bent necked lady and why I was so afraid

It took me exactly 2 years to watch the Haunting of Hill House. I watched the first episode with Sean last year and when I saw the bent neck lady, I told him that it was a series that I was not willing to watch. Not in fear of the bent neck lady, but the fear of living through what the show was going to go through. After watching it, there are some things that completely hit home for me where I could say, “yeah I can completely relate to that. fuck.” other things, I was just like, “meh that’s stupid.”

But looking back at it, it was… well, kind of the bent neck lady that scared me. I would find myself afraid at night to go to sleep or to even think her name aloud. It wasn’t her that I was afraid of, it was the image of my brother hanging that I was afraid of. I don’t think I’ve ever written that in my blog. I always mention my brother committed suicide, but I never mentioned how - he was a bent neck boy. So to close my eyes, and see my brother as my own personal bent neck figure, is probably the scariest thing that I can imagine. Because sometimes, I imagine it is a bent neck lady, but that lady is me.

easier said than done

I get frustrated when my son cries at night, even though I know it’s all part of his development. He’s most likely teething and in pain, but the sound of his cry triggers more anxiety than it does nurturing. That’s hard for me. My husband will say, “we have to remember that he’s a baby and that’s how he communicates.” Of course I know that. But that doesn’t change the fact that my head starts throbbing and my emotions become overwhelmed when it happens.

I say, “I didn’t sign up for this.” I signed up to be a mom to a baby, and I know what it takes to care for a child. But I didn’t sign up to be a mom with postpartum depression trying to heal from her own trauma and ptsd all at once. I didn’t sign up to be the mom that needed to time nursing and pumping sessions with medications to make sure I got the least amount of medications in it. I didn’t sign up to be the mom who needed her husband to lock up her medications because she wanted to take all of them at once when things became too much to handle.

I wish I could be like every mom I know right now, happily watering plants and rocking the whole “working mom” thing and making fucking bento box lunches for everyone in the family. But I’m gonna settle for the “trying to keep it together while faking like we’re doing okay” kind of mom right now, and that’s just gonna have to be good enough.

photography: something that grounds me back to being my own person

I’ve been feeling really out of it lately, out of touch with reality, out of touch with myself. There was a part in Haunting of Bly Manor that just pulled at my heart strings so hard because “I FELT THAT.” Spoiler, skip to next paragraph if you haven’t watched it: When Theo just breaks down crying saying she couldn’t feel ANYTHING at all, like a pit of nothing… I felt that. I cried and my throat got tight because that’s what I feel (or don’t feel) most days.

It’s true what they say - when you become a mom, a lot of the focus turns onto the baby. Everyone wants to know how the baby is doing, but rarely do they ever ask how you’re doing. Unless they’re a mom too, and they know exactly what it’s like to be in your predicament. It’s hard to not feel like you’re being forgotten or feel less cared about. That’s why it’s so important to find something that makes you feel you again. And taking photos or being in photos does that for me.

I’m not the best at taking photos. I’m still learning. Most of the time it was me in front of the camera, but now I’ve found some comfort being behind the camera. And lately, that’s what I’ve been doing with my friends. I’ve been taking their photos and trying to make art, and make them feel beautiful. It reminds me that there’s more to me than just being “Maverick’s momma.” I’m me. I had hobbies before him and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t keep working at them.

It’s been really fun shooting, editing, and then seeing their reaction to how their photos turned out. It makes me really happy to know that I could capture that for them, their beauty, the beauty they’re unaware of sometimes. I hope that in the future, I have more time to learn about photography, but for now, it’s just for fun. It’s for us. It’s for me - to remember there’s more to me than just being a mom. I am still creative.

the voices in my head: welcome back billy

In 2019, I finally opened up about hearing voices. Not that tiny voice in your head that everyone has, aka, your conscience. This voice is like it’s someone else in the room, someone else around. I introduced Billy to the world. I thought I’d bring him up again because it’s starting to pick up again. I hear him grumbling off things I can’t really understand most of the time, but now that I’m feeling more and more anxious, the voice is angrier.

I recently read something about how mentally ill people are portrayed during Halloween. Why are they seen as scary? Why so often are scary films and tv shows based on people who have mental illness? I recently finished the Haunting series (Hill House and Bly Manor), and honestly, I wasn’t as afraid as I thought I’d be. Why? Because I feel like that on a daily basis.

The night terrors, the nightmares, the voices, the feeling of being uneasy, those aren’t new to me. But watching it on television definitely makes me feel a little uneasy about opening up about it. There was a journal prompt the other day that I didn’t do: “if you saw your situation on television, what would you think? who would side with? what would your thoughts be about what you saw?”

And after watching the Haunting of Hill House, it made me not want to open up. I’m debating on whether to make this blog public again or just open it to people with a password. Seeing how Olivia and Nellie were treated and thought of after they committed suicide, or spoke about their ghosts, man… Talk about negative vibes and stigma on mental health.

Unless you’ve experienced it before, or have seen someone completely lose their mind while dealing with it, you shouldn’t get to have a say in what’s real or not. Because for us, it’s very real, and if that’s too much for you, then maybe it’s a good thing that we aren’t really friends.

physical manifestations of mental illness that get really annoying

I’m exhausted, guys. I feel like I’m running on fumes some days. Other days, it’s a miracle that I leave my bed. Every morning I wake up with a headache, and the feeling of my teeth rocking loose from all of the grinding and clenching I do at night. My neck hurts, my back hurts, everything hurts. And that’s just after me opening my eyes. Getting out of bed is a completely different story. My feet hit the ground and all I feel is sharp pain shooting up from my heels to my knees, and I can’t even walk on my left foot right away. I have to walk on the lateral side until by some miracle, my foot cracks into place.

But that’s just the physical manifestation of my initial wake. That doesn’t include the heaviness I feel on my chest. The pain that sits on me making it hard to breathe. Not to mention the dizziness and nausea that follows after I take my psychiatric medications. It’s like the entire world is toppling over, like I’m experiencing another bout of vertigo (absolutely no fun).

I think the worst thing right now is the immeasurable amount of tears I can cry when emotions flood over me. It happens out of nowhere. I could be completely fine, but once I zone out, that’s it - I’m overwhelmed.

I think I’ve finally reached my breaking point. Every triggering subject that’s come up lately has made it difficult to push memories back into that hidden box in my head. It’s honestly why I got rid of my Facebook, because the topics became too much to handle. It made it even worse when I realized some of my ‘friends’ thought that these things were worth joking about, or even seemed to condone some actions.

I hope this therapy works. I know it’s a long road ahead, but at least I’m on it, right?