commotiocordis

Total alexithymia here but it feels weird that my mom is so behind my desire to actually get aspie/asd/whatever finally officially written down.

I mean, it's good that she's going to help, but shouldn't she be saying "no kid you're totally normal" instead of "yeah I always kind of wondered"? If you always kinda wondered why did every evaluation of me stop after I blew away the IQ portion?

Maybe this feeling is just extension of my vague resentment of everyone involved in my education? I know I've thought about this before, because I am pretty much the quintessential example of "kid who fell through the cracks because as long as she can pass the standardized tests we can't be arsed to figure out what's wrong with her". Like maybe the third time I got yelled at by the teacher for "rolling my eyes"/not making eye contact maybe that could have been looked into? and the head banging/si and the stimming and the inability to make friends and the clothing sensory issues and the food sensory issues and the sound sensory issues and how I had to lock myself in my room with the lights off for hours every day right after school/being in public to turn into a person again and the fear of the telephone and the weird obsessions and how all the comorbid things line up too etc. etc.

I mean, I can't blame my parents because when you've got a high functioning kid and a lower functioning kid I understand you've got to make sure the latter can actually graduate before expending the effort to ferret into the former's more hidden issues, but I still feel like . . . idk, like I fell through the cracks. And that if stuff was caught earlier, proper interventions and such could have reduced the probability that it would have caught up to me as hard as it has in college.

Also, Dad came down (surprise!) yesterday, which I didn't actually know about until he was already on his way, so we spent two hours frantically cleaning. Basically, he gave me a hug and then took me shopping for groceries and then made sure I'd made an appointment to actually go talk with my teachers rather than just blowing it off because I was too scared (his actual purpose of coming down was to pretty much march me in there if I hadn't; he was going to go in and sit in the hallway and wait for me today as moral support or something, but he wasn't feeling well, so ended up going home early this afternoon instead).

I don't like how . . . idk, old he is all of a sudden. I mean, he's 56 and people read him as my grandfather sometimes. I know it's just the cancer and then the lung infection thing and the billion surgeries (also, the anti-fungal meds are like mini!chemo; he's nauseated a lot still and is going to have to take the stuff for more than a year, so that's going to be fun), but he's tired a lot and he's weak and he's always sick and it upsets me. Dad's supposed to be the strongest person I know, you know? That's how fathers work. And he's not right now, even though he's not "actively" sick, and it's upsetting something substantial in my worldview, I think.

Obviously, there's nothing anyone can do about that and it's not his fault, etc. etc. etc., I just had some ~feelings.

HAHAHAHAHA, and when it rains.

It turns out I'm not going home this weekend because Dad's surgery got postponed because he apparently (for the first time ever even getting a slightly funny result) failed the chemical cardiac stress test.

Right around the same time that my mother failed a mammogram. (Which, you know, significantly less worrying, but she is around that age.)

So tomorrow, instead of surgery, Mom's got to get a spot compression mammogram and Dad's going to a cardiologist to see if he can get cleared; otherwise (and chances are) he's going to have to go on blood thinners (hahahahaha) to prevent throwing a clot (hahahahaha) and then the surgery is postponed indefinitely and they'll have to just go ahead with the chemo first.

I mean, I guess it's super good that they caught whatever (idk, probably just arterial blockage) before he was symptomatic, because his mom had her first stroke at 50 and he's what, like 56 now, but this is just kind of a lot right now.


In kitten news, this means sixgunsound's mom is coming down instead to pick up the kids and take them to get checked out. I guess it's going to be just see if they can hear a murmur and then maybe consider more imaging from there, because it's fucking expensive. I find that I SUPER DO NOT WANT to let them go anywhere without me right now in that bereaved parent sort of way. Also, dear self: if you could manage to not start crying again every 10 minutes, that'd be good. That headache you get from crying is a bitch.

AGH MY FAMILY AND CARS WTAF.

• About three weeks ago, got my car inspected and had to have $500 of work done replacing the entire exhaust system. The very next trip, the check engine light came on.



• Two weeks ago, the gold Camry has to have a whole new water pump; I'm not sure how much that cost, but Google tells me like $300.



• Last week, Dad traded in my awesome red car (sadface -- I loved that thing -- but he says it was on its way out) plus ~$7000 for a newer, silvery Camry.



• The middle of this week, my mother slips on the road while it's raining and totals the gold Camry on the way to work. (Not sure if we're even going to try to fix it -- going to be like $5000 of repairs and the car's maybe worth just that much.)



• This afternoon on my car (by hand, because bonding with my dad by fixing cars ftw): changed oil, replaced oil and air filters, replaced spark plugs and spark plug tube seals and valve cover gasket and everything in that, and basically spent way more time with my head either in the hood or under the engine than I ever wanted. ~$100 plus several hours of our labor, though that's technically free.
  
  
• And it turns out after that giant exhaust system overhaul, suddenly something's wrong with my muffler (natural conclusion from that and the check engine light: whoever "fixed" my car is a moron), and also my transmission is kind of sketch (and this is totally my fault; umm, apparently I didn't check the transmission fluid when I should have and it was pm completely dry), and basically this car should last another 50,000 miles but there's no way.



• So after all this money and with however many thousand still needing to be put in to the van and my car, now we're down to
  
  • my car, which is on the opposite side of the state as my parents and needs a muffler repair and possibly a new transmission soon and the check engine light is still on for no apparent reason
  
  
  • the smashed gold Camry on the chance they decide to sink $5000 into fixing it (Mom says no, Dad says maybe, so it's probably 30:70 fix it/trash it at this point)
  
  
  • the van, which definitely needs its transmission probably entirely rebuilt because it slips terribly, which is going to be another ~$2000
  
  
  • and the new Camry, which we're still paying off
  
  
  • -- basically my parents have one working car + one that ~sort of works at this point
  
  

And so I may have to buy a new car in the next year or so, because the family obviously doesn't have another one to lend me if this one goes out (and there's probably going to come a point soon on it when it's not worth fixing). And because Dad used all his sick days and thus didn't donate any into the sick day pool last year (even though he barely used any from the pool since some bitch who just broke her ankle took an entire month off right before he got diagnosed), he gets docked every day he doesn't work. Which means even before the however much we've put into cars in the past month, we've been kind of anticipating things getting financially sketch, depending on how long Dad's out for chemo and such. Fixing the smashed car will literally wipe out their savings, which isn't cool because we know the health insurance is awesome for radiation, but who knows if it's different for chemo or if they'll refuse to cover a re-biopsy or whatever....

So instead of getting up early tomorrow and going to a car place, I really want to just see if I can figure out what's wrong with my muffler by myself, at least, because I feel like since it's just . . . umm, loose or something? I can maybe just, idk, tighten it back on, and save someodd hundred dollars?


BASICALLY AAAAGH I HAVE NO MONEY MY PARENTS HAVE NO MONEY WE DO NOT NEED THIS RIGHT NOW.

OKAY SO OMIGOD DREAM.

This was some weird shit.

It started with me somewhere public-ish. A mall, I think, but it was relatively deserted (not for any malicious reason, just that there happened to be only a few other people passing through that section of hall at that moment). But then all of a sudden, there were all these armed swat-team types around me. Huge guns, people shouting, and the impression that they were going to either kill or take me away and lock me up in some tiny little dungeon (a la UNIT and Toshiko Sato). I still have no idea what I did, but there's the general impression overall that it's a science-related/for-your-protection thing (like I was a scientist that they were going to need later in this war that hadn't broken out yet but they knew was going to, so I just ended up sitting around and being guarded. Idk, but it was definitely not that I was a bad guy, just more that they'd rather kill me than have me fall into the wrong hands. Look at me be all self-important in my dreams, LOL).

So they're surrounding me with guns and chaos, and I'm all "I DEMAND THAT YOU TAKE ME TO THE UNITED NATIONS IN ACCORDANCE WITH GENEVA CONVENTION ARTICLE 2-point-some random number!!one!" Because I want me some civil treatment, kthx.

And then they do. Or idk. There's a jump in the dream there. And then I'm in this room; it seems like a sort of hotel room, but very small and greyish walls. It's really just a giant bed with a giant TV on the wall at the foot of it, with the door on the right side of the little strip of open floor between the foot of the bed and the wall with the TV. Definitely not guys surrounding me with guns anymore, and the treatment improves from here on in, so I have to assume I'm with the good-er guys now.

And then we get to the even weirder part. CHRIS PINE COMES IN. No lie. Don't know if he was C-Fine the actor or a character in the dream who was just being played by him in my head (I have no idea why he was allowed in my cell thing; there is no logic in this dream), but I definitely identified him as Chris even while I was asleep. Okay. Then even weirder. We're together or some such, because then begins hetsecks. I KNOW, RIGHT? My second sex dream ever, and it's not even Jude Law, who I'm nurturing this epic crush on right now, but Chris Pine (who I sekritly sort of think is goofy looking, but was hot in my dream).

So right. That happens, even if it ended sort of . . . prematurely, iykwim. I mean, there wasn’t the feeling that I was disappointed or anything; it was like that’s what I expected to happen, but there wasn’t any actual, erm, sexing. It was more of . . . oh, fuck it. I was lying back, and he straddled my legs sitting up, and I jerked him off. There. TMI? Yeah, probably, but I’m trying to get everything I remember about this one down, because I’m still not sure where it came from.

As a side note, it’s really interesting to me that my subconscious hasn’t realized that I’m bisexual. Or, to be more accurate, sexually bisexual (if that makes sense). Two dreams something like 4-5 years apart isn’t exactly a scientific sample, but it’s interesting that though I have dreams where I’m cuddly or get the feeling that I’m in a relationship with women, I’ve never actually sexed one in a dream, and this is two guys now. (ETA: Three, if you count the weird short one I had during a nap the same day as the long one! What is with me today?!)

Anyway, so after that, Chris starts flipping through the TV’s movie menu—I’ve never used PPV TV in my life, but the menu setup here was sort of like “cover flow” on mp3 players, if that makes sense. Titles and prices were listed top to bottom, and you could sort of scroll like spinning a wheel, and the title in the center was expanded for the cover shot and synopsis and runtime and stuff. I don’t recall more than the few specific titles that were mentioned, but in retrospect, they were in weird order, because there were movie series where we passed by the first early and had to scroll much farther for the 2nd or 3rd. And the prices were freaking insane. We’re talking $5,738 for The Blind Side. Older movies were cheaper—there were $68 ones (still insane, but comparatively speaking, that’s nothing). I happened to see Galaxy Quest 3 scroll by, and I hadn’t seen that before (because, you know, it doesn’t exist), so he picks that for me. I found him quite gallant, XD! But something goes wrong, and a different movie starts playing--Beauty and the Beast. (I think this one may be because 2ish weeks ago, I found this B&tB kids’ computer game I played on DOS when I was a lot younger and finally managed to beat it. Both the finding and the beating were quite exciting—there’s one minigame in it that’s hard for a kids’ program; I was playing on easy and still lost and had to start all over the first time.)

Somehow, it turns out it’s my sister’s fault. This almost-14 year old girl somehow managed to switch the movie that was going to play in this hotel-cum-cell thing. She had picked the wrong one somehow--the menu was just a menu, and selecting a movie just sent the request out and then a person had to intervene to get it playing, apparently. There was a question as to whether she misclicked or thought that was the one I wanted, but was apologetic (in that 13 year old “Gah! I’m sorry” sort of way) when I told her that we had to pay for these (why she wouldn’t know that if she was “behind the curtain” so to speak is more evidence of logiclessness).

The sister thing was apparently the segue into the fact that it turned out that we eventually (Chris was still with me) moved into my parents’ house somewhere (it wasn’t a room that actually existed, but the kitchen and back yard and stuff confirmed it as home). It was a time jump again, but control by the handler guys they had looking after us (it was obviously much more protection than anything else by now) had loosened, and I was allowed to go outside, and into my own backyard without supervision. It was an awesome day, weather-wise, and I played with our puppies. I thought about how I could pretty easily escape if I wanted to, but I’d only have at most an hour or two’s head start before they noticed I was gone because I was still under surveillance, and it was better to let them do what they wanted because it wasn’t a huge interference in my life by now anyway, and I’d rather keep it like it is than have it go back to the cellish place I was at the beginning. When I came back in, I puttered around in the kitchen and one of the handlers came up the stairs (which are right on the kitchen in my house) from the basement, thus revealing that in this latest dream!period of time, the current handlers had set up and were living in my basement.

Another time jump. Now, we’re in Springfield. There’s only one handler down there with C-Fine and I because it’s considered less of a target city (where in St. Louis, there were a bazillion and one on different shifts), but it’s time to go back up to St. Louis. We were in the airport in Springfield (which I’ve never seen, but judging as how it handles very little traffic, my brain made into a pretty cramped building with one ticket/customer service desk next to an escalator that led up to several boarding gates) trying to find out how much it would cost to get a ticket to St. Louis. Chris and I figured that we could convince the handlers that it was safer (less transit time along sometimes pretty deserted highways with only one handler/protector guy) and probably not too much more expensive. Because we figured why not try to get a flight out of this whole inconvenient deal.

And then I woke up. I’d set my alarm way earlier than I actually needed to, though, which sucked, because I would have loved to find out what happened next. I get good, memorable dreams so rarely that something like this is really awesome for me. I had another 40ish minutes I ended up trying to go back to sleep for, but only actually fell asleep for part of it and couldn’t get the dream pulled back up anyway, but I sort of expected as much.

ETA continued from above: BUT THEN. When I got back from class, I putzed around the computer and stuff, then took a nap before I had to go do my volunteerything at the hospital (apparently, my reactions to TB tests would like you to believe I’ve never so much as seen La Boheme—which I have, thankyouverymuch, but I’m so unreactive you can barely see a bit of redness where I was poked). And in said nap was ANOTHER DREAM. As this was a short nap, there was very little detail I gleamed and basically no events except for one and OMG IT WAS HORRIFYING. We were in Grimmauld Place (before we get too much further, let me admit that I’ve been reading almost exclusively Harry Potter fic in the last two or three weeks, so this one is in basic setting a bit more understandable) and I was Harry Potter. In the first, long one with Chris Pine, I was myself, so this was odd. Maybe I wasn’t him, because he was still him, but I was seeing things through his perspective (like when Harry!Nagini bit Arthur Weasley, yaknow?) or something? Whatevs. Then the weird part. I don’t remember much setup, but basically Harry got seduced by Voldemort.

And then they were kinda sexing. Or, rather, more of a prelude to it. Making out and grinding.

I KNOW, WHAT THE FUCK, RIGHT? A., I am not Harry Potter, nor (though it would be FUCKING AWESOME) are Harry Potter and I psychically connected a la Harry and Voldemort. B., Even if I were or were connected to Harry Potter, I hardly think I/he would be smexing up Voldemort. C., WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY BRAIN?

That is all.

Yeah. It's cancer. Oropharyngeal, also in the lymph nodes.


I don't know much more than that because I was getting it from my brother. The parents wanted to call me and tell me, but I had just gotten home and was tired (I never go to bed the day before an orgo test) and didn't really want to have to deal with that. Though I know I'm just going to be all "TNM Staging! When's the surgery? Transoral or are they going to have to go in through the neck? Where's it happening? DATA DATA DATA, I CANNOT MAKE BRICKS WITHOUT CLAY," just like I was barking questions to my brother over Facebook chat, there's always the possibility that they'll say something and I'll burst into tears (because I'm on my period for the THIRD TIME IN JANUARY. WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT, BODY?!).

Stupid empathy. I mean, sitting here and processing it, I'm totally fine with the whole situation. It's in his lymph nodes, but from what I gather, only the proximal ones, which means radiation after surgery will probably take care of it pretty easily. But especially with my dad--he's totes a sensitive theatre guy, LOL, but he's not often openly emotional, so more so than with my mom, I pick up on and multiply by a thousand whatever he's feeling. One of the last times his mom had a stroke is one of the last times I actually cried at something IRL, actually, because he was freaking out; even as old as I am, I'd bet it harkens back to a simple "OMG, if this is scaring my dad, it must be really really scary" childhood thing.


Anyway, looking forward to digging through his lab results and stuff (must make sure they remember to have me CC'd on stuff--for ages now, LOL, whenever I get my hands on somebody in the family's lab sheet, I fill in to have it CC'd to myself), not looking forward to finding out how he and mom are dealing with it. His dad died of cancer, so I'm going to bet that no matter what he tries to make it seem like, the answer is going to be "not well".

To summarize that last ranttastic emo post, because tl;dr--I'm half-decent at everything, so I never get told I'm good at anything.

But because self-centeredness is to be punished, the universe decides to cow me quite spectacularly.

Got an email from my mom a minute ago. Basically, my dad's had swollen lymph nodes and lately trouble swallowing and pain, and just recently was coughing up a massive amount of blood. Went to the doctor, who sent him to an ENT specialist, who is sending him to (I presume from mom's tone, though she didn't actually specify) an oncologist.

So I feel even more like shit, because now it feels like I spent all morning being really, really undeservedly whiny. I mean, STFU, Alexandria, your dad's probably got fucking cancer. We don't care that you feel like your life sucks and nobody appreciates you, suck it fucking up; at least you don't have an oncologist's appointment this week.

Obviously, I'm jumping to the worst-case scenario, but it looks bad. Made even more bad-looking by how my mom tacked on to the end "By the way, this is more than your siblings know," meaning "Don't tell them," meaning "Oh, shit." But LOL, perfect example of how even my family knows what a heartless bitch I am--"don't tell the kids because they might get upset, but here's a medical puzzle for Alexandria!"

The worst part is that she's absolutely right. My first thought was "Ooh, glad I didn't sell back my oncology textbook!" Fail.

Idk, it's made so much worse by the fact that I'm not there. When I first came down to college, it was sort of the same thing--his diabetes had been under really great control, but what that means to an endocrinologist is that you aren't going into high blood glucose ranges at all, which makes lows more common. And though highs are what kill uncontrolled diabetics over time, lows kill you overnight or when you pass out at the wheel or something like that, and having been in the car where that almost fucking happened, I was really uncomfortable leaving. Same thing here--I mean, I'm not in tears with anxiety or anything, but I'm much more concerned sitting here getting the second hand information than I would be if I were home and could make him let me go to the onc with him (as I often do when somebody in the fam goes to the doctor for something being wrong, since became the medical expert in the family when I was very young) and get the info told to me as if I were a doctor rather than (I say this with all affection) dumbed down for my parents and telephone-chained to me.

THAT IS ALL. Didn't pay attention and made way too much food and still absently ate it anyway, so my stomach hurts and I'm tired and my laptop charger is all but totally not working, so I'm 42% on the tablet and (hopefully) 100% on Tosh away from being totally computerless. Gah, the shitstorm, when it hits . . . .

You know what bothers me? The fact that I've never really been good at anything.

Ironic!LOL, Alexandria's melancholy when she's 28 hours from failing an organic chemistry test she can't get her stupid ass to study for and has slept weirdly (and by weird, I mean in 2 hour bursts with a very low total hour count) all week. It's 5am, which is probably the reason, though I've never found myself unable to allow the slightest stimuli to throw me into ". . . I fail" mode no matter what time of the day it is.

( Wherein I mope and act all juvenile and emo while espousing how I fail. )

Home for the weekend. Monday's going to suck epicly, because I haven't done any of my homework and won't be getting back until late on Sunday night (probably 11), so I don't know when that's getting done. Tack on test on Tuesday, test on Wednesday, and because I skipped out on Friday's classes to leave on Thursday to go do some market research thing, I got a 0 on an organic chem quiz thing (they drop the lowest 5 of 20, but the 6 or so we've done so far have all been *really* low and I can't fucking figure out why) and missed the video that explains most of the last chapter we covered in biochem that will be a good 1/3 of the Wednesday test.

So, pretty epic FML at the moment. I'm sick as well, and being home when it's temporary and I have this major deluge of homework waiting always makes me stressed all to hell, so I'm panicky and miserable. It really hit me at one point that if I were somebody else, I could just blow all this off, get married and stay home and raise my kids. Ahh, the easy way out. (Not that, you know, raising kids is easy and anything but very emotionally taxing, but possibly slightly less mentally taxing than graduate-level molecular biology courses.)

<--- As usual, this was written a week ago. Was opening up LJ to bitch about how I broke a nail and have to spend my entire Saturday doing practice runs of the MCAT followed by the GRE from 9-5ish tomorrow, and it popped up the beginning bit that I’d forgotten I’d lost when the tablet locked up on me. So, elaboration.

Do you ever get that? I have aunts and uncles and people in my classes that were/are married at this age. At younger than this age, even. And it kind of makes me wonder what I’m doing. I guess science, is what. And I’m cool with that; I don’t date, and I’m not really interested in it , I don’t think, but there’s this feeling like I’m missing out on something. It was the same way with parties and such in HS. It wasn’t my style of evening just because my friends didn’t do that kind of thing, so I knew I wouldn’t like it because nobody I liked would be there. But would I have gone. . . idk, clubbing or something if people I liked were doing so? Yeah. I probably would have had a good time, too.

I’m not even 20 yet, but even just thinking about when I hit that, it seems like. . . idk. It’s not me. I don’t feel like a grownup yet. I want nothing more than to stay home and tag along when my parents go to the store just because I’ve got nothing better to do, and to have the whole family to interact with (even though it’s not like we get along horridly well—much better in short spurts, like when I’m visiting, which is prolly why said desire for interaction is present atm; I haven’t spent long enough with them in the last month and a half to break through the novel of being back home and get to the ‘blech, siblings’). I know the biggest reason that I’m now okay with maybe going to SLU for medical school (that’s the only other St. Louis one) rather than just being all WashU!OMG (which I will never, never get in to since I went to the college I’m at, which is sad because I love it so hard. Single greatest fear right now is that I ruined my chances for medical school all together by taking this scholarship and going down here instead of to one of the more prestigious undergrad places that I got awesome scholarships for but that natch, couldn’t match up to this offer of everything) isn’t because I’ll be able to maybe live at home and thus actually maybe not come out of school OVER NINE (hundred) THOUSAND dollars in debt, but rather because I’m not good at forging connections with people, and if I go to Mizzou or the MD/JD place in Illinois or somewhere else, I will end up with zero local support system.

I think that might be a part of it. As much as I love bleakone to death, she’s the only friend I’ve got down here. I mean, it’s not a huge difference from high school, where I had lots of friends in school, but once the day was over they went and did things and I just went home. It feels different because I knew those people for years and talked to them every day and there was a lot more time to socialize in HS because it wasn’t as fast of a pace. Now, sure, I’m friendly with a couple of people (mostly ones who are in multiple classes with me or in my lab), but if pressed could I tell you their last name? Probably not. It doesn’t help that poetry’s my only class that’s not OMG SCIENCE AT BREAKNECK SPEED, and that one’s filled with god types (wearing my ‘Support Gay Couples’ shirt on Tuesday just to see how scorned I get—no kidding, we break into pods to sort of workshop on each other’s poems and invariably, there’s at least one poem out of the group that talks about how it’ll all be okay with Jesus) which, though often nice and were some of my best friends throughout my school days, are generally not my type. I’m just kind of lonely, I guess. I feel bad when I tell bleakone my awesomesauce stories ten billion times, but I want to Tell Somebody, you know, and Tweeting stuff and posting it on here (when I ever do—the Twitter is really making me pare down my info, which is good because I’m always way too verbose for anybody to read all the way through my stuff on here; the fact that I’ve always got so much to say that I never get it in under one page makes it daunting to update because I never get it done in one sitting!) is okay, but, you know, there’s not as much feedback as you’d get with an actual person.

And at the same time, I’m not . . . emotionally strong enough, I guess, to be one of those people with loads of friends. Not that I'm emotionally weak or anything, I suppose, I think I'm just weary (and wary) of it. So as usual when I’m whining, I don’t like something but I’m not going to do anything about fixing it. *sigh*

Bored now. Thought I'd share. I slept on and off on the drive down (Kaci kept waking me up every 15 minutes all "LOOK, A LLAMA!" which while interesting, when I was already 5 hours past when I should have gone to sleep, not appreciated), but only maybe 3 hours worth. And then I was falling asleep after we got back to the hotel this evening only to get constantly woken up because I was in the wrong bed. Seriously? Can't you guys just rearrange around me? It's not like it really matters. But I managed to de-tired enough that it's 1:15, I'm relegated to this shitty cot thing that's way too close to my brother for comfort (it's right up against one of the beds, and he's sprawled half off of the edge of said bed), and not really tired. I could be, prolly, if I tried, but it's like I've broken through the sleepy. So I'll just be miserable tomorrow.

However, I will have had my monthly quota of vitamin c. I think I've polished off nearly half the bag of satsumas myself.