Preparation Meeting Opportunity

This year, the school I work at is requiring us to keep a blog.  Most are using it as a classroom website, but since I already have one of those, I have a started an educational blog.  Check it out!

http://mrskarnatz.wordpress.com/

Sometimes, we just need someone to lean on. That someone who inspires us and makes us believe, once again, that God has made us capable and talented in so many ways.  In my life, that person has come in so many forms.  My mother, father, sister, girlfriends, husband, and now, Kandee.  Her honesty about discouraging times and her desire to encourage others is overwhelmingly inspiring.  More than anything, I long to get back to the girl that inspires and lifts up.  Sometimes, this can be easy to let slip away.

Recently, someone I know experienced a deep loss. I am just coming out of a depression myself and found it difficult to sit and listen to what my loved one was saying and feeling.  Yet, I love her so much.  Her choice to share herself with me that way is meaningful and a direct reflection of how our relationship has grown over the years.  I sat, listened, silently cried, and worried over her.  This amazing woman and mother needs healing and peace.

There was a time when I would have tried to pretend I understood. I have been through far more than most girls I know.  But this … this isn’t anything I know or can imagine.  There was a time when I would have thought she should get over it, quickly separate herself from it.  The truth is, more than anything, people need to be heard.  People need to be listened to and met wherever they are.  They don’t always need advice or a quick fix.  That doesn’t work.  They don’t always need to immediately try to be better.

“Broken people are like shattered mirrors.  They reflect light more brilliantly and beautifully.” The ever-wonderful Kandee mentioned this on one of her video shares and I know I’ve heard that before.  Today, it really hits home.  Without understanding what pain feels like, it can be hard to touch the lives of people who are in pain or discouraged.

Our pain may not be the same, but it is shared. For a time, all of my reactive anger to being emotionally and mentally abused led me to wonder if I had anti-social personality disorder.  I kid you not … I was really worried about it.  That worry alone should have been the key to let me know that I definitely do NOT have this disorder.  I feel things too deeply, especially when they happen to other people.

Now it is time to be there for the people who really want it and need it. I’m realizing how much my loved ones gave during all of my heart-aches and troubles.  I didn’t have the energy to give back, because it was all being siphoned off by a snarling mountain lion disguised as a kitten.  That mountain lion would rip off my limbs with his silence, his snide insults, his terribly harsh judgments, and then turn around and mew like a kitten when I wanted to leave.

I don’t have time for people who will not be their true selves with me. Instead, I reserve my energies for life, for loving my beautiful friends and family, for letting myself be leaned on by those who need it most.

For those of you who know me well, you know that I thrive on the intensity of sweat-inducing workouts.  Getting on that bandwagon after being off so long can be really difficult.  So Mike and I have agreed to train for a 5K and follow the training schedule in Fitness magazine to help us get ready.  Our 5K of choice?

The NAMI 5K Run for Mental Health!  This run supports the National Alliance on Mental Health … definitely something worth running for!  I am excited to get my husband some proper running shoes and improve our health, while doing something beneficial to others.

Being 33 has its drawbacks. Those inexpensive drugstore facial treatments don’t always seem to do the trick with my leathering skin.  Okay, who am I fooling?  My skin isn’t leather yet, but I certainly have to work really hard to get it smooth and healthy.

That is why I was super excited to discover and try my new Youtube find Kandee’s “Lemon Trick” Video. With just half a lemon (or lemon juice), sugar and cotton pads or balls, I was able to gently buff my face to smooth, delicious smelling sweetness.  When you get older, the real shock is discovering a product that tightens and tones the skin without drying you out.  This does!!!

My skin feels really tight, but when I touch it, it is super soft and smooth! How crazy is that! I’m also over halfway through my water for today (50oz) and haven’t had a headache since I woke up.  Loving it! =)

Here is the link to “The Skin Doctor: Lemon Trick”.

After a long hiatus of job-hunting and overwhelming vacation planning … I’m back!  For me, job-hunting is really, really depressing, as I’m sure it is for most of you out there.  A couple of months before the school year ended, I found out that my position was being eliminated.  Needless to say, I stayed hopeful, but slipped into a medium depression.

I’ve been depressed before, so the way that I distinguish between having a hard time and really being depressed is in the way I function with everyday life.  At the beginning of the summer, I found myself thinking about all the things I wanted to do.  I was almost cheerful at the thought of doing them.  However, I just couldn’t muster up the energy to actually do them.  That is my biggest red flag.

The apartment really needed to be thoroughly cleaned from top to bottom.  I would make lists, set up a schedule, and then just sit there staring at the schedule feeling overwhelmed.

I had a really fabulous interview with a private Christian school for a fourth grade position.  It is everything I want with regard to environment, supportiveness of staff, cohesiveness of staff, and, of course, the ability to talk with students about faith.  It is everything I expected with regard to salary, but nothing that can’t be done with work in the summer as well.

On July 1st I accepted their offer of employment.  I was really pleased, but couldn’t muster the kind of happiness I was expecting.  I feel certain this is where I should be.  There is a connection there that is rare.  However, depression doesn’t end just because something wonderful happens to you.

I’ve been struggling since then to renew myself.  It wasn’t until a few days ago, when I borrowed a book on organization from my sister, that I had a breakthrough, and the upswing has begun.  I realized that I had been pressuring myself back into being depressed by expecting far too much from myself.  My lists included everything that needed to be done in the entire house on one sheet.  I figured that whatever I didn’t get done could go on the next day’s work.  My expectation was that I would get about half the list done each day.

This book said to break off tasks into really manageable chunks.  On Monday, I got started.  I still gave myself too much to do, without knowing it.  I was schlepping items from home to school, then driving the forty minutes to my sister’s to watch my nephews so she and her husband could go to a  doctor’s appointment.  I started at 10:00 in the morning and didn’t arrive back home until close to 7p.m.  After a trying incident with Direct TV(not DTV’s fault, btw) being installed, we dropped off my mom’s car and didn’t have a moment to ourselves until after 10:00p.m.

I looked at the remaining items on my list and cut myself a break.  I felt pretty good about what I’d done.

The next day, I mowed through a ton of items on my new list.  I still underestimated how much time all those things were going to take to do.  I find myself doing this a lot in my life.  I overburden myself with responsibilities, and then have to dig myself out.  Again, I allowed myself to be pleased with the amount of work that I had completed, especially when I have been dealing with a headache for the last few days.

Yesterday, my depression returned, but not as strong as before.  I didn’t get more than five items done on my list.  I was fighting a headache all day.  Mike and I went on a walk for the first time together since our car engine caught on fire.  It was nasty and humid the whole way, but we did it.

Then this morning I woke up with a killer headache again.  It is really hard to be logical and think when suffering from a massive headache.  Between getting some tuna in me (I’ve noticed at times that I get headaches when my body needs protein or just plain sustenance), taking a couple of Advil, and drinking several cups of water, I finally hit on a possible cause for the headaches.  DEHYDRATION.  To be quite frank, I think my cat has been drinking more water lately than I have.  I have taken to drinking far too much caffeine again, and when I don’t, headaches!!  So I’m thinking caffeine withdrawals and dehydration!

Oddly enough, one of the items on my list that wasn’t getting checked off was “64oz water”.  Maybe this is another item that I need to be realistic about and slowly increase.  So today, I’m going for 40 oz of water.  So far, I’ve had about 20 oz.  If I hit 40, I won’t stop, but I definitely think that I need to set the bar a little lower and work up to it.

The other aspect of besting depression that I have not been focusing on is exercise.  I have felt somewhat better when I walk with Mike, and I will continue to do so.  However, I realize that it is mainly intense exercise that helps me to chemically come into balance again.  We’re talking setting the elliptical at an 8-10 resistance and doing interval training that busts extreme amounts of sweat out of me.  I have a Bally’s membership, isn’t it time I started using it again?

No pictures this time, just a lot of thoughts.

Have you ever had a hard time rebounding from depression?

Sleep

Here is where I wish to be, caught in the fresh-pressed innocence and sleep.  It isn’t that I want to be a child again, rather, to enjoy having one of my own at some point.  Innocence is so precious.