I am feeling very low today

Merry Christmas.  I am feeling very low today.  I have not felt depressed like this for many, many months.  I have been fortunate.  Now, it all comes crashing down on me.  Maybe, this is what my therapist warned me of.

My therapist said what was happening was that I felt good on the surface, but the foundation was built on a lie.  I didn’t believe her.  I still don’t believe her.  I asked her if it was anything like a Sudoku puzzle that had a fundamental error deep down, that made all the numbers wrong.  It may look right, but when you check the answer, it is all wrong.  There are big goofs in it. It doesn’t make logical sense.  She said that was it exactly.  Well, I don’t believe my therapist one bit, but that was her theory, and she will of course argue that I am now crumbling because of my faulty foundation.

I believe I am depressed because of what SHE and Dr P are doing to me.  When a therapist decides she’s not going to be your therapist anymore, when your treatment team decides they are going to give up on you, that’s pretty serious.  It means you are a failure.  It means that you will soon lose a major source of help and support.  I don’t know what will happen to me once I lose them.

I gained four pounds, and this further depresses me.  I know THEY will be delighted, but they will want more, and this gain will only serve to fuel them on.  I did not gain to please them, nor did I gain for my own betterment.  I gained because I lost control of my own impulses; I weakened momentarily.  This was not a good thing.  I seem to be recovering okay.  I have not had a gain since this whole thing began.  Why this happened I don’t know, but the timing was cruel indeed.

I was unable to shower this morning due to depression.  I was unable to braid my hair.  I was barely able to brush my teeth, but this I finally accomplished.  I didn’t bother doing my laundry.  Knitting provided reprieve until I discovered a leak in my window (Grrr) which caused a draft while I was knitting, and I could not continue to sit on the couch, where I sit normally to knit.  I will have to call the Housing Authority regarding this leak on Monday.  This further depresses me.

Merry Christmas.

The latest

Now my therapist says that she and Dr P are going to set a time limit on me.  If I don’t gain weight or go into a “program” within a certain amount of time, they will stop seeing me.

I have no intentions of gaining weight or going into any program, ever.

This means my time with them is limited.  Maybe a few months more.  And then I won’t have a treatment team anymore.

I didn’t realize there was a size requirement for treatment.

This sucks.  How is this helpful for me?  How does taking away treatment help me?  I don’t see the point.

I have been with Dr P since 2001.  Eight years.  I have been with my therapist since last October or so.   I may have my disagreements with them, but I’m fond of both of them.

I told my therapist that I have no intentions of gaining weight or going to a reverse fat farm (I didn’t put it that way) and that it will be very sad to say goodbye to her.

What a waste.  What a waste of a relationship.  I got along with them just fine and now they want to end it.  It is their idea to end it, not mine.

I have support from my friends, which is a good thing, but over the past year I have grown to also trust my therapist.  I thought that she would always be there for me.  I guess I was wrong.  I guess I shouldn’t have trusted her.  I guess I shouldn’t have let myself depend on her.  I don’t think I can trust another mental health professional after this.  This is the worst betrayal.

I guess the very idea that she would drop me, even though she hasn’t dropped me yet, is a disappointment to me.  It is like she is testing me.  It is like they are trying to make me worse by denying me treatment so that I will go into a hospital.

I have been stable for a long time.  I have been happy for a long time.  Nothing has gone wrong with me in the psychiatric sense for a long, long time.  And by denying me treatment, they are going to upset that balance.  Why are they trying to hurt me?

This is a lovely Christmas present.

Home page updated

My home page has been updated.  See www.juliegreene.name.

Air conditioner removed

On Saturday, December 19, I contacted the Watertown Tab via e-mail and phone regarding the 40 or so air conditioners still in the windows at my building. I pointed out the incredible waste of energy.  This is taxpayers’ money.

On Monday, December 21, maintenance guys showed up at my apartment and removed my air conditioner.  I can’t help but think that they did it to shut me up.  Did the paper question the Housing Authority?  I don’t know.  I know that now the paper can’t come in here and see the leaky window I had–it is gone.  Interesting.

Of course, I am delighted to be much, much warmer.  What a difference!

And get this: it took those two guys about three minutes to do the job.  Three minutes.  Not five.  Don’t tell me they don’t have the manpower to remove the other air conditioners in the building.

Wow, it’s nice not being cold anymore.

Cold Apartment – The Air Conditioner Conflict

The saga continues….

Last fall, that is, in 2008, the Watertown Housing Authority installed new windows at 55 Waverley Avenue in Watertown, where I live.  This was supposedly to make the apartments more airtight, and cut down on heating costs.  I thought this was great!  A warmer apartment was always welcome.

My enthusiasm died down when winter hit.  You can read about my adventures in past posts here, about my struggles with the Housing Authority to stay warm all last winter.  The good thing was that I did get a doctor’s note and got my thermostat allowance raised from 75 (which is really 73) degrees to 78 (76 really).  You’d think that this would be roasting, but I am above the garage, and it is really chilly on the floor in here with no insulation between the garage and my apartment.  The bathroom floor is like ice, for instance.  I liken sitting on the toilet seat to sitting naked on a park bench in winter.

The Housing Authority gave out a notice that they were going to install permanent air conditioner panels.  This was in May.  We were supposed to tell them if we wanted our air conditioners installed with the panels.  I put my name on the list.  What I got instead was a temporary, summer mounting that was not suitable for winter use.  Air leaks under, over, and around the air conditioner where it has been installed.  There is a one-inch gap under the air conditioner where air comes through.  I was told that the Housing Authority would take the air conditioner out in the fall.

You got it: they never came.  I waited and waited.  I called–I think I recorded the conversation here in a previous entry–and was told they would take them out.  And I waited.

Then yesterday came.  Last night, it got down to 7 degrees.  Seven.  My apartment was freezing when I got up.  The heat was blasting, but couldn’t keep up with the leaks.  In the apartment it was 70 degrees.  It may sound warm enough to you, but to me it was way, way too cold.   If you read my blog last year, you may recall it once was 46.5 degrees in my bathroom when it was 73 degrees in the main part of the apartment.

Today, I called maintenance and asked them when they were going to take the air conditioners out of the windows.  The woman at maintenance, Debbie, told me they were planning to leave them in all winter.

Now, what’s the point of new windows if you’re going to leave air conditioners in them all winter????  What kind of logic is that????

The Housing Authority maintenance people told me last spring that they installed about 50 air conditioners.  That’s 50 people whose air conditioners are still in their windows, 50 leaky windows, 50 cold tenants.

If the Housing Authority cares so much about saving money that they ration our heat and insist on keeping it at 75 degrees and not only that but keep it at a “two degree offset” so it’s actually at 73, why the heck are they leaving air conditioners in the windows????

If the Housing Authority cares so much about saving money that they spend a zillion dollars on replacing ALL our windows in the fall of 2008, why are they wasting these beautiful new windows by leaving air conditioners in them????

I called the Watertown Board of Health to complain.  They called Brian Costello, head of maintenance over here, who told them it was a “liability issue” and that tenants could take them out themselves or hire someone if they wanted.  Fine.  I will.

The point is that all these tenants are waiting for the Housing Authority to do something.  They don’t have the means to take the air conditioners out, or they don’t understand that the installations are temporary.  The Housing Authority needs to provide the means for the tenants to take the air conditioners out, or take them out for them, or suggest services that tenants can hire to take them out.  These air conditioners should not be in the windows all winter long.  It simply makes no sense.

My plan is to call the local newspaper tomorrow and see if they’ll do a story on this.  What the Housing Authority is doing is a crime.  What the Housing Authority is doing is wasteful.  What the Housing Authority is doing is illogical, nonsensical, unthinkable, and inhumane.  Maybe tomorrow, a few people in important places will find out about all this.

Trouble

Today my therapist told me that if I keep on doing what I’m doing, not eating right and losing weight, I will die.  I don’t think that I will die anytime soon.  I think that I will live to be 100.

I admitted to her that I’ve been deliberately restricting my intake since November (since Nano, actually).  This was very difficult to confess.  I know now that this information will get back to Dr. P and that’s  not good.  Also, when I got weighed at my primary care doctor’s office yesterday, I had dropped a pound.  Why quibble over a pound?  But to these doctors, a pound means something.

I see Dr. P on Thursday and I know I’ll get The Lecture.  We go through this every month.  “Why won’t you gain weight?”  “Because I don’t want to.”  “Why don’t you want to?”  And so on.  It’s idiotic and pointless and non-productive.

Dr. P very well may put me in the hospital someday.  She says she will do this if my weight reaches 90 pounds.  I will make certain that it does not do so, but in case I slip up, I need to be prepared….If I do end up in the hospital, I plan to put in a “three-day,” which is basically a way of getting out of there unless a judge deems one a danger to oneself or others.  I told my therapist that I would do this, that it was pointless to hospitalize me against my will.

My therapist asked me if it means anything to me that I might die, and I told her that I don’t believe I will die.  I have never felt more alive.  Everything is going right for me.  This has been my year.  I finished my thesis, earned my degree, got published, wrote another book, took up stand-up…the list goes on.  So how can I be dying?  I’m even building muscles at the gym–my body is getting stronger, not weaker.

When I took off my clothes the other day, when I was preparing to shower, I saw a fat person.  I was so frightened!  This person was not me!  I appeared to weigh about 140 pounds or so.  I pinched myself and felt the fat tissues.  I was truly fat.  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  It was real.  I know I am not fat–but I was!  Right there!  I witnessed it!

So what am I to think?  Why is it that I do this idiot thing, losing weight?  Enough is enough, right?  It’s past the point of wanting to fit into my clothes, because all my clothes are loose on me, or to try to look more attractive, because too skinny isn’t attractive.  I’m freezing cold all the time.  I have to wear a hat indoors.  Being cold is the worst of it.  Why is it that I don’t just call it quits while I’m still okay and breathing?  Why is it always “more, more, more?”

There is a line from my stand-up act: “My mother…she’s short, getting shorter, and shorter, and shorter…she’s almost disappearing…I’m kind of looking forward to that.”

But I myself am doing anything but disappearing, or so I think.

I will be performing again in Cambridge, MA

I will be performing again in Cambridge, MA, this time at Cormier’s Comedy Madness, at the All Asia, 334 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA, on MONDAY, DECEMBER 14.  The show starts at 6pm.  The All Asia is located right in Central Square on the bus and subway lines.  It is best to take public transportation, as parking is limited.  Admission is five dollars.