I am so annoyed with the management of my apartment complex. My boyfriend and I are an issue with the people who live before is due to my tourettes. And yet what has management done about it? LITERALLY. NOTHING. The neighbors are cursing at me through the walls and all management says is “I’ll talk to upper management and be in touch.” If that isn’t bullshit double talk, I don’t know what is. I’m sorry to be crap-talking someone like this, but my boyfriend and I have been dealing with the obnoxious neighbors for months now and mange meant has literally done nothing and I am so fed up with it. It’s not my fault that I have tourettes. I’m doing everything I can to make my tics better (none of its really working but still, I’m trying), and yet management won’t even TALK to them. What the utter fuck! I am so pissed off about this, it’s insane. Fuck. Just FUCK.
Abby, baby, what’s wrong?
My nearly 3-year old tabby cat, Abby, just randomly attacked me for no reason. He was laying next to me in bed and I was petting him. I stopped for a minute, and then suddenly, he went bezerk! He was biting and scratching and clawing into my skin! It took several minutes of me talking to him, holding the back of his neck and trying to pick him up to move him, before I finally could pick him up and closed him in my bathroom. He’s been in there for a few minutes now. When I’m done writing this post, if he’s calmed down, I’ll let him out. I just don’t understand why he suddenly attacked me out of the blue! A little bit before he was sitting on my chest and purring madly while I petted and scratched him. He was very happy. And then not even five minutes later, he went nuts. I don’t understand. Does anyone have any advice? Because now my arms are covered with scratches from his thick claws that he refuses to let me cut.
BTW: He is a boy and his name is Abby. When we first took him in (he was feral), we thought he was a girl, and we named him Abigail. About 2 months or so later, when we took him to get fixed, we were told he was a boy. But he already knew his name, and so it stuck. Haha.
Melatonin: What’s Your Damage?
If you’ve read my first post, you’ll know I have really terrible insomnia. I’ve struggled with it my entire life, even when I was a little girl. I’ve tried everything over the years and sometimes things help for a while, but eventually everything stops working (just like any meds for my tourettes). While I was getting my IVIG treatments from my tourettes I was sleeping much better (I’m actually starting that treatment again tosay, so I’m extremely excited!!). But over the past three weeks, after I finished my first 3-month round of my treatment, my sleeping had turned to shit again. So a couple days ago, for myself and my boyfriend (who is having trouble sleeping lately as well for a reason we cannot figure out), I got us Melatonin gummies from Walmart (I don’t care how old you are, gummies are ALWAYS better than pills). He still hasn’t taken any yet; I don’t know why but it’s incredibly frustrating. Anyway, however, I love them. I take one and within about an hour I’m falling asleep. I have noticed one… Issue, however. Since I’ve started taken them, I’ve had a very difficult time, well, not sleeping. By that I mean, when I take the melatonin, I don’t just sleep for 8 hours. I sleep for like, 12. Or more. I slept for about 5 hours last night, and then I slept from 7 AM until about 5 PM. That’s actually more than 12 hours. Shit. It’s crazy. And I have no idea why it’s working this way. But I am starting my treatment again today, so after today I shouldn’t need to even take the melatonin anymore. Now I just have to get T. to take it… Lol.
Parlez-vous français?
My heart goes out to those suffering in France. While I am still not completely sure as to what happened, I do know that their was some kind of attack, – possibly terrorist related – people have died, and others are still suffering. The president has always imposed a curfew on Paris, something that has not been done since 1944. My god. Tragedies like this… Senseless. Utterly senseless. Along with my gigantic love of French history, I’m roughly half French, and so I have a strong attachment to the place. Even regardless of that, however, when something like this happens, something of a human being’s creation, something that some terrible human being decided to bring about, instead of a horrific act of Mother Nature that could not have been avoided no matter what precautions were taken, and absolutely inexcusable. I’m sorry for my rant that is kind of in pieces. I’m not very good at expressing my sadness and outrage at events like this. I don’t know why. All I know is that people are suffering and dying, and my heart goes out to them.
All About MEEE, hahahaha….
Okay. Sorry about the weird title, guys. Haha. I may be a writer but I absolutely suck at titles. Words from the Dragonfly was one of the few I’ve ever actually come up with in my life. But anyway, this post is going to be the promised post that talks about me, who I am, my medical conditions, and some other important and non-ranty stuff (like my last post, haha).
Alright, first things first. My name is Lexi Vorce. My full name is longer but its not important, because I don’t use it. I jut go by Lexi. I am 22 years old and I live in the oven that is Texas (it is November and it is still 75 digress outside). I am currently (kind of) enrolled at Texas State University, studying for a degree in Creative Writing with a German minor. However, I want to change that to a degree in Creative Writing with a minor in multiple foreign languages, as I want to learn a bunch. I say sort of enrolled because I have to do school from home due to my medical conditions, and I am currently only signed up for one class because it is near impossible for me to read now so one class is all I can handle. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I live here in Texas with my boyfriend, T., and our cat, Abby. I will not use the full names (or even just the first names) for any of the people in my life without their permission, as I feel it could be a violation of privacy or something like that. So my boyfriend, whose name starts with T., will be referred to only as such, unless I get around to asking him for his permission to use his name, If I used my mom’s name, it would be D., my sister would be K., etc. Just to clarify. On the 13th of this month, we will have been together for 3.5 years. It’s pretty exciting. He’s super great. When I was 13 years old (roughly), I was diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome, and OCD (a common sister disorder of Tourette’s Syndrome; so is insomnia, which I also suffer from). TS is a neurological disorder that causes involuntary and uncontrollable physical and vocal “tics” (what the symptoms are called). For example, some of mine are: kicking and punching the air/walls/etc., stomping on the floor/ground, pointing at random objects for no apparent reason, swearing (called coprolalia), repeating words, phrases, sounds, or full sentences that I see, hear, read, or write; spitting, hitting my head against walls, banging my fists on tables and punching walls with my fists, flinging my head back, screaming “help” (that’s a fun one in public, haha), making high-pitched, what my boyfriend calls, seal noises, just screaming out in general, small to large body twitches (the large ones look like seizures but I’ve never actually lost consciousness), banging my knukcles against tables, my keyboard, my computer screen, or anything else hard, and many, many, many others. It is impossible to list them all because ever since I was about halfway through my 18th year, my tics began to change. From 13-halfway through 18, they were stationary. Meaning, I had the same two main tics for those five years (snorting and the body shakes / twitches in varying “sizes”, small to large). But now, they change a lot, all the time, for reasons all the doctors I’ve been to can’t really explain. Apparently it’s not very normal for them to change. Anyway (I’m sorry this isn’t exactly an organized history; this has been going on for nearly a decade so its a lot to tell), all the doctors I’ve seen over the years (at least 15 or so) for my TS and OCD (i’ll get to that in a minute) were generally unable to help me. So for years, I struggled with it. I was in and out of school starting in the second semester of 9th grade. I did this thing called Home Bound, which is kind of like home school, except a teacher from my school came and tutored me twice a week. It was designed for students who got, for instance, mono, and had to be out for about a month, or pneumonia, or something like that, where they had to be gone for more than just a day or two. But me, I did it on and off until I graduated high school. From 9th until 12th grade, those four years, I physically attended school for roughly one year. The rest was done at home. And believe me, it was not fun. I hated it. I’m not good at self-motivation, so doing things on my own time like that, plus being around my mom every day nearly all day, and dealing with my tics, was a big struggle. I would have much rather have been able to go to school like a normal kid. Plus, I missed a lot of education that way. Because of having to be essentially homeschooled, I wasn’t able to take AP English my senior year, which had been something I was looking forward to since starting high school. I know it probably sounds weird to be upset by that, but I really was. Occasionally, one doctor or medication or another was able to help me for a short time. For example, one (if not the first) thing my first doctor put my on was called Tetrabenazine (now called Zenazine, I think). Once we got the dosage right (which amount to six pills a day of the stuff, which is a LOT), it actually did help. Granted, it made me feel like a zombie because I was so tired, and so I had to take Provigil in the morning to help wake me up, Tetra throughout the day so I could go to school, and then sleeping pills at night to battle my insomnia. I was kind of a mess. But that was what enabled me to get through half of my ninth grade year. But, at the beginning of the second semester (I still remember it happening), I realized my tics were too bad, I asked my teacher if I could go to the nurse, and that was the last time I physically attended school that year. The tetra had stopped working, and it was home bound for 14 year old me (my birthday is in July, so I was always about a year younger than my grade).
Okay, that’s enough for now. My medical history is big and long, so I’ll do it in multiple posts to save you the trouble of reading a huge, long block of text. More soon, I promise. 🙂
Oh god, today…
Today has been a really bad day, guys. First off, yesterday one of my tires went flat. I don’t have a spare. So my boyfriend, T., and I spent 2.5 hours yesterday early evening and from 9AM – 4 PM dealing with that issue today! We had to call roadside assistance and spent half the day waiting for the damn tow truck. The man with the tow was very nice but still. On top of that, my parents, who are well off due to my dad’s good job, are running out of money to pay for my incredibly expensive IVIG infusions for my Tourette’s syndrome. I really need to get an online job but 1, I’ve never had any legitimate job before, and 2, it is incredibly difficult to navigate between the real jobs and the scam ones when you have no experience with this kind of thing. I want to get a job. I’ve wanted to get one for years. But now it’s become more than just a desire; it’s a need, a necessity. And I’m totally lost in this sea of potential job opportunities and scams on the vast Internet. And then on top of all of that, I got about an hour of sleep last night, we’re kind of broke, my tics and OCD are terrible and I have a massive headache. Today just sucks.
I’m sorry for the super-rant about my crappy day today. I promise the next post will be more interesting.
Insomnomania
I hate having insomnia. It is definitely not the “bee’s knees,” as some so term positive things. I attend college online, am currently unemployed, and no outside the home responsibility on a regular basis due to having incredibly severe Tourette’s syndrome, OCD, and PANDAS (I’ll talk about them later). So normally, not being able to sleep, while irksome, it not necessarily detrimental to my daily life (and FYI: my current position is life is not to be envied and definitely not all it’s cracked up to be). However, tomorrow, I do have a few things I need to do outside of the home. I need to visit my university’s library to use their free printer; I need to get groceries; and I need to return an article of pajamas to Walmart. None of that sounds particularly taxing or difficult (unless you have Tourettes, OCD, and PANDAS; again, more on that later). Regardless of that fact, however, my boyfriend leaves for work at 3:30 PM. That means I need to be up by 11 AM & leave by 12 PM to complete my errands and be back before he leaves (we only have one car). That, my friends, is the issue here. If he wasn’t working tomorrow, tonight’s insomnia would not be an issue. But alas, it is, and alas even more, I am immensely frustrated.
Yours Most Truly,
~Lexi 𓋹
Words from the Dragonfly 