DAY 4 CONT'D

Tommy surprised me this evening. He came down and asked if Gramma would watch Cohen for a little while. I said she probably would, and he said that was good because he wanted to take me out somewhere since it was my birthday. It was so sweet.
We went to a restaurant in Oil City called Kate's. It's in the Day's Inn (formerly the Arlington). Unfortunately, my anxiety got the better part of me and I couldn't eat. I felt like I was going to throw up most of the time.
Tommy ordered some kind of pesto pasta and it came with flame broiled rolls. They were tasty (I had mine once we got back home and I calmed down). I ordered a simple house salad with ranch, and barely even managed to nibble on the edge of a cucumber.
We watched some animated Batman on Netflix with his phone, which was funny because we couldn't hear anything over the music in the place, and the subtitles kept turning themselves off. On top of that, his antivirus program kept reminding us about something or other and every time it did, it paused the show.
All in all, it was a good experience. I am glad I went, and I'm glad we spent the evening together. I just wish I could've actually eaten.
Our hostess/waitress was very friendly and cool; an older woman, Asian, and she had a cast on her left arm. She probably wondered what was up with me when I hadn't eaten anything and asked for a box to go. Oh well though. That moment is no more and I learned once again, that by playing into the anxiety and the "what-ifs", that I ultimately make it much worse.

Thank you, Tommy,  for being my wonderful big brother and making my evening something worth remembering.
I love you.

DAY 4: In Which it is My Birthday

After I calmed down a bit last night, Tommy and I had a 2 hour chat. I learned things that I didn't know about and so did he. I had no idea he was at the women's shelter with us when mom took me and her there. Joe was there too, for a night. I didn't remember that either. I guess I wasn't alone there as I thought I was.
I only remember 3 things about that place:
The bunk beds, the small boxes we had for cereal in the morning, and the little playground area where mom would tell me not to go too close to the fence because "you-know-who"might be on the other side.
I've come to realize that I feel incredibly abandoned. I feel tired of being the strength; tired of being the one to hold everybody, and myself, up. I don't want to do that right now. I want my turn. I want someone to completely take care of me and never leave. And that can't happen. Life just doesn't work like that. So I have to equip myself to keep moving on.
My parents separated when I was 3; the divorce process went on for about 4 years. My mom hated my dad and told me lies about him (didn't know they were lies until I grew up). I was separated from my brothers, one of which I am still incredibly close to.
My mom met someone else, and then a week after they married, he died. He was good for her, for us. Before all that, we moved around a few times. And then after that, we moved again with mom's dead husband's brother. Jim wanted him to take care of us. It just got worse.
We moved to Florida,  and it was gorgeous. But things got messed up somehow. We did stuff. They got a boat. We were always at the beach, but then a year in, stuff changed. Lewis didn't pay the rent one time so mom took my money I had saved in a coffee can. I had nearly 400$. I was 11 or 12.
Then we moved up to PA. Lewis left us, declaring that we treated him like shit and tried to take our computer. We got that back though. Haven't heard from him or seen him since 2002.

Anyway. I guess talking about all that stuff helped because afterward I just wanted to go to sleep. It was already 3 in the morning. And today I don't so much feel anxious as I do depressed. I feel understandably depressed.
Every 6 years or so, I go through bad fits of separation anxiety. And it's that time again. I hope when I schedule for my appointment Monday that it's in the very near future. I feel like I'm onto something and need to get to the bottom of it quick.

DAY 3: In Which I Didn't Post Before Midnight Again

Had a pretty bad anxiety attack. As I was coming down, I realized that it's not just generalized anxiety and that it is separation anxiety flaring up again. Ugh.

DAY 2: In Which I Didn't Post Before Midnight

But how much does that matter?
Nothing really happened today anyway. Gary had off work, we played with Cohen and relaxed. Pretty uneventful.
The weather has been a frozen tundra the past couple of days. We got about 6 inches of snow, all of which I shoveled twice today, including a place for Tommy to park.
That's about that for day 2 of the year 2014.

DAY 1: In Which it is the New Year

It is officially 2014 and I declared that I wanted to log something for every day this year. I want at least 365 entries to look back on once 2015 rolls around. To do this, I also want a physical journal as well. Hopefully it'll be like a book.
I don't know if it will amount to doing it every year; that'd be a lot of journals to box up and sort through when I die. I already almost feel bad for the poor chap who'll have to do it,  but I always thought that would be something neat to leave behind for kids, grandkids, great grandkids....
Ok well.
This will be the first entry in the 2014 journal. So everyone,  Happy New Year. Make it the best you can.

In Which I Tried to Not Suppress Happiness

I went to an intake appointment today for my anxiety/depression. I feel positive about it & am hoping it yields good results.

Over the past few days, I've had small uprisings of positivity and just an overall happy feeling. I haven't felt anything like that in many years.

I've also been reading a lot lately,  and since my birthday is Saturday, I ordered myself the next book in my Mitford collection. I'm pretty excited about that!

As far as anything else goes, well, it's all about the same as it has been. My brother's girlfriend has decided to see someone else though, and that makes for a very juicy post, but maybe I'll go into that later; right now I just want to read.
I even organized the bookshelf from books I've already read to the ones I haven't yet.

Bye for now.

In Which I Debate Saying This to a Former Friend

"You know, you were never a great person. You may be great in your boyfriend's or fiance's (or whatever he is) life, but you weren't great in mine.
You tried to deceive me by posing as one of my other friends by writing me a note in 7th grade that was supposedly from her, saying that she didn't want to be friends anymore because we just didn't have that much in common and really just weren't that good of friends. That was a joke. The only reason you wrote that was because she wasn't popular and was dorky and your way cooler friends talked you into it. What were you trying to do? Save me from the dork squad? I'd much rather be friends with her any day after the shit I put up with from you. And I'm glad I decided finally to abandon ship.

"My mom did her best to provide for us. And now I know that she did things for you because she wanted me to be happy and not disappointed.
Remember the Starlight Ball in 8th grade? There was a shop downtown called Nancy's Rags to Riches. We found nice dresses there to wear to the ball. Yours was more expensive than mine, and I asked my mom if she could pay for yours because you didn't have one, and we all knew you wouldn't be getting one because your dad was a tightwad douchebag and your mom was too lazy to leave the couch. So she did, and you promised and promised that your mom would pay mine back. We even called her and asked to make sure. Well she never did. And when you were old enough, you never did either. This was everything with you and your family. We'd pick you up from your dad's because he had kicked you out for the 8 millionth time.  We'd pick you up to stay with me when you were at your mom's and fighting with her. We'd even take you home. We'd take your mom places she needed to go, and only twice out of all those occasions did we receive the gas money we were promised. Twice. And nothing was ever made right for it by you or your family.

"Remember Jada, that mean cat you had that needed a temporary place to live because you couldn't keep her at your mom's anymore? Well you abandoned her with me and my boyfriend of the time. You came over to hang out once after dropping her off with us, and it was awkward and you acted irritated the whole time. You got mad at me for driving around because it wasn't what you wanted to do. You had other plans and I was interfering with them. I had asked you if you wanted to come with me to go hang out at another friend's house. You mentioned nothing about having other plans, and then got mad after not speaking up and saying anything after we had been there for about 2 hours.

"So, because it has been so many years and I've had all of these thoughts about you for so many years, I'm letting it all go. Officially, right here. I saw you not too long ago, driving your brand new Jeep with your man and your little dog. You've gained a lot of weight. There was a nice guy you dated in college who tried so hard to get you on a regular workout schedule and a healthier eating plan. You just bitched that he was being so rude. It would have done you a world of good to have listened to him. But you never listened much to anyone that was close to you.

"So anyway,  off the face of the earth you go. I don't want these thoughts consuming space in my head any more when I need that space for much better things. I'm letting you go; letting it go. And I forgive you for all of those things you did and I only hope you're actually a better person now.

"Goodbye once-friend. I sincerely hope we never meet again."