Over It - Warning: big pessimistic whinge
Aug. 29th, 2012 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redback_bites23WARNING: Big pessimistic whinge coming up.
There are people who will read this who will be all sympathetic and want to offer advice. Well you know what, I don’t want it, people have been giving me advice for months. I’m sick of it. I’m over everything at the moment. Why? Because I’m over my stupid, repulsive body and the pain and grief it’s been causing me for about a year now. I must acknowledge that there are people who deal with far worse than me, which I remind myself of often. But at the end of the day I feel like shit and I’m sick to death of the daily pretence of everything being fine and good and I think I’m entitled to complain (now and again).
My body started to give me grief about a year ago. My periods started to go all out of whack and all over the shop. I ended up being in pain often, too often. I just thought that was normal, that it was ‘my age’. I hesitated about going to the doctor, and oh, did I say I fucking hate doctors (except for the doctors at my work who are awesome and a few other rare ones who actually listen). I hesitated because I didn’t trust that I would get anywhere by going. So I waited until I thought had a ‘reasonable’ amount of symptons before going along. When I did my doctor told me that I shouldn’t be in so much pain and she prescribed me the contraceptive pill as the first step. She also sent me off for some blood tests. All the tests came up as fine. I did have a low thyroid function, which I had to have more tests for about 6 weeks later, in that time it rectified itself.
Anyway, that was at the beginning of the year and really nothing is better. I’ve had a range of tests and everything is fine. For this I am grateful. I am grateful that there has been no revealing of cancer or any other revolting, horrible things that other people have had to endure. So why the fuck is my uterous still giving me so much pain?
Over the months the whole ‘thing’ has given me so much grief. I have felt depressed often to a point where I just wish I wasn’t alive anymore. I’ve felt lonely and isolated and like I don’t have any friends that give a shit. The effect on my mental health has lead me to question many things about myself, my friendships and my relationships. Mostly in a very negative sense. Of course no one loves me, I have no friends, the LGBTI community sucks, is completely unwelcoming of me and who I am. No one invites me to coffee or anything, it only happens if I do the organising. And then if I do do the organising no one fucking bothers to come. Of course I logically know that most of this is not true that, that is my negative thoughts and not true at all.
Another contributing factor to my awesomeness is that I have absolutely no energy. Of course I know about the spoon ‘thing’. One of my partners told me about it some time ago. http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/ I’ve been working with this idea for a while. The idea simply being that you choose where to put your energy. I decided a while ago that I could only manage one social ‘event’ a week. This being the case it also contributes to how much time I get to spend with friends.
Of course a lot of what I said previously about friends is imagined, I have ‘lost’ some friends in the last few years but more recently I have managed to ‘find’ some lovely new people/friends. The problem here is that I can’t seem to get it together to spend time with them and I have to keep putting it off. This means I’ve become one of these vile people who says they will do something, catch up or whatever and never does. Or constantly lets people down. It’s also difficult to say to new friends, ‘oh I’d love to come, I’ll just need to let you know because I don’t know how feral I will be on that day’. So there’s some awesome people, who probably think I have no interest in them whatsoever and pretty soon I probably will stop getting invitations from them too. I am also very much an introvert and all of this is making me become quite phobic of socialising in groups because I’m not getting any practise and often the energy needed to do larger groups requires too many spoons.
I hate the impact I feel this this has had on my intimate relationships. Sure my partners keep telling me they love me and give me all the supportive words they can at the appropriate times. But I feel like shit. I feel like I let them down constantly because I can’t be myself. I am cranky and irritable and give them a hard time too often. The partner I live with has also had health issues and this has made everything harder for both of us. Being unwell has caused a lot strain. I keep telling the other partner who lives overseas that she is lucky she doesn’t have to be around me. That if she knew what I was really like then maybe she wouldn’t really want to be with me. I met her at the beginning of all this and she has never known me any other way. Conducting not only a new relationship, but one that is also at a distance and the fact that I am polyamorous has been very hard. I feel like I’m hard work for both my partners and often feel guilty for this.
I really love my job which I also started about the time I started to feel unwell. Much of how I feel about other areas of my life applies to my work. I have been fortunate during the time I have been in my new job to apply for and successfully get a promotion. I feel like I have had so much time off work and that I am unreliable there that it bothers me a lot. The balancing of sick leave, time bank and annual leave is all very tricky and something I have to watch constantly. Although one of my staff told me that she thinks I’m a good role model as far as self care goes. I guess that is something. My manager also keeps telling me what I good job I do. Despite these difficulties I think work is the only place I feel fully empowered at the moment, it would be good to have full energy to really be able to do my job as I’d like.
I perform, I do drag king performance and burlesque. I started the burlesque in part to help myself feel better. To feel better about being feminine and attractive. I had some determination in ‘all this’ to try to make myself feel better, to beat it. Even though I had so much self loathing going on, and I really hate my body and at times don’t want anyone to touch me. I thought I will fake it until I make it. I will dress up to the nines and ‘pretend’ I look good. I will defy my body, because I won’t let it make me feel like shit. This has helped a bit at times. What often helps more is the actual burlesque classes and involvement. This is because it brings fun and social interaction.
As all of this is going on, the months are going by and I’m trying really hard in every way to feel OK about myself, but it’s been difficult, it’s hard to maintain and have resilience. I have been to the doctor(s) numerous times and things haven’t worked. Every time I’ve had a test or tried a new medication I have hoped I will feel better, but nothing seems to have any significant impact. I have also tried homeopathy (which is something I believe strongly in), I visit an osteopath regularly, and I’ve had massages. Every time something new is tried there is a gap of a few months between to see if it works. Every time I’ve been to the doctor I talk about being tired and how it’s been ‘doing my head in’, but I haven’t necessarily felt listened to. I have told the doctors continually that in my family there is a history of early peri menopause, but that feels like it’s not been taken seriously. It was only fairly recently that one of them said that is what it might be. I understand that different ‘things’ need to be tried out and they need time. I understand that get rid of the pain and probably the rest will follow. But understanding something isn’t helpful when I’m dealing with consequences of it all.
I am really fucking over having to pretend all the time I am ok. I’m tired of having to ‘make up excuses’ for things, for not going to things or whatever. They aren’t excuses but it begins to feel like that’s how it’s taken by others. It’s vastly annoying if you say you are exhausted and someone else says, ‘oh I know what that’s like’ and gives some stupid example which indicates they don’t have a clue. It’s also annoying if you say something like ‘I feel old’ and you get fucking stupid responses like, ‘you don’t look old at all’... I know I don’t fuckwit, I said I feel it. Or ‘do you have a problem with young people?’...oh course I don’t I said I feel old, I didn’t say I hate youth. Or people telling you how great you look, on days you feel terrible and if you say you feel terrible they look at you like you’re lying. I’m tired of the constant disappointment about really looking forward to attending some social event and then not being able to go. I’m just over it, over it all.
There are people who will read this who will be all sympathetic and want to offer advice. Well you know what, I don’t want it, people have been giving me advice for months. I’m sick of it. I’m over everything at the moment. Why? Because I’m over my stupid, repulsive body and the pain and grief it’s been causing me for about a year now. I must acknowledge that there are people who deal with far worse than me, which I remind myself of often. But at the end of the day I feel like shit and I’m sick to death of the daily pretence of everything being fine and good and I think I’m entitled to complain (now and again).
My body started to give me grief about a year ago. My periods started to go all out of whack and all over the shop. I ended up being in pain often, too often. I just thought that was normal, that it was ‘my age’. I hesitated about going to the doctor, and oh, did I say I fucking hate doctors (except for the doctors at my work who are awesome and a few other rare ones who actually listen). I hesitated because I didn’t trust that I would get anywhere by going. So I waited until I thought had a ‘reasonable’ amount of symptons before going along. When I did my doctor told me that I shouldn’t be in so much pain and she prescribed me the contraceptive pill as the first step. She also sent me off for some blood tests. All the tests came up as fine. I did have a low thyroid function, which I had to have more tests for about 6 weeks later, in that time it rectified itself.
Anyway, that was at the beginning of the year and really nothing is better. I’ve had a range of tests and everything is fine. For this I am grateful. I am grateful that there has been no revealing of cancer or any other revolting, horrible things that other people have had to endure. So why the fuck is my uterous still giving me so much pain?
Over the months the whole ‘thing’ has given me so much grief. I have felt depressed often to a point where I just wish I wasn’t alive anymore. I’ve felt lonely and isolated and like I don’t have any friends that give a shit. The effect on my mental health has lead me to question many things about myself, my friendships and my relationships. Mostly in a very negative sense. Of course no one loves me, I have no friends, the LGBTI community sucks, is completely unwelcoming of me and who I am. No one invites me to coffee or anything, it only happens if I do the organising. And then if I do do the organising no one fucking bothers to come. Of course I logically know that most of this is not true that, that is my negative thoughts and not true at all.
Another contributing factor to my awesomeness is that I have absolutely no energy. Of course I know about the spoon ‘thing’. One of my partners told me about it some time ago. http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/ I’ve been working with this idea for a while. The idea simply being that you choose where to put your energy. I decided a while ago that I could only manage one social ‘event’ a week. This being the case it also contributes to how much time I get to spend with friends.
Of course a lot of what I said previously about friends is imagined, I have ‘lost’ some friends in the last few years but more recently I have managed to ‘find’ some lovely new people/friends. The problem here is that I can’t seem to get it together to spend time with them and I have to keep putting it off. This means I’ve become one of these vile people who says they will do something, catch up or whatever and never does. Or constantly lets people down. It’s also difficult to say to new friends, ‘oh I’d love to come, I’ll just need to let you know because I don’t know how feral I will be on that day’. So there’s some awesome people, who probably think I have no interest in them whatsoever and pretty soon I probably will stop getting invitations from them too. I am also very much an introvert and all of this is making me become quite phobic of socialising in groups because I’m not getting any practise and often the energy needed to do larger groups requires too many spoons.
I hate the impact I feel this this has had on my intimate relationships. Sure my partners keep telling me they love me and give me all the supportive words they can at the appropriate times. But I feel like shit. I feel like I let them down constantly because I can’t be myself. I am cranky and irritable and give them a hard time too often. The partner I live with has also had health issues and this has made everything harder for both of us. Being unwell has caused a lot strain. I keep telling the other partner who lives overseas that she is lucky she doesn’t have to be around me. That if she knew what I was really like then maybe she wouldn’t really want to be with me. I met her at the beginning of all this and she has never known me any other way. Conducting not only a new relationship, but one that is also at a distance and the fact that I am polyamorous has been very hard. I feel like I’m hard work for both my partners and often feel guilty for this.
I really love my job which I also started about the time I started to feel unwell. Much of how I feel about other areas of my life applies to my work. I have been fortunate during the time I have been in my new job to apply for and successfully get a promotion. I feel like I have had so much time off work and that I am unreliable there that it bothers me a lot. The balancing of sick leave, time bank and annual leave is all very tricky and something I have to watch constantly. Although one of my staff told me that she thinks I’m a good role model as far as self care goes. I guess that is something. My manager also keeps telling me what I good job I do. Despite these difficulties I think work is the only place I feel fully empowered at the moment, it would be good to have full energy to really be able to do my job as I’d like.
I perform, I do drag king performance and burlesque. I started the burlesque in part to help myself feel better. To feel better about being feminine and attractive. I had some determination in ‘all this’ to try to make myself feel better, to beat it. Even though I had so much self loathing going on, and I really hate my body and at times don’t want anyone to touch me. I thought I will fake it until I make it. I will dress up to the nines and ‘pretend’ I look good. I will defy my body, because I won’t let it make me feel like shit. This has helped a bit at times. What often helps more is the actual burlesque classes and involvement. This is because it brings fun and social interaction.
As all of this is going on, the months are going by and I’m trying really hard in every way to feel OK about myself, but it’s been difficult, it’s hard to maintain and have resilience. I have been to the doctor(s) numerous times and things haven’t worked. Every time I’ve had a test or tried a new medication I have hoped I will feel better, but nothing seems to have any significant impact. I have also tried homeopathy (which is something I believe strongly in), I visit an osteopath regularly, and I’ve had massages. Every time something new is tried there is a gap of a few months between to see if it works. Every time I’ve been to the doctor I talk about being tired and how it’s been ‘doing my head in’, but I haven’t necessarily felt listened to. I have told the doctors continually that in my family there is a history of early peri menopause, but that feels like it’s not been taken seriously. It was only fairly recently that one of them said that is what it might be. I understand that different ‘things’ need to be tried out and they need time. I understand that get rid of the pain and probably the rest will follow. But understanding something isn’t helpful when I’m dealing with consequences of it all.
I am really fucking over having to pretend all the time I am ok. I’m tired of having to ‘make up excuses’ for things, for not going to things or whatever. They aren’t excuses but it begins to feel like that’s how it’s taken by others. It’s vastly annoying if you say you are exhausted and someone else says, ‘oh I know what that’s like’ and gives some stupid example which indicates they don’t have a clue. It’s also annoying if you say something like ‘I feel old’ and you get fucking stupid responses like, ‘you don’t look old at all’... I know I don’t fuckwit, I said I feel it. Or ‘do you have a problem with young people?’...oh course I don’t I said I feel old, I didn’t say I hate youth. Or people telling you how great you look, on days you feel terrible and if you say you feel terrible they look at you like you’re lying. I’m tired of the constant disappointment about really looking forward to attending some social event and then not being able to go. I’m just over it, over it all.
