Free Movies and Date Nights │ You’re Welcome

Hey all!

My mother has been bugging me for the past few weeks about signing up for this app called MoviePass. She read online that it was a super cheap way for us to go to the movies together, and since I budget our finances, she thought it would be a good way for us to relieve some stress after a long day or even get together as a family on the weekends for a flick.

Basically, you pay $9.99 for a month in a subscription. In return you get to watch “unlimited” movies at the Theatre.

Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, kinda yes, mostly no.

Basically you sign up with an email address or with your Facebook account, once registered you can enter a credit/debit card for a $9.99USD fee for a thirty day subscription. While you are a member of MoviePass, you can go see movies on their dime.

However, upon registering- you have to wait up to two weeks for a “credit card” to be mailed to your address. You then register the last 4 digits of your card to your account. This is where the rules come into play.

1) You must have a smart device or tablet that has GPS capabilities. The only way to access your account is through the app on your device. The only way to check in to movies is through the app. The kicker: you MUST be within 100 yards of the Theatre at the time of check in.

(This can be a con for those who don’t have a decent data connection/plan)

 

2) Once checked in to a movie/time that you chose, you then have a 30 minute window to swipe your card, and MoviePass picks up the cost of the ticket. Whether it is a matinee, or late night/full price showing.

 

3) The MoviePass card does not cover concessions- No popcorn/drinks/food of any kind.

 

4) You CANNOT see more than one movie a day, or (they may have changed this recently) see the same movie twice.

 

5) The movies CANNOT be in 3d. They have to be a standard 2D flick.

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   All of that being said, if you can follow the rules, you can see whatever movie you want, at whatever time, on the dime of MoviePass. I don’t know about you but a matinee showing of any movie where I live is $7.50. After 3PM the cost shoots up to $12. So essentially one movie in a month and you paid for your subscription.

Because of this app, my husband and I have been to the movies together more in the past few days than we have during our entire relationship together.
An added bonus? Our Theatre has a rewards card, where you get 1 point for every dollar you spend on concessions or tickets. This means that every day that we go to the movies we get a minimum of 14 points. EVERY time. Those points can be used on free popcorn or drinks, which when you use your rewards card for those, adds even more points.

Our first movie we went to go see? 12 Strong- an army movie based on a true story. I never would have agreed to go watch something like that with my husband, but gave in due to my desire to test the app out. This is where we signed up for a rewards card, got two tickets for the film, and then paid .75 cents for a large popcorn with the points we earned.
Our first movie date cost us $4 because we also split a large soda.

 

The very next day, we went back to the Theatre and saw The Shape of Water. A romance movie that my husband would usually never watch with me, but again – the movie was free, so what’s a few hours? We ended up loving the movie and splitting a large popcorn and drink.

Today? We went back to watch Call Me By Your Name.

We find ourselves actually watching trailers to movies during the previews and going : “Let’s come back and watch that”. We look forward to our daily movie dates. The best part is that the app is easy to use and every movie we see past the first one, costs us nothing unless we want a soda or snack.

Tomorrow we are going to watch Winchester. The day after? Black Panther.

The movies are our oyster, so to speak.

Additionally, on Valentines Day yesterday evening, their app was bugging out and we couldn’t check into the movies. While that may seem like a bad thing- I tweeted the company pointing out the problem and they responded immediately apologizing for the influx of customers bogging down their servers.
They stated that if we are subscribers (which we are) and we ever have to pay out of pocket for one of our tickets, we can DM them a copy of our ticket/receipt and they will reimburse us.

I don’t know how this company is making their money but good golly, I can’t recommend this app more. I urge you to get it, give it a fair shake for one month, and let me know what you think.

Going daily for a few hours with my husband has totally upped both of our moods, and I hope it does the same for you as well!

How Dogs Saved My Life. Saved Me From Myself.

When I was a little boy, my mother and father had many different animals over the coarse of my 6-7 years before they got their divorce. These animals were always the pets of other people who lived with us, that my little sister and I were forced to take care of. My father, being a rather horrible person at the time that loved alcohol more than his own children, would give animals away that we had gotten attached to and while drunk- he would tell us horror stories.

For instance, my sister and I once took care of a pair of fluffy black and white rabbits. We took care of their cages, called them Sniffles and Fluffy, and raised them  since they were tiny little things. We did chores to earn money to pay for their food, their cages, their toys, and the supplies required to bathe them. However, when they were fully grown, my father got rid of them. To this day, we still have no idea what really happened to them, but the night he got rid of them, he told us over dinner that he killed them, and we were eating them for dinner.

I tell you this horror story because that’s where my fear of getting a pet for myself stemmed from. Where my anxiety and depression festered and brewed as a young child. I had an alcoholic father systematically terrorizing my love of animals, telling me they left or died in cruel or heartless ways. Years after my mother divorced my father, she decided to take me to the pound and look for a puppy. He was a fluffy white border collie, with a light coffee creme colored fur everywhere except for his paws and around his eyes which made him look like he wore goggles. I fell in love and we adopted him within a week. Robbie was taken in to be my best friend in 6th grade. As someone who switched schools nearly every year, he was my confidant. My best friend. Someone who I could talk to, who wouldn’t judge me. Someone who was just happy to have me around.

However, my friendship was short lived with Robbie. During that summer vacation we had a horrible storm that had torn down our backyard fence in the middle of the night. I let him out, not knowing of the damage during the evening, and when I went to the back door to let him back in to go to bed with me, he never came. I never saw him again. I spent weeks looking for him. My heart was broken. I vowed to never get a pet again when my mother sat me down and said that there was nothing we could do, and she had given up hope of finding him. I never wanted to feel that pain again. That heart break.

On June 6th, 2006, after seeing the movie “The Omen” in theaters with my friends from high school, my mother picked me up from school. Already I knew something was off because she worked full time as a bartender in order to support her two children; this meant that she was always working by the time we got off of school, but since my depression had gotten worse and worse at home my mother attempted to surprise me with a puppy. She hadn’t told me where we were going or what we were doing until I started to panic when we took a back road outside of town near the old Hansen’s gas station. When we had parked the car in front of a run down home that looked like I could’ve blown on it to knock it over like the wolf blowing the hay house from the three little pigs story, my mom and revealed that she met a customer at her work who told her that he was selling sheep dogs but wanted to give it to her for free because of my situation.

I remember arguing with her in the car, telling her that I would never get another pet in my life. Crying. Remembering that pain that I had gone through so many times as a child.

 

My mother made me a deal, like all intelligent and manipulating mothers do. A simple deal, that if I walked over, saw all of the puppies and didn’t fall in love with any of them, we would turn around and go home. I stupidly agreed, like all ignorant pigheaded children who believe they can outsmart their mothers, thinking that my mom was a fool and my heart was a solid chunk of ice.

That day around 4PM June 6, 2006, I walked into a chain link fenced backyard to puppies clamoring all over me. 6 medium McNabb/Kelpie dark cocoa puppies clamored over one another, each trying to lick my face. Each trying to jump on my legs. Each attempting to show as much affection to the intruder as possible.

At this time in my childhood, I had already started to have an issue with my weight. I was nearly 200lbs, and I was a Sophomore in high school. I mention this because at that time, my self esteem was in the toilet. I loved to eat food.

As I was standing there, being a grumpy teenager, fighting back my hatred of my mother for putting me in this situation and my anger towards my father for how I was raised, I looked across the yard to see that the mother of these pups was trotting back and forth, clearly agitated. I initially thought it was because a stranger was near her puppies, but when I looked closer, I noticed that the mother was distracted and agitated because there was this extremely overweight white, cocoa, and toffee colored ball shaped puppy constantly trying to feed from her, completely ignoring the yard’s new guest.

The only way I can describe the feeling I felt at that time…is connection. I leveled with that pet mentally and physically. My heart made of ice began to melt. As it melted, the surplus water began trickling from my eyes. I pushed the pups at my feet away, and crept towards the food oriented ball of fur as if I were in some zombie like trance. He hadn’t noticed me sneak right behind him, and did nothing but try to wiggle free to get back to eating as I picked him up and hugged him, crying into his neck. When I sobbed for the first time, he stopped wiggling, turned towards me, and licked my tears.

 

 

Fast forward- I moved out of my mom’s house when I was 18. I got a job in a nearby town and lived in the world’s tiniest 1 bedroom house that I shared with a roommate, because it had a fully fenced yard. It was my space. Well, Mine and the not so little puffball which I had named Rolo. Since he looked like he had done nothing but consume the caramel candies that his coloring matched since birth. I met a man that moved into the tiny house in place of my roommate, and (in thanks to Rolo my opinion) managed to fall in love with him. This man, Patrick, was the first man I had ever dated that treated my dog as his own. I remember falling in love with Patrick when he came home from work one night and bent down on his knees and kissed Rolo’s head while talking to him in a goofy voice asking the dog how his day was.

After a year or so of dating Patrick, I learned that he had never had a pet growing up, due to a similar upbringing with his parents. This is when I immediately looked up a beagle puppy for sale down in Oakland, California- a dog he’s always wanted but never got. We went down south, paid for this white colored dog, who was nursing from his Beagle mother. It wasn’t until nearly 3 months later that we noticed the little rat dog we called Chance, never grew bigger than a Chihuahua and started turning to a slight brown color. He was the only one of the litter who managed to end up getting his father’s genes that….was a Chihuahua. However, my boyfriend had fallen in love with his new baby, and they’ve been inseparable ever since.

While we were going through the process of getting Chance, which was SUPPOSE to be a Beagle, I informed Patrick that I had always wanted a Saint Bernard. I had seen YouTube videos of them, researched them, thought about getting one, but never actually followed through with it. Patrick surprised me by getting the cash and driving me down to a breeder in Oakland (surprisingly), the week that we had found out chance was half Chihuahua. We picked up the baby girl and named her Kira.

One year later, the woman called us and told us that her Saint Bernard had puppies and she wanted one of them to go to a great home. After a short talk with Patrick- he decided to add to our family, and we made the trip yet again to southern California.

 

With every dog I have gotten, I became a better person. I started to overcome the childhood trauma I had gone through. I honestly feel as though every dog had lead me to another stage in my life right when I needed to transition to it.

 

With Rolo, he made it possible for me to not give up on Love.

With Chance, he taught me that some things in life you put up with things that annoy you, because it makes others that you do love happy.

With Kira, she made me realize that there is another human being out there who loved me as much as I loved them.

With our fourth dog, Brodie, I finally felt as though we had a family.

 

While they are the reason my trashcan foot pedal for my kitchen trashcan doesn’t work anymore. While they are the reason I am scratched and bruised every time I trim their nails. While they are the reason I trip because they feel the need to lay right behind me as I prepare dinner. While they are the reason we have to sweep daily. While they are the reason there is dried drool on the wall. While they are the reason pieces of kibble are dropped all over the kitchen because for some reason they can’t eat over the food dish and I step on it in the dark while getting a glass of water at night:

They were the reason I made my relationship with Patrick work through the tough times. They were the reason I wanted to do well at my job and make a decent amount of money (so I could afford a bigger place for them). They were the reason why my love of my boyfriend, turned into the love of my husband.

They are the reason why I giggle to throw a ball down the hall. They are the reason I stick to schedules via feeding, watering, and bathing them. They are the reason I feel relatively prepared to adopt a child. They are the reason I fight through the mental block I have today.

These dogs brought me back from the brink of suicide. These dogs gave me hope. These dogs not only changed my life:

These dogs make me happy to be alive.

When Mental Struggles Affect Weight

Hey there everyone, I am happy to let you know that things have gotten substantially better.
I have communicated with my husband about my mental illness. I have sought out help from professionals, and between a combination of therapy and medication, I have been able to once again feel like a productive person.

I no longer feel like I am a waste of space, or that the air I breathe is being wasted.

Also, we were approved as foster parents and have officially been licensed and our home is now recognized as a “Foster Care Facility”. Our social worker has done extensive interviews, and we have done intense training to ensure that not only am I prepared to have kids, but that we offer some kiddo a safe place. Our intention is to adopt a child in need, take them in, and give them the parenting we wish we received as children.

 

All of that stated, I am coming to the main update of my personal blog. My weight.

I started this health journey a few months ago and have struggled to find the will to work out, diet right, and firmly believe that the lack of energy I had to even get out of bed due to depression caused a lot of my health problems in regards to weight. I had originally started to realize I had a problem mentally when I hit 399lbs. A scary number that I never in my life thought I would get to.

Just I hopped on the scale yesterday and am happy to report that I have lost 42lbs, putting me at a current weight of 357lbs.

Now, for those interested, here is what I did.

1) I had to get myself in a better mental space. Every time I tried working out or dieting, my brain would look for reasons for me to fail. My depression would take over and drive me down into self doubt and loathing that I’d never thought possible. I got a hold of my doctor, received therapy, and have been prescribed Zoloft. I cannot urge you enough to get a hold of a doctor. Take mental illness seriously. Do not let yourself or others come up with some sort of excuse like “it’s all in my head” or “I can’t afford this”. At the end of the day you need to make yourself mentally capable. Mentally sound. Mentally fit. I can say with first hand experience that medication CAN work. Even if Zoloft doesn’t work for you, there are many medications out there that can influence mood and combat depression. Keep searching, and get the help you need to start taking care of yourself.

 

2) Once I was mentally stable enough to not give up on everything I tried doing within a week- Exercise, Diet, College, etc: I focused on my second biggest problem: Diet.

The world Diet itself, used to make me sad and depressed. I mean, it has the word DIE in it.

The biggest thing I can recommend here is that you need to be honest and hold yourself accountable. I know that I can eat an entire large Domino’s pizza by myself. Is that something I am ashamed of? No. I fucking love pizza. What I can say, is that I no longer eat 3 large pizzas a week. I order pizza no more than twice a month, and I have also started ordering one large pizza, with my limit at a half, while my husband can eat the other half or save some for his lunch at work the next day. In short, DON’T cut things that you love to eat out of your life. Cut it back, dial it down, but do not remove it. It will completely destroy your desire to diet and lose weight. You know what I am talking about. You tell yourself, “Just one Girl Scout Cookie,” and then the next thing you know, the whole box is gone because you didn’t just take one cookie and put the box up, instead you took the box with you to the couch and you’re hating yourself for being a pig.

The next thing I had to admit to myself about dieting is that I hate prepping meals for the week. While that works for other people, I CANNOT sit there, cook for an hour or so, and then spend my week eating cold as hell meals that had to be reheated in the microwave or oven. I get completely annoyed and disgusted. Maybe I don’t want the same thing every night, or maybe I simply changed my mind last minute because something else looked better, or I wanted to get something from the store because I was feeling creative in the kitchen.

To combat this:

I started buying food I knew I loved. I love fried chicken. I love Pork Chops. I love Steak. I love Beef.

So what did I do for chicken? I buy a pack of bone in chicken legs at our local grocery store, separate them into meal portions for my husband and I (2 legs each) and stick them into the freezer portioned. From there, if my husband or I feel like chicken for dinner, I will grab a portioned package from the freezer and toss it into the fridge to thaw for the next dinner.

For pork chops, if they are thicker, we do the same thing but one each and if it is a thinner chop we do 2 a piece. Same for steaks.

For the ground beef, we separate into medium sized rolls in different Ziploc bags for the freezer. The reasoning for that, is that we also pair a portioned package of ground beef with one or two bags of frozen stir fry vegetables from the store. Then we take 1 cup of brown rice (uncooked), and cook it. We mix all three ingredients to make a tasty stir fry.

Generally for vegetables we can get a bag of salad from the store or heat a frozen bag to be a side for other meats.

For out starch, we love potatoes and we love brown rice. The rice is pretty straight forward in how to prepare and can taste different depending on soy sauce or different seasoning (which goes for anything we cook really), but the potatoes are where we have a little fun. We can choose to mash them, cube them and bake them, thin slices and add cheese for au gratin, or make french fries in our deep fryer. We could even grate them for hash browns if we are feeling up to it.

That makes up most of our dinners, which can vary greatly depending on what we use or what seasonings we choose. I mean, tonight we made burgers.

The difference between my diet previously (3 large pizzas a week, taco bell, wendys, etc) and now is completely different. I mean, we still have one or two nights a week where we treat ourselves out, but most nights we get to spend together at our kitchen table, talking about our day.

 

3) Exercise.

I fucking hate exercise.

I don’t know about you, but I severely hate exercising in public. I get self conscious and start worrying about what my body looks like to others rather than doing the very best I can to get the most efficient work out. So while I still pay for a membership, I keep facing that personal fear every single time I considered heading to the gym. I then make the excuse that it is too much work for me to get showered and dressed for only a 30 minute workout and a drive all the way across town.

From there I decided that I would do T25 at home. The problem with that, is that in order to do T25 or other home workout videos, I have to again get myself mentally prepared to do it because exercise fucking sucks. It’s not the most fun thing to do, to turn on your television, pop in the disc, and listen to some super buff or fit person reminding you how overweight you are. Don’t get me wrong, T25 does have Sean T, and he is really nice about it, but it gets rather annoying that a skinny person constantly tells you something isn’t hard when you are carrying 200lbs more than them, and feel every step/jump you do much harder because of it.

So, I decided to be honest with myself and find something I have always wanted to do, but never really went for, because of my depression and insecurities. I started doing yoga. It’s low impact, which is a must because of my snapped knee ligament in my right knee. Also, I can get a great work out from doing 30 second poses that are designed for beginners. I’ve been doing it for a while and have doubled my pose holding time from 30 seconds to a minute, and am doing a total of 36 poses. I am starting to get strength in my legs, and feel less wobbly every day that I do it. The best thing about doing Yoga? My husband has found that he rather enjoys it because he chose to join in on a whim. He went and bought a yoga mat and we do Yoga together every day when he gets off of work. While he is much skinnier than me, he is nowhere near as flexible, so it is rather funny to see him struggle getting into positions and poses that I find relatively easy, which also makes me feel better about exercising.

 

In summary, you need to take care of your mind before you can focus on your body. The biggest thing you can do in regards to that is be honest. Be honest that mental illness is a real thing and that it is kicking your ass. Once you get your mental space fixed or on track, you need to be honest with yourself and address your eating habits and make baby steps to change them for the better. Finally, you have to be honest with yourself in order to find an exercise routine that makes you feel better and refreshed afterwards.

 

Thanks for letting me rant to you about my personal update. I still play video games and have recently started a YouTube channel where I post almost daily, videos of myself and my family playing games that we love together on the PS4 and computer. Feel free to subscribe here or there in order to keep connected.

Sincerely,

That Mental Fight

-Aerick Kerrick / Blaine Frazier

YouTube Channel

 

How Anxiety Almost Terminated My Marriage

Past relationships are always a hard thing to talk about. Whether you talk to a partner about them, or a family member, or even a stranger. You always get that feeling that they aren’t going to understand what you went through, and more often than not, you are met with someone that tries to downplay your feelings. I can’t tell you how many times people respond with, “Why didn’t you just leave?”

Some of us don’t. Some of us stay in that abusive relationship because it is something we’ve always known. I’ve always experienced a father who threw dishes at me since I was 6. I always experienced that alcohol made someone pick a child off the ground and throw them into the wall, or on the couch. I’ve always experienced that feeling like you are constantly walking on egg shells, expecting the worst to happen.

So when I met Cory, I expected nothing more. He was the first person I gave in to. The first person I fell in love with. The first person I went out publicly with, and the first person I started sharing my past with. It didn’t start out abusive. It started like most romances do, butterflies and hand holding. Cuddling late into the night, talking. Somewhere over the course of our dating relationship, he stopped paying for meals. He stopped wanting to hold hands publicly. He started getting angry for things that were out of my control. Things like our landlord not fixing the heater faster than four days. Things like that would always end with me being reminded how stupid I was. How useless I was. How ugly I was. When the words didn’t make me cry, out would come the fists, or the slapping. I’d been beaten so much as a child that I was almost numb to it. At the end of every day, Cory would always come back and tell me he loved me and that he was sorry. I was helpless. I was a scared mouse, happy to have found someone who would always forgive me for my mistakes, always stuck in that terrifying mouse trap. Notice that my mistakes were hardly anything I was doing, just merely existing. Abusive people twist your mind and make you thankful for them. That staying with them is the best thing that’s ever happened to you because without them you are nothing but a pile of garbage. You begin to think this is what love is. Then one day I found out that he slept with his ex. Cory cheated, and when I confronted him, he told me he was poly-amorous. Essentially able to love multiple people through sex- was his definition. He apologized and said he loved me, and I believed him until after nearly 3 months of him cheating and coming back to apologize did the light bulb in my head finally turn on. We terminated our relationship immediately when I stopped being that terrified mouse. The little rodent that would always take his apologies like they were the words of god. I wasn’t his little pet or puppet anymore.

Years later I meet my (now) husband, Patrick. We fall in love. We have our ups, and our downs. Once in a blue moon we have  our verbal fights, but we have never laid hands on one another in anger. He has always listened about my past with Cory, and hugged me through the nightmares, the tears as I eventually overcame the abuse. I made an effort to find my father, to get to know him and overcome the fears I had as a child. Patrick made me feel whole again. He made everything from my childhood, my being raped, by broken relationship from my father, and my past relationships better. He made me better. So when gay marriage became legal in California, we went and immediately got married, that week, in the courthouse. It was small, with just 6 people from my side of the family, but it was beautiful. I’ll never forget the way he smiled at me as I tried to repeat my vows from the pastor through tears and stutters.

We had been married for nearly two years before we started to experiment with things inside the bedroom. It’s not as if we were bored of our usual encounter, but we had just become so comfortable with each other, we started telling each other about certain fantasies. Eventually we both agreed that we would like to try having someone else in the bedroom with us. So we picked someone out together, invited them over, things heated up, and eventually the night came and went. The next morning after the third wheel left, we decided that this was something that wasn’t for us. We liked our bedroom stuff better when it was just us. I don’t mean to put down others at all, but this was just something we both felt. We felt as though it was less intimate with someone else, and the residual feelings that I had from my past relationship with Cory had started to creep back. The feeling and fear that I would be cheated on. I was honest with Patrick about my fears after we came to the conclusion that we liked it being just the two of us, and he assured me nothing would happen unless I was there with him and comfortable.

 

So, we were happy. We hadn’t had anything major happen in our marriage since, it was beautiful and peaceful. Until last week when Patrick was sitting in bed with me and asked if I remembered our third wheel. I had told him yes and asked why he was brought up, for I had not thought about that guy in a while. Patrick then went on to tell me that he had been talking to him for a little while, and the third wheel was telling him about being a caregiver. Third wheel apparently went on to tell my husband that a caregiver was someone who would provide financially and sexually, all the things that they needed.

Immediately the fears of cheating came back to me. I never forbid Patrick from talking to anyone, and tried to trust him. I never wanted to be that person in a relationship who asked to see his phone or text messages. However, the way I was feeling made me ask to read the message to see the context in which it was presented because the whole conversation took me right back to how I felt when I was cheated on by Cory.

Reading over the messages, I saw how Third Wheel was constantly hinting towards my husband about being sexual. How he was shifting the conversation slightly by asking sexual questions here or there. Patrick would always respond with, “my husband and I do this,” or things to similar effect, but when Patrick typed those responses back, Third Wheel would come back with, “Oh that’s turning me on.”

I kept reading these messages back and forth until I got past the caregiver section, and when I got to the bottom after Third Wheel explained what a caregiver was, I saw the words from my husband say, “Do you want me to be that for you?”

Immediately my heart was broken. It hurt so bad to see something like that, because I was reading that as Patrick offering. Patrick offering to be something like that for someone else and nobody had talked to me about anything beforehand. I took that as cheating. Especially because of what happened to me in my past relationship.

 

I immediately told Patrick how I felt and when he reached out to me, I pushed his hand away and started crying. I hit a super low point. Immediately my anxiety and depression came in, and I felt those feelings surging back. The feeling of being that terrified mouse. Waiting to be hit, to be slapped, to be called names, to feel the pain, and then hear the apology. Patrick tried to say that he didn’t mean for it to come across that way and he was sorry, but I screamed at him that he sounded just like Cory. That his apology was garbage and that it didn’t matter what the intent was because it’s what happened.

At the end of the day, he sent someone a message about sexual things, and Third Wheel responded with, “that’s turning me on.” Which seemed like key words to me, about where a conversation was going. I cried for hours, and Patrick cried alongside me. We talked back and forth, and he assured me he didn’t mean anything by it. That he was just learning what a caregiver was and was confused because it seemed like Third Wheel was wanting him to be that. Patrick said when he asked if that’s what Third Wheel wanted him to be, it wasn’t because he was offering, but Patrick was just trying to make it clear as to what the intent was.

It’s taken me days to get over it. I clocked Third Wheel on facebook. I told Patrick that I couldn’t handle them talking or messaging each other anymore. Patrick has respected my feelings. Patrick has assured me that he didn’t mean it to seem like he was propositioning someone outside of our marriage. He said he knows how I went through an abusive relationship, and if I have to be that crazy spouse that wants to check his phone, to simply ask and take it. He said he has nothing to hide and wants to be married to me. That he wants to grow old with me. Have kids with me. That he’s simply too damn old and tired as he is now to even try and play those cheating games.

I know what he is saying is the truth, but it’s hard when you’ve grown up like this. When you went through abuse throughout your whole childhood from an alcoholic with a bad temper. It’s hard when you’ve been raped by someone you trusted, to overcome the anxiety that keeps you from feeling safe or trusting someone again. It’s hard to not feel like someone is going to cheat on you again when you went through that already with someone in the past. Luckily, I found someone who is empathetic with the way that I feel. I can only hope more people are out there like Patrick, and that those empathetic individuals find those out there that are broken, like me.

I hope that others mend themselves, and are able to get over those bumps in the road, built by the past. I know today was a rant and it has been a while since I’ve done an update, but this is where my mind has been the past week. This is what I have been trying to overcome mentally.

I feel better, and Patrick texts me multiple times throughout his work period, talking to me about his shift, what he wants for dinner, and even the cutesy things like complimenting me, or saying he misses me. I just feel so stupid for letting my past relationships, and past experiences almost terminate our marriage. Almost ruin something so good, pure and beautiful.

 

If you managed to make it all of the way through my jumbled text rant from my brain, I am:

1) Sorry

2) Thankful for all the kind words that people have sent me. I know I am a little broken, but this blog and the kind words from different readers whether it be in the comments or getting emails, means a lot. I genuinely appreciate you kind souls out there.

Get up already, damn you!

I can’t begin to express how irritated you can be with yourself when you know you don’t feel normal, and you know you aren’t physically or mentally doing things that others find simple.
Simple things like getting out of bed; I personally set 3 separate alarms: each with 5 minute snoozers and 30 minutes apart.

I have to annoy myself enough to finally get out of bed and not go back to sleep. To overcome the dread of facing another day, through sheer frustration.

I pick the most annoying noise and I set that to be my morning buzzer. I set my phone to yell the alarm time and the 5 minute intervals to sound more like a nagging parent.

It takes me about an hour to an hour and thirty minutes  to get out of bed, groggy and frustrated with myself. It’s the same process every morning: Overcome the desire to do nothing and wither, while overcoming the sleep aids from the previous night.

The most frustrating thing is that if I didn’t take the sleep aids, I’d have chest pains through the series of panic attacks.

The sleep aids cause morning anxiety for getting out of bed. To get myself out of bed I make myself frustrated which makes me a grump to be around for about another hour when I’m moving around. Trying to get a job when you spend 10-12 hours of your day trying to simply be functional is damn near fucking impossible. (Sorry for the swear).

I know others have it worse. I just…need the outlet I guess. To put my thoughts into something and not immediately be told I’m being crazy.

Morning- Coffee and Bagels

My mother text me yesterday out of the blue. She wants me to come over and have coffee and a bagel or two with her this morning.

Seems innocent. Seems fair. Seems like a sweet gesture.
When you suffer from mental illness, it doesn’t. You second guess why she’d invite you. What’s her endgame. What is she planning. She wouldn’t possibly want to spend the morning with me. I’m nothing. I’m lame. I’m not entertaining in the slightest.
So what does she want? Will it be a favor? Help to remodel the house? Give the dogs a bath?

Then it hits your brain. The list of excuses.

Maybe I should text her that something came up. Maybe my husband wants to go do something at this exact time.

It’s an absolute nightmare. However, I’m going to force myself to shower, then drive over. I need to be more open minded. I need to stop putting myself down. I mean, that’s what others say all the time, right? To focus on one thing at a time.

First step-Shower

Excuses- I have none…maybe

It’s already a mental battle to exercise when you are a fat and unhealthy person. The thought of pushing yourself to the limits to see no physical change in yourself that skinny people achieve drives you insane.

People who work out often tell you about the “good” feeling they have after. They talk about it like it’s some sort of high, like a drug that’s bestowed it’s effects through physical exertion and sweat.

I however, am not blessed with this feeling. It’s hard. It sucks. I feel like I’m dying when I exercise, and I always feel like I’ve been hit by a semi truck after. Most people would label that torture.

It sure as hell feels like it. Nearly half the day is gone and my workout buddy had to cancel, so I’ve conveniently found myself other things to do: clean out the car, play with the dogs, spend quality time with my husband, go to lunch with a friend, contact a detailer for the car, call mom.
I have excuses, but none of them should be used. I just need to remind myself that they are merely me trying to procrastinate so I run out of time. I don’t have a real excuse to skip the workout, because after just 25-30 minutes of T25, I’d be able to do anything else.

However- I think I need to make some tea.

Burrito Check-In

Recently I talked to my husband about how I was starting to feel lost.

It’s like your brain is swimming in a deep fog and you can’t find a way onto something tangible. Something that you can step up and rise out of.

I informed him that some mornings just seem so daunting. The mere thought of standing makes me want to curl up in a ball. To shrivel and cry.

I know that’s not right. I know I shouldn’t feel that way. I expected him to talk me down.

Instead, he just laid down on the bed behind me. Put his arms around me and said that I should “just Burrito”.

It was such a random statement that I immediately laughed at him, confused as to what he meant.

He told me that a while back, he saw something on facebook, where a person said all they wanted to do is be a burrito. Roll up in a blanket and feel warm and comfortable.

I thought he was being silly. However, as I got out of the bed for a mere two hours to hang out with him, I went back into the bedroom, laid out our blankets across the bed upside down, and rolled myself into a burrito.

It was odd. It was comfortable. I had laid in a tightly wound roll of blankets and self. I watched The Giver on Netflix.
I woke up to this text message:

Some days I feel just so gosh damn lucky to have found someone. Someone who checks in. Someone who puts up with my crazy, and is genuinely concerned/loving and checks in on me.
This morning was easier. This text message made it easier. It’s a little thing, but it got me going one step at a time this morning.

Going to make a cup of coffee. Then I’ll make another goal after that.

Gasp for Air- My Introduction

Recently, when I tried to lay down to sleep at night, I would start to feel like my lungs are collapsing. They’d feel like when a balloon deflates. Material is there, just nothing inside.

My brain would jolt, and I’d  instinctively breathe in air. I’ll snap wide awake, full of energy, breath deeply for a few minutes. Calm down, and try to sleep again.
That same collapsing. That same jolt.

It’s terrifying.

Originally I assumed it was because I was overweight. I tried propping myself up on additional pillows. I tried to roll onto my sides and tried different positions.

I kept trying for nearly two days. During those two days, I hadn’t slept at all.
On the beginning of the third day, I called my mom. My throat was burning as I pleaded with her on the phone for advice on what to do. Struggling to hold back tears and my panic rising as o explained my frustrations of my recent endeavors. I just wanted to sleep. What made it worse was thinking that I was so overweight, that my chest and lungs  just couldn’t support me anymore.

Her response was “try sleeping”. So I repeated myself. I was met with “That’s not good. I know that I just roll over if I can’t sleep. Give it a day and get back to me. Keep me posted. Love you.”
I instantly reverted to “I’m crazy”, and “I just need to make myself tired.”

I managed to somehow convince myself that it was me having too much energy. Even though my head pounded in opposition.

My phone buzzed and I noticed a text message from my sister asking “what’s up?”

I texted her what I had told my mother over the phone, not wanting to feel that panic and dry throat sensation again.

Immediately my sister said she’d take me to our local urgent care facility. After nearly 20 minutes of waiting in line and nearly falling over from my attempt to stand straight while being exhausted, I got to the desk clerk.

After I explained how my chest was hurting and I wasn’t able to sleep for two days straight, she said they couldn’t help me. That I had to go to an emergency room because if it has to do with the chest or heart- they can’t assist.

My sister then drove me to the Emergency Room at a nearby hospital. They ran an EKG. Did Blood Work. X-rayed my chest. I peed in a cup for the first time in my life. I waited for nearly 6 hours that day, trying to stay awake. If I started to drift off, I’d  not breathe, gasp, and shoot up like a rocket.
After the 6th hour had just passed, they called me into a back room. Had me give my insurance information, fill out forms, and then a doctor came in and said I was fine. That I should take some benadryl. Go home.
That was my introduction to mental illness. That was my first experience with my mental health not being up to par and affecting me physically as a result.

That was also my first real hand on  experience with our health care system in America. Fill out forms, make sure I have insurance, take my money, offer no real help. “Go home.”