Making it up as you go along

So I've been doing this DBT thing for well over two years now. For the past six months, I haven't been going to the weekly (more educational then process) group, mostly because of a lack of time, though my therapist was fine with it because I had been through the whole course several times. The skills that are taught in the group are to help guide you when your own coping skills and 'common sense' lead you astray. (I mean, you wouldn't be there if both of those things hadn't lead you significantly astray for a significant part of your life.) Just like anything, when you consciously use it enough, some of it will start to become second nature. 

I knew this week would be tough. When I moved in before Ginger, The Professor, and I had a new, bigger place that could accomodate the three of us and Ginger's son, I knew that it would be tough to stay at my parents' house again for a full week, especially during the holidays, which are already tough. It seems that when things are tough for me, I feel like they pile on and the list just gets longer and longer. Reasonable mind know that this is more how I see things than how things really are. As The Professor paraphrased yesterday, "Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike," and everyone has several shitty things going on in their life at any given time, just as they have several great things going in their life at any given time. But the point of dbt is to teach you skills you can draw from to get through those shitty things. 

 So this weekend I used some "pleasant experiences" to get me through this week. I have felt very distant from the Professor lately. He has been dealing with illness, the holidays, and just generally being "in the hole." It hasn't just been him, though. I also have had little energy or time for anything that wasn't necessary, usually plopping down in front of the tv when done. Having the weekend and the apartment all to ourselves, with the exception of some time Saturday when I had to work, we spent the whole weekend in rather intense play. I was happy to have the time to work on our Master/slave dynamic, which also helped to shore up our relationship all around. I believe that it helps everyone to feel like they belong and to have reasonable responsibilities appropriate to their abilities and place, whether that be in your employment or in your home. It might not be something we think about very often, but it is important all the same. I think these roles help give us both those things and this weekend reminded us of them. We also talked a little bit about how it would be more helpful for me to have a strong hand this week, for him to push me to be productive, rather than provide a sympathetic ear or leniency. I always do better when not home if I feel like I have to keep my shit together to help them out, like I try to do when they have a play weekend planned, when I want them to just enjoy themselves rather than have to worry about me. 

But this morning it just wasn't enough. I couldn't stop crying, could barely drag myself out of bed to go to the funeral, couldn't bear to look at myself in the mirror while brushing my teeth before my shower. My therapist likes to promote the IMPROVE skill for distress tolerance- Imagery, (find) Meaning, Prayer, Relaxation, One thing at a time, Vacation, Encouragement. In the book, they talk about Imagery as being daydreams or remembering nice places, those kinds of things. But I had developed something else that I use as Imagery, though it might sound weird. I would imagine another me. She was the embodiment of all my reasonableness, calmness, and ability to comfort. She would talk down my panic and distress and anxiety. She would even stroke my face and my hair. When no one else knew the right thing to say, she did, because she was me and deep down I knew what I wanted to hear. 

But sometimes it needs to be someone else that helps you. Or that part of someone else that lives inside you. Like when I needed the part of my uncle that lives inside me to tell me that I needed to get over the fears about being with Ginger and the Professor because they were causing me to suffer when deep down I had already made the decision to be with them. 

Today it was the part of the Professor, the part of my Master, that lives in me that I needed. I'd spent so much of this weekend with his words in my ear that conjuring up his voice wasn't difficult. He wrapped a hand around my wrist and held it to my heart. He told me that being a good girl was more than just what I did at home but it was doing what I needed to do out there in the world, but that he knew I was a good girl and he wouldn't ask me to do something that he didn't think I could do, so I needed to get cleaned up and go. I could cry as much as I needed to while there, because that was ok, but I needed to go. That is when my tears stopped. No not for the day, but until I got to the funeral, when I got to have a good and proper cry, because I was good and properly sad, over the loss of my client and all the losses it reminded me of. 

But, as I told the Professor later, it reminds me that I need to keep in mind that being a submissive, being a slave, doesn't mean I am not strong. It is a controlled (by me) giving up of control, not a giving up of strength and I am stronger because of it, that sometimes I must be stronger just to do it. As much as anything else, the roles that he and I have developed and are developing are coping mechanisms that I do truly believe help me (and I hope help him) to deal better with our lives, our sexualities, our demons, and our love. But just as the dbt skills work to point me in a better direction than I had before, there is trial and error, adaptions for each situation and individual, and no one right answer. 

I did go to the funeral. I cried shamelessly. I saw the casket to the gravesite. I ate lunch and reminisced and laughed with the family. The struggle never ends. The important part is that you are still struggling. 

He Gave Me You

Small wet spots on the green linoleum and then I have to stop because I can't see anything anymore. I'd knelt down to clean the base of the tub and the toilet and somehow ended up crying there on the floor.

Playing the new Jason Aldean album while I cleaned the bathroom in anticipation of your first visit to my other home. As things in each song remind me of you, I'm hit by a wave of...i don't know. Sadness. Grief. Both and more, so much stuff that I can't separate it out. But that voice in my head is saying loudly and clearly "He gave me you. I never would have had you if I hadn't lost him." 

For I can't remember how long, I've told people that I can't feel like I'd change things in my past because I wouldn't be in the moment I'm in, wouldn't have the good things that I did, if I hadn't had all those things in my past, the good and the bad. And except for sometimes wanting to take back the shitty things that I had done to others, I believed that. Mostly still do. But if I only have this because he's gone, and I could change that, would I? It's probably best that I can't answer that definitively.

It's a bitter pill knowing that I wouldn't have this work that I really do love, this path that I'm walking, these loves I can't imagine giving up, without his illness and death. And, if challenged to discuss it logically, I would tell you that I know this can't be true, that this isn't how the mechanics of life work, but maybe the only comfort I can get from it is that he gave me this because I wouldn't have him. He knew I needed work that would fufill me, give me meaning, and people to love me, finally loves who understood my brand of crazy and my brand of love and sex. He had to wait a bit to give it to me, because I couldn't have seen anything when he first left. But he gave me back my bestfriend, the link to my past, then the therapy to help me save myself, and then the work and then you. Of course, with you, more than the others, he had to walk me through it, sit with me through those sad confused drives away from the life I was standing on the edge of, holding my hand while I figured out how to take the jump I really wanted but had not come prepared for. There's no way I'll ever be able to thank him for all he gave me while he was alive, much less all he has given me since. 

I have to hope that I gave him some measure while he was alive too though. I remember a conversation with drunk him where he said he confessed that his plan was to live in the suburbs of larger Midwestern city until my grandparents passed and then he'd do whatever he wanted, live wherever he wanted, but he had to be the one to stay there and take care of them. I was 18 and couldn't imagine not getting out for that reason. For days, all I could think of was the Tim McGraw song "Everywhere," about the man who sees the love who stayed behind in the small town they grew up instead of taking to the road with him everywhere they go. I'm glad he didn't do that. I know that life forced him out, but, if I mourn that he only got to live less than a decade out, I can't imagine knowing he never got to do that. I hope he knows how happy I was that he got out. At least I do know that he felt like I helped when he came out, even if I inadvertently pushed him out before he was ready to be out with my grandparents. (Not exactly my fault. Most of you know the story.) 

I got the Jason Aldean from him too, and the permission to hang on to my crying songs. I feel him in me as I'm making the drive to see you or the drive from you to work, how my body feels in the seat, how my hand looks on the wheel as I smoothly navigate the big highway between the home circumstances won't allow me to give up yet and the one you provide. Listening to Aldean's "Talk," I'm reminded of our talks, our-singular-male in between play, the long nights of getting to know each other more, and our-singular-female in the never long enough mornings, where I'm torn between never wanting to stop you talking to me for fear you might not feel that open again and wanting to touch you, hold you, kiss you. Then, "Don't Give Up On Me" is how I pray you keep standing by me:

"You tie the knot when I'm at the end of my rope,

You never stop believing in me when I don't know,

Who I am or what I'm supposed to be,

I don't give you no good reasons, 

But baby don't give up on me,"

But right now, I'm loving "When She Says Baby," though I wish I change it to "When They Say Baby:"

Some days it's tough just gettin' up

Throwin' on these boots and makin' that climb

Some days I'd rather be a no-show lay-low

Before I go outta my mind.

But when she says baby,

Oh no matter what comes ain't goin' nowhere she runs her fingers through my hair and saves me.

Yeah that look in her eyes got me comin' alive and drivin' me a good kinda crazy

When she says baby.

Oh when she says baby.

Some nights I come home fightin' mad

Feel like runnin' my fist through the wall.

Is it even worth it what I'm fightin' for anymore feelin'

Torn all the hell with it all.

But when she's says baby,

Oh no matter what comes ain't goin' nowhere she runs her fingers through my hair and saves me.

Yeah that look in her eyes got me comin' alive and drivin' me a good kinda crazy

When she says baby

Everything gonna be alright.

Just lay down by my side.

Let me love you through this life.

Yeah she's the perfect shot of faith.

When every bit of mine is gone.

Somethin' I can believe in a best friend

A heaven sent love to lean on.

But when she says baby,

Oh no matter what comes ain't goin' nowhere she runs her fingers through my hair and saves me.

Yeah that look in her eyes got me comin' alive and drivin' me a good kinda crazy

When she says baby.

Oh when she says baby.

Yeah that look in her eyes got me comin' alive and drivin' me a good kinda crazy."

But now I have to go to that work he gave me and the job that I keep because of the life I want to build with you. And i hope that I can make him proud, if nothing else, if I'll never be able to thank him properly. 

2 years gone

you'd think you'd remember the exact time, remember what you were wearing, remember how things smelled

but you don't

or at least i don't

i know that two years ago today he started having trouble breathing and everyone came to his bedside at the hospice

i know that he couldn't really see very clearly and he said that someone must have on perfume, they smelled too strongly. he said it was me and told me to go back to the shower to wash it off.

i know that someone, don't remember who, came to the large bathroom with the shower that was for family members and told me to come back quick.

i know i don't feel like i got to say good-bye, though i was there all the time those last months

i know that how he died sounded just like how my grandfather, his father, died. i know that his death didn't take as long as my grandfather's, though it some ways i guess it took almost four years

i don't know what time it was but i know it was over before this time two years ago

i know at the time it felt like it took forever but looking back it feels like it took no time at all

it's two years on and sometimes i don't know how we're all still standing. at first i thought i'd never stop crying then i thought i'd never be able to talk about him without crying now sometimes i don't even cry when i feel like i should. i'm sure there will be a time when i don't remember this anniversary and i'm sure that he'll be just fine with that, even if i'm not.

i feel like i've changed so much in the time since then, though it might not be easy to tell from the outside. i wish i could tell him how much this has changed me, i think for the better, given me the job i do now, pushed me to really work on myself and stick with the dbt, though if there's something after this, i'm sure he already knows. i with i could tell him that i'd give it all back to have him back, not that it's a choice we get to make though.

i wish i wish i wish i wish so many things

but what i know right now is that i have to wrap this up and stop crying so i can go to work and that after work i'm going to break into that 6 pack i bought and drink to him

42

The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything in that book of yours I ruined that one summer at the pool.

How old you'd be today if you were still alive.

I've gotten better. I can tell the story of how I got to this job to my clients, can tell them that I helped take care of you while you were sick, talk about how much of a burden people who do what I do now took off of our shoulders, I can do that without tearing up. Most of the time. I never thought I'd be able to do that but it's only taken me 23 months.

Every time an anniversary rolls around, I want to take the day off, hold up in the house, drink. I was going to try to go to your grave, when I thought I was only working Saturday morning until 11 then Sunday starting at 5, but, because of the previously made plans of the people I'd be staying with out there, I wouldn't have enough time to really visit, with them or with you. Work intervened though. At first, I was going to be working from 1:30 til 9 Saturday and Sunday. Then, on my way to work Saturday, the office asked if I could stay overnight. The family of the client I was going to be working with had recently had a sharp decline in ability, which was why I was working there to begin with, to help the family who had previously been able to give the client care by themselves in the evenings. But Friday night had shown them that this client needed round the clock care but they couldn't place her anywhere until Sunday. I'd already worked several hours in the morning with another client and was planning on going back there Sunday morning, so that my co-worker could have a full weekend off. Knowing this, and that Friday night I'd felt so heartbroken over this temporary client's situation that I'd cried on the way home in my car even after a last minute call to TyRoy, I still said yes. How could I not? What had it meant for us to have those skilled nurses and aides there at hospice? When we had reached the end of what we knew how to do for you physically, medically, and we were at the end of what we had for you or ourselves emotionally? At the client's house, I didn't think I'd be able to sleep that night. I can't always sleep in my own bed, much less on someone's else's couch. But I did. Though I worried about how well I was doing the job and how well I'd be able to do the job when called upon in the middle of the night, I had some measure of peace knowing that I'd wake up on your birthday in their house, doing this job that means so much.

I thought that after having been on the clock 23 out of the previous 26 hours, I would crash when I got home, but I wasn't actually very tired. Mom had brought up going grocery shopping after having lunch out, but I wanted to do something else. It was a bright, sunny day, not too cold, so she showed me this trail I'd never been to. Then we went on an hour long drive for her to show me this house that looks quite a bit like I've been talking about building for us whenever I win the lottery except it must not have been on the road she thought it was because we never found it. Mostly we just talked. Not about anything too deep, but we did talk and laugh.

And we drove one of your cars. Out of the four vehicles in our drive, two of them were once yours. There's this new country song about driving a dead loved one's truck. I'd heard the song twice before. The first time, I just listened long enough to see where it was going and then I turned the station. The other time, I just heard the last few lines. Mom heard it yesterday and texted me and the three other people who also own a vehicle that used to be yours to warn them as you have a way of influencing songs on the radio. While Mom and I drove around, I had to change channels twice because that song came on and I really didn't want to break down, but I promised you I would listen to it later.

Eighty-Nine Cents in the ash tray
Half empty bottle of Gatorade rolling in the floorboard
That dirty Braves cap on the dash
Dog tags hangin’ from the rear view
Old Skoal can, and cowboy boots and a Go Army Shirt folded in the back
This thing burns gas like crazy, but that’s alright
People got their ways of coping
Oh, and I’ve got mine

I drive your truck
I roll every window down
And I burn up
Every back road in this town
I find a field, I tear it up
Til all the pain’s a cloud of dust
Yeah, sometimes I drive your truck

I leave that radio playing
That same ole country station where ya left it
Yeah, man I crank it up
And you’d probably punch my arm right now
If you saw this tear rollin’ down on my face
Hey, man I’m tryin’ to be tough
And momma asked me this morning
If I’d been by your grave
But that flag and stone ain’t where I feel you anyway

I drive your truck
I roll every window down
And I burn up
Every back road in this town
I find a field, I tear it up
Til all the pain’s a cloud of dust
Yeah, sometimes I drive your truck

I’ve cussed, I’ve prayed, I’ve said goodbye
Shook my fist and asked God why
These days when I’m missing you this much

I drive your truck
I roll every window down
And I burn up
Every back road in this town
I find a field, I tear it up
Til all the pain’s a cloud of dust
Yeah, sometimes, brother sometimes

I drive your truck
I drive your truck
I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind
I drive your truck


I miss ... well, I was going to say that I miss driving around with you, but I guess I still do that. Then, I was going to say that I miss talking to you while we drove, but I guess I still do that too. So I guess what I really miss is you talking back.

But today is your birthday. So I'm trying to focus on how lucky we were to have you while you were here, how much our life would have lacked without you, and what we've been able to take from the time you were here.

Happy Birthday.

When your best hopes and desires are scattered to the winds

I want to write. I've had a post on alcohol rattling around in my head for two weeks and another about leaving my hometown for a week. But all I can think about is you.

You as Lisbeth, girl with the Dragon Tattoo

You were found dead on Saturday, of an apparent suicide. The "life celebration" is Thursday. Your Facebook page is full of people talking about how much they loved you and how much they'll miss you.

I didn't actually know you very well. About this time last year, I attempted suicide. Like most people in that situation, I absolutely did not want to be hospitalized afterwards. And there you were. This cute little baby-dyke ball of love and energy and acceptance and welcome. And all at once you look across a crowded room to see the way that light attaches to a girl. You made me smile, just to look at you, so young and fresh and pretty. You got me to play that stupid Settlers of Catan game. You and the big guy were spots of promise at a really desperate time, when I felt like I'd fucked up the couple months of therapy that I'd been working on, felt like I'd always just end up back in the same place. Afterwards, you created a secret FB page for those of us who were in the hospital at the same time. The group even met for a few dinners, though I was only there for one. I have ended up becoming real friends with another member of the group. Though ze's moved several hours away, I still see zir whenever ze comes back to visit other friends.

Our dinners stopped when you went into an intensive in-patient program in the Large Midwestern City. You stayed there after the program was over. Through the summer, I'd see pics of you at famous locations all around the city, particularly the baseball stadium. You seemed happy. Then again, you always seemed happy, which must not have been the case, considering how we met.

But I hoped that all of us were doing better. Through FB I knew that another person had dealt with medication abuse issues and was back on zir feet. The person that I'd become friends with has found a job ze loves and likes the new city ze is living in. Though it took me until August, and two failed jobs, I finally found a job that I think I can stick with, that I really find rewarding. I finally feel like the skills from therapy are becoming second nature, not "ok, what skill should I use here?" I'm really feeling good.

I'd seen that you'd been back in the hospital a few weeks ago but you said that you were fine, no worries. But sometimes the toughest part is when we get out of the hospital. And holidays. And fall/winter.

I don't presume to tell people that they should stick it out, no matter how much they are suffering, because life is sacred, because it might get better, because of their family and loved ones. I don't know their pain and only they can say if it is bearable. I've read that 10% of major depressive disorder is treatment resistant. I have no idea what the stats are on bipolar, mood disorders, or schizophrenia. Even when medication works to treat the mental disorder, the side effects can make it difficult to continue. These are diseases. Like diabetes. Sometimes you just take some meds and are more mindful of things in your life. Sometimes they take whole parts of you.

Last June, you turned 20 days after I turned 30. Time doesn't always bring wisdom though it does bring experience. It might not have changed your mind, but I wish I could have told you a few things before you were gone. I would have told you that you might not be able to change who you are, but you can find ways to manage bad behavior. I wish I could have told you that life is both longer and shorter than you could ever imagine. It is long enough not to spend it miserable. It is long enough that you'll get more chances than you'd think. It is long enough to find and lose love over and over and over. That it feels neverending when you're watching someone go, but like the time with them went in the blink of an eye once they're gone. That hard times come and hard times go, hard times come and hard times go...just to come again. That they do go. That so much of this will pass, yes the good, but also the bad.

But I'm sure people had told you all those things before. You decided to do this. It's not my place to say you didn't do the best thing for you. Even if I did, it wouldn't change anything. So I'll put these thoughts out there, with hopes that you'll hear them and hopes that they might help someone else. Maybe me on a day when I really need them. And I'll mourn, for my loss, for your family's loss, for your friends' and lovers' loss, that half the world don't even know what they could have had. Whatever comes after this, I hope you find peace or at least reprieve.

Picking at Scabs

It would be so nice to feel sleepy around 10 pm, before even taking any medication, then just lay down in bed and fall asleep. I'm told that's what normal people do and what I will eventually do when I'm healthy. I think it's all bullshit. Tonight I started feeling sleepy, drop dead tired at around 10:30, after eating, but I made the mistake of playing around on my phone, then journalling my day, which led to me thinking about what day it was by that time, since it was by then after midnight, and, well, I fell apart.

I sent this email to Moneypenny, typed on my phone, so sorry about the really poor grammar.

There's an episode of House in which House & his friend Wilon are on the outs but Wilson & their boss conspire to, basically, drug & kidnap Houe to make him attend his father's funeral, at the request of his mother, who knows House has much anomysity towards his father that he won't go on his own. During the ride to the funeral, House tells Wilson that part of his feelings are that the man wasn't really his biological father, which he figured out at 13 because of recessive genetic traits and that the man was a marine, shipped out at the crucial time, but House felt that it was himself who was decieved. At the funeral, House even goes so far as to get a tissue sample by pretending to kiss the deceased, so he can prove it later. Wilson ends up fighting with him and getting so angry that he throws a bottle of booze, at what he assumes is the wall but is really a stained glass window, which he breaks.

In the last scene, Wilson brings House the results of the dna test,which he'd intercepted before they got to House. Wilson also came to tell House that he'd been right about something he'd said earlier, that for all the insanity House had gotten him into that day, it was the mostfun he'd had in a long time, since what paused their friendship. Of course, the test results confirm House's lifelong hypothesis about hi parentage. Wilson tells him that this must make him feel a bit better, because it proved he was that smart and right at 13. House doesn't look more pleased. "Wilson, [beat] my dad is dead." Wilson looks genuinely sad for him. "My condolencses. Let me buy you dinner." He opens the door and waits for his friend.

Being the Wilson to my House doesn't mean you get the shitty character.

My grandpa died today. Around 6 am. I'm so sad.

I started crying and decided I'd rather watch the episode of House, if I owned it, than lay in bed and cry. Somehow I don't have season 4, but I do have season 5, and this episode is the fourth episode of season 5. I'm not sure if I'm lucky or not.

Around 6 am, December 28th, 2007, so about four years less five hours from right about now, I watched my grandfather die.

As I stood in the kitchen, crying, trying to find something to drink that didn't have caffeine to go with my pistachio pudding, things started flooding back to me. You know, it's strange how things run together. All the deaths. All the regrets. All the things you didn't do. All the things you did do. Four years is the blink of an eye when you're watching your child grow up, when you're pushing your way through high school, when it's the last four years you get with someone. Four years is forever when you're watching people die. Four minutes is forever when you're lost and alone and can't figure out where you're going.

I drive Moneypenny crazy with late night phone calls and text messages. The text messages he, rightly, ignores. When it used to be phone calls, he'd feint interest and try to get me off the phone as soon as he could so he could go back to sleep. I don't fault him for this feeling. But, even before this recent extended dance with the Reaper, I've had this fear that I wouldn't say what needed to be said before someone was gone from my life. Maybe it was because I didn't know that the last time I saw my biological father would be the last time I saw my biological father. The anxiety most people felt when they wanted to tell someone that they had a crush on them was doubled by my own worry that this might be my last chance that I ever got to tell them that I had a crush on them, because they might move the next day or get hit by a bus. There was so much I told my uncle, about my life, about my feelings, about my crushes, about my friendships, on our long drives. But there were also times I'd sit outside his door while he was asleep, when I couldn't sleep, when I fought the urge to wake him up and tell him how bad it hurt, inside, all the time. When he was still living with my grandparents and my parents and I would visit from the Very Large Midwestern City, he'd give up his bedroom to my parents. He and I would have to share a bedroom, which was wonderfully awkward for a 9 year old girl and a 20 year old young man, though I slept on a day bed and he slept on a pull-out bed which only sometimes stayed propped up through the whole night. (That was funny, in a Three Stooges kinda way.) I'd lay in my bed, listening to him sleep, wishing I had the balls to wake him up and tell him that I was sad and desperate and maybe even suicidal, though I had no way to express that except reading all the horror novels I could get my hands on. I wish I had told him and yet I'm glad I didn't. It's hard enough dealing with my mental illness as an adult, when the doctors and pharmacists have a sort of kind of solid hold on what the illnesses look like and how the medications probably effect a person, much less children when it's all fucked up and topsy turvy. If my family is worried about me now, I can't even imagine the eggshells they would have felt they needed to walk on then. But I don't think I've ever told this to anyone. Not even Moneypenny. I wonder if my uncle knew. Even more than my mother, he seemed to know everything. While he didn't get to punish me for things I had no idea how he knew, he did get the burden of whether or not to share it with my mother, so she could decide what to do with it. On the other hand, it seems unimaginably cruel to let me sit outside his door for hours and cry and not do anything about it. If there's one thing he wasn't to me, it was cruel.

And why am I talking about my uncle when it's the anniversary of my grandfather's death? Because they all run together. Because I wasn't as close to my grandfather. Because it was easier to accept my grandfather's death. Because it's been longer. Because I could justify it by saying that my grandfather had done all, or almost all, of what he was going to do with his life. And why am I telling you? Putting all these personal issues on blast? Maybe just so I don't feel the need to wake up my poor good friend who is probably sleeping peacefully next to his lovely girlfriend and who definitely has to be at work at 8 in the morning tomorrow (or today.) Sigh.

But I still miss my grandfather. MGD and fritos. Steel guitars and lottery tickets. Ashes and strong coffee. Those steaks my grandmother made for him that I never could figure out how he could chew through without his dentures. A man who never said "I love you," but who never did anything to make me doubt that he did. I care him with me wherever I go and try to let his example lead me, try to be as good of a man and a person as he was. I miss you Grandpa.

[Oh, but I got the details of the episode wrong. Wilson goes to see House because House's patient pulls through. House is drinking in celebration of the test results which proved him right, but he's still depressed because he feels nothing at all at the news. But their final exchange is still the same. Your real friends are the ones who understand, or maybe just accept, that you can be righteous while being pissed off that you're right while still being sad that this person that you had such a strange and complex relationship with is dead. And while they might not show the textbook perfect response, their response is still... well, it's still something. Sometimes, something is all you really need. Your friends will never have the perfect response for you and you'll never have the perfect response for them. But being there is a big step in the right direction.]

[And I'm still the same person. I'm just blogging under an account that's tied to my Google. When I started the blog, google didn't own blogger and/or I didn't have a google account, so I used the email I'd been using for years. Now I rely on google for tons of stuff and I'm too lazy to log out of all my google stuff just so I can blog. So there's two of me blogging on here: Ava and AvaAlso. I think my gentle readers are intelligent enough for this not to cause a large problem.]

Bitter, Sad, or Funny Christmas Songs

Well, gentle readers, it's that time of year again. Though it probably isn't true, I remember hearing on tv shows and movies the whole time I was growing up that suicide rates are noticeably higher than the rest of the year. If you're alone, you feel lonely. Even if you have friends or family, but are the kind of person who often feels lonely around people, you're probably going to feel even lonelier around even more people. And though it's supposed to be the celebration of a birth, since it coincides with the beginning of winter and the end of the calendar year, it seems to make people dwell on those that have died, instead of those born or living.

I'm no different, on all those fronts. They say that the first holidays without a loved one are the hardest, especially when that loved one played a large role in that holiday. One of the reasons that the first Christmas without Grandpa was particularly hard was because he loved the holiday so much. Recent Facebook posts from my uncle's friends have highlighted the ways in which their holiday season is much different without him. I'd tried to just push it away, but today it came crashing down. For the past few years, I've done the shopping for the gifts that my family donates to a local charity. I really do like doing it. But I didn't make it past getting my shower. I started crying while in there and couldn't stop. My uncle is what made Christmas special for me at a time when I really needed to reconnect with my family. Even before that, he was what made it all come alive for me.

While I remember bits and pieces of my early Christmases, it's sometimes difficult to tell what is memory and what is from pictures. The first holidays I really remember started after I moved with my mom and my step-dad to Really Big Midwestern City from Medium Sized But Larger than where I currently live Midwestern City, where my grandparents and my uncle resided, where I was born and raised until then. Moving was a huge culture shock for me and I was severely homesick, as I always considered my grandparents' house HOME. With that move started the tradition of me spending my school breaks with my grandparents at their home. Though we celebrated Christmas in Really Big Midwestern City, my maternal grandparents and my uncle always came up and spent it with us and the rest of the family on my step-father's side. Then, I'd go back home with them. My parents would fetch me after the New Year. As I wasn't much of a kid as a kid, when with the extended family, I felt more comfortable with the adults than I did with my cousins, who were 2 and 4 years younger than me. My uncle, who was smack dab in between my mom's generation of people and my generation of people, was my closest ally. He was also amazing at defusing our family spats, which inevitably rose as we all spent more time together. He was amazing at picking gifts. Always knew just the right thing to get a person. He really liked putting gifts in those shirt boxes. My family has a ton of them that we've reused throughout the years, some with old Famous Barr and Dillard logos. But he wanted to make sure they stayed closed and together, so he'd put strips of tape on all four sides and it was a bitch to get them open. My grandpa would bring his pocket knife out to open his presents.

In an effort to exorcise, or at least air out, my current demons, I wanted to write about all the stuff that I remembered about spending time with my uncle around Christmas. It's fragmented and not really in any order, but I'm hoping it helps me.

Crystal Pepsi. My family has a soda obsession and my uncle was the main driver of this obsession. For as long as I can remember, he loved Diet Coke. His favorite excuse to get out of my grandparents' house, go for a drive, was that he was going to fill up his soda cup. While he always stuck with Diet Coke, I liked trying most new and different beverages. One year, because of the way the Christmas and New Year's holidays fell, my school break started almost a week before Christmas Eve, so I got to go out to my grandparents' house for several days before. I rode back to Really Big Midwest City with my uncle. It was more fun to make the 6 hour trip with him than with my grandparents, who flooded the car with cigarette smoke, stopped every half hour to use the restroom and get a cup of coffee, drove the 55 mph speed limit on the highway, and only listened to 60s and 70s country classics, most of which I didn't know the words to so I couldn't sing along. My uncle always had really cool cars, listened to really cool music, didn't care that I sung at the top of my lungs off-key, would talk with me, and only needed to stop once to go pee on the trip. I believe that trip was also the same year that Crystal Pepsi came out. Like any good American consumer, I had seen all the commercials and I was frothing at the mouth to taste this new sensation. It wasn't yet in the stores in my grandparents' hometown and it wasn't in the gas station we'd stopped at on the way back to Really Big Midwest City. The car was pretty low on gas by the time we reached the house of my step-dad's parents, where the rest of the family had already gathered, but my uncle didn't stop on the way to the house. I wonder if that wasn't intentional, so he'd have an excuse for him or us to go for a drive when he got tired of being there. Either way, several hours later, we were driving around the snowy, small suburb, looking for any gas station that was open on Christmas Eve and trying to find any radio station that wasn't playing Christmas songs. Both were quite a challenge, but the gas station that was open had Crystal Pepsi. I was so happy and, of course, my uncle bought me a bottle. At the time, I loved it. I wish it was still on the market, though I'm obviously a minority. But, yeah, I remember Crystal Pepsi.

And the SNL Christmas special that used to air over and over again on Comedy Central. Which that year included a Crystal Gravy parody commercial. That year, my parents and I were living in a house with a third bedroom and we set up a camping cot in that room for my uncle to sleep on. My grandparents got my bedroom and I got the couch. The year before, without the cot, my uncle had to sleep in my step-dad's armchair, which kept un-reclining throughout the night. My parents have never believed in having televisions in the bedroom so our household's second tv was in the third bedroom. My uncle and I used the cot like a couch to watch the SNL Christmas special and any other Christmas specials that weren't all happy-happy-joy-joy. I was kinda a cynical pessimistic depressed kid. But that was our time together and it saved me from getting into even more arguments with my step-dad, who is unbelievably grumpy around Christmas time for no discernible reason.

As I became a teenager, I fought more with my step-dad, and everyone else, all year round, though Christmas was especially bad. Despite the fact that my step-dad doesn't like the holiday and isn't a particularly social person, it seems like most of our fights during the holidays revolved around me not being social enough with our whole family. Oddly enough, the fighting didn't motivate me to be more social, but made me withdraw more. Finally, one year in my late teens, I pessimistically asserted to my uncle that I thought the holidays were all bullshit and just something to suffer through as best you could. My uncle tried to refute this, but I was so stubborn. Finally, he walked out. Not just of the room, but the house. Got in his vehicle and drove off. This was shocking to me. Though he and I had picked on each other and fought when I was really young, and I'd seen him argue with my grandmother/his mother, he was one of the most level-headed, best able to debate another person and/or defuse tense situations, people I'd ever known. I don't think I'd ever seen him walk out of a room angry from an argument in progress, much less a whole house. He came back about a half hour later and calmly told me that he valued the holidays so much because they gave him a chance to spend extended amounts of time with people he loved but might not get to see this much all year long. He was very sad for me that I couldn't see it like that and worried that he hadn't done a good enough job of showing me what the holidays should really be about. That conversation really stuck with me. I can't say I've always been successful at avoiding the melancholy of the season, but I try to be thankful for the loved ones I have and enjoy their company. For as long as I can possibly stand it at least.

My uncle was my partner in crime and comedy from the time I was young. We were always getting in trouble with our respective parents for laughing, giggling, and making jokes at inopportune times, like dinner prayers and graduation ceremonies. Though I'm now aware that comedic holiday songs are nothing new, the year that "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" came out, my uncle and I had it memorized. I think it was by far our favorite Christmas song of all time. My mom couldn't find it in cassette format, but did manage to find the album. That might have been how I learned to move the needle to certain songs, because we only cared about that one song and listened to it endlessly. Though my mom has a massive collection of Christmas music on vinyl, cassette, and CD, that song, along with the Muppets and John Denver's Christmas Together, will always be my childhood Christmas soundtrack. Our shared love of that song has fueled my love of slightly less than classic Christmas songs, or classic Christmas songs in a less than classic or classy style. Some of my favorites are Merry Christmas from the Family, which has been done by Toby Keith as well as Jill Sobule; I'll Be Hating You for Christmas by Everclear; Fairytale of New York by the Pogues and Kristy MacCollum; and the Ben Fold's song about Santa getting stuck in the chimney and Mrs. Clause suing his ass, which my grandfather also thought was hilarious. Please feel free to share your favorite bitter, sad, or funny Christmas songs in the comments. One of my recent faves is at the end of this post.

That isn't all my memories of holidays with my uncle, but that's what sticks in my head right now. In contrast to my pessimistic, cynical childhood and teenage days, in my advancing age, I find that, more and more, I want warm loving holidays. I think my younger self would be much better at this Christmas, as it would give me a good excuse to be a Scrooge. But this year is made harder by the fact that I don't want to be that, but it's really hard to be happy when half of your family has died in the last four years and you're one of the few un-coupled people you know. I want to be happy this holiday so badly, for my grandpa who loved the holiday, for my grandma who made it all come together, for my uncle who taught me how to love it too, and for my mom who's lost just as much, if not more, than I have. I just don't know how to do that.

Huh. You know, for the past week or so, since right after Thanksgiving, this song has been in my head and I had associated it with someone else, a former love if you will. But now I think maybe it is for my mom and I. Enjoy.

Heartache Can Wait - Brandi Carlile


You're talking about leaving
It's right about Christmas time
Thinking about moving on
I think I might die inside
I'm thinking about years gone by
I'm thinking about church at midnight
I'm thinking about letting go
I think that might finally be alright
But this is where we shine

Silver bells and open fire
And songs we used to sing
One more chance to be inspired
Is what I'm offering, if love is not enough
Then stay with me because
The heartache can wait

It's not about hanging on
It's making my deal with God
If I could call one last truce
We've given it all we've got
Then I'm gonna catch my breath
And make it a long December
If we've got nothing left
This could be worth remembering
With a smile upon my face

Silver bells and open fire
And songs we used to sing
One more chance to be inspired
Is what I'm offering, if love is not enough
Then stay with me because

Silver bells and open fire
And songs we used to sing
One more chance to be inspired
Is what I'm offering, if love is not enough
Then stay with me because
The heartache can wait

Slow

Just don't look myself in the eyes. I just have to put this one cream on my face and then I don't have to look in the mirror until I do my hair. I just have to keep it together to put on this one cream. Because if I see myself start to cry, if I even just see my face right now, I'm done for. It's all over. I'll be a blubbering mess. Thank the gods today is not a day where I have any reason to wear makeup.

A friend suggested I watch this amazing short film, Slow, directed by Darius Clark Monroe. To whittle it down would be to do it an injustice, but, as with anything that has to do with black sexuality or gay sexuality or sexually tense situations, I couldn't help but think of you. I watched all of Mr. Monroe's short films that were available on vimeo and I had to fight back thinking about you because I knew I'd lose it if I let myself think about how I couldn't share this with you, that I couldn't share anything with you again.

I wonder what you'd think of the new cover of "99 Problems." Tribute or rip-off or somewhere in the middle?

One of the blogs I read, Racialicious, is doing an online book club of Octavia Butler books. I don't know if you ever read any of her books and I know you were never really a scifi fan, but I'd give anything to buy double copies of everything, one for me and one for you, so we could read along with these other men and women all over the world.

I want to watch Game of Thrones or True Blood with you and talk for hours about race, sexuality, class, ownership, and anything else that comes up.

I know you'd understand better than many how it feels to worry about living up to potential, pressure to make good on the hard work that others did for you to be where you are, even if it's only pressure from yourself, when you feel like you're running in quicksand. I wish I could talk to you. Wish I could hear you tell me that I don't have to live up to anything. That I don't have to live a certain way because they can't anymore, those people I've lost, because you can't. I should live up to what I can do at any given moment because I owe it to myself. Hell, you'd probably offer me a toke and tell me to just chill, worry about it tomorrow, not to stress about it right now. But I wish I could hear that from you. Girl, you have no idea how much I miss you. Today and everyday.

I was changed for good and for the better by knowing you. If I wasn't an incredible pain in the ass on equality issues before, I definitely am now, which I think is better. Being around you made me realize how incomplete my education was and you made me want to keep filling in the gaps. You have probably been the only female who's helped me feel more alright with being turned on by "the wrong" thing. You knew I was totally in love with you but, thankfully, you never made a big deal out of it.

I'm sure this isn't the last time I'll write to you here, but it's the first time I've written in a long while and that's something. Even if my face is all red and puffy, my nose is dripping and I'm completely unsuitable looking to leave the house. Thank you, Miss Kee. I miss you terribly.

I'd Tell You But You're Dead

I think one of the hardest phenomenon to get over when you lose someone, whether it's a break-up or a death, is that you are so used to talking to them, telling them things, sharing things with them that you think they would like to know or like to hear about.

Monday I called my mom, who isn't going back to work until next week, just to see what she was up to, as she wasn't at home when I woke up. She said that she had went to the bank to cash in the last of my grandparents' savings bonds and she felt....kinda lost, I guess, though that's not what she said, because usually she would call my uncle and tell him about how much money it came out to be (as the money was supposed to be evenly divided), etc. But now there's no one to call.

One of the blogs I follow, Racialicious posted about this independent black film that is getting a good deal of GREAT early press, called I Will Follow. The post had embedded a trailer, but, as I tend to read blog posts through google reader, either on my phone or on computers with VERY slow internet connections or while watching something else on television, so I usually have to go back at a later date to watch videos and it took me awhile to get to this trailer. But it made me want to see the movie even more, even though I think I'll have to bring a box of tissues. From both the trailer and the website's description, it's the day in the life of a woman who has just lost her aunt, who she was very close to, and the twelve people that day who help her find her way amid the mourning and grief. In the little blurb on his front page, Roger Ebert writes: " "I Will Follow" doesn't tell a story so much as try to understand a woman. Through her, we can find insights into the ways we deal with death. In one way or another, every emotion in this wonderful independent film is one I've experienced myself. Grief, of course. But also anger, loneliness, confusion and a sense of lost direction. Above all, urgent conversations you have in your own mind with someone who is no longer alive. How many people, now dead, have you wanted to ask questions you should have asked when they were alive?"

Which is funny, in a weird, sad way, because the first thing I wanted to do once I watched the trailer was to call or text Ms. Kee and tell her about it, because I know she would love this movie, because I know it would speak to her in so many ways, just as it speaks to me, but even more than that because it is directly rooted in the black community and how black families deal with loss. But I can't tell call or text her. Because she's dead.

Then I wanted to call my uncle to talk about how hard it is to want to share something that someone else would love so much, how hard it is to want to share something with someone you were so close to in so many ways. But I can't call him either. Because he's dead too.

Though I haven't seen the movie, I feel much like its main character must feel.

I miss you all so much. So so so much.

He's Gone

It's been almost two weeks and I still don't really know how to write about his passing or my own grief. I wrote something for his funeral but it was more a comedic tribute to the man I grew up with than anything that dealt with how I feel about him or about losing him. I'm writing this in the bright light of day because I lose all comprehension at night when I even think about writing. I think I'd end up with a stream-of-consciousness piece that maybe even I couldn't understand. But during the day, though I'll still cry (am crying), I know I'll push through it to do something, anything. I have an easier time convincing myself that the crying jag, brought on by some little thought connected by 100 degrees of separation from my uncle, will end. As everythig does.

I think I don't want to write because I don't want to feel what I know I do feel and I don't want to know those things that I'm avoiding feeling so hard that I can't even touch them or name them. You know, I've always thought that those pain questionaires that doctors and nurses ask you about were so arbitrary as to be useless. "Is the pain stabby or shooting? Aching or cramping?" I don't know, motherfucker. It just fucking hurts! Are you feeling sad? Lonely? Bitter? Angry? Guilty? Confused? Useless? Lost? Afraid? YES and then tons of other things that I don't even know the words for.

And what feels like it's equally as bad as all the expected grief is that I just want to move on. I just want everything to finally be like a normal life for just a little bit. I want to be done with estates and storage units. I want to just get a stupid, pain in the ass job, working 40 hours a week like a good little American zombie, at least for a little while. Not have to think. Just be pushed along with the flow of things. Set up a 2 year plan for getting out of debt and out of town, before my parents' health fails and I'm back in this same spot again. Use most dollars from my zombie job to do this. But I just want things to be normal. For the first time in my whole goddamn life, I want things to be normal. I want to be normal. I want to have not spent the last four years losing so much of what I love, watching them slowly die. I don't want to be wiser, deeper, more experienced. I want to go back to the day before my uncle was diagnosed with cancer and live a life where that never happens. Which leads to a great deal of guilt, of course. I mean, what a selfish little bitch, right?

But narcistic, exhibitionistic writers are still who they are and I still had to write something when a major life event occurs. Thanks for bearing with me.

End of Life Care

No matter how long life is or how long it seems, there will still never be enough time.

I can't count the number of times I've chastised a friend, telling them that, for most of us, life is so much longer than we give it credit for when we are 24 (their current age). Not only will you meet so many people you can't even imagine now but you'll be offered so many opportunities that you can't even imagine at this point, if you just leave yourself open to it. On the other hand, you can never imagine how long 50 years can seem until you're brushing your teeth next to someone you've grown to hate and loath over those fifty years (hell, even 50 minutes.) And 50 years can't go by quicker than when it's the right person, a person who improves with age in parallel to you. And despite all that is happening now, I know that life is long. So very long. Which means that we have to live with the hurt and suffering just that much longer.

All this medical stuff with my uncle never fully makes sense. I thought that when he came back home this last time, mid-January, I thought that my uncle was classified as "hospice," which was why we were getting all this care. No. See, he was classified as "home health care," on a schedule to show us all how to take care of him, check up on him, etc, but see there was this drug, called a targeted agent, which we talked the insurance into giving to him as a last ditch effort, but my uncle was on the fence about taking it at all, as no one could say that it would actually improve his quality or quantity of life. My uncle kept saying that he'd think about starting it once he felt a bit better but he never really felt better. But if you are on an active treatment regiment, you aren't on hospice. No one really explained this to us until probably Friday, less than a week ago. So we were all thinking about this, what we wanted to do, etc.

But the time for thinking ran out. Yesterday, my uncle started having some really intense pain. The immediate release drugs didn't touch it. My mother was 2.5 hours away, but just about to leave Suburb of Slightly Smaller Midwestern City. My uncle's boyfriend was scrambling to get all the info the hospital might need, to call the right people, to "Where the hell is that ambulance!" (So playing the slightly less dramatic version of my grandmother.) I was just holding my uncle's hand, trying to calm him down, get him to breathe, find out exactly where the pain was. Once at the ER, the doctors, including one we have a previous relationship with, we got the news that you don't really want to hear. My uncle was doing poorly. While my uncle's original living wills, DNRs, etc, said that he did not want extraordinary measures, people can and do change their mind when faced with a very caring but blunt doctor saying, "This is the end. I can do all these things, use the paddles, crack your chest (which will probably completely obliterate your ribs because of the cancer), put in a trach, all that stuff to keep you alive, but you won't be any better than you are right now and we won't be able to treat the cancer at all. OR we can treat your pain, either at home or at a home-y hospice center, though you will probably pass more quickly and be more aware of both the good and the bad of your situation." Though I have a whole other discussion about how much consent you can really get from someone in so much pain, their body wracked with disease, and on a huge amount of narcotics, I am glad that my uncle is making this decision for himself, though with his family, doctors, and social workers. He did not chose the first option. Right now, he is at the hospital, being stabilized, and deciding whether he wants to do hospice at home or at a hospice center.

But there really isn't enough time. One social worker, weeks ago, said that he knew people on hospice for a year or more, that they took trips. Hospice generally covers people who the doctors think might not last for more than 6 months, but that's just an average and people go one way or another. The way things had been going around my uncle's house, I thought we'd have time. We, my mom, my uncle, my uncle's boyfriend, and I, were just getting a rhythm down, moving stuff in so we were comfortable too. But it looks like we don't have that kind of time.

Doctors don't always come out and tell you things. They sneak things into other sentences. The Dr We Like said to my uncle "I wish I could keep you hear in the hospital and watch over you myself but there are more critical patients that could use this bed for the 7-10 days you'd be here."

10 Days. It's never enough.