walking on spiderwebs, or cage / page / stage / rage

I live caged gently in charts. Little black grids on white pieces of paper. Or black marker on a white board. I write in tally marks, numbers, skill descriptors. I write in red pen. These grids contain my feelings because my feelings are too big and threaten to overwhelm me, shut me down, reduce all forward action to zero, leave me in a valley of couch and comforter and unending ache. I am somewhat afraid of my feelings. So I give them numbers. Anxious, zero to five. Sad, zero to five. Happy, zero to five. Suicidal ideation, zero to five. Zero to two is for passive death wishes; three is when I start searching for my safety plan. Where did I put that again? Self-harm urges, zero to five. I have been in recovery for self-injury for seventeen years. I know this because i have a cat who is seventeen years and I got him as a kitten the year I went into recovery. Cats have finite lives though, and this one is doing less well than I would like, but he's okay. He's around right now. 

Sometimes i have to live in the right-now because the bigger landscape of my life towers over me, distorted gothic thing that it is. The sky looms big and heavy like it will come down to suffocate me with cloud. Buildings are *so* tall, they sway in my vision like they want to fall down on me. 

I like it in my apartment. It's safe here. I can hear my neighbors' muffled conversations. The woman down the hall has a dog, a big one by the sound of the bark. I'm glad my cats haven't taken umbrage in such a way that would involve fluids.

I have to push to go outside most days. The gaze of strangers is unsurprisingly yet somehow unexpectedly searing. I walk with my eyes cast down, looking up in little flicks, half-second increments. It is illogical how I reduce the field of my vision even further than it naturally is (natural about 5% of "normal" seeing). This is how disabilities collide. I blind myself further. 

My father always told me to keep good eye contact with people; that's how they know you are trustworthy. But if good eye contact is a learned skill, then how can you tell people are not lying to your face? 

I can't see faces very well. I have to stare and stare. My eyes point in different directions. My pointed stare makes people who don't know me uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable too, so much raw visibility on everyone's part, so I don't do it that often.

This is not "some days" for me. This is my every day. 

I find a deep joy in writing, in running my journal, in being with my friends and my husband and reading books and petting my cats. But I am alone a lot. It takes self-discipline to do work, because I don't have the structure of an office, the white noise of other workers working. I go to coffee shops a lot to simulate this environment, but they are not without peril. The screaming toddler(s). The man who wants to talk to me despite the fact that I am clearly working. Internet that suddenly goes down. 

Discipline and responsibility. I hear the voice of my father when I say those words in my head. 

Yesterday I went outside to do work, but today I think I will stay in. It's not good in my head right now. I mean, even relatively speaking. I have a whirlpool of fear and self-doubt sucking at my heels. I have an enormous work task that seems possible or impossible depending on what moment I'm inhabiting when I look at it. I am pretty much motivated by fear right now. I can't reach joy today. 

I'm scared of being a disappointment, always, eternally, not good enough, frantically working to keep up, keep my secrets, keep going.

I pretend I'm good. I pretend I'm well. I'm really good at pretending I'm well. Therapists even have a fancy phrase for what I do, something about performing better than I actually am...I call it "masking." It happens unwittingly. Haha. I was just having a moment there. No, I'm not that sad. No, I'm not that scared. Let me say something funny to make us comfortable. 

[Apparently people-pleasing is a maladaptive coping mechanism. But my superiors in the workplace really like it when I am consistently pleasant and do what they want. People in positions of power do not express concern for my needs, my differences, or my emotions. Those things get in the way. 

I would like to say that I believe I am smart and capable as others tell me. That I am up to the challenge. That I will continue to be up to the challenge. (Am I being unclear? The challenge of living in the world.) There is a steel thread in me that I was born with. It's thin but strong. It grew with me in early childhood, when I learned the pattern of being absolutely terrified, all the time, and having to act anyway. Act: do, move my limbs, move in the world, think, react, be capable, don't let them see how weak and afraid I really am, achieve, achieve, achieve. As I grew into a young adult, I built a core around the thread--a core of self, not just survival. Creative acts saved my life. Art and writing saved my life. As I grew into a woman, teaching helped me locate myself deeply as a giver and a guide.

I thought my childhood and teenage years would be the worst thing that would ever happen to me. By far. No close seconds. But then my mom suicided (three years ago Sept 21) and that perspective changed. I can't know what's ahead. I can't worry enough do enough rituals enough compulsions pile on enough covers to protect me from the future. << It's been three years and I'm still like this.

I heard somewhere it's National Suicide Prevention Month. 

The reason I'm putting this on my blog instead of deleting it is to say fuck you to mental illness. To stigma and judgement and appearances and people-pleasing and the bottom line. I am alive. Sometimes completely; today barely. But I am alive. 

I wish it genuinely felt like enough to celebrate being alive.

When someone with mental illness or a disability says fuck you stigma, there is a rallying cry from allies. Oh yes. Fuck you stigma. We should be more open about these things as a society. But only in the most abstract ways. When it comes to the practical details. Well. That's tricky. No one wants to really deal with that.

*

I don't know if I'm re-starting this blog or not, for real, or if this entry is just a one-time deal. But I do know that I began the blog with this theory of RADICAL OPENNESS (fuck you stigma). I began this blog not even imagining what was in the future for me. And somehow I'm still here. Straining my neck. Chin bobbing just above the surface.

Here's a video. I'm teaching a class pretty soon and I want to do a section on sublimating trauma through poetry. I found this amazing talk and poem by Rachel McKibbens. It allowed me raw access my emotions, for once. It gave me permission to write this. I churned out work like a demon yesterday. I don't know if I am capable of doing any work today, but...I listened to her talk and it gave me permission to write this, at least.

Donne said that no man is an island

Recently a friend wrote this sentence in an email to me: "I used to be a HUGE oversharer before social media was a thing." I thought about social media. Lots of people just put up pictures of their vacations / parties / marriages / children at their finest moments and call it a day. I actually know of numerous people who have deactivated their Facebook accounts b/c the competition got to be too much. They feel like everyone else is saying, I have the best vacation, the best husband/wife, the best baby. With the implication of, and you don't. I got the feeling that this friend who emailed me feels like sharing their life, in all of its dimensions, is frowned upon.

I have a problem with the term "oversharing." Also, the word "needy." "Oversharing" assumes that no one wants to hear your personal stuff, that it's impolite or socially wrong to share your personal stuff, that we should all walk around projecting only positivity and the more shallower dimensions of our lives.

Everything looks shiny; no one allegedly has to feel anything except YAY YAY YAY.

When really, I think it's a continuum. At my old job, I sure as hell would not share personal things with certain people. Especially administration. Most jobs are like that. But I think it's okay to share things with people who are your friends or close colleagues. Because what the heck are friends for if you can't be there for each other during the positive *and* negative times?

My friends are some of the best people ever because they have listened empathetically to me and really been there for me, especially over the past year-and-some-months, when things happened with my mom. Or they have distracted me with wonderful things like coffee and Indian food and visits and children and simply the beauty of their presence. I never feel judged by them. And I in turn feel special and honored when they come to me with important emotional things. Like: wow, they trusted me enough to ask me to listen. I feel capable and strong when I can support them.

The word "needy"gets kicked around a lot, just like "over-sharing." "Needy" pathologizes the idea of interdependence. As a culture, we live under this delusion of self-sufficiency, like that's the ultimate thing to strive for. It's very American. Or United-States-ian, I should say. But when you dissect it, the idea of INdependence is fundamentally impossible unless you decide to become a hermit on top of a mountain. And then what happens if you break your leg or need to go into town for food?

Each in their various ways, my mom and dad raised me to believe that self-sufficiency was the ideal. In  reality, they were not self-sufficient, but I was raised to believe that I should strive to be. I think they thought they were doing me a service. This created a schism in my thinking which still continues. On one hand, I feel the old emotional pull: do it yourself at all costs. Appear strong at all costs. If you can't, that's bad. Other people will take advantage of you OR You're weak. Incapable. Less-than-adequate. 

On the other hand, I know my reality, and I try really hard not to judge myself for it. Ahem, I'm not saying I succeed in being nonjudgmental, but I try. Yeah, sometimes I need. Everybody needs. And sometimes I NEED. And everyone in their life goes through a period of that NEED too, whether they admit it or not.

I think about need, and sharing, and interdependence also as it applies to teaching. I think about it a LOT. When I went through teacher training in grad school (ages ago… yikes!) I was taught that students are people, that learning is collaborative (students learn from the teacher, students learn from each other, the teacher learns from the students), that each student will have a different learning style, that it's okay to be honest with your students when you don't know the answer, that it's okay to be vulnerable and to expect (and accept) your students' vulnerabilities.

Then… I taught at a certain place for awhile and it really made an impression on me. The culture was rather the opposite of the way I'd learned to teach. Not necessarily through word but through example, the ideal classroom was presented as: the teacher makes the rules, the students follow the rules, the students get punished if they don't follow the rules, each student is an information bucket into which you deposit key skills, and then they somehow translate those skills into a well- or poorly- written paper and then you grade them. Nobody needs to be feeling their feelings all over the place b/c there's no room for that in the syllabus.

I really tried to be that latter teacher and I did not do well being that teacher, and it burned me out. I had colleagues who taught at that place, and still do, who somehow managed to be a combination of the former teacher and the latter teacher. Or colleagues who were so untouchable (some concept called tenure of which I know not) that they could be the former teacher and the administration could go… fly a kite.

If anywhere I thought I could succeed as the former type of teacher, it would be in the teaching of writing. Whether you are writing poetry or a thesis-based argument, the idea of empathy is important. The ability to accept  and not vilify emotions is important.

Now that I'm feeling a lot better, I'm going to start revising / submitting my own work again in January. I'm also thinking about teaching (as a concept), because I really miss it. But, especially given my geographic limitations, I don't know where the right place is for me, if any.

20 things : the group

1. I feel such a sense of relief, having experienced the first iteration of the Survivors of Suicide support group last night.

2. I was worried that the group was only going to be heavy, crushing, scary, and not show its helpful aspects immediately.

3. I want to give an indication of my experiences without breaking the confidentiality of others... so no details about other group members. Which means that I probably won't blog about the group much other than this first week.

4. I feel I owe it to those who were extremely concerned after my last blog entry to show that I am feeling somewhat better. I feel guilty about making others extremely concerned. I don't think the last blog entry was particularly extreme, considering all I've written about. Joanna's voice echoes in my head right now we are not responsible for other people's feelings. We are responsible for our own feelings.

5. But sometimes, with loved ones, the boundaries blur. About who is responsible for what. So I write this entry, in part, because of that. To reassure others, and to assuage my own guilt.

6. I mostly want to talk about the philosophies of the group leader regarding suicide. To me they are unusual and comforting at the same time.

7. She believes that suicide is not, in fact, preventable. She has research to show that with or without psychiatric treatment, the suicide rates remain the same.

8. She believes that suicide is its own illness, a  massive failure of the frontal lobes' executive function--separate from depression, bipolar disorder, and so forth.

9. She believes that the idea that is prevalent in society "suicide is preventable" leaves the survivors with a huge amount of guilt over what they could have, should have done to save their loved ones.

10. This idea is, in one way, immensely comforting to me --because I am still obsessed with what I should have done to help my mom. If only I had been more aggressive about talking to her doctors. If only I had taken charge and flown her up to Pittsburgh.

11. You see, I'd had this idea that at some point, I would have to move her up here and take more of an active role in her life, sorting out her myriad problems for her. Because her decision making skills had been going downhill for decades, plural. Talk about failure of executive function.

12. But we could never have lived together, ever. Because of how toxic our relationship was when we were that proximal. It was not good for me.

13. I had been trying for years--half my life--trying to and succeeding in repairing the damage that --to be frank --she either caused or set me up for.

14. So I had been putting it off --offering to move her to Pittsburgh --b/c I knew it would cost a lot of money to set her up and she has none. I also knew that much of the time it would be like taking care of a child. And I also knew that the relationship had the potential to quickly turn into me = caregiver and she = a mean, combative, even at times violent child.

15. And I've been struggling with this idea of I PUT IT OFF FOR ME ME ME. And so I let her die. I chose me over her.

16. Ironically, I wonder if my relatives in Georgia thought they were doing the same thing when they moved her down there. Like they could swoop in and fix a truly unfixable situation.

17. My mother had a real talent for inspiring this kind of We Will Save the Day kind of help... and then TOTALLY resisting 99% of the help. It. Was. Truly. Maddening.

18. The DBT version of helping me with my survivor's guilt is : waterfall. I may have blogged about this before. Joanna asked me one day to come up with an image that would snap me out of the rumination (dwelling-on) trajectory that I've just described.  I came up with waterfall. Not because it was a beautiful example of mother nature's creation... but because it was beguiling yet destructive. If you stand under Niagara, you will be crushed. The water surges forward under its own power, cutting a channel into the rock because that's what it does. You are just a brittle bag of bones compared to the power of the waterfall.

19. According to our SoS group leader, my mom's brain slowly stopped being able to make the decisions necessary to keep her alive. Complex decisions, but also decisions that we all take for granted. It is a radical idea. However, I'm considering it. Not only do I want to believe it because it lessens my guilt, but it also makes so much damn sense when I look at the course of her life over the past twenty years. If you think about it, it actually connects to waterfall. Well, okay, it does for me.

20. So that's what I got from my first week of group. I'm glad there are only 20 things. It tells me when I can stop writing. B/c I'm exhausted now. Whew. Time to hop in the shower and start my day!

20 things : what to do with the dead

1. My mom's death day (like the opposite of birthday) is coming up on Saturday.
2. I am looking for distractions.
3. The first person whom I asked an opinion about distractions said that I should think how I can memorialize or honor her instead.
4. I don't know if I'm ready to do that.
5. Maybe I will take her ashes out of seclusion and find a place in the house for them.
6. On Thursday, that is TOMORROW, I am joining a support group called Survivors of Suicide. It is the first session.
7. I am grateful for this opportunity to talk about what happened, because I don't really talk about it with anyone, except Mike or therapist N sometimes.
8. Not with friends, certainly not with family.
9. I don't know how to begin the conversation or what I would say.
10. I do envy other people's ability to talk about the dead.
11. Perhaps I am imagining this ability.
12. I think the not-talking-about-it has kept me corralled in a certain area of my mind, so to speak.
13. I don't even feel comfortable blogging about it.
14. Like : that time has passed. Like : no one wants to read that.
15. My favorite cactus died last week.
16. I couldn't tell if it was b/c of over- or under-watering.
17. I think it was under- but the internet says to under-water a cactus is much less common than overwatering. I conducted obsessive internet research but found no good answer.
18. I wanted to conduct an autopsy, but instead I had Mike take it out to the faraway trash, pot and all. I couldn't bear it.
19. My anxiety and OCD started to get so extreme on Tuesday that I only went out of the house to take down the used cat litter, and that made me so paranoid I was hyperventilating by the time I got back. 20. This morning I have already predicted my own death in five ways. The OCD is an unwelcome divination.

EDIT: After having gotten some unexpected responses to this entry, I want to clarify #20. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder leads the individual to have compulsive, uncontrollable thoughts--obsessions. It is common for those thoughts to be troubling, even violent, in their content. The person with OCD deals with the stress elicited by those thoughts by acting out compulsions or tics. Stereotypical compulsions would be hand-washing, checking 20 times to see if one has locked the door, etc. My OCD is torturing me with death thoughts this week b/c of the anniversary and b/c I am joining the support group. It does not mean I am acting violently toward myself or anyone else. Deep breaths.

Water and No Water

When I was a kid living in rural eastern PA, we had a well. As a child, I didn't really understand the mechanism of the well, just that it was underground and through a series of pumps and pipes, provided all the water for our house. I think it may have also required electricity to run. Which means that when the power went out, so did the water. 

I remember the feeling of panic that took hold of me whenever the power went out or there was a mechanical problem with the well. The panic was connected to the sudden scarcity of something I took for granted. Bear in mind too, that for someone with OCD--which I've had it since I can remember--it's important to keep clean. No water for going to the toilet, no water for washing hands, no water for taking a shower. Frightening brown sediment would rise up into the toilets and sometimes the sinks. I didn't know when the water would come back on, only that the forces were completely beyond my control. 

I can hear Joanna-therapy-voice interject here: sometimes a child is just born sensitive.

One time I remember my panic was overwhelming, and my mom tried to distract me by reading a book about horses together. A love of horses was one thing we had in common. This book had all different breeds of horses in it, their historical origins and the countries they came from accompanied with fantastic illustrations. I remember Lipizzan horses capable of astounding grace, stocky Clydesdales, tall and rangy Tennessee Walking Horses, Arabians with their unusual concave faces... although the panic never went away,  the stories slowly replaced it in the forefront of my mind.

[I wonder what my parents thought about my panic. I wasn't diagnosed with OCD until I was 18 and certainly neither of my parents knew what it was before then. What did they think of my strange tics and ongoing anxieties that rarely seemed to ease up?]

* * * 

This morning when I was in the shower, suddenly the hot water cut out and there was just this unmitigated torrent of cold water sluicing down on me. This can happen in apartment living of course... one just has to shimmy to a corner of the tub that is mostly out of the shower stream and wait it out... but this torrent went on and on... finally I dove in and turned off the water entirely. I turned just the hot spigot back on. Nothing. Somewhere a pipe knocked dully. 

Perhaps in response to my stream of compound-complex swear words, Mike asked if I was okay. I imagined the cold shower causing all my muscles to seize up and the fibro ache lasting the whole day. I requested a washcloth so that I could rinse off from the tub faucet and not the shower. 

When I turned the cold water spigot back on though, there was no water coming out of there either. More distant knocking of pipes. I had the feeling there was no water anywhere nearby, although Mike said there was still some coming out of the kitchen sink--probably what was left in the lines. He brought me a bowl of water.

We called the management office and they said that maintenance had to shut off the water for "an emergency repair downstairs" and they didn't know when it would be back on.

* * * 

No Water changed The Plan. 

Regarding The Plan: have I mentioned my recent strategy to tamp down my constant panic with structure? I visualize each of my days as a box. Each day has A Plan. As The Plan is executed, I picture little colored strata start to fill the box. At the end of the day I have made it through. The box is filled. 

Where did I get this visual? I think there was a video game in the eighties involving colored lines slowly filling in or draining out. If anyone knows, leave it in the comments. 

So I have this strategy, but I'm not great with changes in The Plan. For today, The Plan was housecleaning in the morning, vacuuming, washing and wiping, doing the catboxes, in the meantime having loads of laundry going on the second floor. Additionally, I told myself had to rock today's Plan, because I was practically useless yesterday: semi-functional in the morning but in the afternoon and evening, tearful and trapped in a pit of self-judgment.

Last night in the middle of hysterical sobbing I thought look at my fucking life now --my mother did this to me. One last strike so we could both go down together. These thoughts are pretty close to my worst thoughts: the fear spiral that leads to places too dark to blog about.

How strange that she could be so kind one day, so unmerciful another. I mean it: how strange. I thought it was strange at eight. At thirty-eight my mind still can't get around it.

I think of that eight year old girl, vulnerable and not in control of her world, trying to provide structure with rituals, which came along with horrible tics. Today, I lost my shit when the water went off. 


* * *

When I taught at University, I shepherded my students through a campus lockdown because there was a shooter on the grounds. There were three incidences of gun crime at this school during the six years I taught there. This never kept me from going to work. 

If you would have asked me, I'd have said yes, it's scary, but there's nothing I can do about it. The people who are in charge of doing something about it are doing something about it.

Fast forward 2.5 years and I'm totally couchlocked, blogging about waters and wells and horses and my child-self because I can't even execute PART of today's Plan. See, it has to go a Certain Way, follow a certain procedure and it can't with no water and... and... I feel like eight-year-old-me.

All I can do is deep-breathe and say it's scary, but there's nothing I can do about it. The people who are in charge of doing something about it are doing something about it. But I can't get off the couch.

20things : moving / seven years / and

1) All winter my cheeks were windlashed and wet.
2) After this winter I determined I no longer look good w/o makeup.
3) My face has these red flaky areas over my cheekbones. And lots of bumps and blemishes all over.
4) Also I've cried more in the past winter months than I did in seven years previous.
5) The other day I snapped the first buds of magnolia.
6) The picture reminded me of Spain, a raw almond, green and furred, still on the tree; another photo, over half a life ago.
7) I keep running aground on history.
8) It cracks me open every time.
9) I sink further.
10) One night, when I was young enough to barely remember, I cried into the rectangle of orange light that separated my bedroom from the rest of the house, where after dark I knew I couldn't leave.
11) I cried until someone came for me.
12) Sometimes they did not; that night, they did.
13) We were going on vacation in a few days --my first one.
14) I needed to know if the bed would be the same, if the sky would be the same, if I would be the same, were I in another place.
15) The answer was I don't know.
16) That was my mother.
17) That was my mother.
18) And I am again in another place, and the bed is not the same, and the sky is not the same, and I am not the same, and it is still almost too hard to hold onto, like in my childbrain.
19) I hear the present approaching the future, rushing faster and faster toward me. 
20) A train and I am trapped underneath the tracks.

20things : odd farewells

1. So I've gotten emotional over this whole house / history / house story aspect of moving. 
2. I have a lot of narrative that took place here; it makes me unexpectedly emotional.
3. And a lot of stuff I've been dragging around since before I lived in Ohio, which takes the narrative back further into the past.
4. I sort of cried a little when I separated out the majority of my carefully curated collection of costume and handmade necklaces vs. the ones I could still wear with the arthritis in my neck.
5. I donated almost all my cds and over half of my books.
6. Probably about nine bags of clothes and random baroque costumery, also gone.
7. My cassette collection (laugh and I'll cut you) went into the trash.
8. Juno and Ravi's medical records --trash.
9. But then I got emotional about something that surprised the hell out of me.
10. I said goodbye to my makeup. (I don't really wear 90% of anymore. Well, aside from a few basic items and nail polish in summer).
11. And not just "bye bye makeup" {trash}
12. No, I said goodbye to items as individuals.
13. Cranberry colored lipstick : you were a couple of really good office temp jobs."
[INTERRUPTION as I am writing this] : Luna, stop shredding that box.
14. Kohl eyeliner : My favorite eye pencil! You went to a lot of clubs and fancy dinners.
15. Liquid liner: I never really got you. You were always good for drawing on other parts of my body than my eyelids.
Luna, we actually paid someone to bring us that box, stop using it as a scratching post.
16. Raisin colored lipstick : Thanks for the help when I had to retake my photo ID when I moved back to PA. Everybody comments on the good picture.
17. Blue lipstick : You were years of clubbing, and a matching blue wig. Your wig-friend has already gone.
18. Roll-on glitter : That raver thing was more than a phase. Or else it was a very long phase.
Luna, I swear to GOD. {I finally just hoist the cat from her site of bad behavior and into the dining room.}
19. China-blue nail polish : I got inspired to get you after Ava and I had our first pedi together. It was the second time I'd ever had a pedicure, the first being my wedding.
20. I don't think I realized how symbolic and laden stuff has gotten for me. Like, individual items all have a story, and I'm remembering that story as I'm sorting them into donate, trash, and (the rather smaller) keep pile.

That is all.
Still not eating great, but I had a sandwich yesterday and nothing bad happened.
Luna is now back on top of the Forbidden Box, gleefully attempting to maul the tape with her teeth and claws.

Seriously reduced jewelry collection. If you are interested in knowing about / examining any part of the rest, please comment or send me fb mail.

How many bottles of nail polish can one like, legitimately have before it gets to be, arguably, too many bottles of nail polish?

20things : faint

1) Yesterday morning while packing I fainted very, very briefly.
2) This is not normal.
3) Only one other time has this happened to me
4) [the first time I was a teenager and very sick].
5) And it was like I had a head full of
6) bees     swirling static     many many radio frequencies
7) And I thought whoa
8) And I thought this is kind of extreme
9) And then it was like
10) head controls legs? yes/no [choose one]
11) And I thought I'm gonna hit the ground now
12) But there's a chair.
13) We call this one the comfy chair.
14) It is a La-Z-Boy with like water damage or something?
15) But we refuse to throw it out b/c it is so comfy.
16) I slept in that chair in college. And after.
17) I think I have been Mike's friend for as long as the comfy chair has existed.
18) I fell into the comfy chair awkwardly.
19) My limbs were in all the wrong places.
20) But the many frequencies sort of tuned into one and the falling woke me up.

20things : motivation routine waking sleeping

1. At 6:35, my brain turns on. This is the absolute latest it has turned itself on in months. This is how late I sleep, and I have no reason to get up this early. This is off-time, healing time. I don't have to go to work.
2. Telepathically, Rus knows I'm awake and so comes over and yowls for breakfast.
3. I don't want to wake Mike up so I get up.
4. The moment my feet hit the floor I'm like fuck, another day. Weren't we just here yesterday?

A flower I clipped from the long-lasting Valentines bouquet to cheer myself.

5. Get up make coffee cat meds cat food human food computer facebook email blog surf internet until my conscience says I can't possibly procrastinate anymore shower start day.
6. From within my metaphorical nautilus, last night, I wrote down a list of things to do in the morning before I have to leave the house.
7. I put cardamom and ginger in the coffee this morning. Also to cheer myself.
8. It's sort of working.
9. Today I have to leave at 12:30 and I won't get back until 9:30.
10. Nine hours is a long time to be out for someone with fibro, okay, for ME with fibro and attendant visual difficulties that make me so tired. Nine hours is a long time to be up w/o a nap.
11. Okay now you know one (another?) of my embarrassing secrets.
12. On a normal day, I can't go more than nine hours w/o sleeping.
13. Today I will have woken up at 6:30 {math math math} I think that's 15 hours.
14. Most people go w/o sleeping for at least 15 hours.
15. Right now at this very moment I can hear a little voice going there's nothing wrong with you; you're just lazy.
16. But shit, there's a DBT skill for that. It's called "non-judgmental stance." It's like "be aware of when you're judging and stop that."
17. Easy, right?

Luna stole my flower.

18. I'm excited about my impending haircut.

19. Anybody wanna go with me to a reading at the Sphinx tonight? That place is designed to kill me, with its dim light, cramped space, and many overlapping floor rugs that stick to my feet, causing me to wobble.

20. Except it also has the atmosphere of an opium den, which is very relaxing, which is what I want my whole house / apartment to look like. The end.

Punch to the gut

So I was juuuuust getting ready to head out the door when I realized I had to open my email to print out  the actual assignment I'm doing the homework for. And I received a rejection for a press prize that I was really really hoping to at least be a semi-finalist for. Everyone who knew my work was like "did you try ____ Press?" And the judge was the editor of the press. And I sent it out way before the deadline. So I felt like my work would get a good read.

It's not like this is the first time. Maybe that's the problem.

I think the worst part about these rejections is I never know how far I got or what was missing in the MS. In retrospect I think that maybe my work was too risky for this particular press. That's the absolute best interpretation of the situation. But how can I know for sure? Maybe the MS is horrible. I've gotten enough feedback on it to know that's not true though. But maybe it's.... subtly *wrong*.

I write intense, high-stakes poetry. And I don't know where to put it. Or there's something intrinsically bad.... ugh, I have to stop the negative self-talk, because I've had enough success to know that I can succeed, if that makes sense.

I should maybe delete this post because it's rambly. But I'm not going to. This is difficult work.

I used to have a lot of confidence. The confidence got sucked away since August. But I'm trying to keep on anyway.

I just see... the career that I pictured myself having falling out of reach. And I wasn't deluding myself. At one point, it was within my reach. I received credible encouragement. No one ever said, hey, you're not good enough; find a different niche.

Four out of the six poets in my MFA graduating class have now published full-length collections. I graduated in 2005. It sucks being on the bottom.

My alma mater doesn't even count chaps as legit publications on the "graduates who have published" page. I looked.

Poets whose work I admire, poets who I wanted to emulate, have, by this point in their career, by the age that I am, published loads more.

It's not like I've dedicated my life to something else, like law school or marketing or psychology or technical writing or raising babies or organic farming in Montana and the poetry thing is an "also."

I wanted. I  w a n t e d. I wanted a different life.

I want.

Oh, and btw, I'm not even sure I can work full-time with all the different disability shit, and this morning I am not proud, I feel like it is shit, going on. I feel like the scraps of my life are just falling through my open hands.

Thought: I have so much to give. I just don't know who will receive.

Other thought: when poets whose opinion I respected, poets who I wanted to emulate, told that I was really good, it just meant I had further to fall / fail.

I'm not giving up; that's not in my nature. It's just... I had a vision of who I was going to be, and
I've not become that person, and it makes me weep. I'm going to have to be someone else, and I don't know who the fuck she is.

DBT says I need to go out there and do the homework anyway, like I had planned. But the anxiety. And the sadness. They hurt so fucking badly. My head is spinning, spinning, spinning.

20things : up early

1. I got up at 630 this morning b/c my brain turned on and there you go. (a)
2. I wanted to amend some of the latency of yesterday where I basically lay around and cried the whole day and ate only when prodded.
3. So I decided to do some crafty chores.
4. These are tasks I have procrastinated, but of a nature that either involves, for example, jewelry fixing or gluing pieces of paper to other pieces of paper.
5. Firstly I added another item to my inspiration board.
6. It was the goodbye notes from all the people who were in group the day I left.
7. They have elaborate goodbye rituals which I have mixed but ultimately positive feelings about.
8. The purple paper is folded up lots of times so you have a one-inch swath to write a little note on and then you fold and pass to the next person; like an exquisite corpse of farewells.
9. I thought putting up a plain piece of paper was not very visually interesting. So I cut it into the strips with people's individual notes.
10. Originally I was going to make a flower but it turned out, ahem, a bit more free form. (b)
11. Then I fixed Luna's collar. She needed her new rabies vaccination tag attached. (c)
12. Then I fixed my favorite pair of purple earrings. (d)
13. They had come undone after becoming attached to my kitty-cat balaclava and I'd just sort of gone {yank} and the jump ring from the bottom circle twisted open.
14. Finally I had this necklace which I'd been very much wanting to wear but I'd assembled it in haste.
15. There was a lone jumpring at the bottom of it, indicating a charm should be there.
16. So I dug through the charms K bought me for my b-day and found one that looked like a bashed-up metal heart.
17. Fitting enough, I thought, so I put that on there. (e)
18. I tried to do everything mindfully, narrating in my head like now I am picking up the glue pen, now I am pressing it to the paper, now I am taking the chain-nose pliers and very carefully opening the new jump ring. 
19. The mindful narrating gave me a palpable sense of relief from the hardcore ruminating my brain has been up to lately.
20. I hope I can continue the day as productively. Perhaps it will make me feel better and more able to conquer Monday.

(a) This is me up early. 

(b) This is my inspiration board. Yes, it looks like something a teenager might have on her bedroom door, and I am biologically old enough to have a teenage daughter, but it makes me feel better. My favorite item on there says SOMEWHERE SOMEONE IS LOOKING FOR EXACTLY WHAT YOU HAVE TO OFFER. There is also KEEP CALM AND DO THE SNOOPY DANCE. However, someone suggested that it is in fact, impossible to remain calm and do the snoopy dance. I imagine a sort of slow-motion-tai-chi snoopy dance. Which probably looks even more ridiculous than my usual dance of happiness / enthusiasm.

(c) This is Luna, proudly displaying her new tag. Of course the picture is blurry because she never sits still. But I wanted to put it up there to test the theory that if you put any picture of a cat or dog, no matter how blurry, on your blog, you get mad amounts of additional pageviews.

(d) Here's my earrings all fixed, sitting on top of Luna's rabies vaccination certificate.

(e) And the fixed necklace. I was going for a sort of steampunk effect by combining the more delicate filigree with the distressed metal heart. We'll see how I feel about it. Note: I did not make either of these charms. They were merely purchased and strung on a ribbon. Sometimes I like simple things for which I did not have to invest too much time. Especially since August. Hmmmmmmm.

PS: I'm halfheartedly trying to figure out how to embed audio into a blog post here on Blogger, but I can't seem to do it. Anyone have any ideas? I thought maybe they don't offer that feature because of file size, but there's a link to "insert video." 

the grief grind

Last night Mike informed me of an email that he got four days ago wherein my uncle said that my aunt --his sister --was going down to GA for some furniture and possibly boxes of mom's stuff. She's flying down and renting a truck and driving back.

Mike and I can't drive like that.

I told him (Mike) that I wanted to go through those boxes and that we should tell my uncle to send the boxes up from GA and that I'll plan a flight to eastern PA to go through them. Soon, because my aunt can't store all those boxes and I get the feeling my uncle does not want to have them.

A lot of contradictory things bother me about this whole situation. 

1. The four-day lag from Mike receiving the email, to me knowing about it, informs me that I need to take over email communications and... I'm not quite ready to do so. Four months of intensive outpatient therapy has gotten me to a place where I can process my emotions while being safe in the world. It has put me back together. It has not made me all better. I'm scared of getting PTSDmail.

2. I'm ticked that they're dealing with the household items without me when the will named me as the person who "inherited" it.... and I understand the many reasons why they are doing so. Which include geography, power of attorney, and possibly the fact that they think I am crazy to deal with it, since I can't even answer a fucking email yet... and I don't necessarily want to be the person on the front lines with this one.

*

Mike says he reads my uncle's tone as being rather taciturn about his own emotions while at the same time taking care of all these horrible things that would be rightfully triggering to anyone. To me, my uncle's coping strategy makes it difficult for people who want to express their emotions --oh like me for example --because it sort of comes off as harsh. 

Not that his coping strategy surprises me. My grandfather was entirely like this. Even my mother was, to some extent. And I did it for all the years that I was at The University Previously Known As My Place of Employment because "getting it done" was way more important than feeling my feelings about whatever "it" was. 

In all the offices I worked in I was described as "sweet," "cheerful," "perky," and "bubbly." My teaching evals always said I had great rapport.

*

I'm really really not looking forward to making the Philly trip to look through these boxes, but I want the control of being able to look through the boxes and pick out the few items that I want. She left all her stuff to me. In a way, it feels like all I have of her.

I'm even dreading the phone call to my aunt to arrange things.

No one in my family has contacted me since the funeral to say, hey, your mom died. The circumstances were really weird and complex and horrible. How are you doing with that?

And, my uncle has put out vague feelers, but I'm still using Mike as my proxy --I just need a few more weeks to hammer it out in my head, get some strategies in place... 

I just... I would like to be asked, you know? Even if I'm not ready to talk.

*

I'll be more up front: the past four months of intensive outpatient therapy have gotten me to a place where 1) I don't want to self-injure every time I have emotions, 2) I'm not pushing those emotions away, and 3) I'm able to leave the house and start going to readings again, for example, because I have some cognitive strategies to reduce my anxiety. 

I'm trying to be as clear and open as I can about this. Remember, this blog is accessible to the world. I'm being open because I believe it is so wrong that our culture presses into us this idea of emotions as weakness and/or as counter-productive. THIS CONCEPT BROKE ME. I am angry about it. So I'm blogging my recovery from it.

The intensive outpatient therapy, called DBT, is a big-picture therapy. It's a subset of cognitive-behavior therapy. It focuses on examining broader emotional patterns, on replacing inaction and stagnation with action, and calming down self-destructive urges and behaviors. It has saved my life twice now. 

But this therapy, which I am being discharged from tomorrow, is in a group setting, and I have had SO MUCH SHIT to work through. I've focused on fairly broad treatment goals to maximize my time there. I am sort of looking forward to getting back to my former individual talk therapy, so I can hammer out details of how to go about picking up the phone to call my aunt.

*

Frankly I'm scared. I've got on the docket today:

Sadness and dread about planning the trip to visit my aunt and the boxes. Anger at being put in this position when I'm not quite ready for it, yet I do need to deal with it. Fear that my relatives are judging me as batshit crazy thusly ignoring me and the somewhat paradoxical fear that they think I'm going to be "all better" now after four months, when my journey with processing the grief is largely still ahead of me. 

Thinking about the new year...

Lots of people take stock in their new-year posts; I'm thinking about what's coming up. Soon I will be leaving group. It's inevitable. They said they want to discharge me in January. It's mondo-bizarro how these complete strangers have come to mean so much to me. Well, some more than others... and most of the "some" have already been discharged. So I can say I'm on the tail-end of what I consider my cadre: peers in age and stage. Which means I gotta get my ass out the door soon. But what next?

I was talking to A about a week or so ago and she suggested I "work with the energy of the solstice" (so yeah, it was around Dec 21) and consider, in a playful way, the concept of starting over new. She said it was important to consider it as mental play, not a serious undertaking. I didn't know what to make of her comment at first so I put it on the back burner.

During some idle time when I got home I turned it over in my mind. I could see why she said to not consider it seriously. I take everything seriously, perhaps too much so. When I thought seriously about it, I started to cry. So many things have just gouged the hell out of me in the last four months that the idea of starting over new is like... hello? I'm barely scarred over! Give me some time! But as a "pretend" question, it made me feel a bit liberated from my sadness.  I thought about last January, when I was starting my "year of quitting." I never imagined the ending it would have, or should I say, the last third of the year. Act 3. What if I started over on my year of quitting? [Note: I think my blog was on tumblr at this point so you might not know that I had sarcastically referred to taking a year to solely concentrate on writing, publishing, attending and giving readings as my year of quitting. Like quitting the job that sucked the life out of me for something that doesn't pay but is super-fulfilling.]

I remember now with great nostalgia the anxiety that, then, had made me cry. I was taking a huge leap of faith and I was doing it in the shittiest part of the year for taking leaps: winter. I had to fill a blank slate (woo, mixed metaphors) not knowing if my endeavor would be successful. One of my fb status updates at the time was "looking at design blogs and crying." Well, in my world, art begets art. I started myself on a disciplined schedule. I submitted every workday in the beginning --I would say the first 3-4 months. I kept up the momentum on faith, until the acceptances started coming in, validating my decision. I would say the best part was April through July. I was ON FIRE. I was so happy. I was so not prepared for what August would bring.

Now, despite my recent (and for the second time!) publication in MiPOesias, and upcoming pubs in RHINO, Hayden's, and Bone Bouquet, my submission pipeline is low. I feel like I don't have a lot of work to submit.

That feeling of having nothing may be false. It is false. I haven't been writing at the speed I was --I was generating 1-2 drafts A WEEK. For eight months. But I haven't published all of it. And I wrote a chapbook-sized sheaf of grieving poems, some of which have to be good enough to revise.

[Note: can you tell I've become worse at writing blog entries? It's my ability to concentrate. It's gone way down. I can't put together ideas as fluidly as before. Nor can I read a book all the way through. Or watch a whole movie without great restlessness. I don't watch them in the theatre any more-- at least for now. Therapist J says that this restlessness and lack of concentration is normal when experiencing grief. She also says it could go on for awhile.]

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is even though I have great anxiety about "my year of starting over," I began "my year of quitting" also with great anxiety. And that time it was fruitful. I showed up and did the work and I was successful.

There's this little (actually it's not so little) voice, the anxiety voice, that says, you never knoooooowwwwww about the future. You might not be any good any more. Maybe you broke yourself. 

But I leapt before and it was good. Maybe I can do it again. I'm lucky to be in a financial position to try it. I don't have to go back to some thankless job. I can do YWI part-time and maybe everything will be okay. Not grand, but okay. I'm shooting for okay.

Happy anniversary to me

Today 11/1 is my fourteenth anniversary for being in recovery from self-injury. This past year, well okay, these past few months have been the hardest... I won't say in fourteen years b/c that first year was rough as hell but certainly in the past seven years.

There's this artist that I really like whose name is Kimya Dawson. She got a little pop of notoriety when they used songs of hers for the soundtrack of the movie Juno, which is when I found out about her. I can't really describe her style, just to say that she's amazing and other people have used labels like "anti-folk" and "freak-folk" so there you go.

Last night when I was journaling I can't remember what gave me the association but I thought hm what's she up to lately and re-checked her out. Apparently she released an album last year with this great song on it, "Walk Like Thunder." I listened on YouTube this morning. Talk about serendipity or fortuitousness or the universe giving you the thing you need at the right time.

I found two links, a studio version which has a cool pic of the tattoo she references in the song, and honestly the quality is better, but the other version I found was a live one at a bar in Pittsburgh (!)-- I hope she comes around again on her tour this / next year. I'm giving you the live one b/c the energy is there and you get to see real people and real faces and emotion even though it's less polished.

The reason this song is important to me today is b/c I realized yesterday when I was talking to A that this grief I'm carrying around --I can't stop and wait for it to be over. I have to somehow start getting on with my life, my work, again. I need to go to readings and hear people. I need to go to open mics again. I need to submit more stuff. I feel like I'm on the cusp of figuring out how exactly to do that. Like emotionally, how to do that. There's no way I can sort out all the strands of this giant clusterfuck that was dropped on me and THEN get back to my endeavors. They will have to happen at the same time. Yesterday I was like, I have no idea... just NO IDEA how to do that. This morning I heard the song and I felt like maaaaaaybe I could build a little bridge between here and there.

So listen to it dammit! If you can't spare the whole eight minutes, at least listen to half. It's really good.

Clicky click.

Exploring the fear response

One of the grieving responses that I have noticed, and consider rather strange and disabling, is my regression from a normal (well, okay, from my baseline) social anxiety to an extreme social anxiety. This I did not expect. 

Soon after I was diagnosed with fibro I started working with A. Our first project for me was how to develop the ability to take up more space in the world. My aura was small, infinitesimal. If you don't know / believe in auras, just imagine always feeling like you have to shrink / cringe away from every stimulus. As a walker / rider-of-buses, I'm constantly exposed during my commutes. They have always been my trigger. These are situations where you don't volunteer to be with people, and you don't necessarily know how many people you're going to encounter or what their moods will be like on any given morning. We worked on this project for a long time, about a year, before I started noticing real improvement. It was worth it though. My fibro isn't as bad. I started to fall down less, and this was before I was using the white cane. 

My decision to use the white cane came in April of last year. It was at what I consider the apex of my ability to take up space in the world, when I made this decision. Everyone looks at me. Not menacingly, but with curiosity. In my neighborhood, the south side slopes / flats, people's social boundaries are more blurry. They want to ask questions... which is okay I guess... but the thing that really triggers my social anxiety is when they (especially men; mostly it is men who do this) insist on helping me when I don't need help. It makes me feel overly scrutinized and rather incompetent. If you've been reading my blog all along, you know this and the struggle I have worked on to desensitize myself to these feelings and the anxiety they provoke in me. 

The choice is desensitization or I never leave my house.

I was really starting to get ahold of myself there... for about two weeks. My anger levels were really starting to go down. My anxiety was starting to revert to baseline as well, the baseline I had established after working with A.

Then my mom passed away and I've noticed as part of my grieving that the social anxiety is once again off the charts. It's sort of hit agoraphobic levels. Some days I don't make it out of the house. Part of the anxiety is knowing I will be out there, with the cane, and the resulting interrogations / micromanagement of strangers. But I don't want to stop using the cane now, even though it would get me out of the house more. Some reasons: safety. I fall down less. Cars and people give me a wider berth. Also, integration of my identity. Meaning, it was hard enough to pull the cane out full-time. Going backwards would mean I'd put a tear in my identity and have to reintegrate all over again. Lastly, I'm worried about being accused as a faker. I've read on some blind blogs that people with low vision are / were / have been accused of "faking" blindness b/c they can appear to "see" yet use the white cane. I'm worried about the bus drivers' opinions of me. That they will think I'm faking to get a seat or something.

Now if you are thinking f those bus drivers; don't worry about what they think... If I could do that, then I would already have less of a problem. I wish I could not care.... so much of my values involve not caring about what others think and doing what I want / feel is the right thing. It's just that right now, I'm having a problem not caring. I was doing well.... and now I'm just regressing and frustrated about it. Thanks for reading :)

sinkholes

I got back from GA on Saturday. The service was okay. Even though I was raised Catholic, I am intimidated by churches. Especially southern churches. I feel that their participants are a moment away from bursting out with themes of punishment and hellfire. 

I did end up delivering the eulogy, which a lot of people gave me praise for. It ended up being a slightly bigger deal than I thought... I thought there would be several speakers, but I was the only one. The minister was like, And now Jill Khoury will speak on behalf of the family. And I thought, actually, I'm just speaking on behalf of me. The family did not approve this message beforehand... this could end up going badly. But it didn't. 

I spoke from the heart and didn't tell any lies. So there.

And now, after it's all over... 

...I'm sort of trudging along. Things seem possible, doable, one moment, and overwhelming the next. I told Mike that I was gonna go to a workshop this evening and he said it was good to get back into the swing of things. And now, after having a 20-30 minute interaction with someone who asked detailed questions about the aftermath of my mom's death / the service, I feel totally drained…. like I can barely make it to therapy and then meet a friend for lunch.

So I don't know if I'll get a second wind this afternoon and end up workshopping… Apparently my mom left me a note to read after she passed and gave it to my aunt, who gave it to Mike, who gave it to me this morning. I'm saving it for my therapy session to open it. Apparently she enclosed it in a book called Heaven Is for Real, which I'm like….. oh crap. What is this?! I'm not sure what I believe re: heaven / hell, but don't leave me a book with a title that seems like it wants to instruct me eschatologically on what is and what is not. 

I feel bad for having missed the past several workshops and I have lots of poems to workshop. 

I just want to crawl into bed now though. 

This morning I looked up how to respond to sympathy cards on the internet. Rather, I looked up, on the internet, how to respond to sympathy cards. Apparently some people say you don't have to send thankyou cards and some people say you do. I was going to make it into a sort of therapeutic crafting by handmaking my thank you cards. Now I'm looking at the cards I made and thinking these are too bright and colorful. They're totally wrong. Fuck this. Do I make new cards? Do I even bother? Do I go back to bed and not get out? Option C is looking appealing.

And wtf is in that note my mom left for me?!?! I thought we really said all we had to say and left it on a good note. Now she ends up having the last word, whatever it is.

Surely this is making me late.

To sit here and blog because we have to leave for the airport in what sounds like a lot of time, but is actually only a little when you consider it's me having to do the preparing of myself for it. Meaning I'm bad on traveling days. I orbit around, quasi-useless, getting little bits of tasks done and going on to other little bits but not finishing anything.

We are going to Georgia for the memorial service this morning. My dad is not coming. He wanted to but is not. I am reading a statement. Then part of a poem. Not one I wrote. The poems I write are too dark to be read at funerals.

Ruskin scared me this morning by making some sort of weird cat-noise that I've never heard before. Like an exhaled hiss through the nose? With his mouth shut? Not a cough? He only did it a few times but.... I know last night we put more flea topical stuff on them and he wasn't pleased. I think he scratched his head and then licked his paw or something. From having Mike as my decoder-of-all-things-technical-whether-I-wanted-to-know-it-or-not, I learned that apparently Advantage is a nicotine-derived pesticide that is lethal to insects but not harmful to mammals. Or that's what I can remember. He (Rus) also puked in Mike's slippers during the night. Mike says I think he's mad at us. It's true, by 14 years of experience, Rus recognizes the suitcase and is Not Pleased.

I am in the Process of Conserving Everyone. It's like invisible rosary beads where I worryworryworry about them so they will be safe, even though I know that worry doesn't do crap. You can never prepare for what will actually happen or who it will happen to. I can't lose any more cats. I can't lose any more people. No we haven't found Ravi. If we found Ravi it would be a big blog post entitled WE FOUND RAVI.

Yesterday I mouthed off to a few neighborhood drunkards (that sounds like I know them personally but there are so many that they are anonymous to me and it's actually two neighborhoods) who were attempting to micromanage my street crossing and bus disembarkation, and would not take no for answer. I think they might have perceived me as Uppity (Hi Kathi if you are reading this).

I'm doing okay on countering my newfound agoraphobia but not great. I am fallible failing fallen falling. My psyche is slowly falling through space, trying to relocate its tether. If you see my body, that's what's going on inside of it.

Weird stuff that happened this week.

Okay, the post to fulfill that title would take up volumes, but here's a list. You know I like lists. These are in no particular order.

1. I learned that my Gran has serious age-related dementia. She is 93.

2. Gran cornered me (she is good at this, for she operates a walker and it adds like 2x to her personal space) in the doorway of my guest room, just freaking out with anxiety b/c she knows something is wrong with my mom but THE FAMILY HAS DECIDED TO KEEP HER IN THE DARK and I had to pretty much lie to her (is how I saw it) about the situation. This happened several times. I had to leave GA a half-day early. This was to make my goodbye constructive and decent for my mom, so that I would not leave a trail of psychological carnage and salted earth behind me. My family has never told the truth. I had years of therapy to untwist my brain. They were pushing me back in that direction.

3. I saw a woman on the plane wearing an ombré hijab. It went from pale blue the top of her head to dark green to dark blue. I remember when I was working at DU, how I thought those corn-fed preppies had nothing on the Muslim girls when it came to pure glamour. They worked it. I don't know I feel about ombré as a trend, but maybe I will end up picking up a piece or two. It's better than neon. I tried to find a picture but they wouldn't load so if you want to look some gorgeous ombré hijabs you can see them here.

4. My cats welcomed me home last night and are now installed in each of my pockets. They are all like "mow!" and "mew!" and "we love you" and "pls dnt lv us we <3 are hoo-manz!"

5. Sadly for them, we are staying in the hotel the next few nights so I can get my stuff together for the Prosody taping on Saturday. Mike said it would be good b/c I was having more bug freak-outs at my mom's. They have ants. Which brings me to #6...

6. I asked my husband to check my body over for ants. Which I was pretty sure were there but maybe not. So you see OCD, still rolling strong. It has not kicked in yet because a) I'm pretty sure those things on my legs are hives created by stress and overheating and b) I'm chock-full of nice meds from therapist N, who has really be helping me through all this.

7. I saw my husband step up like he has never stepped up before, dealing with family members, making flight arrangements, making sure I got back to a safe environment. When he could have INSTEAD been like "well, we're leaving tomorrow so suck it up." Then again, this is the guy who waited with me in the psych hospital ER (this was like 15 years ago? more?) for ten hours to protect my fragile emotional state from the detoxers and peeps that had gone off their meds who were sort of violent or just weirdly twitchy. I love him, I love him, I love him. If you work with him or are his friend, give him a hug; give him a break. He's been through a lot helping me get through this stuff with my mom.

Just a PS for casual readers of my blog who don't know me very well. My mental illness has been stable for many many years. This is a serious break b/c of all the SHITE that has happened at once.

PPS to my friends who have helped out with Team Cat and everyone who has just sent their well-wishes, prayers, and healing energies, thank you. You really are my extended family, and I love you. My mom has made her choice. Now I've made mine. To live well. To celebrate life, and friends, and creativity. To attempt a removal of the emotionally toxic elements in my environment.

PPPS: I have to go b/c Ruskin has just knocked my books & crap off my desk with his big butt. This is a sign that he wants Second Breakfast and will not be denied.

<3 <3 <3
Jyl

20 things : after

1. Ok so welcome to after.

2. it's thin like a napkin, friable, leaves crumbs in the couch

3. he said he still has scabs on his mouth and tongue from the fucked up intubation

4. the feeling I have when I hear this / is part of after / of what comes what comes next / next meaning the rest of our lives

5. want to stick that feeling down down subzero down

6. wake up time to not think about this

7. two wandering poems that I've found homes for in the last few weeks, for example

8. ... and yay and lunch. 

9. right out of the hi-def bright blue sky a ribbon of canaries and they each fall flat on their little conical faces --and black droplet eyes --and brown & yellow fluff --and wings amputated--

10. immediately I fell too into deep sleep and my face hit the sand and the sand filled every opening

11. who is going to pull me / us up the laughter of babies and sand in my mouth

12. she sent me one of those memetic surveys where you have to talk about yourself in the most inane way / I'll answer like I was him instead I'd rather be / I'd rather put my throat in the way instead / busted throat not really you are being melodramatic chakra

13. ... and tonight I'm supposed to have a beer and be all smiley at the reading.

14. it is true that I'm glad to leave the house even though hi-def sky even though canaries

15. feathers curl up like fur I think that one is a mutated color he's so cute

16. zip the mouth up and tap tap tap tap head held proudly

17. while all the lower beings cogitate on our worst punishments 

18. no I've forgotten about it by now don't remind me

19. So how are we feeling today?

20. the cage is white metal bars / pleasant / the fluid upward arc of the roof

Everyone who continues to read this solipsistic crap should get free chocolate or something.

Dear woman on the bus,

I know that you were attempting to be kind by ushering this blind girl, whom you assume can't see anything, to a seat on a crowded bus. I also observed by the look you gave your friend, that you may have taken offense when I said, rather tersely, "Thank you; don't touch; all right," and moved to a seat further from where you are. Let me take a moment to explain from my point of view.

1) Since I have a very narrow field of vision, your sudden touch on my arm surprised the holy hell out of me. So did the fact that you seemed to be insistent, not letting go immediately. It felt more like a pulling touch than a guiding touch, if you know what I mean. This makes me tense and cranky.

2) I also think it's not nice to touch people without asking, unless you are trying to prevent them from falling into a precipice or retrieving them from a burning building, or other similar dire scenarios.

3) My balance is pretty unstable. When you grab my forearm and tug on it, just a little bit, it throws me off balance.

4) Your grabbing of my arm delayed me getting to the seat I wanted. I know you wanted me to sit sideways in the very front of the bus, because that is where I'm pretty sure you've seen most blind people sit. Sitting sideways on the bus sometimes makes me seasick. Sitting sideways on the bus ALWAYS minimizes my ability to use what remaining vision I have. I noticed that there was a front-facing seat, and I wanted to get to it. You were preventing me from doing this by grabbing my arm.

4) I felt guilty all the way to my stop, as the bus chugged slow slow slowly up the south side slopes. I was sincerely hoping you'd get off before me, but no. I tried to make amends by saying "have a good one," and doing that half-smile thing I've been working on, but you may not have noticed it. I'm pretty soft spoken around people I don't know.

5) Maybe it will cheer you up, as it did me, that as I was unlocking my front door, I heard the neighbor kid call his sibling a "giant butt cheek." I snort-laughed loudly, like HA, and stuck my head all the way into the mailbox to cover up my laughter. I'm giggling now as I remember it. Perhaps you don't approve of that kind of language, but I'm offering it as a giftlet of humor, which we probably all need more of. I know I do.