Life, please... no more

[Kahlia1981]

*huggles Kat* - Thanks hun for your continuing support and words of encouragement. I really appreciate it.

I've made my 21 months Self Injury free. I haven't really celebrated. I'd like to, but I don't really know how to. I mean, the next big celebratory milestone is the 24 months / 2 years naturally. Not all that long now - August 25th. We're totally having a party for that.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of Heidi's death. More specifically of the day I had to make the decision to have her put down. And while I know that I did the right thing - logically and emotionally - it still really hurts. I keep wishing she was still here. I long to pat her, to just feel her fur beneath my hand. To see her looking intently at me. To hear her bark - especially towards the end when she was deaf and blind and senile and would just start randomly barking and then seem to freak herself out with it. I miss the way she would "houdini" herself away sometimes and we'd spend ages looking for her, and then she'd just turn up looking all innocent. And I remember the time that she jumped onto my bed and crawled under a pile of stuffed animals. We took a photo of that - a lot of people couldn't pick her out!! I've got her blanket that I crocheted for her, and her breed book. I also have her collar. Mum is giving me her jumpers. *sigh*

Anyway, I had a GP visit today. Just updated him on what was happening with the psych stuff. And with my pain. He didn't do anything. The letter from the psychologist still hasn't arrived. *sigh* So damn over this. Just want it all to end. I feel like there isn't really a point any more. My pain keeps getting worse and he doesn't want to do anything about it, so why should I even bother? I guess I shouldn't.

I sent my mum a text to tell her that I'd reached my 21 month milestone. Do you know what her response was? "Well done. How is xxxx? Did she find somewhere to live? Is she okay? How are things going with her and yyyy? How are the kids?" xxxx is my friend, yyyy is her ex-husband, for reference purposes. My mother really hurt me with that response. I mean, yes she did say "well done", but I felt like asking her if she'd rather be my friend's mother because that seemed to me to be the role she was trying to take on.

I don't know anymore. I just feel like doing something dangerous and stupid. I don't know how much I can take, I really don't. Sometimes I think it would be so much easier to just give in and give up.

So tired. So sick of crying. Just so damn well sick of it all.

Sorry, I'll stop being a pain in the arse now.

[CrazyHayley]

No words for you at the moment, just *huggles*

I wanted to come online this morning hoping for our time zones to overlap so that I could help celebrate your 21month milestone with you, but my laptop was playing up. You were in my thoughts though *extra celebratory huggles*

[Kahlia1981]

Hayley: A big thank-you for the hugs and celebratory hugs. They were much appreciated. *huggles you*

There's been a heck of a lot happening since Tuesday...

Our friend who had the crisis housing situation kept asking us for advice in a lot of ways. She asked my housemate several times (and that isn't an exageration) to help her to work out a budget and to see what she could afford. The last time he told her that he would only do it on the condition that she would believe what it told her. Anyway, we worked out that if she maintained her savings buffer she would comfortably be able to afford a place for approximately $300 a week.

She got offered a place for that much and came to us asking for advice as to whether to apply for a Bond Loan and Rental Grant or not. Both I and my housemate advised her to apply for both - the Bond Loan to pay for the Bond (4 weeks rent) and the Rental Grant to pay the 2 week in advance. She then ignored our advice and dissolved her savings account in order to pay everything in cash. She was then surprised to find that she had to start paying rent straight away.

Apparantly her ex-husband is paying for all brand-new furniture and white-goods to be delivered to her new flat, so she "borrowed" my housemate to help her to measure up the place. My housemate was a bit disturbed because she was "unable" to read the measurements on the tape measure. She said the door height measurement was "30". My housemate gave her some advice on appropriate widths of furniture and ways of getting it in as he used to be a removalist, but he doesn't think she'll pay any attention.

We're both getting a bit sick of the "poor me, single mother with two kids, whose dad does nothing for me" attitude. Especially as it isn't true. The ex-husband has gone out of his way to buy furniture and white-goods, and I'm pretty sure there's going to be some sort of catch there ... I think that would only be fair. But it just sort of seems as if the world is revolving around her. For example, we had to tell her we couldn't help her because my housemate's pain was so bad he could barely move and her response was "that's ok I understand".

Anyway I finally got up the courage to ring the Public Advocate yesterday. I spoke to a lawyer. She was really good. I was on the phone for more than 30 minutes. She got quite a bit of information out of me. She has to present that information to the Public Advocate and then he has to work out whether it can be acted on, or what should happen next. She also gave me quite a large list of numbers that relate to Mental Health including a Peak Body that might be of use to me and my housemate as things are progressing. The lawyer did say however, that they may not be able to action anything in relation to the HQCC until they have some sort of result from the Independent Clinical Review. She also noted down that the Institute of Mental Health Services in my city/town in a very dangerous place that has a high number of deaths associated with it and that I am concerned about the prospect of having to go in there. When I explained some of the stuff that had happened in or because of our ward just in the last 6 months she sounded horrified.

We made contact with a group that might be able to offer us some help to get ourselves on track, and might also be able to provide some support in a clinical way for our Mental Health issues. I don't know too much about them as my housemate spoke to them on the phone, but it does sound kind of hopeful. I think our appointment is early in June.

I also rang the Open Learning Institute today to make enquiries about studying a Diploma of Information Technology (Website Development) through online delivery but ultimately through the Brisbane North Institute of TAFE. I rang once and got the answering machine but called back later and got my questions answered nicely. I think it'll be really good. It'll be good for me to get back into study and it might take some of the pressure off me for a bit.

I also completely wiped and reformatted my computer then reinstalled everything that I wanted - with one exception - in preparation for starting the course when I'm able to afford the first "Stage". I sadly had to go back to Windows Vista for it. I'm making the assumption that the majority of the coursework will be optimised for people working on Windows, so it makes sense to move back to Windows to make it easier. *sigh* There's a lot of things I'll miss. Like my daily "Least I could do" Comic. - I'll have to see if I can get that. All I still have to do is find the disk for my TV tuner card. I can't find it anywhere. Oh well. Hopefully my housemate will have some idea when he gets home.

*sigh* Always more things to do than hours in the day.

[Kahlia1981]

Ah me, sometimes I wonder "when will this ever end" and then I kind of realised that if "this" ever "ended" I'd probably be dead. *shrugs* Anyway, I have now finally finished the complete reformatting and reinstallation of software and drivers and miscellaneous pieces of equipment on my computer. I think it should be fine for the TAFE course that I'm intending to do.

My friend broke her lease like 24 hours after signing it. I'm not 100% sure why. She went with a lady from the Real Estate Agent to do the Entry/Exit Report and apparently the lady was horrified at the bad condition of the place. She came around today and picked up her stuff from here. I believe that she's staying at her ex-husband's place. I'm not sure how Centrelink is going to deal with that - especially since she is going to have to pay the Rent on the place she broke the lease for until someone else takes it.

My housemate has been working for the last two days. The work has been fairly physically labour intensive so in a way I'm hoping that it isn't going to last too long - at least not in that capacity. His body won't hold up if it continues for too long, and I really don't want him to risk souring the relationship with the employer. He's going to be doing a different type of work - for cash-in-hand - on Sunday. That should be a bit easier on him.

The money coming in will be beneficial to us as a household however. It might just give us a bit of an easier ride for our move.

I just really hope that he isn't too sore, and that he has been taking care of himself. I don't fancy having to carry him up the stairs. The sheer logistics are mind boggling.

My head is going absolutely psycho at the moment. I keep getting that "I'm not alone in my head" feeling. I've been making enquiries about the last times when my DID was running rampant and what the personalities were like so I know what to prepare those around me for, but it relies a lot on what other people are allowed or prepared to tell me - for those in a role where they have access to that sort of information - or from what they remember for the others.

But at least today I haven't felt like jumping off a bridge, or out my bedroom window too much. Attacking myself randomly with a mango (I have a severe mango allergy) or some latex (yes, and a severe latex allergy) have been quite high, as well as wanting to just start tracing lines or "fixing" my scars with a knife.

Sometimes I wish I had never started cutting. But, if I hadn't, then I wouldn't be here now. *shrugs*

I really just wish that I could wake up and the whole of my life would be a dream ... just a really bad dream.

[Kahlia1981]

*screams silently*

My parental units are coming around for dinner tonight. So, this morning I vacuumed the carpets, cleaned the bathroom, washed the floors in the kitchen, dining room and bathroom and cleaned the benches. Then I took the rubbish down to the bin and walked down to the shops to get the necessary stuff. Put everything that I'd had to move back where it should be and finished up the stuff that I could finish up. Meh, tiring work. Just mundane and ordinary, but tiring.

*sigh* I just hope this goes well.

My mood is rock bottom. I don't know what to do right now. I can't seem to get out. Everytime I seem to be getting better, I just drop again. I don't know anymore. Is it even worth trying?

I want to SI so bad. I'm even dreaming SI and suicide now. The urges are just mounting every day so that I can't seem to get away from them. *sigh*

[taz35]

*hugs Kahlia lots and lots* I wish I could give you some good advice, but that's never something I've been able to do :(

But yes - it is worth trying. Keep telling yourself that. You have so much to offer, it would be a shame to lose it all. And it would suck to not have you around on RYL either :(

[crazykat]

*Hugs Kahlia*n Good luck with the parentals coming around, I hope it goes well for you. It is always worth it. Hold on there hun. Here if you need

[Kahlia1981]

Taz: Thank you so much. Please, don't ever worry about not being able to give me advice. For me it just means so much when someone takes the time to tell me that they have read something I've written. Or even just "stops by" to offer hugs and the likes. *hugs you back tightly*

Kat: Thanks for the good luck wishes. I'm hoping that it goes well as well. At least everything is prepared. *hugs you*

Feeling a little more calm now that everything is prepared and my housemate is home. The last few days have just sort of hit in a real whirlwind of emotions and so forth. Hopefully it will all start to settle down. I'm getting a bit over everything being a chaotic whirlwind of emotions, if that makes sense.

It'd be really nice to have a "rest period" for a while. Is that too much to ask?

[crazykat]

I too hope things settle down for you *Hugs*

[Kahlia1981]

*hugs Kat* Thank hun, I really appreciate both the hugs and the kind and warm wishes.

My parents have just left. It was kind of draining towards the end having them here. The good part is that they helped with the dishes. I washed and they dried and assisted with the putting away. They also helped with wiping down the benches and table. Then there was just a bit of light chat and they headed home. Mind you, they hadn't finished their cups of tea before my housemate had to head to bed. That was probably why I was finding it so hard to deal with all the conversation.

Anyway now I'm shaking like a leaf and extremely tired so I'm going to crash out for the night.

[crazykat]

Glad it went well with your parents. I hope you get some good sleep there sweetheart *hugs*

[Kahlia1981]

Yesterday was, in some respects, an interesting day. All up I watched three movies. Something, something, something Dark Side - Family Guy's take on Star Wars movie 4, and then Aladdin a bit later on, then Return to Oz after my housemate got home. I love that movie. It's kind of a bit weird when you've seen the musical Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland though. Probably just because the girl who plays Dorothy is just that, a young girl. She plays the role well though.

I'm trying to find the original Oz series books. If you've ever seen Girl, Interrupted you'll have heard of them, and the same deal if you saw Blade, Trinity. But they've become very rare nowadays. *sigh* They were great books for kids.

Speaking of great books, the long-awaited paperback release of Unseen Academicals is soon upon us. I'm going to have to start searching bookstores! I really can't wait to get my hand on a copy. My family thinks I'm insane, and while they are right, in this case I just prefer to have the paperback if I can because I have the majority of the other 36 books in paperback. Is that such a crime?

I started reading a book yesterday. The title is Reversing: The Secrets of Reverse Engineering. So far (I'm only in Chapter 3) it's brilliant. The second chapter went through a few different high-level programming languages and also went into lower-level constructs like Assembly Language Programming. For me that section was easy to understand because I've spent quite a bit of time learning Assembly.

It introduced Disassemblers and Decompilers and it's amazing what they can show you about the original program source code from either the "bytecode" from programs compiled in Virtual Machines or machine code. Seriously, some of the information is just amazing. Even just knowing where to look for something, or noticing that one particular area is constantly being referenced in memory can tell you so much about what is happening.

Sorry, I'll get off that. It's just incredibly interesting.

Anyway, last night we had a neighbourhood kid come over. He's having trouble with the law and from talking to him last night the reason is his attitude. The last two days he was working to fix a bike. The catch? The bike was stolen. He dumped it in our block of units from garden this morning so it's been taken by the cops. The other day - I think it was Thursday - he and some of his mates scratched cars. One of them used a knife and the other three used rocks. He doesn't think there is anything wrong we that. He is 13 and he smokes, is physically abusive when angry, definitely aggressive, regularly skips school, but I think the main thing is that he does what he can because he doesn't respect the law. With the car incident, his mother asked him a sort of "what about the people whose cars you scratched?" type question and his response was "they'll have to get over it". Perhaps a WIIFM type attitude maybe? (What's In It For Me)

I actually mentioned some of the situation to my parents when they were here the other night and my father said that it sounded like it wouldn't be all that long before his place of work would be dealing with the boy. To be honest I didn't give a lot of details on the incident but more on the attitude. And as much as I hate to say it sometimes, my dad can be an extremely good judge of character. *sigh*

Well I'm starting to get myself ready to study. I've started the process for allowing myself to enrol. Hopefully it won't take all that long and all the bits and pieces will start to flow together.

Now I just have to get through the rest of today without breaking down in tears.

[slasher]

hi kahlia
ive been reading ur thread and uve been through so much. i just wanted to give u a hug and to tell u to keep going.
things might be bad at the moment but clouds pass eventually.
dont really know wat else to say other than i hope things get better for u, and to take one thing at a time x

[mouse in darkness]

*Hugglws Pritty princess. Take care. Will be out and about more so will be able to catch up with you more online and offline. *Huggles you tight* Am glad that you are going back to study. Hope it goes well.

[Kahlia1981]

It's been a little while since I last updated ... and quite a bit has happened so I'll try and make some sense of it.

The last time I wrote I commented that I was starting to get ready to study and had started the enrolment process. I did what I had to do with the online form to register for Self Service so I could enrol. And at the end it popped up saying there was a problem and that they would call me. Well they never did. They just emailed me my Student Number and a temporary password.

Anyway, the enrolment itself wasn't too bad - although I'm going to have to repeat the process quite regularly. The course is the Diploma of Information Technology which I'm completing online through the TAFE (stands for Technical and Further Education if anyone is interested) in Brisbane North. The Diploma is split into x number of Stages and you basically enrol in 1 or 2 Stages at a time. Each stage has 2 or more subjects within it and so forth. The cost is by subject and different for each subject. Naturally this means that some Stages cost more than others. In the Diploma, the first 6 Stages are basically teaching you skills you need for the rest - and I've probably covered way more than I need in my uni studies.

I could have applied for RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) but decided that it wasn't worth the lengthy process. The process that I could find to complete it was quite in depth and had interviews and so forth. But the other factor is that it takes time. In the time it takes to do that - which would mean that I couldn't be doing study - I can already have quite a few of those Stages done.

So my enrolment was done on Tuesday (01/06) and I was able to start studying on the Wednesday afternoon. I only enroled in 1 Stage, due to not having enough money to enrol in 2, which meant only 2 subjects. So my study actually started on the 2nd of June and my assessments were both submitted by the 5th of June. Now I have to wait a week or so to get my assessments back and find out whether I have passed. I'm confident they'll both be fine.

Because of the study I've had to put aside my other reading. I still want to get back to it - and the other books I'm interested in, but right now I'm going to have to just allow myself to have some time.

My physio is concerned about the pain medication that I am taking and was able to put my pain down to 4 different areas: the shoulder, the neck, the lower back and the ulnar nerve pain. She spent some time looking at my neck and thinks it is contributing to my shoulder pain, which kind of makes sense. For the ulnar nerve she has given me some Nerve Glides. They look weird - going from a duck to a waiter - but they ease the pain a bit. The lower back we both thought was probably postural, but accentuated by the cold (damn winter). My movements with my shoulder are still fairly good although I have lost some range; however, with the pain level this was only to be expected.

We've had a couple of issues around the house lately ranging from massive amounts of ants for no obvious reason (we call them suicide ants because they insist, in large numbers, of doing things that appear suicidal, such as rushing into a boiling kettle), to losing 2 of our washing lines whilst they were in use. The washing line issue was a real pain as I then had to rewash my clothes as they had been dragged through the dirt - one side of the line had left the wall so the clothes had been dragged across the floor until the tension eased on the line - and then rehang them on our remaining 2 lines. It's a pain to hang washing anyway because I struggle with opening the garage door and am always lucky to come away without exacerbating my shoulder pain.

I've now had 2 nights with not a lot of sleep. Wednesday (02/06) I didn't fall asleep until about 2am and then was up and about at 7am. Last night I didn't have problems falling asleep, but I couldn't stay asleep. I kept waking up and it always took me some time to get back to sleep, and then the process would start again. *sigh* It's always easier to deal with not sleeping that disturbed sleep.

Today I scared the living daylights out of myself in a way that I could barely explain. I walked out of my room to get a drink of water and when I turned around I thought I saw the guy who was responsible for my childhood SA sitting on a chair on our balcony. Logically I knew that it was impossible - but logic must have been on holiday or something. I took a breath and looked again and saw there was noone there, but my fear reaction had already started with all the "he's come to get me" type stuff. The fear had me sitting on the bed covered in goosebumps and tears and madly trying to calm myself down. It took quite a while before I could leave the room - even just to get myself a tissue. Getting out onto the balcony to have a smoke took quite a bit longer.

It probably sounds silly to someone else that something like that - a tired mind placing something where it wasn't -caused such a reaction, but in that moment it was like reliving every single episode of the SA again.

Sorry, I shouldn't go on about it .... I just couldn't believe that it hit me so hard. Or that I didn't know what to do . . .

*_*_*_*

Before I go I just want to say:

Nicole (MID): *huggles you right back* Thanks so much hun.
Slasher: Thank you so much, both for the hug and for your kind words. *offers hugs*

[Doikers]

Oh thats sounds like it came as a huge shock ! Sorry all I can offer is *Hugs* .....

[Kahlia1981]

Mark: It definitely did. Thank-you so much for your kind words and the hugs. *hugs you back*

[SoMuchMore]

*cuddles you*

Wow it sounds like you've had a lot going on recently! I hope that your class goes well. I'm sorry about the situation you had the other day. That sounds really difficult to handle. I'm glad you were eventually able to calm yourself down. I bet it is really really hard to be "logical" in that type of situation :-/ *hugs*

Hope you are doing well today.

[Kahlia1981]

Laura: Thanks for the cuddles and hugs, they are much appreciated, as are your kind words and well wishes. That situation was extremely difficult to handle and it is extremely hard to be logical. I am extremely grateful that I was able to counter the extreme anxiety thoughts, however my body had started it's own physical reaction. *hugs you back very tightly* Thank you once again.

[mouse in darkness]

Hugs you tight Kahlia. Please take care. I hope things turn around soon for the better.