Fear of the Apple People

I know I have a problem when I need to ask my friends for help.  I know I have a problem when I need to ask my therapist for help.  I know I have a problem when I have to go to a twelve step program for help.  I know I have a problem with my MAC and I cannot for the life of me pick up the phone to call Apple and ask for help.

This is so annoying.  I cannot even begin to express the level of annoyance I have with myself over this.  It’s pretty simple, all in all.  I got myself a re-furbished MAC book for Christmas.  I ordered Ipages and paid for it.  I tried to install and it didn’t work.  I called Apple and they gave me a code to put in.  It didn’t work.

So, instead of asking for help.  I, a) blog about it; b)ignore it; c) don’t tell my friends about it; and d)feel like an idiot for not being able to down load software I paid for.  Obviously, all of the above.

My therapist believes that it is due to my rough upbringing.  Having to be an adult far before I was capable of making adult decisions, of being put into circumstances that demanded adult response.  And thus, now, as an adult, I feel great fear around letting others know I’m actually a complete Luddite around machines and computers.

I suppose that definition is not quite accurate, I mean I do e-mail, I FaceBook, I am currently posting a blog, but ask me how to categorize the fucking entry and it will take me an hour to figure it out.  That’s the issue here.  I want to be the one to figure it out.  You’d think after all this time, I would stop trying to figure it out.  Figure it out is not a slogan you hear anywhere, but man, does it beat a mantra in my brain.

I had a supervisor once who was pretty intimidated by me.  Granted, I was not the nicest person to her and I had a huge superiority complex, still do really, but I will never, ever forget the day she caught me trying to load the Post-it dispenser.  I must have been trying to get the little pink accordians of paper into the dispenser for a good five minutes, when she came over and loaded it in three seconds.

“You’re pretty smart, aren’t you,” she said with a smirk.  “But you don’t know how to load a Post It dispenser, do you”?

“Ah, nope, ” I replied, chagrined.

She walk away without showing me how.  This is my fear.  I will call Apple, I will tell them I don’t know what I’m doing and they’ll hang up and laugh at me.  Now I know it’s completely idiotic and they record phone messages just for these kind of circumstances, but truly I can hear the tinny laughter of some woman in India giggling away.

Please, God, help me pick up the freaking phone.

Therapy

So, the un-fucking-believable just happened.  My therapist told me that I didn’t need weekly therapy anymore.  What?!  I have been carrying around this pre-conceived notion for so long, therapy as life long get used to it thing, that I couldn’t actually fathom the reality of the situation.

First there’s just the money saving thing.  My god, what I can do with two weeks of money that I’m not putting into my therapists wallet.  Granted, I have needed the woman and she has got me through some of the toughest times of my life–the death of my best friend, the trials and tribulations of belonging to not one, but three twelve step programs, dating (good lord that’s just a book in and of itself), my mother (which could be a trilogy), moving, losing jobs, getting jobs, money.  Fuck, the list could go on.

I used to think that there would be a Master’s after my name, or a PhD, you know, some lovely, fanciful string of letters signifying to the world exactly my greatness.  What I got instead– PTSD, ACA, Addict, Alcoholic, Classic Anxiety, Classic Depressive.  Sexy, eh? All with the help of my therapist.  Who told me this evening at my session that she was honored to be working with me and to be a small part of my recovery, but that she didn’t believe in continuing work with me when I have gotten so recovered.

Huh?  So, bi-weekly therapy.  Unless something crazy comes up, then of course she will make room for weekly sessions again.  This is amazing.   Can we say swing dance lessons with my boyfriend will be starting next Wednesday evening?  I can.

Cocaine And Vodka Enemas

So, I’ve been thinking this over ever since I went in to get a tattoo this past Tuesday, and I realized that it was just too good to pass up writing on.

My artist and I are both sober.  He’s been at it longer than I, but I’ve been around long enough to have heard some pretty gnarly stories.  And I have learned so much! If I ever relapse, I am so seriously fucked.  I was a fairly naive, even at the age of 32, woman when I got sober.  I had absolutely no real idea about the world of drugs and what people do to get what they want.

I learned that you can shoot cocaine.  Turns out it’s fairly common.  No clue.  I learned that you can chop up crack cocaine and mix it with lemon juice and shoot it directly into your neck to get high.  What? I have learned about scams and ways of laundering money, of how to get more out of your General Assistance check than one could realize.  I learned what the slang is for being committed non-voluntarily to the psyche ward; I have even seen the tattoo for it on a person’s neck and on another person’s fingers.

I have seen people do the crack dance at the corner of Mission and 16th, pecking at the dirty cement with moistened fingertips hoping against hope to snag a piece of it amongst the litter and filth.  I have smelled homeless people who haven’t bathed in weeks or months.  I have watched people shoot up heroin in the alley way behind St. John’s.  I have seen a sixty year old homeless woman with fried peroxide hair slamming the head of a homeless man against the sidewalk on Polk and Geary, screaming that she was going to kill him, while Monday morning foot traffic made it’s way downtown without stopping.

But I have never, until Tuesday, heard of a cocaine and vodka enema.  I was horrified, repulsed, and grossly curious.  Turns out if your man has “cocaine dick” or crystal meth dick, (I suppose the general public would refer to this as “whiskey dick”)  ie cannot get it up because they have too much of the drug in their system, the best thing to do is to ingest a shit ton of viagra while your girlfriend is giving herself a vodka/cocaine enema in the bathroom.

First, of course, she must cleanse out the area with a regular ol’ over the counter enema, then she goes in with the vodka cocaine enema–it numbs the anus.  Then the man who has the viagra erection and the teeth grinding meth high can fuck her in the ass for as long as he wants with out her feeling it, until the next day.

Can I just say that must be one fucking hell of a come down.  Ack.  And then it made me wonder, what does one do with the enema leftovers?  Do you catch it in a cup and reuse it?  I mean, that is where my addict mind goes.  There’s got to be cocaine in there, right?  Or do you mix up a fresh batch?  How long does the high last, how much cocaine does one use?  I mean you must get instantaneously high, the membrane of the anus is very permeable.

Of course, I couldn’t bring myself to ask.  I couldn’t, but that image of a woman prone on the cold tile floor of a bathroom with an enema pushed up her ass looking at the bottom of the toilet refuses to leave my mind.  Did she smoke a cigarette while she lay there?  I am assuming she was naked, how would one dress?  If you hold it in longer, do you get higher?

Yup, these are my Sunday afternoon musings while I sit in my pink fuzzy sequined slippers that I got at Nordie’s Off the Rack and drink a hot cup of Barry’s Irish Tea.  The sound of the cable in the street faintly whistling and humming, the drum of the rain, and somewhere in a bathroom not too far away there is a woman straining on a toilet seat flushed and high and numb.

You Know You’re An Adult

When you order a decaf americano because it’s after 5pm; and to add insult to injury you are setting the alarm clock for tomorrow while you wait in line to get your drink.

Ugh.  When did this happen?  I remember when 10pm wasn’t even time to go out, now it’s time for bed.  If I’m not in bed by 10pm I am one cranky lady the next day.

I used to schedule bartenders to come into work at 10pm.  No more.

You know you’re an adult when you make sure to buy groceries for the week, have a spending plan, pay your rent on time, get to work early, pay your utilities, buy every thing in cash, and drink decaf coffee.

I’ve grown up.  It only took me 37 years.