Crappy New Year

See what I did there with the title of the post? How have I not won a Pulitzer?

Well had I had the time, internet connectivity and foresight to post in the few days before Christmas, you might have had some insight into my tone and writing style when I'm genuinely happy.

Reasons I was happy;

• Application to rent the most beautiful little one bedroom apartment on the Brunswick/Coburg border was approved!
• Bit the bullet and decided to go to Europe and the US for a lovely little jaunt beginning in April and ending in June. Visited a travel agent who quoted me $4800 for flights, used my mad online flight searching skills (I used Skyscanner) and got all my flights for just under $2300.
• I'd had a crappy stay in hospital for maintenance TMS but in the last two days two nurses on two separate occasions tried to give me the wrong medication. Definitely a bad thing but I felt suddenly empowered because there was something concrete I could legitimately make a formal complaint about and perhaps get some of my other concerns heard.
• The money from my four years of tax returns finally all came through. And money can buy you happiness. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise,

So what happened?

• Well, the money kind of all disappeared on flights, bond, rent, furnishings for the apartment and Christmas. All gone.
• Moving into my beautiful dream home turned out to have a few little nightmarish qualities. Please learn from my mistakes and never, ever move just before Christmas. I spent days without power, the internet has only just been connected and when you realise that your real estate agent has given you the wrong key he is not around for you to talk to. Also a number of the lights didn't work once the power was turned on and they had expensive, difficult to replace globes. And then finally, I don't know whether this stuff happens to other people but they just never talk about it, but the lock on my front door fell off. On New Years Day. When even the 24 hour 7 day a week 365 days of the year locksmith wasn't answering his phone. Seriously, how am I the only person who has things like locks falling off doors and driveways catching on fire happen? And I wouldn't have been so concerned about the lock falling off since the building itself is pretty secure but my new neighbours turn out to be sketchy as fuck! I couldn't work out who actually lived there for the first week or two because so many people were coming and going at all times of day or night. I've finally worked out it's two guys living there (probably not a couple or the counterstereotype of what a gay couple is) and they like to listen to the races all day long while competing to see how many f-bombs they can drop in a single sentence. 
• I drank a lot of champagne on Christmas day which perhaps wasn't advisable since I was kind of tired and overwrought from the stress and lack of sleep from moving so rather than sensibly going home after drinking champagne for six hours straight I went to a party and drank even more and then ended up having some rather unpleasant social encounters. I won't go into it but it kind of put me off parties, drinking, myself and people, particularly those of the opposite sex.
• So then I spent New Years Eve on a couch with a cat watching a documentary about happiness that SBS had obviously programmed so that people in my situation wouldn't top themselves. 
• The complaint I made about the nurses attempting to administer the wrong medication has had zero response which now just has me feeling insecure about ever going back into hospital.
• And I could have endured it all because I kept thinking to myself 'I'm going to Vienna! I'm going to New York! I'm going to see my dear friends!' but then my bastard government introduced some snaky new legislation which came into effect January 1st saying that recipients of certain government payments could not leave the country for more than four weeks in a twelve month period without having their payments cut off. And because I'd been an online travel scouting genius I had booked almost exclusively non-exchangeable, non-refundable flights. So I have a couple of options; 1) Go. Fuck the government. Hope they don't notice and be prepared to have my payments cut off which would definitely put me in further financial jeopardy. 2) Don't go. Forget all the money I've spent on non-refundable flights. Stay in Melbourne, be miserable. Other people keep putting forth another idea, 'Change the flights you can and just buy new ones', which is a lovely idea if the first dot point wasn't in place. I have no further money. It's gone.

So now I've kind of just given up on pretty much everything. I'm house sitting in the suburbs for my parents which means I'm trapped far from everything with dial up speed internet and too much readily available junk food. I've been wearing the same pyjamas day and night for the last three days. I'm kind of half-watching Doctor Zhivago in the same way I kind of half-watched The Crimson Pirate before this and I'm sure I'll continue to half-watch some crap on the telly until it's nothing but infomercials. I also have a UTI which I'm kind of using as a justification for the pyjamas, couch and tell lifestyle.

It's weird though, in giving up I think I've avoided going down the other path I usually go down which is caring too much and falling into a depressive pit. I'm intellectually aware that the things that have happened haven't happened to me. They're not the ammunition of the universe vs. Katie war. These things have just happened. Unfortunately all around the same time. But I kind of like holding onto the idea that something really is trying to break me. It means when a mug breaks or my Android tablet I got second-hand for Christmas breaks (both happened today - whatevs) I have a moment of ire and then I decide I don't care. It's like I'm flipping the universe the bird and telling it it can't break me because I don't care.

Of course I'm going to have to start caring again at some point. I don't think my pink babushka doll pyjamas or stringy bed hair would go down well at work. And I suppose I will eventually want to eat something other than mince pies and corn chips. Eventually. 

And then who knows what happens next. 

Milestones

Cropping up in my life are a number of milestones which if I'm not celebrating I'm at least pondering over the most appropriate way to mark their passing. This week saw the 10,000 page view of my blog, this is also the week of the one year anniversary of my disappearance and fast approaching is my 32nd birthday.

I'm humbled and slightly bewildered to think there have been so many hits on this here blog. Of course I fastly believe that some of them are strange misdirects from porn sites, but I do also know I have a core of readers who I'm ever so glad keep tuning in.
I never would have started this blog if I hadn't gotten so sick and had such a public misfortune to which I felt I needed a public right of reply. As much as I like this blog, and I do, a lot, in the world of checks and balances having this blog doesn't even out against having gotten so terribly sick.

The one year anniversary of my very public demise. There's hardly an etiquette book on how to mark such an event. There is some eerie part of me that half expects I'll again go off the rails at this exact same time of year. Undoubtedly I'll just turn up to work same as usual and the day will pass as normal while my internal voice will be screaming 'Don't you know what happened to me just one year ago! How can you go on with your day?!' I've entertained the idea of taking myself out for dinner to celebrate having survived this last year because lord knows it's been an uphill battle most of the time.

I feel a bit the same about my birthday. 32 should really be one I celebrate since 31 has been such a bust and I genuinely felt at times I really wouldn't make it. I think I might have a quiet picnic or BBQ in a park since the weather will be getting warmer. I can invite just a select few friends and be surrounded by people who also understand how miraculous it is that I made it,

\With milestones comes reflection. I think when I look back on these last 12 months more than anything I reflect on how lonely they've been. Illness is hard. You experience it on your own regardless of how many people you have surrounding you. I think for the next 12 months I'm going to really focus on rebuilding my connections with other people and hopefully that loneliness will start to seep away. Despite ominous feelings of the past repeating itself I am feeling quite good and quite strong at the moment. I'm hoping this is the feeling I will take with me into the next 12 months and it will hopefully blossom into that state we call wellness. In the meantime I'm still taking things day by day and just marking the days worth mention.

Mired in the mush

I should firstly apologise to my readers for the varying writing quality on this blog. Sometimes I spend days deliberating over what to write and how to write it and other times I get all Virginia Woolf and just tap out stream of conciousness, usually one-handed into the Safari browser on my iPhone and very often from a reclined position in my bed. So hopefully even when this is a garbled mess you still enjoy or learn something, and if nothing else you should learn about the benefits of revision and editing.

So now that's done, how am I feeling today? Well, to be honest, I'm feeling mildly crap. Nothing big or bad is happening but work is just a bit underwhelming and I'm having drawn-out dealings with Centrelink and I'm getting anxious about finding somewhere to live and my appointment with my psychologist left me feeling overwrought and I saw a really bad play and just in general there are enough things going on for me to feel a bit 'meh' towards life.

It's actually a wonderful thing to feel mildly crap. When I'm depressed there is no such things as feeling mildly crap. There's just an amalgamated mush of major negativity that continually feeds itself on what would otherwise be mildly crap feelings. And I get mired in that mush and can't separate out the bits to see that anything is circumstantial.

I will be keeping an eye on my mood to see that it doesn't dip any further or without explanation but overall I think I need to just wait for some of my issues to resolve and in the meantime be good to myself. Perhaps take myself to a movie tomorrow on my day off.

It's definitely helping my mood overall that I'm returning, be it ever so slowly, to being sociable. I almost feel like I need some sort of debutante ball to reintroduce myself to society, after having become such a hermit. I'd like to particularly thank those friends who I've had coffee catch-ups, brunches or play-dates with of late for not blinking when my memory packs it in and I'm suddenly left without words. Perhaps you genuinely didn't notice, but either way it has helped my confidence immeasurably to see that my ludicrous memory isn't standing as a barrier between myself and other people.

Ups and Downs Katie Goes To A Party

I left behind Doctor Who and my pyjamas. I left behind Eurovision and the comfortable armchair. I left behind the safe familiarity of home and I ventured out into the night.

I had received the invitation to my friend's 30th birthday party on one of my last days in hospital. At that time I had imagined that by the time the party rolled around I would have transformed into some effortlessly cool social butterfly, flitting around the party with ease and grace. As it was, I was more of a half squashed moth, limping around the party, trying not to brush up against anyone lest I leave my stain on them.

It was awkward not drinking. I almost accepted the offer of a glass of champagne. I didn't want the people I was talking to to know I was sober as I hoped they'd assume I was slightly drunk and this was why I was failing so dismally at the art of conversation. Conversations were hard. I was so anxious about being at the party that I couldn't fully follow everything other people were saying to me. And I would get distracted midway through my talking part of conversations by helpful thoughts like, 'you've just used the word 'good' seven times in this last sentence' or 'these people probably remember you as the girl who flipped out and went missing'.

If I was my usual self then I would have gotten drunk and drunkenly engaged in conversations with the confidence drunkenness bestows and I would have found the whole evening to be an absolute corker. As it was, I did meet some really lovely people, I divulged all my secrets to one particularly nice girl who then told me all of hers and I made it through the night without fainting or vomiting, two things I was scared there was a very real possibility I was going to do. So I'm calling it a good night.