Glitchy Grandma

Dear Friends and fellow Bloggers – I hope that you are as well as you can be. Over the past few weeks our family came to learn that we were having a baby in a few days. To say I was shocked will have been and will always be an understatement. I looked at our eldest daughter and her swollen belly. We went from ward to ward and bench to bench to ensure that she and the baby were safe. My mind immediately cleared, and all I could see and think about was navigating through a public hospital, trying to stay warm in a really cold winter, and taking them home.

The hospital didn’t have water for over 6 days, intermittent service from much-needed doctors and several grounchy nurses. In the labour ward there are chairs where women are expected to sit in their third trimester for over 15 hours waiting for a bed and further treatment. Our daughter was one of them. After a few close calls which required much bench sitting and sleeping in a car in ice-cold parking lots, she finally went into labour. I went up to her and was not allowed to see them until she was ready to give birth.

I sat in the waiting room outside the ward and cried quietly. We’d confronted so much and I wondered if baby hadn’t also perhaps made a poor choice of grandma who does tend to glitch often. I always believe my mental illness when it proclaims that I am the worst version of myself which I’m mostly not. Mental illness unfortunately is seriously believable when you feel it inside and out. Finally, I was called into the labour room. My daughter looked at me and my tears flowed even more. When she was born my mother had been with me and the first person to hold her.

In what felt like so many loaded minutes, our beautiful grandson was born. I felt a warmness with her, with him, together in his first few moments in the world. Intertwined in the love we both felt for such a tiny little being. We cried as he exercised his little lungs for a blanket. I looked at him and her and thought to myself that if anything, they are living testimony of the good I have and can be. That new beginnings are possible even if you need to shed a tear. This is one happy glitchy grandma that will work through, about, and around her glitches for herself and hers, each and every day.

Telling Traits of Mental Illness

There are a few signs, telling traits, that you are mentally ill.  I didn’t know what mine were until recently, when they rather inconveniently showed up on me.  Mine includes dough covered nails, leaving the house like a newborn, behaving like a newborn, lugging the kitchen sink, and other handy party tricks.  Now, I don’t leave my nails unclean (I’m a clean freak about most things) but I FORGET.  For example, I would make doughnuts, go about my business and perhaps wake up with a mini doughy snack or two on my nails. Then there is my leaving the house like a newborn.  I have no doubt this must be frustrating for my children, since they are the ones used to being packed up. Guess what, it’s Mom’s turn now.  When I do travel (includes 5 min runs to the store) it requires careful planning, packing, resting, ok nevermind let’s not go-ness etc.  You get my drift.

I also have the nifty habit of wanting to travel with everything including the kitchen sink.  My husband never complains, but I do see him weaving his lips and eyebrows in a pattern with my name and a few curseworthy complaints quietly as he lugs the sink and other bags to the car. At the clinic where I triumphantly received my medication recently, there were others who had awesome traits as well.  The one lady that caught my eye, quite literally, had bright red blush spread liberally across her cheeks and bright blue eyeshadow.   She remarked loudly that she had no clue why she was at the clinic, but that the psychiatrist insisted on seeing her monthly, and giving her an avalanche of pills.  With that she swooshed her wispy hair and proceeded to drop the contents of her bag on the floor. Her super power trait seemed apparent to me.

More seriously are the more serious traits one cannot see.  In my experience, my internal noise, a terrible ongoing machine that churns through feeling and experience obsessively.  The other is loosing your train of thought which strikes at the worst of times.  The slurring.  I do not drink, so this hurts, when people look at me like wow, it’s 09h00.  I forget where I put things.  And sometimes it’s a surprise, but other times a horrible feeling, that there is something eating away at my insides that it would make it worse, not better, not functional.  And when this happens, I don’t want to do anything.  I want to sleep even more.  And the tears run for even longer.

But those are NOT the traits I chose to celebrate.  Those are not the ones I want to talk about.  I have compassion.  I have empathy (different words for different feelings) and I can make my own doughnuts / cookies and children who are amazing growing beings. And whilst I’ve closed my children’s factory, the most telling trait of who I am, is who they have become.  What I have survived and continued to do.  Continued to fight for, when all the odds have suggested otherwise.  I am NOT only a survivor, but also victorius. For now.   For today.  And that’s enough. What are your telling traits?  Be part of those who support us as opposed to those who don’t.  I am 4 M’s Bipolar Mom.