Month: July 2021

Posted in Mental Health

House of Mouses: Misandry is Not My Idea of Fun, (but here I am anyway)

Posted on by rsfahrudeen

           So here I am trying to get things done. And I’m actually doing better than before. The only problem is that my unchecked massive anxiety is making me hate everyone and everything in the whole goddamn fucking world. (Myself included so it’s not and ego thing.) I’m not good at keeping something like unadulterated hate and pure seething rage off my face and out of my voice, especially at these level so I’m trying to just minimize the damage by trying not to interact with anyone unless I have to. Granted, don’t interact with anyone unless I absolutely have to is my general M.O. but the reasons vary  as well as exactly how bad an idea human interaction is. Today is about a DefCon5 

             I started this morning cleaning fucking mouse shit off the kitchen counters. I have not stopped feeling an overwhelming urge to scream and throw things and screech that I cannot will not deal with this disgusting crap anymore! It’s harder to dissociate when you’re doing more than just throwing an old waffle in the microwave that’s a week old at least but still good because bread in the fridge. But still why the fuck does she leave shit in the fridge for so damn long going ‘oh, I’m going to eat it’  and then doesn’t eat it. She never eats it half the time it goes bad and the other half it ends up being given away because she hates food waste but not enough to let us eat some because ‘don’t worry’s she’s going to eat it’ or make sure to eat it her own goddamn self. Of course I did ask to have one because it’s a Belgian waffle and she just got two more she’s busy not eating and she did say yes but I’m just so mad about it being in the fridge that long anyway it doesn’t make anything better about it.

           I am, of course, out of butter and not up to searching for their margarine and debating whether to sully either my honey or my real maple syrup with it , but I do have eggs so I quickly fried some eggs with runny yolks to eat on top of my waffle. And that means having to find the pan, lid, spatula and also use the stove which of fucking course has mouse shit on it because it’s morning. It’s a white stove top and I have to clean up any egg that spatters or whatever so it’s impossible to ignore the mouse shit.  And I want to cry and scream because I just hate this so very much.

            I am very well aware that given how goddamn long we have had to deal with these mice, I should be getting better at dealing with this and not worse. But see this is what happens when your medication stops fucking working for no reason and your life is an absolute shit show to begin with. My anxiety builds so much faster than it reduces. Thinking that being exposed to something for a long time should make it easier to deal with in my case is like wondering why a damn breaks when it did just fine the first seven days of flooding and heavy rainfall. The experience should have make it easier to handle, right? Nope. I am also very well aware of how everyone thinks things should work, even though it obviously fucking doesn’t.

            So I eat get my meds, go back upstairs, feel like I’m going to throw up and proceed to suffer from body aches, nausea and various bodily ills that either mean I have Covid now or either the waffle or eggs fucked me up.  I’m pretty sure it was the waffle and eggs. It might have been the milk, too. I’m good at being able to tell if it’s gone bad yet or not but also I forget that if I have milk, as a drink or in cold cereal,  after not having milk for a while it sometimes does terrible things to me. Not usually like that. But it may have been a team up.

            This is when I get called downstairs be ause my worker is on the phone. She asks me if I remembered to take the clothes out of the washer Monday evening and out them in the dryer. It’s Wednesday. And no I did not. I knew I would not when she told me not to forget on Monday after she rewashed them from my forgetting them from Sunday. I told her I wouldn’t forget, but I knew I would. I had told her I would do my best, but she wouldn’t accept that for an answer. You see I had no hope at all  for remembering it then, or even on sunday, and I knew it.

           You see, I get easily distracted at the best of times, and loose all concept of time at the worst, which I’m very near right now  If I’m going to have any hope of getting any laundry done and also of NOT forgetting laundry in the washer and having to rewash it again (and perhaps multiple times over the course of a week), I have to get the first load in either early in the morning or early in the afternoon and settle for doing just one load.  Whether it’ll make it out of the dryer and into the basket or the basket will make it out if the basement up to my room in the attic that same day or even the same week is another question. The answer to that depends on how badly I am doing.

          What makes the laundry situation harder to deal with is that we each have our own assigned laundry days. Mine are Sunday and Thursday. I chose them. But the unfortunate truth is that when I loose all sense of time, it’s not only hours that disappear and how many of them have gone by, I don’t always know what fucking day of the week it is. I will sometimes not remember it’s my laundry day. At all or not remember it until the evening where I have absolutely no chance of actually getting the washed load into the dryer.

            This Sunday was one of those days where I forgot until my worker reminded me to start my laundry around 6pm. I had previously talked to her about my having trouble with this. I may not have been thorough enough, but I foolishly thought she would be reminding me to put the clothes in the dryer when the washer was done. She did. But she reminded me of this five minutes after I put the clothes In the washer itself and then ended up leaving for the evening. After giving me my evening meds. I take them at seven. They include sleep meds. This does not help me remember shit it also does not give me the spoons to do them when I do. I tried, but as always, I lost track of time and fell asleep with only a vague thought of the laundry and no strength mentally or physically to do anything about it.

            Monday she informed me around seven pm that she started rewashing my clothes and asked me to remember to put them in the dryer. I had already taken my meds for the night, so the answer was I’m sorry but that’s just not going to happen. As I stated I obviously couldn’t say that. So I just said I’d do my best, an answer that was just as honest at least. It’s just that I knew my best right now was and is complete and utter shit right now.

         Now, intellectually, I know that while Monday is not my laundry day and Tuesday is not my laundry day, or today either, it is better to get that wet load of laundry in the dryer and dry it as soon as possible, even if I have to wash it again first. But the knowledge that my laundry days are ONLY Thursday and Sunday create a sort of block in front of doing laundry other days. It’s a rule. I try to follow them as best I can. Breaking them can be hard sometimes. I have gone weeks without doing laundry because I forgot to do it on my days because of this rule. So this is something that gets in the way when situations like this occur.

       Now, I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with my brain that it does such inexplicable things to me all the goddamn time. I don’t know how to stop it. I’ve tried working around it and I am just so fucking tired. Especially now. Especially with covid, stupid roommates, over heating attic rooms, goddamn fucking mice and mouse shit EVERYWHERE. Also my medication doing jack shit for me right now. I am somehow managing to make myself food and get some things done, but I cannot manage to get my fucking laundry done right.

          Anyways, my worker called and asked if I remembered my laundry. I said no. She then proceeded to scold me. Tell me how that’s not okay and I can’t keep doing that, how it’s inconsiderate it is to my roommates, and that I need to get myself together or some will power bootstrap bullshit like that. Because clearly no one had ever told me to just fucking try harder before. No I one had ever told me anything like that before. I had no idea that all my fucking brain malfunctions could be solved by just TRYING fucking HARDER!!!

        Nobody wants to fucking live like this! Nobody! I hate this. I hate every single fucking thing my fucking mentally illness ducks up for me. Trying really really hard is not al ays enough. It just isn’t. I wanted to yell at her. I wanted to scream at her. But I didn’t I just said ‘well it almost sounds like I need some help, doesn’t it.’ and gave the phone back to .my roommate. Hardly a spartan level comeback but I just went back upstairs and felt sick for a few more hours. 

        No managed to get the load of laundry finally done. I started at two in the afternoon. I just put the single load into the basket around seven thirty. And now I just want to go to sleep and hating everybody and everything for a little while at least. I think I’ll do that. Mwybe i’ll manage to bring up my clean laundry to my room tomorrow. Fingers crosse d.

    

             

Posted in Behavior, Major Irritation, Mental Health, Minor Irritation, Physical Health, psychology

House of Mouses: Morning Madness.

Posted on by rsfahrudeen

         I’m losing my goddamn mind. Part of it is because my medication seems to no longer be doing shit for me. But part of it had to be because my goddamn house has recurring cases of bedbugs downstairs and there are mice just FuCKiNG EvErYwhErE!!!!!!!!!!!! EVERYWHERE! EVERY FUCKING WHERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

          I wake up in the morning and there’s mouse shit on my floor. Not just the edges of the room but in the goddamn fucking middle of it.  Info down stairs and what do I see on the kitchen counter as I go to get a drink for my meds and maybe make breakfast? That’s right goddamn fucking mouse shit. And no, not just along the edges. Right in the middle of the counter, of the stove, of the floor. Goddamn fucking mouse shit.

        I get my drink and whatever I can manage to get myself together enough to clean and prepare. That’s not usually much because I’m not doing well mentally right now or for a while and I just cannot deal with anything like a ton of fucking mouse shit everywhere. When I cannot mentally handle the cleaning task before me or the massive stress surrounding it without feeling like I’m going to break down completely, do you know what happens? My mind goes bloop, not there, not important, don’t notice this, onto other things. The more stressful it is, the quicker, more forcefully, and most thoroughly my mind does this to me.    

          But onto the dining room. As I am doing poorly mentally. I cannot be trusted to remember to take my medication in a timely fashion if at all. Time can turn into a purely theoretical concept for me when I’m not doing well. I can have no idea what time it is, what day it is, how much is time has passed. Somethings are assigned a particular time and it is important that it be done at that specific time with no exception (or that impression has been made upon me) such as medication, to the point of being a routine. If that routine is missed for whatever reason., Over sleeping, losing track of time, etc, the thought of the item that needed to be done is just no longer there and will probably not come back into my awareness until either the next day at the required time or it’s forcibly brought to my attention. I may not even remember missing it at all. So right now. I need them to come and give me my medication at the required time.

            This means at or around seven o’clock I. The morning every day I have to come down stairs and wait for them to come give me my medication. I never know when between seven and eight this is going to happen. Now I am not an impatient person. I know myself very well. I know exactly how restless I get having to wait with nothing to do and thus always have something to do when I might have to wait for something. The reason this waiting is a problem is because the dining room has metal chairs with cloth puffy sections on the seat and the back. It is so less than ten feet away from the living room couch  the living room couch is and probably always will be the center of every fucking bed bug infestation this house has ever had.

           I don’t know why. We never go anywhere. We never have any visitors except staff. Nobody but my two roommates ever sit on that goddamn sofa. But if I am sitting at the kitchen table for a prolonged period of time for any reason, I get the FUCK bitten out of me behind my knees and on the back of my lower thighs. As they are bedbugs this showed up hours later, but I know where I’ve been and I know what I’ve been doing and I know exactly what is happening to my goddamn legs.

          So I try like hell never to sit at that kitchen table for any length of time. Unfortunately I am also out of shape and losing my mind right now so sitting down and doing stuff on my tablet is my only real way to cope with the  waiting time right now. And with getting something of substance to eat for breakfast and not eating up in my room. Be cause crumbs and mice etc.

            It’d be the perfect morning routine for me to be honest. Get up, get dressed, go to the bathroom, come downstairs by seven, get food and water for meds. Eat and take meds, go back upstairs for whatever and be done my nine. Perfect, easy to handle, good for me. But not now because of the fucking mouse shit everywhere and the goddamn bed bugs. This leaves my frayed nerves even more on edge and screws up the rest of the day like nobody’s business.

           Of course that usually just means getting lost writing fiction or doing games on my tablet and watching TV. This is honestly my go to coping mechanism. It’s good as it keeps me occupied and not bothering anybody or doing anything harmful or disruptive.  It on the other hand there is no way to know just how badly my head is fucked up just by looking at me.  The stress/fear response actually has five aspects to it not just the first popular two. Fight Flight Freeze Tend Befriend. When it comes to my own anxiety I tend to FREEZE because with free floating generalized anxiety there’s nothing to fight, nothing to run away from and no one to tend or befreind that could help me get the frick out of this situation. I just have to endure it until it passes and not draw attention to myself so as to avoid external sources of stress that will make it worse.   The squeaky wheel may get the grease, but the squeaky mouse alerts the cat.

H

           This is a huge problem because I don’t draw attention to myself or my distress.  In fact, even if you know I do this it can be impossible to tell the severity of my situation. Often the biggest difference in terms of my level of stress when I’m frozen like this is entirely Internal. On the lower end it’s just mild distractability and stabdard hyper-focus. My mind is calm and focused on what I’m doing and if I’m interrupted, it’s just embarrassing.

            On the other end of the scale, though, every muscle in my body is tense and uncomfortable. Some part of my inner dialogue is running around in the back of my mind screaming. When I’m not medicated or the meds just don’t seem to be working right now, my mind/body just seems to start throwing biological urges at me trying to make me do something anything until I can find something that helps me get rid of my anxiety.

           This can be agonizing. With meds working, my most frequent bodily request is eat something Incredibly unhealthy and tasty. Without meds. I get that but I also get ‘have sex now!’ This is absolutely horrifying because I do NOT want to have sex, like in the worst way. Mostly because the thought of having sex with another actual sentient human person makes me feel like I’m craving sugar and being handed a freaking pack of black twizzlers and a Dr. Pepper.  In fact there is nothing sweet in the world but black twizzlers and Dr. Pepper unless I feel like making something myself. unfortunately all I can make are kickass chewy caramels. If you’ve ever tried making chewey caramels at home, you understand what my fat out of shape butt is saying here.

        *Side note I don’t prefer red twizzlers or anything, it’s just that I like black licorice ones the least. While I have been desperate enough to drink a Dr. Pepper I have never been desperate enough for sugar to eat freaking twizzlers.  And yes I have tried them.

#I kissed a twizzler and felt NOTHING. #I really wanted to though #because Dr. Pepper is just plain disgusting.

Anyways. I digress. I forget where from and where I was going. Right. Biological urges my body throws at me to try and get rid of my anxiety. Another frequent one is the desire to indulge in incoherent screaming and throwing things. This is always overruled. Another is hurt yourself in some (usually small) way to trigger a release of endorphins. Aka skin picking/excessive itching. The final one is to cry. This is often near impossible for me.

The signs and effects of bed bugs and mice everywhere quickly turn most of those urges into the desire to indulge in incoherent screaming and throwing things. This is the deep primal desire I most easily hold at bay. I can distract myself from it very easily. Unfortunately this only works so long as I remain undesturbed. When I am almost every interaction with another person in this state is triggered like a jump scare. The place I can stay relatively undisturbed is I. My bedroom, And in this goddamned house, that’s not even garunteed. God this is a fucking nightmare.

Posted in Mental Health

Possible Improvements

Posted on by rsfahrudeen

I made an omelette for breakfast today. It was a good omelette nice and fluffy and cheesy and not too cooked on any side. It was a very basic omelette with just water and garlic salt and American cheese and cooked in butter. I thought about making it into an egg sandwich but there were only two slices of bread left and one was an end piece. I ate it with some cherries. And ketchup. On the omelette. I have a sneaking suspicion I’m spelling omelette wrong.

But the point is, I made breakfast. An actual. Poked breakfast for the first time in a while. I did not clean up after myself beyond the stove top. But I still made breakfast. That’s progress. It’s really pathetic and small but progress none the less. I’m making progress in alot of pathetic and small ways.

I did most of my laundry and all of my bedsheets. I may or may not have some old pillows and a sheet wet on top of the dryer for the last three days but everything else is cleaned in time to be made absolutely disgusting this week during the next heat wave. But I forgot about it after more than one completed load, which is progress.

I’ve also been writing alot of blog posts. They’re philosophical navel gazing self indulgent crap, of course, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do again for a while so that’s progress. And it’s proof my brain is starting to function again a little bit. It’s a good thing and I know it’s a good thing even though it’s sad and pathetic and small.

I cleaned the bathroom fairly well. It wasn’t my best work but I cleaned the floor. It was very dirty so I used the toilet scrubber covered with Lysol wipes to scrub it up. It worked incredibly well and I didn’t have to get on my hands and knees. Unfortunately my feet were dirty and the wet floor meant I got the mat dirty. Well dirtier as it was nearly impossible to clean. At least not with the scrubby Lysol wipe brush. But the toilet and sink are cleaned, the toilet better than the sink. I did not clean the shower, but it’s not that dirty.

I also changed the sheets on my bed and made them once or twice. I forgot to get the pillows twice in a row and bundled up my comforter to use as a pillow instead but that’s progress. I also picked up some trash from my floor a couple times. I still have the trash bags here and mice have a bitten tons of holes in them both already, but that’s still progress.

I’m driving myself crazy not wanting to play games on my phone or read anything or watch anything and I feel ambivalent about writing though I’m doing okay. I still feel like I’m writing absolute pointless crap. But I’m still doing it. I feel like I should be doing other things. More productive useful things like cleaning my room, putting my laundry away, and dishes and things like that.

I haven’t turned my phone back on after charging it. I know I should. My boys are going to call me, but human interaction feels beyond me right now. Turning the phone on feels like trying to lift the house off the ground. The thought of turning my focus onto cleaning feels overwhelming, too. There’s so much that I know I’ll notice once it’s no longer faded into the background.

I took a shower and washed with my new dove soap. It did absolutely nothing about the residue and my hair is heavy and flat. I wasted the only three dollars I had and have to find and buy zest. But I washed. I am growing sick of my long hair though, but I don’t want to cut it. I’ve actually managed to put it up in a bun with out pins and stuff, so that’s good, but it’s very very frustrating to clean without hope of actually getting clean.

It’s all progress. And knowing it’s all progress is incredibly depressing. This is a sad and pathetic existence so far below what I’ve been capable of in the past. I know what broke me so badly, but it’s of no help what so ever. I know I should be proud of myself for living through this, but at the same time I know that this is a fraction of what I could have, should have been.

I’m almost forty and I am absolutely nothing. I have accomplished nothing. My current best is small, sad, and pathetic. It’s frustrating and I hate everything and I wish I’d gotten more cake with buttercream frosting because iced cream just isn’t cutting it right now. But progress is progress. I guess

Posted in Mental Health

Heat Wave Horrors

Posted on by rsfahrudeen

        This heat wave has not been kind to me here in Maryland. I weigh over 300 lbs. I’m built for famine and winter. I am not built for the heat. At all. Not even a little bit. I have survived this past week, though. It wasn’t easy and I have never felt so disgusting, but I did. I’m now lying in bed in front of a fan, waiting for the night air to cool my bedroom. Eventually it will but in the mean time I’m going to write and hope to fall asleep at some point.

                I have a portable air conditioner. It doesn’t do shit. It would turn on, blow cold air for a second, shut off the entire electrical circuit, turn back on and blow warm air, lather rinse repeat. All it did was somehow heat up my room and keep me from being able to watch tv to take my mind off my surroundings. It got up to 97° in my room (the attic) and was humid as hell. Which means I sweated, alot.

Now the last heat wave it wasn’t such a big deal. Just a little sweat quickly dried off when I got up and fanned it. But not this time. Anywhere my body touched the bed, soaked. The fan cooled the sweat off the rest of your my nekkid butt just fine but nope. I propped my torso up on my pillows too because I lay on my tummy to write when I’m on my bed. So pillows- also soaked. Extra fan time, extra waiting solved that sure, but what was not fixed was the smell.

My breasts, when sweaty have always had this milky almost buttery scent when sweaty, kind of like breast milk or goats milk. It turns out all of me makes that smell when sweaty now and in greater concentrations it is not so pleasant an odor. It’s driving me crazy. My sheets my pillows my skin, my towel all have this smell which I can’t clean off until tomorrow. And Everytime my butt gets a little sweaty I know what’s happening. drying the area out doesn’t even do much more than make it smell kind of like buttery bread.

Along with this unpleasantness, I learned that I have hard water. Do you know how I learned this? I learned this because my skin was so sticky you could have thrown me against the wall and I’d have just slowly rolled down it like those gooey frogs. It was driving me crazy. No amount of scrubbing and washings would take it away. I just felt stickier. I end up googling it. It turns out hard water leaves soap and mineral residue all over your skin that makes it sticky. But only when it’s around 90° or higher in my case. Apparently it just gives my skin a smooth pore clogging film over it when the temperature is reasonable.

Through googling I also discovered that the smell of my sweat is caused by yeast. I wasn’t getting rashes and stuff but my sweat, high blood sugar and the prevelence of natural yeasts in the air and on my skin (and everyone else’s, it’s just one of those things) made the area between my body and my bed the perfect area for it to expand into a smelly dampness. Of course that led to me showering and using soap more which just made me even stickier.

So now that the heat wave is over I need to buy some new soap, like zest, apparently, which was designed to be used with hard water to clean the crap off your skin. I also probably need to wash my bed stuff more often. Being so depressed I honestly hadn’t washed them or my pillows for weeks, maybe even months. It’s so hard to do things, just in general.

There’s another heat wave next week and they still haven’t fixed the air conditioner in the house. Not that it would do me much good, it never reaches the attic. The heat in the winter doesn’t either but it stays warm enough and I like it chilly. It’s easier to warm up than to cool down anyways. And I’m very well insulated.

Hopefully I can handle next week’s heat wave a bit better. And hopefully the new soap I bought (dove not zest. I couldn’t find it.) Will take away my stickiness. I’m stocked up on ice cream and cold chicken and potato salad. As well as stuff for seafood salad, so cooking shouldn’t be an issue. I’ll probably premake a few things as well, but this last week was an experience I don’t look forwards to repeating and it was only June. I’m kind of terrified to think of what July will be like, much less August. But I’ll make it through.