Late July Monte Report

My medical leave of absence from work expired this week. I was hoping that I would remain an employee with a status of "intermittent" -- which would allow me to do some work at times, but without any particular schedule. Specifically, there is work on a large spreadsheet that I was hoping to have the opportunity to do. Unfortunately, my boss decided not to retain me on the payroll, and so I'm being terminated. Part of me expected this to happen, but it turns out I wasn't prepared to hear the news. I had worked there for more than thirteen years, and I feel even more lost than ever now. The intermittent status that I was hoping for would have provided me with a small link to the organization, and since I hope to work there again some day, that small link was very important to me. My boss assured me that I would have every opportunity to return once there's a turnaround in my condition and I can make a commitment to the organization again, provided a suitable position opens up. But still it feels like a physical blow, as well as a psychological blow.

I'm at my parents' house right now. In a few days I'll make my seventh (and "last") trip to Washington since early April. My new house is still without carpeting, and so I've been sleeping on a mat in the kitchen. I've been basically living out of a suitcase for four months now, and it has long since grown wearisome to be separated from 99% of my stuff. The carpet people are supposed to show up on August 6th. At that point I can begin to unpack and hopefully some normalcy will return to my life. Maybe at that point I can begin to try and unravel my brain and really focus on getting better. It's going to take a lot of motivation, though: at this point I just keep wishing I'd die in my sleep or something easy like that. Now that the wait for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is over, it's hard to find something to look forward to. You'd think I'd look forward to living in such a beautiful location. But instead I'm fretting about money (my disability insurance company is still being very unhelpful) and whether I'll ever feel safe going back to a normal full-time job again. Ostensibly I'm interested in birds and butterflies and dragonflies and other nature-oriented things. But it's a struggle to pay attention to these things, just like it's a struggle to get out of bed each morning.

One big hope that I had was that I'd find a psychiatrist in Washington who would come up with some new master plan for my meds and then I'd have a miraculous recovery. My new primary care physician all but squashed that idea when he told me that there are hardly any psychiatrists in my new county, and so I've had to settle for a psychiatric nurse. My appointment with him isn't until August 10th, so maybe a miraculous recovery is still in the cards. But I'm not optimistic -- and I'm especially worried that my disability benefits will be disqualified if I'm not under the care of an actual psychiatrist. Sigh. I'll let you know how it goes.