Loose Associative Links

"I've been thinking about a problem." Moneypenny and I are sitting in his living room, while I'm on my visit to larger Midwest City from Smaller Midwest City. "If you are working from a many worlds theory, where everyone's life is their own world, then you basically create your own world. What do you think people would do differently if they realized that they created their own world?"  I wasn't sure if this was a poke at how I had been feeling all weekend, so mired in the lack of a clearly, overwhelmingly good decision that I feel unable to make any, or was coming from his own place of wanting to make a better life for himself. Either way, it still put me on the defensive and I went on a five minute rant about how no matter what changes in life or attitude people may make there would still be things in their life that they couldn't change and that would still suck anyway. Then I felt guilty for not being able to add anything to his conversation. I ended up leaving an hour earlier than I might have originally because I couldn't stand to sit there anymore as I fought both being angry and wanting to cry.

These kinds of thought experiments used to be fun for me. Even when I couldn't completely understand or envision them, the seemingly kooky ideas that pop up in quantum mechanics always blew me away and I loved thinking about the possibilities they presented. When I was studying Buddhism and how we create our own realities, I could easily get carried away in those possibilities as well, the ability to unravel so much of the suffering that we have created in our own lives. Stone-cold sober, he and I could have the kind of conversations that people are only supposed to be able to have when they are on some sort of mind-altering substance.

But in recent years, I've drifted further and further away from those kinds of discussions and, on the drive home, I was plagued by the question of why. I used to love those kinds of thought experiments, would come up with at least half of the places we would start on my own. Now it rubs me the wrong way to even things of them. I'm trying to work out why. I'm going to try to arrange my thoughts as best as I can, but I'm not sure how good of a job I'll do, so bare with me.

I think part of it is that with the stuff that has happened in my life, it has felt less important. Who cares about the possibilities of the multi-verse or unravelling the cycles of suffering in our lives when we're caring for ill and/or dying family members? Or even when we are just trying to get by, paycheck to paycheck? When you're spending all your time trying to figure out how to pay the next bills or how to afford to move out or you'd be able to someday go to school to be able to get a better job so you don't have to worry as much about paying the bills, you don't have as much, if any, room in your head for thinking about more esoteric things. Or at least I don't. We had all these conversations when I was 21 and in college. Yes, I only had a part-time job and I had to think about my schoolwork and being able to pay bills, but there were much fewer of them and I was convinced that soon I would have a decent enough job that I wouldn't have to worry as much about paying bills. I was convinced that my near future looked brighter so it wasn't as much of a chore to worry about the bills then. Now I'm 32 and I'm hitting this wall where my future doesn't look any brighter, where my best case scenario is having a future that is this same shade and not a shade darker. As much as I might want to, I just don't have it in me to give a shit about that stuff any more.

But I think that a big part of it is the crazy. I read this article last week from the Atlantic's website that was about the link between creativity and mental illness. Near the end of the article, she writes about talking to another colleague about creativity and schizophrenia (emphasis is mine): "Heston and I discussed whether some particularly creative people owe their gifts to a subclinical variant of schizophrenia that loosens their associative links sufficiently to enhance their creativity but not enough to make them mentally ill." Her end conclusion in the article is : "Some people see things others cannot, and they are right, and we call them creative geniuses. Some people see things others cannot, and they are wrong, and we call them mentally ill. And some people, like John Nash, are both." This really hit home with me. Now, I do not have schizophrenia, or a family history of it, nor have I ever been a creative genius, but I do think that the ways in which I think of things that many others might not come from a different way of associating things. But I think that that much of this is tied to letting the crazy drive the train more. Now that I am not letting her drive the train as much, the less I have that. It is not as bad as I had hoped that it would be when I first started down this road of improving my mental health, but it is there and it is enough of a difference that i notice it. I also have to deal with the long-term side effects of psychiatric medications. My memory has never been the same after I took lithium. Being on a mood-stabilizing medication that wards against the brain chemically induced suicidality as well as bringing up the low parts of the low side and down the up side of the ups means that I don't have those periods of creative hyper-energy anymore. (You know, mania.) As we speak, I'm also having weird things happen which I'm not sure are mental illness or medication related (or neither), like spacing out and losing time, and increased light sensitivity and black floating spots in my vision occasionally. But if you take this and add it up what you get is less memory to cull from, less energy to make associations, and a quieter and more orderly brain with less loose associations. And a woman who is very sad and more than a little angry that she has to make the decision between living life at all and having an interesting brain, though she is pretty sure what decision she will keep making day after day, even though it means she doesn't get to have those conversations anymore.

What I Wish I Could Tell Work

I really don't want to have to look for a job right now. What I want is to be looking for an apartment, to be applying for housing assistance on the off chance that I qualify, and/or to be looking for a roommate situation for awhile. What I want is to find a cheap but airy studio or one bedroom apartment that is just mine, where my cats and my stuff can live, where I can settle in, where I don't have to be anything to or for anyone.

But to keep my job, you want me to be able to tell you a designated person who I will be able to tell when I'm starting to not do very well, so that they can call you and tell you "Hey, she needs a bit of a break, even if she isn't in a place to ask for it herself." I get it. You want to make sure that the clients are taken care of, that I don't no-call no-show and leave everyone wondering what happened to me. And I even understand that you do care for me and you want me to take active steps in dealing with my mental illness, in making sure that I go through an easier time next time that I go through a difficult time.

Just two things.

One: You don't know what I already do for my mental illness and I don't really feel like it is any of your business. While the manager who has dealt with mental illness in her family is sympathetic, the boss ended up throwing out a bunch of the stigmas about mental illness in our conversation and I don't really feel like talking about it with her. Shit, sometimes I have a hard time talking about it with people I am close to, people I love, people I am living with. I sure as hell am not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you that I've been on medications for 13 years. I'm not going to tell you that I picked out my health insurance plan, which you contribute nothing to by the way, specificially so that I could go to the mental health in-patient hospital that I liked the best of the three I've been to. I'm not going to tell you that I go see a psychiatrist every couple of months to tweak my meds, except that until recently I couldn't afford to think about adding another one because I didn't have health insurance to help me afford anything other than barebones generic medications. I'm not going to tell you that I've been in a therapy program for over two years where I see my therapist once a week and go to an educational therapy group once a week. I'm not going to tell you that my girlfriend, who I live with, works in mental health, understands my illness, and I still couldn't tell her. I'm not going to tell you that I didn't tell my therapist how bad it was because I didn't realize it was that bad until everything blew up because I was trying so hard to keep everything under control that I almost thought I would be able to keep it all under control long enough for things to settle down again. I'm not going to tell you these things because I'm not sure that I think it's any of your fucking business. I'm also not going to tell you these things because I worry that you'll think "Well, damn, if she's this bad with all this help, how bad is she really?"

Two: It never works like what you are wanting. It is not like I don't know that this is a chronic illness I have. It's not like I don't say the same things to other people about mental illness, that it is like any other chronic illness, like say diabetes, that must be managed and evaluated in a realistic light. But when I am bad, I am lucky when I can express to someone else that I want to hurt myself, that I have hurt myself, when I'm starting to feel suicidal, when I'm feeling full on suicidal, when I've already attempted. Hell, I had one attempt that no one knew about at the time, that no one knew about until months or maybe a year later when I was joking about it. It doesn't work like that for me. You are right that maybe it should. But guess what? That's something I don't have the head space to change right now. Right now, all I can manage to do is to keep moving, to keep getting up each day, to keep doing chores around the house, to keep going to appointments, to keep taking my meds, to keep eating, to not just decide to fall into a bottle until the money runs out, to keep applying for jobs since it doesn't look like I'm going to be going back to this one. Right now, there are moments when it is all I can do not to harm myself or start drawing up plans, so I can't really promise that I'll  make this thing that I've never been able to do in the 13 years that I've been dealing with this mental illness happen.

I have until Friday to figure out if I'm gonna lie and say that I can do it and name a person or be unemployed.

Vicious Voice in my Head: Bad Date Edition

There's no reason to love me. And no sane man would trust me. Who wants to have and to hold what's been bought, what's been sold, just to love me? There's no reason to know me. And what good man would need me? Who wan'ts to peer through the dust and forget all the lust, just to love me?

What does a girl like you expect would happen?  The things you want, the things you like, putting it all out there like you do, do you really think any man is going to treat you with respect or kindness?  I mean, how could he? You were lucky that this one talked to you like you were a real human being.

what kind of paradise am i looking for? i've got everything i want and still i want more.

And why are you put there slutting it up anyway?  Don't you have a lovely boyfriend and girlfriend at home who love you? And doesn't he give you sex how you want it but still manage to love you and care for you and be tender with you? A girl like you couldn't expect to get that anywhere and you've found a home where you do, so why are you going outside of it? Oh, because everyone is feeling off right now and no one is up for fucking? It hasn't even been a week, wasn't even half a week before you started seeking out ways to slut it up. You can't wait that out? What is wrong with you?

Because I revenge myself all over myself. There's nothing you can do to me.

Fear of Walking

3:48pm. I'd only been walking 12 minutes. I felt like I should walk more. Wanted to walk more. But where I really wanted to go was near the park area a block down and a block over. It has a really cool lookout over the city, but is always populated by people who looked...well...sort of shady. Why are there always cars parked on the roads on the edge of the park, often with people sitting in them, all day long? Of course, I have some assumptions about why they are there, which might be wrong since sometimes I sit in my car just to kill time. But it is hard enough to enjoy walking on my own just around a few blocks, without having any major anxiety, so I decided to quit while I was ahead and just go inside the building where I go to my therapy and write. Hell, if it had been dark, I might not have been able to go on the walk at all.

When TyRoy was visiting, he would walk from his girlfriend's work to the downtown library, not far from where my therapy center is. In fact, the week after he left, when I had several hours between my individual and group therapies, I walked down there to read. In an email that night, I expressed that, though it was a brisk Midwestern January day, I enjoyed the walk, that I like walking through cityscapes. He agreed, said that he found the walk invigorating. But I'd seen him walking away from my car on his way back to his girlfriend's work, laptop bag hoisted across his back, and I'd seen a confidence, a carefree-ness, a self-possessed-ness that someone watching me, even on a sunny afternoon like today, would not observe.

The only time I've walked alone in my own neighborhood without my dog or a (male) friend was a few times when I walked to the bar a few blocks away and when I used to walk to work, which was only 5 blocks away. When I was a kid, I watched with envy when characters in movies would wander around late at night, whether they lived in a city or not. I envied people living in densely populated cities who could walk where they were going, or at least from the subway. I envied their autonomy, that they got to do this alone, without having to tell a parent or bring a friend or a dog. (Yes, now that I'm older, I realize that most of those people wish they could just drive their own car around and park it right in front of their house like i do.) Whenever my mom and I were out, or even if we were watching one of those tv shows or movies where I was envying a character's autonomy, she would drill into my head that you had to be vigilant while walking anywhere, watch out for robbers or rapists or murderers. Don't go here. Stay in the light. Keep your keys in your hands. Be aware of who is around you and what they are doing at all times.

Even once we lived in a better neighborhood, I wasn't allowed to just be out by myself (or at least that's how it felt.) I could walk short distances alone, like to friend's houses or the bus stop, but only if there was a specific person or people waiting for me on the other end of my journey. When I got the bug up my butt that I was going to get up early and go for jogs, my mom made me take the bigger and meaner of our two dogs. I was not told that this was because the dog needed the exercise, but that she was with me to keep me safe.

I know that my mom was just trying to keep me safe and trying to teach me how to keep myself safe. And I don't know how much it would have been different if my name had been "Christopher Michael," but I know some of it would have been. [Here is where I start to deal in some assumptions and some broad generalizations, but they aren't wild guesses. They're based on my observations and what I've read of/heard from/know of other people. Bear with me and don't be too quick to dismiss it.] You know why TyRoy walks down the city street like he owns it? It's because he does. Though he is subjected to a different cultural narrative as a black man, and I'm sure there are places where he will get a second (and third) look, a street in this part of the city isn't one of them. While I don't know this for a fact, I doubt he has been taught that everywhere he goes he needs to be constantly vigilant for someone who seeks to victimize him. I doubt he was told as a kid that he couldn't walk down his street without his dog or a friend and I know that didn't translate into an adulthood where he doesn't walk around his neighborhood without a dog or a friend.

My belief, deep down, is that I don't have any business walking around by myself, especially if I'm not going from one set point to another set point. If I do choose to do that, I need to be constantly aware (read: fearful) because I am a victim screaming out for a criminal.

Don't get me wrong. I don't agree with this. I don't think that women (or any people of color or gay people or transpeople) should feel any less welcome to walk down the street in safety and confidence. I just know that is not the lived reality for many people. (And, yes, I do know that there are plenty of non-minority cis men who live with these fears, but they don't have this fear because of this cultural narrative.) 

I just know how stifled and constantly fearful internalizing this cultural narrative has made me. Right now, I'm lucky enough to have constant access to a car for any and all transportation I might need to do, ample parking, and a small yard for my dogs to use the restroom in, but I'm not sure what I'd do if I suddenly didn't have those things available to me. Obviously, I'd have to use other options, but how do you switch that off? Just the other day, I mentioned the possibility of going on a walk later in the day to my mom. "Better take the dog" she said. Rrrr, "It might rain. She's such a princess. She hates walking in the rain," I replied. "Who will protect you then?" she asked, sorta joking, sorta not. What happens if I needed to walk to work or to public transportation because I didn't have a car or the money for gas or car insurance/tags? How do I suddenly turn off that fearfulness that doesn't let me leave the house without a friend or a dog? And if I am supposed to be scared enough not to go out alone, does anyone really think that my stupid little Corgi is going to make me feel suddenly safe and secure? As long as this shadowy robber/rapist/murderer petted her, she'd love them.

For me, it's also become bigger than just being fearful of going on walks alone. As I said earlier, that has seeped out, turned into a belief that I have no place on the street by myself which then turned into I have no right to be out on the street by myself. Then to not having a right to my own self. It sucks and it's horrible and I hate it, but that doesn't change the fact that if something bad happens to me, someone will ask why I was there at that time, because it's my job to be constantly vigilant, not that the person or people who victimized me absolutely should not have done it.

***************************

A week later. The weather has turned back to what I think January should be like. It snowed this morning, though the streets are clear now. I bundle up, pop my earbuds in my ears, and force myself to go on another walk between individual and group. I even wore my ugly ass hiking boots, which are usually used for walking the dogs when it has snowed. I walk several blocks farther today. I left everything but my phone, ID, and debit card back at the therapy center. I try to walk with my shoulders back. The few people that I do pass on this chilly afternoon I look in the eye, smile, and say "hey" to. I'm not so much un-fearful today as I don't give a fuck. I don't walk all that long, just long enough for my face to be starting to feel numb. But this day I went for a walk. By myself.

Temporarily Abled

I'd like to start out by saying that I do feel kinda silly writing this. I worry that I always sound like I'm complaining or whining, that my life and what I am able to do does not look the same from the outside, which means I shouldn't vent this stuff, that I don't have permission from... society? to express this. But lately I've been reading more and more about people living with disability, especially hidden disabilities, from the people themselves, most notably on Feministe and Three Rivers Fog. Not only has it raised my consciousness in dealing with and looking at those who do and do not fit our stereotypes of atypical ability and atypical neurological states, but it has also allowed me to contemplate the ways that I might not currently be as abled as I might be expected to be. I hope that makes sense. I'd don't know all the right terms, but I think it makes sense.

For a while now, I've recognized that I spend large chunks of my life planning for when my life will really begin. While I've been thinking lately about one small segment of my life in particular, that of working a paying job, I seem to be bumping into some of the same issues. First, I had to get my meds straightened out. Then, it was just hard to find a job. Next, Gram passed and I stayed in Slightly Larger Midwest City to help my uncle who was undergoing a treatment there. Now, as my uncle gets chemo in his hometown, I'm commuting the four-hour roundtrip to help him when he gets chemo and playing homemaker when I'm home. Though I might have heard it before and just tuned out, I was told last week that my uncle will likely be on chemo either for the rest of his life or until his body can't handle it anymore, so I'm not thinking that this commute will end anytime soon.

But when I honestly reflect on my last ten years of employment history, ok so all of my employment history, I haven't really been able to commit to anything for a long period of time. The best I've been able to eek out were two one-year stints at part-time jobs. There are various reasons behind this, though a great many of the times I quit jobs had to do with symptoms of my issues with depression and/or bipolar disorder. The biggest of those symptoms was disordered sleep. That hasn't gotten any better and is the biggest issue that I see in any job-seeking future.

For awhile, I thought the root of the problem was getting to sleep. And it is a part of the problem. But when I take an honest look at it, I have times when I sleep 24, or even 48, hours, straight through. At the very least, when I don't force myself to get up, I sleep about twelve hours. Now, for as much as I know a great many people who'd love to be able to sleep that long, ever, it really isn't normal and it definately isn't condusive to working an outside the home paying job. I have, to a certain extent, been able to get when I go to sleep under control, when I want to, when I take the time and thought to really plan taking certain meds at certain times and then making a point of relaxing after that. Oh, yeah, unless my legs start acting up and then I'm screwed. But getting up on time is.... well, I'm barely able to do it. With the exception of my uncle's chemo days and then I'm on it.

Which leads people to tell me to just FORCE myself to get up on time, to pull myself up by my bootstraps and be like a normal person. I mean, if I can do it for my uncle's chemo day, why can't I do it for other days? For a regular job? Or an irregular job? Well, mostly because that takes alot out of me. Friday I slept all day, until about 9pm. I was only up until about 3am until I went back to sleep and didn't get up again until I was dragged out of bed at 8:40pm. I also slept for over 12 hours on Sunday. I was up all day Monday, only to sleep 25 hours on Tuesday. So being up to make sure my uncle is on time and has company meant that I slept through the next five days. I don't mean for that to sound like I'm complaining. I'm not and it's totally worth it to be there for my uncle. BUT that's the reality of my situation.

So I'm starting to wonder if, after all this is done, all I have to look forward to is a string of mind-numbing part-time jobs, which barely pay for my meds anyway, that I keep for a maximum of a year. This really isn't alot to look forward to. When the doctor at the pulmonologist suggested I go on disability, honestly, I was kinda appalled. I guess my main thought was that I wasn't really that bad, I wasn't dis-abled enough by my condition that I was unable to work. There's also another part of me that suspects that, if I got disability, it would take it away from another person who had less resources than I. But now I'm worried that, even when the economy gets better and all this is done, I won't be able to find and maintain a paying job, even a part-time one.

Not sure what I'm looking for here guys. Guess partly just to vent and share my own experience. Maybe to find some advice or experience that I haven't heard before, though I'm not sure that exists. Fuck. Whatever.

Differential Diagnosis II : Lungs of a 90 Year Old

Apparently what I'm going through is all the pre-House-episode stuff that the patient goes through before they get to be treated by House's illustrious team.

The steriods worked great, when I was taking them three and four times a day. See, you get a blister-pack, with how many pills you are supposed to take and when. You start out with about 8 pills a day and gradually back off, taking one pill the last day. Of course, the steriods also caused me to feel alittle manic, with bouncing off the walls energy, but I kept reminding myself of how I got the energy and that I'd pay later, in sleep and perhaps depression, which helped. But on the night before the last day, I started coughing again. And despite supposably being better than Prilosec, the Nexium wasn't making a noticable difference. I was back to where I'd been before. My biggest comfort was that at least I knew I wasn't contagious and my coughing couldn't make my uncle, or any other member of my family, sick. I was resigned to the fact that the cough was here to stay.

I did, however, have a slight shift in thinking, if not a full blown change of heart. A friend of mine, who I know is very aware of how his own body looks, but doesn't limit the kinds of food he eats, brought up that he just cut back his portion sizes when he started to feel like he was putting on a few pounds. It meant that he could still enjoy any kind of food he wanted to, just not as much, though he'd always save the rest for a later meal or share it with someone else. This would also be very helpful for me, since I've overeaten to the point of being ill several times over this past summer and fall. So I decided then that I'd really try to eat less, control my portions, and not drink so much soda, which is really just empty calories, no matter how much I love it.

I expected a disheartening but uneventful follow-up appointment. But the Physicians Assistant brought up the chest x-ray and a breathing test, just to be sure. I agreed, though I was pretty sure that it was going to come back all clean and she'd tell me to lose weight and change my diet. But that was not the case. The chest x-ray was fine, unless the doctor finds something that was hiding under my nipple piercings. It was the breathing test that came back with more troubling results. The PA told me that I had the lungs of a 90 year old. Now, I've done a bit of internet research and "lung age" seems to be less a diagnostic explanation and more something that sounds scary and is used to scary smokers into quitting smoking, because you put it in terms someone can understand. Now, that doesn't mean that it's wrong or untrue. I think she wanted to convey in real-world terms how bad my breathing and lungs seem from their tests, so that I'll be more likely to go the distance in going to see a pulmonologist, who she is hoping will be able to tell me what is wrong with me, despite the fact that I don't have insurance and would have to come up with the money on my own. I think if I wasn't on the lithium, I would have cried right there in the exam room.

I am already in the process of setting up an appointment with a pulmonologist at a local university hospital that my uncle's boyfriend has been able to set up payment plans with, in the hopes that it will be easy for me to do the same thing. The hospital's pulmonology division is currently waiting to get my records from the primary care doctor, then they'll call me to make an appointment time. That was the PA's main treatment plan, though she also gave me a sample of Symbicort, which is for COPD and asthma, and she says should help. She promises to try to get more samples for me. As for the previous push to lose weight, etc, that seems to not be as important now, at least until I get a more firm diagnosis. She must have overlooked that I'm on lithium when I was there for my first appointment, because, when she did mention weight loss this time, she told me that, because I was on lithium, it would be more difficult that usual, so I shouldn't feel too bad if I can't really lose weight, though losing weight and being more active will always help and I should still change what I eat, at least to help manage the acid reflux.

The hardest part right now is the waiting and not knowing. I don't know what is wrong or why or what caused it or what to do about it. I don't know what it will cost to treat it. One thing that is kinda driving me crazy right now is that everything I see online attributes almost all of these things to smoking, but I just can't imagine that the small amount of smoking I've done in my life has done this much damage, especially when compared to regular smokers my age and older, who don't have similar problems yet. Yes, I'm aware that ANY amount of smoking will do some damage to your lungs. But not this much from that little. Then again, Christopher Reeves' wife died from lung cancer and she never smoked a day in her life. (Not to say that I think I have cancer. I absolutely do not think I have cancer.) But this is where your mind goes while you are waiting for an answer. Especially when you know that few doctors are as brilliant as House, not that you have the money to pay him.

Differential Diagnosis

In July, I developed strep. Yep, in the middle of summer, during a period where I saw very few people, I somehow developed strep. It wouldn't have been as big of a deal, but my stomach didn't like the antibiotics. Even once the strep was gone, I still had a weezy cough that cough medicine and mucinex didn't really help. The cough reminded me alot of the cough that I had before I went on medication for acid reflux, so I thought that my esophagus might have just gotten extra-more-irritated during the stomach vs. antibiotics battle and began to take a larger dose of over-the-counter generic prilosec than I had previously. (I was also thinking that my recent weight gain probably wasn't helping either.) That didn't seem to help though. I was still coughing, with weezing on and off. I didn't really want to do anything about it, mostly because I felt like it was mostly psychosomatic, a symptom of the larger depression while staying alone at my grandma's house. I didn't want to spend a bunch of money that we don't really have only to be told it was in my head. But my mom was worried that it was contagious and that I might make my immuno-compromised uncle sick, so I went back to the walk-in clinic where I'd been treated for strep. The nurse practitioner there told me that it was bronchitis and to go to a doctor for a chest x-ray if I wasn't better at the end of the antibiotics that she was going to prescribe. On the one hand, I felt... vindicated? because she was telling me that it wasn't all in my head. It wasn't even because I was overweight. It was just being sick. On the other hand, I might be contagious and/or it might be something, or turn into something, serious.

But I was optimistic. I took the antibiotics. On the first day, I felt great. No weezing. No cough. Second day, I still felt fine. After 24 hours, I was no longer contagious, so I could leave the isolation of my grandma's house and go home. But, alas, it was just the placebo effect. By the night of my third day on the antibiotics, I was back to the weezing and coughing. Of course, I felt decent during the daytime, so I didn't take advantage of any doctor's office hours, for a few days. Eventually, though, it was getting ridiculous. Last night, just taking a small bag of trash outside from the basement had me reaching for an inhaler. Plus, once again, if I'm going to help my uncle during his chemo, I have to be well myself, or at least not contagious, so today I went to the doctor. A real doctor, not a walk-in clinic. Well, kinda. All I could get on short notice was a physician's assistant at my former primary care doctor's office, but still.

And..... the diagnosis is...... I'm fat. Ok, well, thankfully the PA didn't say that. But because I haven't had a fever with the cough, it's not an infection, thus neither bronchitis nor contagious. She was fairly sure that it was just severe irritation of the esophagus. She gave me a prescription of a steriod, to help with my breathing, though it will make me a crazy hyper tweeker for the next several days. She also gave me samples of nexium, namebrand and all. Her theory is that I'll only need a protein pump inhibitor, like nexium, for a bit, until my esophagus heals, then I should be able to 'manage' my acid reflux by "eating a proper diet, maintaining a healthy weight, and avoiding things that irritate it, like caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, spicy foods, acidic foods, etc [or everything good]." I have a follow up in three weeks, so we'll see what happens then, but.... Well, I'll write a later post about what I am thinking about all the dieting and not being fat issues. I just hope this really is what is wrong with me and I start feeling better. I guess I'll worry about the rest as it comes along. But this feels like the lamest episode of House ever.

Re: Weight Cycling

I sent on the post The Weight Cycle to my mom and I thought I'd share her response:
Very well said my beautiful daughter! So riddle me this one....why each and every time I go to my primary care doc am I told to "lose some weight". Followed by a resounding "at-ta boy" each time I drop 10 or so pounds below the weight of my last visit, even though it appears to be the same 10 pounds over and over again. However, he never advises against the harm to my health this constant "yo yo"-ing might cause. At what % above your ideal weight would it be better to just remain at that weight as opposed to going up and down above and below it? Why does no one discuss that? What would happen to Oprah's image if she said "I'm staying put - live with it"? Well, I'd support her running for president, wouldn't you?
Mom

My rather uneducated response to my mom:
I think that doctors try to steer their patients towards healthier lifestyles and there has been a great deal of research that shows at the very least a corelation between being overweight and many harmful medical conditions. Also, we really like one-size-fits-all solutions in our society, so we have that great height/weight chart that only allows a small window of weight which is acceptable, regardless of body type, age, or anything else. Now there is a movement, especially in the fat-acceptance community, to stop equating weight with health, instead focusing on being active, eating healthy, and not really caring about weight. I think they do have some medical and academic support but not a great deal of it.

As for the yo-yo-ing aspect of things, a quick internet search pulled up a couple articles about the dangers of yo-yo dieting,
http://ezinearticles.com/?Yo-Yo-Dieting---Dangerous-Weight-Loss?&id=153031
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=21745which they restrict to meaning using a quick fad diet to lose the weight and then one puts it back on quickly when you go off the diet. This isn't exactly what I was talking about, but the more general regaining of weight after a diet, though I think the studies that the articles cite seem to address what I was talking about too. It seems like the "weight cycling slows your metabolism" is widely regarded as a myth, but there are corelations between weight cycling and a supressed immune system, higher risks of heart disease, heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure, and gallbladder disease. This article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19621031 says that we should go on dieting because there is a higher corelation of more health conditions among overweight people than there are among (I'm assuming, not currently overweight) weight cyclers.

*Eyeroll* I'm not sure how much I believe that it is better for my overall person - physical, mental, spiritual - for me to continue to weight cycle and feel shitty about my body. So I think I might try a combination of the fat acceptance route along with the "gotta die from something" route. Especially right now, as I'm seeing someone who actually prefers bigger women, women bigger than me.

More Fun with Meds

First, I want to send you all to a post by a blogger I only recently started reading, but who makes me feel alittle less alone in this whole crazy mental illness thing, as she shares her experiences with seeking treatment for mental health issues without a great deal of censorship. Also, it feels good to know that someone so far away- she lives in London- can have such experiences so similar to my own. Hell, she even had an attempt in October, just like me. Her latest post is about her experiences on medications, which was also what I planned to write about today. Here's her post: http://thesecretlifeofamanicdepressive.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/puking-shaking-hair-loss-and-sexiness-medications-galore/

And now, selfishly, back to me. And my current med issues.

As I bitched about last week, my doctor's assistant called me on New Year's Eve, telling me that, after getting the results of my blood tests, the doctor wanted me to just stop the lithium. Not back down but just stop taking all three pills that I was taking at the time. At first, I had been against stopping, planning on staying on the current dose until I got a follow-up call, but an acquaintance, who has experience on psychiatric drugs, mentioned that I might have dangerously high levels and that if that was why the doctor wanted me to stop then I probably should. So I did. No lithium Wednesday night or all day Thursday. Friday morning, the doctor's assistant called me back and said that the doctor has misread his notes and I should NOT stop taking the lithium. While I was kinda pissed off about it and felt jerked around, I didn't think it was a huge deal that I had missed three doses. Well, it wasn't a HUGE deal but it did have some effect. Saturday afternoon, my mother, in St Louis visiting my grandmother, called me to see if I was ok, especially after the med thing. At the time, I felt fine and dismissed it as her being too worried. Then, around 8:30 pm, I started spacing out. By 9, I was completely out of it, back to the fogginess I had before. TyRoy and I were at his house, watching a movie, and I know I freaked him out when I just went blank. There was nothing that he could do. Mostly, I just curled into myself and tried to talk myself into not freaking out.

I also got a bit of the weird super-hearing that I noticed when I first got on the lithium. It is like how one hears just after their ears pop because of elevation. Of course, in TyRoy's still rather emptry house, the smallest noise sounds large anyway. Add to that the wild wind.... At one point, I thought there was someone in the house. Doing laundry. Ok, ok, ok. It sounds weirder than it seemed at the time. The wind outside and the settling of the house made it sound like there was something going on in the front of the house. Just a few seconds after, the furnace, which is below the bedroom and near the laundry area, kicked on. With my super-hearing, the furnace sounded like the washer and my crazy mind put it together that someone had gotten into the house and was in the laundry area doing a load of clothes. Ok, maybe it is as crazy as it sounds. But at least I had the precense of mind to know that it wasn't real, to not wake TyRoy and tell him that I thought there was an intruder washing clothes at 1am, and just make my own investigation so I could stop thinking about it. On the other hand, it does give me a better idea of what happens to people with psychosis or delusions. Your brain puts things together in a certain way. For most people, that is close enough to reality that it's ok for us to accept it as reality. But if your brain... misfunctions (?) and puts it together in a different way, how can you go against what your brain is telling you is reality? Especially when you feel like trusting your brain will save you from harm, as opposed to taking other people's word of what reality is. *Sigh* It's problematic at best.

And now I think I am having problems with my anti-depressants. Though it is once again it is hard to tell if the problem is WITH my head or IN my head. Monday I didn't want to get out of bed. I thought I was just being lazy. Then, I started eating everything in sight. No because I'm hungry, mind you. Honestly, on the lithium, I can't feel my stomach, whether it be empty or hungry or overflowing with stomach acid. It was emotional eating. Eating to fill a different kind of void. But still, maybe hormonal. Today I didn't want to get out of bed either. But more than that. Didn't want to get up, ever. Would have been happy to lay there until I faded away. Did I mention that I changed anti-depressants 2-3 weeks ago? *Sigh* See, I was on Lexapro, which is $130/mo without insurance. So I talked to my doctor about switching me to a cheaper anti-depressant. There are 3 that are on pharmacy $4/30pills lists - Paxil, Celexa, and Prozac. I took Paxil once and it didn't work. I used to take Celexa until it pooped out on me. So we have been trying Prozac. Um.... I don't think it's working. And I honestly don't want to wait until I'm completely suicidal either. Though I don't know how I'll pay for a drug that is $130/mo. I guess I just try to hang on, call the doctor tomorrow, and keep my fingers crossed.

Welcome to the wonderful world of mental illness and psychiatric drugs!

More Drug Ranting

I am now appreciating more and more how and why the psychiatrists like to have you in the hospital while adjusting your meds and why the hospital staff like to have a care plan for you once you get out, where you get some sort of full-time treatment, help and monitoring. Kinda like how Dr Drew was harping on Sober Living Facilities on Celebrity Rehab. I'm SO frustrated by my medication right now and my (probably very overworked) psychiatrist has had to reschedule my last two appointments so I haven't gotten to talk to him about it. When I was in the hospital, I had wanted to go into a night treatment program close to my house but my insurance wouldn't cover it at all. So we opted for me going to my therapist a bunch. But I didn't make appointments and got dumped by my therapist. (My fault that I didn't go, though he didn't say that it was because of that, but that he was cutting back, so maybe not.)

But at least I can get in to see my psychiatrist within a month (unless he cancels), which is better than when I didn't have any health insurance and went to the county mental health facilities. To see a prescribing doctor or nurse practitioner there, one had to wait three months. How can one manage med changes that way? Plus, if one is going there, they most likely don't have health insurance, or not one with mental health coverage, are probably lower-income and less education, which all makes it more likely that they have no other treatment choices in situations were no treatment could lead to unemployment and homelessness. Maybe that sounds extreme but I'm realizing more and more that my parents are the only ones who stand between me and the street. Seriously.

Another things that I had never really thought about until recently was non-compliance with a psychiatric medicine regime. When I was just on anti-depressants, the only thing in my mind that would have lead to active non-compliance would have been my inability to purchase the meds because I didn't have the money. But there were no bad side effects and I knew, especially after my doctor and I tried to switch me to a different anti-depressant, that I would be constantly and consistantly suicidial if I was not on the anti-depressant I was on. So very little cons and a huge pro for compliance. But the lithium is different. There are a great many side effects. And, while I do honestly believe that when I first got on the lithium, especially right after BT ended things and I was really bad, it helped to dull everything enough and take away enough of my energy and passion to stop me from hurting myself, I don't think that it is doing what it is supposed to be doing at this point. I'm still having WILD mood swings (just ask TyRoy) and the desire to self-harm is not dampened. So if there is a great deal of con but seemingly little pro, do I want to stay on it?

When I brought this up to MP today, he suggested that this was just a common delusion that people who are mentally ill and on psychiatric drugs have. I'm well aware of this. I know that, especially for those who are very ill, medicine compliance is a HUGE issue. I'm not saying I'm better and I don't need drugs. I am saying that why I haven't self-harmed is because of myself, mostly because of my own fears about the consequences of it not self-control, BUT that I don't think it is because of the lithium. And, with all the shitty side effects, I don't know if the shit is worth what I get, especially when I don't think I'm getting anything good. Then again, I'm not really contemplating medicine non-compliance. I won't just stop taking something or attempt to step myself off of it. What I am talking about is talking to my doctor to either get off mood stabilizers completely or to switch to something else. *Sigh* I have no idea what to do.

Oh, and to add to yesterdays laundry list of shitty side effects, my hair got dry and started falling out, my skin is dry, and I've developed back and neck acne. Lovely. Sure I"m going to find another mate now.

Drugs Are Bad, Mmmkay?

I now consider myself to have been very lucky with the SSRI anti-depressants that had been the major psychiatric drugs that I had been on until this last hospitalization, though of course I didn't fully appreciate that until the addition of the Lithium.

When first confronted by Sir and his parents (especially his mother who was a nurse) that my suicidal ideation and self-harming were symptoms of a larger major depressive disorder that could be treated with drugs, as opposed to just "how I was", I was very reluctant. All I knew of psychiatric drugs were the horrible side effects that I'd seen dramatized in tv shows and movies. I didn't want to be drugged out, bogged down, or out of it. I didn't want to change my essential personality, whatever the hell that was/is. But I went on them anyway. I was surprised that the first side effects were not mental but physical - sleepiness, dizziness, nausea. That went away pretty quickly but there wouldn't be a noticable mental effect for a full six weeks. Then it was like everything got clearer, not muddled as I had feared.

Future experimentation with anti-depressants would be hit and miss. I went on Paxil for a while because my insurance at the time covered it completely, but started paying less toward the Celexa I had been on at the time. I was suicidal as soon as the Celexa got out of my system. Then, last year, when my Celexa pooped out after 7 years, the Effexor I was put on first made me homicidal at the first upping of the dose then suicidal after the second. And I couldn't put together a train of thought. Yeah. That shit had to go. Though there was the REALLY fun side effect of being slightly euphoric and overly happy when I was stepping off the Effexor and onto the Lexapro, but that couldn't last.

But if I had thought that the Effexor was bad, well, I had another thing coming. Lithium is a whole different animal. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me grounded in this is taking a step out of myself to observe the side effects, keep a mental log in my mind for whenever my doctor decides to keep our next appointment. Some of the initial side effects have worn off, and some I've gotten used to. The week before Thanksgiving, I started noticing that the gap between me and the world was mostly gone. A friend who had been on a similar drug told me that she felt like she was stoned all the time. As pot doesn't get me high (I'm a freak), I don't know if that is how I felt or not. But it did kinda feel like non-funny, just lazy tv/movie stoners act. I felt kinda like a really slothful automaton who sometimes lost track of time. But, like I said, that's mostly gone. When it does come, it only comes for a brief spell. My appetite is still gone most of the time, though I've gotten better at eating enough food often enough that I don't get sick. The only thing that I crave physically is salty things, though my love of food has come back enough that I now eat with my mind whenever I make myself eat, which I'm sure will catch up to my weight soon enough. I'm not sure I care at this point. I've also gotten better at drinking enough water to avoid dehydration. The tremor is still there though. I'm learning how to force myself to work with it and not care about what other people may think. My grandpa had and my uncle and my mom have this same tremor, to varying degrees and they still work just fine and no one thinks less of them for it. I could only hope that people view me as they view those three.

But there are somethings that I'm not sure whether they are side effects of the drug or just me or the combination of me and the drug. This mostly regards my moods in the past week or so. Now, unless I'm mad at a specific person/group of people for a specific thing, I'm not really inclined to violence and I generally don't want to just go around beating people up, except when I go to Walmart or Target during the holiday season. And I'm not prone to unexplainable crying jags that aren't precipitated by a sad song or movie. But over the weekend, I cycled between wanting to beat the crap out of someone, anyone, for no reason, one day to crying non-stop for a full day for no reason. And today, after only 4 hours of sleep, I am a walking zombie, mentally out of it and tired but unable to go back to sleep, feeling like I'm vibrating out of my shell. I thought this stupid drug was supposed to HELP with both sides of bipolar, to stabilize one's moods, and, though I'm not diagnosed bipolar in any official way, I would hope that it would do the same for me. Which begs the question- are these moods just side effects of the drug that anyone could experience? Are they just me? Or are they from the combination of both?

And, probably most importantly, what should I want in regards to this medicine when I finally get to talk to the doctor? I think I've been on it long enough to know the side effects, though the only real way to tell if I can handle them is to see if I can work and live a real life on them as I'm not sure disability is really an option. It's definately not optimal. And I'm not sure if it is doing enough good to make up for the bad it does. *Sigh* Weigh in if you have an opinion. Thanks.

Trouble Sleeping

I don't know many people who have trouble sleeping.

I wonder if is because most of the people I know and are close to are men.

I used to think it was just me, just a personal problem. When I was much younger, my family labeled me a night owl. When I didn't have to be up at a specific time for something like school or summer camp, I would/could stay up quite late, for a kid at least, and sleep well into the day. At sleepovers, I was usually the last one to fall asleep. Even when I had to get up early for school, I still did not fall asleep when I was sent to bed. I would play with my stuffed animals, having them act out stories, or I'd listen to my walkman or I'd read under the covers with a flashlight. (This is how I managed to read the first four Anne Rice vampire books when I was 12 and deemed too young to read them by my mother.) As I became a teenager, I was just labeled a typical teenager, who liked to stay up late and could sleep well into the day.

But none of this really changed as I got older. In fact, with the depression and medication, it got worse. Also, with the depression came slightly manic periods. It was never enough to be diagnosed as bipolar, especially as anti-depressants alone made things better instead of worse as they would for most bipolar individuals, and I didn't have the behavioral component required by the DSM. But I would have periods of depression and times where I would sleep for days on end, followed by periods of increased activity, inspiration, and sleeplessness. Strangely, sometimes when I'm depressed I can't sleep either. Sleeping medications don't work either. Rarely do they make me sleep at all. If they do, I sleep for 12+ hours, which I can manage on my own, thankyouverymuch.

So, I realize that much of it is chemical and personal, but I also wonder how much of it is a gender thing. I've often thought about this as I layed next to a (male) lover, unable to sleep. Hours and hours on end, laying next to a partner, wanting to sleep and unable to. And, unlike when I'm sleeping alone, it's not like I can do something, like read a book, until I fall asleep. At least with TyRoy, I could watch TV or a movie while he slept, as the television in the bedroom being on didn't bother him. When BT and I slept at home, there was no TV in the bedroom and I didn't want to turn on a light to read. A couple times I snuck off into the den to watch tv and play on the computer. He'd always cuddle me until he fell into a light sleep, at most ten minutes, then wake up enough to say goodnight again and roll over onto his stomach. (I find that most men tend to do this to some extent.) I remember when we were in St Louis, Vegas, then LA, I would pull my mp3 player out and listen to it, mouthing the words, singing softly. BT must have half-heard it in his sleep, because he asked about it one morning. I really like sharing my bed with my lovers but.... it's so difficult to just lay there until I fall asleep when every man tends to fall asleep within minutes of laying down and it takes me....hours, or so it seems.

While I had entertained the thought that it was a gender difference, after hearing so many married/coupled hetro women talk about their male partners falling asleep, snoring, etc, I had never taken it very seriously. Then I was reading one of my trashy vampire books and the narrator mentioned how all the men in her bed had, as usual, fallen asleep before she had. Granted, it was just more anecdotal evidence to add to collection, but it made me want to start asking the question outloud. Of the straight men I've asked so far, none of them can name a bed partner who regularly fell asleep before them.

So, please, chime in with your experience- If you are a woman who has shared a bed with men, have you ever had a partner that you fell asleep before? Vice versa if you are a man. I'm also curious as to the experience of men who share a bed with other men and women who share a bed with other women. Also, do you feel like you have trouble sleeping? Is it just getting to sleep or is it staying asleep as well?

My Own Health Scare

http://women.webmd.com/tc/abnormal-pap-test-topic-overview
The nurse who called me had already made an appointment for the beginning of August with a proper gyn for a colposcopy and cervical biopsy. No asking me about it or letting me find my own doctor or make my own appointment. Eek.
http://www.webmd.com/cancer/tc/cervical-cancer-exams-and-tests
Well, let's just keep our fingers crossed.
Oh, and I have HPV and could have given everyone that I've had any kind of sex with HPV as well, so that they could have given it to other women who could now get cervical cancer as well.

IM Conversation Today

Names changed to site pseudonyms, not really to protect the innocent because I don't really believe anyone is innocent in this case.


Stewart (7/16/2008 12:22:13 PM): hey
Ava (7/16/2008 12:29:08 PM): hey
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:29:14 PM): hey
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:30:56 PM): stopped by your house monday to see if you were around
Ava (7/16/2008 12:31:18 PM): you know, some people might think that was creepy
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:31:39 PM): what do you mean
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:31:43 PM): we are friends arent we
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:31:49 PM): just saying hi is not creepy
Ava (7/16/2008 12:32:51 PM): Except that I've told you time and again not to just stop by my house. Also, at this point, I don't live there anymore.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:33:55 PM): And you don't stop by just to say. You stop by because you are hoping that you are going to get laid. Which you aren't. Even if I was there, if you don't call first, you aren't going to get laid because I'm probably not in a state in which I'd have sex with you, even if I ever was to have sex with you again.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:34:26 PM): what is your problem
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:34:36 PM): you sound like you have gone crazy
Ava (7/16/2008 12:35:27 PM): No. It's just that from that start I told you not to just stop by, without calling.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:35:51 PM): But you keep doing it. And you keep finding me not there and I don't seem upset that I'm not there at all.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:35:58 PM): Doesn't that make you wonder????
Ava (7/16/2008 12:36:27 PM): Isn't it obvious by now that I'm trying to get rid of you but I don't want to seem too mean and bitchy but I guess I have to be.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:36:42 PM): The crazy part is that I didn't just tell you earlier to get lost.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:36:58 PM): I have NO interest in fucking you ever again.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:38:10 PM): are you still married
Ava (7/16/2008 12:38:53 PM): why does it matter? Whether I am married or not, seeing someone or not, whether no one in the world but you will fuck me, I still don't want to fuck you.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:39:18 PM): that is good, because to be quite honest, and I was not trying to be mean, you are way below my level of attraction. You are fat, extremely unattractive and was just a piece of ass, and not a very good one at that.
Ava (7/16/2008 12:40:20 PM): That's fine. I quite obviously didn't know why you wanted to fuck me anyway because of all the things you just said. So bye. Never contact me again and I'll never contact you again.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:40:33 PM): You should of been lucky that someone like me would even look at you, more less fuck you.
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:40:40 PM): sounds like a deal
[yet he still continues to talk......]Stewart (7/16/2008 12:41:19 PM): some people just amaze me why they act the way they do, when thet have things right in front of them and dont take advantage of the, but I cant teach people to be smart [guess he means that I should have taken advantage of having such a hot wonderful male lover who would stoop to my level to fuck me. Actually, I do, when they are good. In fact I married one of them. Just because I don't understand how a guy could possibly be attracted to me doesn't mean I will pass it up. I usually won't.]
Stewart (7/16/2008 12:41:24 PM): so good luck there

Now I'm not really so insulted by anything he said. He was just sex in a box, a married man who was not planning on leaving his wife, just someone to fuck. We had lunch the first time we met so that we could meet in person in a public place. But other than that, we never went out and I never expected we would. It's not like I wanted some kind of relationship with him and he didn't come through on that. But, to be generous, we weren't very good in bed together and he also pushed me for things that I wasn't comfortable doing with him. Granted, they were things that I definately wanted to do and probably will do in the future, but I honestly didn't want to do them with him, mostly because I could tell that he had no respect for me and just viewed me as a "piece of ass". So I contacted him less, dropped obvious hints of my unavailability, hoped that he'd get it, but he never did, so finally I just told him today. I didn't want to have to be mean and I suppose I could have been a good deal meaner, as he chose to be.

But what I don't understand is why people can't just get it and nicely walk away? I have a couple of sex in a boxes that I have chosen not to continue for one reason or another. If there is a specific reason, for instance "I really like messing around with you but you have this rule against kissing and I'm just not ok with that, so we'll be friends if you want, or more if you change your mind," I'll tell you the specific reason and we'll see if it can be worked on or if it can't. Either way, I wish you the best and that's it. In that particular case, that partner checks up on me as a friend every once in a while and we talk about life, but that's it. I had another sex in the box that who got a different job and neither of us were available the hours that the other could hang out and also I sorta demand some kind of planning because I'm usually not "sex-ready" at a moment's notice. Maybe he saw that as me not being interested in sex with him anymore or maybe he just isn't online anymore. Either way, there were no hard feelings expressed and none felt on my end. One of my few forays into the sex in the box with a female didn't work out because, while I think I explained myself fully as to what it was and wasn't, I don't think she thought I'd be with other people at the same time in real life, even though that was part of the theory. There was a day or two of weirdness and some hurt feelings, for which I took full responsibility for and I tried to explain everything again, but, obviously, I knew that the sex in the box couldn't continue, nor would I have attempted to continue it once the hurt feelings and misunderstandings were smoothed over. We are still friends now though. I wonder why they can't all go like that?

My funniest, in my opinion, though possibly scariest experience, was a guy who I had a FWB (friends with benefits) relationship with for almost a year. While I was pretty good about keeping it friendly and being obvious in the fact that I knew he was probably dating other women (asking him if he'd had recent dates and how they went in a genuinely caring manner, not a jealous way), I would also ask about when we might hang out and do something other than sex. Not even really as a couple but just as friends, because the relationship was mostly the benefits, very little friendship, and, while he kept saying that he wanted to date me when his work schedule calmed down, it never did. Over this year, I went on dates with a few women, but nothing really came of it. He knew about these dates with women and he seemed ok with me dating other people while we were having sex. Except that I later found out it was really only that he was ok with me dating WOMEN, possibly fucking women, but not men, because when I hooked up with a man, in a very unexpected situation, he hit the roof. Of course, he also said then that he wanted a relationship and that he was going to tell me the next time we got together. *eye roll* I bet. Even though I didn't want to see him again and I told him I wasn't really interested in anything with him because of how he had reacted and because I didn't want to be with just one person, I agreed to let him come over, at which point he didn't know the meaning of the word "no" anymore. For a while after that, as a sort of vengence on my part, I acted, on IM and over the phone, like I wanted to be with him, like he was the only one I wanted to be with, like I wasn't with anyone else, but I was just too busy to see him when he could see me. It was all bullshit though as I had several sex in boxes. When I finally came clean and told him the truth, he called me crazy, said I'd been crazy the whole time, said he knew I could never be monogamous and that I never really wanted a relationship with him, etc, etc, etc. He was pissed and I don't blame him. Actually, him being pissed and hurt was the whole point. But it should have ended right there, right? He should have just moved on and stayed moved on. But, after accidentally running into him at a local convenience store where we didn't talk to each other or even act like we knew each other, he IM'd me, told me that he was often in my area (he lives way North but works in my area of the metro), told me that his relationship with his girlfriend was open (I'll believe that when she tells me), and told me that he wanted to hook up again. But wait.... I thought I was a crazy bitch? Oh, he still thought I was a crazy bitch but the sex was always good and he wanted more. OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!! I just don't get it. Obviously, that's a no as well.

It's nice to know that no matter how REAL and full of really hard decisions one's life can become, stupid drama still shows up. Even when one thought they were free of it. And I think we should take bets to see how long it is before Stewart comes around again, asking for some inferior piece of my ass. I say less than 6 months but more than 3.

Medical Bills

Medical bills suck ass. Just when you think that you are done with one of them, the damn hospital gives the money back to the insurance company because the insurance company paid them too much. Then, when you call to find out how much you really owe, first they tell you that you can't go by the cheaper monthly payment that you were going by. Then, the next time that you call, they tell you really only a tenth of what they told you the last time. Finally, you go online to look it up yourself and guess what??? Not only do you owe the big amount but you also the owe the little amount too! FUCK! I'm never going to get out from under these bills! And, in about 2 months time, I get to go back to that same fucking health insurance company that is currently dicking me around because I lose the GREAT health insurance that I currently have being married to a deployed soldier and I have to go back to the shitty plan that my college offers. Can I just move to Canada??? Or Europe? Maybe I'll meet that ONE British guy or girl who just LOVES women with American accents. I just hope that he isn't a serial killer like Hugh Jackman in Scoop.

How Long Does It Take You to Fall Asleep?

I have trouble falling asleep. I always have.

Some of it has been born out of just stubbornness. My uncle says that, when I was a baby, just as I was about to nod off, I would punch myself to keep myself awake. When I was a little bit older, I would play with the dolls and stuffed animals that I was allowed to sleep with, making up complicated stories that we would all act out every night, just to keep myself up. I got yelled at quite a bit for that. Back then though, I really thought that being grown up meant being able to stay up as late as one wanted and, since I wanted to be grown up, I wanted to stay up as late as I wanted.

Then again, I've always believed myself to be a night owl. I don't really enjoy the morning time. While it might be a wonderful time to get practical things done, like cleaning house or doing yard work, mornings have never seemed like a good time to get creative things done. All the really interesting things, like parties, plays, movies, love affairs, usually happen at night.

When I'm in a down turn in my depression, my "night-owl-y-ness" seems to be even more extreme. I am up all night. Nothing that I do to try to put myself to sleep works. (Oh, and sleeping pills? Forget it. Those stupid commercials tell people to allow 6-8 hours before they plan on being active. For me, it is more like 26-28 hours before I can plan on being active.) This means that I don't get anything done during the day, especially not going to school or looking for and/or keeping work, which then makes the depression even worse. That is where I am right now. This is why I've fucked up two job opportunities in the last month. It's gotten so bad that, if I end up getting a job that starts either too early or too late for my mom to get me up when she gets up, I've talked poor TyRoy into being my "drill sgt" to get me up and to work (at least until I can do it myself).

And, as if sleeping matters weren't bad enough, I have to deal with the fact that I can never go to sleep anywhere near the time that I lay down, which is especially apparent when I am sleeping with someone else. I can tell you exactly how my bed partners act as they fall asleep, the way their head gets really heavy, or how they twitch around a bunch, or how they crack the knuckles of their thumbs. I know this because I lay there, in the dark, wondering how long it is going to take for me to fall asleep, wondering if I should just get up and do something else until I'm more tired and ready for sleep, wishing I had someone to talk to about all the crazy stuff that goes on in my head as I lay in the dark unable to sleep. And it seems to take me forever to get to sleep because, the longer I am awake, the more upset and tense I get because I am not asleep yet.

I also have to wonder if it is a phenomenon solely relegated to male/female couples, with the men always being able to fall asleep as soon as their head hits the pillow while their female partners lay awake in bed. I can't think of any women, straight or lesbian, that I have heard complain about not being able to fall asleep while their bed partner has no problem. Maybe it is just that most people, whether male or female, can fall asleep rather easily, while I'm the weird outlier.

I just know that it is annoying as hell to know that you need to go to sleep, that you want to go to sleep, but you can't fall asleep for reasons you don't know, while your bed partner sleeps soundly next to you. Grrrrr.......

Insurance

I think maybe I'm just starting to get old.

After getting a job so that I can pay off my stiffling hospital bills and how on earth I'm going to afford a divorce on top of that, the next biggest thought in my head is what I'm going to do about losing my health insurance after the divorce. I'm in my mid-twenties, for Chrissakes. I should be worrying about shopping and drinking, maybe finishing school. Not HEALTH INSURANCE!

But I am worrying about health insurance. I currently know how much a gall bladder surgery can cost, even after your health insurance company is done haggling down the prices and paying their 80% and it is quite a fair amount. But even beyond that, I have chronic depression. I would like to someday get to a point where every little setback does not send me on a self-harm/suicide spiral. I believe that this will require not a small amount of counseling over a not small amount of time. Finding the right therapist can be hard, much less finding that right person and developing a trusting relationship with them. That requires staying on the same health plan for that period of time, or having each health plan after cover the same doctors and therapists. Even if I didn't have worries about "pre-existing conditions" that might not be covered by a new insurance after a period of not being insured, I am loathe to go back to being uninsured because I can't afford to pay out of pocket for mental health services and the only avenue available to me, the local country mental health agency, takes far too long to actually help a person. When my meds seemed to have stopped working last fall, I was told it would take three months to get into the prescribing nurse practioner. When I think about all I went through when I started a new medication, which actually made me feel worse, I dread to think what would have happened if I had to wait three months to get the medication changed. Fortunately for me, I had private health insurance at the time and a private prescribing doctor who I could get in to see within a few days for a med check-up.

Then again, all this thinking about health insurance makes me think about how we establish other forms of insurance in our life. How it is becoming increasingly obvious to me that love, relationship, and marriage are just insurance plans against loneliness, having to deal with the hardships of the world alone, never having sex again, and any number of other things that one wants to avoid and that their partner can provide. Knowing the histories of both BT and TyRoy, I can't help but wonder how much I am just insurance to them. Then again, how much are they/ have they been insurance to me as well? Fuck. Too late for this kind of thinking. Wish I didn't have to do this kind of thinking at all. Wish my marriage had just worked like it was supposed to so I could currently be heartbroken over my husband being gone and just hoping to find a job, maybe planning on doing full-time temp work just to earn enough so that I could pay the hospital bills all by myself instead of using BT's hard-earned money that he wants to use for our future. Now there is no future. Yeah, it's too fucking late to be thinking about this.

I Got Stood Up

Seriously, how could I get stood up when I look like this????

I'm not saying that I was not cute before. But when I was weighted at the doctor's office yesterday, I found out that I've lost 40 lbs since this time last year. Also, I've gone from a Womans size 22 to a Womans size 14, and often a regular size XL. And the weird pouch I developed over the summer has disappeared since my gallbladder surgery. And I still got stood up. WTF?

Absent

So I’m sure you all have missed me for the past month or so and have been dying to know about what I’ve been doing. Unfortunately, most of it hasn’t been that exciting. The greater part of that time has been spent in bed, being depressed. The highlights of those periods have mostly been my panicky suicidal moments and my moments of extreme physical pain, which I thought were digestive/stomach issues, perhaps a hiatal hernia like my mom and uncle have.

Of course there have been romantic/sexual ups and downs. I started what I thought would be a nice “sex in a box” relationship with a shy lesbian female friend of mine, thinking I made my lack of intentions clear, only to find that I hadn’t, that I had made her feel used, and that I’m apparently treating sex “like a man does.” (Thanks Mon Parrain.) I was very sorry about the way it ended and in hurting her, though we are still friends and she has found a great new girlfriend just recently, for which I’m very happy because she does deserve a good girlfriend. I just thought I could be around to fuck until she found that.

I fell hard and fast for a whole family who live 2.5 hours away only to find that, once the depression set in again, my overwhelming desire to lose myself in what they wanted and needed was almost just as self-destructive as my only other desire at that time, to end my own life. So, as much as I hated doing it and being a complete coward about it, I begged Mon Parrain into getting me out of the situation before I did more harm to myself. He hated having to step in the way he did also because he never wanted to dictate my life, or any one’s life, but, as he felt I was a grave danger to myself, he did it. While I may not have agreed with his methods, he did do what I asked of him in the best way possible.

But of course my romantic life hasn’t been all doom and gloom. I spent a wonderful weekend with a wonderful young man who seemed to accept all my weirdness, has plenty of his own, and has made it his goal when we are together to make me laugh and smile. Also, seemingly without any special effort, he makes me feel safe and wanted when I am with him, hell, even sometimes when I am not with him, and that is a very rare thing. Initially, he started out as a conquest. This cute, slender but muscular army boy who was a friend of a friend and the only straight boy in a tiny bar full of only gay men. Though I got his number and we kissed, I was sure he’d forget about me as soon as he returned to the nearby college town where he lives and sobered up. I waited 3 days to call him. The first thing he asked me when I called though was when I was going to come kidnap him for a weekend with me in the Big City. As he looks much younger than he is and also younger than I am, I spent the weeks in between our first meeting and the first weekend we both had free for me to kidnap him, I took to calling him Boy Toy (BT) to all my friends. That will forever be his pseudonym on this blog as well. But what I thought would be a casual weekend of fucking became something more. I knew early on I was in trouble. He is a huge Buffy fan and on our way out to this posh shopping mall, we listened to the Buffy musical soundtrack. It was all over when he fulfilled my secret wish to sing “I’ll Never Tell” as the duet it is in the episode, with me as Anya and him as Xander. But there’s always a catch right? He deploys for Iraq in January and will be spending months before that at the mobilization site, getting ready to deploy. So, I’m trying to look forward to a year (or more) of sending him cartons of Newports, DVDs I think he’ll like, pictures of me, and loving letters. He says he wants to try to date exclusively as soon as he comes back. I guess we’ll have to see if he still feels that way when he returns and if I think I can be faithful then. But he’s such a sweet guy, there are times when I want to run because I fear hurting him. When I expressed this to Mon Parrain, he had a wonderful comeback. “Ava, you have the most perfect opportunity to leave the campsite better than you found it here. You can give this guy, who you really do like, a great time before he leaves and, then, with very little effort on your part, you can greatly improve his experience over there with your care packages and letters and constant reminders of his home, of all the love people back in the States have for him.. Even if nothing comes of the two of you when he returns, you will have been able to make his life that much better while he’s gone.” Considering how much BT has helped make me feel better, it warms my heart to think that I might be able to return the favor.

Another plus in this crazy time is that I’ve realized the amazing friend that I have in Mon Parrain. He is the one who did the dirty work with the family I loved despite his distaste for having to take over any aspect of my life. He has kept in almost constant contact with me despite a demanding work schedule and preparing for and having a baby during this period. When I was at my lowest point, it was really his genuine worry and fear for my safety that make me seek out a more intensive treatment option, though that didn’t work out quite as either of us had planned. They put me on a 72 hour voluntary hold when all I really wanted was to try to switch my meds, see the prescribing doctor more regularly so that if something went wrong I didn’t have to wait months to get it fixed, and perhaps go into an outpatient program. But it was his encouragement that made me stick to being there, to participating in the groups, and to aggressively seeking out the treatment I knew I needed. He also made dozens of fruitless calls to try to talk to me, despite the anarchic phone system. He continuously worked to make me laugh and also pushed me to get back to my writing, especially this story that I’ve been working on in my head since the summer because it intrigues him so much. Several times recently he’s told me that he thinks what makes our relationship so special, at least for him, is that he finally feels like he’s found someone he doesn’t have to lie to, that he can tell me anything and I won’t run away or be disgusted. I’m also smart enough to know what things are said in confidence and what things aren’t, without having to be specifically told. And, in all actuality, I’m not usually shocked by most of what he says. And I’ve found that in him as well. Though he seems to think that I can be the person that no one has to lie to for everyone, few have taken that offer. In talking about other lovers who’s honesty I’m questioning, he’s often said, “But s/he does know that you are the ONE person that s/he doesn’t have to lie to, right?” Apparently, only Mon Parrain feels that way about me, but I’m working hard to make it more universal.

But the biggest, most dramatic think to happen to me was---SURGERY. The short of the story is that I got surgery to have my gallbladder removed last Saturday and it seems to have taken care of all of my stomach problems and my acid reflux issues. Now, for the longer version: Until this semester, I did not have health insurance. A few weeks ago I started the tedious process of student health clinic visits and referral visits, etc, but nothing really happened until I went to the emergency room late Thursday night. While I was in the hospital for my depression, the generalized pain around my ribs had gotten worse and worse, but they weren’t equipped to help me. They also chalked it up to either being a hypochondriac or anxiety. Once in the ER, the doctor pushed on my stomach and the only part that drew howls of pain was when he pushed just below my right ribs. He referred me to get an ultrasound in the morning because they didn’t have a tech on duty that late at night. Friday, instead of getting the ultrasound, my mom and I spent the whole day trying to convince the student health clinic to give us a referral for the ultrasound (which was required by the health insurance company), while I lay at home in bed, writhing in pain, despite the lovely drugs they gave me. Fortunately, one of the ultrasound techs took pity on me and agreed to make an early morning appointment for Saturday, but that meant no food, drink, or drugs after midnight the night before. I was in serious pain by the time I got there Saturday morning for the ultrasound, but he was quick about it and I read his diagnosis over his shoulder. “Gall stones. Thickening of the gallbladder wall.”

Now, my mother had warned me that usually, even if it is a problem with your gallbladder, you have to wait weeks or even months to schedule a surgery. Not me. The tech took us to the ER, so it must have looked pretty bad. When the ER doctor came gave me a choice between surgery today or…well, I don’t really know what the other choice was because I told him to cut me open then and take care of it.

So Saturday I had laproscopic surgery to have my gallbladder removed. I went home Sunday afternoon. The surgeon said that I would have gone home Saturday but there was some drainage he was worried about, so he kept me overnight. There are two small incisions just below my ribs, one larger spot where the drain was, and my belly button is kinda messed up and bruised (because that’s where they pulled out my gallbladder) I’m sore, though less with each day, and I have to hold my stomach when I laugh or cough or sneeze. But this surgery has made me feel 100x better.

As soon as the surgery was over, I noticed that the weird pouchy roll that I’d developed around my middle during the past few months was suddenly gone. And I doubt they did any free liposuction so it must have just been swelling and bloating that never went away until the gallbladder did. The deep dark circles under my eyes that wouldn’t go away no matter how much sleep I got were also gone. So was the weird acne that had been plaguing me all summer. Even the acid reflux seems to have gone away. I never would have guessed that an organ you can just as easily live without and that you can take out so easily could cause so many problems for so long. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if a great deal of my very recent depression and suicidal-ness was not due in some part to the toxicity my body was no doubt experiencing from my mal-functioning gallbladder and/or my body’s inability to properly process my meds. I guess I’ll never know.

What I do know is that I feel so much better. As much as my still recovering body will allow, I plan on getting back to my life, making right things I let go when I was depressed, getting things back on track, and, hopefully, getting ready to return to school next semester. Unfortunately, I was so stuck in my depression that I chose not to go to class or work so I’ve ruined this semester of school and lost my amazing job. But there’s always next semester and I might be able to grovel, re-apply, and get my job back next semester as well.

So look forward to hering more from me. Sorry for the extended absence.

New Favorite Song* Love Song by Sara Bareilles

I don't even feel the need to honor you with a psuedonym like I do my other lovers who I want to protect, my other lovers who respect me enough to either be my friends or say they can't also be my friends and my lover, my other lovers who knew getting into this that they weren't getting a commitment from me though I would always be safe and protect their safety as well, my other lovers who would not put in the position you have. I loved this song when I first heard it weeks ago and I now I realize that I won't do the equivalent, no matter how much I want you, as my lover, as my friend, even as bad as I've wanted for over a year to be your significant other. I won't give up the life I have, the life I want, the life I built, just because you ask for it, just because you say it is making or breaking this, especially when your heart in nowhere in it.

Love Song - Sara Bareilles
Head under water
and they tell me to breathe easy for a while
the breathing gets harder, even I know that
you made room for me but it's too soon to see
if I'm happy in your hands
I'm unusually hard to hold on to
Blank stares at blank pages
no easy way to say this
you mean well, but you make this hard on me

I'm not gonna write you a love song
'cause you asked for it
'cause you need one, you see
I'm not gonna write you a love song
'cause you tell me it's
make or breaking this
if you're on your way
I'm not gonna write you to stay
If all you have is leaving I'm gonna need a better
reason to write you a love song today

I learned the hard way
that they all say things you want to hear
and my heavy heart sinks deep down under you and
your twisted words,
your help just hurts
you are not what I thought you were
hello to high and dry
Convinced me to please you
made me think that I need this too
I'm trying to let you hear me as I am

I'm not gonna write you a love song
'cause you asked for it
'cause you need one, you see
I'm not gonna write you a love song
'cause you tell me it's
make or breaking this
if you're on your way
I'm not gonna write you to stay
If all you have is leaving
I'm gonna need a better
reason to write you a love song today

Promise me that you'll leave the light on
to help me see with daylight, my guide, gone
'cause I believe there's a way you can love me
because I say

I won't write you a love song
'cause you asked for it
'cause you need one, you see
I'm not gonna write you a love song
'cause you tell me it's make or breaking this
is that why you wanted a love song
'cause you asked for it
'cause you need one, you see
I'm not gonna write you a love song
'cause you tell me it's make or breaking this
if you're on your way
I'm not gonna write you to stay
if your heart is nowhere in it
I don't want it for a minute
Babe, I'll walk the seven seas when I believe that
there's a reason to
write you a love song today

From Craig Ferguson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdE5nrYA5pw
From Public Access
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ctKH9GCbRg