Bumps in the road

These past few months have been hard. It seems like every little thing that happened brought with it a few other issues that squashed my mood/well being even more, not giving me much of a chance to come up for air. I've never been diagnosed with depression but I know it's something I've  battled throughout my life. After Ms. Thang was born I went through a period of "killing my old self" and becoming this new "mom" person. I think that sounds fairly normal, but looking back I can see that I wasn't really healthy. I moved away, lost contact with friends and family, formed a co dependant relationship with the wrong person. Shut myself off from the world. Then came the worst parts of a bad relationship that I tried to deal with alone and failed miserably. I left. I was doing so well after that. Got a job, had friends, was doing things on my own. Healing! Then I went back to him and it was awful. I came out of that second failure worse than I ever had been. I was mentally DRAINED. I was living a double life for my daughter where I was moving along, pretending everything was fine, but behind closed doors I was anything but fine. I was defeated as a person. I just gave up trying to pretend it was fine and let life fall where it may. I was too exhausted to play by the rules and tired of trying to do the right things.Then in one short year I lost my apt, my job, my daughter, got on drugs, lost everything and cared for nothing. That was THE single most awful point in my life. Without my daughter to keep me focused, I had nothing to live for. I was lost and floating. It was either continue on like that and die with nothing, or take baby steps to change my life. Then in the next year, I met my Honey, we moved in together, got pregnant with my son, and got married. HOLY HELL!  Great stuff that year but really, such an emotional roller coaster. Baby, married, separated, second try hell, divorced, lost custody, homeless and on drugs, married, baby etc.. all in my 20s. Decade of plenty lol Then a few years later we bought a house, regained custody of Ms. Thang, and threw another kid in the mix. Things were good. I had worked so very hard to get to that place. Then I started experiencing some of the same feelings I had after Ms. Thang was born. I started "killing my old self" and for some reason this always includes cutting out friends, and becoming a recluse. I think I just try and tear down any connections to any part of my life that may take me back to where I was. It's not healthy and I realize that. I need to deal with issues, not run from them. I need to learn to trust myself.
I've been battling that for a good 4yrs now and I've made a lot of progress. But in these past few months I've really taken a lot of steps backwards and  noticing that, it depresses me and suddenly I'm falling into that familiar pattern of shutting myself off.
My grandma died. It's understandably depressing but it happens ALL THE TIME. But in my defense, a few things threw me off of a natural healing and dealing pattern.
1. The funeral was 2 months after her death. I felt like I was putting deep emotions on hold, and dealing with that internally for 2 months really screwed up my coping skills for everyday life. I got behind in everything. My kids were acting out and I was letting it slide because I didn't have the energy to deal with it. If Cutecumber squeezed out an entire bottle of shampoo, I didn't say a word to her. I didn't punish her or talk to her about it. I cried because I had to clean it and I went out and bought more shampoo like a robot on auto pilot. And of course these types of things kept happening because I wasn't parenting her and every time it happened, I was delving deeper into depression because I knew it was not her fault. It was mine, and the pressure of it all was just making things worse and I was in that vicious cycle of being depressed because things are awful and things are awful cause I'm depressed. My house was a disaster zone (which is so fun to wake up to when you're feeling low) and I was only doing the absolute necessities. Take the kids to and from school, make dinner, use paper plates, plastic forks, etc so there is little to no clean up, say "uh huh" when people talk to me and lay awake all night thinking of how I'm failing at life and then cry as I realize I have to repeat it all tomorrow.
2. There are a lot of family skeletons and drama that comes up with death. That's all I'm going to say about that. It hurts to see family torn apart over stupid shit. You realize you may have to cut ties and that sucks.
3. Death makes you think too much about your life, your meaning and purpose. I was question my religion, my life expectations, etc... Not only had my grandmother died, but a close friend had a daughter just hours away from death, needing a new heart. My grandfather had a stroke and was put in rehab and a nursing home and wasn't dealing well. It was all making me focus entirely too much on death and old age. I thought it about it daily, even hourly. And are these things that should throw me into fits of despair? No, but I did feel real despair none the less and with that came guilt. How can I feel this way when people have it so much worse. I'm a terrible and selfish person. And with that came even more depression.

So there was this bigger-than-it-should-have-been build up to the funeral and I was getting my hopes up that once it was over, my life would return back to normal. I cant tell you how many times my life has been in limbo waiting for one particular event to happen or to end so that I can go on about my "normal" life. I should have known that sometimes you just have to stop banking on change and take your life for what it is in that moment and learn to deal with it because sometimes the thing you are waiting on isn't the change. The change was learning to live with never going back to normal. :/

Fortunately, the funeral came and IT WAS A HUGE RELEASE for me. On the way home I just felt so weightless. My mind felt empty for the first time in months. I physically felt the change. I really did. And then a few days later, my friend's daughter received her new heart. The two things that had been consuming my thoughts were now over. Thank you GOD!

When we got home, I started to notice things that I hadn't been able to while my mind had been so full of "death and despair" and it was not pretty. My kids were wild. My house was disgusting and I'd gained 10lbs. My husband had been ignored and busy trying to take care of the things I hadn't. I needed to take baby steps to get things back in order. But instead I enjoyed my newly  empty mind and took a mental vacation of TV and Halloween candy for a couple of weeks.

At this point, it's just time to stop this and start fixing. I feel a fork in the road. I can give up completely but having done that before and it leading to the darkest years of my life, I wont. I guess in a way, those years are a blessing in disguise. Motivation to keep on trucking. I feel like the past year of getting social, losing weight, getting healthier and working on me was a waste of time and I'm back at square one. But I'm going to suck it up and move forward as that is the ONLY thing that will make things better. And I know that each time I do this, pick myself up and try again, I'm getting stronger for the next time I deal with depression creeping in on me, and there WILL BE a next time. It's something I just have to battle and you know.. I'm getting better at it. 2 months I checked out, and I have to lose 10lbs, deal with a little rebellion from the kids as I get them back on track, thank and repay my loving husband for filling in and miss a few FB statuses and TV shows as I get the house clean. I'm disappointed I let these things bring me down to this level, but  I'm snapping out of it before things are out of control. I think I did ok :)