Allo from the land of… something… something. Dudes and Dudelettes, my brain has been converted to pure fluff, ha ha. But we continue to do fairly well on the whole. Having a baby in the house is tiring and stressful and my husband and I have both hit the point of frustrated sobbing, but yanno… par for the course. And honestly, it’s probably better than we CAN admit that we’re frustrated in such a way, ’cause it enables us to support each other better. And maybe, someday, we’ll understand Baby and be able to translate what each cry of complaint is, ha ha (unless it’s just crying for the sake of crying, which dear deity above is extra stressful!). But at least I’m getting good sleep compliments of the Seroquel, and depending on what my psychiatrist thinks when I see him/her later this week (not sure which one I’ll be seeing), I suspect I’ll get the Zoloft rolling again shortly too.

One thing that’s really stood out since the last entry though, in the realm of mental resilience, is tangential to the snippet of nursery rhyme I used for the title. You see, I abhor advice. I hate asking for it, I hate receiving it, and it frankly terrified me. Yes, past tense; I’ve figured out assorted chunks of why it was so problematic in this past couple of months. And yeah, ties into the abusive/narcissistic parent thing, quelle surprise. When one grows up being treated like they’re too stupid to live on their own (and has that reinforced in adulthood via parental bullying and their flying monkeys), ‘well-meaning’ help from people feels the same as the abuse laid down as a foundation for that premise. And really, what the hell yo. I know the bipolar triggered somewhere between 12 and 17 (I had to add a few more years to the front due to OCD things that started popping up that young), and that I made it into my 30s without going to jail, getting fired, or any other number of bad things that could have happened, especially with the total lack of support network I had. Oh sure, I had friends, good friends, but I was in such an isolated place before moving to the UK that I couldn’t really make use of what I had to me.

As a tester, I made myself ask for some advice on things. The one that comes to mind was a silly game-related question, but I couldn’t find a good answer and figured it was worth risking a chunk of my sanity to find out (and also, because it was innocuous enough to not require lots of pile-on follow-up). Not only did I get the answer I required, I had a good conversation with friends and was able to see their further suggestions related to the core subject (Minecraft) without utterly flipping my shit. This is big, ha ha. I’m not sure I’ll ever be happy with purely unsolicited advice, but I think I might be moving to a place where my natural response to it is not an abusive one. I own that — even if I have no desire to beat down my friends, my natural developed defense mechanism honed by that less-than-ideal growing up situation wasn’t a good one. And realizing this after reading a piece last summer about the isolating effects of having been abused, and unintentionally repeating it and wondering why nobody wanted to hang out with you, was definitely part of the unravelling to where I am today. I’d link the article, but I apparently misplaced it — boo! It was really useful though.

So yeah… as said, things are good, and getting better every day. For now though, I need more caffeine. xD

<3