It’s official: I sleep more than your average housecat

If I had bigger balls, I’d bring a pillow and a binky to work and sleep during my lunch hour. My ass has been exhausted lately. Not just physically tired – lay down on cold wet concrete and fall asleep tired. I came home Friday night and by 6:30 p.m. I was in the land of Nod. Right now, all I want to do is get home so I can sleep from 6:30 – 8:30 and then get up and have dinner and marvel at the meth heads on Intervention while I sip a cocktail.

(I’d be remiss if I mentioned Intervention and didn’t post this gem:)

I just feel fizzled lately. Everything’s fizzling. My practically non-existent energy level has left the building. My ability to give much of a fuck about anything has also gone bye-bye. To say I am feeling anti-social is an understatement. I had to make myself go to the grocery store on Sunday. (The thought of suffering a whole week without my organic 1% milk was my motivator.) And even Paolo and I are fizzling. Yes, you read that right.

Now that he’s working (sometimes 12, 13 hours a day) I just assume that I won’t see him. Even on the weekends, when he doesn’t work, BabyMama usually does. Or wants to go out. So he’s on Daddy duty. I mean, it’s probably been over a month. And I haven’t gotten my shit hot about it. Don’t get me wrong; it’d be nice to see him. But I’m just as happy sitting in my shorts and t-shirt with no make-up and watching reruns of SVU while corporal cuddling Butters. It feels like we’re sort of fading. And that’s okay. Maybe it’s normal.

I’m shocked by how little of a shit I give about things anymore. And yet, I’ll wake up at 3 a.m. and stay awake for an hour (against my will) fretting over shit in my head. It’s like I can’t turn off my brain. Then I drift back off until 6 a.m. or so. Same thing. And then when my alarm goes off at 8:20, I feel like a band of dudes sneaked into my apartment and flogged me, soap-in-a-sock style, a la Full Metal Jacket. I often awake feeling like I haven’t slept at all.

A co-worker just claims he was diagnosed with adrenal failure after taking some 30 minute test where he blew into a tube or something. I’ve looked it up online and the Mayo Clinic sort of pooh-poohs the entire idea of it, but I thought I’d throw it out there to see if any of you knew anything about it or had any opinions. I’ve long thought I had fibromyalgia, but one doctor I went to told me I didn’t (because I tested negative for any/all autoimmune disorders, of which fibromyalgia is one), so I had no choice but to believe her. Still, I’ve heard that’s a tricky thing to diagnose, and that some people wind up seeing 10 different doctors until they’re properly diagnosed and treated.

My new shrink, Benji, has even talked about putting me on Adderall. Fun! Now Lindsey Lohan and I can hang out. Maybe Demi and I can sneak into frat parties and do whip-its together! *sigh* I’ve actually been on Adderall before – my Russian shrink from many moons ago who was convinced I had ADD gave me a boatload of it. Trouble was, he decided that was the most important thing to treat – not my depression or anxiety. You can’t give Adderall to someone who is depressed with a tendency toward anxiety if they’re not being treated for it. But he did. And I was a basket case. Didn’t like it much at all, though taking it now might yield a different result.

The thing is, I don’t feel motivated to do anything. My fucking Christmas tree is *still* up. Dishes sat in my sink for 9 days before I washed them. I ate off a serving platter last night because all my plates were in the dishwasher. This is not normal. This is not human. Being this tired, this exhausted, this sleepy, this unmotivated. Because I don’t want to be this way. If I had a little more energy, and needed less sleep, maybe I’d get out more. Maybe I’d get bursts of wind and swirl around and get shit accomplished. I am so, so envious of my friends who, like, hike and chase after toddlers and run half marathons and have clean homes. I have no one to look out after except myself, and even that seems to be over my head. So lazy.

Part of me thinks my weight is a culprit, and I agree – it’s not helping. But I’ve been 40, 50, 80 lbs thinner and had similar maladies and complaints. I’m back on my thyroid and anti-depressants (for the most part) so I should expect to be feeling better on that front.

I honestly think I am on God’s timing here, because I would be a horrible mother right now if I had children. I wouldn’t want to do anything with them, or play games or cook them meals. I would stick them in a playpen while I napped. I’d skip bath time and put them to bed dirty with snot caked on their nose and a diaper full of piss. See?! Wretched.

Paging Bob Harper

I wish I had something salacious to write about, but my life’s been quite boring lately.  I’ve been busier than a one-armed whore with crabs at work lately, slinking in to my apartment past 7 p.m. Doesn’t sound bad, except for my ass gets tired at 10:30 so there’s not a lot of “me” time. (A testament to this fact: my Christmas tree is still up. And I light up that bitch every night because by God, I am festive.)

I haven’t seen Paolo in a few weeks – nothing unusual there. He landed himself a full-time 8-5 job, so I’m happy for him on that front. Although BabyMama threw him out, he hasn’t really seemed to have left her place. So there’s that. Of course, I’m not feeling very fuckable lately anyway. Despite his persistence that I am sexy and his constant pleas for nude photos (I don’t. Bitches please.) I am not feeling ze sexy.

I’m sort of at that tipping point, where I know I have to quit fucking around and DO SOMETHING about the things that are making me unhappy in life. My lazy gene kicks in and whines something about how it’d just be easier to lounge around on the couch and snack on fried beige things, but that voice can only dominate for so long. Benji, the new shrink, has ordered a battery of tests (bloodwork) for me and I am not looking forward to getting that done, because I know the numbers won’t be glowing. When not to test someone’s cholesterol? When they’ve been on a shrimp-eating spree for the past month. (Really been craving skrimp (shout out to my N’awlins people), crab and fish lately. And milk. Always milk. If shit is creamy it’s going down the hatch. I’m beginning to wonder if I have a food allergy.)

(Watch it. It’s a great way to spend 12 seconds.)

I’ve got to ascertain how much fight I have in me. (Is there a pill I can take to increase my fight?)

Because, ladies and gents, a fight it will be. A fight against comfort and soothing. A fight against instant gratification. A fight against the status quo. A fight to be satisfied eating a motherfucking apple for a snack and resisting the urge to run down to Ravi’s deli downstairs for a delicious Twix.

I’ve realized about myself that I must be soothed at all times. I am stress-averse and when I feel even the slightest hint of anxiety, I look to quell it however I can: fried beige things, alcohol, cutting, shopping, sleep, procrastinating, whatever. This makes sense and coincides with when I first started gaining weight – around 8 years old. I remember having anxiety attacks at a very, very young age and of course, I had no way to articulate how I was feeling or even if I did, getting someone to believe and treat me would have been next to impossible. So I grabbed what was available to me: food. When you’re an addict (and I believe I am, inherently – it’s why I’ve never done drugs, because I would be that wasted ho who clubbed her one-legged diabetic grandmother over the head for her last dollar) you will use whatever you can to tamp down that anxiety that bubbles up. If I like something, I can’t get enough of it. And only once can I think of something that I was addicted to that I gave up and haven’t picked back up, and that’s smoking. Go figure.

Thankfully, I’m back on my meds, and slowly they’ll work their way into my system and my ass will calm down a bit. I’ve never been one of those assholes who feels like her creativity or personality is hindered by anti-depressants. Quite the opposite. Still, even with all my meds, I don’t feel as focused or motivated as I’d like. I’m curious as fuck about where those qualities from from – I mean, for real. What’s the difference – mentally – between my “I don’t give a monkey shit” attitude about pretty much everything, and someone like my attorney friend with four young chirrun who manages to run like 7 miles a day? I’m convinced that the answers to almost every ailment are brain related. (Okay not really. But a lot of shit is.) I just wonder why mine’s so goddamned lazy. My brain is the equivalent of a 23 lb housecat.

Advice assholes always will tell you to start out small. So today, I did. Instead of ordering my crab wontons from PeiWei (oh, how I love thee, with the creamy fried goodness) I Jareded on over to Subway. Now, did I get double turkey and put cheese and mayo on it? Yes, yes I did. But at least it wasn’t fried. And I’ve been drinking more water at work (drinking it ice cold out of a wide-mouthed aluminum container is appealing to me for some reason) and less soda. So. Trying to start an exercise and diet on the same day is NOT going to work for me (unless Bob Harper’s standing over my ass hollering about how he’s going to work me until I puke or die) so making small changes will have to do.

Eventually I will have to find a program that suits me and my body type (sinking feeling this is either Atkins or Paleo) and stick with it. I will have to lay off drinking as much as I do – both milk (I go through a gallon and a half of organic 1% milk a week) and alcohol, since they both have calories. And when I lose a little and feel more comfortable and confident, I can go back upstairs to the gym at my apartment and try to not make eye contact with the super-fit gays and the toothy, overzealous trainer who looks at me like a dog looks at a pork chop every time he sees me. I just know he wants to Bob Harper the fuck out of me, and it’s not happening. (Oddly, not comfortable with male trainers (unless it’s, you know, actually Bob Harper). Would rather a female talk to me about strengthening my core, whatever in the hell that means. Ditto with vaginacologists, but that goes without saying. Male gynos? That’s like me being a penis doctor or something. At some point, it’s about relatability.)

I have farted around for years, appeasing myself at every turn. I have petted and consoled myself, and more often than not, taken the easy road. But I know, deep down in the bottom of my ass, I am going to have to change if I want to live a certain kind of life. You know, the kind where you don’t die completely alone, and lie in your house to rot for months because no one misses you, to be eventually consumed by the 27 animals you have living with you, and only for a police officer to find your vibrators and weird fetish porn. Because that’s where my life is headed, no joke. (And no, I am not telling you my fetish.) I can’t attract a relationship-oriented partner looking like I do, I don’t think. I mean, I’ve tried, on the Fatty Seeks Fatty websites. All I got were guys who looked like a tick about to pop and were in Seattle and wanted to know more about me. So whether I say it’s for my health or so I live the life I want, I have to lose the chunk.

Will I always hate the whores who are natural athletes and love working out? Yes. Will I always long to be a person who has a normal relationship with addictive shit? Yes. I will mourn every fried beige thing I have to turn down. Because it’s time to just feel it – feel the anxiety, go through it, and not self-soothe.

Or I could just get a refill on my Xanax.