worry

Worries about My SSDI Hearing Tomorrow

| marandarussell

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Tomorrow morning is my SSDI hearing. I’m super anxious about it. I feel a little nauseated just thinking about it. I’m afraid I’ll do or say the wrong thing. I’m afraid I’ll burst into tears and feel embarrassed. I’m afraid I’ll somehow misrepresent my reality. I’m afraid the judge will say no and ruin my foreseeable future.

I know the judge probably won’t even give a straight “yes” or “no” answer tomorrow, but that makes it even worse because then I have to wait who-knows-how-long in suspense and worry. I hope I’ll feel better when it is over, but knowing me, I’ll probably spend the next few months picking apart the experience and everything I think I did wrong until I get an answer.

 

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My Four Day Migraine – Ouch!

| marandarussell

Well, my one-day migraine from Wednesday turned into a four-day migraine that I finally had to go to the emergency room to get rid of this morning. They pumped me full of a bunch of drugs that did take the worst of it away, although I must admit I’m scared it will come back once those wear off. They did give me a steroid shot to help stop rebound migraines, so hopefully that will work.

I’m exhausted and somewhat depressed about the whole situation. I went at least a couple years with barely any migraines and then this just pops up out of nowhere. I can’t help but think part of it might be all the stress about my upcoming SSDI hearing. I try not to consciously think about it, but that doesn’t work so well for obsessive minds like mine.

I’m sure you guys understand that this will be a short post since I’m not feeling too great, but here is a picture of an extremely ugly, grumpy stuffed lion for you to enjoy:

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Water Heater Update

| marandarussell

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Ugh. Turns out we have to replace the entire water heater. Over $1,800 (which we can’t afford)! This seriously sucks. To make matters worse, the guy couldn’t put the new one in until today, so we had to go all day and night without any water at all (they had to shut it off entirely due to the enormous leak). The guy said he would be here around 11am to put in the new water heater and it is now 12:30 and no sign of him yet, although he says he’ll be here soon.

Due to all this I am grumpy and feeling yucky and just want to whine lol. I can’t even flush the toilet!!! I know this may seem crazy to non-autistic people, but the huge change in my daily routine has driven me freaking crazy and brought on a nasty IBS flare. God, I hope this is over soon.

This seems like a good time to remind everyone that I do have a PayPal donation button set up on my blog if anyone ever wants to send a few bucks to help out or support my blog. You can donate any amount and don’t even have to have a PayPal account of your own. You can find the button on the right side panel of my blog home page, or access it through the Support My Blog page. If you are able to help out, that is great, but if you aren’t, your kind thoughts and well wishes mean the world to me.

I Don’t Owe Anyone Anything

| marandarussell

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Yesterday I had rather a bit of a breakthrough moment. Now, to most people with healthy backgrounds and relationships, this will likely be a bit of a “duh” moment, but to people like me who were groomed to be codependent caretakers, it is an immensely important realization.

My “eureka moment” can be summed up in one sentence:

I don’t owe anyone ANYTHING, and no one owes me ANYTHING.

Of course, this does not mean that I can’t give to others out of the goodness of my heart, or that they can do the same, but none of us should feel required to do so. I would say the one exception to this rule would probably be children. If you bring children into this world, you do owe them something – and that is to do your best at providing them a safe, stable, and loving childhood. I guess pets fit that category as well. If you sign up to take care of something that can’t care for itself, you are essentially accepting that responsibility.

Outside of that, I’m not sure if any of us should feel like we have to fully take care of others emotionally, mentally, physically, or materially. We all have a responsibility to do our best to meet our own needs, and while that may mean reaching out for help now and then, we have to realize that sometimes we may be turned down and that is ok. If so, we just need to keep looking I suppose.

As someone with disabilities though, I do want to say that I do feel it is vitally important to have public programs and assistance available (whether these be government or charity systems) for those of us who sometimes struggle more than others at being “functioning adults”. To me, it is just a simple matter of society welfare and empathy that should strive to help anyone who falls through the cracks.

Why Did I Watch the Abuse?

| marandarussell

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Last night I was thinking about my history of abuse and how I grew up seeing so much of it. As far as physical abuse goes, I did endure some growing up, but it was much more common for me to see someone else physically abused in my family. There was a “scapegoat” in our family who seemed to be the target of much of the worst of the abuse.

Thinking back, I remember how when this abuse would happen, I would scuttle into the corner or hide in a nearby alcove, but I never tried to actually leave the room. Common sense would seem to dictate that when violence is happening, you would want to get as far away from it as you can, but I didn’t even try.

I questioned myself last night why this was so. I came up with several possibilities. First, perhaps I was afraid to leave the room because I thought it would draw further attention to me. My main goal when violence would erupt was to try to become invisible. Sometimes the rage would boil over and the physical and verbal abuse would extend to me if I happened to get caught in the crossfire, so I naturally tried to fade into the shadows. Sometimes, early on, I would try to distract and please the abuser in hopes of calming them down, but that never really worked.

Another reason I think I stayed to watch was because deep down I feared for the safety of the scapegoat and I wanted to make sure they didn’t die. There may have been some morbid curiosity tossed in there too, the way that human nature makes us crane our necks to see what happened when driving by a car crash.

Lastly, I think I stayed and risked my own safety because I felt responsible for trying to make peace after the explosion. I hated to see the division in my family and the anger and pain created by these confrontations. After the worst of it was over, I would often go to the victim and try to comfort them, and then I would even go to the abuser and try to comfort them. I would try to mend the rift between them, although obviously looking back with adult eyes, I see the utter futility of my efforts and sometimes feel anger that I felt responsible to hold the family together in the first place, as I was so little at the time (elementary school age).

Depression and Gun Ownership

| marandarussell

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For at least a year or two now, I have been debating with my husband whether we should get a handgun for home protection. You see, I have an intense fear of home invasions. I often have nightmares about it. I think part of it may stem from being robbed at gunpoint when I was 17 years old. Or maybe some of it comes from living in several areas over my lifetime that were crime ridden in one way or another. A history of physical abuse and c-ptsd certainly doesn’t help either.

That is why I believe that I might feel a little more safe with a handgun in the house (most likely locked up in a safe). My husband worries about keeping a loaded gun in the house though because of my intense periods of depression. I have bipolar type 2, and while I have never had a psychotic episode, have never tried to commit suicide, and do not think I am generally a danger to myself, my husband has seen me go through some extreme emotional lows that worried him. He fears that if we had a loaded gun in the house there is always the possibility that in a moment of intense depression I might make a rash decision.

I am thinking that perhaps I should discuss the possibility with my therapist and psychiatrist. I know both of them have said they do not think I would ever actually commit suicide. Personally, I agree that I am very unlikely to commit suicide unless my husband died and I was somehow left all alone without any help in the world. I do not think I could kill myself unless the prospect of living genuinely became worse than death. I also would not want to cause anyone who cares about me pain, as I know first hand what it is like to lose someone close to suicide.