This spoke to me today:

"I didn't succeed at my attempts to control emotions. Emotional control has been a survival behavior for me. I can thank that behavior for helping me get through many years and situations where I didn't have any better options. But I have learned a healthier behavior--accepting my feelings.

We are meant to feel. Part of our dysfunction is trying to deny or change that. Part of our recovery means learning to go with the flow of what we're feeling."

Quote by Melodie Beattie from The Language of Letting Go.
Photo by http://sondos.deviantart.com

Weekly Roundup

Yes, I missed last week's round up. Sorry. But I got a really good excuse. My internet has been acting up.

I don't know what's going on with me right now. There's days I want to sleep all day and I do. If I have school, I'll go and come back home to sleep. I get upset when I have a therapist appointment or a meeting for work cuz I know I have to work my sleep schedule around it and that just means less sleep for me.

I got food poisoning last Monday courtesy of McDonalds. That night I had a fever and had a strange pain in my legs. I didn't sleep at all. I've been struggling the whole week. I still don't feel well.

I have missed the gym every day this week. I usually work out in the mornings before school. However, with the food poisoning, that's the time I feel the worst and just haven't had the strenghth to go.

My therapist has been pushing me to see a specialist to diagnose me with whatever I have. So I finally went and have been diagnosed with social phobia. No big surprise there.

My medication has been changed. It is no longer doxepin. The side effects were horrible on me. The meds made me eat continuously and contributed to my low energy levels. I'm up to 172 lbs. It's the most I've ever weighed. I'm now on citolopram or somthin' like that. Now I can't sleep. That was the only good thing about doxepin, it made me sleep like a comatose person.

I'm still struggling with my graphic design class. I've been getting C's. I have one more project to go. I'm determined to make an A on this one. Just one problem, the project is to make a logo, and if there's one thing I hate the most in the graphic design world is logos. Wish me luck.

Weekly Roundup

My graphic design class is driving me up the wall. My professor has his obvious favorites. He'll always use them as examples of "good" students. This girl and I are his "bad" students. He'll make sure to go out of his way to put our work down during critiques. The last assignment I turned in was quality work. I know this because I did the assignment twice just to get it right and still he found faults with it.

I haven't heard from my friend who relapsed. I'm sure he's back out on the streets drinking and drugging. I'm upset. I shall write a seperate blog detailing my feelings on it.

I have been eating and sleeping uncontrollably. This is a side effect of my meds. I don't have the energy to do anything during the day. I barely have strenth to go to the gym in the mornings. As soon as I get out from school, I have to lay down or take a nap. When I'm home, all I eat is cereal. I used to have control over what I ate but now I eat anything in the house. I have an appointment to see new specialitsts soon. Hopefully they'll change my meds.

I'm doing well on my spending freeze. I've been tempted to buy a few more clothes but I resist.

My anxiety levels were low this week...probably because I spend all my time eating now. LOL.

Relapse of a Friend

A close friend of mine has relapsed. It's strange because he sobered up before I did. I thought he had a better grasp at sobriety than I did. When he first told me about his relapse, he made it sound like it was a one time deal. Come to find out, it was more of a one month deal. The severity of the relapse to that degree has me stunned. It's like he gave up. We were supposed to be in this together. Me and him used to party together all the time. In fact, when my addiction got at its worst, he was the only person I would allow in my apartment because I just didn't want to be near anyone feeling wired. He should have known, given our past, that it was a dreadful way of existing.

He's recently got out of a serious relationship. Since then, he's been hanging out with people I didn't agree with out at bars. I warned him. I wanted so badly for him to understand that he didn't need to fill the void with anything but with his own self. I wanted to do a Vulcan mind meld on him so I could show him how. It's just that he's such a social person, he needs to be out and about, something I admire about him. I knew that I couldn't tell him too much about what to do because he's been sober longer than I have. Now its like he's starting all over again. The odds of relapsing within the first three months of sobriety are astronomical. It feels like I've failed him somehow. His situation with drugs has always been life and death. It's a scary time for him.

I find it odd that my pain through anxiety prevents me from doing a lot of things including going out and carrying on with people BUT its the very thing that helps me stay away from bars and negativity. Hmmm...maybe things do happen for a reason. I just hope its for the better for my friend too.

photo by http://dopestars.deviantart.com/

Weekly Roundup

This week was weird. The anxiety level I started off with was enough to kill a small animal. The adrenaline and worry caused me to isolate myself for the better half of the week.

My friend Anissa had called to see how my new job had been going. She asked about my next assignment and I told her I hadn’t gotten one yet but that I had hoped it wouldn’t be in a while seeing how the summer semester is a bit slower than the fall and spring. That very next day, I was text by my photo editor for a shoot that evening. I of course cursed at the irony. I had to photograph the cast of a new play the university is showing. I had a bundle of nerves getting to the theatre. Fortunately the promo lady for the show was also taking photos and giving the cast directions on how to pose. It was the easiest shoot ever. I had worried myself for nothing!

I saw my therapist in mid week. I updated her on my increasing anxiety. She took note that my anxiety levels weren’t this high since my Starbucks job. But now I have jobs that are important to me and I told her I’m determined not to sabotage myself yet again. The therapist then introduced me to my new blue giraffe. I don’t know why but the blue giraffe was an epiphany. It was like the clouds had parted revealing the brilliance of the sun and the world. My blue giraffe gives me permission to be me and forgives my flaws by acknowledging that that‘s inherently what it is to be me. By the rest of the week my anxiety levels were near zero.

My 1st Published Photo

It's official! I'm a photographer. My debut was made on the July 1st edition of my school newspaper. My assignment was to take photographs of firework sales outside the city limits. Unfortunately it was so early on that no one was out buying fireworks so I had to take photos of the two employees working the stands.

The editors weren't too happy about me not getting shots of people buying fireworks but they understood why and still offered me an official position on the newspaper staff. I ofcourse said yes.

Ugh, and with my newbie status, it didn't help that my phone rang and echoed through the halls during the last meeting. What made it more embarrassing was that my ringtone is "Call on Me" by Eric Prydz. I'm gonna end up getting fired, lol, I can feel it!

Pink Elephants, Blue Giraffes

I'm often told not to think about it. That's no help to someone who's mind is racing at lightspeed every moment of everyday. In light of that, I was proposed with two scenerios.

Scenerio 1:

A man is walking with his elephant in a bazaar. The elephant's instinct is to grab the leaves from a nearby tree or to reach for anything nearby. The man gives the elephant a baton. The elphant no longer has the desire to reach for other things because it is perfectly happy with its baton.

Scenerio 2:

If you're told, "Don't think about the pink elephant, not matter what don't think about the pink elephant, just don't think about the PINK E L E P H A N T!" You're gonna think about the pink elephant...but if you think about a blue giraffe, then problem solved. My blue giraffe is a sum of everything I love to do such as photography and graphic design...if I feel anxious, I will not fuel it but starve it by spending time with my blue giraffe.

Conclusion:

Both scenerios are cheesy but the premise is thoughtful. I will carry my blue giraffe everywhere I go from now on.

"Fag"

I was in the elventh grade. This girl, Brenda, and I had gotten in an argument. She sat at her desk while I sat at mine on the other side of the room. I can't remember what we were fighting about. Probably about something only eleventh graders argue about. She became angry and yelled, "You fag!" A silence fell on the whole class proceeded by a thunderous laughter. I sat there, humiliated and defeated. The most hurtful part of it all was that the people whom I called friends sat there laughing loudly and unashamedly. Not one rose to my defense. I fought back the tears. To this day it remains a tough memory for me.

As the years progressed, I would gradually be told by my "friends," Nayeli, Juana, Stacy, Ricky, Marie, Antonio and Ralph, that they too were homosexuals (this is probably a major factor why I dislike closet cases). I was the first to come out. I did it because I hated pretending to be something I wasn't and I paid dearly for it. Looking back at that incident, I think if it weren't me it would have been someone else. If all of this is to build character and to become the proud, confident person I one day hope to be, then I will thank my higher power for bestowing such an honor onto me...and I will thank Brenda.