Lost And Found Freedom Seeker

It really is no surprise that I was found. I’m not very good at hiding. In fact, I was always the first one found during endless rounds of the game we loved so much as children; playing well into the night to distract us from the blistering July heat smothering us with rancid summer boredom. Not that I was really trying hard to conceal myself, like when I was a kid. Part of me knew I would have to face the music eventually and just wanted this updated adult version of the beloved classic over with already.

When I set off on this haphazard trek in search of my freedom, I had no idea what would be in store for me along the way. I knew there were huge risks involved when it came to choosing the path less traveled, but I was too naive to see just how dangerous those risks really were. My body and mind were that of the adult I had recently discovered I had become, but my soul was still that of a child- unaware and unassuming. Wisdom was still such a long ways off for my seventeen years; seemingly more of an old wive’s tale, passed down from one generation to the next, to ease the burdening fears people have about aging past their youthful prime.

I always knew something was different about me. I wasn’t cut from the same cloth as the others were where I came from. Those people were wholly satisfied with their cookie cutter suburbia and the pretentious societal box requirements – instilled upon us the very moment we took our first breath after the cord was cut. They thrived in this realm of standardized constringency and predicated stringencies. I wasn’t. I couldn’t. No matter how hard I worked to try, or, sometimes even not to try, I could not find happiness, belonging, or purpose within the confines of this imperiously scripted life.

So off I went, set to rebel against the system, The Man, the middle-class suburban mindset, and anything else which forced conformity while promoting monetary dependence and materialism. It was my mission not be another Suzy Homemaker who had gone to some Big Ten university to establish a respected career and, immediately following, married a man who only focuses on growing investments and expenditures which add to his precious nest egg, coupled with golf getaways and strip clubs on the sly. There would be no dreaming of minivans, book clubs, or being the perfect Soccer mom with the perfect, but boring, life. Those were nightmares to me. Exactly what I was running away and hiding from. My dreams, I believed, would always be about adventure, emotional connections, and tapping into the well of passion within my fiery soul. About discovering my purpose, my sexuality, and who I was from one day to the next. About a life governed by my desires and regulated by my experiences. Freedom. Resistance. Feeling alive.

I wanted to get married and have kids, still, but on my own terms. Without the pressure to adhere to the strictly structured plan society had created simply to define one’s worth. I didn’t want to live by the book or be conventional in any shape or form because then THEY would win.

For a long time, I stuck to my guns and traveled anywhere that would lead me far from the life expected of me. I crashed on various people’s couches, worked jobs that would only sustain my most basic of needs, and took risks that reflected anything but the Good Girl image my childhood peers had strived to maintain. I had no rules, no boundaries, and no desire to be defined by the tenuous labels of someone else’s standards. There was no stopping me. Drugs, drinking and partying with other freedom-seeking souls trying to escape the democracy we never asked to join fueled my mission, and a fresh tattoo coupled with alternative piercings were displayed like a scarlet letter to show the world I would not live in compliance.  

I lived on the edge, defying everything that had been drilled into my existence from the moment I began to develop in utero. Anything to escape the nightmares dreams of mainstream suburbia haunted me with.

Somehow, though, they found me. Deep down I knew I couldn’t run from those phantasmal ideals forever. I came to realize through the course of my rebellion that conformity is more omnipotent than individualization and true freedom. My escape was futile and all in vain at the end of the road. It was impossible to live freely outside the constraints of the societal structure without feeling the insufferable weight of financial dependency once children and marriage became part of the equation. Society is an altruistic prison in which humans entombed themselves within, long ago. There is no liberation from it. Not when parenthood comes into play because everything changes when you realize you’ve been tasked with the responsibility of raising the next generation of freedom seekers and emulators.

I never expected my nightmares to come full circle the way they have. Never did I imagine that the one thing I spent years hiding from would become the one thing I wished I could have, but here I am. I feel like the world’s biggest hypocrite for it, too.

Yet, I also feel strangely empowered, as I have gained wisdom and understanding which most others will never be privileged enough to sample a taste of. Things I can use, not to fight against the system as ineffectively as my youthful naivety set out to do, but fight to better the system from within so my children don’t have to rebel against the miscarriages of justice which keep us all imprisoned by the labels of a cookie cutter society. And I cannot do it without dreaming of the life that I never wanted to live because I have no choice but to play the game necessary to put me in the position to change the rules once and for all.

Your “Secret Subject” is: Oh no, they found you. What do you do?

It was submitted by: http://dinoheromommy.com/

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts.  Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado 

Dinosaur Superhero Mommy 

Spatulas on Parade 

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver 

The Lieber Family Blog 

The Bergham Chronicles 

Never Ever Give Up Hope 

Simply Shannon  

Confessions of a part time working mom  

Southern Belle Charm 

Climaxed

 

The House Depression Built For Me

Have you ever heard the saying, you are what you eat? Well, I’m living proof that you live in who you are, too. With that being said, one can presume correctly that, because my life is a gigantic blackhole of kinetically-charged chaos, so is my dwelling, my homestead, my address of residence.

It is a level of embarrassment in my life which I’ve had a hard time coming to terms with, but somehow I have. I never imagined that I’d be in this predicament, not in a hundred thousand dreams of nightmares, but here I am nonetheless. I’m living in a house built at the hands of Depression, decorated on a recovering addicts budget, and maintained in unkempt upkeep by chronic pain. It’s not what I had in mind, but it has to do for now.

Long before I was a married mom of four hoodlums, it was very possible I could have been classified with an OCD diagnosis. My home was always a spotless level of clean, worthy of magazine ad showcasing. Each and every thumbtack, sequin, and screw, had it’s own place separate from the toothpicks, bobbypins, and batteries. Everything micro-organized into labeled containers within containers for maximum organization. Everything was always nice and neat, nothing in excess, lost, or wasted. I vacuumed twice a day, every day. I swept the kitchen even more, scrubbing it down, by hand, every night after dinner. Not a single lacy cobweb or dingy dust bunny could be found hiding anywhere, not even in the unfinished basement with exposed rafters and beams throughout the ceiling. I would cut someone with my stabby self if they even thought about leaving their shoes on in my house.

These days, if I even let you get through my front door- after reading you the riot act and forcing you to sign consent forms releasing me from responsibility over your safety, I’ll warn you to keep your shoes on, unless, you want the Plague or Ebola, that is. Every single wall in this house has been colored on. Any cabinet below adult waist-level height has been colored on and stickered, too. The flooring, paint-splattered original-to-the-house wood flooring, which still desperately needs to be stripped and rewaxed, is a gigantic step up from the carpet I tore out of here over the last summer. The same carpet that was brand new to the house when I moved in. The house is totally done with, destroyed merely by living in it, as you do. There’s no helping it anymore. It needs to be nuclear bombed. Or radiated and evaporated. At the very least, quarantined in one of those little life-sustaining bubble thingies until someone finds a cure.

Four years ago, I was in the middle of a really bad time in my life. A time that was dark, cold, and isolating, full of burning bridges and severed ropes to the emergency lifeboats  I mistakenly thought were weighing me down. I was fresh in the aftermath of recovery from an addiction to pain pills, stemming from chronic pain in my spine. Physicians were so quick to throw prescriptions at me, even before the final diagnosis was made! They allowed me the misperception off the starting gate, that the meds could actually help heal the damage, without warning me of the serious dependency aspect.

When all I wanted was answers as to how/why/where I was broken and a plan of action for treatment, all I got was more meds to mask the newest symptoms and the beginnings of immobility issues. Every time I tried to get someone to talk to me like a normal human being, I was blown off with the same spiel and more meds. After trying to get second, third, and fourth opinions, I was accused of doctor hopping to feed my arbitrary addiction. You know, the one they created in the first place! Never any real answers or treatment options beyond the meds, only a name to call my problem- Degenerative Disc Disease with Spinal Bone Spurs.

Within that time, my life had flipped, turned upside down, into the darkness of addiction, setting off a domino effect of misfortune, consequence, and debt that continued to follow me, long after I got sober. Way longer than I had ever considered, but, then again, I hadn’t even considered becoming an addict the first time I chewed up two Vicodin, instead of swallowing one, whole, as the directions on the prescription bottle directed. The doctors and pharmacists also failed to mention the living hell on earth the withdrawals are, that happen when the medications are cut off, as well. It’s the second biggest reason why the majority of people who are addicted to some kind of opiate, from Vicodin and Tylenol #3 to Morphine and Oxycontin to  Fentanyl and Heroin, plus everything in between, don’t stay clean. Here it is, straight from the horses mouth for you: The actual reason why the majority of addicts of any kind don’t stay clean for long, is that domino effect of aftermath that occurs after getting clean.

There’s debts to be paid from all the financial responsibilities neglected to pay for more medication. There’s no support system left, because there’s no trust remaining with family or friends, strangers can peg a train wreck headed their away rather quickly, and other recovering addicts are not the greatest support system, regardless of whatever AA/NA preaches, because everyone has demons of their own they carry with them. Most former addicts have arrest records that won’t get through the background checks every employer uses these days, prohibiting anyone, even the most deserving and longest clean citizens, from getting a second chance at making an honest living. No job, no income, and then there’s more debt. More government assistance. More shame, embarrassment, and discrimination for mistakes long gone and done with.

So, why not keep on using drugs, numbing all of the downer feels, drowning out the life that’s too screwed up to be fixed into anything better?

If I’m gonna live dirt-broke and dirt-poor, might as well be down in the dirt high, too.

I can’t say I blame a lot of them for that kind of reasoning. Had I not had the fire burning fierce in my soul, never liking being on all of those meds, consolidated with the blessing of a husband I have, I can’t say with any certainty that I would’ve been able to get out of the vicious cycle of addiction, otherwise. It was a really hard battle with the DDD factor, to find non-abusable medications that would ease the real pain, still there, long after the withdrawals passed.

What better time, than this perfect storm a-brewing, to find out Depo Provera was no match for my Fertile Myrtle self. I was expecting! Child number four! Right smack in the middle of the declarable national disaster of my life. Someone, certainly had a sense of humor, above me. Now I had a fourth child on the way, with chronic pain to manage resulting from a genetically inherited disease, while maintaining my recovery. That’s right at the time we moved into this house. After all the destruction and mayhem I had experienced in my last residence, it was a dream to me to be able to start fresh in a new home. I really thought this place could be the beginning of something great for my family, a stepping stone back into the social ball game, a place to feel proud and accomplished of all we had overcome. Little did I know upon signing the lease, that the real landlord for this new house was going to be Depression and it was going to redo everything I blueprinted the way it wanted.

During the course of my pregnancy, and the first months we lived in this new place, I was feeling really rough. My body was thrown into a permanent withdrawl type ordeal because the pressure of the growing baby irritated the spinal injuries and the pain meds severely upset my stomach. Coupled with the morning sickness that grew in intensity with each one of my previous babies, I was so very sick throughout the whole pregnancy. So sick that I had to be on round-the-clock nausea meds, administered every 3hrs & 55mins exactly, to prevent it from fully wearing off before the next dose kicked in, or else I couldn’t even keep the pill down long enough to dissolve before I wretched it back up. I wasn’t worried about organizing the house as we moved in, I just threw everything that wasn’t necessary for every day use into the hall closet or basement, to be stored until after I delivered the baby and could take the time to sort it all out. Without puking on it.

Furnishing the house was just as big of a challenge with a baby on the way, as the organization. Like I said before, there was plenty of destruction and mayhem before getting sober, so I didn’t have much of anything worth bringing along when I was starting anew. It was the unexpected pregnancy of the child now known as Stinx Majinx, that really threw my game plan through a loop. Since I thought my family was complete after the third, I had parted with the baby gear as I went through each stage, never thinking that the Depo shot would one day fail. The triple-the-retail-price sacrifice of Rent-a-Center in order to get us nice furniture on weekly payments without credit check play call was uprooted for the Secondhand-Family-Freebie pass play, so the budget could make room for this new addition.

The results are a mismatched mix-up of styles that look like I hired the local white trash redneck garbage picker as an Interior Designer. Another one of those happenings I had no intention of keeping the way it worked out, but once I went into labor, all bets were off, all remaining rights to my blueprints, revoked. That bundle of sleepless nights joy brought home the Baby Blues with her. At first, I accepted it as the familiar gig from the past, knowing it would wander out the same way it came in, riding the changing hormonal tides of post-pregnancy and new life. I couldn’t have cared less about the nitty gritty details of housekeeping. I was beyond over-tired, exhausted, drained. I was a sauntering zombie, unable to think clearly, focus my thoughts long enough to care for the newborn, let alone, three other children and a husband who is gone 72hrs a week, trying to provide financially for his family. Everything in regards to the house and it’s upkeep was loaded onto my back at this point and there was no one else who had my back, but my hubs. What good can a man do at the home when he’s already out doing good for the home?

In light of this reality, I saw the Cyclic Depression I’ve always suffered from, had snuck in under the guise of the addiction recovery, hiding behind it all along. The imbalanced hormones from the very normal Baby Blues gave Depression it’s chance to announce it’s presence, rearing it’s ugly head with an intensity unlike any time before. My mind was consumed, overcome, by a darkness that had been slowly seeping back in through the cracks and crevices of my brain since I had stopped abusing opiates.

Now, after four years of chaos, turmoil, and solidarity, this house is better off on an episode of America’s Worst Houses To Live In. If that show even exists. If it doesn’t, then my house should certainly be the inspiration for such one after this! There are so many times I find myself looking around at all that needs to be caught up on and bursting into tears. It’s not that I wanted it to be this way, it’s not what I had envisioned, and it’s not at all how I wanted things to turn out to be! Depression took over, engineering it’s own blueprint and hiring the lazy, half-ass carpenters, Recovery and Chronic Pain, to carry out the plans and influencing the interior design of the place. There’s finger prints on every surface, boxes to be sorted full of old clothes, toys, and books just waiting patiently to be repurposed, and stacks of laundry baskets that sometimes get emptied out from living out of before it can actually be emptied out by folding and putting everything away.

My floors are lucky enough to be swept and vacuumed daily. It’s a good week if the kitchen floor gets washed. Accidentally. By Stinx dumping out the entire 2 gallon water jug from the fridge, trying to be a big girl. It’s a great month when I remember to not only vacuum the bedrooms, but change the kids’ sheets, as well. The living room window could use a good washing, but why bother when the dog’s gonna press her nose right back into it the second I move out of her way… besides, if I want to clearly see the outside, then I’ll take my butt out there and enjoy nature up close and personal. Forgive me, also, because I have flower beds that haven’t seen flowers in them since I took up residence. My inner green thumb self is much better at smoking green plants than growing anything of anything color.

This house Depression has built for me may not be the house of my dreams, but it’s still my home. I’ve come to terms with the fact that it will take more work than I’m able to put forth effort for and more money for products, supplies, and equipment then I can afford to try to take back what Depression has created out of my home for me. Everyone and their mother’s uncle’s fourth wife, advises me to take baby steps to get ‘er done, but when you have four kids, presently all under eleven, you can’t complete such a large projects in pieces, without expecting everything previously done to come apart while you’re working on a new section. Because, well… life happens is why.

Life does happen, IS happening, and that’s what I focus on when the tears start to roll. Life is constantly passing by. What good would it do to wallow in the happenings that have already passed by instead of making the most of what’s actually happening right now? There’s comfort to be taken in the ever-changing moments of life, because nothing stays the same for long. That means the house that Depression built, with Recovery and Chronic Pain heading it’s crew, won’t last forever. There will be another house, another opportunity, another chance- to do things right next time, get life in order inside my life at home to go along with everything that I was able to get in order outside of my home during the time I’ve lived at this one. Fate is really pretty comedic in it’s ability to alter your perception of reality along with the course of one’s life.

Throughout the time I’ve lived in this house, I saw it as a cursed blessing, a positive turned negative, as my plans fell into what I believed to be the wrong hands. I now know that Depression was meant to build this house all along. Once it gets evicted and a new home to build, all by myself this time, in the works, it is going to be my turn to shine. This time. This time, I will have all of the tools the trio of Masquerading Contractors left behind, in my tool box. Those missing tools I never knew I would need until I learned from life that I did. Until I finally learned how to live in the moment, in the house, Depression had built for me.

A Game To Play

I bend for you at your will, yet you break me
I give you all I can of me, still you take it all
I feel for you deeply, but you cause me pain
I build your ego up, you only keep me small

On and on, ’round and around, we shall circle
Tied to you with binds, unseen by any others
Secrets leave me loyal, fearing them spilling
My only happiness is found in being a mother

You say it’s all me, I know I’m not your crazy
You think I’m just a bitch, I know you are, too
You act smarter, I’m wise to see that charade
You want to feel so powerful, I’m not like you

For now this must continue it’s fated course
There will be no forever after, no, not for me
One day my window will open wide and bright
A fresh start, a new life, I will set myself free

Treating Depression: Soldiers of Misfortune Need An Arsenal To Fight The War Within

There are days when I feel like I’ve had well more than enough. That I need to run away and never come back, leaving everything behind. I’ll contemplate what it would be like, what it would feel like, to no longer have the mundane responsibilities and overbearing pressures in my life drowning me, that I have now. My mind squirrels away down every trail it stumbles across with whatever captivates my fancy, only to chase another sparkle down another winding path. If I didn’t get lost within the sanctity of my mind, I would likely do more than just contemplate my getaway, only to sorely regret it in once I arrived at the end of the road, wherever that may be.

We all have these kind of days. They’re the days that make you question what the greater good of everything in your life actually is. Whether or not the living in your life is worth the aggravated struggle it takes to keep it up. The kind of day when your emotions are stretched so thin that anything could become a trigger for the damn retaining the overflow of your soul to release. But, when you have Depression, these days come faster, harder, & more frequently. These kinds of days may be triggered by the outside influences of life weighing heavy on one’s shoulders, carrying enormous loads of stress, but, they are fueled by influences from the inside. The misfiring of nerves, the imbalanced brain chemistry, the racing or irrational thought processes, and the irregular cycles of intensified emotions and feelings of intense despair, among many others symptoms are the enemy in a never-ending battle for control. Those outside influences of stress give aid to the war cause, but, reality is, that the disease is ultimately what generals the army. Depression is The Commander In Chief and there’s no impeachment laws.

As we grow and mature from children to adults, we learn many ways to cope with, handle, and control the many different aspects of our human psyche. Seemingly, the most successful people in life are those who are truly in touch with their own psyche. They are able to control their actions and reactions and maintain a cool, calm, and collected presence in the most stressful of circumstances. This is a near-impossible achievement when you’re diagnosed with Depression. Depression manages to stay one step ahead of the opposing army, cutting off all attempts at preventing it from sinking it’s talons in, relinquishing the dark in replace of the light in one’s life. It takes a full array of life skills, coping mechanisms, maturity, wisdom, knowledge, and support under one’s belt to push back the frontline to one’s advantage.

The pharmaceutical companies take gamble on this factor of the disease. They prey on those genetically stuck between a rock and a dark place. They prey on the fact that therapy, the psychological reconditioning of one’s thought patterns and teaching of those crucial coping skills and survival mechanisms, takes time, dedication, and a willingness to work hard at make change. Instead, those companies advertise promises of quick, easy, chemically controlled cures. These cures only work so long as you take the medication ritually consistent, creating a physical and mental dependence on it to maintain control of the disorder. That fits right in line with the definition of addiction- the psychological dependence of a substance to satisfy a psychological need for the resulting affects of that substance. In this case, the need is instantaneously relief of Depression symptoms, the substance is antidepressant medication, and the affect is the feeling of sanity, a return to the bright side of life, or, at least, a way to keep the all consuming darkness at bay and maintain whatever misguided idealism of what a normal brain might be.

Now, the concept of taking medication for an illness or disease of any sort is not a ridiculous concept at all. It’s the fact that the pharmaceutical companies push these medications as cure-all’s and one-swallow-fixes, misleading people to believe that it is the only necessary method towards achieving that normal brain they crave, that’s ridiculous. That medicating is the only imperative for escaping the clutches of the piercing talons of that twisted, discombobulated Commander In Chief, Depression. Through the suggestive brainwashing of advertisement, the drug companies give credence to the fact that Depression is no different than flipping a switch or setting a timer knob on and off: at 8 a.m. the pill goes in, normal brain turns on; exactly 23:59 hours later the pill wears off. That is a cycle of symptom masking, not a cure of the actual disease! Human error and real life interference are an oversight, no forethought given that the medication will even be used continuously as prescribed, at the specified doses and intervals.

It is a grave injustice to the mental health community for this debauchery, this facade, of mental health care to continue to go on as it is. Family physicians may have enough training to recognize basic mental health symptoms and feel falsely confident under the persistent influencing by Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Representatives, in treating the more cut-n-dry of mental illnesses themselves- Depression, Bipolar, and Anxiety. They will suggest one see a therapist for “added benefit,” but it’s not mandated for treatment. Other alternative treatment options are typically only brought to the table when the patient does so themselves. Medication, alone, shouldn’t be the only answer given, because it doesn’t work as promised for everyone. There must be something more, something greater, enabling the promotion of every option possible and mandating therapy to increase one’s arsenal, in order to effectively combat the frontline, or else, Depression will always win.

It’s a very morose state of unmet growing needs catapulted by financial greed, wealth of power, and a bit of political influence that the Mental Health care system is being controlled by these days. People walk around like brainwashed soldiers dedicated to the organization, oblivious to whether or not they’re actually benefiting from the system, getting the whole story, or being informed of all the truths. There’s a lot of misdiagnosis going on when Family physicians try to keep those “easy” patients, with their insurance monies and self-paying funds, presumptively lining their own pockets on someone else’s sanity. The only person monitoring a chronic, potentially debilitating and life-threatening illness is an overloaded physician of general practice with no extra mental health training beyond the mandatory six-week rotation in med school. Depression is not a drive-thru issue. It’s a serious mental illness and should be respected as such.

When the medical professionals representative of our own personal opinions of well-being don’t take an illness seriously, neither will anyone else. When those professionals covet their patients and refuse to show them the truth about their diagnosis, refuse to give them other options and mandate therapy, they are harming the mental health community. What good does that daily dose of antidepressant medication do when the day has turned rotten and running away is the only feasible option? It’s not going to magically kick your brain and say “Oh, wait a minute! I’m here. Let’s just change those thoughts about all the things that have gone wrong today and are bringing you down, then make you feel all rosy, sunshiny, and happy, again.”

The medications do the best they can to balance the brain chemistry that leads to those thoughts taking over, but they can’t stop them completely. Especially under a general practitioner’s care. They’re not apt to run any testing to make sure the medication is actually changing anything on the inside, they ONLY take the word of their patients, never looking at whether the medication is accurately effective at balancing that haywire brain chemistry. Those pharmaceutical reps will just continue to bait those physicians with their free samples and smooth-talking, hooking them with the guarantee to increase their revenue by treating cases of Depression themselves, leaving their patients vulnerable, misguided, and at risk.

If the stigma on mental health diagnoses is to ever change, so must our avenues of treatment. Therapy must become a requirement, so those of us with diagnosis can arm ourselves with the necessary weapons of control against this lifelong war on Depression- a fight that will not cease until our deaths. Alternatives to pharmaceutical medications must become readily available and easily obtainable. Changes to the structure of combat against this mental disorder are long overdue and necessary, because the next person contemplating driving off the face of this earth, might actually make it to their final destination without regret, lost to the war within their mind needlessly, sadly, unfortunately. An arsenal containing more than just man-made chemical compounds, could’ve saved that soldier of misfortune from being lost forever.