Dailies... How we spent our time, money, energy and what we ate. An accountability process.

Ok, so this is the first post of our 'Dailies' feature... I didn't get a chance to do it last night because I wasn't sure how it was all going to shake out and Kyle was running out the door for game night at One Up, so I didn't get a chance to sit and interview him about his first day on our new plan. What I gathered and what I can contribute from my own experience is this:

We spent about $30 dollars between the two of us on groceries/meals (I bought a coffee and low fat cheese sticks for breakfast yesterday and he bought two slices of Pizza for supper... the rest was spent at the grocery store) This only happened because a) I haven't been shopping in a while and b) we were both on the run... I woke up late and didn't have time to grab anything, anyway and he didn't have time to stay home long enough for me to make something. I think we can remedy these occurrences when he starts getting regular paychecks again. I have big plans for going back to shopping at the farmer's market and cooking more often/pre-preparing meals for the week. Anyway, I usually spend a lot more on snacks and drinks while I'm at work... mostly because I get so bored that I end up emotionally eating, just to keep from going crazy. Thinking about having to share all that with you guys pushed me to abstain. It's embarrassing how I have spent my days here and I am happy that I can be open and honest about my relationship with this job and what's become of me being here. It feels good to talk about it, to address it and hopefully definitely kick its ass! More importantly, kick my own ass. Sorry for the language, I just need to get super intense right now about all of this. I digress.

Now I have to share about how I ate. It's not going to be pretty... The day started off ok. I ate one and a half low fat cheese sticks, two packs of instant oatmeal, coffee with french vanilla creamer and sugar (its all toxic, I'm aware, but its a step up from where I've been, trust me) I then just drank water for the rest of the day because I didn't bring lunch with me and I didn't want to spend any more money out... But I didn't really feel hungry, so I let it go. By the time I got around to 5 o'clock, I still wasn't hungry but I was so stressed out from being supremely bored, anxious, tired and feeling trapped at my desk in addition to my excruciating commute home in the dark that I got out of control when I went home. I had sushi AND mac & cheese plus a piece of pumpkin cheesecake and chips. I then felt too tired to do anything that I wanted to accomplish and I promptly laid down with Ellie and watched cheesy Christmas movies until 1:30 am. Kyle did a little better, I think. Oatmeal for breakfast, eggs for lunch and pizza for supper with chips as a snack. Not the healthiest but he didn't eat a bunch of snacks like we are used to. I still need to research the two diets we are thinking about switching to. We really do have a desire to eat better and more healthfully, we are just trying to cut back on the junk and get a better grip on how to feed ourselves well. More specifically for me, get over my addiction and stop eating when I can't handle my life.

As far as the other things I want to try to start doing on the daily, I didn't read or pray, budget my time or do any chores. I don't know that Kyle did either. But he IS already up to season 6 of Doctor Who, so he will be ready for the Christmas Day regen... haha. I'm joking, but still. It's all a work in progress and so far, it has already inspired us to be a little more intentional. That's all I wanted. I pray that we will continue to think and grow in this way and talk to each other more and more.

I'm not going to be able to post the link to any of my social media until later tonight, because, guess what!! Our phones got shut off yesterday!! Haha. I'm not upset. Just another obstacle to overcome. And we WILL overcome.

Thank you all for the continued support and encouragement. XO!


Currently listening to: Desert Soul by Rend Collective Experiment

Depression, a long summer and finding my fire again

It's been a month since I last posted. I've got a song playing on my ipod by All Time Low called 'Weightless'. The lyrics go "Manage me, I'm a mess. Turn a page, I'm a book half unread. I'm stuck in this effin rut, waiting for a second hand pick me up... I'm over getting older. Maybe it's not my weekend, but it's gonna be my year. I'm so sick of watching while the minutes pass as I go nowhere. This is my reaction to everything I fear... I've been going crazy, I don't want to waste another minute here."

I got really depressed the last couple of weeks. I let myself get stuck in a rut... It's difficult for me to crawl out of those funks. I've struggled with depression my entire life. For a long time I tried to ignore it and pretend it did't affect me; and then wonder why I was always so messed up. I finally learned to accept that it was a part of me and that I should try to deal with it. This blog was part of my way of working through things. But I have a hard time being honest about the times that I struggle, personally. I don't want people to see me fall apart, so rather than admit what I'm actually going through, I just stop being as transparent. I hide. So for the sake of trying to get over my issues... here's some brutal and uncomfortable (for me) honesty.

At the end of July, I had to euthanize my beloved cat, Hadley. I got her when she was 8 weeks old, and shortly after that, she developed a weird skin condition that caused her to itch her face raw... that I spent the next three years trying to cure. I dragged her to the vet many a time, only to find that they would just pump her full of steroids and send us home. The cycle would start all over again when the meds ran out. I tried everything I could possibly think of. We cleaned, we painted, we got rid of the carpets, we gave her special food and made sure that she didn't eat out of plastic bowls. We tried flea dips, special shampoos, holistic creams and oils, raw food, vitamin e, sardines for her coat, plastic tips for her nails and the dreaded cone. She spent half her life in that bloody thing. Most of the photos I have left are of her with a crusty face and half of her fur gone. It was time. That's not to say it didn't break my heart into a million pieces. I cried for three days. I miss her all the time...  That's what really sent me spiraling recently.

There's been other things. But I wasn't really thinking about them, I was just doing what I have to do. One is probably the fact that my marriage is really difficult. Like.... what?! I don't even know how we got here... I assume this is what we call a rough patch, I just didn't anticipate how hard it was going to be just to talk to him sometimes. I love him. He is my best friend. However, in instances like this evening, doing our budget together for the first time in a very long time was super laborious. We fight hard and I just wish either of us would freaking get it together and read a book on communication or something. I think we are going to kill each other.. maybe... then he turns around and tells me how beautiful I am. I can't tell if we are really resilient or really toxic.

Speaking of the budget, our financial life is atrocious. We were on a really good path for a while; paying off debt and keeping a good budget but then something happened. I'm not even sure what but we stopped talking about everything and he let me just start handling it all. I think that made me shut down because I stopped being 'good with the money' ... I spent... And I ate.. a lot. This has actually been a really long five years of my life. Nearly since the beginning of Kyle's and my relationship, we've had to overcome stuff... Stuff that I wasn't really prepared to deal with. I don't know... I don't want to spend this entire post complaining, I just don't know where to start to really sort through all this crap. I don't even recognize myself anymore. I used to have a lot of fire and passion and I just let it burn out.

I think I have to start by simply admitting that it has been my choices that have lead me down this path. There is no one to blame or congratulate for my successes and failures except me. I don't know if that is necessarily going to help or cure the clinical part of my issues... hormones are hormones but maybe I can jump start something in me again... If I truly start to believe that I am responsible for all the crappy things I have going on, maybe I can start to be responsible for making good things happen for myself too.. Like getting motivated enough to find a job that doesn't bore me to tears. Or to lose the weight I've been lugging around for the last five years, or to get started on my novel, or be a better wife, or work with my husband to get us into a better position in our finances and learn to communicate better with him, or get up the guts to finally apply to mensa.

I don't want to carry this shit anymore. I don't want to be this person anymore. I just gotta find my fire again.

"Happiness isn't a real emotion...It's a generalization of positive feedback emotions that exist as a reward for overcoming adversity"

This. weekend. has. been. THE. most emotionally draining couple of days in recent history. I'm kind of at a loss for where to begin explaining. I learned a lot about myself. Stuff I never realized and things that scare the hell out of me.

It all started Friday night, with an argument I got into with Kyle. Things escalated pretty badly until we were both screaming at each other, things were being thrown, words were uttered that can never be retrieved. Married people fight. It's, for sure, a thing... We just haven't had a night like this in so long. I don't know if all the pressure we've been under just boiled up and exploded, but it was something that made me double take at what we've been doing. To be honest, it made me question if we would last. I know it's ridiculous for me to say that coming on the heels of the post I wrote the other day about how we are hanging in there and coping, but I've never really experienced this with Kyle. I've always just adored him and our marriage, despite the difficult things. I always felt like we'd come back together no matter what, since we came together so organically in the first place. My heart hurts, though, because ever since the fight, I've felt distant from him... He doesn't feel like mine, he feels strange in my life. It's pretty scary for me because for the last five years, I've had my best friend. We've always been able to make up and get back to our path. This time, I can't put my finger on the wedge between us that is so cumbersome.

Something else that is sort of view changing and telling is the realizations about myself. Without getting into too much detail, I finally understood that the abuse I received my whole life has shaped the way I view myself and my relationships and I am constantly setting myself up to carry other people's crap, be their punching bags, neglect myself and my feelings and just shut up and take it. I never realized that I don't actually deserve that life. I don't want that life. It's possible that Kyle and my dynamic is skewed because I don't ask him to carry much of the burdens. I just assume I'm supposed to carry it on my own. So he never has a chance to grow from it. I'm not saying he's not any to blame for the crap we deal with... there's plenty he could work on. Mainly his minute grain of empathy and his communication skills when things are hot and scary, but if I was the person I'm supposed to be more often, he might be becoming the person he's supposed to be. Something else that I'm sure ties into my warped sense of myself, is how I have developed a very refined flight response to adversity. When things get difficult... I just run. I've been running for so long. The thing about running away is that even though it's easier to do at the time, it never makes me happy. Usually, what I want is just on the other side of the dragon.

Having just written that, I realized that maybe it's not really a wedge between Kyle and I... maybe it's me just shedding some old skin... It's not that he particularly feels strange, but new. Maybe our relationship is heading into something new. Maybe, if we can learn to fight the dragon together (the dragon being each of us working on the respective baggage we brought into our marriage) instead of fighting each other, we can come out on the other side stronger and better for each other. As difficult as it is, I know God wants me to keep loving Kyle, even when I feel sad or distant or like I just want to run away from it all. Love isn't always how we feel about each other, it's sometimes choosing to stay and fight for each other. 

I'm scared, but it's time to pick up my sword. Stay. Fight. Conquer.