by the way, my dishwasher broke this weekend

The past few years have been the shit, in a “this shit sucks”. So far this year hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park, because SuperHubby’s back has gotten so much worse and his pain level has drastically affected his mobility, but his surgery is coming next week, and that will fix him and give him his life back. Because he will feel better once he's healed from surgery. That comment right there? Is about as optimistic as I get these days. A fact that was recently pointed out to me the other day by SuperHubby himself. I have fallen into expecting “what crap is coming at me next” mentality, which makes my worldview ridiculously pessimistic.

My pessimism has been forged by events, so to speak, let me summarize: In the beginning, my mother had back surgery in January of 2004 and died six months later from MRSA after NEVER coming home from the hospital.

Two months after she died, my Dad was diagnosed with an aggressive form of skin cancer and the medical world’s first opinion was that they should remove half his face. We all said NO, they agreed to treat aggressively and he beat that cancer after radiation and chemo. Only to be stricken with cancer in separate locations twice more in the ensuing 2 years, battling each instance with stubborn Italian pride and graceful dignity, but he passed away from bladder cancer in December 2006.

During this period, my 10-year-old son was bitten by a brown recluse spider and ended up hospitalized for 11 days, undergoing 3 surgeries and 8 weeks of antibiotic treatment.

Only a few scant months after my father’s death, my nephew was diagnosed with a hyper aggressive form of osteosarcoma, bone cancer. After undergoing aggressive radical new treatments, frenzied trips to John Hopkins for treatment and care, enduring extreme pain, he passed away in February 2008 surrounded by his family. He was 25 and left behind his wife, his adopted 7-year-old son and his 8-month-old daughter.

This past March, SuperHubby’s Dad had to have heart valve replacement surgery and developed a bleeding ulcer that landed him back in critical care days after surgery, so things were somewhat delicate for a few days. He’s doing fabulously well now, which is a huge check mark in the plus column.

Back toward the beginning of this story, we found a nasty infestation of mold under several layers of kitchen floor, moved the kids to my In-Laws while we completely gutted the kitchen to remove the offensiveness. The previous owners had covered over water damaged floors. Fuckers.

My body handled this stress and chaos so wonderfully that it was thrilled to add one more exciting factor, just to keep me dancing in my shoes. I was tossed fully into menopause, at age 37, just after my mother died. Seriously? Yes. Let us have mood swings, memory issues, diminished sex drive, fatigue and hot flashes. Because my life has been so uneventful.

I do try, seriously, to keep my view as positive as possible, mostly by reminding myself that it could be worse and people really don’t want to hear about the next miserable thing we’re enduring, ‘cause they have shit of their own to deal with every day. And not all of the past five years have been miserable. We’ve made many good memories and had exciting events to celebrate and revel in, that hold special places in my mind and heart. They are overshadowed, frequently, in my head, by the icky stuff.

Truly, I know how fortunate I am. My kids are healthy and well adjusted, in spite of our efforts to screw with their heads, because parenting? Does not come with an owner’s manual. I have a guy who’s not only the love of my life, but stands beside me, encourages me and is steadfast in his role as father, husband and best friend. He hasn’t shaken me off as more work than I’m worth. Our house is our home and comfort haven (mostly, if one ignores the lack of space and project’s left semi-completed). Our families are close knit and we’re both employed. There are superior friends supporting us on many sides. See, these are good things and worth holding onto. I know that there are worse scenarios we could be facing. So, yes, I’m totally aware that life can be so much more complicated and I’m incredibly grateful that it is not. I swear.

It’s just that the past few years have taken a toll, on my nerves, my psyche, and outlook on life, on just about everything I think and feel. I’m easily spooked by bad news now and have periodic anxiety attacks, because I expect the worst at all times. My temper trigger? Short, short, shorter. I seek times to be by myself, after the kids and Hubs have gone to bed. Sometimes I wonder if I’m pushing my kids away with my crankiness. Though they do come and sprawl all over me, whether I’m cranky or not, so I’ll take that as a good sign. Or whether I’m pushing my guy away. Or whether they would be better off if I took my moody, fractured, unhappy self away from them because what good can I possibly be bringing them like this?

I don’t find fun in as many things, nor do I seek it out as much as I should. If SuperHubby asks me if I want to go do something, see a concert or a play, I’m all “eh, whatever”. Generating the enthusiasm to go feels harder than it should, and I’ll often pass on going somewhere to do something, anything, and stay home. If I do go somewhere, it’s usually after I grumble to myself about the effort, but I end up enjoying myself more times than not, and should remember that the next time I’m inclined to pass. That counts for something, doesn’t it? Any long range planning often produces a kind of paralyzed indecision, in which I can’t make up my mind, and feel completely over whelmed by the decision making process.

The garden that used to give me such pleasure to plant and see thrive is now just one more thing that needs my attention to maintain. As is cleaning the house and the laundry and the dishes, etc, etc.

Even socializing takes more effort than I can muster these days, to the extent that I don’t spend good quality time with my sister, or those good friends I love dearly, often enough to yank my melancholy ass out of the doldrums through which I’m wandering.

Hell, I started this blog last year, in the hopes that writing would help me heal by purging the noise in my head. Instead, I wrote about lighter things, kept the topics from delving too deep, in an effort to ease my own mind and avoid any judgment or becoming another whiny ass blogger with nothing positive or good to say. Like the world needs another “woe is me” whiner. Shoot me now if I degenerate so far in that direction, please.

Something had to give, I suppose, and SuperHubby and I had a long talk this past week, sparked by a stupendously bitchy argument about short tempers, bad attitudes and how we’re not communicating productively. Either of us. How it’s affecting our relationship, with each other and with the kids. How we don’t like it and what needs to be done to fix it. Because giving up is not an option, dammit. Avoidance is one thing, a quitter, well that’s one thing I am not.

I despise arguing. Not the good-natured bantering and haranguing, but the ill tempered, hurt feeling, angry arguing that is so often part and parcel of life. I’ll toss that up to growing up with the Queen of Bitchy. My mother, (Doesn’t it always come back to our mothers? Jeez, I hope not.), who was regularly depressed and untreated. When in a funk, which could be triggered be over something as simple as her hair was the wrong color that day, she would curse and spew vitriol over everyone in her path, for hours, making it anyone else’s fault that her life was a swirling cesspool of disappointment. When she was in high dudgeon, my favorite coping mechanism was to make myself scarce, either by closeting myself in my room reading, or hightailing it out of the house, to avoid the confrontation that would surely come if we crossed paths.

I still hate arguing and still practice avoidance when I can sense a humdinger on the horizon. Which leads to unresolved issues between the man and me, when tempers are flaring, because his preference is to air it all out there and clean it up. He has the sense, or misfortune depending on your view, to be somewhat confrontational in most things, which puts me on the defensive. My stance is that unless it’s super important, why bother pushing the issue? When it really matters, then I take a stand. This approach doesn’t help the flow of idea’s and communication, however, over the long term. And it tends to foster resentments on both sides, which leads to less discussions, and more hurt feelings, and you can see the circle of dysfunction that I’m building here.

Since the cavalcade of chaos, I’ve pulled further into my own head. It has lead to issues with my self-esteem, tanking it such that I don’t value myself as much as I should. The self-esteem issues are not helped by my weight gain, fueled by menopausal metabolism and emotional eating. There’s that circle of dysfunction again. I’ve chosen to not talk through my feelings about all of this, not discussing all the unsettled, grieving emotions and certainly not reaching out for comfort from anyone, just putting all the angst, loss, grief and anger in a corner of my head and heart, hoping the badness will wither in the darkness. Somehow, I think it’s my heart that’s withering, instead of all the badness.

I’ve had some counseling sessions. While I understand, and encourage therapy as a valuable resource, I have difficulty with the execution as it pertains to me. When avoidance is the game, spilling myself out there for someone I don’t know and who is, I’m certain, judging all my flaws and failures, seems insurmountable. In the few sessions I have had, I kept myself reserved, not letting the weakness I feel inside show, choosing topics as carefully as a soldier stepping through a minefield. Talk about counter productive, go see a therapist a few times, dance around why I’m there, but avoid talking about the true issues and then decide it’s a complete waste of time.

Just about a year ago, I shared some, but as usual, far from the full load, of what I was feeling with a friend and she recommended a therapist she was seeing and felt very positive about. I went to this therapist twice and her viewpoint was that I could benefit from a short term, low dose plan of anti-depressants to help nudge my beleaguered brain out of the constant stress it had been enduring. Crisis mode, she called it. These brain chemical altering medicines? They scare the bejesus out of me, on a visceral level I can’t explain that discounts all of my adolescent recreational activities. I kicked this around the back of my head for a few days, mentioned it in an offhand sort of way to SuperHubby, who was very supportive, and made another appointment to talk some more about it, all the while already dismissing the idea as not for me because I don’t need medication to fix this, I can do it myself. And the referring friend? She took her own life, weeks after our conversation. And while I knew she had been struggling with issues far weightier than mine, in fact had been battling them for years, struggling with medications and therapy, after this tragedy, the thought of taking any anti-depressant, or going back to this particular therapist, was instantly buried. Because if the therapist wasn’t able to help my friend, how could she possibly help me and look what the medications did in this case and Oh My God! I can’t possibly do this again. There was my path to avoidance. And how screwed up is that?

One of the issues that I brought up amid the bitch fest with SuperHubby dealt with his state of mind as well, clearly affected by the severity of his back injury, the medications he hates to take and the limited quality of life he has due to the pain he experiences every minute of every day, unceasing. And also how those things affect us, me, the kids and our family life. It’s been like the pink elephant in the room everyone pretends not to notice and we bumped into it this weekend, hard. I try to respect his privacy here (mostly) and choose not to expand on his portion of this topic, as he prefers not having his dirty laundry aired before the internets, which is perfectly acceptable. Suffice it to say that we’re a work in progress, and that's a spectacular thing.

We both agreed to give counseling another shot, individually certainly, maybe together, if the situation presents itself as beneficial. So, by tapping some resources, I’ll track down a decent therapist and air my dirty laundry, stained and torn as it is. Maybe, if the therapist recommends medicinal treatment after spending some time with me, I won’t be so quick to turn away and disregard. I’ll discuss all the fears and concerns I have regarding that step, and any others, with my husband, rather than hording them like secret forbidden candy, and strip away the power they have had over my life. Maybe the withering fog that has been covering my soul will lift and my heart will begin to glow again. Because it has plenty to glow about.

By the way, my dishwasher broke this weekend.