Yes, I know that I'm not being politically correct. I don't feel like I have to be defined by terms and that I can embrace who I am... I don't have to embrace how those not in the "know" of being mental see me. Have you ever seen "As Good As It Get's" with Jack Nicholson? I don't have the outward idiosyncrasies (bringing my own plastic ware to restaurants or the "step on a crack" problem when walking down streets). I definitely DO process life a little differently. I've seen a quote by an Autistic organization that says those with autism (not me) may have a different operating system rather than different processing. I'm not sure where I stand but I'm willing to boot up with my son any time.
One of my quirks is that I do have a strong stream of consciousness utilizing information/quotes/scenes from movies that I've seen, such as The Color Purple, The Princess Bride, Shrek, Joe Dirt, Kangaroo Jack, Hell Boy, loads of cartoon movies, (I'm sure I've watched more intellectual movies but the fact that I can't list them off the top of my head must say something...). Everything in my head leads to a thought of something else. My thought processing is quite busy. Its probably a wonder that I got through college but I guess my neurons have continued to ping through it all.
I live such a powerful inner life. Its like I have my own "inner child" that views life in different, strongly colored, entertaining ways. I don't hear voices, and I'm not stereotypically "crazy." I do see others as being different, from me. From age 12, I've known that I am living under a unique state of mind, I don't know yours but I can empathize if you feel "crazy" and feel that you are a bit different in how you think, act, or speak, then maybe you, too, can see that being different isn't a bad thing. We are valuable human beings that make life worth living for those who are boring... :o)
I love me. I love my autistic son. I love my sort of "normal" fiance (yes, I just got engaged this week after being together six months). He is fantastic. Most people just see the regular guy, but he likes the same movies and we use "funny voices" based on what we've seen or how it fits into the situation that we have or are experiencing. FUN! He is my Mad Max, Master Blaster. I'm still deciding if he can run Barter Town. Awesome!
I have several labels but the one most socially acceptable is "Bi-Polar." I experience very deep depressions sometimes and alternately, goofy highs. My medications mainly treat the symptoms but I feel that some of the joy is sucked out. I have to work very hard to avoid the leeching of my happiness.
I guess that is what we go through if we're mental or not. We all struggle for our happiness not to be leeched. Grab your happiness (of course, don't hurt others or yourself) when the opportunity exists. Celebrate those who think, act, and speak differently and use that special-ness to help others find happiness too.
I'm mental but its good. I experience life in a new way every day. I love me. Do you love yourself, even if you're normal? Ping those neurons!
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Hoarding.. Is it just a TV show?
I know what you're thinking. Heck, I know what I'm thinking. How does something like the collection of over 30 cats happen to two working women, seemingly sane and educated, in a two bedroom townhouse? Really?
Do you know that Hoarding is a mental illness which is usually about loss? Some people are just drawn to replace or fill a void in their lives. My mom was one such person and I guess I was a co-dependent supporter. I say WAS now, because she lives in her apartment with her two cats, Snookie, and Leo, and one little Yorkshire Terrier, Piper. Mom is now starting to suffer from dementia and often doesn't remember conversations from minute to minute much less years ago where the pitter patter of little kitty feet roared with the strength of a pride of lions through house walls.
You see, all things in life, for the most part, start innocently in life. Mom and I were up to 8 cats (all well loved, cutely named, up-to-date on shots, and only missing their pictures with Santa to be called full-fledged children.) Puff was the first (and should have been our only) cat. One cat in a lifetime has this type of love to give... but I digress. She deserves her own story.
Three kittens were found outside our house, which I took to work and bottle fed. This started the downward spiral of cat infestation. Mom started doing "animal rescue" only she didn't work with an organization and the feral little beasties came to live in whatever nook and cranny existed in our home.
Mom started feeding whatever stray lived in our neighborhood despite the strong opposition of the home owners association and friends and neighbors. Remember the best girl friend who dumped me? (we'll revisit later) but you know, it ended ugly in cat land.
All clothes in our house had to be thrown away (and as an Executive in Northern Virginia, I had some nice clothes), carpets stank to high heavens... I just shudder now, thinking back.
I know that you say surely, this train wreck had to be stopped. I feel your pain, and my own, too. Mom was not to be swayed from bringing in one cat critter after another.
BABY IAN was born in June 2000. He was asthmatic. Now, I thought, Mom will give up the cats (I was already past my kitty craze - with the exception of Puff). I was bewildered. Didn't she love him or me more that the cats? The plans of Mice and Men often go awry. I thought the Hoarding could be changed with every logical argument I could make - this over a 2 year period. I guess I didn't know quite what to do, either.
All things come around though, Mom dropped off Ian at daycare and I found that she was putting him in a cat cage so that the cats couldn't get on him. One day, I was called by the day care. They let me know that Ian's outfit needed to be changed. I guess a cat sprayed him through the cage and he was covered in cat urine.
Okay - a brick smacked my head beyond all else. I picked up my baby, and my Aunt and Uncle let me stay with them while I devised an escape plan. Kitties were placed with every available organization possible and those too feral to be re-homed, went to the pound. I'm sorry if you are offended by the horror story but none of this is easy - especially the hurt and betrayal my Mom felt with me taking her animals and grandson away from her.
I'm not sure what wounds my mom was trying to heal - maybe a poverty childhood, or a crush boyfriend who left her with me (she was a Pentecostal preacher's daughter), or marrying an abusive man to give a 2-year old girl a daddy and us a home outside of a truck-stop and small apartment), or maybe moving back home to more poverty and a very angry young teenage daughter, maybe losses in jobs, friends, her mom and dad, loss upon loss. I don't know how my mom survived her life.
I can only tell you that happiness can grow out of this. Many elements pulled together for her to end up in her happy, neat apartment with Snookie, Leo, and Piper. As for Ian and I, we go to visit. The best advise I can give is to not ever, under any circumstance, hoard your love and support.
Live a life worth living.
Julie Anne Joyce
My kid is normal, dang it
My son was born with red hair and blue eyes. He was pink and squirmy and I have never felt anything so perfect in my arms as my him. One day, someone with a big book, and a proper degree would label him Autistic. Don't fall for this one, I did and I started to believe in the label, not my baby.
I kissed his little lips, dressed him in his blue outfit with orange duckies, and prepared to bring him home after about day 2 in the hospital.
I ate onions on a chili dog on the way home from the hospital which in turn gave him gas. My first night home from the hospital I was sure that there had to be a place to drop off crying babies that couldn't be pacified. Had I made a horrible mistake, or had I been gifted with the most wonderful little bundle of happiness and joy that could be bestowed on a mom? Soon gas passed (as it does with baby gas drops), and all becomes right with the world of babies and little clothes and oohs and awhhs over your baby also known as my "pumpkin pie."
So as I traipse through the years, along the timeline we stop at about age 3. I figured that I had created a small monster. Surely, I had spoiled this small child by having him at 32 and breastfeeding him for a year. Why was he so flipping obstinate? Surely, I did enough for him that he could just chill out and do what was expected of him, right?
Daycare had trouble with my now blond hair, blue eyed pumpkin that I loved with all my heart. This love was by turns looking into his eyes and knowing my miracle was PERFECT and also that he was so defiant he had to be the world's largest pain in the bahookie.
The world moves again moves ahead to about age 6 or 7. School was bookbags, new clothes, tears, and tears, and tears.. Rage, and some more tears. After a while, I developed a routine of shoving my bundle of joy into the back seat of the car, kicking and screaming (I didn't say I was an informed mom and plus, my kid looked normal, he was just being a spoiled brat for goodness sake, wasn't he?), and I dropped him off at the school where a Godsend principle literally performed a hand-off of my lovey boy/brat/?, and carried him into the school.
As I skip a bit further, I belatedly realize that a kid does what he can, he doesn't just set out to make you unhappy with him. Education and movements from elements of depression and many lost jobs over not making it to work on time, my bi-polar going untreated, and a profound realization that he needed treatment and so did I, occurred. (Now, I am an A D V O C A T E for my pumpkin pie. Remember that "degrees" can advise but you know yourself, your family, and your child best. Get help, of course, but you're bright, dang it and you have the knowledge of your child that no one else has.)
I PRAISE parents who "get it" that something just isn't right. But what if you are moving along your path watching Sponge Bob, and Teletubbies (when it hadn't been made into what it wasn't - sometimes a purse is just a purse), and Barnie. What if you have hugs, kisses, bubble baths, and your little perfect monster leaves the water hose on for 3 days before you catch it and you have a "come to Jesus meeting" with the water utility company. What if it all starts out with happiness and joy (after the first shocking sonogram where I finally agreed that, yes, I was pregnant, wow!).
I feel that I tried to do it all right, but somehow it wasn't enough, was it? Well, yes, after tears, prayer, saving birds that my son's cat brought in still alive, all of these things made my life, and his, worth-while. Our lives have been in therapy out the wazoo, and I continue to love but make mistakes anyway...
My family is pulling it all together or maybe just learning to eat the elephant one bite at a time. A joyful life can exist and sometimes it is living and breathing, co-existing with intense pain, but one emotion doesn't have to override the other.
Remember as Sponge Bob sings, FUN, Fun is for friends who do things together, U is for you and me, N is for anywhere and anytime at all, here in the deep blue sea. Remember, the blue onsies and orange duckie outfits picked out from Walmart and the hope you were building as you started the process of bringing him or her home.
Remember to build a life worth living.
Julie Anne Joyce
I kissed his little lips, dressed him in his blue outfit with orange duckies, and prepared to bring him home after about day 2 in the hospital.
I ate onions on a chili dog on the way home from the hospital which in turn gave him gas. My first night home from the hospital I was sure that there had to be a place to drop off crying babies that couldn't be pacified. Had I made a horrible mistake, or had I been gifted with the most wonderful little bundle of happiness and joy that could be bestowed on a mom? Soon gas passed (as it does with baby gas drops), and all becomes right with the world of babies and little clothes and oohs and awhhs over your baby also known as my "pumpkin pie."
So as I traipse through the years, along the timeline we stop at about age 3. I figured that I had created a small monster. Surely, I had spoiled this small child by having him at 32 and breastfeeding him for a year. Why was he so flipping obstinate? Surely, I did enough for him that he could just chill out and do what was expected of him, right?
Daycare had trouble with my now blond hair, blue eyed pumpkin that I loved with all my heart. This love was by turns looking into his eyes and knowing my miracle was PERFECT and also that he was so defiant he had to be the world's largest pain in the bahookie.
The world moves again moves ahead to about age 6 or 7. School was bookbags, new clothes, tears, and tears, and tears.. Rage, and some more tears. After a while, I developed a routine of shoving my bundle of joy into the back seat of the car, kicking and screaming (I didn't say I was an informed mom and plus, my kid looked normal, he was just being a spoiled brat for goodness sake, wasn't he?), and I dropped him off at the school where a Godsend principle literally performed a hand-off of my lovey boy/brat/?, and carried him into the school.
As I skip a bit further, I belatedly realize that a kid does what he can, he doesn't just set out to make you unhappy with him. Education and movements from elements of depression and many lost jobs over not making it to work on time, my bi-polar going untreated, and a profound realization that he needed treatment and so did I, occurred. (Now, I am an A D V O C A T E for my pumpkin pie. Remember that "degrees" can advise but you know yourself, your family, and your child best. Get help, of course, but you're bright, dang it and you have the knowledge of your child that no one else has.)
I PRAISE parents who "get it" that something just isn't right. But what if you are moving along your path watching Sponge Bob, and Teletubbies (when it hadn't been made into what it wasn't - sometimes a purse is just a purse), and Barnie. What if you have hugs, kisses, bubble baths, and your little perfect monster leaves the water hose on for 3 days before you catch it and you have a "come to Jesus meeting" with the water utility company. What if it all starts out with happiness and joy (after the first shocking sonogram where I finally agreed that, yes, I was pregnant, wow!).
I feel that I tried to do it all right, but somehow it wasn't enough, was it? Well, yes, after tears, prayer, saving birds that my son's cat brought in still alive, all of these things made my life, and his, worth-while. Our lives have been in therapy out the wazoo, and I continue to love but make mistakes anyway...
My family is pulling it all together or maybe just learning to eat the elephant one bite at a time. A joyful life can exist and sometimes it is living and breathing, co-existing with intense pain, but one emotion doesn't have to override the other.
Remember as Sponge Bob sings, FUN, Fun is for friends who do things together, U is for you and me, N is for anywhere and anytime at all, here in the deep blue sea. Remember, the blue onsies and orange duckie outfits picked out from Walmart and the hope you were building as you started the process of bringing him or her home.
Remember to build a life worth living.
Julie Anne Joyce
Friday, May 16, 2014
Weighty Issues
Today I will share with you something that is on my current to do list.
Do you ever have one thing that just keeps showing up on your New Year's Resolutions, or your discussions with friends and family (understanding that they usually bring it up and discuss how you NEED to lose weight), or where you begin to have private discussions with your Skinny Latte's and Popeye's Fried Chicken with mashed potatoes smothered in sausage gravy and a large O N I O N ring order. Whew, salivation is good because it clears the palate... I am having a food "glow" memory right now while eating dry pretzels instead of the good stuff. Sigh.
Once upon a time in High School back when Brook Shield's said nothing would come between her and her Calvin Klein Jeans, I, too, wanted to bend over backwards and slip my dainty 150 lb butt into a pair of straight legs that gaped at the back. I did just that by saving $50 in babysitting money (that was real money back in the day). Awwww, didn't I look good. I felt sooooo gooood.
Soon after my stupendous acquisition, we had weigh-ins for the Health Department or some other such agency tracking our height/weight disproportionate statistics (Jenny Craig must have been in on this scheme knowing that if she caught us fat girls early, we would flock to her doors as later consumers.), I just felt that I wasn't skinny enough to wear my Calvin's.
So, now I'm 21, exercising like a Jane Fonda wannabe and quite muscular and, boy, could my lungs push for the burn. Now, one of my first bonding experiences with mental illness raised its ugly head. A 50 ish male friend of mine thought there was something going on between he and I because I saw him as a father figure... Short story, I felt that this was all my fault and up to 220 lbs I gently added air and Ben and Jerry's to my previously svelte figure.
So now, forward to 32, I weigh in at 200 lb but I walked at least 3 miles every day (along with a love affair with the small Reese's cups (not the minis - they just don't have the right chocolate/peanut butter proportions - I'm a connoisseur and kids these day just don't know the real thing - so very sad.)
Okay, three months or so, after a breakup with a best girlfriend (no sex involved - just the regular girlfriend stuff when you exercised together to Richard Simmons with Sweating to the Oldies), I got pregnant with my son, who is soon to be 14 in June 2014.
With finding out I was pregnant (how many sticks can a girl pee on before she get the hint?). The next downward (or upward) spiral of weighty issues was about to strike.
I was in shock with the following responses: my best girlfriend dumped me, my mom walked out of the room (nothing said) when I told her I was expecting, and a 4-year dysfunctional relationship of booty calls (some love on my part, lots of cheating on his) plummeted downhill with his response of "I'm sorry." I was hoping for something more. At the end of the pregnancy, I was 240 lbs. Wasn't this all baby, pent-up breast milk, and a little fluid retention for good measure?
After baby, a year breast-feeding, working (my baby went into day care at 5 1/2 weeks), taking another 18 months to finish my Bachelor's degree, and a lot of life experiences that will be discussed in time (I can't tell you everything all at once that has taken many therapists years of crying, sobbing, and chocolate (that is just their part), my working weight, was around 270 lbs. Yes, I understand that I am past baby weight here and moving into way beyond John Cena and The Rock combined.
While I strive to be completely honest about the ups and downs of emotional eating, weight pain which is much worse than tattoos and child-birth, I wonder will I ever be happy without my "happy" foods.
I dunno, my dry pretzels look pretty good, but only because I just found my stash of M&Ms from last Halloween.
I hope you can appreciate my life experiences because there is always one more bowl of butter pecan ice cream around the corner.
Continue to build a life worth living.
Julie Anne Joyce
.
Do you ever have one thing that just keeps showing up on your New Year's Resolutions, or your discussions with friends and family (understanding that they usually bring it up and discuss how you NEED to lose weight), or where you begin to have private discussions with your Skinny Latte's and Popeye's Fried Chicken with mashed potatoes smothered in sausage gravy and a large O N I O N ring order. Whew, salivation is good because it clears the palate... I am having a food "glow" memory right now while eating dry pretzels instead of the good stuff. Sigh.
Once upon a time in High School back when Brook Shield's said nothing would come between her and her Calvin Klein Jeans, I, too, wanted to bend over backwards and slip my dainty 150 lb butt into a pair of straight legs that gaped at the back. I did just that by saving $50 in babysitting money (that was real money back in the day). Awwww, didn't I look good. I felt sooooo gooood.
Soon after my stupendous acquisition, we had weigh-ins for the Health Department or some other such agency tracking our height/weight disproportionate statistics (Jenny Craig must have been in on this scheme knowing that if she caught us fat girls early, we would flock to her doors as later consumers.), I just felt that I wasn't skinny enough to wear my Calvin's.
So, now I'm 21, exercising like a Jane Fonda wannabe and quite muscular and, boy, could my lungs push for the burn. Now, one of my first bonding experiences with mental illness raised its ugly head. A 50 ish male friend of mine thought there was something going on between he and I because I saw him as a father figure... Short story, I felt that this was all my fault and up to 220 lbs I gently added air and Ben and Jerry's to my previously svelte figure.
So now, forward to 32, I weigh in at 200 lb but I walked at least 3 miles every day (along with a love affair with the small Reese's cups (not the minis - they just don't have the right chocolate/peanut butter proportions - I'm a connoisseur and kids these day just don't know the real thing - so very sad.)
Okay, three months or so, after a breakup with a best girlfriend (no sex involved - just the regular girlfriend stuff when you exercised together to Richard Simmons with Sweating to the Oldies), I got pregnant with my son, who is soon to be 14 in June 2014.
With finding out I was pregnant (how many sticks can a girl pee on before she get the hint?). The next downward (or upward) spiral of weighty issues was about to strike.
I was in shock with the following responses: my best girlfriend dumped me, my mom walked out of the room (nothing said) when I told her I was expecting, and a 4-year dysfunctional relationship of booty calls (some love on my part, lots of cheating on his) plummeted downhill with his response of "I'm sorry." I was hoping for something more. At the end of the pregnancy, I was 240 lbs. Wasn't this all baby, pent-up breast milk, and a little fluid retention for good measure?
After baby, a year breast-feeding, working (my baby went into day care at 5 1/2 weeks), taking another 18 months to finish my Bachelor's degree, and a lot of life experiences that will be discussed in time (I can't tell you everything all at once that has taken many therapists years of crying, sobbing, and chocolate (that is just their part), my working weight, was around 270 lbs. Yes, I understand that I am past baby weight here and moving into way beyond John Cena and The Rock combined.
While I strive to be completely honest about the ups and downs of emotional eating, weight pain which is much worse than tattoos and child-birth, I wonder will I ever be happy without my "happy" foods.
I dunno, my dry pretzels look pretty good, but only because I just found my stash of M&Ms from last Halloween.
I hope you can appreciate my life experiences because there is always one more bowl of butter pecan ice cream around the corner.
Continue to build a life worth living.
Julie Anne Joyce
.
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Loss means change - not always a bad thing...
Today, I search for a new beginning.
My life seems so full of difficult stuff but really good and God-fulfilling too: I have an autistic child who is 13 and has for years searched for a way to kill me (all knives are hidden in the house); I've blown out birthday candles on birthday cakes since I was 16 trying to find Mr. Right (I think he is here but am I right? does a Mr. Right exist?); my mom is starting to suffer from dementia and she has the weirdest dreams such as she killed me in her apartment and Channel 8 was outside wanting to interview her... Yeah, it gets better but I have humor and a bright soul.
I'm 46, SWF, outgoing, Height and Weight disproportionate, animal lover (dog, dog, cat, and rat). This sounds like one of my old personals ads and yes, I've done it. I've never been mainstream for match.com or eharmony.
My Church on Mother's day CLOSED DOWN with a 2-week notice from the pastor. I've been going there for over 4 years and his new interest is the food bank not the Church. Wow! Just because a Pastor has a new summer home doesn't mean that he needs Sunday's free, does it? So I must pray that God opens up new pathways for me.
I have existed through child-hood physical abuse, sexual abuse, mental illness, my son's mental illness, at 13 being the mommy to a mommy who I felt like I raised after her divorce through dementia, through her hoarder's existence (we lived with 30 some cats in a 2 bedroom townhouse with 2 adults, 1 newborn asthmatic child, a dog that peed everywhere, ah sigh).
Had a psychotic break after 2 years off my meds while being pregnant and breastfeeding for a year.
I worked, commuted from Fredericksburg, VA to Northern Virginia for around 20 years also earning my AAS in Business and my Bachelor's in Communications. I have been an administrative assistant, a Human Resources Director, a Teacher, and crashed down to a couple of hours a weekend at Hardees where I was not a stellar employee while I was homeless in my van.
THIS STUFF IS NOT MADE UP. This is my personal story. I can relate with a lot of people and strongly hope that you can relate with me.
Please join my journey. I promise humor and growth in a life worth living.
Julie Anne Joyce May 15, 2014
My life seems so full of difficult stuff but really good and God-fulfilling too: I have an autistic child who is 13 and has for years searched for a way to kill me (all knives are hidden in the house); I've blown out birthday candles on birthday cakes since I was 16 trying to find Mr. Right (I think he is here but am I right? does a Mr. Right exist?); my mom is starting to suffer from dementia and she has the weirdest dreams such as she killed me in her apartment and Channel 8 was outside wanting to interview her... Yeah, it gets better but I have humor and a bright soul.
I'm 46, SWF, outgoing, Height and Weight disproportionate, animal lover (dog, dog, cat, and rat). This sounds like one of my old personals ads and yes, I've done it. I've never been mainstream for match.com or eharmony.
My Church on Mother's day CLOSED DOWN with a 2-week notice from the pastor. I've been going there for over 4 years and his new interest is the food bank not the Church. Wow! Just because a Pastor has a new summer home doesn't mean that he needs Sunday's free, does it? So I must pray that God opens up new pathways for me.
I have existed through child-hood physical abuse, sexual abuse, mental illness, my son's mental illness, at 13 being the mommy to a mommy who I felt like I raised after her divorce through dementia, through her hoarder's existence (we lived with 30 some cats in a 2 bedroom townhouse with 2 adults, 1 newborn asthmatic child, a dog that peed everywhere, ah sigh).
Had a psychotic break after 2 years off my meds while being pregnant and breastfeeding for a year.
I worked, commuted from Fredericksburg, VA to Northern Virginia for around 20 years also earning my AAS in Business and my Bachelor's in Communications. I have been an administrative assistant, a Human Resources Director, a Teacher, and crashed down to a couple of hours a weekend at Hardees where I was not a stellar employee while I was homeless in my van.
THIS STUFF IS NOT MADE UP. This is my personal story. I can relate with a lot of people and strongly hope that you can relate with me.
Please join my journey. I promise humor and growth in a life worth living.
Julie Anne Joyce May 15, 2014
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