Tired ramblings

It’s interesting, this whole life thing. I can’t say I ever want to do it again… If that whole reincarnation thing has any merit, it sucks. I may just be cynical and jaded, but I’m just tired of pain and stress. I’m tired of budgeting and planning, trying to feed a family of four on very little money. And then my mouth needs about $2500 worth of work done on it, not exactly something we can afford. I keep seeing a bit of hope on the horizon, but it keeps getting squashed, only to be replaced by another light, further out… 

Health insurance in the USA isn’t really amazing. I don’t understand why it isn’t run the way we do car insurance; competitively. Pit health insurance plans against each other, make them fight for our business, rather than allowing them to gouge the American people. How fair is it that we have to pay so much more than other countries, yet not have the care to match the cost? My husband’s work is supposed to cover our entire health plan, but since the premium has been raised so high, they can’t even do that anymore and we have to pay half. That means that when my husband got his raise, it was pretty much just to cover the health premium. It is at least not quite as bad as I expected, considering we’re not in the negative at the beginning of the month anymore, but feeding a family of four on even just $100 a month is hard. The light I’m seeing now is that his student loans are almost paid off and he can go back to school for his master’s degree. That bumps him up to the next pay grade and I’m so hoping that we’ll be able to actually get out of debt. They’ll probably still take half of his paycheck, but at least the half we get will be bigger. If I’m correct, with the next pay grade, it would probably end up being around $1300 gross more than now. I’m not sure what the taxes on that would be and I don’t feel like doing that much math. Either way, more money = yay. 

I kind of feel like I need to post a disclaimer. I think I complain a lot on here, and I don’t want people to think that I take what I have for granted, or that I don’t appreciate what I do have. I do very much appreciate how easy we have it compared to others. My life is pretty boring compared to some and I’ll definitely take that over some of the crap I’ve seen other people have to deal with. I mean, I live in a really great house, with a pool! We got it really cheap when the market was low and while it has taken a bit of work to fix things up, we were able to live in it from the get go. My pregnancies may have been crap, but I won’t complain that I got two very healthy little babies who are quite happy now. The toddler is getting quite a vocabulary and we’re starting to be able to really have conversations now! And he’s potty training much easier than I expected. Part of me hates cosleeping with the baby, but I admit I do kinda enjoy snuggling with him when he’s not thrashing about. 

I am thankful for my husband. We hit a very rough patch in May/June and I thought for sure he was going to talk about divorce, but somehow we managed to work it out. It’s much too complicated to write out right now, and rather personal, but suffice to say we have our work cut out for next year… And while he still has issues with his own kids, I like to think he’s getting better about it. He works very hard for the family and sometimes has to work until late at night without overtime. The stress is making a deep mark on him and it trickles over into the family. I feel it a lot and makes tension between us. But hey, life wouldn’t be what it is without hard times… I just hope it doesn’t last our entire life. Isn’t that what everyone says? Hah. My parents are still struggling… My inlaws are still struggling… not as much as my parents I think, but enough to where I can’t feel comfortable asking for help. Not really sure I’d be comfortable asking for help even if they were rich. I want us to be able to make it on our own.

But, anyway, I like to have this place to get my frustrations and confusion out. It helps so much sometimes. 

Brain function and visions

Sometimes when I’m trying to go to sleep, I’ll just let my mind go, I won’t focus on anything at all. Last night I did this, but my brain was just in overdrive or something because images kept flashing through my mind. They would only last a split second before being replaced, so much fast than I could keep track of. Various topics… I remember one was a surgeon removing a kidney, another was a seed germinating, some were too fast to tell, some were just feelings, raw emotions. It made me motion sick, and hurt, like my eyes were trying to focus on them but they were just going too fast, like trying to watch a speeding train zipping right in front of you. I could feel my eyes twitch. 

And now I think my brain is doing it again. My hearing is so sensitive right now I think I need to get my headphones on. Just the quiet sound of the rabbits chewing, the dogs breathing, etc is driving me insane.

Identity

So what defines who we are? Are our actions what define us, our thoughts, our words? My depression may not define who I am, such as “I am not depression, depression is not me.” But, if you take the depression away, I will change. If it weren’t for my dreams, or nightmares I suppose, then I wouldn’t be who I am. If certain things had never happened, I would be different. Not drastically different, but different nonetheless. If I hadn’t grown up having dreams of death and fear, would I be less fearful, or are the dreams a product of the fear? Do they feed each other? Would my decisions in life have been completely different without those warped and twisted adventures through dreamland? I know that depending on who I’m with, I am perceived differently. Does that have anything to do with who I am? My dad claims that my psychotic obsessive intrusive thoughts are not me, but they are a product of my mind, of my imagination… I know that I am a different person to my children than how my mother, father, brother or husband see me. I know that who I view me as is not shown to anyone else.

So who am I? What defines me? 

I am me. I have done more than many people even think of doing in their entire lives. I have been both rich and poor, homeless even. I have sung internationally with a choir, I have written songs, both lyrics and music, I have traveled abroad. I know movie stars, I know the nitty-gritty of life. I have raised animals for wool, meat, eggs, milk and had my own garden (like I could the byproduct, lol). I am self sufficient, as in I know how to survive in the wild. I can build shelter, build traps, hunt for food, build a bow, build arrows, whittle arrowheads. I know how to make rope, thread, cloth, chainmaille. I can harvest wool, spin it, knit it, weave it, crochet it. I can run Unix based systems such as Linux, as well as Dos, Mac, Windows. There is no program I have not tried and mastered that I wanted to. I can play with 3D modeling like it’s play-doh, I can “see” it as if it’s in front of me. I have also sculpted with clay. I can paint, draw, make jewelry. I have sailed to distant islands, motored around, skii and knee-board, wakeboard, surfboard. I’ve gone fishing with both high quality gear and makeshift stick and string and caught things with both. I have made fire with flint and steel, and with two sticks rubbed together. I am a cook, have a title of honorary Mexican for my Mexican cooking. I cook from scratch, making sauce and dough. I have almost mastered Italian and French pastries. I have studied history, foreign languages, cultures and mythologies, collected foreign antique coins, collect antique books, swords and other weapons, jewelry. I have studied heraldry and architecture and archeology. I have had heartbreak, found love, lost loved ones, have children, have depression, OCD, anxiety, psychotic intrusive obsessive thoughts, crazy nightmares, fibromyalgia, allergies, asthma, possibly Aspergers, high IQ…

I could go on for a while, I’m sure, but what I’m getting at is, Who am I? What defines me? With everything I have ever done, that has shaped my life, shaped my being… It’s not an easy answer, if it can even be answered.