Confessions of an Internet Junkie

This hit me like a bolt of lightning this evening, but unfortunate planning means I'm not writing it until after I took the meds and Irish liquer. Anway.

I lost myself these last few years. Forgot who I was when I left the States to come up. How tough I was. How tough I am. I beat repeated sexual assualts as a child. I beat parents who raised me to be their private possession, indoctrinated that no one would want me, for me not to want anyone and that that was not what I was born for anyway. I was theirs. Always. I beat poverty and homelessness and mental depression. I fought my way back from the outer edges and the dead ends, and I worked my ass off to see myself as whole and worthwhile and bright and a winner. I put myself through two of the finest universities in the country; one of them among the finest universities in the world. With honors and awards. I created my life. My life, and I was successful in all of the ways that mattered to me.

I've lost a lot of that, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let that go on. I'm more than this disease. I am more than these circumstances. I have a shit load of barriers to overcome, but fuck it all if I don't try. Damn me if I don't try.

It's easier to post pictures, eh. Stringing words together requires effort, and by the end of the day effort and I are barely speaking. Because that would require . . . effort. You see my quandary.

( I went to see my old rheumatologist yesterday. Note icon. Oh, yeah. )

I hate that it's robbed me of a year of my life, and the theft continues with higher stakes and more consequences. I hate being fogged in and weighted down by fatigue, and I hate that it's becoming more frequent and not less. I hate this sensation of seeing, feeling myself slip away and there is not one thing I can do to stop it. I hate not doing my share.

I hate the alternative, because really - what sane person wants to die? So I need a solution, a plan. I need to make a peace with this that isn't a surrender, because it's never going away. It may recede (please, I'll take that, really), but it will never disappear.

Maybe I just need to sleep, but that isn't happening, either. Two-thirds of my bed is taken up by sleeping cats, and that's both a comfort and a taunt. Pull me down into sleep with you, cats. Remind me how that works. Still, they make me smile to look at them, and that's a blessing I'm happy to receive.

I feel like a wicked complainuh (as they'd say in Boston), but I know that there's reason for complaint, so I'm not going to apologize for this. Maybe it's because I've always been so inner directed that this particular type of lupus is bringing me so low at times. It's attacking my brain. It's leaching who I am from, well, who I am. Or maybe it isn't really, and it's the dementia making me think that, but then . . . isn't that basically the same thing? [thinks about it] No, I don't think it is. The dementia is a trickster, and with luck it can be chased away. If it is lupus dementia and not something organic and degenerative. In which case I am well and truly fucked.

At this point in the movies or a novel, I'd start making all sorts of bargains with God. Give me back my brain, and I promise I'll never watch bad TV again. Never be intellectually lazy. Never take my sense of self for granted. Sadly, I don't believe in a god who bargains, and sadly I know myself well enough (still) to know that I'm only human and therefore incapable of forever holding up my end of the bargain.

But really. Somebody please make this stop.

I have to stop comparing myself to others. All of the people I hear about - friends of friends - who have lupus and carry on with no melodrama. I'm guessing that they don't have CNS (central nervous system) involvement. (Yeah, right, Lee - just kidney failure or liver failure or ruined lungs or hearts. They have it easy, right? See? Comparing is not the way to go.) And then there's Dar, who has suffered horrible medical problems. Medical problems - what a weak phrase for what she's endured. I hate myself for crying when she doesn't, for complaining when she doesn't, for being frightened when she isn't. I know that some of this is the disease itself, the actual outcomes, side effects, dues, what have you, of this particular illness, but it doesn't go too far to ease the embarrassment and the shame. Does a good job on honing the anger, though. At this rate I'll be a Dark Side Darth in no time flat. Let's see, there was Darth Maul and Darth Sidious, right? And of course, the Vadernator. So I shall be . . . Darth Dementous. Darth Demaystone. Nah, sounds a little too springtime and puppies for a Dark Side badass. Darth Ugoddabekiddingus. Has possibilities. So go ahead, give me my Dark Side name. Pimp my slide to the evil side.

[Poll #1116409]

Man, I need a drink. Or some drugs. Or a Twinkie. What I really want, really really want, is a S'mores Toaster Popup Popem whateverthehellthey'renamed. Just one. I don't want a box of them, because then over time I'll eat the box of them. One. I want one. Is that so much to ask? I may have to settle with a digestive cookie. Or lime sherbet. Hmmmmm. Nope, still want a drink (but gall bladder says, "I shall kill you slowly, but that would give me pleasure. Please. Drink up.') Fuck you, gall bladder! I do nothing for your pleasure! (To steal from Legend. Highly underrated picture,btw.) There are drugs. I took a tranq; I could add a sleeping pill. Half a sleeping pill. I'd still rather have a Pop Tart.

OK, so I've been awake since around 4AM. After falling asleep around 12:30AM. It's been a long, long, fucking long day of shopping and cleaning and running around to get the house ready for the showing that was scheduled to take place between 5 and 6PM. But more on that later.

Right now, I want to shoot our back neighbor. Some of you have been here to visit, and you know how close together these houses are. This idiot might as well be living in my closet. At least then I could smother him with a lovely-colored summer blouse. Maybe in hot pink. No, black. In case he starts to bleed from the eyes and mouth. Yes. Definitely black.

This fuckwad is into karaoke. On his deck. With a microphone. Because yeah, I want him for all intents and purposes to be standing at the bottom of my fucking bed! and shouting bad rock and roll at me. Louder! Louder, fuckwad! My eardrums aren't punctured yet! LOUDER! Hey, do you know this one? It's sung to the tune of "If I Had a Hammer".

If I had a magnum,
I'd shoot it in the morning.
I'd shoot it in the evening,
all over your ass.
It's the magnum of justice,
It's the magnum of freeeeeeedom,
It's the magnum of me getting
to shoot your off-key ass
all over this laaaaaaaaaaaand!

Thank you. Thank you very much.

So yeah, the viewees showed up at 6:20, just as I was walking around the house blowing out candles and turning off our gazillion lights. Maddie and I hightailed it out to the backyard so they could go through the house without having to worry about offending us or anything. And the upshot? The agent said, and I quote, "They were overwhelmed. There were too many rooms." Did you not read the damn listing before you brought them over?? Did they not quite get the concept of seven bedrooms meaning the place would be just a tad larger than a crackerbox? And then! Then - after spending a whole 10 minutes in the house (apparently quaking in fear of the vast expanse [perhaps future ads should screen for agoraphobics?]), they proceed to take up fucking homesteading in the driveway for another 25 minutes! I'm not kidding. Yak, yak, yak. I saw the agent take out a map at one point. Helloooooooo. Private driveway there. And a pretty big one. Ooooooh, scary. Run away now, like nice little wussies. No, really. Run away. Now!

And that brings me to, well, now. Wanting to sleep so very, very much. And yet hindered because I am also at the moment so very, very homicidal. Surely you can see my dilemma?

Baileys. And earplugs. And then to bed to dream of Dirty Harry singing karaoke, no doubt.

Fuckwad.