You're tired of Covid-19 and all the restrictions, I get it.

 I'll state it again. I get that you're tired of Covid-19 and all the restrictions. I get that you want to go back to life like it was before Covid-19 showed up. I get that you feel stifled with the mask rules and the social distancing. It's restrictive and unpleasant. I can empathize with your discontent and ire.

You do understand, however, that these rules, restrictions, and such like are keeping people like me safe? I'm not the only immuno-compromised person out there. There's a lot of us. The ages range from tiny little newborn babies to elderly nursing home residents. You may think only of the extremes for whom these restrictions are keeping safe but there's plenty of us who are in that in between age group who appreciate your keeping us safe as well.

There's talk of a vaccine. Rumors are its going to go to the most vulnerable populations first. I don't believe our government is that effective. I think it's going to go to the people that it is most profitable to send it to first. I mean, let's look at how testing kits went out way back at the beginning of this. If we're lucky and we keep playing ball, we might see the vaccine available to 70 to 80 percent of the population by next JUNE. 

The trick here is to hold the line. It's not the doctors and hospital workers who are on the front line of keeping this pandemic under control in our individual towns and homes. It is us, the famous We the People. I know you're tired and this is very stressful. It's been very tiring and stressful for those of us who have been trapped in our homes since this began. It's been very tiring and stressful for everyone. We, however, are strong enough together when we work together to survive this.

Please, work together. Please stick with the mask rules, social distancing, and other rules that come along so that we can get through this mess faster. Because the more we work together, the quicker we can find our way out of this mess.

Keep your shield up and push forward. In this case, your shield is your mask. We can do this.

Holiday To Do List

 Just a post as a reminder of the stuff I have to get done over the next few weeks:

• Finish Snuggle Bug's Socks
• Make Cuddle Bear's Bells
  
• Fix Beloved's satchel
• Make soap to go with MiL's wash cloth
  
• Bake or acquire cookies for FiL
• Clean up living room to decorate
• Put up yule tree
• Put up stockings for kids
• Fill the 12 days of Yule gift boxs w/ trinkets & goodies for kids
• Pick out Yule projects to do for 13 days of yule
• Repot african violet
• Repot rando orchid
• Make Apple Pie Moonshine
  
• Get picture frames for school pics
• Finish NaNoWriMo project no. 3

Ramblings

 Last night was another bad night. I was barely functional when I woke up this morning. I stumbled around trying to do things for a few hours and then I took a nap. Now I sit here feeling a profound sense of ennui and questioning the point to existence. To say the least, the nap wasn't very helpful. I'm trying to find some spark of the 'holiday' spirit or something that could be mistaken for it by the unaware. I've got nothing. 

I hate the christmas music. I hate christmas. I hate the forced cheerfulness of this damn time of year. I hate the fact that I have a big ol' stack of trauma memories that pop up between now and the middle of February. I feel guilty for being like this. I feel like there's something wrong with me because of my loathing of this season. 

Maybe it's because during the holidays, money was tighter than usual and my parents were more prone to lash out due to it. Maybe it's because during the holidays, I was always hoping for that 'holiday miracle' which turned a dysfunctional family into a 'normal' family for at least one day. It doesn't work that way, Hallmark lies. Maybe it's because when I was brought to see Santa (which happened once), I asked that my family be nice to each other for christmas. I'm pretty sure that was the reason why we went only once, because it raised some eyebrows. 

Maybe it's because during the holidays, my brothers and I watched my mom prepare tons of food for other people but we got berated for being greedy when we asked for some, mind you there wasn't much to go around for a while but mom did her army of cookies for the rest of the family instead of baking bread or something for our own household when we were short on food. I asked her why she did it and she answered that it was because we didn't have the money to give gifts to people outside of our household so we HAD to make the cookies. If she decided that we were particularly well behaved as she was cooking up those heaps of cookies, we were allowed a few.

It was torture to see her making all that food for everybody else and we were waiting on a food basket from one of the local churches, trying to stretch the remains of the last one out a little farther. It's a wonder that I can still eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Oh, wait, because of the diabetes, its just peanut butter now. Home canned tomatoes, rice, and ground beef was a regular dinner during the lean times. I hated it. I will never eat it again if I can avoid it. But, this time of year, the memory of it is so strong I can nearly taste it at times.

I have so many bad memories attached to this time of year. I try to put them out of mind and act like they didn't happen. I try to build new ones. But the old ones echo and haunt me. This business of being sick or super stressed out or whatever it is that's got my blood sugar bouncing around is only making the situation worse. I get hungry and I want to eat but I can't because I don't want my blood sugar to spike. I drink copious amounts of water and coffee in an effort to pad my stomach and sooth away some of these feelings (because coffee is one of my few comfort foods that I can still have).

I feel like I would kill someone to be able to sit down and have a bite of Grandma's apple crisp. I have the recipe. I have all the ingredients. But I wouldn't be able to eat it because of my diabetes. things like this seem to be the theme right now. Add to that the fact that I randomly get seized with terror that my parents are going to show up on my door step and drag me back to the farm to be a serf (because there's no other way to describe that dynamic) or I find myself on the verge of tears for no apparent reason ... I'm not doing well right now.

I hate CPTSD.

 I'm on a cocktail of medications that do a pretty good job of knocking me out when its bed time. Some of them wear off around 4 am. That's when the nightmares have been hitting me for the last few weeks. I didn't really get that I was having nightmares because I wasn't quite fully awake at 4 am. But last night was awful. I got to relive verbal abuse and harassment in full detail. I got to relive gaslighting. It was awful. I woke up so upset that I had to walk around my home to reassure myself that my waking reality was real.

All day today, I have felt disconnected from reality. It doesn't help that my blood sugar is out of whack. It doesn't help that I am exhausted. But the persistent low level dissociation that makes things feel unreal is really maddening. The worry that I am actually 16 and cowering in my room for fear of my parents' wrath and that this life I have is fantasy just won't go away. I confess, I used checking my blood as a way to focus myself on the present via the pain of the finger stick. It didn't work for very long. I just want to sleep. But if I sleep, I will have nightmares (daymares?) and sleep poorly.

Every time a vehicle pulls up in the drive way, I look out, afraid that I'll see my parents getting out of it and coming to drag me back to the farm. I have music playing fairly loud right now in an attempt to drown out the racing thoughts of anxiety. I don't know what made last night and today so bad. But I am in a state and struggling to get a handle on it before the kids get home from school.

Can I launch them into the sun?

 Rocker Chick was in a hard spot recently. I called on some people I knew to help her out and gave her some of the extras we had in the pantry so that they had food. She's about to hit her second trimester. Rather than being excited about this, she's filled with anxiety because she and her husband are having a hard time financially. (Thanks Covid-19 and 2020! /sarcasm) We've helped them a bit in the past and didn't think anything of it.

The extended family ... Well, I'm angry at them all over again. She called them to ask for some help and what she got told was pull herself up by her bootstraps, ignored, and to be the dumping ground of one of the more toxic members of the family's emotional garbage. The poor woman was in tears when she got ahold of me and feeling like she was a failure because she was broke.

To say the least, I rallied my allies and got them enough food to last until the food basket from one of the local churches arrives. I informed her about that program and exhorted her not to give up on getting financial assistance from the county (who kept dropping the ball and putting her off because my county is run by idiots). By the end of the day, Rocker Chick and her hubby had what they needed as well as a good start on getting that financial assistance. 

Here's what I am furious about. My late grandparents set up a family trust fund. There are members of the extended family pissing it away on frivolous crap when they should be using it to help Rocker Chick and other members of the family who are experiencing hardship. There are emotionally abusive members of the family who are taking every opportunity to be toxic and harmful emotionally to Rocker Chick when ever she makes contact (which is rarely because of their behavior). I want to launch them all into the sun.

This kind of crap is why I generally disowned them. The total number of family members from the extended family that I still have contact with that are of my parents' generation can be counted on one hand with fingers leftover. Why? Because the others would demand that I make 'nice' with my parents and resume my role of being the emotional punching bag for them. Fuck that noise. Rocker Chick is increasingly of the same mind on this because of their behavior.