Pocatello or bust!

A decision has finally been reached. I am sure now. The decision feels good. I don't have the confusion, conflict, and unrest in my mind. This decision feels good. I get to move back to Idaho, be near friends and family, and get to go to school.

Before when I was going back and forth between Idaho and Eugene I had so much anxiety. I couldn't even pack or clean stuff up and get ready to pack. Now I'm ready. And did I mention that I feel really, really good about this?

A two-post day

Today is apparently a day of thought requiring two posts. You thought you were safe and then, wham! Another post!

If you could see into my head I think it would look something like under my bed - random junk that I've knocked under there in the night, dust bunnies, and more dog hair around the edges than I would ever admit. It's been a quiet day here - my brother is working - and I've been doing a lot more thinking. Yes, I am still getting rid of my Christmas tree ornaments - this is a new topic. Well, not really a new one exactly.

It's just that in the past few days between all my facebook friends there has been an accumulated more-than-usual amount of Boise talk. There have been a bunch of old debate team photos posted. (It really has been ten years!) And a friend has been updating lots of Boise goings-on. Good thing another friend wrote about it being only 27 degrees there yesterday or I might be on a Greyhound right now. Okay maybe not, they are kind of like a public toilet on wheels.

I just miss my hometown so much! I call it this because I lived there twice as long as I lived anywhere else and I feel like I grew up there. So I'm homesick. And it sucks because I can't see my way to getting back there any time soon. I've already covered this: I can't get financial aid from Boise State so I can't go to school, so then there is no progress, no goals, no future. And I've told myself this over and over. If you think I'm repetitive to read, just imagine being in the dust bunny head.

So sometimes I think growing up means knowing that immediate gratification is not always conducive to long-term happiness. I'm now grown up enough to realize it - but not grown up enough to not pitch a fit about it.

Nothing is ever official...

You know when you wake up, on your own, from deep and satisfying sleep and you just feel so good? That's how I woke up this morning. I spent a large portion of yesterday laying on my bed in the fetal position because I was sick, but this morning I awoke feeling so good. Oh, it's lovely.

And I've had some random thoughts.

First, I am rethinking my decision to move to Idaho. More on that as it develops.

Next, I've been thinking about my Christmas tree, still up yes. I was going to take a picture of it for this post, but I thought it would just be too depressing to see this sad Christmas tree in what is practically April. The tree has barely shed a few needles. It's actually quite amazing. But that's not what I've been thinking.

I've been thinking that I will get rid of my ornaments. For years before I got married, I collected ornaments. I just never used them. The first year I was married we broke them out and had a lovely Christmas tree. We also started collecting ornaments with the year on them.

This year I put up the tree mostly to prove to myself that I could do Christmas just for me. And then I rarely looked at the tree. Every other year I spent so much time just staring at the tree, enjoying it.

So I'm thinking I need to get rid of the ornaments. I think part of why I haven't been able to take the tree down is because I couldn't face putting them all away with love and care for another year. I'll keep the beautiful ornament that changes colors that my grandma gave me, and maybe the star, but then I'll donate them. Then I can start anew having released myself of all of that baggage. It's got me looking at all my possessions in a whole new light.

My head hurts

So I foolishly told myself a few hours ago, "You can tough this one out, you're goingto sleep anyway." My migraine is so bad it keeps waking me up. I finally took something. I think my eyeball might explode out of its socket. I am so sure of this I don't think I will freak out if it happens. And even though light is the last thing I need right now, I have to write about what keeps running through my mind. This is my free therapy, after all.

Today I saw pictures of Boise and I had a very visceral response. I wanted to be there; I wanted to go home. But unfortunately it is not in the cards. If I am to progress in my life, I need to go to school. I want to become a paramedic in the next two years! Not just to ward off poverty while working on becoming a doctor, but because I really want to do it. And I can't do that there. Boise State won't give me financial aid because I already have a master's degree. Thus, no progress.

My mom has pointed out that Idaho State University in Pocatello is expanding their medical programs. If they would give me financial aid, that might be an option. Maybe the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls.

But really what makes the most sense is staying in Eugene. I am guaranteed financial aid, I've already checked out the paramedic program, and there are doctors here that could help me. They have a great public transportation system and I have no car. Hell, I have food stamps here. But I just don't want to be here.

I'm inevitably and always a planner. Unless I am at least thinking about a plan for the future, I find myself going nuts. I'm worried I am so mired in the past that I can't plan for the future. But the thing is I don't like my options. Now what?

It's official - I'm moving again!

After much thought and deliberation, not to mention consultations with sage women, I have decided to move back to Idaho and stay with my parents in Heyburn. They were generous enough to offer. Now I think I'm smart enough to accept. My brother/roommate and I are both moving.

This is all going down in the next couple of weeks. I feel overwhelmed with what must be accomplished in such a short period of time. It's one of those situations where there is so much to do you don't know where to start. So I thought I'd start by blogging about it.

Good start.

A note on resilience

I would have given you all of my heart
But there's someone who's torn it apart
And he's taken just all that I have
But if you want I'll try to love again
Baby, I'll try to love again, but I know...
The first cut is the deepest
Baby I know
The first cut is the deepest
But when it comes to bein' lucky, he's cursed
When it comes to lovin' me, he's worst...
-Sheryl Crow via Cat Stevens

This song has been popping up a lot in my iPod shuffle. And as to why I have the Sheryl Crow version instead of Cat Stevens, when I clearly prefer Cat Stevens, I can only guess.

But the thing is, it's got me to thinking. Oh, no.

The lyrics say specifically "the first cut". This is not my first cut. By far - and I'll have no comments from the peanut gallery on that one.

Yet it is the deepest and there is no quick bouncing back. My relationship with my husband was not even my longest lasting relationship either. But clearly the most important.

I have unfortunately received some romantic attention at times. The last time was last week on the bus. I smiled my fakest smile and said, "It was nice talking to you" and pointedly put back on my headphones. Even if we were to overlook the universal policy of not attempting to meet someone on a public bus, I have no interest.

And I think that makes sense given my physical state of being, oh yeah, and the whole mental state of being. I don't question that. What I question is my resilience in general.

Obviously I haven't just bounced back from that car crash. Currently, I can't seem to shake some weird sickness that makes me soooooo sleepy. (That part is actually really great - I mean the sleeping again part - but it seems to be only for about three hours a time, so kind of a mixed blessing... eh, I'll take it.)

And what I can't shake are the ongoing fantasies about winning the lottery, setting myself up in my dream house in Boise that has everything my dogs and I could ever want (including a pool for the dogs and a bookshelf full of TV on DVD for me including Dexter and Weeds and Fringe and Lost and... I'll stop here), and then I will only have to leave my santuary to buy clothes in New York from the spring and fall collections. I would write and study medicine and see my friends and family on select occasions that I organize, making me a lousy friend but a happy person.

I'm new to aging and I wonder if as more of our cells die, as more of our neuro-connections are lost, are we more like statues than like Play-doh?

Just an update

Is anybody really good at waiting? Can anyone really say, I can wait and wait and wait and it doesn't bother me in the slightest? Can anyone say, I love to wait in long, slow moving lines, and I love waiting for the most important letter of my life to date in an endless cycle of pain and hope and frustration?

I was in a state of panic this morning, waiting for my Klonipin to kick in and fidgeting like crazy. It was 6AM, but I figured business hours on the east coast. I called the company that's been helping me with my claim (Allsup) and talked to someone about... I don't know just getting reassurance.

First, I was worried that since I never got a written letter from the judge asking me to go to that evaluation thing (from a few weeks ago), that maybe they didn't have my address or something. I did read it into the court records, but hey, this is the social security administration. But I was told this was actually common that the request for an evaluation go to my representative rather than to me directly.

Second, I wanted to know if they knew anything I didn't know. I was told that basically the judge will make a decision, it will go to the decision writers, then it will go back to the judge for review, etc. This whole deal could take 3-5 months from the date of my hearing and we've just hit the three month mark.

My brain is a scrambled mess and I can't concentrate on anything. And that is what's going on with me.

Sleeping beauty awakes

I have slept since Friday afternoon, waking up every few hours to take care of my dogs or refill my water bottle. I can only explain this by saying I think my body just gave out. It was done.

This morning I awoke at six and I awoke with purpose. I worked on cleaning up my room and even started some laundry. I feel a little better, but not great. And that's okay. I'll probably go take a bath and maybe even go back to sleep.

It's funny - one of the lessons I've learned from all of this pain and all of the ordeals of the past four years is that life really is what happens to you when you are making other plans. I'm a linear, sequential, concrete thinking person. Not having a plan drives me nuts! But I've come to accept that my plans pretty much don't mean squat.

Take spring break, for instance. I had it all planned out - everything I wanted to accomplish and even all the TV I wanted to watch. Well, a couple of days in and my to do list is out the window and I haven't even watched TV in like three days! This is possibly a record!

My mood swings of late have been pretty severe (yeah, as if you hadn't noticed!) but I have to say that right now, in this moment, I feel pretty okay. I can live with that. :)

Punctuated sleep

Yesterday morning I got on a bus early and went to school and took my last final of the term! I was able to sell a lot of books back and now I have enough money to refill a prescription and take my brother out for his birthday! Good stuff.

I'm in the middle of a sort of mixed blessing situation. Since hiking around Thursday and spending time on so many busses, the pain is really, really bad. And now I am sick! Not quite sure what is wrong with me and it totally sucks that the LCC Clinic is closed for spring break. I've had a 100 degree fever and I have this deep lung cough and everything hurts, especially my head. And when I got off the bus yesterday I puked right in front of it! I was so, so, so embarassed - like junior high embarrased. But then I started coughing and weezing while puking and I aspirated some of it and couldn't breath and the embarassment was replaced by panic.

But then I came home and after doing some things I slept! Oh how I slept. I would wake up every couple of hours, but I would soon go back to sleep. At one point I woke up and my brother was watching The Wedding Singer and there was no way I couldn't not watch it with him. But I will soon be back to sleep. It is so wonderful!

I have lots to do in the next few days. I have a writing assignment for my new little job. I have a friend's book to edit. I need to repair my room from the mess created on that yucky day reported on the last post.

But if I can sleep, man oh man, I am going to sleep. Hells yes.

Brook and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

"I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day."

This is the first page of one of my favorite children' books, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. And it happens to be a really accurate assessment of my day.

I didn't sleep last night and so at 8AM I decided to get on with it and go run my errand - dropping off a payment to the electric company. People had told me this building was notoriosly hard to find, so I called ahead and got directions from a customer service rep. I took two busses and then got off where this place was supposed to be and it wasn't there.

I wandered around for about a half an hour looking, walking up these very steep streets for blocks and blocks, around in circles. I stopped a man on the street and asked for directions. His directions were not helpful. I was uphill, sucking wind (because this was really more physical exertion than I've had in maybe years) and finally called the place again to see if they could describe the building, tell me what color it was, anything. I finally got there, got it done, and then wandered around some more until I found a bus stop. Pain scale - maybe a 7.

So I wasn't mad or even that frustrated. I actually felt like a kicked dog, "this is my life, only bad things happen." I sat at the bus stop and cried until the bus came. Then I wiped my tears and tried to act tough.


When I got home I opened the door to a disaster area. The place looked ransacked - even my bedroom. The blinds in the livingroom were pulled off. The dogs were in a frenzy and there was a spot where someone had peed. I knew what had happened.

There is this crazy woman who follows Steven around and in the name of trying to be friends basically stalks and harrasses him; she harrassed me one day as well. She keeps coming over, banging on the door, and then if we don't answer she peeps in all of our windows, even our bedrooms. She's admitted before that she's done this. One day she accidentally got the wrong apartment and that person called the police and the police came and had a talk with her. Later today she was pacing with her dogs behind our apartment. When I get this all substantiated I'm calling the police and getting a restraining order.

By this time I had a migraine from not sleeping for about 24 hours. I took some drugs and tried to go to sleep. Then the landscapers came and mowed the lawn right outside my window, used their weed-wackers, etc. No sleep for me.

My brother came home from work and since he is tall, he worked on re-attaching the blinds, and he fixed them. We picked up the mess in the livingroom.

Then my day turned around! I got a call from a man about a writing job. I had replied to his ad on craigslist. He needed a writer to write articles for his website. I had sent him a writing sample that I pulled together from a microbiology lab, and crossed my fingers. He liked my work! He gave me the job! I have an assignment to work on after I get done with finals. I'm am getting paid next to nothing (and it's just going to be him paying me, so no worries about messing up my social security claim) but I don't even care about that. My writing is getting out there! So freaking cool!

So here is the link if you want to check it out. It's kind of different, but I'm cool with it.

www.antioxidants-health-benefits.com

What's really great about this is that I don't feel so much like a kicked dog now. As my brother said, I got a win!

"Really!?!..."

There's this great segment on SNL called, "Really!?! With Seth and Amy". Click the post title for clip and some giggles.

But there comes a time when Seth and Amy should sit down with you and ask the same question. Or at least maybe you should sit down with yourself and ask, "Really!?!"

So here goes...

So you thought your final was on Wed and you also thought Wed was the 15th and now you have to beg your math teacher to let you take it anyway when you realized at 11PM that night how much you'd screw up? Really!?! And you have nothing to do all day except lie in bed and watch Hulu and occasionally do homework? Really!?!

And instead of folding the small batch of towels on your bed you've decided to start sleeping with them instead, I mean, really!?!

And now you have even more people offering help, including your parents offering to take care of you all summer and you're still not accepting anyone's help? Really!?! Really!?! Wow.

Okay, this might sound a little harsh, but I am in so much pain tonight and am so frustrated with myself that I have to ask myself - no the universe - really!?!

An ode to memory

The sense most strongly linked to memory is smell. The amygdala is in charge of emotional memory. One of the places in the brain that processes smell is also the amygala. There are so many ways our brains creates, stores, and retreives memory that it's no wonder that they are so confusing, so subjective.

Last night when I was taking my dogs out for "last call" I smelled lilacs. It was the faintest whiff and it was gone. I was flooded with memory. I remembered my first spring at my wonderful house on Maplewood Drive. I remembered getting married in the spring of 2005. And I remembered how 361 days later I drove out of the alley behind our bank and turned left - the wrong way on a one way street. I remembered that it was such a beautiful day.

Now sitting here three yeears and 343 days later, those days seem so far away. It's like that part of my life is less than a memory - just some distant myth so disconnected from me that I scarcely recogniize it. There is only now, day to day, running on empty and wishing I could just sleep until life magically gets better.

I think that pain makes a little whole in your soul, and you crawl inside it, and the world gets smaller and smaller and smaller until there is nothing left of the before time. There is only now, lonely and alone.

PS I wish I could make this post "scratch and sniff". There is google image search; there could be google scent search. And then, ah the smell of lilacs.

Shut up, brain!

My mind is running about a million miles per hour. It just won't shut off. I really need that drug I am still missing. Nothing but a specific class of drugs will help. I've had this problem for years now and I know how long it can go and how far. The last time it was this bad I was averaging about 3-4 hours of sleep a night for about two months.

Now I am trying everything I can think of to help. But inevitably even if I fall asleep around 1 or 2 AM, I wake up a couple of hours later and can't get back to sleep. Later on in the day I will sleep when I am so exhausted I can't keep my eyes open. But it is for a few hours at a time. And falling asleep at 6PM and waking up a couple of hours later is likely perpetuating this cycle.

And it's not that I'm not tired. I really, really am! It's just that my brain won't give it a rest!

When I finally do have access to health care again it's going to be like a shopping spree: I'll take this drug, and this one, and this procedure, and this provider.

But I'm having a hard time hanging on until the someday becomes today.

My non sequiturs

I realize that my postings have been pretty random of late - a stream of consciousness at times. I've become of lover of blogging; I love putting your stuff out there into the internet universe and being so open at a pretty anonymous level.

The reason I've been all over the place lately is because if I wrote about what's going on in my life day-to-day it would be this daily bitch fest on how miserable I am, how much pain I am in, and how depressed I am. I would probably also write often about how I wished I lived alone (like the book I loved as a kid).

But I am really trying instead to sharpen a clarity of self and to acknowledge the hope I am daring to feel.

I have to admit I've been indulging in magical thinking lately. I could tell you what I would do if I suddenly won $25,000 or $100,000 or millions.

Except I am pretty sure my answers are not in a lottery ticket. Instead they are inside me. So don't mind the rambling 3AM posts. I'm just trying to figure it all out.

My dream

This post is not about a dream as in "a wish your heart makes". Instead, it is about the strange dream I had last night/today/when I last slept.

In my dream I was back at the Van Buren house, the one I moved into with my sister upon first arriving in Eugene. There was an attic. In the attic was all this stuff. I had to go through it and decide what to throw away and what to put in the free box and what to keep - but the goal was not to keep much of anything.

It seemed the more I got rid of, the more stuff kept accumulating. There were things I had gotten rid of before and during my move to Eugene. There were a few things I have now.

People came and went, sometimes family, sometimes strangers. But one of the weirdest things were the corpses. I kept finding dead people in the mounds of stuff. They were friendly enough. The spoke to me, weren't at all decomposed (nothing like what you see when you watch "Bones"), and they didn't mind the fact that I had to toss them in the dumpster with the garbage.

It seemed I couldn't wake up from this dream. There was just more and more and more stuff to go through.

I don't think you have to be a psychologist to understand what I was processing in this dream. The sub-conscious is fantastic!

Gift

The gifts in my life have been complicated.

One Christmas I received an incredible, beautiful set of Mikasa Palatial Platinum china from a man I used to love. It came with a black eye.

Another Christmas I got my first car, a Ford Taurus that came with a key chain with a hippee-looking flower. But more than that it came with validation from my parents for everything I had done for my family.

Another time I received a copy of a book I had written with a dear friend; she'd had it printed for me and her, a limited release of a couple of years' work.

But I think the best present I've ever received was on my first wedding anniversary. My husband had learned to play on his guitar and sing one of my favorite songs. I received the package in the mail - a CD he had recorded with a friend's help in professionally mixing it.

I couldn't find a good link for you to hear the song. But seek it out. Bob Dylan. "To Make You Feel My Love."

I'm not sure why I wanted to write about this, to share this with everyone. Maybe to thank my grandma for the beautiful card of encouragement. Maybe to continue to manifest that the universe be kind to me and give me the gift of my life restored, renewed. Maybe there's no big reason at all.

Good morning and good night

I think I can go to sleep now. I've been going to sleep at about 7AM everyday. The manic-ness is keeping me awake (there's still a drug I need and haven't gotten). I can try over and over again to fall asleep at night and it doesn't matter; my brain is on overload, going a million miles an hour on about every subject.

Eugene smells so wonderful in the morning. I've never smelled anything like this place. And the water is incredible, by the way.

Right now I am smelling the fragrance of my cocoa butter body butter from the Body Shop - ever since I got really poor I've been rationing what I have left. But that's not the only reason why I only put it on when my skin is red and cracking. This scent reminds me of my husband. He gave me some for a particularly great Christmas in 2006. I had a nightly ritual of using it and the aroma takes me back to those days. It's hard.

It's hard because I have this beautiful future mapped out. With all that hope finally kicking in again I've made some plans. My claim is going to go through. I'm manifesting this. Then I will get better. I'll start the EMT program and then the next year the paramedic program. I'll work and take the classes I need to get into medical school, while practicing medicine through my job. Also key, I won't be impovrished for the next decade.

It's a great future and I wish I was sharing it with him. With my medical issues not taking it's daily pound of flesh maybe we'd have a real chance at making a marriage.

I'm finally exhausted enough to sleep, I think. I should probably just go to bed.

"You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one..."

I imagine a new place to live. I can afford it because my social security claim went through. I imagine getting all the medical care I need - pain mananagement, psychiatric care, everything. I imagine that this enables me to make a real home for myself again.

My home has an ample living room and two bedrooms so I can have guests come stay with me. My home has a backyard, even just a little one, where I can play with my dogs everyday.

I imagine a neighborhood that is lovely and close to everything I want and need. I imagine being able to walk around it. I imagine practicing yoga once again. I imagine myself becoming fit, whole.

I imagine engaging with my friends again, having them over, maybe having some potlucks, with dance parties.

I imagine a new couch and decorating with Cezanne and Gauguin, bright colors to reflect my new life. I imagine hope springing eternal.

What do I know?

Hi. How are you? One of my readers recently commented on my honesty in this blog. Tonight, at midnight-thirty, I'm going to continue the trend because this blog is all the therapy I can afford right now.

I had finished my math test Wednesday and after I turned it in I asked the teacher for my last test, as I hadn't been in class since the last test. She kindly asked if there was anything wrong and said she'd missed me in class. She wasn't trying to be a snarky professor about it; she actually cared. I just said everything was fine, smiled, and left.

I got to thinking.

It would be good for me to attend her class regularly and turn in homework regularly. But I'm not going to do it because taking two buses, sitting in a horrible chair for an hour and a half, then taking two buses home is torturous. Doing it for every class meeting. Unthinkable.

It would be good for me to be a better student. But I can't seem to get the motivation. I just don't care. B's are good enough for now. Next year when I enroll in the EMT/Paramedic program, this stuff isn't going to matter and I don't plan on transferring any of my classes at Lane to another college anyway.

It would be good for me to get out of the house more. But I'm more comfortable at home.

It would be good for me to eat a balanced diet of protien, carbohydrates, and fat. But I love those carbs. And sometimes all I have is the sensory pleasure I derive from the crap I eat.

It would be good for me to live my life and not watch TV 24/7. But again. One of my few simple pleasures.

Come to think of it, there are a lot of things that would be good for me. Cleaning the shit out of my house - every nook and cranny - and putting my laundry away so it doesn't take me 5 whole minutes to find two matching socks and in general putting forth more efforts toward productive pursuits.

These thoughts creep in and I have to banish them. Immediately. There's no place for guilt and shame in my "screw it" zone. And I have to protect this zone because it seems to be having a remarkable impact on my life:

I feel calmer. I feel more peaceful. I feel hope, honest to goodness hope for the first time since... maybe years? I feel myself planning a good future and having forward vision again. I feel the magical thinking (i.e. all my problems will be solved when I win the lottery) slipping away.

So I sit on my ass and slack off at school and live in clutter and sleep in sheets that frankly needed laundering a month ago, because I'm growing hope.

Hope!

It's starting to spring

I noticed something the other day when I actually left my house (I mean besides going outside with the dogs). There is evidence of spring all over Eugene. I was riding the bus over to campus and trees are coming alive. There are flowers blooming. There are smatterings of pink, white, and yellow all over this town. I snapped a couple of pictures around my apartment. Not the most dazzeling of what I observed, but the fact that it looks a bit like spring is very exciting.