Goodbye 2012

Well, the holiday season is coming to an end. I had a fantastic visit with B.K.'s family in Kansas, I had a really wonderful time visiting my family in Oklahoma and it was so nice to get home to B.K. on Christmas Eve night. It sucked that he had to work for so much of the Christmas break, but so goes life.  The holidays wouldn't be the holidays without just a little bit of craziness. 

Only a few more days left of 2012. It was a rocky year, but all I seem to remember are all the blessings.  We went through the unemployment and the stress involved with that, but we came out the other side of it stronger and wiser.  I think the latter are the parts I enjoy the most about life.  The sucky stuff sucks, but if you can learn a valuable lesson from it..... that's what matters most.

I'm eager to see what 2013 has in store for our household.  We celebrate 11 years of marriage in March.  The big 3-0 is coming up in June.  We have a super fantastic Disney  family vacation planned for the fall.  I'm very optimistic that it's going to be a great year.  Not without it's challenges, of course, but many, many, many more blessings to be had. 

I Have a Diagnosis

Since I started this blog, I've tried to start a post to explain my diagnosis.  It's always way too long though or I get frustrated and delete it.  Someone asked me a question about my diagnosis on a debate page though, and I think I was able to sum it up pretty easily.  So I'm going to share it here and maybe it will finally explain (at least a little bit) my diagnosis.

I was diagnosed with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in the fall of 2010. I don't recall what exactly made me realize, "OK, it's time to say something to someone". It had been a long, bumpy road though. I almost died the day after our 3rd child was born due to freak complications from a tubal ligation. No, not complications - more like a screw up. The doctor tied and cut an artery instead of my fallopian tube. He sewed me up and sent me to recovery without realizing his mistake. I started to bleed out and.... well, let's just say that they prepped my husband and family for the worst.

Anyway, that incident was in 2007. For three years, I was just in this haze. I resented our son, I felt like God was punishing me because I spent the whole third pregnancy not wanting it, I was very disconnected from our son and I started to drift away from the responsibilities of being a parent. I just didn't like my life anymore. I kept it bottled up though. Never told anyone. Finally, one day a friend told me to call Military OneSource (a resource center for military and their dependents). So I did, just to talk to someone. I burst into tears (the first time ever) as I told them what had happened to me. I was in counseling the next day and diagnosed with PTSD two weeks later. I stayed in counseling (one session a week) for almost a year. It helped A LOT and helped me get a firm grasp on things again.

I'm now back to loving life as a mother and as a human being as a whole. I know now that I AM worthy of living and I AM worthy of being a mother to these three beautiful children; which is what I felt I wasn't worthy of and the reason I almost died that day. I can now separate irrational thoughts, like that one, from rational ones. The irrational ones still pop into my head quite often, but I can dismiss them away more easily now.

The worst part for me is that you're never "cured" of anxiety and depression disorders. I will battle with it forever. Most days, I completely manage it. Other days, it's too much and I have to find other techniques to remove myself from situations. You definitely learn to manage and control things though. It's a glimmer of hope and what I strive for on the daily.