Breathe, Just Breathe

Today I am overwhelmed with a flood of emotions. You see, 27 years ago my son was born brain dead because I was in full on eclamptic seizures and the blood rushed away from him to save my brain. I never got to hold him, never got to say goodbye and that Mother’s Day was spent trapped on a maternity ward without my child. I woke up this morning and wished him a Happy Birthday and I prayed to God for courage to get through this difficult day for me.

To further complicate my current state of mind, I found out last night, that one of my fellow bloggers, who helped me through a dark depression 6 years ago, took her own life in 2016. I was crushed and so saddened that this stigma that exists for people with pain, not mental illness but pain so overwhelming they have no idea what to do with it, drives some to take their own lives because it seems like a better option.

I am coming up on 2 months sober this Saturday, and one of the main reasons I became so fond of alcohol was because it allowed me to cry for my son, when I was so angry at God for taking him, and couldn’t feel anything but overwhelming rage. I remember playing music so loudly in my apartment and drinking, listening to the Cranberries, Zombie and at one point in my inebriation, tears began to flow. It felt good, but for almost 27 more years, I only cried when I was drunk, very drunk.

Today, I cry when I feel joy, when I’m sad, when I remember my dysfunctional youth and when I find out someone I cared for died way too soon.

The emotions are many today for me, and all I can hear in my head is Anna Nalick, serenading me, telling me to breathe, just breathe. That’s all I can do today, in this moment of sadness, as there is still hope because my heart can truly feel again.

#loss #sadness #ptsd #depression #sobriety #healing #healingjourney #breathe #breatheinbreatheout

HELP!!!!!! Seroquel Induced Writer’s Block

I need some help, desperately! I have been on Seroquel for over 1 month now and I am suffering from severe writer’s block, so I thought of an idea. I was hoping some of my readers would challenge me and give me a subject or idea on which to write. It is killing me that I cannot just sit down as I have in the past and just start typing away, but think that if someone challenges me, it will be the big kick in the ass I need! Comment below with your idea and I will do my best to come up with something (hopefully to the idea giver’s satisfaction) and get rid of this block.

I was also thinking of starting an idea box and throwing the ideas, including mine, into the box and pulling them out randomly when I am stumped.  Looking forward to seeing your challenges and ditching this block once and for all.

Nightmares: Is the Universe Trying to Tell Me Something or Is It Just a Side Effect of the Lamictal?

I’ve always been a vivid dreamer. My dreams are in color. People talk. I see faces and what people are wearing, and when I wake in the morning I can recall minute details that astonish my husband. I love when I have good dreams, like the one I had once that Eminem was coming back after he finished his bus route to take me on a date, but I absolutely despise the nightmares, such as the one I had last night.

Last night I dreamt of trying to protect my children and four puppies from a tiger that was attacking. We were confined to a little white shed with flimsy sliding doors, and when I saw the tiger outside advancing, I quickly tried to close the doors, although I knew they would not offer much protection. The tiger roared outside the shed and busted right through the doors. I feared for the lives of my children, but the tiger left them alone, and preyed upon a black puppy in the right rear corner. He advanced on the puppy, picked him up with his paw and proceeded to rip the puppy’s head right off his body. I saw the exposed bloody area of the puppy’s body where the head had been removed and then saw the tiger holding the severed neck and blood vessels and bloody tissue hanging, and then I woke up.  I was completely disturbed by this dream.

After I drank my coffee this morning, I began researching the meaning. When I was younger I used to have a dream dictionary. I do believe in dream interpretation, psychics, horoscopes, having a sixth sense, déjà vu and ghosts.  I also used to have a set of Tarot Cards and a Ouija board as a teen, and let me not discount my Magic 8 Ball. Call me crazy, as many people do, but I just think there are much deeper meanings in the signs and messages the universe sends us. Anyway, I found some pretty interesting information which absolutely pertains to my life right now.

According to gotohoroscope.com, “If you happen to dream you are being attacked or bitten by a tiger, it may symbolize repressed feelings.” Exactly why I am in therapy and on medications right now and probably will be for the rest of my life.  Also, “Seeing them in unusual settings may mean that your inner landscape has some things that need to be brought forward.” No kidding. I further read that, “If the animals are sick or aggressive, you may not be as happy with what you find within or going on around you.” I certainly am not happy with what I am currently finding, but I do have hopes that there is something bigger going on in my life and will eventually find some form of happiness and peace within myself, my diagnosis and my life.

I proceeded to look up black puppy and a puppy being injured, and found the following on auntyflo.com/dreaminterpretation… “A damaged baby animal, such as a puppy or kitten is connected with trauma in your life.”  Oh trauma, oh trauma, where for art though trauma? Let me count the ways I have been traumatized.

On the dreamingwizard.com, “A black dog could be something hidden-the unaccepted side of yourself.” Although I am being told  and being treated for bipolar disorder, and putting the pieces together with regard to the same, I find myself unable to accept the fact that I may have to be on medication for the rest of my life, and angry at myself for not recognizing the blatant symptoms years ago.   I also found an interesting fact that Winston Churchill battled depression on that site and used to refer to it as “The Black Dog.”

On dreaming the dreams.com, “A puppy in a dream represents a loved child. If it is a black puppy in the dream it means that he will grow to govern the household and to preside over its people.”  So what does it mean if the puppy was beheaded by a tiger? I can only believe the black puppy symbolizes my first born, Michael Joshua, who died one day later. The loss was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life thus far, and for some reason, I seem to be reliving it in one way or another everyday lately.

So is the universe trying to tell me something? Is there meaning that lies behind our dreams? From what I gathered this morning, it certainly seems possible. Or, it could just be the Lamictal, wreaking havoc on my psyche, but I am leaning the other way. I think someone, somewhere, is trying to tell me that with hard work, analysis and treatment, I will have sweet dreams someday. Who knows? One can dream, can’t they?

Misconceptions of Crazy

In June of 1995, I had my first exposure to a mental health ward.  When I was 23 years old, I ended up committing myself to a locked unit, one year after I experienced the traumatic loss of a child I had carried for 8 ½ months. I naively took a week’s
vacation from work to admit myself, with the belief that I would receive intensive counseling and get “over it.”

I was at a point where I could not sit still. I rearranged the furniture in my apartment on an almost daily basis. My knees were constantly bouncing.  I never felt safe.  I was constantly plagued with feelings of doom and dread. I worried of something awful happening to me, but this time never being found until it was too late. Recognizing my mortality at a young age stripped me of those feelings of invincibility most 22 year olds possess and left me petrified of the unknown.

Prior to my voluntary admission, to say I was angry at God was an understatement. I was volatile. I was full of rage. I was unstable and out of control.   I called off my wedding three times, quit my job because I hated answering questions about what happened to my baby, moved out of my apartment, was drinking heavily to numb myself and in complete self destruction mode. By June of 1995, I realized could no longer survive under these circumstances. I was coming unraveled. Actually, I was already unraveled like a tattered baby blanket that had been washed hundreds of times.

When I met with the psychiatrist, he immediately presumed I had bipolar disorder, threw me on Prozac, Lithium and God only knows what else, instead of helping me deal with the loss of my child. What I didn’t realize is that a psychiatrist’s main job is to medicate, not counsel.  I just wanted to mourn the loss of my child, the child I would caress and talk to every evening as I laid on my couch, awaiting his arrival.  The problem was that my M.O. was to disconnect from the trauma and I had done such a great job over that previous year, it was almost impossible to reconnect with the pain of the tragedy.  Over the past year, I would recount the story to people in third person, numb and emotionless, then become infuriated when they would express emotions that I could not.  But to fully understand the extent of the trauma, let me take you back.

My son, Michael, was born on May 5, 1994 after an emergency cesarean section because I had Eclampsia which had gone undiagnosed by my OB. At her office three days prior, despite the fact that my blood pressure was elevated, there was protein in my urine and I had gained over 13 pounds of water weight within one week’s time, she sent me home and told me to rest.  I was 22 so what did I know? I trustingly thought the doctor knew what she was doing.  I was so ill, I lost 2 days time. I have no recollection of the happenings during those days, I only recall waking on the morning of May 5th and feeling as if an anvil had been slammed into the middle of my skull with a mallet. My headache was excruciating. My vision was so blurry it was as if I was wearing 3 D glasses, and I was completely disoriented.  Somehow, I managed to make my way downstairs to my landlord to ask for help. She told me to wait while she got her car as she was going to drive me to the hospital.  I don’t know why or how I managed to get back upstairs to my apartment, but that is where she found me, in full eclamptic seizures, so she called 911.  I was rushed to the hospital by ambulance and my son, Michael Joshua was delivered immediately by emergency C-section. 

Apparently the situation was so critical that the doctor came out and told my fiancé and mother to pray for me, because her main concern was to save me now.  I almost died and was resuscitated three times. I awoke the next day in an ICU; frantically feeling for my baby bump but my belly was flat and tender. Where had he gone? What had happened? Where was my baby???

I was told the baby had been flown to another hospital in critical condition, and I was critical as well, too critical to deal with seeing him. My arms were bruised from being restrained to the operating table because they could not get my seizures under control. My blood pressure was uncontrollable, and I was told I was fortunate I did not have a stroke. I was told I was lucky I did not die. The thought of “luck” was incomprehensible to me at the time. My baby was gone, ripped from within me and now he was dying. Michael was brain dead due to the extent and length of the seizures prior to his delivery. 

I never got to see him. I never got to hold my son Michael, the little guy that would kick lovingly when I would sing and talk to him at night. Apparently my health was too fragile and my blood pressure couldn’t handle the additional stress of saying goodbye.  I had one pervasive thought: God took my baby. God took my baby!!! GOD TOOK MY BABY!!! Why? Why? What did I do to deserve this pain and punishment?  My abdomen is permanently scarred with a jagged vertical incision because they had to get Michael out rapidly and to this day, that jagged scar is a constant, painful reminder that life is never within our control.

Which brings me to the point of this post: .That was situational, right? The trauma, the PTSD, the anxiety, the post-partum depression, were all situational due to the loss, right? Yes and no. I am indifferent, because here I am again, boarding the same roller coaster, except this time, my daughter was attacked while away at school. And once again I question the existence of God! Who was watching over my child? Why would He condemn me to have to endure the pain of another one of my children being hurt? I am again, infuriated with God, and although the ways in which I’m dealing with it are a bit different, my emotions are reminiscent of the loss I suffered over 20 years ago. I’ve been catapulted back in time and all of my wounds are re-opened and fresh and new all over again. My counselor says that each tragedy which has gone dormant and remains unresolved, essentially becomes kindling on a fire, smoldering until something ignites it.

This October 6, when my daughter returned home to inform me of her horrific situation, all that kindling burst into flames. So here I sit, trying to write and work through them, trying to finally deal with them by putting them on an open forum. I have nothing to be ashamed of, right? I am human and as humans we can only take so much. There are days I feel like one more thing and I’m going to turn to ash from the burning flames, but I keep trying, and I’ll keep trying. I’m tired of carrying this unresolved pain and anger, and for the first time in my life, I am trying to confront it once and for all, no matter how long it takes.

Today, in all my darkness, I must be grateful for the ability to put my feelings into words. Whether it was God that bestowed this gift upon me or someone else, I must say I am thankful for the gift of creative expression, for without it, I’m sure I would implode.