I often think that I must be crazy. Is that common or is it just me? Of course, they say that if you have dropped more than 10 hits of LSD in your lifetime you are legally insane. While my teenage years were a whole lot more tame than most of the people I was hanging out with, that describes just one of my many adventures in the wacky world of LSD (it was my drug of choice). Thank God I came to my senses before I burned more holes in my brain.
Aside from that I am too much like my mother for comfort. I find it very easy to turn off the world, tune out of reality, and wrap myself up in my own little fantasy world, the one where everything is ok and there are no problems and no violence and no hatred and everyone has enough to eat. It's very boring, but it's comforting and familiar, and it was indispensable during my childhood when my mother was involved with a series of very abusive men. She lives in that world constantly, which makes it hard for me to hate her for not protecting my siblings and myself. I understand her need to escape and I engage in the same method she uses when life is too painful for me.
I am an extremist. It is always all or nothing with me. I don't necessarily feel compelled to stick with either, but seem to switch back and forth as my moods allow. Right now I am in a nothing season.
I also have anger issues. Namely, I don't get angry. My experience is that when people get angry they do horrible things. When I am pushed far enough to get angry, I feel out of control and I lash out. So I do not get angry. If I find myself in a situation that should make me angry, I back away slowly. In the absence of that option, I get depressed or sad. Needless to say, I cry easily.
Then we have my husband. My husband is schizophrenic. It's not horrible, on a day to day basis you would never know. But once, oh, every six months or so he has a breakdown, complete with visual and auditory hallucinations, paranoid delusions, and extreme anxiety and panic attacks. These last about 24-48 hours and are usually brought on by extreme stress, which is pretty much unavoidable with three children and a net income of about $25,000/year. Of course he doesn't remember the first detail about what happened during the episode or any of the horrible things he said to me while I was trying to help him come back to reality. Since he doesn't know how bad it is, but he does know the awful side effects the drugs gave him when he was a teenager, he refuses to get medication for it. Instead he smokes pot (always *outside* of the house) to take the edge off of his constant anxiety so he can function as a normal person for our family. He is also plagued by feelings of insecurity and a constant need for perfection from himself. He gets angry when he can't live up to his own unrealistic standards. That's why I don't let him cook. It's never good enough for him, even when it's great, and his attitude ties my stomach up in knots and then I can't eat which reinforces his belief that it's no good. It's a vicious circle and I won't allow it anymore. Knowing all of this, you may think that I am more like my mother than I care to admit, which may be true, but I am confident in my choice of men. To avoid going off on a long tangent that is unrelated to the topic of this post (and which I actually just edited out), I will only say that this is just a fraction of his personality and that the majority of the time he is a loving, supportive, and devoted husband and father. I will have to leave the more sane aspects of his personality for a different post!
So we are doing the best we can to pretend that we are normal, happy people so that we can hopefully raise our kids to be reasonably normal, happy people. And praying that we don't screw this up too badly.