1:01 PM - Thurs 8.11.16
LA Parking Is My Kryptonite

Well, other than breakfast with Josh, which was delightful - and I guess the evening's Zumba class, now that I think of it - Monday didn't go quite the way I'd hoped...

At noon, I had a Doctor's appointment, to see about getting an "oral appliance" made for my sleep apnea (Since, after however long I've been doing CPAP now - nine, ten months? - I'm not feeling any better).

Got there over a half-hour early, and pulled into the parking lot.

That's when an attendant came out, and asked where I was going. And when I told him I had a Doctor's appointment, he told me the Doctor's office didn't validate parking, which was $2.50 for 15 minutes, "cash only".

I didn't have any cash - which is often the case these days (I use my debit card for most things) - so I pulled out of the lot, and looked for metered parking on Wilshire (The office was on Wilshire).

And there wasn't any.

So I ended up driving all around, trying to find parking, but one street was "No Parking At Any Time", another was "Permit Parking Only", and the rest of the neighborhood was on a Monday/Tuesday "street sweeping" schedule (Meaning there was no parking on the "Monday" side of the street, so no spaces left on the "Tuesday" side).

And as I drove around and around, I felt my frustration build ("I just want to park my motherfucking car...!").

And as my frustration mounted, I tried not to "act out".

I failed.

And the longer things went on, the more I "escalated" - From cursing, to smacking my steering wheel, to forcefully clapping my hands together, to punching myself on the thigh, to biting my hand, to hitting myself upside the head.

(Just writing that makes me wonder - If I lost my mind over not being able to find parking for a Doctor's appointment, what would have happened if I'd been going to an audition? Hari-Kari?)

Eventually, after I drove around and around for a half-hour, a slot opened up on Wilshire, about a block away from the office.

So I went in, got a key to the bathroom (A need for the bathroom having added extra stress to the parking situation), then came back, filled out some paperwork, and waited for the Doctor.

And I don't remember when it started happening exactly - I think in between the Doctor first seeing me, and waiting for the X-ray tech to get me for an X-ray - but, once again, a wave of pure, abject misery hit me.

When it's happened before, it's typically been after something - the appointments with the Psychiatrist, Zumba, etc. - so to have this happen to me during the appointment was...troubling, to say the least.

When the X-ray was done, and I was waiting for the doctor to come back, I shed a tear or two, dabbed my eyes, and it seemed to "release the pressure", because I was okay through the rest of the appointment. Still feeling tremendously sad, but not as if I were going to burst into tears at any second.

And things ended on a pretty happy note - my insurance covers it (previously, when I've looked into this as a possibility, insurance wouldn't cover it, for reasons too stupid to get into).

And since I've met my deductible for the year, I'm only on the hook for 10%, or about $250 (Now, the idea that this appliance costs $2500 to create is insane, but I'm not interested in addressing that issue at this time).

Of course, I'd prefer not needing this at all - and to know that it'll work for me - but $250 seems a relatively small gamble when it could mean actually sleeping at night.

But in spite of the (relatively) good news - On the one hand, it was only going to cost me $250 (plus Doctor visit co-pays)...but I'd gone in thinking it might be "a couple hundred bucks" total - I left feeling pretty down.

A day or two prior I'd actually thought "maybe the medication is kicking-in..." - I'd had a couple days with no major bouts of smacking myself around, or episodes of public weepiness - so to have it all come back in the span of about 90 minutes was...disappointing.

(I remember ruefully thinking, "Okay, so looks like my current dosage isn't doing the trick after all...!")

When I got home, I thought about calling "Kat" (The Tinder connection who expressed an interest in seeing me), but I was feeling tired and down, and I thought "I'll wait till after Zumba", and spent the time before class playing on the computer, and trying to nap.

So I went to Zumba, and it was pretty fun (I seem, at least for now, to have gotten my "Zumba mojo" back, after weeks of feeling like I was "losing ground").

When I got back home, I decided it was time to try Stranger Things, the Netflix show I'd been hearing such good things about (I watched two episodes, and thought it was, indeed, quite good. I look forward to finishing it in the next few days).

After that, I looked at the clock, saw it was 11:00 pm, and that's when it hit me - "Oh shit! I was gonna call Kat...!".

I opened my Tinder app - because for some reason, I hadn't put her number in my phone yet - thinking I'd message her an apology, and let her know I'd try her in the morning.

But there was nothing there - I guess once she realized I wasn't calling, she went in and deleted our connection (The way I did after my "date" with what's-her-face).

I didn't initially understand what had happened - or didn't want to - so I kept fiddling with the app, as if I was going to be able to retrieve the number.

But there was nothing there.

I'm still trying to figure out just what happened - Did my little depressive episode just push it out of my thoughts, did I subconsciously "forget it on purpose" because - on some level - I didn't want to call, or what? - but whatever happened, the end result is that someone was interested in meeting me, and now that's not happening.

And as I'm writing this, it strikes me - I was sad, bummed that I'd screwed up, and more than a little angry at myself, but I didn't go insane. I didn't do anything that made me think, "Okay Jim, that's fucking crazy...!"

Wonder what the difference is, between the things that make me lose my shit (Which these days seem to be "just about everything"), and the things I can handle like a normal person?

So in spite of the lovely breakfast with Josh - I found myself wishing we could do it more often, but it seems hard to get together with anyone out here - and the fun at Zumba, the day ended up feeling like an overall disappointment, because I'd expected to have a pretty full, more-enjoyable-than-usual Monday, instead of the hit-and-miss affair that I got.

Well, I didn't note the time change, but it's almost midnight now...

And even though there's more to write about - and I'm not really happy with what I've written thus far - I'm tired, and have to get up relatively early tomorrow, because I want to go to my WW meeting, which I skipped last week (Already wondering if I'll brave the comic book store afterward, where "The Parking Incident" happened - between that and the Doctor's appoint on Monday, parking in LA seems to have been my "Kryptonite" in recent weeks).

Meanwhile, I wait for "The Busy Season" of auditions to become "busy" for me.

Stay tuned...

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