when you're strange.

It's funny, this getting better. Feeling good vs. feeling like shit is a crap shoot nowadays, which is better than a sure thing, at least in this case.

The bad side. When I'm feeling good, and I'm ready to get out well...no one's there. Very few people have stuck by me through this mess. I don't blame them. I was (and maybe still am) boring and sad. The ones that remain, or jumped on board my screwed up bus in spite of it all are great. I appreciate every walk, every message, every invite, every word of encouragement. One way to find out who's going to back you up is to get really, really sick. The same way you find out that our medical culture is a complete sham.

Instead of being pissed off, I've been thinking about better days. Letting my mind wander to faraway places I've been, people I've met, and everything lovely about both. Then I flip it. I think warmly of the people I know now, and the places I manage to go without having panic attacks (ie: Target, the grocery store, once around the park by myself). I think, "What next," more often. I've been thinking about what I'll think about all of this when I'm 80, should I make it there. Is that too much? Starting several years ago, I began a harsh scrutiny of every bad quality I think I possess. So did a bunch of other people, including my co-workers, some of my friends, and once in a while, my family.

Starting this year, I put a conscious halt to it. I've made a lot of changes. I don't work as much as most people. I broke out of a potentially lucrative career that was breaking me. I worry more about having less money, in lieu of worrying about work and making a lot more of it. And honestly, it's the lesser of the two evils. I stopped caring what anyone thought about it. My dad, who hated this change at first, keeps telling me I seem better. More relaxed. Happier. He's right, because in spite of the alcoholism, he sometimes still is.

More lately, I've been wondering what wisdom will come when I'm so old and so much time has passed that everything painful is just a faint scar on the face of my and our earthly years. Part of me dreads the aging, and part of me looks forward to every coming day.

“Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.”
― Tom Robbins

getting there.

I am tired. The past few months have been a steep climb, and I'm never prepared for just how heavy burdens can become if I forget to let some go along the way. At the same time, my new path is unfolding faster than I could have imagined.

It's been a while since my cat passed, but we still miss him every day. That was hard. And expensive. I don't regret the expense. I just figured the dent in our budget would recover in a month or two. Then last week, not even a month later, my tooth broke. One enormous cavity and filling later, my fear of the dentist has been conquered, only much too late. My fear of dental bills--it's only just beginning.

In the meantime, I think I'm finally getting better. Little. By. Little.

Even feeling good feels foreign to me. The emotional scars caused by whatever monster has had a firm and painful grip on my head run deep.  I'm no longer confident in my health, and the occasional mild relapse keeps me from ever being too sure about anything. This type of ailment--the kind with no rhyme, reason, or easy fix--isn't foreign to me. So I know the emotional burden of losing trust in my body's ability to function normally. I know that it's a long haul to trips out of town, finding comfort when I'm out of my element, and relief from the panic that comes and goes after this kind of uncomfortable and sometimes terrifying experience. I've given up on ever receiving a diagnosis. Blood test after blood test, cat scan after cat scan and nothing. At least I know I don't have Lupus.

My part-time job has turned out to be good medicine. I feel useful again, and serves as a reminder that I've come a long way since the first days of vertigo. Numbness in my face. Gone. Crackling in my head. Gone. Feeling like my soul is jumping out of my body as I try to fall asleep. Mostly gone. Feeling like I'm still moving when I'm stopped at a traffic light. Hardly noticeable anymore. Memories of all of these experiences...oh, how I'd love to erase them.

What's back? Thinking about writing. Ideas popping into my head while I'm driving. While I'm in the shower. When I'm having my coffee.

Even better medicine than my job? Feeling loved. Loving people back. Positive thinking. Literally imagining what life will be like when I'm well again. Picturing myself as a non-smoker in preparation for the biggest kick of my life. 

Wait, what? 

Yup. I'm thinking about...no not just thinking about, but planning exactly how I'm going to quit smoking. All of these health problems have been scary, and I've made a lot of lifestyle changes for the better. Yet I continue to reward all of my hard work by poisoning myself.

End game.

and the winner is...

It's been a busy couple of weeks. A few short points today:

1. My boyfriend texted me this morning and apologized for getting a parking ticket, after he forgot to move his car into the driveway last night. I rolled my eyes at his poor judgment, but thought, "Oh well. What's 15 bucks?"

Then I parked in a garage to meet a friend for lunch. I'm pretty sure it was always free before, but I neglected to read any of the 10 signs on my way in. I got a $25 parking ticket.

2. While I was having lunch with a friend and complaining about how said boyfriend can't cook or tell the difference between clean laundry and dirty laundry, he was spending his lunch hour at work building me a shelf for my closet. Even more impressive than the act of building the shelf itself is that I asked him just yesterday if he would build it.

3. I'm still learning how to be less of an ass. Thankfully, I have days like today to teach me.

for everything.

I don't have babies, therefore I have cats. If ever any living creature were going to get the best of what I have to offer in terms of love, respect, and endearment, it's my cats. I can say without hesitation that morally, I've never done them wrong. So losing one is like losing a part of me, and not just any part--one of the best parts.

I won't go on and on about all of the little reasons Lucky was a special cat. Anyone who met him already knows, and anyone who hasn't looked past his dirty fur and into in his big, innocent eyes could never imagine. There was the time he stuck his head behind the curtain to hide and started dropping deuce on the kitchen floor. Or the times I came home from a weekend away and he stood in front of me and near-yelled like I'd been gone for six months. And then there were the times he'd sleep quiet as a mouse on the pillow next to me. I'm thankful for all of it.



I wasn't prepared for being the only person who can decide whether or not to end the suffering. No matter who tells me it was for the best, that sliver of doubt is going to stay with me forever. I hope I never have to make that decision again.

So I'm a two-cat owner, now. It's taking the crazy out of my cat lady, and I am sad.

entertaining.

Since I last posted, I started a new job, my dad was released from detox (into the cold, cruel world without a sobriety plan), and one of my cats has a life-threatening ailment of unknown origin.

I don't know why things are the way they are, but I know all of the bad stuff will pass. Maybe it will get worse before it gets better, but I've quit saying, "I don't think I can take much more."

Why? Because it's self-limiting, as well as self-fulfilling. 

"I can't take much more of this shit," is a line in the sand. Because it's within your power, you draw the line. Pretty soon, more of this shit (over which you have no control) crosses it. Before it does, you've added another problem to an already long laundry list of shit you don't want in your life. In spite of and because of the line, you worry about what's going to happen to you when the shit crosses the line. I say, "you," but I mean me and anyone who feels anxious and depressed, just to clarify. Maybe you're going to cry. Maybe it's going to get so heavy that you yell at everyone you love. Maybe you're going to feel disappointed and hurt...again.

What's getting me through is something I told a friend recently. It was, "You're stronger than you think you are." However, it dawned on me not soon afterward that I hadn't lately been thinking it about myself. I came to a point where I had to--I was out of Ativan. By then, screw ups at the doctor's office as well as the pharmacy had kept me that way for a week. I probably could have included this in the "Since I last posted" paragraph, but whatever. I survived. 

Without a line in the sand, it didn't really matter that much, and the problem was solved by the next day. That brings us to yesterday. I took my Ativan (finally!) in the morning, took a shower, drove my sickly cat to the vet, came home, dressed for work, went to work, picked up the cat (and forked over $320 to the vet), and cooked dinner while prepping an apple crisp for the oven. After that, I still had to hand feed the cat and give him a pill, then feed him water from a syringe. I fell asleep at 10:30, having taken everything the day had dished out.

I'm still not miserable. I'm sad about my cat. I'm happy that my boyfriend doesn't even flinch when our budget takes an $805 hit because of my sick cat. I'm sad that my dad called me while he was wasted on Tuesday (and me without my Ativan, oh lord). I'm glad that he shared a funny memory about our old dog, even if his speech was mostly slurred. I'm ecstatic that I have Ativan again. I'm happy about my new job, even if it is part-time. It's part-time because I'm self-limiting in a healthy way for me. I'm sad because health insurance costs almost $400 a month, and I haven't quite figured that part out just yet. I'm sad because people I know and care about suffer terrible anxiety like I do. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone. I'm happy that my sister offered to pay for a month's worth of Lucky the cat's prescriptions should he need them. Unbeknownst to her, they were $8. I think I'll take her up on it, while I'm busy taking much more of this shit.

Anyway, sometimes you hold it together. Sometimes you buy a bottle of wine on a whim, then get a snow day, in exactly that order.

drive.

I'm making a content change. Or adding a content restriction: no more sick talk. Let's just from now on assume I'm feeling like crap a lot of the time, but posting anyway. When I get to the bottom of this mystery, I'll talk about it. Otherwise, mum's the word. The other day, it occurred to me that this may be a food allergy, so I've adopted a gluten-free diet, which seems to be making a difference. The last thing I'll say about feeling sick, is that if I figure it out before my doctors do, I want them to pay me for doing their job. 

Moving on. I've had a great week, even with a few snags. I went in Wednesday morning to fill out all of the hiring paperwork for my new job. It's complicated. It's amazing how things work out, because during that exact time, my Dad was starting over again, too. Happy detoxing, pops.

Am I not supposed to talk about this online? Is this the wrong forum for airing dirty laundry? If that's the case, I'll just talk about me.

I'm the daughter of an alcoholic. I can't even figure out all of the ways this has shaped how I behave, how I love, or how I will continue to become the person I'd like to be. If sometimes that crosses the clothesline of a reader's comfort zone, so be it. I'm not here to create a virtual utopia, and I don't have a way to filter the fact that people have the most impact on my life, whether I want them to or not. I share these things because in some way I think they are important to someone. Not because they are about me, but because maybe somewhere down the road someone will find me here, even by accident. 

And maybe that person will need to read about someone else who is anywhere, trying to sort everything out just the same.

Every one of these topics are based on things I might talk about in my daily life. My daily struggle to live. To live with my mistakes, my successes, or what I feel are my shortcomings. Sometimes I like to talk about things like our current medical culture. That they're pushing me and anyone else looking for help with emotional difficulties into taking prescriptions to solve their problems. Yet, suicide rates are up, and have continued to climb. I wish there were more I could do to address this, but I'm only one person. Part of my struggle with this is also related to some dirty laundry that I may need to air for clarity's sake, since I've also vowed to quit being vague and elusive on the internet. It's pointless. You either have something to say, or you don't.

[I digress. I have at least enough of a filter to know that mean things said without purpose or provocation are best kept to yourself. If you find you have to encrypt something so you don't sound mean, it's probably not worth saying.]

So I talk about me, with everyone in the world in mind. I'm not a narcissist. And if I seem to be, just think about how much time during the day a depressed person thinks about themselves. A hint: it's all fucking day.

O.K. Back to the part where I had a good week. I got a job. It seems like it's going to be great. I guess that was really the only great thing that happened, but it was enough to keep me going. 

“In my paranoid world every storekeeper thinks I’m stealing, every man thinks I’m a prostitute or a lesbian, every woman thinks I’m a lesbian or arrogant, and every child and animal sees the real me and it is evil.” --Miranda July, It Chooses You

while i was sleeping.

All that football was exhausting. I've been spending a lot of time trying to get my anxiety under control, and that said, I've been looking for its root cause. When I watch television, depending on what I'm watching, I feel a lot of things. I can't watch disturbing movies, or even some emotional dramas if the content is horribly upsetting. It's not even that I don't like them. If it's done well, and there isn't anything technically wrong that breaks my attention, I absorb everything. Bad guys, good guys...it doesn't matter. And once I absorb it, it's as if someone gave me an emotional transplant. The same goes in my everyday life. Every encounter is the same. If you feel sad, I feel sad and want to fix it immediately. If someone is homeless, I observe their position, their injuries, the discomfort and hunger, and then I literally feel all of it from the inside out.

I know that this is empathy. I'm in a constant state of emotional overload, and my walls are thin. I think over the past year I developed a feeling that if I could just become invisible, I wouldn't cause people to feel so much, which in turn would help me feel less of everything overwhelming. Off and on, I think I knew that I shouldn't be making myself invisible, so I'd try harder--almost force myself to get out there and be someone who isn't.

Anyway.

I landed a job this week at a college. I start next week, and having been around a few of the classrooms and in some of the halls, I feel happy. Even if I'm not taking any classes, I'm thrilled to be around all of that education and stuff. I love to learn. I hope to take a few lessons from the job, and maybe even a few classes at a later date. First I need to get a handle on the job. A better handle on my life, even. But for getting this particular job, I am proud. This means no more selling insurance, less unemployment, and a fresh start. It's not that I didn't like insurance. I knew it, and well. I couldn't stand working with the customers, and I think now it was the stupid empathy.

Over the last several months, I kept hoping I'd wake up one day and all of my health problems would vanish...that I'd get to start over. That's not going to happen, so I'm going to have to start over now, and hope all of these nasty symptoms begin to dissipate over time. Figures, I get empathy, but no patience.

I just hope I'm well enough to start this new thing without too much additional discomfort. And if I'm not, that's o.k., too. If I've learned anything on unemployment it's that I can do more than I thought I could with a lot less of everything. 


"Wealth, in terms of dollars and so forth, could be counted up, because dollars were finite. It doesn't make any difference how many dollars you have--at a certain point you only have dollars. You start with finite, you end with finite." -Mike Nesmith