Lost in the Woods

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!

Quickie update! Seems like that is all I do lately! Let’s run it down.

#1 All my funding for school is coming WITHOUT any contracts or probation due to medical reasons!

#2 My kids are all doing well!

#3 My mother and I are still getting along here in WA which is amazing considering our history.

#4 Am at Kelly’s house with her four kids and two dogs hanging out and having a good time already!

#5 I got five inches cut off my hair, pictures to come later!

#6 I get to be back in AK in a few days, and cannot wait!

#7 Have only had to take Xanax 4 times since Christmas morning, and no self medicating!

So so far so good, the rest of my top ten to come later tonight!

So here we go! Crackberry is sending you this message via my finger tips. Less then 48 hours till I am back in class!

Great news on classes, other then the math fiasco. Teacher dropped the ball which really pissed me off. I could have shot for a passing grade but she said she dropped me. WTF is up with that?

English two classes and I managed to not only pass Shakespeare, but I will never have to take the class again! YES! Medieval Literature and Inkjest printing was fantastic and I got ‘A’s in both. YA me!!

Less than 48 hours till I am landing in WA. I cannot wait to see all my family again and my best friend Kelly! This is going to be high stress but totally worth 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 faced with the fact I am falling apart, even though this cuban food is really making me feel better. School started today and I was to overwhelmed to even focus. I am freaking out about my Continental Literature class.. UGH… on top of finishing an incomplete in a MONTH! AHHHHH

I lost it last night. Drank for no reason other than nerves and I had xanax in my system.

I really screwed up. I cannot even tell you way. Speculating yes… i am freaked about making through this semester. The reading is going to be intense.

I just felt the need to post that things are not going well… time for another doctor visit!

AGAIN it starts. I dropped one class because of fundage, and am looking for a job to boot. We are really struggling even though we are making decent money. I am frustrated because I was told last night that more than just a few folks are telling Geoff to leave me. That he should not have to deal with my disorder and what comes along with it. That I am using him for his job and money. Like I do not bring anything in? I may have to pay it back but I bring in over 14 grand a year after classes and fees are paid for.  I was so angry. I am so hurt. YES I have earned ill will from a lot of my friends. I did it, before I was diagnosed and having so many problems. I hurt them and I deserve it. But to be told that he is still being told and by “a lot of people” really hurts. I means he is not standing up for me. It means that he is not being honest to me about his feelings. It means that I need to re-evaluate everything.

Do I think it is over? No. But there will be tings that I need to really think about and reconsider. It is like he has done nothing wrong in his mind. But the simple fact is that he has plenty of faults in our relationship. He has broken my trust more than once also. Differently than I have his, but it still is there. Thank we get upset and fight and I end up crying and he ends up in my lap saying how much he loves me and is sorry. This is getting ridiculous.Of course last night I through my freaking PSP and broke it. I was pretty upset and am out of Xanax and so I really was wishing I had a huge shot of Valium to knock me out!

So I came up with an idea. We are going to have a communication book. We are going to start communicating all our feelings even if we are afraid we are going to hurt each other and say it in writing.

Since Spring Break is fast approaching I will more than likely not be posting for a week. Hopefully I can get on campus a few times to have some Internet time.

I finally got my thyroid medication but it will take a it to get me back to par. It is effecting my performance in all my classes. Also not having Internet at home is affecting my math because it is all online. My depression is pretty high because my house is such a mess and the kids are on their way for the weekend. Geoff decided to take advantage of the chaos to move the whole house around. Moved all the bookshelves downstairs and moved the bed and TV to a different part of the bedroom. Change is not good for bipolar people. He understands so much about me and my disorder but he does not get change freaks me out.

The onlly good thing is now the TV is not at the end of the bed which will be good. We have room to Wii now without bending in funny angles on the bed. I predict that during Spring Break in between getting caught up with math I will finally beat Resident Evil IV. I know pretty sad but playing games actually help me get through hard times. Who knew gaming could be an occupational theraputic tool!