Take the Bullets Away

(Take the Bullets Away – We As Human/Lacey)

 

Never have I written a post that better utilized the lyrics of this song…lol…

 

There are a lot of things inside my head that I want to write about…one of them is the shooting that made the news last week. I recognized the location on the map as the same general location as two other shooting events that made the news enough to reach my corner of the universe recently-ish…yet these people described their area as very safe. Sometimes we pigeonhole ourselves into a world of tunnel vision where we see only what is right in front of us and miss the big picture.

 

There are a lot of debates on the internet right now surrounding this event.

 

• Is gun control super important or is it completely irrelevant?
• Is the real problem guns or is it mental health?
• Is talking about mental health following these events important in furthering the conversation or is it completely disrespectful?

 

So yeah, all those things get me thinking about what my opinion would be if my opinion actually mattered. Just going to say right now I think the position that talking about mental health following these events being disrespectful is completely stupid. Sorry if that offends you, but actually, no, I am not sorry about expressing my opinion, lol, just sorry you got your little precious feelings hurt. I think as a society in general we are often too self-centered. We are so focused on our own worlds that we miss what is going on in someone else’s sphere. Other people’s pain is not noticed or is ignored. For that matter, other people in general are often ignored. How many times have we all been on an elevator with someone we didn’t know and said absolutely nothing, or at most a hello? That reminds me of someone’s facebook post that I saw a few months ago. They posted to be really careful near this particular strip mall because omg they felt so threatened and scared…the real story? This person ignored someone who was approaching her and pretended she didn’t notice. She got in her car and she felt really threatened because the person came up to the window while she was texting and knocked on the window to get her attention. The person writing this post said she looked up then refused to acknowledge the other person. I read that story and was pretty sure it wasn’t the writer who deserved to feel threatened. It is perfectly natural and human to request assistance or ask questions of our fellow humans when we encounter them…and ignoring them and refusing to even take the 5 seconds to say you are busy or can’t help is nothing but rude.

 

Okay, so yeah, tangent of tangent of tangent, my point there is that while you obviously do not have to be mentally ill to commit a crime, I am guessing most people who commit crimes are not doing it because they have gotten too much positive attention in life, and that positive attention is good for everyone. People who struggle with mental health concerns often need positive support people, yet no one notices because we are all busy with our own worlds.

 

I don’t really care what you think the “real” problem in these events is. What I do care about is that these events seem to push mental health into the limelight. Whether mental health was a factor in the event or not, I think it is beneficial to bring more awareness to that area. I think mental health is something that a lot of people brush off as not that real, not that important, not that relevant, and that does a disservice to the people who do need help but think by extension their needs are not real, not important, not relevant. Everyone matters y’all.

 

I do think that access to guns is a problem. People have said why does a teen need a semi-automatic weapon (I don’t even know what that means…lol…). I counter, why does a teen need any weapon. For that matter, why does anyone need a weapon. Sure, if we limit weapons it will still be possible for bad people to get their hands on one, but that will be much more difficult, greatly decreasing the ease with which a crime can be committed. Outside of living in a warzone, which has not been the case in the United States since the civil war, there really is pretty close to zero need for personal ownership of a gun. People whine but what about hunting…well, no problem, because there is this thing we do with lots of other entertainment equipment called daily rentals. Rent the gun from an authorized facility for a limited period of time. Return it when you are done. This also prevents the issue of your toddler accidentally killing you when you leave your gun unlocked and accessible…not sayin’ just sayin’.

 

People also claim police officers need deadly weapons for protection. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Yeah, no. This argument goes back to the he said she said of childhood. Just because he pushed you doesn’t mean you have permission to push back. Two wrongs don’t make a right (but three lefts do J ). Murder is no less wrong when you are murdering someone who murdered. Dead is dead. I understand the desire to quickly gain control of a situation before you are close enough to physically restrain someone, but there are options that don’t involve killing or otherwise threatening people. Just because someone made a bad choice doesn’t strip them of their humanity and their right to be treated with compassion. If something audiovisual is not practical, then I’ve heard of something called a pellet gun, which in my understanding anyway, does physically hurt enough to shock the victim, but does not usually cause lasting damage.

 

Speaking of revenge killing…I read that is what the police want to do with the Florida teen. Kind of ironic, because the teen is apparently on suicide watch as well…so basically it is the justice system just wanting to show their power and exert control. No, you can’t kill yourself. We want to do that to you. People who are suicidal don’t necessarily want to die though. They want for their pain to end, and committing suicide seems like the only way out even though that really only transfers the pain to other people.

 

So yeah, the gun manufacturers are gonna have their panties in a wad if they can’t keep selling more guns, but really, what is more important, the needs of a very teeny tiny minority to sell guns, or the needs of the vast majority to have safety? The gun manufacturers can come up with something else to make but the dead people can’t become any less dead.

 

Kinda like what I heard today. Someone in a video said that following loss it is important to remember that we cannot undo what was done, and we cannot do what was not done. Therefore we must mourn the things that were done and realize we cannot change or replace the loss. Moving back into my life, this really explains why even if I had gotten an awesome residency in phase II, it wouldn’t have ended my mourning. We cannot do what was not done – it wouldn’t have changed that I didn’t have a residency then. And we cannot undo what was done – it wouldn’t take away the worthlessness, rejection, and betrayal I felt. It wouldn’t unkindle the pain of the abuse. Sure, it would add something that might take away the sting, but it wouldn’t undo the pain that was already there.

Courage is his Name

(Harold the Helicopter)

 

Today I actually feel pretty good. That is such a blessing considering that under a week ago I was desperately crying out to God to take me home. I know the fact that I feel that way sometimes means I should get help processing the grief, but I also know that with my history it will be best and safest for me to not push myself into that until I am pretty stable. It is kind of a catch 22 I guess. I can’t get help because I am struggling. I am struggling because I can’t get help…but first and especially second year I started learning to stand up for myself and to figure out how to support myself through things. I might have taken some steps backwards through the abuse third year, but elephants never forget and neither did I. Third year and the fallout gave me ample opportunities to start growing those skills to the best of my ability. Someone once suggested that I had PTSD surrounding another event. I posit that if that is true then I have comorbid PTG (post traumatic growth). I have found my inner warrior. I might be primarily a people-pleasing pushover, but I at least sometimes believe that I do have worth and I am worth fighting for.

 

I am not so sure the PTSD assessment was ever really that accurate, but that is not the point. The point is that grief storm attacks are normal, particularly in the first year surrounding the event. Considering that my “event” is more of a complex loss that occurred in pieces over a period of time, defining that year timeframe is kind of difficult. That is not to mention that the one year designation also does not make one immune to further storms of grief, but rather a somewhat arbitrary marker separating firsts from other hard events. It is easy to see the grief storm and feel like I’m not moving forward when in reality I am. I want forward motion to mean feeling awesome all the time and that is not how life works.

 

I am feeling apprehensive, because in almost exactly a month will be the first anniversary of the first match day last year. Maybe I will get lucky and the day will go by without a second thought…but probably more likely it will be a very challenging day. Last year on the 16^th my red skates came in the mail and I tried them on that night before going to bed. The next morning I was taking pictures of my new skates to upload to facebook when I got a call from my mom to look for the match results. I figured it wouldn’t have come yet, but curiosity made me go look anyway. And my world stopped spinning. Grief is hard. It is crazy that it has been 11 months since then. It still feels raw like it was yesterday and at the same time it feels like it has been a million years that I have been fighting since then. In relation to another event someone once told me that I should try to do something exciting on the anniversary to cover up the pain and make it something to look forward to instead. Yeah, I’m not so sure about how that will work. To be honest, that day last year not only had the excitement the night before, but was originally a day to which I was eagerly looking forward. I was excited to announce my residency position. Then the excitement was crushed into disappointed agony. So I don’t really see how adding extra excitement will do much more than make the resemblance even more striking. And…umm, I may have decided to plan a party the night before anyway, because, well, mostly because I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to when the party was going to be when I said yes I would like to help plan. I am really hoping that the party is engaging enough that it at least is a little bit of reprieve from the pain that will most likely be happening that weekend. I am going to be brave. I am going to have a hard week, but I am going to survive.

 

Well, anyway, since I am already way far away from what I originally sat down to write, I guess I might as well go even further off course and share some of the things that have been saved in my internet for a long time.

 

I found this letter on the internet and the site was citing it from somewhere else that was citing it from somewhere else and I got tired of trying to track down the actual original reference, so I guess this is probably kinda copyright infringement or something, but this letter about grief I felt was not identical to my experience but did have a lot of things in there that I would very much have liked to have been able to express. I bolded a few of the things I would really have liked everyone to know.

 

Dear_____________________(Family, Friends, Pastor, Employer),

 

I have experienced a loss that is devastating to me. It will take time, perhaps years, for me to work through the grief I feel because of this loss.

 

I will cry more than usual for some time. My tears are not a sign of weakness or lack of hope or faith. They are the symbol of the depth of my loss and the sign that I am recovering.

 

I may become angry without seeming to have a reason for it. My emotions are heightened by the stress of grief. Please be forgiving if I seem irrational at times. I need your understanding and your presence more than anything else. If you don’t know what to say, just touch me or give me a hug to let me know you care. Please don’t wait for me to call you. I am often too tired to even think of reaching out for the help I need.

 

Don’t allow me to withdraw from you. I need you more than ever during the next year.

 

Pray for me only if your prayer is not an order for me to make you feel better. My faith does not excuse me from the grief process.

 

If you have had an experience of loss that seems anything like mine, please share it with me. You will not make me feel worse.

 

This loss is the worse thing that could happen to me. But I will get through it and I will live again. I will not always feel as I do now.

 

I will laugh again.

 

Thank you for caring about me. Your concern is a gift I treasure.

 

Sincerely,

 

(your name)

 

I wish I had found this sooner. I might have actually posted it on facebook or something if I had been able to find the energy and motivation to do that. I wish that I had found it though because of those phrases at the end “I will not always feel as I do now. I will laugh again.” That is a piece of hope that I am not sure I would have actually believed if I had found this too soon, but that piece of hope is something that I still am clinging on to. Sometimes it feels like nothing will ever change and I am going to be stuck here forever. Okay, most of the time it feels like that. It feels really good to try to believe that maybe someday there will be something more for me than this pain.

 

I also found more recently a page by I think it was Margaret Feinberg about what not to say to someone grieving. Usually I hate that kind of list because everyone is so different and what someone else wants to hear might be what I can’t stand and vice versa. This list though had some things that I agree with. What not to say: you must feel so close to God right now. Umm, no, no I didn’t. I felt like God didn’t care about me, and that is not a close feeling…Instead pray for me. I like that this is phrased “for” not “with” me. While I did appreciate people who prayed with me, the first few days I didn’t want that because I didn’t feel like God was good anyway. Oh looking back I know I needed the prayers at that time, so please do pray for me, but I wasn’t ready yet for the praying to be with me. Don’t say have you tried more super foods? Yeah, trying to create easy solutions for me is not what I need when my world is falling apart. Sure, most people do drown in water where they could have stood up, but screaming at them to stand doesn’t help them. What helps them is jumping in to the water with them and holding them up out of the water. Instead be with me…I am a person, not a problem to be solved. Yes, there is a huge power in with. I crave community all the time, but in grief is isolating and a time when I really needed people but had even less ability to cultivate it…and I wanted people to be with me, not give me a list of what I should be doing differently or an “easy” answer that sure didn’t seem easy or like an answer to me. The third thing on this list was Don’t say let me know if I can help, instead make a specific offer. This one I am not so sure about. I actually really appreciated people who offered to help even if the offer was vague. Sure, I might not have known or if I did know I might not have been able to express it, but just the offer meant a lot to me. And to be honest, even a specific offer that was exactly what I needed could very easily have been turned down because I didn’t want to be a burden, I didn’t want to be anyone’s little charity project, I didn’t want to be needy, I didn’t want to end up in a situation that could get me in trouble, etc…

So yeah, I’ll end with a book title I found and fell in love with…(no I have not even looked for the actual book to read).

“Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved.”

 

Oh yeah, and this would be a good time to say thank you again to all the people who have made a huge difference with your kind and welcoming and supportive words and actions and stuff. Thank you so much for believing in me and for me when I didn’t believe in myself and couldn’t believe for myself. Thank you for your prayers. Thank you for the time you took to enter into my world. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for putting up with my sometimes misplaced frustration and with the crazy that came out when I was hurting. You mean so much to me.

Looking for someone to save your life

(Worth it – Francesca Battistelli)

 

Music is an important part of my life. It is how I best encounter God. It is how I like to experience my world. It used to be omnipresent in my world. I realized recently that through this period of grief, music has not been so consistent. Sometimes it was my lifeline, but other times it was absent, the empty soundtrack mirroring the emptiness in my life. But anyway, on Tuesday I was walking home, trying to hold back tears, and singing to myself…”So whatcha gonna do when the bottom falls out and you’re left with nothing but your fears and your doubts to hold to? Who’s gonna hold you?” The lyrics showcasing the desperation and pain and immense loneliness and worthlessness I felt. “And where you gonna run when it’s all on the line and you’re looking for someone to” and then I stopped. I couldn’t explain it. I just inexplicably couldn’t keep going. The tears came as I frantically tried to keep anyone else out on the streets from seeing my wet cheeks. I turned the corner and partially hidden by the privacy of a building I took a deep breath and weakly finished the sentence “to save your life. Save your life.” Those words so hard to say when the last thing I wanted was my life. I wanted so badly to die. But now I am doing better. Now I can move on and start to actually believe the second half of the song. “Love can hear you. Love can heal you if you let it inside. Oh remember now, love’s not easy. But it’s worth it.”

 

So yeah, I thought considering my last post I better hurry up and get something more positive up before anyone got too worried about me. I’m sorry. I do not usually edit my posts anymore now that I am free and don’t need to hide, but that also means I don’t have the opportunity to read my words and wonder if anyone will be legitimately worried about me. I am still trying to heal the hole of grief, and sometimes it is hard. I know my goal was for this year to be better, and crying uncontrollably doesn’t sound like better, but I have to give myself grace. Being able to give myself grace is better than before. And really, I am learning to climb out of the pit I keep being pushed into. I was pushed hard and the wind was knocked out of me, but I didn’t stay down too long. On Thursday, my manager came to apologize to me about the situation (okay, not the whole thing obviously, but the tiny piece he knew – that the PALS class I was excited about was happening without me). He wasn’t going to change it, and wasn’t going to bend the policy about training only being allowed on paid time, but somehow just being brave enough to acknowledge to my face that he understood my frustration was enough to start building the bridge. Like I have always said, there is a lot of power in “with,” and I think that is why that helped. Although I will say that initially breaking the news to me via email was also good, because I don’t really want my manager to see me cry. Vain, maybe, but whatever. Anyway, I might have come home Friday and had skittles and cookies for dinner before going to church, but I had so much fun at the game night that I actually did eat reasonably well and didn’t want to leave…I was up WAY past bedtime and was practically asleep standing up by the end of the night, but I really enjoyed it, and this morning I was feeling so much better.

 

I know that it is not “good” to be fighting life so hard when grief storm hits. I know it is not exactly “normal” to spend significant amounts of time deeply yearning death. I am working on it my own way, at my own pace. I also know that there are some things I am just not ready for, and trying to process with a counselor is still something that is too similar to the abuse for me to be ready to seriously consider it as an option. There is more healing to be done before I am willing to try again.

 

So on that note, back to what I actually originally sat down to write…

 

I know I can’t expect life to be perfect or anything, and sure, I rarely do compulsions anymore, but I do occasionally have more than an appropriate amount of germ anxiety. Yes, I know people do get sick, and the world goes on, but OCD doesn’t make sense. I am so much more free of it than I used to be, but when I am scared I don’t want “better,” I want no fear. Zero. Nada. Zilch. It (the OCD) probably did get worse than it had to because of what else was going on a few years ago, but I am a fighter. Compared to where I was mid to late third year, I basically haven’t had a single problem since the summer after third year…it’s just that I want recovery to mean 100% of the time having zero fear, but that isn’t realistic, because every single person has at least a little fear once in a while. Having some non-disabling fear occasionally and even having disabling fear once in a long while is normal…which is hard to understand when you have spent time in the very black and white world of OCD. Either it is clean or it is not, and either you are afraid or you are not…no in betweensies. So realistically, I probably am totally normal or pretty close, but my perspective tells me it is pieces of OCD back because I had fear…

 

I read an article maybe a month ago about how hard contamination OCD is in the winter and talked about how people with OCD tend to have a radar for signs of sickness and how that can be like a game of dominos. I definitely have a radar for signs of potential sickness and it sets off a theoretical chain of dominos and I end up with a feeling of impending doom. It is terrifying. For me it has always been linked to social difficulties. If you get sick you have to either communicate that you are sick or somehow manage to hide it, which is probably not completely possible (particularly around anyone like me with a very sensitive radar) and is also super disrespectful of other people to not quarantine yourself if you are germy. Communicating it is scary and also means that you have to decide when to come back.

 

I hate winter. I hate germs. I hate norovirus. So far I feel healthy, but my world doesn’t feel stable, and working in healthcare can definitely impact how safe I feel. Plus, the compulsions I had/have with OCD were not just washing, but also “researching” (in quotes, because primarily through social media). So I am acutely aware that a person remains contagious for weeks following the end of symptoms and traditional hand sanitizer is not effective against it, and even cleaning supplies that *can* kill it are often not effective because they are used wrong. For example, I’m not sure if Clorox wipes are effective against noro even if used appropriately, but the way a lot of people use them they might as well be using wet paper towel to clean. Cleaning wipes require a minimum wet contact time to be effective. If the surface doesn’t stay wet long enough you haven’t cleaned the surface and if you *cringe* wipe the surface dry immediately after using the wipe then you have just become a master of the placebo effect if you believe you actually did any cleaning. Frozen noro can remain infectious forever. Room temp noro can remain infectious on surfaces for significant periods of time as well. Very possibly months or more. The number of viral particles required to cause illness is in the single digits. Compare this to the millions to billions of aerosolized particles following a single vomiting or diarrhea episode, not to mention the amount in the vomit or feces themselves, and clearly it is no surprise why infection doesn’t tend to happen in just ones or twos.

 

So yeah, winter can be a really hard season for me as a former OCD-er. I go on a rollercoaster ride from almost certain I am doomed to promising myself that I am safe and back again. Knowing way too much from my former hours of research makes it easy to be fearful. I know how easy noro spreads, so not only do I react to the people in my actual life that get sick (umm, yeah, I have determined my parents entire house is contaminated and am not sure I ever want to go back…kinda a problem), but I also react to the Olympics outbreak in Korea and the outbreak at a college in Wisconsin. I see the dominos. Even if someone doesn’t get sick, suppose somehow an American tourist’s backpack picks up a few viral particles from being near someone who was near someone sick (and realistically there would be a lot closer contact than that). That backpack gets put onto a plane with zillions of other people where the germs are transferred to another person’s purse. That person goes to work and their purse is hung on a hook touching lots of other people’s bags and coats and the germs transfer to the inside of someone else’s coat. That person’s coat comes home. The next day they put their coat on over their pajamas to go to the mailbox. The germs transfer to the pajamas. The pajamas are worn to bed the next night and the germs are transferred either to hands or sheets and then to the mouth. By that next night the person is sick and there are zillions of virus particles everywhere and they are tracked all over the city and people are very mobile, city to city, state to state, country to country.

 

That little scenario I wrote out takes out a lot of potential steps in the process, and drastically simplifies from the zillions of vectors to a single chain, but I hope that it helps understand how easily I can fall victim to fear. It took a lot of words to write that scenario out, but it took less than a second from reading about the Olympics to feeling a sense of lack of safety…and anger. The Olympic committee put out a bunch of hand sanitizer in response. Unless in Korea hand sanitizer is actually pure bleach rather than something like the ethyl alcohol we generally use in America, it will not help prevent spread. In fact, it probably decreases safety, because it makes people feel safe even though they really aren’t. When people feel safe they are a lot less careful which greatly increases the potential for spread of sickness. I want to say that is not okay.

 

But I am proud of myself. So far I have thought about whether I should keep eating and drinking, but have continued to decide that yes I should. Even with all the other things going on making life hard, or maybe because of all the other things going on, I have not come to a panic level of fear. I might be exclusively wearing pajamas in or near bed – not even clean casual clothes, but I am able to go through life seemingly normally at least from the outside, and that is important to me.

 

Although I will admit that I do have a desire to know everything there is to know about what is going on with noro at the Olympics…but that is probably also related to my input strength – trying to collect and categorize all the information available. It really is a bummer that news sources don’t seem interested in reporting full stories. From my perspective they give just enough info to whet my interest and then end the article and cease follow up coverage. It is kinda frustrating when you are someone like me who desires to know the entire story. It’s the same way with a lot of news – like with a school shooting I want to know how people are doing after it’s over. How are things different? What new frustrations are they facing? …ad nauseum…if I had my way we really wouldn’t need much news, because we’d still be getting news updates on the school shooting that happened in December 2012…inquiring minds want to know…

 

Lol…what do you want to know? I would love to do a Q & A post…although realistically I don’t have anywhere near enough viewers for that to ever happen…

Love needs room to breathe

(Plumb – Phobic)

 

Sometimes life is hard. I don’t understand why God doesn’t love me enough to take me home. I am ready to be done. I am tired of pretending to be strong. I don’t want to keep going through this every day. When do I get to give up?

 

I came home today and, okay, I hadn’t held back all the tears already, but as soon as the door closed behind me I couldn’t breathe because I was crying so hard. I am trying to make it through life every day, but life hurts so much. Every day I just have to keep holding on and keep acting like everything is okay because I don’t have any other choices. Every day I have to get up, shower, get dressed, eat three meals, go to work, change into pajamas, buy groceries, go to bed…I keep doing it because what else am I going to do?

 

I guess I should back up. Today was another resident interview at my workplace. And today I found out I couldn’t take the PALS class I had signed up to take April 2^nd and 3^rd…because training is required to be on paid time and there isn’t PTO available those days, never mind that I would be perfectly happy to use my time I already was going to have off anyway to go to class. I’m a salaried employee, who cares if I “work” an extra 13 hours without extra pay. I want to do other duties as assigned. And that took away the only thing I felt like I had left to look forward to.

 

I want to just give up on pharmacy. I could be happier working at Caribou, but then everyone would be right that I couldn’t make it as a pharmacist. I wanted to prove everyone wrong and show them I am good enough. But all I do is fail and I just want out.

I know you said you’d never ever leave me and I know you never ever lie

(Here – Jamie Grace)

 

I wish I could say that I prayed and shared and suddenly everything was awesome…people who speak fluent Christian-ese like to talk as if that is exactly what happens every time we pray. I really don’t like when people act like that, because it is incredibly naïve. God promises to give us everything we NEED, not everything we want, or even everything we THINK we need. He also doesn’t promise to give it to us here on Earth. All we truly need is salvation, so in reality, God has kept his end of the promise if we eventually die and get to go to heaven. God never promises that life will be easy. He never promises that the answer to all our prayer requests will be yes. He actually tells us that in this world there will be trouble…but people want a vending machine Jesus…and I have to admit that when I hear that theory enough times and I am so desperate for what I really want, it is easy to want so badly to believe it that the fact that God doesn’t deal in plea bargains is forgotten. You can’t buy what you want with good deeds, fasting, prayer, reading the Bible, or any other good thing. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do any of those things if they are what God is calling you to do, but it just means that you can’t expect to get to cash in your “goodness” for what you want.

 

So with that in mind, the sermon at church today was exactly what I needed to hear. It was about living in God’s love, but not experiencing God’s love. A good reminder that yes, God is good, even if life here on Earth is sometimes so very bad. The speaker explained how trying to be really good makes us either a failure or a jerk. He talked about how sometimes we are dealing with so much brokenness, loneliness, and/or loss that eventually God can only protect us and give us refuge in two ways – either by healing our circumstances or by taking us home. Another way God is showing me his presence – another normalizing influence on my desire sometimes to just go home to heaven where there will be no more pain. And speaking of pain, the speaker also reminded us that God’s love is bigger than whatever anyone has done to us. As someone who has been abused by someone who should have been protecting me, forgiveness has been something I have struggled with. At times I feel like I really do forgive her, but at other times the hurt wells up and cuts off my ability to forgive. God’s love covers me and all the pain I have endured.

 

I know God is with me. Last year it felt so much like maybe he gave up on helping me through life, that I was ready to believe it. It took a long time to be ready to believe again that God does care about me. He does love me. Yes, it started with maybe it is possible and slowly progressed to maybe he does before I think he does and then yes, I know he cares…but the whole time I was struggling to keep my head above water, God was there helping keep the water from drowning me. God is there and God cares even when life is incredibly difficult. The first resident interview at my current place of employment was Friday and that was hard, but I have to remember that God is with me even when it is hard. I was thankful for in exchange for being one of two pharmacists not getting to attend the interview I got to trade into the first available lunch time even though my position that day is supposed to have to wait. That let me have the breather I definitely needed after being face to face (literally and figuratively) with the resident candidates.

 

I’ve been listening to the Healing Path by Dan Allender again. Found another quote that I am thinking about “Faith is hope regarding our past. Hope is faith regarding our future.” Faith means I know that despite my painful experiences that God is there working all things together for good. Hope means I believe that one day I will be living in paradise with my eternal daddy. It is a good reminder that although hope is really really hard, if I have faith then I am already succeeding at hope in at least a small way.

 

Totally unrelated, but I was teased in college about having ADHD. I do not have an ADHD diagnosis. Most of the time I think there is absolutely no way that I have ADHD. I did fine in school. Externally until the past year anyway, I was super organized even if my room was sometimes a disaster zone. Surely if I really had ADHD someone would have noticed way sooner than a group of study buddies halfway through college. But once in a while I wonder if they might be right. I know I have heard statistics that only like 25% of ADHD diagnoses are in females, but it is suspected that ADHD is equally common in males and females and simply less well-recognized in females. Add that to times like when I forgot I was making pancakes only to be reminded by the smell of burning pancake…three times in a row, and I start questioning. I followed a series of links today (don’t even ask where I started…) and ended up on a paged talking about women with ADHD. While I still am not totally convinced that I fall into that category, there were definitely some parallels. Girls with ADHD tend to learn coping mechanisms to hide their differences. They become perfectionists who spend hours taking notes and double triple quadruple check everything. Umm, yep, for a long time I strived (strove?) for perfection, not that I wanted to be perfect, but that the closer to perfect you are the more space you have to screw up later without it causing major problems, so basically, what looked like fear of failure was really preparation to make potential failure less damaging. The article talked about how whereas a boy is disruptive by constantly tapping his foot, the girl is forgotten while she twirls her hair…yep, I definitely am the person whose hair is a fidget device and has to be tight against my head if you want me to remember not to touch it. The article also discussed that male friendships tend to be instantaneous via a shared activity whereas girl friendships require noticing and acting on social cues, which girls with ADHD struggle with. I don’t know exactly where my social struggles come from, but I like the idea that it isn’t all my fault 🙂 . The other thing in the article I connected with is that ADHD often comes at a significant emotional price for females which makes medication less tolerable by exacerbating anxiety-like symptoms…if I am being really honest, that is one of the things that makes me not even want to get formally tested for ADHD. I am terrified of the side effects of the first line medications…

 

Of course, then there’s this afternoon/evening that makes me wonder if those people were right. Somewhere around 2:30 or 3 I tried to start getting some chicken cooked. If you were wondering, it is a bad idea to put an entire tray of refrigerated chicken breast in the freezer, because not only does it stick together, but it sticks to something that appears to basically be a cross between a pad and a diaper in the bottom of the tray. Once you have successfully separated them once, it is an even worse idea to throw them all back in a plastic bag (wet) in the freezer. Now instead of a row of stuck together pieces of chicken along a diaper, you have one big ball of chicken uniboob. I tried really hard to re-separate it and even tried cooking it just a teeny tiny bit, but those stubborn things were not coming apart, so the only way to cook them was going to be the oven since it was the only place this monstrosity was going to fit. So somewhere between 4 and 5 I put the chicken in the oven at 350ish degrees…I started at 375, but the internet told me quite definitively that chicken cooked at either 350 OR 400, not 375. So anyway, I set a timer and go back to my laptop. Y’know, the oven does the same thing that they say is the reason you should get a dog – it reminds you of what you should be doing. The oven faithfully went off every like 5 or 10 minutes after the timer went off to let me know to go give it some attention, and I was in my own little world ignoring that beeping…and suddenly it was 7:08 and it beeped again and I was like uh oh, I was making chicken. Luckily the fact that there was like 3-4 pounds of meat there meant it didn’t have time to burn, but just get overcooked. And that explains why I was so hungry and snacky and consumed so much candy and still wanted to eat my brain out – chicken was supposed to be the main course for dinner and I hadn’t eaten it yet. Lol, it is times like this that make me claim I am no good at adulting.