Monday, April 28, 2014

Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out

This past week was my first week of a 2-week sabbatical before Summer Term, which is packed and I'll be extremely busy for the next 9 weeks, I think it is.

My son was also home for Spring Break, which coincided with the Easter holiday, as he goes to a Christian school. It started with Easter with my brother and his son, at a traditional Polish restaurant for a Polish Catholic meal. Universally enjoyed, no one managed to have an eye poked out the whole day, though it hurt a little to overhear my mom laughing heartily with my brother in living room and her saying a boisterous, "Oh, Steve, I LOVE you!" When she says it to me, it seems an obligatory gesture such as saying "God Bless you" when someone sneezes.



I could've spent more time writing, but I slept...a lot. Apart from a trip to Chinatown (you don't want to know, but I'll tell you later) in Chicago with my mom and my son, I essentially slept. Why? It wasn't that I wasn't sufficiently rested, though my brain did need a serious break. This was the first term SINCE my first term when I managed to get all of my work in on time, without needing incompletes or extensions due to my constantly fluctuating moods. I did papers on the fly, and got A's on them the night before they were due. And that was in a depressive mood! I think it's been that way the whole term.

I didn't get a chance to go out with any of my friends over the last week, and won't until Meg and I go out on Cinco de Mayo, which is also Guy's birthday (though we won't cross paths). That means a whole extra week at home with my mother, trying to stay out of her distance so I don't get the shit kicked out of me. I should've made the call to find a new therapist, but I didn't get around to it, which I needed to. It was a most un-productive week overall. This week, I have doctor appointments and should get a haircut, and should straighten out some bullshit paperwork with school and with Medicaid.

It's most likely because of depression. When I'm depressive, I need almost 20 hours of sleep a day. No joke. Today, for example, I slept until noon but was nodding off again by 1:30 pm, yet dragged my ass up and drove to DuPage county for gas & cigarettes (they're much cheaper there). I lied down for about 45 minutes after I got home, but never fell completely back asleep. At present, I'm exhausted.

Things haven't been made helpful at home by my mom, who keeps telling people on the phone (hell if I know who she's talking to) about my extensive medical condition and how tremendously fat I've gotten. The Synthroid hasn't really kicked into full gear yet, and I'm still puffy all over with water weight gain. She went so far last night out to dinner to nix my choice of the family appetizer because "that's not good for you." Because I'm heavy. That hurt my feelings pretty badly.

Things are so out of hand--last weekend--I think--that I started cutting again. I used a steak knife to cut across my abdomen. There, because nobody will ever see it. No one will ever see me naked, so who cares? I was on an almost 5-year hiatus from cutting, but I needed the release.  I can't shift the blame on any one particular person; rather, it was the culmination of ignorance, mocking, snide remarks and oversight of too many people in my life and those who are choosing to revel in their victories, rubbing them in all over like salt in a wound. I did 2 rounds of abdominal cutting, neither of which drew blood, and I'd wished I'd gone deeper, but I didn't. It didn't scar for more than a few days. And you know what? I don't give a shit if it did.

I've been catching flack lately because I've been telling everyone I'm a potato. I mean that in all sincerity. It's what my shape looks like now. I used to be rail thin and beautiful. Now I'm a potato. Everyone says, "Just eat right and exercise!" HI. I CAN'T. The only physical exercise I've been cleared to do medically is swim and thyroid weight doesn't just disappear. I don't eat any more or less than I did when I was anorexically thin. I've only been on the medication for 5 weeks, for crying out loud. If only a miracle could happen and I could look like I did when I turned 40, I'd be happy as a clam. Alas...

Furthermore, while Guy has been decent about responding to texts, I still don't have an email where I can reach him nor do I know where in the county to which he moved. I asked him out for my birthday on May 9th over a month ago, and he's still wishy-washy about it. I HATE THAT. Make a decision. Meg's my backup plan, even though we're slated to go out for a girls' night on Cinco de Mayo as well. God bless Meg--she doesn't want me to be alone, or worse, with my family, on my birthday. (My family will celebrate on May 10th, a Saturday when I play drums, and my brother is coming to see me. Hi, nerves! Stagefright! We're also celebrating Mothers Day.)

I miss Guy terribly. He hasn't called in over a month (since March 21st, I looked at my phone), and I haven't seen him in 3-4 months. I know I'm a the bottom of the priority list, but a check-in once in a while (to say, "Hi, yeah, I'm cutting again!") would be nice of him. I understand, he just moved, blah, blah blah, but he could call during his lengthy commute home from work like he used to, right?

I did find Guy's birthday present in Chinatown, It's small and probably insignificant, but I liked it, and it was blessed by an actual Buddhist monk. And Luke and I bought matching pairs of nunchucks to fight one another with, which is always a good mom/son activity ( I won match #1, easily....his wrists are too limp!). Never having been to Chinatown, I didn't realize how scuzzy and unkempt it is, and how much it stank, nor how many shops full of junk there would be. The food at the widely recommended restaurant? I've had better in my neck of the woods, and then there was that whole experience of taking Luke for a bubble tea at a Communist-run tea shop, the workers in army-green shirts with red lapel patches, a giant map of China on the wall (obviously) and a huge framed picture of Chairman Mao adorning the wall. Me, dressed in a sweatshirt bearing the Polish flag, needed and wanted to get out of there as soon as was humanly possible. With some hand sanitizer, my family and I made it back to the safe confines of our own ghetto.

Next week, no sleeping in. Luke goes back to school and needs a ride early in the morning. I have a significant amount of tasks to accomplish which I put off all of last week in favor of sleep.


This picture is part truth and part fib. Yes, some of us (like potatoes) have to resign ourselves that our lives will entail just ourselves, our work and/or our kids, who'll abandon us for adulthood in less than a decade. I suppose you just have to grow comfortable being by yourself for the rest of your life...no sex, no intimacy, no love (of that kind). Still, as I've probably mentioned before, affection from the opposite sex is an inherent craving. (Or same sex, whatever you're into.) It literally hurts to be this alone and while friends and family's hugs help, it's not the same thing.

But it's still a lonely existence as it surely must be for at least some men.  Still, it's reality. The person I want to grow old with has already grown old without me, which pains me like you can't imagine. I honestly could give 2 shits (or go to great lengths to let everyone and their Uncle know about it) about how well others' relationships are going, how much love they're receiving that they don't appreciate and how they claim they still want more out of life. Walk a day in my unrequited shoes, gals, and stop rubbing your stink in my virgin face. If you're happy, congrats. There's no need to smear it all over social media, in my opinion. Some modicum of tact is decent. My clairvoyant sees a future for Guy and myself, and to date, she's never been wrong, but I think in this case, she might be. I try to have faith that it'll work out, really.

But it won't. Because, in the words of my favorite comedian, Louis CK...



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