Hey best friend! This selfie comes from the Old Navy dressing room. The left is us at our heaviest and the right is us now. I know we see these transformations on tiktok and Instagram thinking one day we’ll have one of those not realizing we already had one. The other pictures we aren’t quite ready for but they are coming one day. When we are having bad days we have to remind ourselves this is what 72 lbs looks like. We are down 5 pant sizes and it is ok that we cried in the dressing room at Old Navy when we slid those pants up zipped and button without a struggle. The last time we saw this size we were 19. We’ve been through a lot since then but we aren’t just losing weight we are wiping away the years of fighting our mental illness, overeating and creating an unhealthy relationship with food. We are building confidence and seeing exactly how beautiful we are inside and out. We are finally love ourselves and that’s something no scale could ever measure. Keep pushing and fighting best friend you got this! I love you and I’m so damn proud of you.
Hey best friend! Monkey is 14! I’m so glad we didn’t miss it. It’s ok you spent Saturday morning crying going through baby pictures. It wasn’t only Monkey growing up we saw ourselves grow up and become the best version of ourselves to be her mama. We had so much fun this weekend celebrating with her.
Look at us wearing a sleeveless shirt (it’s too big now!) to the gym showing off that new tattoo.
We wore shorts more than once at the gym and started to feel confident wearing them. It’s the end of the month best friend and we are celebrating non scale victories. We bought real shorts for the first time in at least 12 years and they were a size we haven’t seen in awhile. We had Wayne with us to help encourage us that they looked amazing. (He’s so incredible. We need to be super thankful for him.) We wore a dress for the first time in forever to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. We go on vacation soon and those two pieces we ordered will be here this week and we are going to rock them on the beach. I love you and I’m so damn proud of you. You are so beautiful and strong. It isn’t always about the mirror or the scale it’s how much we’ve learned to love ourselves and we’ve come so far. That’s something we had to do on our own. We are getting better about turning every negative thought of ourselves into a positive one. We are just getting started I can’t wait to see what we accomplish but remember baby steps. ♥️
So if you’ve clicked on my blog you’ve probably seen every color possible, different set ups, logos. I took graphic design classes in college but apparently none of it stuck because I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m trying to make it look better because I have some important things coming up I want to do so I’m trying to make my blog better but I’m lost. The content will never change but if I can figure out these damn buttons I’ll be happy.
This is a prime example of what happens when you have too much and are also too cheap to let someone else do it but I finally made a logo.
Hey best friend! I know you didn’t feel like working out today but you look amazing. Remember we are only 30 lbs away from 100 lbs lost but that isn’t always the most important part. We’ve gone 9 months without an episode, our sleep pattern is so much better, our moods are more stable and consistent. September makes 4 whole years since our last OD attempt. I’m so glad God saved us (He is so good to us.) because we would’ve missed monkey growing up and all the amazing things she accomplished. We’ve done a great job turning her into an amazing young woman. We get to see her turn 14 in a couple of weeks. (Didn’t we just have her?) We would never had a chance to improve our relationship with Wayne and watch him exceed every goal he sets for himself. We are his biggest fan. We would’ve never had an opportunity to make career changes and create memories with these new amazing people in your life. We can’t forget the blog to document and teach people more about mental health. We also had an event and raised so much money for the AFSP walk. (That was a big day.) but we still have so much to do so remember when we start to feel bad open that photo album on your phone and remember why we keep fighting I know some days are harder than others but I’m so damn proud of you. I love you! (It’s totally okay that we cried while writing this in the middle of the gym.)
There are conversations you don’t want to have with your child at any age and this is one of them. My daughter is 13 and she made a friend at school but this friends parents will not let her come over to our house and isn’t welcome at theirs because of my illness.
I know right now she is mad at me because of it and if I could change their mind I would but I can’t because they believe it is a sign of the devil and I’m extremely dangerous and unstable. If you are reading this just know I’m not and if for any reason I felt off I would never put my child or anyone else’s child in harms way. I am well aware of my illness and for the most part the signs something maybe happening are obvious not only to me but my daughter and husband as well. It would be easier for me to judge you and call you close minded but I won’t. You are entitled to your beliefs and it isn’t my place to tell you how or what you should believe. I do wish you would take a chance to get to know me and I hope one day you will. I hope one day you express your openness about these things to your children so they can come to you without fear of judgement. I believe in my heart that God never makes mistakes, he makes us in his image and I am who he wants me to be. I know that have followers who have different beliefs and this is in no way me trying to force my religion on someone else but if the parents are reading this I wanted to say that from Christian to Christian.
You have an extremely sweet and caring child from what I’ve heard and they are definitely the kind of people I want my daughter to surround herself with so please let’s use this a time to start a conversation about mental health and how we are no different from everyone else. I will try to explain this to my daughter again but this is her normal so she has a hard time understanding why other people don’t get it. So I wish you well and if you ever want to talk please let me know.
It was time for my 6 month checkup. I take great pride in knowing that I’m on 6 month visits that means I’m doing something right. This time I wasn’t as tense as normal though I know the conversations we were having are kind of hard. My psychiatrist and I have an agreement that I can be 100% honest with him and his first reaction is not to throw me in a hospital. It is because of this I feel like I can communicate openly with him. His office has this amazing nurse that takes my blood pressure and then asks me the general question how is everything going which means let it all out and I do we talk about moods and other issues that are going on. I feel very fortunate to be able to speak freely with them. We discussed my suicide ideation issues and mood swings that come along with the new job.
This is also when I was open about leaving my old job and even though I wanted to go to have something more stable and to get away from an environment that wasn’t always the healthiest for me. I allowed myself to become consumed by all the negative things/people around me it was my own fault but I couldn’t control myself and because of this it was toxic. I was enabled and was the enabler to too many people and if any of you are reading this now I am sorry. We also discussed the whole situation with my husband and he was a little disappointed when I didn’t call the office. (I call his office when ANYTHING happens including non psychological issues.) He had there was probably something temporary they could’ve done to ease it out but I think it needed to be hard and I needed someone to push me back and put me in my place. He understood that and we also discussed no matter mood swings happen it’s just how you cope with them.
I’m glad to be on the 6 month cycle after years of every month, every three months or in some cases every 3 weeks. (That was mostly during my addiction and constant overdosing.)
If family and friends are reading this, please stop here because I’m going into adult content, I would rather not know you read or if you do please don’t discuss it with me. Please don’t read it just scroll on to the next post.
This has been requested be several people for an update on what’s going on, but I’ve not really been up to writing a response. I’ve focused my attention on repairing what I broke. I think I’ve fixed it well some of it. He and I have talked numerous times and had a fight or two in the middle trying to figure everything out. I learned some hard truths in the middle of one of our conversations. I kind of knew it but it was confirmed. (This is a completely different topic.) I like most people with bipolar disorder have one of a few different problems which is in the bedroom. Hypersexuality wasn’t a bipolar trait I harness. So that issue has always been a problem. (This goes with something else that happened.) and we got in this cycle where it wasn’t love it just happened because, I didn’t enjoy it and I wanted it to be over. I felt like this was a fix to make it all better and if this was happening it meant everything was okay which also wasn’t true. (Marriage, children, sex, money don’t fix relationships.) It was the moment he told me that he didn’t know if he could get intimate with me again did I realize that those moments when it wasn’t a quick one and done that I did enjoy it and how I missed that time with him. I cried and prayed begging for me to have it back. I wanted it all and that’s when I realized just how badly I messed up.
It took until his birthday until things started to feel semi-normal again. It’s been almost 3 months and things are better now. I stopped saying I can’t and instead using “I’m struggling with.” I’ve also started working on not redirecting anger and blame on him when I’m the one guilty and struggling. I know some of you mentioned therapy, but I’ve never had a good experience with therapists. Our conversations aren’t so one sided and much more open. He had 4 simple request that I work on.
1.) Get up before 7:30
2.) Eat breakfast
3.) Help clean around the house
4.) Walk the dog.
I don’t know if it gets easier than this, but I’ve done all 4 and I am in much better headspace. I’ve focused on losing weight and doing little things of self-care to help boost my confidence (I had none which is why I was so co-dependent.) We knew this wouldn’t be an overnight fix but I’m taking baby steps to get there. I’ll be damned if this illness will make me lose everything I love. If only I could remind myself of that when I’m in a bad place, but this is the update. I am working on undoing what I caused.
As I write this my heart still hurts. I’ve not been feeling well lately my moods have me going in all different directions which has also caused a lack of sleep and my mouth has outrun my brain again. This causes terrible fights and even though my husband is saint everyone has a breaking point and I hit it again. The last time this happened 2017 I was self medicating with pills and overdosed which ended with him kicking me out of the house for three days and it was rough for awhile but I was so numb back then I didn’t really feel it but this time I do.
This last one was bad I told him he didn’t understand anything (the only person who has been here through everything and knows me better than anyone else) and I was so angry and what was so bad is I wasn’t even angry with him I was angry with myself and this mood swing but fml I can’t seem to grasp the idea that I need to talk to him before things got to that point and I said some extremely hurtful and stupid things I can’t take back so now I am sitting in this situation.
It started on Thursday when I left for work and I could tell he was irritated but instead of leaving it alone and going to work I had to call him before I got there and this started the downfall. I was so aggressive and quick to blame him for my mistakes, insecurities, feelings that I wanted to talk to him about but chose the wrong everything to do it. He’s made it clear that I need to make some changes before anything returns to normal again but I am on God’s grace right now because he could’ve said I’m done with this and I want a divorce but he didn’t. I felt it in my heart that it was going to happen so instead of working on ways of fixing I begged and pleaded with him to stay with me and that time of uncertainty I couldn’t eat, sleep, everything made me cry. All of these emotions I’ve fought with for the last few weeks the ones that I managed to numb came out and I felt everything. My anxiety was probably the worse it has been in five years. I just fell apart but I am working on it but thinking that he doesn’t look at me the way he used to still hurts EVERY SINGLE DAY!
I have the ability to fix it but the problem is my codependency issues. He’s always reassured me that everything will be okay and we will figure it out but he said he isn’t helping me and I have to learn to cope with things and self soothe (which is so hard.) I have to become more confident in what I am doing and who I am.
I’ve caused this problem and right now it feels impossible to fix it but this is the hard part. I have to know that it will work out and I have to be the one who shows it first.
TW: Suicide discussed (also I am not currently suicidal it is something that I have written just to get it off my chest.)
Hello,
I feel like starting these letter with to whom it may concern to be to impersonal also because it concerns a lot of people. I know why you are reading this and just know it meant I was ready to go and I think the Lord was ready for me as well. I do believe that regardless of how I go that I will still go to heaven and I made peace with everything before I went but I know that isn’t how you feel. I know some of you are going to be angry, confused, upset and ask yourself why you didn’t see it coming; where were the signs? I don’t have the answer to that questions because they weren’t really there. It started off at ideation and grew quickly from there. There are letters addressed to my daughter, my husbands, my two best friends but for the rest of you this is the letter. I’m not even going to try that bs don’t be sad or anything else because however you feel the need to cope with it is how you will cope with it. I just ask when you do yell at me to refrain from using GD. I despise that word. This letter is just a blanket statement that I feel I am required to give so they know how to correctly identify it on my death certificate. I feel like the whole I’m sorry and extra bs in these letters is useless unless you were close to me.
I’ve actively avoided him for as long as possible but they won’t refill my meds until I see him. This whole process is a chore in itself, getting the day off work, making sure my husband can pick up our daughter driving the 45+ minutes to get here and I dread it. This time I had to pay for a past balance before they would schedule the appointment only to walk in and here you still owe a balance. I lost my cool a little and feel bad for the girl behind the desk. I had paid the balance so they would give me a 30 day supply of medication. I had a balance because my amazing psychiatrist was out due to personal reasons and also COVID was on its first phase of shut downs so I had to talk to this asshole via zoom which sucked. He didn’t listen to a word I said he just kept pushing my meds and new meds because I needed a change. The feed kept freezing and he wouldn’t shut up long enough for me to talk every time he asked me a question it was like “How are you feeling?” “I am feeling….” “You need something besides Lamictal…” How in the world would you know that after you barely asked me a question and didn’t let me respond. I called back and told them that I would rather go without meds than talk to that jackass ever again. I think we were prepared for the conversation though. I don’t know if they heard me fuss at him or he complained about me but alas it is that time again. I am glad I was given the option to go in the office. I know that with just a few hiccups I’ve been okay but it is always an uneasy feeling… Here goes nothing
♥ Daisies and Bruises ♥ 