A Surprisingly Sane Blog

Today is my last day of my 20s. If my mathematical calculations are correct, that should mean that tomorrow, if I make it that far, I will have been on this earth for 30 years.

People joke with me about starting a new decade, asking if it bothers me. The answer is no, actually, not at all. First of all, I still get carded for R-rated movies from time to time when I’m with a group of peers, so I know that at least I still look pretty damn young. And second of all, my twenties were a god-awful piece of shit, and I’m happy to leave them behind.

That last part was a partial lie, because it wasn’t all bad. I’m just still having difficulty coming to terms with the trauma of postpartum craziness, the painful prolapse that will always be a problem unless I have surgery to correct it (even with all the physical therapy I had), and learning that I have a shitacularly severe form of bipolar disorder. Life sucks it you look at it from that perspective.

But because I’m bipolar, there’s always two sides to my story, right? (HA HA, AREN’T I AMAZINGLY CLEVER?) So today, I’m going to list of the great accomplishments of my twenties.

Ready?

During my twenties, I…

1. …studied abroad in Germany.
2. …graduated from the University of Arizona. Twice. Hooray for my higher-level education even though it hasn’t really gotten me anywhere at all (yet?).
3. …got my first job as a dance teacher (funny that that’s been a stronger skill for a job than a college degree).
4. …backpacked part of the Grand Canyon. For like five days!
5. …said “yes” to James when he proposed to me down in the Grand Canyon on that backpacking trip. (Too bad my ring was recently stolen, most likely by the only person who was in our house during that time. She completely denied it, naturally, but we’re not as stupid as we look. Remember? I have a freaking degree… see above.)
6. …married James in a super traditional, beautiful Catholic church wedding complete with a colorful Stargazer Lily bouquet and a white dress (shhhhh… we weren’t virgins).
7. …learned that the Catholic “Natural Family Planning” method is utterly retarded when I peed on a stick and learned I was having a baby just nine months after getting married.
8. …birthed two fat, healthy, beautiful baby girls!
9. …did two completely natural water births.
10. …fabulously survived one home birth.
11. …breastfed both my girls for a year despite the fact that every cell and hormone in my body hated the experience.
12. …got my second tattoo right on my hip/abdomen as a “I’m done having babies!” present to myself.
13. …signed for my husband’s vasectomy .*insert big grin*
14. …bought two houses.
15. …moved across the country.
16. …went to Hawaii a few times and visited Alaska.
17. …learned Argentine Tango and West Coast Swing.
18. …spent some time as a school teacher.
19. …gained baby weight, lost it, and a decade later… I STILL WEAR A SIZE 6 (and sometimes even a 4)!
20. …realized  that my body still looks fantastic and I’m not afraid to bust out my bikini despite having two kids.
21. …survived post partum depression. Twice.
22. …cut my super long locks off.
23. …dyed my hair for the first time. And several times thereafter.
24. …learned how to experiment with and enjoy wearing makeup.
25. …developed my own sense of fashion and style.
26. …learned to love shopping (seriously, this wasn’t a natural thing for me).
27. …sought the help and medication I need, even though it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
28. …promised myself I’d have clear skin for my 30th birthday, took Accutane… and guess what?! My skin is BEAUTIFUL!
29. …became more comfortable with who I am as an individual.
30. …realized that I really do like who I am. I’m proud of myself. While we all have our struggles, not all with bipolar disorder are able to live a relatively healthy and full life. I make that happen for myself. It’s not an easy task, but I still do it.

And there. My Kum Bai Ya moment. There’s more, of course. It’s hard to sum up one’s decade of accomplishments in a small list, but I’m leaving it to 30. One for each year.

Current Mood: Cool

I am so freaking sick to death of people who do everything they can to disagree, cause drama, or just flat out act rude regardless of what the situation is or the question asked.

Seriously. Get over yourself. The world does not revolve around you. You can whine and piss and moan about something, but the fact is, unless you’re actively trying to fix the things that suck ass or are at least somewhat likable, no one really cares. All it does is make folks around you roll their eyes and feel irritated before moving on and remembering you as a that jerk or whiner the next time your face pops up. People care about you if you’re a generally likable person. You are not a likable person if you act like a fucking dipshit constantly.

Now, go to the zoo and let monkeys throw their poop at you. I might start liking you a little more.

Current Mood: Angry

To be positive right now, that is. But the truth is, I’m failing miserably at looking on the bright and cheery side of life.

Someone, please come shit some sunshine into my coffee, mmkay?

In effort of trying to create a positive blog post, I’m going to do my best to list a few of the “happier” things and the shit that has made me smile this week. Are you SO TOTALLY FUCKING READY FOR IT? Here it goes:

• I like this. A lot:

Good stuff, eh?

• I also got an email this week, in which it was announced that my blog has officially been named one of the Top 25 Mental Wellness Blogs by Circle of Moms. Number 9, in fact, which is pretty amazing and such an honor to be listed among 24 incredible women. Thank you to all those who voted for me. Though I have to chuckle a little bit because I don’t know if I would describe my illness as “mental wellness”… especially this week.

See that badge? That’s me! I’m a favorite! Nanny-nanny-boo-boo!

• My daughter turned three on Sunday. She decided she didn’t want to wear diapers anymore a couple months ago and has been potty trained since. It’s been the easiest potty-training experience of my life. DID YOU KNOW that as a mom all you can fucking think about sometimes is piss and shit? You’re constantly cleaning it, coaching it, soothing raw bums, and ripping your hair out over it. And my kid? She uses the damn potty like a pro, no stress included!

• It’s summer in Seattle. Sunshine pretty much every day and highs in the low 80s.

It’d be awesome if I liked the sun and hadn’t fled the desert because of the disgustingly warm temperatures. At least the days are extremely long here, which I love. Bad part: they’re getting shorter.

Aren’t I just a bowl ‘o freakin’ cherries today?

Wait! There’s more!

• I officially finished Accutane this week! Five months later, my skin is clear… and YES, I will post pictures, I just don’t feel like posing for them in my pajamas while my kids get their sticky fingers all over the lens.

It’d be great if the painful stress fracture in my foot would heal now. Unfortunately, Accutane can make your bones a little more fragile than usual, and being a dancer… well, you can only imagine how much stress my feet go through on a daily basis. the big knuckle on my right foot was double its normal size almost four months ago. I’ve been walking and dancing on it since because, sadly, my source of income is being a dance teacher… and we need the money to buy the extra necessities and fun stuff, so I have little choice but to just keep on using it if I want to eat something other than ramen and send my kids to private school. Now it’s a motherfreaking mess, as you can imagine, and I’m really fearing that it will never actually be “better”. It’d be nice to have a “real job” so I could slow down with the lessons, but filling out job applications for two years solid has proven to be a fruitless endeavor in this city. And to think: it was my idea to move here so I could pursue my hopes and dreams. Wow, what a fucking load of shit that’s become.

• We bought an iMac this last weekend! Holy cow, it’s AMAZING! See? Dance money is worth something! But really… we don’t have a computer other than my laptop (aside from James’ work laptop, which none of us can use), which I drag around with me all over the place because I use it to deejay. Julie’s new school requires a lot of educational computer program work, so we really needed a desktop that would always be available.

Downside… These things are freaking expensive. I need to teach more lessons. My poor foot.

And finally…

• We are getting tile installed in our laundry room… FINALLY! This house is 111 years old, and we’ve been walking on the foundation wood in that room, which isn’t a good thing. We’ve been saving for awhile to do this, and I was thrilled to pick out my new tile for the room.

Oh, yes. We are going retro. I have ALWAYS loved the black and white tile checkerboard, and now it’s GOING TO BE MINE! Now, if only the floor wasn’t so uneven and had to be built up with mortar, we probably would have saved a crap ton in labor. Unfortunately, it wasn’t something we could do ourselves due to the shape of the existing floors.

There. There’s my list. Happy Thoughts. Happy Thoughts.

Happy Thoughts.

Current Mood: Bored

Forewarning: This is not a positive post, and it is haunting and tragic. Don’t read it unless you can handle getting a tissue.

I don’t really want to write this, but I feel like I need to because it won’t leave my head. What do you do when an obsessive thought just can’t seem to escape the attic upstairs in your mind? Do you wait while it runs rampant hitting the walls back and forth until it finally tires? It never seems to work for me- it thrashes around indefinitely in my mind. If I keep it in, which most of the time I do, it never quiets. My therapists have told me time and time again that I need to let those painful thoughts out of my internal depths and share them so that I can start the healing process.

As open as I might appear on paper and via blog, I am actually quite silent about my personal life. To everyone. Even friends most of the time. The only people I generally open up to are James and my sister and, funny enough, one of my internet friends whom I’ve only met once in real life. I have some good friends, but I don’t normally see them, so the talking quiets when we are not near. I trust them absolutely, it’s just hard to sit down and talk when you’re running different lives in different cities.

So who do I tell this horrible thing to?

I found out a few days ago that a girl I know was killed in a head-on collision on the freeway last month in Tucson. She was 31 and she had a son my daughter’s age.

I have dealt with death a number of times just as everyone has, all in varying forms. Some deaths are sad, some incredibly painful, some downright tragic. My grandparents both died right before I married James. They were old, we weren’t incredibly close, and they’d lived full lives. I was shocked, I cried, I sang Amazing Grace at their funerals just as they wanted. It was hard saying goodbye to people I loved within a year of each other’s deaths, but their passing was not tragic. Their deaths were what happens when someone is old and not in the best health. It was sad, I still feel that empty hole in my heart when I think of them, my eyes still tear up when I’m alone, but it certainly wasn’t tragic.

This young woman’s death was not just sad and painful, it was horribly tragic and far surpasses that feeling of pain that I felt for the loss of my grandparents. I didn’t even know her well. She was just that girl who worked in a specialty shoe store that my mom and sister and I have frequented for years, even since I moved to Seattle. We really liked her. She was always there, and she’d joke with us because we wore the same shoe size as her in all the European shoes we tried on. We’d spend almost an hour in there, and she and I would talk about our kids and what they were doing and how they were driving us crazy with whatever annoying phase they were going through. She always remembered us, and every time I’ve gone shoe shopping up here in Seattle, she has always crossed my mind.

I didn’t know her outside of that single realm, but I really liked her. She wasn’t super bubbly and ultra-friendly like most sales people. She was straight-to-the-point and dry and a bit sarcastic, but really neat with a good heart- the type of personality I always click with. But besides that, she had a great smile, always remembered us, and always seemed pleased to help us out. She was healthy and athletic and a single mom. And now she’s dead.

You know how some forms of dying seem more tragic somehow than others? Hers was about the worst I could think of. She was heading home from some kind of game, and she was hit head-on by a driver speeding in the wrong direction on the interstate. Her car burst into flames, meaning after impact, if she was still conscious, she had to feel herself being scorched to death. A passerby apparently was somehow able to pull her out of the car, but she died from her injuries shortly after reaching the hospital. The man who killed her died a week after the crash, somewhat unexpectedly because medical personal wasn’t expecting him to die from his injuries. He didn’t seem like some kind of bad person, just some guy who confused the off-ramp with the on-ramp.

My sister felt bad telling me, but I had insisted. My mom had mentioned something had happened when she was here, but I told her not to elaborate. I kept thinking something horrific had happened to her son, and I just didn’t think I could handle hearing it. But then it ate at me for days on end because I felt like, Dear God, I had to know. My brain kept filling in the blanks, and I am relieved to know what happened even though it’s a terrible thing to hear.

[Side note: I keeping distracting myself while writing this post. I've been working on it for a couple hours now, and I just found myself on this college website writing down class times and dates and I have no idea when I got there. Why? I have no idea. I probably won't even sign up for any classes, but anything to keep from writing this post and talking about what's going on inside my twisted thought process.]

This isn’t my tragedy. The loss of her life is not some deep hole in my own world up here in Seattle. She was not family or even someone I spoke with outside of that cool little shoe store. But did you ever meet someone, even if just for a minute, that you just clicked with really well? If circumstances were different, life was somehow altered, you just might have been close friends with them or somehow you were cosmically connected to them? There were too many parallels between her life and mine for me to just brush her death off and add it to the ever-rising tolls. For some reason, her death bothers me more than just about anyone else’s that I’ve known.

Did she register what was happening as that truck came speeding toward her? Did she feel the impact, and was it agonizingly painful? Was her son, her pride and joy, the last thought in her conscious mind? Did she try to fight to survive, willing every last cell to hang in there?

Where is she now?

Is God really there like He promises us in the Bible? Like every culture believes in one way or another? Is there an afterlife, that very thing that humans for as many centuries as we’ve been around have believed?

The worst part for me is not just her son or her parents, but her sister. I don’t know what their relationship was like, but I was under the impression that her family was pretty close, with a similar age gap to my sister and I, or that of my girls. She must be so beyond heartbroken, losing her built-in friend.

The worst part of this is that life somehow goes on. Her son will grow up without his loving mom. Her parents will continue moving forward. Her sister will raise her family without their beloved aunt. Her brother will now have only one sister. When her son is 31, which seems so old to a kid, he will realize just how tragically young his mom was when that speeding idiot hit her head-on and killed her. All the life she will miss out on will just keep on happening.

I hope that, somehow, she can see earth and the people she loved and smile knowingly, understanding that it is just a short time in the scheme of things before they will see her again.

Current Mood: Sad