guess we'll see

Maybe I can learn to cooperate with myself instead of holding the line against sabotage and feeling so flustered when that fails.

ever

First morning back home and the stress to hypertensive ratio ramped up extremely quickly after a certain combination of people happened.

I love my people. But bless their hearts, they are stupid. The catalyst is aging man and 6 year old girl butting heads and escalating over who will control during a time crunch, and the only way to cut through the crap is to out-loud them, possibly separate them, get on each of their levels and diplomatically redirect them to more efficient behavior.

I'm not the best diplomat straight out of a hospital.

But I got them reorganized and out of the house in the 2 minutes I was given. We avoided tears and crabbing and baditude all the way to basketball.

I may spend the rest of the day in bed. I'm having all the big hypertensive crisis symptoms- nausea, light headed, fatigue, headache.

Straight out of the hospital.

And the stupid thing that initiated startup earlier was me simply asking for a box. I was going to send a few more things in the kitchen to go to their house. Simple. Easy. But no, aging man had to complicate it with she didn't want blahblahblah and I said BUT I WANT. This is my house. That is not my stuff. If it doesn't leave today for MY convenience, it goes in the trash. I didn't buy it, I don't use it, if they don't want it they can throw it away. One box. It was nice of me to pack it so no one else had to, right? And it's only fair that I get shelf room in my kitchen back.

Always someone having to have it not my way. I have been trapped with other people running over me for so long. That ends now. I'm tired of it killing me.

I've worked too hard for too long in physical and psychological therapies to croak off like this. I need chill meds just to survive in this house. And dammit, it wouldn't hurt them to learn some chill, too. This is ridiculous.

I do feel a little better, but if the headache is any indication, I'm not out of the woods yet. Hospital messed up my med routine and now I get to regulate it back out. They literally had my blood pressure med dosed in half because it was written wrong somewhere (irony biting so hard during stage 4 +++ hypertensive episode lasting for days), dropped my Xanax completely till I started asking for it so it was missed entirely for 12 hours and sporadic after that, plunked me right back on higher gabapentin regimen, completely stopped my zyrtec so coming back home to allergens was pretty miserable last night with my eyes swelling up and itching so bad it was maddening, but they made sure my blood was super thinned with both shots and aspirin. They got the synthroid right, thank God, or I'd be even worse right now.

I still can't believe my cholesterol was normal. I guess cutting calories at home was doing some good.

NEW LAW. NO MORE COFFEE ICE CREAM. EVER.

That's just a really bad combo for hypertensive diabetic, no matter how well controlled I am or how small the helpings are.

The house has been quiet again for nearly an hour. I'm feeling better laying here and getting stuff off my chest. Interesting saying. Carries a whole new meaning for me now. Stress in my chest. I have to get it off.

problem solving

One of those days that started out dumping a full cup of coffee on a puzzle I'd just finished but hadn't glued yet, soaked a brand new set of ear buds, and how my phone wasn't wrecked I'll never know. I was ripping the case off so fast I nearly created a time anomaly.

The rest of the day was about navigating around a sorta bland headache.

~~~~~~~~

Wrote that yesterday. Wound up being admitted to hospital after ER visit in the evening. Haven't eaten in 17 hours (was barely eating before that), waiting on tests. Not sure how I got a private room, but the quiet is blissful.

Second admittance in less than two years for basically the same thing. Guess we'll see how the notes compare. Apparently confirming a 'reversible' condition (surgery?) that so far isn't a crisis but will likely develop into one at some point.

Still have the headache. I'd say unrelated but probably a result of high blood pressure breakout, despite being well controlled.

~~~~~~~

4 hours later. Prepped for 2 hour test. By the time it's over it'll be nearly 24 hours since I last ate. I'm actually not even hungry right now.

They said this one will nauseate me and give me a headache. 😒

This is the kind of stuff my dad refused to cooperate with 20 years ago. He made it to 90. If he'd done what they said, he might've made it past 100. He was so determined to go naturally. Well, it sucked fantastically. What a very miserable way to go. I see no reason to follow in those footsteps. A few tests, a few hours of my time, I wind up going down a little more gracefully in the end, perhaps. The amount of suffering he went through was awful.

~~~~~~~~

Me: admitted to hospital for hypertensive emergency
Food service: oh yeah, missed seeing that bolded food allergy warn both in system, on cook order, and on printout for tray assembly. Please accept our replacement meal on complete blind trust now that we've added a new even bolder caps line to your patient info.
Me: dives into purse for zyrtec and avoids tray like the plague while hoping new anxiety doesn't set more hypertension off.
Nurse: Why u no eat?  missed entire 'food fight' (I actually wasnt even upset, but heads rolled in cafeteria, I hear) because evidently food service boss doesn't call nurse about possible allergen alert on a patient sending food back

😐

So yeah, it's the next day again, hopefully my last. Still have another test that was ordered immediately upon being admitted and somehow keeps getting lost.

Otherwise my stay here has been exemplary. Meaning they left me alone and I didn't bug them.

Well, I did ask repeatedly for my usual daily dose of zyrtec and every single nurse blew it off with Here's a benadryl...

So here we are. Me not eating. Again.

Just thrilled I got coffee, actually. Finally.

I've also had to request my Xanax doses thru the day. Betcha you didn't know they withhold even mentioning it and not allowed to offer or give it unless patient asks for it because hello, controlled substance, and I'm like hello, manic here. Gimme or start hiding while I stalk you in the hallways.

Plus the humiliation of these stupid holter leads falling off repeatedly and every staff on this side of the floor has seen parts or all of my upper torso multiple times. I'm not technically allowed to snap those back on myself. 😑 Not a holter virgin, guys, I know how they work.

Exemplary.

One in particular asked me 10 times about getting a shower, and I was like um, I just had one before I came here.. I finally got one during night shift and she's back this morning, when do you want a shower. They need shower notes in their reports. "Took a shower. Compulsively cleaned entire bathroom when done." (I've even made my bed last two mornings.)

I'm also famous already for being the quietest and cleanest patient in the entire wing. They've even joked that I never call the nursing station.

~~~~~~~~~~

One hour later. Suddenly told I'm being discharged. What about that test, I say. What test, they say.

Pretty sure another hour will pass before this port and holter are removed.

~~~~~~~~~

3 hours passed.

That test will be set up as outpatient. Up to the very last minute, no one had a clue how that test never happened.

This new monitor is cool. 30 days, only two patches, and it actually triggers itself to record. I feel so futuristic. I have worn so many monitors over the last 20 years.

So very mild tropinin elevation, normal range proBNP, normal cholesterol *faint* me?, and just enough evidence to prove I really am diabetic but nowhere near being messed up.

Oh, and I like black coffee now. 😮 !!! I know! No way to explain it.

~~~~~~

Big lightning night, tornadoes down here and there. By morning we'll have ice, and then the snow comes.

So I had all that time to just think. Hours of thinking. I mostly spaced out lol, but things filtered through and I sorta just suddenly realized that Pinky the interface had been playing a game of matchmaker between a couple of mes that don't speak to each other. They are hyper aware of each other beneath my surface and fight over dominance given a situation, but they don't reason. They don't play well, maybe because they can't. I've been aware since I was a kid that a part of me vehemently loathes another part of me, and that it can be kinda scary in my head when they fight. I don't feel like describing it right now, but it's like watching literal fight with magical, or meanie torturing fearful, or like a rock of anger hurtfully ignoring the pleading tears of tender compassion.

Torn into pieces in my own brain. Pinky stepped up and found a sneaky game playing blogs to get them talking.

And it worked because here we are.

I mean, Pinky was really brilliant behind all our backs. All those ship vids. All those twisted ways of mind bending. She got us all doing it. And this week it hit us that it was about matchmaking my own two biggest messes.

And whether any of this even makes sense is beside the point. The point is they finally started blogging at each other.

Guess we'll see what comes next.

and what about the guy looking in my own window?

So I mentioned looking into windows, only knowing normal vicariously.

There is a guy I've been letting into a window in my own house. I show him a room or closet here or there, my stairways, some decor, maybe a book on a table.

But I don't let him stay long. I rush him through a messy stack of my thoughts and then push him out my window again and don't show back up for a month.

No, I don't invite him in through a door. It's always the same window.

In my house are many closed off rooms. Sometimes I open one a crack, or sometimes I have to hunt for a key and it doesn't fit. Sometimes I discover an old closet with a stuck door, and I can't get what I want off a shelf in there.

Sometimes that guy knows how to help me with the doors. I think I'm ready to open some of the rooms up.

I'm thinking how weird it is that I don't let anyone else into my head like that to help me. I tried a few times, but it got miserable, so I stopped.

I'm in a weird place right now. I have felt for a long time like I'm not really here, and then I run into stuff like this.

I knew by the time I was 22 that my heart was black. The gulf between what feels unreal and whether I care looks infinite on some days.

I'm still with Puddleglum on reality- Whatever lies we've been told, however we might be mocked, I still want the beautiful things to be real, whether I can feel them or not.

We create what we wish to exist. We are powerful that way.

back seat driver

I've been very slowly thinking through reconciliation. My inner split wasn't amicable. I ripped part of myself away, kept it away.

It's like going under anesthesia. You generally don't remember what happened, but it's only because the memory is disconnected as it's being constructed. It's literally still in there. I know because I have awakened under full anesthesia several times and have full recount of what was happening and things said, including me talking, even though I was given more to put me back to sleep. Under anesthesia we can still be responsive to commands.

There is a part of me that stays 'under' where I can't see. I don't have access. My best example is that library book I mysteriously went straight to without being able to remember the title or author. That part of me actively listens and interacts with me, but I'm not aware of it.

As I'm becoming aware that this explains why I've been looking for myself and things I've lost, I'm realizing I've had a running dialogue with myself all this time. I really do take care of me, I just can't see it happening. I've had to trust myself when I fear myself the most.

Me in my head has been like this for a very long time. I'm not sure how to reconcile. Should I even try?

I'm not sure how to trust the person who can help me. I don't know how to share dominance and let the others talk. It was so hard having to learn how to talk in the first place. The me saying this is the me 'under'. I'm just letting whatever comes out type itself while I watch.

We've been taking turns. Maybe some can tell when the words switch off. It's fun coming back later and reading it fresh.

But yeah. I'm the mean one. And I guess I'm ready to try negotiating or something. I want to retain my autonomy but it's getting more obvious that medication is the only way I'm not wrecking things up.

obliviously being oblivious

Me: This thing happening on the side bothers me very much.

Him: *diversion into what line I crossed. again.*

Me: This isn't about that, this is my feelings and I'm trying to finish saying my words.

Him: *feelings wind up being his about nonsimilar but comparable situation*

Me: *arg* I just wanted some empathy, I guess.

Him: Oh, that. *silence*



Oh, well.


*headphones on again while I'm back in minecraft*

Seriously, I do believe sometimes minecraft has saved this marriage.








Anyway. Other stuff happened, too.

Once in a blue moon I'll stalk someone for a few minutes because I want to see how they are doing. It usually only takes a few minutes even when they are unfindable because I just know how to find people. Usually I'm satisfied and go back to my stuff, once in awhile I realize something and push another jigsaw piece into a hole in my life with an all new understanding. I very rarely, and I mean super rarely, like years go by kind of rare, find anything I'm actually painfully jealous of or terribly disappointed or something to that effect. Like the context is so black and white between how my head works and how their real world really works that I wind up sad and just go curl up in my head somewhere wondering how in the world I was that blind or naive or whatever.

I had that moment yesterday. I guess I needed context. I'm in a sort of one-way relationship with someone that needs to continue, and I finally actually reached a place in my head where I need that blank spot filled in, right. Everyone needs to 'relate'. And what I discovered was that glaring truth between us, a knowledge I'll never know in this life the way it is with a head that works like mine surviving it, and I kind of fell into that blank patch with all that new info and watched my insides fall out and mock me.

I will never have normal. I will never know first hand the thing that I crave. I will never realize the possibilities that most people expect as part of the way lives roll out. I may look through lit windows on dark cold nights and see other people having that, but I will never be in that light.

And who, on any normal spectrum, could tolerate me like this?

I think this is the part where people kill themselves, but I'm in minecraft with my headphones on listening to a child laugh with her papa and writing it out so I can come back later and finish understanding what I'm feeling right now. But I'm pretty sure this is where many people kill themselves.

It doesn't matter how smart I am, or how hard I try. Nothing matters if I cannot reach out and not bite anyone reaching back.

But that's not true, is it? I'm here making many differences that never would have happened if I weren't here or hadn't been here. Just because I can't feel it doesn't mean that part isn't true. And just because I feel trapped in a wasteland doesn't mean I can't at least understand and keep teaching.

There is a very old story from my long ago that came to me in a dream during a week of visions withdrawing the hard way off alcohol. I've never told anyone that dream. I tried to write it out back then, but then left off thinking it wasn't that important. But I had a very clear moment a few days ago, and that story is very important, after all. I was given a dream in a week of visions, and I think I'm supposed to share it because I understand it now.

I'm not here to have a normal life. I'm here to race the lightning in the dark along the rocky ridges where death waits at every step. I am here to understand, and to tell.

But I needed that context before I start. I needed to see that glaring truth.

It's a new year. No telling what will be happening. Maybe it's time I went on an oblivious blaze of glory.

starting out *cough* fresh, perhaps

My life in this house has been profoundly affected by a string of men in a person's life. Let's hope this one works out. Kinda done with all the extra drama.