Sleep report: took two trazadone, only had one wakeup and was able to go back to sleep, my sleep app said NINE hours. Amazing. We'll see if this continues, I suppose.

I got up early and went to Sacramento for group therapy. Amazingly, Sacramento was dead empty and barely any cars were out this morning--dead opposite of yesterday's traffic jams. Is everyone on vacation? Unfortunately that applied to group therapy, as the other people who had signed up flaked out on showing up and I got sent home, was told Anthony would reschedule our IRL appointment at 11 since there's no point in making me wait around and he was doing another group at 9. (Apparently he and Lisa trade. Lisa was very nice IRL, we talked about books.) So I went back home and made my requisite Target run for dental products and a bit of food and got more gas, and I was quite pleased that it didn't rain, as predicted, during any of that. Hell, there was even some sun!

People I heard from during the day:

* Heard from HR, saying that the stuff I sent from Kaiser wasn't adequate for FMLA and I was all um....???? to this, called the records department and they said, "no, that form is what we do..." I re-sent it again, maybe I sent the wrong thing for all I know at this point. On a related note, I ordered my medical records from the Time of Incident and it's 244 pages of horror I could not read, but figured I should save at this point. At least the HR lady is giving me till mid-next-week on that one.

* Heard from Cameron, which was shocking in itself because she rarely texts: she's inviting me to the Winters NYE show. Unclear if she's paying or if it's a comp ticket (I presume the former because Winters doesn't do comp tickets), but that is super sweet of her. I note I hadn't gotten around to using Roger's money for that yet since I hadn't told Ashley yet, so that worked out. Hearts to her!

* Heard from Ashley, who's now got a cold in addition to everything else, which now explains why no karaoke mention last night and I won't be going over there tonight.

* Corresponded with Mat about trying to find a therapist, I gave advice on that topic. Ironically, I found them the perfect therapist for gender issues, but Mat isn't in this state. Ah well, sounds like they found something in their area in January they can do.

* Heard from Jess finally, told her all my horrible drama. At least she's got another job, which I hope is not as awful as the last one. I expect she'll have an explosive-y reaction to reading the drama.

* Texted Rachel that "hey, I have free time now," and she said she and Robert were going to Burgers and Brew at noon, awesome.

I had kind of figured at this point that I'd have to reschedule with Anthony for tomorrow or Friday and sent him my in-between-appointments schedule. However, circa 10:51 or so, I was going through my Kaiser email (I HAVE SO MANY OF THESE EFFING THINGS A DAY, I REALLY WISH I COULD LIKE, DELETE OLD MESSAGES AND SURVEYS AND SHIT) and Anthony said he'd rescheduled us for 11 on video. So I had to do a quick pee and organize myself for the appointment and so I could run out the door afterwards. Minus yarn, grrrr.

As for the appointment: the Business Time stuff was him saying my having "acute symptoms" of supposedly other problems screws with the ADHD diagnosis, I could have gotten temporary disability if I wasn't getting paid at my job (oops, I am, never mind, guess that explains why Dr. Amanda never brought that up), and that I'm clearly having a traumatic reaction to a lot of shit, especially every time someone nitpicks me and shames me and criticizes me as a person. "Trauma is clouding you" and "stress is very toxic to your brain."

God, I wish I could have talked to him before I put that letter in the mail. Seriously, he would have nailed what to do ahead of time and now it's too late.

He said the #1 thing to do when experiencing difficult emotions is to validate yourself and your feelings first, and as a trauma survivor who's been invalidated a lot, it helps to acknowledge your reality (and have others do same, per yesterday's IOP class). He said it was a difficult decision and I had different intentions and desired outcomes, and I don't normally deal with conflicts, and when we take a jump, we make mistakes and learn from them. Really, the regret comes from him not contacting me. He politely said he wasn't sure if it was repairable at this point (...yeah...) and I don't know what's going on there because he'd have to let me in. I could try saying something in person if I wanted, but who knows.

He said there are three different relationship goals: to get your desires met (clearly not gonna happen here), to keep the relationship (uh-oh), and standing up for yourself, and he said I had gone with the third one and I wanted him to see that hurt and have that validated for myself. VERY GOOD POINT. I had a vulnerable moment due to stress and that's probably why I wasn't as "skillful" and the feelings may not go away/may linger for awhile, maybe there's a way I can feel it and let it go. And to find some forgiveness for myself because I turn against myself, and that I'm very lonely.

Also, "there is someone out there for you, I know that for a fact," and "we always bring up that people write love letters to serial killers...."

All of that helped.

After the appointment, I met Robert and Rachel for burger lunch outside. Fortunately it didn't start pouring until we'd finished eating. Told Robert all my drama and that I'm going to NYE, which he said he knew about it. He is doing several songs in the show, including ones with Cameron, but seems a bit freaked out at the lack of rehearsal time and he's also missing one tonight to do another show, as he got into a one-act play at Big Idea Theater and that's what he was going to do this evening. He was all, "It's going to be a good...well, it's going to be A Show," lol, and said he'd asked to do one song and then got asked to do five....this may have freaked him out a little.

Otherwise we talked about holidays, pork rinds, how Rachel and I never wanted kids, theater stuff. After it started raining, we moved to Mishka's, a cafe that usually drives me nuts for being full full full (except for yesterday when I went by the bookstore) and indeed it was back to being full again despite it being Xmas Limbo Week With No School Going On Anywhere, but we managed to get the "no laptop" tables and hung out there for awhile, then finished by hanging out at the record store. Scott was brought up in conversation, much to my horror, but only in a "Is he going to do DMTC Fiddler, no, he's going to do Damn Yankees, well, you know how he loves baseball" sort of way. I didn't say much. I had been debating whether or not to break the news to them that we're no longer friends any more, but I couldn't and didn't.

After that, I went home, dealt with more Kaiser paperwork shit (see below), re-ordered my Lexapro because I think I have 15-ish days left (???) and I have a backup prescription and I might as well go get it while I'm still out from work, and then spent the rest of the evening chilling at home (also see below). I'm watching "A Cowboy Christmas Romance," i.e. THE ONE CHRISTMAS MOVIE WHERE PEOPLE HAVE SEX, just to see how that goes. Answer: "wait, they had sex?"

I am also drinking alcohol tonight. Per our conversation about NYE and whether or not to drink at the event or not (part of why Robert didn't want to do five songs was having to stay sober until that was done, har) and I said I don't know if I'd be drinking during it or not. If I'm going to something (say, Green River karaoke) for three hours, I'll drink for the first hour and sober up for the last two, and this party is three hours so I could do that. On the other hand, there's the "you're not supposed to drink while on psych meds" thing. I grumbled that when I asked, I got "we don't recommend it," and I was all duh, no doctor's going to "recommend it," I just want to know if it'll kill me to have a glass or not once in awhile. The most I got for medical advice was "you might get sleepy." So since I'm not going anywhere tonight, I'm gonna experiment and see what happens when you do. I drank some during my first week on half pills and got sleepy one night and then not the next night, so we'll see what happens on full dose.

Answer, as it turns out: nothing out of the ordinary after drinking for an hour. Vaguely felt it in my head, but that's about it. No hangover or sick and one yawn. So I think I can do it.

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