Hot Mess

I am without a doubt, a hot mess. Within the past few weeks I have helped my sister in law and her family arrange a slideshow honoring the life of her mother who passed away after a long battle with a neurological disease that over a span of a few years simply eroded everything that was her. I’ve listened and tried to support my best friend when she got the news that her father, a man I grew up calling my “other father”, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. This week, she called to tell me his outlook is bleak at best, with an estimated six months to live. Her son has been extremely depressed, not only contemplating suicide, but placing a gun into his mouth, unsure about whether it was loaded or not and pulled the trigger. I can only be grateful that the gun wasn’t loaded. I have played referee in my own house between two warring teenage girls, one of which is going through her own struggles with depression that goes hand in hand with an under active thyroid. Whether it’s one or both of those things, I’ll probably never know, but it does make life in my house tense, to say the very least. My own mother has been suffering anxiety attacks, one of which I helped her through during her visit to the dentist office. It’s jarring to walk into a room and see the woman who raised you reduced to a quivering, sobbing human unable to control her emotions over something so simple as needing an extra appointment to have fillings done.

Through all of these things, I have been trying to get through with a little grace, a little sanity left in tact, but every day the strength that I draw on seems to be dwindling. I’ve found myself in tears more than once this week, feeling completely lost and insecure as I try to help those around me that I care most about. This is not my typical I’ll get through this, I know what I’m doing, I’ve got this post. This one is the one where I say I feel lost. I’d love to say I know how to help my daughter, my best friend, my mother, my sister in law, but I’m at a loss. The only thing I can do right now is hold on tight and hope that when things start to look up that my sanity is still in tact and I’ve grown in some way through these experiences.