Meds-- when to say "Enough Is Enough."

"Someone oughta give her some meds."

Have you ever heard someone say that to someone they felt was acting inappropriately?  A little too jolly, a little too much drama, a little too much non-conformity.

As a society, needing "meds" is synonymous with being a little "off."  A little less than what is okay for a "normal" person.  We can joke about meds-- take a Xanax-- you'll feel so much better....  but boy is it hard to admit you are really on them.

Besides being so unaccepted by society, the medications used to treat depression and other mental disorders can have multiple, major side effects.  Weight gain/ weight loss, tremors, insomnia, drowsiness, sexual side effects....  the list goes on and on.  Over the years I have suffered with depression, I really wish I had at some point started a spreadsheet with all the medications I have tried and stopped and the side effects.  I've been on Lexapro, Cymbalta, Zoloft, Celexa and I can't even remember the rest.  I've given up on trying to find the best medication and am just hopeful now for "the lesser of the evils."

When I "tumbled off the deep end" last summer, my current doc prescribed Wellbutrin for my depression and Xanax for my panic attacks.

The Xanax didn't really help the panic attacks-- it helped keep me from bursting into unstoppable tears (this was one of my main symptoms-- it was like I got to the top of a rollercoaster and once I started the downslide, the tears just would NOT stop.  I could cry non stop for 3-4 hours-- even if I wasn't sobbing crying, the tears just kept flowing.  I was starting to wonder if I might have some kind of eye infection instead of a mental disorder).  However, the quickened pulse, the shallow breathing, the feeling of falling, unfortunately is still present when I am in a situation that makes me anxious.  Fortunately, I have learned to cope better with those situations, and so they are farther apart.  My prescription is "as needed," and I've gone from "needing" several times a week to maybe once or twice a month.

The Welbutrin did help, after a while.  I know that this and other antidepressants take time to build up in your system and counteract the chemical imbalance in your brain that is causing your depression, but the waiting for them to start acting can be agonizing.  But eventually, they do-- they start doing what they are supposed to do and they really do HELP. This particular one even had no noticeable side effects, unless I can blame it for the ten pounds I've added but I think my distant gym membership is more to blame.

The hardest thing is stopping though.  Once the medication is in your system, you start feeling good.  You feel like you can actually accomplish things and not want to cry every 10 minutes. Even if you have physical side effects, you just feel BETTER.  As you start accomplishing things and getting out more and mending your relationships that have suffered so much from your depression, you start thinking maybe you've gotten through it--- maybe you are OVER your depression. ("Can't you just get OVER it?"--the worst thing you can say to us).  So you stop, or like me, you just start forgetting.  Then a couple of weeks later-- when you look at a sinkful of dishes or dread crawling out of bed (yes, I know we all love snuggling in our bed, but a depressed person often feels real, agonizing DREAD-- it's a horrible feeling) or just try to think back to a fun time in your life, you feel the tears welling up.  You feel your stomach churning.  You feel the feeling like you are falling again into a pit and cannot crawl up the steep, damp sides.

And you know.  You're not healed.  The depression is still a part of you, the medication was just masking it.  You know you are going to fall farther and deeper and faster this time.  Unless you go find that bottle, fill up your pill dispenser, and start over.  And wait.  And finally, thankfully, blessedly, you find relief as your brain chemistry once again evens out.

I had a big family event last week, and we traveled nearly 600 miles, after four sleepless nights finishing up decorations and last minute details.  We slept at a relatives and then at a hotel and I just got BUSY.  I forgot my meds.  I think I may have taken two or three doses over the last two weeks.  And I thought, just for a little bit, that I had had enough.  That this blog and my lifestyle changes and my time on meds had done the trick.  But I was wrong.  I'm not okay yet.  I still need the meds to get through the day, the week, the month.  I hope I will not need them someday soon, but not this day.  This day, I am still on meds.

Yours in healing,
Nena

What a Little Anger Can Do...

Do you ever get so mad that you have to just HIT something?  Yes, I know you're not supposed to hit your kids but sometimes you have just HAD it.  My solution is sometimes to throw something across the floor but it is usually something flimsy within reach, like a paper napkin, and the gentle float is just not quite satisfying, KWIM? Or the stack of papers I just spent an hour sorting and are now in a mess across the tile.  But the better solution, for me, my house, and my sanity, is to go out and DIG.

And dig I did, last week.  You see, about 7 years ago, we put in an impromptu pond in our frontyard (long story, but it involved divorcing neighbors, an old pond mold they had in their yard, and six forlorn little goldfish we couldn't bear to see die... you'd laugh if you heard the whole story).  In our rush to build it fast, we purchased a 6 foot pond kit from Walmart with probably the cheapest, weakest pump available.  Plus since it was in our front yard, it could only be 18 inches deep, per city code, to prevent drownings.  Pond aficionados know that the larger the pond, the more self-maintaining it is.  Well, our little 12 sq. foot pond needed LOTS of maintenance, and two pumps, replacement fish, several attempts at aquatic plantlife, and, well, we just gave UP.

There it sat, our once beautiful pond that drew oohs and aahs (it really was beautiful for about one summer), with about six inches of putrid, algae filled water that despite Mosquito Dunks made you feel like you were in a World War III with those tiny guys from Night at the Museum.  And every day, I set my eyes forward as I walked it past it, dreading the task it would take to empty it and then refill it with soil.

On top of that, there was this psycho plant called Mexican Ruellia. Beautiful cup shaped lavender blooms atop long stems of beautiful boat shaped leaves.  But in the center of the blooms lay these evil bomb-shaped seeds, and a drop of water would send them shooting into the air, randomly landing everywhere and immediately rooting and forming a new  clump!  The 4 inch pot I had stupidly purchased at the garden shop was now a 6 foot by 5 foot spread, interspersed with honeysuckle vine (yeah, that's a whole 'nother story) and Hackberry saplings!  Between the dead pond and the evil bomb seeds, an entire 10 foot square area right by my front door looked like a long abandoned field.  I knew I had to do something, and I knew a pallet and a half of flagstone lay in that wasteland.

Flung that baby as far as I could! 

Okay, so now that you know the backstory, why did I start digging?  Last Monday, I had pretty much just had it.  Fed up with my kid, my dogs, my mess, my business, and already starting to dissolve into that puddle of snotty tears I told you about (I know, bad image in your head).  I grabbed the shovel and my sneakers and started ATTACKING the Ruellia.  As evil as the seeds are, they are not too smart, and they were very shallow rooted, and within a few hours, I had cleared half the stand!  Inspired, I kept at it, and had finally cleared a space where I could stand and start shoveling out the water and gunk out of the pond!  Several spiders and rocks, and green slimy gunk piles later, I decided to give the liner a tug.  Well, it took a lot more than just a tug, but DANG it felt good!  Planting my feet and pulling with all my might, I yanked that liner all the way out and dragged it to the driveway!  Slowly but surely, the rest of the water began to seep into the old carpet padding on the bottom and then into the soil.


I looked around and mentally calculated how deep my soil needed to be to a) fill the hole, and b) give me enough space for some stabilizing sand and the flagstones. (I had laid the stones out on a blank piece of lawn as I took the pond out and there was more than a patio sized area there!  The stones had been stacked 3 deep around the pond.).   Satisfied with the day's work, filthy, and starting to feel the effects of working for 6 hours in 100-degree heat, I called it a day.

You can see the pond impression on the right.
Where the shovel is was 3 foot high Ruellia. 

The next day, I tackled smoothing and tamping the soil, and with my son's help (he had to redeem himself for making me upset in the first place), purchased 200 lbs. of sand and bender board.  My husband helped me that evening to attach the bender board to stakes, and we began to spread the sand and lay the stones.  The $4 solar lights uplighting my live oak had already started to flicker by the time we finished, and I sat down on the garden benches relocated from elsewhere to survey my now peaceful corner, shaded from the street but still close to my doorway.

I envisioned myself coming out in the evening with a glass of Moscato, or sitting down to chat with a customer picking up an order, but I know my life is not near that perfect nor will it be anytime soon.  I'll likely storm out there after another argument, or hide out to keep from having to tackle the dog pee in the hallway, but at least I'll know I made that spot (mostly) myself and that feeling will do so much towards my healing.  If you know who I am, and you're in the neighborhood, drop by.  I promise the mosquitoes are almost gone and I think I can find some wine somewhere....

My little peace corner.

Lessons from my Journey

Wow... 5 years have just disappeared into a pit of depression.  Twice, I have tried to recover this blog and share my thoughts on the world wide web for anyone, anywhere who maybe has gone through this journey to see that there is light at the end of the tunnel.  But then I just get stuck in the tunnel.

I'm recovering-- I really am.  I've come to terms with living in a family plagued by mental illness and all that entails.  I've been to the dark side of near suicide more times than I can imagine and my love for my family has been the one thing that has kept me alive at times.  I'll freely admit that I am in a place now that without those wonderful drugs we call antidepressants, I could probably not function without dissolving into a wet mass of snotty tears, often in public, several times a month.

My pit has taken its toll though.  Once a promising teacher, I left a campus where I was two steps away from getting booted out because I could not admit my failures and learn from my mistakes.  I've thought about going back-- financially we are struggling-- but the stakes are just so high, I can't handle the pressure.  Of course, pinching pennies is its own type of pressure.  My home, once welcoming and unique with its Southwest style and custom ragged walls, now seems dark and dingy and even more depressing.  But the task of repainting or the expense of repairs is even more daunting than I can handle, so I live with it and tackle a little each day-- at least cleaner, if not lighter.

So many times, I have just felt so ALONE but yet I am realizing as I am becoming more vocal about my struggles, that so many of my friends have struggled with depression, ARE struggling with depression, and I've decided that my voice, my story, just might help.

My problems are nowhere near gone.  I'm the mother of two children with very real, very debilitating illnesses and it just wears you down, mentally, physically, financially.  I won't go into detail on this blog about my kids and their battle, because they are very private and I have to respect that, but if you ever want to meet for coffee, I can share a little and what it's meant for us as a family.  Because of these illnesses, we decided to take a fledgling direct-sales business in home fragrance and jump in completely full time, so that I could have the time and flexibility to be with my kids in crisis as needed.  Unfortunately, this year, it's been so often that the business has not taken off like we planned and money is very, very tight.

But writing, sharing, opening up to my bare soul, will help me pull out of the pit and I hope it helps you or someone you know.  My hope is to write a new blog post at least 2-3 times a week.  My reality is you'll be lucky to hear from me once a week or even once a month, and if you do, you will know that at least I am getting better.

Blub.... blub... blub....

That's the sound of being underwater.  I started this blog almost two years to the day ago, to help me claw my way to the surface from a deep dark depression caused by just an overwhelming series of events in my family's life.  And here I find myself, two years later, looking around my living room, finding myself more underwater than ever.  Part of this can be attributed to nasty weather the past two days and overwhelming exhaustion from being woken up by a hot water leak.  But just a recent sense of always playing catchup and keep up and step up, and that's wearing on me.  I hope that reconnecting with this blog will be a tool to celebrate the little victories and let each become part of the rope that pulls me aground.

Weekend Warrior

As I enter another weekend I wanted to blog about my plans, in the hopes that this "added accountability" will keep me motivated as I tackle recreating my home. My father and sister are visiting next week, so this is the full weekend I have to work on my home. I still have a table full of Christmas (I collected it from all our rooms so I could start wrapping and putting in boxes all at one time). I've got to get the bedrooms ready for guests. I've got to get new pillows. I've got to clean out the refrigerator in anticipation of cooking for a crowd. I've got to shampoo a few spots the dogs have become too "familiar" with, if you know what I mean. AND I've got lots of grading to do as the grading period comes to an end.

But I also need to mentally prepare myself for their visit-- I know since we've been going through such a rough time as a family, everyone seems to approach me with both pity and oft-unsolicited advice, and it just seems to make me feel more depressed. I really need to get myself to where I can keep myself on an even keel. I hope I can find some time to squeeze in some walking this weekend too-- it seems to keep my mood up.

Why Recreate?

The name of this blog is Recreating Home... not like in recreation, but as in re- create, create anew, re-fresh. The past few years have been difficult. One major crisis after another, losing my mother to cancer, losing my mother in law to cancer, marriage issues, health issues, sanity issues.

As the year's progressed, I have fallen farther and farther from what is okay for me regarding my home, my body, and my life. For most of my years, I've felt great with what I have and how I look. I felt I had a beautiful home, beautifully decorated, and loved to entertain in it. I felt great about the friendships I had. Although I've always had a "large build," I felt sexy and in command at my weight of about 160.

But as struggles and tragedies piled up, I found myself "underwater"-- drowning in my depression and overwhelmed by my responsibilities. This year, I am determined to HEAL. In the process, I am determined to regain control of my home, my life, and my body. This will chronicle my journey.