I Get Quiet

When I'm down. I get quiet. I wanna' tell you about the new therapist. About MeetUp groups. About my dad teaching me how to play chess over Thanksgiving. And how tall and grown-up my brother is. About how the adults in the house no longer talk to him like he's a child. How when he talks now they treat him the same way that they treat me. They don't talk down to him or belittle him. About how happy that made me. About how my mother still makes no sense to me, but how I feel an attachment to my dad that I've never felt before.
But it's hard for me right now to get those things across. Because I feel tired and sad. Because those thoughts often get drowned in the gloom I keep feeling, and I don't want to drown all of you in it. I have to keep reminding myself that things will get better. That things could be a lot worse. That no matter how sad or lonely or confused I am, that I still have a lot of things.
I read the posts of my friends, and I envy your happiness. I envy your new arrivals, your marriages, your recipes, and your happiness. I envy them because they were things that I had. Or things that I saw for myself eventually.
Now I am in limbo. Still. Really. Still in limbo. I keep trying to get a grasp on my attitude. To tell myself that it's all in the way that I think of it. That only I can change how I feel and how I let things affect me and where I go from here. And sometimes I have a great feeling. And sometimes I don't.
All I can say is that I'm working on it. Bear with me. Because I'm trying. I'm trying to overcome my penchant for wallowing and trying to be a little less quiet. Even when I don't feel like it.

Scoliosis

Okay, it's not scoliosis, but I don't know what it is.
I have one bump of spine that has been sore for a while. Maybe months. Over the winter I assumed it was the knot on the back of my coat that rubbed there when I drove. Or the place where my dog invariably dug his bony spine into mine when he curled up against me in bed.
I noticed it on Monday, and thought to myself, "Why are you still here? Why won't you go away?" Boom doesn't lay in that spot so much anymore. I haven't worn any tie-in-the-back shirts in a few months. It feels like a bruise. My back doesn't hurt. It's not sore, it's just if you poke that one bone, it feels bruised.
I asked Tony to look at it. He said it's got a little rash. He thinks it's ringworm. I've seen ringworm, and I don't think that's what it is. Now I'm a little afraid that I've got some serious condition that I've not even been paying attention to.
Time to go to the walk-in clinic just to make sure...