katespencer1

Sucker Punch

Sun, 16 Dec 2018 22:41:34 GMT

My stomach has been rolling for days.

I wake up throughout the night in cold sweats.

I'm living on Gatorade and protein drinks. I'm lucky if I can keep one meal down.

The pills I started taking to get myself out of my head are making me go insane. At least for now.

Friends I have who also take it say the side effects will pass. I've been taking them for about two weeks now. I'm ready for them to pass. To feel the shadow lift. To be hungry again.

Nothing sounds good. Nothing tastes good. I've been off work a week sleeping and not eating and being in more of a funk than before the Prozak.

Now I'm wondering how much of my nausea is from lack of food as it is from the pills, but when I eat it sits like a rock in my stomach.

I started a new therapist. She quit on my 2nd visit. Leaving the practice for one that may or may not take insurance. So I start anew in January. But I'm already on the meds and weaning seems silly until I see if they work.

My stepfather did pass away a couple of weeks ago. Exacerbating some issues already ongoing in the family. I may be having a breakdown. I did have a breakdown a few nights ago to Mems and to my mother.

I don't know if I'm built for handling stress. I've worked in news for 15 years and can handle the worst stories but I truly feel like I'm breaking now.

Part of my problem was keeping it all inside. Amazingly I felt better after my mini-breakdowns. And I felt better after talking to some friends about everything going on.

I'm pretty used to handling things on my own so it is surprising to me how much talking about something relieved my anxiety.

I feel like this year has been one sucker punch after another. I'm ready for it to stop. I'm ready for my pills to kick in. I'm ready to stop puking.

Something's gotta give.

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Steadfast

Thu, 29 Nov 2018 18:01:49 GMT

My former stepfather is in hospice care.

We weren't close. I never lived with him and my mother. I never lived with my mother.

He's the father of my siblings and the grandfather to my nephew. The nephew ADORES him. He's five and will have no way to process this loss. Does anyone ever have the ability to process this loss?

My birth father died a few years ago, my stepfather knew him. They were in similar circles in high school, which is likely how they ended up married to the same woman at different times.

I remember him coming out to my car one morning when I picked up my nephew to tell me he was sorry. It was a touching moment in a sporadic relationship.

My mom is taking care of him. They've been divorced for decades but he needed somewhere to stay the last time he fell on hard times and she let him. He's been helping her with my nephew Eli since he was born.

They had a tumultuous relationship since high school. Verbal abuse, physical abuse a few months of happiness. When I think back to my view of their relationship I just see chaos. But I was young and there had to be something else holding her to him.

Some connection or spark that's long since ebbed out. Now they are just people who've been through a lot together. Going on their final journey.

I wonder how this will impact her. She hasn't said much about it. I don't know that she ever will. My mother is always one for internalizing things. She's steadfast in kind of putting her head down and plowing through.

In some ways, it's an admirable trait, but at times I wonder what internalizing all those negative thoughts will do to her insides.

She and I took Eli to my Pops' grave earlier this year. It would have been his 90th birthday. Ever since then Eli reminds me that my grandpa died, but he didn't want his grandpa to die. Now it's our reality.

Our sweet boy will go through the loss of his only father figure. I was 17 when it happened and as evidenced in my posts I'm still not OK.

I worry what this will do to his spirit and his bubbliness and everything that makes him our boy. Until then we'll just keep plowing through until we have to cross the bridge.

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Not my first rodeo

Fri, 16 Nov 2018 02:27:07 GMT

"If you go to the doctor and get your head under control then you'll lose that weight," Mems says as we're talking about holidays and shopping. She's talking about my return to therapy.

She's right. I yo-yo constantly. I'm on the heavy end of the yo-yo at the moment. It's no doubt tied to the ebbing and flowing in my head.

Weight has been an issue for me as long as I can remember. As a pre-teen, my mother asking me, 'don't you want to be cute and tiny like Clarissa on that show you watch?' (In her defense Clarissa did explain it all, just not my weight issues.)

After years of ballet, I quit because of leotards, my self-esteem, and my growing jiggle. I wasn't a fat kid, just a chubby one uncomfortable in her own skin.

Once I hit teen years and hormones then it became more of an issue. I had more control over my diet and that manifested into overdoing it on the foods I'd never eaten at home. Fast food was a constant. Exercise non-existent.

Then I countered it when I started gaining more weight by limiting my food intake to a ridiculous amount. Fat-free hot cocoa and dry wheat toast for breakfast. Diet Coke for lunch. Chicken and veggies for dinner.

I remember those sparse meals nearly 20 years later. Sitting at the kitchen table alone, chewing deliberately.

As I got older my weight became intrinsically tied to relationships and my state of mind. I was my thinnest out of college when I was in my most insecure relationship. I constantly worried if we were stable, if it was real or if it was all going to fall apart and I barely ate and gave myself gastroenteritis.

When it ended food became a crutch, a comfort, a companion. I put on all the weight I lost. I still wasn't comfortable. Would I ever be?

It continues. Now as I hit 36. Sometimes as I'm sitting at my desk or table eating something I don't need, that isn't healthy, that will exacerbate my autoimmune disease I think 'this doesn't even taste good,' but I don't stop eating.

I lost 25 pounds in the first quarter of this year while training for a half marathon then got sidelined by a hip injury that ended my running hobby. The 25 pounds came back. Again. I've lost the same 25 pounds dozens of times in my life.

I started going back to Weight Watchers for the 700th time. It always works at first. Then my brain starts to kick in. The insecurities return.

I'm great at the starting gate but the follow-through lacks.

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Kayfabe

Wed, 07 Nov 2018 02:06:01 GMT

I drive a lot in the quiet. A muffled song in the background or a forgotten podcast in the background.

My mind wanders and sometimes I listen to the voices.

Why am I doing this? What is the reason? Can I just go to sleep? It's too much.

Do you ever feel like you're just going through the motions of life? LIke you're playacting the role you're expected to play. I'm an overachiever and Type A and I sit through meetings and routines and put things in order all the time. Why?

I go see shows and make small talk with people, remember to ask the right questions, send the cards for birthdays. I bury myself in details and lists and reminders. All of them propping me up into this version of a person. A conscientious person who isn't lost in her own head, going through the motions.

I'm loud and obnoxious and curse too much. I call myself a bitch and act like I don't care. Is that who I am? Or is that the role I gave myself? Is it safer to be the bitch no one wants to get close to so there's an easy reason to keep everyone at arm's distance?

What is my role in my life? It feels staged and static and I don't know what else to do. Breaking out of the rut is necessary and terrifying. Is it even possible?

So I make a long silent drive. A forgotten podcast playing in the background. I check in with the receptionist and fill out a pile of paperwork.

I play Angry Birds on my phone waiting. Then I follow the woman back to her office. I sit on the couch and start talking.

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Tsundoku

Mon, 22 Oct 2018 00:08:04 GMT

I'm surrounded by stuff.

It's highly organized and sorted. Neat boxes and cubbies and shelves to keep like things together. I'm obsessed with organization. I'm obsessed with things.

Like books for example.

Last summer I got three boxes of books out of my attic. I have an antique lawyer bookcase in the guest room filled to the brim, with some stacked on top. There's a bookcase in my room too. Books I've never read. It's two books deep. I'm literally hiding books I haven't cracked behind other books I haven't read.

I went through the boxes. It took a few weeks. Every book had a memory, some good and some bad. I said goodbye to some. Reorganized and returned one big tub to the attic. The unread books still sit. It's hard to say goodbye to the promise of a journey to another world.

Who knows when I'll need that escape? I keep preparing. I don't stop buying books. I sort and re-sort my unread shelves. I like thinking more about the escape than living life.

I've been slowing down from seemingly never-ending plans, the schedule I create for myself so I don't have time to take stock. If you're busy, you can't breathe. You can't look around and tell the facade from the reality.

There was a time for everything, a spot for everything, a shelf for this and a drawer for that. A shelf to stack the books that would interest the person I aspire to be or the person I'm running from being.

I picked up a book from my to-read bookshelf the other day. "Lincoln in the Bardo" I took it to a waiting room. I sobbed through the first chapters. The words about grief tapping into the part of me I try to ignore. The tears soothing my soul as the words opened the wounds. The want and sadness that follows the death of a loved one.

Is this why I leave these books stacked? So I'm not forced to confront an aspect of my life I've quietly organized away into a shelf in my psyche?

I'm digging my way out of my head now. Piece by piece. Maybe I'll find more parts on my bookshelf.

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My Mount Rushmore

Sun, 14 Oct 2018 01:51:31 GMT

Not surprising to anyone who knows me or follows me on social media one person jumped to mind when I saw this prompt. My Mems.

She's 87. She's a combination of Ouiser and Clairee from Steel Magnolias with a dash of Julia Sugarbaker.

Before I sit down and try to fully document her, it's important to stress how important she is to me.

More than a fount of funny anecdotes and amusing stories, she's the woman that raised me, shaped me and gave me my slightly abrasive personality. Mems is my grandmother, my best friend, and my rock.

She's loud, brassy, and a true broad. And damn funny. She doesn't just walk to the beat of her own drummer, she stole the drum and kicked down the drummer.

I try to describe her and I'm often lost for words, she'll do whatever she wants, say what she wants and rip you a new one any day she wants, then turn around and pay off your bills or stop and write a check to build a new playground at the local elementary school. She's an enigma of uniqueness that leaves her mark wherever she goes.

As she's getting older I see our relationship shift, as I take a more lead role, doing the grocery shopping and cleaning up. Running her errands now that she doesn't get out much.

We're still roommates. She's still bossy and demanding. She's still hilarious.

Now my worries are different than they were when I was in my 20s living at home with her. I worried about how it looked to people, would it impede my love life (spoiler: it did).

Now I treasure our time. I look forward to Monday nights when we watch Dancing with the Stars. She's on Facebook so I can send her random links and explain why half the things she sees are fake.

But I also have a feeling of dread all the time. She's 87. I'm realistic. I'm terrified of the day there will be a world without her. A Kate without a Mems.

She used to be up at the crack of dawn. Now I'm up. I make the coffee and bring in the paper. I watch her while she sleeps to be sure. I go to the gym and start my day.

In a way I think I'm her Mount Rushmore. A fully formed version of her (with a dash of pop culture obsession she lacks). I'm the most like her of all her kids, for the good and the bad.

Mems is my Mount Rushmore. My guiding star. My Mems.

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"It's hard to beat a person who never gives up"

Fri, 05 Oct 2018 20:54:52 GMT

I feel like I'm treading water. Barely keeping my head up sometimes. Sometimes I sink. I feel a pit in my stomach, my hands shake and the urge to vomit.

I don't know how to handle it anymore. It's one thing after the other. When I feel like I have one thing under control then something else happens.

Complaining about it from my world of privilege exacerbates it. Sometimes I feel like my brain is vibrating with anxiety. Sometimes I want to go to sleep to get away and live in a dream world.

But I keep going. I find solace in being Type A and trying to control what I can as the chaos ebbs and flows around me.

Is this the new normal? Existing until the next thing throws me off my axis, then fighting to get back in form and paddle my feet until it happens again.

I'm trying to get help. I have a therapist's phone number written on my to do list. One day I will call it. I'm making myself get to the gym consistently in hopes that the endorphins will help. Endorphins make people happy (Thank you Legally Blonde).

I'm to stubborn to give up, but damn if it's not appealing at times.

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LJ Idol

Wed, 19 Sep 2018 20:43:47 GMT

I am going to take part in the pop up season!

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