This has been one of the hardest times for me, between the lupus flare, and now thyroid levels being low I'm having a hard time. I'm sleeping a lot, like last night I fell asleep at 830pm and woke at 10 to go to bed, just to sleep until 730am. Did I mention the 2-3 hour nap yesterday? Today I've struggled to stay awake all day and get some housework done, but I feel like crashing now.

But now that I know what's been wrong this past month, I'm looking forward to feeling better, more like myself.

My psychiatrist added a new med to morning, and cut a night time one in half. She's concerned about the darkness that I sometimes end up in, and to be honest I am too. It's making me feel like I'm back in high school wearing long sleeves all the time, writing poems in my notebook while everyone around me just thinks I'm weird. And I was strange back then. Where everyone else was happy and going on with a "normal" life, I was hiding in my bedroom, or under the covers. I spent hours crying, hurting myself, running off and being promiscuous, and sometimes I even scared myself. When I was a teenager the darkness would get so bad that I really did want to die. I wanted to leave this world and all the heartache behind. I was tired of being the fat, strange outcast who felt more and more alone each day. I attempted suicide, just once, I took a bottle of Tylenol, caffeine pills and God knows what else. I had to drink the nasty charcoal in the ER, and that sucked. I told myself that my next attempt would be something different.

But I never did try again, and now suicide isn't even an option. I didn't fight for 8 months to beat cancer to give it all up now. But the darkness gets real bad sometimes and it scares me because it's as bad at teenage me.  The darkness just kind of creeps in and digs its claws in and takes hold, making me feel the things I hate feeling, think the thoughts I hate thinking, and it makes me cry so hard. The darkness is ugly and it's not a place I like being. I wish I could find the happy middle most people feel.

I have my daughter and husband now, and it's for them that I keep fighting, fighting everything. The lupus, the pain, the darkness, and all the exhaustion and every other illness I've got; I fight it all so that I can be here, be with them, watch her grow. I fight every day and everyday I get a little stronger, even if life keeps trying to knock me down.

I wont lie, it was a couple days before the darkness fully went away. But thanks to spending a day with my mom delivering Avon, that helped start driving the darkness away, then a wonderful daughter and husband who make me laugh so much, the darkness is finally gone for now. I hope it stays at bay for awhile.

I decided to re-design my kitchen, that means I pretty much get rid of everything in my way, like the table we never use for anything other than a catch-all for junk. The table I constantly walk into and leaves me covered in bruises. Yes I'm a klutz, I trip over absolutely nothing all the time, so a big table taking up half the available space in the kitchen was starting to be a pain. So I'm redesigning, I'll take photos when I've got it all organized again, but I'm hoping this will make our lives easier, better, and me feel less trapped by clutter.

Sometimes I feel like the clutter is taking over, and I just need to start making space so I feel like I can breath again. And that means big changes in our house, which drives my husband nuts to the extreme. Wait until I start in on the living room! I'm already dreaming how I want to do it, but I may have to wait til he goes back to work so he doesn't kill me lol. But first I have to finish the kitchen hehe.

Grace hates sleeping in her room, says her room is too scary. I know I caused this problem, but it wasn't just my co-sleeping with her, it's also a matter of, until we moved in here she was always in our room. We had no choice, we only had two bedrooms in every past apartment. So she stayed in our room until we moved in here and tried to move her to her own room. I'm wondering if there is some way I can move her bed into my room, and just move the dressers from my room to her room. I'm gonna have to go measure things and see if it's doable. If I can get her to sleep in her bed in my room, maybe I can get her into her own room at some point.

Well I've done enough rambling for tonight, and the neuralgia is acting up this week, really bad (maybe all the rain, not sure), so the pain which is a constant 5/6 has been notching up to a 9 by bedtime. At least it's not a full alarm 10, those suck. Those are take a narcotic pain pills and go to bed bad. And if that doesn't help, or if I start throwing up, then it's an ER trip, and we know how I feel about those. I've also been waking earlier than necessary, like today I was up at 545 and couldn't fall back to sleep, and yesterday I was up at 645. I don't need to get up until 715-745 depending on how rushed I wanna feel.

Ok enough verbal diarrhea, and it can get bad if I just let it go. Sometimes I feel like I just need to keep talking and I will chat about anything and everything, no matter how asinine it is. And the rambling just continues tonight, doesn't it? See what I'm talking about? I get started on something and then it just keeps going. But the pain is starting to creep up so I really do need to sign off now.

It's been 4 years since my father died, 4 long years. He was supposed to go into the hospital, get fixed up again and come home to us. If I had known that day would be my last, that he'd never come home again, I would have told him I loved him so much, that all those years I responded to his love you's with a smart ass I know reply, that I did love him, my teenage self just wouldn't let me tell him. I would have loved him better. He was supposed to just come home and he left me instead, he just left without a chance to say goodbye. How is that fair in any way?

I'm hoping that 2017 will be a better year for us, one with a new job for Scott soon, improved health for me, and continued growth and learning for my incredibly intelligent daughter. I can feel a big change coming, it's just around the corner, I know it. Good things will happen, with God all things are possible.

I'm glad no one can see me as I write this, because then you might see my red rimmed, swollen from crying eyes, and the fakeness behind my positive bravado. I'm scared, Scott's unemployment runs out soon and there is no way we'd survive on my meager disability check. I'm scared, and I hate when my faith is shaken like this, when I start to feel like God has forgotten all about me. I feel like a tiny rowboat out in the middle of an angry storm on the sea, and there is no land or light in sight. I'm scared, without better medical coverage my lupus will flare again, and that means more damage to my already damaged body. I'm scared, scared that, that maybe there is no Higher Power out there looking out for me, that my life has been nothing but good luck so far and it's run out. I feel like one of those woman who sit at a slot machine all day hoping my luck will change and instead of losing, I'll win my money back and lots more. But let's be honest? How many times have you seen a big win? Maybe my big win was beating cancer and it's all downhill from here. Is this the beginning of the end, is this where it all unravels slowly until I can't take it anymore?

It's dark in my head tonight, and I can't seem to find the flashlight. I know I'll get some sleep and be ok in the morning, but the darkness scares me. It's lonely, and I'm afraid that someday it may turn out to be that I've been standing on the edge of an abyss and one false step and everything comes undone. I don't want to be lost forever. 

I really planned on coming on here tonight and being upbeat, positive and yay it's a new year. But then I thought of daddy and the darkness crept in and seems to have a firm hold for the evening.  Just remember dear friends, as my daughter so kindly reminded me earlier, I am strong, and I will fight the darkness, because I don't want to lose myself, all the work I've done to get to where I am. I am strong, and I'll wake in the morning, and hopefully it'll be to light.