Tuesday, January 28, 2014

More beautiful for having been broken

My depression is really hitting me hard. Even when I'm in relatively little physical pain, I can't seem to shake it. I can't do the things that would make me feel accomplished. The ideas in my head never come to fruition. I'm so tired of it. I'm so tired of being either tired or anxious. And, now that I am in a safe place, I know that this is all chemical. So I am considering trying Abilify to see if it will help.

One thing that has been bugging me over the past few weeks has been the constant barrage of online posts from my friends about their Amazing Weight Loss Journeys ™. I finally posted this in response:

"Friends, I know that I may seem like a hypocritical bitch for saying this, but I don't want to know about how much weight you've lost, how many jeans sizes you've dropped, or what diet you're on.

It's not only that it makes me feel bad about myself. It's that it makes me think I SHOULD feel bad about myself, because I, unlike 99.99999% of my overweight friends, did not start a goddamn diet for the new year.

I'm not being mean. I'm being honest. This is coming from a place of deep shame, bitterness and frustration. No, I can't "just be happy for you." As much as I would like to be, I can't.

I have body dysmorphia, and it is about so much more than my weight. I have chronic pain that is often severe enough to keep me from taking a shower, much less get on a treadmill. But it doesn't show on the outside, so people just think I'm a fat, lazy piece of shit.

And this doesn't even begin to touch on the gender dysphoria. I pretend that I love myself just the way I am, but I don't. And unlike most people, just going on a diet won't help. Oh, I am so blessed with these feminine curves! Except, they aren't a blessing for me.

I try to bite my tongue to keep myself from saying something unhelpful. "You're just going to gain it all back after you stop dieting," and, "Didn't you go on a diet last year?" and "Gastric bypass is risky and means you will never enjoy food ever again." But I am not always successful.

So I am begging you: please make friends lists of people who can be as supportive of you as you deserve. I have a list dedicated to queer stuff, one for spiritual stuff, et al. If someone asks not to be on one of those lists, I just don't add them.

I'm asking you not to include me in your Amazing Fitness Journey, because, right now, I can't join you, and I'm tired of pretending to be okay with that fact. I promise not to post any shit about my surgery to anyone who doesn't want to know."

I received 100% positive comments on the post, because my friends are awesome like that, but the entire thing made me realize that I need to do something about my body image. Whether that means losing weight or changing how I see myself or accepting how I am, something has to change.

It's not every day that the image in the mirror makes me want to vomit, but it is every day that I think the image in the mirror doesn't look like "me." The media would love to suggest that the reason is simply that I hate my body because I'm fat and everybody hates fat so obviously I just need to lose weight and everything will be okay. Right. It doesn't work like that. I'm sure losing weight would help certain things, like putting less pressure on my spine and making it easier to fit into clothes. What it's not going to do is actually change how I see my body, or close the gap between how I see myself and what my body looks like.

I had an appointment with a new gynecologist yesterday. He said that he would be willing to help sign off on a breast reduction surgery, given the fact that my breast tissues is very fibrocystic, and this can pose a risk in terms of breast cancer. I have mentioned breast reduction to my neurosurgeon a few times, but I've gotten the brush-off. I think that it might be good for my self-image to get this surgery, but I am already looking at back surgery (which is being delayed because of insurance bullshit), and I am also looking at a tubal ligation so I can stop worrying about getting pregnant. When all of these things are done, will I be happy with myself? Will it fix anything at all? Or will I just find more and more things about my body I don't like? I can think of quite a few right now. I hate my chin. It's too round, and even when I was thin in high school, I had a double-chin. I hate the little skin tags around my eyelids that keep getting bigger the older I get. I hate my shoulders. They're not broad enough- too round and slumped to look proportionate to the rest of my body.

Of course, all of this is coming from a place of depression, and I just started my period today, so everything seems worse. Normally, when I feel like this, I dress up and put makeup on and try to look fabulous, but I didn't even bother today. I didn't even notice there was a huge rip in the ass of my jeans. (Kinda funny because of the arctic temperatures... "Why is my ass cold? Oh...")

As a side note to all of this, I need to change my patterns of behavior. I am a night-owl and there is nothing wrong with this, but I have this weird idea in my head that I can't "do stuff" after Matt goes to bed. If I'm up until 2-4 in the morning, why shouldn't I do art or exercise or whatever else I want to do? Why shouldn't I go out and socialize with other night-owls? I don't need to be locked into Matt's schedule. I need to start using the energy I have when I get it instead of wasting it watching the Murder Channel until I fall asleep.

I will share something that has been very inspiring for me. Matt sent me a link to a Japanese fable. Kintsukuroi is the practise of repairing a broken pottery vessel with veins of gold, thus making it a unique piece of artwork. Symbolically, it is about being more beautiful for having been broken. The story touched me so deeply that I made it part of my "nickname" on Facebook, and changed my Instagram account name to "kin_tsu_ku_roi". I want it there, to look at, all the time, as an inspiration. A reminder that the things that have broken me cannot break me beyond repair, and will make me stronger and more beautiful.



Synchronistically, my Loki doll broke into pieces days after I received him. I was very upset, but as luck would have it, a lady who makes dolls was in town this past weekend, and she offered to fix him for free. And now that I've fixed him, he is definitely more beautiful. (More on that later.)

I am grateful that I have a husband who would love me if I was 100 lbs or 1000 lbs, whether I was a boy or a girl, whether I was bedridden or training for a 10k. I'm grateful that I am making progress in terms of taking the steps I need to reduce my back pain and taking charge of my reproductive health. I'm grateful that I'm taking a free online course about human evolution and having a ton of fun at it. I'm grateful that I finally had the energy to make art last night. I'm grateful that I will be getting a sleep study done next week. (It's supposed to be part of the prep for back surgery, but I am hoping it might give me some answers in terms of my bad sleep patterns.) I am grateful that I am sitting here writing this today, instead of spending the whole day in bed, like I have for the last two days. As always, I'm grateful for my gods and their love and support and constant presence in my life. I am grateful that I can still be grateful.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Ground rules for dealing with a "well-meaning" parent

The following is the email I wrote to my mother regarding my upcoming spinal fusion surgery. I'm sharing it here because this is as much a list of rules for me as it is a clear message to her.

Dear Mother,

I will only be telling you the bare minimum. The more I tell you, the more you will worry. You'll freak out, and I will end up expending energy calming you down instead of taking care of myself. 

I will tell you when the surgery is when I know. It is not scheduled yet, because of an insurance delay. It will be within the next few weeks.

Please do not question the fact that I need surgery. This invalidates my suffering.

Please do not ask for exact details of the surgery. All I am going to tell you is that it will fuse two of my lower vertebrae, which have been weakened because the disk has broken down.

Please do not take the day off work when I get my surgery, they way you did when I got on a plane for the first time. Staying home and wringing your hands all day will not change the outcome.

Please do not expect me to call you the minute I regain consciousness. I will call when I call. I'll have Matt update you. 

That's all I have to say on the subject.

My mother is the type of person who catastrophises even the smallest misfortune or change of routine. I have striven not to be that kind of person. However, when I am faced with my mother's classic behavior, I am not always able to respond in the most constructive way. I either get angry with her, or I start to worry more, myself. Ultimately, I end up taking a lot of time and energy to soothe her fears when I should be taking care of myself. I have learned over the years that, in order to avoid this situation, the less information I give my mother, the better.

She can lament and moan and plaster the back of her hand to her forehead, crying, "Why? Why? Whyyyyy?" all she wants, but she will do it on her own time. And I will not waste my energy on convincing her that the surgery is, in fact, necessary, and not some grand conspiracy of the medical profession to slice people open at the slightest opportunity (in reality, I'm having trouble getting approval from my insurance.) And if, gods forbid, there are any complications, all I will tell her is, "Well, it's just taking a little longer so that they can make sure it worked." 

Am I worried? Am I scared? You bet your sweet bippy I am. I've never gone under the knife for anything, and I have never gone under anesthesia. I'm concerned about all kinds of things. I am confident that I will be in good hands, professionally and spiritually. I still need to reserve my energy for taking care of myself, not pacifying my chronically-alarmed mother. After all, it is I who will be having the surgery and enduring the pain of recovery. I'm the one who's doing all the work. Much as her behavior may contradict it, my surgery is not happening to my mother. It's happening to me.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Pills and pain

Woke up nauseated and riddled with panic, hot and cold at the same time, shaking and aching and rushing to the toilet. I managed to nearly drown myself while trying to take my pills. It's 10:00 and I've already shat four times. (TMI? Too bad.) Matt is on a work call, but he is here, at least. The polar vortex cometh, to extend my pain flare. Why the hell can't my body and mind align with how great my life actually is right now? Why do I feel like utter shit when I should be over the moon? 

Okay, so I have some pretty major stress coming. Getting your back sliced open so they can break it to fix it isn't exactly like looking forward to a vacation, and I'm still afraid of complications, but if it works, it should vastly improve my life. Through the application of SCIENCE! the surgeon will make my spine better, faster, stronger, and full of more titanium and bone chips from dead people. Then they will hook me up with an ultrasonic stimulator for three months, and a lumbar corset. I'll be like a kinky undead cyborg. 

But it's funny how they don't tell you it's going to be months before you can have sex again, like that's just some afterthought or not important enough to mention in the consult. I love sex, dammit. My physical intimacy with Matt and with other partners is fulfilling, stress-reducing, and even helps the pain sometimes. That's going to be hard for me to handle. Hell, for a couple of weeks I probably won't even be able to masturbate properly! I can see something like this putting a major strain on a marriage. I think Matt and I will do ok, but for some people? Death sentence. 

Gods, I am so grateful for Matt. More and more every day. Every time he brings me my meds, or helps me put on my shoes, or gives me a massage, or even just pauses what he's doing to make sure I am okay, I feel blessed. I really do love him more deeply each day. This surgery thing is going to be a major trial for us, but I think we will pass with full marks.

So, the surgery I am actually getting is called PLIF (Posterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion), and this is a little video showing how it's done: http://www.spine-health.com/video/posterior-lumbar-interbody-fusion-plif-video

I have some risk factors. I smoke, and I am "severely obese." I am working on the smoking thing, but it doesn't help that pain and pain meds are huge smoking triggers for me. Nicotine supposedly inhibits bone growth, so I really do need to make an effort. Our friend went through a similar surgery, and did not quit, and nothing horrible happened (except that he left the hospital too early and ended up with a CSF leak. No damn way am I taking that risk.)

One thing that really pissed me off (literally) was a mandatory urine drug screening. Apparently, the Great State of Ohio now requires that anyone on opiates get a drug screening twice a year to continue getting pain medication. Fuck that fucking shit. Thanks so much for making me feel like a godsdamn criminal. I scribbled on the paper on the exam table, "I hate pills but I hate pain more."

I dunno. I'm gonna go over all of this with my therapist and my psychiatrist, and see what I can do to minimize anxiety. 

Switching gears, I've decided to take some free online classes. I'm taking one on human evolution that starts today, and another one on neurobiology that starts next month. The neurobiology class comes with a verified certificate of achievement, but it costs $69. Matt's mom offered to pay for a class if I found one, because I miss academics so much. I've got all these brains in my head just sitting there doing nothing. I would also like to take an art class at the Cultural Arts Center in the spring. Those only cost $55 for a 10-week course.

I feel better now that I wrote stuff down (I always do), and of course my meds are kicking in right now, so the panic is ebbing. I have to pee, but I also kinda need to go back to sleep, and I want a sandwich. Good night. See you this afternoon.


Friday, January 17, 2014

Better late than never, I guess.

I told Matt, last night, that I wanted to go out today to sit in a coffee house and write. Before he went to bed last night, I said, "Don't let me go back on this." I have spent the entire day trying to make excuses not to go out. I'm experiencing a depressive episode that is partly because of pain, and partly because of feeling stuck. I'm stuck to the couch, I'm stuck on pain killers, I'm stuck in my thought process, and I'm stuck in terms of creativity. I am reminded of words said to me by one of my most brilliant teachers, way back in fifth grade. She said, "I think you're waiting for something." And twenty-six years later, I am still waiting. For what, I don't know. I have everything I need, now, for the first time in my life.

I have (or at least had) artistic and musical talent. My scientific mind isn't too shabby, either. I have always been gifted with words. Yet, I have never finished a painting, never written a concerto, never published a paper, and never written a book. I want to have done all of these things, but something keeps me from doing them. A lack of self-confidence? An inability to focus? An overabundance of ideas, creating options paralysis that has kept me in place my entire life? Sure, these things are all true, but the biggest problem has been being stuck on the bottom rung of Maslow's Hierarchy for most of my life. Not having a safe place to flourish, not knowing where I was going to sleep, not being sure of who my friends were, and never having had the foundation of a truly supportive family (because they were all sick, like I am, and didn't know it, or didn't want to know.)

But that doesn't let me off the hook. There are plenty of brilliant people who have clawed their way up from adversity and become amazing and inspiring examples. Yes, fine, I know I make a difference to the people I interact with and can offer help to. I know that the people who love me appreciate me for things I can't see when I look in the mirror. But that's all about them. If you had told me, at sixteen years old, that at thirty-six, I would still have no college degree, be in debt up to my eyeballs, and only surviving because of the good fortune of falling in love with someone who can support me, I would have killed myself. I wanted to believe, back then, that somehow I would become something special. That somehow, my hundred-sixty-whatever IQ would see me through to becoming a success. It hasn't. If anything, it's gotten in the way. I have the uncanny ability to justify everything I do and don't do, to myself and to everyone else. I have essentially conned myself out of doing anything significant with my life.

I don't even know why I'm writing this. It isn't going to change anything. I'm not going to wake up tomorrow and suddenly have the drive and clear-headedness to make up for all the time I've lost. I've almost certainly lived more than half my life, and this should be a motivating factor. Instead, all I want to do is rest. And rest. And rest. I'm no less soul-tired than I was when I started therapy or before I met Matt. It's just that now, I have company, and people who can support me through my depressive times, and love me even though I never lived up to my "bright and gifted" childhood hype. And I don't know how to get rid of that debilitating weariness. I have brief moments of clarity, small bursts of energy that turn into a picture here or a poem there, but nothing sustainable. Nothing significant. I couldn't even manage to draw a picture for my friends' wedding. I don't even want to make a schedule to do things, because then, if I don't have the energy to do those things, I will feel like a failure.

I just want the pain to stop. I want to be an artist and an actor and a singer, a counselor and a research scientist and an activist against injustice, but more than that, I want to have been these things. At thirty-six, I want accomplishments to look back on, and all I can say is... I survived.

Well, this went in a different direction than I wanted it to go. I was going to write about how I finally cried about my cat, and that it made me feel a little better. Somehow, that seems insignificant, now. Such a simple, clear-cut thing, when all of this other cognitive dissonance is so deep, so toxic and so sickening. I'm just glad I never killed anyone, including myself.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

A hasty entry.

Well, you can see how well that "writing every day" thing has worked. As in, it hasn't. And here I am hurrying to write an entry for my therapist in 20 minutes.

My head is so muddled with pain and drugs that I don't even know what I'm writing. I have been in a pain fog for the last four days. Suddenly, when the weather warmed up, my back just gave up. It's been popping and grinding. I have pain down both my legs to my knees, and my low back feels like someone is driving a hot railroad spike between my vertebrae. I was supposed to be having fun over the weekend for my birthday, and instead, I had to go to the hospital last night for a pain shot. The first time I got dilaudid, it completely knocked me out and I could still feel it the next day. This time, because my tolerance for opioids has increased, it only helped for about four hours, and even during that time, I still hurt. It's not just my low back, either. I have pain in my neck, shoulders, and knees, as well as headaches that come and go. Percocet isn't even budging it.

I am so done with this. I am tired of pain and pills and more pain and more pills. I called to see if I could get my surgery consult moved up, but my doctor is booked. At least his scheduler was nice enough to offer to call around to see if anyone was going to have a cancellation. I'm on a wait list.

I feel frustrated and annoyed, and even a little ashamed. In my desperation for relief, I didn't think about the fact that we haven't paid our deductible yet. The ER visit is likely to cost us a lot of money. So much for having anything extra next month. I keep thinking, "Couldn't I have waited and made an appointment?" Would this have happened if I'd kept up with my exercises, like I should have? Well, nothing to be done about it, now.

At least I was able to mourn some for Radar. The other day, I learned that a Facebook friend (who is a prominent author in the Heathen community) had to euthanize his dog. I offered to do a simple ritual for him, and he thanked me. We ended up trading stories about our beloved furry family members. I had received my custom Loki doll in the mail on the previous day, who came with his own "baby Fenrir" stuffed wolf. I used the stuffed animal as a symbol of my friend's dog. My friend said that the toy looked a lot like his dog as a pup. The exercise opened the floodgates for me, and I was able to cry for Radar for the first time. It wasn't as much as I'd hoped, but at least I uncorked the bottle. It will still take time.

There are a lot of things I should have been doing over the last few days, like working on the chore list, finishing some artwork, and washing my clothes, but the pain has been completely debilitating. I am still trying to keep moving, some. I did manage to get to our friends' wedding on my birthday, though I couldn't stay for as long as I would have liked. I did manage to get up, shower and get dressed today, which feels like a major accomplishment.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Writing every day...

... for a week, because I need some semblance of structure. I am going to write, even if it feels like I don't have anything to write about. Today, I am out at Cup O Joe with Matt, and earlier, I actually did a little bit of art. I made a sketch of a piece I want to finish by Sunday for our friends' wedding. I feel somewhat accomplished at having done this, but still rather scattered. Small messes in the house are bothering me, and I need to clean them up. I am still feeling really tired, and at the same time, very restless.

There. I wrote something.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Mixed nuts


Hi, kids. I'm having a mixed episode today. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a delightful state of emotional flux in which the bipolar individual experiences symptoms of both mania and depression simultaneously. It's also called "manic dysphoria" or "dysphoric mania," neither of which are recognized by my spell-check program as real words, but here we are. I am feeling agitated, restless, and anticipatory. By "anticipatory," I mean to say that I feel like I'm waiting for something to happen, even though there is nothing to wait for. Imagine feeling like you're waiting for your test results (the kind of test doesn't matter- Math test, blood test, pregnancy test, whatever), but there never was any test to begin with, and there's no way you can convince your brain otherwise. Fun times. Recommend it to anyone suffering from a lack of thrills in life. That was sarcasm. Fuck off. Racing thoughts? My brain is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on a track filled with hairpin turns and boobytraps. Most of my thoughts are of what the fuck I should write next, where to begin about how I am feeling lately, and how much bile to spill about how irritated and frustrated and goddamn fucking angry I am that I can't relax, now that everything's fine.

EVERYTHING'S FINE. No, it really, really is. It's fine. Everything is absolutely bloody fine... now what do I do? Well, anything I want, theoretically, but I seem to have forgotten how to want to do things. Yeah, I know it doesn't make much sense, but some of my worst bouts of mental instability have come during periods of relative calm. I don't know how to shut down that little asshole in my brain who keeps flooding the engine with adrenaline so that I can't even start the car. That was a metaphor. Fuck you. I'm not really a car. Moving on.

Pent-up, unexpressed grief. Stress from the holidays. Stress from moving. Stress from new relationships. Stress from change, in general. Good stress, bad stress, doesn't matter. It's taxing. I'm taxed to the max, and I want my fucking refund. That was a pun and a metaphor. Fuck you. (This one is going to be fun to read to my therapist in a little while.) But it's helping. Really, it is, typing like the wind, getting all this shit out of my brain and into the little screen with the letters on it. Already, I am feeling somewhat better. Good enough, at least, to start to talk about the appointment I had with my doctor today.

Okay, so it's actually my doctor's assistant, but she's much more pleasant to deal with than my doctor, because Doctor Gregory Figg has the personality of a sheet of drywall. This is actually worse than a slab of sheetrock, because drywall is crumbly and leaves dust all over the place. I digress. I'm digressing a lot today. I'm scheduling surgery. Boom. There's the point. I finally got tired of himming and hawing about whether I should try this or that therapy or holistic remedy or exercise, and have just decided to get the damn surgery. The injections have done exactly jack and shit, respectively, and although physical therapy is helpful, it isn't going to magically grow my disks back or make my bone spurs disappear. So, I have a consult for surgery on my low back at the end of the month. I'm hoping they can go in through the back, so I can get the tattoo I already planned. It feels a little bit like victory and a little bit like defeat, but there's something to be said for facing facts.

Radar. Radar is my cat who's dead now. How's that for a lack of segue? I still can't seem to cry for him. Every time I feel like I'm getting close to letting go, something stops me, like I'm afraid to mess up my makeup, or something stupid like that. I don't know why I keep making excuses. I don't know why I am afraid to mourn. Is it some bizarre form of denial? He's not here. He does not live with us, has never lived with us in the new apartment. Perhaps that's part of the problem. It feels, in some ways, as if he just vanished without a trace. Normally, a pet dies, you look around and see the spot where he used to lie on your floor, the dent in the couch where she always sat, the footprints on the windowsill where he watched birds. I have none of these reminders. All I have is a box, a very pretty little box, that is already gathering dust because I have barely touched it since we moved in. Just like everything else.

I have done a lot of relaxing since we moved in, and also a lot of cleaning downstairs. I want to keep the place looking new and pretty and ready for guests. Normally, I would focus on my own room, but this time, I've done little beyond the initial basic moving-in stuff. It looks fine, it isn't terribly messy or anything, but it lacks spirit. I have not created anything in that room yet; I have barely even spent any time there. This is partly due to the fact that our living area is comfortable for me, now, for the first time since we lived in the house in Hilliard, and partly due to whatever the fuck (yes, I said fuck again) is paralyzing me from the inside. I sit on the couch next to Matt, and he has no idea that I'm feeling awful, no idea how frustrated I am that I want to talk and work out all the kinks in my brain, but, for some reason, I can't.

Like I said, I have no reason to be depressed. I can sit and think about how lucky I am, absolutely gush about how everything is falling into place after such a long period of strife for me and Matt, and yet, something isn't clicking. It's like someone forgot to throw the little switch in my head that says "all clear," and I'm still deep in energy-conservation mode, guarding myself from who knows what. I'm not even consciously waiting for something to go wrong. I don't have any doubts about where we are and that things are going to continue to get better. This shit is entirely chemical, and that's frustrating, because I have been adjusting and tweaking and experimenting with psych meds for more than a decade. I keep seeing these ads for Abilify, you know, the ones with the cute little cartoon people talking about how much better they feel now that they're taking another cute little anthropomorphized pill, and I want to throw something at the TV. My anxiety prevents me from taking any kind of stimulant, which, intellectually, I know should help me, were I only able to tolerate them.

I have all this energy. I need to make things and do stuff and go places. I have the opportunity and the means, now, but do I have the ability to get past these mental blocks? Do I even know what the blocks are, anymore? I feel so overwhelmed, and so guilty, because I feel like I should have gotten the fuck over it by now, really blossomed now that I'm planted firmly in fertile soil. But I guess it's only been a month. Maybe I'm just being too hard on myself. Argh. I don't know. It's really hard to look at things objectively when you're dysphoric, dysthymic, and discouraged. (That was an alliteration. Consonance, specifically. Fuck you.)

So how am I feeling right now, at this moment, sitting here in the lobby of my therapist's office as I read over this entry? Better than I did before I started writing, that's for sure. And I can at least change things up and talk about some stuff I'm proud of myself for. I have had only six cigarettes in the past week, and I have no immediate desire to buy more, thanks to my new e-cig. I'll be able to step down the nicotine gradually, but I'm already doing myself good by quitting tobacco. (Still miss the fire, a bit, but maybe I just need to burn more incense.) Also, a chronic issue with candida (yeast, thrush, whatever you want to call it) that I've been dealing with since my steroid treatments started has prompted me to drop processed sugars from my diet. I'm doing a two-week sugar fast, even avoiding fruits and fruit juices, in an attempt to starve the fungus so my immune system can catch up and get rid of it. I'm also taking pro-biotics. Even after a couple of days, I have noticed the nodules under the skin of my lips have started to dry up. TMI? Too bad. Nobody forced you to read this.

I am glad to be out of the house. I desperately need structure, both on a macro- and micro- level. Ideas I have for this include checking out the free or low-cost art classes at the Cultural Arts Center, having a regular "Morgan Day" once per week in which I leave the house and do whatever I want, and scheduling time to make art, even if they're doodles I don't do anything more with. As I mentioned before, though, I am really bad at keeping myself to a schedule, which leads me back to asking my therapist for some tools to help me do it. Calendars and reminders and stuff don't work. I need something better, something I can't ignore.

I guess that's it for now. I got some other stuff to talk about, but I can't even go there until this wibbly-wobbly manic-dysphoric issue has passed.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

I am a mess.

The holidays came and went, and they were good, but I am such a mess. I started to get sick New Year's Eve, and I'm still fighting this stupid cold. It is frustrating, because I watch other people get the same bug and get over it in two days, while I'm down for a week.

Part of this is fibromyalgia, et al., and part of it is because I smoke. Well, that's changing as we speak. Matt got me an e-cig as an early birthday gift. It's one of the really nice ones with a refillable tank so that I can use all sorts of different flavors with it. Since New Year's Eve, I have smoked only four "real" cigarettes. That's down from nearly a pack a day. Go me. I didn't even plan on it. I think that's why it's working. If I'd planned to do it, I would have been putting pressure on myself, and it would have given me a chance to get anxious about it. So I am very grateful to Matt for doing this for me. It's going to save money and my health in the long run.

But anyway, back to the holidays. We decorated, we had a real live tree, we cooked, we had friends over twice, we did the family thing, we saw friends we hadn't seen in years. There was some stuff that happened that's important, but I will write about it later, because right now, I need to deal with right now, and right now, I'm a mess.

I guess it's to be expected to have mood swings and stuff during the holidays. I think what I am experiencing is a combination of post-holiday depression and anxiety from being sick. Ever since I got the flu a few years back, getting sick always comes with severe anxiety. This morning, I thought I was going to die. I was coughing so hard that I saw stars and almost threw up. I took a puff on my inhaler and I was fine, but then, the inhaler made my heart start to race, and I had to take several minutes to just sit on the toilet and stare at my surroundings to remind myself I was safe.

Today was one of those days when I used up half my spoons just to get ready. Shower, shave, dry and style hair, makeup, clothes.... flop. I'm ready to go, but I feel like I already need a nap. It's so goddamned frustrating. My doctor says my back is 60 years old, and I feel like an ancient crone every time I crawl out of bed. Damn it! I just want to be like a normal person of my age for one goddamn day without paying for it with a flare.

I. Am. A. Mess.

And it isn't just because of the fatigue and the cold and the post-holiday blues. Matt is now working from home, and there have been very few days since we've moved to the new apartment that he has not been home. I don't mind him being home, in fact, it's comforting. With the exception of this morning, when we had a minor spat, we haven't been getting on each other's nerves. We've both introverts. We go off into our own little bubbles and we're quite happy to stay there. The problem is, I have lost any sense of time or schedule. It's been like one endless weekend. I haven't got a job to go to (though I have been applying), I haven't got physical therapy anymore because I will have to start all over again after surgery, and I haven't got Matt's 9-to-5 giving any structure to my day. So, of course I'm a mess. Without structure I fall to depression. I fail to do. I feel like I'm waiting for something to happen, some cue to tell me what to do, but it doesn't happen.

I have never been good at keeping myself on any kind of a schedule, but now, I think it is absolutely imperative that I try to do so. I have to invent things to keep me busy, beyond just chores. Like, Mondays are "art days" and Wednesdays I go to Cup-O-Joe to write. I need to keep getting up at the same time every morning, even if I don't go to sleep at the same time every night. (I've been doing pretty well with that, because I need to take my pills at a specific time.) I need to find things in the community to keep me occupied, that do not necessarily involve Matt. I'm suddenly feeling quite desperate to have my own life again. I feel I've been in this transitory period for months, but it's time to emerge from it. I just don't know how to take the first step, and I need guidance. I'm really hoping that my therapist can give me some tools to help.

Argh. Other stuff. For other entries. Need to write more. But at least I got the surface crap off my mind for now.