Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2014 5:46 p.m.

turning tide

I find it hard to write when I'm home with the kids. I've got so many things going on. My new job, the kids who need to eat and sleep and play. C destroying the house while I'm on the computer trying to be a normal persona and focus on normal thoughts. S fussing and wanting to eat or be held. Trying to get the work done I need to for my new job. Reading facebook. Thinking thoughts. Trying to respond to things. Trying to organize these new shelves K and I installed last night.

My mind is all over the place. Still stuck on this Kent Brantly thing. I'm just feeling, well, that my life needs to change. I'm being inspired to do something, to be more than I am. We're on the brink of coming out of this a dark time in our lives and I want to have changed me. I want to be something different. I want to go a direction. Any direction really. But just go. I've live so much of my adult life stagnant. I used to have dreams and potential; I swear I did. And I really want it to come back.

Robin Williams commited suicide yesterday and it's al over my news feed. It's also affecting me, but not necessarily with sadness. If anything, it's making me unsure WHY so many people are so sad about his death. This sounds mean, but people die all the time, every day. Why do we as a society care so much more about him, but not everyone else? The celebrity of it all Don't seem fair. Sure, he was a face and a voice that people remember from stories they've seen on films - but he was his own person. He belonged to himself, to his family, to his close community. He did not belong to the vast majority of us. Most of our lives are not really personally impacted by him. Sure, a movie he was in might define a particular time in our lives, and so we associate him as meaningful to our lives - but he was just a character. He would not have cared one bit if I had died.

Why is celebrity so revered? Celebrity only goes hand in hand with a few occupations. Occupations that don't do anything. Not really. I'm so over entertainment for entertainment's sake. Entertainment that teaches or raises awareness has purpose. Watching something to be entertained? Pure entertainment feels like the death of productive time.

I just, I'm just, feeling something right now. I'm trying to put my words on it, and to figure it out exactly what I have the problem with. But something.

I think everyone has their own mission field and everyone is called to give of themsevles in one way or another. I honestly think everyone does, whether or not they beleive that their actions or inactions make a difference. I beleive they do. I beleive we all have our individual crosses to bear.

I think another thing that kind of buge me about Robin Williams is how many people are taking about depression and suicide right now.

Can I be honest? The past 2 years of my life have largely sucked. How we've made it through, I don't know. Want a breeding ground for depression? Yeah, I've been living it. Do I know what it's like to have no motivation in order t oleave the house or clean or make food or take care of your kids? Uh, YEAH. I'm still feeling that way. If I wanted to admit it, you better believe I could claim depression. Even now, while things are getting better. Did you read some of my diary entires from the past so many months? If that wasn't a reason to get severly depressed, I don't know what. I still cannot believe that I was not overcome with postpartum depression after the birth of S, but seriously, he is amazing. He, in a way, has been the thing that has gotten me though. I thought it would be so hard to bring another child into the family right now, but you know what? Once he was here, I fell in love with him and he brings me such peace.

I still have such a hard time reading people who complain about stupid things on facebook. I mean, their emotions over their supposed detrimental experience might be real for them, but it's harder for me to have sympathy for people like that.

There were so mnay time in the past two years where the only thing that got me though was to think about how things could be worse and then being thankful that I at least didn't have the worst thing possible. I was alive. My husband was a live. My child(ren) were alive. We were healthy. What more could I seriously ask for? Were we always happy? No? But happiness waxes and wanes and a momentary lull in happiness at least has potential to be replaced with happiness one day.

I suppose this also all coincides with my slow return back to some sort of religion. I suppose that, perhaps, all this has had to happen in order to bring me to the person I'm supposed to be today. To the person I'm hoping to become.

Life could all fall apart again and I'm no longer naive enough to think that I'll always have enough to be content, nor that I'll always be happy. BUT, BUT, BUT what I have taken from all of this is to always be thankful. No matter what. It could almost ALWAYS be worse.

All I can ever do is make the best out of what I currently have.

I've fought hard not to give in completely to the depression and meaninglessness of life, and I'm proud of myself for that.

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