Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Mental Health

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed and I worry because I live in an area with very few (almost none) mental health services.
Admittedly, I have a lot going on between my daughters, work (I just picked up another job), grad school, my marriage, trying to get healthy and the basics of keeping myself and my family afloat.  But sometimes I have episodes that are altogether different.  Intellectually, I know that the feelings that I'm experiencing in the moment are way too extreme for the circumstances.  That unfortunately doesn't make them any less real.  I try to readjust, but this often makes things worse.
I need to be in counseling, I think.  I mostly have a handle on the day-to-day, but I have these moments.  These moments where I feel like I'm drowning, or when I can't seem to move my limbs at all, or when my world flashes white with unexpected and unwarranted rage towards people that I love.  Where my mind stops me.
I don't think it would scare me if I didn't know that the nearest mental health clinic is over forty five minutes away and grossly overbooked.  I think that I would seek help more readily if I felt like I could get it here.  I'm too busy, frankly, to sit and talk about problems that I talk to myself about over and over.  If I try to fit one more thing in my schedule, I feel as though my life will collapse under all that weight.
For now, I'm trying meditation.  I can only hope it's enough.

Monday, July 28, 2014

Random Thought

The relationship I currently have with my body (from time to time), summed up in a musical: I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change.

Friday, June 20, 2014

I'm back, baby(s).

Alright.
So I want to come back to this even though I'm not sure how often I'll be able to.  When last I left you, I was on track with weight loss and had gotten accepted in graduate school.  Lala was getting to the point where she was becoming her own person, who could play for a little bit while I did something that didn't completely revolve around her. I was writing and reading.  I was in a really good place.
Source
And then something happened that really derailed me, in a lot of ways.
I got pregnant again.  The last post that I wrote, I was already pregnant but I didn't know yet.  I was really sick for almost two weeks, but besides simply feeling like crap, I didn't have any other symptoms.  I stopped losing weight.  I started to get really worried.  I hadn't yet gotten a period since Lala had been born and I was on birth control, so pregnancy didn't jump immediately to mind.  But, deep down, I had a feeling.
I took a pregnancy test and it was positive.
I can't fully describe how I felt.  I was devastated and terrified.  I walked out of the bathroom and looked at my husband.  I remember that my hands were shaking and cold.  I didn't have to say it out loud.  I burst into tears.  He held my shoulders but I didn't want to be embraced.  "What are we going to do?"
We had already started preparations to move.  I had been accepted to school and we were set to go.  I was finally experiencing more physical freedom than I had known from Lala but she was still breastfeeding.  I didn't think I could do the exhaustion and the physical symptoms of pregnancy and birth all over again, especially with a baby as young as Lala that I needed to take care of.
It was hard but my husband and I talked a lot and we decided that we were going to go ahead with the move and with school.  I really felt that I needed to go ahead.  I feel like I stalled on my career long enough, and I was really itching for intellectual challenge.
So we packed up and moved back to our alma mater into an expensive not-great apartment in an excellent location in the village and I went back to school.  With a lot of finangling, sooooo much help from our family and friends, a lot of understanding from my professors and a heady mix of determination, organization and insanity, I made it through my first two semesters, giving birth to Lala's sister Mimi a little more than halfway through my second semester.
Lala & Mimi
Now I'm getting ready for my last semester, taking a few summer courses and trying to get back into my groove.  I'm working out and trying to eat better; I'm almost back down to the weight I was when I got pregnant with Mimi (which was about fifteen down from the weight I seem to hover around when I don't pay attention).  I'm trying to get back into writing and read more (for me!).
Thus, this post.  I'm working on my own projects again, though I'm going to try to ease into a little.  Here we go!