There's a lyric in the Meat Loaf song Paradise by the Dashboard Light. The song itself is about making out in a car, but I've found the one lyric "It was long ago and it was far away, and it was so much better than it is today" pretty pertinent to my life in general. It's been a while since my situation in life hasn't been at least somewhat precarious. In addition to my tooth still hurting, the upcoming inspection and my preparations for it, combined with the fact I'm out of both of my anti-anxiety meds, is playing havoc with my nerves.
This is the state inspection, meaning they'll select apartments to look at randomly, so I may not get looked at at all... but on the other hand I might, so I have to be ready. In particular, they've always gotten on my ass about the state of my floors, which, while not unsanitary, exactly, are, well, floors, and I don't get them polished to a shining sheen because I'm expecting the Queen of England to visit any day now; they get dusty, and the floor in front of my front door especially often has scuff marks from shoes and so forth. I don't ignore these things, exactly; they're just not high on my list of things I need to do in order to keep my apartment looking presentable to myself and to visitors. Generally, I think I keep my place pretty tidy.
As to my tooth, as noted, it continues hurting, a dull throb that crescendos to a shooting pain that slowly ebbs away. On particularly bad days, it actually leaves me with a cold sweat on my brow. My last visit to the dentist had them assure me the filling is intact and that it's just sensitivity. They gave my some kind of prescription toothpaste which they said would numb the tooth up, but if anything, it's had the opposite effect, making the tooth more sensitive, because the pain, which was merely annoying beforehand, has become much worse since I started using the toothpaste. I've since stopped using it. while I don't doubt the filling is still there, I'm starting to think the tooth is infected somehow, or that when doing the filling, the dentist (her name escapes me) fucked up somehow. I'm using a lot of painkillers and store brand Orajel-type ointment to deal with the pain, but this is just treating the symptom; I'm definitely gonna go back and demand a more thorough examination and assessment of the state of the tooth and why it hurts so frickin' much, and if I'm not satisfied with their answers, I'm gonna go see a different dentist (which I'd hate to do because I like my dentist and her staff).
As for my knee, mentioned in my last journal, it's more or less healed, so there's that, at least.
And finally, I've been hit my a wave of nostalgia for old friends I've lost touch with. Last year I did a journal about friends I'd lost contact with and was worried about. I posted it to FA, but can't remember if I posted it here, too. That journal did bear fruit, as I managed to get back in touch with my buddy Gragor, who it turned out as on FA.
Well, it's happening again, and, quite frankly, I have no idea why. Or why it keeps happening more or less around this time of year. I guess because it's so early into a new year, which makes me think, y'know, hey, new beginnings and whatnot, try and reconnect with old friends you haven't seen in years, mend old fences and repair burned bridges.
And because I'm sick of being polite and not naming names I'm looking at you, Tristan Hawthorne.
So I have to ask... when do things get better? Apparently never. Apparently, adult life is nothing but one complication and annoyance after another, usually revolving around money and food, and in a lot of ways this neither surprises me not feels unfair, exactly, but, at the same time, I often feel as if people (my parents, my teachers, etc.) did considerably little to prepare me for any of it. A lot of it is my own fault; living as I did with my mother for thirteen years, I'm the very definition of a late bloomer who didn't get out into the real world by myself until 2014, and even then, only because I was forced out by circumstances beyond my control (see earlier journals for exactly what those circumstances are). I wasn't so much thrown as I ran into the real world half out of my mind with anxiety and anger, fed up with my life's lack of direction up to that point, pushed to make an important decision super-suddenly due to things reaching a head at home, all without any real plan beyond "get my own place," and now I feel like I'm paying the penalty. I sometimes feel that in many ways, aside from the lack of cats and cat-related problems (the main source of my misery at my mom's house), I'm really no better off here at Cleveland Green II than I was living with my mom. I feel that all I've done is trade one set of anxieties for an entirely different, somehow more confounding set of ones, and that life really isn't going to improve terribly any time soon.
And yet, I've come this far, so I want to stick to my guns.
Anyhoo, enough of my griping; I just wanted to vent a little. Thanks for reading, guys. :)
