I’m running on fumes.

Emotionally, physically, financially.

The whole picture is thin right now.

The good thing is that I cleaned out the Pilot (on Friday afternoon last week).

Got it ready for today – for getting rid of it for good.

That was a relief to get it cleaned out, but it’s absolutely a stressor all on its own.

I don’t want to have to buy a new-to-me car.

I don’t want to spend the money that I already don’t have.

I don’t want to go into more debt for a car.

I’m so terrified that the bank isn’t going to give me a loan, even with a co-signer.

I’m doing good with the budget my Dad helped me make at least.

I’m following it, and it makes me feel really, quite relieved that it’s being followed.

It takes some of the stress off somehow.

But money is just so fucking stressful in general.

I absolutely hate it.

Probably because I never have enough of it.

It’s now a few days later, it’s Monday, and I only got $800 for the Pilot today.

I called a ton of different salvage yards and junkyards, and that’s the best offer.

It’s better than the $400 – $450 that the big name places were offering.

So, I ended up going with a local salvage yard.

As I was writing this entry, the guy from the junkyard came and went with the Pilot.

I took the $800 to the bank and stuck it into my savings account for the new-to-me car – when I get one.

I saw him drive away with the Pilot being towed behind on a flatbed.

It’s the end of an era.

I thought I would feel more sad and anxious, but I’m sorta relieved.

It’s kinda nice to be done with it – to have an answer, and some money in my savings.

The guy who picked it up was super nice too, and had originally quoted me $500-$600.

So, I did end up getting a bit more for it than that.

I still think it’s worth more than that, but maybe I’m just being sentimental.

It was sad to see it go.

I decided I don’t want anyone test driving it, even with a disclaimer.

It’s dangerous.

There are reports on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website of fucking metal shards causing severe injury and even death, when the driver’s steering wheel airbag deploys.

Fuck, man.

I think Honda should be responsible for this shit.

But what do I know?

At least it’s over and done, and I can stop thinking about the past and start gearing up for the future.

So, there’s not only the Pilot today, but the lady who stabbed me is up for parole again this year.

I just got the email this morning with her parole hearing date sometime in July.

It comes up every spring/summer.

And every spring/summer I have to write a new “victim impact statement”, relive that shitty stabbing, and write something that persuades the parole board to keep her in prison for her full sentence.

Until February of 2029.

So I just emailed them a new one for the year.

I always bring up how she killed one of the guys she stabbed, just before she stabbed me.

He died of a staph infection from the stabbing, but in my opinion, she killed him.

He was a sweet guy too.

It’s so sad, and she should be held accountable for her fucking actions with him and me.

Not to mention the flashbacks I have and the fact I have to get HIV, STI and Hepatitis testing all the time within the last 5 years.

HIV especially is tricky – it can remain dormant for years before testing positive for it.

So, I mentioned all of that too.

Fuck her.

She needs to stay in prison. 

So, it’s been a stressful week, and it’s only noon on Monday.

Ha!

At least I’m looking forward to housesitting for my parents in about a week, for a couple of weeks.

It’s gonna be nice to just be away from my apartment for a minute.

Away from the city lights and noises.

They’re overwhelming sometimes.

I’m going over there again this weekend too, from Thursday to Monday, just to hang out with them before they leave.

It’ll be good.

I love hanging out with them.

Oh, I took a nap on Saturday for the first time in months.

It felt so nice.

And I feel like it helped me catch up on my sleep a bit, thank fuck.

I’ve just been so fatigued and lethargic from all of these medication changes.

I feel like my brain is trying to play catch up.

And my body is caught in the middle.

Together, they’re not getting the chemicals they’re used to, so it’s like they’re trying to figure out what I’m doing to them.

And trying to find equilibrium again.

I just feel out of whack.

But as each day passes, I’m feeling a bit better, finally.

Especially since the nap.

But, the thing is that I do know that my future is looking brighter.

And I have goals that I’m striving towards.

I have plans that I’m following right now, and soon, I’ll be in a better position.

Financially and emotionally – maybe even physically too.

I can wish, right?

Even though I’m not holding my breath for a miracle cure for arthritis any time soon.

And all of my plans, they’re still about a year or so out.

I just have to remain patient and stick to the path of my goals.

I have a benefit renewal situation in June or July this year, I’m not sure of the exact date, but that’s been majorly stressing me out too.

I just need my benefits for another year or so, that’s it.

I’m hopeful to keep them the way that they are for just a bit longer, but that decision isn’t up to me.

It’s not in my hands.

I wish the judge wouldn’t have put a two year limit on my original benefits.

I know I’ve gotten better over the past few years, and past few months more so even too.

And I’m better than I was when I originally applied.

When I applied, I was in psychosis 24/7.

But I’m not at homeostasis yet.

I’m not quite there yet.

And there’s no guarantee that the voices won’t come back at any moment.

I need time to get used to this silence, this stillness.

It’s overwhelming at times.

I’m hearing things that were usually tuned out.

Like the birds, sirens, cars in general (I live off of a busy street), and real people, now that the weather is warming up.

I feel like I don’t know what to do with myself half the time.

I sit on my computer and research what I deal with.

Trying to wrap my head around everything that I can.

It’s a lot though.

And I’ve been learning a lot about myself.

But it doesn’t change how random my symptoms and diagnoses are.

And it doesn’t change the fact that I still can’t walk for that long.

I can do less than a mile at a time, on flat ground, okay.

But anything more than that, or hilly, grassy, gravel, or loose ground, makes me hurt a lot, and I regret it.

My knees, I feel like, have gotten worse over that same time period.

So has my back.

And that’s stressful too.

Very much so.

Especially because I’m still so young.

You’d think I’d be used to the arthritis after being diagnosed for the last 15 years with it.

But, I’m not.

The pain has just increased exponentially in that time period.

All the time I think about how I’m probably going to end up in a wheelchair here, within my lifetime.

And that’s discouraging.

A lot of things are discouraging right now.

But, I stopped watching my usual murder and true crime documentaries while doing these medication changes and with losing the Pilot this week.

I figure my usual murder shows might trigger me right now.

I’ve been watching stupid, pointless sitcoms in the background instead, in order to keep my mind occupied and keep it light.

I think it’s been helping.

It feels like it’s been helping.

I still had to take my anxiety medication for a few days this week.

The anxiety is subsiding, slowly, but it’s still lingering when it gets quiet.

I’m so exhausted, but fairly antsy, all at once.

It’s a horrible feeling.

Really draining.

I’ve been getting super car and motion sick too the past couple of weeks.

My Mom said she thinks it’s from the airbags deploying – that I’m subconsciously and somatically holding onto the trauma of it, and it’s manifesting as car sickness.

And I think she’s onto something.

I know most of these feelings are from finances and the car shituation right now.

And the car traumas are still coming back in waves.

When I sit here by myself, with time on my hands, I start to feel this pressure in my chest.

Not only am I getting car sick, but my “high heart rate” keeps going off on my smartwatch still, even when I’m just sitting or writing or something.

And I know it’s all of my anxiety that’s setting it off.

The other day, when I got car sick, I took an anxiety pill, and felt loads better within 20 minutes.

I can’t help but think the two are linked now.

And that’s exactly why I got that watch in the first place – it’s helped me separate my anxiety from a physical issue.

I even wore a heart monitor for two weeks the other year, before I got the watch, because I thought I was having heart palpitations.

Turns out it was anxiety making me feel like I was having heart palpitations.

And my heart still just had the mild murmur I was born with, and nothing more.

I watched this special on Netflix once, where this guy was having heart failure symptoms and fainting problems and couldn’t figure out the cause.

It was a show where folks wrote into this woman, who is a journalist, and the public would answer, trying to help them solve their unusual health issues and try to put a diagnosis to their symptoms.

But, this guy, his heart would randomly stop beating.

He wore halter monitors, had a tilt table test, and even had some sort of pacemaker like implant put in.

The thing is, the doctors said all the tests came back fine and normal, but they still didn’t have an answer for why his heart was randomly stopping.

And they had documentation of his heart stopping from the pacemaker and from when he was in the ER a few times, hooked up to monitors.

There were many folks who wrote in saying things like; are you sure it’s not psychosomatic? 

Are you an anxious person?

A lot of folks were saying that it could be a psychiatric issue that’s manifesting as a physical one.

(Like my car and motion sickness.)

Turns out he had an extremely traumatic, horrible childhood, and since he had never dealt with any of it, it was manifesting as fucking heart failure.

He finally put together that when his heart would stop, it would be during times of high anxiety and panic attacks.

He went into therapy, I think he got on an antianxiety or antidepressant medication, and his heart issues cleared up right away.

That’s some wild shit right there.

Here’s the original story the show was based on.

Upon googling the original story and putting “update” at the end of it, I found this: “According to updates following the series, after diagnosis, Matt began receiving targeted care, including therapies to manage stress and anxiety. Following these interventions, his health improved dramatically, and he was able to return to normal activities, including working a job.” 

Mental illness affects every single aspect of the body.

I know there are separate doctors for the mind, brain and body, and even then it gets broken down into further, smaller sections, but that’s never really made sense to me, seeing as how they’re in the same vessel and completely interconnected.

I mean, I get specialities.

But I feel like all doctors should be required to learn about psychiatry too.

And in detail.

But the body wouldn’t survive without the mind or the brain.

The mind and brain run the body.

They send signals everywhere to contort and control it.

If the mind and brain aren’t healthy, the body fails too.

The fact that they’re separate entities goes back to the 17th Century.

Descartes said that the mind and brain were not only separate from each other, but that both were also separate from the body.

That the mind could live on its own.

And that the body was merely a machine.

You can read more about it here.

What blows my mind, is that in all that time, no one has thought to change the way we look at ourselves?

The folks who created these thoughts were coming out of the medieval times and they had nowhere near the amount of science, information and technology we have now.

Yet, we haven’t really changed the way we look at ourselves since.

Madness.

It doesn’t make any sense to me, at all.

Such a terrible concept that the mind, brain and body aren’t linked.

And shame on us as a society for believing that and running with it.

It’s absurd.

That’s some wild shit.

Because my anxiety around cars right now is, in part, causing my motion and car sickness issues.

It was bad yesterday.

I was so dizzy when I got out of the car.

And for no reason.

It’s not like we were on a super winding road or anything, it was just a highway.

But my Mom had a good idea; to wear my TouchPoints while in the car, to try to release the trauma with some EMDR work.

So, I did that today when my Dad and I went to the store and had to drive down this super winding road.

And I didn’t get car sick today.

So, it’s obvious that my anxiety over the airbags randomly deploying the other week, and all of the other traumas that I’ve had in cars over the years, is causing my car and motion sickness right now.

Damn.

That’s heavy when I really sit and think about it.

My mind, and brain, is causing my body to become extremely dizzy and nauseous while in a car, because of the past car traumas I’ve had.

Wow.

That’s about as interconnected as I could imagine.

-Keren