Yuletide Blessings

Yuletide blessings to all of you!  Yule was on the 21st, I know, and I apologize for not posting these blessings on that day but I had family to visit and spend time with and it was the first Yule celebration with both my girls and my husband.

For those of you who are unaware I am a practicing Pagan, as is my husband and we intend on raising our children to be such, as well.

Yule for us is about being together, celebrating nature and the beginning of Winter.  Winter isn't a terrible thing to us, it's not something to be hateful of because of the cold and blowing snow.  We realize that it's necessary so that nature can renew itself in the spring.  It's a time to be near the ones you love and cherish what you have. 

Here's a little tidbit about Yule that is not only informative but heart warming, in my eyes anyway:

http://wicca.com/celtic/akasha/yule.htm

Now you don't have to be Wiccan or Pagan to celebrate Yule.  In fact, many of the Christian Christmas traditions are Pagan/Wiccan based.  Christmas trees, exchanging gifts, poinsettias, caroling, wreathes, the scents of cinnamon, bayberry and pine, eggnog, yule logs, fruit in your stocking, even Santa Claus himself, were all brought about by Pagan/Celtic traditions. 

Just some information for you to look at and think about while celebrating your holiday this year and maybe for years to come.

I hope you all have/had a wonderful holiday season.

                                                            Happy Yule!  

When Do I Begin Again?

I've been sitting here for the past couple weeks going, "What in the freakin hell am I going to write about in my blog?".  And then of course being the person that I am I've been putting it off and putting it off and putting it off because I haven't had the mental stamina nor want to sit down and hammer this out.  My muse left me about a week or so ago, probably during the time my entire family was ill beyond belief with the epic cold/virus of the century and it's been rough getting her to come back and play nicely with me for more than a few fleeting moments before she tears away again at the sounds of my daughters cries.

It's harder than one may imagine to sit down and put cohesive thoughts together into sentences to form a paragraph and finally into a line of paragraphs that could either be a novel, a blog, a short story, an article, etc.  Especially when you have one child in your lap doing everything possible to touch the keys of your computer while you're trying to type and another sitting next to you, grabbing at your shirt, cooing and giggling basically begging you for attention (which she has had for the past three hours straight but that's neither here nor there for her) and all the while all you want to do is put thoughts onto paper and get them out of your head. 

So here I sat, trying time and time again to come up with something fascinating, something remotely interesting for you all and maybe something just a little bit zany but nothing happened.  I would sit down at the end of the long day with my computer in front of me and my blog pulled up, a fresh blank page staring me in the face.  And guess what happened?

Nothing.

Nothing happened.  My mind was as blank as the page in front of my face.  I even tried going back to old school ways, writing in my journal with a pen and paper, a trick I learned years ago to get your mind back in the game, and still nothing.

I tried free writing, just putting my thoughts onto paper with no plot or purpose or rhyme or reason and still nothing. 

And then it happened, it was as though a door in my mind just blew open and out poured thoughts and ideas and emotions and I had no choice but to put them down, to write them out.

And now, three blog posts later, it still hasn't dwindled down.

I don't know if I've ever told any of you but ages ago (almost four years now) I started writing a novel.  Yes, that's right, a novel. 

I am 4/5 of the way through my novel and can never seem to find enough time to sit down and finish it.  It kills me that it's been almost five years since I began my novel and I still don't have it done. 

My muse is a fickle bitch most of the time and she rarely plays nice for me but I'm glad she does from time to time.  I just wish she would visit more often when I have free time so I could finish it and pass it along to some editors and see if anyone wants to publish it for me. 

I want nothing more in life for myself than to have my novel published.  I already have four short stories, two articles and seven poems published but I have want for more.  I want to share more of my work with more people. 

All I need now is time.  Maybe, a few years down the road, when my girls are a little older and a little more self sufficient I'll be able to get back into it enough to get it finished and passed on.  Maybe.  For now I have to be happy with this blog and hope that my muse continues to play nice...perhaps be a bit nicer even.  I don't know but what I do know is that my girls come first. 

So until the day comes that I can sit and write for a few hours at a time again, instead of a few minutes at a time, I will be happy with what I have. 

Learning To Cope

We all have coping mechanisms to help us through our every day lives and the trials and tribulations we encounter on the day to day.  Some of them are new, some of them are old but either way it works for you to help you maintain your cool and be a calm rational human being.  At least most of the time, we're all allowed to have our breakdowns from time to time. 

But you have to ask yourself, how often is too often to be having breakdowns? 

I've been asking myself that question a lot lately and there have been far too many "episodes" of me losing my cool and going into meltdown crazy mode these past few weeks for me to be happy about or even comfortable with. 

I've decided after much thought and wads of reflection that one or more of my medications is the cause of my angry outbursts, as the outbursts have been so much worse than before I started the two medications I'm speaking of, Lamictal and Prozac.  The outbursts just continued to escalate since starting them and I have slowly lost almost all control over my anger. 

This is a scary thing for me.  I have a very short temper to begin with, very short.  And when I lose my cool I lash out at the people I love.  

My husband and I have had two major arguments that involved talk of us splitting up for just a bit until I find myself again.  He told me he wants the woman he fell in love with back.  I broke down in tears when he said that, the look on his face, the tears in his eyes...I couldn't help it, I fell apart. 

I bawled my eyes out and lost control of all my emotions.  I was inconsolable and no matter how hard he tried to make me feel better, I just couldn't pull myself out of the depression that I was slammed into by my own hand.  He pinned me to the bed, hugging me tightly as I screamed and cried and let all of my stress, tension, depression, anxiety, everything out and he didn't leave me once.  He shushed me, yelled at me, tried to brush my hair with his hand to comfort me and nothing was working.  I was lost inside my head because my own husband, the man I have loved mind, body and soul, the man I swore to love, honor and protect during our hand fasting didn't know me anymore. 

And then he kissed me, oh so gently, with tears welling up in his eyes he said, "I love you and can't lose you.  You have to find yourself again" and somehow, through all of that roil of emotional turmoil I was billowing out those words found their way to my heart and I heard them.  They meant something.  They made sense. 

I don't honestly think I'd survive if my husband and my girls left me for a few weeks.  I think I'd lose my mind completely.  I need them, like I need my heart to beat.  I need their chaos, their love, their laughter.  I need them. 

As I sit here typing this whole ordeal out, tears are starting to well up in my own eyes.  I decided, after that whole fiasco, that I needed to do some reflection, look back and find out where I lost myself and what I could do to find "me" again. 

My conclusion?  After much deliberation on my part, I realized that all of this started after the birth of my second child.  I had been trying to convey to my psychiatrist that I thought I had PPD or postpartum depression.  Instead of treating it right then and there, he put me on yet another mood stabilizer, Lamictal.  Then when I went back to him and told him it wasn't working he just upped the dose.  And upped it, and upped it and upped it.  Still no change.  So I decided to go over his head and talk to his superior, another psychiatrist who is well known by many a physician in the area and highly recommended by many a patient. 

After talking with him, he put me on Prozac. I took the dose as I was told and did so for five weeks.  My rage just continued to get out of hand.  I tried to get in to see him but because of the holidays he has no openings until mid-January.

I'd had enough though.  I couldn't lose my husband, my girls, my life, myself anymore so I decided to start slowly dwindling down the dosage of my Lamictal and completely stop the Prozac (it was causing me massive migraines anyway). 

I also decided to start taking my Clonazepam, an anti-anxiety drug, much more often since I was barely taking it anyway.  I hate the way it makes me fuzzy but it keeps me calm, as it's supposed to.  It helps me learn how to better cope with my new life because let's face it, four major life changes in less than three years is a lot for one person to handle, one normal person, someone who doesn't have bipolar or another mental health disorder so you can imagine how hard it is on me, being bipolar and having PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), anxiety disorder and insomnia. 

I've been dealing with all of these things since I was thirteen years old.  And I won't lie to you, it's been rough.  And yet somehow, I've managed.  I've survived.  And I will continue to survive because honestly, there is no other option.  I have to survive...for my girls, my husband, my friends, for everyone. 

I am bipolar and I am a survivor.