3 posts tagged “whining”

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Ears and fears

This has not been the best week at all.


On Monday I woke up feeling "not quite right".  I had actually started to go to work, because I figured I would be bored if I stayed at home all day.  I got in my car to leave, had a wave of nausea, came back inside to vomit, called out of work, and went back to bed.  I suppose it's a good thing this happened, because when I woke up at 4pm I had a full-on fever.  This kept me in bed pretty much until late Wednesday and was a miserable experience every step of the way.

On Wednesday, I actually tried to go into work, but left an hour after I got there because I still wasn't up to snuff.  I decided to call a doctor - not so much for the fever, but more because I felt like I had an earwax buildup in my left ear and it had been irritating me all week.  I couldn't get my PCP due to the short notice, but was able to see a different doctor in the clinic that afternoon.  The doctor checked, and removed what earwax there was, but he told me that there was a fluid buildup in my inner left ear that would need to drain on its own.  Either the fever/sickness caused the blockage, or the blockage caused the fever (I didn't really have any other symptoms typical of the flu when I was sick).  He recommended me Afrin (nasal spray) to keep my passages open, and to yawn/pop my ears as much as possible.

I tried my best to keep this out of my mind, but by Friday I was pretty much freaking out.  The feeling sucks - it's like there's something in my head, not quite interfering with my hearing but still noticeably muffling things.  I called my PCP's office on Friday morning for a referral to an ENT, and called back again in the afternoon, but never heard back from their referral specialist.  I left work early to go to the Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary, because thoughts like "what if this gets much worse?  what if my ear feels blocked for months?  what if my eardrum bursts?" were increasing in frequency and messing up my ability to focus on my work.  They checked me out completely - the guy I had on Wednesday left me feeling like he wasn't the best, but the woman I got on Friday was quite comprehensive.  She vacuumed out what she could get (not much, as the fluid blockage is apparently on my inner ear and unreachable that way), put a tube up my nose and looked to make sure nothing was wrong, and told me that it was really slowly clearing with no sign of infection and that I should be fine.

To give some perspective - I have a history of turning negative experiences into phobias, and I feel like that's what freaked me out so badly on Friday.  I get flack amongst my friends at work for hating balloons - this is because 10 years ago I worked in a job where they filled a neighboring coworker's cubicle with balloons for her birthday, and they would POP randomly and scare the hell out of me for three days (until I complained).  Almost everyone that knows me knows I hate ketchup - this is because I once got an employee at Subway who didn't know the difference between marinara sauce and ketchup, leading me to bite into the grossest chicken parmesan sandwich I've ever had.  And eight or so years ago I got water in my ear at a water park, made it worse trying to remove it with a Q-tip, and spent three days deaf in one ear because the first doctor I went to completely botched things and cut something on my inner ear trying to remove the blockage.  I can't stress how much that hurt.  To this day, I really hate the feeling of things in my ear - to be honest, even if I didn't have the whole trans- thing to deal with, the fear of water getting in my ear usually keeps me out of pools and oceans.

So now it's been a week, and I'm trying to figure out how to get things back on track.  The blockage still exists, but just like when I was transitioning I feel like fearing the worst will bring me nothing but stress, so all I can do is learn to deal with it until it goes away.  I maintain - as I always try to - that positivity can take me a really long way.  Meanwhile - I haven't shopped for more than a week now (for some reason, I only shop when I'm in a good mood) and still would like to add a lot to my collection of wintery clothes.  It just dawned on me writing this paragraph that perhaps piercing my ears - something I've been putting off for awhile now - might possibly take my mind off of all of the other ear stuff.  I want to go to MAC/Sephora and have them help me figure out makeup a bit better, and a mani/pedi is long overdue as I always love the way my fingers/toes look and feel when I'm done.  Also, I want to switch my PCP - my doctor is really nice and seems good, but his office is a disaster and I've heard that there is a practicing one in Somerville who is a post-operative MtF who I assume would have a good handle on some of the health issues I'll be facing.

Basically, long story short: my life hasn't been the best in the last week, but I think the brunt of my problems are gone/going away and I expect things to turn around for the better again.

Post a comment Tags: whining, fever, phobias, health issues, ear problems

Freewriting post

Yesterday, I sat down at the computer with the intent of writing a blog post, and...nothing.  It might be the first time ever that I was in the mood to write, but couldn't think of a thing to say.  I started a few trains of thought, but I always ended up convincing myself that "oh, I shouldn't post that, that's stupid" and ended up going to sleep with nothing.  That's never good, so I'm going to break up the writer's block by spending the next 5-10 minutes writing everything and anything that comes to my mind.

First thing's first, I have caught myself in the past acting depressed during times in which I did not know (or think) that I had anything to be depressed about.  I am hoping I can use this post to trick myself into really figuring out what is bumming me out.  Why be stressed?

-  When I moved into this apartment last month, I did so with the knowledge that I was going to have to budget my money significantly better.  I don't feel like this has been happening.  I basically get two paychecks per week - one for bills, one for spending money (and some bills), and I have way too much trouble splitting that one spending check into four weeks.  I have definitely been procrastinating paying bills - just as I used to do with parking tickets, I find myself putting my mail, unopened, in a "to do later" pile that never gets resolved.  Every day I wake up and say "pay your bills today!", and every day I head to work, get home, find something to distract me until bed, and then promise myself I'll handle it all the next day.  The same goes with stuff like keeping my apartment clean, keeping on top of laundry and groceries - my drive to handle dull everyday tasks is completely determined by my mood, and yet also greatly affects it.  That's not fair!  >:(

-  I'm once ahead letting inhibitions rule me in regards to my gender expression.  I feel like every time that I successfully go out dressed and interact with people - this has happened thrice now - something 'snaps' and I just can't bring myself to do it for the next few weeks.  In this case, which is not the first time, I got a zit shortly after spending a day female (followed immediately by another one when the first one healed), and I have pretty much always been able to use apprehension of my appearance to stop me from having the drive to risk the public eye.  If I don't pull out "you'll look ugly", I always have "what's the point?", "you have plans to do something as [male] tonight", or "where will I go even if I do present female tonight?" to fall back on for rationalizations.  Whenever I go a long stretch without at least dressing up at home (which I've done twice in two weeks - significantly below the norm) I start to feel worthless and negative.  One thing that I need to do is purchase makeup that I know for a fact is non-cosmogenic and my skin tone, so that I can at least stop worrying about my (a) current and (b) possible future nose acne.

-  I've been socializing more to keep my mind off of things.  I go to my coworker's house after work two or three days a week.  I usually visit with my friends for television, sports games, and random gettogethers most nights of the week.  In all of these cases, I present male, either because they don't know that I'm transgendered and I'm too chicken to say it (coworker) or because my friends are too used to me the way I am and I'm not ready to just start blatantly forcing change months before hormones.  I hate presenting male all the time, as it feels like the epitome of what I'm trying to avoid.  When I'm home, there are specific friends that I can talk to in which I'm usually a lot more comfortable saying the things I feel (as female), but I usually find myself talking to people instead of doing things that I need to do.  Heck, I've been planning on a mail-sorting + full-scale pickup of my apartment for two weeks and it still hasn't been done.  That's pretty terrible.

-  I really wish I could just get transitioning over and done with so I could live, like, a normal female life.  I have been at the beginning of the long painful wait until January, and it's driving me crazy.  I feel like there's no progress to be made, so I'm just living day-to-day, with a lot of the same bad behaviors I was doing that I promised I'd stop when I moved.  I still eat out for lunch every day at work, eat out for dinner roughly 4 nights per week, still pay to have my laundry done instead of doing it myself, still spend money on silly things instead of saving it - I hate that I've identified exactly what is making me unhappy, but that I can't really get started truly fixing it (in terms of the rest of my life) for at least a few months.

Wow, I guess this was kind of depressing, but I think it was good to type.  Up next, I will figure out some solution to all of this stuff.  I would like to go out presenting female at some point this weekend - I just need to come up with somewhere to actually go.

OK, bedtime!

1 comment Tags: rambling, whining, complaining, moping

Back!

Good lord, it's been a week since I updated!  Allow me to explain myself:

1.  I've been somewhat social this week.  A friend of mine came back from San Diego for the week, so I spent a few nights up way too late to post.  The weekend was filled with sports and trips out socializing, and so I skipped out on those days.

2.  I actually wrote something a few days ago, but I lost it when I closed my browser assuming that Vox saved drafts.  In addition, my computer decided to change the password to the only account I had to access Windows, so I reformatted my system and have been spending some time getting it set up again.

3.  To be honest, I've been feeling kind of down lately.  (and oh boy, this will be the second time I will have written about this!).  I've had two bad pimples on my nose, seemingly back-to-back (the second came in right when the first one healed), and it's the exact kind of thing that is enough to actually make me miserable.  It's the root of my self-consciousness, but I care a great deal about what others think of me and it drives me absolutely berserk when I picture people looking at my face and going "ahh, yuk!".  It helps that no one has ever really mentioned it to me, but then I start getting the thought of "they're all just doing it behind your back!".

That's what happens when I get depressed.  I take everything that I don't like about myself, and visualize people that I know using those things against me as a reason really to dislike me.  Over and over and over, I'll picture my mother or my friends or people I don't like lecturing/critisizing/arguing with me about something, and I'll script entire arguments in my head defending myself against them.  I do this for a little while until I become absolutely convinced that everyone has huge problems with me.  I usually forget these negative feelings when I'm around other people (because they're usually proven to be unfounded worries) and get like that when I'm alone.

For the last few years I would do my best to isolate myself from others when I felt like that because I didn't want to bring people down.  That would just perpetuate negative thoughts and make me feel worse.  Lately, I've been trying to socialize more, since I at least tend to feel better when I'm around with friends.  I think it's a better strategy for the long run!  I've already been informed (by a few people, no less) that I'd best get used to random emotional turmoil caused by self esteem issues, because it will happen to me all the time as a woman.  I swear, throw anything that isn't a huge zit on my nose my way and I welcome it!

I've tried aggresively switching pillowcases, washing my face thrice a day, using soap, toothpaste, all sorts of different products (all over the course of the last....5 or 6? times this has happened) - absolutely nothing seems to have worked.  I tried Retin-a prescribed by my doctor, which made it tons worse - I did not know before I started taking it that it pushed everything out resulting in huge breakouts, and quit after 3 days because I don't think I could take it.  I was recently told that ice when the pimple is young will stop it from swelling, and I used this (on a third zit in a row - if that grew out, I would have needed antidepressants) and it seems to have worked.  I have a dermatologist appointment in November - it's way too hard to get a doctor around here.  :(  Plus, I know that hormones will help with acne.  For now, I can at least stay positive and hope that this is the last nose-pimple for awhile.

Unforunately, it's stopped me from presenting female for the last week or so.  I don't know - I feel at my most vulnerable either when I have a huge zit, or when I'm presenting female, and I really don't think I could feel comfortable combining the two.  That, and my female self (for now) is sort of the presentation of how I want to be seen, and it just hurts a lot more to see Michelle with a zit than [male] with a zit.  The conflict between wanting to be female and yet not wanting to be seen as ugly is usually just fuel for the depression fire.  Both with acne and with crossdressing, I need to work to avoid the trap where I'm convinced that everyone is scrutinizing me, because it's the kind of thing that stays in my head for far too long.

For example - right there, I just read that paragraph and thought "Everyone is going to think you're a whining paranoid fool who complains too much.  You should just delete it, you're too repetitive and this journal sucks".  I followed by thinking, "Everyone is going to think that I'm just doing this for sympathy and attention".  This will usually lead into "Am I thinking this because that's how I actually feel?  Am I externalizing self-doubt?  Am I correct to be this negative?  I must be that bad, why else would everyone think that?"

I think that's the number one reason I write in this blog, so I can just type stuff like this out and not think about it over and over anymore.  It - along with being more "out" and having AIM - have made it alot easier for me to stay social, which has helped.  Even now, I'm pretty much over the pimple thing - it's finally starting to look like it's healing, and I *think* the ice thing is good.  I had my second laser appointment (for lips only), and even though she turned it up one setting and it hurt, my skin on the lip area feels smooth as ever, which is awesome.

Until then, I'm really tired.  Expect regular posts again!

Post a comment Tags: depression, whining, self-esteem, acne