So...

I've been trying to learn html. It's been a bit aggravating but I think I may actually beginning to get the hang of this. I've yet to show the people I know who are nuts about computers what I've been up to. Only my husband has really seen what I've been working on. He thinks it's a good start and is quite proud of me.

What he doesn't know is that I'm working on something special for him. As he does read this blog, I know that he may see that I just said that now. It's ok, though, because it won't spoil his surprise too much. Hopefully, I won't have to ask him to check my work on his birthday surprise for later this month! That'd be a little embaressing to have him do that. All said, however, I think I might just get this right and have something pretty fun to show for my efforts.

On a slightly different front, I have been thinking about it and I finally decided that I needed to publish some of my work. I'm starting out with a few small things via Keen. Eventually, I'll be getting some stuff printed up and put out there for sale in hardcopy format. Until then, however, I'm working on making sure that my material is copyright protected and such. It's a bit difficult to do, because I'm trying to do work off-line and on-line at the same time with all of this even as I'm dealing with the insanity of being a stay-at-home mom.

I dare say, however, I might even be getting the hang of that juggling act as well.

ZOMG DOOOOM! THE END IS NIGH!!!

Yeah, that was impressive, wasn't it?

I'm sure that if you look up the LHC, you'll find alot of people insisting that we all must repent because the end times are upon us, for we're about to create a black hole and our doom. There's been alot of people who are far smarter then I am who are concerned that when the flip the switch, the LHC will create a strangelet. I'm not terribly worried about it.

In my opinion, the likelihood of this is on par with the likelihood that we're going to be pulled into a wandering black hole. I'm also of the mind that we should be more concerned with nuclear winter due to a series of severely fucked up accidents on aging nuclear powerplants and poorly secured military devices. My husband hates it when I say that I think we're more likely to see our planet get hit by an asteroid or something else. He insists that I'm damning us all to a grisly doom by adding to the list other relatively low probability modes of death.

On the other hand...

Immenent doom does make for a good excuse for one hell of a party. Perhaps I should start working on getting supplies together to make fantastic umbrella drinks and such. After all, if you're going to blink out of existence, you should have at least one bit of orgastic joy prior to it, right?

Still can't shake it...

I'm sitting here listening to the news/watching the news on the tv. I still can't manage to shake that feeling of anxiety. It looks like the tax return has come in, thank goodness. I figured that'd make me less nervous, but it hasn't. I'm just a bundle of anxiety today and I can't get over it. Yesterday's nervousness and anxiety hasn't gone away, though I've done what I could to refocus my attentions on other matters.

I've been torn with the desire to go curl up under a blanket and sleep, as I haven't slept well for several days now, and the desire to just sit down and cry. I've spent the day working on making a flyer to advertise my tarot reading business and cutting out stuff from magazines to use in making the collage that is this flyer. I've been trying to play with the baby, having made him laugh several times today. I even took a nap. But I can't get past this terror that something is horribly wrong with me because I can't handle going out and being around other people.

The worst thing is in all of this, I find myself struggling with some other fustration. I can't quiet the desire and/or hunger for rather harsh attention mingled with affection. It's ...

I don't know, it seems like that helps me to feel safe at times. Having the terrors ripped away from me by the immediate focus of what is happening just at that moment helps me to become calm. It helps because I know the illusion is the scene, the pain and fustration may be real but there is no harm. And... I'm not sure how to prhase it... It helps to have a place where it is safe to give up control and to let someone else handle everything for a moment. I worry so much about everything. I try to be as responsible as possible in handling all of the day to day concerns. To beable to take that burden off my shoulders and lay it aside for a moment, where my only worry is how I play the role before me, it's easier.

I feel like a fool for wanting it, though.

I don't know... It is so hard to focus sometimes and I just need help with that.

Social Anxiety vs. Life

I really have no better title for this post because I think that about summarizes what my difficulties are right now. I have a rather... well... enormous bit of social anxiety and it is making a fairly huge impact on the rest of my life right now. I've been trying to run a business on-line but that's not going as well as I thought it would initially. I tried out the whole reading at something of a party where I essentially had a captive audience. I didn't do exactly well.

I'm not saying that I didn't get any business. I did, but I didn't do well in my comfort levels here. I spent a large chunk of time desperately trying to stay out of everybody's way and not saying much for fear of being verbally attacked. The whole experience kinda slapped me in the face with the fact that I am generally terrified of interacting with other people I don't know, specifically women and I'm not exactly sure of what to do about or with it.

When I interact with people on the internet and to a lesser extent over the phone, it's easier. I suppose it is because it's easy to trick my brain into thinking that they're not 'real' people so I'm not at risk. I have times where I desperately want to go out an interact with people but I just can't bring myself to do it. I try, I really do try, to go out and make friends. I just can't bring myself to do so very much because I'm terrified of being hurt.

I don't really know how to handle this. I need to interact with people to build my business, it's just a part of it. But I'm afraid to do so. When I'm doing a reading, it doesn't generally get screwed up by my anxiety. I hit a certain point and it feels like I'm just reading out loud. Sometimes, I get uncomfortable because the information that I'm reading doesn't make any sense to me or the details given are such that I question if I really should know them. For example, I don't generally want to know about my client's sex life. That's private and if anyone tells me, it should be them.

On the rare occasion that I may have some sort of a question, it's usually if this person is safe. Aside from that, I don't want to know or care. If everything that happens is consensual and done responsibly, I could care less. I get embarrassed when I have information about how their lover performs because I feel that I'm being shown something that I really have no place knowing. As such, I try to make sure that the information is phrased delicately and as factually as possible. Unfortunately, when I'm shown things like this (and it happens more often then I'd like to admit), I find myself becoming even more anxious.

I just don't know what to do about it.

What an odd day..

I'm not sure if the weirdness is exaggerated or illustrated by what I just listened to on the radio. I've found my mood swinging back and forth between a state of high anxiety and irritation to feeling apathetic/depressed. It's been rather upsetting. I didn't really get anything I planned on doing today done at all. I fell asleep on the couch for about 3 hours, possibly 4, this afternoon. I don't know why I was so exhausted, but I was. In the midst of all this, I found myself dreaming of various strange things. Such as lotus blossoms coming up out of a sink full of filthy dishes and mold, the baby laughing and having teeth sprouting out with each laugh, and a friend of mine serenading me even as my husband played accompaniment on a battered old electric guitar, that looked like a very beat up version of B.B. King's Lucille.

On the radio, I just listened to Meredith Monk's song Last Words and found myself torn between irritation and amusement. I can say this, while some may say that it is fine music, I think it's a form of auditory torture. I, however, also feel the same way about rap music and love bagpipe music, which most people seem to think sounds like the pitiful screams of cats in a blender or being beaten in a sack.

I've been dreaming again.

And those dreams are not good things.

No, they've been a cross between bad memories, nightmares, and well... something vaguely reminiscent of Dante's vision of Hell, if Dante was modernized into the gratuitous gore and violence fest of today's vision.

And I rather hate this.

I especially hate that these dreams happen as I'm on the edge of waking up and sometimes find myself struggling not to flail about, succeeding only barely at times.

I would vastly prefer if the dreams weren't so terrifying to me. And if they were to terrify me, didn't manage to some how linger in my awareness thru the day, leaving me with a vague sense of danger at odd moments because I can almost hear that horrible voice in my head saying wretched things to me.

Thank god that voice does not have an actual face to go with it, as I fear it would probably prove to be something beautiful in a most terrifying way. And I'm most thankful that I only have to suffer it within my head, rather then in flesh and blood. Facing such a monster on a daily basis in a 'real' person... well, I'd either be committing murder or suicide.

I need a vacation!

I suppose it makes sense that the kid wakes up at the crack of dawn. It's the first whisper of daylight and he's awake. A little while later, the boy plays and then he begins to scream because he wants attention. Mama and Daddy, of course, are not allowed to sleep in, as the purpose of our existence is to attend his whims.

I would love an escape from the duties and responsibilities of my life right now. A weekend off from housework, child care, and all of the other myriad of things I have to deal with on a daily basis would be fantastic. I think, however, that might be asking too much at the moment. Somedays, I think that it would be fantastic if I could just wake up to a clean house. I could deal with my son's temper-tantrums better if I didn't have to attempt to navigate my way thru a maze of toys and laundry to get anywhere in this place, I suspect.

And when the boy is down for the night and sleeping, I look around and see the pile of papers that need to be sorted, answered, and filed. Thank gods that I at least got the bills paid this week. The sewing machine is sitting on the table, waiting patiently, as is the laundry basket under the table full of clothes that need mending and fabric for baby clothes that needs cut and sewn waiting as well. I see my writing projects heaped around the computer. The never ending mass of dishes, where the only change is the number of them dirty at that precise moment.

I try, I really do try, to keep the fact that I have the life I wanted, that I dreamed about as a child right now. Right at this moment, however, it's very difficult to feel greatful and blessed when I am incredibly fustrated and angry with how my efforts to keep a clean house seem to be for nothing. Heck, it seems like what I do all day is as effective as sitting on my ass doing nothing. And then, I spend a day doing nothing and discover that I was wrong, I'm just barely keeping ahead of a monstrosity of a disaster.

Hmm... this is unusual.

I'm not typically a morning person but here I am wide awake. I think I fell asleep at about 3 am last night. I say last night because the sun wasn't up, so it doesn't count as morning. :) Anyways, I am running on about four hours of sleep, maybe four and a half hours of sleep. Yet, I'm quite alert and even in a cheerful mood. Perhaps this will continue thru the rest of the day. If it does, fantastic. :) I may even sleep well tonight, if that's the case.

But, this is not terribly unusual. No, the thing that is unusual is how loud my son snores. I have heard him snoring before and have thought it a little odd. I asked the doctor about it and he said that it was ok, that was at the boy's 3 month check up. Then, I suppose it was last month or the checkup before that one, I asked again. At that point in time, he suggested that if the little darling wasn't showing signs of a cold that it *could* be allergies.

So, I've been trying to keep things cleaned up more in the way of getting rid of dust and such. I'm honestly quite happy that my husband has been helping out more with the vacuuming around here. (I feel foolish but I worry that I'm going to have an asthma attack using this bagless vacume and that's what stops me. It probably shouldn't but it does.) I've been trying to get more dusting done and make sure that the air around here isn't as dry as it has been. All pretty much as the doctor suggested.

There really hasn't been much change with my son's snoring. It actually seems to be getting a little worse. That, however, I believe is my worry speaking. One thing that has remained consistant here in all of this is my husband's smoking. I hate to think that the doctor is right and that this is due to my husband's smoking. I feel like it would just make life more difficult for my husband. He already has a lot to worry about and he has made so much progress on improving his health as it is.

He's cut down quite a bit on his smoking over the last several months. I'm quite proud of him. And he's been getting more exercise, even trying to make his diet become more healthy. On one hand, I realize that I am probably worrying too much about adding to his stress. At the same time, however, I don't want to make life more difficult for everyone then it has to be. In all of this, though, I need to recognize that putting the boy's well being before the comfort of everyone in the home is necessary. It's just one of the things we all signed on for when we decided that we were ready to have a baby.

So, I suppose, what needs to happen is I need to find a way for us to afford or otherwise manage to get my husband the help he needs to quit smoking. Our good friends Jerry and Jamie have quit. They're doing fantastic and have made alot of positive changes in their lives as well. They've been encouraging and supportive to my husband in his efforts to make the same kinds of changes in his life as well. Perhaps I should contact these people, like they did. Maybe we qualify for thier assistance as well.

Sheesh...

I'm sitting here listening to Jay Leno fail at being funny.

The whole experience simply reminds me as to why I don't bother watching late night TV. Aside from that, I made the foolish decision to watch the democratic debate prior to the primary in Pennsylvania. Looking at that decision, I'm reminded again why I don't bother watching politics on television as well. Actually, to be honest, all of the stuff I've seen on TV recently has bored, disappointed, or disgusted me.

Between the inane commercials and the alarmist news reports, I can't really say that I have found any redeeming value to television. I watch the news because I don't subscribe to the local newspaper. I'm inclined to just get my news from the internet and just stop bothering all together with the drivel that they call TV programming. The morning talkshows generally serve as background noise.

...

Wow! I didn't expect it... Ok, this is entertaining for no reason relating to Leno at all.

Who knew that Charles Barkley sounded like Gomer Pyle? I know that I didn't! I'm sitting here almost ready to giggle as he's talking to Leno. It's just impossible to take seriously, especially with things like him saying that the state of Alabama needs his help. It's just sad.

Am I a bad person? I still can't stop giggling at the idea of Gomer Pyle in an elected office. :)

Do we just try to function?

Gods... it has been a hell of a day. I wish I could say that it was just because of a poor night's rest or something. Heck, it'd be easier if I could just blame it on my screwed up hormones, even. But I honestly don't know why the hell I had such a rotten day.

I suppose it is a good thing, in some respect, that my husband finds me to be sexy when I'm angry. I guess my bitchy mood can do a little tiny bit of good by putting some kind of a smile on his face.

I feel like everything I touch of late turns to shit. I recognize that it's an exaggeration, but it is how I feel right now. I've been trying to make a new skirt for myself. Because the pattern I had was screwed up somehow, I now have 12 yards of wasted fabric. And I have no idea how to recover it and looking at it makes me angry. Never mind the amount of anger I feel over the fact that I basically wasted money that could be better spent on more important things.

I can't manage to get this place as clean as I feel it needs to be. And I feel damn angry about that because I know that if I don't get this place cleaned up and in good order, it'll make my lungs start causing problems again. I also know that it could be a problem for my son. I worry that the boy has my consitution, not that of his father, whom doesn't ever seem to get sick with anything. I feel like I have no room to even turn around in my own home because the apartment is really too small for us now.

I don't know what to do. On one hand, I want to just go and throw everything away. But I recognize that I can't throw away my son's things and I can't do that with my husband's stuff either. And if I throw away all of my stuff... well, where exactly does that leave me? It makes me angry because it feels like I'm getting blamed for the mess around here when it gets pointed out that I've got more stuff that got brought in here when we moved in. But, I know that's unreasonable of me.

I know that there's so much in my head right now that is unreasonable. But I don't know what to do with or about it. This evening, I had to walk out pretty much as soon as my husband got home so that I wouldn't do something stupid or rash. I was so angry with how dinner wasn't coming out right, I wasn't able to get my laundry put away, or any of the cleaning that needed done in the rest of the apartment, despite my efforts, that I just couldn't handle the boy's temper tantrum. I had to walk out before I did something stupid.

I wanted to keep walking, but I recognized that if I didn't come back home soon there'd be problems. After all, dinner wasn't done and my husband wouldn't have known what I was working on because I walked out with pretty much saying anything.

God, I wanted to just run. It makes me so aggrivated that I'm not in good enough shape to run anymore, and that I haven't been in many years. I would have loved to have been able to just run until my lungs burned and my body ached with the effort. It would have pushed away that discomfort and anger, it would have done me good. I also had the urge to break things and hurt things.

I'm a generally compassionate woman. I will try to avoid stepping on bugs and such when I'm walking. It's messy and the animal didn't do anything to me. Where's the sense in killing something that was there minding it's business for no purpose other then I felt like it? As I was walking, however, I had to restrain myself from stomping on worms and insects as I saw them on the ground. It really made me feel like I was one of the lowest people on the face of the earth for the fact that I contemplated killing an animal that literally has no defenses and only basal ganglia for anything remotely like mental processing.

So, what the hell is the point to all of this? How the hell is this living? Are we just trying to function while we complete some screwed up circumscribed circut of bullshit thru the day, one that is dictated to us by the mesh of gears which make up this machine that grinds us down, where in we are but one of the cogs? Seriously, what is the point?

Ah well, I suppose I'll just go be bitchy and morose elsewhere.

Family trauma?

I blogged a little about this elsewhere. I'm still tossing this about in my head, trying to make sense of it. I've been having, as I said in that other blog, abit of difficulty of late. About 90% of it revolves around my family. I had a rather sudden epiphany this morning that my family is perpetuating a collection of habits and attitudes that are rooted in some past trauma that had an enormous impact upon people a few generations back. It leaves me rather stunned and troubled to realize this. At the same time, however, I'm comforted by this awareness. It means that I can break that cycle, if anything, in my own home.

As I've thought about this over the last few hours, it's increasingly become clear that things like cycles of abuse are perpetuated because the abuse is a failure in resolving the issue that was the initial trauma to the family. Let me give a bit clearer of a description of my thoughts here. We'll take my family's issues out of the picture and just look at the abuse cycle in random family X. Then, we'll track down the origins of that abuse cycle.

The abuse cycle has a few phases to it. This gal, Dr. Irene, did a pretty good job outlining it here. Now, it may sound a little funny but I think we can put the whole issue with random family X into the context of the abuse cycle, deconstruct it, and then possibly find that original trauma. Now, let's say that random family X has a problem with verbal abuse. One of the parents is hypercritical of everyone, including their two children and the dog (dog = child # .5). This parent has very high expectations for everyone, including themself. As the parent find their expectations not being met, they begin to yell, chastise, castigate, and other wise verbally rip to shreds the person who has not met their expectations.

Now, as a parent, the abuser feels that the children need to be shown by examples what the appropriate way to behave is. As such, when there is a failure to behave appropriately, there must be an example made as to what the punishment is to be, thus making it a learning experience. This, unfortunately, exacerbates the emotional pain of the verbal abuse for the person whom is being made into an example. One may ask, why does parent X act in this fashion?

I suspect this would be because parent X was raised in this kind of environment. I'm certian that parent X is most likely dealing with the echos of their own hypercritical parent in their mind, urging them on to have such impossibly high expectations, not realizing how damaging it is to them. Now, we are forced to ask why that person had such a perspective. Now, it is possible to track back in this fashion and find generations of abuse. It, however, does not help to pin point where it all began. Here, I suspect, we'd need to look at the larger collection of issues surrounding the situation.

Are there topics that seem to be hot buttons for the abusers in the family, topics that are consistent? If the abusers in family X all have fits over money, it is possible that there was some major financial issue in the past that caused an enormous amount of stress. As a result, it's somewhat burned into the familial memory which turns money into a topic of anxiety and confrontation. Perhaps something else is a common topic but, that common topic can usually track back, I believe, to an event that proved extremely traumatizing.

I think that abuse is a result of a failed coping mechanisim. Stress builds up to a point that is virtually unbearable. The person whom is suffering the stress finds that yelling at some one serves to reduce the stress. They then begin to use that coping mechanisim at other stressful times. When anxiety begins to rear it's head, the person begins to engineer situations that can play out the tension building, climax, and release of stress, there by alleviating the discomfort of the anxiety. Here is where, I think, abuse begins.

I also think that it is possible, once the source of it is known, that one can possibly heal that problem. I believe that if you work to build new coping mechanisims, one can break the cycle of abuse. I believe that if you work to integrate the experiences that were traumatic into your life, you can find them to be sources of great strength and transform them from an open wound in your psyche (one that may or may not be festering with the rising sickness of an abusive habit) to a fairly neutral memory, where it's no longer so emotionally charged. I'm also beginning to think it is possible to do the same with the 'group think' of the family as well.

I can't say that this will necessarily do much to resolve the situation with my family. On one side of the family, there is the progressive desecalation of abuse, moving from a few generations back where there was rampant physical, psychological, and verbal abuse to mainly verbal and psychological abuse. And this could be claimed to be progress, though it does not go far enough, in my opinion. On the other side of the family, we find a very tangled and entrenched pattern of verbal and psychological abuse.

I know there is a way to save myself and my child from all of this monstrosity. It is simply refusing to engage in it. However, I do not want to perpetuate the habits that have sprung up around this. I'm still working on how to combat all of that mess, but I know there is a way, somehow.

I'm not sure what to say.

I feel... well... sad, hurt, depressed... I don't know, perhaps heartbroken.

I really don't know what the correct way to describe this is. It just settled on me last night at about 10 or 11 pm. At about then, I decided that I was going to sew and maybe make myself something pretty. That didn't work out well because of the screwed up directions that I had to work with, but I gave it a shot. That feeling, however, grew stronger.

It's just more present now that I just got off the phone with my sister-in-law.

I recognize that part of this is because it strikes me as terrible to be watching how her marriage to my brother is falling apart because my brother wants to be a boy, not a man. When I think about all of that, and how my whole family is attempting to interfere and save the marriage and help them in some retarded fashion... Tragic is an understatement. As would be disgusting, I think.

Disgusting because I can't stand how people in my family feel the need to know everyone's business. I hate it. Yeah, privacy is good. I know, we're family and I should be able to share with you what ever I want. I know that you believe that you can ask me why I need your help and it's reasonable to expect me to tell you the story behind what the problem is. I wouldn't have quite so much of a problem with that if it wasn't for the fact that once that happens, there seems to be the intense desire to tell how one should run their life, raise their children, handle their finances, and such.

I think the biggest thing is I feel a crushing sense of disillusionment with my family.

Aside from that, I just want to sit down and cry.

I realize my hormones are going to be completely out of whack. Between the whole recovering from pregnancy thing (which I think by 7 1/2 months, I'm going to be fairly recovered) and having my hormones fairly fucked up to begin with due to PCOS, I'm going to have some mood swings and such. But, there is something different here to all of this that makes the mood changes based in hormones look like too simple of an answer.

I think it is fear of the financial difficulties growing around us. I think it is concern that these difficulties are going to affect our basic needs in a very large way. And I feel like all of my efforts to try to make things better just aren't working.

I mean, how hard is it that you're supposed to struggle before you get things on an even keel?

Stargazer, I had a dream about you!

It was pretty odd, too. In it, were back at CND in that room we had in Meletia. These girls got into a huge screaming match which then turned into an all out brawl. You then turned to me and said, "This isn't real."

I replied, "Yeah. No shit it isn't real. This is fucked up, even for my head."

You shook your head and then held up my left hand. You drew my attention to the white gold band that I wear and said, "No this isn't real." As I looked at it, the band melted like ice. I looked over at the silver one that I wear on my right hand. You then said, "Oh, don't worry about that. But this one..." You shook your head. "Somebody scammed you both and you got the wrong thing," you said, looking a bit angry.



Now, I'm at a loss for interpreting this one. Your ideas may be helpful because I'm stumped here. The silver one that I wear is from the handfasting hubby and I did years ago before our wedding. The white gold one is from the wedding.

What do you think?

Some days....

Some days, I question what I was thinking when I so desperately wished to be a mother. When the boy is having temper tantrums and nothing I do seems to help... Well, it leaves me feeling more then a little fustrated and like I've some how failed or missed some stupidly obvious solution to his problem. I mean, I'm an adult, right? So, I should be able to figure out what the baby needs, right? I've even got some advantage in having life experience in dealing with children.

It feels, sometimes, like no matter what I do, I'll still have a child who swings back and forth between temper tantrums and periods of brooding silence, refusing to laugh despite everything I do to attempt to coax one out of him.

What scares me, however, is the thought of turning into what my mother was like when I was little. I remember her temper and pots getting thrown across the house. We had a very small house and the pots were cast iron. I don't want to be that kind of a mother. I don't want to be that kind of woman. I don't want to terrify my child into behaving. I don't want to go into a screaming fit of fury over something, with my child wondering what they did to earn my wrath when the anger was at something entirely unrelated to what the child did.

When I get to the point where I just don't know what to do, I ... I feel horrible for putting him down in his crib. But I recognize that it is better to set him down somewhere I know he is safe and just walk away for a few minutes.

A reason why I question my sanity.

I tried to tell him about this yesterday but I failed horribly. Heck, I tried to tell counselors about this in the past, and they didn't really listen to me even. I'm afraid to talk about this because I'm pretty sure that I'd be declared the dangerous kind of crazy and locked away somewhere, never to really live the rest of my life. I'll admit it, I'm terrified of the thought of being insitutionalized. I'll talk a bit more about that in another post, because it'll just serve to distract me from what I want to say here.

Sometimes... sometimes, I suppose I could say that I hear voices in my head. Sure, I know, I hear whispers from the other side and such as a psychic, but I know this is in my head. There's always a difference between what is inside my head and what is not. I'm not that fractured yet. I hope to god I never am.

I suppose it all started when I was a kid. I had a voice in my head, a male voice, that usually said pretty horrific things. It's the voice that whispered to me how I should have killed my beloved pet cat Sandy because it would be possible. It suggested that doing so would relieve the anxiety that I felt. That happened when I was about 15. I don't know when that voice started whispering to me, possibly when I was about 9 or 10.

I don't remember much of those early whispers, but it was present. This was the voice that told me I should just start hitting people when I'm angry, that it'd make me feel better. I knew that was wrong, so I didn't do it. But that voice still whispers such things to me in my head. It scares me, because it's become more complex in the things it says. I think I hear it whispering to me around 30 times a day. If I'm having a bad day, I'm angry, or something else like that, that voice makes it's presence known even more.

I can't say if I'm comfortable with it. Other people I know apparently have a similar monster in their head. Some have chosen to ignore it and other have chosen to find amusement in it. I don't know what to do with it. I'll have times where I am filled with a sudden, visceral urge to do something horrible, like throw a pot of boiling water on my infant son or shove the little old biddy walking in front of me on the sidewalk, jabbering away on her cell phone right out in front of the truck that's barreling down the highway. Those times, I immediately distract myself with something else, usually the exact opposite of that urge. I'll pick up my son and cuddle him, and tell him how much I love him. I'll walk in the opposite direction of the old woman who's presence irritates me.

It's not that I don't love my son. It's not that at all. I adore my son. I love him and would rather die then harm him. I haven't harmed him and will do everything in my power not to. Please, don't anyone think that is the case. And this has been in my head alot longer then the postpartum depression thing too. My ability to shut that voice up... to just turn it off... well, that's what got screwed up by the postpartum depression. I used to be able to just will it into silence. Now... now it doesn't work that well.

My family wonder why I listen to music so often, it's because it distracts my attention from that voice and the others in my head. On the whole, it scares me. What happens if, someday, I'm no longer strong enough to resist it? What happens then? I don't want to hurt people. Especially the people I love or people who are defenseless (like children or the elderly). It's there, though, in the back of my head all the time.

I've had people look at me like there's something horribly wrong with me because I can tell them with relative ease where to cut a person to make them bleed out quickly. They get disturbed when I will sit and talk about poisoning people as though it's as easy as cooking dinner. It's actually easier, but they don't generally want to hear that. No... instead, I get troubled looks and people who move away from me. I find myself more isolated then I began because I just was talking about the wrong things, apparently.

Social isolation really isn't good for me. It makes me more depressed. I'm usually dealing with some degree of depression most of the time anyways, so I try not to think about the bad days where I find myself in a position where I'm actively being pushed away. The worst part of it all is how that male voice in my head tells me that no one really wants me in their life. It tells me that I'm not really loved by people but being used by them, that I'm only as valuable as what I can do for others. That male voice tells me about how everyone I love... I hurt them just by existing. I have some how emotionally hurt them and will someday cause them greater harm just by the virtue of my existence. It tells me that I'm the reason why my family has such financial difficulties, and the only way that we'll be in a better place financially is if I go out and prostitute myself.

I hear other ugly things in my head on a daily basis. At one point, I was put on medication for depression and I had the idiot thought that maybe it would work to help shut that voice up in my head. The other voices in my head, I like them. They're generally decent and nice. They don't get abusive towards me or others. It, however, is something I don't talk about. It's bad enough to have a raving sociopath inside your head, to admit that there's a child or something else in there... you start sounding like Sybil and people start to look for a white coat for you. And don't you dare mention the fact that the sociopath is violent, or you'll be at risk for getting drugged.

No... no, I don't mention this. I'm terrified of being pushed away by the people I love for that reason on top of so many others that could be found for some reason. I've already been met with scorn for my choice of religion. I'm terrified to even bring sexuality into the conversation, as I've seen the people who I thought were tolerant suddenly have the highest degree of scorn towards the remote idea that I may enjoy BDSM or anything else remotely like it.

So, I do my best to be the person that I'm expected to be, that I'm supposed to be. In a limited fashion, I'm allowed to let some of the other less threatening elements out. The artist is welcome, as is the poet. I'm tolerated the child's presence in the correct environment, like when I'm playing with children. It's funny... people wonder why I'm so good with kids. It's more then the fact that I have few qualms about providing structure in their lives via guidance and discipline. I think like them at times too.

Honestly, it bothers the hell out of me when people tell me that I should relax and just let myself be who I am. With all of this noise in my head, what exactly am I supposed to let out? Do I admit to the fact that each aspect/element/voice in my head have a personality that is different from the others. I try to synthesize all of this into one but it doesn't work too well. Hence my fairly regular struggle with depression. I feel like I'm trying to glue together a crystal goblet that has shattered into hundreds of pieces. I may be able to cobble together some of it, but there's a lot that I just can force together.

So, I wonder, am I crazy? Because I can ask that question, does it mean that I'm not?

I don't know and that scares me.

Some pictures!

I haven't recently updated pictures of how big my little one is getting. As such, here's a few that have been taken over the last several months.


This picture above is the most recent. It was taken just last week. We've been practicing pulling him up to sitting and then up to standing. As you can see, my 7 month old boy has figured out how to stand. He hasn't gotten the hang of crawling, but he may not crawl. He might just go to walking. We'll see how it goes.


In the picture above, he'd figured out how to chew on his toes a day before hand. Now, after a bath, he decided was a good time to do it. So, Daddy brought in the camera and got a picture of it. He's 3 months old here.


In this one, the boy is playing with a spatula. He's 4 mo. old and in his new high chair. He looked so tiny in it when we first put him in it. Now... now he's not looking quite so small in there.

What a lovely spring day!

The boy and I just came in from spending about half an hour outside. It's warm and the sun is shining. There's a light breeze from the west and the birds have been making their presence known. Mostly, we heard crows cawing in the trees just down the road across from the big pond in the little dell over there. Across the street, the neighbors have started work on some landscaping.

My son was just awestruck by the way the men worked. He was just fascinated by watching these two men pulling dead wood out of the yard that was blown down in our recent windstorm and their pointing at various things to be dug up. He also appeared to greatly enjoy watching the traffic passing by our home as much, if not more, then watching those two men.

He got very excited each time a semi came by, especially if it was blue or red, more so if it was red. I think it was the cutest thing, however, to watch his head whip around from side to side trying to watch all of the cars as traffic was moving from both directions. He simply couldn't decide what way to look. To say the least, a good time was had by all. Mother quite amused with the baby and the baby quite amused with the world.

Well, we had an adventure yesterday.

I took my little boy out for a walk yesterday. The weather was gloriously warm when we started out. Just shy of 65 degrees and sunny, the only potential problem was the wind. I found that proved very quickly not to be a problem at all. The baby absolutely loved the wind.

As the breeze blew hard on us, he kicked his feet happily, waved his arms, and stuck out his tongue as far as he could. Great smiles, laughter, and happy noises accompanied this display of delight. I'm forced to admit, I'm not sure what he loved the most. He was thrilled with the wind but he also just was delighted with the wind blowing the clouds across the sky, watching the trees sway in the breeze, and seeing how it made my shawl flap around me as I kept fixing the blanket that he kept kicking.

Now, the thing that did prove a bit problematic was the booties. He kicked them off a few times. I thought I had managed to get him covered up in such a manner that they weren't going to go flying again. Somehow, when we had managed to get to the little restaraunt we stop at for a drink and a rest on our walk (where I discovered that the boy likes a little bit of iced tea if there's no sugar in it), he had managed to lose the booties and his socks. I still feel a bit upset about this. The socks really aren't the cause of my dismay. It's the booties.

You see, his great-grandmother (my paternal grandmother) had made him a matching set of booties and a little bonnet. She knitted them with red, white, and blue yarn. They really were just the cutest thing and barely fit him at Yule, when she gave them to him. When we left, it was warm enough, that I wasn't going to put the bonnet on him, but I put the booties on him. I figured we could get one, maybe two more uses before his feet were too big for them. Sadly, in the course of our walk yesterday, he lost them.

So, we started home and searched for them along the way. By this time, the weather had taken a rather sudden turn for the worse. The bright, sunny sky was fairly full of heavy clouds and threatening rain. The temperature had dropped almost twenty degrees and the wind started howling even more then it was earlier. By some strange miracle, I managed to find one of the booties. The baby was getting upset because his feet were cold.

I picked him up out of the stroller in my arms, wrapped the blanket tighter around him and then held him under my shawl as we continued on. We made it as far as the post office, which is a 1/4 of a mile from home before I had to take shelter. We stopped in there and I called for his father on the cell phone. The boy was very upset, but a bit calmer since we were out of the weather. I'm glad that I have a woolen shawl and that it was the one I picked. His major source of upset since I had him under the shawl was the wind making the shawl flap around him.

I'm thankful that I can say that we didn't have the branches falling around us or even a tree fall down beside us (some girls playing in their backyard up in the city had a tree come down beside them). I'm just trying to keep myself from getting upset with the fact that the other bootie is literally gone with the wind.