Tag: family

Life, Love, Parenting

digging out of the darkness

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He won’t remember the two weeks leading up to Halloween when I was realizing the decrease in medication was affecting me more than I thought it would. He won’t remember the dive back into self doubt, self hate; the constant desire to sleep, or cry, or runaway. He might not even remember that we slept at my parents’ house more nights than we did at our own. I pray he doesn’t remember all the times I was uncharacteristically short tempered with him.

He will remember that we snuggled a lot more than we had since the beginning of school. And he will remember that I worked hard with his Lela to make him the costume he requested for the school’s storybook parade and Halloween. He’ll remember that we still made it to school (both of us) and soccer practice and games. He’ll remember the love.

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He’ll remember the smiles and that they were sincere because of my love for him. Because he’s what keeps me going most days. Him and the support I’ve surrounding myself with near and far. I know my anchors…though, I’m not sure all of them know they’re anchors.

All I can do is pray that I get it together before he does start remembering the dark shadowy days for what they really were and not the masks I tried to create to protect him from it all.

Life, Love, Parenting

A Golden Day

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Today was a small shiny snip-it of a GOLDEN day for me.

(Don’t know what I’m talking about, refresh your memory about my blog title here.)

So often I doubt my mothering skills. I agonize over how much time I’m NOT spending with T helping to develop his brain and knowledge. I agonize over having to ask for help with his homework because I literally can not be there after school every day. I feel guilt for someone else having to pick up my slack. I feel guilt because my decision to go back to school takes away my time to be his mom, to be his BEST mom.

Is anyone else making me feel guilty? NO! I think my mom LOVES being teacher again and getting to be there while he learns to read and amaze at his intelligence.

But I still feel it. I still question my EVERY parental decision. Dave came to visit before heading up to the “Great North, eh” and I couldn’t wait for him to have T read out loud to him – all the while wondering if he would feel I hadn’t done enough.

Does he EVER, for one second question my devotion to our son and the hard work parenting (mostly alone) is? NEVER! If anything he’s be overly encouraging and constantly telling me how proud he is of me (I still struggle to accept these kinds of complements).

But today. Today was MARVELOUS! Today I walked away from a one on one conference with T’s K5 teacher thinking “Jess, you’re doing awesome!” And that was by the time I got to the car and excitedly called Dave to share all the awesomeness she had just shared with me. While she was talking, it was more a “Oh, wow, maybe I’m not totally screwing up on a regular basis…maybe he isn’t suffering from my hurried ‘here, T, copy these words while mommy fixes dinner’ or ‘hey, bud, let’s think of all the different ways we can count to 20, 50, 100’ over breakfast since I just remembered there was that second part to “homework” and we didn’t do it last night….”

It was a truly amazing little snip-it of golden. And after the last couple weeks of feeling like the crazy in my brain was going to burst from realizing that maybe I am feeling a little bit of a difference because of the med decrease – I NEEDED THIS! I’ve been proud of him a million times since he was born.

Today I was proud of me too.

Life, Scatter Brained

A big deep sigh…

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I definitely thought I had published a post a week or two ago. I guess I didn’t. I think it had something to do with getting back to blogging as a means of therapy for myself. Letting out some of the crazy (and some of the more sane) thoughts that run through my brain 24/7. Okay, not all of them. No one else needs to know my daily schedule down to the minute. If I wanted to do that I’d be on Twitter. But I don’t, so I’m not. But I digress…

I need to write out my thoughts. I need to release some of them – the ones I’m brave enough to share. It’s really scary to lay it all out on a screen, and even scarier to hit publish. But it also feels great afterwards when you know that you’ve just done something SO BRAVE.

For a person constantly struggling from depression and questioning her every decision – having a small feeling of accomplishment can go a LONG way to boost me up emotionally in the right direction. I start to think “Well hey, I just had the strength to do that, clearly I can conquer the world now!”

Ok, maybe not to that extreme, but I do feel better and think more positively. Until the next negative thought creeps in.

Did I mention I’m in my first semester in nursing school? It’s hard. As in REALLY, truly, the hardest thing I’ve tried to accomplish, maybe, ever to date. I have help. Boy, do I have help! But, it’s still hard.

Did I also mention that I decided now was THE time to lower my dose/possibly completely get off my meds? What.Was.I.Thinking? I’m terrified after reading that I could dive into a deeper depression than when I started as a “side effect”. So, in order to surround myself completely with anchors, I told my family (ha! And now YOU!) and actually confided in a couple of my instructors. I mean, they are nurses and there to help us be the best we can be…and they might start to wonder what’s up if I start coming to class wearing pjs and puffy eyes because I was weepy for some unknown (to me) reason. Because I won’t miss class…but clearly personal hygiene would be an indicator that I’m slowly trying to stay in bed, all day.

That’s my update. This is my big sigh – the moment I sit here for a second and consider to hit publish or not.