The Trough Part of the Intermittent Waves

That time 2 years ago when I was witness to suicide by police.

Today I was alone for 23 hours and 37 minutes.

My husband’s brother, who has an aggressive dislike for me and is visiting for a few weeks, which makes me uncomfortable because the first time I met him 20 years ago, a few days after my dad died, he was awful to me. He waited until Dave went to sleep and came out to the garage where I’d been smoking, and he yelled at me in front of my half-sister Kathy about not understanding why the hell Dave would call me “Goddess”, and ‘omg you’re such a pig, there’s JAM on the floor in the kitchen!!’ for another, and on and on.

Good times, huh?

That was in early 2001 and it’s late 2019 and nothing in my life has changed from that moment until now, and I don’t see an opportunity for change in the future. My kitchen floor no longer has jam on it, however my entire house is incredibly packratted and dusty and dog furry.

Christopher is currently sleeping in Dave’s office on the floor. I’m still terrified to leave my room even though it’s 4:30 in the morning, because last night when I tried that he was walking around the house so I couldn’t really go out.

Dave, AJ, and Christopher are leaving Friday at noon to go to Spokane to celebrate his mom’s birthday. Must be nice to be able to go and visit family for a birthday. Remember how I haven’t had a birthday celebration in decades? I still have emotional scars, and they’re starting to throb with pain as my birthday approaches once again.

At least Bryan will be home from college studying so I won’t be completely alone, or if I need help there will be someone nearby.

Everyone comes before me, but I’m used to it and don’t put much energy into being bummed about it anymore. What’s the point of that? An example is that after I finally got Dave to listen to what my mother said to me this morning that upset me, he went into his office and wrote a very long email to me about how my family is treating me; not what he’d do about it or what he IS going to do about it (as per usual ; nobody has ever stood up for me.)

I’m out of family now. If anyone was hoping for that to happen, congratulations to you…I am completely alone except for Dave now, and if you have a heart you’ll please allow me to keep him. And maybe get him back, too. Who knows. Maybe it’s not too late.

For now, and the past 2 years, I’ve been in my house and without outside human personal contact. Any questions?

First: Yes, I have a hard time every day and I’m moody now, too. I am looking forward to finding a doctor willing to give me an actual fresh diagnosis so I know what to work on. Unfortunately, only AJ is permitted to see doctors right now because we have shitty insurance, so I’m last, of course, because I look normal but nobody can know what it’s like in my mind and how much control I exert to keep from screaming in frustration and deep despair over lost dreams and waves of panic attacks for 30 years.

Second: I don’t feel like I’m going to make it through this. I don’t know how to live a life spent entirely in the corner of a darkened room – alone. Always.

If you want to know anything about anxiety or panic attacks, just let me know – I have the answer to everything except how to get over crippling all day every day highly elevated anxiety.

I hope so much nobody reading this ever has to know what this feels like.

This May Turn Into a BPD Blog

As everyone knows, AJ has always been a difficult child. Was it my fault for taking Xanax during pregnancy (under doctor supervision?) Could have I done a better job of keeping life stable and provide him a loving environment that he felt safe and secure in?

The thing is, I thought I did those things, and now my son is 16 and unwell.

We have only just now been able to afford a psychologist to treat him, but we had to see a Family Medicine doctor at the clinic before being allowed to see a psychiatrist. We can only make that appointment today, so I hope so much that they’ll be able to meet with him soon. It’s just been way too long of a wait for a psychiatrist. We’ve been going through this hell for 10 years as ADHD/ODD, and the last 5 have been building up to BPD, and now it’s full-out Borderline Personality Disorder. The general anxiety is still there, but maybe that’s just another part of it.

There’s so much I don’t know.

One thing that I do know is that I’m fucking tired.

When your son plots hours, or even the day prior, on how to mess with your sleep so that he’ll have his “Favorite Person” (FP) all to himself it can only be exhausting. I have nothing left to give, and yet somehow I keep walking upright. I’m just so tired and cannot remember what rested and peaceful felt like. It’s been a warzone for every waking moment of the past five years, and nobody goes through that unscathed.

Even our dogs hide now. Well, when AJ and his dad “get into it.” Argue. There’s so much arguing for a man who doesn’t like confrontation, and that’s another thing! Why does AJ engage his dad and make him BE confrontational when he knows damn well it gives his dad an anxiety attack???

We’re all facing another hard day tomorrow. We’re withdrawing him from high school, and trust me, it is against his will and he has been extremely angry with us. But, you have to realize that he has set his own hours! School is supposed to be from 7:55am until 2:25pm, but he’d always used to wake his dad up at 7am so that he could go to the school as soon as they unlocked the door (nearly an hour early.)

AJ only goes to school when he wants to now. He’s down to attending only 2 classes, if he decides to go to school at all. He could walk to and from school – he really could! It’s rather safe with wide sidewalks and bike paths and crosswalks, but he refuses to do that; someone MUST take him in the mornings. He’ll walk home, but he doesn’t like it. He also knows that if he tried to make ME wake up and drive 3 minutes to get him I’d FREAK OUT on him. As for leaving school, we get a phone call any day that he does attend about 2 hours after he’s gone in and he’ll be in the counselors office crying that he was bullied and that everyone hates him, including the teachers.

By that point he has attended lunch, and “Introduction to Agriculture” and is finished, wanting to come home, but 100% because he will no longer get an opportunity to be in the vicinity of his crush.

Actually, that brings me to another point: I think Dave’s being manipulated by AJ with the guilt that he carries over how little time he had with his own father, and how little time he has now for family. He’s working 60 hours a week and also getting his MBA, so he’s really very busy and really very tired, at all times…and above all else, a good man who doesn’t deserve to lose over an hours’ worth of sleep just so AJ doesn’t have to walk for 7 minutes!

Did I mention that I was tired? I feel like I’m not allowed to complain, honestly, and I feel guilty for even doing this knowing that I WILL be publishing it. I realize it’s broken up and poorly written, but dude, I’m busted down. If I had a wagon wheel like me I’d be staking a claim on this land.

I’ve recorded horrible, raging fights that aren’t actually fights at all, just screaming rebuttals to logical questions we ask, and then holy fuck the fake crying.

Fake Crying Can Go Fuck Itself

Oh my God I hate that. It rustles me to the core, buzzes the marrow in my bones and I have to use all of the energy I have to not go ballistic, and just keep trying to have a gentle look on my face.

What I don’t understand is that when I point it out, that he’s fake crying/bawling, he’ll literally stop mid sob and tell me in a perfectly normal voice that he’s NOT ‘fake crying’ at all. How is he not hearing what I’m hearing? Like I said I’ve recorded it, but nobody ever has asked to listen to a sample. I guess I’ll always have all these damn audio and video recordings of “the good times” we had raising our son.

You know, I do have 2 older sons. “Round 1 Babies” I guess? I was married before to a man that I truly, deeply, madly loved, but he didn’t grow up and I did, but I got two amazing boys out of the deal so I pretty much won all around. My oldest son, Brandon, was a bit like AJ, but nowhere as intense. And now that he’s 30 he’s just antisocial and has GAD, but he outbursts have pretty much completely subsided and it wouldn’t be a wretched experience to have him come visit for a few days (or weeks!!) I can finally see that little boy that I knew before his ADHD took over and whatever traits of BPD he displayed started popping up. It’s wonderful.

Not having had to go through it at all would have been even more wonderful, actually.

My middle son is a Student Nurse, and his name is Bryan, and he’s got 4 more years of school to go, but plans to live with us only for the next 2. That’s inconvenient because we’re renters, the landlord raised our rent when our 2 year lease was up (we’d been here 5 years) to over $2000/mo and $1700 was hard enough. Harder than hard, and now it’s impossible. Like, today is 9 days from pay of any kind and we have no money and we didn’t do anything but pay rent and buy staples like milk and bread.

We wanted so badly to find a house nearer to Bryan’s college, since AJ doesn’t take school seriously anyway, and maybe pay less a month by buying it, but then AJ used up our entire savings with the suicide attempt, which is of course fine and I don’t behoove him that, I just cannot tolerate the thought of staying in THIS particular house for another 2 to 3 years.

Well, since everything is hard and I’m – again, tired – I just want to say that I dream that someday there will be an easy to find website for parents going through this type of thing with their children and teenagers. Until that time, if you want, please feel free to say hello.

Thank you for reading this.

Red Drops in the Snow

A suicide run to the emergency room last night.

We had to just admit that this was beyond our control, and now he’ll be going to an intensive treatment center.

I know it’s my fault because I was his entire environment his whole life, his dad was never home and it was just us so who else would he have learned these behaviors from?

But I have NEVER “pulled the suicide card.” I don’t know, now, or ever, if he actually meant it went he scratched himself and left welts, and that wasn’t enough of something and then another cutting incident and then finally one that was bad enough that there was actual blood and wham!

Emergency. Blizzard. Fried.

He’s okay but will be entering a PHP. I don’t have any details on the actual diagnosis yet, but it seems they are sticking pretty much with ADHD, ODD, and Anxiety, but adding OCD and a host of other things.  We will find out in a few days what the final recommendation is and then immediately do that, and I know it will be every day, 4 hours a day, for two months, – 7 days a week because brains don’t take days off.

But what about me and my brain?

And what kind of mother would say such a thing?

Jackpot: A First Time Panic Attack Victim Caught in the Act

The other day I was useful, which felt wonderful. One of the destinations that my husband takes me to when we venture from the house in an effort to dispell my agoraphobia, is a casino.  I didn’t realize it would be such an important visit this time.

Photo by Fancycrave.com on Pexels.com

I was simply walking towards the back of the building and saw a small, but frenzied, group of people around a person sitting on a chair, and as I always do, I ran right for the action and it was a young girl having her first panic attack.  I would say she was about 23.  And terrified.

I helped her. Paramedics showed up midway through and allowed me to continue helping her until the worst had passed.

I hope she’s okay now. I gave her my card, but she never called. She works there, so I know that her boss demanded her to allow him to have someone drive her home, but she refused, not wanting to leave him shortstaffed on, of course, the biggest snow day we’ve had in 20 years. I know what her mindset was, and I feel such a maternal sort of bond with her after spending about a half hour with her getting her to the point where she could once again speak and engage with others. When she got to where she could laugh, embarrassed at herself, I tried to sneak away.

I really wish she would have called, though.  I had so much more I could have told her.

Maybe you figure out a way, maybe you don’t…

Maybe you figure out a way, maybe you don’t, but you’re still going to be you at the end of the day and the only one who knows what it feels like to BE you. Make the best decisions for yourself first. 

In 1996 I started a massive website in an effort to gather all of my notes on anxiety disorders, mainly panic attacks. Back then when someone typed in “panic attacks” into google I came up first, always, for several years until algorithms started changing, adsense got ugly, and suddenly all I had left out of the thousands of people I’d talked to and helped over the years was a small portion of the original website called “Panicked and Pregnant” which was basically just a link to a message board. Honestly, I haven’t even checked it in … possibly 10 years or more now. 

However, I made a difference in so many women’s lives – I talked women into going in to talk to their doctor about treatment, not abortions, and I supported them when they chose either direction. It was a full time job. I desperately tried to bring money into my family with it, and at the time my biggest money maker was Amazon, back when books actually sold.  But, all of those little ways to make money and to help people dwindled away, and all of the people are now gone, and there are babies in this world living – old enough to vote! – because of the close relationships I shared with their mothers. Their mothers even contributed articles and became assistants and close friends!

And now it’s 2019 and I have no website and nobody remembers me.

nobody

I still have the same email address active from back then and not a soul has ever followed up, even after 5 year long friendships that I thought would last forever.

It’s an identity crisis, I think.  It sounds like for you and me both, really.  You’ve lived and breathed your very large online community forever, and all I’ve ever done was talk about anxiety, anxiety, anxiety – and we’re both SO MUCH MORE than those things. Hell, you’re a woman not just a mom (and yes, tweens and teens being home with you sucks but then when they all go away that sucks even more, I know! 😦 )

You have so many more ideas in you than you know.  

You just haven’t looked up for a while, maybe? That’s what it is for me. I finally got my head out of the “trying to help people with their anxiety for free” mode and into the “oh fuck – well who THE ACTUAL HELL AM I if I’m not talking about anxiety???” pathway.

And that’s where I am today. 

Not sure of my next move, not sure if I’ll have the strength, but knowing that it’s gotta be done because I forgot to be born into wealth 😉 So maybe if you’re looking to return with a bang, you could start writing about what you know. 

HOW THE FUCK DO WE FIGURE OUT STAGE TWO OF OUR LIVES?????

I’ve been thinking about this for months (total lie, I’ve been at it for over a year) and I do not know what to do, so I get lost on youtube watching crime documentaries LOL  Like my high school friend who just switched careers, should I take a class or something? Should I continue to sit at my desk and do my artwork that is just for me and not a money maker?

Do I get a job, and if so – HOW, since it’s been 12 years since my last good job? What if I HATED my career and it needs to change?

I truly believe that most women go through this time of their lives and since we’re basically the same age’ish I’m guessing we had similar mothers with similar ideas about what it meant to be a woman in your 40s, and those lessons (if any were even ever mentioned aloud!) are so dated and sometimes downright depressing, that it can actually make you even more depressed and hopeless feeling. 

For instance, when I told my mother that I had entered perimenopause she said that wasn’t a real thing and that I better not take any hormone replacement therapy because it would kill me (I’m totally healthy.)

Why does this stage have the stigma of being TERRIFYING?

And why isn’t anyone coming together as a community to help one another? Not even in my small town. It’s as if you aren’t allowed to talk about. It’s too dark to think of a mother having to start a new career and part 2 of her life. It’s a sad image. How could that be fixed?  I mean, we’re in our 40s, not in our death throes!

So I don’t know where you’re going to start, because I don’t know and I’ve been thinking hard, too – sounds like we both have been for a long time … but when you come up with it, I’ll read it.

I’m sorry your site and all that went along with it slipped away and took all the best things with it, but remember that it didn’t take you away. You started it and that’s not nothing.

Written and sent with compassion and understanding,

My mom just fired me from the family

Thursdays. Every Thursday something unexpected happens in my life and it’s always noteworthy. I don’t have a general fear of this day, really, because the good and the bad things that have happened used to equal out pretty well, but now? Not so much.

I suppose I should have known that this was a magickal Thursday because I didn’t sleep much last night. I take a lot of medications and I should definitely sleep through the night – no question, so my psyche knew Thursday wouldn’t be fabulous, certainly.

What finally catapulted my ass out of bed at 5am was a painful snarling calf cramp.

I always look at my computer before anything happens in a day, and as I walked towards it I could see that someone had sent me a message. It was from my mother. Totally stoked to savor any contact with another Human, let alone my own mother, I fully intended to savor the interaction by getting a perfect cup of coffee after doing my bathroom things.

I sat down to open the message to find out that she’s finished with me.

I hadn’t even had the first sip of coffee, but the message was over already and I suddenly found myself without a family back home.

It feels as if they were all on vacation together in a bus and it went off of a cliff and everyone is gone now.

It used to be that I felt like I was Guam. You know, I belong to the United States, but I was really far away and generally my family didn’t think about me unless there was a financial reason behind it.

Choosing to move to the west coast, I chose to sign my death warrant as far as they were concerned.

I suppose there are two things that bother me the most about all of this: One; why did it take me so long to realize they really mean it when they behave as if they don’t want me around? and, two; How fucking desperate and/or stupid am I to have been living 3,000 miles away for nearly 20 years never giving up trying to get them to acknowledge my life, let alone love me?

I don’t understand ugly people. My brain doesn’t work that way.

I Have Successfully Stayed Below The Radar

Everything is worse, but I’ve managed to stay alive.

I hate when the landlord visits & my kid is suicidal.

He hasn’t been here for 5 years and then suddenly it’s an inspection the next day and the following day a banker to take pictures so that he can get a 2nd mortgage.

Then my son became suicidal and I couldn’t get him from the school to Emergency Room because I’m agoraphobic, and it was like they gave me two choices; he goes in their car or my car, but he goes for an evaluation.  I pulled the car over so many times but I couldn’t get there.  I will watch him like a hawk for the next 18 hours until I can get him to the 11:10am appointment with his family doctor.

I’ve had panic attacks my whole life. Xanax is ineffective for my anxiety in the doses that are practical to prescribe.  I’m currently on 4mg of Xanax and I feel absolutely no effect from it.  If necessary, I could take up to 12mg of Xanax today as that is what is prescribed for me.  I never take that much because what’s the point.

Funny enough, though, as much as I want to stop taking it, in exactly 3 hours and 20 minutes it will noticeably stop working the small amount that it does, and I will need to take it again.

Rounding this off, my chest is on fire with muscle tension and acid reflux and I might be having a mild heart attack, and as bad as my heart phobia is (it is the MAIN PROBLEM area with my anxiety) I couldn’t possibly care any less.

I Am Grateful.

For…

• my husband.

• my children.

• my cat.

• my dog.

• the angels.

• my life.

Dressed up.  Going nowhere.  But grateful.

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