It’s Never Done

(Local Construction – Relient K)

Today as I was driving home I was so incredibly thankful for the kind people I called at the police department at approximately midnight yesterday evening last year.

That day I’d filled two U-haul’s with most of the contents of my apartment (which was about a half mile from the loading dock of that building) so I was physically exhausted. And the events earlier in the day had left me emotionally exhausted and overwhelmed. And I’d just got home from saying goodbye to my Bible study friends at around midnight so I was feeling the grief of separation, and I was also sleep exhausted. I walked up to my apartment and was just so terrified. I’d found out earlier that day that my attempts to stay as far away as possible from the bad people had failed. And that I’d been being tracked. And that pictures and videos had been snuck of me in leggings which I’d started wearing barely a month or so prior. I felt violated, but more than that I just felt afraid. I didn’t know what to do, but I found a business card from the police on the floor. And I called the number. And I didn’t really know what I wanted them to say when I called, but once I got through the phone tree I got someone who was kind. This person explained that they didn’t really have the staffing to send someone out immediately unless I really felt like it was an emergency but I could choose a time on Tuesday for someone to come out if I wanted, or if I felt more comfortable I could come to them. By the time these options were presented I already felt a little better, and the fact that these people were willing to come if I needed them made me feel safe enough to turn on enough lights to shower and get ready to sleep. I definitely did use the heaviest boxes to barricade the door, and I set up my make-shift bed of a fitted sheet, and pillow (and maybe the flat sheet, but I’m not totally certain I left a flat sheet unpacked). I didn’t get a lot of sleep, but morning came. The police people let me know they were still available and could come at the previously agreed upon time if I wanted. And I did want. And they were true to their word. And they were incredibly patient with the girl who answered the door wearing a mask and gloves and obsessively cleaning the baseboards (because not that they knew it, but I was afraid I couldn’t afford to not get my deposit back and didn’t want to have to fight a management company I knew wasn’t the most up and up). They let me give them a tour of the floor I lived on. They were basically just the soft people in a prickly world that I needed. I felt a little more safe. These kind people left me positive impressions of the police force. In every profession I know there are people who are good at their jobs and people who are not, but these people showed me the positive side, the side that wants to care for their community. I might not remember their names or what they looked like, but I will always remember the way they made me feel, and the way they took the time to go above the call of duty and talk patiently to this terrified girl who wasn’t even going to be a member of their community much longer anyway. They were a brightspot in a time that had a lot of dark. Looking back, I’d really like to be able to be that kind of person to someone else. Healing from trauma is never over, but every positive experience makes a difference. Every bit of kindness helps. I am so thankful for all the people who reached out when I was in that place.

yesterday has come and gone

(zoegirl – dismissed)

I wanted to use a lyric from surrender by barlowgirl for this post ‘cause I’m currently loving it…but the only one that seemed to fit was way too long…so I had to go to plan b…but just listen to the  beauty of the song surrender for me, k?

On March 16, for the first time in more than half a decade, it was pharmacy match day and I was not enrolled in the match.

Actually, that is not totally true. There was one phase 1 and two phase 2’s in which I did not participate during that time…but I couldn’t say it was the first year I didn’t have a PhorCAS profile, because I did have one of those. I created it back when I wasn’t totally sure what I actually wanted my path to look like. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have created a profile. While I understand that what happened to me last spring/summer/fall is not the typical residency experience. I understand most hospitals are not like that. I understand what happened wasn’t okay…but my body I think would have had trouble understanding that divide. I think it would have been a very challenging and anxiety-provoking experience even to join the world’s most supportive and caring residency program. I probably would have adjusted over time if I did end up in that situation, but the vast majority of my learning would be safety learning rather than clinical or communication skills. And I doubt that I would have conquered the fear enough to form the close relationships with my team that would make me feel successful and accepted, because with the trauma I’ve experienced surrounding residency it would be hard *not* to hold everyone at arm’s length afraid both that I’ll get attached then be torn away and that anything anyone knows about me will be twisted into a way to hurt me. That isn’t something it would be fair to put someone through who really cared about my personal and professional growth. While a job definitely will have some of the same issues, I think given that I haven’t had those types of experiences in a job that it will be easier to overcome the anxiety.

It feels really stupid to think there is a possibility someone who shows they care might turn around and wound you, but someone in my trauma group gave me a really good analogy to explain it. If one day you are walking out of a Walmart in New Mexico and are mauled by a lion, you are definitely going to be scared of walking out of Walmart in New Mexico again even though it seems really weird and illogical to any outside observer. You might also generalize that a bit and be afraid of walking out of Walmart in Minnesota even though the climate is completely different and you’ve never seen a lion in that environment. It doesn’t make sense, but at the same time it makes a lot of sense.

Anyway, I wasn’t sure what my ideal plan was then – pgy-2 then big girl job? Big girl job? Big girl job then pgy-2 then another big girl job? Career change? – but I’m glad I created the profile (not just because it’s there if I change my mind about my path next year). Because I had the profile, programs could find me and attempt to recruit me. It feels so good to be wanted. The interaction with caring RPD’s who reached out to ascertain my interest level in their program and who were supportive of my decision when I let them know I was not looking for a residency anymore was incredibly helpful in beginning to heal the wary parts of my soul. They helped to show me that there are good people out there that I haven’t met yet…(a somewhat related side note, I recently saw on a ppag conversation an RPD stating that she reaches out post-match even to those who didn’t match to let them know she cares about their professional journey and would still like to support them. Reading that was another huge drop in the bucket to remind me that good people are out there. Also, she acknowledged that the majority of candidates do not keep up with her after that email. Reading that was, again, really eye-opening how much people care – those weren’t just words to her, but a true invitation to connect and receive support). I hope that I, too, have that kind of positive impact on the people I encounter.

Umm…that isn’t at all what I thought I was sitting down (okaying, laying down) to write…what I was going to say is that it was really confusing to figure out how I felt about everything. Match day has been an incredibly emotional rollercoaster of a day for so many years, and this year supposedly I wasn’t invested…except I still feel really invested in it…and I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about it. On one hand, I feel sad for all the people who didn’t match, because I’ve been there and I know how much it hurts. On the other hand, I hurt for the people who just matched into their worst nightmare. I am excited for all of the incredible programs still available to people participating in phase 2…and I am also excited that so far at least one person has been spared the nightmare I walked into last spring. So to recap I’m both sad for the people who didn’t match and some of the people who did. I’m excited both that good programs remained unmatched and that horrendous programs remained unmatched. It is a very confusing set of seemingly conflicting emotions that I’m untangling.

Also, speaking of learners, a few days ago I was listening to a CE about leadership. One of the concepts was that an effective leader promotes the wellbeing of their team by showing appreciation for the ways each member contributes, including students. And she said this “It makes learners feel like they are members of the team, because they are. They are people.” I felt like that straightforward acknowledgement that students are real people with real emotions was really valuable. I’ve seen people treat students and residents like free or cheap labor, or like a nuisance to be dealt with, and that doesn’t feel good. It feels so much better to be valued.

Okay, 100% unrelated, but like about a week ago or whenever it was I finally got an oil change, I was driving on a bridge and traffic was pretty stop and go. And it felt like the bridge was shaking. Y’all who are a few years older than me expect bridges to stay put, but I wasn’t a licensed driver when the 35 bridge came crashing into the water and was splashed all over the news. My reaction to hearing it on the radio: oh, I guess bridges probably do that sometimes. In my lived experience, you can’t trust bridges to stay in place. So on that bridge I was considering getting out of my car and running, but everyone else was just treating it like a typical afternoon.

Okay, one more totally unrelated thought…I think I blogged about it back when it happened, but in November I felt angry one day because I received an email that I felt like was intentionally directing me down a dangerous dead end. Over the past few weeks, I am not sure whether I wanted the idea in that email to be true so badly that I was willing to do anything to make it happen, or if I really and truly believed there was a possibility it may have been a helpful remark rather than a push the wrong direction, but in any case, I tried going down that path. It is harder knowing that path was the dead end I thought it was. It feels like the light at the end of the tunnel was turned off for maintenance. At this point do I actually need the things I was asking for? I mean, not really. There are a few things with some nominal value, but for the most part I’ve recreated anything that I actually needed that I didn’t have…at least the things I remember having…that is the other issue…I also don’t remember anymore what I had in the first place. I just don’t like that other people get to benefit off of my work but I don’t get to benefit off of my work.

Also, I lied, make that two more unrelated thoughts…I just finished watching a news video on youtube about cherry blossom events in DC, and if you were wondering the same thing I was – if I go to the cherry blossom events in DC can I pick and eat cherries, the answer is no, the trees do not actually produce cherries…so that is a bummer. I couldn’t really care less about the trees, but I would love to be able to just walk down the sidewalk picking cherries. Although the news lady said traffic was bad, so maybe I’m not interested anyway, because biking in traffic is not super safe because people forget when they are waiting for all the cars on the road that there are also people not in cars going places :)…for that matter, I had that problem today and almost ended up in an accident. But I did see a sign in the background that said sugar sculptures and I was like that sounds like my kind of event! The way to my heart is absolutely through my stomach. A cookie can cover a multitude of wrongs.

angels show up in the strangest of places

(Looking for angels – skillet)

I think this lyric is incredibly true…

The example that most exemplifies this lyric is someone whose name I am not sure if I ever heard in the first place…someone whom I have only ever spoke with on the phone…

It was a little over a month ago and I was terrified. About 12 hours prior to this moment I had found out someone I had wanted to avoid had been tracking me, and unbeknownst to me had had people following me around taking videos and pictures of me. That most likely wasn’t legal because I think even in one-party consent areas you can’t just take pictures and videos of strangers who have in no way interacted with you…but regardless of legality, it had happened and I was afraid…and I don’t know exactly what my plan was, I just knew my brain said call the police, so I did. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that I would do that because my most recent police contact maybe 8-10 hour prior had consisted of the guy repeating the same useless piece of information I didn’t ask for while I was trying to carry boxes until I finally snapped and more aggressively than I meant to told him that I didn’t care what he was saying and just wanted him to answer my questions which he refused to do. I felt bad about my reaction, but my friend who witnessed my side of the conversation reassured me that I wasn’t rude and it probably felt uncomfortable because it was so far outside my peace-keeping nature…and they’re probably right and I’m sure the police have heard a lot worse than someone taking a strident tone with them, but I still feel like I owe that dude an apology…I don’t know if I was terrified enough that I was willing to give the police another chance or if it was more like that I remembered that all my police interaction prior to that point had been people who seemed to care and that overrode the one big negative…but regardless of reason, I called.

And the person who answered transferred me to someone else and that person really was an angel. I don’t think I ever actually told him what was going on or why I was scared, but he remained calm. Without knowing my story or pressing for my story he offered that if I wanted to come in I could (and I realized at that point that it was around midnight and probably not wise for me to drive anywhere at the moment). I think just the offer that a safe place was there waiting for me was a huge blessing. And when I said I wasn’t ready to drive out there, this kind person asked whether this could wait until morning since most of the night crew was out on some other business, and when I agreed, because at that point I was feeling better, he let me choose what time I wanted them to arrive. And he had the foresight to let me know that if something more urgent came up he couldn’t guarantee that time unless I called and needed someone right away…

And that is the story of how I gave a couple police officers a tour of my apartment complex the next day because they did come and I still wasn’t ready to tell them what was going on, but I didn’t want them to leave because I felt safe and protected with them around. I wanted to ask them to stay and protect me and my social skills kept that from becoming a reality, but touring them around prolonged my contact with them…It didn’t fix anything per se, but it made me feel like I mattered, and it showed me that if I ask for help, someone will come help me…there are a lot of things the police couldn’t do, and they and I both were aware of that, but being there and being willing to do the things they could do was incredibly meaningful. I wish I had gotten everyone’s names, because I would love to send everyone a thank you for their kindness, patience, and for making me feel like there were people who would watch out for me and had my best interest at heart. And I mean, God bless them for not commenting on the cardboard boxes serving as my only piece of furniture and the roll of sheets/pillow/pajamas in the hall that I hadn’t folded up after getting dressed in the morning…it probably wasn’t the most normal-looking place they had seen…hashtag doesn’t everyone have to move a couple boxes of canned goods to un-barricade the door before answering it? And then become unable to find her shoes because the boxes are now on top of the shoes? (yep, I located my shoes after they left and I was feeling safe enough to not need to re-barricade the door and instead wanting to get stuff out of the entry and kitchen to allow for vacuuming and other required cleaning that hadn’t been done in the past week when the kitchen had become the dumping zone for anything that I might need in the next month or so…because sorting things is important, but so is cleaning)

The guy might be thinking he was just doing his job, but to me, he was doing so much more than that, and I wish I could tell him and the team that I spoke with in person how much their compassion and taking a few extra minutes to assist me rather than just taking a not my problem stance meant to me…so I guess if the police officers responding to a young-ish woman who called late at night and proceeded to show them around her apartment complex are reading this (which is highly doubtful) please pass along my thanks to you and your colleagues.

I was going to write about some other angels in my life over the past few months, but I feel like I’ve written about enough other amazing people over the past few months…and I really need to get things done because I haven’t gotten much done at all this week…

But one more thing that I promise is totally at least 3% related if I gave you more details about both this and the previous thing I wrote about…

Ever have those moments when you go, umm, and exactly how was this going to work again?!

So the setting is early August. The background is your girl really wants to have adequate food in her apartment even though she isn’t sure she is going to actually need it. This is basically a continuation of the wiggle worm is not going to be defeated by the grocery store story that I wrote back in August.

So I think in August we got as far as I was buying a watermelon and a few other things…

The problem comes in that even though the store I was at *looked* like a traditional grocery store and had prices like a fancy grocery store, it operated like an Aldi…and I definitely wasn’t about to spend money on something that should be free so I refused a bag…I mean, I did bring my reusable bags just in case I needed them…and except for my backpacks etc which I suppose are technically reusable bags, my reusable bags are super cute, so I’m not overly opposed to using them as needed (two of them are little fishies when folded up, and when in use have an ocean scene, and my other one has a picture of a target store on it which I know doesn’t sound cute, but it totally is). But anyway, I didn’t want to bring the cart all the way home and back because as usual I had a ton of stuff to get done. So my plan was to carry everything. And I quickly realized that while I lived less than a mile from the grocery store, it was a lot longer walk in the heat while carrying a watermelon in addition to other groceries…Plan B was quickly attempted – use the bags to carry the groceries…and Plan B was pretty close to a fail…as it turns out, it was rather difficult to get the watermelon into a bag because the bags are not stretchy like real grocery bags but are sized like regular grocery bags. I finally got the watermelon in and realize that the bag was most definitely not designed to hold the weight of a watermelon so I still had to carry it. The bag did kinda sorta make it an easier surface to hold on to…but yeah, when you are a walker you probably shouldn’t buy watermelon unless you have a well-thought-out plan on how to get it home. And let’s be real, at that point I didn’t have a lot of thought left for my personal life because work was taking so much of my thought.

Hashtag life lessons from wiggle worm…

…totally unrelated, but the leggings I’ve wanted from target since I bought my first pair of leggings years ago, someone was giving away a few pairs of them and it was an hour and a half to get there so probably I should have kept waiting until I could both find and afford them at target, but I wanted them and I’m very determined to make my dreams reality, so now I have two pairs of black fleece lined leggings, two pairs of black and glittery fleece lined leggings (not on my wish list, but I’ve only had glittery clothing one other time in my life, so I figured why not especially since it didn’t seem like the glitter would come off), one pair of navy blue fleece lined leggings, and two pairs I didn’t care as much about – grey and grey with pandas, but they were both fleece lined which will be warm and cozy…I was not a leggings count as pants person until recently, but now I don’t care that I still feel inappropriately dressed, because I’ve discovered how comfortable they are and it is my opinion that if you are going to judge me on looks then I don’t need your opinion…I mean, I’m not going to go outside showing off my bra like some girls do, because I do still have standards (plus, modest really is hottest), but I’m becoming okay with leggings without anything else covering my bottom once in a while…

…and I had one more completely random unrelated thought, but I’m worried it may provide too much information on my whereabouts for a public blog so that though it just going to need to stay in my head…

I’ll drown in the water if I listen

(Head Underwater – Flyleaf)

 

I have never really been such a fan of new year resolutions. I’m not sure why. Maybe it is the stigma of creating a goal that is only expected to last a week – why bother planning to fail? Maybe it is the result of so many times in my life where really the only goal was survival and adding another challenge on top of that would have just felt laughable. Maybe it is something else entirely. I don’t know.

 

I did this New Year’s Eve Reflection worksheet every year for a while because a blog I liked said I should…but eventually I stopped doing that…and it wasn’t really something that really fit me…I am 90% sure my answers changed minimally each year not because I was an identical person but because the questions weren’t ones that I really knew how to answer. Over the past maybe 8 years or maybe more it seems like picking a word for the year has taken off and become super popular. I never really thought much about joining that bandwagon. It seemed like a lot of pressure to have to pick one word…and the goal was to have a word to reflect on and we have just established that reflection isn’t something I am well-suited for…and everyone on the internet it felt like had these like crazy divine encounters that left them totally certain of what their word should be and I definitely didn’t have that and had no idea what word to pick…

 

And then last year the phrase better not bitter was in my head and I decided that should be my goal for the year…I guess kind of like the one word except that it was three words. I didn’t realize it right away when I picked it, but I am fairly certain it came from the song “I’ll Find You” by LeCrae.

 

Just hang on a little longer my friend. It’s all worth it in the end, but when you’ve got nobody to turn to, just hold on and I’ll find you.

 

I’m hangin’ on by a thread and all I’m clinging to is prayers and every breath is like a battle. I feel like I ain’t come prepared and death’s knockin’ on the front door. Pain’s creepin’ through the back. Fear’s crawlin’ through the windows waiting for them to attack.

 

They say don’t get bitter get better. I’m workin’ on switchin’ them letters, but tell God I’mma need a whole lotta hope keepin’ it together.

 

I’m smiling in everyone’s face. I’m crying whenever they leave the room. They don’t know the battle I face. They don’t understand what I’m going through.

 

The word tryna play with my soul. I’m just tryna find where to go. I’m tryna remember the way. I’m tryna get back to my home, but I can’t do this on my own. That’s why I’m just trusting in you, ‘cuz I don’t know what else to do.

 

They say fear haunts and pain hates. I say pain strengthens and fear drives faith, and I don’t know all of the outcomes and I don’t know what happens tomorrow, but when that ocean of doubt comes, don’t let me drown in my sorrow, and don’t let me stay at the bottom. I feel like this hole is too deep to climb. I’ve been lookin’ for a way out, but I’ll settle for a peace of mind.

 

Picking up all the pieces of my life and hopin’ that I’ll put together somethin’ right. Tell me all I got is all I need. Tell me you gonn help me stand and fight.

 

So was 2018 better than 2017 or am I still working on switching them letters? I mean, I guess when you consider that 2017 I failed at the match twice and the scramble and ultimately had to let go of pretty much every shred of my hopes and dreams, probably 2018 was better. I failed at the match again, but just once…’cause I only tried once. There were certainly hard days, but I made it to the other side…so that should count for something.

 

You know what I think the hardest thing about moving around a lot is? There are people all over the country (slight exaggeration…) who mean the world to me and I have no way to meaningfully tell them hey, thank you so much for being such an awesome person…I mean, a lot of people like that I don’t even have contact information for or I don’t even remember their names…I guess it really is true that you will forget what people said and did, but you not forget how they made you feel.

 

Everyone has different definitions of introvert and extravert…but I find that the best way to describe myself so people kind of understand is that I am currently an introverted extravert. What I mean by that is that I deeply crave being with people and doing life together, but I am often apprehensive of seeking out these opportunities and stuff…and that really big chaotic groups are really hard for me so like the atmosphere at a conference center where everyone is loud and everywhere is completely overwhelming and draining for me. It isn’t that I don’t like loud – I was the one who loved leaning against the speakers at Remedy Drive concerts…and it isn’t that I expressly dislike large groups of people – I do great in a classroom setting…and it isn’t even that I don’t like having a lot going on – I thrive on a fast paced environment…but there is something about that chaos that just really doesn’t agree with me…so anyway, as a result, there are some people who it really does feel like they have practically moved heaven and earth to support me, but so many other people that mean the world to me, but what they did was something they probably didn’t even really realize they were doing – like a few years ago there was someone who got a little note from me expressing my appreciation because I didn’t know her name and she probably didn’t know mine, but it meant so much to me that every time she saw me in the hallway she took the initiative to wave or smile or say hello, and stuff like that is meaningful to me. I am the kind of person who would be thrilled to just get to go sit in someone’s office or living room or kitchen and just be with them…not even necessarily conversing or anything, just being together….my guess would be that people probably get tired of me eventually…but I guess I’ve never asked…

 

Ummm yeah, I have no idea where that came from…it was totally not what I was planning on for this post…but then again not much of today has gone according to plan…I was going to download an audiobook when I got up, but *again* the app said all downloads for the day were gone…I did some laundry…and ended up putting it in the dryer which I almost never do, because I didn’t wanna get up and deal with the wet laundry…and then I had a ton of shopping and cooking I planned on getting done, but my muscles said no, we are sitting on the couch in front of the computer right now…lol…I suppose there is still time…Once I finish writing this I am going to eat dinner and then put on my shoes and go shopping…I’m guessing shopping Friday afternoon is going to be a little busier than doing it in the daytime, but I’ll survive…

 

So yeah…did that…kind of…I wanted to buy: milk, oil, eggs, fruit, vegetables, and a few other things…I came home with oil…arguably the most important since I wanted to make pancakes and needed oil for that, but yes, I am the kind of person who gets overwhelmed in all the choices and just gives up.

 

Also, on the way to Best Buy to try to figure out what phone I want to buy (which I failed at, but hey, at least I tried…and then made plans to go shopping with my dad another time), someone screamed out their window at me. I wish people wouldn’t do that, because it is really really hard to understand what they are saying and so I get frustrated. But anyway. I’m not sure whether they said “you look hot” “where’s your bike” or something totally different…but I decided to go with the positive and assume they thought I looked hot :). Sure, sometimes people say that because they think you are ugly, but I chose to believe that they think I looked awesome…I don’t really put a high value on appearances, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate people acknowledging when they think I look nice. It is great because I am always really hard on myself…so it feels really good when without being prompted people find something positive to comment on and go out of their way to do so.

 

I guess that kind of relates to where I am right now with the residency process. I read something on the internet and was like that is totally me. It was talking about how some people talking to them you’d think they were these super impressive people when in reality they are actually pretty mediocre, whereas other people have excelled in a large number of pursuits, but talking with them it would seem like they struggled just to barely pass their classes and didn’t do much else. You can probably imagine which camp I fall into…there are a lot of reasons why, and I honestly don’t think it is *just* the abuse, although that definitely does play a large role. I think part of it is also that throughout school getting good grades was punished and I so desperately wanted just to fit in, but also had this strong inner drive to do whatever it took to achieve…two desires that were ultimately pretty incompatible despite my best efforts.

 

In kindergarten play time was taken away for the kids who knew how to read. After that I transferred to a different school and good grades were punished with having to miss class to go to this ELP class that was basically just taking you out of class to assign meaningless pointless homework while you fall behind of real school. In order to finally get out of that class I had to miss an entire lunch and recess one day, but it was totally worth it. My ELP classmates begged me to come back because I guess it got worse when I left, but I am no idiot. I escaped once and I wasn’t going to go back. Instead I gave them the option of escaping like I did and it was their choice whether or not to weigh out the evils and see which was worth it to them. I think one or two did quit (with a lot less fanfare – apparently my parents gave the school a bit of a talking to after my experience) and the rest made their choice to stay.

 

In middle school and beyond getting good grades means getting intentionally paired with the worst students for group projects so that you have to work even harder for your grade not to be sabotaged. (I will acknowledge that in sixth grade there was a great gifted and talented program that I participated in, but y’know, that wasn’t really enough to cover all the more negative aspects of getting good grades). In middle school getting good grades meant you were lucky to win Panther Pride awards once a year versus the special ed kids who won nearly every single week and the kids who never even turn in their assignments winning like every other month. In high school it meant getting pulled out of class again and it meant having a few friends when large groups were being formed for assignments, but otherwise being ostracized and teased…

 

So I was super excited to go to college where no one would know what my grades were and I could pretend I was failing and therefore become popular. Haha yeah…as it turns out, it is really hard to pretend you are failing out. I don’t know how people figure out that you aren’t actually failing out, but they do and it probably happened before I’d even been there a whole month. And once one person figures it out, the world knows. Nothing is a secret when you get good grades. If one person knows then you better believe they are telling all their friends and acquaintances and you can kiss your prospects of making normal friends goodbye. All you are going to get for the most part is friends who want to copy your homework. (I did find a few really good real friends, but let’s be honest, the vast majority of the people I would still consider my friends from college are staff members…or people who didn’t actually go to my school).

 

So, I mean, take that, and do you really think it is going to be in my nature to brag about myself, or do you think I am going to act like I am the loser I have been trained to think I should be if I want a chance at fitting in? Then add to that my natural shyness and social anxiety…and to that the fact that females tend to be under-sellers of themselves…and to that my strong aversion to dishonesty even by means of exaggeration…and yeah, is it really any surprise I am no good at interviews?

 

Then add to that the abuse. When you’ve been told that no one will even want you enough times, you begin to believe it in the core of your being. And the more times you are rejected, the deeper that false truth sinks in.

 

So like the lyric I chose for this post says, I’ll drown in the water if I listen. I need to choose not to believe the lies that I can’t be a pharmacy resident. I need to choose not to believe the lies that I will never be good enough. Instead I will listen to the random strangers on the streets of my small town telling me that I am hot…lol…my jacket with a hole in the sleeve from falling while playing queen of the mountain with myself sure does make me attractive 🙂 (Yep…I’m still a kid at heart).

 

I’m pretty sure I started this post to talk about my new year’s resolutions (or lack thereof) for this year…funny story…I don’t actually know what those resolutions were going to be at the time I started writing this post…I do remember what I thought of last night which was going out to eat at least once a month…but then I decided that was dumb, because the goal of that was to communicate more confidently to help with interviewing, but the going out to eat was only going to happen once or twice before interviews happened anyway, and that isn’t really going to make much of a difference, I know how to order my hamburger plain medium fries and an apple pie…I don’t know how to interview.

 

Oh, how I so deeply yearn for a position this year. I am so excited…I really can’t take the thought of being here a whole another year and doing it all over again. I want to be the best resident some program has ever had. There are a few in particular I am super pumped about. And I hate that it is very possible I could be in this same place next year just praying someone somewhere will want me. Yes, the interview process is financially costly, but more than that it is emotionally and logistically taxing…after interview season I will be out of PTO for a long time…I’ve been working on the math to find out if I even can take a week off in the summer or not…and I don’t even know if I took the right days off for when people will want to interview me…and I don’t even know if anyone will want to interview me. I wish people would just give me a chance. I feel like if someone would give me a chance at the actual job they wouldn’t regret it, but I get stuck on the application materials and interview process and people are so numbers driven that they aren’t willing to see the actual person behind all those numbers. I understand that is how the pharmacy residency world works, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

 

Lol, the interview tips book that I was listening to earlier says you should never pay to apply to jobs…clearly the book wasn’t written with any understanding of the medical profession…if you don’t pay your phorcas fees you don’t get to apply and therefore don’t get a position. That’s just the way it is…the author also lost all respect from me when he said that someone told him once they got a job using Indeed and told him to pass along the great resource and he’s never heard of that resource but maybe check it out if you are looking for a job…like, umm, seriously? How can you at all consider yourself any type of job consultant or anything if you’ve never even heard of Indeed? Indeed obviously won’t get me a residency, but it is an extremely well-known popular job search site. Even if you haven’t ever tried to get a big boy or big girl job I’m sure the majority of the population has heard of Indeed.

 

Totally off topic, but the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence…especially when the grass on the other side of the fence is actually plastic pretend grass and the grass on your side is real grass that is mostly dead because it is currently January.

Even if these tears never dry

(Even if – Mercy Me)

 

Grief continues to be a painful journey I must traverse. Some days I am proudly standing atop a hill, doing remarkably well. Other days, many many other days, I am falling down the hill or working so so hard to try to make upward progress and feeling like there ain’t much to show for my effort. There have been a lot of tears shed and a lot of days spent in the twilight zone between too in shock to cry and too upset to have any control over stopping the tears from appearing completely randomly and inappropriately.

 

Even though I might seem like an impulsive airhead…and maybe I am…I do also find myself reflecting on where I am and what is going on in life. For one thing, the same sentiment I wish I could get my little buddies to understand when they are really upset is pretty much the same thing I wish I could figure out for myself. I wish they understood that as much as they might prefer not to be there, they are stuck with me in this playroom for the next hour and might as well at least try to enjoy the toys that we have before they go as that surely must be more fun that crying. I wish I could find a way to have fun and enjoy myself until God takes me home. It is easier said than done. The feeling of hopelessness and pain and loneliness is oppressive like a thick heavy soggy blanket that I cannot remove. I wish I could just find something fun and forget my pain, but I’ve tried so hard and it just seems so impossible. I tried so hard to give this place a fair chance. I tried to find *something* to be excited about. I try so hard, but I fail which just makes it all the easier to see the continued losses…and then there’s the licensing exam that I probably failed. I feel frustrated. I feel stupid. I just wish God would hurry up and come back so I wouldn’t have to go through this life that hurts so much anymore. I so deeply long to not be on Earth. I do not want to be alive. I want to go home to be with my eternal daddy. I don’t understand why a God who is supposed to be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-caring would make me keep having to live in a world that hurts so much.

 

I also read an article recently about assessing someone’s safety and need for intervention. I’m not totally sure how I ended up on the article, because I started out looking for what would happen if I drank some bleach…before you freak out, don’t worry. I didn’t come up with some stupid plan to intentionally hurt myself. There is a reason I don’t own any bleach and have no plans to own any, but it isn’t because of self-harm or suicidality concerns. The reason is because bleach feels safe and clean and if I had a million dollars I would very much like to buy a zillion bottles of bleach and bleach the world…and along those lines, I wanted to know if it was safe to drink bleach because I thought maybe I could sanitize my insides to prevent getting sick. As it turns out, I learned that small amounts will do virtually nothing and moderate amounts will cause stomach upset. Larger excessive amounts could cause more dangerous issues. Lol, since stomach upset is one of the most terrifying things in my world, there is no way I will ever attempt drinking bleach. Anyway, so the article said ultimately in a person without other obvious symptoms necessitating intervention, if you ask if the person can remain safe, most people will be honest and say no if they can’t so you can simply ask the question and the yes or no will direct whether or not you should intervene. Yeah. I am not most people. Ask me that question and I can almost guarantee you the answer will be that I am fine. There is a teeny tiny chance I will say I don’t know, but even then with further probing I will claim being okay. I’m always okay, especially when I am not. I can think right now of one particular time I was not safe and someone did ask that question…and I claimed being fine. Even so upset that I am crying uncontrollably, I am thinking about others and trying to protect others. My thought process was that if I admitted that I wasn’t very safe it would inconvenience someone and probably just cause more problems later, so I didn’t. Sure, it might not have been safe for me to do what I did, but clearly I survived it since I am still here. In retrospect, it would have probably been possible to sleep right where I was, let someone know to unplug my alarm clock, and go back to my room in the morning when I might not have been doing a lot better but would at least be attempting something in the morning when I am at my best rather than at the end of a long day, but I was deeply in survival mode and that kind of logical thought was WAY beyond me.

 

Lol, speaking of safety though, am I ever really safe? So a little background first, even though my mouth is basically a toddler and my social skills probably place me in elementary school despite my chronological age in my mid-twenties, my skin still thinks I am in puberty. That is to say I still get acne and a few nights ago I had what seemed at the time like a great idea to use a kitchen knife to cut a pimple off. I was very lucky that while I was trying to figure out how to hold the knife to be able to get an angle that would work and still be able to see what I was doing it occurred to me perhaps this was not a good idea. So I didn’t do it. Sometimes I think maybe I need a friend not just for companionship, but also to add a healthy dose of common sense to my life…Lol, I’m always a danger to myself in some way since I am kinda clumsy and kinda impulsive. I do really need a friend though. I don’t have any where I live.

 

Totally unrelated, but yesterday something pressed my buttons. Inclusion is extremely important to me, because I know how much exclusion hurts, so when a child was excluded I was furious. I had to work really hard not to lose my temper when a child with special needs was taken from his developmentally age appropriate classroom and moved to a younger age group where he clearly didn’t fit in and didn’t understand why he was taken away from his friends. If the child was disruptive or couldn’t keep up with his peers I would *almost* understand, but he wasn’t. Another child who had undisclosed special needs was definitely disruptive and was picked up partway through because of it, but this child was wonderful. Even if this child hadn’t been as able to keep up with his peers, we also had access to a 1:1 aide if he needed it to keep him with his peers. It would also be a different story if the room was at capacity and we absolutely could not take any more kids and had to move someone and were moving multiple kids to keep numbers balanced, but that isn’t what happened. Oh man, I was so livid. I got in my car afterwards and cried. I wasn’t crying out of my own grief (which, okay, felt pretty good to have something unrelated to my immediate circumstances to cry about) but because of how this child and his family were treated. That was not okay…especially when our lesson was on how we are all different and wonderful. I sent off an email this morning about it, and apparently it already had come to the attention of someone high enough up to fix it. Tonight should be better. Tonight no one will try to tell me at the end of the night how much better it is because of exclusion. Exclusion doesn’t feel good and doesn’t make anything better.

Am I worthless? Am I filthy? Am I too far gone for a remedy?

(We As Human – Take the Bullets Away)

 

I’ve been living with the intense pain of grief for a long time…and before that the abuse…and long long before that the bullying. I know rejection. I know being unwanted. And so many other hard things life has thrown in my path. I am familiar with pain, but it seems to follow me and want cuddles like a small naughty puppy that I can’t get rid of. It doesn’t feel like there is a way out. I tried to create a timeline of when I could get back to my dreams. It was good to try to create an end to work towards, but even on the more magical completely unrealistic timeline, I still will be fighting through this for another year…and if we’re being really honest, even if we pretend this timeline is practical (it’s not) I am not naïve enough to believe the pain will completely disappear upon starting a new path. Sure, it will likely be super helpful, but it won’t be like flipping a switch. It won’t remove the previous rejection and wipe the slate clean. The more realistic timeline is a minimum of two years. The idea of holding on that long is overwhelming.

 

It is hard not knowing why no one wants me. It is hard feeling so much rejection. It is confusing to be chosen for a big girl position even over people with experience when I was rejected from all the transition roles I tried to get, especially when the same organization didn’t even give me an on-site interview for the residency to which I applied. It is hard hearing people tell me how great I am and then rejecting me later. I’d rather you were just honest and said hey we don’t like you instead of leading me on just to let me be crushed later. I’d rather instead of being polite you told me what was wrong with me so that I could change and improve. Am I so worthless that I do not even deserve the respect of being told the truth? Am I really so lousy that there is nothing I could do to even be close to good enough? And why doesn’t God love me enough to finally just say yes to one of my prayers and let me leave this pain? It is hard to reconcile this pain and God’s power with the goodness all-knowingness of God.

 

I’ve heard that when a Christian woman wakes up in the morning the devil says “oh no, she’s up again.” It’s not just the devil thinking that when I get up. It’s me too. God doesn’t seem to ever want the same things that I want. I keep crying and praying that God will take me home because I can’t take this pain. I can’t keep living like this…and God keeps saying no. I know God cares and I know God loves me, but it is really hard to understand how it could really be love to leave me here. It hurts so much. Why won’t God take me to forever home where I don’t have to deal with this? I have already struggled so long and I don’t want to keep fighting. I want to go home. When the bravest thing you do every day is get up and keep going, it is hard to keep up with life. I FINALLY got my authorization to test from the Board of Pharmacy…and I know that just trying to make it day to day has drained so much of my energy that I really haven’t put nearly enough into studying…and since it took so long to get the authorization, I probably only have one chance before my job gets taken away. I feel like I am probably going to fail…then I’ll have nothing but an expensive apartment in a city where I don’t have any close friends…

 

But I keep fighting. I keep trying. I get home and my ears hurt from the multiple media sources at full volume to which I am listening as I drive to minimize the tears so I can see where I am going to get home…because I can pretend life is awesome or at least tolerable when I’m with people…but put me alone in a car and it is very possible I will struggle – time alone with my thoughts and emotions, kinda trapped there. So especially if I’ve been reminded of the pain I am pretending doesn’t exist prior to getting in, I am likely to have a hard time. Grief doesn’t have a calendar. Grief doesn’t know that it has been over three months and is time to give me a break. Grief doesn’t have empathy. Grief doesn’t know I am exhausted and just want to be able to move on and have this whole thing disappear.

 

How am I? I’m doing the best that I can. I know the basics of life enough to know what I need…and God has been doing good things even if he didn’t give me what I want. I usually burn practically just by thinking about going outside, but I didn’t wear sunscreen and biked to my friend’s house and back last week and the burns were pretty mild. Yesterday, I did put on a little sunscreen but was outside about 4 hours (biked around 40 miles) and didn’t reapply…lol, you can look at my hands and see exactly where there was zero sunscreen on though…but anyway, last night I knew I was on the border of being too dehydrated (vs just dehydrated enough to mute some of the pain and tears as long as there aren’t any reminders). So I gave myself two choices: water or ice cream…I didn’t want either, but the trying to be a good girl half of me was stubborn long enough to win, and I did eventually pick one of the options…picking nothing seemed so much easier, but that wasn’t one of the choices. Protip: ice cream is always the answer. No, ice cream didn’t solve my problems and I was too far gone for the sugar to help pull me back in, but at least it did kinda sorta make me feel a little better about myself because I was also getting calories in at the same time…

 

There is a long road in front of me. Soon I will be moving a couple hours away and be even more alone. I am thankful that I make friends easily, but worried because I can’t exactly expect someone I just met to support me the way that the friends I have made over multiple years have…and I can’t expect to immediately be invited into other people’s circle of friends as the new girl. It is hard being new. Some people are willing to let you join their friend group, but other people are like the girls in my grade at the new church who never really let me join their clique. Sure, the moms sometimes tried to invite me, and sometimes I tried to push myself into their circle, but I wasn’t dumb, I knew that most of them really didn’t want me there and it was easier for them to preserve their little friend bubble by writing me off and keeping me out of the circle. I probably should have asked to join the girls in the grade above me who were a lot more welcoming and had already invited me in…but when I had the opportunity I was still in denial that I couldn’t just go back in time and make this whole nightmare end so besides the fear of using my words to ask or even of having someone ask for me, I denied that because I didn’t want to admit that I would be there long enough for it to matter. It wasn’t until almost my senior year when I finally let go and realized that this was for real and wasn’t changing any time soon…and by then the girls in the grade above me were graduating and moving on. They invited me to the grads group, but that didn’t solve the Sunday morning problem. (But the grads group was a lot better place for me than youth group ever was. Smaller and more inclusive was super helpful for me…no one cared that I was the farthest behind academically…it was awesome until the rest of my class joined and it gradually became more and more exclusive…a few years later I took my brother and he noted that every time he said anything it was as if he hadn’t said anything but the person next to him could say the exact same thing and people would respond. I hadn’t really noticed much because I didn’t talk much anyway, but it is definitely true. They would express excitement that someone new was there and then completely ignore whomever was not in their little friend group). Lol…all that to say that I appreciate however much my friends are willing to tolerate me while I am a lousy friend in return, and I do know how blessed I am and that having friends like this is nothing to be taken lightly.

Speaking of my new place, last week I bought this couch (yes and the pillows in the picture)…might not have gotten the best deal of anything, but it is red and the place I am getting it from seemed to have a super flexible delivery plan which is helpful not immediately knowing when I’ll be available to receive the delivery…

The battle that you’re fighting makes you feel so all alone

(Ordinary Angels – Karyn Williams)

I have experienced a lot of side-lining, exclusion, and isolation in life. I was someone who really only had circumstantial friends until one particular person changed that in high school. I will be the first to admit that although I have found my voice, everyone else had enough of a head start that I still feel lost in the world of friendship. Making and keeping friends is something that I still approach tentatively. I strongly desire close friends, but don’t really know how to obtain them. I don’t want to impose on people, offend people, or bother anyone…I don’t want to be weird and awkward when I’m trying to be friendly. I am so thankful for the people I do have as friends, and many of them go far beyond the call of duty to love on me, but I wish I were better at the friendship game. I’ve always expressed interest in a guidebook for communication skills, but I do realize that it isn’t practical or probably even possible to create a comprehensive book for that…plus even if it did exist it would have way more words than I would probably be able to sit still long enough to read, and it would be so overwhelming that IDK if I’d even see it as worthwhile when I can stumble my way through figuring things out without all that work…

So yeah, all that to say I am used to being an unintentional loner, but grief is a profoundly isolating experience. It is like being inside a translucent hamster ball trying to understand the blurry shapes and fuzzy sounds and trying to interact with a world that you can’t really control or even touch while watching everyone else walk around in complete freedom. No one can really understand what it is like to be trapped in that ball and it is so stuck closed that no one can really free you from the prison of grief. It’s just you and the hard walls around you. The walls keep the world out and you in so your pain can’t hurt anyone else, but you keep running into those hard walls, and it gets frustrating that you can’t escape, and really without control your ball is also running into things.

My grief is getting a little better. It still hurts, and I still cry sometimes, but I am learning to ignore it. Tuesday since I was driving about 500 miles, I had a lot of driving time…driving all day can be less than ideal since there is not a lot I can do to entertain myself which means I am alone with my thoughts for a long time without much in the way of distraction…sure, I have the radio and a notebook in my lap, but that is often not enough. We aren’t going to talk about how dangerous driving can be when deep in the emotional pit, but yeah, driving can definitely underline the pain in life. And that is what emphasized how much progress I’ve made. Sure, by the afternoon I definitely had cried, but I actually did pretty well in the morning. I was annoyed when I realized one of the unmarked roads a few miles ago was the one I should have turned on and I was a little frustrated when my phone told me I should go 10 miles south then make a U-turn and go north when I could have just gone north in the first place, but it wasn’t that big of a deal (and on that second one, I should have just followed the directions I wrote down, but I wanted to believe that my phone was taking me on a shortcut…)…I made it.

I heard a lot of really awesome things on the radio. One of them is that when you’ve been supporting someone and they become able to be responsible for themselves, you don’t let go of them, you let go of control, and you don’t step out their life, you step out of their way. I really liked that. I have some friends who have done that well. When I am falling I might need help, but if once you have caught me you just notice that I am not in free fall anymore and let go and don’t help me get my own footing then I very well may start crashing down the mountain again. Grabbing me and letting go gives me hope for a minute, but it’s a false hope that doesn’t really change anything if I still don’t have any way of clinging to the mountain after you let go. Friends who leave me a rope, connecting me to the top in case I need it again, giving me space to climb but not be totally alone are so valuable…and leaving the rope out isn’t just hey let me know what you need. That is an awesome start that I really appreciate, but when I am deep in grief, it is really hard to figure out what I need. Let me know if you need anything is better, but still not totally there…it takes away the required need to know what I need, but leaves behind an implied fill-in-the-blank requirement that someone like me is usually going to not ask at all rather than leave the line blank. It also puts the responsibility on me to ask, and when I am using all the mental energy I have into keeping up with the more primitive responsibilities of life like eating, going to bed, and dressing myself, clearly that ask is beyond my every day ability. While it might be a frustrating approach when what used to be an easy answer (more skittles) is no longer a reliable solution since at times I wasn’t even eating candy, the best thing anyone can do if you really want to do something tangible is to tell me what you want to do and find out whether it would be helpful or just add more stress. Side note also that you should probably make sure that what you are offering is something you actually have the ability to make happen, because when you are already living minute to minute holding on for one more minute at a time, the disappointment of something that should be of marginal importance can be magnified. For me anyway, something tangible that was really helpful was people texting or otherwise contacting me even just liking a post on facebook in a way that didn’t require a response so I didn’t have to feel rude or extra stress if coming up with words to respond was way over my head, but I could still have the benefit of connection and someone reaching in to my lonely world. I eventually figured out how to ask for that, but I think I kinda failed on the follow up to make it happen…but anyway, I recently saw on one of the sites I follow a comment along these same lines…side note that everyone is different…the person in the quote below only cried like three times a day, and for a long time I cried pretty much any time I was alone and sometimes even if I wasn’t alone…although I suppose some days three might be right because that could also mean I only stopped crying twice…there were and are a lot of tears shed in my life…on a less surface level, for me, surprises are not really my thing, so while I might appreciate you just showing up, it would be more meaningful to me if you asked me first is it okay if you come over. If my world feels out of control, then even more than ever I want to feel involved in the choice. I might not have the mental capacity to actually choose, but at least letting me rubber stamp your decision is good for me…and okay, let’s be honest, I might be making bad choices because I don’t have the ability to reason logically, and I might be refusing help I might need because shaking my head no is the only control I can have in the world…but I might also be making a different decision than what you want for me because I am scared and because I don’t want to burden more people and because I learned shame and most importantly because back in March and April and May I knew I wasn’t supposed to do anything that could put graduation at risk and I knew that without full executive function I could easily say too much and break the rules by sharing about the abuse, and so some things just weren’t safe options for me. Yes I needed to talk, but no, I wasn’t going to let my guard down.

 

 

Back to the point, I will also be the first to admit that it is probably hard for people to know if they should leave the rope out for me, because I am protective of other people and don’t want to burden them so to the extent it is possible I tend to pretend I am okay so they don’t have to feel bad for me or feel pressured to do more than is comfortable for them, and I am used to having to figure things out on my own while pretending everything is fine…Unfortunately, I’ve had way more experience with that than I would have ever liked to have. I went into third year doing reasonably well. I really did at that point primarily just need a steady accountability partner, which is another reason it didn’t seem like THAT big of a deal to be working with someone bad. I’d been bullied so much in the past that working with a bully didn’t seem like a problem. Yeah, I was wrong. It was a gradual enough change that I didn’t really notice it much myself and blamed what I did notice on other (moderately legitimate) circumstances (like new classes, my first apartment, etc) even though other people did notice that I had changed even though I wasn’t talking about what was going on. Looking back, by the end of third year I was probably in crisis mode more often than I wasn’t. Things that would have made me cringe and then go back to normal life became situations that threw me into a day or more of freaking out. I couldn’t handle the stress of the abuse and the germophobia grew into what I guess was maybe partly a mental distraction to take away from the pain of abuse…I don’t really know a lot about how these things work, but I know that regardless of the exact mechanism at work it isn’t the expected outcome to go into counseling close to ready to “graduate” from counseling and after a year be fighting to get through the semester even if there were other things like difficult teachers and deaths to contend with at the same time. (But don’t worry, according to my abuser, I was not grieving…lol…it is kind of scary that this person is still allowed to interact with and even “counsel” (those are definitely huge exaggerated finger quotes) students on campus. I worry about the other students she is hurting. I know I was an easy target and hope because of that I got hurt worse than other people, but that is small consolation, and I don’t have any proof there aren’t other people, easy targets or not, who were being treated just as badly as me.

I work hard to remind myself it is not my fault. It is never the victim’s fault. The victim never really chose to be abused. Being an easy target doesn’t mean it was my fault. It means I was taken advantage of. Someone whose job it was to protect me instead used her power to hurt me and that is not okay. Yes, being protective of others, being excessively quiet, and being very obedient made me an easy target because there was an almost non-existent chance of me spilling the beans, especially when told not to say anything, but that doesn’t make it wrong for me to have those attributes. Being protective of others is problematic in this kind of situation, but it isn’t wrong to want protect people. I know life isn’t all about me and value other people’s experience and perspective. Being quiet is something I’ve always hated about myself, but it doesn’t make being abused my fault. It also isn’t all bad. Someone told me once that not being good at speaking makes me good at listening. I’m not always totally convinced of that because sometimes the worry about if I am going to know what to say next takes away from my listening and also without having something to say in response makes me feel like I didn’t do a good enough job listening, but it is true that I am very willing to take the time to listen when people need to talk. And as much as being obedient has hurt me, I certainly cannot endorse being disobedient to avoid being hurt…I think being disobedient would likely bring its own problems. Following the rules doesn’t make it my fault. Not knowing when or how to question authority doesn’t make me a bad person. It is easy to blame myself because like why didn’t I tattle until months after the dust had settled when tattling even a couple months sooner could have spared me and other students a lot of hurt, but I have to remember that I was doing the best with what I had. My protective personality hadn’t yet let me let go of that protection. I knew tattling would hurt my abuser. I knew it could cost her a job which would also impact her two young daughters who hadn’t done anything wrong. As far as I knew, her husband was unemployed, and the stress of living in a family without steady income wasn’t something I wanted to be responsible for in those girls. I don’t know if she treats her daughters right, but I do know she is manipulative enough that it would be hard for social services to rescue those girls if she wasn’t treating them right. Even when I was ready to let go of protecting the mom I wasn’t ready to let go of protecting the girls.

Also heard on the radio: “I entertain suicidal thoughts.” I heard that and said to myself, yes, yes I do, because I am a fun person. Those thoughts are so entertained…lol…you just wish you were as entertaining as I am. Then I started laughing which was awesome, because I had previously been crying. Also, I LOVE being graduated and free!! Now I can talk about stuff like this without risking anyone taking it out of context and taking it to someone in authority to get me in trouble. Is it stupid that I had to worry about stuff like that, umm, yes, but this was a for real problem. There were people looking for any opportunity to try to say that I wasn’t stable emotionally and should be kicked out of school or at minimum be punished for it…One of my friends asked me to think about the counselors I’d seen…I think the goal was for me to find one to go back to while I was grieving, but considering that over the course of my first 7 semesters of college I’d had sessions with 7 mental health practitioners, to me it was more of a game, and the eighth box on the grid was labeled “FREEDOM.” Not all of my experience was negative, but a lot of it was, and on top of that the last people I saw was, from my perspective, solely a check box of yes I did show up…and the last person even wrote her notes to school that way as a check box yes Wiggle Worm showed up and yes she participated on these dates. There was really no reason besides the stupid contract for me to be there. I saw it as a waste of my time that could be better spent studying and a waste of the money for the sessions and the gas to get there, particularly when I had no interest in being there and knew that even if I did need help that change wasn’t going to happen if I wasn’t interested. I think if the first person and people I saw that summer and fall after the slammed down phone had been more positive experiences that maybe my opinion could have been drastically different, but that isn’t what happened. Instead, being in counseling felt like serving my time, and I was thrilled when that was over. I do recognize that counselors can do a lot of good and I do recognize that in every occupation there are people who are bad at their job, but my experience left me with such a bitter taste that while I am happy to have a counselor as a friend and meet new ones without fearing them, I am not interested in having a counseling relationship with anyone. That ship has sailed. Besides, when you told me back then that part of my punishment for finally breaking under the abuse was going to be counseling, it is hard to in turn break the association that formed between counseling and punishment. I strongly believe that counseling should NEVER be used as a punishment. There are a lot of reasons for this belief. Among other things, it isn’t really fair to anyone involved including the counselor who might not have even done anything wrong – why should they have to use some of their time they could have used to have a session with a legitimate client to have a meeting with someone who really has no reason to be there aside from needing the sign off to stay in school? Why should they have to get into the middle of the web?

Calling them names because they’re different is wrong

(I can be your friend—VeggieTales)

I hate election time because of all of the hatred and hurtfulness that people spew. The headlines are full of stuff like “Hillary should be in prison, not the white house.” First of all, we have a legal justice system in this country that determines whether or not someone belongs in prison. We also have an innocent until proven guilty policy. Oh, and it is “we the people” who get to decide whether or not Hillary will move into the white house…well, we the people with the help of the electoral college, but that’s a conversation for another day and not really relevant to this conversation. Second, how do you think Hillary feels seeing that kind of headline? Why must we be so cruel to those with whom we disagree? And then the headlines of “your body belongs to Trump.” I can’t say I read the article to which this was attached, but I am guessing it was surrounding the topic of abortion. No, your body doesn’t belong to Trump, and I can guarantee he did not say that. I know you know how you feel when someone makes comments about your actions that are false. Do you really think Trump feels any differently? Your body does not belong to Trump. I might be lousy at history, but even I know slavery was outlawed a LONG time ago. And abortion isn’t about what you do with your body, abortion is about what you do with someone else’s body who isn’t yet able to defend him or herself. If it isn’t okay to murder your children when they can scream then it shouldn’t be okay to murder them when they can’t. (Side note, if it were YOUR body we were talking about then post abortion you would be dead…not sayin’ just sayin’). Today I got onto facebook and 90% of what I saw was people spewing hate about the candidates. (The other 10% was mostly the adorable children posts that are part of why I even have facebook). It really bothers me to see this hurtfulness towards those two people and towards anyone who has a different opinion.

Y’all you might only see these people on TV, and they might look kinda funny, but they are not just TV characters; they are real people. They are people with real feelings and real thoughts and real emotions.

You are entitled to your own opinion. So are they. So is your neighbor who voted differently from you or didn’t vote at all. In all reality, the president doesn’t have THAT much power over our everyday lives. No president is going to mandate what time you set your alarm or whether you shower in the morning or at night or what time to have lunch—the things that really affect your day to day remain unchanged. When I woke up this morning nothing was different than yesterday in my life—nor will anything truly change the day that our new president gets the keys to the white house. (Side note that the vice president kinda gets the short stick–how come the vice president doesn’t get a cool house). You don’t have to like the opinions of the person elected, but you should be a decent human being and show respect to the person elected. You don’t have to like how your neighbor voted, but you are still going to have to live with them the other over 1400 days until the next election, so it is going to be best for both of you if you can get it through your thick skull that your neighbor is another person worthy of respect.

Perhaps the news media and the social media folks need a reminder that as the adage says, if you have nothing nice to say then say nothing at all. Have we forgotten our manners? Did we forget “the inside is the part that we’re supposed to care about; that’s where we’ve got feelings that are very much the same…it’s okay if we are different.” It is okay to be friends with people who do not share your exact same opinions. If everyone had the exact same opinions the world would be pretty boring. If you refuse to be friends then let’s remember that being rude and hurtful towards other people doesn’t show how superior you are; in fact, it pretty much just makes you seem childish. Let’s grow up and be civil towards people—even the ones who *gasp* aren’t identical to us.

Do you reach out and touch them?

(Dreaming Jacob’s Dream–Michael Card)

Supposedly over break I have been writing letters of intent, organizing things, preparing for upcoming rotations…all sorts of useful relevant things…

In reality, I am super distractible. I found this video and found it really powerful. Imagine what it is like to go through every day like the first half of the video. Some people don’t have to imagine. It is hard when despite your efforts to be friendly and positive the only interaction you get is negative if you get any interaction at all. The video was so powerful–being ignored or cast aside hurts, and it is discouraging when most interactions in a day are like that. Maybe I reacted mostly because I notice things–I see the facial expressions and body language, but even without the visual and just listening, the tone and words (or lackthereof) is a reminder that every interaction counts…and a reminder of how negative interactions have hurt me.

I also found this video. So good. But honestly, the first thing I thought when I saw it was “I wonder what their parents were thinking when their kid came home from day camp with a word like worthless scrawled across her face.” The video was super well done though.

Yolo…or like the Caribou cups and napkins always say, “Life is short. Stay awake for it.”

I wouldn’t trade your love for all the candy in this great big world

(Me—Plumb)

 

Ironically I actually had a conversation yesterday with a teacher about how isolation hurts so much more than almost anything else that happens in life…and then today my stupid ID wouldn’t work to let me study where I wanted, which equates to a sense of isolation, since it separates me from all my friends and everything else that I want. Although I was thinking about it overnight, and I don’t agree anymore that nothing is the worst thing to say to someone…Nothing is worse than an unintentional wrong thing, but the worst thing is actually to tell someone that they aren’t grieving. (At least I sure hope that wouldn’t be an accidental wrong thing…I have a hard time believing that telling someone they aren’t grieving when they clearly have something hard going on could ever be an accident). This makes me sad but also makes me laugh a little remembering a particular day I am not going to write about.

 

On the positive side, on a whim a week-ish ago I went looking for where the microwave in the other studying building on campus got moved to, so I still have a way to eat…which is good, because I like eating. Girl would be very crabby if she had to wait to get to church to eat lunch.

 

A few days ago an email went out that we have to sign that we agree with who is joining our fraternity (the one whose whole attraction factor is that you can go greek without having as many mandatory meetings to attend…so I did pretty much as a resume booster, because it is the most stupid and pointless group ever). Hahahahaha. You tell me I am required to sign that I agree with who is going to join our fraternity, and if I don’t agree I have to write a letter stating my preferences, and you know what, you could be telling me that Hitler was joining and I’d still say go for it…it doesn’t really change anything for me if someone else is joining. Not going to lie…I didn’t necessarily read the list before I signed my name to say I agreed. Sometimes I don’t care if my opinion is heard…besides, I am fairly certain there is only one more mandatory meeting left, so it isn’t like I actually have to be in the same room with this group more than one more time (and you wouldn’t believe how many people don’t show up for the mandatory meetings anyway…and I don’t blame them, because I’d rather go stick my head in a pot of boiling water than go to the meetings. So yeah, I do have the best friends that money can buy, and you know what, money doesn’t buy very good friends…the biggest problem is probably that leadership in the group is a popularity contest just like student council and when you have stuck up people who have no leadership skills running a group it isn’t going to go very well. (Side note that not the entirety of the leadership is stuck up, but the “president” is, and that sets the tone for the rest of the leadership).

 

I decided that living in an apartment is something that I am going to stop doing ASAP…Apparently once you tell them that you are officially planning on moving out, you are required to keep your apartment completely clean and presentable at all times and if they find out you didn’t then there is a significant fine. I have so many problems with this. First, I am a college student and I have a lot more important things to worry about than whether there is a stray shirt of the floor next to the washer or if the pile of books is starting to look like the leaning tower of Pisa. To me, it is my apartment and if I am stressed out and don’t want to deal with laundry and dishes until after an exam then I should be able to do that (assuming that there is not a science experiment brewing). Second, how in the world do I work on moving out while keeping my apartment presentable. Moving out is a huge process that usually spans over the course of a few weeks when I am *only* going home for break, so you can imagine that it is going to be an even bigger project when leaving for good…especially since I am trying to sell my dresser so once that is gone it will be pretty limited where I can store my stuff. I spent a significant portion of yesterday cleaning…and then of course getting ready in the morning takes twice as long when the bed has to be made and the pajamas neatly folded and…and…and…etc Not so bad when I have some extra time, but the majority of the time I do not have extra time.

 

On the positive side, now that they might be showing my apartment to prospective renters, perhaps they will finally fix the ceiling I have been complaining about since I moved in, and fix the broken burner I have been complaining about since November…

 

On the note of cleaning…I determined that if things were still halfway (or fully) shrink-wrapped then I probably didn’t need them…yep…which resulted in a trip to the dumpsters in the dark and rain…which was frustrating because the fire escape was slippery and also apparently they said they changed the codes on the gates, but what they didn’t say was that they only changed it on some of them, so I was frustratedly trying to release myself to go back to my apartment and the stupid code wasn’t working…I mean, it doesn’t work 70% of the time with the correct code anyway, but eventually I tried the old code and got to go home.