A Surprisingly Sane Blog

Forewarning: This is not a positive post, and it is haunting and tragic. Don’t read it unless you can handle getting a tissue.

I don’t really want to write this, but I feel like I need to because it won’t leave my head. What do you do when an obsessive thought just can’t seem to escape the attic upstairs in your mind? Do you wait while it runs rampant hitting the walls back and forth until it finally tires? It never seems to work for me- it thrashes around indefinitely in my mind. If I keep it in, which most of the time I do, it never quiets. My therapists have told me time and time again that I need to let those painful thoughts out of my internal depths and share them so that I can start the healing process.

As open as I might appear on paper and via blog, I am actually quite silent about my personal life. To everyone. Even friends most of the time. The only people I generally open up to are James and my sister and, funny enough, one of my internet friends whom I’ve only met once in real life. I have some good friends, but I don’t normally see them, so the talking quiets when we are not near. I trust them absolutely, it’s just hard to sit down and talk when you’re running different lives in different cities.

So who do I tell this horrible thing to?

I found out a few days ago that a girl I know was killed in a head-on collision on the freeway last month in Tucson. She was 31 and she had a son my daughter’s age.

I have dealt with death a number of times just as everyone has, all in varying forms. Some deaths are sad, some incredibly painful, some downright tragic. My grandparents both died right before I married James. They were old, we weren’t incredibly close, and they’d lived full lives. I was shocked, I cried, I sang Amazing Grace at their funerals just as they wanted. It was hard saying goodbye to people I loved within a year of each other’s deaths, but their passing was not tragic. Their deaths were what happens when someone is old and not in the best health. It was sad, I still feel that empty hole in my heart when I think of them, my eyes still tear up when I’m alone, but it certainly wasn’t tragic.

This young woman’s death was not just sad and painful, it was horribly tragic and far surpasses that feeling of pain that I felt for the loss of my grandparents. I didn’t even know her well. She was just that girl who worked in a specialty shoe store that my mom and sister and I have frequented for years, even since I moved to Seattle. We really liked her. She was always there, and she’d joke with us because we wore the same shoe size as her in all the European shoes we tried on. We’d spend almost an hour in there, and she and I would talk about our kids and what they were doing and how they were driving us crazy with whatever annoying phase they were going through. She always remembered us, and every time I’ve gone shoe shopping up here in Seattle, she has always crossed my mind.

I didn’t know her outside of that single realm, but I really liked her. She wasn’t super bubbly and ultra-friendly like most sales people. She was straight-to-the-point and dry and a bit sarcastic, but really neat with a good heart- the type of personality I always click with. But besides that, she had a great smile, always remembered us, and always seemed pleased to help us out. She was healthy and athletic and a single mom. And now she’s dead.

You know how some forms of dying seem more tragic somehow than others? Hers was about the worst I could think of. She was heading home from some kind of game, and she was hit head-on by a driver speeding in the wrong direction on the interstate. Her car burst into flames, meaning after impact, if she was still conscious, she had to feel herself being scorched to death. A passerby apparently was somehow able to pull her out of the car, but she died from her injuries shortly after reaching the hospital. The man who killed her died a week after the crash, somewhat unexpectedly because medical personal wasn’t expecting him to die from his injuries. He didn’t seem like some kind of bad person, just some guy who confused the off-ramp with the on-ramp.

My sister felt bad telling me, but I had insisted. My mom had mentioned something had happened when she was here, but I told her not to elaborate. I kept thinking something horrific had happened to her son, and I just didn’t think I could handle hearing it. But then it ate at me for days on end because I felt like, Dear God, I had to know. My brain kept filling in the blanks, and I am relieved to know what happened even though it’s a terrible thing to hear.

[Side note: I keeping distracting myself while writing this post. I've been working on it for a couple hours now, and I just found myself on this college website writing down class times and dates and I have no idea when I got there. Why? I have no idea. I probably won't even sign up for any classes, but anything to keep from writing this post and talking about what's going on inside my twisted thought process.]

This isn’t my tragedy. The loss of her life is not some deep hole in my own world up here in Seattle. She was not family or even someone I spoke with outside of that cool little shoe store. But did you ever meet someone, even if just for a minute, that you just clicked with really well? If circumstances were different, life was somehow altered, you just might have been close friends with them or somehow you were cosmically connected to them? There were too many parallels between her life and mine for me to just brush her death off and add it to the ever-rising tolls. For some reason, her death bothers me more than just about anyone else’s that I’ve known.

Did she register what was happening as that truck came speeding toward her? Did she feel the impact, and was it agonizingly painful? Was her son, her pride and joy, the last thought in her conscious mind? Did she try to fight to survive, willing every last cell to hang in there?

Where is she now?

Is God really there like He promises us in the Bible? Like every culture believes in one way or another? Is there an afterlife, that very thing that humans for as many centuries as we’ve been around have believed?

The worst part for me is not just her son or her parents, but her sister. I don’t know what their relationship was like, but I was under the impression that her family was pretty close, with a similar age gap to my sister and I, or that of my girls. She must be so beyond heartbroken, losing her built-in friend.

The worst part of this is that life somehow goes on. Her son will grow up without his loving mom. Her parents will continue moving forward. Her sister will raise her family without their beloved aunt. Her brother will now have only one sister. When her son is 31, which seems so old to a kid, he will realize just how tragically young his mom was when that speeding idiot hit her head-on and killed her. All the life she will miss out on will just keep on happening.

I hope that, somehow, she can see earth and the people she loved and smile knowingly, understanding that it is just a short time in the scheme of things before they will see her again.

Current Mood: Sad

I stole one thing many moons ago. It was my single experience as a five-finger-discount artist.

I must have been about four, and I was living in Puyallup, WA. We were at a supermarket while my parents picked up some wrapping paper or perhaps a card for a birthday. I showed them the pretty bows that I thought would match well, but they weren’t interested. I thought maybe they couldn’t pay for it, so I decided to help them out. My long plum-colored jacket had big pockets, and the simple, pretty-colored bow fit in there nicely.

When we got home, I remember proudly pulling it out of my pocket and presenting it to my parents with a smile. They both stared at it for a second, exchanged surprised glances, and asked where I’d gotten it. They were great about it. Looking back, it probably cost something less than 50 cents, but they still treated it with a strong sense of “it’s not okay” while they gently explained why it was wrong. I didn’t get in trouble.

I never again even considered the possibility of shoplifting, and it has never crossed my mind to take something that doesn’t belong to me. If I want something, I work, save money, and buy it. There’s so much satisfaction in truly earning something that I would never even consider stealing from someone else. My belief is that if I can’t afford it, then I don’t need it. Material objects only mean so much, and I have everything I need times more than I am probably worthy of owning.

My wedding band was, by far, the most valuable object I’ve ever owned.

James worked his butt off in college for a company he hated to save up the money to buy me that ring. After about three years of dating, we’d picked it out together. I wanted something simple, but elegant, and we went to a privately owned  jewelry shop to find the right one. The moment I put it on my finger, we knew for a fact it was the ring I wanted to wear for the rest of my life. James picked out the diamond and had it set while I waited impatiently for the day it’d be mine.

Right after my 22nd birthday, we went on a backpacking trip down the Grand Canyon with a big group of dance teachers from the studio I worked at. It was going to be a 5-day trip, and we set off early in the morning for the grueling hike down. That night, everyone crashed in their tents early- we were exhausted- but James laid next to me tossing and turning. I asked him if he was okay, and he told me he needed to take his contacts out and he’d be right back. A moment later, he popped his head back in the tent and asked if I could come help him. I was half asleep and asked if he could just bring the stuff in there, and he was silent for a moment, which was unlike him. For some reason, I decided that sure, I’d go outside and help.

We were camped out next to a small river, and the full moon had just risen over the canyon walls. He asked me to stick my hand in a small zipped pocket at the top of his massive backpacking pack to pull out the contact case, and my hand grasped a small box that I knew could only be a jewelry box. I started to pull it out, then put it back in again, for fear I’d grabbed something I wasn’t supposed to see, and then I stole a quick glance at James’ anxious face and realized what was happening. This Was It, The Moment. I pulled the box out slowly and asked with wide eyes, knowing fully well exactly what it was, “What’s this?”.

That’s when he gently took the box from me, got down to one knee, opened it, told me how much I meant to him, and asked me to marry him. The full moon made the diamond glitter magnificently in the way that only a beautiful diamond can in the dark, and I had this moment of surreal-ness as I realized this was actually happening. I looked at him, perched awkwardly on one knee on the cool dirt and rocks, barefoot, wearing nothing but an old thin shirt and his tidy-whities, and there was no other answer but yes to that amazing, goofy young man with a cheshire grin and probably negative dollars in his bank account.

I remember him whispering proudly, “Isn’t it beautiful? It’s yours!” as he slipped it on my finger and we hugged. All those months of hard work through college and paying rent and his food and every needed, and he had somehow managed to buy me this incredible ring on top of it all.

I love that ring. I loved the beautiful, perfect proposal and the fact that we picked it out together. I hated not being able to wear it the last several months. It sat in my heart crystal jewelry box on top of my tall IKEA dresser while we saved up enough to have it re-sized. My finger swelled horribly when we flew over Christmas, and I had to go through pretty extreme, painful measures to get it off. My knuckle has been swollen ever since, and even though I check to see if I can get it on every week, it keeps ending back in my jewelry box.

Until last Wednesday, when I went to put my diamond band that I’ve been wearing instead into the same jewelry box and found my wedding band missing. I thought maybe James took it to surprise me by re-sizing it, but he hadn’t.

My ring is gone, and our house has not been broken into. The kids cannot reach the top of my dresser, even with a stool, and there’s no way they could have gotten to that jewelry box without knocking over the cluttered mess that was on top of the dresser. I did not misplace it, as it has been in that heart-shaped box since Christmas. And I have seen it at least once a week, since that is where I keep my few pieces of jewelry. Nothing else is missing, and my few pieces of jewelry are simple to keep track of.

The policeman I spoke with pointed out the very thing I had realized with horror the day it went missing: Who has been in your house during the last couple weeks? Well, my mom and dad, who would never do something like that, and one other person, who is in our house frequently. Who has access to our entire house. Who we trust. Who, statistically speaking, is most likely guilty of either taking the ring or allowing someone else access to it, particularly since we have not seen that person since we told them my ring was gone.

I never thought I would feel this terrible about a missing object, but it’s the history behind it that breaks my heart.

I just want my ring back, and right now I’m not very confident that I’ll ever see it again.

Current Mood: Sad

[There's a time change on this post. I had trouble publishing it the day I wrote it due to the sensitive material in the post. Looking back at it, I decided it was better to let it be seen.]

I panicked last night when I saw the news about the terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan. I was pretty certain my dad was supposed to be flying into Tokyo within half an hour of the earthquake, and my babysitter was watching the news when James and I walked in from our dinner and west coast swing dance date.

When I realized what was happening, the full-fledged dread and panic hit me like a tidal wave. I checked his flight information and saw that his business trip in Asia was indeed supposed to be concluded with a flight from Seoul, Korea into Tokyo, Japan before he caught his international flight into Seattle. I was supposed to pick him up from the airport in the morning.

Quick math and a look at google maps showed me that if his flight was early, he’d have landed in Tokyo just as the earthquake hit. If it was on time, he couldn’t have landed, so I knew he was probably either still in the air or at some nearby-safe-enough airport. James tried calling the airlines, busy signals only. The website showed no information. The news said Tokyo’s phone lines and power was out all over. I couldn’t get in touch with my dad to find out where he was and that he was safe.

Finally, a couple hours after the earthquake, my dad called me from Osaka, Japan, a city south of Tokyo. The pilot lost connection with the control tower during their decent into Tokyo, knew something was horribly wrong, and eventually made the decision to fly into Osaka, which is south of Tokyo, instead.

(map courtesy of National Geographic)

In my gut, I knew he was probably safe, but I didn’t feel (mostly) better until I got that middle-of-the-night phone call from him telling me that an earthquake had occurred, and that he didn’t think he’d be on the early morning flight to Seattle. They didn’t know. The passengers on the flight didn’t have any details regarding how severe the earthquake had been. I debated telling him for half a second before I said, “It’s bad, really bad. Right now they’re saying 8.9.”

It feels selfish to me that I am so relieved that my dad is alive and safe while uncounted masses of people have died, been left without homes, and are injured. But the fact is, I am thanking my dad’s lucky stars for keeping him safe.

Please, pray for the people of Japan. And if praying isn’t your thing, then do whatever it is you do to send positive vibes to people who truly need it right now.

Current Mood: Sad

I saw an old friend recently, and I was immediately taken aback by how awful she looked.

She’s always been thin since I’ve known her- about my height with spidery arms and legs, no butt, and shirts that hang off her slender shoulders. But this time, it was really bad. She looked like she’d lost a good 20 pounds since I saw her last, which is about a year ago. And trust me, she didn’t need to lose a pound then. She looked like she needed to eat a fucking sandwich.

The first thing she did when she saw me? Asked what kind of food was on my plate while she stuck her face right in it and quickly announced she couldn’t eat anything at the buffet. She’s always been weird about food, self diagnoses of all kinds of food intolerances, allergies, God-knows what. “I can’t eat that because it makes me horribly ill and messes with my digestive system”. “I can’t eat grapes. My stomach doesn’t like them”. “I have to eat every two hours.” Food isn’t just this thing that she can’t eat, she obsesses about it. The saddest part is that she really seems to believe that no notices she has a SERIOUS eating disorder.

She does it to her kids, too. “Oh, he can’t eat that… it gives him dark circles under his eyes, and he’s less energetic”. Doode. He’s five. He’s perfectly healthy. “He’s on a special diet… I’m bringing his own food to the party”. If he had a real problem, I’d understand, but he really probably doesn’t. It’s you with the problem.

I watched her dance recently, haven’t in ages. I almost couldn’t watch. It was painful. Her dull skin was apparent even thought the makeup, and her pants looks like they belonged on a tall pre-pubescent. Great body movement only looks good if you have body behind the movement. Seeing spine and ribs underneath the billowy tops with the, stringy-muscled arms isn’t fooling anyone, and neither were the “show” faces and the “look at me I’m so awesome!” looks that flirted with the crowd. She would be awesome. The talent is there, but the unhealthy, lethargic look about her from the malnutrition can’t be hidden. The truth was right in front of all of us watching.

I hate, hate, hate seeing friends do this to themselves. I hate even more when it’s addressed and a thousand excuses fly at you because they’re in such awful denial that they’re killing themselves.

I am currently trying lose a few pounds. Not because I am fat, but because I want to feel healthier, fit in my clothes better, and combat the inevitable change in metabolism that comes with the impending 30s . You know how I’m doing it? I’m following a “healthy” lifestyle instead of succumbing to the “eat all day and not get enough exercise” trend that happens when you’re stuck in a house with kids all day. It’s an easy thing to do, a simple change. It doesn’t involve removing food groups or counting every calorie. It’s eating small portions frequently, healthy foods, and getting exercise. Some people lose a ton of weight this way because it helps you reach your ideal weight without doing anything extreme. The lifestyle doesn’t necessarily for everyone, but it’s pretty obvious to me that you DON’T have to to go to the extremes to lose weight or look your best.

I sure wish my friend understood that. And I really wish she’d check herself into a hospital before she damages her body for good. I’d really like to find her an inspiration again instead of having to look away because the skeleton in front of me is making me feel ill.

I avoided her the rest of the time she was in the room. Not because I didn’t want to talk to her, but because I just couldn’t bear seeing her like that.

Simply awful.

Current Mood: Alarmed

A week or two ago, one of my cyber friends posted pictures of her beautiful 1-month-old baby along with a caption that read how she couldn’t believe how fast the time had gone and that it’d been the best month of her life.

It was a lovely post, and I felt like someone punched me in the gut when I saw it. Yeah, you saw that right. It wasn’t her fault at all, it just happened to be the wrong post for me to see at the wrong time. It took me a second to figure out why I had that reaction. I mean, I smiled when I saw it and thought, Awww… that is so sweet, and at the same time, I had inner turmoil bubbling to the surface.

I had to look away from the post. It started hurting to much.

I was never that mom. I wanted to be so badly. I’d aways dreamed of holding a new baby in my arms and relishing in the love and attachment that comes with new motherhood.

But I never got that.

Instead, I got too-big babies that damaged my body to the point where I couldn’t take a shit because my rectum was so prolapsed it was falling out of my vag. I started shaking when my babies would cry because I hated the sound and just wanted it to go away. I had dreams that I was harming my beautiful babies and woke myself gasping for breath and checking on them to make sure it wasn’t real. Instead of holding my new bundles of joy proudly and lovingly nursing them, I experienced anxiety attacks while they were feeding off my boobs like leeches in my mind. Instead of fond memories of those first months, I have a near blank-spot in my normally extremely excellent memory of April’s first year. Instead of spending my days at home thinking it was the best time of my life, I was sitting on the bathroom floor at night, half-naked, rocking on the floor with my skin clammy and a knife in my hand while my husband threatened to call and have them come take me away.

My memories of being at the mental health crisis center, how terrified I was, the Safe Zone sticker on the wall, and the diagnosis of Postpartum Depression, Anxiety, and OCD… and being borderline psychosis… those are my “fond” memories of new motherhood. The drugs, the therapy, the God-awful experience with the support group. Finishing breastfeeding and being thrown for a whole other loop when the hormones changes and my need for different drugs were necessary. The horrific suicidal moments when I ingested prescribed drugs that were toxic to my system.

And in the midst of this, making stupid decisions, writing stupid blogs, and learning that people that I thought were friends were stabbing me in the back and painting me as a villain. All when it was out of my control. It’s taken me to this point to forgive myself and understand that I wasn’t in a position of rational thinking, nor could I see the severity of choices that I made.

Yes, those were my “happy” new mom moments.

I never had that chance, and I never will.

Current Mood: Sad