Tuesday, January 21, 2014

What is WRONG with you!

I find it very humiliating. I find myself left depressed and discouraged. I'm incredibly saddened and very irritated at the same time. What the HECK is WRONG with you..

I have two wonderful stories to share and then I will explain why they are humiliating, depressing, aggravating, and very discouraging to me.

        Story 1

     Back in October my family and I went on a week vacation to the Georgia mountains. We were driving back from a day trip to Helen and coming down a two lane fairly step mountain road when we see a tan can pulled as far off the road as possible. My hubby turns to me and says, "We need to go back". Now you need to know that we had been gone 8 hours, I was car sick and the youngest was screaming her head off, but I knew he was right. We did need to go back. So we did just that. Once we pulled up behind the car, we found a man in his early 70's bent over looking under his car at his tire which had completely blown. He was trying to see how he could jack the car up. 

            We climbed out from the car leaving the kids inside until we found out what was happening. When we approached he seemed a bit worried at first. I told him we passed by and thought he could use some help so we came back. *making a u-turn on a mountain is not simple by the way* . He seemed to relax a bit when I told him we wanted to help and that I had a jack in the back of my Honda. I went to get it for him and my hubby began to lift up his car. The entire process took a bit over and hour and while we were waiting he began to talk to us. He was married for 40+ years and had a few kids and grand kids. He went to law school but then left his job and went into construction and owned many apartments building in Atlanta. He was retired from actually working on buildings himself but he had a lad of wood in the back of his car that he planned on building a water windmill with. He was so nice and friendly. He shared many stories about his wonderful wife and about how he didn't know how he was going to make it home on the blown tire because he knew he couldn't change it himself. He called us a blessing and asked to go see our kids. 

           When we got done and loaded everything back up we told him we would follow him to the nearest station to put air in his spare that was flat but at least not blown like his other tire. When we got to the gas station he tried to offer us money for helping him and said his wife would be so grateful. I said no so he went to my husband and when he said no he finally agreed and just shook our hands. Half-way back down the road we hear our kids fighting and when I finally turn around to see why our son had money in his hand. He tells us that grandpa man gave it to him for being good while his mommy and daddy helped fix his car.. Stinky old man slipped us some money anyway. :) 


Story 2

         Today I was pushing my cart up to a lane at Wal-Mart to check out. My hubby had the toddler and I got inline behind a woman about 60? she turned to me with an angry look and says " My gosh she is just going as slow as possible" she then storms off into another lane. I have no idea what her issue is and honestly this is Wal-Mart I figured it was a slow cashier. When I move my cart up I see a elderly woman in one of those electric carts. She is leaning forward trying her best to get her items upon the counter to check out. I couldn't help but to get angry. Not at the woman in front of me loading her groceries, but at the lady who stormed off angry. I told my hubby to take the cart and I walked up behind the woman. I couldn't help but ask her if she would like some help. She was so grateful and kept thanking me. I put all her groceries up and then began loading bags when I realized she had way to many bags to fit back in that tiny basket on her cart. At this point my hubby has figured out what is happening and he catches my attention saying he will be right back. He returns with a regular cart and tells the woman that he would like to help her load her groceries into her car when I get done loading them in this basket for him to push out. We took about 20 minutes to get her all checked out (I have no idea how all those items fit in her cart to begin with those top baskets on there are very small)
              I took our toddler after she paid and my hubby walked her out. I finished checking our items out and headed outside. She was of course parked in the very front because of the handicap she had. So I walked up to them and asked to help load items. She was so funny, she kept telling him to be gentle and asking him to place certain things in her floorboard and in her seats. She just kept thanking us and turned to me saying " You are a blessed lady with such a sweet hubby". I agreed with her and then hubby responds "I'm only sweet because my wife is so kind" She tells us she knows how special that is after being married 43 years to her belated husband. She continued on to tell us she wished he was still here to see their grandchildren because they are so much fun and are about the same age as our toddler. 

               After I loaded our items in the car I walked back to them and told them I would take the regular cart and my hubby would take back the electric cart so she wouldn't have to. She then tries to give us money. We both tell her no we don't want her money and she tells us the good Lord blesses those who help others and she feels blessed and in return wants to bless us. I finally take her money and we get in our car. We make it up the corner and drive back down the lane and my hubby looks at me and says, "I'm running this money back to her we don't need it". I agree and he pulls the car behind her so she cannot back out. He knocks on her window and tells her we just can't expect her cash. She asked if she offended us and he explains it is not That his wife and him were raised to help others for no other reason then them needing help. She tanks him again and says. "God Bless you little family".





So here is my problem with these stories.

#1 Many people drove past the old man on the road and never thought twice to help him.
#2 That extremely rude lady angry that this woman was taking to long and not offering to help her to make things go faster.
#3 That they both offered us cash.
              This is a huge problem for me..............
  1. when did people stop respecting their elders?
  2. when did people stop helping people?
  3. Why is money always the answer, 
        • when you help someone you shouldn't need a numeric payment. Help people

This is humiliating and not to just me but to the ENTIRE Country... When did we become a country so focused on money that you can't do something without putting  a price on it. We SHOULD BE ASHAMED!!!!

The saddening part is how worried that old man was when we pulled up, like he thought we had bad intentions....... WOW!!

The depressing part was how shocked both the man and woman along with the cashier *who thanked me for helping* was that we offered to help and were nice about it......... {nice seriously we were thanked for being nice}


The irritating part is that both those people needed help getting all the way home but because of how the world is now we couldn't offer to follow them home to help because people don't do that anymore due to safety. 


 I look around today angry at the parents of the world for letting go the moral and standards this country once had. I can't fix the country but I can promise my children WILL be those people who offer help with NO expectations and who will look at that older man or woman and see their grandma and grandpa and maybe even someday their father and I...


All I can hope is that with prayer and knowledge more parents out there get irritated and depressed like I am and decide to make a change and do something about it.
          







Wednesday, January 15, 2014

OCD, ADHA, PTSD, STD, ABCD What the ****??

I know I haven't blogged in a VERY VERY long time. Maybe it is because I now have three kids and I am EXTREMELY outnumbered, maybe it is because I built a house and moved this spring and summer and had zero time but I'd put money on the fact that I didn't have much to say. (Well I always have something to say but nothing worth hearing)

Let's start at the beginning.  

I've gone through a mini grieving process  the last year. Yep all five steps.. Here's a nutshell overview.
First there was: 

Denial- I knew something was wrong in the back of my mind. Something that had slowly become off. I didn't know exactly what it was but, I slowly felt her slipping away. She was becoming more distant and more alone. Yet, I kept telling myself it was fine.. This went on for months yet I kept pushing the thought off. Military wives have no time to have a problem. We hold the roof up and everything piled on top of it.

Anger-
She was always angry and she stopped caring about almost everything. She kept saying everything was normal.. Crawling out of bed mad became a normal thing. What began as a once in a while mood turned into a daily thing.

Bargaining- Soon I began to reason that it was just from being tired or stressed yet, when even when getting enough sleep or taking enough things off of the plate things didn't go back to normal. 

Depression- The more things headed for the "fog" the more I began to realize things were off. I knew something was wrong and needed to be fixed but I couldn't bring myself to accept it yet. It made things even worse. The more I noticed the problems the more I got depressed about the problems, which in turn became another problem.

Acceptance- I finally accepted I was heading for a very bad destructive path and that I needed help. Yes! I was talking about me this entire time and things were NOT okay anymore.



         In the spring of 2012, I finally found myself standing in the living room just completely consumed by the world and not knowing how I was supposed to breath. I was handling normal military wife and mom things. Packing a house to move into a house we were building that was running into problems created by mother nature, military finance messing up money and not on a small scale. School for the kids, coaching baseball, hubby in school, helping to plan a wedding shower and wedding for my sister while making invites for both and taking on my roles in the church (Teaching the woman's Relief Society class). Why would I possibly not be okay this was my norm... I wish I could pinpoint the day or thing that finally caused me to be standing their alone in the living room suffocating on the hot air around me, but I can't. All I remember is looking around at piles and piles of boxes, invitations, sports equipment and kids toys and feeling like my chest was caving in on me. (Now, I have always know I have ADHA. I was told at age six and medicated for years and did some therapy until I was ten. Anyone who spends a decent minute with me will not be surprised by that diagnoses.) As I slowly lowered myself onto the floor I kept thinking I CAN NOT keep doing this. I knew I wasn't having a heart attack but I also knew I can't have another one of these( latter diagnosed) anxiety attacks.

        A few days later after finally getting my courage up I made a phone call. I had the biggest knot in my stomach but I schedule an appointment with a Dr. in Psychiatry. Bad news there was no appointment for 2 months. *UGH* Two months later I went in and came out. I had a paper of stuff and a few prescriptions in had. Now here we are over seven months later and I am to a point where I can say Normal is coming back, wait NO normal is in the past I can feel myself heading for something better than normal. 

     So here is the deal. I see my Psychiatry dr once a month to still work out medication kinks and then I see a Psychiatrist every week because I am still not completely okay. I have been seeing the Psychiatrist for almost 5 months now on a weekly basis and there is much to cover since I haven't seen one since I was ten. So here is the breakdown, medical terminology is crazy I didn't know what I had been diagnosed with for the first several months and then one day I was given a paper to take to base to have blood drawn and marked out in black ink was a word that literally hitched my breath and brought tears to my eyes there in the hallway to the office. It took all I had to schedule my next appointment and walk to the car before completely breaking down. I'm betting you are curious what it said. Months ago I would not of told you but now I can. I read Sever Anxiety, ADHA, OCD tendencies, Bi Polar Disorder Type 1 (also known as manic-depressive disorder) and a big fancy term for Mood Disorder. After I spent hours freaking out over it and googeling it (worst thing to do ever) I went in to see my therapist and told him all about the paper and how I was being a huge baby about it and was super upset. He told me they were lables and Bi Polar 1 is not the stereotyped Bi Polar everyone thinks about. Even still the title its self was heart breaking for me. I don't like being broken and I have never looked at my ADHA as broken but then seeing that paper I felt like I was in a million pieces and each one had a mental problem written on it. I didn't even tell my parents. If they read this they now know.. I couldn't bring myself to tell really anyone the diagnosis. (If you knew consider yourself lucky)

      Here I am now, medicated and feeling better. I feel like I can rationalize things like a normal person would. I am not crawling out of bed ready to eat the first stupid person I run into at the store. I don't see my kids covering their ears from me yelling all the time because I'm not yelling all the time. I can feel myself pulling back into my friend circles, my church activities and more importantly my church studies. I haven't felt this well in a few years I'd say. It's not just me. I can feel my relationships with Caylon changing. He confessed a few months back that he was unsure how to talk to me, worried about the smallest things and how I would react to them. Worried to update me on things good, bad or ugly because I didn't act like a normal person would. He said he knew I was distant but never knew how to help and he just felt the space there.

I am still a work in progress but I am to the point I don't feel shameful with people knowing. Judge if you will but just remember I had a problem and though it took time I went and am working to fix said problem. (can you say the same for yourself and your personal issues?) I hope so... really I do because it feels so good to fix a problem that is consuming your life and gain back the control you are meant to have..


I didn't post this for sympathy, I posted it for the exact oppisite for INSPERATION.. If I can inspire just one person to step up and take control of their life wether it be drinking, smoking, losing control like I did, or maybe even being in that distructive relationship. I don't know what it is but hoipefully seeing a bit of sucess will help whomever know there is sucess out their for anyone who trutly steps up and works towards it.. I may be medicated to some degree for the rest of my life, but you know what I look at it like my dads insulin he will always need it to feel somewhat normal and to thrive in society. I will need my medication to feel normal (or better than) and to thrive in society.


So GOOD LUCK whoever you are. 





Behind you are the challenges you have met.
Before you lies new possibilities. 
Today you choose the direction of your life.