Where Have You Been?!

Hello, friends! It’s been a heckin’ number of months since my last blog post (if you can even call it that, they were mostly just dream journal entries), and the year is coming to a close, I thought it might be time to sit down and write about everything that’s happened since… February?! Yikes.

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Struggling

Hello, friends. It’s been a little while since I last sat down to write here, and I don’t have much of an excuse for that, other than laziness, and the ever present thought in my head that begs the question, “Does anyone even care?”

Little Milestones | 3 Years Old

Hello, friends! I can’t believe that it is already time to make another post like this one. It feels like just a few months ago, I was typing up all of his little details for Little Milestones | 2 Years Old, and talking about all of the wonderful things that make my little guy so unique and special, but it was actually nearly a year ago that it went up.

Another Long, Stressful Silence

Hello, friends. I don’t even know where to begin.

Weekend Family Outings

Hello, friends. Today is Wednesday, and I am finding myself still needing to recover from our weekend adventures. I am starting to feel like myself again, but I am tired.

More Health Updates

Hello, friends. I just thought I’d throw a quick update out there, for anyone interested in how kiddo and I have been doing lately, since we both got slammed with health issues around the same time.

A Brief Health Update

Hello, friends. As most of you are probably already aware, I recently spent some time in the hospital. Nothing too serious, just some twists and lumps in my insides, but I wanted to give you all update on how I’m doing today.

My Trip to the Emergency Room

Hello, friends. I wish I had something happy and fun to share with you today, but I don’t. Recently, I’ve been dealing with some health issues. On Thursday, I spent 6 hours in the emergency room.

Struggle

I have been having a hard time lately. With just about everything. Honestly, I don’t even know where to start. I know I haven’t been blogging much these days, mostly because I can’t. I just can’t bring myself to do it. And who would want to read any of it anyway? I have had no energy, no motivation, and when I’m not taking care of my toddler, I’m lying on the couch, over-thinking, or taking depression naps. What a life.

So, here we go.

I was recently given the startling news that my father, grandfather, all my grandfather’s siblings, and my great-grandmother all have/had a rare form of muscular dystrophy, called OPMD. It is genetic (obviously), and there is a 50% chance that I have it. There is also a 50% chance that my brother and two sisters have it as well. And if I have it, there’s a 50% chance my son does as well. The night my grandmother told me, completely out of the blue, an hour before bedtime, I was shaken up. Really shaken up. I spent the next several hours on Google, reading up on the condition, trying to wrap my head around what to expect if/when symptoms occur. I didn’t fall asleep until nearly 3:00 in the morning.

If you want to learn more about the condition, you can click here. I won’t go into details. I’ve calmed down since getting the news, after doing my own research (let’s just say, my grandmother is extremely dramatic, and she made it seem like I 100% had it, and was in for a life of misery, which is not the case). The term “muscular dystrophy” is terrifying, but as far as these types of conditions go, this one isn’t as severe as others. It mainly affects the eyes and facial muscles, but can cause weakness in other parts of the body. Normally, it OPMD doesn’t present symptoms until the 40s to 60s, if at all. My grandfather and father  only recently started displaying symptoms. There is no cure or treatment, but with modern science, who knows what will be possible if/when it presents itself in me.

Next up, relationship crap. As I’m sure some of you know, Kyle started a new job a few months back. He leaves for work very early, and is back before dinner. You’d think this would be great, but it isn’t. He’s always exhausted, and always on edge and cranky. He passes out early every night, and we barely talk anymore. When we do talk, it always seems to turn into an immature fight. I’ve been getting swallowed alive by my depression lately, and struggling to keep up with housework and our toddler, and whenever I ask him to help with anything, it turns into a fight. A fight, and then the silent treatment. He gets defensive about everything, and it is wearing me out. I don’t want to bad mouth him. I know he works hard when he is at work, but he puts in zero effort at home. I’m struggling. I need HELP. But he won’t help me. And I am tired. So, so tired.

On top of all of these things that I need to process and over-think about, my normally sweet, little boy, who turned two at the end of January, is fully immersed in his “terrible twos” phase, and on most days, he really wears me out. Emotionally and physically. Once again, it’s just me with him. Always. Just. Me. 24/7. The weather has been bleak and wet, and we have been trapped inside most days of the week, which takes its toll on both of us. He gets worked up, bounces off the walls, gets sassy and cranky… and I’m so freaking tired, you guys. Always tired.

I’ve been feeling like an absolute failure in every aspect of my life lately. My relationship, my family, my health, my hobbies. Myself. Everything. The only little glimmers of happiness that I have found have been when Liam chooses to share how much he has learned lately. I have been trying hard to teach him his numbers and letters, whenever he sits still for just a second, which seems to never happen. But then, sometimes, we’ll be driving in the car, or eating lunch, and he will just start counting to 10, or correctly naming the letters on TV or in his books, or babbling out actual, tiny sentences, and forming coherent thoughts. Those are the moments that make me feel alright. Make me feel like I’m not a total failure.

I recently got this message from someone in Kyle’s family. Someone I have never met, and who has very opposing views to my own. She is very opinionated, and apparently does not approve of stay-at-home moms. At first, I was a little irritated at the tone in her message, because she blatantly stated that she thinks women who stay home to be stay-at-home moms are not “okay”, but then, I realised that it was a compliment.

Nobody becomes a parent to get praise from strangers, or from family. And, honestly, I shouldn’t care about what other people think about my life, or my parenting. But, in the moment, I needed this. She doesn’t know anything about my struggles. About my relationship, or my depression, or how my toddler, who I absolutely adore, can drive me to tears with his craziness. She just sees a mother, who works hard to teach her baby boy the things he needs to know. High praise.

I have no one I can talk to about any of this crap. No one I can just sit down and bitch with. I’ve been dealing with shitty, fake friends lately, and I’ve decided to just stop trying to befriend people who will only hurt me in the end. I’m 27 years old now, I don’t need to deal with that high school bullshit. I don’t need “friends” who stalk my social media, take screen shots of things I say, and pass them around to all their friends, so they can tweet passive aggressively about me, and pass judgment on situations they know nothing about. If that sounded a bit specific, that’s because that’s exactly what I’ve been dealing with for the last several months, and I am done with it. So I removed these people from my life, and haven’t looked back.

That’s just my luck. It’s hard for me to make friends, and even harder for me to keep them. People just don’t like me. They always have a problem with my negativity, with my anxiety, with my depression, with my opinions, with how I parent. They just have a problem with me. So, I am alone. Always. Fucking. Alone. I don’t have friends. I don’t have anyone I can trust, or confide in. Even worse, are the ones who feel pity on me, so they reach out, and say that they are there for me, that they care, when they really don’t. They don’t care at all. They just think that they can send a few positive messages, fix all my problems, and feel great about themselves. That’s not how it works, folks. You can’t just lure me into a false sense of security, a false sense of friendship, and then decide that it’s not worth the effort. That I’m not worth the effort. That’s cruel. So fucking cruel. And all day long, all I see are stupid memes and pictures of shit best friends supposedly do, and people just tag each other in them, and talk about all the good times they have, and knowing that I will never have that hurts.

If it weren’t my only form of communication with people that weren’t literal toddlers (even if they act like them from time to time), I’d just delete my social media. It’s so pointless.

That’s it. That’s all I wanted to say. That’s where I’m at in my life. Alone. Hurting. Struggling. Pathetic.

Thanks for reading.

Jan

Sorry for the Silence

Hello, friends. It’s been quite some time since I’ve had the chance to sit down and write a post (just over two months), and a lot has happened. Most of the things that have happened aren’t really worth mentioning, but there are a few things that I’d like to share with you.

Firstly, and most important in my eyes, yesterday was my son’s second birthday. He’s two. I have a two year old. Trying to wrap my head around the fact that I have been a mother for two years is just… insane. I was babysitting all day, so we really couldn’t celebrate, and my entire household has been battling the cold from hell for a few weeks, so we were all more than happy to lay low. We had a cookie cake, took some pictures, and enjoyed some family time at the end of the day. Liam had an actual party a little over a week ago, when we went up to visit Kyle’s grandmother, and the whole rest of his family, for the big, annual family Christmas party. We bought Liam a really nice, super delicious cake, and he got to open a massive pile of Christmas AND birthday presents. He’s gotten so many amazing gifts this season, I might have to start doing some more toy reviews. There’s plenty to report on!

Luckily, we got all of our holiday and birthday shopping done early this year, because as you all know, whenever things are going too well for us, something goes wrong. Now, I went off on Facebook and Twitter recently, ranting about the medical lab where Kyle had his blood tests done last year when he was starting his new job. He had to be screened for diabetes, which we then discovered he had. Well, what I may not have mentioned, is that the clinic ordered a number of other tests, which we did not ask for, and in the end, we were charged roughly $1,000 from the lab, and nearly $500 from the clinic. For BLOOD TESTS. Gotta love America…

So, since Kyle is unable to afford insurance through his employer (oh, he no longer works two jobs, just the one driving now), and doesn’t qualify for state aid, it all had to come out of pocket. His mom agreed to help us with the clinic bill, since she was supposed to put Kyle back on her insurance and forgot about it, but the rest was on us. We were making the minimum payments for a while, but since Kyle’s job pays pretty well, he decided to pay half of it all at once on the site. Well, he screwed up and accidentally hit “Pay In Full”, and over $800 was taken from our bank account… and we didn’t have that much in there.

We got slammed with an overdraft, and a fee to go with it. Of course, he didn’t tell me this was his mistake until after I went off online, blaming the company, but when we reached out to see if we could maybe get half of the money back, they wouldn’t work with us. Not even a little. Luckily, I got paid enough the next day to pull our account back from the negatives, but we’ve been riding on $32 in the bank for over a week. Thank goodness for Christmas cash and gas card gifts. Tomorrow, Kyle gets paid, and then I get a few dollars on Friday from babysitting, and we will be all set again. But it sure threw us for a loop.

And speaking of babysitting… that’s all over.

It’s been rough. I had to put my Twitter as protected, because I found out that someone has been stalking my tweets, taking screenshots, and sending them to people who don’t follow me there, which has caused me some drama. Ridiculous, high school drama. I have a good feeling I know who it might be… though I’d like to think it isn’t one of my friends who follows me. I don’t trust anyone anymore.

I feel empty. More alone than ever. I feel like there’s been too much to deal with, but I haven’t been letting myself deal with any of it, because there was always something that needed to be done. Something more important than me, and my feelings. I didn’t let myself feel, or deal, or vent. Blah.

I also recently became an aunt again, to a little girl whose name I don’t even know, and who I’ll probably never meet, we lost my grandmother’s husband, Richard, to cancer right before Christmas, and I gained 45 pounds in 2016.

Oh, and Trump. That happened. So we’re all stuck in this sinking boat of misery.

Thanks for reading, friends. I should have more time to do writing prompts, reviews, etc… I missed writing. Talk soon.

Jan