It's Not About the Ketchup

Do you ever have that moment when you're having french fries at home, and you go to get the ketchup, and when you realize you're all out, you just burst into tears and have a complete meltdown?

Yeah, it's not about the ketchup.

It's just the last straw, THE thing that pushes you over the edge.

You might have big things to deal with.  You might have little things to deal with.  One or two of them at a time, you can handle.  Even 5 or 10 little things, you can handle.  But at some point, you can't take any more, and the littlest thing is what sets you off, to the point where anyone in the vicinity looks at you like you're a crazy person because you've just completely over-reacted to something that doesn't warrant that level of distress.

I had one of those moments today.

Tuesday started off not great with a doctor's appointment (details will be in a future blog post), but then I spent several hours in the afternoon chatting with a friend I haven't seen in a very long time, and then I spent the evening having dinner with the husband and some friends, including one friend who I haven't seen in a while.  All in all, it was a good day for spending time with friends, and it really did a lot to boost my spirits.  Driving home late in the evening, I knew I felt better than I had in a while.

Wednesday, some of the glow had worn off, but not all of it.  I'd even started to think about maybe hanging out with friends for part of the weekend.  By Thursday morning, though, the dark cloud was back.  The voice in my head that said, you don't really want to go to work today, do you?  Don't you just want to stay home?  You haven't been getting much work done anyway, so what's the point in going?  Besides, they won't miss you at work if you're not there.  So I had to fight past that voice to actually leave the house and go to work, and then fight not wanting to actually do anything once I got to work.

And then I got a call in the late afternoon from my doctor's office, and the nurse wanted to go through my test results.  Usually, they just send me the results.  I don't recall them calling me before.  And, as I suspected, both my cholesterol numbers and my A1C (to test for diabetes) were high, though my A1C wasn't actually as high as I had expected.  I've been indulging in a whole lot of comfort eating in the past couple months with everything that's been going on, and I haven't exercised in about 3 months, so yeah, I figured my results wouldn't be great.  The nurse kept giving me a hard time about the cholesterol, and asking me repeatedly if I'd been taking the medication I've already been on for a while.  Yes, I've been taking my meds.  No, I didn't take a break from my meds.  Yes, my numbers are that high even though I'm already on meds.  After then proceeding to the sugars results and then telling me what I should be eating instead, I finally told her that I knew exactly why both results were as bad as they were, and I had expected it.  I told her what had happened to my parents in the last year, and that it wasn't an excuse, but yeah, I've been eating bad things because I'm just trying to get through everything, and I haven't been focused on what I've been eating.  She apologized and said she understood, and we talked about a couple more things before we concluded the call.

And I spent about 20 minutes feeling worse and worse, to the point where I started to cry.  Luckily, I have an office at work, so I got up and shut the door so I could cry in private.  The results were what I thought they'd be.  Having the nurse get on me wasn't that bad, and she backed off once I explained what had been going on.  But I guess that was the tipping point, because I cried in my office for a while.  And I went through a round of "What the hell does it matter what I'm eating?  Why can't I just eat what I want?  Why does any of this matter?  All the stuff that would make me feel better are things that are going to make my numbers worse, so I guess I'm just supposed to deal with everything on my own?  Fine, I'll just sit at home by myself and I won't talk to anyone and I won't do nothing.  And I won't eat anything, that'll help my numbers, right?"

Yeah, meltdown.  At least it wasn't with an audience.  After a while, my sanity returned, and I stopped crying, so I opened my door again.  And then realized a few minutes later that I apparently wasn't quite done, so I had to close the door again for another round of crying since I didn't want to risk having someone walk in on me.  Finally, I'd stopped crying for a little while, and I felt like it was done, so I opened the door again, and I even managed to get some work done after that.  Not a lot, but some.

Not having ketchup for your fries really sucks.

Sleep Doesn't Come Easy

Last week, I had a dream about my mother.

We were at the old house, the old house being the house my family lived in from the time that I was about 4 or 5 until I was about 17.  It's the most common recurring location of my dreams, probably because it's where I grew up.

The house has an attached garage, connected by an adjoining door right after you enter the front door.  We never parked the cars in the garage, but rather, it was a spare bedroom, storage space, utility area.  For some reason, I'd gone in there to look for my mother but was surprised when I didn't find her.

After a little while, I noticed that she was laying in bed, facing away from me.  That seemed odd because I never knew my mother to nap much, unless she wasn't feeling well.  I remember wondering if she was sick and was about to ask if she was ok, and for her to tell me if anything was wrong so we could take her to be examined.  And then I realized, I didn't need to tell her that anymore.

I heard my mother's voice in my head (in Cantonese), "I've been gone for a lifetime, and she still doesn't know it."



Well, it hasn't been a lifetime.  My mother died just over a month ago.  And my father died in October 2016.  So, the last 12 months have left me with quite a bit to deal with.

There are moments when things feel ok, when I feel normal.  The moments come and go, and they don't generally last very long unless I've got something to focus on and I'm actually able to focus.  During the day, I have things to do, things to pay attention to, work, distractions.

The nights are difficult.  There's less going on.  Distractions fade away.  Things are quiet.  People are sleeping, resting.  Except me.  There's just me and a whirlwind of conflicted thoughts.

I've never really been very good at sleeping, even as a child.  It never occurred to me that I could ever actually have MORE trouble sleeping.  That's how it's been for the past month.  I'm awake well into the early hours of the morning, pretty much until my body is exhausted and can be awake no more.  I sleep for a little while, but then it's time to get up and go to work.  And then I spend the day very tired.  So you'd think I'd be able to sleep that next night, right?  Nope.  I'm tired and sleepy all day, but when I get home from work, even if I think I'm tired enough to go to bed early, as soon as I think about going to bed, the brain starts firing again and won't let me sleep.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  On weekends, if I don't have to be up at a certain time, I still can't sleep in.  As soon as my body is no longer exhausted, my brain wakes me up, even though I'm still tired and sleepy.

The irony of having even more difficulty sleeping now than I usually do is that when my mother would hear about my insomnia, she would tell me that I was thinking about too many things, and that was why I couldn't sleep.  She'd tell me to stop thinking about so much.

I haven't yet figured out how to quiet my brain enough to let my body rest.  I figured I'd try writing again, to see if that would help.



If you've been reading this entry, you probably got here from a link I posted.  That will be the only time I link to these sorts of posts.  I figure if you want to read more about this subject, if I manage to write any more about it, you now already know how to find your way here.