zeptember

So george was due Tuesday and never showed up as far as bleeding goes. But he had me bedridden most of Wednesday, and cramping at work on Thursday and Friday.
Friday also started the ass pain.

With the hormone therapy, I had one month free of george and ass pain and all those nasties related to that bastard, but at what cost? I nearly ended my life. I won’t try a different hormone again, just to go through the gradual brain changes that I don’t even know are ganging up, which make me want to kill myself.
No. Twice in my life is two times too many on the fucking hormones.

So I wait for george to show up. I hold my breath that the pain I’ve had so far is the extent of pain I’ll endure, and that the surgery really helped me. But truth be told, my gut tells me that once the bleeding starts, it’ll be the same hell as it ever was.

I know I do not have any other choice in life, so I would rather have that hell than be suicidal.
Here is where I get all with the reincarnation again:
This is what I signed up for. I did this to myself. I can blame my mom for bringing me into this world with her shitty Appalachian genes, but it’s not her fault. I chose her to be my mom because I had shit to learn. And boy howdy am I still learning it.

Why do we continue on once we have an inkling of what we’ve done? When we’ve realised that we’ve come here to learn a lesson - when we finally Awaken?
Well, not all of us do continue on. Some of us say we’re not up to it, that we can’t handle it AGAIN, that it wasn’t quite the mission we signed up for.
I’ve done that route and pressed the reset button in so many lives that I’ve developed a strong stubborn streak to just get through it because it has GOT to be better than last time. It has GOT to propell me to something better. This is how I got through high school. This is how I got through college. This is how I got through living with my mom and brother, living in the “unibomber shack” as I call it:

And I credit my dad for this strength. I chose him for that reason.

Before I leave this incarnation, I will have learned how to get past the bad karma I create, instead of just creating more, saying ‘BAH!’ and pressing the reset button when I can’t handle the pressure anymore. I will take this into the next incarnation. I can do this. And having the pain I have is part of this lesson.

Now, all that psycho hippie woo woo shit(™ Justin) aside, I often wonder if the mindset I have created on this whole reincarnation thing stems from my fundamentalist upbringing.

People who are raised in cults (and christian fundamentalism IS a cult) often end up being susceptible to other cultish mindsets throughout life, even after they’ve escaped.
So I wonder if after being raised with the idea that menstruation is punishment because of Eve’s curiosity - because she took the forbidden apple and was punished by G*d to bleed monthly forever more… I wonder if I have developed the idea that I’m here in this incarnation to endure the pain of endometriosis is an extension of my fundamentalist upbringing. Enduring == punishment == karma and all that.

People raised in cults often need strict rules and structure to replace what they had, once they’ve escaped said cult, otherwise they feel lost, helpless and vulnerable. I am no exception. Therefore, I have wondered if finding Tibetan Buddhist principles appealing in the mid 1990’s, along with Wicca (laugh all you want, but I fired Wicca by 1999), is just a natural next step in recovering from the upbringing I had, and perhaps there IS no next life, and the idea of reincarnation is just as silly as all of Christianity’s ideas.

And if it is, then why am I still here, dealing with job after shitty job, financial instability since birth, and 21 years of wrenching menstrual pain? Why not just say ‘Aww FUCK IT’ and press the reset button?

Because I’m too attached to people, places and things.

And well if I’m going to become a good little Buddhist, I’m going to eventually have to learn how to not be attached, and yet enjoy just being.

This is the part where you think of ME and BUDDHISM in the same sentence, and the next thought through your head should be of Edina from Absolutely Fabulous.

ME? A Buddhist, sweetie darling? Chanting as we speak? I’m every bit as hypocritical as Edina. Every bit.

I guess the first step is Knowing.

And knowing is half the battle. :p

Annnnnnyway….. back to george. Yesterday I had a sudden hypoglycemic attack. I realised that last month while on the hormones, I didn’t have such attacks. So I know for sure that what I read in one of my endometriosis books is true - that the hormone-rich uterus can fuck up one’s endocrine system and cause hypoglycemia around the time of menses. It’s proven now for me. I’m going to have to learn to like all the hippie foods recommended in the endometriosis books.
On that note, the lady who lives in the unit directly behind ours is a practicing health coach, now. I’m scheduled to meet with her next week for a free health consultation and get dietary tips. I will once again be trying to manage my pain through diet. I can do this.
I will also be joining the gym my man attends, and I am going to find a yoga class to sign up with. I can do this.

I can do this because I can’t go on just waiting for the pain to hit and overmedicating with dangerous prescription meds. I’ve wrecked my body enough over the years with medication.

Don’t get me wrong, now. Underneath all this ‘can do’ attitude, I’m still screaming at the world, “IT’S NOT FAIR!!!!”

But merely screaming and pounding fists never really gets one anywhere, does it?

Just woke up from the second of two nightmares in a row, nearly in a panic attack, complete with being unable to breathe and wanting to cry hysterically.

I raced through the house looking for my man, but he’d ony just left for work seconds before I awoke.

I’ve just popped 1mg of Lorazepam to calm the hell down.

This is what my life is becoming? Again?

I stayed home today on account of mental and health problems. The mental is due to work. The health is due to george. George has not shown himself physically, yet, but as of yesterday morning, I began having cramps and feeling run over. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like I’d been in a car accident, because my entire body was stiff with pain. The worst of the pain was my lower back.
I usually only get upper back pain due to the bulging disks in my neck. But the lower back is monthly and means george is coming.

The entire body being locked with wrenching pain - that’s new. Probably also due to work stress.

The nightmares were probably a mixture of said stress along with me having taken a Tylenol 3 last night to ease the pain and get to sleep. Every time I take Tylenol 3, I’m guaranteed to have nightmares.

In the first one, I was in the house I live in now, only it was laid out differently. I was helping care for an elderly man who was related to me distantly on my dad’s side of the family, and who was also my campaign manager.
(…campaign??)

A nurse was in the house as well. She either came by daily or was a live-in, and administered some respiratory drug intraveinously each day. The drug looked like a small inhaler and was inserted into a pocket attached to the guy’s I.V.
The guy was in his seventies and was a smoker. By this stage of his disease, he was kept in a glass case on the floor. He had a twin sized mattress to lay on for his long, thin frame.

I saw him smoking IN the glass case, biding his time.

Well, his respiratory drug ran out, and the nurse was in the other room watching TV or something. I ran to get her as soon as I realised the drug had run out, because the old guy started thrashing about.
At first she was disaffected by my anxiety and took her time getting to the living room where the guy was. Then she saw him thrashing and leapt into action.
Only…she couldn’t find the replacement medication cannister!

We tore apart the house looking for the medication, but she’d let him run out! I ran outside with the cordless phone, calling 911.
I got a woman on the line who was as disaffected as the nurse inside, until she realised the guy was in cardiac arrest and actually dying. Then SHE got hysterical and said an ambulance was on the way. I hung up and heard an ambulance get closer and closer, then the sirens stopped somewhere nearby…the ambulance was for someone else.
I waited. I didn’t want to go back inside to see the guy dying.

Another older gentleman lived in the unit behind ours and had heard commotion. He was now trying to help the nurse, and seeing that she’d failed his friend badly, took the guy out of my house and brought him next door into his house. I didn’t see the nurse after that. I went next door and saw the guy slumped over and my neighbor trying to hold him up. Just as I was backing away crying, the guy woke up, stood bolt upright, and staggered towards the front door in a daze, then slumped again, but was still conscious.

I ran outside again and got to my car. For some reason, my cell phone was in the car. I used the cell phone to dial 911 and got some young-sounding guy on the line. By this time I was angry and hysterical and yelling and swearing a lot. The guy was rude back to me and asked me to think of him right now - the fact that he has to listen to people like me and by the way, he CAN’T get me an ambulance right now. Turns out he was in his own private ambulance and was busy. I hung up on him and pressed the red button on my cell phone. This auto-dials a programmed-in emergency number. Perhaps I was dialing the wrong thing before?
I can’t remember what happened next - I think I kept getting disconnected or put on hold (in real life in the U.S., that is the real actual 911. You get put on hold. I shit you not).

I ran back to my neighbor who was already on to what my next plan was. He was trying to carry the guy out to his car so we could drive him to the hospital. The hospital is only a few blocks away for fuck’s sake. The neighbor was too weak to carry his friend, so I did it. I held the guy like a toddler on my left hip and slumped over my left shoulder, and carried his long, lanky, draping frame to the neighbor’s car. We all got in the front seat - one of the old bench style seats in the old big cars. I belted myself and the old man in and the neighbor drove us to the hospital. I held onto the old man the entire way.
That’s all I remember.

In the second dream, I was campaigning for local office. I can’t recall in what capacity - something important enough to have the media dogging us. We were all gathering at some person’s house, where both parties would take off for an important farm town to make our speeches.

The guy running against me was a bit older than me and dressed like a company CEO. Whereas I was dressed in a long black velvet skirt and a blouse of some sort, also black.
We sat in the small living room of a farm house, waiting. I asked for whisky to drink to calm my nerves. Everyone gave me strange and/or disapproving looks, because I’m female.

I remember thinking, “how did I get myself into this? I don’t want to go through with this. I can’t argue against that guy! I have no talking points! I have no campaign! This will make a mockery out of me. How did I allow myself to commit to this?”

The company man wanted to ride into town on a tractor to show his loyalty to the farmers. I had no special plan, but ended up riding behind him on a day laborer’s truck. I guess that would be the better of the two, wouldn’t it?

After our ride into town, we ended up in another small farmhouse living room, laid out similar to the one we’d started in. The journalists were all there, setting up for all the camera and video shots of me and the guy running against me to interview each other about our politics and positions.

Suddenly, I found myself in a short golden-brown shirt and mini-skirt. I was told this was more appropriate than my gothic look. The outfit made me look like a corporate drone in the (in)human resources department.

Even stranger, I was able to view this from outside myself. I was a spirit in the room or an audience member watching my own self.

The shots were set up and suddenly my outfit began to fall apart at the opening of the interview. I had sat up straight and my shirt rose above the waist line to reveal my stomach, while the criss-cross style top decided to part at the right breast, revealing the fact that I had no bra on underneath. I noticed that I had very different skin. A woman next to me on the couch where I sat reached over to shield my corporate self’s breast from the cameras as I looked at the self directly in front of me.

My other self got up after a moment and excused herself towards the bathroom, while the opposing party on the other side of the living room looked on in amusement. My other self, just short of the bathroom, turned towards the room behind her instead and started to let out a loud “aaagggghhhhh!!” as she shook, obviously having a mental meltdown. I ran to my other self and ushered her into the room away from the media to calm her, and that’s when I woke up, about to yell “aaagggghhhhh!!” because I couldn’t breathe and was having a panic attack.

George is still not here, but I’m tired as hell.

I have to use today to clean the house and look for a job and perfect cover letters. But I need the anxiety to please go away.

I don’t want to be the drugged housewife who is too mental to work.