January 15.

I feel okay.

Not great, but not sad.  In fact, if anything I'm battling an allergy cold onset, so that has me just sort of coasting.

It's been a tough few months.  In fact my friend Jeannie's advice is to see a counselor.  This kind of concerns me a little bit.  I know I've been stressed, but I didn't know it was coming across as that bad.  I've been bad before, and what happened ten years ago on this day had a lot to do with it. 

So to me all this other stuff isn't bad.  It's just life as I know it. 

 

In fact my first response to the suggestion was I don't need therapy, I need my family to wake up and realize I'm not some mindless, emotionless robot who maintains the status quo so they don't ever have to do one thing they don't want to do. 

But I can't even really gripe too much about that, since this is the reality I've created for myself.  And it all comes back down to control.  I like to have it.

And what happened ten years ago has a lot to do with that.

 

From the very first time life kicked me in the shins by losing my dad to the added insult of losing Brandon and then Dan, I'm used to getting comfortable in life and then having the rug pulled out from under me.  That's just my reality.  So what I can control, I do control.  Because life has already taught me I can't control the big stuff, I need to manically control all the little stuff.

And I surrounded myself with people who let me control them.   The problem is, when you have that sort of "parent/child" relationship, eventually the children grow past needing you and leave.  That worries me as far as Steven is concerned.  The kids I expect to leave me.

Actually, in reality, I expect it of Steven too.  I know there is no such thing as forever.  

What happened ten years ago taught me that.

 

I wasn't completely honest with you all at the beginning of this entry.  I do relent to one emotion very easily.  And that's anger.  I'm truly p*ssed off at the way things have happened to me in my life.

Not the stuff I had control over, like being overweight or having financial problems or anything like that.  I'm not angry about that at all.

I'm angry that I can't feel secure in anything I do.  I can't feel secure in my relationships with people, I hate that I have a tiny little thread of fear woven into my psyche that if I love someone too much they'll die. 

Yeah it sucks, but when you lose a close parent, a baby and a best friend/ex spouse all before you're thirty five, it does crazy things to your emotional makeup.  And this doesn't even cover the uncles and aunts and grandparents and niece and coworkers I've lost.  Loss and Death are intimate companions in my life. 

Again, this is what I learned from what happened ten years ago.

 

From the very first loss on I've been stifling my emotions.  My mom and my sister hated my dad for reasons I couldn't understand when I was eleven years old.  But there was no love lost when he died.  It made it really hard to grieve.  I didn't expect them to give me any comfort.  And I was probably really mean to them as I was growing up, meaner than probably I needed to be, because maybe deep down I resented that they left me floundering after the most tragic event any child could go through.

When Dan died I was so mad at God for cursing my young son Jeremiah with the same fate.  Jeremiah more so than Timothy, because Timothy and Daniel had a love/hate relationship and weren't as close.  But Jeremiah adored his dad, and Dan felt the same way.  I knew from first hand experience how traumatizing that loss would be.  And I was so, so angry with God for letting it happen.

Much later when I had some clarity I decided that it was BECAUSE I had gone through it that made me the perfect parent for Jeremiah to help him through it.  This is why I guess we're not supposed to question God's wisdom. 

 

I stuffed down when my niece died at 2 1/2 because my mother fell apart and I had to be strong for her.  I stuffed it down when Brandon died the day before Timothy's fifth birthday so I wouldn't scar Timothy any more than what he'd already gone through. 

I always have stuffed it down.  Way down.  Under layers of fat.  Layers and layers of fat. 

This year, I can't stuff it down.  I have to face it head on.  I have to feel what I feel.  It's not fun, it's like today is the first real day of grieving and the last ten years have been a dream.

 

Yeah, maybe I could benefit from talking to someone professionally.  I'm skeptical.  I've been in therapy before... for the sexual assault when I was four, for Brandon, at my former boss's request and then after the courts intervened with the kids.  I'm savvy enough to know I can only get from them what I give to them; I have to be willing to open up and talk about all this stuff and admit I need help to get through it.

We're talking two of the hardest things that I can do.  That's why this journal is a miracle... because I'm not one to open up readily and easily.  I suffer in silence like I was taught to do.  I project one of three things: strength, happiness or anger.  Those are the only emotions I'm comfortable showing to other people.

One thing I'd rather die than show is weakness.  And for me to admit my failings makes me feel weak.  Because I've never done it.  From that four year old girl who didn't tell her mother she was sexually assaulted, to the eleven year old girl who couldn't tell her mother how badly her heart was broken when her daddied to the mother who had to bury her nine day old child - I've never leaned on anyone.  Ever.

 

Now that I need to lean on people, I look to the people who should naturally support me.  Steven and my sons.  They're not taking the shift in gears too well I guess.  This is what I feel I need more than anything.  For them to understand that I am just a woman, I can't do it all and I do need a little help sometimes.  That it hurts like hell to admit that I need their help, and when I face people rolling their eyes and stomping their feet OR telling me "yes I will do that" and never follow through, it hurts me to the very core. 

I don't need to talk about it, I need to be heard - and not just by anyone.  By the people I have braved the fates enough to love.  I need them to see me as I am, not as how they need me to be. 

 

I just can't give one more thing to one more person.  I've been bled dry.  It was why I quit going to church.  Every single time I went to church I felt on the spot, like I was running a gauntlet - doing what was expected of me.  I got tired of things being expected of me. 

And I think it's just getting to that point where I put my foot down on everything.  I haven't gone back to the old way of eating and thinking, and I don't want to.  Each day is an educational experience on how I can cope without my favorite drug of choice - food. 

The first thing that went was the exercise.  Out of sheer entitlement, totally.  Why should I have to work and sweat if I'm giving up all this food.

Now, it's the opposite.  I am not as careful about what I eat because I'm working my tushy off. 

Even knowing if I combine the two I'll be unstoppable.  I just can't find the will to do it.  Not when I have all these hangers on pulling at me and sucking me dry of all my energy.  Not when I have to clean up after everyone, work my butt off to meet the bills so we don't get kicked out into the street.

 

I'm resentful.  Majorly and totally resentful.  So resentful in fact I'm planning a solo vacation.  We're due for a financial windfall in the next few months and I had planned to do a nice little getaway for the entire family.  I figured the change of scenery would do me good.  Again, in the planning, I found a bunch of stuff for THEM to do.  And after it all, as we have to change and modify to do everything, I get attitude.

It has me seriously contemplating a solo vacation.  I don't take them often, mind you - normally I try to take everyone and share experiences with everyone.  But like I said... I can't give one more thing to one more person.

I'm empty.  And what happened ten years ago had a lot to do with that.

 

I'm making these baby steps no matter how hard it is.  I'll keep doing them, this is a journey that if nothing else is certainly adaptable. 

I am adaptable.

I just have to get it in my head I'm worth a little selfishness every now and then - that I'm NOT asking for more than I'm worth when I tell my family enough is enough.

And as of today, when I have to work ten hours and somehow go shopping for the next two weeks and buy Timothy's birthday gifts and juggle the bills to afford everything that we want to do, then get the house clean so I can have MORE teenagers in my house tomorrow while Steven is off playing four hours at a card tournament, Jeremiah disappearing off to Grandmas and Timothy holed up in his STILL unclean bedroom playing video games, ENOUGH was ENOUGH. 

Yesterday.