Meh.

I wonder how many entries I’ve written with that as a title.

Today is rainy and shitty already at 10am. Was supposed to start a new round of group therapy today at 1 but the therapist has the flu so it’s being put off for next week. I can hardly fault her for being sick but just hearing that we wouldn’t be having group today kinda derailed my entire mood. Though it wasn’t on solid ground to start with, to be honest. My license being revoked has been put off until October 5th, and I just don’t have the spoons to call the county courthouse for the county where I had my owi in 2009 and get a payment plan set up so they can send word to the license people that it’s being dealt with so I can have the driving privileges reinstated. I’ll have to see how I feel tomorrow. Because at least temporarily, even when I do set up a payment plan and it’s being dealt with, for a little while I’m still not going to have driving privileges, and it’ll cost 30 bucks to reinstate that shit. It’s just a fucking money grab, they could do that shit for free or nearly nothing and get by perfectly fine, but I didn’t come here to bitch about that all over again. I’m just annoyed, and now that my 4 day stint housesitting for my folks while they went camping is over, the license issue has resumed its role as the second biggest thing I’m currently worrying about, first being getting my stupid gallbladder taken out on October 12th. But I also didn’t come here to prematurely start having a highkey anxiety attack over it, it’s still too far away for that.

I applied for and interviewed for a simple page job at the library in the last couple weeks, and last week I got the rejection email saying I didn’t get it. The first time I applied here, they let me go through with the preemployment test and the application itself knowing they’d already offered the job to someone else (I was told that person hadn’t yet accepted so they let me go through with the stuff) and I’m just really irritated. My mom has been a librarian my entire life, so I’ve spent my entire life growing up in and using libraries, and I explained this to them. Also, I have retail experience, and when my mom hurt her wrist/hand last year I actually helped check patrons out at her library, and still I didn’t get the job.

Sorry, but if I can’t get a job I’m as qualified for as that, what hope is there for any other kind of job? You can spout meaningless platitudes about my worth as a person not being intrinsically tied to my ability to get a job, but right now I contribute a total of nothing to anything. Housing assistance pays my rent. My parents pay my bills. EBT buys my food. I’m where money goes to die, I guess. I just sit at home making shitty candles and shitty art I never finish. I don’t care that I’m in a bad mood so I’m reading all this shit as worse than it really is. How do I know that how I am now isn’t how it really is? It just gets ignored when I’m in a good mood or when it’s sunny out or whatever other meaningless bullshit is distracting me at any time.

I like grey, dark, rainy days to an extent but when I’m already in a bad mood they don’t really help any. Whatever. Now that I’ve typed all that shit out I already feel a little better about it but I’m just lowkey irritated, moreso than usual.

I came to the library to put a bunch of pictures I took in a graveyard on my thumb drive, so I can take them home and piss about with them in photoshop if I need to, then I’m going to upload them to a seldom used tumblr page I have, meant to be dedicated to old antique shit. Not all of it is going to be me traipsing about in graveyards but whatever. I was going to edit them here using some online bullshit or something but I’m really not in the mood for that anymore.

It’s thundering out but I don’t give a shit, I walked here, I’m going to walk to goodwill and see if they have any huge old candles again. I do plan on eventually trying to sell some of these very colorful candles I make on like etsy or some shit  but taking nice pictures of them all and actually posting them and everything is a series of tasks for another day, I think.

In other news, nothing really is going on, as usual. Just finished a like 102 hour DA: inquisition playthrough, started a new Origins one last night. Look I have no internet at my house, and not very many video games, and my attention span isn’t long enough to watch movies most of the time, even though I can play video games for hours (I think it’s because I have to be actively involved, movies/reading/etc seem to be too passive for me at the moment).

 

A little harder than I expected.

So, let’s see, it’s been a few months. Not a whole lot has changed. Still jobless. Sister spent a month here, at the parents’ house, for sabbatical from work, and I was at the parents’ house for most of that time, and all that was fun. Being back at my own apartment has been… pretty uneventful and boring, really. I’ve once again run out of old candles/wax/to use in the candlemaker I found for 2 bucks at at second hand shop (it’s literally exactly the same one my sister like paid 40 bucks for, years ago, and it works wonderfully. I’ve once again gotten out my collection of several old magazines, and random chunks of color cut out of magazines, and I’ve finished the collage koi fish I had sitting around partially finished for months, have to put the finishing touches on that particular piece, and then I’m going to try to sell it, I think. I’m thinking at pricing it around 35-40 bucks or so. When you consider that I spent hours upon hours going through magazines looking for bits of color, cutting out hundreds (not an exaggeration) of little circles and strips out of said magazines, and strategically gluing them onto a cardboard shape I first had to plan out and draw… I don’t feel like that’s an unrealistic price to ask. I think the lowest I’d be willing to go is probably 30 bucks, because that’s a lot of work. And don’t get me wrong, I enjoy doing it, but artists deserve to be paid a decent amount for putting in work. It’s like that at any other job. I wouldn’t spend hours and hours working on a like, report, I don’t know, in an office job, and then presenting said project and getting told it didn’t look like 50 bucks worth of work or whatever. A lot of time people just look at the product and want to pay for just that, but not the time and resources it took to produce it.

But I’m not in the mood to get into a diatribe on that, because then it’ll remind me of something else that pisses me off, and pretty soon I’ll be bitching about the president or some shit.

In reference to the title of this, it turns out that trying to get online transcription jobs is a lot harder than one would expect. At least in my experience, you expect it to be like “OH, GET PAID TO TYPE OUT AUDIO SHIT ONLINE, EASY PEASY. It’s actually difficult difficult lemon difficult, for future reference. I tried one website, failed their test, and have to wait 45 days to try again (and I failed on the 24th of July so I’m only about halfway through that wait period. Then I tried a different website, and that one actually pissed me off. It gives you two tries for one particular test. And it was this banal clip about  some richass white dude talking about starting a business that I listened to a million times on like 50 percent audio speed. Failed the first time. The next time, I made damn sure I was accurate, spell checked the thing, was very careful about formatting and everything, and it still said I failed with only 33 percent. It took me over an hour to transcribe a fucking 6 minute clip, and it said I failed with 33 percent. I still don’t think that was accurate, but that website was way worse than the first one. They had ridiculous formatting you had to follow, like time stamping each speaker every time they started speaking, and that takes ages, and they had super strict rules as to putting in false starts, etc, and I made sure I went over the guidelines and everything and truth be told I’m still a bit pissed off about that one. But I think it’s because I had pretty much staked all my financial hopes on getting an easy transcription job and then BOOM, having money. I was trying out some positivity crap, telling myself I was for sure going to pass, but the only thing that was positive was the fact that I that was positively pissed off that I failed. I was like UGH, WHAT THE FUCK WAS ALL THAT POSITIVITY SHIT EVEN FOR I DIDN’T EVEN PASS. I was venting to my sister about it and she was all ‘You know, positivity doesn’t guarantee results’ which sounds like a really obvious thing but it was like OH. I guess you’re right.

I’ve been going to group therapy about dealing with emotional intensity (once a week), and this is my second time through the course (which I think ends next week) and I think it’s finally starting to knock something into this stupid brain, I’m finally starting to think about these things. And I mean, I was in a great mood yesterday, and I’m in a decent mood today so take that for what it is. Still I think my financial and employment situation causes me the most stress and the most emotional self flagellation over it. And even in the instances where I think I don’t deserve better stuff, don’t deserve good stuff, deserve to be emotionally beat up about it, it took this long to really start thinking… “Even if you think you deserve to be punished, what’s this shit really accomplishing? Who is really benefiting from this?” Because it’s hard to get to that point where you realize that emotionally beating myself up over something makes it that much harder to accomplish the thing I was trying to get at, which just snowballs out of control and you end up having the exact opposite effect that you were shooting for. It’s weird, y’all. And the tense in that sentence was all over the damn place. Oops.

Before I went off on a tangent about jobs, when I was still on about the collage crap, I’m working on a collage of a planet, it’s gonna be all spacey and shit because I finally got over rage quitting the first mass effect game and actually finished it, and holy shit y’all, the feels are all over the place. I’m currently on my fourth playthrough of the second mass effect, but it’s the first one where I’ve been able to import my Shepard from the first game and like I miss my stupid space boyfriend with the raspy voice and the good eyebrows and I refuse to put his actual name here because I don’t want this shit showing up when I google his stupid ass. Speaking of which, the game really should just be called ass effect because every elevator ride, the camera mysteriously switches round to view his ass.

It’s pretty funny because I literally just finished my 3rd playthrough of ME2 like….last week, so I’m almost getting to dragon age/skyrim levels of knowing where everything is, but my stupid ass still gets lost on Omega, and I’m sure my upstairs neighbor is really tired of me literally yelling “DAMMIT SHEPARD GET DOWN”, especially when I brainfart and revert to the controls of the other game, like mashing the stupid left stick and then going OH SHIT this is the second one, duh, hit A. Okay brain, thanks.  So, that’s why I’m doing an artsy fartsy collage that’s all SPACE-y.

Anyhoo I’m bored.

Restless

Bored af and restless so here we are.

Had a shit few mood days, and just started hell week (they only call it pms because mad cow disease was already taken tbh) so I obviously knew it was coming, but it still blows. Ever irritated about the job situation. It makes me feel like I’m not doing anything if I’m not putting in several apps a day, but it doesn’t help if they’re jobs I don’t feel that I’m qualified for or that I don’t think I could do, so that when they call and leave a message on my phone about setting up an interview, I panic and delete the message. And then feel even worse, because I’m sure I can imagine how pissed off my dad would be if he knew that sort of thing.

I’m both looking forward to and dreading this holiday weekend that I’ll be spending at my parents’ house. It’s been ages since we’ve had an uncomfortable discussion about the job situation, but I feel like being in the same room with dad, he’s brewing that shit just under the surface and it’ll only take one little moment of him being irritated for that shit to explode and make me super fucking uncomfortable.

I find myself once again wondering what the actual fuck the problem was at the stupid pizza place job I had (they still haven’t done me the dignity of firing me outright, they just quietly leave me off the schedule). It was so important to me that I do well. I asked (to the point of nausea I’m sure) if I was doing everything okay, asking what I needed to improve… I mean, I flat out told the boss that I had anxiety, not expecting to have any major episodes at work, but I figured it’s the sort of thing they should know up front. And honestly my first couple weeks there I was anxious af but I thought I got into a groove after a while. I mean, was it the fact that I expressed nervousness at being the only cook when it was super busy (which she literally never scheduled me to be the only cook, ever)? Was it the fact that I didn’t want to be the fucking shift leader, which she asked me about and I was like uhhhhh probably not [or I would have fucking applied under shift leader and not cook, just thinking about that shit gives me anxiety]. I just wish I knew what it was that made her quit putting me on the schedule, but at this point it’s been so long I don’t have the proverbial balls to call and ask, or god forbid actually stop in and talk to the boss.

I mean, around Christmas when she called and said I had to work, then called back like 15 minutes later and said she messed up the schedule and that I didn’t have to work, I can’t remember exactly what I said but I relayed to her politely, in not so many words that it was BS that I wasn’t on the schedule this long and she needed to start putting me on more or look for a different cook. Emphasis on the politely thing, I hated working at the call center but the one good thing that came out of it was I sorta learned phone manners.

I’ve talked about that shit here before so I won’t go into detail, but it’s like, this shit can only happen so many times and go on so long before you really believe there is something wrong with you; why else would all these jobs not work out or would you constantly not even get interviews for jobs you actually are qualified for? Or god forbid you get an interview and think it went well, and then POOF, NO CALLBACKS. Not even when they tell you they’ll let you know either way. Just don’t fuckin say anything if you aren’t actually going to contact the people who didn’t get the job. I’m still pissed off I didn’t get that stupid job at the tee shirt screen printing place, because that was pretty much my only fucking chance to get a job that I actually might have to apply my artistic eye in.

Whatever. I’m irritated but I’m also not in the mood to write a damn dissertation about it. Any more than I’ve already done, anyway.

I’m just so fucking bored. When you’re broke and depressed/anxious there’s nothing to fucking do. I mean, right now I’m just not in the mood to sweat my ass off outside, irritated about all the other people who are also outside to enjoy the finally actually summery weather. And I miss like hell having internet at my own house. And while walking to the library is pretty much the only motivation I have to actually leave my apartment, when I’m actually here, I don’t want to sit on my phone on tumblr for 2 hours like I’d do at home, I just want to get out of public and go the fuck back home. Then I get home and go “fuck I wish I had internet” and then turn on data for 5 minutes and wonder how much I just cost my parents in data.

Also honestly, I think in some ways I’ve declined not having internet at home. The internet literally was the only way I socialized with people, and we can fucking debate how healthy that shit is until the cows come home, but it was something. Now I barely have any socialization at all. The only people I know around here are people I worked with, and all of them are married and have families and children and full time jobs, so yeah, we’re still friends but it’s not like I can call them up randomly and be all HEY LET’S HANG OUT because they have shit to do. And there really aren’t many other opportunities to meet people around here that don’t cost money. I don’t want to go to bars because I’m not going to pay fucking 3.50+ for a pint of domestic beer when for twice that I could get an entire 6 pack of like 18oz cans. Plus, I have no interest in being hit on by old men, and if there are country music loving hicks there, no fucking thank you. I mean, we have a bowling alley, but I’m not about to fucking go bowling by myself. I go to movies by myself. I even went to a restaurant by myself once during a summer that was really fucking super hot, and I lived in a place with no AC. Whatever. I’m annoyed and I’m going home to put on my gross shorts and eat leftover pizza and then some fucking frozen yogurt because I’m a grownup dammit

Eh, whatever.

It’s finally starting to be really nice weather. I mean, I say that as showers/a thunderstorm/whatever are predicted for this afternoon. LOL. It’s nice to finally be able to hang out outdoors, but the normal little park I like to go to to draw and whatever, the picnic table they usually put out isn’t there yet, and there’s zero shade and I know all of that sounds like first world problems but I’d prefer not to sit in the blazing sun for several hours. I mean, there’s places I could drive, but part of the point of trying to be outside more is like, trying to walk more. And I’m still poor so I’d prefer not to waste gas if I don’t have to.

I’m a little frustrated about the job situation. LOL this is news, right? Whatever. I just mean, I touched on it briefly in therapy yesterday, but the essence of the problem is, I use a popular job searching website to look for jobs. Considering that I essentially live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, there’s usually little available within a 15-20 mile radius (20 miles= a 30 min. drive) of me. At one point, right before I moved here, I was commuting 45 minutes one way to get to a part time retail job that paid minimum wage. At one point last summer, I was job searching in a big city (to me, I live in rural Iowa, all right) that is a 45+ minute drive (depending on interstate traffic) just to get into the city, and then fuckall whatever to get wherever you’re actually going, and I went to several interviews, intending to move there if I got hired somewhere, but none of that actually panned out. And I eventually stopped trying to get interviews so far out because I didn’t want to waste the gas.

That’s sort of the same boat I’m in now. I don’t search more than 20-30 minutes out because that’s a lot of fucking gas to waste on going to an interview for a job I more than likely will not get.

It’s just like, with every rejection email I get, or ever application I put in that doesn’t get answered, it just solidifies this belief I have about myself that I’m unemployable. I mean, I spent 3 years at a k fart store as a cashier, I cleaned hotel rooms for several months total, I’ve spent several years total as a dishwasher at a bar/restaurant… the only legal thing on my record is one, single uneventful DUI that was literally 9 years ago (I mean uneventful as in I wasn’t speeding like a madwoman, I didn’t crash into anything or anybody, etc), but that’s why I don’t apply for jobs that require a clean driving record, so I don’t see how that would be an issue.

The point I was trying to make about therapy yesterday was that there are so few jobs listed around me. Of those, there are even fewer I would actually be able to do. Just saying that makes me feel uncomfortable, because there was a time when I was a bit younger, still living at home, that I would just flat out not bother applying for jobs at all because I either didn’t have my license back yet, or I knew I couldn’t do them.

I used to get asked by my folks if it was “you can’t, or you won’t”, and now it seems I’m unable to distinguish the difference. I have pretty severe anxiety, and almost as severe depression, there are things I straight up cannot handle. My short term memory sucks (it sucked before, and long periods of severe anxiety/disordered sleep can make it worse), and I have so much buzzing around in my head all the time, places like fast food are out of the question. I can’t remember a million slightly different food combinations and have to crank the whole thing out in less than 5-10 minutes.

Plus, when I was a hotel housekeeper back in 2007, I basically got back strain, and I simply cannot be on my feet for hours and hours at a time without the chance to sit down. You can say it’s because I’m fat, and true, it’d be a little easier if I lost some weight, but I’d still fucking have back strain and a shitty knee if I lost 100 pounds (and I’m pretty sure I have a pinched nerve in my left shoulder somewhere that rarely acts up but when it does it literally hurts so bad it keeps me from sleeping). I can’t bend over at an awkward angle over a low counter for hours at a time without being able to sit down because of said back injury. It also affects my ability to lift shitloads of weight continuously. I mean, an occasional large load to lift, sure, whatever, but I can’t keep it up. So that pretty much also nixes factory work. Not to mention the severe anxiety episodes I have when surrounded by warehouses full of loudass, dangerous running equipment.

My therapist mentioned performance anxiety, which would be pretty damn accurate. But I went off on a tangent again. Let’s try this again.

The point I was trying to make about therapy yesterday was that there are so few jobs listed around me. Of those, there are even fewer I would actually be able to do. So I feel pressured to apply to jobs I qualify for but don’t want and would not really be able to do well. And then I’ll get left answering machine messages for interviews, and I’ll panic and delete the message without contacting them, because holy shit I didn’t want that job anyway because I can’t do it, what if they hire me….

And I feel shitty because I still hear what my folks would tell me when I was a shitty younger person and wouldn’t bother trying to apply. Therapist said we should address that next time (because this was towards the end of the session). I feel so guilty every time this happens (granted, it’s not many times, but I’ve done it more than once). It doesn’t address the fact that I feel insanely guilty if I haven’t done something useful or productive, and putting in apps makes me feel productive, even if it’s a job that wouldn’t be a good fit. Even as I type that I can hear my dad in my head bitching about how I really need ‘a god damn job’ (for years, dad would say it exactly like that. It was never just ‘you need a job’ it was “you really need to find a god damn job” or whatever.) and that I really can’t afford to be picky.

In a way, he’s right. I can’t afford to pick and choose the ideal job I want. But I also know that I’m not normal (inb4 LOL WERE U EVER), and being neurodivergent means there are some things I simply cannot do like ‘normal’ people can. True, sometimes I assume I can’t do things and then, TA DA, I CAN, but I’m not talking about those times. There are some things I will likely never do as well as others.

IDK. I’m trying to have a good day and not waste the good weather (like I feel like I’ve done so many other summers), but this is just sort of an undercurrent eating away at any good moods I have, and keeping me from doing a lot of things.

Anyway. I’m going to go maybe read outside or some shit, idk

Time to kill

As in, I have some time to kill ie nothing in particular to do right now, cool your jets nsa.

Since I last wrote, Dad did take me to get my updated driver’s license, so I don’t have to worry about preparing a sob story about the expired license. LOL. I’m actually almost more anxious driving now, oddly enough, but whatever. The interview, eh, it probably went fine, but no matter how they actually go I always think they’ve gone horribly, so I’m not really a good source for an accurate opinion of how it actually went. Afterwards I went to the dollar tree there to pick up a few things, then came back home and went for a walk. Nothing that exceptional, honestly, except I literally forced myself to go for a walk last night after I got home. Well, a while after I got home. I meant to stress eat an entire can of barbecue pringles LOL.

Today, my dad was in town (his dentist is here) and stopped by briefly. I was still home because I meant to go on a walk, but this morning it was still a little too chilly outside. Plus, I wanted to bring my digital camera, but the battery was almost dead. So I decided to postpone the walk so the camera could charge. Then I remembered I had 3 really super ripe bananas, so I made banana bread. I’m at the library to put in a couple job apps then I’m honestly not sure what I’m gonna do. It’s a little chillier than yesterday, plus, except for the grass, everything is pretty much still brown and dead. There isn’t a whole lot to do in this town if you’re not looking to spend money. I’ll probably stop in at the goodwill in town for the hell of it, but other than that, I’m not sure. I feel almost a little guilty for not really having anything to do when so many other people are super busy right now, but there’s not a whole goddamn lot I can really do about it at this point so whatever.

Tense af

So yesterday I got a call from a hotel I applied online at, for a night auditor position, and I have an interview on Tuesday at like 1:30, and only because I said I wouldn’t be available until early next week. My van has very little gas in it, likely barely enough to get me back home to my parents’ house this weekend (they’re like a 40 minute drive away, not terrible), so I’ll have to ask them for gas money, because the hotel is a 15 minute drive away from where I live, and I likely wouldn’t have enough gas to get to the interview and back, and then back to my parents’ house.

The reason I didn’t ask them for money weekend before last, when I was last there, was because mom made some passing comment about it would be a tremendous weight lifted (or whatever wording she used, I can’t recall) if they didn’t have to pay for some of my stuff. She didn’t even say it in an accusatory way or anything, but seeing as dad had just paid a 300+ dollar energy bill for me, I didn’t have the balls to ask for extra money.

I have two checks worth about 60 bucks that I’m sitting on because I have no open bank account, and my old bank won’t cash checks they didn’t issue if you don’t have an active account, and the places in the area require a current driver’s license/ID to get checks cashed. And my ID has been expired since November, so I’m lowkey mentally preparing a script for in case I get pulled over every single time I take my van somewhere. It costs 32 freaking dollars to get my current ID, which is stupid. How does it cost them 32 dollars to print my photo and a few tidbits of info on a stupid plastic rectangle? Whatever.

My cat’s out of dry food, and so far she’s been getting spoiled with canned chicken because my ebt card can buy cans of chicken, and even with scrounging for change in my entire house, and my van, I will probably barely have enough to buy a 1 dollar bag of food for my cat, and that won’t even last a week. So once again, I’ll be asking my parents to loan me gas money, and I’ll spend part of it on some fuckin cat food.

Back to the job thing for a minute, I literally didn’t even get to have a rush of “FUCK YES I HAVE AN INTERVIEW”, it literally went straight to “oh fuck, a night auditor? I don’t want to work at night, I can barely function during the day, and my sleeping patterns are already fucked up beyond all recognition”, never mind the fact that back in community college, I took the 2nd to lowest level math class they offered, and I still only passed with a D. I can’t do more than simple addition in my head, I can barely read face clocks, I’m literally terrible with numbers. This is the problem with putting in as many apps as I can, even to the places that ‘won’t call for an interview’ or positions that wouldn’t be a good fit. The problem is that I’m already coming up with all these reasons why it won’t work, so when I inevitably (in my mind) don’t get the job, I’ll actually be lowkey relieved. Being bad with numbers is a legitimate reason, everything else has been thoroughly shat out by my negative automatic filters. So in addition to the fuckload of guilt I schlep around literally every single minute of my waking life, I’m berating myself for not being able to think myself out of this.

It’s been my thinking that, if I’m aware of something, I should be able to fix it automatically/with little effort, or I’M A FAILURE. I think stating any legitimate obstacles or difficulties is just me being a lazy ass and trying to justify being a lazy ass because I ‘just don’t want to do it’. Because admittedly, in the past, I have done those sorts of things. Coming up with a list of places I supposedly applied to, just to shut my parents up, because I wasn’t going to get the jobs anyway, why waste the effort? Etc.

No amount of anyone else telling me otherwise, that I’m not a failure because of same, I think they’re just telling me what I want to hear, just saying it because they don’t want to deal with the huge episode I’ll have. So, every reason why something can’t happen/why it is difficult, legitimate or not, is an “excuse” in my mind, and with this kind of thinking I’m literally going to feel this shitty forever, and I’ll never get on top of anything.

In the past, when I was far shittier than I am now, my parents would ask if I “can’t” work at a place or “won’t.” Some of them were, won’t, to my parents’ credit, but many of the reasons I had were legitimate (or I was being genuine about thinking they were legitimate). So somewhere along the line, my thinking got distorted into “All the reasons you have for doing/not doing things? Excuses, really you SHOULD whatever”.

I’m reading a book by Brene Brown, and it’s kind of eye opening. I had heard my mother (who’s a librarian and very avid reader) mention that name, but to be honest, I didn’t really think much of it until one of my favorite voice actors name dropped Brene in a poem in his poetry book that was just somewhat recently released, and that my sister ordered for me as a surprise. And I even feel bad about that, because my mom has complained before that she can tell dad he should do something for years and he doesn’t take any stock in the advice until it comes from doctor, even if the doctor says the same damn thing that she’s been saying.

If you made a huge flow chart (think really huge, stretching into space tbh) of all the problems I have, all the mental health bullshit, almost all of it boils down to one derivative: guilt/shame. I have a unique ability to feel guilty about almost everything, even to the point where, I’ll feel guilty just if someone thinks I did something, even if I didn’t do the thing. It’s fuckin wild, I feel guilty about shit I couldn’t have even possibly had an effect on, and as I said before, being aware of something and being able to change it POOF LIKE THAT seem to be one in the same in my weird ass distorted brain. Recently my mom has had to put her dad in a nursing home (currently temporary but it’s likely he won’t be able to go back home) , and I once rapidfire texted my sister back and forth that if I hadn’t been such a fuckup and cost my parents so much wasted money over the years, they wouldn’t be worrying so much about being able to afford putting grandpa in the nursing home. Even typing that sentence just now almost made me watery eyed. It comes up in therapy constantly about how I wasted so much of my parents’ money over the years, and right now I rely on them to pay my bills, and that isn’t fair, I should be far past the point where I can support myself, and I get stuck in this terrible revolving door of Guilt for my Past Mistakes and then the Guilt is so overpowering it literally hinders any Progress I Should Be making. My anxiety always adversely affected me in some ways, but it’s now gotten to the point where it actively interferes with and impedes my ability to live my fucking life, and I can even feel guilt about THAT.

It also comes up in therapy constantly that so many others have so much more to deal with than I do, and they’re getting through okay. I hear my mother’s voice, or my friends’ voices that damn they wish they had that little to worry about or they wish they had so many hours of sleep as I get, or they wish they had as much free time as I do. Meanwhile I’m here with all the sleep, all the free time, and I’m still barely able to function? It makes me feel like a spoiled little shit who’s been given everything in life and is still failing, and then I get sucked into the “what’s the point, why are you even here, if you weren’t such a fucking wuss you would just go play in traffic on the interstate and get it over with” whirlpool, which often takes an hour of crying uncontrollably and a 2 hour anxiety/stress nap to emerge from.

Anyway, speaking of mental health, I have therapy in like half an hour.

Still the same.

Not the song by Bob Seger  (tho I do love that song). Not much has changed, honestly. I did finally submit my application for disability fully, which is a pain in the ass, with multiple mailings, answering a ton of questions on the phone,  etc. And I still can’t bring myself to be hopeful about it. What’s probably going to happen is in 2-3 monthsn however long that shit takes, I’ll get a polite rejection letter and be back at square one, only with no job because I once again haven’t been as steady and vigorous at the job searching as I should be. I keep looking but there aren’t shit for jobs, and half the listings that are there are out of the question either for physical reasons or anxiety.

My driver’s license expired in November and I still haven’t been able to get it updated bc it costs 32 fucking dollars. If I have to have it by law (to drive, and for identification) it should fucking be free.

My dad paid my last two electric bills, which with late charges were each little over 300 dollars. I’m sitting on almost 60 bucks in checks that I can’t cash bc I don’t have a bank account and any stores that cash checks require a current ID.

Last time I was at my parents house I was going to ask to borrow the 32 dollars for my license but after my mom made a comment like ‘if we didn’t have to pay for some of your stuff it would help us tremendously’ or whatever wording she used, and then I didn’t have the balls to ask. I’ve also been without wifi for like, 2 months? Ish? And that sounds very 1st world of me but I depend on the internet as basically my only source of socialization with others, and I’ve felt pretty isolated essentially without it. I’m on my parents data currently, and even tho I severely limit my use of it I still manage to use more data than my parents plan covers, so I’m likely costing them a fortune in data. One of my main escapes other than video games was stand up comedy, but I can hardly watch any online without using an astronomical amount of data.

One good thing is, I got approved for food stamps through August, so pretty much the only thing I can afford is food.  I will never not appreciate having real food again. I was down to eating oatmeal basically every meal and almost about to bust into the almost expired cans of green beans I keep at the back of the pantry specifically for situations like that.

I’m trying, I really am, but it’s not good enough because there aren’t any results. I just wonder how much more of this I can handle before I literally lose my shit. It’s like I told my therapist; I have no plans to throw myself into traffic, but I also don’t see a point to life either.

Ugh.

I’d like to say that things have changed since I last updated this blog in what, November? But same shit different day, honestly.

I haven’t been scheduled at “work” for over 2 months now (I quit counting weeks after 2 months, honestly) and I haven’t been fired or anything that I know of, and I’m pretty sure that’s the sort of thing they tend to make pretty final. I still don’t have the balls to go in and turn in my hat and apron and bitch the manager out for never scheduling me. Is this payback for me saying I didn’t want to be the shift manager, way back when I first started? I don’t know, but it’s like, with job after job after job not working out, and with a plethora of rejection emails after interviews (or even without them, as I just got this morning from one of them), there has to be something wrong with me.

I just don’t see any other explanation for this. I mean, look at my past several jobs. Had to quit the call center in mid 2016 because I was literally having the worst anxiety I’d ever had in my entire life (crying before work, crying throughout the day at work, crying when I got home because I was already worrying about the next day at work), not to mention my stats being horrible due to said anxiety. Then the dishwashing at the nursing home didn’t work out. I missed a few days because I got sick, and they fired me because it was within my first 90 days. Like I fucking planned to get sick and need bloodwork and an ultrasound on my goddamn liver and gallbladder. They turned out to be small gallstones, by the way, but they’re not causing problems and aren’t blocking anything.

Then I literally went until, what, May of 2017 before I got the stupid pizza place job (think the place with the red roof with the cheese in the bread part of the pizza tbh), and at first, I was getting decent hours, but that was only because one of their cooks was on vacation. It was so important to me to do well at that job. I constantly asked if I was doing everything all right, if there was anything I could do differently or improve on. For a while, every shift I was even bringing home baked treats to work because 1, I like being nice, and 2, I lowkey thought people would like me if they grew to associate me with brownies or whatever. And apparently that didn’t make a difference. I slowly got scheduled less and less, and it wasn’t for the position I was originally hired for (cook). They would schedule me to come in, wash dishes for 2-3 hours, and then I’d go home, and that’d be all I’d get for two fucking weeks. At this point, I don’t remember specifics about how to make any of the goddamn pizzas, how much sauce or cheese each size gets, toppings, etc, so at this point she couldn’t even schedule me to be the only cook. I can probably count on one hand how many pizzas I’ve actually made totally myself (sauce, cheese, and toppings), and I’ve worked there since fucking May. Last year, I barely made 300 dollars there. I’m only going to bother filing taxes at all so I can maybe get 20 bucks back. The last two years, my tax return was 1000 or more, from the call center.

I’m going to be applying for disability, even though quite frankly I don’t think I’ll get it. My anxiety and depression have obviously gotten so bad that a normal job just isn’t possible anymore, especially when you look at the impact they’ve had on my last several jobs (I remember at the nursing home, I’d literally be crying openly, repeating “They’re gonna fire me they’re gonna fire me” over and over like a literal crazy person. The reason I didn’t get a job at this industrial laundry place is… kind of a long story.

First, I got there and I didn’t know where my birth certificate was, and they said if it was three days from then and I still didn’t have it, they’d have to terminate my job. The lady printed off some info for me and told me it was like 20 bucks to get an official copy of my birth certificate. Then we continued with orientation, or we were going to. I was getting a tour of the floor when I had literally the worst panic attack I can remember, I was pretty much openly sobbing. When they gave me a work shirt and pants to put on, I got in the one stall bathroom, locked the door, and sat on the floor crying for what felt like half an hour but might have been less, I don’t know. I was still weeping when I got out, and I said I’d really like to stay for orientation but at that point I was too upset. They sent me home but I do recall being told “we expect people to be able to work their full shift”, or whatever, I’m paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it.

So back to the birth certificate issue. I got a 25 dollar prepaid card to try to buy it online, and then I find out it’s not 20 dollars over the phone, it’s 30, and I would need to send them in the actual, snail mail, a photocopy of my driver’s license. So I then bought a what, 35 dollar prepaid card, and tried literally six times in a row to buy the damn thing online, and it would not take my prepaid card. So then I decide to just suck it up and drive the almost 2 hours to the state capitol to get it in person, and the car I was driving fucking died an 1+ into the trip, in the middle of nowhere on the interstate, and I ended up having to call my dad’s aunt (barely older than he is, they’re more like cousins) who lived in the area to come get me. I stayed with her for almost a week, during which I finally did get the coveted copy of my birth certificate. So when I got home, I called up the laundry place and told them that I had gotten my birth certificate, and they told me they gave the position to someone else. And all of that happened because I had a fucking anxiety attack during orientation.

And it’s like, I also had a lot of anxiety when starting the pizza place job. I also warned the boss that yeah, I had anxiety, because I’m like, better to tell her starting out than to not tell her and have some huge panic attack at work, you know. I expressed nervousness at being the only cook when it was really busy but I never said I wouldn’t do it, and like I said earlier, it was very important to me to do well at that job.

It just feels like more and more, it literally doesn’t matter what I do, that everything is going to turn out to be shit anyway, so it’s a piss poor motivator to actually do anything. Which is a super shitty attitude to have.

But it’s like, and the guy who prescribes meds (I like skype with him once every three months, at the mental health place because he lives in like Georgia or some shit) even said, “when you don’t have a job you have anxiety about money and when you have a job you have anxiety about getting fired”. And it’s like, for so long it’s always been like “Well once you get a job you can relax”, and then literally as soon as I hear I’ve been hired, my brain goes straight to “THEY’LL PROBABLY FIRE YOU ONCE THEY FIND OUT HOW BAD A WORKER YOU ARE”, and more and more I’m finding out that I’m literally going to have anxiety no matter what my circumstances are. No job? Stress about money, and the family that have been paying your bills for the last 6+ months. Job? Stress about getting fired and then going back to not having money and costing people money. And it’s so exhausting. And I still kind of blame myself for all this. It comes up constantly in therapy where I’m like “What if I’m secretly faking it, what if it’s really not this bad and I’m lying to everyone and I really don’t deserve all this special bullshit” etc.

I mean, for so long, I’ve blamed everything on myself. And yeah, I’ve done shitty things in the past, not all my failures are out of my control. Some of them are my fault, but every time something doesn’t work out, I immediately blame myself, and I’ve literally been doing this to some degree since childhood. When I’d misbehave and get grounded, I didn’t think on my actions, I just figured I was a bad kid, and I grew to resent my parents. Negative reinforcement didn’t work.

I’m still having trouble getting myself to believe that my anxiety/depression are this severe, but at this point they literally prevent me from living my life. I’ll go days without showering, or leaving the house, the dishes pile up, I’m wearing filthy clothes because I haven’t done the laundry in two weeks, that sort of thing. And at this point, they either prevent outright or make it almost impossible to concentrate on working when I have a job, because I’m so busy thinking about how I’m not doing well enough quick enough and that they’re going to fire me. And that’s why it’s like, at the same time that I don’t feel like I’m crazy enough to get disability, more and more I’m finding out that I just cannot function normally, in normal society.

But it doesn’t feel fair, there are so many other people that are doing okay, and they’ve had to wade through way more bullshit than I have, but at this point, I feel like I’m hurting the economy more by not having income than I would be if I received a disability payment each month. I have to assume that I wouldn’t get section 8 anymore, or I’d owe a larger portion of my apartment’s rent. I likely wouldn’t need food stamps anymore because the disability would cover my food costs. I’d also likely be able to use it to cover my own bills, and to start paying back my parents for the assload of money I owe them, as well as building up a savings account again.

But it’s like… I’ve always been taught that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. So I just don’t see how disability is anything but wishful thinking. I feel as if I’ll be in these circumstances forever, and it’s honestly only because I’m so afraid of everything (including pain, and consequences) that I haven’t thought of killing myself, but that’s really not something you can discuss with people without scaring the shit out of them.

All of this, and then you add what’s been happening in the news, and politics, and my anxiety is literally the highest it’s ever been, and I really can’t live my life like this.

 

Ngl, faith in the world pretty non existent…

I’m not gonna lie, I’ve had a pretty shitty couple weeks. For one, my work at the pizza place is still only giving me shit for hours. Barely a 3 hour shift a week, and I just haven’t had the fucking energy to do anything about it. I’ve tried talking to the boss briefly but that did fuckall.

I’ve thought of sending an email to corporate, but I haven’t had the energy/spoons for that either. Besides, I’m not even sure what I would even say. “Hey I got hired as part time but I’m not even working 10 hours a MONTH, let alone a week”? What would they even do? Probably fuckall. I’ll still probably send them an email but I don’t expect anything to be done about it. I haven’t heard back about either of the interviews I’ve had in the past two weeks, and once place that failed to call me back about scheduling an interview about a month ago has a listing for I’m pretty sure the exact job I applied for. My application should still be on file.

I couldn’t afford to get my parents an anniversary present, I couldn’t afford to get dad a birthday present… In fact the money he told me to keep for gas, I literally didn’t spend any of it on gas because I needed toiletries, cat litter, cat food, etc. I have a few more days before my ebt card reloads and I’m down to one box of mac and cheese, one ramen package, a package of pasta, one can of pasta sauce, oatmeal, and hot cereal. I technically have a partial bag of frozen veg in the freezer, too. So it’s not as if I have no food in the house, but I’ll be fucked if I have even have the energy to stand in the kitchen for ten minutes to cook anything.

Case in point. All I ate yesterday was some chocolate cake I made (I had to use watered down coffee creamer because I’m fuckin out of milk) and a ramen packet with one egg in it (the last one, so now I’m out of those too) and coffee. Which probably has something to do with the no energy thing, but even if I had energy, fuckall if I have any motivation.

Also, my back has hurt like a bitch for going on a couple days now. Way back in 2007 I had back strain in regards to my lower back, and while it usually doesn’t bother me much, for the past couple days it’s hurt so bad I had to lean on the counter to do dishes yesterday. I managed to walk a couple blocks to the library, where I’m at right now, but it sure makes getting shit done impossible.

I can’t go into detail about the recent events in the news because I don’t really keep up on it, but what is with all the fucking shootings? The Las Vegas bullshit, the New York dude-blew-up-a-rental-truck shit, and I guess there was a church shooting in Texas or something? Plus president shit for brains either says something stupid or rolls out plans for some new policy designed to fuck over women, people of color, or poor people. Which is why I pretty much isolate myself from the news. If it wasn’t obvious, I’m really not in a good mental place right now and the last fucking thing I need is to hear some heartbreaking news story and feel bad because honestly, I fall more towards the poor end of the “being rich enough to donate/being poor enough to need donations” scale.

My escape has been video games, reading fanfic, or more sporadically, drawing, but it’s hard as fuck to try to improve at drawing faces when you can barely find the motivation to bathe (on that note, dry shampoo was the best like several bucks I ever spent, back when I could actually afford that shit).

Idk. I don’t want to drone on and on about this shit because I’d like to at least enjoy part of the rest of my day, but I also know it’s been a million years since I wrote anything here, and I honestly couldn’t think of another reason to come to the library, so here we are.

I managed to find like, what, a buck and a quarter, so I’m going to foolishly spend it on some fucking soda because it’s not like I can afford actual food with that

Whatever.

Not gonna lie, I’ve had a pretty shitty couple of weeks.

Let’s see. Starting the week before last.
First, I have a huge anxiety attack on what is supposed to be my first day at a new job and they send me home after only an hr and a half. Told me that I absolutely needed my birth certificate b4 I started rly bc if I’d worked there 3 days and still didn’t have it they’d have had to fire me.

So then I buy 2 different prepaid credit cards to try to buy it over the phone or online and one is four bucks short of having the right amount (bc as it turns out the lady at supposed new job told me wrong price) and the other gets declined 5x despite having enough money on it.

So then I decide to make a 2 and a 1/2 hour drive 1way to just order/pick it up in person, and 1 & a half hrs into the drive the car stalls and will not start again, complete with smoke or steam pouring out from under the hood.

So I have to make phone calls about it and end up having my dad’s aunt have to drive to the middle of the country looking for me on the interstate.

So, with some more phone calls and shit the plan is for me to stay at dad’s aunts house (shes cool but I already felt bad about the car and shit). So I end up only having like 3 shirts with me and no extra undies or pants,  and I end up without my meds.

The one med I had already been without for a day bc I forgot to pick up my refill so on Sunday of  hell week, I’ve been without my one med for 5 days, and I’ve been without my other med for 4 days, and I could definitely feel it with all the subtlety of being hit by a freight train.
Then, 2 days into unplanned stay at dads aunts, I get my fuckin period.

So that’s just the week before last. Last week on Monday I called the place to let them know I had my birth certificate and they told me they already filled the position.

Now? I have a 90 dollar electric bill coming due soon because I didn’t pay it last month, and I have an internet bill due, and I’ve only paid half of my portion of the rent this month (section 8 pays most) and my current job didn’t schedule me at all this week,  but I see several positions at the restaurant  (including the job I was hired as) on the job search website I use.

Nevermind current events. A hurricane, another hurricane, the western US is on fire, preisdent shit for brains and the program for Dreamers, an earthquake in Mexico….fuck’s sake, I’m honestly losing my will to live,  here. What’s the fucking point? I thought I was a good person but shit keeps happening and I just don’t see the point if it’s all gonna be shit. I’m always gonna be poor and struggling, working shit jobs, self isolating because I feel disgusting and too weird to be with anyone, like it wouldn’t be fair to expect someone else to deal with my insane bullshit, dating or otherwise. I’ll probably never date anyone else my entire life like the disgusting piece of boring shit I am. Why doesn’t anything ever get better?