Reconnecting with old friends

I wrote last time that I have reconnected with a friend that I have known for probably 25-30 years, and it's as if we just picked up where we left off. We're filling in the wholes gradually for all that time, and that has been an interesting process. Long and many emails are going back and forth on sometimes more than once a day basis. It just feels so good to be connected again with someone who has known me after being virtually friendless for so long.

And through this friend, I have begun to connect with another friend. And he is a special case. He is literally a genius, but apparently has paranoid schizophrenia. He's also been fighting leukemia. But there is some alienation taking place on his wife's part, who doesn't want him to have contact with his old friends. He is definitely paranoid, with a web site full of CIA references and cryptography and reverse speech and such. And he behaves in a paranoid way, but I'm not completely sure he is schizophrenic. I know people talk about him having a "melt down" several years ago, and he only recently completed his PhD. But I really miss him and his happiness and jokes and song writing and singing. He was such a warm, loving human being. I feel like a fool for letting him get away! Alas, if we were only smart when we were young. Yet we really are making a connection. I intend to tell him about my BPD. I already told him about my son who has a form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome. I want him to be able to reach out to his old friends, and to confide in me. So I wrote him that our conversations would be kept private, which they will. He has alreadly given me access to a lot of personal information on his private website, and it speaks of a wounded soul. He's married and has 2 kids with his wife and she had 3 kids from a previous marriage. The older ones are grown and gone. It is really selfish of me, but I wish I had had or could have a chance at him as a partner. Not that I'd want to split up a family at all. It's just that I really miss him and wish that I had been the one there for him when he had his "melt down." If wishes were fishes... Oh well, I can at least renew our friendship and enjoy the benefits of that. Besides, he lives in Houston, which has to have the worse climate on the planet. Think of going into a steam sauna with all your clothes on and staying there for hours. To all you Texans, I have lived in Houston and so have a right to my opinion. Colorado has a much better and drier climate.

Anyway, the writing is going pretty well. I have reached several conclusions. One is that by all this writing, I've found out who my main character is. Yea! Now I am building the plot as well as the background.

I've heard from the temp job and there is going to be an orientation meeting this week. I bet that it starts the following week. That will be a change for me. I'll have to stop writing late into the night and limit myself to evenings and weekends. But it can be done. I don't have much of a social life, except online, anyway, so this will be good for me to have a day job. Not to mention the money.

And woe is me! I have run up $1000 on eBay from buying--all things I don't need, and things that I should be doing without. And multiple things--3 silver rose rings, for example. I mean, how many rose rings does a person need? And how many fingers do I have? I refuse to walk around wearing all my rings at once. I hate that look. But they are put on a credit card and are on their way here, along with a ton of other stuff--Buddhist pendants and what not. Now how many Buddhist pendants do you need? How many can you wear on a given day? This compulsion is finally catching up to me, I think, and I am beginning to see the consequences, which is good. I need to see the consequences. I need to face the fact that I'm not making good financial decisions, and that I'm hurting myself badly.

Well, that's all for tonight.

A crazy jump into the air

Hi, all. I'm back. This had been quite a challenging 3 weeks. I have struggled with cutting, even ran a knife over my arm, but didn't cut. My T thinks that is a big victory. I felt guilty for even trying. But it's true -- I didn't cut.

And now for the crazy part: I quit school for this semester and am working on writing my second novel. All of a sudden a compulsion came over me to write, write, write. I found I couldn't concentrate on school. And I'm just as bad off financially while going to school as compared to writing, so it really was my choice. It's just the first time in years that I've had an idea for a book, and I wanted to go for it. So after talking to my T and my friends and family, I withdrew from school and have been pounding away at the novel ever since. It is going very well. I wrote 80 pages in a week, which is phenominal. So obviously I was really prepared to write.

I have a full-time temporary job coming up for people with Bachelor's degrees to grade the reading/writing portion of State school assessment tests for kids from all age groups. I hope I can get one of the advanced positions that pays a little more. It's just for 6 weeks or so, but it's more than I'm making now. And I figure I can write an hour or so each evening, then all day on Saturday and Sunday.

In DBT we are going over Emotional Regulation, and I find it boring. I joined the group toward the end of the cycle when they were going over Distress Tolerance, which I found much more helpful than this has been so far. I don't know if I'll be able to stay in the group, anyway, because of the new job, and with the possibility of the job repeating. I know I want to stay with my T, but if I'm not in DBT I only get to see her once a month, unlike the twice a month we see each other now. The last time we spoke, we just reviewed a 6 month plan. And then I had to take off and get some free meds before they closed.

But I'm having trouble with buying on eBay again. Compulsive buying. In our 6 month plan, we are treating the compulsive buying as if it were a form of self-harm, which it is. I just hope that I can get past it. It has been going on for more years than I can remember; I just didn't associate it with being any more than a bad habit until DBT and BPD came along. It is certainly wreckless behavior. I hope my T and I can address it on Tuesday.

But the book is going well. I'm reading a book about Success Principles by Jack Canfield, and one of the first rules he mentions is that we are 100% responsible for our lives. We get situations that come up, but it is our reactions to them that determine the outcome. This has been a very helpful book to me. I am tired of being in poverty and not being successful. But in the meantime, the book's concepts have helped me to jump out on a limb and quit school and write my book. This will be my second published novel, by the way, though I have written other novels which got put into drawers. I'm certain that it's going to sell because I intend to make it a good, creative book.

My self-confidence has soared, and I'm working many hours a day on the book. When I'm not directly writing chapters, I'm pondering and writing background notes. I refuse to see that where I am now, in the middle, is a quagmire. I just haven't created the exciting middle yet. That's the spirit!

I don't know if I'll continue in DBT or not. At the center where I go, they completely eliminated the most core session -- that on mindfulness, which is the key to the whole program. Instead they cover it in one session at the start of the other sessions, and each time they cover it it is the same. So I feel that I'm missing a key part of DBT. Maybe I can get into a DBT group that covers mindfulness in a deep and thorough way.

I have been in continual contact with the friend from high school who found me after years of trying. She had no idea what my last name might be. As it turns out, when I got my first divorce, I changed my name back to my maiden name and have kept it ever since -- partly out of work issues, but partly because I just LIKE my name, and I don't want to change it again for anybody. That doesn't mean I don't respect guys who do want you to change your name to theirs. It's just that I've been there and done that, and don't want to change it anymore. Especially as a writer, you've got to keep your name.

So will I finish graduate school? I have no idea. If it was a choice between writing books for a living and doing Instructional Design for Online Learning, I think I'd choose the books. But I'm almost through with my degree, and I don't want to give up before I'm almost over. I'll cross that bridge in January when I see how far along in the book I am, and if I will have time to work on school as well as work full time. I figure I can only do two out of the three, and I have to take the job offering the real money. So that leaves writing and going to school. And if I don't take a class in January, I'll have to start paying back my student loans, which would suck. I'd really like my master's degree, but we'll see how the writing is going, if there's any interest in it, how good it is, etc. With my background as a book editor, I have an advantage that a lot of people don't have in that I have contacts in the industry, and I know what is expected from a manuscript. So my standards are pretty high. I would really like a nice advance against royalties, and in order to pull that off, I am going to have to do the finest writing I've ever done.

So if I can just keep from cutting myself and spending myself into povery and stay on track with the book, maybe good things will come of it. I told my sister I was taking a big risk. She said that I took a big risk when I moved back to Denver, so what else was new? I take risks. I just hope this one will pay off.

My apologies to everybody for not keeping up with the blog. I will try to do a better job of that.

Slices of depression

Waves of depression sweep over me, knocking me off balance. I can't think, I can't read, I can't study, I can't watch tv. All because I talked to my ex-husband about taxes today (I have to send him the bill) and he told me that his girlfriend had now moved in with him, and that if I didn't want to talk to her I should call his cell phone.

It's not as if it's a surprise, and yet it shocks me anyway. Am I jealous of her? No, I don't think so. I'm jealous of him having a relationship and a good job and a house and I'm struggling to simply survive. But to have a steady relationship on top of the good job and house just seems unfair.

Damn it, life seems so unfair at times -- like all the time for me for the last few years. My life has been getting nothing but worse and worse. What am I fucking doing wrong? I'm busting my ass to get a job, but haven't had one interview out of probably 30 applications. Well, I guess that's not true. I had one interview, and it went very well, and I didn't get the job. So I'm running out of money, using up the last of my reserve, and found out that my girlfriend that I thought was going to let me live with her has changed her mind, even though she said she wouldn't see me on the streets.

School has started again, and I don't really want to study this subject any more. But I want to finish my Master's, so somehow I've got to force myself. I'm doing well in school, but I can't provide for myself. How in the hell can I turn this around? I'm trying to get in touch with a long ago reference to use for jobs, but he is proving difficult to find. I need his recommendation, even though it was a long time ago. I haven't worked in so long I desperately need the reference, and also my former boss's too, if I can find her. Do you have any idea how many H.C.'s there are in California, much less the New York area? I have to hunt her down and get a recommendation from her as well. I can maybe use a professor for a reference or two, but that is pushing it. Employers want to know how I do on the job, not how I do in school. Two very different things.

So I am distressed, thinking of cutting, trying not to cut, and trying to find a way to avoid these overwhelming feelings until they stop being so overwhelming. I might read a fun book. Anything to get my mind off slicing my arms. DBT says Distract, Soothe, Nurture, and many other things during overwhelming feelings, so that's what I must do.

I met a friend at the airport yesterday who had a 3 hour layover here, and even though we hadn't seen or talked to each other in 20 years, we picked up where we left off, and she invited me to come see her at her house in Washington. I have to remember some of the good things, too. But it is so hard when depression pounds you again and again like a migraine that won't let go. I made myself sick on pretzels for dinner.

And speaking of migraines, I had one of those today too. What a day. I've been nauseated because of the headache, and now I'm nauseated over the pretzels.

But at least I found the tax notice. I had lost that, and I really needed to find it. And I did.

What is blocking me from being successful in life? I am trying so fucking hard.