Crushed

Friends call on the phone; I don't answer. I hear the phone buzz - they've left me a voicemail - I don't listen.

People tromp up our stairs and knock; I sit in silence until they give up and leave.

I don't feel like being a person, being a friend, these days. I feel like sitting here in my quiet space and doing absolutely nothing. I feel like not being interfered with on my journey into a quiet place where nobody can make me do anything ever again.

Is this depression? It's hard to say. I'm too close to it to see it clearly. It could just be simple laziness.

I am lazy. My mother always said so, then my dad said so, then my mother-in-law said so. And you know? They were so right. I'm lazy. I don't like to clean things up. I don't like to wash the same dishes I just washed yesterday. I don't like to sweep and mop and dust and scrub and blah blah blah every single day of my life. It's boring. It's depressing. It's irritating.

I find myself in long diatribes on the inside of my head about how selfish and inconsiderate all the people who live with me are, how lame and rude they are for leaving all this crap all over the place and not rinsing a goddamn dish, for fuck's sake, not putting the toilet seat down, not cleaning the hair out of the drain, not caring that it's me doing the walking behind them and cleaning up their dish, their mess, their drain hair.

For a lazy person, this must be what Hell looks like, a hall stretching to Infinity, filled with doors, behind each of which lives a sink full of dishes and bathtubs clogged with slimy hair and filthy toilets waiting to be cleaned. And when you get done with one room, you turn around and find that all you've done is undone again a mere five minutes after you're finished.

If I knew what was wrong with me I'd fix it. But I don't. And sadly I think that it would be kind of like my vision of Hell anyway; I'd figure out what was wrong with me, fix it, and five minutes later I'd be back down in the dumps again.

And I'm too lazy to want to fix it anyhow.

Okay, that's my time. I'll be here to depress you all week. Be sure to tip your waitress.

And Believe Me, I Am Still Alive

Hey, wow.

It's been a while!

Things are fine, I'm fine, all is well, but you can imagine that I could use the roller coaster analogy to describe the goings-on since I last posted. Car breakdowns, car repairings, friend still not my friend, huge family dispute, blah de blah de blah.

I'd rather know how you're doing.

How ya doin'?

And Yet Somehow Life Goes On

I'm sorry for the melodrama (GETTIT? GETTIT? *MEL*odrama? BAW HAW HAW!) of the last few posts. Losing a long-term friendship that was more in your own head than in reality, and then finding out that it was more in your own head than in reality, can tend to unhinge you.

Okay, not you, me, but you knew what I meant.

In other news, since I reallyreallyreally don't want to go into that at all, I finally had to break down and go to the hospital for the tooth situation. Those of you who've been following the bouncing ball for any amount of time will know the story - I have very bad teeth, and one very bad tooth in particular. I've been self-medicating with alternating doses of Tylenol and Motrin for over a year just so I can function.

(Hey, guess what the ER doc said about that? He said I had been systematically overdosing myself for ages, which could have killed my liver, and that I was very very very lucky the tests came back fine. READ THOSE LABELS, FOLKS, AND DON'T GET COCKY.)

(Oh, god, how they tested me. Also, a CT scan. Good thing I'm poor enough to qualify for financial aid, because otherwise I'd be hyperventilating right now.)

ANYway.

My tooth got so bad that it created a swelling along my entire jaw that stood out a good two, three inches from my face. Yeah, sexy, right? So I caved and went to the ER on Friday, since I didn't want poison in my brain or an eaten-away jawbone or a heart attack because of poisons in my blood stream (all of which oh, so many people delighted in telling me about over the last year, thanks guys for the paranoia).

After a blood test, a pee test, and a scan, it appears that I am a lucky, lucky sunuvabitch and that I may yet escape death because of my teeth. Also, that I'm way healthier than I deserve to be. Also, I'm not allowed to take Tylenol for at least 6 months, and Motrin only in a pinch. Also, Oxycodone will indeed make you barf if you take it on an empty stomach with Penicillin.

Long story longer, I got a list of places that will take me on a sliding scale (FINALLY! Some light at the end of the tunnel. I guess all I had to do was potentially bankrupt my ass to find out where to go), and so what I'm doing tomorrow is calling all these places to see who will see me and help me get back to a decent level of dental health.

Hasten that fine day.

In the meantime, thanks for being there and listening to me. You guys are the truest friends I have. Except my brother, who is just the best, most loyal and true friend I've ever had. It only took a minor emotional apocalypse to figure that one out.