Tag: millennials

Lent

Day 10: A taste of our future

Alexandra Diane

What advice would you give to your teenage self?

I haven’t been a teenager for a very long time. Over twenty years have passed since I had high expectations of what my life may be. I think back to what my life goals were and how much pressure I put on myself in some areas, and how I let the world pass by in others. Sometimes I wish I had more guidance on real life struggles rather than the obsessive thought process of college. However, none of that compares to the conversation I would have loved to have had with my fifteen-year-old self. 

I would love to hold her and tell her to let go of all her pain. She is beautiful and the pain she feels daily will one day fade away. That she isn’t crazy or a hypochondriac, the doctors that she’s been going to have been awful. Instead of doing the research, they were lazy and failed her. But her mother never did. She needs to appreciate how much her mom does, spending many days off in and out of the doctors trying to find out why her daughter’s body is attacking itself. 

I would tell her to watch for her brother. He’s suffering in his own way. He bottles up his emotions and releases them in the only way his brain can process. What you do for your four years of high school pulls him from his dark place. But keep doing that in college. You don’t want to lose your bother. Thankfully, you don’t. However, you won’t find out until years later you came close to it.

Your older cousin becomes more than that. She fills the void of an older sister. One that you are so desperate to fill. Even though she is 16 hours away, she becomes your best support throughout all the emotional struggles you go through as a young adult. Virgina becomes your solace and eventually you two travel the world with each other. Yes, you have friends outside of blood, but you will be so surprised by how close you two become. 

You are about to meet two of your closest friends in high school. You’ll spend four years studying film in high school, then go to college, and eventually work together before she moves to Virginia. Instead of mourning your loss, you two make plans to spend your summers together, because, as fate would have it, somehow you both end up working in education. Your other friend will also be by your side in college, though she drops out. Your kids have grown up with each other, or as much as you can, for having three kids in sports. P.S., that’s like the hardest thing about being an adult.

The bond you make with another you’ve shared the same name with since first grade is out of a pain no one should endure. Fail first marriages, abuse, rebuilding one another. Nevertheless, there is something to be said about this. Alex’s are strong. We are tenacious. We are crazy but support each other. 

You will meet two people in college, one male, one female in the strangest of places. The male you meet at a hookah bar during an open mic night. He now knows your innermost secrets and you torture him daily about finishing editing your writings. He is your best friend outside your husband who we will get to in a minute. Your female friend becomes your other half. You met her at a gymnastic studio and bond over how annoying children are when they are trying to kill themselves on a balance beam. 

Lastly, love. Don’t worry about love. Don’t search for love. I want to tell you to avoid all the pain that I have gone through. But that pain has made us strong. It has made us reliant. Those dark moments give us the ability to bond with the man who gave you your first kiss. He reaches out to you after what feels like a lifetime. You don’t know it then, but you’ve saved him. He was going to eat a bullet, but the universe stopped him when you said “Hi” thirteen years later. 

Actually, your friendship has saved many people. You never give up on those who are diving into the darkness. You are that annoying friend who won’t let people wallow in their misery and that’s sort of passed on to teaching.

So 15-year-old Alex… hold your breath. Shit is about to get real. 

Lent

Day 8: Therapy 101

Alexandra Diane

Today I took the first step in actively working on my mental health. I had an hour-long session with a therapist. This isn’t my first time with therapy. The last time I sought help was to deal with my postpartum depression and anger. However, that ended quickly after the therapist said to me, “have you ever been to therapy before? Bec” Because this isn’t how it works.” The woman said, after I bared my soul… That may have been word vomit of emotions and feelings, but she wasn’t correcting me, just being rude.

Even though I had an awful experience with therapy, I have always suggested it to family, friends, and my students. My husband is alive because I pushed him to speak to those are the VA who were trained in his combat related PTSD. I have guided more than a handful of students into either talking with a guidance counselor or a mental health specialist. Even my own little clone is in therapy, learning how to handle her massive emotions. So when my husband told me I needed to get help, I didn’t fight him. I didn’t want to do it, but I did it. I would hate myself forever if I always suggested those to seek help while I became lost within myself.

Somehow I got lucky. My new therapist seems wonderful. She has a kind voice, and she genuinely seemed engaged when I spoke about the things I’ve lived through. I can’t explain why I went with the first therapist I contacted, but a tiny voice inside me said, “this one.” When she asked me to fill out the pre paperwork, she asked if I had any trauma. In that millisecond, I finally stopped running and decided I didn’t need to be strong. I said “yes.”

While I have documented my sexual assault by my boss on here before, I have lived through a lot of other extremely dark things. Situations that I don’t feel comfortable putting out in the world, I will say this: I’m essentially a statistic for many things that can go horribly wrong to a female.

One thing she was gauging me on was to see if I may suffer from PTSD because my scores were pushing me there. However, that I don’t avoid situations that have caused me trauma means I don’t qualify. Part of me didn’t like that response because, for most of my trauma, there’s no way to avoid it. As I keep finding out, Jupiter/Gardens is a small ass town and the only way to avoid being triggered would be to move.

But fuck that. I’m not leaving my hometown. This is the place I’ve always wanted to raise my kids. It’s a wonderful community offering more in one location than any other community I’ve lived in. Another reason I throw my middle finger in the air at the idea of avoiding things is that I won’t be the victim. I am stronger than that. Those people who have bruised my soul will not now or ever win.

After an hour of jumping around and explaining pieces of myself to this woman with a trusting voice, I felt drained. However, even though we didn’t dive that much into the crap burdening my soul, I felt a small sense of relief. One that I can only hope will grow.

Mommy Blogs

Pregnant at 35

Alexandra Diane

I’m not sure what’s going on with my generation of millennial moms, or maybe it’s just my group of friends, but I’ve noticed a spike in parenthood for women in our mid-thirties. Perhaps we’ve just all gone crazy and decided that we no longer like sleep, money, or the freedom to leave the house without having to tote along a giant bag filled with everything your little one could possibly need in life. But whatever the reason, maybe a bunch of us are starting the baby journey again.

    My baby brain didn’t just pop out of nowhere. Since I had my daughter five years ago, I have randomly discussed having another child with my husband. However, we were always at a different point in our lives each time I brought it up. First, we had just bought our first home, we were getting settled in with our daughter and son, and things were a bit chaotic. Next, we started potty training. We figured if we decided to add to our family, we would possibly do it when we only had one diaper expense. 

More time passed, and suddenly my daughter was no longer in diapers. She was out of daycare, and we could go on vacation anywhere we wanted without packing a nursery for the trip. You’d think I’d be happy with two wonderful kids and finally feel financially stable to enjoy life.  And I was, for the most part, but a small piece of me would come up randomly, not monthly. It was more than ovulation. It was an emotional tugging that my children’s smallness was ending. I don’t think I was ready for their independence, but I didn’t have any choice in the matter. Our kids grow up and will always need us differently; however, I still wanted the tiny finger wrapped around my hand, cooing and not back-talking me about something ridiculous. 

Throughout the last five years, I had gone back and forth, asking my husband to either get a vasectomy or a baby. He never got the vasectomy, not because of anything to do with his balls but because of the tiny mental breakdowns, I would have throughout the years, especially when one of my friends would get pregnant. He said he’s gone to war but was more terrified of what I would do if he actually took the choice of having a baby. Although I would joke around with the idea of having another baby, I think I only actually said yes, let’s do it once.

We both agreed that if it happened, it would happen. I kind of left it up to God and the universe and said by the time I reached my mid-thirties, he would probably get a vasectomy since we didn’t want to be in our mid-40s with a surprise child. I felt that was a fair compromise, and we actually tried. I wasn’t sure if I was pregnant, but I was late. 

I got extremely hopeful and excited. For about a month, I was giddy, thinking there might be a little one living inside me. I’m not sure why I allowed myself to be so happy, thinking it would only take a try to convince. It was probably because it was that easy with my daughter, but I was younger, and things tended to work faster. Well, it turns out I wasn’t pregnant. I sucked up my emotions and stuffed them down deep. My husband asked if I wanted to keep trying, and I told him no. It seemed like it was a message that we were just supposed to have two kids, not three, and I went on with life. 

A few months later, I got in a car accident. I ended up with a torn disk and a few herniated discs. To me, it was more of a message saying it was a good thing I wasn’t pregnant. Though it was a low-impact accident, I could have lost the baby if I had been pregnant. I know for certain I wouldn’t have been able to get the imaging I needed to find out how badly I got hurt. I spent months in PT trying to get back to normal. I went back and forth with the idea of expanding past the idea of physical therapy, getting more invasive, and receiving an epidural to help alleviate my pain.

Eventually, January rolled around, and five months after the accident, I was scheduled for the epidural. But what wasn’t showing up was my period. We had one small accident when I just so happened to be ovulating, and I was hopeful again but nervous. I didn’t take a pregnancy test, and I wasn’t going to waste the money when I knew that the facility I was going to would test me anyways. So for two weeks, I played the what-if game in my head. I knew there was a possibility that stress was causing my period to be late. But I didn’t want to be rational. Hope is a powerful drug. 

So the morning of my procedure finally came. For some reason, medical facilities were still under the covid rule of no visitors even if you were knocked out and needed someone to drive you home. My husband was told to wait in his truck, get breakfast, or do something at seven in the morning besides in the lobby and wait. We kissed goodbye, and I sat nervously in the lobby by myself. I hate medical anything, and waiting thirty-plus minutes by myself just let my brain think of everything that could go wrong. When I was finally asked back, the nurse asked if I might be pregnant, and I beamed, “Maybe.”  She was not thrilled because if I was, I could not go forward with my procedure. 

After being fully checked in, she handed me a cup. It now did or die. I was going to find out if I was pregnant or not. I peed in the cup, returned to the hospital bed, and waited. Not too long later, the nurse comes in with a big smile. “Guess what! You aren’t pregnant. We’ll send you off to dreamland in a few minutes, and you’ll be feeling better.” She shut the curtain and left. I texted my husband and said, “I’m not pregnant. You need to get snipped; I can’t handle this emotional roller coaster.”

When we got home, I was a wreck, shoving all my feelings and emotions down deep to where I didn’t have to deal with them. I didn’t realize how bad my hormones were and how bad I was PMSing. My husband made a comment that had been a running joke for the last five years about how the only reason he married me was because he was medicated, which was true. He was going through PTSD therapy, and the VA had him on a cocktail of drugs. Well, after years of joking and never bugging me, it did. I wrote him a note the next morning and left my wedding rings on his desk, saying he didn’t have to stay married to me because the only reason he married me was because he was overly medicated. It was our anniversary, and I was in the middle of a mental breakdown. Instead of talking about any of my feelings hiding, I was running away, partly because hormones do wonderful things to your psyche and partly because I wasn’t even sure why I was freaking out. 

I was teaching, and he was working from home. We spent the day texting, and I was also texting with a girlfriend about how I freaked out and was not even sure why I was freaking out. I was not stable, to say the least. I didn’t want to get a divorce. I was now sucking up tears, trying to sort my life out while dealing with the drama of nearly 100 middle school students while trying not to fall apart. Then finally, I sent my friend a text saying, “I felt so alone at the stupid outpatient place.  All my hopes and dreams were smashed, I couldn’t call anyone, and I was sitting there feeling like my world had fallen apart when he said he only married me because he was on drugs. I felt that alone again and wanted to leave everything.” She responded with, “Well, did you tell him that?” I answered, “No, I just figured everything out.”

I eventually told him. 

When we got home, we talked. Well, not right away because the kids had sports, we had to make dinner, and I didn’t want to fall apart in front of our kids. He asked me why I didn’t tell him I wanted a baby. Why did I keep pretending that I didn’t want one? He said he never got a vasectomy because he was terrified I’d kill him in his sleep or something.  After how I acted, I don’t entirely blame him for having that fear. So we decided to really try, not just a one-and-done type thing, leaving it up to fate but actually paying attention to my ovulation cycle. 

After the window closed, we ended up going to Orlando for vacation. We had friends from California visiting and thought it was a perfect time to see them. We joined them for a day at Universal, and the next day they were going to Disney, but before we even purchased our tickets for the park, I looked at my husband and said we should get year passes. He said, “We’re trying to have a baby.” I said, “Well, we don’t have that kind of luck to be pregnant right away.”  He shook his head as he handed the credit card off to the woman and told me. “I swear to God. You are going to be pregnant because you’ve finally convinced me to buy these stupid things.” So we spent the next day as a family riding roller coasters on a Monday with nearly no one in the park. I was super happy. 

The following weekend we ended up getting a kitten. Something my daughter and I have been wanting for years. As we brought the tiny fluff ball into the house, he just looked at me and said, “You’re going to be pregnant, and I’m going to have to clean this little box, aren’t I?” I told him no way. It didn’t take. I feel normal. I feel fine. He looked at me and said, “I don’t believe you.”

For the next month, I had no signs of PMS or pregnancy. At least, that’s what I thought. For the last week, I had left my classroom keys in my door. I was miss placing things and dropping things left and right. I felt like a space cadet and couldn’t figure out why I always felt drunk. Then I was helping my husband cook dinner, and I don’t know what I said or did, but he looked me dead in the eyes and said, “The last time you were this spacey, you were — have you gotten your period yet?” and I said no it’s supposed to show up tomorrow. 

We didn’t wait. I sent him to get a test, and thirty minutes later, we discovered baby brain hits a lot harder at 35 than it did at 30.