Useless Ramblings

Maybe I'll start posting here again and avoid Zuckerberg's descent into AI-hype madness

It's my husbands birthday. He's 36. I was up before him and had made coffee and all that stuff so that when he got up I could give him cheerful happy birthday kisses and hugs. The birthday butt touches will happen before bed, as I forgot this morning and now the butt is on a chair and I can't reach it ;)

I'll be 34 in April.

We've been married about five years. Been together about nine.

I love him so much.

I was thinking the other day of the weird type of lies that are told about me. But it wasn’t so much about the lies, but WHERE the lies started and why.

And I realized, I’m cool with it.

I DO NOT like being lied about, to specify. I hate it. It’s a trigger, essentially. But I know it’s gonna happen.

The common one is that I’m bad at polyamory and I break couples up - I’ve apparently ended more relationships than I realized.

But the origin of a lot of those breakups was one person realizing the other was abusive.

See, abuse, specifically the subtle types of gaslighting and emotional abuse and such, is a hot point for me. I post a lot about it, I share research and articles, I defend my friends against it, etc. It’s because of MY OWN history with it and the damage I’ve felt and seen that I feel so passionately about it.

So you know what? If a friend read my posts on abuse, and from those, realized they were being abused and left their abuser? Then you know what, fuck it. Yeah. It’s “my fault”. Go ahead and blame me if you want to. I’m proud that I helped an abuse victim escape their situation, even indirectly. If abusers want to spread lies about how I broke up their happy relationships, then that’s on them. Their victims are happier now, and I have no guilt or regret about that.

The existential crises I've been facing lately are all about what I DO. Or what's been taken away. I've lost art (even if it's temporarily), I've lost dancing, I've lost working, driving.

But I've not lost ME.

It's something I need to remind myself of a lot. I am a force in and of myself, without having to DO a damn thing. I have the heart and soul of a fighter, a warrior, a Valkyrie. Everything is set against me, trying to stop me? It's only stopping activities. It's stopping things. It's not stopping ME.

Keep trying, pain. Keep trying, disability. Some days I'll feel like you're winning. But those are just small little battles, little skirmishes where you look to be the victor. In the long run, the war is mine. I own this battlefield and I'll never let you forget that again.

My shoulder is in so much pain. So much. I knew eventually this would happen, using a cane for 10 years catches up to you. I have an MRI next month, and I want my VA doctor to help me make the argument that because it’s from the cane use that it IS related to my disability and SHOULD be considered when I try to get my percentage raised… because… I can’t draw. I miss art, it is physically and emotionally gutwrenching to not draw. Without art? All the money I get is is from disability which is only at 20%. I can’t live on that. I’m terrified. How am I going to pay my mortgage? My bills? Will our water be turned off? My husband has an okay salary but a lot of debt so he can’t take over all the bills for me and even if he did I’d be so overcome with guilt that I’d have an anxiety breakdown of epic proportions. So after my shoulder MRI I want to schedule an updated hip and leg MRI (no matte how painful it’ll be (they tape my feet in an awkward position to see the hip joint better and it is BRUTALLY painful and lasts forever)) so the VA can see how horribly my injury has progressed in the last few years. I want my doc to write up how bad it’s gotten since she sees me pretty regularly. I want to FIGHT for more coverage just so I can pay my bills and have enough left over to do things like “pay for my own damn food once in a while” and “not have anxiety/panic attacks every time I see an e-mail from the bank because I assume I’m overdrawn again”

I have a birthday coming up next month. I hate that I want to ask people just to send money. I feel miserable about it. That a time of celebration is just me hoping it might help me survive.

I can’t put the burden of all these finances on my husband. Both because he has other financial things to worry about, and because it makes me anxious as his partner to feel so… “unequal”… there’s a sense of… I don’t know… “loss of power”? Imbalance. When you feel financially strapped to another person you give them the power to utterly destroy you. I know he wouldn’t. But that fear would still be there. To worry that I’ll become a burden to him, that I’ll feel like just another financial responsibility to stress him out. He insists he would never feel like this, but I know he also has his own anxiety to battle with and there might be feelings he can’t help.

I can’t drive. I can’t work. Now with my shoulder pain I can’t even do commissions or comics so that money’s out.

I don’t know what to do.

Part of me wants to find some way to “take advantage” of the political tenseness right now and contact some senator or congressman or something and be all “look I’m a veteran and can’t survive, helping will make you look good with voting coming up” but I feel ugly and awful turning to that. I might eventually be desperate enough, scared enough. But… ugh.

I feel like I’m losing so much. I don’t want to lose my house. I don’t want to lose my husband. I don’t want to end up homeless and starving and alone because my partners just can’t financially carry their useless disabled partner…

I feel sick to my stomach right now. I want to cry but the pain is so overwhelming I don’t have the energy required to cry.

I’m scared.

2016 is already the year of "Shinga is finding style again"

( pics )

So far so good. More thrift store shopping, more being sexy for no other reason than "I want to" (though that second pic was for a very romantic date, so okay that was a pretty good reason)

Yeah. Is good. <3

This is my last week of physical therapy. I have a check-up on Friday to sort of test my progress but I'll probably ask for a range of motion test sometime this week with the folks in the physical therapy section of things, since the doctor might not do that. I know a couple of weeks ago they said it was already improving. And the pain has lessened immensely, while my upper back has gotten a lot stronger (which has done wonders for my posture as well)

I've learned so much. How to use muscles correctly, how to properly stretch and work them, even some tips on how to handle my hips' scar tissue pain (which, since it was unrelated to the accident, they didn't need to do for me but wanted to)

I might ask them on Friday to check my insurance, see if I can be covered to come back at LEAST once a month just to keep learning, keep growing, keep shaping myself like a sculpture. I can see a difference in the mirror. I can feel the difference, and not just physically. There's a change in my demeanor, and I'm not the only one noticing it. I'm more confident, I'm less stressed. I mean, I'm still stressed, but... it's not nearly so bad.

Skipping two appointments last week to spend some time in Houston with the boyfriend may not look smart from the outside, but that was necessary too. I needed a change of scenery, and a few days of nothing but peace and a lack of worry. I didn't have my scanner and wacom pen within eyesight, mocking me daily. I didn't have unfinished work looming over my head. Boyfriend happily paid for things this time around (whereas I normally grab the check before he can get to it when we go out to eat)

There was a noticeable difference when I got home. Less tense, less angry, less... everything negative. I'm still tired. Well, that might not be related to much of anything, I started shark week like the DAY I left Houston. So this last week of PT I'm playing in hard mode. ;)

Will bought me some simple headphones so I'm bringing the ipad with me to PT to listen to music while I do the cardio part in the beginning. I know myself... get the right music going and I will work up a sweat and have my heartrate right where they want it in no time xD

Maybe once I get some better income I can get a bathing suit that fits and come back to try their aquatic exercises too, to get more of the legs and hips moving.

I don't know. This whole experience may have started out shitty. I mean, who WANTS a car accident? But... it's changing how I look at myself. How I look at my body. Slowly I'm beginning to see my body as mine a little better. It's become such a separate entity in my mind that I was beginning to blame it, hate it, see it as an enemy. I always referred to my body and pain as something I was fighting all the time. Which worked for coping for a while, but... I need to work on not doing it as much. Because it's part of me, and something I need to relearn how to love and work on instead of hating and fighting.

I'm already excited for October. On the 1st is my anniversary, also the second-to-last PT appointment, and Will and I have reservations to a lovely restaurant in Denton. I wish to hell I had some spending money so I could grab a nice dress at a thrift store for the occasion. It's not a huge anniversary or anything, but it's been a while since he and I really celebrated it beyond a small gift or card or something.

<3 A lot of crappy stuff has gone down this month. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is usually bullshit, but this time... this time it's been true.

So, I'll be frank. I wouldn't be crippled right now, ten years after the fact, if it wasn't for physical therapy utterly ruining me. Yes there were other factors, but physical therapy blatantly ignoring where my pain ACTUALLY was and "treating" an injury that wasn't there tore my muscles to shreds and has left me a pain-ridden useless blob covered hip to feet in muscle scar tissue.

Tomorrow I start physical therapy for something else entirely... my neck, upper back, and shoulders. These pains from the car wreck have been keeping me from drawing, chores, basically anything with the upper body. Considering I'm already fucked out of my LOWER body... well let's say I'm stressed.

And fucking terrified.

I've had nightmares about this place for ten years. Terrified of talking about it, like saying it out loud would be some kind of bloody mary/beetlejuice bullshit and suddenly they'll magically find paperwork that they messed up and they'll force me to go back and I'll be stuck there forever, breaking more and more every day as they force physical punishments I can't endure, "therapy" that makes it worse, etc. It's illogical but that's pretty much what ptsd does to you, folks. This was a traumatic 6 months that's not left me for 10 years.

So even though the therapists I'm meeting tomorrow are civilians, in a really good facility with good reviews, and for an area of my body that ISN'T the crippled part... I'm still scared. Terrified. Worried. It might not make sense, logically. I'm arguing with myself so much. But it's there. I'm scared that they'll have no empathy, no kindness. I'm scared they'll ignore me and force me to do things that harm me permanently. I'm scared... I'm scared to lose the biggest thing I have left. Art.

I predict that none of this will be happen. These next four weeks of therapy will make my neck/back/shoulders stronger than ever. I'll be confident and I'll grow from it so much. I'll be back to drawing in no time.

But it doesn't erase the terror. It doesn't make it so I can name the place that broke me, because I still fear the name.

... It's okay that I'm scared. Fear doesn't make me weak. But tomorrow afternoon that fear won't stop me. I'll walk into that office and I'll meet who I'm working with and we'll fight this new pain together and it will be an entirely different experience. I'll be wiser from my old experience... if they turn out to be assholes, I'll leave. Cancel my appointments. Find another office... because I can. I'm allowed to do that.

I control the next four weeks. I'm not trapped. I'm not forced. I'm not threatened and abused and mocked and alone.

I'm terrified, but that's not going to stop me. I can't lose art too. I can't. But even if I did, I'll find something else. I'll survive, and thrive, no matter what the world throws at me. That place... the one that tried to destroy me from the inside out. I'm not there anymore. They can't hurt me. I don't ever need to go back.

I'll win this.

In a good deal of pain. It spiked really badly at Panoptikon last night. I still had a good time despite this. The drive home was brutal. Had to take two heavy-duty meds to sleep through the pain.

Woke up late. We went car shopping, which was already the plan with Will but we took Roq as well considering his car might be totaled now. We tested a Mini Countryman and a Jeep Renegade. Leaning towards the second, mainly because of price. I slightly preferred the Mini but it's Will who will be driving it and making the payments so the Jeep is absolutely fine by me too.

Overheated while at the Jeep dealership though. It was really hot out and we spent too much time standing around in the boiling parking lot. That and pain and dehydration... I gave up and waited in the car with the A/C blasting.

After finishing up with the cars we had pho for lunch. It was really good and gave me just enough energy to be able to handle the drive to our friends' place for a party. Unfortunately the pain, dehydration, overheating and just general exhaustion made me sleep pretty much the whole time I was there. I felt bad, because I really did want to socialize. Right at the end of our time at the party I did what I could to at least make the rounds and talk as much as I could handle.

There was a second party nearer to home, a friend's birthday. I really really wanted to go, but... we stopped at the house so I could take my evening meds and I realized I was just too tired, in too much pain, too drained... just couldn't handle more people. Will and Roq both pointed out that there was a hot tub at this party that might help the whiplash pain stuff but I pointed out to them that I overheated today and sitting in a hot tub in August, even though it's night-time, is a god-awful idea. MAYBE I'll take a bath tonight or tomorrow. We'll see.

I have a massage scheduled later in the week. I also need to get checked out in general... neck and shoulders and upper back hurt like hell. Also want to get an ultrasound around my lower abdomen. I'm spotting... which could be because I'm ovulating and I have the IUD but considering how roughly the seatbelt dug in I worry the IUD is out of place and causing bleeding. That's PROBABLY not it, it would likely hurt and be bleeding a lot more. But I still want to make sure everything in that general area is okay.

Ugh. I just want to fall asleep and wake up healed.