Hi all! I realized today that it's been quite a while since I posted just a random update post. Since I have a bit of time before I need to go pick up the youngest, I thought I'd stop by and say hi! Hi!

Thing here are actually going pretty well. There are the usual concerns but for the most part, we're doing okay. I've been making slow progress on the house. Watch for an upcoming photo update post from the kitchen. It's been a long summer though. I've rarely been at home and it's very much taking its toll on me. I'm tired. How tired am I? So tired that I can't stop giggling over this darn image.

Surprisingly enough, my mood seems fairly stable. I'm incredibly appreciative of that fact. Usually when I get this run down, I'm a complete disaster. Right now, though I have my moments of melancholy, it's not crippling me. I'm doing okay and it puts a huge smile on my face to be able to say that. Ever since I went to Baltimore, I've been working on me. It was pointed out to me then that I spend most of my life hiding away and I realized that the person was right. I had gotten to the point where I was scared of most everything.

It hasn't been easy but one little step at a time I've worked on reclaiming me. I've started working on my weight. (You can read about that over on Welcoming Weight Loss) I've gotten back into working on the kitchen. I went out for drinks one night when I was invited. My biggest thing? I've taken on a co-author role on a series of books. The opportunity was offered to me over a year ago but I was too afraid to agree to do it. Now, even though I'm not as confident in myself as my partner is, I'm doing it - one word, one paragraph, one chapter at a time. I've also decided to further my education. Not with another degree quite yet (there's some serious financial mess to clear up before that can happen), but with an hour every other week during my writing time where I focus on something. Some of you may remember Caliban's website. I'm working my way from beginning to end of that. It's a bit of a journey of self-discovery. Once I finish that, I have a ton of blogging and writing tool pdfs that I'd like to go through. Once the boys are back in school, I'm going to increase the frequency for working on the book and for "homeschooling" myself. I do want to go back to college and most likely get a second bachelor's degree and then who knows, one day I may even become Dr Kat. I kind of like the sound of that.

For now though, things are going well. I'm doing well. Finances are always tricky, but I'm not letting that defeat me. I'm keeping busy doing what I can do and trying not to focus on the things that I can't control.

Eek! I just noticed the time! It's time for me to get changed and to head into town to pick up Roger. We have some grocery shopping to do and then home. I'll be back soon though. I have to tell all of you what the boys are up to!



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I've spent the past 30 hours wanting to write here, even needing to write here but not knowing what to say. I always find that to be such a sad irony; the girl who has a writer's soul not knowing what to write. I guess let's start with what the doctor said...

I broke it down for some friends like this:

1. It turns out that I'm brilliant. IQ testing, for what it's worth, put me at smarter than 90% of the people on the planet.
2. I have PTSD that mostly likely began when I was about 3 and has continued untreated well into adulthood. The other "traumas" that I have gone through have only made it worse and in part most likely led to...
3. What is most likely Bipolar II disorder. The testing that I did wasn't geared towards that but it did come up as a possibility and after discussing my symptoms that the testing didn't go over, he's pretty convinced.

So...now what? Now, I wait to hear back from my primary care doctor to see if they'll write me a prescription for a lithium based medication. I also have to call and set up a therapy schedule with a therapist who specializes in trauma therapy for women and children.

On paper, that's where I am right now. Inside my head, I'm so far from there. The stress and anxiety of yesterday has led to exhaustion and depression today. Add into that what one friend calls the "female chemical factory" that's going on inside of my body and I'm left wondering what the point of it all is.

I'd love to be able to say don't worry, I'll be fine, but the reality is..or at least the reality inside of my own head...I don't know. I don't know if I will ever be "fine" again. I look around and I see people smiling and laughing and so much of the time, it feels as if I don't even recognize those emotions. I put on a brilliant show, but deep down, I'm not sure what happy even is.

There are times..maybe too many times..that I sit and think about how I wish nobody really cared about me because then I could just vanish. Somehow, I could just cease to exist on this planet and the world would be such a better place. The oddest part? When I have those thoughts, I'm disconnected from them. There's no deep emotional well that they're coming from. If I were to say it out loud, it would be said in that same bored tone like, "Yeah, I should take the garbage out."

So I would love to say don't worry...because I'll be okay, but instead it's don't worry, you'll be okay. Who knows, maybe I will be too. After all, this is only 2/3 of my world...the rest of it is nothing like this...

For now though, I'm going to leave you with two posts..written by someone who has said and illustrated it so much better than I can right now. She's been there, so she understands...please go and read these and leave her your support.

Adventures in Depression Part I and Adventures in Depression Part II



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I haven't been posting here regularly for a while now. Usually I come back and I make some lame excuse or laugh off my absence. Today..Today, I'm going to tell you the truth of where I've been.

I've been right here. I've been sitting here, staring at this screen and wishing desperately for the knowledge of how to tell any of you who still read here that I'm not okay. I'm not fine. If I say those words, odds are that they're lies because while I so desperately want to be, I'm not fine and I'm not okay. I haven't been for a long time.

Oh sure, there are good days. Everyone has good days, even me. There have been days where I feel like I'm on top of the world and nothing can bring me back down. Those days are almost too good. They give me hope and for a brief shining moment, there's clarity.

Then, there are the bad days. Oh God, the bad days nearly kill me sometimes. Those are the days where I sit and cry because my life just feels impossible. Those are the days where I look down at my wrists and I think about how good it would actually feel to slice open that fragile skin. I don't want to die. It's not about death. It's about feeling something other than whatever is holding me down.

I met a boy not so long ago and he was wonderful. For the first time, perhaps ever, I opened myself up to him. I showed him the good days and I showed him pieces of the bad days. It was hard because I was so afraid that the "truths" of the bad days really were the truth. The voices that tell me that I'm useless, that I'm ugly, that I'm stupid, that I don't deserve happiness..I was so afraid that he would look at the real me and just confirm those things. He didn't, but he still broke my heart. You see, I showed him the real me and he said the real me doesn't exist.

Do I exist? That's such an awful question if you think about it. We all want to exist. We all want to be important in someone's world, don't we? To have someone say that you don't exist and then prove it by completely shutting you out of their world is just awful. It's been a couple of weeks and it still fills me with a horrible amount of sadness.

You see, I do exist but I exist within a world that not many people understand or even get to see. I live in a world where I may be on top of the world for a few days and then below the bottom of the ocean for a number after that. I ride a chemical and emotional roller coaster that makes no sense to many who haven't lived it themselves.

There are days when I don't want to get out of bed, where all I want to do is pull the covers up over me and pretend that I don't exist. It would be so much easier than trying to push through it. How do you explain to the people around you, the people who tell you how smart you are, that there are days where trying to think or put together coherent thought is like being in a smoke filled box where you can't see the walls and so you keep slamming into them as they move in closer and closer to you? That the very attempt at trying gives you awful headaches but you keep trying because you don't want anyone to see just how much you struggle with something that other times comes so easily? How do you explain that sometimes it's like there are two of you living inside your own head? There's the completely logical, rational, totally you girl..your true personality and spirit..but then there's this emotionally rabid creature that just reacts without reason. How do you explain that it's that second girl who desperately seeks out love and affection, even when it's not healthy? It's that girl who will crumple into a weeping pile over something said without any intent of harm or malice?

Those are the bad days, the days where I spend all day fighting myself until I'm an exhausted mess by the end of the day. Those are the days when I try to avoid people and yet everything within me screams to be with certain people. You see, I have what I call my safe zone..those people who have known me for ages and yet still accept me, even on the bad days when I know they don't understand what's happening with me. They're my 5 safe places. The irony is that I can't easily access any of them but they're the 5 that deep down I know that if things got bad enough, they'd be there.

It's not all bad days though. There are the way too good days too. The days where I wake up and I'm on top of the world, nothing can stop me and it's going to be amazing. Those are the days where I'm like a machine. I can accomplish amazing amounts of things and I'm happy, cheerful, bubbly and everyone loves me.

The problem with those? It's not normal or healthy either. A person cannot maintain that level of omgtheworldisawesomeandyesitalklikethisonthosedays. My brain moves at hyper sonic speeds and it's not unusual for me to have half a dozen things going on at once in it. I could be hearing a song, arguing with myself, thinking over some problem, sorting out a schedule and all this going on while I'm actively doing something else. Other times, my body is still as still can be because my brain is moving so fast that I don't need to move. For me, they can last no more than a few days and then the crash comes and I go through a series of bad days. Then, if I'm lucky, it balances out and I have
"normal" days for a little while before the whole cycle starts again.

You see, this isn't just depression. I've done depression and this is something more.  If I had my guess, it's Bipolar II disorder. My guess isn't good enough though, so I'm seeing a clinical psychologist next week. I need to know what's wrong with me and if it's even possible for me to live a normal life. I need to know if I can be just me without all of this holding me down and holding me back. I know that I will never get the boy back or help him to understand that I loved him enough to
show him the good and the bad, but maybe I can help other people understand what it's like to live with this by writing about it. It's a scary, scary place where so often I feel incredibly alone, so alone that I panic and will reach out to people who have no idea just how badly I need them to hold my hand and to tell me that it's going to be okay.

I'm just a girl, lost in her own world, who needs to know that even when she's "crazy", she's still loved.




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It's Tuesday and thank goodness, the weather has changed for the better! I've already moved all of the planters off of my kitchen table and out to the back porch. Thank goodness for that! Trying to keep the cats out of them was becoming more of a challenge then I wanted to deal with. They're usually good critters but those planters were more than they could resist!

Speaking of things you can't resist (nice segue, eh?), I heard of an opportunity to write a Going Green guest post on another fabulous blogger's blog and I jumped at it! It went live yesterday and I can't believe that I forgot to tell you about it. If y'all want to check it out, and I totally encourage you to do so, head on over to Parenting By Dummies and check out the blog post written by yours truly!

There, I think I've caught all of you up on everything. I told you about my radio show yesterday and about my guest blog post today. I don't think much of anything else is really going on so that just leaves me writing about today's tackle.

Laundry. The never ending mountain of laundry that is always waiting for me to get it washed, dried, folded, hung up and put away. Well, today I'm going to try to get through the large basketful that is living in my bathroom. This will open up the rest of my bathroom to being cleaned and I can finally get in there and scrub it down properly. It always amuses me that even if the rest of my house is a total disaster, my bathroom will be clean. Having this basket of laundry in there has been driving me nuts!

Now, since it's a gorgeous day outside, I won't be at all surprised if I tackle a few other areas. There's just something about warm (not hot) sunny days that seem to fill me with energy and motivation. I won't complain, I'll just take advantage of that!

I'm off to take some tylenol (woke up with a blinding headache that I'm stubbornly ignoring) and toss in a load of laundry!