Well, I have a million ideas for blog entries but I’m going a lot of directions right now and it’s hard to find the focus to actually sit down and write. I’m doing vastly better than last time I posted to this blog! Turtle and cat are still stable and doing great, as you can see:
One positive change is that I finally gave up the substitute teaching. It was just way too triggering being in public schools, witnessing childhood that I never got to experience. I remember working with younger kids being much less triggering, so I’ve mostly lined up a job working with preschool and under. It’s just taking a little time to finalize because committees have to meet, people are on vacation, etc. In the meantime, I’d been planning on working on household projects, but I’m famous for getting overwhelmed by to-do lists and finding myself in a never-ending freeze response. So I’m working on finding balance. I also am really, really trying to make hydration work out. Having the Hydration Station in my kitchen hasn’t been fully doing the trick on its own, so I made myself this sticker chart:
Yes, I know, I am incredible. As backstory, last December, Kitten had herpes on his eyeball and had to take Famciclovir twice a day for three long, brutal weeks. He hated the taste of it and it wasn’t going very well, so I made us a sticker chart. It worked! So I found the file in my google drive and modified it into a water chart for myself. The plan is, every day that I drink water at least 10 times, I get a sticker. There does need to be some sort of reward thing, which is a work in progress. So far, I decided that I can get a piece of candy every day when I get the sticker, but I feel like I also need to be working toward something. So I’m thinking that every time I’ve accrued 7 stickers (and it’s okay if they’re not on consecutive days), I get a pastry. All I’m saying is that I’ve been hydrated for two days in a row, so it’s basically like the habit is fully established 😜 Well… okay, maybe not, but I think it’s more likely to work than my previous lifelong method, which has been to use shame, fear, and the extremely-long list of medical problems I deal with that would immediately go away if I were drinking any water at all.
Now, at some point, I’ll probably follow up on my entry not too long ago when I was trying to figure out every single thing I needed to be doing in addition to what I currently do, but for now, drinking water is the main thing because it does seem to help me be less overwhelmed.
The Big Reveal
Well, but there’s more! Well, toward the end of last year I purchased a subscription to OkCupid, and around the end of November I started talking to a lovely person who shall be known on this blog as “B.” I went to visit them (about four and a half hours away) for Easter Weekend, and it went very well 😊 So, now…
The Apostate Turtle has a romantic interest!!
It has just been wonderful to have a mutual crush in my life. B’s roommate has a dog, and you’ll understand in a second why I mention this. I usually keep this blog highly anonymous, but it’s been about five years since I started it and I haven’t gone viral yet. Plus, one reason I keep the blog is so that I can give the link to good providers so they can anonymously check on me if they want to see how I’m doing. So it feels very meaningful to put this here:
It’s still early, but I feel happy. I’m very familiar with trauma, but not as much with happiness. A lot of things had to happen to get to this point, and a lot of people really have gone above and beyond for me. And it’s like, we don’t know what will happen. But, it could be good ❤️