Hope

ENT DARK FOR A FEW DAYS...

Sorry bout that...I don't know if sharing my soul feelings is a good thing or a bad thing...this blog is suffering as I am from not knowing how to deal with certain aspects of life.  One of those is losing hope.  I guess I'm playing my own therapist?  I know grief is very difficult and it can flip you over on your head.  It's not just that, it is the measuring stick of life that has me disillusioned. Did you know the last thing you lose in life is hope?

No I'm not off my rocker, I am sane, and I am a functioning adult.  But not everyone can say that.  I do sometimes have nightmares from the whole 911 thing and the building collapse in FL has brought back a lot of those memories.  PTSD is a real thing.  We may not even realize we have it or are suffering from it.  We did have talks with Phycologists after it happened...I was employed at the time with Con Edison.  We had all watched the entire event unfold across the river from our bank of corporate windows on Hudson Ave in Brooklyn, just over the river...but then as a newly minted NY state EMT I joined the volunteer effort to triage survivors that we thought would be found, and since there were none as in the FL collapse, we ended up cataloging the bodies they brought in from the rubble pile. I did that for 3 days then I went back to work as our office had been closed until the trains were moving again.

I was there when building 7 collapsed and we all ran for our lives, because we had no clue how far it could reach...the towers collapsed at about 9 am and building 7 collapsed around 5:30 in the afternoon when ALL of us were there trying to help victims. I was NOT working on the rubble pile, I was  with a group of volunteers who would render first aid to any survivor they may pull out and I had been there since around 1 pm...we had set up tables and stocked them with wound treatment, splints, general triage items so we could do vitals and we had ambulances waiting to move people to hospitals etc...so when we hear the rumble someone said RUN, and we did...I was actually asked by a news reporter on camera if this would change how I live my life, I replied, "no, because if it does then they won." 

I think If I had to answer that question again I would say "YES, I want to understand why they hate us enough to do this."  Did anyone of you actually try to find the answer to that question? I tried to read the Koran after that and since no religion makes sense to me, it made no sense to me at all...what I learned is "don't allow your mind to be highjacked by extremists." 

That building was very unstable as  you could see  horrible collateral damage  the towers one and two caused while falling down. I lived on 4th street and Ave A in the East Village. North of Houston St.  That night I slept on a park bench just out of "ground zero" as we started calling it.... because I had this HUGE hope survivors were going to be  found...and I wanted to help them if possible...but I just collapsed from exhaustion of the day and I remember looking up at the stars in the sky and asking "why"?

The next morning I walked to my apartment, I lived on the 22 floor of a 26 floor building, to clean up and eat, and then walked back down to ground zero met up with my co-volunteers and that is when I was asked to work in the temp morgue area.... I saw the real horror of what a collapse does to the  human body.  In my apartment there was a pile of ash at least 6 inches thick on all my window ledges, and it stayed there for months until rains could wash it all away.

Eventually two weeks later I began my job as an EMT then went on to become Paramedic and after 6 years of losing hope I quit and left the city.

So Im waiting for rain to wash it all away. 

Years they pass so quickly...

HERE DID IT GO?

Im referring to time... 

Sometimes I feel as if Im a lone survivor of  a terrible disaster that was my family life.  I know I  ran away from family responsibilities at one time, and I needed that I may not even be the lone survivor otherwise.  I felt the door opened and I ran out of it...my son was going into this 3rd year o f college, my mom was retired in fairly good health and content, my sisters were doing okay my husband so wrapped up in his own world of working part time at his business and then golfing every afternoon...so I felt they didn't need me at that point in life.  

I just redid the post on my other blog of when we moved this old house I live in way back in 1977 from town where it was built in the '50's to this land.  All the photos were missing from the post, so I dug them out scanned them in and made it whole again.  IF only we could do that with our past with the lives of people, rescan them and make it alright again. 

While I went thru those photos I relived the memories...and then the 44 years of life and death and loss that followed that move. When I die those memories will no longer exist, they will become ash blown off in a hard wind....and the life those memories represent will be lost forever. 

To say it left me hurting is like saying the sun is bright...damn it hurt to recall all the life we all had here; the happiness, the hard times, the good times, the bad, the hanging on, the trying  again.  The past and the lives in it flashed before me, and before you know it my own will do the same.  LIFE is so damn SHORT...Maybe I have survivors guilt...add that to long list of malady I am currently experiencing.   I think of bones, walls, and distance and suddenly my world is a small island one in danger of sinking and being washed away by the next storm.

Here I am again will you take me as I am?

Stuck for words

HEN IT TAKES 5 MINS...

to write one word, maybe  I shouldn't be writing?

I actually popped a bag of microwave popcorn...I had sworn off the stuff a few years ago, and I gave up chips trying to loose a few lbs but I don't see a change yet.  The popcorn was left over from the movie nights my son and I were having...that doesn't happen any more and there was 3 bags left in the box, so I said wth may as well try it.  I don't like palm oil.  I read all the ingredients of things I buy and IF I can find one without palm oil I will get that one. 

Today I only cried twice, so far...not bad for an old lady who is spiraling down faster than a post hole digger.  We rented one of those things long years ago, when we first started digging this homestead out of 3 acres of woods. My husband on one side and me on the other we dug  500 holes....or so it seems.  I had a horse and we wanted to get more so the first thing we did once we got the house settled was clear some land and put up a fence, I now call that my field or pasture.  We had as many as 4 horses at one time but no grazer on it other than deer for over 20 yrs now. I have been here with the exception of the nearly 7 yrs in NY for almost 44 yrs. 

I was just a young girl when we moved here 24 yrs old...and in 2 yrs I will be 70.  

I really find that so hard to believe.  I thought I would do so much more with my life, my time on Earth than I have.  Once you summit 50 time seems to go into warp speed. 

Today I worked out by my shed sanding my yard chairs for the next layer of paint that's a yearly thing when you live in humidity...if you don't paint it rots.   And since I came in about noon my eye has been burning like crazy I washed it out a few times already...but I have no clue if something flew into my eye during the sanding, I did not feel it happen.  Im sanding by hand. 

My mental health:

Today I realized I was very happy during the 13 yrs I lived with my Mom.  We got along for the most part very well.  I have been reading back thru my old journals and I did do some complaining about not getting the help I had expected from the rest of the family like being able to go on travels, but for the most part it was a very positive time in my life...
I really miss that feeling of contentment, and happiness.  I have been doing a lot of thinking of what my plans were and how did it work out.  I'd say I'd have been better off to have had no plan atall.  Seems I just bounced from one non plan path to the next.  Like doing a thru hike and never staying on the trail and never finishing.

The stages of grief:

Right now Im in  all of them at once.  One is denial, then anger,  followed by bargaining, depression and finally acceptance....but lets put it this way a 4 whammie loss one right behind the other...leaves you in mental deep doodoo.

My x who I had so much love for died in 2018, he suffered from early onset dementia, his older son from a previous marriage poisoned him against me, and before you know it he had made that son his power of attorney, and then within a week he filed for a divorce from me.  I was in the end forced to buy him out or lose the homestead. I did buy him out and after one year of him living alone since the son promised he would come live with him in VA, (that never happened), my x was penniless when that son removed him  from the checking account and had him declared incompetent...and the rest is horrible history.  Needless to say I will never speak to that stepson again as long as I live. He never even came to his father's funeral!!! And never even sent flowers...AND never paid for the funeral either.  My family paid for his funeral.  In his will he had left everything to my son, but the evil son had taken over everything and had dismantled it all before my x died...so there was Nothing left to Inherit.

Mom died one year later in 2019, I really thought she would make it to 100, she was 95, then my sweet little Casey, he was only a dog, but dammit he was special...and in Jan of this yr my son took me out of  his life.  I will not go into his problems, as dragging someone's else's club is not a good thing...but he wants no part of me in his life because I am still clinging to the person I wanted him to be...is how he put it. 

I had no idea I was doing such a thing and honestly he is wrong.  I am currently the only person left for him to blame and hate so that is how it goes...
So the 2018 loss Im in stage 5,
the 2019 loss Im in stage 4, 

the 2020 loss Im in stage 4
and the 2021 loss Im in stage 1...

Ok make that 3 times now on the tears...it may sound like Im feeling sorry for myself...and yes I am, I was handling it pretty good for a few months then it hit me like a ton of bricks. 

And to put the last cherry on the top both my sisters live 1800 miles away and I haven't seen them in well over a year and the oldest one I really doubt she will ever make the trip here again.  

Both my dogs Annie and Floss are now 13 they are not in the best of shape, they are 91 in dog years.  So traveling with them right now would put a hardship on them.  Neither of them can jump in or out of the van without help and I cant lift them anymore they are both about 60 lbs.  And if I outlive them I will be right back at stage one again.  

OK fine, where is the bright side?

Write it down...

ELL....

A very deep and dark place...

I almost feel like I could say something profound, it's right on the tip of my mind, but it hasn't  made it's way to my fingers.  I would like to say I'm healed, all good, in a good place emotionally.  If I said that it would be the lie of the century.  I've never found myself to be so emotionally low and the feeling of complete hopelessness is the mainstay of my pallet. I could paint only a monochrome storm if I had canvas in front of me. 

I do try to "cheer myself up" but it's only a temporary stay as I can NOT fix what is causing the trouble  inside me.  I can't bring the dead back to life, I can't go back and undo the mistakes I made, I can't cure addictions, and I can't even find the words to explain myself.  What once was my sanctuary now feels like a prison. 

I have kept a written journal since 1996...the day my precious Sundance died...I had to get that hurt out of me, put it someplace else so I  wrote  down the emotions, the sorrow, the sadness and the disbelief.  Now I have soooo much sorrow in me I can't even write it out.  It simple lays there and rots.  My paper is blank my journal untouched.  The feelings follow me around like a cloud of bad omens. 

I try to fix it all up in my mind, I imagine how life could be, if only, but then I have to come back to the real world and deal with "there is no butter in the fridge, and I have just toasted the perfect small everything bagel." Ordinary things fall through the cracks and the motivation to do something about it turns to silly putty. 

I purged some things...one day I saw some clutter.  I can't deal with clutter in my surroundings, my van is a complete mess and I have to address that...but my house is normally clutter free.  The cluttered and muddled thinking has spread to my van, my laundry room, and my house.  Suddenly I saw the clutter and it had to go! So I went on a cleaning spree.  I tossed out, I tucked in closets, I dusted under the bed, I collected filed the paid bill stubs...I toss out my old PC Tower that I have dragged around since 2003...
I even moved my sweet Casey's sleeping bed out of the bedroom.  It has lay empty for 16 months, the smudges he left  with his dirty paws still right where he left them.  I however only made it to the laundry room with it and then I broke down and wept like a child  who was lost in the woods, I put the vacuum away, I hung the duster up, stashed the dust pan by the trash can and called it done. 

How can I toss that out? It's like tossing him out.  I just can't do that. Dealing with grief the past four years has taken a huge toll on me.  I am no longer the same person, I don't get that same excitement that I once did from the activities I enjoy doing...I find it very hard to get OUT of my own way. 

I can't go into depth of what is at the root of my sadness, I do know what it is I just  cant share it with the world right now.  I can only continue to WANT things to change, things I have no control over.  
I understand so many things now that I never understood before, it has not made me happier only it has put me in a place of bitter acceptance. I feel any wisdom I had is irrelevant, I am yearning for just an ounce of hope.
Death by fire or death by ice is just as dead in the end.

"he is running a 100 miles an hour in the wrong direction"
Casting Clowns.