Who Writes This Stuff?

I started this blog introducing my girls.  Although the dynamics of our lives have changed quite drastically over the last several years, my family is still my biggest joy.  So, let's begin the reintroductions.  But this time, I'm going to start with me...

I have always tried to be invisible.  This blog helped me realize I didn't have to be.  It also helped me find joy in the everyday.  Then I got bogged down with life, feeling like nothing ever changed for the good, struggling in the day to day because I was facing what seemed like insurmountable grief.  Simultaneously I began a journey with physical illness.

I was also trying to compartmentalize my life way too much.  I had a public blog about my family, a homeschool blog, a girls scout blog, a private blog detailing some struggles MJ (aka Butterfly, Milah, Miracle) was having in her teens, a secret blog detailing the abuse I had endured and was processing through.  Way too many separate things for me to juggle.  But my life was also that compartmentalized.  There were people who only knew me through the girls and people who only knew me through homeschool.  Most of those people didn't know about the struggles MJ was having battling an eating disorder and even less knew anything of the abuse I had suffered.

So, I just shut down and quit everything that wasn't essential.  Including blogging.

Almost every human being has been through grief.  Mine was especially hard to process because there were so many losses, one right after another.   I broke my foot.  MJ had a brain injury.  I lost a man who had been a father to me most of my adult life before I was able to tell him how much he meant to me.  Then I lost the woman who was a mom to me since sometime in high school, his wife.  Thankfully, I realized and shared with her how much she meant to me before it was too late.  Then I reconnected with my dad, a man who had married my mom and adopted me when I was 4.  We lost touch when he and my mom divorced when I was about 6.  We reconnected and less than two years later he was gone as well.

So very much grief hit me all at once. One thing piled on top of another.  I shut down.  I stopped accomplishing anything.  I couldn't get rid of anything because I was so scared I would get rid of the wrong thing and my life would fall apart.  But the holding on to things is what made my home and life a shambles.  Ironic, isn't it?

Last spring, we were forced to move and I was therefore forced to drastically downsize.  I gave away and threw away 3/4 of my belongings.  I still have too much stuff and I'm working on getting rid of more.

And the illnesses... it seems there was one diagnosis after another.  First, I was told I had an autoimmune disease, not entirely specified but likely Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, SLE.  I slowly adapted to that and all the symptoms that began showing in my body; the fatigue, the hives, the sensitivity to sunlight, the all over achiness, the vitamin D deficiency, the potassium deficiency, the recurrent kidney infections, etc.  But then some of my symptoms didn't really fit Lupus so they added another probable of Sjogren's Syndrome, SS, and I began dealing with other symptoms, mostly related to my heart; swelling feet and hands, shortness of breath, water retention, but also dry eyes and mouth like nothing I could have imagined. Not long after, I also developed Secondary Raynaud's.  Secondary Raynaud's doesn't just make your extremities cold like primary Raynaud's.  It also causes the nerves in your extremities to misfire.  I end up with blisters on my hands and feet after hours of nonstop nerve pain.  Not fun.  And then the diagnosis of arthritis.  Kind of to be expected given all the injuries I had in the past.  I settle in and think this is all I have to deal with, until this past winter.  I was diagnosed with encephalopathy.  That is a post of its own for another day.  Suffice it to say, it sucked the wind out of all of us.

Oh, and I never really told anyone that I have two mental illnesses. I have DID and cPTSD.  Both stem from trauma as a child.  cPTSD, or Complex Post Traumatic Disorder is caused by early and repeated trauma by a caregiver and is characterized by all symptoms of PTSD plus an inability to form identity and sense of self.  It also includes feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, and helplessness.  DID, or Dissociative Identity Disorder, is caused in much the same way and at its' most basic description, it caused me to be unable to fully form a single self.  Plus, most of my physical problems can be linked to childhood trauma.  People who have DID or cPTSD are more likely to develop autoimmune disease because of the way the body processes ongoing stress at such a young age. And the encephalopathy is likely a direct result of repeated head trauma as a child.

So, here I am, realizing I'm back to blogging for now, putting everything out on the same table, no more compartmentalization.  But I'm also not committing to daily or weekly or any specific schedule.  I can't handle that kind of expectation right now.  I will do what I can.  I will write when I find words.  It won't always be pretty, but it will always be truth.