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.

Last weekend Adam and I were in Langley and spent a night way out in Chilliwack, there are some super nice mountains that far out of the city, beautiful British Columbia all over the place. I sent two texts messages to Twitter and I used a computer once because my phone was randomly texting important pertinent information to Safeway, and I needed my response to reach the person it came from but I wasn’t even on it for five minutes. Other than that I was completely unplugged. We were at my youngest Sister (in-laws) wedding. And lucky me I get to post photos!

It was three full days away from my cat though, with family I hadn’t seen or spoken to since we got married in 2006. I was afraid of anxiety attacks, migraines, one of my ass or intestinal ailments acting up, totally freaking out, losing it, ruining everything and having to go home. When I thought about it I realized that I hadn’t even spent that much time with a large(r) amount of my own side of the family since 1994, when I was 17 years old and we went back to Ontario for Christmas. I did make a trip back in 2000 as well, but it was hardly 4 days, also for Christmas but it was to visit a very specific person in the family and whoever else I got to see was great but I didn’t see that many.

I don’t like being away from home period, which upon thinking about recently I realized I’ve been like that since I was a kid, I remember I used to come home from sleep overs in the middle of the night. When my parents where still living in Prince George I would fly home early pretty regularly. I knew I was going to be out there from early Friday until who knew when on Sunday.

Back when Adam and I got married my relationship with the people who were to become my in-laws was strained to say the very least. I didn’t actually talk to my sister in laws or father in law at all at our wedding. I had mentally prepared for months to not let how hard that day was going to be get to me, it was one of the best acts I’ve ever put on knowing I was walking down the aisle in front of some people who had reason not to like me, or who had heard enough negative things about me that in only one day I wasn’t going to change anyones mind. I’m used to being misunderstood, but in the case of my soon to be sisters, fucking up the chance at a relationship I had grown up wanting more than anything sucked, really bad.

Over the years that we’ve been married my SILs and I have worked out our differences and we get along better than I ever could have dreamed. I don’t even remember how it happened, it just did. We started hanging out with Kristy my youngest sister and her boyfriend Greg who is now her husband and my brother. Sara started to make a point to come over and see us whenever she was here from Philly. It happened slowly but I was starting to feel like these two women really had my back, that they didn’t just like me that they were starting to love me like real family. Whoa, what a trip that was.

Most people know I’m an only child but what a lot of people don’t know is that I grew up with just my parents. I had an incredibly hard time making and keeping friends and whatever these problems were they were always my fault, that is all I learned was that it was my fault not how to properly socialize or make friends. I never spent enough time with anyone in my extended family to build an actual relationship with them, I don’t know any of them, I know things about them, and I’ve heard things about them but I don’t KNOW them. The time I spent so alone as a child is no doubt why as an adult I spend, at least by choice now, a shit load of time at home. It was in 1985 that my parents made a choice to leave our entire family in Ontario and go as far West as you can coming to British Columbia.

Not spending a lot of time with Adam’s family never bothered me. Not getting invited out for Thanksgiving, who cares! I didn’t have to pretend I wanted to be there and sneak out to smoke pot at any escapable moment I could find. I have enough trouble holding my shit together when my parents visit me instead of me visiting them, I feel trapped, I feel they don’t listen to me or respect my space. I try and set boundaries when they visit but it always leads to overly dramatic fights and periods of time when we have no contact at all. Again, my fault.

Aside from mending and building a relationship with my sister in laws the only other person on that side of the family who I’d met that I knew liked me for sure was my Grandma. She spoils Adam and I rotten and it’s awesome. She was the one Adam learned how to make sock monkeys from so my starting to make the sock monkeys helped me out there a bit I think.

I started to get excited about this wedding pretty early on, I think it is probably for the best that I kept most of my focus on Kristy and Greg and didn’t spend much time thinking about the big picture, which was three full days with the Carlson clan who I hadn’t seen since we married and I’d be meeting members of an entire new family that I’m now a part of, being an only child this was incredibly overwhelming, it is very hard for me to connect which titles go with who, I have the basics down, but try to figure out what the correct term for the relation of anyone outside a brother or a sister and I really don’t have a clue. We hadn’t even been out to Langley, Daddy Bland had stopped by our place a couple of times over the years, but I would rarely accompany Adam on a coffee or eating excursion if there was one. I didn’t see the point, he was never going to like me and it wasn’t because I started to call him Daddy Bland, that’s his middle name.

Last weekend, up until the hangover on Sunday, was one of the best weekends I have had in ages. We’d met Sara at the airport in the morning to hitch a ride to Langley whilst also to pick up her boyfriend and headed straight for ground zero – my father in law’s fancy garage, already set up all nice, in purple and black for the Sunday gift opening. Family arrived all day, some from Dawson Creek, Edmonton, they came from all over. All recognizing me but me recognizing none of them. ONLY because it is nearly impossible for a bride to remember talking to her own family at her wedding let alone members of her new one, at least it was for me anyway, and I’ve heard that is very common.

We took off with Sara and Chris to set up the ceremony and reception hall and watch the rehearsal which Adam was needed for as he played the guitar and harmonica as Kristy’s wedding party and then Kristy and her dad walked down the aisle the following day. I still felt extremely overwhelmed at times and shed a few tears trying really hard not to let my anxiety get the best of me and allow my head to convince me everyone hated me. The bridesmaids couldn’t believe it when I told them I had social anxiety. I had told Adam I wasn’t taking any crap in Langley, yes I knew it was all about Kristy and Greg but this didn’t mean I was going to feel excluded. Not at one moment did I feel excluded. I even had some bonding moments with my step mother in law, I never saw that day coming and it was awesome. Real conversations.

Getting to spend time with both of my sisters at the same time was something I never thought I’d have in my life. I didn’t know if we would ever get along, but we do, and pretty well too. They are both such fantastic, yet different women. Sara and I both like reading, and looking like dorks in photos, she calls random people creeps, I call them jerks. Kristy likes country music SHIT I LIKE COUNTRY MUSIC. HA TAKE THAT INTERNET. Kristy is sensitive, I know I don’t have to tell any of you this but I’M super sensitive. And we all want to get along and want to have a relationship, that means more to me than I can really put into words, I’ve been trying to find them, I suppose they are here in this novel of a post somewhere. I don’t feel as lonely anymore. Talking and laughing with them, the cousins and aunts, uncles, grandma, and being myself – it made me happy, very happy, yet sad, because as an adult I haven’t been privy to times like this with my own side of the family. I never even thought family mattered to me. I have a wonderful husband and a cat, I’m set. But family does matter to me, I don’t know how to connect with my own (and I’m not talking about my parents) but connecting with my in-laws has shown me I can do it.

Weddings are an interesting thing, they can bring out the best and worst in almost everyone included. I needed that wedding, I needed that time with those two women, I’ve always bragged about their accomplishments, always been proud of the paths they chose but I didn’t know how to accept that we were all going to love one another unconditionally, that it was even possible, despite having more than just books and music in common, but we put up and took down that weekend together, Kristy got hitched, we partied like we’d never partied before and I was left thinking that Christmas can’t come around too soon so the six of us get to spend time together again, who knew that I would ever look forward to Christmas, let alone one with family.

As documented in my last post, and over the last year, I’m doing really well. Am I cured? No. And oddly although I don’t like labels, I sort of wish there was a better name for my main mental issue of severe depression, it just sounds funny, but when my shrink has to fill out any forms, that is what occupies the suffers from space, so that is what I go by.

The last week and a half though was total shit. Really hard. I managed for the most part to stay out of the suicidal mindset, despite a couple of unwanted intrusions. But I have this thing where I mention it instantly now, using it almost as a grounding exercise. One of my long time readers asked me a while back how it is that Adam is able to handle my monotonous threats of suicide. I told her I didn’t know but that I’d ask him and I also asked why he married me knowing that one minute I’m happy as a pig in shit only the next to spit out “I fucking hate everyone I just want to fucking die, fuck this shit” and off to bed I go. He said it was because he called my bluff. Then I said, “risky business”.

Feeling better is something that as we have a chance to get acquainted comes with it’s own set of variables, like the fear of having another actual breakdown or even just slipping into a depressive episode over what so far hasn’t been longer than seven days without waking up one day and having it genuinely break like a really bad headache eventually does.

I’m finding some things that even though I know deep down are things that I’m taking big liberties in perception with are bothering me none the less.

I feel under pressure. Pressured to keep all of my friends happy and supported both online and off and I feel I am failing miserably there. Pressure to NOT get depressed. Pressure to keep my shit together around people who also suffer from depression but have their shit together now so as to not be a burden. Pressure to NOT want to kill myself. Pressure to NOT freak out or lose my temper or swear at someone. PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE.

No one but ME is placing this pressure, that I am aware of anyway. But I have no idea how to just drop it off on the curb because it gives me anxiety. Just because I feel better doesn’t mean that my social anxiety doesn’t take a couple licks at my ass as it is trying it’s darndest to get out of the house.  Sometimes I don’t even know what feeling better even really means other than not being on shit loads of medication and having a fairly drama free existence because for me there is always that voice in the back of my head that for almost a year has been tiny but is still constantly there reminding me I’m on three medications, though the dosage has been dropped significantly. I find it pretty disconcerting when I look back on how much medication I was on for the first half of 2009. I’m not saying that I will never have another breakdown but the version of me that occupied my body during what was the longest lasting depressive episode I’ve ever had through 2007 to 2009 doesn’t exist anymore. Even when I get pissy and throw a temper tantrum it is coming from a completely different mentality.

I’ve been working on myself for so long I don’t know WHY I can’t just be happy with the progress I’ve made and call er a day. Be thankful for every good day and just accept that I am going to have REALLY bad ones no matter what. I don’t even feel it is asking for that much but apparently at this moment anyway, my brain feels it is.

** Title from Under Pressure, Queen w/David Bowie

“You didn’t shit your pants did you?”

“NO, but close.”

Right, so last Thursday night I had just finished watching the first episode of Fringe I worked on, and was ready to spend a resplendent evening playing Virtua Fighter 5 on the XBox with my most loving husband when all of a sudden my dinner which wasn’t particularly healthy gave my stomach that not so nice grumbly get your ass to the toilet now cause it may explode feeling and I quickly obliged. What started as mild cramping in my abdomen was soon complimented with a back door tempest which erupted into pain so bad I starting moaning and groaning in donkey tongues.

Although I am known as a whiner, I blame that on the only child thing, I’m also known to have a pain tolerance that defies explanation. One example, the classic statistic I fell into when I broke my collarbone in THE COOK ISLANDS, apparently 2% of collarbone breakages end up in surgery, I ended up in surgery with mine, three months shy of it having been broken for an entire year.

Adam yelled over and asked if it could be menstrual cramps. No fuck no, menstrual cramps had nothing on this, this felt like my innards were being twisted into bows and balloon animals. But just to be sure I lifted up a drenched and dripping sweaty leg to see a bowl of blood. Fan-fucking-tastic. Having had a hemorrhoidectomy this was immediately bothersome but I had been on the can a while by this point and my ass wasn’t 100% sure what was going on because my contracting intestines were on some sort of long standing contract that only your worst enemy would take out on you to make me feel like hell.

The tempest cleared long enough for me to take 200 mg of Gravol and just hope that the contracting would stop and I’d get some sleep. When I woke up in the morning I still felt horrible, except now add drained and tired to that list. Even though I drank loads of water and had a decent sleep nothing was better, as soon as I sat down for my morning pee everything started up again but worse, because I didn’t have any food in my system and I was only drinking water. I did try to eat some tomato soup but that didn’t go too well and I threw it up in my mouth. We tried to get ahold of our doctor but they weren’t answering, so Adam walked over and explained my symptoms and he was told to take me up to the hospital. There was no way I could walk so I laid on the floor in the fetal position wondering how women have fucking babies, while Adam got ahold of a cab which I wasn’t sure about either because I thought for sure I was gonna barf any second.

The downtown hospital is a joyous place, it is one of those you only go to if you REALLY have to, this was my second trip into emerge there, granted this one wasn’t a self inflicted driven right to the door by the ambulance bill ya later kind.

Check in complete. Enter emergency waiting room, or a loose version of what at first sight appears to be a psych ward. Before I am through with my visit I will be privy to a ranting yet 90 days sober drug addict being taunted by a man claiming to be bipolar in cuffs whilst insulting the cops and making everyone in the waiting room uncomfortable to say the very least.

But, back to me, I was supposed to give them a urine sample basically right upon arrival. Always one to appreciate the little things, I was extremely excited about the innovation in giving urine samples, the funnel on top of the regular looking container with the lid and a nice little hand-wipe all in a sterile bag just for me. I went on to explain to Adam that this funnel was such a fantastic advancement that I couldn’t even believe it, why had no one done it sooner?

I proceed to sample my urine, all the while thinking how great this funnel is when suddenly it catches on the edge of my track pants and falls straight down into my underpants, drenching my pant leg in pee and part of my shoe as I watch a puddle of pee form on the floor next to my foot. I burst into tears. Are you kidding me? Is this for real? The waiting room is basically full, I thought the funnel was fantastic and now I want to murder it. I clean up the best I can covered in soaking wet pee and find the positive of the whole ordeal to be the track pants I’m wearing are navy blue fake velour rendering the wet spots less obvious — although this did nothing to help with the icky feeling I had with the cold material drying against my leg. “Do I smell like urine?”, I whispered to Adam as I started swigging from the water bottle so that I can get my pee on again.

I got in with the doctor relatively quickly, and felt like a super star explaining why I had no urine sample. This lovely visit confirmed something I have known all along, that my hemorrhoidectomy had not taken. I had The Rhoids again, internal and external for extra measure, if I only had a dollar for every doctor in the city who has had their finger up my ass I’d be comfortable. Not rich, not yet anyway, but comfortable. After another urine sample I didn’t botch and some blood work they let me go home saying I simply had a nasty viral attack on my intestines causing the back end tempest and at the moment still contracting intestines. I was told to make an appointment with my GP, take it easy and rest, back to solids slowly and lots of fluids.

What a way to kill a day and a half. I’d love to say I’m 100% better, but my energy is still really low with an even bigger interruption to my already lacking food intake and this was about the last thing I needed because I’ve already been bitching about losing too much weight since the stress hit in January. My intestines were contracting for a long bloody time because I am still in discomfort today, so I am resting and trying not to laugh a lot which isn’t too hard, unless of course I let myself think about how awesome it was to walk around with my bottom half covered in my own piss for half a day. That pretty much made the visit, the guy in cuffs had nothing on that.