My husband asked me a few days ago why I haven't written in my blog in a while. He chuckled and said that he liked to read the things I write to gain insight into what I was thinking/feeling.....because I really don't like talking about how I feel out loud. I have been mulling over his question ever since he asked me.
I have tried to write a few things over the last few months.....I have actually sat and poured my heart out in a few paragraphs.....but the emotions ended up being so visceral and so private that I had to delete them instead of sharing. Instead of removing the mask to be honest, it felt like I was ripping my skin off and it was just too painful to expose those raw nerve endings. These past few months have been a very difficult time for me. I don't even feel like I've been myself for a while. And I miss me. The real me......not this crazy, sad version of me.
I have already admitted that I have fought a life-long struggle with depression. I am no stranger to the dark, claw-like and crushing grasp of despair. I can beat it back (at least to the edges of day to day life) with sheer will most of the time......I can quote Bible verses, spit out affirmations, fake-it-till-I-make-it, take everything in stride, keep smiling, be kind to others, remain positive, and keep plowing through. I am tough and strong and resilient and brave. I am a trooper. Or so I like to pretend.
The truth is.....the way I feel on the inside is more like a little scared toddler.....my heart hurts and I want to be petted, comforted, told that everything will be fine. I want to hide in my bed, pull the covers up over my head and cry and cry and cry. Some mornings, it's all I can do to drag a nearly lifeless body up out of the bed, shower, dress, and force myself to drive to an office where I will work at an unfulfilling, thankless job where I struggle to go through the motions for 9-10 hours and then come home.
There are times that I feel completely empty and apathetic. I feel dead inside; void, barren, wasted. There are brittle, dried-up spiritual tumbleweeds blowing through the dust of what's left of me. And I wonder what's wrong with me.....why I don't care about things that I should. Why things that really matter don't seem to....not so much any more. I feel like my heart is shrouded in Kevlar, barbed wire, and steel-wool, blocking any actual emotions. I wonder if maybe I'm just a broken person who won't ever get it right.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are days where I feel every emotion and hurt so exquisitely that I agonize over every word, every action until I drive myself crazy. I imagine slights and insults were none are intended. I let my feelings be hurt by things that don't even concern me. It's almost a strange emotional-thought-life paranoia... that every snide comment is about something I've done. That every vague, snarky Facebook post is about me. I get a sense that people are judging me, laughing at me, weighing me in the balance and finding me wanting; lacking. It's insanity. I know it's not "all about me." My thinking is skewed. It's ego-centric, prideful, and narcissistic......and I can't seem to stop these crazy thoughts. The harshest critic of them all? The one staring back at me in the mirror every day. And, my friends....that woman in the mirror can be SO mean!!!
She tells me how ugly I am. She tells me how unworthy I am. She whispers how I've gained some weight and how lazy and sinful I am. She laughs and points and says, "I told you so." She jeers and sneers and leers and shouts those accusations inside my head all day long. She tells me how awkward I am. How I don't fit in. How shallow I am for fretting about these silly things. The worst thing she does is show me exactly how blessed I am in spite of all the crazy thoughts I have.......and then howls with sinister laughter when I feel guilty about feeling the way I feel.
It's a very fast downward spiral into despair from there.
I am horrified to admit that I found the spotlight on depression in the aftermath of Robin William's horrible suicide captivating. I read every article that came across my news feed. I googled everything about depression and the cause and treatment; I was fascinated to read first-hand accounts....not articles written by professionals - but written by other depressed folks. I wanted most of all, I guess.... to know that I wasn't the only one. That I wasn't crazy for feeling this way. Don 't get me wrong..... I am not suicidal. I have no intention of harming myself or others....I could never even imagine hurting anyone else on purpose...and I'm way too much of a chicken to hurt myself. (However, I did muster up enough courage to manage to give myself a flu shot the other day.....and it kindda hurt, but that's not really the same thing, huh?. Haha!).
I am a nurse and I am always looking for objective, measurable data. There is an actual measurable stress scale and I read through and graded myself. Moving to another state, not having a job, looking for a job, starting a new job, selling a house, buying a house, leaving loved ones behind, a loved one's major illness and several ER trips and surgeries/procedures, fear of losing said loved one, not being happy or fulfilled in your job, being estranged from loved ones, wayward children, worry about a child who lost a job, worry about the horrible choices your adult children make that you can't control, a mother in poor health who also lost her job, it goes on and on and on...........and don't even LET me watch the evening news!!!! Suffice it to say that my stress score rates very high for this year.
The move to Florida brought me a mixed bag of emotions. It's a new, exciting adventure. A new chapter in our book...new places to explore, unknown things to discover, new friends to love.......a tropical, balmy climate, sunshine and palm trees; the amazing chance to live everyday where the rest of the country only gets to visit for vacation! A strange, new, and wondrous place. But to come to our new home, we had to leave another place called home. We had to leave dear friends, leave a job I loved, leave our son, leave my family, and leave the known. And that takes an extraordinary step of faith.
The thing I cling to every time we move is that my HOME is wherever my husband is. Because he owns my heart and where he is, well....that is where my heart is. He is my rock, my shelter, my better half, my best friend, my lover, my soul-mate......he is....well, he is simply my world. When he first started feeling bad this past spring, we thought it was just the stress and fatigue of moving....packing, unpacking, starting a new job, and the stress of buying/selling 2 houses were just getting to him. We aren't as young as we used to be.....and it was just so dang HOT and HUMID here in June and July...we chalked it up to stress and fatigue. Until around the end of July when we couldn't deny that something was terribly wrong. He was having trouble breathing, had to sit upright in bed to breathe, heart racing, blood pressure sky-high. The truth of how very sick he was knocked the breath out of me. When the cardiologist told us that he had Congestive Heart Failure and that his EF was only 20%, you could have pushed me off my chair with the brush of a feather. (To put this alarming news in perspective for my non-medical friends, an EF of 30% is the threshold for qualifying for Hospice services....he was at only 20%......well below that). The fact that he was able to get up every day and go to work is a testament to how stubborn and determined he is and to what a solid work ethic he has.
My usually vibrant, work-a-holic husband would stumble in from work every evening and crash on the couch....weary and completely exhausted. His color was more gray than pink. He had dark circles under his eyes. I tried my best to compensate for his overwhelming exhaustion (his heart was pumping so fast and erratically, it wasn't pumping enough blood for his brain and organs to function properly). I took over the yard-work; I took out the trash. I cooked for him and carried his plates to him on the couch. I would run upstairs to fetch things for him so he wouldn't have to go up and down the stairs. And I still felt helpless as I had to watch him suffer every day and there was very little I could do to relieve it. And that was scary. It shook me to the very core.
In the middle of undergoing multiple unsuccessful cardioversions, heart catheterizations, CT angiograms, TEE testing, echocardiograms, EKG's, blood tests, starting strong cardiac medications and blood thinners......he then developed acute appendicitis with a leaking appendix!!! He had to undergo an emergency appendectomy.....on my birthday, no less! He had his last (and most dangerous) procedure on 10-2-14.....a major cardiac ablation where the doctor burned away 4 large sections of heart tissue. The Electrophysiologist who did his procedure is one of the most successful in the entire South East US in his field. He told us going in that there was only a 75-80% chance it would work, but it was really his only choice for treatment. He told me that without treatment, his heart would hold out probably less than a year. So there was little choice. The procedure was planned and performed; it was an 8 1/2 hour long procedure. A few of the scariest hours of my entire life. Seeing him in so much severe pain after the procedure about did me in. The procedure seems to have worked, though we won't know for sure until about 2-3 months post-procedure. He is already feeling MUCH better and his heart-rate is now in the 50's......instead of the 180's. I am slowly seeing him come back to life...a little bit every day. His color improved; he started cracking jokes again. I knew he was doing better the day I came home to find him washing his car. (His car went almost 2 months without it's weekly wash....and if you know him at all you know he had to be SICK not to wash his car for 2 months).
The very real threat of losing the man I love was more than I could even fathom. Mentally, I knew that the mature, adult thing to do was to face that fear, talk about it, realistically make contingency plans in case it didn't work, and pray for the best. But I couldn't even allow myself to think in that direction. I spent many, many hours agonizing over the uncertainty and the fear. I would spend my lunch breaks at work, crying in my car where no one could see. I would take a long shower so I could cry at night.... without upsetting Steve with my tears. The things is, I couldn't even try to imagine any kind of life for me that didn't include him. One truth that came out of this entire episode.....I don't EVER want to take him for granted. I want to cherish every single memory. every moment, and squeeze every drop of joy out of our time together. Every night when I snuggle up to him to go to sleep, I breathe a prayer of thanksgiving for the precious gift of my husband.
I'm hoping that as we ease into fall, my moods will stabilize and life can get back to some sense of normalcy. Fall is my favorite time of year.....the cool respite after the burning hot summer. The slowing pace, the calm before the storm of the holidays. There aren't many changing leaves here in Sunny Florida. We've had some cooler, less humid mornings, but it's still in the upper 80's and sunny most afternoons. There aren't any boots or scarves or bonfires here. I can still go swimming and wear shorts and flip-flops. But I've pumpkin-spiced the heck out of my coffee, pancakes, cookies, cakes, pies, and I even managed to make pumpkin spice fudge.....trying to capture that elusive crisp feeling of "fallness".
I know there will be days when I am homesick. Days when I just want to hug my babies, and laugh with them like we did when they were little. There are days I would trade my right arm to have a hug from my Mamaw and a few more hours to just talk with her and tell her how very much I love her. There are times when I just need my Momma. There will always be stormy days when the clouds are threatening and the winds blow strong.
But there will also be days that are good. Days when my sun is shining and the birds are singing and the clouds in my skies are all fluffy and white. There will be days of laughter, days of joy....days of singing and days of blessing. And I will store them up in my mind. I will take pictures of the places, the faces, the things that bring me happiness and I will save them to count my blessings on the darker days. And they will remind me of how God is good and I am blessed. They will whisper that the hard times will pass and promise that the suffering of this world is only temporary.
And hopefully, I will find that I am falling back into being ME again. The good, the bad, the ugly, the sad.....the happy, the crazy, the paranoid, the creative, the whole jiggly mess that I am.
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