I feel frustrated by how slow it seems we are moving through many transitions. It seems we are constantly trying to “catch-up” and “get our life together.” It’s like the theme of my adult life that has become so pervasive. I’m tired of it… we are tired of it. There have been so many changes that have taken place this last year or so. We’ve been dealing with them slowly and trying to pace them to our ability to handle all of it, but it is hard to be accepting and gentle with ourselves about it. Everything gets to be so overwhelming and so filled with anxiety as we try to manage the changes, do the changes, take care of these things that have been long overdue in “getting our life together” while at the same time trying to cope with everyday life amidst a myriad of things related to our daily functioning and whatever else that make this so challenging.

So much and so many people and things end up by the wayside–they remain in our hearts, our intentions, our thoughts, our never ending to do list, but after awhile, we’re just a disappointment, a frustration, and numerous other negative things that flow through our thoughts. We’ve realized that we can only handle or juggle so much and in the midst of changes, things just don’t get balanced quickly. The focus of balance gets put by the wayside while we try to focus on doing what is right in front of us or staying in contact with people who are right there in front of us. The hope is that when x, y, and z are done, then maybe we’ll be in a position where we’ll be able to tackle balance and everything else that has been trailing behind us by the wayside.

The image we get is a whole bunch of stuff attached to us through rope or some other means and just trailing and bumping along the rode behind us as we walk with a heavy load on our shoulders and weights attached to our heart that pull us downward into sadness. So the heavy load on our shoulders is whatever we’re dealing with right now, everyday life, whatever stress is going on, etc., and the weights attached to our heart is everything left unfinished and untouched and desperately needing attention and help and healing from trauma, etc. The wayside of things would be what is attached to us trailing behind us, making noise, bumping along, getting hurt and bruised by us unable to do something about it and having no more room to manage it on our shoulders.

We wish that getting x, y, and z done would be so simple and easy to do. It seems like “normal people” can handle x,y, and z so much easier or quicker or something while it takes us a million times longer to do it. Okay, a million times is an exaggeration but the feeling of it being like that is pretty accurate.

My mind is blanking, sleep is calling us and beginning to take over. I have to wonder how much of it is avoidance or some other dysfunctional coping skill or is it not dysfunctional but self-care??? What is the line? I don’t want to go back to bed to take a nap and sleep. In fact I’m annoyed that my body is feeling this way. We scheduled an appointment with a new dr. and got a new CPAP nose pillow mask to use with our CPAP machine. We’ve been working ourselves into a commitment to use it once we found out that we still have sleep apnea. So it is such a disappointment that we’re not seeing immediate results through using it and thus, this means one or both of these things is still likely a reality. We were told by our psychiatrist that we have Treatment Resistant Depression and her options to us at this point in terms of the next steps in treating it are not at all what we’re interested in doing– more medication and the kind that scares us with so many side effects or health ramifications. Besides, we’re not convinced that the remaining symptoms of our depression are all bio-chemical, but rather grief and unresolved trauma that will resolve as the PTSD and other things are worked on in therapy and life. Then there is also the diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that we have gone back and forth on and was hoping that by using the CPAP machine, that it would indicate to us if the constant fatigue was more related to our sleep problems rather than CFS/CFIDS. We’ve always attributed the fatigue to our depression, but since our suicidal ideation has gotten so much more manageable with our current medication and life changes (Sean in our life), we began to realize it may be a physical issue. So anyway, if we’re going to continue being ridiculously exhausted even with using the CPAP, then I guess we are going to have to accept that we do have CFS. Some of us think it is very likely as the symptoms do fit, but others of us are not sure if enough physical things have been ruled out. We’ve had some blood work, but not sure we’ve had enough done.

There’s many other things to talk about, but I guess it will have to wait. We’re glad to have at least written and finished enough of a post.

Julie/s