I hate this shit.

I'm warning you now, this isn't going to be a happy post.

I can't sleep. It's been about two weeks since I've gotten a decent night/day sleep. Most days I can't fall asleep and I lay in bed for hours. Tonight, I fell asleep, but for about 20 seconds and then I was wide awake again. While I'm laying in bed, every single negative thing about me, about my life- comes at me. One thing after another until I start crying. Without fail. Every night. I want to cut right now, really really bad, but there's one thing stopping me. And I'm never going to give in to the urge to cut. I can't do it. I'm not going to let it get on top of me. If I've learned anything in the past few weeks, it's been that I can't let something get a hold of me like that.

Right now, I'm not only depressed. I feel like I'm going to have a panic attack and I am just angry. I'm so pissed off at nothing. I want to break something. I want to yell and flip out and release all of whatever is pent up inside of me. I'm trying to calm myself down. I know this is all disjointed but I'm not writing for any one's benefit but my own.

The thing I hate the most right now is the fact that I want nothing more than to talk to the man sleeping peacefully in our bed about this. But I'm so terrified of opening up. After nearly six months in a great relationship, I still can't forget what my last relationship did to me. I try so hard to talk, but I wimp out at the last minute. I'm even more terrified that he'll leave me because I'm damaged. John was the only person I opened up to completely, and he brought up everything I hated about myself, every fucking flaw I have and rubbed it in my face when things weren't going his way.

Besides all this, my left eye has been twitching for the past two weeks, my migraines are getting worse and more frequent and I'm starting to get physically weak again. I couldn't break ice out of the tray today. It actually hurt. I hope that I'm just reading too much into it, but it scares the hell out of me. I can't afford an MRI. They gave me a CAT scan at the hospital in September, but they gave me one in the hospital in Oregon two weeks before my MRI showed a tumor, and that CAT scan didn't show anything, either.

I know the sleeping is stress related. I've been through it enough to know the pattern. I'm fine for a few months, and then one small thing after another builds and builds until I break. From there I see all the big things- When am I going to figure out what I want to do and start school? What am I going to do about money. How am I going to pay off the mountain of debt? What am I going to do about medical insurance? I'm supposed to be on medications for hormone replacement after the surgery, but I can't afford it. I can't afford to be checked out by a doctor. I can't afford to get a migraine that kicks my ass into the hospital, but at least they don't ask for money up front. It just goes on top of the pile of debt.

It's insane, why can't I just let things go and be normal. Why can't I just talk about this in the open, instead of hiding behind a keyboard. I'm posting this and people I barely know are going to read it, but I can't go wake up my boyfriend and ask him to hold me because I don't want him to see me like this. I don't want to inconvenience him by waking him up because of something that's my problem. I think the thing I'm most afraid of is reaching out to someone and having them turn around and walk away.

I hate this shit.

Part Two

I didn't realize it had cut off part of my post last night. Here's the rest of it.

Upon seeing him in that bed, all that shit hooked up to him I was so close to losing it. I didn’t want him seeing how scared I was. I didn’t want him having to reassure me that everything was going to be ok. He was the one that needed a rock. I’m not going to get into all the medical details of what went down, that’s something that isn’t my personal information to give out. But it was not good. They ended up keeping him overnight; something he was not pleased with. I stayed with him, slipping out every so often to smoke and clear my head.

It was the longest night of my life, watching him. I prayed harder than I ever had in my short praying career. Some were selfish. I wanted him to be ok because I didn’t want to be without him. Many were just for whatever happened to not be permanent or do any lasting damage. I just wanted him to come out of it healthy. I just wanted him to be ok.

I didn’t sleep more than a half hour. I just sat and rubbed his leg, listening to him sleep. I wanted so much to crawl next to him and snuggle him more for my own comfort. It was the first night in a long time that we weren’t sleeping next to each other and that just felt strange. But he needed rest so I let him get as much as he could. It’s part of the reason why I’m writing this now. He’s sleeping and I’d just be tossing and turning.

So now we’re here. It wasn’t a heart attack, and it’s something related to the virus he had a few weeks ago. It’s not serious and it should just go away. Once we got settled back in the apartment, it was like any other night with him - full of laughter and foot slaps. He’s going to be ok.

Hopefully now I can sleep.

I didn’t start writing this to go off on a tangent about the ins and outs of faith and belief. I started writing this because last night we thought Mack had a heart attack, and while I was freaked out at the time, the whole thing just came crashing down on me and I needed a way to release some stress. Writing has always helped. It might not seem connected, but it is.

I’ve always believed in something. I never thought that there wasn’t some higher power or deity running the show. I’ve toyed with many theories over the years. I’ve gone through many phases, practicing different religions, discussing and reading up on many more. I never wanted to call myself a Christian, due to bad experiences with people pushing it on me when I was looking for answers. Also, because I was one of those people who didn’t want to follow what most people were doing, because it was what most people were doing. I wanted to be different.

What I stuck with for a long time, was never really a defined “religion” I found in most religions I had read up on, what it boiled down to was being a decent person, to yourself and to others. Helping when you can, taking help when needed and paying it forward. If anyone asked, I said I was Agnostic, claiming, “I believe in something, but I don’t know what it is.” A lot of people are of the opinion that Agnostic is not taking a stand either way. Whichever they define it as; I’ve come to realize that it’s kind of a bullshit, middle ground stance. The point of faith is to actually believe in something. To say “I believe in God, and trust that He is going to guide me through my trials, and welcome me with open arms at the end.”

I’m not claiming that if you are X religion, you’re going to Hell. I think that as long as you live your life as a decent, caring person, God will welcome you into Heaven at the end of your journey. If you go against that, but genuinely ask for forgiveness and live your life the best way you can, He will see that.

I never, ever thought I would call myself a Christian. We weren’t raised in a house where we went to Church or talked about God. My parents both had that pushed onto them, and wanted us to make up our own minds about our own beliefs. The few times I willingly went to church when I was looking for some sort of answer, it was pushed on to me the moment they knew I was just kind of “browsing”. I hated that. One church found out I was never baptized and wanted to do it right then and there. Without my family. Without me having any real knowledge about Christianity besides the basics. I thought it was absolutely absurd. That being forced on me angered me so much, I turned away from it and didn’t look back until years later. Even three months ago, I would have told you I was Agnostic. I’ve always believed that everything happens for a reason, and that someone is designing it all, but I would never say, “It’s God’s plan”.

That all started to change a few months back, with a late night conversation with Mack. He pretty much said, “Being Agnostic is such a pussy ass way out of making a decision”. I wasn’t offended, because I knew he was right. At the same time, I knew what I had molded my faith into was Christianity without the commitment or label.

We were going through a rough time, financially. When I moved down here, I was all but guaranteed a job upon arrival. Once I got down here, however, that job interviewed me and never called me back. I had multiple interviews, with nothing coming of it. Mack was carrying me on what he was barely making ends meet before I came down. It finally reached a point where if I didn’t get hired in the next two weeks, I had to go back to Minnesota. I was terrified of that outcome. Here I am, finally in a normal, loving relationship, and it was about to go back to seeing one another via webcam until we could get enough money together to try again.

So I did something stupid. Instead of treating this as a normal relationship where I could go to him and vent out my stress, I started cutting again. I couldn’t sleep; I was getting physically sick from the stress. I waited until Mack fell asleep, went into another room or outside and cried. I would cry until I couldn’t anymore, and then I would cut until my mind was off my stress and on to my pain. Then I would finally fall asleep. There were nights that I would take sleeping pills, and still be up for more than 24 hours. I was unable to sleep until I had cut. I felt like shit for it. I felt like shit because I was down here, burdening Mack. I didn’t want to go to him and vent, because I somehow felt I didn’t deserve to have the right to. I was scared and depressed and stressed.

Then one night, I went outside to do my thing. I sat and smoked and cried. I leaned against the truck and looked up. Something right then clicked for me. I asked for forgiveness for all the shitty things I’d done. I prayed. To God. Not to some chance higher power. I said I was sorry for putting off the inevitable for all these years. I put my life into His hands. Even when I was so sick I couldn’t eat for days, and in intense pain before my surgery, I was never able to do that. A few days later, I interviewed at my current job, and was hired that day. You can interpret that any way you want, but I feel that God heard me that night.

That night solidified my faith. It wasn’t the fact that I got the job. I prayed for peace and guidance and it was something I received that night. I felt that everything was going to be ok, the second I ended my little “Dear God, it’s me, Emily” moment. I put my life into His hands and He guided me to a solution. It was something I knew then, I am Emily-Christian, but it wasn’t something I mentioned to anyone until writing this.

What brings me to writing this all down is one of the scariest things I’ve ever been through. Mack got really sick two weeks ago. Since then, he’d been having chest pains. He didn’t tell me until three or four days ago. That day, they had gotten so bad while he was working he almost called an ambulance. The next day, it happened again, but worse. It was while he was at work, and it actually dropped him to the ground. He had shooting pains in his arm, and his fingers were numb. His boss took him to the ER, and came to pick me up. The second I opened the door and saw Mack’s boss standing there, I knew what had happened and for a long time, I couldn’t think. I heard Darren talking, but it wasn’t registering that he was speaking to me. He drove me up to the hospital and led me to Mack’s room.

I forgot this blog exsisted.

Seriously, my bad. I know there's a whopping five people who read this, if that- but I still feel kind of bad.

The past few months have been pretty strange. Not strange, really- but lots of highs and lows. Very stressful. I was all but promised a job before I came down here and that fell through within the first few weeks. Since then it's been nothing but apply for a job, have an interview, and never hear another word. I had applied at Kmart, gone to two interviews and had them run me around for a month and a half. I just finally got a job at a motel in town, they called me back the day I interviewed, so that was nice. The second they offered me a job, Kmart called me back. I've also had more phone calls wanting to set up interviews since I started my job, then I have had all month.

So I started the job, and it's going quite nicely. Fairly easy, most of the customers are normal human beings. Not much screaming. They've never hired anyone as young as me, because once I finish training, I will be the only person working and in charge of a 40 room hotel. Yay, responsibility.

So I'm alive, in case anyone was wondering. Incredibly less stressed than I was last week. I'm thinking about writing a little retarded short story and posting it here, but we'll see. I need something to do to be creative because it's driving me insane, not being able to paint.

Finally on a bus!

Things are looking up

Last week was a pretty rough one. On top of having a rough Father's Day, I was just in a general funk the whole week. I found out on Friday that one of my aunts was in the hospital with a collapsed lung, which turned out stemmed from a tumor growing in her Bronchial Tube. It's not in a place that can be operated on, it is cancerous and they are doing Chemo (from what I've heard, anyway.) I have been stressed about finding a job here, when I'm going to see Mack next, and I just had a general case of the blahs.

This week has been going a ton smoother. I recently got in contact with a friend from my childhood, one I have been thinking about a ton for the past few months and who I haven't seen since his brother's funeral. The day we started exchanging IM's, we talked for a few hours. About his brother, psychology theories, music and our love lives. It was great. We're hooking up for The Taste of Minnesota on Friday, and I'm attending my first hard metal concert, Judas Priest and Whitesnake. I'm pretty stoked.

Mack and I have discussed in further detail what it would take to get me down there permanently. We've got a bit more of a plan now, but that plan can only happen once I find a job. I've sent out countless applications and resumes in the past few days, just crossing my fingers for callbacks now.

No one is going to be surprised that I'm moving. It's become some sort of in joke now. Everyone I've run into since being back home has asked, "So, are you sticking around this time?"

I was planning on it. For awhile at least, but long distance relationships suck ass and it puts way too much stress on the people involved. I'm not losing Mack, the person who was there for me every night, cheering me up, making me laugh, making me feel beautiful again while I was going through the worst six months in my life...I'm not losing him and this relationship over something that's fairly easy to work around.

I say no one is going to be surprised, but oh man, are they going to be pissed.

My mom knew right away I was taking off again. She's already been helping me get my car fixed enough to drive down there. Helping me pack, get things organized to leave. She's the best person in the world, she's so understanding and I love her.

My dad is another story. When I was visiting Mack, he would not answer my phone calls or texts the entire time I was in Illinois. He will walk away from me if I even if I start talking about Mack, or anything to do with IL. He's the most childish person I know, and I know he's going to flip shit when I tell him I'm leaving again.

My cousin, Sammy, is one of the greatest friends a person could wish for. I know she is going to be incredibly hurt when I leave and she is the only person I'm concerned about telling. She's helped me out so much in the past few years. She is, for all intents and purposes, my big sister. I love her dearly, and I hate leaving her- I hate leaving everyone.

I can understand why people have a problem with me taking off again. Green Bay was nothing like it was supposed to be. I was shot down repeatedly for a chance at a relationship when the whole reason I moved out there in the first place was to be with someone. He gave me excuse after excuse about not wanting to date once I got out there, even though before I moved, we had talked about nothing but us being together. I sucked it up as best I could, worked, paid my share of the bills and lived my own life. When I told him I was leaving, he then confessed his undying love for me, became abusive when I rejected him and I bailed.

I went to Oregon from there, to be with John. Things went ok at first, and then we started having problems. I would bring up what was going on, to have things change for a few weeks at the most, and then end up in the same routine over and over. Until I got sick, and it got worse. I wasn't able to cook and clean, I lost my job and the mental abuse I took from that was something I didn't think I could get over.

But I did. With the help from Mack. So my track record of moving away, and getting into these shitty situations is high to say the least. I don't blame people for thinking something is going to go wrong with this one. All I can really say, is that I feel with everything in me that he was put in my life for a reason, and I think that reason is to make me incredibly happy. I think I was put in his life for the same reason. And I think we both deserve it.

So I tell everyone who gives me shit this: I'll never know until I go down there and give this everything I can.

That's exactly what I plan on doing.

Been A Strange Few Days

The past few days have been kind of...weird. I've been in a funk of sorts, and trying to climb out of it has proven difficult. Luckily I've had the help of some good friends, and the best man a woman could hope for.

When my dad came out to Oregon before I had my surgery, I thought things might not be so strained between us when I got back to Minnesota. I was proven wrong once again, and because he's paying my cell phone bill, I try to have a semi-civil relationship with him. He doesn't make it that easy.

My living situation isn't the greatest at the moment, and of course no one can find a damn job to save their lives right now. It's becoming a huge burden on my mother being here and I hate accepting help from people in any situation, and one where I'm affecting someone negatively just kind of blows.

On a lighter note, I've been working on a painting the past few days, one I needed to finish from Oregon, and I think I'm getting close to done with it, which is exciting. I've thought about posting ads on Craigslist trying to sell them, but I'm not sure they're good enough where people would buy them. Also, I'm not sure if I could part with them. It'd be a nice way to get some quick cash, though. And a nice way to maybe get another bus ticket.