Christmas Eve

So it's Christmas Eve. I got home from work about 1am and am still up. I am not sure what I am going to actually do today other than obviously go to sleep at some point. I really just want to spend the day in bed to make up for not having my usual Wednesday in bed this week. Somehow it seems a bit depressing to spend Christmas Eve in bed, but I don't really want to do anything else. I think I will need to leave the apartment at some point for food.. although because of coworkers I have a variety of candy, a couple cookies, and a cupcake. I am logically aware that I need to eat something besides that, hence the need to either search the freezer or go out.

I am going to my parent's house Christmas day and probably staying the night because my brother is coming on the 26th. I honestly have been depressed enough that I considered asking about going over Christmas Eve as well. I honestly am not going because my mom had surgery on the 23rd and I have a feeling should be resting. I am not sure if that sounds logical but I mean that if I am there, she might feel obligated to spend time with me rather than resting. I know I haven't really talked about this topic at all. My mom has a variety of health problems including a lot of chronic pain. She just got a sort of electronic implant for nerve pain. I am too tired to come up with the right words for that. She has neuropathy and nerve pain from a combination of diabetes and an after effect of the chemotherapy she had for lymphoma. She's thankfully been cancer free for almost ten years, but I guess it can be a side effect of the treatment. They did a trial run with the nerve thing and apparently it helped a lot with the pain. I am hoping it helps because currently she is on a lot of medication (Lyrica and tramadol and honestly not sure what else) that only kinda helped and very much made it hard for her to function. It actually didn't look like insurance was going to approve the surgery in time to have it when it was scheduled, so I was so happy to be woken up by a text from my dad saying it was happening. He also texted after they got home and it went well. So I am letting her rest and then tomorrow I will visit.

I have a bit of a problem with denial when it comes to my mom's health. When I first got treatment for my bulimia, my mom was going through chemo. I sort of didn't tell anyone in treatment about this. They found out when she showed up for family group with a scarf on her head because it was after she had lost her hair. What I don't think people understood was that I wasn't ignoring the cancer. At the time I was just so unwell that I could not even entertain the thought that she wouldn't be fine. I had to believe with every fiber of my being that all of the cancer had been removed by surgery (splenectomy) and the chemotherapy was a precaution and she was fine. I believed that no cancerous cells were left and it would never come back. If I had allowed myself to acknowledge anything other than that version of reality, I would not have made it. I would have given up on my own life and let the depression and bulimia kill me because that would have been better than life without her. I only acknowledged how delusional I was after she was years into remission and I was in a better place. I have a lot of guilt about it because I think to her it may have seemed like I didn't care because I didn't talk to anyone about it. I don't think I have ever really tried to explain to anyone the way my reality worked at the time. I mean in college I lost a lot of sleep over the fact that my parents smoked. My life depended on them being alive because I clearly was not able to care for myself. I barely survived high school. I expected to have killed myself before graduation. The years since then have been kinda screwed up by the fact that I never allowed myself to make long term goals because I expected to be dead. This is still true. So I am still occasionally delusional in terms of believing that my parents will never die. They are a constant that I need in my life in order to have a reason to live.

So this was a strange post. I don't know why I picked Christmas Eve to bring it up. I am exhausted and unwell and am still debating what to do about that. Today I think I will go to sleep and when I wake up decide how much reality I can handle. Maybe I will leave the apartment. Maybe I will drink more vodka and stay in bed. On Christmas I will attempt to be a functioning human being, but for now it doesn't matter.