Home Life – Page 2 – FragileSound

Assessments Suck

Having an invisible, stigmatized disease sucks. The worst part, though, in my opinion, is the process of getting treated. Because FIRST you have to prove it. Uuuuuuuuuuuugh.

It is worth it, because eventually these physicians/therapists/social workers/etc can make the pain less.

But first it is stupid clinical worksheets (“On a scale of 0 – 5, how much do your symptoms interfere with your daily life?”) and gateway clinicians trying to figure out if you are displaying drug seeking behavior before letting you speak to a real psychiatrist. First, you have an hour or 90 minutes of being questioned. It may have taken you months to work up the nerve to say “I think I need help,” but you have to have an entire session of work done before anyone will do or say anything helpful. And if anything, going into an inpatient facility is harder!

All of these places and all of these people are worth it. And these hurdle exists to protect patients from bad diagnoses as much as to protect providers from fraudulent people but AAAAARGH. There has to be a better way.

It isn’t just for us adults, either. My 5 year old started have self destructive, self harming meltdowns and NO ONE would help us. I was on waiting lists to see providers that were YEARS long. Finally, after several months of searching, we went to see someone with an amazing reputation who ONLY took cash payment. Because he could see us within a month. Then we had two multi hour sessions, one with us and one with just Jujubee, before we could even start making a plan for her. We were in terror of her behavior for about year. Autism? Depression? Did I do this to her because I’m mentally ill?

Verdict: Anxiety. We have a game plan. We are changing a lot of the way we live to help soothe her and to teach her to soothe herself. But WHY did we have to suffer and beg for a year to get here?

Clutter Makes it Worse

Moving sucks. If our living environment impacts our mental health, and most experty experts agree that it does, then moving is signing up for a serious downgrade on mental security.

First, you go through the filthy job of packing and cleaning the old place, then you are left up to your eye teeth in boxes. Boxes of pre-curated clutter and junk with enough sentimental value that if you can see it you want to keep it.

We are up to it in boxes of clutter right now. We have unpacked enough that we are able to live quite comfortably, but there are stacks of untouched boxes in the corners and about a fifth of the main living space is crammed with them. We have been officially in the new place for 7 weeks. My mood is swinging all around, and I’m struggling to stay vertical all day. It isn’t pretty and we are all suffering for it.

I’m sorely tempted to throw away any/everything still in boxes, then I remember that it includes my photos flash drive and I start wonder what other important things I’m forgetting about, so I have to go through all of it. Sadly, for every awesome find like my flash drive I know there will be a dozen or more little objects that I neither want nor need that I will have to deal with. Broken pencils, sentimental knick knacks, things that I received as gifts that no longer make any sense but still carry a burden of obligation.

How will I cope? What do you recommend? Well, it is obvious as I write this that I need to get the unpacking and secondary purging f-f-f-finished. This is less obvious when the kids are demanding entertainment and the laundry needs doing, and homeschool, and dinner, and and and.

Maybe working on one box, not necessarily emptying it, should become part of my after-Rosebud’s-sleeping routine. In our old home I got up nightly to exercise and work in my journal. Maybe reinstituting that will help me feel less like I’m drowning in unfulfilled potential and suicidal resentment.

My Bullet Journal/BuJo

Do any of you all use a planner? What about a journal? Do they help you? In high school I mocked the spiral-bound planners they issued us at the start of each year, but I was obsessed with Franklin Covey planners in college and when I was working. My family nicknamed my little black zipper binder “The Bible” because it was just about the size of that esteemed tome. I was never without it.

“The Bible” Planner

Then I got my official disability notification and started receiving SSI benefits, and my focus shifted significantly. I went from trying to survive when I couldn’t hold down a regular job, and balancing a perpetual circuit of odd jobs, applications, interviews, and contract positions; to the quiet, inward focused lifestyle of someone managing a small household and a chronic illness. I would easily go weeks without a single appointment, resulting in pages and pages of very expensive blank pages. Once I started having children I had already converted to using a cold sterile e-calendar on my smart phone for planning. Like everyone else.

In all that time, I also kept journals. I have done that on and off since my Grandma Mary bought me a diary at Disney World when I was six. As a sick mom, though I hardly had time. My rather vast collection of blank books and fountain pens started gathering dust. I wasn’t working my way through them any more.

Then I heard about bullet journaling. I thought it was just one more crazy trend the hyper-productive mom at my La Leche League was on about, but the term kept coming up. About 18 months ago, I visited the Bullet Journal Getting Started page and re-purposed the pretty little journal I hadn’t written in for three years.

Now, the internet is full of pictures of artfully customized, gracefully lettered BuJos in brand name, dot grid hard-covered notebooks. There are an equal number of images of elegantly minimalist, simple, graceful spreads. Here, let’s look at some.

PICTURE: Bujo Hand Drawn

PICTURE: Bujo Minimal

Now, I have been doing this for 18 months. My first volume was in a wide ruled 8 by 5 fancy little journal. Today I’m using a discbound 8.5 by 5.5 notebook with a combination of IQ360, Circa, and Happy Planner products. I have some ultra fine felt tipped pens, some Mildliners, and get on kicks of using stickers and washi tape, but on a day-to-day basis I use a mechanical pencil and and the pages get decorated with the occasional squiggly line. Wanna see a working BuJo?

Daily entries from my first BuJo, January 2017

My BuJo. Toddler scribbles & missed days of tracking

What system do you use to keep your days in order and your worries somewhere other than your mind? Do you have a favorite product? I would love to hear about it.

Clearly, I’m experimenting with affiliate links. If you enjoyed this article at all, please click through on the links and explore the products that I’ve been using.

Crying in Public

At the dentist last week we got bad news. In response to this bad news, I did the entirely rational thing and burst into tears. I managed to contain it in the car in the parking lot, but it was still utterly embarrassing.

I was set off because both of my girls need fillings. Big Jujubee was supposed to be getting hers, but the laughing gas wasn’t enough to keep her calm. We had to schedule an appointment for oral sedation in the office. Little Rosebud’s cavities developed like lightening, and now she’ll need to be under full anesthesia for multiple crowns in April.

Rosebud found the helmet and the dress in the dentists waiting room, and it was focusing on sharing little baby cosplay with everyone on the internet that got me centered enough to move forward. I’m still having nightmares about the tooth troubles, but the kids are going to be ok. I keep reminding myself that we did our best with their teeth, and this happens sometimes.

Hello world!

Hi. I’m Bekkah and I’m here because I’m super depressed.

I’m not completely sure what I intend with this blog. I refuse to believe that I’m alone in being a parent with significant mental health issues, but it seems that when I look for other people like me I find lots of almosts and kindofs. I don’t intend for this to be a place that substitutes for health or therapeutic care, but instead I want to create a place where I can come share their everyday experience of being crazy and parenting crazy and maybe throw out some advice, share some good feelings, and make myself a little community.

This post is to see how WordPress works, honestly. I expect to do several low content post like this as I’m getting started.

Today, Alex is on edge from needing to have a conversation with a professor who decided to format her classroom participation credit in such a way that he could not ever succeed. She intends to enforce group seating and randomize those groups at every class session. This is in an upper division math class! I only have minor social anxiety, and that idea makes me want to self harm. Alex’s social anxiety is so much worse. He was near tears describing the situation. He contacted the Disability Services office for an accommodation letter, but has to deliver it himself.

Rosebud has a little fever, meaning that I’m missing my regular session of commiserating and checking in with my BFFs and Jujubee is missing her playdate. Too much screen time.

Stressful Days

We are less than a week from closing on our new home! Around the house, we are trying to pack and purge and clean. That’s the plan, anyway.

Naturally, Juju Bee has come down with a cold and Rosebud is threatening to catch it, too. Juju has grasped her own desire to move for about 9 months and even ran a little store selling fairy garden decor to earn money “for a house with a yard.” Now that is becoming real, though, she’s scared. She’s never moved before.

Change is hard for little humans, especially spectrumy ones. So we pack slowly, and we talk about where her things will go. We have a property walk through next week and we’ll have her help us draw a floor plan.

Rosebud is be too little to even play at being rational. Her toys are only getting packed when she’s asleep or not home because she becomes a creature of sound and fury when she sees her things go into boxes.

Alex, of course, is still in classes Monday – Thursday. This is a critical semester because he can finally start taking his professional exams once he passes these. He’s compartmentalized pretty extensively, but it doesn’t change that he’s weirder than a glow-in-the-dark three headed salamander these days. He is doing an absolutely wonderful job of being supportive, and he’s keeping up on his school work, but the stress has brought back his migraines and upset his gut. Poor man.

Me? I’m blessedly in my pre-ovulatory phase, so my hormones are not contributing to the issues yet. I’m anxious, though. I want to be working on the house. The condo is growing less livable as it fills up with boxes and the clutter combined with the psychological pressure is pretty awful. My heart races and my hands shake and that’s before I’m carrying boxes or laundry through the hallways choked with packed storage tubs.

How am I coping? Well, I have made the poor choices to skip workouts twice and binge on Halloween candy. I’m not eating enough green or protein I’m making lists and schedules for when we can finally move toward the new place and sitting at the desk staring at stuff the kids keep dragging out. None of this is good.

Resolution? Once I get Rosebud down for a nap I will dose Juju with more elderberry syrup then wade into the morass of things to pack for at least one box.