darklingwords

[darklingwords]

So if you want to know how messed up I am- at work I’m warm and enthusiastic and talk too much. I’ve been told I ‘don’t match the meeting energy level’, I.e. I’m too excited by nerdy stuff and that people have said how much they respect me for my kindness. People think I’m normal. They expect I am or have been married. When I’m not working …I’m a hermit. I literally go months without speaking to anyone who knows my real name. I don’t go out. I’ve always been someone who did stuff for other people, but I don’t have any one (even a pet) I’m responsible for any more. And I’ve just let myself become completely isolated.

At work I highly successful and very well paid. I did some amazing things last year and I got my dream job. I’m incredibly happy there and it’s hard to believe it.

So I’m not completely hopeless!

But the rest of my life is a wasteland. I tried therapy and sought out a specialist in CPTSD, added group therapy on top of it. But…it just made me so depressed I had to stop. It’s been about a year since I gave up. I’m doing better- at least I can enjoy my hobbies again.

But I’m faced with the fact that this is all my life will be. It’s sad.

[darklingwords]

Seriously. They are petty, insipid, shitty, motherfuckers.

Also, I am taking tomorrow off to try and correct my attitude.

Motherfuckers.

[darklingwords]

I’ve started wearing an Apple Watch. Apparently I get an average of 5 hours sleep a night. That’s not uninterrupted sleep- just total. I spend 8hours in bed, I just only sleep like 2 hours at a time and not as much. It’s torture, to be honest

[darklingwords]

What do I think of our upper management?

Petty, vicious, bullshitting assholes.

[darklingwords]

No sleep

I didn’t sleep at all last night. Sleep deprivation is the worst. I feel sick. Anxiety is the worst. I have to take my brain tumor meds, so I can’t take my anti-anxiety meds - I get weird side effects when I do. Also my muscle cramps are back, though it looks like that’s a side effect of the brain tumor meds. One mystery solved. My whole body just hurts.

I just feel like I’m falling apart. I don’t know what to do. I’m just so fucking miserable.

[darklingwords]

On Fire

My stomach hurts. I’m exhausted. I’m screwing up at work and have been dealing with medical stuff. I had people compliment two necklaces I made. I got an honorable mention for a photo in the general category for my photo club. So, objectively good things have happened this week along with the bad.

I just feel so hopeless. I’m always going to be me. And let’s be honest, I’m not worth much. No matter how hard I try, I’ll never be worth time or attention. Not worth loving. Not worth knowing. I just want to curl into a ball and cry. And my stomach hurts so much. It feels like it’s on fire.

[darklingwords]

So fucking sad

That's the thing. I can't go a day without running into something I can't think about. The fact I'm going blind. That I've never had a chance to love anyone. That my dad is dying. That I've wasted my life and my gifts. That I can't think anymore. That my memory is going. That at the end of my life everything will be stripped from me. Words and vision and nothing but pain, every day. That's my daily life anyway. I'm taking my brain tumor meds, so I have a headache. My joints all ache. Even when I'm lying down. Most nights I can't sleep. Either from the brain tumor meds or from being fucking terrified of what's in front of me. I get so scared it feels like I can't breathe.

I'm terrible at getting credit for the work I've done. I'm never going to get promoted. I get so scared when I think about standing up for myself. Just being around other people makes me panic. I tried therapy and group therapy with therapy. For CPTSD. It didn't help at all. It just proved that in a group of screwed up people I'm still weirdly fucked up in ways other people can't relate to. There was one person who had a mom kind of like me. She had some of the same problems too - not being able to open her mail. She'd actually married an autistic guy. I wonder if that's why I'm also drawn to autistic people. Like - the lack of manipulation and mind games. They just say what they think and don't mess about. They can be brutal - but sometimes that's easier. It didn't help me, I think, because cognitive therapy is about helping people think through different approaches and untangle what they feel. That's not my problem. I'm pretty analytical already. And you have to trust people to be vulnerable. Turns out I'm pretty shitty at that. I tend to test people. I say "X is very important to me. It's key to understanding who I am." like literally that. And if the other person pays no attention to that - then I don't bother telling them other things that are important. Because they didn't notice or care. I'll mention X - in the case of my last therapist - again and again. In this case it was a movie. But he never bothered to google it. So I knew. He just wasn't that invested. Plus he was constantly rescheduling me to go give talks and train other therapists. Only I hate rescheduling, so I'd just say - let's skip it. So I ended up only seeing him twice in two months. It made me feel really irrelevant. When I left he was surprised and said he hardly ever has people leave. I believe that actually, so many people in the therapy group were wounded birds that would never function normally. You'd have to be a therapist to stand them. I include myself in that. So therapy was a crutch - a support. But it was the wrong kind of crutch for me. I don't need someone to say "how do you feel about that" I need a hug. I need encouragement. I need someone who'll be happy when I succeed. Someone I feel like i can trust. I asked him why he never seemed happy and he said most patients don't like it if he's happy while they're having a hard time. For me, it felt off - like he was faking his interactions with me. It made it hard to trust him. And I hate theraputic interactions anyway. I'm always more interested in other people than in me. I'm boring.

[darklingwords]

My diabetes has damaged my eyesight. I can still drive, but I can tell I’ll eventually be blind. Everything I love is visual. Art, all my hobbies. I can’t have pets. I think it’s just shitty I have to figure out how to give myself injections a couple times a day while blind. That sounds like fun, right?

And I’m losing words. My memory is going. Multiple times a day I can’t remember a word that’s familiar. Can’t even think what letter it starts with.

Given that my brain tumor med (cabergoline), doubles as an Alzheimer’s medicine and there’s early onset Alzheimer’s in my mother’s side of the family, it wasn’t exactly unexpected.

I feel so much despair I can’t sleep. I can’t breathe. I turn 50 this year. I have a little time left. I need to figure out how I want to use it.

[darklingwords]

I’m just having a hard time. I’ve been having a hard time sleeping because my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and got surgery. She’s healing well and had no cancer cells in her lymph nodes, so she won’t need chemotherapy or radiation.

I’m so glad that in going through this she had her husband and her twin and her friends. Her therapist she trusts. It’s wonderful that she’s so well loved.

It’s quite a contrast with my own life. All the medical shit I’ve been through my family let me go through alone. My sister’s breast tumor is out, but my brain tumor is inoperable. It’s supposedly under control by medication, but(well - that’s another story)

My mother has been calling every Sunday. She’s just very hard to deal with. Sometimes she deliberately upsets me. Sometimes she’s controlling. Sometimes she’s just thoughtlessly hurtful. She said something last week about how something about Tali getting sick was the first time she’s been really worried in a long time. And it was all I could do not to roll my eyes and say “thanks mom”. It hurt me, though I know it was just her drama. It brought up how no one cared I was sick. How I was forbidden to talk about it. Sorry- AM forbidden.

I’m pretty sure I’m depressed. I just feel despairing a lot. I tried so hard to be a good person and I’ve given up on ever getting anything good on my life. I can’t even have a cat anymore. My joints hurt so much I’m in excruciating pain after walking around for fifteen minutes. Even lying down hurts. I can’t even have a cat or properly take care of my house. I’ve lost a good percentage of sight in my left eye. My diabetes is not under control. I can’t lose weight. I’m scared of people and really lonely.

My mother was talking about the things that make her feel better and my other sister. Then, uncharacteristically, actually asked me what makes me feel better and I couldn’t answer. Because there isn’t anything. I have no comfort. I just have to go on.

[darklingwords]

My sister is going into surgery to have a mastectomy. She’ll live. But she’ll be changed. Who she is will be altered forever. And I grieve for that. It’s always made me happy that she had a relatively happy life. I know she’s strong and she’ll be fine. But I’m sad that she has to go through this. I’m sad that this will shadow her happiness. I grieve for her.

[darklingwords]

There’s this one person who reminds me of Richard III. Like she’s such a raging bitch that you just gotta give it to her.

Like she is totally committed to being an asshole in every possible interaction. It’s kind of amazing. And toxic. I’ve literally been to company seminars on this kind of behavior. She’s like a walking, talking example of waste dump behaviors.

[darklingwords]

I try not to measure myself by other people. That’s just hopeless. I’m pretty practical and risk averse. I tend to set small goals and try to achieve them. Often that means I lose sight of the big things. Like - having a nice house and garden. Or having friends. Or finding someone to live who might love you back.

Maybe it’s no surprise I’ve failed at all the big things. The life goals thing.

[darklingwords]

Sleeping Duty

There are some thoughts that are like an invasive species. They dig roots in deep, so you can’t pull them out without sacrifice. They grow in caging coils that ensnare with cruel thorns that pin you in place.

The world would be better if I didn’t exist…is one

Nothing good will ever happen to me…is another

I’m worthless and unlovable is yet another

And it doesn’t matter if they’re true. For most people they won’t be, but for some of us they are unremarkable, daily truths we live with. Even if you assume they’re true, you still hurt from them. You still have to struggle. Sometimes you win free. Sometimes you get a respite.

Sometimes you just get to draw another breath.

And that has to be good enough.

Because that’s all there is.

[darklingwords]

When I was nineteen, I worked at my college over the summer and I got very sick. I was in terrible pain, so bad that I couldn’t do more than crawl on the floor in the bathroom. Eventually my roommate found me there and called an ambulance.

It took me two decades to realize that I never cried out. Never called for help. That it never occurred to me to do so. My instincts told me that no one would help me and if they found me, they’d use my weakness as an excuse to hurt me.

I was amazed when my roommate called an ambulance for me, rather than just cursing me for being in the way or leaving me in agony. When I got back she got me a plant with a get well note. It was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.

I’ve gotten to the point in my life now that I know I need help. But I never learned how to ask for it. I tried therapy and group therapy. It was…just really bad for me. I got really depressed. So I quit. And I started doing better. It’s been six months and I can enjoy things again. As long as I don’t think too hard about the past or the future. My future is bleak, my past is loveless, but the is joy in the now. It’s what I have. It’s all I have.

[darklingwords]

People are disappointing

So, last year my aunt gave me sunflower seeds for my birthday. It took several months for them to bloom and grow enough so that I thought they could survive in the yard, instead of a pot. The first one I planted was a foot tall when I put it out. It was destroyed in a day. It looked like perhaps an animal had pushed it over. So I waited a month and put another two out, close to three feet tall. Within three days they’d been killed, snapped cleanly in half. I still thought, then, that it might be animals. So I put the last one against the fence, exposed to the road, where I’ve never had any plants bothered. It was killed within a day or so.  So I thought maybe one of my neighbors was Russian and killed them because they were sunflowers. I love sunflowers because they were my sister’s favorite flower growing up. They always make me think of her. But I didn’t plant them this year. 

Instead I planted smaller flowers - other than one, an annual, which had pretty flowers two feet tall. And today I found it had been smashed, selectively, deliberately. 

I...think it might the kid across the road. But maybe it’s an angry neighbor. I don’t know. It just made me cry. There are so few interactions I have with other people. So few things that bring me joy. And I just feel sad. 

[darklingwords]

If I had one word to sum up humanity and everyone in it, it would have to be “disappointing”. People was far more dismally predictable than I would like. I don’t generally expect much from other people, but when I do, I generally regret it.

I was thinking today about those times when people have surprised me. Like when I got sick working at college in the summer and was in so much pain I was crawling around the dorm bathrooms, because I couldn’t sit or stand. My roommate found me in the bathroom and called the hospital for me. When I got back, she gave me a lot plant. It’s like in the top three nice things anyone has ever done for me.

But it finally occurred to me, twenty years later, that I never called out for help. It never even occurred to me. Because at home, that kind of vulnerability would have been an invitation to abuse. And I still have a hard time believing someone would actually help me, rather than just leaving me to die. Because my family taught me that even asking for a phone call was asking too much.

[darklingwords]

Always late

Do you ever have one of yours days when you start off on your back foot and never get off it?

I just feel sad and worn and small and very alone. It’s my own fault. I’m just not terribly impressive.

I wonder, sometimes, what it’s like to have people decide to love you. To have someone’s face light up when they see you. To be good enough for someone. Anyone.

It must be nice.