Tag: mental health

as of now

I went to the doctor today, and they ask all kinds of “lifestyle” questions aimed at determining your mental health. Normally I try to sound as level and competent as ever. But it was tiring. One question was, more or less, do you ever wish you were dead? I gave a “so-so” hand gesture.

This whole part of my life, the past six years, seem to have been almost entirely about loss and letting go. Sometimes I think I’ve lost so much that I’m past caring about losing anything else. And really, what am I going to accomplish if I don’t live past today? I’ll just lose more things, more people, will have to cancel more plans and forego more activities. fail more, and get sadder each day.

At least I have fewer witnesses for my failures. I decided that not being willing to return a phone call, email or text for two years disqualifies Danny from being my brother any more, and I wrote a letter and told him so. He hasn’t wanted much to do with me since they moved away, and I’ve had to face the fact that even if he won’t talk to me about it or explain it, he’s a toxic person to have in my life. I am less and less willing to have people in my life who treat me badly. Got rid of the boyfriend, too, since it became weirdly clear that he didn’t actually like me. His response was, “but we can still be friends, right?” Nope, not right. I’m not going to make nice with you just so you won’t feel guilty about being so shitty to me. I don’t choose friends who are shitty to me and don’t like me and treat my interests and preferences like failings.

It doesn’t make me less lonely to be around people who don’t respect me.

Bad Words and a bit of Bad Aunt

Looking for some place cheap, safe, and walkable to live. They don’t do a lot of “walkable” in this part of the country, I think. A lot of my neighborhood doesn’t even have sidewalks, or if they do, they’re broken and uneven. Then again, I’m in a food desert, so I can’t really walk anywhere except a dollar store, a “party store” (like a convenience store but mostly booze and lottery), and a pharmacy. But more on this another time, since I dislike where I live and am totally terrified about having to move.

I wanted to slap up a few things I’ve heard and read over the past week or so. Forgive me if I repeat myself. I’ve just now realized that I should cross these off my notepad once I’ve posted them, since I’m too lazy to read older posts. I’m shocked I’m unlazy enough to post at all. Winter makes me very sluggish and more than a little depressed.

“I want to shake the dust off this small town.”

“I didn’t want to shake the boat.”

“He offered her a drink, to which she accepted.”

“They took a sigh of relief.”

“All hell is being let loose.”

These are not by far the worst. A little bad grammar and some mangled idioms.

I watch a lot of documentaries, and you can find a lot of these Bad Words uttered by interviewees, who are always trying to sound smart. Especially police officers, who are trying to sound smart and official/in control.

Seeing the doctor tomorrow, getting some referrals; parts of me need an overhaul. My vision has gotten worse, and I suspect I may have cataracts. Need to have a psychiatrist assess my meds (anxiety & depression). And I don’t even want to talk about the GYN. There’s nothing I hate more than a new GYN. It really takes me a while to get accustomed to a particular person investigating those parts. So I’m hoping I don’t get referred to one of those clinics where I see a different doctor every time. I don’t know if this is something local or new or related to Medicare, but this is one of the things I hate worst about health care since I moved here. The only doctor who seems to be somewhat permanent is my primary – and when I called for an appointment with her, they actually tried to shift me to someone else since my primary had no appointments for three weeks.

I started getting very angry because none of this works if I don’t have the same primary every time. I was so pissed that I got off the phone and called back the next day – and since the day before, an appointment had opened for tomorrow. The three-week thing was a hassle because I’d been told I couldn’t get those three referrals unless I saw the primary first, so that would have been more delay than I wanted.

I find myself very prone to anger lately. Isn’t it the flip side of depression? As is usual in the winter (at least since I moved here), I have fallen into some bad depressive states. Sometimes I feel like I’m turning into my depressed and angry aunt, the mean one. (My only blood aunt, now gone.) She was quick to anger when she thought she was treated badly, which was probably mostly just frustration. She held grudges. She cut herself off from other people. I can only suppose that like me, she was alcoholic and depressed; unlike me, she never got help for either. So maybe I’m not turning into Aunt Mara.