Four Fucking Years

It is coming up on four fucking years. I don't know how that can be. I remember when I could barely summon the energy to say one year, two...now, four?

It is painful down here, let me tell ya. And that story is getting fucking old!  I have become the master of disguise, I am the happy, upbeat, bubbly girl at work. Everyone thinks so, everyone says so. What they can't see is the excruciatingly lonely, scarred, sad and scared girl behind the mask. They don't see or know the me that I hide. Who would want to, that shit will bring a person down man. No one wants that. So the lonely piles on.

I don't know how to change, I don't know how to get better. I do all the things I know to do...focus on the positive, let the feelings come, journal, talk about you, keep busy, stay positive, stay positive, stay positive...UGH. Stay fucking positive my ass!!!

Tell me, what is positive about being penniless? What is positive about the prospect of being laid off for several weeks, months without pay?  Where will that put me? God!!! What is positive about being so desperately lonely? What is positive about seeing life around you move forward while I sit alone doing nothing? Always alone. I can't just go out to a bar and stand there asking someone to talk to me, I can't afford to. It's not normal. I couldn't if I even wanted to. These aren't excuses, just reality.

No one knows the depths of what happened. They only know the hard cold facts. And really, that is enough...enough for a lifetime of lifetimes.

What a person doesn't see is the raw, exposed nerves left in ruins when half of you has been ripped away without any warning. Not that warning could have helped much but to have seen it coming may have made a teeny tiny difference. I could have braced myself, grabbed hold of the 'oh shit bar'. You know, the one above the door in a car. The one you grab and say oh shit when the person driving almost hits something. Yeah...you know the one.

To wake up looking into the eyes of your lover, doing what lovers do, running off for a day of sun and fun and friendship...blinking and it's gone. You're gone. She's gone. Only me left standing wondering what the fuck just happened. All of it...just gone. NEVER to be seen again. Love stays intact, but tenderness, touch, expressions, conversations, intimacies, memories, safety, companionship, togetherness, laughter...our laughter. It's all ripped away with a blink. One damn blink. Gone. I was just looking at you, I took your picture...I have it still. That last picture. I blinked and then there was nothing. I heard you call, I couldn't save you. I tried, I tried. I tried. 

And now...it's four years later and the pain is still raw, I've just learned how to not wince. I've learned how to walk through my days with my skin peeled back and not let anyone know I hurt. I've learned to stop myself from screaming at the well intentioned who tell me I'm not alone, I'm never alone. They know not what they say. It's okay. I love them anyway.

I know a girl who just lost her mother and she came to me and said you know what I'm going through because you lost your husband. I told her, No. "No I don't. I have my mother still. I have not had to sit by her side and watch her morph from the mother I know to one dying from cancer. I do not know that kind of pain and I would never pretend to. I do however have a very close personal relationship with grief and I can tell you a little of what will come and how I dealt with the moments that turn into days that turn into weeks. I can tell you to let it all come as it will, how it will wash over you when you least expect it and that all you can do is hold on as best you can until it passes. I can tell you to breathe, and I can tell you to forgive the people that try to do and say the right things. They mean no harm, they are just ignorant to the issue. I can tell you you must let go of the ones that will try to bring you further down and to give yourself permission to say no and to be selfish on your own behalf because now it's just you looking out for you. I can tell you this road will be long and hard and that I will always be available and willing to listen to you talk or cry it out. I can tell you I know grief and it is hard and I understand only this part of what you are going through."  Her situation has brought me back so very far, or maybe, hopefully it has only brought all that forward so at least I don't need to start all over. God, I could never start over from then, I wouldn't make it.

Do you hear my thoughts of wanting to die? Do you hear me when I think I'm just wasting space and time being here still. It's strange, I'm not a mess in the corner of a dark room wanting to kill myself. It's not like that at all. I just can't figure out the point of why I am here. I have no family around me, I am hanging on by a hair financially, I give a whole new meaning to paycheck to paycheck. I don't see a way to make things better for myself...all my trying be damned. I just wonder what the point of going on is. I have no love, I have no life and I'm on the brink of destruction. So why? Can you tell me? Am I wrong? If ever a girl needs her person but her person is gone...and there lies the crux of it all. Loneliness.

So I write, I get it out, I pretend I am writing to you. It doesn't change, but it's out there now. Isn't that what they tell you to do. Yeah...whatever.

So love, do you think I am doing well four years later? 

Define well.

This hole that I feel

Since our day on that rock I have been in a perpetual state of 'lost and overwhelm'.  I mean I know where I am, which is nowhere, but really I'm just going in circles here.

It seems my life 'after' has revolved around a hole. Weird right? Yeah. But, it's true. When you didn't ever wake up there was just this space, this big HUGE empty space left in my world.  Picture the deepest hole where once, you had stood. Do you see it?  Well, I woke up in that hole, and spent hours and hours, days, and months trying with everything I had in me to climb out of it. It was exhausting, disorienting, overwhelming and excruciatingly slow. Sometimes I would almost make it to where I could see light but got yanked back down time and time again. The only thing to do was get up and try again, so...I did. And I did and I did and I did.

I'm not sure when I climbed out, but I think I did.  At least, and I don't want to say this too loud in case I get pulled back down (I'm having enough trouble with up, I don't think I can handle down again) but I don't feel I am in a constant climb anymore.  Nope, now it's more like a circle the rim kind of feeling. I seem to hover just at the edge of dark and light with 'one false move' just laying in wait to push me in.

It's all just so fucked up. I mean what the hell is this crap, this living after loss shit. A manual comes with EVERYTHING...how to strike a match, how to use your blender, how to set up your phone etc, etc, etc.  But death and how to do it...nope!  And I know there are mountains of books out there, I've read many, but really, and I mean this in the sincerest way possible...THEY SUCK!  All the words, all the best advice, all my best intentions to do it 'right' mean nothing. When it hits you, you are no longer in control. No matter how well you want to do this thing...tough.  You will do it however 'it' says you will do it.

So yeah, I think I made it out just so I can circle around it. Yippee!  And let me just say...walking this path with a full set of tears ALWAYS at the ready is harder than you might think.  It's like trying to drive in a rainstorm without ever using the wipers. You can't see shit and you know the edge is near and you must stay away from it and the stress and pain and overwhelm is all just too, too much. 

Dear God it's just too much.  All I want to do is open my eyes and walk across the room in a straight line towards normal rather than shuffling through a minefield with tears hanging on my eyelids.  It's no kind of life...

You are my person

Hello? 

Are you there? 

I need to talk to you.  You are my person, remember, you told me so.  You said "Until the day you are no longer breathing, I will be your person...I promise."  We were watching my favorite show, Gray's Anatomy, and Meredith told Christina "You are my person" when she put her as emergency contact on a form. 

I turned my head to the right and looked at you, immediately feeling so safe and secure.  There are all these secret fears you have when you are single.  Who will see if I have a melanoma in the places I can't see; what if I choke while eating dinner...who will save me; who will be with me when I am old; how do I know this outfit looks awful on me before I leave the house; what if I have something in my teeth, or worse, in my nose; who will be my emergency contact once my current one, my parents, are gone from here.  Believe me, those are just a few. But with those words, 'I am your person, forever' I felt warm and safe.  Finally!

So, yeah, I'm in need of my person...I hope you are listening.

Mom called and left a cryptic message on the answering machine the other day.

"Hi honey, it's mum. I need you to look up something medical about Dad.  Call me back 

as soon as you get this."

Umm, sure. Okay, do I panic, not panic, what is appropriate here? Mom NEVER calls me, so there is that to consider.

I call immediately, which is actually several hours after she called me.  No answer.  OH. DEAR. GOD.  Now what?  I can't call her cell, she has no idea how to answer it.  When I was just out there her purse started playing a lovely song, so I looked over at her.  She was smiling and looking out the window as I drove us to town.  Still with the music.  

"Um, Mom, are you going to get that?" 

"Get what?" 

"Your phone." 

"What phone?"  

"The one singing a song from your purse." 

"I don't hear anything." 

"That's because it stopped." 

"Oh."  Back she goes to looking out the window...oblivious. 

"Mom?"

"What?"

"You think you should see who just called?"

"When?"

"MOM!  Did you have a stroke or something?  Your cell phone was just ringing...music playing all over the place.  Loud music. Want to check and see who it was, maybe, huh???"

"I was wondering what that pretty music was." as she fishes in a purse that is half the size of her...this takes at least 2 minutes.  Finally finding it she taps it and waits...nothing. Taps it again and waits... nothing.  Now she swipes a finger across the screen like she is conducting a symphony...nothing.   "I don't know how to answer it." as she throws it back inside her bottomless bag.

"Good thing you HAD to have an iPhone." UGH

And Dad doesn't  have a phone.  Well he does, but he doesn't know how to turn it on, and if he could he would never know what to do next.  So yeah, no help there!

Anyway, by 11pm with still no answer I go into a full on panic and put myself to bed.  The only time I'm ever safe from this life is when I'm asleep.

The next morning Mom returns my call(s).  "Dad was in the emergency room."

"WHAT?  WHY?" 

"Oh, he's okay, he's fine.  He was sitting talking on the phone and got this really bad pain in his right hip that went to his groin and eventually down his right leg. The pain got worse and worse as the day went on and he ended up getting severe nausea but never did vomit. He could hardly walk though." "Finally I said to him, let me know now if you think you may need to go to the hospital because I'm going to need time to do my hair and makeup first.  And that's when he said yeah, I think I need to go to the emergency room."  "For Dad to say that, you know it's bad." "But the on call Dr. said he thought it was just his sciatic nerve and gave him a shot and a prescription and sent us home.  The pain is really bad though and he can't lift his right leg, he drags it behind him when he walks...which he can hardly do, I have to help him to the bathroom." "So when can you get here (laughs)?"

See babe?  This is why I need you, you're my person and I need your help.  What the hell do I do now?  I've been dreading the time when my folks aren't able to do for themselves very well and this isn't necessarily that time yet but it has me thinking about that time, you know, when it gets here. You are supposed to be here for this...for me...I can't deal with this crap alone...especially now.  Before you, maybe, after you...most definitely not!  You took ALL my coping skills with you.  I've always been able to pick myself up and dust myself off and carry on after all that I have been through in life...now, I just don't have it in me. This thing with us...it broke me.  Before I would always jump to action and save the day, now I just want to run and hide.  Let someone else handle things.  Problem is, there is no one else.  I am that someone.

Do I move back there?  Did I really go through all that pain and anguish of leaving my family, my son, to come here and start a new life less than 3 years in the making, have that ripped away, my soul ripped out, just to turn around and go back?  I don't think I can. If I go back I fear I will be lost forever.  Other that my people there is NOTHING there, no friends, no prospect of a life...nothing.  How could it be I am supposed to return?  How?  What would I do with Gillian?  Oh God, but they need someone near and there is no one.  There is no one to help them daily or in an emergency.  No one.  I am that someone.

God I wish you were here to help me babe. I need someone to help me so damn bad.

Where the hell are you?????

 

 

Losing the will...

It's been an interesting time. All these months, two years worth of months, and I think I am finally losing my mind...and my will.

I'm not sure what is happening to me, my anxiety level has reached epic heights. I am paralyzed. I am turning inward. I'm losing my words.  My brain won't ever stop running.  I cry all the time.  I can no longer put one foot in front of the other...and I'm scared.  All. The. Damn. Time. 

I spend all day, every day, alone.  Well, except for weekends.  Weekends I still manage to drag myself to visit with friends.  I don't want to half the time, I have nothing to say. I just can't carry on a conversation with anyone anymore.  My friends, they don't know, they wouldn't get it, and why would they? This hasn't happened to them and they have families and jobs and lives.  I do not.  They know nothing of how I feel, how I am.  They don't ask and I don't tell.  I am a friend who once had everything they do and now has nothing.  I don't talk because they won't understand, can't understand. I just don't fit in this puzzle anymore.

To say that I am lonely is laughable because what I am is a prisoner inside my head and no one can hear me scream.  I thought my life had been spared because I was needed here but that was just a stupid lie.  The kids don't need me anymore, they are too busy building their own lives, as they should be.

I don't want to play this game anymore.

Losing Ground

I can feel the rungs of this ladder that I'm on, break away with each step. I can feel myself losing ground.

This is not a life...I am not living.  I breathe because my body does not know how not to, but I am not alive. I am just fooling everyone. 

It's been two years.  Two damn years and I cannot get past this feeling of soul sucking sorrow. I am slowly slipping away.

I can tell you the constant visions stopped, so there is that. That peace came at the two year mark. I still see it all, hear it all, but NOTHING like it was, so yeah...there is that.

I miss you love.  All I do is slip around this house like a ghost, a ghost of the person I was before. I still look out the window in the bathroom like I used to do when I knew you would be coming home.  I would watch you pull in and stop to get the mail. You were so damn handsome with your sunglasses on and your work clothes. You never knew I was there with my heart overflowing, did you? I still look but you don't come. Nothing is the same here, now it is silent. There is no love or laughter or joy here. There are no kids here.  It is just me, yet not.

I am a prisoner inside my head.  I am a prisoner inside this hell.  All the trying and crawling and climbing and trying some more have done nothing but distract me to time passing. I am no better and I just feel lonelier.

I miss you love...I miss you.

Where have I been?

When I'm at my worst I can't write, I have no words.  Not a one.

The only thing to say is I am broken...so very broken.  But who cares, who wants to read that. Really.  If I don't even want to say it anymore, then who would even want to know it.  So noone knows. Noone really knows anything about me.

I am drowning in the visions, but I can't say that really.  I mean come on, after everything, can I say that?  God, who the F cares what I say right?!?

I am so way the freak more messed up than I can say and I don't know how to move on from it. I don't even know how to speak of it, I wouldn't know what to say. I don't think we are given the tools to really really show our true selves. It's all so damn fake, the smiles, the conversations, the goings on...we pretend magnificently!!! What are we afraid of?  Do we fear we will get blood on the carpet? That our raw will attract flies? Hmm, I just don't know.

Maybe it is for fear of being judged.  Fear of seeing that 'look' on another's face. Maybe it is fear of the platitudes or the misguided advice. Maybe it is that you will bleed all over the carpet and still the world will keep spinning.  That you will hear that infamous pin drop right before your friend says "Well, anyone for more wine?"  I mean what else could be said under the circumstances?  It just seems that once I stand up and unzip my facade and step outside it, speak the ugly truth (the only truth) there should be some monumental chain reaction that follows. Earth stops, everything slides off it into nothingness.  The End.

My life is far to heavy for me to carry, it's too hard and I do not want to do it any more. All the time I have thoughts that I am done now, my time has come, it is over for me...there is no point. I just can't find the time to leave, which is hysterical considering all of the free time I do have. Really. freaking. hysterical.

I'm not laughing.

So where have I been?  I've been right here where you left me, alone, 163 out of 168 hours a week.  

I'm not laughing.