Wednesday 29 September 2010

Dancing with myself

So. Did you know I used to dance? No? Well, I did. I danced a lot. I was in gymnastics since before I have memories. Then I dabbled in a bit of ballet and then I joined a drummajorette team which is hard to explain, because where I come from (did you know I'm not actually originally British? No? Now you do!) its a Big Fucking Deal. Like, national and international championship big. Like almost as big as Cheerleading is in America. Which is kind of how I explain Drummajorettes to English people. It's like Chearleading, except with 5 foot tall flags. And I was 4'9 at the time. It's 7 minutes of precision routine wearing a ridiculous uniform. You're performing a mix of marching, dance and propwork on a field with 30-50 other girls, some of whom are throwing mace's (a mace is like a baton, but hardcore. Like if a baton is Adam Lambert a mace is Ozzy Osbourne) 15 feet in the air. You have to be split-second in-sync with every single other girl on that field. You have to be PERFECTLY in time with your music or the whole routine looks unbelievably shit. I practised every single day for years, and I was at official squad practise 5 days a week, with competitions almost every single week, on top of going to school, on top of school sports teams I was also a member of, including the netball team in which I was an inter-school competitor. You have to be dedicated, and determined, and strong. You have to be really strong...we're talking about tiny 9yr old girls carrying 5 or 6lbs of metal and fabric onto a field while marching in time and formation and keeping on-choreography.

It was fucking hard.

And I loved it more than I can even explain to you. I loved it so much that when I watched this video I cried. It was the first point in my life where I had a group of friends. And when I won a place on my team's elite Indoor squad, it was the first point in my life where I felt like I was good at something. Where I felt important, or valued, or proud of myself. The indoor side of drummies was, as it's name would suggest, competed in indoors. It was much more like the group dance-acts you see on TV talent shows now...kind of a mix of chearleading and gymnastics and street dance. It was my life and I loved it.

When I moved to England, there was suddenly no more dancing. I tried to keep up my routines and my dancing by practising at home, but my parents said they would no longer be paying for me to attend classes like they did back home. Without any sort of formal structure, dancing slowly drained out of my life. Sports did, too. In England, sports isn't really valued at a state-school level. Not in girls. My brother would later join his school's basketball team and help win competitions within London, but for me, there was no more moving. There was no more belonging. There was just no more. The eating disorder that had been brewing for a couple of years exploded and took over my life; the more I lost the order, structure, and control that dance and sport had given me, the more I tried to claw it back, take it out on the body that I now felt was useless, surplus to requirements. I hated it. I called it 'the body'. I refused to consider it a part of me. I refused to care about it. What did I care if it was hungry? What did I care if it was weak? What did I care if it collapsed? What did I care if it didn't work right? I didn't. It couldn't do what I wanted it to so I would punish it mercilessly. I would starve it, cut it, beat it. Let others use it. It was no use to me. It was a hideous thing that trapped me, held me down. It was slow and stupid. It was ugly.

When I was older and wiser and better, I decided to take up dance again. I enquired about beginners ballet classes and joined my university's cheerleading team. But weeks later I discovered I was pregnant. And we all know what happened after that.

I love to watch dance videoes and movies now. I have come to grips with the fact that I will never really dance again. I have come to terms with the fact that my body is sick and broken. Of course it makes me sad. Of course it makes me angry. Of course I would love if dancing was possible for me without pain, or a very real risk of injury (fun fact: I pulled my wrist out picking up a fork the other day. Tell me how to do a pirouette without breaking something. Go on.) and people think I'm being negative when I say that, but I'm not. I'm being realistic, and I'm trying to come to terms with dancing not being part of my life anymore, or ever again. I don't want to 'think positively', as my mother puts it, when thinking positively means giving me false hope. I want to think realistically, and rather than think 'hey, maybe one day I'll dance again!' I want to think 'Hey, maybe one day I'll go a whole week without needing a 'bed-day'!' or even 'hey, maybe one day I'll run to the beach with my daughter.' Now the role that dance and gymnastics play in my life is strictly from-afar. When I watch dance video's, it does give me hope, but not that I could dance again. It gives me hope when my shoulders start twitching, when my hips move, when my foot taps. It gives me hope that I'm really coming to terms with what my condition means for me, and that I can still be positive and still enjoy the memories of my past, not look back on them with bitterness and anger like I used to. It gives me hope that my body and I are one again, a co-operating unit.

The Body did one thing right in it's entire life. It turned out to be the last right thing it would ever do, but do you know what? Looking at her sleeping next to me now, with her tiny red baby-curls and Hello Kitty pyjama's? Kind of makes up for all the shit we pulled on each other all those years ago.

Truce, Body. Truce.

Thursday 23 September 2010

Defining yourself as a blogger

Defining myself as a blogger is something I struggle with. To be honest, I struggle with the label 'blogger' at all, I don't feel like keeping a blog and being 'a blogger' are the same thing. It's like the difference between keeping a diary and writing an autobiography. So when it comes to the question 'What type of blogger am I?' I just...don't know.

Am I a Mommy Blogger? Well, I'm a mommy. And I blog about my kid sometimes. In fact when I started out I just seemed to blog about being a mom. But I don't feel like it's enough a driving force in my blog to really define me.

Am I a Breastfeeding Blogger? Not really, although I have blogged about breastfeeding and how that works when you're dealing with other problems.

Am I a Disability Blogger? I'm disabled, and I blog quite a lot, quite consistently about my disability. But I don't actually blog about being a Disabled Person. I blog about being Arienette Who Also Has A Disability. I suspect that those of us with disabilities will understand the difference. There's no activism drive behind my blog, I'm not trying to spread a message (except maybe 'You're not alone! You're normal!') or change anyone's minds. If minds were changed that would be nice, but it's not my driving force. I don't blog about the disabled community or the threats we face, I leave that to more experienced, articulate bloggers with the sort of audience that reaches more people than I can. Occasionally I'll blog about the sort of problems I face as a disabled mother, but I still don't feel like I'm 'saying anything' here.

Am I a Humour Blogger? Er. No. Much as I would love to be, I will never be Sara, of Sara Swear A Lot. I may do the odd post where I try to be funny but I'm not very good at it, and I usually go back to being tiring and pondersome the next time.

Am I a Feminist Blogger? Definitely not, although feminist issues do get touched on now and again (there's a post in the making which talks a lot more about feminist issues and myself as a woman and what that means for me and has meant for me).


It seems to me like a lot of the community in blogging comes from having a somewhat narrower description than I do. I have friends from a couple of communities but the blogs I follow are strangely eclectic in their subjects, and I don't feel like any of those circles are really where I'm at. So I drift from one to another and I dip my toes in and then I come back to my blog and I feel like I'm trying to catch fish with a torn net. I have no focus for my blog but PICKING one feels disingenuous. It feels like I'm trying to force myself to be something for the sake of being able to call myself 'Arienette, Disability Blogger' or whatever. And that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

Sunday 19 September 2010

A message to Achelois

You left a comment on my earlier post that has disappeared, but I received it in my e-mail and have read it. I'd love to have a chat with you about some of the things you mentioned, if that's alright, but your profile and blog have no e-mail address and I can't reply directly through e-mail to the comment. If it's alright, could you e-mail me at arienetteborealis@gmail.com.

For the rest of you, you should know that she rocks. Her comment left me with tears in my eyes and her blog is one of the ones I enjoy quietly reading through. Go say hello to her and give her a hug, she needs one right now.

Saturday 18 September 2010

Frustration, hissy fits, and hypochondria.

I'm frustrated. Really really frustrated. Logically, there is no reason for this frustration. I should feel good, I should feel happy. I have a diagnosis, I have a referral. A small voice in my head keeps saying 'Come on now, what more do you want?' I listlessly scroll through the ARC webpage on Joint Hypermobility, clicking, reading half a page and then pushing away in frustration. The more and more I read, the more I look through pages, the more I think, the more I believe and simultaneously disbelieve, that I've been under-diagnosed. Part of me is screaming 'THIS CAN'T BE IT. THERE'S SOMETHING MORE WRONG HERE.' and part of me is muttering 'Oh shut up, please just shut up, you have your fucking diagnosis now please please just get on with your life.'

I have a 'modest' Beighton Score of 5, possibly 7 but I can't tell how far 'back' your knees are supposed to bend to 'count' [Edit: I got Mr A to have a look at the charts and then my legs, he says my knees definitely look like the ones in the picture. He also says my elbow is way more severe than the pictures of 'backwards' elbows. So that's a solid 7, meaning I only fail the pinky test!]. I am in pain almost all day, every day. I am always exhausted, I have extreme trouble with sleeping. I can't get off to sleep and then I can't wake up. I can't keep my weight up no matter what I do. I have had mysterious heart problems for years now, wherein my heart will start having palpitations or 'dips' or my chest will hurt or I'll have what feels like a heart attack. These are repeatedly dismissed either as panic attacks or without any answer. I pass the ECG, the nurse/Dr shrugs their shoulders, I am ushered out of A&E with no answers, still terrified I'm dying. This has become so bad that even when these 'attacks' are incredibly painful and even temporarily affect my vision, I no longer seek medical help.

I show SO MANY of the characteristics for people with joint hypermobility related syndromes. Even a quick browse through a list shows that. Lets have a look (I've italicised the applicable criteria):

Marfan Syndrome:

People with Marfan syndrome tend to have several physical characteristics, including:

  • being tall (I'm almost 5'7 and would have been taller had I not spent my teen years starving myself.)
  • being slim (I have never in my life been a 'normal' weight. I have always been extremely slim)
  • having long, thin arms and legs
  • having loose and very flexible joints
Other physical signs of Marfan syndrome can include:
  • small bottom jaw
  • high, arched palate (roof of the mouth)
  • deep-set eyes
  • flat feet
  • breastbone (sternum) that either protrudes outward or caves inward
  • crowded teeth
Many people with Marfan Syndrome also have vision problems. I'm short-sighted and my eyes are quite weird. They re-adjust and unfocus and re-focus much more often than is normal or necessary. This in itself doesn't necessarily mean anything but chucked in with everything else it feels significant. While I was in my appointment Dr Rheum kept asking if I had lens dislocations. He came back to it a couple of times, seeming to mull over it, which makes me believe he saw Marfan Syndrome as a possibility.


Then we have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which is what I was convinced I had up until recently.

Ehlers Danlos Syndrome:
  • skin problems
  • soft velvet-like skin
  • fragile skin that bruises or tears easily
  • stretchy rubber band-like skin
  • easy or severe bruising
  • poor and slow wound healing (usually taking weeks to months to heal)
  • small harmless bumps under the skin
  • joint problems
  • loose unstable joints causing frequent dislocations usually occurring in the shoulders, knees, hips, collar bone or jaw (see figure 1)
  • double jointedness (hyper extensible joints), extreme in some cases
  • eye problems
  • nearsightedness, occasionally extreme
That's a lot of italics. But the problem is, I could probably find a lot of italics on a list of symptoms for LOTS of problems that I genuinely DON'T have. Where do I draw the line between a logical step and an imaginative leap? I read two 'bendy-blogs' (Veronica over at Sleepless Nights and Bendy Girl at Benefit Scrounging Scum, both have Ehlers-Danlos) and SO MUCH of what they say and experience feels so close to my life. In e-mails with Veronica we've both felt that my problem extends beyond 'just being a bit flexible' but I think we've also both felt a bit helpless. She knows firsthand the issue with misdiagnosis. But again, I until I properly looked into EDS I was 100% sure I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome! Admittedly the list of symptoms is almost identical to a range of joint hypermobility related syndromes + depression, which I had, but still. If I'd been a doctor I would have diagnosed myself with it on the spot. Then I read about EDS and suddenly I think I may have it. Then I read about Marfan and I'm all 'OMG, I'm tall! And thin! and my eyes hurt! I have Marfan Syndrome!' I'm my own worst enemy, the more convinced I become that I'm sick, the more convinced I become that I'm a massive hypochondriac. How do I shut this cycle down and just move in a straight line, preferably forward?

At the base of it all, this has been a horrific year. From January when I started this blog, when I was first realising that something just wasn't right and that maybe it wasn't all in my head, to my rapidly degenerating physical health, to the highs of getting a referral to a Rheumatologist and the lows of waiting to see one, to the emotional confusion of that appointment itself.

Today I watched my 14month old do the splits on a shop floor while the assistant looked on in wonder. "Wow, is she supposed to be able to do that?" she asked, clearly shocked. My heart lurched and I felt sick. I have to find out what's wrong with me so that when the time comes, Bug doesn't have to live in pain while waiting to find out what's wrong with her. As soon as she's old enough I'll be Beighton-Scoring her. She's not living like this, and she's not living with the thought that she must just be fucking crazy. She's always going to be able to say 'Actually, it really does hurt, it hurts because I have [whatever], which means [whatever].' She's never going to endure having her spoons snatched away from her by people who are forcing her to do things because she can't explain to them what's wrong in language they accept. She's never going to leave a doctors office crying and humiliated because some patronising prick with a PhD has told her that her pain is all in her head. She's never going to consider killing herself because she believes the alternative is to live in pain and the limbo of being labelled a hypochondriac forever, with all the lack of sympathy, empathy, and compassion that comes along with that. It may be too late for me, I may have done all the damage already, but she will go through the same struggles over my cold, dead body.

Thursday 16 September 2010

There's diagnosis and then there's diag-no-help-whatsoever.

Just a short one (hopefully). Mr A is on annual leave from work until the beginning of next month, so I'm not around very much right now.

First, some amazing news! Mr A and I had discussed getting me a new laptop for a little while now. My old one had been dying for ages, then finally about 6 months ago died completely. Since then I've been using a teeny tiny 10" netbook which has been giving me major back, neck, eye, and finger strain. It also doesn't stream video or play DVD's or music or really do any of the things I relied on my old laptop to do. I also went on a self-imposed clothes-buying-ban earlier this year, in order to teach myself self restraint and hopefully to appreciate my existing (and fucking enormous) wardrobe a bit better. I've been doing really well, have not bought a single item of clothing (not including underwear, which is an essential) since I made the challenge. It's also been a tough year for me. I don't talk about my depression much anymore, but coming out of it has been an ongoing battle, and I don't win every day. But slowly slowly, bit by bit, I'm learning to treat myself well, and I'm learning to love myself and my baby. No. I'm learning that I DO love my baby. And I'm learning that I'm human, that no one expects the things from me that I think they do, that no one WANTS me to work myself into the ground, that no one thinks I deserve to be punished for the rest of my life for not living up to the impossibly high standards I set myself. My self-flagellation knows no bounds, really. But I'm learning to ease up on myself with the help of Mr A. I'm learning that when I inevitably fail because I've set myself yet another Promethean task, that actually, it's ok. I don't need to weep and gnash and beat my back with willow branches. But I'm not quite there with the loving-thy-self thing yet. Which is why when Mr A said he thought we should get me a laptop and because of all the things I mentioned above, then he said I could spend £500 on it (I had originally set the almost impossibly low limit of £350, forced up from £300 by the lack of ANYTHING in my original price range) and then said I could buy the lusciously pretty pink one I'd stroked and cooed at the day before in PC World, I told him 'No, nevermind, I don't want one. I don't deserve it.'

Luckily for me, I have a husband who knows I'm an idiot and every now and again he does things for my good. He came home from being sent out to fetch some vegetables with a laptop under his arm. Not just any laptop, but a beautiful pale pink top-of-my-price-limit laptop with enormous keys and a DVD drive and the ability to stream video's and it's perfect and I love it and I nearly dropped the pan of potatoes I was cooking and then I cried a lot. And then he panicked and threatened to take it back if I didn't stop being so bloody silly. And then I TOLD him to take it back, and he refused. So right now I'm typing on my lovely new laptop and it is lovely and all the keys work and I can use it without my hands cramping up and I love it and I could cry.


Secondly, good news and bad news. The good news? I saw the Rheumatologist and I have an official acknowledgement of hypermobility. The bad news? The appointment didn't quite go as well as I hoped it would. I forgot loads of stuff and as a consequence I don't think I really gave him a great picture of my condition. Like he kept asking about my hands and we'd just been talking about bendiness so I said my hands were fine, completely forgetting that while my hands aren't actually very bendy, that's kind of EXACTLY the problem. They cramp up incredibly fast any time I have to hold them in any position, especially around an object, for example while peeling veggies or writing. I also don't think I did justice to the constant exhaustion or what he referred to as 'clunking' and I refer to as all-my-god-damn-limbs-going-where-they're-not-supposed-to. He asked if I dislocate, and because I don't 'officially' dislocate (although sometimes I really wonder how I'd know. Sometimes my limbs do things that make me feel ill to look at, and it hurts, but 90% of the time I don't have to physically push them back in.) I had to say no, and I felt like once he heard that he kind of stopped listening. I know I'm nowhere close to the worst case of hypermobility he's seen, but I can click both hips in and out of their sockets like a light switch, for gods sake, and walking out of there with a bad 80's A.R.C leaflet and my name on the end of a 6 month long physio waiting list (I won't live in the area in 6 months time, by the way. Awesome stuff, no?) felt like a massive, massive disappointment.

On one hand, I feel validated. There's a bit in the leaflet that says 'You're not a hypochondriac. You're not making this up. Don't believe that.' and it's so helpful to read. To hear. to have a doctor go 'Yes, ok, there's something wrong, let's work on managing it.' is amazing. But at the same time he didn't address any sort of alternative pain management (except to tell me to take ibuprofen with my co-dydramol to help with swelling) and he just seemed to want me out of his office as quickly as possible. I know I should be grateful but I felt let down. I wanted answers. I don't know if I was just being unrealistic but I wanted something more than what I already knew and a joke of a referral for physio.

There's also a tiny part of me that died when he said 'No, this won't go away, it won't ever get better. You just have to manage it now.' I think until then and possibly still even a bit now, in my heart of hearts I hoped there'd be some magical House moment and he'd figure out I had some rare but entirely curable problem and I needed to take 3 spoons of grape juice an hour and then clap twice and I'd be cured and I'd go back to living like a normal human being who isn't already approaching her sell-by-date. But there was no House moment. I'm broken. I'm going to stay broken. From now until I die it's just a matter of keeping me patched up however we can.

In the last of the news I saw the dental surgeon. I have serious dental problem. Recurring infection in my bottom right wisdom tooth has caused bone loss around the tooth, and both the bottom right and bottom left wisdom teeth will need to be removed. I'm awaiting a call for them to schedule the surgery, I'm just praying they can schedule it for a monday. Mr A works Thursday-Sunday and is off work Monday-Wednesday and not having anyone else nearby means that he has to be the ones who looks after me and drives me home and looks after the kiddo. The longer I have to recover the better, but if they schedule it for a Wednesday it will be disastrous. I can barely take care of us both under normal circumstances. The day after surgery it'll be impossible.

Oh life.

Saturday 11 September 2010

House of the Rising Temperature

I am absent. I came down with the worst stomach bug I've ever had in my life on Wednesday, Mr A had to take two days off work to look after me except that he got sick so instead of looking after me he fell asleep a lot and then didn't eat the food I dragged myself out of bed to make us. Because it was burnt. Because I was trying not to pass out while I cooked.

So I have stuff to say, but I will say it after I'm feeling a bit better. I haven't had a proper meal since Tuesday and I've lost 4lbs, which is fucking annoying and made me cry, because for the first time in months I was over 93lbs. I am so weak and tired, even though I've been over the worst since Wednesday night (when we had to call an ambulance because I passed out, hit my head and was convulsing on the floor. Good times.) I'm still so out of it and haven't recovered myself properly.

Somebody wrote on my facebook status 'You get sick so often!' and I felt taken aback, then defensive, then like screaming. Rightly or wrongly, I read it as 'Shut up, you attention seeking bint, and take some vitamins.' Yes, I do get sick so often, because my body is incapable of taking care of itself. Thanks for the unnecessary reminder. Will you let George Osbourne know? Only he seems to think that I don't spend every day of my life in pain, with the intermittent day of vomiting so hard and so often that I shit myself. He seems to think I just need a good kick up the bum to get me back out into the workforce.

Isn't it good that there are other people around to tell me about my life? I'd get it all wrong otherwise, wouldn't I?

Friday 3 September 2010

Confusion and superhecticbusy-ness

First of all, I have FOLLOWERS, y'all. Actual people who like, follow my blog. I have two of them. Don't get me wrong, I'm incredibly grateful that anyone feels I'm worth reading, but I won't pretend it doesn't surprise me. I mean, seriously guys. Why?? I'm not that interesting! I spend all my time rambling about painkillers and babies! Also, I consistently forget to spellcheck my posts before posting them!


We've been superhecticbusy recently. There's been a lot of stress. First of all, we had a dairy challenge for Beast. Basically what this entails is exploring the severity of a child's allergy by bit-by-bit exposure and gauging the reaction. There are seven steps, the first being rubbing a drop of milk onto the child's skin, then a drop of milk on their lip, then 0.5ml of milk in 10ml of water, then on and on leading up to a full milk feed, over the course of about 5 hours. We were due to start at 9:30. We arrived on time and were shown into a children's ward. Immediately, we were nervous. We'd been expecting some sort of medical clinic....off into a side room for the tests and then out into a playroom or something while we waited for a reaction. So sitting in a ward, with cots and emergency buttons and oxygen masks....it made me feel a bit sick. There was nothing for her to do except sit in her cot and play with toys or sit in the small playroom and play with toys. I put one of the sides of the cot down completely and sat on the cot with her to make it seem less scary for all of us, but it was hard. There were sick kids all around, a baby not much older than Beast, with an IV hooked up to her foot, suffering with an unknown infection, a boy toddling around with his arm in a sling, his little face white and pinched. I'm not afraid of hospitals, as such, but I don't like being in one with my young baby. No parent wants to see their child in hospital, no matter how non-emergency the situation is.
In the end, after making us wait until 11 with no explanation as to the delay, she started reacting to the first stage of the testing, but they pushed us through to stage 3 and tried to push to stage 4 before we put our foot down and said we were taking her home. We go back in 6 months to repeat the whole ordeal and hopefully by then she'll be allergy-free.

We're having a load of problems with our Housing Benefit claim. First of all they took 4 months to approve our backdated claim, citing that we should have just claimed earlier, ignoring that Mr A works full-time and that I can't really make it down to the office and sit there for a few hours waiting for someone to stamp a few bits of paper. I don't know why, but the air-conditioning in that building does something weird to me. Every time I go there I get dizzy and almost pass out. I actually get the same thing in Asda. It's really strange.
Anyway, so we finally got approved for the backdated payment for a SIGNIFICANT amount of money, and then we get a letter saying, word for word, 'We were going to pay you on Sept 6th but now we've stopped your whole claim'. Like, wtf. WTF. That is some cold shit. COLD. They've put a stop to not only the backdated payment, but also all our ongoing payments, until we supply PROOF that we're not behind on our rent, and a copy of our tenancy agreement. They already have a copy of the contract so I don't know WHY they need that again, but as far as proof of being paid-up with our rent, why couldn't they have made a to minute phonecall to our property managers? Surely that would have cost less time and money than the process of stopping the entire claim, sending out separate letters and then re-starting the claim, including re-paying the missed payments that will amount while they're faffing about? Not to mention that this is going to put a financial strain on us while we're not getting our payments. Yes, wah wah wah, poor me and my free money from the government. But seriously, they're creating work and expense for themselves for no reason. Aren't they supposed to be trying to save money? They seem to find a problem with our claim every 6 weeks. If I didn't know better I'd think they had nothing better to do.

We had our property inspection on Wednesday, so we've spent most of our spare time in the last few weeks trying to clean the place up and make it presentable. Housework falls by the wayside for me, because I never have the spare time and spare energy. I do what I can to stay on top of the laundry and nappies (diapers) and dishes, but almost everything else doesn't really get done. We have painted wooden stairs that need to be washed instead of just vacuumed, a small, cramped bathroom which would need to be emptied of about 10kg's of storage before I could clean it, a kitchen that is as devoid of useful storage space as it is over-burdened with space-swallowing-furniture, and we have a lot of 'stuff'. Just stuff that is accumulated over the years. I'm a terrible pack rat. Mr A has a box of colored pencils and random teenage-boy-desk-crap that despite NEITHER of us using or touching for over three years now, I cannot bear to throw away. I'm just convinced that one day, probably the very day after I throw it away, we will DESPERATELY need something in that box.
This all makes for a house that is pretty tough to clean, even if you are in full possession of your physical well being, and DON'T have a toddler who is never happier than when she's causing mayhem and won't allow you out of her sight for longer than two minutes.

Anyway, after next Friday Mr A is off work for 2 weeks, woo hoo! We're still trying to figure out if we want to take advantage of the time off and go away somewhere. We're thinking about a day in Paris, but it may prove to be a little expensive for just a day out, especially when Mr A isn't actually 'into' museums and the like. It'd be cheaper to stay in England or go to Ireland, but not quite as romantic or interesting. It may all be a moot point if the benefits don't get sorted out, as we may find ourselves short of money at the worst possible time. Bloody typical!

Thursday 2 September 2010

It's never about what it's about.

I'm a bit sad today. I started an argument with Mr A over 'nothing'. I still don't really know what it was about, he didn't bite though, thank god, so all is good in the Borealis household. I'm just feeling insecure and confused.

I had my first afternoon away from A.B with a friend. It was less than three hours but it was great. I dressed nicely and A.B's Godmother and I had a fabby time wondering and chatting and not having to pause awkwardly every few minutes to chase the baby, or not being able to go into half the stores because of the pushchair.

We also had the property inspection today, which is why there's been quite from me recently, as I've been working my tiny, bony ass off trying to get the house in a presentable state. It's still not guest-ready, but at least it wasn't going to have the landlord cancelling our contract. However I did massively over-do it, and if it wasn't for the painkillers I wouldn't have made it.

Having painkillers is good and bad. Good, because I'm starting to live what is approaching a normal life. Bad because the more normal I feel, the more normal I assume I am. You know the mentally ill person who takes their meds, feels better, so decides they're cured and goes off their meds, only to go off the rails? That is LITERALLY me. I used to play chiken with my anti-depressants, forgetting to refill my prescription and going three days sans medication. This week I went through withdrawal and FUCK ME SIDEWAYS. That SUCKED. I wasn't even withdrawing off anything strong, but shit a brick. It was horrific. I never want to do that again, so despite my little cat-and-mouse game with myself (going from a pill every 3-4 hours to 2 pills in over 24) not going so wrong until very near the end, I will be refilling my prescriptions at the appropriate times from now on. Although there is still a voice in my head that goes 'You're just a massive, drug-addict hypochondriac. The painkillers 'work' because THERES NO PAIN. Co-dydramol? That's basically just paracetemol. You're MAKING IT UP.' And this is hard to deal with, because, guys? I actually kind of am a drug addict. Like, not in a terrible, heroin-mommy kind of way. I don't even drink. But I have an addictive personality and I have always always always preferred my state of mind to be altered. I don't even care what way it's altered. I just do not like being in my own headspace. It's uncomfortable for me. I've been taking substances to address the difference between where I am and where I want to be (read: anywhere else) since I was 12. A decade and a lot of bad experiences is a WHOLE LOT of time to think that everything is really just in your head. It doesn't help that my problems are not, as far as I can tell, quantifiable to me. As in, I'm not covered in postules. I'm not bleeding from my eyeballs. I look fine. Skinny and tired, but fine. I limp a little, but I look fine. Until and unless a Doctor does a magic test and tells me that I am Definitely and Completely Surely broken in some way, it doesn't matter what my body does...I'm just not going to believe it.