Hi Friends! It’s been a while. Ok, a looooong while. It might have something to do with the fact that after Hubby read my last blog post he said “that was pretty mean and unnecessary,” and I just couldn’t quite put myself out there again. For about 6 months apparently. But, I’m back. Or at least I want to be back. I want to re-commit to this writing thing even if I know people aren’t reading it besides Hubby.
I mostly want to re-commit to writing because it’s something I truly love. I just finished reading a book of essays from Ann Patchett called “This is the Story of a Happy Marriage,” and her only advice to someone who really wants to be a writer is to KEEP WRITING. Every day. No excuses. I am also considering every single one of these blog posts a FFT. If you’re not familiar with this acronym, I highly suggest you check out some of Brene Browns’ work. But, and get ready to clutch your pearls, FFT stands for Fucking First Time. These are all just my Fucking First Times of trying to write something I think people want or need to hear. And it’s really, just shit I have to get off my chest.
So. Searching for Mental Health. It’s been a life-long journey for me. It started way back in the awful years of middle school. Back when no one knows what the hell is going on and who they are or aren’t and are just searching for belonging and understanding. I was initially diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder and Major Depression and have pretty much maintained those 2 diagnoses ever since. (There was that time after a boyfriend unceremoniously dumped me for the second time on our 1 year anniversary and I took a nose dive into booze and drugs for about two weeks of my life that I have no recollection of, when I earned a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder, but even I knew that bitch was way off base.)
Since then, it has been a dance with the devil: good days, bad days, good months and bad months, doctors, therapists, drugs, vagus nerve stimulation, exercise, self-help books, and salt bath soaks and meditation and energy healing. I have looked high and low for help with my mental health. Some days I feel like I’m winning, and others I know I am fighting a failing battle. Giving birth to your third boy 2 days after your birthday (and 15 weeks early, might I add) followed by several scary and touch and go moments with a grand total of 199 days spent in a hospital without a crystal ball, coupled with a diagnosis of Emery-Dreifuss Muscular Dystrophy for your now middle child who is only 3 years old WHILE your infant is still in said hospital, is enough to push anyone over the edge. And then said infant was released from the hospital. And no, even special needs children don’t come with a “How To” booklet. I became so involved in my two youngest children and all their needs that I neglected everyone. My friends, myself, my oldest child, my family and most of all my Hubby. And thus, marital problems arose on top of it all.
In a little less than a week, it will be the 2 year anniversary of me finding out about some untoward actions between Hubby and she who shall not be named. I didn’t even realize this was creeping up because 1 week after this “anniversary”, on February 8th, my youngest son will be undergoing major surgery for his hip dysplasia. I have been consumed with dread and fear about this surgery. And I didn’t even realize this is what I had been feeling until I met with my therapist today and she reminded me of the anniversary of the day my relationship with Hubby derailed.
So here are some thoughts I’m having. I have PTSD. I am labeling it and I am feeling at peace with this. I’m not being medicated for it, or at least not yet, but my meeting with my psychiatrist isn’t until this coming Thursday so possibly this will change. I have PTSD from the 7 earlier surgeries that my tiny micro-preemie had to endure at an age before most people are even living outside the womb in order to save his life. I am experiencing PTSD from the *at least 3 times* we were called by the hospital telling us our youngest was going to die in a matter of minutes or hours and we needed to get back to the hospital after having been there all day in order to say our final goodbyes. I am having PTSD from having to think about things like would we bury or cremate Landry when he was only 18 days old. Being told that if we wanted him baptized that it needed to be done soon because time was not on our side. I have PTSD from people telling me incessantly that there was something wrong with my 3 year old when everyday it was all I could do to get my older 2 kiddos to school so I could sit in a hospital room alone for hours until it was time to go home and be with the other 2 kiddos again. I have PTSD from being told that my middle son has a degenerative neuromuscular disease that I am directly responsible for him having because it is an X-linked gene. I have PTSD because while my middle son is an old soul and full of wisdom and sass, he is beginning to show signs of heart problems and was just put on heart medication. Declan’s form of Muscular Dystrophy is the rarest in the world. There isn’t much data or scientific research on this type and therefore no known treatments. When he was first diagnosed, we had people (some family members even) trying to tell us how best to treat Declan. What foods he should be eating or dietary supplements; as if an essential oil would cure him of a hereditary disease. We were told by the professionals that he would not die because his body would stop working like in other forms of MD, but that it would be his heart that would be the eventual killer. And so now, with the addition of a heart medication to add to the list of things to do for another one of my children, it all seems too much.
I just recently went to my special heart doctor because, lucky me! I get to have (possibly) all the same heart issues as Declan, being a carrier of the mutated gene that led to Declan’s disease. I have just found out that I am beginning to show some initial heart dysfunction as well but not enough to be treated for, so there’s that.
In September, my youngest, who has cerebral palsy, is legally blind, can’t walk or talk and eats through a g-tube inserted directly into his stomach, went to see one of his 11 doctors for a follow-up appointment in the Cerebral Palsy Clinic at Children’s Hospital Colorado. It was discovered that since the last visit to that clinic (a mere 6 months prior), Landry’s hip dysplasia had worsened by more than 50%. This meant it was time for surgery. MAJOR surgery. During a global pandemic. To a child who has chronic lung disease. I knew it would eventually come. It was always on the table as he doesn’t move like “typical” 5 year olds. But to have it become an option less than a year after we first discussed it was a gut punch to say the least. And at first, I was more consumed by the logistics of everything than by the actual surgery itself.
I never grieved any of this. I never took into account the grieving for a child who was born too early without a known cause and would live a diminished life because of his early birth. I never grieved passing on a mutated gene I didn’t know I had to a child who will now have to suffer the consequences for the rest of his days. I haven’t even begun to grieve the loss of innocence for my oldest child who has had to sacrifice so much in the name of his brothers. I never really grieved the impact all of this had on my marriage to the man I promised to love and cherish until death do us part.
And so here I am, suffering. Trying to better myself and usually feeling like a complete failure. Trying to present a happy face when all I want to do is not live this life anymore. Trying to be the perfect wife and mother and friend and always dropping at least one of those balls but usually more like all of them at the same time. I am finding ways to tune out of my life, to disappear, to hide from my feelings. Obsessively reading, obsessively running or working out, drinking too much at night, staying up far past a reasonable time and then waking to do it all again.
So yes. I have PTSD. I have flash backs to when the doctors told us Landry wasn’t going to make it through the night. I remember so vividly running from one side of the hospital with an unconscious and un-breathing Landry to the ED side in order to have him intubated and then stay in the hospital for 11 days, meanwhile we lost a dog while Landry and I were in the hospital and I never got to say goodbye. I remember finding out about the infidelity and thinking to myself every day since “Am I doing enough? Being enough? Loving enough?” in order for that situation to never happen again.
I just read an article in People Magazine about a mother who was arrested for killing her 10 year old autistic son. Her husband had left her and from the sounds of it, she had been calling out for help for a while. And she never received help. Or at least not the kind she needed. People who don’t know her will judge her and call her a bad mother and a terrible human being. Meanwhile, it is being reported that she was having thoughts of grandeur prior to the killing of her son. She was telling people in her life that she was the Messiah and that sacrificing her child would help to save the world. This is not a bad mother. This is not the picture of a bad person. This is the stark illustration of a woman who was experiencing a mental health crisis because she had NO HELP with a difficult child. This could literally be anyone in any of our lives. We need to help each other. We need to find our way back to compassion and love and fight back against judgement. We need to recognize that we were not made to handle all these hard life lessons by ourselves. There is a reason people have lived in villages or groups since the beginning of time and it is because we as humans crave connection and stability.
So if, or rather when, a friend comes to you in need and says “I am dealing with this today,” or “I have PTSD from XYZ,” please do not brush it off as attention seeking or just having a bad day. Please consider that your lending an ear, or offering to help in a way that you are comfortable and know you can give can literally save a life.
I will leave you with a prayer and a quote from St. Francis of Assisi.
“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, where there is hatred, let me sow love, where there is injury, pardon, where there is doubt, faith, where there is despair, hope, where there is darkness, light, and where there is sadness, joy.
Oh Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”