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A good evening can turn south so quickly when living with me. Which is also not unexpected after the day I had. The key points that started to unravel my manic stability:

  • After being a non-functioning manic the past five days (lots of alone time, no desire to clean up after myself or others, struggle to motivate myself to get up and actually move toward starting a new task (required or not), extreme exhaustion, excessive sleepiness) my bedroom had become messily cluttered and started to feel that way last night. Having not dealt with the issue last night caused an exponential increase in “pressure” revolving around the messiness that “feels” like it is screaming how neglectful I have been.
  • Payday was Thursday. I had my mealplan and grocery shopping list done by Wednesday night. I had made mental plans to do the grocery shopping early Thursday morning before the household woke up so I could start my mealplan fresh and keep details on how it was working out for me. Wednesday night Patrick told me he wanted to do the grocery shopping this week. Fast forward to Saturday afternoon (today) and we have already spent $61 of our $100 food budget on a dinner out and quick food supplies to last us through Thursday evening that somehow stretched to Friday which was further stretched to Saturday by purchasing a $21 dollar meal from Pizza Hut ($10 dinner box for the kids and $11 large for the adults – of which the dinner box has been polished off along with half of the large – which reasonably gave the girls dinner on Friday and then a lunch because both Patrick and I were exhausted and couldn’t get ourselves motivated to do any active parenting until sometime after 1:00 – which gratefully brings the cost of the per meal to $10 (still too much in my manic mind) – but still inches my manic trigger closer to explosion). Since the grocery shopping wasn’t done when I planned extra mania has been accumulating every time I have to take myself to the kitchen to scramble to find some semblance of utterly useless crap that I can arrange into a presentable meal that I can snap at my children to eat because “some people have less to eat than this and would happily eat every last bit on your plate” [The asshole guilt trip parents have to lay on their children to get them to eat what no child in their right mind would eat unless the only choice left to them is eat this or go hungry] And so because I don’t have money to buy individual ingredients to make palatable food for my children, when the pantry is bare we are literally stuck with whatever creativity you can manage to create with eggs, butter, milk, sugar, bread, peanut butter, and jelly. Thank god my children love PB&Js. They are tired of scrambled eggs, french toast, and filling up on “dip” eggs. But I digress – I could continue to elaborate how this tiny detail of Patrick not understanding when I do the work to plan meals and make shopping lists, he needs to make that a top priority project to complete. Not getting up at 6:00am to grocery shop is understandable. Postponing shopping until after work on Thursday sucks donkey balls but is still understandable. Beyond that and my manic trigger starts flashing and taking furious and fevered notes on every opportunity he had to go to the store and get the things I need to make my life easier to get through. And yet somehow the priority of giving me groceries to cook food for the family with the extreme beneficial bonus of calming my mania somehow gets pushed to the bottom of the list to be postponed until I lose it and do the shopping myself (now with the entire family in tow to make the whole process that much more exhausting, draining, destabilizing, manic exponentializing, and people management annoyance producing).
  • After quickly moving through the store with the family being on some of their best behavior I can remember in any of our recent excursions to the store, things started to unravel quickly. My stomach was cramping badly, my legs were feeling weak and unsteady, my bowels were churning, the baby was fussy (because we had to skip her nap so the family could go shopping in order to have actual food to prepare for dinner), and my social seclusion trigger was in full alert. We rushed to the checkout and somehow despite all my planning and substituting cheap inedible swill in to replace what people actually need but can’t afford we were $100 over the $100 I planned on shopping. That brings the total for food we spent to last us two weeks cost $260 when Patrick and I sat down and budgeted to spend $100. I was crushed. I worked so hard to be so frugal. How did I mess it up so bad? I could barely contain the tears to make it out of the store. We only figured that we would have about $300 leftover after the “pay or we don’t give you service” bills and groceries and our $80 allotment for gas. $300 to get school supplies for the girls, household supplies we are out of, and then whatever is to spare to obtain “medication” for me. $160 of that is gone and it is only Saturday. $140 to last two weeks is scary. Knowing that the $140 still has other obligations to satisfy is terrifying. Knowing that now we cannot get “medication” for me for another twelve days because money is far too tight is downright crippling. But I have to keep going so what other choice do I have?
  • After loading the car up with groceries and people, my “outside world” facade crumbled and I started silently streaming tears. Prudence was worried. Daddy was trying to Daddy the situation. And somehow because I was crying, rapidly trying to work through my sadness at having overspent and unable to communicate anything really understandable beyond my tears, “I” became the reason why we wouldn’t be going to Target right now because first we have to get home and let Mommy cool down. The excitement the girls had built up for their chance to spend their hard earned money fizzled in a heartbeat. Even in my manic state I know we never come back out a second time in a day after adventuring somewhere as a family. And so now the guilt of being too emotional added pressure to the manic trigger button because so easily the finger gets pointed at me when everyone fun or excitement is dampened by my inability to cope with the world at large.
  • When we got home I quickly made macaroni and cheese, green beans, and fresh grapes for a meal (not planned for “lunner” on Saturday but rather lunch on Friday) but a good substitution considering I was beyond exhausted and unable to fathom processing meal ideas and cooking protocols) and headed upstairs to solitary confine myself to my room for alone time and medication. Because the girls were disappointed about not going to Target and because Patrick had pinkie-promised Patience to go on a walk, he had assured someone in the car that they would be going on a walk. While the girls were eating Patrick went comatose because he had stayed up all night playing video games (understandable considering he never gets any time for “his” form of entertainment) and therefore my beyond dangerously necessary alone time was frequently punctuated with interruptions from the children about when Daddy would take them for a walk. Somehow cooling down while the children ate turned into making them wait two and a half hours to go for a walk around the block. My manic mom trigger was raging and yet despite having blown a fuse over his utter disregard for how much the children have to give up on the simple things they want to do to accommodate my “special needs” I was able to maintain a calm exterior and continue trying to push Patrick out the fucking door without seeming like a lunatic bitch wanting to rip his head off for promising his children something and then procrastinating the hell out of giving them what they wanted while spouting some parent bullshit that “children have to learn to be patient”.
  • While almost getting Patrick out the door on his walk with the girls, the 18 year old prostitute Patrick’s cousin (the leech of a roomate for which I left the signs for) invited to crash a night and who has since spent every night in our house eating came parading into our house (without knocking) in full prostitute wear along with some unknown 14 year old girl to begin changing her clothes in the middle of MY FUCKING LIVING ROOM WHILE MY CHILDREN ARE STANDING THERE WATCHING THE CRAZY BITCH. WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK IS WRONG WITH MY LIFE? What normal person or even abnormal person has to deal with a prostitute child stripping in front of innocent children? How in the ever loving hell do you anticipate that level of bullshit? And how in the hell am I supposed to protect my children from that? That rude, overreaching, assuming child (who was never properly raised by a loving parent from the stories she has told me – which are mixed with stories of complete fantasy including a real gem where a man proposed to her with a 54 carat diamond ring after knowing him for a week after staring at each other for five minutes in an airport).
  • And while the manic bitch is raging at this child for being so rude and inconsiderate, the eternal mother in me is weeping for a child, so lost at such a young age and the protector inside of me desperately crying out to help someone desperately in need of a helping hand, while the wise old soul I wish I could drown out reminds me yet again – “You can’t help someone else before you are first able to help yourself”. A torrential downpour of overwhelming and near indefinable emotions swirls around this point.
  • My manic savior stepped in when I couldn’t do what needed to be done and took care of business. She let the girl know that she was a guest of Brandon’s and as such was only welcome in the house when he was there to keep an eye on her. After staying far too long after I asked her the first time to leave the house, once again my manic savior had to step in and tell the unwelcomed stranger in the house to go and wait on the porch for whatever reason she had for coming back to the house.
  • Major guilt trip repercussion for falling back into my manic bitch because manic savior is not “socially acceptable” and does not “rub people” the right way despite scaring people away when I am about to lose my mind and feel the potential for “crazy buffoon” level mania.
  • Once Patrick started his walk and the prostitute was locked outside on the porch I went upstairs to tidy up my messy bedroom while I could do so with full attention on the task and no possibility of children interrupting my chores….. or so I assumed there was no possibility of being interrupted. I didn’t factor in the child sitting on my porch who did not listen to me when I told her to grab all of her things when she left the house. Therefore shortly after going outside she began knocking on the door to be let back inside. My manic side allowed that if she had listened to the person living in the house and followed instructions she would not need back inside and so she could wait outside until Patrick came home. So throughout my entire “supposed to be kathartic” sprinting cleaning session, I had to battle with the annoyance of knocking, the guilt of ignoring someone, the pressure that I might be acting like a total bitch, the pain of leaving a love-deprived child outside to beg for entry like a dog, and the knowledge that even if I let her in my chaotic swirl of emotions would only become more unstable.
  • Patrick came home, things were calm for a bit, got the baby to bed, and Patrick left to go pick up the backpacks that Grandma and Grandpa has purchased for the girls leaving me with the loose responsibility of watching the girls (means I seclude myself in the bedroom and tell the girls what they can do while I get my alone time, knowing they are intelligent enough not to hurt themselves seriously, trusting they will follow the rules, and believing wholeheartedly that being downstairs plopped in front of a screen is better than dealing with a Mommy who has a paperthin trigger that might blow at any moment. Sadly, by this point even so little active responsibility is too much for my overwhelmed, overworked, and overly exhausted mental processing capabilities. But you press on because there’s no other option.
  • Moments after Patrick came back home, leech roommate and prostitute come back to the house as well. Too much for me to handle.  Patrick and I end up bickering because I want to go down to the kitchen and gather up all the groceries so the inconsiderate fucks who eat all our food because they don’t have jobs and feel that people who do have jobs and do have food should share everything they have with the pathetic losers that fail to try anything productive to support themselves aside from latching on to the closest fountain of perceived money and assumed generosity. Blah blah blah my manic tirade started going. Directed at the nice guy who goes to work, pays his bills, provides for his family, helps decrepit losers, and is working himself to keep giving more to the point it is stealing his health.  He snapped and ran off saying he didn’t want to talk about this, which is a good resolution for us because my manic rant never turned angry, never got loud, and never blamed Patrick for anything other than not standing up to people undeserving of perpetual generosity.

The evening we were looking forward to spending together. Ruined because of all of the above bullshit that ALL HAD TO HAPPEN in order for me to lose my cool at the end of the night and my inability to calm myself before killing my chance to spend the night happily with my husband rather than angrily, sadly, deflatedly, and earnestly pouring my heart and soul into a blog post praying that someone, somewhere, anywhere will reach out a helping hand and tell me how I am supposed to drag myself out of this hole my family is in when it seems like all odds are stacked against me to destabilize everything I am working towards completing.

I want to help the world. I want to help people. I want to help my family. I want to help everyone so I can finally be free.

Why does that have to be so hard?