Daily Archives: February 21, 2018

Last night I zonked before ten p.m. and I did sleep, but I woke often, and I woke early, because there was ice and school had a two hour late start so I was getting notifications. Of course on any day I can sleep in I wake early, it’s life’s little ‘fuck you’ joke. Like weekends with a kid who can’t be dragged out of bed for school without a crane yet come Saturday they’re awake with the bloody roosters.

My anxiety has skyrocketed today as days count down to us needing to be out of here. We have a line on a place in dad’s armpit town, he talked to the guy and stepmonster is gonna come get us tomorrow to go look at it (ya know, since it’s 16 miles round trip and my death trap won’t run over 30mph without a death gasp). I am not wild about this, at all. But I am also sick of not eating or sleeping and feeling like my skeleton is crawling out of my skin. We have to do something and it’s not my job to think of myself right now. My damage from growing up in a small town has to take a backseat to making sure Spook has a roof overhead and I am just gonna have to put on the big girl panties and deal with it. I’m not committing to a 20 year contract to live there. This could be a six month or year long thing, or hell, it may turn out to not suck so much.

I hate myself for thinking that or writing it.

I think mostly I fear my sister and mom might be right and dad and stepmonster may be making a power play to take over my daughter and turn her into a mini redneck version of themselves. And without a reliable car and depending on them to provide me with transportation…I am going to be in no position whatsoever to defend my right as her mother or my independence. That is the worst position (aside from living in a cardboard box with no wifi connection-just sayin’).

To demonstrate how redneck and ignorant my dad is…he thinks because the rent for this place in his town is fifty dollars less than what I pay here, it is going to save me money. Except I will have to pay water there ($25 monthly), trash ($45 every three months), and of course, ten bucks gas every time I need to run into town for groceries or appointments. Moving there may be necessity, but it is not one bit cheaper and it is not at all convenient, so this is how I know that my dad only sees things from his perspective. Saving fifty bucks on rent isn’t saving a penny if I’ll be spending another hundred between water, trash, and travel money.

Again, though…this looks to be our only feasible opportunity and it is a two bedroom so at least I wouldn’t get stuck sharing a room with Ms. Snores A Lot. (Love her to pieces, but man, she could suck down tile ceilings with that snore.) It’s not even a lock, the guy just agreed to let us look at the place and he’s going by what they have told him about my situation. I don’t take anything as a given anymore because…well 2018 has been a dick so far and as far as the former landlord-now-property-manager giving a good reference…I’ve seen the man out and out lie to my face repeatedly so…not breathing easily there, either. There’s also the matter of doing laundry, I don’t know if Armpit (so shall the town in question be known here on out) still has their laundromat, which would cost even more money. I don’t even know if they have mail service, everyone seems to have a post office box, which again, MORE FUCKING MONEY. They have a restaurant open 8 hours a day, a gas station open til 7 p.m. and of course, said post office. That is it. I might go brain dead from boredom, especially if stuck with no gas to escape to town.

At the same time…I wonder if this isolation might be what I need. Get in the slow lane, keep to myself, maybe be able to focus on my writing when Spook is asleep because being so isolated might lower my anxiety and allow me to focus better. God, slap me with a rotting mackerel already for spewing this limited sunshine. Gross. I am likely gonna hate it because it will bring back every traumatic memory from my adolescence and teens where the small town redneck bullies made me want to die daily. But I am 45 now and it’s time to move on, blah blah blah. Some things you move on from but their imprint is a scar that flares up whether you want it to or not.

And this is where standard issue people start rolling their eyes and call me narcisstic and tell me it’s about my kid, not me, and how self centered I am and all I talk about is me me me and I am a horrible person always playing the victim…

Oh, wait, that was what the heroin using shrink said to Analiese on How To Get Away With Murder thus my paranoid brain instantly jumped to, “Oh fuck, is that why nurse doc didn’t help me or believe a word I said? Did she think I was a narcissist playing victim????” And this is where mental healthcare/shrinks/counselors totally confuse and baffle me. If I am supposed to go in and talk, isn’t it supposed to be about myself and how I am feeling and what I am going through? The very definition of narcissism, acceptable not even in my supposed care and management and cure? It is all these self doubt causing questions that have caused me to give up on therapy. The doc nurse and abandonment by Dr. B have made me seriously question if I will ever get the proper professional to actually do more good than harm. But then it goes right back to my own brain rolling its eyes at me and snarking, “Victim much?”

Grrrrr. It’s maddening. And certainly doesn’t help the depression. I have been running on sheer anxiety for weeks and the depressive abyss days certainly take precedence even if I rant more about the anxiety…But it’s come to my attention just how depressed I have been yet scared to admit the sevetrity lesy some well meaning genius professional decide it means I’m an unfit mom. The only person being neglected here is me. I don’t watch my super fave shows like The Flash or Supernatural. I can’t focus on the shows I do try to watch. I am glad to be awake only about two hours of the day, long enough to get a caffeine burst and an acceptable nicotine level. The rest of the time all I do is count down hours til I can go to sleep. And as we’re out of melatonin and the script sleepers damn near kill me…I am going to be spending a lot of time awake, breaking out in nervous hives, twisting stomach aches, and spinning thoughts.

I don’t know where to begin packing. I am frozen, like a deer in headlights with a car speeding at me at 120 mph. And I can’t seem to move. It terrifies me. I should be packing, my kid reminds me constantly. Well, first we need boxes, then we need to have a place to go, and I have to determine the space we will have going from a 3 bedroom two bath to a two bedroom one bath, no outside storage shed. I am trapped in don’t stop, don’t go mode.

Still…I am plastering on the brave face and validating my kid’s ‘nervous-cited- state (thank you, my little pony, nervous-cited is almost a cool way to describe it) while assuring her the move could be a great thing for us, who knows. I mean, I was once stuck in such a depression I thought our world would crumble if the donor left. And ya know what? He handled it like the cowardly cockweasel he is, sneaking his shit out and announcing he wanted out via a 30 second phone call but…within a couple of weeks I was on the mend, realizing how much better I felt without him. I just didn’t have the guts to risk change by admitting it when he was here. And Spook was only two and he wasn’t all that interactive with her so she didn’t even notice his absence. It was something I thought would be catastrophic yet it turned out better than it was, so I often beat myself up for my inability to overome my fear of change and extricate myself from unhealthy situations.

Maybe being forced at metaphoric gunpoint to make a change is what I need. Or it may be push me over the edge, God knows I have been hit from all angles this year with devastation and bad luck. I’d like to at least keep the door cracked open on things being okay, minus any sunshine spewing. Sunshine helps my mood, but it just makes me feel like a traitor to myself if I trade in my hard earned cynicism to blow rainbows up my own skirt. If I wore skirts.

So…depressed. Anxious to the nth. Terrified. Feeling helpless and hopeless.

Still alive and kicking and doing what has to be done for my kid.

If this makes my diagnosis narcisstic, then again…the mental health, er behavioral health, community is guilty of bad behavior.