I finally was able to move out of my parents' house last month. It was a struggle the last month I was there; I just had to keep reminding myself that I wouldn't have to endure their crap for much longer. Somehow I made it through.

My kids and I moved back to Buffalo and got a new place with my husband. I love the house and our quiet street. It's a huge change from our apartment on a busy main street. It is a lot more work though! I lost five pounds just from being so busy working around the house. The first few weeks were great- I was on such a high, but that has worn off some and I still have to get up the nerve to get a job here.

I am pretty happy with my son's new school- his classroom is double the size of his old one with fewer kids in his class. His reading, writing and speech have all improved in such a short time. It kind of makes me wonder about his old school... before I left I also found out that his teacher aide (I graduated with her) had been gossiping about me and my son a lot with people, I guess some people never change. It just made me so grateful that I was getting away from there.

Christmas and New Years were both a lot of fun. I still haven't found places for all of the new toys though, and my mother has not mailed all of her Christmas presents to the kids yet!

We had family and friends over to our house for a big Christmas dinner. They love the new house and I received lots of compliments, especially on the turkey- probably one of the best I have cooked before. It was so succulent and juicy that they were surprised it was not deep fried. My brother in law, his girlfriend and her son came over on New Year's Eve and we played board games and the kids had a blast throwing my homemade construction paper confetti :p

It's a snowy day here today, so I am going to take my daughter outside to play for a bit now... hope to catch up more with old friends here soon.  

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I fell down the stairs this morning while carrying my son wrapped in his blanket, because he was very cold. I tripped on the blanket though when it got caught under my toes. I made sure I bore the brunt of the fall so Mathieu wasn't hurt too much. My right ankle twisted and my left knee slammed into the floor and swelled up.

My mom actually was concerned about how I was, something that hasn't happened in a while. She helped get my son ready for school and she even called to check on me at lunch.

The school psychologist called me  in the afternoon (omg I have been answering the phone when I see it is his school- have talked with the psychologist a few times, his teacher and the school nurse). She said my son had a rough day in school. He went to the nurse for ice for his head which he said hurt from the fall, and he cried because he was worried about me. So the psychologist took him at snack time and he ate his snack with her and made a card for me.

If ever there was a way to make my day... the card made all the bad stuff seem insignificant, and I was filled with so much love, pride and happiness. He explained the whole card to me, with the pictures on the front and back of the card. I thought I would share the front of the card here because it is very special to me.

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I don't know why really, but I have just been avoiding a lot of things the past few weeks, including this site. I've been depressed or so refusing to deal with things that I was blissfully ignorant in the shelter of my mind? This is just something I do from time to time... I turn more introspective and avoid people as much as possible. I cope with things by denying their existence I guess.

I let a few disappointments/ setbacks erode my self-confidence. I have managed to get through the depression I was feeling and let my family just be the mean and spiteful people they are without getting much of a rise out of me lately at least.

I guess being told that I was a loser and my life has no meaning kind of killed whatever I had left in my heart for them. They celebrated my brother's birthday without me, and I honestly felt relieved not to be out in public listening to them talk about themselves. So instead, I cooked a nice dinner for myself and the kids and later, I had my own little party with a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.

I feel terribly and want to apologize to people who I never replied to on SAF... I feel guilty for not responding to people on here almost as much as I feel horrible about the friends I never call or whose emails I never reply to.... sorry :(

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So this weekend was my cousin's wedding... went from being her maid of honor to not even being able to go to the wedding at all because no one wanted to watch my kids so I could go for even a little bit (since she decided at the last minute that she didn't want any kids there, which sure felt like it was to purposely exclude me from it). Oh well, I was told I didn't miss much, that it was the most bizarre wedding people had ever been to. It still hurts. My kids and I had a nice suite to stay in at the hotel, and we really did have a good time on our own though.

Yesterday morning when I took them swimming, my cousin came up behind me and put her arms around me and whispered in my ear "you know I still love you, right?". She didn't apologize to me for any of the horrible things she said to me in her emails, or for excluding me from her wedding, just said that, which was oh so comforting.

Should I feel good, considering she looked pretty miserable yesterday morning? That she was on her own because her husband drank too much and his plan was to stay in bed until the football game, then go to the bar and watch the football game and then go back to bed again, the day after they were married? When we left, she was sitting by herself in the hotel lobby checking her email, looking sooo sad. I have been told I should write her out of my life for how she has treated me, but I couldn't help but feel bad for her, leaving her there like that... I still love her even as much as she has hurt me, and I can't help but wince at the fact that she was so desperate to get married and have kids that she married someone she shouldn't have.

When we came home yesterday, we found one of our dogs very, very sick and my mother rushed him to the emergency veterinary hospital. They found he had liver and kidney failure and there was nothing they could do to improve his condition, so they put him to sleep. I am very sad, and my son is absolutely heartbroken. We adopted this dog from the ASPCA a few years ago, and my brother took ownership of him when we had moved to Buffalo. He was an older dog, a coon hound, but when I saw him I just couldn't leave him there. He looked up at me, so longingly. He looked so sad, which is why I assume they named him Blue. He was very mellow at first, but as he became comfortable with our family, he became a very boisterous, lively, playful dog and he was a lot of fun. I knew he had some health problems, but none of us realized he was as sick as he was, and so this really seemed to come out of nowhere. My son cried so hard last night and kept waking up during the night. He said he felt like he was going to throw up this morning, so I kept him home from school, though I was really hoping he would go and get his mind off of it :(

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Feeling very anxious because I know I have to call a doctor today. You know what's funny? A lot of you seem more concerned about my health than my family does :/ Thanks for the concern... just uggh I feel so pressured about it.

Yesterday I had trouble getting the SAF site to work, it just kept freezing up on me on IE and scrolling was lagged in Firefox so I got frustrated and gave up trying to do anything.

My mother mentioned to my daughter yesterday morning that it was Grandparents' Day when she woke up... I said to her "wow does that mean you are going to be nice and doting upon my kids like most grandparents are today? Because it would be so nice to see you like that for one day, it really pains me that my kids do not have the kind of relationship with their grandparents that I had with mine. They never made me feel anything but love when I was little" I know it hurt her feelings- she didn't say anything, and I felt kind of bad for doing so, but it hurts my feelings on a daily basis when she treats my kids like they are burdens to her. She is always annoyed at my daughter and the other day she even screamed at my son "shame on you! You are a bad boy!" which brought back memories of when I was little.

I went to church yesterday for the first time in a couple of months. It was the first day of Sunday school for the kids so felt it was important to go, and now that I am used to waking up so early in the morning with my son going to kindergarten, it wasn't too terrible waking up at 8am on a Sunday morning.

First of all, the pastor of my church is a very funny, normal, flawed man. He is very easy to talk to, and someone I think everyone could get along with and enjoy listening to despite their views on religion. One of the funniest sermons ever was when he talked about how "shit happens". That said, the sermon yesterday was about loneliness, and he talked about loneliness growing up, as a child, in high school, college, your job, etc... and it seriously made me start to cry because so many of those examples were like pulled straight from my life. I struggle so much on a daily basis with loneliness and other feelings and it is hard sometimes not to question why God why? But if it was not for my faith in God, and the fact that things will turn out all right in the end, I don't think I could get through all the really trying times.

The times where I feel so much emotional pain consuming me, the deep pain inside my chest and my wrists and being overwhelmed by that feeling of wanting to hurt myself to release some of that pain uggh.  

I got upset because my mom was sitting there listening, but I knew it wouldn't make one ounce of a difference to my mother even though a lot of that I know she had to realize was exactly what I go through. It makes me angry that she can go to church every week and listen to those sermons, and still be such a bitch.

Anyways, besides calling the doctor today, I am still trying desperately to find child care for my daughter so I can do the job training program that starts next Tuesday. I feel very discouraged and the probability that I will get to do the progam seems very slim at this point. I wish that I had gotten some help from my family with this since they know how huge of an opportunity this is for me (they will help place me in a job at the end). It seriously hurts that they have not taken this seriously. When I asked my mom why she couldn't have helped me make some phone calls these past few weeks, she said that people told her she shouldn't be doing that for me.

That blew me away, because damnit, I sucked it up and made all the phone calls and went for the interview to even get accepted into this program myself, why couldn't she help me with the rest? Why does she always listen to other people and not me when this is so important for my future?

It's just like how she listened to all these other people telling her to force me to go back to college the spring semester of my freshman year because everyone has a hard time their first semester. Did everyone spend most of their time outside of classes crying hysterically in their dorm room? Did everyone make their meals in their room because they could not handle everyone staring at them in the dining hall? Did everyone get sexually harrassed by their professor? Did everyone have both of their grandmothers, one who was the person they were closest to in the whole world, die within months of each other while they are away at school?

Yeah I went back and I forced myself to be more sociable because that's what I was told was my problem. That if I could go out more, make more friends, I would be happier.  So I sucked it up and talked to random people even though I constantly heard things like "you were here in the fall? we never saw you", which made me cringe and feel so small. And so there I was sitting in the student center by myself at night giving him the perfect opportunity to confront me and try to rape me too.

And when I couldn't handle it anymore, could not bring myself to go back there, it was my fault for throwing away my scholarship and wasting the other $6000 they had paid. No concern for me and what I was going through. And to this day, when I try to talk about it, all I get to hear was "you never told me he tried to rape you, or I would have helped you to pursue criminal charges against him" still no concern for my wellbeing, just going after him.

Okay, well, I really didn't mean to write about all this crap, now I got myself more depressed and that's not going to help me make these phone calls :(

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So I just had to sign for a certified letter from the hospital... it says they have been trying to reach me by phone unsuccessfully and that the abdominal ultrasound they performed while I was hospitalized revealed an enlarged spleen, and I need to followup with my primary care doctor....

I am really scared now... thinking about what might be causing that, and the fact that I have procrastinated about calling a doctor, now I have no choice :(

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It is my son's first day of kindergarten today! I can hardly believe it. They only go for two hours today though; tomorrow will be a full day. He was a little nervous; I hope he doesn't freak out like he did for his class breakfast last week.

I thought he would be the only one getting on the bus at his bus stop, but there was another little girl getting on the bus... this girl was in his nursery school class when he was three, guess my neighbor is her babysitter now... I was very anxious having to speak to her mother, who was one of the mothers who was very condescending to me back then, but I held a better conversation with her than I did in the past at least. I was kind of surprised how well I spoke despite the spike in anxiety I felt when I realized who they were. Feel kind of proud of myself for that.

The last few days have really sucked for me, I have had major problems with my family that are making me want to leave here, but I feel trapped because my son is starting school and I am leery to take him out of that, he has had so much instability in his life the past couple of years.

My brother was being a jerk to me, so I gave him a dose of his own medicine and I talked shit back to him which I never do. So in retaliation, he came on the computer while I was at a party and deleted World of Warcraft and most of my picture files off the computer and everything off of my usb drive. I lost some pictures I don't think I have copies of anywhere else, including ones from when my kids were babies, and I am very devastated by it. He edited a picture of me and wrote "depressed HAHA: domestic violence survivor" on it and left various comments on my private writings and poetry. When I confronted him about it, he pushed me down on the ground, which resulted in several scrapes and bruises on my arms and back.  But as usual, I got blamed for it all and my parents said that I was no longer allowed to use their computer because I fight over it with him too much, and didn't really give a damn about how bad he hurt me. Not that that's anything new; my brother has always been abusive to me, and it led to me staying in a domestic violence shelter a few months ago because my parents would not kick him out and I had no place to go.

Yesterday my mom locked the door to the room, but today miraculously I guess my punishment is over and I am allowed on here. I love being treated like I am eight years old.

It gives me more incentive to get the hell out of here, just worried about moving another time and dealing with another school district to get my son the speech/ occuptational therapy services he needs. Uggh. 

Going to take my laptop in and see how much it will cost to get it repaired so I don't have to deal with them holding the computer over my head anymore.

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A few weeks ago, my cousin wrote me a series of really nasty emails about how I apparently wasn't fulfilling my maid of honor responsibilities (her wedding is September 15).

One of the most hurtful things she said to me was: "You are a grown WOMAN, 26 years old. You know how to work a phone"

I never replied to her because she just kept saying nasty things to me, and then I ended up in the hospital with pneumonia... I was very angry and decided I didn't want to even go to her wedding... but now I am feeling really sad, missing her and upset thinking I will miss her wedding...

So I sucked it up and wrote her this email today because I am just so upset with the situation and feeling really depressed:

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My anxiety has been through the roof the past week and a half and I have not been able to bring myself to make a few seriously important phone calls. Every day I have hope that I will be able to talk myself into it, but I only succeeded in making one necessary phone call (to confirm I was still interested in the job training program that starts September 18).

I have not made a followup appointment to check on my pneumonia (because I do not have a primary care physician down here and I am scared to call up a new place, especially for an urgent appointment). I still have a cough, some pain, and occasionally some really bad coughing fits though, so I know I seriously can't put this off much longer...

Also, I need to find child care and transportation in order for me to attend the six week job training program and I am intimidated and haven't been able to pick up the phone to call the child care council or a woman from my church who runs a day care center even...  and it is absolutely essential that I do this job training program since I do not have any real job experience to back me up even though I have most of the necessary skills and had trouble finding a job on my own...

And now tomorrow is my son's kindergarten breakfast. I know his teacher- I don't really care for her though because she was my camp counselor when I was young and I was a bit rebellious and did not get along with her very well, and I am a bit afraid of how she is going to treat my son. I figure I can deal with her okay though...what's really terrifying to me is having to interact with other parents and their judgements about me.

When my son went to nursery school, I had a very difficult time coping with this because a lot of the mothers were very full of themselves and hoity-toity and condescending to me. I shut down around them and my son missed out on getting to have playdates with some of them and a few different out of school events they had because of it. I really do not want that to happen again.

I suck at making small talk with people, and I feel inferior to other mothers who have serious careers or are the perfect stay-at-home moms. I am praying that I will be able to cope with it better than I have in the past, because my son is a great kid and I do not want him to be picked on or left out of things because I am such a dumbass.

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