It may be Friday, but I feel somewhat hopeless today. I got a good night's worth of sleep so I don't think it has anything to do with that, I'm just in a mood of sorts. I hope it will dissipate during the course of the day.

Already it's hot here, about 83 degrees in the shade. It's going to be a VERY hot weekend here. I'm not looking forward to it ~ many of you already know that with my fair skin I don't do so well with lots of heat and sunlight. In fact, my skin turns the color of this background I'm using today, lol.

Right now I'm watching a brood of 8 ducklings and their mother swimming around the pond. It makes me so happy to see them, in all the years we've been here none of the ducks have ever brought their young with them. They came in yesterday and just decided to stay. Last night as the sun set they settled in a quiet little area that they could sleep in safely away from predators. I bet Mama has been in here before to eat several times, and that's why she made the journey with them over to our place. I'm glad she did.

The Sandhill Cranes have also been in this morning feeding their chick (although how I can call something that big a "chick" is strange to me). I can tell it's going to be a 2 feeding kind of day. The cranes come in at least 3 times during the day to stop off and eat scratch corn and get bread. Now with the ducklings I'm going to have to double how much I put out or else there won't be enough for everyone. That's okay, I don't mind. I'll just make it a point to feed them before I lay down and nap today.

I'm feeling a little better this morning physically, although it's nowhere near gone. I have a feeling this chest cold is going to take me awhile to get rid of. My husband was berating me last night while we lay in bed because you could hear me wheezing with every breath ~ I hadn't done a breathing treatment. But the breathing treatments don't seem to be helping anyhow. The only thing that's going to help now is the doctor most likely. And I'm not willing to drive all that way to be seen and given another breathing treatment from her (same as I do here) and maybe some medicine and have to pay for it. Nope. If it gets worse I'll go, but not before then.

I'm in a tough spot right now. I'm disappointed in myself because although I should be feeling good emotionally I'm just not. I don't want to do anything other than blog, journal, sleep and smoke. Food doesn't hold much appeal for me at this point, but that's a side effect of the Ritalin, and honestly I really don't mind. I don't want to be around friends or talk to anyone, I just want to be alone. But at the same time, being alone only makes it worse. It's such a weird predicament; wanting to be alone but needing to be around others. I know I'm isolating but I can't seem to help it.

Last night I made myself stay up and watch a show about hummingbirds with my Mom because we never get todo or watch anything together on t.v. because Zach or Aaron are always on it. But I'll give kudos to Aaron this time because he was the one to suggest me spending "quality time" with my mom. It turned out to be an enjoyable show, but in my head I still wished I had gone to bed. 🙁 How sad is that? I feel like a bad daughter.

I did talk to my friend Mindy yesterday. Apparently she had ordered some legos for the boys to build together and they never came or even got ordered somehow, so she asked if she could take Zach up to Toys R Us with her and her son Joshua to pick out some legos instead. I told her that was fine, but that she didn't have to do that. She said she wanted to, because they had been so good at the sleepover last weekend together. I made her promise not to spend much money. I know she loves Zachary and Zach adores her too, but I don't think she understands about some of Zach's problems with the Asperger's Syndrome. He has this sense of entitlement to things, I don't really know how to explain it. He expects that if he wants something it will get bought for him regardless. He doesn't do this out of being spoiled (because we DON'T give in to it) it's just truly not understandable to him why he can't have everything that he wants. I don't want Mindy to feel like she has to buy him what he wants, that she needs to set limits for him herself about what he can have. Maybe I'll talk to her about it today. I don't want her to get offended by him asking for something that's way too much money, or more than 1 item. Or maybe I'll go with them if she'd like. We haven't gotten to hang out this week, so that could be good bonding time for us away from the guys (other-halfs). And that would get me out of the house as well.

I'm so unmotivated today. I still need to clean the bird's cage, need to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer (that is if it doesn't smell from being in there overnight ~ then I'll have to wash it again), need to pick up around the living room and kitchen, need to shower and wash my hair, and a ton of other things that need to be taken care of. I guess I'll probably start with cleaning the bird's cage and then showering and washing my hair. I get bad about it when my hair gets long because it takes forever to lather it, rinse it, lather, rinse, condition, rinse. I don't know when the last timeI shaved my legs was but it's been awhile from the looks of things. This morning it took everything I had to change out of my pajamas and into some shorts and a t-shirt to take Zachary out to the bus stop.

I feel disgusting but I just don't have the energy to make myself do something to feel better. No, I'm going to force myself to shower, wash my hair and shave! Even if it takes me all day to do it!

As I sit her my eyes glaze over and I find myself transported back to the past, unseeing of what is in front of me but clearly viewing what is in my mind's eye. I see myself 7-8 months pregnant, in a delusional and psychotic hell where everything terrified me and I wanted to die, except for the child in my womb. I see the beginning of my fear of showers and washing my hair and how my husband would often have to force me into the shower and do it himself gently and lovingly while I cried like there was nothing greater to break my heart. The beating, pulsing water jets on my head made the unending migraine scream, bringing me to my knees at times.

And my therapist wonders why until just recently I refused to shower more than once every couple of days. There lingers that memory, the one where the water brings agony on my already agonized brain, and the severe mental illness and distortions I was experiencing at the time ~ is it really any wonder?

So then I become ensnared like a rabbit caught in a trap, reliving moments out of those 7 months of absolute hell and misery, and I swirl down toward the drain, towards the darkness that terrifies me but seems welcoming somehow…

I pull back, blink ~ and here I am on the porch listening to the squirrels complain at some unforeseen enemy on the ground. It is a bright sunny day, already hot but with a breeze to make it forgivable.

I keep telling myself that one day, one day, I'll finally write down what happened to me, how it started during my 3rd or 4th month of pregnancy as anxiety and depression and how by month 5 it had become a monster of delusions, psychosis, physical agony, and the desire to die. What happened to me has changed me forever, and I am always afraid that it will come back to take me.

I was so ill that I belonged in a mental hospital, but there would have been nothing they could have done for me there except intensive therapybecause I was pregnant. No meds. No medicinal treatments allowed.

I wish I could let go of it. I wish I could erase the past from my mind but it's still so vivid to me. I have PTSD from it I know, but there's not much I can do about it. Even in therapy we don't venture there because it could trigger it to come back to me and overwhelm me.

For years and years I fought to find out what happened to me, why I went through what I did with the pregnancy of my only child, and no one could tell me. I have yet to meet someone else who suffered a similar pregnancy. Pre-partum psychosis. Post-partum psychosis. Extremely high blood pressure, gestational diabetes, things that mimicked seizures. My prenatal doctors were completely lost, thought I was hysterical and nuts. I was. That should have been the clue to send me to a psychiatrist long before I gave birth. But no, doctors don't want to admit something is beyond their scope of abilities, so theykeep it quiet. I was a dirty secret to them.

Wow, this is an intense blog. Sorry. Must have to do with my mood. And the worst part of all of it? I can never have another child. My psychiatrist told me it would probably kill me or leave me in a state of mental illness that he could not pull me back from this time around. So Aaron had the procedure to make him sterile, to keep me from having to fight with myself about having another baby. In my loss I adopted a dwarf bunny who Zachary named Trigger and he is my baby now.

But it's okay. I'm coming to terms with all of it. I know that sometimes the things you want most are the most harmful to you, and I accept that. It doesn't change the desire, but it does change your judgment of the likely outcome of the decision you make. I need to be here for the child thatI almost died for, and for the husband who got me through it, as well as my Mom who watched over methrough all of it.

I'llfinish with a verse from one of my favorite poems that explains how I feel about it all…

"…The woodsare lovely, dark and deep

But I have promises to keep

And milesto go before I sleep

Andmiles to go before I sleep."

~ Robert Frost