Not Engaged Yet

In need of some serious emotional support right now....It's longer than I expected, sorry

edited March 2014 in Not Engaged Yet
First off, sorry I haven't been on much lately (or at all for that matter) work has been quite crazy for the past few months. A lot has changed in staffing and hours. I've been working 65+ hours a week for the past few months and I'm seriously burning out, fast. I'm seriously hitting an emotional and physical low. All I want to do is sleep on my days off. My boyfriend literally had to pick me up out of bed and drop me on our couch for me to get up this morning. He's working today so I've been at home alone with my depressed self. 

I've been looking at cat food online since I'm going to Petco next Friday to get the girls harnesses and all that, and I just realized that I refuse to by anything produced by Hill's. I'm biased. I believe somehow, without proof or evidence of any kind, that Dainte suffered from kidney failure because of her food. There were no harmful chemicals in her water, all of the cats drank the same tap water. She didn't arbitrarily get into cleaning chemicals, as mom kept them locked in the cupboard above the fridge or under the sink away from young grabby hands. She hardly ever ate human food. Our cat Igloo died because he was being given the "wrong food" for his condition a few years before, so mom switched from the Science Diet to the Prescription Diet for Dainte because we didn't want her contracting a UTI as well. 

I have thought about this a lot lately. I would still have her if I hadn't been so busy with school and work and my boyfriend to actually pay attention. The warning signs were there for months. I also feel that if I had actually spent more time with her when I put her in the hospital that maybe she would've pulled through. The first few days looked great, and then I couldn't visit for a few days and she stopped eating all together. I don't know why I'm thinking about this today and making myself upset over it but I am. 

I love Percy and Grimorie so much and they are my babies, but Dainte was my best friend growing up and I miss her so much everyday. Every year around my birthday I get sad a little because that is the time of year that I had to make the decision to put her down. It's been almost 5 years and I still see her as she was getting the injection and I still feel as though I failed her.

I'm having a breakdown and a bunch of tiny panic attacks and I can't seem to pull myself out of it. I get distracted by something for a while and then I keep thinking about depressing topics. My grandfather not being able to see me graduate or meet my ex-husband (whom he probably would've discouraged me marrying in the first place) or my boyfriend right now or any important milestone that I wish I could have shared with him. Or I'll think about my ex's dad and how he died this past November and I loved him like my own father and that my ex didn't even have the courtesy to call or send me a message on FB or anything to tell me that he had passed. I had to find out from a post his brother put up that my sister saw and then get it confirmed by looking up his obituary in their local newspaper.

 I was hoping me posting to here would help a bit, and it has. My thoughts are a bit more organized now and I feel more composed. I'm now calm enough to meditate properly so I think I'm going to try that and check back later. Hopefully I'll be in a peppier mood and can actually contribute positivly to someone on here :)

Re: In need of some serious emotional support right now....It's longer than I expected, sorry

  • phiraphira member
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    I'm so sorry you're going through all this! Everything on its own is tough enough, but oh god, burnout from work makes EVERYTHING worse.

    Pet diet can totally be a thing that contributes to illness, although I don't know how common a problem it is, and I don't know much about what happened to Dainte. Either way, I do know how easy it is to search for explanations or blame when someone you love dies, and I know how unbelievably horrible and difficult it is to have a pet euthanized. The day my dog died was the single worst day of my life. Which, okay, what a nice life I've had so far, but it was really uniquely excruciating. Not having an explanation for Dainte's death + not being able to explain to her what was happening + loss of a loved one = horrible. Downright horrible.

    It does sound like you're really spiraling emotionally right now. I know that my partner J does the same kind of thing when he's in a really bad depression. Like, we'll be up late because he's going on about how he'll always be in debt and his poor parents can barely make ends me, oh god my poor parents, my poor brother is going to drown in his student loan debt and mortgage, oh god why can't it get any easier ... for the whole night. It's the same thing with your sadness over your grandfather and ex-FIL and Dainte--you're spiraling, too.

    The most important thing right now is to do everything you can do to take care of yourself. Do what you need to do to get through the day, and what you need to do to make yourself feel better. Distract yourself if you can, and make sure to rest and eat and drink water.

    I used to teach SATs part-time while working full-time in a lab. Biology lab with mice and cells = mice and cells do what they want, and you might have to work nights and weekends with no overtime or any kind of compensatory time-off. Because of that, there were 2 months in a row where I worked every. Single. Day. I didn't always work 8-10 hours every day, but I was working at least 8 hours every day during the week, and I had to either teach SATs or run into the lab every weekend.

    At the end of each month, I woke up so exhausted that I couldn't get out of bed and had to call in sick.

    Point is, working 65+ hours a week while EVERYTHING is super stressful is hard enough when you do it for a single week. It's harder when you do it for a month. When you do it several months in a row? You need to engage in as much self-care as possible.
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  • Thank-you @phira I've been feeling so blah lately that things just suck. I am happy to announce that yesterday after I vented I felt much better and I focused on cleaning the house. Today I woke up motivated and cleaned some more and had no emotional lows! I'm just so tired. Luckily I had yesterday and today off, but this next week is going to be a long one. I think I'm working 12 days in a row, and most of those are 14 hour days. I think that the only saving grace of this job, which I love, is that I get to see my guys who are always so full of positive energy and just by spending time with them I feel better. Their good moods are infectious! Before this job I never thought I would enjoy caring for someone else in this manner, but now I'm contemplating going back to school for another degree. Something in the medical field, I'm thinking medical assistant since it's relatively quick and I can get a pretty stable job fairly quickly right after. But we'll see :)
  • phiraphira member
    First Anniversary First Comment First Answer 5 Love Its
    Having a clean house/apartment ALWAYS makes me feel SO much better. J is always mildly amused by how much the cleanliness of the apartment affects my mood. I can be super depressed, and having the house clean makes me feel like I can do ANYTHING.
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  • Me too!!!!! I rearranged our furniture today, and there is sooooo much more space now. We live in a dinky little basement apartment with one bedroom with NO windows, which seriously contributes to my bad moods a lot, and I hate it. It was great when I worked overnights, but now that I'm on daylights most of the time it's seriously bumming me out. My BF might be getting a much better paying job soon *crosses fingers* so we can actually afford a nicer place. It kills him that I'm the breadwinner in our house, but I love it. I like knowing that I can be independent. Though I know that until he feels he can support us we will not be getting engaged anytime soon. I've come to terms with that, and I'm happy to wait for that moment :)
  • Hey there - I'll try to help with the pet diet.  1st off most vets are not educated on nutrition.  Ohio State University is in the top 5 vet schools in the country, a friend of mine went and told me that I was better off researching nutrition myself as they do offer nutrition as an elective but it's a very unpopular one and most vets do just go with whoever the vendor is for the vet clinic.  These are some of the brands that I like:
    Fromm (this is what I feed)
    Earthborn
    Blue Buffalo (wilderness)
    Orijen
    Acana
    Taste of the Wild

    For wet food:
    BFF pouches (Weruva)
    Cats in the Kitchen  (Weruva)
    Natural Balance

    I also order my cat/dog food online through chewy (or wag if chewy is out) - they've had great customer service!


    Sorry you've been stressing about work.  Being stressed at work sucks big time - I'm right there with ya where all I feel I'm doing is working and sleeping!



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  • @Dignity100 Thanks for the pet info! I've been thinking of switching to Blue Buffalo for a while, it's just out of my price range right now.

    Work has gotten worse this week. My boss is battling his depression currently and may be let go from the company due to him having a breakdown at work. I'm upset about it because I adore him and am extremely loyal to him. He's an amazing boss and he's great for our guys. So we'll see how that pans out.
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