We are the Fast Four!

I'm working really hard to keep myself mentally healthy right now, I can't lie it's been a really big struggle. Mental health has never been something I've managed very well. As a child I was incredibly anxious, I bit my nails, chewed on necklaces/hair/sweater strings/sleeves, I spent many nights wide awake terrified of any small sound. I was so anxious, my mother used to fondly refer to me as her "little worry wart" and she gifted me with worry dolls (tiny little people shaped dolls that you would whisper your anxieties too, right before bed, stick them under the pillow and sleep on top of them, watch your worries disappear)! Into my teenage years, I would replay every conversation I'd had during the day, over and over, on a loop in my head. I would plan every inch of my outfits from socks to hair elastics and definitely my underwear (God forbid what my grandma said came true and I "got into a horrible car accident so the paramedics had to cut my clothes off.") Early adulthood found me constantly crying because I was suffering from horrible separation anxiety; I'd moved in with my now husband and out of my childhood home.

In more recent years, I've suffered from postpartum anxiety and depression. This is when things got really bad. This is when I for the first time couldn't get better, at least not without some medical intervention. I saw a doctor and started medication, we talked about therapy. I even went to my first therapy appointment; I got a babysitter; I drove to the office; and... my therapist wasn't there (she had apparently called in sick and they had missed my number on the call list). Right after this my son got sick, my life spiralled. Things were out of control and it didn't matter what I did or how hard I tried I couldn't get control. We went through hell, our whole family - like our WHOLE family went through it with us; my parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, my grandmas. We had an amazing community holding us up and helping us. We wouldn't have survived without so much help. We had people gift us money, bring us groceries, clean our house, do our laundry, house our pets, and so much more. Our children were showered with love, gifts, and prayers. I had friends and cousins that stayed up all hours of the night researching every new term or medication the doctors threw at us. I had friends and family that literally let our daughter stay with them for days and even weeks. But the person who held me together, the one who held me up, the one that let me scream and cry and wipe my snotty face on his shirt, that was Shane. He was having a hard time too but there has never been a moment when he hasn't been there for me. He has brought me meals in bed when I just can't get out from under my blanket, he has helped to make sure I take my meds every day (yes I am a nurse but I am also a terrible patient, I hate taking meds), he has worked so many hours to run a very successful company so that when our son needs me, we can handle me not working.

So obviously, I definitely struggle with mental health. It's always been a struggle and now with the pandemic, I've been doing everything I can to keep myself from falling into the deep, dark, lonely, hole. I've been trying really hard to make our house feel like the safest, warmest, most comforting place in the world. I've been keeping busy painting, and wallpapering, restoring furniture, learning to garden, and organizing closets. This is my way to feel safe, to be ok. I was driving Shane crazy with my weekly resolutions and the millions of projects I was asking him to do but he did them. We were doing ok, and then, or daughter decided to show that she was struggling a little. She was acting out, regressing, and we couldn't figure out why. We spent extra time with her, bought her presents, disciplined her, even took her to the doctor. Finally one morning she woke up and declared,  "I am a boy, a boy named Jax." This actually wasn't all that surprising to us, they had always been a very fluid child, and for the past few months they had been playing "big brother" with her dolls instead of "mommy" and randomly proclaiming "I'm a boy!" We decided to go ahead and let our child explore who they were. We slowly broke it to family and friends and we started using the pronoun "they" as Jax was in their own word "sometimes I'm a girl and sometimes I'm a boy." 

That was the point when everything else in my life stopped being important, that was the moment in my life where all I cared about was protecting my whole family, as they were, for who they were. We were facing a whole new ugly side of humanity - homophobia directed at a CHILD! Now not only were we facing the pandemic with a medically fragile child but we were also fighting for our other child to simply be allowed to be their true self. On top of it the world seemed to literally be crashing around me. Headlines of death, hate and destruction were every where. Racism, homophobia, transphobia, just pure hatred seemed to be spewing from every direction. That was it, I couldn't handle it, I stopped reading the news, I deleted my social media apps from my phone (I could still use them I just had to make the effort of going through the computer), I drowned myself in crafts and binge watching tv shows. I needed an escape. I needed to find safety again. These last couple of days I've been feeling like I've found solid ground or maybe at least a sturdy cliff that will hold me for a while. The free fall was really scary but I feel like I came out transformed. I've become stronger and braver; I've learned to stop caring what other think of my life and just live my life. I actually don't care if people think my dog is too big, my yard has too many weeds, my kids are too wild, I'm lazy, my husband is a workaholic, my house is too dirty, or whatever other hateful things I've heard over the years. Take me as I am, love us for who we are; or fuck off. We are the Fast Four!