I’m a bubble — blow me

So, well… *yawn* Not much to report, really. It was a quiet week for me because I was really feeling crappy the entire time. I don’t know what it was beyond maybe the teaser of yet another bout with the flu that never fully realized into one. I had a terrible headache and nausea, constantly, that interfered with my sleep more than I am normally interrupted. So on top of my usual fatigue, and the fatigue that comes from just being ill, I was even more sleep deprived than usual.

So I sat/laid on my ass all week long. No IOP classes; barely-made trips to the convenience store and back (it’ll be a cold, cold day in Hell before I miss out on my Diet Pepsi tankard!); and much, much phone avoidance due to the screaming of my head each and every time I tried to talk/listen.

And, girl… did I whine!!! Each and every day, any time I was awake, I was all whiney and mopey and generally feeling sorry for myself. It’s just that no one was around to care except for Popcorn and, well… she’s a cat: she cares when it’s convenient for her! So it’s probably good that I avoided public outings and phone calls because I would have been really annoying with my self-pity and screams for attention and sympathy. It really IS true about us men when we’re sick: babies! I deal with illness each and every day and can push through it, work around it, etc. That’s “just” my “normal” illnesses, though. Throw in a cold or flu or in between and I am a needy, whiney little bitch who wants someone to take care of me, to baby me and give me good things to eat and drink, maybe bring me a new book or something, make sure my pillow is just perfect… you know, all the well-cared-for invalid stuff one thinks of. Instead, it was just me, trying to tell myself to buck up, to get over it and get some things done. Great: I’d be yelled at for being sick when growing up, not allowed to miss school unless puke was involved. Now I’m treating myself the very same way. Yet something else for counseling!

I did manage to get to my counselor appointment Thursday morning, chiefly because we often do EMDR therapy (which I highly recommend), and she has some woo-woo hand motion/eye movement stuff that has been helpful for me in the past with the headache and nausea. So that’s primarily what we did during the session, and we talked about how I am feeling the burn-out of having these IOP classes three days per week, etc. Aside from this past week of not feeling well, I’ve been finding that I really have to work at getting myself to go to the classes because I’m just flat tired of them. Even with the improvements made due to the letter I wrote to my “Get Curtis Off Of Morphine” team that blew up and gave cause to many changes in the IOP program being made, rending it much, much better, I am loathe to find much motivation to go to them anymore.

This feeling of apathy is apparently all just more and more of what my brain is doing during this tapering off from the morphine it has been fed for so, so many years. That is supposed to be the reason, too, why, even after over twenty years of alcohol sobriety, I’m having to really be careful and watchful so that I don’t give in to the suddenly-much stronger cravings for alcohol that I barely have anymore. I swear, cell memory is amazing: I can smell the booze, maybe even taste it a little bit, when I think of it. And trust me, I’ve been thinking of it a lot. That is one of the reasons I was worried to attend the drag benefit show last weekend, to which my counselor treated me for my birthday: I was going to be surrounded by liquor and I wasn’t sure I could maintain myself with all that my body/brain are going through lately. (Neither my counselor, nor her friend nor her friend’s daughter drank, either, so that helped immensely, not having the alcohol sitting right there in front of me on the table.)

So, I guess since my brain has been losing out on the depressant effects of the morphine it is reminding me of how much alcohol could provide the same “benefit” of numbing me up some, etc. Well, I’ve got news for you, Mr. Brain: I’m NOT giving up, giving in to replacing one chemical for another. That is one of the reasons why I’ve chosen to not go with the original plan to switch from morphine to Suboxone. The suboxone may or may not have had all of the great benefits which were touted to me; and it sounded wonderful to learn just how “up” one would feel on it. But it’s still replacement therapy, and would still involve a rough kick in about 1.5 to 2 years. I’ve chosen to continue tapering down with the morphine with the hopes of getting totally off of it without having to use any other substance. I’ve still got the Suboxone availability if things get to bad or if my body/brain decide that it will not allow me to taper down any more.

So that’s about it, about all that is going on in my little part of the world. The father of one of my dear friends passed away and I’ve not been able to get in touch with her since she left me the phone message at the beginning of the week. It took me a while due to the anxiety of making phone calls; but I left a message for her yesterday. On top of that, her mother is very ill, too. I worry about my friend because she, like me, has pretty severe emotional problems and, being as close with her parents as she is, will most likely have to go into a facility for several weeks if/when her mom passes, too. And the best friend of the property management company manager over our site, a friend of mine from Weight Watchers as well as here when she’s in the office, is traveling to the heart of the tornado devastation this weekend because the little girl of one of her best friends was one of the kids killed in the school collapse.

With what my friends are going through, some of them at least, it really DOES trivialize my little illness of the past week… sort of puts things I perspective. I so often live so much in my own head that I fail to look around me, to see the bigger picture of the world at large. I don’t have it so bad after all, you know? Have a great weekend, OD peeps!