Monday, January 28, 2013

A Nip O' Nyctophobia

Ah, the night. I have never been friends with it. Not once in my life have I ever said, "It's dark, and that's okay." I used to say my fear was of the dark, period. Now I've realized that my fear isn't darkness itself, but rather what the darkness might be hiding.

My father used to say, "There's nothing in the dark that's not in the daylight," as if that's supposed to comfort me. It doesn't I know that already. The problem is, there are horrible things in the daylight. I have seen some of them. I have had some of them happen to me. And while we're on the subject, no, I don't ever feel completely at ease during the day either. PTSD isn't at ease anywhere. I'm always a little more nervous and jumpy than I'd like, no matter what time it is. Sometimes I'm downright paranoid. But I'm one of those people who believes in being able to see what's coming at me so I can be prepared for the shit storm, if you will. If I can see it, I can fight it. That's why I'm not on good terms with the night: because it hides things from view. Because who knows what could happen when the lights go out and I start to fall asleep and I'm off guard, just not ready?

I've tried telling myself that my apartment is as close to impenetrable as it's going to get. All doors leading to the outside of the building lock automatically at 4 pm every day. I have a knob lock and a chain lock on the door to my unit, and I live on the top floor: the only way someone's getting in without me knowing about it is if Spiderman climbs up the side of the building  and sneaks in through the window, and I really don't think Spiderman gives that much of a damn about me. And yet I can't shake the conviction that darkness is a cloaking device for every imaginable evil.

I've been trying a new coping skill to help me come to terms with nighttime: imagery. Lou-Dad likes to remind me that the night will hide me as well as it'll hide anything else, so I lie down and imagine myself as a giant panther, black as pitch, roaming the night as a shadow and owning the darkness, a predator who is in control and will not be startled by any scuttling in the leaves ... and it works until one of my neighbors shouts or breaks a dish, and then I'm back in my own body and seizing up with fear in the way only the cerebrally   palsied can do: my entire body lifts up from the couch in one hugely exaggerated startle response, every joint straightening with a simultaneous snap, every muscle tensed to its limit and shaking. Needless to say, this imagery thing needs more work. But how? How do I dial down the adrenaline, the natural caution? I feel like I've tried everything to conquer this fear, from the aversion principle all the way down to magick: mounting a dozen tiny mirrors on the wall on either side of the doorway to the bedroom to prevent evil from entering.

I guess I am improving, bit by tiny bit: last night I slept with only the light under the stove hood on and the glow from the TV, and I listened to nature music instead of some show -- I usually need voices, not music. But then there will come a period of weeks or even months when every light in this tiny place has to be on before I can even entertain the idea of shutting my eyes, and I can't tell what causes the difference. Some subconscious thing, I guess. I can count the number of times in the past ten years that I've actually gone to sleep with no lights on and no TV going on one hand. I long for the ability to lie down in the darkness and feel safe, but it never comes. It's embarrassing, when I'm staying over somewhere: hoping the spare room has a TV so I can leave it on, or a small lamp somewhere, or even a streetlight shining through the window, because otherwise I'm faced with the choice of lying awake all night or owning up to being scared of the dark. Le sigh. I guess I just have to keep trying.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Silly Me

I'm a lot happier today than I was in that last entry.

See, I realized something: maybe I'm not supposed to be working right now. My mother is ill and quite possibly dying of a disease she won't admit she has, and if I was working, I wouldn't be able to make it home for a visit. Since I'm not working (full-time, that is) and since my boss at MPC would be willing to do without me for a bit, I can leave for Indiana as soon as I get the money and stay for as long as I feel like staying. I could stay for a month if I wanted -- house-hopping, of course, so my sister and her husband won't insist upon giving up their bed for an entire month; they refuse to allow me to sleep on the sofa, even though I do that at home a lot of nights anyway and their couch is 10 million times more comfortable than my love seat.

I could see everyone I didn't get to see last time I was there. I could even go to Indy and see Missie AGAIN, for the second time in less than 2 years. That's a luxury that has been unheard of so far, ever since I moved here: the ability to go home and stay there until I damn well feel like leaving. PLUS I got paid yesterday, and assuming I don't have to touch it to keep from overdrawing my broke-ass checking account, it's a third of a plane ticket to Indy and back. A full third!

So here I am, and I have this blessing I wasn't even counting. Silly me...

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Depressing Rant

I've been more than a bit of a malcontent lately. I just feel ... trapped. Stagnant. Stunted. Restrained. You get the drift. I'm frothing at the mouth for something to happen, something that will move me forward, but I just keep sitting in the same damned place. And every day I do the same things and go the same places and see the same sights, while the world goes on around me. I'm stuck in a world where everything moves but me.

I expected things to be different. I guess that's part of my problem -- I expected. One should learn never to expect things to be a certain way; it leads to disappointment. I thought I'd at least have a job by now, maybe a bigger apartment, a sibling for Jude-Cat. What I want out of life is relatively simple ... at least I think it is. I look around me at my friends, at people my age with houses and spouses and kids, and I want half of what they've got: an apartment I can stretch out my arms in, a date for next Friday, another cat. But here I sit, stuck in neutral while everyone else is in drive. I am, to put it bluntly, a loser.

Yes, I am feeling sorry for myself -- it's yet another one of my charms come lately. I've told myself all sorts of worn-out platitudes to snap myself out of this funk, all the way down to, "Brighten the corner where you are!" They don't work. In all honesty, I've felt this coming on for months: ever since I graduated, it's gotten a little worse every day, bit by bit. School wrung me out like a wet rag, but at least I had something to do. Now ... well now, not even reading really helps. I used to be able to lose myself in a book so easily, but these days I want to be out living my own life, not sitting on my worn-out, 3rd-hand love seat reading about someone else's.

I've also become acutely more aware of my poverty. I'm trying to be thankful for a roof and food and heat, but all I feel is frustrated. I have all this free time on my hands, and I don't even have the money to go anywhere. I have to choose between flying home to see my dying mother or saving what little money I have to help with a possible move to Harrisburg to grad school a year from now, if I can get there at all because of all the hurdles and the loans and the vast amount of debt it'll put me in. I have no reason to believe, at this point, that life after a Master's degree will be any different than life after a Bachelor's. What if I put myself $40,000 more in the hole and still can't find a job? It's harder for the handicapped to break into the world of the gainfully employed, and that's not self pity -- it's a fact. So I have hurdles because I'm poor and hurdles because I'm disabled, and hurdles because I'm poor and disabled ...

Look, universe. I know I've jumped a lot of hurdles in my life, but that's part of my problem. I'm tired. I would love for something to go my way just once.

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Random Updates! Read Them and Yawn!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Joyous Hanukkah, don't drink and drive, and all that stuff I never got to this year.

In case you're wondering, I spent Christmas Eve at the tree farm in Slatington and Christmas at my Aunt Jen's in Burlington, NJ this year. Her daughter Bonnie is 4 years old now, and we had some good times ... Bon got a LEGO set for Christmas that was a chemistry lab with a little lady scientist, and she spent the larger part of the afternoon turning me, Momma, and Uncle John's girlfriend Kathleen into dragons. It was very elaborate. There was even a point at which we all had to join hands and walk in a circle around an imaginary fire to make the "experiment" work right.

Also in case you're wondering, I still don't have a full-time job, but I'm still trying. I have 2 to follow up on in the morning, and the temp agency I'm signed with did actually call me a week ago tomorrow to offer me something up at Penn College, but I didn't notice till today because the answering machine has been turned upside down on the floor for a week. (Don't look at me like that. The only reason I have a phone and an answering machine to begin with is because I can't convince everyone to just Facebook me. I seriously hate my phone right now. I'm going through a self-isolation phase, meaning I want nothing to do with people unless I choose to have something to do with people. That damned phone rings, and it's like the people are screaming at me to pay attention to them. The phone can't have a nice ring; it can't play me some birdsong or "Claire de Lune" or something pleasant -- no, it has to scream: I'M A PHONE! I'M A PHONE! ANSWER ME! I'm this close to throwing it out the window and then running downstairs to dance on the broken bits.)

Anyway, I am going to call the agency in the morning to see if the position still needs to be filled. I doubt it, for which I could kick myself, but hey -- this is the first time THEY'VE called ME instead of the other way around, so maybe there's some hope on the horizon. Meanwhile, my part-time job gets progressively more interesting: I'm still doing payroll, and now I've broken into marketing and advertising. I'm now the person who finds potential customers and sends out the mass mailings seeking new contracts, and I have a new Facebook page in the works for the business, too, which shall be unveiled in all its glory once it is complete. We have an ad on the local radio station too, but my boss did that. Maybe I can write the next one :)

Also, in early December, I had a speaking engagement at the college to discuss life with disability with Social Work majors. I didn't get paid a single red cent for that, but I'm still going to offer to go back this term, as I quite enjoyed it. I'm one of those weirdos who loves public speaking. And who knows? If I build myself a reputation as a speaker, I could turn it into a paying gig!

That pretty much brings us up to date on The Mundane Life and Times of Tiffany B., aside from a few oddments: my mother is still ill and had another surgery, and there are plans roiling around in my head of making my way to that neck of the woods to see her, maybe ...

and

I have decided to start bird watching. Dad bought me a pretty good pair of binoculars, but I haven't seen any birds yet. Mostly the binoculars have been employed in helping me spy on people from the 5th-story balcony.

FIN.