Campaigning!

My family and I are hoping to raise enough funds to purchase some land to share with a few other families. We are hoping to build our own community here in Washington, which unfortunately has some pretty hefty land prices. We have to stay in Washington in order to share custody of my stepson, and because our whole lives are here. I am currently in school to become a Nurse, as well as still pursuing my dream of becoming a midwife. Nursing is what is best for my family right now and I will hopefully transition to midwifery later in life.

Please share our campaign page with everyone you can think of, anything helps!

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/building-our-community/x/3013894#share

Tragic Loss

I am part of a wonderful community of midwives, student midwives, doulas, etc. Yesterday, our community suffered a tragic loss when a classmate's 2 1/2 year old son was run over by an SUV. He passed away shortly after. I have started a fundraiser through my Scentsy business. All of the commission I earn from this fundraiser will be donated to the family to help with hospital, funeral, and legal expenses. Please help in anyway you can, even if its just sharing the link. https://barbaramiller.scentsy.us/Scentsy/Buy?partyId=119410935

Help Needed

Not On The Right Path

I have been realizing quite a few things about my life lately, and just how unhappy I am with things. Maybe I am having some type of epiphany, idk. What I do know is that I cannot continue to keep living my life like this, it is slowly killing my spirit.

I am not anywhere near the path that I am supposed to be on. I can feel that in the deepest parts of my soul. I really feel that this can explain some of the depression I have been experiencing, on top of it being a side effect from the Avonex.

I feel like a big change is about to happen and I am not sure what things from my current life will survive. I feel like the person I am supposed to be is going to erupt forth and its not going to be pretty for the people who don't want me to be this person.

I want so desperately to get on the path that I am meant to be on. I just don't know how to make it happen. I feel like I keep trying everything I can to get there and something is always either in my way or pulling me back in the opposite direction. I am getting so exhausted from all of it. Its soul crushing. I literally feel like my soul is screaming at me, crying out for a change.

I wish I could get people to understand how I feel. I swear that everyone is missing the point of what I am trying to tell them. JUST LISTEN TO ME! I need support, I need someone to let me unleash my crazy on them (which most of the time is Aaron, but the poor man probably can't deal with much more) and please tell me that I am not utterly insane for my feelings!

I can't find the answers to all of this on my own. I need to get on my path: being a midwife, a mommy, and a homesteading, earth mama.

My brain is beyond fried at this point. I feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders, even though I know that it truly isn't. I feel like I've been abandoned by my "friends," family, and other people I care about, because of this stupid disease. People are tired of hearing about my fatigue, my pain, my depression, etc. Instead of being supportive, I am getting written off or told to get over it.

I think I am just completely tapped out.

Thriving

I do this thing every year with a group of friends where we choose a word to basically have a theme throughout the year and immediately the word Thrive came to mind. Here's a definition:

1. to prosper; be fortunate or successful.

2. to grow or develop vigorously; flourish: The children thrived in the country.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I am not representative of this definition at all. I don't thrive right now, I am going through the motions. The fact that I am getting so little back on my taxes, after busting my ass for a company that could give two shits about its employees probably set me off on this rant, but I feel this way a lot. I'm not living the life that I picture for myself and I can't seem to find a way to get from here, where my life is now, to there, which is where I want to be.

Maybe I have just idealized my perfect life too much and there is no way to obtain it? Right now, I want to quit my job and dive into my midwifery studies full time. Then, I think of all the medical bills I have and the fact that I absolutely need health insurance so that I can continue to see my Neurologist. *sigh* It seems like being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis has doomed me to a life of working a "normal" job.

I also want to move the hell out of this town. We pay way too much in rent, its obscene. If I had money for a down payment my mortgage would be less than what I pay in rent. Granted, it might even out after utilities and such, but at least then I would *own* something. I feel like we are pissing our money away into this place and its not even that great.

I don't know if I am stressing myself out, or if I really am just this stressed all the time. I try extremely hard to think positive thoughts, so that way positive things can come into my life, and I just seem to keep getting beaten down with the negative things in my life.

So, back to my word of the year. I want this year to be about thriving, moving forward in my life, not letting this MS thing keep me from being who I am. I'm getting married in about 7 months (cue slight panic attack) and I just want this to be one of the best years I have. I've had a lot of shitty ones lately and I deserve a good one finally.

I want to buy a newer car, maybe even really get serious about buying a house, get pregnant, etc. I have so much to look forward to and I am done just looking forward to it, I want to LIVE it.

Uncertainty, The Future & Other Ramblings

 I have been sick for about three weeks now, loosing feeling in my feet and my legs. Discovered I had a birth defect (Spina Bifida Occulta) on my 27th birthday (yay!...not) and a few days later found out I had a 1.9cm lesion on my spinal cord around T 7 (this is most likely the cause of the numbness). So, now that I have had 3 rounds of IV Solumedrol, I am only feeling slightly better in one leg and amazingly better in the other. Compared to how I was when this weirdness all started, that's not bad I guess.

Alright, now that I have gotten that out of the way and gone parentheses happy, lemme get to it. Nothing like a serious illness to not only knock you on your ass, but also put things into perspective a bit. I have realized yet again that I spend way to much freaking time worrying about, taking care of and being there, for EVERYONE. Even though I am seriously sick, I am still trying to take care of everything like nothing is wrong. How is that normal?!

When am I gonna stop putting everybody, their needs, and what they want before my own, when I'm dead? Cause at the rate my body is going, who knows just how close that possibility really is. I firmly believe that part of the reason I got sick is because my body just had enough of the worry, the stress, taking care of everyone else and not myself, that it fucking quit. I'd apologize for cursing, but I just don't care right now.

I have always been a planner and here I find myself once again in a position of extreme uncertainty. I honestly have no idea if I will regain full feeling again, even if the Neurologist is optimistic. I don't know what this means for my future as a midwife and that terrifies me. I will literally fall to even more pieces if I have to give up that dream. I don't even know what this birth defect means for me in terms of being a midwife either or having children. I thought I had come to some sort of peace with the possibility that I might be infertile thanks to the troubles my ex and I had, but obviously I have not, because thinking about this possibility devastates me on a level I didn't know I had.

This crap has once again forced me to completely change....almost everything. To take a long hard look at, well...me. I don't like this feeling very much. Being "selfish" is so against my nature that I feel guilty to do it. It obviously needs to be done, because how can one concentrate on healing themselves if they aren't just a little selfish?? I feel like such an idiot because this has been a...theme, so to speak throughout my adult life.

What do I do now?? Well, I've been thinking a lot lately (another of my faults lol) because let's face it, I have had A LOT of time on my hands. So much time in fact, that I am going crazy. You'd think with all these books laying around that I would just sit here and read nonstop. That's difficult to do when you can't get your mind to shut the hell up. I am reading one book finally. Eat, Pray, Love and that has probably been the inspiration for this post.

This illness has made me realize that nothing is more important than doing what one loves, all the time, no matter what. Follow your bliss, every moment that you can. Even if that means eating ice cream for breakfast and yes, I have done that recently. I felt like I needed to drown my sorrows in ice cream and it was awesome :)

We all spend so much time worrying what other people think, do, or say, that we are not focusing on ourselves...even a little bit. How are people supposed to be happy if they don't realize their divine right to do what they love?? I guess what I am trying to say is that I now have an opportunity with being home sick, to at least come up with a plan to get closer to my goals. Am I going to waste this opportunity or embrace it?? I have a feeling that I will have days where I just want to do nothing but lay here, but that's to be expected. What I am going through is pretty tough shit. Uncertainty about the future is always like that and some days you just need to curl up in bed and hide from the world.

I have the start of a plan brewing in my head right now. It starts with finally getting the hell out of this town when our lease is up. I cannot stand living here anymore. I want to move to a smaller town, closer to the country, but not so far away that it takes me 1.5 hours to go to the grocery store. Been there, done that. While I enjoyed it at the time, its just too difficult for me at this time in my life. I think I need a place to have a bit of a starting over. The other part of my plan is to do everything I can to bust through school. That's about as far as I have gotten with the school aspect of my plan. I am in still in the beginning stages after all.

First and foremost though, I need to get better. I am so thankful for all the support I have gotten, from Aaron, my family and my amazing friends. I don't know what I would do without each and every one of you! The phone calls, the texts, etc have meant so much and have helped me stay relatively sane.

Doing It Again

I am doing it again, I am making someone and something else my whole world and loosing myself. I keep trying to stop the process and refocus on myself, but its freaking difficult. I feel guilty for not taking care of everyone and everything else over myself.

If I am completely honest with myself, I am not fully happy with my life. I am working a job that I despise, its nowhere near what I want to do with my life and it seems like every. single. day. something goes wrong to fuck with my life outside of work. I do not get paid enough to deal with the crap (literally) that I have to deal with every day.

I hate the town I live in, it stresses me the hell out. This town has entirely too many snobby, rude people and I am just tired of dealing with it. The cost of living is too high. We pay so much money for our dinky apartment and its crappy complex. This complex doesn't really have room for Lucian to play, no gym, no playground, etc. Its full of constantly partying assholes too. I do not want to raise children in this town either.

I would love to stay home again and be able to concentrate on school full time. I took five days off with the intention of at least devoting ONE DAY to school and that didn't happen because I was too busy being there for everyone else. I guess its took much for me to ask to put what I want first. Everything I had planned on for my five days off didn't happen and I am angry. I feel resentful too. I'm sitting here almost fuming because I took that time off unpaid and didn't do anything *I* wanted to do. I played cook, maid, taxi, etc. I think the only "me" time I got was being able to shower.

I want out of this town, out of this life. I want a REAL break where I can do things that I want to do. Unfortunately, I won't be able to do that anytime soon and that makes me angry too. AHHHHHHHHHHHH! I wish I could do that for real, for a long time.

I am so stressed out and tense that I'm going to snap soon and it probably won't be pretty. Maybe getting this all out is a form of snapping?? IDK, all I know is that I want me back. I want to live the life I choose, not what everybody else thinks is the "right," or "normal" way to do things.

I am tired of saying these things over and over again. This has been the theme of my life for over two years now and I am nowhere nearer to the things I want than I was before. It hurts so much to be so....stuck. I guess I should just practice patience huh? However, I think my patience was shot on those 1.5 deployments, that basically wasted a good portion of my life.

I do not want to end up like the woman I was two years ago. I won't survive if I go back to that dark place.