reflection

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

growing pains

i don't have anything in particular to talk about today but i felt the need to write.  maybe something will come...i usually feel better after writing and that is no small feat.  i'm struggling with bronchitis, and it is a struggle, it takes all i have to shower, take winston on his short walks and breathe!  last night i nearly killed myself in an attempt to put clean sheets on the bed.  it took nearly an hour to accomplish for having to sit and catch my breath. 

i was in desperate need of sleep and i managed to get a couple of hours.  i think i've had a total of 8 hours of sleep in the last 4 days...i'm hurting now.  sometimes my insomnia doesn't bother me much (when i can read and write and generally enjoy my awake hours) but in the last couple of weeks i've been unable to write and am almost unable to read.  those middle of the night hours aren't fun right now. 

nothing is fun right now.  i had dinner with a friend last night and had another one of those moments...those reminders of how out of touch i am with the real world.  we went to macy's for a few minutes and i was flabbergasted by the price of one piece of clothing.  i feel, in those moments, like a coma patient waking up after years of unconsciousness to find a world full of new things and it's scary.  my near complete exclusion from the pre-flood world has taken it's toll. 

i don't work, i don't shop, i don't have concact with many peole at all, i don't leave the house for days and weeks at a time and it's shocking to realize that the world has moved on without me.  it's like that scene from "growing pains" where mike seaver realizes while he's home sick from school that "'gilligan's island' is on TV whether i'm here to watch it or not."  the realization that the world as we perceive it is just that:  our perception.  it goes on with or without us. 

anyone who has lost a loved one knows that feeling, when you are immersed in grief, and cannot believe that other people are going about business as usual while you mourn and say goodbye to family or friend.  the last 2 years of life have felt like that.  i am in a constant state of shock and grief and everybody else is keeping on:  shopping, planning vacations, celebrating holidays, etc. and here i am.  just stuck.

sometimes i wonder if the world has changed too much for me to ever feel comfortable again.  or have *i* changed that much?

grace and peace  

Happy Easter

when i reflect on the last year, as one is want to do at birthday time, i’m reminded of how hard it was.  at the time of my birthday i was spending nearly every day at a local rehab center where both my grandmothers were recovering, one from a fall and one from complications due to pneumonia.  neither of them was able to be alone.  my mother’s mother, then 84, was watched over by my mother, my aunt and me.  my father’s mother, then 93, was watched over by my dad, 2 of his sisters and me.  there were times when i was the only one able to be there and i had to run back and forth from room to room.  luckily for me they were on the same floor.  my paternal grandmother was there for 4 weeks and my maternal grandmother there for 6.  in the meantime i was traveling back and forth, 180 miles round trip; to be with my dad’s other sister who was in the last stages of cancer.  she would die before either of my grandmothers’ left the center.  My 93 year old grandmother would not be able to attend her daughter’s funeral.  i was tired and frazzled beyond what i thought was possible.  after surviving 2010 and the bronchitis, the pneumonia, the firing, the flood, the loss of my house, car, my possessions and possibly my life i didn’t think i would ever recover.  i would soon lose a 17 year old dog as well.  i was one big, raw nerve.

when i think of the last 2 years i cannot remember a day that i didn’t feel exhausted, a day when i didn’t feel helpless in some way, a day when i wasn’t terrified of the next catastrophe awaiting me.  i still feel that way, but i am grateful that this birthday was spent in a more peaceful place, every little bit helps.  my life is still in limbo as i await the changes yet to come, the completion of the house, the inevitability of a new job or school, the subsequent plan to escape this anxiety-inducing heap of a house and go somewhere else—anywhere else; a place where i can relax, a place where i can leave the house and not have to see this wretched river that is now my arch-enemy, a place without torturous memories.

so i experienced my birthday as not much more than the marking of time.  one big red “X” on the 37^th year of my life.  then i woke up this morning, Easter—day 2 of my 38^th year—and was reminded that i was to celebrate the best thing to have ever happened in human history:  the resurrection of Jesus.  the thing that makes all that we suffer in this world worth it.  the thing that gives us Christians hope in the painless and tearless Heaven that awaits us.  the thing that proves to me that the pain is not the end of the story but a necessary means to an end that is greater than anything we can imagine in this fallen, sinful world.  praise be to God for being bigger, better, kinder, more merciful and more loving than our human minds can comprehend. 

Happy Easter!

grace and peace