2 years

In the last 2 years I’ve experienced somethings that have really changed my laugh and broken my smile…literally! Thank you Bell’s Palsy! 

The amount of change, worry, fear, loneliness and control over every decision made over my life has really crippled me. I hate the person I have become. Never in a million years did I think I would end up this way. I have really confused love.

I’m not sure what’s best for me anymore and that’s a scary thing. I’ve been so isolated and drugged quite frankly that allowing someone to pull the strings has been easy. You don’t realize it’s even happening because every word I eat up and it’s so easy to spin a web in my head. It’s sadly so effortless for me to let challenges go or take the blame, feel the guilt.

Let’s be honest my mental state has been weak for some time now. I have basically disappeared in my life and in my families life in most ways. Sure I take up space and they need me to do things for them. God knows they would starve without me. I’m here to lend an ear and I enjoy our conversations. My sisters always manage to get a laugh out of me here and there. But just because I’m alive doesn’t mean I’m living. I’m not and haven’t been.

 

6 months

The last 6 months may have been the worse yet. The only time in my life since high school that I have thought it’d be fine if I was dead. It’s terrifying when you are able to convince yourself that the world will be fine without. Someone will take over and handle your position. I was okay with, it was weird like I came to peace with it. For awhile when these thought would creep in my head I’d cry and get real sad but after awhile I’d think, “What will be, will be.” and I just didn’t care anymore.

I can honestly say the lack of love and care that I have received, along with not having the ability to control anything over my life has made me stop caring about my life at all. It’s like I’m walk around in a very bad dream but other times ( and most of the time ) I feel like I’m watching myself in someone else’s dream.

 

1 1/2 month

Now, I have had some tiny sparks of life here and there in the last month or so. Like a dead person being brought back to life but not fully. Maybe it’s going to be a process after being part of the walking-dead for long.

I have started to talk a little more and conversations about important topics are now happening, which is why it makes me absolutely insane when I’m told I’m not talking and/or my words start to get turned around or used against me.

I’m making good progress here but I see that door still. It’s just over my shoulder and I look at it often, it’s not far away. I could walk through it at anytime, shut down and go away and stop all this if I wanted to. That’s something I could do. They don’t know what it takes for me every second not to.

 

Sometimes I feel like I’m be taunted.

There are times I find myself crawling back into bed but only for a moment. I just need to give my mind a little break. Break from the needs and wants of everyone. I can’t do much for myself but I can go lay down for just minute. I can give myself that.

Sure, it pisses everyone off because they want me up and doing things for them or at the very less giving them my attention. “Give me a freaking second!”, I yell and then they do but my made to feel the worse Mom ever for it… usually. Being mental disabled is exhausting.

However, I’ve been better about trying to keep the laundry up and the house mostly clean. I read to my kids just about daily and have taken them to the library a few times now ( outings were hard before ). Making dinner and planning ahead has been easier to do most the time. I have my moments but I get it done.

To all of you this may sound obvious… may be not a big achievement.  If I read this earlier in my life I would have thought this person was pretty pitiful, “You can’t cook dinner and you’re able to now read to your kids?”  What the hell is up with that? I know it’s crazy but I’m not who I was and every month, every day, I’m a new person and I’m fighting a new and terrible freaking struggle that I never imagined.

Now and Moving Forward

As you saw at the top of this post there’s a music video by the artist/musician NF www.nfrealmusic.com 

I like all music and I’ve written about that before, though rap isn’t everyones cup of tea I understand. However, I have a weird connect with NFs’ work it seems. Maybe we are just both really messed up people wanting to not be and he just happens to be far better at words than I am.

I listen to each word, each song and I think YES! That’s what I’m feeling but I didn’t know how to say it or how to explain it to someone else. His music has been good for me to share to help explain how I feel but also to be better.

You should smile more. What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you talk to me?

When you’ve been down that road so many times…you know your words evaporate into air, no ones really hearing you. It’s been hard for me to explain myself because I really want someone to talk to me, not at me. I want someone to care but not dictate my every move. And for F-sakes, sometimes I’m not thinking anything…I’m just being. Please forgive me if a genuine smile doesn’t come easy anymore. I’m a broken person.

The thing I have found as I battle, is we are all a little broken. Some are better at hiding it, others moving pass it and heal it, then theres me. I’m like waves in the ocean. One minute I feel like I’m healed…my brokenness is mended but then the next I’m a raging storm. I can move mountain, destroy buildings, reck my very soul and then theres this very creepy and eerie stillness that comes…I know this stage all to well and this part of me is probably the most dangerous time for me.

I’m distant, silent and still, as if I don’t exist at all. You’re not sure if the storm has moved on and the sun will soon come out or if round two will rear it’s ugly head. This non-movement can go on for weeks, months…my mind is busy convincing me that this is what it’s like without you… I don’t need to be here…. walk through that door… just go and end this pain.

At that point I am basically dead, a lifeless corpus just going through the motions but just hardly. I’m waiting for it to end…hoping God will just jerk the wheel because I’m too scared to do it myself. There’s still apart of me that wants to live and even misses that feeling of joy. I’m sure after awhile of my miserable lethargic disappearance that the “living” people around me start wishing for the storm to return, at least than you’d know I’m alive and fighting for something. I start wishing for it too.

As of now and the last few weeks I’ve been praying and reconnecting spiritual. I never realize how hard it’s be to reconnect to God after being so far away from Him. I’ve always had a very strong faith even in the hardest of times. I can’t put my finger on why things have slipped away….why I have slipped away. I guess it way so gradual that I didn’t see the distant until I was so far away that I couldn’t see Him, feel Him and I didn’t think of my spiritual life at all.

The last thing I want to be is a person who only calls on God in a crisis. I can’t deny I’m in a crisis and I’m calling on Him… a lot. I’m rebuilding that relationship and trying to find my place again. I guess if being in the totally nightmare was Gods way of shaking the shit out of me and wake me up then I’m glad for it. Don’t get me wrong…I’m done with this lesson…I don’t want to learn anything else.

Baby steps it is. I’m slowly gaining my confidence back and trying to take my life back. I know in this process I may have to make some hard calls but I’m willing to do it. No one said this was going to easy and I wasn’t going to be uncomfortable trying to figure this out but it’s a means to an end. I have to aim at something, Arise and go! The wondering and being lost is over. I want to have some control and have peace.

My faith was shaken and maybe even gone…defiantly on pause. That needs to be reignited for sure and number one. The rest will come and I am getting it in order. I am, I promise.

Living arrangements, I’ll be totally truthful… you all know about as much as I do on that. I could be sleeping in my truck…hell I don’t know. But I do have some choices to make. There’s a few other things that need to happen first before that can be talked about.

When the conversation happens I need to stay calm…I need to stop crying.

My marriage…well it’s comes and goes. We both want it to be good and we have love for each other so that something. But the sweet unstoppable friendship we had. That wittiness and closeness that no one could break… It’s not there. I have hope we’ll get that back and that this stress of life has just weighted us down and broke us sadly. As we lighten our burdens and move forward things will get better and we remember the way we were maybe it will be better, stronger. I only hope.

 

Lastly, I want to include one other NF video that really hit me. I don’t want to just walk through this life asleep, numb and waiting for my real death. I want to live and love to my real potential and stop letting anyone hold me back from that.

 

 

xoxo sk