I did not leave for those reasons.  Not the ones you've always believed.  I know in my most honest heart that I am the type.  I warm slowly to love a new friend, but I will hold on to hurt for years like it's a cherished thing.  I remember all the unguarded moments  with you, which come so rarely and unnaturally for me.  What have I said in the past that will allow you to feel better about my decision? 
     "She always seemed so resentful."
     You assume someone upset me.  You assume that it was just too much effort, or that I'd prefer to break some rules rather than fight the good fight.  How insulting.  You, my dear friend, cannot bear to picture a heaven without me in it.  For that I am grateful.  I still want you to like me.  I just can't do it at the expense of liking myself.
     I don't want to talk about the reasons we stopped.  I am not looking for you or anyone to fix my problem, because for me it's not a problem.  Discussing it, having you point out that it's so very obvious to you, will only drive a wedge between us.  I don't have many friends left to lose.
     Messages from people I barely ever spoke to arrive in the mail.  So many unannounced visits, like gentle attacks on a very private introvert's personal sanctuary.  A well-meaning but socially excruciating talk with the woman who once, twenty years ago, lectured my boyfriend for driving too fast.  Eyes nearly meet mine at school functions, then quickly glide away. 
     "She looks like a freak now.  Probably always had a rebellious streak."
     My purple hair makes me smile every time I see it.  It feels good, like I am a butterfly that was locked in a cocoon for years.  This is a small part of who I am, but was always afraid to show.  Blending in was always so much easier.  But it hurt a lot more, too.
    
     
    

     I have been wanting to go back to school for years.  In fact, it has been eating me alive for a very long time.  With the help and encouragement of a few people, I started pursuing it again a few months ago. 
    When I go onto a college campus, I'm very aware that I don't fit in.  I never really did.  I had one semester of college before marrying Toby.  Then a few more semesters while married or married with young children.  That first time around, I was nearly the same age as everyone around me, but I felt so much older because of my additional responsibilities.  
      So, fast forward to now.  I am fifteen years older than the typical college student, with about a million more responsibilities than I ever had before.  I am chunky and I have purple thistle-fluff hair.  In some ways, I am less prepared for school than I was when I began the first time.  But now I know how badly I want this.
     After doing my FAFSA and applying to the local college, I waited.  They needed another transcript.  The I waited again...and they needed another transcript.  Finally, I took the advice to just go and stand there until something happened, because I had been growing increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that I might be rushing around the first week of classes trying to figure everything out at the last minute.
     The admissions office said I had been accepted as of the day before.  I wanted to know who could help me enroll for classes.  I'm a Unified Science Education with Physics Emphasis major.  Functionally, this means I am under the jurisdiction of both the education department and the science department...and no person from either place was available to assist.  Bum.
    The girl at the Admissions desk must have thought I looked disappointed, because she said if I went up two flights of stairs to the third floor, someone in the Registration office might be available.  I hopped up the stairs, then sat on a bench and caught my breath for a few minutes (killer cold, not that out of shape...).
     The lady in Registration, who may just be my new favorite person ever, printed out a copy of what classes counted for which requirements, and what I needed to take.  She addressed my prerequisites and together we picked two classes for me to take in the spring. 
   I walked into the hall and tried not to cry. 
   Classes start the 12th of January.

 

I have seven amazing kids.

I have enough food to eat.  (Probably too much food.)

I will soon move into a new house where both our business and family will have space to work.

I'm healthy.

I have a husband who loves me.

I am so lucky in so many ways.  

But I'm still stressed out and depressed.  Why is everyone so obsessed with seeming happy all the time?  Isn't honesty good, too?

Seriously, is there anything that's more depressing than clothing shopping.?  I had a couple of glorious hours allotted to spend however I pleased this morning.  Off to Goodwill.  I found a polka-dotty skirt and dress, and that wasn't the soul-sucking part of the day.  Then I decided I'd like to try for some shirts at the mall.  That's the mistake.

Here is the problem I have:  I don't fit into any easy, normal demographic.  I am not a teenager or an octogenarian.  I am not quite plus-sized and not quite regular sized.  I'm not country or preppy or minimalist.  Most importantly, I don't want to look just like everyone else.

I'd call my ideal look a little bit punk-rockstar, with lots of black stripes and boots.  I also have a fondness for goofy novelty print dresses and graphic tees and odd whimsical thrift store things. I realize that's a bit schizophrenic.  I call it circus-goth sometimes.

I don't like most of what the stores have to offer.  I spend an hour or two riffling through the racks, finding something I like a bit and realizing it won't fit me.  Sometimes, I stop into Old Navy in desperation at the end and buy something because I don't want to go home empty-handed.  Then I remember why I don't like their stuff when it falls apart or shrinks up wonkily.

I'm pretty frustrated with the whole shopping in person thing.  I am also terrified to buy online, wait for shipping, and realize the item still doesn't work for me.  But I think I'll have to give it a shot. Maybe I'll also give sewing for myself a try.  I need some nerdy dresses to wear with cardigans and tights and boots for the winter, I think.

End rant.  On the bright side, a hipster guy at Goodwill told me my glasses were cool.

Some days I wonder who will still love me when I'm not exactly like they are.

Oh, my daughter. 

You are making a stand in the exact place I have been pushed slowly for years.  I am proud of your courage.

In the interest of being transparent, I've told a few people I trust about the depression.  One common response:  "You hide it so well!"  I'm not sure how I feel about that one.  Everything in my life has been so thuddingly dead, and I'm stumbling zombielike through the apocalypse, and you didn't even know until I told you?

I was thinking about it today, and it isn't that I'm not able to handle difficult situations, or social gatherings.  I try to avoid them at all costs, but I still have to deal with a lot of things.  The difference, I realized, is how long it takes me to recover the amount of energy I must expend to act minimally normal for that time. 

I teach a Sunday School class at church, which also requires me to attend on Wednesday nights.  I love the girls I work with, I adore the other leaders, and every meeting is a struggle.  I'm deeply ambivalent about my faith, or lack of it these days, but I keep going because I don't feel good about making huge life altering decisions while under the influence of a distorted world view.  I go.  I do, and I try.  And then I spend the next day or two trying to get my mojo back.

Toby overheard this exchange while we were getting ready for church this morning.

Hollis:  "I think when I'm older, I want to get colored contacts."

Margaret:  (After bending over, grasping the sides of his face and gazing deeply into his eyes.)
"Hollis, your eyes are hazel, and that's good enough."

We all need a Maggie.

I didn't go to church on Sunday.  Mother's Day is hard for me.  I don't want to go and hear warm fuzzy stories about how much someone's mom was perfect in every way.

This bothers me because:

Harry has not let me sleep for a month.

I feel guilty for not being a happy mom when I know there are women who would kill for being able to have kids.

I don't think I'm a good mom.  I work,  I lose my temper all the time, I don't read books to them, I let them watch too much TV, I swear in front of them, I forget to brush anyone's teeth when I'm depressed, I haven't made kids do homework for most of the school year.

I want my daughters to live their lives however makes them happy and fulfilled...and I know that I'm not making the whole mom gig look good right now.

I work so hard for my kids and they like Toby better because he's fun and lets them play video games.

I don't iron.  Ever.

I am not patient, I am not gentle, I am not generous, I am not unselfish.

I love my kids so much and mostly I want to hide from them because I don't want to teach them to be crazy like me.

So, take all of the insecurity and guilt and anger above, and add to it a day of watching everyone I'm friends with on Facebook gush about what their families are doing for them on that day.  Nothing makes me feel like I'm right about all of the above like the fact that no one in my family mentioned the day.  At all.  I guess I should have gone to church so they would be reminded.

I commanded Toby to take me and buy me a donut for each of the ungrateful kids I birthed, and then we got into a big fight.  Probably my fault because I'm such a grumpy ass right now.

The end.



  

I've come to the realization that doing whatever seems the least awful has left me...feeling more awful.  I've done a lot of reacting to whatever is stressing me out by hiding from it or taking the path of least resistance.  Or both.

So here's to trying things that make me uncomfortable.  Like going to therapy.  Or talking about going to therapy.  Like doing things make make me look or feel like an idiot sometimes.  Because who knows, it might be fun once in a while.

...but this post probably won't sound that way.

Internet, I'm in therapy/counseling.  And it's helping.  If you feel that mental illness is a faith or personality failing and I should just pray harder or stop feeling sorry for myself, F OFF.  It's none of your business.

After two young people committed suicide in our area, I started to think that maybe it was time to model something more constructive for my kids than just toughing depression out and waiting for it to go away.  And for purely selfish reasons, I wanted to stop thinking dying might be nice.

So my problem stems from two sources:  I have trouble dealing with the hormonal swings that happen around pregnancy and childbirth.  Yeah, even though I've done it so many times.  And family history?  I'll just say that depression occurs in 100 percent of my female blood relatives.

The other source:  Let's see...I have seven kids (one of whom depends on me entirely for nourishment), a full-time job, a crappy cluttered house, a husband that is constantly distracted and busy building a new house, and a fairly busy church job.  None of these are bad things, except for the old house, and we're in the process of fixing that.  But it's a lot to deal with.

So maybe it's no wonder that life is beating me up and stealing my lunch money right now.  I've learned that it's okay to be frustrated with things that I wanted.  I would always beat myself over the head because I chose to get married and have kids, so I deserved every bad feeling I had if I wasn't happy with some aspect of that life. 

It's a little easier now that I don't have to mentally punish myself for being irritated with the kids occasionally, or with Toby.  That doesn't make be a bad mom or a bad wife.  Somehow, giving myself permission to be mad sometimes has made me mad less often...which is a good thing for all of us.

(Image from the awesome "Heal Yourself, Skeletor" site.  It seemed appropriate.)

It seems like it's my middle name right now.  Either regret or resentment.  Is there a word for the odd sense of loss when you contemplate something you might not even have wanted?

I've had two things bugging me, so maybe if I put them out here in print on my blog, they'll leave my head for good.

One:

I don't have a wedding ring.  We were the classic broke teenagers when Toby and I married.  We didn't think a lot of fuss and expense were necessary, and were keenly aware that everyone in both our families didn't want us to go ahead with it.  We went together to Spencer's in the mall, and picked out a cheap silver band with sun, moon, and stars on it.  It was just a ring, so we'd have a ring, and a little nod to my intended astronomy career.

They day of our wedding, the ring disappeared.  I don't know what happened to it, or how. The man who performed the ceremony forgot the ring part, which was just as well, since we didn't have one.  It wasn't a big deal at the time.  We were just happy to be together.

Except...sometimes I wish I had a wedding ring.  It's not that a little piece of metal with a bit of mineral on it would make us more married, or that I need it to constantly fend off the advances of clueless suitors.  I don't like the diamond cruelty situation much, either.

I don't even know what I would do to fix this.  I can't go back in time, although I probably could have Toby use his metal detector at the decommissioned church to see if the original turns up there.  It would be odd to tell Toby he has to buy me one now, after fifteen-plus years of marriage...and we wouldn't be people for a traditional wedding ring with precious stones in it anyway.  I'm way more into the semi-precious ones with more personality than sparkle.  If I want a ring, I can buy one for myself.  I don't know why this bothers me at all.

Two:

I've never had a shower of any kind.  Not like that, I wash quite regularly.  I didn't have a wedding shower, or a baby shower for any of the kids.  It's not that I need stuff for my babies, because we're pretty well set these days with baby care items.  It's just that after all these years, in a community that is so excited about procreation, I wonder if it's just me that's never had one.

Don't get me wrong, I'd probably have been really weirded out if someone wanted to throw me a big party and give me things, especially with baby number 4, or 5, or 7.  And maybe that same community has understood that about me and thought it was doing what I wanted.  But after years of trying to blend in and not be noticed, it sometimes feels like I've done such a good job that no one knows I'm here.  Oh well, I suck at thank-you notes anyway.

I like being the person who does things a little differently.  It's part of our family identity at this point.  But sometimes I see all the things that people do because they're things everyone does, and I wonder if there's something to those traditions.

In the meantime, I feel sort of like I missed my chance to get on the tradition train, and it's never coming back for me to get it right. 

When I wake up and it's Toby's turn to make breakfast and get the kids on the bus, but after I'm sure he's going to get up, I can't relax or go back to sleep because I want to make sure the girls' hair is fixed.  I weigh myself in my unflattering underwear and see that I've gained back three of the seven pounds I lost in the last month. 

The washing machine has been giving us fits because the floor in the laundry room is so uneven it walks all over the place, so we strapped it to the wall and it instead jitters in place so much that it's tearing itself to pieces.  I check on the load that I tried all day yesterday to wash and it's still sitting in a bath of grey water. 

Back in my room I pull the nightgown over my head and I think about how I should get dressed for real but a nightgown is only one thing to do and I can't face putting on a bra and socks and pants and a shirt.  Too many steps...

Toby has popped amaranth and mixed it with yogurt for the kids' breakfast and they're avoiding it like the plague.  They ask if they can eat breakfast at school instead and I want to swear at them for being so picky.  I have to convince them to wear actual coats to school instead of the jackets they prefer because it's less than twenty degrees this morning.

They all pile out the door to wait for the bus even though I tell them to run out when it's at the corner so they don't stand there in the cold for five minutes.  They'd rather be out there then in here with me and the amaranth yogurt breakfast.  I yell a huffy goodbye at them.

Maggie is student of the month at school.  This time the kids managed to inform us, so we wanted to go for the ceremony.  Liv told me the assembly was at nine or nine-thirty, and after Toby puts Loch and Cora in the tub, I ask him to call the school to double-check when we need to be there, because I don't want to talk to anyone. 

Oh, hey.  We have to be at the school in fifteen minutes, at eight-thirty.  I have a sleeping baby and two naked kids in the tub.  I desperately need a shower myself.  So Toby and the camera go instead.  I sit down at the computer with my breakfast and there's something upsetting on facebook.  I try to call Toby to discuss it, but the school is in a cell phone wasteland.  Instead, I sit and simmer...snipping at Cora when she wants to climb me like a jungle gym and yelling at Loch when he can't find clean pants. 
 
It's not ten yet, and I feel that today is irredeemable.  Not only that,  it's all my fault for not trying harder. 

Signs and symptoms include:

• Persistent sad, anxious, or "empty" feelings
• Feelings of hopelessness or pessimism
• Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, or helplessness
• Irritability, restlessness
• Loss of interest in activities or hobbies once pleasurable, including sex
• Fatigue and decreased energy
• Difficulty concentrating, remembering details, and making decisions
• Insomnia, early-morning wakefulness, or excessive sleeping
• Overeating, or appetite loss
• Thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts
• Aches or pains, headaches, cramps, or digestive problems that do not ease even with treatment.

All of these, except I'm not suicidal and I've a double dose of irritability.  I feel like there's an anvil of awful on my chest and I try to make Toby and the kids take the blame for it.  Not being fair makes me feel like more of an asshole, which makes the anvil even bigger.

(Information from here.)

I keep noticing that when I'm talking to people about how many kids we have, there are some common assumptions.  I don't know if these things are common to all people who choose to have a pile of children, but I'm going to tell you how it is for us.

"You are so blessed."

Yeah, I think we are, they're all pretty awesome and healthy and even kinda cute.  Thanks.  But, um, sometimes they drive me crazy.  Now I feel guilty, so thanks for that, too.

"You are so blessed." (With sarcasm.)

Hey, you may assume that I while I wear shoes in public, at home I'm chained in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant at all possible times.  We don't swing that way.  In spite of your prejudices, intelligent women with the ability to make informed choices in regards to their lives sometimes choose to have a litter-worth of kids.  That's me.

"You certainly have your hands full."

Yes, and you should see my car and my house.  Want to hold one?  Especially whichever one's leaking.

"You must be a wonderful mother/parent."

So much guilt here.  I am not a great mother or even a nice person sometimes.  I am NOT better at it
than a parent with one kid.  I am constantly wondering if I'm somehow neglecting one of them, like the quiet, unassuming and nonpushy type ones especially.  I have to hope that the interaction they have with each other makes up for it somewhat.

"Catholic or Mormon?"

Mormon.  But I don't ever remember getting the memo that we had to do things this way, and I am contrary enough that I don't think just being told would change my mind if I didn't want to have lots of kids.  Trust me, if you knew me, you'd agree.

"You must really like kids."

Not all of them, just the cool ones.  All of mine are pretty cool, by the way.  How convenient!

"How do you pay for everything?"

With corsets.  Also, money can be exchanged for goods and services.  They have clothes to wear and food to eat and a roof over their heads.  We have a car that can seat all of us.  What don't we have?  We don't have a cable bill or a boat or lots of new things.  We're okay with cultivating a load of offbeat people who wear funky thriftstore clothes.

"Don't you have a TV?"  (Personal fave.)

Yeah, we use it to distract the kids so we can have sex.

I'm the type who has trouble with endings.  Those parenting books which talk about how to transition your kid to a new activity?  They were written for people like me.  I go all toddlery when I have to stop doing what I'm absorbed in or used to.

Today is the first Thursday of my sister's internship for college.  She currently cuts hair for a living, and has always had one day of the week free and worked on Saturdays.  We all meet at my Mom and Dad's house, about five miles from here.  That means my entire family, with few exceptions, has been all together once a week for several years now.

There are only four of us, in my family, and I know that in a larger one, or one that is more widely spread, this would not have been possible.  Toby is one of eight kids, and it has been a few years since everyone was all in the same place at the same time.  (We may get them all together when Levi returns from his mission in India in a couple of months, so high-five!)

What have we done with our Thursdays?  Nothing spectacular, usually.  Laural and I have gone to Kansas City a few times.  We always try to go between our birthdays (early September and mid-October), unless the Halloween corset rush makes it impossible.  We missed this year entirely due to Halloween and my enormous pregnancy at that time.

Mostly, though, we have just hung out at Mom and Dad's house.   We eat and watch TV and just do nothing of importance.  But we've done it together.  Now things will be more difficult.  Instead of a standing Thursday date, we'll have to plan things. 

Don't get me wrong, I am super excited to see Laural graduate and find a good job.  I just don't like change.  It makes my blog whiny.