#girl help the mental illness has gotten onto me in the form of a silly turtles show

[lavender--system]

hello tumblr dot com i just wanted to say before i literally pass out that my new hyperfixation is rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles and it probably wont go away for months so. yup

okay lavs heading out now see ya 🏃🕺

[kleiner2296-blog]

My truth:

Last year, I literally had the hardest year of my life. In the midst of all the happy events going on (wedding, honeymoon, family trips, a newborn/infant), there was always this lingering cloud of sadness and emptiness. I was so far in my head, I just couldn’t get out. It was a time where breathing felt like a chore- where most days I would lay around and felt like I couldn’t get out of bed. Being a stay at home mom benefitted my depression in many ways. It was easy to put on a facade of a “put together mom, and wife”. Most days, my dishes went unwashed, laundry piled up, and the house went awry. Carter was always taken care of for sure, but some days it was so bad, I’d hand him my phone to play with just so I could stay in our dark room, lay around and sleep. Of course it was my anxiety that pulled through whenever someone had to come over. I was obsessive over what people thought of me, and sometimes the judgement that came with it- even if it meant just shoving everything into a closet for the time being. It was only then, that it was easy to just hurridly clean up and make my life seem so picture perfect.

On top of that, without going into any details, my marriage was just a bit rocky, and most of it (in my opinion) was stemming from my irritability and anger/bitterness. There has been so much resentment from many many things that have eaten at me for a long time in my personal life as a whole, and it was an easy target to put onto my husband, and it was unfair to him. I will probably be forever saddened by my behaviors and my choices to act on my emotion so carelessly. But, i’m happy to say that we are 110% again and most of that burden/trauma has been slowly lifted 🙂

I was diagnosed with PPD (For those that don’t know, it stands for Post-partum depression) later in 2016 around november/december if I remember correctly (Sounds crazy but a lot of 2016-2017 is literally a blur- which i would assume just happens with depression???) amongst my already existing anxiety panic disorder. I have had anxiety since I was pretty young, and was first diagnosed at age 16 where I was shipped off to a therapist to “help me”.

I had so much guilt from my failure of breastfeeding and so much stress on my plate from carter’s slow weight gain (Which now I understand he is small because those are his genetics lol... although sometimes it still gets to me). I was angry because it was always me up at night and all day while carter fought sleep (Rightfully so! Cj pays the bills and works very very hard!! we love him! He’s a FANTASTIC father and husband!!!) and the lack of sleep, plus crazy crazy amounts of insomnia stemming from my anxiety, were literally making me obsessive and paranoid for no reason about dumb things. One of my biggest anxiety triggers is time, and so every night i would obsess over how many hours i had to fall asleep and then panic when i wouldn’t fall asleep by that hour, and then repeat, until it was too late to even get a healthy amount of sleep. Unfortunately I took it out on a lot of people over simple small minded things. And if you’re reading this, and that possibly applies to you, I am sorry. I am not proud of how my behavior was during 2016-2017, but please know, that although it’s not an excuse, it also wasn’t completely in my control. 

***An example of how bad my anxiety got at one point: I was flying home to visit my parents and carter was just switched to Almond milk/soy milk because he couldn’t have dairy, and I literally went into a full blown panic over how I was going to get him almond milk in the airport/how i was going to feed my child just to get to where I was going. I almost considered canceling my flight over such a silly thing. I obsessed over it for days, throwing myself into a pit of fear that literally swallowed me whole- at that point I called my mom and just broke down- full blown panic on the phone over it. She walked me off the ledge and we came up with a game plan. I’m so grateful my mom understands how bad it can get for me... and over the dumbest things. Mom, if you are reading this, I pray you know how much you mean to me, and how thankful I am for you<3.***

April-June was a pretty scary time, looking back. I was drinking more often than I should have been to cope with my feelings or “lack of” feelings. Not crazy amounts, but enough to raise concern from my husband. I like to have an occasional glass of wine and have a few drinks here or there, but this was really different for me.

My bachelorette party, I got absolutely wasted and ended up having a major panic attack about what a shitty mom I was, right in the club we were in. I’m sure some of it was honestly me feeling typical “mom guilt” for just enjoying myself, but hearing some friends talk about that incident is a pretty sad thing for me. Although it’s easy to laugh about on the outside, parts of me knows how deep that was and how dark of a time it was, internally. I almost feel like it was a cry for help, but came out just as any new mom feeling guilty for “going out” even though I knew it was more than “going out”. It was an escape from reality.

Around March or so 2018, I started to feel like I had just a bit better grip on my anxiety. I was able to relax a lot with carter- even allow myself to let go enough for him to stay the night at someone else’s home. That was a big victory for me. My depression, however wasn’t getting better. I called my doctor and asked if there was any way to help me. She ended up revealing that my Mirena was probably the cause of most of my emotions. This was upsetting because I have an anxiety diagnosis in my medical history so knowing that, my midwife should have mentioned that there was a strong possibility of heightened anxiety and depression. She prescribed me birth control pills to take ALONGSIDE my mirena. So now, at this point, I was on some form of progesterone and the estrogen provided by mirena. Talk about hormone overload.

So a little more background info.... My insecurities started really taking a hit on my mental health as well. Anyone who knows me, knows that i’m just a vain girl. It’s who I am and I am okay with that. I’m in a vain industry, as a cosmetologist! Oh well! So with my mirena causing a lot of these mental health issues, my face also started breaking out even more due to the levels of estrogen it had. **Currently, my face hasn’t gotten a ton better, but enough for me to start to see the light. Sounds silly, but my acne was also a strong contributing factor of my depression at the time.**

The birth control pills my midwife prescribed were also supposed to help that issue as well. I gave them a shot, and unfortunately they didn’t help much. I have a nurse who comes to see me every 2 weeks to check on carter and answer questions I have or give me info about being a mom (I found this program through WIC, and have seen my nurse since I was pregnant every 2 weeks!! Highly recommend!!), and she and I discussed my options. After another panic attack during one of our visits together, she urged me to get some help, and we decided that taking my mirena out was probably what was best.

But here we go... *cue adulting problems*. We didn’t have insurance that covered the removal of my IUD. It was going to cost $400. So I put on my big girl panties and sucked it up- I mean, depression/anxiety is nothing when you live with it for a long time, right? I kept that mirena in until June 2018. We finally got advice from a family friend, and she recommended her doctors office who went above and beyond to make sure that my insurance would cover it. I got it removed!! I shit you not, yall. THE SECOND that mirena was pulled out, (NO EXAGGERATION), that cloud that had been hovering over me for so long, started dispersing- poof. just like that, i felt 100 times better. 

This leads me to where I am now. Sitting here, typing this long story. I pray that, even though I am willingly putting my truth out there on the interwebs, judgement won’t be too harsh, and that there’s someone who may get something out of this. One day, I want to look back on this blog, and see how far I have come. I want to live a better life, I want to beat my mental illness(es). I want to be better than I was the day before, and I want to feel immense love and satisfaction with myself. 

To the future Vannessa:

You are worthy. 

You are stronger than your illnesses.

You are resilient.

You are happy. 

YOU ARE FREE. 

P.S. This is a picture of my tattoo! Seratonin symbol that represents anxiety and depression