How Do You Explain Pain?

I'm in more pain than I have been for years, most of which is stemming from my low back.  I have a deep aching burn that is sharp and irritated with every bending, turning or twisting motion, every single position change, every movement that requires a pivot in my lumbar region of any kind causes this pain. 

Some days are worse than others of course.  Some days I can't even THINK about bending down to pick something up.  It's bad enough my daughters and husband have begun to notice my bad days because I will literally stare at something on the floor and have to will myself to bend over and pick it up.  Those days suck....so bad....

A frequent phrase I utter, "Bending is so overrated". 

It's become almost imperative for me to be able to pick up even the smallest or slimmest of objects with my toes so I can bring the object up to the level of my hands without having to bend in the middle.  My girls think it's a fascinating super power and have tried numerous times to copy my movements but they haven't got the dexterity down in their toes yet.

My husband thinks the amount of dexterity I have in my toes and the fashion in which I use them is a little disturbing. 

Disturbing?  Maybe.  Super power?  Definitely not. Unusual use of toes? Probably.  Useful tool? OMG YES!

I have noticed a change in my lifestyle over the years due to having to adapt from pain issues. 

I no longer sleep on my back, I will wake up almost instantly if I happen to roll into said position during sleep.  I have myself positioned to reach to my right most of the time because leaning/reaching to the left is more painful. I am usually hunched forward to alleviate back pain. 

I've learned to adapt to my surroundings and have my surroundings adapted for me.  I try REALLY hard to NOT keep important things in low cabinets, drawers, shelves and such, things I use regularly and often become irritated when I have to bend for the umpteenth time to get are put in a position I can easily reach without issue. 

My husband has noticed this and adapted his own living arrangements and lifestyle to help coexist better with me.  My daughters know better than to ask mommy to grab something off the floor for them and noticeably offer to pick things up for me without my having to ask. 

My sex life is lacking from when we first got together and not because of our kids. Today, in fact, I told my husband that I feel like a shitty human being because I can't keep up with him and the kids. I just haven't the energy at the end of the day to get sexually excited because that's a physical feat most people my age don't understand or even notice.  It requires so much more energy than I feel I have most days and my hubs is trying so hard to be understanding but a big part of our lives is the hypersexuality from the bipolar we both share diagnoses of.

I'm at a point in this pain filled world of mine I often find myself hating my body and I will tell it as much.  I hate that the neurological disease I have is making it so my hands don't always work, I drop things often even if I had a tight grip on the object only a few moments prior.  My right foot doesn't always respond to lift up when I'm walking and I have tripped and fallen so many times because of this.  If I don't really focus on walking I will trip and fall.  It's infuriating.  I can't feel most of the top portion of my right foot, from toes to about the middle of my foot....it's mostly numb. 

I lost sensation in my right big toe years ago and was told after my spinal surgery to remove the cyst I had on my right sciatic nerve root that perhaps the sensations would come back and that, in fact, I had a very good chance of that happening....and yet the numbness continues. 

I have a creepy crawly, almost like little bitty ants crawling up and down my legs, feeling on days my nerves are super inflamed from weather, fibromyalgia or whatever that day brings me. 

I moved an hour and a half north of my hometown in Milwaukee back in April.  I have had to continue to see my regular physician down in Milwaukee because he and I cannot find another physician within a half hour's drive from here that not only takes my insurance but will also continue my care for me so I don't have to have an epic long day of traveling just to see my doctor every month. 

My case isn't that horrendous and I've been seeing the same physician for almost two decades with no issues.  And why?  Because of all the crazy ass changes to our health care systems over the last two years many physicians are refusing to treat patients who have been on long term opioid pain control. 

I've been using opioids for chronic back pain for almost 15 years and never have I lost a prescription, had a positive urine drug screen test for anything other than what I'm prescribed. 

I have friends who think it's this great thing that I get pain medication like that and comment on how I am "lucky" or how great it must be to get to use it every day. 

No.  I don't get a chemical high from it.  It's not some fun party drug I get to take and then enjoy the ride.  No.  It's a medication that if I DO NOT take it I CAN NOT function.  It hurts too much to even move.

And I wouldn't consider myself fucking LUCKY.  PLEASE?!  What a fucking joke.  Yea, I'm super lucky to have such a difficult pain control issue that a drug is the only thing that helps me feel well enough to be me. 

Yes, my body is physically addicted to them to a degree but that's unavoidable.  My dose has gone up and back down over the years but I've never been without them completely and I hate it.

I hate how I have to rely on this stupid man made form of heroin so I can feel "human" enough to function and take care of the daily needs and wants of myself and my family and friends. 

Only those really close to me know what my bad days are like because when I'm having those really bad days, I don't interact with people outside of a small group of super close friends and family members. 

Even my in laws don't know what it's like for me on my really bad days.  And trying to explain all of this medical jargon to people who genuinely have little to no history or background or relative knowledge of medicine and physiology is more difficult than most could imagine. 

I almost want to write it all out in pamphlet form and hand it to them and be all, "Here! Educate yourselves!".  LOL

That might be rude or at least, considered rude.  I wouldn't know.  I wish I did.

How do you explain to someone that every day is different for you to such a degree that you really can't make express in advance plans. 

It tires me out to explain this all to people and in the end, I don't even know if it helps. 

All I know for sure, tomorrow is a new day.....

Opportunity knocked.....

My daughters, husband and I have been living with my two aunts, uncle and three cousins for about one year now.   We were basically shut off from all of our friends because my aunts felt all of my friends were bad influences and drug dealers so they couldn't visit and since I had no vehicle to call my own and use at will, I never got to see my friends and therefore rarely got a reprieve from the insane ruling over my life by my aunts.  It made for me and my husband and our girls to be cranky, moody, uneasy and dying to get away from it all at whatever cost I could afford.

Abruptly after an argument with my eldest and forever single aunt, DM we'll call her, I received a message from my youngest and married with two of her own children and one adopted daughter whom they were basically given by my only uncle on my mother's side, their own brother when she was still a baby, aunt whom we shall call AJ.

In this message I had been informed that I was a "lying and selfish little bitch" who was leaving her mother in her time of need (my mom is having total left hip replacement and I'm moving my family up to the Sheboygan area right around the beginning of April for both things).  I was an unfit parent who could barely bathe, clean up after, feed or take care of my two daughters and should just let my aunts take them now so I don't fuck things up and get them taken away from me....

I have no history of this kind of negligence in any sense....this is entirely made up bullshit by DM just to get a rise out of me and my aunt AJ and therefore cause enough strife for me to be forcibly evicted from my home.

All of this began because my aunts asked if I had a place to move to and I informed them that my husband's parents had bought a home they were willing to rent out to us because in the last 18 months I was evicted, forced to live with my aunts, moved out of there and got all excited about moving back to Sheboygan, only to have my friend whom we moved to help out, bleed us dry of our entire savings which forced us to move back in with my aunts and wait for my husband's tax returns again because obviously my best friend had no intention of ever repaying us.

They were furious that I could not provide an address to said home.  I was told I was a terrible parent for telling my children that we had a home to move into but it wasn't "real" yet and I was getting their hopes up and hurting them.

In the end, they "packed up" all of our belongings from our room the four of us shared in their basement into plastic garbage bags with no sense of organization or respect for our belongings.  I had received one bag with nothing but glass objects all thrown into the bottom of the bag and then a collection of my books and other heavy things were put on top.

I have most of my belongings in a storage unit.  I'm being told by my own family, my own blood, that I have a responsibility to take care of my disabled mother and be there for her every need now that she's having hip replacement surgery. This includes paying her back rent so she doesn't get evicted and affording whatever other things she may need be it food or whatever.  I have to pay to have her bathroom redone, despite her having more than an adequate amount of money to do so on her own last December but instead of taking care of her bills she decided to go on a shopping spree for needless materialistic items.  She also let my autistic sister go on an insane Yule shopping spree for my daughters and literally, spoil them to pieces with trinkets and other meaningless crap.

I can't do it.  I won't do it.  I can't sacrifice my entire family, the daughters I made with the husband I will always love just so my mom doesn't have to figure out how to budget her money right.  Just so my aunt doesn't have to pay a little extra to take care of her nearly 12 year older sister who took care of her and her other younger sisters in a motherly way as soon as she was capable of it because her own mother, my grandmother, didn't want to have to "deal" with her children.

My mother was a live in caretaker and babysitter to her younger siblings from the time she was eight to the time she finally moved out of the house at 22 years old.

Explain to me how any of those women could possibly think it is my sole responsibility to care for my mother when I'm still trying to get a consistent life down for my OWN family?!

Why do they think that they have no reason for inputting any financial interest in taking care of their elderly and disabled sister?  My mother has loved and cared for her sisters for years and suffered their terrible treatment and abuse for years....before she finally moved out and started her own life.

I have found....I have a need to do the same.  With a heavy heart I must admit, I haven't spoken to my mother in nearly four days.....

this is very unusual and hurts me to say.  But what pain should I suffer?  Which pain is worse? That of my daughters not being raised in a stable home environment?  Or allowing my blood relatives to hate me and use me as their negative scapegoat for all their worries and woes because I moved my family one hour away to a stable environment and life?

I can be hated......but seeing my girls and husband this happy makes me see the silver lining of this entire experience.

Freedom.  Freedom to live.  To flourish and to thrive.   

I Couldn't Ask For More....

I have encountered so many people of different creed, color, religion, sexual orientation and whatnot throughout my life and so many of them have put themselves so deeply into my heart that I can't NOT feel for them to some degree regardless of the ways they have loved me...and wronged me. 

I have a deep seeded need to help people.  I have worked as a CNA, a medical receptionist, a medical transcriptionist, a customer service representative, an administrative assistant at a nursing home...the want I feel to help people in any way I possibly can runs deep in my veins and I feel as though it is hardwired into my genetics.

I would, literally, give someone the shirt off my back if I felt they absolutely needed it...without thinking twice about the consequences I would endure after. 

Self preservation is something I lack.  It is something I know very little of and have been working on with my therapist as of late.

It comes from my background, my upbringing, the way I was raised and the need I had to adapt to my surroundings as a young child so my sister and I could thrive, to some degree, in the hellish, nightmare of a world we grew up in.

Everyone comes before myself...the needs of my family and those I surrounded myself with as a younger adult always came before my own.  And those around me saw this in me, saw this raw need to be a pure human being who cared for others to such a degree I worried about myself almost never, and exploited it.

Used, abused, lied to by my own family, my own friends, my own blood only to have them throw back the remnants of what they could not use of me as though I was a carcass on the savanna left for the carrion birds....useless as a living organism but enough to sustain another user....another abuser.

This vicious cycle repeated itself over the course of the last 20 years or so and then, I met my husband.  He saw in me what everyone else saw, a love for helping people, a want to be needed, a desire to make people happy and heart so big and so full of love still....despite the heavy footprints set across it by the numerous takers I had had run through my life.

Instead of using me...he has nurtured me.  He has helped me grow and shown me how useful and loved and wanted and important my "self" really is.  He has loved me and accepted me fully and completely from day one.

Six years later, despite my trepidation but amid the excitement, I have moved one hour away from all the users and abusers I used to call family....some of whom actually are family. 

This move has been years in the making, the reality of it has set in, I have seen my new home, I have cleansed it and filled it with light, love and positive energy.  The pantry is stocked, the fridge and freezer are, too.  Our beds are in place, set up and have sheets.  The windows have curtains, the walls are the colors I would choose for myself, the yard is small but delightful. 

And tomorrow, we are moving in. 

My daughters have been anxiously awaiting this day, we have talked about it for weeks and the time is finally here. 

I have surrounded myself with people who love me, people who want nothing more than to see me succeed in life and support me with helpful encouragement and even difficult to give advice.  My mother-in-law is teaching me how to appropriately budget so we can actually have savings, my father-in-law refuses to let me help move because of the ever decreasing physical ability I have.

I have two brother-in-laws who are helping my husband and my father-in-law to move all my things after they drive nearly two hours to get my things and one hour to get to our new home and then another hour back home...and they offered their assistance out of sheer kindness and love.

I have said thank you to my "Dad" (we'll get more into why he deserves that title in a different post) so many times he has asked me to stop because he knows....he says so jokingly but the depth of my gratitude is hard for him to grasp.

This house they have rented to us is a once in a lifetime opportunity for myself, my husband and our daughters.  The details of this rental are so unique....I can't even begin to describe them.  I will have a home for my children, a place to feel safe again, an altar for my religious needs and a kitchen, living room, bathroom, nearly finished basement complete with art room for yours truly for the first time in my 34 years of existence.

I will finally have safety and comfort, again.

My family, my blood would never have done this for me.  Not in a million years.  No one ever taught me how to properly budget, no one ever showed me how to balance a meal plan for two weeks at a time, shop the ads for great deals, by store brand whenever I possibly can....these are all things I've had to learn for myself and my learning curve has been great.

My husband and girls are the most important reasons for me to begin this new chapter in my life.  They are the reasons I had no trouble saying goodbye to my hometown of 20+ years and moving into a city I barely know but have grown to love.

At this point in my existence I really honestly and truly can say....there is nothing more I could ask for right now....

except maybe world peace.  LOL

Love truly does conquer all.....even my chemically imbalanced brain can see that love really is something that should not cost you a dime....and if it does, it's not real love.  Blood relative or no, I had people in my life I wouldn't trust with my new Van sneakers, let alone my or my husband or my girls lives and emotions. 



I could not ask for more right now...and I never would.  

The End is the Beginning and the Beginning is the End

I won't deny that every now and again, a thought pops into my mind such as, what would it be like if I could just start all over?

Throw out this version of myself and all the shit I've been through and all the crap I grew up with and everything that's "wrong" with me and just start over...

Blank canvas, clean slate...whatever you call it, I have the need for it every now and again...just reinvent myself.  Go somewhere, where no one knows me, knows where I'm from or what kind of past I have, so I can be me, no questions asked.

The strange, yet beautiful, side of my life that people here (meaning the state I live in, basically) aren't really wanting to understand or try to be open minded about it and it's a very precious piece of who I am.  It holds a spot in my heart that no one has ever touched and is always there in my personality, hiding in the undertones of my sarcastic sweetness.

Sunk into the abyss of my adulthood and emotional baggage from years of verbal and mental abuse by people whom I am actually blood related to, there's a sweet little woman who wants a house to decorate with cute skulls and crossbones and fancy window treatments made of black and red, a family to call her own which includes dressing my baby girls in goth lolita outfits, a place to be herself, a place where being who I really, truly, am inside won't scare away half the population and cause my family members to jump on my already painful back.

I want people to see ME. 

I am 34-years-old and this is the first time, in my entire life, I have moved away from my family to do things and be things they refuse to accept or be part of.

One hour, one hour north and I have been told it is too far.  They won't visit.  They won't accept it.  They want nothing of it.

They have accused my husband of spousal and child abuse, which brings tears to his eyes to think about.  It hurts him deep to have my family think such terrible thoughts about him.

My mom and sister, they love Adam.  They accept him for who and what he is and adore how he dotes on and shows love and affection towards our two daughters and myself.

He is my partner in crime, my best friend, my most trusted confidant, the love of my life, the father to our beautiful little girls and the rationality in my crazy chaotic bipolar world.  He is the reason I have not yet left this world.  

My husband has given me so much strength, support, love and guidance over the past six years we have been together, so much more than even my own family have provided. He has accepted me wholly and completely for who I am.  He has taken the time to get to know every little nuance and detail that makes up the entirety of my self.   He loves every curve, every imperfection, every freckle, stretch mark and scar both inside and out...he truly loves me.

Adam is the first person I have met who accepts my whole self and respects my whole self and loves my whole self, crazy and all, he loves me. 

And, as I remind him daily, I love him so much more than he could ever know. 

Our daughters are little versions of each of us, wrapped up in deceitful cuteness and unabashed curiosity, they are the reasons we get up and keep going every single day. 

I want my girls to know all of this, to know my past, my husband's past, our families and their pasts...I almost need them to know this, so they can be better people, better human beings for this world and all of its inhabitants.

My eldest shows a love for animals that can border on obsessive and often be painful if she isn't reminded to be careful and gentle, which one day she will remember all on her own.

My youngest requires constant engagement, supervision and reminders to be patient with not just the people around her but herself, as well.  And I know, she too, will one day remember this on her own.

We teach them manners on a daily basis, remind them to share, redirect their curious little brains from danger to safety. 

We teach them to love the Earth, love their fellow human beings, love the animals and plants the gods and goddesses have provided us with, love the weather we are blessed with, even the nasty kind because each in their own right, has a purpose and in our religion, respecting that purpose is the best thing you can teach someone.

Respecting anyone and anything for their purpose is something more people should be taught at a young age.

I have caught flack for teaching my children our religion, Paganism, from my own blood.

All of this lack of respect, this lack of acceptance for difference, is the main reason leaving my hometown was not a big issue for me.

Leaving my mom and sister, starting something completely new and different with my husband and children is both exciting and downright terrifying.  My comfort zone is gone.  I know very little of the layout of this city and it has been years since I have been a part of it...

But my want for returning here is still so much stronger than I ever expected.

I know now, looking back at all the strife my blood relatives have caused me over the years and deciphering their nonsensical psychotic ramblings, they will never change, they will never accept me and nothing I do will ever be enough.

So it is time to close this chapter of my life and start a new one. 

And maybe, just maybe, I won't need to end a chapter of my life like this, ever again. 

I know this is a whole new start for us and I want to take full advantage of that fact.

To new beginnings.....

Crazy Is As Crazy Does: An Introduction

I must admit to you all, at first, I was extremely apprehensive about writing this blog for all eyes to see.  And then I got to thinking, why not share my experiences as a "crazy person" with the world? 

I put "crazy person" in quotes because everyone has a different definition of what makes someone "crazy".

That's a good question: What is crazy?  Well, let's take a look at the different definitions of "crazy", shall we?

CRAZY:

Adjective, crazier, craziest.

1. mentally deranged; demented; insane.

2. senseless; impractical; totally unsound: a crazy scheme.

3. Informal. intensely enthusiastic; passionately excited: crazy about baseball.

4. Informal. very enamored or infatuated (usually followed by about): He was crazy about her.

5. Informal. intensely anxious or eager; impatient: I'm crazy to try those new skis.

6. Informal. unusual; bizarre; singular:  She always wears a crazy hat.

7. Slang. wonderful; excellent; perfect: That's crazy, man, crazy.

8. likely to break or fall to pieces.

9. weak, infirm, or sickly.

10. having an unusual, unexpected, or random quality, behavior, result, pattern, etc.: a crazy reel that   spins in either direction.

 Noun, plural crazies
 11. Slang. an unpredictable, nonconforming person; oddball:a house full of crazies who wear weird clothes and come in at all hours.

12. The crazies, Slang. a sense of extreme unease, nervousness, or panic; extreme jitters:

The crew was starting to get the crazies from being cooped up belowdecks for so long.

Idioms

13.  like crazy,

1. Slang. with great enthusiasm or energy; to an extreme:
   We shopped like crazy and bought all our Christmas gifts in one afternoon.
2. with great speed or recklessness:
   He drives like crazy once he's out on the highway.

Well, now that we have all of THAT information.  LOL  I prefer to refer to myself, if I must, as number 11, a noun, an unpredictable, nonconforming person, oddball.  

Yep, that about sums it up in definitive terms.  

But what about the non-definitive terms?  What I mean to say is, what makes a person "crazy"?  

Everyone on the planet has a different definition as to who/what a crazy person is.  I consider myself a "crazy" simply because I have a very uncontrolled case of bipolar disorder emphasis on depression, along with PTSD, disruptive sleep disorder, severe generalized anxiety, postpartum depression,  borderline personality disorder and self awareness issues.  

I'm a wallop of a mix, aren't I?  LOL 

Keeping myself sane, patient, calm, collected, resourceful and rational are difficult tasks for me every day.  I wake up every morning and I have to test the waters a little bit for about an hour or so to see if, after I take my morning meds, I'm going to be so irritable that I would rather rip someone's face off than look at them.

I can't help it.  I never know what kind of mood I'm going to be in when I first wake up.  I wonder what that's like?  To just wake up and have a refreshed feeling about yourself....I bet it's nice.  I bet it's nice to know that you aren't going to turn into an irritated monster bitch because of one thing that happened to you early in the day or even yesterday.  

Things need to change, though.  Lately, I've had more irritated moments than my regular mood swings and it's affecting my relationship with my husband.  I need to fix this....I need to fix me...

If I don't, I fear I may lose my dear sweet husband forever.  I love my husband, so very much.  And imagining a life without him, without my best friend.....well, that's a life I don't want to live. 
 

So I struggle, endlessly, to keep a level of calm that I think is "normal" when all I want to do is rage out and throw things to get my point across but my rational brain kicks in then and I maintain my calm and continue on with my day.  

If my rational brain does not kick in, however, then things go south, very, very south, very, very quickly  .

I guess what I'm trying to get across is that I have to TRY to stay sane, every day.  How many other people can say that?  

I mean, I'm not naive.  I know there are other people out there who suffer from these mental disorders/diseases daily just like I do but at the same time no two people are exactly alike.  Therefore, no two mental illnesses/disorders/diseases are exactly alike.
  

I have a perfect example:  My husband, Adam, is ADHD, bipolar emphasis on manic and has generalized anxiety, as well.  

He does not require daily medication to stay sane.  To stay....normal.  

He controls his ADHD and bipolar with many coping outlets he has learned over the years that work well for him.  

I have looked to my husband for so much advice and comfort in my battle to remember who I was before my bipolar and anxiety took over. 

I have begun seeing a psychologist who has taken the time to check and see which diagnoses actually apply to me so I can get the right support and medication and coping mechanisms for what I actually suffer from.  

There's a thought, why do you get told that you "suffer" from these syndromes, diseases, disorders and conditions?

Is my very existence considered "suffering"? 

I have so many mental health disorders that no one ever really gets into the physical ones that do not in any way shape or form help with my mental health disorders.  

For instance, I have IBSD, that's irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea.  Yea, I take about thirty 2mg loperamide (otherwise known as Imodium) per day just to control my IBSD symptoms. 

The extensive research I've done on the topic shows that only and I mean, only, loperamide, Imodium does any good to make these symptoms bearable in daily life.  

Without those "magickal" little green pills I am left with this awful need to run to the bathroom every time my guts start to ache because I know sooner or later, if I don't make it to the bathroom, I will crap my pants.

As a 33 year old adult do you know how embarrassing that is? I'm sure you don't.  If you do, then believe me when I say, I believe and understand you and I hate it as much as you do.

I have to take extra special care of what I eat and when and how much because if I'm not careful I may end up having to stop on the way to my next destination to crap my brains out.  Not only is it foul smelling because my body hasn't had appropriate time to digest everything but it is is annoyingly time consuming.  I mean, come on, thirty minutes in the bathroom at least three times a day is an hour and a half of waiting for my body to decide what it wants to do with the food I put in it.

Then there's the anxiety, which doesn't help any of my issues, at all.  Anxiety instigates my GI tract to be even more irritable than it already is.  It makes my muscles tense, my bones begin to ache, my nerves in my lumbar spine that are already irritated begin to burn and throb, my entire body is thrown out of whack when my nerves are off.  

Add in serious chronic pain issues not even related to the constant state of panic my body is in and it gets mind boggling tasking just to exist.

My sleep is disrupted by pain, anxiety, nightmares from PTSD...everyone tells me I need to relax, get rid of stress in my life and focus on myself more often.

How do you get rid of stress that is present, literally, because you are alive? 

My anxiety is as much a part of me as my right arm is. It's just there, I can't hide it for very long, I have to learn to properly cope with it.

You learn how to exist in this space with that never ending sense of panic.

I don't like how those who are diagnosed with mental diseases or disorders are suddenly under this stigma in our society that they're mentally unstable and their brain function is never considered quite "average".

What is with labeling everyone and what the hell is "average" anymore?

You would think with today's ability to receive knowledge at the tips of your fingers we wouldn't need to label people, at all.

No, we feel the need to label and peg hole people, tell them that this is what's "wrong" with them and shove pharmaceuticals down their throats in hopes to make them feel like....well, like everyone else, like people "should".

I think we need to take a step back and really check into the big picture of what we're doing to the people in our societies with labels and cultural standards and rethink how we categorize the human beings around us.

So here I am Society, one of your crazies, out of the closet and into the light for all to see.

Watch out, I'm crazy....and crazy is, as crazy does.

Hah! 

Today's Question: Where the hell did I put that list?

I feel like I've lost my mind lately.  I have had so much on plate, it's indescribable.  I can't believe, looking back that I've made it through all of this with so many underlying/other issues going on as of late. 

Let me explain, well, try to explain.  I've had difficulty articulating my thoughts lately in every fashion imaginable (written word, spoken word, hell, even stick figure drawings are a task).  I have an involuntary muscle spasm in my neck and left shoulder that whips my head violently and painfully backwards. 

I don't know if this is doing any damage to the area that was supposedly "fixed" by my back surgery in May of 2014 but no one seems particularly concerned about the fact that I'm twitching except for me and most of my family and close friends. 

I know it's a side effect of my medication for my bipolar disorder.  I KNOW this because it all started when they switched me from 10 mg to 15 mg to try and better control my mood swings.  Pfffft. 

Not only are my moods no better but now I may have a permanent, medication induced, tic.  Wonderful.  Ha!  Sarcasm, I guess I can at least keep it light-hearted in my mind still.  So that's a plus.  I suppose, I use sarcasm to cover my fear. 

My fear of the unknown.  What's going to happen to me?  Is this permanent?  Will we be able to make all the necessary payments for our new home?  Will I be able to organize and live well in our new home?  Will I be able to keep myself sane if I'm coming off my bipolar medication and going on a new one if I'm home alone with my girls most of the time by myself?  

I've never lived by myself before.  I've never lived away from my mom and my sister before in my ENTIRE life.  I've been living with them BOTH for 28 years. 

I'm 32 years old and I've never left the house on my own.  To live on my own, away from my family.  I've had a want to live on my own for years....YEARS. 

However, two things have kept me in my home with my mother and sister.

I'll admit to the first one, free and clear.  Living on my own scares the ever loving crap out of me.  It's the whole fear of the unknown thing again.

I'm sure some of you are saying, so what's the other thing?  What could possibly make someone want to live with their mother and sister for their entire adult life so far?

Well, I'll be honest again here.  They've needed me.  They always HAVE needed me.  Ever since I hit adulthood and my mother's health and general life took a turn for the worse and started spiraling down the drain she's needed me.

How can you deny your one and only parental figure that's ever been there to support you through all of your stupid childhood decisions and idiotic young adult life mistakes?  How can you sit there and look them in the eye while they are tearing up in front of you and say "No, I can't help you"?

Can't or won't some will ask?

Well, I can't anymore.  I know that deep down in my heart, deep down in my soul I know that I absolutely can not and will not help them any longer.  I just can not.

It hurts me, to say all of this is hurting me.  I feel it in my bones, how can I do this to my mother?!

SOMEONE HELP ME!

I feel like screaming it every single day.  Every.  Single.  Day. 

I want to scream, I want to tear my hair out and just lose my shit completely....

But, I can't do that. 

I have to be a responsible adult.  I have two daughters and a husband to worry about now.  I can't keep this up.  I'm spreading myself far too thin and things need to change in order for me to survive. 

I barely sleep, I barely eat....

I can't remember the last time I took time for myself...only me time. 

It's like it doesn't exist anymore.  Time to myself, I mean.  There's always one thing or another that needs tending and it always involves someone else and their problems that I get sucked into because I care FAR too much for people who don't care nearly as much about me and I get lost in the shuffle.

I looked in the mirror the other day and barely recognized the pale, zombie eyed, gaunt looking individual staring back at me.

What am I doing to myself?  I worry this much about everyone else and about everything with my family and end up getting hurt in the process.

 Someone, save me.  I can't FIND my lists.  I make them and I lose them.

It's a fucking vicious circle because I have no fucking space to myself.

Gahds!  I just want to move and be done with it and have space of my own!  FINALLY!

So much is involved in that process though....oh so much.

I need my lists.  Goddammit.

Where the hell did I put that list?  

(see, eventually, it all comes full circle.  welcome to a day in my mind)

Yours truly all,

One Crazy Momma