Hopeless

My anxiety has been at 200% for days now and I'm just.wiped.out. So much to say and so little energy.

I may be quitting my PhD. This is not the trajectory I was supposed to be on. I feel really lost.

Stress Bomb

I don't even know where to start. So.much.PhD.stress. My adviser is an asshole that behaves unpredictably and my project is a mess and I was given two weeks notice that I have to start my comps next Tuesday (long story) and I haven't had a paycheck since December but just found out that I don't in fact get paid this month but have to wait until September 30 even though I have $300 less in my bank account than I need just to cover August's bills, and in general I wish was working at a coffee shop somewhere instead.

I flew back to PhD Town yesterday, after a month with Match. It was a bit of an arduous visit: his surgery, his dad's visit, and then I was down with what was apparently an infection, not the flu. I put up with a week of night fevers before I finally went to the doc and got antibiotics (I HATE taking antibiotics for things that could potentially be viral, but my body was obviously not kicking it on its own and the throat culture showed that it really was bacterial). But despite all of those things, I think we're stronger than ever as a couple and it feels so strange to be away from him now.

And now school stress. I was very, very sad to leave Match, but I actually do love my apartment and my friends and my life here in PhD Town too, so all was well until this morning when I had an extremely rough and possibly path-changing meeting with my adviser on top of the stress about comps, and right now I just want to crawl into bed and never come out. I don't know how this became this.

Part of my overwhelmedness is probably that I'm catching up on sleep: I had a 6 AM flight from Match City yesterday, which meant waking up at 3 to be at the airport at 4, and that is one time zone east of PhD Town, so I was up for a lot of hours yesterday. It's 8:19 PM and I already feel like passing out on my keyboard.

One way that my brain deals with stress is, of course, to fixate on my weight. I think I gained a small amount of weight during the month at Match's. Really sort of within the margin of error but oh well. It's actually a metabolic miracle that I didn't gain more, since I exercise about 25% less when I'm with him, we had a lot of splurgy restaurant meal days, and I took 10 days off of running while I was sick. But I've still been having a ton of disgust about my body, anxiety about people here noticing that I'm heavier than I was before (reality check: I weight about one pound more than the highest weight I've been at here before), stress about my winter stuff not fitting the same, etc.

On the flip side: Since I've been in Intense mode with studying for comps the past 10 days or so, as well as leaping back into my weight-lifting and cardio routines here the past couple of days, I do appreciate having a stronger body and brain that can handle being thrown into situations that demand high performance.

Everything is very back and forth in my head.

I had all summer in a bubble with my family and Adam giving me constant support and reassurance, and I feel a little bit like I've just slid back into the lion's den. I don't know.

Other tidbits so that I don't end on a gloom and doom note, because gloom and doom is eating my brain right now:
- My shins feel almost brand new. Apparently the most effective way to make me rest my legs from running is to infect my respiratory tract with bacteria and spike my fever daily, but it worked.

- My sixth anniversary with Match was on Monday. We had a great day and a fun evening out. We were super thirsty on our way home that evening, so we asked our Uber driver to go through a drive-through, and I made a split-second decision to get an ice cream cone. At midnight. And I wasn't even drunk anymore. Score one for being a normal human having a holiday.

- More from the anniversary, related to another food win. We had brunch at what is one of the most famous breakfast/brunch places around, super great menu and ambiance etc. It is so popular that we had to wait an hour for a table at 10 AM on a Monday. Anywho, irony of ironies: that  place that is famous/infamous for its indulgent pancakes and other desserty breakfast items is the first place I've ever seen another person with a visible ED recovery tattoo like mine. Hers wasn't just like mine, it was red, on the back of her neck, but still. I'm glad she was having a winning morning too.

I hope everyone is having a good week, love y'all.

Surgery, Father-in-Law, Flu, and Other Delights

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Lots to update on since I last posted; things have been a bit hellish but are looking up. Match had his wisdom teeth out + jaw surgery about two weeks ago.  It was a really brutal procedure and didn’t go all that well. He woke up in the middle of the procedure and could feel everything, and instead of putting him back under they just strapped him to the table and kept going after adding a little bit of lidocaine. He is still having nightmares/flashbacks about that. The recovery was also pretty awful – he bled for at least 12 hours and was in super excruciating pain. He also had violent chills/shaking that evening and throughout the night.  I had been really emotional after I dropped him off for the procedure (kept a bright face on for him before because he was already nervous) because I knew they were going to hurt him, but I didn’t expect it to be quite that bad afterward.

The rest of the week he was in mostly just plain excruciating pain, and it was over a week before he could eat any solid food. Most of the liquid supplements/options available are really sugary, and typically he goes out of his way to limit added sugars in his diet, so he was also sugar crashing and feeling like death every afternoon. I basically took the week off of working on my dissertation stuff to just keep him company to help keep his mind off the pain – we played lots of SimCity together, watched HBO and soccer and tons of silly pet videos online, did daily ice cream/gelato/froyo excursions, etc etc.  By now he can eat all of his favorites again and is in a lot less pain, and he has his energy back and his spirits are high, so all of that is a relief.

All of that was interesting as well as awful. It was an important milestone in one specific way: it was the first time in our relationship that the food accommodations (limitation on us going out, timing of meals, etc) had to be made for him, not me. I’m glad that I’m in a place right now that I can do that. Also, the fact that I was eating my normal foods while he was sitting down to just Boost and yogurt was a bit awkward but manageable. A few years ago it would have been unbearable for me because I was so self-conscious about eating in front of people. Basically, I’m at a place at which this could be about him, as it should, rather than about my issues.

The weekend after Match had the surgery on Monday, his dad came to visit. His dad is not a bad person but very difficult to be around. He is somewhat Aspergerish and really evangelical and outspoken about the immorality of most things in daily life, and my tolerance for being around him lasts about 24 hours. He stayed for three days.

One of the main issues is that he makes stupid comments about food all.the.time (despite the fact that he has diabetes and manages it more poorly than anyone I have ever seen). Examples just from this trip:

“Wow, I can’t believe she ate all that food!”

“Surely she’s not hungry yet!”

“Yeah, I went off of my insulin because it made me gain weight, and I’d rather live 10 years less than be that fat.”

“What is the glycemic index of that yucca she’s eating? Oh wait I’ll Google it.”

Yes, he also mostly refers to me (sorry, I mean to “she”) as if I’m not in the room.

He and Match were getting along okay, but then in the last 90 minutes of his stay they had a huge and very painful fight. It was terrible. I get credit for not letting him huff out and take the train to the airport before they could reach some level of resolution. In the moment I was focused on him not leaving angry so that he and Match would be on okay terms, but after I left I’ve gotten more and more angry about the terrible and unreasonable things he said, as has Match.

I guess you know you’re in a serious relationship when you spend a larger portion of your therapy session discussing your partner’s parents than your own.

The day after Match’s Dad left, I came down with some kind of bug – it was like the flu with no gastro symptoms. I had a migraine-scale headache, raging fever, bad dry cough, muscle aches, chills, etc. The fever broke overnight (along with about 10 gallons of sweat, I soaked the entire bed, it was amazing and gross), and I felt fine the next morning, but the headache and a mild fever came back that afternoon. And that pattern has been about the same every day since (this started on Wednesday and I’m writing on Sunday). No idea what’s up. At the same time, the fever experience really made me appreciate having a body that works like it is supposed to (the immune system ramping up, etc).

So, food and weight: Not a lot to report on the food/body front. Weight has stayed the same since I’ve been here, despite some pretty splurgy restaurant meals at least a couple of times a week (which I’d expect to make me gain) and some pretty damn stressful events (which historically result in me losing).

Exercise: To the surprise of precisely no one, I ran through some minor shin pain last month/this month so that now the pain is major enough that I can’t run at all. I guess there’s not a whole lot more to say about that besides what I’ve said all the other times it has happened before.

On a time crunch before we head off to see a soccer game, more soon. Love y’all.

On Love Handles

[Setting: settling in for sleep in bed last night. I'm on my side and Match scoots in and puts his hand on my hip.]

Me: You're holding my love handles.

Match: That's not a love handle.

Me: Yes it is.

Match: A love handle is part of someone's back. That's not what that is.

Me: Oh. Well, what is the term for hip fat?

Match: Normal.

Me: *silently files away that piece of wisdom*