for heart problems earlier... and I ended up not going. Here's why.
For the past several days, I've had weird heart things happening. I guess they could be best described as palpitations? Sometimes my heart skips a beat... other times, I can actually feel my heart pumping in my chest and it feels weird. Sometimes I get a tightness in my chest that doesn't want to go away. On top of that, I've had a little bit of nausea here and there, and excessive panic attacks. I've been debating about what's wrong with me... whether I'm suffering a heart attack, or stress, or indigestion, or a combination of things. I kept trying to convince myself that it was just stress, and that I'm not really dying.
I was sitting in my bed earlier tonight, and I was having the thing where I could feel my heart beating in my chest, and it wasn't going away. It started making me nervous, and it started getting worse, so I decided to go to the hospital to make sure I didn't die. I was on my way there, and it started getting worse, and I started panicking more, so I called my uncle, who is also an incredibly close friend. I didn't tell him what was going on, I just wanted to talk to him to get my mind off my body. We got to chatting, and I started to feel a bit better - I ended up driving right on past the hospital. We chatted about lots of things. I gave him a quick rundown of how busy and stressful my life has been, and gave him an idea of what my schedule was like. He told me about his most recent bout with the flu. I told him about the huge crush I have on my teacher, he told me about some of his flings. Then we started talking about our pasts, and how funny our families were, and how our families reacted when he and my brother came out of the closet. We started laughing a lot. Meantime, I'm just driving around the city, burning gas and cell phone battery. Finally, he says to me that he has to go, because his dinner from Panda Express had arrived and he was going to go eat. I got off the phone and headed home. I no longer had weird heart problems, my chest didn't hurt, and I wasn't having a panic attack.
I guess it was all due to stress after all. Surely talking on the phone to my uncle wouldn't make a heart attack go away, would it?
After we got off the phone, I decided I needed a good blog to get things off my chest. So here goes.
I'm not really sure what about my life is bugging me the most, but I know that it's a combination of many many things. For one, my health. I've been having new symptoms with my ear issue that I've been dealing with for years, and I don't know what it means. It hasn't made the dizziness any worse, but I dunno... ya know how when you get water in your ear, you can hear it? It sounds... fuzzy? (If that makes any sense.) Like when you move from sitting to laying down or something, you can hear it in your ear... I have that now. Not all the time, but occasionally. I don't know why. But I sure can't afford to have it looked at. I just hope I don't wake up deaf some morning. Another health issue that is bothering me is my weight. I want to lose weight badly, but when you have a schedule like mine, it's almost impossible to find time to exercise. If I try hard enough, I should be able to work out a way to eat healthier, but even that is hard when you're constantly stressed. Who wants carrot sticks after a long, hard day? Not me!
Then there's my son. For one, he's having behavioral problems in school. He's not a bully or anything like that, he just has issues with keeping his mouth shut and his butt in his chair. I'm at a loss as to what to do about him. Part of me thinks that he's just a boy, and it's what boys do... but the only problem with that mindset is that the schools don't see it that way. They see it as an issue... so I guess I have to address it as an issue. So, I decided to start giving him a punishment based on his daily report. If he came home without a stamp (basically recognition of a good day) then he lost his Playstation and computer privileges for that evening. He's obsessed with both, so I figured that would be enough to set him straight. Boy, was I wrong. He still comes home with 1 or 2 stamps per week, which isn't enough. I expect 4. I give him one day for an "off" day... I don't expect perfection... but I expect 4, and he doesn't do that. So picking up him from school is always a little stressful for me because I hope and pray to God that he got a stamp that day, but more often than not, he didn't. He's only six, so I'm not sure what other options I have to coerce him to do better in school. When I get frustrated, I want to just say, "Fuck it, he's a six year old boy... he'll grow out of it eventually." I just hope I'm right.
Then there's financial stress, which seems to be a constant in my life. I've had stress about money since I was like... fifteen. I'm making barely above minimum wage, working around 15 hours per week. Well, I am now. I was pulling around 20, but that got to be too much. So I barely make enough money to live. Most of my student loans are going into a savings account to pay for my sons karate classes. Which is okay, I don't mind. I just hope nothing major comes up between now and August, when I get my next round of student loans. I did, however, use my most recent round of loans to pay off quite a large amount of debt, bought some clothes, and had some fun with it. I feel comfortable with that, and I'm pleased that I was able to do the things that I could with it. I just worry about the future now.
Next stressor - my job. I feel stupid even considering my job to be stressful, because I have quite possibly the easiest and most fun job ever. I hang out in an ice cream shop and give people ice cream. I wash a few dishes, make a few waffle cones, and the rest of my time is spent jacking around with my fellow teenage employees, or surfing the net. Seriously. What do I have to complain about? I guess my biggest issue isn't the job itself, it's just the fact that I have a job, period. It's just one more thing I have to think about and plan for. It's one more thing that keeps me from relaxing or doing homework or spending time with my son. *sigh*
Next! School. Duh. I'm taking nine credit hours... I was originally taking twelve, but one of my classes moved to a different building WAY on the other side of campus from where the class before it was at, so it became horribly inconvenient for me to take it.... I was going to be late to class every single day, so I just dropped it. It wasn't that important anyway. So anyway, yeah. Nine credit hours. Not too hard, right? It shouldn't be, but it feels like it is. I love school... I love learning, and I love being there... it's so much fun to me. But it's just plain stressful. Homework every night, tests to study for, etc... school definitely doesn't end when my classes are over for the day, that's for sure. So, again, just one more thing to think about and plan for... one more thing keeping me from being able to relax and spend time with my son.
Next! My son's karate classes and cub scouts. Karate classes are twice a week, cub scouts is once. That's three nights a week out of seven where we have something going on for him. The classes and meetings are only an hour long, so they don't take up a lot of time, but.... well, you know the drill by now, don't you? One more thing to think about and plan for, one more thing that keeps me from relaxing and spending time with my son. The only plus about cub scouts? I can usually bring homework with me. Not so much in karate class. It's not easy to focus with a bunch of 4-7 year old boys and girls screaming "ights!" and "Yes, sir!" every few seconds.
And then the last real stress I have to deal with is how to deal with my stress. I don't know what to do. Should I give something up? If so, what do I give up? I need the job to survive. I could drop school, but that would be horribly stupid. I'm going to school to get a degree to make good money so that I don't have to stress as much. Quitting would mean working full time for shitty pay and still being stressed out about money. Quitting school would mean not making progress. Do I pull Skyler out of cub scouts or karate? That would be mean. Hell, cub scouts has already been paid for in full for the year. Karate has not been, but he just started, and it's something he's been bugging me to do for two years now. I figured it was about time. Not to mention, I was hoping the karate would help with the behavioral problems in school. But what do I do? When do I get time for me? I've tried getting "me" time in the evenings after my son is in bed, but then I'm generally up too late and I don't get enough sleep so that just adds to my stress. I've tried putting off homework to get some relaxation in, but that just adds more stress down the road when the homework piles up. And apparently blogging isn't even good for me, because it's now midnight... I have to be up at 7am... and 7 hours of sleep isn't enough for someone who is stressed to the max and sleep deprived... so even blogging keeps me up late. (I've been typing this over the course of about 45 minutes... trying to organize my thoughts.)
I just don't know what to do anymore. It fucking sucks. Anyone have any ideas?
For the past several days, I've had weird heart things happening. I guess they could be best described as palpitations? Sometimes my heart skips a beat... other times, I can actually feel my heart pumping in my chest and it feels weird. Sometimes I get a tightness in my chest that doesn't want to go away. On top of that, I've had a little bit of nausea here and there, and excessive panic attacks. I've been debating about what's wrong with me... whether I'm suffering a heart attack, or stress, or indigestion, or a combination of things. I kept trying to convince myself that it was just stress, and that I'm not really dying.
I was sitting in my bed earlier tonight, and I was having the thing where I could feel my heart beating in my chest, and it wasn't going away. It started making me nervous, and it started getting worse, so I decided to go to the hospital to make sure I didn't die. I was on my way there, and it started getting worse, and I started panicking more, so I called my uncle, who is also an incredibly close friend. I didn't tell him what was going on, I just wanted to talk to him to get my mind off my body. We got to chatting, and I started to feel a bit better - I ended up driving right on past the hospital. We chatted about lots of things. I gave him a quick rundown of how busy and stressful my life has been, and gave him an idea of what my schedule was like. He told me about his most recent bout with the flu. I told him about the huge crush I have on my teacher, he told me about some of his flings. Then we started talking about our pasts, and how funny our families were, and how our families reacted when he and my brother came out of the closet. We started laughing a lot. Meantime, I'm just driving around the city, burning gas and cell phone battery. Finally, he says to me that he has to go, because his dinner from Panda Express had arrived and he was going to go eat. I got off the phone and headed home. I no longer had weird heart problems, my chest didn't hurt, and I wasn't having a panic attack.
I guess it was all due to stress after all. Surely talking on the phone to my uncle wouldn't make a heart attack go away, would it?
After we got off the phone, I decided I needed a good blog to get things off my chest. So here goes.
I'm not really sure what about my life is bugging me the most, but I know that it's a combination of many many things. For one, my health. I've been having new symptoms with my ear issue that I've been dealing with for years, and I don't know what it means. It hasn't made the dizziness any worse, but I dunno... ya know how when you get water in your ear, you can hear it? It sounds... fuzzy? (If that makes any sense.) Like when you move from sitting to laying down or something, you can hear it in your ear... I have that now. Not all the time, but occasionally. I don't know why. But I sure can't afford to have it looked at. I just hope I don't wake up deaf some morning. Another health issue that is bothering me is my weight. I want to lose weight badly, but when you have a schedule like mine, it's almost impossible to find time to exercise. If I try hard enough, I should be able to work out a way to eat healthier, but even that is hard when you're constantly stressed. Who wants carrot sticks after a long, hard day? Not me!
Then there's my son. For one, he's having behavioral problems in school. He's not a bully or anything like that, he just has issues with keeping his mouth shut and his butt in his chair. I'm at a loss as to what to do about him. Part of me thinks that he's just a boy, and it's what boys do... but the only problem with that mindset is that the schools don't see it that way. They see it as an issue... so I guess I have to address it as an issue. So, I decided to start giving him a punishment based on his daily report. If he came home without a stamp (basically recognition of a good day) then he lost his Playstation and computer privileges for that evening. He's obsessed with both, so I figured that would be enough to set him straight. Boy, was I wrong. He still comes home with 1 or 2 stamps per week, which isn't enough. I expect 4. I give him one day for an "off" day... I don't expect perfection... but I expect 4, and he doesn't do that. So picking up him from school is always a little stressful for me because I hope and pray to God that he got a stamp that day, but more often than not, he didn't. He's only six, so I'm not sure what other options I have to coerce him to do better in school. When I get frustrated, I want to just say, "Fuck it, he's a six year old boy... he'll grow out of it eventually." I just hope I'm right.
Then there's financial stress, which seems to be a constant in my life. I've had stress about money since I was like... fifteen. I'm making barely above minimum wage, working around 15 hours per week. Well, I am now. I was pulling around 20, but that got to be too much. So I barely make enough money to live. Most of my student loans are going into a savings account to pay for my sons karate classes. Which is okay, I don't mind. I just hope nothing major comes up between now and August, when I get my next round of student loans. I did, however, use my most recent round of loans to pay off quite a large amount of debt, bought some clothes, and had some fun with it. I feel comfortable with that, and I'm pleased that I was able to do the things that I could with it. I just worry about the future now.
Next stressor - my job. I feel stupid even considering my job to be stressful, because I have quite possibly the easiest and most fun job ever. I hang out in an ice cream shop and give people ice cream. I wash a few dishes, make a few waffle cones, and the rest of my time is spent jacking around with my fellow teenage employees, or surfing the net. Seriously. What do I have to complain about? I guess my biggest issue isn't the job itself, it's just the fact that I have a job, period. It's just one more thing I have to think about and plan for. It's one more thing that keeps me from relaxing or doing homework or spending time with my son. *sigh*
Next! School. Duh. I'm taking nine credit hours... I was originally taking twelve, but one of my classes moved to a different building WAY on the other side of campus from where the class before it was at, so it became horribly inconvenient for me to take it.... I was going to be late to class every single day, so I just dropped it. It wasn't that important anyway. So anyway, yeah. Nine credit hours. Not too hard, right? It shouldn't be, but it feels like it is. I love school... I love learning, and I love being there... it's so much fun to me. But it's just plain stressful. Homework every night, tests to study for, etc... school definitely doesn't end when my classes are over for the day, that's for sure. So, again, just one more thing to think about and plan for... one more thing keeping me from being able to relax and spend time with my son.
Next! My son's karate classes and cub scouts. Karate classes are twice a week, cub scouts is once. That's three nights a week out of seven where we have something going on for him. The classes and meetings are only an hour long, so they don't take up a lot of time, but.... well, you know the drill by now, don't you? One more thing to think about and plan for, one more thing that keeps me from relaxing and spending time with my son. The only plus about cub scouts? I can usually bring homework with me. Not so much in karate class. It's not easy to focus with a bunch of 4-7 year old boys and girls screaming "ights!" and "Yes, sir!" every few seconds.
And then the last real stress I have to deal with is how to deal with my stress. I don't know what to do. Should I give something up? If so, what do I give up? I need the job to survive. I could drop school, but that would be horribly stupid. I'm going to school to get a degree to make good money so that I don't have to stress as much. Quitting would mean working full time for shitty pay and still being stressed out about money. Quitting school would mean not making progress. Do I pull Skyler out of cub scouts or karate? That would be mean. Hell, cub scouts has already been paid for in full for the year. Karate has not been, but he just started, and it's something he's been bugging me to do for two years now. I figured it was about time. Not to mention, I was hoping the karate would help with the behavioral problems in school. But what do I do? When do I get time for me? I've tried getting "me" time in the evenings after my son is in bed, but then I'm generally up too late and I don't get enough sleep so that just adds to my stress. I've tried putting off homework to get some relaxation in, but that just adds more stress down the road when the homework piles up. And apparently blogging isn't even good for me, because it's now midnight... I have to be up at 7am... and 7 hours of sleep isn't enough for someone who is stressed to the max and sleep deprived... so even blogging keeps me up late. (I've been typing this over the course of about 45 minutes... trying to organize my thoughts.)
I just don't know what to do anymore. It fucking sucks. Anyone have any ideas?
