Count Down Begins

I finally finished my paperwork and googled the clinic for directions. I really can't believe that I have to do this and I'm terrified that I'll either get bad news or nothing when I go. I don't want to be told I need more tests before I can be told anything because I feel like there must be enough in my file by now to tell me a few things. 8 white blood cells were found in my spinal cord fluid when I had my lumbar puncture. Your immune system is not supposed to get through the blood brain barrier so this is a red flag. There were lesions on my brain MRI. I had a full course of optic neuritis in my right eye and a mild case that spontaneously resolved in my left eye. I have anecdotal evidence from late 2007 to represent a possible former attack. Just please don't tell me nothing can be said until more tests have been done, especially when this appointment is 90 minutes long.

I'll be a wreck, I know. Doesn't matter what he tells me, I'll be fucked up because we'll be talking about it and referring to prognoses and the future. I'm a strong person, I know, but there really is only so much a girl can take.

I took today and tomorrow off from work so that I can get my home in order since my mother will be staying with me. So far I've got the laundry done, the bathroom scrubbed, and the bedroom organized. If I'm smart, I'll move on to other chores just to keep my mind busy. But some things sink in no matter what you do.

I just want to get to the post diagnosis point in all of this. Technically I'm there, but knowing I have a disease without any more information and no treatment plan keeps me held in limbo and it is killing me. When I think about it, I get so scared I cry because I don't know what my new doctor is going to tell me. I don't know how I'll handle giving myself shots. I don't know anything and it scares me, makes me feel helpless, makes me feel weak and awful. I've even stopped researching it because I just don't want it in my head until I know more about my particular form of it.

And I know I have people I can call and talk to but I don't want to because all I'll do is cry and say how scared I am and be incoherent. This fucking sucks. I hate this. I hate fear and I hate uncertainty and I just can't always be as patient as I need to.

God damn it.

Something happened in my life a week or so ago and I can't even talk about it here. Four people total know about it, three of whom live thousands of miles away and have received messages from me on fac

Teeter Totter

Things I should be doing

Cleaning
Writing letters (currently have three outstanding)
Doing laundry
Gym
Changing my sheets
At very least, putting my shoes away
Playing with John
Eating a real meal for dinner

Things I am doing

Watching television
Contemplating a nap
Contemplating a marathon bath
Fucking around on the internet
Having the right thoughts (re: need to be cleaning and changing sheets)
Eat toast with smart balance

Today was stupid and I'm glad I only have one more day at work. Hopefully this nice long break will get me back to my old self. I had a meeting today with the other admins and an ice breaker was "introduce yourself to our new members and tell us the worst job you have ever had." I came very close to saying "this one" but didn't for diplomacy sake.

But tomorrow will be better. I'm being super normal and having dinner and a movie with three chicks from work, two of which I've hung out with socially before. That's a normal person thing to do, right? We are going to see "The Help" because we read it for book club two months ago (or maybe three? I don't know, The Beautiful and Damned took two meetings to get through).

I really should do something with myself tonight but I don't think it is going to happen. I think the bath is going to win out only because a nap would ruin me for tomorrow and today was shitty, in part, because I stayed up until 1 last night watching "Four Brothers." So yeah, bath it is.

Silver and Gold

What's with places that flood and people having dinghies? Whenever there is a storm that causes flooding, there are always pictures of people in their little boats floating through their neighborhoods. Do people just have boats? I don't. My family never did. If we'd been flooded out, we'd have had to be rescued from our rooftop.

I feel both young and old this morning. Young because I have a weird hangover and hangovers are for the young. Here's why it is weird. I was hungover yesterday so I bought materials to make some Bloody Marys. Well, I've never made them before so I ended up getting drunk all over again. At 9 PM on a Saturday night, I was drinking water and coffee to try and get myself sober - not exactly the life of the party, this one. Woke up with a mouth tasting like a garbage disposal and some equilibrium problems. Have not turned on the lights but am sitting on my living room floor, surveying the fallout from this weekend (like a bomb went off) and thinking that I really need to take out the recycling.

Here is why I feel old. My friend from high school is part of a rap movement in my hometown. I wanted to download his music and so, last night, I went to his website and tried to do it. But I hit the wrong button and was asked for my credit card info. I entered it and was taken to a site that looked like a scam. So, basically, grandma here may have compromised her debit card because of the internet. I called my bank to cancel my card but their systems are down so I can't get a new one reissued until the chick I talked to this morning calls me back. Not a big deal. The card is canceled so if it was a scam, no one can use my money. And I'm still on J's account so I can just transfer funds and use my debit card for that account. But it is frustrating and annoying to know that I did this to myself.

Well, happy Sunday.

An open apology to someone who probably doesn't know they deserve one

As a rule, guys have never hit on me. More than once I've found out, years after the fact, that certain guys in high school or college had a thing for me but they never acted on it. I'm very good at subtly dissuading guys from making said move. It is a subconscious move on my part and one I've only just realized.

My family is not affectionate (save for my middle brother, who always struck my eldest brother and I as weird because affection was weird). We didn't really hug and it has only been in the last five years that we've verbally said "I love you." We do love one another and always have but it wasn't said. This happens in a lot of families and I don't think there is anything wrong with it. But we also had a lot of death and strange trauma when we were children and I think those two things led to my fear and/or dislike for being touched.

I used to think it was an emotional thing, that I didn't want people touching me because it was the crossing of an emotional boundary that had not been earned. A boyfriend could touch me because I had an emotional connection, and intimate connection. But a friend did not have the same rights.

But now I think I just never learned how to understand my body in relation to other bodies. What's more, I never understood, until just about now, that just because I view myself as a 12 year old, others do not. I know that I'm a thirty year old with a woman's body but I forgot that other people see that as well. It makes sense that other people would, perceiving me as such, expect me to behave as such. Things I say and ways in which I act are taken by external beings as behaviors and words of a grown woman, not an asexual twelve year old.

I am very inexperienced with men, an odd thing to say since I've been married four years and with the same man for seven. But my previous experience was with one guy from for three and a half years beginning when I was about eighteen.  I didn't date and so didn't really learn about how men and women interact in casual settings. That is a part of my education that has been neglected and it has really fucked up my interactions with men because I didn't understand that men would really consider me a woman and view me as such. Viewing myself as a 12 year old, I assumed everyone did.

This was naive and ridiculous. I spend so much time in my head that I am utterly oblivious to the reality of the external world. But as any police officer will tell you, ignorance is not an excuse.

So I was slow. I was a late bloomer as a child and, embarrassingly, as an adult as well as it has turned out. One can paint this in a positive light. "Oh, she is just so innocent and has a lovely world view." But that isn't true and isn't fair. Really, I was just skating through life on this 'oblivious pass' and put the work on other people. If you viewed me as an adult that was your problem as I never claimed the mantel; it isn't my fault I'm a thirty year old woman on the outside because I feel 12 on the inside. That is selfish and a cop out. It is also not taking accountability for my actions and words.

And it has led to misunderstandings in which I come out looking pristine and innocent and the other party as the wrong doer. But the truth is, there are no innocent bystanders in these sorts of misunderstandings and I invited you to walk into this mess, as much as I unwittingly led myself down the same path. I would feel like a con artist if I didn't feel so fucking stupid and embarrassed because for fuck's sake, I'm thirty years old and I didn't realize that other people viewed me as such? What the fuck is that? I'm not stupid. I don't know of any mental defects that would lead me to be THIS oblivious.

But there you have it. I am sorry for what has happened and my idiotic part in it. But I'm also grateful in a way because I've finally been brought to the present and if what happened hadn't happened, I might never have had my emotions and self-concept catch up with my chronological age. If nothing else, I know now to be careful and fair to other people and not carry on as though I'm twelve.

Cat

The very funny thing is that I don't want to be with anyone right now. One side is assaulting me with jealousy; another is pushing me to reconcile with J; several others just want me to talk about it. Either that or MS. I have become the sum of the following parts:

• Woman
• Multiple Sclerosis Sufferer
• Separated Wife

I don't get to be just me. There are a handful of people in my office, who when I speak with them in passing, do not ask me how things are going with J or else about the MS.

Why I feel I need a straight jacket lately