Rockin' Around The Christmas Grief

 Otherwise titled:  "Crippling Depression, But Make It Festive".

Hey, I am allowed to be sarcastic about my suckage.  I suggest you do the same.

On a more serious note, I can't shake the constant sad.

There is a reason that I haven't written a full blog post about my life for the past couple of years.  There has been a lot of suckage.  There's also a lot of good, however, this is not what this is about.  I definitely am not one to expect, or even wish for, puppy dogs and rainbows all the time.  At least one a week would be fine.

We are stuck right smack dab in the middle of a "Pan-Demi-Levato", as one listener of my favorite podcast calls it.  Other wise known as COVID-19.  I understand that these are "unprecedented times";  learning all new catchphrases like, "social distancing" and "masking" and "vaccine passport".  We have lost some very good people this year.

My seemingly wonderful relationship that I allowed myself to freefall into is over.  Which one?  Do you ask.  Because over the past few years there have been a succession of ones that I thought were the "forever kind", and yet here we are.  There is so much I don't want to write about because I've spent so much work to put it behind me.  In fact, I am currently the most single that I've been since I was 10.  No crushes, no dating, no random hook ups.  I have had a lot of random hook ups.  I haven't had sex in the longest stretch that I've been in for years, and I am also the most okay with it than I ever thought that I would be.  

Reighan graduated, had 6 med changes in 4 months, was hospitalized, went to Job Corps and is currently on medical leave until she can get herself stabilized.  

Jesse graduated, had a legal scare, suffered unmeasurable depths of depression, didn't leave the house for months.  He and I received our college acceptance letters on the same day.  

I cut ties with a couple of very significant people that I believe that I can't live without, but I can't live with them the way things were at the time that I decided that I needed to move on without them; and I don't know what to do about it.  

I moved.  In September, my landlord brought to my attention that he was selling my house that I've rented from him for the past 12 years and 9 months.  I was devastated.  At first.  It's not a huge secret that I don't make changes without being forced to.  What can I say?  I like consistency.  Then I kept finding reasons that I should have seen a long time ago as reasons to get out of dodge.  I live in the big city now.  It's honestly like Green Acres in reverse.  I am certain that I'm going to be spending the next century unpacking, but I'm happy.  And seriously, Door Dash is the best!

All of these above subjects I am planning at some point to write about in their own post.  

This pressure cooker that I've been in containing these and so much more is the what brings us here today.

It's Christmas.  I know that I wrote in a previous year that for the most part since I was a kid the holidays have been the same.  Except for that one time I won't talk about right now.  Maybe never.  Last year, none of us got together and as hard as it was, it was also wonderful because I did basically nothing.  This year, it went back to being pretty much status quo, but there were so many things that stuck out like a sore thumb.  

At the start of the week, I had made an emergency therapy appointment because I am so, so tired.  Exhausted from not sleeping, moving, nothing is where it belongs, no routine.  The kids are so excited to be living in the city now that every night I've had to be out of the house until late most nights and up watching TV because I can't relax right now.  Monday at 1730.   I sat right in front of my counselor, my group co-facilitator of a support group that I have fostered for three years, and verified when he asked me if we had group this week, that we didn't.  Wednesday, I got an email from my advisor at NAMI with the title "Are You Ok?"  She brought it to my attention that another group facilitator had joined my group in need of support, and once I didn't join in, she just facilitated it for me.  Nobody called or emailed me about it.  That, right there, was the clear and final indication that I have reached the breaking point.  

For Christmas this year, I gave the kids each $100.  I couldn't shop.  I can't make decisions.  There is a Christmas miracle that happened though:  Jesse needs a laptop for school and he didn't want to spend almost a grand for something that he could get at Walmart for $300, but he would have to wait for school to be over before he could get his student money, so he was stuck in a pickle.  Last Saturday evening, Jesse and I were in my bed watching a show and something told me to look at the Walmart app on my phone.  THE SAME computer was on sale, for $120!!!!  As he was sitting next to me, venting away about how worried he is about the situation, I ordered it and had it shipped.  He is STOKED!! He won't stop thanking me.  

This fall, I was partially devastated that my kids wouldn't both be home for Christmas for the first time in their lives.  Reighan told me that she wasn't planning on coming home for the holidays, but it was her choice and I found a way to deal with it.  Growing up is a thing children have to do, for some reason.  Over the past few years, I have come to the realization that it's going to be awhile before she is ready for independence.  Everything in it's own time.  I've been going through this grieving process since she was three.  You'd think I'd be better at it by now.

There's a slight twinge of I told you so where I feel like the family is finally understanding what's been going on all these years.  After going through what I did this summer and cutting ties with most of my family, I got invited to family Thanksgiving and again to our get together Christmas Eve.  My brother asked me if both kids were going to be home and I verified they were, that Rei was on medical leave.  He asked about that, and I told him exactly what was happening.  Naturally, he tried to blame her brother, and I verified that it was happening not just at home, it was happening at school too.  I also threw in the fact that she has had 8, count them, 8 evaluations since preschool, and not a single member of my family has bothered to ask me what is happening or read them.  Blind judgement is much less work, you know. What a surprise to understand that maybe, just maybe, I'm not the villain.  

So, back to what bring us here today.

The stress and grief has gotten so bad to the point where before this past weekend, I was sleeping at best three hours and crying almost constantly.  When I was moving, before it actually came time to do it, I had planned on having all this help, that at the time it actually came time to do it, I got crickets.  I sprained my arm.  For every three amazing things that my daughter was doing to help, there were eighty things that would send us back to purgatory.  Namely the furniture placement in our new place is sending her into a panic just looking at it for a week straight.  For every five minute pleasant conversation, there was twenty of acting like something out of the Exorcist.  I sent a very strongly worded email to my daughter's counselor, who has yet to respond because he's on vacation, and CC'd my counselor.  It included the line that I couldn't get out of my head:

"This is the reason that people like me kill themselves."

The strong ones.  The ones who don't need anyone on a regular basis and when they need it the most still don't have it in the ways that it's needed.  The ones who are tired of constantly being in warrior mode and fighting just to have the basics of everything that comes naturally to everyone else.  

It got to a point that something as dumb as using the spoon that I found at Goodwill that is the same pattern as what I used as a kid at my grandmother's house on Verona sent me in a tale spin of tears.  If someone had asked me how I was doing, I most likely would have dropped to the ground and ugly cried like a kid when they need a nap.  Update:  I slept.  A lot.  And I unpacked a bunch of stuff which helped my sanity.  My new place is finally feeling like a home versus a Labyrinth of daunting tasks.  

I miss Jack.  My car buddy.  The sharer of cheese popcorn and watcher of movies.  The giver of zero fucks.  My stinky from rolling in dead things and proud of himself buddy.  The one who wouldn't cuddle, but would sleep on my feet, every night for eleven of his fifteen years.  

Last summer he stopped jumping up on the bed when it was bedtime and I just figured that he's almost fifteen, it's natural.  That his depth perception was just off when it was dark. When I would lift him up to go to bed, he'd do this little jump and push his feet off the floor like he thought that he was helping.  And help me, he did more than he knew. 

His blanket is in the same trash bag that it was in when I brought his cremains up from the vet's office back in March.  When I told Jesse what the bag in my car was, he said "That's okay mom.  I'll take care of it."  He brought it down cellar to be washed.  Two days later, I saw that he put it back in my car.  We aren't ready.  Someone brought it in the house when they were helping me move.  I put it on the fridge.  I am not ready.  I can't open the bag to smell him and see his hair on it.  His cremains are in the car, where they should be.  He was my car buddy.  He would go with me anywhere, and from now on he will.  

Whether we like it or not, life goes on regardless of how we feel about it.  I have found that when you are open about depression and anxiety as I am, people mark you down as a miserable person.  I'm not a miserable person, I'm a realistic person.  When I feel emotion of any kind, I feel it realistically.  It's not all about "Better Living Through Denial" all the time like I used to believe it is.  Today was a good day.  I'm okay today and I can say that and mean it.  Sort of.  I think it just takes a little acceptance and a little time.  I am learning what is within my control.  I don't want something out of Pet Cemetery, as much as I wish for Jack to come back.  Like I said in my previous post, I don't want someone to try to unpack me that wasn't getting paid to do so, so dating is on the back burner for now.  I don't want to continue being treated the way that I was by those I chose to take a break from.  

And with that, I will leave you with this:

You do not need to solve your entire life in a day.  You do not need to fix everything tonight.  You do not need to, nor will you be able to.  So instead of feeling as though the mountain in front of you is so huge you could never scale it and give up entirely, just focus on taking one step.  All you need to do today is take one step in the right direction, and then tomorrow take another.  Your life is not transformed in one sweeping motion, it is changed bit by bit, ordinary moment by ordinary moment, when you decide to stop waiting for perfection, and start doing what you can right here and now to move yourself forward.

~Brianna West

My Thoughts About Grief

 If you know anything about psychology, you probably heard multiple times about the 7 stages of grief:

• Shock and denial.
• Pain and guilt. 
• Anger and bargaining. 
• Depression. 
• The upward turn. 
• Reconstruction and working through. 
• Acceptance and hope.

I'm someone who the experts say is in constant survival mode.  One will track my childhood and try to pinpoint it but can't.  Even as a little kid, psychology and what makes people tick has always been my favorite fascination.  I took Psych in high school twice, as a sophomore and as a senior.  I almost wasn't allowed, but I convinced the principle to let me because they were both taught by 2 very different teachers, and I wrote a paper on the differences in teaching styles and what was different about the same subject being taught by two different teachers.  Of course I lost all of my old papers when my basement flooded 6 years ago. I could have made a killing putting it in my book. 

What nothing prepared me for during my young and full of hope, still in high school brain, was that I would be dancing around the mulberry bush all fucking day long for twenty years.  Even back then, we filled out a test in class that was a scale of anxiety  and it had seemly simple every day things like "change jobs", "losing a family member", and it said on there that a score of 80 was high and it indicated that a person was having a hard time and experiencing anxiety.  My score:  320.  I was 17.  I remember because I laminated it.  I like to joke that my life is a dumpster fire that's been sucked into a tornado, but lately it's not such a joke.  It's happening.  And I continue to willingly drown myself in the ocean for those who wouldn't steer me clear of a parking lot puddle.  

I have been finding myself experiencing loads of grief since I was a small child.  My parents were teens and I grew up nurturing and caring for my family.  I am an empath and sometimes I hate it so very much.  I remember constantly being worried about making sure that everything was perfect; at my grandparent's parties - was everyone having a good time, did anyone need anything?  Did I look cute enough to get attention from everyone?  Did I smile enough?  I have become very conscientious about how much of a people pleasing pain in the ass I was and have made huge steps to stop, but every once in awhile (at least once a day) I get sucked right back in to caregiver mode.  

I remember when I was 5 and my grandfather died unexpectedly.  He had a fatal heart attack while sitting on a bar stool at the local watering hole.  At 12 when my great grandmother died, my dad wouldn't let me go to the funeral.  He said that graveyards aren't a place for children and I was so mad, I loved her too and I wanted to celebrate her life - knowing what I know now about the spiritual world, I agree to a certain extent.  When I was 18, my great grandfather passed.  Then the daughter of my mom's friend died in her sleep and she was only a couple of years older than me.  I have experience so much loss that I could go on forever.  Most recently, my great grandfather a month ago.  I didn't cry about his passing.  I cry because he was 11 years younger than my Nana.  They met when she already had grown kids and he loved her until the end.  She died when my son was about 2.  Growing up, the adults in my life treated children as though they were not to be sucked into the grief of adults.  To a degree, I do agree with, however there is a certain beauty in being honest about how you're feeling.  That it's okay to be sad and miss a person no longer with us.  To celebrate their life and continue to learn about who they were when they're gone.  I was a baby.  I saw all these adults that I love crying and grieving, but I didn't feel like it was okay for me to do that because it was something that only the grown ups could do. I wasn't given an opportunity to talk to anyone about it.  When my aunts left home, one to go to Florida, and the other off to college in Pennsylvania, I missed them, and I was full of grief about the huge change to my life, and I was never allowed to talk about it.  

I just needed someone to tell me that it was ok to stop and feel something.  One of the biggest fights that I have with people is how I'm too much of a robot.  But I'm not.  I just look at things realistically.  I guess I don't cry enough or carry on enough for some people, but what they don't know is that I do.  I just do it privately.  Alone.

I think the hardest losses I've had to process were when they were everything that everyone has:  A perfect relationship, successful kids, and friends and all the things that seem to come naturally.  But they don't come naturally to me.  I have to fight every step of the way to have the bare minimum of everything.

I wish someone would have told me a long time ago "Grief is your new rollercoaster.  It will spin and drop you all over the place many times when you aren't prepared for that moment.  But like a rollercoaster, you have to ride it, and it's easiest when you go in the direction it's already taking you".  Translated:  grief is a bitch that will never go away.  Sometimes the emotions will hit you out of nowhere, and it's vital for healing to let yourself feel emotion.  Coping isn't even an option, fighting for survival is all you will know.

Also translated:  You can't make a vase out of a grenade.

Point being: growing up in my family, trauma, grief and anything in between were things to smoosh down like an ant at a picnic.  Enter left curtain: Me.  And I can't shake the feeling that I have spent my life surrounded by a bunch of assholes standing in the middle of an Italian restaurant eating spaghetti and wishing it was Chinese.  At some point in my life I had confused being kind and compassionate with feeling obligated to give more than I could spare.  I confused being understanding of people's circumstances with excusing their lack of respect. The gifts I would bring became an expectation.  The privileges I granted were confused as their right.  But I'm not confused anymore.  

It's no secret that I've been my children's only parent. They are now the same age I was when I was going through the hardest times of my life, and being forced to figure it out entirely on my own for the first time. When I turned 18 in February of my senior year, my mom told me to come get my stuff and had me start living with my aunt full-time because she needed a babysitter. I had my daughter a month before I turned 20.  My daughter is 3 months away from being 21, and up until six months ago, I thought that she was never going to be able to leave. She has some disabilities and isn't on the same level of her peers.  There has always been all the bargaining in the world, hoping and praying that she would reach the same level of her peers, crashing into the pits of grief at the acceptance that it may not happen for another 10 years. Sometimes there's a glimmer of hope, only to have the air sucked right out of the bubble that I hoped I'd be able to wrap around her.  The world looks like an entirely different place from the perspective of a mom trying to help her child wrangle the special hell that is being seen as "other".  The sting that come with your child not being invited to birthday parties and having friends.  The constant advocating, meetings, emails, appointments, exhausting.  The feeling of all the air leaving the room when she cooked dinner but forgot the pot holder in the oven with it still on;  realizing that she is never going to be able to live on her own.  Even when I feel like I'm drowning standing up, I don't know how to do anything other than fight, for all of it.  I see my peers with great relationships with their family and a ton of friends and I feel so lonely.  Whether single parenthood has caused me to self-isolate or if I'm excluded on purpose, I have had to wake up and rally every single day by myself.  It's just easier to stay away.  I'm so tired of hurting.  Social media is just the sad reminder of how alone I am.  When my sister was up in July for the first time in four years, I couldn't process so much.  My nephew was 9 months old and I was just meeting him for the first time despite repeated attempts on my part to come visit - only to be told "not now", but there were pictures all over the place of everyone else getting to meet him.  My entire life, I've looked forward to being an aunt.  My brothers live in the same town as me, one two miles down the road and the other fifteen minutes away.  And that whole week, I was finally able to get to do that.  And every single night, I cried myself to sleep knowing that it's most likely never going to happen again.  Most recently, I got to see my entire family getting together at my grandparents house for a BBQ/bonfire to celebrate my grandfather's birthday and see my brother off on his expected deployment - and not a single one of them invited me or my son.  Rather than make a big thing of it, I unfriended every single one of them.  It was easier to admit defeat and accept that I'm not going to have the life that I have longed for;  to just quietly go away.  None of them have said anything to me.  They most likely don't even care that I'm gone.  

Rather than being able to be excited to help them through these milestones, because there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that I would ever allow my children to be put through what I've been through, if I really let myself sit in it for a minute, I am swallowed by a black hole of sad.  I freeze even trying to help them.  Most recently, my son wanted to apply for college and he was so mad at me that I didn't even know where to begin.  There are so many things that nobody taught me that I have been stuck figuring out on my own, and I am so sad because I want them to be able to have the mom that I didn't.  I am at a time in my life where I realize that my life has never been about me or what I want, and I'm at a crossroads where I have to figure out what that is.

I've said it before:  I was born with my big girl panties permanently welded on.  I cannot pull them up any higher. 

I do such a good job of just powering through. I like to joke that I'm healed person, that it's just times like these that it becomes evident that we never really heal. One of the most common questions I get asked:  "How did you stay so strong during all your struggles?"  I guess it depends on how you define strength.  Sometimes strength looks like barely rolling out of bed and accomplishing only one thing;  choosing to stick around.  Sometimes strength looks like crying in my bed while everyone is doing other things downstairs because I realistically can't do it all on my own.  But here I am, every day.  I have struggled every single day for 40 years.  Looking back, I get really sad.  I shouldn't have to have been put through all of this.  I don't know what it's like to be able to truly relax.  None of my relationships have worked out for one reason or another.  I don't know what it's like to not be alone.  I have never had another adult to delegate anything to.  Even when I try to enjoy myself for five minutes, I have a child at home that I'm struggling to keep alive and another one that, up until recently I believed to be completely self-contained and doing great.  I would never want anyone to try to unpack me that wasn't getting paid for it, this is why I'm in therapy.  I am like a Rubik's Cube with a Chinese finger trap inside.  I really don't think anybody understands what they're getting into when they try.  I have come to find that they like the idea of me; what is on the surface.  They peace out the second they see how I struggle to survive when I feel like I'm drowning just standing up on dry land.  None can handle the reality.  Especially on the days when silence is louder than thunder.  

And I get it.  NOW.  This inability to receive support from others is a trauma response.  My "I don't need anyone.  I'll just do it myself" conditioning is a survival tactic.  I needed it to shield myself from abuse, neglect, betrayal, and disappointment from those who couldn't and wouldn't be there for me when I needed them the most.  From all the situations when someone told me "I got you" then abandoned me, leaving me to pick up the pieces when shit got hard.  I learned that if I don't put myself in a situation where I rely on someone, I won't have to be disappointed when they don't show up for me because they always drop the ball.  Extreme independence is a preemptive strike against heartbreak that always, eventually comes anyways.  I don't even trust myself to choose people.  

But no matter how I dress it up and display it proudly to make it seem like I chose this level of independence as if it's what I always wanted it to be, in truth my heart is waving the white flag. 

Wounded, scarred, broken behind a bullet riddled brick wall.  I guess on some level I understand that in order to have good things I have to feel like I deserve them.  And to some degree I still don't.  The older I get, the more I realize how much time I spent believing the lie that who I was wasn't good enough.  I find myself fighting back.  All of the moments I wasted hiding who I was, all in the name of making other people happy.  So as I sit here now, with years of living and learning behind me, I want so badly to go back in time to that little girl, who happened to develop before the other girls, to tell her that not only is she good enough, but she is extraordinary.  I want to go back and tell her to be kind to herself because the world needs exactly who she was made to be.  

I have slowly learned that you can't truly appreciate your life wallowing in "Yes, buts."  It should be about the "Okay, and".  Greif is an asshole.  Feel free to tell it to fuck directly off and allow yourself to experience joy for once.  And of course you'll know you are by how much it kills you inside when it's happening.  True story, because sunsets and pausing kill me.  

The world fed us all a lie about what strength looks like.  It's time to start telling yourself a different story, a true story.  That if you are still here despite how hard it might be to still be here, if you are showing up for yourself and your life despite how exhausting it is, then you are the epitome of strength.  But it's okay to need to lean on someone sometimes.  

To My Guru

His tears had become memories, and his memories had become dry and fractured.  As he looked at her one last time, he could only muster one final, broken question:  "But when will I heal?"  I didn't have the heart to tell him that sometimes you don't.

To my Guru:  

It is months after I decided to walk away and I am done crying.  Life doesn't feel like it's underwater anymore.  I can laugh without your name feeling like a splinter in my lungs.  Sometimes I go days without wondering where you are.  I can hardly taste you.  I call this letting go.  Announcing that it is over, at last! I've shouted from the rooftops about how I closed and bolted the doors to him once and for all.  Ten years, down the drain.  My support, my confidant, my lover, the vault that held our secrets, dead to me.  Walking away from you even after I knew it was time felt like I had chopped off my left arm;  and all I got from you was crickets.  That in itself was enough.

Please go to Hell in a pretty pink handbasket with a polka dot ribbon.

Keep your prayers.  I make my own luck.  I'll remember you, the man who loved me the most at my worst.  The pillow I could lay my head on.  I, the woman who set you ablaze.  I won't talk about the windows left unlocked.  The tiny bit of hope that maybe, we were wrong.

Looking back, you were a whole lie but the truth is that I loved you anyway. I loved you bold enough to print your name on paper and you, my darling, could not even whisper my name into an empty room.  I truly believe you thrive on destroying me piece by piece.  The best part was waking up on Christmas morning to find that I had been deadass lied to for four months.  Engaged, to someone that I didn't even know that you were seeing.  

I'm opening the chest wound because it's time now, and I'm leaving. For better or worse I can't find the words to say anything else about what happened.  I would have painted you stories with these words - promises true, and absurd.  I would have pulled the God damn sun right from the sky for you.  

Ain't I just a bitter girl that stopped living after you played dead and I chose to leave?  Ain't I just a sad thing, over there?  Ain't all these poems about you?  Ain't everything about you?  Every time I got asked why do I write, I should just say your name, right? Any article written about me should just be titled "The Girl He Didn't Want Anymore".  My book when I write it - that is going to make me a millionaire - should have your name on every page.  You made me famous, didn't you?  Made me so broken that it gave me something to tell all the lonely girls, a piano to play them a song to sleep to.  You get all the credit, the glory.  You get to tell that story.  I loved you and you didn't love me back.  But I told you the night you asked me to stop writing about you, every poem that I write is about me.

Whomever this new woman is, I pray she sees you for who you are.  That she leaves sooner than I did. Don't worry, the truth about who you really are dies with me.  After all, what are best friends for?  I hope she never fills her art with your name.  I hope that she is beautiful and makes you forget all about me.  That you'll never read this because you have.  She is my blessing come to set me free of you.

Bless this pain, the knot in my throat thinking of your face the first time you saw me walking into that Irish Pub on the corner.  Bless this grief, the years that I gave you.  Hundreds of hours talking.  Bless this sweet nothing.  This, absence.  If I had not loved you I would not have known what it is to stop fearing love.  Bless this pain that I earned.  Sometimes, it's not what was wrong that bothers us.  Sometimes what bothers you the most is that it never was right, and for a time, you didn't know the difference.

In other words:

FUCK OFF.

Then keep fucking off.

Keep fucking off until you get to a gate with a sign saying "You can't fuck off past here."

Climb over the gate, dream the impossible dream, and keep fucking off forever.  

And for the record, I didn't say that I want you to die.  I said that I still care about you enough to want to make sure that your trip to Hell is a nice one.

Sincerely, Hurricane Jessica

Highlight Reels and Decision Fatigue

 What if we could reel through our memories to the exact moment before the salt went into the wound?  That moment of pure perception before the hardening began?

It's very sad and perplexing at the same time, when you're treated like a person worth getting to know.  It feels like a completely foreign concept.  It hits your brain in the most awkward ways.  Like it almost feels like they're wrong.  Like you're doing them a disservice by letting them get to know your insides.  There's something about rejections that does that to us.  We tell ourselves that we know better;  but knowing something and feeling something are always going to be parted by the great sea of rejection and all other things that have wronged or ruined us, every single time.

I used to think that coffee was a grown-up drink.  Then I thought alcohol was the grown-up drink.  Now I have fully achieved adulthood when I understand that it is water that is the grown-up drink.  I saw this on a meme and it makes me chuckle every time I take a drink of something. Alas, I keep forgetting it's the one thing designed to keep me alive.

Most people never heal because they stay in their heads, replaying corrupted scenarios.  

Let's talk about how hard it is to open up to someone about being sad for no reason.  About how hard it is to explain that you have this heavy feeling in your chest, for no reason.  How hard it is to understand you're having a panic attack while just taking a walk in the most familiar of places.  Let's talk about how hard it is to feel like the entire world is on your shoulders and everything falls on you and you don't know why.

Having a bad day where you can't be alone with your own thoughts doesn't mean that you don't love yourself.  It just means that shit is getting real and that right now it's easier to show up for others than it is yourself.  Why else would anyone else voluntarily spend 40 years fighting against their own nature of being a people pleasing pain in the ass like me?

If it's one thing I might have figured out, is that you don't always have to be the strong one or the broken one to win.  Sometimes just doing the bare minimum to get through your day and come out of the fog in one piece proves you're capable of being a champion.

Completely unfiltered, I have zero energy right now.  I put in for vacation time for this week and I'm on day 4 of 5.  3 weeks ago, decision fatigue had smacked me in the face and I don't have the energy to shower, make food, eat or get out of the house and I think my body relates these tendencies to the time right before I had my breakdown after the first half of 2016 wrecked havoc on my entire life. In turn, it's making me scared that I'm going to get back to that place again, even though I know in my heart I'm nowhere close to it.  The entire month of March can go die in a hole.  

So far, this "vacation" has included having a zoom meeting with an advisor of sorts that I sobbed the entire way through, a phone call with a resource director that I was too overwhelmed to talk to, a day with my kids that was just crap - insert a commercial, "Coming To A Blog Post Near You..." - getting rid of 2 car loads of stuff out of my house, new furniture that is not put together (thank you procrastination as a born coping skill), and today, which has actually been pretty great despite my brain's attempts to thwart my joy.  I got some much needed yard work in, another trip to Goodwill, took a car ride with my best friend, held a baby that liked me, let a 2 year old experience pretty nails for the first time (purple sparkles, of course), and saw a new movie with my son.

That being said, if you are in that place otherwise known as the tarpit of crap, I get you.  That you feel numb.  That you don't want to interact with humans.  That you've turned down the things you love because they require actual energy.  I also get that you don't want to feel this way, but it's easier than asking for help.  So that's why you stay where you are.  

Life is not about who you once were.  It's about who you are now and who you have the potential to be. 15 minutes ago I was talking myself out of being a total piece of shit (in my own head, of course) because I spent an hour looking at my desk still in the box and just the thought of getting up and putting it together was too much.  But then, I decided that if I didn't get up right now, that it wasn't going to get done.  I took a breath, and it's now done.  My house still looks like every drawer and closet threw up, but it's a start and the amount of victory that I feel after accomplishing the one task that my brain was too frozen to let me do in the 8 days since I bought it - one for the Olympics!

I'm truly done living in a constant state of overwhelmed.  I know that I need to move on from some things in my life, but first I need to accept the fact that not every chapter's closet has to be neat and tidy before closing the door on it forever.  Sometimes you need to slam the door and walk away.  Anxiety isn't what you see in the movies;  it doesn't always roar for all to see with hyperventilating and hand wringing sobbing messes.  Sometimes it snuggles into the places we leave open without realizing it; the soft places that we think we've safeguarded.  It creeps in around the edges.  It blurs the lines of reality and make believe.  Believe me when I say that what you can't see is far worse than what you can.  If I had a tattoo on my head, it would read "Icebergs are always larger than they appear" because what you don't see are the sleepless hours on end and the riot going on inside my head at 2am when the house is still as midnight on Christmas eve and I lay in bed sobbing tears over demons that I cannot name;  although the bags under my eyes might shout it loud and proud for me, the fucking traitors.  What you don't see is the inability to make decisions, my unwillingness to help myself, my distance from people that I love, my lack of interest in things that I love doing, my lack of interest in being creative and desire to do so.  I have to remind myself to breathe, but only realize I need to after finding myself gasping for air.  I'm drowning on dry land.  It's all too much yet not enough at the same time.  I'm so grateful for the people that love me and understand who I am.  I'm a mess, but somehow able to self support - the only one who I've ever been able to rely on.  

So remember this, some of us look great and we will lie to your face; but all of these faces that I show you are the faces of my anxiety and if you could hold it to like one of those big shells to your ear you'd hear a mixed tape of untrue statements set to the rhythm of my irregular heartbeat.  This too shall pass.  It doesn't, but here's to hoping for someday.

I think that we all forget that it's okay to struggle, including myself.  Today, I was going to post a selfie with my rosacea in full flair up with a smile, but then I saw the picture.  It was really painful, and I'm allowed to be upset about that.  I am also working on giving myself permission to feel sad about that.  To feel the feelings.  That's healing too.  It leads to allowing myself to treat my body with kindness.  "What's the kindest thing that I can do for myself today?" I ask.  "Take a step back and assess.  To decide that I am in charge of what I want today."

I keep coming to the same conclusion every single time I stop to think about it.  My life has never been about me or what I want.  I don't know what to fucking do.

Back to the highlight reel:

I call her after my fight with him and ask her if I was overreacting.  I mean, I 'm right to feel that way that I do, right?  I'm not crazy like everyone says I am - those who have no idea who I am on the day to day.  She's the first person that I called when Nana died, when the boyfriend before this one cheated, when the baby died inside of me.  She listens until I finish sobbing, then she tells me a bunch of things that I swear are magic spells, because I instantly stop apologizing for being in love with someone that dismissed me with one word.  I can feel my feet again at the sound of her voice.  I can wiggle my toes, I can walk away.  We change the subject.  "Feel like burning some shit?"  We talk until our throats are raw and look like two hearts wrapped up on chords.  "Call me tomorrow, ok?"  OK.  Thank you, I love you.

My definition of spiritual growth:  Do I care about stupid shit less than I did yesterday?

I've decided to not be sad on the weekends.  From this second forward, I will wait until Monday.   I will cry on the fucking clock.  I won't let capitalism win.

Dear dudes who ghost cool chicks:  Don't.  You will most likely run into her again and she will be more attractive, elegant, eloquent and more successful than you remembered and you'll still be an asshole.

Bare With Me

She believed she could and she almost did, but then a pandemic hit and someone deemed her essential and asked her to do double the amount of work with the same amount of hours in a day and deal with everyone else's shit-losing at the same time, and someone else asked her to be the best version of herself while running on fumes, and she lost track of realistic expectations until she heard all the people talking, realized she wasn't alone, discovered a new flavor of seltzer water and decided that her best was enough.

Guys!  So. Much. Shit. Happening.

I have spent the better part of the past 6 months in a constant state of overwhelmed.  I have a lot to say that I'm going to get working on - but guys, the decision fatigue is real.  It's a miracle if I can put my leg through my pants one leg at a time in the morning as I'm rushing out the door and remember that water exists and is a thing designed to keep me alive.

More to come.

**also, yes, I know the I meant to spell "Bare" the way I did.  Keep your bitchy judgements to yourself if you can't take it for what it is.

My Dating Life Is Fucked.

 As if we didn't need any more assistance in figuring out that there is absolutely zero hope for my love life, I now have an example for you from a little over a year ago:

I was chatting with someone who was, we'll say relatively attractive.  His profile made my nerd brain tingle with delight as it is anytime that it is presented with intelligence and depth.  We said the usual "hello", and then when he asked me how I take my coffee.  So I told him, and his response was "Lately I've been pouring my coffee at 140 degrees and it's really great that way, you don't even need any sugar or cream."  

To which my reply was, and I quote while face palming, "Wow, at that angle it's a miracle that you even got it in the cup.  Good job!"

And if you didn't catch on to that, he was talking about temperature - clearly, but my brain didn't pick up on that until after I sent the message;  because my geeky brain thought that he meant.....you guessed right, angles.  

And how I came to that conclusion at 11:30 pm when were chatting, I have no idea other than I'm a big fat science nerd and there is no hope for me, at all.

Stay tuned, there's more.