There is a reason why I am still here.  I want to say it is because of my own personal need to live. However most days it is not. I have to say I do have more good days then bad these days. I haven’t been completely depressed in awhile. Actually since I quite my job I haven’t had any. I think the reason why is because I am with my children more.

 

They give me the will to live. They are reason that on my worst days I still get out of bed.  Honestly they don’t give me much of choice in the matter. They are 2 and almost 8 months. I can’t just let them fend for themselves. Though my two year old knows how to get to the chocolate which he pronounces “choco-let”. Pickle however has no teeth and is just starting to army crawl around. Even if it takes every ounce of will to get out of bed just to get them breakfast, I will. I will admit that there are days spent of the couch watching Nick Jr or Disney Jr.  It doesn’t take long for them to get bored with it.  If Big D realizes it is a nice day out forget about being a couch potato. He wants outside and he will go outside. He knows how to open the doors and will go out even if he is naked. He has on several occasion. Thankfully our neighbors are not close.

 

 

And it is not my children’s fault that I become depressed. They are too young to understand why Mommy gets this way. I don’t ever want them to grow up thinking it is somehow their fault. I know how children are. They are so quick to take responsibility for the burdens in their lives.  It is so strange. As adult we are so quick to blame others for the problems in our lives. It is always something or someone in our lives causing the hardship. Never our own selves. With children, they always blame themselves first. Mommy is sad because of something I did. You see it a lot in children of divorced couples. They always try to justify it with something they did or didn’t do.

My children are so free-spirited. Pickle is always smiling. He could have a fever of 102 and he will still be smiling. He will smile and just  go to anyone taking that big grin with him. Big D has a very adventurous take charge attitude that I admire. You can’t tell him he is unable to do something. He will prove you wrong every-time whether you want him to or not.  -_-  (He is the source of all my gray hairs) Their attitude is honestly contagious. How can you not smile back at that be gummy grin? How can you not be silently proud when you see them accomplish their goals? They encourage me to be more of an example. I want to show them that they can be more than anything they can imagine.

Everytime I think about giving up I think of the day Big D walked for the first time. Big D took his first steps for my exactly 10 years after my mother had be put in a psychiatric center. I was 16 at the time. I was a month into my senior year. I was not the most popular kid in school. I wasn’t on the bottom of the social chain but I was far from the top. My parents fought alot at the time and school was just miserable for me. I wasn’t originally from the area and even two years later I still felt like an outsider.  My friends were into playing catty girl games which only made me feel more alone. As a way to cope, I had started cutting myself. I tried to do it where no one could see. Then one night I had cut my arms and decided that the next night I was going to end it. I was so depressed and out of it, I didn’t realize I had even cut my arms. I woke up and dressed in my usual t-shirt, jeans and hoodie. I was actually at lunch when I realized what I had done. My friend had noticed the cuts on my arms when I had pushed up the sleeves on my hoodie.  I was a little unnerved that I didn’t know I had done that. I went and talked to a teacher I trusted. Well they had to call my mom and then she took me to be committed. From there I was diagnosed with depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. Then re-diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder when I started seeing my own psychiatrist.

 

I think about what if I didn’t tell my teacher. What if I had taken my life? I think about all the good in my life I would have missed out on. I would have never married my husband or had our two beautiful boys. Out of a negative came such positives. Even years later life had re-purposed a dark day for me.  That day is no longer the day I was committed, it is the day I saw my first son take his first steps.  Even with Pickle that day has special meaning, we went on our first outing as a complete family that day.

When the darkness  starts to creep up, I just look towards to the little lights in my life. I just look back and think, “If I were gone, I would miss moments like this: