self-help

I do not do my self-destructive crap because there is something wrong with me or I am bad or malformed or failing in some deep inherent way. At age 26.5, I am used to feeling bad. I'm used to feeling like emotional crap. It's familiar. It's my default. It's pretty easy to trace back through my childhood and see all the pain and angst that made for my most common theme. But that's what I know how to feel and know how to live with, so that's the pattern I create for myself.

This little light bulb went off a few weeks ago. My procrastination and other dumb shit I do to screw myself up always felt like some deep uncontrollable flaw or something I should be fixing but wasn't and that was bad and it was another big icky-feeling judgmental turd on my soul. But this is oddly freeing. I know I'm only doing it because I'm used to it. That's much easier to break free from. Still not easy, but far less epic.

Right now I have a sinus headache from hell. I had a terrible cold this last week that's finally loosening its grip, but my sinuses are shot to hell now. I think I should be exempt from sinus headaches because of my migraines.

I may be buying a condo. Like, soon. Holy shit.

Cysterly Love

As I clung to the shaggy green fibers of my bathmat and tried to concentrate on my fingers and the feeling of the floor instead of the pain in my abdomen, I wondered if I'd ever be able to eat again. I thought about Julie and her four years of tube feedings. I understood the ability to give up all food if this kind of pain was the alternative, but wondered what kind of life one could possibly have without food. Eating is such an important experience for me. I understood having all of your guts transplanted with the hope of being able to eat again. And then I thought about what the transplant did to Julie. How she's been in the ICU, sedated and waving at death ever since. What it's done to her family, with her parents now living month-to-month in Florida in an apartment chosen entirely for its proximity to the hospital and her sister now in charge of everything else back in Michigan. What is life worth? What is pain worth? Will they ever figure out what's wrong with Julie? Would they ever figure out what's wrong with me?

Mine started weeks earlier. I needed to pee even after I'd peed. I wondered if I had an extremely mild urinary tract infection. I've never had one and I'm not a very good candidate for contracting one (since I'm not having The Sex and I'm fairly compulsively clean to the point I use those flushable wipes in addition to regular toilet paper and never go more than 48 hours without showering), but they're so common and easy to deal with, I just drank lots of water and figured it would clear up on its own and if it got bad I'd go to my doctor. No big deal.

I've also been back to More Migraine Than Freedom pretty much since Thanksgiving. Maybe even before. I got stuck at my parents' house for days when my car window decided to randomly fall off its track and after the mechanic out by them fixed it, I was too dead to drive home. Then I went to NBF's house and spent two days there passed out and eating his food and occasionally taking the dogs out but he mostly did that, too.

At the end of January, my health insurance starts paying for my migraine care again. I'm supposed to call my neurologist and make an appointment for then so we can start fixing things again. I don't know why I haven't yet. I think I'm scared it still won't help and I'm sick of getting my hopes up and being a walking pharmacy and new tests and pokings and proddings that result in maybe feeling a little better some of the time but still feeling vaguely awful most of the time.

I go through phases where I do mini-workouts at home, usually including the lame-ass push-ups where you are on your knees, lunges, crunches, and whatever else strikes my fancy. Sunday night I did a lot of crunches including the kind where you lay on your stomach and crunch up backwards. Monday the pressure in my bladder was almost painful, I had to pee all the time (no trouble when I peed and regular good ol' non-smelly almost clear yellow pee came out), and I just kind of hurt in my general low-down inner gut area. I wondered if it was the crunches. Tuesday, it was clearly not the crunches. It still hurt, I still felt like I had an old lady or preggers bladder, and let's just say pooping wasn't a particularly pleasant experience.

I called my doctor. She couldn't see me, but her associate could. Fine. Associate at 3:30 PM.

I made NBF drive me. I was feeling pretty gross, though the actuall pain was less bad. More like "significant discomfort." I told the doctor what was wrong. She squished my belly and abdomen. I peed in a cup. I used to have serious issues with that, having to talk myself down from my OCD tendencies almost as much as getting blood drawn. Apparently, I'm much better at dealing with it now. No big deal.
Tentative diagnosis pending urinalisis: bladder infection. The place that was the most uncomfortable when she squished was apparently my bladder, and this was after I'd peed. The instant dipstick test of my urine was positive for traces of blood, too, which would indicate bladder infection. So the doctor gave me antibiotics that were "known to be good on stool" and said she hoped the drugs would clear up the problem before we even got the confirmation from the lab that it truly was a bladder infection.

My doctor's office is on the 11th floor of the Galter Pavilion at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. We dropped off my perscription at the Walgreens on the first floor, got dunch at the Au Bon Pan on the second floor, and went back to the first floor to pick up my perscription and validate the parking ticket.

I dutifully took my pills that night and Wednesday morning and night. I still hurt and didn't feel like eating much, but I mixed ramen noodles with Indian mashed vegetable curry for lunch and finished off the last of my raisin bran for dinner.

I woke up Thursday some time before 6 AM in pain. I had to pee, I had to poop. I did. It hurt my guts to do so, especially the lower right part (higher than the earlier pain, but below my belly button). I still hurt. A lot. It was like the worst gas pain and/or the worst period cramps ever, but in the wrong places. The experience was like having really terrible diarhea, but with regular poop. Running to the bathroom, clutching my guts, hoping it's over, crawling back to bed without the pain subsiding, big sharp stabs, wishing to fall back asleep, back to the bathroom, not wanting to have to sit up any longer, clutching the bathmat, thinking of Julie.

I called my doctor back to say what was going on. To say I was in hell, the worst pain of my life and I get migraines. Migraines aren't so sudden. They are extreme, but at least you can adjust to them. This was sharp and intense and unfamiliar. Help. I don't think this is a bladder infection anymore, since I've been taking my antibiotics. They left a message for the doctor to call me back when she could. I don't know why I knew I wasn't in immediate danger, but I did.

I called my sister. My mom was seeing clients that day and I didn't want to bug her. This was painful, but even if it was something serious, there was no reason to have her around stressing and missing things in the waiting room of the ER or something when I knew my sister wasn't doing anything. I woke my sister up and she said she'd come in a few hours. I figured that would be fine. If I needed more immediate attention, I could call NBF or 911. Until then, I didn't want to leave the comfort of my own bed and bathroom and the run back and forth. Mostly, I wanted someone to come and walk my dog for me and deal with anything else that might arise, since I was completely incapable.

I may be buying a condo very very soon. In Rogers Park, preferably right on the lake. I have the money my grandparents left me that apparently my parents have also been supplimenting over the years, and it's sitting in a nice tust fund that's purpose from the start was to finance education and/or a first home. With the economy in the shitter, the entire housing market looks like Filene's Basement. Part of me is very hesitant to buy something here, since I'm not positive I want to stay in Chicago long-term. I miss many of my friends who live in other states, NBF is moving to San Diego to be all lawyery in a year, and yesterday the temperature hit 8 F not counting windchill.

But I have family here. And I do have friends here.

I wasn't aware that I'd fallen asleep until the phone rang. My sister was downstairs and needed to be let in. The pain was quiet now. She walked my dog, who was desperate enough to go out and familiar enough with her that he didn't do his usual apeshit barky routine. My guts were still uncomfortable, but nothing like earlier. I was afraid to eat but I kept drinking. My sister and I talked about calling various friends we knew in the health professions. My dad is a doctor (former internist turned Insurance Company Health Administration Bad Guy, except he's a good guy...) but he was still in Bermuda for some conference thing. Then my sister mentioned kidney stones. We looked them up on WebMD and I decided that sounded right, since it was right around where the pain was and it came in two big waves and maybe there was a stone hanging out in my bladder. I kept drinking water but was afraid to eat. My sister had oatmeal. We called my doctor back and left the message that maybe it was kidney stones? Just a thought.

I took a long shower and shaved more carefully and completely than I do for bikini season. I figured if people were going to be poking around at me, possibly at my "lady parts," I wanted to be as well-groomed as humanly possible. The shower also felt fabulous, and I had a fear that I would check into the hospital and they would keep me, like Julie, and this might be the last good shower I got for a long time.

The doctor's assistant had called while I was in the shower. They wanted me to come in for a CT scan ASAP, but the soonest they could get me an appointment was the next morning at 6:20 AM. I could go to the ER and hope to be squeezed in some time before that, but there was a solid chance I still wouldn't get in until the next morning and would be stuck in the ER. I called back. 6:20 AM, CT scan it would be. My urinalysis from Tuesday came back with no signs of infection, so it clearly was not a bladder infection after all and I should stop taking the antibiotics. It could very well be kidney stones. Sounded like it. Then I asked about food. Apple sauce, soup, jello. I said I was feeling like eggs. "No eggs."

I had none of these foods in my apartment, so my sister and I had to go grocery shopping. But first we started watching The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I enjoyed very much and she fell asleep. I talked to NBF and informed him that I was crashing at his house so he could drive me to the 6:20 AM appointment. He was unthrilled but I knew right away he would do it.

My sister fell asleep and I got restless watching the movie. I hadn't eaten or taken any of my medications all day. We headed out to the grocery store.

I was in a daze and spent twice as long as usual (those of you who've been shopping with me know this is already an annoyingly slow process) picking

By the time we headed to the grocery store, I could barely walk straight. I hadn't eaten all day, which meant I hadn't taken my regular pills, and I felt like total crap. My sister was also hungry, and she's not very good when she's hungry, either. I stocked the cart with both super-bland easy to digest non-food foods and things I needed assuming I would be able to eat like a normal person again. I was really out of it but managed to do a fairly good job with my choices in the end. I also needed quarters so I could do a load of laundry before heading to NBF's house and the hospital. I wanted lots of good clean underwear and my hoodie and other things claimed by my hamper. I handed my sister my credit card so she could get in line and buy the groceries and I headed over to the in-grocery-store bank. No quarters, but customer service had rolls. I went to customer service. I pulled $10 out of the part of my wallet that has my quick-access stuff, like my credit cards, my drivers license, and sometimes cash. The customer service guy informed me that a roll of quarters was $10.25 because they charged a 25 cent service fee, and pointed to a sign. Lame. I complained, decided it was worth it anyway, told the customer service guy I wasn't bitching at him personally, since I knew it wasn't his fault or anything, and went back to find my sister starting to put groceries up on the conveyor belt. We discussed Jello shots with the check-out guy as he scanned watermelon, peach, and strawberry (oh how I wished they were intended for booze) and headed to the car. My sister really wanted to go to the bagel place by my apartment and it was unquestionably cold enough in the car to leave the groceries, so that was our next stop.

By this point, I was beyond stupid. I might as well have been completely drunk, having not eaten in a good 18 hours and going through Effexor withdrawl to boot. I wanted soup, but apparently the bagel place no longer sells soup, so I ordered apple cider. My sister did a make-your-own sandwich (all the ingredients you want for $60) with egg, salami, cream cheese, and sprouts. Weird girl. I went to pay for it and found my credit card was still floating by itself in my purse without the drivers license etc. chunk of my wallet. Where'd my cash go? Where'd that wallet chunk go? I paid with the credit card and started ripping my purse apart. I took everything out. I emptied my pockets. I went back to check in the car, including the grocery bags in case it fell in. Nothing. It was gone. Did I drop it back at the grocery store? I knew I had it when I took out the credit card to give to my sister to buy the groceries. I had to have had it to get the $10 to buy the quarters. That was the last place I knew for sure, customer service. I might have had it at the checkout, but maybe not.

We went back to the grocery store. We searched the parking lot. We asked at customer service. Nothing. We looked around the floor. Nothing. We found the guy who checked us out. He remembered us and tried to help us look. It was a very short amount of time and space between when I knew I had it and when I knew I didn't. No wallet. It contained my drivers license, one credit card, my ATM/debit card, my AAA card, my health insurance card, and probably $40 in cash since I'd just gone to the ATM the day before. I left my name and phone number at customer service in case someone turned it in, since I was sure it went missing right around there.

Back at my apartment, I called the credit card company to cancel the card and make sure no one had charged anything on the card that day. I hadn't used that particular card (it links to my parents' account and is just for emergencies) so it shouldn't have any charges.
The first charge made on the card was at Walgreens, at most 20 minutes after I know for a fact it was in my hand. Five more charges were then made at Target and Best Buy within half an hour. My ATM/debit card was only used to buy gas along the way. We canceled the cards and disputed the charges no problem, but I wished there was a way to instead make the next time they tried to use the card set off all kinds of alarms and have the police show up on the scene. The way things are now, they get to keep whatever they stole from the six transactions, even if we don't have to pay for them.

My sister sat me down and made me eat applesauce and soup. I started to regain my basic brain functions. I did laundry. My sister looked at Facebook and potential three bedroom places for rent in Portland, Oregon. I packed a bag with clean comfy clothes for the next day and enough clean underwear to last a week (I'm not sure why) and she handed me over to NBF by 8:30.


UNFINISHED

Dream: storms and sex and drugs

I was dreaming about dust storms and these giant pod things (like, building-sized) that I was in with my mom and sister and this guy I had a crush on on-and-off from elementary school through high school

and then I went into the bathroom and I was at a bar or a club or something and I'd only had one drink but I was really fucked up and I thought maybe someone had slipped me a rufie and I sat down by the sinks and then the bathroom got really crowded and we all had to stay inside because of the dust storm and a flood or something

so they drunk guy next to me decided he wanted to have sex with his girlfriend right then and there

but there wasn't much room so a bunch of other guys helped prop her up and people were cheering and I was taking it all in but really wasted and couldn't really move

and then they wanted me to get in on the orgy acrobatics thing but I could only function enough to shake my head no and half push them away
then the flood splashed past and I started to walk out of the bathroom and follow exit signs but fell down by the bar at the top of the stairs so some other guy was going to be helpful and there were a few guys who were trying to either help me or get with me and I couldn't really tell which and I was really dizzy and eventually I ended up in a car with my cousin-in-law and one of the guys who really was helpful and they were taking me home.

Fin.

No, this post isn't about you

Ever wonder what it would be like to have sex with people with whom you wouldn't necessarily actually have sex? What aspects of your current relationship (whatever it may be) would manifest themselves, and how?

I think about a certain past Boy. Our friendship was complicated to say the least. We could have a wonderful time together, driving around and going to diners and just hanging out and talking about life and the creative process and frustration and happiness and being silly and goofy and dumb as shit. But I had hopes and expectations and things I wanted him to be that he wasn't, and he could turn into a molten asshole on the head of a hairpin. When we hooked up, we always knew we shouldn't. There was something tumultuous and rebellious and sinister about it and we knew it, but the idea that we couldn't fight our passions and our bodies just made everything more desperate and burning and forceful. It was like all the hurt and anger of our relationship came crashing out and rippled and exploded until we were sated. But then he, having expressed what he needed to express, was satisfied, while I wanted more. I loved the tempest and had more to "say." I wasn't done.

Like the sad self-hating creature I was, I kept right on going in this cycle for years. Years. I don't know exactly what changed in me or the friendship to make the "tempest" stop, but hooking up is now just a familiar and pleasurable way attending to a physical need. It's also significantly less frequent, since said Boy has lived in another state for several years.

But it's not always the same part of a relationship that comes through. My sample size is way too small and my imagination is way too busy. I take one friend and wonder if it's the playfulness that would show up, or if we'd get weird and cerebral like we sometimes do, or if it would be just completely comfortable and whatever and ok, because that's also a part of things. Or another friend who might seem totally awkward and wrong, but also might be completely harmonious because we know eachother so well and in such strange intimate ways...

Yes, I need to get laid.

excuses, excuses

Tonight, I got on the train in the wrong direction. Not my normal route or station because I went to catch the express one station beyond my usual stop. The red line towards the loop is on one side of the platform, so I assumed the purple line on that side also went towards the loop. It does not. It took me two stops into Evanston to realize this.

I was feeling ditzy and out of it and the gazillions of pills I'm on don't help matters. I was ten minutes later to meeting my dad for dinner than planned, though I'd texted him as soon as I got onto the right train.

According to him, my train mistake is part of my pattern of self-destructive behavior and people don't want to hear the excuses, they just want to hear that I'm sorry and I know it's not ok.

That's the kind of thinking that keeps me depressed and self-hating and crazy, not to mention, it's just not true.

I'm sorry for the intrusion on my dad's time, because he cares about timeliness (which is a serious pot calling the kettle black, but that's enough negative campaigning there, Annabell McCain...), but what are 10 minutes, really? Our reservation wasn't even until the time I showed up.

My "pattern of self-destructive behavior" could be seen as a "pattern" of all kinds of things. It's the pattern you're looking for. Getting on the wrong train is dazed, and this wasn't some major life anything. Plus, the fact that I could ride the train at all should be cause for celebration. My head has been very cranky the past few weeks and my "monthly cycle" is in super-fussy-mode, too. I had enough foresight to check the map from the el stop to the restaurant, knowing I haven't been "all there" and I didn't need to waste time hunting down Wacker when I could look it up before leaving. And I left my apartment with time to spare, as proven by my making it to the restaurant only 10 minutes late with a full wrong-direction train and then more waiting for the right one.

Not every imperfection in life is an excuse. Sometimes, they're just reasons. Because I'm human and I'm trying really hard to let myself be human and have that be ok.

Apparently, Topamax has terrible horrible withdrawal symptoms similar to Effexor's terrible horrible withdrawal symptoms. I have been feeling like cold sweaty death for a bit over 24 hours now, even though I got the Topamax back into my system a good 8+ hours ago. And NBF's dog won't stop whining at me. She is here for a doggy playdate/her and my mutual entertainment and company while NBF was at school all day, but I am not allowed to do anything other than play with her and at the moment that is annoying. Earlier it was just fine, because I was a doggy snuggle sandwich with a furry love blob in each hand. Now, I'm trying to get a teeny-tiny bit of work done while I'm sitting up, but that means getting sereneded by persistent whines.

Dream

I've been having dreams about anime. I'm alternately watching and taking part in a series in which consciousness is entirely cyberized so that you can enter/hack into the consciousness of anything from other people to fish. The main character is a variation on the General from Ghost in the Shell and there's some sort of shady something going on that she's investigating (I slip back and forth from watching and being her) and these rings of bad people are clearly about to do something and the question is what, and you don't know who's good or bad or themseleves or anything, and there's a general societal feeling that anybody not completely good is bad so that there is very little trust and checkpoints everywhere for everything and lawyers are some of the only people who know the real rights anybody has when being checked and for life in general, so they're this whole class of people that have a strange power of understanding the system which can then be used to help or to hurt people, so both good and bad people have really intense opinions about lawyers since they both completely distrust but also desperately need them. The main character person has no idea why the 2 or more lawyers that are trying to get in with the bad people ring and what their motivations might be, good or bad or inbetween. And the inbetween is a really difficult area to deal with, because the masses tend not to believe in it but the main character at least (particularly when I'm her) sees that the only good aren't the perfectly good and that people are mostly just people and that needs to be accepted.

my little d has the big C

aaaaaaaaaand now my dog has a malignant mast cell tumor. Awesome. It's kind of on his back left side above his leg towards his butt. Sunday, I thought it was a cut. Then he wouldn't leave it alone, so I stuck the collar thing on him. It scabbed up but it still looked weird, so I brought him to the vet. And it's cancer. Awesome. Probably low-grade and as not-a-big-deal as possible when it comes to a cancerous tumor, but no one wants cancer, even the least bad form of cancer, and I love my dog very very very very very much and it's clearly bugging him and I just want to hold him and snuggle him all the time (since I found out like 5 hours ago).

More Migraine Life Philosophy Crap

Originally written as a response to another person's blog post about dealing with chronic sinus issues:

For as far as we've come in medicine, there's still SO MUCH we don't know. There's this expectation that we can somehow find the "answer" and fix whatever is wrong. And sometimes we can. And maybe that "cure" is out there and if we make the right choices, we'll feel better. And maybe it's not. And even if it is, there's no way to know if we've made the "right" choices or if we ever can. And that's frustrating as hell, especially when you feel like crap for the whateverith day in a row and it's hard enough to function with the constant distraction of pain and ickyness but now you have this extra job of figuring out how to make yourself NOT feel like crap. OR do you just learn to live and love and accept your pain? Know that it is part of you and that you may never find that golden panacea and instead spend that last little burst of energy on coping methods and enjoying the good functional pieces of your life?

There are no answers. I have to decide for myself every day what's most important and what's doable. Some days the decision is very conscious and struggly. Some days I don't even think about it, but I'm still making these choices. It's a strange, strange little world of serious chronic pain that creeps in and becomes a part of your life.

Goldie

I took the #70 Division bus tonight from the red line stop at Clark to Paulina. Clark and Division is at the edge of the Gold Coast (super-rich neighborhood), turns immediately into Old Town (still rich, a little younger and cuter, Second City is in the 'hood but on North), and then something was clearly wrong. New shopping centers and developments bore the name "Old Town" but I was pretty sure we'd passed Old Town and it didn't feel like Old Town. We were still on Division. There were mismatched new buildings scattered around huge empty lots, random blatant "green" developments, a big garden that looked like it had been planted on top of a parking lot with a sign advertising its Tuesday and Thursday markets and another sign tied to the fence that read "It takes a village to raise a tomato." The whole stretch felt like a ghost town with haphazardly placed well-intended left-winger projects band-aided over the holes. The bus was back among the affluent and into the hipsters of Wicker Park when it finally dawned on me where we'd driven:
Cabrini-Green.
If you're not from Chicago, that may not be much of a punch-line. Cabrini Green was a notorious housing project. [For more info, have fun with the Wikipedia site and Chicago Housing Authority site.] Six years ago, when they began tearing down the buildings of Cabrini-Green, I would have been much more aware what lie between the red line and Wicker Park and probably would have opted for a different public transportation path. But in 2008, I sat across the aisle of the #70 from a redhead who spent the entire ride on her cell phone flirting and talking about ultimate frisbee. A woman in her 60s got on a few stops before we crossed the Chicago River, still in the heart of the ghost town, but she started to get off at the next stop because she couldn't pay the fare. "Does anyone have one ride on their transit card?" Someone swiped for her to get back on the bus. The area is certainly safer, but what happened to the thousands and thousands of people who used to live there? Where are they now? The CHA hasn't accepted new applicants for housing since 2001. Totally fucked up. It's like the entire plan for Cabrini has been to make the world nicer for Rich White People and worse for Poor Black People. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I don't love the Chicago Tribune or their reporting, but read this anyway.

And another thing! How can so many people be so deeply and disgustingly racist in so many ways?
I am small, blonde and female, and even if I'm wearing old sweatpants and a stained t-shirt, I walk down the street or into a store and IMMEDIATELY get the benefit of the doubt. Cops do me favors, I've never been accused of stealing anything or loitering, no one crosses the street when they see me coming. I am grateful for these things, but I did nothing more to deserve them than any other human being. I just happened to be born blonde and female in a world that values that.

I don't expect any major paradigm shifts from a silly blog post, but if you could think for a minute about the difference between living with and without the constant benefit of the doubt (and the really sick part is we've gotten to the point where it's not just white people doubting everyone else, but everyone else doubting themselves in varying ways and to varying degrees, too).

Please? Do it for the little blonde girl.

remiss

In an email from a friend: "I've missed reading your blog posts - have you given up on Annabell Jo?"

Hell no. Out of the habit. Distracted. That's bad enough, but I'm not giving up.

I'm still migrainy. Nowhere near as bad as they were, but I've had almost zero days with zero pain and symptoms. They're just more livable, and I'm doing a lot more around them, and I'm only really losing maybe a day or two a week instead of only having a day or two a week. I've sold my cards in person more than once now, and my aunt and uncle are hiring me to do some stuff on their website that can be done whenever I'm physically able. I want to take one class in the fall back at school, but I'm not there yet. There's a whole lot of tests and a few doctors' appointments I need to make to hopefully get me to that point, but first I need health insurance.

I still don't have health insurance. On the phone yesterday with the iChip people makes me think I'm really, really close, but I would have said that months ago, too, so I don't want to get too excited. The adjuster from iChip had the exact same problems with the idiots at my last insurance company that I did (it took her EIGHT CALLS to find someone who could give her my policy number, something I was never able to get in writing), so that made me feel a little less crazy.

My car is still "in the shop." It's now done except for a tire, which wasn't the result of the accident (Chicago pothole(s) damaged the tire and wheel itself), so it's out of pocket, so I got a tire for half the price online that has to be shipped from Saturn or something. I'm borrowing my sister's car until I get my own back, which my sister just loves, but my parents are redoing their kitchen which somehow translates to also repaving their garage and outdoor parking space thing, so my sister's car needed a place to stay anyway, and parking is terrible around her summer sublet apartment in the now-cool South Loop.

She and I went to the Taste of Chicago yesterday and had a very nice time. It was as uncrowded as the Taste gets, and I think I was sufficiently distracted by food and being the Person With a Sense of Direction to ignore my persistent mid-grade migraine long enough to have fun. With two strips of tickets (a total of $16) and "Taste sizes" only (each booth offers one of their items as a smaller portion for 3-4 tickets), the two of us had:

• rib tips from Robinsons No. 1 Ribs
• cumin-dusted fries with mango chutney from Vermilion Latin-Indian Cuisine
• jerk chicken with red beans and rice from Vee-Vee's African Cuisine
• chocolate-dipped frozen baby banana from Aunt Diana's Candy Makers
• samosa from Arya Bhavan
• alcapurria (pork filled banana dumpling) from Sabor Latino

Everything was entirely fabulous except for the alcapurria, which was a big fried blob of generic friedness. The jerk chicken was a real stand-out, so my sister and I will have to go to the actual Vee-Vee's sometime, since it's close to my apartment.

My grandma turned 85 yesterday and this past weekend most of my maternal extended family converged on San Diego. That's where NBF is for the summer and I almost didn't see him at all because he is a big fat poo-head. My mom's sister hosted the whole thing (she lives there) and she's pretty fabulous. That side of the family is much easier to deal with in general, since they say what they mean and don't care how much money you make. On the other hand, my grandma can be pretty difficult, but also people have stopped being nice to her and about her. And my siblings were being total schmuck-heads to me in general. Let's just say it was a real test of my Newfound Positivity (thank you therapy...I'm not sure if I'm being sarcastic).

Speaking of therapy, big revelation this week: being less loud and/or obnoxious and/or "annoying*" and generally changing what I say and how I act to fit a situation isn't "giving in," it's more like being a teacher altering your methods until the students understand. My therapist is very good.

That should be enough for now. I need to get my ass back writing again in less than seven weeks.


*My sister thinks I'm annoying. All the time. She tells me so. All the time. It's swell.

Growing Up

My 26th birthday is tomorrow. I need to wake up, make calls re: my car accident last week and my health insurance, then my mom and my sister are taking me to lunch. In the evening I'm picking up NBF at the airport. Maybe I'll make him watch a me movie while we eat take-out Indian food. My presents this year are mainly furniture. I put together the first big Ikea piece tonight and am kovered in krazy glue I keep picking off my fingers.
I remember when birthdays stopped meaning toys. I remember when they stopped meaning you were the center of the universe and everybody treated you like a princess. Those felt much more tragic. This is more of a change than a loss. I asked for furniture. I'm excited about my furniture. There are grown-up things I find terribly annoying, but I want to be a silly grown-up, not a silly child. Does that make sense?

Yes, it's been awhile. Yes, I should explain the truck that rammed into me last Tuesday and all sorts of other things, but not now. I'm too out of it.

The War, On Drugs

I've gone from completely stoned to back in pain and moderately stupid with time lurching along in weird fits. I don't know quite what happened to Saturday except I was in pain and then NBF came over and then I added pot to the mix and it helped a little and I slept and poked at my computer and then it was Sunday. Sunday I kept referring to things I did Friday as "yesterday" because I didn't feel like there'd been a Saturday, but last week feels like a million years ago. A few hours ago feels like a moment ago. I've been using the Norflex to kill the pain, and it seems to help but it knocks me out. I'll be upright and semi-functional for minutes or hours after taking it when WHAM! I can barely hold my head up or concentrate on whatever I'm in the middle of doing and I have to lay down. Some times I pass out right away, sometimes I just lay there. Then minutes or hours pass and I get up again until I pass out again. I spoke to my new neurologist today about my drug reactions and I had some trouble explaining myself but he seemed encouraged that the first few days on the Neurontin were less painful and he says the stoned/stupid feeling goes away in time.

My weird visual halucination thingies are really bad right now. I keep seeing flying bugs and realizing they're only spots in my vision. Good way to make me crazy fast.

I think I'll try reading in bed. See how that works out for me.

New Whirled Order

I feel stoned. I kind of am stoned, in that I am on drugs, but I am not on marijuana, or anything else illegal. I went to my new neurologist on Monday and he spent three hours with me and was extremely thorough and asked all sorts of questions about the exact location of my pain and the type of pain and if I preferred hot or cold on my face when I was in pain and if external pressure felt good or bad during headaches and things like that. He also determined that my specific type of migraine is very high stroke risk and I never should have been on a number of the drugs I've been on in the past. Awesome. So the new short-term plan is to keep me on what I was on most recently (50 mgs twice a day of Topamax and 225 mgs of Effexor XR once a day) so we don't mess with where I was before as we add the new drugs: Gabapentin (generic for Neurontin) three times a day and Oraphenadrine Citrate (generic for Norflex) twice a day as needed. The Gabapentin is normally an epilepsy drug, like Topamax. I'm starting on 100 mgs at a time (three times a day) for a week, and then I'm supposed to move up to 200 mgs at a time for week 2, and 300 mgs from then on. That means eventually I will be taking at least 14 pills a day, every day, theoretically for the rest of my life. We'll see if I can do it on schedule, since that's apparently a bit faster than my doctor would normally get me started, but since I've been so crappy and told him to "just fix it," he went with the more agressive dosing.
But I'm not so sure I can handle it. I've basically been stoned out of my mind since Tuesday. I'm not quite sure what I did the last few days. I slept a lot Tuesday, but then yesterday and today I know I was awake, I'm just not sure what I did. That's fucked up. I made some greeting cards. That's good, I guess. I don't entirely remember making the greeting cards, but I have the results to prove I did it. I've been on Etsy, too. And some other websites. And I took pictures of my dog in his hoodie in the snow on the beach. Oh! And yesterday I went to my first therapy appointment with my new therapist! How the hell did I forget about that!?! I got on a bus and went downtown and she was good and quickly recognized that I am intellectually aware of many of the things I need to see (the big one being that my mom doesn't see anyone as capable of doing anything without her help and it's not just that she sees me as a permanent child who will never be able to be a functional adult) but our big goal for therapy needs to be getting from the mental knowing to the internal feeling and accepting. She also told me to read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, so I stopped at Borders on the way home. Then the bus was running late and there were a gazillion people waiting for it, so I figured I'd go into Lush and poke around since the first bus would be crowded and just get one of the next busses. And I did. And I ended up talking to the salesladyperson about Etsy a lot since she had a friend who sold jewelry on there and she was thinking about opening a shop of her own, so I gave her my card and she gave me a bunch of free samples (standard at Lush anyway) and as I left my bus was just pulling up and I even got a seat. I ruled.

Maybe now I'm just tired. It is after 5 AM. I thought it was 4 AM at 8 PM, but now it's really after 5 AM. In theory I'll get used to these drugs and not feel so damned stoned anymore, but I'm hoping that happens soon. The migraine is better, though not gone, but holy crap I feel stoned. Oh, and I also watched The French Connection, which wasn't nearly as good as The Last Picture Show, and The French Connection won the Oscar that year. Gladiator also won the best picture Oscar, so there's no accounting for taste, I suppose.

I'm going to go to the bathroom and refill my water bottle and go to bed now. I don't think I am going to take another Norflex because I am plenty stoned as it is.

I listen to emotional music because I am dead inside

This is a friggin' long entry. Some of it is good, some of it is bad, and very little of it talks about anything I've actually done for the past month. If you only read one part, read the blue text. If you read any more than that, sorry in advance.

I don't know why The Sads are winning now as opposed to some other moment over the last few weeks, but they are. Probably hormone-related and all terribly logical, but I'm still feeling The Sad. I should listen to Emo and wear sweatbands around my wrists.

I called a therapist today and left a message. I've had the business card of said therapist for a month, but my parents decided to give me an ultimatum on Friday that I absolutely HAD to 1) start therapy 2) find a good psychopharmacologist and 3) hire a housekeeper on a weekly basis. They thought I'd be most upset about #3. Mostly I was upset that they were giving me Life Ultimatums, but as we all know, They know best and have not only a right but a duty to tell me what to do because They are right. At the moment it's particularly frustrating because, as I check off month number four of seriously compromised physical wellbeing, I do need some help and I do need to get my ass to the therapist but I've had such a hard time convincing them I'm a grown-up that relinquishing any of that is terrifying. And being my parents, their fucked up shit is ever so close to my fucked up shit, so it all gets more and more fucked up and shitty and I start regressing and now I'm back in my hole avoiding the universe. And I hate myself for getting like this, and it's not nearly as bad as it's gotten in the past, but knowing my cave-dwelling tendency, it freaks me out to watch myself bolting back in that direction. I have an appointment with a new neurologist on Monday, and I've done a lot of the crap to get myself on the state's health insurance thing, but I haven't followed up and I needed to do that today. I didn't. I called the therapist (and my regular doctor to restock my supply of Effexor samples, though my head was being too fussy to drive down there) and that was very good, but I didn't deal with the health insurance. I should have dealt with the health insurance a week ago. And instead of it just being the top priority on my To Do list tomorrow, it's a fucking albatross.

On the other hand, Etsy has been great. I'm actually selling things. Not nearly enough to consider it a job or even a real income, but at least my crafting hobby is paying for itself and it's given me something to do in my state of permanently-semi-dead. It's mostly a feel-good lovey-dovey community and the chatrooms provide a vague sense social interaction, and when I make something and someone likes it enough to pay me money for it, I feel deeply complimented and at least a little bit productive. I think the next step in Living-With-Migraines is to find some sort of work-from-home part-time data entry job.

It all comes back to trying to balance my current life formula. What percentage of my time should be spent doing each of the following to make the most out of my life:

• actively looking for medical and trying out answers and solutions to my migraines (neurologists, headache clinics, clinical trials, etc.)
• actively looking for and trying out "alternative" answers and solutions to my migraines (acupuncture, yoga, howling at the moon, etc.)
• learning to live with my migraines and seeking out new short- and long-term paths (find more lucrative work-from-home strategies, get degree online, join chronic pain support groups)
• nursing my wounds and just trying to do things that make me happy on a basic day-to-day level (sleeping, Etsy, dog snuggles, watching movies, etc.)

I want answers. And now I think my parents are convinced most of my migraines are self-perpetuating from my depression, and that's definitely on my list of possibilities, but my parents are back so deep in my skull I can't tell if that's really just me thinking it, if it's them thinking it and so I think it, or if both they think it and I think it but one is not necessarily dependent on the other. I'd say a lot of my opinions are going through this process right now. It's like back when I was 10 and I realized for the first time that everything I thought I knew was only because I accepted what I'd been told.

If I let myself, I could easily spend my entire life in an epistemological daze/fury.

It's hard when the voice of my own nagging and self-doubt is echoed by my parents, and then their voices echo in my head in an orgy of aphorisms and "shoulds."

A month or two back my whole immediate family was out to dinner at a very good restaurant. As we were all quite stuffed and contented and happy with our meals, we started ranking our favorites to least favorites from each course. I pointed out, half-joking, that we were such a judgmental family we couldn't even get through a meal without judging and ranking everything instead of just talking about how delicious things were and why. Everyone got really quiet. We'd switched to judging ourselves for being too judgmental.

This is why I'm crazy.

Tomorrow, I will deal with the health insurance. Head willing, I will go to the post office. I will also gather the plates and bowls and things that have overflown my garbage can by my desk and put them in the trash and take that trash outside. Baby steps.

"Baby steps" is so something my father would say.

The Frozen Tundra that is My Soul

It's almost 3 AM. I just finished picking the chicken out of my cold leftover mediocre semi-homemade masala with a serrated knife, because that's what was clean. I dipped a multigrain roll in the sauce (also cold), too. I couldn't really taste the roll, so it was ok. Now I'm eating the Hershey's kisses my aunt sent me. This is why I had indigestion earlier and it will probably give me indigestion again. My period decided to show up 8 hours ago. My apartment is freezing and I am wearing 2-4 layers on almost every part of my body, then wrapped in a bathrobe and again in a blanket. I keep hoodies and hats on my head at all times, and frequently just give up and crawl back into my bed cocoon in front of my ever-blasting space heater. My dog is there 90% of the time now, and it's making him restless and whiny. We are both restless and whiny, but too frozen and fussy and lonely and stagnant to do anything about it. Happy fucking Valentines Day.




PS- Things haven't actually been that bad and I'll post a real post later. But it's 3 AM and I'm fussy so this is the post I'm posting now.

In dreams

In my dream, right before I woke up:

“Little girl! Do you know where you are trying to plant your seed? In that soil is all the sadness of the world!”
“Yes, I know, and I think that’s the best place for a tree to grow.”

Quick bullets to catch up with possible expanded stories later:

• I tried out for Wheel of Fortune. I was awesome. I won't find out if I made the show or not for another two weeks.
• I made new friends on my hallways when one of them was almost mugged at 2 AM on a Sunday night/Monday morning
• I'm now also friends with the substitute mail lady
• and a pedophile
• Classes start next week and I haven't signed up yet, but I plan to take prose forms and that's it since I'm still having lots of migraines
  

In and Out of the Flow of Life/Mucus

Screw neti pots and their recent surge in popularity thanks to Oprah and the New York Times - my OCD tendencies had me eying those saline nasal irrigation things for years. Normally I want one when I have a cold, since I seem to have been spared the classic runny-nose seasonal allergy crap, but with more evidence and doctors suggesting that perhaps my migraines are sinus-related, I splurged and spent $12 on the NeilMed Sinus Rinse kit. 8 oz of warm water (I did it right from the tap, livin' on the edge, instead of buying distilled water and heating it in the microwave) with the little packet of salty crap to make saline, mixed in the bottle, leaned over the sink, held it up to my nostril, and squeezed.
Gross. But the good kind of gross. Except for the part when it started snotting down the back of my throat and I had to spit out snot. That was mostly the bad kind of gross. But overall, I am pleased. I do feel better able to breathe through my nasal passages and feel they were very well cleaned and irrigated.

I'm a member of this awesome co-ed fraternity now: Alpha Alpha Alpha. They're really into travel, and they'll help you out anywhere if your car dies, and all sorts of places give you discounts if you tell them you're a member. AAA loveeeeee!!!

After spending way too much time and energy insuring my new car (have I mentioned lately I love my new car? I don't think I have. I love my new car.) I was getting renters insurance through AAA because they were significantly cheaper than anywhere else and my dad decided I needed renters insurance. Then the AAA insurance guy asked me about my car insurance and blah blah blah now I am paying a lot less and I trust AAA more than the no-name company I ended up with before. So that was all good insurance news, even though I spent a very long time going through the different quotes and people and things.
After the fiasco with my old health insurance, I decided to get new health insurance. Pay more and make sure everything was covered. I did lots of shopping around for that, filled out the application online, answered more questions over the phone last week when they called to clarify certain things about my health and insurance history, and told my mother every other day that no I hadn't heard back from the health insurance people yet. Well, the same day all my other insurance got happy, I got rejected from the health insurance. Probably because of my migraines (yes, they can do that), in which case I just need the letter to show up here that states they rejected me due to medical history and I can apply for the Illinois Lame People Insurance, but (and here is the moral of the story so I will bold it) Why is it so fucking difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to insure our health and property to a safe, legal, minimal standard?

My migraine has been much better behaved and I was all ready to do an I Love Topamax dance, then the weather shifted and it kicked my ass. Maybe less so, I'm not sure. It was a few days of bad that I first thought were the result of chocolate and didn't know what to do if it turned out chocolate was my trigger, but then I went outside and it was very clearly the weird crazy weather shift shit that normally gets me. Now the weather is back to Standard Chicago Winter and I'm doing better and I want to register for classes and such, but I still don't have this crap figured out and I don't want the same thing to happen again and I don't quite know what to do about it all. My school starts really late, so I have a few weeks, but I don't know what monumental change will happen in those few weeks to make things any clearer.

To end on a positive note: I have an audition for Wheel of Fortune on Tuesday! I got an email saying I'd been selected for an appointment time to audition for the Chicago taping of College Week! So excited!

and then it was 2008

I spent New Years in a ballgown* in the international terminal of O'Hare airport. On purpose.

After three weeks with his girlfriend in Florida, NBF's flight was scheduled to arrive at 11:25 PM on New Years Eve. Had I not seen the sign for the airlines when I dropped him off, I wouldn't have believed his domestic flight was really going in and out of the international terminal or that this "discount carrier" actually existed.
With all my recent migraine hell, I wasn't going to make any big booming New Years plans, and my one other big non-booming NYE possibility fell through, so I agreed to pick up NBF so long as I was physically capable of driving. A week of my family mostly behaving themselves and then an energy jolt from being back at my apartment again put me on enough of an upswing that I even drove to Target in a snow storm hoping they had better evening gloves.
I put on my funky Jessica McClintock ballgown and did my hair and make-up and packed a bag with:

• cheap champagne flutes and cheap champagne to match
• sparkling blood orange cranberry juice for my new booze-free self
• marijuana as my partying alternative, packed neatly into my first aid kit because I think it's both appropriate and funny
• cherries, because I had them in the fridge and they were portable and delicious
• these Trader Joe's raspberry brie filo appetizer things that taught me 1) my oven has no temperature numbers on its knob 2) it still works and 3) so does my smoke detector.

I checked Imaginary Airline's Website before I left and discovered NBF's flight now wasn't getting in until 12:12 AM, so I took my time. My dress fell all the way to the floor and I thought about wearing my best snow boots, but ended up in my black dress boots as a compromise between form and function. I drove through what was crappy driving weather, but I was in no hurry and my new car is super comfortable with its seat warmers and anti-lock breaks and Garrison Keillor the radio and hardly any other cars on the road and everything so beautiful and still and white. I could have been miserable and cranky, but instead it was one of those strange moments of pure joy where you just have to laugh at the beauty and perfection and ridiculousness of it all.**
Garrison and I counted down at midnight on the exit ramp to Terminal 5. In a ballgown. In the snow.
Terminal 5 parking is entirely outdoors. I found a spot right by the entrance, grabbed the champagne and food, lifted my dress above the sludge, and went in.
The terminal was warm and almost empty. I put my coat and purse and food down on some seats near the middle and wandered back and forth within 20 feet of my little "base camp." The monitor still said the flight was due in at 12:12. A man slept on a few seats nearby. I wondered if he'd missed the new year. A man and a woman stared at me. I smiled. After all, I was wearing a ballgown. Another man walking passed, also staring, said, "I'm sure whoever you're here to meet will be very happy; you look wonderful." I thanked him. I wanted to say, "Yeah, and the dickwad isn't even my boyfriend!" but I didn't.
I called my parents to wish them the obligatory Happy New Year. They were having fun with their annual party and my dad as drunk as he ever gets. We hung up and it was 12:24. I noticed a bunch of people over beyond where the bar was. I thought it was just restrooms back there and the bar was closed, but maybe there was something going on. A champagne toast? People coming out of the flight?
I picked up my stuff and walked over. Heads turned. I felt like a warped version of Cinderella walking into the ball, except this turned out to be a solitary "domestic baggage claim" in the international terminal and the closest thing to Prince Charming didn't even notice until I was right next to him.
We waited at least half an hour for the bags to come out. Another hour driving home in the snow, counting down with NPR to New Years on the west coast. Then I ate all but one of the brie things, we drank our respective sparkling beverages, smoked a bowl, and he and the dog fell asleep while I lay awake and convinced myself I knew what he was thinking and overthought every turn of his head and move of his arm for at least an hour before finally passing out myself.



*Ballgown is now one word because I think it should be.
**C.S. Lewis talks about those a lot in the appropriately titled Surprised By Joy. They're like microbursts of happiness. When I try to explain them, some people know exactly what I'm talking about, some smile and nod, and others think I'm crazy. I consider them much more logical than and a welcome balance to bouts of depression and sadness. Why is unprovoked sadness common but unprovoked happiness crazy?