Into The Rabbit Hole

Well, I got through this week.  For this, I am impressed with myself.

I found myself cranky, irritated, and within my head, I was downright mean to people.

Biting my lip in a time of extreme stress is exhausting.

You have to bite your lip, though, because feeling bad is relative.  And when one person feels like they just had a hellacious week, what they experienced may not seem like such a bad experience to the next person.  And vice versa.

Anyway, I suppose the point is that I did it.  I’m done with my classes.  I have this weekend off from the kids, and I will write my two papers.  Hopefully I get them completely done in the next few days.

Tonight I’m not really sure I know what to do with myself.  Part of me wants to escape while the other part knows I can’t celebrate entirely until I complete these papers.  The house is somewhat of a disaster… though I did just do a bunch to clean it up.  It was quite unnerving to have my entire family come over to drop off a bunch of my great grandpa’s furniture… I was fifteen minutes later than I said I’d be, and they had unloaded all of the furniture into the driveway… the same driveway that I had spilled some dog poop on while bringing the trash can to the curb for trash day.  I walked inside to put the dogs out back to discover that the dogs had somehow maneuvered their way into the trash can and had strewn coffee grounds everywhere.  Fabulous.  Then I recall that I cannot let the family see the last couch they gave me, as the dogs have destroyed THAT, too.   Just throw it all into the garage, folks…

Thankfully, my uncle & his buddy will come back tomorrow to move the rest of the furniture.  I think they’ll take away that couch the dogs have destroyed, too.  I’ll put my Pappa’s furniture in the basement, keep the old, destroyed couch cushions on the floor so the dogs have something to sleep on, and cover the new couches with sheets and pillows so the dogs stay off of them.  That way if I ever want to sit on them, I can just pull the sheets off.  Yesh…

I re-potted the plans I “inherited,” one of which I gave my Pappa Luke for his birthday.  It’s a beautiful dracanea… and the other is a pothos; I’m not sure where that one came from.

Shit… I can’t believe he’s gone.   I suppose it’ll all sink in on Monday, when I go through the motions of a funeral.  I suppose funerals are good.  I cry and all those normal things… I like funerals better than bridal showers, I guess.

I’ve noticed feeling terribly surreal lately.  Nothing seems real.   Has Landon really been gone for four weeks?  Today is the beginning of the fifth week.  Almost half way through.  I guess being alone here in our home on a Friday night is real enough.  I feel bad that I don’t really have it in me to love on the dogs.  They’re four weeks without a bath… I’m allergic to them… I don’t know if I can convince Emma to get in the bathtub.

I guess tonight I’m a little blue.  Now that I mention it.  Should I work on my papers, or should I relax some?  Should I read a book?  And if so, where?  Down here in the living room or up in my bedroom?  Should I eat something?  That would mean I have to prepare something.  I just want to skip dinner.  I’ve skipped lots of dinners in the last month.  Too bad it’s not showing in my belly yet.  Or maybe it is…

The fucking neighbor dog won’t shut up.  Rah rah rah rah rah rah rah rah rah rah rah.  Yeah, it annoys me, too.

Pink Floyd.  Typing on my blog.  Sitting here.  Pretending nothing is real.  Nothing has to be real.  It could all just be my imagination anyway…

The contrast.  It does something… something good.  It makes the good things extraordinary.  Oh yeah, I like the contrast.  Or maybe I like the pain.  Perhaps I’m a masochist.  Yes.  I’ve always been an emotional masochist.  A proverbial cutter, I enjoy emotional pain.  It reminds me I’m alive.  Or some fucked up thing like that.

*exhaling slowly*

I have this throbbing on the back of my head, under my occipital bone… I have it behind my eyes and at my temples.  My Eustachian tubes are sore.  Gotta love spring time in Colorado!

Along with the beautiful (albeit schizophrenic) weather, the blooming flowers, the growing grasses, I have finals.

And five million other things I need to think about.  The responsibility is killing me.

I’m going to shut my eyes and dream about the lack of responsibility.  I am in the sun, lying in a beach chair.  Or maybe not a beach chair, but a hammock.  Yes, a hammock, tied in between two great trees that stretch so high I’m not sure they ever end– and the sunshine penetrates through to kiss my forehead.  The leaves of these magnificent trees dance in the mild breeze that comes to wipe my sweat from my cheeks.

Yes.

Imagine it all now…

That sounds nice.  I think I should have some of this adventure.

Since it’s not likely that’s going to happen to me this weekend, I suppose I should focus on my homework.  Organic chemistry.  It’s not really even homework as much as it is preparing for my exam.  Yay, finals week is in two weeks!  I know I should be tied up for saying this, but I’m downright giddy about this.  It’ll all slow down here soon.

Then I’ll have only mediocre responsibility.

I think I’ll grow a garden again this year.

Heh, who am I kidding?   I wouldn’t consider NOT growing my garden.

I’ll grow my garden, but first I need to build a fence.  I have never built a fence, and am not sure where to begin, but I’m quite certain I can figure it out.  Hell, figuring it out will give me that much more pride in what I’ve built.  Even if it’s not a terribly fancy fence.  Just need to nail some boards together, no?

Build a fence.

Clean up the back yard.

Bathe the dogs.  *laughing hysterically*

Yep.

I’m doing this to prove to myself that I can.  I suppose that’s my motivation for most things.

Fence, back yard, plant, bathe dogs, entertain children…

Good times, yo.

Never mind while I go have a panic attack.

Today is going to be a particularly difficult day for me.

If you will keep me in your thoughts and send me warm loving energy, that would be most wonderful!

My greatest fear from this whole experience is being alone.

His companionship is my most beloved blessing, and for the next few months, I’m going to have to get by on my own.

I know I can do this!!

Regardless of our desires of how slowly or quickly we’d like it to go by, we cannot break from from the self-imposed imprisonment of time.

It does not much matter what I do– it will continue to march on at the pace we’ve assigned it.   Until we are gone, it will continue.  This is what we’ve done to ourselves!  We’ve made our own bed.

Somehow I find comfort in knowing I cannot control time.  It tick tick tick ticks on by, with or without my help.  Like my heart, which continues to beat even as I fade away into unconsciousness every night, time keeps beating its drum.  Every day the sun will rise again.  And if it doesn’t, I’ll have bigger problems to worry about than what I’m worrying about now.

Last week was pretty grueling!  I took a four day weekend for President’s Day, so that I could get completely prepared for my Organic Chem exam this week.  O Chem is going to be fairly challenging this semester,  so I’m VERY relieved to have only taken the O Chem lecture and lab and to be doing research. Thank GODDESS for having the wherewithal last December when I signed up for classes this semester to have not loaded up on schoolwork again– last semester was sufficiently crazy-making.  I’m pretty sure I learned my lesson.

A four day weekend should have been plenty of time to get ‘er all knocked out and compartmentalized in this here brain, but we had the kids, too… and they were sick all weekend.  Grrr.  This meant that while I *did* take the time to study, it was interrupted at times, and I still had other things to do… like laundry and help blow boogery noses and stuff.   Is it worth it?  Absolutely.  I love having booger noses in my life.  They say cute things and it’s neat to watch them learn and grow.

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Tonight, I completed my last class of the semester. Next week: Finals.

Good goddess I’m relieved to be finished. I’m not out of the woods yet, but I’m close. Seven days. Now, much closer to six days. The countdown has begun.

Today turned out much better than I was making of it. I began the day rough, and I’m ending it wonderfully. I woke up with major anxiety, something I haven’t experienced in quite a long while. I went in to work late, hoping that the extra sleep would ease my heart. It didn’t… Once I arrived at work, nothing spectacularly horrible happened. In fact, it was over all a great day. The hospital’s employee lunch was held, and the food was wonderful, and my co-workers dragged me away from my desk for lunch– my doctor even joined us. I haven’t been able to take a lunch this week– I’ve been slammed. So it was nice to take a lunch and have a freshly prepared meal, complete with caramel chocolate cheesecake.

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I’m torn between feeling ecstatic and panic. If this is what manic feels like, which I’ve heard it is, then I can’t imagine cycling through this emotion like a pendulum– one moment invincible, the next moment pummeling through the depths of depression like a fiery comet through the pits of hell… well, then, I’ll pass.

This life is so crazy. Insane. Crackers. Cooo-cooo.

Inevitably, amazing things happen. Of course, then, so do worrisome things. I’ve felt a lot of emotion today… a lot of the precursor towards guilt… not quite guilt, but just enough question in my mind that if I really did fuck things up with so many of the people I’ve experienced in my past, then ouch, I must not be as good of a person as I had thought. At the same moment, right as I’m about to succumb to feeling sorry for myself, the faint whisper in my mind hastens me to stop… Why can’t I be just fine as I am, mistakes and all?

Of course I’m not perfect. You all have followed me along this path of realization that one– that I– cannot always be the perfect (fill in the descriptive role here). I’m not an angel, after all. I may try, but alas, I fall significantly short. So if that is true, and right, and perfect, then why should I feel a negative emotion such as guilt for being human?

My passion for people is proving to be another roller coaster ride… highs, lows, and every place in between. I shed tears for my lost friendships… but in the same body, I recognize that I have three options: change my thoughts, release my thoughts into the Universe, or come to resolve. All of which are valid options, none complete without the others, but some more permanent in healing than the rest.

Choose to resolve. To revolve. To evolve. To embrace the life lessons as my own– my learning opportunities perfectly suited for a Work In Progress such as myself.

How I will go about resolving myself from my sins… is a challenge most people would gift a god. Dear Father in Heaven, save me from myself. Forgive me my sins.

What does a child do who has no Father? Does she cry out with self pity? Does she wallow in misery knowing that no imperfect creature such as herself could possibly pursue the expression of bliss?

I can’t go that route. I can’t allow myself to rot that way.

Instead, I will learn to forgive and embrace myself. In all my passions– my pitiful behaviors– my oversights and loose tongues. I allow it to be my experience, and yet strive for perfection.

They say perfection is god’s work.

And in saying yes, I recognize the goddess in me.

Wow.  I’m really emotional today… and of course, that leaves me trying to find a reason behind it, a reason to explain my feelings… there has to be something logical behind them… something that justifies them and makes it okay to be feeling this way. Today, I feel like a sad person in a normal person’s skin. It’s weird.  I’ve been really trying to embrace the good feelings I had this time last year.  I was suddenly alive again, in love… I was on top of my world, and the universe was turning itself around to be precisely what it was that I desired from it.  I desired SO much, and everything just came to be.  Just like that. *snap*

I still have everything. I have everything I could possibly desire, everything that my heart could want.  And at the same time, I wonder if perhaps without feeling exuberant, that maybe I really have nothing.  After all, it’s that feeling that I want, not necessarily the material or circumstantial things that I thought made me feel that way. I feel lonely.  Read the rest of this entry »

I suppose that there is one of two possible causes for humans to have created spirituality in the realm of evolution.   The first possibility is that we need it in order to cope with our own mortality, feeling less anxious about death because we know something “Better” will come after we pass on from our physical bodies.

The second possibility is that we somehow remember– not necessarily cognitively– that there is something more.  Perhaps our cells remember– though organically that wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense because our cells are what die.  The scientist in me struggles to make sense of it all- to understand how a majority of perfectly reasonable (okay that’s relative) people believe in SOMETHING.  It comes back to one of the laws of thermodynamics: Energy cannot be created nor destroyed.  So, in the scheme of all that exists, we are energy.  Every single cell in our body uses something carbon based as a “food” to make energy.  Every carbon based cell we consume once used something else to make energy to grow.  Animals consume other animals and plants. Plants use sunlight to make energy.  The sun expels energy from the dramatic process of nuclear fusion, which is a result of the cataclysmic nature of the creation of our universe– a creation that natural physicists insist followed the law in that the energy was already there– it just changed form somehow…  When we die, our bodies decompose into basic carbon that is reabsorbed into the ground.  Or, the process can be accelerated by cremation– either way, our cells are always carbon based, and eventually those carbons return to the earth to be used as nutrients for more plant life, which again is eventually consumed by another animal– us or otherwise.  I suppose another possibility to allow our cells to remember is that we are all the result of something living.  Every single one of us was created by two cells from two other living beings.  Perhaps that “memory” is passed down to us from the point of conception… I’m doubtful, but somehow there could be a connection.  Read the rest of this entry »

I awake, my head spinning.

I am curled up, my knees against my breast, my chin against my knees, my arms wrapped around my legs.  I cannot move.

I am in a fog, and am unsure of where I am.  I cannot stretch my legs, in fact, I cannot move.  I am inside of a box.  I try to wiggle. There’s not much room around me to move at all.  I can pull my arms into me, but I cannot lift my head.  There is wall against my back, above my head, and at my feet.  My elbows don’t have room to bend, so my attempts to feel my way around the structure are hindered.  I pierce the skin on my right index finger on something. 

Fuck. It’s dark.  I’m trying to decide if my eyes are open and it’s really that dark inside of my enclosure, or if I haven’t figured out how to open my eyes yet. I keep trying to lift my head from my knees, but I keep running into something. Read the rest of this entry »