Batshit crazy: a longwinded explanation

Anyone who knows me in real life probably doesn't even question the fact that I'm batshit crazy. Probably because I say things like "I'm a poet. I have an MFA in being depressed and drinking!" and then, when my sister suggests that I enjoy being depressed, remind her that as a poet  I must  be a broken shard of a human being (my poetry is significantly better than that phrase, I promise). See, the thing is, I got this useless degree, and now I am only marginally employable and overeducated. I spend a LOT of time with my writerly things: my computer, my typewriter, my different notebooks and pens for each specific type of writing (you know, one for jotting down notes, one for poem drafts, one for journalling, one for other more personal journalling, one for journalling about poem drafts-- you get the point, right?). Spending so much time without human contact makes me a little weird sometimes.


It seems I have this weird disconnect between the things I say and what I mean. Like, my brain moves at its own strange pace. When I try to explain intricate things I lose track of what I'm saying, or I get off on a tangent and forget my original point. The funniest examples, and the ones that make my siblings say I'm batshit crazy, are the ones where my brain just gives up and offers my mouth a shortcut to what I mean to say. Once, when my sister was driving me around and I was missing my little car that had recently blown a head gasket, and I couldn't figure out a way to ever afford a car again, and my sister and I were not even remotely talking about anything that had to do with the subject, I turned to her and said "Maybe I should just get a sugar daddy." I mean, out of nowhere. It was like my brain just assumed she had heard it play out all the other options for affording a vehicle I hadn't audibly expressed desire for, and was like, "skip to the point, girl." 


Another time, I was standing on the bus stop with my brother and he was starting one of his long, rambling rants about how he's studying engineering and math and logic and boring shit, and is going to have a job one day. I told him to shut up about his math research, because math had already been discovered, and he responded in detail with how wrong I was. So, I started gently toning him out by listing all the ways I could fix up my apartment, and I was telling him that I can't get rid of this table I have that's totally in the way because that's where the hamster cage goes. He was all, "Wait, when did you get a hamster?" and I had to confess that I didn't have one yet. I just had imagination hamsters, which are better because I don't have to watch them eat their own poop and they don't stink or run in the squeaky wheel all night, but they're also not as good because you can't pet them or watch them stuff shit in their cheek pouches. I watched as my brother almost crapped himself laughing at me. Then, I told him to shut up because math is imaginary too, and he makes shit up all the time, like numbers and zero. 


The thing is, I'm pretty sure the batshit crazy is genetic. See, I spent the day with my mother a couple weeks ago,  because I went to a new endocrinologist and I wanted some company in case he was as shitty as the last doctor I went to. This maybe wasn't the best idea because my mom has some kind of weird body dysmorphia where she's like a size 8 but she thinks she's as big as a house. She swears her nutritionist told her she'll never be thin, but I'm pretty sure, having been a patient of the man, that he probably told her something like she won't go below the weight she is, or she won't be as thin as she was 40 years ago, or something healthy like that. Anyway, I brought her into the endocrinologist fully expecting her to be a little weird.


To start with, we sat in the waiting room with several older Staten Island ladies. Every time one of them would speak, my mother would roll her eyes and whisper snarky comments about their accents and how unintelligent they were. At first this annoyed the crap out of me, because my mother is so very judgmental. But then I realized the women in the waiting room were idiots and I had a good laugh about it. BONDING WITH MOMMY. 


Then, when we met with the doctor, he began asking weight-related questions. He asked about who in my family had weight problems, and I said there are endocrine weight issues on both sides of my family. My mom suggested she also had a weight problem, even though I was actually referring to her mother who had a thyroid problem. The doctor looked at my mother like she had just grown a unicorn horn and starting farting out rainbows. He asked her weight, and told her she was barely overweight for her height and age. I may have told the doctor that she's crazy and has body dysmorphia. He seemed to have a good sense of humor about it. 


Then he asked me how long I've had a weight problem. I paused to think about it, wondering if I should mention having always been a chubby kid, or if I should go with when I started having symptoms of PCOS, or when I actually started gaining weight at an abnormal rate. Before I could answer, my mother told him that I've had a weight problem since I was 5 days old. I sort of wish I had a camera to capture the doctor's face. She insisted that I gained almost a whole pound a week from birth (which I find incredibly hard to believe)  and that my pediatrician was all like, "omg lady what are you feeding this kid?" But, um...babies are supposed to gain weight. It's not really abnormal for them to do so. The poor doctor looked mortified for me, and just kept making jokes and explaining to my mother that these kinds of medical issues are very emotional for the patient and stuff.


I would have been furious at my mother, but then later when she asked me if she'd been butting in too much, I realized that my mother is priceless. I mean, aside from the fact that she's crazy out of love, she gives me a built in excuse. I'm sorry I tone out everything you say and then interrupt loudly to talk about my imaginary pets, but my mom is batshit crazy. It's genetic. Also, I'm not fat because I overeat or anything. I was BORN THIS WAY. 


Well, I'm off to cuddle with my imagination hamsters. They just got a new math wheel to run in (because math is fake.) I'll leave you with this random image of Chamillionaire. Those teeth!

I know you have a crush on my blog, because you didn't say so.

An acquaintance was recently talking about online crushes--having a crush on someone you only know via the internet and how weird that is, especially when we stop to consider how the ability to structure our social networking pages to suit how we want to be presented is used. I mean, we talk about preserving privacy, which is totally a good thing, and way more important than most people seem to realize, but we're also preserving, deconstructing, and repurposing a sense of anonymity and control over what people know about us. People tend to make a ton of arbitrary rules for how their internet existence is presented that they insist on following and then judge others for not following. But, we all make our own rules at the same time, and hope that we're being better at the internet than the next person.


For some people, facebook, tumblr, twitter, instagram (which, like, seriously, wtf is that instagram shit even necessary for? I already have a tumblr, pinterest, twitter, facebook, and gods only know what else.), and whatever else they have are an opening into their lives, interests, thoughts, happenings. For others, it's just another way to keep in touch with people, and involves powering through all the privacy settings. Which is cool. I have members of my family, ex-classmates, ex-coworkers, etc. who I block from seeing most of what I post. But, then, those same people could probably find my internet presence pretty quickly just from looking around. I've used the same "screenname" for a decade. Plus, I kind of enjoy oversharing because I think it's hilarious to make people uncomfortable. Which means that some people I've never met and often internet friends who I have never even remotely opened up to can find my blog and read about my gynecological mishaps.


But also, I don't see why I should have to hide anything about myself from anyone I actually know or want to know. People should either like me or not like me, and I shouldn't really have to try to pretend I'm not batshit crazy or whatever just to get people to like me. This is related to internet crushes. (I swear I'm not just rambling). This is totally related to internet crushes. Hang on I need to wrangle a stray train of thought because shiny things keep happening and also Ally Mcbeal is on. 


Where was I? Internet crushes and our control over our internet representations and arbitrary rules we make for ourselves? Connections? Oh. Right. Ok. Another friend was recently discussing the self-imposed rules of dating that our generation seems to abide by. Don't text someone too often. Don't call first. Wait some magical amount of time after a date before contacting. Don't have sex right away or they'll never see you as anything more than a fuck buddy. Don't ever tell someone you like them before you're sure they like you too. Fuck that noise, right? Especially when it comes to online dating, these rules are ridiculous and constricting, and pretty much inhibitive of any kind of real connection (we can argue later about whether online dating allows for real connection or not; for now we're talking about internet crushes).


I keep thinking about an internet crush I had many years ago. I can't even remember his name. Probably Justin or something like that. I believe he went by the letter "J" (he's one of about 20 guys I've known who do that, and it's almost never not kinda douchey). I was maybe 19 or so when I met him. He contacted me on some dating site that I was on at the insistence of some friends after a break-up. By the time I had figured out how to reply back to him I was already dating someone else. But a friendship was started, and we'd chat on a regular basis. We always spoke of hanging out, but I never wanted to deal with having to explain to the guy I was with that I was heading out to meet some other dude from the internet. But at some point, I dumped that dude, and made it pretty clear to "J" that I was now single. And totally rebounding.  In the end, "J" came over less than a week before he moved to Nebraska or somewhere, and we made our for, like, nine hours. And instantly we weren't friends anymore. I mean, we chatted a bit after he moved, but within 6 months he had disappeared completely. And I totally missed my friend.


I've been told that men never move women into the "friend zone". It occurs to me that potentially my entire friendship with this guy was his way of trying to get into my pants. Even more, it occurs to me that I really didn't know much about him. I knew what he did for a living, and what area he lived in. I knew to some degree what kind of music he was into and what he did for fun. But I never bothered to ask him what his intentions were with me, and I never told him what I really wanted from him. So, my wanting to chat with him after we hung out potentially sent him the signal that I was more into him than I was. Which is possibly the stupidest thing ever.


I shouldn't have to be careful not to IM a person just in case they think I like them more than they like me. Or not like their facebook photos too often. Or whatever. But we do have these rules. Self-imposed rules based on the fact that men and women supposedly speak a different language, which is total bullshit. Men and women do not need to be fucking mysteries to each other, except for our culturally imposed and socialized differences. Whatever, bitches. Gender is a construct and queer folk have these stupid rules too, and nonsense makes me sad. But I still don't want to tell a person I'm into them because no matter how many hints I may think they're dropping, I'm still not sure what they want from me. And it's against the rules to ask.  


Which is just fucking ridiculous because unless you've known someone a pretty long time you can't possibly know what they're thinking. Whether they're on the internet or not. I'm pretty sure the moral of this post is to shut the fuck up and project whatever image you want of yourself whether it's on the internet or IRL, or totally in your own head. Also, tell that person you like that you like them. And not in a creepy way that makes them question why they know you. Also, I'm pretty sure no one will read this post anyway because I'm not talking all crazy-like about my lady business.

A Fairly Normal Week, Overall

Conversation inside the chapel where my sister-in-law was being ordained as an interfaith minister last weekend (not coronated as I originally thought):

My sister "M": It is fucking hot in here.

Me: Want a hairtie?

Sister: You don't have lice, do you?

Me: Yes. Lots of them.

Sister: Like, how many, would you say?

Me: About 20. Wanna know their names?

Sister: Oh G-d*, you're one of those people that names everything, aren't you?

Me: Yes.**

Sister: Like your vag.

Me: I never named my vag.***

My niece who is hard of hearing: YOU NAMED YOUR FAT?!

Sister: No, never mind.

Me: Shhhhh. We're totally not talking about my vag in church. Quit talking about my vag in church!

Sister: Mary Magdalene had a vag. How do you think she gave birth to Jesus.

Me: Mary Magdalene was NOT Jesus's mother. Other Mary was.

Sister: The hooker? Christianity is so confusing!

Which, to be fair, Christianity is totally confusing. I mean, Jesus had a whore girlfriend with the same name as his mama who was a virgin. And how hard must it have been to pass a baby through the tube of birthing if her hymen was still intact? (Yesterday on the radio I swear I heard someone mention a musician named "Dick Hyman" and no one else heard but me and they couldn't understand why I was laughing so hard.)  

Later that same day I was bored with my family so I decided to read "The Story of O" in the church foyer. Because I'm respectful like that. Also, I once hit my car into a church, but it wasn't a hate crime, it was an accident. It was a Lutheran church. I don't really know what that means because I'm pretty sure all Christians who aren't Catholic are Protestant. Unless they're Unitarian. Which might mean they're cyborgs****. Good grazing gods, I'm offensive today. Probably because I'm still high on the adrenaline of wielding a baseball bat against a drunken man last night...

Y'all. I have very little to hold onto in my life. Through a series of poor decisions made, bad luck, and a lot of spiders and tickle clowns I lost most of the material and  immaterial things that mattered to me over the past couple of years. I have no car, and half of my belongings got downsized when I moved back home after grad school. I'm pushing 30, unmarried, and the career I gave up for the life I was going to have hasn't really kicked off. I moved home a year ago and was in bed with tonsillitis for the greater part of 6 months. Now I'm working the same part time job I had as an undergrad for the same pay. The only thing I have that I really love is my home. My brother "Baldy" and I inherited a 3-family apartment building from our father. It has a mom and pop shop in front where my sister "R" and her wife "The Reverend Doctor" run a bookstore. I have a little apartment downstairs and a gay neighbor upstairs who sleeps on my couch and makes me watch "Clean House" until the chaos goes away. People should not fuck with the only thing I care about when I have so little to lose.

But they do. The hipsters in my neighborhood with their "fuck authority" attitude (fucking privileged white kids with nothing better to do) like to piss in my driveway. On my building. Beneath my bedroom window. Also, they like to be loud and shitty, but I don't much mind loudness as I am loud and shitty myself. But really, why the fuck do grown ass humans need to be told not to piss on other people's property? Were they raised in a barn?*****

I mean, just last night the douchebags from two doors over decided to climb up on their roof to set off fireworks, and then climb onto my niece's roof next door to throw more fireworks into my backyard which is full of cars with gas in their tanks and which is next to my beloved wood-frame home. So my niece goes out on her back porch and tries to get them to go back to their own roof, which prompts them to throw lit fireworks down onto her. Did I mention that the occupants of that building include an older man with Alzheimer's and a 13-year old boy, both of whom I'm related to? And that they threw fireworks into my niece's face? So, of course we rang their bells and tried to get into their building and called the cops, but they locked the doors and hid. 

Then, as I was standing around with my two nieces, waiting to see if anyone would come out of that building, my older niece goes down our driveway to the backyard to see if she can see anyone up on the roof. I was pretty aggravated and having anxiety and asthma and a whole lot of fun, because of course my home, the only thing I cling to, was being threatened. So, when a few minutes later a large drunk man teetered down the block and into my driveway and got between me and my niece, something in my brain snapped. I don't remember much, but apparently I screamed "Oh  hell no!" and got a baseball bat and ran at him. Mostly I just slammed the baseball bat against the metal gates at the store front, and screamed a lot.

Friends, I am 5'3 and round. I am maybe not so intimidating. But I am loud and I am insane and I have no fear of death******. I have nothing to lose. This man should have been scared. A screaming fatass with a baseball bat is something you run from. Or at least stumble away drunkenly. But instead he saw a fat chick half his size (yup) and tried to get in my face and tell me I was out of line for waving a baseball bat at him. I mean, he was pissing under my bedroom fucking window. And he stunk like beer and uselessness. And then his daughter shows up and she's drunk too and she kept putting her hands on me. It's really a miracle I only used the baseball bat as a barrier between them and my nieces and not as a bludgeoning tool. These assholes also claimed they were harmless and wanted no trouble but refused to go away, and my poor nieces kept trying to reason with them while my neighbors all watched. I think they ran when the police finally came.

 So, congratulations people who live at 387. You get away with being douchebags for now, but I'm fucking crazy and no one's taken my baseball bat away yet. Pretty much any time I see someone get out of a car and walk into your building from now on, I'm going to break something on their car. Also, pretty much any time I find anything dead or disgusting near my garbage cans, it's going on your doorstep. I hope someone stabs you in the throat while you're out grocery shopping for PBRs and skinny jeans.

*She's Jewish. 

**But only my electronics. I firmly believe they crap out on you less if you treat them like people. IT'S TOTALLY NORMAL AND IF YOU SAY ANY DIFFERENT IT'S A HATE CRIME BC I'M PAGAN. 

***Although I do have a list of words I prefer used when referencing my holy sanctuary. 

****This is a reference to "Oh My Gods" which apparently now only exists in my memories. Oh well.

*****GET OFF MY LAWN.

****** I do however, have an unreasonable fear of heights so if you make me chase you across the rooftops I'm probably going to throw you over so that there's something soft to land on in case I trip and fall over myself.

Why I am Batshit Crazy, or Adventures in Gynecologists Who Don't Have Vaginas

It has recently come to my attention that I'm probably not just randomly batshit crazy like because of a chemical imbalance or inbred stupidity or anything. I mean, I always suspected I was batshit crazy from being a poet too long, kinda like when you read so long your eyes cross. I poeted too long so my brain crossed.

But no. Turns out I'm batshit crazy because the medical establishment hates fat people and I am fat. I have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, which does not mean I have cysts on my ovaries. It means I'm fat. Also it means I have inflammation issues and an omega-3 imbalance (if I were a slightly saner woman I'd probably blame the batshit crazy on the omega-3 imbalance which causes memory issues and stuff but right now I'm blaming the doctors IT IS THEIR FAULT). Anyway, I've had this diagnosis for 10 years. So I know stuff.

I asked my doctor (who I trust and is a pretty good doctor) to send me to an endocrinologist to deal with PCOS, which is an endocrine/metabolic issue. He was all, "Nice try, girl, but I see you're not on birth control, you hussy. I'm sending you to the gynecologist." Which is fair, since the wonderful ob/gyn I used to see is the doctor who diagnosed me with PCOS and was treating me for 10 years. The treatment was birth control to regulate my cycle and prevent unwanted babies that would also be fat and have PCOS and probably also not have a father because men hate feminists and fat chicks.Unfortunately, the one good ob/gyn in all of the world moved to the other side of the country and I have to shop around and test drive a few new ones. So, here are my most recent adventures with the gynecologist.

1. I had to go to Planned Parenthood because my medicaid plan was FidelisCare, which I like to call INFIDEL in my head, and they are Catholic-ish and hate ladyparts. After waiting for 3 days in the PP waiting room with no food or water or cigarettes, they took my blood pressure and gave me a pregnancy test, but they didn't realize that I'm so deathfatz that you need a plus-size bp cuff for an accurate reading (which I learned by accident at the student health center after a bunch of nurses made me think I was about to die all the time from high blood pressure and I had terrible anxiety forever and then one day a new nurse whipped out a larger cuff and this sentence got overly long) and almost refused me birth control until I very loudly insisted they retake my blood pressure and then they saw that I wasn't actually on the brink of a stroke. Then the doctor, who is not actually a doctor but a physician's assistant, came in to take a pap smear but she couldn't find my cervix. I was all, "Lady," (oh yeah, she probably has a vagina which kinda makes this blog post's title wrong but oh well) "Lady, my cervix is that wall at the end of my vagina, the one you keep stabbing with the swab you are waving around." But still, she tried 3 times and then I got 3 letters over the next month from PP telling me that my pap smears were unreadable. Then she prescribed me birth control saying, "This is the one for PMDD" and then giggling nervously when I reminded her I have PCOS and not PMDD. Then she forgot to write out refills on the script and so I only had birth control for one month.

2. Then I got real health insurance from my job, and my trusted doc gave me a referral to a real gynecologist, and I called and made sure he had experience with PCOS, and the nurses told me he was director of gynecology at a really bad local hospital so I thought maybe that should count for something, and the internet said he was thorough and nice, so I figured I'd show him my hooter. But you know, by now I'm traumatized by ladybitsdoctors so I needed the moral support of my friends:

Friend: I'm sorry you have to get your devil's pocket examined by a stranger.
Me: It is the curse of Eve. My spousehole needs investigation; wish me a warm speculum.
Friend: May it be warm and small.

Also there were lots of pregnant women wearing white in the waiting room and I thought, "Who do they think they're kidding?"

3. The examination was fine except I couldn't always understand the doctor who was soft-spoken, accented, and used strange phrases. He asked if I was genetically fat. I mean, yeah, I probably am, but no one cares to ask questions like that and instead the doctors just assume I'm fat because I eat baby-flavored donuts all day while weeping in the dark. When he asked who was treating me for PCOS I was a bit disturbed though, because um, doc, that's why I was sent to you. Then he asked if my doctor had put me on metformin and I said no, my doctor says I don't need it, and since he has checked my blood insulin levels I believe him. The gyn with no vagina however, looked at me with his head all sideways like this. And then implied my trusted doctor was a failure who was ruining my life by making me stay fat.

4. Back in his office, ob/gyn of doom showed me a chart of the female reproductive cycle and what goes wrong in women with PCOS. I decided not to tell him I've borne the red flag of womanhood for almost 20 years now and have carried the fat-hate and man-hormones of PCOS for 10 years. I didn't think he would listen to me, and I was proved right when he whipped out the BMI chart, I told him according to BMI I should be dead, and he ignored me. Instead he told me I need to lose more than half of my body weight, which at nearly 30 years old is totally possible and likely to happen ever, especially since I have a metabolic disorder and science pretty much shows that once you're fat you're fat and you can get less fat and you can get healthy but you'll still be fat.

5. The ob/gyn with no vag agreed with me that I need to menstruate regularly (if you're still with me, dear reader, sorry for talking about the woman's bloody curse in public) so he prescribed me a progesterone pill or something. For 14 days of the month. I thought I ought to remind him that memory fail is a problem with PCOS, and that I can almost never remember daily pills, and so maybe I'd take those pills for 14 days but then I'd forget to start again. But I figured I'd just set a calendar reminder and my phone would beep and it would be ok. So then I asked him about the birth control pills and he said no. He said, "Take this Provera. It will give you your period." Then I told him I want birth control to prevent pregnancy and he told me not to worry. Even though in his show and tell session he mentioned that some women with PCOS sometimes ovulate normally, after not looking at my bloodwork at all he decided I don't ovulate ever and can never ever get pregnant ever. I thought about asking him if that's why all my kinky, unprotected sex never resulted in abortions, but I didn't think he'd laugh. He also mentioned birth control making me even fatter, despite the fact that I've been on the pill for 10 years and I'm freakin fat anyway, asshole. Then, after not looking at my bloodwork or even suggesting I get my blood sugar levels tested, he also prescribed metformin. Which, I would totally take if he'd at least pretended to prove to me I genuinely need it or that it's not counter-indicated by other medical conditions. But he didn't. He didn't even discuss side effects or anything like that.

6. I asked him to write the prescription I didn't want anyway in the format my prescription plan wants for the mail order pharmacy, and he told me I could get the pill locally. I agreed that I could but that my insurance did not prefer that and that it was cheaper to do as they asked me. He said something along the lines of, "It really doesn't cost that much. You don't need to send the prescription out." Because he totally knows and understands my finances better than me. Probably because I have a cunt and that makes math hard.

7. As I fled the office, near tears because I really just wanted him to listen to how I wanted to treat my illness that I've had and been researching for 10 years, it occurred to me to look up the Provera he prescribed and see what it is. Turns out I've been on it before. I  saw the generic name and had an instant panic attack. Because this medication is what my old ob/gyn used to put me on as a sort of it's-for-your-own-good punishment whenever I forgot to renew my birth control for months at a time. Old doc would give me a 3-5 day prescription during which time I did nothing but cry and scream and hyperventilate. THE NAME OF THE MEDICATION STILL SENDS ME INTO ANXIETY MODE. And this douche wants me on it for 14 days a month.

8. I cried all the way home by bus. In public. And then I realized I don't need referrals with my new insurance and so fuck this shit, I'm going to an endocrinologist and this time I'm bringing everyone I know with me to back me up when I say I want to be treated on my terms.

P.S. I don't know why I numbered the paragraphs, but it makes it easier to read, right? I thought about changing it to bullets, but then I figured I'm talking about my vagina and this is only the second blog post since I started and I don't really have readers yet and why get all fancy.

I should not be allowed to have bubblegum. You should not give me access to bubblegum. (I may or may not be covered in bubblegum.)

How big do you think I can blow this bubble? You know what's fun? Blowing the biggest bubble you can find and then popping it on your face, while wearing glasses. You know what's also fun? Stretching out the bubblegum with my fingernails. 

O hey there, bubblegum. I didn't know you could find SO MUCH to stick to. Like, say, all the exposed skin on my body, and all of my clothing and hair as well. 

Plz do not ever give me bubblegum.