Technofashion

I think this is frickin' amazing.


Look at that embroidery! It has LIGHTS IN IT.


This dress is seriously lovely. I would wear this. Where to, I have no idea, but it would make me feel like a fairy.

More technofashion

Fairytale Fashion: wow.

Running the gauntlet

So how had I forgotten how much therapy DRAINS you?

Two hours of talking about myself, babbling stories of how and where and when I have problems, surprisingly having to keep myself from breaking down more than once.

I think that entire two-hour period I had every muscle in my body clenched.

I was a lot more nervous about the meeting than I thought I would be. I mean, it's like going into a business meeting making a proposal as to why your project should be taken on, only you have to explain exactly how you are messed up and why you need help with it. So in addition to trying to get someone to care, you have to talk about already painful things.

I found that I have extreme difficulty meeting peoples' eyes, more so than I thought. I found that when talking about myself and my issues I downplay it like whoa. Well, that's not a shocking revelation or anything, but the therapist actually commented on it when I was periodically giving him my anxiety level on a scale of 1-10.

I said, at first, 6. Really, it was probably more like an 8. Later, when I had relaxed a little, I said about 4. Really, more like 5 or 6.

I downplay myself because...it feels weak to be so stressed out over such a...commonplace thing. I feel guilty being stressed out over commonplace things when there are so many more valid reasons to be stressed. I don't want people to know how stressed out I am because I want them to like me, and who would feel drawn towards a spastic mess?

He left about halfway through to get some paperwork, and I actually did have a mini-breakdown. I was able to get it under control fairly quickly, but it was a measure of how. Damn. Stressed. I. Was.

After it was over, I was seriously exhausted. I wanted to go home (instead of going to the library like we'd planned) and take a nap. I wanted to retreat into myself and not have to talk to Husband or cook or anything. Of course, I couldn't do that, but at least I got some old comfort books to calm down in.

The day after was like...I don't know why it would be this way, but it was like all the worry of the day before had compounded itself to where I felt literally ill with anxiety about going to work. That day combined with the tension of the day before gave me the tension headache to end all tension headaches. I've had tension and posture-related pain in my neck and shoulders ever since. Oy.

So...the therapy. Will it work? I don't know. I liked the therapist. He seems nice and willing to work with me. He wants me to speak to the center's medicine person to discuss my options re: medication, but he doesn't seem to want to push me to take anything. He seems open-minded and like he will take a creative approach to helping me.

I hope it works. The money issue means maybe I can only go twice a month, which means it might take longer for me to get better, but I'm optimistic. I would just like to get to where I'm able to do normal, every-day things without feeling like I'm about to die. Chat with people, go to work, make mistakes.

Not want to run away before I make mistakes. Not feel like enemies are lurking behind every bush, waiting to mock my every imperfection.

Impulse control

I did the unthinkable.

I did something momentous.

What is this gargantuan accomplishment, you ask?

Well, I...actually made an appointment to see a therapist.

...Believe me, that's better than it sounds. I've been saying I need to do this since 2004. This is the first time I've gotten desperate/miserable/motivated/determined enough to do so, and it was right after I wrote my last entry.

And of course, as it always is when I finally cave and make an appointment to go to a doctor, therapist, etc., I've been feeling a lot better lately. Relief, I guess. That's something to talk about-- how acutely I make myself worse just by keeping it all in, worrying away at it, building it up and up until it's a big scary volcano of fear inside of me.

I feel like I have been doing better lately, though. The exercise is unquestionably helping. I feel less upset when I feel healthy and look good (it helps to find out that my supposed current body fat percentage is at the "athelete" level...don't judge me!). I have been actively trying to address my nervous compulsions, the trichotillomania, the dermatillomania, the sugar addiction, etc., though I'm trying not to overwhelm myself with that so I'm focusing mostly on the hair and the sugar. I've drastically reduced the amount of hair I pull out-- I can touch my hair without feeling the need to search for "aberrant" strands to yank on. I've cut back to sugar in my coffee (and not always then, even) and fruit, though I do plan to allow myself a treat once a week or so. And, of course, the fact that I've managed to exercise every day for nearly five weeks now, and floss every night since June 20th, makes me feel wonderful. I've formed two positive habits! Hooray!

But...ugh, I feel like I need a diagnosis. I feel like I need someone to tell me that I do in fact have a problem (or problems) with a name, and that it's not just me. It's not just weirdness. Having something with a name that is medically recognized means having an enemy you can fight. Simply being weird, and having to fight weird, is like the U.S. going to Vietnam to fight communism. Where the hell do you even start?

I am hoping that my therapist will actually listen to me when I tell him all this. I am taking a first step towards trying to get beyond the fear, and trying to not always aim low, and trying to make my life something that I want to live.

I hope it gets beyond one step.

Sick of this

I am...wasting my life.

I am learning this by reading about what other people are doing with themselves. It's not about keeping up with the Joneses. It's about...not feeling like your days are just killing time in between major events.

What do I do with myself? I work. I do normal chores. I read books and re-read books. I watch the same episodes of the same shows over and over again. I lie on the couch. I spend most of my life at home on the couch.

Okay, I do work on projects. I'm almost done with my fabric book I've been working on for over a year, and I've started crocheting on my second afghan less because I enjoy crocheting and more because I want to use up the non-pretty yarn I've had hoarded away since the dawn of time. I've been exercising at least half an hour every day for a month at this point and I'm starting to feel the difference, even if I don't look it.

But what is that? It's bupkis. It's time-killing, even if I enjoy it. Stuff to cross off my List of Things to Do This Year So I Don't Feel Like a Total Lazy Loser. Not even stuff I really want to do anymore, necessarily.

What am I doing with my life?

I feel...trapped. Trapped by my house and my limited income, which seriously, despite all my whining about being poor, is not normally a problem.

It only occurred to me last night that the relative financial freedom I anticipate once the house is paid off is only an illusion. There are always things to fix about a house. Plumbing goes dead. A mudroom must be built so we have a place to put a cast-iron stove so if our power goes out in the winter we have enough heat to not freeze. The roof starts to leak. The road needs to be re-graveled.

I will never have a chance to replenish my meager checking account. My husband has plenty in his, so he will be paying the bulk of anything major, and then I'll have to "pay him back" by paying for everything else, which will wipe out my checking account yet again and not let me even catch my breath because we always overpay to avoid paying lots of interest.

So in the meantime I can't take classes, spend money on the gas it would take to get me to volunteer somewhere, go to the frickin' therapy I think I need because I feel like I keep getting worse and worse.

And I read about what my family does, my friends do. I don't envy them their jobs that require sixty-hour work weeks, but I do envy them their kids, their positions as chair of this or that amazing volunteer organization, their three-week trips to China, their voice lessons and constant efforts to improve themselves and be the best they can be.

What am I doing? I'm lying on my couch, stitching on something only me and my husband and maybe my parents will ever see.

It's not even all about money. I could volunteer. Hell, there are plenty of places right near where I live that could maybe use some help. I could maybe even find something to do like my husband does, selling off the video games he amassed when he had a store for a tidy profit. He makes money doing these things, and he gets to spend it on stuff like Kindles and CDs and DVDs and crap. I'm not, though, am I?

I'm too scared. I'm scared of responsibility. I'm scared of having to be the one to answer to any blame if something goes wrong. I couldn't even handle a 40-hour a week professional job because it made me so anxious I couldn't eat, sleep, or go an hour without crying. I've volunteered before, but I need an exact task, or someone to tell me exactly what to do each day, or I'm too scared to take the initiative for fear I will mess something up. I'm too scared to submit any of my work to anything that might show it to more people beyond my immediate sphere because criticism makes me horribly anxious. I don't even take pictures and show it on my frickin' Facebook.

I feel...trapped. By my own fear. I want to do SO MUCH MORE. I want to look back on my life-book and feel that I did something. I made some sort of difference. I want to be more than a goddamned shut-in with no one to mourn her when she dies!

My nail polish is chipped.

Sure Signs Fall is On Its Way:

I start having to sleep under the sheets on the bed. When the nights are in the 70s and you've spent the day in varying degrees of stickiness, it's all you can do to even lie on top of anything. Your skin touching anything is only going to compound the problem, and you will wake up drenched and have to peel yourself off the sheets. Thus the concept of needing to lie beneath something, even if it's only a threadbare top-sheet, is a novel concept.

I start having to wear clothes when I get up in the morning. I am an early riser. It is a rare day indeed that I wake up past 7 am, and even at the crack of dawn it is usually warm enough that I can be in my altogether and still be hot be perfectly comfortable. Now I have to actually put on a shirt, or there is gooseflesh. Gooseflesh, people! Gooseflesh hasn't happened since that freak snow flurry we had in April!

The cat deigns to sleep next to me. My cat is not a lap cat. She is affectionate, but she is also wary. Even when she sleeps in the way cats do, all sprawled out and utterly abandoned to the lazy glory of deep sleep, she has one eye open just in case you decide that now would be a good time to eat her.

So when I go to collapse on the sweat-soaked mess that is my bed, she will always follow me, but will meticulously settle down on the opposite side, where I can't reach her. Granted, this may be because my sleeping style involves a lot of flailing and flouncing that may or may not have resulted in a kitty bitch-smack or too, but still. A sure sign of impending fall is that she actually lies down next to me, touching me, even, leeching my precious warmth like the bloodsucker she is. Eee, kitty snuggles.

It takes 30 hours to get home from work. School buses are bad, but worse are the carefully spaced-out traffic lights on our road that activate once school is in session. One is waiting to turn onto the road, when one of the lights turns green, letting a stream of cars by while the other lane has crickets chirping and tumbleweeds blowing across it. One waits patiently for those cars to go by, when the other traffic light turns green, and the dead lane now becomes a flurry of sudden activity! Lather, rinse, repeat. And of course all these cars are exactly 10 feet apart, like someone put them in formation, so you can't creep out in between them. No, that wouldn't do at all.

My mother-in-law starts forcing winter squash upon us. Not that I'm complaining. I like squash. But these are crazy monster squashes like on steroids, and they frighten me a little.

The stores suddenly decide black and orange is a good color combination. Never mind that Halloween is still two months away, but that's an old story, stores being in a rush for people to buy, buy, buy. It makes me sad because I love Halloween, and no kids come to our door because we live on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, and really Halloween is only fun as an adult if you have kids. Well, unless you don't have issues with buying a bag of Halloween candy for your own personal consumption and, maybe, mix it with a Buttery Nipple or two. And I don't!

That's all I got. North Carolina is all mild and crap and I'm unobservant.

What else...

--I would like a pair of boots and one or two more sweaters, and then I'm pretty much good on the clothing front. I've weeded quite a bit from my closet and am making it a point to wear everything that I haven't worn in a long time once, to see if I still actually like it or if it even looks good. Thus far, I'm realizing that I have a lot of great stuff in my closet that I'm an idiot for forgetting about.
--Still working out. My inner thighs are sad.
--Celebrated our second wedding anniversary yesterday. We ate sushi and Indian food, bought an ugly headboard for our bed, and spent a lot of gift cards on random stuff. We realized that instead of spending a bajillion dollars on art for our walls, we could purchase an art-related coffee table book on clearance and cut out the pictures. So now except for one or two spots, our walls finally are covered and our house looks like someone lives here now. Hooray for cheapskatedness!
--Eating roast nori straight from the package results in a lot of mess.

THE END.