I wanted to get my mail today. I only check every week or two, because no news is good news, right?
It isn’t just the mail. I feel a certain existential dread when checking my voicemail. I think of all the bad scenarios that someone could leave on voicemail. Something with my apartment complex or my social worker.
I’ve taken to checking my front door twice a day for something from the apartment complex. I know my neighbors must hear me open the door and quickly shut it again. They must either think I’m the nosiest bitch in the world or that I’m totally nuts. Knowing that one of the maintenance guys now lives across the hall exacerbates everything. He tries to be nice when we see each other, and I try to reciprocate to the best of my ability, which ain’t so great. Looking in someone’s eyes is like looking directly at the sun. Smiling makes me self-conscious because I feel like my lips clamp together paralyzed, and knowing my teeth are ground down from years of bruxism, I just can’t. I imagine my neighbors think I’m autistic, slow, and may know I’m a cat lady.
But yes, I went to get my mail…and my mail key wasn’t on my fob. Panic set in. I will have to go to the office on Monday. First, I’ll ask if anyone turned in a key, and then, heaven forbid, ask for another. Logically, I know I shouldn’t feel like the world is about to end when I have to venture there for something, but I see those times as dangerous. Potential questions asked, complaints foisted on me, as though reminding them of my presence is enough to make me homeless. I got a note from my shrink with some shit about my friend needing to park by my building in order to help me about a month ago. I have yet to turn in said note, the wages of playing the tard card so my friend wouldn’t have to walk a long distance from the dark visitors’ parking lot and potentially get her car broke into at night. Maybe I’ll have the courage to give it to the assistant manager to keep that vulture towing guy off her car. Wish me luck!
It was 10 years ago today that my mother died. I only had one purpose in life and that was being her daughter. That morning I lost the only person who actually needed me. From that day on, I switched to survival mode. Ten years without a family and the knowledge that I only exist to take up space. It is what it is.
Everyone leaves or dies, or both. This year, the cousin who let me know I was disowned after Mom’s death, died. He lived to be almost 80. Did his conscience ever get to him? I’ll never know because I’m too much of a coward to contact his sister. I don’t want to be rejected again.
Also, this year, the last person who loved me unconditionally, died. Died in an accident with a drunk driver. I feel so guilty.
I can’t believe I’ve made it 10 years and am relatively independent. My life may have little meaning, but I’m still alive. I keep expecting worse things to happen, but I’ve always felt I was on the precipice of fate. One step forward and I could plummet.
Will I catch covid and die in a similar way to my mother? Will I step in front of a bus or will I just collapse one backday? Would anyone notice or care?
My friend is mad again because I didn’t notice a text. I sometimes wonder if she would miss me if I died or if she’d just find someone else. One thing I’ve learned is never to expect the same amount of compassion you give, and in one way or another, everyone leaves in the end.
The holy rollers at my primary school used to say that God strikes down useless people ( more or less) and that God only gives a few chances. It must not be true because I’m still breathing, useless or not. My mediocrity and lack of intelligence or beauty notwithstanding.
Generally, I’m content in my solitude. My mother’s ashes are nearby, but mainly disregarded in the discount crematory plastic box. One day, when I have the courage to fulfill her wish to be scattered at sea. I can’t let go yet.
It’s the overt stuff that reminds me I’m alone. My social worker, the most tactful woman on earth said, “Don’t you have any family? Your mother’s gone? Not even cousins?”
No. But it’s not entirely true. I have some second cousins, but they made it clear as my mother lay in the hospital morgue that they wanted nothing to do with me.
And then I made someone mad while he was drunk and he told me I wasn’t his bartender, his mother, and NOT HIS FAMILY. We aren’t even friends, but he knows more or less, an outline of my life. While I can’t be certain, I think he meant to cut me to the core. Perhaps he is trying for my own good to excise the unfortunate feelings that crept up on me. Were I beautiful, an uber socialist SJW, and maybe 12 years younger, maybe I would have said something to him someday…if he didn’t think of me as an ugly, naive sow.
It’s almost my 42nd birthday, and I’ve found out a few things about myself within the past week. Though the consensus of people I casually meet is that I’ m an imbecile, the truth is I’m average. My psychological evaluation says I have a 96 IQ. When I picture a 96 IQ, I imagine me in a MAGA hat with a Q-anon T-shirt, waiting to get into a Trump rally with some of his more gnarly supporters. But at least I’m not mentally challenged. I probably do have a learning disability, which is super nifty to know now that I haven’t been in school in 20 something years. My vocabulary is high average, my processing speed is borderline MR. Ain’t life a bitch? I guess that neurologist when I was 11 was right about me having mild cerebral palsy.
Though the psychologist only put unspecified learning disability, looking around Dr. Google, I think I have “nonverbal learning disorder.” It’s a little bit like being autistic without actually being autistic.
Egads, I also have GAD. Not terribly surprised by this either. I don’t have to obsess on something to be anxious, so I have 2 anxiety disorders.
I don’t have a personality disorder, but I have characteristics of both dependent and avoidant personality disorders. Charming.
Other fun observations include that I’m slightly older looking than I am, that my hygiene is ‘fair,’ and that I’m a troubled and insecure woman. Oh, and a bit of a hypocondriac, I despise myself, and I’m disappointed in my looks. Beautiful, Lisa.
“….but I’m not stupid.” That will be my mantra from now on.
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It seems there are a few maladies unable to be conquered by waiting for them to go away, that there are some things that will make the most reluctant patient go to the doctor. My abject horror of disease-finding doctors kept me away from them in cases most people would go to a physician. Like that time I thought I had Swimmer’s Ear, or the time I had that giant pus-filled boil and could barely lift my arm (sorry to be graphic). The only time in around five years or so that I had to get a medicine, not referring to my antidepressants, was the time I got oral thrush and ended up at my dentist’s. Genius here thought it would be fabulous for my gums if I kept Listerine in my mouth slightly over the minute directed on the bottle….. like 19 minutes over the time on the bottle. Cleanliness may very well be next to godliness, but this doesn’t pertain to the bacteria of the mouth. Of course I thought I had oral cancer, then, after my mother explained what thrush was, that I was sure I had a compromised immune system and had ‘caught’ AIDS in a nontraditional way. …Ever the optimist if not the deep thinker. But anyway…
One morning I woke up and went to the bathroom to receive an unpleasant surprise of almost red urine, to which I immediately told my mother. She at first wanted to say it was still my Aunt Flo, but I told her that good lady of red blessings packed up and left at least two days ago. This had happened to me a couple of times months ago, but it went away and my bladder kept its peace until now. This time would not be the same. From almost red urine, I began to void red clumps and spots (again, sorry to be graphic). I just chalked it all up to bladder cancer or kidney failure.
For the first day or two my mother remained optimistic that I just had a long period, but my stomach and back now began to hurt and I seemed to pee less. To strain gave me a bit of a burning sensation. Then, joy of joys, I had my once every 3 months pill pusher’s psychiatrist’s appointment to go to while I barely could stand up for the pain and dizziness. It was today I planned to ask her to switch me to a medicine I only tried for a while because I am desperate to end the need to be perfect and the overwhelming anger at not being able to live to my standards. If you feel like you have to restart all the time you might be pretty pissed off and on edge too. Though I was half dead, I still asked. Recall, gentle reader, I’ve mentioned this sort of thing before, my medicine not working well (I sort of cringe when I read one sentence in it, embarrassing! But you can have a look if you didn’t have the fortune of following my fascinating, deep chronicles of my life in April:
My psychiatrist heard me out and this time she decided it would be better that she increase my dose rather than change my medicine. I take 300 mg of Luvox, which is the maximum dose recommended, so she upped it to 350 and would have me back in a month to see whether I was still alive.
“We’ll have to watch out for Serotonin Syndrome,” she pronounced as she scratched my new prescription on the pad.
“But I’d have symptoms before I fall dead of it, right?”
“Usually.” Ain’t life grand?
Before giving the prescription, she asked me if I was having any health problems.
“No!” You can go to hell for lying, you know, Nelly?
I decided I wouldn’t start the brave new dosage until I was over whatever settled on my kidneys. Let one thing kill me before another thing decided to give it a go.
I got progressively worse. I didn’t make it to the toilet twice, thinking I only had to slightly go when my bladder played a dirty trick on me. Freaking out, I told my mother, “That can’t be a kidney infection can it? That isn’t a symptom is it?” I was convinced I had kidney failure/diabetes/cancer/AIDS.
“Yes it can. You have a kidney infection and you need to go to the doctor.”
“No!” Look, I knew I had kidney failure/diabetes/cancer/AIDS and I had no desire to hear a doctor tell me I was as good as dead.
“If you don’t get better really soon, you’re going to the doctor .”
“OK.”
But I wasn’t about to go without a fight with my immune system if not my mother.
I began a war of feverish, almost sleepless nights where I felt like I was freezing. My temperature at its highest was 103 and if I coughed my brain felt like it was exploding. So I told my mother if I wasn’t better by the time I finished an entire jug of cranberry juice I would go to the doctor. So I drank my juice, took Tylenol for my fever, and Azo for urinary pain. I had no appetite.
Curiously enough, as I was dying, I began to worry about a blogger thinking she might have caused my malady and I knew it wasn’t, but I was much afraid she thought so. So I says to my Mom, “If I die, please let her know it wasn’t her, that I knew the frozen tampon thing was a joke to begin with anyway.” Well sometime or another I felt better enough to let her know myself. Strange what the mind thinks about when sporting a fever. I said something along the lines that my vagina was just fine and all, but if it had been my vagina ending me, perhaps my death would have warranted a Darwin Award and I could say I had not died in vain.
I guess it’s OK to explain, because if any of you read the comments on a blog, you might have seen what I did just because I was curious a little. I knew the post was a great joke, but I hadn’t dared myself to do something ignorant since my teens when I ate an ornamental pepper and ate a whole packet of mustard down with nothing else. The good old days, you know? (Such an attention whore to be so shy). So I decided to try freezing my tampon just because I could. I left this comment on her blog:
So I left it in the freezer about 4 hours, hidden behind a half-used box of spaghetti. It was one of those new “U” tampons, a blue one, which is really apropos for freezing. Somehow they think if tampons come in bright colors that you’ll buy them…well it worked for me (though I believe I prefer others….neither here nor there)
Anywho 4 hours later I remove the package from the freezer, and I’d be a liar if I wasnt thinking about those tasty ice cream on a stick things as I hurriedly stuck it iin my pocket.
The package was cold but yay! no freezer burn! I open the package and yes the applicator was cold, So I ….
The applicator was cold, not like Ice Man taking advantage cold. More like jumping in a pool in May cold, but God bless America, the actual tampon was only slightly cool.
It was a chilling experience and makes me wonder if there actually are people who do this junk.
But I climbed Mt. Everest and I conquered.
When I started vomiting, I knew Game Over on Save Myself with Cranberry Juice. If indeed I had a kidney infection instead of or along with kidney failure/diabetes/cancer/AIDS, I was getting in the stage before it gets in your blood and damages your kidneys, which = FUCKED. Little did I know how difficult it actually would be to see a doctor.
My mother called the local Medac urgent care, which takes Medicaid if you’re first approved. Sort of takes the point away from ‘urgent’ doesn’t it?
My mother called Social Services and I could be approved for a certain doctor’s office, so we called there, and they could pencil me in on November 15. Great. I might literally be dead by then! They suggested I go to the emergency room if I couldn’t wait that long. Perhaps it’s unfair of me to be cross since they had never seen me before, but cross I was and am. Here I am trying to die here and all, dang.
I hope y’all won’t be cross, but gonna stop here and continue later. I can’t believe I’ve written this much and only now get to my guest appearance on ER. Anyway, in Part 2 expect our heroine to go to the damn emergency room, return to her version of ‘normal,’ and get freaked out at the therapist. Important junk like that!
(This short post was started March 31, then set aside , only to be finished today. Besides, I could not bear to not finish it when I liked the title so much).
Once upon a time (like yesterday), I took a look in the bathroom mirror and my eyes were red, particularly my right eye. Not like bloodshot-been-opening-my-eyes-too-long-underwater-someone-been-on-a-drunk-red, much weirder. A horizontal line seemed to divide my eye in half in the middle, reddish at the bottom half and normal white on top.
I looked into the eyes of death.
Or something…
My mind began to conjure up what symptom of my imminent death was this.
I had mostly given up my of several years’ obsession with the idea of contracting AIDS by bizarre means not pertaining to intercourse or needles, so scratch that one for now.
Cancer? Maybe that’s it, I thought. I always swam in outdoor pools without goggles due to my high tolerance for chlorine, and I loved looking at the sun’s rays dancing on the pool’s bottom.
So I ask my mother, a retired nurse, what dread disease is this one?
What malady is about to dispatch me, to nail the lid of my coffin, strike me down in the prime of my life?
Ramblings about my life, my mental health & my physical rehabilitation following my suicide attempt. “They say don’t look back, but sometimes it’s important to see how far you’ve come.”
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