Rants and Musings

So I made a small post on my tumblr about something that really bothers me, and I wanted to go into it more here.

My biggest 'pet peeve' is people who refuse to take responsibility for their actions and how it effects them.

This is something I've gone over with my therapist before, and I feel like it's a good idea to fully put it down.

I just can not honestly understand how someone could go through life and think that every single thing that happens to them is someone elses fault. I mean, some things, yes, but everything? Every single bad thing that has happened to you has been because of someone else? I know someone that is constantly getting evicted from their rentals, and every single time it's because 'the landlords an asshole'. Well yeah, he's probably pretty pissed at you for not paying your rent.

I mean, if you've been fired from 6 jobs within as many months, how can you not, at some point, think that maybe you're just a shitty employee?

I know where my strong feelings about this comes from. This is what my mother does. To the T. This is also one of the reasons I don't speak to my mother any more.

Story time. 

When I was thirteen, my mother took my younger brother and I and moved us a thousand miles away to live in Vermont. As if that wasn't bad enough by itself, it was to go and live with someone she met on the internet. My dad was absolutely heart broken about his, but he figured that children belong with their mother and didn't fight it. That is seriously a concept that just needs to die.

So she moves us up there in November. We went from 90*F to a foot of snow on the ground in less than a day. It was shocking to say the least.

Anyway, we moved in with this man, that we had never met before, and who my mother had only spoken with via internet and phone. So things were pretty tense to say the least.

We lived in this tiny 2 bedroom basement apartment out in a very remote area. The school I went to was the absolute worse place I have ever been to. I'd been bullied all my life, but these kids were just down right vicious.

This was my first time dealing with depression. It was so bad that I wouldn't even change my clothes. I would just come home, go straight to bed, and wake up and change my shirt before going to school. There were ink stains on the sheets because I didn't even bother to take the pens out of my pocket. It was that damn bad.

So of course, I wasn't exactly a ray of sunshine. Things were bad for my 8 year old brother as well.

After being there for 4 months, my mother and this man broke up. Not exactly a big surprise there. I mean, this whole thing was destined to fail, you could see it from a mile away.

So then he kicks up out. Straight up tells us to pack our shit and be out before he gets back from work.

We did that, and moved into a hotel until we could get tickets for a flight back to Texas. While we're sitting at the airport waiting for our flight, my mother than tells us that we would be taking the flight to Texas on our own, because she was taking a different flight to California to live with her dad.

Now here's the point of this story. She goes on a huge tangent about how we wouldn't have to be doing all this if we'd just behaved ourselves. It was OUR fault, mine and my brothers, that her relationship failed. Because we, being brother and sister, cooped up in a tiny apartment and had to share a room for the first time in our lives, fought too much. We did what every freaking brother and sister has done for all of time.

It wasn't because their relationship just didn't work out, it wasn't because (as I found out later) he had FUCKING AIDS!, it wasn't because THEY fought all the time, it was because WE fought all the time. WE were the ones to blame. WE were the ones that did wrong.

This is the first time (that I can remember) of many that my mother did this to me.

I could probably write a book on all the shit she's done to me, and maybe I should, to be honest, but this is with out a doubt why I have this very intense hatred of people who act like this.

It is also probably the reason for my intense anxiety that I have. I've gone full reverse from what my mother does. Rather than blame everyone else for my mistakes and problems, I feel like I'm responsible for everything that goes wrong, even if I'm not.

Only recently, with the help of the (finally) perfect cocktail of drugs and therapy have I been able to stop thinking like that. That I stop blaming myself things that are out of my control.

The unfortunate thing is that I have to deal with this a lot in my job. I work in driver licensing, what many states call a DMV. I have to speak to people that have their license suspended out the wazoo because of stuff they did, usually drunk driving.

Do they feel responsible for it? No, It's the officers fault for giving them the ticket. It's the states fault for having there be fines attached to DWI's. It's my fault for not just making it go away for them. Don't I know they have stuff to do? That they need the license to get on a plane tomorrow? That work is going to fire them if they don't get it taken care of TODAY?

I have been told, so many times, that I have ruined that persons life. I have been called the 'rudest person in all of Texas'. I have been called a 'cold hearted bitch'. I have been called so many different things, from so many different people, all because they don't want to except the consequences of their actions.

So I guess, it all being wrapped together, this would be why I can't stand it.

Trying to deal.

It's hard to describe what exactly I've been feeling these past weeks. I've been cycling through my highs and lows and an incredible rate, and things have been all around shitty.

I think the hardest thing for me right now is that I have all these ideas in my head. They keep coming and going and it makes it really hard to focus on day to day life. I've actually missed a fair amount of work because of it.

The problem with these ideas is that I have no way to follow through. I want to make this and do that, but in reality I'm just not as creative as all that.

Even this blog is kind of a shout out into the void, hoping that something will come to me.

The simple fact is that I just don't have a lot to talk about. Literally, the only thing going on in my life right now is my mental and emotional state, and that really isn't all that easy to write about, and I'm sure it's pretty boring to everyone else.

Part of me feels like I should try to improve my life, cause then I can improve everything else. Part of me just wants to give up on it all.

I guess that's why it's called bi polar disorder.

Maybe one day I'll get there. More than likely I won't. I know that I need to try though. So I will. I hope that someone out there would be willing to help me though all this ranting and raving.

Working on things.

It's been a busy couple of weeks. There's been stuff at work going on and I'm been having some in-law issues, so trying to find the time to sit down and really think on how to change my life gets kind of pushed back. It seems silly to think that just sitting here typing out my thoughts would make a difference, but it really does.

So I had another visit with my therapist yesterday, and she sort of got onto me for not doing my 'homework'. The biggest thing was that I really need to go somewhere that's (at least slightly) crowded, and sit down, and be okay being there by myself.

I got some points for going to a 4th of July party where I only knew two people, but when I mentioned that I kinda stuck by their sides the whole time, she said that I need to try it without a crutch.

She suggested a coffee shop would be the best place. I've always kind of wanted to be one of those people, though I don't exactly know why. Maybe because that's what I perceive as normal? Anyway, that would be an ideal place because there would be people, but they're all kinda focused on their own thing, and if I needed to make a quick exit, I could without any problems.

I kind of always feel weird is these kind of situations. My main coping mechanism is knitting, but I still always feel weird knitting in public because it's different than what other people do, and might attract attention.

I spoke about this with her, and she brought up a very good point. I live in Austin. Knitting is not exactly the weirdest thing anyone's ever seen. I mean everyone is almost immune to the weird.

Example: At my work, we see a lot of people who have just moved here from other states. We've had a bunch of people comment on it, particularly about the dude that rides his bike wearing nothing but a G-string. My first response? 'Oh yeah, him. He rides around here a lot'.

If someone can ride around being as close to naked as you can get, why do I think that people would judge me for sitting in a coffee shop knitting. So yeah, that thought helped. So now all I need to do is actually go and do that. Maybe I'll post pictures.

Back and trying again

So, I'm gonna give a run down of what's been happening for the last year that I've been gone.

Things got a little better, then they got much much worse. The doctor that I was getting my medications for my anxiety turned out to be a total nut case. She was so flaky that it just caused more anxiety to try to get in touch with her and get her to keep a appointment. When ever she did, it was just several hours of her spouting nonsense and basically put me off from going back.

So things spiraled, my work suffered, until I had a really really bad week and forced me to find a new doctor. This guy is good. He spent most of the time actually listening to what was going on, going over family history, even had me do blood work to make sure it wasn't something with my thyroid or anything else. After going over all that, he said that he thought that I was being treated for the wrong thing, and that Xanax was not what I needed. So I'm now on mood stabilizers for type 2 bipolar disorder.

So that being said, I've been on Lamotrigine for about 3 months now, and I can tell that it's helping. I still get a little crazy every now and then, I still get those insane needs to do all the things that make me feel guilty later, but I can now understand them for what they are and keep myself under control.

I started seeing an actual therapist who I really like. She really supports the idea of using my crafts to help me deal with my anxiety attacks, and that it would be better than having to rely on medication. So I just have to remember that when I knit or spin, that is what I focus on and try to stop my thoughts from going to other places. I've found that once I get the thoughts out of my head, even for a few minutes, I'm able to deal with the situation much better.

She suggested that I keep a journal, which I'm doing for the very personal stuff, but I think starting up the blog again will help too. I think it's good for me to try to reach out to people who are dealing with the same thing I am, with out the social anxiety of going to group therapy.

TL;DR, back to blogging about how my crafts are helping me cope with my anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder.