My hair

If it hasn't been clear, I'm in a bit of a slump. My temper is...easily triggered, but I'm managing to swallow most of my reactions. I vent on the internet and try to spend as little time with my family as possible. It's not that they're horrible (though insensitive and ignorant at times), it's just...we're in such close proximity all the time that we periodically get on each other's nerves ANYWAYS. My current state means it just effects me more.
The new quarter is starting soon, and I'm beginning to look at what I need to do to transfer to the University of Arizona. I need to get in. So badly. I don't know what's happening with social security. I don't know how I'm going to do at school with no meds to ease my way. I...just need this one thing to go smoothly. I've had a lot of random roadblocks thrown my way lately and, even though they've mostly been trivial matters, it's getting to me.
My fibro isn't too bad lately, but I'm trying to be more physical and dance and stuff and...am paying the usual sort of cost. It's okay. It's also totally worth it.
So why is the title of this post "My Hair"? Well, hypothetical reader, I'll tell you. I've not so jokingly told people in the past that you can gauge my mental condition by the length of my hair. If it abruptly goes short, it means I've gone into a slump where I forget to brush my hair (we won't discuss the other personal hygiene issues that sometimes accompany the situation). So the hair has matted and I've chopped or had it chopped off. The times I've chopped it myself were...entertaining ;). Particularly the summer time ponytail episode. That time it hadn't matted, the summer weather had just *really* gotten to me. To say it was uneven would be an hilarious understatement.
I've been having moments where it's dawned on me that I haven't brushed my hair in a couple of days. Yesterday...actually, day before yesterday at this point...in any case, whatever day it was, i finally hit a moment where I couldn't just brush the tangles out. Had to cut a small mat out. I have beautiful hair, and it's one of my few vanities. It's been a matter of pride to have my hair this long. I don't think it's been this long in...at least six years, possibly closer to thirteen. But I might have to chop it, because I can't take care of it.
If I do...If I do have to chop my hair off because of mental health I plan on dyeing it an outlandish colour. Because I've never been able to. I won't let it be a defeat, it will merely be an opportunity. If I have to chop my hair off, I will chop it SHORT (and donate to locks of love if the hair isn't too damaged) and dye it lavender.

Cooking

I've been on the receiving end of teasing about my cooking for awhile. My ex used to get kind of malicious about it, going on about my ineptitude. After all the years of that, even my mother had forgotten that I actually do know how to cook. In fact, I made my first solo dish when I was six years old (lentil soup and I was incredibly proud of myself). Needing a recipe does not make you a bad cook. It may mean that you'll never be a chef, but that's never been on my list of "if only"s so whatever.
My mom still teases me about my lack of enthusiasm for cooking. She calls me lazy. It actually does bother me a little. The thing is, I do like cooking. I like cooking when I can try to make new dishes and not have to worry about what other people want. These occasions are few and far between. An added impediment is that if I don't make something when I want to, I just forget about it. So it never gets made. I freely admit that I have the attention span of a gnat. I'm working on it, but it is an issue.
Another issue (and one that my mom can't chide me about since she does it even more than I do) is that I sometimes forget that I'm cooking. Multi-tasking is not my friend when it comes to cooking. I need to stay in the kitchen with a book if I'm going to cook or I'll get distracted (have I mentioned my attention span?). I also have a memory like  a broken sieve, so there's that too.
My mom also likes to go on about my bad food choices. The thing is...if I have healthy food on hand, generally speaking, it's what I prefer. Frozen blueberres? Omnomnom. Apples, strawberries, grapes, peas (particularly frozen, I know it's weird), baby carrots, hummus (mmmm....red pepper hummus....), yogurt (not that ultra processed stuff, REAL yogurt), all of these are foods that I love. But living in a house with four other people...yeah. Stuff doesn't stick around. I also try to be courteous and not nom everything I love all by myself.
If I lived on my own and money wasn't a factor, my freezers would be full of frozen fruit (and peas nomnomnom) and I would make my own snack boxes. I won't lie, I'd still probably eat some junk. But I grew up on fresh and frozen fruit and home-canned veggies. It's what my taste buds love.
I've just lost my train of thought (predictably) and can't remember where I was going with this. I only started writing it because I went to get something to eat and the only thing that didn't require tons of prep time (HUNGRY NOW) was lunchables and mac and cheese. And frozen blueberries, but my mom gets pissy when I eat them all (which, uh, has happened). So I ate a lunchable, was still hungry, and made some mac and cheese. Which my mom will be all judge-y about "You need to make better food choices!"
So...yeah. Blecch. Too bad I'm not cute enough to have a sugar daddy...well, I suppose the whole "mostly asexual" thing would be an impediment as well.
I suppose I'm off to watch some more Doctor Who (currently on the Tom Baker years :D ) and eat some mac and cheese. I'd watch my kdrama, but my fave streaming site doesn't seem to like me today :/. I won't lie, one of the reasons I'm taking Korean is so I don't have to wait for subtitles ;) (we'll see if I can learn the language well enough!). (wow, is it just me or did I use a LOT of parentheses in this post?)

September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day

Trigger warning-because I'm talking about suicide and just talking about it can cause people to flashback. I would add to this trigger warning that I have never been suicidal. Also trigger warning for talking about selfharm. Also also, if I ever talk about something that doesn't have a trigger warning and should, please let me know.

My family (maternal line)

My grandfather is kind of an asshole, but he's gotten better over the years. He and I have butted heads many a time, but we love each other. He doesn't understand me, but he seems to have decided that that doesn't matter. We don't talk about anything much, we just sit together and love each other.
My grandmother is kind of a heinous bitch. She's always mean, but funny. So that when she says something horrible she can retreat to the sanctuary of humour. I love her anyways and acknowledge that a good chunk of who I am comes from her...which is why I'm so very careful NOT to be her. I have as much venom in me as she does in her, but I recognize that that's NOT OKAY. So she's the only person I let the venom loose on, and only when she's doing it to family member. She rarely does it to me, but when she does it's more bitchy than funny.
My step-father is an incredibly sweet man, but...he has a temper and he has communication issues. Overall, I would say he is the parent who's most okay with who I am...I think. I don't know if my mother told him anything after I came out to her, so maybe he's not. He is Republican and votes the party, which means he's voting for people who seem to hate everything about me. He's a caring person who'd give you the shirt off his back.
My mother doesn't have a malicious bone in her body and has what my aunt calls an "innocent" sense of humour. I sometimes have to explain jokes. She loves me, but she doesn't understand me. She should never have had children because she's kind of shitty at parenting. She doesn't know how to handle my infirmities, and how seriously she takes them is really hard to figure out. She thinks I'm going to hell and that I've turned away from God.
My older brother is a sanctimonious prick who knows everything and can't mind his own goddamn business He is incredibly disrespectful at times, and I don't appreciate how he talks down to our parents. AT ALL. .When he pulls that shit on me I have to leave the room. He gets my ire up SO MUCH, that if I don't leave I will say something that will start drama that will last until I move. He kind of thinks I'm lazy and periodically makes belittling comments about my infirmities. He loves me, but he often doesn't seem to like me or my presence. He still gave up his room for me and tries to understand me, as well as helping me out with tangible things like taking care of the car and moving stuff.
My other brother just kind of goes with the flow. He's very much like his father, and I have the least bad to say about him. He needs to mind our parents better, and he sometimes thinks my infirmities are just laziness. But...when I'm cramping up, when my fibro is flaring, he is always willing to try and massage the knots out. When my anxiety is flaring and I can't leave the house by myself...he is usually willing to come with me so I have that safety blanket. That said, he's still a sixteen year old boy.
My aunts are both very different people, but they've made life choices that have left them living solo. One of them is a bitter old hag and the other is sweet and ineffectual. They don't have much to do with my life. Neither do my cousins.

O! The possibilities

I'm still not in the best headspace (yay lack of meds!) but things keep happening to encourage me. I won't talk about the biggest one because it may not happen. Though I have been trumpeting it to my friends because excitement. I may or may not remember to blog about it if it happens, so you may wonder FOREVER.
One fantabulous development is that Wendy's daughter (who I am also friends with) might be going to college in Tucson, which MEANS...I may still be living with a friend even if I DO have to live in Tucson! Of all the possible Arizona-living-situation results, this would be the most ideal. We get along well, we've got a lot of shared interests, and (very importantly) she's a carer just like her mom and step-dad. I think we would take good care of each other and I think she would make sure I take my meds and vihtermins. Plus, living with another Korean entertainment fan would make fangirling SO FUN. I would save a LOT on gas and still have someone I know around (yay not living with strangers!). I also think we'd be good at encouraging each other to finish goals. To top things off, she is an EXCELLENT cuddle-buddy. So fingers crossed.
I'm also going to get a chance to test drive teaching english...sort of. They're going to be trying conversation groups (as opposed to one-on-one) and I'm the conversation partner who's going to be doing it :D. My friends and I have proven that conversation groups work better for some people. So that is groovy as HELL.
I'm keeping my head up as best I can, but I can feel the downswing lurking beneath. Good days are like life preservers and bad days...well...they suck. I'm a moment from tears lately, but that's just something I have to deal with. Mostly by crying. Hope is keeping my head up, hope is keeping me going, but GODdamn I'm tired.
FIGHTING.

So, yeah.

I have a car now, yaaaay! This is progress on the path to Arizona. I've also been looking at apartments and stuff near(ish) the university, just to price things out. I like to be prepared for every eventuality. My friends are happy to have me stay with them, but we all know that it may not be practical. We'll see how everything works out financially.
Which leads nicely into the next topic. More stress crying :D :D. Woohoo. *sigh* Also, more whatthefuckery. So. Yeah. Social Security. I finally called the office for clarification and ended up stress crying on the phone. I kept apologizing in the midst of my tears, trying to reassure the guy that I wasn't upset and that this was just a stress reaction. I don't think he believed me at first, not until I got the stress crying under control. He was really nice, calmed my fears, reassured me that I was doing the right stuff and managed to hide really well how much I was annoying him. :) I'm being honest here, he did a very good job, I've just had years of experience of catching the cues.
Anyways, with all these tears and drama...I apparently hallucinated the fact that paperwork had the wrong name on it. What. The. FUCK. I mean, I'm glad I talked to the guy, I feel reassured, but STILL. This has proven to me that I really ought to have someone helping me with this and that I'm probably going to fuck things up. *sigh* C'est la vie.
I'm tired and thus the post ends abruptly.

Anxiety Dreams, Yay!

So...yeah, anxiety dreams are annoying as hell. I call them anxiety dreams, but they're not exactly. It's hard to explain. If they were actual dreams, I would just call them bad dreams or nightmares. Anxiety dreams...are different. They're kind of like daydreams, but not. I hate the ones of the type I'm currently have the most, I think.
These anxiety dreams always happen late at night (or in the wee hours), usually after I have tried, unsuccessfully, to get to sleep. I will be lying in the dark and my mind will wander those lovely, dark, depressing, anxiety-inducing paths. I will lie there and my mind will go through every scenario of failure it can think of. I won't actually be asleep, but I will have particularly vivid "daydreams" that detail everything that will go wrong. I will usually become aware of what I'm doing only because my leg will be jiggling so hard it makes noise. Yeah, that whole "restless leg" thing may annoy people, but I appreciate it at moments like these. It clues me in to what's going on. If I clue in I can *maybe* do something about it. Even if that something is just giving up the attempt at sleep. If I give up the attempt at sleep I have a chance to distract myself.
I've been avoiding making the call to the social security office. Partially because I hate talking on the phone to people who unintentionally steamroller me into doing things (I mean, they have no real way of knowing that I have major difficulty disagreeing with them, but the effect is still the same :/ ). Partially because...I've been feeling good. I had this random period of a week where, for the first time in over a year, I felt like "Hey, I can totally work and get a job and support myself and not have to go on government aid!". It felt really good...until I quite abruptly crashed.
It was a different experience, that's for sure. I mean, I tend to be overconfident and overestimate what I can do, but nothing like this. It kind of reminded me of what a friend described the "highs" of being bipolar were like. Only not. It's so hard to explain these things, but I feel compelled to. Like...if I explain them maybe I can make sense of them and conquer them. In any case, it was a new and annoying experience. It wasn't just mental/emotional, I felt really good physically for that week. Which was nice.
So now I'll have to call social security and...BAH. I'll probably have to figure out a time to go in and talk to someone, because talking over the phone isn't working. Which means I'll have to find someone to go with me because, yeah, crazy. This is the difficulty, because my mom is not an option. She doesn't think I can get on disability (even though she's the one who encouraged me to apply). I can't help but think, based on little things my family members have said, that my family honestly thinks that I'm lazy. That if I'd just get off my ass and go to a doctor then he'll give me a magic pill that will make me ALL BETTER. My mom, at least, takes the physical side seriously. Most of the time. But I...I love her, but I don't entirely trust her and her opinion of me. Which makes the idea of her going with me (if she even WOULD (which is a whole 'nother story)) less than optimal.
Thus the anxiety dreams come into play. These little waking nightmares, you'd think they'd have me not getting aid and homeless in the streets or something. I mean, that would make sense, right? Nope. In every one I end up on disability. AND NEED IT. I end up going to Arizona and failing. Or if not fully failing, failing enough that I need a keeper. Why? Because I probably do. Personal hygiene is becoming a problem again. Eating is a problem again (fast and binge, fast and binge, food is disgusting because I'm a fat bitch who doesn't NEED to be eating, fast and binge, the thought of food turns my stomach, etc. etc. ad nauseum). I live in a haze punctuated by periods of physical discomfort as my fibro makes itself known.
At times like these it's hard to believe the hope that drives me. It's hard to believe that I can have a future, or at least one of the futures that I *WANT*. It's impossible to believe that someday I could go a day, DAYS, without pain. I'm so grateful for auto-pilot at moments like these, because it's the only thing that keeps the momentum going. Hell, auto-pilot is the only reason I was able to stay EMPLOYED for as long as I did. It's funny, I was known as the customer service queen. Customers loved me. There were days when I couldn't tell you what I'd done that day. Nobody noticed. Because my auto-pilot is DAMNED good.
I'm starting to ramble. Because it's the wee hours, I'm tired, I don't feel good, and my brain hates me. I'd planned on writing a post about my anxiety dreams about the fibro and related crazytown-ness, but apparently it wasn't to be. I would say "Fighting!", but I'm just too damn tired to fight right now. I'd rather have some cheesecake and watch movies. "Cheesecake, just what your fatass needs," says my oh-so-helpful brain. *sigh*
It gets better. It gets better. It gets better. I know it from past experience. I know I know it. I just wish it would hurry up and get better NOW.