SoCS Apr 8/17

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “give/given/giving.” Begin your post with one of those words. Bonus points if you end your post with one as well. Enjoy!

Give me a break! is something I scream silently to myself quite frequently, for a variety of reasons, and for the past umpteen years. I used to land on my feet, or at least that is the story I told myself. Now my story involves landing on my ass, or my face, with a broken bone or two, and maybe at the bottom of a deep, steep well. Are these fictional or non-fictional tales? Maybe both tales are moving and it just depends upon which observer you query? Who is the writer and who is the narrator? And the reader? Are these a series of short stories, joined together by a theme (and if so, who is writing that damned theme?) or is this one, long, continuous full-length book?

This past week has been one of stresses. On already shaky ground, my finances just took another massive hit, thanks in part to me stupidly thinking that I should find out if my symptoms of a pending bursting appendix should be evaluated by a healthcare professional. My lack of access to adequate healthcare, both mental and physical, raised its ugly and frustrating head again, despite having insurance and living in an area where a behemoth healthcare corporation is the largest employer of the state. The little social support I have keeps me questioning whether it is worth the effort or causing more harm than good. And the beyotches at work were guess what? The weather won’t let up from gloomy and awful. Right now we are having snow flurries again. Politics is now a given daily stressor; there’s only so much exclaiming in disbelief one can stand.

While my life has improved from a little over a year ago, mainly because I’ve managed to stay employed, it hasn’t improved that much. Things are pretty bad, but they aren’t dire. Is that my measure of things now? Not dire = good? I’m in a depressive downward spiral, and because mental health doesn’t count as important in this country, and since I’m now in the financial cracks between indigent and rich, I get to tough it out. My countrymen decided it would be fun to elect a malignant narcissist conman to run the country and set the agenda; this healthcare situation isn’t going to improve.

Given that repeating the same thing over and over and then expecting different results is widely considered illogical, if not insane, yesterday at work, after having been surprised and disappointed again at some bitchy, shoddy, unprofessional, mean, rude behavior of a couple of my cow-orkers, I spent some time Googling “people disappointment.” I was at work and looking at the images that that search brings up (which includes a lot of really badly written faux-inspirational and even faux-er deep thoughts). I kind of hope they track my Internet use, and I wish I could see the expressions on the faces of the techs who do. I’d find that amusing. I spend way too much emotional and energetic resources on giving too much of a fuck about those people. I have found some coping mechanisms, like the Mother Teresa quote and the (voodoo) duck, but I still get tripped up by their antics. This situation repeats itself, and me expecting anything other than idiotic behavior on their part is just stupid on my part. And yet…

Maybe if I had some of that magical, unavailable mental health care I could find some equanimity and it wouldn’t bug me so much. Or maybe I could just numb myself enough with medication to no longer give a fuck. Apparently we’ll never know.

Giving myself a break would help. The word equanimity keeps revolving in the background of my thoughts. I’m trying. I’ve been reexamining things here and there—looking for other perspectives. Right this moment, what is happening? Right this moment, what do I need to do? Right this moment, right this moment, right this moment…

I’m taking a bit more care of myself physically, even if struggling mentally. The series of colds, stomach flus and other physical complaints have been making that difficult and have slowed my momentum that I had going a few months ago. I haven’t given up. I often feel like I have given up, or that I should give up, but I am somehow still here, putting one foot in front of the other. I’m not sure why. Why not just give up? I don’t have an answer to that, which is a bit disconcerting if I think about it too much, so I won’t. I’m still here; I just haven’t felt like writing about it too much, but I can’t argue with SoCS.