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

wait, they don't love you like i love you

Maps

Pack up

I'm strayed
Enough

Oh say say say
Oh say say say
Oh say say say
Oh say say say
Oh say say say

Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Maps
Wait, they don't love you like I love you

Made off
Don't stray
My kind's your kind
I'll stay the same
Pack up
Don't stray
Oh say say say
Oh say say say

Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Maps
Wait, they don't love you like I love you

Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Maps
Wait, they don't love you like I love you

Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Maps
Wait, they don't love you like I love you

Wait, they don't love you like I love you
Maps
Wait, they don't love you like I love you

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Brian Chase / Nick Zinner / Karen Orzolek

Maps lyrics © Chrysalis Songs (digital Only), Chrysalis Music Ltd

I have this whole entire nerdy playlist simply titled "pretty".  This is one of the songs on said playlist.  I love it.  I don't know if you've ever seen Karen O live, but I'm old enough that I've seen her at a Vans Warped Tour at the Shoreline, this totally amazing outdoor amphitheater in Northern California.  That's the first place I ever encountered weed being passed at a concert, too--but that was Coldplay.  I turned it down, and I'm still glad for it.  It was totally amazing with the lights and everything sober and I still recall it as an 18 year-old.  Fucking great.  But yeah.  Karen O.  Massive girl crush.  I remember just feeling like this woman is just feeling her music and is just there, she is enveloped in it and she is here in the moment and no place else.  I thought she was totally amazing.  Still do;)

I have no idea what I feel in my personal life.  I wasn't drinking, now I am.  I write in my head constantly, trying to sort things out.  Trying to untangle things.  Trying to sort out the mess.  But I just don't know.  I don't know what I want or how to feel.  I know that I really want to have amazing sex with someone I care about ideally.  Because I am so very full of love.  And I need to give it to someone.  And I'd rather not give it to a rando.  

I dyed my hair with semi-permanent dye.  Rose gold.  Mostly it looks somewhat reddish purple.  But it is very subtle.  

I imagine people are more complex than they are in my had.  More intellectual and more mysterious and more everything.  Reality is a really big sobering opposition to the lady boner.  But maybe it isn't if he feels the same way.  I don't fucking know.  Because he hasn't communicated so who knows.  Maybe that's why I gave up on reading and all the places I used to go.  Because I just have to learn how to get used to this very bleak, very real, very boring actuality.  

Is it fucked that I get off on being tied up and choked?  What does that say about me?  Or that I wake up with bruises and he doesn't talk to me?  What the fuck does that say about a person?  

I like to help others and care for them.  But who do I let do the same for me?

Liver eaten by birds

 Right now in this moment I just want to be cuddled on the couch by Dan. Have him hold me and fall asleep in his arms with his leg around me.

I still love him. What the actual fuck is wrong with me?

When I wake up I know I'll feel differently again. It's a constant yo-yo. This inane ebb and flow without any smell of sea of spray of salt to make it better. It's over one year later and I feel like a jaded alcoholic Hemingway character drawn in 2D who is doomed to keep rolling some stone up a mountain only to have it come tumbling down in an infinite futile loop. 

For a year I've tortured myself, my liver eaten by birds over and over again: why don't you love me? Why can't you love me? 

justified in the way you make me bruise

The Silence

Manchester Orchestra

Why do I deserve the science
To feel better about you?
At a loss I lost my cool
I denied that I found you

I tried to be a basket case
I did not surprise you
I'm trying to find a signal fire
Let me know when I should move

But you, amplified in the silence
Justified in the way you make me bruise
Magnified in the science
Anatomically proved that you don't need me

Why do I desire the space?
I was mourning after you
I was lost and lost my shape
There was nothing I could do

I don't want to waste away
It was all I gave to you
Take me back and take my place
I will rise right up for you

But you, amplified in the silence
Justified in the way you make me bruise
Magnified in the science
Anatomically proved that you don't need me

All the while you waste away, you're asking
"Did I really need another one to take me down?"
Everybody knows it's something that you had to live with darling
Nobody's gonna tear you down now
There is nothing you keep, there is only your reflection

There was nothing but quiet retractions
And families pleading, "Don't look in that cabinet
There's far more bad than there's good, I don't know how it got there"
That was something your father had burned in me
Twenty hours out of Homestake eternity
You can go anywhere but you are where you came from

Little girl you are cursed by my ancestry
There is nothing but darkness and agony
I can not only see, but you stopped me from blinking
Let me watch you as close as a memory
Let me hold you above all the misery
Let me open my eyes and be glad that I got here

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: John Andrew Hull 

So I listen to this song most nights before bed.  I think the drums are hauntingly beautiful, and the lead singer's voice singing the lyrics is almost poetic.  Or maybe it is.  And I never understand words in a song, and certainly don't ever sing them correctly, so it struck me as kind of hilarious that this song was apparently written as an ode to fatherhood, this prayer to God for the man's self and his daughter.  Wanting to get things better than his own father did.  I don't know.  There is something kind of profoundly beautiful in me being so drawn to it.  

I've been really down on myself lately.  I changed from sertraline to duloxetine last week since I hadn't really been sleeping at the urging of my doctor.  When I say not sleeping I mean not sleeping, like literally some hours a night.  And when you're working twelve plus hours sometimes three days in a row it's actually pretty fucking dangerous.  And then Friday at work I just lost it.  I had a really tough assignment, two kids, this Down's baby without parents at the bedside and this adorable 4 year-old who recently became neurologically devastated following a cardiac surgery (I mean, a really beautiful, sweet boy prior, and still beautiful) with mom and dad homebound with three kids who have school online, and each of them with eight diapers a piece, one pooping blood and getting tests done bedside and tons on meds and chest physiotherapy and nebs and suctioning and so on and so forth, and feeling obligated to still turn them and love on them and tell them their parents loved them (and yes, of course hold that adorable baby and sing to her), and I tried to eat lunch late past four o'clock and I just couldn't.  This is the first year I'm missing my mom's birthday celebration with her.  And I realized to me, it's so much more than Christmas and Thanksgiving and New Years.  Because my nuclear family disintegrated awhile ago, and my mom's birthday is the most special thing that I can spend with her every year working in healthcare, no matter what.  I just lost it and started sobbing in the fishbowl with my head on the table.  It was pretty silent and I just thought, you dumb fuck, you're leaving a puddle on the table, and your mascara is going to run. I was so ashamed.  

I know I'm not alone, and it's only me choosing to feel this way.  But sometimes I wish I lived in a house with someone and had a baby and people to care for.  When it's just me, it's easy to not give a shit.  And I know that is the exact opposite of how I should feel.  That it is dangerous to feel this way.  That these thoughts drive people away.  I had someone say they liked me.  But only after I told them so.  And I'm fucking tired of being the brave one.  The first honest one.  And it won't work anyway, so what the hell is the point.  Where does all my honesty and courage get me in this life?  It gets me last place, watching all the others from the sidelines.  It makes me such a goddamn cynic it makes even me feel sick.  And I'm so damn tired of all these brick walls I've built up over the years.  I used to be sweet and sensitive and unafraid to feel and be hurt.  And now I don't trust anyone.  People like Chris and Dan saw what my family was and said they'd never hurt me and then put me through the worst kind of hurts.  And I don't know why.  What did I do to deserve it?  Why couldn't they be honest with me like I was with them?  I never would have hurt them like that.  I don't have it in my body.  I want to feel love.  I want to feel safe and protected and be loved and to do all of that for someone else.  But I'm also so tired and confused and so badly want to get the fuck out of Brooklyn that who knows at this point.  

I'm really angry at myself for what I've done with Dan recently.  I thought he legitimately wanted to be friends again but I think he just viewed me as someone he could use, and that really fucking hurts.  I think he views me as trash.  I don't know why I still have love in my heart for him, I don't.  He has treated me like as if I am less than human over and over.  He responds to conversations when he feels like it.  He NEVER asks about me or my family.  He never asks about my day.  He never asks me a question, period.  He actually only ever speaks about himself.  His day, work, drinking/food, wanting to masturbate.  And I get really mad at myself.  I just have a hard time reconciling that the person I spent a year with would treat me like this.  

I'm so fucking bored.  I hope a spaceship comes and beams me out of here and takes me to Mars.  

You know what--

Today I woke up and I was grateful.  I have amazing friends that look out for me and protect me, that want the best for me.  I am so blessed.  I am not perfect, and that's okay.  I need to stop beating myself up every single day.  I need to love myself.  And love will come.  It will.  But I need to first practice self love.  I give so much to people at work every single day.  And yes, I get so much back.  And then there is Samson.  My beloved Samson.

Truly I have so very much.  And I am thankful.  

 I don't cry anymore.  Truly.  I don't even get close to the feeling of it lately.  I feel a numbness taking hold.

I want so badly to feel connected, to feel close.  To be held and to be wanted.  To feel safe and protected.

I am so sick of games and bullshit.  I like being transparent and honest.  And I still have these feelings.  God help me but I do.  I wish I could just cut my heart out of my chest, tearing the fleshy pulp from my breast and truly feel no more sadness or emptiness or longing.  Because he so clearly feels none of it.  So clearly views me as a means to an end, a way to get off; something easy.  It hurts.  A dull hurt, but sometimes the dull pains are almost worst than the sharp twinges.  

And I know it makes me so pathetic and desperate and foolish.  Why don't I have more self-respect?  He doesn't even want to talk to me.  It breaks my heart, my spirit.  I cross one day to the next, caring a little bit less about everything each day.  My apartment grows a little more unkempt, a little more dusty with every passing week.  Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I wonder, who is this old, tired woman before me?  Who is this person who has so very clearly already given up on life?  

I am so tired and yet I rarely sleep anymore.

I went on a date.

He has the most books of anyone I’ve ever met.

His mind fascinates me. His heart is kind. I stayed up all night talking with him and left at nine thirty in the morning. 

And he held me and I felt safe. 

I feel joy.  A quiet, timid joy but joy nonetheless.

I’m jealous that my cousin’s birthday is in perfect alignment with National Tequila Day.

PS why the fuck is there one?

PPS not that I’m complaining. Cheers.

I received so many beautiful texts and calls today.

I really am so damn lucky.

A friend of mine said: I hope you feel the love because it’s all around you.

I hope you know it’s little things like that that mean everything.

I’m so grateful. Thank you, God. Thank you for these 35 years. I am blessed. 

I wished for my momma’s health (all kinds) this year. And for my aunt and uncle’s—and that all of them know how much I love them this year because I show it better. And I wished for my colleagues’ safety and health also in addition to that of my family. And of course for Sammie’s well-being and happiness. It was many wishes to be honest. For me I wished that I start to see a therapist and get mentally healthy because I know right now I’m not. I need help. But I do know I have a lot of love and gratitude in this heart and I do have good things I can offer to this universe. 

I love you, God. Thank you. Please watch over mommy.

I'm anxious about something in my head at pretty much every moment of the day. 

And it is perpetually draining. 

I have to stop this.

Records

Words to describe how I feel--

Stuck. Rusted. Torn. Shuttered. Useless. Withdrawn. 

A scratched record.

This is my punishment. All those nights I couldn't wait up, now I never sleep. All those feelings I never made tangible, all those unspoken words--now I'm choking on my own word vomit and drowning in my own tears. God forgive me. This pain I do not dull with drugs or alcohol. I've experienced it. I've sat with it.  But when the fuck does it end.

And why does he punish me like I've cut out the others that really fucking hurt me. What did I ever do to deserve that? What, God? I don't understand it. I don't understand. I loved him so much. 

The record catches skips and hums: love, love, love. I want to carve a hole in my chest to make it as empty as I feel.

God I try so hard. I'm so tired. I'm so tired of trying. Living hurts so much and I feel so awful and selfish saying it. But I can't sleep. And here I am crying again. And I'm just awfully tired. Please take my pain away. I've carried it with me for a very long time. 

Do you ever feel like you're missing the most family you ever felt with someone else?

Do you ever want to pick up the phone and hear my voice?

Are all these sleepless nights of heartache on my own?  Will I always be Eponine in Les Miserables?  The one who gets the best song but the girl who dies alone? 

I try being hard. Being angry. I just want you to hold me. And to hold you back. I'm so sorry for everything. 

Simply put, I love you. 

God I hate myself.  I emailed and I wish I could take it back.

At the end of the day at work, I'm the softest person ever.  In my personal life, I am angry and I am hard and I am a brick wall and I don't trust anyone.  My aunt started crying a couple of years ago and said she was worried about how angry I was and that I needed help.  And when I started dating she said this is so good, don't fuck it up.  And I did.  I didn't let him in.  I didn't trust myself.  I didn't trust anything about my happiness or the whole thing.  I didn't plan schedules with him or trips, because it wouldn't last.  I didn't want to spend time with his family or friends because they wouldn't like me.  

What the actual fuck is wrong with me.  Why do I think I deserve nothing good out of life.  I'm drunk and sad and not angry at anyone but myself.  I'm so sad.  Because I don't see a future for myself or good things.  I have so much love but so little trust for the world.  And I'm hurting an awful lot.  And I keep choosing people that hurt me more.  And it makes me sad that I think I deserve them.  

Also I simply cannot drink your damn whiskey. The first shot is fine. Then for whatever reason I feel sick and even smelling it is off-putting.

When I’m honest I miss you. And I hate myself for it. 

It's my first day of vacation and I cannot go anywhere.  I am bound to Brooklyn and I want to get the fuck out of here.  More than anything I want you to come over here for my 35th birthday and drive me anyplace.  I am drinking your whiskey angrily, so pissed at your best friend and all the fucked up shit he said, pretending to care that I was depressed.  Who fucking does that?  And how did he watch our relationship fall apart when I had no clue?  I am so angry that I wasted my fucking time.  I want someone who knows what they want, and that someone is me.  I'm so sick of liars and fucked-up families.  Assholes and idiots.

Yesterday an 18 year-old girl who went down at a party was terminally extubated without her mother or father present.  An aunt and a great aunt held her hand instead because her mother and father were too fucking selfish, it was all about their suffering and grief.  Shame on people like that.  No past medical history or anything.  And yeah, I'm fucking angry.  Why should my fellow nurse be put through that?  Thank God that child was already free from her suffering and God was already with her, but I just lost it on the train last night.  And then I started to audibly sob because of course it had been silent tears on the train but it was Sammie's birthday and he was barking, excited to see me, so I had to be in mom mode when I got home and flip my switch.  But what the fuck.  

How dare you Corie.  I didn't even like your friend that much.  But he laid it on thick and kept lying to me.  So why don't you spend your energy getting pissed at your friend and getting real with him instead of saying really fucked up, hurtful shit to my friend that I will later read?  I am not the asshole here.  I have been duped and lied to a lot.  I'm broken.  Your friend knew that.  He keeps playing the victim and keeps saying woe the fuck is him.  He's never been married or had a very long relationship, I wonder why.  Why don't you open your dumb eyes?  Just keep thinking you are better than everyone else, keep making fun of everyone else.  I hope it makes you feel better about yourself and fills whatever holes you have. 

I know I don't need you anymore.  I thought I did because you made me feel good and I felt lonely.  But I love myself and you hurt me and it's over.  I miss our friendship and laughing with you and feeling like someone understood the way I felt the way I felt about work but now I feel like you just lied about everything.  Like the only thing you didn't lie about was OCD and biting your nails, cleaning bipap machines until 0400.  You probably lied about the sex and the intimacy and wanting kids and the whole thing.  And my heart's not broken anymore.  Now it's just fucking dead on the floor.  No amount of CPR or defibrillation or epi or whatever the fuck can revive it.  It's not coming back and I don't give a fuck.  It is what it is.  I'm almost 35 and I'll never have kids and I don't care.  I can't afford them anyway alone and I'l probably die young and it is what it is.  I don't actually care anymore.  I don't wish you ill or well.  I don't wish you anything anymore.  I feel the most giant amount of apathy right now at this moment in time but I feel no depression about it.  I literally feel nothing about my own life.  

Only sadness that you act like I am crazy, like I invented the whole thing when you were the impassioned one.  I'm sorry I was scared.  I'm sorry I had been through a divorce and I was nervous.  This is why.  This is why I have trust issues.  It's fucking valid.   You were promising the moon, and you gave me fucking nothing.  You took my heart out of my chest and stomped on it and then acted like I was crazy.  Fuck you, Daniel Sain.  My birthday will be better next year but what is a birthday at this age anyway.  I loved you like crazy, I really did.  Your whiskey tastes awful in my mouth.  I wish I was tasting it in yours.  

My heart just turned eleven years old. I wished him a happy birthday and he looked a bit startled as he was relaxing on his side beside me.

The love I have for my Samson--it is something. I love you, my sweet boy. 

Sweet boy

I took care of a dying intubated baby for the past two days. I was so gentle with him. I told him I loved him all the time because his parents are not present, never call and are in the process of giving him up for adoption.

How truly devastating to be dying and up for adoption. The other nurses tease me. But I say I want him to know love in this world before the next. 

I love you my sweet Jayden. May God hold you in the palm of His hand and protect you. May your transition be peaceful and may you know soon the peace and freedom you so justly deserve.  My sweet boy. 

That migraine was a bad one. 

I threw up and had tears running down my face I was in so much pain. 

A good friend had twins a couple of days ago. She named one Caleb and I lost it last night when I found out. I was obviously over the moon for her but...

I've always wanted a Caleb and it seems less likely I'll have one of my own.

Chin up. Keep it moving I suppose 

I haven't been telling myself I love myself.

I had an eye exam today since I realized my driver's license is nearly expired and I need to renew it. Then I came home and started looking for my passport and broke my shells in the shadow box I made after I went to Sanibel with Chris. 

I want to start crying. Where the fuck is my passport? Why can't I get the hell out of Brooklyn in July and see my mom? I just want to escape. I want a little peace for Sammie's birthday and mine. 

And I'm stuck here. I need green and water and calm. And I'm so frazzled and stressed, my head is one big numb buzzing. 

I don't dream of him anymore. I had nightmares about patients crashing last night.  Today is a bad day where I want to be held by him and be told it's all going to be okay. To fuck the stress away until my head starts to clear sounds a lot better than laying here like one great void. I have so much love in this little body. And I just want someone to feel it and give it back to me. I can't write prettily because my head hurts too fucking much. 

I need to grow up and start believing in myself.

I realized after another rough weekend that I allow the negative words of others to deeply affect me.  Like why do I care about what some friend of Dan's thinks regarding me?  Was I actually naive enough to think he wanted to speak with me?  Actually, yes.  Do I still make excuses for people and say they are nice and would never purposefully try to harm me?  Yes, I do.  

I don't even want to type his name again.  But my ex-boyfriend is not worth my time or energy, be it positive or negative.  I no longer care what he thinks, and I no longer want to be angry about it.  I want to let it go.  I want to also let go of all my negativity I feel regarding work.  I have so much anger and frustration when it comes to how others work, and I'm so hard on myself--why can't I chart faster, why are the tasks just never-ending?  

At the end of the day, I need to give myself praise.  I need to set an alarm EVERY morning and not just wake up when I feel like it, too.  I work so hard and give everything to my patients and literally nothing to myself, I pretty much just rest and relax when I'm off, gearing up for more work.  I don't want this type of life for myself anymore.  I'm tired of it. I need to wake up early and go to be on time.  I need my rest.  I look awful.  I need to do my laundry and clean and function like a grown human.  My world around me has just been crumbling and I told myself I needed someone else to help me put myself back together again, and I don't.  I need people in my life, yes.  I need to learn also to ask for help from my friends.  Instead of just being on the sidelines like I just want to tap out and then being angry at them for not reaching out...how could they possibly know if I don't tell them?  I can do this is the bottom-line.  I love myself.  Every day I will start to say it.  And no, brain, it's not stupid.  Because I'm 34 and I don't feel loved and it starts with the way I treat myself.  So here it is:  I FUCKING LOVE MYSELF.  I am going to try to commit to myself in earnest.  No bullshit, no more excuses.

When I'm feeling sad I like to read Ernest Hemingway quotes sometimes.  

Like "The first draft of anything is shit."

"Forget your personal tragedy.  We are all bitched from the start and especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously.  But when you get the damned hurt, use it--don't cheat with it."

"Write hard and clear about what hurts."

"The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting you are special too."

All Ernest Hemingway, of course.

On Sunday I took care of a patient who broke my heart.  Anyone child who is dying and knows he is dying has a certain look.  It's common in the adult world, but in pediatrics they so rarely give up.  And to see them resign themselves and to know what is coming, man is it fucking hard.  Not so much for me so much as it is for the teenager alone doing it.  It breaks my damn heart really and truly.  

So I guess it was there after all;)  Fully capable of repairing itself, mending anew only to break all over again.  What a portrait we paint, eh?  

I wish you would call.  I know you won't, but I wish you would.  The tequila brings out the wishes.  Humans aren't like cats, another Hemingway gem.  We hide our emotions.  We drink them away.  Until we shoot ourselves in the head with them.

When I drink, I get lonely. I get lost in memories of you in this apartment. 

I call and you don’t answer. 

I’ll be so angry with myself tomorrow. But tonight I only want you. Your curls. Your blue eyes. Your laugh. Your fierce hug. The absence of you smacks. 

What I wouldn’t give to be with you in Muir or Sanibel or any of my favorite places of the universe. To share them with you. How I miss you when my defenses are no more. 

I have white hairs. And my under eye area looks so sunken. In the past year I feel as though I have aged ten. But I also feel more comfortable forgoing makeup, with bare skin.

Mostly when I look in the mirror I see someone supremely sad. I feel like even when I smile now my eyes give me away. 

wanting to fast-forward

I'm in  a horribly sad mood.  I tried calling Dan.  Sometimes I do just to hear his voice, which is pathetic.  And I started crying and hung up because it was the bizarre automated recording talking about transcribing your message.  I had just watched this series called I know this much is true on HBO and I was desperate for human connection.  And of course the most absurd place to ever find it again is from Dan.  But when I'm feeling really desolate I find comfort there still.  And it makes me feel really ashamed and small and the only thing I tell is this blog.  

The series was stunning.  I am still kind of needing to sit in quiet and be alone after completing it.  I cried throughout it, and really connected with it emotionally at times.  It was painful to watch at points.  The end wasn't the hardest-hitting, the writing kind of cheapened a bit for me.  I might like to read the book it was based upon.  

I'm so ashamed of myself.  I think it's ridiculous that I reach out.  I don't know why I do.  I just feel like I've lost everything.  I have no home, no family.  I lost my marriage, I lost my chance at having children.  I look down sometimes and I'm like wow, you are a joke.  You are such a failure.  I'm so good at helping other people, God.  I don't know how to help myself.  It probably speaks volumes that I isolate the fuck out of myself and reach out repeatedly to someone who literally left me without one word of explanation one day and proceeded to block me out entirely from his life thereafter.

What is wrong with me, God?  Why did he have to break me heart and cut me out and then keep working at the same place?  I'm not strong enough for this.  It's been months of dreading every day of going in for fear I might have to see him.  I've lost weight.  My blood pressure and heart rate are up.  I'm trying to work out, to meditate, to help myself.  But when does it really get better?  When will I not care?  When will I want to date someone else, let alone sleep with someone else?  I cannot fathom it.  And I so badly want a family of my own.  I was holding a baby the other day at work and I looked down and he was so sweet and I literally almost started sobbing.  I know I'm not okay.  And I also feel like no one else sees me.  And it's like am I really doing that great a job of pretending or do people just kind of not care that I'm slowly just killing myself every day at work?  Because I'm so exhausted.  I am so, so very tired.

watch the sun rise

If you don't know the song The Chain by Fleetwood Mac, perhaps you live beneath a rock of some kind.  But it is beautiful and unique--the layering of it is so super cool.  It has a super cool feel to it, and was recorded in 1976.  Of note, it was "assembled" (yes, quoting wiki here, but it itself cited its sources) at the Record Plant in Sausalito, California.  And you know that while I myself will never again find myself living in Marin County, I have crazy love for its beauty and I felt perhaps most myself there when I was outdoors.  I love Northern California and its natural beauty.  The people that live in Marin are another thing entirely haha.  But yeah, the drums and the guitar parts were the only parts they recorded in one another's company.  Interesting, eh?  I really love the song.  Plus Stevie is fucking bad-ass.  Here are the lyrics:  

The Chain

Fleetwood Mac

Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise
Running in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies

And if, you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)

And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)

Listen to the wind blow, down comes the night
Running in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies
Break the silence, damn the dark, damn the light

And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)

And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)

And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)

Chain keep us together (running in the shadow)
Chain keep us together (running in the shadow)
Chain keep us together (running in the shadow)
Chain keep us together (running in the shadow)
Chain keep us together (running in the shadow)
Chain keep us together (running in the shadow)

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Christine McVie / John Mc Vie / Lindsey Buckingham / Mick Fleetwood / Stephanie Nicks

The Chain lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Reach Music Publishing

I feel my luck could change

In my humble opinion, one of the best songs of all time.  But you have to listen in a big way, either with headphones or good speakers or something.  It is fucking amazing.

I was lucky today.  Took care of two amazing patient families, and the most special 20 year-old renal patient.  Really neat kid.  His mom gave him his kidney.  His dad was like okay, how do I give you this award.  And I looked at him and was aghast--truly.  I told them that they made my job so easy, that it was honestly a pleasure to do it and I loved my job.  And yeah, I was lucky.  It was a fucking glorious day.

Lucky

Radiohead

I'm on a roll
I'm on a roll this time
I feel my luck could change

Kill me, Sarah
Kill me again with love
It's gonna be a glorious day

Pull me out of the aircrash
Pull me out of the lake
'Cause I'm your superhero
We are standing on the edge

The head of state has called for me by name
But I don't have time for him
It's gonna be a glorious day
I feel my luck could change

Pull me out of the aircrash
Pull me out of the lake
'Cause I'm your superhero
We are standing on the edge

We are standing on the edge

write it on your heart

Okay.  I am obviously losing it today.  So we entertain a bit of Ralph Waldo Emerson for the win:

"He said, 'Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.  He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.  Finish every day and be done with it.  You have done what you could.  Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.  Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.  This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.'"

Okay, this seems like a tall order.  But a girl can try.

I love you, God.  I am truly grateful for every breath, for every day.  For the glorious life that I live, for the job that I found myself doing after I tried and failed and tried again--I truly love what I do and know not many people get to do that in life.  For this I consider myself truly blessed, and exceptionally grateful.  I am humbled.  I love my family, I am challenged by my coworkers and friends and also love them immensely and feel loved in return.  My dog is pretty much the best thing ever.  And definitely gives the best cuddles.  Thank you, God.  I love you.  I will aim higher.  I will try to shine brighter.

I'm listening to this song that just came on, Something about you by--Odesza Remix by Hayden James.  And it's like, "What about a hit of your love?"  

And that's what it feels like.  Withdrawal.  I see my kids go through it all the time at work.  I feel like I'm withdrawing and fucking miserable for months.

Pleading.  Just a little bit.  C'mon.

I fucking love you.

Just a little.  

C'mon.  

To be naked, in your arms.  Warm and loved.  In love.  There is nothing better.  But I don't want anyone else.  No swapsies.  

What the legit fuck is wrong with me.

never have i ever been so sorry: fucked up again.

Cloyde had me watch this show, Never Have I Ever.  I said, I'm sorry.  I don't do fluff.  I'm into HBO dramas like The Wire or miniseries like Chernobyl or witty comedies like old-school Arrested Development.  I don't do what looks to be teen fluff.  But I said I'd give him one episode.  I watched the whole damn thing in two days and ended up sobbing.  I loved it.  Loved it.

I could relate in some ways.  I mean, my friends were those girls.  We were the so-called AP outcasts, that "UN"--the unfuckable, only I just so happened to be the tiniest, nerdiest white girl in my class.  I could relate to going to my best friend Priya's in my junior year of high school and having her mom prepare dinner knowing I was going to be in attendance (basically, dinner for me pre adding in a lot of additional spices for the rest of the family haha--she did this without my asking, I think she just knew having moved to the States from India so many years beforehand).  I would have done anything to have a cool boyfriend, but really not...because when push came to shove, I let another girl give the boy I liked a blow-job.  I wasn't ready and that was okay.  My girlfriends were really amazing, and made me strong and determined, and fuck.  I think I actually learned a decent amount of shit in high school.  So I did actually really enjoy that show.  I could relate to a lot of things even though it centered on a different culture and focused on a girl experiencing a big loss.  I dealt with my own losses in different ways I suppose.  And had a lot of fucking anger and a temper too.

Still do.  I lashed out at the person I still love.  Who in fact hates me.  Who only reads the texts I send when I send the ugliest, nastiest texts ever in life.  Yesterday was the one year anniversary of a favorite patient's death.  I still have a hard time thinking about it.  I still remember bathing her and putting on these really ugly pajama pants and being upset that it didn't feel right, that everything felt so wrong and what I would have done to see her smile one last time.  Mostly I always remember the good memories obviously, but this was that one day.  So I was angry.  And even a year ago I didn't really feel like my ex was there for me when she died, it was odd.  So I sent him this beautiful photo his mom posted to facebook.  With an amazing remembrance.  And of course he didn't read it.  And then crazy ramblings that became more and more angry and pissed because I'm so hurt that he hasn't ever talked to me since September really and I basically just broke up with myself since he said he needed a break and a week later I said it doesn't feel like a break and he said no after I called many times blah blah blah and I basically dumped me.  Cool.  Anyway, I drank last night and was an asshole.  A major asshole.  No excuse for bad behavior.  Whenever I hurt, I do not allow myself to be sensitive and hurt.  I lash out and get so. very. angry.  I am mean.  I am like a wounded lion.  A wolverine.  A gray wolf.  I am ill-tempered and cruel.  I will say the meanest fucking thing and I do not understand why because I want to howl at the moon, I want to cry, I want to bleed.  I do not allow it of myself.  

I do not know what's wrong with myself.

I asked my psychiatrist this week if it's normal to be so sad.  She nonchalantly asked if I wanted to be on medication.  I said the last time I was on it was years ago and I was afraid because I had not felt anything.  And is it better to be heartbroken and desolate or unfeeling altogether.  She looked at me and said I have a hard time believing you were ever unfeeling you are one of the most feeling people I've ever met.  What the fuck kind of response is that.  If I tell you that is the very thing that petrifies me then believe it.

I love you, Daniel.  I am so sorry.  But you should be too for all the fucking bullshit you have put me through.  And why can we both not say sorry and actually talk and deal with this.  Do you not have feelings the way I do?

I struggle so much with keeping children alive who have no say in the matter who have no parents at the bedside to watch their suffering.  Who literally say that it is too painful to see their child the way they are, and yes, they know they have a terminal illness, but we must (the hospital) give them a trach and G tube so that the suffering (the child's) is further prolonged.  All I can do is be as gentle as possible, provide as much dignity and compassion as I can, be as liberal with pain medications as feasible, and apologize all shift long to a child I pray finds heaven soon.  The things these children endure.  If you could see these wounds, these sores, these physical things.  It is like oh my good Lord, please take them home.  Please.  Please free them.  Because if anyone deserves heaven it is these little angels.  It breaks my heart.  And if I am being forced to watch, it really angers me that the parents aren't by his or her side along the way.  I will always hold a hand.  I will always wipe a face.  I will always tell them I love them.  But it isn't the love of a parent, the hand of a parent.  And that is the biggest indecency that I really struggle with.  I am so truly sorry for these parents--I cannot fathom it.  But goddamn it.  Be there if you are taking the choice away from the child (who in some cases is an 18, 19, 2o year old with that parent making medical decisions on his or her behalf).  

I love all my babies in heaven.  I only wish there weren't so very many of them.  They are more courageous, stronger, and more loving than I can ever hope to be.  

thunder-heart

This is beautiful.  I learned some new words, and I had to read and re-read it to appreciate it.  It's really something:

Oh Wonder

Traci Brimhall

It's the garden spider who eats her mistakesat the end of day so she can billow in the lungof night, dangling from an insecure branchor caught on the coral spur of a dove's foot,and sleep, her spinnerets trailing radials likeungathered hair. It's a million-pound cumulus.It's the troposphere, holding it, miraculous. It'sa mammatus rolling her weight through duskwaiting to unhook and shake free the hail.Sometimes it's so ordinary it escapes your notice—pothos reaching for windows, ease of an avocadoslipping its skin. A porcelain boy with lampblackeyes told me most mammals have the same averagenumber of heartbeats in a lifetime. It is the mouseengine that hums too hot to last. It is the blue whale'sslow electricity—six pumps per minute is the wayto live centuries. I think it's also the hummingbirdI saw in a video, lifted off a cement floor by firefightersand fed sugar water until she was again a tempest.It wasn't when my mother lay on the garage floorand my brother lifted her while I tried to shout louderthan her sobs. But it was her heart, a washable ink.It was her dark's genius, how it moaned slow enoughto outlive her. It is the orca who pushes her dead calfa thousand miles before she drops it or it falls apart.And it is also when she plays with her pod the dayafter. It is the night my son tugs at his pajamacollar and cries: The sad is so big I can't get it all out,and I behold him, astonished, his sadness as cleanand abundant as spring. His thunder-heart, a marvelI refuse to invade with empathy. And outside, cloudsgroan like gods, a garden spider consumes her home.It's knowing she can weave it tomorrow betweencitrus leaves and earth. It's her chamberless heartcleaving the length of her body. It is lifting my soninto my lap to witness the birth of his grieving.

I am utterly heartbroken with all of it. The whole world. 

I've been off for almost a week.  Which is awful for my mind.  I've thrown away a bunch of shit, I've groomed my dog, I've cleaned.  But my mind always comes around to you.  

As I near 35 I wish more than anything you'd talk to me, that you secretly feel the same way.  I know it's a lost cause.  

Forward march.  I have to keep it moving.  Keep pointing north.  I've overcome so much.  I know eventually, with enough time, this will feel smaller, duller.  I will be better for it, I have grown.  I will keep growing.  

I am grateful for all of this, even though it is hard.  I am grateful for the ups and downs, and highs and lows.  Because the sun is that much brighter when it comes back around.  

And I'm so very grateful for my dog, Samson.  I love him so very much.  His love is everything.

Being heartbroken in the times of quarantine is shitty. I'd rather be working, I'd rather be distracted. Nothing makes me happy. Not even TV or movies, which I used to find comfort in. Sammie does, of course. But food, no. I'm not ordering out much at all. I make soup or sandwiches and drink my shakes and eat string cheese. 

Mostly I think about you. And apologize to God for wasting the previous life I've been given by doing this. But how do I stop. That happiness I felt was like a drug. Going out with you, being with you just made me feel good. Being in the car with you, going places. 

But I have to stop torturing myself. I have to move forward and keep working on myself. Keep squatting, keep up with my skin care regimen, keep taking care of myself. I want to be happy for me. Be good enough for me.

But a little piece of me wants to come out on the other side with you looking for me.  Is that so wrong? 

feelings.

I had this bipolar patient back in acute psych.  She was 18 and very sick already, her medical record included an exceptional number of hospitalizations from a very young age and it made for a bad prognosis.  But I won't ever forget her looking at me in the eye and explaining her sentiments (and yes, this is from memory from years ago, so I'm paraphrasing here--in reality it was all the more beautiful and hauntingly sad):

"I would not trade this for anything.  You see, when I'm sad, I'm sad.  More sad than anyone will ever know.  It's awful, there's no end in sight.  But when I'm happy?  I know happiness that you will never experience.  You see, I can feel things that you will never comprehend.  And for that, I will suffer these waves of depression knowing that there exists that joy like no other.  Because I can have these feelings.  I CAN feel.  And I pity the rest of you, because you will never know what this is."

And even though it sucks, I guess it is something to know that I can experience these feelings.  I'm not a brick.  I'm not numb.  I can let myself experience thought and feeling.  And while I'm not bipolar, I've always thought I can process emotion and feeling in a way that not many other people can relate to--and I'm trying to explain it, because I'm not trying to brag here.  It's really fucking shitty and isolating a lot of the time.  But it can also be incredibly beautiful too.

Does that make sense?

the shadow of your heart

Cosmic Love

Florence and The Machine

A falling star fell from your heart and landed in my eyes
I screamed aloud, as it tore through them, and now it's left me blind

The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out
You left me in the dark
No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart

And in the dark, I can hear your heartbeat
I tried to find the sound
But then it stopped, and I was in the darkness,
So darkness I became

The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out
You left me in the dark
No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart

I took the stars from our eyes, and then I made a map
And knew that somehow I could find my way back
Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too
So I stayed in the darkness with you

The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out
You left me in the dark
No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart

The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out
You left me in the dark
No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Florence Leontine Mary Welch / Isabella Janet Florentina Summers

Cosmic Love lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group