I am writing while sitting inside with the fans and air conditioner on from our new house in sunny QLD (well, rather overcast QLD today). The house is wonderful, more than I could have hoped for, and we are slowly settling in after our big move on October 4th.
I am now almost completely off the antidepressants now, I take half a 50mg (so 25mg) tablet of Zoloft a week, and emotionally things haven't changed so I am taking that as a good sign that my withdrawals are confined only to mild physical symptoms like tingling in the limbs and extremities and dizziness/feeling light headed.
The only things that have brought me down are the occasional argument with the hubby over finances (we need to sell our old house so that we can clear out all our current debts and it isn't happening yet grrrr), and having people on facebook taking what I type the wrong way.
Before I go any further I would like to state that I am not writing this out of any anger or hate, I am writing it with only confusion and the thirst to learn what went wrong. I am merely using this medium to get my thoughts out of my head and put them down where I can reanalyse them at a later date and learn what words in what order could be taken the wrong way so that I can improve my "neutral" status updates so that in future they can't be taken the wrong way.
A serious question though, if you are asked a question about who has removed themselves from your friends list and you answer it with a name, and are then asked if you know why they've removed themselves and you admit that you don't know and then make a guess saying "I guess being diagnosed with PND and moving to QLD might have been the right time time for said person to defriend me", it's a guess, something that isn't based on fact and is just a conclusion you make without sufficient information to back you up and confirm it, you wouldn't normally see it as having a go at someone unless you were already looking for a fight would you? I know that I wouldn't, my closest friends wouldn't, the person who asked me the initial question didn't and was horrified that an innocent question had started such a huge drama just because I had answered with a name and made a guess.
I have nothing against this person who started the drama. Apparently I am passive aggressive against her and other "crunchy" or gentle parenting mothers, apparently I have something against them all and am anti-crunchy/gentle parenting just because I have smacked my kids. The reality is I have nothing against them, some of my closest friends are Crunchy and Gentle Parenting mumma's, I respect their parenting beliefs and they respect mine even if they don't believe them to be the right way to parent themselves, if I post something on my wall that might impact a bit negatively on gentle parenting without realising it, they just ignore it and move on, they don't start a fight or create drama just for the sake of it.
To be honest I feel sorry for this person. This isn't the first time she's taken something the wrong way and created drama. I've stuck by her as a friend in the past even though I didn't agree with why she started the drama, I just ignored it, had a bitch to hubby in bed at night if I needed to clear my head of it (if by the off chance said person does happen to come across this and recognises it, or one of her friends, ONCE AGAIN I AM NOT HAVING A GO AT YOU SO STOP THINKING THAT EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE SOMETHING BAD ABOUT YOU!!!, and then moved past it and went back to being friends and enjoying the good things about said person. I have noticed that said person does pick fights a lot, and is very touchy about anything said about herself and her family and reacts rather angrily and aggressively by attacking the person who makes the apparently "controversial" comment. I understand where she's coming from, I've done it myself in the past. Which is why I've never deliberately made any comments about her behaviour before. Last night I did lose control a bit after being abused one time too many in a short period of time and I did make some comments that shouldn't have been made, and for that I am sorry, but now it is done and I cannot take any of it back. In a way it is a good thing, because it has removed a negative person from my social circle who was only going to bring me down with her if I had continued to respond to her comments.
I have to note though that this person is also a fellow doula, which scares me a bit. If she can read passive aggressive from an originally neutral post and "guesses" made in the form of puzzled comments then I worry how her reputation as a doula will be affected if she reacts the same way to something that one of her clients says without the client realising that it could be interpreted as passive aggressive or, if a client is trying to tell her that she has done something wrong and is unable to get it across without seeming confrontational or condescending. Going on from that if her reputation is affected by just one client that she took the wrong way then every other doula's reputation will suffer as well. Word of mouth spreads quickly, especially when social networking is involved, and a once perfect reputation can be ruined in an hour if enough people talk about it. It is scary, and it makes it even more important for Doula's to learn and take in communication skills during their training. Something that I have noticed after talking to many doula's who have done their training through many different organisations is that not every Doula Training organisation has an in depth module dedicated to only communication and what things could be taken the wrong way and how to improve how you communicate with not only clients, but people in general.
Back to the original reason I'm posting about this. I have also had people say things about me in the past, for the most part I ignored it, unless I was pregnant and then I gave back as good as I got because undiagnosed post-natal and pre-natal depression while pregnant can make you very angry and aggressive which is what happened to me. I admit, I have created drama and started arguments before, but I always apologised for starting them once they reached a certain point where things just start going around and around in circles, which is what happened last night. Instead of accepting my explanation for why I posted and nicely asking to remove the answers to the question said person just kept going on about it and abusing me. She took it too far, and has now lost a friend who used to respect her and her personal beliefs.
I am also fully aware that she has lost respect for me as well, if she ever had any respect for me in the first place, I don't know and I never will truly know as I am not her and don't know how her mind works. All I can do is make personal observations on what I have seen of her behaviour yesterday and in the past, and from my point of view it doesn't look good, just as much of my past behaviour doesn't look good either. The difference between the two of us though is that I am actively working on improving how I control my emotions and what I let bother me and what I don't let bother me.
I was doing pretty well until the abuse started, and that's one thing I WILL NOT STAND at all, being verbally abused by someone who has no idea what I've been through or am going through and insists on making it look like she has it worse than everyone else - which is untrue, there is always someone far worse off than you are, something that I am faced with every day as a self confessed VBACtivist who supports women wanting to VBAC and having to fight tooth and nail just to get an empowering, often healing birth in a way that they want and not under the knife by some obstetrician's orders.
I may have gone through hell and back again bringing my first child and third child into the world, but both times it wasn't as bad as what someone else went through to bring their children into the world. My birth experiences had shaped me, made me, brought me down and lifted me back up again. I am stronger for what I have been through, I have more knowledge than I did when I was pregnant with each of my children, I am able to support a woman impartially throughout her pregnancy and birth, and able to share her happiness and excitement when her baby is born happy and healthy while taking any negative feedback at the same time and learning from it to be better the next time.
The one thing that I still seem to have trouble with though is dealing with people in general. I have always struggled to relate to people, to get my words across the right way. Even as a very young child I was far more comfortable around adults than I was around other children my age, but I also had the problem where I would say things that could be taken as negative or innapropriate by others. I am a literal person by nature, I say it how it is and rarely think about the consequences if what I said is taken the wrong way. In many ways I am naive when it comes to the intricacies involved in normal every day conversation, what I see as normal conversation isn't normal to most people and they find it strange and hard to relate to, just as I do with them. It seems that this is a lasting legacy from my childhood, one that I may or may not be able to overcome. But you know what? I AM GOING TO KEEP ON TRYING. Because that is all that I can do, try and try, and try again until either I overcome it or reach a point where it doesn't matter anymore
And this is where I end this post. I have updated on where we are at, I have raised a valid issue and put my side of the story across, and I have gone off topic a bit, come back again, and extended the issue again.
I have tried to explain why I think, talk and write the way that I do in the only way that I know how to. What those who read this take away from my post is up to them, I am not responsible for other peoples feelings and emotions, and I am not responsible for other peoples misunderstandings of what I write, if I was I would probably be in jail already, or dead because someone decided that I shouldn't be allowed to live. Any misunderstandings or bad emotions are the responsibility of those who have them only, and it is their choice of what they do with them, if they choose badly and take it out on others that is their problem, not mine. If they choose the better option and ignore it and move on then that puts a good light on them and they have my respect.
Jenna.
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