Moving on with the Dirt

 My bi-polar disorder has affected my relationships in many ways. One of the big relationships it's affected is with my weight. Taking many medications has made my weight fluctuate up and down. I used to consider myself heavy because I was "bigger" than my friends, meaning I was taller than them and had a larger bone structure. In my senior year, I went between a size 10 and 12 for my 5 foot 10 inch frame. The largest I ever got was a size 26. I was in my late 30s, and when I hit a certain number on the scale, I vowed I wouldn't let that number go any farther. I was letting my meds become an excuse to gain weight. I no longer had that right. The meds that I was on weren't making me gain weight any longer; I was eating because they made me hungry, but I learned to control that hunger. This is a picture of me, not even at my heaviest, in 2011. Bi-polar disorder has also affected my relationships with my children. When my oldest, Bryan, was little (and still to this ...

 Growing up, I was what could be considered as moody. I grew up to be good at hiding it, though, because people don't want to see a person who's upset. In the picture below, I was devastated because my friend had a brand new dress for our first communion, and I had a homemade dress. (Looking back now, as an adult, I realize that my mother couldn't afford a dress for me, and I greatly appreciate the efforts she went through to make me something beautiful.) For my 13th birthday, I received tickets to the New Kids on the Block concert. A few days before my party, however, my mom and I got into a huge blowup, and she revealed to me that she had bought the tickets and wished she hadn't bought them. I got really quiet and said that I needed to call my friend Jenn. My mom refused to let me use the phone, and I sobbed, "You don't understand! Only Jenn will understand!" My mom still wouldn't let me use the phone, though, and I rushed into my room, threw myself ...

 Matthew really started gaining his independence once he started his early education program. For as big of a skeptic that I was about having him diagnosed with autism, I was very overprotective once he was diagnosed. It killed me when he went off to school. Matthew really flourished once he started school; it was like he discovered that he could do all these different things. He loved helping his dad out in the garage. He pretended that he was wrenching on the truck that his dad was building. Matthew and I used to go to Target all of the time. We had a routine when we went to Target. First we went to the bathroom, then we hit up Starbucks, then we did our shopping. When we went to Starbucks, we would get Matthew an ICEE. The first time I let Matthew fill up his own ICEE, I held my breath and felt like I was ready to jump in at a moment's notice. I remember how tense I was. I don't think I was breathing until that cup had its cap on and the straw was in it. Once we figured out ...

 Matthew loved electronics from the time he was young. My best friend Leah used to babysit him (we called her Grandma Leah because whenever we went out, everyone used to mistake her for Matthew's grandma). At first she used to give him water bottles to roll around. He loved that, but soon he grew bored with them. So out came the tablet with the piano app...and a monster was born. The tablet was fascinating to him. I had a kindle, and I wouldn't let him play with it, but I did play some music for him on it. However, we had some old phones that didn't work. We gave him those old phones after we pulled the batteries out of them. However, we only learned to pull the batteries out of them after we had the police show up at our back door at around 9:30 one night doing a welfare check. They had received 911 calls from our location. We discovered Matthew in bed with a cell phone that no longer had a SIM card. But did you know that you can still dial 911 from a phone that no longer ...