2011 Catch-up

I purposefully write my blogs as entries in a developing story. Because of that, if you've missed one or two posts, I'm sure you feel reluctant to jump back in without reading everything in order, which takes time. Because of this, I've decided to do a catch-up post of the developments of the past two months, as there have been quite a few.

At the New Year I decided to take a break from dating, and was promptly contacted by a guy one of my readers calls Captain SmartyPants on my defunct Match.com profile that hadn't been active since the middle of last year. He was perfect on paper but not in person, and another Match contact I call S was intriguing until after he showed a jealous side before we had even met. The same exact weekend I hung out with my year-long friend D and had a hang-out session turned date, and have returned to the hangout stage as his impulsive kiss came as a shock to even himself.

Health-wise I finally received a diagnosis of sleep apnea which has put me on a CPAP machine to keep me from waking up every six minutes. Turns out what I thought was deep sleep was not really deep at all. Just as they say patients need to be their own advocates, I'm the one who suggested seeing a sleep doctor, and I'm very glad I did.

As the year goes on I continue to fight for social security benefits -- the next step being an administrative hearing which my lawyers are in the process of setting up. I'm also fighting for my disability insurance to pay for my CPAP machine, since even though they don't cover durable medical equipment, the sleep apnea is what is (at least partially) causing me to need their insurance in the first place. From my point of view, if they pay for the machine and I can get better, get off the insurance, and then they won't have to pay anything. The insurance alone was a struggle to keep this year as my GP stated in my mid-year review that I could work. Thankfully my neurologist has come around and declared that this is not true, stating sleep apnea and ataxia as the reasons for incapacity.

Lastly, I've started seeing a therapist as my mom has disclosed some events from my past that need working through. This therapy -- which I get at an alarmingly low sliding scale rate -- is changing my views not so much about the world around me, but about myself. What I thought were weaknesses are coming out as strengths, and so I enter this new year with a firmer self-awareness and appreciation of my personhood.

All of the happenings of this year make the current focus of this blog that of loving ourselves just as we are, appreciating what makes us uniquely us, and knowing that fighting for what we need and want is -- while a continuous struggle -- something that pays off and keeps us on the road to wellness.