My 5 Minute Life: Managing ~ Building ~ Recovering 5 minutes at a time

Hey there!

Does the mud in your life make you feel stuck? Has depression taken over and now you’re spending your days lying on the couch watching TV or surfing the web mindlessly trying to escape?

I’ve been there more times than I like to admit. I’ve been in that mud hole of mental health since I was a child. The roller coaster of good days and then the next really bad.

Here is the story of how one of those really bad times changed my life.

I had tried over the years to ignore everything that was bad in my life in my first marriage. I faked being happy. I didn’t tell anyone around me how bad the abuse was at home. It wasn’t physical abuse so, no proof anyway.

Finally the verbal attacks started on our kids. That was enough. I filed for divorce.

It was not an easy divorce. I had nothing to fall back on. I had no income, no skills, no real support system from the family I had at that time.

My ex husband didn’t make it easy, it got to be too much. I decided suicide was the only answer. It wasn’t the first time I had thought about it. This time, I had excuses for everything. The kids would be fine with their father. Everyone around me would finally be rid of me and me being a burden to them.

I obviously didn’t follow through but it prompted my ex husband to immediately take me in for evaluation to be put into a mental health institute. He’d then get the kids and I’d be out of his life, and someone else’s problem.

I will never forget the man who saw through the bullshit the first time. He was a therapist from our county mental health department. He of course spoke to my ex husband about what lead up to me coming in and then he came and spoke to me.

I sat there downplaying, skirting around issues the best I could as he asked question after question. Then he surprised me.

He had asked me when I last had a break from everything. I stared at him. A break? I was a mom with 2 small children, who gets a break?
I'll never forget his words… “I think most of your problem is standing in the hallway.”

I broke down. He saw through the bullshit. He knew and I couldn’t hide it anymore. After finally getting to say what I really wanted to say he prescribed me 3 days of respite care in a local facility. I needed a break from life.

I wouldn’t have to think about anything for 3 days. They would tell me when to get up, when to eat, when to take medicine, everything.

It was my first night sleeping in that hard unfamiliar bed under itchy covers that I lied crying not knowing what to do next. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t function at all.

That’s when I decided I only wanted to live for the next 5 minutes. But I didn’t want to die this time. I ONLY wanted to live for the next 5 minutes. I’d worry about the 5 minutes after that when the first 5 minutes were over.

And that’s how I started living 5 minutes at a time. I lied there watching the clock until I finally fell asleep.

The next morning I woke up and felt a little better, I had survived.

I stayed the 3 days and then back into the same world I needed to take a break from.

I never really gave my 5 minute life another thought honestly until almost 18 year later.

My life that 18 years since that had been one mud pit after another. Chronic Illness had been piled on top of mental illness and then being a single mom with few skills was quite the struggle. Many of life’s hardships fell upon me.

I have so many stories I could tell you about those 18 years, it would make your head spin… it did mine.

Then in 2016 I had the biggest nervous breakdown of my life.

Everything came crashing down August of 2016. I snapped. It affected me not only mentally and emotionally but it also affected me physically.

I told Evil and the rest of my family I knew what I needed. I needed respite care. I needed to heal without any responsibility at all.

I have an amazing family now. Evil is a very supportive boyfriend and he has two wonderful teenage kids. I could not get through life without them. My daughter had a tough time because she had never seen her mom like this before.

I couldn’t think past a 3 year old I tell people. I felt like a child trying to remember anything. Everything felt new and I didn’t know how to do it.

At first the entire world, even our home was too big. It was too overwhelming and way too scary. I stayed in our bedroom unless I had to come out.

My social anxiety amplified to the point where I couldn’t leave my home. If anyone wanted to see me, not only would they need to come to our home but…. I wouldn’t leave the bedroom.

Those first few weeks I spend writing anything and everything down. I was scared, I didn’t know if I’d get my memory back enough to even remember something I had thought earlier in the day. Lists of what I was feeling, notes about things I wanted to talk to people about. If it crossed my mind, I wrote it down.

I was not getting better.

Again, I started crying and couldn’t leave the bed. That’s when I remembered my 5 minute life.

Give me 5 minutes without thinking. 5 minutes of peaceful thoughts. 5 minutes of rest.

Slowly the racing died down.

I looked around me and decided that I was going to start exactly where I was with exactly what I had.
I had 5 minutes to do anything I wanted.

I started to develop a plan of getting back on my feet both mentally and physically.

I have two systems I use together. One is a simple Red, Yellow, Green system to help me prioritize what needs to be worked on first and a 5 minute task system to keep me from getting overwhelmed.

These two systems together have taken me from FML - F*ck My Life to FML - Five Minute Life.

I have a whole lot I want to share with you about these two systems and how it has helped me become a pretty good momager now.

My family still continues to support me every day as I continue to grow stronger and overcome the things I need to overcome to achieve everything I want in life.

Right now the areas I’m building myself are home management and self care with chronic illness.

I’m slowly adding into my schedule: blogging, homesteading and developing a business in Second Life. I have big dreams! I’ll get there. I’ve already come so much further than I ever thought I would.

I want to help you achieve everything you want too. 5 minutes at a time.

~Ferocity~