Oh, poor little me!

First, I want to say thanks to everyone and to let you know that your nonjudgmental support means so much to me. I made it through the day (and night) last night, feeling a little better today, especially after writing the dump below. I also want everyone to know that if necessary, I will go to the ER. I'm not there yet, but if I do, I will do it, even though I know, like Charmed said, that it could affect custody stuff. I look at it this way: in the event of a divorce, it would be better for Bubba to have me around and healthy, even if I didn't have primary custody, than it would be for him to have to deal with the after-effects of his mother committing suicide. But anyway...thanks again so much.

Okay...onward. The rest of this post is going to be a major mind-dump of narcissistic bitching about everything. You've been warned.

I was up until 4 a.m. Then I awoke for the 7:45 a.m. scramble that my husband is doing to try to get his own depressed self and Bubba out the door. Bubba wants a cuddle, so I'm cuddling him for a brief moment, and he tells me that "I don't want to go to school. Joe and Hans hit me yesterday. Joe says I'm not his friend." He had already mentioned this to me last night as well. I asked Bubba if he was afraid to go to school and he said yes. So I relay this to J., who says he will bring it up with the teacher. He called me later and said her explanation was "Yeah, yesterday was kind of a crazy day and we'll keep a closer eye on it." J. is calling right now to make an appointment for our meeting with the teachers. Yay.

Then I called my boss. That went well. We talked about maybe reducing my hours for awhile instead of a full leave, which I think makes sense because I don't want to fall off the face of the earth and down into this hole forever, and I think I could handle some work if I knew I also had some time to just...recover, I guess. Anyway, I'm going to take the rest of the week off, try to figure out what to do, and go back Monday.

Then I called my parents. I need to put a big sign up on my wall that says, "If you are feeling depressed, DO NOT CALL YOUR PARENTS." I called them today, mostly because I had worked up my nerve to ask if they could take Bubba for the weekend. I started off telling them I wasn't doing so well and that I was trying to figure out what do about work, etc. My mother starts telling me that if I lose my job I'm "really going to have problems."

"What are you going to do if you don't go to work? Just sit around being miserable?" she says. Then the crying starts. "We need to find something or someone who is going to make you better. You're too young to spend your whole life feeling miserable." She tells me she thinks maybe I need to "go somewhere" to get better, and that she will come with me or pay for it or whatever. She tells me she's even thought about "that place on Dr. Phil where they're always sending people." (Even in my depression, I think this is kinda funny...) "There has to be something I can do to make you better," she says, almost sobbing on the phone. This goes on, with my dad getting on the phone making comments like "If work was fun, they'd call it a hobby" and "It's a state of mind." My mother tells me about how hard this is for them. My mother wonders aloud if I "enjoy being depressed." They both want to know "what's causing it."

The end result for me, in my narcissistic daze, is the following:
*I feel like I am ruining not only my life and my kid's life, but also my parents'.
*I feel bad for causing them so much pain.
*I feel like a failure because I can't just get it together.
*I feel like my parents blame me even though they say they don't.
*I feel like a huge burden on everyone who cares about me.
*I feel like I should just try really hard to conceal this from them from now on, make them believe that I am better, and never confide in them about this again.

I told them that the biggest thing they could do to help me would be to do some research on what depression really is, because I want them to understand that it's not like I choose to be nonfunctional, it just is. It's not like there's some magic pill or magic therapist or whatever that's going to make it all go away. It reminds me very much of when I was grieving Hope and six months out, they told me that I had to get things together or I was going to lose my job and my marriage and that it was time to move on and get better. Like I had control over that. Anyway. My mother says she bought a book called "Undoing Depression" so that she could try to help me undo it, I guess. I told them that I would appreciate it if they wouldn't outline all the ways I'm ruining my life when I call them. I told them that sometimes I just need someone to listen, you know? I'm sure they don't get it. I said at one point that it would help if they took Bubba this weekend but then I said I was afraid to ask because I felt like they were mad at me and the conversation turned to them telling me they weren't mad at me and the Bubba thing was never addressed again...so it looks like that's a no go.

Look, I know that my parents love me and they don't understand and they are doing the best they can...but JESUS CHRIST. How do I keep forgetting that every time I call them with a problem, it becomes their problem that I feel bad about causing?

In the aftermath of the phone call, I am blowing my nose, and suddenly a bunch of fluid pours out of my right nostril. By now I know that it's a cyst in my sinus, because this is like the third time it's happened. So that's what was causing all my pain, maybe there's also an infection causing it to form, I don't know. I called my doctor's office. The phone rang about 10 times before someone answered. I say I need to speak with my doctor's nurse. "Well, they're in clinic in Xtown today," she says. "Okay, then what's the number there?" I ask. "Well, they don't take calls there," she says. "Okay," I say, clearly bitchy by now, "then I need to speak with someone else's nurse." At this point I have to give her my name, which is probably flagged with a huge skull and crossbones at the front desk or something, and tell her what is going on. I give her a terse history ("I had surgery in October, I had infections until January, I think I have another one and a cyst in my right sinus just ruptured.") Someone Else's Nurse calls me back (she's actually pleasant) and miraculously, my doctor has an opening tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. "Someone must have cancelled," she tells me. I think "cyst" and "rupture" were the words that got some action.

Then I called LilCherie's oto, in the town that's 40 min. away, and got an appointment for April 1. I'm going to get my records/scans and take them up there and get a second opinion and see if he can help me. I figure that if I've been having problems this long, I'll probably still be having problems in another month's time, so that should work out alright.

And I'm supposed to go to the dentist today at 4 p.m. to have them start working on fixing my bite, which is completely fucked up because I'm grinding the hell out of my teeth. Still haven't figured out if I'll go or if I'll have to come up with some excuse to get out of it.

Here's what keeps going around in my head. "You are causing problems for everyone who loves you. You are making your life worse by not dealing with it. You are so selfish to be so self-absorbed. Your life is not that bad, why are you such a wuss? Just deal with it!" Hmmm. Pretty much what I got from my parents. Believe it or not, I never really made that connection before. Ahhh, therapy by blogging. It's pretty amazing.

Oh, and I got my period yesterday, so today I'm dealing with Aunt Flo's Second-Day Hemorrhage.

In spite of it all, I am actually feeling a little better today. I'm feeling like I need to and possibly can make a plan to try to get better. It's all very confusing, but what comes to mind right now are the following (in no particular order). It all sounds very ambitious, but really I'm just brainstorming right now, so I'm not ruling anything out.

*See psychiatrist as soon as she's back in town (on vacation now, of course).
*Tell psychiatrist I need some major and immediate help, and that if she can't provide that she needs to send me to someone who can. Ask if it would be helpful to have therapy with her as well as med management.
*Get appointment with ob/gyn. Discuss period-related depression issues, ask about testing my hormone levels or other diagnostics to see if we can find a physiological problem, talk about endometrial ablation.
*Figure out reduced work hours schedule.
*Arrange a short break from everything--i.e., go away by myself for four or five days, spend the money even though I don't have it to give myself some pampering and some respite and some distance from everything that's bearing down on me.
*Look into some alternative therapies like acupuncture, reiki, herbal supplements, whatever. Just doing something else to feel proactive would be helpful I think.
*Try, really really try, to start getting some exercise, any exercise. I know better than to expect that I will be getting up at 5 a.m. to go running or anything, but I need to move my body.
*On the same token, I need to pay some more attention to my nutrition.
*Commit to marriage counseling. The counselor we were referred to has no openings, so I need to talk to J. about finding someone else, even if we have to pick someone out of the phone book. I'm still going to talk to the lawyer on Monday, but right now I don't trust myself very much, and I don't want to make big, life-altering decisions in this frame of mind. This might sound naive and stupid after everything I've written here, but what I really want is for this marriage to work and for us to both be happy--so that's what I should be working toward.
*Look for ways that I can do something meaningful with my life. I think a big part of my dissatisfaction with my job is that it is so pointless and doesn't help anyone or mean anything in the big picture of life. Man, I wish J.'s grandma would just die already so we could get a little money to go back to school or something! She's 98 fucking years old! (I am terrible.)

I'm thinking about actually writing this all down in a calendar book, actually scheduling them in small steps, like "Feb. 27: Call acupuncturist and make appointment" or "Feb. 28: Look into options for getaway" or whatever.

Whew. I do feel better. For anyone who made it this far, I thank you. For everyone reading, commenting, thinking about me...I thank you. Very much.