Tag: Paranoia


The Worst Month of the Year

28
November

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.

Comment » | 10 Years of Madness, Alabama Weirdness, Confessions, Family, Geekery, Internet, Janet Goes AWOL, Like So Totally Me, Mental Health, Music Stuff, My Family's Weirder Than Yours Is, My Sites, Sickness and Health, So Damn Special

Come On Now

15
November

My mom decided to call her sister on Saturday to find out why exactly her sister’s family won’t be at Thanksgiving. It was, of course, my fault. Apparently, she is upset because she had been told that I called her an evil bitch. I didn’t remember doing this, so I decided to do a search. In the ten years that I have had this site, I have used the phrase “evil bitch” 3 times.

  • The most recent was in 2010. I referred to a psychiatrist as an evil bitch after she told me I smelled bad, even though I had showered, put on nice smelling clothes, etc. Valid use of the phrase, no?
  • The next most recent was in 2005. It was a reference to the furthest back entry where I had called a psychiatric nurse at the Mental Health Center the “Evil Bitch Monger from Hell”.

Clearly, since my aunt is not a psychiatrist or a psychiatric nurse, I didn’t call her an evil bitch.

I decided to try just evil next.

As for various forms of the word “bitch”, I said others described her decision about the separate Thanksgivings as bitchy, I described someone from the other side of the family as saying things that distressed me and led to me making bitchy responses, I mentioned an argument between my mom and me (later in the argument, my mom began talking about how awful I was vs. her sister, which led to sarcasm from me), I called myself bitchy, I called my eighth grade history teacher a bitchy person and said she was a misogynist, I described the call from my aunt’s daughter-in-law as being done to bitch me out, I described my mom’s mood swings as “incessant bitchiness” right before I first mentioned how frustrated I was about the video on the news, talking about nother bitchy psych nurse, a reference to myself, my mom calling me a bitch, saying my dad was bitchy about Farmville and Facebook, my being pissed at a former family friend, me mentioning a philosophy teacher that I felt was bitchy, and talking about the evil psychiatrist. That’s pretty much it when it comes to calling people bitchy or bitches or anything of the sort. So, technically, I didn’t call my aunt a bitch. I also didn’t call her evil.

She also said that I said that she made my life a living hell. I did accuse her of that as part of a meme I was participating in April. I spelled out my reasons for it, too, which I think she should read since apparently she has never read the actual entry. Other than that, my comments about her have been relatively mild. They have all been based on the same things that were discussed in the other post, which makes sense because we, as a family, have not dealt with the cause behind the feelings. Until we do that, the words will continue to be something that probably comes up. That isn’t a threat. It’s just part of what goes on until some kind of resolution happens.

It’s weird how she is upset over the 5 or 6 that had any negative content about her in the past year, but doesn’t realize I’ve also posted 1 where I was genuinely concerned about her after she had eye surgery, quite a few posts after Thanksgiving last year gushing about her cooking the meal, the 3 or so in the last year where I talk about missing her in some way, etc. That’s out of around 100 posts total that I’ve made on fuzzypinkslippers.com in the Family category and the 152 on the site overall the beginning of 2011. Most of the posts in the Family category refer to my mom or my dad or both. There are  probably more posts from the last year about going to court over my grass than there are about my aunt. So, I think a littler perspective might be helpful.

Now, if she wants to claim that I’ve been more harsh about her daughter in law, then that might be a legitimate issue, but…I haven’t even called her a bitch or evil.  I did accuse her of being a catalyst in tearing apart our family and of having a double standard about medications, but I didn’t even get all that vicious on her.  So really,  they need to get over it.  If what I say is causing them so much anxiety, stress or anger, then they are old enough to know how to click the little x in the corner of the browser.  They are also old enough to not have surrogate blog monitors check out the site for them.  I think that if they would lay off on the familial pressure (via the monitoring and the accusations they make to my mom and grandmother) then things might get better.  I keep posting things related to them because their anxiety heightens my anxiety and my paranoia.  I really wouldn’t think that people who are related to me would want to cause me to either get so angry that I have severe headaches or so depressed that I cry for hours on end because I’ve heard yet again how horrible (in terms of actions) yet insignificant (in terms of importance to them) I am.  Honestly, the best way to end all of this drama is for them to back off.  They want to prove that I’m immature or wild or needing to be controlled by my parents*…that’s fine, but this all seems like a way to bait me, which doesn’t make them come off as being much more mature than me.

*Yes, my aunt actually told my mother that my mom should be able to exert some kind of parental control on me about what I blog about because she is my parent.  Yes, my aunt knows that in less than four months, I will be 28.  She also knows that I am a lot better behaved at 27 than my mom was during her teens and twenties.  So, again…perspective.

3 comments » | 10 Years of Madness, Confessions, Family, Holidays, My Family's Weirder Than Yours Is

Just Stop Touching That Stuff

3
August

I hate having people touch my stuff.  I am not quiet about this objection.  I don’t like people to touch things that belong to me.  I don’t like people to touch me.  Touching and I are not good friends.  I have intense bouts of anxiety and panic when people start touching my stuff, even if they’re just trying to help me organize.  I start feeling like my mind is on fire and like if the whole situation continues that I will end up suffering something horrible.

So, why is it that suddenly today, while I was watching the Secret Life of the American Teenager, my father decided that he would start putting my things that I have had in a box by my recliner in another box?  The old box broke, so I guess he was trying to be nice.  I should be appreciative, but it just felt like thing huge invasion of my space.  I know he probably didn’t mean to upset me, but it upsets me when people touch my stuff.  I would expect him to know this, especially considering the number of times that I’ve freaked out when my things were touched by other people.

Yet again, I am sitting here trying to stop a full-blown panic attack from happening because he was going through my things.  And I can’t tell him that it upset me because he will get defensive and angry and I’ll be reminded how ungrateful this makes me sound, which will just make things in our house more tense and more frustrating.

Why is it that people keep pushing the touching issue?  Clearly, it is something that I just cannot handle.  So, why is that I keep on having to deal with it?  I know it seems unreasonable for me to expect people to understand this boundary issue, but it just one that I have.  It is one that I have to have for my own sanity.  If I had to deal with the thought of people just going through my things whenever they wanted, then I would probably need to spend some time in a nuthouse again…and I don’t want to do that.  So, I just want people to get this.

 

1 comment » | Family, Mental Health

What Others Think Of Me

3
June

Haven’t you heard the phrase: what other people think about me is none of my business? Stop being so paranoid.

That was a tweet I received this morning from someone who had already said she wasn’t going to say anything else to me.  While I know that she has a point, I also think it’s too simplistic of a perspective.  I can’t just stop being so paranoid.  Believe me, if I could, I would.

Paranoia has been ingrained in me.  When I would be sick and staying home from school, I would be afraid to go outside (to go to the doctor or go with my mom to pick up my medicine) and I would be afraid to go by windows and doors.  I was always afraid that the truancy officer was out there waiting to cart me into court for missing school.   Part of why I had to quit going to high school was that when I would walk down the halls, I would hear other people talking about me and I would know they were judging me.  Even though they weren’t, I still felt that way.  The first time I explained it to a psychiatrist, they upped the antipsychotics.  That helped, but that’s not an option anymore.

Paranoia is something that I come by honestly.  My mother, too, has always been paranoid.  Hers manifests in the form of little men following her around and writing down everything that she does.   She didn’t tell me until I asked (as a teenager) if this feeling was normal.  She said yes.  My dad, who isn’t paranoid, said no.  We both had a reality check.

I know that my life isn’t the stuff that most people would look at and critique or anything.  On some level, I know that the paranoia is ridiculous.  It’s the same way that I know that my obsessions and compulsions aren’t realistic and that my hallucinations aren’t real.  But there’s that level of my mind that I can’t seem to conquer; the level that tells me that all of my thoughts about it being unrealistic aren’t true and that I have good reason to think people are judging me or are out to get me.

I don’t know how to fully get rid of the paranoia.  The only way that helps now is to sleep, but sometimes that doesn’t help.  I’ll end up having dreams that I’m being kidnapped, raped, or murdered.  I’ll wake up screaming, agitated, or crying because (by the end of the dream) I will have died or gotten so upset that I just feel so horrible.

I can’t go back on the anti-psychotics.  It isn’t an option.  The Geodon reaction (seizures + pseudoparkinsonism), the Abilify increasing my dreams instead of helping, and the Zyprexa sky-rocketing my weight.  I would have continued the Risperdal, but the more I took it, the more I like it was having the same effects that the Geodon had had.  I also realized, after I quit taking them, that I quit gaining weight when I went off of the pills.  I even began to lose it.  So, in order to be more physically healthy, I knew I had to stay off the pills.

I know I’m nuts.  I’ve been fairly open about that part of my life for a good long while.  This is why people who know me in real life don’t generally take my insults and stuff too seriously.  This is why they don’t chastise me.  They know that if I could keep it under control, I would.  They know that I have been trying since I was a kid to be normal.  They know that I’m more than just this angry paranoid girl.  Unfortunately, people on the internet don’t always realize that.

1 comment » | +acquaintances, +ex-internet friends, +internet friends, 10 Years of Madness, Facebook, Friends, Twitter

I’ve Learned to Live Half a Life

2
June

I feel like I’ve been angrier than usual lately.  I’ve been more depressed than usual, too.  (Those things tend to go together with me.)  I don’t know why.  Everything and nothing is causing it, I guess.

Most of my offline friends are married or pregnant or both, or they’re about to get married or they’re trying to get pregnant.  Most of the guys I’ve liked have gotten married, and I know I never had a shot with most of them, but it makes me sad to know that I will definitely never know.  Of course, I should’ve known that sooner because I have given up on ever finding anyone.

I’m obnoxious.  I’m opinionated.  When I’m not being one of those two things, I’m closed off.  I have 2 settings–outspoken/mean and quiet/shut-off.  It’s easier on others for me to be the latter, but its easier on me to be mean.  That tends to lead to me losing friends and ending up feeling like a total shut-in.  Of course, it doesn’t help that I don’t leave my house.  Whether I can or not, it doesn’t matter.  Staying in the same location around the same two people doesn’t help my social life.  So, I’m lonely.  I’m afraid to not be lonely, though.  Not being lonely leads to having some kind of relationship (friendship/romantic/etc.) and that leads to one thing: abandonment.  People don’t stick around.  There are no BFFs.  There is no forever.  There is no eternal anything.  People leave.  It’s what they do.

And its not just the real world that people leave you in.  Online people do it, too.  And in dreams.  I’ve had so many dreams lately that my friends that I’ve known forever tell me that they never really liked me or that they always thought I was pathetic or something like that, and I accept it because that is what I’ve come to expect.  I don’t think I am lovable or even likable.  I have to reason to think that I am either.  I have the same spiel going through my head that I’ve had since I was eight years old.  I hear that I’m not pretty, that unless I’m skinny no one will ever love me, and I hear that I have no values.  Then I think about other things that happened, and I don’t want to allow any kind of pain to be added to my life.  Things that I don’t talk about, that I should, but that I can’t.  Things that occurred a lot earlier and that I still can’t face.

I wanted to get married and have kids, and I know it won’t happen.  I’m seriously considering the gynecologist’s suggestion that I have a hysterectomy.  I’ve had my period for over a month now, and it has gotten really bad.  (You know the size of a half-dollar?  That’s the size of the clots I keep having.)  It’s the first one that I’ve really had since the D&C in November, and I don’t know how much longer I can deal with it.  What’s the point in going through the extremely heavy bleeding if I won’t go out?  What’s point in going through all of this if I know that I will never will have a kid?  And even if I do end up finding someone and trying, I’ve got the PCOS and that seems to make it more difficult for so many folks to conceive.  And if I do have a kid, what happens when I pass along all the bad crap to them?  Wouldn’t it be selfish for me to do that?   I’ve had  problems for so long and it would be wrong to force those problems on someone else.  I’m sorry that I’m whining.

But you know, if I weren’t whiny or whatever, then my opinions wouldn’t be talked about by others in fairly open settings  If I weren’t obnoxious or socially inept or suffering from some illness, then I wouldn’t be entertaining for other people to read about and complain about. And if they didn’t complain, then I wouldn’t get to feel even more paranoid than I already am.  I wouldn’t get to rehash the bad memories of my youth.  I wouldn’t get to sit around and feel even more useless and pathetic than I already do.

You see, when I go around thinking that everyone is out to get me and that people hate me, it makes me get more defensive and more agitated.  It makes me wonder how sincere the next friendship is or how caring that little token of advice someone will give really is.  People screw you over more than they do anything good for you.  Family, friends, the internet have taught me that.  I used to be the hopeful girl who thought the world was really shiny and happy.  I got over it.  The only thing I know how to do is cry or scream.

I’ve cried so much lately.  More tears than I could ever imagine, which is weird because I cried all year when I was in 3rd grade.  Every day, I cried.  But now, I just keep crying.  I keep feeling like my life is somehow gone.  Like I died at some point and my life just ended.  That’s what I live with every day.  And yeah, that shows that I need therapy, but the best I can do is see my therapist once or twice every two or three months and my psychiatrist every 4-6 months.  That is the amazing health care that people seem to think that folks on Medicare and Medicaid get.  I get to go to a clinic where they rush you through as fast as they can, pay attention to things that don’t even matter, and disregard everything else.  Why don’t I go elsewhere?  Find me a private doctor and therapist that accept both, and I’ll go.  I’ve tried before, but they ended up not filing things properly and I still am paying for it.

I don’t say these things for attention.  I don’t expect attention.  Like I’ve said, people let you down.  That’s what happens.  That’s how life is.  I say these things and whine about these things and make posts about these things because this is the only way that I get to deal with them.  This is my only form of therapy.  Otherwise, I sit around rehashing them in my head or talking about them to myself.  I end up sitting in a corner crying my eyes out over something that I could’ve just spent my time whining about.

I have no idea if any of this makes any sense.  I don’t really care if it does or doesn’t.

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The Invasion of the Parentals

2
May

I’m about to sound ungrateful, which I’m sure el radio dude and compadres would think is fitting of me, but I’m generally a very grateful person. So, what’s eating at me? Kind of a long story.

Well, I’ve been working on genealogy recently. This is something I enjoy doing, but it’s something I’ve had to work on on my dad’s computer because he has the most up-to-date file. My dad DECIDED that I should put it on my laptop. (My laptop being the one that does not connect to the internet in this house, thus making further research IMPOSSIBLE.) Well, it took him a few weeks to find the one that works with Vista in his little spot where he keeps all the discs. (He even tries to keep all of my discs, because I’m irresponsible and lose things.)

I installed it last night, and my dad asks me where my flash drive is so he can give me the family file off his computer. I tell him that I lost my disk. He berates me for my irresponsibility. (I paid for the disk, so if anyone should be pissed at me, it should be me.) He then reminds me of a year and a half ago when I lost a memory card for my camera. (Another thing that I bought.) This is proof that I am irresponsible.

Then, he decides that during the middle of a thunderstorm, he will connect my new laptop to the network via a network cable. This pisses me off because one does not pay $3k on a laptop to have it fry because her father can’t get rid of a file fast enough. He also goes through MY stuff while he’s trying to do this and rearranges MY CDs, putting some where they will fall in the floor. (If I put my CDs where they will fall in the floor, I get reminded of how irresponsible I am.) When I explain to him how uber protective I am of my new computer, he gets pissed; forgetting that he is the person who always taught me that in the middle of a storm, I’m supposed to unplug my computer from anything that could fry it because computers are expensive and we don’t have the money to go around replacing them every time a storm hits. Eventually, I get it across to him that I want to wait on moving the files over.

This morning, after I go to bed a second time in the last 12 hours, my mom goes through my stuff where I keep my books to find the flash drive. Admittedly, I don’t keep the books all stacked nice and neat, but no one in my immediate family does that. Well, I wake up and I cannot find my glasses because my laptop has been moved and I keep my glasses on top of my laptop. My Bible is right where Gretchen jumps up and looks out the window, thus meaning that the Quad that I have spent almost $100 on will most likely be dirty and ripped up because my irresponsible place that I kept it was too dangerous and it should be placed in the path of a hyperactive dog. My books were put on a bookshelf across the room by my father, along with DVDs that I was keeping next to the laptop because I was watching them on my laptop. My screwed up headphones (because I’m too irresponsible for NICE headphones; keep in mind I inherited them in a semi-broken state from my father) are in a plastic bag somewhere.

When I get a little pissed, my mom quickly apologizes, and it seems like she didn’t want to go through my stuff. (My dad probably convinced her to because she understands that I don’t like having my stuff rifled through.) My dad tells me how my books were falling apart, which is UNTRUE! He starts telling me of my irresponsibility, and how “books go on bookshelves”, so dad, if you’re reading this: tonight, after you go to bed, don’t be surprised if I decide to go to your spot and rearrange all your stuff because you leave books off the shelves, you can’t find discs that you want to be responsible for, etc. If I’m allowed to have my life rifled through because of my irresponsibility, don’t act like you’re surprised when YOUR stuff is gone through.

Seriously, it’s not my paranoia and schizo-spectrum stuff that is eating at me on this one. I don’t think ANYONE would want a spot they keep stuff gone through without their permission. I know somewhere in their hearts, my parents had good intentions, but does it take that much time or energy to ASK if I want them to do this? I tell my parents I don’t like being touched, they touch me. I tell them (and have since I was a little kid) that I don’t like my stuff being touched, they touch it…worse, they MOVE it. They look through my things and try to find out what I do with my dad. I’ve ALWAYS been private, mainly because I’ve always been paranoid. My mom, who also has paranoia, should especially understand that I do NOT want anyone to look at my stuff and move it around. She would have a fit if I did the same to her, and my dad would probably kill me if I did it to him. So, why don’t I deserve the same respect? It’s my house and I’m the one treated like some kind of lout that can’t be trusted.

Comments Off | Family, Rants

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

     

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