I have been experiencing another bout of chronic headaches - tonight is going on six days nonstop. This has been happening more frequently, with my last nonstop headache in August/September and lasting for more than a month. At times it's unbearable, making it impossible for me to do much of anything except lay in the dark. I had to call out of work on Friday because I couldn't get out of bed, and I knew that not only would I not be able to work, especially with a band playing, but I wouldn't be able to drive to Middletown to get there. When my headache is at it's worst, my vision can get really blurry, and I have to close my eyes for short periods of time.
Finally, today, after a weekend of tears and frustration, I called a doctor. Since I'm going to the community health center, which has a sliding scale fee, I'm hoping the visit will be relatively cheap, but even if it's not, I have to go. My appointment is for Thursday at 3:00 and I'm hoping that Paul can come with me. I can't live like this anymore. I rewrote the list of symptoms I've been keeping track of for a few months now, and added some detail for the doctor, and just my everyday symptoms are 3/4 of a page long. I don't know what is wrong with me (my suspicion is along the lines of Fibromyalgia - something I have all the symptoms of) but I want to find out and I want to have a plan of action of how to relieve me pain. I'm only 24 and the older I get the worse the symptoms get, and while I don't want to say I have a disability, I am certainly disabled to do many everyday things. A simple task of going to the store to do an errand depletes me of my energy. Going to the mall weakens me to the point of nausea. While I do have "good" days, where I have energy to do some things, my bad days I can hardly get out of bed. A simple touch burns my skin. At my worst I don't even have energy to read a book. I can't watch television because the flashes of color hurts my eyes. I end up sitting in bed, just staring at my hands. I don't want to live like this, if you can even call it living. I want to be able to travel, work, go hiking, go to the beach, go to concerts (the last concert I went to I had to leave early), hang out with friends. Because of my symptoms I've had to switch jobs, call out of work, cancel plans, and almost drop out of high school. I need someone to take me seriously and look past my age, and my history of depression, and stop writing it off as mental. There is no doubt that I have mental health issues, but I have also learned how to cope with my bouts of depression and mental illness, and I have been able to control them quite well these past few years. I know what depression feels like. I know what anxiety feels like. And while I know that those things exacerbate my symptoms, I honestly do not believe that that's what causes them. In fact, usually my most severe depression (for example, this past week) is spurred by my physical ailments, not the other way around. I really, truly hope that the doctor takes me seriously. I'm not expecting some magical, instant cure, but I want some place to start. I need to know what I'm battling so I know what weapons to use.

This semester is only a few weeks away from being over, and I am amazed at how quickly time flew by. I've already picked out my classes for next term, and am pretty excited about a few of them. I've decided to get my math class over with, and then take Composition, General Psychology, and Litigation. I wanted to get some of the core classes out of the way this term, and the selection of legal classes this term was few, I think only six or seven, and most were three hour night classes, which are tough to get through. So for this semester I decided to only take the Litigation class.

The rest of this semester I have to still get through three quizzes for Political Science (the first being today), a test (on Tuesday) and a research paper for Introduction To Law and then my final exams, one which is a take home exam (for Legal Environment) and all four final exams are based on what we have covered since the last tests we have taken, not cumulative, which is good, and then I'm done. A few weeks of winter vacation, and then back to school. I wanted to take intercession (winter and summer) courses, but as of right now there is no way I can afford them, so that's out of the question, which means that most like it will take me an extra year, or at least a semester, to finish all my credits and get my Associates.

Besides school, Paul has been introducing me to all of Harao Miyazaki's movies, which I have been absolutely loving. We started with The Cat Returns, then Kiki's Delivery Service, The Castle In The Sky, Spirited Away (which was one I had actually already seen before), Laputa, Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, and Howl's Moving Castle. I have already seen Ponyo a few times (it's one of my favorite movies now) and so all I have left for the Studio Ghibli collection is Porco Rosso. I wish I could find his short films, but no luck so far.

I had never been a fan of anime before, but Paul has definitely turned me on to some of the genre. I still don't like a lot of the anime that has to do with fighting, which is what I thought all anime was at first, but I am loving the new world of entertainment this form of animation has opened up for me. It's like learning a new language and getting to watch decades of movies you had never seen before. Plus, all these characters are ridiculously adorable.

I have been failing miserably with my reading goal. Ever since school started I have been so busy with schoolwork, or so bone tired from school, that I haven't had any time or energy to read anything but magazines. This month the only book I could get through was The Magician's Nephew. Before that I think I finished The Night Castle. But lately I have been in the habit of starting books, and then getting bored of them, starting a new book, getting bored of that book, starting another book, and then not being able to decide which book to read and giving up all together. I think I have at least four or five books started and left unfinished. I can write three papers, take four tests, and attend all my classes, but if I don't read more than one book a month I feel like a total failure.

During the power outage that took over CT, I did get a lot of writing done. Granted, it was all over the place, but I did start a few short stories, which is more than I have done in a long time. I was going to do NanoWrimo this year, but it's too much to focus on with school. Maybe over break I will have my own, personal, NanoWrimo.

Edit:
I just updated my Reading List for anyone interested.

I have just survived not only my 24th birthday, but also a week long power outage due to a freak October snowstorm that brought down many trees and power lines. Some parts of CT are still without power, but thankfully East Hartford got ours back Sunday afternoon. Paul's parents have a generator, so luckily we were still able to do things like shower, cook, and have heat - at least until Paul's dad went to bed at 10:30 at night and shut it all down. I wasn't feeling well at all last week - even more so than usual - and so instead of taking the downtime to catch up on some reading and writing, I mostly slept a lot and watched movies on my laptop. I don't know what is wrong with me, but I have been feeling extremely run down lately, and have had unexplained hot flashes/fevers off and on. Friday and Saturday, and even the first part of Sunday I felt decent, but with the exception of those two and a half days, I have been down for the count. I can probably attribute a lot of that to stress. Even though I didn't have school or work at all this week, thanks to the snowstorm and taking off work for my birthday, I almost get more stressed out at home than at school. Even normal days stress me out living here, but pair that with no power and cramming a whole other family in here (two adults, one young child, one constantly SCREAMING infant) plus a slew of neighbors here every day, I have been dealing with constant noise, and constant noise with no way to drown it out often leaves me feeling very, very tense, anxious, angry, and drained. Loud noises and bright lights (plus a lack of privacy) are the main contributors to my everyday stress, and often lead to migraines and panic attacks. Usually if there is loud noise I can drown it out with a fan or some non-stressful noise, but without electricity, this was impossible to do. A noise I particularly can't stand is child noise, and if that makes me a bad person then so be it, but I can not stand child noise. Loud, screeching laughter or crying - I just can't. It makes me see red. Often Paul would get home and I would feel like I had just ran around all day punching myself in the head, and then it would continue on the rest of the day and into the night. 24 hour a day uncontrollable noise. Just thinking about it makes me want to cry. So I spent the majority of this week fighting off a panic attack. I'm already living in a house that I am completely uncomfortable in, but to add even more people crammed in to the mix - I'm honestly surprised I didn't honestly have a break down. I do not handle stress well, and holding it all in is probably the cause of my sick, tired, achy, fevery feeling. Luckily, on Tuesday, Wednesday and the second half of Thursday I was lucky enough to be able to go to work with Paul, where there was electricity and the internet, and more important, less uncontrollable noise. Thank goodness that Paul's job is so family orientated and friendly, because it probably saved my brain from being the first to ever implode in on itself with frustration and anxiety.

Thursday morning Paul's brother hooked up the internet to the generator, and so I was able to spend most of the morning watching Jenna Marble's Youtube videos and falling in love. I then decided that since it was my birthday I would do my best to not look like a lazy slob, and actually put on makeup, then Paul picked me up to head to his work so I could email my professor my essay that was due that day (I found out too late that the campus was open and classes resumed that day, and missed my first class, where we had an essay due. My professor wrote me back later that it was postponed anyway, but I didn't want to just not show up and not turn in the essay, which I thankfully have more time to work on, since I didn't get as much time as I would have liked thanks to the power outage) and relax. We had planned to go to my grandmother's house after he got off of work, since she had left to take a road trip to Florida that morning, and we were going to house-sit and make good use of her power, which had come back the previous day, but I had to go to my 5:30 class before we could go to Middletown, especially since in that class I had an exam scheduled. Thankfully, when I went to that class, the exam was also postponed, and we just went over the next chapter. After that class we headed to Middletown, saw my parents for a little bit and got some delicious pork roast, and then headed to my grandmother's house to relax, watch television and spend some time in the wonderful, amazing, peace and quiet. My birthday was relatively uneventful, to be honest, and we celebrated by going out with some friends on Friday night to La Boca and then coming back to my grandmother's to watch a movie.

Saturday Paul and I went to the mall to do some window shopping, which quickly turned into actual shopping. I got five pairs of panties, since they are probably one of my favorite clothing articles to shop for, a really cute pair of dark red jeans (mine have only one button, although I did try this pair on as well, but they didn't have anything lower than a size 27) and a simple grey dress from Forever 21 (I also put aside an amazing black double breasted belted wool pea coat that has cute little matching "belts" around the wrists - kind of like this only with a belt and different pockets -and came back for it Sunday, since we didn't have enough money for it that day - however, I have been looking everywhere for the perfect pea coat that I can wear for dressier occasions during the cold months, and after probably three years of looking for something cute and reasonably priced that fit me, I found it - for only $30! I am in love.) I spent a little bit more money than I should have, since I should have spent nothing, but they are honestly pieces of clothing that I can wear all the time, and are more "professional" (I know red jeans aren't really professional, but trust me, they are amazing).

I was thinking about writing an entry that required some thinking, doing some soul searching now that I am 24 and closer and closer to being too old to be such a loser, but I am extremely exhausted, and therefore want to talk about happy things, like awesome new clothes.

Maybe next time my blogging will be more interesting. But probably not.