29
December

Let Her Cry

I’m not exactly sure how to structure this post because there are so many things I want to talk about, so if it is a little more flighty than usual, then I apologize.

I guess first of all, I should talk about Christmas.  My parents and I had our Christmas meal with Nana on Christmas Eve so that my aunt didn’t have to see me or threaten violence against me.  I cried almost the entire three or four hours that my parents and I were there.  I managed to almost have an asthma attack because of the crying and I messed up my internal system by getting so worked up.  (My temperature shot up, I started getting sick, etc.)  So, it wasn’t all that pleasant.  I felt bad for my grandmother because she’s almost 80 and she’s got a lot of health issues going on, so having to have separate Christmases was tough on her physically and mentally.  (She has a lot of anxiety issues, so this whole situation has upset her quite a bit.)  I also felt bad that I couldn’t even fake a smile or a good mood while we were there.

When my mom talked to Nana about how Christmas Day went with my aunt, uncle, cousin, cousin-in-law, and cousin’s son, she said that it wasn’t a really festive occasion.  Apparently, my cousin’s son went through Nana’s house looking for me and was sad that I wasn’t there to play with him.  I almost cried when my mom told me this.  I missed him, too.  He’s the one person that I have missed every second of this whole non-communication between my aunt and me thing.  He’s just so awesome and thinks differently and is so smart and creative, so being around him is always fun.  I feel like he’s a kindred spirit.

Nana said that my aunt asked how we handled Christmas without them.  When Nana told her that I cried almost the whole time, my aunt said that that was good because I hadn’t made any effort to apologize to her.  Okay, that isn’t true.  First of all, I actually did write a “letter” via Google Docs and sent it through my uncle’s email address with a note for him to please give it to her.  While the apology isn’t a complete acceptance of the alleged wrongs that I’ve been accused of committing, it is an apology for what I did do; a request that she cease this anti-Janet “campaign”; a request that she learn a little bit more about the physical and mental health problems affecting my mom, Nana, and me so that she could understand the context of the posts I write; and questions about why she made comments to my mom suggesting that I should be kicked out of my house, that I was a bad daughter, etc.   Anyway, the apology is the best that she is going to get.  I would’ve sent it to her personally on Facebook but  she blocked me from sending her messages after I sent the message chastising her for not contacting her sister (my mom) after the June 2011 hospitalization or any of the hospitalizations/surgeries.  I can’t do it via the phone (fear/anxiety issues), face-to-face is out of the question, I don’t have her personal email address, and I just don’t think sending a letter is practical.   I would post the apology letter on here, but she doesn’t actually read this site, so it wouldn’t do any good.

On Christmas, I wasn’t just upset about the downfall of that particular relationship.  I was also upset that my maternal grandfather’s only surviving sibling had unfriended me on Facebook, as had one of his kids.  These were two of my favorite people in the family, so being unfriended saddened me.  And part of me wondered if my aunt had anything to do with it.  I hate being paranoid, but it was weird how they unfriended me shortly after she had posted something on each of their walls.  That thought/paranoia, plus the knowledge that she keeps badmouthing me to Nana and (when my mom calls her) my mother, made me very frustrated because some of the key issues with being Borderline are the fear of abandonment/rejection and intense and unstable relationships.  I think anyone who knows me in any way, shape or form could cite any number of examples that I will go to a near breakdown state whenever things change, relationships end or near an end, I start feeling unappreciated, and when I feel alone, unloved, or unwanted. So, when I was crying on Christmas Eve, I was thinking about the familial implosion, possibly killing myself over it, and how I was somehow a horrible human being.  That’s not the kind of thinking that one should have at any time, but it is especially bad during the holidays.  And that thought process and the pain that it caused makes it harder for me to come up with a way to apologize over any of this or keep quiet about how I feel.  I don’t want to excuse my (sometimes) bad behavior, but I want my family to understand where it comes from.

(BTW – When my aunt tried to lay all the blame on me for this, Nana wouldn’t have any of that.  She told her that she [my aunt] was to blame, as well, and that she was the one who wanted the family split up. She’d also told her off on the 23rd when Nana mentioned that she had to fix the table for our lunch and my aunt told her not to worry about it with us because we “weren’t used to eating at a table” anyway. )

Aside from the Christmas tear-fest, I was going to share whatever the results were from my MRI and EEG.  I went to the neurologist’s office yesterday, but (after waiting an hour and a half) I was told that the neurologist had just left to attend to an emergency at one of the hospitals.  In a small way, I was upset over not finding out the answers, but I would rather not know what was wrong with me than know that my neurologist might have wasted time with me that he could’ve spent on someone who was truly in need of his help at that moment.  (And I know that neurologists are not exactly doctors who have soft-fluffy-type emergencies.)  Anyway, my neurologist was supposed to call me sometime later in the day yesterday.  He didn’t.  He still hasn’t called.  I could call them, I guess.  The only thing I do know from the appointment yesterday is that I had lost another 6 pounds, in addition to the ~50 that I’d lost in the last year.

Oh, I finally had my T4, TSH, LH, and FSH tests done yesterday afternoon, over a month after they were originally ordered.  The woman who did the test asked me if that was my husband in the waiting room.  I silently gagged and told her that that was my father.  She told me she was glad because she had been mad when she thought he was my husband because he should know better than to be with someone so young.  In a way, I understood what she meant, but it was kind of weird to have someone say that kind of stuff.  I mean, she doesn’t know me, so what was she going to say if she had been my husband?  How would she have gotten around her disgust?  And is saying that kind of thing a good idea when you’re sticking a needle into someone?  (It could cause someone to tense up and cause veins to ‘disappear’ in someone who, like me, is a hard-stick.)

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28
November

The Worst Month of the Year

I think that in the last 30 days or so, I have been seriously frustrated by some things that have gone on.  I’m not really sure why this month seems to have sucked more than usual.  Oh, wait.  I know exactly why it sucked, but I don’t really get why it all had to happen in one month.

First, there was the whole iTunes account hacked issue, leading to me getting charged for an app that I didn’t purchase.  I did get that taken care of, but I ended up having to delete my PayPal account (since it was the funding source and I felt like it might have also been compromised) and put a fraud alert on my credit report.  I had to change all of my passwords everywhere, but apparently missed a few, as I would find out a few weeks later.

After the iTunes issue, my laptop decided to take a break.  My external hard drive’s enclosure was also on a break.  The new enclosure came first, but I couldn’t see if it still worked until the laptop came back.  When it did come, I had to format the external hard drive’s drive again.  Now I’m working on getting everything back on the drive.

Meanwhile, I go to log-in on likesototally.me’s WordPress and find that it has been hacked.  I figured out what was hacked–the .htaccess.  I decided to download files from it that I knew were safe and not located elsewhere before trashing everything else.  The deletion finally got done last night.  I changed the domain’s username’s password before I decided that I needed to change the username as well.  So, that was fun.

In terms of non-tech related bad things, I had thought the disintegration of my extended family on my mom’s side was the worst possible thing in the world that was going on, until we got a nice little letter from ALFA (our insurance agency) letting us know that we would be dropped from our homeowner’s policy in February.  Apparently, insuring us was “too risky” and wasn’t worth continuing the (at least) 26 years of business with my family.  Well, technically, they’ll still be doing business with us because the life insurance policies for my dad and for me are under them, but my parents are planning on moving the car insurance when they find a new insurer.

I felt like it was my fault that the insurance got dropped.  First of all, ALFA is the employer of certain members of my family that I am not really on speaking terms with and their position in the company is fairly high, so my first thought went to that ongoing crap.  Even though they don’t want to be around us, I figured out that they wouldn’t do something that petty in order to punish me for talking about them on here.

After realizing that they were probably not behind the dropping of coverage, I thought that maybe my dad had decided not to pay the (staunchly conservative) PAC  ”contribution” when he paid the membership dues for the farm bureau.  (You have to belong to the bureau in order to get insurance and it is requested that your membership payment include a “voluntary” contribution to the PAC.)   But they say that you don’t have to pay into the PAC, and I don’t know if the company would really drop people because you choose not to contribute to it.  Somehow, I’m not sure if that decision might keep us from being insured.

The other possibility is that because of the continuing issue with the grass, this house might be considered too unsightly for them to insure.  Their standards are pretty high, and my mom suggested (at one point) that they may have been doing some of the reporting to the city about the grass and the stuff on the porch.  Of course, that makes me even more paranoid.  The idea that you can lose your insurance and get threatened with jail time because of grass and because of other random crap is just something that causes me intense anxiety.

And, as per the norm for me, I have felt worse lately.  I’ve had bouts with dizziness, pain, fever, sinus crap, and (of course) the heavy period that came around for a week and a half, and is currently on hiatus again. And I got a call from my family doctor about wanting to do blood work, which is always torture for me, so that has me kind of apprehensive.  Then, of course, there was the depression, mood swings, and generally nuttiness that I usually deal with and that usually gets worse this time of year.  It’s just been the rotten cherry on top of a melted sundae.

So, yeah, this past month has really, really sucked.  I’m hoping that December will be better.  I’m guessing that it won’t, though.  That’s not me being pessimistic or anything.  I’m being completely realistic.  And realizing that the most joyous time of the year is probably going to be suck-filled is awful.

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28
October

Kick-You-In-The-Crotch, Spit-On-Your-Neck Fantastic

Remember how I was in a bad mood yesterday because my Apple ID had been disabled and because I was told that my SSI limit wouldn’t be increased because I wasn’t (and couldn’t) contribute my “fair share” to the household expenses?  What would you say if I said that those two things might be the highlight of my week?

I was overjoyed when I finally got my Apple account reset.   I was not so overjoyed when I saw that there had been a charge to my account for a $19.99 app.  Of course, since I have no iPhone, iPad, or app-loving iPod Touch, I have absolutely no use for any apps.  So, nice-going whoever ordered that.  That was a big honking clue that that account had been compromised.  It is now back to being disabled.

I’ve also put a fraud alert on my credit and will be closing out money-related accounts ASAP.

Luckily, my Apple account appears to have only been compromised on the twenty-fourth of October, so it was caught rather quickly.  Still, this is all going to be a pain in the ass.  I guess I couldn’t appreciate the not-so-great, okay, mediocre, or semi-good (and sometimes very good/downright awesome) if there were moments that really sucked.

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28
October

Why Do I Even Bother

Mom just got a call from her mom. Apparently, I’ve been up to no good again and saying “bad things” about certain people. I thought this was weird because I haven’t been saying anything recently about certain people. The last thing that I could find that is public is something from September. It was a rant about my mom taking me for granted while glorifying a particular family member, who I was (and still am) annoyed with over the lack of participation in my mom’s recovery process. I still feel my rant is justified. Of course, I still feel my rant from January is justified and I feel the rant I made in 2002 was justified, too. I also think that they have been taken way too seriously in some respects, while not seriously enough in others.

Since I know that those people are probably reading and will probably continue reading, I want to say this:

I have specifically asked, many times, that you not read this site if you don’t like what I say. I have also asked that you not take it off the computer or try to use it against me with other family. Apparently, this isn’t possible.

I am sorry that you were offended by what I said, but I’m not sorry that I said it. That may sound childish or rude, but let’s face it, I’m not exactly thought of as the most mature member of the family.

I do think that it was unfair in 2002 to shut me out of your life for 9 months until you suddenly decided that something might happen and that you couldn’t live with yourself if it did. I think it was even more unfair that for the next 9 years, even when I tried to make up for the 2002 post, I was basically ostracized within my own family. I think it was unfair that I spent two Thanksgivings when I was severely depressed wondering what I would have to do to make you spend time with me on a holiday that we used to enjoy together.

I think it is unfair that I am the bad one about the January thing in general. I find out something that was apparently so private that people who share DNA couldn’t know, but that was okay for hundreds of thousands of strangers to find out at the same time as those strangers. I get pissed about it. I make one tiny little comment, then become public enemy number one. Meanwhile, it is okay that that post that got her so upset was found only 6 or 7 hours after it was made meaning: she was checking up on me. Yeah, you can say that I apparently needed to be constantly monitored, but the thing is that I didn’t.

I also think that it was unfair that in January, when you talked to her after the post, you didn’t somehow emphasize that making a phone call to me would only further agitate me. You have known me since I was a little kid. Have I ever really been comfortable on the phone? No. Have I ever really been able to vocally defend myself? No. Didn’t it occur to you or to her husband or to anyone who may have thought that call was a good idea that it was, in fact, a bad one?

I shouldn’t be forced to feel guilty because I said things you didn’t like. I shouldn’t have to be told not to write about things that you don’t like. If I cater to you or to anyone else, then I won’t be writing about what is upsetting me anymore. I won’t be doing what the blog was basically set up for. Writing about my issues is how I deal with them. If I don’t write about them, I go more crazy than I already am. If that happens, then I go to the hospital. If that happens, then what? Are you going to move my mom and dad down to your house to make sure that they’re taken care of? Are you going to try to keep up with their health problems? Are you going to give my mom shots (insulin or otherwise) when she’s so out of it that she can’t give them to herself? If I don’t write about these things, these are questions that you will have to have answers for.

What I say doesn’t actually hurt this family in anyway. How have you been harmed by my words? Offended? Maybe, but not hurt. Whereas, I’ve dealt with having my education called into question multiple times, been treated like a dangerous fiend since my time IP, and hearing speculation that my grandmother (and then my mother) have drug problems because of their use of pain medicine. I’ve seen our family get torn apart because suddenly there is only room in the family for you and my uncle plus your son, his wife, and their son, and maybe your mom’s “adoptive” sister that you apparently communicate with more than you do with your own biological sister.

I will not quit writing about things. I will not apologize about your getting upset by them. I will not pretend that I’m okay that this family has been so dysfunctional for years now. I will remind you that you are an adult, you have a choice about what you do when you’re on the internet, and you make the choice to read these things. You know what you will find and you do it anyway because that justifies the anger that you have toward me. The subsequent acting-like-Janet-is-a-subhuman attitude is then okay because I brought it on myself. If you don’t want to be angry with me, then don’t read things I say. If you don’t want to know that I’m frustrated about you, then don’t read it. Or learn to skip posts that are categorized as “family” because they “might” be about you and they might be negative.

So, I shall say this now: back off and try to get over it. Oh, and stop opening that entry over-and-over. It will not be going away. It will not be edited. You need to move on.

I’m guessing this feud will probably hamper any Thanksgiving plans, but…it might be worth it. Sure, Thanksgiving is one of those rare days where I actually do eat a significant amount of food, and it is one of the few days that I get to see people I’m related to that aren’t my mother or father, but if I’m going to have to put up with this crap then I don’t want to spend the holiday with them. I want to spend it with Nana. At least she’s loved me and actually tried to be there for me through all of this.

I shouldn’t spend a family holiday with people who clearly don’t want me to be a part of their family.  I want to be where I’m wanted, and that probably won’t ever be in a room where she is.

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21
September

You Don’t Know a Thing About Me

In a little over a week, I will be back in court. Even though I know that the city was lying in court back in July about the grass, I am still very, very nervous. Since, according to one of my cousins, Municipal Courts are basically set up to be revenue sources for the city, it is unlikely that I will be found not guilty. So, I will be told that I have to pay between $200 and $500, plus court costs, and I could go to jail for “not more than 30 days” for the violations.

I don’t have that money. I will not have that money anytime in the near future, but it will still be expected of me. And when I tell the judge that I’m on a fixed income, he’ll suggest two months. If I tell him that two months won’t do a damn bit of good (in a nicer tone, of course), he will say that that doesn’t really matter. I guess once you’ve been a lawyer long enough to be a judge that you don’t really understand the idea of having less than $500 a month in income coming in.

And while I’m dealing with all of this court crap, I’m also dealing with all the stupid family drama. My mom and I got into a really big argument the other night. She threatened to call DHR on me, which I told her that she could go ahead and do. She started saying how they would move her out and suggesting I would go to jail.

I love how my mom’s memory is so great that she remembers that DHR said that she could be moved out of the house if conditions weren’t good enough for her care, but she didn’t remember that the social worker told her in the same breath that I could also be removed from this house if conditions were not good enough for my care. Of course, my mom’s always been good with the revisionist memory when it could suit her.

My mom and I got into the massive argument, which had basically been brewing for weeks now, because she wanted me to take garbage out. She was demanding that it out right that moment. It was about one o’clock in the morning. I don’t live in a really bad part of town, but I didn’t want to go outside by myself in the middle of the night. I told her that I would do it later, which wasn’t good enough for her. So, I took it out. She and started bitching back and forth at one another, which led to me telling her that I some point she needs to learn to get up off her couch and start getting her water and her food for herself from time to time. This fight occurred after two straight nights of being awakened twice to bring her water and food and being ordered to get my father up because she couldn’t walk five more feet from the bathroom to the door to the bedroom. (She can walk to the bathroom most of the time, and that day was no exception to that ability.)

During the fight, she went from claiming that she had fallen the night before to basically admitting that she’d just stumbled. (Bouts of stumbling are regularly classified as falls from her.) I tried to get her to understand that she isn’t the only person prone to falling, and that when I fall, I generally hit the ground. She was then trying to explain how she just can’t walk and she just can’t go back to physical therapy and she just can’t get the doctors to understand that she has problems with things like her memory or her ability to get around. I have a feeling that if they aren’t understanding that she “can’t” do these things or that she’s having trouble with things that it is probably because she is not telling them things properly. She is probably telling them something that she thinks that they expect her to say. She does this on the phone with people and I’ve seen her sit back and let doctors think that nothing is wrong with her. Regardless of what she says, I think she does enjoy having things done for her. And I don’t mind doing things for her if she absolutely cannot do them, but I have a feeling that she can do more than she lets on. I also have a feeling that she doesn’t completely grasp just how difficult she has been, as of late.

I know that she thinks that I whine too much or that I’m lazy. I know that both of my parents think that. I know that friends that I know both online and offline think that, too. And I guess that maybe I am lazy. Maybe two years of being on what seems like an endless shift of care-taking (i.e. fetching things for my mom, sleeping in the living room so that if she needs me I will hear her, sacrificing sleep so that I can make sure that I do actually hear her if she needs me, standing around fixing food and water in the way that she likes, hearing how I’m doing something wrong, hearing how I don’t get things to her quickly enough, and taking care of almost anything she asks me to do, and some things that she doesn’t) has worn me out. Half the time, I feel so damn exhausted that I think that if I died it might actually be a good thing. I have given up on ever having a life. I have done a lot of that for my mom. I could still be hanging out with my church “friends” and doing things that they liked doing (not that I really enjoyed them that much) but every time I try to get away, it seems like I get to go through a guilt trip. Hell, I get guilt trips even when I’m here all the time. I am tired. I am really tired. And I was so tired the other night that I told my mother, among other things, that maybe she should move in with my aunt–her sister, aka the one who won’t talk to me. (This is also the aunt that my mother has recently begun waxing poetically about how perfect she is and how wonderful she is, even though the total contact that her sister has truly initiated in the last 2 years was a Get Well Soon card.)

I guess I have to accept that this is my life. Misery is apparently my destiny, so I guess I should just get accustomed to it. And in case you’re wondering what the fight with mom and the court stuff have to do with one another: I am often reminded that this house, though it is in my name legally and though I can be fined and imprisoned for things related to it, doesn’t belong to me. I am a guest here. And sometimes I really feel like I am definitely unwanted.

I could probably bring it up in therapy, and the therapist would probably suggest I move into low-income housing. This would lead to another fight, my self-esteem tumbling even more, and absolutely no good coming out of it. I can’t go back to school. Even if I could focus, there is no way that I could ever pay for it. So, I’ve got to figure out how to get out of this damn house and out of all of this unhealthy shit before I go off the deep end.

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10
August

I Want My A/C

My family has been enduring one of those things that could break a lot of people.  August in Alabama with no air conditioning.  That might not seem so bad if you live in one of those oddball places where summer temperatures never get over 80°F, but in Alabama, even in the northern parts, August is known as one of the most brutal months of the year.  It is always hot, and it is usually humid.  Right now, at 8:49PM, with the sun having been down an hour, the temperature outside is almost 83°F.  That 83° is about 20° cooler than it is inside my house.

The last window air conditioner that had a working compressor quit doing anything more than blowing air about 3 days ago.  Before that, it had been making this God-awful sound for a few weeks.  My mom called a handyman to see if they could install a “new” one (one that was purchased a while back, but never installed) and they said that they could for $200.  Since our family lacks the ability to pay that $200, we’re not getting an air conditioner put in.  We would ask for help from the church, but as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, we wouldn’t expect anyone to actually end up helping.  My mom tried asking CASA if they could do it, but apparently that is yet another community outreach project that they “no longer do” because of lack of volunteers.

So, we sit in the heat.  We go through all of the ice that is made and use up the ice packs fairly quickly every day.  It isn’t really a pleasant experience. It’s made even more unpleasant by my overheating issues and the fact that I can’t seem to eat anything that is above (normal) room temperature while it is so hot.  Basically, I get to have water and crackers all day.  Fun, right?

I’m hoping it either cools off soon, which would be a miracle, or we find someone who can help us get a window unit in.  We don’t have a central unit because it never worked for more than a few months at a time.  So, as a kid, it was getting fixed every single summer.  I’m almost tempted to call my Nana and ask her if I can please come stay at her house, where there’s A/C.  Of course, that house has no internet and very few channels on the television.  I would get to read and to sleep, and that’s about it.  Of course, I would get to do it with cool air blowing on me.  That might be worth missing the internet and television.

Ugh.  Just found out that I might get to participate in yearly (or more often) drug testing because I happen to receive Medicaid.  Apparently, I might be one of those people who does drugs.  Oddly, according to the bill, if I were a resident of the penal system (prison), then I wouldn’t have to have the test.  Apparently, prisoners who receive health care from the state aren’t likely to be on drugs, which is nuts since, in some prison systems, around 1000 incidents involving drugs occur every single year.  I know you can’t keep prisoners from receiving health care, but it seems like proposing taking away their health care if they got caught with drugs would help the state’s finances more than doing drug tests on every person who doesn’t reside in a facility for criminals, the mentally ill, or the elderly.  So, I get to have the tests done in order to keep my insurance. Not to worry, there were more dumb bills introduced to the state legislature this session.

Oh, I’m curious about something. I’ve noticed that there is a repeat reader to the site (actually to more than one) from Guntersville and Albertville.  Now, that wouldn’t set off any alarm bells expect that they seem to use the search function on here.  They also seem to come on a weekly basis, so it is making me a little worried.  I’m thinking that it is a particular family member checking up on me on behalf of a certain relative, or it might be a friend of that relative.  Anyway, if it is anyone from my family or checking for my aunt, cousin-in-law, cousin, etc., then I would like to say something to them (and you can tell them to visit the site, since their IP addresses are no longer blocked and hasn’t been for a few months now):

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