In the beginning

This is a new year. 2011. Last year I had bad news tossed at me from left and right. Some news was bad for the world. Some news was bad for my family. But bad news was like the theme for 2010. At the beginning of last year, my husband was "between orders".He works for U.S. Army and his job in the Army was, for lack of a better way to put it, taken away from him because the Army has physical standards that must be kept up with in order to maintain a job within the Army. He was having some trouble keeping up with those standards. Maybe because he was with a very srtict branch of the Army. Their physical standards are hard to keep up with for even the totaly athletic type. Most guys I know in my husband's old unit were always "on a diet". Sad but true.
So the paychecks for my family weren't coming in. I was looking for a job. I am a medical assistant and phlebotomist. So I have what the Army calls a portable job. They are great if you're an Army wife. You can find a job wherever you move to. But not this time. I wasn't finding any jobs anywhere. I looked for months with NO luck.So we lived off our 401k to a point that now that 401k is looking like it went on a diet these days.
My husband decided to switch units. You know, to something he was better at managing. However that also meant he would most likely deploy, but that was okay with him. Deployment means a steady paycheck. Deployment means health insurance for the family. Deployment means he finaly gets to put all that training to the test. And when you're in the Army, there is LOTS of training. Deployment was a good thing. Except that we have three kids. Three small boys that have ADHD. And I am a mom with ADHD, and did I mention I have a quick temper?
I have always had a hard time managing those three boys and myself. Plus I have a very hard time making  time for the things I really enjoy. In fact, I NEVER make time for myself. I always do and do and do. By the end of every day, I am usually so exhausted from doing that I can't wait to take my sleeping pill and hit the pillow with full force. I'm also full of resentment. I did, and did, and did and who helped me? Did anybody offer to help me? Not usually. Did they do like I wanted them to? Not likely. Did I ask for help though? 9 times out of 10 the answer is no.
But deployment was a solution to so many financial problems for us that saying no was a bad idea. So deployment was what happened. June of 2010 I said goodbye to my husband.On the day he left my boys and I stayed out there on the tarmac at the airport till almost midnight watching as my husband and his new unit took off into the air. I cried and cried, filled with dread.
By July I was informed that my middle son has Tourette's. That would explain why he kept making this wierd noise with his mouth and blinking his eyes ALL the time. The Tourette's made itself known to us all because apparently it's symptoms are exaggerated by stress and anxiety. My own ADHD was out of control. It's symptoms are also exagerated by stress and anxiety. My ADHD was so out of control that I was literaly repeating the same word over, and over out loud to myself because if I didn't then I would completely forget what I was doing. Like I was saying, "shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes". Otherwise I would forget that I needed to get on my shoes before I left the house. Then while I was driving down the road I would have to say, "bank, bank, bank, bank" because if I didn't then I would end up at the store and wonder to myself, "why am I here when I needed to go to the bank?"
My anxiety was rubbing off on the kids. Their anxiety was high. Their ADHD was out of control. We all needed to get to the doctor for a good old medication adjustment. So that was exactly what we did. The doctor reccomended I take my boys to a psychiatrist so we could have a psychiatrist help us to adjust medications for anxiety and sleep dissorders and ADHD. And when anxiety is under control so is my son's tourette's.
We were also advised to have a family therapist because like I said before, I have a quick temper. Well, so do my kids. We have all been biting each other's heads off and spouting mean words and playing on each other's last nerve so much that when we did go to see our family therapist, she reffered to my family state as "fragile".
So here I am planning out pills and doctor appointments and trying to manage a daily life of cooking and cleaning and laundry and school events and homework and playdates. I am up to my eyeballs in busy. Busy, busy, busy. I go to bed wondering what the heck I did all day because I was so freaking tired but I had nothing to show for it. I couldn't hold out my hand and open it and say, "look at this! This is what I have been doing this whole time! Isn't it great?"
Birthdays go by, as well as Halloween and Thanksgiving and FRG family events every single month (it's an Army thing), and Christmas was coming up. One day in the middle of all this busy, I got a phone call from my mother. I could tell it wasn't good because she refused to talk to me unless I was alone with no kids to distract me. She knows it isn't often that I have moments like that so I knew it couldn't be good. So while my older two were at school, I stuck my 4 year old in front of the tv with a bowl of pop-corn and a huge sippy cup of juice and I locked myself in my bedroom and dialed my mom's cell phone number.
It was what I feared. It was bad news. My mother called me to tell  me that she was healing from a double masectomy because she had breast cancer. I say "had" breast cancer because she was healing from the double masectomy that she decided to have to eradicate all chances of the breast cancer ever returning. But why was she telling me now? Why did she just now tell me that had cancer? Or that she just had a double mastectomy, for crying out loud?
She told me was that it was a hard decision to make to not tell me. It hurt her to not tell me. She found out about the cancer in October, but knew that I was so busy with "Busy" that she didn't have the heart to tell me and add to my already stressed out life. So she decided to not call me and tell me until she felt like she had something good to report. The good news: It was caught early. Really early. Stage one, in fact. However the risk of cancer returning was still there so she asked what her options were. There was radiation, but radiation was a bad choice because once you have radiation done, you can never have it again, and the risk of cancer coming back was still high. The other option was double masectomy. The risk of beast cancer coming back after something like that is 1%. That means there was a 99% chance that the breast cancer will never come back. So that's what she went for, and that's what she was healing from when she called me.
So the year was full of bad news. Sad news. I felt like I was being bombarded and blindsided by all this bad news.
But in a sense, all of my bad news was actually good news. All of my issues have been just that. Issues. I have recieved good news with every issue. Our finacial woes had a solution, deployment. Our mental issues had a solution, psychological help and medications. My mother's issue with breast cancer had a solution, surgery and now Chemotherapy. (ugh) They might not always be the solutions I would have chosen for myself or for my family but they were solutions nontheless. I prayed for God to send me solutions to each issue and he provided. I am a lucky girl, I guess. My family is a lucky family.

So here we are in a new year. 2011. I have made for myself a resolution. Okay two resolutions. Resolution number one: Sell our old broken down house in Missouri and resolution number two: Make myself a priorty.
The house in Missouri has been a serious issue. That has added to my Busy. Finding the right realtor...any realtor that will help me to get rid of the house that we used to live in when we lived in Missouri. The house is broken down and selling it has proved to be a real challenge. I NEED to sell this broken down, money trap. It HAS to go.
And of course, making time for myself is another really serious issue. I have such a hard time telling people no. I will take on duties and tasks that anybody else in their right mind would say no to. I know I can't, shouldn't, don't have time to do this task for somebody else but for some reasons unknown to me, I say yes. I NEED help. Why do I do this? Why do I do this to myself? Why do I do this and then get angry and even resentful for it? Why do I let my kids see me do this? They see me doing and doing and doing, and they are learning from me that selfless behaviour is all there is. They are learning from me that taking care of things that matter to yourself isn't as important as taking care of other people's matters. They are learning to be codependent. They are learning to be control freaks. I CAN'T let them learn this. I HAVE to change my ways. It's imperative to learn to say, "I'm sorry, but I just can't do this or that because I just don't feel like it today. Instead I'm going to go take myself to the movies because it's been a hard week and I deserve a reward for myself".
So now where to start? What do I do to change this way about myself? How do I recreate Jayme? This is my dilemma. Or more like this is my project. I resolve to find inner-peace with myself and make Jayme an important person. I must find peace.