Life is changing for the better for me! Scary

Life is changing for the better for me and I have to admit, I feel a little scared. Sometimes it’s easier to face the demons of our present situation than to move into the beautifulness of a better life. Well, you may have guessed my apartment in take went well. Yes, my Mom went with and did get excited at certain points. However, she even told me that I handled myself with maturity. I went out of that meeting feeling really good and my Mom wasn’t upset when she left. My Mom did make the comment about the fact that I told the apartment director I won’t be going home as much as did last time, saying that she only saw her parents twice a year when she became a Navy wife at twenty. That was a little extreme and I reminded her I can sleep at their house once a month. You see last time I was in the same apartment program I was going to my parents’ home every weekend. That is just not healthy because I am supposed to have friends (which I have now) and I need to do stuff with them on the weekends too!

It’s just all so scary for me. I keep thinking these weird thoughts like what if my roommate has digital cable hooked up in our living room and aspects me to pay half of it. Now I do want cable, but I don’t need four hundred channels. I am also worried if she has high speed internet hooked to the cable and wants me to go wireless on my computer. I am planning to get dial up when I move because I need to able to afford everything. I worry if I will want to use the computer when she wants to use the phone. I also worry about what if I want to use the phone when she wants to use it. However, looking at it and writing it down it all seems so silly. These are really minor things that I don’t think will happen. Maybe the part about me wanting to use the phone when she does, but everyone has that problem when they live with other people in a dwelling. I know that happens here at my parents’ house so what’s the difference? Also all of these things can be easily solved like the digital cable thing; I could get regular cable in my room and just chill there. And which is really stupid anyway because I really don’t watch that much T.V. The reason I am leaving my parents home is a more serious problem. I can’t handle the emotionally draining fights with my mother. There are only two solutions to that problem. I can move out or I can go to therapy with her! And being that I am going to turn thirty – one on the twenty – first of January, I would rather move out. Don’t get me wrong I will still work on my relationship with my Mom, but it will be easier if sometimes I can say, “O.K., Mom I am going to my apartment to let us both cool down!” I do totally believe that relationships in your family sort of influence they way you react in other relationships. However, realizing when someone is toxic is also valuable.

I am also a little nervous because I am going to start my volunteer work at the hospital. This is my dream. I did go eight years to get a four year degree in Literature, but to work a full time job in that field (being a teacher) is just too stressful for my mental illness. I could work part time somewhere, but by me going to college that long I built up a debit big enough that if I worked a part – time job I would be paying it off for the rest of my life. Anyway, I have a lawyer (who’s an Episcopalian priest) who took my case pro – bono (I don’t have to pay him anything) and proved to the government I can’t pay my loans because I can’t work. So my chosen profession is volunteer work. I do get government benefits so it’s not like I am going to be homeless (but obviously now you know why I can’t have digital cable). Anyway, my dream is to volunteer in the ER at the hospital I go to. I would help patients by getting them blankets and such. I also found out I would help the ER staff with clerical work. Now the scary part! The hospital said they have openings. I even have an application. I don’t know what there going to say about me waiting until January to start, but it looks like I will actually be able to do my dream! That’s scary to me. The biggest thing for me, is what if I do this and fail? What then? However, we can always have new dreams and ideas and I think if I was eighty years old, never having followed my dream, I would be more upset with myself than if I tried and failed.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on with me! My new life is starting and I have all these little worries. Although, failing at my dream is not a little worry. However, sometimes you have to experience something in order to know if it's what you want.

Where am I going to be?

Hello, everyone. For my avid followers and those that occasionally stop by I would to ask for forgiveness for my absence from the blog world. I just didn’t feel like blogging. I’ve been sleeping a lot. First it was because my thyroid levels were off and it was making me sleepy. Then I got into this pattern of sleeping away my day. This brings me to my topic. I am going to be moving out of my parents’ house so I will have way more to do and I won’t be sleeping my day away.

It started because I had a fight with my Mom over getting something to drink out of the kitchen. She thought I had wanted water, juice, or milk and didn’t want me to have any of those. I was trying to explain to her I wanted the soda. Her reasons were the water was still filtering and there wasn’t much juice or milk. However, my therapist says I shouldn’t have to ask for food. I give all my food stamps which pays for two out of four weeks of groceries and there is three of us in the household so I pay more than my share of the food. To me, it freaked me out because after we started yelling, I sat on the kitchen floor crying. My therapist and psychiatrist just said that I had a strong reaction to my Mom’s reaction. However, I have noticed a pattern that my symptoms, about eighty percent of the time, are triggered by fights with my Mom that are often useless.

Well, I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I had been waiting for an apartment in the highest level of a program for my county of New York State that teaches mentally ill people how to live on their own. The highest level is for the most functioning, can take care of themselves people! It’s the permanent step and for this reason has a very long waiting list. I was at the bottom level of the apartment program from 2005 – 2006 and felt I was being too supervised. Well, there is an in between level, lower than what I have been waiting for, but higher than what I was in. I have chosen to sign up for this level and wait for the higher one there because I can’t wait at my parents’ home any longer.

I will have a regular apartment, whereas the lowest level I lived in a building that this program owned. All the apartments where together and it had an office where I had to go and they watched me take my pills. I also had to check in with them as to my whereabouts during the day. Also they would come into my apartment tell me what needed to be cleaned. The level I signed up for, it much similar to HUD in which the progam would make a deal with landlord that they pay my rent. So no one would know, it would just be a regular apartment. I take my pills on my own, I go where I want, and I clean when I want. However, I will still have an apartment counselor come once a week and count my pills (which they don’t do at the highest level). At all levels the apartment counselor will do therapy on living on ones for an hour and at the same time be in the apartment so if it is overly messing she will say something. The other difference between the highest and this level is I will have a roommate which in the highest level I would have a very own, by myself. I will still get into the highest level as soon as it’s available, but it could be another year or more. This middle level has openings as it is temporary because the point is to get to the highest level. Some people go from this middle level straight to HUD, I will decide later if that’s what I want to do.

The reason it will give me more freedom is because I will be in the larger town. I told my Grandma Flossie for those of us living outside of New York City, in New York State, it seems like its own city. However, growing up in Chicago I know it’s not a real big city it just seems that way. Anyway, there is more stuff I can walk to because I don’t have a car right now. Most important is I can start my volunteer work. I want to work in the hospital ER. At the hospital near my home, which will actually be in the same town as my apartment and in very close walking distance, there are many volunteer positions. However, because of my many medical problems I would like to give back to the ER. What I would do is visit patients in their room ask them if I could get them stuff like an extra blanket or water. I would also ask their families (if they had them there) if they would like soda, food, extra chairs to sit, etc. I am planning to do this three days a week so no more sleeping all day! Also I could walk to things like my doctors, group therapies, grocery store, library (which is about four times bigger than the one that’s near my parents’ home), some neat restaurants, and the pharmacy. So you I wouldn’t be trapped in my home all day.

I am really looking forward to this move. I can deal with people counting my pills once a week because I always take my pills and I have many people praying I will get a Christian roommate. And eventually, I will move to the top of the list of the highest level of the apartment program. Tomorrow I have an in take appointment for the middle level. I am very nervous because my Mom’s going to come with me. I don’t know what’s going to happen with her there. Pray for me everyone. And I am back to the blogging world. Yea!