I Will Not Suffer In Silence

Just woke up from the second of two nightmares in a row, nearly in a panic attack, complete with being unable to breathe and wanting to cry hysterically.

I raced through the house looking for my man, but he’d ony just left for work seconds before I awoke.

I’ve just popped 1mg of Lorazepam to calm the hell down.

This is what my life is becoming? Again?

I stayed home today on account of mental and health problems. The mental is due to work. The health is due to george. George has not shown himself physically, yet, but as of yesterday morning, I began having cramps and feeling run over. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like I’d been in a car accident, because my entire body was stiff with pain. The worst of the pain was my lower back.
I usually only get upper back pain due to the bulging disks in my neck. But the lower back is monthly and means george is coming.

The entire body being locked with wrenching pain - that’s new. Probably also due to work stress.

The nightmares were probably a mixture of said stress along with me having taken a Tylenol 3 last night to ease the pain and get to sleep. Every time I take Tylenol 3, I’m guaranteed to have nightmares.

In the first one, I was in the house I live in now, only it was laid out differently. I was helping care for an elderly man who was related to me distantly on my dad’s side of the family, and who was also my campaign manager.
(…campaign??)

A nurse was in the house as well. She either came by daily or was a live-in, and administered some respiratory drug intraveinously each day. The drug looked like a small inhaler and was inserted into a pocket attached to the guy’s I.V.
The guy was in his seventies and was a smoker. By this stage of his disease, he was kept in a glass case on the floor. He had a twin sized mattress to lay on for his long, thin frame.

I saw him smoking IN the glass case, biding his time.

Well, his respiratory drug ran out, and the nurse was in the other room watching TV or something. I ran to get her as soon as I realised the drug had run out, because the old guy started thrashing about.
At first she was disaffected by my anxiety and took her time getting to the living room where the guy was. Then she saw him thrashing and leapt into action.
Only…she couldn’t find the replacement medication cannister!

We tore apart the house looking for the medication, but she’d let him run out! I ran outside with the cordless phone, calling 911.
I got a woman on the line who was as disaffected as the nurse inside, until she realised the guy was in cardiac arrest and actually dying. Then SHE got hysterical and said an ambulance was on the way. I hung up and heard an ambulance get closer and closer, then the sirens stopped somewhere nearby…the ambulance was for someone else.
I waited. I didn’t want to go back inside to see the guy dying.

Another older gentleman lived in the unit behind ours and had heard commotion. He was now trying to help the nurse, and seeing that she’d failed his friend badly, took the guy out of my house and brought him next door into his house. I didn’t see the nurse after that. I went next door and saw the guy slumped over and my neighbor trying to hold him up. Just as I was backing away crying, the guy woke up, stood bolt upright, and staggered towards the front door in a daze, then slumped again, but was still conscious.

I ran outside again and got to my car. For some reason, my cell phone was in the car. I used the cell phone to dial 911 and got some young-sounding guy on the line. By this time I was angry and hysterical and yelling and swearing a lot. The guy was rude back to me and asked me to think of him right now - the fact that he has to listen to people like me and by the way, he CAN’T get me an ambulance right now. Turns out he was in his own private ambulance and was busy. I hung up on him and pressed the red button on my cell phone. This auto-dials a programmed-in emergency number. Perhaps I was dialing the wrong thing before?
I can’t remember what happened next - I think I kept getting disconnected or put on hold (in real life in the U.S., that is the real actual 911. You get put on hold. I shit you not).

I ran back to my neighbor who was already on to what my next plan was. He was trying to carry the guy out to his car so we could drive him to the hospital. The hospital is only a few blocks away for fook’s sake. The neighbor was too weak to carry his friend, so I did it. I held the guy like a toddler on my left hip and slumped over my left shoulder, and carried his long, lanky, draping frame to the neighbor’s car. We all got in the front seat - one of the old bench style seats in the old big cars. I belted myself and the old man in and the neighbor drove us to the hospital. I held onto the old man the entire way.
That’s all I remember.

In the second dream, I was campaigning for local office. I can’t recall in what capacity - something important enough to have the media dogging us. We were all gathering at some person’s house, where both parties would take off for an important farm town to make our speeches.

The guy running against me was a bit older than me and dressed like a company CEO. Whereas I was dressed in a long black velvet skirt and a blouse of some sort, also black.
We sat in the small living room of a farm house, waiting. I asked for whisky to drink to calm my nerves. Everyone gave me strange and/or disapproving looks, because I’m female.

I remember thinking, “how did I get myself into this? I don’t want to go through with this. I can’t argue against that guy! I have no talking points! I have no campaign! This will make a mockery out of me. How did I allow myself to commit to this?”

The company man wanted to ride into town on a tractor to show his loyalty to the farmers. I had no special plan, but ended up riding behind him on a day laborer’s truck. I guess that would be the better of the two, wouldn’t it?

After our ride into town, we ended up in another small farmhouse living room, laid out similar to the one we’d started in. The journalists were all there, setting up for all the camera and video shots of me and the guy running against me to interview each other about our politics and positions.

Suddenly, I found myself in a short golden-brown shirt and mini-skirt. I was told this was more appropriate than my gothic look. The outfit made me look like a corporate drone in the (in)human resources department.

Even stranger, I was able to view this from outside myself. I was a spirit in the room or an audience member watching my own self.

The shots were set up and suddenly my outfit began to fall apart at the opening of the interview. I had sat up straight and my shirt rose above the waist line to reveal my stomach, while the criss-cross style top decided to part at the right breast, revealing the fact that I had no bra on underneath. I noticed that I had very different skin. A woman next to me on the couch where I sat reached over to shield my corporate self’s breast from the cameras as I looked at the self directly in front of me.

My other self got up after a moment and excused herself towards the bathroom, while the opposing party on the other side of the living room looked on in amusement. My other self, just short of the bathroom, turned towards the room behind her instead and started to let out a loud “aaagggghhhhh!!” as she shook, obviously having a mental meltdown. I ran to my other self and ushered her into the room away from the media to calm her, and that’s when I woke up, about to yell “aaagggghhhhh!!” because I couldn’t breathe and was having a panic attack.

George is still not here, but I’m tired as hell.

I have to use today to clean the house and look for a job and perfect cover letters. But I need the anxiety to please go away.

I don’t want to be the drugged housewife who is too mental to work.

While at work yesterday, one of my cow-orkers decided to pick me to vent her lovelife woes to, and asked if we could hang out at lunch. I dig this cow-orker, so I said yes. The entire lunch hour was spent trying to tell me the backstory leading up to the clincher. The entire hour!
Because she didn’t finish her story, it had to be continued, but I didn’t think she’d try to continue it through the rest of MY workday. This is where the line was crossed.

I have major anxiety issues around TIME and I told her this at lunch as soon as she crossed the half-hour mark. Every second of my time is regulated at work. I have exactly 15 minutes for break twice a day and exactly 60 minutes for lunch. I have to be back in my seat at the appropriate time and ready to take calls or I stress out because management says they log into our machines when we are NOT on time, to see what we are doing. I don’t care if she doesn’t care about her time at work. That’s not my problem. But don’t make your bad habits MY problem, y’know? I had to tell her several times to go back to her desk or that I’d reply to her chat messages as soon as I could.

She’s my age but I felt like I was counselling a high schooler.

The argument could be made that I ALLOWED my time to be owned by this girl, and that is correct. I was trying to be a good listener. She sought me out. But after awhile it crossed the line is all, and I don’t always know how to stop it while in the midst of it. It’s only after the injury that I can look back and see where things should have been reigned in.

*sigh*

So I came home last night and was still depressed in general. I was worn out from my cow-orker but depressed because of PMS. Two different things intersecting. I took a muscle relaxer because my upper back and neck were stiff yet again, and the joints aching. I plopped down in front of the TV to finish watching Berkeley Square.

When I was finished watching TV, I began sobbing. I was mad at the TV series. I was mad at the fact that I’ve just accepted full time employment with the job that’s so far away. I was depressed because I spent a lot of money in the past week and I should be saving it because I owe on two personal loans. I was mad that there was no one to go clubbing with - and no club night last night anyway. I cried because I missed my boyfriend. I cried because Friday was my grandmother’s birthday (She’s been dead for 21 years though). I cried because I was alone while a party went on next door. I cried because I’m afraid of being in pain again this month from george, who I thought was due yesterday but is really due today. Related to that, I cried because I’m afraid I’ll miss more work this month from george pain, even though I’ve just had surgery - people at work think I’m all better now. They don’t understand.

I woke up this morning after having two nightmares. The first involved being witness to three people being murdered by a psychopath and being made into sausage. The second involved me getting away from a male - I hurt him and caused him to bleed heavily when I thought I was being attacked. He came after me. Someone shot him or otherwise splattered him, and I looked back and saw a lung gush with massive amounts of blood out of the guy’s mouth. I looked in horror as I realised I’d be blamed for the guy’s death and people would never know I was the one who was attacked.

I suspect too that the muscle relaxers I’ve been taking before bed this week have had a CNS Depressant effect on me, further irritating my already fragile emotions which are a result in my opinion of continued post-op blues and PMS.

Regarding post-op developments…
My belly button and the area just below the button are still painful to the touch and still bruised inside. I still have the three raised scabs. It’s still painful to lay on my stomach, and sometimes hurts when I roll over onto my side, or if I get up out of bed too quick. I keep forgetting to adhere to the rule against picking up heavy things, but I haven’t tried to pick up a computer monitor or anything stupid like that. ;)
So healing continues to go well.

I’m just impatient for george to show up and leave already, and I’m worrying about the birth control pill’s side effects.

I went face down on the bed to take a Tylenol 3-induced nap and had the following dream:

I was in college at a night class with B and we were being shown an educational movie.
The teacher gave us a break at some point during the movie, and I drove my car over to the bathroom, which was at an elementary school around the corner from the college.

Looking in my side view mirror, I said, “No, she’s not behind me, don’t worry about it.” Two cars had pulled in front of her from an adjacent side-street as I drove down the road.
I neared the corner where I would turn right and enter the parking lot to the college, and I wondered if I should go back to the college and finish up class, or if I should just go home, because I was going to be quite late back to class anyway.

The dream ended and I woke up pretty much gasping for air, because the Tylenol 3 had depressed my respiratory system AND I was laying face down on a soft bed. I was out of breath for several minutes and had to sit up straight and take deliberate, slow breaths to get back to normal.

When I woke up, I had to pee very badly. This is always the case that when I dream of having to use the bathroom, it means that I have to use the bathroom in real life.

The part about me being in college is a result of me reading a book before my nap and thinking to myself, “I should really get my ass back into college.”

Me being so deathly afraid of others looking at me half naked is a normal extension of my insecurity issues.

The elderly Chinese woman who was sweeping…hmmm. I would say she could compare to my boss, but my boss is Japanese and not elderly. Although she does make a great habit of looking away and letting my co-worker destroy the damned place around her. Hmmm sweeping stuff under the rug…doesn’t see a problem, must not exist…
The boss wants compassion for her patients, but sings la la la while looking the other way as the co-worker degrades the patients or gets mean with them. The boss wants to treat each situation with honesty and give it your best as it comes up, while the co-worker tells me “No, uh-uh, I ain’t got time, that person called in too late, just say you forgot to order it and put the file away. And don’t bother telling [our boss], there ain’t nothin we can do. I don’t want to deal with talking to [the patient] again when we already know that the contacts won’t be here in that short of time. I don’t like her, anyway.”
(Then she turns around and, an hour later, takes a last minute order from an African-American woman who physically stopped into the office, when she thinks I’m not paying attention).

The yelling at the woman who humiliated me is of course a throwback to the scuffle I got into with my co-worker last week. While we were talking things out, I’d said that I don’t plan to be at this job past December. She’d mentioned that she didn’t think she’d stay in this job, either. It was only supposed to be temporary, and it turned into three years so far.

You don’t know how much her statement both terrified me and repulsed me.
Well, I guess now you do…through my dream. I want to tell my co-worker the things I yelled at the maid in the bathroom in my dream.

The fear of being followed for retaliatory violence is just my usual brain thinking, because I grew up in and around Detroit, where that sort of behaviour is commonplace, and is what I had happen to me at least twice in my life while living there, and what I’ve done to others, because as I said, that sort of thing is commonplace. It’s very immature and wrong, but I’ve also read stories that people do that sort of thing in the Bay Area, too.

*whew* I’m tired again after all that analysing.