Miss Independent

So those that know me well know that I am very independent. Very. I like to do things all by myself, and figure that most of the time it is better this way, because I am a quality control type of person. I get that from my mother. It isn't often that this causes me trouble. I mean, what could be bad about being in control?

Well....it can mean that when too many things are out of my control I can freak out. Does this mean that I ask for help? No, I still try to do it on my own. I can write this and see how silly that this is, but it doesn't stop me from doing it.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was trying to do things on my own for 3 months.  In the beginning, I thought that we were looking at a few weeks, a month maybe. I can handle that, I thought. Reality set in as I started adding more and more weeks with no car, and a few with no phone. I tried to get everything done on the weekend. There didn't seem to be any reason for me to announce to anyone in my LDS ward that we were moving until we actually knew when we were. I didn't tell my neighbors, because we don't really have any. We live on the highway all by ourselves and the nearest house is a 10 minute walk away. I didn't tell my parents, who live 3 hours away, because I knew that they were really busy and had a lot of commitments. I didn't want to complain. I didn't want to be the squeaky wheel. I just wanted to take care of me and my own.

After a while, a few people on Sundays would ask how things were going with moving. I was good at telling them that we hadn't found a place yet, and that my boys really missed their daddy. When I talked to my parents I said the same things. I didn't mention that I was lonely, or that I was feeling burnout doing it all by myself. Sometimes I thought to myself, "if he was not in the country, or state, I could ask for help. If he was on a military deployment, people would offer to help whether I wanted it or not." At this same time I had a few friends with their husbands at basic training and such, and they (rightly so) had great support systems that allowed them to catch the occasional break by watching their kids or doing other needed things. I am not proud of it, but sometimes I was a little jealous. I then would feel incredibly guilty for that jealousy, so I kept telling myself that at least I had him on the weekends, and I could call him every day. And I didn't ask for help.

I am not someone who likes to just sit. I need things to do. I tried to find projects to keep me busy. I joked to my husband that this was because he was gone and he was usually my project. ;) I wanted to pack, but not knowing when we would move meant I didn't want stuff in boxes if I might need it. I got caught up on making books from our photos online. I made a book about our wedding, I made one for Eli's first year. I tried to make an ABC book with miscellaneous pictures we had taken throughout the year. This occupied me for a week. It is ridiculously easy to do. I read a few books. I tried to exercise regularly. I caught up on TV shows online.

Throughout all of this, my husband and I talked almost every night he was away on the phone. I had only been apart from him a couple of times before, for a few days at a time. People that know us as a couple know that we are kinda joined at the hip. We are best friends. I missed him so much. Something that made this harder was his own struggle. My husband has bipolar disorder, which he usually can control pretty well with medication. With him away, he wasn't sleeping well, or eating well, and was under a lot of stress. He was lonely. He hated essentially going back to a bachelor lifestyle. His moods became harder and harder to control. Riding this roller coaster with him is not always fun in the best of circumstances. In these circumstances, it became painfully tiring and difficult.

On the weekends he came home late Friday night and left Sunday afternoon. On Saturdays we crammed in grocery shopping, family time, cleaning, and tried and failed to stay on routine for the kids. Neither of us was sleeping well or doing well emotionally. Needless to say we were tired and overwhelmed and frustrated, and added needless arguments to the mix.

My 3 year old son Ethan began acting out. He wanted his daddy, and when he wasn't there when he wanted him, he was angry. He didn't understand why he had to be gone. He threw tantrums over it. He yelled and threw things. He started to talk back to me, or ignore me. Every day was a struggle. On the weekends he didn't want me to talk to him or touch him. He just wanted daddy. The one bright spot in our lives was my sweetheart Eli. He was happy almost all of the time (and still is). He smiled, he laughed, he snuggled. Even when his brother pushed him down and hit him. He cheered me up on some of the hardest days.

In the beginning, I was strong. As the weeks wore on, I started to cry whenever Marc and I talked. At the end, I had stopped crying. I was too tired. I was numb. I had become depressed. I didn't do my hair or makeup except on the weekends. I only cleaned the parts of the house the kids used every day, instead of the tight ship I usually run. I didn't cook meals very often. We still ate healthy, we just ate fruit and microwaved frozen veggies with all the other foods around the house that needed minimal cooking. Which is a big deal. I love to cook. There just didn't seem to be a point when I didn't have Marc to cook for. I stopped having the heart to read. I never did get the heart to blog. All I had left was my routines for my kids and TV shows I watched in the evening.

I really didn't think that I could take much more. Finally it looked like we were really going to get into a home. I knew that I should feel happy, but I just couldn't get excited. I was expecting something else to go wrong. Then the shootings at Sandy Hook elementary happened. I felt sick. The dam broke. I couldn't stop crying. I sobbed several times. Yes, I was devastated for those children and their families and friends. But I was crying for me too. And I couldn't stop. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I just cried off and on for days. That was the weekend that I realized how low I had gone.

I know that there are a lot of people that can handle being in the same situation, and for longer, than I. But there is nothing wrong with my realization that this was too much for me. I feel that because of a few factors unique to our situation everything was compounded. This is why I feel that it wasn't just hard for us, it was somewhat traumatic. It is going to take a while to heal from this. Thankfully, that has already started to happen, most notably with my kids.

The good news from all of this is that I have learned a lot of lessons. I know that I can't do everything by myself, and never want to do so to this extent again. I have next-door neighbors now, and you had better bet that I am going to get to know them. And I don't have to feel guilty about everything I feel.  I just need to stop listening to the little voice in my head that is telling me that this post will just look like a pity party and seem that I am looking for people to feel bad for me. Because I am not. It is okay that I am admitting these things, these real things.

The real test of this learning came last week when I was sick. Both of my kids had been sick and it hadn't fazed them much. I thought I would come through unscathed. Boy was I wrong. I was completely taken out by it. I was more sick than I remember being for a very long time. I will spare you the nasty details, but lets just say I couldn't keep anything down and was in the bathroom almost constantly for most of 12 hours. I didn't sleep.

It was morning at that point and I was dreading my husband leaving for work. I honestly did not know how I could possibly take care of my children that day. My husband suggested that we call someone in our LDS ward to take the kids. At first I resisted. But then I remembered that I wasn't going to be so dumb about getting help from people anymore. He made some calls and soon had someone to watch the kids. And she watched them all day. I gradually was able to leave the bathroom, then able to eat a few crackers, and finally I got some rest. I slept from a little before 2 to 5:30. When my husband brought the kids home, he came with a dinner this sweet woman had prepared for us.

I was overcome with gratitude for this wonderful person, someone that hardly knew us because we had just moved in. I cried. As I cried, a little bit of it was for all the days that I had needed help in the past 3 months and had not asked for it. Why did I do that to myself? Why?

Maybe an old dog can learn new tricks. Maybe someone set in their ways like me can learn to ask for help. Maybe someone independent as me can learn that they need other people more than they think. Maybe. I sure hope so, for my own sake.