The trinity

There is a trinity for me that is necessary for OK mental health -- proper nutrition, adequate sleep, and some form of activity. By activity, I mean taking a walk, not necessarily going to the gym. With the trinity in place, I am much better at dealing with stressors in my life. Monday morning I was missing at least two of the trinity and I had had some stress hit on Sunday. Needless to say, I was not dealing well on Monday.

I got to work and realized that I just wanted to go back home, crawl into bed, and cry. Then I got up from my desk to get some caffeine so that I could get through the day. It seemed quite necessary since I was operating on three to four hours of sleep. Walking to the kitchen, I felt myself getting dizzy and for a brief moment thought that I was going to pass out. It was at that point that I realized that I was completely fried mentally and physically. All I could think was, "I don't want to talk to anyone. At all." It was one of those let-the-blue-envelop-you-like-a-comforter moments.

Lunch time hit and I toyed with the idea of skipping lunch -- because I sometimes do that. OK. Let's be honest. Most days I function on one meal a day -- lunch or dinner. It's rare that both happen. The days that I have both are the ones when I split my food from lunch over two meals mostly. But hey. My waist is getting smaller. I know that I can't function if two elements of the trinity are missing. So even though I felt nauseous, I forced myself to eat lunch. And when I got home, I had a dinner that was not composed of my lunch leftovers.

During the whole day, I toyed with post ideas even though I knew that I had written one on Sunday night that kind of summed up the stresses of Sunday. I wasn't really happy with all the various posts that I had written by Monday evening so I decided to combine them. And now we have this post.

I knew that Sunday was going to be stressful. Visits to my father's house almost always are. But for over a month, my dad's older sister had been telling me, "You know that you really need to do something special for your dad for Father's Day because he's under a lot of stress right now." And it wasn't enough that I was going up on Sunday morning. No, I needed to go up Saturday night and spend the night. I explained to her that I had an eye appointment Saturday afternoon -- and yes, they did dilate my eyes -- so I didn't think that driving on Saturday would be that advisable. She stopped just short of saying that I should change my appointment. Now mind you, this is the same woman who told me once my health benefits kicked in at my current job that I shouldn't go making appointments immediately even though some of them were overdue.

In the days leading up to Sunday, my father had shared with me how there might be other folks around besides him and my stepmother. Then he told me to not worry about feeding them because they had plenty of other food for those folks to eat. Because my stepmother's family and her friends like to drop by the house on holidays, as they always have, and expect to be fed. I guess I wouldn't mind the moochers much if I actually liked the people. But I don't. Over the past twenty-plus years they have barely hidden their disdain of me in the their looks, their tone of voice. Hell. A few years ago my stepmother gave me a huge lecture on how she didn't like how I greeted her mother. Something about how it is not sufficient to say "hi" and to wave from across a crowded room. (If you knew the old biddy -- ummm, my stepmother's mother -- you would think that I was doing a great job. My dad even asked the woman, "Could you shut the fuck up?" a few years ago.)

So I showed up and started cooking. Then the people started showing up. I was cooking enough for four. By the time, I was ready to serve the food there were five people present including myself. Then right as everyone was ready to start eating, a sixth person dropped by. And my stepmother's mother looked at me and said, "Well, you know if you just cut some stuff in half..." That was the point when some unkind words almost crossed my lips. I know that I rolled my eyes so hard that no one could have missed the expression on my face.

I probably could have let it roll off but then I got home and received a call from that boy. Oh, and by the way, I did go out with him again on Friday. So I figured that it wouldn't hurt to stop in the cafe around the corner from me. Apparently he hangs out there a great deal to avoid having to deal with his roommates at home. And then he informed me that he thought that we should be friends because he has decided to date someone else. Oh, and could I help him in looking for a new apartment since I was much more familiar with the area than he is? Yeah, I knew I was mentally toast at that point. That's why I decided to ignore his text message on Monday.

And so briefly for a while yesterday I toyed with simply writing the following as a post...

Memo to Self
Stop being such a fucking doormat. Because at the end of the day you just end up feeling like a worthless human being.

There was also a post about feeling like I'd been run over by a truck.

I think I'm going to spend a lot of time over the next week thinking about this whole dating and family stuff. Right now I just feel like I'm done with it all. Doesn't mean that I'm not not hitting the Kate Spade semi-annual sale though.