Tag: broken foot

Too depressed to think of a name for this post

Sometimes the depression end of the mental illness that I get to enjoy hits me like a nice thick fog with claws. I can hear it coming but still can’t quite escape its nasty grip. It grabs on and envelops me, surrounding me in a dark cloud no matter which way I try to turn. But pretty soon I don’t try to turn any way anymore.

This ugly depression erases companionship out of my life and surrounds me with a dark cloud, and, to add insult to injury, it zaps me of the motivation to make a nicer-looking illustration with Photoshop.

It’s sadness and frustration and hopelessness all rolled into one entity. It’s wishing all that feels wrong could just wink out of existence, that somehow I could wave a magic wand and have everything better. On extreme times, it’s wishing I could wink out of existence. The cloud allows me to see out, and I know others can see in just fine, but they can’t tell that anything’s happening. It somehow eerily makes others blind to my inward suffering. I end up feeling alone, isolated, and misunderstood.

I want to scream and cry sometimes. I want to talk it out. But talking doesn’t help because there are no solutions, and the people around me have nothing to say that can change the stark reality of the dreary fog. I want someone to have answers. I so desperately want that. I want someone to fix it. When I’m pushed into the depression it’s usually because circumstances in my life have become a bit too much for me to be able to handle anymore. This time around, it’s all the things I wrote about earlier in the week. It’s not having any time to myself to think or write or just care for my inner self for the whole summer. It’s having huge expenses and a bunch of seemingly nonstop little ones drain my bank account this year and make me nervous about spending any little sum, so I don’t even want to take all of my kids to see a full-price movie for a nice change of pace (even at matinee prices, it would cost almost 40 bucks for the five of us to see “Brave.” I mean, come ON!). It’s this darn broken foot. It’s the frustration of having no control over almost anything in my life lately. So many things have conspired to drain me of my resolve and my strength, and now I am down to the level of near-hopelessness.

Oh, I wish a miracle would happen. I wish my blog and website could be wildly successful. I wish I could get some time and inspiration to write the book I’ve been planning and researching for months now: and to feel that it’s even possible to get it published if I do manage to get that mythical time and inspiration together. I wish that I could find the motivation in myself to lose some weight. But with a broken foot, the exercise part of the equation is more than challenging: the recumbent bike sessions I’ve been doing this week aren’t going to cut it.

I wish that I could feel comfortable enough with more people to really say how I feel, but I don’t trust many people to do so. I’m pretty much afraid of how people will respond. My husband at least has learned over the years to stop saying anything that I could remotely construe as platitudes (because those make me go from 0 to 60 in angry miles almost instantaneously), but now he just says nothing. That’s only a slight improvement on the cliches and pep talks; I just wish he could say something that would really comfort me or encourage me. I wish I could find it in me not to feel at all resentful that he can’t do this for me, because it’s really not his fault. Very few people are very good at dealing with someone who’s laboring under the fog of depression and that utter hopelessness. That’s what’s so frustrating: it isolates so quickly and easily. No one knows how to respond. I know. I get that. But it still makes me feel alone, and angry, and doubly sad. I am deathly afraid of people’s judgment, of their fear, of the possibility that they’ll think I’m weak or that I am just a complainer. (I usually feel fairly strong. That’s the problem: I’m too strong. So even when I feel weak and hopeless, everyone else still thinks I’m fine and just leaves me alone.)

I’m afraid. I’m tired. I’m exhausted. I’m actually just overflowing with “sick-and-tired”-ness. I’m at wit’s end. I’m utterly sick, sick, sick of feeling like this on a somewhat regular basis, of feeling that life has me cornered, that I have no control over my own destiny, that I’m Sisyphus pushing, pushing, pushing on that rock. I’m SICK of looking at that rock.

That’s the thing: I’m not the type of person who expects to have anything handed to me on a silver platter. I don’t think the world owes me a living. It’s the opposite, really. I work hard all the time to take care of myself and my kids and my husband. I work hard in volunteer roles to help other people. My heart goes out to everyone else I hear about who’s in need in any way and I wish I could help. I am always doing something that’s practical in some way. But when I get into this down mode, I wish that all of my efforts would finally bear fruit, that the rock on the hill I constantly am climbing would just sprout some legs already and MOVE, dammit. My arms are tired.

Again, I guess that’s why I’m writing this blog. I want to put into words what I experience, in the small hope that what I say can be of help to someone else out there climbing their own hill, pushing on their own insurmountable, immovable rock. Man, I wish I could just pick up your rock for you and toss it away, let it crumble into a million pieces as it rolls down and hits the valley floor. I wish you could do the same for my rock. And I wish that I could help everyone out there feel more comfortable talking to someone in my position right now, make you feel able to say something encouraging, able to sit it out and not run away cringing. I want to feel less alone. I want others like me to feel less alone.

It might be another thing that’s impossible, but like all the other goals in my life that seem impossible right now, I just have the tiniest hope that they might, might, MIGHT be possible, in some other universe in which I am happy and capable again.

The best moms … know their limits

Much talk has been made over the years and even recently about “good moms” or moms who “do everything for their kids” and so on. The Time piece titled “Are You Mom Enough?” stirred quite a bit of controversy and buzz. But there are clearly as many ways to parent out there as there are parents. I would venture to say that a number of those methods employed by some parents are probably not so great, but in general, most parents get the job done passably well. But I think what bugs me the most is when people make judgments about parents whose kids are doing just fine and start saying that their parenting style is lacking. About a month ago, right around the time I was in dire need of a little me time, a Facebook “friend” posted that she was so disappointed in all the mothers who were complaining that their kids were driving them crazy. She ended by saying, “It’s about attitude!” I gently responded with a couple of kindly worded comments to the effect that just because some of us mothers were rightfully saying our kids were making us nuts (this is summertime, people!), it doesn’t make us bad parents. Just normal. A few hours later, my comments (which were completely appropriate) had been deleted. What the heck, man?! But that’s a whole other story.

Let’s just say that I consider myself in many ways a pretty normal, typical mom. For years, women have dreaded the summer months in which a passel of kids would be constantly underfoot and looked forward to school starting again (even a popular Christmas song refers to the relatively short winter break: “And mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again!”). So feeling nutty here at the end of the summer does not make me an unusual mom, let alone a bad one.

I will say that what makes a good mom, I think, is knowing your limits. I figured out long ago that, given my personality and my mental health issues, having consistent and dependable time alone, preferably weekly, can keep me going at my best. I’m a gas-guzzling, large-capacity van, let’s just say, at this stage of my life, and I need frequent infusions of gas, oil, and water to keep me running effectively and continually transporting my load of children through their lives. I also need good quarterly maintenance.

Unfortunately, the summer months disrupt my fairly well-planned and nicely balanced routine that keeps me at my mothering best. I know this going in and start feeling a little nervous come May. But I do the best I can to plan and make allowances. And then I still end up running low on gas and oil and burning out at least once, sometimes twice, usually in the middle and at the end of the summer. A month ago, I felt myself snapping, stretched to my utter capacity for patience and sacrifice, and I scheduled a Saturday for myself. I hadn’t had more than an hour to myself in about two months. I hired a niece to babysit for the day and I went for a lovely bike ride and then had lunch and manicures and facials at the beauty school with a friend. It was wonderful. And not nearly long enough. I was not ready after merely seven hours to get back into the grind. The timing the next day of that Facebook post of my friend (unnamed here) was very unfortunate. I thought it was insensitive and judgmental. After having my comments deleted, I deleted the friend (this was not this person’s first “offense” at overreacting to innocuous comments, either). At the time, I felt it was the simplest and quickest solution to help reduce the negative influences in my life. Again, I suppose that’s a whole other story.

Mama’s stretched to snapping: it’s not a pretty picture.

A month later, I am back at snapping point. Having four children with all their demands (and whining and fussing amongst themselves, which can just grate on one’s nerves) around nonstop; then having to make sure the two older ones get to a girls’ camp; then the oldest, who can actually babysit, be gone for an entire week at band camp; then breaking my FOOT and being unable to do the things I need and want to do; then not having any time or brain-space for thinking clearly in order to work on the writing projects that mean a lot to me personally; having other big responsibilities on my plate that still need to be taken care of, broken foot or not (band boosters [the band director needs us to raise $150,000 for new instruments over the next three years?], being in charge of my university’s local alumni chapter, other volunteer things); then throw in PMS, and it’s a recipe for burnout. (Not to mention having all kinds of large and small expenses pop up until the point of ridiculousness this past four or five months, and the astonishing number of things that have kept breaking down on me the past few months till where I’m begging the financial universe for mercy…) It’s the rubber band being stretched entirely too far. It SNAPS.

I wish I could be the kind of mom who enjoys every single moment with her children. I wish I could savor every moment during the summer with them. I have done some fun things with them here and there. I just haven’t been their everything for every moment. (Nor do I think that is good for them, anyway.) I am still absolutely ASTONISHED at the amazing journey a dear friend took this summer with her seven children. They drove in a pop-up camper all the way from the western United States to Alaska and spent two months making the trip. I would have gone nuts probably on the second week, the third at the latest. How she did it is beyond me. But I am in awe and I tip my hat to her. What an amazing experience for them all. But me, I’m just getting my kids through the summer at home, barely gripping on to my sanity.

I am still trying to figure out right now how to just survive the next eight days until my children start school. It sounds silly now that I’ve managed to get through a whole summer, but the last days are seeming like an eternity because I’ve already snapped. I have no spring left. I pretty much want to curl into a ball in my bedroom, take some kind of sleeping pills so I can coast through the next days mostly unconscious, and lock the door.

I would probably be a slightly more “normal” mom if I didn’t have my mental health issues. But I do the best I can to stay on top of them. I take medication, check in with my psychiatrist, and have regular visits with a therapist. I try to be reasonable in my expectations. I’ve been trying to repeat all kinds of useful and inspirational mantras the past weeks to keep myself positive enough to survive until I have some time alone to just regroup in pretty much every way. I just don’t know who or how to ask for help. And unfortunately, when I mention my feelings and am aware that I am being stretched too far, I end up with mostly unwanted advice (one-sentence cliches that too often start with “just”… if you’d just do X, Y or Z, you’d be fine. Or just “let go and let God.” Yeah, I know all that. Doing it is really the battle, isn’t it?) I don’t want advice. I want support and practical help. Someone want to take my girls on a vacation for a few days? That would be most welcome. No mantras, no judgment. Just support and caring.

As you can see from this long post, my manic side is coming out a bit. Sorry ’bout that. But it’s my reality. I am who I am, and I’m daily trying to improve the parts of me that can be improved, and manage the things I can’t change (genetics, brain chemistry: I’m talking ’bout you). But I’m still working on it. I’m going to fall down a lot and fall short a whole lot. I just wish I were better able to figure out ways to practically deal with the snapping of the rubber band before it stretches too far. My aspirations for being a great mom are simply in knowing my limits and not pushing past them. I’ve given my children so much and taught them so much and love them a great deal. Yeah, I need some time alone, away from them, sometimes in order to be able to continue to be a good mom to them. I just want to be able to stave off the snapping.

Beach bum foot

Now that I’m settled into week three of Saga of Broken Foot, I am day by day making little adjustments to my routine and to how I view life in general. I suppose that I may very well by the end of this come up with a lovely post on How I Grew From This Experience or How This Made Me a Better (Gentler, More Patient? etc.) Person. I hope that if I do choose to do that, it won’t be filled with cliches, Pablum and/or platitudes; I would like to spare you all that tedium.

At any rate, right now I can say that this Experience might be reminding me that I truly need to learn how to Let Go and stop trying to Control Everything. Being off my foot and unable to do all I normally do, combined with the other lovely Learning Experience this year of having a whole lot of medium-sized and a couple of really big expenses hit me one after the other (jab! uppercut! jab jab jab!) should theoretically help me to be able to Let Go of my control issues. I dunno. I guess we’ll see how that actually goes.

In the meantime, I’ve learned to relax a little and at least enjoy my backyard pool. Those who know me will already be familiar with my general frustration with having said pool, mainly because it takes maintenance, which we tried to do ourselves for a couple of years and ended up just failing miserably at (and had to cave and hire a Pool Guy; I have a pool guy???!), and because it costs money just for general operating costs every single day of the year, even in the many months that we can’t use it. Thanks also to the shade we have in our backyard on the pool for a good chunk of the day every day, the water is generally pretty cool, so we really can only swim in there during the day (too cold even to skinny-dip at night. Drat!!!) during about three months of the year. So I spend maybe $2500 a year for three months of swim time. That just chaps my hide. But there it is. There is a pool, and we can’t let it go green or just empty it. Ah well.

SO. We have a pool. I’m not a big fan of swimming (irony, I know). I distinctly remember being about 9 or 10 and having a perfectly nice instructor at our school system’s pool (located at the high school) try to teach me some basics. I screamed bloody murder and did not learn said basics. Eventually, I learned to tread water and float and get around, but a pool or the beach is just not my first choice of vacation destination. I can take it or leave it.

But these past two weeks, being weighted down by a heavy boot on one foot and two unwieldy crutches, I have come to appreciate the utter freedom and bliss of letting the water carry me gently in its embrace. I can take off my boot and slip into the pool and either float like a water bug on the surface, light as air, or paddle around languidly under the water, letting it do most of the work. I love how gravity seems to just take the day off for me then. No longer am I tethered to the ground; I can snip myself free and glide and gently kick.

It’s been delightful. I’ve gone outside every day with my girls for about an hour and basked in the warm sun and the brief but amazing feeling of weightlessness. I have become a beach (well, pool) bum. I think I’m actually going to be sad to see the season end, which will be a new one for me in the three summers we’ve lived in this house.

So I might not have learned a whole lot of big Life Lessons yet. Whether I do or not, I’ve learned just a little bit to relax and let go of my body and my worries for maybe an hour every day. That’s good enough for me.

And what’s so bad about being an 80-year-old?

This past year as I’ve become more aware about the issue of self-image and how appearance dominates in our society, and as I’ve researched and discussed with other people, I have realized just how pertinent the topic of aging is to the discussion. I don’t think that this will be news to most people, but our society is very anti-aging. We don’t want to look old; ideally everyone in society should have the skin and shape of a 16-year-old. Twenty-somethings are still acceptable, but after that it’s all about thirty-somethings looking like they’re still 20 and “40 is the new 30.” Wrinkles are ugly and must be Botoxed and Juvederm-ed out of existence. Soft bellies must be sucked dry of fat. Saggy breasts must be perked up through surgery.

But it’s not just the look of aging that puts people off. It’s just being old. Our culture, unlike many other cultures, does not revere or respect the older members of our society. We are happy to shunt them off to the side and try to pretend that old age does not exist. No one likes to think about the inevitable breaking down of parts of our bodies. As long as we’re young or just somewhat young, we can eat right and exercise religiously and tell everyone (and ourselves) that since we’re doing all those things, we’ve earned our good health. Even with diseases like Alzheimer’s, which we still don’t know the causes of, there are still all kinds of “tips” out there to help us exercise our brains, too, so we can somehow fend off that kind of debilitation. Perhaps. But the fact is, we cannot fend off aging or death. They are a natural part of life. With all of the technology and resources we have today, we can put them off a little longer, but we still simply cannot make them go away.

I would love to be in a culture in which we respect and revere the elderly, in which we want to put them front and center, in which we seek their wisdom and yearn to be more like them. Rather than trying to emulate 16-year-olds, why don’t we emulate those who truly have something meaningful to impart?

After I broke my foot this week, I became pretty helpless physically. The day afterward, my husband had to help me shower. I used a walker to get into the bathroom, and I needed assistance toileting and getting in the shower, and he helped hold me steady while I shampooed and tried to soap up. Just having one foot broken threw me completely out of whack. I was unable to take care of myself, and I felt my body had completely betrayed me. Leaning over my walker and hobbling slowly down the hallway and being in need of my husband’s help in such personal ways just bothered me. I said, “I feel like an 80-year-old!”

It is very disorienting to all of a sudden not be able to do the things I usually do. It’s upsetting to have to lean on someone (literally) for so much help. It’s hard to lose freedom. And the things that happen to our bodies as they age lead to those outcomes. In our independent, “me” culture, having to be dependent on others goes against our very natures. But really, why should it bother me SO much to feel like I’m 80? It’s not a horrible thing. I know wonderful 80- and 90-year-olds.

Life is not all about youth. Life is about ages and stages. We weren’t meant to stay frozen as teenagers for our entire life spans. We were intended to become adults, to move through middle age into old age. We are built to change, in all ways. Our bodies change, and our minds change, and we learn and gain (hopefully) wisdom and knowledge. We are supposed to experience life in all of its varieties. There’s simply no reason for me at age 42 now to be wistfully thinking back on how I looked at age 16. Honestly, I wouldn’t want to relive those days, I don’t care how cute my legs looked. I love my age now. I love all the neat things I can do. And in 20 years, I expect that I will be loving the new opportunities I will be facing at that stage of my life. I will be even closer to my “golden years” (or IN them) at that point, and I will be that much further away from the fresh years of my youth when my skin was wrinkle-free and my belly flat(ish).

I have read several times about how women in their 70s or older say they just feel free and completely able to just be themselves because they just don’t worry anymore about how they look. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if ALL AGES of people could say the same thing? That we could just be who we are, the real us? Wow. That would be freedom, indeed. We expend so much energy worrying about how we look and trying to look young and thin and … whatever. I don’t mean we shouldn’t take care of ourselves, but we can stop obsessing about all the details and perfection.

I’m thinking I should embrace all the good things about being 80, or at least just appreciate where I am now. Right now, I think I should embrace my SELF, who I AM. Right now, I should enjoy just who I am and where I am in my life. My teen years are past (thank GOODNESS); my 20s are past (those lean years); my 30s are even past. Now is what matters. I am 42, by golly. Today, I have a broken foot. This year, I’ve let myself eat too much, so my body is not in its best shape. I have plans to work on that, and thanks to the foot, it might be a few more months until I can really work hard on that aspect of taking better care of myself. But I have some quality time to read and plan how I will eat better and lose some weight. My house isn’t going to be as spotlessly clean as I like, but my kids are doing the cleaning and laundry. I’m not getting to cook a whole lot of the nice things I like to make, but we’re all getting fed. I’m reading a bit more and getting a chance to watch some movies, and my girls are learning a few more skills and how to take care of their mom. I’m appreciating how nice it is to be independent. I think this time in my life is just fine.

Giving my old life the boot … temporarily

So a couple of days ago I wrote about my new normal, which is living life with a broken foot. It’s thrown me for a loop emotionally in a number of ways. The first evening after it happened and then most of my day the next day involved a lot of wondering and what-ifs and trying to plan for what was still somewhat unknown. It made for a stressful day, all run from the confines of my couch.

Yesterday was much nicer. I got my two oldest girls off to camp, and my husband took me to a specialist who could really tell me what would need to happen to get my foot back to its unbroken self. In short, the breaks are simple enough that I only need to wear a boot, rather than a cast (hallelujah for that removable piece of hardware!!), and I can put a little weight on it as I hobble about on crutches or the lovely walker my husband dug out of storage (he likes to collect these old things because someday they might come in handy). Partial weight-bearing actually helps my bone heal properly rather than resting it completely and letting it find its own sloppy way. Amazing. At any rate, my dear husband, who is a physical therapist, reminded me several times that this was the best news possible. I agree, with the addendum “in this situation.” The best news possible for me right now would be to travel back in time three days and tell myself to stop hurrying around so much, especially on uneven pavement. (Smack upside the head) But given that the deed is done and the bone truly is broken, knowing that at least I can just wear a boot that I can take off sometimes is great news.

So my new normal for the next week or so is pretty much what I’ve been doing for about the past 24 hours: sitting on the couch with my leg up and reading or using my laptop computer. That’s the nice part. The tricky part involves when I must move around. Yes, I still need to get up and go to the bathroom. I pull myself up onto the very stylin’ walker, grab hold and walk very lopsidedly, putting the smallest amount of pressure on my left foot, preferably the heel or toes.  I try not to crash into the furniture that lurks all around me. I lurch down the hallway and … well, I won’t go into too many details about that. I lurch back down the hall and collapse back onto the couch.

End of the day is entertaining. The first night, my husband suggested I go up the stairs backwards, which worked but was also a workout. Man, it exhausted me. (He suggested before that that I just sleep downstairs, but I just wanted the comfort and semblance of normalcy that was my own bed.) The next night, after a comical but also nerve-racking shower experience during which my husband manhandled me in and out of the big shower downstairs and held onto me while I washed my greasy hair and stale body, I decided to heft myself up the stairs frontways, just kind of crawling. That was much easier. So I repeated that last night. At the top of the stairs, though, I still have to get myself back up from a crawling position into standing using the crutches. Not as easy as it seems, frankly. And last night, I went up without any help, so I had to crawl through my bedroom into the bathroom, which now has tile on the floor rather than carpet (thanks to our work of a couple of months ago, and which I generally prefer to the old carpet, but let me tell you in this case, it’s hard on the knees). By the time I’d made my way, pilgrim-like, into the bathroom area, my husband had come up with the crutches, and I pulled myself up rather like Gollum, via the chair he had also brought into the bathroom the other night, into a half-standing position.

One big problem is that I cannot carry anything. Both of my hands are completely kept busy just keeping myself semi-upright and not too much in pain. So if I need to take one or two or three items from point A to point B, I must order around one of my minions. It’s astonishing how much we take for granted when all is working fine. It’s such a nice thing to be able to stand up, walk across the room, and grab a Kleenex. Or hop over to the kitchen for a glass of water (or some chocolate…). Or just GO TO THE BATHROOM, for pity’s sake.

Yep, it’s a brave new world.