I’m sitting here crying, literally, because I’m also literally sitting here, watching the clock, waiting for 4pm when the kids come home so I have someone to talk to. Because I’m lonely. I mean, I have friends & all, but I don’t have any friends here. And now that Ronny works nights and Alex doesn’t drive, we never see them anymore. The rest of our friends live in Toronto.
And moving is not the solution. If we moved I would be further away from Alex and not much closer to our Toronto friends if you consider the fact that I get off work at 8am and have absolutely nothing in my life to do until I got to bed at 9:30pm.
TV holds zero interest for me. We’ve been watching Dowton Abbey and that’s okay, I guess, but it’s a “Blake & Sunny show” because I don’t want to watch it alone. I have a REALLY hard time watching TV because it seems like such a waste of time unless it’s something that I’m super into and I feel like it enriches my life like Community or Doctor Who or even Walking Dead (which starts in 6 days btw – no idea if Ronny & Alex can come watch it with us as is our tradition of 2 seasons). Actually come to think of it,, those are the only 3 shows that even matter. SNL is a staple since I get off work at 11pm on Saturdays but if someone lame is hosting (and I stopped caring about the musical guests years ago when all these fucking stupid hipster bands with beards started popping up and sounding the same and the host always announces them like they’re some revered classical pianist worthy of worship – give me a fucking break)…anyway if someone lame is hosting, I’ll just go to bed. We record it but it’s Saturday Night Live. It seems to be missing the entire point if you watch it Sunday morning and all the best skits will be on YouTube the next day and if they’re any good they’ll make it to Facebook and I’ll see it then. We only record it in case we have to start watching late for some reason, like if we have Doctor Who to watch since Blake and Madison wait for me to get off work so we can all watch that together.
Anyway, my DVR right now is literally *all* Oprah’s Next Chapter (honestly, I’m just so sick of Oprah, especially because she asks the dumbest questions; she used to be such a good interviewer, now she’s just boring), the last two episodes of Doctor Who that I want to rewatch but again, I don’t like watching them alone, and about 30 episodes of Toddler’s & Tiaras which I usually save to watch with Madison but since I stopped painting pretty girls, because I was sick and tired of painting pretty girls, I stopped having the desire to watch pretty little girls on TV. Plus, honestly, I think the show’s gone downhill. It’s just way too over the top and I think the psycho moms are acting extra psychotic just to get their kids on the show or to win pageants or to be the next Honey Boo Boo (which was a terrible show; Madison & I watched the first episode and were like, “wtf is this shit?” and then I deleted them all from the DVR and made it stop recording them).
So TV’s out. So are movies for the most part because I can’t JUST watch a movie. It’s so very fucking difficult for me to just watch a movie at home. I can watch a movie at the theatre, that’s a life enriching experience. Plus you get popcorn. But movies at home are hard, especially if I’ve seen them before because I don’t paint pretty girls anymore and I don’t have anything to DO while watching. Except to sit there and watch which seems like a pure and utter waste of valuable time.
Not that sitting here crying and being codependent on your kids is productive either but I can’t help that. I’ve been saying it a lot because people seem to have forgotten but I am a sick person. I am not well. My body may be healed/healing (I say “healing” because I still haven’t had a period in 15 months so until that happens everything is NOT kosher inside me) but my mind is getting sicker by the day the greyer the sky gets and the more leaves fall from the trees in front of the house. Fall is the absolute worst season. Everything is dying. Not to be dramatic or emo or whatnot but I just feel it. I know for a fact that it’s the change in the light and I should really ask my shrink if I can borrow an S.A.D. light from the mental health centre, which I will probably do when I see her on the 26th, but that’s a therapy that happens over time and I’m pretty fucking dead inside these days. I stopped using the flower essence sprays because I’ve had a headache for the past 2 weeks that won’t go away and the only 2 things that are different is that I’ve been weaning off the hydromorph (yesterday was my last one) and I’ve been using the sprays. I’ve been 3 days off the sprays and 1 day off the hydromorph and my head is still killing me. I take 3 extra strength Ibuprofen a day and about 12 Tylenol 1s but nothing helps. Crying certainly doesn’t help, when I was little and I would cry, my mom would ask if the crying was really helping and the answer was always “no”, but I have little control over that. If I could change one thing about myself instantly, it would be to not cry at every. little. fucking. thing. I think cognitive behavioural therapy is supposed to help with that but I’m not there yet.
Want to know something super sad? So I bought this camera backpack and it cost me $125. It was becoming stupid to carry around both the camera bag and my purse so I wanted the backpack so I could combine the two, especially since Charlie had bought me two new lenses and it had compartments for them (plus a compartment up top for all my “purse junk”). Yesterday Blake helped me put all the camera stuff in it in its various compartments and then I emptied my purse of all its junk and organized it all and it’s been sitting on my desk ever since, right side up because it has a flat bottom, with my geocaching patch and my 1 inch buttons and Hello Kitty zipper pull and my customized Flip camera in the mesh side pouch, along with my flower essence serums and it’s all packed up and ready to go but…go where? I *can’t* go anywhere!
I wanted to go somewhere all day. I wanted to go on the trail by my house and take pictures with my new lens but there are scary construction workers in front of my house for one and for two there’s probably rapists on the trail at noon on a Tuesday or maybe just a person walking there dog which – not to minimize rape because I’ve been raped, repeatedly and I know how that feels – is pretty on par in my hierarchy of terrible things at the moment BECAUSE if I ran into either one type of person and they interacted with me in the way that those kinds of people would interact, it would freak me right the fuck out and it would probably be months until I left my house alone again. Can you understand that? In my imagination someone forcibly holding me down and putting their dick in my vagina (or worse) would be just as terrible as if someone walking their dog stopped to chat with me on the trail. I probably wouldn’t react the same way at the time (can you imagine?) but both instances would equally make me not want to go there ever again. It’s not right, it’s not rational and again, I can’t help it because I AM SICK. That’s why I want to bring the dogs with me bu they won’t listen to me off leash (they’ll listen to Blake) unless I have Milkbones maybe but we don’t have any and I can’t walk both of them at the same time and I can’t walk Hoover at all because he pulls. (I realize it’s my job to train them how I want them to be but I’m only one person in this house of 4, I’m definitely the weakest link and I just don’t know how. Plus I’m kind of lazy and training a dog is also training yourself and that’s work. That would mean going on the trail every single day and risking them taking off, which would be my worst nightmare. And I can’t take pictures of things and hold a leash at the same time and i just can’t go on the trail to be on the trail, I have to be doing something, which is why I bought the camera in the first place.)
And I also literally think that the trail – even in a town of just 2000 people in the middle of the day – is probably full of rapists and thugs. At the VERY least, the construction workers would be staring at me, if only because they now know everyone on our street but they don’t know me and maybe one of them would talk to me and I wouldn’t know what to say back so they would think I’m an asshole and I would think about them thinking I was an asshole the whole way down the trail and I would start to cry and then I’d be scared to go home because I wouldn’t be able to STOP crying and I wouldn’t want the construction workers staring at some weird lady crying up and down the street.
But back to the backpack for a second. It’s big. It’s really big. And I’m really not big and I’m scared and self conscious that I’ll look weird or people will think I’m weird for carrying around this gigantic backpack around with me all the time. But I can’t have it both ways. I can’t move all my purse junk back to my purse all the time if I just want to carry my purse and the smaller camera bag with just the camera and whatever lens happens to be on it. Why do I have to carry around all 3 lenses all the time? So I just can’t win with this backpack but we already took the tags off it so I can’t take it back. And I did that on purpose actually, because it IS what I need, even if I don’t necessarily want what’s good for me.
So I have this backpack all packed up and I had from 8am-present to go on the trail and take pictures, which is what I wanted to do all day, but instead I pretty much literally sat and stared at the wall. Refreshed Facebook about a million times. Tried to find that supersonic bungee jumping thing on TV (not successful) but settled on an episode of The Office I hadn’t seen before and that half hour was about all I could stand for TV. I could barely sit through it it felt like such a waste of life, being a rerun. And now it’s 4pm, I can hear Wes in the driveway talking to a friend and making plans to hang out with the neighbour kid and Madison’s going to be home any minute. I’m mad at Madison so I don’t want to hang out with her until after she’s read the post I made this morning about her selfishness, which she’ll do as soon as she gets home because as selfish as she can sometimes be, she does read my site pretty religiously, if only to see what I’m saying about her but also because she’s an extra pair of eyes in my constant sanity checks. (I have to have Blake read everything I post because I just don’t trust myself to be healthy minded when I write things ever since I was literally psychotic on the internet and thought I was communicating with god.) Anyway, she’ll read the post and will do one of two things: she’ll either be mad at me back and not talk to me (which is fine) or she’ll feel bad and come talk to me (which is also fine) but either way I’m going to lose the light to be able to take pictures on the trail at a time when I could, theoretically, have one or both of the kids come with me.
And Blake’s not even going to get out of work, in the city, until 6pm so we’re fending for ourselves for dinner tonight. Then he’s going to Lush to get Wes Lemony Flutter for his cracked feet and me Veganese because I’m out. Then he’s stopping at a pharmacy to get Tylenol 1s because I’m down to my emergency purse supply of them and that’s bad news when you’ve had a constant headache for 2 weeks and you’re coming off major narcotics. Then, possibly, he may stop at a grocery store to buy Milkbones but I told him that’s not super important when IT’S SUPPOSED TO RAIN THE WHOLE REST OF THE WEEK so if I wanted to take pictures in the trail, today’s the only day for a very long time.
And yeah, I’m supposed to be doing immersion therapy and yeah, forcing myself to go on the trail today would have been immersion therapy but it’s too big of a step and there are no small steps in between my house and there, especially not with construction workers in front of my house all the way to the park ( where the trail starts) all the fucking time. My caseworker scares the ever-loving fuck out of me and I have a card in my purse with his name and phone number on it but I can’t bring myself to call because I just don’t like him and I don’t think there’s anyone else. And truthfully, he’s probably the best option BECAUSE he scares the shit out of me and I don’t think I can bowl him over with irrational, possibly bullshit excuses as I’m prone to do and I did to my other caseworker until she finally gave up on me. Like I said, I see my shrink on the 26th and I don’t know what to ask her about this. Like if I should ask for a new worker and run the risk of them being a push-over or if I should stick with the one I have even though he scares me. And why does he scare me? Because he asks you a question and then you answer and then he keeps on staring at you for like, 15 seconds more like he’s expecting you to say something else, but not really because he’s just boring a fucking hole through your forehead for no reason. Maybe he’s thinking, I dunno, but staring is one of my major “things” so this man is barely tolerable. (And yes, I’ve only met him once. His only two redeeming qualities are that he’ll probably legitimately get mad at me if I don’t do what he says to do and also that he’s willing to work with me via e-mail in some capacity. So I should probably stick with him. But then the problem is actually physically calling him, which I can’t do because I don’t know what to say so I’ll probably ask Blake to do it but he won’t know what to say either. Maybe my shrink can do it. But maybe not because that would be enabling. I dunno. I dunno. I dunno.)
And now Madison’s home and she’s being snobby to me so I’m assuming she either read my post at school or someone told her about it (it happens; there’s this annoying kid named Daniel who apparently announces to the class every morning what I blogged about the day before – hi Daniel, you’re an asshole!) or maybe she’s just being snobby because that’s how she is. If she didn’t read my post today at school then she’s surely reading it now.
My cousin about an hour ago asked me on Twitter, “whatever happened to that colouring book you were making?” and that’s a very good question. I told her I lost interest, which is true, but I lost interest because of rejection. I knew I would work super hard on it and if I ever actually completed it (which, let’s face it, would be a first) no one would actually buy it. In my experience, people say they’ll buy things but then they never do. “Oh if you paint X, I’d for sure buy it!”” so I paint “X” and it rots in my Etsy shop for a year. A $20 colouring book that I’d sell maybe 20 copies of, tops, just isn’t worth my time for all the work I’d put into it. The paper dolls idea was another one that I liked but it would be the same. Plus I’m just honestly sick to death of pretty girls. I’m sick of making them, I’m sick of seeing them. Pretty soon I’m going to take everything off my walls and down from my Etsy shop and make a bonfire in the backyard I’m so sick of them.
Although that thought makes me cry so maybe that’s not true. :o(
I just don’t know what to do. I’ve said that a lot in my life and yeah, I’ve got first world problems coming out my ass here but I live in the first world so these are my problems dammit. I thought that after I got better life would be different, that everything would start over and I would have a brand new life because “life’s too short to…” sit there and cry, not leave the house, not try new things. But it’s just turning out to be more of the same from before I got sick, the only thing that’s changed is that I work less hours (partially because I have to work less hours to save my sanity, partially because that’s all the hours available; I don’t think working more is the answer to my problems, I’m pretty sure that would just make things worse unless I had to work more hours to keep my job) so I have more time on my hands to do nothing.
And yeah, I worked in Lightroom for most of the morning. I re-edited all of Madison’s grad pics for printing and my friend Sondra challenged me to correct a photo of her that she just took this morning. Challenge accepted. Here’s her before pic:
Here’s her after:
I think I made her look artificially young, to be perfectly honest, but I also think I’m getting better at retouching.
It also takes a good friend to volunteer to let you Photoshop them silly.
So I guess I was semi-productive today and I listened to really loud music all morning and was generally having a good time. I even Blipped a time or two. But then I ran out of pictures to play with and the light inside our house sucks so taking pictures in here is pretty much impossible and I’ve already taken pictures of the dogs in the backyard and the kitchen and the kids weren’t home, and neither was Blake and I couldn’t leave the house and I don’t know how to use the remote for the camera plus I look like a bag of shit today so self-portraits were out of the question…I literally did nothing but cry and reload Facebook from about 1pm-present. I read half a chapter of the newest Sookie Stackhouse but even that felt like a waste of time, especially because Charlaine Harris is actually becoming a WORSE writer as the series goes on and she starts getting more colloquial but in a totally overdone Louisiana hick way so all the characters sound stupid and then she “borrows” characters from the show or pieces of them and renames them and they’re all really obvious and it should be the other way around, with the show borrowing from HER, so if I can’t get through this book, which has been a real chore and I’m only on chapter 3, then I won’t be buying any more of them. I thought about having a bath but even that seemed like a waste of time. I knew that if I ran the bath water, I’d just sit in there and cry so I might as well cry and be clothed at the same time. Crying in the bath tub is just super pathetic and I couldn’t bring myself to risk it. I usually read in the bath and I have a million things to read but no interest in anything. I just have a serious case of ennui, I think. So very little holds my interest. The only thing I care about right now is photography and it’s the absolute worst season for it. Have I mentioned how much I loathe fall? The only good thing about it is Thanksgiving but I gave that up this year to go to Militiagan because I thought a change of scenery and people would be good for me. Not that I don’t love all the people we saw, but the only really good part of the trip for me was seeing Blake’s Aunt Pat, who I absolutely adore. And I was so fucking mad at myself because I forgot the camera bag when we went to visit her. Blake’s mom even called out to us before we left while we were getting in the car that we’d left behind a backpack but because she called it a backpack I thought she meant my actual backpack which just contained my hoodie and the connection that she meant the camera bag which I DID mean to bring didn’t connect. I really would have liked to have gotten some pictures of Wes and Pat so I could have printed one and sent it to her for Xmas. That was my only goal for the trip besides successfully working somewhere other than home and I totally and utterly failed. This is another reason why the camera backpack is a good idea for me. It has Ativan in it which I won’t leave the house without.
Anyway, I think that’s all the pathetic juice I’ve got in me. Madison wants to take pictures on the trail (actually taking pics was her idea, the trail was mine) and she’s choosing not to read the post I made about her this morning after I told her what it was about (or maybe she’ll read it later because I really want her to, I really need her to see, in writing, how selfish she’s been lately so she’ll understand) and she said she’d make her and Wes frozen fries and corn for dinner and me spaghetti so we’re good. And now I’m going to go take a crap, gather the kids (Wes is next door) and hit the trail before the light dies completely.
Sorry for making you read this.
PS. i still haven’t even started my sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project. I don’t even know where it is. :o/ Another thing I could do but I have zero interest in. It’s not just ennui, I’m pretty sure it’s also depression.
PPS. Madison has decided that we’ve lost the light and she’d rather talk about the post I made about her this morning. Fair enough, but this is just going to turn into the exact same scenario tomorrow when I don’t even have pictures to edit to keep myself occupied.