Tonight Channah and I had a date to go watch Jason play softball.  It was a real treat since the game started half an hour after her bedtime.  I packed up lots of stuff to do for when she got bored (I figured the game would keep her occupied for maybe 5 minutes.  I think I overestimated), some snacks and we headed off.

We were in the middle of a huge open field.  No lights but the ones on the diamond.  We could see the lunar eclipse perfectly with no interference from nearby light sources.  We got to make the bracha ose maaseh bereshit  together while we watch the moon completely disappear from view.

And you know what?  I made the bracha without any resentment towards God that if he could create such amazing things why couldn't he have let Gabbi live.  It is a hard time, we have a number of friends due any day, but I was able to see the amazing feat of nature for what it was- an amazing feat of nature.

One small step for me, one giant leap for my recovery.

Well my therapist thinks I am one of the strongest people she has ever seen, but also that having to fight for every single thing all  the time for the last little while is taking a physical as well as mental toll on me.  She wonders if there is anyway I could just avoid the people who hurt the most- unfortunately once I explained she understood why that was just not really possible.

She commended me for not giving up, and expressed real concern over the damage other people can do to me.

She also told me that Jason is a really good guy who loves me a lot- as if I had any doubt about that part of the equation.  She thinks we are a really strong couple and will land on our feet.  That we are mostly there and the next step is to build a wall around ourselves so certain people can't hurt us anymore.  I hate to admit it, but I think in this case she might be right.  It is something I have been thinking about for years but I never really thought my therapist would tell me that sometimes it is a good idea to find ways to shut out the world when the world is too hurtful.  I just assumed that I always needed to deal with pain the way everyone else in my family does- head on and move past it and don't look back.

It never rally occurred to me that maybe for me there are other options.  Maybe for a lot of us there are other options- we just never really thought to go looking for them because we have been conditioned not to.

Starting next week she is going to work on helping me build a wall to keep out the hurt that comes from contact with certain people.

Had a long talk with one of the women I know who have gone through this and now help council others before I went to bed last night and, while I did drug myself to sleep for fear of never getting there on my own, I did feel quite a bit better afterwards.  I am really, really glad that I found this woman.  She is actually a longtime family friend who I never had much to do with on a one to one scale because she was my mom's friend, but the truth is that I have no idea how I would have gotten this far without her.

Anyhow, she reminded me that there are just some people who will never "get it"- and that even if they do they might be to overwhelmed with their own grief that they just look for reasons to put it out of their heads and not deal with it.  There are just those people who take an "ok, it happened, now lets move on and never speak of it again" sort of approach to life.  That is obviously not my approach at all and so of course I am going to find those people hurtful, and it will seem that they don't care.

Now, being a touch further away from the puddle of tears I was last night, I can also look at it a little bit more objectively and say that there are just those people for whom emotional pain does not "count".  So long as I was still recovering from the c-section, I "earned" understanding.  Now that it is "only" emotional pain, I should just get over it and move on.

The truth is, I was really hurt last night when I found out that someone close to me was given the opportunity to come be with me during those first few horrible days, and while all along I was being told there was no way, in truth they just chose not to take the option.  As it is someone who is supposed to care about how I am doing and want to b there for me, I am more than a little upset.  The truth of the matter is, as my conversational companion pointed out, she might not have wanted to come because she was worried that by being here she might make things worse.

On the other hand, even if they only came for a few days I would have appreciated it.

So I guess the long story made even longer is that I need to remember that there are those out there callous enough to really think I can just get over this and move on.  But that's not me.  The fact that they choose to handle their problems that way and that it might work for them, does not mean that it would for me.  If they can't understand where I am coming from, no amount wasting my breath trying to explain it will make one iota of difference.

Why is it that God chose to make it that those who love you the most can hurt you the deepest?

As always, please keep praying for Rachl Marmel bat Mindle Hinda Chaya for a speedy and complet pregnancy that ends in a healthy, happy baby.

Thanks for listening.

I quit. I need help. I am sitting here a puddle of tears on my couch. There are some people you can't avoid for various reasons and they never stop hurting you.  And you just keep going back for more and more and more punishment.  I am a freaking masochist when it comes to this sort of thing.  I don't know why I even bother trying.  

Lord knows I know other people have their problems, but that does not mean that mine are so simple that "things will get better" and that "I am a fully functioning adult with a family of my own" so therefore I do not need a shoulder, or attention in any way shape or form.  

I know I don't matter much in the grand scheme of things, but this is going to be the end of my undoing.

I have decided that in some cases the side effects of the medication are not worth the good they do.  One drug in particular I am trying to cut cold turkey- the withdrawal effects may be awful for a few days, but today being day 1 of my experiment I have a supreme headache, but for the first time since I started taking it I can breathe without my mouth drying out, blink without pain, and was able to get out of bed without needing help because my knee joints were so sore.

I am not sure yet if I can expect the withdrawal effects to get worse or better, or at what point they will peak, but day 1 has me achy and shaky, but feeling better overall.  The only problem is that it was the one drug that actually seemed to be helping.

Had a huge fight with Jason over it, but I have decided that until someone is living in my shoes they have no right to judge my decisions when it comes to pain management.  I am not doing anything dangerous, merely possibly stupid, and I can always go back onto it if the withdrawal effects get to bad.

In other news I am not making any serious plans for the next few days.

This all started because my family doctor was unhappy with the drug and made me feel terrible for still needing drugs at all.  I asked her to help me deal with one of the side effects and she responded I should not be on it anymore anyway.  While technically I think that is between me and my shrink, it did get me thinking.  This is the result.

She was willing to send me for bloodwork to show me that what I thought was going on was probably all in my head.  She tacked on what I tend to think of as the "fat lady" panel.  Colesteral, tryglicerides etc.  Which I had done less than 6 months ago and were all fine.  I blacked them out.  I did not have them done.

I thought I had finally found a family doctor who accepted who I was despite the numbers on the scale.  I guess I was wrong.  I went to her for something totally not related, and she just decided, without discussion to tack on the flp even though it has been less than a year since I had it done and everything was fine.  Oh, and no, I am not still loosing weight, but I was stable, which I have been told on the drug in question is a minor miracle- so hopefully taking myself off of it will allow me to keep loosing.

In any case, between fighting with her, and fighting with Jason and skipping the first dose of the medication, lets just say yesterday was not my best day in a while.

Had a bit of a moron moment and thought today was Father's Day.  Sent out my father's day emails.  Gave Jason his gift (well, got it out, will wait for Channah to get home before he can open it, but now that he has seen it I am not going to take it back into hiding.  Good Lord what is happening to my brain.  It is like being pregnant but without the reward at the end.

I hate that.  Seems so often that line floats through my head.

In any case, I am doing a little better than last week.  It is a new box of the drug and I think something must be wrong with it as I am reacting really badly to it.  Going to see my family doctor today and have a call in to my shrink.

Just took the resperidone.  Please God let it start working quickly.