Whiney Weirdo

This. So much this.

I grew up in a family wherein anything and everything bad that happens to you is: your own fault, and if it's not your own fault then it's not that bad and they've gotten through much worse without being such a loser about it. Oh, also, you're probably exaggerating.

I love my family, but I hate this aspect of their dynamic. Even my sister is this way. She's actually the literal QUEEN of invalidating other people's problems because she thinks no matter what you've been through, she's been through worse and handled it better. She unironically insists that this is true, even before she knows any details of your situation. Literally doesn't even know your situation before dismissing it as not as hig of a deal as you're making it out to be.

Also, asking questions is forbidden in this family. My parents and sister are all the same in this regard, as well. If you have the audacity to ask where something is or how to do something, you are at the mercy of their mood: two in ten times, you'll get a simple answer to a simple question, but the other 8 times you will be mercilessly derided. Mocked. Talked down to and patronized.

So, over the course of my 44 years on this planet, my already neurospicy brain has become RIGID in its inability to be open and vulnerable with my family. I want to be. I do love them and I know they love me - their toxic behaviors are just unbroken generational patterns, and while my parents are lost causes, I know my sister is aware and wants to create better patterns... she's just burnt the fuck out right now and can't currently see past her own exhaustion and annoyance. It's not her fault, for the most part.

Regardless, it is stifling. Living at The Manor, means existing in a bubble of pretense at all times. The only authenticity I can let slip is some of my "quirkiness" because my family has come to treat my weirdness with genuine humor rather than mockery, so my weirdness is the only aspect of my authentic self that is safe. At least I have that, I guess. Some people can't show any part of their real self without the threat of mockery and/or judgement.

It was last Saturday, around 9am.

I was at Bobbin's, sitting in his room drawing, when I suddenly felt what I can only describe as a lightning bolt hitting me in the back of the head. It knocked me off my chair. Almost immediately I was screaming, bawling, vomiting, and begging for pain killers. I thought it was a migraine. I'd never had a migraine before and remember thinking, holy fuck this is what migraine sufferers go through???

Bobbin panicked and wanted to call an ambulance. I sobbed, no, it's just a migraine. Then a wave of horrifying pain hit me, and I started vomiting again and the pressure in my skull felt like my head was actually going to crack open. Apparently i was screaming in agony, but i dont remember that. The ambulance was called. Their pain killers did nothing. I got to the hospital and they put me on an oxymorphone drip, which took the edge off just enough that I stopped asking them to just kill me, please. I went for a CT scan, and they told me, you have bleeding in your brain. We're going to send you to <other> hospital down in the city because they have brain surgeons and we don't.

Brain surgeons. Am I getting my skull carved open today?

The ambulance raced down the 401 with sirens blaring. It was terrifying, because I just got out of the hospital after a catastrophic accident where I'd been laying down in the back of a van when it crashed. PTSD gripped my whole soul and I focused on my breathing to keep my heart rate down as much as I could because my head couldn't take all the pounding.

I spent 3 days mostly asleep in the ICU. They had to wake me every hour to test my physical and cognitive abilities for the deficits that are almost sure to accompany a brain hemmorhage.

I know my name

I know where I am, and what the date is

I can lift and push against you with all my limbs

Back to sleep.

Another CT scan, an MRI, and an angiogram later, they came back to say they can't find a cause, or even a source of where the bleed happened.

Of course, I suspect I know. I snort crystal meth. They said they couldn't confirm or deny that as a cause, but it's possible. Of course it is. Have you ever snorted crystal meth? You can literally feel it eating your brain for 20 seconds after the huff.

What kind of an idiot would do something like that to themselves willingly?

They have a medication that takes pressure off the brain. A pill. A pill that literally targets just your head to take pressure off your brain. I don't know how many animals suffered in its creation, but because of it, they didn't have to drill a hole in my skull. I'll make a sacrifice to the universe for the sake of those souls who suffered so that I could keep my skull intact. When I'm better.

I was there for 7 days and then sent home. There's still blood in my skull cavity and in my spinal column. I have to take the med - nipoopoodoopoo or whatever the fuck it's called - every four hours around the clock until March 23, 5pm. They cost $2000. Thank gods I had insurance. I'm Canadian, so the hospital stuff was free... thank gods for that, too. There's nothing to take the pressure off my spinal column, though, so every time I shift position or try to move I get violent pain spasms down my back and legs that curl me into a fetal position - even if I'm standing... I just curl down over my cane and wait for the spasm to pass, trying to strategically change position to make the spasm go away. Eventually the blood will reabsorb back to where it belongs. Hopefully, the pain will go with it.

I'm not getting any sleep. Every 4 hours I have an alarm set to take my meds, around the clock. It goes a little something like this:

1am take my meds, and chug water. I'm a mouth breather and these meds dry me out and the two combined keep me thirsty. I'm drinking a LOT of water.

2am start dozing off

2:15am NEED TO PEE. NOW. Fight the spasms to stand up, get to the bathroom, come back. Wide awake.

3am start to doze off

4am NEED TO PEE. NOW. Spasms, walk, piss, come back. Wide awake.

4:30am start to doze off

5am ALARM! TAKE YOUR MEDS!

Rinse. Repeat.

Because of the lack of sleep, I don't have much in the way of emotional regulation right now, so I'm crying a lot, but only for short spurts. I have to reel it in because crying puts pressure on my skull and I don't want that headache back. Because I can't find any true comfort in any position I sit or lay in, I'm eating a lot of comfort food. Drinking a lot of coffee and tee with extra sugar. (Yeah, it's caffeine, but I've completely quit all smoking cigarettes or weed and all huffing Tina - forever. Yes, I'm that traumatized by this. I narrowly skirted death my dudes). Eating a lot of mac&cheese. Tomato soup and grilled cheese. Chocolate cake and ice cream. Soup, soup, and more soup.

Holy fuck, bud, do I ever have a LOT to catch you up on. I can't believe it's only been about a year since my last post... It feels like it's been at least a couple years since then.

I'm not decided how to do this yet. Just like me to start without a plan, Lol. Figure out what you're doing first, and then do it? Where's the fun in that? Anyway, maybe I should do a point-form "Reader's Digest" of the last year, and then do separate entries for the points I actually want to elaborate on? That seems like the best way to keep this from becoming one of my meandering 10,000 word entries. I hear people don't like those.

So. Point form:

• Bobbin and I got the van in March. Chevy cargo van. I gave my dad my car to sell, and he fronted the cash. It was already insulated with flooring, walls, and ceiling. Dream come true.

• the landscaping business started to pick up a lot. Bobbin and I left The Manor at the end of March? to live in the van full time and working on the build as we went.

• Ariel, Enzo, and Fish. Have I told you much about them yet? We don't talk anymore, unfortunately. No bad blood... well, not much, anyway... just that Bobbin's and my life blew up right around the same time their's all did, for different reasons. We've all been busy for the last half year or so.

• end of summer 2023, two days before Birdie's wedding, we got into a catastrophic van accident. I spent 140 days in hospital and had to re-learn to walk, (still using a cane/walker for now). Within days of the accident, Ariel and Fish were both arrested on drug trafficking charges.

• that whole hospital recovery story...

• I got out of the hospital and was released to something akin to a "group home" - only not actually a "group home" - in mid-January. It's a place for homeless people who've spent time in the hospital and have nowhere to be discharged to. My "home-on-wheels" was written off. The hospital can't willfully, knowingly, discharge a patient to the street, so these places exist to fill in a gap I guess. I hate it.

• My mental health plummeted as soon as I left the hospital. I hadn't allowed myself to really think about the post-hospital landscape, cuz it made me feel sick to think of the sheer devastation to our lives. I needed to stay hopeful and focused on the goal of recovery. I figured I'd take the time to be properly angry, and grieve my beloved Blue Beastie, and the life I was finally getting to create, once I got out.

• I had a meltdown at the Notagroup Home, packed my shit, and fled with no plan. Ahh, there you are, Jess 🙄. Called Bobbin crying, in an unfamiliar town with all this stuff to carry and using a walker, and he sent me an Uber to bring me to the place in Newford where he's been since October. I hid out at his place for a few days before D started asking questions and I confessed what I'd done and where I was. I'd called a couple local shelters, but wasn't having any luck, and I can't move in with Bobbin cuz he's only renting a room... D told me to come back to The Manor. I told you that house doesn't wanna let me go. Bobbin isn't welcome there, so we're living separately for now (he was driving when we had the accident, so of course everyone blames him. He shouldnt have been driving. I told him not to drive. I told the police and insurance that he had permission, to protect him, but now insurance wont cover the van cuz Bobbin doesnt have a drivers license. Its reasonable that my family is Big Mad at him i guess).

I have so much fucking anxiety that's just been compounded by the fact that I'm once again between employment.

Christmas and New Year's took so much mental energy out of me, not that I had much to spare to begin with. Working takes so much out of me and over the holidays there was absolutely no opportunity to decompress. Even when I retreated to my room to get away from the peopling for awhile, it offered no real reprieve because all I could feel was sadness and guilt. Whether the pressure to perform for my family was real or imagined, it makes no difference. I long for closer relationships with them and can't help but feel angry with myself for not being able to maintain a level of functioning that could allow me to actually engage with them as fully as I want to.

It also took a lot out of me because I had to be an emotional support to Bobbin, who was also having a very difficult holiday season. No matter how beneficial it might have been to go "no contact" with his father, brother, and sister, it's still an emotionally difficult thing to do and it takes time to grieve. Add to that his mom passing away a couple months after he stopped talking to the others, leaving him with no one but me, while living in a house where (at least) one of its primary inhabitants routinely antagonizes, sabotages, and otherwise goes out of his way to ensure Bobbin can never ever feel comfortable, and you have a recipe for misery. Not to mention the fact that Bobbin is someone who wants and needs to work, and the fact that he's neither employed nor living somewhere where he can comfortably even leave the bedroom is a heavy emotional burden in and of itself.

This Christmas was his first one without any family, and the family that he is living amongst have made it clear that he will never not be an outsider to them, so when D tried to insist that Bobbin should come down and participate in Christmas I turned around and gave him express permission to do whatever he felt comfortable with. He was welcome to come down if he wanted to, but if he didn't want to, then I'd make regular trips upstairs to check on him and bring him snacks. No pressure. What I wouldn't have given for certain past boyfriends to give me the grace to hide without judgement if and when I needed to. I'm not going to suffocate another person with arbitrary social expectations just because the "normies" don't understand. I know how awful that feels.

This household is stifling right now. I can't put my finger on it, but it feels like some unspoken grievance is choking the air like smog, and it's getting harder and harder to breathe while I'm amongst my family. I don't know if this feeling is just a result of how mentally and emotionally burnt-out I am, or if there actually is some budding conflict waiting in the shadows. I can feel real vitriol towards Bobbin from both D and R, and it's starting to really get in my craw. The way Bobbin is held to an entirely different standard than that little fucking troll really gets my back up, and the fact that his "annoying" neurodiverse quirks are met with so much judgement and condescension just makes me want to put distance between myself and that ableist horseshit. Fuck I wish I could win a lottery so I could move away somewhere where I'd only have to see them on holidays. Maybe if we didn't see each other so often, we would all appreciate each other's presence a little more, and maybe the easing of the moronic stressors between us would help bring back that level of comfort where we can actually feel free to really talk to each other like we used to.

I'm just getting ready to leave for my first day at my new job. I'm afraid because I feel like I'm reaching burn-out, and I'm afraid because I don't know how much time we'll have to be off over Christmas and I'm sure I won't get paid for that time off which means we're likely going to be behind on rent again... I'll be annoyed that we didn't even get to enjoy being fully caught up for more than a few weeks, if that happens. I'm afraid because if I burn-out and can't handle working anymore, that will be the end of me. I can't just keep walking through fires my whole life. I need peace and security and I need it soon, or I'm fucking done with this fucking life.

In other news, I deleted my dating profile. Weirdly, I didn't delete it because I felt guilty about doing something behind Bobbin's back or that I was fearful that he would find out... I deleted it because i felt like I was being a dick to the dudes who were wanting to connect with me. I basically ignored them completely because I didn't actually want to cheat on Bobbin. What's the point of having the profile if I'm not actually going to use it?

So I missed out on two weeks of work because Bobbin just had to take a job with that fucknut who literally always causes drama and problems and rips Bobbin off every chance he gets... And guess what? Bobbin went to Ottawa for two weeks of work on the promise of $250 a day, and got a grand fucking total of $750 for the whole two weeks.

I'm starting my new job on Monday now, but we're behind on the budget again, which sucks. I don't blame Bobbin, necessarily, because I understand the depression that he was experiencing over the fact that he wasn't working and the promise of $250 a day was too good to pass up, but still... He really should have known better by now. Thankfully I think he's finally ready to "just say no" anytime that fuckwit calls him to come work. It's not worth it.

In other news, I created a dating profile on one of those dating app thingies. I haven't done anything, or anything. Ive said hello to one or two people, but I'm not sure what I'm doing. I don't actually want to cheat on Bobbin, but I'm also feeling more and more lonely all the damn time, and every time I think back over the things he's done my heart just hurts more than the last time I thought about it. I wish I could just turn off my love for him so I could do what is most likely the best thing for me, and walk away. But I can't. I can't let go. Why can't I let go?

I think there's some part of me that hopes he catches me on this dating app. Every now and then I get a notification from the app and think, "I should disable notifications so my phone doesn't just light up with 'potential matches' and shit", but then I don't. Like, maybe if he sees this he'll realize that he could actually lose me and maybe then he'll smarten up and act right. Haha. Yes, I know how naive that is, but I honestly can't describe how badly I want him to love me the way I love him. I've never been with anyone who accepted me so fully as my truly authentic self and around whom I have never felt any judgement about my body or appearance or anything else. I honestly don't think I will ever find anyone I'm so fucking compatible with in so many key ways ever again.

Oh my gooooddddddd I thought I was so much more healed than I ammmm lmao. All the old unhealthy coping mechanisms of my past, all the old feelings of being simultaneously bored and overstimulated, depressed, angry, lonely, wanting to be dead but not wanting to kill myself... ITS ALL BACK. Like, I'm literally getting ready to go to the liquor store as I write this, to spend money I can't afford to spend on booze that I'm not going to enjoy because being drunk while hating being drunk is one of my favourite forms of self-destruction and self-punishment. If I wasn't such a social recluse I'd be calling one of the numbers I have for T-hookup, but I'm too much of a nervous fucken squirrel to do that by myself. I need Bobbin here to make the calls and do the footwork, or at least make the calls and send me for the pickup... ugh.

This fucking loneliness is a real reminder of how socially inept I am. The only "friend" I ever really have is a boyfriend, when I have one. Bobbin being five hours away working in another city really hammers home the fact that I have absolutely no one to turn to. I mean, sure, I have acquaintances. I have my family. But I'm so pathologically afraid of allowing anyone to get too close to my real self that the only time anyone really ever gets to know my vulnerable side is when we're dating or a couple. I don't know why I'm like this. I've tried to psychoanalyze it, but I don't understand it. I want to be seen and have close friendships, but I just can't do it. I don't have the social skills, I guess. Maybe I'm an off-putting person and I just don't see enough of it to change it? Maybe I'm so afraid of the repercussions and inevitable humiliation from my tendency to over-share, that I end up chronically under-sharing? I don't know where the happy medium is.

Bobbin is supposedly finally going to send money today and he's talking to a buddy of his who's in town here who can potentially hook me up with a treat, which would be nice. Maybe I'll take myself out to the bar tonight... Lord knows there's no better time for my personality to shine than when I'm high 😂 maybe I'll make a new friend. If I wasn't on my rag, I'd probably even consider hooking up with someone as some ill-considered and destined-to-blow-up-in-my-face revenge plot against Bobbin for all his fucking cheating - but Ragnarok prevents me from doing that (probably a good thing... I'm not a cheater at heart and I would regret it, no matter how satisfying the idea of revenge might be).

I wish I was better at being a friend and then maybe I'd actually have a friend or two to talk to when I need someone, you know? Maybe this is why I have such a hard time accepting that Bobbin isn't right for me. Because if I lose him, then I lose literally my entire close social circle. There is no one else in my life who knows me like he does. He's the only person I have to turn to for emotional comfort, so I would have to grieve our relationship all alone with no one in my life who knows nearly enough about us for me to talk about my feelings or just cry it out to. You know?

The sadness is so deep today.

Bobbin made me quit my job so he could work, because we only have one pair of steel-toed shoes between us. His job supposedly makes more than mine, but mine was regular predictable income and his is a cash job through a notoriously untrustworthy "buddy". He's been in Ottawa for the last couple nights for work and expects to be there for at least another ten days, but still can't give me an exact number as to how much money he's making or when he's gonna get paid or if he's going to be able to send me anything. He's apparently been calling around trying to find someone to put my snow tires on, (even though I have no money for that and he dances around the conversation about sending me money), but no one wants to touch my car because he keeps telling them that the bolts are stripped on three tires. Just ask them to do the tires and don't mention the fucking bolts. If they end up charging extra because of the fucking bolts, then they end up charging extra. If he's making the $250 a day that he says he's "pretty sure" he's making, then the cost shouldn't fucking matter. Now he wants me to call around to find someone to do the tires and I know I should cuz it's my car and I'm the one who's gonna have to take it in anyway, but I just don't have it in me. I just don't give a shit, you know? I have no motivation for life left in my entire body. Not one shred. I just want to step out into traffic.

I feel like I'm drowning.

I'm trying so hard, but there are just too many variables. Too many moving pieces. I just can't juggle all of the things that a functional adult is supposed to be able to juggle. Especially considering the additional shit, like desperately trying to make a relationship work with someone who is making it increasingly more clear that he either doesn't actually want the life I'm fighting to create, or he does want it but he wants me to make all of the effort and sacrifices to create it while he just gets to enjoy the benefits while not carrying any of the mental/emotional weight or making any of the kinds of sacrifices I'm being forced to make. Also, today is my last day at the first job I've been able to excel at in a fucking decade because business is so slow and they're unloading all of their extra staff. I've already got a new job to start on Monday, which gives me one day off before I dive into something brand new that already sounds like it's going to be highly stressful and with hours that I know are going to very hard for me.

It's too fucking much. Our housing situation is precarious. Bobbin is increasingly hostile towards me and disengaging with my family, which is making it even more precarious. My car needs so much shit done, and I have absolutely no extra money after all of our expenses. Snow tires need to on, but bolts are seized so we have to take it somewhere to do it $. My windshield wiper fluid sprayers don't work, which is going to make winter driving next to impossible on wet days. I need to take it in for recall work, which is free, but I don't know when I'll actually be able to do that because I literally never have time anymore. I need clothes, desperately, and new work boots. I need to see a doctor about the fact that my feet and ankles are falling apart. I'm carrying the entire burden of our existence while Bobbin drinks and sleeps. He treats me like his enemy one minute and then love-bombs me the next.

I'm drowning. Even if he would just be moral support for me and continue being useful around the house to keep my family appeased until we can escape, it would relieve so much stress, but he just chokes me with his own emotional needs and forces me to constantly comfort and reassure him in order to keep him peaceful while he gives me no comfort, peace, or reprieve at all.

Just got home from an almost two hour round-trip to pick up Bobbin at some chick "who's just a friend"'s house.

I'm not sure where the line between understanding girlfriend and doormat is, but I'm fairly certain I've crossed it at this point.

Now he's passed out like a fucking log (as he was for the entire drive), and I'm going to be sitting up all night, doing all our T cuz fuck him it's his fault I don't want to sleep right now, and stewing on this. What do I believe? Do I believe him? I love him and want him to be the man he insists he is so badly that I'll believe just about anything he throws at me. I want to believe that we have something real. I just can't imagine how I would handle it if it suddenly became obvious that the only one this was ever real for, was me. Oh my gods, I honestly don't believe my heart could take it.

He left on his bike hours ago, and stopped communicating. He knows I worry and that my worry turns to panic if I text or call and don't get a response, yet he let several texts go unanswered for an extended period. When he finally answered my call, I hear someone else laughing practically right into his ohone speaker. I couldn't tell their gender... whoever they are, theyve smoked way too many cigarettes in this life. Bobbin sounded drunk and high off his ass, and he's in another town 50 fucking KM away and he's gonna charge his bike "at his buddy's place" over night and come home in the morning. I mentioned that it was rather fucking odd that he never hesitates to call me for a ride when he finds himself in a bind, and yet this time it didn't cross his mind to call me? Why? If you're out with a buddy and everything's on the up-and-up, why wouldn't you ask me to come get you? I'm literally the most understanding girlfriend in the world. You wanna party with a buddy for a night? Be my guest, you're a grown man and you deserve to have fun. If you need me to get you, let me know. Just be honest with me. Just communicate with me. That's all. He knows I don't police his whereabouts or the fact that he sometimes likes to party with seedier crowds than I'm comfortable with. More power to you, babe, I don't expect you to sit and listen to me and my friends yammering on about our shit. So, why the need for sneakyness?

He wants me to come pick him up now, apparently. He's supposedly going to call me shortly once he knows "an exact address".. or rather, so he can get away from this chick's house and find a public place to get me to pick him up at. Watch. I would put money on it that he's not going to have me pick him up at his "buddy's" house.

Fuck it. I'm feeling some kind of way that I can't discern and I'm tired of feeling it. Weed makes me dumb. Dumb is good.

Oh yeah, it also makes me find really dumb shit funny. For example: we got Chinese take-out tonight. When I was putting it all away, I decided to write the dishes on the lids, so D wouldn't have to open each one to see what it is... But, me being me and loving all the dumb humour, this is what she's gonna come home from work to. They got progressively worse as I became more emboldened lol. I hope she gets a giggle.