I’m up, barely. It’s just after 9:00am and I’m needing more caffeine, I wish I knew how to mainline it faster and thicker into my system without my heart exploding.  So,three hours of sleep was a bit more than I expected, yea me.  I wish I had eight because then I could possibly feel comfortable driving.  I need to spend at least 2 hours cleaning the house today and I promised myself I would go back to working out.

I’m an idiot!  I don’t know what I was thinking when I set that goal.  I’m feeling more overwhelmed then I thought I would.

True, I’m not exactly moving yet.  Getting the inertia to start moving forward seems to take a monumental effort, especially for getting housework done or exercising.  The two big things on my list of things to do today and I can’t get seem to get the lead out of my ass to do it….no, I think I could if I really, really wanted to, but I guess I really, really, really don’t want to.

I need more sleep.  I’m going to give myself an incentive….housework and exercise and I can take a nap in my nice cold office in the heat of the day.  I’ll chant that for a while and see what happens. (Of course, it might help if I medicate and sit long enough for the pills to ruminate a bit).

I don’t know if it’s the medication, the stress, or pure unadulterated stubbornness, but I can’t sleep.  I’ve read for the past two and a half hours and my eyes just won’t do it any more.  I’ve queued up one of my most watched and favorite movies but I haven’t turned it on yet.  I don’t know if I want to sleep just yet.

Mom has been a little sick today.  Having just had the pacemaker to see her go back to the heaving (ewwlekeew) and wet strands of mucous draining from her mouth make me ill, but are an especially bad sign for her.  I thought the pacemaker would take care of it.  So, I’m worried.

I promised not to take a sleeping aid tonight, which is fine.  After the change of mental status after taking the last one, I’m thinking of just doing 1/2 of one from now on, and if I’m still having issues, I’ll take 1/4 and if still, then I’ll start brewing sleeping potion tea again.

I keep thinking that the sleeping problem is payment for sort of fibbing to my psychiatrist in order to get them for my sister.  She’s sorta attached to them and she doesn’t have the great insurance that I have.  (I think I just confessed to a misdemeanor…oops).  It’s not like it’s oxycoton or anything like that so I don’t feel so bad.  Anyway, you know Murphy’s law, you use your dying grandmother to get out of work for a day and then Grandma becomes critical and you can’t take the time off.

I’m also wondering if the lack of sleep is another fun side-effect of the higher dose of the Lexapro.  I’m at the max at 50mg per day.  Mom gave me her prescription of 10 mg so I don’t have to break a tablet in half every day, but I’m thinking to back myself down to 45mg a day and see if that will reverse the cheek numbing jaw clenching I’ve been doing and the sleeplessness that I can’t seem to find a cure of.

I’ve sleep deprivation issues before.  I would sleep and wake up between 4-6 times a night.  It got to the point that I saw big huge spiders crawling across the floor or up a wall, jump and turn only to find nothing.  I actually stopped driving because I wouldn’t see the cars driving in the lane I wanted to go into and just pull out and they’d “poof” appear.  I don’t want to go through that again.  I know part of this is that I’m worried for mom, but I was having issues before she went into the hospital.

The OCD, I realize, is where all my stupid rules come from.  My rule for staying up late is a fun one when you’re writing, so I’m not holding myself to it on these nights.  If I am up and awake at 4:ooam I have to stay up to greet the sunrise.  It’s a great rule when you’ve written the whole night and it’s like a victorious salute to the day because you beat the night.  I don’t have those rules now, it’s not a victory to have your body and brain refuse to let go of the day and make you go into the next day without needed rest and relaxation.  There aren’t pills big enough to slay the dragon I become after day two.

I’m different.  Yes, I’m still struggling with the same problems; depression, anxiety and anger.  But I’m different.  Even my sister who doesn’t really have much of a clue of what I’m going through (she even admits it to me outright, but she is trying) sees a difference in me.  So, even though I’m still dragging my bum around from task to task, and I can’t get past hearing the characters talking to me and getting it onto paper, but I am improving.  I think it’s stamina.  I wish stamina came in pill form too.  I know, that’s the lazy way of doing it.

So, I’m recommitted to going to the gym on Monday.  The heat normally keeps me away so I need to come home and get into the shower and get my body temp down.  I hate the heat.  I want to move to Oregon or Washington where it’s rainy and green and wet and overcast like my personality.

Along with the aerobic exercise I want to start some sort of Yoga practice as well.  I’m hoping the relaxation of the yoga will take the need off the jaw clenching when I get over-excited.  I need to put my needs first.  I need to stop putting myself on the back burner like I have been.  Tomorrow.  Remember that post?  Tomorrow is only a day away, but I need to be more focused on today and taking care of myself today.

This blog is so self serving.  It’s a auto-biographical, pep-talk, and quick expulsion of what is bothering me all in one.  I feel so self-centered doing it, same with my journal.  Therapy, psychology, all circled around the “ID” or the “ME” I’m supposed to be.   You’d think it would make me more willing to do something to support their work.  Here’s the catch, if I do it for them, I’m less likely to do it for me when I’m supposed to be through with the process.  They are putting me first when we chat, I have to be able to put my needs/requirements/goals first.  Righteous goals, healthy goals, attainable goals.  Good luck to me! (Meant with all sincerity, not sarcasm…I swear)

I was so happy.

Then I took a sleeping pill.

I slept forever.

I woke up angry.

I’ve been trying to get my happy back.

Why is this this taking so long???

Yea, who thought I’d ever see anything positive coming from this plague.  While talking to Mom today about my writing and I realized the genesis of this life path started with a fit of anger.  Yes, at twelve seems a little early to start such a path, considering my idea for a cool job was archeologist.  (Actually, I still think that would be a cool job).

I don’t know the impetus of this current bout of anger, I just remember feeling the need to make myself stand apart from my family.  I was going to show them that I would write a book and become a famous author without them knowing.  Had I known then what I know now about the process of getting published, I think I might have stayed with the archeology.  If Indiana Jones were  a teacher/co-digger it would have sealed the deal.

Looking back over my words above, I realize I have become an archeologist.  I’m digging out the secretes of the lost relics of my life.  I’ve talked to my sisters about this and we all seem to agree that none of us can really remember a lot of our childhood, at least not as well as my mother seems to remember it, anyway.  It’s time to pull out my old journals and read the memories, if I even recorded them.  I’ve always used my journal more as an intellectual repository rather than the pavers in memory lane.  I hope there are enough clues to lead me to enough of the lost memories to understand what makes me, well, me.  Maybe if I rebuild my foundation I can rise from the emotional detritus, above the anger and become who I was meant to be.

You know the saying….”I’m not paranoid, it’s a rumor started by those people who are out to get me”.  I guess I’m still suffering from a bit of paranoia.  And it’s not because I think people are out to get me.

Maybe history would help in this case…..

I belong to a small congregation of one of the largest churches in the world.  Because all the congregations are small, and we believe and practice a form of 1:1 type of teaching we all know what’s going on in everyone’s home.  No, we aren’t supposed to gossip, but truthfully, a religion that has almost every carnal sin band  makes gossip fly at a greater speeds.  Not in a catty way, but in a “how can we help her with her depression/anxiety/OCD/financial problems.” kind of way.

The problem is, I’m so bad with helping other people that I feel so unworthy to have other people help me.  I know the Bishop can’t share what he knows about me due to the priest:parishioner relationship.  And you might think that the other conversations you have with your visiting and home teachers would too, and I trust my people but  it’s the ‘other’ person in my home likes to share with everyone she meets about what I’m going through, how I’m making big strides, how I’ve been struggling with the rent and so on.  It’s the Christlike attitude of wanting to help to alleviate suffering and to bear one another’s burdens to make them light

Why am I whining about this? you might ask.  I have this image of me going to church and walking down the hall with people’s sympathetic eyes following me, the silent prayers being said during casual conversations, knowing I’m lying when I say I’m ‘fine’.  See, that’s the paranoia, they aren’t out to get me, they’re out to help me when I want one bastion of freedom from my day-to-day dealings with balancing drugs, mother, emotions, and the surprises bubblings up of morsels if enlightenment from my subconscious.

Like paranoia, I have no proof that anyone knows anything other than I’m normal.  This unfounded fear has been keeping me from partaking of the sacraments of church, the camaraderie of fellow believers and the comfort that comes with it.  I’m denying myself opportunities to grow and to learn and to just be normal.  I have to stop giving into the paranoia, I can’t let it rule my life and after-life.  It’s bad enough the depression/anxiety is robbing me of the now, I can’t let it rob me of eternity too.

So, I’m doing okay with my songs to sing in my head, my ability to stop the eddy that leads to the whirlpool better and faster and I’m even more hopeful now than I’ve been in months/years even.  Mom on the otherhand is acting, I’m assuming, like I used to when I was angry to either give me a taste of my own medicine or to try to get the response/action out of me that will make her the happiest.  The house is messy.  She wants it fixed so she can feel more comfortable.  She feels like she’s been cast away like garbage and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I know that’s harsh.  And not very Christlike either, but honestly she can bite me.  I’ve been staying up late waiting for her call in case she needs help going to use the bedside commode, or needs something.  After last weeks stress and shampooing the carpeting, and all the good things that are happening to me right now, I’m a little, well exhausted and cleaning house is the very last thing I want to do when I am in that state.  She is snarly, growly and very sharp with all her words.  Pretty much, I assume, what I was when I was in that frame.

It’s not pretty seeing my reflection in her behavior.  I’ve been talking to her a lot about what I’ve been going through.  She first said she had no idea, and now that she’s had time to take my words and apply them to her skewed memory, she knew something was wrong and just didn’t know how to help me.  Before, that would make me angry, but now I just find it funny.  The narcissism wouldn’t allow her to not know, and now that she does know, it will be all about how she was at a loss to help me, to eventually she was about ready to call the padded wagon to come and take me away.  That should be coming soon.

I wish I could get rid of her ‘anger’ or as I like to call this fugue she’s in a temper-tantrum.  But it’s something she has to do for herself, I can’t make it better for her any more than she can make it better for me.  What a big fat juicy dill pickle I’ve found myself in.

I would hope that music would be what soothed me when I’m stressed, or chocolate or something more palatable, but no.  I like cleaning the carpets.  Not vacuuming, that’s for amateurs.  I like shampooing the carpets.  Of course, if you repeat this to anyone in the family I’ll deny it.  We make fun of my nephew who gets met at the door by my niece with a vacuum to help him unwind.  He will never live that down.  Can you imagine what it would be like for me?  I know, I shouldn’t be ashamed of doing something productive for my health, but my family shows no mercy to anyone that is beyond the family dysfunctional norm.  Or worse, they’re going to want me to work out my issues in their houses.  That will never happen, never, never, never!

So, the anger isn’t swimming around in my head, whirling like an inertia fueled eddy instead I have songs flipping like a meth-addled DJ on a sugar tare.  Right now it’s “You Spin me right-round baby”, but when I try to stop it it flips to Renee Fleming “Prelude to a Kiss” from her Haunted Heart CD, and when I get tired of that it flips to Sarah Brightman and then to Susan Graham, then back to Renee, and so on.  It’s kind of annoying.  It’s more than just getting one song stuck in my head, like happens to a normal person, but we’re talking DAYS!  I don’t know if it is a drug side-effect or if I’m just cursed.

I’m going to talk to my therapist tomorrow and see if there is something, anything I can do to not hear these songs constantly in my head.  Of course, it would probably help if I stopped listening to the Divas list on my iPod and then I might get a break.

Okay, so I quoted Harry Potter for my title.  Sue me.  Today was a day where I felt the emotions raising in me, pricking at my eyes and making me tear up.  I don’t know what caused it.  It didn’t help that my nephew J kept talking about killing Sammy, my parrot.  He can be very bombastic with his desire to kill her.  I can understand not liking someones pet, but to be as specific as to how he would, and how much he would enjoy doing it hurt.  He know’s I’m overly attached to Sammy, which I think only adds fuel to his aggressive style of humor.

I missed church, I wanted to go but the idea that everyone knows what’s going on in my house, my head and my spirit I don’t want the looks.  So, I was already wound up when he got here.  At least I was wearing my dress so he thought I went to church and he couldn’t razz me about it.

The thing is, I was okay when he was there.  I think it started when Mom got up and demanded her breakfast and “Where’s my ice tea.”  I really have an issue with Mom treating me like a waitress.  She wanted me to unpack her new oxygen system and I told her to do it herself.  When she got up and started it I helped her.  It was a confrontation where she wanted me to “want” to help.  Her tone was “You will because you work for me” and I took the bait, like a well heeled poodle.  I need to stop that.

I let her in on that I was having issues and that I took something for it when she started to get eye problems and how she’s upset that she feels like she’s loosing her eyesight….again.  And again, I let her get to me.  And it won’t be the last time I’m sure….dumb bunny.

A teaspoon is a really small place to live.