You may not think I know, but I know.

I got dumped last month, and it was rough.  We’d been growing apart for weeks, but I figured it was something we could work through.  Turns out, I was wrong.  She wasn’t interested in salvaging what I’d thought would be a lifetime together.

No, something better had come along, and she knew she wanted it.

Still, I held onto the thought that we could still somehow save our relationship.  After all, she’d told me she loved me.  A lot.  We’d sworn we’d be together forever.

And then she said the shiny new thing wanted her to move in.  But they weren’t together.  Oh no.  It was just a change of scenery was all, and couldn’t we still be friends?

I knew before she did, I guess.  I was getting dumped for something new and exciting.  How could I not know?  Everything had become about this new woman and what she liked.  We stopped talking, because she was always texting away.  When we did speak, it was tense.

I wasted a lot of tears on this, last month.  Now, when she tells me it’s official, she expects me to react.  As if.  I saw this happening the night you called it quits in the WalMart parking lot.  Hell, I saw this happening the week after Christmas, and I probably should have seen it sooner.

So don’t look at me like that when I offer a chilly “I’m happy for you” as you tell me that you’re with another woman.  You didn’t have to tell me at all, because I already knew.  Stop fishing for reactions, and let me pull my life out of the gutter alone.  You post cute things on Facebook about how a woman builds up walls brick by brick, how you know you’ve found someone when they’ll help you tear them down.

Congratulations on becoming another brick in the wall.  Another lesson hard-learned.  I hope you’re happy.

The Tao of Tactical Dysfunction

It seems weird to be writing about TacDys over here on my personal whining post, but...  There's a part of me that just can't be divorced from my gamer life, and that's the part I want to address today.  The philosophy I've built up after like twenty-seven years as a player of video games and eleven or twelve years as a player of MUDs and MMORPGs is as much a part of me as my anxiety, mood imbalances, and authority issues.  I put the tenets of Tactical Dysfunction into play in pretty much every aspect of my life.  And...  I dunno.  Of late I've just felt an overwhelming sense of "you're doing it wrong" when talking to other people.

In gaming, Tactical Dysfunction means forcing the game to work around you, rather than working around the game.  It eschews flavor of the month builds and comps, ignores the prevailing metagame, and carves out its own Robert Frost-esque path through the grind.  It means accepting all playstyles and preferences as equally valid.  It also means striving for excellence, not just on your own level but on a general level, and adapting yourself and your demands to that ultimate goal of greatness.  To be Tactically Dysfunctional is to brook no incompetence, to expect the most out of yourself and the people around you, and to mentor and encourage the latter so that they can realize their potential.  It's finding out-of-the-box solutions to problems, and making what you HAVE work, rather than forcing everything around you into The Mold and trying to make THAT work.  Because generally it doesn't.

In life, or at least in my life, I view people and the world as my fellow players and my game.  We all have goals, or at least goals to which we pay lip service.  There is competition, and there are those who preach that the only road to success is that which they've traveled themselves.  Focus.  College.  Suit and tie.  Corporate sell-out.  Anyone who breaks that trend is highlighted as the exception to the rule.  An outlier from the standard deviation curve.  As a woman walking the path of Tactical Dysfunction, I look for ways to turn my own talents and strengths into a powerhouse, rather than trying to force myself into some society-set mold that doesn't take into account my weaknesses and adaptations to them.  Rather than trying to market myself as the ideal pencil pusher or laboratory assistant, I offer myself up as a problem solver, critical thinker, and spiritual heir to Ronald Regan as the Great Communicator.  And when I can't find a role that works for those skills, I create my own.

Hence these blogs.  And my stream.  And all of that.  The desire to carve my own path in this world is what keeps me researching branding and marketing, and how to launch and maintain that brand.  That's what gets me to push through having low viewership, dipping daily views on the websites, and keeps me fine-tuning my identity as a writer and broadcaster.

I don't believe that by putting myself out there, I have to either take or leave my success as it passively comes to me.  Not that I'm going to look down on those who do, but...  If they were to come to me for help, I would gladly offer suggestions on how they might improve their lot.  And I don't mean to disparage those who play by the normal rules, and chase their society-labeled shoeboxes.  Some folks are more comfortable like that, and for a lot of people those predefined roles and rulesets fit as well as what I've tried to customize around myself.

To be Tactically Dysfunctional is to maintain perspective, and consider a person as a whole before making a judgement.  It means calling out those who are blindly leaving their strengths to atrophy while fighting to do what is expected of them.  It's about nurturing those around you, and building them up so that they can realize their potential, and not just what someone else says is their limit.  What it DOESN'T mean is fighting for people who will not fight for themselves.  If someone will not invest time into their own development, and actually strive for success after declaring their standards and goals, the Tactically Dysfunctional say "fuck you" and move on.  They do not believe in carrying around dead weight.  They do not endorse rebellion for rebellion's sake.

And that's the part that people seem to forget when I'm telling them about this mindset, both in gaming and in real life.  Because it sounds so much like a liberal lovefest or a carebear family guild, folks seem to ignore the expectation of effort and success.  The overall goal of being The Best by doing not what is expected of us, but what we WANT to do.  Maybe that's my fault for not properly communicating those conditions, and focusing too much on letting people define themselves.  I don't know.  But lately I'm starting to get pissed right the fuck off by people calling themselves TD without upholding what I see as the most basic tenet of the ideology: don't be a fucking scrub.  Tactical Dysfunction is NOT permission to fail.  It's not an excuse for gimping yourself.  It affords you the freedom to make choices outside the norm, but NOT choices which will negatively impact your performance or that of your group.

I'm so fucking tired of people saying "But Roxi... you said I could still be successful doing whatever felt right.  Why are you being so harsh?"  Because FUCKING FUCK people.  What you're trying to do is the equivalent of being a professional juggler of flaming rubber duckies as a fucking blind guy with no arms.  You're being stupid, and you're ignoring all of THESE strengths.  Why?  Because you think flaming rubber duckies are cool?  Jesus fuck, people.  Focus on what makes you YOU and build around that.  Don't just go "Oh, this is sparkly" and decide that's what you want to be.  -.-  That's pretty much the exact OPPOSITE of being Tactically Dysfunctional.  And while we're on the subject...

WORK FOR WHAT THE FUCK YOU SAY YOU WANT.

Don't just expect others to form around you to make it work.

Don't just hope for the best, and then whine when it doesn't come to fruition.

You're not following the norm, of COURSE it's going to take a lot more hard work and dedication than if you just followed the cookbook.  You should have known that when you jumped on the crazy train.

So yeah.  I am Tactically Dysfunctional.  It's not for everyone, and I'm cool with that.  But don't expect me to sit idly by while you fuck yourself, or let myself be dragged down with you because you don't know what the fuck you're doing.

Homie don't play dat.  (Do people fucking say that any more?)

Warning: Highly Inflammable

My friends need to come with warnings like that.  Seriously.  It would be nice if I could just look at them, or check their facebook, and there would be this popup that says "Crazy Level Orange" when shit's about to go down.  We have a terror alert system, so why can't we have a drama alert system?  It would make MY life a lot easier, let me tell you. I'd just temporarily unfriend them, block their phones, and whatever else it took to keep my day chill.

The current drama?  Of all fucking things, it's World of Warcraft shit.  Not exclusively WoW, mind you, but that's the focal point of this whole debacle. 

See, we want to have a guild.  We thought it would be totally sweet if the three of us went back to leading a raid team like we did in Cata.

Then three became four, because we can't do anything without The Girlfriend.  FML.  Like, she's the Derpyhooves to our Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie.  (Yeah, I went there.  My Little Ponies, bitches.)  If we want to have a LAN party, she has to come.  If we want to go get hot dogs and hit the comic shop...we can't do it if she's working, or until she's done work.  If we eat out, we have to go where SHE wants to go.  If we're gaming together, we have to do what she wants to do.

It's irritating.

And Freya forbid we object, or indicate in any fucking way that we're less than thrilled about going from the Three Amigos to Pain and Panic.  (Hades' minions from Disney's Hercules.  Keep up.)  I shit you not, we all got together to play Diablo, and the entire time it was nothing but bitching about their lack of bed, and that we wouldn't play exactly how she wanted, and that we didn't have food they liked...  I'm sorry, but I'm not going to go out and buy a bed just so you can sleep like an angel.  We told you to bring sleeping bags.  You know your options are that or the couches, which you hate because of the fact that the cats run rampant downstairs all night.  I mean, for fuck's sake, we moved our house around so that there would be a room for you people to use when you visited instead of having to be in the living room.

Ah well.  At least I got my fucking womancave out of the deal.  All the computers are in a central location now, I've got a good set-up for streaming and writing, and we have plenty of room to play cards or host a D&D table.  Shit, we could even bring a minifridge up her if we wanted.  We have one.

I dunno.  I just don't get why everything has to be a big deal when things don't go exactly as my friends want them to.  And it's not like they give immediate feedback, like "you're being kind of a dick, all I want to do is play with you guys and get some help."  No.  We hear about it a month later, when they're using it as ammunition in a wholly unrelated argument.

Anyway, the guild.

Initially, the plan was for the three of us to be co-leaders, or at least for Cookie and me to be officers under him as a leader.  He and Cookie would split raid leading duties, and I'd handle my usual roles as guild quartermaster.  We started contacting some old guildies and friends, started getting a roster together...

And then SHE happened.  It's like by virtue of being his girlfriend she immediately became an amazing player who knew her class perfectly and had five plus years of raid experience.  (She's not.  I don't think she's ever raided reg, or even really played in a capacity other than Some Guy's girlfriend and pocket healer.)  Now all of a sudden she's co-lead, she's telling everyone what to do and what to play, and saying that she gets first priority on class choice and gear.  Like that if I have a friend who's a druid, and she decides to switch to a druid, regardless of my friend's skill she's booted from the raid team.

Um, hello.  A leader's first consideration is always the team.  And I don't think either of them is going to make the call to bench themselves so a more skilled player can get into raid.  But whatever.

What REALLY bothers me about this whole fucking thing is that she's completely taking control of everything.  Like, the longer they're together, it seems like he's less an less his own person and more and more her puppet.  It's as if he's afraid to upset her or make her unhappy, so he just capitulates right away and gives her whatever she wants.  Even when he knows that's going to lead to disaster.

And I've been there.  I've been that girlfriend.  I don't plan to repeat the experience, and I'd do pretty much anything to save my friend from that fate.  The only problem is that with circumstances as they are, there's no fucking way in hell that he's going to listen to anyone.  Because, you know, his relationship is pure and concrete, and the failures of my past are representative of my failings as a person and my lack of personality.

So yeah.  Friends need warning labels so I can tell without having to get dragged into their whirling maelstroms of death and havoc that they're feeling codependent or possessive or whatever on that day.  Someone make that app.  You could have it parse their FB statuses for the last few days or something for key words and score that to give their crazy index.  Or something.  I dunno.  I don't fucking write apps.  You figure it out, make it happen, and I'll download it.  But only if it's free, because fuck paying for shit that goes on my phone.

Adventures in Crisis Land

So... if you read the last post (and you should, it's...ranty.  And context-providing), you know that I was on the verge of running out of some of my medicine and pretty much losing my shit last week.  I wish I could say that I handled things gracefully, and without crumbling, but...

Nope.  As if.  This is me we're talking about, remember?

I dragged myself to the ER, a bundle of raw nerves and fear and jitters, and told them my sob story.  Me being me, I got more and more worked up about it the more I talked to the nurses and doctor about it.  Go figure.  After like...four hours of observation, they finally give me my dose for that night, and tell me that they're sorry, but they don't have any beds in mental health available.

Really?  I'm so spazzy when I'm worked up that you want to admit me?  Jesus fuck.

Okay.

So anyway, they couldn't keep me, but at least gave me my dose for the following day and sternly advised me to check in with Behavioral on Monday.  Which was cool, because I would have done that anyway, even if I hadn't had an appointment with my shrink then anyway.  They hand me my papers, and I go off on my merry way.

Gotta ask: what's it mean when they list your "disposition" as group home/assisted living?  Like seriously.  Does the ER really think I need to be in a facility, or is that just what they put when you need help, but not commitment help?

So Monday came, and big girl things happened.  I went to my shrink, who pulled some eleventh hour shit to get me a trick-or-treat bag filled with my meds for a month.  I went to the rental office with Cookie, and we cleared up that whole omgwtfeviction thing.  Aaaand...I prepped for an interview with the most amazeballs company ever.  Like, international law firm billions of dollars we're on the cover of Forbes kind of amazeballs. 

It's super exciting, and the position is pretty much tailored for me.  The only way I can describe this whole job-finding scenario is going into Goodwill and finding a fucking Armani suit that fits like a GLOVE with the one week tag so you get it for a buck.  I finally hit the nail on the head with a cover letter and resume presentation, and... fingers crossed will find out Friday or Monday that I got the job.  (And that they waived the contract period and are bringing me on full time so I get bennies starting October 1.  But that's kind of...the Disney ending to the whole thing.)

Meanwhile, in the land of live action, I capitulated and said I'd work at Dairy Queen, because it's money and the job is pretty much on offer to anyone willing to take it.  I'm kind of amazed that the lady running the store hasn't put out a bunch of uniforms and hiring packets in a cardboard box out front with a sign that says "free to a good home."  That's pretty much how getting a job there feels.  I start there Friday, which is hilarious because I will hopefully be able to walk in on my first day and be like "...fuck this I'm out." 

We shall see!  I feel like a kid at Christmas, running around trying to find mom and dad's secret present stash and dropping hints that it would be super swell if there was like... a giant box of Transformers or a fat stack of new comics under the tree come Christmas morning.  (Speaking of Christmas, this law firm gives like...two days off for every major holiday and half of the bank holidays.  No weekends.  Amazeballs.)

Things right now are...not great.  I'll admit it.  I'm not going to let this potentially life-changing thing eclipse the fact that we're in the financial shitter right now.  But they're looking up.  There's a glimmer of hope.

Which probably means that the universe lifted the toilet seat and is about to piss on my face.  >.<

We shall see.

Because reasons, dammit!

Everything I do, and I do mean just about fucking everything, has a reason.  My mind races so fast I put the equivalent of probably twenty minutes of thought into decisions that look to the rest of the world like they're impulses.  Things that other people would just say "yes" or "no" to, I agonize over.  I may be processing it for like, five minutes, but to me that's like a day's worth of agonizing over the decision.

That's how I go from zero to Hulk so fast.  That's how I go from giggle giggle yay to completely shut down, or tears, or whatever in the blink of an eye.  After all the therapy and all the meds I've been working with in the last five months I'm pretty much sure that the root of all of my problems is my mind's complete inability to shut up.

So what's this got to do with anything?

Last night I took my last dose of Seroquel XR.  I thought I had more pills, but my shrink doubled the dosage, and in so doing cut my supply in half.  I thought the coupon I used when I had insurance would keep working even without insurance.  And I thought that the behavioral health center would have someone at least on call on the weekends.  This is all stuff I had going on well before I told anyone that I was out of medicine.  Which was last night.

I understand the instant reaction of "how the hell could you be so irresponsible?"  I really do.  There's a part of me that wonders the same thing. But the thing is, for the last three days (which is like two weeks, with the way my thoughts go) I've been fretting over this.  Worrying at it like a goddamn bunny with one of those wood blocks.  Trying to find a solution.  The rent?  My joblessness?  That's felt like the better part of a year instead of three weeks (since I walked out of the hold-us-until job).  So no, I'm not going to get mad at you for reacting that way.  I'm going to let you have your say, and parse the whole damn thing for information that I can actually use to solve my problem...and then I'm going to let my mind race over how I can fix it.

Me getting mad doesn't fix anything.  Me screaming that I've been losing sleep, unable to focus on shit that I enjoy (reading, gaming, my stream...this blog...), and have pretty much completely lost my appetite and desire to keep shlepping around this mortal coil isn't going to help.  So yes.  I will sit there, and I will stare at you, and nod, and not say a goddamn thing.  Because I recognize that you have a fiery soul, and so do I, and the two of us combusting together is only going to cause a whole lot of collateral damage.

I'm scared.  Scared as all hell.  I've got applications out for aid from the county and state, but those only get processed so fast.  I need fifty dollars' worth of medication NOW, not in a week or whenever Job and Family Services manages to get back to me.  And that's not counting the Seroquel.  That shit is five hundred dollars without insurance, and contrary to what I thought, Astra Zenica will only give a seventy-five dollar credit.  It won't magically just be fifteen dollars.  I don't know what's going to happen if I can't take those meds any more.  I remember how unstable I was before they put me on my happy pill cocktail.  I remember vividly not being able to kind-of control the torrent of thoughts, or stop myself from reacting to triggers.  I don't want to go back to that.

But I can't talk about this, because it's all my fault.  I knew two weeks ago that I didn't have insurance.  I knew a week ago that I couldn't afford the pills without it.  Yes, I thought I could get them for fifteen bucks, and no, I didn't double check because I was naive.  I also just kind of assumed I would get unemployment because I'd been making over ten dollars an hour when I lost my job, and didn't realize that they can tell you no because you didn't make enough money in an eighteen month period.  Again.  Naive.  Thinking that the systems in place will help me when I need them.

I won't go down the hate track with that train of thought.  I've been there before.  I've railed about everything from race to reproductive responsibility to sexual orientation and gender identity, and I don't want to sully myself with that much rancor.  The system is dysfunctional.  Blame the system, not the people it actually does help.

So now I'm at a complete fucking loss.  Nothing I do today is going to get me my meds by 9pm tonight.  Nothing.  I can probably go to the emergency room, make up some cock and bull story, throw some tears at them, and at least get meds for the night.  But after that?  Who the fuck knows.  Maybe they'll float me enough to get me to Monday, when I can go over to Behavioral and talk to nursing about maybe some patient prescription assistance.  If they'll give me that without a medical card.  Or...they'll fucking admit me to inpatient psych.  Wouldn't that be a fucking hell of a phone call?  "Sorry, honey, I can't come pick you up from work tonight.  I was committed."  Or better, "Sorry, awesome law firm I'm interviewing with on Tuesday, I can't make our appointment.  I'm in a padded room."

But.  Ultimately.  A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.  I thought maybe after my morning meds had some time to get working, I'd calm down, but... I'm not.  Which means that it's probably a good idea to just go to the ER.  Maybe Freya will smile on me, and make this battle easy on me.

Explain to me how THIS works

So I lost my job of almost two years in July because I freaked out and melted down.  Technically I went on medical leave and never came back, but functionally I lost my job because I went cray-cray and couldn't go back without getting more cray.  I had a false start in a local liquor store when they transferred me to the attached supermarket's deli.  The overall disorganization of the department and generally shitty scheduling and labor practices combined with a string of asshole customers to create another craytomic bomb, and I walked out.  You are now caught up on the last two months of suckage in my life.

There was one glimmer of hope in the darkness: unemployment.  I thought for sure that, as someone who'd gone from making sixteen hundred dollars a month to five hundred dollars a month to zero, I'd be able to get short-term assistance until I got back on my feet.  And bonus, they'd help me develop my job-hunting skills and find something suitable.  Right?  Right?!

Fuckin' nope.  After a month of jumping through hoops for their information requests, sending in letters from my previous employer, wage histories, and information from my doctors, they tell me I didn't make enough money to collect.  I can still appeal it, mind you, but fuckin' what?  Apparently I have to have a weekly income average of $233 for like an eighteen month period or something to get unemployment.  And for the first like...six months of working at my last job I was getting fuck all  for hours, so I got shot down.

They didn't turn me down because I was on bad terms with my previous employer, or because I was some kind of crackhead.  They shot me down because I was TOO FUCKING POOR.

How.  In the everloving fuck.  Does that even WORK?

The last time I applied for food stamps, which my girlfriend and I have decided would be roughly equivalent to a goddamn revolution and us getting a third roommate, I was told I made too much.  Bear in mind, this was during the period where I was making so little that it dragged down my average too much for Unemployment to give me the hookup.

What's a bitch gotta do to get some help in this fuckin' country?  I can't go back to school because I can't get grants because I defaulted on my student loans because I can't get a fucking job to pay me enough to pay the fucking loans.  I can't get foodstamps because I make too much, and I can't get unemployment because I make too little.  I was TOO GODDAMN WELL-WRITTEN to get rent assistance (literally, they made me rewrite my statement twice and I was still told it wouldn't go through because they'd read my letter and wonder why I needed help) even though I had a fucking pre-eviction notice in my hands and a bank statement with a negative balance.

So now I'm sitting with like two months' worth of rent do, my electric and water teetering on the brink of getting shut off, my car in such a state that if I get pulled over I'm losing my license for like...ever... and what the fuck are my options?  My girlfriend can't support my dead weight any longer.  She's at the end of HER fucking savings now, too.  We've got eleven bucks between us until Friday until she gets a check that's gotta go to bills, and which will leave us with no food in the house but some pretzel rods from two months ago and maybe five bucks to go grocery shopping on.  I've only got half a week's worth left of my meds, which is Kind Of A Big Deal since I need the psycho-active ones to FUNCTION.  And the gubment is telling me that I'm in just the wrong income bracket to get help.

I put in a new application for benefits with the welfare and foodstamps people.  My shrink says I'm not likely to be successful in applying for disablity, because I'm young and I don't have a very long history of my "condition" disrupting my ability to work (since I didn't bother getting fucking diagnosed until it started causing MAJOR problems at work).  I guess at this point I'm going to have to try going back to fast food, in spite of the fact that the whole thing that triggered my meltdown in the first place was, you guessed it, fast food.  Maybe the meds will keep me stable.  Who knows?  Unless, like, they run the fuck out.  Which they're going to do in like four days if I don't get some kind of divine wallet intervention before then.

It's frustrating.  This is the longest I've ever gone without a job, and it's only been like a month.  I've worked my ass off since I was eighteen years old, and all I have to show for it is a buck twelve in my checking account.

And people say this country's socioeconomic structure isn't fucked.  Godmotherfuckin'damn.

It's time for some FOOTBALL!

We now interrupt this senseless whining for a very important statement from the deepest recesses of my psyche:

FINS UP, YO!

I am a closet football fan.  This time of year, Sundays turn into manic days for me, filled with cheering, angry ranting at the television, and almost self-deluded arguments about why in spite of their record the Miami Dolphins are the best team in the NFL.

WOOO!  FINS TOUCHDOWN!  Awesome movement after a BIG sack/fumble against the Pats.

*clears her throat*

Like I was saying.  I love me some Dolphins, and I have since I was itty bitty.  I remember writing letters to Dan Marino when I was like four years old or something, and proudly sporting my team hat all season until my head got too big for it.  (NFL Merch costs WAY too much for me to get a new hat and jersey, sadly.)  Originally, I picked the Fins because I loved dolphins, and their mascot was a dolphin...  It sounds dumb, but remember I was like a three year old little girl when I picked my team. I mean, I grew up in Eagles territory.  They start us young, and for some reason I had this deep-seated aversion to the Eagles and the other neighborhood favorite, the Cowboys. 

This time of year, I bleed teal and orange.  It gets me into trouble now that I live in Steelers territory.  I thought being a South Jersey Fins fan was hard.  Nope.  Out here it's black and gold or red all over.  As in you're going to get mauled if you sport another team's colors at the wrong time.

Which of course means my contrary ass was at Buffalo Wild Wings when the Dolphins played the Steelers last year.  That was a good game...  >.>

Anyway.  Happy Gameday, folks.  Fins are tied with the Pats right now 20/20, and for once my team's playing AWESOME in the second half.

#StrongerTogether