Daily Archives: May 14, 2014

So I’m on Week 3 of my job search, and yesterday I got slapped upside the head—again—by the realization that no matter how capable I still am, there are some jobs that are not for me. This is not rocket science; everybody has limitations. But I’m still having trouble wrapping my brain around that concept, and if I can’t do that I’m apt to wind up in still another unsuitable position.

I interviewed with a home health agency for a position as a case manager, which I thought would not only be interesting since I’ve never done it before, but give me the opportunity to work 1:1 with clients. (I’ve been healthy enough, for long enough, that I think I could handle clinical nursing again as long as I’m not dealing with 35 sickly and/or demented nursing home residents, or 7-8 acutely ill medical/surgical patients.) But then the interviewer began to outline the requirements for the job, which includes being on-call night and day for a full week every third week, and that’s when it struck me: There really are things I can’t do.

There are many things I shouldn’t do, and still more that I don’t WANT to do, but this is one thing that would be impossible for me to do if I want to remain mentally healthy. There would be times when I’d have to drive out to a client’s house in the middle of the night to deal with an emergency; how would I manage that when I’m so drugged I can barely even walk the fifteen feet to my bathroom in the middle of the night? Worse, it would screw up my sleep schedule and keep me from taking my nighttime meds during on-call week…..and we all know what a cluster-fuck THAT would be.

Plus, there’s the probability that my job would end up eating my life. Again. I’m sorry folks, but I just don’t have that kind of dedication anymore. I want to work to live, not live to work. So I’m going to just say No to this opportunity if I’m called for a second interview, even though I need a job like a week ago.

I could curse my limitations and continue to try to defy them, even in the face of mounting evidence that they actually do exist. However, doing so is a mistake, and I’m done making that one. Just the idea of having to get out of bed and drive someplace at 2 AM or so gives me the willies, but the thought of not taking my meds in anticipation of the above is far worse. I can’t do that to my family. I can’t do that to ME. It took too long for me to get to this place where I’ve been stable for a couple of months and have the right number and amount of medications to keep me that way; if I mess with any of the elements, the whole damn opera will fall apart and I know it.

Therefore, I shall continue to peruse the Help Wanted ads, comb through Internet jobs pages, and e-mail resumes to every employer that sounds even remotely suitable. And if you’ve a mind to, please send up some prayers and/or positive energies…..I need all the help I can get!

At age six, seven, eight, kids want to be princesses, firemen, doctors, cowboys…

At some point, everyone kind of falls into or aims for the direction they want to go in life.

It occurs to me, all I ever wanted to be was…high functioning. It didn’t matter at what. Waiting tables, working a cash register, changing bedpans…I just wanted to consistently function at a higher level. Because, let’s face it, the rest of the world does. There are overachievers and supermen and superwomen who do a juggling act every clown on Earth envies…Good for them. It was never in the cards for me, even without a wonky brain. I’m just not that…inclined to overachieve.

But to function regularly and highly, like the “normal” folks…That would be a winning lottery ticket for me. After today, I am more certain than ever I am never gonna be a lottery winner.

This stems from a sick kid and a simple doctor visit. She was fine when I put her on the bus, she came home moaning in pain and throwing up. I called the dr. They declared her constipated then poured water down her gullet in order to make her pee for a urine sample. When that failed, they sent us home and told me to bring the sample as soon as I could get it. Before we even hit the parking lot, she was throwing up all that water. Big time. In the car. Then when we got home. Then she said she wanted food. And couldn’t keep that down. So do tell, how can I get a urine sample out of a kid who won’t keep anything down?

And between that and picking up her new glasses, which she hates, then going to the pharmacy and coming home to my dad taking away some of the cats outside so the landlord will shut up and the maintenance asshole won;t bring his pit bull to kill them…while neighbor girls pop out of the woodwork saying that cat’s mine, that cat is ours, you can’t take them…

I think my brain has become cerebral puree. TOO MUCH. ENOUGH. I mean, here I am getting all this shit for the cats…and suddenly the owners come forward. REALLY?

And how do I send a perfectly chipper and healthful kid to school and get a sickly spew machine back? And why was she perfectly chipper and healthful at the dr’s, talking so much even the doctor was growing (politely) annoyed then she gets sick on me, like I’;m some munchausen by proxy histrionic? I mean, I have the shirt covered in spew if you want proof, there’s something not right with the kid…

Overwhelmed doesn’t begin to cover it. And throw in the guilt for being so self absorbed that even my kid;s sickness becomes about me…

This is never what I wanted to be when I grew up. What you want rarely has anything to do with how things turn out.

 

This is what I wrote yesterday at starschmucks...          

Tuesday

I don't like the idea of hating Mondays. Yesterday I posted the very old song "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats (awful name) on G+ yesterday because I had to go to the therapist. being with the therapist is not the problem. Anyway, if you're not old enough, the song is about the news of one of the first school shootings in the US that hit the UK. Supposedly, the reason the shooter (a girl) gave why she did it was, "I don't like Mondays", hence the song and the terrible 80's video.

I had never had a morning/early afternoon so awful, so filled with anxiety as I did yesterday in such a longass fucking time. It was fucking horrible! The more I tried to stop thinking about it, the more I did, and made things even worse. Breathing didn't help either. I kept eating bits of seroquel that I'd cut off a 200mg chunk and another piece I'd found sitting on the table from who knows where. I stopped at about 1.15.

At about 1.30, I thought, I just grabbed my shit and left the house before I could really form a thought. I had no idea what time it was, but figured I'd have plenty of time to make it since my appointment was at 2. I was overdressed for the weather in a big black hoodie, and I pretended no one could see me. That didn't work.I was really struggling up the street with a cigarette in one hand, and the other hand in my pocket, tightly clutching my keys and mini Swiss army knife. I had to make one stop alone the way because it seemed I couldn't do 2/3 things at the same time - smoke, walk, listen to music. 

So I stopped in a doorway to finish my smoke, looking like some kind of sleazy freak. My back hurt again, but I wasn't going to let it hurt me more and make things worse. We're talking about a 4-5 block (?) walk!!! WTF!! I know!! 

I was listening to  - get this and laugh - Boston "Peace of Mind" - over and over again, and one of the lines was "look ahead", so I did. Above all the heads, there was the sign I was waiting to see, the Haagen Daz ice cream shop on the corner. The therapist's corner! I tried to remember eating ice cream there as a very young silly punk rock teenager, barely 14. I tried to think of a flavor of ice cream with all different kinds of things in it, kept struggling up the street, trying not to trip up, or crash into anybody along the way. Oh holy ice cream fucking store, let me reach your fucking corner! Don't let my back give out! Don't let my lower back kill me, even though I no longer find ice cream appealing! Fuck! Please!

I made it across the street and to the door of the offices. I saw my reflection in the glass door and thought 'you pathetic fuck!' and the shame came raining down upon me like a thunderstorm in New Orleans. Fuck you, reflection. I opened the door and checked my phone for the time. It wasn't even 1.30 yet. I left my place around 1.27ish. This had to be wrong. Did I lose some time somewhere? Disappear into the Awkward Dimension for a while? It seemed to take forever for me to get to the office. There was no way that I made it there so fast. If I was going to teleport there, could we skip the fucking MISERY next fucking time?JFC!

I made it to the therapist's and back, and I did not cry a single tear. Mostly I just couldn't shut up about how I'd sort of reconnected with some cousins via FB, remembering only those as the good times - playing with cousins in childhood. Towards the end, I thought WTF?! Structure! There is no structure here! I'm blabbing for nothing. She's not even taking notes! Something's very wrong with this picture. BP's need fucking structure in this yap therapy thing, otherwise it's a waste, and I'm not doing it again. 

I'm cancelling next Monday, and telling her what my be is, asking her where her notes are, why she never takes any, why she hasn't mentioned the possible cause of the anxiety maybe being some unconscious fear. Well, that's what I'm starting to think. An unconscious thing or maybe something that's shoved so far back in my head that it is there, that it's not unconscious, that it's something I can't dig up just yet, maybe something that I can't or don't want to admit to myself. I fucking do not know, but IT IS SLOWLY FUCKING KILLING ME.

I crashed on the couch from mental/emotional/meds exhaustion and woke up with a "meds hangover" the next day.

I don't want to hate Mondays when I used to look forward to them! I cannot take this shrink schedule, and I won't.

Having attended numerous depression and bipolar support group meetings, I have heard one complaint from new people over and over again – weight gain. When the new person timidly asks if anyone else has experienced weight gain, the usual response is a lot of stifled laughter as nearly every person in the room raises a […]