Yesterday I drove my own car to work instead of driving with Kevin so I could do some stuff afterwards. The song Hello by Adele played twice on the store’s overhead and then once on the car radio because I’d forgotten the hookup to listen to something on my phone.
The song is appropriate a couple days after learning my first boyfriend passed away. “Hello from the other side, I must have called a thousand times. To tell you I’m sorry for breaking your heart.”
Ughhhhh. It’s an older song from a few years ago, why is it coming up so much now? I did break his heart, but only because I was heavily pressured to I was only approximately 20, and we were under a ton of pressure to only want careers and not families.
Finally in the car, thank goodness I was alone because I said, “Matthew cut it out!”
Then laughed at myself. When that song first came out, I made fun of it, mostly because of this meme:
We are finally home from Louisiana. I’m extremely tired, because I had absolutely no sleep last night. Good thing I didn’t have to drive.
I mentioned when I married Kevin that he’s my 2nd husband, but the fourth time in my life that I’ve found love. The first time was when I was about 18, and I ended this relationship when I was about 20 or so. We also kept in touch online here and there over the years. (Every once in a blue moon- not literally.)
The supermarket chain that we do inventory at in Louisiana always pages their store managers by “Mr. Last Name”. At one store we did, the store manager had the same last name as a public figure that my first boyfriend couldn’t stop talking about when this public figure made the news last time we had an online conversation. I’m not going to say who the public figure was, just that he’s largely disliked but my first boyfriend seemed to admire him. I couldn’t care less, but the way they kept paging the manager at that store all day calling him by that last name brought my first boyfriend to mind. Then when we got back to the motel, I saw my favorite YouTube channel that “narrates near death experiences” had a new video so I clicked. This NDE featured a 75 year old woman whose first love dumped her after she had an abortion. It’s actually kind of a disturbing story, so I won’t link it, but she describes looking her first boyfriend up and finding out he had died. Shouldn’t have been surprising for a 75 year old, but I stopped the video, thinking- maybe I should do the same. So I did. And I found his obituary. He frickin died. I was so shocked that at first I thought, it must be someone else with the same first and last name. The same thing happened to me that happened to the woman in the NDE video.
I sat there with my mouth gaping open in shock. It was definitely him. I realized he hadn’t been on social media for a while. He would have said something when I got engaged and married.
As of right now now, I’m not going to link his obituary because even though he’s gone, I still want to protect his privacy. And even though the obituary itself doesn’t mention his son, there’s one comment that says the name of his minor son. I would rather keep his son’s personal information private as well. My first love was born in August of 1978 and died this past February of 2025 on his own “half birthday”. He was exactly 46 years and six months.
What bothers me greatly is that not only does his obituary not mention the name of his son, but it doesn’t mention literally anything about him except his dates of birth and death, the city he lived in, and a recent picture. It doesn’t say what happened or who he left behind. Obituaries get very elaborate, and absolutely nothing was mentioned about this man, who was a computer genius, a businessman, a father, brother and uncle. And a son, if his parents are still alive which I have no idea of. He had three siblings. They were not mentioned with (spouses in parentheses) like is usually done. Did he have nieces and nephews? Probably. In fact I did ask him once if he had nieces and nephews and he rattled off their names and who they belonged to, but I do not remember how many. I also know that he had a stepson that he never stopped visiting after he divorced his mother. No mention of that or of anything. It doesn’t seem fair. My 94 year old aunt Fran’s obituary just went on and on, with her work history, her love of cigarettes and coffee etc.
my first boyfriend did tell me once that he took Ritalin for many years as a kid and as a result, was living with a permanent heart condition. I wonder if this was his cause of death. It also could have been an accident or murder or suicide or something else entirely. I wonder, if he did die from the heart condition which was a result of long term Ritalin use as a child, is that why his family didn’t write anything, and that’s why the obituary just seemed like it basically just said “bye”. I mostly wouldn’t believe that he had specifically requested no obituary in his “dying days”. He blogged and tweeted and was on social media regularly. His final posts were in January of this year, and he seemed to still be working. I just can’t imagine someone with that much of an online presence would specifically ask their family for no obituary. Did his parents possibly leave everything out because they feel guilty? Are his three siblings going through the same illness? My speculations are wild today.
As soon as I learned about this I crawled in bed next to Kevin and thought, I’m so glad I have him now- because if I’d stayed with my first boyfriend, I’d be a widow right now instead of a newlywed. In fact, it’s eerily weird how my engagement and marriage happened so quickly after he actually passed away. Have you ever heard of people who claim that they try and get pregnant for a long time and then their grandma dies and a couple months later, they’re pregnant? It feels like that. (Heaven sent). It feels like my husband Kevin, who was always kind of ambivalent to the idea of engagement and marriage, all of a sudden wanted it just a few short days after my first boyfriend died and I didn’t know. It all feels Heaven sent. I would never tell Kevin that. He’s a skeptic. I don’t even believe it 100% myself, I just made the connection while looking at the calendar.
Then I got my daily Kalimera (good morning in Greek) message from my mom, and I told her. She responded, “Who?”
That was irritating. I’m an only child, and he was my first love. What do you mean who? I’ve been flustered with her selective memory lately. She asked what his last name was, and I just sent her the obituary (or lack thereof). She simply responded, “ RIP Now I remember him 😢”.
It was because of his picture. He looked exactly the same, just older.
I’m so glad to be home now, especially after my sleepless night. The last store we did was extremely dirty and run down. I spent most of the trip home in the passenger seat reading Kevin some of the Google reviews. They were hilarious, and we laughed our butts off.
That’s where we worked this morning, in a town called Vinton, Louisiana right across the Texas state line. We do this trip every three months. I’m glad I can have a really busy sport at work again, because at home with not much to do hasn’t been fun. I did a lot of side jobs, but eventually got tired of them. In a previous post, I mentioned that one of the apps asks for landscaping pictures around Mormon churches every month. Well they also occasionally want Dollar General and Family Dollar landscaping pictures. Those posted about three days ago, and I’ve been non stop with them. They aren’t as beautiful and scenic as the Mormon churches. They’re mostly all trashed. I’m required to walk around the entire building and take pics on all four sides, and backs of Dollar Generals and Family Dollars have never been pretty. Twice, I’ve seen (harmless) snakes. Twice I have been yelled at by management members that had the stereotypical “meth face”(but not recently). I can generally tolerate, get on the level of, and befriend any drug user except meth users. When people say meth is a hell of a drug, they mean it. Meth makes normal people stab others to death and cut their bodies up into little pieces. True crime binging is a hell of a hobby/habit too. Luckily these jobs are easy and the employees mostly don’t even see me. But by yesterday, I was sick of doing them. And that’s ok since I made pretty good money. Kevin and I have not had a Wednesday off in weeks and weeks- so I got to go to 25 cent day at the thrift store! I’m still working on a denim chenille quilt Etsy shop that’s likely to have other things as well. I stocked up on jeans and other items I can cut up for the fronts of these projects. There were several denim shirts with Prairie View A&M University dorm supervisor printed in the front. They were all very large and had a lot of buttons to save. It’s thinner fabric that I can alternate on the fronts (the non chenille side). In total, I spent $12.75, which means I got 51 items. Then I stopped at a convenient store and spent $25 on items for the Louisiana trip. The. I had wicked insomnia! Hopefully I’ll fall asleep as soon as I hit publish.
I wondered. Is there anyone else that loves just a part of certain songs, but dislikes the rest of the song? Two famous worship songs come to mind. The first is “He’s in the Room” by Tasha Cobbs and Maverick City Music. I do not like the majority of the song, but I like the part that starts at 2:37.
“If I search the heavens high, he’s there. If I search the earth below, he’s there. If I make my bed in hell, he’s there. No matter where I go, he’s there.” It’s beautiful and catchy.
The other Christian worship songs that I dislike but only like one part of is simply called Lion by Elevation Worship featuring Brandon Lake. I love the part that starts at the 3:13 mark. It simply repeats over and over, “Oh Valley, be raised up; Oh Mountain, be made low.” It could be a mantra if Christian’s believed in mantras. Is that expression “Oh valley be raised up, oh mountain be made low” in the Bible? It must be, or they’d not be singing it.
In an audiobook I listened to about writing a memoir, there’s a whole chapter about the accuracy of our memories. We writers tend to freak out if we get something wrong. We tend to think of Oprah telling some writer “I feel duped” when she found out his story was supposed to be a true one but wasn’t. In my case, I’m writing about working with children- I have to change names and scenarios around in order to keep confidentiality. In that case, I may or may not be able to say “based on a true story” but rather, “loosely based on a true story .” What’s the right answer? I don’t know, but someone will help me figure it out someday. Marjane Satrapi, who wrote “Persepolis” describes it best in this interview.
I have a second cousin, and her birthday is either July 6th or July 8th, 1977. My family always talks about how everyone wanted her birthday to be 7-7-77. But I can’t remember the exact details. Either she was born on July 6th, and it was right before midnight and she was born too fast; or she was born on July 8th and it was after midnight and she had taken too long to come out. I always remember people kind of chewing out her mom when I was growing up, saying either “if you had just kept her in longer” or “if you had just gotten her out faster”, then she would have had this magical birthday of 7-7-77. And her mom would always retort, talking about labor and how much she couldn’t help it (which I would too, because jeez). It was either one of those scenarios, but I don’t know which one. I asked my mom, but she doesn’t remember either. This is her great niece, and she has too many nieces and nephews to begin with to remember everyone’s birthday.
Another thing about memory that bothered me is when my parents and I were moving from Chicago to Arizona in late May of 1993 when I was almost 15. I came home to a completely empty house on the last day of 9th grade and a U-haul in the driveway. My parents had been saying for over a year that we were going to move to Arizona, but I didn’t completely believe it. The people that bought our house originally didn't have the money for it, so this is part of the reason I really didn’t believe we were moving until I came home on the last day of school to an empty house. I remember asking my father about it and he said that he lowered the price a little bit for them and their grandparents gave them the rest of whatever they needed. We’d been having garage sales before that point, but it still wasn’t real to me.
Then I remember spending the first night in Oklahoma City, and it was my mom’s birthday. Her birthday is May 30th. We had pizza and cake in that motel room, and that was my mom’s birthday party. Then that night, our dog Queenie started barking at about 3:30 am and my dad insisted we had to leave because Queenie was barking and he didn’t tell the motel we had a dog. I remember it being scary as we drove with the U-haul in the dark for a few hours. The more I thought about it and looked stuff up, the more I realize how impossible this memory was. It’s a 12 hour drive from Chicago to Oklahoma City, and we didn’t even leave until I got home from school. There was no way my dad drove all that way, had the “birthday party” and then insisted on leaving way before sunrise because the dog was barking. So Oklahoma City on my mom’s birthday with the dog barking actually must have been the second night on the road. I asked my mom, where did we stay the first night? She didn’t remember, she said “probably somewhere in southern Illinois.” Then she insisted that my memory of my dad needing to leave because Queenie was barking and the motel didn’t know we had a dog was a completely false memory. She said, “We only stayed at pet friendly motels on the road and always told them about Queenie.” So then what is the truth? Why do I remember it as the first night when it was obviously the second and why do I have this memory of the dog barking and my mom having a completely different experience? Is it because she’s gaslighting me, because my dad lied to her and said they were pet friendly or do I really have a false memory?
I don’t know. But as I mentioned in my previous post, I do have a spiral notebook that I jot things down in for the book I’m writing. In it, I recall job hunting when I was very new to Houston. It was either when I first moved here or it was after I started working at the inventory service and they slowed down and had little to no work for a while (I don’t remember!) But it was a Montessori daycare that I was hired to help out in the two year old room. They were extremely abusive, and I noticed it immediately! I noticed that the daycare director was bringing the kids into the classroom instead of their parents. Obviously, I’d worked in two daycares before and parents always came to the room to drop off and pick up. I asked the two other caregivers who worked in the room about this, and they explained that the parents aren’t allowed in the room. They must drop the kids off in the office and have the director escort them back. I said something like, “That’s weird!” And the other caregiver snapped back at me something like, “Well that’s how it’s done here!”
At lunch time, it was awful. One of the toddlers wouldn’t eat. One of the other ladies that worked there actually started force feeding him, and as a result, he threw up. I rushed over to clean him up and the other lady told me not to clean him up and to just leave him alone or something. I don’t remember, I just remember her telling me not to clean him up. Then she told me to go on my lunch break. I had 30 minutes. I walked outside and paced for 25 minutes, all up and down the sidewalk from corner to corner. Then I came back and told the director that I was not coming back. She actually told me, “Why? You think we are abusing the kids?” I was shocked because I didn’t accuse her out loud. She could just tell that that’s what I was thinking? Or had she known by my demeanor that I would think that? I simply told her “Well you said it, I didn’t!” And walked outside the door while she insulted me.
I went home and just shook and cried. I called my mom (who at the time lived a thousand miles away in Arizona still) and told her the whole story. She calmed me down and said not to worry, that “jobs are a dime a dozen” (NOT what they’d taught me in high school lol, in high school they always taught that you better keep a job no matter what because there aren’t any other ones.) Then my mom told me that she wanted to call my aunt for a second. My aunt who is my dad’s brother’s wife was a retired teacher. About 30 minutes later, my mom called me back and said my aunt told her I needed to call CPS immediately. I already knew that I did. I was just too shaken up. I was shaking so bad that it was almost like I was seizing. I told my mom that yes I knew I had to call. She said “Your aunt said you need to call right now. Pull yourself together and call right now.”
So I did. It wasn’t reportable to CPS, I had to contact childcare licensing. I was on the phone for hours. When I finally got through, they asked me a lot of questions. They took my name and number, but agreed to keep it as an anonymous report. I thought that they would storm in the following day, but it was actually a whole month later that I got a follow up call from the investigator that was going to go check it out. She proceeded to ask me the same exact questions that were asked the month prior by the intake operator. But by then, I had forgotten the child’s name. I had forgotten a couple other details due to the passage of time. I don’t know if this place is still in business. When I google the name, a few locations come up that aren’t the location I worked at for half a day. I don’t remember the address, but I do remember that it was right by downtown, so close to downtown that I could see the skyline pretty huge in front of me as I paced during my “lunch break.” If I knew the address now, I would drive by, but the other locations listed are nowhere near downtown.
Remembering this experience and writing about it has really given my body visceral reactions. I have insomnia because of it. I wonder if my memory of it is 100% accurate. Does it need to be? Do I need to remember this child (who’s now an adult) name or just that I tried to help an abused child? Should I have called the cops when I was pacing on my lunch break? I didn’t have a cell phone, but pay phones were more prominent back then, I could have found one. Maybe I should have started pulling that woman’s hair out of her head and dragged her ass to the ground when she made that two year old throw up. Believe me I wanted to! My monkey brain went straight back to memories of girls I went to high school with pulling each others hair and falling to the ground. But I restrained myself. I was no vigilante back then, but maybe I needed to be and should have been. I was very new to Texas, and my only experience with CPS had been in Arizona my assumptions that they would take care of it immediately and shut it all down were based on a different state. I had not even lived in Texas a year at that point. CPS (and childcare licensing which is part of CPS) here is a joke.
I’m slowly realizing all the shit I’ve been through on jobs. I have come to believe that anyone who’s worked in caregiving roles, caring for children and elderly, must have some amount of compassion fatigue or PTSD. I definitely do. I know I’ve said working with elderly was easier than working with kids, and on the daily it is. But elderly do something quite regularly that no kid I’ve ever worked with has ever done- die. That has taken its toll as well. I have lost count of how many have died that I’d cared for. I had several on hospice. Don’t get me wrong, I love hospice, I think it’s wonderful, I wish my father had received it, but even the natural deaths from very old age have taken their toll on me.
Writing is my therapy. I’m not going to another therapist ever again. I’m at a point where I would say they are all assholes, but I’m pretty big on the “not all of them are like that” trope. I know not all therapists are assholes, but I’m not going back to one myself.
I just wish our memories were more reliable. I wish the same people could tell the same story the same way every time. Life isn’t so black and white.
When I was in my early 20’s, I was heavily pressured to set a career goal, so I set a career goal to help children. I was also very unprepared. My very first job was in a daycare center, and I worked there from age 16-18. But setting the “career goal” was after that. My two years of daycare experience really helped me get into roles I was initially very mentally and emotionally unprepared for. Many of you know that I worked as a caregiver at a cps emergency facility when I lived in Arizona. I don’t remember exactly when I started there. I do know that I was working there when 9/11 happened and that I left when I moved here to Houston on Memorial Day of 2002. I probably started working there sometime in early 2000. Immediately before that, I worked at a second daycare center (not the one I worked at in high school), and I and another young coworker took care of 11 infants. I remember all of their dates of birth being in 1999 and 2000. So it must have been sometime in the middle of the year 2000 that I left there and joined the CPS center.
I had a dream last night that I went back to work at the CPS facility. There was only one person I knew that was still working there (in my dream), and in the dream I asked her if she was the only one still left from 25 years ago. At this facility(in real life, not my dream), two infants had died of SIDS before I ever started working there, and there was a lot of tension among the staff. All three shifts hated each other and all of the races hated each other. I realize now that they all blamed each other for the deaths of the SIDS babies. I faked being Hispanic in order to get along with my three main coworkers. I can’t tell that many people that I faked being Hispanic. Usually, people of color try to pass as white in order to succeed, but in my case, I was taking care of 12-18 babies and toddlers with three women who hated anyone who wasn’t Hispanic. I needed to get along with them for the sake of these kids, who were already in crisis situations. It was like I had to coparent with them. I never tell anyone this unless I know that they’re the type of person that is able to believe there are exceptions to every rule. One of the three women I worked with, AG, once asked me where my family was from and if I was Mexican. I said, “No I’m Greek.” But she didn’t know what I meant. I tried to explain that my grandparents were from Greece, but she didn’t seem to understand. I then realized that she’d never heard of Greece. So I just said something to the effect of “Yeah I’m Mexican”. She asked me what part of Mexico my family was from. All I could say thinking fast was “Mexico City.” I couldn’t name the Mexican states in a thinking fast type of situation like this. Sometimes I wonder if AG ever found out that Greece is an actual country, remembered our conversation, and figured out that I was bullshitting her. It’s been 25 years, she’s had a lot of time to figure out which other countries exist. I can imagine her learning this information and thinking “That lying bitch!”
I was also a volunteer child advocate with the CASA program in both Arizona and Texas. I worked at the children’s museum for about 8 years. Then, I got my college degree.
When I went to the advisor at the University of Houston and told her my history and my career goals, she told me that if I got ANY degree within the “College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences” (or, CLASS), that I could get a pretty good position at “any nonprofit organization.” So I believed her and got my degree, because that is pretty much what the previous generation taught people my age our entire lives- just get a degree and you’ll be set for life.
When I graduated, I looked for a job and quickly realized that all of the nonprofit organizations wanted full time volunteers. They wanted people to work 40 hours a week for absolutely nothing. I always turned them down saying I was a single parent, and I was- my daughter was in 2nd grade at the time. But it doesn’t matter if someone is single or married or a parent or not. Full time volunteering shouldn’t happen. Someone working full time should always get paid. A few hours a week for something you’re passionate about is ok. I didn’t get paid to be a CASA volunteer, but it never took up more than about 8 hours a week.
I immediately felt like my entire “career goals” were failed at. This is when I went to work with the elderly. I thought at the time that since what the college advisor had told me wasn’t true that it was me who had failed at that goal. Working with the elderly however, was best for me at the time because of the onset of my severe anxiety. I only had to care for one person, and it was in their homes. It was just, doing for them what I would be doing for myself if I was at home all day. And back then, I was more able to lift people. I don’t think I am anymore.
I realize now that I didn’t fail at my career goals whatsoever. The advisor just gave me misinformation. She was trying to sell a product. I have never failed any actual child. I made minor mistakes along the way, but changed and learned from them like everyone else. I never “failed” at any of my jobs involving kids or the elderly, never got written up or fired, and always helped. I look back now and realize that all of my actions were for the betterment of all these individuals I was either directly caring for or working on behalf of.
Therefore, what do I do about it now? Do I go back to it? No, I really don't want to quit the inventory service and the side hustle apps. In a way, I am back to it by writing my book “The Child Advocate.” I have a document on my laptop with about 29,000 words. I also have a spiral notebook that I just jot things down in. The day before I had the dream that I went back to the CPS shelter, I had been jotting notes about that. When I feel like it, I’m going to have ChatGPT help with how to structure what I want to say. I’m also going to change what ChatGPT tells me to write. AI isn’t going to write my book for me by any means. I can’t really describe what I mean. I’m going to look at what it suggests for a paragraph or page and then put it into my own words. I understand both sides of the AI debate. I absolutely don’t want it writing the book for me, but I have ADHD and want to use it as a tool. That, and Scrivner.
Realizing that I’m not a “failure” has been monumental. It has encouraged me to get to work on the book. However, memory jogging has taken its toll on my mental health. Remembering all the tension among staff because of the two SIDS babies that died before I even started there has made me realize that I never should have internalized anything. Code switching and pretending to be a different race is something that I would never do now, with the things I know now. And feeling like *I* failed when I was simply lied to by a college advisor like MOST millennials is not something I’d experience if I know what I know now either. I guess I’ve gained wisdom with age.
More later of the accuracy of memory jogging and specific memories.
My favorite picture of Pope Francis! Xanax wasn’t for me, but still.
When I found out the pope died, the first person I thought of was Manuela Orlandi. She was a 15 year old who was kidnapped from Vatican City in 1983. She was born and raised there, and her father worked very closely with the pope. In fact, her father served three popes.
When Pope Francis was “inaugurated” (is that the right word?), Manuela’s brother approached him and demanded answers. The pope simply brushed him off saying, “Your sister is in heaven”. But the brother was like- how does he KNOW my sister is in heaven?
The first person I thought of was him. I wonder if he’ll go up to the new pope whenever the “inauguration” happens and do the same thing. It will probably be the last pope to be old enough to remember 1983. You can watch a detailed documentary about Manuela and her brother’s own personal investigation here.
Many of you may not know, but I’m pretty passionate about missing people who may still be alive. It irks me when they are assumed dead with no evidence. I want more to be found alive in my life time. The prevailing theory about Manuela was that she was taken to be a s3x sl@ve for a mafia boss who gave millions to the Vatican. There was audio footage of him raping her. You might say that if she was still alive today at age 56, she’d come back to her family. Not necessarily! There are a million things to unpack regarding someone who is alive and considered a missing person will not just be like “here I am”, especially with both the Vatican and the mafia involved. Manuela had a lot of siblings and probably by now a ton of nieces and nephews and would worry for their safety. She might be in a secluded convent. Or she may have been murdered shortly after her mafia kidnapper died in 1990.
I hope her brother approaches the new pope! And I hope we find her!
Elephant’s Child is where I heard of this, where each Sunday you post photos you haven’t posted (or in my case, I’m pretty sure I have not). These are my three favorite pictures of me with my childhood dog Queenie. I would guess the years as being 1983, 1987, and 1990. She lived 1983-1996.
I tried to make a ChatGPT action figure of myself- a lot of people are doing this, but they have items having to do with their interests that are on the side of the pictures. I asked it to give me black jeans and a navy blue polo shirt, because that’s what I have to wear to work. Then I added a calculator around my waist, because that’s what we do inventory with. It has no scanner, but that’s ok. And why did I automatically get a smile once I got my waist calculator? Also wish I could have gotten a sewing machine and the book I’m writing, which is called The Child Advocate.
And speaking of black jeans for work. I get to shop today for smaller ones. My diet works!
I ordered this dress from SHEIN for only $12! It’s good for lounging around the house, or a gay pride parade. I look just like my deceased cousin Kathy here, when she was my age.
Today I also had my first Pap smear in 10 and a half years.
It was a male gynecologist. I know a lot of people don’t want to see male OBGYN’s, but he seemed to be trying really hard because he knows no one wants to see male OBGYN’s. That helped my anxiety a lot. (The fact that he seemed to be trying really hard, that is). I am also not using the most effective contraception in the world due to mine and my husband’s ages, and he didn’t lecture me about that at all. I feel like a woman would have. I’m not really worried about having cervical cancer tho- I’m just trying to get all the routine stuff out of the way. My biggest fear is dying from the cancers they never screen for. Even though I have not been for a decade, I went yearly before 2014, and always had normal results.
Before I start writing this story, I want to make clear that I absolutely don’t want to hear anyone’s horror stories about anyone they may know that is living with the same condition or possibly passed away from it. I would be truly sorry for your loss, but for the sake of my extreme panic attacks, I would rather just know about my own personal experience with it.
Trigger warning for liver disease:
Back in 2022, I went to the ER because that was the first time in my life that I experienced palpitations as a result of the panic attacks I had since 2014. Nothing was wrong with my heart, but they did some imaging and told me that I had a “fatty liver”. I had absolutely no idea what that meant. At first it felt like they were making fun of me and calling me “fatty”, but told me that I needed to see a gastroenterologist. They asked me if I drink alcohol, and since I do not, my official diagnosis was “Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease” or NAFLD. The level of anxiety I suffered from at the time absolutely prevented me from seeking out a gastroenterologist. Finally in November of 2022, I did go to an inner city clinic and told them about it. They drew blood and tested me for all kind of stuff. All the hepatitises, lupus, aids, diabetes, I mean you name it I was tested. They ordered imaging and a consult the following day with a doctor. I remember freaking out so bad and not wanting to go, but my ex boyfriend convinced me to- although he convinced me from a place of seeming to believe I was terminally ill.
The doctor at the inner city clinic in November of 2022 concluded that it was caused by high cholesterol and prescribed me atorvastatin. I’ve been taking it daily ever since.
Fast forward 2.5 years later, about two months ago, I googled what were the best foods to eat for NAFLD. I wrote them all down and went to the store and stocked up on all of them. A lot of the advice I was getting that I was actually able to listen to was “change your diet”, but no one ever seems to tell you how. On another hand, our society is jam packed with people who say that nothing ever works for trying to lose weight. A lot of people like that are in my family. It’s scientifically proven that a calorie deficit causes weight loss- but there are still just people literally everywhere who say calorie deficit doesn’t work for them. And I hate to say it but a lot of people in my family are in a sort of “fat pride” mentality. I’m all for believing you are beautiful no matter what, (and I do know many people who look better fat) however, sometimes that comes with extreme vitriol and hatred towards women who are slender. I was very slim as a kid, and got so much hate and verbal abuse for it. I was constantly told over and over to eat fattening things and so I did. Thinking back, that all really must have caused me to develop NAFLD in the first place.
This whole experience has just been one aspect of unlearning things that were taught to me that were false and relearning. Before I finally had the courage to google best foods for NAFLD back in February, I was doing calorie counting and deficit which helped a little. But once I started eating mostly things on the NAFLD green light list, none of the things on the red light list, and some on the yellow light list, the weight has been Falling Off. I’m losing weight probably 2-3 times faster than I did when I was just doing “calorie deficit no matter what the food was”.
My experience on the teledoc app was a nightmare. I had hoped to see a therapist to help me go to specialists to see if I had cancer or anything else that might kill me. It actually worked in the opposite way. That therapist left me so depressed that I didn’t care if I died. So I called the gastroenterologist back and said yeah maybe I do want an appointment with him. We’ll call him Dr. HH, since he goes by Dr. first name and his last name has about six syllables and 20 something letters. I figured I’d just go tell him the entire NAFLD story.
Dr. HH was SUPER NICE. He seemed kind of like a gym bro, and gym bros usually hate fat chics so I was nervous but he was a very nice gym bro. He told me I was doing everything right. But he wanted blood work and a certain type of imaging that wasn’t the same as what I had in 2022. This was like an ultrasound, but with a vibrator (held up against my upper right abdomen where livers are). . Idk it was weird. I went for the bloodwork afterwards. His office staff scheduled me for a follow up in mid June and said if there was something serious then Dr. HH would call, but if I was normal then I would just talk to him at my follow up in June. The vibrator ultrasound was Thursday the 10th. He has not called yet. I’m hoping he won’t of course. And yes he also consulted me about a colonoscopy. But I’m putting it off till June.
If you’re wondering what the best foods for NAFLD are, then here’s my list. Literally no one ever told me this condition existed. As I mentioned, I was raised harshly to eat a lot of bad things because they all hated that I was thin at the time. They tell you smoking causes cancer and they tell you having sex causes std’s, but they don’t educate you about much else.
For oils, the best oil is avocado oil and olive oil comes in a close second.
Nuts: almonds and walnuts
Fruits: apples, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, passion fruit and dragon fruit. Bananas are on the yellow light list- not “the Best” but I can have them.
Any vegetable of course. No diet is ever going to be against vegetables. Spinach is a plus
Avocados all the way.
Fatty fish: salmon, trout, tuna, and mackerel. Yellow light fish is said, flounder, and shrimp.
No sugar, no grains!!!
Dairy: low fat dairy. I’ve been getting skim milk and almond milk for smoothies, “triple zero” Greek yogurt, fresh little mozzarella balls and string cheese sticks with skim milk in them. Feta cheese is on the yellow light list
No peanuts and or peanut butter I use almond butter in some of the smoothies
If I get a sweet tooth, I get the Atkins treats which have little to no sugar.
Olives are a huge plus. I make olives medley ziplocks to take to work.
Garlic is a huge green light, and the best drink is green tea 🍵 It’s just that it has caffeine, which tends to give me palpitations, but I do need to wake up somehow sometimes.
That’s all I can think of right now.
In 2022, I weighed about 215 at those appointments. In January of 2024, I was 227 just like the old tv show. “Calories deficit no matter what the food was” put me back down to 210, but I plateaued at 210 the morning of my appointment with Dr. HH, I weighed in at 197.4 (same scale since 1/2024). So switching to nothing but the good foods for my condition made me lose 12 and a half pounds. My goal is 165.
My breakfast is usually my smoothies. They cut the craving for ice cream. I do bananas, skim milk, triple zero Greek yogurt, and any medley of the fruits mentioned above and sometimes almond butter. When I work, I bring ziplocks with almonds, walnuts, mozzarella balls, and olives of different kinds. For dinner, I’ll oil a pan with avocado oil, chop up any veggies I have, and fry a fish with it, season it with Cajun spice, and right before I turn the heat off I’ll either mix in a whole avocado for some creaminess or I’ll have the single serve plain guacamoles since avocados are so hard to keep. No more pasta or bread. I no longer have sandwiches because of the bread. I did have a cheat day when I traveled with my job. We stopped at Burger King and I had the impossible whopper- which is vegetarian but I ate the bun as well. If I want to make salsa or guacamole, I look for baked Tostitos, no fried.
That’s about it. I hope I helped educate someone about this condition. I told Dr. HH’s nurse that I was scared he was going to tell me I had a month to live. She glanced at my chart and said, “Well probably not, since he wants to see you in two months.” I could see myself telling someone the same thing.
I wanted to log here some of the problems I’m having changing my last name since I got married on March 19.
When I was born, my parents didn’t give me a middle name. They claim they “forgot”.
When I married my first husband 20 years ago, I took his last name and simply made my maiden name my middle name. No hyphen. It just became a middle name. There were no problems at the time except for the fact that the woman at the DMV thought I was age 16 instead of 26. She looked at my birth year and just did the math wrong. She asked me with anger in her voice, “Did your parents LET you get married?” I said, “Yes?” With an obvious confused look on my face. When it became clear that she mistook me for ten years younger than I was, I corrected her and said, “It’s ok, the change of centuries kind of makes it hard to do math” or something to that effect. She stayed mad and told me, “Get against the blue screen so I can take your picture!” In that ID card, my face was like this: 😒
After that, it was simply a matter of calling around to report it. I had no problems whatsoever.
This time, I’m running into problems. I’ve had two female phone operators simply say they couldn’t help me and couldn’t change my name. In both instances, I freaked out for a few hours, started to come up with a plan in case I was ever pulled over by a cop and had to explain why I have two names. Then I called each entity back and spoke to someone else, and neither person the second times around gave me hassle.
One of my friends told me that there’s actually a bill being introduced by the Trump administration that would prevent you from voting if your legal name differs from your birth certificate. She said those women were trying to do me a favor. I looked this bullshit up. It’s one of those things that has a snowball’s chance of passing, and opponents of it are turning into extremists themselves. Especially when you won’t ALLOW a person to change their name upon getting married. Do me a favor? Get over yourselves.
At least now I know why it just seems impossible and like I’m running into roadblock after roadblock. Their attempts to save my right to vote would be in vain anyway, since this is my second marriage and my legal name won’t match my birth certificate anyway. Or, my choice to make my maiden name my middle name would have saved my right to vote. So maybe it was my parents who “did me a favor” by forgetting my middle name. (How on earth can you forget to give a kid a middle name though?).
In case you’re wondering, my middle name would have been Marina. It’s the Greek Orthodox saint whose patron day is the day I was born, July 17th. The icons of her show her holding satan by an ankle and beating him in the head with a hammer. It definitely would have been appropriate for me.
Thank you for all of the support regarding that god awful therapist. I remember there used to be this subreddit called r/roastme, where people would give their personal situations and/or post pictures of themselves and ask to be roasted. By that, they meant they wanted people to basically verbally abuse and insult them. That’s actually what seeing this therapist felt like. She claimed to be mad that I pointed out the lack of bio markers for psychological conditions, but she also didn’t like that I regret college and that I am married to an older man who was my boss.
It’s proving harder than it was 20 years ago to change my last name. I’ve encountered two entities that were like “nope can’t help you”. But all I had to do in the end was wait a few hours, call back and get someone else, and get the name change done successfully.
My health insurance premium is going up by $100 a month, and my car insurance premium is going down by $90 a month.
I also saw a gastroenterologist, but more on that later. It’s a really long story. I didn’t just go see him for a colonoscopy consult. I was told in 2022 that I have a slight condition, but more on that later. In past blog posts, I’ve said that I lost no more than 25 pounds since January of 2024. Well I weighed myself the morning of my first appointment with him, and I was another 7 pounds down. So now I can safely say I’ve lost at least 30. Next blog post will be all about this. Sometimes I don’t want to talk about the thing I was diagnosed with in 2022, because I don’t want to hear horror stories from people who had a friend who knew a person who’s spouse’s sister’s son had it or whatever. Stay tuned.
Depression has completely overtaken me. I heard back from the teledoc app and found out why the therapist I saw Tuesday “requested cancellation” and thought I was a bad fit. In the beginning of the session she asked me if I’d been to a psychiatrist or therapist before and what my diagnosis was. I answered honestly. I suffered panic attacks for 10 years, and saw some 8-10 mental health professionals during that decade. They mostly diagnosed me with different things, but the most consistent diagnosis was anxiety or panic attacks. She then asked why I was diagnosed with many different things. I simple said, because this isn’t an empirical science. There is no blood test or imaging that can give a definitive diagnosis. All there is is the provider’s interpretation of what I’m telling them.
Teledoc got back to me to let me know that she said I made an inappropriate comment that psychiatry wasn’t a “real” science. And I am 100% sure I didn’t say “real.” I said “empirical.” What really burns me is the fact that she didn’t even stop me when I said it to sort of explain the DSM or anything. (The DSM is still not the same as a blood test or imaging), but she could have back tracked and sought further explanation. Instead she chose to give me a dirty look through the entire session. She allowed me to open up about regretting my college degree and actually argued with me about it. She allowed me to say I’d just gotten married to someone I met at work, which women like herself generally believe is unacceptable.
I feel extremely defeated and can not even function today. I forgot why I even sought out therapy. I don’t even want to get out of my bed. My cat is out of retirement from his therapy cat days and laying on my head. (He’s not an official therapy cat, I just call him that.).
The only positive thing is that my daughter had her prom. Here are some pictures. I’m glad she can’t see me like this.
