I was 39.

We decided to move to the Houston area, where Scott’s job was. A few months before, I started having a lot of pain in my right knee, so I went to an orthopedist who took x-rays and said that I had no cartilage in the left side of my knee and that was causing the pain. I started getting shots in my knee and had physical therapy. It got better for awhile. Our house went on the market. I had the house professionally cleaned and I decluttered. When my realtors showed the house we would get feedback that the house wasn’t clean. It would be after having the house professionally cleaned. I felt like a failure.

Megan and I were planning ScrapFest and it would be the first time we held it in a hotel. It was October and we held the event – some people liked it, some didn’t, but it’s what we decided as business partners and thought it went well. The entire time we weren’t sure if we would break even due to being limited as to how many croppers we could accommodate because of the space of the ballroom. Once the event started things ran smoothly, but the numbers showed we would have to come out of pocket to pay the hotel. This was a first. The scrapbooking industry had been in decline and the number of crops was increasing, so croppers had to decide which events to go to, which we had no control over. And we liked going to the other events because we were actually able to scrapbook when we weren’t running the show. On the last day of that October ScrapFest we were forced to make a hard decision. I would be moving, which would make planning difficult, but do-able. But we couldn’t put on the event out of the goodness of our hearts and lose money. We made the hard call to tell our croppers that it would be our last event. We put on happy faces, sold the majority of our Cricut collection to our croppers, and sold or donated the rest of our way cool stuff (our Plinko board, spinner wheel, Accucut machine and dies), but I kept the candy machine.

For me, losing ScrapFest was like losing a part of myself. I didn’t care about the money. It was never about the money for me. It was about having a creative outlet and bringing other women together to be creative. ScrapFest was the only vacation some women took each year. They looked forward to it like kids look forward to Christmas morning and that’s not an exaggeration. And that’s not because of Megan or me – it’s because they could get together with their friends and have a great three days doing one of the things they loved most. I lost a part of my creative self. Designing tshirts and mugs and bags for hundreds of women in six or so years meant a lot to me. Going to other events and seeing women wearing something I drew or designed was a feeling that is practically indescribable. It didn’t just make me feel good. It was good for my creative soul. And then it was gone.

I started to pack up things I knew we wouldn’t be using until after the move, not knowing when the move would actually take place. I resigned my position in the PTA so I could focus on getting packed and finding a new house. It was too hard to get the newsletter together and attend meetings while being in the process of a move. PTA was something that was important to me – and just like that, another creative outlet gone.

One day, shortly after the last ScrapFest, I was at Megan’s doing some of our last bits of housekeeping before we could call the business actually closed. That morning I greeted the maid at my house, left instructions as I always did, then drove to Megan’s. The maid said she was having headaches, but I didn’t pay any attention to that. Forty minutes after I left my house, the maid called to say she’d gotten a last minute doctor appointment and would have to reschedule. I said that was fine. I left Meg’s or maybe we went to lunch and then I went home to see that exactly nothing had been done in the forty minutes the maid had been there. I called Megan and said how odd that was. A notification came up on my phone from Walgreens to say my refill was ready. I would put that off until the next day. The rest of my day was unremarkable, just lots of pain in my knee. Late that night I opened my nightstand drawer to take a Percocet to get some relief from my throbbing, swollen knee. The Perocet wasn’t there. I went through the whole drawer – it was gone. These were the drugs left over from my ablation and laparoscopic procedure. There were 27 tablets left, I knew this because I only took three after the procedure, then took Advil. I dialed up my Walgreens after remembering that I got the notification earlier. You can imagine my surprise to see that a refill of Percocet was picked up that day (and my thyroid medication). Dr. B had given me a refill knowing he didn’t remove the pain in the ovary cysts. I concluded the maid had stolen my medication and called in the refill. This is a woman I trusted to clean my house for several months, whom I left alone in my house many times. I called Walgreens, they said they didn’t have video on the drive through, so they couldn’t ID anyone. I called the police, they came to my house and ran the maid’s name and all she had was a traffic violation, so they couldn’t go to her house with only my word/suspicion. I was livid. I called my friend Kathy, the detective. Kathy said to text the maid and say I know what she did and a few other things. I did what Kathy said and the maid denied everything, then blocked me on Facebook. Bitch was guilty. At some point that week, I was in my medicine cabinet and noticed the bottle of liquid Percocet (from my sleeve surgery) was missing as well. Having something stolen from you is horrible. Having something stolen by someone you knew and trusted is disturbing.

The house was slowly getting packed up. October became November, then December, then January. I had mixed feelings about moving to Texas. I wanted to be in the same house as my husband, but Texas represented what I recognized as when my anxiety really hit me. I remembered all the times I had the irrational fears when Molly was a baby when we lived southeast of Houston. The time I had to leave my cart in Walmart and had a panic attack. When the planes struck the World Trade Center towers. Molly’s first birthday when my family couldn’t come in because my grandmother was dying. Then my grandmother died. So many awful things happened during the short time we had lived in Texas 12 years before. I didn’t know if I had it in me to do it again. We’d lived in our home in Covington for 9 years. I loved that house. This would be different and I would be okay, I told myself. I had a couple of built-in friends in the Houston area – Michelle and Katie. We were looking for houses in Houston and the two I loved were snatched up. In February we finally got an offer on our house and we accepted it. That week Scott found a house he thought was perfect and sent me tons of pics, plus the pics that were online. It was brick, had a front courtyard, amazing kitchen, amazing master bathroom and closet, a study, and “wing” for the kids, as well as a big gameroom upstairs. I told Scott to go ahead and make an offer on it and I would drive to Houston the next day to see it. I made the drive and on the way to see the house, our realtor called to say our offer was accepted. We were thrilled. I was really thrilled once I got to the house. Our new town would be Humble. The H is silent. It annoyed me and still annoys me. Our street is Guadalupe. No one can spell it. I have to spell everything for customer service people.

The closing on our house in Covington was delayed by a week and I took the kids out of school the week before St. Patrick’s Day. We stayed at my wonderful mother-in-law’s house for that week. I worried about all the things that could go wrong during our move. There were no school uniforms at the new schools, so we went on a shopping spree for spring school clothes. The moving truck was holding all of our possessions until our moving day. One of my great friends, Stacy cleaned my house after we moved out. Scott had taken the dog to Texas already and was waiting on our closing day. We closed on St. Patrick’s Day and the kids and I drove to Humble. My Explorer was packed like I had never packed a car before. Another closing was down. We took the kids to see our new house for the first time. They all liked it, but Katie moaned that she didn’t have a bay window like Molly’s room did. Our moving truck arrived. The unpacking began. A house was starting to become a home. That Thursday I took the kids to enroll in school, but couldn’t get Andrew enrolled until the next day because we were waiting on the old school to send one more form. Paperwork never ends.

I kept unpacking and arranging. Our new furniture arrived. Things were coming together. Molly started showing signs of depression. We brought her to a new pediatrician, a psychiatrist, a therapist – started medication. I had new fears that I was passing my depression onto my children. It was something that terrified me. Something I didn’t know how to handle except medically and to be there if she felt like talking about it. After the first four months she was okay and didn’t need medication. She’d made friends, she was plugging in. After unpacking the last box I realized that my flatware never showed up in the new house. That made me furious. Just last week I realized my record (yes, record) collection never got to the new house either. This made me a whole ‘nother level of furious.

We got a kitten. Actually, three kittens, but only F. Catz Fitzgerald survived. That was Easter weekend. When I returned to my car there was a lovely note on my windshield that said “learn to park” with a smiley-sun face and then “happy Easter!” Shortly after that we got a note on our front gate that said someone was reporting us to the Homeowner’s Association because our dog barked. Our dog only barked at the landscapers and strangers. Texans like to leave notes. It wasn’t the last note we’d get about our dog.

My Covington friends and I texted. Beth and Christine started scrapbooking retreat called Scrap Dat in Mandeville and although I was sure I’d be able to make their first event, I just couldn’t with the kids starting school and the pain I was in. I went to a new orthopedist who said I had the worst osteoarthritis in someone my age that she had ever seen and that because I was too young for a knee replacement, I’d get a custom fitted brace and start knee injections. Then I went to a new gynecologist who actually listened to me and did an ultrasound, finding the two softball-sized cysts and a tilted uterus (of course it was tilted because I can’t have a normal anything). She said she had no idea how I was walking around with the pain I must have been in. Finally, someone who understood my pain (for real). She scheduled my hysterectomy and I finally felt like I was going to be okay.

My mother came down to help with the kids at the end of June and I had surgery. My doctor was wonderful. Surgery went well. I went home the next day. The day after that my Aunt Darlene died from ALS. I was recovering and couldn’t make the funeral, which made me very sad. I was sad for my cousins who lost their mom while she was still young, for my dad and for his sisters, for my grandmother. The way ALS takes away the person you love is like nothing else I know of. It takes your body from you while you still have your mind. Then it takes away your ability to speak, when you still have a mind to speak, then it takes you away from a family that loves you. I was glad that I got to have lunch with my aunt before her disease progressed, while she was able to still say “I love you too.”

And then  a few days later I was forty. My husband gave me a gorgeous ruby ring and took me out for a great dinner and to buy my first cowboy boots. He gave me Counting Crows tickets for later that month. My favorite band. Their drummer Jim wished me a happy 40th on Facebook. So did Tommy Blatnik of the Rave Ups, a band I’d loved since 1986. We went home to have my favorite cake with my mom and fantastic kiddos. It was a good day. Another week or so passed and I went in for my surgery followup and my new Dr. B (how is it that it was my second gynecologist with a name that started with B?) showed me photos of my twin cysts, one a softball, one a baseball. She also told me my cervix was precancerous, so it was good that bitch was gone. I told her my belly felt like jello since the surgery and she said “well, we removed a bunch of stuff.” I like it when doctors get all technical like that. I asked her if my belly would ever tone up and she said “not without surgery. You’ve had five abdominal surgeries, it doesn’t work like that.” Well, that was deflating – emotionally and physically (literally, ha). Nothing fit right after having the hysterectomy. All of my new “skinny” clothes didn’t fit anymore because of the way my abdomen rearranged itself. That’s the only way I can think of to describe it – that’s what happened. I went up a size, it was okay – I’m old enough and smart enough to know I am not a size on a pair of jeans. It only hurts the ego to go up a size. And my ego was practically non-existent anyway.

I started seeing a new psychiatrist. I went to her twice and didn’t like her at all (plus she had a weird hippie name and I can’t get past that kind of thing – no offense if you have a weird hippie name), then the third time I went, the receptionist told me my shrink couldn’t make it in that day and another doc was seeing her patients. Yee-ha! The other shrink and I clicked. He told me I wasn’t crazy, a term I’d always tossed around like my friends had.

For the first time I was properly diagnosed. I was Bipolar Type 2. It’s scary admitting that to the blogosphere because maybe you’ll see me differently now. Maybe you’ll think I am really crazy. Maybe you’ll defriend me on Facebook because I’m “crazy.” Do I look like someone with a mental illness? Now that you know it’s a mental illness, anyway. Suddenly, I’m not just quirky or just funny anymore – I’m Bipolar 2. Or Bipolar 2 – Electric Boogaloo, as I refer to it. So what does that mean? I’m sure you’re wondering.

“While bipolar I disorder is characterized by one or more manic episodes or mixed episodes and one or more major depressive episodes; bipolar 2 disorder is diagnosed after one or more major depressive episodes and at least one episode of hypomania, with possible periods of level mood between episodes. The highs in Bipolar II, called hypomanias, are not as high as those in Bipolar I (manias). Bipolar II disorder is sometimes misdiagnosed as major depression if hypomanic episodes go unrecognized. If you have recurring depressions that go away periodically and then return, it could be Bipolar II.” DBSA.com

I told my new doctor that I knew what Bipolar 1 meant because I had family members with it and I wasn’t like that. I didn’t have that particular brand of “crazy.” Bipolar 2 was different. My doctor explained more and put me on the right medications. He told me that it was the cause of my irrational anxiety, ability to be more social than usual, having periods of being very energetic, being very quick to anger, having racing thoughts to the point of not being able to sleep without medication, being easily distracted, even the periods of being intensely creative and having this driving need to do something and feel accomplished. Then the crippling depression that settles in and doesn’t want to leave. I had been more depressed since ScrapFest ended, since the move, since the hysterectomy that felt like a loss somehow, even though it was a good loss – it felt like what made me a woman was gone, even though my pain was gone. I had periods of depression after losing weight when people said what they thought were nice things. I was depressed that my everyday crew of friends was now five hours away. And I was depressed after gaining back a little weight (even though I was definitely told I would) when I had the hysterectomy. To me, this was all loss. It all represented failure. My failure. And a diagnosis that wasn’t just regular old depression. A real diagnosis. A diagnosis of a disorder that could be genetic, that I could pass on to my wonderful spirited children.

So, I was 40 and I lived in Texas and I was Bipolar 2 Electric Boogaloo and I still felt much the same. I had the same sense of loss. And then one day in November my dad called to say my favorite aunt on his side passed away in her sleep. She was way too young to be gone. My heart broke for my dad and my cousin Teresa and Uncle Jerry. The next day Scott’s grandfather died and we made what I secretly called “Louisiana Funeral Tour 2015” from Humble to Shreveport to Union Springs to Metairie and back to Humble. It was a whirlwind of emotion. My kids had attended their first funerals. And then it was Thanksgiving. And then it was Christmas. There was no Faler Family Christmas Party last year after Scott’s grandfather passed away. The kids had the flu and couldn’t make the trip in to Mandeville for Scott’s mom’s Christmas party. Scott went in and delivered gifts and brought back gifts. We had Christmas here in our house for the first time and decided we would always have Christmas day in our house. And we spent New Year’s in our house, watching the neighborhood fireworks.

The first six months of this year went by and we adjusted to Texas. Well, I tried my best. I really did. I purposely didn’t join the PTA. I didn’t volunteer at school. I didn’t volunteer period. I went to Scrap Dat last spring. I refinished and painted a bunch of furniture when I had hypomanic episodes. I designed Will’s new album cover and all. Then I wouldn’t be able to leave the house. I wouldn’t be able to go to church. I would cancel a trip to Shreveport that I had been looking forward to. I was on the right medication and I thought I felt better, but I wasn’t better. I had the medication, but I didn’t have the coping skills. I wasn’t coping.

It was July and I turned 41. Within three months I would be in a mental hospital.

So, the Victoria’s Secret “Fashion” Show happened and as I do with most major news stories, I’m covering this in depth, just as you’d expect. Let’s go to the photos.

That’s right, find the tackiest Christmas lawn decor, snap a photo* and email it to me at kbfaler@gmail.com for the chance to win an iTunes giftcard. Photos are judged by me and the winner is announced here on Christmas Eve. Remember, the tackier, the better!

*no nudity allowed because of Stacy Ellenberger Smith. 

Just tap to save the wallpaper and install on your phone to make your mobile merry and bright. 

   
    
    
    
    
    
    
 For this one, open in A Beautiful Mess app or Rhonna Designs and put your name in the tag. You can do that with any of these wall papers. Enjoy!

All four of us were moving into our rental house in Mandeville, LA which was practically around the corner from my mother-in-law’s house. I liked our rental house – it was spacious and had beautiful hardwood floors. I liked being close to family and mostly thrilled to be out of Canada and back to all things American. Once we were back, Scott started looking for a job and he worked in New Orleans for awhile before KBR called up and asked him to go work with the military in Afghanistan. We had only been back for a couple of months and Scott and I prayed over that decision and thought since it wasn’t longterm, that it would be ok for him to accept the job. The pay would be great and would afford us to build the house in Covington in the subdivision where we were looking. And it wasn’t longterm. I kept telling myself that.

In August or September I joined a group called MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) and attended monthly meetings and dinners and stuff just for moms with little kids; other women who knew the everyday frustrations and joys of being a mother of munchkins. I needed this since I had no friends in the area. Kim lived 40 minutes away and we would see and talk to each other, but I needed friends close by. She would have her first baby, Shelby, and I was there for her birth. I so treasure that we were there for each other in those once-in-a-liftetime moments. She was (maybe for the first time) completely speechless when I told her we were having another baby on a day that I went to visit her and baby Shelby. MOPS was great – it got me involved and was a safe place to talk about things and really a saving grace for me. I met who would become great friends that were in my group. The whole group was probably 40-50 women, but we met in smaller groups within the room. We would have a speaker or an activity each month and a craft. This was right up my alley. You know how you see someone and just know you would become friends? That’s how it was with Megan, Beth, Lisa, Jennifer C., and Mandy. Beth was our group leader. She became like a big sister for me. Megan was my exact opposite (other than being just as crafty as me) – she saw a need and just did whatever it took to get the job done. She would be a lifeline for me. Jennifer and I just clicked over pure silliness and things that would only happen to us. Lisa would open a scrapbook store and we would all spend a lot of time together. Mandy was a friend who was a transplant from Georgia, trying to make a life in Louisiana; we were both in the same boat.  All of these women became like family. Especially when Scott went to Afghanistan.

I enrolled Molly in preschool and she loved it. Always the happy kid. Two weeks after Scott landed in the Middle East, I was spotting and Megan and Beth gave me the name of the OB/GYN they both loved. I made an appointment with Dr. B. and Scott’s cousin Kat babysat while I went for what would be a 5 hour appointment. 5 hours. I was pregnant and Dr. B. was the first doctor to properly diagnose my type of infertility. I had an inhospitable uterus. I laughed. Not only could I be a bitch, so was my uterus! He put me on a drug that I can’t remember the name of that would calm my bitch uterus down so the embryo could grow into a baby. I was due sometime around July 15th, 2005. I told my doctor of the problems I had with Katie and the meconium and he rolled his eyes at Canadian medicine. I would be put on light bedrest and the medicine made me woozy. Light bedrest with two toddlers is a joke, but I did my best.

During this time our house was being built. We picked the model that had the best floor plan and space and I picked all the finishings when Scott was out of the country. I started to show almost immediately. I was at my heaviest and the extra weight made an already difficult pregnancy more difficult. It was hard to keep up with the girls. I couldn’t fit in a restaurant booth. That was probably the thing that bothered me the most being that heavy. I started scrapbooking with Megan and Lisa and then Mandy. They kept my spirits up. At the Faler family Christmas party I broke down when Scott’s dad took a photo of everyone to send to Scott. I hadn’t let myself cry over how much I missed him being there everyday. It’s not just the big stuff you miss. For me it wasn’t sleeping alone. It was not having daily conversation. It was not having him there to put the star at the top of the tree. It was him not being there to help me be Santa on Christmas Eve to fill the stockings. It was having to take the trash out myself. It was being the only one to be up with the girls if they were sick in the middle of the night. It was having to ask Scott’s uncle Mike to come over and change a lightbulb I couldn’t reach. It was having to call Scott’s mom to come over and inspect Katie’s mouth when she fell on the fireplace and knocked a front tooth up into her gum. It was doing Molly’s birthday party alone. It was being the only one at home to rock and sing Katie to sleep on a wintry night and singing every Beatles song in the catalog until she fell asleep. It was having to ask Scott’s brother to come over and put our Christmas tree in the garage because I couldn’t carry the box in February because I was too depressed to take the tree down.

My parents came in for Christmas and it was nice. Then it was spring and then it was May and our house was almost ready. Megan and Beth spearheaded the packing of our possessions. My mother-in-law had already come to pack up Molly’s room, but the girls from MOPS came and packed everything in the rental house. They wouldn’t let me do anything. I just sat and gave directions. Megan put my computer in her car and brought it to my new house while my dad was there painting the upstairs bright colors in the kids’ rooms and hanging curtains. A moving company moved the boxes, but it was my MOPS friends and my mom and dad who were there for me. They were amazing. My realtor went to school with Scott and handled our closing perfectly, telling me what I needed to do, step by step. I made curtains for our extremely tall windows that you couldn’t find ready-made curtains for. We moved in when I was eight months pregnant. I could barely fit behind the steering wheel in my minivan.

Scott had come in once from Afghanistan. We decided to get a nanny to help out once our baby boy came. I interviewed nannies. We settled on one and she seemed just perfect. She would cancel on me two weeks before Andrew was born. I went into a dark place. I couldn’t talk about it. My parents and grandfather came down for Katie’s birthday and Dr. B. was inducing me on the 11th. We had a Cookie Monster birthday for Katie and went to Trey Yuen’s for Chinese for my birthday on the 9th. On the 10th I packed a bag for the hospital and my dad brought me to the hospital at 3 am, per Dr. B’s instructions. He stayed for awhile, then my mother-in-law came to relieve him. Dr. B. was sure I’d be ready to deliver sometime after she got off work, so she went to work that morning and my parents came up to the hospital. I can’t remember who kept the girls. It’s one of the few things I can’t remember.

The anesthesiologist gave me my epidural around nine and I was ready for a day of contractions and visitors coming in and out. At ten I was feeling a ton of pressure and asked my nurse to check me. She insisted I wasn’t ready yet, but I asked her to check anyway. She checked. Her face went from pleasant to distressed in seconds. She told another nurse to get Dr. B. “NOW.” My mother stood up and came to stand at the head of the bed and hold my hand. I was calm. Remember, I had seen every episode of A Baby Story on TLC and read What to Expect When You’re Expecting 42 times. Dr. B. got there within minutes. His office was 5 minutes away, but I know he made it faster than that. He examined me and told the nurse to keep her hand in place. I knew that couldn’t be good. He was incredibly calm and said “we’re going to take you back, the cord is wrapped around his neck.” He told one of the nurses to lower the head of my bed – it was so low I thought I would slide off the bed. Nurse #1 sat on the bed “with her hand in place” and other nurses worked quickly around me, taking off my earrings and watch (because I don’t have babies without accessories). I stupidly said “so it’s going to be a c-section?” and the nurses all said yes, it was an emergency. Dr. B. was already out the door. A nurse told me I was super calm throughout this process. I told her watched a lot of hospital shows on TV – this seemed very important at the time, as if I had some sort of minor medical degree from TLC and “ER.” I was wheeled quickly down the hallway, nurse still on top of my bed. I remember other nurses and patients looking at me, it was completely surreal. A nurse said I was the calmest patient they had ever had after being told they were having an emergency c-section.

Once in the operation room, my favorite guy, the anesthesiologist showed back up and started deadening me with a local and kept asking “do you feel that? how ’bout now? what about now?” My arms were put out to sides like wings and I was hooked up to more stuff. I could hear Dr. B. talking in a hushed voice. I cannot express how calm he was at all times, but he was in complete quiet control. Nurses were rushing, the anesthesiologist sat on a stool by my head and talked to me the entire time. He was fanfreakingtastic. We talked like there was no emergency – we talked like we were both waiting while getting our oil changed or sitting at the DMV, how you make temporary friends with whoever may be sitting next to you. It was so rushed there wasn’t time for my mom to be in the room. She called Scott’s mom who dropped everything and got to the hospital.

Dr. B. told me what was going on the entire time. The umbilical cord was wrapped twice around Andrew’s neck and once around his arm. Once I heard that, the tears started flowing even though I was assured by everyone in the room he would be fine. Everything would be fine. But everything wasn’t fine. My husband was halfway around the world and I was by myself being cut open in an emergency that could have ended horribly. My mind always went to the worst. What could have happened. But Andrew was fine. He was taken to the nursery and I was brought to the recovery room, where my mom met me. I was freezing and couldn’t stop shaking. Nurses brought me warming blankets. Eventually I was ok. Everything would be ok.  But it wasn’t.

I was brought back to my room. Family and friends would come in and out. Flowers were delivered. Nurses came in to help me get up after the epidural wore off. I was in so much pain, more pain than I had ever been in. At some point after family had left, a nurse said she would stay in my room while I showered just in case I needed her. Me? Need anyone? I never needed anyone. I could do it all myself. I had managed my whole pregnancy practically by myself. I could do it. I couldn’t do it. I called for the nurse as soon as I got my gown off. I could barely move. Let me tell you this: you have no modesty after having a baby; you have another level of zero modesty when you’re naked in a shower with your nurse. For the first time in my life (and I mean that quite sincerely because I am very vain to be honest) I did not care what I looked like. My makeup had been cried off, my hair was a red cotton candy afro, I was bloody and iodine-y, and whatever else – I was 300 pounds of naked mess in front of my nurse. She kept telling me to stop apologizing while I cried. Nurses really are the most wonderful angels walking among us. I developed a fever and had to stay an extra day in the hospital. I talked to Scott on the phone and he would be home in two weeks. He had to plan his trip way in advance, and because both our girls had been late, he booked his trip a little later than my due date.

Andrew Scott Faler was a great baby. Kim came up to see him right before I was released from the hospital. I was not used to having to rely on people the way I had to after the c-section. I needed help getting into the car. I needed help getting out. I needed help getting to my bed. I needed help to get the baby. I was not myself. I was not in control. I didn’t like it one bit.

Friends would come by, my dad would go back to Shreveport and my mom left after a few weeks, being grandmother and nursemaid and overall being great when I needed her most. Scott came home to a new house and a new son and girls that had grown a little. I’m sure it was overwhelming. He was gone again two weeks later, but I treasured the time he was home. MOPS friends would bring food and ask if I needed anything. I remember Candi coming over one of those first weeks and asking to do anything I needed her to do and she meant it. I asked if she could vacuum  for me and she said “of course!” and vacuumed my whole house. I’d told her I only needed the living room vacuumed. She did the stairs and everything. I couldn’t believe I had such caring friends. Were there really people like this in the world? People you could depend on at your worst? Was I in some parallel universe where people were kind and just did what needed to be done out of love and genuine concern? It was real. Those friends were there for me and saved me from a deeper depression I could have fallen into. Two weeks later my mom told me she asked my dad for a divorce. I was in complete shock. She moved in with my grandfather. Scott said he would be coming back from the Middle East and we would all be a family again.

Then it was August and no one would be prepared for what faced it. Her name was Katrina.

One the morning of the 28th, the mayor of New Orleans and the governor were calling for evacuations. We were in Covington. I was alone with the kids in my new house and was sure we would be fine. I wasn’t going anywhere. My husband would be home the next day. My neighbors talked in the street in front of my house discussing their evacuation plans. No one was staying. The men told me I had to get out of town, that I should probably go to Shreveport. I started throwing random clothes in suitcases. Scott’s mom had been saying all week that she would not evacuate because she worked at City Hall and had to be there. Even she decided to leave. She, Scott’s step-sister, and I packed up the kids and drove what would be a six hour drive to Lafayette to my sister-in-law’s house. There were other family members there. We listened to WWL on the radio for the latest news – the Causeway was closing, the airport – the message was clear: get out now. The atmosphere in Lafayette was half-party, half-anxiety overload.  The airports were closed and Scott had to fly into Houston and rent a car to get to us. We all camped out in the living room and watched the news. Watched as the storm missed New Orleans, going a little to the east. Everything would be fine, we would just get some wind and rain. We watched as a CNN reporter stood in front of a strip center in my town and reported on the wind that left him barely standing up. We watched as it looked like New Orleans was safe. Then we watched as New Orleans began to fill up with water due to faulty levees. We watched and wondered if some family members would have homes to go home to. We watched as people were standing on their roofs and waited for the Coast Guard helicopters to take them to safety. We watched as water climbed and climbed and neighborhoods became lakes, and we assumed Scott’s grandparents’s house was underwater. They would lose everything in the house they had called home for 40 plus years. Scott’s dad and stepmom’s town was devastated in Mississippi.

A few days after the storm came we went to my grandfather’s house in Shreveport to stay until our house had electricity again. It was a difficult two weeks. My parents were separated and tension was high in the house with my family there and my mom and grandfather. I was glad to be in town, but wished it was under better circumstances. There was no visiting of friends, no reason for celebration. Scott went back to our house to check things out. A dozen people were staying with his mom because she had a generator. The mayor of Mandeville was there, as were half of the people needed to run the town. Our house only had damage to the very top of the chimney and our fence was mostly blown down. It was all completely fixable. Three of the trees in our backyard had fallen, but it was okay.

I’m not sure when I stopped caring about things. Was it during the c-section? Was it during Katrina, during that drive? Was it when Kanye West said “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” while standing next to Mike Myers on a telethon? Was it when we returned to our home only to see that only a handful of things were open and the military was handing out MREs and bottled water in front of my Target? Was it when I first went to the grocery store and there were hardly and fresh things to buy? Was it afterward when school started a month late and our MOPS group met and wondered if we could even have MOPS that year? Was it when Molly asked if we could watch something besides the news?

It was all those things. It was the depression and anxiety that had been there all along, but broke through the ceiling of happy I had built that first year back in Louisiana.

Months would go by. People would get their roofs fixed, stores would open again, gas stations would actually have gas, and Scott would get a job and he and my dad and grandfather would put our fence back up. Everything around me was getting back to normal, on my side of the lake: on the Northshore. Things in New Orleans were still in a desperate state. Soon, I would be in a desperate state. I’m not comparing my little life to the massive loss of life and devastation of whole towns, it just happened to coincide.

My house was in mass disorder. I couldn’t keep up with laundry and cleaning and then I just didn’t give a damn. Not the “I don’t give a damn” where you come home from work and don’t load the dishwasher and put on “Grey’s Anatomy.” The kind of I don’t give a damn where you absolutely do not care what your house looks like anymore. I had been through a couple of maids who wouldn’t stay or said it was too much work for a three hour cleaning. It was close to Hoarders proportions. There were paths to walk through in my home, but nothing was clean. The kids and I were clean. I would wash clothes and leave them in the dryer until everything in the dryer had been worn and then start over. No one who knew me would suspect my house was in complete disarray. That my mind was in complete disarray. Scott’s mom would come over and clean for me. She would give me cleaning tips. I would have maids over to clean before my mom would visit or when Scott would come home, so they didn’t suspect anything. But the everyday was just convoluted as my brain was.

When Andrew was nine months old I was driving on Hwy 22 and talking on the phone with Beth. I believe at that time Scott was working in Mississippi or maybe it was St. Croix, I’m not sure because a couple of years ran together while he worked away from home because there was no work for an oil cost engineer in the recovering New Orleans job market. She was the first person to say I didn’t seem like my self. Beth was the first one to suggest I may need to talk to someone or ask my doctor about medication because I didn’t seem to care about things anymore. I couldn’t go to Walmart for fear of a panic attack and my friends knew this. There were things that were just off the table because my anxiety couldn’t handle it. One day I would be in the freezer section of Winn-Dixie and have a panic attack and be unable to close the door to the frozen peas.

I was 30.

Note: If you haven’t guessed, all of my titles for each entry (except for the first) are song titles. I may post the songs, we’ll see.

I was 25.

We moved into our new home, bought new living room furniture (which I hated as soon as the pregnancy hormones wore off. Do not make major furniture purchases while preggo. Just don’t), and I convinced Scott we needed a dog. Specifically, we needed a basset hound because I’d always wanted one, since the days of The Dukes of Hazzard and Smokey and the Bandit. I found a breeder in the Atlanta area and we stayed with Scott’s brother Chris and his wife, Candice, in Marietta while we picked out our new puppy. We picked out this almost all black puppy I named General Beauregard of Atlanta ( I like our animals to have titles, like our current basset, the Former Governor of the great state of Mississippi Lucille Brown). Beau was adorable and tripped over his ears a lot. He was our first baby. Our practice baby before the real one came.

We traded in my Corolla for a Ford Escape, my favorite of the smaller SUVs. It was big enough to accommodate the dog’s crate and baby’s car seat, stroller, and everything we’d need for a road trip. We were doing everything right.  One day while getting gas, a seagull flew into my car, flapped around for a few minutes (it seemed like an eternity) and then flew back out. I have never quite gotten over the seagull incident.

Beau liked to sit on the sofa and rest his head on my belly before I was even showing. He was something else. We were doing our usual wait-to-tell with the pregnancy and I was trying not to get too excited. I was working for this Christian Correspondence school that I thought was shady, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. A husband and wife team ran the school and it was like the blind leading the blind. When I came along, the owner was convinced they were upping their game since I had worked for the bigtime correspondence school. He had taken some courses and frankly, I thought they were laughable. They were the courses my old coworkers and I would make fun of that no one took. I’d written their typing textbook while I was there, which I thought was kind of cool. I would grade essays and do just about whatever they needed me to do at the new school. It was okay.

One night I was home with Scott and I started bleeding. My new OB/GYN knew my history and told me to call at the first sign of threatened miscarriage. I called or Scott called, I don’t remember – and got her service, it was after hours. Dr. G called me back pretty soon and assured me that I would come in the next day for an ultrasound and that she was pretty sure all would be well because the week before our little tiny thing had a strong heartbeat. I cried and Scott did his best to console me. The next day I  went in for an ultrasound, not knowing what to expect. Almost instantly we heard the woosh-woosh-woosh washing machine sound of the baby on the ultrasound and there Baby was – heart beating and very much alive. I was relieved. Beyond relieved. Dr. G put me on light duty and told me not to take it very easy. I listened. I started getting dizzy some days and would have to lie down. I missed work once. When I came back I told my boss I was pregnant and he asked if I planned to return to work after the baby was born. I was pretty sure he legally wasn’t allowed to ask this. I said I wasn’t sure (which was the truth). I did my job. I did my job well. I brought up things that needed to be changed in the school and my advice was taken fairly well. Their website was a joke. They still typed things on typewriters, with virtually nothing saved on a computer. It was like the stone ages and it was only 15 years ago. The boss’s wife began to hate me and I figured this was because she had graded essays before I was hired and my boss and a coworker fussed over me once they knew I was pregnant – getting me water, giving me a stool to put my feet up, bringing me the mail from my box. One day I called in before work and said I just couldn’t make it that day. I was too dizzy to drive. Later that day my boss called back and fired me. I was pretty sure this was also illegal. I had only missed one day of work prior to this. I went to the Department of Labor and found out nothing could be done because the business filed as a religious organization. I remember thinking how Christian it was to fire a pregnant woman.

I kept myself busy with painting the baby’s room a soft green with a white picket fence and decorated with a Beatrix Potter theme, putting up framed pages from her books on the walls. One day I had sciatica so bad I couldn’t get up from the floor for a few hours. Another day I was giving Beau a bath in our tub and couldn’t get up from the floor again. He and I stayed in the bathroom for a couple of hours. He, of course, couldn’t jump out of the tub. It was kind of funny except for the fact that I was in tremendous pain. Other than that, my pregnancy was going well. My mother told me that she saw in the newspaper that Will had married his girlfriend, Molly, he’d dated since before prom in 1992.  She and I had gone to middle and high school together and somehow never had a class with her, but I’d always heard she was nice. I was happy for them.

I craved IHOP all the time. And orange juice, which was weird because I hate juice of any kind. Still do. I found it had to dress my plus-sized preggo body because no one made cute plus-sized maternity clothes. I bought everything Motherhood Maternity had in a 2 and 3X. I worried about everything. What to Expect When You’re Expecting was my Bible and I consulted it daily, as well as Babycenter.com. And I bought What to Expect the 1st Year in advance and read the first few chapters. I watched A Baby Story on TLC everyday. I knew more about labor and delivery than most medical students, I’m sure.

I was due January 15th, 2001. Then Dr. G changed it to the 10th, then to the 20th. It was like musical due dates. I would be induced on the 24th. Kim came in, as did my parents, Scott’s mom and grandmother (complete with fur coats), and Scott’s brother and our sister-in-law. I was a nervous wreck. The hospital was nice. I was induced with a cervical gel. Later that morning, my doctor realized I had asthma and was not supposed to have the gel that made asthmatics have complications. So, that was great. They started me on an IV of pitocin and had me walk the halls. My mom walked with me. After our second of third time down the hall I felt like a bowling ball was going to fall out of my vajayjay. I spent the rest of my labor in bed or in a rocking chair, until I was finally given an epidural. Epidurals are great. I would have one right now if I could. Before the epidural I was craving Taco Bell and made Scott go to Taco Bell. By the time he got back, they had given me something to take the edge off and I was completely out of it. Kim made fun of me. I do remember that. The baby was being stubborn and I wouldn’t dilate. Finally at 6:14, Molly Kathleen made her debut to “Who Let the Dogs Out” on VH1. The funny thing about having a Birth Plan, which is what all the books tell you to do, is that everything goes out the window when you’re in pain and drugged and just want the baby out of you at 6am. We forgot to turn off the tv. While in the middle of a contraction, Dr. G asked me if I’d ever had a mole on my extreme upper thigh looked at. I’ll never forget that.

And she was perfect. She was easy going and breastfed well, slept well, napped well, tolerated going places well, did fine in the church nursery (when I let her go to the nursery because what if something happened there?). I stayed terrified something bad was going to happen. Until now, I have only told one other person about the feelings that I had, only AnnaBess. Not even my husband knew of the anxiety I had. I couldn’t explain it. It sounded crazy. I would sound like a crazy person. I stayed up nights thinking about how I would tell my parents that something happened and Molly was dead. This played through my head constantly. There was nothing wrong with her. Our pediatrician said there was nothing to be concerned about other than she was in the 25th percentile for growth. The pediatrician said this was nothing to worry about, that she would probably catch up during a growth spurt or over a couple of growth spurts. I was not at ease. I didn’t believe him.

I was 26

Then we got news that KBR was moving us to Houston. Baytown, specifically. Molly was 9 months old. We were warned that few apartments would accept dogs and I now had that to worry about. A friend of Scott’s offered to take Beau, but something about them didn’t set right with me. Then Darla and Chris said they’d always wanted a basset. I warned them that Beau was extremely protective over his food and had bitten Scott, but otherwise was a great dog. I loved him. He was sweet and would take Molly’s socks off her feet when she was in the baby swing. He was silly and would roll over in clover when Scott walked him. Dar and Chris said they would love to take him in. I cried when we they met us at Scott’s mom’s house to take him, but I knew they would give him the best home possible. Dar and Chris loved Beau and a couple of years later would get another basset named George. There’s just something about a basset hound.

A moving service packed all of our things and our things went into storage while we looked for an apartment. KBR put us up in a very nice executive apartment in Clear Lake while we apartment hunted. It was a nice apartment. Molly slept in her pack and play and played in front of a big floor length mirror. We had only been in the temporary apartment for a week or so when I was watching the Today Show one morning and they said a plane flew into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. Shortly after that the second tower was hit. Suddenly, America was not the safe place I knew it to be and the anxiety over something happening to my baby girl became anxiety about everything. I called my grandmother. She said President Bush was headed to Barksdale (where I had hung out for a few months when I dated this pilot named Fred while I was in high school) to address the nation. This was all too close to home.

The nation went about getting back to normal and we found an apartment in Baytown. We found a pediatrician and started going to a local church. It was all very normal. Until one day when I went to the Super Walmart while Scott was home with Molly and had a panic attack on the bread aisle when there were approximately eight family members arguing in Spanish near the hamburger buns. Everything felt like it was closing in on me. The aisle became very small and narrow. I started to sweat. I could feel my heart beating hard and fast and I knew I had to leave immediately. I left my basket and went to my car. I couldn’t get out of the store fast enough. Once in the car, my racing heart started to calm and tears flowed from my eyes. The radio was on, but I couldn’t hear it – I could only hear my heart beating loud in my ears. And then it went away. This was the first time I knew it was a panic attack. I’d read online about them while I was in the middle of the move.

Now, looking back I can put check marks by all of my early panic attacks: in the Student Center while eating my taco salad at Tech; the time we were at an Olive Garden on my birthday and the servers started clapping and singing for someone else’s birthday and I was terrified they were coming to our table; when I had to leave a Saints-Falcons game in the dome in Atlanta because it was so big and there were little blimps floating around and I thought I was was going to die in our upper mid-level seats. All of those times I was convinced I was having a heart attack, but my doctors all said my heart was fine when I went in. All of those were panic attacks. I would not be diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder until 2006. I tried my best to manage the panicky feelings and racing thoughts and did a pretty good job of it for a while.

The anxiety about the baby grew worse. Our pediatrician’s office was on the second floor of a medical office building where the center was open. Once upstairs, there was glass that went up about four feet for safety. Every time we went to the pediatrician I was terrified somehow Molly’s stroller would go over the glass. Terrified she would fall. She wasn’t walking yet, she was crawling, but I would have never let her crawl around the track-like area around the glass. Still, I was unbelievably anxious every single time we went to that office. The glass scared me like nothing had before with my anxiety. Before an appointment I would think of how I would word telling our parents that their granddaughter fell from a second floor office. It became the white elephant of my nightmares. And it was completely illogical.

It didn’t help that it was the summer Andrea Yates was on trial in Houston for drowning her own children in a bathtub because of her postpartum depression/psychosis. Is that what I had? A pediatrician had mentioned “Baby Blues,” but this was something else. Did I have postpartum depression? I didn’t want to harm my child, I was simply terrified something would happen to her – something I couldn’t control. I could no longer go to Walmart. I could only go to the regular grocery store. And that was when I would leave the apartment. Most days Molly and I stayed in or went to the pool, but just the beach entry part where we could sit on the sand colored concrete and barely feel the water. I wouldn’t let her get in past her knees. I couldn’t let anything happen to her.

Then it was Christmas. Then it was January and I tried to plan Molly’s birthday party. But my grandmother was in the hospital and was diagnosed with cancer. We were told she wouldn’t have long. I loved my grandmother dearly. More than dearly. More than anything. When Molly was itty bitty I would nurse her while chatting on Yahoo messenger with my grandmother. She thought it was funny. Multitasking. I talked to her about a week before she died. She said she couldn’t go yet because too many people needed her. I couldn’t imagine my family without her. She had been sick when my grandparents and my parents came to help me unpack in October. We didn’t know it then. We didn’t know we only had a few months with her. And then it was January and Molly’s first birthday and then my uncle called to tell me I needed to get to Shreveport because my grandmother was dying. We went straight to the hospital after the almost 5 hour drive. She was still lucid and could see Molly and could tell me she loved me. I told her I loved her. We all did. I don’t know of anyone more loved that my Mammaw Patsy. And then she was gone. And we had to go on.

Molly started to try to walk, but wouldn’t master it until 15 months. I joked that she didn’t have to let go of a piece of furniture from her bedroom to the living room to our room. Finally she let go. And she was okay. And she would be okay.

And then I was 27. And Scott’s company started talking about sending us somewhere else. And they took our photos and we had to get passports and they sent Scott and I to visit Fort McMurray, Alberta Canada, where the sun was still up when we came out of a movie theater at 11pm in August. Molly stayed with his mom. It was our first trip without our baby and I was terrified something would happen to her. We went to a restaurant that spun at the top of a tower in Calgary. I had a panic attack in the bathroom. I was not getting better.

“Kid Things” by Counting Crows

There were things that went on in college that I left out, but shouldn’t have – only because they’re tough things to write about, but I’ve thought about it and some things need to be said. Some things we don’t talk about because they’re hard to talk about or difficult topics we’d rather forget happened. 

A girl on my floor before I was an RA in Dudley gave or at least attempted to give herself an abortion. I don’t know what happened to her. 

I don’t know what the situation was. I don’t know if she couldn’t go to her parents. I don’t know if she told her boyfriend or if there was a boyfriend or if it was a one-night thing. I don’t know if she couldn’t go to her doctor. Or if she had a doctor she felt comfortable enough to tell about her pregnancy. I don’t know if she was alone in the world and didn’t see another option. I don’t know. 

And I didn’t and do not judge her. That isn’t about being pro-life or pro-choice. It’s about being human. 

You see, there are a million ways to not see a way out of a situation, whatever it may be. And that’s not being callous or poetic. That’s the truth for many more people than you realize. 

When I was a Senior RA my next door neighbor attempted suicide. There were razor blades found in her room. It was very hush-hush. Her father was a dean of something or other. She disappeared. I don’t know what happened to her. She didn’t return to Tech before I left that winter. 

Again, I don’t know what the situation was. I don’t know why she attempted suicide. I don’t know if she had a mental illness. I do know that she was a pretty brunette, a freshman that I had laughed with in her room the week before. She didn’t seem depressed. She didn’t seem in crisis. 

So many people are hurting that you would never know were hiding something – something they believe in their hearts and minds to be unspeakable. Things that they cannot tell another person. 

I know because I’ve had hurts like that in my life. Maybe you have too. Maybe someone in your life, no matter how close or distant – maybe someone is hurting and is afraid you’ll think they’re crazy if they confide in you. The thing is, they’re not crazy. They’re in crisis. They just need to feel like there is one person they can talk to. Just one. 

This was taken two weeks before I went into the hospital last month. 

  
Do you see a person in crisis?