The Mind is Willing But the Body is Not Lending...

I wander lost and lonely, unable to heal my soul on my own.  As hard as I may try, my mind plays tricks on me, repeating over and over how terrible a person I am, how no matter what I do, I will never be enough or be able to do enough to make my existence worth while.  Everyday, every single fucking day, my mind tells me I am not worth the flesh I am printed on, the stardust I am made of is worth more than my self is and that despite my best efforts and big hearted ways no one will remember or miss me.

A deep depressive rut of existence...a mere chemical imbalance in my brain causing me to swing from thoughts of suicide to thoughts of homicide is what makes me so sad.  I can't control it.  I can't deny it.  I can barely hide it.

And I can't escape it.

It's a difficult reality, when you really think it through.  I can barely rely on my own body to do as my mind asks it to and then for my mind to tell me the thoughts I have to move and do things and be something are worth nothing at all. 

The mind is willing and wanting but the body refuses to be lending.  Daily, I struggle with being a mother who can barely remember to care for herself but teach my daughters to be strong and confident and real and humane. 

I make a point to ask them not only if school was good but if they were good people at school today.  I often have my toddler remind me that she has trouble not fighting when people make her angry.  It's like looking in a mirror and my own coping mechanisms of disassociative behavior isn't a healthy road for her to go down.  I know from personal experience she needs to learn to grow and remain calm and center herself before she lets her ever broadening strength of emotion lash out and react. 

Think first.  Act second.  Speak third.  I tell them both this, every day when they get home from school.

Then I struggle to be a reliable partner in a relationship where we went from having sexual intimacy multiple times a day to we barely get one or two good ones in during the week.  My sex drive has not diminished but the amount of pain I've had to deal with has changed....it's risen exponentially and it's become harder and harder to function.  Just to be.  I can't expect my husband to do everything needed around the house and take care of our girls AND me. 

I feel selfish and indignant every time I have to admit defeat and just lie still on the couch, hoping for a better day, a burst of energy, something....ANYTHING to make me feel more like the me I remember being before this.

I recently in the past month or so found out most of my menstrual health issues have been from an infection of my endometrial lining that I apparently acquired not long after my second daughter was born...that was four years ago.  I finished the antibiotics for it just yesterday and I already feel more "normal", more me, than I have in years. 

This was shocking news and a painful truth to swallow and deal with.  The medication to heal me made me feel even worse.  10 days of taking a drug that causes such a horrendous taste in your mouth you don't even want to swallow your own saliva.  It's truly a ghastly taste that shouldn't belong in your mouth for any reason but there it is.  Then the stomach ache, the nausea, the sheer will to NOT vomit is what helped me make it through the entire course.

I have my menstrual cycle going on again and it's more regular than it's been for so long.  I hate it so.  It drains me.  It lies to me.  It tells me I'm feeling better, the pain is subsiding, get up and do something while you can.  Or at least while you feel like you can.  Then your legs almost give out on you and your husband is so fearful for your health he is offering to call 911 or a best friend to take you to the ER on a painful Saturday night. 

I told him no.  I explained to him that this was my normalcy for my cycle and that it hasn't been this way since BEFORE I met him.  I even told him to call my mom. 

I know he worries about me in ways I feel I can only worry.  I mean, fuck, I worry about myself when I'm alone or trying to walk across the kitchen with hot coffee.  I don't want to burn myself by spilling just because my body doesn't always react when I tell it to.  It doesn't always do what my brain tells it to do. Add in a lack of sensation in my right foot and most of my outer lower right leg is numb when I stand.

It's a scary reality to live in, one where you can't even be sure that you are in control of yourself, both mentally and physically. 

My mental health has taken a turn for the worse because of the pain and frustration and aggravation caused by my uterus that has somehow spread to every other aspect of my life.  I feel cut off and alone.  As though I don't exist. 

No one talks to me.  No one says anything to me.  No one calls or texts or messages just because they're checking up on me just because.  I really honestly thought I had good friends....all those years I wasted.  All that love I poured out with no rhyme or reason or possibility of return.  I lost a piece of myself over those years. 

And I can't be sure I want to get it back even if I could.  I was so  naive and let myself be.  Just another reason to hate who you are, right?! 

My relationships are strained, I can barely stand up straight and I'm anemic from fighting a four year uterine infection. 

I'm weak and worn down....and just want someone to hug me and hold me and tell me it's going to be okay, eventually....just be patient. 

See, the rational portion of my brain knows I will have good days again, that it will be okay again.  But the irrational part of my brain has a much louder and more pronounced voice when it speaks to me about my failures, misfortunes and bad choices in my life. 

I can never win.  I can fight and I can try but winning isn't what I'm after.  I'm after longevity.  My father left me, WILLFULLY, a month before my 16th birthday after making a promise not more than a few months prior that he would do anything to be there for my graduation from high school (first and only daughter of four who graduated high school....with honors...still to this day). 

I've told my daughters repeatedly that I would not leave them willfully...ever.  I promised them both when they were born...I will always try for them. 

My husband tells me I haven't failed him because I AM still trying and I haven't given up, yet. 

Some days....in all fairness, I'm closer than I should be and other days, I'm not close enough to care. 

When the mind is willing but the body is not lending it causes certain grief of ones self.  Grieving the loss of what you used to be and do before your disease took over and robbed you of everything you had ever hoped for...

For yourself, anyway. 

Why am I a "survivor"? Why can't I just be me?

I had a conversation with an acquaintance not so long ago.  This conversation went down a road that I often am very uncomfortable to travel despite knowing every crack, crevice, bump, curve, hill and valley of this horrifying path of past tragedy I can't seem to get away from no matter how hard I try. 

It isn't as though I'm terribly uncomfortable reminding myself of what it is that has made me who I am today, what I, apparently, "endured" to become myself.  It's the endless heartfelt sympathy and empathy that pours off of people when I tell them about my sordid past and everything it is I am supposedly so very brave and strong to have come through and become, in spite of it all.

I don't see it as enduring. I don't see it as being a survivor?  I mean, yes, in the sense of the definition of the word "survivor" I would probably be a poster child for anyone wanting or needing to learn that word.  My picture mine as well be put right next to it in the dictionary.

But that isn't how I feel.  Survive, yes, you do what you have to do to survive when you're forced into situations that are less than ideal for your sanity and well being growing up and developing into an adult.  There are things that no child or young adult/teen/preteen should ever have to be a part of or be involved in but when you are that child, that young adult and you are forced into such a situation you either learn to survive and eventually thrive or you die.  And I don't mean that figuratively.  Adults who were children of dysfunctional families have an increased risk of suicidal tendencies than those of rather normal social standard upbringings.  And yes, it really is that simple.  You either learn to live through that kind of daily and routine mental and or physical and or emotional trauma or you end up dead, on the inside or entirely ceasing to exist.  It's that simple.  And to be honest, if you have a will to live, be it from an outside source or your own internal drive from dreams and aspirations you have, you learn to survive so you eventually can thrive.

You learn to cope and to live.  No, the coping mechanisms are NOT always healthy and yes, sometimes we can be led astray and get caught up in illicit drugs or illegal dealings but given the right guidance, the right hand to hold...we can find a healthy and productive path in life to become what we really truly are and not just be a survivor.

Don't get me wrong.  I am proud to be known as a survivor given my long frustrating, abusive and often mentally detrimental family history but I wouldn't change any of it for the world.  Everything I went through made me into the person I am today.  The beautifully strong and capable, independent, loving and slightly crazy person I am today.

There have been times where I didn't want to have to deal with the memories. I had wished for a different past, wished and wanted and prayed for a different background, a different upbringing, a better start to life but thinking back now, as an adult, where would that have gotten me?  Where would I have ended up if I had been given so much more than what I had been given as a child and young adult growing up?

I know for certain I wouldn't be the strong and mostly confident woman I am today.  I wouldn't be the gentle mother who is doing everything she can to nurture her children and help them grow in positive and productive ways.  I wouldn't be the woman who is trying her damndest to make her marriage work despite all the rough and tumultuous times we have already been through in our only six years of being together.

I wouldn't be me!

I guess, the thing I'm trying to get people to understand is, don't show me the significant amount of empathy and sympathy you have for me when you find out who I am and what made me who I am.  Don't remind me of how terrible it really was.  Show me how PROUD you are of me for going through it and still being here. Be proud that I haven't turned to murder or addictive drug abuse.  Show me that, not the sadness you feel as soon as you hear my tale.

All that does is make me cry inside, it makes it hurt inside in places I don't want to hurt again.  Reopening wounds is never fun and when someone you're talking to shows you such sympathy and sadness and true regret that anyone could treat such a soft and gentle person as me with such outright hate and anger and meanness show me how happy you are that I am happy. 

Seeing you cry, makes me cry and sadness brings me nothing when I'm trying to show you how brave and strong I really am.  Show me happiness and don't be wowed by the amount I've survived...don't show me that.  The shock doesn't help me any.

Just show me love and pride and happiness.  I know I'm a survivor already.  I know it sucked and was hell to go through...I was there remember? 

Show me love.  And I'll show you how I learned to love with every ounce of my being...yes, in spite of it all.