and then my pet fish died.

I got home from work awhile ago and the fish tank filter was pretty noisy because the water was low from the cats drinking all the water out of it, so I finally gave in and topped off the tank and I noticed something float up off the bottom so I turned on the light.

And there was my red baby betta Marlin. My one and only fish, my cat's pet, whom Matt and I picked out together with Tootie at PetSmart last August. We each picked out a fish and let Toulouse pick which one he wanted to bring home. This was right after our blue betta Dory died of old age... he was over 3.5 years old, maybe even 4. Lived a happy bachelor life in a big 10 gallon tank with some Finding Nemo plastic guys from the Disney store.

Marlin was all bloated and had a big bubble, an actual bubble, just attached to his side. I buried him in the same pot where Dory is buried on my front porch, with a flowering potato bush under a little frog with a silver ball sculpture.

And I am crying like a big, big baby. Because I needed just one more freaking thing to send me over the edge. Like I wasn't already over the cliff already. And now my fish is dead. And it wasn't just any fish, it was a fish we picked out together. Matt even held Tootie on the leash and managed to not look totally embarrassed to be walking a cat around in public.

Amelia is sitting next to the tank and watching it. She doesn't seem to have realized Marlin is gone yet. She must think he is hiding really good today.

:( :( :(

I want my fish. I want my boyfriend. I just want my life back. I hate my life right now. :(
Please don't let it get any worse. Please.

Always on the Edge.

I am always on the edge and I just hate it.

I am down to 175 now. Slowing down on the weight loss a little and eating a bit more so that is probably a good development. Probably the only one.

Tuesday night I realized that the appointment I thought I had at Kaiser on Wednesday was actually on Thursday and I flipped out and somehow talked myself into registering for the WPPI On the Road conference, which is basically a one day sampler photography conference, which if you go to it, you get free admission to the real week long conference in Las Vegas in February, which is really expensive. I definetly couldn't afford to go to the on the road conference but the realization that I was going to be home alone all day Wednesday just sent me over the edge and I went to the darn thing. It's the first and only photography education related thing I have ever been to and the only time in my life I have ever been around other photographers, which given the length and level of my success in this career, is totally bizarre.

The day ended up being half mediocre, a little nice, and a lot horrible. I made a big effort to eat lunch and I ended up throwing all of it up in the bathroom about 10 minutes after I finished and had a stomache ache the rest of the afternoon and had a sore throat from throwing up but I didn't want to leave because I had paid so much money to be there and if I left I wouldn't get the free admission to the big conference next year. Which, I don't even know if I want to go to, but if I end up wanting to go, I don't want to pay $500 or something if I could have gone for free!

Thursday I would describe as horiffic, and I was basically forced to graduate from the daily program I have been in, which scared the bejeezus out of me because now, how am I going to get any help? I ended up having a MAJOR breakdown with the psychiatrist, and was all over the place, crying one second and begging to stay and the next (still crying) shaking my head and saying I didn't belong there and I didn't want to be there any more. I felt like a lunatic and I told her so. I did graduate from the program with the understanding the the purpose of graduation is to set me up with more specific services to actually suit the needs I have right now to handle my problems. So that made sense and what she wanted to put me in made sense too. She registered me for a once a week group therapy thing with other people from IOP who had also graduated and then a 3 month class on how to cope with distressful situations.

Well it turns out you can only go to the group thing 3 times and the class won't start for over a month and I'm on a wait list!!! So what am I supposed to do now?!

After I graduated Thursday afternoon I basically went straight into the grad therapy group, where some other lady sucked up most of the time so I left feeling really tense and then I turned around and went straight into another group! I was at Kaiser from 840am to around 530pm or 6pm!

So the last one was a "re-entry" group to go to, which was very sadly organized and the leader was supposed to teach us about depression but he clicked through the slides so fast no one could even read them and he didn't even read them aloud himself or explain them! He was just like, ok, so this one is about depression, click and this one is on suicide, click, those are hotline numbers, click, click... I am so serious. THere were approximately 50 slides and he was done with the entire presentation in less than 10 minutes. The second he walked out everyone started complaining and exclaiming to each other on what on earth that was about. For me, the information was already stuff I knew, but I wasn't exactly pleased either and the other people in the class were pretty upset because it was new information to them.

After that we each got called individually to meet with either that guy or a woman, and the woman turned out to be my regular therapist. Well, while I was waiting to be called I was sitting next to another woman from IOP and was listening and chiming in a little on a conversation two other girls in the room were having about college- they were both biochem majors and both my best friend from college and my sister were biochem, so it is something I know a little bit about. One of the girls was going on a scholarship to a school out of state and someone asked her where.. Southern Oregon University. Where Matt went to school. And I triggered. Instantly.

I had time to say it, I said to Roberta (the woman next to me from IOP) that that was where Matt went to college, and then I started to hyperventilate, cry and panic. She grabbed me and grabbed my back and made me focus on the floor and started counting out my breaths and was telling me all that stuff they told us in class... You are in this moment, nothing bad is happening to you, you are okay, no one is going to hurt you, stuff like that. I would breathe a little bit but then I would lose it, start crying really hard and either hold my breath or start doing the shallow panting/hyperventilating thing. I can't even explain how awful this crap is. It is SO HORRIBLE. Somehow, Roberta kept me out of going into a full blown panic/anxiety attack and although it took a good 15 minutes she brought me back down. If she hadn't been there I don't know what would have happened. I probably would have run out the door and been flipping out int he parking lot like a complete lunatic. I am so glad she was there.

Tomorrow I have to go to work again and although I am not as anxious as I was last weekend, I don't want to go. I don't wnat to go by myself! I wish I had friends who could just go and be with me and hang out with me during these things, even to just drop by for a little while... They don't have to stay the whole time... Them being there at all is such a comfort.

I hate being here. I don't want to be alone. I just want to run away and hide and cry and I don't know what else.

You Utahians will be glad (or maybe you won't be glad given my current state of mental health) to know that if I do go to WPPI in Vegas in February, it does look like I will have a direct ride to SLC afterwards so I can come visit! Who wants me to come cry all over them and wipe snot on their shirt like a little kid first?

:(

I also finally bucked up and called LDS Family Services for therapy, since I am obviously not going to get what I need from Kaiser anymore and I am really now starting to get into serious breakdown stage (although I seem to be good at surpressing and stuffing my feelings alot of the time too) but they are SO expensive 9$112.50 initial appointment and $75 each after that! And really, I need to be seeing someone a couple times a week right now... at a minimum... I can't afford that!( and I need a referral from the Bishop and I'm not a member and the whole thing intimidates me and I tried to just find a regular therapist and there are so many and you don't know anything about any of them until you actually book an appointment and pay the money and meet them and they are so expensive too...

I am so overwhelmed and sad and I just want to hide. :(

Making Myself Clear

I write on this blog to keep people updated, you know, so they know I didn't die or that I didn't kill myself or something, and so that they kept in the loop.

But there are boundaries here I want to make clear.

I am sharing my feelings. My deepest, most honest, hurt, painful feelings. I am entitled to those feelings. In the words of the psychologist whom I saw only yesterday, my reaction to this, and the time period for which I am experiencing this is right on target and perfectly normal. There are stages of grief, and I have to go through them. I am sure it is different for everyone; in fact, I know it is. For me, my whole life was shattered from one hour to the next. Look at your partner. Think about how you feel about them. Think about all of the things in your relationship which you know as truths. If in an hour you found out that everything you have known in your life together to be truth and fact is suddenly... NOT... how do you even fathom that? Can you even understand that sentence?

How does a person stop drooling and staring and realize that what they are hearing is actually happening? How long does that take?

And I have been shocked. This entire story is unbelievable. And although I have been able to repeat the story several times, it doesn't mean I have been able to process it in any way shape or form. When it's not happening to YOU it is completely different. This is happening to ME. Not YOU. ME. This happened to me. I lost my partner, my future and everything I treasured in my life. About a year ago my friend's mom commented to me that all of my dreams were coming true. And they were. Do you know how precious it is to have your dreams come true? How special that is? How rare?

And where on Earth are you even supposed to begin to process it when you are suddenly informed those dreams are gone?

This is my blog and I am entitled to write, post, and leave pictures up however, and as long as, I like. (It is also too overwhelming for me to change stuff right now too. I'm not even looking at my blog, I'm just writing it.) It is extremely hurtful and upsetting for me to get comments, emails and IM's from people telling me I should be this way or that way and I need to do this or that. Not only is it upsetting, but I am now saying it isn't okay either. It doesn't do any good. You are all entitled to your own opinions and feelings and I am leaving this blog public, however, by sharing those opinions directly with ME -who is actually going through the experience right now, the worst experience of my life, you aren't doing anything helpful. You are hurting and upsetting me. This is something that has now happened with at minimum half a dozen people. This is what I risked by sharing what happened, but maybe if I speak up now, it will help other people put themselves in my situation and see perhaps what is and is not tolerable and unacceptable behavior/actions/comments/etc. We are all opinionated. But we have to remember that opinions need to come after empathy and sympathy. Because opinions serve ourselves and sympathy serves others.

I love Matt. I love the man that I knew, who took care of me, who thought I was beautiful, intelligent, the smartest person he knew. That there wasn't anything I couldn't do if I set my mind to it. I loved his hugs and smile and reassurance and the open way he shared his feelings and love for me. I have never been so happy or so secure in a relationship before. (Nor had I ever been so full of myself after all of his compliments!)

Despite everything, even with my intellectual and logical side chiming in here, I am still grateful for the relationship I had with the Matt that I knew because it taught me I could be happy. That I was special. That I was someone to be treasured. No one has ever made me feel as wonderful as he did. Honestly, in my entire life, I had never been so happy as I had been as when I was with him. It was such a weight off my shoulders, such a relief and exuberance of joy to finally KNOW what it was to be loved. That I could be loved! That I was loved! And it was amazing. And I felt amazing and wonderful every second of every day that I was with him, and I told him so!

Regardless of what was going on in his reality, the relationship he had with me WAS real to me, in every sense of the word, and I had never been so happy before. I remember smiling SO BIG and telling him just how happy I was! I didn't know, or have the faith that I would ever get that kind of joy out of my life, and HE is the one who gave it to me. I cannot emphasize that enough. I had never been so happy as I was in the moments I spent with him. Particularly early on in our relationship. The day we told each other we loved each other, I was over the moon. And you proabably could have gotten a tan from just looking at me, I was radiating so much sunshine!

But, the man that I knew is gone. He is not in that house with that woman and that child either. He is gone. He is someone that was dreamed up, or maybe what the real Matt wished for himself, maybe the kind of person he really wanted to be. I will never know. All I know, is that I truly loved Matt Timmons, and he has passed away from my life and won't be able to return to any place or time in the future or past.

For all intents and purposes, he has died. And I miss him dearly. And if that is how I chose to cope with this, and it helps me, and my psychologist thinks that this is healthy, and an appropriate reaction to this, then by golly, regardless of what anyone says, that is what is going to happen. Let me greive my loss. There is a process to this, and this is the first step. We can't just jump from Step 1 to Step 5. It's a process. I'm on Step 1. So let me be on 1. Let me sit here, on one, with my box of Kleenex, and my boyfriend's ratty old t-shirt and miss him. Because that's where I am and that's what I need to do to take care of me right now.

There is a time for anger. But it is not right now. I'm not an angry person to begin with. I never got angry with my previous ex and I had plenty to be angry with him about. It's probably more likely than not that I will eventually simply feel sad and feel sorry for the real Matt and whatever drove him to do this and hope that he becomes a better person in the future and truly repents his mistakes.

But my Matty? I loved my Matty. He loved my cats. He accepted me for who I was. And he even didn't mind that I put the milk carton back in the fridge empty sometimes. He thought it was cute.

Be kind... I love all of your comments and suggestions and I read them all and I look forward to hearing from all of you, but please be aware of the kind of state I am in right now and that unless it's going to help me, or soothe me, or even just make me feel not alone and know that you're there... save it for another time.

Thank you guys for sticking around and reading... even though I'm officially a mental patient with a poop-load of cats now. (=Crazy cat lady)

Pooping Uphill

This morning as I was driving into class I saw a Golden Retreiver squating on a relatively steep, albeit small, hill next to the sidewalk, with just about all of his weight on his front paws, and trying to go potty, you know, uphill. He looked like he was about to do a handstand.

I hope it all came out okay.

My weight is down to 175.8. But I have good news about this. I met with a case manager today and although I have now discussed the food issue with several professionals in my program, the woman I met with today reminded me that my new anti-anxiety medication that I was put on when I started the program 2 weeks ago causes weight loss! I was so relieved! So it is not all just me! The doctor told me that when she perscribed it but I completely forgot with everything going on. It is probably not all the medication given how rapid it has been, but Theresa (the psychologist I chose to cry all over today) told me is supresses appetite, so WHEWHOO! It is not all totally in my head and that is a relief. It was causing me some additional worry and I really dont need that right now.

Today I ate some crostini (kind of like a big crouton) with some apricot and almond goat cheese, which was really good. I got that from the grocery outlet and I definetly need some more of it! I also had a whole greek yogurt (well, I didn't eat the fruit on the bottom.) And I made some pumpkin raviloi with salt. So in total, I probably got almost 500 calories in me, which is more than I have been able to eat in awhile. I didn't even cook a whole serving of the ravioli and I couldn't finish it, but I am going to try again in awhile when my stomache settles down. I get really bad stomache aches when I eat now, which may be from my body not being used to eating, but two psychologists I've talked to have both told me they think it's from the anxiety.

So, Saturday I shot that wedding. I would describe it as horrible. The ceremony, which is something I hadn't even really thought about, particularly the vows were really personal, and people cried. The groom's sister sang Norah Jones' "Come Away With Me" and she can actually sing. I had to turn away and try to think about something else and basically imagined driving pencils into my eardrums so I wouldn't have to hear it. I loved that song. It made me think of him while we were together and I don't want to hear it right now.

From the couple's perspective, they didn't know the difference and everything went fine and they had no idea, which is the ultimate goal. From my end, I probably took half as many pictures as I usually do, family pictures took 50% longer and I forgot to take pictures of the bride and groom alone before it got dark. I have no idea why. I didn't feel like I was shooting any less, and the groom's family is large, but I am used to wrangling large groups. I don't know. Bottom line, the couple will never know the difference, only I will.

Yesterday and today were really bad. Particularly yesterday. Like I told my dad... it's like you got run over by a truck... after you wake up, the first thing you ask is, "What just happened?" Which is what I have been mumbling for the last couple of weeks. (That and "Huh?" ) Yesterday I started thinking... "...Did I just get run over by a truck?"

I had a panic attack talking to my dad on the phone on Friday night. He said a particular word, and it made me react but I controlled it... and then he said it again and I triggered. I started panting and raised my voice and told him I couldn't hear that because it put me back "in that house" and I couldn't do that. And he was like, "What house? What are you talking about?" And I was all, "WHAT DO YOU THINK I'M TALKING ABOUT?!" It made me SO mad (after the fact), I mean come on, this is the ONLY thing going on in my life right now that I am dealing with. What else would I be referencing? But, I was hysterical, and I am completely hypersensitive and I know that. I ended up hanging up the phone and it was a good 15-20 minutes before I could calm myself down. I couldn't stop crying, I couldn't breathe, I felt like I was dying. At one point I caught myself slightly rocking. That freaked me out. That's what crazy people on tv do. It was awful.

So I asked to see a case manager Monday and I ended up getting held after the program for about an hour crying in this womans office. She told me we needed to assess if my needs were being met in IOP and if I needed a higher level of care and she talked to me about going to a voluntary in-patient facility for awhile. ...That really scared me and I told her I was too scared to do that.

So today I saw another case manager (Theresa) and she commented while I was bawling my eyes out in her office that she had noticed how distressed I had looked the day before and that, basically, I looked like I had been run over by a truck and based on how I held my body and how shallow my breaths were that it looked like I was on the verge of a panic attack and ready to run just about all day long. She also told me that I am greiving and that this is a loss and that this is ok. This is what I am supposed to be doing. Nobody has really said that before. No one had mentioned the 5 stages of grief to me until yesterday and that was mentioned to me by a friend! Then Theresa mentioned it again today and another therapist approached me after class and said the same thing. Theresa reccomended that I read some books on loss and losing a spouse. That that is how this feels. But that this is almost worse, because, when a spouse dies, they aren't rejecting you. They didn't deceive you. You can just love them and miss them and its simple in that respect. This is more complicated. But she said the first step in this is greiving him and the relationship and the loss of our future and our plans together.

And that is how I have felt. And people jumping at me with "You should be angry!" and Why do I still have pictures of him and ordering me to remove them (literally, I've receiving emails and IM's in caps saying that), so many people have told me what a horrible person he is and have listed every negative adjective in the book to describe him. But the man that *I* knew never hurt me. He loved me and cared about me. That's it. And... he went away. Or he died. And all I really want is for him to come home. And I need to figure that out first before anything else. It's been haunting me all day.. He's not coming home. I always thought he would come home to me. And he isn't going to. He isn't coming home.

Ole' Crappy's Eve

Kinda like All Hallow's Eve (Halloween) but adjusted to my own situation. Old Crappy Eve. Tomorrow I am shooting my first full wedding since this happened. I haven't had a single friend offer to come with me, despite begging many, MANY people to come with me. I am freaking out, to say the least. I cannot even begin to express how panicky and upset I feel about having to do this at ALL let alone do this without any support.

It's not like I am asking someone to come and work with me... I am asking someone to come and hang out and just BE there. And they get a free meal and get to go to a wedding. And they get cupcakes and wedding cake. Is that so terrible of a day? I am always willing to do whatever for a friend. As long as you don't ever ask me to help you move (you're going to have to dupe me into that one, and somehow my friend Cecilia somehow managed to do that the day I broke my foot. I still have no idea how she conned me), I'll do anything you ask me to do. I'm just like that. You want me to take you to the airport at 3am. Sure, no prob. I could care less. (Throws up hands.) How is it I don't know anyone that is like me?

I'm also worried about the food issue. It takes all day for me to... I don't know... get up the wherewithall? to eat. I just ate for the first time today. I had some split pea soup. Some yellow tomatoes/green peppers/avocado with a tortilla nuked in the microwave to make chips. (Just take a plain old corn tortilla and cut up into triangles [I just fold it and it breaks] and put it straight in the microwave for 2 minutes. Flip, microwave 15-30 additional seconds until crisp. No oil, nothing. 75 calories of chips. And salt free, for me anyway, too.)

So I ate today, but not until like 10pm... I am going to HAVE to eat before I go to this wedding tomorrow. I have to be there, ready to go, energized at 330pm. I don't know how i am going to do that. How am I going to get myself to eat a full meal before then? As soon as I start eating right now I start feeling sick as it is and I don't want to eat at all, even if I am hungry. I just... I can't. I open the fridge and look and it just seems disgusting. I just can't eat. I can't.

I suppose you can psychoanalyze me and say food and eating is the ONLY thing I can control right now. And maybe I am "restricting." I don't know. That is anorexic-type behavior. But I don't think I am anorexic. I think this is just part of the reactive phase of what's happened to me. Eating makes me sick.

But if I don't eat before I work, I'm going to get sick. So what do I do?

The psychologist who is supervising me in this program told me to just try and eat a little bit here and there, snacks through out the day, have some nuts... when she said that I visualized putting the nuts in my mouth and then just letting them drop out onto the table unchewed. I don't think that's going to work.

I'm getting upset just thinking about this.

Also today the psychologist said something today that really upset and bothered me and I don't know what to make of it because it doesn't make any sense to me. She said there was no realtionship because Matt wasn't really in it. I said, well it was real to me. She said, you may have thought that but a realtionship takes two people and he wasn't in it all the way.

... Matt asked me to be his girlfriend. We were together for a year and a half. If I had never found out, and we had simply broken up, I would be mourning this as I would any other break up. But, it wouldn't really be a break up? Because there was no realtionship? He told me he loved me. He wanted to spend his life with me. That I was his best friend. He told me all of the reasons he loved me and often. He held me, hugged me, kissed me and teased me and loved me like no one else ever has. Even knowing most of the truth now. Isn't that still a realtionship? I mean, I didn't just make this up in my head. I was going to marry this man... make babies with this man. Die in his arms as an old woman. I was happy. And I was going to have a very, very happy life.

But...? I don't understand. Do you agree with what she said?

I did one positive thing today... I attempted to make a ruffly camera strap cover. It didn't come out all that great, but I had to make a goal to do a fun thing in class today and I actually followed through. That's rare for me. But I did it... My friend Kristin is going to make me a whole collection. Because I said so. She is finding this out as she reads this post. Thanks!

Divorce Diet

My friend Allison mentioned something to me about the "Divorce Diet" and we didn't actually get a chance to talk about it, but it seems pretty self explanatory to me, especially since I seem to be on it.

I've had weight issues for a long time. I distinctly remember "confessing" to Jessica Noble in the 5th grade that I weighed 100 pounds. I was so embarrassed and ashamed about it. Now, in contrast, watching that show, "Too Fat for Fifteen" about a camp for overweight teens, a little girl named Emily (!) who is 11 years old, weighed in at 211 pounds when she arrived at the camp. She's probably really tall for her age, but either way, she doesn't look that terrible and neither did I. But when I got my driver's license 5 years later and wrote 179 down as my weight, I was definetly over 200 pounds at that point. I am only 5 foot 5 inches. I definetly think the constant harrassment by my family about my weight probably didn't do too much to curb that whole "self-fufilling prophecy" thing.

My weight is kind of always going up and down, but I had kicked the 200's butt in 2008 and dropped 60+ pounds and have maintained a 10/12 size since then. I was on an upswing on my weight before this started, weighing in at a whopping 189.8 pounds, which was really freaking me out. It was the heaviest I had been in two years, even though I could still get in my clothes.

Yesterday was the two week mark of the day I had found out. I weighed in at 179 even this morning.

I tried to eat a litle tonight and it positively made me feel absolutely sick and nauseated almost immediately. I did end up waiting it out and eating, but my new food habits are fascinating to me, because in all the bizarre eating habits I have (I am a binger and can find ANYTHING to binge on, including broccoli. And no, I'm not kidding.), I have gone to a whole new level of weird [for me at least].

Tonight I had Pumpkin Ravioli, one of my favorites, from Whole Foods. It's a fresh pasta imported from Italy and is freakishly expensive but I splurged on it since I haven't been eating very much. Typically I would make a sage butter (margarine) sauce, or goat cheese, butter sauce (margarine, again), or olive oil and balsalmic sauce. I'd also typically have a nice salad and a couple slices of bread to sop up the sauce. (Typing that out now it sounds totally disgusting.)

Tonight I put some salt on it and drank a glass of water. Oh, and some pasta water got in there too. I think I had like, at least 8 raviloi. It felt like way too much. That was it. Just salt and water.

Divorce Diet?

...
I went to the lab yesterday and had them run tests. So far, everything has come back normal. I had to do it. You just never know what could happen or how it could. I hated being there. (I told the receptionst everything too, of course.)

...

A fellow blogger reached out to me today, and it just, it really helped. I have been having super issues with holding everything in. It is making me feel tense ALL the time, to an extreme. I am always on edge, always ready to run, like we are on the verge of a natural disaster and I have to be ready. I feel freaked out, tense, stressed and any other synonyms you can think of for those words, all day long. And when this blogger reached out, I cried. I needed to cry so bad. When I cry now, I actually cry OUT. It sounds like an animal dying. I sound like a dying moose or dog or something. I'm sure the neighbors are loving it. But I need to cry. My heart hurts. I am scared.

As I think about these things, like my post last night, I worry. Matt's motivations in everything are scary. If he was manipulating and lying to me purely for his own benefit and just feeding me lines, "I didn't have anything because I didn't have you," and was seeking out some kind of revenge on his wife and using me in the process... I feel sick. If he truly loved me, then how could he have lied? Either option or scenario is not good and the first in particular, if true is going to make this whole process a whole lot more difficult to process. I've been used and dumped before. At this point, even though I was lied to, if that is what happened, and it happened again, then there is something I am doing to attract these people. I can't take the heartache. I don't want this to be my fault. I don't want to be responsible for what he did. And I feel like it's my fault.

I loved him. I really loved him. I thought it was real. It WAS real to me. Every moment of it. I had never been so happy. This was the best relationship I had ever been in and that is no exageration whatsoever! I just remember sitting with him, and smiling so big and just telling him, "I am SO happy. I have never been SO happy. You make me SO HAPPY!" I would squeal like a pig with glee I was so giddy. My dad bragged to family about how happy and proud he was... that it was about time for me. That I deserved some happiness and someone who treated me right.

I thought I had that.