This Blessed Mess » just act like the normal people & no-one will notice.

A visit from the olden days

Mrs. Messiness — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 13:30:25 +0000

So I was poking around the interwebz and found a bunch of stuff I wrote another-lifetime ago. Needless to say, it is odd (to say the least) to run into yourself like that. I immediately put on my dark glasses and backed away quietly before old-me pulled a shank on new-me and took off with my checkbook.

..But not before stealing these juicy snippets from my angst-ridden self..

From March 26th, 2003:

I saw it coming for miles- But I couldn’t stand moving my feet.

I saw you moving in on me, But I refused to give up my seat.
As if I was craving the blow- I simply sat waiting on you.

I simply sat needing your rage- I simply sat loving the cage.
I knew that the storm was approaching, but I sat at my open door.

Your wrath rained down like thunder, and I simply sat asking for more.
I needed your anger to fill me, I begged for your wrong to feel right.
But you pushed in on my walls of submission- and crushed my desire to fight.

From April 2nd, 2003:

So you really are quite stupid

And you really move this slow.

What a truly sad condition

To be living from so far below.

So you really have no spirit

Hidden deep within your hide.

And you actually serve no purpose

And you in fact are empty inside.

So when I ask you what it is you’re hiding,

You’re not lying after all

When you tell me nothing’s a secret

You simply have nothing at all.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, MrsMessiness, circa 1999:

…gather from that what you will.

And from a very artsy and creepy/concerning angle:
…apparently I was on fire a lot in 1999.

There. Now don’t we all feel better that the olden days are over?

Don’t even read this.

Mrs. Messiness — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:52:28 +0000

Tonight, I am one of those people I can’t stand that look at sad things and read sad poems and listen to sad music and be sad.

I suck. I hate it when I do this.

The problem with being someone who “suffers from depression” is that you can’t tell the difference between sad or down or blue and depressed. You don’t know how to just be down because there are so many times when you got down and didn’t get back up. You end up being scared to be sad and suspicious of your own emotions and paranoid that this is more than just ‘regular’ sad so that every time someone asks ‘are you ok?’ you shoot back from the hip with ‘OF COURSE I’M OK-WHY WOULDN’T I BE OK-WHY DO YOU KEEP ASKING ME IF I’M OK!?’.

That’s usually when your inner-jerk whispers “only unstable people scream things like that through their teeth”.

Can you even imagine being stuck in here with this inner-jerk and my logical self arguing all the time? I wish they would just make out and get it over with.

Emerging

Mrs. Messiness — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:53:22 +0000

“I am prone to depression”.

No.

“Sometimes I get depressed”.

No.

“I struggle with dep-” No.

“Depression has always been a-” No, that’s stupid.

I never talk about it except to my husband, and even that is new. Before him, the only time I came close to discussing it was if someone demanded that yes-I-did remember that-one-time that-one-thing happened, and I have to find a delicate and elusive way around the fact that I don’t. At all. I don’t remember most of what you said or he said or she said or I said at all during that particular time. The worst “bout of depression” years ago, that required 4 or 5 different prescriptions and a psychologist to fish me back out. I am still fascinated by stories with me in them that happened during that time; pictures with me in them that I don’t remember posing for. I lost a lot of that time, but the point is, I survived, and for the most part, for most of the time, that was all I was doing.

And now when it creeps in, I hide and deny. I don’t want drugs or doctors or labels or diagnoses. I am immediately terrified that it is going to get that bad again and I hide and pretend I am fine; all the while snapping at my family, agonizing over old wounds I can’t bear to let heal, building walls, rationalizing the idea of never leaving the house again. Giving in.

And then I emerge and I look around, three months later this time, and realize I have been disconnected, disjointed, disengaged. I come out with almost a manic explosion; I need to write this out, check everything, ask everyone, know everything, NOW. I have to get out, get moving, get something, go somewhere – do something. All in an effort to bandage anything I let bleed while I was ‘gone’. Gather up anything I missed, pick up whatever I dropped, feel anything I shuttered against and let bounce off me while I was under my rock.

I hate and love this part. Hate that I missed things. Hate that my baby is four months old and I just shrugged a three month drudge off my shoulders. Love that it didn’t last three years and I am here now. Hate that I must have felt distant to my kids and they (like I did at their ages) may have wondered what they did to deserve that. Love that I came out of it long before they got fed up and gave up on me (like I did at their ages).

Finally the blackness has lifted, but my bones ache after dragging it around for so many miles.

But it lifted, and I came out and now I am gathering up everything I missed out on while I was gone, and that’s the point.

There. Now I officially ’talk’ about it.

On being a scaredy-cat

Mrs. Messiness — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:07:17 +0000

I hate it when I realize I am afraid of something. I hate that there are things lurking around in me that control my actions (in inaction, as the case may be) and dictate my every-next move without my permission.

To my computer-geek mind, these unaddressed fears are like a computer virus in my brain. Just sitting around inside my head, waiting to trigger a detrimental reaction; activating pop-up bitchiness and eventually shutting down my whole machine self. {Who’s the biggest nerd you know?}

The other night while I was knee-deep in justification as to why I had not yet gotten off my ass and gone to volunteer at the crisis center like I said I was going to a month ago, my husband said “what are you so afraid of?” and it all came out in a blurry, snotty mess.

I’m afraid that someone might need me. Someone might need to tell me their story and I might have to listen to it. Someone might have a story that I get, you know? Like mine. And I might have to relate to it. Like at some point, what if I need to tell someone my whole story? Like my whole story? And what if it doesn’t make any sense and someone makes the things that happened seem unnecessary or unjustified? What if someone somewhere says that what I did was wrong and thinks I am a bad person for it? What if I am a bad person for it? What if the grief and mourning and hurt was all unnecessary? What if someone says “and then what?” like the story doesn’t have an ending?

And that’s what it was. I was frozen by the fear that my pain was unnecessary.

What bullshit.

I went in this afternoon. No one asked me anything I couldn’t answer. I didn’t get hit by a truck and a meteor didn’t fall on my head. Nothing exploded and no one punched me in the face or threw rocks at me.

I’m going back tomorrow.

Weird.

Foreheads, Republicans & Singing Doctors

Mrs. Messiness — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:47:57 +0000

Where the hell have I been?

Hiring a lawyer: Yay for custody battles! This appears to be going ok-ish, although my Republican, Bush-loving, animal-heads-mounted-on-his-walls, nervous-twitch-having lawyer kept smacking himself on the ass and telling us that he has a birthmark “RIGHT.THERE” that matches the one on Jack’s forehead. I think he is on drugs. He is a very nice man.

At the doctors office: My poor, poor, pitiful Bella was in line, walking to the bus after school when her “legs tangled” and she fell, face-first onto the pavement. Apparently, her “arms were busy falling” (direct quote from her) so they weren’t able to catch her and she broke her defenseless, minding-it’s-own-business, perky little nose. She also bit through her upper lip, got a big purple goose-egg on her head, and skinned both knees and an elbow. Bruises are spreading across her nose and under both eyes, and her lip is turning yellow to match the hue of the lump in the middle of her forehead. We are sure to become the talk of the town (or at least the talk of the crazy ladies at the bus-stop). Bonus: The doctor sang an off-key “We Will Rock You” to Belle after she finished peroxide-ing her wounds and sopping blood and mud from her nose. I love our doctor.

Sleeping!!: Jack has graced us with 8 long hours of wonderful, uninterrupted, fabulous sleep every night!! This is a beautiful, beautiful thing and I have caught myself more than once almost waking him up to nuzzle and snuggle and thank the slobber right out of him.

And that’s about the size of it. Plus, I am working on putting my story together for MaggieDammit who is my new hero. Stay tuned, my loyal readers (all 1.5 of you).

Protected: Abnormal

Mrs. Messiness — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:27:55 +0000

My seven years & his three days

Mrs. Messiness — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 21:20:02 +0000

It’s been 7 years.

Yesterday I sat in a doctors office listening to him be so honest, so naked and vulnerable and so real. I was so relieved to watch him peel layers away and admit to the doc that he had relapsed and that he needs help. That he knows what he needs to do and how badly he wants to do it. I sat there staring at his feet hanging off the end of the exam table – half of me wondering how many more times I would see him teetering on a paper blanket, and half of me wondering how many times I already have.

Out of nowhere, the doc says “effexor” and I slam back into myself. They are nodding, “similar to the zoloft” yes “familiar with the effects” yes “tapper up in dosage”, uh-huh. I stopped hearing them then, because my heart was beating so hard in my ears that I thought for a minute they might hear it.

Seven years since effexor, celexa, zoloft, and all the x and z meds. Seven years since lists of disorders and symptoms and syndromes. Seven years since I relied on cocktails of chemicals to find ‘normal’.

I had no idea it had been so long – so many things have changed and so many have stayed the same. So many things reoccurred and so many things have been forgotten.

I am proud and guilty all at the same time. I got better. I lived. I ran away. How many days has it been? How many weeks? Why did it never occur to me to count days like so many people in recovery? I wonder why I didn’t realize that the whole process was ‘recovery’.. does this mean I am recovered? Does it mean that the next relapse could be mine?

Doc said he will be okay on it. I was not; it made the earth shake. Doc says he will ‘keep up’ with it and monitor it; mine didn’t and they earth kept shaking for me for far too long.

But it’s been seven years, so maybe it worked.