“So you're a Lebowski, I'm a Lebowski.”

I’ve been having trouble starting these blogposts. It’s unlike me to struggle saying anything that’s on my mind, but for some reason when I begin this first paragraph, it has become difficult to relay my thought process. Perhaps it’s because this is THE NEW YEAR’S EVE POST but when you’re sober, you don’t really take these "holidays" seriously. So maybe it’s the residual pressure of having to report on 365 days of…whatever.

This year started off with a relationship I wasn’t expecting myself to get into. It’s incredibly easy to date comedians, which is why I dated yet another comedian later in the year. It’s like when smokers go out to smoke but they don’t know each other. They immediately have a sense of camaraderie because they’re smoking anonymously. It’s the same for comics as any other artistic form of expression, I imagine. But it’s hard to not shit where you eat when all you’re doing is comedy. Like let’s not pretend I don’t know about it, because I do. I’ve dated a few comics. Some of them ended in a real Hindenburg type explosion but others softly glided down to an even relationship homeostasis. For a real paycheck, I was labeling, measuring, describing, and slinging mid-century modern furniture to people who had never been exposed to the design form everyone over the age of 50 is relatively sick of. The consignment shop was reminiscent of a pawnshop owned by Don Draper, but most of my time was spent listening to Creedence and try to upsell people on the experience of a reversible sectional sofa versus a love seat with no accompanying ottoman. For forty hours a week, sizing up furniture and thinking of ridiculous names that had significance to me but was beyond imagination for anyone else visiting the vast array of uneven concrete floorspace.

March rolled around and life’s challenges became unusually stressful both mentally and emotionally. It was around this time last year I was having conversations about wanting to better myself in terms of what I ate, how I exercise, and what I deem a healthy amount of sleep. And in the new year, I became obsessive over numbers: units of insulin, calories, carbohydrates, minutes spent expelling energy, low blood sugar, high blood sugar, pounds on the scale, inches of my waist. I unknowingly started to go through something called “diabetic burnout.” At some point many diabetics will experience the notion of feeling like they can’t go on because of their disease. They become tired over the mathematical labor it takes to act as your own pancreas, so their diligence becomes lazy and worn out. Except my burnout was the opposite. I was overzealous with my equations in the kitchen that doubled as my laboratory. If you take one pound of cauliflower rice with X ounces of protein over four days divided by Y sodium preservative sauces from Trader Joe’s, how many times will Liz cry by the end of the week? I wanted to be accurate and exact. I couldn’t turn into the diabetic person who is the case for the misinformation most people receive about the disease. I didn’t want to lose my toes. I didn’t want people to see me as someone overweight and finding out I had diabetes and saying “Oh yep, that makes sense.” I even pulled out of a comedy show that required me to strip to my degree of comfort. “Comic Strip” looked fun and exciting and it was refreshing to see a comedy show that didn’t involve smoking weed or drinking, and at the time, it felt like most of these comedy shows weren’t for me at all. My self worth was at an all time low and I couldn’t get a break from the autoimmune disease taking up so much of my brainpower.

I started contemplating killing myself. There wasn’t a cure and there most likely won’t be, so why slog through the next 40 years at limited capacity? At first, I didn’t know how I’d go about it, but I narrowed out things like using a gun. I didn’t even know where to get a gun. Knives seemed drawn out and painful and the IKEA brand stainless steel edges weren’t going to be effective. I thought about using medication but I didn’t want to have my last experience in life be that feeling where you take mushrooms and then just sit there idly waiting for them to kick in. I was too short for the rail in my closet. This insanity in itself was exhausting, and I ended up mentioning it to my endocrinologist, who submitted me to the ER when I told her the ideations I was experiencing. I was crying a lot, tired, dragging my feet. I was at my appointment in sweatpants and the slippers I wore to rehab because I stopped caring about my outward appearance when I wasn’t on the clock. I looked like I had a drug problem with all the drugs I wasn’t actually on. I was losing my hair from being stressed, I stopped wearing make up, and I rarely responded to text messages.

My endocrinologist walked me to the ER where my mom met me. I’m the only one in my family with diabetes so before my diagnosis, no one had any familiarity with the disease, and a lot of my stress manifested through having to explain to everyone around me why I couldn’t have dinner yet, why I was sweaty and clammy behind the wheel of a moving car, why I’m eating dessert after dinner before everyone else, why I needed to stop at the 7/11 for extra Skittles to keep in my glovebox. I explained to the ER social worker person (I’m clearly still unsure of her exact title) who met with me that I wasn’t in danger, I’m just tired and frustrated I can’t have a break. I told her I’d rather have cancer since I’d maybe have a chance to beat it. I told her that my life was narrowed down to prescriptions and the fear of President FuckFace ultimately making it so that my life would become completely unmanageable while living in the expensive, Amazonian oasis that is Seattle. I spilled out all of my fears, frustrations, all while trying to stay sober at the same time. I went home and called my boyfriend, who scolded me for not telling him of my ideations sooner. I had spent six hours under the care of medical professionals and when I finally returned home to the small closet I was renting on Alki, I was essentially shamed for having any kind of emotions. It was a real “I’m not sad, just disappointed” kind of vibe. Looking back on it, I understand his concerns. But at the time, it really wasn’t what I wanted or needed to hear.

I returned to my job at the consignment store the next day and was promptly laid off. The store had been hemorrhaging money to make it a competitive environment for people who wanted to buy and sell furniture. But with the economy the way it was, people were more interested in receiving money for their flatpack crap they had lying around for months in a damp garage than spending money on a cosmic shaped couch dubbed “The Jetson.” This was the third time I had been laid off in my life and the only one where I remained sober of the rest of the day. I was becoming overwhelmed, aimless, and unclear about how to proceed, so I ended my relationship, deleted Facebook, and I wish I could say I hit the gym and lawyered up, but instead I resorted to eating cereal twice a day and sleeping through the literal days of my two favorite seasons. I quit comedy for roughly six weeks. The last thing I wanted to do was present my unpresentable self in front of a bunch of my peers and a bunch of strangers. My sense of routine was demolished, but finding a routine elsewhere and doing the research to find some structure wasn’t completely out of reach.

90% of the time before I go to sleep, I’m on Reddit with my phone three inches away from my face. I scroll through the qualms of history and Seinfeld gifs retrofitted to current politics. The expat subreddit came up, r/iwantout, and I looked at the kinds of questions people were asking about moving abroad. I had wanted to move abroad for years but never did the thorough Googling it entailed, and since I had all the time in the world in the middle of the night because I didn’t have a job or a relationship, I slowly started compiling information about the former communist bloc country now known as “Czechia” except no one calls it that. Like I’ve stated in this blog before, the reasons I moved were preserving my quality of life and improving my cost of living. Being an insulin dependent in Seattle without health insurance was going to be a gamble. So I did what Reddit suggested. I got out.

At first my decision was met with extreme hesitancy. “The Czech Republic? That seems drastic,” my mom told me. And over the next few months, I completely inundated her with information about cell phone plans, rent, the language, transportation options, healthcare in the US vs public healthcare in what was going to be my new home, geographical points of interest, how far away I was from Russia and the Ukraine, and carb counting on the metric system. While my mom was concerned, my dad was pleased. I was almost 30 and reached a point where I was no longer clinging to anything in Seattle. No boys. No future in comedy. No job. I made a list of reasons I would return to the US; a family member getting seriously ill or dying, zombie apocalypse, or an outbreak of nuclear war were all reasons to book a ticket home. Some people estimate I’ll be gone forever. Others estimate I’ll be home by March.

And so here I sit on New Year’s Eve, in Brno, with the sound of rumbling and bumbling fireworks all around my concrete home. I wonder how bad the PTSD is here from the multiple transitions of power that took place in this country over the last 100 years. I’m finally living by my own guidelines instead of the false, fabricated, grandeur expectations of others. There’s a lot of verbs I could apply to my situation. I escaped. I failed. I lived. But whatever I’m doing, my ham of a kitty hasn’t left my side and I’m making new friends while learning a very difficult language and I’m staying in contact with my family at home. I’ll be going to a friend’s flat, another expat from the states for boardgames and home-cooked vegetarian food. I don’t know how to sign off on this, much like the beginning of all this bullshit regarding not knowing how to begin. So I’ll say fuck this year. Actually, no. This year wasn’t bad: it was just different. I’m assuming 2018 will progress in the same way. That seems like a good note to end on. Goodnight from Brno, Happy New Year.