Again, and Again, and Now I'm Rambling

Last night I found out that my friend had decided to take a butt load of pills to be followed with many chasers of Vodka. I currently do not know how my friend is doing since I am unable to reach anyone at the house. In fact...there are a lot of people wondering what the hell is going on.

First I would like to explain something so that you might understand where I come from regarding this. Here's the deal...I do not cope with suicide or thoughts of suicide, or suicide attempts. It's not that I don't want to, but given my history (<--click here for the story.)...yeah, anything suicide related causes a chemical reaction in me that isn't pretty. So I tend to come across as a cold bitch. 


Next I have to address the alcohol chasers. So yeah I'm a former alcoholic. I've been sober for 18 years. I don't have much patience for alcoholics either. Been there, done that. If you didn't click on the link above, here's a brief telling. I met guy, guy was great, guy was a closet alcoholic, guy hated himself, guy put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger, I found guy Easter morning. I really do recommend you click on the link though and read the full story. 


So here I am today with a big ole pile of WHAT THE FUCK in my lap to deal with again. I don't want to deal with the emotions, I want to go and bitch slap the shit out of my friend. However I have a feeling that this probably will only make me feel better and wont make things better for my friend. Guess I should strike that from the things to do today.


Anyhow I have to figure out how to deal with this so that I can be a good friend to someone in need. I am having a very hard time doing this because of my out take on it. Now don't get me wrong here. I get that people get depressed and fall into a pit of despair...I have been there, I do suffer from depression. What I have an issue with is the fact that people can't get themselves out of that pit. Most times when someone has this problem they go to the doctor and get some happy pills. I do the same thing. I occasionally get to the point where I can't even stand to be in the same room with myself so off I go to make an appointment. Wow I seem to be having a very hard time articulating this with you. So I'm just gonna say this way, and if I offend someone, well so be it... God damn it, life sucks for everyone. The majority of the population keeps on going. Why? Because that is what we do as humans. Fall down, get up, brush ourselves off, and start marching again. There isn't anything out there that is so bad we need to kill ourselves. Perspective is needed. So say a mother looses her child to cancer, and feels like she can't go on. I get that, but there is so much more you can do for your child than permanently curl up in a ball and wither away, or more bluntly put...off yourself. Become a warrior against cancer, become a mentor, or support for another family...
 

For some reason though society seems to have forgotten that lesson, and now it is ok to sit there and expect others to stop what they are doing and to feel sorry for us, even complete strangers. It has become the norm in society to sit there and use past transgression upon us as an excuse for our behaviors today. Ya know there is some truth in that, but if it was the case straight through and through, the little child who was beaten, raped, mistreated, and all sorts of other horrors wouldn't ever become anything other than a product of their environment, and I know for a fact there are many of those kids out there stomping the hell out of their past and blowing by us "normal" people.  We are a super sized generation, and in that super sizedness...our emotions are super sized too. It's time we reign it back in to what is supposed to be normal, and get a correct perspective on life.

There are people who's life sucks worse than mine and yours and yet they sit there and smile and are thankful for the life they do have. What right do I have to sit there and wallow in my self-pity when they are still able to smile? Can I cry about my situation? Hell yeah, but the point is to cry, learn, move on. I come up against a tough time in life and I'm not sure how the hell I'm gonna get through it, I have to make a conscious decision to look back on my life and find all the other times where I came up against a tough time, and realize even though at the time of these "catastrophes" I thought it was the end of the world...I got through it. If I got through that, and at the time it was the worst thing in the world that could ever, ever happen, or so I thought at the time...I can get through this worst thing in the whole wide world that is happening right now. 


And now I'm rambling, and I still got nothing on how I need to deal with my friend, or rather how I need to deal with me, about my friend. It's all about the perspective I guess. Lesson learned.


I realize that there are parts where I don't really address somethings, and I went back to do that, but it ended up covering much more that what the simple reason for this post was, and becoming extra super long...if you need clarification, or would like to continue on a point I made feel free to comment.

Thankful for My Problems

Sometimes I have a very hard time being thankful for what I have. I at times get so focused on all the shitty things going on that the little things just evade me. I have to make a conscious effort to stop my line of thinking and get it back on track, but sometimes...it's just so hard. 


I hate when I get into the negative mind frame, it tends to be a real downer, and I much prefer the uppers. (no I'm not a pill popper in that sense) I hate being depressed, and one of the only ways for me to get out of that funk is to kick myself in the ass, the other is to take some "happy pills" which I hate. I take enough medicine, and I would rather not add more, but occasionally it is something I have to do.


When we were living off of only $451 a month, it was really hard for me to go into the store and see all those cute baby clothes. I wanted to shop myself silly with all the clothes that would have been so adorable on my baby, but I barely had enough to buy the diapers. I would get down because I couldn't buy my kids all the cute clothes and toys that they "needed". 


Then there was the time that we were basically homeless. I mean we had a place to stay, but we weren't supposed to be there. It was a building that DH was trying to buy. It had apartments upstairs but they weren't up to code and there was no electricity. We ended up staying downstairs in what would have been a place of business. We had electricity down there, but there wasn't any heat or hot water. Neither the boiler or the water heater worked. We made a "tent" house to keep the little bit of heat we got from the electric heaters in so  we wouldn't be freezing, and heated up water old style to take baths. I HATED that time in life. 


Then we finally moved back to Minnesota and the five of us plus one dog ended up in a hotel room for 4 months. I seriously didn't have a stove for like a year and a half. I have to say I am VERY VERY thankful for stove and the house we rent now. People say that being poor is more enriching because you are so thankful for what you do have...I say bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I was very thankful for what we did have, but being that poor and down and out is a total mind fuck. It's humiliating, degrading, embarrassing, and stressful as all hell. My self esteem hit an all time low. I really struggled to find the good in those situations, and I'm happy to say we are doing better financially now.


Then there was the time when Superman was first born. This poor kid would throw-up every time he was fed. I'm not talking the spit-up that babies do. I'm talking actually throwing up. For two very long months I sat and watched my baby loose weight and cry non-stop, and nothing we did seemed to help. We tried different formulas, medicines...nothing worked.  We finally got him scheduled for x-rays on his stomach, and the night before the appointment he got really bad and we drove the fifty miles to the hospital. They were slammed and the doctor checked his vitals, and since they were ok, he sent us home as we already had the appointment the next day. The next day I drove the fifty miles again while DH stayed at home with Jokester and Princess. They took Superman into x-ray, and came out twenty minutes later telling me they were prepping him for surgery. I was devastated and scared shitless. It turned out he had Pyloric Stenosis, and in the 150 times the doctor had seen this and operated, Superman was the worse case he had ever seen. Superman improved immediately after the surgery, and has been shoveling food into his mouth non-stop since. 


So there have been many times in my life where I was totally overwhelmed with the events happening in my life, and I'm not sure exactly how I got through it all, I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. I had to stop focusing on the bad, and start looking for things to be thankful for. While the boys were babies, I may not have had the money to buy them new cute things, but they didn't go without. I may have not lived in the perfect house with the perfect conditions, but I did have a roof over my families head and food to eat. I may not have had the ability to heal Superman when he was sick, but there was a doctor who did, and he is now a typical kid with no residual health problems.  


Yeah, there is much for me to be thankful for, I just have to stop and get out of my funk to notice the good things, and remember to be thankful whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. It is after all my life, and I have the choice to wallow and sink or rise up and live.