June 13 2016

ttc

Wrote on March 10 2016

I just want to make art and listen to acoustic music and write stories and watch horror movies and sit in the sunshine and press flowers and read books and burn candles and wear neutrals and take pictures and believe in magic and sit in hammocks and paint pictures and inspire and smile and and and and and 

Wrote on February 26 2016

What is love?

Love is a pug taking up your spot in the bed. Love is your husband asking you if you want a treat. Love is your Pyrenees laying beside you on the floor. Love is your toddler holding on tight to a balloon. Love is your husband getting up with the baby in the middle of the night. Love is spending $5.00 on a birthday card. Love is sending a picture text. Love is thinking of someone during a song. Love is not getting up to pee when your cat is sitting on your lap. Love is picking out the perfect Christmas gift for your friend. Love is wishing someone a happy birthday. 

Written January 24 2016

1/8

Are you ready? I hope you're sitting because I'm a rambler. 

I've been struggling on a daily basis with my mental health since *first grade*. I cried every.single. day before I went to school. I had panic attacks. I would throw up from being so upset. People thought I was faking it. Do you know what that does to a person? Do you know what that does to a child? No one knew what was wrong with me and it took about 8 years of this until I was diagnosed. I would have internal battles with myself at school. I was too anxious to get up during class to throw something in the garbage. I was too anxious to put my hand up when I knew the answer to a question, too anxious to answer the question if I did get called on. I remember holding in my coughs just so no one would "look at me". It was a freaking long journey.

2/8

Let's skip to third grade, my worst elementary year. Let me preface this by saying I am AWFUL at math. Beyond awful.  The calculator app is the best thing to ever happen to me. Anyways, my teacher gave us math quizzes where we had to write the answers down in a certain amount of time and then switch with someone to mark our quiz. NBD, right? I started pretending I was sick so I wouldn't have to do the tests, because my anxiety was eating me alive inside. So much so that when the fifth grade rolled around and I got assigned the same teacher I ended up switching schools. Now, I didn't switch schools just because of this but it was totally a factor. I was also bullied. I ended up spending a lot of time alone at recess and lunch, sitting by myself. I was in a constant struggle of wanting break to be over so that I wouldn't have to look like a loser, and not wanting to go back inside and have the anxiety of school. Adding on top of this OCD (I didn't know what it was at the time, and thought everyone did the same things as me) - intrusive thoughts, counting numbers compulsively, etc. It was shaping up to be a rather mentally exhausting childhood.

3/8

Eighth grade hit and the stress of high school was really hard on my anxiety. It was really hard to deal with everything that comes with high school plus undiagnosed mental health disorders. Friends+boys+bullies+classes don't really mix well with anxiety and depression. Ninth grade came and I switched schools again. We ended up moving down the street from a different high school and I had friends there as well. Without getting into the sheer craziness that ensued that year (good and bad), let's just say my stress levels ended up maxing out. Enter ridiculous acne, enter my doctor putting me on Diane in attempts to control the acne. This caused me to gain weight and become more depressed. Through that all my friends left me. They had their reasons, good and bad, but either way that just made everything 1000x worse. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't leave my house. I had no energy and was tired all the time. My doctor put me on anxiety medicine. I ended up dropping out of high school after I finished grade nine. I actually even went to a few days of grade ten, but my disorders won and acted like a physical block. I tried to do my school by correspondence but it didn't end up working out. 

4/8

This is when I was diagnosed. Throughout all this my mom was always fighting for me. She was researching things online to show my doctor, she was doing everything she could and being a single mom while she did it. Eventually, I ended up with the opportunity to see a psychiatrist. My town didn't have one at the time and this person flew in a couple times a year to see people. Obsessive compulsive disorder, general anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder and generalized depression. She put me on a different drug. 

5/8

In 2008 I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). "PCOS is a problem in which a woman's hormones are out of balance. It can cause problems with your periods and make it difficult to get pregnant. PCOS also may cause unwanted changes in the way you look. If it isn't treated, over time it can lead to serious health problems, such as diabetes and heart disease." It explained a lot of stuff, but obviously wasn't a sigh of relief. They put me on Accutane, which is the craziest drug ever. 

tldr; PCOS fucking sucks. You gain weight, get bad acne, grow hair, some people lose their hair, infertility issues etc. Lots of women end up REALLY depressed because of all the issues it causes them, understandably. 

6/8

2009. I had been dating Mitchell, and we decided to move to Calgary. We moved into a basement suite and I was going on and off my pills. I don't know if any of you reading this have ever stopped taking your meds cold turkey, but if you have then you know how bad this was. I was in an out of withdrawal from them all the time. I was staying up all night, couldn't work up the courage to get a job, didn't go to school or anything so I didn't meet anyone to be friends with and was barely leaving the basement apartment we were living in. This went on for about a year. I ended up in a really bad place where I started having panic attacks at night. I ended up going to a doctor and he put me on Zoloft. It worked pretty well, a couple years into it I actually went out and got a job. Biiiiig step for someone like me. 

7/8

In 2013 we decided to have a baby and I got pregnant (holla for clomid). I went off my Zoloft when I found out and I've been off it ever since. While things are not perfect being off of meds, I feel it's the right decision for me at this time. I still struggle every day. I struggle to get in my car and drive to places, I struggle to leave my house sometimes, I struggle to try and make friends, I struggle to do anything new that I haven't done before. It's definitely an internal battle every single day, but this is who I am. I'm still here and I still fight and I'm still living. That's basically all that matters in the end.

8/8

When you have mental disorders it's not about "getting help". It's about fighting through all your inner demons, staying ALIVE while you do it and then working up the courage to get to the people that can help you. Then usually it's a roller coaster of finding the right drug and the right dose that works for you, which can take years. If you're reading this and you have a mental disorder, take a moment of comfort in the fact that you are NOT alone. I am right here with you fighting those demons. 

#BellLetsTalk #mentalhealth #fightstigma #endthestigma #mentalhealthawareness #selflove #mentalillness #anxiety #depression #ocd #bekind #effyourbeautystandards #honormycurves #bigandblunt #plussize #plussizefashion #psfashion #plussizebeauty #fatbabe #bodypositive #bopo #yyc #torrid #greenhair #alternativegirl 

Wrote On October 31st 2015

My wonderful mother, Doris Dominato is 59 years old. Over her lifetime, she has done many things. At 19 she opened her (first) hair salon. At 21 she bought her first home. At 25 she had her first child (alone). Over the years, she had her second child (me, obviously), provided many jobs for other people in her salons, paid taxes, received no maternity benefits twice, travelled, bought another house, bought vehicles, took care of her elderly parents, raised children, raised pets, paid many vet bills, got married, got separated, developed carpal tunnel syndrome in her hands (hair dresser), developed extremely bad knees (cement floors because hairdresser), had grandchildren, had surgery on her hands, had surgery on her knee (soon to be knees), moved to Alberta to be closer to her kids, and much more. Over the course of these years different things and different situations occurred. One of which was her knees, they got so bad from working hard for a living that she couldn't work anymore and this led to not only surgery but also to a government building in Lethbridge. She went there for help, because as much as we would love to be able to 100% support her, we can't afford it (trust me, we tried - that's 3 adults, 1 baby, 2 dogs and 1 cat on ONE INCOME). She went there and got put on a list to get an apartment in Lethbridge from government assistance and also for assistance with money. After a few months an apartment opened up for her and she moved in, the rent is covered by the government. She also got approved for $480.00CAD a month. With that $480.00 a month she has to pay the following: phone bill, car insurance, gas, groceries, banking fees, Internet, and parking at her apartment (meters, at an government assisted living building). As well as sometimes the dollars have to be stretched further to include things like cleaning supplies, toiletries, clothing, shoes, any gifts she can try to do for her grandchildren's birthdays/Christmas (because let's face it, that's what grandma's do) and more. This is my mom's life. She spends her time taking care of her grandsons in Lethbridge, driving down to Calgary to visit me, my husband and my daughter, knitting, desperately wishing she could afford to adopt a cat, playing free games on her iphone (an old one of mine that I gave to her), watching crime shows and talking to her far away family on the phone. She doesn't do drugs, she doesn't even drink alcohol. Last weekend when she was here in Calgary visiting, she was so excited to tell me about this picture she saw on Facebook. It was a purse with a caption encouraging people to fill up an old bag with things like shampoo, tooth brushes, soap, etc and give it to a homeless woman they see on the street. After ALL of the stuff she goes through, she is still trying to figure out a way to give to people that are LESS fortunate than her. I literally could not be more proud of her. The point of this post is to show you what welfare (government assistance) is. So the next time you see a meme on the internet degrading people on welfare and how much they have, I hope you think of my mom. I hope you are as disgusted with the ignorance of whoever has shared/posted it as I am when they pop up on my timeline at 11:30PM and send me into a public fit of fury. 

March 8th 2016 #2

Oh and family, family is also not a given. Everything I thought I knew about the world was wrong. 

March 8th 2016

I've come to the realization that I won't be someone great, or do something great. I have also realized that having friends is not a given, and I don't think I will go through life having any. I should have appreciated the ones I had so long ago. This is all my fault.

February 27th 2016

About a week ago I was watching Masterchef Canada and this girl on the show said "I never thought I'd be someone special, but now I'm thinking maybe I will be." It hit me pretty hard, because I have the opposite problem. I always thought I'd be someone/something special but in that moment I realized I never will be. It's pretty devastating to figure out that everything you ever wanted isn't going to happen.

Feb 21 2016

Took my plugs out.

I feel sad

blue

run down

tired

alone