No news is good news, they say sometimes. That's the case when it comes to me posting here.
Then it kind of dawned on me, all the times I've posted here recently, between here and that Withdrawal Diary I had, I really should update a bit when things are going good too. It might not make for as entertaining a read or whatever, but I know there are a few that read these that actually care about me. So I kind of owe them that.
It's April 8 in the wee hours of the morning, 4:37am to be exact. My lovely wife is sound asleep beside me, and Marbles the cat is between us all curled up in his own dreamland. And I'm here with MSNBC on after having watched Seth Myers' late night show not able to quite shut my eyes. In these late hours I've been experiencing, I've grown to really like Myers' show. A lot. It's a breath of fresh air for the late night show genre. He even had David Letterman on recently and graciously let Dave be Dave and charmed everyone with his wit and humor hearkening back to yesteryear when he was the king of late night. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was kind of passing the torch.
March was quite a good month, really. No real troubles to report. Nothing out of the ordinary anyway, like exploding hemorrhoids or anything. Since being on 50mg of Zoloft daily, after being off of it for quite a while, it feels like its effectiveness was kind of rebooted. The trade off being that there's that numbing kind of effect, but my mood has leveled off very nicely over the last month. I would say this is the best I've felt maybe in years.
As my daughter's birthday approaches, so does the anniversary of my last day at work. One year ago, I came home after a rough day/week/month/year, lost control and literally back-dropped myself from five feet in the air onto the hard floor. On purpose. I felt like I might have seriously injured myself. Janice decided for me that I was going to be taken off work -- and much later, doctors and advisors semi-convinced me to go on permanent disability. I say "semi", because I just don't see me not working again, but, I can now choose what work I want to do without any pressure. I can actually pick a job I like.
But I'm wary of my mindset, and when I'm ready or not. This week I got a bit of a wake-up call of sorts that I'm not quite ready. Faced with stress or pressure that brings about triggers, I've found that I'm not 'there' yet. There were two times in the last week where I was confronted with the urge to self-harm. It's a very, very unsettling sensation that I can't quite put into words. Suffice to say, my wife was with me both times, and helped me de-escalate. Plus I was aware of what was happening and took steps to curtail the incoming dark clouds.
I spoke to a brother-in-law of mine that offered to help with a project for the house. We chatted a bit on the phone, and he and my sister are friends with a cousin whose husband is a neurologist, who's privy to my brain injury history. I found it extremely reassuring when he told me that this medical professional insisted that what I'm dealing with is not quite ordinary, or transient for that matter. My in-law expressed his understanding of my situation and related that, with my sister, to others in the family, helping bring about an understanding about my issues. This goes a long, long way with me, knowing that I actually have a neuro-surgeon to back up everything I've been saying all along. I can never be rid of what this is that afflicts me, but I can control it, like a diabetic controls their disease with insulin. It also opened my eyes to the fact that I likely will be on some type of medication to keep it in check permanently. Zoloft is a mighty weapon against this affliction, but it's not a silver bullet. Thus, stressful situations like some work (I will say this... I'm completely done with retail!), I should be avoiding. And I admittedly deal with a learning disability in conjunction with it all. That's not to say I'm stupid. But the water takes a little longer to seep into the soil, so to speak.
I'll be testing my learning impairment with a couple of gadgets I have that I'll dig into soon. I have this thing called a Tune-Bot, which is a little machine about the size of a guitar tuner that helps tune drums. It's simple I think to the average person, but I'm actually an average simple person. I should be able to get a handle on it if I persist enough, and watch my trigger points if I don't grab onto something about it. That's basically a guarantee to happen. The other gadget I have is a Fostex 8 track digital recorder I got second hand on the facebook marketplace. That thing will be considerably more of a challenge that I'll be enlisting help with, but I want to study the owner's manual for it first. My music hobby is just that, a hobby. I have no illusions of grandeur about becoming a 'recording artist'; hell, I can't even find a band to play in. But wow, does my creative motor get running when I'm on that Utopia oil. Then of course I forget my ideas when I sleep and then wake up. Hence the Fostex. Still, like a drawer or painter does artwork for themselves, I'll do this for myself. It's kind of a therapy.
Something else that's been helping is going to the gym. The wife and me go pretty much every other day, sometimes more, and we train for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. We start with 20 minutes of cardio, then we'll do what we call CHARMS, SHACK or LABS day. Or chest and arms, shoulders and back, legs and abs.We work one of those groups each workout. One week, we'll do freeweights, the next we use machines, and alternate. Each cycle, the first would be high reps and less weight; the next cycle would be lower reps with higher weights, or drop sets. It's been very effective for both of us. Neither one of us are body building or anything, either. This is for our health and for fun. Both of us are out to impress each other and that's it. I do know that for a couple of folks like us, there aren't a lot in our age group that go as hard as we do. And Lord, I've built my own She Hulk in my wife. She purely means business when she's in the gym.
That's all there is for now, I think. Might do a Random Thoughts thing over on the other page. Thanks for coming by, I appreciate you doing so.
