New Clothes

I changed the theme. I think it’s a push for me to start writing again.

I’m also going to write really honestly.

Here are some truths.

I miss The Girl. I am pretty sure she knows this. I’ve never stopped loving her, though I fear her intensely because at one time, she had the power, and used it to try and hurt me. It worked. I’d love to have a relationship with her, but I also fear it. Trust and all.

I am moving on in life after so many losses, but in all honesty if I die today, I am pretty OK with that. I don’t think I am courting death, but maybe I am. I’m not going to the doctor and I have some pretty serious things going on with my body. Do I ignore it longer and go till I drop, or do I go to the doctor?

I’m not really into more of the same. I have kind of had enough of the loss.

I am probably more closed off than ever, because to let anyone in that close would mean to trust, and I am very, very, very careful about who I hand actual trust to.

On the other side, I know the things I have experienced, seen and felt, to be true. It’s just that life hit me so hard I fell off the path. I’ve not gone back to that same hateful person, but there is this wall of protection around me and when you live like that, you aren’t really living at all. You’re sitting around, waiting for it to be done. My life has felt like the last act, of a bad play, that will not fucking end.

But still I am waiting. I don’t know for what, but I am waiting.

I’m thinking I know what I personally need to do, but I have procrastinated because to jump back into it means work and I know that with so much hidden emotion and denied feeling, it’s going to be heavy. It can’t be any heavier than keeping all this shit inside me, can it?

There are things I am totally happy about also.

I love my little apartment. I love that the things I do in my life, are mine. I do them when I want and no one criticizes me, tells me I am wrong, disapproves, or hits me.

I love my few friends I have kept. These are the people I trust and am comfortable with.

Yesterday, I read something I wrote a few moths before the stroke. How odd. As things were getting better and I was happy because of Mr. Yummy, my move, my job, my soaring spiritual awakening, there was a point I admitted I feared what was coming. In all honesty I seriously thought The Girl was about to make an appearance and I wasn’t sure I could do it. That would have been so much easier than losing Mel, Mr. Yummy and Arie. All within a short time span. Back to back. It felt so cruel. it made me ask if I was a good person? I sort of began to doubt my value. I forgot I am what I am and deserve what I deserve, as do you.

With Love,

IWentCrazy

I lost…

I lost many things when I lost my best friend.

I lost security, my soul-mate, my strongest supporter, my confidant, my partner in crime, my favorite reason to laugh, my trust in many things, mainly letting anyone love me or get close enough that I might get hurt if they go away, the comfort of realizing that someone important has gone away, but thank the Creator they didn’t die and my ability to sit almost everyday and write.

I miss that creative outlet, but I realized that I read Mel EVERYTHING I wrote. My writings were part of our hours long conversations. In hindsight, it’s like in my mind I was always writing with her as my audience. I only read my writing to one other friend (and of course, my mother). I read it to no one now.

I am a different person today.

I have made a new friend. I’m tentative and cautious. I haven’t called her a friend to her face yet, but I love her. She’s my girl I have been the most honest with about who I am. She is my head expediter at work. There are only two of us who do this job as well as driving. She was out all week while her kids were on Spring break. Work, without her on a slow day is doable,  but work without her on busy days or glitchy paperwork and labeling days SUCK. Yesterday was one of those days. I was so frustrated at having a work ethic so different from others around me. 90% of our mistakes could be eliminated if drivers checked their paperwork so they didn’t just take the food on their shelf assuming what was there, was all theirs. Mistakes do get made and when the expediters check and release the food for drivers to pick, the drivers sometimes help shelve the food. Sometimes I make a shelf mistake, sometimes Nette does, and sometimes drivers do. Check your pack slips to the food on your shelf as you load your van.

Nette text today saying she would be in Monday and she knew I must be burned out after a week without her. I updated her on yesterday and how I got so frustrated I went out to smoke and cried. Beneath it all was the old habit and desire to call Mel and vent to her all the anger and get it out, without saying shitty things to people I mostly like and have to work with. She came back with…”Well I’m not Mel, but I’m Nette and I always have an ear to listen and to vent at.”

It touched me and made me smile to feel like I have a friend again. She’s right. She’s not Mel and I wouldn’t want her to be. I like her as Nette.

Life does go on after a death like that, but for me it is different. It is…less, because I learned so much and lost so much.

Do I miss Mr. Yummy? No, I miss the idea of him like we were years ago, but that guy is long gone and the guy in his place is not the guy for me as I was not the woman of twenty years ago. Now I know.

Do I miss the living people I have lost? Some I do, some I don’t. That’s all I will say about that, because anything I say, could be falsely used against me because the WRONG people would think what was said about another, was said about them. Story of my life and without that kinda confusion, my life is simpler.

Two year and three months later, I am still crying. Not every day, but more than I imagined I would. I think the only thing that would impact me as much would and will be when my mother walks to the Creator. But today, she is here and I let her love me.

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.