One day down, six to go!

My one year anniversary with my boyfriend is approaching. I am very excited to celebrate the day with him. I've begun "the countdown." He is going to be on Spring break, which is excellent timing.

Not so nice timing though is that a suspicious charge appeared on my boyfriend's credit card statement. In fact, it was from eBay. Somebody opened up an eBay account under his name and made some purchases. eBay has not closed the account yet, which is ridiculous. We went to the precinct today to get information on what to do and we will go back there again soon. Hopefully we can get it resolved, or mostly resolved, before next Monday. I have a tendency to worry a lot and this criminal activity has scared me a bit.

My house counselor is coming over tomorrow afternoon. I thought she was only supposed to come twice a month, but she is coming every two weeks. Since this is a long month, this will be her third visit. She is a big pain. She does room inspections and I always seem to get a bad review. I think part of it has to do with my housemates having practically empty rooms and I have a room with wall-to-wall furniture and "stuff." My room is the odd one out and always seems to be a problem. I have too much clutter, she says. So tomorrow I will be trying to hide/disguise the clutter and I have to be home between 3 and 4.

I have Sally this week, last week she canceled due to a death in the family. I realized when she canceled just how much I have gotten used to her therapy sessions. She has become the new 'Jeanne' to me, but I feel like it is going even better than it did with Jeanne.

Overprotective

I am seeing my psychiatrist on Wednesday, April Fool's Day. I don't really celebrate April Fool's, so do not expect to find an entry from myself that is totally bogus. I don't like to trick people. I haven't been writing entries very often lately, so I might not write one that day. Who knows. She is going to ask the same question, which is basically, "Tell me how you've been?". Good thing I only see her once every two or three months, because usually I don't have much to say to her. Truth is, I've been doing very good, probably for the past ten appointments. I am still looking for a job, now I am waiting to hear from a state park for an interview. If she asks me what job it is, I will tell her it is data entry. She doesn't understand the English word keyboard- as in keyboard specialist. I don't remember what country she is from, but there is a definite language barrier.

The only real part of my life that is currently bugging me is my living situation. I must say though that if I can survive this house for three years, I can survive it for another if necessary. My one housemate has been working on quitting smoking, she hasn't had a cigarette in six days. One less smoker will definitely be nice. Smoking is going to be banned in my house in June, but I think my other housemate will break the rule during the few days of the month that she lives here. I spend the majority of my time at this house in my room: on the computer or listening to music mainly. I don't watch much TV, though I do watch the weather kind of regularly.

Now, to get to the subject of this post... my mother is very overprotective of my two cats, Spooky and Katrina, that live with her. My parents are going to Maine for a couple of days and are leaving the house to be watched by my sister. Apparently, that is not good enough for them. They want me and my boyfriend to "stop by" the house twice, one time being during the day while my sister is at work, to keep the cats company. It is not all so bad that they want me to do that, but that week is my boyfriend's Spring Break and also our one year anniversary. It is much better than neglecting my cats, but I think they will be OK with my sister. My sister is 26 years old now, she took care of a cat at her ex-boyfriend's apartment so I am sure she can take care of Spooky and Katrina. I definitely will stop by at least once to ease my parents mind.

As I mentioned, my one year anniversary with my boyfriend is coming up. We are going to go into NYC to a fairly fancy Italian restaurant. It will be a romantic way to celebrate our year together. Hopefully we will get good weather for that day/night.

Home alone but not for long...

It's the end of the weekend, and to my surprise, I came home to an empty house. This never has happened before. My one housemate is home and only goes away like two or three days of the year and usually the other one is home then. The other one is home like 4 days of the month come summertime. She goes fishing with her father and stays there. Just 5 minutes ago I think I heard someone come home; it figures, I never get the house to myself for very long.

I had a great weekend with my boyfriend. We went to Dunkin Donuts for coffee/hot chocolate and we went for a couple of walks. Today we walked to the baseball game on campus. We watched it for a little while, it is still kinda chilly outside. We also went to the library and played Scrabble. It is fun playing it at the library and we can use the Scrabble dictionary while we are there. I have Scrabble on my computer at home, which gives me an unfair advantage. I am up to the level of playing against the veteran, but I have more losses than wins against the vet. Scrabble has to be my favorite game. Though I'd like to get the electronic version of Battleship someday. I think that would be kinda cool.

I found out that if my boyfriend and I were to get our own place now, we'd be taken off of the couples housing list. We are going to wait, as couples housing is much more affordable and we'd probably have a washer and dryer if they gave us a house. We can get either an apartment or a house depending on what's available. I am really looking forward to that phone call from the housing agency.

Last but not least, my boyfriend and I are going to see Coldplay!!! I am very psyched, they are one of my favorite bands. I have all of their albums and I have a DVD of a concert of theirs which I have watched and they are great in concert. That is something else to look forward to, though it will probably come up before the housing does. We saw Dave Matthews Band last summer but we had field tickets and got completely drenched from the excessive amount of rain that night. This time we have actual seats, so if it rains, we will be ok.

Take a number, have a seat

It's been some time since I posted, and that's because I've been very busy. My boyfriend's car is pretty much dead, and because of that he had to find some way to be able to get to school. First he was thinking about buying a newer car (with student loans) but then he decided he would rent a room close to campus. We found a decent sized room in a very quiet house for him to stay at. It is only a half mile from the bus that runs to the main part of campus, about a five-ten minute walk.

I am happy that he'll be living a lot closer to me. It's a ten minute commute compared to an hour. He plans on living there until he graduates, or until we get couples housing. If we get couples housing he most likely won't be able to walk to school anymore, but we will deal with that if/when it happens.

I went to my local Social Security office today. There were no seats left to sit in after I took my number. They run it now kinda like the DMV. There is a screen that says what number they are 'serving.' I went there to get a proof of income letter so I can send it to my student loan company. I am putting my loans in another year of forbearance. They've already called me because my payment was due today and I didn't mail the forbearance letter in yet.

I saw Sally today. It went very well. She just might be my favorite therapist of all the ones I've had over the years. I hadn't seen her in over a week because of the big snow storm last week and also she went away for a couple of days.

I am at my parents house now. We are having a white pizza tonight for dinner. It is always nice to see the cats.

Stigma

	stig·ma [ stígmə ] (plural stig·mas) noun Definition: 1. sign of social unacceptability: the shame or disgrace attached to something regarded as socially unacceptable

My post today will be about stigma. The above definition is from MSN Encarta.
In terms of stigma, schizophrenia is probably one of the worst diagnoses that you can get. Have you ever heard the term 'schizo' in reference to someone? There are other common abuses of words such as 'psycho' and 'psychotic' and very often 'crazy'.

There is so much shame in my family over my mental illness. My parents won't let me volunteer in a hospital that is around the corner from the hospital they work in. They are afraid someone they know will find out my last name. My mother never told her best friend that I got sick. Her best friend. So you can imagine the awkwardness that occurred at my grandfather's wake. Especially when I told her that I was a psychology major at college and then she started talking about bipolar disorder to me.

The stigma is so bad that I feel like I have to keep this blog as anonymous as possible. I suppose it could be argued that I am not helping the stigma issue by remaining anonymous. But I would like to work someday and I know that if an interviewer found out (other than a mental health job) about my illness, I'd probably automatically be crossed off the list of potential employees. I already have an 8 year gap in my resume against me. If this were a perfect world, I would be able to disclose my illness without it being frowned upon. But unfortunately, many people are afraid of those with schizophrenia and/or just don't understand it.