Today was a BAD day...

4 years, for years since I posted anything... since I decompressed in blog form... well tonight I needed to type.  It was a bad day.

Today, right now, I am sitting in my dark living room because the idea of sleep is terrifyingly unreal to me. It cannot happen, It will not happen, and I can only change it by taking medication, which at this late hour will create a "mombie" in the morning, and I have responsibilities that need to be handled (what's funny, to only me, is that this morning in Sunday school we talked about being responsible).

This bad day began as Not a bad day.... but in a matter of hours, and through many colliding coincidence, there it was... the WALL of AWFUL.   My brain, my body, my choices, what I allowed others to project on me, my reactions... all of them bricks in the wall that so easily is built.

There are the usual things that are mortar to today's bricks. Chronic Pain, and Depression...

I have been working through depression, getting counseling and being defined as a highly functioning depressed person; (as my doctors says I'm such an optimist, it's a very different kind of depression).  To give clarity,  just under a year ago, I begun sliding down a small slope, to a dark place, that felt very familiar. It's one thing to be a depressed teenager and hide behind childish outbursts and youthful "angst" but now as a grown up, as a wife, and mother I had to keep it together.   As I am healing I find that there are more good days than bad, but the bad haven't disappeared.  I'm not sure if they ever will.  So I carry this brick with me, most days it's just a thing I carry and keep in check (prayerful that God will deliver me from this, to receive healing for).. but today is was as thick as a concrete cinder-block.

Chronic pain has been part of my life since I can remember. There were moments growing up that I didn't understand how people just did things - like move, like play, like live without having to stop, without have their bodies punish them, without over the counter meds... from Migraines, to joint issues, to lower back, hormone and organ issues... I know that there is a bigger picture, and although I and many others have prayed for healing, I sit and wait on the Lord for his plan, and His glory in my life.I am reminded daily that I am, sort of, a medical freak show.  I wish that I could have some kind of title.  When you say to someone oh it's lupus, or cancer or fibromyalgia people have a picture, they understand the concept.. not that I want those things, but to be able to have people grasp some idea of what I  deal with... ... to not have people go numb to my life.  Like today, today I felt as though my husband was numb to my pain.  I'm not asking him to feel it for me, I'd never wish that, but to be so insensitive to it... BRICKS.  First brick was the hurt, that he didn't care about my body. The second brick, and the one I'm more ashamed of, was jealousy.  HE can be numb to my pain - I want to be numb to my pain... I want to not feel it, for a day, an hour.

The bricks are heavy, so heavy. 

I was in a car accident 4 weeks ago, nothing major - just some whiplash.  JUST whiplash... meaning my body hurts to turn, to lift with my right arm, the numbness in my hand makes grip and any form of work, like mothering, and house keeping, and wife-ing, hard... To add to the other physical problems I tolerate daily.  My head feels like a bowling ball stuck on my stabbing or aching neck muscles - each so small and so strained that it's like burning threads under my skin...  'fine lines of agony' is my new pet name for this.  Today I moved too much, didn't rest enough, pretended I was fine too often... and now as I lay in my bed my very bones cry in pain.  the muscles so rebelling against the rest they needed earlier.  My joints ache as if I were old and feeble, and it was a damp day.   The physical is almost unbearable... these are more bricks to line the wall, to add height, constructed with the mortar.

Colliding coincidence like being invited to dinner, to arrive and the hosts having eaten not just supper, but also finish dessert before we arrive.  Having to serve myself and Lil Mister and then eat alone in someone else's kitchen... why did i go? Was this worth not being at my own place? I went because  I didn't want to feel alone....  Why did I sit quiet? Why did I then go, and make conversation, and pretend like I wasn't hurt? Why did I act like I wasn't lonely in a house full of people? To smile for my child, who asked why we were last and no one waited... to make excuses that came too easy.  Hide my emotions... because... because that is what I do.

So very heavy.

Husband is working extra hours, working really hard for us, to provide for us, to help those he loves, and with extra time help those who need his help.  It's honorable, but lonesome.  I crave my husband, I crave his touch, his heart, his soul.  Lately, in the fog, I feel far from him.  Not emotionally, but just far. My days are home are full of teaching (homeschool momma and glad to be one), trying to clean something, and trying to stay on track of my week with multiple MVA-treatment-plans added into my normal routine.  His days at home are spent catching up on house jobs and honey-do lists that he gave himself, or resting from the hard hard working, physically intense job he has.   So I put on my happy face, and smile as he goes off to save the world... I'll hold down the fort and one day when life slows down I'll get him back.

I think I'm more needy for this since the depression.

Is that something I can say to him - "Hey husband, I know you're doing this great stuff for me, for the family, for friends... but I'm dealing with the mental illness that you don't quite understand, or really have ever had experience with, and so I need you to stay and be near me, and I can't tell you why, cause there aren't any words for it... but you just need to get it... so yeah, do that. cause I'm sorta falling apart in small pieces all over the house and i don't' want to lose myself as I pretend to play house, and you never wanted a mask, but I'm wearing a mask so that you can have less stress and so that our goober can have a great home life.... so h!e!l!p!"  Ahem... So just say something like that?

While sitting on my couch, vegging out and eating frosting from the tub, Betty Crocker for those who need details, I felt completely void.  nothing. well not nothing. I felt the dense dark fog drift around me. The hurt and pain settling in for a long night. so nothingness.  I felt nothingness.

The wall of awful is something I can't really picture well, it's got brick layers piling up, but thick mortar to secure them where they lay, and yet it's full of holes. I know it's not a strong wall I know that hope and faith often topple this wall.  I know that they will ... but somehow laying in my bed tonight didn't feel hopeful, i didn't doubt - I just didn't think it was for now... I know it's not for now.  I know the fog will lift, and I know it's not tonight, and might not be tomorrow...

What do you call that ... faith and hope for not now.  the wall hurts me, the wall crushes me, the pain drives me to a point I didn't know i could get too, the ache is bone deep bring slammed into a wall... and I will endure because it won't last, it won't be my final chapter, but it is this chapter.  it is this moment, it is the current state i'm in. 

Right now.

Do I become a realist/pessimist in my fog, and instead of becoming suicidal (again) or socially isolating myself, a lump of flesh, I just become this. Is this what being an extreme optimist, with a faith stronger than she thought, looks like when shes wading through the fog, when she's crashed into a wall of awful?

...

I feel like I need a vacation, and I needed it 3 months ago.  I need a maid to clean my house because I can't seem to grasp my inner Martha Stewart, and without this key element I would get vacation only to return to a mess I would have rather stayed in, and stayed in denial about.  (Do you feel me? are you picking up what I'm putting down... if so, would you come by and do that with my laundry?)

A time without pressures of myself, without the failures ad a housewife, and the time to sleep, un-medicated.  oh maybe a chance to write again, it's been to long, to paint for joy, to eat chocolate for breakfast and lunch, and have cheesecake for dinner... well a girl can dream can't she.
...

It's now after midnight and my brain is more and more becoming less and less coherent... so I will end with the hope that one day the wall will fall, and until then take comfort in the fog and pain that I know so well... as sad and as awful as this is.