Finding the positive...

I don't know what it is about me lately... I'm depressed and don't have much to be depressed about, in reality.

My daughter is being a typical kid (so I'm told). Typical is good! She's crawling, pulling herself to a stand, walking with support or while pushing objects, cruising... these are all good baby things. She's gaining her independence and testing her limits, throwing tantrums in the interim... all par for the course.

But when I think of her future, our future with her, I get sad. I get sad because when I do research on preemie's I very rarely hear 'good news'. I hear about the kids with autism, sensory processing disorders, mental retardation etc. Having these things does not make you a bad person and I will love my daughter if, at any point in the future, she is diagnosed with any of them - but it will make her and our lives harder.

I remember my social development as a child/pre-teen and it was not pretty. I was teased incessantly and ridiculed a lot - it has left a life long scar. I hate to think that my daughter would have to go through what I went through as a 6th and 7th grader. I am hyper sensitive to what people think of me, as a result (and the previous post, and my views on my self stem from that), have difficulty with conflict.

What would I do if my daughter was ostracized like I was? What would I do if my daughter was forced to sit alone, in obscurity, in the lunch room while other people snickered or threw trash at her? I don't know, but it will be better than my mothers advice of "well, if you want to sit at that table, then just go sit there".

I worry that she will grow up like me in regards to that kind of social sensitivity. I hope she doesn't.

I have a very harsh view of myself. I don't like how I look. On any given day I can find SOMETHING wrong with my appearance and will dwell on it. Alot of this has to do with the famly I was raised in. My grandmother put alot of emphasis on appearance - you had to portray yourself in a positive light, no matter how bad things were in your life. I remember when I was 9, standing outside the pool at my aunts house and my grandmother telling me I looked pregnant in my bathing suit. I never wore a bathing suit without a large t-shirt covering it after that. Today, for instance I wore some of my pregnancy pants and a t-shirt in size XL. I was sweating, yucky - but wear shorts? Um, no... no way.

In reality, I'm not huge. At one point in my life I couldn't purchase clothes in a regular store. To walk into GAP and purchase a pair of jeans was out of the question. When I got married I was wearing a size 22. Today, I can buy clothes in normal stores. I could stand to lose 20 lbs. but would like to lose 35. This is a far cry from the 75 I lost before... if I just went to the store and bought new clothes I would probably feel better about myself.

Our basement was destroyed this week and will cost a lot of money to fix and require a lot of our time. Alot of my pictures were destroyed, a lot of my scrapbooking supplies were ruined and we had to destroy the rooms that they were in by pulling up carpets and running big fans. This is stressful!

I've had a headache all day... Its 8:43, I think I'm going to go to bed now. Hopefully I'll start to feel better about everything soon. Or perhaps I should look into therapy? Sigh...