"Sometimes you don't realize the weight of something you've been carrying until you feel the weight of its release."

Ugh, where to start?

I went back to work April 23rd. Everybody was welcoming and nobody asked me a damn thing, which was good. My buyer was fantastic. The HR woman did everything right. But by Tuesday, the very goddamn next day, I was riding the struggle bus. I went to work but only because I knew I had Wednesday off. I had worked that out with the HR woman....to have Wednesday's off for a month to ease me back into it. Thursday rolled around and I was the same. Struggling to force myself to go. Friday was fine because, well, it was Friday. The next week wasn't good at all. I cried Monday for no fucking reason. Started in the a.m., continued through lunch. I don't know why. Who the fuck knows why. I did and it sucked. But I worked and that was good, right? I texted a friend to help boost me the next day because I knew I would need it. He did and it worked. Wednesday was a good day. Went to my CB AA meeting and ran errands.

Finally, after 5 years of living here, replaced the light above the kitchen sink, with Dad's help of course.

I love it and my dad is a rock star. It was not an easy task to accomplish, but he did it and it works and it's awesome and I love it.

So Wednesday was good. However, I woke up Thursday and called in. Said I was nauseous. I honestly have no recollection of whether or not I actually was. Maybe I was, but probably because I made myself that way by worrying myself to it. I don't know why. Why do I have this wall I can't break through when it comes to work? When did all this shit start? Why do I allow it to continue?

I fought with myself again Friday a.m. and finally came to "Fuck it. I fucking give up. I cannot fight this goddamn battle anymore." And I called HR and quit for good. She understood. I cried all damn day.

A friend of mine who has been around me the past couple of months said to me, "Amy, you haven't been right for 2 months. Your sleep is all jacked up. You're up one minute, down the next. Something isn't right." And it hit me. How did I not see it before? Because I get in my own head and just think I'm a worthless piece of shit who should just die and release everybody in my life from having to deal with this big fucking burden that I feel I am. But having someone say to me, "You're not okay" makes me realize I'm not. You're right. I'm not. I am not okay. This isn't okay. This isn't me.

This shirt didn't work. At all.

And so I finally got with my med check lady and said as much as I hate anti-psychotics, I would take anything she thought would help. Anti-psychotics fuck up my body and make me suicidal, but if they even me out, then so be it. It's a give & take. She found something that isn't an anti-psychotic but is simply a mood stabilizer and I've been taking it since this past Tuesday. I've also been on a high dose antibiotic which is fucking up my body. My mouth tastes like....sour milk. I don't know. It's disgusting. But today was my final day of it so from here on out, I should be able to tell how the new mood stabilizer is effecting me, good or bad. It has the potential to cause blisters around the mouth and nose (mucus membranes) so that's fun! *eye roll* It's unlikely, but why can't a side effect be spontaneous orgasms or something exciting like that? *sigh*

So I'm unemployed and feel like a loser and I'm still crying sporadically for various reasons, but I don't want to end my life and I see that as an improvement. Obviously.

This new drug....I knew I'd been on it before so I went back through my old journals and found when I was on it before and how it effected me. 03-04 and I didn't write anything bad about it, so there's that. However, I was drinking pretty heavily so I'm sure it didn't work as well as it could have. Hopefully this time is better.

It was hard reading those journals. I'm glad I keep them for the above reason because I've been on numerous medications throughout the past 20 years and need those journals as references. But damn. I wish I could burn every fucking one of them. And I may.

Here's what I realized.

I am no goddamn different than I was 17 years ago. I'm the same fucked up goddamn idiot I was then. The only difference is I'm not drinking.

Now, my therapist would remind me.... I am absolutely not the same person. I've grown in those 17 years. I have a greater understanding of myself and others in my life.

But....

My journals were a lot about my relationships with men. And with Mom. And my life today is a lot of the same. Men and Mom.

I feel free to write about Mom here because I'm pretty sure she doesn't read this shit ever. It's too goddamn depressing and I don't blame her one bit.

So here goes.

What I read in the journals was a lot of "Poor me. Why doesn't my family reach out to me? Why don't they check on me? Do they care at all? Hell, I could be dead and they wouldn't know for months because nobody checks in." I still feel that way today, lol. I live a block away from my parents and I'm pretty sure it'd be a good week before someone realized, "Hm, haven't seen or heard from Amy in awhile. Maybe we should check on her." And then it'd probably be another week before they actually did and by that time, Garfield would have eaten my bloated, gassy body and my neighbors would wonder what the smell is emanating from my house. Yep. That's how I envision it happening. I'll choke on some stupid food and lie here for weeks rotting before anybody noticed.

And isn't that sad & depressing? Yep, it sure is.

But here's what.... It would be my own goddamn fault.

That's what I realized reading those journals. It was all "Why don't THEY...." Hell, why don't I? ME. The phone works both ways. I hear my own mother say that all the time about her mother. Grandma complains no one calls her. Well, guess what? You have a telephone too. So here I am, perpetuating the cycle of "poor me", "you take care of me". And I'm sick of it. I'm sick of my behavior and my attitude and my part in relationships and, and, and.

Step Four anyone? "Made a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves." This is my start.

How am I responsible? How have my actions played a part in my relationships with others and myself?

Take men, for example. This is where the rubber hits the road for me. Fearless inventory. OK, here goes.

I use men to feel a semblance of love. While, yes, I enjoy sex, honestly, I use sex to feel close to another human being. I feel unlovable. I don't feel worthy of anyone's love. And so in order for me to feel some form of "love", I use sex. And then I dismiss them. Your services are no longer needed or wanted. You're getting too close for comfort. You may actually see the real Amy so I'm gonna kick you to the curb before you can kick me to the curb. I will hurt you before you can hurt me. Or if you hurt me first, that's it. My level of trust in you is gone and I may try, but our life will never be the same. I will always hold myself back and protect my being at all costs. Because it hurts too damn much to feel and I can't drink that shit away anymore so I've found another way to protect myself. Build a goddamn wall around me of defenses.

You have no idea how hard that is for me to admit. Because when I say I use men for sex, that's all you're gonna see. You're not going to see that I honestly do enjoy sex and my libido has been raging for 2 years. You're not going to see the real work I've done trying to be in 2 loving relationships in that time. All you're going to see is "She uses men for sex. I knew it." And that's where my fear comes in. People thinking less of me or interpreting my honest assessment as something other than what I mean it to be.

Just because I have and continue to use men for sex does not mean I haven't loved and been loved in the past. I have and I do to this day love. As much as I am capable of loving anyone, I have loved Chris and Ricky. And if I'm fucking honest with myself, I fucking love Phil and I hate him for it. *eye roll* There's obviously still work to be done, but reading those journals and realizing my apparent lack of growth was a very rude awakening for this almost 43 year old woman.

Jesus.

When I did Step Four before, it was pretty easy. It's easy, because as a woman, we're good at finding our faults. We feel guilty about everything. We feel (& are made to feel by society) shame for simply being female.

But this time.... this time is different. I still want to do it. I'm actually looking forward to it, in a way. I want to change. I want growth. I do not want to come out of this the same person I was yesterday. I want more. I deserve more. We all do. However, it makes me very anxious to fearlessly look at the deep down core shit that I've clung to for decades and it scares me to think of releasing those defenses. As shitty as they are, they've brought me to this point. Good or bad. They've made me who I am today. I thank them for that. But I don't want to be this person anymore. I want to be more. I want to be better.

And I can be.

"Another morning comes. It always does. Time always moves at the same rate, only feelings have different speeds. Every day can mark a whole lifetime or a single heartbeat, depending on who you spend it with." -Fredrik Backman, Beartown

Aunt Hope, have you read this book? I don't even need to ask Mom. I know she has. What is it with my family (and most of my friends) and books? We devour them. They transport us into worlds we may never experience. Or they take us back to a place we've experienced before and we feel all the same feelings again, good or bad. They excite us, scare us, make us laugh, make us cry, grieve.

I don't know what it is about Fredrik Backman's books that everyone on the planet (should) love so much. He has a way, like Stephen King for me, to put me in the story, to truly make me feel like I'm part of it....without the horror and blood, of course, because only Stephen King can do horror and blood like no other.

Beartown made me cry. I couldn't remember the last time I cried before Beartown, for any reason. Probably over a boy. *eye roll* I remember what it was like to be 15 and to have friends like that. It's true - you never have friends like the ones you do at 15.

“You never have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen ever again. Even if you keep them for the rest of your life, it’s never the same as it was then.” 

 True. And sometimes you don't see each other for months, years, decades...but when you do, all the years fall away and you pick up right where you left off.

I consider myself to be one of the luckiest 42 year old women on the planet. Because at 15, I had some of the most loyal, funny, profoundly wicked, caring, screwed up and loving friends a girl could ever ask for...and I have them again.  Shannon, Jason, Ricky. We're like a really small gang again except with a helluva lot more gray hair (or less if you're the guys), a helluva lot more wrinkles, and a helluva lot more life experience....so we know in our hearts how damn lucky we all are.

I've hit a bit of a rough patch the last few days and I blame Beartown. There's a reason I don't cry, I said to Ricky the other night. Because once I begin, it feels like it will never end. Never. I open the floodgates, the dam overflows, and look out world! Here comes a salty flood. I don't know why. I tried to cry a week or so ago and nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I couldn't squeeze out a tear if someone gave me a million dollars. Well. Come on. I could certainly fake one for a million dollars. Shit. But damn Beartown. It made me feel. And it made me feel (& remember) all the good and the bad a girl experiences at 15.

I hate feeling. Unless it's pure joy, bliss, happiness....but even then, like my Buddhist professor always said, "Once you realize you're happy, you're not happy anymore."  What the fuck does that even mean? I think it means that happiness isn't a thought in your head. It isn't as if you can say to yourself, "I'm going to be happy" and suddenly BAM! You're happy. No. It doesn't work that way for me. I can fake it, sure. I can fake it like no other. I should win a goddamn Oscar for all the fake happiness I've shown the world. We can all fake it. But to feel happiness...that's the real rub, isn't it? Feel. And feelings are fleeting. They come and go. We feel a hundred different feelings a day. They ebb and flow.

Or I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.  I remember the words, but not the lesson. Typical.

And even though I didn't want Beartown to end, like all of us with any good book- we just want it to continue and go on & on & on- I forced myself to finish it last night because I couldn't make it go on & on & on. If I did, the crying would continue....on & on & on. And trust me, nobody wants that, least of all me.

So, while the tears have presumably ended, the feelings haven't yet quite dissipated. But I'm working on that. By myself, because that's what I always try to do. It doesn't matter if I have every single friend from every moment in my life hanging out on my doorstep, there are just some things that have to be felt alone because, honestly, it's too fucking hard to try to explain to someone who hasn't a clue exactly how fucked up you are. How do you explain that the past week drained you even though you didn't really do all that much and that every little frustration, every minute of sleep-deprivation, every bite of the tongue along the way has built up to the point they're all spewing out of your eyes because you just can't anymore.  Sometimes I just can't. And so I shut down. I cry. I sleep. I sleep for a lot of reasons. Because in sleep, my conscious isn't aware of feelings. In sleep, the world is shut out. In sleep, my mind and body heal. On their own. Without me having to do a fucking thing.

But there comes a point when sleep is no longer enough and I have to get my fat ass up and moving before I fall down a deep dark hole I might not recover from. So here I am, dear reader, verbally vomiting all of it to you, to get it out of me and to move on.

Because life is too good and time is too short to waste it on tears.

"Whoever came up with the phrase 'the freaks come out at night' has clearly never been to Walmart during the day."

I'm fed up with snow and it's only December 2nd!  WTF?!?  It has rained, sleeted (is it sleeted or slet or something else entirely?), freezing rained, snowed every damn morning this week!  GARG! At least tomorrow is supposed to be decent (supposedly....).

Follow this bunny trail:

Today at work, a couple of co-workers were chatting about hard-candies. They were right next to me so I couldn't help overhearing.  Yes, this is the type of conversation that goes on.  Hard Candies. I love them! Blech, I can't stand them! So I piped in with my hilariously funny story about how I almost choked to death on a butterscotch candy when I was a kid, sliding in my stockinged feet across the linoleum kitchen floor. I choke. Mom screams for Dad who had just gone downstairs to the basement. He comes racing up and whacks me a couple of times on my back. Out pops a perfectly good (now ruined forever) butterscotch candy.  Hilarity for all.  Then I said, "Well, you know I'm single and my cat can't do the Heimlich so I've googled how to save myself if I'm choking because I'm pretty sure I'd be laying for dead for days, DAYS, because who checks on me? And by that time, Garfield will have eaten my face...."  I'm a crack up, I tell ya. And one of the women says, "So that's why you're always happy! You're single!"

Happy? Me? Who the f- is she talking about? Surely not me? Happy? Could it be? Could it possibly be?

I've either really got these people snowed or maybe...just maybe...I am actually happy.

Huh. Something to ponder, though I had a Buddhist professor tell me that the moment you realize you're happy, the feeling disappears, so let's not ponder it too much.


I do have Friday off from work because we're remodeling and the carpet-layers (not to be confused with the carpetbaggers) will be in Friday & Saturday to lay the new carpet. And the man who is moving all of our desks and cubical walls and copiers, etc, etc, etc, will be in tomorrow evening so we're closing at 4 so all of us women-folk can clear off our desks, box up all our stuff and move the computers to another room in order to make it easier for him to move the "big" stuff.  And one of my co-workers actually said today (and not the only one) "I don't want to move my computer...I thought someone would be doing that for me..."  Ummmm, seriously? Seriously? SERIOUSLY?

*eye roll* I'll move your damn computer for you. Geez. These people lack compassion. They could care less about helping their fellow man. Like that guy wants to come in tomorrow night and have to disassemble all of our shit that we're fully capable of doing ourselves and then move the big stuff? Come on. Help a guy out! O.M.G.


I had a thought today on the way home from Walmart...which...funny story.  I turned into the shampoo aisle and two young chicks (maybe 20) were standing in the middle of the aisle (because people are inconsiderate assholes and like to be asked to move every 2 seconds).  So I said, "Excuse me" to get by and one of the chicks whips her baseball cap off her frizzy head and asks me, "Do you know what shampoo to use on frizzy hair?"

Lol, are you looking at me? Do you see my hair? Have I suddenly sprouted long hair that would be frizzy if I didn't have the magical product that I certainly would find at Walmart? OR do I look like I work here? Do all Walmart employees wear their coats, push a cart around and drop random shit into it? Maybe. Just maybe.

So I said, "Well, I don't know. I've got short hair (because she obviously couldn't see that) and straight (again, is she blind?) so I'm not sure.  You want moisture. I know that." And then I go back to pondering which shampoo to buy for myself because I wanted something new. Why, tonight of all nights, do I need to try something new? Grab your regular shampoo and run! Run like the wind! Get away from the crazies!

But I didn't.  I stood there, in a stupor, and she says to me, "What about Pantene? Is that good?"  So I say, "Well, their commercials certainly show great hair! Sure, try that!"  And then she asks, "Or Loreal?" To which I say, "Loreal's kind of expensive, isn't it?" I grabbed my shit & ran. I'm not even sure what shampoo I bought. Probably something for men.

And then I saw her two more times while I was getting food and every time I saw her she asked me an asinine question - Where are the bags of lettuce? Seriously, girly, I do not work here. I might look like I should be working here, but I don't.

WTF? People are whack.

And the thought I had on the way home from work was............

I have no idea because it fled my mind as soon as I pulled into my garage. It was good, too.  A really deep thought about something important.  I'll remember tonight as I'm falling asleep but I'll forget it again by tomorrow morning.

*sigh* It sucks to get old.

"Whenever I feel sad, I just go to my happy place....The fridge."

I don't think I'm feeling sad. At least, I don't feel sad. I may be sad, but I don't feel it. Of course, that doesn't stop me from, lately, wanting to eat every-damn-thing in my house, whether or not it's low-carb. Hello TrailMix! How I've missed you! If I'd had a family-size bag of Peanut Butter M&M's in the house two nights ago, I'd've eaten the whole damn thing in one sitting. What is up with that?

However, I don't think I'm sad. No, what I'm feeling is something all-together odd. I felt it yesterday, too. I can't even describe it to myself but it's a mixture of anxiety, disgust and....fear, I guess.

I'm still not 100% but I can walk without looking like I've been riding a horse for a week and I'm sitting here at the computer with my legs crossed for the first time in days so that's an improvement. I'm not going to venture into not going commando today, though. That'd just be pushing my luck and I don't think I have much luck to push around.

I woke up for the 50th time last night at 3:00am from a wicked nightmare that hit too close to home. The owner of the house next door and a friend of his were taking down my fence. I got my heavy-duty hammer and scared them away with it but the next thing I knew, the fence was completely down and there were huge holes in the yard and the fence was piled to the side.

I didn't wake up feeling good about that.

And then this morning, I took Shooter out and found this:

One day! I got to enjoy the umbrella Mom & Dad gave me for ONE FREAKING DAY! I say this because the cloth that wraps around one of those poles ripped. I'm going to need to get out my sewing kit to repair it and it's too wet to do anything right now. *sigh*

I knew when I saw this

Rain water from the outside door to my inside steps. I really need a storm door here.

this morning that we'd gotten more rain & it was windier than I thought it was going to be. I don't even remember thinking it was going to rain overnight. And muddy! Ooooh boy, Shooter's paws were caked. I'm an idiot. I, obviously, wasn't quite awake this morning. Ah well. 

If this is the worst that's going to happen to me today, ok. I've been waiting for some graffiti artist (living here? Doubtful, I know.) to go to town on the outside of my fence. It's a perfect blank canvas. How could they resist? And who knows, maybe someone did last night but I've got enough to deal with today so I'm not even going to check. 

So I woke up this morning, determined to Google Iowa's laws regarding defense of one's property. I can use reasonable force. Reasonable to who, exactly? Reasonable to a normal human being. Is wielding a heavy hammer "reasonable"? I'd say so. It's not like I killed them in my nightmare. I just scared them a little. Ok, a lot. I think, in real life, I'll use my baseball bat. Better arc. 

Oh, and the ex-man Facebook'd me last night. I know this is clearly a psychological issue I have, but all I feel when I see his name or his picture is disgust. I think, because, it reminds me of a time when I wasn't entirely myself....or I was more like my very old self and I didn't like that person very much. Not that I like this person much better, but still...I like me now more than I liked me then. I don't even know who that person was. So, I just ignore the ex-man and hope he'll go away for good. 

*sigh* Is this day over yet?