Tangled Grrl

I don't have very many true fears, but I can tell you two of them. One is the feeling of being trapped. I don't have to be in an enclosed space, I just have to feel like I can't escape. I have to feel unsafe and unable to get away. Dad says it's a form of claustrophobia. The other is new doctors. New doctors make my blood pressure go up, they tongue tie me and they, in general, turn me into an idiot. This really only happens when I'm the patient. It's a new problem. One that has only really starting happening in the last five years or so. Why am I anxious, fearful really, of new doctors? Because they hold the power to me getting answers and treatments and they typically don't believe me. I leave there feeling powerless and the size of an ant. So when I have to meet a new doctor my delightful brain starts prepping me the second I walk in the door. I've worked on dealing with this by bringing someone with me to new appointments. I took my dad with me to ...

I've been trying to think of how to do this for days, weeks maybe. How to express thanks. I've been touched by so many people over the last few months in so many different ways. Who ever thought that you could be so thoroughly heartbroken and yet so thoroughly soaked in a feeling of love that you feel as though your heart was overflowing with it all at the same time? It's possible and it's confusing. I would love to thank you all individually. Hug each of you and let you know in just the right way how much you've touched me. How much you've helped, how your acts of generosity, kindness, time, words, gifts, patience, phone calls, text messages, flowers, presence, hugs, food, conversation, shelter, rides, organization, ideas, etc have somehow impacted my family or I in a big way. But I don't even know who all contributed. And I don't know how to say it in the exact right way. But I sure as hell am going to try. The last three months are a bit of a haze...

There aren't a lot of stories about my mom and I shopping. Mostly because my mom was not a fan of shopping. She was not the type to be bored and then beeline for a mall. If she had to buy an outfit for an event, she was going to complain about it more than a little bit before actually leaving the house to go search for it. My cousin got married last October. Mom and I both needed to get something to wear. We decided we were going to go and get something for each of us that made us feel fabulous. I talked her into going to stores that were probably outside of her comfort zone because I promised her that if she was willing to try something new, I would too. We deserved to feel good in what we had on so that we could just be comfortable and enjoy the event. I may have bribed her with the promise of dinner, my treat. We went to a few stores and decided to try White House Black Market. I found several somethings for me and settled on an outfit that cost me entirely too much money, b...

I cried at work today. That sums up this week better than anything else I can say. Yesterday I woke up at the time I normally leave for work. Somehow I still managed to make it on time. Today I woke up on time, but got stuck in absolutely atrocious construction traffic and ended up clocking in 16 minutes later than I'm supposed to. For the past week I've been fighting my summer time headache and nerve pain. For whatever reason, I have been getting atrocious nerve pain as soon as the temperature starts to stay in the 80's. Instead of it starting gradually and building to numbness down my left arm in a few weeks or months, it got to that point in one day this year. That's been my companion for almost a week. I've been back at work for not quite three full weeks. I still am trying to figure out what I'm doing again. I barely knew what I was doing before I left. Yesterday I screwed up, and someone pointed it out to me, rather forcefully. So I went to one of the su...

I was going through my phone today updating the photos with some of my contacts. That led me to scroll through my All Photos album, where there are so many memories of Mom. Even the photos that don't have her anywhere in them. I remember the conversations we had about so many of them, because I used to call her every time something funny or annoying happened in my life. I'd send her pictures of the braids my youngest put into my hair. Or pictures of my kids playing outside in the rain and mud. I'd send her pictures of the ridiculousness that is my husband with our cat. I'd send her pictures of whatever crafting project I was working on, or had just finished. I sent her pictures of choir concerts, show choir performances and letters praising the girls on some accomplishment. She may have lived 3 hours away from me, but she was as integral to my every day life as my husband. And she appreciated my husband's Dad jokes and puns in a way few others do. When Mom made a ...

Today is the day before Independence Day. In the town we live in, they start out the celebration by having a small town parade. By a sheer miracle, my husband and I were kid-less and home together to sit out front and watch the parade this year. The route takes the parade down our street, so we just take a couple of chairs out front and watch. Mom loved parades. When we were little, she would take us to them, more full of excitement than we were. When we were teenagers, she embarrassed the living daylights out of us. She knew the local firemen and police and would be jumping up and down to get them to blare the sirens and horns. And they always would as soon as they saw her. As adults, her sheer enthusiasm was contagious. She was so excited it was hard not to be excited too. She loved the sirens and the horns. She loved the bands, the color guard, the noise. She loved watching kids march along, some bedraggled and obviously overheated. She loved seeing the girls in pretty dresses. Sh...

Everything has changed. Nothing has changed. That's how I feel about being home. When I drove up to my house, everything looked different. There was an abundance of green that had not been there when I left. I noticed that the speed limit on one of the local roads went up. The highway has been repaved. The annoying construction near work has moved from the left lane to the right lane. All of these seemingly inconsequential things force me to accept that I've been gone from this place for 2 months and the world kept moving. It changed in normal, everyday ways. And I still feel stuck in place. That's the thing about tragedy, loss and long hospital stays. You're so insulated from the outside. Yet the outside keeps moving along. Ready or not, it will slam you in the face with the differences when you emerge. Today was my first day back at work after a 60 day leave. And I was so nervous about going back. What if I forgot everything? What if I just started sobbing at my d...