Heidi Chronicles

So, Aaron was asking me this morning when I was going to get the pictures from our trip to Torquay uploaded to Flickr.  My response was “when I feel better.”  He teased me a bit by saying “well I can’t wait until summer,” and then gave me a big hug.

I have been quiet here over the last year.  It’s been a challenging one for a lot of reasons, most of which I am attempting to put into a thank you/2009 holiday letter…which probably won’t be done until summer.  (Right.  I know you’ll all be waiting with bated breath for 4th of July.)  But I need to write some of it down for the record while I’m in the thick of it because it’s such a huge part of my life right now.  I don’t want to forget.

The main reason it’s challenging right now is that I have been working (since we moved here basically) to get off of my antidepressant meds, which, even with increased dosages, weren’t making any difference.

I did a lot of preparation to help my brain get settled back into a baseline level before I really started cutting back.  I didn’t exactly follow the directions of the program I chose to use (Potatoes Not Prozac) because my doctor was on my case to get off of one of the drugs that isn’t approved in the UK sooner rather than later, but I did follow the steps outlined in the book so that it would be easier in the long run.  It took me a year to get through those steps and steady with support and then, last March, I started cutting back with the support of my friends at Radiant Recovery, whom I have lovingly dubbed, my Sugar Peeps.

I don’t know that I’ve ever done anything this difficult that requires such a strong commitment to getting better.  Nothing comes to mind at the moment so if it’s not *the* hardest, it is *one of* the hardest things I have ever done.  I suppose anyone struggling with an addiction feels this way.  There is nothing that can prepare a brain to go from being spoon fed a pill every day for the last 12 years to having that taken away (even if slowly, bit by bit) and being asked in a not-so-polite way to please get off its ass and start doing its job.  It’s a painful process at times – and brains don’t really like pain.

Before I talk about the hard times though, I should also mention that there are times it has not been hard – at least 1/2  of the time, actually.  My brain seems to have a threshold.  Sometimes  I could do several cuts without being affected and move along in life quite nicely – and then something else would happen and suddenly, BOOM, I was on my ass and my brain was screaming.

These are the hard times.

For me, BOOM is exemplified by turning into a person that I am not.  Since I started doing the Potatoes Not Prozac program, I have actually become pretty calm and patient, and a hell of a lot less of a drama queen.  As a general rule, I do not cry over every little thing. Nor do I get burning hot, 0-100 angry in a millisecond and yell.   But during a difficult time, those are things to be counted on if I don’t catch them before they come bubbling to the surface.

The BOOMs seem to happen after I have been taxed with prolonged or excessive stress.  These are things like Aaron having major surgery, the gray winter here in London, PMS, travel, visitors, the kids on break from school, dealing with Liam’s SPD diagnosis, extended illnesses, etc.  The day-to-day stuff I can handle, but anything that interrupts the basic routine of my life causes an overload in my brain.  It just can’t work that hard right now.

I can feel it trying to slow me down when it gets overloaded.  To cope sometimes it shuts down my body to the basic, “must-do” level.  I get a “heavy, can’t move” feeling and it takes a lot of energy that I don’t really have to do the things that need to be done.   It can last for several days.  When this happens, we are lucky that there will be food in the house and that everyone has clean underwear.  That is a good day in times of BOOM!   Everything else stops.  The basic activities of life are just too taxing because I can’t think.  Phone calls are too difficult to make, the laundry feels like too much, being around people is hard (but helpful if they are understanding and it’s not stressful), there’s no cohesive thought process that allows me to write emails or make conversation, I don’t have the motivation to do the things that make me feel better, I’m tired, blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda.  I have to just sit and be still and kind of mindless, really.  Sewing is good, television is ok as long as it’s not stressful.  Reading something that doesn’t have to be digested is good.  Solitaire will do.   Staring at a wall and just letting thoughts drift in and out is perfect.  Sleep is also really, really nice.

If I have to keep going despite the warning signals I’m getting from my brain (as happens often enough when one has two children), it typically ends up with me crying or get really, really angry – and *then* crying.   (Always with the crying…it’s so annoying!)  Fortunately I have learned (and I am completely serious) that Macey will let me know when I am about to lose it and yell, and I’ve started trying to pay attention to that and stop whatever it is and sneak away before it all comes bubbling out.  Unfortunately, with kids, that’s not always possible, so I try let them know that I am angry or sad, but not upset with them in a way that warrants my behavior (Even though they do usually do the final thing that sends me over the edge, LOL).  It’s the best I can do at the moment.

The good thing about it is that I know it WILL get better.  I’ve been doing this for a year now and it always does.    Sometimes it just takes more time.

And I do have coping skills that really do help:  food is first and foremost, but the light box, fun activities, friends I can call on to make me laugh, relaxing activities, music, making space for myself, my sugar peeps, gentle exercise, quiet time in the mornings during the week, rest, and trying (sometimes really, really hard) to be positive most of the time all help.  And the sun.  There’s nothing like the sun to give me a boost.

It also helps me to look back at the winters when I *was* on 450 mg of Wellbutrin and 150mg of Zoloft and I was worse than I am now.  I couldn’t get out of bed…Aaron had to pull me out.  And we didn’t have all of the additional stuff going on that we do now!  I’m definitely better now on good food, 37.5 mg of Wellbutrin, and no Zoloft than I was then!

And another really great thing?  Even when it really sucks, I can still laugh and smile through tears because I know it will get better.  I think that’s progress.  

So, maybe more in a few days.  (Hopefully on a really good day?  LOL!)  I think this is important for me to keep track of.  Maybe here is good, maybe not.  We’ll just have to see.

Note:  There are a lot of thoughts crammed in here and I don’t have time to properly edit it if it’s going to be posted today.  Maybe I’ll fix it later.  Maybe I won’t.  Whatever…it’s posted on the right date, for once.  Clap for me!

Today is the one-year anniversary of the day that the kids and I moved to London.  I look back on that day and all that came before it and I wonder how I did it all.  Seven weeks without a husband or home, preparing a house to sell, trying to be a single mom….  UGH.  My life was insane.

When we did finally get here, I arrived with expectations based on this list that I wrote when we first started talking about moving.

Pros

• This would be a great opportunity for Liam. He’d go to school there and he’d really remember some of it.
• We’d get to travel.
• Different cultural experiences
• It would mean that I’d have to get out of my comfort zone.
• Aaron really wants to do it and he’d enjoy the job.
• It’s only two years.

Cons

• It will be very difficult to have to sell/store everything in that amount of time.
• I was just starting to feel like we were getting settled…getting things painted, etc. It was finally starting to feel like it was our house and now we’d be leaving.
• We’d have to sell a lot of stuff. There will be no room for it in London and even if there was, there’s no way to get it there. The taxi would have to go. The 300. Furniture. It almost makes me cry to think about it.
• There wouldn’t be as many amenities. We’d have a much smaller place.
• The majority of the time it would be just me and the kids. Obviously I’d find ways to make some friends, but it would be hard. And Aaron would only be working with one partner, so it’s not like I’d meet anyone through work.
• I would be without any support system in terms of the kids. This alone could kill me.
• I would miss my family.
• I would miss my friends.
• I would miss my house.

It was a pretty good list, considering that it all pretty much happened the way I thought it would (except that we’re probably here three years and I’m ok with that now).  I called it pretty well.

Yes, selling the house, most of the stuff, and storing the rest sucked.  Then not selling the thing sucked.  Moving to a smaller place…not as bad as I thought.  And I still miss the friends and family.  But not having help with the kids nearly sent me over the edge.

When I made this list, I didn’t realize that the support with the kids was giving me the personal time that I require in order to function in happiness.

Nor did I realize the general inconvenience of life here.

I’ll not go into detail…I’ll just say that last winter was the worst I’ve ever had.  It sucked, sucked, sucked.

Since then, I’ve learned to deal with the inconveniences and appreciate London’s attempts to thwart them.  Public transportation is nice.  Grocery delivery is nice.  Being able to call someone to do the laundry when I get freaked out by it is nice.

And, I was SO lucky to meet an amazing group of women who keep me sane on a daily basis.  I’m pretty sure we’d all be dead if I hadn’t met Jennifer.

But I still struggle with getting enough time to myself.

I love having the nanny one morning a week.  I love that Aaron and I trade nights and occasionally get to take a full weekend day to do what we want by ourselves.  And I ABSOLUTELY ADORE having friends who can get me out of the house and will keep my kids at any time.  But it’s just not the same.

When I lived in KC, I had about three hours to myself a day when Liam was at school and Elena was napping in the morning and both kids were napping in the afternoon.  Plus, I had people who would take the kids so I could get stuff done if I needed to when they were awake.  That gave me ample time to accomplish the stuff I needed to AND blog every day, which is really important to me.  I even had time to read, or do crafty things, etc.

Obviously it would have changed gradually no matter what, but moving here completely cut it off.  So now it’s pretty much me or Aaron watching the kids if the other one is going to do something on his or her own.  And when I take time to do something I want to do, that usually means something I should be doing isn’t getting done (right now it’s folding laundry) and I’ll have to make up the time, so I just don’t do it. It makes me feel a little trapped.

What it comes down to is that I’m still mourning that time I had to myself.   And I’m sure that Aaron misses me having that time too – since every evening I just want to get my crap done and sit by myself and I never have time to sit and watch tv with him any more, which he loves.

So.  I feel like I’ve adapted to everything else pretty well.  It’s just this one thing.  But then I look at and think, well, it’s just two more years and then I’ll get that part of my life back to some degree – surely I will since we’ll be moving back to the States and Elena will be in preschool then while Liam is at school (regardless of where me move), right? And life will be easier since washing machines in the US are four times the size of my machine here and I can do all of the laundry in one day instead of three loads PER day. And the school system makes sense.  And the grocery stores carry brands I recognize.  And the oven is in Farenheit.

Um, is this the American Dream?

Anyhoo, it is crazy how many things have changed in the past year.

• I have gone from knowing absolutely not one other mom to having some amazing friends who are willing to listen to me bitch so that I don’t have to call anyone at 3 in the morning U.S. time.
• I have botched nearly as many hair color jobs in one year as I have in the rest of my lifetime.
• I have gone from pants that fit to pants that are too small to pants that fit too many times to count.
• My definition of a nice day has changed completely, because if it hadn’t, I’d lose my mind.
• Elena has gone from this
  
  to this.
  
• Liam has gone from this
  
  to this.
  
• Aaron has increased his sock wardrobe by nearly 100% – and they are not black, grey, or white.
• Macey has learned that we pass on the left when we’re on a walk.
• Murphy has learned that he doesn’t do air travel.

And, there are a lot of things that aren’t any different from living in KC, so that helps a lot.

• I have friends here for whom I would do ANYTHING – just like I do in the U.S. (which I can see from my back porch, by the way…do you see me waving to you?).
• Liam is in school and he adores his teachers and friends, just like he did before we moved.  He still talks about the mechanics of things and asks me a hundred thousand questions a day…it’s just that now they’re different questions instead of the same one.  (Do you hear the beep?)
• Elena is still NOT in school and wishes she was and she’s sweet as pie and cuddly as ever.  She’s also still nursing.  Will it ever end?
• The kids and dogs still run to meet Aaron at the door when he arrives home and Murphy is still the most excited to see him.
• I have something planned that I can do – or not do – to get out of the house every day, and if I change my mind, my friends just laugh at me.

You know…even with the struggles…I feel like I’m pretty much settled in.  I’m getting more and more involved in things here, so I’m sure the next two years will fly by and we’ll be on our way back…

assuming you people put Obama in office and we don’t have to move to Germany and live in a commune with the all of the other Americans and their big dogs and cats that you throw out of the country by putting Sarah Palin one heartbeat away from being the next president.

I will take it personally, people.

Woke up this morning feeling terrible.  I guess I was coming down with something yesterday.  Fortunately Jenn came and got the kids and I got to rest this morning.

The kids and I watched TV all day long.  It was awesome.

Then Aaron got home and we watched TV after we got the kids in bed.

What a great mom/wife I am today.

On a funny note…

Liam has been saying “It sounds like” when he means “It looks like.”

So, instead of “It looks like the sun is shining,” he says, “It sounds like the sun is shining.”

He’s also to taken to falling off the sofa (or whatever Elena has hurt herself on) and pretending to be hurt to get attention.  It’s a little annoying.