Archive for the 'Bali' Category

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You can tranquilize your mind

Published on January 7, 2011 by Corinna Carlson | 26 Comments

When they read the email he’ll insinuate that I don’t know what I’m talking about, he’ll say that I’m trying to make it worse and to make it about me. But I’m not and it isn’t. Anyone who knows anything about my family dynamic has at one point asked me if a free trip to Bali every year is really worth putting up with my parents’ constant drama and bullshit. I have always answered with a resounding FUCK YES. When I went to see them in 2009 things were only semi awkward, but because I was in a really good place for a change I gave it a go and about 90% of the trip was good. I even kept my lips zipped right shut when my dad made some witty remark about how the depression in our family had skipped a generation [delusions of grandeur much]. It didn’t take me long to see beneath the mask my father wore while I was there, I left knowing he hadn’t changed a bit. I probably said a lot to the contrary back then but I wanted to believe.

Over the last year the answer to that question has been changing more and more to FUCK NO. The ignorant and racist letters they send when they moved to fucking ASIA are quite shocking. I’m simply not capable of using them for a free trip and last year we didn’t go anyway. The older I get the more I simply can not live with “we’ll just have to agree we remember things differently” being good enough for me. It isn’t. A lot of days my resentment builds, and shit man, I’ve been working on this relationship with an incredible psychiatrist since 2003. I know that I either have to walk away or accept them for who they are.

And I can’t do either. Despite trying and failing at both.

Since they’ve moved to Bali it has been one thing after another. For two people who inflicted the level of abuse and neglect on me that they did, I honestly thought that them moving to Bali would result in us simply drifting further and further a part like we were doing before suddenly they woke up one day and realized they had a daughter well after I realized I’d grown up way short handed and it has been a battle ever since. I’m sorry but you just do not get to neglect me to the disgusting and gross extent you did and suddenly decide we are going to be friends. No, it’s over, it ends here.

And now I’m being accused of trying to get my mother to have another breakdown [again] because that is how my family rolls and he reacted like I said he would in that first sentence I wrote at 2:22 PM looks like he was out of bed for about two minutes before he blasted off his ‘I’m a five year old and it’s all your fault’ message to me.

Right, so my Grandmother is in the hospital and long story short she should have either been put in a home years ago or have a paid nurse who looks in on her weekly, she is 88 years old and is basically left with distant relatives of relatives of friends to look in on her, when she talks to her children she lies to them about how she is doing because she is fucking 88 and last time she was in the hospital having HEART SURGERY instead of her daughter who lives in a suburb of Toronto going to visit her the relatives of the relatives of the friends were left to handle it all AND my Aunt still bitched about the costs.

My father because he has never liked my mother’s mother has refused to do anything to help her, like say having a professional check in on her, which has now lead to my uncle entering her apartment to find it reeking of feces, the bed pot not changed for days, the bed-linens un-save-able and bloody Kleenexes everywhere. I’m fucking furious. I’m livid. Is this for fucking real? No matter how I feel about my parents, even if I’m taken out of their will, I would STILL not allow what has happened to my Grandmother to happen to them.

And his excuse, she at 88 wanting to keep her independence and not telling my Aunt and Uncle how she was actually doing and he knows that under no circumstances can my Aunt or Uncle afford a nurse or a home, to which I reminded him that the elderly don’t always know what they want and what they need and that someone as independent as my Grandmother would NEVER give that up without a fight. There is no excuse for her living like that none. I can not believe these people expect me to have a relationship with them just because THEY are the lonely ones now. I’m not ready, I don’t know when I will be but I’m not and this just makes it SO much worse, so much worse that I may never be ready. I’m pretty sure the admittance forms to whatever home I end up tossing them into can probably be signed without my having to see them, but at least I’d still fucking help.

I Think I’m Paranoid.

Published on July 22, 2010 by Corinna Carlson | 17 Comments

I’ve always considered myself to be a paranoid person.

People have always called me a paranoid person.

No matter how well I am doing, of all the variables I face dealing with chronic depression I have some of the most trouble dealing with paranoia. With years of therapy I know that paranoia is actually nothing more than having a negative attentional bias towards something, not allowing myself the observation of any positive feelings to help convince myself that no, everyone does NOT hate me or think I’m stupid or useless and that I shouldn’t even be entertaining these negative thoughts and overwhelming feelings.

It doesn’t matter how much medication I’m on or not on. There is no medication that helps me with this. This is something that to different degrees I have always dealt with, but when you add anxiety into the mix, I feel like my innards are being blown up and twisted into balloon animals and not even cool ones at that. I’m allowed to take an extra clonazepam on really bad days to curb my anxiety but that still leaves me unable to eat because when I’m hit with paranoid anxiety attacks just because I can get my stomach out of the knots with the clonazepam I still can’t force myself to eat as I still feel like I am going to barf all over everything.

Recently something happened where I was bullied, badly, yet again in my life, being a few years into my thirties now just adds to my utter disappointment in myself. And it has unfortunately triggered my negative attentional bias and my anxiety to off the chart levels. Not to mention I’ve had two idiots totally fucking with me on Twitter which hasn’t helped matters.

The last two weeks have had me feeling like there is no reason for me to be here. I despise feeling like this. What happened just reminds me that no matter how much I work on myself, no matter how hard I try to work on my posture and stand up straight, no matter how many people tell me that what happened was not my fault, that it obviously is, there is obviously still something very wrong with me, after now eight years under the same psychiatrist’s care it blows my mind that I am still a target for bullies. It makes me angry it makes me feel like everything my father has ever said about me is true and that I don’t deserve good things. It brings me back to having to have exchange students, who were staying with us when I was in high school, come and get me to keep me from getting beat up. I just don’t want to deal with this anymore.

It hurts really bad.

And speaking of my father, it also makes me resent even more how far away my parents are, I deduce that no one understands my relationship with them, not Adam, not even me, but last week I needed to be able to pick up the phone so badly and just unload to my parents and I couldn’t. They are too secluded for Skype. Getting and holding a clear phone connection is a challenge, not cheap and with the time difference we are up at the same time for a very short period of time. I even know I probably would have just ended up more upset talking to them if I didn’t hear what I needed, but simply not even being able to take the chance just reminded me again yet again that they left me here, that retiring to Asia was more important than their only child and fuck it, everything hurts. I don’t know why I can’t let this illusion of my parents suddenly being ideal parents go, they did the best they could with a problem child.

This will of course pass, just not soon enough, it is hard enough to deal with these two facets of my depression but when they nail me at once I have to hang on for dear life I know that I’m not headed for break down mode, what happened is only going to make me stronger. But it sucks feeling like a loser, that is never good. Worrying constantly that people are out to destroy my reputation, worrying that some people are NEVER going to give me a second chance, worrying that people don’t want me around – what have you – is all petty and idiotic and I wish I could have a new brain.

Doing our best with what we’ve got.

Published on July 18, 2010 by Corinna Carlson | 9 Comments

The last couple weeks have been a little crazy. After I posted about my SIL’s wedding I was sure I would finally be back blogging regularly and even had my list of posts I wanted to write ready to go with notes.

Between my health, the cat, heading back to work and trying to write for ThinkHero nothing has been going as planned. I don’t mind doing bullet point posts but only when the points are small and not all worthy of their own post.

I think one of the worst things we are dealing with is that Adam’s UI runs out next month. He’s in a union or he’d likely have found work by now. It has hit the point where we have no choice, he will have to leave the union or things will become dire. We’ve lived for almost seven years with no extended medical, I had it when I was still in corporate jobs but Adam wasn’t on it. Both of us having it for the period we did, with the medical problems we have or that have come up, it hasn’t even helped. For example, the most expensive of any of my medications is my allergy spray and it isn’t covered. Sure I need new lenses in my glasses but I’ll just keep having our medical stuff written off on our taxes like I always do.

I have returned to work as a PA on season 3 of Fringe. I’m feeling pretty good about myself having been called back for another season. Given this show films downtown as much as it does and because I’m back on my bike, getting to and from locations has just become about 80% easier. I’m still working on call / part time, but this works best for me. The longer I do this work the more I enjoy it, the work itself isn’t hard, it’s the hours that make the work hard, get used to those and you are good to go. And that is basically all I can say about that.

I’m feeling a tad overwhelmed because a lot of positive things seem to be coming in my direction, yet I’m terrified of my health, my depression, or my ‘I don’t deserve good things’ side of my brain taking over and fucking it all up. I invented self sabotage.

As mentioned I started writing for ThinkHero, I have gotten a few really good pieces up but my intent was to post more and now I’m paranoid I won’t be offering up enough to keep me on, to which my friends say “are you kidding me you are writing for free” to which I say – yes, but I said I was going to do such and such and now I’ve been sick and going for test after test after flippin’ test and go see this specialist and OH lets have a barium enema while we’re at it. That now means another four plus doctors have had their finger up my ass in the last month. I intentionally don’t even shave my INNER ass cheeks anymore. Fuck it, and I sport a 70′s bush too while I’m talking about pubes. Deal with it.

Not to mention:

My blood work has come back showing I have VERY low blood sugar and that I am hypoglycemic. This means I have to see another specialist because I do not as of yet have diabetes and part of the goal here is keeping it that way. Eating every three hours is a real new one for me. I’ve never had an eating disorder but I do not like food and I eat because I have to, not because I want to, making myself eat every three hours makes me feel like I’m going to barf, sucks it is already helping me feel better. No idea if it is affecting my moods because I have too much going on to look that deeply in upon myself yet. This explains A LOT of my complaints over the last few months, dizziness worse than my normal shitty balance falling over, I’m a clumsy pants nonsense, my over the top tiredness, low energy and dropping close to fifteen pounds off my already small frame. This was so odd for me because I’m used to losing weight when I’m depressed but aside from these complaints, mentally I’ve still been doing fairly well. We were chalking everything up to the stress of having no full time work since January but I was pretty sure it was more than that being pretty in-tune with when and why I’m losing or gaining weight.

Speaking of me MENTALLY my meds have been dropped again. I’m on the lowest amount of meds I’ve been in oh, shit maybe four years. There is only 25 mg between me and NO MORE Seroquel the least favourite of the three meds I take, I have MANY an argument or rather *words* with my psychiatrist about him putting me on Seroquel. I’ve stopped waiting for the ball to drop, and I’m really giving this feeling better stuff a go. As I’ve mentioned this doesn’t mean I don’t have BRUTALLY bad days where it is ALL I HAVE not to toss myself out in front of a bus, but I’m hanging onto the rails of the sanity train for dear life and I will keep riding it no matter how many people try and toss me off for as long as I can.

Now for the hardest news to share. Gus isn’t doing so good. When we went to Langley for the wedding we thought not hearing from my girlfriend was a good thing, turned out she didn’t want to ruin our weekend. We came home to find that Gus had attacked someone who had not only known her since 1996 but had sat her on numerous occasions some over two weeks long back when I used to be a travel agent. This has left us with some hard and shitty decisions that had to be made, because we can’t have Gus attacking our friends, we won’t be spending Christmas with our siblings, we won’t be able to see our friends in Tofino and probably the worst for my parents is we can’t go to Bali until…… … and I can’t risk going to Bali myself and missing my last month with her, she is having enough trouble with my having returned to work. She is also dropping weight at a rather drastic rate. So much so that we were going to take her in early for her six month check up. It is hard to believe it has already been a year since we had to put her on pain medication and up until about two months ago she was doing really well. Her blood work has all come back fine both times it has been taken, she doesn’t have any kidney or liver problems. We made the decision to wait until her check up in September. We get her weighed once a month when we pick up her medication and are being pressured to bring her in but here’s the deal; Having picked wee Gus when she was the runt of the litter and she wasn’t the last kitteh but she was the one I fell in love with even thinking she was a boy, I know her and I know that taking her in for blood tests in June instead of September is only going to have to have her pricked an extra time. Forget the cost, it has nothing to do with that, everyone knows we can’t afford this to happen right now but who is ever ready for this financially or mentally or fucking in any way. The fact remains that even though it is beyond heartbreaking when Gus goes to lay on the floor right now and her bones make a horrible sound as they hit the floor, she is happy, she has energy she is still feisty, she still sits with us, sleeps with us, she isn’t hiding. She is eating less, but she is drinking more. Gus has lived a great long life, she was my best little furry buddy and now she is our best furry little buddy and we are going to keep her comfortable as long as possible but not drag the inevitable out. She is dying of old age, plain and simple. It is really, really hard, I don’t know what I’m going to do without her. I don’t like to think that far ahead yet. It sneaks in sometimes, but I’m not ready.

I did something crazy and other stuff.

Published on June 5, 2010 by Corinna Carlson | 12 Comments

Gus on Phaed's mat.

To the dismay of Gus who likes blow up mats, we are empty nesters again, our guest Phaeds & her sock monkey Bobby have gone to their new place (woot congrats again buddd-dy) and with that means Dr. Vegas is basically alone and he is depressed. This makes almost no sense; he used to despise and spend almost all of his time plotting ways to eliminate other members of the army and now he is friends with some and is so depressed he can hardly sit up. He’s gone soft on us, I’d almost go as far as to call him a bit of a pussy, Adam says I can’t call him a pussy but I can say he is ‘acting like a pussy’.

Before:

Ho Chi Pimp, Bobby, Dr. Vegas

(from left: Ho Chi Pimp, Bobby, Dr. Vegas)

After:

perplexed and depressed.

My intestines / ass haven’t been the same since I ended up in hospital so now I have to have a barium enema on July 20. Two people over 50 have told me they are not a big deal and Dr. Buttle (my shrink) figures it is IBS brought on by stress. I will save you the details of exactly what is going on but it isn’t pretty or pain free, it is also frustrating as I am pretty tired of things going wrong with my ass.

We we riding bikes in Stanley Park one day and we came across this gator and being they are my favourite animals on earth (YES, more than cats) I first of all could not believe I hadn’t seen it or heard about it being in there before, nor did I expect to end up in an epic death roll, thankfully I was wearing my bike helmet, I think I pissed it off while feigning to surf on its’ nose.

Some sad news, Narco didn’t make it, I have yet to find out what happened to the little guy nor do I know if any more cygnets have been born, I need a break from the heartache. The Lagoon has been waiting for eight years now for a cygnet to make it and it seems unlikely yet again this year. Hope I’m wrong on that one but none of the nature photographers I know who follow the cygnets as closely and some closer than I do have had new photos up.

R.I.P little Narco buddy.

Narco!

FUNNY STORY TIME!!

I did something TODAY that I have wanted to do for YEARS but never had the balls to do. I only need to tell you a tiny bit of back story.

One of the penthouses in the building across from us faces straight into our living room and bedroom. When we first moved in here in 2004 out of my tiny bachelorette from down the hall the most interesting off all the new neighbors to make up life stories for was the lesbian couple in the penthouse mentioned, she barbecued year round and generally wore some form of work out wear or what could be considering gardening clothes but she never had a garden up there just a motion sensor light for the barbecue. When they moved out maybe a year and a half ago now I was actually sad. I felt comfortable naked in here and she was very entertaining and beyond fun to make up theoretical scenarios for, especially in the summer when her and her girlfriend would take to the patio with red wine in white robes. We even called them our lesbians. Since they moved out they haven’t been able to keep the place occupied. There are constant open houses and from the first one I mentioned to Adam that I wanted to go. I think he thought I was insane. But WHY NOT??? If not just to see exactly how much can be seen from there, ALL my curiosity surrounding what it looks like in there would be solved, and not only that, knowing what it looks like will I’m sure make it about ten times more fun to make up stories about future buyers. A couple days ago the latest owners moved out and while Adam and friend where out on a ride around the Sea Wall I could hear voices. I looked out the window and there is was another open house. Unwashed and with greasy hair I decided it was time to giver a go. I put on an outfit that at least covered my tattoos but had to leave flip-flops on because I’m sporting a blister the size of a grape right now on my heel and have to be in heels at a wedding next weekend so shoes are out for me right now and headed out giggling to myself as I walked down the stairs. I crossed the street and up to the penthouse I went, I walked in to see what appeared to be serious lookers and quickly scanned the area. WHOA way smaller than it looks from the outside for one. SHOCKING what $685,000 will buy you. I talked to the realtor telling him my parents lived in Bali (true) and were looking for a place to buy when they are back in the city for extended times for visits. (lie) Somewhere I ended up throwing in that I was thirty-two (true) because I could sense my youthful looks where throwing him. He said and I kid you not, “I was going to say this open house is for nineteen and over” NIIIIIIICE lately youngest someone has guessed is twenty-two (true) and they said they were being generous it was on the Fringe set. I walked out onto the balcony and looked into our place and could see the bike and the fan, I had left the blinds down but instantly confirmed that not only could you see in here you could probably see the zits on our asses if you looked carefully enough. As I walked back across the street feeling triumphant I instantly texted Adam with ‘I just did the craziest thing ever you are going to be so jealous’. I brought a pamphlet home so at least he can see what it looks like up there but I have been in there now. Awesome. And Adam is, totally jealous.

I’d also like to mention that I’m writing for a new site now called ThinkHero if you like sci-fi / comic books, movies, television, anime and video games then you should check it out. It is more of the sci-fi / supernatural / horror / action movies and shows type website with video reviews than romance and dramas. So far I have written an introduction piece which talks briefly about working as a production assistant on season 2 of Fringe and I will have an opinion piece on one of my favourite shows up soon. I’m excited to have somewhere new to write. Being that it is an American site out of Los Angeles I’m hoping the audience will grow fond of the wee Canadian and her opinions and such from Hollywood North. I’m still a bit nervous to say the least.