Dauuuuugh I'm sick again. Another cold. My shrink joked that I would fall ill because I showed up for my appointment soaking wet from nostrils to tiptoes thanks to an unexpected mid-bike-ride rainstorm, and I laughed. Oh, how I laughed.
I should have remembered that I had two ill roomies at home. I should not have challenged the gods.
Showing posts with label sick. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sick. Show all posts
March 25, 2009
December 10, 2008
Wake Up
I had been putting my life on hold.
I was a terrible student. People said I was smart, told me I was going to be somebody, urged me to live up to my potential, but I skipped school as often as I could get away with starting from the seventh grade. I didn't do my homework, which stacked up. I started missing crucial stuff in math class, earned a reputation as the weird kid, made enemies and alienated potential friends. I fell behind. I gave up. I dropped out.
Then college happened, and for one semester I felt like I was really going to accomplish my goal of getting a degree and leaving my shitty life behind. My anxiety got in the way--I didn't have a pen, but I couldn't bring myself to approach the nice girl sitting next to me and ask to borrow one of hers. I didn't have a study partner because I was terrified of strangers. The professor had a thick Korean accent and his descriptions of Venn diagrams would have gone right over my math-deficient head anyway. I skipped all study groups to avoid talking to people. I flunked the class, gave up on college and switched to part-time at a different school. I used my scholarship to take Japanese and Composition instead. Then I "took a semester off" because I finally realized I was having too many issues to focus on schoolwork.
For the next five years, I maintained a holding pattern. Work on the comic, do the art, hide in the bedroom, shelve the books. My only social communication was with my few friends or the people I helped at work. We moved out of the apartment where my Mom and I had weathered 9/11, and I retreated into my one-room hovel in my sister's backyard, shrugged off the lack of running water and heat, wondered if I might be autistic, came out as transgendered, dissociated and ranted on the internet and injured myself for kicks. I remember it as good times but it was really kind of pathetic. All alone in a little party house with my bad music and the undefined substances crusted into the carpet. Chest strapped flat, nails through my ears while my right eyeball flared up red and swollen every day from the layers of dust I swam through. Family drama alienated me from all relatives except my Mom. I kept in touch with the world outside through my modem.
I started going to cons. Met Seebs, Rah and Jesse for the first time at Anime Central 2004. I had been planning to stay with Rah, but when we all started talking at the tables it was nakama at first sight and we stayed in the same hotel room for the rest of the weekend. I didn't buy my next $80 bus ticket to Canada; instead Jess and Seebs brought me home from the convention to stay at their place in Saint Paul. They extended pseudopods and replaced my plans to go back to Nebraska with the urge to go native, which I did. Told my Mom I wasn't coming home except to pack my shit. She was sad, but my brother was getting out and she wanted to live with him anyway. I gleefully jettisoned my home life and never looked back. I didn't call her enough. I still feel sad that I didn't call her enough, but I just forgot. I knew I'd regret it very soon but I forgot.
Then Mom died. I went back to Nebraska to be with her during the end, got sick, came home, went back but I was too late. She died the night before I returned, and I was on the phone as it happened. The funerals weren't bad. She was polyfaithful so there were two, plus the wake where I wore an offensive T-Shirt to piss off the relatives who didn't like me anyway. My brother and I made up and I gave him a wad of money from comic fan donations to pay the funeral director for one pitiful box of ashes with a side of shitty attitude.
Now I had no connection to my past. Now I've been kissing-close to death and I realized I was wasting my life. Everything I felt was now under scrutiny as suspected bullshit. Two months later I had a petty disagreement with my childhood friend and he dumped me. I couldn't muster the willpower to apologize first like I always did, and because he never learned how to apologize at all we ended up never speaking again. One more piece of my old life fell away. Rain moved to North Carolina a few months after that, and I got depressed. I adopted a dog to force myself out of my head and being responsible for him got me through the worst of the sadness. Dogs and cats do their best to cure the blues by being small and pettable and needy, and in return we make sure their bellies stay full. It's a good trade.
The household moved to a small town where the atmosphere is much more laid-back. There are two colleges here, and I started thinking about going back to school. Thinking I didn't have what it takes to be a student, I was too old, too dumb, too anxious.
Then the accident happened, and I guess almost dying must have knocked some sense into me. Suddenly I was making plans instead of daydreaming about them. Small plans at first--see a dentist, find a good vet in town--and then larger ones followed from that. I got a therapist and a psychiatrist because I was overwhelmed, instead of hiding in my room and hoping the world would forget about me. The therapist hooked me up with health care and pointed me at assistance programs. Things became possible.
I re-established contact with my Dad, and we're slowly getting to know each other again. I really love the guy, but we've got to tread lightly for a while at least. I've always hated the idea of wasting my life, but now I feel more like there's something I can do about it. Medication helps with a lot of this, but some of it was just plain good luck.
So where am I now? Making plans. Establishing normal living activities like schedules and chores. Learning to work with the ADHD meds, and I've just started Zoloft for the social anxiety and OCD. I'm creating a new routine to replace the flawed one that was more of a prison than a refuge. There is comfort in routine, and just lately mine's been changing quite a bit and creativity has taken a backseat to the real world. I figure it's now or never--I either ride this wave or spend more years in the holding pattern. I'm impatient to get back to the old habits that I enjoy--comics and writing being the two major ones--but so far they haven't found where they fit in my new life. Creativity is kind of like a cat that will curl up in your lap if you stay put, but if you move around too much it gets pissed and wanders off for a while. Luckily creativity and cats are also sort of stupid, and will eventually come back for another try.
Hopefully within the next month or so I'll wake up with that cat back on my lap so I don't have to go chase it down like I've been doing. My comic is about to go awesome places and I'm getting annoyed by how slowly it's unfolding compared to the four-pages-a-week powerhouse of yesteryear.
Things go well at home. The Captain's nose is turning pink at the base. I still haven't mailed off the buttons for the folks who donated to get his vitiligo diagnosed, but I've got all the info here and will be getting to it as soon as I can. This damn cold isn't helping much, but it's slowly getting better.
Also, I've begun to think about college again. Scary stuff, but why not? "Too old" is bullshit anyway. I feel certain I'd make a better student in my 30s than I ever was in my teens.
That's it for now. Musings on a quiet Wednesday morning while the sky is gray and the snow is a few layers thicker than it was last time I blogged. Hope you're all well.
I was a terrible student. People said I was smart, told me I was going to be somebody, urged me to live up to my potential, but I skipped school as often as I could get away with starting from the seventh grade. I didn't do my homework, which stacked up. I started missing crucial stuff in math class, earned a reputation as the weird kid, made enemies and alienated potential friends. I fell behind. I gave up. I dropped out.
Then college happened, and for one semester I felt like I was really going to accomplish my goal of getting a degree and leaving my shitty life behind. My anxiety got in the way--I didn't have a pen, but I couldn't bring myself to approach the nice girl sitting next to me and ask to borrow one of hers. I didn't have a study partner because I was terrified of strangers. The professor had a thick Korean accent and his descriptions of Venn diagrams would have gone right over my math-deficient head anyway. I skipped all study groups to avoid talking to people. I flunked the class, gave up on college and switched to part-time at a different school. I used my scholarship to take Japanese and Composition instead. Then I "took a semester off" because I finally realized I was having too many issues to focus on schoolwork.
For the next five years, I maintained a holding pattern. Work on the comic, do the art, hide in the bedroom, shelve the books. My only social communication was with my few friends or the people I helped at work. We moved out of the apartment where my Mom and I had weathered 9/11, and I retreated into my one-room hovel in my sister's backyard, shrugged off the lack of running water and heat, wondered if I might be autistic, came out as transgendered, dissociated and ranted on the internet and injured myself for kicks. I remember it as good times but it was really kind of pathetic. All alone in a little party house with my bad music and the undefined substances crusted into the carpet. Chest strapped flat, nails through my ears while my right eyeball flared up red and swollen every day from the layers of dust I swam through. Family drama alienated me from all relatives except my Mom. I kept in touch with the world outside through my modem.
I started going to cons. Met Seebs, Rah and Jesse for the first time at Anime Central 2004. I had been planning to stay with Rah, but when we all started talking at the tables it was nakama at first sight and we stayed in the same hotel room for the rest of the weekend. I didn't buy my next $80 bus ticket to Canada; instead Jess and Seebs brought me home from the convention to stay at their place in Saint Paul. They extended pseudopods and replaced my plans to go back to Nebraska with the urge to go native, which I did. Told my Mom I wasn't coming home except to pack my shit. She was sad, but my brother was getting out and she wanted to live with him anyway. I gleefully jettisoned my home life and never looked back. I didn't call her enough. I still feel sad that I didn't call her enough, but I just forgot. I knew I'd regret it very soon but I forgot.
Then Mom died. I went back to Nebraska to be with her during the end, got sick, came home, went back but I was too late. She died the night before I returned, and I was on the phone as it happened. The funerals weren't bad. She was polyfaithful so there were two, plus the wake where I wore an offensive T-Shirt to piss off the relatives who didn't like me anyway. My brother and I made up and I gave him a wad of money from comic fan donations to pay the funeral director for one pitiful box of ashes with a side of shitty attitude.
Now I had no connection to my past. Now I've been kissing-close to death and I realized I was wasting my life. Everything I felt was now under scrutiny as suspected bullshit. Two months later I had a petty disagreement with my childhood friend and he dumped me. I couldn't muster the willpower to apologize first like I always did, and because he never learned how to apologize at all we ended up never speaking again. One more piece of my old life fell away. Rain moved to North Carolina a few months after that, and I got depressed. I adopted a dog to force myself out of my head and being responsible for him got me through the worst of the sadness. Dogs and cats do their best to cure the blues by being small and pettable and needy, and in return we make sure their bellies stay full. It's a good trade.
The household moved to a small town where the atmosphere is much more laid-back. There are two colleges here, and I started thinking about going back to school. Thinking I didn't have what it takes to be a student, I was too old, too dumb, too anxious.
Then the accident happened, and I guess almost dying must have knocked some sense into me. Suddenly I was making plans instead of daydreaming about them. Small plans at first--see a dentist, find a good vet in town--and then larger ones followed from that. I got a therapist and a psychiatrist because I was overwhelmed, instead of hiding in my room and hoping the world would forget about me. The therapist hooked me up with health care and pointed me at assistance programs. Things became possible.
I re-established contact with my Dad, and we're slowly getting to know each other again. I really love the guy, but we've got to tread lightly for a while at least. I've always hated the idea of wasting my life, but now I feel more like there's something I can do about it. Medication helps with a lot of this, but some of it was just plain good luck.
So where am I now? Making plans. Establishing normal living activities like schedules and chores. Learning to work with the ADHD meds, and I've just started Zoloft for the social anxiety and OCD. I'm creating a new routine to replace the flawed one that was more of a prison than a refuge. There is comfort in routine, and just lately mine's been changing quite a bit and creativity has taken a backseat to the real world. I figure it's now or never--I either ride this wave or spend more years in the holding pattern. I'm impatient to get back to the old habits that I enjoy--comics and writing being the two major ones--but so far they haven't found where they fit in my new life. Creativity is kind of like a cat that will curl up in your lap if you stay put, but if you move around too much it gets pissed and wanders off for a while. Luckily creativity and cats are also sort of stupid, and will eventually come back for another try.
Hopefully within the next month or so I'll wake up with that cat back on my lap so I don't have to go chase it down like I've been doing. My comic is about to go awesome places and I'm getting annoyed by how slowly it's unfolding compared to the four-pages-a-week powerhouse of yesteryear.
Things go well at home. The Captain's nose is turning pink at the base. I still haven't mailed off the buttons for the folks who donated to get his vitiligo diagnosed, but I've got all the info here and will be getting to it as soon as I can. This damn cold isn't helping much, but it's slowly getting better.
Also, I've begun to think about college again. Scary stuff, but why not? "Too old" is bullshit anyway. I feel certain I'd make a better student in my 30s than I ever was in my teens.
That's it for now. Musings on a quiet Wednesday morning while the sky is gray and the snow is a few layers thicker than it was last time I blogged. Hope you're all well.
December 1, 2008
This Is My Milwaukee
Ho damn I'm sick. Head pounding, dizzy, eyes and body aching. I'm weak and out of breath over little things like climbing the stairs or bending over, and my tonsils are so swollen that when I try to swallow they get in the way and sort of squish around painfully. Pleasant.
After the first half-hour of being awake, I feel better, but after a while I get drowsy and the symptoms come back, so I go back to sleep. Very vivid dreams, mostly of the disturbing variety, but I'm OK with that.
With what little of my time remains to me after sleeping and whimpering, I am following an ARG. It's the second time in my life I've come across one when it was just getting started, and the first time (I Love Bees) I didn't know what it was and wandered off long before any of the good stuff showed up.
If you're into this stuff, here's the website that starts it off, and here's a thread where clues and possible leads are being posted.
After the first half-hour of being awake, I feel better, but after a while I get drowsy and the symptoms come back, so I go back to sleep. Very vivid dreams, mostly of the disturbing variety, but I'm OK with that.
With what little of my time remains to me after sleeping and whimpering, I am following an ARG. It's the second time in my life I've come across one when it was just getting started, and the first time (I Love Bees) I didn't know what it was and wandered off long before any of the good stuff showed up.
If you're into this stuff, here's the website that starts it off, and here's a thread where clues and possible leads are being posted.
January 8, 2008
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME
You know those lollies you could buy in the 1980-1990's, where the candy went in a color gradient from green to red?
I swear to God I just coughed up one of those, sans the stick.
The thing was the size of a half-dollar coin. I was too horrified to throw the tissue away in case it might be an organ that would need to have reinstalled later. To be totally honest, I had to restrain myself from taking a picture for this entry.
(You're welcome.)
I swear to God I just coughed up one of those, sans the stick.
The thing was the size of a half-dollar coin. I was too horrified to throw the tissue away in case it might be an organ that would need to have reinstalled later. To be totally honest, I had to restrain myself from taking a picture for this entry.
(You're welcome.)
January 7, 2008
He Choked On What?
If this ain't poetic justice, there's no such thing.
Laryngitis rules my world with an iron fist and my strength and energy are in the toilet. I slept 11 hours today and took a nap on top of that but I still feel like something you'd pry off the bottom of your shoe with a narrow stick.
It was 40 degrees out, so I took the Captain alongside the bike to the dog park in hopes that it would perk me up. On the way back, the front wheel suddenly turned 90* and would have resulted in a terrible wreck if I hadn't already been slowed almost to a stop. That was some scary shit. Also, the Captain decided to run right up in front of the bike a bit later and his paw got run over. No damage but here's hoping he learned his lesson.
I have gotten no work done since the day before yesterday. Maybe when the rabies passes I'll be feeling more artistic.
Laryngitis rules my world with an iron fist and my strength and energy are in the toilet. I slept 11 hours today and took a nap on top of that but I still feel like something you'd pry off the bottom of your shoe with a narrow stick.
It was 40 degrees out, so I took the Captain alongside the bike to the dog park in hopes that it would perk me up. On the way back, the front wheel suddenly turned 90* and would have resulted in a terrible wreck if I hadn't already been slowed almost to a stop. That was some scary shit. Also, the Captain decided to run right up in front of the bike a bit later and his paw got run over. No damage but here's hoping he learned his lesson.
I have gotten no work done since the day before yesterday. Maybe when the rabies passes I'll be feeling more artistic.
January 4, 2008
IT IS TOO EARLY FOR MORE PLAGUE
DAMN YOU ROOMIES WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME
I woke up this morning without my voice, to the sound of a rumbling tide that turned out to be my own phlegmy breathing. Also, my throat feels like I deep throated a porcupine. And is my right eye attempting to water for no reason? I think it might be.
Also, what the fuck possessed me to begin reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius this week, of all possible weeks I could have taken an interest in the story? It's too good to put down but the first two chapters gave me flashbacks up the wazoo.
Oh well, at least my brain still works. Off to make some art.
I woke up this morning without my voice, to the sound of a rumbling tide that turned out to be my own phlegmy breathing. Also, my throat feels like I deep throated a porcupine. And is my right eye attempting to water for no reason? I think it might be.
Also, what the fuck possessed me to begin reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius this week, of all possible weeks I could have taken an interest in the story? It's too good to put down but the first two chapters gave me flashbacks up the wazoo.
Oh well, at least my brain still works. Off to make some art.
November 30, 2007
HACK HACK HACK
One more time for just-in-case:
IF YOU ARE ON AIM AND DECIDE TO SEND ME A LAUNDRY LIST OF MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR A SHOW I JUST TOLD YOU I HAVEN'T SEEN YET, IT IS GOING TO PISS ME OFF AND I AM GOING TO TELL YOU SO.
IF YOUR DIPLOMATIC RESPONSE TO THIS BEGINS WITH 'HAHAHA,' WELCOME TO THE LAND OF BLOCKED.
For fuck's sake. I'm starting to regret having made my AIM name public again.
In other news, I caught Jesse's plague and it knocked me on my ass. I've been doing a lot of sleeping today and just walking up the stairs tires me out. I'm also becoming intimately familiar with slightly bloody phlegm, which is a definite experience.
Lovely word, phlegm. Right up there with smegma, sputum and election.
IF YOU ARE ON AIM AND DECIDE TO SEND ME A LAUNDRY LIST OF MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR A SHOW I JUST TOLD YOU I HAVEN'T SEEN YET, IT IS GOING TO PISS ME OFF AND I AM GOING TO TELL YOU SO.
IF YOUR DIPLOMATIC RESPONSE TO THIS BEGINS WITH 'HAHAHA,' WELCOME TO THE LAND OF BLOCKED.
For fuck's sake. I'm starting to regret having made my AIM name public again.
In other news, I caught Jesse's plague and it knocked me on my ass. I've been doing a lot of sleeping today and just walking up the stairs tires me out. I'm also becoming intimately familiar with slightly bloody phlegm, which is a definite experience.
Lovely word, phlegm. Right up there with smegma, sputum and election.
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