as this year/decade comes to a close i realize that i haven't written on this blog in more than a year. it's been a blur. the life of a small business owner, i suppose. december is so busy that christmas comes and goes without my noticing (except that i get a day off on the 25th). so, i didn't even consider that a new year was upon us until i started seeing social media posts about the decade ending.
that's when it hit me - this decade has been a bitch and i'm glad to see it go. but it has also been ten years of...growth...maybe. it begin with me in a job i didn't love but that provided me a good living, i owned a home, had a couple of dogs and a cat. it was okay.
the flood in may of 2010 changed everything - i lost everything. every thing. but the most important thing i lost was me. the trauma changed me. it damaged me. i know now that it also set me free. in the best way it taught me to have no attachment to things but in the worst way it taught me to have no attachment - period.
may-oct 2010 we rebuilt the house. oct. 2010-june 2012 i was nearly paralyzed with anxiety and rarely left the house. in 2011 i lost an aunt to cancer. i started working in june 2012 at a local used bookstore and while i still suffered from severe PTSD i was able to go to work. in 2013 i lost my 3 remaining grandparents and a great-aunt in 7 months. i stayed there until 2014 then went to work at a friend's jewelry store where i learned a lot about sales and business and customer service.
in august 2015 daddy was diagnosed with stage 4 lunch cancer and he died in april of 2016. it was, is and remains the hardest thing i will ever go through. i'd often heard people talk about the "club" you join after losing a parent. i've heard people say you don't really become an adult until you lose a parent. i'm afraid it's true. it's the most untethered to life i've ever felt in a life that has felt full of floating just out of range of most people around me.
almost immediately i opened my first bookstore (daddy never got to see it open but he was there when we painted the walls). upon reflection it's obvious i wasn't capable then of the stamina or drive i needed. it's also obvious that i opened in a neighborhood unprepared to sustain a used bookstore. i was incapable of taking care of myself at the time and stopped paying all my bills and called my mortgage company and told them to take my house. i didn't want it anymore - it had tried to kill me and i wasn't staying there one more night and i wasn't paying one more dime. i was lucky that my mother had inherited a house from her aunt that was sitting empty so i took the dog and 2 cats and moved. i left behind about 3/4 of my meager belongings because i didn't want anything that had ever been inside that house. i eventually filed bankruptcy (on just one credit card a credit union line of credit) to avoid foreclosure. they foreclosed anyway.
the presidential election later that year sent me into months of depression and grief that i had not had time to process. i went to work but i talked to no one. i moved my store to a temporary location in april 2017 for 6 months at the end of my first year-long lease. i worked at the bookstore 1-2 days a week, at the jewelry store a couple of days a week and for a jewelry designer 3 days a week. i moved my house in may 2017. i went to bed each night exhausted, sometimes hungry and always in mourning.
in novemeber 2017 i opened full-time in my permanent bookstore location. my lifelong dream realized! it's been a difficult run. the neighborhood, in fact the city, is changing so fast and all retail is having a hard time adjusting. the retail book business is especially hart-hit. in april 2018 i moved houses again. in april 2019 i lost my perfect, sweet, hilarious pug winston and i wanted to stop. i wanted to refuse to go on. i wanted to shout to the heavens that i'm tired of losing. that last one i did. the others i can't do. that lost was the only of the many losses that made me feel as hopeless and as helpless as the loss of daddy.
just last month the building in which i rent for the bookstore was sold to the university across the street. my days/months are numbered. there isn't any affordable commercial rent in nashville in the areas i could make a go of it. i'm faced with another loss that doesn't feel possible to survive.
i do know that i will survive it because i've survived all the rest but i'm sure beaten down by them. i don't always know what to do with myself over them. i'm not sure why i've suffered so many. i try to repeat to myself a line from M*A*S*H that is 100% true. BJ, in despair over what he's missing with his wife and daughter while away in a war, lashes out at margaret and hawkeye because with them being unmarried they can't understand his pain. margaret says, "maybe you do have the most to lose but that's only because you've got the most."
maybe i've lost so much because i had the most.
this is a long haul; thanks for sticking with me.
grace and peace
