I am one who keeps track of things. It's in my nature. I have a planner (where I write more things down after the fact than I do beforehand), and a journal, and facebook, Instagram, and this blog. All of which serve me well in keeping track of dates, and things that happened, and my feelings, and, as it so happens now, my pain journey. It's part of who I am. So, it comes as no surprise that I know when my pain started. And the anniversary of that time is this week. Three years.
Actually, it's funny because I don't have the "actual date" the pain started, because it started as an ear ache/jaw pain that I thought might be an ear infection or a tooth problem. But I have the dates of my first Dr appts (Aug 3 I saw my dentist and Aug 9 I saw my reg Dr). And I made a note in my planner on one day that I had had the ear pain for about 4 weeks at that point, which backtracks to this week. So, yeah. Happy Anniversary to me. Worst anniversary date ever.
But in recognition of this, I thought I'd do a few little updates and blog posts that have been in my brain for a really long time.
First of all, how things stand now: Well. Hmm. Let's go back a bit. In November I had the 22 day migraine when my current neurologist refused to give me any help to abort it ("just keep taking what you're on" she said). That wasn't acceptable to me, since I'd already been to the urgent care and ER in desperation for the pain. Not offering me any help to get rid of this pain was not an option. I needed a new plan. And fast. This led me to rallying all my sources to find new Drs or ideas. In Dec I started seeing an integrative medicine Dr who I was told was good at helping migraines and getting to the root of problems. I saw a chiropractor (who honestly scared me so much with his technique, I almost cried, and he asked me if I was ok.... I wasn't really a fan of that - and although I scheduled a whole month of follow-ups, in the madness of Dec, I cancelled all of them and never went back). And I found a new neurologist.
The integrative medicine Dr did a bunch of blood work that led me to a few ideas to try. I started supplementing Vit D, because my levels were very low. I tried a progesterone supplement, just because he said a lot of women feel better with a little more, even though my levels were ok (this may have contributed to the breast discharge problem that I subsequently had, although I've been off of it ever since and still having that other problem. So whatever. Who knows, but I won't take the progesterone anymore just in case.) And my blood work showed IgG sensitivities to milk, wheat, eggs and gluten. I also tested high for an inflammation marker. So, I went off of all of those foods. The hope was that by avoiding the things that my body was sensitive to, it might reduce inflammation in all of my body, which might be contributing to my pain, or depression, or energy levels, or something. Ok. So we tried it.
My new neurologist was a headache and sleep specialist and had also given me a low-tyramine migraine diet to try. So, that's when I went off of just about every tasty food on the planet (between the migraine diet and the IgG sensitivity foods I was avoiding). This was not a good time. I was lethargic, depressed, and basically slept all day and stopped eating. I didn't have the energy to find things that I could eat and I just didn't feel like bothering with any of it. Plus my pain was terrible. Pain can also be exacerbated by emotions too, so it's just a terrible cycle. It's impossible to tease out all the cause and effects, but I sure didn't feel any better.
In Jan, I also had an overnight sleep study done to rule out apnea, ordered by my new neurologist. I barely slept at all that night, but somehow they collected enough data to still consider it effective. And I got the report and it basically said I DO NOT HAVE SLEEP APNEA. There is a rating score they use to differentiate between normal breathing, mild apnea, moderate apnea, and severe. I was in the normal range. But, the neuro still thought that apnea might be a cause (huh?!?) and that I should try a CPAP machine. Well, the machines are costly and not easy to sleep with, so I held off on that.
He recommended that I try Botox for the chronic migraine. It would take up to 4 treatments, 3 months apart, to know the full effect of how effective Botox would be for me. Everyone has a different response to it. Some people it helps right away, either with intensity or frequency of migraines, some people have an accumulative effect where they get more benefit with each treatment, and some people it doesn't help at all, or even makes them worse. He said it wasn't very painful, most people were fine, and that I wouldn't need the numbing cream that a lot of Drs use for it. LIES. hahah. It was terrible!! Probably the worst medical procedure I can ever recall since the terrible nerve block experience. I sobbed. He asked me if I was ok, and I said no not really. But what else could he do? The injection sites stung and ached and throbbed for weeks. This isn't a typical response. I had more migraine pain in those areas, when previously I didn't have any pain at all there. And my eyebrows became paralyzed - for the entire 3 months that the injection was "working". Oh and the best part?! He had told me there were NO SIDE EFFECTS. Riiiiiiigght. Of course I knew from my own research about all the possible side effects beforehand, but I was ticked that he said there weren't any, and I had decided it was worth at least a try to see if it would help me. I wasn't happy about any of this, and had decided there was no way I could do it again. Just. couldn't. Not worth it.
Sometime in all of this, I was also dealing with breast pain and discharge and having to undergo mammograms, ultrasounds and a ductogram, all of which were not very pleasant.
And the neuro had sent me to a neurotologist (kind of an ENT neuro), and an ophthalmologist. The neurotologist said I most likely had Menieres disease, due to some strange sound distortions I had had occasionally and very rare vertigo episodes years before, and I had very mild hearing loss. But my ear pain, he said, was most likely a nerve issue that the neurologist should help me with. Great. The ophthalmologist said I had very dry eyes and that could cause eye pain. Hmmm. He said I should do drops every couple hrs. But I kind of don't think my dry eyes could be causing the exploding type of eye pain that I experience. I cancelled my follow up there.
So, anyway... the neuro had me try a medicine to rule out Hemicrania Continua, a headache disorder that causes one sided head pain. The med caused half of my soft palate and throat to swell, making me gag, an allergic reaction. I saw a different Dr on short notice who told me I should stop taking it, of course, and prescribed a short term steroid. The steroid seemed to actually help my pain a little, but you usually can't stay on steroids long term. Interesting though.
The neurologist had also tried me on a couple different prescription NSAIDS, a beta-blocker, nausea med, and ear medicine, none of which really helped. He also gave me anxiety meds and a muscle relaxer, which I could take when the pain was bad just to help me zone out and not freak out. Also to help me sleep. That was probably the most help he ever gave me. After a few months being gluten-and-everything-else-free, I went back to the integrative medicine Dr for follow up. My Vit D levels had improved, the inflammation marker was down, and the IgG sensitivities were down but still not normal. Since he wasn't on my insurance and I was paying $200 a visit, we determined that I couldn't afford to keep seeing him. So he recommended I keep off the foods for a couple more months and if I still didn't see any improvement in anything, then it probably wasn't worth staying off the foods (hallelujah). Oh, somewhere in there I also tried taking a thyroid supplement. My levels were on the low side of normal. But I never noticed a difference being on that either, so I stopped. Didn't notice a bit of difference in my pain levels going back to eating normal food, but I did unfortunately gain back the weight I had lost when I wasn't eating. No surprise there.
And then, my neuro kept pushing me to get the CPAP. I explained my concerns in getting it (the cost - $400 out of pocket after our deductible has been met, the possibility of a face mask aggravating my face pain, the fact that I DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE SLEEP APNEA), but he was still very insistent that trying this might help me. He was also very disappointed that I wasn't willing to give Botox another try. Then he tried to tell me that maybe all of my pain was actually stemming from my depression, so he referred me to both a psychiatrist and a neuropsychologist. Hm. I knew my depression had been pretty bad so I felt ok about taking the referrals, since I clearly needed more help than he could give me. But I really didn't like that he wanted to attribute all my pain to my depression. Seriously.
I was seeing a counselor when my pain started and asked him about this, as this is often a question that comes up with chronic pain, and he very clearly explained to me that when pain is associated with depression it most often manifests itself in more vague ways: a dull headache, backache, stomachaches, etc. It doesn't usually follow the pattern of a specific disorder, like Trigeminal Neuralgia. So he didn't think that was causing anything. They might be feeding off each other, as emotion plays a very significant role in the perception of pain, but that would be the extent of it. Many many people with chronic pain get this kind of thing from Drs, mostly when the Dr has run out of ideas and is feeling out of their element. They don't know what else to do, this makes them feel incompetent, and they then blame it on psychology. Most people with pain feel invalidated, accused, and discouraged in this situation. I am not an exception. This, along with his insistence on Botox and CPAP (notably, his areas of expertise), convinced me that I was done with this Dr. He had nothing else in his tricks of the trade to offer me. He didn't know what else to do.
I saw the psychiatrist, who tried me on another anticonvulsant I hadn't tried yet. I had a potentially life threatening reaction, which sent me to the ER. She wanted me to try some antipsychotics to help with my sleep, mostly. I didn't feel good about that. She agreed that getting off the migraine preventative med (also an anticonvulsant) made sense, since I'd been on it for over a year and never felt like it helped at all. The neuro kept telling me my pain would probably be worse without it and didn't recommend getting off. But I followed the psychiatrist's recommended tapering schedule and now I'm off, with no change in my pain, either better or worse. She also increased my antidepressant, but then I started having high blood pressure which can happen from this medication. I had my blood pressure taken in different places and situations (even knocked out in the ER) and it was always high. So, since it was no longer working much for me, it could be causing me high blood pressure (which can happen at any dose), and there's always the slight possibility that my pain could have been caused by it (who knows), we decided to start weaning off of that too. That is a very long slow tapering process, since it is known for having nasty side effects getting of it (one of the worst for antidepressants). The entire process would take a few months, and I'm still in the midst of that. But she told me to call her anytime I'm feeling desperate, or have questions or anything and she seemed like she really wanted to find something to help, and that was encouraging.
I also went and saw the psychologist. She works closely with the neurologist, he referring patients to her, and she likewise. I was nervous about what he might have told her about me, with my stubbornness in refusing the CPAP and Botox, and how he thought my pain was caused by my depression, so perhaps I was a little defensive from the start. I didn't feel comfortable with how my information might be passed back and forth between them and I wasn't sure how it would work, since I had already come to the conclusion that the neuro had basically given up on helping me (our last visit, he told me to come back when I wanted to try the CPAP. Ummm, ok...). And there is also an element of rapport and feeling like someone is on your side. Like someone is listening and genuinely cares about YOUR experience. Having seen a number of psychologists/psychiatrists/counselors before, either for myself or my children, I kind of know how this works and how important this aspect is. Sometimes you just need someone you "click with" for it to work (also important with Drs, incidentally). But this lady.... she seemed kind, and she went through the stack of paperwork I had filled out and asked some relevant questions, but then she just went on and on about some pain she had (nothing at all like mine) and what had helped her, or her sister, or somebody, and have I tried essential oils, or acupuncture....? And I was taken aback a bit. During the visit, I just explained that yes I've tried oils and no I haven't tried acupuncture, but that I've tried a whole dang lot of things, and I was exhausted. My Dr had just basically given up on me. I had seen 22 Drs and health providers of different sorts over the last 2 1/2 yrs (to which she said, why do you think you've seen so many Drs?? in a tone that felt accusatory to me, like I'm just Dr shopping to find one that tells me what I want to hear. I felt I had to defend myself against my choices - not really how I want to spend my time). I've already heard about just about every treatment available, I have been through a lot of crap, and really, can someone just listen to me for once???? I paid $75 to see this woman, I was paying her (I thought) to listen to me, because if a psychologist won't listen to you, then tell me, who will?!?! But I didn't feel like she was listening. She didn't bother to ask me what treatments I had tried, before going on about her own things that helped her, and she hadn't even asked me about my pain enough to even understand it. How could she know what could help me if she hadn't even talked to me about what it was like? She recommended a book about managing chronic pain (which I now have from the library) and suggested I take an online inventory assessment-thing that would help me clarify my strengths and values, which she said is important to remember during pain. I did it, which I found fascinating but not particularly helpful or relevant to what I'm going through. I went back to her again, and we talked a little, but it was clear this wasn't a good fit. If nothing else, I need someone not so closely connected to the neurologist that was driving me crazy. We mutually agreed that I probably shouldn't continue coming back. So that was that.
So that's where I am. I've started getting these terrible insomnia episodes (where I sometimes never fall asleep at all, all night long) that don't make a lot of sense to me. I've never struggled like this before. I don't know if it has anything to do with the medications I'm getting off of, or just my general anxiety levels, or my pain, or what. My pain seems about the same as it's always been, although it's really hard to evaluate that objectively. I sometimes don't get out of bed much for days at a time. I don't have a Dr to see currently. I'm just kind of in a holding pattern until I get off the antidepressant and then evaluate how I feel. There was also a very slight possibility that it could be contributing to the breast problem. So I'm waiting to do anything else about that (since it is ongoing) until I'm off of this too. It all just really stinks. Sometimes I am doing ok, sometimes I am just not.
And for three years now, that's how it's been. Every single day. Happy Anniversary.
Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Fourteen: a "blogging-as-therapy" post
If you're a long-time reader of my blog, you may remember that I went through a stage when I was very self-conscious of who I was in my youth. I was kind of embarrassed by it, in a way I guess. I had issues with integrating who I was with who I am. Yeah, I just had issues. We all have issues, right? It's no big deal. And I am mostly through with it. I've worked through it, partly through writing some great blog posts on here where you guys helped me come to terms with who I was and who I am and that it's all ok and no one really cares and it all works together to make me who I am and I can like who I am and like who I was, even though I may not like parts of who I was and still not like parts of who I am now and still want to become better even though I accept where I'm at and everything will all be ok. It really will be ok. I don't judge you and you don't judge me and we try to create a safe space here on my blog where we all have our own stuff, right? Because we're all imperfect and we're all just doing the best we can. Ok. So we're all clear on that.
So. But sometimes I still like to use my blog as therapy. Writing is a great therapeutic tool.
And so you see my daughter, my oldest daughter, my firstborn, this one that turned me into a mother . . . she turned 14 in May . . . 14?! How can this be? Yes. 14. And this turned my head around and whipped my mind around in circles and kind of kept me up at night in reflective thinking, flashbacking to some kind of memories and aching and wondering how such silly old memories could still seem to hurt so much, remembering and wishing I didn't remember some things. Then wondering how she and I are so different and our experiences will be so different (of course, because we are different), but then how we might be the same, and how can I be her mother, how can I best help her through these years, and why were they so hard for me, why were they just so hard and what was I supposed to learn from them . 14 was a transformative year for me. A hard year in a lot of ways. Much of this was through my own dumb choices which I recognize, but which I was blind to at the time, I guess. Who knows. What do we really know at 14.
14. Ugh.
I turned 14 in the middle of 8th grade. I had already had 5 so-called "boyfriends" (eeeeek, please please remember that little clause about not judging too harshly). I'd had a boyfriend attempt suicide. A friend who had been raped. A few friends who used drugs (although I had never had it offered to me). And one of these so-called boyfriends who did clearly only want "one thing" - he asked for it as his Christmas present. Nice. I had my older sister call and break up with that one for me - because I was very clearly mature enough to handle this on my own. hahahahahahah.
I also got mono at the end of 8th grade which meant I was very sick for what felt like forever. I ended up in the hospital for 3 or 4 days with abscessed tonsils that had to be drained. Then towards the end of that summer when I was 14 I had to have my tonsils taken out, which was awful. So it felt like I was very sick that entire summer.
Anyway, I don't know how others would have described me at that time. I guess I was shy? Insecure? Self-conscious? That sounds pretty typical of a teenage girl, but I think maybe it went beyond that.
You see, I had a problem with talking.
Let me explain.
My first "boyfriend" was in 6th grade, but I've told my kids that we didn't even talk, so it hardly even really qualified as a relationship. And that's no exaggeration. I mean I did not exchange words with this poor boy, ever. I even called him one night (our one and only phone conversation) and we said hello and then sat on the phone listening to each other breathe for 20 minutes. I kid you not. I'd like to say we share equal blame for this, which I suppose must be true to some extent. But I just don't really understand it. Why didn't we say anything to each other?!? How did that even happen? I don't know. And then the thing is, this kind of thing kept happening throughout my relationships. So I began to see that it must be me.
It was excruciating.
I think all of my so-called boyfriends had given me lines at some point such as "you should talk more" "why don't you talk" "you're too quiet" "what are you thinking" (except for the boy who I never actually talked to). These words would swarm around my head like bees and buzz so loudly I couldn't hear anything else until I couldn't even hear any of my own thoughts anymore and I would clam up even more than I had been before. Teenage Kristen Rule #1: If you wanted me to talk, don't bring attention to the fact that I wasn't talking. Some of the time, until they brought it up I wasn't even aware that I "wasn't talking". It was just comfortable quietness or listening to them talk, or laughing, or whatever. But then. Once I was aware. Then it always became awkward self-consciousness. Which I hated. Was I talking enough? What if I wasn't? What if I was too quiet? Was it not ok to be quiet? Other times, usually when I was very emotional, I would have so many thoughts and feelings and something would happen where I would physically shut down and I could. not. talk. I could not make words come out of my mouth. It is very hard to explain - but it's almost like standing at the edge of a high diving board and just not being able to make yourself jump off. I would be frozen. Shut down. One of those things. Anyway. And it just kept happening. So I knew it just wasn't one other person who felt like I didn't talk enough. It was me. As a 13 and 14 year old girl I felt very acutely that something was wrong with me.
Summer after 8th grade. 14.
My first church youth conference. I had a boyfriend who was going. This was a boyfriend who would take the phone and play basketball with it sometimes across the room sometimes when I wasn't "talking", just throwing it into the trash can over and over, and I would sit in silence. I remember that. Why did I sit there? I don't know. I can't remember if we had broken up officially at that point when we went to youth conference, maybe we had. Maybe we were kinda sorta getting back together. I don't remember all the details. We were riding in big charter buses to drive several hours to a college campus for the conference. I sat next to him. He leaned his head on my shoulder and slept. I really liked him. I thought I did. I had a heart that liked too much too early and yearned to be liked - and I mistook all sorts of other things for being liked in return. How could I have protected myself? This is what I ask myself. Maturity would have helped. Self-confidence... Why didn't I have any? I don't know.
At any rate, as things went on at the youth conference my 14 year old self felt like I was being given very clear signals that this boy still liked me and we were very much still together. There were unmistakable signs. Clear actions on his part. At least the first night there were. And then the next day there were various workshops to attend etc and I felt like he ignored me completely. We didn't go to workshops together like we could have. Or go eat meals together at the cafeteria. I didn't see him anywhere, although I tried. He didn't try to see me. I felt discarded. He didn't talk to me again for the next 2 days of the conference.
The last night of the 3 day conference there was a dance. I was tired of feeling so confused and sad and used. I waited around at the dance for him to show. He did. He didn't ask me to dance. I gathered every bit of courage I had and asked him to come with me for a walk outside so we could talk. Because we needed to talk . . . . didn't we? Because I needed to know why he'd been ignoring me. I needed to know where we stood. I needed to know why he had acted (very clearly) that first night like he liked me if he really didn't. Oh my poor little 14 year old heart.
So we walked down a sidewalk and sat down on a bench. I had words in my head that I wanted to say. So many words. Like a huge puzzle of words. I had to say them. I had to. They were exploding out of my head, but it felt so hard so hard to get it out of my mouth. And we sat. We sat. The silence. The longer the silence built, the harder it became to say anything at all. What was wrong with me? What was my problem?!? He started picking flowers off of a nearby bush and dropping them on the ground and crushing them beneath his shoe. I watched. Agonizing. And we sat in silence. And I felt paralyzed. I wanted to speak. I wanted him to speak. I couldn't get any words to come out of my mouth. Nothing. I felt like I couldn't even move. I don't know how long we sat there. How long could it have been....? Finally he said something like "well, if you're not going to talk, I'm going to go."
And he stood up and walked away.
I sat.
I looked at the crushed flowers on the sidewalk by my feet.
The next morning we boarded the buses to go back home. All of my friends, including this boy, somehow ended up on a different charter bus than me. I don't remember how that happened, as we had all been on the same bus when we had come. As if I wasn't already feeling crushed and heartbroken enough (and also hating, hating myself), for some reason this added to it. I sat in a seat by the window, overwhelmed by such overpowering feelings I could not even deal with it. It wasn't just the sadness, although there was that. It was the self-loathing - this not being able to believe what had happened, not wanting to accept this part of myself, this way that I was, this thing I did. Then the rejection. And feeling alone. And the happy noise of the bus all around me but not being a part of any of it. And it was too much. It was too much for some part inside of me that just broke into pieces. And it was then, on the way home from youth conference on that bus, there in that window seat, sure that no one was paying attention to me (and they weren't), that I first self-harmed. I won't go into details because you really don't need to know. But I feel like this was the age (if not before) when I began having depressive episodes. This was definitely the beginning of one. I feel like they continued ever since although I didn't recognize it as such until much much later.
And I hope you don't feel like I am placing any blame on this particular boy or what he did, although rejection can certainly play into triggers for this kind of thing. My goodness, I can only have very vague and compassionate views of what goes on in any 14 year old boy's head. And certainly I am very forgiving of any poor boy who did his best to like/love me back in my teenage years. Sigh.
14.
And so, that was one of the defining turning points during the summer after my 8th grade year. Along with having mono/being hospitalized with abscessed tonsils and then getting my tonsils taken out. It was just a bad summer.
My problems with talking, by the way, continued to plague me well throughout my dating years, even into my marriage, although Zac has been able to patiently work that out with me when I would shut down over the years. It's been a hard long process even with him, which I am somewhat embarrassed to admit. But he never told me I didn't talk enough or that I was too quiet. So that is to his credit.
So, you may think I am making a bigger deal out of all of this than I should. I certainly don't see any point in comparing what should be a big deal and what shouldn't. And this is just my story, one part of my story - I can only tell my own and what it meant to me. I look at my sweet daughter, my 14 year old daughter, and I know she will have her own story to tell, which will not be like mine (in the time since I first started this post, she has gone to her first youth conference!!). And I hope I will be able to help her navigate through her own. I hope she will not have to suffer in the same ways I did. I hope she will be confident and will be loved and love when she is more ready. (So far there has been no mention of any boys (fingers crossed).) But I also hope that there was some purpose to what I have gone through. That there is some reason for it all in helping me become who I am.
This is only one little story of me being 14.
It is hard sometimes to think about.
But it takes out some of the sting to tell it out loud.
(me second from left, a couple days before I was hospitalized with the abscessed tonsils. I got very sick very quickly. This is pictured with my siblings and visiting cousins)
So. But sometimes I still like to use my blog as therapy. Writing is a great therapeutic tool.
And so you see my daughter, my oldest daughter, my firstborn, this one that turned me into a mother . . . she turned 14 in May . . . 14?! How can this be? Yes. 14. And this turned my head around and whipped my mind around in circles and kind of kept me up at night in reflective thinking, flashbacking to some kind of memories and aching and wondering how such silly old memories could still seem to hurt so much, remembering and wishing I didn't remember some things. Then wondering how she and I are so different and our experiences will be so different (of course, because we are different), but then how we might be the same, and how can I be her mother, how can I best help her through these years, and why were they so hard for me, why were they just so hard and what was I supposed to learn from them . 14 was a transformative year for me. A hard year in a lot of ways. Much of this was through my own dumb choices which I recognize, but which I was blind to at the time, I guess. Who knows. What do we really know at 14.
14. Ugh.
I turned 14 in the middle of 8th grade. I had already had 5 so-called "boyfriends" (eeeeek, please please remember that little clause about not judging too harshly). I'd had a boyfriend attempt suicide. A friend who had been raped. A few friends who used drugs (although I had never had it offered to me). And one of these so-called boyfriends who did clearly only want "one thing" - he asked for it as his Christmas present. Nice. I had my older sister call and break up with that one for me - because I was very clearly mature enough to handle this on my own. hahahahahahah.
I also got mono at the end of 8th grade which meant I was very sick for what felt like forever. I ended up in the hospital for 3 or 4 days with abscessed tonsils that had to be drained. Then towards the end of that summer when I was 14 I had to have my tonsils taken out, which was awful. So it felt like I was very sick that entire summer.
Anyway, I don't know how others would have described me at that time. I guess I was shy? Insecure? Self-conscious? That sounds pretty typical of a teenage girl, but I think maybe it went beyond that.
You see, I had a problem with talking.
Let me explain.
My first "boyfriend" was in 6th grade, but I've told my kids that we didn't even talk, so it hardly even really qualified as a relationship. And that's no exaggeration. I mean I did not exchange words with this poor boy, ever. I even called him one night (our one and only phone conversation) and we said hello and then sat on the phone listening to each other breathe for 20 minutes. I kid you not. I'd like to say we share equal blame for this, which I suppose must be true to some extent. But I just don't really understand it. Why didn't we say anything to each other?!? How did that even happen? I don't know. And then the thing is, this kind of thing kept happening throughout my relationships. So I began to see that it must be me.
It was excruciating.
I think all of my so-called boyfriends had given me lines at some point such as "you should talk more" "why don't you talk" "you're too quiet" "what are you thinking" (except for the boy who I never actually talked to). These words would swarm around my head like bees and buzz so loudly I couldn't hear anything else until I couldn't even hear any of my own thoughts anymore and I would clam up even more than I had been before. Teenage Kristen Rule #1: If you wanted me to talk, don't bring attention to the fact that I wasn't talking. Some of the time, until they brought it up I wasn't even aware that I "wasn't talking". It was just comfortable quietness or listening to them talk, or laughing, or whatever. But then. Once I was aware. Then it always became awkward self-consciousness. Which I hated. Was I talking enough? What if I wasn't? What if I was too quiet? Was it not ok to be quiet? Other times, usually when I was very emotional, I would have so many thoughts and feelings and something would happen where I would physically shut down and I could. not. talk. I could not make words come out of my mouth. It is very hard to explain - but it's almost like standing at the edge of a high diving board and just not being able to make yourself jump off. I would be frozen. Shut down. One of those things. Anyway. And it just kept happening. So I knew it just wasn't one other person who felt like I didn't talk enough. It was me. As a 13 and 14 year old girl I felt very acutely that something was wrong with me.
Summer after 8th grade. 14.
My first church youth conference. I had a boyfriend who was going. This was a boyfriend who would take the phone and play basketball with it sometimes across the room sometimes when I wasn't "talking", just throwing it into the trash can over and over, and I would sit in silence. I remember that. Why did I sit there? I don't know. I can't remember if we had broken up officially at that point when we went to youth conference, maybe we had. Maybe we were kinda sorta getting back together. I don't remember all the details. We were riding in big charter buses to drive several hours to a college campus for the conference. I sat next to him. He leaned his head on my shoulder and slept. I really liked him. I thought I did. I had a heart that liked too much too early and yearned to be liked - and I mistook all sorts of other things for being liked in return. How could I have protected myself? This is what I ask myself. Maturity would have helped. Self-confidence... Why didn't I have any? I don't know.
At any rate, as things went on at the youth conference my 14 year old self felt like I was being given very clear signals that this boy still liked me and we were very much still together. There were unmistakable signs. Clear actions on his part. At least the first night there were. And then the next day there were various workshops to attend etc and I felt like he ignored me completely. We didn't go to workshops together like we could have. Or go eat meals together at the cafeteria. I didn't see him anywhere, although I tried. He didn't try to see me. I felt discarded. He didn't talk to me again for the next 2 days of the conference.
The last night of the 3 day conference there was a dance. I was tired of feeling so confused and sad and used. I waited around at the dance for him to show. He did. He didn't ask me to dance. I gathered every bit of courage I had and asked him to come with me for a walk outside so we could talk. Because we needed to talk . . . . didn't we? Because I needed to know why he'd been ignoring me. I needed to know where we stood. I needed to know why he had acted (very clearly) that first night like he liked me if he really didn't. Oh my poor little 14 year old heart.
So we walked down a sidewalk and sat down on a bench. I had words in my head that I wanted to say. So many words. Like a huge puzzle of words. I had to say them. I had to. They were exploding out of my head, but it felt so hard so hard to get it out of my mouth. And we sat. We sat. The silence. The longer the silence built, the harder it became to say anything at all. What was wrong with me? What was my problem?!? He started picking flowers off of a nearby bush and dropping them on the ground and crushing them beneath his shoe. I watched. Agonizing. And we sat in silence. And I felt paralyzed. I wanted to speak. I wanted him to speak. I couldn't get any words to come out of my mouth. Nothing. I felt like I couldn't even move. I don't know how long we sat there. How long could it have been....? Finally he said something like "well, if you're not going to talk, I'm going to go."
And he stood up and walked away.
I sat.
I looked at the crushed flowers on the sidewalk by my feet.
The next morning we boarded the buses to go back home. All of my friends, including this boy, somehow ended up on a different charter bus than me. I don't remember how that happened, as we had all been on the same bus when we had come. As if I wasn't already feeling crushed and heartbroken enough (and also hating, hating myself), for some reason this added to it. I sat in a seat by the window, overwhelmed by such overpowering feelings I could not even deal with it. It wasn't just the sadness, although there was that. It was the self-loathing - this not being able to believe what had happened, not wanting to accept this part of myself, this way that I was, this thing I did. Then the rejection. And feeling alone. And the happy noise of the bus all around me but not being a part of any of it. And it was too much. It was too much for some part inside of me that just broke into pieces. And it was then, on the way home from youth conference on that bus, there in that window seat, sure that no one was paying attention to me (and they weren't), that I first self-harmed. I won't go into details because you really don't need to know. But I feel like this was the age (if not before) when I began having depressive episodes. This was definitely the beginning of one. I feel like they continued ever since although I didn't recognize it as such until much much later.
And I hope you don't feel like I am placing any blame on this particular boy or what he did, although rejection can certainly play into triggers for this kind of thing. My goodness, I can only have very vague and compassionate views of what goes on in any 14 year old boy's head. And certainly I am very forgiving of any poor boy who did his best to like/love me back in my teenage years. Sigh.
14.
And so, that was one of the defining turning points during the summer after my 8th grade year. Along with having mono/being hospitalized with abscessed tonsils and then getting my tonsils taken out. It was just a bad summer.
My problems with talking, by the way, continued to plague me well throughout my dating years, even into my marriage, although Zac has been able to patiently work that out with me when I would shut down over the years. It's been a hard long process even with him, which I am somewhat embarrassed to admit. But he never told me I didn't talk enough or that I was too quiet. So that is to his credit.
So, you may think I am making a bigger deal out of all of this than I should. I certainly don't see any point in comparing what should be a big deal and what shouldn't. And this is just my story, one part of my story - I can only tell my own and what it meant to me. I look at my sweet daughter, my 14 year old daughter, and I know she will have her own story to tell, which will not be like mine (in the time since I first started this post, she has gone to her first youth conference!!). And I hope I will be able to help her navigate through her own. I hope she will not have to suffer in the same ways I did. I hope she will be confident and will be loved and love when she is more ready. (So far there has been no mention of any boys (fingers crossed).) But I also hope that there was some purpose to what I have gone through. That there is some reason for it all in helping me become who I am.
This is only one little story of me being 14.
It is hard sometimes to think about.
But it takes out some of the sting to tell it out loud.
(me second from left, a couple days before I was hospitalized with the abscessed tonsils. I got very sick very quickly. This is pictured with my siblings and visiting cousins)
"If I don't write to empty my mind,
I go mad."
- Lord Byron
Sunday, June 30, 2013
how does your garden grow
The other night I was kneeling in the dirt of our little garden looking at what has come of the seeds we have planted, what has grown and done well, and what has not, pulling out all kinds of very prickly noxious weeds, and weeds that had worked their twisty ways around the stems of my dear little plants. I knelt there weeding and weeding and weeding and and I got to thinking, as I am wont to do. Oh, thinking. My brain. It's a doozy. And I thought about life and summer and the trip I just went on and my kids and the things we've been doing and all of what we've been up to. (I know it's hopeless to even tell you about the posts I still have in my drafts that I really am still going to finish and post. I really am.) But anyway. Gardening. Weeding. Thinking. And I thought I'd check in here and give you a little update and let you know how things are going, or growing, as the case may be, beginning with our experimental garden plot, and maybe expand on this as little metaphor because metaphors are always fun. And here I am.
1. So we've lived in our house 11 years and through these years we have had a little plot in which we have sometimes on and off experimentally gardened. Nothing has been very successful and it has mostly been discouraging and has mostly grown an amazing amount of weeds. This year we are trying again. We bought some manure and peat moss and turned the soil and even designed and installed a watering system (which we determined to be our main failure in the past. Turns out things don't grow so well without water. Hm.) We bought seeds. We started some seeds from little seed starter peat pots indoors. And eventually (later in the year) we bought a few tomato plants and a red pepper plant. The younger kids also brought home some carrot seedlings they had started in yogurt cups at school. So, at this point, our watering system has failed - our sprinkler system turned out to have main water valve leaks that Zac has tried to fix at least 3 times and it is still leaking and so the branch leading the garden and back yard are still not functioning. And yeah, it's over 100 degrees and our backyard is not being watered. If you're not from Utah or the West you may not understand the significance of this. Oh well. We are watering the garden from the hose but we are more committed to keeping things alive and I think it is working. We have some tomatoes starting to grow. Some lettuce. Some peas look good. One carrot from the kids school seeds. Of my little herb garden that I started from seeds, only basil looks like it will grow into something that can be harvested. I am disappointed not to have any dill or chives but not much can be done. Of the seedlings we started indoors, marigolds were the only ones to make it after we transplanted outdoors. We have some green bean plants growing (haven't seen any fruit yet) and some zucchini or yellow squash (not sure which). The pepper plant died and we don't know why. We are learning through trial and error. Probably mostly though error. We don't really know what we're doing. Just hoping to enjoy some of our harvest.
2. My trip: I went to CA for my oldest sister's wedding. I drove 2 days there with my mom and her new husband and my niece/sister and her husband and we stayed there 3 days in a rental house with the 5 of us plus my brother, his wife and their 2 yr old and my youngest sister, then drove 2 days home again. We spent time with my sister, her son, her fiance, and his 2 daughters, plus the best man, another friend, my sister's fiance's parents. Did I forget anyone? There were a lot of people, which meant they were surrounded by a lot of love and support which is wonderful, but for an introvert like me who needs a little time alone to recharge, and a person like me with chronic pain who needs daily naps to kind of function in a normal fashion, all the busy running around kind of drained me in a significant way. I mention this to try to explain to myself why this trip felt so difficult to me in some ways. Family. We grow up together. Are we like a garden? We are seeds somehow sown together, we think we are getting the same experience of sun and water and soil and yet each of experiences it all so differently. This is something that always seems to come up when I am together with my siblings. We experienced our childhoods so differently. We remember even the exact same things so differently. We experienced our parents differently. It is hard sometimes to come to terms with the differences of our experiences. Our memories. Our childhoods. And even now. We continue to experience things so differently. It is hard sometimes to respect and come to terms with the differences of our experiences. We are in the same garden but experiencing differing shade and sun and water. Sometimes we forget that it's not the same. And not all of us are flourishing in the same way. Anyway. I'll just quickly also bring up the issue of being an adult when your parents divorce and remarry. I must have been naive or maybe I just didn't want to think about it - but I didn't think this would affect me as much being older. I was 21 when my parents got divorced. And I will just tell you that I was wrong. And if you are one of the people who somehow think or thought the same, I just want to disprove that myth for you once and for all. And I just have to say that having your parents remarry at any age is still hard. There just is no way around it. There were weeds I found on this trip cropping up in my mind that I didn't even know existed. Not the "bad thought" weeds that we're typically taught to weed out of our minds in that sense, but just things growing in the back of my mind, thorny prickly uncomfortable feelings that needed to be dealt with. Painful thoughts that had to be grabbed with both hands and yanked on and brought to the surface and untangled, even though they dug into my palms and left me scraped and bloody. I came home from the trip having accidentally unearthed some prickly thorny weeds and it wasn't necessarily any one's fault or any particular incidences or anything. It was just the circumstance of what is and that I need to deal with my weeds. It was a wonderful trip, all things considered. It is so beautiful there and I love it. The wedding day was beautiful and I loved it. I love my family and I loved spending time with them. Gardening is just such hard work. We work at it the best we can and sometimes we aren't so good at it.
3. Summertime and my kids: we started a new chore system and it seems to be going well. The kids are actually doing chores!! Hooray! This is going well for the most part because I am doing well enough to enforce it - ta da! Magic! ;) And Zac and I are both actually amazed at how well it is going. It took a couple weeks to get some of the complaining to stop and to not have to drag certain children from step to step but after 4 weeks, it seems to be going somewhat smoothly. They have a room for the week to clean and maintain everyday and then "deep clean" once a week and we have incorporated doing the laundry and some extra things into the basic rooms. They have a printed list of what they are expected to do every day. I help Samuel and Elisabeth as needed. That's basically it. They seem to be proud of their work, happier throughout the day, they keep things cleaner because they take some ownership in it. Ahh finally seeing some growth in this little garden!! We are also taking steps to limit screen time and that seems to be helping the overall tone in our home. Other than that, we've made our list of "fun things to do" and we're trying to do them. Except Elisabeth wants to do things like "make hats" and I'm really like, really? do we have to make hats?! I'm not crafty and I don't really want to sit and make hats but there it is, sitting, staring at me on the fun list, wanting to be done. Crap. So yeah. There's things like that. I'm more into the "make homemade ice cream" - lots of it. Let's make lots of homemade ice cream, and popsicles, and smoothies, and cookies .... and forget all about counting calories .... ever . . . again. Ugh. It's too hot here.
We are also doing lots of pooltime and hopefully growing lots of great family memories. Summertime...
4. Finally, because I haven't updated in a long time, I'll just give a quick pain update. It's still there. The beastly trigeminal neuralgia and chronic migraine. I added another medication that is supposed to be helping the migraines and could also combine to work with my other med to help my TN. I started in April and have been increasing the dose. April I had 17 migraine days. May I had 14. June I had 10. So you could say perhaps it's working. It could be coincidence. It could be any number of factors. You could say any way you look at it, 10 migraine days in a month is still an awful dang lot of migraines!!! I was disappointed when I counted it up because it felt like it had been such a better month for me. hahaha. That's still an awful lot of days. And then I still have the daily TN pain. But I'd have to say that pain is mostly down a notch. So instead of generally being at a 6-7 on a 1-10 scale, it is mostly at around a 5-ish most of the time. And I have some small hours at a time when I am almost without pain, which is glorious. I have been able to exercise, or I am able to force myself to exercise most of the time, which I am grateful for - and I have been counting calories, which is miserable. But it is a necessary evil, because I hate the weight I gained on the meds and being bedridden that first year and a half with the severe pain. It is/was a definite contributor to my depression. I never know if or when I may be at that point again so I need to do all I can to become more physically healthy while I can or whenever I can. It's been hard but worth it to see even small results. So my pain is a little bit better. Mostly now I get the ache and stinging pain across my cheekbone, occasionally aching in my upper jaw, occasional aching and shooting pain in ear, pain around eye and in eye, tingling along tip of tongue, feeling like someone is pinching my ear - then the migraine either in my left eye and left side of forehead and head, or on my right side of head (I know that's
weird). So that's the strange garden of my brain (these messed up neurons). Just leave it alone - only the professionals can tell what's growing in there (metaphorically).
And there you have it. Lots of growth and weeding and watering and fertilizing and nourishing and waiting and watching and hopefully harvesting. All of it. That's what life is, right? Gardening. :)
(all below photos taken in Humboldt, CA)
2. My trip: I went to CA for my oldest sister's wedding. I drove 2 days there with my mom and her new husband and my niece/sister and her husband and we stayed there 3 days in a rental house with the 5 of us plus my brother, his wife and their 2 yr old and my youngest sister, then drove 2 days home again. We spent time with my sister, her son, her fiance, and his 2 daughters, plus the best man, another friend, my sister's fiance's parents. Did I forget anyone? There were a lot of people, which meant they were surrounded by a lot of love and support which is wonderful, but for an introvert like me who needs a little time alone to recharge, and a person like me with chronic pain who needs daily naps to kind of function in a normal fashion, all the busy running around kind of drained me in a significant way. I mention this to try to explain to myself why this trip felt so difficult to me in some ways. Family. We grow up together. Are we like a garden? We are seeds somehow sown together, we think we are getting the same experience of sun and water and soil and yet each of experiences it all so differently. This is something that always seems to come up when I am together with my siblings. We experienced our childhoods so differently. We remember even the exact same things so differently. We experienced our parents differently. It is hard sometimes to come to terms with the differences of our experiences. Our memories. Our childhoods. And even now. We continue to experience things so differently. It is hard sometimes to respect and come to terms with the differences of our experiences. We are in the same garden but experiencing differing shade and sun and water. Sometimes we forget that it's not the same. And not all of us are flourishing in the same way. Anyway. I'll just quickly also bring up the issue of being an adult when your parents divorce and remarry. I must have been naive or maybe I just didn't want to think about it - but I didn't think this would affect me as much being older. I was 21 when my parents got divorced. And I will just tell you that I was wrong. And if you are one of the people who somehow think or thought the same, I just want to disprove that myth for you once and for all. And I just have to say that having your parents remarry at any age is still hard. There just is no way around it. There were weeds I found on this trip cropping up in my mind that I didn't even know existed. Not the "bad thought" weeds that we're typically taught to weed out of our minds in that sense, but just things growing in the back of my mind, thorny prickly uncomfortable feelings that needed to be dealt with. Painful thoughts that had to be grabbed with both hands and yanked on and brought to the surface and untangled, even though they dug into my palms and left me scraped and bloody. I came home from the trip having accidentally unearthed some prickly thorny weeds and it wasn't necessarily any one's fault or any particular incidences or anything. It was just the circumstance of what is and that I need to deal with my weeds. It was a wonderful trip, all things considered. It is so beautiful there and I love it. The wedding day was beautiful and I loved it. I love my family and I loved spending time with them. Gardening is just such hard work. We work at it the best we can and sometimes we aren't so good at it.
3. Summertime and my kids: we started a new chore system and it seems to be going well. The kids are actually doing chores!! Hooray! This is going well for the most part because I am doing well enough to enforce it - ta da! Magic! ;) And Zac and I are both actually amazed at how well it is going. It took a couple weeks to get some of the complaining to stop and to not have to drag certain children from step to step but after 4 weeks, it seems to be going somewhat smoothly. They have a room for the week to clean and maintain everyday and then "deep clean" once a week and we have incorporated doing the laundry and some extra things into the basic rooms. They have a printed list of what they are expected to do every day. I help Samuel and Elisabeth as needed. That's basically it. They seem to be proud of their work, happier throughout the day, they keep things cleaner because they take some ownership in it. Ahh finally seeing some growth in this little garden!! We are also taking steps to limit screen time and that seems to be helping the overall tone in our home. Other than that, we've made our list of "fun things to do" and we're trying to do them. Except Elisabeth wants to do things like "make hats" and I'm really like, really? do we have to make hats?! I'm not crafty and I don't really want to sit and make hats but there it is, sitting, staring at me on the fun list, wanting to be done. Crap. So yeah. There's things like that. I'm more into the "make homemade ice cream" - lots of it. Let's make lots of homemade ice cream, and popsicles, and smoothies, and cookies .... and forget all about counting calories .... ever . . . again. Ugh. It's too hot here.
We are also doing lots of pooltime and hopefully growing lots of great family memories. Summertime...
4. Finally, because I haven't updated in a long time, I'll just give a quick pain update. It's still there. The beastly trigeminal neuralgia and chronic migraine. I added another medication that is supposed to be helping the migraines and could also combine to work with my other med to help my TN. I started in April and have been increasing the dose. April I had 17 migraine days. May I had 14. June I had 10. So you could say perhaps it's working. It could be coincidence. It could be any number of factors. You could say any way you look at it, 10 migraine days in a month is still an awful dang lot of migraines!!! I was disappointed when I counted it up because it felt like it had been such a better month for me. hahaha. That's still an awful lot of days. And then I still have the daily TN pain. But I'd have to say that pain is mostly down a notch. So instead of generally being at a 6-7 on a 1-10 scale, it is mostly at around a 5-ish most of the time. And I have some small hours at a time when I am almost without pain, which is glorious. I have been able to exercise, or I am able to force myself to exercise most of the time, which I am grateful for - and I have been counting calories, which is miserable. But it is a necessary evil, because I hate the weight I gained on the meds and being bedridden that first year and a half with the severe pain. It is/was a definite contributor to my depression. I never know if or when I may be at that point again so I need to do all I can to become more physically healthy while I can or whenever I can. It's been hard but worth it to see even small results. So my pain is a little bit better. Mostly now I get the ache and stinging pain across my cheekbone, occasionally aching in my upper jaw, occasional aching and shooting pain in ear, pain around eye and in eye, tingling along tip of tongue, feeling like someone is pinching my ear - then the migraine either in my left eye and left side of forehead and head, or on my right side of head (I know that's
weird). So that's the strange garden of my brain (these messed up neurons). Just leave it alone - only the professionals can tell what's growing in there (metaphorically).
And there you have it. Lots of growth and weeding and watering and fertilizing and nourishing and waiting and watching and hopefully harvesting. All of it. That's what life is, right? Gardening. :)
Sunday, May 12, 2013
becoming a mother
“When a woman gives birth,
two are born;
a baby
from the womb of its mother
and a woman
from the womb
of her former existence."
-Marianne Williamson
The arrival of Mother's Day always does something to me, puts me in a contemplative mood, perhaps especially because it coincides with the month of the birth of my firstborn, so I am always thinking in particular of when I became a mother. This child, my daughter, this baby, who suddenly came into the world and transformed me into a mom. I struggle, as perhaps all moms do, with feeling adequate, with feelings of guilt, all my shortcomings laid out in sharp detail with every parenting misstep, every single day.
And now I find myself in an interesting stage of parenting. This middle stage. All my children are in school. It's an "easier" stage in a lot of ways. Not yet driving or dating. No potty-training or diapers. No nap schedules or nursing schedules. We can leave them with a sibling who can babysit. Admittedly, there is more fighting, whining, screaming, throwing things, hitting, and crying than I would have expected at this stage, but I am learning that things are very rarely, if ever at all, like you expect them to be. Really. Like my face pain. Just when things were supposed to be getting "easier" . . . nope, BAM! Let's hit you in the face (almost literally) with chronic pain instead. Have fun with that.
Anyway. I wanted to tell you the story. This story of when I became a mom. Just because all stories are fun, right? And this is my mother's day story. And we all have our own stories. I don't mean to diminish anyone else's or glorify my own. Yours may be a story of not wanting children at all, or wanting but not being able to, perhaps a story of having children young or waiting til you're old, whether by choice or by circumstance, of adoption, of infertility, of being rich or being poor, or having a single child, or 12 children, or something in between, of being married, single, divorced, widowed. I don't know all of your circumstances, how can I. We each have our own story to tell.
This is mine.
Zac and I had known each other about 4 years when we got married so we felt like we already had a somewhat solid foundation and knew each other very well. Although there is always an adjustment period being newlyweds, there was a deep well of trust and emotional bond that we had to draw from from the very beginning of our marriage so that we felt we were ready to start the next phase of our life together. Even though we were both still young college students, we felt strongly that as soon as I graduated we should start our family.
I was graduating in April so we figured May would be the absolute earliest that we'd want to have a baby, counted back 9 months, figured it would probably take at least a few months to get pregnant anyhow (right?! I mean, of course!) and we started trying.
And I got pregnant right away.
Of course.
That was September. So I spent Fall semester pregnant, sick and running out of my classes puking. Then Winter semester I had a full time internship during which I became very swollen, uncomfortable and very pregnant.
I graduated 8 months pregnant.
Here is my department head congratulating my very obviously about-to-pop belly:
Having a child I think is like a million other hard but wonderful things in life where you cannot really wait until you feel ready or you will never do them. You are never ready. There is no ready. You can never be ready for something so completely transformational, so unexpected, so deeply individual.
So was I ready?
Of course not.
I would never have been ready.
No one ever is.
Ask any mom. Any parent. I don't think anyone is ever really prepared for what lies in store when one becomes a parent because it's never really ever what one expects it to be. It can't be. That's just the common refrain of life isn't it?
So there I was. I was 24 years old. Just graduated from college. Zac had a really great, well-paying, important-prospecting summer internship at a firm in DC so we were actually packing up our apartment and leaving to drive across country. In 3 weeks.
Um. Yes. This was slightly crazy. And turned into the perfect recipe for a delicious brew of postpartum depression, but I didn't realize any of that at the time. It wasn't any one thing's fault. It was just a combination of factors.
(Here is zac with 3wk old Abigail at a gas station stop somewhere in Wyoming)
We packed up everything we thought might need for the 2 of us and a newborn baby that we could possibly squeeze into our tiny Tercel floor to ceiling, front to back, and we took off, stopping at least every 2 hrs to nurse this tiny infant and change diapers and outfits and blowouts at the side of the highways and at gas stations and rest stops and soothe her whimpering and crying all along the way across the country. I remember she still had a bandaid on her heel from her PKU test in the hospital and her umbilical cord stub fell off somewhere along the way on that trip. It was . . . perhaps . . . the longest car trip I have ever been on in my entire life.
Then we eventually arrived to stay in this strange apartment that was part of an semi-attached garage in the house of a lady who attended our church there in Fairfax,VA. We were sub-letting the apartment from a couple who were coming out to UT for a couple months and thus leaving it furnished and leasing it out for the months they were gone. We would occupy it for those 2 months. But the owner of the house was an older lady whom I felt like never really liked us very much (who knows why) and I felt uncomfortable and shy and weird in this other person's apartment with their furniture and belongings. It just felt strange.
Zac worked long hours. I was home alone with Abigail without a car in this apartment. It was so hot and humid outside, I was afraid of the baby overheating, and I don't think I even had a stroller. I felt self-conscious and even paranoid going outside (clearly something was going a little bit wonky in my brain). I was a brand new mom with no friends in the immediate area and I had not a clue what to do. We didn't even have a TV (and this was before prevalent internet). I read some books. I called my mom and cried to her. I nursed my new baby and napped with her and talked to her and watched as she developed new skills. But that was all I ever did. I was lonely and depressed. But I didn't recognize the symptoms of postpartum depression at the time. It was only looking back in hindsight that I see it and sometimes I am a little sad that those were my first months of motherhood. But I know now it was also more than just circumstance - it might have happened to me even under the very best circumstances just because of my very susceptible chemical makeup. Anyway.
I also had no clothes that fit me. None. I think my socks were all that I still had that fit. Nothing else. Even my feet had swollen and become a half size bigger. This persisted as a problem because we were still rather poor college students (trying to save his great internship income, of course), now with baby costs, and also I was still holding out great hopes that I would soon be able to fit back into my pre-pregnancy clothes. That's what "everyone" said would happen, right? That was the expectation. So I wore Zac's baggy clothes to get by and tried to adapt to my new body that felt so foreign to me. I remember the first time I tried to go for a run that summer, the first time since sometime before I had gotten big into pregnancy, and I felt shocked by what my body had become. It wasn't me. It couldn't be. And yet I looked down at myself and yes it was. Oh.
And I never did get back into my pre-pregnancy clothes. I guess that's part of my point in this story. More than just the clothes, I never went back to person I was before I had Abigail. I never could. I don't know if I would want to. Everything changes. Everything. When you become a mother. If I wrote about all the ways that I changed, this story would never end.
But this is my story now. It never ended. I guess it wasn't how I expected it to be. Nothing ever is.
This is the story of when I became a mother.
Everyday I become
more of my story.
This is my story.
Everyday is my story.
I become more
everyday.
Related posts that got me thinking:
Why Mother's Day is For the Birds
Don't Call Me Mommy - Unless I Birthed You
Birthing a New You
Thursday, March 20, 2008
100 Things About Me {REPOSTED}
(Originally posted March 20, 2008)
Well, in honor of reaching our 100th post, I will now share with you a 100 Things About Me List (some of these might be in my 33 Bday list, but there'll still be at least 67 new things for you). Yippee!
1. I lived my whole life in Virginia (except for college, mission, and married life)
2. I'm the 2nd of 5 kids (1 brother, 3 sisters)
3. I like whales and dolphins
4. I love lemon flavored things (and scents)
5. Also lavender
6. I lived in Southern Germany for 18 mos. as a Mormon missionary
7. my major was Therapeutic Recreation (mostly for little kids with disabilities)- but sometimes I wish maybe I had done something else
8. I read a lot
9. I've played violin (on and off) since I was 5
10. I took piano lessons for 1 year (and don't remember anything except chopsticks - and I didn't learn that in my lessons)
11. I have 4 terrific kids (2 boys, 2 girls)
12. And the best husband in the world
13. I've been told I have a very unique (and loud) laugh
14. sometimes I write poetry - but I very rarely share it with anyone
15. I need 10 hrs of sleep at night (and never ever get it)
16. I don't wear make-up, or paint my nails, or even "do" my hair
17. I love rain (and it hardly ever rains here - so sad)
18. And I really really love trees
19. I like the ocean and beaches (but not necessarily swimming in it or getting sunburned)
20. My favorite season is Autumn (if there are enough trees around)
21. I've written in over 50 journals
22. I really miss the bakeries in Germany - yummy bread is one of my favorites foods
23. I've rappelled of an 80 ft. cliff
24. and been white-water rafting
25. and whale-watching off the coast of Mass.
26. I usually like to camp (as long as all the kids are sleeping through the night)
27. I advocate breastfeeding as long as you can or want
28. I've had 3 babies without medications
29. I like listening to oldies
30. and classical music
31. and I used to be a big "alternative rock" fan (sometimes I go back on memory lane and listen to it again - and sometimes I'm shocked by what I used to listen to)
32. I go back and forth between long and short hair
33. I went to lots of fun rock concerts as a teenager
34. I took ballet for many years as a child and have taken classes as an adult, too
35. I love the feeling of a plane taking off
36. my favorite color is sage green (for now)
37. I pretty much hate shopping - it's discouraging
38. I swam on a community swim team from age 9-14
39. My best stroke was breaststroke
40. I still have all my ribbons and medals
41. I like to save everything
42. I had my tonsils taken out at age 14
43. that was after I got mono and had an abcessed tonsil
44. that all happened in one summer
45. the worst summer of my life
46. I shattered my elbow when I crashed on my bike in 7th grade
47. I've also broken my arm falling off a chair (4th grade)
48. and got stitches in my head after jumping up and hitting an open cabinet door (in 3rd grade)
49. I tend to be clumsy and accident prone sometimes
50. I really liked to dance as a teenager and young adult (church dances, school dances, clubs etc)
51. I met a guy at a club once and went on a date with him later - I've never been so scared on a date. But he really was harmless.
52. Ok - change that. The most scared I was on a date was when I went spelunking in the Nutty Putty Caves with a guy I had just met in my Physical Science class in college.
53. But maybe that was because I'm a bit claustrophobic and it was very tight and very dark and I was not having fun.
54. I never saw that guy again.
55. And have never gone caving again either.
56. I think I have a lot of interesting dating stories
57. And I am so grateful to have found the love of my life
58. and to be married so I don't have to date weird guys anymore
59. and I really really pray I won't be single again in my lifetime (for any reason)
60. I've driven cross-country between Va and Ut several times
61. Maine is one of the most beautiful states I've visited
62. I'd like to see the Northern Lights someday
63. one of my favorite CD's in recent years is Niamh Parsons - (beautiful irish songs)
64. I took German in high school -and did very poorly
65. I took 4 semesters of American Sign Language in college - and did very well
66. But then I was called to Germany for my mission and had to relearn German
67. And I forgot almost all of my ASL
68. Now I've forgotten almost all my German, too
69. I had my gall bladder taken out a couple years ago
70. I love to roller-skate
71. and I'm an 80's music fan
72. I don't watch very much TV
73. except sometimes lately when I have a lot of laundry to fold
74. I've run in 5K races twice
75. and would like to again someday
76. But I mostly walk for exercise these days
77. sometimes I wish I could be more crafty - because I am really not
78. I have mild asthma
79. I'm much better at writing than talking
80. I say "I don't know" an awful lot when I don't know what else to say. People have told me I say it way too much. But, well, I don't know.
81. I've also been told I give people "looks", but I really don't mean to
82. I'm a terrible liar - and can't hide my feelings even when I want to
83. I really like foods flavored with vinegar and/or dill - yumm!
84. While in Germany, I developed a strange affection for (live) snails. They really are disgusting, but I find myself fascinated by them - repulsed and attracted all at once.
85. When I was very little, I wanted to be a school bus driver. I just thought I'd do such a good job.
86. I'm lefthanded - and sort of proud of that fact
87. sometimes I lose my train of thought in the middle of speaking and I don't know how to say what I was saying
88. That's embarassing. And I'm easily embarassed.
89. I want to go on a hot air balloon ride someday
90. And swim with dolphins
91. I want to collect all my favorite books and have a great home library
92. I really don't like math
93. I've never had a "real" job
94. But I'm happy to have the job of Stay-At-Home-Mom for as long as I can
95. I have occasional struggles with anxiety and depression issues (but don't usually talk about it much)
96. My 2nd toe is longer than any of the others
97. I like taking pictures and would like to learn to do it better
98. I tore my hamstring really bad once trying to do a ridiculously difficult ballet stretch - many years after I stopped taking ballet
99. I like to have "a plan" or nothing really gets done
100. And I really like lists.
Wow, that was long. Now you know more than you ever wanted to! Aren't you glad.
Well, in honor of reaching our 100th post, I will now share with you a 100 Things About Me List (some of these might be in my 33 Bday list, but there'll still be at least 67 new things for you). Yippee!
1. I lived my whole life in Virginia (except for college, mission, and married life)
2. I'm the 2nd of 5 kids (1 brother, 3 sisters)
3. I like whales and dolphins
4. I love lemon flavored things (and scents)
5. Also lavender
6. I lived in Southern Germany for 18 mos. as a Mormon missionary
7. my major was Therapeutic Recreation (mostly for little kids with disabilities)- but sometimes I wish maybe I had done something else
8. I read a lot
9. I've played violin (on and off) since I was 5
10. I took piano lessons for 1 year (and don't remember anything except chopsticks - and I didn't learn that in my lessons)
11. I have 4 terrific kids (2 boys, 2 girls)
12. And the best husband in the world
13. I've been told I have a very unique (and loud) laugh
14. sometimes I write poetry - but I very rarely share it with anyone
15. I need 10 hrs of sleep at night (and never ever get it)
16. I don't wear make-up, or paint my nails, or even "do" my hair
17. I love rain (and it hardly ever rains here - so sad)
18. And I really really love trees
19. I like the ocean and beaches (but not necessarily swimming in it or getting sunburned)
20. My favorite season is Autumn (if there are enough trees around)
21. I've written in over 50 journals
22. I really miss the bakeries in Germany - yummy bread is one of my favorites foods
23. I've rappelled of an 80 ft. cliff
24. and been white-water rafting
25. and whale-watching off the coast of Mass.
26. I usually like to camp (as long as all the kids are sleeping through the night)
27. I advocate breastfeeding as long as you can or want
28. I've had 3 babies without medications
29. I like listening to oldies
30. and classical music
31. and I used to be a big "alternative rock" fan (sometimes I go back on memory lane and listen to it again - and sometimes I'm shocked by what I used to listen to)
32. I go back and forth between long and short hair
33. I went to lots of fun rock concerts as a teenager
34. I took ballet for many years as a child and have taken classes as an adult, too
35. I love the feeling of a plane taking off
36. my favorite color is sage green (for now)
37. I pretty much hate shopping - it's discouraging
38. I swam on a community swim team from age 9-14
39. My best stroke was breaststroke
40. I still have all my ribbons and medals
41. I like to save everything
42. I had my tonsils taken out at age 14
43. that was after I got mono and had an abcessed tonsil
44. that all happened in one summer
45. the worst summer of my life
46. I shattered my elbow when I crashed on my bike in 7th grade
47. I've also broken my arm falling off a chair (4th grade)
48. and got stitches in my head after jumping up and hitting an open cabinet door (in 3rd grade)
49. I tend to be clumsy and accident prone sometimes
50. I really liked to dance as a teenager and young adult (church dances, school dances, clubs etc)
51. I met a guy at a club once and went on a date with him later - I've never been so scared on a date. But he really was harmless.
52. Ok - change that. The most scared I was on a date was when I went spelunking in the Nutty Putty Caves with a guy I had just met in my Physical Science class in college.
53. But maybe that was because I'm a bit claustrophobic and it was very tight and very dark and I was not having fun.
54. I never saw that guy again.
55. And have never gone caving again either.
56. I think I have a lot of interesting dating stories
57. And I am so grateful to have found the love of my life
58. and to be married so I don't have to date weird guys anymore
59. and I really really pray I won't be single again in my lifetime (for any reason)
60. I've driven cross-country between Va and Ut several times
61. Maine is one of the most beautiful states I've visited
62. I'd like to see the Northern Lights someday
63. one of my favorite CD's in recent years is Niamh Parsons - (beautiful irish songs)
64. I took German in high school -and did very poorly
65. I took 4 semesters of American Sign Language in college - and did very well
66. But then I was called to Germany for my mission and had to relearn German
67. And I forgot almost all of my ASL
68. Now I've forgotten almost all my German, too
69. I had my gall bladder taken out a couple years ago
70. I love to roller-skate
71. and I'm an 80's music fan
72. I don't watch very much TV
73. except sometimes lately when I have a lot of laundry to fold
74. I've run in 5K races twice
75. and would like to again someday
76. But I mostly walk for exercise these days
77. sometimes I wish I could be more crafty - because I am really not
78. I have mild asthma
79. I'm much better at writing than talking
80. I say "I don't know" an awful lot when I don't know what else to say. People have told me I say it way too much. But, well, I don't know.
81. I've also been told I give people "looks", but I really don't mean to
82. I'm a terrible liar - and can't hide my feelings even when I want to
83. I really like foods flavored with vinegar and/or dill - yumm!
84. While in Germany, I developed a strange affection for (live) snails. They really are disgusting, but I find myself fascinated by them - repulsed and attracted all at once.
85. When I was very little, I wanted to be a school bus driver. I just thought I'd do such a good job.
86. I'm lefthanded - and sort of proud of that fact
87. sometimes I lose my train of thought in the middle of speaking and I don't know how to say what I was saying
88. That's embarassing. And I'm easily embarassed.
89. I want to go on a hot air balloon ride someday
90. And swim with dolphins
91. I want to collect all my favorite books and have a great home library
92. I really don't like math
93. I've never had a "real" job
94. But I'm happy to have the job of Stay-At-Home-Mom for as long as I can
95. I have occasional struggles with anxiety and depression issues (but don't usually talk about it much)
96. My 2nd toe is longer than any of the others
97. I like taking pictures and would like to learn to do it better
98. I tore my hamstring really bad once trying to do a ridiculously difficult ballet stretch - many years after I stopped taking ballet
99. I like to have "a plan" or nothing really gets done
100. And I really like lists.
Wow, that was long. Now you know more than you ever wanted to! Aren't you glad.
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