Somebody Cares

(pieced together from accounts sent to various people on the 20th of December, 2022, when the events of this story took place)

Today was a crazy day.

I went to my doctor's appointment... And...

• I checked in about the psychiatrist’s assessment, and apparently I officially have a diagnosis now.
  

• I'm being prescribed an anti-anxiety medication to try for four weeks and see how it goes.
  

• My doctor is on board with making the best case he can for my ODSP application, to help me afford the counseling I'm trying to do and the medications we’re going to try.

I told my friends, while I was leaving the doctor's office:

I feel like I've just been handed a huge golden trophy inscribed with the words Somebody Cares. And a little like this can't be happening. This isn't the world I live in.

I.... Think I might be kind of in shock for the next few weeks. Or months. Or years.

The world isn't like this. Friends, scientists, anybody, run scans on the gold in this trophy. Tell me there aren't pockets of depleted uranium in it, because this does not happen.

A Shot of Proactivity

Hi, dear blahgh.

I did a lot yesterday. I've been doing a lot. I had my troublesome top tooth out, it was a premolar. I've been getting some nasty ache while it heals which sometimes reaches all the way up to just under my eye, probably due to the fact that the cavity in the root opened up an infection right against, or possibly in, some of the lowest part of my sinuses.

I got a referral and went for a psych evaluation. The psychiatrist said that my triggered mental images of being stabbed or otherwise hurt with almost any particularly scary object I see was OCD. It's what he said; not might be, was. I personally am not sure how much confidence to have in his apparent confidence, but I've just started taking the mind medicine he prescribed me. And holy hell is it ever bitter. For now I'm going to presume that means it would be dangerous to take too much of it, so they did their best to make sure no-one would want to. I'm being started on a quarter tablet, then half. I should be taking whole tablets daily within two weeks.

My roommate's Australian girlfriend is visiting and she is awesome. She cleans. She cleaned his room, she cleaned the kitchen. I helped her clean a box full of dishes from the place he and Robbit used to share. Then, because Robby was feeling tired and lazy and I would have been bored walking by myself, she went with me to the drugstore to pick up my prescription for mind meds, and we stopped in to get gardening supplies, which I've been meaning to pick up, and groceries.

Gardening is something I've been really wanting to try for a while, and I'm very excited about it! I planted seven trays of ten spots in those little pre-planting seedling trays made of decomposing cardboard, so you just tear them apart and replant them outside without having to take them out of their potlets. All cucumbers and lettuce, since those were the seed packets I had that suggested pre-planting in the instructions on the back. I'll be trying to follow the instructions as much as possible, because I'm very new to this and I know I don't really know what I'm doing, despite having helped my mom and dad in the garden sometimes while growing up. I'm sure what limited knowledge I do have will be useful, though. I really look forward to having home-grown vegetables during the summer. I hope I can keep a garden somewhat maintained. I imagine having the reason to be outside should be good for me, too.

So anyway, yesterday was awesome in many ways, I got a lot done - I even tidied up my room and went through my shirts to get rid of some by donating them to the Goodwill store I work at. I really do have more than enough clothes, so I got rid of anything that I probably wouldn't wear, either because it's not as comfortable as other options I have, or because it's too high-cut and shows my belly-button if I lift my arms - not that I have anything against that kind of shirt, but I can't wear them at work, and I rarely dress up to go other places, and I have no problem wearing longer shirts when I go out to other places anyway. I didn't toss all my high-cut shirts, but I did pass on a few. A lot of my clothes probably won't be good enough to go out on the sales floor, but I know that the "salvage" they get there (what isn't up to quality standards) goes to do some good too, so I'm sure they'll be able to do more with it than I was.

I was so energized last night due to my good mood that I stayed up late just because I wasn't tired. And then, unfortunately, I was woken up very early by my roommate packing his lunches into tupperwares. It sounded exactly like a kitten chasing the lid to a tupperware container around the kitchen floor, with a lot of scraping and sliding sounds. I'm going to ask him to try to do that in the evening, now that he's working morning shifts and is home earlier than 11:30 at night, so that I don't get woken up that way again.

Roommate's girlfriend is staying with us during weekdays for two weeks. I hope that I can continue to use her energy to spark my own. Maybe I can help my boyfriend out by stealing his bedding and insisting on washing it. He won't do it himself, but I really think that the mess he voluntarily lives in can't be good for him. Maybe I should be more like her, and clean his room like she cleaned our roommate's. I hadn't thought about it this way, but I may be neglecting Robby by allowing him to neglect himself when we both know he's in a rut.

For now, excitement abounds! Thanks for reading, and may you be inspired to make progress in your own lives as I am being inspired to do in mine.

To Be Happy

This may be the best night of my life.

The day... was beautiful. I went out and bought a birthday present for my Robby that was both expensive enough it made me reflect on how incredibly much more I can afford to do now that I'm working, and something I'm sure he'll love.

I stopped to play piano again at MSP for the first time in a long time, and got praise showered upon me again for it.

On the way home, there was a sudden, intense cloudburst shower, and I grinned and laughed and giggled at people I passed while walking home.

I cooked a fine meal.

This evening, my mother messaged me. After a string of passive aggressiveness and clumsy attempts to force me to take responsibility for her long abuse of me in my childhood, I told her with extraordinarily satisfying malice that if she kept sending me messages tonight, I would block her, just like I blocked Pup for a month, when he deserved it. I gave her the same three. She only used one more, and logged off. She made it such an awful one that I was tempted to block her anyway, but Robby talked me out of it. I must have finally remembered Dan Savage's words, in that one video... "Your leverage over your parents is your participation in their lives."

Later that night, Damon came for a visit, and I mothered the heck out of him. I made sure he was well fed, and gave him food to take with him, as he has not had enough in his pantry of late. At the bus stop before he left... He kissed me...

I had either forgotten how good his kisses were, or he's gotten better at it since it last happened.

...I guess we still have that old spark glowing strong.

And then I went to see Robby, who after all is now my primary, and after a dramatic romantic moment with someone else, deserves my reaffirmations and attention.

And I found a new and interesting way to completely blow his mind.

...

This may be the best night of my life.

I think I'm in subspace.

Wheeeeeeeeeeee.

Oh, yes. One more thing. Possibly the most important thing of all. Before I fought with my mom, I... While frustrated with my own moodiness because I was getting upset at Robby for something silly, and didn't want to be upset...

I thought to myself, and realized...

I want to be happy.

I actually. Want. To be happy.

Not just to not be feeling this, not just for the misery to go away.

To be happy.

...And here I am...

A Perfect Day

Someone decided on me that today was going to be a perfect day.

I got an email that tells me my potential employment process with another promising company is moving forward, though this time I'm not going to tell you readers which one. I have been welcomed to the team. I don't consider myself to have the job yet... not until I'm all the way through training and signed up. But now I have some confidence it will happen.

I made a big pot of soup which I am calling "Green Soup". Two packages of chicken noodle soup, a stalk of broccolli, two huge carrots, three onions, a couple handfuls of frozen mixed vegetables and a substantial bunch of spinach, brewed up in the pot with salt and pepper and oregano. I didn't expect it to mellow out so nicely, I expected that the huge mass of vegetables would make it either bland or bitter, but it seems like I got it to work out.

I'm listening to Jethro Tull for the first time in half a year, and sharing some old, old stories of my life with my Pup, who I am now calling Whelp, and emoting tickle-attacking him. Earlier, I watched a bunch of the 40K Rejects series by miniwargaming, after being so cracked up by the Whelp's impression of Sgt. Slaughter that I had to hear it for myself.

And walking home, some black guy I'd never met and I shared an amusing moment of conversation, starting with my giving him an amused look for singing along with Bruno Mars's Lazy Song which was playing in a restaurant we were both passing. He offered me a bus ticket, or rather, asked if he could get rid of it by giving it to me. He observed that I sounded authoritative when I told him, "Don't need it, got a bus pass. Thanks, though." I said I was just watching videos of a sargeant shouting at his recruits, so maybe that was it, and even dared to try my own impression, "MUH-REENS! CLEEN YUH SHOOWZ!" Came out well, and he did an exaggerated march for a few steps, playing along, before we parted ways.

Earlier this morning, I helped a friend of mine to feel better despite the heavy grief of losing a family member... partly by telling a bad joke at a perfect moment.

And somehow... somehow... I don't even feel like something terrible now has to happen to make it all crash down.
It's got to be some sort of miracle.