Where It Started

     As I lay in bed praying asking God to help me to let go of the need to control how my mom deals with life I found myself thinking about where it started. Wanting to control how she views life, how she heals, how she reacts to life and the challenges that face her. Wanting to control how and when she forgives and lets go of her anger, and all other things that in my view are poisoning her life; is all part of trying to “fix” her…a “job” that has been mine since I was little.

Leah, if you say this or do this for your mom you could cheer her up and help snap her out of her depression. When I would tell other family members about my mom’s depression and about her being suicidal, instead of telling me to not worry that they would deal with it; I was told what to do to try to snap her out of it and make her happy again. This by the way NEVER worked. I was left with the impression that I could “fix” her, and not only could I “fix” her but that it was my job to do so. A “job” for which no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get it right. Here I am all these years later, in my early 30’s, and I still can’t get it right.

Leah, if I wasn’t worried about what would happen to you I would run away, or sometimes it was…I would kill myself. I also was her confidant…personal councilor. Marriage problems, problems with her family, problems at work…I got to hear it all. There were many times when she was crying hysterically and would want to drive off. How was I supposed to react, knowing she was suicidal and talked about wishing she could drive off a bridge; how she wanted to run away so bad. I would hide her car keys, and even at times stood in front of her car to keep her from driving off.

After I told my mom what Jon had done, my Grandparents would call me to talk my mom down. They would say that I was the only person she would listen to. I could hear her in the background crying and saying she couldn’t talk to me…that she couldn’t face me. They would have to coax her onto the phone with me. This was codependency working its charm. My mom’s family is very codependent, and this is where it all started. Being taught that I was responsible for another’s wellbeing and happiness gave me the sense that I could control it somehow. So, here I am…still trying to control the uncontrollable. I will say I have come a long way from where I was. I’m starting to understand I need to make a choice to not let it bother me whether I understand why I let what she does bother me so much or not.

Every time I allow her to upset me I am giving her power over me, and only I can change it. I have to make a choice…to get upset or not…to give her power over my emotions or not. She knows how to push my buttons, and sometimes I think she pushes them on purpose. She has so much rage and anger not only at Jon, but at herself for not protecting me. I feel at times she pushes my buttons as a way to punish herself…a way to keep playing the victim role. She feels so strongly about her views on how she thinks I view her or feel about her that at times it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. She accuses me of thinking of her as less than human, and views all my actions through her skewed perspective. Even though I have been and continue to get angry with her, I always go out of my way to be as kind to her as I can at any given moment. My anger at times gets the best of me; so, I am by no means perfect at it, but I try my best. I do not think of her as less than human. I do, however, see her as a very toxic person in my life. She likes to talk to me about how she is doing in therapy in an effort to try to show me she is healing, but when she does something and I draw boundary lines; she goes on the attack towards me accusing me of not giving her any breaks…she puts on the victim role. By refusing to move on and to let go...to heal, she has become her own victim. She victimizes herself with her won toxic thoughts and behaviors.

In Joel Osteen’s book, Every Day A Friday, he says we should never pray and ask God to change others without first praying and asking God to change us first. So, I will ask God to help me; to change me; to show me my fears, and to help me conquer them. I know in my past blogs I have said, whenever we can’t let go of something or face something there is a fear there holding us back. That’s what I have to ask myself, and what I have to face. So, I ask myself, what is my fear? My fear is…

Clarification On "Life And Death Are In Words" Post

     I just want to let everyone know that I wanted to clarify something on the posting "Life And Death Are In Words". So, here is a copy of the change I made:

" I don't want to get graphic, so I'll just say that I know more about the circumstances surrounding my conception than anyone should ever know (Now, here's a note: what I'm considering graphic most of you probably wouldn't consider graphic or not that graphic, but it's enough to gross me out)".

Life And Death Are In Words

     Our Words are so important, and I don't think that we realize just how big of an impact they can have on people. The words that we say can have lasting effects on those who hear them. Like wise the words we hear can have lasting effects on us. Proverbs 18:21 says, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof". We all produce fruit with our words, and we will reap either the benefits or consequences of our words.

     It doesn't take much to leave a lasting impression. A few critical words can produce perfectionism in our lives that can drive us in a variety of unhealthy ways. For me, a memory that I remember very clearly is a time in which my step-dad, Jon, had asked me to do a chore...a few minutes later he came back to tell me to do a second chore. Then yet again a few more minutes went by and he came back to give me a third chore to do, and got mad and frustrated that I hadn't finished the first two chores. I was too slow, and should have been finished according to him. To be honest, I don't remember everything that he said to me over the years; I just remember how I felt. Not just his words, but his body language told me: I couldn't do things good enough; something would always be lacking. After all not everyone could be as brilliant as he was. You see, He sees himself as being far superior to those around him. I felt unwanted and alone. I wanted to feel like I was worthy of approval. This atmosphere fostered in me a sense of perfectionism. Which can work in one of two ways: (1) you work really hard to become an over achiever and (2) you become paralyzed and don't try. Starting in my pre-teen and teen years (probably even earlier) I worked so hard to be perfect...to fix everything. It took a huge toll on my health, and I ended up in my late teens through my early 20's having a lot of stomach issues. My body could no longer handle the stress and pressure of what was going on in my life. The older I've gotten the more my perfectionism paralyzes me. A chore or task will get so worked up in my mind to impossible standards that there is no way that I or anyone else would be able to preform at the level at which I hold myself accountable to. My own standards upon myself shuts me down, and I seek to be distracted from it. So, in times past, I have developed addiction cycles with watching t.v and with being on the Internet (mainly playing farmvile on facebook). The more overwhelmed I felt the more I sought to hide from it, and the more I hid from it the more over whelmed I felt. It's a vicious cycle that is hard to break. Over the years I have learned to tell when I start to feel like I'm going to shut down, and have learned how to take it one step at a time to keep from shutting down. I'm not perfect at it, but at least I'm working on it and making improvements.

     Another instance of the impact of words in my life would be yet another example of something my step-dad, Jon, said to me only a few times. He told me that he likes the out side lane on the highway because if someone tries to side swipe him/come into his lane he has an out/room to move to avoid being hit. Where as in the other lanes you can get boxed in with no where to go. I don't care much for driving on the highway or in traffic for that matter. When I'm surrounded by cars I start to feel a bit claustrophobic. I feel invisible and fear tries to work it's way in...that no one will see that I'm there and come into my lane and hit me. Granted some of these feelings probably come from feeling invisible most of my life, but his words triggered this particular fear of being surrounded by vehicles. When I get nervous my hands sweat which only makes me more nervous if I'm the one driving. If I'm not the one driving I'll hold onto my seat belt for dear life, or put my foot down like I'm stepping on the breaks, or how about this one...holding onto the door. My hands begin to sweat and my heart rate goes up. I feel a loss of control when I'm not the one driving and it scares me. As a teenager when ever I got out of the car, when my step-dad had been driving, I would swear to myself that I would never get back into a car with him again. His "aggressive" driving scared me, and I constantly thought that we were going to get into accidents. I have realized lately just how out of balance this "fear" has gotten, and it's something that I'm going to have to remedy.

     I want to give just one more example. I could give lots of examples...I've heard things that have affected the way I view eating, things about myself, and my life. This example comes from something my mom has told me. I don't want to get graphic, so I'll just say that I know more about the circumstances surrounding my conception than anyone should ever know (Now, here's a note: what I'm considering graphic most of you probably wouldn't consider graphic or not that graphic, but it's enough to gross me out). I know my dad had a five year waiting plan for kids, and that I was born before this five year plan was complete. I know that my mom wanted to have kids so bad that she was probably suffering from depression from not getting pregnant as fast as she had wanted. I know my mom meant no harm, but the things that she has told me left me feeling like I was unplanned and unwanted by my dad. I feared upsetting my dad, and that doing so would cause him to take his love and approval away from me forever. My parents divorced when I was two, and as far back as I can remember I have always been afraid of hurting my dad's feelings and of him taking his love away from me. I don't know at what age my mom started telling me about his five year plan and my conception, but I know that I was probably pre-teen or a teenager. I believe that somewhere I heard or was given the impression that I could lose my dad's love and approval forever at the youngest of ages. I may not have the memories to prove it, but I have a life time of fear that had to have been placed there somehow. It affected my relationship with my dad in that I didn't feel like I could be open and honest with him. I didn't feel like I could go to him in times of trouble and difficulties...let alone for help when life was a living hell.

     Words speak life and death into lives. We have to learn to accept words that are spoken to us that speak life into our lives, and how to cancel out the words that speak death and destruction into our lives. I believe that everyone knows the pain of having hurtful and destructive things spoken to them. If we all take a good look at our lives we can see not only how words have shaped our lives, but how they have shaped us...our personality, and how we deal with things. So, please remember the pain hurtful words have caused you, and choose to speak life into the lives of others and into your own life as well. We can choose to accept or to cancel out what has been spoken to us and over us. Pain doesn't go away over night, but with persistence and a healing hand from the Lord we can be made whole again.

So...Seriously...I Don't Get It...It Proves NOTHING

     Growing up my ex-step-mom worked on projects that she wasn't allowed to talk about, and I remember being told that she couldn't talk about them because if anyone ever came to the house to try to get us to tell them, then we wouldn't  be able to tell them anything because we wouldn't know anything. Then after my dad and my ex-step-mom divorced; and Jon, my mom, and I moved to Texas I was told that Jon had security clearance for his job.

     Leading up to court Jon claimed that he never had security clearance until right before court in 2007, and they even had his resume put into evidence...SERIOUSLY?! WHAT DOES THAT PROVE?!...NOTHING!!! Jon claimed that he had disclosed the pending court case against him in his application, but no one ever contacted the D.A. to ask them about the case. It doesn't matter what is in his resume; what matters is what I was told, and what I believed.

     My mom even knew that he had security clearance. He would always have us watch shows about government conspiracies, and at times claimed to have some kind of knowledge about it. One time Jon said that he was going to Area 51, and said that he could take me with him, but I had school and couldn't go. Jon went there more than once. He would fly to El Paso, Texas and then go to Area 51 from there. Jon would go into Mexico to get cheep antibiotics for our dog who had skin allergies. My mom even remembers seeing his plain tickets.

     Before we moved to Texas Jon worked for an Aerospace company that made satellites. Jon would travel to other countries to help with the launch. Also, when we moved to Texas Jon worked for another company that required a security clearance, and lots of traveling. Jon would tell me things like...that he had seen the launch codes for the satellite that was launched, and gave the codes to our government who then sabotaged the satellite; and that I couldn't tell anyone because he had signed a confidentiality agreement that he wouldn't talk about anything that he had seen, and that he could be charged with spying if I said anything. This is just the tip of the iceberg of lies and mind games that Jon did.

     If Jon really didn't have security clearance then how was I to know. A child or teenager is not going to have access to an adults resume, and even then the adult could have made a fake one or lied on their resume. There really is no way for a child or teenager to know. PLUS, my mom even knew that he had security clearance!!! There was NOTHING going on in my life to suggest that Jon was lying about having security clearance. So, what on earth would make them think that his resume had anything to do with it?! It is my opinion that Jon lied about not having security clearance until right before court in 2007. But regardless of that what matters is he told me he did (and there was no one to tell me otherwise), and that I believed him.

     I've just been thinking about this lately, and about how absurd I think it is that they put his resume in as evidence during court. I just don't get it. IT PROVES NOTHING!!!

I Hate Depression

     Over the last few months I've been trying different antidepressant medications trying to find the right one to help me function the right way during the day. It wasn't all that easy for me to even think about getting help like that. I hate depression, and the fact that I need help. It just got to the point that I felt that it wasn't healthy for my daughters to see me struggling to keep up with the house work, and with cooking dinner. I don't have the type of depression where you feel sad all the time; which is probably why it's so hard for me to accept that I need help. I just felt so overwhelmed by everything around me that it paralyzed me to the point that I didn't feel like I could get anything done around the house. When I did finally go see a doctor she tested my serotonin levels which turned out to be very low. This does help me to realize that I have a chemical imbalance that I have no control over, and that taking medicine should be able to help me feel better. I do not think that taking antidepressants is a fix all solution. It is something that I plan on doing for now, but I plan on someday being healthy enough to get off of it.

     I recently tried switching the antidepressant that I was on, and well...I'll just say that it's not the right one for me. I haven't felt this bad in a while. I didn't want to get out of bed, I was having some trouble sleeping, and most important of all...I had ZERO drive to do ANYTHING during the day. I pretty much spend all of yesterday on the couch. The whole day I was yelling at myself in my mind...saying things like, "what are you doing?!" "get up and do something!" "don't just sit there" "why are you doing that". The more I yelled at myself the more bogged down I felt. I couldn't stand feeling the way that I felt yesterday, and I wasn't going to continue on that medicine to see how long it would take to see if it would help. I had been on it for about a week; most take a few weeks to fully help, but there was no way that I was going to wait that long and to continue to feel that way. So, I've put myself back on the previous medicine that I was on until I go the next time to see the doctor. It's not that the previous medicine was all that bad (it did help me some); I just thought that there might be something out there that would be better. Which is why I was trying the current antidepressant that didn't work out too well.

     The reason why I hate depression, and having to take medicine for it has a lot to do with my childhood. My mom was suicidal pretty much all through out my teen years. She would just sit there and cry, and do nothing. I grew to see crying as a weakness that I never wanted to have. Yeah, sure my mom went to doctors for help, but it wasn't much help. The more medicine she got on the more suicidal she got. It was all just a bad mix of medicine. She would have side effects to one medicine, and instead of changing the medicine the doctor would just add another medicine that came with it's own set of side effects to add to the mix as well. I remember hiding the car keys from her so that she couldn't just drive off...driving while crying is such a dangerous thing. She would tell me that she just wanted to run away or drive off a bridge. I even stood behind and in front of her car so that she couldn't leave the driveway on different occasions. I did my best to help / "fix" her, but nothing I did worked. So, you can see why I was so hesitant to be on antidepressants, but I'm still not going to allow myself to be put on a lot of medicine all at once. It has all boiled down to what kind of mother I want to be, and what kind of memories I want my children to have of me. I don't want my girls to remember me as a mom that couldn't get anything done, and just sat around the house. I want to be so much better than that for them...they deserve it.