Why I'm on this journey

I guess I need to express why I am on my journey. After all, if I'm not sure where I came from, I won't be able to tell how far I've come.

I have had anxiety issues all my life. With all the ways that my mom talks about me one of the things you will hear her say often is that I like to obsess over things and stress out about things. I love my mother dearly but sometimes I wonder if that should have been a red flag for her. But I do feel like I do obsess and stress out a lot and it's not even something I feel I can control entirely. I mean I've come up with ways to cope but when anything happens I stress out about and I have to talk myself down. I always got really nervous talking to anyone who was positioned higher than me in my mind. I was just always scared I'd say the wrong thing. I've just kind of always coped with it though and never really officially saw anyone.

The next thing is I'm almost 100% certain I suffered ppd with my daughter and sometimes wonder if even though I am out of the major cloud of depression, if it doesn't still hold me a little bit. However not long after my baby was born I started having issues. I began to resent my family for leaving me when I asked them to go because I felt I could handle things. I began to resent my daughter for being a newborn. There were even times that I imagined just throwing her against a wall to just be done with it all. I never followed through with it, but there were times I felt it would just be easier if she was gone. Then I began having problems with her. I was in school and finishing my semester when I felt like my baby just would never sleep. I cried and I tried to help her and I just ended up making methods that worked to fill her needs but allowed me to mentally check out of the parenting process. I tried to keep those processes going as long as I could.  We ordered out a lot and I didn't clean up very often. We stopped going to church because I just couldn't pull myself out of bed to get there. I started pulling away from everyone. I really had no friends at the time and some days I feel like I still don't. I mentally checked out of the 1 social gathering we did go to. I struggled so much that daughter's pediatrition noted that he thought I might have PPD. I came back to him about a month later and told him I thought he was right and then he just ignored the comment and left. We had our apartment threaten to kick us out twice and once they threatened to report us to CPS. And I don't know, maybe at that time they were right. I was struggling to take care of myself and a kid and just feeling like anything I did didn't matter so I stopped trying. I flunked out of my classes at Weber State online. I had felt I had failed at everything. 

But then things changed. My husband got sick. Money got terribly tight. I felt I was drowning and losing everything. I reached out for help from my mom. I then did everything I needed to do to get us moved out. With the change of address, I tried to recommit myself to be better. I forced myself out of many of the habits that let me escape the real world. I forced myself to make some healthy sleeping schedules for my daughter and to focus on getting us both fed 3 times a day. I focused on getting my husband better. This all helped bring me out of the cloud. I started going back to church. I started to be more involved in the world around me. I finally had people I could talk to at easy access.

However, there are still times I look at myself and wonder what's so special about me? There are still times I feel guilty about things I didn't do with my daughter and times I missed. There are times I blame myself for things I feel that my daughter should be doing better with. I'm trying to stop though. I'm trying to leave that pathetic version of myself in the past and move forward to build a stronger and happier version of myself.

And that's why I'm starting this blog. I feel like I've come so far out of this horrible place that I need to document the things I am finding for myself so I don't go back. It was a horrible awful place that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. And I'm posting all of this online, because if I can touch 1 person with my experiences, then I am successful. However, if the only person I can touch with this is myself, I can accept that.