Raising kids isn't easy to begin with. We've officially hit puberty and Cuddle Bear has gone from ... well, a cuddle bear to an angry young man half the time. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that I haven't slept well in about three months. That makes me a bit hair-trigger with my c-ptsd. Throw in on top of that the fact that we've had a few screaming arguments that set it off, it's been rough.
Beloved spoke with him. I don't know what their conversation was like, I wasn't in the room. Cuddle Bear is not quite as angry, just moody. I know that puberty is rough. Hormones swinging like a pendulum is bullshit no matter why it's happening. He's chafing at the bit to get the privileges and freedom that he sees his older peers have. It leads to some friction, to put it lightly.
Snuggle Bug is looking at the way Cuddle Bear and I have clashed over the last few months and NOPED out of even trying to be involved by either defending his brother or trying to calm him down (which they've both done in the past). It's very confusing. Where Cuddle Bear has gotten angrier and more aggressive, Snuggle Bug has slowed down and become more deliberate in what he's doing. There's still maturing happening and there's still stuff that has to be sorted out, but it's like they switched brains right now. It's bewildering.
I've been struggling with my c-ptsd for about a month now. My doctor has increased my dosage on one of my meds to help me regain control over the flashbacks. I've been attempting to force myself to do my therapy writing but I just get real upset when I try. I've been catching myself struggling to stay present in the moment. It is hard because the age difference between my sons is exactly the same as the age difference between my brothers. And the boys, if you look at the right angle, look like their uncles did at those ages.
So, I swing between being in the present and being Mom and being in the past and being the terrified older sister desperately attempting to keep her brothers 'in line' so that all three of us didn't get some sort of awful punishment. And I was punished for this behavior. I couldn't win for losing. On top of that, I had untreated bipolar which lead to being accused regularly of drug use when I was actually depressed. Hypomania just meant that I got loaded down with more chores and told to shut up more often. My parent's approach to kids was "children should be seen and not heard" and "spare the rod, spoil the child." They didn't believe in mental illness or chronic illness.
The whole business of my mangled upbringing makes living in the present hard. I have to take a lot of medicine between the diabetes, pcos, c-ptsd, and bipolar II. Having my parents criticize me for taking cough syrup when I had a cold and insisting that I was using drugs when I wasn't left a mental scar that leaves me feeling guilty and like the world's going to judge me as a bad person for all of the medication that I have to take to function and be alive. It's so upsetting that Beloved has taken over the management of filling up my pill sorter for the week. (I am eternally thankful to him for that. I could do it, but then I wind up just about crying afterwards every time.)
I'm rambling and I don't really know what to say. I am struggling to function. It seems like every time I turn around, there's a 'new' trigger that I wasn't aware of until now. And the old triggers that I had thought I had under control are bringing back up anxiety again. Seeing a pile of dishes in the sink shouldn't make you panic, but it does because when I was small I got beat for not doing the dishes properly and then made to wash them all over again in nearly scalding hot water. Seeing that something needs dusting shouldn't make you shake with fear, but it happens because my insane mother used the white glove treatment after we cleaned. If there was a speck of dust on her glove, you got hit and made to do it all over again. In some cases, it went on for a few iterations because we simply weren't tall enough to dust the entire area (like the top of the upright piano) and weren't allowed to stand on anything to get to it.
It's a whole bunch of stuff like that coming back up. It is painful. It is disorienting. I try to hide it from the kids because they get scared when I am not my usual self. Especially if I am crying for some reason. I think it's because they expect me to vanish for a few weeks off to the hospital. It's a heavy load to carry. It hurts.
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