#absolute babble

It absolutely feels like a Monday. I have a quizxam (because I don’t know if he’s calling it a damn quiz or an exam) in stats this morning, and I have no idea what - OH right, I have a take-home exam due for the other class by Saturday night.

I also have my three-different-schools-of-thought-on-psychopathic-personality paper due on the 27th (Either I’ll surprise myself and make this deadline like a BAMF, or I’m gonna need until like the 10th to get it done). I have to have my “Humanizing Batterers” poster in my hands to take with me on the 29th. My four-different-papers-in-one paper is due on the 30th, when I will be in Pittsburgh. Also on the 30th I have an exam for the same class as the four-papers-in-one paper. On the 31st I give my poster spiel to people as they walk by and hope I catch peoples’ attention with it. On the 3rd (which is the Monday I get back from Pittsburgh) I have a paper due about my experience doing community outreach (which I may or may not have actually done... -cough-). I’m not sure how long that’s supposed to be, but I imagine this professor will at least be okay with me turning it in a bit late. On the 3rd I’m pretty sure I also have an exam in my psychopathology class... and aaaaaaaallllll of that is supposed to happen in the next 11 days. Including writing two papers and designing a poster (which I’m sure will be overnight-mailed again)...

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This means I might have to miss my (presumably) future little sister’s science olympiad this weekend. OR I take my computer, lug it along, and do what work I can. Or I just take ONE day to be human and forget about the work. I love her and I love that she’s into the STEM fields as well as art and music. Like, she could EASILY be my biological little sister.

Which reminds me. The boyfriend and I actually had the talk about name-changing last weekend. It came up when I talked about telling my dad that he had to stay alive long enough for me to make stupid jokes about people not being able to tell the two of us apart because we’d both be doctors in very similar fields (but with different credentials). My boyfriend said, “You might be a different doctor by then,” just sort of in passing. I said, “What if I wanna keep my last name?” And he just looked at me. I snorted because I couldn’t keep the “innocent, wide-eyed, blinking” look going for that long, and admitted that I had always planned to change my last name. Because while I’m all for keeping the family name going, there are SOME old fashioned traditions I don’t mind so much. He made a comment about hyphenating, and then we tried it and it was just... like... no. I never wanted to do that anyway. I’d be happy to be one of their family, and mine will happily take him in. And they’ll love his little sister.

The one thing I’m REALLY happy about is that neither set of parents is pushing for grandchildren, or poking us, like “when’re you getting engaged? When are you getting married? Huh? Huh?” I finally had one friend straight up ask me “So when are you gonna marry this guy? He’s perfect for you!” and I did not know what to do. I just said we were taking things slowly - and we are. He KNOWS I don’t need a wedding to plan on top of everything else. ***Skip if avoiding marriage/wedding babble*** Besides - his parents AND mind would want some sort of huge ceremony AND celebration. But luckily they don’t get to make that decision unless they’re paying for everything, and neither family has the capacity for that. The actual marriage ceremony might be very small, once we get to figuring that out. We agree, at least, that there should be an awesome reception, but... I dunno. Neither of us want the big ceremonial thing. I’d be so, so happy to have family, bridesmaids/groomsmen, and like five friends from each side somewhere pretty. The reception would be the celebration and the fun part anyway, and more people could actually enjoy that, us included. We have not had the bachelor/bachelorette party discussion(s) yet. I’m indifferent. Lol.

SO SORRY ABOUT THE BABBLE. 

Kind of.

I dunno. It makes me happy. He makes me happy. ALSO, he cleaned like the entire apartment last weekend. Okay it was just the living room, but the amount of cleaning he did in a couple hours would’ve taken me three days. And he did it of his own accord, out of the blue, and even had a talk with me about how he’s happy to be able to help me, and how cleaning this place makes it feel more like home to him - which is the actual next step. Once things calm down at his job (lots of changes taking place), and he’s ready, we’re moving him in here for real. But the fact that he feels at home here means everything to me. 

Okay, so I sorta broke down at my boyfriend a little on Saturday because I’ve been struggling a lot with feeling “human.” As in, I don’t. I finally talked to him about having zero libido and only being able to guess that it was coming from stress and depression.

I spent all of Friday chasing down the medications that are basically keeping me alive (Humira and methotrexate injections - because Mesalamine, no matter where I put it, apparently only does so much, even at high doses). I’m glad I connected with someone intelligent at my specialty-care pharmacy who was willing to call my doctor’s office to speak to the office assistant (who was trying to handle authorizing these meds (the methotrexate shouldn’t need an authorization, which is what confused me (and the pharmacy assistant), but my doctor wanted to try raising the Humira to every week instead of every other week, which does require an authorization).

Long, incredibly bitchy story short, the pharmacy assistant ended up calling me, laughing (once he verified that it was actually me), and told me how he had ended up trying to explain pharmacy law to this woman, and that they had gone around and around and around because she could not wrap her head around the idea that pharmacies dispense medication, but there has to be a prescription, and THESE medications needed to go through insurance - who did not dispense these medications.

TL;DR - this mush-for-brains is the reason I have now missed three shots of methotrexate, and almost missed one of the Humira (due to take this one Wednesday, provided it arrives by then ), and now we have to file an appeal because the insurance rejected the request for authorizing every-week Humira dosing. “We” meaning I, really, because I’ll be damned if I let her handle it. I’m going to make sure my doctor is fully aware of what’s been going on in his office. He needs a new person with a brain.

SO that’s what’s been stressing me out, and making me feel like shit recently... On top of being in Michigan, where fast, huge weather changes are a thing, and I’m a human barometer... it sucks.

But yeah. As far as having no libido and having a bit of an aversion to sex, I think on some level I feel like my boyfriend shouldn’t want me. Like, there’s no possible way he still loves me and finds me attractive when I bleed from the wrong place, am in constant pain, chase (prescription) drugs like my life depends on it (ha, I joke because it does). So I do things that lead to self-verification of my extant beliefs...

Going into psychologist mode - ready? Nope.

So, I have been doing a piss-poor job with self-care. Like, my apartment is a mess, I go days without showering, I hardly eat, I’m isolating... all I do for self-care is music, and I put eye makeup on when I have school or something. I gained like 10 pounds from the trial my psychiatrist insisted on of Abilify - in under a month, no less - and I’m having a hell of a time shedding it, though the bloating seems to have gone away, the pounds don’t seem to have done so, which is triggering my history with anorexia.

SO. By not taking care of myself, I justify thinking my boyfriend shouldn’t find me sexy, because I actually AM gross (re: not showering, weighing more than I want to), and he hasn’t moved in with me because I’m a slob and I’m gross, and why would he want to do that in this situation? So if this is the situation I may as well be a slob and be gross and not take care of myself because he must not want someone who doesn’t take care of herself... see how I’m cycling?

And with the sex... I don’t find myself attractive right now, so I find it really hard to believe that anyone else would. So it feels forced/fake, and I’m not interested in fake (which it isn’t, really). But with that, I’m sorta creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of not wanting sex because I don’t think he should want to have sex with me, and finding myself icky, and thinking (based on the, er, difficulty he had last time we tried) that he doesn’t really want me... which is why it feels forced to me, and makes me uninterested.

That’s one theory, anyway. I think I’m doing this to myself. So what’s the next step? How do I fix this? I’m not sure. Logic says I start with self-care and self-love... and maybe I let him seduce me even if I think I’m disgusting. Maybe I do things in self-care-land to help myself feel less disgusting. Like starting up yoga-ing again.

And maybe picking up some gentle, slower piano pieces to learn in addition to the furious Rachmaninov and unrelenting Tempest I picked. But THAT is another post. It’s almost 6:40 and class starts slightly after 8:30.