Today was a weird day all around. When I went to my psych appt., they told me they’d tried to get in touch with me to tell me that Leighton had to miss and could we reschedule? They probably did, but I generally don’t pick up if I don’t recognize the number, and they did not leave a message. So, I show up and they say they’ll relay to Leighton that I’m out of Lexapro and Neurontin, but they don’t, so when I get to the pharmacy, there’s only my sleeping medication to pick up- one that Leighton doesn’t want me taking anymore, anyway, so I have almost six months’ worth in my top dresser drawer. Now I have seven. I wasn’t taking it all that much to begin with, because it was the same drug they gave me at the hospital that JUST. WOULD. NOT. WEAR. OFF. I could function ok, but when it came to actually wanting to leave the house, I’d run out of spoons before I’d even finished getting dressed and getting on the bus to go anywhere sounded less appealing than a root canal. Root canals are awesome. You can feel like you got something taken care of and you can sleep through it the whole time. #winning
The spoon theory is why I think I need a housekeeper, and why it was so important to me back in the day that Dana agreed to take care of me while I was working at Alert Logic… or get a housekeeper to take care of us both if she wanted to go back to work. Commuting an hour and a half each way and trying to prove myself at my job, thus working far more than forty hours a week, has all my spoons up. Today I worked from home, and from 1300-1400 I set an alarm and napped, I was so tired. The Lamictal and the Klonopin are helping until I can get the Lexapro refilled, but they’re just not the same. I’ve put a call in, but no one has called me back and I haven’t had the time to hound them. And even that is partly bullshit because there are no amount of things with which I will get busy in order to not have to make a phone call.
We all worked from home today, so it was especially annoying that I actually did reach out, and they didn’t get back to me, so I didn’t get to go to the pharmacy at lunch.
Which brings me to yet another point as to why the day was weird. I thought I’d be ok with it, but I was not. I thought that having an extra hour and a half to my day would be awesome, but it just interrupted my routine and my mood was terrible. It reminded me of all the days I spent unemployed at my own computer in the silence of the house, coding instead of writing, but still with the complete isolation. My office is silent as well, but hearing my office mate type and just knowing she’s there is a different situation entirely.
The flip side is that I got even more done than I usually do, because of course I type faster on my own keyboard in my own room.
After that, my day got even weirder. I was asked by the church to take a course on identifying abusers within the church. I know you cannot imagine why that would be hard for me. Lines from The Cost of Shame kept running through my head as if my teenage years were happening all over again, because the inappropriateness jumped out at me in a way that it hadn’t before. All the signs I could have recognized had I not been a teenager in the first place, a fact I could do nothing about. All I wanted was for Argo to be right there so I could bury my face in her neck and sob afterward. To be angry with me. To be sad with me. But she was on my shoulder the whole time, and we’d have these little conversations in my head because I wanted to write to her and didn’t know what to say all at the same time. We’re good enough that I could have. I was just speechless, shaking with rage and disgust at the times I could have told, but didn’t to protect Diane….. just like the course said I would. People fall all over themselves when they hear her sing, and they love her as a person outside of that. I learned that abused kids are less likely to tell when their abusers are well-liked because they don’t think anyone will believe them, anyway… and that they don’t report abuse because they think they’re going to be in trouble for whatever it is they think they’ve done, which is nothing, but at the same time, always seems like something. In my case, it was that I wasn’t supposed to be talking to her at all. How could I go back to my parents and admit I was freaked out when the relationship was supposedly ended for good, anyway? Besides, we weren’t actually having sex, so how could it be abuse (in my 14 year old mind)?
The course also said that one in four girls are molested, and one in eight boys. You know how many abusers get caught?
Three percent.
Stories That Are All True 
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