It's a rough night for me tonight. My husband and daughter are downstairs watching a movie which is a good thing, I very much need alone time. I am on my couch with a blanket over me, sitting in front of the Christmas tree crying. While these tears aren't happy ones, they ARE good. Tears free up your soul a bit for whatever else is to come. I tell my daughter its like a cup sitting under a constantly leaky faucet, eventually you have to get rid of some of the water in the cup or its going to overflow. The heart and spirit are like that as well, you have to relieve some of the pressure or it will relieve itself and probably at a time and place and in a way that you don't want them to. May come out as anger, or regular crying just not when you want, you may shut down emotionally and mentally, or you may get sick either acutely or chronically. One way or another, the pain will find a way out so better to have the control over it. So many of us try to repress pain, seriously, who wants to feel badly? No one, but thats how many people end up addicts, thats how my husband relapsed. That is how people have nervous break downs. You can't push it back , you just can't. The only way out of the pain is through the pain and it takes as long as it takes. You can't see the rainbow until you've gotten through the rain.
My motto lately has been "the only way out is through" and I have to hang on to that. I don't know HOW I will be okay, I have no freaking idea in the world how I will be okay. But I KNOW that I will and right now that's all that I need to know, I don't need to know how, I just have to know that I will. I look at my dad and my step mom, both have lost both parents, in fact my step mom lost both of her parents within weeks of each other.....and it devastated them BUT, they smiled again, they laughed again, their life went on and they found a new normal. I will too. I will never ever be the same for what I have gone through this year and what next year will bring but that's okay, I don't want to go back to being who I was before this because after going through this I will have more strength and more compassion and more appreciation for life. I wish I never had to go through this but if I have to then I'm taking some lessons with me to help some other people.
Today I was down with my mom, once I had her settled, I went into her room and started wrapping the last Christmas presents that she will ever buy, and as I curled the ribbons I cried because I was missing my Gram, she was the one that taught me how to curl the ribbons, and I thought about Uncle Joe and his upcoming memorial and my cousins and how hard things must be for them right now..
So yeah, it was a really hard day and I am letting the memories slide down my cheeks tonight without bothering to wipe them away. When I'm done,I will feel better and I will have the strength to keep going....
Friday, December 23, 2016
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Long time, no write
I know, I know, it's been 5 months since I've written. I got into a bad funk and it's not just from what's going on with my mom although that is enough. Since 2016 began here is a list of all of the things that have happened (negative things), I would list the positives but honestly there haven't been many.
My Cousins son was diagnosed with Cancer
My Uncle was diagnosed with Cancer
My dad was supposed to have surgery for his back, he has bad spinal stenosis, but then he ended up
with a blood clot so the surgery had to be put off for six months, in that time he developed
cellulitis, they found another blood clot, he lost the use of his right leg which made him fall and he
ended up breaking a bone in his back. They found he had skin cancer, luckily is was basal cell
carcinoma, if you get skin cancer thats the kind you want because it is the least deadly and doesn't
spread too far or too quickly. In August he finally did have his back surgery.
My step mom ended up with the same kind of skin cancer
My Gram started having dizzy spells, fell and broke her arm, turns out that her heart was skipping a
beat so they put a pacemaker in.
On our way home from the ALS Center, my mom and I were sitting at a red light and the guy in the
car behind us must have been texting or something because he hit us going about 40 MPH while
we were at a dead stop, never hit his brakes, hit us so hard that he went up under our car and
ripped out the exhaust system, drove us into two other cars. Our glasses flew off of our faces
upon impact. My moms front license plate was found 20 feet behind her car.....I just had a lot of
muscle spasms, my mom had a bruised sternum and messed up her shoulder.
I started losing my vision and started having horrible headaches , ended up that I have Idiopathic
Intracranial Hypertension so I ended up needing brain surgery to have a VP Shunt placed. When
my husband came to pick me up from the hospital to bring me home the day after my surgery he
had to tell me that my grandmother had died unexpectedly.
Three weeks after my surgery my daughter ended up hospitalized with Pneumonia
My husband, who had been clean for a year ended up relapsing and went back into rehab
My daughter got lice and rather than pass it back and forth I shaved my head, I now look like a Chia Pet.
My dog shredded his ACL and needed a $1,200 surgery
A part broke on my furnace and we were without heat for three days when an arctic cold front came
our way, we could see our breath in our house. That cost us $800 (and was in the same month as
the dog surgery)
My Uncle died last week.
It just never ends and those are the big things, there are tons of small things but because of all of the big things the small things don't feel small anymore. It seems like we are knocked down, get part way to our feet and something happens to push us right back down. Its been overwhelming to say the least.
Anyway, I am trying to stand up again, this is what I wrote in a FaceBook post about everything.
So, as I was grating cheese for our crock pot dinner, I had an epiphany. This year has been HORRIBLE, full of sickness, tragedy and death....thats nothing new...but somehow I went from telling myself that I would get through it to just throwing my hands up in the air. I stopped trying to get back up because each time I did, something new would push me back down. I am first and foremost a mom and I need to teach my daughter that when life pushes you to your knees you get up again, no matter how many times you fall, you get up. Many times you don't think that you can, many times, if we are being honest, you don't want to, but you have to. I have survived every single thing that has ever been thrown my way, as have you all. I will survive this to, I will never be the person who I was but that's okay, I will have holes in my heart that will never be filled but I will be stronger because I go on even with those holes there. This is what my daughter needs to learn from me. Not by me telling her but by me showing her. Does this meant that my emotional outbursts are done? Haha NO. But it does mean that I've regained my focus, my big girl panties are on and I'm getting up off of the floor now.
So I am back, I don't think anyone reads this posts anyway being that I have so few posts up but who knows, maybe someone will someday.
My Cousins son was diagnosed with Cancer
My Uncle was diagnosed with Cancer
My dad was supposed to have surgery for his back, he has bad spinal stenosis, but then he ended up
with a blood clot so the surgery had to be put off for six months, in that time he developed
cellulitis, they found another blood clot, he lost the use of his right leg which made him fall and he
ended up breaking a bone in his back. They found he had skin cancer, luckily is was basal cell
carcinoma, if you get skin cancer thats the kind you want because it is the least deadly and doesn't
spread too far or too quickly. In August he finally did have his back surgery.
My step mom ended up with the same kind of skin cancer
My Gram started having dizzy spells, fell and broke her arm, turns out that her heart was skipping a
beat so they put a pacemaker in.
On our way home from the ALS Center, my mom and I were sitting at a red light and the guy in the
car behind us must have been texting or something because he hit us going about 40 MPH while
we were at a dead stop, never hit his brakes, hit us so hard that he went up under our car and
ripped out the exhaust system, drove us into two other cars. Our glasses flew off of our faces
upon impact. My moms front license plate was found 20 feet behind her car.....I just had a lot of
muscle spasms, my mom had a bruised sternum and messed up her shoulder.
I started losing my vision and started having horrible headaches , ended up that I have Idiopathic
Intracranial Hypertension so I ended up needing brain surgery to have a VP Shunt placed. When
my husband came to pick me up from the hospital to bring me home the day after my surgery he
had to tell me that my grandmother had died unexpectedly.
Three weeks after my surgery my daughter ended up hospitalized with Pneumonia
My husband, who had been clean for a year ended up relapsing and went back into rehab
My daughter got lice and rather than pass it back and forth I shaved my head, I now look like a Chia Pet.
My dog shredded his ACL and needed a $1,200 surgery
A part broke on my furnace and we were without heat for three days when an arctic cold front came
our way, we could see our breath in our house. That cost us $800 (and was in the same month as
the dog surgery)
My Uncle died last week.
It just never ends and those are the big things, there are tons of small things but because of all of the big things the small things don't feel small anymore. It seems like we are knocked down, get part way to our feet and something happens to push us right back down. Its been overwhelming to say the least.
Anyway, I am trying to stand up again, this is what I wrote in a FaceBook post about everything.
So, as I was grating cheese for our crock pot dinner, I had an epiphany. This year has been HORRIBLE, full of sickness, tragedy and death....thats nothing new...but somehow I went from telling myself that I would get through it to just throwing my hands up in the air. I stopped trying to get back up because each time I did, something new would push me back down. I am first and foremost a mom and I need to teach my daughter that when life pushes you to your knees you get up again, no matter how many times you fall, you get up. Many times you don't think that you can, many times, if we are being honest, you don't want to, but you have to. I have survived every single thing that has ever been thrown my way, as have you all. I will survive this to, I will never be the person who I was but that's okay, I will have holes in my heart that will never be filled but I will be stronger because I go on even with those holes there. This is what my daughter needs to learn from me. Not by me telling her but by me showing her. Does this meant that my emotional outbursts are done? Haha NO. But it does mean that I've regained my focus, my big girl panties are on and I'm getting up off of the floor now.
So I am back, I don't think anyone reads this posts anyway being that I have so few posts up but who knows, maybe someone will someday.
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