Been awhile in Snowspangled

It has. It has been awhile. This is for a lot of reasons, most of them bundled up with my fun combination of rage, despair, learned helplessness, and sheer avoidance. Talking about shit ain’t pleasant, yo. Not even when I’m only talking to myself, partially because I am talking to myself. Yes, I do have a therapist, but that’s one hour a week, and we haven’t even gotten into the fact that I’m angry yet. I think she wants to sharpen her trauma teeth on me (she’s a student) and I think I don’t even give a shit about the ptsd bit of me, I want to find relief from this rage and exhaustion. Seriously, it’s so bad that my arms ache right now, because I am so tense, because I have to filter every movement my lips make because the rage keeps getting out. It’s not fair that I have to sit with this, because Jesus knows the spouse is being pissily passive aggressive, the roommate is playing video games til midnight, and the kids are self-absorbed little shits incapable of well, anything.

And that’s probably part my fault, yes, I know. I tried to make things easy for everyone, and now they expect it, but it isn’t easy for me, because the difficulty of balancing it all has gone off the meter because now I have to care for me, too. And worse, I have to look good while I try and figure it all out, because heaven forbid I get treated like something I am, straight up, right on the tin. I may be forty and a mom, but also a student. Can I get the same support please? No? I have to do this Ginger Rogers style? (You know, the meme: Fred Astaire can dance, but Ginger Rogers can do it BACKWARDS and in high heels.) I resent being Ginger in this case. I want to be Fred. But I wouldn’t mind looking like Ginger. Meee-wow.

So let’s unpack therapy this week, because it’s stuck in my head. In class just before, we had discussed cognitive distortion, or seventeen common types of that, and if you want some fun, they will definitely be showing up here. Chuck a duck or something. My common ones are responsibility related, and I catastrophize. And I probably always will a little. Thanks Mom.

(Why Mom? She often dumped adult stressors on me (the light bill is due and we’re broke, we’re going to get evicted again, and the whole time, the whole time, I can/could look at her biggest pleasure habit - jewelry and cosmetics. She could drop $40 on nail polish, but like spouse, she can’t find $270 to replace my glasses, or a copay for a dentist…but she does own a diamond tennis bracelet. Actually, I think she has two or three now. And she’d like more.)

What else are you supposed to get from that? If someone you love and trust (you don’t know better) tells you it’s essential to have ALL the red polishes in this line, are they right or is the voice in your head asking about rent and groceries and that one girl from school has dance lessons and maybe you want to be a ballerina this year right? Answer: your mother is right, because if you bring up that other shit, you’re going to get beat the next time her bitch switch flips. You won’t remember asking why the other thing is wrong, but she will, and it is coming due in bruises.

Or Spouse’s passive-aggressive sulkfest.

Anyway. We started off with a measurement tool. I had a shitty week. The kids are loud, the house is crowded, the lack of a door is getting to me in some major ways, and while I did get an hour without them, the house is so fucking cold that I spent it in bed, watching videos. Class is hard, and I had a chat with Fin Aid and they’re telling me “if you need one more semester, bitch, you’re gonna be paying. Your money starts dwindling next year, and after 20-21, buonasera signora. No, in Italian, that’s “ciao” for goodbye: I think I just said good morning…Anyway. So I don’t have time to double major without an act of God. But I’m so damn close. Maybe if I can squeeze in one capstone…

Anyway.

So from there, we only really got so far as “kids are loud” before she started having me sort things into “what I can control” and “what I can’t.” I argued with her on everything. Apparently, I might be a control freak. Or I’ve been excellently trained to try and pre-suppose needs and be right there with solutions, which is definitely part of the case.

So we didn’t discuss the hysterectomy at all. Backing up (you weren’t there) the IUD has failed (to the tune of 20+ days of bleeding with maybe 2 weeks between: the next one is due any day now. Might be today. Super wet and DEFINITELY not horny.) (Well. Actually, the kickoff day of my period is the high point of my sexual calendar. I suspect I think about my vagina more during it because shit it hurts, and that whole “hey, I’m thinking about it” means that I’m most likely to do something about it. And that’s how that works.) (But I’m not ogling people and jacking off or anything. Not in public.) So the OB-Gyn says, hey, your only option from here is hysterectomy. And that’s “okay you can keep bleeding if ya want, but I could also take that out now.” Wow what a choice, right?

Except no choice, because I have anemia, I’m tired, I’m fuzz-brained, I’m panicking every time I feel even a little wet, my uterus is somewhere between 5 and 7 months pregnant in size (and it’s been like that a while) and the u/s says the insides are…basically pulverized. I guess. Nobody interpreted it for me, but there’s readings of “rugation” (stripes) and “Venetian blind effect” (more stripes) and the word “pronounced” shows up a lot. And it ain’t talking, you know?

But Kaiser only offers one option to overweight women, and that is robotic hysterectomy. If I were slimmer, I could also look into ablation (but it has an 80% success rate. I already blew past the success rate of the IUD…)

(The hysterectomy has a failure rate, too.)

I just didn’t get my money’s worth…we discussed ways of making the children do chores. She says to quietly and calmly take control of something they’re using and hold it until they finish. But my kids will just go do something else. How many things am I supposed to confiscate?

And then I went home and dumb fuck hadn’t…Ehhhh I won’t go into dumb fuck. Suffice it to say that I’m playing bad cop and it’s playing with my head in bad ways.

But I am wasting my quiet time in Starbucks crying at this wall. I’m going to be done now.

Tomorrow or later, I might write a fun piece about how love is horrible, because my brain is enjoying coming up with things like “Love is a litterbox. Sure it’s full of surprises, but they are literally ALL shit you have to handle every day or else.”

Or “love is an abortion. it definitely wants to stop my beating heart.” (I’m pro-choice, though.)