12.2.20

Aunt Barbara.  I cannot write anything yet, I tried. The feelings are too big.  She was part of why I wanted to be a psychiatrist at a young age--I can say this; I had a keen sense of compassion for her and people like her, and I did not understand a world that would shun her.  The manic-depressives, the bipolars.  The different.

I was watching some documentary on HBO the other day, and I thought--this is what it is! I love so deeply, so fully, my fellow man.  I cannot fathom how any human or man can hate or discredit or ignore another merely because of some categorical box they have put another in.  I am incensed by this love, and it comes across as hate but at the foundation of it, at its core, is love.  I cannot fathom how anyone can hate another and kill another because they are of a different color, or they love a different sex, or they are trapped in a body that is not right to them or so and so forth.  I cannot explain it.

For me, Aunt Barbara could be infuriating and difficult and especially selfish as a human--separate from her illness--but she was also special and permanently altered by the medications she was forced to take and her very existence, my how truly painful it must have been.  I truly cannot fathom it.  I know she brought pain to her children, and I am truly sorry for them, but I am also so very sorry for her.  And I know she is in Heaven and no longer suffering with the angels.  

I love you.  I wish I had told you more often.  And that you had been able to listen, and to hear it, truly, when I did.  

“Depression is awful beyond words or sounds or images...it bleeds relationships through suspicion, lack of confidence and self-respect, the inability to enjoy life, to walk or talk or think normally, the exhaustion, the night terrors, the day terrors. There is nothing good to be said for it except that it gives you the experience of how it must be to be old, to be old and sick, to be dying; to be slow of mind; to be lacking in grace, polish and coordination; to be ugly; to have no belief in the possibilities of life, the pleasures of sex, the exquisiteness of music or the ability to make yourself and others laugh.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

searching for a trail to follow again/

 I am listening to my Spotify 2020 playlist and feeling a tad whistful.  Drinking tequila and reminiscing about a year of struggle and pain, but a year I came through, a year I survived.  That counts for something.  A lot of people were not so lucky, and my hearts are with the families and friends that grieve them.  

I never remember dreams or nightmares.  Last night I had a dream, I awakened and I remember it involved Samson, Emma and Cassie.  At least I think I did.  And I felt such joy, such happiness, such thanks--I remember being so grateful, and so at peace for being surrounded by all my dogs in my life.  And then I had a nightmare, where I awakened literally drenched in sweat and I think shouting, after my ex-boyfriend attempted to shoot me and then shot himself.  Or maybe it was my ex-husband.  I felt such grief, like the opposite of what I had felt before, even though assuredly they were both alive and well in the universe.  Dreams and nightmares are such fascinating things, eh?

The last thing I've read?  About the iliacus and the psoas.  Literally about muscles and joints and the fascia etc etc.  Nothing of beauty but of substance to be sure.  So I'm gonna include the lyrics from one of my top songs from 2020, which was comforting and beautiful throughout the year--initially it was half-cried by me in the shower, and now I sing along nostalgically.  I love the all of you most of you some and now none of you bit, I think it's quite pretty but also clever.  

The Night We Met

Lord Huron

I am not the only traveler
Who has not repaid his debt
I've been searching for a trail to follow again
Take me back to the night we met

And then I can tell myself
What the hell I'm supposed to do
And then I can tell myself
Not to ride along with you

I had all and then most of you
Some and now none of you
Take me back to the night we met
I don't know what I'm supposed to do
Haunted by the ghost of you
Oh, take me back to the night we met

When the night was full of terrors
And your eyes were filled with tears
When you had not touched me yet
Oh, take me back to the night we met

I had all and then most of you
Some and now none of you
Take me back to the night we met
I don't know what I'm supposed to do
Haunted by the ghost of you
Take me back to the night we met

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Ben Schneider