Detox Sucks and I have a survey for you

So I guess I didn't scare you off, huh? Good! Welcome back!

Sorry to disappoint my exes and their attorneys or whoever else they have spying on me. I am not talking about drug detox. Feel free to have me tested however you want. Even hair follicles. I swear I won’t go all Britney Spears on you. Seriously, I cried when I cut off 10 inches of hair. There’s no way in hell I could shave it.

I’m talking about detoxing from junk food. On Monday, I started on nothing but raw food, eating nothing but fruits and veggies. No Diet Pepsi, no dark chocolate mint Three Musketeers, no Southern Style Chicken Sandwich and sweet tea. I even switched to soy milk and stevia instead of cow’s milk and sugar.

Ohmigawd, just reading that is making me hungry. This is just so not fun. The first two days I had a pounding headache, probably from the lack of caffeine. Oh wait, now that I think about it, I did cave in and have a Diet Pepsi on Monday or Tuesday. By Wednesday, I was dying. Like Asian-bird-flu-spinal-meningitis-ebola-virus dying. My whole body ached, I was tired, my throat was scratchy and I lost my voice at one point.

If I’d had the energy, I would’ve crawled to Taco Bell/KFC – and stopped at Pizza Hut on the way – just to make it stop.

But I’m glad I didn’t. I feel a lot better now – and I lost 6 lbs – although I’m still sick…feels more like a cold than a flu though so that’s good.

Now while I lay on the couch and watch old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Hulu, would you mind taking a few minutes to answer a quick survey for me?

Click Here to take survey

Merci, mes amis!

(I probably totally screwed up my French but who cares, right? I highly doubt my 10th grade French teacher is reading this and if she is its not like she’s going to email me to tell me how disappointed she is.

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Living with the crazy label

You know why most people keep their mental health diagnosis a secret? Stigma. Any time you admit to someone that you’ve been diagnosed with a mental illness, you risk being judged and labeled by people who are misinformed and uneducated.

And there will always, ALWAYS, be the assholes who will use it to try and insult and hurt you. I can’t even count how many times I’ve been called “psycho bitch” or had comments about voices in my head and multiple personalities directed at me. 

But here’s the kicker…you know who most of those comments come from? People who have never even met me.

Yet somehow just having that one little piece of information seems to make them think they know everything about me. They assume it means I’m a bad mother. They assume its the reason why I’m single or why my relationships have ended. They assume that every issue anyone has ever had with me is my fault because I’m the crazy one.

Oddly enough, I have my shit together more than most of them do. Some of the people that have tried to use my diagnosis against me have fallen into at least one, sometimes more, of the following categories:

• Full blown alcoholics
• Active drug addicts
• Adulterers
• High school dropouts
• Unemployed
• In abusive relationships
• Are the abusers
• Borderline illiterate (which is really funny when they try to insult me with a text message or post or email that’s filled spelling and grammar errors)

And these people will say stuff like that thinking they can hurt me with it…but do they seriously think that I’m going to give a shit what they think when I don’t even know or remember their name and couldn’t pick them out of a lineup? Do they really think they can hurt me with something that I make fun of myself all the time? I named my blog after it. I have a sticker on my roller derby helmet that says Crazy Bitch and it used to be the ringtone on my phone. Being called crazy is a joke to me, not an insult. Sticks and stones and all that…

Let’s get a few things straight here, okay? Yes, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. So were a lot of people –  successful people, brilliant people, famous people. And like anyone living with any type of illness, whether its diabetes or epilepsy, my illness is managed with medication on a regular basis. I am functioning at a level equal to (and in some cases, ABOVE) many non-bipolar people. 

Oh, and while we’re at it… schizophrenics are the ones that hear voices and its dissociative identity disorder that has more than one personality. I am bipolar. The only voice in my head is my own and I only have one personality, which just happens to be a fabulous one.

Morons.

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Strawberry fields forever

Before I share today’s thoughts, I wanted to acknowledge a special occasion. 16 years ago today, I delivered my only son into this world. He and I have a song that we share so I wanted to post the video here.

I don’t know if that’s what is making me feel so emotional today or if its the weather (we’re getting a bunch of snow dumped on us) or all of this Valentine’s Day crap or if I’m just stressed and tired. But it seems like the slightest little thing is just bringing me to tears.

I was in the shower this morning and I was out of my favorite coconut body wash so I had to use Princess’ strawberry scented Suave for Kids.  And that smell reminded me of how, when I was little, I always wanted strawberry scented shampoo.  Then that brought back another memory.

I lived in Spain when I was about 13 and I was one of “the cool kids.” I hung out with this big group – both boys and girls – and we were the types that owned that school bus, we all dated each other, the girls were tough and the boys were cute. (Gimme a break, it was junior high.)

But there was this one girl that didn’t hang out with us. She lived in our neighborhood, she rode our bus, but she didn’t pay one bit of attention to us. She was beautiful…and I was jealous.

It wasn’t her beauty that intrigued me though. It was this…aura…that she had. Now the reason this all came back to me this morning is because I remember that anytime she was around – especially when I was a few yards behind her walking to the bus stop – this scent trailed her. It was some kind of fruity, floral shampoo or something and it just added to that aura. It smelled like happiness.

Her dad was military which is why she went to school with us, but her mom was Spanish. And she called her Miel which is Spanish for honey. I remember seeing her around the neighborhood with her mom and I envisioned them doing the fun things Moms and daughters do – shopping, getting manicures, talking about her friends and boys.

This was around the same time that I was living with some of the greatest pain I’ve ever felt in my own life. I wanted to be anyone but me. I wanted to be this girl called Honey that smelled like flowers and didn’t seem to care about being cool or popular. 

To this very day, I find myself wishing I had that same sense of confidence and feeling of being loved.

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Happy birthday to That Crazy Mom

No, its not my birthday.* Just the one year anniversary of That Crazy Mom.

I’ve blogged off and on for about 5 or 6 years but it was always through places like MySpace, LiveJournal and Blogger. One year ago, I bought this domain name, started out just redirecting my Blogger account to it and just completely moved to self-hosted WordPress shortly after.

So happy birthday to ThatCrazyMom.com.

* Feel free to send presents anyway.

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We need to talk

I have something I want to share with you. Its a very personal video blog post about a very important subject: childhood sexual abuse.

Sexual abuse is not something I talk about a lot but I do talk about it openly when the subject arises. Thanks to the 12 for 12k Challenge, I have a reason to talk about it and a way that you can help.

Did you know that in the U.S. childhood sexual abuse affects 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 6 boys by the time they’re 18? Did you know that the effects of childhood sexual abuse include mental illness, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, suicide, homelessness, and crime? Did you know that we’re spending billions of dollars to treat these effects?

There’s an organization called “Stop Child Sexual Abuse” that has launched a campaign called “Stop the Silence” which is aimed at preventing sexual abuse and providing treatment for survivors. Here’s how they describe their mission:

The Mission of Stop the Silence is to expose and stop CSA and help survivors heal worldwide. Our overarching Goals are to:

1) to promote healing of victims and survivors; and

2) to celebrate the lives of those healed.

Through our work, we aim to address the relationships between CSA and the broader issues of overall family and community violence, and violence within and between communities. Our focus underlines the importance of a shift in focus on positive development within our social complexes (e.g., the relationships between men, women, adults and children, cultural groups) to support peaceful – and to hinder violence-prone – relationships.

So what can you do? Watch this video. Then visit the 12 for 12k Challenge website and do your part.

UPDATE: I’ve added the ChipIn widget from the 12for12k.org site so that a) you can just go straight to the donation page after you’re finished reading/watching this post and b) so anyone who reads this post can see how much has been donated so far. There’s a “copy” button on the widget if you’d like to do the same.
After you’ve done that, I want you to email me at thatcrazymom@gmail.com, attach a copy of your receipt showing your donation, and I’ll provide you with a free custom Twitter background. I wish I could afford to match your donations but I hope you don’t mind settling for a freebie and my undying appreciation.

Thanks for listening. Now here’s the video…oh, wait, one more thing… I want to apologize for the wobbly video. I was sitting on my bed and Princess kept coming in then climbing up and down, up and down…. And I apologize for looking like a total dork too. I’m not one of those women that can cry and still look cute.

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