Oh wow has it been a long time!

So because I am so awesome at forgetting passwords and what not I wasn’t able to log into this blog until now. So here I am back at it in action. The blog is going to take a turn for a while because it is going to be my new vice. You know, quit smoking…..pick up something new LOL.

It’s been a really rough few months for me. I know a lot of you don’t know this, but I suffer from Bipolar and Anxiety disorder. I am medicated thank god, but just because you are on medication doesn’t always mean you are going to be in tip top shape. And lord knows I haven’t been.

December 5. Probably one of the worst days of my life. My poppop (grandpa) passed away at home of natural causes. We were very close and I loved him dearly. Losing him was like losing my own father. A couple of weeks after he passed away my mom, sister, and I went to Ohio to visit my nana and make sure she was holding up ok. Of course she was because lord knows she is the toughest old bird I have ever met in my life. I like to think that I get my strength from her. But after losing my poppop I wasn’t feeling very strong. In between all of that my mom and dad moved out of my childhood home. I know it sounds like something silly to get sad over that, but I grew up in this home. And here I was already sad that I lost someone I loved so much, but now I was losing the home I loved. And to top that off, I was the one that was there when the movers were moving them out because my mom and dad had to be out of state to close on their new house. Yeah, you heard me right. OUT OF STATE.

So now, my parents are out of state. They were always my go to when I needed someone and it was just an hours drive away if that. Now……4 hours. Might not seem like a lot to some people but throw 3 kids into the mix of driving there and now you have like a 6 hour drive. It sucks. They also have the worst internet and phone service at their house so I can’t even FaceTime my mom. It’s always text messages. Sometimes I just want to see her face and hear her voice. But I am getting better coping with them moving. I know its where they need and want to be so how could I possibly be bitter about them moving?

So in the midst of all this change…..here comes depression. At first it was just little spurts of crying here and there (mostly because i thought I was sad about everything going on.) but then the crying just stopped one day and I shut out the world. I wasn’t going to work. Didn’t want to take a shower. Had trouble dealing with my kids. You name it…..I wasn’t functioning. My husband noticed something was going on but he wasn’t sure what it was. He thought I was just having a really hard time with all of the changes that happened in my life in such a short period of time. Oh not to mention in the middle of all of the changes I had a birthday and Christmas. Not the greatest days. So back to what I was saying.

Depression. It’s an ugly disease that creeps up on you whether you are medicated or not. And they say its all about how you deal with it but as someone who has suffered from depression since my teenage years…..there’s no dealing with it for me. I shut out the world and go into like a zombie state. And I don’t like to talk about my feelings at all. Like being vulnerable to me feels disgusting. I don’t like that open wound feeling. So I just kept everything bottled up inside. Well that is until I couldn’t anymore.

My husband and I go to marriage counseling so that we can better learn to communicate with one another and I can start to get in touch with my feelings.(gross). But this one Wednesday that we went I had absolute word vomit and just started spilling my guts to our counselor about how I wasn’t ok and I didn’t think it was going to get any better because every day the depression got a little worse. I mean she’s a counselor she could see it written all over my face. For a good hour I talked about what was bothering me and we came up with a game plan. I was going to leave there that night and call my psychiatrist and see what she could do for me.

Come to find out…..my psychiatrist is on vacation. So I asked them to page the on call dr whoever that was. I waited 3.5 hours for a phone call back. And finally I told my husband I thought it would be best if I went to the emergency room and talked to a crisis counselor and see how they could help me. This was at like 9:30 at night. I thought about going in the morning, but I knew that I would wake up and just repeat the depression pattern and I wanted to get out of the hole. I couldn’t be in the hole anymore it was consuming me. So I drove myself into the ER. Waited for probably 4 hours for a crisis worker to come in and talk to me. He was the nicest man I had ever met. He made me feel completely comfortable and not as crazy as I was feeling. He made the decision that it would be best if I was admitted to the psychiatric hospital and go from there. Now keep in mind that is not what I wanted to hear. I had 3 kids at home that depended on me. My husband had a job he had to go to every morning and I was how the kids got to school. But my husband assured me he could handle the house.

I was in the hospital for 2 weeks. The longest hospital stay I have ever had. They weaned me off medication. Started me on a new medication. Upped a current dose of medication I was on. And bam I was there for two weeks. It was a two weeks I needed. I needed the counseling and the groups and med changes. I needed to talk to the chaplin about the grief I was feeling. These were things I needed to do. I needed to put myself first. I needed to be the best me I could be for my family. And I am glad that I can look back at it now and feel that way instead of feeling guilt.

I have to take each day as it comes and deal with it then. No thinking into the future, no planning ahead unless its absolutely necessary. Just take the day I have right now and roll with what comes with it. It feels good to be blogging again. A way to get everything off my chest and not have to worry about it anymore. Really start to feel my feelings. Which I do in turn realize means I have to be vulnerable. Again. Gross. But it’s what I got to do so that I dont find myself in a situation like I was in last month.