Tag: YSA


You Don’t Know a Thing About Me

21
September

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comment » | 10 Years of Madness, Confessions, Family, Friends, General, Mental Health, Sickness and Health, So Damn Special

If It Were You, Even If It Never Will Be Or Already Was

5
July

I have a tendency to have a differing opinion than people.  This is pretty much the norm for me.  Part of the time, I think it may have to do with an inner desire to not be like everyone else.  Other times, I think it is because I literally think differently than others.  My brain has a way of interpreting things that is probably different than others, whether it is from mental illness, from abuse and bullying, from the way I was raised, or from something differently.

When it comes to the criminal justice system, I tend to get asked about what I would do if it was a family member or friend of mine that got killed or had any sort of violence committed against them?  How would I feel?  Maybe I would say someone was guilty, regardless of evidence.  Maybe I would want someone to be executed, regardless of crime.  I get that some people see the world as being a place where if it happens to you, then you will want some sort of vengeance.  Maybe I would, but I don’t think so.

When I was 14, I had a friend who was almost killed by her oldest brother.  He also injured 2 of her 3 siblings and killed their mother and father.  He almost attacked another one of my friends that day.  I had been at the house the day before.  I had seen her mother.  I had heard her voice.  For me, that was very difficult to deal with.

When I was 15, a guy from my grade and his sister who was a year younger than me went missing.  I think that the father was either missing or his body was found in his home.  I do know that the kids were found a while later in the woods nearby.  They had been killed by their father.  Though these deaths were tragic, I never really felt sorry for either child.  I know that sounds awful, but they were always so mean and hateful, that empathy was something I couldn’t imagine having towards them.

Long before I was born, my mom’s mom’s mom’s sister was killed by her ex-husband.  This death led to most of her kids going to one relative.  One of her older kids was not sent to that relative because they didn’t like her.  No one really thought they could handle her, except Mama and Papa, my great-grandparents.  They raised her, and though she wasn’t legally their child, I think of her as a great-aunt and Nana always calls her her sister.  But the grief over the murder of a relative that I have never known is something that has always been a part of my family’s interaction.  My mom tries to keep it light-hearted by telling me that my great-grandmother wanted to light the murderer’s grave on fire.  I know that the way that the members who were alive back when it happened, during my mother’s childhood, carry the angst with them.  In a family that never forgets and rarely forgives, this kind of thing can’t help but cloud your life.

In April 0f 2008, I had a friend that got killed in an accidental shooting.  He was headed home late at night and lived in an apartment complex.  The apartments all looked the same and he was apparently a little out of it.  He didn’t understand why his key wasn’t working on the front door, so he headed through the sliding glass door.  It was the wrong apartment, though.  The person who lived there shot him.  The shot was fatal.  He went from being a law student to being a statistic.  Many of my high school friends still have pictures of him as their profile picture on Facebook, even with it being something that happened over 3 years ago.

The next April, a guy who was in my stake’s YSA died in a horrible car accident. It was a supposedly a DUI. The car that hit his car was driven by an illegal immigrant.  The death of this guy that I knew and his girlfriend has been used by people who didn’t know them as a rallying cry to get rid of illegal immigrants.  It was even cited at one point by Mo Brooks, who was recently in the news for saying he’d do anything short of shooting immigrants to get rid of them, as a reason why we should get rid of immigrants.  He ended up being elected to Congress and part of his election was based on his rhetoric about this death.

Though I hadn’t been to the school in almost a year, I was technically still listed as a student when the UAH shooting by Amy Bishop took place in February of 2010.  I would have just had to reapplied (as a technicality) and signed up for classes to be considered a current student.  Even though I wasn’t going that semester, I had friends that were still students there.  I had friends who were in that general area earlier in the day on the day of the shooting.

Because of these deaths and others, I can fairly easily answer the questions of if I would feel differently if someone was killed in a certain way.  If I’m asked how I would feel about the death penalty if it were someone that I knew, then I can easily say how I would feel because I’ve been thinking about this kind of thing for a long time.  If I were asked how I would feel if someone I knew was harmed by an immigrant, I can say with a clear conscious how I would feel.  If I am told that people are never accidentally shot by someone in legal possession of a gun, I can tell them that that is bullshit.  If I’m asked about how I’d feel if someone I knew were harmed in a shooting at school or work, then I can think back to the fear and sadness of the shooting at UAH.

Between growing up in a liberal/politically-oriented family, losing these people, and studying social policy in and for school, I haven’t come to my opinions about things just by chance.  I’ve had to live some of it.  Other parts I’ve had to look up.  I can tell people that I never express an opinion that I haven’t tried to learn as much as I can about.  My parents always encouraged me to learn.  They always encouraged me to feel.  They also taught me that I had to think for myself.  I didn’t have to agree with anyone as long as I held an opinion that I understood completely.  I know that people think I am uninformed.  I know some think that I’m un-American or a bigot.  Hell, yesterday I got the following response to something I had said on immigration:

Mexico just DEPORTED over 2,000 ILLEGALS from their country, in the past month. Why is it, you do not want to give Americans the same Equal right? I will tell you why. You are an Anti-American bigot, wanting to deny the American people, the same EQUAL RIGHTS as the rest of the world. The right to a sovereign nation.

Just as I think of people who disagree with me as being unaware of all facts on issues, I get the same comments thrown at me by people with differing opinions.  And I have been called a bigot and a racist many times before, which is odd to me.  I’m not a racist.  If anything, I’m more on the egalitarian way of thinking.  (I’ve apparently been anti-bigotry/anti-racism and pro-equality since my mom and I passed a cross being burnt somewhere nearby when I was a toddler.  She said I asked what it was and she told me that it was some very bad people doing something very wrong.  Later in my childhood, when it happened and made the news, I found out what it meant.)  I know that it is easy to call someone a bigot or anti-whatever, though.  It’s easy to assume that no one knows what they’re talking about, and maybe I don’t know the same things that others know.  That doesn’t mean that my knowledge/experience is anything less important, though.

Anyway, I don’t know if this post makes any sense at all.  And now I’m annoyed ’cause I read about the David Duke potential campaign for President in 2012, which I think is one of the worst pieces of news I’ve heard in a while.

Comment » | +acquaintances, 10 Years of Madness, Causes, Confessions, Facebook, Family, Friends, National Weirdness, So Damn Special, Tumblr, Twitter, UAH, Who I Was - Past

Imma Be

20
August

Tonight has been strange. Well, I think that everyday is unique/strange/unusual, but this day seems to be one of those really odd ones. First there was the strange coincidence of several TFL folks eating pizza, which I guess isn’t that strange when you think about how Friday is one of those days when pizza is considered a valid dining choice. Then, there was my odd decision to finally start adding more people I know from real life on my Twitter account. This probably means that I should either adjust my behavior to something more fitting with my real life friends’ tastes and personalities, or just be me, and hope that they are okay with it. I’ll probably do the latter. I’m sick of trying to be the girl that people want me to be, and not being the girl that I actually am. Tonight was also the night that I got a rude wall posting from someone I know from real life, where I was told that we could no longer be friends because I’m “very fat and very ugly”. Another friend explained that the other guy was going through some issues in his personal life, and that, though that didn’t excuse his behavior, those issues explained why he was acting in an inappropriate manner.

I’ve sort of been thinking over the past few days about how my life has changed over the (almost) ten years that I’ve had fuzzypinkslippers.com. I’ve gone from a girl who dropped out of high school to a girl who dropped out of college. I’ve gone from someone who never saw people she knew from high school and other real life outlets to someone who never sees people from high school, college, and other real life outlets. I’ve gone from a girl who spent a lot of times at different appointments to a girl who spends a lot of time at different appointments. So, basically, my life hasn’t really changed all that much.

I need some suggestions about promoting Urban Sunrise. I was thinking about having a referral contest. Sometimes those work. Basically, you join, then have your friends join and say you referred them, and at the end of the contest, the person with the most referrals will win. I think that might work, but I would prefer that people actually post if I do this. (I’ve done a contest like this before, and people would refer other folks, but no one would post.

I’m really getting sick of this layout, so I may try making a new one soon…or I’ll post a premade one until I make a new one.

4 comments » | Facebook, Fanlistings, FPS-Related, Friends, General, Internet, Message Board

When the Wind Blows

22
January

Yesterday was another one of my sleep during the day days, and one of the only times I’ve gotten to actually do so in my bed. Well, Alice, my little guard Bassa-dachie was up in bed with me. We were snoozing away.

At about 5:30, though, I got this weird feeling and all of a sudden there was a siren. I shot up and out of bed, grabbing Alice. Unfortunately, I couldn’t carry her all the way, but I told her to run into the living room. (I STILL do not have cable in my room, which thanks to the Switch to Digital means I have a TV that picks up nothing.) So, we scurry into the living room and there is Dan Satterfield (@danwhnt on Twitter). Well, he and Alan Raymond are covering the tornado that is hitting Huntsville. I wait a second to see which part of Huntsville, and I notice that the wall cloud is near Chapman mountain. I, along with many other valley folks, get to watch as they confirm via the Saturn V cam that it is in fact a tornado as there are flashes on the screen as the tornado snaps power poles. It was quite interesting to watch, as I’ve never actually seen footage of a tornado AS it is happening.

So now folks from YSA who are from such tornado-deprived areas as Kansas are discussing how strange it is for a tornado to hit in January. (Not here, baby.) I told them about the 1989 tornado and the 1995 tornado, which were both deadly (the former was a mile away from my old house and the latter killed a family member).

Oh, I have added many embarrassing photos of my childhood on facebook. You can see me in my Middle School choir’s blueberry dress, be reminded of that short time when my face wasn’t big, see the first man to emotionally abuse me (Dadada), etc.

Comments Off | Alabama Weirdness, Facebook, Family, Friends, General

Mine Eyes Have Seen

4
January

So, my last Twitter update still rings true. I have yet to have a pair of glasses to wear. I have to take them somewhere this week or else I think I’m going to go crazy from the headaches. I had forgotten just how bad headaches could be. It’s funny how you can have migraines and tension headaches for years, but the second you take away the glasses that keep away the eye strain headaches, it’s just completely insanity provoking.

I had an appointment with my rheumatologist last week. He finally convinced me to go back on my lovely steroids. I just don’t take the full 40 mg each time I do it. I only do 20 mg twice a week. My inflammation is bad enough that I probably need much more, but the steroids are so hard on my system that I have to determine just how much of my treatment that I can handle.

My rheumatologist has changed my diagnosis again on the sheet, which is now confusing me. Instead of marking Sjogren’s or Fibromyalgia, he selected Connective Tissue Disease, unspecified, and Osteoarthritis. Apparently, my lovely body, which still exhibits the symptoms of Sjogren’s has gone hog-wild on attacking all kinds of connective tissue. Every day I seem to learn what a new level of pain my body can sink to.

I can no longer use any eye drops that we have in the house, which is really difficult given the whole dryness factor of Sjogren’s. All eye drops cause my eyes to feel like someone has taken acid and poured them on my eyeballs. I’m having to be careful with certain foods, too. Strangely, I’m having to eat higher fat stuff in order to maintain any sense of normal feeling in my body. If it has certain carbs in it, I’m sick soon after.

Relaxing helps, which would be great, if I could get my father to stop insisting on telling me how horrible I am. I ate a personal pizza thing he’d gotten at the grocery store a few weeks ago, about a week after he got it. On Saturday, he decided, after seeing me eating a flatbread sandwich, that he had to have the pizza. Well, he got mad when he discovered that I had eaten it. (I ate in the middle of the night when I had nothing to eat and I figured that since the man hates pesto that he wouldn’t want a pizza with pesto sauce.) Well, apparently, this was just further proof of me being a pig (he even snorted to prove his point) and that I’m an invalid. When I told him that the only thing I could ever imagine making me happy was his death, he said that that would make him happy too because then he wouldn’t be around me and then I would have to finally learn what it’s like not to live off him. (For the record, I don’t actually want him to die. I just want him to be a dad who actually cares about his family.)

It’s kind of funny that he said that. I’ve been taking care of him for years. When he lost his job because of his anger and depression, I was the one who used my money to buy him groceries. I’ve been the one who made dinner a majority of nights for years. I’ve taken care of him when he’s been sick. I’ve done the same for my mom, and I took care of his father as well.

He also told me that my mom and I use him because he constantly has to take us to the doctor and the hospital. I haven’t been to the hospital in months, but when I was there, it was due to a sprain that wasn’t getting better. I was there WHILE my mom was there with her break, so there was no going back and forth. As for the doctors, well is it really my fault that I drew the short straw on the whole illness thing? Every bad gene that could be inherited, I got, and it’s like he thinks I enjoy this. Who would enjoy this? Yes, being crazy was kind of cool because I see things differently, but some of the crap that it has caused me to go through are awful. And the physical problems? Well, y’all know how I feel about hate-mongers and completely ignorant people? I wouldn’t wish any of these problems on them. Maybe I have some sort of martyr thing, but I would rather be the person suffering than know any other person was going through this kind of pain. Feeling like you’re dying is hard enough when you have panic attacks and know it’s not really real, but in a way with the physical problems, it is real. I’m not actually dying, but I get this sensation that my body feels that I am because it’s attacking itself. That can’t make a body feel all fluffy-duffy-good or whatever.

I finally figured out what his problem is. He doesn’t want to feel any better. He wants to be miserable. He watches things that make him mad on tv. He plays games on the computer that piss him off. He snarks at me when I try to do things to make him happy. It honestly feels like he is making an effort to make himself feel bad. I guess he wants the same kind of care and attention my mom gets.

Oh, I have had what I would assume is an inner ear infection since right before Christmas, but I was unable to get a doctor’s appointment. I’m currently waiting until I can call my doctor to find out if maybe I can get in. If I don’t get whatever is going on in that region taken care of, then I’m going to fall down one of these days during a dizzy spell.

Oh, and if the whole dad issue, health crap, etc. wasn’t bad enough, my friends are all getting married, including the guy I liked…only, he’s now married to one of my friends. I would be happy for them, but some of the couples have barely known each other for more than a few months before their nuptials and the rush seems to be kind of odd. If you’re going to be with someone for an eternity, as one would assume they believe with the whole temple wedding, then why not just wait until you are absolutely sure that you know, love, and accept a person for who they are?

1 comment » | Family, Friends, General, Sickness and Health

As Soon As Possible

28
September

This afternoon, I called the UAB Health Center to arrange for a new family medicine practitioner. I told the receptionist the basics of my issues…okay, so I just said, “muscle weakness”. She told me she’d get me in “as soon as possible”, which I figured might be 4 weeks. (Becoming established with them again after a few years away can mean a 6 week delay in getting an appointment.) She got me scheduled for an appointment for the 14th of October. That’s not too far away, all things considered.

I might feel better by then, but chances are, my body won’t. I’ve been feeling gradually worse as each day passes. It may be partially due to the seasons changing. A lot of my problems are seasonal, and get worse this time of year. It’s weird to have a kind of seasonal schizoaffective disorder. I’ve heard of seasonal affective disorder, but not seasonal schizoaffective. I guess anything is possible.

I ran out of Effexor this morning. I need to call the Mental Health Center to beg for an appointment with the nurse for med check. That way I can get a prescription for it. Of course, it’ll probably be a few weeks. If my mom were without pills, I would be expected to share with her. With me without them, my mom is not sharing any with me.

She and I had a bit of an argument this evening. I pointed out that she has a tendency to marginalize my problems. I told her that I know more about her back problems and my dad’s current obsession with Dark Orbit than either of them know about anything that is going on with me. I mean, my back hurt for years, but I didn’t tell her until this year because I knew my problems would be seen as less significant. Then, a few months after (about 3 weeks ago) I told her about it, she and I were in Wal-Mart. She wanted to walk all over the store, and go back and forth across it, and my back was just in too much pain. So I complained, and she said, “My back hurts worse than yours.” Now, I get that she might feel that way, and it’s possible that it’s true. The thing is that I don’t know how her back feels and she doesn’t know how mine feels. I’ve tried to explain the pain before, but every time I start to explain how I feel or I start to complain, she has to tell me how she’s suffering worse. It really makes me feel insignificant. So, we had our argument tonight, and I said that I hadn’t wanted to talk to her today because she kept seeming argumentative. She asked me why I wouldn’t stop talking to her, then. I told her because she was the only person I had access to to talk to, and she started to tell me to go to YSA stuff. I pointed out that I tend to get treated like shit when I go there, and that I’m not a big fan of being treated like shit. She, then, suggests I go back to Institute and try to avoid hanging out afterwords to get away from the ignorance. I point out that I encounter a lot of ignorance at the hands of the Institute teacher (the one who suggested that questioning the Church was tantamount to being a gangrenous infection that needed to be cut-off). She then starts suggesting other churches. Maybe I don’t want to be around religious people. A lot of religious people in this area tend to be of the opinion that being conservative is the uber shit and being liberal is basically a condition of idiots who will never know the love of God unless they repent of their evil secular ways.

1 comment » | Family, Mental Health, Rants, Sickness and Health

Don’t Look It, But Feel It

30
July

I hurt right now…really bad. I’ve had leg pain for the past day. It’s in my hip. My mom says it’s the fibromyalgia acting up. It probably is. Of course, there’s this funny little thing about fibromyalgia: it doesn’t always affect just muscles. This feels like a ligament or tendon. Those can actually be more painful than the muscles. With muscles you can find ways to maneuver that lessen the pain. When a ligament or tendon is aggravated, it basically feels like a bad sprain that has been worsened by like five million percent.

I know, I tend to exaggerate alot in terms of fibro descriptions, but that’s because unless you’ve actually had it, it is so hard to understand the pain. For example, most people have felt pain. Many have even felt bad pain. How many people get to experience the joy of being in so much pain that you’re physically sick? That’s one of my joyous experiences that my problems give me. It’s a pain overload, I think. Not something I would wish on anyone…not even Dick Cheney or the head of Summit Entertainment.

I wrote a rant on Facebook about/to my friends in YSA. I didn’t specifically tell them it was about/to them, but I figure maybe they can figure it out. One of my friends from HS read it, I think, and apologized for my loneliness. It wasn’t really geared towards her. I have accepted that most of the people that I grew up with are actually too busy to chat sometimes, though she offered to. It’s the people who I know aren’t because I pretty much know a lot of their schedules and I’m fairly certain that if they can create random groups on Facebook, then they can check on their friends every once in a while. I also ranted about them not joining my autoimmune cause. Maybe I need to find some big celebrity who is big into autoimmune research to try and get them to see that research support is like really cool. It may not be supported by some big group or band that they listen to everyday, but it’s supported by someone…probably like the most famous knitter or something. Not that there’s anything wrong with knitting. Hey, sarcoidosis is apparently something that famous people have: Bernie Mac, Karen Duffy, Bill Russell, Reggie White, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Evander Holyfield, Travis Michael Holder, Floyd Mayweather, Sr., and possibly William Shakespeare. Michael Jackson may have had lupus, which is an autoimmune disease. I wonder if they care about any of those folks? Eh…if it’s not FOB, then it’s not a big deal to them probably.

For the Q&A, which I will take questions on through Friday: Ask Here. I’ll post the Q&A every week, btw.

Also, please, if you like Twilight even a little, try and help the effort to Bring Back Rachelle.

Comments Off | Friends, Sickness and Health

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