Crazy people are people too

You know how I say I'm crazy with pride? Well it depends on what crazy I'm referring to. The crazy that's me, that's always been me, the me dancing in weird places to make the clerk laugh or driving like a mad woman, that's a crazy I'm proud of. The diagnosis crazy, the stuff that's new to me, not so proud and highly embarrassed.

I also know not only what it's like to take care of crazy people, I know what it's like to be crazy. 

When I take care of my nephew, I want people to know he's crazy. He's a handful. He's difficult. I want people to know because it IS difficult to raise him. I earned it dealing with the crazy. I want you all to know for sympathy and an occasional pity party because I need those things to get by and keep me going. Everyone enjoys a good pity party once in a while. Don't even pretend you are immune to that. Even more, don't be the asshole who is all, "shut the fuck up, stop bitching, and live your life about it," because we all know you cower like a little bitch too on occasion and need a poor you minute. 

I know I'm not the only one. I read blogs of moms of special needs kids, and most do the same thing. It's so difficult to raise this kid. It's almost impossible at times. There are issues that have no solutions. These are things they actually do experience. Things they want the world to be more understanding of because of those people who say, "Suck it up it's called parenting." 

One time I was on a facebook group, and a mom of a kid with down syndrome went ape shit over someone calling a mean person retarded. I understand the word offends her. I understand her need to advocate for her son and release her inner pity party, but she went too far when she is offended that someone called someone else retarded because she believes her son is retarded. It makes him appear special needs more so than he already is to people.

Yes, we are flipping the picture here. As the person who is crazy, I'm sick of people treating me as such. Here's the deal. I have a diagnosis that should land me in a long-term care facility for the rest of my life. I'm not there. Instead, I'm at home cleaning the house, taking care of my kids, raising my kids, cooking meals, planning doctor appointments, handling all the finances, taking the kids to school... I'm still the person everyone calls when shit hits the fan, "Hey Michelle, tears, I don't know what to do, I need to pay my water bill and I don't have the money." Ok. I'll help. "Hey Michelle, come get me now before I kill my mother." Got it kid. I will pick you up mid-meltdown with all 3 kids with me, calm you down, and make you spaghetti. "Hey Michelle, I can't bring this kid lunch because I'm busy here at work, do you mind dropping some off?" Why not? I'm the crazy one right? Nevermind my life, what do you want me to cook for him? 

Now that I've more than proved I'm more capable of life than most non-crazy neurotypical people, then they follow it with:

• You can't make clear decisions because of your diagnosis.
• Nobody will take you seriously in court or in your kids' school because of your diagnosis; your husband will get instant custody of the kids in a divorce because of your diagnosis
• Your advice that will make things easier on you in the future when I come at you to fix my problem is something I can't follow because you are crazy and therefore have no credibility; and when you come at me later with, "I told you so," I'm going to believe you are making it all up because you are crazy. 
• You can't say crazy things like "she's gonna regret the day she pissed in my Cheerios," or "Patti has no idea her pet unicorn, Lord Burgess Atwood, loves to dance to showtunes from Rodgers and Hammerstein," because of your diagnosis, people will take it wrong. 
• You are making excuses for your crazy, in response to things like, "I'm running late because I overslept, and then the kids flooded the bathroom and one peed on the floor on our way out the door and I had to change her clothes and clean it up, and then they wanted food..." As if real life doesn't happen to me anymore because some Freudian Wannabe wrote something about me on paper. 

Let's not even get into...

Did you take your meds?

I hear this question every time I disagree with someone who knows my diagnosis. Heaven forbid I have my own opinion and it's not the same as yours. 

The one that really gets me. I'm not entitled to emotions anymore. If I have a feeling, it's somehow part of my crazy and a sign that I'm getting worse. Just because I am pissed at someone for pissing me off doesn't mean I am crazy. In fact, if I responded with a poker face, that would be a sign of a mental problem. When you respond to fight or flight mode with calm logic, you are fucking crazy, like kill the population by talking them into drinking bleach crazy. If someone stabs you, pain is a normal response. If someone you love calls you a cunt, pissed off is a normal response. If a stranger calls you a cunt, a little pissed off followed by, "Do I look like your mama?" is a normal response. 

From a crazy person to another. From a person who handles crazy person to another. Do not assume the crazy are incompetent. That's mean. Calling me retarded over a diagnosis is bad enough, but to take the extra steps to SHOW me that's what you think no matter how you word it? Now that's fucked up. Look at people for who they are. 

If I'm sitting here telling you the world is going to end on December 5, you need to stock up on water, first aid kits, chicken blood to ward off the vampires, and wear this aluminum hat until then so the aliens can't see you, ok then treat me like I'm retarded enough to need your help and that my advice might suck. If I'm telling you, "I thought about driving off a bridge yesterday," Ok, red flag. That doesn't mean I don't know what we should eat for dinner or that my advice on making a crazy person see a shrink is bad advice, but it is definitely a red flag. IF you see me in my bedroom for days without sleeping or eating and just crying, lots of crying, and I didn't take the kids to school or clean the house, hospitalize my ass. But if you see me taking my kids to school, cooking meals, worried about coming up with money for picture day (hey multiple kids, that shit is not cheap), you know, being responsible and shit, don't treat me like I'm drooling on myself plotting to lick the windows.

I'm not saying you are not entitled to your pity party for putting up with my ass. If I make you stop what you are doing to come over here and help with the dishes, by all means bitch that you had to help me with the dishes. But don't bitch about shit I'm not. Don't do that to any person with a diagnosis. Don't treat normal or unusual but safe things like it's part of the diagnosis because it really hurts the person you supposedly advocate and love.

Judge a person NOT by their diagnosis, but by the things they do. If they are fully functioning or damn near close enough like you, don't treat them like they aren't. We all have moments of insanity, and just because someone had one long enough to get diagnosed doesn't mean they are always that person. If they aren't fully functioning, those who aren't actually caring for the individual really shouldn't have an opinion of them. By actually caring, I don't mean being nosy up in their business. I mean you wiped their butt and cooked their meal.

All people are crazy. Some of us are diagnosed. The people who don't know their crazy enough to give it a name are the ones that are dangerous. And all of us, crazy or undiagnosed, need to realize that we all may be different, but we are still equal. Crazy people are entitled to bad days, negative emotions, strange opinions, bad behavior, and shitty excuses just like you are.

PS. I have never licked a window, but I have licked people and poured salt on them and then licked the salt off before doing a shot of tequila. You don't even want to know what I do with the lemon afterwards. Mmmm. Body shots.

If for whatever reason you licked people for salt and you like my blog, you know, you can subscribe to it.

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Blogs who I think sent me traffic to my blog that you should check out if you haven't...  I do read all of these blogs regularly.

The Bloggess

Insane in the Mom Brain

More than Cheese and Beer

Finding Ninee

Ooops I Said Vagina Again

Janine's Confessions of a Mommyaholic

Sleep Deprivation Sucks

I'm finally sharing some of the story that lead to my current levels of crazy I hide from all of you, and this is only a glimpse. In order to tell the whole story, I'd have to write a memoir. That might happen some day. Might. It's a lot of skeletons. But here's this...

The Sandman likes to skip my house as if I have smeared the butter of dead cattle over my doorway to let him know to Passover my house like a story from Genesis. Sleep deprivation is not for the faint of heart. It’s not really for the strong, determined type either. In fact, it’s like having lice that carry the swine flu, like it’s just not good all the way around.

Being tired and falling asleep was the easiest task in the world for me to do. I’d fall asleep by accident at work, especially when doing brainless tasks like putting postage stamps on 300 Receivables, where I wake up somewhere around 150 and find half the stamps were placed dead center of the envelope. Or in school, I’d be taking notes, and I’d wake up to see I had written, “The psychosexual stages are comprised of…” and then the text would get really small and almost illegible, “bat wings and Mark’s accounting entries for the soufflé.” This was me being healthy with sleep.

For most of my life, I was, overall, in a sleep heaven. That was until I had kids. People think the concept of “sleeping in” is the luxury, but parents know, the concept of falling asleep in the first place is the luxury.

For many years of my life, I was the walking dead. My natural state was a state of panic-laced confusion 30IQ points shy of normal cognitive functioning. Other symptoms of sleep deprivation, for me at least, included lack of depth perception, short term memory loss Dory level, weight loss, migraines, and it made whatever crazy that ails me much, much worse.

When sleep deprived, it takes ten times longer to accomplish something, from brushing your teeth to doing the dishes. The number ten totally came out of my brain from nowhere, so don’t assume that’s a real statistic because it’s an under-exaggerated hyperbole. While sleep deprived, your most brilliant ideas to solve your problems are generally irrational, make-the-situation-worse, stupidest ideas that make the village drunk look like the village elder. The irritability would hurt people if only you had the energy. The anxiety is like having a thousand raging hormonal teenagers inside your body ready to burst out in the form of tears and hair loss over the toilet paper someone threw on the floor next to the toilet.

I did drive under the influence of sleep deprivation, a lot more than I should have. At my worst, one time I was in the McDonald’s drive thru, and I was stopped in between window number one and window number two. Traffic slowly moved up, and I slowly, at like 1mph, inched toward the window number two, and my daughter, 6 years old at the time, screamed, “Mommy look out!” I damn near drove into the brick building at 1 mph. I didn’t see it. A huge brick building 3 inches in front of my face. It came out of nowhere. Depth perception is something you use a lot more than you realize.

My symptoms were probably worse than what most people experience because my sleep deprivation was much worse than what most experience. I did do that whole normal mom syndrome thing: the newborn needing to eat every 2 hours while trying to maintain a house and cook meals. That was followed with two more newborns, which it’s totally a different game having a baby eat that often while caring for toddlers at the same time, all kids in diapers. That in of itself is enough to put some people on suicide watch at the local funny farm.

Sleep deprivation takes on a whole new meaning when you are sleep deprived, not because you can’t fall asleep, but because the world around you just won’t let you because the world around you, too, is sleep deprived, lost in a hyper-confused, irritable state of mind.

My oldest child is on the autism spectrum, and with that came sleep issues. It was like her body operated on a 30 hour day instead of a 24 hour one, so we cycled where some days she slept for most of the night, and others, she didn’t sleep at all at night, and all the nights in between, she slept some funky hours, nothing consistent enough to schedule one’s life around.

Then my youngest daughter is allergic to milk and soy. For the first 2 years of her life with doctors refusing to test for allergies, she was covered in a blood-drawing itchy rash on her arms and legs. As if the itching wasn’t enough to keep her awake at night, the antihistamines doctors pushed on us somehow added to the hyperactivity she faced during O dark 30.

For the first 3 years of my life as a mother, I slept like most moms thinking there was a light at the end of the tunnel to find out the tunnel is a donut with no beginning or end. I slept on average 2 to 6 hours a night, non-consecutive. That word, non-consecutive means I got 2 to 6 hours of sleep with 15 minutes here, 45 minutes there.

The next two years of my life as a mother, I only napped at the husband’s mercy (and he didn’t have much mercy for me). The youngest would fall asleep about 9PM like a normal kid. The oldest child had a hard time falling asleep at this point with her autism, making the middle kid follow her lead, so they’d finally clonk out at midnight. The baby would then wake up soon after, hyper, ready to tackle a day between the itching and antihistamines. She’d finally fall back asleep around 6 AM. At 7AM, I’d wake all of them up to send one kid to school.

There were phases where it got much worse. At one point, someone called CPS on the baby’s rash among other things that made no sense, like they complained that my husband was a college student. Yes that’s horrible. Everyone call CPS if you know any college students who procreated. While I’ve discovered the real reason since this moment, including politics surrounding the situation (family members arguing with CPS supervisors on a professional level), the reason the CPS investigators gave me for opening a safety plan at the time was that my child was eating popcorn, and popcorn is a choking hazard. I am not making this up. While I’m totally embarrassed CPS ever showed up at my door, I can’t help but to laugh at the desperate stupidity of the investigators to open a case on me. On paper, the reason was because my kid has autism, and I don’t hit my kids. Only I would have CPS open a safety plan on me because I don’t hit my kids.

The two months CPS was in my life and the two months I attempted to have a real job, I literally did not sleep. I would go 3 to 5 days straight with no sleep, to sleep 4 to 8 hours before going another 3 to 5 days straight. When I wasn’t sleeping, I operated balls to the wall full throttle, running to chase kids, bouncing off the trampoline to get the blanky and back to the dishes, doing some Jet Li stunt to get a kid out of the space between the sofa and the wall… I didn’t think that was humanly possible, but I can tell you it is. I did it. I pushed pass the pain like any good soldier and carried on.

Why would CPS make me lose sleep? I had to keep the house immaculate for them while taking care of a baby and 2 toddlers, one of which had a hyperactive, super-destructive autism complete with meltdowns that would tip trash cans and book shelves, a table, dumped toy bins, all at once in a matter of 15 seconds. I have white carpet, so I had to shampoo it every other day to keep it looking not-so-disgusting. Everything was in reach of the children, including dirty and clean laundry, which often ended up in a pile covered in juice and shredded cheddar often putting me at square one, again, with laundry. It was almost like a weekly ritual for the kids where I imagined them dancing around it like Indians praying for rain around a bon fire.

And I was alone. My husband was like a 4^th kid. My mother was lost in taking care of my sister’s kids. My sister wouldn’t watch my kids because she was too busy not having her kids to want to take mine.

In 2 months, I lost over 80 pounds. I had migraines every day, and not just little ones, show stopping, vomit inducing, someone shoot me in the head and end the pain, migraines. I am now terrified of housework from this period in my life.  I just don’t want to be that girl again, the one laying on the floor with dripping wet soapy scrubbers in her hand huddled over a trash can throwing up while kids were screaming and hair pulling over a toy 3 feet in front of me.

And the worst part of all my sleep deprivation, nobody cared. Nobody. It’s impossible for someone who is well rested to empathize at all with someone who is not. They think you make it up. That you are exaggerating in hyperbole that you didn't sleep last night. In fact, they’ll insult you by saying, “I didn’t sleep at all last night either, like I got up 3 times in the middle of the night.” Bitch if you got up, you went to sleep you don’t get to claim not sleeping at all. I didn't sleep at all because I never laid down in the first place to get up.

People don’t want to help, so they use any and all logic in their stupid minds to justify not helping, no matter how desperate the logic sounds, and they do this to avoid admitting to being an a-hole. It would really just be easier if when I call you and ask, “Can you watch my kids for a few hours on Tuesday so I can sleep that week?” if you just say, “I know it sucks to be you, but I am too busy with my happy, well-rested life to really care about yours, so no. I’m just a dick. Sorry.” That’s so much better than, “Yeah, sure, any time,” and then disappear from the planet come Tuesday, followed by 3 months later, “But I have offered to help you and you refuse to take it.” The passive aggressive latter is really an aggressive kick to the face while I’m already down.

The only thing to get me through this dark period of loneliness, overwhelming work load and insanity, besides God, was the internet. Mommy blogs became my daily inspiration to laugh things off and embrace the chaos. The friends I made online, scattered throughout the world, including other planets whether they are aliens or delusional, have been a Godsend to me. They let me bitch and gripe about the daily grind offering encouraging words of support and cyber hugs. Someone, somewhere, over the rainbow, out there beneath the pale moonlight, cares. Knowing that means a lot when you are down. Then I started blogging, a sign that things are turning around and I am slowly healing.

I had to wake up from not sleeping in order to sleep again. I had to solve my own problems and take charge of my own health. Like teaching my children to walk and pee in the potty, I’m slowly taking baby steps toward embracing this new life I brought into this world. I’m sleeping regularly now with the help of my inner bitch and sleeping pills, and I’m currently battling the past that haunts me. While things look overwhelming still, and the no solution problem of keeping up with the kids while maintaining my own personal health at the same time seems, still, a no solution, I at least am well rested enough to take on these days with a clearer mind. For instance, next time someone calls CPS on me. I’m just going to be like, “We don’t live here. No this mess? Really? You think I would let my kids live in a messy house at all? This place belongs to my evil twin. No we live with my mom in her immaculately clean house where we don’t eat any popcorn or go to college whatsoever.”

To the sleep deprived in the world out there, I want to say, Laugh it off. Laughter is the best medicine. Now stop reading this and go to bed.

  

It's the Little Things of Parenting.. that make you go insane

This week's Sunday Confession's prompt is LITTLE




They say the Joy of Parenting is found in the little things.

• The little hands caressing your giant honker claws
• The little hugs
• The "Mom! I love you." 
• Tucking them in bed
• Kissing a cheek while the little one sleeps

Awwww. But the Insanity of Parenting is also found in the little things. This is the part people don't usually get. This is the part that I think goes without being said when I start talking about any story that entails my children with other people who CLAIM to have children. I don't care if I see you grab your little minion from the cluster of PTA in front of the school every day, if you fail to get this without it being said, you are not a parent. You might be a sperm donor or womb carrier but real parents know what I'm talking about here. It's the little things that bring on the insanity, and everyone with normal human children experience it.

It's not the easiest thing to describe. It changes for every Psychosocial Stage.

• The heart drawn on the wall in deodorant and Preparation H
• Complete disregard for the words, "Stop Fighting." 
• The inability to walk from the car directly into the house
• The puddle of pee on the floor the kid splashed into like a mud puddle
• Clean clothes piled with dirty clothes covered in Shredded Cheddar
• A banana launched at your face (she was aiming for her sister)
• The mysterious pile of pizza crust in the corner behind the TV
• ...

Even a list of the little things just doesn't give it justice. These THINGS (not the children) are like Power Rangers. They are just little things dressed in bright colors, but they have the power to combine forces into a big monster transformer. Imagine BOTH lists happening in the span of an hour. Yes you can drown in the little things.

Long story example because we are talking LITTLE THINGS compiling into a BIG THING:

We are late a lot for school. Tardiness is my virtue. One I seemingly hold dear in my heart. And when you sign your kids in late at school, the stupid sheet asks in the LITTLEST box on the thing, "Reason." Which translates into "excuse" because according to the school, there is no good reason to be late. Car breaking down being attacked by chupacabra wolves and receiving open heart surgery just isn't any real excuse for being late.

I don't know why they ask. They don't really want to know the answer. They don't care what the answer is. Most parents put down "Late."

Me, no I put down things like, "The centripetal force from the kids was so strong that it increased earth's gravitational pull slowing down time for us." One time I put down, "Karma."

What does that mean? It's the little things that make me late every day. It's never one thing. It's always a cataclysm of meaningless events entwined with bad luck, proper parenting, and some procrastination. Time doesn't exist in my world. My kids have their own clock.

My morning tea party punishment (for murdering time like the Mad Hatter) consists of the first thing. Waking up. This is a new thing we've added to the ritual. I really did go a few years without any sleep whatsoever so waking up was never an option for me in the past. It's so weird actually having to wake up. I'm not really used to it, so I don't always remember to bring my phone to bed with me (alarms). Big deal. Most people at the school had the luxury of little things like sleep. They are sleep experts in my mind. I'm a newb. Baby steps. I'll be there some day. But until then, I actually sleep in sometimes. By accident. And it's a new thing because before when I was always late, the fact that I hadn't slept in days was usually the reason I forgot to pay attention to the time. Only people who have actually been there could possibly understand that. Sleep deprivation isn't for the holier-than-thou perfect people out there.

This post explains why I didn't sleep and how I got to a point where I could sleep again. 

After I wake up, I have to actually wake up. The morning drink. I've been doing this red energy drink that doesn't really give me energy but like coffee, I just tell myself it does so it has a psychosomatic effect on me. Nobody is to bother me until I'm well into my second drink. They do anyway, just so we can start the day with a good blow to my inner peaceness. Usually before I can get to a sip, a kid is asking for something. I need a bottle (she's too old for a bottle she doesn't need it she just has issues), put my blanky on me. Remember the pancake syrup you had mom?

At this point, any mess I leave sit there, even if it's pancake syrup all over the floor at risk of being stepped in and trudged through the house, and we all know hardened syrup is harder to clean than soft recent syrup. I leave it. I'm determined to get my beverage. I get whatever I need to get to stop the "MOM" noises long enough to have my beverage.

Then I lose track of time because I check Facebook and Email. The reading of things wakes up my brain. I have absolutely no idea what day it is, what year it is, that I have children, that they might have school, I don't know any of this until after I read a few things people say. I think this is what black and white men on 1950's television was attempting with reading the morning paper.

So then I usually have an "Oh shit" moment looking at the time like when people slept in, and we are not late yet, but we are going to be. I don't always have this moment where I'm thinking Oh Shit. Many mornings, I'm thinking, "We have over an hour to get ready for school we will so be early today they might get breakfast at school instead of home." Regardless, I pick a point in time and decide, "It's time to get the minions."

Sometimes I wake up kids. The oldest never wants to wake up early for school unless it's Saturday. Sometimes they are already awake. Most of the time, I'm waking up a kid with the other 2 awake. While only 2 kids are school aged, all 3 kids attend the dropping off the two kids to school ritual. For a long time, all 3 kids attended the dropping off the one kid to school ritual. It was so convenient, taking 3 kids to drop off 1 every day.

I grab their clothes (usually before waking them up or while waking them up), and I throw it at them, "Get ready." I don't know why I do this step. It's my attempt at teaching my children to be independent people. They can dress themselves. But when I'm around, only the 4 year old wants to do it herself which takes 10 times longer than if I did it, and then she gets stuck. She's been this way since she was 2. The older two "NEED" my help. So I then dress each kid. Then I find socks. Then I find shoes. Then I brush hair. EACH KID gets this.

I do all this while they fight, ask for things, demand things, fight, more fighting, can't find something unimportant, wants to play a video game, spills milk, dumps a trash can...

So I'm finally at the point where 17 gray hairs popped out of my head and 27 brown ones fell out. We are now already late because the children made sure of it. I'm proud of myself because they are wearing their own clothes and while their socks don't match, at least they fit their feet. This is when one of them will sit on ketchup somehow, or paint, or pee or poop themselves, or go wash their hands and end up drenched... Or the one on the autism spectrum doesn't like her pants... Something to put me back at square one with at least one kid. I can't leave without dressing a kid a second time.

Then we get to the car. The kids scatter into the parking area in 3 different directions looking at mud puddles, rocks, toys, lizards whatever. I'm screaming, "Get in the car" as I'm putting backpacks and things in the car. This goes on for 20 minutes, "Get in the car or I'm going to spank your butt," and it usually entails herding them like I'm a cowboy on a horse. Morning PT. I don't need the gym. I have kids and I got them in the car. Then the fun part. I get to buckle them in. Whoever invented car seats is a sadistic bastard. "Here use this to save your kid's life, break a finger trying to buckle them in."

I get all 3 kids in the car, buckled. I sit my butt down. Turn on the radio. Breathe. Shit I forgot that paper the teacher wanted signed. Hold on kids. I go up, FIND the paper, get the paper, come back, and they are unbuckled. How? How can they unbuckle something so easy that I struggled so much to buckle in the first place?

I buckle them back in. I sign the paper and read it for a second. I pop the car in reverse, "Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom."  Are you fucking kidding me? Can you hold it? "No, I have to go now."

So I unbuckle that kid, walk them up into the house, wait, wipe their butt, get them back in the car. Rebuckle the kid.

I usually get as far as the mailbox before I realize I forgot my wallet and purse. Sometimes I get much further than that before making this realization. Either way, I turn around to retrieve item. And why?

Shit, they need breakfast. They missed school breakfast now I have to come up with Breakfast. McDonalds it is.

And we get to school at a roaring 9:30 AM.

It's the LITTLE THINGS that make the JOY of parenting. Really. The LITTLE THINGS will make you and they will break you. But the best part of the little things, you can't explain it to people in a sentence, especially people who don't give a shit and will judge you nevertheless.


If for whatever reason you inhaled too many bleach fumes cleaning your toilet and you like my blog, you know, you can subscribe to it.

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You can also find me under these rocks...
 


Blogs who I think sent me traffic to my blog that you should check out if you haven't...  I do read all of these blogs regularly.

The Bloggess

Insane in the Mom Brain

More than Cheese and Beer

Finding Ninee

Ooops I Said Vagina Again

Janine's Confessions of a Mommyaholic

MOM Syndrome: How to treat a crazy that defies medicine and freudian stuff

I suffer from what I call MOM Syndrome. The crazy. Coping with that life long sentence of insanity you get the moment the pregnancy test comes out positive… I actually want a t-shirt for it, which is funny because I have these cafepress stores, and I have yet, at the time of writing this, made one. I will soon, and the reason? Not one of those, "I pooped out 3 kids and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" deal. No...  You know how they have those little cards you can print up, and some people do, that say something like, "Sorry my kid has autism" and you hand them to strangers when your kid starts acting autistic (meltdowns) in public? It's like that. When I start acting all MOM in public, like a person who probably needs a straight jacket and padded walls, it would be nice to direct people to a simple explanation for it, you know, before they start admitting me into the funny farm. Now you are thinking, "Who gives a fuck what people think?" I really don't when I'm at Walmart, but when I'm at a doctor's office or my kid's school, okay I do give a fuck, like they need to know that I'm crazy because I try to be a good mom, and the fact that they are not crazy is a sign they either don't have children or they have a lot of help with it. 

OLD BLOG ON WHAT MOM SYNDROME IS

But the coping with this crazy? How do we do it? It's not like we get a shrink for it, and most of us self medicate. Those of us who do get prescribed help, it usually only curbs the anxiety, which I'm sure makes a little dent into the insanity, you know, like washing a dish or two in a hot mess disaster kitchen. 

I know some moms like my grandmother and my mother in law, both of which are/were in environments where the women did ALL the work and their men were completely useless when it came to the household, they turned to alcohol. I should probably say ABUSE of self medicated drugs... My grandmother started drinking at noon. My mother in law usually waits until 3PM. I don't know how they did/do it because like I couldn't function if you took away my ability to drive. And for those who are curious why I keep referring to my grandmother in past tense, she passed away Christmas of 1998, liver failure. 

Mary Tyler Mom beatme to a little of this subject. She says it well. For her mother, it was valium. It was not something she abused like my grandmother did alcohol, but it was her coping strategy for those really crazy days. Moms today, many of us turn to Facebook. It's our valium. And we probably abuse it more than the 70's moms ever considered trying with valium.

I don't think it's just Facebook. I think a lot of us moms are looking for a healthy outlet for our crazy, and the internet becomes it.

It's convenient. You don't have to get everyone dressed and load up a car and fuck with sadistic car seats in order to go talk to someone. Even better, chat and messaging allows for the kids to be screaming in the background and the taking a break to run and change a diaper and scream "STOP FIGHTING" mid conversation, something that is a horrible distraction to communicating via the phone. 

It becomes therapy. I have learned that it truly helps to realize you are not alone with whatever crazy ails you. I have learned that with autism, PTSD, and now, MOM Syndrome.

It becomes your friend. When your friends who don't have kids or have kids who are more independent can't find time to come see you or you them because they don't want to deal with your kids, you find people online who are caged to their houses and families looking for someone to talk to just like you. I probably have about 50 Facebook friends of females I met online who are better friends than most of my relationships offline, especially when I need that moral support.

It becomes a place to vent about how your children just spent $150 on Kick the Buddy app for the iPad, or how they took all the clean clothes out of the drawers, piled them with the dirty clothes and sprinkled cheese and juice all over it putting you at square one with that room and laundry all in the matter of minutes. We need to vent this shit because nine times out of ten, our men don't give a shit. If they listen to you, IF, they have little sympathy because they just totally saved the world in Call of Duty, like your day wasn't shit compared to theirs. Plus you have to let it out somewhere. I have learned, don't do this on your normal Facebook profile. Save it for a secret group of friends somewhere confidential. Why? Your haters are also on your Facebook, and they like to see you down like that. Who else is on Facebook? People who actually do worry about you, people who might hire you someday, and most important, people who do not understand at all and take it as bitching. 

It becomes your guide. There are no parenting manuals. It's a lot like Adobe products, like Photoshop, in this aspect at least. No manual comes with the program, BUT there are various tutorials online to help you navigate the program. We as moms have that resource too. We have Pinterest with recipe and craft ideas. We have Facebook sharing the crap they put on Pinterest. We have blogs about sanity and deep subjects that are parenting related like school bullying and rape. We have medical information at our fingertips. Some people suck at that kind of research and could diagnose their kid's common cold with some rare infectious disease from the planet Mars courtesy of Web MD. But some of us find it very helpful for home remedies, disinfection advice, identifying a rash (don't image search that while eating)… We get cleaning advice, cooking advice, gardening advice… Motherhood covers such a wide range of subjects that only the internet could hold all that in one place.

It becomes your shopping. Yes we women need to shop, and the internet too has that convenience. We also get packages in the mail which adds to the excitement of it. You can even buy normal stuff online like diapers and shampoo, in addition to our girly stuff like clothes and accessories, but also hard to find stuff, which is great when your kid needs something like hypoallergenic diapers and emu oil, or they have to have a Mario Backpack for school or Dora on their shoes…

It becomes your entertainment. This is the best of the internet. The funniest moms are online, and Facebook and blogs are full of humorous memes (funny pictures). Laughter is the best medicine, and us moms need to laugh. We need to learn how to laugh at the crazy in our lives offline, and we need to laugh at other people's crazy online. Insane in the Mombrain often gets emails from people serving overseas or dying of cancer who thank her for making them laugh in the darkest of times. Mom bloggers like her are that scene in the Lord of the Rings where Frodo falls down and the witch elf appears out of nowhere like a hallucination and helps him up. Patti at Insane in the Mom-brain, Nikki at Moms who Drink and Swear, and Sheila at Mary Tyler Mom are my elf witches. They have been for years now. 

It becomes your drama. This can be the worst of the internet. Anytime you put a bunch of women together, online or offline, for long periods of time, there will be drama. There will be the PMSy bitch. There will be the overly sensitive butthurt. There will be arguments and cheap tactics like spying and gossip and straight girl world bullying. People will call you fat and ugly, even though they have no idea what you look like. It will always be over something stupid.  I guarantee you there is someone on your facebook friends list (if you Facebook) where you had a falling out and you have no idea what the fuck it was about. You knew then, but not so much now. I'll tell you what it was about. Drama. Stupid girl world drama. Don't be embarrassed you were part of that. You are a woman. This is part of the package. We know drama. We know it more than TNT. And for some strange sick reason, we enjoy it, no matter how much we play it off like we don't. 

It becomes your addiction. It's really okay to be on Facebook a lot. It's okay to get sucked into the internets to where you have no idea what the weather is like outside. What's not okay? What I'm doing now. I'm sitting here typing this blog surrounded by filth I call home. I'm procrastinating cleaning up my childrens' destruction because A, I don't want to clean it. I just did that. I should get at least 12 hours in between catastrophic messes to myself. B, I want to write this blog. It's been on the to do list for over a week. I need to finish what I start. C, I have a sprained ankle. Who in their right mind wants to clean on a sprained ankle? My foot and leg are still purple and the baseball sticking out of my ankle has turned into a golf ball. Great it's healing. It's still a golf ball hanging out the side of my ankle and it hurts like a bitch when I step on it wrong. And A, B, and C are my excuse to be online, to escape my reality. To forget my house is a mess for a minute, and that minute turns into hours.

It becomes your tool. Kids math homework? Google it. How many cups are in a gallon? Google it. There's a calculator somewhere. To Do List/email/calendar/horoscope reading/dream interpretation/school closings and delays/weather forecast/stock market... The internet is full of information and tools we moms use regularly. 

It contributes to your growth/development. That's the important part. When a toddler is learning to walk, he will use whatever resources are available to him as a tool to help him learn. Naturally we do this. If there's a table, he'll use that to help him stand. It can be a table, a chair, a pack n play, a house plant, a stool, a vacuum cleaner… If it has wheels, he'll use that to help him move. We as moms do that, and the internet becomes our vacuum cleaner table stool that holds us up for a second before we pitter patter across the room to another vacuum cleaner table stool. While finding our balance with parenting via online tools of humor, shopping, calculators, recipes, research, we also nurture whatever we are trying to learn with support, advice, wisdom, and feelings. We share more than just funny internet memes. We share each others lives, whether it be to our friends in a closed Facebook group, or to complete strangers on a comment on a blog post. Some of my best lessons I learned came from some random person's comment. A plant needs water, dirt, and sunshine to grow, and the internet provides all of that for us moms. The water is the advice and wisdom. The sunshine is the humor, and the dirt is the comfort of friendship (or being anonymous in many cases).

It becomes your fantasy. We human beings love characters. We read books, watch movies, soap operas, prime time soap operas, reality television... whatever. We like characters. We like getting to know someone or a personality who isn't real in our lives and letting our imaginations run with it. We like falling in love with them. We like hating them. We like learning from them. The blogs online provide that. Each blogger is a character who pours their life online and you get to love and hate them. ... My friend is obsessed with Grey's Anatomy and has been making me watch all the seasons with her on Netflix. I never quite understood the character love deal (human fanaticism) until this show. Izzie is my lesbian lover, McDreamy is my husband who I cheated on with Henry who just died in whatever season I'm on, Arizona is my best friend and mentor and I am Yang. None of these characters interact like that on the show, but they do in my head, much like I am Insane in the Mom Brain's wife who cheated on her with The Bloggess and Moms Who Drink and Swear is my mentor (who I argue with a lot, but she teaches me so much with it) and People I want to Punch in the Throat is one of my main personalities I've been repressing for years. Mary Tyler Mom, she is my best friend I want to hug every day. Bitches in the Burbs is the Army of Bad Asses I call on when I need back up in a fight, you know, my posse (in reality, they give great fashion advice). The Zookeepers Wife is my therapist (she really is an astrologist), and I am Counting Caballeros' crazy cousin (she's the practical wise grounded one, even though she has more children than I do, and we really are probably related even though I met her online). Holdin Holden is my career oriented friend that makes me feel like I'm in a scene of Sex in the City except it's about booze and motherhood more so than sex. I Want a Dumpster Baby is the woman in the rap video I'm trying to mimic the butt shaking in the mirror nekkid, and I am Honey Badger Press (I'm not really her, just in my mind I am, I really am Dribbles and Grits). 

Of all possible addictions one could have to cope with MOM Syndrome, I think the internet is the healthiest approach. I also turn to Diet Coke, energy drinks, chocolate cake batter, and other cheap methods that do nothing for me but hurt me in the long run, but the internet, it entails good and bad, and it's my choice how I use it.

One thing I want to say to you, the person reading this, sometimes we have bad days as moms. I don't care if you forgot your mommy childhood (the early years of the motherhood struggle), you can at least admit you had bad days. You had crazy days where the shit you said made no sense and sometimes you were hurtful only because you hurt. Remember that other moms do that too. If you see them doing that anywhere, online or offline, don't be an ass about it. Ignore it and move on, or reach out and touch someone with some love. Some of us need tough love, real talk, yes, but when we are emotionally ready for it. A stranger trying to give the tough love talk, or the mocking (I tend to mock), that might just send them into a downward spiral and that shit is not cool for their kids. When you mock a mom losing her mind on Facebook, you are fucking with her kids indirectly. I'm not saying she's going to beat them to an oblivion or abuse or neglect them, but she is NOT going to handle her kids in her best mindframe if you provoke her, especially if she's on the brink of completely losing her shit to begin with. Don't be the flying monkey that pushes people over the edge. Reach out and reel them back to a safer ground.