What Now?

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.

I spent my first Christmas in my new house with my mom, sister and soon to be brother-in-law. I spent all morning cooking up a yummy Christmas lunch and then we spent the afternoon playing games and decorating gingerbread cookies! It was the perfect day :)

The last 6 months have been so wonderful. I decided last summer that I wanted to buy a house so my path since June has been focused on learning everything I could about the home buying process, researching loans, realtors, cities, etc. As October and November rolled around I started touring houses in my area and fell in love with a house not 5 minutes from where I work. 2 weeks after my 30th birthday I closed on my house! Over the past month my focus shifted from house buying to moving to unpacking to decorating/preparing for Christmas.

As I closed the door last night and walked into my living room alone, I was overwhelmed with this feeling of "What now?!" With no more packing, moving, decorating or hosting to distract me, I suddenly realized I had no clue what to do. Buying a house was a huge step in the right direction for me. The whole process brought me such comfort and strength because it was a goal on my life's list that was going to be/is crossed off.

But now what? Where do I go from here?

It has been very unsettling to feel this sense of confusion again. I feel very lost and when I am lost, I tend to revert back to what I know will always be there: my past and my trauma. Last night I spent an hour or so reading through my posts from when I first transferred to V to the present day. Time had dulled my memory of a lot of interactions early on with V, but not the experience of hitting rock bottom. Re-reading all my words and emotions were compounded by the fact that it is almost 3 years to the day that I walked into V's office, disclosed the true depths of my depression and was escorted to the hospital. Even now, it's hard to think about. There is a strong sense of shame there still. But as hard as it is to think about, in a twisted way it brings me some comfort because it gives me direction. I know no matter what, that path of my past is always there, lying in the shadows waiting to pull me under again.

Busy

I have been extremely busy lately. Family parties, church parties, work parties, school, therapy. Jeesh. It's the last week of school before winter break, so my kids are falling apart at the seams. They are burnt out and need a break. As does their teacher. But we have finals to prepare for which means no down time :(

I have been approaching some hard topics in therapy with V. None harder than the one we just touched on last night, and after 20 minutes I was curled up in a ball, fighting off a panic attack and flashbacks that left me in a daze the rest of the night. I am so freaking exhausted of not being able to approach therapy the way I want to or think I need to because my body can't handle it and shuts down. It's frustrating to feel like I have to work at a snail's pace when my mind has made the decision that my body has just not caught up to yet. V says I need to be more patient with myself. That I put way too much pressure on myself and that I have got to focus on the baby steps as my victories for now.

I went home last night and tried to calm myself down, but ended up sending myself into another panic attack thinking about how I didn't plan ahead with my cutting and will have to work extra hard to cover scars while I'm visiting my dad out in California. They just got a new pool installed and he is so excited for me to enjoy it. I CANNOT get into a bathing suit. Oh my gosh. There is just no way... and I wasn't thinking about that over the past 6 weeks. The scars on my thigh are mostly healed but you can still see them in direct sunlight. The ones on my calf are fresh. I just wasn't thinking that I normally don't start cutting there until I get BACK from California... so now I'm stressed out about what I'm going to say to get out of swimming in their new pool. I'm not going to be able to wear shorts at all like I normally do there (it's winter and cold here so I wasn't thinking about that either!). Ugh.

Lots going on in my world right now... I can't wait until I can get to a point where I actually enjoy the holidays again. Right now they are nothing but a source of stress and anxiety.

Can I Just Hibernate, Please?

Man I wish I was a bear. Sleeping through the winter sounds like a really good solution. I'm starting to find that with each passing year, I dread the holidays more and more. The few family members I was close to have all died in the past couple of years, leaving me to try and look forward to fending off questions about my constant single-ness and underhanded comments by my mom about never having grandchildren. That's Thanksgiving in a nutshell. This year, to make it worse, my mom invited her dad and stepmom, who just recently moved back to the area after living 23 years in Oregon. I have seen them maybe 5 times since I was born.

He scares me. After all the stories I heard of how mean he was when my mom and her brother and sisters were kids, it is hard to want to get to know him. She is nice enough, but has brain damage from a very bad bout of pneumonia that left her without oxygen for too long. She is unpredictable in a childish way; lifting her shirt to show me a scar (god help me) or bursting into tears when talking about her nephew that died. They aren't my grandparents. I don't even consider them family.

It pisses me off that I have to pretend to want to get to know them (as I would never be blatantly disrespectful to them or my mom). I had grandparents. Ones that took care of me, played with me, talked with me, loved me. And now they are both gone and I am not looking for replacements.

Thanksgiving was so uncomfortable. I did anything I could to avoid being in the same room with them, only to be cornered by my aunt who succeeded in calling me a "titty baby" a few times for not getting plastic surgery to fix the after effects (loose skin) of losing so much weight. The only time I actually enjoyed myself was when I was with my sister, her boyfriend, my cousin and his girlfriend. We are all about the same age and it was nice to be able to sit and chat about things that we wanted to; movies, sports, school, etc. We sat down and played cards for almost 2 hours as well. I enjoyed that, but couldn't wait to leave.

And now that brings me to Christmas. Something I dread as well. First and foremost, I enjoy Christmas for the ability to celebrate the birth of my Savior and give back to the community. The thing I enjoy second most to that is being able to go out and see my Dad. With my work schedule, this is one of only two times a year I get to see him. I struggle with everything else.

Christmas with my other family makes me defensive. I don't want their obligatory gifts. The fact that you are buying me something to show me you care just because the date is December 25th ticks me off. You don't show you care any other time, so I don't want you to even bother now. Save your money, it'll just be wasted on someone who can't appreciate your half-hearted attempt "showing love." It's a lose-lose situation, because my family has always worked on the belief that you show how much you love someone by how much you spend on them. I wish every year that my desires of just a small gift card or maybe a new Vera Bradley purse were honored.

Knowing it never works that way, I'm stuck with trying to balance gift giving for everyone else in my family. My sister I tend to spend a little more on because she's still in school and has no money, but I do not want to go overboard on her. The bad thing is, she has experienced much more of the "I love you this much because I bought you this much" message since that is how my Dad is with her. I can see the disappointment on her face when I give her just one thing, or maybe two when she was expecting more. To her, it means I don't love her. Then she goes and spends money she doesn't have on things I don't need to try and show me she loves me. It's a freaking great situation we've got going on. >:(

As far as my mom goes, I'm to the point that everything I think of getting her is so lame (slippers, gift card, etc) that it hardly seems worth the effort. I'd rather find something that we can DO together as opposed to something I can just give her. My sister however, always goes overboard. I swear she spends at least $500 each year on her and wants me to go in on everything she buys. I just don't see the point. My mom would be just as happy to spend time with us as she would with whatever crazy contraption my sister has decided she needs this year. So this year I'm taking my mom, sister, and two youngest nieces to an art studio here in town where they let you paint ceramic plates, bowls, coasters, ornaments, etc and they glaze and fire them for you. My godmother used to have a store like this when we were kids and she would always let us paint something for Christmas. My mom used to do this very often as well so I thought it'd be something fun for all of us to do together. She was so excited about the idea, especially being able to bring the girls and starting a fun tradition with them. My sister on the other hand was like "That's it? What else are you getting her?" *sigh*

All of this "fake" love and obligatory actions tends to put me in a very depressed, somewhat passive-aggressive mood. It doesn't take much to trigger me into a deeper depression, where I fall into the traps of old habits and thought processes and re-route all my pain, anger, sadness, everything that the holidays brings me into myself, where I hold onto it and let it eat me alive. But I'll always put on the happy face... until the holidays blow over and I'm left with a dark cloud of depression and anger that will take me months to get out of. Yay, Christmas.