Powerful Message

 This popped up in my news feed today. It was 6 years ago now. I had searched for this post many times, but figured I must've deleted it. Glad I didn't.

I'm usually private, but then I realized well might as well be straight up. No more job to lose or people to infuriate since I usually live across the ocean. As many others in this very cruel world, I have mental health problems. I was in the hospital, (psych ward) for 13 days. My incredible mom flew out on a plane to take care of my son. I still require some extra attention and help which is why we flew back with her. Pryor to my hospitalization, I was under the falisy that my mental problems started when I acquired PTSD, but rather that just compounded my problems. The main things I learned were that the psych ward is a lot like prison, your mind is very powerful, put yourself first, and find something or someone else to believe in when yourself just isn't enough. I built up some anger while I was in there, but I'm choosing to use it to enlighten others and spread awareness on mental health problems. If you feel you have mental health issues go get seen, don't continue to sweep them under the rug, and please stop judging those of us whose wounds are not visible. Say hello to a passers-by, hold a door open for a stranger.  Make someone's life better today.

Good Day

 Yesterday was legitimately a good day. I just took the day in stride, in little parts. My son kept asking Mom can I go to my uncle's later. I just kept telling him I don't know we'll see how the day goes. 

We were able to get more school work done than we have any other day so far this year. We would do one assignment then I'd give him a little break. Then we'd do another one. We got some tasty lunch. We played some wiffle ball. He had school in the afternoon so I got a little alone time with my husband. I took my son to speech. We picked up some dinner. 

I finally took him to his uncles in the evening. I was originally only going to let him stay for like an hour or an hour and a half and then go pick him up so I didn't have to be alone. I would normally come back home and probably lay down. However, instead I chose to listen to some music and then pick up the phone to call a cousin I hadn't spoken to in quite some time. We ended up being on the phone for about an hour and a half. We had a great conversation. It was long overdue. Then I finally picked up my son. Spent a little time with him. Then we went to sleep.

While I didn't do anything over the top or particularly special it was a good/ great day for me. I didn't let depression take over and keep me in bed or down all day. I chose to just do the next thing, go with the flow, take it in stride. If I would have looked at the day as a whole it might have been overwhelming and might not have gone nearly as well. 

I'm writing this to remind myself that while we go through hard times we can still have good days if we just slow down and take things step by step. Every day doesn't have to be a bad day and we can document good, ordinary times as well. 

I have grown to learn not to compare myself to others. A good day for me might just be an ordinary day for somebody else or even a bad day. Everyone's perspective and experiences are different. And that's ok. My house may never be clean, but that doesn't make me a bad wife or mother. I just need to be present and live in the moment and continue to cherish every hug my son gives me because it may not last forever. I'm blessed for the life I have and I need to remember that.

I am going to try to tackle today the same way I did yesterday taking everything one step at a time. I don't know what today will bring but I'm just going to try to live in the moment and be present.

I'll update this blog as I see fit. It may be everyday or it may not be for another six months just don't know. Whatever feels therapeutic for me is what I'll do. I do this to help me, but I share it with all of you in hopes it will potentially help others as well. Please feel free to share the link suicideandptsd.blogspot.com with anyone you want to and you're welcome to email me anytime at suicideandptsd@gmail.com. You can also sign up for email updates to get notifications of when I add new posts.

Take care until next time.

Awake

 It's about four o'clock in the morning. I've been up about two hours now. I fell asleep just fine with my son last night, but I guess I never turned the light off. Therefore when I woke up at two the light was shining in my eyes. I really didn't feel like getting up just to turn it off so I tried ignoring it and falling back asleep. I fell asleep for a couple of minutes I think, but then woke right back up and I've been up ever since.

The thing that initially prevented me from falling back asleep was replaying my initial visit to the hospital when I was diagnosed with the ectopic pregnancy. That led to thinking of all my recent visits to the hospital. Which of course led to do I want another baby. I thought long and hard about having another child for several years through my days in Hawaii and Maryland even, but I was not in a good headspace and I was hesitant giving my past experiences with being so sick with my son, the 36-hour labor, the delivery, the postpartum psychosis, his autism and speech challenges. Do I really want to potentially go through all of that all over again? Sometimes my answer is definitely not! However, there are times especially going through this ectopic that I want another child more than ever. So all that played through my head preventing me from falling back asleep.

At four o'clock I finally decided forget it, I'm getting up. When I came downstairs I started trying to problem solve on how my son and I are going to get all his school work done this week. I took a few hours for self-care yesterday getting my tattoos which unfortunately put us further behind, but it was necessary.

I know I'm far from the only one who's ever woken up in the middle of the night and had trouble sleeping. However, it seems as if most people just get overtired. I have to really monitor my sleep because a few sleepless nights can lead to hypomania where I don't feel like I need sleep at all. This then can lead to full-blown Mania where I haven't slept for weeks and I end up in the hospital again. I'm nowhere near there, just a little tired, but it's always a concern of what it could potentially turn into. I'm actually really lucky and impressed with myself that sleep troubles haven't been a consistent thing given my current situation.

Yesterday was a good day. I got two new tattoos. Not exactly the two I had thought I was going to get, but two I'm happy with. The first one was what I originally had the appointment for. The second one I had planned on he wanted to take more time to draw up so we had a consultation about that one and I got a different one yesterday. It was more of an impulse decision. I usually don't make those, I tend to think long and hard about things. But it felt good to just do it. I put it on the back of my neck so if I'm not crazy about it I don't have to see it. Everyone else sees it and I'm okay with that or I'll just cover it up with my hair. In addition, while picking up some paper work, I got to see my favorite nurse yesterday for a few minutes where we were just laughing and it wasn't so serious. It was nice to share those moments in a different light.

Well it was 4:40 a.m. when I finished writing this. Now it's 5:09 as I'm wrapping up putting this online. I don't know why but typing it up isn't nearly as therapeutic for me as writing it on good old-fashioned paper. Hopefully writing this out will help me to get back to sleep. I guess I better try to lay back down before my son wakes up in about an hour.