Hey!
I just checked last weeks’ diary in this Saturday evening series,
and I have the same problem as last week’s diarist.
But not nearly as bad.
But I have other problems,
so this is a list of problems I have been dealing with,
some of them most of my life,
some of them only ten years,
and some of them for less than two years.
First my underlying disorders,
that give me limitations:
1. I have been diagnosed with cyclothymic disorder.
2. I have given myself an amateur diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.
3. I have been diagnosed with osteoarthritis.
My other problems are family problems:
1. Problems dealing with my wife’s unusual disorder.
2. Problems dealing with a drastic difference of religion, between myself and my family.
3. Problems dealing with a drastic difference of politics, between myself and my family.
Osteoarthritis
This is the easiest problem to deal with.
1. I reduced my work load:
About a year ago,
I cut back from five days a week, to three days a week,
at my bottom level Walmart job.
I could afford to do that,
because, starting about a year ago,
I’ve been collecting my Social Security check each month.
2. Starting about two years ago,
on the advice of my doctor,
I’ve been eating pain pills like they’re candy.
Have you ever been in a Sam’s Club or Costco,
and you saw two big bottles of, for example, ibuprofen,
and each bottle had 500 or more tablets,
and the two bottles were wrapped together,
so the customer would be buying 1,000 or more tablets of pain pills?
And you wondered, who in the world would ever have so much pain,
that it would call for buying all those pills?
That’s me.
I have a membership at Sam’s Club,
and I buy 1,200 Ibuprofen tablets for $10.25,
and the same number of acetaminophen caplets,
1,200 for $10.25,
which comes out to eight tenths of a cent per pill.
I take two of each,
four pills that cost me 3.2 cents altogether.
I take those four pills every two hours,
on the days I’m on my feet,
working at Walmart.
See why I only work three days a week?
Anyway,
that arthritis pain is the least of my problems,
because my round of pain pills every two hours,
keeps me darn near pain free,
in spite of fascitis in my left foot,
and a torn miniscus in my right knee.
My right foot feels swollen and sore at the end of the day,
(don’t know why the right foot gives me the most pain,
when the fascitis is in the left foot)
but I get home,
take my work boots off,
take more pain pills,
and I’m okay.
Now, let’s get right down to the serious problems.
First my wife.
But before I describe my wife,
you need a little back ground on my marriage history:
In 1977, at the age of 22, I married Pam, who was born disabled,
from congenital muscular dystrophy.
She could not walk or even feed herself.
I wanted to be the hero,
and do everything for her.
That plan worked out well enough, for thirty years,
and then Pam died, in March of 2008,
from complications from the muscular dystrophy.
I tried the single life,
but after three years single,
I realized that I needed the emotional support of a dedicated wife.
I married Tonia, in October of 2011.
Tonia was, some years before, one of the workers paid by your tax dollars to take care of Pam.
Tonia is very dedicated to me.
And, in March of 2017,
Tonia and I moved in with her brother and his wife and their two children.
Everyone in the family is dedicated to each other, and they all like me.
They all give me lots of emotional support,
especially Tonia, my wife.
So, what’s the problem?
Tonia has a strange disorder,
not officially diagnosed or given a name.
But sometimes,
if I ask her a question about someone else in the house,
she has a terrible fit of anger,
and yells in a terrible rage,
yelling at me,
her nice husband.
I hate to give you Too Much Information,
but Tonia is so disabled,
she needs my help with bodily functions:
I often wipe her behind for her.
Real often.
(Of course, I spent 30 years wiping Pam’s behind.)
How could she possibly yell in anger at a husband who would wipe her behind?
The reason is actually rather obvious:
she is a victim of the situation, just as much as I am.
Certain questions trigger anger in Tonia.
It is not her fault.
Sure, it’s easy for you and I to say,
“Count to ten, Tonia!”
“Stop yelling at your husband, Tonia!”
But it’s not as bad as it sounds,
because all I need to do,
to get her back to talking sweet and loving to me again:
Say nothing,
and wait a few minutes.
That’s right, just wait a few minutes.
Then she says,
“Sorry I yelled at you.”
And she gives me nice hugs,
and says,
“I love you. You’re my favorite person.”
Problem solved. (Until next time.)
On to the next problem:
The rest of the family,
especially the brother-in-law,
is very conservative Christians,
the kind that think all the Bible stories are literally true.
The creation,
Adam and Eve,
Noah’s ark,
parting of the Red Sea,
everything.
I am an atheist.
The strange thing is,
we enjoy Bible study together, two or three nights a week.
They know I’m an atheist,
but I gain useful lessons about life from the Bible,
and I explain what I learn.
(Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, for example, are full of just plain philosophy.)
They think the Holy Spirit is teaching me.
I think human nature is the same as it was four thousand years ago,
so lessons about human nature, if useful then, are useful now.
This is only a problem,
because I feel a strong desire to vent,
about my crazy Christian family.
And I mean, of course,
vent to a person or persons who are more sympathetic to my atheist views,
than to the fundamentalist views of my family.
I tried to get together with such folks,
in my face-to-face world.
I wrote a diary about what happened:
www.dailykos.com/…
I announced to my wife and to her brother,
that I plan to attend a pot luck dinner at a nearby
Unitarian Universalist church,
in order to make new friends,
new atheist friends.
They were horrified.
The sister-in-law seemed especially, deeply hurt.
My brother-in-law claimed that if I make new friends,
those friends will turn me against him, against my family.
He told me that if I go and make new friends,
he will throw my wife and I out of his house.
You see why I cannot vent to anyone in my face-to-faced world.
So,
thanks for letting me vent, here, online.
Next problem:
My brother-in-law voted for Trump.
Not only did he vote for him,
but he cried tears of joy,
when he heard that Trump actually won.
He thinks the Republicans have policies that line up with the Bible.
I think he’s talking about abortion and same sex marriage.
So, how do I deal with that problem?
Vent about it, here at Daily Kos.
Thanks for letting me vent.
For my last problem to present to you,
I will suggest that my autism makes me draw away from others,
even when surrounded by family in this small house.
When I am feeling alone with my thoughts,
I often get depressed,
similar to the diarist from last week,
feeling as if nothing in my life is getting better,
not much is getting done,
I’m wasting too much time,
I’m a bad and lazy person,
that kind of thing.
But, lucky for me,
my cyclothymic disorder,
the same disorder that makes that mild sense of wasting time into nasty depression,
the same disorder has the way out of the depression:
Any little thing I do that might make an average person feel a little bit good,
such a thing gives me a kind of wonderful, natural, high.
So:
I make a list,
such as:
boil chicken and rice
do the laundry
take my pills
open mail (tomorrow)
and write the WYFP diary at Daily Kos.
Getting things done from the list,
gives me a natural high.
I truly do not have the severe problems of last week’s diarist.
My list is short and practical.
I often include one or two items that will be done some other day.
But I have a great track record.
If I write it down as a goal,
I will usually get it done,
sooner or later.
Well, I need to get off the computer,
and finish the laundry.
By the way,
the chicken and rice is pretty tasty!