How not to buy your own leased car
My temporary tags on the car expired July 4th, and I forgot that that was a Friday, that everything would be closed, and the deputy registrars were all closed over the weekend. I spent Monday on the phone trying to find another source of money to keep my car and came up empty. I don’t want to (and don’t have the extra room in my budget) to have to pay to renew my plates for a year, when I’m going to possibly lose the car on the 17th.
It's bad enough that I had to send Allstate money for the month of July.
When I finally got myself out of the funk I was in, I went down to the car (looking forward to "cruising around with the top down"), only to discover the front driver’s side tire was flat. The frustration was so bad; I just stood there and stared at it for about 10 minutes with a tight chest. Fortunately when I first got it in 2003, I paid an extra thousand for an extended warranty that included unlimited road-side assistance. All I could think of, was that brief year when I momentarily had the physique of a Greek god, and now I doubted my heart condition would allow me to lift the “doughnut” spare out of the trunk. Just one more reminder of the life I once had.
By the time they came out to change it for me, it was too late to get the plates renewed, so I drove over to a tire place on the next block. They wanted $39.99 just to plug a tire! I hopped on the expressway and headed to NTB.
Nothing accentuates just how SLOW 55 MPH is until you get on an expressway with a dinky spare tire and everyone's doing 70-God I was miserable.
They wanted $24 and I said go for it. Five minutes later they told me that they couldn’t plug where a nail got it, because a couple of years ago I’d put Fix-a-flat in it and so now I’d have to buy a new tire.
$119.49 for a new tire on a car I'd only have a few more weeks, destroyed my entire budget for July. Oh they had other cheaper tires, but not in stock. Usually I enjoy being fucked, but not this time. The frustration and hopelessness were building up inside me because even the most simple things in my life seem to go against me. It didn't help either that when they pulled my car up front, everyone in the lobby started gushing about how nice it must be to have such a beautiful car and how they wish they had one too.
Tuesday, I drove up to renew my plates and they told me I couldn’t buy additional temporary tags, so I had to shell out $60 for a full year on a car I’ll only have to the 17th. I needed comfort food, so I microwaved some lasagna when I got home, plopped myself down in front of the TV and put a comedy movie on the DVD to cheer myself up…
My cat Mischief jumped up on the tray table spilling scalding hot pasta into my lap and a glass of diet Dr. Pepper went flying… I spent the rest of the night sleeping... and wondering if it was worth it to wake up the next morning.
People who have never experienced clinical severe depression, scoff it off and say, "Ah stop it; you're just feeling sorry for yourself-so get over it." They don't know that this is a chemical process in your brain that causes it and that only prescription meds can control it. The fact that my life's been in freefall for almost four years hasn't helped either.
Wednesday, my shrink gave me a phone number of the head of her department, who expressed an interest in my case and might have some suggestions on saving my beloved car.
Thursday I sank into a “What’s the use” frame of mind and mostly busied myself answering comments on my latest BlogCritics’ article on line to take my mind off my woes.
Friday I tried calling the number Dr. “Mind” gave me and repeatedly got his voice mail. I left my number… he never called back. I wonder what frame of mind I’d be in if I weren’t on Cymbalta; I’d probably be dead by my own hand by now.
I've thought of trying to get two different $5,000 loans, but that'd mean paying double the interst. Now I'm thinking about trying to get them to change their minds about not extending my lease on the car, by offering to use my $1,500 down payment to give them the first five months up front.
I went over to Hunting*** Bank and paid up to August 17th with their little ticket in the back of the book. It was only after I got my money out that I saw the fine print that said I'd need prior approval to extend the lease another month. I gambled and paid the $299.83 and they took it, so I guess I'll be alright.
I'm waiting for someone to screw up on a computer somewhere and send a tow truck to take my car on the 18th of this month because I didn't turn it in...
Well five days after getting my new plates I'm still driving around with temporary tags on the car that expired July 4th, because I keep forgetting to take a screwdriver with me to put them on. Somehow this has to stop.
I got three numbers on the megamillions last night!
I won a whole $7... whoopie.
Monday 14th
I had a 2:30 appointment at Ohio State's Eye clinic that didn't finish until almost 6. (The clinic closes at 4:30.) I wound up with a needle stuck in my left eye to relieve pressure and to administer some drugs into it. They're trying to schedule surgery on my right eye to remove the debris from an exploded capillary that's partially blocking the optic nerve, but can't operate until I get clearance from my cardiologist on the 23rd. I'm holding my breath until this Thursday to see if everyone got the word that I extended the lease a month on the car, since no one will finance it. I know one thing, I can't afford a cab to see Dr. "Heart"; last time it was over $135 round trip, so I need the damned car.
The pits is that if I do have the knee surgery, I won't be able to drive it afterward with the contraptions they'll have sticking out of my leg. On the other hand, if I let the car go, I'll never be able to get financing on another one, so I've got to find a way to keep this one-no matter what.
Wednesday 16th
Yesterday was the pits, and Dr. "Mind" only confirmed it today at our session. As Thursday is now only a matter of hours away, I'm showing more and more psychosomatic symptoms. I went the whole day yesterday with a burning sensation in the top of my throat as if I were about to throw up or about to burp. I actually walked around with a garbage bag in case I couldn't make it to the bathroom in time to throw up. At the same time I still had an appetite. I've been fighting off wanting to sleep all the time (classic symptom) and I'm having nightmares of the attack again.
The guy she wanted me to get in touch with about possibilities for my car, still hasn't called, and frankly I'm weary of hoping. I drove out to a restaurant supplier place and then Wal-Mart and stocked up on supplies in case someone shows up with a tow truck to steal the car that didn't get notified that I paid a month's extension.
Tomorrow, I'm going to offer to send them the $1,500 I was going to use on the down payment to try to get them to let me lease it for another 5 months. They can still refuse it, take the car, and refund me the $299.83 I paid last Friday.
I'm going to fight to stay awake tonight. I've been avoiding sleep anyway because of dreams of suicide that usually end with me screaming my head off and bothering my neighbors...
Thursday 17th
I've dreaded this day. I really thought (convinced) that if I offered them $1,500 in cash up front, that they'd let me keep my car an additional five months. Instead they've said that the deal is already done to sell the car to an auto auction.
That's it, there's no other options left. Even if I didn't love the car, I can't get financing, even for some junker that'd probably fall apart six months after I bought it.
I seem a little less scared of death today...
I dumped a glass of tea into my keyboard and ruined it and the mouse. Just got home from buying new ones from money I can't afford. With the new tire I had to buy on a car I'm only going to have until August 17th, and having to buy license plates for a year, it pretty much taps me out. Nothing has gone right today. Dr "Mind" wants me to spend a night or possibly a weekend in a rubber room under observation...
Friday 18th
Last night was one of the worst nightmares I've had in my life... and that's saying something. It was a flashback dream of the robbery/beating, only I knew what I'd go through after they finished with me, so just as they were about to run off, leaving me bleeding and knowing the ordeal I've been going through since that night, I grabbed the gun out of the middle guy's hand. They froze and before they could take it away from me, I put it in my mouth and pulled the trigger.
I woke up screaming my head off. Over the last four years, when these dreams started, I avoided sleep, forcing myself to stay awake until I'd pass out from exhaustion.
Saturday 19th
I woke up this morning from a nightmare where my attackers threw me in an old pizza oven and I fought to find a surface that didn't burn me. I woke up screaming again.
The reason for the nightmare was obvious the moment I regained my wits... I suppose it was due, and I almost asked myself why now God? Why now? Sometime during the night, my central air conditioning compressor died, and it was 95 in here. No repairman until next Tuesday at the earliest.
I tried shutting it down in case it just froze up and needed to thaw, but that didn't help. I opened the sliding glass doors and turned on my kitchen and bathroom exhaust fans, but it's as hot outside as it inside and the humidity is a killer. Fortunately I can take a cool shower for a brief relief, but poor Mischief is suffering in her fur coat... At least she could fit in the refrigerator, not that I'd dare try.
Last February when I was denied my Cymbalta, I went into a three day rage and trashed my apartment. Now, with only three chambers of my heart working, I haven't been able to clean for over six months... that and I'm irrationally afraid to take my trash to the dumpster or venture out my apartment door after dark. When they redid the elevator last fall, the health department said the garbage chute/compactor room was too close to the elevator shaft and closed it down. Food trash goes down the garbage disposal, but the paper trash and empty pop cans have been accumulating since then, and I'm too proud and too scared of strangers to hire a professional company to come out and do it, and wouldn't have the money either.
I swear, God is testing me. Although I've been resisting it, I may have to call Dr. "mind" and reserve a rubber room over the weekend after all. I must really be strong to have not killed myself yet.
I don't feel strong. As the frustration is building, my eyes are burning, but the tears won't come to give me release. When I was a kid, I'd get a beating from my father if I cried... so it's really hard-damned near impossible-to cry, especially when I need the release.
I drove out to Wal-Mart and Kroger's and picked up my presciptions for July. It was a debate on whether I'd go with the top down or up. Knowing how much gas I'd use running the A/C I went with Down. I'm shocked I didn't get a ticket trying to work up a "wind-chill factor"
I bought a new lottery ticket; since the lotto started back in the 80s, I've always played the exact same bet 2-5-9-14-16 22. My eyes are so bad that I filled the card and didn't realize until I got home that I'd inadvertently filled it out right except the last number-which is now 20 for the next 10 Megamillions drawings. Par for the course. Mega millions is 120 million on Tuesday... yeah right
I'm tempted to sleep in my car tonight with the A/C on. How ridiculous is that?
I haven't killed myself yet because I'm too much of a coward.
Monday July 21st
Went to the heart clinic today, surprise of surprises I've lost 5 pounds and even more astonishing is that my sodium levels were right where they should be (with all the cheap food I've been eating.)?!? Afterward I bought a head of red cabbage, shredded lettuce and carrots and I'm planning to eat nothing but salads for a week.
I'm getting more and more paranoid, edgy and impatient. My shoulders and face are beginning to spontaneously bleed again (from nerves) and the night sweats have come back.
I keep telling myself things have to get better.
...Even though I've stopped believing that long ago. Like a tease holding a piece of candy just outside the reach of a toddler's hand, fate waits for me to reach for hope, and laughs as it's pulled away when I almost have it in my grasp... I've stopped reaching for it.
11:04PM... I think I just figured out why losing my car is hitting me so hard. When I'm in that car-I'm free, the car and I are one, and I'm my old self again. I get into it and the horsepower of the car, the great looks of that car, the freedom of that car embodies me the way I was in my carefree days before the attack. When I didn't have a care in the world, and I had the money, the looks, the talent, and the business savvy to take on the world.
That's all gone now and I feel like I'll never-ever get it back. The acceleration makes up for my mangled and beaten leg. The "Inferno Red" paint and the styling represent the body I once had that turned heads and earned compliments wherever I went. The envious stares of other drivers at that beautiful red convertible with the top down represented the confidence and the drive I once had, but now I've lost it. I think that if I lose that car, that part of me (the best part of me) will be lost with it.
Family members that once discarded me years ago as a pervert or worse never even saw the best years of my life, and if I told them about them, they wouldn't believe me. Sometimes I have trouble believing it myself. Judge Judy says on the subject of lying, that if you tell the truth, you don't have to have a good memory. My problem is I don't remember half the lies I've told to an already judgmental and dismissive family to cover what my real life was actually like.
On my quarterly visits to San Diego, I would've loved to visit my brother at the naval base, just to see his astonishment at what a year's worth of gym training and a few unnamed and unmentioned injections did. Can you imagine going within half a mile of your brother and knowing you weren't welcome to visit? Unfortunately that muscled body didn't come with a warning label that said that if I didn't become a slave to it, it'd turn into a grotesque lump of blubber in revenge...
I shake my head that they never questioned where it came from when I'd send a thousand here or a thousand there at the mere hint that they needed it, or sent lavish Christmas and birthday gifts. Oh I'd hint at it every once in a while with photos of the penthouse, or the customized British Sports cars, and luxury convertibles, but they didn't catch on or wonder. They'd discard the evidence of their own eyes and then shake their heads and turn their backs... poor Jet is making up his ridiculous stories again...
Now I regret being so camera shy in those days, preferring to be on the other side of the shutter of that Nikon I'd carry with me wherever I went.
The very thought that I'd have to prove it to them, is telling of what little they think of me.
I don't think I can deal with that anymore, or the loss of my beloved car; and as the days dwindle down to a precious few and I have to give that car back and know that it (like my pride)is going to be sold at some auto auction for a fraction of its value... I don't think I can bear to think about it... and it scares me to think that... God, I'd sell my soul if I could find the strength to cry-to experience that grief and the release it'd bring.
Everything that once said I was here on this earth is disappearing right before my eyes. Two houses where I grew up (one across from the Air Force base, the other across the parkway from the airport where I got my nick name) have been torn down decades ago. The airport where my mother worked as a waitress in the coffee shop, where I playfully ran freely up and down the halls day in and day out, and spent hours watching the planes and then jets take off and land has been torn down too.
The Moon High School class ring that never left my finger for as long as I can remember was lost uncountable months ago; My brain so numbed by this ordeal and by Cymbalta that I don't even mourn its loss. It's like if I look behind me, I see a wave of erasers trying to engulf me, getting ever closer, and someday soon they'll catch up to me, and like some nondescript factory worker who lived in the 1890s, the only evidence that I was here will be some weathered tombstone that no one could read, even if they could figure out who I was... and I'll be as nonexistent as I was before I was born, in limbo.
And what of my art? The pieces that started my career, were beautiful portraits of civil leaders and common folk, and landscapes of homes long gone on the walls of two non-descript McDonald's. Both of which have been torn down and replaced, leaving no evidence that they'd ever existed there, like Illustrations of obsolete refrigerator compressors and VCR components for long-forgotten appliances that also are long discarded, along with the repair manuals that serviced them. Those line drawings were the bread and butter of an unnoteworthy art career.
The movies I did the camera work on, have all been re-edited and renamed, so that the new owners wouldn't have to pay me royalties for them. Like a deer in oncoming headlights, I see that wave of erasers catching up to me, careening headlong at me and I feel nothing... I'm too numb from everything I've lived through to feel anything... everything that I once was has almost all ceased to exist...
My writing at BlogCritics still exists, telling people I was here... but so do the snide remarks, derogatory and cutting, that my loyal readers also see that were left by those who would discredit my point of view, but never write articles of their own so others just as ignorant can do the same to them.
I can't sleep tonight because of the heat
I can't sleep because of the fear of nightmares
I can't sleep because of the flashbacks.
I'll stay awake until I fall asleep finally from exhaustion...
...then I'll wake up screaming... again.
Tuesday July 22nd-Heaven is a quickly repaired air conditioner.
All my central a/c stuff is on the roof and I was awakened to the sound of footsteps on my ceiling... Santa Clause? The air coming out of those vents is almost as good as an orgasm...
I said almost!
We had one hell of a storm at 4 this morning. I woke to the sound of cannons and to Mischief poking my face with her declawed paws. I swear she looked like she'd just pleaded, "I'm scared-hide me!" You know it's bad when bright light flashes through closed solid window blinds. With all the office buildings around here equipped with lightning rods on their roofs, it isn't any wonder that storms are an event around here.
I was going to delete all of yesterdays ramblings, but then it wouldn't be an honest blog. I discovered this morning I'd missed my dosage of Cymbalts... oy
Thursday July 24th
Dr. Heart cleared me for surgery yesterday, GB called this morning to see if I went to his office and if I got clearance. I guess I'll make a bunch of phone calls on Monday
Saturday July 26th
The bulk of the last couple of days have been spent reorganizing my web pages, not much else, except to go out and drive around and pick up supplies here and there. In the last two days my vision has clouded and I felt like I was going to faint. It scared the hell out of me.
Sunday July 27th
I have a big-screen TV-the tube type that weighs a ton. It's a 42 inch Sony that I bought in 1996. It's got 5.1 surround sound. It sits in a custom shelving unit about five feet off the floor over my 80 gallon aquarium.
Tonight Mischief decided to play with all the speaker cords back behind it. Two speaker lines got crossed from their push-in connections and blew something out, and I had to rush and find the power cord as the smell of wire insulation smoke billowed out. It wouldn't turn back on for a while, I just tried it, and to my relief the picture came on...
...but no sound.
Just great-just fucking great. It's built into the custom shelving unit, and is too high and heavy to get out by myself. Even if I could, I can't afford to repair it, or buy a new one-since the HDTVs are all hundreds to thousands of dollars... even if it was only $50 I'd have to cut back $50 worth of food or prescriptions.
I've just lost a major source of entertainment and news.
I can't take much more of this.
God-why won't you stop torturing me?
Monday July 28th
I went my first full day without TV today. You never know what you've got till it's gone. I didn't realize how much I used CNN for background noise while I was cooking or cleaning until now. It was also strange eating without watching Greatest police chases on Tru-TV every evening between the network news commercials.
I keep having these problems, which are completely out of my hands to prevent or control. Maybe I am losing it, because it seems as if God is really testing how far he can stress my sanity before it finally breaks.
I boiled some eggs and mixed some Tuna and Miracle Whip this evening for some sandwich spread. My lord it's horrible not being allowed to have salt. I spent the evening working on the new graphics for my six blogsites here.
Tuesday July 29th
My sister Betsy called me on her way to work this morning and ten minutes in, I suddenly realized that I was bleeding all over the bed. I reached down and where my groin meets my right leg, there was an almond shaped knot just beneath the skin, and I was stupid enough to squeeze it and blood with the consistency of puss gushed out. I cleaned it with some alcohol and paper towels. it's right at the site where they ran the probe up to do exploratory heart surgery.
I suddenly realized that I was so busy yesterday, that I didn't take my Lantus insulin, because I'd run out of needles and couldn't locate the stock I got at Grant Hospital last December. A nurse at Grant Hospital was sweet enough to give me a big carton of assorted cartridge needles and I just assumed-and considering my track record I should've known better.
I just located the box five minutes ago only to discover that none of the 500 or so fit my cartridge pen. No pharmacy will let me buy the right sized ones unless I have a prescription for them, and the last few times since I don't have insurance for them, I've paid full price.
Now it turns out that without a prescription, I can't use my county Medicaid card to buy them.
I just went into the kitchen for more paper towels, I pulled (but didn't yank) on the sheet and the roll fell into my dish water-it was a brand new roll too. I examined the roll (one of the BIG ones) and discovered it seems to be about an quarter of an inch narrower than the holder. Probably to cut back on size instead of raising their price-like the potato chip guys do by reducing the bag weight by an ounce instead of raising the price. I'm too emotionally exhausted to be mad, or lose my temper at something so stupid, and instead tossed it away.
I have a feeling this isn't going to be a good day.
Wednesday July 30th
After a rather lengthy session with my shrink today, I've changed the title of this particular page to Blogging on the Edge of Sanity... instead of and opposed to "suicide"...
My temporary tags on the car expired July 4th, and I forgot that that was a Friday, that everything would be closed, and the deputy registrars were all closed over the weekend. I spent Monday on the phone trying to find another source of money to keep my car and came up empty. I don’t want to (and don’t have the extra room in my budget) to have to pay to renew my plates for a year, when I’m going to possibly lose the car on the 17th.
It's bad enough that I had to send Allstate money for the month of July.
When I finally got myself out of the funk I was in, I went down to the car (looking forward to "cruising around with the top down"), only to discover the front driver’s side tire was flat. The frustration was so bad; I just stood there and stared at it for about 10 minutes with a tight chest. Fortunately when I first got it in 2003, I paid an extra thousand for an extended warranty that included unlimited road-side assistance. All I could think of, was that brief year when I momentarily had the physique of a Greek god, and now I doubted my heart condition would allow me to lift the “doughnut” spare out of the trunk. Just one more reminder of the life I once had.
By the time they came out to change it for me, it was too late to get the plates renewed, so I drove over to a tire place on the next block. They wanted $39.99 just to plug a tire! I hopped on the expressway and headed to NTB.
Nothing accentuates just how SLOW 55 MPH is until you get on an expressway with a dinky spare tire and everyone's doing 70-God I was miserable.
They wanted $24 and I said go for it. Five minutes later they told me that they couldn’t plug where a nail got it, because a couple of years ago I’d put Fix-a-flat in it and so now I’d have to buy a new tire.
$119.49 for a new tire on a car I'd only have a few more weeks, destroyed my entire budget for July. Oh they had other cheaper tires, but not in stock. Usually I enjoy being fucked, but not this time. The frustration and hopelessness were building up inside me because even the most simple things in my life seem to go against me. It didn't help either that when they pulled my car up front, everyone in the lobby started gushing about how nice it must be to have such a beautiful car and how they wish they had one too.
Tuesday, I drove up to renew my plates and they told me I couldn’t buy additional temporary tags, so I had to shell out $60 for a full year on a car I’ll only have to the 17th. I needed comfort food, so I microwaved some lasagna when I got home, plopped myself down in front of the TV and put a comedy movie on the DVD to cheer myself up…
My cat Mischief jumped up on the tray table spilling scalding hot pasta into my lap and a glass of diet Dr. Pepper went flying… I spent the rest of the night sleeping... and wondering if it was worth it to wake up the next morning.
People who have never experienced clinical severe depression, scoff it off and say, "Ah stop it; you're just feeling sorry for yourself-so get over it." They don't know that this is a chemical process in your brain that causes it and that only prescription meds can control it. The fact that my life's been in freefall for almost four years hasn't helped either.
Wednesday, my shrink gave me a phone number of the head of her department, who expressed an interest in my case and might have some suggestions on saving my beloved car.
Thursday I sank into a “What’s the use” frame of mind and mostly busied myself answering comments on my latest BlogCritics’ article on line to take my mind off my woes.
Friday I tried calling the number Dr. “Mind” gave me and repeatedly got his voice mail. I left my number… he never called back. I wonder what frame of mind I’d be in if I weren’t on Cymbalta; I’d probably be dead by my own hand by now.
I've thought of trying to get two different $5,000 loans, but that'd mean paying double the interst. Now I'm thinking about trying to get them to change their minds about not extending my lease on the car, by offering to use my $1,500 down payment to give them the first five months up front.
I went over to Hunting*** Bank and paid up to August 17th with their little ticket in the back of the book. It was only after I got my money out that I saw the fine print that said I'd need prior approval to extend the lease another month. I gambled and paid the $299.83 and they took it, so I guess I'll be alright.
I'm waiting for someone to screw up on a computer somewhere and send a tow truck to take my car on the 18th of this month because I didn't turn it in...
Well five days after getting my new plates I'm still driving around with temporary tags on the car that expired July 4th, because I keep forgetting to take a screwdriver with me to put them on. Somehow this has to stop.
I got three numbers on the megamillions last night!
I won a whole $7... whoopie.
Monday 14th
I had a 2:30 appointment at Ohio State's Eye clinic that didn't finish until almost 6. (The clinic closes at 4:30.) I wound up with a needle stuck in my left eye to relieve pressure and to administer some drugs into it. They're trying to schedule surgery on my right eye to remove the debris from an exploded capillary that's partially blocking the optic nerve, but can't operate until I get clearance from my cardiologist on the 23rd. I'm holding my breath until this Thursday to see if everyone got the word that I extended the lease a month on the car, since no one will finance it. I know one thing, I can't afford a cab to see Dr. "Heart"; last time it was over $135 round trip, so I need the damned car.
The pits is that if I do have the knee surgery, I won't be able to drive it afterward with the contraptions they'll have sticking out of my leg. On the other hand, if I let the car go, I'll never be able to get financing on another one, so I've got to find a way to keep this one-no matter what.
Wednesday 16th
Yesterday was the pits, and Dr. "Mind" only confirmed it today at our session. As Thursday is now only a matter of hours away, I'm showing more and more psychosomatic symptoms. I went the whole day yesterday with a burning sensation in the top of my throat as if I were about to throw up or about to burp. I actually walked around with a garbage bag in case I couldn't make it to the bathroom in time to throw up. At the same time I still had an appetite. I've been fighting off wanting to sleep all the time (classic symptom) and I'm having nightmares of the attack again.
The guy she wanted me to get in touch with about possibilities for my car, still hasn't called, and frankly I'm weary of hoping. I drove out to a restaurant supplier place and then Wal-Mart and stocked up on supplies in case someone shows up with a tow truck to steal the car that didn't get notified that I paid a month's extension.
Tomorrow, I'm going to offer to send them the $1,500 I was going to use on the down payment to try to get them to let me lease it for another 5 months. They can still refuse it, take the car, and refund me the $299.83 I paid last Friday.
I'm going to fight to stay awake tonight. I've been avoiding sleep anyway because of dreams of suicide that usually end with me screaming my head off and bothering my neighbors...
Thursday 17th
I've dreaded this day. I really thought (convinced) that if I offered them $1,500 in cash up front, that they'd let me keep my car an additional five months. Instead they've said that the deal is already done to sell the car to an auto auction.
That's it, there's no other options left. Even if I didn't love the car, I can't get financing, even for some junker that'd probably fall apart six months after I bought it.
I seem a little less scared of death today...
I dumped a glass of tea into my keyboard and ruined it and the mouse. Just got home from buying new ones from money I can't afford. With the new tire I had to buy on a car I'm only going to have until August 17th, and having to buy license plates for a year, it pretty much taps me out. Nothing has gone right today. Dr "Mind" wants me to spend a night or possibly a weekend in a rubber room under observation...
Friday 18th
Last night was one of the worst nightmares I've had in my life... and that's saying something. It was a flashback dream of the robbery/beating, only I knew what I'd go through after they finished with me, so just as they were about to run off, leaving me bleeding and knowing the ordeal I've been going through since that night, I grabbed the gun out of the middle guy's hand. They froze and before they could take it away from me, I put it in my mouth and pulled the trigger.
I woke up screaming my head off. Over the last four years, when these dreams started, I avoided sleep, forcing myself to stay awake until I'd pass out from exhaustion.
Saturday 19th
I woke up this morning from a nightmare where my attackers threw me in an old pizza oven and I fought to find a surface that didn't burn me. I woke up screaming again.
The reason for the nightmare was obvious the moment I regained my wits... I suppose it was due, and I almost asked myself why now God? Why now? Sometime during the night, my central air conditioning compressor died, and it was 95 in here. No repairman until next Tuesday at the earliest.
I tried shutting it down in case it just froze up and needed to thaw, but that didn't help. I opened the sliding glass doors and turned on my kitchen and bathroom exhaust fans, but it's as hot outside as it inside and the humidity is a killer. Fortunately I can take a cool shower for a brief relief, but poor Mischief is suffering in her fur coat... At least she could fit in the refrigerator, not that I'd dare try.
Last February when I was denied my Cymbalta, I went into a three day rage and trashed my apartment. Now, with only three chambers of my heart working, I haven't been able to clean for over six months... that and I'm irrationally afraid to take my trash to the dumpster or venture out my apartment door after dark. When they redid the elevator last fall, the health department said the garbage chute/compactor room was too close to the elevator shaft and closed it down. Food trash goes down the garbage disposal, but the paper trash and empty pop cans have been accumulating since then, and I'm too proud and too scared of strangers to hire a professional company to come out and do it, and wouldn't have the money either.
I swear, God is testing me. Although I've been resisting it, I may have to call Dr. "mind" and reserve a rubber room over the weekend after all. I must really be strong to have not killed myself yet.
I don't feel strong. As the frustration is building, my eyes are burning, but the tears won't come to give me release. When I was a kid, I'd get a beating from my father if I cried... so it's really hard-damned near impossible-to cry, especially when I need the release.
I drove out to Wal-Mart and Kroger's and picked up my presciptions for July. It was a debate on whether I'd go with the top down or up. Knowing how much gas I'd use running the A/C I went with Down. I'm shocked I didn't get a ticket trying to work up a "wind-chill factor"
I bought a new lottery ticket; since the lotto started back in the 80s, I've always played the exact same bet 2-5-9-14-16 22. My eyes are so bad that I filled the card and didn't realize until I got home that I'd inadvertently filled it out right except the last number-which is now 20 for the next 10 Megamillions drawings. Par for the course. Mega millions is 120 million on Tuesday... yeah right
I'm tempted to sleep in my car tonight with the A/C on. How ridiculous is that?
I haven't killed myself yet because I'm too much of a coward.
Monday July 21st
Went to the heart clinic today, surprise of surprises I've lost 5 pounds and even more astonishing is that my sodium levels were right where they should be (with all the cheap food I've been eating.)?!? Afterward I bought a head of red cabbage, shredded lettuce and carrots and I'm planning to eat nothing but salads for a week.
I'm getting more and more paranoid, edgy and impatient. My shoulders and face are beginning to spontaneously bleed again (from nerves) and the night sweats have come back.
I keep telling myself things have to get better.
...Even though I've stopped believing that long ago. Like a tease holding a piece of candy just outside the reach of a toddler's hand, fate waits for me to reach for hope, and laughs as it's pulled away when I almost have it in my grasp... I've stopped reaching for it.
11:04PM... I think I just figured out why losing my car is hitting me so hard. When I'm in that car-I'm free, the car and I are one, and I'm my old self again. I get into it and the horsepower of the car, the great looks of that car, the freedom of that car embodies me the way I was in my carefree days before the attack. When I didn't have a care in the world, and I had the money, the looks, the talent, and the business savvy to take on the world.
That's all gone now and I feel like I'll never-ever get it back. The acceleration makes up for my mangled and beaten leg. The "Inferno Red" paint and the styling represent the body I once had that turned heads and earned compliments wherever I went. The envious stares of other drivers at that beautiful red convertible with the top down represented the confidence and the drive I once had, but now I've lost it. I think that if I lose that car, that part of me (the best part of me) will be lost with it.
Family members that once discarded me years ago as a pervert or worse never even saw the best years of my life, and if I told them about them, they wouldn't believe me. Sometimes I have trouble believing it myself. Judge Judy says on the subject of lying, that if you tell the truth, you don't have to have a good memory. My problem is I don't remember half the lies I've told to an already judgmental and dismissive family to cover what my real life was actually like.
On my quarterly visits to San Diego, I would've loved to visit my brother at the naval base, just to see his astonishment at what a year's worth of gym training and a few unnamed and unmentioned injections did. Can you imagine going within half a mile of your brother and knowing you weren't welcome to visit? Unfortunately that muscled body didn't come with a warning label that said that if I didn't become a slave to it, it'd turn into a grotesque lump of blubber in revenge...
I shake my head that they never questioned where it came from when I'd send a thousand here or a thousand there at the mere hint that they needed it, or sent lavish Christmas and birthday gifts. Oh I'd hint at it every once in a while with photos of the penthouse, or the customized British Sports cars, and luxury convertibles, but they didn't catch on or wonder. They'd discard the evidence of their own eyes and then shake their heads and turn their backs... poor Jet is making up his ridiculous stories again...
Now I regret being so camera shy in those days, preferring to be on the other side of the shutter of that Nikon I'd carry with me wherever I went.
The very thought that I'd have to prove it to them, is telling of what little they think of me.
I don't think I can deal with that anymore, or the loss of my beloved car; and as the days dwindle down to a precious few and I have to give that car back and know that it (like my pride)is going to be sold at some auto auction for a fraction of its value... I don't think I can bear to think about it... and it scares me to think that... God, I'd sell my soul if I could find the strength to cry-to experience that grief and the release it'd bring.
Everything that once said I was here on this earth is disappearing right before my eyes. Two houses where I grew up (one across from the Air Force base, the other across the parkway from the airport where I got my nick name) have been torn down decades ago. The airport where my mother worked as a waitress in the coffee shop, where I playfully ran freely up and down the halls day in and day out, and spent hours watching the planes and then jets take off and land has been torn down too.
The Moon High School class ring that never left my finger for as long as I can remember was lost uncountable months ago; My brain so numbed by this ordeal and by Cymbalta that I don't even mourn its loss. It's like if I look behind me, I see a wave of erasers trying to engulf me, getting ever closer, and someday soon they'll catch up to me, and like some nondescript factory worker who lived in the 1890s, the only evidence that I was here will be some weathered tombstone that no one could read, even if they could figure out who I was... and I'll be as nonexistent as I was before I was born, in limbo.
And what of my art? The pieces that started my career, were beautiful portraits of civil leaders and common folk, and landscapes of homes long gone on the walls of two non-descript McDonald's. Both of which have been torn down and replaced, leaving no evidence that they'd ever existed there, like Illustrations of obsolete refrigerator compressors and VCR components for long-forgotten appliances that also are long discarded, along with the repair manuals that serviced them. Those line drawings were the bread and butter of an unnoteworthy art career.
The movies I did the camera work on, have all been re-edited and renamed, so that the new owners wouldn't have to pay me royalties for them. Like a deer in oncoming headlights, I see that wave of erasers catching up to me, careening headlong at me and I feel nothing... I'm too numb from everything I've lived through to feel anything... everything that I once was has almost all ceased to exist...
My writing at BlogCritics still exists, telling people I was here... but so do the snide remarks, derogatory and cutting, that my loyal readers also see that were left by those who would discredit my point of view, but never write articles of their own so others just as ignorant can do the same to them.
I can't sleep tonight because of the heat
I can't sleep because of the fear of nightmares
I can't sleep because of the flashbacks.
I'll stay awake until I fall asleep finally from exhaustion...
...then I'll wake up screaming... again.
Tuesday July 22nd-Heaven is a quickly repaired air conditioner.
All my central a/c stuff is on the roof and I was awakened to the sound of footsteps on my ceiling... Santa Clause? The air coming out of those vents is almost as good as an orgasm...
I said almost!
We had one hell of a storm at 4 this morning. I woke to the sound of cannons and to Mischief poking my face with her declawed paws. I swear she looked like she'd just pleaded, "I'm scared-hide me!" You know it's bad when bright light flashes through closed solid window blinds. With all the office buildings around here equipped with lightning rods on their roofs, it isn't any wonder that storms are an event around here.
I was going to delete all of yesterdays ramblings, but then it wouldn't be an honest blog. I discovered this morning I'd missed my dosage of Cymbalts... oy
Thursday July 24th
Dr. Heart cleared me for surgery yesterday, GB called this morning to see if I went to his office and if I got clearance. I guess I'll make a bunch of phone calls on Monday
Saturday July 26th
The bulk of the last couple of days have been spent reorganizing my web pages, not much else, except to go out and drive around and pick up supplies here and there. In the last two days my vision has clouded and I felt like I was going to faint. It scared the hell out of me.
Sunday July 27th
I have a big-screen TV-the tube type that weighs a ton. It's a 42 inch Sony that I bought in 1996. It's got 5.1 surround sound. It sits in a custom shelving unit about five feet off the floor over my 80 gallon aquarium.
Tonight Mischief decided to play with all the speaker cords back behind it. Two speaker lines got crossed from their push-in connections and blew something out, and I had to rush and find the power cord as the smell of wire insulation smoke billowed out. It wouldn't turn back on for a while, I just tried it, and to my relief the picture came on...
...but no sound.
Just great-just fucking great. It's built into the custom shelving unit, and is too high and heavy to get out by myself. Even if I could, I can't afford to repair it, or buy a new one-since the HDTVs are all hundreds to thousands of dollars... even if it was only $50 I'd have to cut back $50 worth of food or prescriptions.
I've just lost a major source of entertainment and news.
I can't take much more of this.
God-why won't you stop torturing me?
Monday July 28th
I went my first full day without TV today. You never know what you've got till it's gone. I didn't realize how much I used CNN for background noise while I was cooking or cleaning until now. It was also strange eating without watching Greatest police chases on Tru-TV every evening between the network news commercials.
I keep having these problems, which are completely out of my hands to prevent or control. Maybe I am losing it, because it seems as if God is really testing how far he can stress my sanity before it finally breaks.
I boiled some eggs and mixed some Tuna and Miracle Whip this evening for some sandwich spread. My lord it's horrible not being allowed to have salt. I spent the evening working on the new graphics for my six blogsites here.
Tuesday July 29th
My sister Betsy called me on her way to work this morning and ten minutes in, I suddenly realized that I was bleeding all over the bed. I reached down and where my groin meets my right leg, there was an almond shaped knot just beneath the skin, and I was stupid enough to squeeze it and blood with the consistency of puss gushed out. I cleaned it with some alcohol and paper towels. it's right at the site where they ran the probe up to do exploratory heart surgery.
I suddenly realized that I was so busy yesterday, that I didn't take my Lantus insulin, because I'd run out of needles and couldn't locate the stock I got at Grant Hospital last December. A nurse at Grant Hospital was sweet enough to give me a big carton of assorted cartridge needles and I just assumed-and considering my track record I should've known better.
I just located the box five minutes ago only to discover that none of the 500 or so fit my cartridge pen. No pharmacy will let me buy the right sized ones unless I have a prescription for them, and the last few times since I don't have insurance for them, I've paid full price.
Now it turns out that without a prescription, I can't use my county Medicaid card to buy them.
I just went into the kitchen for more paper towels, I pulled (but didn't yank) on the sheet and the roll fell into my dish water-it was a brand new roll too. I examined the roll (one of the BIG ones) and discovered it seems to be about an quarter of an inch narrower than the holder. Probably to cut back on size instead of raising their price-like the potato chip guys do by reducing the bag weight by an ounce instead of raising the price. I'm too emotionally exhausted to be mad, or lose my temper at something so stupid, and instead tossed it away.
I have a feeling this isn't going to be a good day.
Wednesday July 30th
After a rather lengthy session with my shrink today, I've changed the title of this particular page to Blogging on the Edge of Sanity... instead of and opposed to "suicide"...
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