Lost in the Woods

Have not checked in in a long time. I have been having a rough semester and am doing worse in a lot of ways. The loss of a friend, my daughter Amanda being kicked out. Unable to Clem this disaster of a house and everything in between.

To top it off migraines from hell that are effecting my school. To top it off deep depression, no mania and no gumpstion to keep myself up. Hard to find the energy to even shower. I need to work on this blog. It is theraputic to say the least.

More to come

So here it is 2010. I made it home fine with all my luggage in tow. Geoff could not get me from the airport so I took a taxi home. When I get there the cat had decided the litter box was not up to par so I had to clean that mess up right away. Than things got weird. I really cannot tell you much because it is pretty much a blank.

I experienced a major sense of displacement and feeling out of sorts. Geoff has told me things three and four times because I am not rembering asking. Then to top that off I have Benny experiencing a horrid flu/cold that according to doctor is more than likely swine flu. I do however tend to disagree so far with that because after having a horrid day yesterday with a high fever, I am doing ok today. Still am sick but no where what it was yesterday.

Oh, and my Blackberry died or was in the process. They wanted $45 for a new battery and my keypad and trackball were going. With $125 deductible what was the point? So for about $30 more dollars Geoff decided that it was time I got my iPhone. I have to say I love it so much more than the Blackberry. I did like that phone but after two years I think it did it’s job.

Now I am waiting on my grants, scholarships and loans to get here. Having them direct deposited was supposed to allow us to get our funds earlier. Since we have no physical book store everything has to be ordered online. I will be starting my semester off without books. Lovely! Three English classes and a math class with no books!

So I am back in Fairbanks, starting school in two days, and feeling like death warmed over. Should be a great rest of the week!

So here I am in Gig Harbor. I got to spend Christmas with my three oldest kids. It has been interesting. My oldest, the middle one and only man in the photo, Nathan and I are always on good terms, and so are Amanda and I. But Josephine, the one on the left, and I are not.  I am not sure why but she has gone off the deep end with her behavior. Plus she freaked out and I should have taken away cell phones at night because she texted her step mother and to tell her I was drunk and she was freaked out and so instead of calling me, they called my friend who was here and was told I was NOT drinking and yet Josephine STILL was freaked out and they decided to call the sheriff. NICE huh?

Suffice it to say, I gave the officer a breathilizer, or asked that I be given one so my daughter would stop the drama, and she had worked herself into a legitamate freakout. She was diagnosed with bipolar by a family practitioner and I am so MAD! But I cannot do anything about it. She lives with her father, she is 13 and she is on a dose of Lamictal that is not even theraputic. But it is obviously causing some issues. I just want to SCREAM, but again I have no power she lives with her dad and step mother.

BUT At least I get to spend time with the girls. Amanda and I have never lost our bond and neither has Nathan and I. SO I need to work on Josephine BIG TIME!

My parents bought a new boat. They are selling the sailboat and have gone to the Darkside and are now the proud owners of a Grand Banks classic Trawler. They are getting older but I just cannot think of my Dad on a yacht!! He has been sailing since before he could walk! I was the same way. He raised me on a sailboat. I remember how I hated how quiet it was and liked it better on our friends Grand Banks. But I wish I could have that silence now! We always were the last one into the destination on our summer trips. When Mount St. Helens blew the second time we were at Eagle Island and I was playing truth or dare. I french kissed a boy for the first time.  In the middle of the second round of truth or dare we were in a tent, five of us, when the park ranger told us to pack up that we were being evacuated because of the ash fall. Most of us had been in Spokane for the eruption because of a ski event/celebration and still were scared from having to live through that being stuck there for two weeks, or some of us watched it from the school parking lot, but everyone in WA was effected by the May 18th eruption and so we, the kids in the tent, were FREAKED OUT. We had face masks ready and packed up on the boat. The yachts made it ahead of the ash, but motoring, the sailboat only could go so far. We got a huge dose of the ash and had to go to the doctor the next week to make sure we were ok despite the masks.

I am rambling, but I believe it is because I am in my childhood home and it is bringing back both good and bad memories. It is very stressful and I have had to take a Xanax every night and watch TV till I fall asleep, on Hulu… THANK GODS FOR HULU! I wish I had internet at home, I would be SET for life with hulu! Next week it is just me and my parents. Let us hope I can make it!

One final almost done. Just have to matte and frame the photos for the photo show for my Inkjet printing class. It will be nice, I am calling it Since and Sensuality because there are so many sexual undertones to these macro shot photos. The teacher looked at them and said they were beautiful, which meant a lot because I was not sure I had pulled it off. I will be hanging them on Monday the 14th and they will be in the UAF Wood Center from then till February 18th! I will try to get some up on here so I can show it off and on Facebook. But I am not at home at the moment and won’t be able to do that till I have access to my Mac Pro at home. This is just a Toshiba and has no photo editing programs that will change the tif’s into jpegs.

I am going to try and write a paper to get it in on time for my class tomorrow but I doubt it. I am staying at a friend’s while Geoff is in Arizona and I have a hard time writing anywhere then at home. I then have to re-do one paper for that class and write a paper on King Lear that is due on the 14th too. I also have a final for the last class and two reading responses to write so I can at least have a chance for an A in that class, but I will settle for the B just so I have it done!

Thank goodness for Xanax because I have such high anxiety not being able to have the solace and safety of being at home. My mom sent me a Thanksgiving check so I have some money to take a taxi home tomorrow at least so I can clean the house for the kids when they get there on Friday and so I have one night to just CHILL and watch some TV on my big TV instead of the laptop. It has been so hard getting up in the morning because he gets up hours before I usually do, my friend that is. I got the right medications now so I know that is helping but my body and brain are still drug addled when I wake up. Plus not sleeping in my own bed and sharing a futon with two large dogs and my friend makes it hard for me to get to sleep so I have to top off my normal night meds with a half a Xanax just to sleep, but that is ok just makes me drugged out in the morning.

I managed to get back to my friend’s house on the new Grey Line bus route without completely going into a full on anxiety attack. Taking the bus always makes me so nervous, not sure why. It could be from the year I spent working for the local school bus company and having it bring back memories of my life before the divorce. It also could be because it is at night. But I managed to ride home yesterday night and early this morning on my own without missing it and without incident. I did not even have to take a Xanax this morning, mainly because I think because I had my final printed, and I found out a week early, which is never a bad thing.  So, I did not have to race to print, and I am the only one done. I am worried about cutting my mattes because the pictures are not perfect 11×14 inches they are more like 10.766×16.369 inches and one that is another off size. But I know I can do it just have to not freak out. Hopefully the frames that Jason has sitting in his office are fixable and I do not have to buy anymore because we are so short on money this time of year.

As for school next semester, I still am wondering if I want to fight with the financial aid office or just hope that my Pell Grant covers the whole tuition and books. Or I just take two classes and go from there. This is a definite possibility and maybe the best idea to give me a chance at getting my aid back for next year. It is going to be forever till I graduate, which kills me but we will see. After I finish these three classes we will see how bad it was that my math class was dropped this semester. I just hope I am back up to 75% completion so I can have my aid without a fight. I have to get a letter from my adviser again to say she thinks I can handle the four credits and supports me so the office will grant me my financial aid, but as I said before I am done stressing about that.

I have three weeks to be with my kids in WA for the holidays and although I will miss Geoff so much I will be able to relax and enjoy a vacation, the first in five years, out of state and with my family. I have not seen my brother or his family since summer of 2004, so it will be very nice for me.

So things are going better and hopefully I can pull off not failing Shakespeare again. I am going to give it my all, but I am not writing well enough for the teacher and so the best I can really hope for is to not fail. Even if I have to take it a third time or take it in the Spring with another teacher, I will do it. I have to, or all of this will have been for nothing.

Well I may not be able to continue my education. I had to withdraw from a semester due to my medication issues with my bipolarism and they let me and did not let me know it would count against me being able to get financial aid. I found that out this semester and now am being told that it is my last appeal. What the hell??? I am sitting here after sobbing on the phone and wondering if I am ever going to feel like a real human being at any time soon. I cannot clean, I do not want to be awake, just want to sleep and hide in bed. I force myself downstairs and play a video game or read for class JUST so I am not in bed. I know this sounds like i am whining but I am also just scared. If I am not able to go back to school, that means basically I work a shitass job that will start paying my loans back. That means I have basically wasted four years of my life. I am suicidal, I am holding on by a shoe string and I hate myself beyond belief. I am a horrid mother, hell I am no mother.. and I am wondering why the fuck my birth mother did not have an abortion, other then it was 1967. Sorry for posting this but this is where I am… I had to withdraw from math YET again because I could not GRASP the concepts at all. I do not get them. How am I EVER going to graduate even if I do finally pass the math. I have to get into the Nat Sci classes… I guess all I have to do is get through today. On top of it all. Geoff and I are not doing well. It is not that we are fighting it is just that he and I are never intimate anymore, he just is never in the mood. I just need him to want me, need me as much or even just NEED me. I feel like he is still here out of a feeling of obligation, even though he does not say it. Honestly, I will probably do something really stupid if he walks out. I should not be so codependent, but I need someone to depend on, I cannot depend on me most of the time. I hate my house, I hate that it is such a mess, I hate that I have not cooked a meal in months that all we do is take out or frozen food.  I want to live in a better place but we never will. We could not afford it. Nor would we get a good reference from our landlords, we are always late on rent. It is not that we do not have the money it is just we always forget to pay it.  OK enough, I am going to go to class and get through the rest of my day.

I find myself embracing the first Canto of Dante today. Big surprise since I just took a midterm and had to write about Canto I when Dante, the narrator, finds himself in the dark woods.  His exile from his beloved Florence, bitter sweet love he has for it although, has him contemplating suicide and finds himself in a dark wood confronted with his demons in the form of animals… The wolf being the wolves of Florence, the merchants, and those that exiled him. I find myself back in that wood remembering my rape and assault three years ago.

I was in the dark wood on that fateful day, walking home from Chaos, exiling myself from the craziness of a party gone TO wild for my taste.  I was subsequently approached and when I would not answer in a language that these two men could understand, for I was not of Slavic descent, I was attacked, raped and after bashing my head into a tree several times and stomped upon, left for dead. This was the beginning of my journey into the world of being bipolar. For it raised it’s ugly and expansive mind blowing head all at once into my life.. much like Dante’s use of Cerebus and his three heads of horror. I was faced with the horror of my own path, the horror of the path of my mind, and the horror of the actions done to me.  On top of it all, I am taking Shakespeare this semester and we just finished Titus Andronicus and with Lavinia’s rape and assault by the Goth Queen’s sons. I at times look down at my hands these days and see in terror that they are not there as they were anymore. They do not work as they should, and they do not guide me as well anymore. I do not have the mind I used to have, it is altered. In someways for good, and in others at a loss of creativity. I find beauty in the image of her hands as beautiful barren branches as the famous movie with Anthony Hopkins and Titus shows her, a beauty. I find her loss much as mine, the loss of her tongue, turned into nothing but a violent offal.

But apparently I am wandering, and the wolf is my own self. I fight against my self and my mind daily. I cannot keep my house the way it should be, to help keep me calm. I find my ability to put together a good critical essay impossible to please teachers.  I tend to be so esoteric that they do not get where I am coming from. I tell them I am not simplistic, I do not want to just reguritate what I read, I want to explore what I have learned. But alas with some teachers I must do that with my own time, which I have very little of.  With that time I find myself playing a video game or two and losing myself in a world of fantasy, or in a forbidding book not on my reading list, and even in television series, of which I am an addict of many.

But even through the darkness that surrounds me, I see the light that Dante ultimately finds at the end of his journey through hell. Perhaps I will finally find my way through, or at least learn to go hither and through as I please. In control of some sense of my own nature. Her horror is a beauty to some, and I am one of those that find that violence and travisty a beauty, only because I am learning to embrace it as one of my own nature, just one of my paths in the darkness of my woods.

This is a complete bitch session and I am scared too. I am not going to be able to pass Shakespeare EVER!! I cannot wrap my brain around this freaking class and it is the second time I have taken it. I just want to f’ing cry, wait I am.

I do not want to post to much because I am sure this teacher is a stalker.  But I AM JUST at my wits end! I worked so hard.

In all other classes I am really doing well, in this one, NO!

ENOUGH SAID… let the screaming commence!!

I am still struggling with medication. I finally got things squared away with my insurance company, however my doctor called in my serequel and she did not call in the extended relief version. Therefor at 300 mgs. I am a walking zombie feeling like I have a hangover all the time.

School is ok, other then my math teacher dropping me from the class. Well at least she better have because it is to late for me to drop it and I have not been doing the work.  I was getting a solid B but I got to the end of my rope and learning curve and could not understand, even with help, what was up. Since it was an online class I decided it would be much better if I took it again in the classroom.

Well we bi-polar people have addiction problems. Mine? TV Series on DVD’s. I just cannot help myself, I cannot stop myself, and I just want to keep watching. Over and over. I hide in my comfy bed and watch.

I am sorry that I have failed all of you at keeping this up, I just feel like I have had nothing to say other than to complain about how hard all it has been lately.

I am doing well in class, an A so far in Medieval literature. my Shakespeare, which I am retaking is a bit harder. We will find out soon enough if I can pass this damn class. I really do not like his grading scale and he hates my writing.

I think for now I am going to go and try to get some down time till Shakespeare. I just gave a speech and my head feels like an anvil during war time.

I have done some really messed up things to my friends that directly correlate to my bipolarism. I drank horribly and I always was getting rides to the store for more. I blew it, but that was years ago. I have forged new friendships and that is not an issue anymore. The problem is that it will haunt me for all my days because of how I feel and because of how others keep it alive.

I am broken therefor I am not worthy to be an equal. I have a mental illness but it is not an excuse for anything about me, but it is an excuse for them to slander and to talk behind my back. I just want to have a few friends I can trust. I obviously cannot. Which brings upon another aspect. I cannot trust myself therefor I tend to abuse my relationship with Geoff and he gets the distrust from me and now he is questioning his trust because I cannot be forthright in how I feel or what is going on because of the simple fact he is sick of hearing about it. I am deathly afraid I am going to lose him. Everyone I know eventually leaves me.

Sorry that is all folks. I had to put it down somewhere.

I just finished my speech in Shakespeare. Thankfully he let me do the same one I did last year when I took the class, did not finish it because I just could not do well in all my classes if I pushed to finish it. I did it on Richard the III and the true history of this king. I think I did OK and the teacher seemed to like it. But NO ONE had any questions.. UGH!

I still need to make an appointment so I can get refills and prescriptions. I am not doing as well as I would want ALL the time. But I am doing OK. I wish I had more to put here that will help people but I am hanging on by a thread. Two more weeks to finish an incomplete and I have really not gotten anywhere with it!