OK! We are (about to be) BACK!
So. My site got hacked and/or was insecure and my partner didn’t have time to fix it for a bit because life so there was a hiatus.
Meanwhile, OMG I had a mental health goddam fucking CRISIS at the end of 2019. Like, things were GOOD. X3 was doing the best she’s done. She was doing well at school, she was holding it together, against all odds she was learning to FUCKING READ something I honestly had no idea if she might EVER do. And X2 remained the generally charmingest kidlet in history (except she still doesn’t sleep, whatever). And my job was going well, with colleagues supporting me and clients liking me and winning and stuff. And my partner and I were generally not fighting or having hard times.
And I just went OFF THE RAILS. Hours and hours at work staring at the screen doing nothing. ANGRY ANGRY ANGRY all the time at home. Unable to get out of bed. Crying in my office. Simply a massive, intense, overwhelming, mental health depressive episode, made harder by the self-awareness it was happening and the crushing double-depress that it had been 3 years medication-free and I was so proud and happy to be in a good place and it just all felt apart for NO REASON. (That’s how problems with brain chemistry work, FYI).
Turns out, it’s really hard to get in to a psychiatrist! But luckily my (brand new!) OB was willing to prescribe the generic of my old stand-by, 10-year anti-depressant. So after an awful awful December (FOR NO REASON) I went back on anti-depressants.
AND LOST MY MIND. Something about the release timetable, it seems, just killed me. I was alternating SCREAMING RAGE that took over my whole body and just felt like it came from outside me and SOBBING DESPAIR, just hopeless, heartbroken, misery at everything but most especially the state of ME. Day-by-day it was a battle just not to have myself committed, where at least I could just let go and scream or sob or stare blankly at the wall 24 hours a day and would be hurting no one and letting no one down (except by my absence, failure to earn a living and support my family, and complete abrogation of all responsibilities. A girl honestly cannot even schedule a nervous breakdown these days).
My partner, who is NOT the most sensitive, emotionally available partner of all time… JUST KICKED ASS. He survived. He did not fight back at me. We actually came to each other the same night and said “something is wrong with these little white pills”. And it was so amazing to be united and supported in the fact that SOMETHING WAS REALLY WRONG. And he survived it, and pulled us through it, during a time I almost gave up.
I tried all sorts of things, and I can’t even go into the health system BULLSHIT that prevented faster or more precise treatment… but on March 4, (it was mid-October when things started falling apart, mid-December when everything fell entirely apart, and early January when we realized new pills were equal in chaos to the nothing of the depression) I was able to get in, and started a new medication. I am too tired in both the morning and the night (but not as much in the middle day) but otherwise, my mood has stabilized.
Luckily. Because the world just fell the F apart since March 4, and maybe a little before, and along with the world our family has really been OMG trying to get through it. There has never been a time that I needed more outlet or more processing than right now, in a pandemic, with a trauma child, coming back from a mental-health breakdown. So, we’re BACK.