I want to give up, I want to end it right now. I want to scream, to punch a hole in the wall, in the door. I need the world around me put on mute or else I may fall even harder. Happiness, sadness, nothing makes the pain go away. I need to close my eyes and sleep.
I’ve been happy. I was happy with things I was doing, ways I was getting involved. There was Daisies, my womens small group (SWOG), and finally my recent involvement in the Susan G. Komen 3-day for the walk. I cannot put in words how excited I am about this walk. If I could wear a 3-day shirt everyday, with pink sox and accessories, pins, bandanas… I would. I got the shoes, I got the camel-bag. I ordered handmade bracelets to sell for a fundraiser. Heck, after only two months, I’m $800 away from reaching my minimum contribution!
I realized that these kind of things were the things that were going to make me happy. Giving back to the community! Finding my relationship with God! Helping raise money to find a cure for breast cancer so that I wouldn’t have to lose my Mom to cancer like I lost my Dad in January…
That is it though… that was the spark under my ass that got me moving in triple time. Watching my dad those last few months. He wasn’t the guy we knew, he was miserable, he was tired, he was old. Yes, he was old, he had reached his 70th birthday last year, but the cancer AGED him. When he was healthy, you would have never guessed how old he was!
I had no idea, up until the day I sat in the funeral home with my mother and my sister Dee, how involved my Dad was in EVERYTHING. He had a long list of organizations that he was involved in. Masons, Shriners, Knights of Columbus. He served in the Navy. If he was a member of something, he was probably more than a member, maybe president. Like his condo association, or the golf club.
I don’t know, I think that part of me absorbed this information and began to have the desire to be active like him. At the same time, this is/was a shock to me and i’ve probably spread myself too thin.
Over the weekend I had an unpleasant conversation with Mike where he made me see something I wasn’t seeing. He made me see that I wasn’t as happy as I had thought. I tried to blow it off initially, that he was wrong, that maybe I was just stressed because of the knee injury I had experienced the week prior, the one that was keeping me from my training, that was making it difficult for me to do the things I needed to do. It became evident last night that maybe he was right.
The dog barking, the daughter whining, the son crying for me. Mike complaining about the meal I had prepared. Still, the pain in my knee, the doctors appointments. I came to a point where I could not take it anymore! The mere sound of any of the above made me want to scream/vomit/run!
I got in my car to go to my SWOG meeting, but I wasn’t in any frame of mind to listen to anyone or be a part of anything. I couldn’t even listen to the radio. I drove, but realized, I didn’t want to be driving, I couldn’t drive. Where would I go? I couldn’t go home, that was the place that set me off to begin with. Friends? Those were scarce in the area. Family? again, not the best solution for me. I cried as I drove, stressed to a point I don’t ever remember being at. I needed to get off the road before I jerked the wheel, hitting a tree or worse, another car. I’m not suicidal, but I needed my brain to turn off.
I finally made it home and decided to sit in my car (in silence) until I could calm down enough to go inside. Or, as it turned out, until Mike would pull me from the car and order me into our room. With the fan turned on, bundled up from the cold outside, I layed down to cry and to sleep.
My husband and I are in a whole heap of trouble financially. We’ve dug ourselves into a hole and I’m scared we are never going to get out. It’s debt – thousands and thousands of dollars of credit card debt. Debt that has accumulated because Hubby wasn’t working at some time, or because we live above our means, spending money we don’t have because we like the way it feels to have something new.
This is something that’s been happening over the past 5 years, so it’s pretty bad. We’ve known about it for a while, but never took it seriously enough to fix it – until now (hopefully).
I’m using Quicken now to track our spending, schedule and remind me about the bills. It’s frustrating, but definately needed. I know we need to start a budget, and I’m doing that too, but the problem will be sticking to it. I think we are going to try the envelope system with our budget – it’s where you have an envelope for different expenses like food, gas, entertainment, etc. What you’ve budgeted for the month for each category, you put cash in the envelope. When you go to buy food, for example, you have only what is in the food envelope. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Basically you have all your money spent on paper, ever item budgeted for before the month even starts. Obviously, this will be a huge challenge for us.
The scary/downside to all this is – when I started the budget last night, it doesn’t look like there is a lot of ‘extra’ money after all is said and done… so I’m not sure how this will work. How can you pay down debt if there is nothing left after the expenses to add to your debt? I guess we’ll have to start cutting costs elsewhere by cancelling the cable and/or internet, eating cheap, etc.
Anyone have any experience with this? Any help would be greatly appreciated. All I seem to do these days is think about how to get out of this mess, so this won’t be the last of my blogging about debt…
I visited my dad in the hospital yesterday. He looked much better than expected. His lips were swolen from the sores, but they were healing.
The hardest part about this is that my dad is so depressed. It’s not a lot of fun seeing your father cry. I really can’t believe how I managed to hold it together that day… but I guess I’ll pay for it after the fact with some random crying here and there.
I drove into work this morning and I found myself crying. I don’t know why, I don’t know what triggered the tears.
Almost a year ago, my little monkey was born. He was perfect in every way, and to this day his is the best baby. He’ll brighten your day with his smiles and it’s hard to ever be upset in his presence – looking at him and watching him in all his bliss wipes all those bad feelings away.
How could these kids not make you smile?
But he can’t be up with me at all hours of the day, so there are times when I am without that drug to keep me from feeling down. I can’t look at myself in the mirror to see that baby fat that refuses to go away; I can’t watch any tv because I’m sure to find a show or commercial to put me in tears.
When I was probably 5 months pregnant, I KNEW something was wrong with me. Yes, pregnancy can be rough, it can be emotional… and with a 3 year old at home who’s coming into her own… and the struggles of a marriage… so it’s not like it was a surprise to me that I was so unhappy. I seeked the advice of my doctor and got prescribed some anti-depressants. Anti-partum depression is what he called it.
I didn’t stay on them longer than a month – I was one of those pregnant women who hating taking any kind of drugs, even tylenol, while the baby was inside of me. It said right on the material that came with the drugs that any use of these could cause dependency for the newborn – yeah, I didn’t want that…
So Monkey came, and things didn’t get a whole lot better, so I decided to go back on the anti-depressants. I took them for a while, but then I’d forget or skip a few doses. Hubby would notice and make comments – I’d have major highs and major lows. I’d start crying for no apparent reason. Even I had no idea why I was crying. I’d lay in my room, huddled in a ball while I cried for hours, isolating myself from my family.
So now, Monkey will turn one in a few weeks and I still struggle with these emotions. When will I get better? How will I know?
