NDCQ - Not Dead Can't Quit

Most of us recognize that we let ourselves live in an illusion of control over our environment and our personal world. It gives a nice warm false sense of security. We also know we can have events beyond our control or just the unforseen consequences of bad choices blow our best laid plans out of the water. Most of us, me included for a long time, would rather pretend we have control than deal with the scary prospect that we don't. Thats right up until life smacks you in the face!

Due to some traumatic events in my childhood I have always had a major disconnect between my body and my mind or soul or whatever you would like to call it. If you asked me in my twenties to describe myself I would have said I am the entity that inhabits this flesh, but the flesh isn't me. I did literally not consider my body to be "me." Wierd I know. What we don't own we don't take responsibility for or take care of. I spent decades ignoring my bodies needs and not taking care of myself. That choice is totally on me. And as always the bill comes due. In my midthirties I was seriously overweight from a chronic back injury that caused me to decrease activity while at the same time eating my way through every stress and uncomforatble emotion I had. Bad combination and bad choices. At any rate, by 2003 I had a herniated disc with nerve pain down my leg and chronic inflammation in  my spine and could barely walk. I had done a lot of work on my eating issue but not enough to make headway in weight loss because of the missing exercise component. At this point I was flat on my back or sitting virtually all the time because of the severe pain. I wouldn't take the narcotics and muscle relaxers and "live with it." like my doctors said. I am a single mom with 3 kids at home at that time. I couldn't be drugged out and semiconscious!! I was also terrified I would get addicted. So after 2 years like this I finally found a pain management specialist who got me back on my feet within a few weeks. I found a desk job, again very little activity. At the same time all this back stuff is going on I began a slow incremental slide into depression, so gradual I didn't even recognize it for a long time. I later found out what was happening was I had reached menopause and and as my estrogen levels began to drop it started massively messing up my brain chemistry. In 2005 I knew something was going on but I thought it was stress from very major issues going on in my family life. A few months later I realized it was progressively getting worse and maybe it was something more.

Over the next two and 1/2 years we went through every antidepressent and even bipolar medication known to man and nothing worked. This was not garden variety sad mood, unmotivated, blues kind of thing. I was emotionally numb, capable of only grief and guilt. I was physically exhausted 24-7, my short term memory became impaired, my concentration dropped severely, my judgement was impaired because details and eventually the obvious went right by me. I struggled to think clearly- like trying to push a thought through thick cotton in my brain. One day I just hit the wall and could not push myself through one more day. The energy drain was severe and I became so impaired I lost my job and with it my health insurance. I went through our savings and I struggled to keep a roof over our heads, food on the table, and the lights on. Try parenting when your short term memory is about five minutes long and you can sleep 20 hours a day and still feel exhausted, when all the details that dont add up get right by you, and your too spacey to be fully present with your child. Nobody was having a good time. We had little to no family or friend support. After 2 years in the pit the doctors said "we have tried everything and there are no more options for treatment", basically wrap your head around the idea that this is your life now. I was 50 years old. They took away my last sustainence -hope. At this point I am thinking @#$% this! I am not living like this, as a turnip, for the next 20 years! For the first time since this rollercoaster started I seriously considered putting a bullet in my brain. But I could not leave my children. They had no other parent and no one to take them if something happened to me. Bad as I was I was better than no parent and foster care. So I got up every day for months and decided to live one more day for them. So at that point its been about 5 years of sitting and laying down. I am now severely obese and my muscles are wasted and I have no endurance what so ever. And I'm shredding myself inside for not being able to just pull myself up and fix it and do all the things I am supposed to be doing. Its like trying to wake up one day and decide you don't have cancer, but I didn't get that at the time. I thought there was something seriously wrong with my character and I destroyed my self daily trying to figure out what it was to fix it. Then one day I got a call from a medical provider friend. She had come accross an obscure article about a drug for seizures that had been around a long time. Someone noticed it seemed to help people with depression who didn't respond to other stuff so they were starting a research project. It was a Hail Mary with nothing to back it up but I had nothing left to loose. And miraculously it worked. Within a month I was 2/3 back.

My life was leveled in every direction. What choice do you have but grab a shovel and start digging? My kids were ghosts of their former selves, my finances were destroyed, my body was a train wreck, my mind still shakey, and I didn't know if I could ever work again. That was 2 years ago. It took 18 months for me to level out and get stable mentally. I got my family restored, and began working on my health. At first I was wheezing walking up 6 steps and could not walk around my house doing basic cleaning for more than 10 minutes without having to sit down and rest. Now I am a full time college student. I just finished my 1 mile walk/run, and I can function in my daily life just fine. I am working toward rebuilding my career. Rebuilding my faith in myself has been hardest. I have lost weight and improved my endurance so much from where I began though I know its still poor by most standards. Most of all I have learned to appreciate the daily beauty of life and to never take it for granted. I also know I have no promises for tomorrow so I better cram all I can in today. I got a second chance. Many people don't get that. I have a responsibility to be the best i can be.

This site has been such a great help to me because there are not many places where you hear positive, motivating, encouraging voices telling you to keep going and "Not Dead, Can't Quit." That phrase has special meaning to me. Macks book also, same thing. The carver matrix in UTWW helped me sort out where to start digging first. It also helped me with using trigger words when I was finding my mind wanting to go back and dwell on the negative past, or become fearful of the possiblities of the future. Learn to live in today because it really is all you have. I am grateful to Mack, Mandy, and the Team NDCQ because of the infromation, support and encouragment.