Mistaken Identity

I've always said Flathead Lake is like the Hollywood of Montana. We live among celebrity vacation houses. Wayne Newton is our next door neighbor, for example. He lives here:

My husband has an awesome job here. He's the caretaker and construction foreman for a mansion being built on a small island for Don Abbey of The Abbey Company, out of L.A. Unfortunately I don't have super recent photos of the island and mansion, so please ignore the snow in some of these:

So, anyway, on with my story...

Today Mr. Abbey was on his way out here, so my son and I went to the island with my husband to get everything ready. While he was working, my son and I played in the water just offshore, and skipped rocks. I didn't have the foresight to wear a swimsuit, so I was out there in my short shorts and a black sports bra because it was hot, and I also wanted to tan my tummy while we were hanging out in the sun. Several boats passed by very close to the shore, and at one point one stopped pretty much right in front of us.

I could hear the people in this boat talking about me. Sound carries over the water much better than people realize. I heard them asking each other who they thought I was. Several movie star names were mentioned, but they couldn't decide. They did decide that I must be a celebrity though, because of the mansion and everything. Then, before I knew it, out came their cameras, and they started snapping pictures of me playing with my little boy in the water. I just tried to avoid eye contact and ignored them. My husband saw and heard all of this going on, and finally came outside and stood on the dock staring at them with his hands on his hips until they left.

So someone somewhere out there now has pictures of me playing with my son in the water right off of this island, with the mansion in the background. All I have to say is... what a bunch of wannabe paparazzi! Hahahaha. Though, I don't blame them either. I do look stunning.

:)

Always a Journey

If there's one thing I can say about living with bipolar disorder, it's that every day is a journey.


Today I got up and purged all my bad thoughts by writing them right here in my previous post. Then I had a choice. I had to take a step, because life never stops (well, it does when you die, but I'm not going to discuss that here, you all know how that works). I could take a step backward, a negative step, or I could take a step forward, a positive step.


As difficult as it was to come from the depths of wallowing in self-loathing and take a step forward, I knew I had to do it.


I took a step.
Then I took another step.
Then another step.
Then I picked up the pace.
And I ran.
And ran.
I ran for my little boy.
I ran for my husband.
I ran for my marriage.
I ran for me,
I ran for myself.


And while I ran, I listened to Blink 182's Dude Ranch album.
It was my favorite CD, back when CD's were a thing.
It was my favorite in Junior High.
Before the drinking.
Before my parents got divorced.
Before my dad died.
Before so many failed attempts at college.
Before my failed first marriage.
Before my trip to the psychiatric hospital.
Before my accidental pregnancy.
Before my shotgun wedding.
And I remembered.
I remembered who I was before all of that.
And I remembered that I was a person worth fighting for.


A lot of lyrics spoke to me, but in particular these:

"You're gonna drown in the mess you make 
Your self-inflicted hate 
You turn your back on the friends you lose 
When they don't follow all your rules

But people are what they wanna be 
They're not lemmings to the sea 
Maybe it's time you looked at yourself 
And stop blaming life on someone else"



I'm going to be okay.
Because I'm not done fighting.
I will fight for my life for the rest of my days. It might be a struggle every single day I live, but it's worth the struggle. I'm worth the struggle. I've invested my whole life in my life. I know that's a strange way to put it, but seriously, I'm all I've got. Yes, I have a great family too, but when it comes down to it, I'm the only one in control of me. There's power in that. I have to get up ready to fight for my life, fight to make my life what I want it to be. No matter how screwed up things get, no one can take that away from me. I am in control of my life, and no mental illness is going to keep me down. I can do this. I can straighten it all out. 


I ran almost 4 miles. Then I lifted weights. And nothing has felt so good in a long time. I need to work out more often. It just might be the key to my sanity.


Thank you all for sticking with me through my horrifyingly depressed post this morning. Writing my thoughts and feelings here helps me in so many ways. I'm even beginning to see some trends in my feelings. Hopefully this blog will be a great tool to help me continue as happily as possible on this journey I am taking. This journey through life.

The Truth About Me

I am a defective human being. My son has been staying with his grandparents for nearly a week, and I now realize he is about the only reason I keep myself sane enough to live day-to-day. Without him I am lost. I am depressed.

I am codependent. I think that is actually the biggest reason I've always wanted to be married. I don't quite function as a complete adult by myself. I need someone to take care of me. It turns into this unhealthy relationship though, because I resent needing my husband. It is all massively unfair to him. He is a wonderful, successful person. He takes care of everything while I try to figure out my life. We have been married for over 5 years now. It seems like I should have my shit figured out by now. Sometimes I think the biggest reason I want to leave is because somewhere deep inside of me, I know he deserves better than this. It is Saturday. He is working. On top of working, he is trying to figure out the mess that is my life. He is also probably worrying that I'm getting close to that breaking point. That breaking point where I just can't handle it anymore, and off myself. If it weren't for my son, I'd consider it. I'd consider the fact that I'm just missing something vital to being a stable human. It isn't something you can buy. I will never be able to be the person I want to be.

I have these mood swings. The doctors call it Bipolar Disorder. I go from one day being happy, full of life, and silliness, to the next day so depressed I can barely get out of bed and function, to the next day where I am too anxious to step outside my house. I go from normal to either crippling anxiety, or crippling depression without warning. Medications annoy the fuck out of me too. Anti-anxiety meds are pretty much the opposite of anti-depressant meds. Add to all that the fact that I have ADD as well, and my medications are a very careful balancing act, which I really don't have much respect for. If I stayed on my meds, maybe I would be okay, but I hate having medication be in control of my life, and when I'm on all my medications like I should be, I have like 8 different prescriptions to take, most of them more than once a day. I think last year my medications cost somewhere around $7,000. My life is scheduled by medications. Lately the problem has been that I would like to have another child, so I have been trying to stop taking as many medications as I can, because they aren't the sort of thing you can take while pregnant and have a healthy baby. I'm starting to believe I'm going to have to give up that dream of another baby, so I can properly take care of the one I do have. Now I have been wanting to get back on my meds, but my psychiatrist is a complete airhead, and keeps rescheduling my appointment. My husband blames this on me though. He seems to think when she calls and says she'll be out of the office when I'm scheduled, and needs to reschedule me, that I should say no. I see where he's coming from. From his perspective, wow, i don't think I even want to start looking at this mess from his perspective. I know my brain is a complete disaster, and now in the past week, we've added seizures on top of everything else malfunctioning. So I can see how he thinks I need to be more proactive about my care. Maybe he's right. I don't even know. I do know that what I've been doing hasn't been working.

So back to my first point though. I have to find a way to make this messed up brain of mine work properly because my little boy loves me and depends on me to take care of him. It is difficult when I really can't even take care of myself. My husband is feeling the strain of not only having to work a ridiculously involved job, but also having to take care of me and our little boy, because I can't seem to make it work. He has his flaws, yes, but I can't really hold anything against him when he is single-handedly taking care of our family. I love my husband, and couldn't imagine living a day without him in my life.

Childhood Drinking

Hello, my name is Jenny and I'm an alcoholic. Yes, I've uttered those words in a group-type setting before. They are probably true words. I started drinking in high school. I started drinking heavily at the age of 16, and by the middle of my senior year of high school I was drinking daily. Yes, daily. Many days I drank beer at lunch time and then went back to school. I used to go to youth group and have a beer or three or 10 afterward. I was everything you hope your teenage daughter doesn't grow up to be.

I am a self-made alcoholic. No genetics here. I didn't grow up with an alcoholic parent or grandparent. I grew up being harassed and made fun of by my peers. I hid behind alcohol at a very, very young age.

I met the man who is now my husband our senior year of high school. I was drunk walking into a gas station, and I tripped as he was coming out of the gas station. He caught me, and I caught him. He was most likely drunk AND high at the time. I remember I stood there, wrapped my arms around him, looked into his eyes, and started making out with him. Yes, this is how we met. My best friend at the time then pulled me away. She was also drunk, and was telling me that he had a big girlfriend who was going to kick my ass, which actually was not true, she was mistaken.

So we hung out the next night after we got the girlfriend thing straightened out. It was a Wednesday night, and we were supposed to be going to youth group, but instead, we went out with these guys drinking. The guys got us all liquored up, and took us to the weigh station. Not very smooth. I wasn't impressed. Still, my friend and her guy went in the men's room to... um... get it on. I stayed in my future husband's truck with him and, well, okay, everyone got laid that night. Super romantic huh? But that was an average Wednesday night for me in high school. I was living with my best friend and her parents since mine had given up hope on me by that point. That particular night I think we made it home by 1am. Yeah, youth group lasted forever! I don't know why, but we really didn't get into too much trouble that particular night. And, yes, I still smelled like alcohol when we went to school the next morning.

I started drinking young, so I had to grow up fast and learn some rough life lessons before most people did. I was in jail for DUI, reckless driving, and hit and run, while still in my senior year of high school. I ended up only being convicted of the DUI, but was sentenced to 5 more days in jail for that.

When I went to college, I drank even more. I drank to blackout almost every night. I sold marijuana from my dorm room. I didn't go to my classes. I was pretty much just a drunk. I had to go to alcohol classes once when alcohol was found in my dorm room. We took a survey about how often we drank and how much. I will never forget my score claimed that .02% of college females drank as much or more than me. Let's see, I was drinking at least 6 drinks per weeknight, and probably 12 drinks on Fridays and Saturdays. I made a rule among me and my friends that we should only drink between the hours of 5pm and 5am. There were a couple times where 5am rolled around, and after drinking all night, we would put our drinks down and go to bed.

I ended up with a very unlikely boyfriend who didn't drink at all. He helped me stop drinking. And I married him to keep myself out of trouble. I got married at 20. Still not even old enough to legally drink, yet I had already been a daily drinker for a couple of years. That is a big part of the true story behind why I got married so young.

The plan backfired though, when we got divorced, I went right back to drinking, and dropped out of college, and moved back to that small town in Montana where I went to high school.

Even when I found out I was pregnant, the first thing I did was poured myself a glass of wine, sat down, drank, and thought about my options. That is when I decided to get married the second time. I was pregnant with his baby. And after that glass of wine, it was very difficult, but I gave up drinking for the rest of my pregnancy, and I still rarely drink to this day.

It is no wonder I am a little bit off, a little bit screwed up in the head. I grew up so quickly. Married at 20, divorced at 21, pregnant at 22, remarried at 22, and became a mother one day after my 23rd birthday.

I think today I will give myself a break for not being perfect, because after all, things could have gone much, much worse. I'm playing the hand I dealt myself, and am having a fabulous time for the most part. Today I am going to celebrate my successes in life.

Thank you for reading :)

Pixie

I have a dog. Her name is Pixie. She is a silver-factored chocolate lab which is a fancy way of saying she's a mutt with some weimaraner somewhere in her past. This dog weighs nearly as much as me. I think I weigh 5 lbs more than her. She's not a smart dog. She's afraid of everything, but she's my dog, so I love her.

Blast From the Past (Honeymoon in Italy!)

As some of you know, I was married once before. Hubby #1 was a great guy. A man who truly believed in honor, integrity, and unfortunately for our relationship, fighting for one's country. Yes, I was almost a military wife. I even had those "I ❤ My Soldier" bumper stickers. I know, right? So unlike me. 

I'm not the kind of person who does well on my own, and after enduring 3 months of basic training, then 3 more months of AIT, I started freaking out about deployment. We had a beautiful romantic love story though where we wrote each other a letter every day that he was in boot camp. I waited for the mailman and cussed him out in my head when he was late with my letter. I still have a shoebox filled with every one of them neatly arranged in order. I even flew to Georgia to attend his graduation from boot camp.

 He was a beautiful person, but as soon as we got married, things spiraled out of control. I was only 20 when we got married, and when I turned 21, I wanted to live in the bars every night. Hubby #1 didn't drink, so that didn't happen. We did have fun though. He was the master of building epic Magic: The Gathering decks. We played all the time. Our friends came over and played too. We set our computers side by side and spent hours at a time playing World of Warcraft, Battlefield 1942, Diablo, and every other popular computer game at the time. We even had a LAN party once. I think we managed 12 computers in our small 2 bedroom apartment, and the neighbors below us were not happy about all the noise all night long.

It's funny how I managed to just shove all these memories aside when we got divorced. Like I was never married before, but that's what you're supposed to do when you get remarried right? Not talk about the first marriage?

Anyway, we both attended Central Washington University. I was a psychology major, he was a history major. We had a history class together once. Once, and only once, I got an A on a test that he got a B on, and history is my worst subject. I teased him about that forever!

But it wasn't meant to be. I knew I couldn't handle a deployment, and it was inevitable once the war in Iraq really got bad. There were of course other issues too, but the biggest was that I just could not handle being a military wife. I hate people telling me or my family what to do, especially the government. So, 5 months after we had a huge, beautiful, expensive wedding, and a 2 week honeymoon in Italy, I filed for divorce. I figured it was better to get it done sooner rather than later. I definitely wanted to get it done before we had kids or anything complicated like that. It was tough, but in the end it was amicable. I still have a lot of respect for hubby #1 who has been overseas for quite a long time now.

So here are pictures from our honeymoon.

This was taken on our tour of the Colosseum in Rome

Me studying the Italian language in or Rome hotel room

Um, okay, I get all these monuments and shit confused, but this was in Rome

Hubby #1 in Rome

Oh, so Hubby #1 was a terrible driver. Barely drove at all. In fact I drove us everywhere even at home. I called our rental car the devil car. Why? it was a manual transmission and I only knew how to drive an automatic. So We got to Florence and I had to just wing it and drive this car to the Tuscan countryside. There were a few emotional breakdowns along the way, but I didn't wreck the car. I like to think I'm a natural driver. I picked it up fairly easily, but have been terrified to drive a manual ever since. This picture was when we finally arrived at the villa we were staying at near Cortona.

Me and Hubby #1 eating at a trattoria in Cortona

This is Roberto. A Tuscan chef who owned the villa, and a wonderful host.

Here we are with an Irish couple enjoying one of Roberto's 5 course dinners. Let me say this. Italians know how to eat... and drink... and when we asked Roberto how they keep in shape well, he said "We make big love." Meaning epic lovemaking sessions every night. Ok, I could go for sexercise every night with a hot Italian man.

Hubby #1 with a frog we found. I'm not sure who looks cuter in this picture!

....and this is Venice. Yes, lots of pigeons. No, I don't know who that guy in the picture is.

Venice is built like this everywhere, which is confusing, and weird.

Me in Venice

Venice nightlife is absolutely amazing.

A market in Venice

View from our hotel room

And of course you have to go on a gondola ride when honeymooning in Venice. We looked super happy there!

So, it was a fun time for the most part, and maybe the only time I will get to go to Europe.

Hubby #1 is still alive and well. Never remarried. Currently single and on deployment in the desert. 

And, playing with... falcons? Great guy, but completely wrong for me. I wish him all the best in life.