First, credit where credit is due!

CONGRATULATIONS TO MY BROTHER, DANIEL, ON PASSING THE CALIFORNIA BAR EXAM ON HIS FIRST TRY! YOU, SIR, ARE TRULY COMPETENT!!!

Seriously, words can’t describe how proud I am of my brother. He is as smart as can be, twice as clever, and is going to make an excellent attorney. Though I doubt he’ll have as much *fun* practicing as I would, since he’s interested in business, international relations, finance, securities, and the like. He’s going to be making money. 🙂 (What? We can’t all use our advanced degrees to get into movie premieres and concerts and awesome clubs and hanging out with people who make art. Some people must concern themselves with important work, like dealing with big business and buying and selling incredibly posh homes and whatnot.) 🙂

Secondly, I’d like to give the Federal government, specifically the DEA, a great big noogie.

The Full Faith And Credit Clause of the Constitution is becoming more and more of a joke, thanks to an unnecessary prohibition of helpful medication.

There are 15 states in the union that have legalized marijuana for medicinal use. One of which, obviously is California. Another is Nevada, which is a very recent thing. This excited me because as someone who has studied the law, I know that it is legal for me to use my medicine in my home, but it is not legal for me to bring it in the car to my parents house when I visit for Thanksgiving because it is interstate drug trafficking, technically speaking. I was hoping that this trip, since they have recently opened about 15 dispensaries in the Las Vegas area that I could follow federal law and leave my necessary medicine at home and purchase some in the great state of Nevada, thus following the laws of both California and the Federal government while bringing new business to NV.

To this end, I called one of the local Las Vegas dispensaries, only to find out that you must be a Nevada resident and have a Nevada recommendation to become a member of one of their clubs and purchase medicine. They do not accept doctors recommendations from CA.

Isn’t that terrible? Locals only.

Now, I know that President Obama, son-in-law to a multiple sclerosis sufferer, has specifically told the DEA not to prosecute medical marijuana users, so I shouldn’t flip out about this, but these are the things my law brain thinks about. I guess if you have a condition that requires MMJ, you just shouldn’t travel at this point in history, or you should just not be worried about bringing it with you from home. *shrug*

Next, I want to talk about something that I think we all do from time to time, whether you have an illness or not: buying yourself time to process things that have happened in your life by repressing your emotions, only to later pay the price.

Paying the Piper: When Repressed Memories and Emotions Affect Today. Why it’s no good living on Emotional Credit.

I finally realized yesterday that a big part of what’s going on with me has to do with dealing with some extremely bad stuff that happened in my past that I simply repressed to the point of not acknowledging or even remembering, and that my body and psyche is simply dealing with it now. I become suicidal or violent to myself when I hit at things that I simply cannot process without changing my whole world view. I just…flip out or seize. It’s like pushing some kind of button. Add that to the emotional lability and I’m like a loaded gun, ready to go off, with a lack of understanding of my place in the world when sudden flashbacks happen. It’s not good for me or for anyone who loves me. Apparently, my mind is like a trained rottweiler. It’s just been trained incorrectly, and there’s very little I can do but try to accept that things are as they are and work to retrain it.

Finding out that a lot of my seizures are my brain trying to protect me from necessary (but painful) personal growth is frustrating to say the least. Needless to say while some people have a hard time being wrong, this puts it in a whole other category. And here I thought I was humble. Apparently not. Still, it suggests that the work with EMDR should alleviate many of the seizures I do have. So that’s something.

At least I can give myself credit for doing the hard work and not giving up.