You are now entering The Twilight Zone.

08/23/2009

There's got to be somethin' in the air or somethin' in the water because it just doesn't make any sense why so many people can lose their mind at the drop of a hat. These past few days have been more chaotic than I thought they could have been; accounting for everything that I'm already dealing with, I felt that things would freeze how they are now before getting worse. I should have known, that if it's one thing I can't acquire, it's stability.

[ Family Problems ]

My dad has been having problems with his legs, and we're not talking about arthritis or anything of the sort. He's got a 12" blockage in one leg, and the other leg has about a 3-4" blockage. He's losing circulation in both legs which creates added pressure, and with having to walk on his job constantly from one side of the store to the next.. by the time he comes home it's normally all he can do to walk. He hobbles on a good day, and on a bad day it's all he can do to walk because he's shaking from the intensity of the pain. He has diabetes, which makes matters worse, and his father went through something very similar before he died. His dad had to have one leg amputated while in the hospital. We (my mother, grandmother, and myself) tried to get him to go to the doctor sooner, but he would protest. Now, he's faced with what could be irreversible damage. The only thing that would possibly help is if he has a bypass surgery that re-routes the veins in his leg, which means that in the end, he would lose circulation in another part of his leg and we'd be right back where we started from. People who undergo that type of bypass typically lose their leg in the next two to three years, regardless of how well they "recovery". The pain he has would ease, tremendously, but the rest of his lower body would begin to deteriorate.
If he doesn't get this surgery, then losing his leg right this moment is right around the corner. The doctor we sent him to doesn't want to do the bypass surgery; He's claiming that he is too young for it, he's 54, and that it might just be a wasted procedure.

This is adding a lot of stress on the family, for obvious reasons. We got his doctor bill and the hospital bill the other day, and it's going to be ~$2,000.00 that we have to pay. We don't have the money to pay that off, and doing a payment plan, there's no telling how long we could keep up on payments. If he has the surgery, he's going to be out of work, and he's not going to be able to draw full disability which means we'd get an average of $180.00 a week - unless they decided to speed things up. We're hardly making ends meet with my dad working 38-40 hours a week. His hours keep getting lowered, but even if it was just $180.00 a week.. for those two weeks he'd basically get half of a paycheck. You may get paid less, but that doesn't mean your bills realize that and cost less.

My half-family (my mother had three daughters from a previous marriage who are all much older than me [41, 38, 35]) is also creating a lot of drama over money issues. They've fought, for the 15 years I've lived in North Carolina, over my grandmother's money. She's not a rich woman, she just happened to save up a decent sum over the years. Everybody feels she has more money than she actually does, and mixing money with family just always seems to be a bad combination. I'm getting real tired of them fighting over money and expecting her to hand them money left and right (despite owing her $1,000+ from previous loans). They talk so much trash about her, and I know my grandmother isn't perfect and she's got a lot of growing to do despite being 84-years-old, but they don't even realize how horrible they are. My oldest half-sister, who has caused a lot of the drama lately, even went so far as to say that the whole family would be cursed if we didn't loan her any money and that we were going to "get ours in the end". We told her that we don't have the money to loan, that we're struggling as well, but that's just not good enough. She exaggerates a lot, and lies a lot, so it was all just for show. She ended up getting $150.00 out of my grandma, and still wanted to ask for more, even though she had doubled her profits because she had wrote some bad checks. I don't understand why people expect my family to suffer, or others in general to suffer, but they always have to be "bailed out" from their own holes they dig.

[ Relationship Problems ]

I've mentioned how I have two poisons in my life, and both poisons have been eliminated, even though if you had of asked me a year ago I would have bet my life that I would never lose either. One I had known for countless years, who would forever have a section of my heart. The other is my ex, who was my best friend for almost as many countless years, who I had also given a section of my heart.. and a much bigger chunk of it. He replaced the previous poison, almost completely. I trusted him, with every ounce of me. He's the only person I had ever, in my entire near-19 years of living, let see me for everything I was worth.

I've been missing him, who he once was, but one night he said something and it was that instant that I realized the man I saw in him was gone; he was completely wiped out and replaced with a personality that brought tears to my eyes. I've never been so scared in my life. He sent me one message, one sentence, and fear ran through my entire body. I started hyperventilating and I couldn't keep the tears from falling. I was instantly transformed into a scared, six-year-old little girl again, who cowered in her corners during the daytime and screamed all throughout the night.

It was my biggest fear, reawakened, in a man who I didn't think could possess that spirit.

I'm having to come to grips that nothing is going to be what it was, in the past, ever, ever again. I told him that I couldn't talk to him anymore. He kept sending me text messages, randomly, and each time he sent one I'd end up dropping my phone. I guess my family thinks I've just became more of a "butter fingers" than I was known to be.

I've mentioned my insomnia before, and how it's came back with a vengeance, but it's never been this bad before. In the past six days, I've gained a total of four hours of sleep. I've nodded off, a few minutes here and there, but everything is restless tossing and turning. I've only had four hours of what you can consider "peaceful slumber". It surprised me to realize just how much things have taken a turn for the worse, as of last night, I think I hit rock bottom. I was talking to a friend, and I told him I was going to head to bed, and just the mere thought of having to go to my bed made me swell up with tears that I couldn't seem to gain control over. I thought I was going to drown myself by the time I actually laid down on my bed.

I've only been this way, once before, years ago..

*Sighs* What have I become..

I was going to make this entry to blow off some steam, to get things off of my chest, and to reassure myself that I was going to get past all of this. I wasn't going to cling to the abusers, I was going to embrace what good I still have left in my life. I even had a song picked out to emphasize all of this, and here I am.. realizing that maybe I am just another nutcase.

I think this is the first time I've ever truly considered that I may need professional help, whether it be a therapist, anti-depressants, or simply having a straitjacket attached to me while I sit in the off-white padded room.

I think I'm failing myself, and I'm even failing this diary right now. Everything really is like the Twilight Zone for me, eh?  My apologies, to anyone who has to read all of these muddled phrases.