You want to stick WHAT? WHERE?

Today was the big, scary appointment with my pokemon gastroenterologist.  As usual, I'm not entirely sure why I got so worked up over the thing.  I learned nothing at all, pretty much, aside from that I should stop taking NSAIDs and drinking so much soda.  Oh, and some of my problems (but not ALL of my problems) can be caused by the hypothyroidism.  I think I confused my poor nurse practitioner (I didn't get to see the GI himself, which disappointed me, because I wanted to see if he said his name over and over again like a pokemon, since his name looks like Hitmonlee) with my laundry list of issues. 

The highlight of the visit, I think, was once again getting the "did they do ANYTHING in the ER" look/line from the doc.  When I went in originally for my incessant dry heaving and inability to keep food down, they pretty much asked me if I was pregnant, drew some blood, and sent me on my way with a proscription for protonix.  Cop out, in my mind, but given that the time I went in for violent mood swings, or took the girlfriend in for a foot injury all they did was talk to us for two minutes and write a scrip...  Yeah.  I'm thinking the ER I go to is pretty much terrible.  Unfortunately, all of the doctors there ALSO work at the other local hospital, so the service between them is pretty much equally bad.

Ah well.  I had nothing to fear from the GI.  This time, anyway.  They're sending me for an endoscope and a belly ultrasound.  I'm 29, goddammit.  I'm too young to be scheduling "minor outpatient procedures."  They wanted to do a colonoscopy too, but I gave them a resounding "oh hell no."  Exit only.  I don't care if nothing actually wants to exit, that is not a sign that things should begin entering.  You don't send the negotiator in until all other options to get the hostages released have been exhausted.  I know this shit.  I've watched Die Hard.  And that episode of Good Morning America where they shoved a camera up Kathy Lee's butt.  Nooooo thank you.  Nopenopenopenopenope.  Hellno.

In other, non health-related news, my kitten has developed an obsession with my bra.  I'm not entirely sure why, but she seems to think it's the ultimate kitty bed/hammock/play pen.  The thing's on its last legs anyway, so I'm pretty much just letting her have it, at this point.  Which means I should probably cut the wire out, so if she springs it, she doesn't end up impaled like her brother almost did when he destroyed their pop-up cube...

The joys of having kids kittens.

Let the count-down begin to the new job, and my first appointment with an actual factual psychiatrist.

FMLA = Fucking up My Life A lot

Honestly, the FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) is pretty much the only thing keeping me "employed" and insured right now.  I'm going into week three without working, thanks to my little meltdown at the store and subsequent issues.  Looking down the barrel of a smoking gun called "no paycheck."  I got my letter in the mail the other day from corporate that I qualified for FMLA, and that they needed some paperwork from my doctor.  Here I was, thinking it was a confirmation that they received said papers, and I could arrange to have all of my shit covered.

Yeah, no.  And apparently nobody at my store knows what the hell is going on, because all of my arrangements to use remaining personal and vacation time have to go through the store- not corporate.  I'm out of work because I have fucking panic attacks at the THOUGHT of calling those people, or going back to that store, and in order to get my affairs straightened out...  I need to go to the store.  I thought about possibly texting my manager.  Seeing if she'd meet me on neutral ground somewhere, but... what if she says no?  What if she thinks I'm weird, or trying to set her up?

I don't know why I obsess over that so much.  What if they try to say I'm faking it?  Maybe it's because my parents were never very...understanding of mental illness.  Or maybe it's because of the social stigma attached to behavioral disorders.  I am having problems.  I'm not just seeing three different doctors (soon to be four- got my appointment with the psychiatrist at my therapist's practice, finally) because it's fun.  I hate doctors.  And hospitals.  I spent enough time on all that for a thousand lifetimes while my mom was fighting a losing battle with lung cancer.  I know my problems are real.  My doctors clearly believe my problems are real.  My girlfriend, the only thing in this world keeping me clinging to sanity and actually fighting to stay together believes.

Why does it matter to me so much that other people don't judge me and find me wanting?

Something to add to the list of things to talk about with my therapist tomorrow.  Worrying at it like a dog with a bone isn't helping me right now.

And hey.  At least we're not moving now, right?  Silver linings.

Rox the Builder! Can she fix it?

Evidently, she can, but it causes a huge mess.

So the day started off well.  I had my interview, I did well, I got a job offer... my period stopped.  It should have been the best day of the month, right? lolyeahright.  With the stress of being more or less unemployed off my shoulders, you'd think I would finally have a good day.  And I did, for all of five minutes.  Then I started worrying about the fact that I'm taking a two dollar per hour pay cut, going from a guaranteed forty hours with frequent overtime to twenty with strongly-discouraged overtime, and probably losing my insurance.  Somehow, my car came into all the worrying, and next thing you know I'm retching out my girlfriend's car window the whole way home.  Ole.

Now, my interview was at nine in the morning.  I got home, and the girlfriend was still in bed.  She's able to get right back to sleep after I tell her the good news, and I lay there for like two hours staring at the ceiling, wondering if the monsters were going to eat me (figuratively speaking).  I juuuust get to sleep, and she gets up.  And then here come the cats.  Once the cats get involved, there's no trying to press on and sleep in.  There are six of them.  Four of them just want to snuggle and cuddle, and the other two want to kill anyone that comes close.  The only thing that kept me from just giving up and storming downstairs was the moose in the cat suit sitting on my chest.  (He's like, half Maine Coon.  He's a fucking moose.)  Getting next to no sleep because of alarms, phone calls, and anxiety might have been okay...

...if I'd been able to come downstairs and give the couch surfers the good news.  Only as I'm getting up, I hear the girlfriend telling them ALL about it.  Great.  Because the brief rush of "look what I did!" excitement wasn't, you know, an emotional high that I desperately needed.  It's cool.

Then the sink backed up.  Or rather, I went out to take my small pile of meds and noticed that there was water sitting in the sink under the dishes.  It was okay for a little, because I promptly forgot about the fetid lake when I popped my birth control out of the blister pack and it bounced across the counter and down between the cabinets and oven.

"Oh fuck!" I yelled, dismayed and already starting to freak out that I could potentially fuck up my entire hormone schedule because now my birth control will be a day off.

"What'd you do?  Shit, don't tell me the cats got at your Zoloft," I hear from the living room.

"No.  I dropped my fucking birth control."

Silence, followed by raucous laughter.  Apparently, a lesbian on birth control is the funniest shit since +1 dead baby flails for raising vile xp.

Which reminds me.  I should really call my doctor and find out if (a) I'm going to have my uterus explode out my vajeen now because my birth control is off by a day and (b) if she's figured out how to get me my damn mood stabilizers.  Because shit.  Any more days like this and I'm going to be back in the ER screaming about wanting a pudding cup and a padded room.  In that order.  After the thing with the meds, the couch surfers and my girlfriend decide they want to go out for lunch.  I spend most of my time worrying about frigging money, and they want to spend it on fast food when we've got perfectly good spaghetti and cereal and stuff here.  My diplomacy check whiffed or something, and I ended up popping a couple stomach pills and nerve pills and stuff, and off we went.

And then the fem-surfer's dad calls while we're stuffing our faces with soft serve.  He's got a job offer, and we have to make a big decision: are we moving into his house together, or not?

Well, fuck.

I didn't want to move.  I really didn't want to move.  After the last month of relationship roulette with the couch surfers, and all the shit I've been going through at work and with the doctors, I really didn't want to add the chaos of a move into the mix.  The girlfriend and I talked it over a bunch, and we decided that since I wasn't comfortable with it, we'd stay in our place.  Which was fine by me.

Three hours later, we've got two plungers and a couple notebooks from WalMart, and we're on our way to see this house I said I don't want to rent, and to talk to the new land lord I don't want.  It won't hurt to hear him out, they say.  I'm just glad I wasn't driving, because I was pretty much shaking and gnawing on my bottom lip the whole ride there.  We get there, and I get to meet the fem-surfer's dog (I am terrified of dogs), and see the house.  It's a nice house.  Really nice.  But it's filled wall-to-wall with twenty-plus years' worth of her dad's stuff, and her stuff, and even his ex-wives' stuff.  Every place I've ever moved into has been completely empty.  How in the hell am I supposed to envision someplace as MY home, when it's clearly someone else's?  Cue the first crying jag.

The girlfriend gets me calmed down, I get my eyes dried and the snot gone, and Daddums comes home.  (Late.  Of course.)  They start talking about stuff like rent and expenses, and the girlfriend and the he-surfer negotiate a little bit, and I'm just sitting there on the couch between them trying desperately to fall into the center of the earth.  I don't want to move, remember?  Change is bad.  Why are we talking about this like it's going to happen?  And why do I have to know right now?  Don't ask me to decide something like this right now.  I'm not in a good place right now to make snap decisions.  Yes, when I'm on the upswing I do things like quit my job and move across country on a whim.  When I'm three steps removed from suicide?  Fuck no.  I want to hide under my bed until the world stops being crazy at me.

Then he looks right at me and asks what's wrong.  Cue crying jag number two.

Go outside. (There's a yard.  It's nice and little.)  Calm down again.  Reaffirm terror of moving and change to the roommate.  And then...

Then logic happened.  See, if the four of us live in this house, it comes out to being as much INCLUDING utilities for the two of us as we're paying right now for the rent on our place.  Given the pay cut and hours cut, plus my mounting medical expenses, it's a strong choice.  And for some reason, when I'm crying my eyes out and terrified, I can't ignore good sense.  My whole being is telling me not to go, and I feel like a cat being shoved into a carrier against her will, and there I am nodding and saying it makes sense.  Because it does.

But shit, really?  Why can't my brain and my gut just agree on things?  Yes or no, motherfuckers?  PICK ONE.  I can't handle this "don't wanna don't wanna don't wanna...okay...don't wanna" bullshit.  I don't think the rest of our little group can, either.

But whatever.  We are now in some kind of informal agreement that when he starts this new job and moves out, we will take over his property and move our shit in.  And our cats.  But we don't know if he'll be starting in two weeks or six months.  I shit you not, we could be waiting as late as December to make this move.  And this is with us having to give our landlords a fucking thirty day notice before we vacate.

Four hours and a free sammich from Domino's later, we get home and the sink is still fucked.  And I learn an important lesson:

Those cute little yellow sink plungers at WalMart are pieces of shit, and pretty much will implode the first time you use them.  Yeah.  And trying to use a toilet plunger on our sink is like shooting Bruce Banner full of gamma radiation.  The damn thing kept slipping on me, and I was getting stanky-ass water all over me.  Best part?  As we plunge it, it just keeps pushing water from one side to the other.  Hulk smashes, yells in the trying-to-be-helpful he-surfer's face, and runs outside.  Calm down, get the "bitch, slow your roll" talk from the girlfriend, and go BACK to WalMart to get DrainO. 

Yeah.  Just because that shit says it's for completely clogged drains doesn't mean it's for completely clogged drains.  Follow the instructions on the bottle and what happens?  Fuck all.  Absolutely jack shit.  So, being the genius wannabe engineer that I am, I go back to plunging with my now decimated yellow sex toy/sink plunger.  Squelch squelch, back and forth, and finally it dawns on me.  The U bend.

Two trips to WalMart with matching temper tantrums, DrainO all over my goddamn hands, and all I had to do was unscrew the U bend and clean the damn thing out.  -.-  This is why I need...  Whatever it is I need.  Fuck if I know, at this point.  Anyway, I figure I'll just unhook it with a bucket underneath the sink to catch the water that was SUPPOSED to make the DrainO work.  (Sink clogged?  PUT MORE WATER IN IT.  Yeah..  But the bottle saaaaid...)  The plan was awesome.  Until the bucket was too big, and the SINK WAS FULL OF FETID WATER AND MULTIPLE DRAIN CLEANERS.

But hey, I guess at least the kitchen floor got cleaned?

The whole time I'm doing this, mind you, I've got a peanut gallery standing behind me going "This is why you can't tank, Roxi," and "So...is this what our progression raids are going to look like?"  And singing the Bob the Builder theme song. 

Fuckers.

But you know what?  The sink's not clogged any more.  Why does it feel like this is somehow an allegory for my life right now?

So I heard you like pills...

...so we upped your dosage across the board and gave you some new stuff, so you could take pills with your pills.

The original was funnier.  ("Yo dawg, we heard you like procs, so we put crit in your crit so you can proc while you proc.")  But you can't fault a girl for trying.

Holy fucking what the fuck, today was a shitfest.  The girlfriend and I got kicked out of our living room at like three because our couch surfers wanted to sleep.  We get upstairs and I make the mistake of bringing up our Warlords of Draenor raid comp, which sparks a discussion on whether or not I'll be able to handle progression tanking with my anxiety issues (I've only ever healed progression).  Eventually, we fall asleep, only to hear screaming coming from downstairs an hour or two later.  Me being me, my first thought isn't "Oh god, I hope everything's okay" or "I should get the sledgehammer and sort this shit out."  No, it's "make it stop make it stop make it stop" and I unceremoniously bury my face in my girlfriend's armpit with the blankets over my head.  Which I then threw off, because claustrophobic.  (I am a hot fucking mess, now that I read this shit.  Wow.)

So there we are, laying in bed, whispering about what could be going on downstairs, and all we can make out is "I DON'T PUT THINGS IN MY MOUTH!" from our fem-surfer.  My first thought was "what did he do, put a Hotwheels in her mouth?  Where'd he get a Hotwheels?"  But what came out was more like "so... surprise balls in your mouth didn't go over as well as anticipated?"  The shouting continues, and between the noise and my hyperventilating the girlfriend can't get back to sleep- so she does what any decent friend would do.  She goes down to investigate.

Seven AM.  Both couch surfers crying. Shouting.  I'm curled up in a ball on the bed hugging my pillow like it's Alan Grant and it's going to leave me in the path of a ravening tyrannosaur.  And then my girlfriend comes back upstairs and goes "you were right."  Dead silence. 

"What?"  I ask, wondering if maybe my ears are clogged with self-loathing.

"You were right.  I'm not sure who started what, but he woke up with his cock in her mouth and she woke up with-"

"Stop.  I don't wanna hurl all over the bed and I can't take the stomach stuff without food, and that'll just screw up all the meds for the day."

Paraphrasing, of course.  No way in hell am I that coherent when I first wake up.  I improved the prose for entertainment's sake.

Eight AM.  Fall asleep on the love seat.  Eight thirty, get dragged back up to bed.  Nine AM, phone rings.  Shaping up to be a greaaaaat day.  I almost screened the call, but then I noticed it was from a company I'd recently applied to.  Shit.  Now I not only have to be coherent, but polite and charismatic.  After alllllll that shit this morning.  And I have to go to the doctor in an hour, and...  Fuck it.

"Hello?"  Short version: apparently in small doses I can pull some awesome phone skills out of my ass, and I scored an interview.  For ass-o'clock in the morning tomorrow.  Which in five minutes will be today.  (From when I'm writing this, dipshit, not from when you're reading it.  Jeez.)

TL/DR version: I got pretty much no sleep, and had to go to the doctor's office.  They made me wait for an hour, kicking my legs over the side of the exam table with the girlfriend watching some sappy ABC Family show or other on her phone (in her past life she was part of the Inquisition, I swear), which is pretty much a recipe for more ulcers.  I kept reading over my medical leave papers, wondering how in hell they were supposed to make these things apply to a behavioral health issue when all it really seems to care about is if I have ten fingers, ten toes, and a fucking pulse.  Then I started worrying about losing the job I'm trying desperately not to go back to (explain that one to me, please, someone), and somehow THAT segued into wondering if perhaps my doctor was down the hall delivering a baby or something, or if talking with her annoying office staff was really that much more interesting than unbreaking my everything.

And then the doctor actually came in and I had to find some way to make "my head is fucked up, my stomach is fucked up, I scare myself, and I want off the fucking roller coaster" something that she could diagnose and treat.  Which is when the B word got dropped, and then the mood stabilizers came into the equation (which is really just a euphemism for anti-psychotics, I learned.  Thank you, wikipedia), and I pretty much started freaking out all over again.  On the inside.  On the outside I'm pretty sure I just looked like a kicked puppy.  Or maybe a kid who just got told she can't get the second My Little Pony if she wants to stop at McD's on the way home from the doctor to get a happy meal. 

Jump forward like ten hours, because you really don't give a shit about how I pouted after being pouted at for running Lich King dungeons for money, or how much I just wanted to slap the shit out of the fem-surfer because seriously?  If you don't want to do something, don't do it.  If you're going to do it anyway, I don't fucking want to hear about it.  (Pot, kettle.  Sup?)  Or the not-so-subtle feelings of butthurt when the girlfriend went out to dinner with her best friend with whom absolutely nothing untoward will happen.  I drowned that shit in cherry doctor pepper and Stouffer's mac and cheese.

So it's like half an hour before the pharmacy closes, and I finally decide to get up off my ass and go pick up the scrips.  I get there, for the first time in a couple of weeks NOT freaking out in the car the whole time (yay me!  Maybe I'm over the feeling of impeding car wreck?), make a beeline for the pharm counter, and give the usual introduction.  "Name, birthday, pickup."  I'm getting a little too good at this, after three months.  -.-  The lady stares at the screen for a couple minutes, looks confused, gets one bag off the rack, and looks more confused.  Disappears into the back, comes back even MORE confused.  (At this point, I'm wondering if she was having to formulate the stuff right then and there, hibachi style.) 

Turns out, my delightfully overpriced insurance doesn't cover Seroquel.  Seriously?  The shit's generic now.  I checked.  (Again, thank you, Wikipedia.)  So now there's some arcane ritual my doctor has to do, which I can only assume involves a whole lot of pot and beer, and I'm back in line for the roller coaster.  Fun times.  Only totally not at all.

A few days ago (abrupt transitions ftw) I requested a small mountain of books on meditation and mood-control techniques from the library.  Today, on the heels of my hurry up and wait doctor's appointment, I added a few books on bipolar (there's one on bipolar II, which kind of made me happy) to the list.  I can only imagine what those people are going to be talking about when they process the requests.  I mean, when I worked at the library we tracked people's divorces, college searches, cancer struggles... all through their hold lists.  They're probably going to be like "Meditation, Bipolar, and...high fantasy?  There we go.  Probably thinks she's an elf or something."

Which is lies and slander.

I'm a fucking half-orc.  Get it right.

Hopefully tomorrow will bring some good news.  Then I'll be able to stop freaking out about how to tell them I'm not coming back without using the words "fuck you" or mailing in a case of revenge bears with a note that says "because you cared."

So there's this pickle jar...

I haven't blogged in years.  Not really.  For a while I fancied myself an up-and-coming MMORPG blogger, and I pretty religiously posted rants about guild leadership, the "right" and "wrong" ways to do things...  Basically, I was an elitist prick waggling my epeen at people.  Little surprise that blog never really took off.  I think I had one regular reader.  In Russia.  Which, given everything, kind of makes sense.  Those Russians love their World of Warcraft.  Anyway.

The last few years have seen me fall very much out of touch with a part of me that used to be pretty damn important- my inner writer.  Used to be, I would write constantly.  Stories, online role-playing, journals, my blog.  Hell, I wrote analytical reports on books I read FOR FUN, back in high school.  (I can hear you shouting 'nerd' from waaaay over wherever you are, and trust me.  You are not the first person to say that.)  Those years also saw me become a much angrier, stressed-out, and emotionally unstable person.  Maybe it's just the age of the beast.  I mean, I am nearing thirty.  All kinds of chemical nastiness is going on in my body right now, I'm sure.  Or maybe it's adult-onset mental instability.  I wouldn't be the first person in my family to have that problem.  I've consulted the oracles of modern medicine, behavioral and internal, and while they've had some helpful suggestions... something's still not quite there.

Hence this blog.  Ultimately, this is going to be the Seinfeld of blogs- which most blogs are, in my experience.  No stated plot, no major theme or message.  I'm not here to share recipes or give tips on rearing a strong two mommy family, or how not to look like a complete jackass in a video game that's been out for ten years.  I'm just a woman on a mission to reconnect with the things in her life that really matter, and get rid of all the things that don't.

Which brings me to the pickle jar.  The other morning, while I was still sleeping off a panic-attack and crying bout, my unfathomably understanding girlfriend posted this video on Facebook.  Short version, a professor dumps a bunch of crap into a pickle jar, and it's a life lesson.  The jar is us, the stuff in the jar is all of our baggage.  And then there's chocolate, but... I'm going to sidestep that particular issue. (Touch my chocolate and I will cut you.)  I realized, after I stopped sobbing like an anorexic blonde chick in a Lifetime movie, that I've spent most of the last few years worrying about all the wrong things.  Yes, finances and computer stuff and having the right job and...all that other crap I worry about matter.  Well, not all of the crap.  Class balance in player-versus-player content doesn't matter.  That's sand.  (Watch the video.  You'll get it.)  What matter most are my health, my happiness, and my family.  I've let stress from work (and other things) push my relationship to the limit.  Multiple times.  I let my health go for so long that it took two months and close to five hundred dollars in doctor visits, tests, and prescriptions to START getting me back on track.  And my happiness...

I cry at sudden, unexpected noises.  And yelling.  And strangers making eye contact.  I can't sit still any more.  My chest seizes up when I go out in public, and when I'm alone at home I oscillate between fine and terrified that something bad is going to happen.  I have been very much doing it wrong for a long time, and it's got to change.  Pills aren't the answer.  They help, yes.  But I can't live my life popping pills and hoping that'll make my troubles just...disappear.  Somewhere along the line my coping mechanisms took an arrow to the knee.  Zoloft won't fix that.  Ativan won't fix that.  Only I can.

So here we go.  The first step in a journey of a thousand keystrokes.  With some exponent, because I can blow through a thousand characters pretty damn fast.  (Which is why I suck at Twitter and never use it.)  Maybe someone will read this, and at least know they're not alone in their hardship.  Or realize that their problems aren't as bad as they could be.  Or that their problems are WAY worse than mine, and get all full of righteous indignation that inspires them to push on.  Or...maybe no one will read it, and I'll just work my feelings out on paper (so to speak)...and move on.

We'll see.  That's all we can do, right?  ^.^