Catching Up
So as far as this blog goes, I fell off the planet for awhile. Anyone who reads this probably knows what has been happening but I feel some redundency coming on, so here we go. I'll cut it short.
I checked back into the 'Wood in late August. I stayed in residential for three weeks. I then moved to stepdown, where I not only had a hard time adjusting to the difference but most of the girls were somewhere on the spectrum of mildly disliking me to hating my guts, which may or may not have been my fault (the jury's still out.) I spent I think five or six weeks there, during which time I struggled behaviorally, but was making real progress in therapy, and learning a lot in general about just how to live with people who think you're a bitch (which I still don't understand because I tend to think that I'm at least a somewhat pleasant person, to be around, but whatever. NMP. Not my problem.)
However.
The week after my birthday, the stepdown coordinator gets a phone call from my insurance company. They've been looking at my weight, my behaviors, several other arbitrary things, NOT looking at my progress in therepy or anything else that actually matters, and despite pleading from the treament team--you guessed it--they decided to drop me like a hot fucking rock. And my father? Upon hearing this, he pleads poverty, "nope sorry can't support this even though it's only HALF as expensive as what I just paid for when you were in house." I was out of my fucking mind. I heard this news on Thursday 10/11. He agrreed to pay through tuesday so I could see Cara (my therapist) for a final session. That left me four days to figure out what in God's name I was going to do with myself once they drop-kicked my ass out of there. Clearly, I couldn't go back to living with Mom in Austin. Bad situation, too many issues, no way I could remain in recovery. I couldn't live with Emily for obvious reasons. Beth had just moved. Jordan offered my a spot on her Ikea couch but her life is pretty chaotic and she's not exactly the most stable person in the world even though I love her to death. So...I pretty much took a little dive into suicdal depression. Only for about a day though, until I realized that after surviving several major suicide attempts, a heart attack, an anemic crisis and hyperalimentation, near death by starvation/liver failure, double pneumonia, a collapsed lung, respiratory arrest, caridac arrest, a thoracotomy, and the removal of a third of my lung, after still living despite all of that, it would pretty fucking stupid to kill myself. You know? So. At this point, the only person left that I could think of to stay with was my sister's godmother, our Aunt Robin, in Kingwood, Tx (right outside Houston). She's my mom's best friend since like 1812, and she's pretty much my godmother too. And as soon as I called her and told her what happened, she immediately said yes, I could stay with her and her husband and daughter as long as I needed to. She's so amazing. So I booked a flight for Tuesday evening. Over the weekend I tried to get my shit together, packed, blah blah. Monday night comes around, and after groups at the main house are over I head out to drive to the stepdown house for dinner. I'm about halfway there, it's raining, the little winding roads are slick and on a curve I feel my car slide. The corner of my car crashed into the corner of the car coming from the opposite direction, which spun me into a guard rail, at which time my airbag deployed, spraining my wrist and burning my hands, arms, and face. The other people were perfectly fine. I, however, could NOT FUCKING BELIEVE THIS WAS HAPPENING on the NIGHT before I was moving to another state. This gave me less than 24 hours to do the ER thing, the insurance thing, the packing thing, the therapy thing, and the figuring-out-how-to-get-a-wrecked-car-down-to-Houston thing, all with one arm and trying to find rides. Nightmare.
Anyway, to sum up, I made it here in pretty much one piece, and it's been really good. These people are brilliant. I love living here. I'm not a huge fan of Houston or Kingwood but I love this family, especially Mandy, Robin's 16-year-old. We have a blast hanging out together. She's a really cool kid. And since I've been here I've actually found a treatment team: therapist, psychiatrist, dietician, and possible group. I'm looking for a job and a dance class. Trying to build a life. It's a process, like everything else. But considering the curve ball I was thrown, I think I'm doing pretty damn well.