Time and Holding Space

It’s been a while, dear friends.  I don’t even know how long it has been, but I don’t want to look because then I will feel ashamed that I have been away as long as I have.  I would feel guilty for not posting things sooner, even if I didn’t really have anything to post.  Maybe it wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to post, but I just didn’t have the right words for it.  I figured I had posted enough of the dark recesses of my heart and mind (and really who wants to read that).

Since I don’t even know where I left off in my life last, and I didn’t want to go back to see where it was, I figure I will start fresh and slow.  Sort of ease my way back into it, into the world that I was trying to deny but life just won’t let me anymore.  M moved out, months ago now, actually.  The divorce is next Thursday.  

I have been seeing a Doctor who just wants me to take more meds,  but really, they just pile up in my medicine cabinet.  Maybe I am waiting for the Zombie apocalypse to come before I take them.  I look at them, the bottles with my name on it, and I feel like if I take them daily as I should (in the morning with food), it is admitting that I am not okay.  The fact that they are sitting there with me not taking them is a sign probably that I am not okay.

It’s hard.  Life if hard.  There are easy times, really good times, where I am so happy to breathe, and live, and see trees.  Playing cards, or Star Wars pinballs, or other pinballs, they help me.  I can’t do it forever though, and then when I go to bed alone, usually medicated on sleeping pills (those I do take.  I can fully acknowledge that I have problems sleeping), it just washes over me.  Then there are the other times.  The times that aren’t so easy.  Coming home from work at 8 before Girl 1 and 2 go to bed, and I have about an hour before they do so.  Girl 1 usually very interested in what is online as 15 year olds can do, and the Boy playing a game or watching Star Trek.  Absent is Girl 2, since even when she is here, getting home at 8 really doesn’t provide a lot of time, and weekends are split between two working parents.  I feel it, her not being here.  I feel a bit empty, and to cover that up I do what I can to fill it, like play Star Wars pinballs, or stare at the Facebooks, and push myself to knowing that she will be back.  Sometimes I just want to stay in my footy pajamas all day, or go to bed as soon as I get up.  I don’t do this, but I know I want to.

My life has changed so radically in the last few months, some in ways I expected and some in ways you just can’t plan for no matter what.  The past month alone has provided me with a loss I won’t share here, but didn’t help me get back on that feeling great train.  I am very thankful for my girl K, who has just let me cry, even if I can’t provide a reason for it.  She just lets me be sad, and to borrow a phrase from Momastery, she holds space for me.  FFAC listens to me as well, and provides me with the pick me ups that I need to know that it will eventually be okay.

In general, I am a positive person.  I feel the world provides for you and gives you what you give to it.  You have to go through things to get to the end of the tunnel.  These last few weeks have been particularly hard with the upcoming holidays.  I don’t know how to share my children.  It isn’t something I have ever had to do.  Going through a Thanksgiving, or Christmas Eve, or Christmas day even without it being what it has my entire life makes me sad.  

Today I have off and I have done absolutely nothing other than sit here.  I haven’t picked up anything, or done the dishes.  I haven’t gone through my coupons, or removed the plates/glasses from the living room.  I did take a shower, so that is a plus.  I did call the doctor to tell him that I really am having anxiety issues at work (how can you not when the person you are divorcing sits two feet away from you), and that yesterday the word “lemons” threw me into a downward spiral, which resulted in me having to breathe deeply and cry.  He was on vacation, but the Doctor who called me back told me to take more pills.  I still haven’t.  I guess I am still in my denial there.

So, I guess what this all equates to is that presently, I may not be in the best space, but I am alive.  Sometimes I seem to be incapable of doing normal things, like phone calls, emails, or a blog post, but I am still here, going through my days.  I am thankful for what I have in my life, and I know that there are great things to come, but I just have to push through this time and get there.  I just hope my girl K doesn’t get upset that I didn’t do anything today.  

Hold some space for me, friends.   

The Art of Feels

When I was 15, I was told that I was a manic depressive.  I didn’t understand really what that meant as I sat there holding a paper to give to a pharmacist.  Sure, I got depressed but I was 15.  It like comes with the territory, or so I thought.  What the person who handed me didn’t understand is that what he saw as manic depressive, I saw as just having a lot of feels.  I had that paper and I walked home and walked right past the pharmacy because I didn’t think I actually needed anything to cure me.  I just had feels.

I’ve always been a girl who had really deep feels.  I didn’t think it was strange to cry over books and commercials, it was normal.  I could empathize with peoples pain and hurt and always want to fix it for them.  If I could, I would try to suck their feels into myself so they wouldn’t have to have them anymore.  I would shoulder the worlds hurts if I could.

I remember being in third grade and my teacher had reached out to my mom.  There was a girl in the class who was having a difficult time.  She really didn’t fit in and she had no friends.  The teacher wanted me to make friends with her so she wouldn’t feel so alone.  So I would walk home with her and play games with her (I still remember sitting on her living room floor playing “Where’s the Beef” – yes, they made a board game out of that).  I think it has always been in my genetic makeup to just feel all the feels.

When my father unexpectedly passed away, I remember going to the doctor again.  A regular doctor who asked a bunch of questions and she ended with giving me a script for anti-depressants.  Again, I was handed something to dull down my overactive feels.  I went to the pharmacy this time because I was older, and didn’t trust myself as much, and got it filled.  I went home and stared at it before I threw them in the garbage.  To me, being sad and not sleeping well had everything to do with the fact that my father died on my son’s birthday and no one knew he was even in the hospital.  That makes sense, right?  Who wouldn’t have feels?  I remember talking to one of my employees at the time who’s father had also passed and he was given the same pills.  The difference was he took them.  He told me how he didn’t feel sad, but he also didn’t feel happy.  It was just nothing.  After that conversation I had known I made the right choice.

Once more I was given this magical cure of the feels.  I was going through a rough spot and just couldn’t get out of my hole.  It was pretty bad for a while and resulted in me having a mini breakdown.  I saw yet another new doctor and this time filled the pills and started taking the medication.  I did it for about a week before I realized that this is just who I am.  I am a girl who has deep feels.

That isn’t to say that there are tons of people out there who need the medication.  I think anyone who has issues should exhaust avenues to make themselves better.  For me, it wasn’t the medication that was going to make me feel better.  It was accepting who I am and acknowledging that sometimes I will care too deeply, love too hard, and mourn when I’ve lost things.

Right now I feel a little broken.  I feel a little sad, and a little mournful.  It will eventually pass, and I will be back to my rainbows, unicorns, and please don’t cuddle me self (walking contradiction, remember?).  I was outside and the neighbor was mowing the lawn and I wondered if he was also broken.  Maybe he had just lost something and felt a little sad and mowing the lawn made him feel better.  I am sure it probably wasn’t the case, but I like to make silent connections with unsuspecting people.  

I didn’t take the medications because I wanted to feel.  I wanted to feel all the feels, good and bad.  I fully believe you can’t have one thing without another, you can’t be happy without knowing sad.  You can’t be full without knowing empty.  It helps us gauge where we are, or what we need to do to get to a better place.  Sometimes things can be scary.  Scary doesn’t mean hard stop though, if anything scary is the best feel to have because it is going to be a monumental moment in your life.  Stop and think about it.  Think about one time you were really scared.  Did you run?  If you did, were you happy you did?  Did you face it?  If so, did you get that waive of relief for doing something you never thought you could do, or was it for something worth so much that nothing could have stopped you?  Monumental.  

I love people.  I really, really, love people.  I love them when they are happy, and I love them when they aren’t.  I understand broken people, the fighters that keep going, and the ones that need help getting picked back up.  I have been all of those, and something tells me you have as well.  I have yet to meet one person who has not been broken.  We are all so wonderfully fantastic with our feels and our scars.  It’s beauty, friends.  I may not feel it now, but I know I will again.  I will ask Girl2 and K to give me my own Warrior face make up because I deserve it.  

I don’t know what ended up happening to the girl who I played Where’s the Beef with.  She ended up moving at some point.  I still think about it from time to time, and how I was really scared to approach her at first, but we had some good times together.  Feels aren’t always a bad thing, even when they are at their worst, and they are always worth it.  For me, being a girl with really deep feels makes me feel alive and connected.

Just remember it’s okay to be broken.  I sat around all day today in my pajamas, took a shower and got dressed in more pajamas.  I drew 2 pictures, ordered pizza because I couldn’t be bothered and ate the whole small gluten free pizza in one sitting.  I think now I will curl up with a book, and try to lose myself in someone else’s broken story.  One day I will get my face paint.