This Crazy Up and Down Life!

I feel like I go so long between blog entries these days.  Honestly it is just this crazy up and down life I live.  I went off my anti depressants last spring and things were okay for awhile.  Then I had a bad cycle and they weren't okay for awhile.  Then the summer happened.  I was determined to keep myself and the kids busy through the summer, so that the depression would not sneak in and take over.  I guess that is always my goal, that it won't get in and take over.  But it does, and then I fight it off and things are good again...and then it comes back and so forth.

The summer was busy, we filled it with playgroups and playdates and swimming lessons and Vacation Bible School and family reunions.  I actually made it to the gym three times a week for most of the summer.  In general I was pretty impressed with myself.  I have had good days and bad days, but honestly the bad days hit harder without my meds.  I wouldn't say that there are necessarily any  more bad days being off the meds, the bad days just seem  harder.  My focus sometimes is so driven by just staying okay that I don't realize how it affects the rest of my life.

My husband is self employed in the wedding business.  He works all the time, and as you can imagine, the summers are especially busy for him.  So I live my summers determined to get through them and keep everyone busy and happy.  I stumbled through the bad days and pushed forward.  After a while I realized how angry and disconnected I was feeling.  And then I realized that we, my husband and I, just weren't talking anymore.  My bad days are really hard on him.  The anger pulses through my depressed mood and then before I know it, I am letting it all loose on him, and the kids, but more so at him.  The kids are used to me yelling, they are not even really phased by it anymore.  I wish I didn't do it as much as I do, and I try not to, but it still happens.  I don't think I am as "yelly" as I used to be though.  But on the really bad days I can't control it.  I was afraid things were getting too bad though, going down a road that we wouldn't be able to get back from.

So we found some time to reconnect, and went on an awesome family vacation the last week of summer.  We all needed it so much.  Going to the ocean always rejuvenates my soul.  My husband and I actually used to daydream about moving there.  We used to think that was the only place we could be happy.  This trip, though, as our daughter was declaring that she wanted to live at the beach forever, we realized that we are exactly in the area where we want to be.  We know that we have more to lose than to gain if we moved away from our family and friends and the kids' schools and our church family....it feels good to know that we actually have a place in the world where we feel settled.

Then school started.  We have a first grader and a pre-schooler this year.  My emotions started going all haywire about the kids growing up.  My baby will be starting Kindergarten in a year, and I just don't feel ready to give him up just yet.  I know he will be ready but I won't be.  Crazy roller coaster emotions.  And First Grade is hard.  HOMEWORK is hard.  We are just adjusting to a whole new set of routines.  I let the kids each choose one activity outside of school to participate in this year.  My daughter has wanted to dance forever, so I signed her up for ballet, and my son has been begging to play soccer for ever, so I signed him up for a soccer skills class.  So three nights a week after school we have activities now.  We have soccer night, church night and ballet night.  And on Saturday mornings the kids have swimming lessons.  I do better when I am busy, and I feel better when the kids are doing stuff that they love, and both of them really love their classes.  But it has also been a struggle to get in a routine where all the homework gets done, and dinner is on at a reasonable time.  And honestly I always feel that there is so much stuff to do, that I then start to get overwhelmed and then nothing gets done at all.

Right now I feel like I have this huge to do list and there is no way that anything will get done.  This is kind of funny, because who decides the stuff I have to do anyway?  I mean aside from the daily laundry, homework, food preparation  and cleaning, all that other stuff is on me, right?  All those deep cleaning and basement organizing and scrapbook making projects are things that I have assigned to myself.  I guess I don't really have to do them.  But I feel like I do.  Then there is the list of phone calls and e-mail kind of stuff that needs doing.  I  hate doing that stuff because the kids always interrupt me at the worst moments....and I just hate doing them.  I just need to buck up and plow through them, but finding the motivation for that can be challenging, so that stuff just falls into the I have overwhelmed myself category.  I don't know what it is about feeling overwhelmed.  This is kind of a new thing for me.  The just not feeling motivated feeling is very different from the overwhelmed feeling.

I think that I just keep coming up with these plans and ideas about how to make myself feel better, how to parent better, how to make my marriage better, how to make my relationship with God better.  Then I just fail miserably at trying to follow through with anything.  I bought a parenting book, a couples devotional and we went to a marriage retreat.  I get determined to diet and exercise and go to the gym and walk the dog...and all of these seem like completely reasonable things to do.  None of them take much time.  I just can't seem to do them.  The only thing I am doing remotely well is making it to the gym several times a week.  I usually do 3-4 times, unless I have a kid who is so sick that she misses four days of school.  That happened last week. 

So why can't I find time to read a book every day?  To pray more?  To clean the basement?  To write more blog entries?  To make that phone call to switch my car insurance?  It is seriously frustrating.  And when I stop to think about it, sometimes I wonder why I bother to try to change things at all.  I feel like even if I start, I will never follow through all the way anyway, so what is the point.  There are some days where I do really well and then I feel accomplished.  I have succeeded in creating a good school year routine for the kids.  We are keeping up with Anne's homework and both of their church quiet times pretty well.  We are fitting in their classes and dinner is on the table every day.  I have yet to fall into that giving up on dinner attitude that I have excelled at in the past.  But I just feel like I can't push it to the next level.  I feel like I will never get past the point of just doing what I have to do for show.  If the kids aren't fed and the homework isn't done, other people will see that.  I can run the vacuum and clean the bathroom before people come over. I would like to do more than just live on the surface though, but mostly I am just too tired.  I fight the daily battle.  Some days I win and some days I lose.  But I am coming to the conclusion that this depression is going to be part of me for the rest of my life, and it kind of sucks.  I wonder how much fighting is actually worth doing.  I feel like it is pointless to try to change because I will never really ever get there.  Then I just feel like I am failing myself and everyone in my life because I just can't move past it.  When I feel like this, everyone elses' lives just look so much easier, and better.  What do you do when you want to change, but you actually can't because something inside of you is broken? 

It is hard to go from having days where I feel motivated and I feel like I actually can change some of the things that I want to change, to days where I feel like everything is impossible.  In actuality, I have changed.  I have changed a lot.  I am more in tune with myself and my emotions, which is probably part of the reason why I feel like I have failed so miserably every time I lose it and yell at my kids or my husband.  I know that things can be better in certain areas in my life and I actually know what I need to do to change them, which is why I am so hard on myself when I feel overwhelmed and generally unable to move forward.  It is just a constant, exhausting battle.  I just have to do everything I can to make sure that I keep moving forward, even if I am moving at such a slow, painful crawl that I can't even see it.  I know that someday I will be able to see it, even if today is not one of those days.