Some of my friends have very tumultuous relationships with their mothers.  I listen to their stories and I just can’t imagine having a mother who could do such things.  In my world, a mother is kind and generous.  She always has her family’s best interests at heart.  She does make sacrifices for her family, but she still retains her identity.  She is an example…a role model.  She is strong and fierce when protecting her family, but humble enough to take responsibility for her mistakes.  To me, this is a mother, because that is the mother I had.

Her name is Joy, and I don’t think she could have been given a more appropriate name.  She was the kind of child who didn’t get spanked in a time when everyone was spanked because she only needed a stern, disappointed look and a few words to be redirected.  When my grandfather died, she was a young, first time mom to my brother.  But it soon became apparent that her little half brother was not safe in his mother’s care, and when the state stepped in, she adopted him and raised him as her own.  She maintained a very close relationship with my grandmother, and after I was born, the five of us moved from Rhode Island to Florida…into the very same house that I am sitting in as I write this.  She met my Daddy down here and married him when I was around two.  He wasn’t biologically my father, but he will always be my Daddy, and she gave me that, too.  She worked more than one job frequently throughout her young adulthood, and after marrying my Dad, she went back to school to become a nurse…at the same school I am earning my AA from next month.  I remember her commencement and pinning…in December, it will be she who attends my commencement there.

She worked long, hard hours for nearly 25 years at a hospital she wound up commuting an hour back and forth to.  She did that for me.  So I could have everything I needed, and some of what I wanted.  She did very little for herself…and yet the well that she dipped in to give of herself to her loved ones and just others in general seemed bottomless.  She stood by me when I was a terrified pregnant 16yo, and she cut the cord when I had my son, eight days before my 17th birthday.  She never once made me feel like a disappointment, though I know I let her down many times.  She helped me navigate single motherhood, balancing a child, a job, and school, and even helped me get my first real home.  I couldn’t have done any of it without her, because I lacked the experience and wisdom she contributed.

When I got married, and then divorced, she let me come back home without hesitation, even with two more children than the one I left with.  She encouraged me as I went back to work and school, and offered whatever help I wasn’t too proud to accept.  When I reunited with my ex-husband, many times, even after telling her probably more than I should have about the circumstances of the many breakups, she welcomed him back with open arms and no questions asked.

She’s *always* been there for me.  Always.  I’ve always known I was so loved.  I’ve always known that I have somebody on this earth who values me in a way everyone should be valued.  I’ve always had a shining example of what a woman and mother should be to emulate.  I’ve always had someone in my corner.  I wish all my friends could say that.  The fact that they can’t only makes me value that I did so much more.

Mom, I just want to thank you.  You gave me everything a mother should give, and then some.  You were everything a mother should be, and then some.  I know my brothers and I haven’t cured cancer, or won the Nobel Peace Prize.  But you raised some really unique, amazing people, even with all the obstacles life threw at you.  You are my hero, Mom.  I have so much respect for you; you are everything I am striving to be.  You always tell me I am a wonderful mother, but you taught me everything I know.  I cherish every day that we both walk this earth together, and when the day comes that I have to let you go, know that your legacy will go on, in your children, and our children, and their children.

Happy Mother’s Day.  I can’t even explain how much I love you, but I hope this gives you a glimpse.

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It is next to impossible to explain anxiety to someone who has never experienced it.  I’ve tried, repeatedly, with very disappointing results.  Variations have included:

• The feeling you get when you hear nails on a chalkboard or whatever sound has that kind of effect on you.
• A swarm of bees inside you, getting more and more agitated as they creep toward your brain.
• An elephant on your chest, sinking further into you every time you exhale.
• An overwhelming feeling of unease…like something REALLY! FREAKING! BAD! is going to happen if you can’t get out of your own skin RIGHT! THIS! SECOND!
• All the air being sucked out of the room, or, conversely, so much air being pumped in that the pressure being exerted on you feels absolutely bone crushing.

None of those are exactly right…but I think the sense of desperation is clear.  In that moment, I am nothing short of desperate to make the feeling stop.  Eventually it does stop, and I am swept with feelings of hopelessness, guilt, and a new sense of desperation, this time, to just be normal.

I wonder what it is like to be able to just decide to do something on a whim…to be able to face large groups without the inevitable meltdown that precedes every family function…to be able to cope when the myriad of little things that will inevitably go wrong do, in fact, go wrong.  I know that at one time, I didn’t have anxiety.  I wish I could remember what it was like, but all I can connect with it is the fleeting feeling of freedom when I am driving alone in my car with the windows down and the radio up.

I know it is hard for my family to live with me.  I know I am moody and I react badly to being disappointed.  I am impatient and I expect things to be MY way.  Sometimes I get so angry because I have explained over and over what I need from my family to help me control my anxiety but they don’t take it seriously, and I lash out, saying or doing things I regret. I don’t want to be the mom that the kids tell stories about and their friends make comments about how awful that must have been.

*Photo credit: amber10_75 on Flickr*

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So, let me explain how things have been in Cheeky’s world.

Sometime in late August or early September…I’m leaning toward September but I don’t want to actually go look up my son’s mug shot to tell you for sure…my son decided to take the douchebag route and was involved in a neighbor being burglarized. He was arrested and released back into my custody. Weeks later, on September 18th, we got a letter that the state’s attorney had decided to charge him as an adult. I called the Sheriff’s Department on Monday and asked that when the warrant came through, to please call me and we would turn him in within six hours. (My daughters were traumatized enough by the first arrest.) They agreed. Tuesday he went to school, and they arrested him there. Without the warning they agreed to give me. In any case, there he sits, to this day.

A week after he was arrested, I was leaving work and it was raining, as it usually is in Florida in the afternoon. Some jackass did something up ahead in my lane that caused the guy in front of me to slam on his brakes, which I then did, in turn. However, the slick roads did not cooperate and I slid into his rear end. Then the car behind me paid it forward. They both just has scratches, but my front end was smooshed and my car wouldn’t start. I didn’t think my insurance (state minimum since my car was a ’98) would cover a tow, so I called AAA and had it towed to the last place I had work done, the Dodge dealership in town. It was about a mile away. The next day I learned that their body shop was the exact location my car had just been towed FROM. D’oh.

So, Brian picked the girls up from aftercare (since my after school babysitter is sitting in JAIL now) and came to get me. But his car wasn’t re-registered on time so we had to be all slick and park him in the lot next door. When we leave, we get at the same spot in the road that I just had my accident at, but heading the other direction, and his hood flies up and smashes the windshield. With both girls in the car. Emily was shouting “Oh my God, Oh my God!” which is a little funny because I don’t let them say that but none of us even cared. Brian was so stunned for a moment that he didn’t even realize what had happened, which is really funny because he has these BOSS decals on his hood so all we could see was SSOB and he still didn’t get it for a second. Once he did realize it, he started pounding on his steering wheel and said very bad words while I picked glass off my lap and screeched at him to just put the fucking hood down and GO before the police (still on the other side of the road from working MY accident) saw us!

So, yeah. September was a big waste of 30 days. But it’s October now, and I am going to pick up my shiny new (to me) 2000 Mustang, which I will then use to bond my juvenile delinquent out of jail, now that he’s had two weeks to sit and think about what a dumbass move he pulled. So, goodbye shitty September!

 

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I just started back to school. I’m working 32 hrs/week, taking 13 credit hours in four classes, and raising the kids and running the house. I also have had three house guests in between homes for the last week or so.

I already felt like I was buckling. Like the big steel bridge that everyone takes for granted as always being there was starting to sway and the supports were folding inward, and if one more single thing, even as light as a butterfly, rested upon it, the whole structure would cave in, taking everything on and around it under the murky depths of the water it was meant to span. And then a meteor fell from the sky and landed smack dab in the middle.

My son. Again.

I think I may be having a nervous breakdown. I can’t stop crying. I don’t want to do anything..not play my hidden object games, a favorite escape usually..not shower..not eat..not anything. I can’t imagine how I will survive this again. I think the only thing more painful as a parent than leaving the courthouse without your baby would be burying them. It’s indescribable. And I will probably have to do it again. I am screaming and punching doors but it doesn’t release the pressure and this buzzing inside me just gets louder and louder and there is no way out.

Hell. Again.

I’m searching for hope I can find my way back again. And I’m terrified that he never will.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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I wasn’t always the anxiety-ridden control freak that I am today. When I was young, I was very laid back. It was something that most likely drew Brian to me throughout the years of our pre-romantic friendship. The irony that the way our relationship fell to pieces is what catalyzed my journey into anxiety and controlling behaviors is not lost on either of us. I was easy going and carefree, even while raising my son alone and balancing college classes here and there with working full time and running a home and family. I had a child-like faith that everything would turn out okay, and, no matter what kind of mess I got myself into, it typically did, for the most part.

But the years of never knowing what to expect..or, rather, knowing what to expect, but having the either faithful or stupid hope that things would be better than I expected..created a familiarity with anxiety and fear that I wish I had never known. I was never hit, or threatened, or verbally abused, or kept under tight control, or cheated on, or anything truly awful like that. But sometimes I feel like I survived a war, anyway. Sometimes I wonder if I don’t have some mild form of post-traumatic stress disorder, because when I look back, all I see is a vast period of mere survival. There was no thriving..there was no personal growth..there was little room for intimacy in my marriage, and I don’t mean sex, although that suffered as well, I mean *trust*. There were no family traditions or routines or vacations or outings or sleepovers or…anything. At least not much that I can remember. All I remember is despair. All I remember is insecurity and mistrust and feeling like my life and family were completely out of control. All I remember is putting one foot in front of the other, loving my babies, and all the while knowing I was not providing everything they needed.

When I got separated while I was pregnant with Faith, I made great strides to put that insecurity and chaos of the first years of my marriage behind me. I found FlyLady.net, and I followed that system like it was my religion. I was pregnant, working full time, raising an 18 month old and an 8yo, running my home, and grieving the loss of my marriage and the dream I had for my family, all on my own. And I did it better than I did when I had help. My house was always clean, aside from the toys the kids would pick up each night before bed, and we always had a home cooked meal. I managed my life and my family with routines that made me forget all about the tension that day-to-day living had before. I never had to think about a thing…we all knew what to expect and what to do because we just made habits of the things we had to do.

Then I gave birth to Faith, her father and I got un-separated, and within a month, friends of ours needed someplace to go, so we had a family of four plus a dog move in. That was one of the worst years of my life. Our friends are good people, but with the household going from two kids and myself to four adults, six kids, including a newborn, and a dog, and them being more accustomed to clutter and a less organized home…..it was very hard to maintain the system I had honed. I felt like I was the only one who gave a shit about the house staying clean and uncluttered, and really, I was probably right. I was let go from my job six weeks after returning to work, for missing work because the baby was sick, so by Christmas, I practically lived in my bedroom.And while you would think that my room would be the one clean oasis in the house of junk, the opposite was true. I was in such a depression, that it was a wreck, too. It was all I could do to make sure the kids were clothed and fed and loved. I did laundry, but rarely folded it and put it away. I gave up on cooking because the kitchen was always such a mess that I would have a baby panic attack just walking in it. Even after our friends moved out, I was so far gone that I didn’t know how to pull myself out. I became a social recluse; unwilling to go out because I was ashamed of myself, and unwilling to have anyone over because I was ashamed of my home.

But all of that is over now.

I know the limitations of my disease, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and I know what exacerbates it and what eases the panic that feels like a million buzzing bees are inside me, getting louder and louder as they swarm and swell in order to break out of my skin and consume me and everything I care about. And being in a chaotic environment literally damages my spirit. I need order..I need routine..I need security..I need to know what to expect, and I need those expectations met most of the time. I don’t handle surprises well, or plans that keep changing, or travel, just because of the sheer amount of the unknown, and how little control I have over flights and airports and planes.

It seems to be the lack of control that sets me off the worst.

It’s not that I am controlling because I just feel like being a prima donna and expect the world to kiss my ass. It’s that for a long time, if I wasn’t in complete control over every aspect of our family, something would always go horribly wrong. I couldn’t trust Brian with much of anything for those years. If I left him with the kids so I could work, he wasn’t as attentive as he needed to be, or he took them places they weren’t safe. If I depended on him to provide financially, he would often quit jobs or switch jobs or spend all his money on pot or whatever teh fun thing seemed to be for the moment for him..end result being me scrambling in a panic to pay our already late bills by begging for help or worse. It all boiled down to the fact that I couldn’t trust him for shit. I couldn’t trust him to provide, to be honest, to keep the kids safe or clean or fed…I couldn’t trust him to make our family his top priority, so I ran around like a maniac trying to clean up the piles of shit his unreliability created for me.

And now, I have to trust him.

I have to have faith, (Anyone seeing why I chose that name for my youngest yet? It’s SO hard for me to trust anyone but myself.Her name reminds me that sometimes I have to let go, and have faith.), that he will be able to make our family his priority..over the friends that I battled for him so many years..the faces have changed but the situation remains the same, over the partying that is admittedly more fun than raising a family, over everything that was more important than us for all those years.It’s the hardest thing I’ve done in a long time….just letting myself be vulnerable….just handing trust over to someone who has not proven to be trustworthy….giving over complete control over whether this family survives or not. I’m afraid. I’m an anxious mess. I am second guessing myself every single day over whether I am doing the right thing, but now I’m in school, and dropping out now would mean it would be next to impossible to ever go back again, thanks to financial aid suspension and academic suspension, both of which I am on and only attending school on account of an approved appeal. So, when the fear and anxiety and OMG THE SHEER FUCKING TERROR that everything will go to shit faster than I can clean up the mess start taking over, I am having a glass of wine or a klonopin (which are amazing for anxiety attacks!), and reminding myself that the strongest thing I can do right now, is just have faith.

Just trust.

Even though sometimes I’ve been wrong to trust. Right now, I have to trust, and just do my part, and believe he will do his.

I am surrendering to the forces of good in my life, and having faith they will protect my family from the forces of evil.

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When I found out I was pregnant with him, I was just 16, myself.

Just a child.  A child who thought she could handle anything the big bad world threw at her. Oh, what I’d give for that fierce courage now.  Life itself has become my Jabberwock, and some days I bring its head home and others it’s my own head I’ve lost.

At first I thought I would give my baby up for adoption.  I was only 16.  I had such dreams…I was a straight A student who barely cracked a book.  But I changed in the months I carried him, and after receiving my family’s blessing and offer for help, I chose to keep him.

I went in for a 38 weeks checkup and when my doctor checked me for dilation, he said he was certain that my baby was either breech, or reaching out to say hello.  Within twenty minutes I was in the high risk OB’s office next door while he took a look with his ultrasound machine.  They conferred in whispers I couldn’t then understand, but later learned was about how short the cord was, and it appeared to be laying in a  way that suggested it was looped around his neck…all major complications in a breech birth that could be life-threatening to both the baby, and the mother.

I was sent home with orders to not eat after midnight like I was a Gremlin, and to be back at the hospital in twelve hours for a c-section.

So I did, and then, in a moment that both lasted for eons and flashed by in a twinkling, I became a mother.

He gave me that.  I gave him life, and he gave me the most beautiful reason to live.

Memories.  Of trying to write a term paper or study for finals while jumping up every five minutes to redirect him from something he shouldn’t be doing.  Of being overcome with terror when he pulled his 18 month old hand out of mine and tumbled down the stairs, and the relief when he was dancing and playing in the ER waiting room soon after.  Of martial arts lessons, and BMX bike parts carpeting the garage in our last house, and his reaction to seeing his baby sister for the first time.  Of first day of kindergarten and elementary school graduation and spending a week in the hospital  with him when he had Rotovirus.

It’s been a wild ride.  Some tough times in the recent years, and I know there will still be situations that make me wonder if he’s learned anything at all that I’ve been trying to teach him.  But he’s different now.  He thinks more about the consequences of his actions.  He puts more thought into what he says and does.  He tries to make me proud, and he finds satisfaction in himself when he does the right thing.

He still comes to me..about anything.  I was so afraid we would lose that after he was sentenced to the program last year.  But, if anything, it’s brought us closer.  He knows I will fight for him…even if it’s him I have to fight.  And while on the surface, that’s the typical annoying parent thing to do, I can see in his eyes that a part of him appreciates that I got his back, no matter what.  If he slips, I’ll help him get back up.

I’m proud of the young man he is today.  He’s come a long way; he used to be someone who deserved to hear the nasty truth of who he was choosing to be.  But not anymore.  There is no nasty truth.  He’s not that boy anymore.

Happy birthday, Christian.  Thank you for all the richness and joy you have brought to my life, and for teaching me some of the toughest and most important lessons I will ever learn.  I’m proud to be your mom.

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