Healing

"The biggest myth I have experienced in my life is that "time heals all wounds". The wounds never heal, the pain never goes away, life moves forward and new wounds begin to overlap. At the end of the day, the pain, the sadness, the anger is just as fresh today and tomorrow as it was yesteday and the day before." -me

The Rain Fell

Once again it is 4 am. Seems like I am either asleep all the time or not at all, no happy medium here. I have been lying in bed the last few hours listening to the spring rain gently falling to the ground, with the chill of the still cold air filling my lungs and house. It was weird to lay down and hear a dog barking somewhere far off in the distance. This winter was a short one. It was only two weeks ago that my son was hiding in a snow fort, now there is no snow to find, let alone build a fort with. Things in the garden have started to pop up and the buds are forming on some of the braver trees. I shouldn’t be surprised given the weather, but they are about 6 weeks earlier than normal. I am continually reminding myself that it is still March as it feels more like end of April early May. We have had record breaking highs several times in the last week or so. 

I have been thinking a lot the last few days about how I want to have another baby. I am getting old now and I really want to start a family. The whole thing, husband, house, kids, dogs, etc.; I am not sure if it is bothering me more now because of my age or if other things are the cause. Spring is always a hard time for me anyway as it’s the time of year that my last baby would have been born had she survived. It is hard for me to sit here and think that my dark haired angel would be five in a few short weeks. I know people miscarry or lose infants or children every day. What I don’t know is how they move forward. I have been paralyzed by fear for all these years because of her returning to the heavens where she belongs. 

Humans are selfish beings. For some reason we would rather have the person alive, tactile, and suffering then to consider letting them move on to where the pain of today and tomorrow no longer exists. I just want my babies back, is that too much to ask for? I suppose it is because that then makes me the person who would rather have them here suffering this world then happily playing angelically, innocently for eternity.

I have been blessed over the last several years with finding sisters like Christine and for finding friends who support my often insane rants and conspiracy theories. I am lucky to be intellectually stimulated by what I consider to be among the most intelligent people in the world from nearly every race, religion, culture and place. Who can ask for more as far as loving friends go? When I am told I am being prayed for my all these diverse groups I cannot help but to think at least someone has to be right!

The rain is beginning to trickle again and the cool air is causing my bones to ache. A train is rolling on off in the distance causing a beautiful rumble to echo off the lake. The train is blowing its’ horn which they never do at night or in the wee hours of the morning, meaning something is on the tracks, likely a deer or two. 

Staring out at the blackness of the night used to make me feel anxious. Maybe it’s my medication but now I look out at the darkness and I feel as though that darkness represents my life – dark, cold and scary, yet somehow familiar because it has been lingering over me and following me for so long. That dark hole allows me to realize how much I am edging the brink of insanity and how easy it would be for me to just be sucked out completely into the unknown. Honestly, it is met with little resistance. Which is where the fear I am feeling seems to stem from.  

Bouncing About!

I guess one could say this has been a fairly emotion week for myself and several of my friends. We have been dealing with everything from illness, to bullying, to financial issues. It seems like when things hit they always hit hard and fast which I guess is or can be a good thing because everything is over and done with at once, but boy does it wipe you out. 

I have been betrayed by someone who I never could have imagined hurting me, never mind on purpose or without explanation. I guess months of talking to one another day in and out isn’t enough regardless of how much you claim to care or how willing you seem to be to protect one another. Funny how things work out, that’s for sure. 

I have been having randomly insane dreams and flashbacks again in my sleep. Stress is always so kind to me –NOT! I find myself feeling as though I am drowning in a sea of chaos and confusion. I think it is fair to say I am exhausted both mentally and physically. 

I was asked to rest today and I did for several hours. I am good at arguing against it because of nightmares but I have come to realize in the last week or so that when someone says I should get some rest that they are likely right, even if it is frustrating. After all, I wouldn’t fall asleep if rest wasn’t required. 

I was feeling rather reckless earlier on. I think that has subsided, at least for now. Maybe I am just overwhelmed by everything and I am just too tired to keep fighting. I am feeling rather submissive at this point and it isn’t going without notice. I have just come to realize that in a lot of things I am not willing to recognize what I actually need versus what I merely want. 

I think I will be done talking about that stuff it’s just depressing and really uninteresting.

I have had my little girl spirit coming by again most evenings. It always seems like she is here so early because of the time change. I am always surprised when a spirit follows the daylight savings time rules, but then again they wouldn’t be visiting me and communicating with me or touching me if they were residual instead of intelligent. I have known for quite some time now that she was a young girl but tonight while she was playing with my hair as she always does she revealed more of herself to me.

She has dark hair, nearly black, and skin about the color of mine, very white. She isn’t one of my children, but she is related in some way, which I find odd because I don’t know of anyone who lost a female child who was related to me. Only boys. She revealed to me that when she died she was older but for whatever reason likes this younger age to visit me in.

Child spirits are always hard to deal with, especially when you have lost children of your own. I love how she always plays with my hair though, feeling those tiny fingers on the back of my head. She reminds me of when my own kids were young and it often makes me sad because she also reminds me of the children in the heavens whom I am missing out on. The only solace this brings me is knowing that my angels don’t have to deal with the pains of this world and that they will forever remain innocent and pure because they were taken back by God Himself. 

Spring is already in the air, the snow is gone rather early this year and things are starting to pop up in the garden. The birds are back and many of the trees are beginning to get buds. It is very weird for March where I live. Normally at this time of year I am still contending with snow and shovels and heat. I don’t even have the heat on right now. Normally I would be considering buying seeds and starting them indoors at around this time of year. It appears as though the growing season is going to be longer this year than normal so I am thinking now about doing a vegetable garden for the first time in a long time.

I have so much on my mind right now everything is bouncing around so horribly. I don’t know if I am going up down or round in circles. 

I have lots to say but no means to communicate it so I will end here for today.

In Between

I haven’t written in a few days which is odd because I usually like to put everything I think out there as it helps to clear my head. This past week or so I have been struggling a great deal with a lot of different things including my own mortality. Doing what’s right for me is never easy. Especially when I have never really cared before, we were sent you with one sole mission in life and that was to die, so I am left asking the question, why can’t we as a society accept our own deaths or the deaths of our loved ones? Other cultures who we consider more primitive deal with death in such a profound, loving and spiritually appeasing way. Somewhere along the line we lost that and became this society that fears that in which we cannot control. I often wonder what the catalyst to this extreme and rather sudden change regarding death was. It came to fruition somehow and instead of being embraced it became feared. 

Selfishness perhaps?

As I lay here awake at quarter after five in the morning my mind is flooded with thoughts from the most rational to the most irrational I have ever had. Bouncing from one thing to the next like a fox on a trampoline. I have images pouring in faster than I can process them and they are all becoming jumbled into one big mass.

I see myself fighting, being restrained in a hospital and then I see myself fighting and being restrained by the men who took my soul. I can see the ceiling tiles that I would stare up at while being raped. I can feel the hands on my flesh being gentle just before they assault me. I can hear the word “sorry” when the torture is done for the night, but then again, was it ever really done?

I close my eyes and as I drift from the present to the past I can feel the restraints on my wrists and ankles. The cold steel followed by the click of a lock causing my stomach to twinge from that sense of permanency that the lock seemed to give off. Like the lock possessed an energy all its’ own, strange how an inanimate object can hold such power and be associated with so much pain. It wasn’t the locks fault.

I miss a lot of things. I miss feeling the kicks of a baby growing inside of me. I miss the will to get up in the morning and live, instead of having a life that I have learned to hate. I have come so far yet really gone nowhere. Today, fear is my chain. It is what holds me still. It is what prevents me from moving forward and learning to love to live again. Fear may only be four short letters but they may be the most powerful in the English language. 

I remember growing up and how close me and my cousins were. We saw each other every weekend, we played hide and seek in the most insane locations. We got stuck in quick sand and had to yank each other out. We would slide ourselves down embankments of sand hundreds of feet into areas that had collapsed from rainfall and we had fun. We called our giant hole “the junior grand canyon”. It gave us years of enjoyment as it progressively grew and it was our secret because we were told not to go there because it was dangerous. Now us girls rarely talk. Not even at Christmas or Thanksgiving. We have all become separate entities. People who grew up as my sisters are now unrecognizable to me in both image and in who they have become. I definitely struggle with respecting them, or anyone who I once considered to be family. “The good die young”.

Now I live my life in hiding with few neighbours and no one who comes into my home. I have my dogs and my cat and my bird as my friends and I have become this recluse who doesn’t recognize their own life, or in this case, lack of life. Fear has trapped me here somewhere between life and death. Maybe this state of mind is in fact the purgatory that the church once spoke of. I look around this hell hole and each pile of stuff, each book that hasn’t been put away, each box; they all represent the chaos that I feel deep within. I can’t bring myself to organize and put things away because inside I am so deeply out of order. You can look behind the piles of stuff and see that I was once quite organized. Books on the shelves are in order of size. The knickknacks are specifically placed. The reality is you can see the exact moment in which I decided to give up on life, the exact moment in which I allowed my life to stop, the moment in which the pain became unbearable and that I quit loving because if you love you lose and I can’t afford to lose anyone else, not now, not again. This chaos doesn’t just represent the mess I am in; it represents my loss of control over my life, my emotions, and my fear. It shows that I am being dictated by a power far beyond my own control and most of all it shows that I really don’t care. In that moment something inside of me gave up and I quit. I don’t know how to turn that desire back on, likely because I don’t care enough to want to. 

Part of me has all these crazy plans and the other part, the dominating part, keeps me locked up inside. Is this a result of having post-traumatic stress or is this something bigger than that? I am most definitely lost and have far more questions that I do answers, yet when I am given the opportunity to ask my questions I draw a blank, like a printer without ink. I open my mouth and nothing comes out. I tend to be shy, fearful, and most of all ashamed of how I feel and fear.

It’s quarter to six now and I am still rambling on. It helps that I can type fast I suppose or much of this would be missed and lost into the air forever. I have described myself as feeling dead inside but really I know that’s not the case. I feel far too much pain and sorrow filling the holes within my being to be dead. If being dead is feels like this then maybe that’s where my fear in the after-life stems from.

I tried to kill this pain because of someone making it even worse. I wonder how it feels to be the person to push someone over the edge on purpose. Does it make you feel big, powerful? I would feel horrible if it was me that had caused that break and pushed someone over the edge I often teeter on. Unfortunately, we live in a society where most people are more concerned about themselves then they are others and they will gladly hurt you just so they can have a moment of feeling as though they’ve won. The internet seems to have made it even easier to purposely hurt another person because we disregard one another as human. We create a persona that allows us to be anyone or anything. We aren’t all the person we claim to be online and honesty is lost and real people who you only know by a screen name end up hurt, or dead.

I suppose I will post this and then head to bed. I am not really sleepy yet but everyone keeps insisting I rest. Not sure if they want me to rest because I physically need it or if they are worried about the mental fractures I have been dealing with over the last few months. With the new chaos and fear I am rather fragile. The word “rest” reminds me of the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Sometimes I swear laying here and looking up at the knots in the pine and looking for faces or patterns in those knots will drive me over the edge like the woman depicted in that story. Psychosis is psychosis in my book, regardless of the cause.

I have come to realize that maybe it’s not death that scares me but living forever in this realm and then the next that gives me goose-bumps and instills a fear deep within my soul. I believe that to die would be a great adventure. I guess I will find out one day, as far as I can tell no one has ever conquered it and lived on forever. If they have, they have yet to admit it. Then again, I wouldn’t admit it either. I suppose that would be a one way ticket to the nearest padded cell. 

I Miss Your Love

There is something, at least for me, that is so beautiful about death and even blood. I have watched many times as my blood breathes and sucks the container in trying to get its own oxygen before it finally decides to die. It is so nostalgic to be sitting their alive, and at the same time watching a part of yourself die. It is not only nostalgic but symbolic in so many ways.

For me when that slice goes through my flesh and the blood bubbles up and begins to drip onto the cloth below it symbolizes how dead I feel inside, it reminds me that I am still alive. “I hurt myself today to see if I still feel” – Johnny Cash. The pain I feel in the days following as I begin to heal is connected to me emotionally. It represents the emotional anguish I am feeling. Each cut, each scar, has a story, has a pain associated with it. When that blade hits my flesh everything deep within me is suddenly tactile, it is real, it can be bandaged it can be healed. If I could find a way to do that within myself instead of externally I would but I haven’t been able to. 

I look around this makeshift house and I often find myself staring up at the knotty pine ceilings. Counting every single nail and wondering how my grandma managed to do each one by hand while literally dying of lung cancer. Each of the nails has her energy. She held each one firmly and gripped it as she hammered it into place, one after another after another.

This house may be unfinished, it may be too small and it may be a cluttered mess, but every nail, every board, every piece of wood, every crack or break was placed here by the hands that held me when I cried, that slept with me when I was a child, that nursed me back to health when I was sick. Those same hands taught me how to iron, how to fold the dreaded bottom sheet of a bed. They nurtured me and taught me how to cook, to bake, to scrub cigarette smoke off of white cupboards and walls. Those hands encouraged my love for art, for birds, deer and nature. They taught me how to garden flowers, fruits and vegetables.

Those old worn hands that were far beyond their years brushed my hair and drew on my back and I did the same for her. They taught me that a weed can be beautiful as long as it has a flower and that sometimes even the biggest sunflower will get pecked by birds before you have a chance to retrieve the seeds. I learned to walk around my flower beds every day and yank what shouldn’t be there and become excited at the buds and new growth that occurred between now and the day before. 

Maybe best of all is that she taught me to embrace the gifts god had given me. She taught me that being empathic and psychic was okay. She taught me that ghosts were real and not to be feared. I saw my first UFO with her at around three in the morning. I am happy to say that the gifts I have were nurtured by someone like her, who had the strength that I will likely never possess, pieces of her live on through me in so many ways. She taught me how to love unconditionally no matter how many times someone screws up, and even if you can’t have that person in your life that the love doesn’t have to end because the friendship/relationship has.

I was raised to believe that you sleep when you’re tired even if you are having a siesta every day and if you’re not sleepy to use that time for yourself because you only have each moment and each minute once. You can never go back, you can never relive that moment again, except in memories and dreams. Much like the internet, what you put out there in the physical realm is irrevocable.  

Lastly, I was taught that it’s okay to be selfish regarding your own life. It’s okay to be sick and make the decision to refuse treatment. It is okay to die on your own terms without the influence of anyone else. It is not a sin to die and it is not a sin to prolong life for those who wish to stay. I was taught that embracing death as another chapter in life was exactly what death is. It doesn’t mean you no longer exist. It means you no longer exist within the vessel in which you were sent. I was taught that when someone on their death bed tells you they are going to haunt you that they likely mean it and that no matter how sad the people standing around are regarding your death that it is a human reaction and an action of selfishness.

Saying goodbye isn’t easy, so say so long because you will see one another in your dreams, you will feel one another at important events. People don’t live on because they were written about, they live on because they touched a persons’ heart in such an insurmountable way that their stories continue to be told, their life continues to be analyzed and in each fleeting moment you think about that person and can honestly say “grandma would of bought this” without feeling a sense of dread or loss or anger.

I have come to realize over the years that the best way to take back your life is to control your death. To die on your terms with your convictions and to not be swayed by those who would rather have you suffer every moment in pain just so they could have you for one more day or create one more memory. There comes a time when we each must choose to follow our own hearts and create our own life paths, even if that means toes get stepped on along the way.

Do I miss her?

Yes, she was like a mother to me but I wouldn’t wish her back, not to the pain and suffering that she was living with every day and trying to hide so as to stay strong. If I could have everyone back healthy both mentally and physically I would take it but then I realize that when I die I will be whole for the first time since the moment of my creation. Our souls will meet up again in the heavens and maybe even on earth.

I would rather be whole than shattered the way I have been for more than half of my life.

Yes, I would rather be whole.

Connected Me to You

“I would go lay on the beach in the dark of night and watch the sky dance, it was wonderful” –Me

I find it so magical when you and I can be 1000 miles apart and stare up at the same time into the brightness of the black night sky. We can watch the moon together, we can see the stars. Suddenly that thousand miles doesn’t seem to exist, the gap is filled because of the magic that is so far away. The chill running through you as you lay back and watch all of space and time right before your eyes. It is easy to see why ancient cultures revered the movement of the sky the way they do. There is something so beyond our grasp that tends to pull you in.

When I look up at the moon I am looking at what hundreds of thousands of people are seeing at the same time. Oddly looking into the unknown is somehow grounding. It makes you realize that distance on earth has no bounds and that you are a part of the sand or grass in which you sit.

It also gives you a feeling of being small and almost insignificant. You stare up at the dotted sky and you wonder if the stars are looking back at you. You wonder how many are even still burning. So many are burnt out but we still receive their glow because of how many light years we are away.

I often wonder which ones are the souls of people, who I have loved and lost, staring down and guiding the way. When I die will I become someone’s guiding light? Will you?

I remember at one point talking to a priest and telling them that if believing in Jesus gave me everlasting life I didn’t want it. I tend to still feel that way. Everlasting is a lot of time. It would be easier to believe I will come back as someone and not just roam another realm for all of eternity. I guess my ideas on spirituality have a whole lot of things picked out from several different “religions” and my faith is based on that. Do I believe in a god? Yes, but I also believe in other gods. Christianity tells us through the ten commandments “You shalt NOT have any gods before ME” to me this is highly suggestive that even god almighty believes there are others, he just wants to be, or demands to be, the most high. 

Now, I don’t know where my actual belief system falls. I guess somewhere between Hindu and Pagan. I am not really sure. I don’t believe in a monotheistic faith, I believe in reincarnation, but I also believe in heaven, hell and being trapped in between.

I guess the journey to find out who I am continues to be ongoing. I am fine with that. Maybe no one ever truly finds themselves. Life is an ongoing piece of growth. I doubt we are ever actually done. If you think you have figured out everything there is to know, you either don’t have many questions, or you have given up on learning who you are. 

They say “you learn something new every day” I suppose that holds more truth than people would want to believe. Especially in our societies where people tend to believe that they are a registered professional and can do no wrong. The fact is we have two choices, live or die. If you give up you are dead whether you have left this realm or not. If you decide to live you learn, you change, you modify and you grow. You are open to new ideas, concepts and understanding. 

I would like to say that even though I often feel dead inside that I am an ever evolving being, learning from my actions, from the world around me, both good and bad and the history of the world. Every moment in life gives us the opportunity to learn, it’s up to you to decide what exactly it is you take from each moment.

This week I have learned a lot about myself and the people around me. I have come to realize that when someone is hurting me and they refuse to change their ways I HAVE to protect myself and be willing to walk away, even if that walk hurts because living to die is getting really old. I am tired of the person who I have become. Dependant, melancholy, depressed, emotional and untrusting.  

I have allowed the wrong people to influence my decisions the last couple of months and that was dumb. Being a victim already I know a bad situation when I see one and I should never have fallen victim to others, or myself.

In this world, there tends to be only black and white. Most of the time I live in the grey areas that are far less explored.

I am exhausted and sore. I need to rest. I am beginning to loathe that word. I have been sick so much so often the last while and it’s one thing after another after another. I am tired. Fighting a fight that you don’t even want to be part of is draining all around. 

Love and Loss

I had this boyfriend named Steve. He had two kids who lived with his mom because he was in and out of jail for heroin and the chaos that goes with it. The kids’ mom was dead from an overdose.

Anyway, he and I shared a wall for a few months while in jail, and we could reach each other with a newspaper and would pass the TV remote back and forth that way. He realized I wasn’t sleeping and was listening to me having nightmares at night, so he started to sleep on the floor up against where my bed was. His body heat would warm the thin steel wall. When he still continued to hear me whimper in my sleep he purposely got his hand slammed in his cell door and it was shattered. They gave him pain meds because he had surgery.

Every morning, afternoon and night he would pass me his pain meds inside the remote so that I could sleep without the nightmares.

I was later transferred to a different jail and we continued to talk. One day his letters stopped coming. My friend Gerry sent me a letter with a drawing in it and he told me Steve died of a heroin overdose.

The morning I was transferred I knew I was going to be. I was the only girl in that area. It was about 5 AM when the CO (corrections officer) came to get me. Gerry and all the guys woke up to wish me luck and say good bye. I remember I was holding onto Steve's cell door and this male guard was trying to pull me off, it was so early and I was screaming Steve's name and begging them to not take me away. Finally, I let go and was semi dragged down the corridor while sobbing, when I got to Gerry's cell he was crying too...

Of all the traumatic moments in my life I would have to say that one probably tops them all.

I loved Steve. Steve loved me. No one had ever sacrificed themselves for me the way he did and no one has since. I often look up at the stars at night and wonder if one of the glistening beams is his soul staring down at me. I try to be good, not for you, not for blood, not for my kids, but for Steve. He watches me. He wanted better for me then what I had been dealt. We had dreams, aspirations. Sometimes while staring up at the darkness of the night I wonder if he was the one God had sent for me and that because he is gone I have lost that chance.

Et je t'aime encore –And I love you still

Gone Too Soon

The pain of losing a child is insurmountable; you cannot describe the deep ache of a hole that is left in every fiber of your being. At times you feel like your inhaling water because not only are you drowning but you can’t breathe deep enough to get enough air.

You wonder why?

You scream at a god that you may never have even believed in until that moment. You hate Him yet you beg for Him to accept your child into His peaceful grace. It is hard to not be angry. Angry with yourself, with everyone around you and with whatever entity took your child home.

I am not sure if it is a blessing or a curse that my babies were taken from me long before they were ever born. I never got to meet them. I never got to hold them, look into their eyes and greet their soul. All of those moments were stolen from me. I never got a first cry or even a final resting place for my children. Being miscarried they weren’t even considered to be “human” in the eyes of the government.

If they were never human then why was my life so deeply changed by each and every one of them? I have to believe that someone placed them inside of me, allowed me to feel their flutters, hear their heartbeats and even see them on ultrasound for a reason other than to teach me another lesson in pain.

I have experienced loss after loss after loss in my short amount of time here on earth. No seven year old should lose their best friend to murder. No nine year old should lose their new best friend to an aneurysm. No nine year old should lose their cousin to suicide in the back yard in which we played!

It seems as though I have known the pain of loss before I ever learned the joy of life, leaving me a tortured soul full of holes and scars both inside and out. I have watched more children and young people buried then I have the elderly. Every week the obituaries show another person I knew or know. My death list grows longer by the day. Why?

I am not really sure what I wanted to get out of writing this today because really there are no words to describe such traumatic events. There is no solace whether your child was taken before or after their lungs filled with air.

The only thing I can really say is that our children live on through us. Through the love we have for them. The memories that we have, no matter how short or long we were able to create those memories for. I have to trust that I am a better person because of my Angels and that this wasn’t all fruitless.

Rest in Peace my Angels.

People taken too soon:

William
Todd
Kyle
Angus
Aurora
Cameron
Alexander
Taylor
Micah
Callie
Shawn
Chippy
Steve
Carol
Josh

Rest in peace each of you and those whose names I cannot remember offhand, unfortunately too many young kids and infants are lost far too soon.

I post this with a heavy heart and tears in my eyes.