To Do List Revisited

So it's been about a half a year since my posted To Do List. The pandemic has really been a huge set back for me and my personal care. Not only do all the old issues still exist, but I'm convinced I've developed PTSD on top of everything else.

At the end of 2020, I finally bit the bullet and signed up for insurance through my office. For 18 years I waived coverage as the Maharajah's coverage was always so good and covered at 100% by his employer. When "The Rat" bought out his division, they foisted their shitty insurance upon us. Crappy coverage, and a plan where next to none of my providers participated, PLUS a $6200 out of network deductible to be met. I was hemhorraging cash last year. 

So I signed up, my annual contribution is $1575, with a $1250 out of network deductible, and so far from what I can see, only one of my current docs don't participate. 

This past Friday I had a hum-dinger of a melt down. Raging at the current state of political affairs. Raging about a now-former POTUS that allowed 400+K Americans die (my mom was one of them). Raging about how none of us will have any justice for the losses we incurred, loss of life, loss of a year of our lives, loss of the collective's sanity and sense of well being. Raging and despairing about it all. 

For someone like me, who has a couple of robust life traps developed in childhood, even though I can intellectualize the need for isolation from everyone else, I am still left with this intense sense of abandonment. I wish I had the cognitive dissonance to make me act and think that *all this* is nothing. I rage against everyone who acts and thinks that this is nothing more than the flu or worse, that it's a hoax. 

When I say "hum-dinger," that's code for INCONSOLABLE. Tears didn't trickle down my cheeks, they shot out of my tear ducts like hot bullets. I was so inconsolable, I spent the next two days in bed, trying to rally from it--what a romantic way to spend Valentine's Day, eh?

Today I called my insurance company to see when is the effective date of my coverage, and to verify which of my docs participate in the plan, and today I set about making two appointments. Tomorrow I'll make two more. Thursday, two more. 

The appointments I scheduled today are close to home, or video appointments. The remaining appointments will be scheduled for Veterans Day (or thereafter), and are in NYC. I hope it's not being overly optimistic thinking we'll be coming out of this mess by then. 

I did manage to hear back from my former therapist at the end of July. And I've since reconsidered the notion of going back into therapy, as I'll be starting from square one, as whatever good work I managed to accomplish has totally backslid. I cannot bear even talking about what's going on with me anymore as it's too upsetting. 

On top of everything else, and my suspicions of PTSD, I'm also going through an existential crisis, now that mom's gone. The illusion of a safety net is gone. Intellectually I know I never had one. And the reality of 2017 (year of mom's injury which resulted in her going to Shady Pines permanently--by choice) and 2020 (when she died), those three years in particular I know I had no net--but really she wasn't much of a net even before her injury. But at least she was always at the end of the phone--when her phone would cooperate, that is. 

Now that mom's gone (over nine months at this point), and my friend Susan is gone, and the Maharajah has shown me he cannot handle what I'm going through, my only outlets are my blog here, and occasionally screaming into the abyss which is Twitter--neither of these are problem solvers.

I think about how lonely mom was after dad died. 12 years of loneliness, and yet, she kept retreating further and further from everyone. And here I am feeling (many things, including) loneliness. And right this moment, I know the choice is mine, to decide how long I'll feel this way; however, at least TODAY, I made some self care appointments, and hope by doing so, it'll remind me of normal things I'd normally do during non-pandemic, normal times. Fake it to make it, I guess. Maybe five more months of this?