#8 - starting over

[sanmagic7]

thanks, rainy - so do i.   

last nite i actually did sleep - i had enough meds in me during the day, so i think that helped - and honestly, it makes all the difference. some of my anxiety at night about not being able to sleep and end up feeling the way i did yesterday really gets in the way of being able to fall asleep and stay asleep.  it's such a vicious circle!  so, i'm hoping to be more at ease tonite after having one good night of sleep.  fingers crossed!

Working on the stuff w/ my ex has continued to bring up childhood stuff.  it's where it all began, after all, and i'm seeing more and more how what i learned as a kid has made such an impact on choices and decisions i've made throughout my life.  it's part of the reason i've stayed too long in terrible relationships, why i've believed i could be 99% of what anyone in my life has needed if i just said and done the 'right' things, and why i've tolerated abysmal treatment from people day after day after day for years and years.

i've also seen how these attitudes have been part of my survival mechanism through the years. so much of the push and pull of what i'd been taught in childhood was absolutely schizophrenic-making  --  be honest/lie about certain things.  family is always there for you/if you get pregnant, i'll send you away to a home for girls 'in trouble'. be good/show some spunk (which included breaking the rules from time to time). you're not an 'average' child/ perfect grades aren't acknowledged or celebrated.

those are some examples of having to live in two opposing worlds at once and making myself fit into both of them at the same time.  no wonder i've been more afraid of losing my sanity than of actually dying physically!  i've been expected to do the impossible for so long, i believed i had to do just that in every situation in which i found myself. 

ok, i just found myself overwhelmed by all that.  time to go.

[Hope67]

Hi SanMagic,
Firstly a big hug for you 
It's good that you were able to sleep last night, and fingers crossed for another good night of sleep for tonight! 
I can see what you mean about the contrasting push and pull of those attitudes you listed - really tough for a young girl/young woman to work her way through all of that!  Two opposing worlds - understandable that you felt over-whelmed thinking back on that. 

You are always so supportive to others here, and I wanted to say how kind and caring you are - and that I hope you know that you're cared about too.   
Hope 

[Not Alone]

i've also seen how these attitudes have been part of my survival mechanism through the years. so much of the push and pull of what i'd been taught in childhood was absolutely schizophrenic-making  --  be honest/lie about certain things.  family is always there for you/if you get pregnant, i'll send you away to a home for girls 'in trouble'. be good/show some spunk (which included breaking the rules from time to time). you're not an 'average' child/ perfect grades aren't acknowledged or celebrated.

That sounds crazy-making, San.

[Tee]

  San your lady post is exactly what I'm working through as well dealing with how to be perfect for a NM who was night and day different if anyone else was around. Or if she was surprise in a good mood.  Which lead to looking for love and acceptance in other forms and nevertheless feeling like it was safe to tell anyone when something wasn't right.  The horror story of my Life started so young I'm sorry yours did too.  Here with a giant hug of understanding and patience and love 

[sanmagic7]

hope, i appreciate you more than you could know.  thank you

notalone, i do believe it is crazy-making behavior, and i'm not sure how i've come thru w/ my sanity mostly intact.  with a lot of help, for sure.  part of that help has been from you.  thanks for the validation

tee, for some reason, as young as this all started for us, we made it thru. thanks for all the gifts you've give me.

election day tomorrow here in the states, and my anxiety is so high, i can hardly bear it.  just trying to get thru today, have no idea what will happen tomorrow.  i do talk to my t in the morning, so i'll talk to her about it.  i know she'll help settle me down.  this is the most outrageous, the roughest election i've ever gone thru, and i've been pretty political for a lot of my younger life.  this one, however, takes the cake.  and i don't like what it's doing to me, not one bit.

[Bach]

The election is just awful!  There's way too much unsettling energy in the air, coming from all sides.  It's definitely taking its toll on me, and, I daresay, on pretty much everyone whether they realise it or not.  I guess I must be healthier now than I was four years ago because although the doom spiral doesn't feel any less oppressive, I haven't had to use as many drugs to deal with it.  I'm hoping there will be at least some easing of the tension once election day is over and the votes have been cast one way or the other.

So many hugs, dear san   

[Tee]

  tomorrow will still come no matter what the out come of tonight is. I can't watch the results any more.  If your still watching.  Here is some tea to help calm and a weighted blanket.  Big hugs.  Life will continue. No matter which pompous idiot is the White House?  Hugs.

[sanmagic7]

thank you for all the hugs, dear bach. when i saw them, i felt warm inside.  they were wonderful!

tee, you know, i said something similar to my d the other day.  her anxiety had spiked terribly, and i told her that the next day would either be different or the same, and if it was the same we'd get thru it.  she said it helped.  thank you for seeing it so similarly to my perspective. 

yesterday was quite a bad day, just trying to get thru the stress and tension.  2 cigarettes bad, and the urge is there right now to have one this morning in order to release some of the tension i've been holding.  i've been thru a lot of pres. elections, but never one like this. one thing that hit me a couple days ago was that we in this country were on the brink of a possibility of having a woman of color as the vice-president.  that is, indeed, historical.

nothing final yet, so i'm still quite full of negativity.  this has been a gut-wrenching few days, the likes of which i've never known for an election.  i'll be so glad when it's over.

my t is moving from a county clinic to private practice, and when i talked to her on tues., most of which was about my stress levels about the election, she asked if i'd be willing to be her first appt. in her new practice.  i told her i'd be honored, and we both just laughed with glee.  she'd told me about it before, so i knew it was coming.  nothing will change, even tho she'll be moving to another town.  we've done well on the phone since the pandemic deemed it much, much safer for me to stay home, so her location is not a concern.

so far, the trazadone has not been bothering me, altho i think i need to up the dose in order to sleep longer.  still waking up after a few hours, but last night i was able to go back to sleep, so that's good.  and,  no nightmares for a while, so that's good, too.  plus, it has anti-anxiety, anti-dep, and insomnia-easing properties.  i know it's an old med, been around a long time, but it seems that my legs aren't bothered by it like they have been with some of the newer meds i've tried.  one can only hope.

[marta1234]

  San, sending you so much support through these stressful times. I'm not in the us currently, but I can totally understand how this event is affecting lots of people negatively. Sending you much support and love so you can at least get through the day, however that looks for you 

[sanmagic7]

marta,, so sweet of you.  i appreciate the support so much    

especially because today we found out by accident that the owner put our house up for sale, didn't tell us, they're having a showing tuesday.  both my d and i are completely wrecked.  back to cigs, coffee, xanax, and pizza for a splurge.  we watched some dopey movies just to give our brains a break, but tonite i find myself so stressed out i can hardly bear it -- again!  hard to breathe, my throat feels tight, my eyes are stretched, and i'm beyond knowing what to do.

i don't hold out any hope - even if someone buys it, they don't have to honor our lease, which ends next july, and can give us 90 days if they want us out. we're quite sure we won't qualify for a loan to buy it, i'm on a fixed income and she doesn't make much more than i do, if at all some months.  and if the new owners decide to buy it as an investment, there's no guarantee they won't raise the rent, which we wouldn't be able to afford.  we learned all this today only because we put in a work order.  otherwise, who knows if/when we might've found out.

we're flucked every way to sunday. don't know if either of us will get much sleep tonite.  i'm having a hard time believing it.  plus, the election still isn't over, might not be over till next week, and some of the results are being taken to court.  it's such a mess, and that's how i feel.  right now, i'm hating life, am only hanging on because of my daughter.  i would never do that to her.  but, the thought of packing and moving again makes me sick to my stomach. 

[Blueberry]

 

[sanmagic7]

blueberry, those hugs, at this moment, really warmed my heart.  thank you so much.

well, the election is over, and that, in itself is such a relief. now i can go about doing what's necessary to move forward. we've already begun looking at apartments that might be available, and kind of reset ourselves to deal with what we're seeing as the inevitable.  i know there must be a reason for us to leave this house that we don't really see right now, and i have to have faith in that.  this house has a lot of fundamental issues wrong with it, and it might be that. i don't know, but we could be in for some major repairs, well, more than 'could be'. we're talking foundation and walls that we wouldn't have enough money to fix.

anyway, whatever the reason, i can only make the best of what's happening. my d has dreamed of owning her own house, and it's difficult for me to have to see her struggling, as she has her entire life, with another dream possibly shattered.  still, once again, it's out of our hands to do anything meaningful except to accept and move on.  i've already owned 3 houses by the skin of my teeth, have had to walk away from all of them because of the relationships that evolved inside them.  each one of them has been what i believed to be an end goal, someplace to live out my life, and none of them have worked that way.

*sigh*

[Sceal]

Glad to hear that the election is over, and that you've now got a new president. I can't imagine how it must be like over there now. With everything going on. In the country and with you.

I can relate to your daughter's dream of owning your own home. To have a place that is yours. That no tenant can come and kick you out, or tell you what you can and cannot do in your own home. Even if this house isn't it, maybe there's another one around the corner that you don't know about yet. One that doesn't have foundational problems.

Sending you some thoughts and warm hugs tonight, San.
hopefully this election is the start of something better.

[Not Alone]

That is a lot that is happening. 

[sanmagic7]

sceal, thank you for the thoughts and warmth.  much appreciated.   

notalone, thank you for the validation.  it really helps.   

things have not gotten better. i'm smoking again, not really eating, we've got people coming in to look at the house in an hour - i placed a request w/ ;the realtor that no one touch anything unless they're wearing gloves, and if they do touch something that she would sanitize it all before they leave.  i'm too old and sick to have to clean up after possible covid carriers.

we do have a case manager thru the county who will help us find out about tenant rights, and if the 90-day eviction is a real thing.  she would also have access to legal aid and help us relocate if it comes to that.  right now my d is way too stressed to even think of making the call.  we haven't heard if we're eligible for a loan, and that 's been hanging in the air for 2 months.

talked to my t all about it this morning - the last things she told me was that she prescribes cigs for me right now.  i nearly started crying cuz when my d and i went to the store to get them yesterday, a wave of self-hate washed over me that i'm down in this non-coping place again.  when i told her, she put her arm around me, said 'i don't hate you, mom'.  it was so sweet and just so caring.  and my t on top of that.  it really keeps the self-hate at bay.

so, waiting on pins and noodles till these people arrive.  we also had someone in to look at the water seepage in my d's room, which is getting worse.  we'd been told by others who've looked at it to use a de-humidifier, a fan, turn on the heat - basically, put a band-aid on a broken bone.  this guy went up on the roof, said that's where the problem was, and it would have to get inspected from below as well. i told him that i was afraid of mold, that my d might be breathing spores.  always play the concerned mom and bring forth dire consequences in order to finally get something done.  i've learned that from previous situations that have pertained to health or life and death.

just got off the phone, vented my complaints to the management person, who also told us, 1/2 hr. before the visitors were due to arrive that the showing was canceled. dang, mental health concerns are a gritch when faced with this stuff.  but, i got a few good shots in, and she listened, told me that she's discovering a lot of similar complaints about the properties owned by whoever owns this bunch of rental properties.  so, for right now, we're simply in another holding pattern.  this is so wearing!

the ongoing election litigations are also stressful, and we're having to live thru them at the same time. is this all worse because of c-ptsd issues? absolutely. no doubt in my mind. all this stuff piling up on each other is bad enough if i was sound of mind and emotions.  w/ cptsd, it's so much worse.  feels like the rug keeps being yanked out from under us, sometimes on a week to week basis. dang, not 2 months ago, we were evacuating because of the fires, and everything that went along with that.  it's just too much.