Sunday, September 7, 2008

Day 27 on Lexapro.

Day 4 on Lamactil.

written two days later.

Another Sunday. I am still not ready to go to church. I am usually never absent. Em really misses it. She misses her friends. She asks me if she’ll ever see them again. I assure her she most definitely will.

This day was frustrating because I woke with a horrible headache. I was also extremely exhausted. I felt dehydrated. My mouth was dry. I slept much of the morning because I felt so poorly. When I woke up, I took some Tylenol and drank as much water as I could.

And I put my glasses on.

Oh, how they agitate me. When I’m home, I don’t like to wear them. I don’t like something touching my face all of the time. I even pull my hair back into a ponytail and attach barrettes wherever necessary to keep my hair from falling in my face.

But without them, I am fairly blind. A few months ago I went to the eye doctor for an appointment, guessing I needed glasses as I was suffering fairly bad headaches. Well, apparently I was right because she ended up prescribing bifocals. She explained something about me having extremely poor vision and a rare pair of astigmatisms – one horizontal and the other vertical. How, they kept asking me, did I pass my driver’s test?

The thing is, it seems I’m nearly blind. But I don’t notice it a lot because my eyes constantly struggle to stay focused. Of course, this makes them extremely tired. Hence the headaches.

So I need to wear them. This day, I went ahead and put them on.

Then, at some point, my ex-mother-in-law called. She’s not supposed to have my number. But she does. She had called the day before as well. As always, I ignored her. I listen to her messages and then erase them. She has not been very nice to me over the years, and she can be extremely manipulative. I herald her, though, because she was the single greatest influence in me learning to draw personal boundaries to protect myself emotionally. For this, and only this, I am grateful to her. At any rate, she wanted my mailing address. That is a no. She certainly does not need to know where I live.

And she also wanted to let me know my ex-husband was in the hospital. Again. For depression. She said he had been in this time for 2.5 weeks and had been in for two weeks prior to that. I had a feeling this was the case, as I had received a phone call from a hospital shortly following my own breakdown. When I returned the call, they could not give me any information. I didn’t hear anything else until this day.

So, I guess we must have had breakdowns at around the same time. How cute.

She also added one more tidbit of information. The reason he had the breakdown was…can you guess? Because of me. Because he misses me so terribly much.

Oh, sweet manipulation, guilt, and cruelty all rolled into one! What a divine multi-layered dessert!

Later, after vigorous water-drinking, and Tylenol-taking, and glasses-wearing, my headache started to lift. I also took Em to pick up some barbecue for dinner which further helped my headache dissipate. Because I hadn’t been feeling well, I had neglected to eat earlier in this day. After the food hit my belly, I felt a lot better.

Then, we took pictures for Em’s cowgirl party invites. This week she will turn four. What an amazing occasion! We had fun dressing her up in full cowgirl gear and photographing her sitting on a wooden rocking horse. She likes to pose a lot…and then look at every picture after it is taken. She is lucky the camera is digital – she gets instant gratification from laughing hysterically at her own silly faces.

I guess I was the same way…only we didn’t have digital cameras back then. Our instant gratification came in the form of Polaroid.

This night, after I put Em to bed, I started to clean. Vigorously. Perhaps a bit obsessively. All I will say is there was steam cleaning of carpets going on at around midnight. But, things got done. And I’m really, really happy to say that my house is getting really close to being at a starting point again. And I felt like I needed to take advantage of feeling okay. Because right now is so difficult for me – and some days are much harder than others — I feel compelled to use the time I can to get things done. There’s a big part of me that really believes I would feel a lot better if the house were clean. Because I think if it were, it’d alleviate a lot of pressure and make everything else so much easier to handle.

And I really need the pressure to be alleviated.