Grief, But Make It Pinterest Friendly For The PTA Moms

A former love interest once told me about how his cousins that I went to school with were so wild and crazy as teenagers, that their parents had a suicide pact.  I laughed it off.

My aunt, on the day that her only child graduated high school, I found nearly catatonic sitting on her bed in her underwear with her dress in her hands when I came to pick her up.  I laughed it off.

I am no longer laughing.

Grieving isn't just a physical death of a person; it's change in its entirety; your own expectations of how something should be.  I can't force someone to love me the way that I wish they would.  I can't make someone treat me like I am a person worth getting to know.  Everything that I ever dreamed of for a life for my children may never happen.  

When you're a parent of a child who is different, the world looks very different than it did before you were.  

If you met me in my 20's and when my children were little at all and think that it's an entire picture of who I am as a person you couldn't be more wrong.  I wanted to die.  Not in the literal sense of jumping off a bridge, although there were definitely moments; it was more of a.....

I need help that I've been told never to ask for, nobody is helping me navigate life, I have been thrown out into the world to figure it out entirely on my own and I have no idea what the fuck I am doing, constant free-falling state of chaos and panic.

There was nothing about my life that I enjoyed.  I wish that someone would appreciate the fact that every day that I wake up, is a day that my 14-year-old self never planned on having.  I was reckless, and careless, because honestly, I truly wished that something would kill me.  I didn't dream that I would be a mom before I even had a savings account, let alone two children with extreme needs.  I definitely did not dream that I would be doing it completely alone.  When I turned 30 and suddenly started having all sorts of medical trauma that was terrifying, again, I was left to deal with it alone.  The first 35 years of my life felt like a long, dark, cavernous hallway searching for something that was always eluding me.  I have always been the outsider, even to my own life.  Growing up in the household of my mother, all of my decisions were made for me, and I was always told, rather than taught.  Expected of, rather than heard.  I have been so lonely.

Even as a child, I resigned myself to being the one who heard about everyone's birthday parties rather than the one who got to attend.  The one who got to be happy for everyone else, but from the sidelines, never to participate or be included.  Forever the single girl that everyone talked about behind their back, kind to my face but heeding warnings to everyone who would listen that they needed to watch out for me because obviously since I'm single, I must be after their partner.  It could never have possible had anything to do with the fact that I believe in treating everyone with respect.  The quiet one, who doesn't gossip about other people, but again, is gossiped about by people that have nothing to do with me.  I have always been the one watching the weddings, the baby showers, birthday parties, get togethers for drinks and cards, major life-events that I would have given anything to be there for.  How shitty of a person do you have to be to deserve something like this? 

I guess I have been destined to have a life full of acquaintances, who will see my obituary, and say "Wow, she was a really nice person", but not anybody can say that they actually know who I am.  If I'm being realistic, there isn't going to be an obituary unless I write it myself. I love every single person that I know, but I don't know how to get close to anybody.  If I was even given a chance for any amount of participation, I would give 150% of myself to you.  But nobody knows that.

I have lived the past 22 years of my life in this weird glass cage of emotion, switching back and forth between having to act like Mary Poppins and The Hulk.

There were the occasional playdates and sleepovers, but they would never be invited back. I had to work to make ends meet, they didn't like the daycare that was my only option. It's impossible to connect with other humans when you're stuck in survival mode.  Isolation was my only safe choice.

I just "knew" once my kids were older, I would have all sorts of time.  I'd be able to whatever I wanted completely uninterrupted.  I'd be way more rested because I wouldn't have to lay awake all night long worrying about the never-ending checklist of making sure that I had the right food in the house for my picky eaters, emails back and forth with teachers making sure IEPs were followed, money, bills.  I didn't have other moms my own age with kids.

Nah, they were just traded for the never-ending highlight reel of everything I have ever done wrong as a parent. I still end every day feeling as if I had just gone toe to toe in a boxing ring just trying my best to make sure they're still alive. 

There was so much available time in my delusional future. Now when they want to spend any amount of time with me, I find myself terrified to move a muscle or make a peep exactly like when I finally got them to sleep like when they were babies because I don't want the moment to end.

I did my due diligence yesterday; counseling, journaling, commiserating with those who "understand" but still came out feeling empty through no fault of theirs.  This period of my life is supposed to be mine now, but nobody has ever loved them like I do and therefore no one can possibly understand what I am feeling right now. 

No one....

In the history of the world....

Ever.

I am neither the mean kid or the bug, and there was never windshield nor magnifying glass involved, yet I still feel like my heart has been squished just the same. 

I didn't know how to be present for my own children while I was busy wishing someone else would take over. 

As I write this, both of my children are the same ages in which I had them; my son is 19, the age that I had my daughter and my daughter, 22, is the same age that I had my son.  I don't know what the fuck I am doing.  For 22 years.  All I know is that I have spent this time desperately holding this umbrella over them and praying that they have no idea what it feels like to have nothing.  I have wanted nothing more than for them to find their way in their own time.

Alas, there is a better chance of me becoming the next Supreme Leader of North Korea than there is of me getting my children to maintain baseline human function on their own.

I have hit a wall. 

My son has made it known that despite the fact that he has no money of his own, no job, nowhere to go, and zero life skills, he intends to leave on the date of the ultimatum that I have been forced to give him.  

The ultimatum, given in February:  

By April 1st, you need to step up and start helping me around here without an argument and making me want to kill myself.  If you don't want to do that, then you need to find a job and start paying for one third of the monthly household expenses and you get to do whatever the H.E. Double Hockey sticks you want.  Or, get the fuck out of my house.

I have given him all that I can in the name of "understanding", but I have watched him go down a spiraling rabbit hole of being an entitled douchebag - who is an adult now.  Nothing, nothing, prepares you for watching your child, my baby, fall apart in front of your face. Gone are the days of therapy and med adjustments to help manage his multiple mood disorders that he has been diagnosed with multiple times over; he has decided that I am the mortal enemy who ruined his life because I got him the help that he needed while I still had a (legal) say in his care. He refuses to do anything around the house without breaking me down in such a way that I would give anything to be swallowed up by a sinkhole where I stand in my own home.  I am all done paying to be abused in ways that I would never tolerate from someone that I was dating, yet I have endured this from my own child since they were a toddler with no outlook of it ever changing or getting better.

I have cried until there are no more tears.  Dry heaving and sobbing in my car and bedroom, alone, until I'm gasping for my next breath. Stared at this computer screen trying to think of the next thing to say until my eyes want to fall out of my head because I forgot to blink.

The more I look for someone who understands that more I realize that this grief is something that I must do alone.  That is, after all, what grief is about anyways, right? I don't want to be a downer, but I want you to understand that even though what I am going through (not around, or under or over, despite my best effort for avoidance) is the worst possible thing a human can endure and that they/we must do it uniquely and as individuals but there are many who have done it before and came out the other side intact. All that means, is that something within the Universe, God, fate, inertia, etc., has a plan through which I will endure this present darkness and I will hold hands with whatever is with me while I mine through more than it is possible to describe. 

I will always be pushing a river that should be flowing by itself, with radical acceptance that I am wet.

Done With You

Sitting in a corner playing with my monkeys
All is dark
There used to be a light
It was stolen
I was raped of all necessities
Love doesn't exist anymore
Never will know if it ever existed
Left with all this pain
Feelings of your pleasures rip through my walls 

Like glass on flesh
I'm here with open wounds
Identity pouring through
Have to hide it
Can't give in
Don't touch me 
Don't give me the happiness
Leave me with my pain
My only friend who never betrays me
Pour me that drink again
The one that tells me with every gulp 
That the only one who ever needed me worse than heroine 

Was you
You're the only one who cares
Oh wait
In my confused state
I have seemed to have forgotten 
That since your beverage runs through my system so fast
It leaves me with a terrible discomfort in the pit of my stomach
Hand me a Rolaid instead

I found this poem that I wrote when I was cleaning my room this past weekend. I vaguely recall the notepad I scratched it out on being in my purse that I used whenever I would go to Mr. Invader of WhatTheFuckLandia's house, circa 2017. I wrote it as a bit of a cleansing - kind of an odd thing, finding something that occurred during a cleansing, while performing another cleansing. I would always feel so empty when I was with him, and I could never place my finger on why. At that time, anyways. I completely understand why now. I used to get the same rush and subsequent crash when I would randomly touch base with him, and now that I live in the same town, ten houses down the road from where he works to be exact, I just have no energy left for him anymore. I feel really good about that.

My Real Christmas List

 Random reflection:  When it comes to relationships, we're always taught that abuse is wrong and that we should never tolerate it.  For some reason, the examples always seem to show only romantic relationships. What happens when we are in a toxic friendship?

If there's any one thing that I can be most proud of myself as a person, it is that while I have absolutely zero trouble burning bridges while I am standing on it when it's necessary, I have not knowingly made a person regret being good to me.  I cannot say that same about most people that are in my life, past and current.

I am very much the same person to your face as I am to your back.  I do not have time to gossip or be petty and I won't make time for it.  

Anyways, onto the point that has fallen out of the lottery ball pit that is my head.

I don't ask for a lot from anyone.  Maybe that's why all my past relationships have failed.  I have always worried about what everyone has wanted, and I never focused on what I needed to be happy. I mean, one year I lied and told the local library that my aunt was my child so I could get her a library card. When she was little, a few years before I was born, our family experienced a tragedy and had to up and leave town immediately, so her sister didn't return a library book the previous summer and the librarian wouldn't let her get a library card because of it, and for 45 years, her heart was broken, and I wanted to make it better by any means necessary.  

Because that's just who I am.  But that is also what Christmas Magic is all about.  When in reality, it's the way that people should be caring about each other every single day, but I digress because, my penchant for a good rant.

When I was pregnant with my son, I worked at a restaurant chain in Ellsworth that isn't there anymore.  On Route 1 from Bucksport to Ellsworth, there is what used to be a flea market that is now abandoned, or the landowner isn't doing anything with it at this time.  On top of the old sign, is a horse.  For some unexplainable reason, I need it.  I have needed it for 20 years.  Do I have any idea what I would do with such a thing once it is in my possession?  Absolutely not. Am I going to find out who the landowner is and explain my strange covet over this object and the fact that the Universe has spoken, and I need it?  Also no. Can I explain why?  Absolutely not.

However, I need someone in my life, who is determined to be a permanent fixture who will see the inner workings of my mind and doesn't run or malfunction, who understands me enough to get it.  Someone who doesn't judge me and maybe, just maybe, gets me the thing. No matter how stupid it might seem to them. And yes, I understand I get can get the majority of things myself, but that isn't the point that my shriveled-up Grinch heart is trying to make. I am truly convinced that true love is deader than Jimmy Hoffa, and I need someone to prove me wrong. Just. One. Fucking. Time.

So far those unexplainably coveted things would be:

That horse on top of the random sign on Route 1.

#13 of the Quantum Leap comic book series, I already have 1-12, of 13.

The entire DVD series of Dr. Who but understands why I only want to watch the seasons with Matt Smith in them.  #amyandroryforever

Amazing sex, every day.

Space, literally and figuratively.

Looks at me like I am magic even when I am obviously a bog witch.

Someone who will help me hang my great grandfather's sign.

Someone who will produce a lighter when I get a look on my face that signifies that we need to sage a place.

Lets me watch TV with the subtitles and understands that it helps me hear better.

A room covered in star and planet stickers.

Someone who can translate if my day calls for booze or ice cream and hands them over as needed.

A blanket fort, but only with a mattress on the floor of it, because we're fucking old, and floors hurt us.  Or maybe just a blanket fort over the bed, much less work and mess to clean up.

Someone who understands that reading puts me to sleep, and I have this undying want to read The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, so they read it to me instead. 

Someone to sit my ass down and watch the Lord of the Rings series with me, because I'm worried it has The Last Unicorn and NeverEnding Story vibes and well, childhood trauma. And to rewatch those other ones with me too.

To be just as stubborn as me, but also whose love language is communication and acts of service just like mine.

Someone to prove me wrong about love.

Someone who understand that the look on my face translates into the need to watch Star Wars, Star Trek, or a serial killer documentary.

Someone who loves to make the bed because while I absolutely love and want to crawl into a made bed every day, it is completely unrealistic to accomplish something like this myself when I usually have 10 minutes to haul ass out the door and make it to work on time.  Preferably after we have the amazing sex listed above.

A date where we lay on the ground in a field magically not covered in bugs and watch the sky.

A trip to a planetarium. 

A date to crack a geode at a rock shop.

Walk around an antique flea market and get to see every inch of it.  This will require me to be either dehydrated, or if they really loved me, they would call ahead to make sure they have a bathroom, because childbirth.

All of the above, but where they would just get it that I might be so excited I would cry. But also, the kind of person who understands why I feel like these things are the most important ones of all; or maybe that they don't need to understand, but that for one time in my entire life, I actually mean enough to them to give me these things.

Ode To The New Guy

 I just about lost my wits

When you started talking in front of the children about tits

You talked to my child about drugs

And then asked if he's sharing his nugs

My dear friend has lost her brain

Losing my shit in your general direction, I did refrain

Your grave I did mentally dig

While you were acting in my house like a mansplaining pig

My favorite was when you likened eating sugar to smoking crack

Listening to your drunken banter was the straw on the camel's back

My favorite rock you told us, as if you knew, that it was volcanic

It was actually sedimentary, your bullshit was tragic

When you disrespectfully came back in my house with an open beer

I should have kicked you out on your rear

I draw the line at bossing me around in my house

I should have sprayed you like a louse

You didn't wash your hands when you peed

She thinks she's landed quite a steed

I'd like to pack you in a box

And send you off to the Land of Lost Socks

Dude, your vibe is absolutely atrocious

And yet, my friend simply sees you as precocious

As harrowing as this evening was

I for sure cannot handle you, even if I had a buzz

No sir, not at all

Was your presence a ball

I do not like you here nor there

I do not like you anywhere

The smell of ashtray and beer just about caused emesis

You do not want me for a nemesis

But keeping my mouth shut I shan't

Because harm coming to her and the children, it can't

It's evident that you're a leach

Yet she's convinced you're a peach

The bad energy I did gather

Being near you again, I would not rather

No sir, not at all

I do not like you, big or small

Please excuse yourself out of her life

Stop causing all of this strife

She's stuck on you like white on rice

Her brain isn't working to think twice

There is a calm in sticking to what you know

And this is why you have to go

On Dating 3

There just comes a time where you have to accept the fact that you've been through enough and protect your peace at all costs.

I have genuinely given up on dating and the idea of.  I have deleted all profiles on all apps.  I have only one on Hinge, that I never use, but for some reason I intermittently feel like throwing myself into the fuckboy filled trust fall that is the proverbial "out there".  There is that ever-dreaded question of "What are you looking for?"  I mean, who is ever going to completely align with that? And what person asks that before even meeting or getting to know another person to know what they might want from directly that person. It's basically become code for "say you're a douchebag without actually telling me you're a douchebag".  I mean come on, maybe from Larry I just want a night of the best sex that I've had in year (10 months, but who the fuck is counting).  But maybe from Sir Tall, Quiet, and Makes My Brain Shut Off Just Existing that I've had a secret crush on since junior year geometry I want to Netflix and chill every night for the remainder of my life, and not once have I had the balls to tell him that.

I guess the best way that I can put it, is that I would like to not die alone.  I mean come on, at least one person needs to be sad at my funeral. All of the relationships in my life until now have been entirely about what everyone else needs.  I've been single for several years and have been focusing on my life and doing what's best for me.  For me, a partner is a nice to have, but definitely not so necessary that I would do anything to have one and anyone who has followed me on this rollercoaster knows that hasn't always been the case.

I know that I have trouble letting people in. But I am an awesome friend. Although I have had to cut off a couple of friendships that I am currently still trying to sift through the rubble of.  I miss them terribly, but I simply couldn't go on being treated like I was and of course everything was status quo until I spoke up and said no more.  I do have a tendency to keep things inside until I can't anymore because I am so afraid of being rejected, which I find odd because under the right circumstances I also have a compulsion to burn bridges while I am standing on them. 

Everyone just seems so driven to be something they aren't. I just want to meet one person who is who they say they are all the time. Pinterest what? Fuck that shit, give me an antique store that hasn't been dusted in twenty years. I like geeky things - Star Wars, Star Trek, I have numbers 1-12 of 13 of the Quantum Leap comic books I'm pretty proud of.  I was that girl who would rather walk around in the woods rock hunting and building rockets or fishing with my dad as a kid.  I prefer to spend a day being quiet outside or in a dive bar than some loud concert or pretentious restaurant any day. 

I don't have to spend every waking moment of my day worrying about what someone else is doing. I don't have to worry about whether or not I'm being lied to. I get to spend my days doing what I want without having to worry constantly about what someone else is feeling, and I don't see why I would need to be in a rush to compromise that. I am certain that once you feel the exhilaration that is feeling nothing in the general direction of someone who once had you like Pinocchio, you would also go out of your way to never allow another person to have that control ever again.  

It's totally not a trauma response.  I'm fine. God I need to get laid.

In comparison to the relationships of others that I have observed, I wouldn't say that they've all been a shit show, but even the best of critics watching the highlight reel that is my attempt at love would say it was definitely along the lines of a friendly clusterfuck.

I have better things to do.

My Wrestler

 I can't stop thinking about you.

Feeling you.

Your hands.

Your eyes.

Your breath.

Mixed with mine.

Your nervousness.

Your lips.

On mine.

That warm summer night.

This control you have over me.

Primordial.

Longing.

Needing.

Your hands on my body.

Come back to Maine, J.

Please.

I need you.

Just one more time.

Forever.

Hanging Up

I hate feelings.  I have said before that I experience them like a crash test dummy;  ignoring them until I'm drowning and broken, without a choice.  Four years ago, during the holiday season, I was given therapy homework to write about what I have for a really good coping mechanism, and one that I fail at miserably.  

Hence the subject of this post.  This one tips the scale both ways, depending on the day.

It has taken me 19 years, 2 months, and a day, to say out loud the reason why my brain is wired to treat my son the way that I do.

I've been getting run over by the freight train of self realization lately, and I think it has a lot to do with the amount of processing that I have had to do.  I'm in a new place, both figuratively and literally, where I am completely unable to reach for the old familiar attempts at stuffing the proverbial "it" down.

My son.

Until the day that he was born, his name was going to be Connor.  At the time of my pregnancy, the Laci Peterson case was all you could see on the television.

It's not a secret that I've been a single mom for 21 years.  The story behind it, is kept for those who are interested in knowing.  The story behind that story, is close to the chest.  Like, took me 15 years to say out loud.  I tell it a little more freely now that my children know, but it's still not ever going to be public information.

Back to the task at hand - I didn't take my meds today, so bare with me, squirrel brain is real, and it's even worse when you have been finally embossed with the correct label and you forget to take the substances preventing you from procrastinating for another 19 years.

I named my son after me.  Kind of.  Until I was 22, my nickname was Jessie to anyone who knew me.  For ten years after he was born, I stopped using it, and while I don't know why, it feels good to use it again.  The entire time I was pregnant with him, my favorite movie was Hanging Up, with Meg Ryan and Walter Matthau. Meg Ryan's character, is me.  Watch it.  You will understand. 

These scenes makes me feel so much.  

My least favorite memory, turned reoccurring nightmare:

My favorite name for a boy was always Jesse, so I said to myself, "Fuck it.  Men do it all the time, and under these circumstances, who the hell is around to stop me?"

He was born on his due date.  I almost died giving birth to him while everyone who came to "coach" was worried about the baby and paying attention to him, the doctor was doing everything she could to keep me alive, and nobody cared to check on me.  For three days, it was just me and him together in the room at the hospital.  Reighan was so excited to be a sister.  

I had to muster up the energy to drive to Bangor to get his lay-away at Walmart that I had started for him.  According to the doctor, I was supposed to have two more weeks.  I was signing forms and the attendant at the desk had gone back to get the box.  I felt the double stroller jostling around but I just figured it was my toddler being herself, bebopping away to the overhead music.  She was very speech delayed, most everything that came out of her cherub-like mouth didn't make any sense to anyone but her.  I can still hear her say, clear as day and with as much conviction a  tiny big sister can muster, "THAT'S MINE."  

I turned around, to find an empty rear stroller seat.  A woman was walking out of the service desk area with my baby!!!!  After chasing her through the store and trying to navigate a cumbersome double stroller through early 2000's Walmart, I finally caught up to her, ripped him out of her arms while she screamed like a banshee that I was taking her baby.  Her boyfriend had been using the bathroom and left her outside waiting for him.  She was out on a day pass from Acadia Hospital - for those who don't know, it's a mental health facility in Maine.

Until today's therapy session, where I emptied my guts, probably more than I have in the entire 6 years I've known this mans, I have merely given everyone else the Cliff's notes version.  Minus the trauma. Even now, just forcing myself to remember everything, reliving it in detail, my entire body feels like it's been dipped in an ice bath. Last night, I couldn't get rid of it. It was an octopus suctioned to my face.

For 19 years, 2 months, and a day, my brain has been wired to protect at all costs.

"Allow yourself to grieve; you have to if you're going to keep your sanity."  Something that his teacher told me when I noticed a sudden personality change in forth grade.  I was so quick to jump to the defensive with that statement.

"First of all, I was never sane to begin with.  I'm fine.  I've got this".  

Turns out, it the hardest truth I had to swallow.  I had it like I was wrestling a greased piglet.  

No matter what is happening, no matter how tired of it I am, no matter how much abuse I endure, no matter how I get treated in ways that I would NEVER tolerate from someone that I was dating.  But my brain is programmed by something primordial.  I have to protect him.  

Whenever he is hurting, I do everything in my power to make it stop.  You want this new thing you did nothing to earn?  Sure thing!  You have made a complete mess of the house that we live in?  Oh that's fine, I'll spend my entire day off cleaning up after you.  Spending my days on a continuous Mary Go Round of trying to decide what to mention that is going wrong so that something will get better.  It doesn't.  Saying no to him about something as nonchalant as frozen mac and cheese last week sent him into a tirade via text message for twenty-five minutes about how I screwed him up as a child and got him help and medication that fucked up his brain chemistry permanently.  And there is zero reasoning in his mind that this is definitely not how it works.

For the past three months, he is not taking his medication to help manage his bipolar disorder. To the detriment of my own mental health, I have allowed defeat to sneak its way into my mind like an octopus in a bottle. 

I have been passively suicidal for years.  

Things have been so bad, that at the end of the day I am finding myself with absolutely nothing left to give to the point where I took my good streak at school and failed my past two classes miserably.  Easy ones, that I loved and simply didn't have the brain power to put effort into.  I should have passed both with an A.  I don't want to be home. I can't get anything done with him around because he just explodes into an argument if I even ask him something as simple as to pick up his dirty dishes that were sitting in front of him all day with dried food on them, or to put his dirty socks in the laundry pile - that is behind the couch he is sitting on when he does it.  If we are having a civil conversation, and he doesn't hear something that I said, his entire being changes and beats me down with verbal attacks until I admit that I didn't say it and apologize.

This past weekend in an effort to save him I did the one thing that I never wanted to do.  I called the police, and I had them take him to the hospital. Saturday, he was no longer safe in more ways than I can lay out here.  It simply isn't my story to tell right now. 

The kicker, 

I work for NAMI.  I teach courses, run support groups - plural.  I am a peer support specialist.  

I cannot help my own child.   

Tonight, I told him that he had to leave. He was screaming at me about the pizza crust that I had bought so he could make homemade pizza for dinner not working for him. I gave him 48 hours to find somewhere else.  He won't.  Since that day at Walmart, I have never felt so helpless and scared as a mom in my life.  For five days now.  Things are slowly, and hopefully, clearing. He has to want it for himself.  I know that. I just know that I am so tired of feeling so broken.  

"Sometimes to be heard, you have to hang up."

Adequate

 Kids, today's word is Adequate.

Not capable, not loved, not included.

ADEQUATE

This is how I feel when I push myself to the breaking point.

And I do, every time.

I do it at work, in the kitchen creating food for other people, at other people's houses, at events.

I don't get invited to anything that I see people that I'm friends on Facebook doing.  I've never been the one who has been included, ever.  I cannot explain with words how it feels to be this isolated, so I'll give you some examples.

I was always adequate enough to talk to people in school, but I was never invited to hang out afterwards.  I was never invited to a single birthday party or party, at all.  I was adequate enough to graduate with a C+ average.

I have always been adequate enough to sleep with, but never enough to stick around for.

I have always been adequate enough to be friends with when there's something I can do to benefit you, like taking care of you when you are sick, but never enough to take care of when I am.

Fast forward through the crap that was the first 33 years of my life....

The year was 2016.

In January, I had been dating someone new.  Mr. Seven Year Itch was making my life a living hell in every way that he could; catfishing me, stalking me, pretending to be my friend.  Drugged and raped me with my children in the other room.  Bring on the protection order and court hearing.  The anxiety disorder and constant panic attacks.  The inability to shower if I was home alone.  The inability to be alone, at all.  The binge drinking, the sex, the serial dating.  The changing of my hair and dying it after the two year journey I had been on to heal that part of myself and the subsequent blow to my psyche that I wasn't strong enough to handle it. The stuffing it down because I couldn't live if I didn't. Adequate.

In November, a complete breakdown and I couldn't hang.  Took almost the entire month off. Started to heal, started new medication, started therapy.  Wrote a lot to get it out, but not all of it.  Just enough.  Adequate.

New Year's Eve, my aunt eloped in her living room after telling everyone they were just coming over for a house warming party. I made cupcakes and a wedding cake that looked like it could be a house warming cake, complete with a tree made from tootsie rolls and spearmint leaves.  It took me hours. I felt adequate. 

By March 2017 I was pretending I wasn't a complete mess.  I was working full time at my job at the switchboard, and had just signed up to go full time with Oncology so I was working two jobs, raising two teenagers alone, juggling dating 2 men at once and neither that amounted to anything, and barely living.  Adequate.

April Fool's Day, my other aunt got married.  She eloped and gave me 24 hours notice about it.  I could have just let her do it alone, but I had to be there.  I had to make the cake and take the pictures.  I needed to be there for her.  I needed to feel needed, and, adequate.

She harassed me nonstop for the pictures for days after when I was so burnt out that I was barely alive. "Yes, let me drop everything for this thing that I'm doing for you, for free!!"  I'll just be dying over here in the corner.  

She didn't talk to me for months, and I was left to deal with everything I was going through alone. Not adequate enough to be heard, just adequate enough to be expected of.

Every family event, busting my butt to be perfect.  Baking and cooking and helping out until my body collapsed because I am convinced I won't be included if I didn't make multiple things for everyone to enjoy. Surprise! I'm still not included.  Still not adequate enough.

I don't get close to people so I don't feel the sting.  See, I lied there.  I always feel the sting.  As said in a different post, even when I say that I give zero fucks, there's still 30% still hanging on for dear life.  I'm always that single girl, the one without a partner who doesn't get invited to the card games, to camp to hang out and laugh with.  A person who is worth getting to know, at all.

The one time that I was actually happy in a relationship, and thought it was real, that I might have actually found what everyone else in my life has.  Found out he was not who he said that he was a month prior to the end of the relationship (10 months in).  My entire family loved him.  I was adequate enough to be included for the first time ever.

When it ended and I told my (now former) best friend (the one I had since I was 6), she was at the beginning of her mental health downward spiral that she is very much still riding (I will get to that in a different post), she blew the entire situation out of proportion, and messaged every single one of my family members that she knew, and told them about what I had found out.  She also told them that I had dated three other sex offenders in the past, still have no idea where that came from (not true)...I needed to be saved....on and on.  I was cut off from my entire family.  They didn't unfriend me on social media, of course.  I was just a kid spanked and sitting in time out in a dark corner for writing on the wall with permanent marker, even though it said "I love you mommy".  Did any of them actually talk to me about it?  Did any of them care that I had no idea what life I had been living for almost an entire year and my heart was destroyed and my life was turned completely upside down in the blink of an eye?  Do they care that I have completely given up on dating and that I now will never get to know what it's like to have what they have? You know the answer already. She and I didn't talk for almost a year after that, by the way.

They did however, follow me like I was some murderer trying to kidnap their children when we all went to the Lumberjack show when my sister was up last July.  The kids all wanted a rock from the big chest they were selling and in my effort to be an aunt that I always wanted the privilege to be, I had them all come with me because I wanted to do something special.  Growing up, whenever I went somewhere with dad I always got rocks.  It was important to me that I carry on that tradition.  The looks on their faces when they learned they didn't have to pick just one stone, but got to pick out a whole bags worth, meant everything to me. 

Trying to give my niece a treat when I had gone out of my way to make stuff that was allergen free so she could get to enjoy something, my sister in law barked at me to ask her mother if it was okay, as if I had no idea how to take care of a child.  The same sister in law who, who when I was excited and sharing with my family about the new promotion that I had coming at work (in an effort seem adequate enough to be liked) smugly replied "Everyone is so short staffed they're letting anyone cover now." For the first time in my life, I have a career in which I feel like this is what I should be doing.  Like I have finally found that thing that I was made to do.  I have my own office and the entirety of my job is to be happy for complete strangers all day long.  It basically threw boiling acid on my joy.  I bought pizza for lunch for everyone that day despite the fact that it almost broke my budget.  To be adequate.

I can live without feeling everything that I was made to feel that entire week, ever again.  Who am I kidding?  I feel that way every time I remember. 

I cannot, however, stop feeling the sting knowing that I am never going to be adequate enough to have the privilege of sleepovers, dance parties, tea parties, being needed for babysitting, teaching them all the cool stuff I know in the kitchen and about science.  I'm just the sister who's different, who's always the odd one out, who isn't supposed to be allowed to have feelings - I am the dramatic one, afterall.

They can say all they want about how dramatic and over the top that I am, how much of a liar I am.  They aren't here helping me in any capacity that adds value to my life.  They can judge me all they want about how I've raised my kids, by myself, without their involvement.  They can hate me all they want for saying anything about this, but if they took a second to realize, it took me an entire year of feeling this way before I said anything at all.

My sister will be home again in two weeks and I was so excited about it, that I had also gotten the week off so that I could enjoy it.  It also falls on finals week.  My daughter is coming home for a couple of days so that she can see everyone.  I may cancel my vacation time and work.  Every fiber of my being already feels like the Cowardly Lion right before he jumps through the window of the Wizard's castle.  

Or I may keep my vacation and spend it doing anything else than be treated like an outsider in my own family.  I suppose time will tell.

Freight Train of Self Realization

Buckle up Bitches.

I haven't attempted to write anything here since April.  Not for lack of fodder, but when you spend your entire day, both at work and school at a computer, even doing something so simple for myself is too much. 

I have changed.  A lot.  I am finding myself more and more excited to be alone.  There isn't anything I have to worry about when there isn't another person around.  I don't have to constantly be worried about whether or not I'm being lied to, what the other person is doing, bending over backwards to make another person like me and heaven forbid I want them to stay.  Maybe I never wanted them to stay.  Who knows.  Life is better this way, and it's that is not me giving up on the idea of ever finding the proverbial "one", I'm just no longer available for what doesn't mutually benefit me.

Give this Friday evening as an example of my growth.

To start with background:

There is a man that I met in 2016 when things for me, mentally, were at their worst.  Just coming out of a huge breakup from  Mr. Seven Year Itch, post assault that changed the entire wiring of my brain.  I was a mess.  For three years, weekly, we would get together once or twice a week.  We talked about everything.  It was nice.  Of course eventually I fell and of course, it ended abruptly. I didn't write an actual blog piece about him until now because I really liked what we had and something in me wanted to fiercely protect it.  So much to the point that I never let him be a part of my life and in that 3 years he might have spent a total of 15 minutes inside of my home, because I realize now that it was my subconscious protecting myself from him. A lot of what I published in mid 2019 was regarding that.

Fast forward to a year out to the end and he randomly messages and wants to grab dinner.  I go.  He unexpectedly apologizes.  He is heart broken because this new girl is treating him badly, he was ready to propose and he needed a friend.  Guys, I don't know if you have ever experienced this, so bear with me while I try to explain what I am experiencing, as it is foreign to me as well.

I felt nothing.

I kept waiting for the rush of "I told you so", "Take that", pity, excitement to see him again, something.  

Nothing. 

Fast forward the past couple of years since.  He got dumped in spectacular fashion. I have, I guess you can put it as more than healed.  We still see each other when timing allows, and as a friend, I thoroughly enjoy hanging out with him.  I have slept with him when I had an itch to scratch that I couldn't reach myself. I guess the disconnect now is that I don't swoon when I see an invite to come over.  I don't put my life on hold waiting for it. On Memorial Day, I invited him and a couple of other friends over for dinner.  I never would have dreamed of doing that before.  It just didn't feel like such a big deal anymore.  He came.  We hung out as friends.  It was nice. 

Protecting my peace has become paramount to me. There is some sort of roadblock put up in front of me where I don't have any emotional attachment to him anymore. And given what I used to feel about him, it's freaking me out that I feel so little.

Back to Friday.  It's been six years since we first met. 

I grabbed dinner on my way over. We watched a couple of episodes of Picard, which made my nerd brain light up with glee. But when we were deciding on what to watch, I saw it.  Her name as a profile listed under his accounts for streaming services.  He still lets her use him even after the way she treated him. I was never good enough for that - as the one who treated him well. As I watched the show, that marinated throughout my being, invading my mind like acid.  

The cork that was holding in all the rage I didn't even know I have been holding in has been launched into outer space.

In the most unceremonious way that I can be, I am done.  Finally, completely, totally, done. No crying, no whining and asking why I'm not good enough and why he wouldn't choose me or why he's holding onto a shitty person when I am right in front of him in all of my amazingness that he refuses to see.

I am enough.  Too much maybe, because I refuse for another second to settle for excuses.  He found less.  He knows that. But if that's what he still wants, so be it.  

In every relationship that I have been in, I have always been stuck in the role of curvy fantasy fulfiller.  The something to do when you have nothing else to do. Not once, even to my ex husband, that I married, was I ever good enough to be the one to change or stick around for.  The one to commit to.  The one, at all. 

Hell, one of my ex's lied to my face about seeing my modeling photos online, and stuck to his story about it for months until I confronted him about a comment - that he made on one of them 90 days before meeting me! He knew exactly who I was, and what I did, and he lied to my face about it.  Mr. Seven Year Itch had, multiple times over, a second life, controlled every aspect of my life (For. Seven. Fucking. Years), stalked me, drugged and sexually assaulted me with my children in the other room and I still took him back.  I cannot even tell you how sick I feel knowing that the woman he is with now, and lives with has 3 daughters. He is a monster that belongs in jail for what he did to not only me, but his ex wife and more women than I can count.  My Guru, I am pretty sure that straw that broke the camel's back. I have no idea how on Earth I believed myself to be the exception when his rule was a haram. And I knew that! 

**insert moment of silence for my brain cells that just jumped to their death.**

Yeah, all of the one night stands and sleeping around were great.  They served their place at their time.  It's just not ever going to be what I need in my life to be happy anymore.

I just think that I have gotten better at severing what doesn't serve me anymore. I cringe at the thought of my past, but I am so hopeful for my future.

Don't kill yourself over a person guys.  They'll just bring someone else to your funeral.

J.M.

 It was a year into my breakup, and I created a profile on plenty of fish. You respectfully messaged me and found out with delight that we're both in the same town. Trying to be smart for a change, had you meet me down at the waterfront. We said our niceties and decided to go eat at a local Chinese restaurant. As soon as I got in the car and saw your profile, I froze. I asked you your last name even though I already knew, and I almost stopped breathing when you said it out loud.

I don't know if you ever knew this, but you're that guy. The guy who was a couple of years ahead of me in school, and the second that I would see you in the hall I was completely incapable of everything that I knew up until that point. You said that nobody ever said that to you before.

I really liked you. I kept catching myself being nervous but completely fine with it. We migrated from the restaurant to the other local bar of the road and had a couple of drinks and talked some more.  Someone decided to go for a drive because we didn't want the night to end.

We went to the lake. Talked more and the second your lips hit mine I knew it was over. You were always a part of me. Something from another time.  

I died waiting for you. 

You contacted me a couple of years ago. It was shortly before my relationship ended. You're coming back to Maine, you complimented my blog and made me feel the same way. I really wanted to see you. Then suddenly you blocked me.

Just know that I can't stop thinking about what you do with your lips when you're nervous. 

Day Drinking

when my body is at the point of exhaustion 

and my brain is a scattered mess

which we both know is nothing unusual 

my heart still beats your name

The bartender must have thought we were insane

middle of the afternoon on a Thursday

it felt like we were the only two people inside an Irish pub

and you could feel my body wanting to jump out of my dress 

when you ran your hands down my side

and I could feel your entire being pressed against me

I let you pay the tab 

and told you I'd meet you outside 

but I took the back door 

and you took the front 

I can't remember how I got home 

but I remember thinking cold pickles and gin were a good idea

and falling asleep naked to reruns of Parks and Rec

and dreaming of all the lives we almost lived 

and on dark days when I think I could maybe be over it

I wonder if maybe I might ever find you again 

and I need to know to keep this heart beating 

for another four hundred years 

if that's what it takes because I still owe you half a tab 

and at least one more lifetime

TED Talk

I don't know about you, but i thought that "getting healthy" emotionally was like vanquishing this inner demon and having this huge amount of success, but in reality it's just giving broken pieces of yourself soft hugs while sitting in the junk drawer of your own existence.

Here we go with another blog post where I am a real human.

The apartment is shaping up to be something I think I could live in forever.  Slowly learning the city and the little side streets and the tricks to avoiding the shitty traffic.  Door Dash is a wonderful invention.  Both kids are still home.  Things would most likely go much smoother and I would be done unpacking in under a century if, big if, my dear daughter would stop moving everything that I unpacked because she didn't like how I set it up.  

I feel like both children deserve their own posts sometime soon.  I have been working on that carefully. It's a lot.

This past Sunday, in an effort to hunker down and get something accomplished that was going to make my life a little more functional, I made myself focus on my bedroom.  I'm pretty excited.  I didn't get everything that needs to be taken care of done, but "don't let perfect get in the way of better" has been the motto of my anxiety.  Just before I moved, we got hit with a rain storm and it caused my old basement to flood.  Unfortunately in my effort to downsize prior to moving, I sold some of my storage shelves and my son had put some stuff on the floor and that included a box of what appeared to be old letters and things my mom saved that she left after coming to get the remainder of her stuff that she stored there.  They got wet, but I just put them up on another high shelf.  I almost threw them out when I was cleaning, but something (Nana) told me to go through them to see if something was worth keeping.  I decided that I was going to take the time to go through those boxes.  I found a bunch of stuff that my siblings and I made.  Some things were ruined, but not as much as I was expecting.  I also found a bunch of letters between my parents when they were in school along with some things that my siblings and I created when we were little that she kept.  

Wait for it.......

I found a letter, written by my mother in January 1980, meaning she was 15 years old.

She was upset that she started her period, because she didn't know how else to show my dad that she loved him other than to give him a baby and it's all she wants.

Wait for it......

My mother.  Who had me a week after turning 17.

The bitch who made my life hell until I cut ties.  

Who every time she got mad at me as a kid told me, that I, a child, was a mistake.  The one that I would bend over backwards to please no matter what it did to me because I was convinced that it was me who was the crazy one.

The person that I was sad about not having to talk to when I need a mom.  Because that's truly the thing that I have needed more than anything, or at least it feels that way because I didn't have her and yet, somehow managed to survive without.

Let that sink in.  I sure have.  And it was all I will ever need again to remember that cutting ties with someone, regardless of why and who they are, if they are not bringing you peace, then peace the fuck out.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

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.