Invested



I'm sure I've complained about this before, but my kids don't like to eat. Like every other small person, they will gladly snack on granola bars all day, pick at a healthy dinner then beg for more snacks right before bedtime.

To remedy this, I'm making a greater effort to let the kids be part of the family food decision. I've let Logan pick out vegetables and fruit at the grocery store. He helps put away groceries (when he is in the mood). I've always cooked with the kids, but I'm trying to get them to take an even bigger role. I supervise them as they make their own pizzas and quesedillas. Vivian just figured out that she likes grilled cheese sandwiches. I let her make that too. Last week she said she wanted three types of cheese on her sandwich. Who was I to say know to such a foodie? I dug out three types of cheese from the fridge, and she was super happy to make and eat her sandwich.



 Tonight was a big culinary step forward  (in my eyes), Vivian breaded taliapa for fish and chips. She dipped the fish in egg wash then into bread crumbs and finally onto the baking pan. Her fish was perfectly coated. Yes, I had to shriek, "Don't lick your fingers!" She only tried it once, and she even washed her hands with soap afterwards without being told to do so.

Best of all, as I give the kids more control over what we cook and eat, they eat more. Vivian especially eats more when she is the head chef. Tonight she ate more fish than me!

Vivian says, "I like to taste the stuff when they're getting cooked, like a cake or some bread. I love when you (Mommy) make something for me."

Well said sweet girl.

If you were here to cook with me

For 6 months I've gathered a couple friends each week to teach them to cook some of my favorite recipes and recipes I've wanted to try. Some of the recipes are family favorites that I grew up eating and cooking, others are from the Internet and TV that I've wanted to try, but most are meals that I've been cooking for my family. I enjoy teaching the ladies how to cook home cooking with a bit less work and a lot of confidence building. I've seen the girls progress from not knowing how to cut an onion to doing happy dances because they look forward to using my super sharp knives. It took a while for me to notice the changes in my friends, but now that I've opened my eyes I see the confidence and joy I've helped them find. Last week I received a text message from one of the girls that said, "My husband said that the Shepard's pie is 'bang worthy.' Thanks!"
I'm tyring to figure out how to turn this into a small business. I'm excited but very scared. I should deal with my fears by crunching some numbers and figuring out a business plan. But the risk....
Anyway.
With Thanksgiving around the corner, I thought I would share some new found favorite side dishes.

“Dirty” Broccoli *easy and yummy enough for Thanksgiving

1 lb fresh broccoli

1 T water
2 T olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
¼ c. plain breadcrumbs (store bought or pulse a slice of bread in the food processor a few times)
½ t dried oregano
¼ t salt
Pinch of pepper

-Cut broccoli into spears and put in a microwave safe dish with the water. Cover tightly with plastic wrap. Microwave for 4 minutes. Drain water from bowl.
-While broccoli is cooking, heat oil in skillet over medium high heat. Add garlic and cook until you can smell it (1 minute). Add remaining ingredients and cook, stirring frequently, until breadcrumbs are toasted, about 2 minutes. Toss breadcrumbs with broccoli and serve.

 

Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes

I now crave these potatoes.

2 pounds Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and diced in 1 inch cubes
6 T butter
2/3 c buttermilk (room temperature)
Pepper

 -Place potatoes in a large pot. Fill with water so that potatoes are covered by one inch of water. Add 1 T salt. Bring to a boil over high heat. When water starts to simmer, reduce heat to medium and simmer until potatoes are fork tender (18 minutes). Drain.

-Add butter to hot pan. Melt. Add hot potatoes to pan with buttermilk and smash. Add pepper to taste.

What you can do

Now you know and love someone with depression. I’m not the first or last person you will love who has a bout with severe depression. This may not be my last go around with depression either. I’m doing pretty darn good now, but I have days when I see how easy it would be to slip back into deep dark days. I’d like to give you a few parting thoughts on this disease.

-Nothing you did made me depressed! It’s not your fault that I’m sick, and it’s not your responsibility to make me better.

-I need you. I’ll have moments where I don’t feel that I deserve your love, respect or even time. I’ll feel like I’m just going to pull you down into the mire with me. Don’t let go of me. Hold me tight. Keep me in your life and in your heart. I’ll push you away, or avoid you, but more than anything I need you to hold on tight while I go through this storm. I may not want you to intrude, but I need you to pester me and keep me connected with you and the world.

-Do not call anti-depressants ‘happy pills.’ Prozac does not make me happy. If I were the tin man, from the Wizard of Oz, then Prozac is my oil can. It makes my brain work smoother, and I need it regularly so I don’t get all ‘creaky’ and stuck. Life brings happiness not pills.

-Do not make every conversation a deep talk. I need distractions from my depressed thoughts. Tell me about bad reality TV, or great teenage books, or someone interesting you met today. Keep it light so that I can distract myself from the dark.

-I’m more than sad. Everyone has periods when they get blue, when they are sad. Sad is normal. Blue is normal. Being down is fine. When I’m in dark depression I feel numb, sad, broken, hopeless, worthless, isolated, worried beyond reason, and so very tired. When I’m normal sad, I can cry and crying is a release. I feel better afterwards. When I’m in deep depression, crying makes me feel worse and I can’t stop crying. Not being able to control my crying jags, makes me feel worse. It’s a horrible cycle.

 -I am not weak. I’m fighting every moment of my day to be as content and happy as a healthy person. Some days the routine tasks feel like a marathon. You may be strolling through days, but I’m battling to stay afloat.

The big question

I’ve learned that there is an unspoken question others feel the need to ask those with depression.

“Do you want to kill yourself?”

My answer is NO! No! I didn’t want to commit suicide at any point of this disease.

The tricky part about depression is that your thought process is so screwed up that though you have no desire to end your life, death is still on your mind. Thoughts and worries about death felt utterly unavoidable. They were both simple and complex. Death thoughts came in many variations.

“If I don’t pay closer attention when I drive, I could crash the car and kill both me and the kids. I must pay closer attention.”

“Follow the directions on my sleeping medicine with extreme vigilance so I don’t end up in a coma.”

“Can lack of sleep kill you?”

The worst moments were when I was faced with a situation that I just didn’t trust myself in. One day I was crying, and thought that maybe a hot bath would calm me down. A second later I sobbed and realized that I just don’t trust myself in a bathtub at that moment. I didn’t think that I would try and harm myself in the bathtub, but at that moment I felt so out of control of my mind that I didn’t know if I would make the worst choice of my life.

It was in that moment I understood how happy/healthy people commit suicide. When the mind is sick as as mine was at that point, I wasn’t able to make right or wrong choices. Depression made me feel completely detached from everything around me, even detached from myself. If I had tried to hurt myself, it wouldn’t have been a choice. It wouldn’t have been logical. It would have been beyond mine or your understanding because it was unfathomable. The sick part of me would have thought that putting my head under water and letting everything go was good.

It wouldn’t have been me, the Michelle you know. It would have been the sickness.

So…yeah…this is a deep discussion. I hate having to ask you to think about this. I hate showing such a dark part of me. But I need you to see that in the deep moments of depression, a person is walking a fine line. The mind is battling to remain sane. The world looks bleak and you feel  SO isolated. I felt numb, confused, exhausted, broken, worthless, afraid... all at once.

Here’s the kicker: Don’t make your first question to a depressed person about suicide. It’s insulting.  We don’t want to start off by showing you the deepest darkest part of our crazy. But…if you know someone who is depressed and the depression is getting worse…if you’re worried…if you love him…ask if he thinking about hurting themselves. Remind her that life is here waiting for her to get healthy again. Remind him that the world is wonderful and joyful and he is part of what makes it that way. Tell her that the negative thoughts in her head are not true. If she ever needs someone to be the voice of hope, love and strength when hers is lost…be that voice for her.

I have a story to tell you

I’ve been absent from my blogs for a while. Partially it was due to some of Dustin’s work stuff (long story), but mostly I’ve been silent because I’ve been struggling with clinical depression.

From the beginning of this process, I wrestled with how to explain this to people. I could keep silent and keep my story to myself and my family. I didn’t want to be the person who used depression as an excuse. I didn’t want to tell my story the wrong way and have others pity me.  

In the next few days I would like to describe how depression affects me. Through my story, I hope that you will see that depression is not just having a lot of sad days. It is scary and humbling, but it is making me a stronger person. I’m glad for the personal change.

Please enjoy

Breakdown

I think I’ve been teetering on the edge of serious depression. Keeping my patience with the kids was getting harder by the day. Little challenges like getting the car registered required as much planning as an Artic expedition. I cooked dinners that were too salty, too bland, raw, burnt, or illogical (Greek salad with fried rice). The worst part was decision making. I felt like my mind was wading through mud as I made decision. Looking back, I think I’d felt like this for months. I could manage life, but it was a lot of work to get through a normal day. I was fighting everyday to find happiness.

In August things got worse. I can’t say what made me worse, but I went from treading water to drowning in life in about two weeks. I yelled at the kids all the time. Poor Vivian couldn’t do anything without me scolding her. One day she told me, “I had a good dream. You didn’t yell at me and we had fun.” I think my heart broke. Then I started crying. When I’m feeling normal, I cry to work out a problem and when I’m done crying I feel better. This sort of crying wouldn’t stop. I would slump against the wall in my closet and cry for nearly an hour (a couple times a day), and I wouldn’t feel better. I would feel ten times worse than I did before.

My kids are the best. One more than once occasion I would hear them whisper outside the door, “Mommy is crying. We need to make her happy,” then they would pop into the doorway and make silly faces at me to cheer me up. This would make me cry even more because I felt like I didn’t deserve children who could be so wonderful. I yelled at them all the time. How could they want to make happy when I was always making them cry?

I was more than sad. I was broken.

Picasso's Woman in the mirror. Exactly how I felt.

I couldn’t sleep. I’d wake up at 3 am and not be able to go back to sleep. I would pour a bowl of cereal, and stare at it. I couldn’t make myself eat it. My appetite was gone, gone, gone.  I made lists for everything. I even had to put the most mundane tasks (brush teeth, do dishes, get gas)  on my list because I couldn’t remember a thing.  Nothing was engaging. I couldn’t focus on TV or books or sewing or any of the hobbies I enjoy. I knew I should have enjoyed fun times with my family, but it was like watching the world from an aquarium. Everything was muted, and I had a buffer between me and the rest of the world. I felt miserable, trapped, isolated and safe all at once.

And I stressed. Oh my, did I stress. I know now that it’s called cyclical thinking (worry). You know when you get a song stuck in your head? Well I had unfounded worries stuck in my head. If it only bothered me for a couple hours a day, I would have been fine. That was not the case. I worried all the time. I couldn’t fall asleep because I was worrying. Then I would wake up at 2am because I was worrying and then not be able to fall back asleep because I was worrying.

It got worse and worse…One Thursday I couldn’t stop crying. The image of a Picasso painting of a fractured woman popped into my head. I finally knew what in the hell Picasso was trying to show the world. Depression is when you are so broken that you can’t even recognize your own mind. I felt fractured. I didn’t even recognize my own thought process. That scared the shit out of me.  

Then I went to my doctor. She diagnosed me with clinical depression.

I was filled with relief.

Not my imagination

I am not a girl who gets sad when diagnosed with a medical problem. Every time my doctor tells me there is something wrong with me, I feel great relief because I now have name for what is making me feel the way I felt. With a diagnosis I can see a path for getting better.

Knowing that I had clinical depression was wonderful. I now knew that my brain was a bit broken. My brain chemistry was out of whack. I had felt like I was weak. Couldn’t cope. Broken. Overreacting. Stressed out...but now…now I knew that it wasn’t me being unable to deal with life. My brain was just not working right.

Here’s what you may not know about starting antidepressants. Things can get worse before they get better. I thought I had hit rock bottom of personal insanity, then I started Prozac. For a week I was worse. I couldn’t focus. I cried more. I simply couldn’t eat. I lost seven pounds in a week. I couldn’t sleep.

I had many, many moments when I thought that the cure was worse than the ill, but I started seeing little improvements. I worried less and had moments of joy. I should have felt hopeless, but I saw that I was getting better.  I finally begged my doctor for some Ambien so I could finally sleep.

Sleep helped. A lot.

I still had days when I couldn’t get off the couch. All I wanted to do was lie on the couch and stare into space. I couldn’t even pay attention to TV. The TV would get turned to E! and before I knew it I was watching hours of “Married to Jonas”, and I didn’t care.