We Can in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

Well, it’s been a pretty crazy couple of weeks. Crazy because I’m doing everything possible to keep myself from going crazy.

Since I cut off all contact with Richard, I’ve quit my job and gotten another one (maybe two), I finally cleaned up and organized my house (I’ve been trying to sort out all of my stuff and thin everything down for the last two years, but I’ve made very little progress up until a few weeks ago), finished the next two chapters of my novel, and I’ve gone back on my PKU diet.

That last one is particularly interesting because of the fact that I was randomly reading up on the symptoms adults have. I’m very familiar with symptoms in children, but in the 80s when I was learning this, it was rare for PKU kids to survive into adulthood and so very little was known about what that looked like. The list of symptoms was frightening to say the least: short-term memory loss, trouble focusing, headaches, depression, anxiety, eczema, hyperactivity, easily confused, paranoia, crying spells, difficulty with self-control, difficulty with every day tasks, lack of willpower, losing words when speaking (okay, so I might not have this one), feelings of helplessness, fear of crowded spaces, constant sleepiness/lack of energy.

Okay, so I know this sound super-generic but you have to remember that PKU primarily affects the brain, so gone are the days where I had to worry seriously about shakes and things of that nature. I know this sounds rather silly to blame all of this on this one thing, but the truth is, some of these things I’ve been struggling with for years but I don’t ever talk about it because I figured it was just some kind of inherent psychological problem within myself… which is why I saw a shrink while I was in college. It helped absolutely nothing. In fact, it made me feel worse because it made it seem like I was truly just a miserable person whom nobody could ever love, in either friendship or otherwise. Finally knowing that this might just be a product of having gone off the diet (which was apparently very prevalent in the 80s and 90s because they assumed adulthood brought an immunity to it since no more serious brain damage is really sustained after puberty) is such a relief.

Making the dietary change has been very difficult. I mean, I’m always hungry… up until yesterday when my supplement finally came in the mail… and then I felt over-full. It was an awkward experience. I am back to literally not being able to eat ANYTHING anymore. I can’t really eat out anymore because I’m unsure what they put in things. I am excited because I just found out I CAN eat kale and I CAN eat avocado, both of which I was told to avoid. They also tried to tell me potatoes were bad for me and I just said to myself, “Put me in a fucking coma, you are not taking my potatoes.” I have eaten potatoes nearly every day of my life and I’m not giving those up.

I suppose the point of this whole entry is that I just am trying to develop my willpower in new ways. I am completely uprooting myself and starting over. That night with Richard, I felt like I was alone. My grandmother was gone. Richard wasn’t going to be my rock (which I should have known because I’d always been his, so why should I expect a little quid pro quo), and that’s why I was so out of it.

I got home and I just thought, “Nobody is going to save me anymore. There’s no net any longer. If I’m not going to be my own reason for living, then I might as well just give up everything and everyone right now because nobody is going to want to be around me anyway.”

That’s what happened to my grandfather. It’s why he degenerated into the vile, malevolent man that he was at the end of his life. I won’t allow that to happen to me.