The New Government Conspiracy

After nearly two decades of hard drug use, my ex's brain started to cook. I feel fairly confident in giving him that medical diagnosis despite the fact that I myself have never personally attended medical school, simply based on the fact that I was around him long enough to watch his brains actually start to cook.

(I also feel like I'm semi-qualified to diagnose people with various ailments because I've watched enough Discovery Health Channel that I'm basically a doctor now.)

So what does it look like when someones brains start to fry?

Think schizophrenia brought on by drug addiction.

When the delusions brought on by his drug use started to interfere with his everyday life, my quasi-medical school degree clued me into the fact that his brain was cooking. When no one around him was able to verify that what he was seeing was real, he did the most logical thing that someone in his position would do and he saw a doctor  stopped using drugs  did anything logical at all  decided that the rest of the human race was in on a giant conspiracy theory and he was the one we were out to get.

Yep, fun times.

**I feel like I should add in a disclaimer that I myself eventually made an appointment with a doctor who specializes in addictions to make sure that my ex didn't have an untreated mental illness, and the doctor agreed that it was most likely "just" the drugs.**

Abuse aside, living with someone who is paranoid 100% of the time is really freaking hard. I was the target of many of his conspiracy theories and as his brain continued to cook itself (I'm deeming that an actual medical term based upon the fact that I've watched like 30 TV marathons of "Mystery Diagnosis" and as I said, I'm pretty much a doctor now), he even progressed into sleepwalking.

Allow Me To Catch You Up...

Hey, so do you want to hear the updates to a couple of past posts?

Of course you do! No one likes to get halfway through a book and then find out the last chapter is missing, so here, allow me to catch you up.

The gerbil is no more.

Yep, remember the little critter that was loose in my house? Well I'm not exactly sure how he met his untimely demise, but I found him... hibernating... on my driveway. He hadn't gotten into any of my traps so I'm not sure what happened to him. He was actually really cute though so that did end up making me a little sad, but on the upside, yay, he wasn't in my house, and double yay, I didn't have to murder him!

I'll take my wins where I can get them.

Speaking of wins, do you remember when I asked you guys if I should accept a lunch date offer from an ex?

Do you want to know what I decided?

She Didn't Even See Me

I got mail from the Child Support Division.

I cried.

I opened the mail while I was in the car and burst into tears.

I am just literally at my wits end with this entire thing. Three months now, three months Mr. Attorney Man and I have been chasing this issue around from office to office, the courthouse and back, only to get a new order approved, sent to the Child Support Division, and have it entered wrong again.

AGAIN.

This is me talking to Frisbee Boy's Mom

Allow me to give you a close up view (it was too hard to edit the pic in the screenshot). The pink form is the order from the courthouse, it's what I walked away with when I left court last month. The white copy is the way that the Child Support office entered it into their system.

You Will Never Guess What I Saw Today (And I'm Not Sure You Want To)

I saw something at the gym today that was....well...

Ok, so you all know that I hit the gym pretty regularly. My family and I were lucky enough to get a scholarship slot at our local YMCA and I was pretty stoked because it has a state-of-the-art fitness center within it. Now when I was younger I remember going to the YMCA with my mother, and from what I recall it only had a racquetball court and what was pretty much the equivalent of a hotel fitness room, meaning there were a few spin bikes, a treadmill, some free weights, and that was about it.

The Y that is just a few minutes from my house is more like a stand alone gym that smashed into a community center. On one half they hold a preschool, have a teen center, daycare, family water park, small coffee bar, etc., and on the other half there is a weight room, cardio room, track, basketball courts, dance studios, lap pool, sauna, etc.

Why am I telling you this? Because I'm setting the stage to show you how strange the atmosphere can be sometimes. You have these huge muscly men and their protein shakes walking in with their wrists all taped up and what appears to be some obvious steroid use in effect, and they are walking past the moms sitting at the coffee bar waiting for their kids to get out of preschool, who are watching the senior citizens pop in for a sauna, and sometimes it's just strange.

Strange like the time I signed up for a deep water fitness class. "60 minutes in the deep end of the pool. Strengthen and tone while using the resistance of the water. Must be able to tread water for extended periods of time."  I'm envisioning an aerobics class where we tread water the entire time and from how that looks in my head, I'm thinking that sounds great, because workout + no sweating = AWESOME!!

I realized how very wrong I was when I showed up for the first class and was greeted by 20 senior citizens. I was at least 30 years younger than any other person there. Not only that, but we were all required to wear floaty belts. So there I was, me and 20 fake hips, wearing a Styrofoam belt, and doing scissor kicks in the water.

To Answer All Your Burning Questions...

***Alrighty people, I'm finally putting the Answers post back up but unfortunately it is a highly edited version of the one that was up before. I have to say I am still really saddened by what went on last time I put it up. The fighting in the comments, the nasty emails, and the hack that happened at the same time. I wish that I could re-publish what I originally wrote, but I just don't feel like playing playground attendant in the comments section so for now this will have to do. For all of you who have already seen this post, in order to supplement everything I removed I added a few more answers to questions that I did not get to last time.***

Well wowzers.

As you know I opened up the floor to reader questions and offered to answer the questions that have been burning on your mind, and I have to say that the amount of questions that came in was intense! Not only did way more come in than I was expecting, but I was really surprised to see how many of you wanted to know the same exact things; things I would have never guessed you would want to know.

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Eden, why are you and your kids on that strange diet? Shouldn't you just be grateful for any food people donate to you, regardless of whether it fits your fad diet? Do you know that being gluten free really isn't any healthier? Why do you drink alcohol if you go out of your way to live a healthy lifestyle? 

It's My Weekend Yo!

Wow, it has been a BUSY day.

First off, it started at 3:30am. I had a super creepy dream about my ex, so much so that I couldn't fall back asleep because it had freaked me out so bad. By the time the kids got up I was so completely wired that I ran five miles and lifted weights. which normally wouldn't have been a big deal but I had made plans to go to a free Zumba class with a friend.

Side note: funny story, but shortly after I had The Boy Child, this same friend and I signed up for a hip-hop dance class. We were SO out of place it was downright mortifying. I still had all my baby weight, was completely out of shape, and we were easily ten years older than every girl there.

It was a moment I wish I could forget.

Back to the story.

Lucky her, she got more sleep than I did and missed the class.

I however, did not, and I have to tell you that it was an intense class. I'd say we started with maybe 30 people and ended with half that many. I guess I envisioned it more like a fitness dance class, but in all actuality it was a repetitive jumping and lunge class.

The Chicken And The Egg Theory (If You Push Her, You Will Break Her)

As you know, I work with a lot of abused women. At this point I would say that the hours I dedicate to my girls add up to being another full time job outside of the work I do with the nonprofit. I can't even begin to tell you how many hours I've spent running support groups, giving presentations to the community, sitting through court hearings with women who need nothing more than a supportive friend, meeting with women who need help navigating the public aid benefits system, answering late night phone calls that run into the early hours of the morning, and more.

What takes the most time though?

Just listening to them.

And it's hard.

It's really hard.

Abused women have a method of thinking that is very distinctive to the life that they have lived. Typically when I first become involved with them they are fresh out of an abusive situation. While it's easy to think that they should feel free, in reality they don't. They don't feel free because all they feel is terror. Terror at the long road ahead of them and terrified because they no longer trust themselves. They feel ashamed that they let someone do this to them and they feel angry that it went on for so long. Angry at their abuser and angry at themselves. So although "free" they may be, truly free they are not.

While they may have won the battle to stay alive, for many of them a new battle is just beginning; the battle to really live. Because although they are no longer fighting to free themselves from their abuser, they are now fighting to free themselves from what their abuser has done to them.