Emotional Nonsense
I try to write words
that smoothly flow
But they don’t come to me easy
Maybe I just suck at poetry
But I will keep trying and praying
That I will become good at this thing
Before I painfully decide
To give up this poetic life
And on paper try to make some sense
of my emotional nonsense
Moving Forward
So last week, I started a second job at Kroger and I’m excited about it. I feel that with this job my life will finally start moving forward. My end goal is to be financially independent from my husband so I can separate from him. I know that sounds harsh but it’s been over between us for a while. I know that it will be hard trying to work anywhere from 60 to 70 hours a week but sometimes in America, you need a second job to move forward in life. I follow the examples from my hard working immigrant parents who have set this precedent for me. I’m tired of struggling and just getting by. These are my goals:
1) My first goal is to pay off debt I accumulated during my great depression of 2016 and 2017 . 2) My second goal is to build my credit score enough to get approved for a used car loan. Right now we only have one car and it’s rough.
3) Save up for a down payment for a car.
I know that I’m sacrificing time with my kids but since they’re older, they understand. Also, they deserve better than what we’ve been giving them and it’s up to me to take that initiative. This is part of my plan to make my life better for me and my kids. We’ll see how it goes.
The last few months of 2017 have been a roller coaster of a ride from 3 job changes within a month to issues with my middle son. However one of the good things that happened was landing my current job in October of this year. I’m an administrative assistant for public health. Through this I was introduced to the keto low carb diet. I want to clarify that while the diet was highly recommended and there is a workplace wellness program for it; no employee is ever forced to do it. I researched it ,prepped my meals and started doing the diet since October 16, 2017 and have gained already a few benefits like 11 pounds lost,loads of energy, and becoming super aware of the harmful processed foods I have been eating all of my life. I hadn’t had my labs drawn when I first started the diet but decided to do so today to hold myself way more accountable. So I had my blood drawn for labs, was weighed, and had measurements done for the Workplace Wellness program to help monitor my progress on the diet. I started the diet with great enthusiasm and for the most part maintained myself below 20 grams of carbs a day but lately I’ve been slipping off track due to the holiday seasons and life stressors. I think taking full advantage of the Workplace Program will renew my motivation for a healthier lifestyle the low carb way. I have various reasons for beginning this journey and continuing it that I will only discuss a few now.
My biggest reason for doing the keto diet is my health-both physical and mental. You see, I’ve suffered half my life from anxiety and depression and while I’m on medication and have gotten better at managing it, it’s simply not enough. I’m constantly reading articles on studies about how I should exercise or practice mindfulness or eat specific foods to help my serotonin levels and be “happy” . While I understand that it all can help; for me personally, a drastic change such as changing my diet needed to be done. For me, food was one of those comforts I would seek out in order to help me “feel better” after a bad day. I felt like I needed the white rice, french bread, potato chips, and tacos to help me survive. Obviously,I had a very unhealthy relationship with food and it got so bad this summer that I was at my heaviest at 179 lbs which is pretty heavy considering I’m 5’4. Being this overweight made my depression worst, my energy was drained every single day so bad that it was a struggle to get out of bed and function. I also could not keep up with my very active boys ages 12 and 6.The extra weight also made my occasional hip pain worse to the point that some days I was limping around.
I knew that at this point I was at risk for other factors due to family history, my maternal grandmother has had diabetes with complications since she was in her 50’s, I remember watching her test her blood sure since I was little and it never looked like something I wanted to do. My paternal grandmother also had diabetes in her 50’s. My maternal grandfather had heart disease as he got older. My father himself has high blood pressure that’s not easy to control. If I didn’t do something fast; I was a ticking time bomb of soon to be obesity and diabetes among other diseases that would shorten my life.
My second biggest reason of course are my three sons ages 19,12 and 6. I want to live long enough to see them through major milestones in their adult lives. I also want to set a good example for them about is a healthy relationship with food. While all three of them have been super hesitant about trying out even certain foods on the diet, I hope that in the future they will consider it as all three of them could benefit from it in different ways. My oldest has social anxiety/major depressive mood disorder, my middle and youngest children are overweight and have a high BMI; I also want to add that my middle child has possible ADHD and emotional problems.
Today the nurse asked me what my goal was and I basically told her I wanted to be at a healthy BMI. My current BMI is 27 which puts me in the overweight category. While I go love myself and my body at 160 pounds, I know I can do better to feel better. I will be sharing different tools and resources I use that I find to be successful throughout my journey.
It’s been a long 4 years since I last blogged and two themes seem to follow: my dissatisfaction with life and the progress with my oldest son D, on the autism spectrum.
The Good: My boys- My oldest son D, graduated from high school in May with a 4.0 GPA and is starting the university next month. Also, he graduated with over 30 college credits and many honors and awards. He literally is my light at the end of the tunnel some days when everything seems so overwhelming and bleak. My middle child T, is the opposite of D, meaning he’s extremely social but does not do as well academically. He is definitely the most sensitive child out of my three sons and that presents challenges. My little one M, is now 6 and is as happy and energetic as ever. I always say he’s a good combination of my oldest and middle sons. He does well academically and is a social butterfly. I feel like aside from the usual childhood angst, nothing really gets him down. I envy him.
Other things- I joined a local Toastmasters Club and have grown more confident in my public speaking skills. I’m also on the board of a storytelling organization that empowers our local community by telling one story at a time. I’m actually proud that it was telling my own immigration story in October that prompted the board to invite me to be on it.
The Bad: I have severe anxiety and depression. Some of it is circumstantial. Some of it is just me and my awful brain. I took a job working from home with Child Support Services in October of last year and my mental health went downhill. Dealing with angry clients every day on the phone while also dealing with not the most positive work environment. Most people would argue that this would be an ideal work environment but for me it was just the opposite. For one thing, it’s fucking isolating, especially when the only human contact are your colleagues/supervisors via Skype and the angry clients on the phone (because about 75% of the people on the phone are ANGRY and rightfully so). The other thing is fucking technology not working right and being monitored on a continual basis. Both of these things just added to an awful and stressful situation. And of course, there is my husband who doesn’t have the motivation to find a job and therefore is home every day. I resented him more with each passing day. While I’m being verbally abused every fucking day, he has the audacity to tell me to get over it. And to top it all off, my “perfect” oldest son started skipping school because of his own anxiety and I couldn’t help him. It was a recipe for me feeling like a worthless piece a shit to everyone so eventually I decided to do something drastic (that’s another blog post). Eventually, I did quit that job and landed another job in February of this year (not high paying at all) for the school district. It’s a job working with high school students with special needs. It’s actually quite an amazing and rewarding job in many ways but not one that pays the bills.
So this awful summer, I have been out there again, looking for jobs and while I have gotten a few interviews, none of them have panned out. It’s frustrating and almost hopeless. I told my husband, “We are just going to end up at my parents’ house soon” because this is how I truly feel. He responds that we’re not but how can I possibly trust him when he does NOTHING to re-mediate the situation. I told him I’m probably going to end up in an institution or dead to which he said nothing at all. Maybe that’s the only response he can come up with. I stay in this relationship mostly for my children’s sake. I keep thinking there is a light at the end of the long tunnel that is depression but I can’t seem to find it yet.
I think that finding that bright spark in my life has been very hard for me to grasp lately. This week my oldest son D was accepted into a highly competitive academic program in the high school he will attend in the fall. I am a very proud mama and I have a good reason to be.
D was diagnosed with high functioning Autism at the age of 5 and at the time, he was basically almost non -verbal, extremely behind on academics, and showed no interest in socializing with his peers. As soon as we found out his DX, the school placed him in a special education self contained classroom with a multitude of therapists and teachers to help him. All expectations and hopes I had for him before the DX were dashed away and I honestly just wanted one thing for him : for him to be happy. 
I did mourn for a while for “the child” that I had lost and this did blind me for a while. He was now a child whose future was quite uncertain, a child who most likely would rely on me for the rest of my life, and a child who would not graduate from high and certainly not go on to college. It was an inner conflict within myself and I felt shitty enough not being the best mother to him considering I had him at the age of 17. I was overwhelmed and felt guilty for being so ignorant and young at the time all of this was happening that I also blamed myself for his DX for a long time. I had already felt like my poor child had so many obstacles stacked against him when he was born into a family with no father and an immature single teen mom, now this, Autism. Sigh.
So how did I tackle this: I educated myself.I read a ton of books- a year before his DX and continued to read the books and articles after. I had to learn to advocate for him and keep in constant contact with his therapists and teachers. I was that mom and continue to be that mom that teachers dread with my emails about what might seem minor questions and issues. The most important thing I did was: I had to learn to believe in him and his potential. I had to believe that my little boy would one day learn how read, do simple math, verbally tell me he had to use the bathroom (instead of grunting and stomping his feet), and just really talk to me instead of giving me two word responses and phrases. At the beginning of the journey, I told myself, that if he could just do those simple things, we would be okay and if he didn’t , then I would have to accept it and love him no matter what.
So with the support and help of family, therapists, and teachers, D just really blossomed throughout the years. The first 3 years were tough. I felt like we would finally reach him and we would finally get him to a point that he was functioning well,then something would happen and he would regress. Excuse the cliche but it was truly, one small step forward, and two huge steps backward. To say that it was frustrating would be an understatement. To be honest, I wanted to give up sometimes but I didn’t. 
I always remember the day that I knew I could have expectations of him having a semi-normal life and it took his special education teacher to show me. It was during an IEP meeting for third grade and it hadn’t been a particularly good year for him but she turned to me and said, “You know, one day in the near future, it will just all click for him” . And sure enough, the following year, he really blossomed. It was all about these incredibly miniscule steps that built up over time.Eventually he went from his special education classroom in Kindergarten to a co taught classroom in fourth grade to advance/regular classes in Seventh grade. He went from several therapists and resource personnel to just a case manager on a monthly consult basis. His IEP went from 30 pages long focused on basic communication/academics to just a 3 pages long that focus mainly on socialization and independence.
Getting to this point with him hasn’t been easy but it has been well worth it. 
So while the idea of starting a new blog before seemed awesome, it quite wasn’t the case while trying to move and start a new life somewhere else with my family. Just a quick update on me:
I went from unemployed in December 2011 to employed with another state agency in March 2012. At first I was like happy, kind of smug feeling
that I had not only secured with a state agency but I was going to get paid more and actually use my B.A as a Family Independence Case Manager (AKA Food Stamp and Medicaid Caseworker). I had my own office and training was basically a breeze. However, when training ended, I found out they had other plans for me. So now, as of Feb 2013, I feel kind of like this 
you know unhappy, kind of dreading to go to work every day, having a breakdown on a weekly kind of basis. By the way, the model in both pics is my now 19 month old son. Figured, I would make use of his expressions to express how I feel about my job while updating everyone (all probably 2 of my readers on his looks). Getting back to my unhappy feelings about my job: Reason #1-I have been placed on the front desk as what I feel is a glorified receptionist. I basically get the brunt of all the frustrations the clients feel as well other bureaucratic bullshit the higher ups hand out to us (especially since we are going live with a new business process model-later on in March). Reason#2- Flexibility from this job is basically gone thanks again to the new business process model. Apparently, if the higher ups thought we were thoughtless robots on an assembly line before then it rings even more true now! When I first got this job, I was encouraged to create my own schedule so I was super-excited to work from 8:00am to 4:30pm. Well, this is no more an option. I now either work from 7:30am to 4:30pm or 8:00 am to 5:00pm and I am literally forced to take an hour lunch. Forget that maybe your child has an activity after school or maybe you want to take an extra 30 minutes one day during the week for a much needed counseling session. You are basically a slave to either one of those time slots and this is more so if you are at the front desk where coverage for you is basically non existent at times. I could go and list more reasons as to why I detest job but I will leave it at that for now. Moving forward, I have decided to look for another job and concentrate more of my energy in bettering myself and family and once again really rejecting stagnation instead of letting another year of living in mediocrity pass me by.
So it’s official, we are now residents of Gainesville and have left Athens behind. The move was rough to say the least, especially with 3 kids, no childcare for them, and hardly any help from Big T’s family. My best friend and family helped and I was pretty damn grateful for that. Leaving Athens saddens me to a point that I feel like I am mourning the life I wanted to have there. Athens is so rich in culture and is so unique whereas Gainesville is well in my opinion-normal, ordinary. I know that there was no other way to move forward with our life. It just sucks because in Athens, I felt more like me and not some stereotypical person people think I am when they look at me in Gainesville. I know that most of it is in my head and maybe I’m allowing the ignorant and bad experiences in Gainesville rule over head and my heart at this time.
The kids are finally enrolled in school and had a great first day. D’s bus driver was the same one he had when he went to elementary school here.
So let me introduce myself. My name is Patty Tacuri and I am a married mother of three boys ages 13, 6, and 5 months old. My world is in complete chaos right now due to a recent turn of events. To try explain it all in one blog would be exhausting for me and the reader. So post by post I will reveal a little about my world. Right now we are in the middle of packing up our stuff to move in with my parents in another city. Who says you can’t go home again at age 30?Lol. The major reason we are moving in with my parents: The weekend before Halloween ,our house was broken into while we were out of town. They had broken the glass in the carport door and also broke the kitchen door. They tossed our place looking for valuables and took all our video game consoles, my laptop, my 6-year-old son’s piggy and both of my sons’ backpacks to tote the stuff in. Those material things though aren’t as important as what they ultimately took: Sleepless nights, tranquility, security, and privacy. Every time we leave the house as a family, I get into panic mode thinking that when we come back, we’ll come back once more to broken glass. This affected our two oldest children in a dramatic way as well. My teenager is scared when my husband leaves the house because he thinks the bad guys will come back and I won’t be able to defend him. My six-year-old still has nightmares. Staying in this house is not an option at all. if I want to remain sane and help my children start to heal emotionally. So about 3 weeks ago, I did the unthinkable and quit the stable government job I have (6 days left) after my husband and I decided to move in with my parents. I’m in for the most chaotic weeks for 2011 as I prepare for a new beginning with my family.
Life on the BPD 