Yeah, so I was up early, that was a mistake!

Either that or spending the entire day with my sister doing her gender conflicted version of shopping was, maybe both. She's the only person I know who can spend an hour fondling socks trying to decide which ones to buy. She's also so fraking obsessed with her own unique twist on "reality" that she MUST buy another pair of shoes, ones she wasn't going to buy in the first place, just so that there will be SIX pairs of shoes instead of five, because God and Goddess forbid we don't get the buy one, get one half off deal for all of them. Mind you she was only buying three pair when we started, and I bought two. Nuts I tell you!

We wandered all over hells half acre and then some to even find the shoes in the first place. Me, I found a decent pair of Merril knockoffs for 22 dollars, and a nice simple pair of plain black pumps. Now I can go back to wearing skirts, I have shoes to go with!!! Yay!!!

I did way, way, to much today, including a brief, and not terribly successful foray into a mall. Not just any mall, but one that the last time I'd been there was more than ten years ago with Earl before we married. We were window shopping for rings, and found one in Nordstroms that we liked. Personally I think I handled things amazingly well and only broke down hyterical crying once while we were eating lunch at Subway.

My sister got to talking about patterns and behaviors, how people who live long enough in horrible situations pick up bad habits and so forth. She then proceed to launch into a blow by blow description of how O'Brian on DS9 was sentenced to 40 years in prison, then they did this whole compressed time thing so that he lived out the entire 40 year sentence in a handful of days. Somehow I'd missed that one (thankfully) but her going into great and gory detail managed to remind me of what it's like to be in prison for years on end. Not like I'd know anything about that, and she realized what she'd done way too late. I was toast.

Living in 'gender prison' is bad enough, but THAT isn't what came to mind. I've been officially diagnosed with 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder' sub classified as 'Prison Camp Survivor' because of my life with Earl. Yeah, it really was that bad and then some. So I lost it right there while eating lunch, and all because I was "eating too fast" and how that wasn't healthy. Mind you, I've slowed down quite a bit of late, working on getting away from the behaviors beaten into my head and heart around Earl and his parents. My sister who knows EVERYTHING (just ask her) then launched into the whole thing and the DS9 episode I'd missed. She assured me that at the end of the show they'd managed to "deprogram" O'Brian and he was fine.

Can they do me next?

Regrettably, no such technology exists in this time and space. Sucks to be me! I hate this, I really do! By the "end" of the day I was so screwed up I was jumping at everything. Now however I have a hankering for some corn. Yeah, just a dish full of hot corn! I'm so tired I think I'm going to head off to bed at TEN tonight, which is right around the corner. Maybe I'll dream of a life without the agony of my past, the limitations on my future, and the damage simple talking can do to me, let alone going out in public.