happy birthday... i guess

It was my 34th birthday today. I spent the day feeling a whole lot under the weather... mostly physically but emotionally as well. My son made me cry with his incredible need to be the only person in the room you talk to so when I was finally unloading some of my work anxiety and he was talking louder and louder and louder, all I could do was start crying. Unfortunately two hours later I am still crying. FYI - if you are seriously congested, crying is an incredibly bad idea!

Don't get me wrong. My birthday was great. Very cool and unique presents. Tons of well wishers on Facebook. It's just sometimes the aloneness is crushing. I love Toby beyond measure but lately he has been getting on my very last frayed and ragged nerve. He runs around talking in some psycho language like those damn blue people in Avatar, ignores every single command I give him, acts like he is deaf and blatantly ignores me telling him to do things. So after almost 3 years of being his mommy, I am at a total loss other than going back to spanking all the time - which I had let up on some. Spare the rod, get yourself a migraine headache!

Depression is a nasty friend. It is like that one girl that you so desperately wanted to be friends with in middle or high school. She was the cool kid and everyone was her friend. But looking back now 15 years after the fact, she was just a really mean bitch! She danced around you finding your weak spots and poking her fake nails into them, just enough to hurt, maybe draw a little blood. She criticized you just enough that you really thought she wanted to be your friend if only you would or could have bigger boobs or skinnier jeans or curlier hair. She laughed at you behind your back, maybe had some stupid things she would see if she could get you to do in your desperation to be part of the inner circle.

Now I'm not saying I want to be friends with depression. I'm saying that it is hard to walk away from. For every up in life, there are 20 crushing downs. For every small victory over one of your struggles, there are hundreds of things hidden in that locked box just waiting to come out. The other day I went to a MOPS meeting at FBCTT. I've been invited to this every month for about 2 years by a friend of mine. This month something crawled into me and I was determined to go. Every month Toby gets sick or I get a migraine or I am just so bone tired. This month Toby was already sick, I was already coming down with something and nothing was stopping me.

So I go to this meeting and an old friend of mine was going to be the speaker. And I was in no way prepared for the words that came out of her mouth. She told a story of sexual abuse that she had repressed for years, that came to the surface almost 10 years ago and she has been seeking healing from ever since. I am not an idiot and I know that this message was meant for me. While there was no sexual abuse that I have repressed (at least I hope not cause boy this would suck way worse when it's done if there was), there are years of emotional, physical and mental abuse. Some have been locked away behind little doors in my box and others I allow to sit on the surface to remind me not to go that path again. Maybe that meeting unlocked something but I have been hit with that bone crushing sadness again ever since. I am using this week to screw my head on straight. I will be using some unpaid time in the wake of Toby's surgery to try to find just a little bit of peace, enough to get back into the saddle and try again next week.