Defeated

I have a feeling of defeat over this whole financial issue.  Last night when I went to go to bed I had overwhelming anxiety.  Not too too overwhelming, but enough that I had to take a sleeping pill because I was so wound up that I couldn’t get myself to fall asleep.  I slept really good as a result, which I really needed to do.  I didn’t sleep so well the night before. 

If you have panic attacks, then you are familiar with the sensations associated with them.  But, if you’re not…  When my anxiety is acute, my heart pounds in my chest and my breathing feels constricted.  My thoughts race at 100 miles an hour and I can’t get them to slow down or to stop.  I feel hot, even if it’s cold and my face will even flush with heat.  I will become fidgety and be unable to relax.  I will also feel like I’ve been punched hard in the gut.  It’s fight or flight at its finest.  It’s not a pleasant feeling. 

I used to assuage my anxiety and stress by smoking cigarettes.  Since I quit smoking over a year ago, I don’t have that coping mechanism to quell the rise of anxious feelings.  I quit smoking and had started working out.  However, within a couple months of meeting and beginning to date Jon-Pierre, I stopped going to the gym. 

It was shortly after that when I became hyper sensitive to how Jon-Pierre acted in certain situations.  He seemed to me like he was being secretive; not wanting me to see what he was doing and typing to people on the internet in instant messages, usually to other women.  He also would sometimes act somewhat suspicious, making furtive glances over his shoulder at me to see if I was looking at his computer screen.  That’s how I found out about the little internet romance that he was having.  I caught him red-handed, as he was typing back and forth with her.  One of them, I’m not sure if it was him or her, typed “I love you.”  After panicking for a few minutes about what to do, I confronted him about it, asking him if he regretting being with me and if he was sure he loved me.  When he said he wasn’t and he did, I then asked why he was saying those things to some other woman.  He managed to turn the whole thing around on me and make it my fault since I was the one “invading his privacy” and reading over his shoulder.

It also didn’t help that I wasn’t sleeping much while I dated Jon-Pierre.  I would sleep an average of 3 hours a night.  I would take an hour or 2 nap in the afternoons between.  But that wasn’t enough.  Nowhere near it.  I was suffering because of it.  My judgment was clouded.  If it hadn’t been, then maybe I would have done the smart thing and left him when he lost his job.  Then he never would have moved in with me and he never would have been yet another leech, sucking the life and trust out of me.  I would have never experienced all the heartache and anxiety that I experienced as a result of my relationship with him.  I would have never developed such an unhealthy obsession that revolved around him and induced all sorts of stress related bodily functions and malfunctions.

I have to find a healthy way to deal with my anxiety.  It does its damnedest to drive me crazy.  It’s like nothing else I’ve ever felt before.  I just want to be rid of it.  In a few months, I can get a new gym membership and start working out on a regular basis, which will take care of a good deal of the anxious feelings I’m having.  But it won’t take care of all of them.  My writing is a good outlet for me and I plan to keep it up.  I enjoy writing.  A sense of calm comes over me when I write and I really like that.  I’m able to focus my thoughts and even enjoy them.  And one of my favorite things to do is to take a long walk and actively think about things and work issues out.  Sure, I talk out loud to myself when I do this, but I try not to make people that may be close enough to hear me think I’m totally bonkers.

In the process of trying to work through the issues that I’m having right now, I decided that it would be best if I were to sell a couple of my things.  That would take a huge weight off my shoulders as far as things go.  I’d be able to get my inspection taken care of and maybe even have enough money to take care of the court filing fees for the tickets I got for expired registration and expired vehicle inspection.  And if my parents are able to loan me the money I begged them for, then I know I’ll be alright and I’ll be able to sleep at night without having to take a sleeping pill, which is what I prefer.

I listed my Wii console and the four games that I have for sale last night on Craigslist.  I already got one response for both the console and the games combined and 2 responses for the games by themselves.  If I can sell those, that will help me out substantially.  I’ll be able to fix the emergency brake and get my truck inspected.  The apartment office called me back while I was at work yesterday and let me know that the courtesy officer was okay with letting me have a little extra time to get my inspection taken care of.

I’m also going to list my bicycle for sale.  That was a hard decision for me to make.  I love my bicycle.  I’ve had it for over 10 years.  I’ve had so many adventures on that bicycle.  I’ve rode hundreds of miles on it.  I will miss it incredibly.  What cinched the decision to sell the bicycle is that I haven’t ridden it in about a year and I won’t be able to ride it for at least another 3 months from now.   But when all my finances level out after I’ve paid off the mechanic and the payday loan people, I’m going to buy myself a road bicycle. 

I am thinking about possibly selling my CDs as well.  I could just ask $2 a piece for them.  I don’t have the cases, but I’ve loaded them all into my laptop, so I really don’t need the CDs themselves anymore.  I’m not sure if they would actually sell, but I suppose it’s worth a shot.  My friend Jessica in Wisconsin is the one that suggested selling my CDs.  She said she had sold a bunch of hers for $2 each.  If I could do that, it would help a little bit.  Every little bit helps me out just that much more.

Something else that would help, but I probably won’t be able to do until after I’ve recovered from the surgery is to empty out one of my storage units and put everything in one.  I want to rebox everything anyway and clean it up a bit.  The boxes are all old and falling apart.  Some of them have been in there for 13 years.  Also, there are stuffed animals that I can donate to Goodwill or to the women’s shelter.  That would get rid of a few boxes.  Also, I may have some old books that I could sell to Half Price Books.  I wouldn’t get much for them, but I don’t need them anymore.  Also, I have a chest freezer that I want to sell in my storage unit.

I think that everything is going to be okay when all is said and done in the end.  It’s going to be really tight for a while, but I’ll get through it.  I’ll be more mature because of it as well.  More self-assured.  More confidence in myself as well.   I may even be more independent too.  How so?  Because I will have figured out, on my own, how to solve what seemed like an insurmountable problem in the beginning.  Sure, if my parents help me, I will have gotten a much needed assistance, but I still figured everything out on my own.  And that counts for something, don’t you think?

One way I’ve been able to cut some stress out of my life is my promise to myself to remain single for the remainder of the time that I’m in Texas.  This may seem extreme, but really it’s not all that excessive.  I just remember back to the last time that I was truly happy and balanced and that time was when I was single for 2 years.  I got to know myself pretty well and even loved myself.  When I let men back in my life before I was really ready to date again was where I made my mistake.  Since I really wasn’t ready to date yet, I got myself into a wrong relationship right off the bat.  It lasted for 2 years but was over at the 6 month mark when he accused me of cheating on him because he snooped in my email while I was sleeping and read into something he found in there and threw a huge tizzy fit.  I had nothing to hide, if he wanted to read my email, all he had to do was ask.  I should have just let him leave, but instead, I talked him back because I didn’t want to be alone.

As a result of that relationship, I started having money problems.  He would be unemployed for long stints of time, so I was stuck supporting both of us.  I fell behind on my rent and utilities payments to my roommate at the time.  It also didn’t help that not only did he not have his own vehicle, but he didn’t even have a driver’s license.  I really don’t know what I was thinking when I agreed to date him.  I know I got guilted into it by a mutual friend of mine. 

How did she guilt me into it?  Well…this is where you look at me like I just grew a second head.  I allowed her to weave the guilt in me by telling me that I had to date him because he had spent so much of his menial paycheck on the two dates we had gone out on.  Yea.  I fell for that shtick, believe it or not.  I’m a naïve romantic at heart. 

I fall for things that people tell because I want to believe the best in people and tend to ignore their faults and shortcomings completely.  And that right there has gotten me into situations where I am in a relationship that has turned toxic, whether it be a romantic or platonic one.  I allow myself to be used and abused by these people.  They siphon off of me like piglets at a sow.  It’s a pattern that I seriously need to break, hence the self-imposed abstinence from all relationships beyond friendship for up to 2 years.  I need this separation from that which causes me the most anxiety, from that which rends my heart into itty bitty ragged pieces.  I need to grow a spine when it comes to romance.

In less than a week, it seems, my life appears to have gone to complete shit.  I get my truck back, but only after overextending myself to do so with a high interest payday loan.  Then, my truck won’t pass inspection (hopefully only) because the emergency brake wasn’t adjusted properly when the mechanics replaced it.  And now, my immediate supervisors and the one above them have all recommended that I not be approved for another extension of light duty.  I mean it still has to go through 3 other people, but if the supervisors closest to me have all recommended that it not be granted, then what exactly do you think the other 3 people are going to say?  That’s right.  They’re going to go along with everybody else.  And all this means that I will have to deal with a union attorney while I’m all loopy on pain meds from my surgery.  Just what I wanted to do while I’m trying to be stress free and recover from spine surgery.

It is so hard (but somehow also almost effortless) for me to stay positive, but somehow, someway I actually manage to stay positive.  I don’t know how I do it.  I’m not even sure I want to know.  I’d think it’s a whole ignorance is bliss thing, but it’s not because it’s not like I’m ignoring the problem.  I’ll work through it and figure out the best course of action for me and then I just kind of set it aside and get hyper, like I have to work out the negative energy that I allowed in.  It’s kind of like a calm after the storm.  It’s in that calm that I relax and feel like everything is okay and taken care of and that there’s nothing for me to worry about, even though I could have totally been freaking out not 15 minutes before.

Of course, I talk with someone else who is on light duty at my work (they’ve only been out for 4 months while I’ve been out for 6), and it dawns on me that if I’m out from work on FMLA (family medical leave act) that they most likely won’t be able to legally touch me.  So, when I faxed the FMLA paperwork to my surgeon’s office, I included a note that said to make sure I was off work for at least 3 weeks, if not the full recovery time and that the “desk job” I would be working consists of repetitive standing and sitting, which could potentially be bad for the lead that needs to scar itself to my spine so that it doesn’t move around and then they end up having to go back in and fix it.  So, maybe I don’t have anything to worry about.  Maybe it’s going to be alright. 

Maybe.  We shall see. 

All I know is I’m not holding my breath until next Thursday when I’m so high on pain meds that I can’t tell my ass from a tea kettle.  At that point, I’ll be able to put it in the perspective of it doesn’t matter at the moment and I’ll worry about it later.