I think I'll move to Australia....

It's kind of a funny thing - I have refused to let myself fall and have become so entirely accustomed to that way of thinking. I'm trying to somewhat let go of that though because in truth I know that it is not correct, nor is it healthy. So then I find myself starting to feel, just a little, and with that comes a hesitant fall. And then of course as life would have it, something happens and I am snapped back to my resolute way of thinking. I find myself with several reasons at ready for why I have chosen this, why it is the best thing for all parties involved. I've no idea how to remedy this, or if it is something that I actually desire. A friend of mine said to me offhandedly the other day that I was going to be an expensive wife, referring to my medical issues. I told him that that was one of the reasons that I wasn't going to get married. He thought I was joking. But it's the truth. I do have several reasons for why I say that, but that is one of the major ones. I see what my problems do to my parents, the mental, emotional, physical, and financial stress that it puts on them. They didn't have a choice; I was born to them and became their responsibility. Granted, they could have disregarded my complaints, told me things weren't a problem, and just let me be sans doctors. But they are phenomenal parents. And that wasn't even an option to them. So they have spent uncountable hours, dollars, and tears on me, none of which I can give back. The financial aspect I plan to do my best towards. Once I graduate nursing school I plan to immediately get a job. I'll have rent, insurance, phone, loan repayments, and such. But I will be supporting only myself, no family, so I plan to support my parents, to repay them what little I can to relieve some of the financial burdens I have unintentionally placed on them. That's another reason against marriage. And I know what I have done to them. I can't take that back and I can't ask them to stop. But I can prevent another person I love to have to go through the same things. I don't want to be in love and see that person feel guilt or pain or have to sacrifice anything in their life because of me. And I know that that would happen. I don't want to have children and see them suffer as well that way. Or to pass on anything that I have and see them go through life like this. It would be utter selfishness for me to do such things. And I would rather miss out on things like love and marriage and a family such as that than put them through this. I can do this. Holy crap I can't do this. I'm sick of having to pull myself up and through again and again. I'm too tired to, too worn out. Is there an end? Not one that I can see. I got a corticosteroid injection today, hurt incredibly bad and still does. I scheduled my next surgery. Well, didn't pick the exact day, that'll happen in the next couple days. But it'll be mid-December, the 16th in all likelihood. I thought I was done with this. I don't want to be doing this crap during nursing school. Didn't want to. Now, a surgery in December, another bone cut, a plate and 7 screws. Then, within the next 10 years, another more intense surgery, this time on the radius. Then, sometime into the future after that, there will in all probability have to be a third one, a partial fusion of my wrist bones. For those of you who may be thinking that I'm just being dramatic and blowing things out of proportion, I'm not. I may be woe is me, but I'm not a liar nor am I the type of person to exaggerate about health issues. Desire to be the opposite. So here I am. I hurt on the inside and out and I don't know how to make it stop. I drive to Detroit on Friday for another round of all the tests and such with Wolford. I have to talk to him about it, have to figure out why it hasn't healed, have to figure out how to fix it. I'm not big enough for this.

But I am and I know it. I know this will worry those of you who actually make it through reading this whole thing. But I am fine. This is here for me and writing out all this junk helps me. It may make me come across as a crazy depressed weirdo (all of which are true to their own extent, but not in an intense combo), but I'm not. I suppose you're allowed to think that, but I'm really okay. It's just been a rough day and this was the major part of it. (Other part included a straight drive to Danville from Indy, an hour and a half late for class, and a patho/pharm test which I despise in general. We won't get into all of that though :)So, thanks for reading (it's okay if you skimmed, really) and hopefully there'll be a perkier entry soon. Oh, and I changed around some of the songs if you ever listen to those. Oh and if anyone gets the title, let me know :)

Hands

So I've been meaning to write in here pretty much all week, but haven't done so. That's pretty much the concise description of my week - good intentions, but no follow through. Not entirely true, but that's my attitude towards it all. And I've been wanting to change the layout of this thing (again) but every time I find one that I like, I realize it's going to take a little more effort than just plopping it in here; I'll need to make little tweaks and changes and such. So I keep reverting back to the original basically because I'm lazy. But brace yourself for dizziness if you get on here regularly, I daresay one day I'll overcome the laziness and then it'll change a lot. More than once.

So we're approaching Saturday again. Good grief. On Sunday nights I generally have this clenched stomach, there's no way I can make it through the whole week sort of feeling. And then it's Thursday and I'm walking out of lab in a daze, wondering where the week went. Monday thru Thursday honestly feel like they fly by. And if I haven't done enough things during the week to keep me on top of things or ahead (ha, yeah right) then I am frantic and scrambling to catch up come Saturday night and Sunday. Yeah, you're probably thinking what happened to Thursday and Friday? Oh, they happen, they just generally happen with me in a veg state accomplishing nothing. I think it's necessary for my health, but if I'm honest with myself it's not at all. Tomorrow is going to be nuts/stressed out time because I really haven't done anything school wise at all this week. We're all kind of burnt out at this point. Nursing school is no longer new and exciting, it's just time consuming and frustrating. I am constantly having to remind myself why I am doing this and that it is worth it. Sometimes I'm not very good at persuasion though.

This next week is going to be awful. Quite the attitude, eh? But really. I have a paper due Monday that I haven't started on, a patho/pharm exam Wednesday that I haven't even glanced at the material for, a test-out on Thursday that I put out of my mind as soon as I stepped out of lab last week and haven't thought of since, plus all the normal clinical and class stuff. The real biggies are appointments though: normal dentist Tuesday (which shouldn't be too bad, just not looking forward to the holding the mouth open and them screwing around with it part), Tuesday night going to spend the night in Indy to get up early on Wednesday for a "Difficult Problem Meeting" with like 10 docs to decide my fate (dramatic, mostly for comical sake), then going to Wolford on Friday (I had to schedule the appt for noon which is going to mean like a 3am morning). Driving Detroit by myself which is going to be pretty much awful, but I've done it before. At least it's at the end of the week. Sorry about the negativity, it's just all weighing on me. But I'll make it, I always do :)

This Thursday Mom and I went to a dinner/workshop about chronic pain, FM, and CFS stuff. It was honestly pretty interesting. It's always difficult for me to sit through that kind of stuff, to listen to all the junk and to not be cynical about the doctors. He actually kind of impressed me though I am still pretty skeptical. He's technically a chiropractor but he also has a masters in nutrition and another one in something else that escapes me right now. He's into holistic care, discovering and treating the cause rather than the symptoms which is awesome and in my experience rare. He does a lot of nutrition/diet stuff, finding out food allergies and sensitivities, things that he calls stressors that trigger and cause a lot of the symptoms. It's interesting for sure, but some of it still sounds kind of hokey to me. He had some sort of deal if you were at the workshop so I scheduled an appt for 11/3 for just twenty bucks which includes most all of the testing and a follow up appt to discuss the results. Will update on that when it comes.

Thursday I also went around with Jill looking at apartments in Danville and the surrounding little towns. It was really pretty much unproductive, but good to spend some time with her outside of classes. She'll be okay to live with. There's a couple other people we may have live with us who are looking for roommates now plus she has a friend from where she's from, he's starting the program in May. We'll figure something out. I need to be more proactive about looking and contacting places though.

I continue to be upset with Stacie. And I continue to not approach her about it. She's going to the wedding as well tomorrow - it'll be the first time I've actually spent time with her in probably over a month. Did I mention we live in the same house? I need to let go of my bitterness towards her. It's just hurting me and I'm not accomplishing anything with it. It's hard though. But I know I cannot change her. And it's not fair for me to hold her up to my standards, to what I think is right (although I think my position is fairly justified). I need to work on letting it all go.

This seems like such the depressing post, which it is not intended to be. I have many good things too, it just seems easier for me to vent about the bad. I am doing well in my classes which is awesome. It helps me to lose some of the intimidation I have with nursing school, the blocks I had all during my past experiences. There are still things that I feel intimidated by, things that frustrate me, things that wear me out (that's pretty much and all-inclusive category....), but I am encouraged by my small accomplishments, which do happen, and by the friends I have there. It's pretty neat. And little life things, like getting to talk to friends. Getting to spend a pretty good amount of time with Dylan which is something I've basically missed out on for years. He an amazing though certainly not flawless kid. He's called me mom a couple times on accident recently, which I'm not sure how I feel about. While part of me feels pretty good when he's done it, part of me also doesn't want to be mistaken with his actual mother at all and I also don't want him to have that - to not really know who his mom "is" because of how much time he spends with someone or what they do together, etc. I don't know. But I do love him desperately and love getting to be part of raising him.

Okay, at this point I'm not entirely sure what I've even written about, but I'm sure that there's more I'd want to say. It is, however, after one in the morning and I should really get to bed (despite having slept in till almost 11 this morning :). That being said, I'm going to get off here, leaving one last question that I have. What exactly do you wear to your first real heartbreak's wedding? Night friends

Cathartic

I'm unsettled. I have this desperate need to have something, but what that something is I have no idea. I want to go to AR to see my friends. Terribly. I want to resolve the unresolved issues in my life, but I'm not sure how t do that. I want to not be mad at my sister. I want to feel good. Note the selfishness of this one; I'm not going to attempt to call it anything else. But I believe that some if not all of those wants also count as needs. In my opinion at least. But anyway. Today I did a little festivalling which was nice. I went to Rockville and walked around for a few hours by myself which was nice. Got some pretty neat finds too - mostly all books of course, but some other stuff too :) Tomorrow I'm going to a fibro support group thing for one of my classes. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. Kind of just not thinking about it. But I'll let you know how it goes. I didn't really have much to say tonight, just felt the need to write. So I'll leave it here. Goodnight

Roller coaster....

Dear Barbara. Today has been interesting. I had a good day all in all, I just can't keep a firm grip on whether I'm going up or down. Did the festival all morning which was of course good because for some crazy reason I love it. But it was tiring and somewhat emotionally draining; on the way home Mom apologized to me and Meg for tiring out early. Which wasn't fair, we'd been walking for over four hours. Being tired was totally legit. But she apologized and said "I didn't realize my knees were this bad" and started tearing up. I didn't really know what to say at first but I just said it's okay and put my hand on her shoulder - she was driving. I said that we'd work on it, we'd exercise and stuff. She got even more teary-eyed and said that it wouldn't make any difference. I was fighting back tears and I told her that it scares me. She said it scares me too and her voice broke. That was it more or less, she changed the subject to talk about something meaningless. My mom has been my rock, my solid driving force for good or for bad my whole life. When I have cried desperately over my pain and illness, she has always been there, comforting me and crying for me, wishing she could take it away, telling me that she would take it herself and have everything I did if it would take it away from me. And I know that's not just something she says to reassure me, that she honestly means it from the bottom of her heart and would do it without a thought if she were given the chance. But I have never seen her cry over herself. Never. And while everything that I have is awful and miserable and sometimes I feel like I can't do it, none of it is truly progressive. Hers is. She comes with a certainty that no matter what she does, she cannot stop what is happening. In any number of years, she will lose a lot of her mobility. She may take medications to help her symptoms and maybe slow the progression, but it cannot be stopped or 'cured' altogether. And the thought of that, the thought of my mother forever hurting, is terrible. I shock myself with my selfishness - I haven't given much thought to all of this. I know that part of that is an attempt to protect myself, to not have to consider and deal with everything, but that too screams of selfishness. My parents are aging and with that, they are becoming more fragile. I don't want to think about that at all. I cannot fathom this life without them, or even with them in any way impaired. It's been weighing heavily on my mind today. With my nerves still shaken and frail from that, we drove down the road towards home. Not but a few minutes after this conversation, we witnessed a motorcycle accident. We rushed out of the car to see if we could do anything to help, and running through my mind was what I could do, what I knew how to do to help him. Nothing. I thought, if he's not breathing I could do cpr, but even that I'm not truly confident with. So there I stood, watching this poor man writhing on the side of the road, blood pouring from his head, with my hands at my side. I did things like try to call 911, run for my jacket to hold over his injuries, but honestly I did nothing. I do not like that feeling. Not at all. So then we come on home. All of us got there at the same time and Meg stayed for a while then left after we decided we weren't going to do anything else in the evening. I asked Stacie what her plans were, hoping maybe I would get to see her for at least a little bit. There's so much going on in my life that I would like to share with her, but I never see her. I feel more and more that she's like a stranger, a person simply boarding in our house and hardly even doing that. She left soon after Meg to go to Brent's. I didn't realize until after she left how upset with her I was. Mom came in to see me upset and we talked about it some. Maybe it was just that I was feeling so fragile, so shaken from thoughts of my mother and seeing the accident, but I was upset. I cried telling her that I missed my sister, that I felt as though she didn't care at all. I listed off some of the things that I'd done for her, the fact that I would do anything, give anything up for her. She is my sister. But I feel as though she wouldn't do anything in return. That she hasn't. That I talk to people who are more than 500 miles away more than I talk to the person who stays in the room 5 feet from mine. It hurts. But I don't say anything to her. I think feeling this way is better than having her not respond or not care or scoff if I actually told her what I was feeling. Mom, Dad, and I went to the fish fry which was nice, a kind of tradition that we do. I cling to those. Another reason that I was upset with Stacie I think: we always go to the festival together, Mom, Stacie, and I, if we have the opportunity. She didn't even consider going with us and I know that Mom was really hurt by it. Then later tonight in talking to a friend, I fouled up and marred our friendship yet again with my unfounded overreactions. I hope to have righted this; I asked to go on a walk and we did. Not the brightest idea for midnight, but I'm still really glad that I did. So that's my day, being jerked back and forth, tossed to and fro by my messed jumble of emotions. Life is something beautifully fragile and I'm terrified to mess it up. As one of my friends told me regarding my interactions with another person, it's a catch 22. I'm so scared of messing life up, I miss out on it altogether. Vulnerability is hard for me though. I'm so scared of losing or hurting or being hurt by the people I love, I miss out on loving them at all. I'm ever-working though. Trying to right my convoluted way of thinking before I miss anything else.