Every Second, Every Minute, Every Day

I miss you

mediocre

So, I have PTSD... ya'll knew that... I knew that

I had a full on panic attack on Friday but that's the first I've had in months. I can go to the grocery store and restaurants (I even order for myself now). I can even do that really horrible "how are you?" "Fine, you?" bull crap now. (Though today someone asked how I'm doing and I said "shitty" and they didn't know what to say for a full minute... I guess sometimes I can't do it). Long ramble short, I've come a long way back into society. I think I was starting to believe that I'm functioning pretty close to "normally."

I've always had to work hard to learn. I'm not a hear it once, got it kind of kid (my hubby is). Knowledge is hard won for me but I've always functioned really naturally in an academic environment. This is the first semester since I've come back to school that I've had a truly full plate. I'm teaching, taking classes, and researching... and its kicking my butt.

I'm not new to this either. I was a single parent through much of my master's work. I put in nearly a full year on my PhD before Damon's death. Sure, it was hard but I rarely felt like I just couldn't hack it.

My brain is broken.

I was told by a few therapists before I gave up on the whole therapy thing that my mind is fractured. Because I can't deal with my memories of Damon's death I've partitioned it off, thrown up iron walls surrounded by a moat filled with crocodiles... you get the picture... and that this dividing of my mind prevents it from working correctly. I believe them. I believed them then. Believing them doesn't make me any more likely to walk back into those memories, but I believe.

I believed them because of the panic attacks, the incessant crying, the constant fear, the all consuming ever-present hurt.

But only in the past few months have I started to realize that the damage is not only emotional.

I regularly forget words, as in five or six times in a day, words like "door" and "computer" not to mention "argenine vassopressin" or "dompamenergic neuron." Everyday. I can't remember where I parked my car and perhaps most frightening of all to an academic, I cannot incorporate new information. I can learn it but I can't get it to sink down into me. It just sits there on the surface, tickling my mind when I try to go find it.

So I'm asking myself the question... can I deal with being mediocre? Can I accept average (really below average for a PhD). If I face the fact that I simply am not the person that I was in all ways, including my intelligence and capability, what does that mean? Can I still do this?

I don't know.

Until next time...

So sensitive..

Don't be so sensitive

Let it roll off of your back

Get a thicker skin...

The last is my (least)favorite.

I have no skin. I walk through the word with virtually no emotional armor or resilience. If you take me down you take me down for days.

I feel every word. I feel every look, every snarl, every slight.

It hurts.

People often tell those of us who walk through the world emotionally vulnerable to be "thicker skinned." It's possible to develop thicker skin, as in your real physiological body covering skin. You can do it. On parts of your body that are exposed to constant wear the skin will thicken... As it thickens you lose some of the sensation, you lose a great deal of the flexibility, the color changes. In the end it looks and feels nothing like the original skin. It is protective. It serves its purpose well.

I honestly don't know if I could do this emotionally or not. I know there are people who have. There are people who, in self preservation, have thickened. They have lost much of their ability to feel. In the process they have become very inflexible and, perhaps, to those who knew them before, unrecognizable. You probably know them, too.

Sometimes I really really wish I were thicker. EVERYTHING hurts. People are angry and opinionated and mean. Speaking about things people don't want to hear makes me a target.


But... some people are genuine and kind and honest.

Some people entrust me with their truth... their own deep hurt

Some people sacrifice their time and energy to raise money for Damon's Dance

Some people never forget, never stop, ever offer their support


If I grew that thicker skin, built that wall of armor that protects me from the mean and angry and opinionated would I still cry out of an overwhelming gratitude to the amazing women who organized a Damon's Dance fundraiser? Would I still be a person my friends can trust with their hearts? Would I still be able to feel it when people purposely poor their love and affection into me? Would I be closer or further from the woman, wife, mother that I want to be?


It sucks to be so sensitive. I really sucks to be a deeply sensitive woman trapped in a body with a very, overly, obnoxiously honest one... seriously. But even if I could turn it off (and I don't think I can) I don't think I would be willing to accept what that would do to the rest of me.

Much like grief, sensitivity is not an illness. It is not something that needs to be changed. It is not a weakness any more than aching for a child I will never hold again is a weakness. It just is.

Until next time...

The one where I call some people out...

I spend a lot of time working in places like Panera... I'm pretty niche-y about where my brain works.

I hear a lot of conversations about church, god, faith... etc.

These conversations have stimulated a lot of thought and a lot of pain. I'm trying to decide if I have the courage to publish my rather extensive and, honestly, quite critical thoughts as I've been writing them for the past year or so. I haven't decided yet.

Quite frankly I don't know if I can emotionally withstand the potential backlash. Ya'll all know I'm barely holding it together as is.

But I will say this:

No one, I repeat, NO ONE wants to be your mission.

We are people.

The bereaved.

The broken.

The addicted.

The atheist.

The agnostic.

The angry.

The wounded.

The smelly.

We. Are. People.

We are not your project. We are not your obligation.

Wanna hurt someone? Make them your "mission."

Enough said.

Until next time...

Facetiming Rainbows

The Rainbow baby has discovered facetime...

I don't even know where to start here so I guess I'll just go all brain diarrhea on you and hope it makes sense.

I honestly don't even remember the first time he facetimed but clearly it made an impression. Yesterday He brought my phone to me chanting "Papa... Papa... PAPA!!!" at least twenty times. He wants to call his Papa Bear (his name is Barry... you get it). We called Papa and Grams, who dutifully answered and tried mightily to have a conversation with an almost two year old who mostly giggled, said "Papa!" and "Bye!" He was so persistent I asked them to make videos of themselves talking to him. They did and he watched them at least thirty times each. He also insisted we call his Aunt Angi, by name (genius baby).

We tried to get a video of him watching the videos and talking to them (because we're modern parents) but he has some sort of 6th baby sense and stops doing anything adorable or video-worthy the second any recording device is activated. Seriously, how does he know?

Today I thought the videos would satisfy his facetime obsession. It was not to be. He got into my facetime app on his own (again, my baby is a genius) and started with the chanting "Papa!" We facetimed with his Papa! and Grams twice today and only because I started hiding my phone.

So... if you are in my contacts and you start getting random facetime requests if you answer you will likely find an absolutely adorable baby staring back at you, maybe asking for his Papa! or maybe just saying "Hi-eeeee" and "bye!" repeatedly with no intention of actually hanging up.

This has been the highlight of my weekend truth be told.

We're starting hell month and things will get really dark. I'm so glad that my rainbow is such a bright fire inside me.

Until next time...

floating isn't as great as it sounds...

I should be studying. I have a test that I'm ridiculously underprepared for in about three hours.

Instead I'm sitting at my desk staring across a space of about four feet at the pictures covering my husband's work space. One picture in particular, Damon. He was about a month old, wrapped in a blue baby blanket, fast asleep. I was holding him in this picture. You can't see me but I remember. I remember.

I remember feeling like I could protect him. I remember believing in a future.

I often am overwhelmed and frustrated by a world that refuses to acknowledge pain and most ardently refuses the reality of death. It this world of happy smiling people I am a spector floating in blacks, whites, and greys while everyone else can see color. It is a lonely, lonely way to live. There is a chasm between me and you... always.

While I am certain that people in general could and should (there's that word I hate but there is no way around it) pull their heads out of themselves and insist on an awareness of the suffering and reality around them I also understand the refusal. Living in this place where nothing is solid, where I know that my son's, my husband's lives could me yanked out of my grasp at any moment, where I know that I can not protect my children is... there is no word for what it is. There is no air. There is no ground. There is nothing to orient myself, no way to get a grip. It's horrible.

The death of a child steals a child's life. It also steals security. It steals comfort. It steals certainty.

I am sure of almost nothing...

Until next time.

It's my birthday

And I'll cry if I want to...

I turned 34 this week. I look at aging differently now. I think we all know how our culture abhors aging. Wrinkles? Sagging breasts? Cellulite?!! Dear Lord, certainly there is nothing worse!!

It's an all out war to consciously reject these perspectives. I am determined to embrace aging. Damon didn't get to age. His wrinkles and age spots were stolen from him, and from me. 

Yes I'm 34, damn straight I'm in my mid 30s. I'm aging. It's a PRIVALEDGE.

That being said, the actual day is brutal. I always relive, over and over, my last birthday when he was alive. My incredible fullness on that day, my thought "this year is going to be the best yet," smack me hard across the face. So, while I insist on embracing aging I hate my birthday. It may be the most painful of all of the gut wrenching holidays. I don't think I have to tell you what I spent most of last week doing.

But Friday I did this

That's 5 bands, permanently announcing 5. There are 5 of us, always, whether the world can see him or not he is one of us. It's another silent scream and it eases the ache. It makes me feel like no matter how uncomfortable his death makes people the world can't make him go away no matter how hard they try. He is mine.