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anonymoustoddler · 4 years

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The night before I wrote this post, I thought my mom had had a stroke.

The night before I wrote this post, she couldn’t speak to me or do anything but smile and shrug no matter what I asked her.

The night before I wrote this post, she spent the entire day in bed, no food or drink or television or phone.. just laying there, doing nothing. Finally, I made her soup and made her get up to come out and eat it.

The night before I found out my mother’s ovarian cancer was now “ovarian cancer with brain metastasis” and the tumors in her brain were causing so much swelling and pressure that the epicenters of both speech and language, as well as motor skills, were being cut off completely unless she suffered through daily steroids and the insulin dependency that came with them, I watched my mother pick up er soup spoon, full of broth and noodles. I watched her hold the spoon while simultaneously completely unable to either know it was there or to stop herself from moving. She kept moving her hand, her arm, moving her whole body clunkily like a drying claymation model - slow and sort of jerky, confused and flailing. I said, “Hey stop, be careful, put the spoon down.” She looked at her hand holding the spoon. And then she turned to look at something and took the spoon with her and literally turned the spoon upside down onto the floor as I was speaking to her.

The night before I found out my mom was now considered “dying” instead of “fighting”, and before we stepped into two months of one long nightmare, I watched my mother pour soup onto the coffee table the floor the tv remote the table cloth all while I was telling her to put it down, and I didn’t know what was wrong with her and I had been running the household for a week while watching her deteriorate with no one to talk to about it, and I snapped.

The night before I took my mother to the ER and looked into her eyes when he said “the cancer has metastasized to the brain” and felt the first hint of everything bad coming down the pipeline, I screamed at her. I swore at her. I stomped around while I cleaned up the soup, yelling about how I was sick too and I didn’t know what was wrong or what to do and why would you DO this to ME when I’m already doing so much so suddenly and what the fuck is HAPPENING TO YOU TALK TO ME.

The day I wrote this post, I made her agree to begin oral steroid medication to keep down the swelling in her brain even though it made her bloat and caused her blood sugars to spike and crash over and over through each day, leaving her insulin dependent after an entire history of Type II diabetes managed with medication and diet. I made her agree even though she said, in a broken and stilted hodgepodge of words, no no no I’ll just go home I can’t I won’t they’re so awful. Take me home.

The day I wrote this post while sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a little ER cubby “room”, waiting for the ambulance to transfer her across town to UTKnox and admit her onto the 18th floor, Oncology - Adult, I told her I refused to drive her home, that if she continued ro refuse the treatment plan I would never forgive her, stop speaking to her, leave her there by herself because I refused to drive her home if she refused medicine.

She was fighting it so hard, I didn’t feel like I had any choice. If she had gone back home we would not have made it to June. I did the only thing I felt I could do. But I still threatened to abandon her if she didn’t take medication that made her sick and bloated and wrecked her sugar levels. I still told her if she made a choice for herself that was not mine I would never forgive her.

I made her go into the hospital that day, the day I wrote this post. And it was during this admission that everything went wrong and wrong and wrong, worse and worse. This few days of attempting to stabilize her brain swelling triggered something in her lungs; they said hospital aquired pneumonia in the same way I later heard “fluid pockets around the lungs [created by tumors growing there too] putting too much pressure on them, and taking so much space a deep breath was impossible. And that illness would be what sealed her fate. The extra ten days in and out of the ICU and Cardiac ICU, the sudden and severe loss of lung function she fought to reverse so she could get the brain surgery she was intent on having as soon as anyone would clear her, the horrific loss of muscle mass and motor functions, between laying in a bed and not allowed up on her own for over two weeks, to how little she ate and how often she was completely sedated. She would wind up spending all her energy trying to regain her strength enough to just get back to Michigan and find a surgeon who would put her under anesthesia and cut the tumors out of her brain on the 2% chance it would work, and give her more time. She would decide to spend thousands of dollars moving us both back to Michigan as quickly as possible, although our moving day got derailed when she started feeling dizzy and then coughing up blood, and that set back and last Tennessee hospitalization would directly set up the moving company refusing to deliver and refusing to deliver, a scenario that left my mother to spend her final days outside of the hospital she died in living in an apartment with no furniture for weak and aching body; forcing her to sleep on an air mattress that had popped a hole and kept deflating, leaving her asleep on the hard floor. It also led us to get delivery on July 11th, the last day my mom would spend alive and able to talk or laugh or even listen. The last day I had to spend with my mother, I spent instead overseeing the two man moving crew, and then sleeping after anxiety kept me up all through the night before.

I’ve spent so many hours, days, weeks, months, replaying it all over and over, connecting dots, seeing the entire story of the final year of my mom’s life, and how each step caused the next, or triggered something else down the line that rained down on her like invisible stones until her kidneys shut down, her heart became irrevocably destabilized as she spent hours in and out of atrial fibrillation that left her feeling like she was drowning even though she never stopped breathing until she was gone. And I know too now, all the times I could have saved her if I’d just stepped in, if she hadn’t moved away, if her oncologist hadn’t withheld information from my mother, from me, and acted with negligence repeatedly while she was under his care. If I had been able to do something and step in at one of a hundred different points over that final year... Maybe I could have gotten even a little bit more time for her. Maybe I could have saved her some of the pain, could have kept our house, could have insisted on cancelling the trip to Europe that wound up keeping her from the oral meds her doctor prescribed when chemo was over because she was no longer responding, and by skipping treatment for four+ weeks in addition to misunderstanding the doctor’s intentions on clearing her for travel, she unknowingly created the perfect petri dish inside her skull, and had a mostly miserable and lonely time repeatedly hurting herself and making mistakes like packing pain medication in her checked bag ahead of a 9 hour flight with connection and layover, and forgetting to put ANY ostomy supplies in her carryon then proceeding to blow out her bag before the plane to Vienna even took off.

I could have interceded back in 2017 when she “felt sick and bloated and never hungry and backed up” but never told her doctor or nurses because she was too stoic to allow herself to be seen as a potential “whiner” or as weak. If I had spoken up for her when she would not after describing her symptoms, they would have caught the tumor in her intestine months earlier. She could well have had only a temporary colostomy or maybe even none at all. I wouldn’t have spent six weeks stranded in Knoxville unplanned while she struggled to survive surgery and the results of how much that tumor destroyed her health. I wouldn’t have had to sell the condo. There would have been NO time gap in her transition from intravenous chemo drugs to oral new to market specialty medication that, if it had been given a proper chance, could have bought her at least a few more months.

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anonymoustoddler · 4 years

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This whole fucking thing is bullshit.

Fuck your selfishness goddammit. You have so many people. You couldn’t just try to feature me instead of one up me JUST ONE FUCKING TIME?

And you? Who ARE you?? Why would you... Maybe you didn’t. They said it looked like you were but jesus who doesn’t tell a white lie to a fucking mental case who you just want to finally shut the fuck up?

But at the same time... how could you just happen to feel and do this NOW?? I mean fuck what the fuck???

And finally, just... what is SO wrong with me? Am I really that disgusting and that awful?

Just... fuck ALL of you.

I fucking QUIT.

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anonymoustoddler · 4 years

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In Which I Get Stoned And Bitch About Work

Yesterday I worked for nine hours checking patients in with a weird system we had to make up on the fly due to the large number of people who came early and kept coming for seven straight hours. I ran hundreds (literally) of people through a software system and set of procedures I never got a full training in and could only practice with twice.

It was really really hard. And it wasn’t as fun as it was half a decade ago, the energy and the excitement and the teamwork. I stood directly behind the CEO for the media focused ribbon cutting. I welcomed hundreds of excited, mostly happy people into a brand new, gorgeous facility with flashy displays and top quality product.

I have been through this sort of experience so many times. So many iPhone and iPad and every other Apple product launches. I’ve clapped in guests and had little chats to make each quick transaction a bit more enjoyable for both of us. I’ve swapped stories with coworkers, joked around with managers who feel accessible, gotten frustrated and got mouthy for a minute about the inevitable mismanagement and poor planning for big turnout. For god’s sake, I’ve literally been photographed with and chatted with the CEOs of BOTH companies. And F****** is small now but... in a year, you’ll all be smoking their shit and a lot of you will be visiting them for medical and recreational. They’ll create more local jobs. They’ll be a leader in Michigan cannabis.

But I’m not the same person I used to be. I know so much more now. I know how shitty their consideration for their bottom rung employees is. Which really really matters when you watch THOSE employees literally building the guts of this business. Painstakingly unboxing, pricing, properly labeling, stocking, and creating displays of each and every product - and it’s medical weed so like let’s not forget that this is a process that you HAVE to pay attention to and be careful about.

It matters when you see a team stretched way too thin because it’s way too small, learning so much in such a short time (maybe that’s just me though honestly... I did learn two jobs instead of one, and I started at least a week after everyone else who got hired around the same time).

When there were still five or six hours left of the business day, I was informed we’d already done $20,000 in business since we opened that morning.

Twenty. Thousand. Dollars.

Not even a full day’s total.

And I get one half hour lunch for an 8 hour shift, no benefits, and I don’t even get time and a half pay for holidays unless I go full time.

I have to cap my hours at 17 a week because if I work more I’ll lose my medicaid and both my doctors expect to see me every three months and my meds cost money. I have to schedule another upper endoscopy, do you want to guess how much that would cost out of pocket, with the scope, the anesthesia, the gastroenterologist’s read of the scan and the after appointment, etc etc?? I don’t.

The Corporate team was swarming yesterday. Most of them didn’t even acknowledge us. Most of the people who did treated us with the unintentional condescension of people who feel they’re inherently better, smarter, and more deserving than you. They don’t mean to. They think they’re being kind.

But at the end of the day, they make annual salaries with solid benefit and possibly bonus packages, and you make an hourly rate higher than min wage but not even close to what you deserve considering you MAKE the company work. I mean, jesus, almost all the positive reviews I’ve seen so far specifically mention the great customer service/awesome employees. And yet, even with such disparity, they tried to cut our discount. There was an actual hours long discussion two days before grand open when Corporate wanted to cut our employee discount (for legal med patients working there) to almost nothing. They openly tried to take back a discount policy we ALL knew about, so they could charge US more despite working for the company. And we’re not a shady hole in the wall op in some creepy spot in Detroit that has dirty carts for half the usual price. This is higher end shit, and we’re the only game in town so prices can kind of be set with some flagrancy. Why would you want to make money off your employees who are not even getting what they deserve to begin with? How can you want MORE???

I’m not trying to shit on this place, really. With the company headquarters setting up in the same building, the growth plans of the company as a whole, and the potential doors this could open for me in the field of legal cannabis, this job is still a great opportunity. I’m learning a lot and after years out of the loop, it’s kind of nice to have a “real job” again. The team working on site are all nice and fun and pretty chill. I like and feel comfortable with everyone on the management team, but I also know I can’t get away with bullshit callouts with them so I have to practice the choice of either sucking it up and getting out of bed or making peace with potentially losing my job in a bad way. Those external consequences are the only things I can respond to anymore. It feels terrible and I’m still a miserable mass of depression, but.. I’m getting out of bed. 🤷🏻‍♀️

As usual, I got pretty far off track. My original point was, I think, that.. I miss my innocent days. I miss when I was 23 (hell, when I was 26, 27) and didn’t understand the evil of corporations or the exploitation of the workforce. I miss the days when I felt excited to be making almost $XX an hour because I’d never made more than that and it was a few bucks over minimum wage and I got really good insurance for not too much of my paycheck. I miss feeling like I mattered. I miss being ignorant enough to believe that anyone cared about me, that anyone could see how much I had to give and how smart and capable I was even if I also was sick more days than average. That I wasn’t just disposable chattel to make money for the people at the top and their investors. I miss living in the delusion that we were a family. It was a really powerful motivator, honestly. When you believe The Boss cares about you, is on the same team you are, is paying you a fair wage... when you don’t understand how bullshit that is.. Work feels a lot more bearable, I guess.

Yesterday I made it through nine chaotic, messy, Learn As You Go and Make It Work, non-stop, exhausting hours. I still have my job, and I intend to keep it for as long as possible. But I’ve also been forced to see just how much I’ve changed over the last decade. I’ve learned and seen and experienced so much that has affected how I see money, work, the world, being alive at all. I don’t think I can ever be enchanted anymore. I can’t be magicked into believing a dumpster of garbage is a treasure chest ever again. And as much as it matters to me to know the truth... I was a lot happier when I still saw a treasure chest instead of a rotting pile of trash. It’s just not as inspiring, you know?

#work rant #disenchantment #wage inequality #life in your 30s #ramblings

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anonymoustoddler · 4 years

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I Got Stoned And Started Typing To Post On FB (And Ended With Something That Could NEVER Get Posted)

Hah. I hit my vape pen a bunch and then this happened:

This afternoon, after taking way too many hits of my *state tested, clean and safe* vape pen, I was surfing hulu on my laptop while scrolling through facebook on my phone and playing Stardew Valley on the PS4 every few minutes in between and I suddenly, in fact altogether _casually_ thought to myself, “I wonder if I’d want kids and be able to take care of them if I made it to 38?”

And the thing is, that is literally the most positive organic thought I’ve had in my VERY busy, VERY chatty brain in almost two years. It is the first thought I have had regarding a potential future that wasn’t colored by the idea that My Mom Is Dead So Nothing I Could Do In Life Would Mean Anything Or Be Possible Because She Isn’t Here To Experience It Too Or To Help Me Through.

This stoned, distracted, completely mindless and unfocused random little insignificant thought... is the first time in over a year and a half of thinking, that did not immediately end with, “She’s Dead So You Can’t Ever Hope For That Anymore Because It Means Nothing Now That She Can’t Be There To Experience It Or Get To Be Proud Of Me For Once” and also, “Nothing Is Possible Without Her Because Without Her I’m Alone And Unable Forever Unless Someone Else Takes Over Helping Me But That Will Never Happen And I Will Never Be Ok Or Able On My Own.”

I mean, no wonder I’m doing so poorly and also dealing so badly with her death?! Being close was great in a lot of ways and awful in others. Our codependent enmeshment was deeply and traumatically unhealthy. Having to be your mother’s best and only friend at 8 years old is... really weird. And abnormal. But then, so is developing a diagnosable anxiety disorder and eating disorder at FOUR YEARS OLD is kind of abnormal too!

The thing is... some physical aspects of puberty for me started very early. VERY early. All aspects of puberty seemed to start earlier in me than a lot of girls in my class, in my grade. So maybe it makes sense too then that I would develop these psychological issues so early, particularly with the stress and fear of moving from Texas to Michigan and leaving the first friends I remember having, how terrified I was of change and meeting new people, trying to make new friends. I was so painfully and obviously shy. I was so afraid of people.

But anyway. No one caught the anxiety disorder until I did myself.... in college. I lived with a totally unchecked anxiety disorder and pretty high-but-not-yet-extreme depression from the ages of five and eleven/twelve respectively, and the first time I got ANY help was at the age of 19. No wonder I was sick for so long. The fucking eating disorder is suuuuch a perfect(ly horrifying) coping mechanism. And since it was my primary, and often only, coping mechanism for many many many years, as in almost ALL of the first two decades of my life. Two decades of drilling this into myself of How To Relieve Stress And Self Soothe = Disordered Behaviors And NOTHING ELSE.

Is it really any wonder why I’m like this??? I am dealing with the loss of my only family; my best friend by leaps and bounds and freakin lightyears; my entire and very giving safety net - so I could try something new or move away or whatever and I knew I was safe because if it didn’t work out or I tanked I could ALWAYS go home. Always.

I’m also dealing with the loss of... the person who never let me try things because she was a control freak so I could never learn from her; the person who taught me the

passive aggressive ➡️ passive aggressive ➡️ very aggressive

method of responding to interpersonal relations, which I mean... how could anything go wrong?! 🙃🙃🙃

I’m dealing with the loss of a relationship where my mom once, in all seriousness, asked me if I’d have a baby if I didn’t have to take care of it, she would take care of it for me.

Like, I know part of her was “joking” but... she wanted to be a grandmother. She wanted to see me have a career, a family, security.

But also who sort of benefited from my continued illness; my inability to cope or work; my low functionality, my constant need of help, support, and validation... they made her SO frustrated but also kept her busy and kept her from being alone, kept me with her but also sometimes was too much for her so it was upsetting, because surprise - crazy people gon turn up a notch higher than you can predict, and don’t ever forget that.

I am mourning this relationship that either fully shaped or strongly influenced almost every issue I have now. I don’t mean to shirk responsibility, just to be clear - I have to actually try as much as is literally possible to fix the things in me that are broken. I have to find a therapist and go to therapy. Trust my doctors, try a hundred different meds that might ALL make me horribly sick or even more crazy or both as side effects while still trying to build some kind of life. Maybe, eventually, find one, but also... get out of bed every day. Shower, brush your teeth, get dressed, GET OUT. Grab your coat boots keys purse and go outside. Make it into your car, drive it down a few blocks (depending on where you want coffee/are you reading a book or can you play HP there/etc), get coffee and sit and read or play a bit or work lines or whatever. Make your to do list there! Lay out a plan for the day. Schedule at least two work items then set a timed break for video games or whatever. When the alarm goes off, you MUST get back to work. Two to three more items earns a longer break to play OR taking care of any other immediate need stuff and then going out or something.

If you want to get some casual exercise, go to either mall. Walk around for Shopkick, the game, and to get your blood flowing at least a teensy bit while working out rarely used muscles and burning juuuuust a few calories.

You spend SO much goddamned money on delivery, when actually — Going out yourself is SO much better for you. It is obviously MUCH cheaper, but it’s also good to get out of the house even if only going to and from the car and into the store or restaurant or whatever, and it’s very VERY important to drive the car regularly, to keep the battery functional and the guts ok. ((Also RE: CARS — Next warm day, that Prius goes through an intense car wash. Need to get that shit out so it stops stinking, prob growing mold ugh ugh need fix!))

But I mean JUST THINK how much money you’d have left, maybe to even treat yourself to better things, and also if I stop ordering, I will 100% lose weight. So muck fucking weight lmao. And with a job, I’ve got two sources of income coming in! And hopefully still medicaid for as long as I can possibly have it 😭

This got REALLY away from my stoned assssss BUT. The original point is this:

I thought about myself as potentially being alive six years from now, which is very much not what I see lately but which, for once, didn’t automatically sound like a punishment, and I thought of myself six years older and wondering if I might be better enough to be an ok caregiver and also have a relationship that could sustain children coming in, and I was able to and did have one?? That’s SO bananas to me lol. It made me feel... weirdly hopeful though.

#stonerthoughts #soliloquy #depression #mentalillness #dead parents club #orphan #codependent relationships #dysfunctional family #suicidal ideation #ramblings

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anonymoustoddler · 4 years

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🔹Some Musings On Christmas And Life That I Posted To Facebook But Really Need To Delete 🔹

Christmas was my favorite holiday. And one of the only holidays my mom even partly bothered with. For her, and for the few years I had my grandmother too, Christmas was a freakin EVENT. Christmas was Surprises and Excitement and part of How We Show Love In This Family - with all the Stuff that no one had a generation ago because my grandparents were poor and there were five children to keep alive. But when it was just me, and money was at least consistent and enough, Christmas was my own precious child friendly Bacchanalia.

But Christmas is so terrible now. These last few months of every year will always be terrible now.

And the thing is, being sick with this cold plus being neck deep in PMS DepressionPlus™️ PLUS the misery of Christmas...

It’s way too much. And being alone makes it SO much worse. Because no one can shake you out of hyper focusing on how bad you feel when there’s not one to see or call or text or anything else. No one visits, no one else lives here to be a distraction. No one but the awful, scary, dangerous thing that is me. Being alone was always my nightmare, and then it gradually became more and more real over the last seven years. Baby step by baby step by giant leap. And now I live my nightmare every minute of every day, all the time.

I’m just so sick of feeling so bad. And not counting the sickness inside my mind, this cold is not even a bad one. But I can’t seem to stand or even sit up for more than a few minutes, and it’s so dry and so dusty in here I feel like I’ll be sick forever. I guess in some ways, that’s pretty true.

I used to wish for so many things. I’d wish for the sweet and solid relationship I’d been searching for since I was 12. For a big and loving family to step into with my Perfect Person. For wealth, for fame, for my mother to live a long life, particularly because I lived in constant fear of her death for 20 years (with good reason, as it turns out). I wished for consistent and interesting work as an actor, a big house with all the things I’d been drilled and pressed and conditioned to want. And friends. So many close friends that I’d never have to be alone unless I really wanted to be.

But I don’t wish for any of that anymore. All those wishes had been dwindling for the last few years, and finally died when my mom did. Now I only wish for the end. I wish I could take all the Really Bad Illnesses from everyone I know and everyone they know and take it all into myself and be finished. It’s just so ridiculous to be so alone and useless and meaningless and ready to go, and have to watch as other people get Very Sick who have full lives and loved ones and who want to be here. It isn’t fair to any of us.

I used to always say that if I had a super power it would be invisibility so I could see the sides of people that no one ever gets to see. But I don’t think I want that anymore. I just want to take away all the illness into myself so those people could live the lives they love for much longer, and I could disappear quickly as I’ve been dreaming about with increasing passion and consistency for years.

Why can’t I just be done now, and help others on my way out? Why does it always seem like the people getting the diseases that have the highest chance of taking them out early are the people who want to live?? Put that shit in the people who already want to die. Two birds one stone, you know?

I’m going to delete this pretty quickly I’m sure, but if you see it and you read it, don’t worry. If I were capable of doing anything to myself to try and go away, I’d be gone already.

I suppose that’s really my greatest curse in life; I have been wanting to be gone for so much of it, but instead I’ve watched the people I love most die or build busy full lives that don’t have room for me. And I’m still just... here. Watching. Waiting. I’m still around, alone and incapable and lonely and so profoundly sad, still hoping for something to take me down, but forced to watch the worst things take down the people who actually want to live instead.

I wish I could save all of your loved ones, all of you, and cash my own check all at once. I don’t have any big hopes or dreams or goals anymore. I haven’t for so long now. I don’t want anything except to either hit the end point or get my mom back, and that second bit isn’t going to happen. I’m just so tired of feeling so bad but only being sick in my brain, while my body somehow ticks on and on and on.

I’m just so tired. And I’m so ready to go.

#Christmas #Depression #ramblings #When you just want to go #I am the scary story you tell your childen in order to keep them on the right path #I am the nightmare you wake up from with gratitude

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anonymoustoddler · 4 years

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I got stoned and found out some things and started writing a facebook post. And then... it turned into whatever the hell this is:

I went to NYU from 2005-2009.

Ilana Glazer.. apparently went to NYU from 2005-2009.

We graduated at the same time.

ALSO, I thought Rachel Bloom was older but NO, she was there too. And everyone seems to know her except for me.

She didn’t even go to Tisch, or study acting or writing or.. any of it. Rachel did. But all three of us sat in Yankee Stadium at the same time and listened to Hillary Clinton give our graduation speech. We had all the same opportunities and general access, the same potential for experience, exposure, connections, and a career.

And now they are there.

And my BFA’d ass is... right here.

It’s just really strange to think about that. Maybe if I had somehow done things quite differently, I’d be there instead.

Probably not, to be honest. I know I’ve never had whatever that thing is that makes certain people magnetic. I’ve never been the one to stand out in adulthood. I think, in fact, that many people find me rather dull compared to the shine of others in this field. But maybe... maybe if I’d really worked for it, for real. Maybe if I could have put everything into the work instead of most of it into all the wrong places with just a shaving of energy and effort and commitment left over.

But also. Something happened to me, back then. When I left Northview and Grand Rapids and Michigan to head for New York, I believed in my talent. I believed in myself in that way, if not much else. I knew I could do it, and do it well.

A lot of people seem to come into themselves in college. Find themselves, find their people, their passions and strengths, their future. But I think I had the opposite experience altogether. From my very first day in New York, I felt Weird. Different. Loser. Less than. Behind. Misunderstood. Shamed. Overlooked. Ignored. Doubtful. Anxious. Depressed. Afraid. Embarrassed. Hidden. Invisible.

It was a slow motion dissent into the earlier stages of where I am now. But nobody noticed. No one saw an eating disorder or depression or tremendous anxiety. No one saw severe mood instability, executive dysfunction, a strained and codependent and complicated two person family relationship. No one saw the things going on and attributed them to “She’s not ok.” It was always, “She’s immature. She’s selfish and lazy. She doesn’t WANT to grow up, so she’s keeping herself in states of dependency so she never has to try.” “She just doesn’t want any of it badly enough. If she did, she’d be doing the work to get it.”

I wonder, sometimes. If I hadn’t been sick and scared and alone, with only so much understanding at the time of what was happening to me and no understanding of what I was preparing to become; if I had real and proper help from any doctor or professor or from my mom - because I did not understand the severity of my need for help back then, and I thought my family doctor, a PA who actually really fucked up my life multiple times with her loose prescription pad and severe lack of knowledge of what she was doing, had me covered - what might I have accomplished instead of spending most of my free time in bed, balancing a part time job but barely able to take on anything else. 30 hours a week in retail plus commuting was literally everything I had in me WHEN I WAS AT MY BEST IN LIFE. When I was the closest I ever got to being a rack rate size, when I was still able to prioritize limited money spending, still eating both regularly and healthfully (as much so as I’ve ever been), still exercising simply by getting around, sleeping ok enough for the most part and generally on a more normalized schedule. I mean — I got up at 6 to be at work at 8 OFTEN. It was excruciating sometimes, but other times it was fun to get up and get ready for work. I had routines. I loved getting off the train at my SoHo stop and, depending on which line I took and how much time I had, getting my coffee at Starbucks or at Aroma, so overpriced but an entirely different experience and worth the convenience and sometimes a pastry to go along.

I’ve gotten quite entirely away from myself, but.. I was doing the best I’ve ever done or maybe will ever do. And I still could not work to pay my bills and also take voice and tap and jazz and scene study and exclusive workshops and networking events and open calls and appointment auditions and keeping up with theater and film and the business and and and.

I went to a handful of auditions in 2013 and 2014 - My Only Almost Good Years. Things were actually pretty horrible for the majority of them but it was also mostly the closest I ever got to Good in the beginning.

Regardless, I subscribed to Actors Access and I got the only real headshots I ever had taken and I submitted and submitted and submitted (not nearly as regularly or often as I should have, because I was still too scared then. I still gave a shit.) and I very occasionally got an audition. I submitted for a commercial call Under 18 girls skin care. I got called in. When the CD saw me, she told me they were only considering minors, but she wanted to keep my headshot and info anyway. I never heard from her again.

I got a call for a short film once (or was it a web series? Who knows) and even got a callback. But no part.

I did one show in those two years. Technically I guess one could argue two if you count the weird little Christmas play I did for no money right after I moved at the end of 2012, but. Aside from that... one casting. One.

In New Jersey. No pay - travel stipend included.

I was 24 years old playing a 12 year old in an aged down musical version of Three Sisters set in 1970s New Jersey. “We have to get back to Mosc- New York City!” But with generic numbers telling most of what little story there was.

And then I took an acting class, I fell and injured myself, my body wasn’t ever the same after that, and by the time my shoulder was as normal as it would ever be again, my brain was really starting to crack. I was depressed and anxious. I hated living in Brooklyn, I hated having no friends after so briefly being close with Jenn. I hated my roommate, the only man I had ever lived with before George. And no wonder. He was one of the worst people I’ve ever met, I think. The worst kind of fucked up Entitled Vaguely Wealthy White Male. He enjoyed making me upset, making me feel unsafe. He listened to me express my issues with things he did and instead of even pretending to care about living harmoniously, he laughed in my face and used every chance he could get to fuck with me for the kick of it. He was rude and weird and cold and cruel and cocky and prideful and hateful and gross and mean. He was selfish and thoughtless and manipulative. I knew he felt wrong from the moment I met him. I knew. But our third roommate was chill and relaxed and flexible, she seemed to get along with both of us enough so I thought she could and would act as a buffer if it ever came to that. I knew but I loved the apartment, and he found it and I didn’t have any friends to grab it out from under him with. I knew he was a bad guy and someone I might well have real trouble with and discomfort around, but Jenn had gone silent and enemy for reasons and in ways I will never, ever understand. One day she was my friend, and the next she was putting locks on her doors and saying I should really move out of HER apartment as soon as possible. She stopped speaking to me. She passive aggressively left disgusting messes all over the apartment. She locked the living room television in her bedroom and told some version of events in which I was the bad guy somehow to friends who we both went to school with, people I knew and liked. They in turn randomly met my coworkers and proceeded to say horrible things about me, and the only reason I even know is because one of them told me about it in the break room the next time I worked.

I knew Nick was a terrible risk in multiple ways. But I had to get out of the apartment because at the time I didn’t think it could be worse than living with Jenn, and Dan was a third who I thought would be in my corner, and the apartment was so much nicer than most of the places I had lived. I thought I could make it work. I thought that move was going to save me.

By the time my headshots were taken, I was beginning to lose feeling in my legs. I was struggling to keep treading water and starting to drown. I never got the free retouching because I never chose my final shots. I never chose because I barely submitted for auditions. I was doing on partial leave from work and doing as much physical therapy as I could afford to copays for, I was taking percocet for months and months because the pain wouldn’t go away. Something’s Wrong, I said. The Scans Look Normal, Try Taking Ibuprofen. I was home and hiding in bed more and more often. I extended my work leave and gave shifts away as much as I could. I went to therapy and a middle aged white woman with long beaded necklaces and a New Age Buddhism vibe in a shoebox office on the Upper East Side was getting tired of me and my lack of progress and consistent last minute cancellation of appointments. I went back to work and had panic attacks that kept me sobbing uncontrollably for over an hour, so many shifts spent partially alone sitting in a little room in the basement back of house, steam pumps taking up much of the space and nothing else there aside from a single office chair and a little grey table. I spent my entire hour lunch chain smoking on a stoop down the street. I smoked cigarette after cigarette, compulsively and even when I did NOT want any more. I talked more loudly and often about how bad things were, about my disorder and anxiety and depression and people liked me less and I was alone at work more. New people came on and old people left and new cliques formed and I had no friends. Work was torture and home was terrifying. I got through the summer by getting stoned on the roof so I wouldn’t have to be in the apartment in case he was home. But then one day my door knob broke and I was so terrified he would go into my room and take or break or mess with my things and the fear and panic were so real and so severe that I missed my best friend’s baby shower because I couldn’t find a locksmith on a Sunday and I couldn’t leave my room until I fixed my door knob. She was angry with me for a long time after that. We never saw each other before I moved back to Michigan. I don’t even know when we last saw each other anymore.

I could keep telling this story for hours, days. Tell every piece as I remember it straight on through 2014 and into 2015 and cancer and treatment and 2016 and George and more cancer and the worst possible conditions for a new relationship and relapse and the beginning of my current inability to function because everything was depression and exhaustion and loneliness. And on and on through five more moves and break up and emergency surgery and being thrown into the drivers seat and struggling with my mom’s health changes and selling my home and leaving everything I had for something new that was just more versions of bad. The scariest loneliest months of my life. And then the even scarier even lonelier ones after she died.

But just... just think of all that. And what if most of it had never happened?? If I’d gotten proper help a decade ago, who would I be now? Where?

Maybe I’d be there. With them.

Instead of here, alone, with nothing but memories of other times when I was also sad and life felt pointless.

I wonder what it would have been like to be there instead. I wish I knew.

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anonymoustoddler · 4 years

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I took this photo and posted it to my public instagram in Spring 2017. Around this time George got a new job, my mom decided for real to move down to Knoxville - even though by June her cancer would be back again - and George and I, still together, me mumbling stupidly about marriage to him like a moron, took over the condo. My mom and I on the deed together.

Moving was terrible. George was out of town for work the day my mom left. I look back at that day... watching strange men put their hands all over her - our - mine now - those things... the kitchen table that’s seen better days. Her bed, the one I laid with her on when I was sad, the one I slept in when she went to work and I was broken and sick and unemployed and insomniatic. Her things, loading onto a giant orange truck. She was excited, hopeful. I was heartbroken and terrified. I had one best friend and a boyfriend who was growing colder and increasingly distant as the summer days passed by.

We’d had my last birthday together a few days before she left. I don’t know how to count the birthday I had two days before she died. She did say happy birthday to me, before she was given more morphine and went back to sleep again. She ordered me one gift. I don’t know when it came but I found the package notice July 11th as I headed to the hospital for what would be the last time. I picked up the box containing my gift on my way home from watching her die. A weighted blanket; so I could sleep better. I love it, but. It isn’t washable. I binge in bed, I can’t keep the apartment clean, and.... I can’t risk doing any damage to the last gift she ever gave me. So I kept it on a shelf packed away for a year, and now the closets are too dusty and anxiety inducing to unpack anything, so... now that blanket lives in a vinyl bag from our favorite store in China Town in NYC.

Fuck, I want more of those vinyl bags. Maybe there’s a way to order some...

Anyway. That one got away from me fast. We’d had my last birthday together; it was a scavenger hunt around the house, the way my mom used to do for me when I was little. I fucking loved those scavenger hunts. I wonder if part of her wondered if this would be her last chance to do this with me. I wish she’d talked to me more about those things. All those lasts, so many we brushed over because we didn’t know they would be.

But. That breakdown’s for another time. Hell, it’s November 1st. We’re heading into the Big Holidays now. The part of the year I hate second most now. I loved Christmas.

Fuck. MOVING.

George was out of town the day my mom’s things went into a large truck, and she got into her little car, and went away. I spent the first night in the condo by myself, while the cats cried and were very confused. The next morning I organized the move of George’s and my things. And I spent the first few days there alone. It was awful, doing those moves without him. Without her.

Anyway. This book.

Once I started feeling George slipping away from me, and more so once my only parent and best friend was gone, my eating disorder slipped right in through all those cracks. It made me stupid and selfish and crazy and embarrassing and weird and miserable. Making Peace With Your Plate got packed in a box five moves and two and a half years ago. Five moves in two years... I have NO idea where it is now. But one of the co-authors commented on this post yesterday, and I saw it tonight/this morning and it made me so sad. I wanted to do the work then. I was struggling and life sucked but I really did want to try. But then it was... life got in the way. So I packed it in a box.

I’d like to find it again. I binged and purged three times this week. Things are pretty bad. I’m ashamed to call therapists. I’m... somethin’s so wrong with me, I can barely manage the most basic tasks since this last move. Forget showering, brushing my teeth, laundry, going anywhere. I don’t do aaaany of that, 95% of the time. But before, I could keep the cats ok. Food and water, Simon’s dinner, change the water and refill food before bed. Scoop the boxes every few days.

I’m slacking now. It’s exhausting to get them fresh water, to pour out fresh kibble. It’s damned near impossible to put one grocery bag inside another, walk all the way through the apartment, and scoop the boxes. Three times in almost three weeks. I’ve become a monster.

But I do want to make peace with my plate, though. I want to read it. I want to get out of bed and handle all of this.

Why can’t I? Why doesn’t anyone care that I can’t? Are we all going to die here?

Fun questions I ask myself on the daily.

Maybe we will die here. But not today. I’d like to die once all of my to do list is crossed and completed. I’d like to go when I know the cats will be ok and when all the work is done for whoever gets stuck with my estate. I want to die once all of this is finished. Until then... we say, Not Today. 💜

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