Trigger Warning: Alcohol Mentioned

A Rum and Soda and Apple Pie

 

Oh, I have apple pie! Yay! I forgot!

Sorry, I got distracted with… organizing the past to make way for the future. The reason for the rum and soda with some apple pie? I’ve been living with level, oh I don’t know, pain since last Wednesday and it’s next week Thursday now. About a month ago I clocked level eight pain that I couldn’t get out of bed coursing through my whole body. Then there was level nine tooth pain where I couldn’t sleep, the pain was so bad and so present that I was living in hell each millisecond I went from crying in pain to falling asleep and back again. I reserved 10 of course for giving birth, even though I will never give birth myself.

So since that experience, I’ve been brought to my knees with exhaustion instantly, I’ve had lava coursing through my veins. Who’s to say what a pain level is anymore? Especially if I can bite an unknown bullet, “pull up my boot straps,” and be ableist and “just do it”? That’s what I did Monday when I went to work feeling only about 70% better saying “this is my new normal. Just bite the bullet and get through it.” I made it until 1:30 before I almost fell asleep from the exhaustion of it all. Then at about 3:00, my brain just decided it was done. No parade. No drag show. Just done.

Thus the rum and soda and apple pie. It’s the last of the apple pie. I don’t care. If I cared, I would have poured the ice and the vodka in my drink first like I usually do. If I cared, I would have poured ice in. Hahaha. Jokes aside, I’ve been under terrible strain. I don’t know if I will lose my job. I don’t know if we can afford my body going on the fritz. I was raised to people-please my way through society, which meant doing everything I could to make sure I was the most efficient, productive person I could be for my father’s… I mean family’s… I mean society’s sake!

That didn’t just go away when I got away from my father. I hoped that it would, but that “intrinsic motivation” that my therapist just raved about in our sessions… yeah that came from fawning to every person I ever encountered. I didn’t realize it until I was diagnosed autistic. That’s when the heavy mask I wore like my glasses fell off, and once it fell off, it felt SO GOOD, and yet, that’s what was holding me together through my traumas. If I could pretend to be okay to everybody else, then I was okay. I was okay, are you okay? I’m okay. Are you okay? If we keep saying we’re okay, are we still okay? Which is basically a bit that Taylor Tomlinson does much better than I do. Watch her!

So it didn’t come until this week that I started falling apart emotionally. It started Tuesday with me pretending I was going to work only to be stopped by my body twice. Hard. I was walking to the couch and my entire body just collapsed from exhaustion. Just bam! And as a graceful gay WASP who was also a cheerleader for two months, I did it in superhero fashion where my face did not completely smack against the ground, though it was close. After a few minutes of collecting myself and asking “what the hell just happened???” I stepped out of the superhero pose and went to get my shoes. Every step made more of my blood turn to lava and my pain turn up a notch. That’s why there’s no such thing as a pain scale. I took more than ten steps! I texted my boss I would not be in and just made an ugly face sob. I was a failure.

And it kept repeating itself in my head as it turned from one day into needing a month off. I’m still waiting for approval to get a month off of work. I don’t even know if I will have a job. And the psychiatrist wants me in a therapy program, and I don’t want to be in therapy when I can barely do anything. But I don’t know. Some pretty traumatic things have gone down in the past few months I’ve been at or near this job.

My apple pie is gone. Sad day. I’m signing off for now. Have a good day.

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