Oy Vey

Things with Alexander have been getting pretty heated, and not in a good way.  We've been nitpicking at each other constantly the last week and none of it has been of any importance.  We finally actually yelled at each other tonight, which is a first [at least on his end of it, I have probably yelled before] to the point that I was embarrassed my roommate was home and could hear it.  I'm even embarrassed to admit it.

I don't know why exactly we fought tonight.  After several months of dealing with his constant arguing, I shut down on him.  I thought that eventually he would realize his infinite arguing just pushed me away but so far, it hasn't clicked.  I now react the same way as I did with the slew of bad boyfriends before him or my father by just saying, "you're right. I'm wrong."  Naturally

--interrupted. finish later--

Medicated Me

Wow.  That's really all I can say.  Life has changed quite a bit in the last month or so since I've really written in here.  I finally caved and called to see the "Behavioral Medicine" services offered by my school.  For being devoted to helping people, they really throw you through some loops to get to where you want to go.  I had to go through an inital appointment where I get asked a million and two questions by who I'm pretty sure is some grad student who seemed more concerned about performing her job correctly than anything else.  Then she set me up with an appointment for a medical doctor as well as a psych-ologist/therapist/iatrist, or whatever.  

Well, the doctors appointment went all right.  I took almost the entire hour to give my history of troubles, diagnoses, and medications.  I finished with enough time for the doctor to clarify a couple things I mentioned and write me a prescription.  Yes, prescription.  I caved.  For years I've held out on any sort of medicating "solution."  I hated being on them before.  Yes, they helped.  Yes, I handled things better.  But was I really myself?  No.  I was Medicated Me.

Yet here we are, roughly four years from then and I have allowed myself to be back to popping pills [though safely now].  It was great that I was treated as an adult, in a non-judgemental situation, and to top it off, by a very soft spoken man.  Back when I had my last psychiatrist, he treated me like I was mute and retarded.  Now, I don't like used those words in that way but that is how I felt.  I did not feel mentally disabled.  I felt retarded.  Handicapped.  Helpless.  He did not value my opinion in my own life and dictated when and how much medication I would be taking.  I'd like to stab the professors that allowed him to graduate into his field of business.

Moving on.  I left the appointment feeling relieved.  Nervous about my medication, yes, but I finally took a step to asking for help, something that has literally taken me years to vocalize.

Now don't you be thinking this will all be positive, happy-happy-joy-joy.

There was still one more appointment I had to make.


The therapist.


I'd just like to start by saying it was one of my biggest pet peeves to arrive for an appointment at a specified time and then have to wait for the other person.  Don't make me adapt my schedule to you and then leave me in the waiting room-you will not be dealing with my pleasant side!


So the lady finally comes out of her office to get me and lead me down the hallway.  Hold on though, there's not one person, there's two.  The older lady introduces herself as Blah Blah and the younger girl as Blahh, a graduate student.  No one told me there would be a grad student sitting in on my first therapy session in years.  Now I'm angry.


I struggle to focus as I realize the lady has been talking this whole time.  She wants me to retell the ENTIRE story I just told two days ago to my medical doctor.  Great.  I proceed, attempting to go through it as fast as possible seeing as I had just practiced it.  I didn't even feel like I was talking about me.  I was just talking about the synopsis of some fucked up book.  I felt like Mus musculus, the little white mice used in experiments all the time.  I was just a prop for some grad student to get her degree and end up just like that d-bag I dealt with years before.  


I danced in and out of listening to what the therapist was saying but zeroed in when she asked, "How come you never thought about committing suicide?"  Umm, what?


My heart began racing.  Don't tell them.  Don't tell them.  They're required to report it.  She can break your trust, and she will!

I quickly mumbled over the story of Kurt and how from him I realized the effect it has on your family.  Very true.  I just neglected to mention when I learned that in comparison to the rest of my own mistakes.  


That hour could not go by fast enough.  I was rescheduled another appointment for the week after and whisked out of there, furious that I had to sit there and get stared at.  I didn't want to be a method for learning.  I was there to get my own help and feeling like the puppy in the window was not the way to "cure" me of anything.


I fought and fought over the next couple days what to do and I finally caved and called to cancel my appointment.  The lady on the phone offered to help reschedule it and I told her I had to find out my work schedule before knowing when I came in.  I hung up and felt a wave of relief.  I was too angry to talk to anyone there.  It wasn't fair what the threw me in to and I wasn't about to go through another hour of Mus musculus.

Untitled, Unfinished

The thing about depressions, well, at least for me, is that it makes you think or remember things in different ways. Like, my first therapist, she had those thin, pursed lips.  And after that whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, everytime I see pursed lips again, I think of her and have this automatic dislike for the new pursed-lip person I have met. 

My anxiety has been getting really bad in the last couple weeks.  In hindsight bias, I can say that the summer before I moved out here, I spiraled down from multiple heartbreaks and then was working on building myself up with the inspiration of Martin.  But when he died in November, it all came crashing down.  Then meeting Jake, well, it was the false sense of security happiness.  Deep down, I'm sure I was still a mess, but being with him made me unrealistically happy.  Most of my friends had told me at one point or another they had never seen me laugh or smile as much as when I was with him.  So to say that he shattered my heart again, well in reality, I guess he just peeled off the bandaid that was barely holding all the pieces back together.  So again, it was an immediate drop back to where I was.  I missed Martin worse and hated where I was even more.

Eventually I worked on picking myself back up.  About a ten months after Martin's death, I was so depressed that I swear I did not even smile for a week.  So I tried again, to think about how Reuben felt and how Martin would want me to feel.  I thought about him saying "Don't be sad, Troubles"  and tried to, rather than break down at the thought of his voice, to instead to kind of go with it and live for him, as I had told myself so long ago I would for Kurt.  And I started to.  The anniversary of his death I felt happier than I had in months, which confused me why I would.  For so long I fought back and forth to just get completely annhilated on the day, or well, to not.  Knowing Martin's feelings towards alchohol and drug use, I knew that it would be blatant disrespect to him and tried [and even succeeded!] to fight off the weaker of the two choices.

That lasted about a week.  And then she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  And my world came crashing down.  Since then, I have cried at least five days a week.  Sometimes it will be just a tear or two, and other days I'll sob for hours.  But the tears I held back for so many years have just been flying out more than I would ever think imaginable.  Since this summer, and more specifically, since the new job, I have felt my anxiety skyrocket through the roof.

Every time I think "this is the worst it's been" I have a slight recovery, crash again, and then think the same thing about the current low.  So I have been now I have been working towards specifying my feelings more so that I understand me.  What seems at face value a simple task has become quite daunting.

I again feel alone.  And that no one cares.  But these are just my typical emotions.  Now, I have the overwhelming anxiety that has been most noticeable with the crying.  I cried at work this week and last week.  I cried during my exam today.  I have never experienced such an inability to hold back tears!  It is so frustrating that I have become so weak, I am incapable of hiding it.   For at least ten years, I have practiced being able to hide most of my emotions [aside from fleeting happiness or anger] and at this point can pride myself in the ability to appear so calm and collected while chaos reigns inside.  This however, has also prevented me from getting help or continuing help because of the habitual ongoing of seeming so well put together, even during something like a therapy session where the psychologist wants your raw emotions.

...[tbcont]

Need to Sleep More, Think Less

I think the scariest part about being with Alexander is that I'm actually starting to want to fall in love with him.

It's like I'm addicted to getting my heart broken.

Oopsies.

You remember that little note I wrote about Al and said how he knows things without me needing to tell him? Well I guess he forgot because he is in the doghouse right now.

I spent all day today crying and all night last night crying and all I wanted was a hug from Al. I didn't need him to listen to my woes, I just wanted his arms around me but of course when I'm having a bad night, he also decides to blow me off.

Yeah. Oops.

It's just one of those weekends where if one things going wrong...they're all gonna go wrong. Lucky me.

Where'd The Condom Go?

Take a peek at those spiky ones!

Well after such a groundbreaking 24 hours, you couldn't expect the next one to be so pleasant, could you? Anytime you think that everything in life is just goin' swell, BAM! Karma comes after you for something evil you did and throws another curveball at you.

So last night we had some people over to drink away the dwindling hours of summer. As people began filing out, I texted Al and he meandered over. Since Al hadn't taken any sort of nap after returning home from camping [I took a two and a half hour coma] the poor guy was snoring on the couch by the time I said goodbye to the last person and locked the door.

I attempted to help pull my "little" darling up so he could go sleep in a bed but the deadweight of a college football player was no match for my inebriated muscles. Eventually I convinced him to move upstairs and we lay in bed cuddling for awhile. Well, despite his claim that he is "less horny than most guys," Al's hands start wandering and next thing you know, clothes are being flung onto the floor.

[Don't worry, I'll spare you the details] Things get heated up and we decide tonight's "the night." We talked about taking the next big step on a couple occasions and I finally decided I was okay with it not because I just wanted to or we waited long enough, but because we talked about it and I felt like we're on the same level with what we want and how we want the relationship to be.

Well, he slips on the condom and things are going well for a couple minutes and just as he changes positions I hear possibly one of the worst things a woman could think of during intercourse: "Umm, the condom fell off."

WHAT? My mind was racing and all I could think of was children, pregnancies, and abortions. I don't know what could kill a mood worse than thinking of children [and not trying for one] He makes a quick attempt to find the condom and can't even find it.

Now I'm even more frightened. I'm imagining triplets coming out of my vagina. No thanks.

Al asks me if I want him to find the condom or if I want to do it myself. I leap out of bed and head to the bathroom and tell him he better search around the bed and find the condom or his life is at risk. Turning on the light, I immediately find the condom and am flooded with a bit of relief that I wouldn't be making a humiliating visit to the doctor the next day.

And that was it. So much for the next big step. Al claimed he knew when it fell off and there was nothing I needed to worry about but as in inexperienced condom-putter-onner, I'm a little confused why it fell off so quickly. He seemed to make light of the situation maybe because he doesn't understand how scary pregnancy scares are.

People say a lot of things about your "first time" some say it sucks, or it hurts, or it is awesome. I was prepared for it to possibly suck. Digging out a condom was NOT what I was prepared for. It scares me to think that I could have made the same mistake my friends made in highschool, what I swore I would never do.

One things for sure, Round 2 may not be for awhile. Or at leas 'til I know I'm not baring quadruplets.

Roughing It

Since this was the last week of summer for me, my boss was an angel and gave me a couple days off work. We went camping on Thursday which was fun but not nearly as romantic as it sounded. First of all, cuddling actually became a form of survival. The temperature dropped much lower than expected. Of course, Alexander pointed out that you generate more body heat when naked and then asked me if I wanted him to take off his shirt or if I wanted to do it myself. [I did it.] For those who are not in the know with basic survival methods, it absolutely got warmer. However, our sleeping bags somehow had incompatible zippers [which contributed to the whole freezing problem] so anytime Alexander shifted, part of my body would be exposed and a small layer of ice began to cover my skin.

Needless to say, any "romantic" thoughts were quickly extinguished by Mother Nature. I think we slept a total of twenty minutes. The ground was like chopped up cement. After years of damage from full-contact sports, we both share a list of aches and pains that all seemed to flare up that night.

The trip was not an entire disaster although it takes a hindsight view to figure that out. The drive up was delayed a couple hours by Alexander's tardiness, then it took longer to get up there anyway because we couldn't find the correct campsite. We ended up doing a lot of nagging at each other to the point that I didn't even want to sleep by him that night. Once we settled at our site I went wandering with Aurora to do some thinking. The other girls camping with us were off doing their own thing so I finally shouted for Al to come up since I felt bad he was sitting there doing most likely nothing.

Well he came and up and sat on the rock and there was just more nit-picking. My problem is that normally, when someone annoys me is I just give 'em a piece of my mind without a second thought. With Al, I become quiet so I avoid regrets. As everything is running through my head, Al realizes I'm upset and asks me what I'm thinking. The problem is, I rarely tell him what's on my mind, which adds to his frustration. Knowing that now I'm making the situation worse, I finally tell him that I'm not mad, I'm just bothered by all the nit-picking we've been having.

Without skipping a bit, Al jumps off the rock and stands a couple feet behind and tells me to come here. I slowly slide off the rock and walk up to him as he opens his arms to hug me. As soon as I feel his arms embrace me, I feel my eyes start to water. I'm not sure why I get like that since I could hug him for two hours and never grow tired of it.

We get to talking again and Al tells me that I'm pretty. Now, I'm not about to give you some long, winded sob story, but I'm just not used to being treated well or complimented. He asks me if I believe him and I tell him kind of and after a pause, he tells me that every time he tells me that I'm pretty, he wants it to feel like the first time I've heard him say it.

Later that night, after several failed attempts to cook bratwursts over the fire, and a couple beers later, the girls start getting themselves worked up over bears. They finally go hide in the car, too afraid to even sleep in their tent for the night. Hours later, as we find ourselves tossing and turning in an attempt to get comfortable, I realize Al is wide awake. We start talking, being as groggy as I was it took me a couple seconds longer to figure the mumbling noises was him asking me a question.

"What do you want?"

I'm not sure how long it really took, but it felt like a long twenty minutes before I answered. It wasn't that I didn't know what to say, it was that I didn't want to say it. Then I finally told him, "I think what I want is what I'm scared of having."

"Which is?"

"Something good," I told him. There, I said it. It was out. This wasn't the first time I told someone this.

"Do you think I'm something good?" My head, resting on his chest, nodded a timid yes. "I care too much about you to hurt you. You know that?"

Despite the fact I thought I was whispering all along, I felt my voice get even smaller as I told him, "I've heard that before."

"How many of them lasted as long as I have?"

"A couple," I responded. Sadly, the two longest relationships I have been in I was told "I love you too much to hurt you" and "I'm not going to hurt you, I promise." The second one is a five second video clip that I play in my head all the time. And then you cheated on me? How could that not hurt me? You said you loved me!

Al went on to tell me how much he cares about me. As I sit here, retelling the story, it is so easy for me to see how incredible he is. But amidst the conversation, all I felt was fear.

"Do you think I am going to hurt you?"

"Yes," I told him hesitantly.

We talked for a bit more, and then I nodded off into a restless sleep. The conversation from there on is much more blury which is too bad because it was a fairly important one for our relationship.

So despite the nit-picking, arguing, and almost-frostbitten bum, I'd call the overall trip a success. I don't know much but I do know we're taking a step in the right direction and with every baby step forward, I'm one step closer to learn how to trust, feel, and maybe even love again.