Tag: college


30 Days of Truth: Day 8

20
April

(I know that it has been forever since I started this meme, but I’m going to try to finish it up.)

Day 8 is devoted to:

Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.

You might think I would choose my (emotionally abusive) grandfather or the eighth grade history teacher that picked the girls in her classes. No, this will be devoted to a couple of people who are all from the same group of people. Who might they be? My cousin’s wife (not the funny one) and my maternal aunt.

The wife of the cousin shall go first.

It should come as no surprise to anyone, especially her, that she and I are never going to be buddy-buddy.  Ever since shortly after she married my cousin in 1999, she and I have pretty much been at odds.  I’m not sure if the first time that she really started acting like I was some kind of miscreant was when I accidentally (and yes, it was an accident) stepped on her wedding gown or when I made a small joke (at the beginning of her pregnancy) that it would be cool if their son was born on April 1.  (His due date was already supposed to be in April, around 2 weeks after the start of the month, so in terms of development, it wouldn’t have been a big bad thing.)  She acted like I was hoping for the death of her child.  He ended up being born February 18, the day after my 16th birthday.  He had some pretty hefty birth defects and I got why everyone was so concerned about him and was so careful with him.  The birth defects were treated with various surgeries and with stays in the hospital.  By the time he was a toddler, he was relatively healthy.

In 2002, I wrote a blog entry about her.  I was pissed off at her because she didn’t seem to care about discipline and because she wasn’t acting like she was concerned that (at 2) her son was not even attempting to talk.  Honestly, I was a bit concerned that he might have some form of developmental disorder, but if I had asked her, she would have shut me down.  (Anytime I’ve tried to ask what’s going on with him, she has shut me down or acted like I couldn’t possibly have a clue what was going on.)  At the same time, she was apparently telling my mom that she thought that there was nothing wrong with my mother.

The blog entry practically got me excommunicated from my own family and I was told to never talk about that part of our family on the blog again.  (I have, but no trouble occurred until earlier this year.)  I let my internal issues fester for years, knowing that I felt like a stranger in my own family and that this one person was basically keeping me from having the loving family that I once had.  I almost got used to having my family turn their backs (literally) toward me at family events.  I didn’t get used to seeing the eye rolls, having anything I did for the family (i.e. the Christmas where I cooked pretty much everything) treated like it was suspect, listening to the concern that maybe my grandmother was a drug addict (because she’s taken medicine for Degenerative Disc Disease), hearing that my education was worthless because it was at A&M, or having long-time family events called off (or rescheduled) for no reason.

The last thing I mentioned really bugged me because we have had a dinner on Decoration Sunday the same weekend in May every year.  Soon after the marriage, the dinners became harder and harder to get anyone from that side of the family to attend.  What made this even more annoying was that this was also the weekend of the family reunion for my mom’s father’s side of the family, and it was the only time of year that we got to see some people, including my last remaining great-uncle from my grandfather’s side of the family.  That Sunday was always special and it practically disappeared because she had to go camping or my cousin had to go to a golf tournament or something else that could’ve probably been done at any other time.  It also bugged me because there were years when my family couldn’t attend Christmas dinners because of work or illness.  We didn’t get those days moved so that they specifically fit our needs, we would just miss them.  But Christmas has been dictated by that side of the family since 1998.  In 2008 at Thanksgiving, they decided not to even make an attempt to come see us.  (They went to see friends, as they’d done the year before.)  That Thanksgiving happened to be the one where I spent the day prior cooking everything and then ended up being able to eat none of it when my mom’s sugar bottomed out.  I nearly lost my mother that year, and I didn’t even know how to get in touch with them–on the off chance that they even cared.  That Christmas, they didn’t want to celebrate it.  I balked at that.  I pretty much threw a tantrum that said that if they didn’t come then that meant that they really didn’t love us.  They came, but they were all-too-thrilled to leave as early as possible.  (They’ve left quickly since then.)

At Thanksgiving, my mom mentioned that she had been at the pain doctor the day before.  Whether my cousin’s wife realized it or not, she rolled her eyes and made a disgusted look.  After we ate, she and my aunt were talking about her son’s lack of appetite and how it might be related to his ADHD medicine.  When I asked about the medicine, she rolled her eyes and told me.  When I tried to give her some insight on how the medicine might be making him feel, she cut me off and acted like I was somehow invading on her privacy.  (I’ve actually taken ADHD medicine in the past, and I thought I might be able to help her figure a way to help him stop losing weight.)

At Christmas, my parents and I couldn’t show up because of snow storm.  They decided to celebrate it on Christmas with my grandmother anyway, even though they knew we couldn’t come.  The cousin’s wife was pissed because my parents and I had decided not to make a journey that went over the river and over a mountain to get there.  It didn’t seem to occur to her that we couldn’t get there because it was unsafe.  Our lives were worth the risk, I guess.

The final straw was when I was watching television and got to have a news anchor announce to the rest of the Tennessee Valley that my cousin’s son happened to have some sort of developmental disorder.  (He was in a performance art group for kids with disabilities and he was in the video, though they didn’t call him out by name.) I really didn’t appreciate finding out with the rest of the people in the viewing area.  It seemed like the sort of thing that could have been discussed in the almost 11 years since his birth.  I was pissed and I wrote a blog entry, which led to her calling me on the phone, getting my mom to hand me the phone, and then blessing me out.  She wanted me to apologize and to promise never to talk about her on here again.  I told her not to read about herself on here, but to never demand that I keep from talking about certain aspects of my life. Since then, the family has pretty much been split in two.  No one (from the aunt, uncle, cousin, & cousin’s wife) acknowledged the birthdays of my mom and me.  (Of course, my birthday has always been ignored by the cousin and his wife.) My cousin blocked me on Facebook.  The only way that we find out what has gone on in their family is through my grandmother, who (this time) wasn’t mad at me for what I said.

Now is the turn of my maternal aunt.

I think that the two of us started drifting in 2002.  I was annoyed at her reaction to the blog entry that had occurred back then and I didn’t appreciate being shut out of her life for almost 1 year afterward.  I have to wonder if she would’ve continued to freeze me out if her childhood friend hadn’t died or if I hadn’t had the same surgery that the friend had had prior to her death.  In 2003, things seemed to go back to normal for a little while, but it wasn’t long before I began to realize that I had completely lost her.

My aunt agreed with the cousin’s wife that my grandmother was abusing pain killers.  By all accounts, she was even going into my grandmother’s house and counting the pills.  She tried to get my mom to help do an intervention with her (and wanted her to go into a nursing home), which my mom only agreed to because my grandmother was falling down all the time.  After a medicine was changed, though, my grandmother didn’t fall as much, and my mom changed her opinion on the whole thing.  My aunt has still seemed to be of the opinion that no one really needs pain killers.

She has also participated in the discontinuation of family events, the non-contact, and some of the other unkind behaviors.  I probably would’ve let it slide except that she never called or came to check on my mom any of the times she has been in the hospital, including when she was near death from the blood sugar thing or when my mom’s had her ankles operated on.  In fact, for my mom to even get to talk to her sister, she’s had to make the long-distance calls to my aunt.  If my aunt ever calls, she only talks for a few minutes at a time.  (If my mom calls her, she’ll talk for an hour or more.)  The calling thing bugs me because my aunt and uncle have money, and they know that my parents and I don’t.

She also was the person who told my mother that she wouldn’t help my parents pay for my books for college because I would never graduate.  She’d gone from seeing me as this person who could do things to this person who would be a leech on society.  She never helped contribute to our family when we nearly lost our house or when we struggled to get even basic necessities paid for.  Instead, my dad’s sister would help.  His sister, who had always been a bit of an absentee, volunteered to help out.  She continued to help as long as she could, while my maternal aunt would go on trip after trip and buy expensive things, while continuing to claim that they had no money.

If you look at past blog entries, especially the last few years, my more annoying behaviors and attitudes corresponded quite well with the family issues.

 

Comment » | 10 Years of Madness, 30 Days of Truth, Confessions, Family, FPS-Related, Holidays, memes

Start a Revolution

9
December

Today, I have to go see my gynecological for the follow-up of the D&C/hysteroscopy. I will also get to go over whether or not I want to continue having periods, aka do I want (at the age of 26) to have a hysterectomy? The gynecologist kind of suggested to my parents that I really needed to think about that, and I have been trying my hardest not to. I don’t want to have it at the same age as my great-grandmother. I don’t really want to even have it as early as my mom (age 41), but I would rather that than earlier.

So, I’ve seen that there are demonstrations in Britain over tuition fees. (I know that there are ties into the health/education system that some are demonstrating about.) I read that the maximum would be £9,000, or about $14,000. Now, if I were to go back to UAH at full-time status, the tuition cost for me (as a resident) would be about $4,000 per semester or around $8,000 per year. Instead of being in the 3 year system that would accrue £27,000, or around $42.5k, a new student here would face 4 to 5 years which would be up to around $40,000. Of course, if someone from out-of-state tried to go to UAH, they would face $10,000 per semester or $20,000 a year, and almost $100,000 in tuition over their undergraduate program. The UAH costs are prior to the addition of fees/expenses that are subject to change without the student knowing. At Alabama A&M, a resident would pay $6,140-$7,040 per semester if they were staying in a dorm or $3,509 if they were staying outside of one. A non-resident (out-of-state) could anticipate paying up to $10,000 per semester to study.

I just find it weird to think that people are that upset about their fees when they’re actually quite similar to what people here pay for a public higher education. I understand that fees are higher than what you’re used to, but just think, there are kids over here who have very little and they still have to pay these rates, though some of our schools are definitely not anywhere near as high quality as the ones in the British system.

Now, as for some of the proposed cuts that folks might be facing, that I can understand. Maybe it has to do with a difference in the places we’re from?

Comment » | Alabama A&M, School, Sickness and Health, Twitter, UAH

No Baby Bird

22
January

If I were to send the following (taken from an explanation I sent to a family member about what happened with college) in an email to you about what happened with A&M from 2004-2007 and trying again at UAH, then what would you say?

I started at A&M in 2004, told my professors from the start about my whole nutty issue. My depression started getting worse almost immediately, but I kept going. When it was time for my internship in the Social Work program, the field coordinator didn’t want to place me because (this was the first excuse) I couldn’t drive and she said that there were no agencies she could place me with that would accept a non-driver. She eventually found one, after she decided that the medicines I was on were too dangerous to allow me to drive safely. The first day I went on the internship (at the main Boys & Girls Club in North Huntsville), I wore the wrong shoes (fake Birkenstock sandals instead of tennis shoes) and my supervisor called her. So, the next day she came by and she wanted to check on me, and I was interacting with the kids and doing stuff and wearing the right shoes. A week later, I got called into the supervisors’ office and she was in there and they were talking about how I had been withdrawn and wasn’t reacting properly to the kids. (I was there with another girl from the school and I was actually more involved than she was, but this was never noticed.) Well, the field coordinator (who had been a teacher in a previous course and had been kind of hostile toward me there) intimidated me a bit and I started crying, which she said was unprofessional. She wanted to call my parents and I said that she would have to wait until the answering machine picked up and leave a message. She wanted to know why my parents couldn’t use caller ID, which made me cry harder, because this was in early 2007 when we had absolutely no money and were waiting on disability. I tried to explain, but I just couldn’t get it out, and part of me didn’t like the way she was acting. So, she decided to call my advisor and my advisor asked me if she could come with me to my next psychiatrist appointment. I said okay, thinking it would be only her. I was told to take a week off, since the appointment was in one week. I took the week off, and my parents and I went to the appointment. I was shocked when my advisor AND the field coordinator were there. My psychiatrist couldn’t see me that day, but another psychiatrist (at the Mental Health Center, they pass us around) saw me. Both professors went back with me, and I told this stranger about my problems with the two professors sitting there. The psychiatrist could tell I was upset, so she thought I needed to go inpatient (I didn’t) and the professors told me to take that semester off. They told me that if I thought I felt better that I could call them later in the semester for a new placement. I called several times, but my phone calls were ignored. I went back to A&M in the fall and pretty much sat outside the field coordinator’s office. She told me to wait a while, so I did, and one day later in the semester, I was asked to go to a meeting room with the two professors. This was the day that they told me that because I was bipolar, I could not complete the program. They went on to tell me that I should not have a job ever that had to do with dealing with other people. If I could avoid human contact, then that would be advisable. I finished that semester at A&M, and a year later I was at UAH.

I was going to go to UAH for a different degree, since I couldn’t finish that one when I realized that going to school was wreaking havoc on my mental and physical health, which was causing me to do worse in my classes. I was skipping a lot because I just had no physical energy some days. So, I’m on kind of an indefinite hiatus.

When a person can’t show up for half of their classes because of pure exhaustion, pain, depression, horrifyingly bad headaches, etc., should that person be reminded that they have basically quit? I am not currently in school, and I don’t know when I’m going to go back. However, I don’t think it’s fair to call me a quitter.

I probably have more credits than most people who have their doctorates. I went pretty much non-stop from August of 2001 until January of 2007, took a break and went back in August of 2007, had to reapply at UAH, started at UAH in January of 2009, and took a break beginning May of last year. I almost graduated in 2007, and am two classes away from that degree but I can’t complete it.

I just want to scream. I don’t like when people say I quit. Quitting sounds like I gave up because of laziness or something. I really hope that people don’t truly believe I’m lazy. If they do, then that’s their own damn problem. I work my butt off every day. It takes a lot of energy some days just to open my eyes. I have to push through a lot of crap just to do simple stuff.

People seem to see all my failures or things that I haven’t finished as being who I am, which I don’t appreciate. If you look at a baby bird learning to fly, you don’t look at all the times that it falls or that it can’t get up or any of that. You look at its successes. You cheer those on.

Of course, I’m no baby bird.

2 comments » | General

When It All Falls Apart

3
March

I’m depressed. Not the mild, oh-no-I-think-I-may-cry-a-minute kind. More like the endless pit of loneliness and despair kind. I’ve been crying a lot lately, and I mean, for hours straight I will sit and be in tears. I feel like absolute and utter crap. I’ve been getting more and more depressed for months, but my mom keeps trying to convince me that I’m not depressed. It’s one of those lovely time periods where I haven’t been acting the part, so she doesn’t believe I’ve been feeling it. Well, I have been feeling it, and denying it hasn’t been helping. Telling myself that I’m not miserable is not making me happy. It’s not even helping me put up a brave face anymore. I’m depressed. I’ve wanted to cut, but I haven’t actually done any cutting. (Mainly because my lovely razor won’t cut anything at all ever.) I have been able to scrape my leg with my finger nails. (Yay for being able to accomplish one thing in my life.)

I’m considering dropping out of college…for good. I’m sick of going. I’m sick of anxiety. I’m sick of paranoia. I’m sick of getting out and putting myself out there, and not having anything good come of it. I’m tired. I’m always tired. I want to sleep. I want the ability to be able to sleep when I’m tired and stay away from people when I just don’t feel like dealing with the world.

I just want a break from reality. A real break from reality. I can’t have one, though. No one would allow me the chance to recuperate from life.

1 comment » | Mental Health, UAH

Phone Fear

17
March

If I never have to call the special phone number for UTC again, I will be happy camper. :tennessee: I had to call to check about housing, financial aid, and some admissions stuff. I hate using the phone. I was surprised that I didn’t have a panic attack over the whole thing. I’m serious. I usually have panic attacks when I have to use the phone.

So, I finally wrote my essay on suffering in Stoicism and Buddhism for Philosophy. :notebook: That was not a fun essay to write. I hate it when I have to compare and/or contrast things. It gets all confusing because I start to see everything as either completely similar or completely different or as just completely confusing. My poor brain can’t handle it all.

I’m giving away a lot of my fanlistings. :computer: I’ve listed the ones that I’m giving up in the more section, so if you see one that you want, then please let me know. There are more that are up for adoption here.

Sometimes, even after the surgery, I wish I had the “willpower” to starve myself…to just give up eating. Eating has always been my enemy. I never wanted to be fat, and yet, here I am. I hate looking this way. I hate feeling this way. I wish I could lose weight faster. :pray:

BTW, Happy St. Patrick’s Day! :clover: I’m not wearing green today…of course, I think it would be a little silly for me to wear green. I’m not Catholic. I’m Protestant. To the best of my knowledge, green signifies Irish Catholic. I’m not Irish Catholic. If anything, I’m Irish Protestant (among many other types of Protestant), so I should be wearing orange, which I’m technically wearing. So, ha! Also, isn’t it a little strange that Protestants celebrate a Saint day? I mean, Protestants don’t do the whole Saint thing.

Oh, I found 2 four-leaf clovers today. :clover: I find them all the time in our yard…I even find 5-leaf and 6-leaf clovers sometimes. I wonder, though, if they’re more lucky on St. Patrick’s Day.

Plugs: Abby, Anna, Britta, Iris, Jen, Kristie, MonkeyBlog, Rachel, Spratalie, Tashina, Tiffany

Continue reading »

20 comments » | Confessions, General, Internet, Sickness and Health

Nerves set afire

2
August

Have you ever felt REALLY nervous when you’re about to start to a new school? Well, this is worse than any nervous experience in my whole life…that I can think of. All of my friends keep asking me if I’m excited about going to college, my answer is:

NO!!!!!!!

I’m not excited. I’m nervous! VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY nervous! Not that I’ll fail (well, not very nervous). Not that I’ll be late for classes. I’m nervous about seeing all those people. I mean, there are 8,000 people who go to the 3 campuses of Calhoun. I really don’t want to embarrass myself in front of a fraction of those people.

*sigh*

I also keep telling them that sometimes I wonder if I’m ready for this. Then, they ask if I think I made the wrong decision when I dropped out. I KNOW that I made the right decision. I mean, I feel it in my heart. I know that I couldn’t have stayed one more second. High school was not for me. But there are so many things that I wish I could’ve experienced:

More pep rallies
2 Junior/Senior Proms (I quit a few months before the first one I’d have gone to)
The ability to be nominated for homecoming court (If Coach Val had written down MY name instead of Megan’s, I would’ve been on the nominations list…and it wasn’t that I didn’t get the votes of my homeroom. They voted for Leigh and me, but Coach Val LOVED Megan…:oP)
Senior Skip Day
Graduation
Saying goodbye to all my friends

I’m never going to get those things…I mean, yeah, I’ll graduate and I’ll have the chance to say goodbye to my friends before they go to college, but I won’t get 175 more days to say how much they mean to me. I won’t get all those little things that you don’t realize how much you love until they’re gone.

I have got to quit talking about this stuff, because I’m going to start crying. :*( I cry really easily.

You know, over the past few weeks, people have really only gotten to see the annoyed me. Well, from here on out, I’m going to try to focus more on me and my friends–online and off. :)

Oh, my mom has decided yet AGAIN that I can have a DIFFERENT time to take classes and this time, I’ll get them in Decatur. :o P She doesn’t want me to have to stay at school alone for two hours because she’ll have to drop me off at 2 so she can go to work…So, now I may have to go to school at 8 in the morning. That really doesn’t thrill me, because it’s about an hour from my house to the campus. NO FUN!!!!!

Aw…Xan looks so depressed. I don’t know if he’s really sad or if he just wants attention. (He is SOOOO good at manipulation.)

*yawn*

I slept for a little while longer this more after I took X-boy for his walk.

My butt hurts. I know, you didn’t need to know that, but…who cares? It’s my diary…it’s my butt, it hurts…I share. So…:oP

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I now have “Born to Make You Happy” by Pinky Spears in my head thanks to some stupid tv commercial.

Oh, that reminds me…I updated my AOL profile. It still looks stupid, but it’s mine so that makes sense. :) If you have AOL, just go to get a member profile and type in Jadimo. You’ll see my dorkiness.

Well, I guess I get to go check my faves. I want to thank those of you who’ve left nice notes over the past few weeks, because I don’t feel like I ever thank you guys enough. Nice notes really do touch my heart. :)

Comments Off | Calhoun, General, Sickness and Health

My first entry

3
March

Wow. This is my first entry in my new diary. I have a diary offline that I’ll keep my juiciest secrets in, but this one is for the not so juicy stuff.

So right now, life sucks. I mean, my friends are great, but I’m not exactly the happiest chickadee in the world. It seems like everytime I get my life under control, I suddenly lose control of it. I guess that’s part of the psych problems I have. I have OCD, Depression, Panic Disorder, Anxiety problems, and I cut myself. I also have binge eating disorder, which really makes me feel like an ugly cow.

So I guess I need to let you know about me. Well, I’m 17 and from Alabama. I love *NSYNC. I have a foster brother “E”. I live with him and my parents. I dropped out of school in January because of my health problems, but I plan on going to college and becoming a psychologist. I want to help teenagers who are going through some of the same problems as I am. So I guess that’s all I can think of for now.

Comments Off | Foster Sibling, General, Mental Health, Plans for Life

     

↑ Back to top