Entry for February 12, 2011 Denny’s view on VD and Up to Date School Stuff

I love Denny, but I really hate how he is against certain things.  One of those things is coming up in two days.  That is right; he dislikes the whole premise of Valentine’s Day.  He doesn’t feel that there should be a day designated to where you have to gift the one you love, he believes in showing it all the time.  I kind of agree with him to a degree but it would be really nice to not be that person with someone who loves you and not be able to let others see it on the day of love.  I guess that makes me a material person, but damn it would be nice.

The last time that he did something for me for Valentine’s Day was in 2007.  We built a bear together at Build –A- Bear Workshop.  Now that was kewl.  I call him our bear, because the both of us worked on him together.  Even came up with him name together.  His name is Gene Yus.  If you actually say it and sound it out you might get a laugh.  Gene Yus has two hears, One from me and one from Denny.  It is really sweet actually, and every time I look at him I get a smile on my face thinking about the day we made him.

Denny does always do sweet things for me when I least expect it and that is so nice.  He is doing as he says by showing me he loves me any ole time.  I love how he will get me one flower just for the hell of it.  Over the time I have known him I think I have gotten more flowers then most people have gotten for Valentine’s over the same amount of years, so I really should not complain.  I suppose I just needed to write it out and see it for myself.

School is going fairly well.  I have a lot more reading this semester then last, there is no doubt of that.  I actually just spent the last six hours reading and I think my brain is going to explode, so I decided to put the books down and relax here on my puter for a bit.  Funny thing is though, online is starting to really bore me to tears.  When I was not in school or working, all I ever did was sit on my computer and now I wonder what it was that I did.  I know that I spent a lot of time on the blog I had on Yahoo 360 and then Multiply, but after my great depression in the late winter early spring of ’09, I have lost some interest.

Oh yeah right, I was talking about school.  I have had one graded paper given back to me and I got an 82 on it.  Needless to say, I was not happy with it.  It was in Sociology and I really thought I nailed it, but apparently not.  I feel pretty ok with it though since there was only two A’s in a class of 35, granted I would have loved to be one of the two, but at least I was part of the upper 50% of the class with my B. 

English Comp is going well considering I can stand my Professor.  I won’t go into why I don’t care for the man since I made the choice to take his class, even after having him last semester and knowing what he was like.  I made my decision to take his class based on the fact that I wanted to get it over with and his class was the only available one that fit so perfectly into my schedule.  One thing about the man I do like however, how well he grades.  I finished his class last semester with an A so I know that I should be able to finish well this semester with him.

Both Psychology classes I am really enjoying and we are not even into the meat of the course yet, so I am really looking forward to getting farther along.  They both require most of my reading time and one of the books is a nice read.  The other book is quite lengthy, and I wish the woman who wrote the book took the time to take out many of the unnecessary words, but otherwise I am able to comprehend the material better than I expected.

Lastly is my Microeconomic class.  This one I am getting by.  That is the best I can say about it for now.  The Professor is from Bangladesh and very hard to understand.  It is also an issue that he has the tone that is the hardest for me to hear.  I have asked him if I could record in the class and he has given me such a hard time about it.  So far he is the only Professor to question me and ask that I get some documentation that I have a hearing issue.  I don’t know but perhaps my hearing aids could give him a clue.  I am guessing that he is a bit arrogant about the fact that he is the author of the text or something like that, who knows.  Anyways I have the paperwork he requested and maybe I am not too far behind in understanding the material. 

Alright I have bored you all to tears enough tonight, so I will tell you about the photo I have chosen for you today.  I owned one of these Holly Hobbie purses back in the 70’s.  For me being a tomboy this was the most girly girl I ever got back then.  My mother was overjoyed but it didn’t last long at all.  I think because of the fact that I was finally showing signs of being a girl, my mother decided to enrich that part of me and basically I owned everything Holly Hobbie.  Actually my favorite blanket was a comforter that had Holly Hobbie all over it, and it met its demise one early autumn night at a party in the woods.  One of my friends decided that he would hold it over the fire and up in flames it went.  Well you all that is it.  TTFN

Entry for February 10, 2011 What is my true mystery

When you look at my face, what is it you see?

I could be crying

I could be screaming

But I am always showing

The mask I am always wearing

Why do I feel I must do this?

Because I don’t want to share the hurt

And let you know I feel like dirt

My mind is all cluttered

But yet I can be so determined

So you ask who are you really.

I can only answer that I do not know

I think I have hit a new low

It will not win

Is this the fault of my kin

Would you like me if you saw what lies inside?

That is what I dread

Many times I wish I were dead

But I pick up and go

And join with the flow

And lastly I say

Love me

For who I am

Anyway

This is the way I am feeling today.  Don't know why I woke up this way, but I did.  Maybe it is because most times I do and I try to hide it from myself and try and live life and find something good about it.  I don't know, maybe I am kidding myself each day that I live.  Maybe I have convinced myself that I am a good person that I sometimes actually believe that it could be true.  

I have got to get out of this low I am in, since soon it might affect my school.  Jeeze when is this going to end.  Well at least I am up and ready to tackle the day.  Time to put my mask on and do what I have to do.  TTFN

Entry for February 4, 2011 Spring Semester

Here I am up at seven in the morning and my original plan was to start working on the many assignments I have due on Tuesday, but I am writing this instead.  I am finding it very hard to get myself going this semester and I don’t know why.  Well I shouldn’t say that, because I know that I am heading towards a low and I am doing everything I possibly can to keep myself going. Every time I feel like staying in bed rather than go to classes, I remind myself of the Nike ad that said JUST DO IT.  It has been working so far and I hope it continues to.

Just to let you all know, I finished last semester with a 3.92 and an over all of 3.88. I am very proud of the fact that I finished so well, but I wonder if I will be able to keep it up this semester.  Already I have seven chapters to read and two papers to write by Tuesday.  I wonder sometimes why I do this to myself and then I remember that I am capable of doing this sort of thing.

Alright here is the run down for all of those that want to know what classes I am taking and such.  Last semester when I picked my classes I signed up for: English Comp, Development Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology, and Microeconomics.  Like the semester before, I signed up for five so I can see the classes and choose to drop one and did that fine, but this semester it was very hard to choose, so in the end I decided to keep all five.  I figured that since I finished so well last semester I can handle it.  As I look now at the pile of large books for four of my classes I wonder if I had made a grave mistake.

Honestly though, last semester was my first full time semester and I felt exactly the same way.  I even had the bit of a low and was still able to manage the four classes I had.  Out of last semester’s four classes of: College Writing, General Psychology, Western Civilization and Math for Liberal Arts, I got an A in each class except for the A- I received in General Psychology. 

I guess I am just writing this to remind myself that I am totally capable of carrying on a heavy load of classes.  It is funny that just last week I was approached by a newspaper reporter in my area about questions pertaining to my mental illness and my classes.  (Note to self: find the article and read it) I was quite honest with her and she was quite impressed with my honesty.  I wonder though, what was actually said in the article. 

Well I guess that will be all for now.  Though this blog is open for anyone to read, I really wrote it to help me to see where I am and in the future take a look back and hopefully be able to say that even with the way I am feeling I still managed to handle each situation and succeed.

Today’s picture is the first book that I ever read out loud to anyone.  I loved this book for years and since today is about my education, why not show you all my early steps to it.  TTFN

Entry for January 31, 2011 My Brother’s Birthday

Today is my brother’s birthday and I figured that today I would try and write the issues that have been festering about my feelings about my brother.  Now don’t get me wrong here, I don’t hate him or even dislike him, but there are issues revolving around my family pertaining to him.

I guess I will start with the present situations with my brother and my father.  Dad has been sick now for quite a while, and at the present time dad is having memory problems, incontinence issues and he is having difficulties walking.  I will start with the incontinence issues.  I was just at my dad/brother’s house and realized that dad is not cleaning himself properly, and issues like this could bring on a world of other issues.  His not being able to walk around easily enough is also a reason why he is not cleaning himself properly since he has to climb stairs to do so. Six months ago I told my brother that he really needs to get going on building up the bathroom downstairs for my father and here now six months later nothing is done about this issue.

I have also brought to my brother’s attention that dad has great long term health insurance and that I have contacted a wonderful home health care center that will visit dad three days a week for three hours each time and my brother shot it down.  Now at this point you all must be thinking why not just go through my father about getting a home health care person in.  I have.  Now is the time to bring up a bit of the past.

My brother is the golden child.  He has been since the day my parents had brought him home.  I can’t understand why this is.  Maybe it is one of two reasons or both.  You see my brother was the only boy and he was also the only one of us that was adopted as an infant.  I am guessing those could be the reasons but I am not sure.  What I don’t get is that my brother was also the major problem child growing up.  Our lives revolved around how he would react to issues and my sister and I were left to our own devices.  Even when my parent split and it was me and my brother living with my mom she still took the time to check in with us at times, but as soon as my brother left to live with dad as a teen my mom seemed to pretty much check out as a parent and it felt as though I was on my own at 14 yrs old.

I think what pisses me off the most about my dad issues is the fact that my father has given the house to my brother and actually my brother has never in his life paid rent, because he has lived in my dad’s house since he was fifteen years old and dad never asked him for rent.  Actually my brother basically pays no major bills.  Yes I am jealous,  I have had to struggle all my life and each time I visit dad/brother’s house there is a sting I feel when I see all the things my brother gets to buy for himself.  Even food shopping with him is crazy.  I always buy sales and look for them.  An example is boneless chicken breast, I refuse to pay more than $2.50 a pound and there was my brother just picking up one and it was over four dollars.  I know I am being small and petty about all this but I wonder, is this shit ever going to end.  Will I be recognized for all the struggles I have gone through? I am not saying that my parents don’t say things about the things I have done, but it would be nice to not have my father say something about my strengths and then in the same breath mention how great my brother is.

Even yesterday because of my father’s memory problems, I called him up to remind him that today was my brother’s birthday.  And like I said, I don’t dislike my brother and honestly I am not sure he even knows that he is the golden child.  My brother is basically disconnected with people and don’t really pick up on those things.  And I am not saying he doesn’t care about my father or anything like that.  He just doesn’t know that he is doing anything wrong as far as my father’s care goes.  There are so many things that scare me about my father being in his care, but there is nothing I can do about it.  With my sister having passed away my father has chosen my brother to be the one in charge of his care and since that is what dad has chosen I have decided that I will step back and let my father have his way and I will help when asked.  After all it was his decision and there is nothing I can do about it.

I know this was a major rant blog and honestly I didn’t even touch into the issues pertaining to my brother and mother but this has been long enough and honestly if anyone has even gotten this far in the blog I would be majorly surprised.  No picture today since I am not in the mood and I will write soon and let you all know about the classes I am taking and things related to school, but I think I needed to get this out.  TTFN

Entry for January 2, 2011 Loneliness Falls Upon Me

For some reason today I feel all alone.  I have been living alone now for over four months, and I guess it is pretty good that I have made it as far as I did without feeling this way.  Being in school, I think, has helped me to have other things to think about other than being alone most of the time. 

I have some really good friends, but they live so far away from me and all I can do is talk to them over the phone.  I have lived in this area for some time now and yet I have not been able to meet any close friends.  I do have a few people whom I would call friends but not close friends. 

I guess it also does not help that I have been shut up in the house as much as I have either.  Funny thing is though; I don’t seem to want to go anywhere.  I am going to force myself to go out tomorrow though.  I have to go and pick up some late Christmas gifts, so maybe I will head out to a mall that I have never been to yet.  Honestly though, I will probably go the safe route and go to a store that I know already.

I do have Dennis and lately that has not been a good thing.  I love him and care about him, but that has only hurt me in the last couple of years.  It is so hard to see someone destroying themselves and watch them not care.  I know at this point he is sabotaging our relationship and I know why he is doing it.  Better to hurt others then to have others hurt you.  I know this all too well.  I have done it myself countless times.  What I find the hardest to deal with is the fact that he is not willing to help himself.  I have been there as well, but I recognized it and corrected my thinking.  He was there with me through the whole process and I am trying to be there for him but I don’t thinking he sees it just yet.  I am wondering how long it is going to take him.  Then I wonder: am I going to hang on and wait for that to happen? 

Moving out was something I had to do.  Something that I thought would help the both of us.  It seems that it is helping me, but it is making him worse.  Then I wonder if I was or am being selfish.  We have talked about my moving from the very beginning and I thought he understood that it was going to be a growing experience, but since I have moved he has taken the opposite turn. 

I am supposed to go with him to his family for a get together next weekend, but I don’t think I will.  I have asked him to talk with his family about some of the issues he is dealing with and if he tells me that is what he is going to do next weekend then I will go with him, but if not I am heading to Albany to visit with my friend earlier then I was going to go in the first place.  I think if I go and make sure I don’t talk to him while I am away it will strengthen me more as a person.  I know that I have been in the past mega co-dependent on him and even today there is some of that going on, but what I wonder is: Was he co-dependent on me as well, and if so have I ripped that away from him.  For me I have slowly broken away from it and I am wondering if my moving out and not spending so much time with him caused him not to be able to move slowly into an independent person like I have. 

The good news about all this is that during this time I have a new excellent therapist to which I can discuss all these thoughts and feeling with.  For the past three years I have had a stagnation in my therapy because of a therapist that I feel was not qualified to handle the case load they were given.  His main goal was to keep me out of the hospital and he did manage to do that for almost two years but I was stuck in this never ending circle of not getting anywhere in my therapy.  I am however grateful in his support as I went from not being able to move out of my bed to being able to attend school and maintain decent grades.  Now, however,  I feel as though I am ready to move on so I can grow further on and he was not going to be that kind of person to help me do that.

I was lucky enough to get a new therapist because of a career move on my old therapist’s part.  I am so pleased with my new therapist for many reasons but the one that is major is that she is a woman and is around my age.  It is so much easier to talk with a female and it makes a huge difference that she is around my age.  That means that she has lived some and knows some.  That does make a huge difference.

I know this was a long blog and I am sorry, but like I said before, once I get to typing I have no idea where this blog is going to go.  I just know the first sentence and then it just goes from there.  It is almost like I have no control over it, and honestly that is the way I like it.

Today’s picture is from way back in the day.  The reason I picked it is because yesterday I was out with a friend and her two sons ages 3 and 7, and the 7 year old asked me if I know about video games and I was like sure I do.  He proceeded to tell me all about the Wi that he got for his birthday and all the games he got for Christmas and well I just got to thinking about the early games and happened to find a picture of Pong and decided to share it with you all.  So with that I am signing off.  TTFN

Entry for December 31, 2010 Choices that Change the Course of Life

Have you ever had to make a quick decision that could alter your life, with little time to make it?  Well I had one of those moments last night.  I am not going to go into what that decision was I just wanted to state that last night was the time I made it.  I guess I want to see it in print so later, should I fail to carry it out, I can see that it was made at some point.

Looks like I am going to be spending New Years Eve alone.  I am not overly disappointed about it at all actually.  I am kind of happy that I can relax and not worry about getting home and worrying about the many drunk drivers that are going to be on the road.  Not only will there be the regular drunk drivers, but there will be the ones that only drink for special occasions.  In my eyes, it will be a blood bath out there. 

Now I know I over exaggerate about drinking and driving, but I can’t understand what goes on in the heads of those that choose to get behind the wheel when they are stumbling around on foot.  I mean how friggin hard is it to call a cab or hoof it home.  I know that if I am deciding to go and drink outside of my home and I am driving myself there I always think about how I will get home or if I can stay until I am sober.  It makes no sense to me why this is even an issue anymore.  Shit, are we not aware of the possibilities.  I know it has been thrown down my throat since before I could even drive.

Personally I have had friends and friends of friends die from drinking or drug related accidents.  In high school alone there were seven deaths and three in one year.  And I knew all these people personally.  Just after the first one, I made the decision that I would never be in that position and have carried it out to where there have been many times that I would sit at a party or whatever and drink a coke so I could get myself and my friends home safely.  Each time as I drove I was hoping that any car I passed that the person behind the wheel had made the same decision I had.

I understand that many who are addicted to alcohol are not using the best judgment in the first place, but come on there is no reason to make your car a deadly weapon.  I saw this billboard here around town in a few places.  It has a large picture of a man in is late twenties to early thirties and the caption reads something like this, “So and So had 15 DUI arrests and killing So and So was her 16^th.  I want to ask, why the fuck was she even out of jail in the first place.  How many arrests does a person have to have before they are convicted?  Oh I guess they have to hurt or kill someone in order to keep them behind bars for any real amount of time.

I want you to know that the decision I had to make last night is not related to this discussion that I am having now and honestly I don’t know why I chose to write about this.  I can only say that when I sit down to write my blogs, I really have no idea where it is going to turn, just that I write and I don’t think, I just type away and you all get to see where my mind heads to.

Today’s picture is one of my favorite pictures as far as New Years pictures go.

With that I am going to say Have a Save and Happy New Year.  TTFN

Entry for December 28’ 2010 No Excuse for Not Writing

I could sit here and tell you all I have been mega busy or something to that affect, but that would be partially lying. Up until December 16th I could honestly tell you that I was way busy with school and final projects and exams, but since then I have been so not busy it is starting to really drive me crazy. It is funny when I think about how I have changed in the past three years. I actually got excited if I was as active as I am right now this second. To be up and out of bed was a big accomplishment back in that time. Now this not having anything to do for days is really taking its toll on me.


My biggest fear when it comes to having nothing to do for a few days is me falling back into the old patterns and finding myself deep in that pit of depression. I know it is easy for me to fall into that pit and I even had to fight it this past semester. I missed three days of classes in a row because of the feeling of not wanting to get out of bed and that feeling of it not really mattering if I get up and join the human race. On that forth day I had to be at the bus stop at six thirty in the morning and believe me when I tell you that getting up that morning was the hardest thing I had to do in a long time. I did manage to get up and go, but I felt like I was in a fog the whole rest of the week. You see when I say I missed three days of classes and stayed in bed that whole time, it was actually six days because of the weekend and the day we had off for some reason or another.


I am thankful that I forced myself to get going and get back on track with school, because I can’t afford to fail anything there because of financial reasons. If I fail anything there, I can never try this again. There is no more chances, this is it.


Well the good that came out of it all is that since I am aware of my patterns and moods, I am better able to address them and see if I can work them out on my own and if not, have the power to find someone who can help me with that.


So with the semester over I can tell you all that I did finish and I managed to pull off a semester grade point average of 3.92 out of a 4.0, with a cumulative average of a 3.88. Basically what this means is I made the Dean’s list for the semester. This is something that I was working toward and even with my quick bout of depression I was able to pull it off. I am so happy that I did manage to still get the goal I set for myself and proud that I was able to deal with my illness when I needed to. So my picture today is a copy of my grades from my first semester (where I tried only two classes to see if I could do it) and this semester.

Hope you all have a great one. TTFN

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Entry for November 11, 2010 Loved Ones with Medical Problems

Just got back from Denny’s this morning, after spending the night with him.  His mother is pretty sick and in the hospital.  Apparently, she has fluid around her heart.  This is not good.  We went last night to get his train ticket and then looked to see if there was a movie playing at the mall.  He wanted to do something to keep his mind off of what is going on with his mother.  I can’t blame him at all.  Sometimes I avoid calling my mom or dad because it is really hard for me to know that they are both sick.  It makes it even harder that I can’t be with them and both of them don’t want me to visit them, because they want me in school.  Both, mom and dad have told me that it would make them very angry if I went to them and took a semester off.

Dad had colon cancer and is in remission but he is having some serious memory problems and is also showing major signs of depression.  I think he is scaring me more than mom, because he does not want to do anything which is causing him to have problems walking and such.  It is almost like he is giving up and just waiting for the end to come.

Mom has lung cancer, but she is more active in her treatment.  Not to say that her illness will have a better outcome then dad, but at least she is more active about it.  Mom lost her sister and father to the same cancer, so I am not looking for that special miracle and neither is she.  She started the chemo this past Monday and thankfully she only had a bit of sickness from it.  I hope that is how it goes for the next twelve weeks.

It is hard to go to school each day with them being sick and I feel like I am being selfish, but what am I going to do, neither one of them want me to hold back in my education.  So I have been taking the approach of trying to do my best for myself and them.  I know that when I share with them a good grade that I received, it brightens up their day in one way or another.  Mom and dad have both told me that out of the three of us, they always believed that I was the one with the good learning skills.  It feels good to hear that, but I know that my brother is very smart, it is just that he really hated school and was ADHD before they knew what to call it.  They used to call it hyper activity back in the day.

Well I guess that is all for now.  So what picture is this and why did I post it? Well since I talked about my family a bit here, I decided that it would be nice to post something that we had in our house when I was growing up, so this is a bumper pool table and we had one in our basement.  There was a cover that you could put two ways, as a table or a card table.  The regular table part was kina messed up because we did arts and crafts on it (dad was not too pleased with it but didn’t complain much) so that is why I posted this picture today. TTFN

Entry for November 9, 2010 Updates

Entry for November 9, 2010

Had to make a hard decision pertaining to Denny.  What I came up with was telling him that if he is engaged in any kind of drinking I am not going to be part of it.  Told him that should he decide to drink, while with me, I will get up and leave.  It is what I have to do. In order to help him get better, I have to stop being a part of his addiction.  The first step I made was moving out, and that did bring on a depression for him but it didn’t have the outcome that I was hoping for.

Sunday I sat down with him and told him how it was going to be from now on.  I was actually surprised first, that he didn’t get up and walk away.  That is his usual move whenever I try to talk to him about his drinking.  The second biggest breakthrough came when he totally admitted that he knows he has a problem and got mega teary eyed.  Even with these breakthroughs I don’t expect him to quit drinking just like that.

The good thing about this whole thing is that he is currently seeing a therapist for his depressive burst about a month ago.  What makes this even really good is that this therapist also specializes in addiction recovery.  That was a blessed coincidence and I am hoping Denny utilizes this man’s skills.  I asked Denny if he brought up to the therapist anything about his drinking habits.  Denny said that he had but very briefly and Denny feels as though the therapist is waiting for him to bring it up again.  I like this therapists approach. 

I let Denny know that if he needed my help in any way with his recovery I am so right there to help him.  I even gave him a few examples of how I could help and I hope he knows I mean it. 

School news.  Registration began on Monday around midnight and I went in the website and was able to get the classes I wanted.  What this means is, I only have to go to the main campus twice a week and two days here in the city.  I will also have every Friday off.  I think I am more excited about the Fridays off more than anything.  I am basically dragging myself to the bus stop each Friday and have actually missed a few.  So this is a great thing.

I have an exam on Friday for Psychology and I am hoping to keep my grade at an A.  Weird thing is…I can’t seem to get into the studying.  This is not good.  Maybe it is the whole in the middle of the semester thing.  Whatever it is, I have to get out of it.  Other than that, all is good with school.

Since I was talking about school, I decided to share a picture of a toy/calculator that I had as a kid.  I loved math, and when I got this Little Professor I was so excited.  I took with me everywhere.  I can remember leaving it in the woods and from then, I don’t remember it anymore.  I think I most have broke it or something.  Maybe it rained or something, but I liked it, a lot.

TTFN