2 nights ago I started a blog post and then got distracted by supper and went to eat. I have been feeling like I was about to lose my shit lately so was writing it out to try to vent some steam. I should have kept writing.
After supper I was perusing Facebook and came across a post from my daughter. A little background, we don't see eye to eye politically. I put in a comment, basically shaming her in public for the post. I felt so much rage and hurt right then that I then went outside to cry. I certainly wasn't in a frame of mind to make good decisions. This is my daughter and I love her and I verbally stabbed at her in public because I didn't agree with her politics. Not good.
Ken saw me come out and came up to talk. I'd been hoping to be alone for a bit to try to calm down. When Ken saw my face he knew something was wrong so we started talking. I cried and raged and cried. I cried a lot. Then I'd rage some more about how I hate everything lately.
How I can barely tolerate this life I'm currently forced to live. How I can barely tolerate to be around people anymore. How much I hate wearing masks. How I wish I never needed to go any place where I have to wear them. How much I hate this social distancing. How insane the world is. How horrible politics are. How poisonous! My fury over how cops are being treated. My deep fear over what's going to happen if we don't start appreciating cops and separate the bad from the good. Trying to imagine a world without them to keep the peace. My pain over the George Floyd death since I'd seen the long version of the body cam. How it changed my perspective on the entire event and broke my heart in so many directions. How I can't even stand being in my own skin anymore because everything feels so bad! I feel so hateful inside I barely know myself anymore. And then I blew up my relationship with my daughter. Absolutely unnecessary and not helpful.
On top of all this I have a father who is making some scary choices about his life and I'm trying to be supportive of my sister who is stressed trying to deal with him and his issues. Everyone is coming to her like she's his keeper. If only she or I did have a say in his life! We just get to deal with the fallout. Her more than me and even what I'm dealing with sometimes makes me want to cry or be angry or both. I need to be there for her!
I have a couple of medical things going on and they could take some time to resolve. The old cancer word is coming at me from a couple of directions but there are also other things that the problems could be - cancer is only the worst - so I'm trying to think positive. I'm actually doing pretty well with this but I have to do some level of "what if" so I can have a plan to try to handle things if something does end up going south.
My job is beyond stressful but either I'm getting used to this fight or flight reaction or I'm managing the stress from that better. Maybe I'm just getting used to it. Maybe not when I think about it because it seems like this is all piling on. I have clients at me all day with their needs. I can't keep up with it.
I don't have much to look forward to. I have a camping trip with friends for a weekend in October. That's about it.
If I go hiking my body punishes me (medical things). Hiking isn't something I'm that willing to do until something gets figured out. Last time I hiked in Capital Reef I was hurting pretty badly over it. I wish they'd just do a hysterectomy but they actually need to find out what's wrong and then go from there. So I've started a process that will take months before we even get an action plan going.
For the next few months I have doctor appointments to look forward to. Pelvic ultra sound to try to figure out what the hell is going on in my uterus and another mammogram to see if the little growth in the boob has gotten bigger so they can decide if we should worry or not. The boob stuff could drag on a couple of years. Or I could have an answer in a couple months.
And then there's the politics. I recognize that both sides benefit from keeping us separated. I watched parts of the Dem convention and basically the message is that if they don't vote for Biden the world is going to end. The Republicans are spinning the same thing with Trump. That the US will become a socialist hell hole. The agendas are EVERYWHERE. I don't trust any source to be honest with me. Not a single one! I do my best to try to understand things but when you can't trust anything it's hard to figure anything out. This makes me so angry I can't even express it!
Then there are the bullies. The mask bullies. The political bullies. The "we're right and everyone else is wrong" bullies. Cancel culture bullies.
I found out 2 days ago that my husband has been packing a Go bag in case things go to shit and we have to leave our house. I really can't imagine it getting that bad but being a retired cop some of this is bringing up his PTSD issues. I'm worried about him. This makes me especially sensitive to the anti-cop posts out there. I feel like they are attacks on him. His daughter and my daughter are pro-BLM and post a lot of things that are anti-cop. Or at least they feel that way to Ken and his cop friends. That led to my shitty comments on my daughter's post. That led to my meltdown 2 nights ago.
After I sort of calmed down, tho honestly I'm still not really calmed down, I realized how shitty it was and took it down. She saw it and was extremely hurt and angry. Yesterday morning she lit me up. I won't go into what was said but it wasn't pretty. I've apologized over and over but this is going to take time to heal from. I brought this on myself and regret hurting her. Why, when I'm going thru all of this will I then start a battle with my own kid???
The reality is settling in on me that I need to make some changes. I've been crying off and on since 2 days ago. It's like once the bottleneck opened up I can't seem to stop it. I feel like I'm in pain and I can't escape it. I've been like this before but now that the release valve has been hit and I created a crisis point in the process I'm becoming even more painfully aware of how much emotional pain I'm in.
I'm trying to figure out where to go from here. I really don't know where I'm going to end up but my life has to change. I'm not suicidal but I'm being honest when I say that sometimes I think it won't be so bad when it's time to die. Life hurts. I'm already tired and I'm only 56.
I used to set goals to get myself into a better mental place. Right now that's difficult for me. Things that I would have done in the past, like hiking or taking a trip, now have complications due to my health issues and COVID issues. I can't go see a movie and escape for a while. I read but I can't spend my life in a book. Would be nice but I can't. I'm stuck.
I took my first step today. I decided to turn off social media. I've decided to mostly stop listening to the news. I'm going into a bubble and going to give myself some quiet. I feel like everywhere I turn there's messages coming at me. So many of them are against me and my ideals since the media is run primarily by liberals and I'm not a liberal. I get angry and hurt often about how the world has pictured who I am. My own daughter sees me that way. That hurts on a level I'm not going to dig into. I'm already hurting enough so I think I'm going to try to file that away if possible and never take it out to look at it again. I'm hurt. I need to heal. Instead of fighting a pointless battle I'm going to retreat and curl up in a ball and lick my wounds until I figure out what steps I'm going to take next. At least I've shut off some of the external negativity. Hopefully that will improve my outlook on the world and start killing off some of the toxic hateful feelings I've been living with this year.
My other goal is to strive to avoid the general public as much as I can. Shopping is NOT something I enjoy anymore. It's necessary and I do as much of it online as I possibly can. I want to live life on my own terms and nothing proves to me that I've lost that right as much as going to a grocery store now. They want to direct the way I walk down an aisle. I can't even get in the door with out the mask police starting on me. It goes against my most basic core to cooperate with this - even to the point of being illogical. I put on a mask to go into a store to buy food and spend the entire time tamping down rage and trying to put a good face on it. I've worked really hard to keep trying to put a good face on things, even to myself. The reality is that I truly hate how life has become and the infringements on my freedom to choose for myself. Yeah, mask police, I get the point of the mask but there is no way I can seem to find it in myself to be gracious about it right now. I don't even like turtle neck sweaters or foundation makeup because I find them incredibly uncomfortable. I hate foundation makeup for cripes sake! It's a thing with me. Like a phobia. Putting a mask over my face, where I breathe, feels like torture to me regardless of all the lives I'm saving. It's like putting me in a high place and telling me to get over my fear of heights. Doesn't work and there's nothing rational about it. It is what it is.
Some of this stuff I'm stuck with but if I can figure out ways to reduce my stress levels and phobic reactions I'm going to work on that.
Some of the stuff, like the health stuff, will resolve over time. I'm going to have to be patient. Sadly you just can't announce that you want a hysterectomy (take the bloody thing out - I don't care if it's cancer or fibroids - just get it OUT - I'm so sick of having periods that last 1-2 months at a time or every time I dare to hike up a mountain that I could scream!!!) or that you want them to take the lump out of your breast (it's weird to know a mass is in your breast but no one is ready to make a decision about it - my instinct is to get the damned thing OUT). You can't expect insurance to cover it until you go through this process. Until you go to appointment after appointment and go through this and that uncomfortable procedure while your body keeps acting like a shit to you. You have to get cozy with the shit and live with it. Possibly for a long time.
So for now I'm cutting down some of the negative messaging that's been causing me damage. I'm clearly not coping. I was trying to but I'm clearly failing. It means I also miss out on the good stuff from social media but at this point I really need to give that part up to protect myself from the negatives. I'm thinking I may keep this up until after the election at least in hopes that some of it will calm down. If it still seems like it might be shit show I may not go back except for once in a rare while.
That's where I'm at for now.
