Ok, how to start. Well, I was born, I grew up...ha ha. Seriously, I was born in a small town in East Texas in the heart of the piney woods named Longview. Growing up was hard, we never had a lot of money, but i was spoiled a bit by my maternal grandparents at the time. Yes, I am the baby of the family, though in later years the family was so dysfunctional that titles had no real meaning for me. I have strugled with the pain and depression and anxiety for so long i barely remember when it began for me. My current struggle is not having enough insruance or money for the rx'. So thats me!

Well, the above picture of me is the one i normally post to websites, but since this site is about honesty and results, i figured i would post the updated version (the one with bags under her eyes and that defeated look on her face) in the profile section.  This is just a reminder of how I used to be before the pain, anxiety, insomnia and depression took over my life.  This picture was taken by my best friend at Baylor University in Waco Tx.  She calls it my last virginal shot, lol.  By the time I made it to Baylor, I was having muscle pain, ibm and depression.   This has steadily gotten worse over the years to the point that now I just want to jump off a cliff.  But I digress.

I have a habit in my life for running from things which are painful or conflictional.  I ended up quitting Baylor one year from graduation because my depression was to the point i couldnt work two jobs and go to school and try to avoid my ex bf who was schizophrenic and stalking me.  So I move back home, moved in with my sister and started working for a law firm.

This was not so bad, actually enjoyed the work, but I hated my homelife. I was 27 years old and living at home, constantly berated by my mother (who is all kinds of crazy) and was just aching to be free.  So I developed an online relationship and ended moving to Dallas Tx.  This was one of the worst ideas yet.  My new love had a serious drinking problem, and I ended up finding out was a sex addict as well.  Now during all this serious drama, I found I was hurting terribly, had stomach issues, couldn't sleep and wa very depressed.  I did get a fantastic job at a law firm in Dallas, but this was pretty much the up-side for me.  I have never been good with money, and seemed to spend as much or more than i was making because it was a type of therapy for me.  Don't feel good, go buy a new comforter.  Not to mention my ex was now drinking a lot of my profits as well.

Then my grandfather passed away from cancer a week after being diagnosed.  It was the hardest thing I ever had to deal with.  I was his world and he was the rock I knew would hold me up when I was weak.  My grief was so overwhelming I didn't know how to deal with it at all.

It was around this time I started seeing a pain specialist, then a neurologist, who both told me it was stress and the pain i had in my neck and shoulders was just tension and I had to learn to de-stress.  Yeah, right.  They gave me a great deal of painkillers and muscle relaxers and sent me on my merry way.  Well, to be perfectly honest, I started using both those things to self medicate not only the physical pain but the emotional pain as well.  I know there were days at work when everyone could tell i was gorked out of my head, but no one said anything and I just kept trying to ignore the fact that my boyfriend was cheating on me, i had no rent money, my apartment looked like a trash bin, and i was failing at a job that was the best i ever had.  Oh, yea, and the one time I tried to find someone else who was a nice person to date, I ended up being raped.  It was just one fun thing after another at my house.

Very long story short, i had what most people would call a nervous breakdown and sat on my couch for a long time trying to decide if i should take the bottle of pills in my hand or just go home to longview.  Because I knew my oldest sister loved me, and I had nieces and nephews that did too, I packed up  my new kittens and went home.  Most of my family simply looked at me with an expression that said "I told you so" but my oldest sister, Chris, knew I was on the brink of being lost forever.  It took some trial and error, but we finally found a psychiatrist that dealt with my emotional issues for the first time in my life.  My sister literally saved my life, which explains some of the choices I made later on in regards to her and her family which haven't turned out well.

Anyway, before I write a whole book, to sum up to this point, spent a few months healing, then followed Chris to Florida where she was going to work a temp nurse position, had some nice times down there. I do remember the pain in my muscles were better, and of course we were swimming everyday so the FMS was better, only I didn't know that was what it was at the time.

Hence another great dysfunctional leap within family (my mother and other sister) and Chis had moved to Hot Springs, AR and I followed her here. This is where we have been since 2002 and where i started to get worse and worse.  Arkansas has not been good for me.  The Economical climate is such that the legal jobs i had here were barely able to pay my car payment with no health insurance, and the job I have now at a customer service company helping people when they call in about their phone service only has a limited health plan and 1000.00 a year prescription plan.  I was finally diagnosed last year by a rheumatologist, but have not been able to afford the medicine she prescribed (lyrica) which really did seem to help or keep up with visits.  Now I am dealing with pain in my abdomen and constant nauseu and vomiting.  I am so exhausted I don't have the energy to be nice to anyone, so i walk around and everyone thinks i am being bitchy.  Especially my brother-in-law.  He is one of the most self-centered people I have ever met, and the longer i have to live with him the more i want to just run away or kill myself.  I have so much anger built up toward him, he just always seems to be making judgements about me, or doing things to make me feel like a worthless piece of crap.  He isn't violent, but you can always tell when he is playing the victim because of the passive aggressive statements he makes to me and my sister and their kids. 

Sorry to have written so much visceral crap...but I guess I needed to vent.  Thanks to anyone who had the time on their hands to read it all!