DogTags

He ships out tomorrow and even though I know he will be perfectly fine, I can't help but worry. I put my hands against his chest and felt the chain that lie beneath his t-shirt and a spot somewhere inside me went cold. I pulled the chain out from under the shirt and turned the dogtags over and over in my hands. It seemed so very real all of the sudden. Even though this trip has been planned for a long time, it isn't his first trip and it won't be his last trip, I still get scared every time he goes and stay that way until I see with my own eyes that he is home, whole and safe.

I must have asked him a million times if he is going to be okay and he could tell me a million and one times and it would still not be enough. The fact is he is going away to war and no matter where he is on the base, he is still at war. Holding those dogtags in my hands brought the whole reality of it crashing down. He is the closest I have ever been to "war". Never, in any lifetime, have I been exposed to its horrors or its fallout.

Please, God, bring him home safely. Bring them all home safely, but please be sure to bring him home safely.

"The light of God surrounds you,
"The love of God enfolds you,
"The power of God protects you,
"The presence of God watches over you.
"Wherever you are, God is, and all is well."
(Unity Prayer for Protection)

Happy Birthday

It is my birthday. Today I am 31 years old. Last year I refused to acknowledge my birthday but no one would let me forget it. This year I really don't care. It's a birthday - so what? Am I supposed to celebrate this day? the day of my birth? the beginning of a lifetime of pain that I caused? the day I have wished could never have happened for as long as I can remember? I celebrate it with the mask that I need to wear to keep people happy but in my heart I do not celebrate it.

Last night I stayed up very very late. I do not know why - I had nothing special I was doing. I just didn't want to go to bed. I surfed the Internet and I read emails and the Friday night stories. I watched recorded copies of "my" shows and I read a magazine. I didn't do any writing or blogging or meaningful reading. I just didn't go to bed. I think maybe I just didn't want today to come.

Each year on my birthday, I reflect back on what I learned over the past year. Last year I learned it is possible to trust but that doesn't mean you won't still get hurt. It's just a different kind of hurt, one that isn't meant to demean and degrade and show your faults and failings. This kind of hurt, from someone I can trust, is about showing truths that I don't want to see and being willing to do things that upset me, even hurt me, but are to help me. It's strange, finding that trust, real trust, can still hurt. Maybe pain in universal. Maybe pain means absolutely nothing at all. Maybe that's why things that shouldn't hurt do and things that should hurt don't.

This year I also had what I have always known confirmed. Do or don't do, anywhere in the middle means getting caught and getting caught is a very very very bad thing. Ah well, I have to learn that lesson over and over it seems...

"Happy birthday to you..."

Alone in a Crowded Room

I feel so alone. I don't know how to explain it. It's not like I'm ever actually alone. And even on the extremely rare times when I am physically alone, I am never alone in my head. And yet I feel incredibly alone. I have friends, online and in RL, and they talk to me and I talk to them but I don't think they have any idea how I feel or all the things that happen behind the scenes. Mostly this is because I won't tell them. I just can't afford to let them in. The warring factions in my head don't want interference. It is very difficult when so many parts of me want to feel better, to get better, to be better and yet so many parts of me know I don't deserve to feel better. There is so much hatred inside of me, for me, about me. I want to hide. I want to be invisible. I want to die. But I don't want to hurt my kids and the people who care about me. And I don't want to admit to feeling so dark because it would first of all get me into trouble, secondly hurt the people I care about, and mostly it would destroy the things I most cherish. It is ironic that trying to be everything I want to be is the very thing ripping me apart. I want to be home for the kids. I want to be influential in my writing groups. I want to be Baby-Mommy's shoulder to cry on and the only one who knows how to take care of Baby.

And yet I know the swiftest way to recovery would be to immerse myself in these horrors that I have been rejecting for as long as I can remember. As the shrink would say, to destroy the Wall, all of it, all at once. Remember it, feel it, accept it and grow out of it. Radical acceptance, he calls it. I can't accept what I won't experience or remember experiencing. But that type of immersion would take me down. I would not be able to function while drowning in that pain, even if I knew I could rise out of the ashes like a phoenix.

Although that would be the quickest way, it is not the way I can choose. I cannot drop out of my life for the time it takes to fall down and stand up again. My children could not have me disappear for a while, every moment is critical in the life of a child. If I were to shatter, even knowing I would heal again, Baby-Mommy would take Baby away from me and I would never be able to regain that relationship with her. And every moment is exponentially critical in the life of an infant. I think everyone else would understand or at least not be destroyed. But my children, including Baby, mean everything to me.

And so, the best I can do is take this ever so very slowly and try my best to hang on tight to everything I hold dear. Every moment is a labor of pain but done for love. I wish every moment of every day for the peace of death and do not really trust myself to keep my body safe from the damages of my mind. I have no doubt that I will burn my flesh again, though I may not mean to. I will likely cut and scratch at my skin until I draw blood, though I may not feel it at all. I may even take pills that I ought not take, though it would not be done lightly for I strain against that with everything I can and the force to be so drastic is weaker than my will to protect my children.

It will be a long path to recovery, piece by piece, two steps forward and one step back, but it is the best I can do. I know my best is not good enough, not now and maybe not ever. But it is my best and I can only pray it will suffice. I don't want to look at the things behind the Wall. And every time I do so, it tears at my heart and my will. I know I have no choice so I will do what I must but I am scared. Perhaps, if there is a conscious God, He will bring me home instead of bringing me to this pain. Or perhaps, He knows I deserve every moment of the pain and more.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned..."

She Could Have Died

She could have died. Right there - right here - in my front yard, she could have died. Twelve years old with her whole life ahead of her and she almost lost it all. A poor judgement call, a slip of the shoe and she almost lost it all. With two kindergarten boys and her almost 12 year old boyfriend watching her fall, watching the rope they've played on for years go tight and nearly take the life of a young girl.

She could have died. In my yard, on my watch, in my tree...

Just a trick. She was showing off for Kid-1 and tried a very stupid trick. The rope, knotted around her neck, climbing the tree, just a trick, watch this trick. She slipped, she fell.

He saved her. He probably saved her life. He brought the little stepladder, the 3-step one the little kids use to reach the first branch. He brought it and put it under her feet. He saved her.

The bruising. The cut. She looks like she was brutally attacked. She's only 12. And she nearly died. She could have died.

She could have died.

More Random Thoughts

Where do "things I want to have but need to have but still really want to have" fit on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs? I didn't see a tier for "selfish, materialistic desires"

Why do I feel more like Baby's mommy than her auntie/babysitter? Am I wrong to feel that way if I don't tell Baby-Mommy this? Why doesn't Craig understand that I don't tell Baby-Mommy no because I feel Baby is my responsibility too? I can't explain why, but she is. She's my baby as much as Baby-Mommy's. Heck, even Baby-Mommy refers to her as "our" baby.

Saturday I rode a bicycle to a park about 1/2 a mile from our house with the boys and carrying (wearing) a rather heavy backpack. We stayed for about 20 minutes then came back home again. I had 2 asthma attacks (one each way) and my knee swelled up for about an hour and I ended up taking a rather strong pain pill.

Today I walked a little over a mile carrying Baby and Baby's carrier and wearing the same backpack only now at about triple weight in the noon day sun. (Baby was heat and sun protected!) I had one asthma attack and every muscle in my body is trying to figure out what it did to deserve such a cruel punishment.

The burn on my arm is trying to heal, I think. I still can't figure out whether to keep a dressing on it. I called the GP and his nurse said to leave it open to the air so it can dry out and form a scab. It has been open since late Friday afternoon. It won't dry. The best I can get is sticky and that's if I put it directly in the path of a breeze or fan. Someone says it hurts and for a while, it did hurt! But now I only know it hurts because someone is telling me this. What's the deal with that? I made an appointment with GP to get it checked. I need it to heal before Craig sees the scope of the damage.

Speaking of the scope of the damage, we are actively having to restrain Pyro again. He wants to "fix it" by making it an oval shape instead of the awkward-to-explain wonky cross that doesn't even look like a cross. I feel him bubble up behind my eyes. I feel him pulling at the minds of everyone holding on to him. I tried putting away the candles. I tried putting away the lighter. He says that won't stop him and that we can only hold him back for so long. We will continue to hold onto him. Tomorrow maybe we can get help.

I had a dream last night that totally blew my mind apart. I woke up from it, not screaming or yelling, not even scared, just so deeply hurt and shocked and horrified. I spoke with the girls this morning and they have agreed to stop throwing pictures at me. We threatened to throw THEM over the Wall if they couldn't lay off. I'm not ready to deal with this yet. I'm just not ready.

It takes a lot of energy to suppress thoughts and emotions that I'm not allowed to feel. They spout off inside my head and are promptly pounced on and buried again. But they come back. They are things no one can change but me and there is this huge tug of war between wanting to change and be rid of those feelings and thoughts and feeling that they are totally valid, real, and can never be changed. Anyone who says contrary doesn't know the whole story, doesn't know me.

I watched the movie "Stay" with Ewan McGregor and and Ryan Gosling. It is about a psychiatrist filling in for a different psychiatrist who finds that one of the patients is seriously suicidal and follows through the next three days until the kid says he's going to do it. By halfway through, it obvious there is something weird going on. By the end it becomes a TOTAL MIND F*CK!! It was so weird I sat staring at the televsion for 15 minutes afterwards just trying to figure out what the heck happened. Two days later, I am still trying to decide if it was a total deus et machina or not. Whacked movie... would prolly be awesome on some kind of drug trip (yeah, as if I would know *rolls eyes*) but as it stood it pulled me along on a wild ride trying to figure out what was going on and when the end came I went - WTF?! Seriosuly... massive MIND F*CK!!


One more thing before I go bang my head against a brick wall until it begs for mercy then hide in the closet until the next millenium...

Why are most people afraid of death?

And It All Comes Down to MONEY

On Saturday, my son turns 12. This is his first year in middle school and I want him to make a good impression. I want him to be happy. I feel so materialistic, but I want to give him things that make him happy. Somehow a big hug and a heart-felt "I love you!" just isn't gonna cut it. Anything I could do for him that would be above and beyond every day stuff... it all takes money. I think the current plan is to take him and some of his friends to play laser tag on his birthday. (How are we going to pay for that?) So what happens if his friends don't show? He doesn't know it but his "real" friends aren't the kids from school that he hangs out with only at school. His real friends are his brothers and the neighbor boys and the kid around the corner. They play with him when he is happy and the forgive him when he gets mad. They may not be in middle school yet, but they are always there - they are his "real" friends, and he doesn't even know it. He isn't inviting any of them to his party. Some day he'll realize it, hopefully before it's too late.

So, he'll have his party and we'll see what happens. Then there is the matter of his birthday presents. I have no idea what to get him! He won't give me any idea of what he wants. Football gloves and an mp3 player. That's it. That's all he'll say. The entire list I have to give to everyone. WTF?! What do I do with this? (And how do I pay for whatever gift we give him?)

Beyond that, there are so many things going on and they all seem to boil down to one solution - more money. How do we pay the back bill for the pediatric urologist so we can schedule the test that needs to be done and then how do we pay for the test? How do we pay for the psychiatrists and the pediatricians and orthopedic specialists? How can I find the cash to get the kids' eyes checked? Kid-2 *really* needs to have them checked ("every 6 months" and it's been 2 years) and Kid-1 prolly ought to, to make sure his prescription hasn't changed. And Kid-3 should be checked too, especially since all three of the others need to go in. There are so many bills to be paid, big ones and little ones. And all the little things that turn out not to be so little: school pictures for 3 kids this week. School lunches, football fees, drum lessons, gymnastics, dance, school dances and back-to-school carnivals.

There are other things... Craig had to put the spare tire on my car because my tire was so stripped bare, even the little bitty metal thread things were broken. He said I am *very* lucky it didn't blow out while I was on the highway - it could have caused a major accident. (And I'm not allowed to wish that had happened, with fatal results for me and no collateral damage.) He says all 4 tires are critically bad but that one tire is lethally bad. All 4 tires, he says, for the kind he says we need, will be somewhere between $350 and $400. And it has to happen. How?

Then there are all the things I shouldn't even be putting on the list but somehow got in there anyways. There are books I want (not a big deal). There are some shirts and jeans and things I want (again, not a big deal). There is software I want: MS Office, incl Access (and I *really* want it!) and Dragon NaturallySpeaking (I *really* want that too!) and Final Draft (I want that but it can wait). And there are activities that I want. I want to go to school. Just one course a semester, just one. But that's $400 we certainly don't have. And I want to rejoin Curves - I hate the way I look, the way I feel. Refusing to eat has helped - 25 pounds of helped - until I got busted and now I have people checking up on me, making sure I'm eating. And as a result, 5 of those pounds have come back already with more to come, I'm sure. I don't know what else I can do that works with who I am and what my physical limitations are and the Curves program is perfect. I did it for a while and *loved* it. I only quit when I had knee-breaking surgery and that was with the intention of returning. Except now I can't - it's another $30 a month.

If money weren't an issue, the bills would get paid every month, the doctors would get paid on time, medical attention would happen when it needs to happen, including dental and vision. The kids would take the activities they want and that fit into their lives and their schedules and to their tastes. I could buy the baby the things that I want her to have. I could get Kid-1 into counseling and checked for braces and get the braces if they are warranted. I would take one class per semester, fall and spring, until time and mental stability allow me to take more. We could do birthdays and Christmas and handle emergencies. And maybe have a little savings just in case.

I'm not asking for enough to buy a yacht and a mountain get-away. I don't want to buy the kids designer clothes and expensive everythings. I'm not even asking for enough to pay off our house and car flat-out. Just enough to be able to pay our bills and take care of our kids.

And the thing is, there isn't a way out of this. We can't sell the house and downgrade: we couldn't get out of it what we owe on it. We can't sell the van and downgrade for the same reason. I can't go back to work and even if I could, without crashing and burning to a point of no return, it would mean losing my SSDI to a job that won't pay as much as the disability does; I can't go back into my former profession: 6 years is a lifetime in IT and I'm obsolete in a world that is teaming with 20-somethings who are on top of the world. I could think of something under the table but I don't feel right about that and it'd be back to the whole crash and burn scenario. Craig can't get another job in his field at his rate and he can't get an additional job because of his work schedule.

Is there a solution? Is there a way out of this mess? We are drowning in debt and we don't even own a credit card! It's not like we're out partying and buying extravagant things and racking up credit card debt for stupid things. I just want to be able to pay the medical bills!

Oh well, nothing that complaining can fix. Might as well shut up now. *sigh*

Dragging the Bottom of the River (CRAZY WEEK pt 3.5)

CRAZY WEEK, part three and a half

Wednesday night/Thursday morning: It had been a rough 3 days. Three little days that could have been an entire month because each day seemed to go on forever. Truth be told, Thursday and Friday were almost nothing, not even footnotes in the annals of CRAZY WEEK. But by Wednesday night, I was strung out, stretched out, worn out, and drama-ed out. Getting lost on the way home that night really did no good. Especially since I got lost because I missed my exit because I was trapped in the middle lane on all sides by semi-trucks and never even saw the exit.

Anyhow, that was part of Wednesday and by the time I got home it was very clearly Thursday. I figured I would sleep like the dead but was granted no such victory.

Semi-trucks haunted my dreams. The smell of an old sleeper-cabin used for intimate activities jerked at my senses even through sleep. A slight overtone of Old Spice - the original - hanging over the primitive rankness. The feeling of being unstable where every so often, at unpredictable times, the whole world would sway and shudder like slipping at the edge of a cliff and knowing how close I came to falling into the sea. The damp heat of stagnant, sun-warmed air, sweat wanting to rise on my bare skin kept at bay only by an unwillingness to do anything that might prove I am alive. A distant roar, steady as the droning of bees, with sudden crescendos as of angry waves breaking against unbeatable cliffs.

The first night, only my senses were assailed but they were assaulted repeatedly throughout the short night. In the morning, knowledge - new to me but as old as the memories themselves - existed where a blank void had been. I prefer the blank void. After that night and every night since, more has been added to the dream... words, pictures, feelings, footage that continues beyond the sensory snapshot of Wednesday night. No new knowledge has emerged from the dreams, just the intense and painful re-enactment of one horrible night long ago that happened to a different person, to a little girl who now refuses to speak for herself, even among the anonymity of the group structure. She cries now, the little girl, for she feels the pain that I no longer remember except as fact. I think it is like the knowledge that brothers fought against each other in the Civil War and the horrid, rending pain that must have created in their hearts - I know it was painful, but I do not *feel* the pain of it.

She existed before that night. She existed long before that night. And she exists still today. She shelters me from the pain that hurts the heart too much to bear, turns it into someone else's pain, leaving behind simply the knowledge that it was painful. I do not know when she appeared in my head. Perhaps she was the first of the Voices that were more than a thought, perhaps she is nothing more than that even now.

I cannot go further tonight. My heart keeps seizing like an icy hand gripping it painfully tight and releasing just as quick. It isn't a panic attack per se. It's more like a spasm, but it grips my heart and radiates pain and shock and fear and horror and hopelessness and death all together in one, maybe two seconds. Then it passes, leaving me wondering if I truly felt all that so quickly and praying it doesn't happen again.

"Pray with me, Forrest!
"Please, God, make me a bird so I can fly far, far away from here...
"Please, God, make me a bird so I can fly far, far away from here...
"Please, God, make me a bird so I can fly far, far away from here..."
(Jenny in Forrest Gump)