Reflections On How Far I've Come And Other Randomness

In talking about my emergency alert system being gone as I'd mentioned Monday in my last blog entry I forgot to talk about what old technology that emergency alert system actually is. The emergency alert system I'm talking about is similar to Life Alert in that the person who has an emergency alert system wears a button around his or her neck. If the person who has the emergency alert system needs urgent help then he or she just presses the button that's located on the necklace he or she wears. However the particular technology and the way the emergency alert system works, are both outdated. LOL. What I mean in saying that particular piece of technology is outdated is this: for one thing the emergency alert system only works inside a person's house or apartment or right outside a person's house or apartment. So if I were elsewhere and I had an emergency that I needed to contact 9-1-1 for, thankfully I have my Apple Watch to rely on. Needless to say I was glad when I was able to get that emergency alert system out of my hair, especially because said technology is becoming outdated. Here is the thing though: if a person who is homebound needs to use a service like that, the service would work for that kind of person. However when a person like me who leads an active life has an emergency alert system like that, it really doesn't make much sense because the emergency alert system would only work where I live. Whereas my Apple Watch has GPS on it and can therefore locate me wherever I am. Not only that but I can call 9-1-1 directly from my Apple Watch if I need to. In my last blog entry that I wrote on Monday I forgot to mention that I finished reading Self-Compassion in its entirety that same day. Then shortly after I'd written that particular blog entry I checked my DMs on Twitter to see whether Apple Support had written me back or not. It turned out that they'd written me back the same day that they'd called me. So I immediately replied to Apple Support's DM asking that particular company if we could schedule for someone from the company to call me this coming weekend. I let Apple Support know that things have been hectic in my world lately and that I want to make sure I have all the time in the world to talk to someone from the company about what I'm encountering in trying to complete the AppleCare Technician Training as a totally blind person. A little while later Apple Support replied to my DM saying that they'd schedule an appointment to talk with me on the phone this coming Saturday morning. Yesterday morning I had my last appointment with this particular therapist. During hers and my therapy session yesterday morning she and I talked a lot about me continuing to allow myself to experience what it feels like to truly be happy with myself and to be happy with life as a whole. She and I talked about the importance of me continuing to allow myself to really live in the present, moment by moment. Because honestly I've never been able to live in the present because my body and mind hadn't had an opportunity to heal from the repeated traumatic experiences I've had throughout my life. Now that my mind and body have started the process of moving past my past, that's what I'm solely focused on right now. I've had too much pressure put on me with regards to my future and I'm going to work on taking that pressure off of myself. Because it isn't fair to me to not let myself live fully in the present. I deserve to live fully in the present. I owe it to myself to live fully in the present from here on out. I'm really going to miss this particular therapist but I'm incredibly grateful for the time that she and I had with one another. All of the therapists that I had a chance to work with in San Antonio since last August have been a blessing to me though. All three of those therapists were compassionate and kind people who are absolutely doing what they are called to do. When I was down on myself and I'd say things like "I think my mom wants me dead" or "I feel like my mom hates my guts" the therapists would ask me if I knew that for a fact and I had no choice but to say that no, I didn't in fact know what my mom's stance was. All I knew for a fact was that my mom has chosen not to be in my life and that I've chosen to keep her out of my life because of who she is. Just to show you all where my head was when I first started going to therapy in August I'll show you something I wrote. What i wrote was written on September 27 2017. It reads as follows: "I think this particular traumatic event happened because I made a bad choice in allowing my mom to come visit me in the hospital when I was on my deathbed. Based on past experiences of how my mom treated me I should’ve known that the experience of her visiting me in the hospital wouldn’t prove to me that she loved me. Based on past experiences of how I felt I was a burden when I was around my mom I should’ve known that this experience of my mom visiting me in the hospital wouldn’t cause me to feel happy, safe, trusting of her or at peace in an already intense and stressful situation. I feel stupid for even inviting my mom to come see me in the hospital because I’d successfully predicted how she’d act towards me during her visit. When my mom visited me in the hospital I believe that in telling me that she'd had work to do rather than paying attention to what I was going through she wanted to remind me that I don’t matter to her, that my life or death doesn’t matter to her. I believe that my mom wanted me to feel like I'd inconvenienced her by asking her to visit me in the hospital. I believe that she also wanted to reinforce the fact that my choices, thoughts, feelings, safety, wants and needs don’t matter to anyone. I believe that she told the medical staff at the hospital that she wanted to be in charge of what happened or didn’t happen to me because she wanted the medical staff at the hospital to accept her word that I wasn’t capable of making my own decisions for my life. I believe that she wanted me to feel powerless and unhappy with her in the hospital and to accept that other people don’t take me seriously since she’s never taken me seriously herself. This experience reinforced the message that I believe my mom was trying to communicate to me: that because she saw me as the biggest burden in her life and the worst mistake she’d ever made, the entire world should see me as a burden and the biggest mistake to humanity too. This experience also reinforced the belief that whenever people tell me that I’m not a burden on them, those people are lying to me because they think I can’t handle the truth or they think that I don’t deserve to know that they’re only being nice to me because they feel that they have to be nice to me. Because of this experience I feel like I can’t trust people since people may not value me if I’m truly open with them, just how my mom doesn’t value me. I feel like I can’t share things about this experience with people because I think that if people knew I had these thoughts, those people would hate me forever. I feel that if I shared these thoughts with people, those people would tell me that I don’t deserve to be alive nor do I deserve to enjoy life to the fullest. Because of this experience I often feel like love is something hurtful to experience (whether the person who loves me is a family member, a friend or a significant other). When I’ve been in romantic relationships with people I’ve felt that my choices, feelings, thoughts, needs and wants in each relationship don’t matter. This particular experience where I allowed my mom to visit me in the hospital made those same feelings and thoughts come up for me. I felt like by my mom being at the hospital, she was reminding me one last time how insignificant I really am to her, to the world and to myself. When she showed me a video of my two nearly teen-aged brothers Max and Alex being fowl-mouthed towards one another I felt like she knew exactly how to hurt me and how to make me physically feel like my heart was being ripped from my chest. In my mom showing me the video of Max and Alex I believe that she wanted me to want my life to end since she wouldn’t let me see the two of them again. I believe that through my mom telling me graphic details of when my favorite Aunt Loretta had died just a month before I was in the hospital my mom wanted to drag me into an even deeper hole than I was already in. I believe that my mom wanted me dead, gone forever so that no one would have a chance to truly love me, so that I'd never have a chance to truly love me." Of course now I understand that my mom is just an awful person. How she's acted and how she continues to act has nothing whatsoever to do with me. I also no longer see myself as a burden to anyone. It's taken me a ton of work to get to where I am now though that's for sure. However I'm grateful for everything that I've been through. Today is my last day in this particular apartment. This morning a friend of mine texted me to ask if I'd mind him asking people from the church he goes to if there's anyone who would like to have the remaining furniture I still have in the apartment. Of course I said that it would be great if I could give the remaining items to someone who would truly use them. My assistant is currently in the process of taking apart my computer desk so that she can have it for her little girl. My assistant is also going to take the chair that's by my computer desk. That way her little girl will have a chair to go with her new desk. In just a few hours I'll be packing all of my things and getting ready to leave this apartment for good.