Just how interrelated are emotional pain and physical pain? I've always known there was a connection, but the past few days are really making me wonder. After the incident with the Match guy last week, I tried hard on Friday to get over it and I thought it was working as my mood was generally bettter that day. But then on Saturday I was back to the point of being so depressed I couldn't get out of bed. And my back and my leg were KILLING me. Of course it didn't help that my sister called and told me about a friend of ours who is even more depressed and probably somewhat suicidal. So much of what he's going through are things I know a lot about, but while I told her I would love to talk to him if he's willing to, I sort of think he won't. And because he's 15 years younger than me, we don't have the kind of relationship where I can reach out to him (without an intervenor like my sister who is very close to him) without it being somewhat weird, which would probably push him farther away. In addition to that, my sister also emailed me pictures of three beautiful size 10 dresses she's wearing to a wedding next week. And while she has worked her ass off (literally) to get to that size and the ability to wear clothes like that, and I am truly very proud of her for it, it definitely made me feel even more like a fat cow. Which I know I shouldn't, because even though I haven't lost any weight lately, I am still diligently making efforts to walk as much as possible and get back to my healthy eating program. But for whatever reason, it did. Which of course also made me slide back into the unhealthy thought patterns of "will this leg pain really ever go away?", "am I ever going to find someone to share my life with?", "am I going to be stuck in this miserable job forever?" and "why can't I just find a way to kick myself in the ass and find the motivation to change all of this?" Needless to say it was a pretty miserable weekend. And so far today isn't much better. I've been attempting to look up women's groups in my area that I could join, but almost all of them have meetings at completely ridiculous times -- "Thursdays at 10am" -- who the hell can attend those except stay at home moms and ladies who lunch? Again, depressing. I so, so, so want my attitude from the week before last back....but of course have no idea how to get it.

Still working my more positive attitude, though having a somewhat harder time with it today. Out of nowhere two days ago I got an email from a guy on Match who was actually someone I was very interested in writing back, though I can honestly say that my first impression of him was that he was too good looking to really be looking for someone like me. And while that sounds like I have no self esteem whatsoever, it's not true. What I mean is that he was a great looking guy who clearly did not have to pursue heavy women unless he really wanted to. And I've learned from experience (just the truth here, people) that most men, even those who are heavy themselves, still prefer thin women. It is what it is. Anyway, I took a shot and wrote him back and we ended up having a great 3 hour phone conversation that night, including plans to email each other yesterday to figure out an evening next week when we could meet in person for a drink. When I hadn't heard from him by after lunch, I sent him a quick message telling him I was pretty open next week and to just let me know what worked for him. No reply at all yesterday. And while I cut him some slack because yesterday was his son's birthday, I definitely got a weird vibe from the complete lack of response...particularly since I saw he was on Match all day yesterday. Just in terms of the "he's just not that into you" theory, if he was really interested, he's have at least have acknowledged the email, even if he didn't have an answer to the question yet.

Anyway, this morning he finally sent an email saying that a project has come up at work that is going to require him to work long hours next week, so we'll just have to play it by ear about getting together. (This from a man who on Tuesday said he was always out of work by 5pm and could totally work around my schedule.) The email also made no mention of speaking or even emailing again between now and then, so I'm pretty sure that's the last I'll hear from him. It was almost textbook "he's just not that into you."

So of course I'm bummed about it and wondering what it was that changed his mind....was it me? did he get a response from someone else he decided he'd rather pursue? what? And of course I'm now going through my "goddamnit, why don't I just do what I have to do and lose the fucking weight, so that I can at least know that that is not an issue and feel confident enough to contact guys myself" versus the "goddamnit, why can't I ever find any men who really can see past the weight and like me for me --- particularly when we've had great conversations and I can tell they actually DO like me". Of course, losing the weight needs to get done no matter what, particularly for my health, but I hate that this is happening during a time when I was really having no thoughts about men at all, just working on all the other aspects of my life and getting happier in general....and now the whole men and weight thing is back in my head. I so, so, so don't want to lose my better mood of late and I so, so, so wish I had someone I could really talk to about it, but I don't. In fact, I am currently avoiding telling my coworker about it (and she's already asked once today if I'd heard from him yet - I said no), because she will literally get mad at me for "assuming" he's blowing me off. Seriuosly, she will YELL at me for having a bad attitude about it, even though she knows it's happened to me numerous times before. And of course, she herself is a beautiful thin girl who literally stops traffic occasionally, so she has no concept at all of where I'm coming from. In fact, she's always talking about how we need to go out together so I can meet some men...yeah right, because I'll just be reeling them in sitting next to a beautiful, skinny, ultra-fashionable black girl. It actually pisses me off whenever she suggests it. Luckily she's married with a kid and lives on the complete other side of town, so the odds of it happening are rare.

Anyway, I'm trying to get as much of the initial emotion of it all out by writing about it here so that it won't ruin my whole day or dampen my attitude for long. Then I'm hoping to just add it to the "get the weight off and get healthy and happy" motivation. In fact, I think I'm going to go read "The Happiness Blog" right now and update my irunurun account for yesterday to try and keep me on track. Fuck stupid men! There's more to life!

OK, I just finished that last post, then went back and read the (practically suicidal) post prior to it. Now I'm starting to wonder if I'm bipolar! Actually, I don't think so. Well, maybe a little. But I have really been thinking about the whole lack of support issue lately and I've realized it really probably isn't going to change much -- it's just who those people are. However, I don't have to feel like because of that, I have to do everything alone. I just need to find new support people. (It would be great to find some in similar life situations as I'm in. Single, smart women, no kids, looking to do new things. Not quite sure how to find them yet, but I'm hoping to keep my positive mood going long enough to brainstorm some ideas on it and find some!) I've had several positive interactions with really random people lately (an AT&T cable guy, for one; a random woman in the office parking lot, for another) that have sort of encouraged me to make more personal effort to interact more with new people (in any context!) on a daily basis. Being stuck in an office with the same five negative people REQUIRES some other contacts to be bearable and keep up a decent attitude. So I'm going to add that to my chart of weekly things to do....it's gotta get me somewhere!

Hold on to your hats...I may have actually managed to get a tiny bit of a new and better attitude. And amazingly, I think it came as a result of not being able to have the MRI for my back. For some reason, I actually ended up (after a day or two of being pissed, of course) feeling relieved, which I never would have expected. It's like some weird switch in my head flipped to an attitude of "well, with no MRI, I just have to trust the doctors that it will get better" and "it is what is, just suck it up and work on getting it better." I've also somehow made the decision to literally not think about it as much as possible -- to live like I don't have any pain (as much as I can without doing anything stupid like lifting things I shouldn't lift, etc.). And somehow that shift in attitude has made be somewhat less guarded physically, which I think really is helping my back relax some. I'm also making an attempt to walk around more all day and do the PT exercises during the day, even at work. The leg pain is certainly still there, but I think I really might be turning a corner on it.

And with the injury less of a looming disaster in my head, I've been able to work more on forcing myself to look for ways to improve some of the other crap in my head. This past weekend I finally looked at the website for a work connection's new business idea which involves charting (and focusing on) daily things you can do to improve your life, instead of just focusing on the far off (and overwhelming) goals. I also went out and bought The Happiness Project, a book I'd looked at several times but never bought because I just wasn't ever ready to make any effort at listening to anyone else's ideas on how to make life better. Turns out the woman who wrote it, though very, very different from me in terms of her life situation, has some interesting insights into happiness and definitely some ideas I can put to use, especially if I combine them with the daily charting idea.

So for the past few days I've actually felt pretty positive about moving forward. Of course, it's helped that it's been a quiet week at work generally. Sadly, that factor could change at any minute. But I'm back to feeling like, even if it does, I am back on a path of finding a way out of here, even if it's not immediate. The back problem is not going to lock me into this job. There is light at the end of the tunnel! Halle-fucking-luyah!

None of the following is new informtion really. Just something I typed while killing time at work today and wanted to save somewhere to expound on/think about more later.

Seriously....how is it that I am where I am? Is it fear? Is it laziness? Is it lack of self-confidence? Is it apathy? Is it because I was never someone who had a concrete passion for anything specific and just ended up falling into things as they came, never having any true love or calling? It seems like for years I was fine just doing what I was doing, knowing it was never really going to progress much but not really caring. Liking a middleman kind of job. Hoping I’d meet the perfect guy and get married and have kids at some point, but making no huge effort to make sure any of that actually happened. Of course now, at mid-life, I look back on everything and think, "holy fuck, how did I waste all those years???" And while on paper my life could certainly be worse – I make enough money to support myself, I have a house and a car and a small amount of savings – every other aspect of it is making me completely miserable. Like already-taking-antidepressants-AND-valium-and-still-wanting-to-break-down-and-cry-myself-to-sleep-95%-of-the-time miserable. I’m overweight (with the beginnings of related health problems), I hate my job and pretty much everyone associated with it, my number of friends has dwindled to almost none over the past few years and I have made next to no effort to make new ones, and I have a family who offers no real support with regard to any of it. How is it I can be this miserable – and even TELL them that I am – and they all still literally say "oh, you’re fine, you’re the strong one, just go join a club or take a class and you’ll be fine" and then proceed to tell me about some trivial thing their cat or child did that day. It literally astounds me. Even my doctors minimize it when I try and talk about it. I can’t figure out if maybe I’m talking about it too much and no one wants to hear about it any more, or if I’m not talking about it enough for anyone to take seriously. Because when it’s all you yourself think about all day everyday, you feel like it’s got to be blatantly obvious to everyone else around you, but my own best friend – who herself is an actual shrink! – acted shocked a few weeks back when I tried to describe things to her. And while I know that one thing I do need is a real shrink of my own, the last one I had did nothing but listen to my stories and take my money, and with my money being currently funneled directly from my bank account to my physical therapist for my back problems, the idea of spending more of my savings on psychotherapy seems impossible right now. Also, I’d have to find one who could see me on late evenings or weekends only, because my bosses have recently announced that they feel like I’m missing too much work lately with my medical appointments, even though not one iota of work has gone undone because of them and they admit this.
So where am I going with all of this? The usual place. The one I’ve been going to in journals for years and years. Putting it all on paper so as to possibly find some sort of "ah-ha" moment to motivate me out of all this crap. It hasn’t really worked yet in 44 years, but for some reason I keep trying. (What’s that definition of insanity again??)
Of course I’m also putting it all out there yet again as a way to kill time at work after having some everything I could possibly do and now sit here in utter boredom. And typing this crap out feels like at least a slightly better use of my time than solitaire or web-surfing. Maybe it will at least kill time until I can go to lunch, which will give me at least a slight distraction from some of the crap. Though certainly not all of it, as my only lunchmate is a coworker who can talk of nothing but the details of how much this job sucks.....something I agree with but that certainly doesn’t help my state of mind.
But who knows. Maybe today at lunch I’ll meet a wonderful single man who also owns his own incredibly successful business that he needs help running and thinks I’d be perfect for. A girl can dream, right? Or is that just sad delusion?

More healthcare joy. Today Humana advised me they would not pay for a penny of the MRI I finally got the doctor to schedule because I have not met even $1 of my deductible. Apparently, not a single one of all the prescriptions, copays and physical therapy bills I have paid qualify. So the only way to get the test would be to pay the (minimum) of $725 myself. Which of course is impossible considering the $200 a pop I'm currently paying my physical therapist.

So now (after spending the whole day trying not to fall apart), I'm trying to convince myself that I just need to change my mindset to one of complete trust in my physical therapist and to just suck it up and walk it off in terms of the pain until he fixes it. Let's see how long THAT works!

On a completely different note: got a call from my best friend today mentioning returning the cupcake carrier I lent to her last week with the special birthday cupcakes I made for her oldest child to take to school. Not a word was said about the cupcakes themselves -- whether they were good, bad or indifferent (which I know the answer to myself -- I had one, they were awesome), or even a thank you. And while I'm generally not a person who requires any effusive thank you for such things, at least SOME acknowledgement might have been nice. WTF??

I've now been in physical therapy for three weeks. And while the therapist, who I love, seems to think he's seeing improvement, I'm just not sure. I definitely feel better for a few hours after treatment, but that is also the same period of time that the pain patch my doctor has me wearing is in full force. By the next morning (and 8 hours of no patch), I often feel like I'm back to square one. I told my therapist yesterday that even though I'd been feeling better the last two days (but by no means does that mean pain free), I still wanted to have an MRI to find out what's really going on. He was totally against it and says it wouldn't mean anything, that the treatment wouldn't change. Which is pretty much how it went five years ago, until my doctor finally decided I wasn't improving enough and was risking nerve damage if I didn't have surgery. That process took 5-6 months. 5-6 months I can't afford (both financially and emotionally) this time around. I see the doctor this afternoon and have the feeling that he is not going to want to go the MRI route just yet. But I'm going to have to have some sort of a financial come to Jesus with him if that's true, because I flat out don't have the money to keep paying $200 an hour for physical therapy. And if I have to stay trapped in this horrific job for the rest of the year because of this injury, I will definitely have a breakdown. (And if my mother ends up in the hospital again at any time while all this is going on, I just might jump off a cliff!) On th way home from PT last night I really tried to convince myself to change my mental attitude about the whole situation and to just treat it like the pain I had in my foot a year and a half ago, and the bursitis in my right hip last year: both hurt like hell for several weeks and really worried me, but both slowly got better and are now completely gone. But it's a hard attitude to have on something that you've already been through before and that DIDN'T go away...at least without surgery. Once again, my life feels completely outside of my control and is completely exhausting me. Can't I have just one thing happen to make it feel like there's light at the end of the tunnel??