And just when

things seem to be getting better....

Getting back to writing

and hopefully blogging (about substantial things). I am writing a story, have about 4 1/2 chapters written and know the big plot point I'm working towards and it features a protagonist with PTSD, Parker, and is fantasy set in present day earth. Since I am writing it in my journal-smaller pages, I have set a goal of writing 10 pages every day. Hopefully this will get me writing again.

I have some ideas for feminist theory kicking around my head (which I can only hope will be as good as my polyamory and activism and my compulsive masculinity pieces) so hopefully once I have trained myself to write everyday I can make the leap to sit down and work on that. I'm hoping that after this last go boom it's all uphill so that I will be able to pull quotes and research stuff out without any PTSD related crap happening, but first the fiction.

This is kind of cool: why anxiety means homework goes unfinished

My kick-ass rad fem therapist today and I were talking about (what else) the overwhelming anxiety I am having from my proofs class which is coupled with the fact that I went to see him today to ask for help and he just stared at me. (You should listen to him when people who are doing well in the class go in for help, he's super-helpful. All other C students like me say the same thing: when you ask him something he stares at you, but he'll help the people who all ready get it. Being one of 3 resources for the class (another one being his crappy definitions and the third being me, who can't figure out the definitions and is therefore struggling to stay afloat) this SUCKS.)

ANyway, back to my story. There is, of course, some PTSD triggers thrown in there as well. So much about this mirrors being in a house with my abusive mom: having to be somewhere I hate while being helpless and having no one to turn to (b/c yes I *can* get a tutor, but all the math fellows either a) tell me they did horribly at the class, b) took it from someone else and every prof covers different material, or c) blocked it out of their memory), and then there's the constant replays of my mom's voice telling me I'm stupid and a litany of other similar things. HOORAY! Isn't my head a fun place to be these days? My best friend begged me to leave the class (we have similar mental health (dis)Abilities and are always watching out for one another, but I can't. I have 2 friggin' quarters to go and I will have that BS in my hands. Can't change now, don't want to either. Like math, want to continue doing math for a very very long time. Must push through even though b/c of this class they've upped my Xanax AND my Lamictal. Heh. (and I had to double my xanax dose yesterday b/c one just didn't work)

SO, here's the cool part. My therapist likes to explain how these things work inside your brain by modeling it for me. I really like this. SO today she showed me how anxiety and PTSD affect the entire brain, not just how PTSD traps you in your midbrain (and how the techniques we use like EMDR try to put these things into words instead of just emotions which move them out of your midbrain and make them something that is easier to deal with and not an automatic reaction.)

She held out her hand in a closed fist: this is your brain (I know you probably all pictured the frying pan, but shake it out), she then opened her fist and pointed to the middle of her hand and said "this is your amygdala" and then to her thumb and said "this is your hypothalamus" and re-closed her hand. She then said "this is normally how your brain is, but when you get activated, or in a manic state, or in a mixed state (which happens to me when I get activates), or have anxiety this happens" and she opened her hand (which makes sense since in PTSD the midbrain takes over) "and your neocortex is unable to function properly."

I all ready knew that anxiety meant that I was not going to get anything done, but it's nice to have an idea of *why* nothing gets done. Although I'm sure if I had a more technical explanation I would just be confused.

Finals start the 17th, we don't have a final in this class, just a 2 hour class period of, yay, proofs that Wednesday. Everyone keep their fingers crossed that I don't have a nuclear meltdown before then, because it really feels like I am heading for a major one and I really REALLY hate the idea of having one because of something that I put myself through.

i will, i will, i will

I WILL leave the house in time to go to school tomorrow.

I WILL go to EVERY class, even if one of my prof's doesn't lecture on the material (our test on Wednesday had questions from 3 chapters ahead of what we were assigned to study. WHo does that? No reading, no lecture, no homework. I have no idea how the hell we were supposed to know that. I just looked up temperature in the index and read EVERY section on it until I got to the relevant one.) , the other prof lectures straight from the book, and the last class is the evil proofs class where I desperately feel as though I will fly into a blind rage or cry at any given moment.

I WILL finish that damn proof I've been working on for 3 hours. (mixing delta/epsilon proofs with cluster points and continuity (but at least it's a closed set and I *know* how to do it in a hand wave-y way, but not a "rigorous" way *sigh* I can explain the concepts and how it will work, but how to put it all together to form that whole crappy rigorous proof thing, bah. Have I mentioned lately that I hate this class? He doesn't like it when I turn in proofs written in the style that my 401 prof likes them to be written. ARGH. At least I get A's for those assignments, so it's not that I can't write proofs, just not these (since I can't use a damn book)))

I WILL get up 2 hours early to go to my prof's office hours so I can finish said proof.

I WILL do my physics homework tonight, even though I will have an hour between office hours and class tomorrow.

I WILL drink that glass of wine tonight so that I can make sure I will actually sleep so I can get #' 1, 2, and 3 done.

I WILL FINALLY call the doctor's office and make that appointment to up the dose on my medication that I so direly need since I've had a "low mood" (nice euphemism for depression) for the past 3 weeks.

Ugh. *fingers crossed* these things actually happen.

Oods and ends

-School starts Wednesday. Yippie.

-Even though my financial aid worker is second in command AND said I was DEFINITELY getting financial aid for Fall quarter I have none at this moment. NONE. And no one is able to tell me why the hell that is b/c I turned in my petition in May (MAY!) and have no idea what is going on. And apparently, they don't know what's going on either.

-Dating a math geek rocks. Though sometimes when we're in public we like to joke about women's "inferiority" in math because of those pesky ovaries and people take it the wrong way. They think we're serious. Like I'd ever date anyone who took that shit seriously. HA! (We also get weird looks because when we're at a coffeeshop or bar we'll make up math games. People are missing out by thinking math games are weird.)

-Have proved how big of a geek I am by buying textbook for the graduate Linear Algebra class and am up to chapter 4, having studied it and done the homework exercises. (One day I'm hoping to convince the department to let me take that class. I love me some Linear Algebra.)

-Really, really, REALLY need to clean. Badly. Will I? Mmmmmm, probably not.

-Don't want to go to school. Want more summer. But if the weather insists on being shitty I guess I'll be ok with school. I'd feel better starting school if it had ever been warm enough for me to spend a lot of time at the beach this summer. *sigh*

Angry school

gSooooo. It's been an interesting week. I bombed my first Limits (and Infinite Series hereafter referred to as Limits) quiz and when I went to talk to my prof about a question I had gotten wrong he first pissed me off a little by asking me if I understood things I had gotten right! Obviously I understood them. Then as I was leaving the office he told me that I have to do better on the next quiz. NO SHIT! I left his office and immediately started crying. Sitting through his class I stared at the floor the whole time thinking I was going to burst out crying again. I went home and proceeded to freak out (I had gotten a C on my first multivariate calculus quiz and even though I know I always suck at the first quiz I was feeling pretty rotten.)

I started thinking that I could never ever ever get a math degree, that I was too stupid (yes my mom was in my head that day telling me I'm stupid and I'll never be good enough) and that I should have majored in Comparative Literature because I know I can read and analyse or that I should just drop out of school because I'm just too stupid for a degree. (I'm so glad I didn't drop my classes that day like I though of doing.)

I got over it and I know I ACED the quiz today (because I had done the homework so often I had the answers memorized (those were the quiz questions) AND I've been thinking about limits when I can't sleep AND dreaming about them AND I studied Limits for 3 hours everyday this week.)

But besides that my friend Jonathan and I were talking and he said that it's only from his female friends that he hears about these kinds of things being said by a prof or a boss, and that it's never happened to him as a man. Which of course got us talking about the feminist theory behind why men in power behave differently towards men and women, etc, etc.

Needless to say I'm REALLY mad at my prof and when I get 100% on the quiz I know I'm going to want to jump up and yell "HAH!"

This describes my life so well

From Hoyden About Town

I first learned about spoon theory when I was poking around reading up about lupus. Christine Miserandino, a person with lupus, was trying to answer a question by her friend. The friend had asked her what it was like being sick - not about her symptoms, but about what it was like being her. Stuck for a metaphor, Christine grabbed all the spoons off the table, and explained that every day, she had a very limited number of spoons, unlike a healthy person who has a near-unlimited spoon supply. Each spoon stood for one chunk of activity. The friend started out with 12 spoons, and had to run through a day, giving up one spoon for every thing she did: including getting up, dressing, showering, and so on. The friend was down to half her spoons before she’d got to work in the morning - and the light dawned. It dawned for me, too.

Every day, every moment, is a tradeoff. Every piece of activity has to be a conscious choice. Normals never have to choose between cooking and cleaning up, between showering and playing with their kid. Never have to think ahead to the weekend, and say “I’m having lunch with a friend on Saturday, so I have to keep Sunday completely free to recover.” Spoons are always my first thought when planning out my life.

Bad TV

If you want to see mediocre to subpar dancing, just watch Dancing with the Stars. I watched (what was apparently) the Paso Doble being danced to some crappy pop song. So, yeah, the music sucks too. I can't wait until So You Think You Can Dance comes back in the summer. A dance show with REAL dancers.

This weekend I watched The Devil Wears Prada and I must say, I quite enjoyed it. Guilty pleasure I guess. I knew it was going to be horrible going into it because it's about the fashion industry, if anyone asks what's wrong with the fashion industry should just watch this movie. One of the characters is on a diet where she doesn't "eat anything, and then when I feel like I'm going to faint I eat a cube of cheese." The woman was a stick. Another great line is when the main character's getting something to eat and the guy tells her the main ingriedient in corn chowder is cellulite and then she asks if any of the girls there eat and he says "Not since 2 became the new 4, and 0 the new 2." (is there a size below 0? Like infant sized?) She then says "Well, I'm a 6." "The new 14."

One of the reviewers on Netflix says it's a great movie for moms to take their daughters to! Yeah, that's all we need, women watching a movie that says their size is morbidly obese if they're over a size 2. ARGH!

Funny thing is, I almost went into fashion design. I rethought that again when a friend of mine at Parson's who was in fashion design told me that I should go into it because I made a lot of my clothes and dressed kind of eccentric and, for lack of a better word, hip. Watching this movie made me miss being fashionable, but I never fell into the idea that I had to dress up, there were plenty of times I wore baggy pants and t-shirts. I just don't feel the pull to dress like I usually (read: when I'm in a city) do here, but that part of me is not gone. I am just waiting to move somewhere. I have my whole wardrobe (if it still fits me, I only have one pair of pants that fits me now because I gained weight and could only afford one pair of pants from a thrift store.)

The movie did get me to thinking about my weight, or more accurately the weight I have recently gained. It worries me only because my boobs have gotten bigger. It's nice to have a tummy that kind of balances that out, but I've always been heavy on top and want no help in that area. Since I don't really want to diet, and water polo season's over, I guess I'm just going to have to get off my ass and exercise. My therapist tells me to do it all the time anyway. Maybe the movie's influencing me as well. I think the bigger issue is that I'd love to fit into my pants again because I can't afford to buy new ones. (and I have some pants I love for the nice weather.)

I don't recommend it to anyone who has any body image issues, which would be most of us. Unless you're a masochist like I apparently am.

And a funny

I just want to give up

school is just too overwhelming.

I can't concentrate.

I can't think.

I sort of don't care.

HELP!!

Anxiety & Water Polo

This weekend turned into a big old suck fest for me. I had a water polo tournament, which I'm usually excited about, but apparently some people on the team are unhappy with my frequent absences. I decided to tell one of the captains, who I am comfortable with, about my disability. Whole lotta fun, right? Well during our second game I had an anxiety attack, because the team had no confidence in me in my head. I'm a good goalie, and I am dedicated to the team. I'm amazed at how many practices I actually make it there for, between the depression, anxiety, muscle spasms, and migraines. She asked if she could tell the team, and I told her yes. I ditched out the last day, missing 2 games because I still felt fragile. I also had to avoid the team because I was having an anxiety attack. I didn't even shower or change after the game.

Water polo, when I'm playing, with a good coach, makes me feel on top of the world. I'm good, I know it, and the team is usually supportive. Losing that makes me feel like I should just quit, but knowing I can have that makes me miss it entirely. I don't know what to do. Now they know. Who knows what will happen. I guess the big question on my mind is should I keep at it? This may be my last year, and I have the option of missing a tournament making the next tournament my possible last one as goalie for this team, possibly ever if I don't go to grad school with a team or in a city with a masters club, who I'd feel more comfortable playing with as they are more my age then the college team.

I usually like snow

Today some of the physics lab TA's made a giant snow woman (complete with nipples) and a smaller snow man grabbing her ass. Do I need to point out why I hate them so much?

Also, some days I think that I didn't get re-evaluated for Disability (I had a review this year and I didn't have to go see one of their shrinks again.) because their psyciatrist diagnosed me as Borderline, just like the pyschiatrist at my doctor's office. Welcome to the wastebasket. (More on this and BPD later, as many of you know I am fond of blogging about.)

I apparently missed a post on bees and hives, and I'm happy to say my bubble is still intact, because I have no idea what ya'll are talking about.

You know what's fun...

...having crippling migraines the last 3 days of class then insomnia the weekend before finals

BPD

Because I once again have blown a friendship because of my chaotic and unstable behaviour I am giving you a refresher on what those of us with Borderline Personality Disorder experience:

-Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
-A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
-Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self
-Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating)
-Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior
-Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
-Chronic feelings of emptiness
-Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)
-Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms

It's not an excuse, but please those of you who know me, take this into consideration as I just can't deal with losing one more loved one due to my brain disorder.

Seriously, it takes me by surprise as much as you. I've been trying to contain it, controll it, all my life. Sometimes I'm doing just fine and then *BOOM* I spin out of control in a matter of minutes for god knows what reason. I can't predict it, I can't control it, and I certainly am failing miserably at dealing with it (at least when other people are involved). I'm trying my hardest everyday. I can't control the mood swings, the intense changes in behaviour. I wish I could, I really do. I'm so sick of feeling broken whenever my BPD flares up.

I'm dealing with it one moment at a time.

It's all anyone can really do.

Also: It's good to note that since I suffered abuse all my childhood my immediate reaction to a threatening situation is to run away, whether by dissociating or distance.

I always try and keep this stuff in mind when dealing with my friends; all I'm asking is that you all try to keep it in mind to if a friend of yours suffers from BPD (or PTSD, same symptoms in a lot of ways. Luckily I have both!). I guess that why my exroomie Christy and I are best friends. We both have BPD and PTSD. We get each other, we understand the craziness. But having friends who only have BPD or PTSd is somewhat limiting.

To everyone of my friends that has experienced this: I'm working on it, I really am. I apologise if I made you feel like shit. It's never my intention to hurt the people that I love. If I've shut down on you, well, that just happens. It's how my brain responds to stress.