Here’s a story of a girl that I won’t name. She’s nice and caring and likes me, but I don’t particularly like her. She’s sweet, but it’s kind of like how saccharin is so sweet that it’s too sweet and tastes awful. She values my opinion (too much) and wants to talk to me a lot. She thinks she knows me because my presence reminds her of her old best friend and we both wear glasses (she’s severely visually impaired, though; I’m just myopic with an astigmatism) and draw SSI. She doesn’t really know me, though. One day two people in my Art of Interviewing group were telling me what to do and I snapped, this girl was shocked that I would do that, but tried to calm me down. We rode down the elevator together on Friday and she asked me how I was. I know that the “polite” thing to do when asked that question is to tell the other person that you’re fine, which I’ll normally do, even though I think that that social norm is absolutely asinine. Well, when she asked, I told her I was depressed. She asked me what was making me depressed. I know it’s the normal question to ask, but I hate that question. What makes me depressed? The stupid chemicals in my brain make me depressed. My wonderful genes make me depressed. I’m not depressed for situational reasons. I kind of snapped at her and told her that it was just the stuff in my brain that made me depressed. I’ve already told her I’m Bipolar, so she should have known that I would be prone to bouts of depression. Ugh. I don’t want to hurt her feelings because she’s a really nice girl, but I just get so stressed when I’m around her. I feel like I have to play nice, and I’ve played nice for too long. Sometimes I need to let my inner bitch out.

I may be expressing myself differently shortly. I’m considering getting a makeover–hair, makeup, etc. I want to get it done before Thanksgiving because I want to surprise my family with the way I look. I know that some of them visit my site, so I’m not going to spill what I’m planning on doing. My mother and I are the only ones who know. All my dad knows is that I might be getting a hair cut. That’s all my Nana knows, too.

Speaking of Nana, my mom and I went to visit her yesterday. My mom had to do something down there for Nana. I get so comfortable while I’m there that I don’t want to leave. I never really know what to say to Nana because my mom is like me, she tells her mother almost everything. (We’re all crazy, but we know each other really well.) I also don’t know if I should rant about certain issues because, though I know she’s a Democrat, I don’t know how liberal Nana is. I know that I’m the most liberal person in my immediate family, and I have a feeling that of all of my cousins, aunts, etc., I’m the most liberal. Basically, I know that I’m going to be more liberal, but I don’t know how much. Oh well. Even though I’m not sure what to say, I never like leaving her. Like with my mom, I don’t have to talk to my Nana to communicate with her.

I always feel like I’ve never spent enough time with her. I used to spend every Saturday with her. Then, Granddaddy died and she got really sad and quit coming by very often. She’d come to my birthday parties and occasional little visits, but she didn’t visit as much. After seeing someone so often for so long, it’s hard when you don’t see them much. She started having health problems a few years ago, which basically cancelled out any chances of her visiting every Saturday. Now, she only comes to Huntsville for medical things, and occasionally when someone else brings her for some other reason. I don’t blame her for “not being around”, it just still hurts not seeing her very often. I get to talk to her on the phone a lot, but I hate the phone and talking on it really isn’t the same as seeing her in person. I’m about to cry just typing this up. Anytime I think about it, I start to cry. I’m such a baby, aren’t I?

I’ve been considering going to church. I’m afraid to go, though. I know that if I opened my mouth about anything I believed, they would try to get the demons out of me. Afterall, I’m just a heathen who worships the devil and dances around naked in the forest after sacrificing animals and small children. I want to go to church for a superficial reason. I want to meet people and make friends. I don’t want to go for the religious stuff, because quite frankly unless there is a Gnostic Christian church around, I’m not really going to have beliefs that fit in. The only church that I can really go to is my mother’s church (LDS), which means that I’d be introduced to all those good Mormon boys. If I were to fall in love with and marry one of those boys, we would have serious issues over how our children would be raised. Actually, I’m probably going to have that issue regardless of the religious affiliation of my future husband. I don’t want to raise my kids to be anything. I’m not saying I want them to be Atheist, but if that’s what they feel drawn to, then I don’t want to stand in their way. My parents raised me that way, and, though I ended up believing in one of the rarest/most obscure sects of Christianity, I think it worked really well. Well, there’s a good thing and a bad thing about going to church. The good: I get to buy dresses and skirts; The bad: I’ll have to wear dresses and skirts

Some rude person on the Q&A page who kept saying that I was ugly and a loser said I needed face cleanser. I looked at the pictures on the site to see if I had lots of blackheads or something. I didn’t see any. The only think I could figure was that it was because my skin was shiny. I know that the 7 pictures of me with glasses were taken when I came in from 90+ degree weather, so I was sweaty. The other was taken after I’d come in from getting the camera, so I was probably sweaty there, too. All I know is that my skin is very clean. I wash it and use Noxzema pads. I know my skin is clean and that person is banned.

I also know I’m losing weight. I had had some clues over the past week that I’d lost weight. I had one pair of jeans almost completely come off at school. Then, I had another pair start falling off. Finally, I had a pair that had been tight for a while, that pair was a little loose. Of course, I didn’t know how many pounds that I had lost until I weighed myself yesterday at Nana’s house. I got on the scales and the thing went to 220. I double checked. That was lower than I’d ever been since the surgery, even before I gained weight back. Of course, her scales saying I weigh 220 means I can weigh anywhere from 215-230. I’m hoping it’s 215-220. If I’m actually at 220, then I’ve lost 20 or more pounds since September 25th. If I keep losing at this rate, then I will be at almost 200 by Thanksgiving and 180 by Christmas. Of course, the rate that I’m losing weight will probably get slower.

There was one hallucination during my off-Geodon period that I wanted to write about, but I forgot about it. As I was walking to the dorm one day I saw this guy heading to the Caf. He was walking away and suddenly his head spun around (like from The Exorcist, except none of the grossness). Some people would have freaked out, but I thought it was funny. I had already seen a magic bunny that day, so I already knew I was seeing strange stuff. It was like Janet’s-on-acid Day, but I wasn’t.

You know what’s bad about being someone who sees things? When you see something that no one else looks at, then people think you’re seeing things. I had been on my meds long enough to not be hallucinating, so I knew that the cute little animal I saw was real. No one else looked at it, so when I told my dad that no one else looked at it, he asked me, “Are you sure it’s real?” I’m 100% sure that the animal was real.

Happy Halloween!

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I know I haven’t written in a while. I’ve been busy with school and completely exhausted from everything. I want to write more, and I hope that I’ll be able to. It’s not too long until Thanksgiving break, so I should have a few days to write then.

I did my speech for my speech class last Monday. Most of it was direct quotes, so I spent a lot of time “reading” my cards, which led to people accusing me of delivering a manuscript speech. I hope the teacher didn’t think I was reading from the cards too much, or I might end up with an F on my speech. I really don’t need that in that class. I’ve already got a D in there.

My experiment of not taking Geodon is over. Apparently, if I go off my Geodon, my emotions get out of control, I get psychotic (duh!), and I come up with a lot of new ways to hurt or kill myself. These are apparently bad qualities, so now I’m taking the Geodon again. I hope it doesn’t affect my grade on next week’s test in Art of Interviewing.

I’ve been really depressed lately, and extremely stressed out. I’ve got my normal issues with depression, but the stress of my current classes and how poorly I’ve been doing in them is literally driving me crazy.

I have to go to my advisor this week about the classes I’m taking next semester. She’ll probably be a little confused when I have to tell her that I’m probably going to have to take Art of Interviewing again. She knows I’m a good student, but that class just isn’t going so great. Hopefully, she’ll understand.

I do think I may have gotten one good grade in Art of Interviewing, other than the 80 on the group test. Yesterday my group had our group presentation and she said right after it that it was the best presentation so far. Then, the next group out did us. Bleh. Still, I hope I get a good grade.

My knee is still hurting. My mom said it may hurt for a month. The ER doctor didn’t say anything like that. He said if wasn’t better in a week that I should come back in. I can’t be going to the hospital every week until I get a family doctor.

We’ve figured out how to solve my studying problem. I didn’t have to get Adderall. I just have to go off my Geodon, the anti-psychotic. If I want to pass classes, I need to be able to think. Okay, so I’m inviting in some lovely characters, delusions, etc. into my life, but I have to do what I have to do. If this doesn’t work, then I’ll just go back on it.

I found out how I did on my Art of Interviewing exam. I got a 49. That’s out of 100. I stood in my teacher’s office as she told me that everyone had missed one of the questions and as she said for me to see her after class on Monday. I told her that I should start doing better soon because I’d be going off my medicine. I had tears in my eyes, but I didn’t start crying until I got on the elevator. By the time I reached the second floor, I was crying like crazy. All of my classmates from Diverse Populations were worried. They asked me what I’d made and I told them. I kept crying and people kept hugging me. They were reassuring me since they’d gotten low grades, too. I still cried, and I was glad that there were no sharp implements around. (Yes, I dropped that low over an F.) Eventually I stopped crying.

Well, I’ve pretty much figured out my schedule for next semester:

Monday-Friday
University Choir

Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Social Work Methods I
Rural Human Services

Monday, Wednesday
Advanced Composition
Human Behavior II

Tuesday, Thursday
Social Problems

I wanted to take Creative Writing on Tuesday and Thursday, but my mom said I might be taking too many writing classes. I really wanted to do that class, though. I don’t know if I could handle 7 classes. I’m having enough problems with 4. I guess I can wait until my Senior year to take Creative Writing. I’ll have to do it in the first semester or I can never do it again. Second semester of Senior Year is Field. Field is basically an internship program where you are sent out and work (without pay) for an agency.

I thought about taking a photography course, but it would interfere with one of my required courses. I wanted to take voice classes, but I would have to find the instructor and set up special hours. If I can, I’ll try to sign up for voice classes my Senior Year.

Oh, back to the actual classes for next semester, I will have to spend the night on campus two nights a week. Ugh. I like sleeping in my own bed in my own room. I don’t like the thought of sleeping in a dorm again, especially that dorm. Last year there was a fire set in one of the dorm rooms. I knew that when I decided on Terry Hall, but I picked it because you can bring in fridges. The people there are nice, but I want to stay at home.

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Well, I had started walking more than I said I would. I was walking 2 times a day for a total of 2 miles a day. I was going to try for 3 miles on Sunday, but I only got in 1 walk. I had turned to come back home and I stepped up onto the curb and my knee went “crunch”. I’m serious that it crunched. At first, it didn’t hurt too bad. The more time that went by, the more it hurt. I couldn’t go to my speech class yesterday because I couldn’t go up & down “the Hill”. I sat in my dorm room and studied with my leg propped up. I was studying for the 3rd time for my Art of Interviewing test. Then, I studied for a test I thought we were having in Diverse Populations. I hobbled to Diverse Populations and find out that our midterm is tomorrow, and that I was the only one in the class who had read the chapter. After that was over, I went to Art of Interviewing, where I studied for a few minutes before taking the test. After probably flunking the test, I hobbled back to the dorm room. In my mind, I was having all these thoughts that I was going to end up having to have surgery. I knew I needed my knee checked out.

My parents took me to the emergency room since I have no family doctor anymore. I saw the Triage nurse, who had this very cool new thermometer that they run across your forehead. I waited for about 3 hours before I was taken back to Direct Care. I was shipped off to X-Ray. After 4 digital shots, I was sent back to my little curtained chair. The doctor finally came in after I’d been at the hospital for 4 hours. He spent about a minute with me. He said that I had no breaks and no bad arthritis. He also didn’t understand when I explained to him that when I stepped onto the curb, my knee went “crunch”. He told me that I had said I twisted my knee, which I wanted to slap him for. I had told about 5 people at that hospital that I “crunched” my knee. He went away and wrote a prescription. It’s for Voltaren. If the doctor had looked at my medicines or at my history, he would have known that I can’t take it. Asthmatics are supposed to avoid it, and people with acid problems are REALLY supposed to avoid it. I looked it up this morning before we went to get it filled because I had a feeling that it would cause me “tummy troubles”. If the doctor had spent a second and actually looked at my chart, he would have known not to give me that. Instead, I have to take Tylenol. Yes, my addiction. I get to take it while my knee is hurting.

So, I found out that actually do have arthritis. I just wish the doctor would have asked me if I knew first. Saying that it’s not bad isn’t good enough. I don’t get why he couldn’t have been more sensitive. Actually, I do. He didn’t really care about me.

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Have you ever wanted to hit someone without fearing the consequences? Yesterday I really wanted to. I wasn’t going to, but I wanted to. My Art of Interviewing teacher told me not to wear the top I was wearing again. It wasn’t skanky looking. It had a pretty modest cut neck. There were no sleeves, but it wasn’t a tank top. The only thing that could’ve been problematic was that sometimes one part of it would ride up and show a small portion of my stomach. Apparently that was enough for her. Now I don’t know what I can wear. No spaghetti strap tank tops. No nice black shirts that show nothing. I still doubt I could wear my bell sleeve top because of how low the neck goes. Most of my t-shirts have stains on them or holes in them, which has led to them being put in the pajama pile. I seriously have about 5 tops that I can wear this fall. At least on Fridays I can wear my “skanky” clothes.

She only seems to tell me not to wear certain things. Other girls have worn things that were “worse” than what I’ve worn, but she doesn’t like what I’m wearing. I seriously wonder if it’s my race or my size or both. I want to complain to the administration at the school, but I’m afraid she’d give me bad grades over this. I could ask for it to be brought up anonymously, but she would probably remember that I’m the one she singles out.

The Inderal had been helping my tremors and had taken away an 8-year headache. Well, yesterday, my emotions get a bit mixed up and all of a sudden, I’ve got a migraine and my hands are shaking. Things are better today, but I was in so much pain yesterday. I was also nauseated, which I got the first time I had a migraine. On Monday, I saw auras, but I didn’t see them yesterday.

I want to clear up something about the last entry when I was talking about my Diverse Populations assignment. I don’t think being assigned the Black Americans chapter is bad. (It isn’t African Americans because it is referring to people who haven’t just migrated from Africa. I was taught this from a black man and it has been reinforced by the book.) The assignment doesn’t intimidate me. I never said that the assignment was a bad thing. In a way, it will be a boring thing because much of what it’s about is civil rights struggles. I grew up in Alabama, we’re schooled in civil rights from a very young age. I wanted another chapter because I wanted to explore something new.

Part of me wants to get a haircut, but the other part (the part that is very attached to my black scrunchie) doesn’t want to get a hair cut. I don’t know how I’d get it cut. I don’t know if it should be short or not. It’s always hard for me to decide on a new style.

Oh, I wasn’t hungry at all last night. I had to force myself to eat. I think it may have had to do with the migraine. I had the same problem at lunch today. Part of me just wanted to skip dinner last night and lunch this afternoon, but I knew that that might start me on a dangerous track. Oh, I had my picture taken Tuesday as sort of a “before” picture. I figure that anytime I get weighed, I can take a new picture. Since I don’t weigh myself, there shouldn’t be too many pictures. Hopefully, we’ll get to see me shrink over the months.

I started walking an extra time a day today. So now, I walk the puppies twice and then I walk by myself once. After a week, I’ll be walking by myself twice a day. That should give me about 40 minutes of exercise each day that I walk. I may not get to walk both times on days that I go to school, but I walk and climb “the Hill”, so I get some exercise in there.

I can’t believe Katie Holmes is pregnant with Tom Cruise’s child. That’s just very ew. I had hoped he was impotent or had fertility problems. He shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce. That should just be against all laws of nature and man.

Speaking of being against all laws of nature and man, I think that statement should also apply to Judge Roy Moore’s sick attempt to become Governor of Alabama. I’m considering leaving Alabama if he becomes Governor. If you don’t know who he is, he’s the “10 Commandments Judge”. He’s the guy who snuck a huge 10 Commandments monument into the Alabama Supreme Court in the middle of the night. He refused to remove it, even when there was a court order. This led to him being kicked out of his position as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. God apparently has blessed Moore with the ability to have his own cult of followers and the stupidity to not realize that he was breaking the law. Now he wants to be the head of this state? He has enough followers that there’s a good chance that he will win. I got very frustrated when I heard that he was running. I hope Riley beats him in the primaries.

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Well, Jenny and I had our interviews today for Art of Interviewing. We both screwed up, I more than she. We didn’t introduce ourselves or the agency (a therapeutic foster care agency) and we didn’t do a summary of what we were going to be going over. Jenny said I did better with the interview because I didn’t look at the questions as much. I knew the questions, though, since I’d come up with them. Since we were interviewing each other, we could answer however we wanted. Well, I decided to be a cold-hearted woman. I told her that I didn’t want Muslim/Arab kids and that I didn’t want kids with any attention problems or acted up. I said if a child in my care overate, I would padlock the fridge. Then I told her that I spanked my own kids, so I would spank the foster kids as well. I also said that I was only in it because it paid “good money”. I said a lot of things that I knew would get me turned down or at least cause me to go through a little more training. Jenny didn’t pick up on any of it, and our teacher said that with the spanking of the kids, she should have explained that the agency doesn’t allow for corporal punishment. I guess it was unfair that I went so far because I knew the rules for foster care and I don’t think Jenny did, but I had so much fun. I never get to act anymore. I wish I could take a drama class, but my memory is so shot that I couldn’t do the class properly. Besides A&M has no drama program.

In November, I’m supposed to present a chapter for Diverse Populations. I have a partner, but she’s never in class, so I figure that she won’t be doing anything for the presentation. It will all be on me. Now I get to figure out how to teach 11 people what struggles black Americans have gone through in this country. Isn’t it ironic that the only white girl in the class gets the black chapter? I think my teacher did it on purpose.

I’m always tempted to type out the names of my teachers, but I know that if I did, something bad would probably happen. It’s hard to refer to all of them as ‘my teacher’ or ‘the teacher’. I’m used to saying there names.

I had to go to a conference on Monday morning about disabilities in the elderly. I don’t think I learned anything. I did get a copy of an Advance Directive, a living will and health care proxy. I’m thinking of copying it and filling it out. I’m not sure who I’d put as my proxies. The only two people that I know that know my wishes are my parents, so would it be right to list one as one proxy and the other as the other? I know that I couldn’t pick my grandmother and probably couldn’t pick my maternal aunt. They would want to keep me around, but that’s not what I want.

After the conference, I came back to my dorm room to eat my lunch–cottage cheese and mandarin oranges. Well, I was sitting on the bed eating. I had my bowl between my legs. Well, I had been drinking water as I ate the oranges. When I went to put my bottle up, I shifted my legs. The cottage cheese and juice/syrup went everywhere. I spent a good deal of my “lunch time” cleaning up the bed and my pants.

I’m really annoyed with my body, but even moreso with the Seasonale that is supposed to be helping my body function better. It is supposed to keep my hypermenorrhagia in check, but it’s causing me to bleed between periods. It’s actually heavier than my periods have been. I’ve decided to up my iron to keep the anemia coming back, especially since I don’t eat as much anymore. It’s just frustrating that a pill that is supposed to keep me from bleeding is causing me to bleed. When I finally get a new gynecologist, I’m switching pills.

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Have you ever had one of those days that you knew would suck before it even started? I knew that Friday was going to suck Thursday night after I had been studying all day for an exam in Speech, and I still had to study more.

My mom told me that I could miss my first class to study for the test, so I did. I had read chapters 2, 6, & 8, but I was trying to refresh my memory on chapter 1. I skimmed over the chapter, remembering what I thought were the keypoints. Then, I headed to school. I was fairly confident until I saw the last page of the test. We had to remember the key factors in communication. I had no clue. I got one because it was an answer option in the multiple choice section of the test. I got another because I could remember that answer. The other 10 questions, I couldn’t remember, which meant the highest I could get was an 80. I’d missed others, which were things we were told about in class, but were things that I couldn’t remember all of. At best, I made a C.

I went up to the dorm and ate my lunch. Just as I opened my Diverse Populations book, I hear the on campus Homecoming Parade. So here came the yelling and the squealing and the cars and everything. I managed to tune it out. On my way to Diverse Populations, I had to walk through the crowds of people watching the parade. I also had to walk past the band, which is okay until you get to the drum section. The first boom almost gave me a heart attack. The second one made me flinch a little. By the third, I had reminded myself that I’d pretty much grown up listening to weapons testing, I could handle a little drum beat.

I got to Diverse Populations and no one was studying except me. Apparently, this test was open notes and this had been decided the day I was sick. They all had pretty much copied the chapter verbatim. I only had 1 page of notes to go on, and none of that was on the test. I took my test with only my memory, and I got a 25 out of 30. I thought that was pretty good for someone who had to go from memory instead of from notes.

I was a little bummed from my DP test and very bummed from my Speech class as I walked to see my Human Behavior teacher/advisor. I asked her what I had missed and apologized for not coming to class. She told me that I hadn’t missed anything. I have a conference I have to go to on Monday on disabilities. I’m going to have to get up at 6:15 because I have to be there by 8:30. That’s no fun. So, as I was feeling bummed, she said that she’d handed back tests and our Cultural Sensitivity project. I was sure that I hadn’t done well, but I saw the grade on the test–100. Then, I excitedly flipped the pages of my Cultural Sensitivity paper and saw an A. So, I may be doing poorly in Speech and kinda okay in Diverse Populations and in Art of Interviewing, but I’m doing excellent in Human Behavior.

Yesterday after the Diverse Populations test, the floor started moving and there were sparkles coming out of them. My dad’s first reaction: “Have you eaten?” My mom’s: “Did you take all of your medicine?” My dad saw it as a low blood sugar thing; my mom saw it as psychosis. Since I had just had lunch, I guess I’d go with the psychosis. So there we have it, my first bit of psychosis this semester. Hey, maybe it’ll get bad and I’ll end up passing all my classes with A’s. (Any time that I’m at my “craziest”, I do really well in school. And this statement was not made with me actually hoping for psychosis all semester.) While in the class, I checked around the room and there were no people in the walls, so I relaxed a bit. I also closed my eyes tightly to keep from seeing the floor move. At least we were taking a test or else people would’ve thought I was crazy, which technically would’ve been true.

I feel so special. There is a blog devoted to me. It’s called “Fuzzy Pink Slippers” and it says in its only entry:

Dedicated to a lost soul.

Isn’t it amazing that someone thinks that I lost my soul? That’s better than the people who’ve come by here and thought that I had no soul to begin with. When I saw the link on my incoming links, I expected more. I hate being the center of attention, but if you’re going to devote a blog to me, at least post more than a single line. Otherwise, you’re just wasting space.

Well, I have some news that will please those of you who are worried about my calorie consumption. On weekends, I will allow myself to have 1100 calories. That way if I get hungry, I can find something to eat. It’s also so that I won’t feel deprived, which would be a great thing except that there are M&M’s and Oreos in the house. While I’m not all that big on M&M’s, they’re still chocolate, and Oreos are my favorite cookies. The Oreos are for my mom’s class that she teaches. My dad wanted Oreos for home, but my mom remembered that I’m trying to stick to a diet and having my favorite cookies open in the house would just tempt me too much and be a little cruel.

I’m not going to develop an eating disorder. I’ve already got one of those. Doing this diet goes against that eating disorder. If I wanted to cut my 900 calories in half, then yes, you should worry. Under 500 is Anorexic. I’m currently 400 calories over that barrier. I don’t intend to go below it. The only times that I might consume less than 500 calories are days when I get sick. So, I want those of you who are concerned to remember that I’m not going to become Anorexic, and it is beyond difficult for me to become Bulimic. I will be seeing doctors and therapists while I’m on this diet, so there will be people who will make sure that I’m healthy.

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