A Short Meditation

Meditation is something I have always liked the idea of, but had convinced myself it wasn't something that was actually useful. I didn't know what it was supposed to look like or how to go about it. To me it was something religious people did, and because of my past I didn't really want much to do with anything that could be viewed as a religious practice. However I have seen several studies on the benefits of mindfulness and meditation. My personal mental health has always been somewhat of a struggle for me. After spending so much of my life trying to forget my problems (so Jesus could deal with them for me) it is hard as a post-religious person to learn to start dealing with them in a healthy manner.

After a hard weekend that brought back all of the pain of when I first came out as an atheist, as well as the sting of family rejection, I was left reeling. For the first time in years I said I wanted to see a therapist. This is a huge thing for me. I have always fought so hard to deal on my own or take medication if possible to avoid the pain. I now want to actually deal with it. I'm scared and I don't know how well I will handle this, but things are to the point where I am having a hard time thinking of much else and this is making living life very difficult. I know something has to give or I will be unhappy for the rest of my life and I don't want that. That brings me back to this meditation thing. While we are figuring out if our insurance will cover any kind of mental healthcare, and if we can afford it, I'm going to try to meditate the pain away.

Still, because of my feelings towards Christianity I will not have a meditation space that looks at all like anything I ever saw in a Christian church. That would be triggering and completely ruin the mood. So I set up an old coffee table with some candles, one of the skulls I've cleaned, some incense, and a box to keep all the little things I may need in. It looks very pagan which makes me happy and helps me relax. I put a pillow down and sat in front of the table put on some “meditation” music and set a timer for 15 minutes. My brain is so full of stuff that I don't really care about. I spent the first 10 minuets thinking of ways to make the meditation space better. Once I was able to give myself something to focus on, a simple phrase: “Be calm and forgive”, I started to feel like this could actually be a thing I do on a regular basis. It felt like something that could help me navigate my way through the things I'm dealing with. It felt like something that could help me grow into a better person and that makes me happy and hopeful.

Disassociation

I have not been feeling like myself lately. I have been fighting with depression in a way I haven't in years. It started with the diabetes diagnosis. Diabetes is something I have lived in fear of my whole life. I had a fairly traumatic childhood experience with the disease. All the memories I have of my grandmother are of her toes, feet, and legs slowly turning black and being amputated. My grandparents lived in filth surrounded by animals. A cat so mean I was scared to leave the couch, and a literal pack of dogs outside that only became friendly after the older generation died. When we visited, the smell of animal piss was overwhelming and so was the fear. All I could do was try to distract myself with the TV and try not to look at my grandmother who was so obviously depressed and miserable I had to fight tears every time I looked at her. I remember one year a family had “adopted” my grand parents for Christmas and they brought my grandmother a pair of shoes, this was shortly after she lost the first of her feet, she started to cry and they were so heartbroken they caused her pain on Christmas. I hate that this is one of the strongest memories I have of my grandmother. 

With this as the groundwork for my understanding of how bad it could be for me. I try to remind myself she relied more on prayer than she did on her doctor's advice. She even once ordered water that came from a hole in the ground that someone said a light came out of. Needless to say it wasn't helpful. She didn't eat a proper diet or attempt to take care of herself. Knowing all of this there are still times when I am terrified I'm going to die a slow and painful death like she did.  

This is where the depression comes in. I feel like I have lost myself and struggle with the thought that I will become a huge burden to my family. Logically I know this is not the case. I know lots of people that deal with diabetes that are just fine and are much older than my grandmother was when she died. Still this only brings comfort for a short time. My relationship with food has become this fight to the death. Losing weight is no longer a nice thing to think about it is something I have to do. I'm very happy that I am losing weight but I feel like with every pound lost I am in a way losing part of myself. I know that sounds weird but my weight loss has become one more thing that I am no longer in control of in the since I have to do it. Eating and weight loss have become a survival issue for the most part and not something I am doing for myself, and this is what is leading to my feelings of being out of control. 

It is a strange thought for me. I hadn't realized how much the principles in Satanism are at the center of my being. One of the seven tenets that The Satanic Temple follows is that, “One's own body is inviolable, subject to one's own will alone.” but, what am I supposed to do when it is my body that is causing me harm? My struggle has been to try to find away to live for myself and somehow take back control from my body. This dissociative feeling has been difficult to say the least. Again it is weird to say but I have been trying to find a way to put myself back into my body and live there happily again. 

Physical change has always been a way I have marked change and progress in my life. This has normally been a new tattoo or piercing. I told my partner I wanted to get a new tattoo to remind myself that I was not diabetes but I couldn't think of any design. Even saying those words felt like a lie. After a rough bout of depression over the weekend I had to find a way to re-marry my mind and body. I decided I would take control back a little at a time. Again I my thoughts went to physical change. Hair color is an easy change to make, but it backfired on me. I bleached my hair and this left it very damaged. I sat on the toilet and cried; even my hair was against me. I had lost the fight for control again. I walked out of the bathroom defeated and sat down on the bed facing my partner and a calm came over me and I asked him to help me shave my head, he agreed. As I shaved off the damaged hair I felt like I had won and I couldn't help but smile. I still struggle with eating but at least when I look in the mirror I see me.

My Path to Happiness

I have struggled throughout my life with the concept of happiness. What is it; where does it come from; how do I become happy? I’ve tried lots of things. Fortunately for me, my search never took me down too dark of a path. I do however feel I have learned a lot in my relatively short life so far. Despite my daily fights with depression and anxiety I believe I have landed in a happy place.

When I was very young I thought committing myself to the Christian god would do the trick. Everyone I trusted said it would. Growing up in a “charismatic” church there were certain signs to know if you were doing it right. I couldn't do those things. I couldn't speak in tongues, a language god would give you to worship him properly and only it you believe strongly enough. I faked all the “falling out” but I didn't have to fake the guilt. Why didn't god love me? Why was I not good enough? What could I do better? I knew some of the people that could do these things were far more sinful than I was. It wasn't until years later that I learned some people’s brains are more inclined to be accepting of the influence of groups. I was just not one of those people and that was ok. I filled that part of myself by soaking up what I could of explanations of the world around me. I found that best way to do that was through understanding science. I no longer felt there was something ‘missing in me’ or ‘wrong with me’ and I was happy.

Unfortunately, we are not single layered beings and there is more to happiness than what you believe about a god.  My upbringing in the church wove itself into almost every fiber of my being including my methods of dealing with my depression. I was taught that praying was the only good solution and that medications were for the weak or faithless. It was never explicitly stated but it was obvious in the way some of my family reacted when I told them I was seeing a therapist and taking antidepressants. Here I was again feeling like I had failed in my faith. I needed more than just Jesus to feel like not killing myself and I had let my family down because of it. Once the medication was well in my system and I was able to feel and be clearheaded I decided it wasn't me that had failed god it was god that had failed me. It was one more step in my deconversion and one more step toward happiness for me.

Romantic happiness is a thing that again the church got in the way of for me. I met my first husband at church and we ended up going to our local Bible college together. He was always the questioning type and had found his atheism long before I found mine. The college and our history in our individual churches led directly to the downfall of our relationship. We weren't allowed to explore our romance and sexual expression before we married. That's not to say we were completely abstinent, but it wasn't what it should have been. Once we were married we just weren't happy in many aspects of our relationship. We had two kids; that didn't help. We opened up our relationship; that worked for a little while but caused a lot of additional stress which we had no community support to help us endure. We came to the conclusion, through much heartache and some physical pain, that we were just looking for someone to replace each other. I am in no way suggesting that this is what all open marriages are about, but it is what ours turned out to be. We ended romantic things between us letting go of what was supposed to be, what was expected of us, and just let ourselves be what we wanted to be. That has turned out to be pretty good friends. Myself, my second husband, and my former husband all live in the same house raising our three children together. We made happiness for ourselves outside of the norm.

When I met my second husband I was in a strained place. My relationship with my first husband was coming to an end and things were getting tense. Some things happened that I won’t go into detail about, but they were ugly and put the last nail in the coffin of that relationship. My second husband and I were both in open relationships and seeing several people each. There was this instant connection between us so to speak. However, we both had plans about what we wanted for our future and they were different so I just decided to enjoy the time I had with him and be thankful for it. However, over the first year of our relationship we noticed we were canceling our plans with other people to spend more time with each other. We were on the verge of a monogamous relationship and neither of us were doing anything to stop it. Then something pretty cool happened. I became pregnant with his child. I was on the pill consistently and wasn't taking anything that would have interfered with it doing its job. I am just one of those small percentage of woman that has a failure. There was panic at first; I knew he didn't want to have any children. I was terrified this would end our relationship. I took a few hours to calm myself and called him. I'm not going to lie, it took some time, but eventually we decided to continue the pregnancy. This is right about when we decided to end the rest of our relationships and be monogamous. Here again, I went against the norm and did things my way and I have been happy because of it.

Happiness and comfort in your own skin. This is something that is especially hard for women. I am a fat person, there is just no way around it… well there is a long way around it. I have been told my whole life that I am less because I am more. This has always been a struggle for me.  I got my period when I was between nine and ten and I only made it to five feet one inch tall. I think these things doomed me to be fluffy. Once I became a mom of three (and the three c-sections I had to bring them into the world) I'm pretty sure there is no way I will ever look like a “normal” person again. This is hard for me to swallow.  I let myself go because of it. I couldn't deal with the fact that I will forever be misshapen. I go between knowing I want to live forever and living a healthy lifestyle and not caring at all. I have decided to live and I am working on being happy about the body I will be living in. I have to decide every day to get up and shake off what society says about fat people and do what I need to do to be happy and healthy. It is a choice I make and it is a hard one for me.

Physical pain puts a damper on everything. For almost as long as I can remember I have had this nerve pinch in my lower back. It sometimes makes sleeping, moving, and enjoying anything almost impossible.  The pain sometime crumples me up like a ball while trying to walk. It can send shooting pains into my legs that make sleeping a joke. I sometimes pretend that if I lose some weight it will make it all stop, but I know I'm lying to myself. This pain started when I weighed less than a hundred and twenty pounds.  I assume that one day in my old age I'll have to go under the knife to deal with it. Still, when I am in the most pain I hold my husband's hand and cry and make the choice that I will be thankful to be alive and be happy.  This choice is sometimes the hardest one.

So many things are forced on us, happen to us, or are chosen by us that either lead to our happiness or unhappiness. I think the most important thing I've learned about happiness is that it isn't something that you can force and it isn't something there is a formula for. It also isn't something someone can do for you. No one or no god can make you happy. Your happiness only comes from yourself. You will sometimes have to fight against all odds and your own brain and body to be happy. You also have to accept that even if you don't feel it all the time your life can still be happy.  You also have to be willing to go outside of what you were taught to find the things that you actually need to be happy. Happiness is sometimes an uphill battle against, society, our families' traditions, and our own bodies, but it can be had, and I choose to have it.

A botched tummy tuck preformed by Michael Myers

My life long struggle with my weight.

A brief history. It started the day puberty hit I swear and it hit early, I was 9. I fluffed up like a cotton ball with boobs. It was really hard for me. Girls didn't like me because I had boobs and the boys didn't like me because I was fat. I did get tired of it in middle school and starved myself down to my lowest weight since childhood; it was not pretty. By the time I got to high school things had kind of evened out. I wasn't thin but I was on the small end of plus-sized. I gained my freshmen 15 my first year in college, but after that my weight was stable until I started having babies.

Jump forward to post-baby-number-one body. I actually weighted less after she was born because of a special diet I had to be on. The problem was with the c-section. When they closed me up it wasn't straight or flat it was this bubbly flappy thing. I hoped for a long time that as the time went by my body would snap back like I had read other women's bodies had. Every doctor's exam started with the doctors asking me if I was going to have a tummy tuck or them asking me to hold up my stomach so they could check me out. After baby number two and c-section number two it was worse and after baby and c-section number three my stomach looks like something out of a plastic surgery nightmare.

So here starts my weight issues today. I have several times started and stopped working on losing weight. I stop because I get so discouraged because I know that no matter how much weight I loose I will still look like I had a botched tummy tuck preformed by Michael Myers. I keep telling myself I need to lose the weight to be healthy and because of my back problems. Combined with my depression issues my tummy issues drive me to give up. I have had some success as of late. I've lost 13 pounds and several inches in the last two and a half months. I am just about at the point where I would normally give up and I feel like doing so. I am trying my hardest to keep it all up. Here is my problem. As I get smaller the more I am able to see all the ugliness that is my stomach. Our new house has so many mirrors in our master bathroom and every time I get ready to shower I am able to see my whole body. All the tucks and folds of my stomach just make me want to cry. This is why the up and down continues for my weight.

I am left in this limbo like state between “yes, I want to make sure I'm healthy” and “I won't be pretty so why try”. It's very difficult to stay motivated when you feel like it won't make a difference where you want to see change. This makes me feel very vain and shallow which leads me to sometimes long bouts of depression than then lead to it being even harder to motivate myself. I know this isn't a thing that is unique to myself, but it sucks. Add to all of that that I am a stay at home, home schooling mom of three crazy kids that are always wanting something. It is really hard to stay on track.

I have however motivated myself to get halfway back on track. I am hoping that despite the fact that even if my stomach is smaller it will still look deformed I can look past that to my health and stay motivated. Fingers crossed.

I am sorry if this is repetitive or rambling. It has been a really long time since I wrote anything is this was emotional for me.   

I am writing this for therapeutic purposes I need to get it out I can't carry this anymore. I am an “autism mom” though I really don't like that term. I am a mom of a child with autism his diagnosis doesn't define him much less what kind of mom I am. There has always been this swarming thing around autism. The way people talk and argue about it. The way people and children with ASD are treated and expected to act. The way the media panics over the “cause” and any possible “cure”. Mostly for me it is all the unsaid words and emotions that have me scared silent most days. Today I am going to speak.

The day I got the call from the doctor's office to give me the results of all the months of repetitive testing we had waiting months to go through I sat quietly listening to her explain to me the diagnosis. She said he has autism and he would be considered “low to mid functioning”. I thanked her and hung up the phone. I crumpled to the floor in tears not really knowing what any of that meant. I just knew there was something wrong and it would be a long hard uphill battle to help him. In that moment I knew in my head that she was just confirming what I already knew but it felt like a loss. He was so little, only 3 years old. I just kept thinking of all the things he may never be able to do. I decided right then I wouldn't let this over take me I was done crying. I see now that was a bad idea.

Over the years Lex was put into many different therapies and went through many different therapists. He started in public school at 3 just a few months after the formal diagnosis. It was shortly after this I met my husband and soon after that I became pregnant with my third child. I was terrified throughout the pregnancy fearing this baby would also fall on the autism spectrum. When she was born everything was fine. Until she was about 18 months old we took her for her wellness checkup and some blood teats were done. One of them came back with some not so good news. She had a high level of lead in her system. Our house was over 100 years old and it was in our plumbing. We moved within a week. Once Lex and Violet were out of that environment things changed quickly for the two of them. Lex was settled into a new school that ended up being one of the best things for him, and once Violet was 2 all the evaluations and testing started for her. Long story short she isn't on the autism spectrum but she does have some developmental delays probably due to the lead she had been ingesting from birth. There is a level of guilt that comes along with knowing this that is sometimes over whelming. I will never know for sure the amount of damage the lead caused any of my children or who they may have been if their tiny brains where spared the toxic levels of lead.

Jump forward to today and what moved me to write this. I watched a PSA about the early warning signs of autism. I caught them all and all of kids have had everything I could give them to make sure their education is all it can be. However, I still harbor guilt, anger, and morn the loss of the unknown. I feel like a terrible person. Yes I love my son more than I can say, but I also desperately miss all the “normal” mother and son things that I will never have. I have lately let myself slip into the fear that my son doesn't love me. I know this isn't true and he shows me love in the ways he knows how and can. This is my own selfish desires that make me feel this way. Today the pain is deep. He doesn't speak to me, or anyone very much, I get no hugs or kisses when he gets off the bus. He is 8 years old and some times he feels like a stranger, one I want with all that I am to know. Most days I can ignore all of this and let the hope for the future get me by, but today is not one of those days. I try to think about all the good things. Like the fact that all of my kids are “well behaved”. People will literally approach us in public and tell us how good our kids are. The violent meltdowns had pretty much stopped. He is attending mainstream 2^nd grade elective classes along with lunch and recess and is doing great. Things could be way worse. Still there are days when the self pity takes over. These vicious cycles of self pity and self loathing are compounded by my own anxiety and depression issues cause more than their fair share of trouble. I don't think I am ever really free of these things they just weigh on me in different strengths from day to day.

So, here is my ugly truth I morn the loss of a son I expected and didn't give birth to. I fear that he will be stuck at his current level of functionality and I will have to care for him for the rest of his life. It is deeply heart breaking to me when I think that he may never meet and fall in love with someone. I am always worried he will be bullied. I am terrified that he will be out in public one day and someone will misunderstand some of his actions and the police will kill. I fear the complacent words muttered over the bodies of other children with mental disorders, “we don't have time for this”. I will always wonder what I am missing or how different things could be and what that may feel like. Knowing these things about myself make me feel like a terrible person and an even worse mom. My selfishness is heavy and today I let it pull me down. Tomorrow is another day and I am hoping tomorrow I will be stronger and a balance can be maintained.