Seven ...already???

Most of my friends were going to college right after high school, and I was extremely jealous.  I was happy for them to be starting a new chapter in their lives, but I was stuck.


I don't think I mentioned before that during high school many of my friends had jobs, working at the local movie theaters.  I was  jealous of that too, I wanted to get a job.....mom wouldn't let me work while in school because I was already not focused on that enough so the added distraction of working wasn't an option in her eyes.  After I graduated I  spent the rest of the summer with my friends getting into all kinds of shenanigans and was again going down the road of destruction.  In my heart I knew drinking wasn't a good idea. 


The thing about having an addict for a parent is that half of you is scared to death of becoming that  person, and the other half wants to have all the fun those bad things bring you.  I read somewhere that children of addicts are more likely to develop an addiction than that of their peers without.  How scary is that? I didn't realize it  but I was an addict. I was and still am addicted to food. 


College started and all my friends moved away. I was alone and rejected again.  I was doing nothing with my life and mom finally stepped in and told me I had two choices, get a job or go to community college.  The latter was not a choice for me in my eyes. I wasn't good at school the first time around so why would this be any different? So I got my very first job.  I got a job as a receptionist at a busy office and excelled at it.  For a while I looked forward to going to work and really enjoyed meeting people. I worked at an Escrow office so people were always in and out.  I made more money than anyone else I knew my age and I loved it.  

It was also this job that I was diagnosed with depression.  It's also when I started needing to hear that I did a good job, or that my co-workers and boss were pleased with my work.  It wasn't that I just liked hearing it...I needed it to function.  This isn't the reality of the workforce. Your boss and co-workers don't have time to tell you what a good job you are doing or how awesome you are...of course they have time to nit pick every little thing you do wrong.   When I would get reprimanded for doing something wrong it would consume me.  I would focus so hard on fixing that one thing, that I would neglect my other duties.  It was an obsession though, I couldn't help it. 


At work one day I was sitting at my desk and started to get a copper taste in my mouth and felt like I couldn't move.  The phone was ringing off the hook, but it was like I was in a trance, it completely freaked me out. Of course I got in trouble for that. We had a strict rule in the office that the phone couldn't ring more than twice unless you had a darn good reason for it to.  When I got home that night all I could think about was making sure I didn't do that again, I couldn't sleep that night .....over and over I kept telling myself that incident could never happen again, I had to make everyone happy. 


The next morning I was exhausted, but I got up and headed to the shower. I wasn't in the shower more than 10 minutes when I started feeling light headed, I knew I had to get myself out of the shower and ASAP because I was going to pass out. I yelled for my mom and sure enough by the time she came running I was out.  When I woke up a few minutes after that my mom had the phone in hand about to call 911.  As soon as I came around I started getting violently sick and very weak.  I had several more episodes like this over the next few weeks, including checking out at work, just like the first time. 

Long story short, I was having Absence Seizures  and  it was due to stress. I really wish I knew then what I know now about what was really going on with me.  Doc suggested I try stress relieving practices and that really helped for a while.  I had one more of those episodes, but that will be discussed later.


I have to apologize (again) for all of this jumping around, but I get it down as it comes, not to mention I get it down when I have the chance to have some kid free time....gotta love nap time =)  Hopefully it will get better as we get to the here and now, but in the mean time I really hope you find my story fascinating...maybe even relate to it on some level.