my own worst enemy

Well, it's two weeks today since I got fired. A lot has happened...I've done a lot of soul-searching, a lot of thinking about what's next.

Funny how life--God, in my opinion--hands you things; or, in my case, thrusts them upon you, and at the time that it happens it's like the worst thing EVER, but then you think about it and after it has a chance to sink in, it turns out to be just what you needed to happen. It hurts like hell, but it has to happen for you to eventually be happy.

Oh my God, how I want to eventually be happy.

I'm going back to school. It's still kinda far in the future, from my current standpoint...January. Really that's less than four months away, but I still have to do the career counseling (JUST TO MAKE SURE, DEAR GOD...let us make SURE this time), still have to re-register since I haven't gone to ACC in five years, still have to find some sort of part-time work, still have to heal.

I thought I was healing. I thought that July was rock-bottom. I really did. I started therapy and new meds and I thought I was getting better, but two weeks ago I got a big setback, and yesterday I got another one.

I am struck anew every day since the day I was "let go" (and for the sake of my heart, let's refer to it as such...every time I say "fired" it's like picking at a scab) just how much I disliked my job. I was GRATEFUL to have that job. After being unemployed last year for the first time in my adult life, having that job meant a lot to me. I liked sleeping until 10 every morning. I liked working 7 hours a day. I liked knowing I was making a difference in the lives of people undergoing severe personal crises. I was just glad to be employed, to have my own money, to not have to stand up all day.

However.

Every day, before my sister-in-law and my friend Katherine began helping me out with anti-anxiety meds (BIG BROTHER: TOTALLY LEGAL, NOW FUCK OFF), I was so tense I wanted to cry. I hated the monitoring, the micromanaging, the feeling like one misspoken word would get me in a world of hurt when I meant nothing malevolent. Oh, the pressures of having to know just what to say to those people, when each person was different--to know just what to say to a person with cancer who you have never met or spoken to before--oh my God, it was torture. Knowing that I had to look through the databases to make sure the information I was giving was in that database and not just something I pulled out of my butt (ew) was so difficult. You think it will be easy. What? You're just reading from a computer screen. But those people expect you to KNOW YOUR SHIT. They expect you to be on the ball. They are freaking out, they want information NOW; WHY do you have to look that up? You should KNOW. TELL ME. ANSWER MY QUESTION, YESTERDAY. And a lot of the time, the question was specific. It was not "what is cancer, anyway?" It was, "I have stage blah blah cancer, and I'm going to have blah kind of surgery and the chemotherapy drug they will be giving me is called blah blah. Then they want to do radiation. I want to know if the chemotherapy drug they are going to give me will interact badly with this completely random supplement that has these ingredients: blah, blah, blah, and shark cartilage."

Okay. I'll get right on that.

Then there were the crazy people. The man with schizophrenia who has called so many times the organization is looking into SUING HIM (and he is indigent. RIGHT ON, THAT'LL WORK). The woman who insists she is living on top of an Indian burial ground and there are ghosts stealing her food, and she needs to find a ring, and since she had cancer fifteen years ago, can't we help her find another place to live? Oh, and pay for it, too? And then there's the woman who calls and talks about how her car stalled out (seriously, this is her M.O.), and could we give her the symptoms of vaginal cancer? And the woman who insisted that the Bavarians were giving her family cancer and three of them had died and she was next. And how could I forget the guy who called because he needed help quitting smoking, and when I asked him the demographic questions we are required to ask but they are NOT required to answer (race, age, marital status, etc.), started FLIRTING with me and then asked for A COPY OF THE CONVERSATION?

Fuck you, you crazy fucking idiot.

And then there were the people who were in tears. The people who threatened suicide. There's a "procedure" for everything. Where's the procedure? Speak calmly to this poor soul while you look up the crisis hotline number, and tell this poor person they will have to hang up and call another number when you KNOW what it's like to NOT BE ABLE TO PICK UP THE PHONE, oh my God, don't you realize how hard it was for me to dial this number, and now you are telling me to dial another one? That I've got the wrong place? I can't dial anything else. I just want the pain to stop.

All the while, I'm thinking, I don't have cancer but I KNOW HOW YOU FEEL. You DON'T want to die, that's the kicker. You want to LIVE. You just want to quit HURTING. This is GODDAMN SCARY SHIT. You are in anguish, Jesus God, I understand, and I am sorry.

But I'm not a counselor, I can't talk to you. It's all about "seamless service." It's all about saying the right thing so the organization doesn't get sued.

It's all about the money.

Ugh, how I have a love/hate relationship with money. Necessary evil, y'all.

After I got my own anti-anxiety drugs < insert picture of me here holding my klonopin close to my heart > I was much more able to function. As I got accustomed to the databases, to the way things worked, with the meds, I got smoother. Especially when I found out how to know when I was being monitored. I always knew. I think that's part of the reason I was "let go."

The irony is, I was getting really good. I was getting used to all the prison-life crap. I would not have gone back to school. I would have stayed there until something drastic happened to make me leave.

And then it did. Just a lot sooner than I expected.

It's a good thing.

The zoloft isn't working. I had my last session with Elfie and I'm going to start seeing a different therapist. I'm going to have to get on a different SSRI. It's not touching my anxiety. I take two klonopin a day, every day.

Then there is the almost insurmountable insomnia (precious, blessed Seroquel) and the sexual side effects. I will spare you the details, but OMG, FRUSTRATION.

I managed to have a complete breakdown yesterday. Y'all, I am sick. I am really sick. Not gutter-brain sick, but pretty seriously mentally ill, and yesterday I scared the crap out of myself.

My dad, who means well, who is of the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" persuasion, came in yesterday on his lunch break and proceeded to sit me down and lecture me.

Let me set the scene.

My mom had left me a note asking me to unload/load the dishwasher and do some laundry. I was in the midst of doing what she'd asked (folding laundry), when he came in with an air of stern authority, sat down in his chair, and with an air of You're in trouble now, Young Lady, said, "I'm glad to see you're doing that. I have something to talk to you about."

I stopped and stared at him, immediately terrified. It must have shown on his face, because he then said, slightly less warden-like, "It's not bad."

Okay. Your demeanor belies your words, but all righty.

He then told me that, while I don't have a job, the house is to be my responsibility. I am to keep on top of all the housekeeping tasks. He does not want to see my mother vacuuming, dusting, doing laundry, dishes, et cetera. He is not going to talk to my mother about this. It will make her feel better, me feel better, and him feel better that I am being productive. He said, and I quote, "I want your mother to look around, see the good job you're doing and how neat the house is, and think, 'gee, isn't Lori doing well?'"

He ended his pep-talk with, "Got to have a purpose in life."

Well. I nodded, smiled and said okay, sure, and I held it together until he left. I feel the need to point out that it wasn't what he wanted me to do that was the problem. It was the fact that it was not a request, it was an order. It was the delivery. It was the fact that he. Does. Not. Get. It.

I thought he got it, or at least got it that despite the illness, I am not well. It's like, if this had happened last year when my leg was broken and he had insisted I would feel better if I just got up and hopped around on my bad leg for a while. It would make everyone feel better.

I felt kicked in the gut.

If you have never been where I am, you're probably thinking I am the biggest drama queen in the history of ever, and you will not understand so you might as well go read something else. I'm just saying.

I sat frozen in my mom's chair, thinking, "If I don't move, I can't hurt myself."

My mom came home and I talked to her about it. I wasn't supposed to, but there was nobody else who would get what I was saying. I completely broke down. Bottom line: he has got to understand how sick I am. He has got to try. Who knows if or when the time will come when he sits me down and lectures me for my own good and I can't, or don't, stop myself from getting out of the chair? If I get up out of the chair, remember, I might hurt myself.

There is something so bone-chillingly scary about being afraid of yourself.

He means well. He wants me to be well. He's worried. He thinks I will feel better if I get up and do something...and sure, I can do that. But God, don't come down on me like I'm in Really Big Trouble during what is quite possibly the lowest point of my life and give me a Good Talkin' To, when doing so is detrimental.

He wants to force me to be well, and it's not going to happen. I hope my mom can make him see that.

It got bad. He wasn't home last night, because he's a coach and he had a game. But it deteriorated to the point where my mom was almost in hysterics, she is so afraid I'm going to kill myself. I promised her I'm going to be okay.

There are a lot of promises I haven't kept in my life. I sure hope I can keep this one.

I'm going to end here because the seroquel is kicking in and I don't think I'm making much sense anymore. Leave any questions in the comments...I'm an open book, I'll answer anything you ask.

In a nutshell, depression sucks.