A Surprisingly Sane Blog

Step one: bury face in pillow

Step two: scream “motherfucking piece of shit” and any other obscenities that come to mind as loudly as you can.

Step three: remove your face from pillow

Step four: take deep breath (remember to exhale)

Step five: splash cold water on face

Step six: towel dry

Step seven: plant ginormous smile on your face

Step eight: kick the motherfucking shit out of whoever just pissed you off.

Step nine: run like hell

Step ten: plead insanity if you get caught.

There.  Don’t you feel better now?

Current Mood: Alarmed

I just had a conversation with a good friend (thanks, R) and read all the comments after yesterday’s post.  All of it forced me to take a step back and think.

The movie director just yelled “Cut!“, and everyone on the set just stopped in mid-action.

Hold on a second.  Stop the drama production.  Take a deep breath.

I am getting sucked back into the same cycle that almost sent me to the loony bin in the first place.  The very thing that has caused so much mental trauma and emotional turmoil my entire life.  And I am stupidly falling for it once again.

Until now.

I can stop this.  That’s what all the medication and therapy has been about.

Bear with me for a second.  If my life were a movie, the song “Everything In Its Right Place” by Radiohead would be swelling loudly drowning out all the other sounds, and I would be standing on the rooftop of a New York skyscraper with my arms outstretched toward the gleaming sunlight laughing maniacally.   That epiphany moment before the story turnaround.

I feel so stupid for not realizing that this is exactly how the majority of my issues always start.  Like I said, the beginning of the cycle.

Yes, there are other certain triggers that will send me spiraling, too, but this particular one has been an ongoing theme in my life.

I let everyone else’s needs and desires and issues affect me.  I am, quite simply put, too damn nice.  If someone comes to me with a problem, I do everything in my power to help them.  When someone in my life pulls a passive-aggressive, manipulative stunt, I get sucked in and play damage control.  Rather than taking care of myself, I make sure everyone else is doing well.

Some people in my life are horrifically (albeit unknowlingly) selfish.  Combine that with my huge heart, and you get a whirlpool effect.  Generosity and care getting sucked into a dark abyss that just can’t be satisfied.

But today, I realized it.  My sanity not worth someone else’s battle.  Their issues are not my own, and I just need to stop trying to help people who aren’t receptive to it.

So what if someone got pissed and tried to make me out to be the bad guy when I called them on their bullshit?  Yeah, it sucks, but I can’t change them or how they choose to perceive things.

I can change my reaction to it, though.  And I am.

This is the point in the movie where there is a montage of smiles, and good choices being made, and people shaking hands that makes the audience so happy that the cynical people like me feel their stomach churn and resist the urge to barf.

And the director yells “CUT!” with tears gleaming from his sappy eyes.  What a beautiful ending.  Or is it really just the beginning?

*Applause*

And for you audience folk like me, here is the part where you roll your eyes and force back the bile.

Current Mood: Confused

dissolving

into a puddle

of pathetic

nothingness

wishing

my mouth

was sewn

shut.

Current Mood: Angry

I’ve been having a really rough time falling asleep lately.  And once I actually do drift off, dreamland is more like a frustrating hellhole where I just can’t run fast enough or breath deep enough.  I wake up feeling like someone slipped me a ruffie.

A large part of these disturbing dreams are stimulated from the fatigue of dealing with certain people in my life.  Their situations, problems, and multitude of psychiatric issues are something that I just don’t have the emotional capacity to empathize with right now.  I have my own problems to face.

Finally, I told one of these people that I couldn’t handle it anymore yesterday.  I handed them my therapist’s card.  If they don’t make an appointment, I am dragging a certain someone’s ass to the mental health crisis center.  You know, the one I ended up at a few insane months ago.

But laying there last night, my brain stuck in a hyperactive web of stress and anxiety, I couldn’t stop the flashbacks of the beginning of the end of my severe depression.

Remembering how bad it was, I started panicking: what if it’s too late to help the people in my life who need the kind of intervention that I had to have?

It’s not, I know.  It’s never too late.  I was on the verge of suicide without any coherent mental capability of understanding that I was in a severe state of postpartum depression bordering psychosis.

The day that James took me to the crisis center, I actually thought I was doing well.  I mean, it’d been two days since I’d had visions of killing myself.  Nevermind the fact that I hadn’t slept since God-knows-when, or that I was 99.9% certain that the nurse was plotting a way to straight-jacket me and pump me full of psychotropic drugs that would turn me into a vegetable.  Or the fact that I couldn’t feel a single emotion other than anger or complete blank-ness.  Everything was rushing past me like I was in slow motion.  A dull rushing sound took the place of any attention that I had once possessed.

But yeah, I actually thought I was okay.  I thought I *might* be just a little depressed.  When my psychiatrist told me I needed Prozac, freaking Prozac, I started to understand for the first time how bad of a mental breakdown I was experiencing.

After months of therapy and the sad realization that I have failed to accomplish a majority of my dreams as a result of my bad habit of living to please everyone else, I have finally reached a restless point that can probably be referred to as a quarter-life crisis.  Or maybe it’s just the moment where I am actually waking up.

I have to stop bearing the weight of everyone else’s problems.  I have to make decisions based on my personal needs in order to grow into the person I aspire to be.  I have to hand someone a phone number and tell them to call it because I am done being their therapist.

Most of all, I have to get out of here.  James needs to work a job he is happy with.  I need to live in a place where I don’t dread going outside.  My kids deserve to have two parents who love where they live, not who stay here out of obligation and guilt to everyone else.

I keep having these thoughts as I lay down at night about what life would be like somewhere else.  What it would be like to make decisions based on things I need and not on what my family wants.

What would it be like to be able to tell someone close to me that I’ve been looking obsessively at Seattle real estate and found a house that I’m madly in love with without having to deal with the guilt trip?

Yes, I know.  Family is important.  The sixty million obligations we have here are important.  Taking care of people who need to call my therapists number is important.

I should just be grateful that we own a house and that James has a stable job.

I can dream, can’t I?

And, hopefully, one of these days I can make the choice to get out of here without adhering to everyone else’s wants for my little family and I.

For me, getting out and starting a life I want to live is a need.  The opportunities I want don’t exist here.  It’s just too small of a city, unfortunately.

My therapist agrees.

Yes, I’m having a hard week.

Current Mood: Confused

Don’t get your nipples in a twist over that title, okay?

So maybe they’re not illegal immigrants, but hell, I live in Tucson.  You never know.

James and I suck at yard work.  Big time.  I mean, I’ve killed bamboo not once, but twice.  So, it should be no surprise that our yard was nothing to brag about.

I say “was” instead of “is” because two days ago, these guys in a van (part of some church ministry of sorts) rang our doorbell in search of freelance landscaping and yard work to do.  For a *very low* price, they would pull the weeds, prune the trees, and finish the rocks that were sitting in a pile in our driveway.

Dude, it was so worth it.  Our yard looks great!  Holy cow, those guys were really good!

If I wasn’t still in my silly striped nightgown, I’d go outside and take a picture.

(A, Miss-How-Does-Your-Garden-Grow, you’d be proud of us!)

Now, along the line of illegal immigration, I have to tell a slightly un-PC little story.

When James and I bought this house four years ago, our current dance room was flat-out hideous.  One of the previous owners had converted it from a garage into a den, but apparently unbeknownst to them, they forgot to finish it.  It was a half-ass job.  I guess no one ever told them, “Pssst… that room looks like shit“.

The floor was nothing but a slab of concrete with peeling blue paint.  The wall had this crappy hand-made entertainment-center-thing built into it.  Add that to the the dingy off-white paint, broken track lighting, and heinous sparkly popcorn ceiling, and you sort of get a picture of how bad this room really was.  To be honest, I think there was even dried snot on the walls.  Blech.

We hired this really nice guy to come do the ceiling.  After he removed the sparkly crap, he textured it for us.  He did a beautiful job.

Well, my sister-in-law and her ex-husband came by soon after that, and when the ex saw the the ceiling, he stared at for awhile, then said, “Wow.  This looks like it was done by a real Mexican.”

I was moderately horrified by the fact that he said that and nearly chucked a knife at him, but James came to the rescue and kind of stuttered, “Yeah, I guess he was.”

And the ex said, “Yeah, I know.  Those guys are amazing.  They just know how to do this kind of thing.  It turns out perfectly.  You couldn’t find a white guy to do that kind of quality work.”

You know, because the color of your skin determines how well you can remove popcorn ceilings *cough*.  Someone go track the ex down and slug him, okay?

But anyway, my original point was this:  I’m not sure whether there were a few illegal immigrants working on my yard or what, but they are coming out again today to do some more work for us.  Those guys did such a great job, and I’ll support anyone who is willing to work out in that hot sun if it means I don’t have to do it.

Throw stones, go for it.  I don’t see anyone else driving around the neighborhood and knocking on doors to pull weeds.  Hell, if they want the work, they are welcome.

Current Mood: Cool