Depressed? Or is it anxiety? Why not both?

I have my appointment with our family doctor Friday. My mood's been gradually tanking as the day draws closer. I am deeply concerned about the fact that I am eating approximately 70 carbs per day and my blood sugar is still doing stupid things. I'm supposed to be at a minimum of 90 carbs. It's been a year now. A year of this bullshit where I eat less and less with my blood sugar continuing to be stupid. They say that I'm worrying too much because my A1C looks good.

I am really struggling with the urge to just ignore when I feel hungry. This is not a good thing. Because, when I ignore feeling hungry my blood sugar can get fairly low before I realize I need to eat. And that's because I go 'huh, I feel hungry? it is real or is it my blood sugar is high?' and I test. I've been told that I'm testing too frequently. This is after I was told I wasn't testing often enough. 

I have cut dairy just about completely out of my diet. I'm considering cutting the meat that I eat to push back the hunger cravings out too because it's probably not doing my cholesterol any favors. I've cut out processed foods. My lunches are now peanut butter (no jelly or jam of any sort) on diet flat bread. I am eating salads but my blood sugar still spikes. I can't eat a 'normal' breakfast anymore. When I try, my blood sugar spikes. So, I am eating this ultra diet yogurt that's 3 carbs and granola that is 20 plus a cup of coffee with 1/2 and 1/2 in it (another 1 carb). That makes breakfast 24 carbs and I still feel rotten. I'm seriously considering going back to what I was accidentally doing and having a breakfast of 14 carbs. (I misread the label on the granola and thought it said 30, not 20 for total carbs. There was a few weeks where breakfast was 14 to 15 carbs.)

50 carbs for a diet is the beginning of ketosis level of carbs. Ketosis is fatal to diabetics. I am desperately attempting to avoid it. I have cut snacks out of my diet. My meals keep getting smaller. I am starting to fall back into patterns of avoiding food or avoiding eating with other people until I absolutely have to eat. This is taking a toll on my mental health. I know this is part of the reason why I am having so many flashbacks to when I was a kid.

I spent the first 20 years of my life with an eating disorder because of my tyrannical parents policy on food. This business of being hungry all the time and being isolated due to Covid-19 is proving to be a big trigger for bad memories. I can't find a therapist who takes my insurance. I really should have one, but it's basically impossible. I tried changing health insurance providers and I was denied because of preexisting conditions. So, I'm stuck with this heath insurance. The only option that keeps popping up on the therapist front is to go to the county mental health clinic.

Those were the fuckers that were the reason I almost lost my kids because of a mental health crisis that they created with their negligence. I will slog through this on my own before I go back there. So, to say the least, today is not a good day. I am afraid. I am anxious. And I feel horrible. Fuck diabetes.

untitled no. ?

 As I am sitting here, I am unable to shake this feeling that I am going to start openly sobbing for no apparent reason. I am struggling to process trauma memories that have bubbled up along with random 'ok' memories from my childhood. It's like there is no bottom to this well of sorrow. Because remembering trauma that is 'new' brings up the memories of other trauma that are more familiar (but no less harrowing). I am so tired of trauma work. I have been doing trauma work since I was eighteen.

I've been dealing with some form of trauma all my life. First there was the part where I lived through it. That sucked. I compartmentalized and pushed that into a closet to be able to pass as a 'normal' kid. It didn't work. So, on top of the business of being traumatized at home, I got traumatized at school by bullies. There were few safe havens and those places I could go, I couldn't stay there for too long before my parents were looking for me.

When I finally went off to college, I was in the weird state of limbo. I lived a double life. At college, I could freely express myself. At my parents' house, I had to do my best to live the role they expected of me as the dutiful daughter and emotional punching bag for just about everybody in the house. It was exhausting. As I was at college, I started therapy because my room mate insisted on it. Theresa, if you're reading this, thank you. 

It was still a weird limbo on the psychological front because I was working on healing the trauma of the abusive relationship I was in during high school as I was living in the traumatic environment of my parents' house. When I was out with Beloved, I had some flashbacks and panic attacks. Fortunately, we were off on our own at a park when I had the screaming fit and I started clawing/hitting myself. I had these sort of incidents a few times. It almost broke our relationship. My parents had no idea because I never had that happen in front of them.

Flash-forward about a decade and my mother makes a comment that rips through my mental barriers. I didn't have a screaming fit, but I devolved into incoherent babbling and sobbing as I curled into a fetal position and sat rocking on a step. Mom called Beloved. When he showed up, I was still a wreck. In less than five minutes, he had me calm. The next day, we got married. I dissociated through most of that day. Memories of my wedding day come back to me in flashes. It wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the fact that it was my wedding and it was a comment from my wonderful mother that set me off.

I don't know why but I find myself feeling like I'm on the edge of a cliff and someone's about to push me off. It's not a 'jump from the fiery airplane as it is crashing' or a 'you're going to fly now' kind of feeling. It's more like I'm standing at the edge of the abyss and I have some malevolent force at my back trying to force me over the edge. It is something I've had nightmares of. Many nightmares of being forced over the edge of a precipitous drop to fall to my death. Those started after my mother dangled me over a three story drop with the threat to let go if I didn't obey her whims. I was four. I had stopped my brother (who was old enough to crawl but not yet pull up and walk) from going over the edge. 

I pulled him back when Mom stormed into the room and started screaming at me for being in my parents' room (which had a smaller room off to the side and a drop down to the basement where a flight of stairs was supposed to be, those steps did eventually get built about a decade later). She just about kicked my brother aside and gripped me by my shirt. She held me in such a manner that the majority of my body weight was upheld by her grasp on my shirt despite the fact my feet were on the floor as I was levered out over the drop to the basement. She held me there for probably a few minutes but it felt like forever. She shook me like a rag doll and I was convinced I was going to die. Then I was half thrown into the main portion of her room towards the direction of the room that was eventually to be my bedroom. I don't clearly remember what she said. I just remember the sensations and the murderous look in her eye.

It is memories like that which have been coming up. It wasn't the only time she did that, by the way. It happened again when my other brother was approximately the same age and about to do the same thing as his older brother (tip a laundry basket over the drop and fall with it). In both cases, I grabbed my brother (who was holding on to the laundry basket like it was for his life) and I dragged him back into the room. The second time, Mom first shoved my face into the bookshelf next to the doorway into that room. The only reason why I didn't get a face full of books and a black eye was because I dodged and caught the door frame with the side of my head. No black eye but a bit of a bump on the head. But she dragged me over to the same spot that she did the first time. This time she held me by the back of my shirt. But the process was the same, hold me at a 45 degree angle over that drop down to the basement and scream at me about how I was bad and attempting to harm my brother.

It is oddly ironic that the time Mom nearly kicked my youngest brother out a window, I was the one who grabbed him and pulled him back as the screen got knocked out the window. That time, Mom didn't scream at me. She was confused and partially awake, wondering why my toddler brother was shrieking and where the screen had went. It is bitterly ironic that the same brothers that I had saved from death multiple times turned out to hate me because of the mind-fuckery of my mother.

I don't regret saving my brothers from our mother's insanity. I know I did the right thing. Even if they are of the opinion that the wouldn't piss on me to put me out if I had caught fire. (Yep, one of them actually said that to me as the other laughed and agreed.) I feel like I'm going crazy. Loki says that I'm going sane and that the two feel about the same. It is awful. I feel like I'm falling apart. Beloved tells me that this is happening because I finally feel safe enough to remember these things. I know he's right, but it is awful.

I am annoyed.

 Way back in 1998, when the site Mysticwicks was still around, I shared a chant that I had written the year before. Flash forward twenty some years, I find that an artist took my chant and set it to the exact music I had planned for it, and adapted it by adding 'baby talk' gibberish as a chorus between the lyrics. I am not amused. I am highly annoyed. This album came out sometime in early 2000s, so they sat on it for a little bit while MW was still up and running.

I have a note book with the dated entry of when I wrote the original chant in September of 1997. A part of me says that I could go after them but I'm broke and the effort of getting into a fight about this isn't going to do me any favors. I am just really annoyed and disgusted. It makes me disinclined to share original material for free anywhere. I'm posting stuff up on Tumblr because if you repost it, it automatically pings back to the original source. 

I think my annoyance with this is just heightened because of someone attempting to rip off my witchy blog in an effort to pad their blog post count and to steal my readership base. That's why I turned off the repost feature on that particular blog. Because that is one of the blogs that I'm using to try to make some money and build a career with, I tend to take a hard line against the theft of intellectual property. It's one thing to quote a blog post. It's one thing to quote it and add commentary. But to just copy it wholesale and then post a link to your blog in the comments is bullshit.

Scumbag brain is doing scumbag brain things again.

 I have been working to build my online presence as an author of esoteric and non-Christian religious texts. I'm actually making some headway in this process. Facebook has been a bit wonky about the author page that I'm working on. At the same time, however, I am having anxiety over finishing this page and such.  Why?

Well, I'm afraid that my parents are going to use this public access point to harass me. I'm afraid that the horrible things that my mother predicted about my writing on these topics are going to happen (including but not limited to people coming to burn my house down and kill my family). Mostly, I'm afraid that my parents are going to get back into the psychological abuse game in public and destroy my budding career. I have them blocked from my personal page. I don't have them blocked from my professional pages. But I don't think they're even following them.

I am just afraid to move forward, to be more aggressive in my pursuit of my career in writing because I'm afraid that they're going to come slithering up to me and make my life hell. It doesn't matter that I've been married and functionally out of their lives for the last fifteen years. My brain says that they're going to show up and drag me back to the farm at any given point in time because they have some kind of claim of ownership on me due to the fact that I am their child. I panic that my life today is just some kind of elaborate fantasy that I invented to cope with the hostility that I was living under in that household.

It's been rough. Last week, I had a traumatic memory bubble pop and I've been reeling with emotional flashbacks and anxiety for the last several days. There's no way for me to get justice for what happened to me. There's no point to trying to confront the people who traumatized me because they'll act like nothing happened (at best) or damn me for trying to make problems in the family (at worst). I don't have a therapist to talk to about this crap. I feel like it would be helpful but I can't find anybody who takes my insurance.

I'm just not doing fantastic right now and it's making everything hard. I'm not sleeping well because of it, and that's despite the cocktail of meds that knock me out every night. I am just afraid to do anything. I'm afraid that everything I do is going to go wrong and I'll be subjected to corporal punishment and psychological torture for it. I keep reliving my late middle childhood and my early teen years. I don't know why but it's exhausting and I want it to stop.

I'm writing poetry again.

 After about five years of not writing poems on a regular basis, I've been writing poems again. I feel like most of them suck, but I am going to keep writing poems until I get back into shape again. I used to write a lot of poetry back in the day. I am going to attempt to do it on a daily basis. I'm trying to catch up on lost time because I am working towards a goal.

What might that goal be? Well, I'm attempting to have a small book of poetry done by the end of the year. The goal is to write love poems. I'm not there yet because I'm still relearning stuff aside from blank verse. I figure if I can manage to write a book of love poems and get it done by the end of the year, maybe I can hit some holiday sales with it. Long term planning is what's happening here.

The other reason why I'm writing poetry again is to get back to writing heroic style poetry so that I can add it into my novels. That is going to take a bit longer. Here's one I slapped up on Tumblr today that I feel is relatively decent.

https://ladybrythwensinclair.tumblr.com/post/642949497231638528/another-poem

Fiber Fluff: Nothing's happening.

 I'm still working on the monstrosity. I'm up to the halfway point of finishing the final triangle. I don't know how I am going to keep this thing from curling up. It's so big that the weight of it might work when I try to block it out (by hanging on a laundry line) but I honestly don't know. I am a bit vexed with the fact that this project is taking forever. At the same time, I am half finished with the final section so I am going to work on it and complete it before I pick up that sweater I started for myself or start making things for other people.

Next weekend, when we see the in-laws again, I am going to bring the red fiber to run it through my mother-in-law's drum carder. I just don't have the spoons to sit down and card it by hand. And I am still trying to decide how I want to approach spinning up the alpaca fiber. I wish the weather would warm up because I could go out walking with my distaff and spindle. I don't have enough room in the apartment to do that and my attempted distaff stand isn't working with my kick wheel.  

Thanks to the monstrosity, however, I have nowhere I can put the kick wheel and get spinning right now anyways. This project is going to eat my living room, I'm sure of it.

Monday Menu

 The kids are planning on eating breakfast at school most of the week. That cuts down on the amount of planning I need to do. Due to my blood sugar being stupid, I am eating really small breakfasts in the morning (a cup of diet yogurt and a tablespoon of granola plus my morning coffee, it's depressing). They've requested their favorite  foods for lunches. So, Cuddle Bear will be getting his bbq bologna sandwiches and chips for lunches all week. And Snuggle Bug will be getting his peanut butter and blueberry jam sandwiches with chips for his lunches all week. Beloved has taken to packing his lunches the night before and  I don't know what he is putting in them aside from ramen noodles and some kind of sandwich. My lunches are going to be salads with some form of meat along side it (likely something lunch meat or tuna). So the real menu of any interest is going to be dinners.

Monday: Hamburgers

Tuesday: Tacos (with homemade seasoning mix)

Wednesday: Chicken stew with biscuits

Thursday: Take out (because the schedule has me running everywhere that day and no time to cook)

Friday: Fish sticks with peas

Saturday: Peanut butter stew (I'll slap the recipe for this up later in the week, if I remember.)

Thinking about finding a therapist.

Image from Kat Jayne at Pexels.com

 My psychologist has declared me to be one of his most stable patients. That's a big deal because a few years back my mood cycling was really bad. This Vrylar stuff had done wonders for sorting out my mood. I spend most of my time in a low level depressed state but the lows are not as bleak as they were before and the highs are not as unhinged. He's really proud of the effort that I have put in and how well I am doing.

So, some good news there.

At the same time, he has noted that I'm coming up on about five years with out a therapist. He knows about my medical conditions. He's aware of the struggles that I've been having over the last year with trying to get my blood sugar under control. Between the stress and anxiety that comes with having diabetes and the fact that Covid-19 has a rather high death rate for people with diabetes, my psychologist has strongly encouraged me to find a therapist to talk through the anxiety that I've been dealing with.

This year, the trauma anniversaries have been a bit more intense. I think it's because of how much I have been isolated. It makes for a weird parallel to my youth when I spent a good amount of time isolated to avoid people who were harmful towards me. The doctor is of the opinion that a therapist would be helpful in getting me through all of the emotional flashbacks I have been having over the last few months.

The problem is my health insurance. There are therapists in the city who take my insurance. But my insurance dicks around on paying them. So, I have been turned away from people who could have helped me. I will never darken the doorstep of the county mental health facility after the hell they put me through. I have been attempting to do what I can with journal writing and using prompts that I find on the internet. It's been rough and I often forget to write in my mental health journal. Last year, I had three entries in there for the whole year.

My goal is to have three entries in there per week. I'm going to treat it like I'm back at college and I have writing homework. I am doing a lot of writing across various platforms. I have scheduled time for this type of work. I just have to stay on top of my schedule to get it in. I don't have a therapist but I have over a decade of experience being in therapy so I have a pretty good grasp on how it works. So, I sit down and write like I'm talking to a therapist. I'm going to call my health insurance company to see if I can make arrangements to have a list of approved providers sent to me. I fear that most of them are off in Buffalo, which is a 2 hour drive away from me and that they're not going to take me because of Covid and/or the games that the insurance company keeps playing in trying not to pay people for the services provided.

I'm angry because I want to be on the better health insurance that is accepted pretty much everywhere. But, I can't change providers due to my preexisting conditions. So, I'm stuck with this second tier insurance that isn't going to get me much help with my mental health stuff. I am sick and tired of mental health (as well as dental and eye care) being treated as a luxury. It's necessary for us to be well and get the help we need to function as best we can. Especially during a pandemic. But, what difference is that going to make to the people who are counting numbers and don't see the members as people but as income sources.

Adding to my arsenal.

So, it took me literally four months to find these things. I had a set about ten years ago that I gave away. I forgot about them and then I realized that I kinda suck at knitting in the round on double pointed needles (DPNs). I picked up a sock loom thinking that I could use that on my back log of sock projects. I promptly discovered that I had no clue how to do the purl stitch on a knitting loom which I had to know in order to use the sock loom.

I sent Beloved off in search of a set of round looms. I had seen them at Wallyworld back before the pandemic began. I figured that it would be something that would be in stock. I was wrong. Everybody, their sister, and their brother went out and bought up all of them as fast as they came into stock. Same was true with some other craft supplies that I was needing to make Yule gifts. Fortunately, I am crafty and I had enough resources to come up with alternate things to make.

Last month, Beloved found me a long knitting loom. I opened up the package and read the directions. The book was ok, but it didn't cover everything I needed. I also needed a larger loom than what that long knitting loom was going to provide me for the project I had planned. So, I took a trip up to the city. I checked at the two different craft stores but it wasn't in stock. There were slots for it but not a single loom knitting kit was to be found.

Last week I had the car to run some errands while the kids were at school. I stopped at Wallyworld with the hope to find one. I got lucky and there was a single kit left on the shelf. To say the least, I snapped that up and some yarn to go with it. Now I am going to have to reteach myself how to use this thing. Next, I will take over the world with yarn. ... Ok, maybe not take over the world, but I will make more hats faster.

I'm having a rough time right now.

 No pithy comments or snarky sarcasm. I'm just having a rough time. Yesterday was the anniversary date of my first miscarriage. All of the emotional flashbacks that lead up to it suddenly made sense. I suppose I have to explain a few things about this first miscarriage.

First, I was barely fifteen living with my parents. My boyfriend at the time was 19 and serving in the military. We had gotten together as a couple in the autumn of the year before at the high school home coming dance. He walked up to me and declared that I was going to be his dance partner. I refused and went to go back to my conversation with the guy with the sound system playing for the dance when N- said, "I don't take no for an answer." and proceeded to pick me up and drag me out onto the dance floor. 

I struggled, I tried to break out of his grip, I yelled. I was ignored until I was put on my feet in the middle of the crowd and then people stared at me like there was something wrong with me. I tried to stomp on his foot but he just laughed and refused to let me go. This set an early precedent. He introduced himself to my parents when they came to pick me up as my new boyfriend. Then he blew me a kiss and promised to see me at school on Monday.

My parents read me the riot act. My plan was to give it a week and then drop him like a hot rock. That didn't work. Social pressure and love bombing at the same time is a hell of a thing. About a month later, the sexual assaults began. At the same time, I was pressured not to say or do anything because he made threats against me and physically hurt me to "keep me in line". I got good at concealing marks with makeup. I learned to ignore sharp pain in intimate areas. And I got really good at spacing out and just letting my body do whatever it was going to in response to what he did because I wasn't there.

Cue a year and a half later. He's on leave from his first real tour of duty. N- spent most of his time that he was on leave with me. He did his best to impress my parents on his sincerity. At one point, he and my father had the Talk. N- stated that he planned to be a career military man and keep me happy as a stay at home wife. (This was after in the summer, N- promised me that we were going to some day get married. This promise was made after he had grossly assailed me and I was completely spaced out. I remember staring at him in shock as he took the emerald ring that my Grandmother had given me as a gift and slipped it from my right to my left hand. All I was able to think in that moment was, why wasn't he giving me a promise ring that he got if this was what he was going to do. To this day, I have complicated feelings about that emerald ring.)

My parents had begrudgingly come to give their approval of this relationship with no concept of what was going on behind closed doors. (This note comes back to haunt me a solid decade later.) So, N- brings me out to dinner and then to where he is staying while on leave (his grandparents house). He tells me that he has some interesting family heirlooms to show me because he knows I have an interest in such artifacts. At which point I find myself in an old bedroom underneath the stairs and he forces himself on me.

I tried to resist. I told him to stop. I told him no, but N- didn't take no for an answer. That was New Year's eve. I went from being with him all day New Year's eve to going with his father to drop him off for his flight back to Norfolk. Then I was dropped off at my grandparents house for dinner. I was nearly sick at the sight of meat because it reminded me of what happened. I cried off eating, claiming that I had a stomach ache and had already eaten something on the way there from the airport. N-'s father, during the drive, was talking about how I was a proper match for his son because I was so quiet and 'docile'. (The man was divorced, I suspect with good reason.)

About a week later, N- called me and proposed to me over the phone. He told me not to tell my parents. He said that when he was back on leave again, he'd have a ring for me. (Fun fact, N- stole the last gift that my younger brother had given me in good will to get the ring sized, a silver turquoise ring. I am still angry about the theft. N- never gave it back to me. I suppose he kept it as a trophy, I don't know.) A few weeks later, the band trip happened and we marched in a big parade in Florida. All the time, I was keeping a secret from everyone. Not just about the rape but the fact that my period never came.

It was the beginning of February when I had the miscarriage. I remember it clearly. My mother was screaming at me for using too many menstrual pads and wasting so much time in the bathroom. I passed blood, clots, and a small pink curly thing that was the size of a pencil eraser. What I had suspected turned out to be true. I grieved this and yet was relieved. Because I knew that if I stayed with N-, I was going to eventually die. Because I knew, if I had remained pregnant my parents would have named me a slattern and thrown me out of the house at fifteen. So, I kept the miscarriage a secret.

About a week later, I experienced my first suicidal episode. I mentioned this to the school counselor. The school counselor called my parents. My mom picked me up and brought me home, berating me for wanting attention and calling me a liar. Then when we got home, she slapped a butcher's knife down on the table in front of me telling me if I was suicidal then I should do it right in front of her and prove it. My father came home from work. I got read the riot act again for being a 'hypochondriac' and brought up to the hospital in the city for a 24 hour observation with my parents sitting there glaring at me.

I was terrified. I didn't say or do anything. I just slept for the time I was there. I was released with people saying it was all a cry for attention. And that, my friends, is why February is an awful month for me.

Ramblings

 My new headset came in the mail yesterday. So, I am going to be exercising it doing readings this week via the phone and on chat through Keen. I'm nervous and excited at the same time. My kids have declared it to be the coolest thing they've seen this week. The week is early yet, there may be something else interesting that pops up.

Going back to doing readings on Keen was a tough decision. But, I was strongly encouraged to do so because I apparently was getting squirrely with the lack of regular adult communication. So, Loki and Freyr pushed me pretty hard on that front. They were also concerned by the fact that I was giving up a hobby that I love because of politics (basically). So, at their urging, I went back to Keen. I boosted my rates and informed my previous clients why. It was a pleasant surprise when they came back for readings despite the price increase.

I'm not doing readings today because my schedule has been thrown into complete disarray by the fact that I had errands to run and a child to take to the dentist. Snuggle Bug lost a tooth last week and the new one is coming in well. He was a big wiggly and giggly for his appointment today but apparently the electric toothbrush tickles, so it kinda makes sense. I never thought of it as a ticklish sensation, but he was emphatic that it was. To the point of he was trying not to start laughing, so he decided to make duck noises not to laugh. This made the hygienist laugh and confused almost everyone. Of course, Snuggle Bug did it even more because he had an audience that was laughing. I swear that kid is going to grow up to be a comedian.

I picked up a new journal with a llama on the cover. I needed a new journal like I needed another hole in my head but it was my excuse to solve a mystery. I know now what the deal with the gift card that's been living at the bottom of my purse is. (I had forgotten if I had even used it or not.) And in the course of my travels today, I realized that the craft store is no longer my supplier of cheap ink cartridges for my favorite pens. I'll have to be going to the office supply store now for that. I think that those pens are going to be off the market soon with my luck.

I am planning on buying a new pair of tarot decks. I also have supplies to make my own oracle deck. This is something that I have been considering for years. I think that I'm finally going to do it. I don't know how fancy I want to make it or not. But I like the idea of making my own oracle deck and using it for readings. Putting that together with a tarot deck may get interesting results. I'll post pictures of the cards as I get them done and of the other artwork that I've been working on (or will resume working on).

I want this blog to be more active. I want to write more and communicate with people that are dear to me but far away. This blog lets me do that in a more freeform method than the other blogs I have. And I don't have to worry about some censor taking offense to what I've posted and booting me off the platform.