Tree and flower sex, Hushed Whispers, blanket monster, new meds, and laying it on the table.

Hushed Whispers by Katorius on Deviant art.

Last night I began taking new depression medication. I'm not sure how that's going to go, but today I'm feeling pretty good. Well, aside from my OTC allergy medication not quite cutting it. It is that time of year when all the trees and flowers are having sex and spreading their yellow sex dust around. Every time I go to the car I see a thin yellow layer of it on the windshield. Still, I have far less trouble living in the Northwest than I did growing up in Kansas. But the last couple of days I have had watery eyes that somehow still feel like sandpaper every time I blink. On top of that, I suspect an algae bloom or something in the water because my stomach is not happy. The weather has also turned hot and sunny this week, thus I have turned on the air conditioner. 

Thorin loves to sleep with Amanda and I. Often times, he will sleep between us but lately, since it's been hot in our bedroom and we've not used blankets, he's been sleeping near my feet. Well, that's fine, until he attacks your toes and feet for daring to move. When there are no blankets, the blanket monster is on vacation, but try telling him that. So, not only is it hot in the bed, not only is Amanda a veritable furnace when she sleep, not only does she snore and laugh in her sleep, not only does she like to slip her hands under me and try to push me off the bed in her sleep, but Thorin likes to attack me. It is a miracle that I get any sleep.

Hushed Whispers, the art piece above, felt oddly appropriate today. Sometimes it feels like the characters from my stories are the phantom in the picture, whispering to me, trying to pull me in their direction, which is freaking awesome, except several are doing it all at once and I can't seem to decide who to go with. I get a little discombobulated with it all and sometimes even feel a little guilty when I am giving one set of characters attention over the others. To normal people that probably sounds absolutely bonkers, but if you are a writer, that might make sense or at least you might be able to sympathize. Needless to say I haven't written anything since I finished the fanfic story, but I have been going through some of my old stories, some of the short ones, and there's so much I want to play with. 

Okay, as uncomfortable as this is, I'm going to lay some things out on the table in the hopes that I can help myself get the ball rolling again. I'm trying to lose weight. At the moment I'm sitting at 403 lbs and with my pear shaped body (thank you Great Grandma Ester), I look more than frumpy. I've been given the "okay" by my doctor to start doing light exercise like walking and other things, so long as I don't aggravate the herniated disk in my lower back and I am to be careful of my core muscles because I should be finishing up the healing from the hysterectomy. Just because it was five small incisions, my abdominal wall was cut into and the doctor doesn't want me to get excited do some crunches or something and hurt myself. That said there are some sit and be fit exercises I want to look up and try and we blew up my yoga/palates ball for me to sit on. Funny story, I actually fell off it recently, or rather I lost my balance and rolled back into the sofa. I hit my back and got stuck and Amanda had to come and save me.  

So, I told Amanda no more fast food. If we are going to eat out, let's just go to a restaurant. It will cost more so we don't do it as much and it will be more enjoyable. Secondly, we have to cut down the portion size. It's hard sometimes. When I was having hormonal fluctuations with the PCOS and bleeding all the time, I could never get anything regulated. I am hoping that I can now. Speaking of, something weird is going on, I have been craving sweets. I have always been a salt person- as in eating it plain, but lately, I just want chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream every day. I'm a little weirded out by that.

Anyway, those are just some things I want to try working on or with. I am kind of hoping that I can lose some weight before m wedding. I have no high expectations, but if I could lose twenty lbs, that would be nice. I've got 4-5 months to do it in. 

Therapist, doctor, and The Goblin

Just to see if it worked, I added the Dramafever channel on my Roku and then perused the selection. When I stumbled on Goblin the lonely and Great God, I thought it looked really cute and decided it would be the show I tested to see if I could watch. Yep, I can watch stuff from Dramafever for free but it has a lot of repetitive and obnoxious commercials. The show is really cute by the way and if you like Korean Dramas or want to try one out, I think this one is going to be a good choice. 

Moving on. I went to my doctor's appointment this week. The verdict is that we are going to try me on another antidepressant medication and if I do well with it, she is going to put me on a weight loss medication in a month to get the ball rolling. I am able to begin exorcising but it has to be low impact and nothing that's going to work my core too much, but only for a little while longer. My doctor just wants to make sure everything is nice and healed up and that I don't aggravate the herniated disk in my lower back. When we were talking about my depression she mentioned that she thinks I have some PTSD from the whole mess with my cancer scare and the crap I went through with the gyno and getting the surgery. I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around all of that and now I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the notion of my having PTSD. 

So I talked to my therapist yesterday about it. She also thinks I have PTSD and not just from that but from a few other things. But I didn't that was possible. PTSD is for people who have been attacked or abused and most certainly for combat veterans. My therapist said yes to all of that but it's like there are certain type or varying degrees of PTSD. I talked to my Dad about it and he is of the impression that to say I have PTSD cheapens what happens to people like combat verterans- which was kind of how I felt in a way. He said that yes, I had had some trauma but it wasn't anything like what veterans have experienced. But on the other hand I am struggling what that too. It;s hard to explain. I'm not playing a victim card because I don't do that, I think I am too self depreciating to have that sort of thinking. However, in a lot of ways, I feel as if what I experienced and dealt with was just dismissed as nothing. And THAT is something that I am really having a problem with. That is something that I can't just keep sucking it up and getting on with my life about. I've been doing that for too long and its not okay. 

One of the assignments I had this week from my therapist was to write down what my depression monster says. So I did and these are the things I think whether I want to or not and more than that, these are things that get reinforced a good deal of the time, sometimes every day. 

You are worthless- the proof is in everything.

You have no right to complain and even if you did, no one really cares.

People like Amanda more than you, you know it in how they look at you and react.

People have already written you off.

You have no value. (this is even more so since you had to get a hysterectomy)

You will never be anything.   

You can work as hard as you want to lose weight, health mentally and emotionally, and even physically but it's not going to matter. 

You will never have control of anything in your life every again.

You are alone because no one will ever choose you and it doesn't matter how willing you are to jump up and help someone else. 

Why try to come out of your shell, no one will like the real you anyway. 

The most frustrating thing is that I know at least some of this isn't true but these thoughts run through my head all the time. I can't stop them and no matter how much I try to reason with myself that its just the depression, its really hard to shake this shit. 

Anyway, yeah, I'm having trouble a lot of this stuff but I am hoping the change in meds will help take the edge off so I can start getting back on my feet a little. 

Other than that, I have been down the last two days with a migraine. I ended up taking some meds and sleeping a little yesterday but then Amanda and I stayed up all night watching a scary movie. It was actually a little freaky so we had to watch something light so we could go to bed but ended up watching several episodes of something and then I had to take her to work. Oops!