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!

I choose me, is it the right decision?

Well, I choose me. I don’t know if you all got that from my poem. My poetry is not always about me, but that last post was about me. I have always been obsessed about love. I can remember being thirteen and thinkging a young boy in my Sunday school class was the only one for me. It continued for as long as I can remember. I mean that should have taught me something, there must have been at least ten people in my life already that I thought were the only ones for me. God keeps placing people in my life. And you know what I do? Instead of getting to know them, I jump off the deep end and start fantasizing! The qualities I want in a person just seem to magically appear in this person. When, if I actually listened to them or really got to know them without thinking about what my wedding dress was going to look like, I would realize I was just seeing what I wanted to see.

So there is this guy in my Stress Management Group. It’s a group therapy, I attend on Tuesday evening. And I would feel all flustered and make little plans to talk to him after wards. And I talked to my therapist about it two weeks ago and she said I really am getting a lot out of the group. You know, like besides Mr. Hottie, I was learning stuff that would help me deal with stress. Just so you know most groups run at the clinic I go to, you’re not allowed to date people in the group. So essentially what the topic turned to was shouldn’t I just be good friends with Mr. Hottie and stay in group? I thought about it for a whole week and decided that I choose me, that me getting something out of Stress Management was more important than some guy. I mean I still want to be his friend and learn more about him and maybe in the future pursue a relationship that is deeper. However, for now I just want to focus on the group not what I am going to say to him when we walk from the group room to the outside.

Today was my first group since I made this decision. I didn’t really feel sad that I decided not to be flirty. I did feel an attraction still, but I realized it was more of a physical thing. And the only thing I keep thinking now is “Did I miss my chance?” Which is really stupid because I said at beginning of this post I should have learned by now there are many people in which I have felt were the only ones for me, so in theory another person will come along soon enough. I feel sometimes like I am too old to be looking for someone, that I should already be married by now. And the thing that fuels this fire is a lot of my friends, that are the same age as me, are already married.

However, the thing is thirty isn’t old. I just talked to my therapist Monday about wanting to see who’s out there and dating different people. She says I am not too old and generally she knows what she is talking about. My best friend is forty and she’s still looking. She told me her sister got married for the first time at forty. I also have another friend who didn’t get married for the first time until she was thirty - six and she’s pretty happy. I remember once I asked one of my friends who was in her late thirty if she ever felt sad that she wasn’t married yet and you know what she said? My friend said, “I dated a lot of jerks in the past so I am happy I am single and not married to a jerk.” I really need to work on this whole, it’s all or nothing thing!

I choose me

I want to apologize to my avid blogger readers. I should have posted last week, but my Dad’s been on vacation now since the second. We’ve been doing a lot of fun stuff. However, I did miss you guys. Just wanted you to know I wasn’t sick or anything bad so no worries.

I choose me
By Amanda Robin

In span of my life
I have always picked
From the bucket
Of choices
Love of another person.

I am still hopelessly
Romantic,
But sometimes
The romance
Lies with in
One’s own self.

Those people we’ve
Looked up to
From far away
Say you have to love
Yourself first
And I do.

However, sometimes
In the bucket
You have to continue
choosing you.

Just because I am
In the right state of mind
Doesn’t mean romance
Comes without torns.

Sometimes the choice
In front of us
Is what is best for me
Not am I ready.

Sometimes even though
It might be a healthy
Relationship
It comprises something
For me.

I was faced with that
Choice from the bucket.
I could choose a healthy
Relationship and
Lose something important,
Or I could choose me.
And I choose me!

My Helper

You know the thing that helps me the most in my dark hours of my mental illness? My Jesus. When I was a teenager I had a thing for Jewish guys. I remember the first hot Jewish guy, he was my actual first crush. Pauly Shore! I can remember coloring Easter Eggs at my Grandma’s house in the kitchen and she had a T.V. in her kitchen. Now a little aside, when I got to be about thirteen, around the time of this Pauly Shore revolution, I hated Easter. I would color Easter Eggs on Good Friday all by myself so that on Easter I could eat Easter Eggs all by myself. Now back to my story. There was hot Pauly Shore in Speedos on “Totally Pauly” talking about being Jewish. Well, the perfect Jewish man, that I could actually date, didn’t come until about ten years later. I learned something. A Jewish guy wouldn’t want his kids to know my BESTEST FRIEND, my Redeemer, my Lord Jesus. I mean if I just married a Jewish guy and it was just us, it would fine. He could practice what he wanted and I could practice what I wanted, but I always wanted kids in the equation.

Well, how about this Jesus? How about Yeshua? My Jewish man come to do his Father’s will. Well, way back in 1999. Before I felt suicidal, I did know there was something wrong with me. I had to fix it. I hadn’t been going to church my whole time at college. Well, maybe sometimes, but I would go hung over and half asleep. So I went to Reconciliation. And after what I told the priest and how he forgave me through Jesus, I cried. I walked out the confessional and cried some more in front of the Blessed Sacrament. There were no other people for Reconciliation so the priest came and asked me if I needed to talk. I was embarrassed and said no. I got up and left the church and cried all the way back to my dorm. Then came when it got really bad and I was going to end it all. I felt like I could trust no one. I saw a middle aged black man coming down my dorm hall. It was really weird because I went to a college in Southern Indiana where there isn’t very many African – Americans. And he told me that I could trust my father. I knew at that moment I needed to talk to my Dad, but after I went my dorm room I pushed the thought aside. Later that night, I got in my car and was ready to start it up and find a wall and crash my car! Then I got a feeling that wasn’t my own. I had heard others talked about this phenomenon before. My mother always described, when she was taking communion to the hospital, that when many people did not wish to receive that she would walk the halls and feel a great sadness that wasn’t her own. Well, I felt this feeling and it felt like strong warning not to go through with killing myself. Later I was court ordered to a mental health unit and I remembered what my Guardian Angel (for I believe that was what the middle aged black man was) had said to trust my Dad. I put him as my emgerency contact and he was there for me during my stay. For example I tried to escape three times from the mental health unit. Which was really just me going on the elevator that needed key to go anywhere so all it really did was close and open doors, the nurses witnessing this called my Dad. He talked to me and helped me. He still helps me when I get panic attacks.

Now you all know I was in the hospital about two weeks ago. Well you know what my Yeshua did? He sent all three priests from my parish to visit me. One every other day! On Thursday the twelfth he sent Fr. Michael. Father Michael asked me if I ever received the sacrament of the sick. In the old days before Vatican Two it was called Last Rights. Fr. Michael said I have a serious illness and it could help me so I agreed. He forgave all my sins, anointed me, and laid hands on me. I didn’t have any racing thoughts after that. And after he was all done, I asked Father Michael if I could have a hug. Now I have hugged lots of priests, but I am always embarrassed with Fr. Michael because he is young and cute. Anyway, he hugged me and I mean he REALLY hugged me. I felt it was my Jesus saying that everything would be o.k. I thought about that hug all day and when I was saying my prayers before bed, which by the way I could say better because there were no racing thoughts, and just felt Jesus' love

Now those are two examples of how my bridegroom, Yeshua has been there for me. He is always there. I love him. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t plan to become a bride of Christ (a nun). However, Yeshua will always come first.