If I post this right now, I will never need to stress about sharing anything because I will have already posted the most irrelevent and ridiculous shit. If I was you? I might skim this one. (But say hi or something, damn.)
I just heard a song called Loner by Maggie Lindemann and seriously, it would be my anthem if it wasn’t so…exposing.
So, here’s what’s up with me, let me know what’s up with you in the comments. I can do that because I expect two people to have accidentally read this far, but it’s also totally possible that tomorrow I won’t remember that I have a blog.
Shit, I just remembered that I came here to write a music review because I have to post something, submit something, do something (but did I really, doubtful) and I want to talk about Our Current Reality? Because what is even happening right now. I cannot with everysinglething. I mean I was more capable when I was publishing things. Now, all the things seem insurmountable. Or are insurmountable. Is it unlikely, or have I convinced myself I’m actually terrible?
There’s a Halsey lyric that doesn’t go “…need someone to come along and tell me ____ all right, is this okay?” That’s not it, but you yeah. (I should probably tell you that I use the wrong words a lot now. If I end a sentence with “so.” then you should know the rest and I gotta conserve my energy, and I don’t know the word.)
I need someone to do that but I don’t trust anyone so I probably wouldn’t believe them anyway.
I have questions.
How was I relatively ok when the kids were little? Was it that everything was so immediate with children that I didn’t have time to have a breakdown? Taking care of them gave me some sort of structure in my life? That’s funny, because I can hear myself saying, “Kids need structure and routine!” Was that part of it?
Well, this fucking pandemic definitely didn’t help anything, right? You’re supposed to stay home, you know, and my body wouldn’t handle a serious illness, so. Also, I don’t drive anymore and live on the edge of the forest.
Shit! My back is killing me, of course my neck always hurts, and I keep getting distracted. This is what happens with anything I try to do, I either get sick or get distracted with something else and then forget what I was doing or I suddenly realize that I’m just sitting here with my head in my hands again.
I initially was going to punish myself for not…being better/submitting literally anything/doing one normal human thing by writing a music review (which isn’t punishment even but it’ll make me feel stupid so). I had to stop and think about what I came here to do.
Okay, so I guess I won’t tell y’all everything right this second. Or even anything.
When you share my posts, it brings me more joy than I can express. I know that bc I've spent the last hour trying to express it.
I’ve been pondering my blog-neglect. I worked so hard on this, why would I abandon it? I’m writing, so why aren’t I posting? I’m not writing, why am I not writing?
I found this today, and it’s very good. And definitely a large part of my problem.
That’s not the whole of it, of course.
Partly, I’ve felt like I can’t write about much that’s happened in the past two years. I can write about the things I’ve done, mistakes I’ve made, pain and joy I’ve felt, but I can’t say anything about anyone else or what they did. That’s frustrating because yes, some of this is my fault, but not all of it. So that’s one part–I’ve always been very open here and now I’m limited to half-truths or less.
Then there’s this: Obviously, I started a blog to share my stories. But somewhere along the way, as I learned more about blogging, writing, social media, submitting to places, sharing, groups of bloggers helping each other, the world of bloggers and editors etc., I stopped writing what I wanted to write. I tried to make my posts more general, to appeal to a broader audience. I tried to organize my writing into the proper bunches of words–three or five paragraphs, TITLE, ending. (Titles are the hardest part of writing for me.) And of course, every post had to have one or more images.
I’ve always abhorred the “technical” side of blogging; code, links, images, sharing.
So I think the combination of all the above, and wanting my work to be perfect (in the eyes of editors and other writers, anyway) helped make telling my stories more of a job than a joy.
I hope you read the piece I linked to; it’s really very good, and explained my feelings before I could put them into words.
I don’t know what this blog will be now or in the future. I know it once brought me joy and a sense of accomplishment and community that I miss.
I also know this isn’t formatted in any way, I haven’t read through it even one time, and…I wrote in on my phone in 10 minutes.
Here’s hoping you’re all as okay as you can be right now.
Going hunting for my muchness.
Steph
When you share my posts, it brings me more joy than I can express. I know that bc I've spent the last hour trying to express it.
It should be at like 4:12-4:38. Just listen. (I’m so fucking specific, but not totally committed to the idea that I did that correctly.)
Okay, discuss.
Admittedly, I’m a pretty obsessed Halsey fan and also a bit high. But I’ve listened to that 30-second statement at least six times now and I still don’t know quite what to do with it.
Clutch this brazen, tantalizing idea tightly to my chest, hold my breath, picture myself laughing too loudly and talking too much; writing blindfolded or on my skin, in the dark or in a bathroom; dancing because I have a body, singing because I like it, listening, really listening to music all day long, stopping only to make my own?
Or drop it before it burns me, this foreign thought, forgiveness, appreciation even, of a chaotic mind, a rollercoaster ride, a river of tears; give back this moment of not-wrongness that is not mine; apologize (again) for being crazy, broken, volatile, for being at all; try not exist too brightly, feel too hard, want too much?
It took me 40 years to even like most of me. I’ve never thought that I could–maybe should–love the side of me that is impulsive and inappropriate and creative and damaged and yes, passionate, about so many things. The side that cries as easily at the beauty of a sunset as at the coldness that crept into love’s voice. The part that needs to “calm down.” The unreasonable side; the “crazy” that I make jokes about because it’s easier than trying to explain what mental illness feels like. The side that feels everything, all the time.
I can love…my temper, my inability to stop saying, “fuck,” my awful dancing and worse voice, my nervous talking, oversharing, failed parenting, broken heart?
What I really want to know now is:
WHO TOLD ME I COULDN’T?
No piece of me is perfect. But I am not in pieces.
I am not a broken thing to be discarded. I refuse to only love and cherish my shiny best-self, the self that’s seemingly so easy to love. Because THAT me couldn’t exist without THIS me. I don’t get to pick one or the other, and neither do you; it’s all or none, my best and my worst, my past and my present, my heart and my mind, my laughter and my tears, my opinions and my insecurities.
All this, this mess, this disaster, this madness, this me? It’s not what I ever thought I ever should be. It just is. It’s me. The whole damn thing. Brave and fearful, weak and strong, obnoxious and honest, funny and ridiculous, hideous and beautiful.
I don’t see any reason to start using my head now; generally, that fucker is trying to take me out anyway.
When you share my posts, it brings me more joy than I can express. I know that bc I've spent the last hour trying to express it.
I’ve been pretty open about my physical and mental illnesses since I started this blog. I haven’t posted anything in a long time, for a lot of reasons. But I finally feel like I can look back at everything that’s happened, the many mistakes I’ve made, and all the heartache, confusion and fear and anger and pain…maybe because I survived it. I just know I have a strange feeling that I think might be hope.
The last year and a half has been one devastation after another. I’ve cried, I’ve screamed, I’ve wanted to die, I’ve been so afraid of what is happening to me physically that I’ve begged people to help me die if I become unable to do it myself.
Maybe you know and maybe you don’t, but I’m disabled. Mostly because of chronic migraines, depression, and PTSD, but I have so many other diagnoses that I’m not even going to attempt to list them all.
I spent a lot of my life in debilitating pain, both physical and mental. The only post I ever wrote that went viral was about being a mom with disabilities and feeling like I was failing, even as I loved my children so damn much and tried so hard. That was before what I’m about to tell you.
Probably 3 or 4 years ago, strange things started happening. I couldn’t walk straight. I started losing words, so I’d have to say “those cutter things” instead of “scissors.” I’d get lost in my tiny hometown. I forgot how stoplights worked. My body would feel so exhausted sometimes that it was hard to even lay down; literally doing nothing was too much work for it.
Of course, I had test after test, and MRIs, and saw a million doctors and no one knew what was wrong. My family doctor and I both thought multiple sclerosis at first. I felt like I was losing my mind–all the medical shit I already had, and now something else invisible?! It was scary, it was depressing, and I did not handle it well.
August 31st, 2018, my husband and I separated. Shortly after that, my youngest child, my 10-year-old daughter, went to live with him. I felt like I absolutely could not survive it. Even though I was getting sicker and sicker, losing my vision, had to stop driving, all these things that made it impossible for me to care for her alone, I just could not bear this pain. I didn’t lose her–she comes home every other weekend and school breaks–I just got the shit deal that almost every divorced dad in the world gets.
I’m not going to discuss my boys; they are 17 and 21 and I don’t think they’d appreciate being blogged about right now. (Or ever, lol.) But I know that none of this was easy for them, and the state I was in, both mentally and physically, only made it harder. That is another pain that I will always carry.
From the time my husband and I separated until just a few weeks ago, my health deteriorated so fast it was unbelievable. I was walking one day and the next I was literally crawling. My limbs not only stopped working, they started hurting in an excruciating way they never had before. I had to sit down to do anything at all, and even then my arms became too heavy to lift within minutes.
There were days that I didn’t eat because I couldn’t get up, and days I only had bananas because it was so hard to chew and swallow. Then my vision, which had been going in and out, started getting really bad–because I couldn’t hold my own eyelids open. Speaking wore me out. Sometimes I wasn’t able to hold my head up.
Taking a shower standing up was impossible, as was walking more than 10 feet. I couldn’t answer the door, as if I would ever do such a ridiculous thing anyway.
One neurologist suggested myasthenia gravis or some kind of muscular dystrophy. I gained 30 pounds. I was still having migraines and all my other issues, but now I also lived alone and was barely mobile even with a cane. The pain was so bad that I sometimes cried before I even got up because I dreaded it so much.
To say that I was depressed is a huge understatement. I was nearly 40. It seemed inevitable that at the very least I would soon be in a wheelchair. I saw my kids regularly, but I was always sick. I was never able to do anything for them or with them, and the more I tried to force my body to cooperate, the worse it felt.
Since I often couldn’t operate my eyelids, I had a lot of time to think. And I kept thinking that if I could go back to when I “just” had 5 million ridiculous things wrong with me, instead of being nearly paralyzed, I would do so much differently.
This was hell. I’d lost my husband and best friend of 16 years, my children, my ability to think clearly, speak, walk, brush my hair…and it just kept getting worse. I was so embarrassed, I avoided everyone I knew. I didn’t want my friends to see me like this.
Then, a few weeks ago, I had 4 really bad migraines in one week. When I recovered, I realized that I was walking better. I didn’t want to get too excited. But it became clear that whatever it is that I have has gone into some sort of remission. I can drive. I can see. I can walk.
I don’t know how long this will last. But now it seems like the things I thought were disabling years ago, in comparison, were kind of just a huge pain in my ass. I’m not saying that living with treatment-resistant depression and chronic pain and a fucked up brain and a migraine nearly once a week is awesome or anything, or that any of that has gone away, or even that I’ll be able to walk tomorrow. I’m just saying that, right now, while I can, for however long it lasts, I’m going to take advantage of it. I’m going to do the things I cando in this moment, and let the future worry about itself.
I have felt more joy in the last few days than I remember ever, ever, in my entire 40 years. I’m back in counseling. I’m going to the gym. I’m eating better. I’m laughing more. I’m singing LOUD, and I am a terrible singer. *shrugs* Sounding stupid just doesn’t bother me anymore. (I mean, obviously it bothers anyone who hears me. Super not sorry at all about that.)
I’m dancing. (Or at least moving my body in as close an approximation of dancing as I’ll ever get.) And I’m not going to stop until these legs decide they need a break again. Now that I know that it’s at least possible that no matter how dysfunctional my body acts, it can cut me some damn slack every once in a while, I’m not going to waste anymore time.
Things are not perfect. But, somehow, surviving this shitstorm has made me appreciate even the not-terrible. It’s crazy to me that I had to be so weak and feel so broken to finally know my own strength.
I don’t know what will happen next or when or what it will take to get through the next half of my life and keep this light inside me. But I’m also not dwelling on it.
I’m busy dancing.
When you share my posts, it brings me more joy than I can express. I know that bc I've spent the last hour trying to express it.
Have you ever felt like holding yourself together is all you’re capable of? I’ve been holding myself tightly, arms crossed over my always-sick stomach. What if I let go and I just…crumble? Fall to my knees, sob, and just howl my anguish. I’m afraid that if I let go of this fucking pain, it will destroy me. I won’t get back up. So I don’t let go. I try not to think. I push my thoughts aside however I can. Of course I’ve cried, probably a million times. But something about this pain, these tears, feels different. This pain tastes like eating hot coals, one after the other, until I burn up from the inside out.
You know that game we surely all played as kids, where we pretended the floor was lava? That’s what my mind is like these days. I’m balanced on the tiniest of throw-pillow islands with boiling, steaming red grief surrounding me. I’m burned no matter which way I turn, and so I stay on this pillow, stuck, raw and blistered.
I keep picturing myself like this:
I sit in a lawn chair in the middle of my house while strangers wander around talking quietly and judging my things. Someone asks, “How much for this chair that caught your daughter when she fell asleep standing up after claiming she wasn’t tired?” And I say, “That chair is not for sale STOP TOUCHING MY MEMORIES I’ll take $50 for the pair.” And so it goes until my home this house is empty except for me and the past.
The guilt is eating me alive. At the same time, I’m screaming in my head that this isn’t my fault. The irony: My mental and physical illnesses are destroying my life and there’s nothing I can do about it because I’m mentally and physically ill.
When you share my posts, it brings me more joy than I can express. I know that bc I've spent the last hour trying to express it.
We Don't Chew Glass 