53 Days

Life is pretty different. I lost my words after Melissa died. They slowly dried up and I’m sad about that. So many things left with her and I am always mourning old things I’ve lost of myself.

I’ve been shut in now for 53 days. Actually 54, but it’s dark thirty and I just haven’t scratched today’s mark. I think I have been out maybe 7 times since March 03, 2020. I started staying home 5 days prior to the official call of Covid-19 becoming a pandemic. I stopped my side gig work on Feb 29, 2020, because I didn’t like elevators and apartment buildings for delivery. My full time job called it on March 8th, when is was federally recognized and we were all but a few, placed into a shared work unemployment program. It means we were sent home for lack of work, but not released. Our insurance would remain in effect, we didn’t have to search for new jobs on any unemployment forms, and we file weekly unemployment claims, until we are slowly called back in. We lost 90% of our business in a few short days. We were a recognized and still rapidly growing, woman owned catering company. Many of our clients are tied to big name tech companies in the Greater Seattle Area. We were set to move into a new building, as we slowly outgrew our original single space in a strip style business park, after taking over 8 different spaces. With no other neighbors leaving, after getting fed up with all our work vans, personal vehicles, and people, we had no where left to expand. Our move was to begin March 01, 2020 and finish the first week. We had started, but it was ongoing as the pandemic was called and the few people out of about 500 who were left, moved everything.

Meanwhile, I’m at home, thinking,”I’m all introverted now…I got this.”, and for the most part, I do. I miss my mom. I miss my sister. I miss my friend I do side summer work with and play in his yard, learning so much about planting and maintaining a nice English style garden.

I keep weird hours now. I was so used to getting up at 1:30 AM, four days a week and working ten hour days. I’ve kept that schedule for 3 years now and been OK with it, as long as the kids upstairs aren’t being kids till 9 PM. I’ve gone from barely making it, working my ass off, to always be a little behind, to being OK. I’m rested in a way I haven’t been in years, but I am also exhausted from the panic and fear. The beginning of panic and fear was the worst.

At the start of it, it was intense and everything and every person I came in contact with, caused fear in me. I knew my health issues and age would heighten my chances of getting a more severe case, were I to become infected. So everything, caused fear. I began harping at work for masks. Being catering, gloves were plentiful. Once I spent a few days in panic mode, I was able to plan. I was ahead of the curve and managed to get some dry goods and non perishable stuff. I was able to get hand sanitizer, which I still have 2/3 of. I rely mostly on soap and water since it’s more effective and less harmful to bacteria I need. I was able to get my unemployment claim started, that would pay rent and leave me $125.00 for everything else. I called a different state agency and was able to get SNAP food assistance. I was able to talk to my landlords and let them know my status and suspected schedules at staying up on my rent. I was able to get my car insurance to continue billing me, but stop asking for money till my unenjoyment claim was deposited, same with my TV. Luckily for me, all utilities, including basic cable, internet and laundry are included in my rent. My bills are manageable, but I lost my cell phone in the grey area between normal and pandemic. Luckily, I have a work issued phone and hopefully will be able to get it all set up before I have to return it.

My days are long and monotonous. Groundhog day every day with a different TV line-up. I’ve had 53 days to drift in and out of my own head. 53 days to see my life play out before my eyes. 53 days to examine lots of ghosts in the closet. Things I’ve not delved deeply into for years, because I haven’t really allowed myself to seriously dig. It’s hard to dig childhood traumas, without a really good trigger. It arrived.

We are solving a family mystery. One we never thought we would have the answer to. My sister started digging and knew a few people who have been in a position to help with information. So far, my sister and I are the only ones who know, and we are unable to share any of it right now because it is going to impact our mother. It’s going to disrupt her life and I’m not sure how well it will play out, even though she will finally have answers, there appears to probably remain some questions. In other words, none of this is e-mail, text, phone call type news. We need to be with her and we need to see her.

This news has caused my younger sister and I to have some heavy conversations about our lives and the status of our family. We have talked about things in a way we have never talked about and traded information that has been hard to trade and digest. It has caused us to speak, listen and hear each other in ways we have never done. I’ve been heard and understood in ways I’ve deserved to be heard, as well as understood. I have also seen my sister in new ways and have a new found respect for the little ditz.

I continue to miss Mel. I miss the kids super bad too. I’ve not heard from her oldest since before the pandemic began and since he works for UPS, I’ve been worried sick about him.

I think about Mel and her untimely exit. How maybe some of us just weren’t meant to live through this bullshit. How she was lucky to not see the world as it is today. In 30 years, we have changed so much. She wouldn’t recognize the difference that 5 years and three months has made. I’m grateful in one way, she is not living through this. But the other part of me is wishing that for her kids and my selfish ass, she was still here and in fact I wish we were living through this together, even if from different states.

I don’t know what it’s going to be like when it’s time to go back out. I don’t want to go back out too soon, because I am high risk. More so due to the fact I get bronchitis. So far, they aren’t too worried about my Auto Immune diseases, because I am not on biologics. I worry though anyway, because of white blood counts. It’s s o different now, that I received a knock on my door three days ago and panicked, because I wasn’t expecting anyone and I wasn’t wanting to open the door to a virus.

What has happened to my world (our world) in 53 days, is traumatizing. A month ago I saw two co-workers, while grocery shopping in an over-crowded store. We recognized each other through masks, but couldn’t stop and couldn’t Spanglish with one another at the time. I cried outside the store. I went to work the other day to pick up a 2 meal care package and bottle of wine. Saw the new building, saw the owner of the company and a few co-workers from a distance. It was emotional. I cried out in  my car.

I get emotional a lot. Commercials and sappy TV make me cry. Anything that ties back to my current family mystery, makes me cry. Life is full of tears right now. And I can’t explain what some of the tears are for. They just are. Life is so different. The future though always “unknown” is unknown in a different way. Do we hope? Do we leave Covid-19 with a different set of values? We need to. I don’t want to return to the way we were.

Will I ever post again? I don’t know. I could be sick right now from my last trip out for essentials and not even know it. That’s how uncertain the future is. Will I ever get to share my mystery? I don’t know. I hope I do. But I can’t risk anyone accident;y reading anything online before I get a change to meet with my family.

When they say we can go back out? Will we (I) be able to walk outside and interact with people again without severe anxiety? I have had panic attacks prior to store runs and immediately after them. I’d do all my shopping online if the system was set up for EBT, but they aren’t right now.

If a vaccine is found, will those of us who are still here have a giant collective case of survivors guilt aside from you asshats, protesting Stay at Home orders?

Till next time…

Mourning…still

I don’t know what I expected “mourning” to mean or to be like. It’s rooted itself into every fiber of my being and my soul.

I think I am understanding that it will never go away. The loss of you impacted me so deeply, because you were with me for every other loss or trauma I have ever experienced since 1988/89. When you died, the only other person who knew and understood my History, went away. You took all my secrets to your gave with you. Here I am about to start therapy, where the promise of taking your secrets to the grave with me, are on the chopping block. Your secrets have become my secrets and some of them…are weighing heavy on me. I hope that sharing with whoever I wind up seeing for therapy, isn’t breaking this trust. But there are things I can’t talk to Mik about. She knows a lot (old soul that she is), yet she doesn’t know everything and shouldn’t know everything. Same with the boys.

I feel such guilt in the way I told you we were removing life support. Not because you didn’t want it. You did. We had those “What if talks”. Not because you didn’t have a will. You did and I knew it. I was fucking blown away when I finally found it, it had never been signed. It did though show that evil woman, your brother and his wife, that you had in writing, what your wishes were. I regret it because I was hysterical. I came straight from the final meeting and was told to go in first, tell you, say what I needed to and then everyone else would go in one at a time, spend time with you before you were removed from life support.

I’m so sorry I was hysterical, shrill, sobbing and out of my mind insane. I wish I could have told you the right way. Maybe you needed to see how much I love you? Maybe you understood. Maybe you would have been exactly the same if it were me in your shoes and you in mine.

I have flashbacks out of the blue of those 12 days in Texas. They happen at the weirdest places. The weirdest times. A word, your name, a smell, a song, an object, and shit in fucking hospitals. Where btw, I am going to be spending plenty of time in the near future. I feel it in my chest, my pulse, by temperature and I hear it and see it in my head. It is always accompanied by that feeling of not being able to breathe and having to take that deep breath in, but just not being able to get enough air. It is followed by the need to scream. Primal scream, like that morning I blogged about so long ago about my drive up the highway from Mr. Yummy’s house and hearing that primal, guttural, deep in register freak out scream in my car at 70 miles an hour, while trying to strangle my steering wheel and give it shaken baby syndrome, thinking now would be a good time to hit a wall. It was such a foreign voice, I literally looked in my back seat to see who was screaming.

It is happening more and more. My wailing wall is so big.

Did you know it would be this Grand(e) (Venti)?

This is where my head is this morning. I realize I am terrified of Therapy. It’s sad I have never felt anyone I talked to in the past helped me deal with trauma from my childhood, adolescence, or my marriages, motherhood and abusive boyfriends. All of it has brought me to the loss of you and my inability to fucking deal with this trauma, sorrow and loss. The abandonment issues and trust issues I already had, have married the stuff from losing you. It is so big, inside of me. It’s in me and it’s bigger than me. Getting it out is going to hurt. Really bad. More than Venti.

I see your profile, Miki beyond you. You are making vocal “sounds”. I look at your profile and focus on your lips, the cadance and rhythms I hear. It’s Three. It dawns on me as I watch you on the second “sound” that you are trying to form the word love. It was the way your lips were shaped, and the air that was coming out. I asked, “Are you trying to tell Miki that you love her!?” A tear fell, and you nodded, “Yes”. I hope this is an important moment in your daughters life of KNOWING the love you had for her.

I didn’t realize it immediately, I think I was back home. I had heard the same sounds from you two nights earlier that I figured out the Miki thing. It was when you and I were alone in your room and I told you that you were my soul mate. I didn’t “hear you” that night, but I did eventually hear you. It was bittersweet. I was alone. No one saw it, heard it or, knew it but me and that felt lonely, but I was already with Mr. Yummy again and that was a miserable shit show in the end. But, I know it now. Maybe that was appropriate though, since no one knows the friendship we had. Many people don’t understand it. More than one person has asked me if we were lovers. Maybe it is because I called you “My Love” in the hospital, not caring what people assumed. You were my Love. I loved you more than any other boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or lover I have ever had. I held you in higher regard than any other person I knew, because you were my BEST friend and I loved you for being the person I knew. You were the person I trusted, the person I could and would say anything to. I WAS and remain in love with you. Love is love. Because we didn’t have sex, doesn’t mean I didn’t love you more than any other person I’ve ever known. When I had no family. I had you. When I had no support. I had you. When I was in danger. I had you.

One joy you gave me during the 12 days was this: Every person who met me and heard my name said “Ohhhh, the best friend…” and treated me with that reverence. Well, except…ya know.

Mourning…I had no idea what was coming.

Rough

It has been a rough week. Today I signed the work paperwork for the FMLA act to protect my job and ability to make money while living with HS.

I go back to the doctor after about a year, to finish dealing with this and hopefully get myself into remission.

Trying to change the relationship I have with food, is difficult. It has brought me to tears. The AIP diet is STRICT. There are SO many “No” foods and so few “Yes” foods that I don’t know how I will do it without resenting every bite I take.

I dropped dairy (except for the partial block of Sharp Cheddar I WILL be finishing) I replaced Milk and half and half with Almond milk, but on this diet…NO nuts, NO seeds (So this includes spices, like Cumino.)

Here is a list of NO, just to make it easier:

Gluten, dairy, Eggs, soy, fungi, alcohol, beans/legumes, sugar and processed food with added sugar, nightshades: white potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, bell pepper AND ALL FUCKING PEPPERS, cayenne pepper, paprika, canned foods, processed foods, coffee, high glycemic index foods (White bread, white rice, white potatoes etc) ALL grains, nuts and seeds.

It is so strict,  that even just writing this much has stressed me the fuck out and I now want to throw things and scream.

No Cheese? FUCK YOU! NO coffee? FUCK YOU! NO bread? FUCK YOU! NO SPICEY FOOD?! SO FUCK YOU! These are my staples

No Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy? FUCK YOU!!!! I may not DRINK milk other than my half and half in my coffee, but milk is needed for delicious country gravy to smother potatoes!

Of course, I can eat seafood, but 1) I am picky about seafood, and 2) I watch  that I don’t eat too much because the way we have polluted our oceans freaks me the fuck out. I don’t want to eat other people’s prescription drugs, or Mercury or even Fukushima shit.

For the first time in my life, after one live birth, a few miscarriages, and the fact I always wished I had more children, I am glad I did not.

I use to…

I use to call you whenever I want.

I use to see us together again.

I use to dump all the thoughts and shit that runs through my head non stop, in your lap and talk about it for hours, from every angle.

I use to feel such comfort in having you there, to tell me no matter what, “It’s OK girl, I love you and you still got me.”

Those are magic words. I never knew that not hearing them after five and a half months could hurt me so very badly.

When things in my life happen, it hits twice as hard, because I don’t have that special, amazing someone to remind me I am loved.

Don’t ever think you didn’t matter to people, because I can’t even begin to tell you what losing you has done to me. Like yesterday the owner came in to talk to me about some heart tins I want to order for your memorial. I felt bad for him as we were talking stickers, I felt myself feel it all as I said your name and birth/death dates should be on the bottom sticker. He looked at me and said, “You’re emotional”. I said, “I know, and I am sorry.”

This morning I went in and I don’t know why, but I was uncontrollably sobbing about you. Like the loud and hyperventilating kind. For a while I was alone in the dip room, and I went to a box of meltdowns and just beat the fucking shit out of them, leaving them in little tattered shards of beautiful beesewax. Afterwards I just said accusingly, “I FUCKING MISS YOU!”

This is probably a horrible thing to admit, but I have been thinking of when I get your ashes. I want some to go in the ground, in a tree I could plant. I want some to go on a memorial necklace that will have sick n sin engraved on it with your “dates”, and the last thing I was thinking of doing will probably gross the world out and set me up for horrible scorn, but…well, I was thinking of snorting a line of you.

I know that is way, way, way fucked up of me to even say, but I miss you and want you with me so bad that in a state of grief, it seems perfectly normal and acceptable to my fucked up state of being lately.

Let’s Be Honest

With growth, come growing pains.

With ownership, sometimes just comes pain.

The company I work for is AMAZING.  We recently were awarded the highest rated green award for our recycling efforts. I am proud of this.

The owners and management of my company, are also caring and compassionate. At the moment…I am really appreciating this fact. Recently, a good friend’s mother passed away. I asked the owner if we could make some memorial candles for my friend, who also happens to be the company’s tax preparer, along with how I got this job. They of course, went out of their way to do it, and then because of the companies relationship with my friend, did not charge  me. Here is the final product:

After giving them to my friend, and seeing how much her whole family enjoyed them and are planning to order more for the entire clan, I was proud. I also started thinking about my grandson that passed away. As I have wailed and stated repeatedly, I never got to meet him during his short six month life. I never had anyone call me grandma, I never got to smell him, or look in his eyes, have him grab my finger, or watch my daughter become a mother. There is a lot of pain there and as much as I have not felt it…I did something without thinking how it would make me react.

I decided that I wanted candles like that, to give my mother, my two sisters, my daughter, myself and my ex-husband. Yes, I am including my abuser, he lost a grandson too. I spoke to the owner this morning and asked him if I could order six similar candles. Of course he asked questions and so my story came out. It was a condensed version without all the dirt. He expressed his sympathy and said they would do it for me. I was happy. I felt like I was doing something that made me own the fact that for once, for a short time, I was a grandmother.

I sat down and continued working. Then I realized my daughter told me my grandson’s name. His first name. I don’t know his middle name. I can assume his last name. I have ONE picture of him, I stole it from the father’s FB page. I have to go to my sister, who is the only one who met my grandson for more photos. All of it hit me, and the tears started. I sat, crying, processing candles while blind with tears for two hours. I kept working as long as the tears stayed silent. When the sobs started in the bathroom, I found my manager and checked out, grateful for the compassion that I am not always sure I deserve. (See that? How easy it is to slip in to old thinking?)

As I am feeling these emotions I have not yet allowed myself to feel, I also am asking myself what the tears are for? Are they for my daughter and her loss, or are they just selfishly for myself? Is it wrong of me to ask my little sister to get my daughter and my older sister their candles, and not tell them they are from me, or this is where I work?

My first “want” when I left work was to call Mr. Yummy and look for a band-aide, but that is an old pattern. I decided to come home, FEEL this and write, burn my Clarity scented candle and center myself back to the now.

I felt my growing pains and didn’t stuff them. I think this is a good thing. It hurts, and it sucks, but I did it, which must mean I was ready to feel it.

One thing I know, the love and support of my friends and family, is a very nice offset.