I'm trying to do something productive with my day instead of just spending the whole day crying.
To say I'm disappointed is an understatement. I ran out of my migraine preventative medicine Thursday night. I have to take it every night and if I miss a dose it takes about 12hrs for the withdrawals to kick in. Saturday (the one day R and I got to ourselves for the past month) I woke up feeling atrocious since it had been over 32hrs since i had my last dose. R took me to the pharmacy so I could pick up my refill. Normally I only take the meds at night because they make me tired but since I was already feeling withdrawals I went ahead and took them as soon as I got them.

And slept all day. Effectively wasting all the time we had together. Managed to wake up enough to go out and get a burger at our favourite burger place.
And then slept some more.

I hate wasting time sleeping when I'm supposed to be enjoying real quality time with my boyfriend that I barely ever get to see even though we live together.

I'm so mad at myself for wasting the entire day. I waited a MONTH to get that one day and I ruined it.

It will be at least another 3 weeks before we even come close to maybe getting to spend that much time together again, probably longer.

Maybe then I'll be able to manage not fucking things up.

I don't know about anyone else, but I seem to have this huge disconnect between my mind and body. What do I mean by this? Let me try to explain as best I can since this is something I am still trying to grasp, much less communicate.

See, my "fight or flight" response is kinda screwed up. My flight responses will kick in hard core for absolutely no reason at all, whatsoever. I can just be sitting at my desk doing my usual thang when all of a sudden I feel the overwhelming urge to GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! PANIC! IT'S TIME TO PANIC!!!

It's extremely irritating because it makes it impossible for me to focus on whatever I need to focus on. This has been a problem for as long as I can remember. I can remember being a kid waking up in the middle of the night feeling like this. Most of the time it happens when I'm drifting off to sleep. It used to be much worse when I was taking medication for sleep like Lunesta. One time I apparently called Reid in the middle of the night (before we moved in together) and told him he needed to get our hedgehog and himself out of the house and run for it, didn't matter where, he just needed to leave.

Yeah.

I *know* there is nothing to be afraid of. I *know* that everything is fine, and that my wellbeing is not currently being threatened. But my body doesn't know this. My body goes through the motions of a panic attack even when logically I know it's a waste of time and just plain silly.

Sometimes though, there are little stupid things that trigger this response. The past few days have been excruciating because of this. There is a meeting tonight with our "poly-pod" (since it's not a triad or a quad considering there are 8 of us) and even though I know it's just going to be an evening of relaxed conversation and check-in's to make sure everyone is okay and we're all on the same page and happy and what our expectations are moving forward yadda yadda yadda, my body has been freaking out over it. This time because it was triggered by 4 little words, "We need to talk."
Nothing will make me blanch faster than those words. They send me into full blown panic mode. Logically, I know that this isn't something to dread. Everyone else keeps going on about how much fun it will be and stuff but I'm completely miserable and I have no idea why other than the fact that we need to talk.

I don't know what my subconscious is so afraid of to trigger these responses, either over nothing at all or something that is logically stupid.

Anybody else ever feel this way? Like you have a major disconnect between your logical, thinking mind and your automatic physiological responses? If so, how do you deal with it?

@DougX831

Actual conversation that just transpired at work:

Me: "Thank you for calling ____, this is Meg."

Telemarketer: "May I please speak to the man of the house?"

Me: "Pardon?"

Telemarketer: "May I please speak to the decision maker or the man of the house?"

Me: "I'm sorry, this is an equal opportunity business and I've decided that we don't want whatever services you are trying to sell."

Telemarketer: *hangs up*

That, my friends, is how you get it done.

As many of you know, marriage is a touchy subject for me in which I am torn in two, and the two pieces of me have completely different feelings towards the subject.
There's the me that grew up in a reformed evangelical/charismatic cult (it was NOT a church, I won't sully "church" by saying SGM was one. They are a cult through and through.) where girls didn't go to college, they didn't get a job outside of the home, and they lived with their parents, under their father's complete control, until a guy came along who wanted to court them and then they got married, power transferred from father to husband, and wife was expected to stay and tend the home and pop out babies. It was highly frowned upon for a woman to pursue any other life calling other than being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Think I'm joking? HA. One woman was lauded in front of the whole church on Mother's Day for quitting her job as a very well off attorney and staying home to make their house nice for her husband, even though he struggled to make ends meet because he didn't have as good a job as his wife. Didn't matter that now her husband is worn ragged. Nope. She realized women need to stay home for their own good and that is something worth rejoicing.

ANYWAYS

Then there's the other me who woke out of the stupor and the brainwashing that I endured my entire life. I realized that marriage in and of itself doesn't mean ANYTHING. It's just a piece of paper. It's just a legal status. It's the relationship that matters. I am in a committed, long-term relationship. We are tied together legally through many things; our lease, our utilities, etc. Both our names appear on all these things, even though we don't share a last name. We split all financial responsibilities right down the middle, and whatever we each have left in our bank account afterward is our own to do as we please with (we do not share all our money, his is his, mine is mine). I don't need a piece of paper to tell me that this guy is committed to me, I see it every day by his actions, his words, his whole being. This half of me is very cynical of marriage in light of how it was portrayed to me my entire life. It's not the end all be all. 99% of my friends are married now (all between ages of 20-25). One of them is already getting a divorce (right before their second anniversary). 90% of my friends who are married only dated/courted their spouse for a few months before getting married. Maybe. MAYBE a year in some cases. Most of their engagements were 3-6 months long before the wedding. Most of them got married because they figured it would help whatever problems they were having in their relationship. Maybe if they got married those problems would go away. Maybe it's because they are struggling too hard with wanting to bone each other so they should just get married so they can and then it will be all fine.
Stupid.

So here I am caught in the middle and I finally figured out where my biggest insecurities were coming from (outside of the pressure I have been getting for years from my family and friends, to which I tell them to kindly fuck off since it's not their business).
I've been engaged before. In fact, when I started this blog I was 2 months away from my first proposal. I wrote about it here and though I'm not sure how many people are still around who remember that day 4 years ago, it's still fresh in my mind (it was beautiful and it was perfect). I was supposed to get married September 14, 2009. I was dumped July 7, 2009 after "giving away" my virginity 3 days prior to my ex-fiance (who was also a virgin). I had my wedding dress picked out. I was only a couple of days away from buying it. I had my decorations. I had my registration. I had all the things a bride-to-be should have had.
But I didn't get married. I never bought the dress. I never got to where his grandmother's wedding band. THANK GOD.

Fast forward to today.

I still struggle with feeling insecure. I get angry sometimes, really angry and I didn't know why until I was driving home last night.

I realized I went from being in a relationship with a man who said he wanted to marry me but didn't, to a man who is in every way but legally married to me, but won't actually propose or go ahead and get married already.

That's the big issue I think. That's what bothers me the most and I didn't know it until I connected the dots last night. One man said he would marry me but didn't do it. The other does it every day, but won't say it (even though we've been talking about it for 3 years). And yes, I did pulse that he left his browser history page up and that he had been looking at rings, but there was only 3, and less than a minute spent on any of the pages (hey, it's not my fault, he left it open for the whole world to see and no, I didn't go through the rest of his history, that'd be stupid. That's the thing that made me mad because I know he still really has no intention on proposing any time soon. He has it in his head that you have to date for 8-10 years before getting married like his parents did. Only his parents met and started dating in high school.)

In the end, I still don't need that piece of paper. I don't need that change of relationship status on Facebook. I don't need it because I have everything I need right now without those things. I have everything I've ever wanted in this man. He's everything I wanted, needed, and so much more. Even though I am dreading going to his cousin's wedding next week with every fiber of my being because I know I'm just going to get bombarded with, "So when are you two going to married?????" Seriously, why can't people mind their own business?

I don't need a diamond ring to know that he wants to spend the rest of his life with me. I know that from how he treats me every minute of every day.

And I think that's the most important thing.

I would write about my weekend, but I know all of ya'll are too lazy to go through the process of being authorized to read X-rated sites

So here's a picture of Scully dog instead.

Before I begin the excitement that will be the rest of today, I want to just take a moment to recognize someone important in my life.

It's no secret that Reid and I are mad crazy for each other. The past 3 years with him have been anything but smooth sailing. The first week into our relationship, he came speeding to my house with a buck knife to chase off my biological father who was trying to beat down the front door of my mom's house to "make me sorry" (aka "beat the living shit out of me, again") for telling him to fuck off after he almost killed my dog. I have never and will never talk to him again after that. A few weeks after that incident, Reid had to take me to the hospital on my 21st birthday because I had pleurisy so bad I got to where I almost stopped breathing at my dinner.
2 months into our relationship I left for Air Force BMT. I was gone from March 30th until June 9th. Reid wrote to me every single day. Sometimes more than once. When I was stuck in the medical discharge squadron, he would print off pages and pages of my favourite forums and websites and mail them to me so I would have something to read (mainly textsfromlastnight and somethingawful choose your own adventure threads).
June 9th when I stepped off the plane around 11:45pm he was standing, toes on the tape that marked where people in the waiting lounge could not pass, with a bouquet of my favourite flowers in my favourite colours (which he actually pilfered from various gardens around his neighborhood). He was there with me for every ER trip I took that year because my migraines were so out of control I thought I was going to die.
The fall after that he moved in with me when I got so severely depressed I couldn't even get out of bed. He made sure I was fed and did his best to keep me from laying down on the train tracks that were 50yds from our back door. Without him, I surely would have killed myself by now, no if's and's or but's about that. Reid is the only stable thing I've ever known in my entire life.

This morning I woke up feeling awful. I had a stuffy nose all night and I was pretty sure I had a slight fever (but then again the house is freaking cold right now since we haven't run the heat in a good month or so). I knew he had a horrible night the night before and hardly slept. Neither one of us has slept much since my surgery. I rolled over and apologized to him for more than likely keeping him up all night and how I had been nothing but a dead weight (sometimes literally) and a bother all this past week. He didn't say anything, he just leaned over and kissed me and looked at me with his stormy blue eyes and said he loved me, no matter what.

This man loves me. ME of all people. I can't even begin to wrap my head around the "why?????" But that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter why he loves me, what matters is that he does love me. There's not a lot of people who would not complain at having to pick me up off the couch (and toilet) every day this past week just so I could stand. There's not a lot of people who would go out of their way to make me as happy as possible, even if it means going across town to get my favourite soup. I've never had a boyfriend who could even stand for me to cry in their presence, but Reid is always there, with his arms wide open.

Sure, we have our bad days. There's things I do that annoy the crap out of him that I wish I could change about myself. I wish for his sake I wasn't such trash but he doesn't complain about having a dumpster girlfriend. I thought love was aloof, I thought love was withholding. I thought love was bruises and black eyes. I thought love lasted until they found out you were damaged goods. I thought wrongly.

If there is someone out there who is "the one" (a belief I don't subscribe to, personally) then I think I've found him in Reid. It's undeniable that we have a special connection. He's even said to me that sometimes he doesn't even feel like I'm a different person, but an extension of himself with awesome tits. I feel the same way, although his tits aren't as awesome.

Anyways, I just really needed to rant about how undeserving I am of a man who is so kind, graceful, forgiving, loving, and awesome. Feel free to vomit now.