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Jun. 12th, 2008 01:44 amToday is a perfect representative example of my life as a whole right now.
I woke up after not enough sleep from a horrible nightmare, that was really hard to come totally out of. I was so exhausted that I kept drifting back off to sleep and back into the dream, and was trying to resist that and failing, and it was just a really awful feeling, until I finally drug myself out of bed, head hurting, SO tired, but almost panicky claustrophobic scared of being trapped in a nightmare that way.
I felt like a wreck, for hours. Like I didn't know how to get anything accomplished, like I didn't even know where to start. I kept sitting here at this stupid computer, refreshing things, checking things, staring, desperate. It was ridiculous, not even really dressed in real clothes, knowing I should be doing better, my kids deserve better, what is my problem. I was thinking I should have made the first therapy appointment for today, and gotten Laura to babysit somehow, I should stop being frozen and get up and stretch and breathe and pray, but mostly I couldn't hold a train of thought at all. It was like my whole brain was a whirling dervish, a lot of fragments. I was close to tears all morning and most of the afternoon. I nursed Jake and Elise sometimes, answered Isaac's questions and responded to all his whining, told Aaron and Annie, yeah, you can play outside, and got food for them. It felt like some monumental task to put hot dogs on the George Foreman. At one point it occured to me that maybe I should try to read through the archives of my LJ from the time period of gestating and having Jake, maybe facing things I've been blocking out would help, but I couldn't get very far. I felt ashamed of myself, hoping my mother in law wouldn't come over, watching the clock tick away hours as my to-do list loomed. Some people - like Lowe's delivery confirmation and Brigham's billing department - called, and I was glad because it was a very passive way for me to feel like I was accomplishing something official.
More than once I stopped, shocked, in the bathroom, where I'd been washing my hands or peeing or whatever, because my reflection was so off-putting. I look pretty, and normal. Like I always do. Like the whole regular me. I don't know how to explain what I mean, it was just jarring, like...I don't feel normal, or pretty, or regular, or even know who "I" am, right now, so...it's a good thing, that I still have my crazy Cuban hair and the eyes people talk about and my way too big nose, that it's still me with my curves and my skin. It makes me feel for a second like I can fake it til I make it, or something.
Finally Elise got ahold of a box of cereal, probably something Jake got off the counter while I wasn't looking, and poured it all over the carpet. And I pushed myself to just go through the motions and pick up the living room so I could vaccum it all up, throw the box away. I started calling people.
Laura doesn't think she can help me with emergency therapy babysitting because they have some big stuff going on too.
My mom obviously can't just rush down here and leave her job and her husband and the medical tests she's undergoing because I'm having some sort of breakdown.
And then at like, 4? 5? Something like that? I talked to Grant. For a good long time. He had to go when his desk phone rang, probably 3 times, but he called back after he was done each time. The 3 big kids were outside, Jake was napping and Elise was playing, and I was able to just...cry. A lot. And talk to a grown-up, with no facade, and lay it all down. About the mirror, and the nightmare, and the lack of motivation, and the un-done to-do list, and how I'm scared to death about how in the hell I'm supposed to "Deal with my issues" and be a full-time mom to 5 young kids at the same time. About how I'm scared he won't love me anymore if I'm a basketcase or a burden or weak, because I'm always scared he won't love me anymore, and how he will always love me, and how maybe this wasn't the best time for me to be trying not to eat sugar, and how writing really is cathartic for me and I need to do it more, and what we can do for the kids, and...
I felt so much lighter, when I got off the phone. So much better. I still had that shadow, in the back of my mind, but it was simple enough to make a meal plan and grocery list for the next 3 days, to get Jake and Elise dressed and Ananda, Aaron and Isaac's shoes found, for AWANA...It was nice to get dressed and remember the A.MA.ZING. Indian scarf-thing I bought at The Falls last weekend, with Laura, and tie my hair up in it, and the UPS guy was arriving as we backed out, so he handed our package through the van window.
I could just BREATHE, you know? It seemed easy to sing along, to talk with Jake, shopping was simple and then on the way home Grant was getting off the highway in the Prius just as I was driving by that exit with the grcoeries - we went together to get the 3 big ones on the way, and then all met up. I talked to our neighbor Diane in the front yard for 15 minutes, about her grandson Jacob who is the same age as our Jacob but seems to be autistic, and her asthma, and our new house. It was nice. I came in and cooked an absolutely FANTASTIC dinner that was devoured by all, with a prayer, and G and I hung out in the office with Elise as he worked on a computer and layed in bed for awhile before he had to go to sleep, talking, and Elise and Jake went to sleep easily after a brief finger-pinched-in-the-door incident. Read A and A half a chapter of Harry Potter, which Isaac drifted off during, and picked up their room a little.
Left me time to catch 2 episodes of Sex and the City on TBS while knitting, and feel like I got some time to myself in all before 2 am. And for the record this Sex and the City thing is new for me, and I still don't know if I can call myself a "fan" exactly. But it's definitely more intelligently written and better acted than any other late night tv, and there is a sort of train-wreck appeal, because that whole microcosm is SO far removed from anything in my own life. Anyway, yeah. I have a breakfast plan, and need to be over at the new house between 10-12 for a delivery. I have calls to make, lessons to teach, and PATH in the afternoon - one of my favorite PATH moms emailed to say she'd be there, and her daughter is probably Annie's best friend right now. The kids will all be in the adorable new clothes that came today, easy to find and clean like only brand new can be, with them.
....Aaaaaaaaaaand I'm back at this "don't want to go to sleep" point again.
ETAThe whole shadow in the back of my mind, or sense of things as surreal, or more of an effort to keep things together than usual with patience and all - that stuff has been off and on more or less constantly for over a year now. Maybe 2 years. But the way it's encroaching, and taking over, is new. It's been a gradual increase that I first really stepped back and went, "WHOA" about last week, when I couldn't make it to PATH and wanted to give the kids cereal for dinner on the same sad day, and didn't even have the energy to feel guilty. That was the day after I became certain I should be sending them to school because "I can't do this". So yeah...something is definitely going on with me :/ I'm just hoping that with a lot of prayer and deep breaths and however many tearful talks with Grant that I need to have, I can keep it together properly until my appointment Monday and then have a direction to feel I'm moving in, with "healing" as a destination. I tried to research "self treatment" for ptsd today, to find any sort of excercises or thought processes or specific journaling or any-damn-thing that could be useful, but apparently self treating ptsd is pretty much exclusively done with illegal drugs or copious amounts of alcohol O_o
I woke up after not enough sleep from a horrible nightmare, that was really hard to come totally out of. I was so exhausted that I kept drifting back off to sleep and back into the dream, and was trying to resist that and failing, and it was just a really awful feeling, until I finally drug myself out of bed, head hurting, SO tired, but almost panicky claustrophobic scared of being trapped in a nightmare that way.
I felt like a wreck, for hours. Like I didn't know how to get anything accomplished, like I didn't even know where to start. I kept sitting here at this stupid computer, refreshing things, checking things, staring, desperate. It was ridiculous, not even really dressed in real clothes, knowing I should be doing better, my kids deserve better, what is my problem. I was thinking I should have made the first therapy appointment for today, and gotten Laura to babysit somehow, I should stop being frozen and get up and stretch and breathe and pray, but mostly I couldn't hold a train of thought at all. It was like my whole brain was a whirling dervish, a lot of fragments. I was close to tears all morning and most of the afternoon. I nursed Jake and Elise sometimes, answered Isaac's questions and responded to all his whining, told Aaron and Annie, yeah, you can play outside, and got food for them. It felt like some monumental task to put hot dogs on the George Foreman. At one point it occured to me that maybe I should try to read through the archives of my LJ from the time period of gestating and having Jake, maybe facing things I've been blocking out would help, but I couldn't get very far. I felt ashamed of myself, hoping my mother in law wouldn't come over, watching the clock tick away hours as my to-do list loomed. Some people - like Lowe's delivery confirmation and Brigham's billing department - called, and I was glad because it was a very passive way for me to feel like I was accomplishing something official.
More than once I stopped, shocked, in the bathroom, where I'd been washing my hands or peeing or whatever, because my reflection was so off-putting. I look pretty, and normal. Like I always do. Like the whole regular me. I don't know how to explain what I mean, it was just jarring, like...I don't feel normal, or pretty, or regular, or even know who "I" am, right now, so...it's a good thing, that I still have my crazy Cuban hair and the eyes people talk about and my way too big nose, that it's still me with my curves and my skin. It makes me feel for a second like I can fake it til I make it, or something.
Finally Elise got ahold of a box of cereal, probably something Jake got off the counter while I wasn't looking, and poured it all over the carpet. And I pushed myself to just go through the motions and pick up the living room so I could vaccum it all up, throw the box away. I started calling people.
Laura doesn't think she can help me with emergency therapy babysitting because they have some big stuff going on too.
My mom obviously can't just rush down here and leave her job and her husband and the medical tests she's undergoing because I'm having some sort of breakdown.
And then at like, 4? 5? Something like that? I talked to Grant. For a good long time. He had to go when his desk phone rang, probably 3 times, but he called back after he was done each time. The 3 big kids were outside, Jake was napping and Elise was playing, and I was able to just...cry. A lot. And talk to a grown-up, with no facade, and lay it all down. About the mirror, and the nightmare, and the lack of motivation, and the un-done to-do list, and how I'm scared to death about how in the hell I'm supposed to "Deal with my issues" and be a full-time mom to 5 young kids at the same time. About how I'm scared he won't love me anymore if I'm a basketcase or a burden or weak, because I'm always scared he won't love me anymore, and how he will always love me, and how maybe this wasn't the best time for me to be trying not to eat sugar, and how writing really is cathartic for me and I need to do it more, and what we can do for the kids, and...
I felt so much lighter, when I got off the phone. So much better. I still had that shadow, in the back of my mind, but it was simple enough to make a meal plan and grocery list for the next 3 days, to get Jake and Elise dressed and Ananda, Aaron and Isaac's shoes found, for AWANA...It was nice to get dressed and remember the A.MA.ZING. Indian scarf-thing I bought at The Falls last weekend, with Laura, and tie my hair up in it, and the UPS guy was arriving as we backed out, so he handed our package through the van window.
I could just BREATHE, you know? It seemed easy to sing along, to talk with Jake, shopping was simple and then on the way home Grant was getting off the highway in the Prius just as I was driving by that exit with the grcoeries - we went together to get the 3 big ones on the way, and then all met up. I talked to our neighbor Diane in the front yard for 15 minutes, about her grandson Jacob who is the same age as our Jacob but seems to be autistic, and her asthma, and our new house. It was nice. I came in and cooked an absolutely FANTASTIC dinner that was devoured by all, with a prayer, and G and I hung out in the office with Elise as he worked on a computer and layed in bed for awhile before he had to go to sleep, talking, and Elise and Jake went to sleep easily after a brief finger-pinched-in-the-door incident. Read A and A half a chapter of Harry Potter, which Isaac drifted off during, and picked up their room a little.
Left me time to catch 2 episodes of Sex and the City on TBS while knitting, and feel like I got some time to myself in all before 2 am. And for the record this Sex and the City thing is new for me, and I still don't know if I can call myself a "fan" exactly. But it's definitely more intelligently written and better acted than any other late night tv, and there is a sort of train-wreck appeal, because that whole microcosm is SO far removed from anything in my own life. Anyway, yeah. I have a breakfast plan, and need to be over at the new house between 10-12 for a delivery. I have calls to make, lessons to teach, and PATH in the afternoon - one of my favorite PATH moms emailed to say she'd be there, and her daughter is probably Annie's best friend right now. The kids will all be in the adorable new clothes that came today, easy to find and clean like only brand new can be, with them.
....Aaaaaaaaaaand I'm back at this "don't want to go to sleep" point again.
ETAThe whole shadow in the back of my mind, or sense of things as surreal, or more of an effort to keep things together than usual with patience and all - that stuff has been off and on more or less constantly for over a year now. Maybe 2 years. But the way it's encroaching, and taking over, is new. It's been a gradual increase that I first really stepped back and went, "WHOA" about last week, when I couldn't make it to PATH and wanted to give the kids cereal for dinner on the same sad day, and didn't even have the energy to feel guilty. That was the day after I became certain I should be sending them to school because "I can't do this". So yeah...something is definitely going on with me :/ I'm just hoping that with a lot of prayer and deep breaths and however many tearful talks with Grant that I need to have, I can keep it together properly until my appointment Monday and then have a direction to feel I'm moving in, with "healing" as a destination. I tried to research "self treatment" for ptsd today, to find any sort of excercises or thought processes or specific journaling or any-damn-thing that could be useful, but apparently self treating ptsd is pretty much exclusively done with illegal drugs or copious amounts of alcohol O_o
