Monday, July 2, 2007

Wow ... I'm Famous ...












Thanks to reader Lisa, who wrote the following note on the message board of my "When One Door Closes …" post:




I'm still trying to figure out how/if this applies in my own life. Fall in love at 19 -- get dumped, lose my virginity to the wrong person, get pregnant, have abortion. Get smarter. Get married at 24 to man who'd been a friend for over a year. He becomes (AFTER the wedding) emotionally and verbally abusive. Stick it out for five years and get divorced. Get MUCH smarter. See therapist, take antidepressants, read, learn, spend time alone, work the mental health program. Meet man four years after divorce. Vet him carefully for power and control issues. Have happy marriage for several years -- he relapses and refuses to get help. I become divorced single parent of a one year old. See new therapist ... take meds ... work program ... lose 140 pounds ... get healthy ... do some dating ... set clear boundaries ... fall in love with special man ... he tells me every day for four months we will spend our lives together ... I love his kids and thought he loved mine ... he dumps me out of the clear blue for someone who lives in his town, because it's less hassle than a relationship with me 70 miles away. No one has been able to understand (or help me to understand) the cumulative effect of all these losses ... and all I can come up with is 1) despite all the work I have done to make better choices, I brought this on myself with my terrible choices in men and/or 2) I am a terrible person that no one wants to be with. At any rate ... doors keep slamming ... and the only ones that open manage to smack me in the face and bloody my nose. Any thoughts?






I was blown away by all the compassionate and insightful notes (60 of them) that followed her entry.




Among them:




This reminded me to let go and let God, and to remember God can see farther down the road than I can. –Ms. P
When one door closes another door always opens, but sometimes we have to wait in the hall. --Mike




Don't trip! GOD ain't through with you yet! --Anonymous

I believe in most cases one door will open when another closes, however, there are many times when it feels like all that is happening is that doors are slamming shut and no doors or windows are opening. I believe it is at this point we need to learn two things: patience and endurance. Sometimes it may seem forever for the door or window to open for us after many a doors have closed, but in retrospect, I think we can all look back and maybe see a time in our lives when it was harder, or we had less, or maybe this is the time it is harder and we have less now. Then this is the time we need to tap into our endurance. We need to know that the bad stuff, the things we don’t want that seem to keep happing will stop, sooner or later, but we are not patient, and its hard to be patient in this day and age. Life is a journey, sometimes you stub your toe, sometimes you break a leg, but in the end, you will be able to count some blessings even if you cant even think of a single one right now. Hang in there. –Kiki




"And the only ones that open manage to smack me in the face and bloody my nose..." You are not alone. Handing one's life to a higher power does not mean that you don't keep walking into closed doors. I wish I had brilliant, soothing, words-of-wisdom at this time, but I don't. About as much as I have figured out is that accepting your own weaknesses are part of the journey. –Shenova




In all the pain and agony of wanting things and people that God obviously does NOT want for me, and learning to embrace God's will for my life despite anything (or anyone) that I may think I want...I just have to trust God. I have to trust that God knows the outcome and he's protecting me not only from myself, but from some bigger hurt in the future or from possibly going on a life tangent that will ultimately keep me off track from my divinely appointed course for many more years. If I can just help someone else deal and move on without giving up, that always helps me keep going. In helping others, I shift my focus from myself, thereby maintaining functionality and usefulness while God simultaneously sorts through the mess I've made of my own existence in an effort to steer me back in the right direction...that is if I actually use my free will to choose to listen to the still small voice that cries out in the depths of my soul. –Kim Lovette




From your brief story, it seems clear you have lots of inner strength. You know how to take care of yourself, and how to seek the help of others to assist you when you need it. It seems that we sometimes fail to see where the window is opened, that doesn't mean it isn't open somewhere. Keep looking, keep believing in the beautiful person you are. Your inner strength and life energy speaks clearly above the adversity you have come through. Peace be with you in your path. --DSK




"When Bad Things, Happen to Good People" by Harold S Kushner. That and some times life just sucks. I’m fifty-two and have a trio of marriages, a quartet of children. Sometimes it isn't you that has the problem. Sometimes you are someone else's lesson. Keep your chin up. Uou aren't alone. One of your sisters --Kathy




I believe that Kathy is correct. Unfortunately for you, some intangible "thing" may draw these souls to you. I also believe that you WILL find peace and appreciate it when you do! Keep doing what is right for you. 25 years ago, I found my soulmate after 2 bad marriages & didn't care if I ever saw another man darken my door. I've always felt that he is my reward! You have my admiration and my support.
Posted by: Rose June 28, 2007 6:40 PM

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Wednesday, March 21, 2007

It's 3pm --- Do You Know Where Your Leg Is?

I've started the program at the hospital this week. Already I'm learning/relearning things that may eventually help ... but there is always 3:00pm. One of our running jokes was always that we were at our worst emotionally and intellectually after 3pm, so that reminder is always a little knife. But I leave group and head home and the next thing I know the pain and the tears are overflowing. I can't begin to describe the hopelessness and despair I feel. There is nothing to replace what I've lost. Nothing but bills and furnace problems and shame and humiliation about my financial situation ... responsibilities and duties and months of this awful pain and nothing to look forward to or offer any meaning or hope. I see everything through the lens of this relationship and/or what I've lost -- and I mean everything. Weather. Streets. Houses. Strangers on the street. This physical/psychological/emotional pain is so overwhelming I'd chew off my leg to escape it, and I am getting so angry at people who don't seem to get it. I'm becoming childish in my pain; petulant and demanding and I can't seem to help myself. As if I don't have enough issues causing me pain these days, here comes "No One Takes Me Seriously." Am I painting myself into a corner where I have to kill myself just to prove that I meant it when I said I COULD NOT take this pain anymore? That I refused to be soothed and placated with empty words and platitudes? I'm so sick and tired of being sick and tired. And hurting. And I can't help but believe (as the paragon of emotional health that I am these days) that I was tricked into surviving this last month as some cruel joke ... that I believed the people who said it would get better and I should have just ended everything in February as I had originally thought instead of being a patsy. Again.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

an unexpected gift ...

The one person who's been overlooked in this whole mess is my poor eight year old daughter. Within the space of two weeks, she lost Steve, the weekend trips to his house, his kids, the life we were building together -- and gained a mother who is shaky and crying and completely shattered. She's started asking to contact her father again -- which she never did as long as Steve was in her life. She even wanted to contact his former girlfriend, with whom she had been very close before that relationship ended last summer. One of her daycare "grandparents" went into the hospital which necessitated a shift in that part of her routine ... and then we went home to help out the folks after Mom had her hip replaced.

Ailing grandparents ... absentee parents and parental surrogates ... basket case mother ... house chaos ... the poor kid.

She went through a bad patch right around the time the thing with Steve collapsed, and at out parent-teacher conference yesterday, both her teacher and I remarked at how out-of-character it was for her. I had an "aha" moment -- duh, but I am REALLY slow on the uptake these days -- and wondered aloud if the incidents had any relation to all the upheaval in her life at that time.

Luckily, her teacher is an absolute gem, and has offered to give Nora the chance to talk through and process her feelings about all these changes, if she wants to. I don't want to create a problem where none exists, but Nora really should have a grownup that she can talk to about how all this feels, and she's so protective of me, I'm not the one to do it. Not to mention that I would fall apart and cry and make a hash of the whole thing.

Then as we wrapped it up, her teacher told me she was praying for us in this time, and I burst into tears again, but of gratitude.

I'm still not willing to concede this life is worth living, but I can recognize an unexpected gift when it's offered me ...

Monday, March 12, 2007

"I Never Knew What To Expect"

Feb. 26, 2007 issue - Tammi Landry, 36, loves movies—but not "Father of the Bride." It reminds her of all the ways her own painful childhood didn't measure up. Five years ago, Landry's father, a police officer in Indiana, killed himself. It was devastating for the mother of two young sons, but not a shock. Even as a little girl, she sensed something was wrong. "I never knew what to expect," says Landry, who lives in suburban Detroit. "One day, I'm at the center of his world, and the next day, he could be distant, uninterested. All hell could break loose because I left a towel on the bathroom floor." Landry realizes now that her father suffered from undiagnosed depression. "He was a man, a cop," she says. "There was never any asking for help."
Depressed parents like Landry's father often leave a legacy of fear and anxiety—emotions forged in childhood that can linger a lifetime. Reflecting on her family history after her brother's suicide, Julie Totten, founder of Families for Depression Awareness, realized that her father had been depressed for years. In one recent study at Columbia University, researchers found that rates of anxiety disorders and depression were three times as high among the adult children of depressed parents as they were among people whose parents were not depressed. Adult children of depressed parents also reported about five times the rate of cardiovascular disease—a sign that emotional disorders affect more than mood. Even kids who manage to succeed socially often struggle at home to care for their parents or younger siblings. "Depression has an entire family dynamic," says Myrna Weissman, the lead researcher in the Columbia study. A predisposition to mood disorders may be inherited, and researchers still haven't teased out how much of a child's problem can be traced to genes and how much to growing up with an unstable or unresponsive parent. They do know that even the youngest children are vulnerable. Babies of depressed mothers, for example, are particularly at risk because infants learn to communicate through their mothers' responses. An apathetic mother sets up a child for a lifetime of social and emotional problems.
But thanks to new research, an unhappy ending is not inevitable. Weissman's team found that many children improved after their parents were treated. At the beginning of her study of 151 depressed mothers and their children, about half the youngsters had a history of psychiatric disorders and a third were suffering from mental-health problems. The mothers were all put on an antidepressant. (The kids were not treated as part of the study, but a few were under medical care.) The recovery rate for kids with mental-health problems whose mothers' depression lifted was nearly three times that of similar kids whose mothers did not respond to treatment.
It took Landry years to face her past. After her father's suicide, she and her husband divorced. That sent her into therapy, where she finally got help. She currently takes medication for anxiety and is doing well but, aware of genetic susceptibilities, she watches her 4-year-old son closely."He wants to be good at everything," she says. "He's so hard on himself. I would do whatever it takes to make sure he's OK." She's already doing the most important thing she can do for him: taking care of herself.
With Joan Raymond
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

Friday, March 9, 2007

... people go mad if they think too much ...

On the one hand, I'm doing everything in my power to STOP thinking these days.

On the other, I could make a pretty convicing case that I'm already mad; and not just mad, descending into depths of depression I never dreamed existed.

Just when you think you've seen everything, right?

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