I'm melting.

 The apartment is 73 deg F. and I am sweating like crazy. Earlier I was freezing. The temperature wasn't different. I haven't gone outside yet today. It's about 80 deg. F right now. The neighbor's kids are running around and having fun. Every so often I hear screaming, and out of reflex, I look to see if somebody's bleeding. Working at a daycare burns some things into your brain, I think that's one of them.

So, June saw me hypomanic for most of the month. July came along and I was in a mixed episode for most of that month. Now my seasonal affective disorder is knocking on the door even though we haven't lost a lot of sunlight yet from the changing of seasons. I just seem to be more sensitive to changed in light levels. Also, a couple of trauma anniversaries rolled over me and knocked the wind out of my sails.

My ability to focus has been problematic. It made my attempting Camp NaNoWriMo in July a joke. As some of you may know, I can complete at least one novel length manuscript in a month when my brain is working properly and I'm motivated it can be two manuscripts. July's final word count was 15k, not the 50k goal. I am really hoping November goes better.

I confess, focus has been a problem for me in remembering to take all of my medications. I lose track of what day it is and then I have to adjust my dosage schedule for some of my medications. It throws off my biochemistry and I have more problems with hot flashes, aches and pains, and brain fog. Hormone replacement therapy actually does help, but you have to take the medication for it to work. 

Failing to remember if I have taken my medication is less of a problem with pills because I have a pill sorter. It's when I deviate from using the pill sorter that problems happen. I have two medications that can't be fit into the pill sorter. One is the Estrodiol patches (one twice a week) and the other is my Trulicity injection (once a week). Those are the two that I have problems keeping on schedule. I haven't gone so far as to writing them on the calendar, but the calendar doesn't have space for notes like that, it's barely got room for appointments.

You'd figure that my all important day-planner would be my go to on this. If I didn't have goldfish brain, I would be set. But I keep forgetting to use it. I look at it and think, I should check what I need to do today. Then I look away and it goes right out of my head. Perimenopause makes me feel stupid.

Hypomaina sucks.

 I have not slept well this week. Last night I didn't sleep at all. As a result, I am hypomanic. I don't trust this 'good' feeling. I do dumb things when I am in this state and feel like I am fantastic as I do them. Example, one of my hypomanic episodes included a cleaning binge in the project room. I put all of my magazines into one file box and attempted to set it on the floor. While it was a somewhat controlled descent, it basically fell because the box was somewhere around 50 lbs. This stupid act is why I have a hernia and can't lift anything heavier than two gallons of milk. All the positive endorphins running around in my system buffered my senses from the initial pain of the hernia and I felt 'a little sore'. 

By the time I realized something was wrong, it was a few days later when I was no longer hypomanic and I couldn't figure out why when I moved a certain way a lump would stick out of my abdomen. Like an idiot, I poked at it, pushed it, and prodded it into creating another, larger, hernia. As this opened up, I felt a burning sensation. Being ignorant about how to manage what I had done to myself, I let this sit until my next diabetes follow up (months later). As a result, the second hernia was bigger and wider by the time I saw my doctor. Apparently this is a good thing because it's the small ones that get trapped and need surgical intervention.

But, hypomania and ignorance is why my sex life is dead, I can't do my back therapy exercises, bend over, or pick crap up off the floor with out squatting down (and even that is a bit risky). Beloved, bless that man, isn't angry with me for the long term impact of this on our relationship. Hell, the timing was pretty close to when the vaginal symptoms of perimenopause hit. Fortunately, we have a long time that we were working around problems like this due to trauma instead of physical injury. So, we know how to keep the fire in our marriage even if we can't get it on.

A part of my brain says I should info dump about how we coped early on in our relationship with my sexual difficulties. Another part of my brain says I should info dump about how perimenopause is treating me. And then there's the third part that is insisting I should go to the library and return a book. As is there the urge to start cleaning all the things, clip all the dead leaves off my plants, and throw this restless energy into meal prep for next week. Generally, do everything all at once and throw a few more items on the pile just for laughs.

No hard feelings or depression right now. I'm somewhere around bubbly and silly, but I have some control over it. In case you can't tell, I am very verbal at the moment and thoughts are racing. I can't type as fast as the ideas hit me. It is exasperating. My attention span isn't too great. I'm currently disorganized as hell. But my brain is feeling more wound up than it was last night. Thoughts are racing faster. I'm practically vibrating with energy. And all I have been drinking is water.

I am displeased.

 I have been diagnosed with the beginnings of glaucoma. It doesn't help that my optic nerve is already thin. Like significantly so because I was on oxygen as an infant. Being born preemie didn't do me any favors. So, I now have eye drops to lower my eye pressure. Put the effects of the eye drops together with the effects of the antibiotic I'm on for a uti and I am dizzy and unable to operate heavy machinery. Fortunately, I take the eye drops at night. I am exceedingly frustrated. I figured it was just a matter of time but I thought I had more time than this.

Hormones are making me miserable. They're messing with my sleep and my appetite. Now, you'd figure with the cocktail of medications that I am on to help me sleep and the CPAP making sure that I'm breathing properly through the night, I'd be sleeping like a rock. The problem is the night sweats. And the hot flashes during the day. I have heard rumors that this symptom of perimenopause can last months or it can last years. All I know is that it's really irritating waking up in a pool of your own sweat.

The other thing my hormones are messing with is my mental state. I am irritable, to put it lightly. I am more forgetful than usual (which is seriously not a good thing). And my mood goes from ok to moderately depressed like some hyperactive toddler who has discovered light switches. I don't have rapid cycling bipolar, but my hormones didn't get the memo. I am this tired, irritable, fog of misery trying really hard to resemble a sane human because my teenagers are going through puberty and deserve a sane mother.

Did I mention that my anxiety is up? I'm twitching because of it. And I'm anxious over everything. I can't take my anxiety pill as often as I probably should because I fall asleep when I take it. So, my anxiety being high makes my irritability hair trigger. My focus is garbage because my anxiety clouds my mind. I try to meditate. It turns into a running monologue of what I'm worrying about. And I can't focus on my crafts to quiet my mind because of that running monologue.

Second puberty < Second breakfast

I got irritated with my thin hair and bald spot. The gal at the salon who does my hair was a little surprised when I said hack it all off. I explained that my hair was irritating me and looked like a picket fence with gaps in it because of how it was thinning, she tried not to giggle at my description. 

She wasn't comfortable shaving it all the way down at first. She took it down super low. It just made the thinning spots even more obvious. So I had her cut all of it off.

I'll be saving money on shampoo now.

What a week!

 The calendar assures me it is Friday but it sure feels like Monday. I have been busy with housework. I have been fielding phone calls about putting services into place to support the kids going forward. I had an IEP meeting for Snuggle Bug that went surprisingly well, though it ran a bit long. And I've been attempting to write. It's been a busy week but progress is happening.

I haven't just been spinning my wheels, though it feels like it. Back in November of 2024, I submitted an application for Social Security Insurance. I got denied last month. I have started the process of appealing that denial. I am not hanging my hat on any hopes here. It would be helpful to have the extra income but if I'm unable to get it it won't be the end of the world. It is just really frustrating because last year, if I was working, I'd have lost my job due to the fact that I was so depressed I wasn't leaving the house and I was sleeping all the time. I don't have an expansive work history in part because of my parents resisting my having any independence until I was an adult and in part because of complications from mental illness.

I want to work. I try to approach my writing like it's a job. It isn't going that great, to be honest. There's not really any income coming in from that direction. I just can't sell things to save my life. I don't know how to market things either. When I was doing tarot readings, that was going ok. Then the company that was handling connection with clients and advertising hiked up their rates to the point that they were taking 51 cents off of every dollar I made. And I'd still have to pay taxes on that dollar. To say the least, I stopped working with them.

No Menu this week.

 I have been going in circles trying to get things clean. It's not working that great. I have been feeling a sense of pressure to get my home tidy as the snow melts outside. A part of me says I should be scrubbing things and putting warm clothes away for the season. It is distracting, to put it lightly. I wish that my anxiety would calm down a bit, but that is why I take medication for it.

The geese have been loud and flying overhead a good deal. Living in spitting distance of a lake makes this a regular thing every year. At the same time, it was confusing a few days ago to see a large flock of geese flying east to west. Beloved and I were impressed by the number of birds there were. It was easily a hundred of them up there. Not enough to be like the murmations that were recorded by the colonists, but it was far larger a flock than either of us had seen in a long time.

The constant noise of the geese is annoying. That said, I prefer it over the noise of the neighbors fighting. With the weather warming up, however, I know that is coming. I honestly don't know what the deal is with that. It seems like whenever the weather is above freezing, the neighbors come out into the parking lot to have their screaming matches. I rather dislike this feature of living here but there's literally nothing I can do about it.

I have been having a hard time getting myself organized over the last few days. I believe it is directly related to the fact that I am having some difficulty sleeping. The business of these night sweats wakes me up several times a night. I tried looking up some home remedies but that led to an anxiety attack. Never ever look up your symptoms because Dr. Google will tell you that you have cancer or something else equally awful. But being disorganized has lead to my winging it on how food is going to go this week. 

We had burgers for dinner tonight. I'm thinking about soup and sandwiches tomorrow. I'm not sure what I'll make later this week. I know I'll figure something out. If anything, I have cookies to bake and potatoes to make.

It has not been a good week.

 I wish that I had happy things to share and fun pictures for you. I don't. This week has sucked. First, there was the business of being on tenterhooks waiting for my father-in-law's condition to change. He had been in the hospital most of last week (which wasn't a good week either) due to complications from fatty liver disease and a fall the Friday before. Fortunately, the fall just left him with some good sized bruises but there was no concussion or broken bones. About the middle of last week, he decided that he was done taking medication for his fatty liver disease and dealing with the side effects. So began our death watch.

To some extent I was on the sidelines for this. But it was still stressful. The kids were prepared for the news that he was dying, but they still were upset with it. They had a close relationship with the man. A day or so after my father-in-law decided he was done with treatment, we got a phone call telling us that he had anything between a few days to a few weeks before he died. At which point, Beloved called out of work and we all trooped up to the hospital. Snuggle Bug wanted to see his grandfather and say something to him. Cuddle Bear preferred not to go into the ward where the man was. He waited with me and we all headed home when Snuggle Bug had his say. For my part, I had nothing to say.

I had to restrain myself from saying when Beloved asked me if I wanted to step back and say anything "Naw, I've seen corpses before." To put it very lightly, I despised my father-in-law based upon his past behavior, politics, and general attitude. And he never knew the depth of it. My father-in-law would tease my Beloved and insist that I actually liked him. The old goat mistook my politeness for actual pleasure in his company.

 I didn't disabuse him of the notion but as time passed on, he started to think that there was something a bit off there. Perhaps it was the fact that I had my hair chopped after he fawned over a haircut that I had gotten, I think it was two or three days after it that I got a super short pixie cut. He made me uncomfortable, angry, and I decided to do something about it. But between the mannish haircut and my changing my clothing style to black everything with occasional splashes of color, I got suspicious looks from him and he started queer baiting me. I made a point of not getting into an argument with him over it because I was observing frith and sticking to my own faith's rules of good behavior in another's home. There were several times he said things that made me want to loosen his teeth, but I replied with a dry 'that's your opinion.'

All of this exposition is to explain the background for why I am not mourning the man. I'm actually somewhat relieved and glad that he's dead. He can no longer hurt anyone now. He can no longer terrorize his wife. He can no longer spread his brand of hatred. And, he's made himself semi-useful in death by donating his body to science. I have but one childish regret, that I didn't punch him when I had the opportunity. I, however, recognize that I have anger issues and do my best to keep that in check. And I recognize that punching him would have been breaking frith, done nothing to resolve all of the agony he has caused in the course of his lifetime, and would probably have netted me an assault charge. I still feel like he deserved at least one punch for how he behaved in life, though.

All of that aside, the old goat dying has left something of a mess that Beloved and his siblings are sorting through with their mother. Changes got made to important legal things which didn't get down in writing before my father in law went into the hospital. Palsy made it impossible for him to feed himself, let alone write something down. And I presume that when he made these changes to his wishes for end of life stuff, he expected that he wasn't going to die essentially immediately after. The extended family are in the process of converging on the town. This is going to be complicated and messy because feelings and opinions on what should happen next. 

I'm not looking forward to the next few weeks. I expect that Beloved and the kids are going to have a rough time of it all. I expect that Beloved's mother and his siblings are going to have a rough time too. I'm going to do my best to support them and disregard what others have to say, even if it makes me angry. 

Since the cat is out of the bag ...

 My husband's parents are not doing well. We've been doing our best to offer support and help out. But there are something that you can not avoid, help, or otherwise make go away. My father in law is actively dying of liver failure due to fatty liver disease. Now that I am aware that this runs in Beloved's side of the family, I can educate the kids about it. I'm probably going to wait until everything finishes unfolding for my father in law, to be honest.

So far, Beloved is doing ok handling complicated feelings about his father. I am doing my best to hold space for him and support him in whatever way that I can. I understand the complicated feelings that he's going through, having gone through them myself when my own father got a cancer diagnosis. (Dad's in remission thanks to an experimental treatment and will be declared cured if he doesn't have it come back by August.) It is rough to hurry up and wait for someone to die.

It doesn't matter how much you're angry with them, how much you hate them, or how you feel on any front. It's still unpleasant and difficult. You see the suffering of the people who love them and it gets to you. Or at least it gets to me. Grief isn't easy. Grieving someone as they're still technically alive is a paradoxical experience and painful.

Right now, my father in law is spending a lot of time sleeping and getting pain medicine. He fell last week and was in the hospital with respect to that when it was discovered that his liver enzymes were high. The old goat refused treatment after a few days because he was just sick of the side effects. Not long after that, he started spending a lot of time sleeping. The doctors think he has anything from a few days to a few weeks to go. 

It's odd. The idea that it can be that uncertain is just strange to me. Then I think about acute liver failure and how it kills you in 24 to 48 hours. It's been a surreal week. I feel like I should have more empathy for the grieving that my sister in law is going through because she is close to her father. I don't, however. I kinda feel like a bad person for that.

I have spent a fair amount of time thinking about death and coming up with no good ideas on how to talk about it. The fish died on Tuesday. I haven't been able to clean out the tank yet because of all the stuff stacked around it right now. As the fish had been acting strangely for about two weeks and he was old, the kids were prepared for it to happen. There wasn't really any wailing and gnashing of teeth like the last time we had a fish die. The kids were disappointed and sad, but they accepted it as a natural part of life. They've agreed that death is not cool and that it's a sad thing. By letting them come to their own conclusions about the matter, I have done my best to keep my opinions out of it.

Looking back on the last week, I think that the death of the fish prepared the kids for the coming death of their grandfather. My only concerns about all of this is how to help my immediate family navigate this process. Beloved, as I said, has conflicting feelings about it all. He has a bad relationship with his father for much of the same reasons why I have a bad relationship with my parents. But we're standing behind the kids and doing our best to guide and support them through this, because they have a relatively good relationship with the man.

My mother in law is obviously distraught. It has driven her blood pressure up and she's had medication changes which have impacted her in various ways due to it. I suspect her doctor didn't fully consider her situation when he made the change and put her on a high dose rather than titrate her up to it. Hopefully as the medication is adjusted, she'll be doing better. But her cognition isn't the best right now for a number of reasons. This has kickstarted my anxiety again about myself developing dementia, because that's in my side of the family.

I try really hard not to think about it but watching my great grandmother H. lose her mental faculties scared the hell out of me. It was somewhat traumatic to watch from the side lines as a kid and it instilled in me a deep fear of losing my memories. Hence why I started journaling to begin with. My thinking was if I wrote everything down, I'd have reminders about the important things as my mind started to go.

Then bipolar happened to me. After living with the facts of how bipolar effects my cognition, I have come to recognize that my frantic urge to save as many memories as possible is futile. I still journal. It helps me to get a handle on my brain and sort through my feelings. But the anxiety about preserving everything just kinda got pushed aside in the light of how this last depressive episode really messed with my memory and stuff. And realizing that the next depressive episode will likely do the same.

My celebratory post was a bit premature. Oops.

I am on a run of almost a week of being awake for the majority of the day. It was not easy because the dosage of my new medication went up right after my last post and I was drop kicked back into the land of Nod. It was exceedingly frustrating because chores piled up, appointments were missed, and projects lay idle. I was grumpy and unhappy. I am feeling more alert and much better today.

I am really hoping that holds. The magnitude of the shift in my brain from this time two months ago is pretty huge. I was on the verge of suicidal depression in March when I talked to my psychiatrist who initiated this medication change. The last two months have been exhausting. Which is pretty ironic considering that I was sleeping most of the time. But, it was exhausting and uncomfortable. I was sleeping so much that my body was getting sore which ever position I slept in. I needed to be upright and moving to feel better but I simply couldn't do it. 

I am trying not to be resentful of all the stuff that didn't get done, appointments missed, and such. I am attempting to focus on gratitude and moving forward. I was having a really hard time summoning up the will to write a damn thing when I was awake. As such, blogs and journals were not updated. It is not a thing most people feel much about but I feel pretty bad about that. I feel like I let down my readership and I was failing to keep record of what going on in life around here.

At one point I had a therapist ask me why I keep a journal and a daily log of activities in my planner. I joked that I worked for the redundancy department of redundancy. Namely, I am terrified of losing my memory. The fact that my brain is an unreliable narrator is horrific enough. The idea that I would lose my memories and forget who my family are is bone chilling. I watched dementia consume my great-grandmother Hazel. I will never forget the day that I came to visit her at the nursing home and she didn't recognize me. My heart broke. I promised myself that I wouldn't let that happen to me.

Thus, I kept a scrapbook through middle school, high school, and part of college. And when it was safe to keep a journal, I wrote in it religiously about almost everything. Trauma in my life and my psychiatric illnesses have robbed me of memories that many people take for granted. I have spotty memories of my children's early childhood. If I were asked when they said their first word, I wouldn't be able to answer the question or necessarily tell you what it is on a given day. I rely on my journal to be my memory keeper. 

That said, I have spent most of the last two months sleeping and I'm hopeful that I will be only sleeping at night now. We'll see.

Nightmares suck, night terrors suck even more.

Sleep last night was not my friend. Two reasons: I am still getting used to the damn CPAP machine and trying to fit the mask properly, and I had some vivid nightmares. I think the nightmares means that my traumatized brain is attempting to process what happened to me when I was younger, but I'm not sure. Last night, it was more like memories coming up with a combination of staircase wit. I woke up on the verge of crying, furious, and with the words in my mouth to scream at my mother over her accusation that I seduced my father to get him to sign on my student loans. I literally lost count the number of times that she had accused me of being sexually involved with my father, going all the way back to when I was in my single digits. I was horrified, disgusted, and embarrassed by it. It wasn't my father that molested me, it was my paternal grandfather and a few years later, my younger brothers.

But if I said any of that, all hell would have broken loose. Arguments between my mother and I consisted of her screaming insane accusations at me, as I stood with my head hung down, waiting for a beating to commence, and mumbling that I didn't do anything she had accused me of. It was awful, degrading, and left me scarred in ways that I am still trying to figure out how to process (the Aspects/personalities/insiders).

It wasn't safe in my parent's house to express myself. As such, when each little bit of me split off, it went down inside where it'd be safe. Now that I am safe, it's confusing when they bubble up. My psychiatrist assures me that trauma is a spectrum and that my having these experiences does not mean that I have an additional diagnosis only that I was deeply traumatized.

At least I am not having night terrors right now. The weighted blanket helps prevent that. I worry about having them again. Once the CPAP machine entered the picture, sleep sort of improved despite how uncomfortable and awkward the mask is. But the mask reminds me of when someone in my parent's household tried to smother me. It's not good. It makes me concerned that I'll be having them again because these memories are coming on so strong.

Nablopomo post no. 9 - Planner Pages!

 

What I am holding in my hand is the heart of how I organize things in my life. When I forget to do this, everything turns into disarray and I have the one-two punch of more anxiety and more depression. October was a hard month, as was September, because I was sick and I kept forgetting to keep up with my planner. Let me tell you, before I started using this, I was a mess. I was overwhelmed by everything and panicky a lot. Prior to the templates that you see here, I was drawing out boxes in a notebook and getting pretty intense hand cramps by the time I was done setting up one month of pages. Then Beloved said, "Let's make a template, that'll make the planner easier to use." Trust an engineer to find the solution that streamlines an arduous process. They're good at that stuff.

At the top of the forward facing page is space for me to note the date in a liturgical calendar I follow (part of the whole Filianism thing I have going on), space for me to note the date in the Julian calendar that everybody else uses, and a space to note the day of the week. The column on the right side of the page starts with a reminder/record of how much water I need to drink on a given day. Below it is a reminder/record as to if I had taken all of my daily pills. 

There isn't a checkbox for each pill because I take 12+ medications and it changes on occasion. Following the monitor of medicine compliance, I rate my mood for the day and then I rate my anxiety level for the day on a scale of 1 - 10. A one is horrid and a ten is horrid in it's own way. My goal is to be around a five on the mood scale. On the anxiety scale, I try to be around a five also, because one is apathy and ten is I'm so anxious I am vibrating through space and time as well as seeing sound.

After this comes what is probably the most important thing to track in here, my fasting blood glucose reading. I'm kinda lucky that I just have to check this in the morning. The problem here is forgetfulness will have me go a week either forgetting entirely to take the readings or forgetting to write them down, because my brain just doesn't work quite like it did before and I have memory problems.

The check boxes and lines on the left side of the page are for tasks, errands, appointments, etc. I use it in a fashion that is really similar to Ryder Carrol's Bullet Journal method. I reserve the last line for writing down what we're going to eat for dinner that day. The lined back of the page is for recording notes and a bit of micro-journaling.

NaNoBloPoMo Post No. 2 - Why am I exhausted?

 You know how when most people lose a few nights of sleep, they get bags under their eyes? Well, I have a full set of luggage and it isn't quite complete enough to look like I got in a fight. This August marks three years of awful sleep for various known and unknown reasons. We've gone through several neighbors in that next door apartment. Each of them has been loud, with a tendency to fight at full volume at all hours of the night, and had a large dog that howled for them when they weren't home. The noise enough screws with my sleep. It doesn't help with my cptsd. 

I struggle to get back to sleep whilst having flashbacks to my parents fighting over money from when I was a small child. Between their fighting, telling me that I was the reason they were poor, and a lot of other ugly stuff that was said, I guess I was around eight thinking that I'd be more valuable being sold as body parts on the black market and the money funneled to them. Pretty screwed up, eh? So, here I am about two score years later, with those thoughts running around in my head and fear that my parents are going to catch on that I heard them and they're going to beat me for it.

Now, putting that horror aside, I'm in perimenopause. The hormones screw up your sleep cycle there too. It seems like my body is looking for more ways to hate me because I just got a diagnosis of sleep apnea. I get the CPAP machine next week and I'm hoping it helps with that. And that heavy blanket that helps me feel safer at night, it's a weighted one that weighs almost as much as a toddler, seems to be making the sleep apnea worse. So, I may have to give that up. I don't know what a good alternate solution for my night time anxiety will be. 

My psychologist has been a champion through all of this. He's been carefully tailoring my psychiatric medications to try to help with out interfering with my other medications. He's a bit at wits end on this matter to. So, when I got prescribed a sleep consult with the clinic up in the city, he immediately began telling me what to expect (because I was anxious) and about his experience. He also was so kind as to explain what a CPAP machine does and how it has helped him. I came away from that discussion reassured and ready for the video conference with the sleep doctor's PA. 

In that video conference, I got my diagnosis and a very through explanation of everything from what is sleep apnea to how a CPAP machine works. With the discussion of sleep apnea, there was an explanation why I could sleep a whole night through and wake up exhausted. I'm hoping the CPAP machine is the silver bullet on this one.

Prompts No. 1

 Because I have so much difficulty writing of late, I have turned to my prompt box and I'm going to try to write daily posts on the basis of prompts. I can't promise success, but I am going to try.

Today's prompt: How much of yourself do you keep hidden?

Well, this one is a gut punch. I keep a large amount of myself hidden. I have lots of emotional scars, my personality is fracture (to put it lightly), and a great many things that I'm terrified of that I force my way through just because it needs to be done. I have this attitude that I must push through whatever hardship I am dealing with (like walking pneumonia right now) and make things happen. It was instilled into me by parents who didn't believe me when I was sick and repeatedly accused me of being lazy when I was trying to rest and get over being sick. I remember very clearly them telling our family doctor that I was a hypochondriac before I could even begin describing my symptoms. Cue a different doctor thirty years later saying I have textbook arthritis in my knees and have had it all my life.

I hide my pain with sardonic comments, redirecting things to other people and their needs, and excessive cheerfulness when it's really bad. When I had appendicitis, I was cracking jokes with tears in my eyes from the pain. The nursing staff was disturbed by this, partly because those jokes were really dark. Then I got the morphine (which I am now allergic to the whole family of pain medications, yay!) and the jokes got darker and twisted. Why, because I could make myself shut up. It was an experience and a half.

I also hide things that are precious and deserving to be shared with the world because of how scarred my metaphorical heart is from years of harassment and bullying. I'm scared to share my paintings because of how often people told me they were garbage. Once, a painting that I was really proud of that I gave my parents as an anniversary present, they gave back to me with a comment 'I believe this is yours.' also known as 'Take it or we're going to get rid of it.' It hurt. That painting now hangs in my kitchen. It's a view of the prettiest place on the family farm during autumn, up by the pond looking out over the valley.

I try to hide my pride and do my best to remain humble and genial. But when I get insulted, I have a rush of adrenalin and I'm ready to fight. Honestly, that's the hard one to keep under my hat. For too long have I born insults and snide comments over the last 44 years from people around me, often in the form of backhanded jokes or 'constructive criticism.' I try to just let it pass over me like water around a stone. It's really hard, though.

Now that I've word vomited my way through this post and overshared too many things, I am going to attempt to write something else on another blog. Fortunately, my prompt box covers a really wide range of topics. 

Perseveration sucks.

 Perseveration is the act of thinking about one topic for an extended period at the exclusion of other topics. This is different from concentration or being focused. It can go on for hours or, even, days. It's part of a collection of symptoms I have from  my mental illnesses. I pretty much hate it because I perseverate on horrible things from the past that I don't have 'resolved'. Honestly, I don't think you can resolve the breech of trust that comes from when your parents throw you out of the house when you're extremely ill in the middle of winter. I had pennies to my name and they were going to leave me with just the clothes on my back out in the street. My Grandparents intervened and that's how I wound up living in east Jesus for a year before I got married.

 I grew up on a farm about 5 miles from civilization in any direction. There was literally nowhere for me to go. I've been thinking about this for weeks. I had to deal with threats of being thrown out from the age of 12 through my early 20s. When they did it, they claimed it was because I wasn't pulling my weight as a member of the household. Meanwhile, one brother chain smoked, played video games, and was unemployed for years by that point, with a child. The other brother was in the military but wasted his money on alcohol instead of supporting his wife and children, leaving the rest of the family to do that. And when he was on leave, he would play video games and fuck off to bars in the area to get his drink on instead of going to be with his family. Neither brother cleaned anything, they wouldn't cook, or do their own laundry.

It was my childhood all over again during the time from graduation from college to when they threw me out. I was basically the household serf who had to perform perfectly and be silent. There is a lot of unresolved trauma around all of that. I think that's why I can't get it out of my head. It's part of a long list of things that I am certain I can never 'resolve' only learn to live with.

Color therapy.

My Brother-in-Law gave me this book for Yule/Christmas a few years back. I have only finished one of the images in it. But I've decided that when I do my weekly half hour of art therapy, one time a month I will bust out my colored pencils and work on a page. It's going to take me a while to get through the book but it's brainless work. I suppose it lowered my stress levels some. I was a little frustrated that the half hour passed before I could finish the design element that I was working on. I had one more element to do before what I planned for the day was done.

Still, I am making progress on this. I tried out coloring books aimed for younger audiences and I got bored quickly. I am giving this one an honest shot. The details in it are interesting and can lend themselves to complex color combinations. I'm not attributing therapeutic meaning to the colors that I pick. I'm simply going of of aesthetics here. It's like the coloring pages they had me do when I was in the psych ward. Brainless work that just forces you to slow down.

Before, I did the green portions. I guess that was back in April. Then I set the book down and forgot about it. Today, I did the yellow and red portions. I was planning on doing some of the inner section in red as well, but I was  having a hard time choosing from my massive colored pencil collection. (I have been hoarding colored pencils since childhood because my parents were prone to confiscating them and my artwork. So I kept them hidden away in random places. Now that I can have them out, I've got them organized, roughly, by color and I've almost 100 of them of various brands.)

I'm not hypomanic, so I don't know how well working on this coloring book when I'm in that state would do for slowing my brain down. I'm just tired and mildly anxious about Cuddle Bear getting his braces tomorrow. This was an ok distraction from that anxiety. Now, I have a ton of housework to catch up on ranging from laundry to dishes to wiping down the bathroom. All the stuff that fell by the wayside during the hypomanic episode and the depressive episode that came before it. I wish my brain worked properly. Then I'd be able to keep up with stuff.
 

Yeah, I missed mental health month. Still important thing here.

 If you've been keeping score for as long as I've been running this blog, I have mental illness struggles. Part of it is suicidal ideation due to depressive episodes. Thanks alot bipolar, it's just a great feature. (Where's the sarcasm font again?) Today is art therapy day. I spend 30 minutes doing art and thinking about it's meaning.

The semicolon is a symbol for suicide awareness. Generally, it is found among people who have survived suicide attempts. I have struggled with depression and suicidal ideation since I was a kid. Some of it was growing up in an abusive household. Some of it is just due to my genetic lotto win of undiagnosed bipolar (which finally did get diagnosed in my 30s through a series of horrific events, but that's beside the point). 

The heart below the semicolon is for love. It is love that keeps me pushing forward and moves me to get help when I need it. The blue portion of the semicolon is a tear for all the lives lost due to complications from mental illness, such as suicide.

Important note: I am not suicidal right now. I am feeling maudlin and thoughtful. I think I'm out of the hypomanic episode. It's raining and gloomy. It tends to make my mood gloomy. That's part of where this came from. I just stared at the page with no idea what to do. Then I drew this with my oil pastels and put the book away. 

Still wired, but maybe there's hope.

 I'm definitely hypomanic right now. I've been up since 0320 and I feel like I can vibrate through space and time right now. I have been avoiding the internet and social media because I don't want to do something stupid that I'll have to clean up later. It's been a long week or so. The days blur together and between my sleep difficulties and my brain going 10k mp/h, I have a hard time keeping up. Somehow, I am managing to keep notes, though they're scattered through different locations. I'm going to try to channel this urge to organize and clean everything into getting my notes into order.

I have been dealing with what I call 'brain itchies' for the entire time I've been like this. It's aggravating and it is making me a bit grouchy, on top of the mood randomly going between Fighty McFightface and HappyFunBall. Things like the kids' Rubric's Cube being scrambled is irritating because I look at it and my brain screams at me all the colors should be the same on each face. I'd solve the damn thing but I don't remember how to solve a Rubric's Cube. In my rambling last night, I was talking about how I was going to buy two and work at each slowly until I master how the damn thing works and then I was going to unscramble the cubes. Beloved then showed me a video on Youtube of how these damn things can be disassembled and put back together to be cleaned. Of course, he described it as how you can explode one and my brain thought t.n.t., which made me immediately start cracking up hysterically.

I started reorganizing and cleaning the project room. I am finding all kinds of shit that I forgot existed. Like the two bins full of fiber that needs to be washed (they're sealed shut and the samples of fiber are in sealed plastic bags, so there's no smell). I found most of the floor and then covered it up again with boxes as I was going through stuff. But, I am actually putting things away in places where they can be found. 

I have been restraining the urges to organize the kitchen and our pantry-shelves (a bookshelf repurposed to hold dry goods and canned goods) by color and such. It's been a major brain itchy because I look at it and see that there is no rhyme or reason to it and I feel like I must fix it. When that feeling gets too strong, I go into the project room (which evokes it writ large because of the chaos in there) and start working. I am right now taking a break from cleaning. I'm struggling with the urge to start dragging out all of the plastics from underneath the sink and scrubbing them. It's been a day. And we're not even half done yet.

As Beloved says ' @whee '

 Finally the depressive episode is lifting. But I'm transitioning into hypomania. I kinda suspected this was going to happen since I have been waking up at o'dark thirty every morning for the last three weeks. I've promised Beloved that I will not reorganize the kitchen by color again. But, I have no idea how far up I am going to go because it's been a while since I've been hypomanic and I can't entirely predict what I'll fixate on.

In the meantime, the Spinning Guild meets Saturday. I may or may not be going depending on brain state. It's musical wheels and everybody who has an interesting spinning wheel brings one for people to try out. I have a kick wheel (made by Jim at True Creations) and I totally love it. I also won random rainbow striped roving that I can use on it to demonstrate  how it works and share with interested parties. I'd like to make this happen, but if I'm at a point where I'm bound to say whatever potentially awful thing comes to mind, I really should stay home.

Monday,  I go to see my other eye doctor and talk about if I am developing glaucoma or what's the deal with my right eye being wonky. (I see the optimologist next month about a possible new prescription because of this business with my right eye.) I'm kinda scared about the glaucoma thing.

Tuesday, I talk to my psychiatrist. If I'm hypomanic at the time, it may be a bit of a surprise for him because most of our sessions I have either been depressed or meh.

Wednesday, Cuddle Bear goes to the orthodontist. I have some suspicion that this will be the appointment that he gets braces put on and we make the down payment on the second round of braces. He's nervous. Heck, I'm a little nervous. But the orthodontist is a good guy and really knows what he's doing. It when we get to the oral surgery stage that I am real nervous about because I don't know how that'll go at all or who we're going to see or anything else like that. The kids have a great dental care team. I know they'll recommend someone who is good. I hope that they'll do the procedure under sedation so that Cuddle Bear doesn't have a panic attack.

[insert witty title here]

 I am struggling with depression again. It is a never ending merry-go-round of suck. Start to feel ok and then I drop into depression because of situational bullshit. Or, start to feel ok and then I drop into depression because my brain chemistry is fucked. Either way, it's bullshit.

Book five of my fantasy series is out. The paperback got approved yesterday. I have yet to slap up links to it on social media and such. Honestly, I feel like I am going nowhere fast with my fantasy series. I am not going to give up, I'm just very frustrated that I can't seem to manage to find my audience. (Hence the dog pic.)

I'm going to shut down the adult fiction blog I have going and start actually publishing it under a pen name. I don't know if I am going to have to keep a blog for that pen name to keep readers interested or what. I just don't know. I don't have a solid plan in mind. I'm making shit up as I go along. I've been hesitant about attempting to sell adult fiction because I was convinced that I was real bad at writing it. But, upon consideration, I am a decent author whose narrative style is pretty dynamic (or so I've been told). And I've been doing research into this for about three years, maybe five. There's some really awful stuff on the market that sells fairly well. If I set my price low and focus on writing quality short stories, maybe I can make a few bucks like those people writing the bad stuff.

Because I keep struggling with mental health issues, I have been struggling to write pretty much anything. It's not helping me any. Some of the low confidence issues that I am having right now are due to a three year project falling apart. Some of the low confidence issues are because I keep having flashbacks and intrusive memories of my parents telling me that I wasn't ever going to be successful as an author. C-PTSD sucks.

My computer is acting suspicious. It isn't charging. I don't know if it is because I have been using it as a laptop and this is how it is conserving the battery or what's going on. Windows is pushing real hard for me to upgrade to Win 11 and get Windows360, their office suite. It's really annoying. I was ok with my Win 8 machine until it literally started having mechanical failure issues. I'm kinda concerned that this computer, which isn't a year old and is 3 days away from having the warranty lapse, is mechanically fucked up some how. Planned obsolescence is a thing. It makes me miss the clunky, big desktop computer that we had running for almost a decade.

I don't know what I'm going to do with this machine. I'm considering reupping the warranty. I'm considering taking it to the local computer fix-it shop and having them figure out why in hell this thing isn't charging. I know one thing, I'm not upgrading to Win 11 and I'm not getting their office suite. They're working on forcing everyone's data off their boxes and into the cloud, where they can hold it hostage for money. Fuck that noise. I will switch to a different operating system before I let those assholes have more of  my data than they already got. 

I mean, the system is still trying to get me to use a pic of myself to unlock the computer. I refuse to do it. Passwords are a thing. They're useful. And I don't trust Microsoft Corp. They've done enough shady things in the past, I am suspicious of the whole 'unlock your computer with a smile'. Also, it's creepy as fuck to have Friend Computer demand that I smile.

I can do minimalist design too.

Pic # 1

 I bought the hoop and the butterfly sticker at the craft store the other day. My total working time on this project was about an hour (with Snuggle Bug distracting me). First pic is with out the sticker. Everything is back stitch and using leftover floss from the birds project. The buttons I randomly found in my bag, which inspired the whole process.

Pic # 2

 I have come to the decision that I am going to resume art journaling for therapy. Doing mandala coloring is mind numbing and doesn't really work for me. I'm finding that embroidery helps me calm down.

Maybe art journaling will help me process the stuff I'm dealing with. I will post pics of pages as I get them done.

Projects and my sanity.

I have started on a new sampler. I just grabbed fabric out of my stash and discovered that I had a significant amount of black 14 count Aida cloth. So I popped it into a large oval shaped hoop and started stitching. I am a masochist. I'm not insane because I am not doing black on black embroidery here. But it is difficult for me to see the hole in the fabric where I need to pass my needle through. Still, I'm going to make this thing. I'm going with white on black for this one. I have another, larger but narrower thing of black Aida cloth. That'll go on the scroll frame and I will do something like gold work on it. I mean, if I am going to torture myself, I may as well go whole hog on it.

I am not doing well. I am getting towards the bottom of my current depressive episode and feeling like everything is hopeless. It's part of the reason why I haven't posted most of this week. I just have been so full of despair and disgust with myself that I feel like I am an utter failure as a human being, just as my abusive parents predicted I'd be because I didn't conform with their concept of what normal was.

The business with Keen has really upset my apple cart. I have looked into other platforms where I can give readings for hire but they want full time commitment. I can't do that. The whole reason why I was on Keen was because of the flexibility of the platform worked with my disability limits. Now they're pushing towards this other model of business and I just can't do it.

I have been rather dejected and thinking about other things that circumstances had forced me to give up, like painting. Being depressed and thinking about these things does not help being depressed, it just makes it suck even more. 

Throw on top of this, we have a new neighbor who triggers my c-ptsd whenever I encounter her. I either get the powerful urge to flee, space out and go on autopilot, or a visceral urge to do violence. All three are really bad options so I have been hiding in the apartment as she has been steadily redecorating the entryway and public spaces of the building.

Her sense of taste in such things is atrocious. I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns. She's making noises about repainting the entryway. If I wind up going to the hospital with an asthma attack because of her crap, I'm giving her the damn bill. She's just a few steps away from taking over my gardens. She's talking about putting mulch over everything. We're not past the danger of frost. I haven't purchased the plants that I want to put in the beds this year. And she's sticking decorations out there where I wanted to put a planter, all proud of herself.

It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that she's entitled and has an attitude problem. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that she's demanding that the other residents of the building put up with her shit. I want to punch her in the face but assault is not the answer to the problem. So, I am doing needlepoint and envisioning stabbing her in the eye with just about each stitch. I posted the front and the back of my current project because both look kinda cool.