After going to the exam room, I waited…and waited…and waited. Finally, the doctor came in. First, he apologized for having been too sick to see me before then. (I didn’t know he’d been sick.) Then, he went over the results.

He said that the MRI had revealed 5 white spots (aka: white matter lesions) on my brain. He said the radiologist report said there were 10, but that he’d only seen 5 legitimate ones. (The other five were apparently blood vessels and other anatomical parts.) He said that these were normal, especially for people with migraines. He told me, after that, that my EEG had some abnormal electrical activity, which seemed to be related to migraines. I asked him about my myoclonic jerks being worse lately–again, I was told it was the migraines. The dystonia is apparently due to the migraines as well. So, he basically told me that migraines are all powerful, evil problems that cause a hell of a lot of pain and torment for people.

While he was telling me about the results, he told me that he would’ve had the MRI results sooner except that, according to him, his computer just suddenly started writing other files over the disc the hospital sent him. This resulted in him having to get another disc. I’m not exactly convinced, but…who knows?

Anyway, I am now scheduled for a “BOTOX evaluation” because he said that he didn’t think that just treating me with pain medicine was going to cut it anymore. Apparently, I need something more permanent or long-lasting. (From what I’ve read, there is no conclusive data about the level of permanency of BOTOX injections when used to control neurological conditions.) I don’t know if my insurance will cover BOTOX. (I’m now on a Medicare Part C program.) So, I don’t know if I’ll be able to have it done or not. If I do have it done, then I can tell people I’ve had a nose job and BOTOX. Fun, fun, fun.

Let’s see…where to begin?

I don’t know that my family remembers my first words. I know I don’t remember ever liking to talk. Talking for me was always something that was extremely difficult. I’m extremely quiet. If you don’t believe me, I recommend checking my youtube videos. That voice you can barely hear is the voice that people in life have gotten extremely frustrated over. People have accused me, at times, of trying to be inaudible, but it generally isn’t something that I am trying to do. With the exception of whispering, I don’t generally try to go unheard–it just happens. Speaking is something that I don’t ever remember being good at. Singing, on the other hand, was always something that I felt more secure in.

My mom taught me the first song that I ever sang, “Tomorrow” from Annie. I would eventually learn every song from the musical, which I obsessively watched a video of as a child because of my love for the music and my fascination with one of the few redheads I ever really saw on television or in movies. (When you grow up in a group that only makes up 1-2% of the entire global population, you search for someone who looks like you that you can truly respect or admire.) I would move on from just singing along to Annie to learning all of the songs of Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Tracy Chapman, Janet Jackson, and Paula Abdul. I accidentally stumbled upon the “Like a Prayer” video on MTV, a channel which I wasn’t allowed to watch by myself until I was a teenager, and became fascinated by the song and the video. I remember watching that video before quickly flipping my television onto BET, which I was allowed to watch anytime and go to sleep to when I was small.

I absorbed music like sponges absorb water. It was something I needed to survive. It was something that was necessary for me to understand humanity. It was never a thing where I just randomly listened to music that was popular or had a good beat or anything. It was something where I needed to find music that was interesting or inspiring or just left me feeling like I needed more of it. I listened to lyrics and tried to understand them, even if I didn’t completely understand some of the lyrics until I was much older. Music was communication for me.

Even though it was communication, it wasn’t a very open form of communication for me. There were the occasional times when I would perform “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” for one of my preschool teachers, but usually the only people who heard me sing were my parents. I didn’t sing around most of my relatives. I didn’t usually sing at school in elementary school. Part of it was that I was extremely shy. The other part was my ever-present self-esteem issues crap. It didn’t help that when I sang for one of my friends in third grade that she told me that I had a “weak voice” and that I shouldn’t sing. It also didn’t help when I would volunteer to sing for assemblies and would get skipped in favor of some of my other friends. The answer was generally, “That’s okay, we already have [insert the name of one or two of my friends during that time] so you don’t have to.” It felt like a confirmation of that inner voice that said I was awful at everything. It made me feel like I was somehow “less than” other folks. Actually, it just reinforced that already-present feeling.

When I was in middle school and high school, I was in choir. It surprised everyone but me. My parents figured I would pick band, since I’d done well on the band’s music aptitude test. I wasn’t interested in band as much I was interested in singing. I needed to sing. I needed to learn to feel good about singing.

In sixth grade, the middle school choir had about 79 people total. Our director was on her first year at the school, and she just wasn’t going to have a choir that was so itty bitty. After the ensemble I was in got a Superior (a “1″) at State Competition and earned a medal, she used us a lot to recruit new members for the choir. We performed at the orientation for incoming sixth graders. We were also the group she used at a concert at a local health food store. When the 30 or so eighth graders moved on to high school, the choir didn’t lose any memebers. It didn’t stay at around the same number. It more than doubled. By eighth grade, around half of the school’s 650 students were in choir. (The other half were in band, with a few seventh and eighth graders participating in both.) Partly because of our excellence in recruiting, our teacher decided we needed to have special choir trip for the eighth grade (plus a few select seventh graders), so we ended up going to Chicago, instead of the normal trip to Atlanta. Actually, I ended up going on both trips that year. (My mom was the treasurer during the last 2 years, and had to do the trip planning, checking in of the choirs, and prep work, so I got to do all the activities.) So, choir in middle school was, for the most part, something I enjoyed.

If I hadn’t been so competitive and wanted to earn every single medal possible, it would have probably been a lot more fun. I always wanted a medal. I think earning medals was a way for me to prove to myself (and other people) that I was more than just the girl who you could depend on for the answers in class. I felt validated when I would get medals. I felt validated when I got into choirs like All-City choir. It felt like all those bad things that I had always heard from people or that I had thought about myself weren’t true. The only time that I ever really craved attention and real approval was when I was performing. I wanted to have something that people respected me for, because I always believed (and still do) that there was something fundamentally wrong or broken about me.

The competitiveness continued into high school, but it wasn’t as easy to get medals or go on trips or do the stuff that was so überfun because the directors in high school weren’t apt to take hundreds of kids to competitions or trips. The only trip I remember was a trip to Decatur, where we (oddly) stayed the night between Alabama Honor Choir rehearsals. (It was odd because Decatur is literally 40-50 minutes from my house. It was also odd because the trip was one I’d done in middle school and not had to stay the night.) The only competition I remember participating in during high school was District/State Solo/Ensemble Festival in tenth grade. It was memorable because I broke down after receiving news that I had gotten a 3 on my solo, while every other soloist from my school had gotten a 1. Even people (from other schools) who were utterly tone deaf were given at least a 2. I was given a 3 and one of the reasons listed was that I mispronounced 1 word (virgine) in the song “Ave Verum Corpus” and that mispronunciation was so horrible (a jih [like jib] instead of gee) that it knocked me down quite a bit. The two other people in the room with me, my voice teacher and my choir director, were floored by the other flaw he found in my performance: he said I was repeatedly off-key. According to them, I missed 1 note in the two songs I did. (The other song was “Art is Calling for Me” and he’d heard it the week before by a college student, who’d apparently done a magnificent job.) I was crying when I got the results, and was comforted by many of the choir students from my school, including one who I didn’t even think liked me. She said that she had been standing outside (they all had) and had heard me sing and that the judge was an idiot. This was something that people told me repeatedly that day, which (if I remember correctly) was the same day as my 16th birthday party. The next week other people, including ones who had never heard me sing, told me that the judge was an idiot. So, though I was utterly devastated by the result of that one competition, I did receive a little bit of a confidence boost from my friends. That made it easier on me when my tape failed to play Mariah Carey’s “Can’t Take That Away” in my eleventh grade English class and I ended up having to sing it a capella with no rehearsal. It is one of the only times I ever remember performing for an audience with my glasses on (I would always taken them off so that I didn’t get nervous) and being able to see the entire room. It was also one of the only times I ever felt completely safe performing.

When I quit high school and started going into my deeply depressive spells on a more frequent basis, I pretty much quit singing. I didn’t have the spark that singing needed in me anymore. So, I quit. And when I tried to sing along to a song on the radio a few years later, it felt like my voice had shrivled up on me. It felt like a voice that I had been using for years decided to quit working after I quit using it. I started giving myself voice lessons again and trying to strengthen my voice. It isn’t as strong as it once was, but it is a lot stronger than it was between 2004 and 2007. I now know that I don’t ever want to lose it, so I always try to remember to sing when I can. Just a little singing seems to keep it strong enough to stick around.

I told her that I’d been having more problems with getting fatigued by barely doing anything and I brought up that some of this muscle fatigue had been going on for years (because it has, but I’d never really told her about some of it), and do you know her responses?  First, there was the comment that somehow she was hurting really bad (not worse than usual, though), which was followed by the comment that some of the fatigue I had was a result of my not enjoying doing certain tasks and must be because she never pushed me hard enough to do those tasks.  She basically just took something that was about me and shifted it into something that was about her and about my being lazy.

Speak of the devil! She just woke up.  And it wasn’t one of those June Cleaver-style good, sweet, wholesome greetings.  No, it was her typical greeting, which is her breakfast order.  I’m a damn waitress.   When I was a little bit snippy about getting it right away, because I was (1) I was in a lot of pain and (2) I was agitated (meaning, crying) after reading a post on an LJ community about my icon promotion technique, she got more rude about it.  She insists that it was simply a request, but if I hadn’t agreed to do it, then I know that I would have been bitched out for hours on end and I would have had to go through the whole “no one loves me” whining spree that she loves to dole out whenever anyone doesn’t acquiesce to one of her demands.

Can I please have one day in my life that doesn’t end up sucking?  Can I have a mother that actually takes into consideration that I’m tired?  Can I be able to do things that I like without having to feel bad or angry or sad or upset about it?  Because if I don’t have a good day (or even an okay one) soon, I worry that I’ll just completely give up on things.

I had the appointment last week to find out the results, which turned out to be a dud because the doctor had the hospital emergency that he had to deal with. He was supposed to call that evening. He didn’t. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and didn’t call the rest of last week. I even waited until halfway through this week, just in case he was out or backed up because of the holidays. But a couple of days ago, I got tired of waiting and made the call.

I got a call back this afternoon. It was his nurse. Apparently, he was looking at my chart, but hadn’t gotten my EEG results back until late this week. I thought that was strange because of the appointment from last week being scheduled and me being told that my results were in that day. The nurse today couldn’t tell me what the results were, even though they finally had them. I wasn’t really worried about the results until I talked to my mom.

My mom was able to trigger my inner health-related panic attack voice. She said that if the nurse couldn’t tell me the results, then she must not have been able to read the EEG. She then said that that would be due to the EEG being abnormal in some way, so I started getting nervous. I don’t think she meant to trigger that anxiety, but I have this tendency to think the worst when she makes that kind of suggestion (because she is generally right about it) and I was sitting at home by myself in a bit of a panic. (My parents left for the grocery store right after I got the call.)

When they got back, I mentioned how nervous I was. At this time, my mom said it was probably no big deal and that she didn’t mean to scare me. I don’t know that my mom understands just how much this kind of thing worries me. I’ve talked about it in therapy multiple times before, and my therapist has told me to tell my mom not to make the comments because of the heightened anxiety it causes, but I don’t feel that it is fair to make my mom stop saying random things because I have an inability to deal with the comments rationally. It isn’t like my mom is trying to upset me or hurt me or anything. If anything, I think she may be trying to prepare me.

So, now I am going to try to forget about the whole panic-related stuff and have a relatively relaxed weekend. I bet that won’t happen, though. The neurologist is supposed to definitely call by Tuesday, so I hope that that does happen. I’m not holding my breath on it, though.

Oh, and, in a somewhat related note, my mom made a list on the first of all of the things that the neurologist (or, in one case, a different neurologist that used to treat my headaches) has diagnosed me with. I was kind of surprised at the length of the list. After she made the list, which is below, she told me why she made it. Apparently, the next time that my aunt starts in on how horrible of a person she thinks I am, my mom wants some sort of proof that my life is a bit more difficult than my aunt seems to realize. I mean, my mom and Nana have both tried to convey the physical and mental stuff I deal with, along with the stuff I have to do and (sometimes) choose to do, even though I have very little energy and always feel like crap or hurt. I think it’s basically her version of a wake up call.

The List

• Migraines (actually, 3 neurologists dx’d this)
• Chronic Daily Headache (2 neurologists dx’d this, including 2 of the three that dx’d the migraines)
• Dystonia
• Essential Tremors
• Myoclonus
• Vertigo
• Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome
• Degenerative Arthritis of the Lower Spine
• Absent reflexes in parts of my legs

I think that is everything, but I might have forgotten something. Anyway, my mom seemed shocked at the length of the list, even though I’d told her about each of the things when the doctors would tell me what I was “suffering” from. And some of the things, i.e. the tremors and the myoclonus, are things that I was told I had quite a while ago. I think the tremors were diagnosed in middle school; while the myoclonus was diagnosed a couple of years ago, even though it had been going on since I was a very, very small child.

So, now I wait to find out if that list is going to be edited…

I still do not know the results from EEG and MRI.  I do need to make that call today.  I was going to call yesterday, but I am pretty sure that the neurologist wasn’t there yesterday and I was asleep for most of the last twenty-four hours.  (I took 2 Flexerils at 4 AM yesterday, then took 2 more at about noon yesterday, and doing that kept me asleep most of the day and night.)  I would probably be asleep right now, but my iPod had reached the red section of the charged bar, so I needed to recharge it so I could listen to music instead of having bad dreams.

It’s pretty damn cold today, which shouldn’t be surprising since it is winter, but it is kind of shocking to the system since I was running around in shorts and short-sleeved shirts last week.  Right now it is 21°F (or -6.1°C) outside (unless you’re in some parts of Madison County where it is 9°F or -12.8°C), so I had to change from my warm weather clothes to my cold weather stuff. I wish that I wore socks right about now because that would keep my feet a bit warmer, but I don’t, so no socks for me.

Oh, I had a weird dream yesterday. It was one of the few bad dreams that I think that I’ve gotten while doing the listening-to-music-the-whole-time-I’m-sleeping thing. I’m not exactly sure how it started, but apparently, different parts of my family actually had money in the dream. My parents and I were living in this huge house in an affluent neighborhood, and the house was right across the street from Deb, Nana’s first cousin who was raised by Mama and Papa (Nana’s parents) after her mom died. Apparently, in the dream, Deb’s husband was involved with an organized crime organization, which would never happen because he is way too nice and too good of a person to be involved in a crime enterprise. Deb had apparently found out and gotten him to turn someone in, and when the group found out, they made him choose between his life and hers, so he basically ordered a hit on her. She was killed in the house my family lived in, which I apparently witnessed, but couldn’t remember because I had some weird form of amnesia. Anytime anyone would bring up her name or what happened, I would start crying or saying that it didn’t happen. It was very, very, very strange.

I had planned on making icons everyday during 2012 for my icon/graphic community, but I haven’t made any so far.  So, I need to make some today.  I was planning on doing some Colin Morgan on the 1st, Kate Bosworth on the 2nd, but I don’t remember who I planned on featuring today.  I guess I could make the first two and do some others today, as well.

Ugh, I need to not pay attention to Rand Paul making his dad sound like this über-cool guy.  I don’t like or trust either of them, don’t get the appeal of either of them, and don’t want either of them involved in decisions of the government.

It never happened.

I went through my invoices and reported this transaction, as well as one for a purchase of Volume 7 that had done the same thing, which I’d purchased the singles for the first 3 episodes of the third season through Apple.  In total, I’ve paid for 14 songs that were on the two albums, as well as the full album price for the albums.  Basically, I’ve paid $46.04 for 2 albums worth $27.98.  And, though their Terms and Conditions page says that you can only complete albums within 180 days from the first purchase (which Volume 7 would be, but Volume 4 wouldn’t) , their FAQ says:

When you buy individual songs from any qualifying album, you can complete the album at any time, as long as the album is available for sale on the iTunes Store.

So, instead of being a legal scholar-type and going by the Terms and Conditions, I went by the FAQ like a normal lazy person. I filed a complaint on all the previously purchased songs, and guess how much credit I received over the issue: 1 song credit. While I appreciate that I got $1.29 of a virtual refund, I would have preferred that Apple admit that there was something fluky going on with the store and done the 14 credits.

And now I’m left with the feeling that I might not want to ever make purchases through the iTunes store again, which kind of sucks (for me) because it is so easy and (for them) because I do it so often and I have bought so many songs, videos, episodes, and movies from them.  In the past 3 and a half years, I have spent at (or around) $3516 (or 1/5th of my income for the same length of time) in the iTunes store.  Now, I’m sure that there are people who have purchased more than that in that time period, but, aside from the hacked account (and $20+ purchased by said hacker) and this one time, I would say that I have been a good customer.  I’m even so nice about iTunes/iPods and stuff that I won’t insult the company in front mine.  (Silly, I know.)

Ah, just got an email saying that I would get a refund. Good iTunes.  Now, I just wish I could take back the admitting to my dad how much money I’ve spent in the iTunes store in the last 3 years because he almost freaked out.  (Not that I blame him.)  Of course, there was quite a bit spent using gift cards purchased with money given for gifts.

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.)

Anyway, I had the MRI on Saturday and the EEG is scheduled for tomorrow.  I won’t find the results out until December 28, aka three days after “Christmas”–I’m not acknowledging that Christmas is even happening this year.  With the disappointment of last year and the implosion of my extended family, which apparently occurred because of what was said by me on here in 2002 and was wiped off the site and the internet entirely by the epic fail/major scamming of INI Hosting, I am not acknowledging that Christmas will even be happening this year.  I mean, I was miserable last year because we got snowed in and then this whole family-falling-apart-over-the-words-of-a-severely-depressed-eighteen-year-old-version-of-me has me hesitant to acknowledge that my favorite holiday is even going to happen this year.  It’s not like it even matters if I celebrate it or not.

Okay, I’ve gotten distracted on stuff that gets me all teary, and I hadn’t even gotten to the very best part of the medical news.  I’ve apparently lost about 50 pounds this year.  My secret, you ask?  Let’s see, eat at least 7 Cadbury Dairy Milk bars, 2 boxes of Crackerfuls, and 1 bag of bagels with regular whipped cream cheese per week & drink 1-2 Caffeine Free Cokes (2 liter variety, of course) per week, plus the occasional binge of chips, chocolate frosting, and various other unhealthy crap.  Oh, and have dinner that consists every night of the Stouffers, Walmart, and Marie Callender’s varieties of throw-in-the-oven-for-a-quick-meal-for-the-family.  And, last but not least, no exercising.  In fact, spend almost every waking minute of your life on the computer.  Yes, this is the way to lose 50 pounds quickly.  No wonder I always gained weight on diets.  I’m the opposite of normal.

Actually, I know that the junk food binge is not a good thing to do, but I’m still not ready to contact the gastroenterologist over this.  I mean, I’ve told him for years that regular food makes me sick.  But I just don’t think he’d believe that I would lose some mass amount of weight after eating unhealthy food the majority of the time.  I know that if I were a doctor, I would have a hard time believing it.

I think my neurologist appointment is this week. That should help me some. I hope he’ll have some ideas for what causes these awful headaches. I get migraines and even they aren’t this bad. I don’t think they’re tension headaches because, from what I’ve learned about them, tension headaches aren’t crippling. (I also think the tension diagnosis was crap back in 2000.)

The headache probably isn’t helped by the fact that I forgot to finish my (already late) dinner.  I had only eaten once yesterday before I started my dinner at almost midnight.  Then, I didn’t really like what I was eating (imitation crab salad with crackers), so I put it aside so that I could eat it once I got hungry enough to not care what I was shoving down my throat.  Well, I forgot to shove it down my throat until four o’clock, which was about 21 hours since I had actually had a legitimate meal.  I had been nauseous the entire time, but by four, I had started shaking, twitching, palpitating (it’s a word), and just feeling like shit.  My muscles felt weaker and I was almost in one of those moods where my body was either going to shut down or start making me sound like someone who’d been drinking for about 10 hours straight.  It was not pleasant and it was getting less pleasant by the minute.  So, I ate the rest of my dinner quickly, shoved some other high-carb crap down, and basically tried to swig anything that had even a slight amount of sugar.

My sugar doesn’t feel so low now.  Actually, it feels like I overcompensated.  So, instead of having the typical nausea of hunger, I am now having the gagging feeling that I assume children get on Halloween when they toss their twenty pounds of candy in their mouths without thinking.  Yeah, it’s that unpleasant feeling that was described in the episode “The Almost People” from Doctor Who:

I expect chocolate for breakfast. If you don’t feel sick by mid-morning you’re not doing it right.

Of course, mine isn’t from jumping on the bed on my birthday or eating chocolate for “breakfast” so it isn’t exactly the same, but it is pretty close to what happened, so it’ll do. And I guess it serves me right because I know better than to completely or almost completely skip eating meals. I’ve had low sugar issues for almost as long as I’ve had headaches, so I should know how how to not abuse my body in such severe ways.

I don’t get how we picked Thanksgiving.  There is one day to celebrate Thanksgiving on and that’s Thanksgiving.  We didn’t say we wouldn’t eat with them.  That was my aunt’s decision.  And since all that we do on holidays is eat together, because they always seem like they’re ready to be somewhere else, I don’t get why we couldn’t stick food in our mouths at the same time and in the same place.  They would leave right after anyway, so I just don’t see why they can’t be grown-ups and bottle their hostilities towards us for an hour or so on two days this year.  I mean, I’ve been bottling it up (obviously) for years and they want me to continue bottling it up publicly, so why can’t they do it for two out of the 8760 hours in the year?  Apparently, that’s too much to expect.

And if we have to have separate holidays, then I think that we should get to pick Christmas.  Last year, we got snowed in on Christmas and they chose to eat lunch and open presents at my grandmother’s house on Christmas, without us.  And, according to Nana, the cousin-in-law was none-too-pleased that my parents and I weren’t willing to drive over an icy bridge, up and down an ice-and-snow-covered mountain, and down some country roads to get there in a car that’s 12 years old and didn’t even have much get-up-and-go when it was purchased, doesn’t have 4 wheel drive, and doesn’t have any winter weather gear (because this is Alabama) to celebrate Christmas with them.  Oh, and the drive would’ve been without the dogs because we haven’t been allowed to have them around this particular family member since we first got Xander.  (Odd, since they have a dog of their own now.)  So, we would’ve been leaving 5 dogs at home, without food, with a limited supply of water, and (for Willow) without their medicine.  We also would’ve had to take all of our medicine and some extra clothes with us, in case we got snowed in there.  So, I’m not exactly sure why she was upset at our not coming last year and I’m not sure how it is that they got to choose when they celebrated Christmas with Nana last year and how they get to choose it again this year.  Of course, they picked the day the family celebrated Christmas during the first few years that my cousin and his wife were married, thus leading to some issues for my family with regards to Christmas.  So, it’s always been them who gets to choose that day.  It kind of makes me feel like my family has never really been appreciated by their family.  And that’s not exactly the warm, fuzzy feeling that one should have on Christmas or at any time of the year.

It’s not like it should matter to me when we celebrate Christmas.  There are no presents to open in my immediate family, so it’s not like there will actually even be a Christmas here.  At least, not a materialistic type Christmas.  And Nana doesn’t buy presents anymore, so there won’t be anything like that from her.  So by not getting Christmas with her (again) I’m just missing out on one of the two days a year when I don’t (generally) have to cook.  Basically, I’m not getting one of my days off because some members of my family can’t put their big kid underwear on and deal with us for an hour or so.  Way to go, them.

I could easily end this by apologizing, but the more ridiculous they get with their behavior, the less I think I should.  Besides, like I’ve said many times (online and off), I haven’t said anything that I should really have to apologize for.  They’ve used the same language in conversations about other people.  Why do I have to apologize because my “conversation” is available for lots of people to read?  Their conversations are a lot more likely to be overheard by someone that could take offense than my posts are to be read by someone who would get upset.  Maybe I’m not completely competent about social mores, but how is their behavior any better than or my acceptable than mine?  How is it okay to insult or degrade people about their lives behind their backs if you’re doing it vocally, but it isn’t okay to rant about my own feelings about what goes on in my life on a website that I pay for?  Why is that okay?  Maybe whoever is reading my blog on their behalf (’cause I know they are) will be willing to have my aunt or uncle or cousin or even the in-law send me an email or something explaining that.

Sometimes I wish that I had a truly boring life.  One where my family got along and everything could be considered normal.  Then I realize that wishing for a different life won’t do any good because I’m stuck with this one.  I’m stuck in a family where our relationships are basically based on some antiquated caste system with the “better than” members not wanting to talk to or spend time with the “less than” members, where it is normal to have third parties read blog entries to find negative words and then report back about how “this” or “that” was said even when it wasn’t, where it was okay to give R-rated movies to me when I was 15 but the second I mentioned being suicidal or psychotic I started getting gifts most families would consider to be okay for a little girl, where censorship is okay when I judge but they’re allowed to spew whatever crap they want, where my dad has to get “groomed” (haircut and extra shaving) to keep them from calling him names behind his back, and where I’m told not to talk about them, but they get to lie to my only living grandparent about what I say so that maybe, just maybe she might decide to quit talking to me or loving me or something.  Yeah, that’s the family I get to have.  I should just accept it and move on.