JessiesMom

Yeah, she was pissed. In fact she refused to talk to me for about half an hour. God save me from strong willed children.

It sounds like anxiety to me - maybe bordering on panic attacks. You are pretty awesome to try to help him from so far away. I was surprised when I learned that depression and anxiety often go together. I guess I had always assumed that you had one of the other - but often you have both. I know I have both 😉

As some of you many know, there was recently a not flattering article about my father in the New York Times. This has caused a great deal of turmoil in my family, as you can well imagine. Yesterday, I found myself motivated to write a note to the author of the article as follows: "Mr XXXXXX, I write to respond to your article about the situation in St Cloud. Specifically, to respond to what I saw as a incorrect picture of the man you profiled. John XXXXXX is my father and I have spoken to him a great deal about his concerns with the economic condition of the city I grew up in and the effect of the decisions of politicians on the long time residents as well as the recent immigration into the community of the Somali refugees. I was saddened to see the nuanced and complex opinions of my father reduced to a picture of a racist, xenophobe. As a progressive liberal, I expect more from my news media than I would expect from the likes of Fox News. Unfortunatly, in this case, I was let down. In addition, the impact that this article has had on my family is substantial. Our family has already had interpersonal difficulties and mental health issues that are our cross to bear - and somehow, despite our political and religious differences - we have always managed to maintain positive relationships with each other and get past our differences to see the love and support we always offer to each other. This article has made that increasingly difficult. I cannot overstate to the you turmoil we have experienced as a result of the words that were published in your esteemed newspaper. I ask nothing from you except to remember that the people you write about are human beings, just like yourself - with complex opinions - complex lives - and feelings that can be hurt by cruel words. We are all beloved children of God - republican and democrats, rich and poor, urban and rural, men and women, old and young. Maybe if you keep that in mind in the future another family can avoid the devastation that has been wrought on my family. Thank you for you attention" At first, I understood my motivation for this action to be a desire for others to not be hurt in the future. I still think that that is part of my motivation, but I now wonder if part of my motivation was not a desire for him to feel badly about the hurt he has caused. To be honest, that makes me feel pretty petty and vindictive. However, I have learned that my instincts about such things are not always correct. So, I ask - 1) does this action seem petty and vindictive to you? and 2) if so, is that ok? Thanks!

Enjoying the fact that my daughter is having fun at grandma's for the week. Sad that she missed the showing if Bohemian Raphodsy in the park last night. She would have been over the moon.

Due to the holiday weekend, I was away from my job for four days. Hooray - right? The problem is that it has taken me most of the day to get organized again and be abke to be productive. Also, the stress of having yo come back gave me a stomach ache.

As I was driving to the store this evening, a song came on the radio that has always spoken to me and I finally realized why. On this Independence Day, I have a message for my depression, my anxiety and all the bullshit from my parents. I am done letting you control me. We've got the right to choose it. There ain't no way we're losing. This is our life, this is our song. We'll fight the powers that be just, don't pick our destiny 'cause, ypu don't know us, you don't belong. I am done taking it.

Stuart Smally would call this stinkin' thinkin'. I don't think it is so easy. The thing that I always feel in that kind of situation is that I am afraid of discovering that all the things that my mother said about me are true. That I am not good enough. It's bullshit. I am good enough and so are you @MarkintheDark!

They can't fire me- one, I am a corporate officer amd two, neither of them know jack about accounting.

This one requires twp emojis. First - 😢 and then 😆

A tangent, or a corollary to this might be to ask, is our depression part of our identity - or is it something that is standing in the way of us being ourselves? I don't really have an answer, but I do know that there is part of me that needs to accept my brokenness as part of my identity, since I really do not believe that I will ever be whole. Basically, I have to be ok with that to continue on.

Oh wow, that is a true statement. I think that can be part of the reason people fear therapy - we are so used to living in our brokenness, how would we cope without it?

I had an experience yesterday where it appeared that my worst fear was going to come to pass. I have always felt, not really believed but perhaps feared, that I am the lynchpin in many places in my life and if I drop one of the balls I am juggling - terrible things will happen. It is a lot of pressure to put on myself and I know, for the most part, that it is not true. However - still I fear it. I got sick on Thursday night (nothing huge, but definetly not fun). Friday morning I sent a text to my boss saying, "Hey, I am sick and will not be in today." A few minutes later I get a text from my brother asking me to call him as he is having a problem with QuickBooks (I moonlight for his shop 😉 ). I could not do it, because of lack of sleep and also the being sick thing. So I did not call him back right away. Several hours later I got a call from my father telling me that my brother was melting down, that I needed to fix the billing for QuickBooks, that my brother was threatening to quit the shop (which my father owns) and move out of his new house (which technically my father owns) and back into the house that he has been trying to sell. Ok, ok - I pull it together and call my brother who is in full meltdown mode. It seems that this time he is serious. Of course, I take it on myself. None of this would have happened if I had just called him back. So I fix the problem and call him back. Meanwhile - my father is calling and telling me that my brother is moving out of the house and quitting the business and he (Dad) has to go back to St Cloud to fix this. In the middle of it my sister is calling. I am close to hysterics. It turns out that my brother had been blasting my father about all of his little frusterations and Dad finally had enough and let him have it. Everything seems to be corrected now - but for a few hours it seemed that my worst fear had come to pass. What is your worst fear?

The irony is that I have spoken to my family more since this happened than I had in a long time. My sister is quite upset about the whole thing. I am trying to hold onto rationality. My brother is trying to bury his feelings. I have a feeling that, if things go right, we have a great opportunity for growth here - but I don't know if that will happen or not.

A few days back, I was perusing my Facebook feed wile waiting for my friend to come out of his place - and I saw a picture of my father sitting in Culver's. Hmmm, I thought - why am I seeing this picture of my father in my Facebook feed - he is not on social media. Then I noticed that the picture was attached to a New York Times story and all I could think was...….****. A little background. My father has always been involved in local and state politics. He is a fiscal conservative and has always belonged to the republican party. Recently he retired from his university job and I wondered, what is going to be the next thing for him. Soon I learned that he was making a more serious foray into local politics, by running for city council. The city I grew up in was always more of a small town. Predomanatly german and scandanavian - there was a small Mexican community and a small Asian community - but most of the residents were white and catholic. Due to some issues - demographics of the city has been skewing poorer over the past 20 years or so and most of the manufacturing plants had closed down or relocated. This has left few middle to high paying jobs that do not require higher education. Over the past 10 to 15 years, a large population of immigrants from Somalia were settled in this community and the result has been a lot of difficulty. My father has been campaigning to stop settling more refugees in the community until there is a plan for how to provide them with more and better economic opportunities. This has been misunderstood as being anti-immigrant and this has led to further slurs. My father has always been a rock for me in the stormy seas of my mother's obsessive compulsion and depression. I know him to be a kind and generous man. Unfortunatly, the reporter that he chose to give an interview to did not portray him in a flattering light. Quite frankly, the picture of my father in the article is appalling. This has left me in a great deal of turmoil. I do not agree with some of the opinions my father holds, but he is still my father and I love him. I am angry with him, however, because he should have seen the hit piece coming a mile away. There is a great deal of mental health issues in my family - and a lot of us struggle. My brother and sister are diagnosed bi-polar. I suffer from depression as do two of my three children. We are all worried and rather frightened as to what the fallout from this will be. I worry for the safety of my parents, but thank the lord they are in the Northwoods far away from the city of my birth for at least a few months. I worry about how this will effect my children and my siblings. Last, of course, I worry about how I can deal with this. I told my sister this morning that I wished I could live in the world where this did not happen, but the reality is that it did. And I am going to have to deal with it.

One of the most abhorent phrases in the english language (IMHO) is, "You should't be upset about that." If you are upset, you are right to be upset. Sometimes learning additional information can help to make you less upset, but we spent quite a bit of time in our society telling people what they should (or should not) be feeling.