New Year, Same Old

How can I feel in any way hopeful for a new year when I’m shredded to pieces a few hours before midnight. The night previous I went with my friend to the emergency room and marinated for 8 hours in God only knows what kind of pathogens during a pandemic. I foolishly believed this alone would give me a pass for whatever near future transgressions I would commit. I was wrong.

The nurse practitioner suggested something was elevated by 300 points, which could indicate congestive heart failure, but people have had readings in the hundreds of thousands. “Follow up with your primary,” said the NP, who was eager to go off duty. My friend wanted a covid test and the RN was pissed, so it seemed she used just a bit more vigor than necessary, as though she wished to hit my friend’s medulla. Some tech practically dug into her veins and didn’t get blood at first. It was a farce, the whole thing. And it didn’t help that my friend’s sunshine disposition was showing itself.

There was an old man with dementia who continuously made noises and she said in a jesting voice ( but not really) “can’t they give him something?”

The intake area was filled with all sorts of people young and old passing through. A psych patient kept asking everyone who passed by if they were a nurse. Some tersely said no, others completely ignored her. One tech took her purse and put it at the nurse station because she was afraid someone would steal her meds. When she finally got a nurse she begged to be put somewhere else because she was afraid to be out here with all these people. My own paranoia whipped up and I was afraid she was scared of me. She had changed seats, but during Covid that’s understandable. Finally someone came for her and they ushered her along as she told them she had talked suicide 30 times. “Tell the nurse,” the escort said.

Another fellow with an injured arm who could barely walk or hablarse íngles almost got served by a cop, but since he couldn’t understand, 5-0 went in search of his family.

A woman, likely a hoarder, had brought a bunch of stuff with her, and an EMT helped her carry it to a sitting area. The last I saw of her, she had commandeered a wheelchair and was arranging everything on it. I surreptitiously snapped a photo.

But to my sin. I asked my friend the next day if she got the results of the covid test. They were negative. We had hoped it would be positive, because the elevated fluid or whatever it is can be brought on by infection.

I was trying to figure out what I was going to do for the evening, and I was afraid if I didn’t ask her if she wanted to do something for New Years Eve that she’d be upset. So I asked her if she wanted to do something. I didn’t hear back, so I ordered a pizza.

And then it happened. As though I lit kerosene. ” The proper question would’ve been, how are you?”

The conversation followed a similar trajectory to the other times she’s been mad over me not doing something right. I lack empathy. That I’m missing a chip upstairs. Wait until I’m sick and it won’t be pretty.

I try to apologize, that I thought she only felt bad if she exerted herself. I wish I could convey how upset I was by what she was saying. I kept wishing I was dead intermingled with rage. I risked my health to be with her. Not many would. She knows I’m pretty sure my mom got the pneumonia that killed her in a hospital waiting room.

There were reminders of death as we waited. Two code Sepsis rang out, a protocol not started until almost a year after my mom’s death. I suppose Oscar probably heard his Code Sepsis over the intercom. We also heard two people code blue.

I’ve always hoped I’d be the first to go since I’m huge and not needed much. I don’t want to be alone again. Everyone leaves one way or another.

Filling the Hole

Perhaps “Filling the Hole” is not a wise choice of name preceding my last post, but what the hell.

I am fine physically, in spite of my lifelong belief otherwise. Now I need to know why I’m alive. After my mother’s death, my life’s purpose croaked too.   My organs were supposed to shut down, one after the other, in solidarity with my mother. Until the age of 33, I had one identity: daughter. My identity died September 13, 2011. My family was dead except for a few distant relatives. I called my mother’s first cousin, Charles, but he was still angry at my mother for distancing herself from the family after my grandmother died. Cold in the morgue or not,  them there mountain grudges die hard. He was nice in that he never said he was mad at my mom, but it was a “don’t call us, we’ll call you,” scenario. I wonder if sometimes he and his sister wonder whatever happened to me. Now I was no one’s daughter, no one’s family member. I didn’t belong anywhere. It made me even more certain that God overlooked me the day my mother died.

Now look at me. Almost 37, and once again reminded that for no particular reason, I’m still alive. I played the hand dealt, and I’m the only one holding my cards now. I did pretty well for myself considering all the blows that came that first year. My mother died and I gained the love of my life. Then the love of my life, gay man that he was, used my love for him against me. I’m still in love with the illusion he painted. The one person in the world who understood me, who saw me as brilliant, who shared the same interests as me, and the same ideals. He told me I got him on a level no one else did, that we would be friends forever. He’d hold me in bed at night, nothing overtly sexual, but he must have known the feelings he sparked within me. His abused past, how he got his disease, made him all the more mesmerizing to me. The one thing I’m certain we both shared, was low self-esteem. I only saw it once in a restaurant when he teared up because he thought the restaurant manager was staring him down. The rest of the puzzle came in the stories he told. Men who were also in love with him, friends he had that never materialized, stories I knew were lies.The stories may have been true in his past, but not now. One guy he spoke of was in a foreign country when he spoke of going to give him a hand job. Another guy was a cop. In fact he used the pretense of writing an email to Cop, but it went to me instead, and I think I was the target anyway. The email was titled, “Pig in a Blanket.”  The email told his lover that I was the pig who never did anything and freeloaded on them. It’s true I wasn’t good at chores (or doing them at all) and I did eat them out of house and home for just 250.00 in rent/ later 475.00 their pain and suffering rate after my botched suicide attempt. My bad.

But the point is, I do what I got to do now. I live alone and it’s such a blessing to have no one to tell me what to do, to not be fearful of being thrown out by one wrong step, to just be. I tend to my cats, I help out a friend, and I have my hobbies. I have internet friends. I read, occasionally write, I’m a gamer, I swim in season, and I go places, and I eat a lot of burgers. La dolce vita. And I dumpster dive. But that deserves a post of its own. 

Related articles

• Jesus Christ IS the way
• Dead man
• Five men charged in two separate cold-case murders

My Third Blogoversary!

A wake of majestic turkey vultures, roosting in a tree in Mountain View, California, waiting for new blog posts. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Strangely enough,
March 25th will mark my third blogoversary. Time flies when you type five words a minute. Picture it, I a callow youth of  32, rose in my cheeks  and tortured genius illuminating my eyes, typing my first words! Oh how the muses danced, the angels wept, and the majestic turkey vultures soared! Three years, still here. In case you missed those 3 years, let me summarize:

Lisa, the OCDbloggergirl, lives with her mother and 3 cats. Lisa has OCD and is getting into fights with her mom, mainly because Lisa cannot be the perfect person Lisa wants to be and this pisses her off. Poor mom. The years are swallowed up with Lisa writing, Lisa getting published by online journals ( reprints of blog entries, mainly). Lisa’s writing improves. She thinks “Hey why don’t I get my own website, maybe I’ll get rich or at least be able to have a meowing cat widget!” Life is swell. Then Fate says, “Hey why don’t I let your mom die of complications from pneumonia, that would be a plot twist!” Life sucks. Some social worker says Lisa might have to go to a group home if she can’t find somewhere to go on her SSI check.  Lisa would rather die than be separated from her cats now that there’s no one else. Neighbors step in and she and the cats go live there. Life is very good again and Lisa finds her Soul Mate in her gay neighbor (Dumb, OCDbloggergirl. You get what ‘gay’ means, right?) But gay friend and jealous partner are kinda messed up themselves and who was wrong? Who was right? Who was fucked over? I think Lisa was, but maybe they were, but maybe she was, but then …All the lies and uncertainty make Lisa do something to herself, she ends up in the hospital. Then she ends up in hell…er a nursing home for two months, until her roommates cave and let her dumb ass back in for a nominal hike in rent (475.00 instead of 240.00). Life is teetering from good to bad back and forth. The man she loves, Gay Romeo, likes to lie, and has stopped taking his medicines. He forgets he cares about  Lisa altogether, but she is saved from hell by a program. Lisa now has her own apartment for the first time in her life, and they all lived happily ever after maybe. She hopes that now her blog will stop being a total buzz kill.

I guess you could say I am at a good place now. Well, almost. Oscar, my grey and black tabby is missing now for over a month. I remain hopeful he will return, just as my Phillipe did 9 years ago when my mother and I moved into our old apartment. Phillipe was cooped up 2 weeks before we opened the door and let him go outside. He didn’t come home for 2 and a half months. Came home though, and no worse for wear. I suspect someone took him in and he finally got away, which I suppose happened to Oscar too. I think a good post would be to tell the stories of my 3 cats one day. For those of you who pray, please pray Oscar comes home. Thanks.

But yeah. Good place. Now. I am happy for the most part. There is a strange sort of freedom to being alone in the world. I find my life worth living, even if only for my cats, and the occasional ‘rescue mission’ for Bestie, who is a bit of an anxious lass. I don’t have to be useful to anyone anymore, and that’s freedom in a way. When I was with the roommates, my use was measured in my finances I guess. When I was with my friend I  knew from way back, all he wanted was a batch o’ my snatch. When I went to that ‘home,’ almost everyone wanted me for one reason or another. Eh God, vultures. I am better off on my own having my own adventures and my own  life. Hanging out with Bestie, my friend of 20 years, basically  fulfills my social life, that and my online life. Soul brothers are merely mythological creatures, unicorns. I miss my unicorn though (we even watched My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic together, sigh).

And now, not to be all Jodi Arias stalky or anything, but I did have someone drive me by ye olde home place, just to see if the members of the She-Male Lisa Haters Club had indeed left town as they said they would in March. Part of me prayed that they were gone, that seeing an empty apartment would cure me of my feelings for The Unicorn nee Soul Bro. But neighhhhhhhh, the signs that they were still there abounded. First, the plants that I gave him from my mother were still there. The chair that once was mine was still there, as no doubt the rest of the lawn furniture that he felt was his due (I would have left that chair for him anyway, the way I had left half of my hard candy for him). There is a yellow truck out in front. I wonder if it’s his. He always wanted a yellow vehicle. If it is, the straits they said they were in due to me must have eased into gentler waters.

But the doubts are ever present in my mind. Is it because of  me that they aren’t gone to fulfill his dream in DC? Is he sick? Or, like so many other things, was living there just another of his stories? Once, The Partner told me that I was a boil on his butt that he just can’t lance. Well, I was lanced wasn’t I? Shouldn’t they be happily ever after now, and shouldn’t I, like a normal person, stop giving a fuck about The Unicorn? Somewhere over the rainbowwwwwwww….

I am happy now. I am almost at peace. I must put them out of my mind. I am eternally grateful that he was there when my mother died, but that chapter of my life must close. That way I can truly be happy, That and finding Oscar. Where the hell are you, Oscar?

PS, other fun incidentals. Remember for a time I foolishly flirted with having a self-hosted site? Well when I hung up the towel there at ocdbloggergirl dot com and let my domain expire, guess what happened? I thought maybe some other blogger might buy it, but I doubted it. Nope. Ocdbloggergirl dot com didn’t even become a Canadian pharmacy. Cough. It became…cough…a porn site. A porn site boasting Polish lesbians. I’m not joking,  And as Paul Harvey used to say…”now you know the rest of the story.”

Related articles

• ‘Mona Lisa’ (blakecrystal.wordpress.com)
• Getting over a break-up & Whisky Dick & Mom (singlemalehuman.wordpress.com)
• Sky Beneath My Feet by Lisa Samson (myfullcup.wordpress.com)
• My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (seanmalstrom.wordpress.com)
• Outrun Cancer 4 Lisa (appliedepidemiology.wordpress.com)
• Turkey Vultures (poesypluspolemics.com)
• The Voice Of A Writer (evilnymphstuff.wordpress.com)
• Just One Stuffed Animal (bootsbarnsandbirds.wordpress.com)
• Lisa had No Surprises with her Loan (burkgrenlending.wordpress.com)
• Racial Equity Network (recidetroit.wordpress.com)

Scent of a Woman

It’s not been a good 24 hours. I’m anxious and feel as though my life is over, which is stupid …I hope. All I can think of is “What if he doesn’t forgive me?”

My Soul Brother has two Chinese pugs. One is an ‘unaltered’ black male pug. He likes me A LOT. I’ll call him Stan to protect his dog anonymity. My first encounter with Stan after my mother’s death resulted in him trying to make love to me via my arm. His good lady wife, I’ll call her Maude, was in heat and it gave Stan an affection for her and every living thing around her. It was actually a good bit of comic relief from my terror and grief (it was a week after my mom went to the Great Beyond). Thankfully, once Maude ‘cooled’ he stopped. But he always wanted to be with me. At the time I thought it was my award-winning personality.

Later, when I moved in, I was sure I was going to be put back out when Soul Bro told me I shouldn’t be letting his dog sleep with me in case he started marking. But I wasn’t put out.

The other day, Soul Bro approached me again and told me to push Stan away for a couple of weeks and finally admitted why the dog liked me so much.

“It’s your feminine odor, but it’s the same with any female.”

Ugh. Great. So I resolved to rebuff Stan getting near me for exactly two weeks. But that didn’t last too long, because later that day I got upset by something The Partner did. The Partner is Soul Bro’s partner, a man who dislikes me, but the feeling is mutual. Soul Bro, being the dear soul he is, relaxed the rules so I could cry on Stan’s wrinkled shoulder so to speak.

The next day I asked if I should start pushing Stan away. “Nah, he’s OK. He’s a smart dog.”

But Stan’s behavior continued. and the night before last, Stan started to whimper when I wouldn’t  pay him mind. I should have known pushing Stan away was back when Soul Bro took him back to his bedroom and shut himself up with the dog. I should have known, but I’m so ignorant.

So yesterday, sigh, Stan was beside me again and Soul Bro called him to go lay down with him (Soul Bro wasn’t feeling well). I quickly pushed  the dog down when Stan refused to go with his master. Right back up there, Stan jumped, so I pushed him right back down. But it was too late. Soul Bro was angry at me. “See? This was what I was trying to tell you if you EVER let him sit beside you!”  And he slammed his bedroom door.

I was afraid. Soul Bro has told me before that short of me killing him, there was nothing I could do to make him not want to be my friend. But I’m so scared. He’s my only family now and if he stays mad, what will I do? I love him so much, so I always try to please him, but I honestly didn’t mean to do anything.  I hate myself. I even hate my vagina. This has made me Chaz Bono!

So like I used to, I went to  bed and slept to get away from my problems. I dreamed about my mom giving me a beautiful Christmas Barbie doll. Then my mom died, I went to the Appalachians and was rejected by relatives. But then I look for dolls in a flea market, find out that Dolly Parton is my real mom, and she has the same Barbie that my mom gave me except in a different colored dress. Then I dream I’m peeing blood. The end.

At one point, I heard Soul Bro and The Partner up at midnight. I went and got a hello from both when I spoke, but as soon as the show was over, Soul Bro left without a word. I’m terrified he’s still mad and will want me to move when the lease is up.  I don’t want to even imagine life without my Soul Brother.

Outrageous Fortune

I want to go to the parade tomorrow alone, but I’m worried what might happen to me or my mom once I’m set out to fend for myself.

Nightmare Scenario I:  I go to the parade, but as my mother is driving home from dumping me, she has the misfortune of:

a.) being run down by a Mack truck

b.)having a heart attack

c.) being murdered

You choose the scenario you like the best, but the point is she is deceased…and it all could’ve been prevented had I just gone to the parade with her less than enthusiastic self in tow.

I am alone. I can’t even afford to bury or cremate my mom.  There is no money except my $674.00 every month, and the cats and I are soon hungry and evicted.  My friend takes me and the cats in,thankfully, but I yearn to live on my own for the first time. I give up thoughts of love and all my dreams. There is nothing to live for but my cats, because my friends and everyone might not need me. I am a burden.

Fin

Nightmare Scenario II:  I fall dead.

Fin

But I so want to go alone! If I do I’ll let you know…If I don’t, well, guess you’ll know too!

Ophelia: O woe! If only outrageous fortune spared me from Parade’s earthly delight and I knew whither I goest toward danger or iniquity. Harsh, bitter, agonizing fate! Mayhap I ought to not frolic among Danish princes, either, given their penchant to be douches. O woe, I die!

Poetry Pot Luck: Great-Grandmother Perfection Game

Image via Wikipedia

Here is my latest post for http:// jinglepoetry.blogspot.com. This week’s theme is emotions. So I began writing this poem, the emotion: frustration, and before I knew it I wrote an extremely depressing version of this poem, superbly self-loathing and terribly annoying. So I took my literary jujitsu knife and cut, cut. Even I hated the emo trash which had sprung forth from my brain’s  murky depths. Hope y’all like this version. My grandma and I didn’t get along so well the last 13 years of her life , which I feel guilty over 9 years later. I was never good enough, and great, I’ve started the violins playing again, but that’s the poem’s back story.

Oh and another thing, I have the final episode of Rumors of My Death finished and just editing and tweaking this masterpiece. Look for it really soon if you’re big into 2500 word tomes on kidney infections in soap opera/melodrama format. Good times!

Oh and one other thing, for those of you doing the honor of visiting me for Poetry Pot Luck, I did a poem last week too but sadly missed the deadline. If you want to read my ‘building’ poem, here’s a link if you’re bored: https://ocdbloggergirl.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/mediocre-poetry-the-apartment-complex/

 

I never knew my great-grandmother, dead at 91.

But I heard of her so many times from Grandma , I can’t think of a sum.

She was perfect, benevolent, and divine,

while I maintained the mien of a swine, laughing too loud for Grandma’s taste,

never sublime.

My great-grandmother was strong, a saint even in times of great duress,

while I go to pieces at the slightest stress.

I wanted to be perfect too, I wanted to be the best.

But my grandmother died before I could pass that damn perfection test.

It wasn’t that I didn’t try,  my urge for perfection will never die.

Mother cried and Jesus wept at my attempts to be perfect,

my anger and prayers co-mingle.

Uh oh, looks like I might remain single,

I’d drive anyone insane,

but it’s OK ’cause I can always pick my own brain,

failing myself at the great-grandmother perfection game.

 

Why I Am -Part I: Who’s Your Baby Daddy

Okay, so I’ve been working on this on and off since May. Today’s posts, mercifully cut down from one  giant 3000 word monster to a couple posts,   is the beginning of my life story and will continue it when there’s nothing better to bore you with. The story of my father is told here as I remember it being told to me over the years, so if I get something wrong, I will let you know.  As weird as this story sounds, it is the truth as best I know it.

Basket Case

 

How did I become this way, an obsessive-compulsive woman-child; a timid, anxious individual? Genetics? Brain damage at birth? Life experiences, both remembered and forgotten? Alien abduction? Almost all the above? Probably.

The years 1976-1977 were not good years for love or fashion. People walked around wearing puke green, brown, and orange; all the while love conquered all, including common sense. At least this was true in my mother’s case. What do I mean? I mean Mama sure knew how to  pick a man. She decided to dive into a gene pool of  green, stagnant water and I am the result. My father was an alcoholic, which in itself is nothing new or that different from other people. It’s all in how my mother met my father that is the difference. You see, my mother was a nurse who at the time worked as a counselor to alcoholics, which is where she MET her husband, a patient. Love Story.  Just how my father beguiled Mama, I’m not sure. She was 34 then, her true love turned out to be a prick, and several years had gone by since their break-up. Perhaps she was super lonely and my father was a nice fellow. Likely also, and this is a trait I see in myself too, she had a similar urge to save or help people .

My grandmother, Zoulean, yes that was her name, always warned my mother against marrying a drunk or dating anyone she wouldn’t consider marrying. There is even a story showing how much Grandma hated intemperance. When she and Grandpa first got married they stayed at his parents’ home. The first night they stayed there, Grandpa and his two brothers decided to go out together, a boys night out. So my grandmother went to bed, only to be awakened later by the brothers’ wives.

Hazel and Margie were two prim sisters who had married my grandpa’s two brothers. “Come on, Zoulean,  our husbands are in jail. We gotta get ’em out.”

“Y’all can go if you want, but I’m staying right here,” said Zoulean.

Which set the sisters clucking. “You can’t leave your husband in jail overnight!” exclaimed Hazel, and the two sisters clucked, clucked, clucked until they were gone. The whole house was roused from sleep, but Grandpa’s parents sided with Zoulean. He had left his new wife in a house with people she barely knew to go carousing with his brothers. Let him stay overnight in jail. Would serve him right was their verdict. Apparently, alcohol is no cure for claustrophobia, and Grandpa learned his lesson well spending the night in that jail cell.

Maybe it all made my father more appealing, forbidden fruit. Forbidden by parents and no doubt kind of frowned upon by Mental Health for upping and marrying the patients. But whatever. At least she didn’t meet my dad years before when she worked an internship at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. (Fun fact: John Hinckley resides there nowadays). So my mom married my dad in a charming civil court ceremony and they honeymooned in South Carolina after he asked her, “Do you want to get married?”  Their married life together and apart and together again lasted a whole 6 months. Like I said, love conquers all, right?

But it wasn’t all bad. He was a binge drinker, so he wasn’t drunk all the time. He was a good guy when he wasn’t drinking, I’m told. Give the shirt off his back type of guy. But just before he went on a binge, he’d get agitated acting, like something was building up in him, and voila, a several day binge.

(Stop the presses a moment. Here is where I grow suspicious of Daddy Dearest and wonder if his contribution to my genetic make-up was that of Mental Midgetdom. Almost every man in his family was a drunk, which makes me wonder what the hell they were trying to dull down. Anxiety? Depression? Was it compulsive? Or were they just a bunch of assholes who could find no  better diversion than getting plastered?)

My father was also supposed to be a smart man, though he only made it up to 8th grade before his family needed his labor. My father’s life consisted of living by his wits and hands. At one point in their six month marriage, my parents decided to move  to Alabama where my father could find work in landscaping and carpentry-type work. While there, my parents started going to a Baptist church and Dad slowed down on the drinking for a time. For a time.  But in the end the alcohol won. Their relationship went something along these lines: Things are ok. Things are not ok, so Johnny spends up the money drinking. Johnny sobers up and swears he’ll never drink again. Things are ok. Things are not ok….

Daddy’s Little Marriage Helper

Once when good and sauced,but before he got into angry drunk mode as was his custom, he told Mama  that he was part Cherokee Indian. When they said in vino veritas, they probably didn’t mean imbibers of Wild Irish Rose Whiskey. Before my mother knew him, one of my father’s jobs was ‘orange picker’ in Florida. I suppose  he got himself a good tan out there working with his co-workers, all Mexicans.  So good in fact that when Immigration rounded up everyone, they picked up Johnny too.  Before he was deported, however, he was able to negotiate his freedom. Perhaps it was my dad’s southern accent that tipped INS off, or maybe it was that he didn’t know one blessed word of espanol. My hair is dark too, but very curly, my cheek bones aren’t pronounced (even when I wasn’t chunky), and my eyes are a dull blue, so how do you like them apples, kenosabe? Just another mystery, though Grandma told me she knew that family  forever, “and there weren’t no Indian in  none of ’em.”

In another  alcohol soaked scene  of domestic tranquility, Dad called the police saying he had a gun and was going to kill himself. My mother was not amused.

Talking to the police outside of the house, my mom leveled it out with them, seething. “NO, he DOESN”T have a gun . NO, he is NOT suicidal (though at that point, Mama probably could have killed her husband with her own hands). The police worried about leaving her alone with her drunkard husband, but Mama swore she would be fine, and she was. The fact of the matter was my father on a drunk aspired to being  wife beater, but never could reach his mark. Kicking or trying to lash out at the air all the while hurling  bizarre combinations of curses and insults, my dad  wasn’t fast enough or coardinated enough to actually catch my mother.

Sometime in all the breaking up and making up, Mama got pregnant and miscarried.  She wanted that baby, ailing marriage or no, but for whatever  reason my sibling ceased to be before it had a chance to become.

The final break up saw my father running out to the car in his underwear as my mother drove away. She circled around once to make sure the man she married got back into the house safely, and that was that. Little did she know when she made the long trek  home to her parents that for about two weeks a memento of a marriage best forgotten grew inside her.

Wild Irish Rose photo used w/o permission from blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com

Faux Pas a le Wanker et La Douche Terrible du Fail Epic d’ Defense

Hi,

This post  was started last night, before being assured people don’t think I think they’re wankers, but  I like the title and was almost done with the post, so here it is…

.Oops, went and offended folks. Meant well. But did it anyway.  They seem to think I think they’re wankers and now they think I’m a douche no doubt. I feel reallyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy bad.

La Douche Terrible feels culpable if someone she knows is getting beat up, and well, La Douche Terrible  made terrible  douchiness on le blog of other bloggers and made le fail epic at defending someone. La Douche Terrible  decided she was Jeanne ‘d le Fucking Arc, mounted her white steed, and chargeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Et hit a wall. Le ouch.  Fin.

"Want a piece of me? Here I come!....Non!!! Oops, there I went. Ouch! I want mon maman, s'il vous plait."

Going to be honest here. The person I defended has always been cordial to me. That’s reason one.   Reason two, I genuinely like his writings and was terribly sorry anyone made  him feel bad. Reason three, however, definitely goes to Team OCD. I feel a need to atone for whatever reason made him unsubscibe from my blog. Did I offend him? What did he find objectionable about my writing, or me for that matter?  Was it ’cause I’m mental? I cuss like a dockside prostitute in my writing? My writing is lacking? I’m boring? My writing is too long?

Reminds me of  when I was in college.  To pass expository writing, you had to have an essay examined by 3 teachers and if 2 out of 3 passed you, you passed the class.  I  passed by 2 out of 3, but did I care? I was too busy wondering why the enigmatic third teacher failed me. I probably could easily tell you why  now if I saw it, but I don’t have it and I don’t even remember what the essay was about, just that it was timed and they gave you the topic. I’m lousy at anything timed,  deadlines, etc. I passed classes like geology and math by the teachers liking me….I was less socially anxious in those days. I was good at logic I remember, but numbers and I are bitter enemies.  I think  my geology paper was on tsunamis or something like that and my teacher liked it because I wrote it in a “creative” way, replete with the word, “treatise” in the title, and he never gave it back to me. My geology teacher and I had a similar outlook on life and he sort of adopted me…..Dude knew what I was thinking most of the time, plus sort of looked out for me because he knew I was a tad more delicate than my peers. To this day, I believe he was the only person who really “got me.”

My math teacher was a crotchety older man and this woman in class  wanted to get him fired. I knew she was a nasty person, a slithery snake of  a woman with fire engine red hair.  And she latched onto me. I could sense she had a personality disorder , I just knew it.  She approached me, got me to sit with her near the elevator and told me what she planned. I forget her exact words  but she would talk about how basically she and I were smarter than everyone else, more artistic.  You and me,  us against them, we’re better than they are was the jist of her conversation. ” I’ve gone to a university, and I know how a class is supposed to be.”  Well, why are you at a community college,  I wanted to ask, but she was around 50 years of age, so perhaps she returned to school.  She would ask me if I know what such and such meant a couple of times.  “Yes,” I replied. ” That’s because you’re smart. ” And she told me how she was going to talk to the dean and get the man fired. Now may it be said I didn’t particularly love said math teacher, but get him fired? I knew it wasn’t because I was smarter, more likely I could be easily manipulated. I look kind of dumb, my voice is child-like,  and a bit on the super gullible side, but I wasn’t quite as ignorant as she thought.

I rushed to my geology teacher almost in in tears and let him know the nefarious plot against his fellow professor just because she didn’t like him. I thought if I let her do it and so unfairly, plus his age might be against him finding another teaching job, it would all be my fault. So my geology professor warned him of psycho-broad and to watch out. I couldn’t warn him myself, no way! So thank God for my geology professor, my protector.

Well, the psycho-broad, was given to towards thinking herself above everyone and anyone, the perfect narcissist. I wish they could bottle that sort of self-confidence and give me a prescription for the amount in her pinky, but it was this superiority that proved to be her downfall. Psycho-Broad marched herself to the dean’s office and when asked if she had an appointment, she told the receptionist she was a friend of his. Needless to say, the dean was not amused. They had words and in the end she was asked to leave the college for good. How many people can brag that they got expelled from a community college? Obviously  she could. The dean perhaps had been appraised of the situation beforehand, but anyway she now was gone and I got thanked by my math teacher. No one thought bad of me. I think  even other students disliked her. I think I did the right thing, I hope. I didn’t want anyone to get in trouble.

I really did try in that math class, but I still wonder if my grade was pushed up a couple points from D to C.

(Image above was taken from nndb.com w/o permission)

The Things That I Obsess Over the Most; or Let’s See How Howard Hughes-ish a Gal Can Be

This is one of those posts unburdening myself because I’m anxious, so probably won’t be the best post ever, but oh well. Here is a list of things I fear:

1. My worst fear is harming someone. I’m not one of those obsessive-compulsives who thinks she’ll kill someone somehow -much. Though butcher knives and guns in the house would scare me if we had them, because I’d imagine going crazy and doing everything I would never ever want to do. I am aware that is silly, I’m not suddenly going to do anything totally against everything I believe, but you see all these people who go nuts on TV and it’s enough to send me into a terror. I usually know I’m not going to go  crazy, that it is OCD trying to upset me. More real in my mind is the fear of causing harm by accident. What if I ran over someone someday? What if I   could save someone and somehow I don’t ? It’ll be my fault.

The obsession I worry the most about though is my fear of causing offense or hurting someone’s feelings. Most of the  time it’s all upstairs, but it scares the hell out of me. You’d think  with everything going on in the world I could find something better to panic over, but that scares me. Probably one of the roots of my social anxiety issue is this fear. Online, offline, in the air and under the sea I’ve done someone wrong I fear. I’m never good enough. I even fear that bad phrases will rush out of my mouth or I’ll write something awful and it will be…..well….awful, you know? Though I don’t have Tourette’s, unless you count that stupid brain puke flowing in a stream throughout my brain. I’m scared I’ve upset someone, and I wouldn’t deliberately, and now I don’t what to do……..I think I’m being irrational, but can’t help it.

My therapist says it’s because I’m a kind person that I have all this stuff go through my head. Why I worry about others, let others take advantage of me…etc. It makes me really wish I had that “F.U., buddy” mentality so charming among people. I am way too sensitive. I cry like a wuss if someone is nasty to me lots of the time. Can’t watch certain things on TV because it upsets me too much. I didn’t cry the other day, but since they  did one of those re-enactments of the events of this local murder victim on a cable show my friend and I watched at her house, I had the unpleasant feeling of  feeling what he was feeling a bit. Not good. Not good at all. If they had just said his body had been found all beat up, showed some blood, etc. I wouldn’t have been so upset, but they showed what they did to him before he died, the anticipation of death he must have felt. It was too real. Then on the local news they interviewed his mom who watched the program. Ugh. I was afraid she was watching it, and the fact that I’ve been to the places in the story just weirded me out. 

 I’ve been too sickeningly sensitive since I was in my middle teens and it’s a curse. Trust  me.

2. My mother’s death. I am afraid my mom will die some awful way. I’m afraid she’ll die in a car wreck, or be murdered, or die of a disease. And if i survive her death, that I won’t be able to bury or cremate her. It happened to us when my grandmother died and without help we wouldn’t have been able to bury her.  I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to afford a roof over my head, though my best friend would let me live with her permanently…..but I’m afraid we wouldn’t get  along living together because we are pretty different in a lot of ways and I’d want to live alone I think. If my mother died the only person who will ever love me unconditionally will be dead. Though in a way my best friend and I have never had a difference so bad we’d walk away from one another forever.

3. I’m never going to be loved.

4. I’m going to die alone and without setting the slightest mark that I was ever here in the first place.

5. T he flaws on my face. I scour my face for hair everyday and spend a significant time feeling for  it, thank you  Paxil that stopped my period for a couple years (a rare side effect that happens in like 1 in 10,000 people) . You can’t see  them much,  but I feel and pull to the point I’m sore and bleeding. Heck , for a little while I was shaving myself three times a day until Mom got onto me. If I imagine a man kissing me, the first thought will be of my face, even before thinking of my weight. One of these days I’m going to the laser people, so I can worry about other flaws.

6. That hell is real and I will be expected there.

7. That I will be accused of something and won’t be able to prove I didn’t do it.

8. That I have a hidden disease that will be fatal, but am too afraid  my doctor will tell me I have a disease…..so I just avoid going to the doctor and will not go unless I’m dying. My stomach hurts and I secretly wonder if  it’s from radiation off my netbook.

9. I’m sometimes afraid if I’m alone in public  I’ll panic, faint, and/or die. Or say the wrong thing.

10. I’m afraid I’m going to be attacked because I’m not vigilant 100 % of the time….that isn’t entirely irrational here at Shitzville Apartments trust me.

11.  I’m afraid something upset me when I was 4, but  I don’t quite remember. It’s probably  nothing. I’ll explain sometime, but it isn’t really anything all that bad.  But it probably did mess with my mind a little if it’s even true.

Anyway, I feel better. Though I’m still a bit worried. I will try to write  a better post when I am more myself.

 

http://www.ocfoundation.org/whatisocd.aspx if you want to know more  about OCD ‘n junk.

Visit a Vet and Your Therapist.

Just when you think things are going ok and that you might be able to stay out of the pawn shop just one month, someone goes and kicks your cat.

Granted it wasn’t on purpose, but the cat was kicked all the same.  You see, Mama was in a hurry  to use the can and there are two doors to said can; one being the entry from the hallway, the other opens into the master closet.  As I stated before in one way or another, I am not about to be on the cover of Martha Stewart Living. So when I throw dirty clothes into the master closet for later washing, theoretically, the clothes are supposed to go into a hamper.  Said hamper in said closet is usually overflowing with dirty clothing, however, so I tend to aim, throw, and let my discarded clothing  fall where it may. And this is how the tragedy began.

My mother, in her haste to close the closet door, kicked a pair of black shorts that were obstructing the door. Unfortunately, Babee Dondee was curled up on that pair of shorts. Babee Dondee is small and black except for the occasional white hair here and there, so he was perfectly hid on that  black  background. My mom’s swift kick made hard contact with shorts and cat.

Mama felt terrible, placing the blame on herself, though I think if it is anyone’s fault, it’s mine since I’m a total slob and it was my shorts left there by me. She apologized repeatedly to Dondee and I think he realized Mom didn’t mean to do it to him.

But whoever’s fault it was, it became obvious Dondee needed medical attention, because he still limped this morning and wouldn’t emerge from the closet.  I hate taking my cats to the vet, Dondee especially, since he is absolutely terrified of riding in the van in his carrier. He cries the five minutes it takes to get there, and is an awful thing to hear, especially when you can’t  tell him what is happening in a language he understands.

The vet who saw us is a man in his 50s, whom I distinctly get the feeling likes animals more than humanity, or maybe he thought we meant to do it, and I feel horrified and guilty in his presence. But I think (hope) he knew we didn’t mean to, because I doubt the average person who abuses animals takes them to the vet afterword. I tried not to avert my eyes as much as usual, lest the doctor  think we meant to do it and mistake my social anxiety as guilt.

In the end, nothing was broken, but his nerves in his shoulder were inflamed. He received steroids for that and antibiotics just in case he was bit by something instead of my mom’s kick because his temperature was up.

My mother gave me the joyous task of settling up with the receptionist since I had the money, but I knew it was going to be more than I have. And so it was. I’m too chicken shit to say I don’t have $195.00, so I beckoned my mom over and show her the invoice.  Mama explained the situation and that we’ll be back as soon as possible.  $96.00 down, $99.00 to go. So we take Dondee home, grab up some pawnable merchandise, and back out we go.  Meanwhile, one of the maintenance guys told us the pool passed inspection and will probably open today. Great, figures the damn thing would finally open and I’d be on the……nevermind.

I think the receptionist was pleased we came back as soon as we did, and hopefully, since we brought the money back so fast, that will give us a gold star in character and somehow show them we don’t abuse animals. Lord.

Then, this afternoon was a trip to my therapist. Now my last trip to see her, she kinda sorta almost yelled at me, or was very firm.  Well, at least it worked. Plus my mom, my best friend, virtually everyone on earth, also wanted me to do what I did. So I did and I feel the better for it. Guilt and elation, anger, guilt, then elation again. Some things that are easy  for other people are much harder for me. I meant well, though.

My therapist was glad I went out with Green and that I had no real problem with talking to him or the Hippies, that I didn’t freeze up. She wants me to contact him again.

She isn’t so happy I’m so nervous-acting, I don’t think, because she asked me when I last saw my shrink. It was a couple months ago and she couldn’t up my meds, but thank God, my depression lifted a lot since.  I went from life-sucks-just-let-me-die-or- something  to life-sucks-less. Good enough, man. Party!

She seems to think my little perfectionist  bent  is a tad maladaptive. I can’t stand my inability to do everything just right. If I feel I haven’t done things perfectly, I will go into a rage at myself and go take a nap. One thing goes wrong, EVERYTHING is wrong. If I raise my voice at my mother, I will get angry at myself, feel I’m a failure at life in general….and go to sleep.  Every morning I wake up and promise myself  today I will not make a mistake. Doomed to failure, but I can’t stop. I’ve done this off and on in some form or another since I was a small girl. Nothing I would expect of another person, but I  can’t stand  my lack of measuring up to normalcy.  Oh well.

952 words, I’m shutting up now.