zeptember

As of August 18, I felt I had come out of my funk. Of course, that’s when I began spotting. I got my period on August 19, and had a hard time of it, but in general I was not depersonalising or becoming suicidal or falling into deep depressions anymore, and the mania had calmed down.

My anxiety kicked up on Sunday, August 22, because I was still in pain - I had the ‘last gasp’ as we call it, where there’s one last push of big pain and bleeding before the menstrual cycle stops again for the next 21 or so days. But the pain lasted alllll damned day. So I resumed taking ativan along with my pain meds and was a total zombie all day Sunday.

When I got to work on Monday - it was my first day back to work after being gone all summer for the teacher training - I required 1.5 ativan to get through the workday.

Monday was also my first visit with a new psychologist - Lynda Sussman. I like her. I will be seeing her weekly.

I don’t remember if I took any ativan at all on Tuesday, August 24, but the next day, on August 25, I found out that my chosen sister’s papa had died. he was my adopted/chosen grandpa. He always treated me like family. I cried for part of the day at work, and got home and spent the rest of the evening sobbing while talking to my chosen sister over the phone.

I required 2 ativan to get through Tuesday.

Today I was just a wreck, and have so far taken 3.5 ativan to get through the day/night. I took these over the course of the day, but still.
I had another chemical exposure at work today (orange oil cleaners to scrape masking tape off the floor) - I was wearing a mask & gloves but the chems leaked through gloves. I walked back into the room after taking my mask off, and was sent outside cuz I was faint/flushed and didn’t realise it was BECAUSE of the fumes. After work, I noticed my bike helmet was gone. Then, my shoelace got caught in the pedal on the way home.
And of course I’m still sad about my chosen sister’s Papa. All this makes for a needful night of crocodile tears. There’s been a lot of crying, lately. I haven’t cried such huge, wet tears this often since I was a teenager.

Oh, and I am now wondering if the bouncy leg thing is from the ativan, but then, didn’t I have this symptom before getting on ativan? Too tired to check.

I was supposed to work today, then go to the gym. Instead, I came home from work, cried hard on and off, got into pajamas, then street clothes, then pajamas, then street clothes, then pajamas again, crying each time I changed clothes, because I was trying to go to the gym but just couldn’t do it. I wanted to run a load of laundry at 8pm but just couldn’t do it. It was all I could do to clean the catboxes. I have not eaten dinner. I ate I dunno how many M&M candies, and cried some more.

And now, after this last 1mg ativan I popped about an hour ago, I’m ready to be a zombie and be in bed, now.

Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow is Friday. Tomorrow is game night with friends, even though I wanna go dancing. But if I go dancing, I WILL get drunk. So game night it is.

On a positive note, both the school owner and the director both keep telling me how great it is to have me back, and that means so much to me, so very much. I am loved and appreciated.

I need to keep seeing Dr. Sussman, and also get myself a psychiatrist, because Dr. Sussman thinks I am Bipolar II and need to be on mood stabilisers. I totally agree with her.

There’s good news to be had, of course…

B’s dad got out of the hospital yesterday, and they figured out what caused his blood sugar to spike up to 500 in the first place - he was given some kind of prescription-only B vitamin because he was sick with an upper respiratory tract infection. This B vitamin knocked everything out of whack and could have killed him. Ugh. But he’s doing better and is finally out of the hospital.

With B’s paycheck on August 10, we’ve been able to do a full round of grocery shopping again. Hoorah. This lifts both of our spirits a bit.

B was able to give me money to go out dancing both Friday and Saturday this weekend. For the most part, I had fun, but I admit to still being on the melancholy side. For many minutes throughout the night, both nights, one could find me sitting alone in a chair or standing up against the wall, staring off at the crowd. Even though I had friends there to talk to, I felt lonely, isolated. There wasn’t much I felt comfortable talking about with people. I didn’t feel like I had anything smart or witty or worthy to add to conversation.

The ’still not out of the woods’ part is that I haven’t done homework in two days, because there’s other stuff in life that comes up, like wanting to be there for friends who are about to get married. And there’s selfish stuff, like wanting to go to dinner with my husband, and go out dancing. And there’s health management stuff, like having to go to the pain management class on Sundays, and then get the grocery shopping and some housework done for the coming week.
Not getting homework done means guilt creeps back in HARD. And then I pop another Ativan. And then I get too tired (well it doesn’t help that I only had five hours of sleep last night).

The ’still not out of the woods’ part is that my husband is still severely depressed after all he’s been through with my mental breakdown, then nearly losing his father, and the lead singer of his band quitting (haven’t mentioned that til now but it’s also a major part of his depression)…and I don’t know what to do to make him feel better. When I suggested cuddling this morning, he shrugged and grimaced.
My eyes welled with tears and I fled the room.

After a few minutes, we talked about it. We talked it all out. We did get some cuddle time in after that, and it wasn’t forced - he was gonna ask me if I’d still like cuddle time when I had turned to him and burst into tears. So yeah, after talking about it, we cuddled for a bit, and the rest of the day was a tad brighter. I felt like I had my man back again for part of the day.

Now he’s off to game night, which I’m glad is happening, and I hope he has some fun. That’s all he would have needed was for game night to be cancelled yet again.

That leaves me here, free to start homework and get a good six hours of it done.

And yet, I’m melancholy again. Can’t focus. Can’t get started. Want to spend the evening crying.

Maybe I should just do that - get it all out - again. Ugh. So tired of this depression. I thought I was coming out of it. I’ve been taking my vitamins every day. I went and had the ‘hey look at me, I’m still part of a subculture’ boon this weekend. I got to be a foodie with my husband and eat out at Thai and Sushi restaurants again this weekend cuz he had the money for it. We have a freshly stocked pantry and refrigerator because my husband has money for it.

Has my depression just turned into PMS, because I’m due to menstruate in the next four days?
Did I screw my hormonal balance up by having one small glass of red wine on Friday night, and one small glass of red wine on Saturday night? Did I screw up my mental state by taking Tylenol 3 at 4am for the moderate, nagging low back pain and knee pain caused by the dancing I did on Friday and Saturday?

Gah. I wish I knew what is too much, what is the wrong way, what is verboten. I wish I had an accurate owner’s manual to this body.

I put myself on the waiting list for free psychological counseling through Harborside Health Center. This week I will give the Magellan psychologist a call to schedule meeting with her. I also filled out a form detailing the bad experience I had with the CBD bought at Harborside, as I am part of their patient research - I’m a willful guinea pig for the CBD - now they get the bad feedback on it. I’m likely the teeny tiny less than one percent rare side effects person in the study. I always am. But they need to know. I’m just glad Harborside offers other services besides cannabis medication. Today was the Alexander Technique class. I would like to check out their yoga sessions, too.

Right now, I’m gonna do some light housework to prepare for the coming week. This is the week I need to re-establish getting up as though I’m going to work, so I can get my body back in rhythm for that.

Then we’ll see if I’m up for getting some more homework done. I’ve learned that forcing myself through the homework only makes me go deeper into depression and tantrum mode, so I’m gonna do what I can, if I can get stuff done. And I’m going to have to be okay with that.

By December 28, my sinus infection or whatever it was, had started to finally fade.

By December 31, my husband’s doctor cleared him to be able to go out in public again, though we’d been stepping out of the house for the past two days as it was, because of cabin fever. The doctor said that as long as one still has a cough, one is still contagious, at least when it comes to H1N1. My husband had a mild cough, and was told as long as he coughs into his inner elbow, and washes his hands frequently, the spread of the illness would be greatly minimised.

So on New Year’s Eve, we went to our friend’s house, and enjoyed a mellow evening just hanging out. Some of our friends have young children now, so the house was filled with infant and preschooler noises as well.
I had reminded my husband on the way to the party about how to cough into his elbow, since we employ this method in the Montessori school I work for.
Of course, within the first half hour, my dear husband jokingly shoved his face into a box of homemade cookies and made ‘nom nom nom’ noises.
I pulled him aside immediately and reminded him of his germs. He sheepishly said he was sorry, that he’d forgotten already.
*sigh*

On January 1st, we decided to go dancing, since we’d been screwed out of most of our vacation by being sick. We sweated and danced our asses off at Meat vs. Death Guild.

The next night, we returned to the same location for New Wave City, and danced some more. I began to get sad on the way to the club, because I realised it was our last night out together before having to return to work. We’d not been able to go to Michigan to see friends and family, and we’d not been able to go out into the world from Christmas Eve til New Year’s Eve in any capacity to hang with friends, much less go wining, dining and dancing.

Today is the end of our “vacation”. Tomorrow it’s back to work. I slept in til 11:30am, despite having told myself that would be a bad idea - that I’d have insomnia tonight. Ah well.

Throughout the past week and a half, I’ve checked flight status on the airline we were supposed to have flown. Our flight made it safely to Michigan on December 25, and safely back to San Francisco on January 2. The Cabal party we were supposed to attend still happened in our absense, and pictures and dialogue were posted. I kept tabs on the weather - snow fell regularly through Christmas into the New Year in Michigan.
It’s a bit surreal knowing all of this, and having reality be that I never got on the plane.

Meanwhile, back in California, it’s been a mix of rain and sun, and the temperature has been roughly in the 50°F range during the day, and in the 30-40°F range in the evenings.

Yesterday as we shopped for a dishwasher, I informed my husband that we’d boarded the plane in Michigan and were now on our way home.
This morning I had a nightmare that we’d overslept and likely missed our flight back to San Francisco. I spent a lot of time on my cell phone with a bad connection to Travelocity to try to pin down whether the plane had left already or not. The nightmare ended with me at my ma’s house, having gone into the kitchen and turned down the country music on an old small boombox radio, so I could hear the phone conversation about how to go about getting booked on another flight. My husband was in the living room, my brother had just walked in the front door, and the boy next door stood on his porch with his wife, who was there and then not there and then there again…like some sort of hologram. The two looked a bit Victorian.

My cough returned Wednesday or Thursday as I cleaned the house, because of the dust. The cough settled, then returned again by Saturday morning, along with phlegm, after my husband and I had gotten all kissy face for the first time in about two weeks. I was hesitant but gave in. We’ll see if I get sick again. I don’t have the best immune system…

Yesterday I was so tired all day long, despite having slept in, that I wanted to cry. I overcaffinated myself to no avail. Today I’m feeling pretty tired again, but not as worn out as I was on Saturday. I’m guessing I was just super dehydrated and worn out from all that dancing and sweating on Friday, since it is the first major activity in weeks on account that I’ve been sick. I first got the flu around December 5, and my husband’s doctor thinks it was a blend of H1N1 and the regular flu. She says it takes weeks to fully recover from it, and that relapses can happen.

So it’s back to wait and see, now that we’ve had a weekend of strenuous activity via the nightclubs.

For the past six months, since working close to home and not having a daily commute anymore, I have not listened to the news on the radio.

I don’t have regular television to watch news - we only have DVD and VCR hookup - we don’t have cable or satellite TV.

I don’t watch the news in online video feeds.

Every now and then, I’ll google national and world news to see what’s going on, or I’ll see news via posts made in LiveJournal, Facebook or Twitter.

But I have to say, overall I’ve been a much more sane person since cutting two things out of my life:

• working for the computer industry
• listening/reading the news every day

For the past couple of days, I’ve been full on checking the news again, because of the school and health care speeches that President Obama has given, and everything surrounding what’s going on with those speeches - mostly right-wing nut jobs (check it out here, here and here). Since I was paying attention to who said what about the President’s speeches, I thought I’d also check in on national and world news as well.

I’m seriously depressed, now. It’s been no more than 36 hours all told I think, checking the news a few times, and I’m a mess. This world pisses me off. This is why I had stopped paying attention in the first place - I don’t have the energy or health reserves to be absorbing world news and politics.
It wasn’t any one thing - it was all of it: right-wing nut jobs, several child abuse stories, continued horrors of vets returning from war when I know I still have extended family in the military, all kinds of stuff on The Canary Report by a fellow blogger-acquaintance, unemployment stats, continued heat waves, local homophobia, and other news.

I have a daily job that makes me work really hard for eleven effing dollars an hour. I come home exhausted. For up to two weeks out of each month, I am incapacitated in some form by endometriosis, culminating with being bedridden for 1-3 days. I don’t have time outside of my own home life and health issues for much else. I NEED to focus on me and not on the rest of the world. So when I do pay attention to the news, it leaves me emotionally bitter and depressed. And when I’m left like that, I don’t have the extra spoons on reserve to also handle what’s going on in my own life, or my family and friends’ lives. I certainly don’t have the stamina to catch up on my own blog, which captures and reposts the latest news and research surrounding finding a cause and cure for endometriosis.

To try to correct the damage I’ve caused myself over the past couple of days, this evening I took a dose of Happy News. It’s sort of like a news anti-depressant if you will.

I’m not trying to sing LA LA LA! while plugging my ears and pretend nothing’s going on in the world around me. I know there’s a lot of bad and serious shit going down in the world, in the U.S., in the Bay Area, in my town.

I just not the right person to talk to about these things - if I get involved in any way in matters which I feel are completely beyond my control, it will literally take me down emotionally and physically. And I’m too self-preserving to let that happen.

After reading some happy news, I remembered I should be attending a meeting to help get the word out to say NO to a recall of three of my town’s school board members. I panicked a bit, wondered if I should bother now that I was late, but in the end, I bit the bullet of social phobia and walked to the event. I only wanted to bolt from the meeting a few times, but I stayed in my seat. Two of my friends were in the row in front of me but that didn’t stop the social anxiety.
After the meeting, I met and shook hands with one of the board members and got her business card. Wouldn’t you know it? One of her kids used to go to the school I now teach at. Connections are a great thing.

After the meeting, I went to the grocery store and spent an hour trying to figure out the best groceries for me and my food allergies. I still eat a lot of processed foods - still not prepping most of my dishes by hand. Need to work on that. Food prep is calming.

Tonight’s outings more than pass me on the homework I was assigned by my shrink, which was to walk alone around the block as a step in facing my social anxiety.
I know my therapist will be proud of me. The thing is, I know she means well, but she really just doesn’t understand what I go through, and how intermittent it can be, and how debilitating it can be. She may say I’m on the road to recovery but she has no idea. At least, that’s how I feel right now. She’ll view me going out as a huge success, but down the road, it could be a day, a week, a month…I’ll have another social phobia freakout and/or drink myself to blackout again in order to deal with the anxiety. It’s hit and miss.

*sigh* anyway…

Now it’s nearly 11pm and I need to be in bed but for the past three nights, I’ve not been able to fully wind down.

Hot shower, here I come.

I just spent the past 6 hours on and off searching for airfare to Michigan. I’ve been searching on and off for the last few months and I keep dropping the ball.

This year is my 20-year high school reunion. I started off saying I wasn’t going, then I waffled, then I said definitely I wanted to go, then I got in touch with more and more old school buddies through facebook and found out none of them really wanted to go. Then they waffled, then they wanted to go, and now the most important ones to me no longer want to attend the reunion. It’s hilarious because I got an email the other day saying the whole reunion will be canceled soon if more people don’t commit to it and pay the dues for dinner and drinks! What losers our class continues to be.

I’ve been saying for the last couple of years that I want to go back to Michigan to visit friends and family, that it’s been too long, that my family will be mad at me if I don’t visit soon, etc…

And then I remember something - the ONLY family that ever came to see me in California over the last 12 years that I’ve lived here are my father, my aunt, uncle and my cousin (and my aunt, uncle and cousin came here to visit the rest of their immediate family as a present to said cousin who graduated high school back in 2000. I was just an additional bonus to visit as it were).
My mother, my brother, his wife and kids - none of them have ever come to visit me.
Granted, they’re all poor as dirt, living hand to mouth like I am much of the time. They don’t know how to save their pennies for a vacation any more than I do.

Therefore I’ve always felt it my responsibility to be the one to keep in touch, since I so thoughtlessly abandoned them by moving nearly 2,500 miles away.

I’ve had friends and chosen family come to visit over the years - that’s always wonderful of course.

But the family thing…I moved to California in 1997 and went back home for Christmas in 1997 and in 1998. That’s about all I could take, what with all the drama and politics that goes on in families. And well I was still an AngryGoth™ back then, who was going through the teenage rebellion several years later than most people.

I declared after two Christmas trips home never to do that again. And I haven’t. It’s going on 11 years now that I have not gone home for Christmas.

That, combined with just having gotten married last October, and my 20-year high school reunion coming up next month, and the stark fact that we still haven’t gotten out hard copies of wedding photos yet to immediate family - all that has me feeling much more obligated and in debt to the family for an in-person visit than I normally feel.

So I wrestle with the thought - do I want to go back home to visit? Or do I think I have to go back home to visit?

As I went through expedia.com for the umpteenth time this evening, trying to find the perfect schedule and airfare, I finally just growled, tossed aside the laptop and fled the room.
I spent several minutes in the bathroom just staring at myself in the mirror, trying to figure me out.

And that’s when it finally hit me on a conscious level - I don’t want to go back home. I’d much rather spend the $1,500+ it will cost for airfare, rental car, hotel and food for a week on going somewhere special with my husband, or buying stuff we need, or hell even getting some new nice clothes.

I keep trying to rationalise the idea of flying home for Christmastime, during the snow and freezing time, as something that would be enjoyable. I keep thinking we could turn it into a winter lover’s getaway and snuggle near a fireplace.
What a laugh.
We’d spend an entire day traveling, check into the hotel and try to catch some sleep. The next day, we’d need to get a rental car and slog through the snow and ice for 300 miles, which normally takes about 5-6 hours but in snow could take much longer. So that’s another whole day of travel. Then we’d spend two days visiting my father up north. Maybe there’d be some fun and lazing about in that.
Then we’d have to slog back downstate through the snow and freezing weather again and arrive back at a hotel - day 3 of 7 being nothing but travel. Then we’d spend the next couple of days trying to see my ma, any other family, and friends.

I’m twitching just thinking about it.

And I’ve been bitching at my husband to tell me if he has Christmas break off work or not. He finally told me yesterday that yes, they are shut down for one week between Christmas and New Year’s.
I realised while looking at airfare that not only do I still not have my autumn hours for work in place yet, but I don’t even remember if my workplace shuts down for a week or just a few days.

So now I feel sheepish for pestering my husband so much about his time off.

And I realised too that a lot of my mental friction has been just The Point Of The Matter against my husband - I know he despises Michigan and Kentucky where I have family. More than that, he hates flying in airplanes. He’s got severe flying phobia - I call him B.A. Baracus because he’s gotten unruly on flights, and has to be severely drugged to get through the flight.
So anytime I so much as mention missing my family back home, and could we maybe visit soon, he gets all bristly and short with me. This has been going on for the entire time we’ve been together. I then go ahead and make the flight arrangements, and we argue the entire time because his phobia ramps up severely, and I need his input as to dates, times and all that.
Once, I booked flight without telling him in advance, just to save my sanity. It did jack shit cuz once I let him know we’d be flying, he still flipped and hemmed and hawed and then totally backed out.
I flew without him (this was to visit friends in Seattle in 2005). I made him pay me back for the cost of the canceled ticket.

So it’s a lot of stress for both of us to even consider flying anywhere. Doubly so when it’s to a place he doesn’t even care to ever set foot in again, and doesn’t really care much for his in-laws to begin with.

That has left me thinking two things simultaneously:
1) FINE, I’ll go without you, then. I don’t know why I didn’t do this before. Wait yes I do - I still have a bit of that co-dependent streak in me.
2) You’re my HUSBAND now, you HAVE to come with me, otherwise you shame me and my family for being absent from my side.

While staring at myself in the mirror tonight, trying to get a grip on my brain meats, it occurred to me that I - ZEPT - do not want to spend all that money in cold and snow to be running around trying to please parental units by being physically present for them. My father continually treats me like a 15-year-old, and my mother continuously wants me to try becoming Christian - for her.

I wouldn’t even have time to visit the extended maternal family - and ma says they don’t even gather at the holidays anymore, anyway. All this I have in my head is just romanticised childhood memories of extended family holiday gatherings that ceased to exist 23 years ago. Going back now and trying to make that a reality would fail on all levels - families have split up, grandparents, an uncle and a cousin have died, other cousins have abandoned the family and/or the family has abandoned them, and let’s not forget that several cousins have gone on to have their own children and broken homes at young ages.

Then there’s my childhood homes - my ma still lives in the one I grew up in during the week, and it’s still as gross and disheveled and legally condemnable as it ever was when I lived there. My father’s childhood home, which then was my childhood home on weekends, and then full time during the last two years of college - that house was sold a decade ago and got a second floor added onto it. And development has claimed much of the wetlands forest surrounding the property.

Then there’s my friends and chosen family. Many of them have grown up and now have families of their own. They work full time and/or cannot afford to go out anymore. They certainly don’t party or go out on weeknights anymore. Others moved out of state like I did.

We can still have an awesome Cabal Ball - I can declare that I want one and we can set a date. If not that then a nice dinner somewhere - people usually are able to make it to a dinner.

The friends thing is not a loss - just an adjustment.

So other than that, what am I chasing?

What do I NEED from going back there?

It’s ghosts, now. It’s swirling dust. It’s the past haunting my mind. I don’t want to go back to Michigan, I need to go back to put my life there to rest. But haven’t I done that already? I thought every time I go back there, I declare, “I’m SO glad I moved away!”
Don’t I find out the hard way every time that my Michigan vacation is not a vacation? It’s actually rushed and complicated and frustrating due to family dramas and cycles I can’t break free of.

The only thing I NEED from that place is genealogical and geographical historical research.
That’s what I want.

And knowing that, I can then declare that it is Not Worth It to put my husband through hell for the false notion that he must be at my side to represent our marriage. I realise I have been trying to prove to my family that I have somehow MADE IT away from the nest. I’m not sure I have - I need their validation that I have. In my head, I don’t know if I’m actually away from home or if I’m still there in my bedroom writing in my diary, wishing I was grown up and had moved away.

I think that not until I have cleaned out my mother’s house of every last scrap of my childhood will I feel a sense of closure on my past, and finally begin to grow up on my own.

There has been recent talk on my brother’s part of retiring my mother, selling off her house, and getting her settled into an apartment near his place three hours to the south.

Therefore I need to just WAIT, and when I find out for sure when my ma will be moving, THEN I can fly back home with or without my husband, and help ma move, and box up or throw out the rest of my crap, and bid a final farewell to that despicable old house we had to live in for so long - the house that contributed towards my low self-esteem and self-loathing just by its very nature of being so run down and smelly and flea infested and in a shitty neighborhood and looking so obviously inhabited by people living below poverty level.

There.
Now I guess I know what I want.