Wednesday, June 24, 2015

The Hero

Today my thoughts won't leak.  My crystal clear vision of what I want to say and how exactly and irreverently I want to say it is plugged up.  I have a hallway full of dirty laundry.  It's a wide and long hallway and there is no room to walk for all the mounds of dirty clothes, sheet & towels.   Also, two little girls eating Italian ices on the couch after being told not to eat Italian ices on the couch.  The two boys are off and out in the world.  That helps because at least that Xbox is shut off.  Maybe one of the little girls will break it.  Maybe I should suggest they blow bubbles into it.

This week alone my father unfriended me on Facebook because he is worried I use too much profanity in my posts (I don't) and he's worried it will haunt me because I am employee of my local school district (he might have a point).  We've made up.  We are FB friends again, although I did NOT wish him Happy Father's Day.  I'm still mad because instead of writing "the Xbox is shut the fuck off", I conceded and wrote "the Xbox is shut off".  I really resent the fact that my 77 year old father can influence me this way.  I consider myself a far better communicator than him and more in touch with modern living.  Can this man be right?  I don't know.

My issues with my father are not the worst of it.  This week, my brother-in-law almost died because he had blood clots in his lungs.  He got himself to the hospital and he is actually fine now.   But even that is not the worst of it.   The real worst of it is that my niece is having a thyroid nodule biopsied today.  My niece is a cancer survivor.  She isn't just a survivor.  She's a miracle because ten years ago my sister more or less willed her back to life after three years of chemo, radiation and a full bone marrow transplant.  My sister's name is "The Hero".  My sister has done some things for her kids and despite her kids that I don't know if I could do to help her daughter survive.  I don't know when I would give up.  I don't know what my name would be if one of my kids were to get sick.  One of my kids had Lyme disease years ago and I was so worried I almost hated him.  Is that love?  Helping your kid survive despite being mad, literally angry, with worry?

I'm going to tackle some more laundry, get the girls off my couch, loosely meal plan and then I'm going to go to yoga.  And the whole time I'm at yoga I'm going to be thinking of my niece and The Hero and try to transfer whatever energy I can to help them.  Because what if my sister, after all these years, doesn't have the strength of will anymore?  What is her name going to be this time?  I'm going to stop using the word "fuck" and I'm going to start to pray the only way I know how.  And maybe this time I won't be angry and afraid and hide and maybe I can help The Hero keep her name.

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

My Important Side



I wish I could show people my most important side.  The one that rages and reacts and sweats.  Slaps herself.  The one who knows what adrenaline tastes like.  The one that no one can help.  The one that kind of doesn't want help.

I've been having panic attacks since puberty.  I don't know if I was born with a predisposition for them or if they were slapped into me by the time I was six.  Probably a combination of both because I think the slapper also had some sort of panic issue as well.  So, probably I was born this way AND got it slapped into me.  I'm that kind of lucky.

I'm not writing this to "out" anyone.  I'm writing this because I don't know who I would be without my most important side.  Some of my most lucid and true thoughts have echoed through my brain while I'm busy stuffing myself into a closet (presumably to find a womb like setting) or hiding under the covers while dry heaving.  Sometimes this is the only way I know how to find out what I'm really thinking.  Answers to questions I never learned to properly answer when I was young.  "What do you want?" and "What would make you happy?"  Questions you shouldn't feel guilty or wrong for answering.

My husband probably suffers the most from my panic attacks.  My kids - hardly at all.  I am definitely NOT slapping anything into them.   Never my babies.

My husband, though, he's not my kid.  I need him to bear witness.   This sweaty, crying mess that I become doesn't want to hide.  There is something in there and every time I withdraw when I can't be fabulous,engaging or even just calmly boring then I feel very dishonest.   I have left many a friend based on that judgement of myself until I learned that not every friendship need go that deep.   However, my marriage does or I feel that I might as well go it alone.

I just realized that this whole entry is kind of a love letter to my husband.  I don't need to show my most important side to everyone.  But I need to share it with him.  I trust him to listen to the answers only crying under a kitchen table - or, lately (and more gently), sweating into a terry cloth yoga mat - will get me.  It's my kind of normal.  This life that we have built is what makes me happy even if sometimes I don't know it.