My dog sassy

I got a new dog a few months ago. She has brought joy and sunshine to my life. My moods are better. I feel like waking up in the morning so I can give her a treat. She loves me so much that I can not help but love myself a bit more because of her. I always wanted another child, another daughter but due to my health I can not have anymore. Sasssy is like the daughter that I was not able to have...
She is constantly by my side and she can feel my moods and knows how to cheer me up or calm me down.
I have heard people say oh she is just a dog...she may be just a dog to some people but to me she is much more. She is my friend, my companian and more. I found this cute little story and it reminded me of how I feel when people say she is just a dog...

Just a Dog

From time to time, people tell me, "lighten up, it's just a dog," or, "that's a lot of money for just a dog." They don't understand the distance traveled, the time spent, or the costs involved for "just a dog." Some of my proudest moments have come about with "just a dog." Many hours have passed and my only company was "just a dog," but I did not once feel slighted. Some of my saddest moments have been brought about by "just a dog," and in those days of darkness, the gentle touch of "just a dog" gave me comfort and reason to overcome the day.If you, too, think it's "just a dog," then you will probably understand phrases like "just a friend," "just a sunrise," or"just a promise." "Just a dog" brings into my life the very essence of friendship, trust, and pure unbridled joy. "Just a dog" brings out the compassion and patience that make me a better person. Because of "just a dog" I will rise early, take long walks and look longingly to the future. So for me and folks like me, it's not "just a dog" but an embodiment of all the hopes and dreams of the future, the fond memories of the past, and the pure joy of the moment. "Just a dog" brings out what's good in me and diverts my thoughts away from myself and the worries of the day.I hope that someday they can understand that it's not "just a dog" but the thing that gives me humanity and keeps me from being "just a person." So the next time you hear the phrase "just a dog" just smile, because they "just don't understand."

depression is not normal

I think some people think that being depressed is just a normal part of life. When I have told people I am depressed most of them say oh but why...you have such a wonderful family, healthy kids blah blah blah...well DUHHHHHHHHH.....it is because I have an illness called depression. If my kids were sick or my husband was dead and I was depressed, that would be NORMAL....when your life is going well and your kids are healthy and you have food and a house and you still feel depressed, that is ABNORMAL, you have an illness. By telling me that I should feel blessed and should be happy becase look at this person or that person who has all these bad things going on and I am soo lucky and I should be happy...HELLOOOO that is like telling a person with a broken leg that they should get up and walk...I have an illness. I know I am lucky, I know I am blessed, yet I still feel like life sucks...and of course I feel guilty when people point out how blessed I should feel.
I think people are confused in the fact that mental illness is still an illness, a sickness, a disease. It is nothing we have done wrong. People would never tell somebody with cancer to just get over it, but people have the nerve to say that to people with depression.
Luckily I have simple depression, not bipolar. My depression seems to come and go with really no rhyme or reason. Often my depression is not in a form that people would even realize that anything was wrong, unless it was somebody who knew me really well. I do not cry or seem sad, I do not think of suicide. I usually just do not care about anything. I do not care about how I look, if I change my clothes, I do not care or even know what day or the week it is. I could spend the entire day sleeping. The days that I am depressed I also seem to not want to eat. I just do not want to bother to take the time to make anything and no food sounds good. Too bad I have not lost any weight. I have actually gained lots from the medications I am on.
I was thinking some more the other day about what sort of symptoms I had of anxiety when I was a kid, and the more I thought of it the more I realized that I was a really depressed kid. I hid it well but I did have symptoms of it that I can even remember now. I also wrote this awful awful dark poems. Poems about me living in a box, or dying and bleeding and nobody caring. Poems about me being worthless and unloved. I saved the poems in a notebook and was reading some of them the other day. I can not believe that people who read them when I was younger never looked into me being depressed. In 9th grade I took a creative writing class and lots of these poems are from my class journal and was read and graded by the teacher. Even though here was mentions of harming my self and lots of saddness in the poems, she never questioned me, never sent me to see the school counselor, never contacted my parents etc. I also used to have quite a few of the poems hanging on a corkboard in my room....again, nobody ever asked me if I was depressed.
I also had odd sicknesses, injuries, bruises etc that I had caused myself. Looking back, this started about ag 13 and lasted until my early 20's....I will write a post later detailing some of the things I did to punish myself or to get attention, I think mostly to get attention...

Rough times and learning to have faith

The past 2 months or so have been on and off rough. I feel like the higher dose of meds is finally fully kicked in. I am happy with the decrease of the panic attacks but do not feel as if the medication is working as well as I would want it to. It controls my anxiety some but not as much as I was controlled last year on a lower dose. Of course now I also am aware of just how fast a med can stop working and that I could wake up tommorow with the medication not working and have to start over again. This scares the crap out of me. I can not deal with the panic attacks and try to take care of my kids at the same time. I wish I had some family or friends I could count on to help me out if I had a setback. I really do not have anybody who I know would help me out if I needed it. Everybody is busy and has thier own life and I am sure people do not understand what it is I deal with. Each night I get scared to go to sleep because I worry what the next day will bring. Will I wake up in a panic attack? will I be sick? will I be ok? The mornings are slowly getting better for me. Those are usually the roughest and now they are somewhat better.
The dr just re-prescribed me wellbutrin 150mg to start again. I am having bouts of what I would call * just not giving a damn* Not really depression but just not really caring and a bit of feeling sorry for myself added in.
I have worked on some things. I have done some rather large size sewing orders of doll stuff. I have listed some stuff on ebay. I did actually go out and get my eyebrows waxed the other day and am enjoying my new collection of bare minerals makeup.
I also am trying to be faithful and believe that GOD has a purpose and a plan for me. My friend D comes over every week and she has been a huge blessing to me. I now count the days of the week based on her visit. It helps the days not each be the same. I used to love having friends and it helps to have somebody come over. We finished the bible study the purppose driven life and I learned so much from that. I then got baptised and am very happy about that decision. I do firmly believe that there is a GOD and that I will go to heaven and that there is a purpose to everything.
Right now we are watching a series each week based on a lady that had suffered from depression for many years. She is now on medication and she did a dvd based on her faith. It really makes sense and each week gives me something to think about. The week before last really was a good message and it was to live life to the fullest. I am still stuck on that a bit because I am not sure what the fullest is. I see people who have these huge ambitions. Plans to climb mountains or ride bikes across the country. To me that is living life in the fullest but those are not things that I could do. I guess before I can live life to the fullest I need to figure out what it is that it means. I would love to get out but I am not sure where to...I also worry that if I do live life to the fullest if I have a setback with my anxiety that it will just make it all that much worse for me to deal with.
My current definition of a good day is making it through the day without a panic attack. I am slowly doing more though. I have cooked dinners for 2 weeks now and have made meal plans. I have planned out and am almost done with shopping for Christmas gifts.
I guess I need to have some ambition and some energy and to decide what I want to do with my life. I feel like I have wasted just about 5 years of my life and I can not get those back. Maybe I will make it a goal to list 5 things that I want to accomplish in the next 6 months.

pay it forward

K and I watched this the other day. I had heard great things about it and so borrowed it from netflix. The movie was awesome, the idea of helping each other was great. The ending totally sucked though and nearly ruined the movie for me. I think there are sooo many other ways it could have ended and still made sense. I think there are so many other ways it could have ended to make it make even more sense.
I was talking to my friend about it and she said that lots of people had told her the ending sucked so she watched the movie and turned it off just as it got to the ending. She says she has no idea how it ended and she really liked the movie.
I want to implement my own form of pay it forward but I do not rely on others to follow through. I have quite a few skills that I can put to use to help others out and never have to leave my home.
In the bible study that I am doing, the purpse driven life, this weeks lesson was about helping others so it tied into the movie well. The main idea is that I need to give with a happy heart and for no reasons other then to give.I can not give to make people like me, I can not give to gain anything and I can not give and then complain about it. The giving needs to come from my heart. The bible study pointed out in the bible where it says that only the services done with a happy heart will count.
I think that people who give stuff or help others only so they can boast about it, should not even bother doing the good deed in the first place. I have had people help me before and nothing is lower then helping somebody else and then throwing it in thier face everytime you get a chance. I have a few people in my family like that. Nothing they ever give is given with kindness and just to give...it is given for their on selfish reasons and with strings attatched. There is a certain family member who still brings up stuff they have done for me over 10 years ago..geez...time to move on huh?
Well, I do realize my limitations, I can not commit to something that I have to leave the house for and I do not have lots of money. BUT, I do have plenty of other things to offer. I want to donate crochet hats to the cancer patients, I want to make some preemie clothes for the 1-2 pound babies in the nicu, I want to make memorial and burial gowns for the babies that were stillborn, I want to make and donate mama slings and newbown blankets etc..there is so much more I want to do but I need to start slow and aim big. And I do know that I am giving for the right reasons and with a happy heart.

Fall is coming

I hope fall will be here soon. I know it will be on the calender but I am sure we will have at least another month or 2 of awful hot weather.
I went to the psych dr the other day and he asked me if I wanted to try a different med since this one is helping but not helping 100%. I decided to stay with what I am on. I am better, not normal and I do not think I ever will be normal. I do not want to risk trying something else and then having it not help as much as this. If this med stops working, like the lower dose did, then I will have to try something else.
I asked the psych dr if I will ever just not have to worry about anxiety...his answer was that unless we found a magic pill that I would always have to deal with it. His goal is to get me to a point that I mostly have good days and once in awhile have a rough patch.Right now I have bad days and good days, his goal is more like me having good months with a few bad days. I was at that point before, last year before the lexapro stopped working.
I can feel that I have more of my agoraphobia right now. I do not want to go anywhere. I make excuses not to leave the house. I do not want to go to the store or anywhere. I make plans to and then the day comes and I make an excuse to not go. I have gone a few times with my husband but I would rather not. There is no real reason, I just feel like I am safe and comfortable at home.
I watched a few episodes of the show Monk, about a detective with OCD and wow do I relate...I totally do..it is funny to watch the show but it is not funny when it is happening to me.
I also have been a bit more of a hypochondriac. I did well for awhile about not worrying about stuff, illnesses etc but had a few bad weeks where I was sure something was wrong with me.
I am having a good day and hope to be able to go with the family on a drive to phx tommorow to visit J in rehab.

Trying to catch up

I have fallen behind on the blogging. I keep a journal that I write in at home and always plan to transfer to my blog but never quite got to it. I will write some of it here, even though it happened over the past 2 months or so.
JULY...july passed with not much fanfare...My husband changed his schedule so he can be home 4 days a week and just work 3 shifts a week. 12 hour shifts. This helps quite a bit since I feel better when he is home. I still do not feel like the lexapro increased dose has fully kicked in. I feel more agoraphobic then I had been a few months ago. It is ok, it is over 100 degrees out and I really do not need to go out anyways. I feel quite lazy though. Since the doctor stopped my wellbutrin I do not have much motivation for anything. I do not feel as depressed but I do not feel like my anxiety is as well under control as it had been.
K turned 18..I got her a car but she only drove for 3 weeks and then wrecked the car.

August....J is in trouble again. He was found with more weed and he is already on probation. He had 3 drug tests in a row show positive. He had to go to court again on the 17th and was sentenced to one year of probation. We got him a spot in a rehab and he will do 60 days inpatient rehab. Hopefully it will help. He has never tested postivie for anything other then pot, I know that is still bad but I am so glad that it has not progressed to any other drugs.
I am still having some problems with my anxiety. I want to get back to where I was a few months ago. I think it will take awhile longer for the higher dose of lexapro to kick in. I also had my xanax dose raised.

Family ties that bind

Seems that this craziness runs in the family. Somebody drank some bad water some years down in the gene pool. Seems that everybody in the entire family has some sort of mental illness. My grandmother died in a mental hospital. My mother has extensive mental problems, my father has issues of his own but just will not admit them. My fathers issues played into how he parented us and he made our lifes miserable most of the time he was around. He always had a reason or excuse for what he did.
My aunt is mentally ill and has spent years in and out of the mental hospital. My cousin has problems as well but like my father she will not admit to them. My brother has problems. 3 of my 4 children so far show signs of problems. 2 of them are medicated already. My grandfather had anxiety issues and had agoraphobia so badly that he never even took the trash out because he did not go outside and when he died he had like 10 years of trash in his house. I remember when we were younger that he wanted us to call him every night at 5pm. He told us that if he did not answer then to call the ambulance because it meant something was wrong with him. We called him everyday at 5pm for many years, I did not realize until recently that he was probably thinking that he would die alone and nobody would know.
All of my relatives on my moms maternal side of her family is mentally ill. SOme more then others but all of them are diagnosed with something.
The thing is, most of them were diagnosed in their teens. My mom and aunt were mentally ill at a young age so I figured by the time I hit 30 I had lucked out..guess it was just waiting for the right time to pop up for me.
Looking back I had lots of signs and symptoms of mental problems growing up but just never came out about them. I had bouts of depression where I would write poems about killing or harming myself.
I also self harmed myself numerous times, sometimes to make myeslf feel better, sometimes for sympathy and love. I will make another post about my self harming as this post is getting rather long.

Looking for a purpose

I have decided that part of why I am so depressed and anxious is because I feel like this is all there is to life. Suffering, grief, problems, pain etc. I feel like death is some scary event and is the end of everything. I started thinking that maybe if I thought about it differently then maybe it would not be so scary. I started thinking about the religious people who have faith that this is not all there is. That there is eternal life and that this is just a very small part of the entire scheme of things. Thier faith allows them to know that they will have more then just this life. I think if I knew that for sure, then I would not be so depressed or anxious about death.
I have OCD and my thoughts are all on death and dying and illness. I sometime go over in my head about what I will feel like when I am on my death bed, what will I feel what will I think. I focus on how I will die, who will be with me. It is not a good thing to think about and for me it is all in a negative view. If I could find a positive out of it, maybe I could stop worrying just a bit.
I have started meeting with a very very nice gal, we shall call her R lol.....just for her privacy. Well she is teaching me about the bible and about being saved. She is not pushy about it and I really want to learn. I have some devotionals that I am reading. I also found some really neat passages in Matthew that actually sound like they are talking about not worrying about things because there is a plan.
The last few days when I started to feel a panic attack coming on I would just think about my visits with R and try to focus on the fact that there is a plan and to just say to myself that if it is my time to go then that is fine..for some reason that has helped me relax a bit. To just go with the flow I guess. I figure there is no point in fighting it, if I am going to die then I guess I will not worry about it anymore.

June 2006

Well...June is over now but it was not a very good month.
I had panic attacks on and off in the beggining of the month. I have not had a panic attack now for almost 3 weeks but have been on the verge of one on and off the past week. I am definatly not doing as well as I had been. I do have good days. Some days are very good days. I have gone shopping. I have gone out more. I just do not feel like my panic is as well under control as it used to be.
My mornings are rough. I wake up wondering if I will have a panic attack.
I feel like an awful mom because the days that I am not doing well I do not want to do anything with the kids. I just can not deal with them and a panic attack at the same time.
I also felt betrayed by some of my friends from a forum I go to. I was very hurt and it caused lots of panic and upset for me. I am trying to stay away from feeling like that but I am sensitive to stuff and it hurt me that friends would question something about me like that...

april and may

April was a fairly good month, I got my decision letter about getting ssdi and it was my sons 4th bday.
I feel like I missed out on a lot of his last 2 years because i have been consumed with my own problems but in reality I feel like I spend lots of time with him and he loves me and knows I love him.
I had gotten out more. I went to the mall and even went to the clinique store....oh wow. I have not been to the mall in ages. I felt like a kid in the candy store. Well, I started not feeling good that day with a headache etc.
I had just raised my wellbutrin dose to 400mg so thought maybe that was it. We went out to dinner ( another big thing for me...) and I could not eat. I just did not feel right. By the time I came home I had a feeling that it was anxiety. I had done so well for almost a year. I went to bed but could not sleep. My husband had to work the next day....and I started with a huge panic attack. My oldest child was not home to help me with the younger kids. I was having such a bad panic attack I thought for sure it was not panic and that I was dying. I was moments away from calling an ambulance. I called my husband at work. I was crying and I could hear the dissapointment in his voice. Not with me, but with the fact that I started having panic attacks again.
I begged him to come home but he could not. I was taking more xanax but really just wanted to go to bed. I called my mom and for the first time in many years she was willing to help me, she took the 2 younger kids for 2 hours. I laid down and slept. I woke up still feeling out of sorts and very depresses. I cried the rest of the day.
I then talked myself into thinking that maybe it was just a one time incident. That maybe the panic attacks are not back, it was just one attack. Even though I had a feeling that maybe the lexapro was not working anymore.
Well...I had another panic attack the next day, and the next. I called the psych dr crying. The first thing he did is tell me to take more xanax and then to stop the wellbutrin....thinking maybe it was the increased dose of wellbutrin. He thought it was unlikly but was not sure, so I stopped taking it. I had a few good days so breathed a sigh of relief that it was the wellbutrin. Well....more panic attacks.
I was sooo frustrated. I actually asked my husband if he would help me kill myself. This freaked him out. I just do not want to live this way at all. I can deal with most of the symptoms of anxiety, the GAD, the social anxiety, the agoraphobia etc but I just can not deal with the feeling of the panic attacks. The feeling that I can not breath and that I am dying
I called the psych dr again....we discussed either stopping the lexapro and taking zoloft or raising the lexapro to an above normal dose. I was a bit skeeved at taking a dose of lexapro above what is a normal dose but was willing to try it. The dr had me take the extra dose while we were on the phone...and some more xanax.
I felt a bit better that at least we were trying something new.
I spent the next week just sort of depressed. Had some smallish panic attacks but took xanax as soon as they started and I got through them.