When Does It Turn Around?

Back in the summer of last year my ex-husband and I made a decision to both relocate to a new town. Both of us had a variety of reasons for wanting to leave the town we lived in and the fact that both of us were ready to leave at the same time is some kind of miracle in the wild world of post-marriage co-parenting. We both settled on a town and by August the move happened. I drove into town with all my belongings in a trailer and felt this optimism. I thought a fresh start in a new area was exactly what was needed. New job, new home, new options in the dating world. Everything seemed like it could finally come up roses for me for once.

After a few months of being here I learned that you can’t outrun the things that you haven’t dealt with. No matter where you go, things find you. So by November I found myself on the couch of a new therapist. Ready to start tackling a lot of different things head-on. I loved my sessions with her. She got me (she still gets me) and in a short amount of time I learned some things about myself that deep down I probably already knew but I had never been able to piece together. The number one thing was finally the recognition that I suffer from anxiety. The number two thing was that I struggle with “cognitive distortions” which is where I take a situation and instead of focusing on what good can happen, I instead distort it and think of what can go wrong and what might happen, or put my own thoughts about myself into other people’s heads when they likely haven’t even thought it. I assume the worst before anything has even happened. We are working on this regularly.

By February, after a short 2 months of seeing “The Pilot” which ended in some pretty heavy heartbreak for me, I finally realized I was exhausted of trying to deal with my anxiety on my own. I was tired of always being negative. I was tired of fighting a battle in my brain on my own. I called my doctor and asked to go on an anxiety medication. I started taking Citalopram the next day. Within 3 weeks I started to feel a shift in myself. Sure, I was still tired, but I felt my body calm. I felt happier. I felt like I was spending less time over-thinking everything. I felt like I was starting to get a version back of myself that I hadn’t seen in a long time. I even noticed that it helped me become more patient in my parenting my son.

These are the great things that happened because of my move to a new town.

But those things that I wrote about above. The ones I was thinking about as I drove through the town for the first time with all my stuff….the ones about more options for dating and finding my own home and having a great job. Those ones aren’t going as I had hoped. Those are the ones that just followed me from one town to another.

My job is good. I’m happy with it. But lately I have been struggling with motivation on it. For a variety of reasons. In January we were all sent to work from home because of Covid reasons. It’s now the end of May and I’m still working from home because we are waiting for our new office building to be completed. It seems as though this move to working from home has set me back a bit on my learning and expanding as I’m not always around people who can teach me. I’m finding myself going and watching TV at 2:00 in the afternoon instead of working or struggling to get out of bed and sit down in front of the computer for the day. This needs to change as my boss is starting to take notice somehow. And I will change it. But my enthusiasm that I had early on is wearing off. I miss that version of myself.

I’m still in the small apartment that I really don’t love. This place was supposed to be a temporary stop over until I found a place to buy. It was supposed to be so temporary that I kept all my home decorations in boxes in storage. Well….a few weeks ago I hung up a painting that I was gifted for Christmas. The housing market boom seemed to follow me from one town to another, and it turns out banks don’t love giving mortgages to single income moms. I was approved for a mortgage that is less than the rent I pay on my current apartment. The bank decided for me that I can’t even afford what I somehow manage to pay every month without issue. So it’s been back to square one of trying to figure out what I am going to do regarding housing. I can stay in this apartment as long as I want….but I don’t want to.

As for finding love and that one person who makes me feel happy? Well, let’s just say I have learned how to appreciate and enjoy being alone. They say that if you can enjoy being alone then the right person will one day enter your life and close that circle of happiness. I am doubtful that it is ever going to happen for me. I am content being alone. But there are times where I yearn to have someone who I can spend time with. Someone who I can get excited about when I see their name come up on my phone. Someone who cares for me and makes me feel important. I thought that maybe I had recently found that person, but today that illusion I was starting to create in my head got shattered in one polite, but upsetting phone call. So instead of going to his house where he was going to cook me dinner and I was going to bring over a nice red wine, I am now sitting in front of my computer, eating a frozen pizza I cooked up, and writing this. Frustrated beyond belief about how difficult it is to meet someone who wants to stick it out and create something with me. They all say that I’m amazing, that they really like me, that I’m a lot of fun…but then they all have their reason to not actually want to continue dating me to enjoy those things about me. So how much of that is actually true? I’m getting to the point where I think that even though I know I have a lot to give to a relationship, that I don’t think I’m destined to be in one.

Life has a funny way of bringing me up just a little bit and then sends things crashing down some more. Just as I start to find my happy footing, something happens and I’m reminded that life can take me down again. So I have to crawl my way back out of it, over and over again. I’m doing my best to focus on those little moments of happiness. But life has taken a lot out of me over these last few years and I’m tired. So incredibly tired of pushing forward and waiting for things to fall into place for me.

And Crawling Back She Came

Back in April 2019 I made a post on here saying that I had lost the desire to keep writing to the same intensity that I was before. I essentially halted writing in here immediately after I made that post. Some life events happened and I tried to go back to writing but I did it through a different blog name that I was using to remain anonymous. Something never felt right with that one, so this morning I decided to re-visit my old stomping ground and see if I can return back to the interest I used to have for writing about life.

Shortly after that April 2019 post my life got flipped upside down in a way that I never expected. No one ever stands at the alter, promising the very best of themselves, and thinks that it will take a downward spiral and end. We all speak those words in front of our family and friends. We make promises to one another that we foolishly buy into. But what a lot of us don’t realize is how much actual work is required in order to fulfil those promises made on that day. There isn’t any point of me going into the nitty gritty of what happened. It’s been 2.5 years now and a whole lot of shit storm that has taken place. I don’t need to rehash it all. My ex husband and I are in a good co-parenting place, our son is loved tremendously by both of us an life continues to carry on.

I will talk about the present and future. The good and the bad.

What triggered me to come back here and start writing is that recently I have come to the realization that I struggle with anxiety and mild depression. Deep down I have known for a while about the anxiety. Hell, I have even known about the depression. But I have pushed it aside. Because no single mom has time to deal with these things when life has so much going on that is taking priority. I have allowed myself to believe that it’s not that bad and as long as I am getting up each day then I’m ok. Wrong. About three weeks ago I put my son to bed and I went into the kitchen and burst into tears. Uncontrollable, overwhelming tears. I had dark thoughts that scared me. I didn’t know what to do but I knew I needed to call someone. I ended up calling my ex-husband as I knew he would still be awake. I sobbed into the phone. I honestly cannot remember much of what I said. I do know that I said that I don’t think anything is going to get better. And that I don’t want to be a burden on others. He got me calmed down and made me promise to reach out to a doctor to discuss anxiety meds and mood stabilizers. He also made me promise to find myself a counsellor to talk to. He said that I am destroying myself by regularly putting on a brave face for everyone while inside I’m breaking down. He is right.

I sent my mom a text telling her about what is going on with me. I never received a response back from her about it. It’s like the words “depression” and “anxiety” scared her off and instead of embracing me, I feel pushed away because she doesn’t know how to handle it. I have started to distance myself from my parents because I am so hurt that instead of asking how they can support me, they are instead acting as though I never sent that message and are trying to replace it by talking about anything else. I should talk to them about it, but I don’t have the mental strength to right now. So it sits as something to be added to my never ending “To Do” list.

Today I heard back from the counselling office that I had recommended to me. I sent in a very large intake form to them a few weeks back and when it asked me to list the reasons for needing counselling, I shocked myself with everything that I listed. It was a reality hit for me. Brutal honesty right there on the paper. I fought back tears as I hit “submit” on the form. I was told that my intake form would be looked over and then given to the Counsellor who they feel is best suited to my needs. The person who got back to me is a Clinical Therapist. Not a Counsellor. In my irrational brain the word “Therapist” leapt off the screen at me and told me “Wow, you must really be fucked in the head if they gave you to a Therapist and not a Counsellor.” I have always had this belief that there are three different levels of help depending on how bad you are.

3) Counsellor: means you have some issues but they are mild and just need a bit of help

2) Therapist: means you have some pretty big mind fuckery going on and have done a deep dive into a dark and horrible place

1) Psychiatrist: means you have experienced insane levels of trauma and horror and need the most intensive, maybe even hospitalized, care possible.

Don’t come at me for my irrational thought processes of the different levels of mental health care. I don’t claim they are right in any way. But inside of me I still feel that Therapist is a step higher than Counsellor when it comes to mental health help. Because of this thought, and seeing the word “Therapist” jumping out of my screen, my heart dropped to the bottom of my stomach and I felt a wave of emotion hit me. Tears tried to spring out of my eyes, but I’m at work and I needed to pull that shit together fast. I hesitantly sent a response to the Therapist and asked if she can accommodate an appointment next week after work. I’m still feeling a major mixed bag of emotions. There is some relief, there is some upset that I am at this place and there is some anger that I can’t even explain.

I have sat in counsellor’s chairs a few times since my marriage ended in 2019. I saw one provided by my former work place who I actually really liked, but she was only there to do three sessions and that was it. So I found another one who almost let me walk all over her with me putting on a brave face and making it seem like I wasn’t as bad as I thought I was. She didn’t call me out on my bullshit. She should have. Covid hit and after a couple sessions with her, I didn’t return. This time though, I have promised myself that I NEED to be open, real and raw. I need to talk about how insecure I am. I need to talk about how I regularly think that life isn’t going to get any better. I need to talk about how I struggle to put me first, mentally and physically. I need to talk about how I don’t think I’m someone who will ever find someone who will love me again. I’m not going to put a smile on my face and act as though I’m not struggling as much as I am.

This is a pretty heavy hitting return to the blogging world. But it is the exact reason why I decided to re-start this blog and see if having my thoughts flowing out of me onto the screen will be beneficial as I start to do the work to heal myself.

I have taken care of everyone else in my world….now I need to take care of me.