January 7, 2010

Houston is bracing itself for a big freeze. We've already had snow this year, an uncanny anomaly in and of itself.  I moved to Houston to get away from the cold!

This morning, like many mornings, I woke up with a nasty headache.  For a while all I could do was take my medication and wait for it to kick in.  I always get aggravated when I'm forced, crippled so much by pain, that there is nothing I can do but wait.

After about forty-five minutes of that kind of torture I decided I couldn't afford to waste any more time.  Even though the headache was still lingering, I did my usual exercise routine.  It helped.  I've come to find regular exercise to be an essential aid when it comes to my mental health.  That doesn't mean I'm some kind of buff health maven.  Just getting myself to do the task is tough.  In the end, however, my self esteem rises, the endorphens kick in and I just feel better.  By the time I hit the shower - which is almost always a task I also dread - my headache was essentially gone.

I don't know why showers are so hard for me.  The room always seems too dark and isolating.  It's like it messes with my mind.  Every time I take a shower I shave.  That razor blade almost has a mind of it's own.  Inevitably this vision of me smoothly slicing away at least one huge swath of my long blond hair pops into my mind like it's the justified punishment I deserve for all of my imperfections. I am sure there are women in this world who are not so vain to value their hair, but to me, the loss would be mortifying.  Yet, there I am, as usual, struggling against my own will, reassuring myself I could never do such a horrible thing to myself.

Furiously I scrub at my face hoping to remove the constant crop of zits it insists on harboring, fully knowing that yet again it won't make much of a difference.  Then there's the cold; that moment when you have to shut off the warm stream of water.  I hate the cold.  So much of my time is already spent cringing, I certainly don't need a sudden drop in temperature to make things worse.  All the same, I survive.  Only someone as neurotic as me could turn showering into a dreaded event.

Decisions, even the simplest ones, are difficult for me to make, which means choosing what to wear often becomes an ordeal.  In my mind I run through any number of outfits assessing every minute factor from appearance to practicality to my own outright moodiness until I finally put something on.  Even then I may change again.  It's a process which still baffles my husband, but being the good man that he is, he does his best to work with it.

Almost three hours into the day I'm finally able to start tackling the work that needs to be done.  I read up on how to protect my home from the cold, do what little I think to be necessary, then head out for a doctor's appointment.

I hate doctors.  I hate doctor's appointments.  It seems like I can never get away from them.  This time it's my General Practitioner, to get some routine meds refilled.  Tomorrow it's the dermatologist (remember my zit farm issue?).  Then there's the psychiatrist, the gynechologist, and the rheumatologist.  You'd think I was at death's door and forty years older than I actually am at the rate I run up medical bills.

Here he comes.  I've got to go.