I Don't Know Where to Begin

I have difficulty with sensations on the right side of my body and issues with attachment, abandonment, anger,self-hate, self-mutilation and self-medication due to an inter-hemispherical arachnoid cyst on the left cerebellum that was discovered after I got my head scanned after my 6 week checkup as an infant. From there, my story starts. As an infant I was in and out of the hospital for the first year and a half or so of my life. My mom and dad had to work and look after my brother who was only one year and 3 months older than I, so I was mainly cared for during the day and during some nights by my maternal grandmother and my maternal uncle (who was in his undergrad years at college at the time), My grandmother would hold me and walk me up and down the hallways singing a song she made up because the doctors told her that hearing a voice could be very therapeutic and helpful in my recovery through my 16 or so surgeries that I had on my head due to multiple shunt-cloggings and shunt infections that I had to continually have surgeries for.

Thankfully though, after a while of using shunts to eliminate the cerebrospinal fluid and relieving the pressure, they operated on the cyst and got rid of it (these are the story details I know because all of those medical records, x-rays and things of the like were misplaced or lost or… I don’t even know because my mom doesn’t talk about it much. My mom, 2 years ago (I’m almost 28) admitted to me that she emotionally and physically distanced herself from me during my time in the hospital because she feared my death.

This is why my grandmother had grown and still has an immense attachment to me that at times has been beneficial due to emotional and financial support, but has also become very controlling and toxic to this day. Growing up, I was very much a loner, only having no more than 5 friends and mainly keeping to myself and video games day in and day out, along with watching shows on real crime cases, building sets like k’nex or construx, and imaginative play based on those video games.

Through this, my mind grew very active, able to daydream and visualize nearly anything at will, and I would spend hours in my head going off to different places. In school and in life, I am driven by structure. I have a task to do either for myself, my survival or because someone tells me to do it or I feel that I need to do it for them, and I get a lot of anxiety about it because there is always something else to do around the corner. Going through school, I was much more carefree, with my outside life, (video games, dating, etc) was much more important.

Back to the issues due to my surgery: I have a limited feeling/altered feeling on my right side known as proprioception. I had to figure it out and diagnose myself with it because my mom always told me that I was normal and if I just tried harder, I could get over it, although she never took me to get a driver’s license because she feared my ability to drive a car with my disability. She still to this day thinks it’s all in my head. Anyway, if I am not looking at my right hand or leg, or either aren’t touching something I know the location of around me, I have no idea where they are.

Feelings of heat and cold feel differently on that side too. Heat, in particular, like that of steam off a stove, feels like burning electricity, although I do have a very high tolerance for pain. I have been known to have spasms in my hands and feet, and have dropped many a cup, plate or utensil because of this. I have punched doors because my hand does not open fast enough as I reach for it. It took me until I was 16 to learn how to balance effectively to ride a bike. Sensation wise, I feel the weight of my hand and leg and all that, but it definitely does not have the same sensation as my left side does. This also makes shaving my face difficult and I have frequent cuts on my face from pressing the razor too hard. In case it is hard to discern, I am predominantly left handed.

I do not like other people to help me out with things unless I have absolutely no clue what I am doing, and even then when I ask for help, I feel like a failure and I will be seen as incompetent. Even writing this gives me anxiety, but whatever. I’m still typing aren’t I? There have been many occasions on jobs where I try my best to figure something out first, and I always seem to take things a bit too personally or feel that people think less of me than they actually do (I tend to think of someone giving criticism as sort of a death sentence of whatever situation I am in. Staphysagria has helped me with this, I think, as I took a 10m dose about a year ago that released a lot of crap and has gotten me to speak up more)

… another segway, I guess… so throughout my teen years and in college I was greatly helped and unfortunately influenced by my grandmother. She demanded on seeing me once a month at least to help me pick a college and probably mold and shape me as a growing individual. I dressed gothic/alternative, which she supported and all that, until I graduated from high school.

She helped me get my license, even got me the house that I lived in, but I was not allowed to talk to or see my mom, dad or brother unsupervised for the first 2 years of college when I broke that rule and she found I had my mom over to my college campus. She also caused my relationship I had when I was 18 to break up to her chagrin. In college, I was expected to (and easily did) hold up grades no less than a B (Except for a class where the teacher didn’t like me). I was expected to (and still am at the age of 28 now) to call her once a day, or it gives her anxiety and “turns on her worry button”.

Whenever I make a decision to do something, without consulting her, especially about monetary things, she flips, calling me incompetent, saying I’m just a kid and don’t know anything, or belittling me in general. As a person with a teaching certificate and master’s degree, I feel like I am reduced back to 17 whenever she picks a fight, which is very, VERY, frequent. When I tell her the truth, she thinks I’m lying, and when I do lie, she believes in 99.99% of the time.

More about my family: My dad is the type of person who wants to get stuff done right away. He’s the only person that I cannot win a fight with (I learned how to fight from him) and whenever he says something is gonna be done his way, that’s how it gets done. When I was living with him from 16-18, I got to do whatever I wanted, had friends over whenever and eat whatever, as long as I cleaned the bathroom, did laundry, vacuumed, etc. and maintained the house. That was the best freedom I ever had and I thank him eternally for it.

Before that, I was living with my mom seeing my dad every 2 weeks. Like, I said before, I was in my room doing my own thing all the time, and always felt intruded when my mom would come in to bother me and try to get me to do different things like hang out with people or go to social functions at school. She tried to force me to go to a school dance once when I was 15, even having my neighbors (2 girls) waiting at the door to take me up to the high school. She became so belligerent about it that I cried, and it was eternally embarrassing. My mother was an alcoholic, getting tipsy/drunk most nights sneaking vodka out from under the sink or in a laundry pile in her bathroom), and I moved out of her house at 16 partially because of that and my jerk of a stepfather.

My stepfather had a son who would intrude on myspace every other weekend, basically I was the babysitter (he’s only a year younger than me, but as an introvert, I needed my alone time, and didn’t get any usually). My stepfather once picked a fight with me because I changed the schedule when I was to see my dad, when I was gonna get picked up on fridays and dropped off on sundays, and he compared his custody agreement to my parents’ agreement. Neither he or my mom seemed to listen that it was a choice I made, and pointed the finger at my dad, citing their idea that he was a deadbeat.

To this day, my mom thinks my dad’s house was messy and that I barely ate any good food while I lived there. My mom loves to make potshots at my dad and her own mother for helping me at various times, and it becomes a cyclical fight each time, where I ask her “why are we going over this again?” She does not like that my grandmother helped me with college and my house, but there’s a bit of a story to that. Before I began college, my mom offered to pay for me to go to a community college and just wanted me to stick with my grandmother until I got my license. After I did, she denied (and continues to deny) any knowledge of the conversation, and I had to suffer through a lot through my college years under my grandmother’s totalitarian rule.

My dad left after I went to my grandmother’s house the summer before college. Before he left, there was an instance when I had had enough of my grandmother fighting me about the fact that my ex still had a sweatshirt of mine, and demanded that I get her mom to drop it off at my house, when I thought it would have been easier to pick it up ourselves, but of course, my grandmother is too entitled for that.

For a month after high school, all I heard her talk about was how my then ex girlfriend was a slut and a bitch, and how the alternative clothing that I wore was deplorable (which was a complete turn from her attitude just the month before). She dictated when I woke up, what I was to eat, where I could go and what I could do. My only outlet was at night when I got to be in the basement by myself (even though she’d come down to talk to me every half hour, and when I could sneak a cigarette or 2. I got very proficient at hiding it for a long time, even though she would stop me at the door and smell me every time I came back from a walk.

Anyway, I told her I was going to go for a walk one day, and I walked up to the mall (25 min walk) and found someone who lived a few towns over. They offered to drive me to my ex’s house to pick up my sweatshirt. I was so irate at my grandmother’s behavior, that my plan was to go get the sweatshirt and go live in the woods for as long as I could before I hopefully would die of starvation in my sleep. I referred to it as a “last hurrah” and had been planning it for weeks. So I got to my ex’s house, got the sweatshirt back. At her house, I called my mom and complained about my living conditions, and he told me that I made my bed and now I just have to lie in it, and hung up. She called my dad, who found me walking on the road.

When he took me to his house and we talked until my grandmother showed up. He told me to give it up and that it was a stupid thing to fight over. I felt as if it was the last thing that I had that could connect me back to the kid I was before I got changed so drastically that summer. I went back to my house with my grandmother, and none of her behavior changed at all. I just buried it inside for 2 weeks until I was trusted to be at the house by myself when her and my grandfather went out to visit some friends. I hid in the bathroom with the door locked in my then empty house, and happily released all of the pain with a deep cut from a kitchen knife on my right bicep.

I had been cutting since I was 16. My first real girlfriend had been cutting herself on and off before I met her, so I guess that’s where I learned it from. When I was living at my dad’s house, my mom called me and threatened to call DCF on my dad. I can remember sitting there feeling alone and empty, and something drove me to go into the kitchen and grab a steak knife. I cut 17 times into the back of my right hand.

I still can see most of those scars, and it actually brings me comfort to look at them sometimes. I cut on and off for years, hiding it from everyone except those I dated. I knew I wasn’t suicidal or anything, I just knew what to do when I felt overwhelmed. I wouldn’t do it for the blood like some do, but for the stinging pain that came with it. I’ve got cuts on both arms, both biceps and the back of my right hand. That’s at least one thing in my life that I think I still have control of. At least nobody else can damage me physically. Only I have the privilege of doing that.

Other issues: I developed a bad relationship with alcohol starting when I was 23. I had not drank anything until I was 18, when I shotgunned a bottle of heineken at my grandmother’s one night because I did not have any cigarettes left (she confiscated them earlier that night). Then, when I was 20, I was chatting with a friend after a recent breakup and he offered me some rum. 3 shots later, I felt much better rather than being in an emotional hole. Anyway, after college, I was living at my house with a girl I started dating my senior year. We had always been friends in college, being part of the same social circle, but started to date the first day she moved back on campus and I helped her move all of her stuff into her room. 2 years into the relationship is when it started to get toxic. She was an attention seeker who always wanted me around and didn’t like me to be alone. She was also jealous, although she had nothing to worry about.

She would pick fights with me over the simplest thing, being well known for yelling and not backing down, I had to use the tactics I learned from my dad to shut her up, but in typical girl fashion, the things she was mad at me for one day always came back later. I began having about 7-8 shots with mixed drinks each night in a 20 minute time span to trigger sleep. Sleeping was the only reprieve I could get from either her or my grandmother, as dreams allowed an escape (although ironically, I did not remember 99% of those dreams I must have had, but at least the day reset and I could hope for a better outcome the next day).

I have huge issues with abandonment/failure. In both my job and my relationship, I fear screwing up something and then losing either thing. I feel like my cats are the only true reliable thing in my life because they don’t have anywhere else to go and they know I won’t fail them. My girlfriend struggles with depression and anxiety, and when she gets angry, I used to feel like I was going to lose her, but I’ve grown a thick skin for it over the last 2 ½ years and seem more confident that she isn’t going to go anywhere. My fear of abandonment with her now focuses on the fear that she’s going to find someone better than me that is more into what she is into.

I feel like my needs are not being met by those around me. As an introvert, I feel that I need down time to chill out and decompress from work (which gives me anxiety due to my high standards that I set for myself due to my fear of failure) so when I get out of work, I need some time alone or, if my girlfriend is not at work, I like down time with her or, if we do go somewhere and do an activity, that I get plenty of prior notice (which is difficult for her because of her ADD).

Usually, if she is at work (which I take pride in driving her there when I can) she usually gives me objectives or chores right before she gets out of the car (which does not constitute prior notice for me whatsoever) so I feel like there is an endless list of things that I have to do for her or my grandmother and that my time is not really my time, but someone else’s. Basically, at work and a lot of my life outside of it seems like I’m just taking orders and completing objectives. My time alone is precious to me, but there are many factors that hinder me from enjoying it, from having to talk to my grandmother, to completing objectives my girlfriend gives me, to cleaning up the house.

The house itself is very disorganized because my girlfriend is bad at organization and mentally jumps from one thing to another, which is why I have a practical storefull of magazines, art supplies and random nicknacks. Due to her anxiety and ADD, she does not help me clean as much as I wish she would because the majority of the time, those messes that I clean up are purely her stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I love doing these kinds of things for her, but it gets overwhelming when I come into my house and notice a bunch of things laying around and out of place. I can remember my ex being messy as well and how happy I was when I kicked my ex out of my house with all her stuff within 24 hours and had my house spotless less than a week later. I had to clean when my ex was living with me because she would not even help me do the dishes.

She was a very lazy person who mostly went on the internet or read books, leaving dishes, books, clothing, etc. EVERYWHERE. my girlfriend now is very wonderful at cleaning (i’ve seen her organize and clean things) but the mess has gotten a bit too big for her to handle, so it is very difficult for her to help me at times. I am ecstatic when I get a text from her telling me that she did the dishes or cleaned something, because it helps me to know I am not alone in the fight against the dis-organizational monster that lives in all the corners of the rooms in my house.

I used to not bothered by heat until the summer of my 21st birthday. Now I can not tolerate heat. I love the cold and can even walk outside in winter with a t shirt or just long t shirt and pants. I have even walked outside with no shoes to go to my car in the winter or take out the trash. I also have to have the fan going at night time as well. When I feel the heat I get instantly tired and sweaty. When I walk inside cool air from the hot outdoors it feels like I am instantly energized and my energy through the roof. Even though I hate the heat I will only wear pants. Shorts feels mentally uncomfortable.

It is not that I am worried about my legs (they are muscular and I have a high metabolism) I just do not like it. I love swimming and I love walking and biking. At college I started taking walks at night so I could have a cig or 2 before going to bed. As I walked laps around campus, I got to be alone in my own thoughts and really digest the stresses that I was going through. I didn’t have homework to think about, or my grandmother to bother me and I felt safe because I knew there was a girl waiting for me to come back inside.

I like to think of life in allegorical terms. In high school, in an english class, we were charged with taking an act from the play Hamlet and making a CD soundtrack for it with music that we liked. I loved that project because I love listening to music. So I took it a step further. I started to make my own “life soundtrack” with songs depicting, for me at least, events that happened it my life, like when I found my cat outside walking the streets and took her in, or when I began student teaching, or different points in relationships.

Due to my iodetic memory, listening to these songs kind of brings me back in time. I have always felt comfort with looking back in the past because it is predictable and I know the outcome of those situations because I lived them. I find comfort in predictability and stability in life’s events.

I am lactose intolerant and I have smelly feet. I can only have certain types of cheese. But sometimes I eat pizza or ice cream and get constipated. I am allergic to latex. I get itchy eyes, breathing problems and get hives if I got it in my mouth, I can not go into a bike or tire shop. I have allergies to grass and pollen, I get a stuffy nose. I used to have cases of insomnia in the middle of the night. I would wake up at every night. Right now I have trouble getting to sleep. I have clogged ears before. I can notice it if I am listening to something because I can tell it is blocked. I am psychic/intuitive. I practice meditation, magick. I have seen spirits also and believe in the paranormal. I also have initial anxiety if I go somewhere new.

S L E E P

1] Describe your posture in sleep. (On the back, side, abdomen etc.) Are you able to sleep in any position? In which position you can’t sleep?

2] During sleep do you:
a) Snore? Yes, I also snore with my mouth open( mouth breathing). I have a dry mouth and lick my lips in the middle of the night. Sometimes I stop in the middle of snoring.
b) grind teeth? No
c) Dribble saliva? Sometimes I drool in my sleep.
d) Sweat? If covered with too many blankets or oveheated in any way I will have nightmares,
e) Keep eyes or mouth open? just mouth open
f) Walk? Talk? I have sleep walked and even gone to the bathroom and I have talked or will reply in my sleep.
g) Moan? Weep? Not that I know
h) Become restless? Wake up with a jerk? I used to wake up with a jerk.

3] Describe if anything else is unusual about your sleep: (sleepy, sleeplessness, etc. if so when?)
It is hard for me to get tired and go to sleep even though I want to since I teach and get up very early. I use bendril which is for allergies or alcohol to get to sleep. If I wake up in the middle of the night I am instantly awake and can not get back to sleep. And I get very hungry.

APPETITE AND THIRST

1] How is your appetite? I am most hungry in the morning right after I wake up and when I am at work. When I am at home I do not have much of an appetite.
2] When are you hungry?
3] What happens if you have to remain hungry for long? I get grumpy, tired, dizzy and I feel sick.
4] How fast do you eat? I eat normal.
5] How much thirst do you have? A lot
6] Any particular time are you especially thirsty? When I am at work.
7] Do you feel any change in your taste and feeling in your mouth? I get dry mouth if I do not drink enough.
Food/Drink likes and dislikes, and how strongly
I hate tuna or fish or any seafood. The smell makes me nauseous and makes me think of dead things. I can not imagine why anyone would eat that or that it would taste good.
I enjoy ice tea, orange juice, grapefruit juice (also grapefruits) and apple juice.
I like sugary things and things that are really salty. If I eat one of those I instantly crave the other type.

STOOL
1] Do you have any problem regarding your stools? Vey big and hard but if I have any alcohol I need to go to the bathroom within 45 minutes of waking up and have bad diarrhea.
2] When and how many times a day do you pass stools? 1
3] When is it urgent? In morning if I had alcohol night before.
4] Do you have any problem about bowel movements?
5] Do you have to strain for stool? Even if soft? If I have cheese then it is really difficult to push it out.
6] Do you have belching or passing gas? Describe its character. If I have had alcohol sometimes.
7] How do you feel after passing gas up or down? no

URINATION & URINE
1] Any problem about urine?
2] Any strong smell? Like what? If I am dehydrated it can be deep yellow and smell.
3] Do you have any trouble before, during and after passing urine?
4] Any difficulty about the flow? Slow to start, interrupted, feeble dribbling etc.? It is good. Comes out like a fire house.
5] Any involuntary urination? When?



SWEAT/PERSPIRATION-FEVER-CHILL
1] How much do you sweat? I sweat at any temp above 70 degrees.
2] Where and on what part do you sweat the most? forehead, arm pits and but
3] Do you perspire on the palms or soles? Soles and they are stinky.
4] Is the sweat warm, cold, clammy, sticky, musty, greasy, stiffens the linen etc.? wet
5] What is the smell like? E.g. foul, pungent, sour, and urinous.
6] What color does it stain the clothing?
7] Is the stain easy to wash off or difficult?
8] Any symptoms after sweating?
9] When do you get fever or chill?
10] What brings it on?
11] Do you experience any sense of heat or cold in any part of your body at any particular time?

CHEST-HEART – COLD – COUGH
1] Do you catch cold often? If so, how often? Once a year when season changes from Winter to Spring.
2] Describe the symptoms, nature of discharge etc. If I get a cold my nose is stuffed as hell.
3] Is there any trouble with your CHEST or HEART? When I get anxiety I can feel my heart pounding.
4] Is there any trouble with your voice or speech? Everyone always critque my voice because they are overly mean to me. I sometimes sound like I am upset but sometimes I just have a mono tone voice when I am tired.
5] Is there any difficulty in breathing?
6] Do you have cough? Extremely cold weather makes me cough.
7] Is it more at any particular time? ________________________________________


SEXUAL SPHERE (GENERAL)
1] Any excessive indulgence in sex in past and present ? Any effect on your health? Alcohol makes me very excited sexually.
2] How do you feel after sexual intercourse? I feel really relieved but sometimes I wonder if I did something wrong. I wonder if my partner really wanted it. I know that I am good at performing.
3] Any particular feeling or symptoms appear before, during and after sexual intercourse?
4] Do you suffer from any sexual disturbance? No
(Homosexual inclination etc.?) No
5] Any habit like (masturbation etc.) in past as well as present? How often? I used to masturbation to get to sleep.
6] Did you suffer from any venereal disease? No
Syphilis? Gonorrhoea? No
7] Do you have increased desire or decreased desire for sex? when I am drunk
8] What is the method you use for family planning? coitus interruptis. I have been able to train myself to withhold orgasm until I want it to happen, so I do not ejaculate unless I am masturbating.

FOR MEN
1] Any difficulty in erection? When I am drunk
2] Wanted erection? Unwanted erection? No
3] Weak erection? Failing erection? Describe. When I am drunk, it can be difficult to achieve
4] Any other trouble in sex? Describe in detail.
If I overheat during sex it can be difficult to continue due to the fatigue