#I should’ve taken my antidepressants this semester

[thisiswash]

ngnhhhhh

can’t sleep because of that exam grade

turned in a project and while it wasn’t perfect i had to have gotten at the worst case a 60%, and i only need a 50% on it to pass this class, but im still terrified…

[lizzykasters]

This is gonna be a long one.

I am a firm believer that awareness of mental illness is extremely important. Why? Because it’s something I deal with on a daily basis. I’ve been dealing with depression for ten years now, and anxiety for at least the last five, if not longer. Needless to say, most of 2018 was horrible for me, and so far 2019 isn’t going much better. I could tell pretty early last year that I was struggling - I was going to school full time, working, taking care of a toddler, and planning a wedding and honeymoon for my husband and myself. I had a lot on my plate, and the stress definitely took its toll on me. Things weren’t much better even after we were married, because then I had to focus on the end of the semester, finals.

In May I found out I was pregnant. We were ecstatic! We’d been trying for a while, long before we were married, and had some difficulty. This was very exciting, but also a little scary for me. I’d had a miscarriage two years prior, and I was afraid things would go wrong again. At the end of May, I went to the doctor, only to find out I’d miscarried again. This was around the same time that the semester was ending, and two weeks before I was supposed to start a summer class. I told myself I could push through it, but instead I made myself forget about the miscarriage. Two weeks later my husband’s grandmother passed away and he had to go out of state for almost a week - he and I both agreed that I shouldn’t go as well because of everything else that had been happening to me.

The rest of the summer was going by slowly, and I thought I was okay, but in hindsight I really wasn’t. On one hand, I was working after withdrawing from all the summer classes I’d thought I could get through, and I love my job. I had my family and things should’ve been good. I’d attempted to see a counselor after my miscarriage after one of my “friends” (I’ll explain the “” shortly) urged me to seek out help. That didn’t go well because I really didn’t like the counselor - so I stopped going. Which was okay, honestly, because I felt better not seeing that counselor. I was trying hard to prepare myself for the Fall semester of school coming up. I was excited about school - I was taking classes I wanted to take even if a couple of them were mandatory for my majors.

At this point I thought I’d even made a friend on my own - meaning, I made a friend without this person also being an acquaintance with my husband. I was proud of myself.

At the end of August, my supervisor at work pulled me aside - I was being referred to mandatory counseling. Not only for the issues that had come up after I miscarried, but because I screwed up. This “friend” I made, I thought we were pretty close. I confided in this person, probably more than I should have. But it was someone to listen when I felt like I had no one else to turn to. We worked together, which was a plus I thought. But this mandatory counseling also meant I couldn’t talk to this “friend” anymore, and to put it simply, it was over a huge miscommunication - I’d said some things that had been taken the wrong way, that anyone probably would’ve taken the wrong way because of the way I worded things. So, on the first day of Fall classes, I had to go to a class in the afternoon trying not to have a mental breakdown because my supervisor at work thought I needed to seek help - though I hadn’t noticed, my performance at work was suffering because of the issues I was dealing with. Both with this “friend” of mine and because of all the things that had happened in my life in just a few short months.

I started the new semester of school trying not to call attention to myself. I tried to go to work without causing any problems, with my performance and with my coworkers. With the mandatory counseling referral, I was also told that more than one person I work with could tell a difference in the way I acted at work. I’d also felt betrayed because of my own stupidity, and I didn’t trust a single person outside of my family.

By this time, my doctor had put me on an antidepressant and I started seeing a counselor per the mandatory referral - a different counselor, one I actually liked. I talked through my issues with this counselor and thought I was getting somewhere.

But somehow, I let things build up, I started getting bad again. I wasn’t doing my school work. I was hiding it rather well at work after a couple of months of seeing the new counselor, but that was the only place I was able to hide how I felt.

I withdrew from two of my classes - a huge relief off of me. I thought that would be enough. But by the end of the semester, it really wasn’t. I didn’t finish the other two classes I was taking. I got grades of “Incomplete” for both, somehow. And I have to fix that.

But even before the end of the semester, I was miserable again. At one point I actually thought about hurting myself again - I have a tattoo that says “Always Keep Fighting” over my old self-harm scars. Even thinking about that wasn’t helping. The only thing that ever kept me from hurting myself was thinking about my family, specifically my child. My child needs me more than anyone else in this whole world. There’s no way I could do something that would compromise my ability to raise my child. So I never hurt myself. I thought about it plenty - every once and a while I still do - but I would never actually hurt myself because if I did, I wouldn’t be able to be a good mother to my toddler. That child is what keeps me going, even when I think I can’t take things anymore.

I’m still struggling. A lot. On top of everything that has happened in the past year, I have some very deep-rooted issues that stem from the relationship I was in with my child’s father. It ended as a deeply abusive relationship on all fronts, but not a lot of people know that. I still have a hard time talking about it, too, and it doesn’t help that I still have to see my child’s father because of visitation. That “man” was physically, emotionally, verbally, and sexually abusive to me, sometimes around my infant after I had our child. He was on drugs and was very controlling - I couldn’t even talk to my own family without fearing what he would do if I found out. So I still have issues because of all of that - I flinch at sudden movements, I’m hyper aware of where people are around me (especially men, and particularly men who are much bigger than I am), and I shy away from conflict and retreat back into myself as soon as I feel like someone is upset or irritated about something.

But I’m working on things at the same time. I’m trying very hard to be my best self. It isn’t easy, though. Far from easy, actually. Recently I’ve been having a lot more anxiety over seemingly nothing, and my depression is getting in the way of the way I interact with the rest of the world. I still have no friends, I still don’t trust people outside of my family, and the only person I even get irritated with anymore is my husband because he and I are pretty good as resolving problems together without arguing too much. I haven’t seen my therapist in a while - last time I went was before Christmas - but I can’t afford it right now, either. I’ll have to figure out a way to get by until I can afford to go back.

If you’ve read all of this to this point, thank you. I don’t have any other way to get all of this out. I’m not expecting anyone to have anything to say about this, I just needed to let it all out. I’m still not okay, and probably won’t be for a while. I’m going to start trying to get better, but I probably won’t be for a while.

[canaryatlaw]

Alright so I need to get this done quickly so I can go to sleep because I'm tired and what the fuck else is new. Ugh. My mind is not a happy place to be today. I'm trying to tell myself I only feel like I'm losing my mind because I ran out of two of my antidepressants and being off them is fucking with me, which is probably true, but I'm worried there's something more to it. I'm actually really worried I am having something like mono if not actually mono because this is getting fucking ridiculous and I can't live like this. I'm just....what the fuck do I even do? There's nothing I even could do. I am NOT dropping my classes this semester and I'm NOT dropping my job, I love it too much. I can't just let it come in and fuck everything up like that, I just can't afford for it to happen right now. I need to finish law school in 3 years, that's how it works, you can't make it work any other way it just doesn't. And I love my job, I can't just stop it, and I'm getting field placement credits for it (I need to fucking get on my stuff for that because I'm majorly behind though) and dropping now would screw me over grade wise and so much more and I'm just so NOT doing it all. I'm not. I'm not dropping everything and just giving up or moving back to NY (no matter how much I want to on days like today, and believe me, that is really fucking rare) it's just not happening. Getting out of bed is just so damn hard lately and I don't know what the fuck to do about it because I feel like all I do is sleep and it doesn't get any easier. Ugh. I just have way too much going on but I'm not willing to give up any of it. It's awful. Sigh. I need to get into today now though if I want to finish this any time soon. My alarm was set for 7:00, but unsurprisingly I couldn't convince myself to get out of bed when it went off, and I progressively stalled getting out of bed with different reasons until 10 am when I forced myself to get up. I had called my job at 9 to let them know I would be coming in I had just "overslept" (and went back to sleep after making that call). But I did get up and went to work, and got there just around 11 which ended up working ok. I spent a little bit of time going over my motion outline before ending up meeting with the foster parents and talking with them about the case and the kids and just why they didn't want to testify in front of the biological parents. It was nice to actually talk to them, and they seemed really nice too, definitely very invested in the kids. I found out that the couple that has the daughter now (I've probably given pieces of the family make up of this case here and there, but it's two boys and a girl with the same dad, then there was the little boy who died who had another dad, then there's the twin boys whose dad is the 17 year old involved in this case) also had the little boy who died when the kids were previously in the system. I knew they had the daughter previously and that the older two boys were in the same placement they used to be in, but I didn't know they had the little boy who was killed as well. My heart kind of broke for them to find that out, because I can only imagine how painful that had to be for them when they had this little boy and in their home for two and a half years only for him to be returned to his mother and for him to die at her hand.....unspeakably awful. It was good to get to speak with them though and just get to know them a bit, and why precisely they didn't want to testify in front of the biological parents as we knew that was gonna be the hang up on the motion. I think my motion did a great job laying out the applicable law and how the court does have the authority to let them testify in chambers, it just comes down to a justification as to why, and the issue is that there really isn't one here, but more on that in a minute. So we go down to the court room and wait for everyone, the parties slowly coming in. It turns out it's a bigger court date than I originally expected, and all the parties will be there, which just upped the stakes that much more. It's also kind of awkward of course when the people you're talking about are in the room and you're saying oh the foster parents shouldn't have to testify in front of them because they might retaliate against them, but if I remain down this legal path it'll likely only be the first time of many I'm in this situation. So eventually everyone gets down and we start, I put my name on the record and we're good to go. So apparently adjudication had already taken place, and I knew the mother and dad #1 had already been found unfit (termination proceedings have two parts, part 1 is if the bio parents are fit or unfit, and part 2 is called best interests and it's where the foster parents and caseworker testify and the court is to determine if it's in the best interest of the kids to terminate) so it was just a matter of dad #2 and moving on to best interests. The issue with dad #2 is he was charged as a juvenile in all these proceedings since he was 17 (and normally I am all for charging juveniles as juveniles, but in this situation I strongly feel as though he should've been charged as an adult) and was basically given a slap on the wrist, my supervisor thinks it's because the state made/is trying to make a deal with him to get him to flip on the mom so they can bring murder charges against her (it's kind of ridiculous that they haven't already). But since he's charged as a juvenile it doesn't count against him the same way an adult conviction would, so we didn't know what the judge would do with that, but he started out by finding dad #2 unfit because of his involvement with the kids and basically how he was taking on the role of a parent and let the child starve to death on his watch, so that was a good start. Then it was motion time, so I got up and made my argument. I had been told the state decided they wouldn't oppose us on this which I was thankful for, so it was just the 3 public defenders then. I didn't think any of their arguments were particularly compelling, nothing I didn't expect, though one of them said something stupid and inaccurate about the cases cited in the motion that I was ready to rebut and through a dig at during rebuttal but wasn't really given the chance to (which all in all was probably for the best). The main issue, as I suspected, was that there was no real basis for any fears of retaliation, and on that basis the judge denied the motion, but I wasn't really upset because he made it clear that was the reason and it's not like there's anything I could do about that so oh well, I know I did well with it and that's all I can ask. Then the state started calling the foster parents. As I've said before I always like watching foster parents testify because a lot of it is just them talking about how much they love the kids and why they want to adopt them and it just makes me happy. The first one, when asked if there were any conditions that would need to be met in order for him to adopt one of the kids (a common question for a number of reasons), all he said was "just that he breathes" and that kind of touched my heart. The rest of them did well, stood up to the incessant and sometimes asinine questioning of the public defenders. On some level I understand that they're doing what they can but like, some of the questions were just dumb and definitely backfired on them. The last foster parent to go I could tell was very nervous so I shot her a reassuring look while she was up there and she smiled in return. Once that was done the state called the caseworker, which was pretty typical questioning regarding the kids and the services in place and all that, nothing too out of the ordinary. One interesting thing came at the end of her testimony when the public defender for dad #2 tried to use her to lay foundation for a letter the dad had written to the judge regarding his kids but the foundation was like "do you recognize this? Is it the letter I showed you before court?" and like that's not fucking foundation....at all...lol cuz she was trying to avoid having to call her client because that would result in him being subject to cross examination but the judge was NOT having it. His letter was addressed to the judge and was all like "oh seeing my kids born changed me and I just want a chance to raise them" but like, you were entirely complicit in the death of a 4 year old, why should anyone ever trust you with a child again??? So that didn't get into evidence, lol. The mom had also written a letter they were gonna try to get into evidence, but hers was addressed to the kids, however at this point they didn't want it actually passed on to the kids (because we had obvious objections to that) just for it to be admitted into evidence. And it was all like, oh you know I'm so sorry I'm missing so much of your lives and I love you so much and I would do anything for you, and I'm just reading it and seeing it addressed to all the kids in the subject line and I'm just thinking, would you address that to the child you killed as well? Did you feel the same way about him? I mean there's no way this woman is ever getting her kids back, but it's kind of insane to think anyone would take anything she said like that seriously. At this point though it was almost 5 so they had to pick another date towards the end of March to continue, and that was that. I had to run out to the bus to make it on time, and then barely made it to the train, but made it to the other courthouse on time. Hung out with some people for a few minutes, then started class. My cross went pretty well, and then I had to be the witness for the second problem that actually involved being two witnesses that were both just assigned to me. It went fine until the cross of the second witness, when the 3L girl who's in my group was going and I'm sorry, she just doesn't know what the fuck she's doing and she was just begging for me to take each opportunity to act like a witness on cross and then she'd like fight me on it and it was BAD, and the judge was legit like twice "what you just said would've caused a mistrial" and like I know this girl just thought I was being an obnoxious witness to her but it's not my fault you don't know what the fuck you're doing and don't know how to ask questions, you didn't see me do that to the other girl who did cross did you??? Nope, not at all. What a mess. So I was glad when that was over. Went home, somehow missed initially that legends wasn't on tonight so I was kind of ticked off about that but decided to watch the flash which was a quality episode, though I won't get into it too much because it's late and I'm tired, and yeah that was my day and did I mention I'm tired? So I'm done now. Goodnight peeps. Be well.