I found a new blog today called Things I Can't Say. Great blog. She does a meme on Wednesday called "Pour Your Heart Out," in which bloggers can post things in their lives that are usually difficult to share. I'd like to start participating, and use this blog rather than Cookingmom as I do for other memes. I actually wrote this first on Cookingmom, but I'm reposting for this meme.
"You don't care about me!" (I care, very much)"I hate you." "You love the girls more than you love me!" (Not true)"I need money. My hours were cut again." (Again? *sigh*)"Don't call my mom about my homework - she beats me!" (Big NO)"Daddy tried to strangle me when I was with him last weekend!" (Bigger NO)Every heard of Borderline Personality Disorder? My oldest daughter Sarah was (finally) diagnosed with it a couple weeks ago. I have known all her life that there was something going on, but it's so hard to explain to people who don't have experience with it. But it's a big part of why I suffer from depression and anxiety.I found this article recently, and realized that right now I'm in the second and third stages, having lived all of Sarah's life in stage one. I'm lucky that I now have support from my family, and have gotten awesome encouragement from my friends since I recently "came out" to them with my situation.It's hard being the mom of someone who has a mental illness. And although I've known since she was a toddler that there was something wrong, and I knew a few years ago it was more than likely BPD, it still freaks me out to have a mental illness diagnosed and confirmed. But this is a mental illness where the sufferer must help him or herself. I need to help myself get my physical, emotional and mental health back to a good state or I'm no good to Sarah or anybody else in my family. The BPD has taken its toll in a big way on me over the past 20 years.Right now, I am "split black," which means at this moment, I am not one of Sarah's favorite people. I'm sure at some point in the future I will be "split white" again, but I can't concern myself any longer with how Sarah views me. Nothing I say or do will convince her once and for all that I do love her, I do care about her and I want her to be healthy and happy. I just need to make my peace with that somehow.
I love reading personal memoirs. Especially memoirs with stories I can relate to, like growing up in the 70s and 80s, going to Catholic school, trips to Disney. I would LOVE to write my own memoir, but I just can't think of anything in my life that would be interesting to write about. How do these writers have such interesting and funny lives? Especially as children? My life was filled with anxiety and stress, worrying about the world ending in the year 2000 (thanks, Mom!), going to hell for any little thing I did or thought (thanks nuns in high school!) and Bloody Mary and other legends that were very real to me (still can't look in a mirror in the dark; thanks, 70s weirdness!).
I guess I could write about all that, but isn't there a glut of memoirs in the bookstores written by stressed-out, middle-aged women trying to make sense of their lives? Is there a spot for me? Would anybody really care that Sister Mary Meany scared the hell out of me on a daily basis whenever I had to pass her in the hallway?
These are the kinds of things that run through my mind. Fascinating!
I usually post on LiveJournal, but I'm trying out Blogger since that seems to be where all the cool kids hang out. I'm going to keep my LiveJournal for now, which is called Cookingmom, and that will be where I post about cooking and participate in memes.
Here at Chaos and Contentment, I'll post about my family and hopefully my writing, which I am getting back into after several years.
I know a lot of Bloggers have really neat pages, but I'm just going to keep things basic and simple while I take this for a test drive.
