I went to NB to visit my kids and grand-kids back in September and, for the most part, it was a hard visit. First was my oldest daughter. All was well with her, she’s looking forward to becoming a full time teacher. It was a brief visit over pizza but we had a longer visit one evening out at my parent’s cottage which was so nice. Conversation was easy and pleasant without resorting to small talk, neither one of us can stand it.

Second was my younger daughter’s baby shower. The poor girl was not feeling well at all. In addition to depression and anxiety, she shows symptoms of PTSD surrounding her pregnancy. She had a baby who died within hours of being born and she had a miscarriage some time after that. At the shower she explained that she had ketones in her urine so she felt crappy physically too. She had a bit of a meltdown at end of the baby shower. I did my best to comfort her, there was really nothing else I could do for her.

She and her husband have various active stressors at the moment. Some are financial, some are work-related and some are due to this pregnancy. I guess you could say, “that’s just life” and you wouldn’t be wrong but I think that’s kind of a callous attitude. A situation like this calls for a more empathetic attitude. I know what it’s like to be overwhelmed by so many things at once.

My granddaughter is showing signs of high anxiety, possibly PTSD also. She had a little meltdown at the baby shower too. There were other kids there and they were making a ton of noise. I think it just overwhelmed my granddaughter and she needed to step away from the chaos for a moment. Not only that, she was separated from her mother while her mother was in the hospital for months during the pregnancy in which the baby was born live but died within hours. Not to mention the miscarriage and witnessing my daughter’s mental health struggles after that. I can see how watching her mother struggle through this pregnancy would be very triggering. I am concerned for my granddaughter but she does have a counsellor at school she talks to.

My son and his two partners are going through a break-up, which is never easy. It was awkward visiting him at the his children at his former partners’ home. One of his partners (the mother of his two children) seemed very depressed and more than a little detached. I met the second partner for the first time under these circumstances and like I said, it was very awkward. The children don’t really know me right now but when they are older they will. Their interaction with me was minimal.

The two women and kids live way out in the country and don’t drive; their apartment is tiny and grungy; the whole building could use some TLC or a stick of dynamite. It’s about what you’d expect someone on welfare to afford (I’m not making a judgement here, I can tell you that welfare is really not enough to live on). I was saddened by the whole situation.

The women are now drinking and my son suspects they are having sex with their downstairs neighbour, and leaving the sleeping children alone in the apartment (with no smoke detector) upstairs. They only take the baby monitor with them. There’s more but that’s a whole other post. At least with the older child in school there are more adults involved, who should be able to pick up on signs of abuse or neglect. I don’t live close enough to keep my own eyes on them.

My mom was away at a nephew’s wedding so I visited with my dad a couple of times. I was grateful for the use of the car and cottage for my NB visit, and for the couple of hundred bucks he threw my way, but for the most part he was quiet and I felt uneasy. My dad specializes in small talk so my visits were brief. I guess there wasn’t much to else say.

Yeah, this year was a hard visit.

I’ve almost doubled in size over the last four or five years and I am very unhappy with the way I look and feel. My waist was about fifty inches and I weighed in at a whopping two hundred and thirty-eight pounds, which is too much for my five foot three inch frame. I’ve always suffered from body dysmorphia but it has gotten much worse since the weight gain.

I asked my doctor for a little help with weight loss because it didn’t matter what I tried I kept putting on more weight and as I gained I became more depressed about it. I made all kinds of harsh judgements against myself. Judgements I would not make on anyone else. My doctor prescribed Ozempic for losing weight and so far I’ve lost twenty pounds. I see the difference on the scale but not in my body yet (there’s that dysmorphia). I haven’t measured my waist again, I want to wait a bit.

Ozempic isn’t a miracle “lose weight effortlessly” type of drug. Weight loss still takes work. I’ve been getting out for walks almost daily with my dog and I have an exercise bike for those stormy days we don’t walk. I’ve been eating significantly less sugar and chips but I can’t seem to get away from bread. The doctor says to eat nothing with flour or starch in it because flour and starch increase your appetite where Ozempic works by reducing your appetite. I feel marginally better, I can walk a mile and a half before I tire, that’s a big improvement over only being able to walk a half mile.

At my next weigh-in I am hoping to be under two hundred and ten pounds, at least that’s the goal.

I finally got a date for my bladder sling surgery and it’s coming up fast, less than two weeks. It’s hard to describe how I feel. I’m looking forward to staying dry, no accidents, and I’m afraid the surgery won’t work.

This is my second time around, the first time the sling moved out of position which rendered it ineffective. My doctor has never seen it happen before and so the “why” of it remains a mystery. After this surgery I doubt there will be any room to do it again if the sling fails or moves out of position. My plan is to take it super easy for about eight weeks after surgery. I want to make sure that sling doesn’t move one bit.

Assuming the surgery works, my PTSD symptoms surrounding having accidents should be significantly diminished. It will feel good to be able to go out and do things without fear of peeing my pants halfway to a bathroom; or worrying about the smell should I dribble while I’m out; and I can hardly wait to stop wearing bulky and expensive incontinence pads. I expect my quality of life to improve mentally and physically.

If all does not go well, I need to be prepared for that too. What happens if the surgery doesn’t work or it maybe works too well? If it doesn’t work, there’s still one other thing we could try; bulking up the urethra which will apparently help block unwanted leaks. I’m working on losing weight and I do kegel exercises which also help with incontinence. I’m not sure what the protocol is for the sling working too well but I assume it involves going back in to loosen things up a tad.

Here’s to hoping all goes well with my surgery.

While I was visiting close family friends I found out that my parents had a 60th wedding anniversary party last year. I was obviously not invited or even informed of the celebration.

I pretty much cut my siblings out of my life, it’s not like they were even in it to begin with. I blocked them on Facebook after my father and I had words about my lying coward of an older brother. Long story short; my older brother molested me and nobody believes me, not my parents or my other siblings. He does that to me and I’m the one who gets shit on. I should be used to it by now, it’s always been that way. He’d spill milk and blame me, and of course, mom always believed him. She always took his side in every dispute as far back as I can remember. He’s the golden boy. I’ve been branded a liar and who knows what else by my family.

Even though I cut my siblings out of my life, I’m still my parents’ daughter and should have at least been informed. I probably wouldn’t have gone knowing that lying coward was going to be there.

The eldest of the family is my sister, and she organized the event and deliberately left me out. If I was to be invited she could have found a way to get in touch. I unblocked her and sent her a message asking why I was excluded. She’s obviously ignoring me. My behaviour around being ignored by my sister is different than it might have been a few years ago. I am not harassing her with endless messages or trying to reach her by phone. I sent two messages total and that’s it.

I have to wonder if I’ll even be told of my parents’ funerals when the time comes.

Needless to say I felt like shit and it spiralled downward from there. I was flooded with a deluge of unhappy memories and unwanted feelings of abandonment, rejection, hurt, anger, rage and resentment. Being excluded reinforced the perception I’ve had since childhood that I was bad and nobody wanted me around.

All the negative self-talk needed to be addressed if I was to stop brooding on the subject. Maybe they don’t want me around but it doesn’t mean I’m bad, it means they can’t or won’t accept the truth. And frankly, it’s their loss because I’m a pretty awesome person. I’m actually too nice to be thrown in with that lot. They lack empathy and understanding where I do not. Yes, I was emotionally abandoned as a child, rejected and hurt by my family and my peers but as an adult I comfort my younger self. I don’t need them. I allowed myself to feel the rage, anger and resentment. I reminded myself it’s okay to feel those things but not to stay there too long, I have a life and I had to get back to it.

Being mindful of my own vulnerabilities is no easy task, but for the sake of my mental health I work on it constantly. Before letting my emotions run wild and unchecked I find it helpful to take stock of where I might be vulnerable to having an outburst. Did I take my meds, get enough sleep and exercise, am I hungry or in pain…etc?

It brings the responsibility for my conduct back to me, and I am the only thing I have complete control over in any given situation. I’m forced to dial myself back and give myself a little time to respond in a healthy way rather than just have a knee-jerk reaction.

The goal is never to suppress or deny my emotions, rather slow down my racing mind so that I can explore my feelings with a weathered eye. I don’t want to cause myself needless suffering by jumping to conclusions or flying off the handle. It’s not that I don’t have the right to have feelings about a situation, but my response should be tempered to match its severity.

Tempering my response to match the situation has saved me a great deal of heartache. It has helped me regulate my emotions so that I am not overwhelmed. It has helped me stop chasing my thoughts the same way a dog chases its tail.

Being in control of myself and responsible for my own conduct is liberating in ways I never imagined. Being aware and mindful of my vulnerabilities frees me from being a slave to my emotions.

There are few times I ever allow anything to live in my head, and this is one of those few times, and I’ve let it happen for days. Writing about it is a way for me to cope, you know, get it all out.

I dated a couple a few years back and after the breakup I was left feeling very hurt. At the time, my mental health wasn’t the greatest, and apparently they were “very sensitive to my mental state”. It makes me wonder what they said about it. And if they mentioned they were having mental health issues too (I doubt it).

From my perspective here’s how things went down: Towards the end of our relationship he and she would constantly argue. I shouldn’t say that, it’s inaccurate, she was constantly yelling at him. I tried to ignore it and started hanging out in the “bedroom” (their house was in need of being condemned-to describe why is a whole other post). Every time she yelled at him I was triggered due to my own past with mental and emotional abuse. I’m not saying she was abusive but she used a lot of the same language and tactics abusers use.

When she wasn’t yelling at him (usually because he wasn’t around) she was telling me and anyone who would listen about all the things she wasn’t getting from her husband. The same level of forgiveness, for instance. She wanted him to forgive her completely and swiftly whenever she makes a mistake, just as she forgives him his mistakes. I don’t think that’s how people work but it’s one of the things she went on about.

To be fair they were adjusting to new medications for their mental health and their house was full of black mold which is very toxic, and can totally fuck with your mental health over time. Each member of the family was having their own mental health issues. I heard they moved out of the house so I sincerely hope the family’s collective mental health has improved.

The point I want to make clear is that it wasn’t just my mental health that ended our relationship, theirs wasn’t in the greatest shape either. Just as I needed to work my shit out, so did they (and I hope they did).

I’m given to understand that being angry over them “being sensitive to my mental state” is not an overreaction, it’s quite normal as it implies that I was the only one having mental health issues. And because I am getting really good with regulating my emotions, I’m not going off to confront them, it isn’t worth it.

Now that I’m reconnecting with some friends from before my wall of depression hit, there’s a chance I’ll run into them. My plan, should that happen, is to just avoid talking to or about them. If they approach me, I can let them know I’ve moved on, I’m happy with my partner, and I have no interest in them, not even as friends.