Unexpected Visits and Unfortunate Conversations

I bought more yarn on Wednesday. I honestly don’t think I should have bought it. What I should be doing is putting all of the money I’m making at my crappy part-time job into my savings so I can properly afford to have my wisdom teeth out at the end of the month. 2600$ for all four of them out. Ouch.

But everything in the store went to 50% off. How can I say no to that?

I know I have a problem. But prices won’t be this low ever again! Buy it while its cheap!

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My Uncle Don was up from Charlotte last night. He works for IBM and had a business thing in Hartford. After his meeting got out, my family, Sam and I went to meet him for dinner. We went to Smokin’ with Chris in Southington. If you ever have the chance, I would definitely recommend going there. Its this great BBQ place and they smoke everything. Everything just falls apart and is absolutely delicious. Just don’t wear your favorite white shirt when you go there, and you’ll be fine. (My uncle made that mistake. But luckily, it came out unscathed.) Aside from the food, I have to say my favorite thing about this place is that the table ‘cloths’ are just sheets of brown paper. And they leave crayons on the table. I drew a pig drinking a beer, and Chris (the actual Chris of Smokin’ with Chris) put it up in the bar with the other table top art work he’s accumulated. He comes out and talks to all of the diners every time we’ve been there. This guy loves people.

But enough about Chris. My Uncle Don. OH MAN. You think you’ve met some characters in your life? You should meet my uncle. He is the sweetest guy ever, and he just has story after story after story. I honestly think that he should have been a comedian. He is so funny, I can never get over it. And he just compels everyone else around him to be happy. Because he is always happy. His laughter is contagious. Even when you think that he shouldn’t be, he finds the good in every situation. 

His mother recently fell, and she hit her head. Extremely hard. She is now stuck in the 1950’s. She truly believes she is living her life as she had as when it was 1950. She talks about going home (to her parents house.) Going down to the corner store with her girlfriends. Just everything in her life as it was when she had been that age. But she still recognizes her children. When she introduces my uncle to people, she says, "This is Don, my brother." Because in her mind, she isn’t old enough to have a son who is over the age of 50. But she talks about Don and says he’s her favorite brother. And Don looks at his uncle, (his mother’s actual brother) and he said something to the effect of, "I’m okay with it if you are, but it looks like you got the short end of the stick!" 

And I know someone is going to say, "Well he shouldn’t make light of a situation like that," or "He’s only joking about it to cover up how he really feels." But he says, "You know what. She’s happy. And that’s all that matters. Its a little sad to see her that way, but she knows who I am, and she’s happy with where she is. Why am I going to tell her otherwise?"

I love my Uncle Don. He is a riot and a half, and I don’t get to see him nearly as often as I would like.

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I had another breakdown on Tuesday. Someone recently commented on an entry I wrote back in February, and back then I was thinking I was depressed. I hadn’t discussed actual depression with Sam. But on Tuesday, he brought up the idea that he thinks I might be. We tried to work through what has been going on in my head lately. Which is no mean feat. I feel like my mind has been going a mile a minute in a constant loop. And there is nothing good going on in there. Its ‘This Thing that’s driving me crazy’ and ‘That Thing that’s driving me crazy’ and ‘This Reason for why I’m an awful person’ and ‘That Reason for why no one likes you’ and ‘This Pitiful Reason why Sam is still with me’ and ‘MY GOD you’re an awful person and you should just leave so no one has to deal with your crazy anymore.’

And with all of this stuff buzzing around in my head, I’m having daily anxiety attacks. I come home and I can’t breathe. I go to work and I can’t breathe. And then I snap at someone or I yell at someone. And I can’t live with myself and I cry about it. And then I give up because my whole life is in the gutter and why am I even trying anymore?

I feel like I can’t even effectively describe what is going on. But I have no motivation to do anything anymore. Things I used to do to make myself happy aren’t enjoyable anymore. I’m not really walking or exercising anymore. I’m eating less and gaining weight. My pants don’t fit me right anymore. I’m knitting less, but buying more yarn. I’m not even really cooking anything for dinner anymore, which is awful for me because I love to cook. I laugh about something and then I cry because I feel like I shouldn’t be laughing when I don’t feel like I’m happy. I’m not even cleaning my house anymore because there is no motivation to. I clean something and then an hour later it is filthier than it had been before I cleaned it. There are goldfish and other foods ground into my carpets, and when I vacuum, I turn around and there are more than what had been there a minute ago. (And I’m not even talking about when my house mates have the baby.) I’ve just given up on a lot of things because I feel like no matter what I do, there is no progress.

So Sam and I got a whole lot of what I’ve been feeling out there and he told me I need to call and make an appointment with a doctor. Because there is clearly a chemical imbalance going on somewhere. And I realize he only said it out of concern for me, but having him say that he thinks I need to be medicated kind of hurt. Not that I don’t agree that there is something wrong. I wish I really knew where all of this came from and why am I broken and why do I need to be fixed. But to hear him say that brought me down even lower than what I had been.

I also don’t want to be a person who can’t be happy without taking a pill for it. I don’t really believe in taking pills to get better. And I really cannot express how much I do not want that to happen. That isn’t to say that I judge anyone else for taking a medication. If that is  what works for you and you’re okay with it, then that’s fine. Personal choice and all that. But I, personally, do not want to be on anything. I actually think it is more that I don’t want to become dependent on a substance. And the consequences of going off of said substance.

I don’t want to have the above taken the wrong way. Its a really messed up paragraph about how I might feel about it.

Either way, I still haven’t made an appointment. I don’t have a PCP. I really don’t want to find a PCP and have the first conversation with them be, "So I feel may be depressed. What can you do for that?" Because then it just sounds like I’m fishing for a medication. Which is absolute

ly not what I want in the first place sooooo…. yeah.

Ugh. I just hate everything right now.

I don’t even know where to start to fix this situation I’ve gotten myself in to.

But I guess I’m going to have to keep on trucking.

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Day off today. I think I should start knitting some of my metric buttload of yarn.

ALW