My Kind of Town, Not My Kind of Drugs

I've always been willing/happy to move to another city if there was some other city with a solid concentration of my friends. The more I look at condos, the more I realize that everybody isn't going to just magically congregate in one place and I need to keep chugging along towards stability and pretend adulthood and as long as there's nowhere else to go, buying a condo in Chicago makes a lot of sense. Hell, this one was my idea, not my parents'. And there's a lot of great stuff out there. So condo it is!

So la-dee-da, staying in Chicago for at least Obama's first term (roll your eyes at me because you always knew I'd be in Chicago forever anyway) and now a few of my favorite people may come to me.

One is applying for jobs post-masters degree graduation. He was like a less healthy (mainly because I was even less emotionally healthy) version of NBF back at Liberal Arts College. I do have a history of turning into an idiot around him, but the last few years I seem to be over the idiot thing (I'm not sure when and where he turned into a human being instead of a demigod, but as long as the glitch in my perception is fixed, it's a decided improvement) and we have much fun together in less-than-gigantic doses.

My friend who lives in Madison auditioned for Chicago Civic Orchestra, and I reeeeeally want him to get into that for next year because he'd have to come down here more often but could still stay living with his fabulous girlfriend in Madison while she finishes med school, and Civic is an excellent gateway to many other Chicago (ok, and other) orchestra opportunities and she's all Midwestern Cheesecurdy anyway and unlike some friends that I would just be trapping in a web of evil, I have a sense he could be perfectly happy as a Chicagoan. Mwahahaha.

Am I trying to justify planting my condo-buying roots here while NBF gets ready to move to his no longer certain or shiny future? And why do I cling to NBF most when he's fussy? I cling to a lot of people most when they're a certain level of fussy. Too fussy and they can go fuck themselves. But that familiar level of sad and self-hating and you are suddenly the magic little center of my existence. Case in point: my dog. Those of you who know my dog, stop laughing.

My health has been particularly frustrating. In the past 16 days I've gone from a daily dose of 225 mg of Effexor to 0 Effexor to 40 mg of Prozac to 60 mg of Prozac to now 10 mg of Prozac. Slap on top of that the 1 mg tabs of Lorazepam I get to bite in half as needed to keep me from jumping out of my skin and make sure I can still digest food and I'm a treat to be around. 900 mg a day of Neurontin, 100 of Topamax, and .05 of Synthroid feel like old friends now. The foundation. The sandy beach atop which I must build my castle. Oooh, cheesy metaphor.
At any rate, all the stomach troubles and the jumpiness was due to the Prozac. My psychiatrist thought by switching directly from the Effexor to the Prozac I could avoid the Effexor withdrawal and I'd take to the Prozac right away. Instead, I went through the full withdrawal thing and then all the batshit insanity was classic serotonin side effect crap, meaning my body did not adjust nicely to the Prozac and my psychiatrist added anxiety meds just to counteract the Prozac and dropped me waaaay down on the Prozac and I'm still feeling jumpy and useless and having trouble digesting things but in theory it will go away in a few days. In theory. And my head still hurts and my left eye is still twitching. You don't notice the eye thing unless I point it out and you look very carefully, but it's there and it's weird and I'm broke and I can't get anything done towards being a productive member of society and it's making me very fussy.

How many more years until you go to the doctor, they stick you with a needle and instantly know your exact body chemistry and what's wrong and how to fix it?

Back to happy thoughts, brain. Happy happy happy thoughts. Hot Dog Sam and her hubby are likely to move to Chicago in a few years, too. They would totally live in my neighborhood. We'll totally force our dogs to play together the way our parents used to force us to play with their friends' children of various ages and personalities, regardless of compatibility. It'll be awesome.

more drug problems?

My stomach has been pissy for days and I'm now pretty sure it's the drugs. I've got this nervous jumpy shaky feeling, particularly in my legs, like I can't hold still, but then I feel too crappy to do anything productive with it like go to the gym. And I've been doing terrible things to food, worst in the mornings. It's like the physical crap from being really anxious and worried about something, but without any of the emotions to help it all make sense. Can't I just lead a normal, healthy, productive life without the medications and crap? Please?

Biggest real worry I'm feeling right now: paying for the psychiatrist on Thursday, since he requires a check up front and then the insurance can come in and be useful. I should start doing the phone sex thing again. Make some money.

NBF likes saying things like "The need for love is the one true failure of the human existence."
I think the need for food is a much greater failure.

I want to take the people I love most in the universe and have them all live in the same city and stay there and be happy.

crampy period happy fun time yay!
Might explain a bit of the batshit insanity from yesterday. Now it's just that familiar but very strong ouchy ouchy ouchy right in the guts that never lasts more than about a day but is quite concentrated and distracting and I try to do things to distract myself from it but it can't be anything too important because the pain wins many a mini-battle along the way.
Want to punch hole in the wall a lot.

Also, the burning/Thursday smell turns out to have been my lampshade pressed up against the lightbulb and, well, burning. Oops. At least that was rooted in reality.

I want to rip out my uterus and all my inner girl parts and maybe a chunk of my intestine, too, while I'm in there.

Body Head Indent drugdrugdrugdrug

Drug switch not going so smoothly. I've felt like nervous panic for days, but in a very obviously chemical way. I'm having a very hard time getting anything done, including writing this. I don't know why. The impulse to write is there, but the impulses to do all sorts of stuff are running around. It's translating any of those impulses into actions that feel like I'm running a million volts through a big giant rock or a big clay blob. I also really want to keep backspacing everything I write. And for the past hour everything has smelled/tasted a little like blood/Thursday. I don't even know what that means, but that's what my brain keeps identifying the smell and taste as: a combination of blood and Thursday.

This backspacing thing is annoying the hell out of me.

Dog should go out again and I should take him, but that's harder than it should be. I don't like the way the "shoulds" ended up placed in that sentence but I'm leaving them so as to avoid the backspace and refiguring it all out.

I think I'm so backspacey because I usually think in full sentences so the whole thing is there before I write it but now I'm in fragments so I have to keep fixing each piece of sentence as I go. Makes it much harder to write, but I wanted to make sure I captured this lovely mindset for posterity (emphasis on my posterior).

When I woke up this morning I thought I was so nuts because I was hungry, so I made scrambled eggs and cheese and stuck them in the small corn tortillas I have. I ate one and a half and then almost puked my guts out and got hot and cold and wanted to punch the dog when he tried to touch me.

My stomach has been doing nasty things ever since. I'm sticking to applesauce.

And I think this is somehow progress in my Effexor withdrawal, since it's been 48 hours since I've had any and I only took 75 mg the last time and 75 mg 24 hours before that, and this doesn't really feel like my Effexor withdrawl. This is new. Chemical and bad, but new, so I'm much less inclined to pop more Effexor.

Soundtrack in my head through most of Happy Fucked Up Fun Time: "Let Me Entertain You" and "Little Lamb" from Gypsy (which I saw for the first time the other day) and Weezer's "Buddy Holly."

How am I going to get this dog out again? Why isn't he toilet trained? I'm so never getting any work done ever and we will both end up wasting away in mud puddles for lack of self-sufficiency.

Sucky Me Off

Why would you ever, after lasting maybe 90 seconds, assume that your partner is hunky-dory? I don't understand it. Nor do I understand the amazement when I don't let the offender off the hook. I suppose this is why and how such offenders exist and continue to exist long after the sexual revolution and Cosmo and the internet. But dammit, you do not get anything else nor are you going anywhere until you at least make an attempt at getting me off. I'm not demanding two hours of advanced Kama Sutra here.

Boy I slept with totally sucks and now I want him to go away. Really he was annoying the hell out of me before I even slept with him and I knew I was using him from pretty early on in things. But he got exponentially more annoying the more time I spent with him. And while at first I feared I was pulling a "don't want to be part of any club that would have me for a member," it became abundantly clear that I just don't find him interesting and I was using him but he was boring and not very good for the using and now I want him to go away. And I'd feel worse about being the Bicked Bitch of the Best, but he's not even a particularly good person and is a total universal taker and if anything needs a good smacking upside the head. So now I have to figure out how to get rid of him because he clearly doesn't see things the same way and I'm done. No more. Not even worth using anymore. He smells. Literally. Not just smoker stinky but also unwashed stinky. Stinky stinky.

On the plus side, now my confidence is up and I can pursue better, cuter, less smelly boys. Hopefully without having to hack this one to death with a machete first.

Countess

I went to a psychiatrist for the first time in a few years. No more Effexor! Yay! Switched back to Prozac (which worked well for me back in 2000ish) as of today, plus he's going to talk to my neurologist about just how high and terrible my stroke risks are to see if I can get on birth control after all. I still think birth control would help all kinds of non-pregnancy-related things in my body, like the friggin' ovarian cyst that I had and my evil evil periods and my migraines in general and my cyclical swinginess.

He asked me about the last time I was happy. I have happy moments and hours and days all the time. Then he asked me the last time I was happy for a whole week. Um, summer of 1999? And even that's questionable. I also think I sound like the whiny over-privileged child of a doctor and a social worker with no valid reason for a lifetime of negativity. Then again, that's a very negative thought and doesn't help matters.

I have been feeling better emotionally this past week, for whatever reason. I camped out at NBF's for a number of days with ouchy brain, this time prepared with clean underwear and plenty of my medication. I've been to the gym five times since I joined January 31 and that's certainly helping emotional matters, since it's a place I can go and I only have to be a certain level of functional and I don't have to talk to anybody but I can if I want to and then I get to feel all pleased with myself for having gone to the gym and doing something productive and self-lovey. One of the boy people who works there (I've only actually seen him twice) is cute and sarcastic and makes me a little girl-stupid, but in a good way.

There's another maybe boy who clearly likes me a lot and/or really wants to get in my pants and I'd love to say more here about him but I don't actually know who reads this thing anymore and I don't want to hurt anyone or anything along the way, so email me if you are a reality friend and entitled to details.

Head is pressury distracting hurty.

The whole "tackle the big projects first" thing does not work for me. I have to start off doing something that's technically somewhat productive but I don't mind doing to get myself geared up for real work and the "big" projects. I never was one to jump into pools, but rather start with my toes and slowly lower myself in as I got comfortable until I was ready to duck my head under.
Yay ten billionth water metaphor.

Anyway, now I tackle. Or, more acurately, begin dipping until I am ready to tackle. But just writing is a start for me, and I made myself a headache journal template so it's easy and has exactly what I personally need to track. Two semi productive things! (cue thunder crack and Count Von Count cackle).

The smoke/carbon monoxide detector battery beep is going off in the vacant apartment next door but the door is locked so I can't shut it up and instead it is driving me insane. I called the apartment management company two hours ago. Kill kill kill. I could just do what I need to do and then leave, but much in my recently formed tradition, I'd rather subconsciously punish myself and procrastinate on what I need to do in my apartment and let it make me miserable because I think I deserve to be miserable. Wheeeee!

I need more intellectual pursuits so my brain doesn't go self-analytical-insane-self-picky-wtf all the time. My aunt and uncle company job sure as shit doesn't keep me stimulated. Think of more cards all the time. Think about rebranding my whole "company" (I put it in quotes because it feels like quotes...it really is a company now with its own business checking account and EIN and everything) and making something out of it in a way that I can do. Try to think about the phrase "the way that I can do" without my heart sinking and my eyes welling up like I'm some useless washed up wreckage of humanity. Try to concentrate on the process that is my life instead of my misguided inner notion that I'm supposed to be something or do something. Reconcile the things That I actually want with the things I'm able to accomplish, and start liking myself enough to allow myself to accomplish things. Call the people I keep saying "I really need to call ____" and know that it's ok that I'm going to spend the conversation in tears and be the needy self-centered friend for awhile.

I've been fighting myself so hard this past year. I've been trying to see the world as positives and make the most of my can't-kill-me-and-way-better-off-than-most-of-humanity-but-still-hard-for-me-to-digest shit sandwich.

Crap. Maids are here. Another source of guilt: my parents paying for maids to clean my apartment because I don't do it myself and they insist. Going to print things to be mailed for Etsy business and run errands and then back to NBF's house where dog is hanging out. So much more to write and bitch and brood. Bah.