October has become a pivotal month. It’s been weird and very unsettling.

Today I made a couple of confusing discoveries on a personal issue that has me thinking, what the hell was that all about, it sure looked as if there was something there? I guess it was all an illusion. Good thing I didn’t really put my heart out there-even though I wanted to; it wasn’t really wanted. Oh well, live and learn.

I’m going to enjoy an evening of staying busy purging and reorganizing. Purging is the theme of the day.

I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster starting with an incident at work that may lead to me leaving my job. That actually happened the last week of September. So, my replacement employment hunt is speeding up. It’s scary not knowing when my job will end. I’m not being hopeful as so many things about this year have turned out to have fog as foundations.

Then the Cologuard surprise. Thinking all would be good because I’ve had no symptoms of anything being wrong. Then trying to make an appointment with the first referred gastroenterologist and finding out they had no new patient open appointments till January. Next up came the new referral. I got the only open new patient appointment available until January. That was for today. I was scheduled to work today so, I went to my boss and got my shift removed so I could go. Wrong move.

Enter insurance snafu that shouldn’t have been because I wasn’t a full three months late on payments (that only happened because I THOUGHT it wouldn’t take so long to get my tax refund. It still hasn’t arrived). My policy is through Obamacare; they are not supposed to cancel until more than three months of being behind has happened.

I didn’t find out that my policy was canceled until last Friday. It was just the last thing that made me want to not breathe anymore. Like most people having suicidal ideation, I didn’t really want to die. I wanted all the pain, disappointment, disillusions, illusions, money shortages, job, domestic, lack of romantic partner (I seriously miss being in love with someone who feels the same) hurts to end. It’s been 13 years of these struggles and after a while it just gets too hard to fight anymore.

I will tell you, and anyone who knows me, will tell you that I am one of the most optimistic humans they have ever known. So, folks, if I was feeling like that on Friday, you can bet there are many, many more who also want to cease to live:to DIE.

Fortunately, I do have a deep reserve of strength but, as I told one of my bosses last night when she sent me to work self checkout for the last hour of my shift, just after some more bad insurance news, very often you have to let the irrational emotional freight train plow forward, making all the stops, before you can take the deep breath and acknowledge what you already cognitively know. And, that is to just take that deep breath and form the next steps you need to take to fix the problem. Science has empirically shown that thoughts can possibly be altered at the snap of your fingers. Emotions, not so much. I’ve always had very deep, complex emotions. I’m glad I do; it keeps me from being too much like Spock. It also drives me to write and take photographs and keep learning to be better at both and be a better human. As a side note, it took me over thirty years to realize I related more to my artist half than to my scientist half. It’s the curse of scoring in the 98th percentile in everything in school. I love anything that exercises my mind.

Return to yesterday when I was at work: earlier in the day I’d called the new gastroenterologist, as they told me to do, and find out if they learned my insurance was reactivated. Florida Blue told me it would take up to 32 hours. Yes, I know it was the weekend. For some businesses those hours don’t count, for others, they do and I was assured that the action on my account was marked as, “high priority.” I called the doctor’s office and was told that my policy was active, thus, my 8 am appointment for today was still on. About two hours later at 4:34 pm, I was ringing groceries on register 8 when my phone blared its Sherwood Forest ring tone. I peeked into my vest pocket and saw it was the doctor’s office. It could only be bad news. It was. I got permission to call them back and waited about ten minutes to be told that, no, my insurance wasn’t reactivated and that the information they had showed I hadn’t paid Florida Blue since July. That was wrong. I’d paid $100 on September 8th and $223 on Friday.

But, there was nothing I could do because they’d cancelled my appointment. My primary did the same to my appointment I had for tomorrow but, I was going to have to move that anyway because I haven’t done the blood tests yet.

Today’s personal discoveries have given me more resolve to focus on practical matters to fix my life. New job, new way of earning a living, new home-I do miss my Florida West Coast connections-new money. One step at a time.

I did have some good news today. My Florida Blue payment cleared and I won a free Cash 4 Life ticket last night. How exciting.