Feeling Like a Baby Boomer!

It’s only 9:38pm and I’m in bed watching King of the Hill, wishing I could go back to the better days of the nineties. I mean, I’m only 33, but I feel like a baby boomer talking about “back in my day things were better, simpler.”

I miss the days when I had insomnia that kept me up all night. I’d use that time to my creative advantage. I could really use that alone nighttime energy.

Everything in life is different now. I miss my youth, not because I fear getting old, but because I feel like my childhood and adolescence were stolen from me… by family.

I’ll enjoy watching King of the Hill while I fall asleep, unless I change it over to Fargo. The cold weather always makes me think of Fargo.

Abandoned by My Psychiatrist, Yet Again.

I am giving up on therapists and psychiatrists alike. Last week I called to schedule my usual 3 month follow up with my psychiatrist and was told he is no longer with the company… instant panic attack…

“Can I schedule you an appointment with another doctor?” the girl on the other end of the phone asked with distain.

I have been going to the same psychiatrist office for 6 years. I’ve had 4 (this would now be my 5th) different therapists.

Each time the company lets my current psych. go, they charge me a new patient intake fee of $450.00 and treat me like a new patient… asking me all of the usual boring and pointless questions so that this new doctor can get to know me.

I have abandonment issues and this company keeps shuffling me around different doctors like I’m an only child in between foster homes. I’m starting to wonder if they even understand anxiety and panic disorder?

My heart is pounding out of my chest as I write this. I cannot go through another therapist. I cannot go through another intake.

Unfortunately, this means I am going to have to ween myself off my anxiety medication. I never benefited from the talk portion of therapy. Maybe it is because I have never connected with a doctor. Not one that made me feel safe.

Doctors, especially psychiatrists, are such judgmental people! Like they’re fucking perfect? Please.

UPDATE 4/10/21: Just received a voicemail from my psychiatrist office to reschedule my “intake” appointment on Tuesday because THAT provider is no longer with the company. What the fuck?

Patients should be notified when doctors leave a company and given the opportunity to follow them or stay with the company. How is having a different psychiatrist each year helpful to someone’s mental health? It’s not.

Nightmare Family Visit: Part 1

It seems my life is at another crossroads. I had a nightmare weekend. I went down to my mom’s house in New Jersey to help her; she has a form of ALS, commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It’s not only heartbreaking to have a parent with such a debilitating illness, it’s also… what’s the word I want to use… it’s also life altering for you as an adult child. Especially when your parents are divorced and your mother doesn’t have a partner to step in and take care of her like she deserves to be. The cherry on top is that my two sisters are not any help – they actually cause MORE problems when they come around.

My younger sister, Rachael, moved in to help my mom when I moved up to New England to finally start building my own life with my fiancé, after dedicating 10 years of my life to being my mother’s sole adult child caretaker. I was happy about that because it gave me a level of comfort knowing that my mom wouldn’t be living alone since she can’t take care of herself due to the ALS. But, Rachael always screws things up. She moved in with her two kids and their father, who is a complete psychopath. He kicked holes in doors, broke mirrors that have been in our family for generations, smeared my sister’s makeup all over the shower-tub in the bathroom upstairs, and (from what my mom told me) held a gun to Rachael’s head, threatening her life. He moved out and took the kids back to the city with him after being there a few months of his rain of chaos because he found out that Rachael was sleeping around with another guy that lived near my mom’s house… who turned out to be an even bigger psychopath than the first one. I honestly didn’t think it was possible, but leave it to her to find the sickos. She has the worst taste in men… and they’re not even attractive! My sister is beautiful and could easily get a really wonderful guy if she stopped looking in the wrong places.

I didn’t really believe that part about the gun as my mother tends to embellish. BUT the last time I was there visiting, I was lounging on the sofa after my sister, my mom, and I smoked some weed. I heard my sister come in and sit on the other sofa, she called my name to get my attention and pulled out a huge glock from the center storage built-in the arm rest of the couch… she leaned forward with it and smirked. It was shiny silver and wrapped in one of my mother’s handkerchiefs. I asked the obvious questions: “Is that yours? Or is it Tony’s?”

“Yeah, it’s mine. I mean it is Tony’s, but I know how to use it” she replied casually.

When they lived there before, he kept a fucking machete on their nightstand. This wasn’t the bad part of the city that they’re used to living in. It’s the Jersey Shore. It’s a small peaceful (for the most part) town.

My cloudy mind was in shock regardless. My mom wasn’t being dramatic when she told me about it. Which means she probably wasn’t lying to me when she said Rachael is pregnant with psycho #2’s baby. Who stopped by just a few hours after I arrived at my mom’s during that visit. He was drunk. My sister was stupid. I heard her screaming outside and my mom’s eyes widened and she told me to go out there because he is hurting her. I was so confused. I walked out back and saw him with my sister’s arm locked behind her back. She was crying and kept yelling “RJ get him off me, RJ get him off me!”

I walked right up to them and told him to let her go and I grabbed her to get her out of his violent grip, “She has my phone, tell her to give me back my phone” he slurred.

Once released, Rach ran into the house and locked herself in my mom’s bathroom with his phone. Scrolling through his photos and conversations, yelling out what she was discovering, “He’s been texting some chick and she talked him into sending her pictures of his dick!”

I impatiently attempted to get her to unlock the door. When I stepped away to get the little key to poke through the hole, I heard a BANG. He busted through my mom’s bathroom door and grabbed his phone out of the toilet. Then ran out the back door to his car. I followed and saw Rachael darting out of the front door towards his car. She lunged herself into his window and was howling “WHY?! JUST TELL ME WHY?! WHY?!” I cut my finger while trying to pry her out of the window. The psycho was backing out of the driveway and ran over my right foot.

I wanted to wake up and find this all to be a vivid nightmare. But this is my reality. I was born into a crazy fucked up family. I always visualize myself visiting my family and cooking dinner together, sitting and talking about life for hours, watching movies, and sometimes smoking a little pot. My idea of a good time. I always forget the family in my head is never the one that shows up.

And I now realize I’ve rambled on for paragraphs about this one particular visit instead of writing about what I originally had in mind. I should have written this after coming back home from that visit. I’ll make another post about my most recent visit this past weekend to help my mom, after Rachael ran away to the city with her kids and their father. She was supposed to only visit for a week and then come back with the my niece and nephew. She left the middle of February and it’s now March 10th and she hasn’t returned.

Part 2 coming soon…