Holy shitballs... Can I catch a break please!!!???

Seriously.  It feels like every week there's something new that fucks up. I'm really getting tired of this cycle repeating itself. My stress levels look like Mt. McKinley on acid.

My Mom and I were talking last week and she mentioned that she wished we could get a good fishing day or two in before my Dad has his surgery on July 6th. So I made a special point to drive in Friday night and visit with them over the weekend. So Friday morning I wake up and it's sooooo hot in the house. I noticed my A/C unit wasn't on.... but whenever we get a power surge it often turns off so I just figured that happened while I was sleeping. So I turn it back on and go to the bathroom. I come back and it's off again. Damnit. I'm thinking to myself, maybe I need a better surge protector. I know that the unit is supposed to be plugged directly into the wall, but I live in an old mill house and there are only 2 power outlets in the living room, and neither of them are anywhere near the only window (where the unit is). So I go to Home  Depot and buy a heavy duty power surge protector ($40 damn dollars eeek!). I plug it in and it seems to work great. After half an hour of watching it I go ahead and pack my car up and head out. In the meantime I call a friend who has a key to my place and ask him to check on it over the weekend, which he does and messages me Saturday that everything was good.

Fast forward to this past evening. I get home at about 9pm (Monday) and walk into the house. The a/c unit is running but it's not putting out any cold air. What it's spitting out is barely cool air and the house is over 87 degrees. DAMNIT! So once again I clean the filter, which I had already done, and reset the unit. I try everything that I can think of, and that Google can tell me to try, to get it working. The fan works but the compressor doesn't seem to be kicking on. Lovely.

And now my maintenance request is in at the new property manager (which are so new I haven't even paid rent to them yet), and their website says that it could be up to 14 business days before they can get out and then they may or may not decide to fix/replace the a/c. Holy Jebus. In the mean time, there's a fat-ass, menopausal woman who does NOT do well in the heat at all. I don't mean that I don't do well because I don't like it.... I mean my body reacts in a VERY non-pleasant way. I start to overheat very quickly because I don't sweat as much or as often as most people do. (I have no clue why but it seems to be genetic.) And it's been over 95 degrees quite a few days lately. Oh yeah, and I can't open any windows because they've all been screwed/painted shut for years before I got here. YAY!!!!!!  These next couple of weeks are not going to go well my friends; not at all.

You know I have tried and tried to stay positive. I know that the Universe is going to give me what I am focused on the most. But it seems like no amount of my trying or focusing on positive things can overpower the bitch that is my subconscious mind, (which apparently is not only an annoying bitch but also a masochist). I guess I should have assumed this all along; after all I was a cutter for many years. Bah. Wish me luck that I can handle this until some resolution is reached.

3am ramblings

Lion King was awesome! I kept wondering how they were going to take animated animals and tell a story as humans. They did it beautifully and I think that Mom really enjoyed the show. They even came down the aisles and made the audience feel like they were a part of the production. We had GREAT seats, (I had bought seats on the platform for those with a handicap/mobility issue) and could see everything pretty well. We took a cab there and back so we wouldn't have to fight for parking. That was an experience in itself. I've not been in a cab too terribly often in my life, but it seems that the usual thing now is just for average people to drive their own cars and call it a business. Welcome to the age of uber drivers.

The other big news is that I now have a stackable washer and dryer! YAY! Mom happened to find one at a yard sale for cheap and took a risk that it would work. After having one of her friends drive it up here (he just moved to my town), I paid Bobby and his son to move it into the house and hook it up. After cleaning it up a little bit it looks brand new and works like a charm! My god it is so great to be able to wash a load of laundry at 2am without having to wait for a machine, listen to screaming little kids running around, or have to deal with puddles of water on the floor. It's the small things in life.....  I really hadn't planned on getting one until after I found out if they were going to up the rent when my lease is up in September, but it really was a steal so there ya go. I truly am stressed and worried about them changing the rent and me not being able to afford it. I can barely afford it now and have been selling everything I can to pay the bills. The property management company has been changed AGAIN so I just had to go through the entire process of getting approved to access my account online. With all of this shuffling around of landlords it makes me nervous. Fingers crossed that they just keep things the same and let me sign another 12 months lease. Please!!!

While Ma was here we also went to see Wonder Woman. It was such a good movie! When we were waiting in the theater for the movie to start, Mom was telling me how she remembered when I was a little girl and I used to love the tv show. She asked me if I remembered running around the house flicking my arms all around and playing like I had Wonder Woman's bracers on my wrists/arms. I said yep, I totally remember that. Little Wonder Woman; that was me! It's nice for little boys and girls today to have a strong, capable female super hero that gets things done by herself and doesn't depend on a man for anything to look up to. It really was so encouraging and inspiring to see.

Once again my sleeping is entirely fucked up. I should just be used to this fact by now. The past few days I've been in a funk and not feeling well. Some of it is mindset and some of it is just not feeling good. I used to have migraines in high school... we're talking serious enough to have CT scans, a neurologist, and medication that put me on my ass almost instantly. As I got older they slowly faded away, but I've had a wicked headache for the past two days. I don't know if it's blood pressure, stress, sugar fluctuating up and down like mad, or something else entirely. BUT IT SUCKS!! I'm so ready for this headache to be gone. Ugh.

I think this post has been long enough and I really don't have any witty things to express at the moment, so this was primarily just an update for my therapist to be aware of how I'm feeling at the moment. So there ya go. Until next time..... stay out of the heat!

It's so hot even my salt lamps are sweating...

I shit you not. Yes, I realize that it's normal for salt lamps to sweat and leave salt on the table around them. But DAMN it's been hot lately! I hate summer, truly. For those of you who have never had the privilege of living in the deep south, (and by that I mean DEEP SOUTH, namely... SC, NC, GA, TN, and AL) you will never understand the true hell of 100% humidity on a sweltering hot day. I've lived in Arizona, a mere 30ish miles from the Mexican border in the middle of a desert, where it was 120 degrees in the shade... and it still was more pleasant than a hot summer day in SC. Yuck. Bring on the fall and winter please!

It was a pretty bad day today. My mood was not the problem but my body was. Every week and a half or so it gets to the point where I have a day where my body just doesn't seem to want to function. I am so exhausted and icky feeling that I just can't stay awake. So most of the day I spent trying to stay in the dark, coolness and get some energy back. When I finally did wake up I watched the Jeff Sessions hearing which I had DVR'd and was totally disgusted. I really dislike that man. He reminds me of what would be produced if a Keebler elf and this aggravating little ass from the Hitler youth army had a love child.

 

Seriously. Like WTF man? Anyway, this entire political year has been ass-backwards and it's easy to get worked up over the idiots that back this hateful rhetoric. I can only look forward to the next elections when we can reverse this idiocracy that exists now.

I really wanted to get a few things accomplished this week, but for the most part I didn't get as much done as I should have. I did get my cutting board put together and sanded down, and now it's ready to stain. I sold a few more things on ebay and offerup, which will help pay at least one bill. I still have some more things to put up but I still have to take pictures.

Tomorrow I have a dr. appointment and I have to attempt to figure out where I'm moving some things in the kitchen to. I have to clean out the area in the kitchen in order to get to where the connections for the washer/dryer are. When your apartment is so small though it's an act of congress to figure out where to move anything to, even just temporarily.

I'm looking forward to Friday. Mom is coming back up for the weekend because we have tickets to go see the Lion King live! We've had tickets since before the new year, as they were a Christmas present. I don't know what we're going to do about parking yet but we shall see. I hope that we can just pay to park somewhere close and not have to do a lot of walking, as hiring an uber or a cab will cost almost 30 bucks! Which, by the way, I think is totally ludicrous. I hope Mom really enjoys the show. She has never seen a Broadway show (neither have I actually), but I have always loved the theater plays that I've seen and I also love musicals for the most part. I just want her to have fun and enjoy it.

So I guess that's about all for now. I hope that tomorrow I am feeling a bit better and that my body has some energy. It really does suck to feel like your body is just a lifeless husk. Bother.

Bruce Lee Kicked my Ass

Once again it's been quite a while since I've been here. No excuses; it's just the way it is. Last year I was working with a therapist that I called "Rhea" who was appointed to me from the cancer center. She met with me a few times and told me that she wanted me to journal again and so I did. Eventually she just never returned my call or set up a new appointment and so that ended that. Honestly ya'll, I didn't do anything really crazy at all! She had asked me about religious beliefs and I honestly told her a little bit about my beliefs and well....... I guess that severed that link. How someone can call themselves a therapist and then cut off anyone who isn't Christian like them is beyond me, but what can you do?

So from that point on, well almost a year I guess, I've been dealing with things myself. Some things have been better and some have been much worse. Last month I decided to ask my doctor at the clinic to refer me to one of the therapists there and she did. Luckily my new therapist is pretty damn cool and she seems to not be threatened or frightened of my outlooks on life. Hah! She wanted me to journal again too so here I am. We'll name her "Lois" in honor of Achelois, (a moon Goddess whose name meant 'she who washes away pain').

What's been happening in my world, you might ask. I'm still attempting to finish school and am officially a senior according to the college. I've tried to find a job and put in a good many applications but due to the physical restrictions there just hasn't been anything that I'm qualified for. And those that I could physically do require a degree that I don't have yet. So yeah... catch 22! I've been living off of my school loans and I've been selling a lot of my shit to pay bills. I guess I'm lucky that I saved up all kinds of stuff for years in preparation of moving and having my own place. It's just stuff.... some of it is hard to let go because of the dreams I had tied up with them, but for the most part I let it go because I know those dreams are gone now and things have changed so much. When it's time to create new dreams then I'll just start anew. I'm not the same person that I was so there's no point in holding onto those old things. Needless to say, things have been pretty tight some weeks.

I'm still dealing with a lot of stress and anxiety. Lois says that I have depression. Well duh. I've been depressed all of my life, (well at least since about the age of 10). At this point, after 30 years of feeling damaged inside, I'm pretty much a pro at hiding it behind a happy mask. She told me that I seem to be a pretty positive person and I'm usually happy. That makes me feel a little proud and a little disturbed. Proud, because I've done a good job at locking all those emotions away so successfully. Disturbed because I've done a good job at locking all those emotions away so successfully. Yep that's me. All kinds of double edge sword ninja tricks. Bruce Lee totally kicked my ass.

What's changed other than me? I've had to let some relationships go or at least cool off drastically. I really had no choice in this. It was either take that step or continue letting them hurt me because either they A) didn't care about me in the first place, or B) they were too selfish and decided that hurting me was a way to get me to do what they wanted or to make themselves feel superior. So for the most part I stay at home alone and hang out. From time to time I'll venture out and hang with my friends Bobby, Dawn, and Sam. We have a good time together and none of us are trying to use the other for some reason or another. We all help each other out when we need it and I'm so grateful for their friendships. It's nice to have people that understand that real friendships are a give and take and not just a take take take take with no give. But other than that it's just me. It's pretty lonely and sometimes I have trouble with that so I try to make the most of it.

I turned 40 last month. I never thought I'd live to 40. Not in a million years did I believe that. Honestly, many days I wish I hadn't lived to 40. I promised my Mom a long time ago that as long as she was alive I wouldn't hurt myself, and because I love her so much I have done my best to keep that promise. She deserves so much and that is the only real thing that I can give her. However, that doesn't keep me from hoping some days that I would just not wake up. If I die naturally it would still hurt her I know but there's nothing I can really do about that and at least she would know I kept my word. Not trying to sound morbid, mind you. It's just the honest truth of how I feel. I don't mind taking a shower in a thunderstorm now because if lightning hits me it's not really that big of a deal. How's that for fucked up?! HAH!

One day at a time. That's how I tend to get by at the moment. I try to just get through this day. Some days it's much, much harder than others.

I suppose one of the biggest issues for me right now is dealing with the loss of possibilities. I had always wanted to have kids I think, even though I didn't realize quite what I was feeling until I was much older. There was some part of me that knew that it was probably better that I didn't have kids because our family line really needed to end with me and my brother, (he's totally in agreement with that as well). Our family is far too fucked up to pass the same cycles down to another generation. It is better to end with us. Knowing that doesn't change those feelings, however, and as a woman I think it's embedded in our DNA to have that desire to reproduce.

I've always loved kids and have always wanted to have a child, as well as to make my Mom a Grandma. Even though I knew that the odds were 99% against having a kid, up until the cancer there was always that slight possibility that it could happen. (Now other than the health issues, there were a VAST amount of mental and emotional roadblocks to that ever happening... but the heart wants what the heart wants and logic need not apply.) After the cancer surgery though, all of that was gone. I don't feel as though my 'womanhood' is gone as some I've talked to feel; I just feel that the chances and possibilities were ripped away from me. As one lady told me, it's like I'm grieving the death of the child that I never was able to have. It feels like a death and a loss. It feels like grieving the life that never was to be. I don't know how else to explain it, and I know it doesn't make sense to anyone whose never felt the same. How can someone mourn what never was? But there it is folks; there's this huge, gaping black hole in the soul. And what is a black hole? To use one definition they are: "A region of space having a gravitational field so intense that no matter, light, or radiation can escape." To use another definition they are: "A place where people or things, especially money, disappear without trace." And there you have it. The black hole in my life has caused the possibilities to disappear without a trace with no trace of light escaping.

It is hard to explain these feelings to anyone else, so I really don't talk about them. I've tried to explain them to those who are close to me but they choose to either ignore or dismiss them. For example, I've had one friend that I've known since I was about 18 years old. We've never lived near each other, (we met in a chatroom), but I've visited her a couple of times in person and we stay in touch over the phone almost every day. I love her to death. She has never wanted children and in fact she has always been adamant about not wanting kids. Two years ago she got pregnant and was a little upset about it, however she is Catholic and doesn't believe in abortion so she decided to have the baby. Now don't get me wrong; I'm extremely happy for her that she had her little girl and doesn't regret it now - but I still have to listen to her almost every day complain about her kid. She loves her; but she also complains a LOT about it. I don't mind letting her vent, but quite often she makes remarks like, "Oh you're so lucky that you don't have to worry about kids" or, "Be happy that you'll never have to deal with a kid", etc. There are numerous other comments like that, but you get the general idea. Hearing those things cuts me to the bone, and what's worse is that she knows how it makes me feel. I've told her that they really hurt me because I'll never have that chance, but she still makes those comments often. I just don't say anything anymore; it's easier that way because people don't get it. They don't try to get it. They don't understand how sometimes seeing a pretty baby in the store or on TV can rip that wound open anew. Hell, I was almost in tears the other day sitting outside the pharmacy waiting for medication because I was sitting directly across from the baby aisle with all those kids on the diaper boxes staring out. I know... crazy right?!

So, yeah... you feel like a failure as a woman. And for me, it makes me angry and resentful towards myself for making my life such a mess that I never was able to realize the opportunity of having a family. It makes me hate myself even more because once again, my fucked up mental and emotional situations controlled my life and stole those things from it.  Add all of that anger, resentment, hatred, grief, sense of loss, pain, failure, and anxiety together and some days it is quite crippling. Some days it's hard to even make it to the bathroom and get a shower, or make myself eat. (Imagine that, a fat girl who finds it hard to eat!)

And on that note I think I'm going to end that post here. If I dwell on it too much it just depresses me even more and I don't really want to wallow in it tonight. :) Here's to hoping for a decent tomorrow.