gathering

I got a little tanked on just enough xanax to cordially enjoy visiting. The part of my brain that I turned off is a bit put out about not being able to go into shock naturally on its own.

The psychiatrist was right, don't even try to get through this now without xanax. I was very ill this morning before we left. I wasn't really that anxious, no anger or depression issues yanking my chain because I turned feelings off while my head underwent a barrage of unbidden memories, almost like a life review attack, so since I couldn't feel anything, my gut took every hit and I was literally stuck at home for an hour before we could even leave. And after there was nothing left, I was able to leave the house and float an hour drive on extra xanax. By the time we arrived, there were other people coming in to talk to, plenty of little kids and diversion, wonderful smelling food, and loads of emotional distance from the source of our gathering. By the time cake was happening, I was even able to sit by him and be congenial, hang out for pictures, even laugh a bit with a few of my family.

My dad is not a bad man. He never intentionally hurt me excepting out of really bizarre forms of neglect. But he never considered how I might feel about anything my entire life during some intensely important life changing things that he had a chance to literally save me from, and even if he has reconnoitered his soul for damages, I'm not privy to anything he may feel between us. In short, a lifetime of intense pain and psychiatric diagnoses (delayed response, narcissism, and possibly dissociative) may be directly related to how he looked at me as a person and handled my life.

It's not his fault. We are all here to learn, are we not? I apparently agreed to let him practice on me, and I apparently don't fear standing up to him when it's time to handle the important things in our lives. But it's so very difficult not to let the negativity creep back in and destroy me some more, eat at me, lie to me.

That part is not on him. It's part of my own learning.

I'm glad I went. I learned today that he has lost all memory of playing chess with me. From age 10 on up a couple or three years, he insisted on me playing with him, because he wanted to learn. He practiced on me and never let me win, using me over and over as his counter moves while he figured out all the angles, as it were. Until one day I finally beat him. And then he never played me again. Those chess games were probably the only times I felt some affinity toward my dad. It was just me and him, and unlike the just me and him times where we were killing, skinning, gutting, and dismembering animals on the farm, and other very challenging chores, chess was a quieter more gentle time of a more intellectual sparring. It wasn't 'necessary'. But I was necessary as an opponent. I was his necessary opponent during a number of religious debates through the years as well. I don't know if he ever even gave that any thought, considering all the times he told me something was unnecessary and left me emotionally hanging in a wisp of breeze, easily forgotten as a real person.

There is more to this, but I'm not ready to deal with it yet.

mood

Hit me earlier today I'll have to refigure out my direction with my psychologist way later now. I think my next visit is just before Thanksgiving since so much stuff moved around on both our ends.

My dad's birthday party is tomorrow. I have nothing more to say about that.

sammies

5 years ago I stopped eating everything wheat after spending 17 days on rescue meds for anaphylactic reactions to the only common thread between 3 meals, which was difficult given that one of the meals only had wheat in the form of soy sauce. Once I purged all wheat, the reactions stopped happening, but it took awhile for my body to calm down.

I hadn't had a sandwich in 5 years until this week. I missed them terribly.

I couldn't sleep several nights ago and spent hours looking up random things popping into my mind. I started searching out gluten free sandwich bread. It is notoriously hard to get a good bread for a sandwich without wheat.

I finally sifted them down to 3. One is potato based, starting with mashed potatoes. Another is cream cheese and egg white based. The third is a buttermilk quick bread that someone figured out with the sugar left out, of all things.

That buttermilk quick bread was kinda like a denser biscuit in loaf form, but sliced better after being refrigerated, and aged well in flavor. I've had it twice now as open face egg and cheese sandwich, which, after 5 years, was heavenly.

That quick bread has variations, so next time I make it I'm going to add onion powder, grated cheese, and oregano/basil kind of stuff. I imagine it will taste a bit like a Red Lobster signature biscuit. I think that will give a really nice flavor to a sandwich next time I eat one.

I'm still doing really well with my one pint per month ice cream law, and I'm not regaining any of the weight I lost feeling ill, which is still going on. I'm managing to get veggies in every day, too, and believe it or not, holding the coffee to one cup pretty good.

Had a 6 month with my psychiatrist, and he said stick with my low dose 3x per day xanax while I'm dealing with the extra stress I'm feeling about my dad on top of still daily caring for a grandchild in my home on top of chronic health issues like severe fibro and arthritis. Took a few years to actually get a blessing on this med after years of low dose and then detox off and then clean for a couple years, but my options are so limited. It's hard to treat for both pain and mood disorder without complications, so xanax is the fallback.

My fren...

(insert every xanax meme ever)

I wanna go write more Lexx stuff but I keep winding up in minecraft. Do you know how many years I've been working around an exploded lifestyle? Yes, my entire Pinky public life, plus off and on brilliance elsewhere, and damn if I didn't just catch a shadow hit again.

Did I ever mention the time I was working on something in a draft and literally caught the page scrolling so I wrote STOP SCROLLING MY PAGE and it stopped?

Where was I? Anyway, I used to have this life where I thinked stuff and writed stuff and enjoyed wording and stuff, and now I'm running around killing mobs and bossing players and very slowly dredging out a slime farm under my shop.

I'm not sure where forward is from here, but HEY I ATE A SANDWICH TONIGHT.

Total badass.

7

Grabbing a spare moment on the run.

I guess while some things finally settle down and sift out, I'm kinda noticing that any time my remaining parent comes up in convo, which is a LOT lately, I get physically ill almost instantly. Ye olde IBS from ages ago is back and I forgot how horrible it was living like this. I wish I could turn my feelings back off like I used to do when I was younger, but as big a mess as I was back then, that's clearly not a solution.

So I am literally abstaining from food every school day until I've collected kiddo from the school pick up line, which I'm stuck in usually for 45 minutes. Several days this last week have been excruciatingly painful and horrifyingly almost too real. My only recourse seems to be fasting. I can handle my morning coffee, a small cup of milk, and a stick of cheese, and that is about it. All I have to do is think of the picture of my dad's ear being eaten up with cancer and I about throw up. Noncompliance is a bitch.

On a happy note, I've lost 7 pounds, yay! 😃

So intermediate fasting and calorie restriction it is. Maybe I'll 'get my life back', as they say. Whatever that life was. Sure wouldn't mind getting some new clothes.

I guess it would be nice of me to stop hogging the bed with the laptop so we can turn the light off now.

Predators

I caught an adult stalking a minor live on server yesterday. Turned out to be a pair of traffickers with dark web connections working very hard to influence young girls away from the server. They were consequently banned from every venue regarding the server, but then set to work on lower staff who also runs a realm that our players cross over into. So this morning we are continuing education on server safety for staff and players.

I'm literally on front lines protecting minors from future plans for rape and forced prostitution.

I wish people were more aware how prevalent this is.

the really long dreams are a relief to wake up from

I had one of those dreams again last night. There were 3 parts, each of them lengthy.

Part one was about my car and college. I had driven partway and had to stop to eat, so I parked my car and went into a restaurant. That bit is hazy, but I remember having to move my car to a nearby trailer park as it was getting dark. Somehow I was flashing back and forth between college and car, and I said one of the families in the trailer park could use a cool futuristic AI fridge I had with me. When I arrived next morning to pick up my car, it had changed to a different kind of car. So far everything is triggered by real life memories, even though they don't match anything in real life. For some reason, that city street layout isn't part of my real life now, but has shown up in several dreams.

Part two was about running into a guy in college that I'd seen on TV in a show here or there, no one big time. I was surprised about the college part, but he seemed thrilled to be back in school and wanted me to hang out. He had an RV and said he'd drive me to my car but drove me to a hospital instead, where he flirted with someone while I watched stray kids running around. Again, all from memory triggers, I've done nursing clinicals and kids are somewhat in my life again. No idea why that guy, but I did say to someone in the dream that he reminded me of my husband because something he was doing. The RV apparently came from new neighbors we met over the weekend.

Part three was awful. I was back at the trailer park and my brother was talking to me when he seized up and whispered "Help me". Then he turned into my niece and appeared to be going unconscious unable to breathe. As I started Heimlich, she wretched up handfuls of metal objects, including jewelry, padlocks, and more. Near the end, still not quite breathing, she whispered her sister's name, who had died years ago. And I woke up.

Everything was connected very differently than it is now, and no one looked like they do now. My life in the dream was very different than my life now. Even the food I ate in the restaurant was very different.

I had missed a pill and got up to take it in the middle of the night. That med can cause odd dreams, it's part of the side effects. I honestly think it just makes them more memorable because I've never slept through a night properly if I take it after supper. I've had very detailed dreams all my life and remember a lot of them anyway, but this med enhances remembering them even more.

My takeaway thoughts are I want a fridge like that, did I really kiss that guy because that was weird, and the symbology of things my niece puked up seems like things she was trying to hold back from saying, padlocks being a broad hint, but felt like that was more fitting of my dad not sharing certain memories, plus I'd been on the phone with him the day before and both nieces came up.

Funny how much stuff our brains constantly work through behind our backs. I'll probably get oh yeah moments through the day today as parts of the dream pop in and out of my mind.

I'm especially wondering why that guy, though. That was the most disconnected part of all.

it was never over, and apparently I'm not done

Or not. Doing better, I mean. I try to be an optimist, but that's a big fat lie I tell myself to survive.

I'm not surviving well at the moment.

git up and go

I think I'm getting to a better place. This last year was the best out of the last ten for sure, but still really hard. Mentally, it was hard to tell if I was starting through some fail again. I'm pretty sure now I managed to hold my position fairly steady through a major depression all summer, likely kicked in during the stupid allergy season medrol packs and breathing meds all spring before I lapsed into glucose challenges and pain spikes all summer. Having to be treated for nose bleeds from a prescription nasal spray didn't help that depression at all. More unremitting sensation on top of already unremitting sensation puts this aspienado into overload, which autoclicks me into shutdown, and having to stay 'on' and alert for kiddo was all I could do not to have mini breakdowns here and there.

But school is back, the set schedule is back, I'm strategizing all over my diet and lists again, and I think the depression is finally backing off.