fashion clothes

I spent a good long time yesterday pouring out my soul in a piece that may never be published. I do that a lot, actually. Sometimes they get edited and posted. Sometimes I just hit the delete button and never look back. Sometimes I enlist the help of trusted friends for guidance and wisdom.

Sometimes I write it just because I need to get the words out, like the proverbial letter scratched out in anger and frustration and sadness then set aflame and tossed ceremoniously in a wastebasket.

I think this one needs to be set on fire.


These things, the hardest ones to write about, sometimes I am not ready to let them out yet. Not here, anyway. I try to always be cognizant of the affect my words might have on others. Even if it will carry some benefit for someone out there reading, I have to worry first about protecting myself, protecting my children. I don't have to protect my parents anymore, but I still need to shield my kids.

This is one of the pieces that could bring with it ramifications. Not horrible ones, but some nonetheless. It contains too many of my truths in one place. Too much of my past. Things I still haven't really worked through myself.

Maybe someday I will be ready. I don't know. This one might stay away from the public forever.

There is so much that you all don't know about me. This piece I wrote, it is one of the parts of me that even most of my best friends in the world don't know about. One of the things that I still carry shame and regret about, though I am trying to forgive myself.

Even with all that, the lesson it all taught me was it was one of the most important I have learned in my life thus far, one that I carry with me every day, one that keeps me writing about the things that people don't always want to read about. A lesson that literally took me twenty years to learn.

I don't always want to write about the hard stuff, but I do it anyway.

Sometimes I don't really have a choice. It comes out or it eats away at my soul.

Making people uncomfortable is my thing, after all. I talk about the truths and the realities that we would rather live without seeing. The things we would rather deny. The things we would rather ignore. The things we would rather rationalize.

Sometimes, though, even I can't do it.

I can't hit the publish button.

I had coffee with someone new yesterday, someone that I met through this bizarre online world, someone that began the day a stranger and ended the day a friend.

She could see it.

My internal conflict, almost constant in my head. Sometimes it comes out here. Sometimes I'm elusive about it all, sometimes I lay it all out for the world to see. The conflict, though, is almost always there.

Thus is the life of a writer. 

If you do it long enough, you end up writing about all of the things. The menial, the mundane, the boring and bland. You write about the important, the significant, the controversial, the real. You write about the truth and the lies, the pain and the loss.

Then there are all the things you keep inside. The stories untold, the secrets kept, the times that you want nothing more than to shout it from the rooftop, but you won't allow it.

You refrain.

I sense that the writers out there will know exactly what I'm talking about, particularly the ones who have been at this long enough to have been sitting where I am right now, staring at the words running across the screen as they come screaming out.

The writers will know what I mean when I talk about the absolute therapeutic value in letting the words out, even just to ourselves, even if no one else ever sees them.

The writers out there will understand what I mean when I say that the words just need to be set on fire.

Yesterday was my birthday. Though it was one of those days that I legitimately needed several extra hours to get everything done and was running around all day, it was a good day. A really good day.

Probably the best birthday I've ever had.

There was no celebratory dinner. It was waiting in the crockpot when we got home from all the other things we had to do.

There was no cake. Which is fine, because I really don't like cake anyway. (Gasp! I know, right?)

There was no party. Unless you count the singing of Happy Birthday as we crammed chicken cacciatore into our mouths.

There was no hurrah. My youngest didn't even realize it was my birthday until last night.

And you know what? It was still awesome.

I resisted joining Facebook for a long time, telling myself (with real reason) that I didn't want to be on a social media site, that I didn't need to connect with classmates from decades ago, that I didn't need to be wasting my time there. I pushed it away because I was afraid I would like it, if I am just being honest with myself.

I eventually gave in and joined.

Over the years I have reconnected with people I never thought I would, forged friendships with people I never would have had the chance to, and met some of the nicest people I've never actually met.

Then there is this. Most of you came by way of Facebook.

All day yesterday, I received posts and messages from these people that live in my computer. I laughed at a few, teared up at others, was touched by everyone that took time out of their day just to write to me.

It's fairly fantastic, this internet thing.

A few times, though, I saw people posting memes and links to posts whining about the 10th anniversary Facebook movies. In case you don't know what they are, earlier this week, Facebook celebrated their 10th Anniversary. To thank their users, they created an app that generates a one minute look back video of your time on Facebook. The first posts you wrote and pictures you shared, the items that people interacted with the most, the things that some algorithm decided were worthy of being included in that little snippet of life.


Most people loved their video. Some didn't, usually because it included pictures of painful reminders, posts having to do with heartbreak or loss, people who aren't here anymore.

Even if people loved their own video, eventually the snark about everyone else's videos began. It seems in this world we can't ever just let people have their moment without making it about us, can we? We seem to think that our opinions are important enough to voice them, even at the expense of others.

If you don't want to make a video, fine. No one required you to do so. If other people do, leave them be. Chances are that video means something to them that you could never possibly understand.

My video made me cry. In it, pictures of my parents who are both gone now, of my babies when they were little. Images from some of the worst days in my life where I was trying to hold it together and smile for the camera. Others that show the moments when I started to emerge from the tunnel. When life turned around, when there was genuine joy again. Pictures of the things I love, the people I love, the things I am proud of.

My video was an absolutely accurate representation of what my life has been like, perhaps because I am absolutely authentic, even online.

The trouble with social media is that it's easy to portray ourselves as something other than who we really are. It's easy to get caught up in comparing yourself to the images everyone else puts out there. If you can take it for what it is, though, be real about who you are, and stop worrying so much about what everyone else is doing, it can be a truly beautiful thing.

I have been writing almost every day now for five years, as of yesterday. Ironic, at least for me, that the day that I crossed that threshold was one where I didn't even open up my blog to do anything more than check for comments.

I planned to write about teen movies today, and I fully intend to do that soon. I just have to get my head on straight first.

There's too much else going on in there right now for me to think about movies.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Northridge earthquake.

TWENTY YEARS.

It happened early in the morning. I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life as I was that day. It sounded like a freight train ran into the side of the house. It felt like the world had picked everything up and shook it.

I grew up in Southern California, lived about five miles from the epicenter. There is a huge crack that ran down the canyon, through the neighborhood, and directly under our house.

I was 16. A senior in high school. Fortunately it didn't hit during the day, or I might not be here, along with a bunch of my classmates. The concrete overhangs collapsed at school. We were out of our school for two months, sharing a schedule with our cross-town rivals.

Part of living in Southern California is living with the reality that an earthquake can strike at any time. We did drills for them, were well trained in what we were supposed to do to stay safe and shielded in the event one hit.

Then the earthquake happened and panic set in. All those years of drills and training went out the door and instinct took over. Just get out of the house. Get out. It was the only thing I could think of. GET OUT NOW.

Oh shit. Oh shit! OH SHIT. OH SHIT!!!!

I couldn't move for a while. I was so scared I couldn't even scream. When I could stand, I was knocked over. The door was jammed shut and I was being pelted with whatever had been on the shelves in my room that had been turned into projectiles.

When it stopped, I met my parents and brother in the hall. Everyone was freaking out. We got down the stairs in the dark, tripped over whatever had fallen, and got to the front door. All the car alarms were going off, but the power was gone.

It was dark. Warm. Just the slightest hint of a breeze.

My Dad was sitting on the driveway, rocking back and forth. My Mom was talking and talking and talking and worrying and worrying and worrying.

We checked on the neighbors to make sure everyone got out, that no one was injured. Everyone gathered on front lawns and wondered what the hell we were going to do. The aftershocks came one after another.

At first light, I went back into the house, against the wishes of my parents. I had to get my brother's medications out. The dust clouds were forming all over the hills, there was smoke in the air from fires, and he needed to breathe.

The debris in the kitchen was thigh high, but I found it all. You don't feel the cuts and scrapes when adrenaline is pumping through your body, you just do it.

We were without power for four days I think, gas for longer. We had no water for over a week, used the pool water in buckets to flush the toilets. We had to boil it for weeks.

The whole house shook with every aftershock. We slept in the car for almost a week. I use the word slept as though I ever actually slept. It was years before I slept soundly again.

The afternoon of the day it happened, I saw one police car drive down the road next to ours. That was it. No one was coming. We had to learn to figure out how to make this work on our own.

It's one hell of a way to learn survival skills, but the things I learned that week have been used many more times since.

Keep bottled water and canned food on hand at all times. Keep flashlights, batteries and a battery powered radio as well. Sleep with shoes next to you. Know where the gas, electricity and water shutoffs are for your home. Have an evacuation plan for your home and a designated meeting place.



That, and try to keep your shit together when it happens.

Good luck with that.

My sweet girl,

Just after midnight, fourteen years ago today, I lost you.

Everyone else was sleeping. I curled up on the bathroom floor and cried until I ran out of tears.

I wonder who came up with that term originally, anyway. I wonder who decided that the way we should refer to dead babies was as lost, and not just that they were lost but that we, their mothers, lost them.

The word connotes something else, as though losing a baby is something transient that might be fixed someday. That if I tried hard enough, maybe someday I could find you. That perhaps I had done something wrong, I made some error, some miscalculation, that I neglected to do all that I could to keep you here, to keep you safe.

I did everything I could.

I wanted you with every ounce of my being.

It didn't matter, because it wasn't up to me. Nothing I could have done would have let you stay.

I wonder all the time what you might be like if you were here. I wonder if you'd have the same eyes I do, blue with hazel in the center, or if they'd be the crystal clear blue of your father's.

I wonder if your hair would be thick and wavy or straight and fine. I wonder would your skin be olive like mine or fairer like his.

I wonder if you would love to draw and paint like your brothers do or if you would sing and listen to music the way your sisters love to.

I wonder if you would be cautious and intentioned. Would you hesitate, or would you close your eyes and jump in with both feet? Would you have clutched my leg around other people, would you have reached for my hand or would you have craved the connections of others?

I wonder who you would confide in, who your friends might be. I wonder if you would snuggle up next to me or be a daddy's girl.

I wonder what your laugh would sound like, how the tone and pitch of your voice would be.

You would be thirteen and a half years old now and we would have just picked out your high school. You'd be navigating your way through adolescence and we would be doing it with you, unsure of it all together.

Instead, here I am and here you aren't. Instead of what should have been, I am writing a letter to you, the child that I never knew.

This is the hardest part about this kind of grief, the wondering. The not knowing. The always asking questions that can never be answered. It's also the most amazing part of it, though it took me years to understand. You'll always be new and fresh and full of wonder and possibilities. You hold so many of my dreams within you. Dreams that can never come true, but will always live on.

The pendant I wear every year on this day, in her memory.

They ask about you sometimes, your siblings. I never know quite what to say. They know that before they came, you were here and then you weren't. They know that I was a mother before I was. I can tell them what your name would have been, I can tell them when you should have been born, but I can't tell them anything else about you because I never got the chance to know myself.

Though I never held you in my arms, though I never was able to drink in the delicious smell of your head, though I never traced the outline of your brow as you slept, though I never walked you to your first day of preschool or caught a glimpse of you dancing in the hallway, you are a part of me forever and for always.

You taught me so much even if the lessons weren't ones you were here to see me learn.

You taught me that I was wrong about what I thought I wanted in life.

You taught me about unconditional love the second I knew you.

You taught me that I could overcome grief.

You taught me to cherish every single second of being pregnant.

You taught me to never take anything for granted.

You taught me to love with my whole heart today because we never know what tomorrow will hold.

You taught me to be brave enough to share your story, our story.

Without you, without having you with me for the time that I did, without your light dimming far too early, I wouldn't have the children that are with me today. You made them possible.

Thank you, from the depths of my soul. Thank you.

I love you, sweet girl.

Love,
Mom

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last year on this day, I wrote Hannah's story. You can read it here if you are interested. 

Sharing her story connected me with other women who lost children, and together, we wrote a book about those losses so that others out there won't feel as alone as we did.

In honor of the legacy my little girl left behind, I am giving away one copy of the book, which I will inscribe for the winner. If there is a chance that this book can help someone you know, please refer them to this page. The raffle entry will close in one week and the results will be announced here.

A mother's love, it knows no end. It begins with a dream, with a silent wish, and it never ever ends.

To the mothers out there, whether you hold your children in your arms, in your memories, or only in your dreams, my love.


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If you've just recently started reading here or missed some of these, here is a list of my favorite posts of the year, lumped into categories to make it a little bit easier.

Five Funniest (I'll try to be funnier in 2014)

These retrospective posts are hard, you guys, because they make me go back and relive so much of what has happened in the last year. Some good, some awful. I cried and laughed while writing them, I'll do it again re-reading them.

The things I do for you people.

Sheesh.

2013 will go down, for me, as a year I'm glad to see go. It wasn't the worst, but it was far from the best. I could use a little boring around here.

I started the year by diving into fiction, and began a story about a woman battling alcoholism that will hopefully be finished this year. I hope to publish it by the summer. If you haven't read it yet, here is the chapter that opens the story. It is pretty dark....I have to warn you. My head is a messed up place.

I revealed a lot about myself. Some stories I had shared in pieces before, some were things I never disclosed...sometimes to anyone.

I wrote about losing my first child, about struggling with anorexia, about the day that a close friend tried to rape me and how I didn't tell anyone. I opened up a vein and wrote about my battle with post partum depression. I confessed that I struggle with PTSD and anxiety attacks.

The post about losing my baby was a jumping off point for other women to share their stories of loss. It is what brought me closer to other women who understood. It is why I was asked to contribute to a book for grieving mothers, Sunshine After The Storm.

The post about anorexia pushed me to start a support group for parents dealing with children in the same place I was in. The rape post opened a can of worms and helped other women tell their stories, like Slice of Humble and My Husband Ate All My Ice Cream.

The PPD posts helped me to reach out to women who struggled with it as well. The PTSD posts and the response from them told me that I needed to start another online support group for those who need to know that someone out there understands. I spent an entire month hosting guest posts from people about mental illness in their lives and in the lives of those they love.

A friend asked for help in the wake of escaping from an abusive husband. You responded. You responded big and overwhelming and beautiful and words will never be enough to thank you all.

I spent a month on diabetes awareness after my mother died from complications of the disease. Others shared their stories as well.

After I lost my mother, I started to tell that story.

I still miss my father. I nearly lost my brother.

I hosted a photography challenge and started a group on Facebook to share pictures.

I did an A to Z Music Challenge and revisited the 30 Days of Truth. I hosted many amazing guest posts.

I fully embraced my inner nerd and became Princess Leia.


I'm still Wonder Woman.


I went to my first Con and decided the geeks should inherit the earth. I started a Thursday Nerdsday series where I reveal all kinds of ridiculous things about myself. I started a real-life Wonder(ful) Women series too, honoring the kickass gals I know (and the ones I haven't met yet).

I wrote legal analysis on the DOMA vote, the VRA, the Duck Dynasty debacle, gun rights, abortion, the death penalty, child rape, the rights of the accused, vaccine injuries, child support and the Boston bombing. I took on the drone policy, the Catholic church, Lance Armstrong and many more.

I wrote about the pollution from wells in the wake of the flood before it was sexy. I wrote about what it was like to help a family salvage what was left.

I wrote about Paul Walker's death and the post went viral. I learned a lot about myself and the internet in a few short days. I cringed that this was the post that went, given how rarely I write about celebrities.

I still get pissed off almost every Tuesday.

I learned that to some degree, happiness is a choice. Choosing to try and be happy again was terrifying. I know how crazy that sounds, but trust me when I say that PTSD will mess you up big time.

I learned that trust won't come back until and unless you let it.

I learned that some wounds never heal, you just learn how to live with the scars.

I learned that I have to use the hell I've been through to help other people. There has to be some good that comes out of it.

I learned that there is strength in being real, in being vulnerable, in opening up the ugly things and exposing them for the world to see.

I've lost fans over what I write, I've lost friends over it too. I've picked up more than I scared off, so I'll declare victory. I've learned a lot about myself this year, most of it the hard way, but I'm better for it.

I'm a hot damn mess at times.

I'm funnier on Facebook than I am on the blog.

I'm totally inappropriate in person.

I'm glad you're all here.

I hope you'll stick around...just in case I do something awesome next year.

xoxo

My Mom and I had a complicated relationship.

That sentence may qualify as the understatement of the year.

Possibly even the decade.

She was a complicated person. I am a complicated person. Though we shared little else in common, we shared that. Over time, all of the things that made us each who we were and are became insurmountable obstacles. When she died just over two months ago now, I hadn't seen her in over a year. It was hard. It was all hard.

Her being here was difficult. Her being far away, impossible, but in different ways. There was little about our relationship that wasn't part of some intricate web, some labyrinth of differing perspectives, some convoluted story with a past you had to muddle though to get to now.

And now she is just gone.

I miss her.

I miss who she was.

She loved Christmas in an almost unnatural way. She was the polar opposite of me.

She could listen to Christmas music year round. I cringe at it when I am forced to listen. 

She could seek out the little Christmas boutiques in every city we ever visited and spend hours touching everything, find something she couldn't live without. I haven't bought a Christmas decoration in years. 

She bought and bought and bought and bought. I try to be frugal.

We couldn't have been more different, her and I, not if we tried.

The last few years have been exhausting. I won't even begin to sugarcoat any of it. Maybe someday I will write those stories, but for now, they reside in my head and my heart, confirmation that I did all that I could until I couldn't do it anymore, and then I did what I had to do, even if no one understands.

Last Christmas was painful. My Dad had been gone almost two years, it was the second round of holidays without him and she had gone back, moved away from here. Not because we wanted her to, but because I think in her heart she felt like it was the right thing to do. I don't know for sure why she did because she stopped really talking to me so long before then. I never will know what her motivations were for much of what happened those last few years. I sense that she may not have even really known. What I know for sure is that she packed up and left one day and whatever hope I had that things could be better between us someday was crammed into that truck with her belongings.

I didn't understand it then, I don't understand it now, but rationality and reason haven't suited me well when it comes to her. They never have, so I don't know why I would think that anything would suddenly make sense now.

I think perhaps it is because I crave it so desperately. I want to believe that there is a linear time frame, that cause and effect exists, that things happened the way they did because there was no other way for them to. That, at the core of it all, was some rhyme or reason. Or maybe I'm just trying to convince myself.

All I know is that I feel a bit lost sometimes.

This navigation of the world without parents is bizarre, to say the least.

It's something I tried to prepare myself for, something that I thought I was prepared for, and yet here I am, struggling anyway.

She wasn't very maternal those last few years, that's for sure. Our relationship had flipped and I was the one trying desperately to take care of her, even if she fought me the whole time she was here then shut me out when she was gone. She wasn't always kind and loving, not anymore, not with me anyway. She wasn't my safe place, she wasn't the place that I needed her to be. She wasn't very much like a mother at all, certainly not when I could have used one, and hadn't been for a long time.

But she was mine.

And I miss her.

I've realized so much about my relationship, not just with her, but with my father as well, in these past few years, but I have learned even more in these two months. I've learned things I never wanted to learn.

The hardest lesson of them all is that even if what she and I had was broken and damaged and flawed and dysfunctional, it was all I ever knew.

And now it's gone.

Sometimes it still doesn't seem real.

Christmas has not passed without a hole in my heart in a very long time. Most years were occupied with a constant nagging, a feeling of being pulled somewhere else, dreading the inevitable, trying to squeeze every ounce of the bittersweet taste out of each moment. Even back before all that, it wasn't nearly as idyllic as I thought it was, I just had no idea. Maybe it was better that way.

Delusion can be magnificent when you don't realize you're in it.

Those days are over, though, and I'm here now. Eyes wide open, missing both of my parents. Wishing that I could have just one of those moments in the past back, knowing that it can never be, understanding that there is no utility in entertaining such fantasies.

I live, irretrievably, in reality.

Uncomfortably.

Reluctantly.

This Christmas, I'm going to try. I'm really going to try. I want to live in the moment, remember the good times, shake the bad ones off quickly. I want to make new memories.

I need to make new memories.

I need to recapture myself this Christmas, whoever it is that I am now floating around this world without a mother or a father. I need to find my joy again, figure out who I am without them.

I need to remember how much my Mom loved Christmas and figure out how to do it myself.

I know deep down in my heart that she'd want that.

When we put out the decorations this year, a box of hers came up from the basement too. One that she'd left here, filled with Nutcrackers she bought in a frenzied insistence that she needed.them.all. They drove me crazy at the time she bought them, because they said so much about the chaos going on right at that moment. Now, they are bittersweet reminders. Pieces of her left behind that I still don't understand. That I'll never understand. That I've learned I must stop trying to understand.


On my cabinets now, the Believe sign she agonized over in the store one day, tracing the letters of the word she clung to when Dad was dying. Behind the sign, all the Nutcrackers. These little wooden statues are safely in a place where they will watch over her six grandchildren open gifts on Christmas morning, precisely where she would have wanted them to be, precisely where she would have wanted to be if she was still here, even if it had never been possible.

I'm trying, Mom. I am.

I miss you both so much.

Give Dad a kiss for me.

Merry Christmas.

I dread writing Christmas cards for a few reasons. It seems like every year I send out more and receive fewer. It's one of the things that I hang on to, a bit like the rusty and antiquated dinosaur I am.

I'm a walking contradiction sometimes. I know this. I write online. I have an entire virtual persona. I blog and admin a page on Facebook and some of my best friends are the people who only reside in my computer, and yet I crave the direct human connection. I need it. I require things I can see and feel and touch.

I still write all the important stuff down.

I like lists. They make me happy.

I resist ebooks, even though I've been a part of one that was published this year.

I like paper.

I like pens.

Get off my lawn.

I hand write the envelopes for my Christmas cards, even if I stopped writing the update letter years ago when life started to get complicated. I figure that the people who actually care either talk to me or read this and they should have a fairly good idea about what is going on. No one else cares enough, and that's fine too.

Handwriting the cards is one of those things I force myself to do even if it's outdated and old fashioned and absolute proof of my crotchety old age.

It's also one of those things that I absolutely dread doing every year, but I force myself to do it anyway.

This is why.


This address book. It's the one that I have had for every one of the fifteen years that I have been married.

I love this address book.

I hate this address book.

Every year I vow that this is going to be the year that I get a new one. My husband laughs at me and asks, every year, why I don't just keep all this information in some electronic format, you know now that we live in the digital age and all.

I shrug my shoulders, open the address book, and flinch every few pages.

This book isn't just a book of numbers and letters. No.

It's my past.

The good, the bad and the ugly.

Fifteen years of friendships that faded away. Fifteen years of people who hurt me. Fifteen years of addresses that I used to hand write envelopes to.  Fifteen years of little stars and asterisks and dots beside the names of those who received a card in the mail that year.

Fifteen years of the names of people who aren't here anymore.

Fifteen years of the ghosts of Christmas past.

This year, an address underneath my Mom's name that didn't get a star next to it.

I know that I should get rid of this address book. I do.

I also know that I won't.

I know that this time next year, I will reluctantly open it up again, and I'll remember.

It is time.

The annual Christmas list.

I do this every year.

Because I am 5.

I don't actually sit on Santa's lap anymore. Well, not the cheesy mall Santa, anyway.

If you're interested to know what I've asked for in the past, here are the lists from prior years.

2012
2011
2010
2009

I will premise this with the following: many of these are totally unrealistic fantasy things. I know that. But I'm 5. AND I WANT THEM.

1. I want my van cleaned. Like every nook and cranny. Occasionally it smells like something died in there, which is not necessarily an improvement when compared with the shoes the tweens leave in there accidentally at times.

2. I want people to be nicer. If you wouldn't have the balls to say something to my face, don't say it online. That goes for the people I know in real life and all the ones I don't actually know. (it's been a long week)

3. I want to not feel like a failure when it comes to my kids. We all have issues, some of us more than others. In the process of dealing with those issues, I really don't want to create new ones. I'm trying. Honest.

4. I want a glitter cannon. A real one. Of course, it would have to come with someone who has to clean up every single speck of glitter because you know that that shit gets everywhere. It truly is the herpes of the craft world.

5. I want the greenway along the river fixed. I want the parks rebuilt. I know it will all get fixed eventually, but I'm impatient.

6. I want people in my house to clean up after themselves. (pipe dream, I know)

7. I want three additional hours each night after the kids go to bed so that I can go on Netflix benders and catch up on all the shows I need to watch.

8. I want a new tattoo. Three actually. Maybe more. I know that it's going to take a while to get them all, and I know that they will make me want more and more and more. I know this.

9. I want more corsets. Because boobs.

10. I want phone chargers that actually charge my phone. If they could do it faster, that would be awesome. I can never find a charger when I need one. Ever.

11. Speaking of phones, I want a phone that isn't a moody bitch. My current phone needs to be pressed up against my body at all times. It doesn't like to be cold, so it lives in my bra. Not because I want to store it there, though it is a good place to hold things...but because it literally will not work unless I keep it body temp at all times.

12. I want a cat that I'm not allergic to, that isn't an asshole, that doesn't insist on escaping from the house and doesn't bring me dead things. Even though George was all of those things, I miss that little jerkoff.

13. I want thigh high red patent leather custom made boots to go with my Wonder Woman Costume. Strike that. I need them.

14. I want a giant box of camera accessories that I can't afford.

15. I still want that totally irrational thing that I wished for last year and that hasn't happened.

16. I want to get one of my books finished and published in the next year. For reals.

17. I want to meet some of my blogger friends.

18. I want to tell my Mom that I've been hanging on to something she ordered for the kids, and that I'm giving it to them for Christmas this year just like she held on to something for me from my Pap the year he died. I hope that they will cherish it the way I have.

19. I want world peace, an end to hunger and illness and all the other things responsible adults are supposed to wish for.

20. I  want a brand new crossbow with Daryl Dixon attached to it sitting under my tree.


C'mon, Santa. I've been a good girl. ;)

Okay, so that isn't exactly how Uncle Ben says it to Peter Parker, but it's close, right?

The last 24 hours around here have been eye opening to say the least.

Yesterday, I had an appointment with my therapist. For those of you who don't already know, I have PTSD. Which is awesome.

I also have a serious case of smartassitis. It's a thing.

I make fun of myself, I laugh at inappropriate things. I do. I force myself to find the humor in the most unfunny places because it keeps me sane. Well, it keeps me marginally more sane. Whatever that means.

In all seriousness, I do have PTSD though. It pisses me off, if I'm being honest...but probably not as much as the anxiety attacks do when they show up.

I am a control freak. Type A all the way through to my core. I'm so left brained that my left hand is merely a decorative appendage with almost no functional capacity. I like to plan. I like to anticipate what will happen. I like to analyze things. I like to know what all the possibilities are. Except that life doesn't really ever work that way, even if I lived in a world where it mostly did for a long time and fell for the illusion that it would stay that way.

It didn't.

Stuff happened that I never anticipated. Lots of stuff. Bad stuff. Much of it in a very short time frame. So short that I couldn't process it all. I couldn't adjust or adapt to one change before another showed up. I feel like I've been on high alert for about 4 years now. Like I've been constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like I had to look over my shoulder every few seconds just in case something else was coming for me.

I couldn't deal.

I can't deal.

It messed me up.

Though I had been writing before it all went down, and I tried to stop a few times during it all, I learned pretty quickly that writing was my first best therapy. I needed to write. I didn't necessarily need to publish it for the world to see, but I had to let the things I was thinking out of my head. I had to put them into words and set them free.

Writing has kept me more sane, at least marginally.

It wasn't enough, though.

It isn't enough.

I do pretty good most of the time, but when it all gets to be too much and my system gets overloaded, my body literally shuts down. I can't stop it. I can't control it. I can't see it coming. And it sucks.

I need help to get better. I need help to undo some of the damage done, to untangle the overactive parts of my brain, to get back to me.

And yet, through all of it, I haven't really changed all that much. I've become more vulnerable, yes, but I've also chosen that partially because I am willing to share so much of it with you all. Not because I want someone I don't know somewhere far away to pat me on the back, because I don't want that or need it. I share because I know how alone I feel when the doubt crawls inside my head, when I don't want to ever leave the house again, when I can't imagine things ever getting better. Somewhere out there, there might be someone else who feels just that way, and maybe they could feel less alone if I lay it out there. Maybe someone else is hyperventilating in a grocery store bathroom and just wants to know they aren't the only one.

Maybe.

My therapist told me yesterday that I'm actually a whole lot further along in the healing process than I am properly giving myself credit for, because I am using my terrible experiences to help others.

As I left her office, my friend messaged and told me what had happened with the pending divorce and custody case. My friend who wrote the anonymous domestic violence piece last month. My friend who ran away from this man with little more than the clothes on her back. My friend asked for help. She came to me and I can't even begin to tell you how it humbles me.

She came to me because of you.

Yes, you.

And you, those of you out there who read the words that I write, you responded.

You trusted me even when I told you that I had to protect her and keep her safe and that I couldn't tell you who she was or give you too many details. You trusted me. And you helped her.

Because of this.

These words that float through the internet that I write and you read.

You helped because what we have here is the real deal.

I told my therapist yesterday what I've said to so many other people in these past few years. I don't understand why bad things happen to me. I stopped asking why and why me a long time ago. If there is a reason for it all, the only one that I can rationalize in my Type A analytical brain is this:

It happened so that I will learn. I learned so that I can help others. I share so that others won't feel alone. I share even when it hurts, because I hope that someone out there will hurt less. 

Last night, it paid off. All the laughing and the crying and the soul searching I do at this keyboard paid off.

You helped her. 

You are still helping her. 

Thank you.

Thank you for not running away when I write about the stuff that hurts. Thank you for sticking around when I am not funny. Thank you for reading. Thank you for sharing your stories. Thank you for your kindness and generosity.

Thank you.

I lack a filter.

Most people who know me well enough know this about me.

If something pisses me off, in all likelihood, I'm going to say something about it.

If something is awesome, I'll tell the world.

If something unjust is happening in my city, my state, my country or the world, I'm going to drag out a big giant spotlight and shine it on.

This is just who I am.

I don't sugarcoat things. I don't smooth the rough edges of the truth. I call it like I see it.

Which is, I'm sure, the reason that the boyfriend of one of my best friends was more scared to meet me than he even was of meeting her father for the first time.

Should I be offended about that? Or proud? Or maybe a little bit of both?

This personality trait of mine is also why people tell me things. It's why people come to me and tell me the things they see wrong with the world. It's why they quietly hand me papers and send me messages and texts and emails. It's why I have unique insights into the goings on of the world. People tell me because they know I won't keep quiet about the things that are wrong.

They know I will find a way, somehow, to shed light on situations.

They also know that I will find a way, somehow, to do it without ratting them out.

I keep a lot of secrets for someone who spends so much time revealing things that are wrong, because I have to. I will go to the ends of the earth to protect those who confide in me.

I will also be the first to call them out for doing something stupid if they do it.

I'm honest, to a fault.

Which is why I literally laughed so hard that I fell off the couch the first time that I saw this commercial.


I am Grandpa.

I laughed until the commercial came to a close and the voice piped in that sometimes being too transparent can be a bad thing.

I don't think it is, actually.

I think the world would run a lot more smoothly if people actually told the truth more often. If people didn't do the passive aggressive baiting that they do. If people didn't walk around telling little white lie after little white lie all day long. If people were open about what they want and need from their relationships with other people. If we didn't tell half truths instead of the full truth.

If everyone was honest with other people.

If everyone was honest with themselves.

Imagine.

A world full of Grandpas.

I don't think it would be a bad thing at all.

I've been debating telling this story for a few days. At first, I told myself that I wouldn't, that I would keep this one to myself because I didn't want to listen to those out there who like to tell people like me that grief somehow implies that we are not grateful for what we have.

Then I decided to tell this story because I know that there are other women out there like me, who everyone else insists should be done. Who can't conceive of a world where we might not be. Who can't understand that having as many kids as I do already doesn't mean that I have cherished memories of them.  Who can't possibly fathom my reasons, not that I'm going to hash them out here, because I don't intend to.

Mostly, I'm telling this story because it needs to be told. It needs to get out of my head. And I need to let it go so that I can write the other things I need to write this week.

~~~~~~~

In this world of motherhood, there is a lot of conventional wisdom out there. One of the phrases that I've heard a lot lately is how there are certain things that can virtually guarantee that you will have another baby...like getting rid of all your baby stuff, or planning some kind of fancy vacation, or sending your youngest child to Kindergarten.

When you actually want to have another baby, all those phrases sting a little. Instead of letting on to anyone that I'm crazy enough to want another one, I wave off the jokes and laugh because that is what I'm socially expected to do.

I'm not supposed to actually want another baby.

But I do.

To compound the situation by a thousand fold, I missed a pill last month, on a day after I was sick and it probably ran through my body too fast to do any good.  After a while of wondering, of nervous anxiety, of wrapping my head around the idea that an oops might be happening, I stopped taking my pills, knowing that if I got a period in a few days the oops wasn't meant to be, but knowing in my heart that I wanted it anyway and that I would be elated.


I resisted the urge to buy a pregnancy test because I knew I couldn't wait to use it.

I stopped the pills and nothing happened for days. And days.

Initially scared to death, I became more and more used to the idea of this happening. After only a couple of hours it seemed, I'd gone from hesitant to fully embracing this idea.

I wasn't just okay with having another baby, I wanted one.

With every day that passed period free, my hopes grew bigger and bigger. I was working things out in my head about carpool numbers and when the baby would come. I was thinking of names already, jumping way ahead of myself.

Until the morning of the first day of school. The fateful day that I ushered my youngest over the threshold of his Kindergarten classroom. That day.

I got my period.

On that day.

Trust me when I tell you that finding out you aren't pregnant when you want to be is always devastating. Finding out you aren't just minutes before you have to let your baby go on the first day of school - unspeakable.

Grateful that I hadn't confided the possibility of the oops to anyone before that day, I laughed off the jokes people told at my expense. I smiled through the tears I fought back whenever someone asked if I was doing okay with little boy being gone. I nodded along when the conventional wisdom came out and those who didn't know told me that this would be the day I would wish for another baby.

I did wish.

It just didn't come true.

Society says that I should be done. My heart isn't. The timing sure didn't help.

Maybe someday that wish will come true, but I know that it probably won't. It's not in my hands and all the hope in the world can't make it happen. Hope can be pretty soul crushing sometimes.

I was almost pregnant, but almost doesn't count.

At least my baby already started Kindergarten and I never ever have to relive that day again.

I have to apologize for my moods the last few weeks.

This was why.

There are times that I feel like I'm really an 80 year old woman with a lifetime of knowledge within her, though I am nowhere close to that old. I've had more life experience than a few people put together would ever have to contend with.

It's a lot.

It's been a lot.

And some of it has left me this battered, bruised person I am now. I wish that I didn't have triggers, I wish that seemingly innocuous things didn't send me reeling. I wish that, but all the wishing in the world doesn't change things.

I've learned that lesson.

Sometimes things can't be changed. You can wish or hope that they were different, but they just can't be. Sometimes you have to accept what has happened, as horrible as it is, and figure out how to go on from here.

Fortunately, if you can get past the anger, you can learn a lot about yourself and about other people along the way.

I've learned that forgiveness doesn't erase memories. It takes the bitterness away, but not the pain. There are some things I don't think you ever really get over, you just go on.

I've learned that burying hurt and frustration doesn't make it go away. It just festers beneath the surface.

I've learned that the things people do when they suppress that hurt has a much wider circle of damage than it ever would if they dealt with it in a healthy way.

I've learned that justifications aren't reasons, and excuses aren't explanations.

I've learned that I am just going to react differently to things now, and that my reactions aren't good, bad or indifferent. They just are.

I've learned to just sit with my pain at times, to let it happen when it does, because if I try to will it away, it just comes back stronger the next time.

I've learned to get back up again and dust myself off after it happens, because I know that I can get through this. I've been through worse. True story.

I've learned that I am far stronger than I ever thought I was, because at a time when I really thought I needed others, I was the most alone.  And I did just fine that way...I just didn't know it at the time.

I've learned that most people can't handle even listening to the things that have happened to me, let alone process them and be helpful in any way. So I don't bother telling them. It's more work than it's worth on my part.

I've learned that I don't care what others think, I don't care what their assumptions are, I don't care if they judge me.

I've learned that those who judge the most do it for a reason.

I've learned that you can't possibly ever know what you would hypothetically do in any situation until you've actually been there. Anything before that is just a guess based on inexperience with that particular set of circumstances, with no basis in truth or reality.

I've learned that I will fight with everything I have in me for what I want, and that I can let go of what I don't need in my life a whole lot easier now.

I've learned to trust my instincts.

I've learned that you know who your real friends are when things get rough.

I've learned that I have a lot less true friends than I thought I did.

I've learned that I'm okay with that.

I've learned a lot along the way. It's been a hell of a few years, but it's getting better. I'm getting better. Things are getting better.

I'm not the same person I was before, but I am okay with that too.

This version of me is wiser, smarter, stronger and a whole lot braver. She just has a few scars now.

Princess Kate Middleton is in labor, as you'd likely know if you've turned on a television or been anywhere near Facebook this morning. I want to believe that the paparazzi will allow her and her husband this time with privacy and discretion, and I have to hope that the cameras won't chase them all over town when the baby emerges, elbowing each other for that first picture.

You have to wonder when being famous automatically meant that you consented to being followed by total strangers 24 hours a day, to having flashbulbs go off in your face at every opportunity, to relinquishing any sense of privacy.

Obviously, I make the argument that it shouldn't. I don't just make that argument, I also refuse to buy tabloids because when you buy tabloids, you are encouraging that very behavior.

Anyhow, I wish them calm and peace, joy and love on this day.

It also got me thinking.

I've been thinking a lot about babies lately.

I had a bit of a revelation in a therapy session a few weeks ago when it comes to my experiences with pregnancy, childbirth and parenting newborns.

My first pregnancy was a true miracle. I've never been so happy in my life as I was then, feeling as though the entire cancer diagnosis and all that had led us to this moment. Then it ended in the middle of the night in a medically forced labor two days after an ultrasound told me that the baby had died.

My second pregnancy, a miracle as well, but a cautious one now because the joy was gone, ended in shock and panic when he came too early and was whisked away to the nicu and intubated. The pregnancy had been easy, and he was an easy baby once we got past all that, but those were the scariest 9 days of my life.

My third pregnancy, mostly uneventful, ended in an anticlimactic birth in a room full of too many people and cameras, but with a baby girl who was healthy. She would soon develop nightmarish colic that would last well over six months.

My fourth pregnancy was hell, from the moment of conception. I knew I was pregnant immediately and was sick within days. I lost so much weight and was so dehydrated that I needed IVs more than once. Towards the end of the pregnancy, I developed an irritable uterus, which basically just meant that I had contractions almost constantly. For six weeks. Then I tripped chasing one of the kids and strained every ligament and muscle between my knees and my chest. In excruciating pain, contracting constantly, I was just happy when it was over. And she was the sweetest, easiest baby. I developed PPD that was almost border lining on psychosis. It lasted over a year.

At this point, my therapist stopped me, knowing that I still had one child to discuss, and she pointed out something that I had never considered.

You had to combine all four of them to get one good experience. To get the joy of pregnancy, an easy pregnancy, a good labor and a healthy happy baby, all four of them had to be grouped together. Something bad, very bad, had happened each time, and I had never really allowed myself to think about that way.

Instead, I always just sort of felt like something was missing but couldn't make sense of it.

Even though I am a doula and help other women work through their experiences all the time, my own weren't making sense to me.

I can see it now, though.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, my fifth pregnancy was easy. He was early and tiny, but perfect. He was a good baby, but he was also not planned, and that fact set in motion an entirely different set of events that would tarnish all the memories that could have been good ones. That should have been good ones. I've written before a little about how, purely as a coping mechanism, I don't remember most of it. What I do remember acts as a trigger for my PTSD. My own child, a trigger for something that he had no fault in.


I know that it may sound odd, but as a woman who has been pregnant five times and who has four children now, I don't have many good memories of those moments in my life. Just playing the numbers, you would think I should.

I became a doula in the hopes of helping other women build those memories, but every once in a while, I wish that things had been different for me.

This is the part where I ask you not to lecture me about being grateful for what I have, because I am. I'm fully aware that society, women especially, expect and almost demand that we only remember the good pieces, that we never talk about the bad experiences because they mistakenly think that it somehow diminishes our love of our children. It doesn't. It just makes our experiences as mothers more real, more genuine, more honest.

I wish and hope for other women to have what I didn't.

And as much as I hate to admit it, sometimes I'm a little envious when it all happens for them.

Good luck, Princess Kate. I hope another chapter in your fairytale comes true today.

Hi. I'm not supposed to be here right now, but guess what? I am.

I'm supposed to be out there. In the wild. Sleeping on the ground and communing with nature and shit.

I have never been this happy to go camping. Ever.

Let me just say this before you read any further.

I'm not a good camper. I complain. A lot.

And yet, I found myself cursing Mother Nature last night, all night, because I was in a tent with five other people and 300 flies hoping that the wind didn't pick us up and drop us somewhere in Kansas.

I should explain.

The husband camps. He's a camper. He loves this stuff. He backpacks and hikes and fishes.

I like toilets and showers and air conditioning, plus I'm allergic to nature. Literally.

I'm seriously not kidding. I'm allergic to nature. This is my bubble.

In the name of teaching our kids to toughen up and love the outdoors more than their prissy mother (namely, me) does, we camp. We camp even though we have a horrid track record when it comes to ending trips prematurely because someone barfs in the tent.

The husband (who seriously wants to be a park ranger when he grows up) planned a camping trip for this weekend. One that obviously doesn't involve me sitting on the couch with my laptop and wifi.

In fact, he rejoiced and patted himself on the back when I lost service a few miles before we got there. He likes to unplug. I like the people. He likes to make me unplug and ignore the people.

We got out to the lake yesterday and it was hot, but nice. We went down to the sandy beach and swam and played. Then the blazing hot ball of fire in the air disappeared behind some clouds.

Goodbye sun. It was nice knowing you.

Afternoon thunderstorms are part of life around here, and they usually pass quickly. For the moment, we'll ignore the fact that I'd told my husband the weather was calling for rain and storms the entire time he planned for us to be there and the naysayer said nay. The naysayer was wrong.

The sun didn't come back out. Ever.

It started raining and we set up the table inside the tent figuring we would just wait out the storm, then make dinner. Checked my phone. No service. The last thing that came through before the service was gone was a flash flood warning for our hometown, which was West of where we were. Storms move from West to East, so I knew something big was coming, but had no radar to look at anymore.

The storm never ended, it just got worse and worse and worse. We ended up cooking hot dogs fast on the camping stove and telling the kids we couldn't cook anything else. Eat chips for dinner. Yes, Mom said it was okay.

I should tell you that I told the husband to buy an LED lantern this week, and he told me we didn't need one because we had a propane lantern.

I should also tell you that he should listen to his wife.

We huddled in the tent with one glow stick, a tiny flashlight and the kids' lanterns. And listened to the wind howl all night.

Rain. Thunder. Lightning all around us.

All.freaking.night.long.

At some point, I peed in a cup because there is no way in hell I was going out there in it and hoofing it to the bathroom.

Incidentally, I realized this morning that pit toilets scare the ever-loving crap out of me. Seriously. Totally irrational fears in that little cinder block room.

The storms finally eased up sometime just before sunrise.  When we finally peeked our heads out of the tent, we saw that most of the other people in the campground had given up. Either packed up and left entirely or slept in their cars. I don't blame them. I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about it over a million times. It was still raining, but it wasn't scary storming anymore.

The husband was determined to salvage the trip and got up, re-set up the shade tent and started making coffee. Halfway through cooking breakfast, the raindrops started getting bigger and bigger and we knew it was time to call it.

So we grabbed everything as fast as we could, shoved it into the car with no rhyme or reason and started on home, with a van full of insect castaways.

Seriously. It's like we are taking part in a fly relocation program.

I should be floating around in a lake right now, or sitting on a beach and drinking a beer.

I'm home instead, running on almost no sleep, with a van full of muddy camping gear that still needs unloaded and dried out.

The camping gods were not pleased.

Clearly, I should stay indoors with my internet and air conditioning where I belong.

Hey! At least no one barfed.

That has to count for something.