Strangers

I know I've written about this a million times and it's boring already. It's boring to me. I can see why it would be boring to you. As A. says, I go in cycles. It's like my life is a merry-go-round that isn't so merry. I keep thinking if I purge if I get it down on paper it'll be gone. It'll be out of my heart and on the page. But it isn't. It doesn't work. It's yet another quick fix. It keeps getting more and more acute and clearer and clearer. Like I am getting closer and closer to the hard part in the center of the jawbreaker. At first I was licking it. It tasted sour then sweet. Sour then sweet. I take it out of my mouth to see what color it is now. The color changes with every layer. I keep licking. Then I start sucking on it in earnest. I want to get to the center. I want to get to the hard part. I want to crack it open with my teeth and get to the bottom of it until there is nothing left of it besides the sour sweet taste left in my mouth. I keep thinking that's what's happening. That I am getting closer to the truth, to the center, to the end. But I'm not. Here I am here again. It's brand new and huge in my mouth all over again.

I just saw Dr. H, the psycho-pharmacologist. I didn't want to see her. I thought she could call in some refills and call it a day. She said she hadn't seen me since December and she needed to see me before refilling anything. As I stood on the crowded 6 train holding on for dear life I started coming down. I wondered where I was going to start when I saw her. A lot has happened since December when I saw her. Too much has happened since December when I saw her. And I started thinking of the big picture which is always bad. And by the time I got off the subway at 77th street there were tears welling in my eyes. I was 15 minutes early and took that time to write about everything I thought she needed to know. That I thought I needed something stronger. That when this all started I didn't know what I was getting into and now I am in the thick of it and I am lost in the forest of illness and when I see the forest I freak out but sometimes it's unavoidable and I want something for those times. I want something for when a beer used to do the trick. Now a beer doesn't do the trick. Now a beer does nothing but make me more depressed that it does nothing.

Fine. So I went so I could get the drugs that make my life bearable. I felt dirty and nasty just knowing that was why I was seeing her. I felt like a drug addict. I felt desperate. I am. It's the truth; I am not seeing her for my physical body. And nothing she could give me will make my physical body any better. I go to her so it's easier to lie to myself. I go to her so it's not as glaring how shitty my life is. I go to her so the amount of drugs I take for my underlying condition don't make my life a living hell by the havoc they wreak on my body in the form of side-effects. And that makes me feel like a junkie. I see a therapist. I have a million doctors. I am going to her for drugs straight up no chaser. Drugs. So I can more easily lie to myself. So I can dull the pain of knowing that my life isn't how I ever imagined it would be. So I can embody what she called the 'new' normal. When all I want is the old normal.

I want a cure. I want an answer. I want to be rescued. I want to believe there will be an end to this shit. I want to wake up and know this was all a bad dream. I want to stop taking all of the drugs. All of them, from the B12 shots to the steroids, to the clonopin. I hate it all. Toxins and poison rushing through my veins at all times. In the beginning I savored the moments in the morning when I was myself, before I took the drugs. Then my body quickly adjusted and I needed to take them immediately upon waking. I would be jittery and crazed and dizzy and just wrong otherwise. Now I don't know the difference. I don't know who I am. I am lost. I am completely lost in this maze of health and loss and who I was and who I don't know I will become and who I don't know I will ever be able to become again. Lost. This is a chimichanga go home early and take a bath day. This is a day where my head feels like it's going to explode. This is one of the red letter days where it all makes sense that it makes no sense and I hate it. I hate what my life has become. I fucking hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it. What about the fairy tales I grew up on? What about how being a good person will pay off? What about hard work paying off? Where the hell did I go wrong? Or is all of that shit just a load of crap that people tell themselves to justify going on. And Briana lived happily ever after. The end. Bullshit

Lose Yourself

There are a few people close to me that are going through some shit right now. Not that they're not strong (something I hated hearing about myself when I was going through my stuff) but I still wish I could make it easier or somehow allay some of the pain or carry some of their heavy burdens on my broad shoulders. I feel their pain. I keep offering myself up but there is only so much in my power.

One of them is suffering from General Anxiety Disorder. She doesn't want to take drugs for it. I respect her decision. She jokes that I am advocating her trying the drugs because I want to make my life easier so I don't have to deal with the manifestations of her anxiety that often get displaced on to me, and all of us that are close to her. That isn't the case. I just want her life to be easier. I welcome her venting and taking out on me whatever she wants to take out on me. If venting helps her even an iota, I am am down with it. Bring it on. Again, my shoulders are broad. I can handle it.

I just think the drugs might help her. The anxiety is so paralyzing that she gets frantic being faced with a simple decision and feels blindsided when a new idea is put on the table. She can't grasp when someone is trying to make her life easier by taking something off of her plate because the anxiety rules her and her ability to process is skewed. She perceives the attempt at help as someone flipping the switch on her; she had her day planned a certain way and it must remain that way; she cannot see that someone taking care of one of her duties is helpful. Instead it makes her feel out of control. It's very hard for me to witness. It's confusing for me to receive frustration and exhaustion and anger as a response to the coveted bikini wax appointments I made for she, my cousin and I. It wasn't on her timetable for today and despite the fact that she isn't working today and had no plans she freaked out it. Any variables, anything she doesn't have complete control over or doesn't know about far, far in advance is too much to absorb. I used to get mad because I was trying to make her life easier and she was getting mad at me for it. Now that she is slowly letting me in to her world and I have become privy to the demons that plague her, she can get as angry at me for interfering as she wants. My heart goes out to her. I rarely panic. Most things roll off me. I probably should feel a lot more outrage or anger than I do. But when those emotions do overtake me, it is unbearable. Knowing that someone so close to me lives as intimately with those emotions as I do with my shoes is horrifying.

Fortunately, I can take whatever she gives me because I see life through very different glasses than she does. I get a kick out of life. I view it objectively almost as if it's a movie and I am an observer or outsider. I find it fascinating, even my own role in it, foibles and all. Her anger when it is directed at me doesn't usually doesn't affect me the way it would affect her. I don't take it personally. Knowing what she lives with makes it even less likely that I'd take any of her outbursts or erratic, unpredictable behavior personally. I just wish there was something I could offer her besides my ear. She says it helps but I want her to have more help. I am not trying to pass the buck by advocating the drugs. They were recommended by the doctor that diagnosed her disorder but she refuses to give them a shot. She is the type who won't even take an advil for a headache. In response to my queries of why she refused, she could only admit that she's afraid she'd be on the drugs for the rest of her life, a sentiment I can relate to because I will be on drugs for the rest of my life. It is scary knowing that your body is getting help and isn't functioning seamlessly and wonderfully on its own. But she has choices. While my drugs are a life or death thing, hers aren't. She could opt not to stay on them if she didn't like them. She is in control. I think she's lucky that technology has advanced to a degree that she could get help and doesn't have to live like this.

I think it's the General Anxiety Disorder that's preventing her from considering the drugs. Ironic, isn't it. There is something about remaining in control, remaining in the familiar that calms her. A drug is a scary prospect if you're coming from where she's coming from. And what if it makes her feel even worse? What if there are side effects? There are no guarantees. What it comes down to is her hands are tied, my hands are tied and all she can do is vent and all I can do is listen and let her lead hecause when she's not leading, the demons are unleashed; who knows where, me, the person who loves her most in the world might take her. That comment was obviously tongue in cheek and illuminates the graveness and tragedy of the situation. Too bad I couldn't have taken one for the team. I went through enough so others don't have to, didn't I?? Bottom line is she needs to let go and I wish she'd feel my arms around her providing a strong safety net. Bottom line is her disorder prevents her from ever letting go. And there we remain. Stalemate.