Tired of counting the days...

It has been a while since I wrote last and there are several reasons. A few days of depression here and there, 3 weeks of sobriety and then a crash and realization of sorts, several intense sessions of therapy (is that a good thing or not) and just regular life hitting at me.

To explain - I think the depression is coming back. Not so much by the tell-tale mood swings, highs & lows and other depression signs but more by the fact that my hair is falling out again. Aghh... just when I thought it was getting better. The reason I say that this is a sign of depression is because last year I went to see my doctor about it as it had been over a year since I had given birth to my last and second child. My hair was falling out in gobs - in the shower, on my clothes and in the hairbrush. The Dr. checked the normal stuff and it was all normal (it always is, isn't it?) and then asked me if I felt depressed. I said sometimes but I mostly just feel like crying all the time. Well, DUH! I tried anti-depressants for a while and then went off of them in March to try a different route of Neurofeedback and talk therapy. It took a while but I noticed a couple months ago that my hair wasn't falling out as much in the shower and I wasn't cleaning out my hairbrush every day. Now I am...again. What does this mean?

I went three weeks with no drinking. I thought about it every single day of those 21 days. Believe me. It seemed so appealing and that is all I could think about. After a day of hard therapy, I decided to buy a bottle of wine. Even though I drank, I didn't drink until after 6PM and I only had two glasses. Several days later, we all went to a party and I got pretty drunk...drunk enough to not really remember much after a certain point. Blackout drinking is the one thing I hate because there is enough I can’t remember already in my life without worrying about what happened in one night. The funny thing is that after all that craving of no alcohol and then drinking, I decided to just drink if I feel the urge, as long as it is in moderation. You know, one glass a night type thing. Here is the funny part - now that I have decided to drink again, I haven’t had a drink since. Guess it is all in the mind!

In therapy, we are using EMDR now. I have done it 3 times with the first being a sample. The second time I did it was the night I started drinking again. During that session all I could think about was how much I missed my sister and all the feelings I have for her being my safe person growing up and how if it weren't for her, I just wouldn't have made it. The third session of EMDR was last week on Friday. I went in for therapy full of anxiety and anger about my old employer who keeps contacting me for help. We started there with how I feel about them. EMDR is nothing major really. I watch 3 little green dots run back and forth on a bar and I just let my eyes follow these lights - back and forth, back and forth. I just think of whatever I am told to and then let my mind wander and see where it goes. So in this past session, we started with the anxiety feeling about my old work. I won't bore with the details but let’s say that this employer knew what buttons to push to have a totally devoted employee who was more loyal to them than her own family. It was like an abusive situation all over again - not leaving because it was good money, not saying how I felt for fear of retribution - and in the end, being dumped on as the bad person. So my thoughts started with the feeling of anxiety which for me is rapid heartbeat, pressure in my chest and stomach churning and many random stupid thoughts running through my mind with every conceivable scenario. That led to me thinking that I must be gullible or stupid to keep finding myself with these types of employers. Next thought, why? Well, because I really want to trust in someone but it never pans out. Each and every person that I have trusted in for the "wrong" reasons have let me down. My thoughts were tracking each of my past jobs and who I trusted and how I was disappointed. These thoughts went all the way back to being a child. Who let me down more than anyone else? Albert or my mom? Albert wasn't my natural father or even a legal guardian so he really only violated my trust and body. My mom carried me for 9 months and then gave birth to me. But did she ever really take care of me? NO. Did she protect me? NO. So in these thoughts, my mom did more damage to me than anyone else. Now my thoughts went to the fact that all my employers for the most part were male but my mom is not. My thoughts turned. Maybe I was reaching out for males to give me what I thought was needed because my mom didn't. A little while into the EMDR session, I became overwhelmed by a strange sensation. After I watch the lights for a while, I am told to take a deep breath and close my eyes and then indicate where my thoughts currently are. Well, at this point, I closed my eyes and tried to put my feelings into words but the sides of my mind began to close in and I felt like a fog was trying to cover me. I never could put anything into words but was crying. At some point, I felt startled and was able to open my eyes again. After watching the lights again and closing my eyes again, I started to feel like my body was sinking under water but my head was floating above me - almost like being stretched from my neck. I couldn't open my eyes but I really felt like I wasn’t there any longer. I remember trying to dig my fingernails into my hand to bring my head back to my body. I was crying hard, just tears streaming down my face and all I could think of was my mom knowing what some man was doing to her little girl and how much that hurt. (Damn, I thought I would actually make it thru a post without crying) I am filled with so much pain. I feel like my heart is breaking into two at times when I think about this. I have two kids. And as mad as I get at them allot of the time, when they look at me with smiles and so much love in their eyes, I cannot bear to be mad any longer or hold a grudge. I cannot imagine seeing them being hurt and doing nothing. And then I think of my mom. And how she did nothing, except what was in her best interest. And that hurts. And honestly, I don’t know if that can be forgiven.