Life is Okay Right Now

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

It’s strange to say that since I quit my job I am less stressed and overwhelmed even with having to deal with financial hardships and having to look for a new job. You would think that I would feel even more stressed since I have to worry about where money is going to come from and where I can apply for a job that would fit my limitations.

This right here tells me just how stressed out I was working for my last boss and how much I hated my job after I started to see my bosses true colors. I never felt like anything I did was good enough for my boss. He would point out everything I did wrong but nothing I did right.

Even my bestie said she feels bad for me because I finally went out there and got my first job in over three years and she was so proud of me and it ended up turning to shit because of how my boss treated me and he was a total dick when he was in a bad mood. My bestie also said that she was surprised I stayed as long as I did (7 months) given that I was always being talked down to because my education level wasn’t what my boss wished it would be and once my boss even called me stupid and said that I had a horrible memory but he said at least you’re a good organizer. Like really? Wtf!.

Which I never understood that. My ex-boss knew that I only had a GED and a Medical Assistant degree certification and he still hired me knowing that. But after a while my boss would start on how I should further my education and choose a field you can get a job in even if you hate what you’re doing and that my degree I got was pointless (which it is because I paid thousands of dollars to go to a technical school to become a medical assistant but the school didn’t even offer an associates degree and just gave me a certificate. I only worked in the field for like 3 years and now I can’t find anything in that field available that will hire me. I went to school for nothing and now I am swimming in student loan debt because of it.) TBH, I think my boss was frustrated that he couldn’t put me down as anything he actually needed to open his first group home.

I worked for a very small company that had maybe 15 employees and it was literally only me and my boss working in the office because that’s all there was space for. (So pretty much when my boss was in the office I had to walk on egg shells and try to find work to do since there was so much damn down time that it drove me crazy. What sucked about being the only one in the office with your boss is that when they are in a pissy mood they take it out on the only person that is around.) The rest of the employees were Direct Support Professionals or there were a few people he had on reserve to help him open a group home such as a nurse and program director.

It was a start up home health care agency that had been open for only 3 or 4 years. My boss was struggling to open his first group home and the state kept saying he needed to have certain people with specific qualifications to hold certain higher up positions before he can open the home. I didn’t meet any of the qualifications and I think he resented me for that by the snarky comments he would make.

My boss would stalk out certain people if he felt like he could gain something from them and try to bring them on board. Once he even had me sign a document saying that I was on some professional committee for him because he just needed names to show the state in order to make progress with whatever task he was working on. I should have read what I signed but I didn’t.

I just can’t believe that I have been feeling stable for the most part still. I thought I would totally break down and lose my shit after I quit my job but it hasn’t been like that thankfully. I might even go as far as to say that I am proud of how I have been handling things. I still have my occasional mood swing or episode but it doesn’t last nearly as long as it used to. I haven’t even had any suicidal thoughts that used to plague my mind far too often. Actually, I have more so been having fears of dying and get a lot of anxiety and paranoia about it. It’s like the total opposite from what I am used to.

My psych doctor finally prescribed me something that is actually starting to help with the horrible leg and arm jerks and twitches that I get at night from the Seroquel that are actually quite painful and feel like a jolt of lightning is running through my limbs. The twitches would last 2-3 hours and it would start as early as 30 mins after taking my night time meds. The Seroquel and Trazadone combination for my insomnia has been the only thing that has ever really helped me get a normal amount of sleep every night.

Before this combination, I would only get an average of 3-5 hours of broken, restless sleep every night (on the nights that I would actually sleep) and it went on like that for months. It caused my moods to become more erratic. I felt like I was losing my mind. Sleep is important for everyone. When you go for long periods of time on limited sleep it really plays with your mental health in a negative way.

That is why I put up with the twitches for so long but it was becoming harder and harder to deal with. I would even jump around and my legs would jerk into the air or my hands while I was asleep. My boyfriend would tell me how bad it was the next morning.

The med my doctor put me on is called Pramipexole (Mirapex) and it’s a very low dose. Only 0.125mg. But I do have to be careful with this med and we can’t up it too much because it actually decreases the effectiveness of some of my psych meds. But we tried other things that actually made the twitching worse. She weighed the benefits and the risks and decided it would be okay to try the restless leg syndrome med. So my doctor is hoping that at such a low dose that it won’t effect my others meds too much.

I still twitch but I feel like it’s starting to become more tolerable and I can actually fall asleep even with the twitches sometimes because it’s not as bad. Before, it was impossible to fall asleep until the twitching started to let up. By that time it would be like 2am. I hate that I have to take a med to combat the side effects of another med. It’s just one more thing I have to remember to take every day.

I go to CVS for my meds and every 10 prescriptions that you get filled you get a $5 gift certificate. I get that $5 rather frequently because of how many meds I am on. I used one gift certificate today and got another one right back.

Even though I am very happy with my how my current medication regiment is working, I still wonder if all the meds I am on are making some things worse instead of better because the more meds you have to take the higher the chance of an interaction. Example; my leg twitching for the Seroquel mixed with the Trazadone.

Plus, everyone on psych meds knows that you have to worry about weight gain with most of the meds and I feel like being on so many psych meds makes it so much harder for me to lose weight than the average person who isn’t heavily medicated. I gained a massive amount of weight the first time I was on higher doses of Seroquel and that was about 10 years ago and I am still struggling to lose that Seroquel weight.

I really feel like my medical marijuana regimen helps a great deal on top of my medications. I feel like the meds and the marijuana together are the perfect mix. It just really sucks when I run out and don’t have enough funds to get more. I am on a limited income and had to reduce how much I get which leaves a few days a week that I am completely out of it. I usually get the marijuana capsules and take a certain amount every day to stay stable and tame my overwhelming anxiety and worries but I run out a few days before I can buy more again.

Then I am left with horrible anxiety and overthinking everything once again for the days I am out. My prescribed anxiety meds (20mg Buspar, 25mg Seroquel, 50mg Trazadone) just don’t cut it on their own anymore and because I am on medical marijuana my doctor will not prescribe any benzos which would be the only thing that could actually tame my anxiety on the days I don’t have weed. .

When I have my supply, I am able to function like a normal person. I can socialize and go out in public. I can talk to strangers without my heart pounding. I can focus on tasks that I need to get done and actually be able to complete the tasks. It’s just amazing. I feel like a whole new person when I take the capsules. I can even keep up with the housework lately when I am fully medicated. It doesn’t get me high, it just mellows me out and relives my anxiety, overthinking, and worries better than anything else. Plus, it does help with my physical pain conditions.

I feel like years of smoking cigarettes and weed (weed since I was 14, and cigs since I was 17) have wrecked havoc on my lungs. I also have asthma now. One doctor I seen listened to my lungs and asked me if I have been diagnosed with COPD and I said no and she said she believed I am at the start of it so they prescribed me Symbicort and an albuterol inhaler. I don’t know if COPD is genetic but my dad was diagnosed with it after he quit smoking.

I can’t smoke my marijuana like I used to because I end up coughing so bad that I end up throwing up. It’s so embarrassing. I can’t even sit to smoke weed when I used it that way because of the really embarrassing risk of a bladder leak from coughing so hard. But it really sucks because I love using the flower, vape pens, and dart pods because it kicks in immediately instead of the two hours or so that it takes for the pills to kick in since it’s considered an edible. But the pills do tend to last a lot longer than smoking it. Plus, with the pills, if you eat something it doesn’t decrease the effects like it does when you smoke it.

Even though things are going well for the most part (minus some occasional mood swings or downswings because I got into an argument with someone or because I was triggered) I can’t help but have this worry or fear in the back of my mind that things are going too well right now so that means that something bad is going to happen to change it all because that is what I am used to.

Every time things start looking up something bad or negative always happens that causes me have a melt down or for me to slip into a bad episode. It’s really hard for me to hang on to hope that things have finally changed for the better because I have never seen permanent change for the better in my life. My entire life has been this crazy rollercoaster ride with no one there to operate the ride.

This is the longest I have ever been stable. The only symptom that really gets me right now is my anxiety, worries, and fears. I think about everything and overanalyze everything to the point where I start to think about everything that could possibly go wrong in every situation and it causes so much anxiety and worry and I can’t control it sometimes. My mind will jump to the worst case scenario every time and I don’t know how to stop it.

When my loved ones are driving around, I ask them all to text me when they get to their destination or get home so that I know they didn’t die in a horrible car wreck. If they don’t text me after a while, I will call the person just to double check. But if they don’t answer their phone for whatever reason, I start to get paranoid and worry that something bad happened to them. I can’t help or control that I get like this. It’s like something takes over me and I just panic until I hear from the person.

Ever since I first tried to get sober from alcohol and I had nothing to numb me anymore, I developed all types of anxieties and fears. I feel like I am scared of everything. Now that I am out of recovery, I was hoping that it could take away some of the fears that developed but nope.

I feel like listening to people who told me I was an addict and needed help and started going to AA for them helped me and made things worse at the same time. Sobriety and working the steps unleashed a floodgate of emotions and memories that triggered me in every way possible. I couldn’t find mental health stability while in recovery like people in the program claim happen after awhile. I actually got worse because I couldn’t figure out how to get out of my head.

I feel like I am the only person in the world who got worse mentally while trying to get sober and stay in recovery. It’s like unheard of. Sobriety and recovery is an amazing thing for most people and so many people need AA or NA to recover and get their life back in order, but I guess I am the odd woman out again. While I was in AA I watched so many people bloom into an even more amazing person while they stayed clean and worked the steps and I don’t get why I was the opposite. I get this feeling like I failed in a way because I couldn’t get the program to work for me.

To be honest, I was completely sober from all drugs and alcohol for a whole year. That year I was the most mentally unstable that I have ever been in my life and tried to commit suicide more times than I’d like to admit. I obviously failed every time. But then on my 32nd birthday I started smoking marijuana after a good friend brought a blunt over and I started smoking again to help with my anxiety before I was an actual medical marijuana patient.

I kept that hidden from everyone who was in the program because I didn’t think they would accept it. But I have never felt like there was anything wrong with smoking weed. If everyone in the world would smoke a blunt at the same time everyone would be chill and get along for a few hours and shit would probably be more peaceful for those few hours. It’s better for you than alcohol because it isn’t a depressant.

Sorry for the long ramblings. It’s been awhile since I wrote a personal post and I guess I had a lot to say again. Thanks for reading and stay healthy and safe!