Twenty-Seven Dollar Can Opener
Jun. 1st, 2025 06:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
disappointed_lesbianI need a new can opener. The cheapest one I've found in town so far costs almost seven dollars. The most expensive costs twenty-seven dollars. I don't understand why can openers are so expensive now. I've noticed the price climbing over the years, but the average of about fifteen dollars now just seems insane.
I tried starting Pimsleur Korean again. It is maddening. Not enough grammar is taught to enable retention of the long verb forms, which are impossible to remember even with all the repetition. I probably won't even continue with it, let alone finish it. This is the old Pimsleur, which was sold on CDs and is now available free/bootleg online; the new Pimsleur might be better, but it must be streamed from the website (or downloaded to a smartphone, an ungainly device which I'm not going to bother walking around with), so it's far less convenient to use. I'll stick with Rosetta Stone and resubscribe to Lingodeer if I feel the need for more input. I dislike English-language instruction anyhow.
Maybe I need to see a psychiatrist. I'm no longer having mood swings, but I've had a couple of scary episodes of intense doom and despair that felt like they didn't even come from my mind. When I think about dying, it's comforting; when this seemingly alien consciousness puts thoughts of dying into my head, it's mentally painful and existentially terrifying. It can't be progesterone this time because I've been off it for weeks. These episodes always occur when it's been a while since I've last eaten, so I'm assuming they're related to low blood sugar. I looked it up online and ended up on the diabetes subreddit, where someone said that she ignored these symptoms for years but ended up being diagnosed with severe depression.
Now is a great time to talk about my experiences in therapy. There's been just one counselor who seemed truly understanding, with whom I felt most comfortable. And it was a guy. I felt that I got nowhere with the female therapists I saw, but one was like some Freudian specialist, so that may have partially accounted for her being inappropriate for me (I can recall her telling me that I was not accounting for my unconscious motivations, which was all but enraging since I've had so many episodes in which people assume that I'm thinking something other than what I say about myself).
The graduate student who did most of my first (or second?) autism evaluation (which was kind of garbage) tried wayy too hard to be empathetic, to the point of manufacturing emotions to empathize with, it seemed. At one point, she said something like, "I know this must be difficult to talk about," and I responded that no, it wasn't difficult, and, later on, she repeated here assumption that the topic was difficult for me. She wasn't listening. She misdiagnosed me with schizoid pd. Her work was overseen and approved of by a licensed clinical psychology (whom I never met). I was very disappointed with this evaluation and felt that the student was biased. But she was, after all, just a student.
So I'm going to request a male psychiatrist. I'm afraid that female clinicians put too much stock in empathy, which I do not need. Maybe the older, more experienced ones don't do so as often, but I'm wary. I need intellectual understanding and solutions, not empathy. Honestly, it annoys me when people think that their emotions can make me feel better. I have my own goddamned emotions; what do I need theirs for?
Oh I almost forgot: during my last cycle, I finally ate a little bit of menstrual blood, albeit not enough to make any difference in my iron levels. I was just sort of leveling up from licking pads. I swallowed a very small dollop of blood. I could not detect any taste. It was slimy, so I don't think I'll be doing that again.
I've been thinking about getting in contact with one of my dad's old girlfriends, a womon who raised me for a year when I was five, the year my mom abandoned us. I'm afraid she's dead or very ill, and I can't handle thoughts about death in my current mental state. Yesterday, I came across a Reddit thread about Palm Springs, CA being a gay-friendly retirement community, and the idea of people growing old gay (many of us alone, sadly) was almost too much.
My sleep is bad again; my newest melatonin is too strong, so I stopped taking it, then slept hardly at all. It's taken me days to come up with the idea of cutting the pill in half. Maybe I'll even do thirds.
This afternoon, I went to the local public library for some more free menstrual pads. While I was there, I looked for the novel Crazy Rich Asians. Surely that ought to get me on my way to an Asian Studies degree. Actually I just want some English-language fiction to read that isn't Lovecraft. Horror every afternoon is too much. I flipped through the book and found it vapid and dull. Instead, I chose Dean Koontz' The Silent Corner, a suspense novel that's probably going to have some low-key horror elements, if I know Dean Koontz. I also got a volume called Filipino Studies as my first taste of Asian Studies.
I tried starting Pimsleur Korean again. It is maddening. Not enough grammar is taught to enable retention of the long verb forms, which are impossible to remember even with all the repetition. I probably won't even continue with it, let alone finish it. This is the old Pimsleur, which was sold on CDs and is now available free/bootleg online; the new Pimsleur might be better, but it must be streamed from the website (or downloaded to a smartphone, an ungainly device which I'm not going to bother walking around with), so it's far less convenient to use. I'll stick with Rosetta Stone and resubscribe to Lingodeer if I feel the need for more input. I dislike English-language instruction anyhow.
Maybe I need to see a psychiatrist. I'm no longer having mood swings, but I've had a couple of scary episodes of intense doom and despair that felt like they didn't even come from my mind. When I think about dying, it's comforting; when this seemingly alien consciousness puts thoughts of dying into my head, it's mentally painful and existentially terrifying. It can't be progesterone this time because I've been off it for weeks. These episodes always occur when it's been a while since I've last eaten, so I'm assuming they're related to low blood sugar. I looked it up online and ended up on the diabetes subreddit, where someone said that she ignored these symptoms for years but ended up being diagnosed with severe depression.
Now is a great time to talk about my experiences in therapy. There's been just one counselor who seemed truly understanding, with whom I felt most comfortable. And it was a guy. I felt that I got nowhere with the female therapists I saw, but one was like some Freudian specialist, so that may have partially accounted for her being inappropriate for me (I can recall her telling me that I was not accounting for my unconscious motivations, which was all but enraging since I've had so many episodes in which people assume that I'm thinking something other than what I say about myself).
The graduate student who did most of my first (or second?) autism evaluation (which was kind of garbage) tried wayy too hard to be empathetic, to the point of manufacturing emotions to empathize with, it seemed. At one point, she said something like, "I know this must be difficult to talk about," and I responded that no, it wasn't difficult, and, later on, she repeated here assumption that the topic was difficult for me. She wasn't listening. She misdiagnosed me with schizoid pd. Her work was overseen and approved of by a licensed clinical psychology (whom I never met). I was very disappointed with this evaluation and felt that the student was biased. But she was, after all, just a student.
So I'm going to request a male psychiatrist. I'm afraid that female clinicians put too much stock in empathy, which I do not need. Maybe the older, more experienced ones don't do so as often, but I'm wary. I need intellectual understanding and solutions, not empathy. Honestly, it annoys me when people think that their emotions can make me feel better. I have my own goddamned emotions; what do I need theirs for?
Oh I almost forgot: during my last cycle, I finally ate a little bit of menstrual blood, albeit not enough to make any difference in my iron levels. I was just sort of leveling up from licking pads. I swallowed a very small dollop of blood. I could not detect any taste. It was slimy, so I don't think I'll be doing that again.
I've been thinking about getting in contact with one of my dad's old girlfriends, a womon who raised me for a year when I was five, the year my mom abandoned us. I'm afraid she's dead or very ill, and I can't handle thoughts about death in my current mental state. Yesterday, I came across a Reddit thread about Palm Springs, CA being a gay-friendly retirement community, and the idea of people growing old gay (many of us alone, sadly) was almost too much.
My sleep is bad again; my newest melatonin is too strong, so I stopped taking it, then slept hardly at all. It's taken me days to come up with the idea of cutting the pill in half. Maybe I'll even do thirds.
This afternoon, I went to the local public library for some more free menstrual pads. While I was there, I looked for the novel Crazy Rich Asians. Surely that ought to get me on my way to an Asian Studies degree. Actually I just want some English-language fiction to read that isn't Lovecraft. Horror every afternoon is too much. I flipped through the book and found it vapid and dull. Instead, I chose Dean Koontz' The Silent Corner, a suspense novel that's probably going to have some low-key horror elements, if I know Dean Koontz. I also got a volume called Filipino Studies as my first taste of Asian Studies.
