by anonymous | Mar 20, 2019 | Emotional Abuse, Feelings, Health, Stroke |
My ex-husband’s wife had a stroke yesterday. She’s a year younger than I am. Mid-thirties is too young for a stroke.
I’m angry for her. I know what is happening to her right now. She’s in the hospital, she’s scared. Scared isn’t the word – she’s terrified.
I know what he’s doing. He’s sauntering around acting like things aren’t a big deal. He’s showing up and being caustic and sarcastic. He’s making comments about how much it’s going to cost him and how much of a fuss she’s causing. He’s acting like he doesn’t mean it, but she’s hurting because she’s JUST HAD A STROKE AND HE’S MAKING JOKES ABOUT IT!
He took a stranger up to her room today. She was crying because she didn’t know him and it scared her. He didn’t ask the guy to leave, he just let him hang around. Then he went to smoke with the guy for forty-five minutes.
Then while I’m having a nice rant about this, my mother told me that I shouldn’t tell my boyfriend things that would cause him to dislike my ex-husband.
She turned around and said, “I remember that time you cried all weekend because he took off and left you to go visit his old friends in his hometown right after y’all got married and wouldn’t wait for you to get off work.”
I really wanted to say, “Right, and then there was the time I was in the hospital because an ovarian cyst had ruptured, and he wouldn’t come see me because he said I WAS FAKING MY OVARY EXPLODING!
Then there were the times he forced me to have sex with him because I lived in ‘his house.’ Oh, and the time I said I was depressed and felt like dying, and he said I should go ahead and get that over with because he had things to do.”
All I really said was, “You know, he has to know what happened to me or he’s never going to understand why I’m COMPLETELY PSYCHO sometimes.”
Now I’m hanging out, not telling my boyfriend any of these things because, apparently, I can’t use my mouth to tell him things – I get a mental block with words because I’ll cry.
I’m so ashamed of myself for putting up with it, too. Plus, how do you tell the person you love that the person they accidentally introduced you to nearly fifteen years ago did all these things to you? Yep, my boyfriend introduced me to my ex-husband.
And there’s the part where someone I know just had a stroke, and I’m feeling sorry for myself. Oh, I’m feeling bad for her too; I have enough guilt and pity for the both of us!
I’m just going to lay here for a while and determine what feeling to feel next.
by anonymous | Mar 18, 2019 | Dose of Happy, Family, Feelings, Happiness, Parenting |
Good morning!
Happy Monday, y’all!
Sometimes I look at my kid and he looks all grown up, and I can’t believe it. I think there’s no way that my 7 year old looks like he’s 10. He’s growing up right before my eyes and it hurts.
But then I realize his hair is really, really shaggy and I make an appointment for him to get his hair cut.
And just like that? Within a few minutes of cutting and thinning, he looks like my little 7 year old again. Young and innocent.
My baby. My happy.
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What’s your Happy?
Don’t think you have one? Look harder. Something will make you smile today.
We want to know! Find a bit of happy in this Monday!
by anonymous | Mar 15, 2019 | Ask The Band, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Fear, Feelings, Mental Health, Parenting, Self Injury, Self-Destructive Behavior |
Between 2 and 3 million people in the US alone self-injure.
This is her experience.
I just want to start out by telling you about the gift God has so graciously provided me: I have an awesome, incredible, beautiful, rambunctious three-year old named Libby. She is my everything. Her smile, laugh, voice, everything about her makes me wake up in the morning with a smile on my face. She is my best friend, my ally, my stepping stone to true happiness.
We were sitting on the couch watching TV, and she was holding my arm with her hand.
She asked, “What happened, Mama?” when she saw my scars. I was in shock. I quickly changed the subject because she has the attention span of, well, a three-year old.
But I couldn’t get it off my mind. I know if you’re my friend or have ever been around me, you must have seen them. They are pretty noticeable. I’ve never tried to hide them; there’s no point.
I started cutting myself for the first time when I was 18 and a senior in high school. I was in a bad spell. This was before I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.
I lost almost 20 pounds in three weeks, I cut all my hair off, I spent hours locked up in my room, and I felt so… numb. Lost. Hurting so badly inside. I felt stupid that I was so upset and depressed. I thought I was crying for no reason, that I was being a dramatic girl.
So, I tried self-injury one night. It felt like a world full of black and white suddenly went colorful. I finally felt the pain on the outside that I was so desperately feeling on the inside.
I continued cutting.
It felt good and I loved doing it to myself, as narcissistic as that sounds. I didn’t do it for attention, necessarily. Maybe sub-consciously I did; I can’t really be sure. I didn’t do it to try and kill myself, either. It gave me reason for hurting. It gave me actual scars instead of the ones on my brain and on my heart. Real battle wounds instead of the ones I could only speak of. I used to hide in my closet for hours and self-injure a little at a time.
The closet is my safe haven in my brain. Whenever I’m super upset about something – when it’s really bad – I hide in my closest, most of the time with no lights on, and I cry. I try not to, but the reason I go to the closet is that is where I used to hide when my father would beat the hell out of my mom. I would go in there, ears plugged, eyes closed, and cry.
I stopped cutting after I found out I was pregnant with Libby. I didn’t do it for over three years, until July of this year.
I’d called my then-boyfriend one night, freaking out. I was so lost, in such a dark place, so afraid of myself. I collapsed mentally. He had to carry me out of the closet because I was shaking so hard.
I don’t know how to answer the question to Libs when she asks me again. Honestly, I’m afraid: I’m not supposed to be weak. I’m supposed to be her mom. Her protector. I’m supposed to be her knight in shining armor. How do you explain that to a child? I don’t want to lie to her, but I don’t want her to look at me differently when she’s finally old enough to understand.
Are they battle wounds or are they just a crazy girl’s self-inflicted scars?
by anonymous | Mar 13, 2019 | Alzheimer's Disease, Coping with Alzheimer's Disease, Dementia, Family, Health, Stroke |
Over 5% of Americans are living with Alzheimer’s Disease.
This is her story.
Alzheimer’s is one crazy bitch, just like my mom.
Don’t worry; I’m not an evil daughter, I just decided to take the more, shall we say, “optimistic” approach to my mom’s disease than some people would. Also, I have a very warped sense of humor, which has helped me get through quite a bit throughout my 40 years on this planet.
I’ve already been through my dad’s stroke in my 20’s, Mom’s stroke right after, followed by the death of my first husband when I was 27, my dad’s death when I was 28, my mom’s slow decline into Alzheimer’s Disease, and so much more.
Humor has been my savior and my go-to tool for as long as I can remember. So, please keep that in mind as you read what I’m sharing. Because believe me, my heart breaks into thousands of tiny shards of broken glass when I really allow myself to think of the shell of a person my mom has become.
I miss my mom terribly.
It pains me to talk to her now; our weekly phone calls have drifted into bi-weekly and crossed over into monthly conversations, simply and selfishly because it hurts me to hear her so confused. There is nothing more that I miss than being able to talk to her – really have a normal conversation with her – one that I know she was comprehending what I am saying to her.
Even when I was at war with her in my teen years, I’d take that over what I have with her now. I wish I could have those times back, but I can’t, so instead of being hurt and mortified by mom’s words and actions, I try to find humor instead. Although there are times I hang up the phone and just allow myself to cry for her, for me, for us.
I have decided to blog various stories about mom that have made me chuckle over the years. It’s okay to laugh, I do.
——–
I should have known Mom was drifting toward Alzheimer’s when we went out to eat one night. While the cashier was ringing up our check, mom grabbed a peppermint from the large bowl of candy on the counter. She must have really loved those peppermints because she grabbed another one and shoved it quickly into her mouth while the cashier handed me my change.
I unzipped my pocketbook and Mom unzipped hers. I put my wallet back in to my pocketbook; Mom dumped the whole bowl of candy into her pocketbook and walked out the door.
I was mortified! I asked the cashier “How much for candy?” She just looked at me, shocked, and said “Don’t worry about.“
———-
One day I was lounging around, soaking up the sun, half watching my children swim in our pool and half daydreaming. The phone rang, bringing me out of my semi-comatose state.
“Hello,” I mumbled into the mouthpiece.
“Ma’am,” a Southern gentleman drawled, “is your mom named OCB?”
“Yes, who’s this?” I asked, my suspicion aroused. Who the hell was this guy asking about my mom? How did he get my unlisted number?
**Side note: even in the depths of her Alzheimer’s, she’s never forgotten my home phone number.**
“I’m Clyde, from the Pottery Mart? Over here on Airline Lane? You know it?” he asked.
I could see the big red building clearly forming within my brain. It was located in the town where my mom lived, about fifteen minutes away. They had a large statue of a rearing horse on top of their sign and I often wondered how they had gotten it up there. “Yes, I know it. What’s going on? Is my mom alright?” My suspicion had now turned to concern.
“I reckon ma’am. We don’t want to call the police…”
Police! What the hell is this guy talking about?
“…but it seems your mom has gotten into someone’s car, and she won’t get out. The owner of the car has been real nice and all, but your mom insists it’s her car, but it clearly ain’t; her keys just won’t fit into the ignition. She told us to call you. Can you come down? She seems pretty scared and, well, pretty mad.”
I was dressed and out the door with the kids in record time. On the drive over, never once did it occur to me that my mom had Alzheimer’s. I figured she was merely having an ‘off day,’ which happened from time to time since her stroke several years prior.
I arrived to find my mom sitting in a white vehicle (hers was red), with a gentleman standing alongside and another gentleman sitting on the ground looking a wee bit pissed. I thanked both men profusely, apologized countless times, and sent several thankful prayers up to God that they didn’t call the police or the EMT’s. I was even thankful that we lived in the South at the time and not New York. I managed to talk my mom out of the man’s car (I don’t recall what I told her), and I drove her home. My friend drove her car, and that was the last time my mom ever drove her car, or any other vehicle, at least that I know of, anyway.
This event led me to take her to the doctor for a full work up and her first official diagnosis of Stage One Alzheimer Disease.
———-
Now that I’ve brought you full circle, this fun phone call I had with Mom the other day prompted me to write this novella in the first place:
After going round and round with Mom about my weather on the east coast versus her weather in the central United States, and having that same conversation several times, she asked how things were with my family. She always remembers my boys’ names, but has trouble remembering Peanut’s name because she came along further into Mom’s illness. We talked about the kids for a few minutes, then I shared with her that I bought myself a car.
Out of the blue, Mom remarked, “A car? It must be nice to have a car to drive wherever you want. I wouldn’t know since you took mine away. You know you did. I remember. It was red and I loved it and I shopped in it and I went to the VFW in it. I danced at the VFW on Saturday night. You took it away. Why did you take my car? I went to the craft store in it. I used to go…”
I could sense she was building up steam so I cut her off at the pass and said, “As a matter of fact, I do remember that car, Mom. I gave it to my brother. Aren’t you going to see him at lunch today? You should ask him what he did with it!” I snickered into the phone. I could see my brother now, sitting across the table from my mom and getting blindsided by this conversation. It would be a classic! He gave that car to his son almost ten years ago; who knows how long it’s been out of the family now.
“Really?” Mom replied, “He’s coming up here for lunch. I’m going to ask him about my car!”
Crisis avoid.
Buck passed.
by anonymous | Mar 11, 2019 | Dose of Happy, Feelings, Happiness, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder |
I painted my nails two weeks ago in honor of Susan Niebur and her almost-5-year battle with inflammatory breast cancer.
I’ve never had a period of time where I stopped picking my nails.
I don’t bite. I pick. I did realize a long time ago that biting them was pretty gross. But I pick. And pick. And pick.
Ugh.
I know it’s anxiety. And maybe even a little OCD.
But I painted my nails and wanted them to be perfect. For Susan, who would never see them.
I haven’t picked at my fingers in TWO WEEKS, y’all!
I changed the purple sparkle polish twice and now it has clear/silver glitter polish. They’re so pretty I can hardly stand it.
I want to pick. But I’m not.
My Dose of Happy this week is that I’m able to tap my fingernails on my computer and THEY MAKE NOISE!!
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What’s your Happy?
Don’t think you have one? Look harder. Something will make you smile today.
We want to know! Just find a bit of happy in this Monday!
