Archive for the 'Family' Category

Page 3 of 14

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.

Returning to Langley and a Wedding

Published on June 23, 2010 by Corinna Carlson | 8 Comments

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.

The Bowleg.

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.

Kristy and Greg's cake.

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.

Kristy and Greg's cake.

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.

Kristy and Greg's cake.

It only took 13 years

Published on May 13, 2010 by Corinna Carlson | 14 Comments

Last weekend I overcame a thirteen year fear. It is something that for years I have tried to tell myself I could get over but was never able to. For those who don’t know, in 1997 I was on vacation in The Cook Islands and on my second to last day there I crashed my motor scooter and landed on my head. The pavement was wet and I went into a roll, my shoulder took the brunt of the fall snapping my collarbone and did some sweet damage to my right knee.

at the base of the peak.

where we hiked. ~ The Needle

We had done the cross Island hike to The Needle, the peak on the island of Raratonga, and because we each had our own scooter we left one at each end of the trail to make it easier to get back to the house where we were staying. We got lost on the hike and ended up scaling roots and rocks and were beat when we got to the bottom. Even had we not have gotten lost, it is still a full days worth of hiking. We were covered in mud and pretty pleased, it had been a really amazing day. We picked up the other scooter and as we were leaving for home it started to pour rain. I was not wearing a helmet.

At the time, Air New Zealand was the only airline with the rights to fly into Raratonga, leaving the Island a diamond in the rough in those days. I haven’t been in the travel industry for a good while now and could still probably sell a trip there just from talking about how awesome it is, lets just say Bali has NOTHING on it, not ONE thing. When I rented the scooter I rented it FIRST and DROVE to the license place, no lesson no nothing. My parents had been there the year before so my dad showed me the basics and I learned how to use it myself, and fast, they drive on the other side of the road there too.

My dad was in front of me and because of the rain I had my head dipped slightly as to not get water on my sunglasses, rendering me unable to see. He slowed down to hit a pot hole and I looked up too late, hit my front brakes and the bike slid out from underneath me so fast the next thing I remember is my head hitting the pavement. I remember the whole accident minus the sound, I have no memory of any sound and apparently I was swearing my ass off and freaking out at myself, calling myself stupid for crashing, how could I have let this happen… whatever it was relayed to me after and I was sort of embarrassed over how many f-bombs I had apparently dropped but not really I was after all in complete shock.

I was taken to hospital in what passes for an ambulance there – the back of a pickup truck with the universal red cross sign on it. Even with a piece of bone sticking up out of my arm and the fact that lifting it was agony it was according to them not broken, no x-rays, they cleaned up my road rash and sent me home.

i may be smiling but i am in shock and broken.

(please note the OLD SCHOOL Nike Pegasus runners before they were discontinued but were thankfully brought back a few years ago now, they’ve always been my favourite shoe to run in)

kinda glad i took a teddy bear.

I rode horses as a kid and had some pretty bad falls and throws and I ALWAYS got back up on the horse even though I was never a huge fan of riding, it was one of those things my parents must have thought would be good for me I guess, I never thought crashing that motor scooter would evoke so much fear in me that biking would simply exit my life completely, and roller blades FORGET about it! Unfortunately the image of my head hitting the pavement played over in my mind like a broken record, I can still see every moment of that crash like it was yesterday.  No matter how hard I tried to block it out, it would not leave, still today it isn’t gone.

The more years that passed the less likely I thought it was that I would ever ride a bike again. When my parents moved to Bali my dad left me with his old mountain bike that I rode as a kid as one of my cross trainers for running. It sat in the living room, then it was in the bedroom, my mom even bought us both helmets, then it went down to storage and then Phaedra needed a bike so we lent it to her and once we lent it to her I started to feel really left out, not by her, but by myself. I’m not a pussy I’ve been hurt badly before, I define clumsy, but that has never stopped me before.

By the time she was finished with the bike I was determined to get back on it. I can’t afford to swim right now so that is out as a cross trainer and in order for me to be able to run injury free because I have injured myself so badly racing in the past I HAVE to cross train and the bike was my only FREE option.

Last weekend, thanks to the support and encouragement of Phaedra and Adam I got back on the bike; I DID IT!

I was a little wobbly at first, and it took a few tries to get the seat right as I gauged how comfortable I felt and what was going to work best for keeping my hips stretching out nicely with each turn of the pedals. It felt so amazing to be back out there, it felt like I can for serious get back to running, Yoga just is not enough to strengthen the damage I have done to my right I/T Band but with Yoga, cycling AND starting slow again with a run / walk / run program I should be running 44 minute 10ks again in NO TIME! YAY!

I’m seeing a few bizarre things and having some horrible bloody thoughts running through my head while I’m riding but I’ve been out for three rides already, all well over an hour and have managed to keep my fears in check.

So without further ado, ME back on the bike! Here I am on my first ride out.

My second ride, we went in the same direction but i picked up the pace.

I know, I know BARF city, but hey, we work hard at staying happy together and finding yet another activity to do together (with Adam on blades) is beyond awesome. Things have been extremely hard since January and having a free active thing that isn’t walking to get out and do is already proving to RULE. I can’t help it, I am pretty proud of myself.

I like this picture because it looks like I’m wearing a CAPE.

cape!

Third ride was around the Sea Wall with Phaedra and Adam. I was more nervous on this one than the first, parts of the wall are really narrow and ODDLY people on the Sea Wall are NOT as polite as the people are when you are riding along the wall that goes through False Creek. I have never found people on the Stanley Park Sea Wall polite in all of the years I have used it, but having ridden twice towards False Creek I had gotten it into my head that all of a sudden everyone was wearing polite pants. ON YOUR RIGHT, ON YOUR LEFT. Nope, people on the Sea Wall would rather just run you over, or pretend you aren’t there, nothing has changed.

please don’t hurt me just because you can

Published on March 25, 2010 by Corinna Carlson | 9 Comments

One of the things that really stood out to me when I was in Bali last September was my mother. When my parents lived up North in Prince George I was never there for more than two weeks and from May 2002 until the middle of last year I was in and out of a serious state of clinical depression. I know I’ve always suffered from depression but after I lost a friend to suicide, was sexually assaulted in my own home, found out my dad was dying then wasn’t dying, and had a three year relationship with a man come to a dead end over email and there was absolutely no communication between us for months – it became unbearable. These incidents all took place in just under a year, it has taken a lot of therapy for me to accept that even the strongest person would have cracked under all of that and crack I did, it was too deep and wide this time, and I didn’t think I was going to make it, through a lot of it I honestly didn’t want to make it I couldn’t stand to be in my skin and set on the path of finding the psychiatrist I still see now.

In 2004 my mother started to deal with her own depression issues but because I was so depressed, up until I went to Bali I never noticed. She was just mom, a bit mopey but being in such similar states I didn’t see just how much of a struggle she was having I just knew we were both struggling. But when I went to Bali I was in a really good place, one of the best places I have been in mentally since I started to seriously deal with my mental illness. It was on that trip that I saw just how depressed my mom was/ is, I’m not 100% sure with them so far away how she is really doing but I was flabbergasted. It was like staring myself in the face. One day she was ok happy in great spirits, the next totally quiet, not very responsive or interested in conversation BUT trying her very best to enjoy every moment she had with me, which I appreciated more than I think she knows because seeing her like that, I knew how much she hurt, how badly she wanted to be happy and chipper and YAY lets all drink Bintang Birs and be a family again. But some days she just couldn’t muster it and I understood, I understood her better than I think I ever had. It also made apparent the work I had done to have been in a head space so positive I only had two bad days where I thought please no, I don’t want to be depressed, please let this day be just that – a bad day – and I didn’t do anything stupid.

When I returned from Bali, I was still in a great place. After all that happened with my parents around this time last year it was just nice to feel like I had a family again. But with anything in life there are challenges and we are always left to make our own decisions as to how we deal with them leaving those around us to try and define, interrupt, perceive correctly or incorrectly what we are actually doing or saying. And in my opinion no matter how hard you work on yourself mentally ill or not you are bound to fuck up at times, sometimes worse than others resulting in steps backwards. With myself, when I feel myself slipping when I think I’m gonna lose it I slip right back into what I want least to become – what or who people perceive me to be, a sort of a typecast if you will. With anything that happens in life that leaves you feeling negative it is going to have triggers that set your blood on *temperature setting* HELL. It’s hot, it hurts, it burns, tears just sear the pain in further. And what would you know it, last Friday almost losing a friendship brought the asshole I’d been playing; no excuses to make, only the glaring assholy facts. I just wanted to cry and get high. Oh right I did. It has been a long time since I have gotten myself so worked up that I had a full sleepless night of night terrors, and three straight days of prescription drug abuse to say I was wasted would be an understatement, I’ve already been warned I abused them enough in the past that I could have a heart attack during an episode and even that can’t stop the beast. By Tuesday I was still a fucking wreck crying uncontrollably, mentally double fisting myself in the face, so mad at myself, fire retardant anger pants where the only saviour I had. Between yesterday and today I have regained my sanity. I’m still pretty pissed at myself but I’m not known for going easy on me. But for the record, I’m done. I’m not over it, I haven’t let it go, but I’m done allowing myself any inappropriate behavior towards this situation I’m dealing with regularly in therapy. I’ve been working so hard on this I even read a bloody self help book. I’m going to get there, I’m just going to KEEP my big girl pants on now. Fuck this high school shit, tricks are for kids.