Hey, Miss J!

Strangely enough this blog post is written right after the previous one. I’ve been riding the edge of updating on time at all lately, so this is a pre-write in case I can’t manage anything later today.

Time: 12:01AM.

I’m drinking my water, like I’m supposed to, but I need to sit down and get myself to relax. I am over feeling exhausted. I am tired of being tired.

I lost my temper on Friday and told my friend that I was too tired and too frustrated and strained already into 2023 that I was not in the mood to subscribe to any ‘madness’ at all. I completely dismissed any concerns she had about what turned out to be a very sensitive topic. I refused to speak at all.

Then, the next day I felt like a complete jerk and gave her the biggest hug when I saw her.

Of course, we’re back to hanging out and cracking jokes again.  

But I still have so much that I need to give my undivided attention to. Except… I can’t quite avoid dividing my focus at all!

That inability is a familial trait. I can sing over one part of a song, then switch right over to a different song and move on to another task at the same time.

I have another frightening day of trying my hand at adulting. I’m hissing just thinking about it. I am so frustrated that I want to spit.

Adults take the stresses when they come and seem to flip back to their feet with most of their sanity intact.

…Or at least that’s how I’ve always seen them portrayed. Maybe it was all a figment of my imagination. I’ve been an adult for years now and still don’t like when I have to be all serious about everything.

Maybe being out of the work force has helped me be less stressed in that regard. I was losing hair back then… it was very bad. I also would talk incessantly about my job, and I know more than one of my friends were tired of hearing it.

I was dealing with the mess that comes with my family and work and other responsibilities and it was all just… There never seemed to be enough hours in the day.

Now I’m so medicated that I feel like I’m five sheets to the wind some days. I get up, hiss at the sun and climb back under the sheets.

Isn’t choosing when I’m going to wake up a normal adult thing?

I suppose so, but not for all adults and certainly not all the time.

Since I want to fall over by 3PM now (though it tends to start around noon), I’m seriously wondering how on earth I managed to have a regular job at all. I was used to swing shifts. As in closing and getting off after 10 at night and back up at 4am the next day to get back to work. I had to do this and find time to eat in the middle or meal prep.

THEN AGAIN… I was unmedicated, always agitated and depressed or internally screaming. I’m a strange one apparently, since most people can’t keep their internal screaming on the inside without posting a video about how well they hold it in.

If you post videos about how well you hold in problems (Especially on TikTok… Yiikes…), you aren’t holding them in at all. My reflections are on what I went through over the course of a solid decade of madness in an industry where people treated, saw and indicated that you were no more than an ant.

Have to pee? You need to hold it in. Feeling sick? You must be faking it.

I would be scolded for being 2 minutes late, but see male colleagues who were nearly two hours late and never reprimanded for it.

The double standard made me sick.

I’ll never forget being told by a manager that he was in charge and if it was up to him, he could have me working my entire eight-hour shift and only let me have my 15 minutes break right before the store closed.

In other words, I would not get it at all.

It hurt so much to be treated like that. I wanted to pull my own hair out.

And he ended up barely letting me leave even for a bathroom break for a solid six hours, then told me he was being merciful by letting me take any of my break at all.

Seeing as I’ve long since been diagnosed as having PTSD along with anxiety and depression, it’s no surprise why I wouldn’t be able to handle the idea of going back in to that madness again.

Even with the enormous amounts of self-restraint that I use, I know if I do go back into my old field I’m going to do or say something and someone will get hurt.

Be it emotionally or physically.

And that’s the last thing I want to do.

It’s not that I don’t like people… I just can’t stand being around them in large quantities screaming out absurd orders. All at once.

I can’t be in five places at once. I also shouldn’t be doing the work of five people at once, but I was made to… with no extra pay. Just extra added stress, which led to me losing a lot of hair.

I got mad once because a manager had me writing his emails. This was on top of my other responsibilities, and I received no additional pay for this. So, I told him one day that I would type it all verbatim. He said: “Fine.” But when I asked him to check what I’d typed, he scoffed and told me to just send it off. He was angry that I suggested he review… So, I obeyed and sent off the email.

…Only for him to review it five minutes later and complain at me that he sounded stupid because of what I had typed.

I’ve had to deal with management breathing down my neck to write up fifteen people for dress code violations… only for upper management to dismiss them because “no one was warned ahead of time”. Yet the information had been up and circulated for months.

I suffered through that along with extreme temperatures and being told that I wasn’t allowed to even drink water while working… even when coworkers were drinking coffee or soda… I had notes from four different physicians, two of them involved with my lung condition and was still denied.

I also had a manager block me from going to the office to get a tissue to blow my nose. Less than 5 minutes later, I sneezed and the snot was all over my wrist, my hand, my glasses, my chest and the door handle to the office.

I’ve even had a manager tell me that if I needed to go to the bathroom so badly, I could use the trash can.

I’m going to hope that I don’t look back at my blog and feel sad… because I swing between being outraged and depressed over how poorly I was treated.

Even if I don’t have a college degree, I didn’t deserve that.

I had to turn down a friend who asked if I could drive her somewhere yesterday. Not only do I not trust myself driving her, but before I had surgery, I ran into someone’s car.

Oddly enough… my insurance couldn’t find the vehicle and the police refused to do anything. I suppose the car was stolen and had fake tags?

Now I’m so uncertain about driving much around here that I tend to try to use the bus to get to appointments. Just to avoid the stress of being on the road.

I’m told that since I “drive around so much” that I should be able to do other things. By someone who watched me nod off while sitting upright. I give up. It’s not like people listen when I tell them that for me to drive, I have to forgo taking my medication on time at night.

Playing around and missing doses is not safe at all. Nor is it recommended.

I recently noted that I am compliant with taking my meds. That is true, but only with the daytime ones. Nighttime I always hesitate… and I need not do that.

I took my meds two days ago at 11PM and needed until noon that I started feeling functional.

I feel like a failure on a fluctuating basis at this point, and while it’s nice that so many people assume that I can do so much… it’s painful when I have to tell them I can’t.

I can see the denial in their eyes. As if it’s not possible for me to have a problem at all. Why would I be taking medication to treat my psychiatric issues if I did not have a problem? Why am I being forced to try to fit into a mold that I know I won’t fit into.

I can’t go back.

Yet…

For that same reason, I can’t really go forward either.

At least I have you, WordPress online blogging journal. At least I have you.

And my cat. Can’t forget her.

I recently found some mugs with cats that looked like my dearly departed one. That made me unusually happy, along with obtaining most of the groceries I ordered. And some pocky.

I think I’ll go eat the rest of my friend’s pocky.

That was a nightmare to obtain too. In the store, I was hyped because I found the matcha green tea packs… but they all said December 2022. It’s not far past that, I know, but why is expired food still on the shelves!?

Pfft.

This might have been a bad idea. I don’t know.

I feel like I just word vomited all over the place.

And I am certain that even though she says it… my psychiatrist will not be reading my blog to see how I am. I don’t blame her. If it was me, I wouldn’t want to sit and read this drivel either.

Wanna know what’s worse? Being the one to write this stuff. And knowing the ones who should count don’t even care enough to look.

/end post

~J. Lyst

Good grief. This is like seven pages in MSWord. Apologies for anyone who gets a headache from reading it. It was very upsetting to write it, but I wanted to get it off my chest and a handwritten journal wouldn’t do. Nor would it be legible.

I think I’ll set this to go up around 9:15AM today.

Then I need to get in bed.

#sleepyforever