Quitter

My parents used to call me a quitter.

• After a year or so of Campfire Girls, I didn't go back. It wasn't any fun and I have some very bad memories of it.
• I was in Honor Choir in 5th grade and I quit it to play softball. Because our lives revolved around my brother's sports, I thought I'd get some of the attention if I played a sport. (There is a whole, ugly story around this, but now isn't the time.) I wish I hadn't done this. I'd have been happier in Choir. But I was only 10 or 11.
• In 6th grade, I joined Girl Scouts. After about five months, all we had done were a handful of crafts. We didn't go anywhere or do anything. I had joined with two other girls, and they were also bored and unhappy. They made me the spokesman to tell the leader we were quitting. She cried. I was 11. My folk began calling me a quitter to my face.
• I was forced to join Job's Daughters when I was in 7th grade. Didn't want to, but the family had promised my dying grandfather (and given several things, I certainly felt no compulsion to follow that promise). I stayed for a year and a half before being able to leave it. My parents again accused me of quitting, of never being able to stick with a thing.

Not Enough

Today was my mother's birthday. She would have been 72.

I'm doing particularly badly today, but have been doing generally badly for weeks. I've done virtually nothing on one of my jobs; I'm sure they are just so glad they asked me to do it.

I'm so miserable and I don't know what to do about it that I'm not already doing. I think it wouldn't be a bad thing to be dead on almost a daily basis. I hurt and there is nothing that gives me any reason to think I'm going to become appreciably better. I have no family. What friends I do have are really just friends: none of them will ever come to visit me here or make me truly part of their family. And I haven't made any constant friends since I moved here. Given my experience, that's likely to remain the case.

Anyone who's reading this is already thinking "oh you should have hope" and "you don't really mean that" and "you don't know that's the case" and all that other optimistic stuff. And I wouldn't be able to convince such people — even if I bothered trying — that I have done and thought and felt all the hopeful, positive, productive things anyone has ever told me about, asked me about, or that I've read about or even thought of independently and none of it has worked.  But nobody ever believes me about that anyway. Just call me Cassandra.

Turn Off, Tune Out

Even with the new ideas I'm having here, the great work, and the epiphanies, I still ignore my life. I am still not living, I'm only taking up space and air.

Most people in my position would be finding some work, any work to help pay bills. Most people would have made the calls to find financial help.

I just watch streaming video and read blogs.

I have lived vibrantly in the past, even in my adulthood. I've even lived vibrantly in the last few years. But I've done so less and less and that disturbs me. I don't want to spend how many years I have left just taking up space, simply existing. I want to enjoy living.

Sure, right now the zest is still pretty much gone, with Mom gone and my having a distinct lack of social life. I love my online friends, but I need face time. I need to be able to hug someone, or even just touch their arm or their hand. Not being able to touch is kind of like being in prison.

I've had some times with The Man that were beautiful, truly beautiful. I've spent some time with one of my girlfriends here, just talking and talking, that was very fine. When I still lived at the beach, and was walking regularly on the beach, and was not wallowing in self-pity because I didn't have any friends at the beach or a lover, life was beautiful and joyous. (And my body was in good shape, too!)

I want ... I need ... what I don't have, and that stunts me. I feel that living is unpleasant and a chore. I'm sure as hell not having fun and haven't had much in a long time. I know — just do it and all that other stuff. It's ungodly difficult when I don't see any payoff for me in terms of what I want, what I need. I'm not such a great person that I can live to serve others. In many ways, I've been there and done that, from family to manager to lover. I keep thinking the pendulum is going to swing back my way, but family is gone, I'm desperate for an income so I don't have a lot of choice about a managerial relationship, and I don't see The Man choosing me (yet, in some ways, I honestly see us together) nor do I see me choosing another.

So far I've gotten little zings here and there, from mental breakthroughs and good therapy, but it's all popcorn stuff — it doesn't satisfy except for a few moments.

Voices talk to me in my mind — not those kind of voices! — telling me all that stuff about just do it, be satisfied with what you've got, ya gotta give before you can get,  you'll only get love/friends/whatever once you stop wanting it (and what kind of psycho came up with that one?), etc. 

In the Buddhism book I like to read, the author refers to a couple of her friends who died young of cancer. One of them wrote a letter to all his friends about how he would have wanted more, but he had never wanted other.  You know the sayings about living without regrets? My life is filled with regrets and ways I wish my life had been "other." This is nothing like the life I wanted to live, and I never imagined I would be on the far side of middle age and completely alone as regards family and geographically close friends. This is nothing like the life I always imagined, not just in little ways but in huge, powerful, reasons for living ways.

So it's not really hard to figure out why I don't look forward to tomorrow and why my depression recurs and why this time it is so damned hard to shake. I can't even call my mom to talk to her about my sadness and get her sympathy and pep-talk the way I have a thousand million times before. 

I have no one I with whom I can exchange "I love you." "I love you, too." I miss it.

Not Quite Succeeding

Well, I tried. This week, in addition to the regular therapy homework, I had my new behavioral homework, just a few tasks. And as simple and small were the challenges, it's going to take more than a week for me to incorporate everything successfully and routinely.

Therapy homework
Nope. Didn't even think of it until about an hour ago and a couple of hours before I go to sleep is not the best time.

Behavioral work

1. Take a shower and get dressed every day, preferably before noon.
   I showered every other day. I got dressed every day, although sometimes in lounge-around-the-house clothes. About half the time I managed this before noon. Lesson: Don't read more than one blog before beginning after-breakfast routine.
2. Eat three meals a day, plus a piece of fruit and/or a vegetable every day.
   Didn't manage the three meals at all. I still mess up the hours in my day. Started out okay with the fruit, but then let the rest of the fruit and some of the berries go bad. Managed that a third of the week. No vegies at all. Lesson: Create alarms to make me aware of meal times. Prepare vegies right after I bring them home. Be more vigilant and eat the fruit or vegie first.
3. Leave the apartment every day. Pick up my mail every day. Preferably mesh the two and walk to the mailbox every day to incorporate some body movement.
   Only one day did I manage the mesh. I think there were only two days when I didn't go out, thus two days (or maybe three) when I didn't pick up my mail. And the walk plus mail day was my only walk day. Lesson: Create a schedule for the week requiring me to leave. Walk the walking trail at the complex at least twice a week — maybe set an alarm for it. Pick up the mail when I return from my going out. Without an external reason, I just don't go. Still too inert.

I'm also still not getting to bed early. I haven't been to bed before 12 this week, and I hit 2-ish at least once, which makes me get up later. And I generally turn off my alarm and continue sleeping. I need to push myself (which I'm not yet succeeding at) to go to bed earlier, and I need to put my alarm across the room so I have to get up (the alarm doesn't stop until I physically turn it off, so this could work).

I also am finding I still need a Red Bull each day to help me stay awake. I had one all week and did fine. I didn't have one today and around two thirty was so tired I lay down. The alarm on my Mac woke me up just enough to turn it off. I went back to sleep until 6:30. Four hours. I wish I could simply take a nap for 30 minutes, rather than sleep through the afternoon. It cost me time on a project, pushing me even later.

So I had a couple of very small successes this week, plus I got some ideas about what might work for this coming week. I've been solidly this inert for months, so changing may take longer than I expected. Unfortunately, because I'm very tired of it. Plus, I'm not making any money, which puts me closer and closer to running out.

It doesn't seem fair, after all I've been through, to have to deal with all this, and alone. I know Life isn't fair, but I wish it would help me a bit. If I have to do it all myself, I just might end up living in my car. (Sorry, Julie.)

Floating lightly, as if smoke on air, and peeing

Between feeling like a cat — just a breath away from a nap — and feeling as if I have no responsibilities when I'm here (which isn't exactly correct), I've been drifting from one thought to the next, none of those thoughts being particularly deep. That's fine, but half of my two-week vacation is gone and I haven't accomplished what I planned to do: go through the storage unit to sort more of my things out and to find things to send home. I do have a couple of hours here and there I could devote to it, but so far most of my hours are completely filled. It's totally weird. And I still haven't set a time for dinner with the neighbors.

My two deep thoughts are about my health. First: why am I so bloody tired? Needing to take one or more naps a day is not normal for me, and my first (always my first) thought is that I have cancer or some other wasting disease. Because dying now would simply round out the story of my life: 1, 2, 3, 4 — Dad, Jim, Mom, me. Hypochondriac? Maybe, but more likely it is just another part of hypervigilance and always expecting the worst so I'm prepared for it. And yet, as with Mom and last summer, I'm only prepared for the worst in respect to myself. I mean, I've been grieving since September 12th; I've only been sleeping all the time for the past two months or so. The napping and the grieving don't match up.

The other health concern is about my urine. If you have a problem with bodily TMI, better skip out now. Are they gone? Okay, now it's just us. The problem with my urine is that it's gone completely clear and it smells a bit odd. No pains in my kidneys, but this seems like something wrong. Is it my medication? Am I dying? Is it something else? I've called and left messages with my psychiatrist and my physical doctor (because the psych wasn't calling back). I left info about symptoms. That was earlier in the afternoon for them. It is now mid-evening back there ... I doubt they are calling me back today. Does this mean the symptoms are nothing to worry about or that no one has actually looked at or listened to their messages? A call back would have been nice. Kind of like a signal on one of the SETI radio telescopes. "Yes, we heard you. You are not alone."

Napping and peeing: important issues at the beginning of life and often at the end. Let's just hope it's also a problem in the middle of mine. Not like I'm paranoid.