Becoming a Strong, Caring, Indepedent, Christian Woman

Well everyone, I was supposed to move into my new apartment today. I was waiting all day yesterday and this morning because the apartment director said she needed a paper signed by a doctor at the clinic I go to. Well, several of my friends said I should page the doctor, it was defiantly an emergency. When the apartment director called today in the morning and said I couldn’t move in that she would call me when she got the paper, I thought let her handle it. However, later I thought about what my friends said. I didn’t page the doctor because they are so absent minded. I called my therapist so she could get to the bottom of it. My therapist did and said the paper will be at the apartment program by tomorrow. Now everyone pray that the apartment director will call me tomorrow and say I can move in Friday. I know I waited four years to get out of my parents house I can wait a little more.

Now the topic: becoming a strong, caring, independent, Christian woman. That is my New Year’s resolution for as long as take. It may take a life time. I didn’t expect Jesus to test me on my strength so soon. I heard it once said be careful what you pray for because if you pray for something like being strong, God will give you situation in which to be strong. Well, my Mom was getting on me all day that she doesn’t have enough money and I should ask the apartment counselor if my parents can have some of my social security money because I will be here at least a week.

Now what happened is I got my social security on the thirtieth of December and I was going to save it to pay my program fees for the apartment program I am moving into. However, my parents didn’t figure on the rent they weren’t going to get this month because I wouldn’t be here. I said they can borrow the money and I would pay my apartment program fees this Friday. Well, they went through it like water and racked up over two hundred dollars in what they owe me. Now they are saying they can’t pay me back and that they should get more money. I probably picked the wrong time, but I told them I have to pay my credit card bill and I didn’t know how I was going to it while we were in the grocery store. And it became a big fight. It ended up with them leaving me there and coming back to pick me up later. It was so lonely at the grocery by myself I felt alone. I should never feel alone. God is always with me. I guess I just need another human to care and understand.

Well, my parents said they are going to pay me back and I said that if they don’t charge me program fees for this first week, I am going to keep it because along with the credit card bill, I have other stuff that I need. I haven’t bought anything for myself since my December first social security check (I usually get my social security check on the first of every month, but this month December thirty – first and January first were holidays so they gave it to me early). Am I selfish?

I really missed the blogging world. I was just so busy with Christmas and then I had a sinus infection. I promise to try to stay on top of my blogging. Right now I just feel so alone. I need some love. Pray that God will send someone into my life to share it with. I need a companion. Someone to understand, a soul mate or a least a kindred spirit. I need some love from my blogging buddies.

New Moves for Lady Amanda

Well, everyone I been quite busy over the last couple of weeks. Mostly with Christmas things, you know buying presents, sending out Christmas cards, and I even went to a Advent Penance service to clear my slate. Well, Christ came to make the world anew! My world is defiantly coming around to being anew. On January 3rd my Mom is getting back surgery and the next day, January 4th, I am moving into my own apartment. It won’t be totally my own because I will share it with a roommate. Her name is Karen and I remember her as being a quite, docile, and kind person when I was with her in Friendship House. Friendship House is a day treatment facility for the mentally ill. So I guess another thing I know about her is that she takes care of her illness!

I wrote before about how I am worried about so many things involving my apartment. However, I realized in Stress Management Group, my life will be a whole lot worse if I remain where I am. I can face the challenges of living on my own because it is healthy and gives me stability to do so. Another thing, is this guy I totally have a crush on in Stress Management Group (not the one I wrote about before, boy I am using that group to pick up guys), while he said I am taking a huge step. I didn’t realize it was a huge step. I guess I just thought it was normal for a thirty year old to move out on her own, no problem. However, it opened my eyes to realize it doesn’t matter how old you are, to go from the safe and predictable environment of my parents’ home out into the real world is scary. It is defiantly something that takes adjusting. It will take a while and you will all come on the journey because you know I am going to write about it!

It seems everything is set up. My apartment, my roommate, my Uncle helping me move, and even the telephone service is being set up. One problem, I don’t have is my day program set up! What I would like to do is volunteer at the hospital that is a fifteen minute walk from my apartment. I put in the application ten days ago and called the volunteer director twice to check up on it. The director seemed very nice and seemed to think she would call me for an interview as soon as her co – worker looked over the application. However, I am scared. The days to when I move in are not that long and I don’t want to be sitting all day in my apartment with nothing to do. Why does it frighten me so much? Do I really think they will find something in my application that they won’t give me the position because of? I think it frightens me so much because they are taking so long. I am not a very patient person. I ask God to give me patience, but sometime people say to be careful for what you pray for. Sometimes God gives more patience by giving one trials in which one needs to be patience in! My parents said why wouldn’t the hospital take me and I just read an e – mail from my friend Amber (who also has blog on this site) who said basically the same thing. It made me realize maybe it takes so long because maybe they are deciding where to place me and set everything up. I just have to be PATIENT. And my Deacon friend couple back in Chicago said in an e – mail, “God will bless me with it, if it is what is right for me.” So I am thinking if God doesn’t allow it then he’s got something better!

I have to focus now on packing for my new apartment. So while I wait patiently for an answer from the Hospital, I can concentrate on getting my stuff together. Also I need to do some shopping because there are more necessary things that I need for my apartment. God is so good; he had my Uncles give me awesome gift cards for me to stock up on things for the apartment. God always takes care of me and I have to remember that. He has a bigger plan. And speaking of that, I have to remember His birth. I can’t forget to get caught up in the Holiness of Christmas. Well, please all send good thoughts and prayers during this anew period of my life.

A Christmas present

This is a poem, I written for my therapist for her Christmas present. I wanted to share it with all of you!

Have you ever had someone
You could tell all your secrets to?
By Amanda Robin

Have you ever had someone
You could tell all your secrets to?
I haven’t always,
Which seems deathly
Strange
Considering the fact
That I have been
In therapy
Longer than one
Wishes to think about.

Have you ever had someone
You could tell all your secrets to?
Four years ago
Which flew by like leaves
Blowing in the wind,
Coming straight out
Of a safe secure hole
Of a day treatment facility,
I meet the most wonderful
Therapist I think
I will ever met.

Have you ever had someone
You could tell all your secrets to?
This therapist taught me
A lot in those four years.
She taught me to trust
Woman again.
She taught me to trust
Myself again.
And she taught me
How to trust God.

Have you every had someone
You could tell all your secrets to?
I have!
And I will treasure
Her longer than
She will grace this
Green, wonderful, exciting world
She taught me to enjoy!

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!

You confuse me

You confuse me
By Amanda Robin

You are beautiful,
Smart,
Non – smoker,
Take care of yourself,
And are very sweet.
This is why I like you.

You have periods where
You don’t want to talk
And that hits me
Like a thousand tiny
Knifes

You are secretive
Like a ghost
In the night
About whether
You have a girlfriend.

I wait for you e- mails
Like in those
Old movies where
The girl is waiting
By the phone.

However, you are
My friend.
Maybe you will
Become more one day.

I will see if there
Are more things
To like about you.
I'll make sure I know
You inside and out
Before I give you
My Heart.
I fear, though,
You may already
Have it.

What happens when I am not fat?

O.k. maybe I didn’t choose myself. The guy in my Stress Management was just too cute. Since my last blog, I had decided to get his e- mail address because in group he talked about how he liked to use the computer. I thought two things: it’s not his phone number so it won’t be like admitting I like him so it's less risky and two it’s not his phone number so it’s not like totally going against my therapist because again it’s not like saying I like him. Well, I was so nervous the day before. However, I went to Yoga and that really calmed me down! Yoga is wonderful. I am getting side tracked so I ask him right! And he gave it to me. After my hands shook as I gave him the paper and dropped the pen I was handing to him to write it down. Anyway, I wrote him two days later and he wrote back the next day. So I am all excited and I wait a day to e – mail him. Well, five days later no response. You know what I do? I e – mail him again to ask him if he got my e – mail. Nothing for over week! Today I go to group, no words exchanged. The simple answer is in my second e – mail to him I asked him if he had a girlfriend. Maybe that was just as risky as asking for his phone number. Well, you know what? I keep thinking in my head, “What if he does want to encourage me because I am still over weight?’ Which by the way, I weighed myself at the clinic today because a wise person told me you should always use the same scale and I lost two pounds in two weeks!

Now everybody is either saying, “Amanda, that might not be the reason.” Or if you agree with me, “What a jerk?” Well, here comes my question. “What happens when I am not fat?” I mean eventually I will get to my goal weight, right? And I plan to stay there! What if I don’t find anyone until then, will I ever know if the person would like me if I was fat? I have been the fat girl now for eight years! I know what it’s like. Also there are not that many medicines for schizophrenia that don’t cause weight gain. What if something went wrong and I needed to be put back on a med with a side effect of weight gain. I mean yeah, I still work out and eat good, but what if I can’t maintain a healthy weight. I was over at my friend’s house watching “Fat like Me.” And the main character, after posing as a fat girl, asked her boyfriend, “What if I was fat, would you still like me?” He said, “You and I are athletes. We like being physically fit that’s just who we are!” So I say the real jerk will be the one who likes me when I am skinny.

Now I want to say something here. Most of the men I have been attracted to have been skinny. That’s just what my psychical body wants. Maybe that’s the way the kind of men I am attracted to feel about their women. However, I learned a very valuable lesson when I was just nineteen years old. I meet a guy first weekend at college before classes even started. He was the sweetest and gentlest guy I’ve ever known (maybe besides my Dad). I ate lunch every Friday with him for about three months. I had pledged a sorority and while I was still a pledge we had our first formal in December of 1998. I had to ask someone so I asked this sweet and gentle guy. NO, he wasn’t fat. However, to me he was not psychically attractive. He just didn’t look hot. But you know what? He became my first serious boyfriend. He was the first boy I ever frenched kissed and the first person to ever see me totally naked besides family members. And at nineteen I fell in love with him. Even when I was in love with him I would admit to my friends he looked ugly to me, but I loved him for who he was and how he treated me. There is still a nineteen year old girl inside of me that loves that nineteen year old boy. If we meet today, the two thirty year olds would have to get to know each other before we could start anything. So no, if I meet him today I wouldn’t be in love with him. But I think that holds my answer in it. I will date a couple of guys over the next few years and have crushes on a few more that I probably won’t ever date. But in the end I will find someone who loves me. Not Amanda skinny or Amanda fat. Not Amanda with the high check bones. Not Amanda with the fair skin and dish water blonde hair. No someone who loves Amanda the funny, sexy, understanding, smart, and, as my best friend puts it, sweetheart. Now maybe that will never happen, but I feel it will. I believe that if you believe it’s possible it will happen. And if it doesn’t, I am not going to marry someone who just likes me because I am skinny!