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Learning to grow

A blog by Briannah in General

  • Entries

    140

  • Comments

    285

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    49,686

About this blog

This is Bree's journal talking about how life changes, and how you grow with them (probably with the occasional freakout, I'm good at panic mode too!).  Life has been hard since day one, and not doing it alone is the key!

Entries in this blog

The things they don't tell you about marriage are legendary.

There is a seriously flawed cultural understanding of marriage in American society.  There is this collective assumption that every marriage functions the same, and our media reinforces that.  A giant wash of anything that doesn't look the same.  For a country of freedom we do that a lot, alienation of people who look different, behave different, culturally different, etc.  So much of this country really practices the 'freedom to be just like me' rather than 'freedom to be who you are in peace'.

Ohio offers, but does not give.

A few glorious days of spring, then back to the 30's.  Like look what you COULD have Bree, but I'm not going to let you.  I'm going to make you be physically cold and stew while you're working through your latest emotional pissed offness.  Yesterday we were talking about our sex life in the car, and Nikki told me flat out he had been sexually bored for years, and he loves now that we're doing all sorts of new things.  And it didn't percolate right away.  I didn't like hearing that, was minorly a

Living on hope of vacation.

So Nikki's back has been out for a while now, so I dragged him strait to the doctor Friday, based on the pain response from limb manipulation test, they think at this point it's an inflammation problem rather than an injury from all the physical labor we've been doing.  (I'm sore as anything too, but I still have full flexibility and only sore-pain not crazy pain like after the surgery I had or what he's feeling so I'm sure I'm just tired) and they gave us anti-inflammatory pills that are helpin

Laugh, Cry, or just kill the neighbors.

Seriously, some days I don't even know.  Nikki has gotten a diagnoses, so that's good, however, he's been on a roller coaster of moods because next she wants to talk about the childhood abuse.  So from moment to moment I have very little idea what is going on in his head right now  and keep 'stepping in it' as it where.  I wish I was better with the random, he needs support not clumsy right now.  The dog comes in last night, and apparently found something that died horribly and instead of avoid

Help, I"m not sure what to say in a job interview.

So...you're never supposed to say anything negative about former employers in interviews, it doesn't come across well.  But what do I do with the question of why I'm going to be taking a major paycut (most of the positions similar to mine pay much less) to work somewhere else?  The real reason is they've put me in a position where I have to break a variety of laws to do the job as they require of me, and I deeply don't like this.  At first I thought they didn't know and were going to get me the

Nikki did it

He took our conversation seriously and rallied round when the guild teasing turned to me.  I'm so sick I just wanna hide and he was all nope we're leaving Bree alone tonight she'll play with you guys next week.  It was a great practice start.  Love my Nikki.  Wanna collPse quietly in a corner.  Germs you win.  I surrender.  

Making an effort.

So since Nikki's depression has been seriously lifted due to the combined efforts of therapy and his medication and the life chagnes, I'm making an effort on the holidays this year.  I have severely mixed feelings about holidays, so much unpleasantness to others hidden in that cheer, but what the #*&&.  Nikki's having a good time and can use some festivity in the middle of winter.  And me, being the extremely clumsy thing I am, managed to injure myself several times already trying to get

21st anniversary

Thank you to everyone on the forum who helped me sort out my feelings, learn, and work things out.  Yesterday we celebrated our 21st anniversary, and I can say we've really rebuilt this marriage and it's going strong.   And managed to get home from dinner through Ohio's surprise ice storm.  Outback Steakhouse is nice food(lobe their chicken tortilla soup) but not worth dying over! 

Let's stop judging the ones on the outside society.

Between sitting on the sidelines while Nikki sorts out himself and our entire future, and watching my friend whose basically been soloing a marriage for years and a complete tantrum and horribly ongoing vilifying is thrown every time she points out her needs haven't been met in years because 'she doesn't understand what he is suffering' (while he continues to smoke, not do his therapy, not do his rehab physical work, and eat in ways that aggravate his illness daily), I've come to realize my earl

And that week of work is finally over.

SERIOUSLY I hate my job.  Nikki did the math, and barring any unforeseen financial emergencies (I can hear the peanut gallery laughing at the girl who thinks life is going to cooperate and nothing major will break in the last five months) it's looking like August is my exit day.  This week was just stupid.  Paperwork going wrong, customers being weird, half the people on vacation, half of who was left getting seriously ill.  If I have to forcibly tell one more person "I am reception/accounts rec

Well...that didn't work out the way I meant it to.

So it's crazy busy season at Nikki's job and he hasn't had a day off in weeks.  He MIGHT get one day next weekend, but it's also equally possible he'll work five weeks strait with no days off until the Christmas shutdown for the eve and day.  And while he's upbeat about it, all the overtime is paying for our next cruise this spring for his birthday and his dad and stepmom are going (I love his dad, his dad is awesome.  His stepmother stresses me out, shes a nice person overall, but she gets rand

Bad week.

Having a crap week, and am going offline for a bit to sort it all out.  ​ Last week I was feeling...odd.  Especially late at night.  Saturday night I felt really odd, and checked my fitbit, and had a crazy high pulse rate for laying down.  40 bpm above my usual resting rate doing nothing.  So after goofling symptoms off the er I want, were I spent the next five ours waiting to find out if I was having a heart attack, pneumonia, viral infection, acid reflux onset, or a mineral deficiency (and tho

So. Much. Change.

There are huge, sweeping changes we have to make to our day to day lives.  Me exiting the working force changes our financial bad habits, and getting those under control is never easy.  All the prep work I have to do to exit the job for the person after me.  Supporting Nikki's depression recovery required a lot more changes.  Meeting his desire to change his poor social habits still more.  Figuring out how to fit girl time into all this crazy.  Trying to overcome the dysmorphia and bad health ha

Valentine's Day, Part Two

So after the movie we started talking, and I realized that Nikki has made an extremely comfortable place for me in this.  Which is both wonderful and truly scary.  I'm included in his personal world where no one has been, and actively participating in the practical demands and the emotional ones.  I'm finally at the level of closeness to him that was just slightly off, and I had started to think maybe I had internalized too much social romance culture and didn't exist and was doubting myself tha

Autumn Sad

Sometimes cliches exist for a reason, and as excited as I get when the pool goes up, as happy as I am in it all summer, I never really hit the full depth of how much that pool means to me as when I am facing the oncoming autumn and knowing it's about to go away for a long, cold winter.  So I'm frantically swimming as many days at the sky will let me, and trying to store away every moment of pool joy to mull over in my winter blankets.  And I'm reminded it's not just a pool.  It was a lifelong dr

Reflective Bree

The first time I realized that being a girl was different than the boys was when I was in fourth grade.  If I remember right, that made me around 10?  11?  Growing up, I had a big group of mixed friends.  I liked the games, toys, and kids in both sides of the fence pretty equally, and never really thought much about any differences other than for whatever reason the other girls and I weren't allowed to run around topless in the summer like the boys, even though we all looked the same there, and

So apparently I do have more need for external validation than I thought.

I was just watching a video on YouTube posted by Phil DeFranco's wife (he's a funny youtuber with a take on the news I often enjoy and watch sometimes) and she is describing a break in that had happened to them, and talking about it made her cry.  After we had the break in, I couldn't talk about it without falling to pieces either, and I wasn't entirely sure why, as we were not injured and yes we lost a lot of things, but we were okay and it was over.  Watching someone else struggle with the sam

Scary wind.

It's shaking the house, and the fence was just at a really odd angle to the ground.  ti's a six foot wooden privacy fence, not a little flimsy decorative fence I mean.  I'm glad we had the roof finished last year from the windstorm that tore it up and made it look like someone ran a giant sander over it, because I think chunks would be gone tonight and smacking the neighbors house.  Don't like the neighbors, but I still don't want their home to get hit by my roof chunks.   One year I got hit in

Why so much conflict in LGBTIA

So the more I read, the more I see a LOT of splintering and unkindness between the different groups under the big group umbrella.  It makes me sad.  All the groups under this umbrella are small population wise, logic dictates to me that banding together would be the way to go.  Rights for everyone, equality for everyone!  But instead there seems to be conflict everywhere.  Large groups of gay and lesbian hating each other, large groups of both of them hating trans people, a lot of transgender pe

Let's talk biology vs. modern life.

So.  It took me 12 years of alarm clocks, schedules, and struggles with insomnia and exhaustion to get my body to a roughly midnight to 8 am sleep schedule.  Where I still needed the alarm clock, but most days I woke up without it or just before it went off.  But there was that knowledge that it wasn't fully reliable and I had better have that thing set so I didn't get fired.  And it's taken roughly...four weeks to end up back on my native 4 am to noon sleep habit.  And now I get tired around th

Update

So doing much better.  Yeah, that stupidly expensive Medcline wedge thing with the body pillow costs around $300, but WOW if you need some sort of sleeping wedge for a medical issue (I'm pretty sure apnea, copd, and some other conditions besides acid reflux benefit from the incline sleeping position) then I really really recommend this one.  The wedge is pretty firm and holds you up well, and it has a 'stuffer' pillow so you can change which side you sleep on (the other conditions it doesn't mat

Why is buying a house so freakin' hard.

Feel free to ignore me, I'm just venting to try not to explode.  I'm super frustrated as we're so close to escaping my froot loopy idea to stay with my mom (man, I moved back into my awful childhood, what was I thinking that this would work out okay???) and it feels like everyone is trying to stop me.  First Nikki got mad at me: my fault, and sorta not my fault, I was trying to do research, I didn't realize any mortgage brokers were going to CALL HIM I thought I was just gathering intel or

This week is kicking my butt.

Seriously, I'm getting next to nothing done.  *headdesk*  I need a cleaning buddy or something.  I just have zero motivation this week, even showering was a massive endeaver.  And, of course, I had a clumsy moment and forgot the dimensions of the shower when I dropped the soap and cracked my head but good on the wall.  The lovely headache I had for half the day so DID not help.  I honestly think I'm having some kind of episode, anxiety maybe?  I just have this...constant feeling of vulnerability

Being the parrtner sucks.

Nikki is going through some serious painful topics in therapy, nothing I can do.  Not a thing.  He has to sort all of it out, and it will be good for him, but I'm not stupid, he's hurting and nothing I can say or do can take that away until he works through it all.  I'm here, ready with the comfort and the hugs and the reinforcement, but that only goes so far.  I suspicion everyone here knows that.  The sheer helplessness sucks.  I WANT to be able to help him, to make it all better, and make all

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