A Ceramic Fish Joint

The therapists all tell me that things aren't my fault. Stop feeling guilty. Stop blaming myself.

Obviously, the therapists are wrong and I was right all along.

I think I've lost my best friend today. A friend I have had for nearly 15 years. A roommate of four years. All because I'm me. And I get in the way. And am clearly the worst person to live with, ever. Apparently I also take advantage of him, and have for a long time. I don't know how and he wouldn't elaborate. I'm also so horrible a person that I'm not allowed to be in the same room as him…so I'm stuck in the bedroom he is so graciously letting me occupy until my dad gets here on Tuesday.

I won't be getting the security deposit back, even though it was agreed upon in the very beginning. He never wanted me to stay in this apartment and is punishing me for moving in with Brian and abandoning responsibility. Nevermind that I only lived here for a week in June yet paid all the bills. Nevermind that he wanted me gone by mid summer. Somehow I'm at blame. When Brian broke up with me and I wasn't able to live there, he told me to come back. I wanted my belongings put in storage while I was at my parents – then I would come back and get a new place.

I guess that offer was really a lie. It's so hard to tell with people.

I came back a week and a half ago. I offered to pay rent, and leave once I started getting full paychecks – which would be the end of October. Yesterday was the first day back at work, and it's also the week we get paid…so it was going to take a while to get real checks. I thought that was okay. He told me not to worry about rent. Why he would say it and not mean it, I don't know.

I also won't be getting back the vicodin he took from me while I was gone. $300 worth. What a great friend. Yet, I take advantage of him and crowd him.

Since I've come back I've gone and picked up drugs for him, putting myself at risk of getting arrested. I've cleaned. I've taken care of the cat. I've cleaned up after him. Yesterday, I had asked him to talk to me after I got home from work. So that he would know what was going on. Me leaving again. So that we wouldn't have this fight today. He was asleep…and never woke back up. I made sure his phone alarm was set and put it next to his bed, closed his door to keep the noise out. To make sure he could sleep and still get up for work.

I like to think that I'm nice to the people I care about. Apparently I'm not. I must have some huge flaw that makes people get sick of me. Whether it takes four years or three weeks.

What the hell is the point? My job's going away. I have no home. Nobody wants me. I've lost the most important people to me; they just don't want me around anymore. I feel flawed beyond repair and don't see the point.

I went back to the Nurse Practitioner today, and she's decided that I'm bipolar. I'm really not so sure about that. I also have a therapist here now, but it turns out that her schedule conflicts with my current work schedule. She works the exact same hours as I do. However, there's apparently going to be a schedule change at work in a few weeks so I'm not sure when I'll be working. So it's entirely possible that I'll get to see this same therapist.

At the same time, I'm not certain how much I like this therapist. Perhaps I'm just judging her against the therapist in Maryland…someone who has known my mom since before I was born. She worked as a nurse with my mom for many years, and they were very close. She treated my mom when she was in renal failure while pregnant with me. She was present when I was delivered. And when she became a therapist about ten years ago, my mom started seeing her. So she knows the entire fucked up, dysfunctional background that my family has. I thought it would be uncomfortable, but it really made therapy so easy and I felt a great relief each time I saw her. Talking with this new therapist is just weird.

Logically, I can understand the core ideas she's presenting. But I don't feel like she's giving me any tools to achieve these goals. One thing did stick out during our session yesterday, though. She said that when you're a child, you look to your parents for permission to be happy. And if your parents are dealing with their own issues, like depression, the child feels like they're not allowed to be happy. As an adult this perception continues and you have to learn to allow yourself to experience happiness without feeling guilty. I think this concept is really interesting; it's something I had never considered previously. But I definitely don't allow the happy to sneak inside. I'm always waiting for the bad part to come and probably get stuck in some fucked up self-fulfilling prophesy where I always lose.

So anyway, I have a therapist. And now take Lithium, along with everything else. Freaking Lithium! I can say that it makes me tired as hell. I took one this morning after I got the prescription and could barely stay awake for my hair appointment two hours later. After that I fell asleep for almost four hours and I'm still tired. I'll definitely be taking this in the evening so I can function.

I also finally got the approval sent in for me to go back to work. Hurray! I go back on Thursday and I honestly can't wait. Although I know this position won't last forever, I really enjoy my job. Plus, getting a full paycheck will be nice. Having a reason to get out of bed each day will help, too.

My new haircut it so much better. I'm not longer embarrassed to go out in public. It actually looks really cute, but I can't get a good picture of it on my phone. Apparently the hair makes me “glow” now too. Maybe it's just the Lithium, I have the glazed over look now or something. I also just got a package of henna in the mail today and may henna my hair tomorrow. It's “Mahogany” so it should make my hair a little darker and a little redder. Plus, henna = not permanent. And since my hair has grown out a lot since I dyed it red I only have a few areas that are lighter and right now they look like completely natural highlights. I think the henna will turn out well for me.

Ok, enough babbling. House is coming on and we have a working tv in the livingroom… it's a loaner while the other is being fixed.

My therapist still hasn't faxed in a release for me to go back to work. I go back on Thursday. It's Monday night. I am flipping the fuck out. I spoke to her Saturday evening and she said she would have it faxed in today. I guess as a last resort I can have either the therapist here or NP that I see tomorrow release me for work. But the therapist here doesn't think I'm ready for it. And the NP doesn't do so well with filling out paperwork.

My head hurts so bad. Stress = too much for me to handle.

Diet Sunkist? Is really freaking good! I had been thinking about cutting back on the amount of regular soda I drink…since I really only drink regular soda. I'm really most worried about my blood sugar. It's been pretty okay, but sometimes gets a little on the higher end of normal side after I eat. With the strong family history of diabetes (mom, both aunts, 3 of my female cousins, great grandma) I figured that I should be a little more realistic about my chances of developing it. Anyway, I can't stand the taste of diet pepsi…because I drink regular pepsi all the time and it's too much of a change. So I thought that I would try to get myself to drink diet something else. I sometimes like diet cherry vanilla dr. pepper, but not always. But diet sunkist has a really good taste and hardy any weird aftertaste. I am pleased. Of course, there will be no diet orange soda at work so I'll have to condition myself to like something else. They have diet dr pepper in the machine closest to where I'm at so maybe I'll go with that. I'll have to check out diet mountain dew, too.

Well, I'm not feeling as bad today but I'm still hurty. Damn not-liver being all inflamed. I need to go to Target to pick up my birth control. Not that I'm having sex today or anything, but I'm late in starting it up again since I've been sick. I also apparently need to make an appointment to have my girly bits checked out again because I only have one more refill left on the prescription. I hate having my girly bits checked out…it's always hard for them to find my cervix, and they overestimate the..uh…depth of my cooch and try to use a ginormous speculum. This equals not-fun for me. I guess I should be happy that I'm no longer going every three months or so and having chunks of my cervix cut away to see why it's trying to kill me.

Jeebus the cat is screaming loud. I wish Wes or Joe were here…she calms down when a guy is around. I think that having me here causes her to turn up the screaming a bit, so that she is the only noticeable female in the universe. She still screams a bit with Wes, but more often than not she'll lay on his chest and have him pet her. She won't come near me right now.

So I'm supposed to go back to work on Thursday. Yay! Except my therapist won't send in a release for me to go back to work. It's not that she's not wanting to, but she's not responding to my requests. We had already talked about it like three weeks ago and she agreed to do it. But I've been emailing and calling her house for the last week and she won't respond to me. I don't really want to call her cell phone, but I guess if I don't get a response by Sunday evening I will. I don't even bother to call her office because they're kind of retarded there. Nobody is ever in the office and getting a message through takes a couple weeks. I do not know how that office stays open.

I found a therapist here, and think I like her. I saw her yesterday afternoon and am going back on Monday. I'm not very good at the therapy thing…it's a little uncomfortable for me. I have always internalized everything; talking about all those feelings doesn't come naturally. And being honest about things is even less natural. I normally just tuck stuff deep inside and pretend nothing happened. So, anyway…we'll see how this goes. It really was a lot easier to talk to Susie (therapist in Maryland) because she already knew the background. She may not have known everything, but she knew the big things that were wrong and had happened with my family. And she also knew my mom well, and knew how unstable she is now…so I didn't have to explain quite so much. With someone new, I have to go into detail about things and I'm not very good at that. I tend to gloss over things. I don't get along well with my family, I hate my brother, my mom is crazy, my dad uses me. Stuff like that. I dunno, maybe it will get better as I see her more.

For some reason, Wes' giant tv in the livingroom won't stay on. When I try to watch anything, it will be on for a minute (or ten) then one of the lights flashes a few times and it turns off. I can't find the remote for the TV, but I don't think it's a setting on it or anything. I went through the menu a little and it's not set to go to sleep or turn off when other things are off. The light that flashes doesn't have a name on it, just a little image of a light bulb. There are three lights that can possibly be on, the power (it's green when the tv is on, red when it's off or turning off) the light bulb and a thermometer. So I've got no clue why it's not staying on…but it's not. And I tried to hook up my tv in my bedroom. We pay for digital cable boxes for the living room and both bedrooms, but have never used the ones in the bedrooms. Anyway, when I first hooked it up, the digital part never worked and I got channels 2-7, 15, 21, 47, 97-99. The time never came on the box, either. It was one of the older digital cable boxes and I thought it was just a bad box. I tried resetting it and stuff. Then I got the one from Wes' room. His is the newer one. Well, it doesn't work at all. When it's first turned on, the blue Scientific American screen comes up for a few minutes then it goes black. No channels will display, the time doesn't come on and there are just slashes on the display of the box. Then I just hooked the tv into the wall and get 13 channels. Even basic cable should be more channels than that. So I guess that outlet isn't turned on right or something. Which would require a person to come out. Since the account is in Wes' name, it would require him calling about it. Which wouldn't happen. So I guess I'm going to not have tv other than the first few channels in my bedroom. That's fine, I really just like it to watch the news in my bedroom. Plus I'll be moving into a new place relatively soon so none of this will matter.

Ah, Kitten is in heat. Again. Like always. She wasn't that bad the first couple days I was home…now she's in full-on screaming mode. She's singing her song of “Fuck me in the pussy…harder” all through the apartment. When I start to drift off to sleep she begins to scream again. I hate living with a cat in heat. Drives me completely crazy.

I'm back in Tampa and still alive. I've mostly unpacked the things that Brian moved for me. I'm so impressed at his moving abilities. /sarcasm

I'm now left with no dresser and a broken bed frame because he was too cheap to pay for movers to handle it. I also have no shower curtain, despite having furnished both bathrooms with one. He didn't give me the most random of things (like the steamer tray for my rice cooker) but threw in extra things that I assume he didn't want (like a crappy little lamp.) The whole situation is weird. There's too much to even say about it.

Hmm. So, I've got a nice uneven bed and my clothes are in laundry baskets or on the floor. The cat has taken the liberty of throwing up on a box of books and pissing on just about everything. There was even this fun concentrated cat piss surprise I found on a bag! I've removed most of the things that Wes was storing here, except for his monitor. Which is just too huge and heavy for a human to carry.

Moving crap and putting up my bed and finding things that were just thrown into random boxes was so freaking hard this time. Shortly after I came back I developed this lovely frequency of throwing up. Yum! Then the horrible side pain came. Right side, mid abdomen. Same place that always hurts me and nothing is ever really figured out. I had decided at first that I killed my liver from too much Vicodin or something. Then I realized that I had neither taken enough Vicodin to cause an acetaminophen overdose nor was the pain really in the liver region…liver is higher, I hurt lower. So I guess I just strained something while hugging the toilet on the bathroom floor or flopping over the kitchen sink. I've done much less throwing up today, though…which is good. I am hurty all over though, especially in my not-liver area. I also can't seem to regulate my body temperature; I keep getting super hot and sick from it – then I have to strategically place icepacks on random areas of myself to cool down, not get sick and keep headaches away. Hopefully this will be over soon. I had to cancel plans today, and really didn't want to. I have things I want and need to get done before going back to work next week. Then there's the whole going back to work bit, which I especially hope has been taken care of. And finally being all hurty and hot with a sad tummy is lame.

Oh, one more thing before I go back to bed. When I was at my parents, my legs and feet (and soles of my feet) were eaten up by fleas. Well, I guess it was fleas…small bites like flea bites. I would get attacked by bugs when I would go to the rabbit cages outside. When I came back here, the cat had fleas bad. And the apartment had fleas bad. The couch is very uncomfortable with the jumping biting things. I slept on the couch the first couple nights. Fleas bit my scalp. I have flea bites on my scalp! Nothing has bothered the middle of me. Just my feet, ankles and scalp. When something bites the soles of your feet or your scalp…it itches a lot. Damn fleas.

So I've been playing around with this knitting thing for a couple of weeks. I have three skeins of yarn, but only like one. I've only been able to get it from Wal*Mart so the options are few. The first (and favorite) skein is bright pink, soft acrylic. Second is a multicolored acrylic which feels like ass. And the third is a white skein of the same type as the pink. Except for some reason it keeps getting knotted all to hell so I think I'm going to throw it away.

Anyway, I think I'm getting quite good. I'm knitting pretty much evenly now. I have a couple of techniques down. Look at my progress!

Pink the first (the very first swatch I knitted) – taken on August 21st:

Pink the second (2×2 ribbing) taken September 13th:

It only looks stretched at the top because I moved the stitches apart to look at them.

I'm so proud! I can make pink things now. Pink things are one of my most favoritest things, after dinosaurs and orgasms.

My mom and I are really not getting along well right now. She's been pretty bitchy to everyone since the house payment fuckup of last week. And even though it's all be resolved (thanks to me for the nearly 2 grand I handed over to cover the missed payments) she's still furious. With everyone. She's convinced everyone is plotting against her or something equally as insane. I mean, she's crazy and all but this is like crazyPLUS.

Anyway, I'm really ready to leave. I've been here over two months. I hate it here. Now that I am feeling better and my defenses aren't down, I probably haven't been the nicest person to her. However, as soon as I started feeling better the whole house payment thing happened and she was angry. Then she went back to making everyone her personal slave. I don't know how many years it's been since she has made or poured herself a cup of coffee, but I'm sure it was way back before I was even in highschool. Now that I'm walking without assistance? Yeah, I'm expected to cater to her every desire. And that's not so much happening. I despise her laziness. Her feigned helplessness. Especially since the ordeal I went through with the med reactions this summer. Roughly every other day, I WAS helpless for at least two hours. I needed help holding a glass to take a drink. I realize that she has some health problems, but she blows things way out of proportion. It was interesting how she was able to take care of me and didn't whine about her leg hurting or her stomach hurting or oh, she must have another kidney stone or jeebus chest pain, etc. But as soon as I thought I knew what was causing the problems for me? That same day she developed pains in her side, then her other side, then she had the flu, then it just went from there.

Oh, she just came in and told me I'm rude. Meh.

So I just have to get through the next seven days, then I'm home. I wonder if I'll ever come back here, or if this is it.

I am bored. Every since the whole “getting better” thing happened, I've been bored. I'm still more or less stuck at my parent's house. Which is okay since there aren't many places to go. Except Wal*Mart, and I've been there way too many times. I've been there more times in the last two months than I have in the last two years. I've watched the 3 disks of Firefly that I have a few times each this last week. I've watched “The Holiday” twice. A freaking romantic comedy – I hate romatic comedies. Thanks to Netflix, I've also watched Jurassic Park a couple times this past week, Black Snake Moan, season one of The Office (both BBC and US versions) and Elizabeth. I also got Capote today from Netflix, but figured I should give myself something to look forward to for tomorrow – especially since the most recent three I got today and can't return until Monday.

I'm honing my knitting skills. Mostly I just knit pink rectangles, but they're fun and fabulous pink rectangles and I made them myself. So they rule.

I've got a huge pile of books but don't feel like reading any of them. Mostly because when I do anything at all, I'm interrupted by someone. I hate being interrupted while reading, especially if it's a good book, so I don't put myself in the position to get mad.

My super happy news is that I am going home next Sunday. I can't wait to get back. I'll go back to work at the end of the month, and I'm even happy about that. I just want to move on with life. I want to get back to Tampa, unpack that which needs unpacking (from the move while I was gone) settle in as much as I can, look for an apartment and finish saving some dollars so I can keep moving along. I'm sure it won't be as easy as I'm planning because things never are. But I've had enough crappiness this year. I think I deserve a little change in the tides of my life.