Hard Week

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I have a leg infection, it's not the worse one I've ever had but it brings me some fear since my diabetes is controlled and I never failed to wrap my leg or do my Flexitouch. Is it from being up too many hours at the zine fest? From the high heat of the past week where I've been totally housebound? Too much stress? Air conditioning gives me relief but my body feels the heat anyway. I don't know. Here comes a nervous breakdown for the hard-pressed Lippie. It is the last thing that should have happened to me. Sometimes one's hope ebbs away when health problems never end. If I lose my mind and go insane, I've been sick since my late 20s, with leg infections putting me even then in the hospital time and time again.

 I scared away my home call doctor or something, I think he came to the door, when I was crying about having just dropped my nebulizer mouth piece while washing it into the trash can, and goop it went right into a can of grease I had in there. The grease in the can was from the crock pot of yesterday after cooking some chicken in it. Thank God, I had another one, because I don't think even vinegar is going to take away the grease germs. I called the office asking where they were, and they said they had been here, and I never heard a knock on the door. I didn't cuss or anything but was crying, saying "How am I going to find this thing?". Aspie melt-down but maybe he showed up at the door at another time and gave a limp knock and walked away.

Anyhow the office told him to come back, and they were almost back to the office 40 minutes away, something I didn't know. The office made it seem like he was still in my town.  He was not happy they told him to drive back. So my second meeting with this newer doctor, I can tell he already doesn't like me anymore. The appointment was kind of a waste of time. I didn't know the leg infection was coming yet but was teary eyed and unable to socially deal.

Why did they make the nervous Aspie woman switch from the doctor she had for three years? I am tired of new people. You know life should not be this endless dance where you have to meet new people constantly while the new ones are gone. I could tell he was annoyed during the visit. He kept criticizing me and said "Why didn't you answer your phone?" [at 8:00 am when the old doctors always called at 9:00 am like clockwork] I felt on the defense and nervous. I was getting very sick but didn't know it yet. At this point, I just felt stressed out.

With the doctor he gets one more chance, but if he is one of those personalities who will just criticize me, I will call and say I need someone else. Any more limp knocks at the door, and not calling the buzzer because some idiot let him in, I'm not putting up with it. Part of me wonders if I was gas-lighted over the door knocking.

Then I went into the bathroom and cried, feeling stressed out from being housebound from heat, and the new doctor possibly hating me, from too many phone calls, and the fact that I am losing more hearing because I couldn't hear the door. My diminishing hearing is ruining my life. It's going down too. I'm listening to music in a frenzy knowing that one day it's going to be gone. That's a lot of pressure.

Everyone thinks that going blind is the worse, and to me that would be worse too but hearing is a close second. Everything confuses me, and talking to people seems harder and harder. I can still manage one on one conversations but the level of concentration to lip read and the rest is killing me. I know it's making me seem zoned out and slow to people. I seem to irritate them even more then usual. My head hurts, I feel like I am underwater, and stuck in a foreign country trying to make sense of words that sound like Russian but really is English.

Then some guy in a group I am in wrote THREE TIMES on my Facebook wall, "We need to talk". That usually means something bad to me known as the favorite phrase of bosses about to fire people or other people ready to lower gut-bombs. So I write him, I leave him two phone messages. Are there more smear campaigns happening to me? No message is returned. Nothing ever seems good enough to anyone.

I cried and told my husband, "This town is destroying me". I said, "Remember the days when the old church had a goodbye dinner for us, and we said goodbye to friends and people noticed we were alive? Remember when people talked to us?" Around here there seems to be just the same breed of mean-faced baby boomer aged women who have too much money and others who I have nothing in common with. I even miss the conversations I used to have in my old town. I wasn't queen of the ball but I wasn't a hated and or ignored pariah. There were people who noticed I was alive. The days of having no enemies were nice ones.

 I wrote about us considering moving again but we can't make another "mistake" like this one was. I wouldn't make it through. Of course I can't decide if these people are just jerks and snobs from hell, or if I just went more deaf and got older and sicker and ruined my damn life moving to this town in 2007. It's like the "mistake" I wish I could rewind and go scream at the me of the future and say "Don't do it. You will be alone and end up with yuppies who will do nothing but criticize you!"

I have learned some intense lessons about the social differences of the upper classes. They don't talk to each other the same as lower classes. Everyone thinks the suburbs of the 1950s were soul-less and oppressive but nothing beats their contemporary counterparts. Yes this is a generalization but socially since I've lived here I have been more on edge and I don't think it's just my imagination. Status matters far more to them. They are indeed more secretive making sure to put on fronts to the world. No one ever suffers and every problem is to be hidden. They are far more conformist. The number of narcissists are a given. There is less toleration for the ill. Eccentrics are less tolerated among their lot as I have learned all too often.

If we move somewhere poor and rural, but friendlier, that means no more health care with multiple specialists. That means no more free clinic or dentist. We would never get an apartment as good as this one. Where else do we move? So we have stayed but my gut wrenching fears about what the social side of things are doing to us have stayed.

I'm worried about my health since my leg turned on me. My last infection ruined my diabetes and forced me on insulin. Two weeks ago even, illness laid over me like a shroud and even then I could not get out of bed for a day. The leg infection probably actually began then. Cooking or basic cleaning was wearing me out. My immune system is toast. Sometimes lately I am just plain afraid. The stiff upper lip crowd around me is just choking the life out of me.

 The other day I watched Frida, the movie, I don't agree with the Communism but lets be frank corrupt Capitalists suck too. Her art was interesting.  She laid in her bed with serious health problems just existing in it. It looked like my life being in bed so much lately. Maybe I should try painting in bed too. This is where I have been for days though today I actually plan to go outside for the first time in a week. I hope my leg gets better. Did I pay a price for going to a fun zine fest out of town?  It sucks when your body punishes you just for wanting to live.