To get caught up...

Will the real Darna stand up? March 2, 2007
I'm surprised I'm awake. My body is tired, as it always is, but my mind is racing. Since typing takes relatively little energy, my blog affords me an outlet, and maybe once I've dumped the contents of my mind onto the screen, I'll feel like I can sleep. Here's hoping, anyway. I've had a cloud hanging over me my entire life. From parental accounts of life before my birth, my parents didn't like each other much and my mom really had no business being pregnant since neither her physical nor her mental health was optimal. I've heard my mother talk about being homesick (as I would be if I'd traveled halfway around the world to live without knowing when I'd see my family again), so I imagine her pregnancy was not a terribly happy time. I know that even though my mother is often the last person I go to for any kind of support, it was a comfort to have her around while I was pregnant. So she must've really missed her mother when she was pregnant with me. Or maybe not. Who knows? I've long given up on trying to understand what drives my mother.Anyway, both of my parents have said that I almost died in the process of being born. But God had other plans, I guess, because I was born shortly after midnight on Valentine's Day- or maybe God's attention was diverted for a moment.... While my mother remained in her drug-induced sleep, my father gave me the gift of conflict and turmoil through my name: Darna Valentina. (His thinking was quite innocent, but it just so happens that Darna is the name of the Filipino equivalent of Wonder Woman, and Valentina is the name of Darna's arch-nemesis. That's a lot for a little girl to handle.)As I grew, it became quite clear that my sister Eara (such a cute kid!) was the apple of my mother's eye. I accused her (mother) of it a lot and she always got mad. With my grown up mind I understand that no one likes to admit or face ugly truths, and this was certainly the case for her. In addition to thinking the world of Eara, my mom didn't like me much because I was so much like my father. She actually admitted it a few years ago- sometime between wishing I'd die of Anthrax and hoping I had a child who made me as miserable as I made her. I think about all the horrific things I had to hear as a girl, and instead of being angry now, I am sad for the mother who clearly needed help, and so sorry for the little girl who had to suffer. NO CHILD can ever deserve to hear what I used to hear. It's taken almost ten years to stop the tape from playing in my head. I am just so sorry that it even started.I do not mean to paint a picture of a terrible childhood, or even to use my childhood as an explanation for what I am today. I have experienced some amazing and wonderful things, and when my mother wasn't angry or frustrated, she was teaching me things and encouraging me to dream big. Oddly, she's probably part of the reason I was a resilient kid who was able to survive. (But really, that credit goes to teachers and family friends who loved me even when I didn't think so much of myself.) Times like now, though, when I feel like a failure who is weak and inept, it helps to remember that I didn't exactly get a healthy sense of self to fall back on. Though I try to have as little to do with her as possible these days, she is so in love with my son that it appeals to my vanity...but I also know that my son is a piece of me who will some day ask her too many questions so that she might get annoyed and say something mean. So she doesn't spend much time with him unsupervised. How sad is that? It just shouldn't be that you can't trust your own mother with your child.I had a nervous breakdown during my senior year of high school. It came about because the social worker at my school, my guidance counselor, and my student council advisor all somehow saw through my "act," which was by now perfected to an artform. Forced to admit the horrible things that happened at home and how I had to put on a happy mask for the world, I guess I couldn't deny the ugliness of my life. I stayed in bed for a week. I hardly talked. I cried profusely. I didn't eat. I wished for death and contemplated ways to help it come quickly. But I did nothing. I know now that my guardian angel was sitting in my bedroom with me.Even though I'd admitted that there were bad things going on in my life, it wasn't until I was a sophomore in college that I worked up the courage to admit that I needed help dealing with them. I took a depression screening test. One of the volunteer screeners took me into a quiet room and cried when I told her what I'd been going through (spontaneous crying spells, a desire to isolate myself socially, making really dangerous and reckless choices, etc.). She referred me to ASU's Student Health office to see a counselor. The counselor's name was Kevin. He was a doctoral student and he was marvelous. He listened to me talk and validated my life's worth, which I have always seriously doubted. It was 1998. I'd been my mother's verbal/emotional abuse victim for nearly 19 years. I was finally diagnosed as having major depression.It is now 2007. I'm not my mother's victim anymore. But the depression won't go away. In 2002, I was lucky to find a terrific psychologist who put me in touch with a gifted psychiatrist. I learned I'd been sadly under-medicated, but that was fixed. When I started taking Wellbutrin XL along with Zoloft, I really started to feel better. They are such staples in my life that I didn't even consider going off of them, even when I learned I was pregnant. They have helped me be myself, and most importantly, I got through some major life changes without falling apart.But they don't seem to be working anymore. I'm not working anymore. I've fallen apart. In my last blog post, I shared the medical nightmare I'm going through...I've since seen a naturopathic physician who agrees with my lab results that I am seriously fatigued and depleted of necessary hormonal support. She's given me herbs and vitamins and is running more tests to find out what else (if anything) is causing my health problems. My therapist comments that I am the most depressed she has ever seen me in the last five years. My son failed his hearing test. He needs tubes put in his ears. I am gone from work a lot and it makes a lot of people unhappy. What's worse is that I am powerless to stop the unhappiness. I only work half a day, and even the thought of that exhausts me.Is my depression the reason for the medical problems? Or have my medical problems caused my depression to come back in full force? I don't know. What I do know is that I am tired all the time, and it takes much more to make me laugh and smile genuinely. And I wonder a lot more now what would've been so horrible about missing my birth. But I have no desire to eliminate my life- I truly do want to find my way out of this scary fog and stop dreading life so that I can enjoy it again. Thursday morning as I sat on the kitchen floor, unable to move and having difficulty breathing, I realized that my son, who put his face on mine and wiped away my tears, is my guardian angel this time around. So he won't let me push life out of my way. I can remember not feeling like this, so I know deep down that it is possible that I'll feel happy again. I just have to not give up. So much easier said than done. I am soooooooo tired all the time. Who I am and who I have been the last couple of months is not the real me. I want the real Darna back.

Blog Stew: February 18, 2007
How is it that all the women on HBO's Rome have curly hair? Is this historically accurate? I mean, I'm struck by how wonderful everyone's curly tendrils look. Makes me wonder if maybe Italians in the day (as these Romans were) had naturally gorgeous hair that was lost with their empire, and is only now recreated with time-intensive hair manipulation. Hmm...Musings about hair aside, I'm up so late on Sunday night because I took a three hour nap today (and there's no school tomorrow). I fell asleep and George didn't try to wake me up (for once) to get Alex juice or a snack. I haven't been feeling well since yesterday, so the nap was much needed; I have to admit that I take a lot of these "urgent" naps lately, since I'm ALWAYS exhausted. I wake up some mornings after sleeping eight hours, and I feel like I've been up all night. Chalk it up to whatever is going on with my hormones.For the record, I finally made an appointment to see an OB/GYN for a pap smear and woman's exam.....and what happens? Exactly what I feared would happen, which is why I hadn't been to see an OB/GYN since right after Alex was born: I got bad news. During the exam, there was nipple discharge. I'll never forget the doctor's surprise- and the matching look of masked shock- when it happened and she nonchalantly asked me if this had ever happened before. She tried to assure me that it was probably nothing, handed me lab paperwork (apparently she ordered a full blood workup), and encouraged me to call right away if the discharge changed at all.At first I wasn't too worried. But there's something about nipple leakage that's unnerving. It was odd even when it was supposed to be happening after I gave birth, but now that there's been no birth, it's especially strange. Long story short, my bloodwork showed some strange hormone levels (I think my eyes must've glazed over and rolled back in my head as I heard the doctor explain all of this in her foreign medical jargon because I can't really explain what she said) and my doctor was concerned about a pituitary gland tumor, which can often cause the strange hormone levels and the nipple discharge. Mention a tumor, and most people wriggle in their seats uncomfortably. I freaked out. I put off scheduling an MRI. I went into full denial mode. This is why very few people knew anything about this entire health ordeal- until now, that is, when I've come out of denial mode.My MRI came back showing no signs of a tumor. {sigh of relief} The doctor wants another few blood tests done to try to specifically pinpoint which hormones have strange levels so that I can possibly be put onto hormone replacement/treatment therapy. I'm so NOT enthused about this possibility. Even after all the blood loss and the torture of having to lay still for the MRI, the doctor tells me that we may never be able to pinpoint exactly what is wrong with me, and it could just be chronic fatigue syndrome. What this has to do with the leaky nipple, I don't know. All I really understand is that there's not a definite answer for what is wrong with me, and I may be tired for the rest of my days. Not a very heartening thought.This latest health roller coaster has made me really understand how much of an asset good health is for those who have it. I took mine for granted, and now I see that should I ever completely achieve it again, I will cherish every minute of it.I had an interview on Saturday morning for the Arizona Virtual Academy. I REALLY, REALLY want this job, since it allows me some flexibility in the hours that I work, as well as the major perk of being able to work from home. I think it went well, but it's hard to feel good about myself and my teaching attractiveness when I've had such a hard time of it with my job this year. I'll sum it up by saying that I've missed a lot of work, and while 90% of the time my absences have been unavoidable, I work on a team that needs me to be at work. Plus my principal clearly doesn't share my philosophy on child-rearing, which is that I'm Alex's mom first, so that's a rub. I was getting down on myself when I realized that though the circumstances are bad, my passion for learning and teaching hasn't changed- I'm still an awesome teacher because I work hard to plan the very best lessons and be engaging; I read and keep myself abreast of educational issues; and I still have so much to learn! I'm so grateful for Presidents' Day tomorrow (and completely confused about the proper placement of the apostrophe) and I'm going to bed now!