piling on

i feel like i should write something tonight but i have no idea what to say.  i'm overwhelmed.  that's all i feel...overwhelmed by everything:  life, the bookstore, upcoming choices, the past, my present, the future, grief, hard facts that have to be faced, going through life with a mental illness, looking at everything through the lens of trama and loss.  

how would one not feel overwhelmed?

i am, by no means, alone in this.  most of these things are faced by an awful lot of people on this green and blue planet hurtling through space.  but one thing i really struggle with is that people offer me very little comfort.  i'm not a people person.  i want a deserted island and the comforts of life but NO people.  knowing i'm not alone is, most often, a very cold comfort to me.  i wish i were alone...most of the time.

i don't wish i were different in this but i feel like maybe it would be easier at times.  community and all that.  i know that's what God created us for; it's one of the things i can't wait to ask him about on the new earth.  here on this earth i struggle with it so very much.  

i'm gonna try to get a little extra rest tonight so i'm headed to bed early (at just after 11:00 - it's very early for me).  

grace and peace and rest

6 years and counting

today is the 6th anniversary of the flood.  the day that changed my life beyond compare.  the day that i morphed into a jumpy, scared, fundamentally anxious ball of nerves.

today is worse in that daddy isn't here to comfort me.  i haven't been able to blog about the loss of my dear, sweet father - he's been gone less than 3 weeks.

i'm 2 days away from opening my own business, the dream of my lifetime, and he's not here to share that day either.  he was able to see the store and participate in the planning and the preparation.  last may 2 he came to my work to visit and check on me.  i faced today without him and it HURTS!

i'm tired and anxious and weepy.  i have lots of last minute things to do tomorrow and i just want to hide.  i want to stop, to shut down to hibernate. 

i want my daddy!

the great david letterman

in my childhood it was “M*A*S*H” (11 seasons) then it was “the cosby show” (8 seasons) “cheers,” (11 seasons) “frasier,” (11 seasons) “seinfeld” (9 seasons) and “friends” (10 seasons.)  because all of these live in syndication i’ve not missed them like i will miss david letterman. 

i remember at 9 or 10 years old, on those friday nights spent at my paternal grandparents’ house, getting up to watch while the rest of the house slept.  i’ve always been an insomniac and everyone slept too early for me so i would sneak out of bed at 11:30 with my brother and my cousins sleeping and turn the TV down real low, sit just inches from the screen and watch dave. 

 

i loved it:  larry bud melman and the man under the stairs, stupid pet tricks and paul shaffer, hello deli and biff henderson.  sometimes my brother got up to watch with me.  i loved that too.  i’ve watched dave for 33 years; i’m 41.  i’ve found myself crying every night as i watch his last season.  i cried with him after his heart surgery and i cried with him after 9/11.  i’ll cry with him tonight as he says goodbye.  i’m sentimental so my attachment to a person i’ve never met or seen in person isn’t that odd but because he's the man who made a scared, lonely little girl laugh every single night i desperately mourn his leaving. 

 

for an insomniac late night TV is a lifesaver.  when i was a teenager we didn’t have cable and we only got 4 channels, ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX.  FOX still went off the air at about midnight.  while dave was on NBC, and followed the tonight show, i had those 2 glorious hours to myself while everyone else was out or asleep.  he moved to CBS when i was in college.  i watched every night. 

 

i cannot imagine his absence.  i love stephen colbert and will watch his show but there will always be a part of me that mourns dave.

 

grace and peace and dave

 

 

more of the same

job-hunting, interviewing, making decisions, accepting a job and then...one of my beloved cats, kentucky, got hit and killed by a car and something inside me BROKE.

 

 

whatever it was that's kept me hanging on slipped away and i felt my grip on everything let go.  for 4 1/2 years i've been waiting and worrying about one final thing what would break me, that would finally drive me crazy.  and that once i went crazy i would never be able to get back.

 

i worked for 2 weeks at a job that wasn't at all what they advertised.  the position wasn't the one they promised and my hours were not close to full-time so i had to leave.  i've interviewed at two companies since, to no avail. 

 

more loss.  LOSS:  one of my least favorite words!  that, and CLOSURE!

 

 

grace and peace

piling on

 

grief in two part.  the first is loss.  the second is the remaking of life.

 

anne roiphe

 

another loss in my life has left me more angry than anything.  but underneath that old familiar friend lies another hole.  i feel hollowed out, tunneled through, an open wound.  i keep thinking i will get sad for the loss of the only job i ever loved but i don't have the energy for sad.  anger and emptiness leaves nothing else.

 

i've learned a lot in these last 4 1/2 years of loss upon loss but what i haven't learned is how to hold on.  now the losses feel normal, expected, ultimately inevitable.  even the replacing of things feels ridiculous.  as if they too will be lost in the long-run, but more likely in the short-run. 

 

there is little worry over another job, in fact, i've already had an interview.  the anxiety is over my inability to even care!  perhaps i live under the false belief that each loss will be the final straw that breaks this camel's back but when that doesn't happen i find myself wondering, seriously wondering, if i have the ability to respond properly to things anymore or if i'm numb to what's happening to me. 

 

while my anxiety is ever-present it surrounds mostly small insignificant things.  the big things touch me very little.  for example, i'm much more worried about tomorrow's trip to trader joe's: the traffic, full parking lot, busy store, the unavailability of some things on my list, rather than the much bigger and more dire circumstance of my dwindling bank account and employment status.  go figure.

grace and peace   

and the horse you rode in on

other than 2010 (AKA "the year of the flood") i have never been so ready to bid adieu to year in my life.  that year was full of tangible loss, you know them by now...say it with me...job, house, car, all my belongings but the worst losses were the unquantifiable:  the safe, secure place called "home," the "amy" i used to be, the ease of pre-flood life, the "normal" that was so easy to take for granted.

 

but 2013 has been a year of loss so unquantifiable and so hard that it's given 2010 a run for its money.  the first week of the year came with a surprising (at least for me) cancer diagnosis for my maternal grandfather.  by the second week of april, 6 days after my 39th birthday, he was gone. 

 

my great-aunt, only 9 years my mothers senior, died in may, followed in august by my maternal grandmother (rather unexpectedly.)  my paternal grandmother died just last month at age 96.  in 7 months time i lost 3 grandparents and a great-aunt to whom i was very close.

 

my grandparents (all 4 of them) were instrumental in my life.  almost all of my good memories of childhood took place in their homes.  i didn't have the sanest of childhood homes and my grandparents were saviors.  we relied on them for money, time, a safe place and some normalcy. 

 

i feel rather like an orphan with 2 living parents.

 

the last month of the year came with surgery for 2 of my 3 pets:  winston the pug and moxie the cat.  only kentucky the cat was spared.  they, all 3, are fine and healthy now though we still have to have stiches removed for winston and moxie.  also, i'm recovering from a nasty bout of the flu.  all in all i'd rather the year be in the rearview!

 

grace and peace and hope for a better 2014

7 days and counting...

i am not good at anniversaries.  i overthink them and dread them and remember them to a fault.  today is one week since i buried my grandmother.  today has been beyond sad for me. 

 

i feel the weight of all my recent, and not so recent, losses.  there are plenty to remember and i don't intend to rehash them now.  i just need to acknowledge that i am tired and sad and that i feel like i should be able to call "time out" and keep myself from having to face any more loss.  as we all know, life doesn't work that way even when it seems more than fair to wish for such a thing! 

 

grace and peace

and so it goes

for those of us with PTSD there is a new (30 years old now) therapy called EMDR  (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing).  it is supposed to help the right and left sides of the brain process trauma as a whole. 

 

when trauma happens the left side of the brain - the logical, linear, problem-solving side of the brain shuts down and the right side of the brain stores all the trauma.  the right side of the brain is the sights, sounds, feelings, reactions, memories, etc.  it takes on all the trauma but stores it in a fractious manner.  there is no ability for the PTSD affected brain to convince itself that the trauma happened yesterday, last week, last year or at age 5.  the right brain tells us that the trauma is happening NOW. 

 

EMDR is supposed to help transfer the trauma to the logical and chronological left side of the brain and help my right brain and my memories, my heart, my fight-or-flight-or-freeze response to be put into perspective.

 

i am TERRIFIED of this therapy.  i have to relive each moment of the trauma (in this case the flood - though i have had many traumas in my life) and work on moving it around inside my damaged, tired, scared and scarred brain. 

 

i have documented the losses of the flood for 3 years now.  there have been many more non-flood related losses as well.  a quick list:  a dog, an aunt, a cat, a grandfather, a great-aunt, a grandmother (7 days ago) my other, 96 year old grandmother, is in the hospital with pneumonia. 

 

EMDR can't do what it's supposed to do if the participant (patient - ME) is in the middle of a new lose or recent grief.  today i feel like i will never be at a time and place when there WON'T be a new loss.  i'm so tired of loss and grief and pain and fear.  it's the classic double edged sword or catch-22, whichever you prefer.  

 

RIP Elizabeth Ray Jackson Lowe Willis, my grandmother, who had much more trauma in her 87 years than i in my 39.  i love you!

grace and peace

maximum capacity

i've begun to wonder if there will come a point when my ability to feel loss will cease to exist.  can i shut down any more than i already have?  i've lived a life of numbness - will it always be this way?

 

in 3 years i've lost a job, a house, a car, all my belongings, a dog, 2 cats, an aunt, a grandfather, a great-aunt, my safety, my sanity, my will, my independence, my security, my figure, my new man, most of my friends, my energy, my interests, myself.

 

the losses keep coming and i keep going.  i don't want to, i don't want to feel the loss and the pain, but there is no alternative.  i have to keep going.  i do have a job i love but it's not enough money to live.  i have 2 beloved pets left and i continue to spoil them as much as i can.

 

i'm so tired of the way things are but it's the way things are.

 

grace and peace

life goes...on...

i'm having that sensation today that we all get on the day of a loss, a funeral or the first day back to "normal."  the "my life has changed forever and these people are going about business as usual" feeling.

i feel pretty empty and tired and hot (85 degrees today and the air conditioning at the bookstore is out.)  i just can't wait to close up and get to the house.  i have no internet at home (again) so i thought i'd post while i had access.  

i'm tired of losing things and people and pets.  the third anniversary of the flood is looming and i dread it.  someone mentioned may 2 today as the day they will close on a house and i thought i would scream!

in serious need of sleep!

grace and peace

writer's block

i have never felt less like writing in my life than i do now.  i just can't think of anything to say.  i suppose some of it is that i have fallen back into the routine of work, errands, home, read, pets, sleep, do it all over again. 

 

my grandfather's cancer diagnosis has hit hard.  he's 86 and dying.  his death will be hard, not just his physical absence, but the repercussions for my grandmother and the rest of the family.  i'm still in the frame of mind that one more loss, one more heartbreak, will be able to push me over the edge of sanity and that i will be unable to come back. 

 

intellectually i know that it's unlikely but it sure feels real to me.  i struggle every day to survive and to take care of myself and the pets while holding down a job and trying to pay $10 here and $10 there to all my creditors.  not so much fun.

 

i'm still as tired and as frazzled as i can be. 

 

grace and peace

 

   

reality check

i got home tonight after spending the day with a friend and STILL NO CAT!!!!  somehow i felt sure that if i finally broke down and stopped watching to door for her little face to appear she would show up...the "watched pot never boils" philosophy...no luck.  i reluctantly left winston to hold down the fort while i visited with my oldest and dearest friend.  we had a good day but my mind was never far from worry over what may have happened to the cat.  i miss her terribly.  little, spoiled, self-involved winston has noticed that she's gone and is diligently looking for her.  it's disconcerting and heartbreaking.

however, i do seem to have avoided the dreaded lockjaw.  the cut has finally begun to heal and i am resigned to putting sheets back on the bed any day now (i have been sleeping on the couch since maeve went missing just in case she starts her siamese crying in the wee hours...) 

i am in mourning over the loss of actor harry morgan, 96, who played my beloved colonel sherman t. potter on M*A*S*H for 8 of its 11 seasons. 

with my anxiety on high-alert i have begun to count the recent losses and to add these to the previous ones for what can only be quantified with equations, algorithms and numbers too complex for my addled, tired and grief-stricken mind to comprehend.  i am beyond overwhelmed.

i may actually be at the point where i can no longer pay my mortgage.  i don't know if it will be this month or next but the day is coming if i can't find a job soon.  somehow i have very little interest in or fear of this fact.  it's just too surreal for my aforementioned otherwise-occupied mind to handle. 

keep my in your prayers as i keep you in mine.

grace and peace 





differences in perspective

since my last post i have been to therapy, trader joe's and the dreaded lowe's.  none of them were easy.  daddy had to go to lowe's with me, of course.  as i was waiting for him to pull his van around, the lowe's employee waiting to load the purchases asked me if i was "almost done" with the house.  i told him that the load we were picking up is supposed to be my last (new fiberglass front door and new storm door.)  he said, "i've seen you in here hundreds of times since the flood.  are you excited to get the house finished?"  i surprised him by answering a very firm and succinct "no!"  i told him i wanted to get all the stuff done and then "set it on fire!"  he gave a nervous smile and chuckle but quickly realized i was not kidding.  he wanted to know if the whole 18 months had been miserable.  i replied with a simple, "yes."

it is so hard to explain to people who haven't lived this that no matter what the house looks like it feels as if it will never be finished to me.  i still see concrete floors and bare studs where the walls are supposed to be. 

this photo was taken in the guest bedroom looking through what is supposed to be the wall that separates it from the kitchen.

it's impossible to explain that the house is the least significant loss the flood inflicted.  the emotional scars of losing "home" are far greater than losing a house.  the exhaustion of endurance and recovery is more shocking than the loss of any one "thing."  or of many things. 

the realization that trauma can change not just one's address or wardrobe or the color of paint on the walls or the perceived safety of home but that it changes the very idea of oneself.  i know that i am no longer the person who woke up the morning of may 2, 2010, while the rain was still falling, and my home was still "home." 

i'm reminded again and again of hemingway's quote, "the world breaks us all, and afterward, some are stronger at the broken places."  while i am not the same, maybe, just maybe, i will survive the brokenness and have a certain strength to show for it. 

grace and peace