This Day

I vividly remember the news bulletin coming over television, saying that Dr. King had been shot.  I was sitting in the den floor playing solitaire.

And then there was Bobby Kennedy, keeping one major city calm:

Who knew we were two months away from another murder.

Hanging On

By my fingernails.  Which are slowly breaking, one by one.

Making this:

out of this:

Agony

Second acupuncture session today, and it was a disaster.  The needles, the cupping caused pains that made it difficult to breathe.  One needle to my hand sent electricity through my fingers.  One needle in my foot, in a place that one was last time, caused me to gasp in pain.

Then, all of a sudden, I was crying.  Not just tears leaking out of my eyes.  Huge, racking sobs.  I couldn't stop.

If I can't even endure the treatment, how will I ever get well?

Newtown

I am 52 years old, and have experienced my share of sadness.  But what happened yesterday in Connecticut has me, for the first time ever, wondering about and questioning God.

It's been a long time since my two children were in Kindergarten.  Those two first days, however, are very clear in my mind.  After I left them in their classrooms and walked back to my car, I cried both times.  They were so small, and they were setting out on such a big adventure.  It never crossed my mind that, on any given day, I might not be able to pick them up in the line of cars, but would have to go to the medical examiner to retrieve them.

That someone the same age as my younger child could walk into a school and shoot 6 and 7 year-olds over and over again defies reason.  That parents had to wait after getting that horrifying news, that those babies were still lying where they fell and they could not get to them, is something my heart cannot bear.

Temporariness

It struck me at some point over the weekend that most, if not all, of my headaches and knotted stomachs and a good deal of my depression has come from temporariness.

Since I last worked, in December, 2010, every aspect of my life has been unsettled.  My mother's health.  Her death, and having to deal with the estate.  Being unable to find a job.  Problems with my children's lives.  Them moving out of the house, then in.  Finances.  All of these issues have been ongoing, without any ends in sight.  I've been saying that it feels as though my life has flown apart into pieces, and those pieces are just circling my head.  I can't catch any of them and put them to rest.  Or think clearly enough for long enough to try and make sense of them.  My life has been, still is, up in the air.

And although I still have no idea how to deal with all of it, it's comforting to understand it a little more.

Scream

My clothes are aggravating me.  My skin is aggravating.  I want to rip the entire world away from me, or me from the entire world.

I am angry and I am hopeless and I want to scream, but I have no idea what I'd say.  Nothing --- nothing --- is calming me.  I have the TV on because silence is deadly.  But noise makes my skin crawl.  

My son is having very serious mental health issues, but he is not sharing (and he certainly has every right to keep his business to himself.)  My daughter is all over the map emotionally.  I gave each of them until December 31st to save enough money to live on their own --- I can't imagine that either of them have even a tiny percentage of what it would cost.

If they cannot pay rent somewhere else, I will allow them to live here, but there will be rent and bills and rules.  Frankly, the idea of all three of us under one roof again scares me.  We are not good for one another in a long run.  And the feeling that they will have that they have failed will only blacken their moods.  And as they go, I go.

Why can't I get better?  My therapist and my psychiatrist and I are trying all we can, but I'm just sinking more.

The Panic, It Devours Me

When I am having a particularly bad depressive day, or in this exact situation, several in a row, the feeling that lives inside me is that I am being torn to shreds.  Thoughts hurt, clothing is a nuisance, the sadness has depth, breadth and width.

These are the days that make The End (as in the righting of the ship) seem impossible to see, much less imagine.

I see people who care enough to get dressed, go out, keep their heads up, look others in the eye, talk, and I want to SCREAM at them "HEY! I'M DYING HERE!  And no one cares." I used to have my mother to pray for me --- now I'm not sure I even know anyone who prays.  My children are dealing with issues of their own (though they weigh exponentially on me), plus neither is of an age where anyone's world matters but their own.

I am sitting on this couch right now wondering how I will make it through the next ten minutes.  That's what my life is some days.  How am I going to make it through?  Why should I try?  Nothing interests me.  Nothing inspires me.  There are no conversations to be had.  There is no energy to be creative or proactive.  I just sit.  Sit on the edge of panic.  My throat closes and my heart races and I cannot take a breath and I'm going to faint and please don't let me faint and I break out in a cold sweat and I just want to now why this is still happening to me after all these years.  I've gone through therapies, I've gone through medications, and I have never been so low, so despondent in my life.  Nothing --- God help me, sometimes not even my children --- gives me reason to stay conscious anymore.

And yet, I keep waking up every morning.  And my first thought is always the same: "I hate my life."

Hammer Time

In Tennessee, have made one trip to the house, loaded up quite a bit of stuff --- mostly pictures and things, and see quite clearly most things, even the wanted and cherished things, will have to be left.

Went to the graves and cried and asked for forgiveness.  There is no way to describe how bad I feel.

Goodbye

My parents' house sold this weekend.  I'm refusing to the play the could-we-have-gotten-more game because I am so drained by everything that has happened in the last year, I've got very little fight left in me.

I got money out of a bank account I swore I'd never touch to pay for a hotel room for a couple of days, and am leaving tomorrow.  Hopefully, all the papers will be signed and notarized by Friday morning, because that's when I'm leaving to be back for Briton's birthday.

I'll go through the house, and the cabinets, and the drawers, and the closets, and the attic one more time.  Because even though the buyer has given me 10 days after closing to remove any and all things I want, I just don't think I could go up there again.  This has got to be my goodbye trip.

If it won't fit in the car, I have to let it go.  I've asked and asked and asked Briton and Hannah what they want from the house, they haven't given many answers, so if they think of something they want, it's too late.

I've walked through that house so many times in the last 11 months, I don't think another stroll will hurt me.  But I did realize last night that, as of this week, I'll have no more reason to go to Nashville.  Not that I can't go on the odd occasion, but my real reasons are gone.  Which took me to Mama and Daddy's graves.  I'm abandoning them.  No one will go visit them.And I've had so many helpful talks with Daddy. . .

I've just come from therapy, and my therapist encouraged me to just feel whatever I feel, whenever it comes up.  I'm pretty sure the drive back here will be awash in guilty, sad, lonely tears.

Never Count Yourself In

All week, once I'd made the decision to come to Tennessee, the panic had been building.  "I cannot go back inside that house" kept playing over and over in my mind.

Today, I went back into that house, and in less than two hours had my car completely filled.  And I had only worked in one room.

This is more than I can do.  I cannot do it alone, but even if there were a team of movers somewhere waiting for my call, I have no way to pay them.  And where are they going to take everything?  We don't have room in the house in Athens for even a sixth of this stuff.

So I found myself sitting in Daddy's room, sweating and sobbing, and begging him and Mama to forgive me.  I wasn't doing anything right by them, and I was so sorry.  I couldn't do all the things that had to be done, and I was so sorry.  I knew they were angry with my, and disappointed, and hurt, and I was so sorry.  It is just too much.  And I am so, so sorry.