Sorry for my absence of late. I’ve kind of felt myself slipping into a depression, the post below is actually a post I sent to an email list I’m on that helps people cope with a marriage that breaks up under the circumstances mine did. I don’t really have the energy to do a whole post from scratch so I’ve tweaked this one. Forgive me for cheating. Some of what is in this post has already been covered earlier in my blog, so bear with some redundancy.

Thanks to all my twitter peeps who kept me away from the mojitos and blizzards today. Hopefully the scale will thank you next week. I WILL try to get some pics of my new hair in the next few days. That did help raise my spirits a bit.
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As far as my depression, I hoped it was just exhaustion, but I guess its not. I've been fighting it, but my insurance recently decided that my anti-depressants were too expensive and insisted that I change to a generic and I don't think they are working as well as they should. I hate it and I fight it hard when I feel it coming on, but I think sometimes it just makes it harder when the bottom kind of drops out of my basket. I know that I will get past it and be ok...maybe I'm just hormonal right now...thats what I'm hoping.

Last week I was exhausted, couldn't get enough sleep and I was worried that I was on the downhill slide, but kept telling myself I had been working too hard. I rarely get "boo hoo" depressed. It manifests itself in exhaustion and apathy for the most part, but I know it affects my son as well because no matter how hard I try to be "up" for him during these bouts, he tends to kind of "unravel" around the same time which only makes things worse.

I've pretty well moved past the fact that my marriage is done. I know that I would never go back to my husband no matter what he told me at this point. We are still great friends and care about each other as we always have, but we have concluded that while we think we would have always been great friends, we just should have never gone further than that.

I am working right now and a few moments ago I had to look up some church times for someone and it got me to thinking about this weekend. The last 10 years have really tested my faith and I hung in there when I almost lost my son at 15 months old. He survived meningitis but was left deaf and with subtle brain damage that manifests itself in behavioral problems that have truly made our lives a daily struggle. I prayed my way through each day, asking God to give me the strength I needed to be the kind of mother Tanner needed; asking for him to guide me in raising him to cope with his frustration and anger and while it was truly difficult to get through the day most days, I felt Him with me and it gave me strength.

We kind of treaded water for a few years and then 2001 I lost my great grandmother right around the time my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. We had already been struggling with my grandmother's breast cancer recurrence and ultimately lost her 6 months after my great grandmother. My mother would be next dying 6 months after my grandmother on Thanksgiving day. A month before my mother died I learned that my relationship with my husband may not have been as strong as I always thought it had been. We had a very dramatic heart to heart where I asked him to please tell me if he wanted out, but he told me that he loved me more than he ever had, that we had a connection he hadn't experienced with anyone in his life...even his family and confirmed time and time again that there was nothing to worry about. I think that I was just too emotionally exhausted to push it any further. We had just celebrated our 7 year anniversary and convalidated our marriage in the Catholic Church, I had gone through classes and converted and up to the point of disclosure, my faith was stronger than it had ever been despite going through all the loss we had experienced. I look back and I see that first disclosure is what put that first "chink" in my faith.

I was trying SO hard to find meaning in all the crap we had gone through and discovering that my relationship with the person closest to me might be in question shook the foundations of my faith. Over the next five years, various stresses continued to erode my marriage and my faith. My son was spiraling out of control and no medication, therapy, anything seemed to be helping him manage his frustration and frequent meltdowns and both my husband and myself were tired. We had stopped going to church because Tanner could no longer sit through mass and in our own exhaustion and anger, I think we refused to go separately as a way of thumbing our nose at God. We were tired and pissed off at watching everyone else around us enjoy their children and families and whine about things like finding time to help children with their homework, getting them to all their activities, attending yet another birthday party that weekend when our gripes were how to get our son through a meltdown without hurting himself or someone else or how to chisel out a few moments a day to replenish ourselves to face the next day.

We had NOBODY to really help us with Tanner after my mother passed away. Erik's mom could no longer watch him for us (her way to cope with him was to give him whatever he wanted, give in to his tantrums, etc). Our lives became nothing more than work and tag-teaming tanner, living from meltdown to meltdown. We were just SURVIVING, coexisting, but not living. There was very little joy in our lives and I'm sure this all led up to the true disclosure moment which finally snipped whatever fragile tendril of faith I was able to preserve. For the first time in my life, I felt truly isolated. I have very little family left (just a grandfather and aunt/uncle/cousins) so I had kind of comforted myself in the knowledge that I would always have Erik. He and Tanner were my family now and we would make it through together; we'd eventually sort things out. We were fighters all of us. When I finally had to face the fact that my husband and I were going to have to split, that I would never grow old with him after spending almost half my life with him (we met when we were 19) and that my small family unit was no more....it was almost more than I could take. Add to that the fact that we had to hospitalize our son 7 times that year and I was just about all but completely tapped out of happy.

Over the past couple of years, things have improved. Erik and I still live together for financial reasons, but mostly for the sake of our son. Its been working just fine..he sleeps in Tanner's room, I sleep in a room to myself. Tanner has started to improve as he matures which has made a huge improvement for all of us. It is still a challenge, but I finally have some hope that perhaps he may have a better life than I had imagined he'd have just a few short years ago. I've begun to pick up the pieces and I'm looking forward to the next half of my life. I'm slowly rebuilding the damage I did to my body piling on the pounds as I coped with the stress of the last decade + the only way I knew how..with food. I'll get there, I know I will.

I hate when I get caught off guard though. Like researching that request I mentioned. It made me think that maybe I should take Tanner to see the stations of the cross. He's been asking a lot of questions about God and while I answer them as if I still believe, I don't know anymore. I looked up "Stations of the Cross" in our city and the first link was to the grotto where my husband proposed to me and I find myself in tears over something I haven't cried over in at least a year. If there is a God....WTF? The first time I think about heading back to church and out of a random google I get my face rubbed back in the mess that has been my life. The mess that I had slowly pulled my way out of ALL ON MY OWN. It just pisses me off all over again.

When you find yourself blindsided or in a weak moment, where do you find your strength if your faith and family is gone?

PS. to add insult to injury...as I'm closing this a song I've never heard before came on and seemed to echo what I'm feeling right now. It's "Life on the Moon" by David Cook. God is either getting a lot of satisfaction out of rubbing my face in it or I'm working out some seriously twisted karma.

Someone tell me a good joke before I slit my wrists (totally kidding...I have a warped sense of humor)
If you've read this far, thank you xx

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So that is where my head is at at the moment. I’ll find my way back. I know that blogging and the support I get from you guys is what has really given me hope again that I can get my weight off. I will try to post more as I struggle to work my way back to the land of the living. I'll get there....I always do :)