Social Phobia

Some sufferers may use alcohol or other drugs to reduce fears and inhibitions at social events. It is common for sufferers of social phobia to self-medicate in this fashion, especially if they are undiagnosed, untreated, or both; this can lead to alcoholism, eating disorders or other kinds of substance abuse. SAD is sometimes referred to as an 'illness of lost opportunities' where 'individuals make major life choices to accommodate their illness.' - Social Anxiety Disorder Wikipedia Page

I was thinking of joining a support group or something for my social phobia. I fear it's only getting worse. Maybe it's a matter of simply being under-medicated, but maybe I really am just getting worse. Or maybe the depression is getting worse?

I don't know how to even identify what is wrong. How do I know what is wrong when I can't remember ever feeling right?

ANYWAY, the very last sentence of the quote above interested me. Well...I just find it so incredibly accurate and relevent. I do everything I can to avoid jobs where being social would be any part of my life. Even being a crime scene technician doesn't appeal to me anymore because they testify in court. I don't think I'm capable of that. Even as a lowly autopsy technician, I worry about communicating effectively with the evisceration/exploration team. I can't fall back on the job of a funeral director either because there is NO way I'm going to be able to talk to grieving family members. I'm just not skilled or comfortable enough. I'd make them uneasy.

It's easy to see how someone like me could end up on the streets. People like me take drugs or ingest alcohol just to feel okay and then BAM - it's an addiction. Untreated addiction leads to the loss of jobs and family ties. Then the next thing you know you're on the streets because you can't even dream of holding a low-wage entry-level Mcjob (aka: cashiering, call center agent...ing, and waiting tables).

I'm so lucky to have Stephen, but I worry so much about our future. If he keeps working full time, we can't be sealed and he will take a long time to get his bachelors. I don't know if he's stressed or not with his schedule and taking care of me and Millie...I feel so guilty for doing this to him. And I just seem to sit around and use his money for medicine, food, and therapy.

I know he'd be better off without me. It's simple logistics.

I don't know if I can ever work, and that's all I ever wanted out of life - a job that I loved. Earning my own way through life. Independence. Prestige. Passion. Skill. 5 years out of high school and I have no letters to my name. Not even an AS. A dying part of me still wants that. The majority of me just wants it to end and go away.

I'm so tired of going through hoops just to hit brick walls and end up in a worse situation than before. I'm tired of pushing myself so much harder than everyone else just to scrape by. I'm tired of not only disappointing everyone around me, but of disappointing myself.

If I died tomorrow, it would all be over and maybe I could find some peace, but my life will have been so completely void of meaning. I haven't done anything good or worthwhile. Not for anyone else anyway.

I'm just wasting away in such an undignified manner. It's like suffocating an old person with a pillow. I'm the old person just frightened and struggling to breathe while the pillow presses into my face. I'm suspended in time, scratching and flailing in vain. I just wonder how much longer I can do this. I'm so tired of this. And what's next? Having a baby? That poor thing. It would have such a disgrace of a mother. And it will miss out on so much.

That's really all I have left to look forward to/mess up.

I just can't keep this up. I can't keep doing this. I'd be happy if I never spent another day in school, but I want a career that I love and that I can actually do. But I don't know if I can really do anything. I am vastly unequipped for this life.

Until Dawn

The point of me explaining how I felt in the earlier post (that wasn't supposed to be it's own post) was so that you could understand how much I enjoyed this game.

When I was younger, my imagination was wild. Really wild, constant, and vivid. I played outside frequently. I was anything from a wife to a jedi to an explorer. My daydreaming would even creep into my school hours. Maybe as a result, my night dreams were crazy, colorful, and outlandish. As I got older though, dreaming meant something else. Instead of putting myself into every movie I'd seen recently (like an imagination-run fanfic), I'd put myself in the shoes of an astronaut or a detective. Things I wanted to be when I grew up. At school, instead of drifting away into whatever world my brain had recently absorbed, I'd obsessively make lists about what steps to take to reach my career goals and even break those lists down into more lists. 

As I got even older, I stopped remembering my dreams at all. I only had nightmares. There was always blood, someone or something (often multiple somethings) trying desperately to kill me. Anything from a powerful being to assasins, to all sorts of unique monsters. These nightmares were still incredibly vivid (too vivid), but very gorey and even enough to scare me awake. 

It's rare now that I insert myself into fictitious worlds at all. And, in that case, it only happens at night to help me sleep. The last world I remember "daydreaming" about was Game of Thrones (I would imagine being a second officer to Prince Doran of Dorne and, right now IRL we think he's been killed, so imaginary me - who of course has natural but hidden elemental bending "powers" - and Areo Hotah - the big black guy with the awesome poleax skills - set off alone to destroy the prince's murderers and save Tristane, the heir, in the heart of chaos that is King's landing). 

HOWEVER, I'm now controllably obsessed with Until Dawn. It is the perfect game for me because it joins my favorite genre of game (horror) with probably my favorite aspect of recent games (choices that make a difference). Add in amazing graphics, good voice acting, plot twists, fresh takes on villains, and enough GOOD jumpscares and you have the perfect game. 

I even think of it during the day, and I can't remember the last time I did that! Don't worry, I've already daydreamed the best, goriest way my character would die and the outfit she'd wear. 

When I think of playing this game again, I'm excited for something. Which is SO weird and embarrassing (because it's just a game), but I'm up for feeling alive and having genuine fun. 

Medical Update?

I've been feeling very horrible lately. It may be the fact that I went from 300mgXL Bupropion back down to 150mgXL. I did it because I wasn't noticing any depression-related benefits. I'd see spiders everywhere that weren't actually there. I blacked out at one point and completely lost track of time and didn't know where I was when I "came to". I'd get dizzy spells for no reason. There were good things too - like weightloss and even better orgasms, but the weightloss was caused by the induced anorexia. I was never hungry. I had to make myself eat. I remember once that I couldn't even eat more than fries and half a burger. ME!!

Anyway, I went back down to 150mgXL. The benefits just weren't worth the bad side effects. But now this isn't really working at all anymore. I'm gaining a lot of weight back (almost passing back into where I was pre any treatment), I'm absolutely miserable, and it's really hard to orgasm at all again. It's like it's no longer effective.

So I've been feeling pretty horrible. Useless. Waiting to die. Hoping my results are bad news...they're not so far. Blood tests are normal and blue nevus is not cancerous and is, in fact, not a blue nevus. They said it was vasculature-related and also a hemangioma. Which doesn't make sense because those are red to purple, are congenital, only grow on babies, and usually disappear by age 10. So I don't think they know what it is, but it's gone now. Just waiting on the 24-hour urine results now. Those are the most important as far as estimating kidney decline.

This turned into a medical update. Sorry.

It's just kind of hard to explain how I've been feeling. I just wake up and it feels like it's the same day just prolonging itself. I feel very empty and hopeless. But it's not like pre-treatment. At that point, I was ready to and willing to kill myself and actively hoping someone would crash into me or something. I was very sad. Now it's different. I'm not even sad, I'm just empty and over it. Just operating this body while my soul is somewhere else. Going through the motions of being alive and a person. I'm already dead on the inside, basically. That sounds so emo... I don't know. I'm only ever decently excited when I'm with Stephen - especially when we're eating. I'm so hedonistic about it, too. Now I'm eating a lot and all I look forward to is eating more - especially with Stephen. I don't even really look forward to sex anymore! And I used to be very active about that.

It's hard just to get out of bed and it's getting harder to shower every other day. When other people talk to me I just feel like everything I say is stupid and useless and it's just frustrating and headache-inducing to leave my apartment. I see Stephen in less than 2 hours. That should be nice I suppose.

I did it.

I did it.

I dropped all my classes last night.

And I already feel a little better. Of course I'm worried out of my mind about paying for things and all the future bad consequences of my choice, but as far as feeling like I'm doing something wrong? No longer.

It took a women's therapy group to realize what was going on.

No one was saying much (there were only 3 of us at the start), and the only other girl who wanted talk time was finished. When it was my turn, I only meant to get some advice on feeling so incredibly lost and overwhelmed. I wondered if it was normal - if it was just beginning of semester madness or something else. Quite quickly, however, more information on my life was necessary, and I tried to sum up everything that was going on.

I already feel overwhelmed and so far behind because I can't afford my textbooks yet because I'm waiting on financial aid that I'm having to do all this petition nonsense to *maybe* get it in the future because I lost it due to missing so many classes because I'm so mentally ill. I feel like a failure of a wife because I can hardly keep the house clean and I rarely make dinner - so what do I even do anyway? Why am I so overwhelmed with nothing? I feel apathetic toward nearly every single thing in my life. Is it the fact that I'm still expirementing with my medication? And on top of it, now I'm really feeling the pressure to have babies before time runs out. I know he didn't mean to rush anything and he said I could maybe go until 35 years old, "but sooner rather than later". If he didn't mean for us to start having kids pretty soon, why would he bring that up now? Why would he start telling me about a kidney team he knows of in Salt Lake?

And then of course there is the usual "Why am I getting a degree at at all? Will I ever be able to work?" It's been my life's dream since I was 5 years old to have a career. The first one being meteorologist, which I find hilarious now because I'm no good at atmospheric science. Let alone chemistry and physics. But now that I can plan for my future it's just like...finish at least one degree, have babies, and begin dying. That's what I expect - though I realize anyone can die at any time.

I digress, I told them everything. And they didn't really know what to do with it at first. One of the girls spoke up about her struggle with finding the right medications for depression. Another girl could relate in that she has a disease (much more visible than mine) that could shorten her lifespan. Those were close enough. Then they all began saying that their struggles alone were hard enough and that I had a lot on my plate.

And there it was.

Oh my gosh, I do have a lot on my plate!

Sometimes I feel like people around me try to ignore my problems because they believe they can't really help with them. They don't know that they do help by being there, and that's enough. But it makes me feel alone and different, so I try to ignore them too. I always noticed that things were harder for me than they were for other people academically. Though I could never pinpoint why. I thought I was like everyone else and that I was just somehow lazy or something. People were always calling me lazy. But I'm very mentally ill. I am very physically ill - and that will only get worse. It's like the ultimate vindication. People kept assuming the worst of my hygiene when I was getting frequent UTIs. They kept assuming the worst when I got bad grades - not that I was incapable, but that I was just being lazy, which hurt my feelings even more because I felt like I was always giving everything I had and still falling short. And I was hard enough on myself. My whole life's goal was to be successful and the best at my chosen career, and I could hardly graduate high school!

This whole time I was comparing myself to "normal" people. And I am not "normal".

Anyway, I just realized that I do need to take a break. And not to be ashamed about that. It's bad timing, but I can't handle whatever is going on right now while trying to go to school at the same pace as "everyone else".

I also realized (as I was going through the appeals process) that I've been going to different schools - not to follow my dreams, but to go wherever I could get aid - because I kept insisting on pushing myself instead of going at my own pace. As a result, I ended up losing aid at every school because of my bad grades. Now, my once-amazing GPA is rubbish and I'm quickly running out of aid. I've just ruined my academic career trying to be like everyone else and ignoring my worsening issues.

I believe in pushing yourself. I believe in pushing through things, but sometimes it's just better to go at your own pace. I can't be too upset that it took me THIS LONG to realize what I was doing. Before, I didn't have a chance of going anywhere without financial aid. Now, going back to a community college with a hard-working husband, I can have a chance. Heck, maybe I can get a job now that I'm not going to school full time and it's not a million bucks a semester (6 credits at UVU is nearly twice as much as 6 credits at SLCC)! I've ruined that too. My resume is junk mostly because of my mental illnesses and me not taking a hint. Though, I was desperate at those times, so I can't blame me for that either.

It's all coming together. It's taken a long time, but I can get an AAS in criminal justice at SLCC in 20 credits and then go for my AAS in mortuary science for thousands of dollars less than getting a bachelors at UVU. And, if I'm understanding my aid right, my pell grants run out in 2 semesters, so I'd never be able to get my bachelors there anyway. I may not have been able to get my associates even.

Anyway, this is just a rough draft plan, but I'm finally able to truly take control over my own education. I don't need to follow the money. That was so stupid, and it took a lot of time to figure it out, but it's better to let go after you've spent a lot of time making a mistake than to continue to waste time making that mistake.

There's also this:

I think it's about time I start blooming. At my own pace.

Going insane

I don't know what to do anymore.

I'm in school and people keep asking what classes I'm excited about.

The answer is none of them.

Not a single one.

The only benefits of staying in school at this point is to maybe one day attain my associates degree. Finally. My associates degree. I calculated it and this would be my 7th semester. That's enough, if I'd played my cards right, for a bachelor's degree after next semester. I've taken nearly twice as long as it normally does. It's mostly because I've been earning UW grades. Why? Because of my mental illnesses. It just makes me wonder why I'm even doing this. As it is, I'm going to have a very hard time holding a job. Why? Because of my mental illnesses.

I mean, the last job I had, I was able to keep for 9 months (I think). And I ultimately quit that one because of the monster assistant manager I had. Who would pick me out. It sounds so stupid, but it really happened. I was miserable. I hated going to work. I had nightmares about work, and not just at the start. I dreaded answering the phone - a big part of the job. I tried my best to be great at everything else just so I wouldn't have to face people. Not to mention the till, which I barely learned to run during my last few months there. Luckily, there was a gal who liked getting the till. Maybe because she was trying to avoid the phones. I'd rather have phones, so I like to think that we had an unspoken deal going on. Sans monster assistant manager girl, I think I could've maybe done that job for another couple of years. But not longer. I was quite stressed. The only real friends I had were Stephen and a paramedic student named Nate. He was rad. We'd share body stories and things we were learning. It's funny because I told him he'd miss me when he left, but he said he wouldn't (of course). Then he did. That was the sweetest thing about him leaving. And, after he left, monster assistant manager girl went supersayan.

Anyway, my point is that I just don't feel like I'll ever get anywhere with my life anyway. My doctor asked us if we'd been talking about having kids yet. I feel like my time for having babies is running out. So...even if I was to get any degree, what's the use? I'll be pumping out and raising a couple of babies in the next few years here. Then at least 5 years after that to raise them. By then, are my skills even marketable? Are they as sharp as those of new graduates?

I know I worry too much. It's part of the package, but I think these are all legitimate. As it is now, I go into school and I just sit there thinking "Oh no...we have to work in groups? Time to drop the class." "How much is this textbook going to cost?" "I'm supposed to have learned all of this since last time?" "How am I already so far behind?" "What am I even going to do with a criminal justice degree?" "College sucks." "Liberal education sucks." "How am I going to pay for this?" "Why am I taking this stupid class?" "Why am I here?" "What about mortuary school?" "Is there an easy way around all of this?" "There has to be something better out there." And then, before I know it, class is over. Just another 16 weeks of this nonsense.

Why does anyone do this? Where have all the tradeschools gone?

Cheating and society

I'm talking about marital cheating this time, ladies and gents.

I recently caught wind of a movement called #BreatheFire. It's a movement inspired by a woman (probably with good intentions) who criticizes Anna Duggar for staying with her husband. She makes some valid points. Anna was raised in a super-religious household. She married into a super-religious family. They don't value educating women in those circles, but this woman claims that's a contributer to the fact that she's staying with him. She says she feels bad for Anna for not saying "enough is enough" and leaving him.

I watched the show long before all of Josh's demons were exposed to the country. I know who Anna is. She is strong. She is kind. She is dedicated. Maybe overly so. I won't pretend to know what's best for her and her family. And I really think she should be thinking about herself alone right now because if mom is happy, everyone is happy. The inverse is also true. And she has every reason to leave right now.

But, regardless of what society preaches, leaving someone like that isn't always the best answer. We don't know all that was going on behind the scenes. And he's no different from a lot of men in this country. In fact, a quick Google search says 70% of married men admit to cheating. It was magazine.foxnews though so...take it with a grain of salt.

Either way, that's a lot of cheating men. Given society's thinking (and assuming that statistic is true), 70% of marriages should end in divorce, not the currently accepted 50%. And why is Anna being criticized at this time? She should be allowed to make her own decision without outside or inside influences. The implication is that she's weak and not empowered. She doesn't know her worth.

Well...a similar thing happened to me.

I'm not going to pretend we're even close to being in the same boat. No one is ever really in the same boat. However, I have been cheated on by someone I love more than anything in the world. It happened before we were married, but it still hurts today. Every single day.

I chose to stay with him and even marry him because I loved him and he changed. He truly changed into a better person and, according to him, it took seeing how badly he could hurt someone for him to realize just how shitty of a person he was. And he really was. Just a great liar, sneak, seducer, manipulator. I didn't see it at the time.

Since dealing with that incredibly painful blow, I've been humiliated, criticized, and called a liar. I'm not sure which one was the worst. I got way more guff about this than either of the actual participants! My jerk (a nice word) of a mother-in-law decided it was a good move to tell "many people" about this and, while doing so, criticized my choice to stay with Stephen. Because she didn't do the same? Does she think everything she does is the right answer? She must. Because that was her reasoning.

Forget her. My point is...why? Why do I need that on top of everything? And I "won" (a scrap of consolation) because, after having sex with me for the first time, he never went back. My therapist says to view it that way anyway. I don't really believe I won anything other than a better Stephen. And that was a good thing among a trash pile of horrible things. At least he knows how much he means to me.

And I was going to leave him once. I think it was about the time we were going to get engaged. He'd crossed my line once again and I was out. He cried harder than I'd ever seen before and promised to change. And he has. A LOT. But she doesn't know that. She doesn't know anything about me.

And we don't know anything about Anna. We all need to stop criticizing her and let her do what she knows is best for her. I don't think for a second that she hasn't considered leaving him. And neither should any of us. We shouldn't assume ANYTHING about her. And, when her final decision is made, we need to support it. Or at least not make things harder on her. For pete's sake.

EDIT: As a side note, I think it takes a LOT more strength to stay with someone who has done this than to drop them like a rock. Not that dropping someone is the wrong answer, but both have their place.

Private Detective

Remember what I was saying about private detectives not being able to help a lot of people? Or did I say that? Anyway, I always thought they only worked with lawyers and insurance companies to investigate fraud. And there are some who investigate extramarital affairs.

Well, there are apparently some who solve homicides. That's pretty neat. That job just went up in my book. If being a coroner, coroner technician, pathologist's assistant, or autopsy technician isn't in the cards, that would be my next career choice.

Though I'm not that much of a charmer, so it would be hard to get information from people. We'll see.