The Ten Things I Can’t Seem to Admit to in Therapy

This will end up being a list post, but I want to first interject that it is hard as hell living with mental illness and every good day should be celebrated.  Don’t get me wrong, there HAVE been good days, and there will be more.  Right now, what I am trying to purge from my system is all the negative stuff that I can’t seem to talk about in the place where I need to the most:

1) My nightmares have come to the point again where I am terrified of sleep, terrified of bed.

2) The stuff of nightmares keeps me from wanting to leave the house…like, ever

3)  I have not seen the inside of any type of store, including even a convenience store, in over two months.  I have not even tried.  There are people in there, you realize.

4)  I have been hiding my crying spells.  From my therapist, my med doc, my art therapist, LarBear, my mom, my dad.  I know what crying spells mean, and I don’t want anyone to know it is happening at an alarming rate at this point in time.

5)  I absolutely cannot manage without Klonopin at scheduled times throughout the day.  I keep trying to skip it, and I keep having breakdowns and am told to take my Klonopin.

6)  I am stuck with my jewelry.  It’s not fun to make, to plan, to do.  I feel absolutely defeated by the lack of activity on my Facebook page for it, and I end up giving it away because I don’t think it is good enough, anyway, to sell, and neither, apparently, does anyone else.

7)  I am very close to giving up on some various people in my life.  I decided a while back to no longer be in contact with my ex-step-father.  I am very close to that in a few other relationships.  I am tired of caring and not getting caring back.

8)  I don’t feel like there is a safe place for me to go whenever (if) home begins to feel unsafe.  They use the crisis house as an overflow for social detox — the award for fuckhead of the year goes to whoever made that decision, because if I am sick enough to be there, I am too sick to not be taken advantage by one of those addicts.

9)  My weight is at an all-time high, and I am not sure what else to do.  Sure, I need to move more, but I eat quite healthfully and smaller-size portions, and Seroquel (my psychiatrists guess) or the tides of the moon or terrible chemistry makes me gain ten pounds if I so much as look at a cheeseburger.  I have completely stopped bingeing, and I am gaining weight.  There seems little fairness in that.

10)  I get tired of feeling depressed constantly, so I often put on that mask that says everything is fine.   Dear Mental Health Gods:  I am really, really tired of having to do that.  Most things in my life are going swimmingly right now, can I please catch a break?

Throw a Bunch of Thoughts into the Pot

It has been a very up-and-down three days since I released from the residential crisis center.  To start with, the weather has been crap, or (to be more accurate) severe, and I am tired of rain, tired of thunder, and very tired of keeping up with two dogs who suffer from varying degrees of thunder and storm phobia.  I told my mom I was going to order them and myself a doggie thundershirt.  Yes, they really are driving me that crazy (ier???).

After reading a friend’s post about SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), I realized that some of my angst might be coming from a lack of sunlight, so I have my sunlamp blazing now, and I just pray it doesn’t throw me into a manic spiral.  It seems like the last month or so, I have experienced the true ick of rapid cycling, and to say it hasn’t been fun is an understatement.  Right now, this moment, I am desperate to feel just a little better, so in front of the sunlamp I will sit, until the bipolar devil on my left shoulder releases it’s talons from my flesh a bit.

I spoke with my peer mentor yesterday, and the conversation that I was worried about went just fine.  We are going to start meeting twice per week for 90 minutes each session, which is what I wanted.  She states that she never received any word that I was at the crisis house, including the voicemails I sent her and her unit secretary.  I don’t believe her.  I completely think she is lying, but it just shows that you can’t trust people.  Which is sad, because before all of that happened, I had been thinking about trusting her more than the average human being.  Now, I’m not so sure.  It isn’t easy for me to trust people in the first place, and my faith in people is easily lost.  What is different about me, is that I do give people many, many, many chances.  So, while I am not trusting her so much at the moment, she is going to get another chance.

Now that I have pushed through the suicidal ideation and self-harm thoughts of the past little while, I find I am stuck with huge spikes in my anxiety level.  I have spoken with a few people about it, and my therapist today even wanted me to go into the hospital.  I am not going into the hospital unless I am at a danger to harm myself, and I’m not, so therefore I will figure out the anxiety problem while I am living at home.

I’ve read a few interesting articles on evening anxiety, including this one because it talks directly about anxiety specifically in the evenings.  Every evening between four and five o’clock, I am having a very severe anxiety spike.  This has happened with regularity for over a week, since before I was in the crisis residence, and has happened at other times in my life as well.  I have a hard time when it gets dark outside, but its light at that time right now, although I do notice a further anxiety spike as the sun falls.  My mom and I jokingly have said for years that I have “sundowners,” which is a worsening of symptoms typical in Alzheimer’s patients at dusk.

Obviously I don’t have Alzheimer’s, but I have never been able to figure out why evenings are so difficult for me, other than maybe for trauma reasons.  I think it also has to do with my fear of the dark, which hasbecome more pronounced as I age for some reason.  Those little things that go “bump!” in the night…full body shiver.  I do believe all of that also relates to my issues with sleep and near-constant nightmares.  It is ALL related, I do believe.  I just have to figure out how to ease my unease.

 

image by listzblog.com

A Bit Strange — More Crunch, Less Smoosh

The last bit has been so very up and down, my moods so quickly changeable, intense.  Many tears shed, even more maniacal laughter.  Sarcasm sharper than sharp, my brain is afire and I find myself plucking “damn, that’s good!” phrases and one-liners from it at random, and feeling prideful, in a sense, that my brain is so damn wonderful.  The up and down is fast becoming more of an “up” and hopefully, not a “too up” up.  If you had to ask me right this second how I will feel tomorrow, I really wouldn’t know where to begin but would bet on “elevated.”

Memories have been haunting me lately.  I attribute it to listening to a lot of different music, and also on the fact that my brain is whirring along faster than ever with the subtraction of a very sedating sleep medication that I decided I no longer wanted to take.  Belsomra…that stuff is of the devil himself.  So, I took myself off the “anti-nightmare” medication Clonidine, as well, because it just wasn’t working.  As my psychiatrist often says, no point taking something that doesn’t work.

I happen to know things are getting better (or at least more interesting) for my mental health because I can identify so closely with the word photos in this post.

I had a really great day today.  I made it back to the gym and my water-walking, I helped my mom roll almost three dozen burritos, LarBear and I have been clicking along, and I have all this new-found energy.  Great things build upon itty bitty good things, I have found, throughout life.  If I can just get started, I can be dangerous.  I’m like a snowball coming down the top of the hill that just keeps gaining new snow and getting bigger and wilder and faster.  Hmmm, this does not make it sound so positive, but it does FEEL positive.

I am working really hard in DBT on judgement.  Judgement of self, but other people, too.  First focusing on my own self-judgement, and the rest will follow.  I am trying not to judge my quick thoughts and upbeat mood and newfound energy, and to just accept them as they are, not try to label.

That’s hard, and if you have any kind of disorder in your life, you know that.  You know the SIGNS, man!  The warning signals.  I am glad the cycling isn’t so rapid right at the moment, but I WILL keep an eye on things if I continue to get racier in my brain and louder in the mouth.  I am so stinking tired of med changes and most days would like to get rid of them altogether, but the constant TWEAK that seems necessary is annoying.

I really must listen to one more song, smoke one more cigarette, drink a little more Crystal Lite, and try to go to bed.  I have a full day of things tomorrow, because I WILL be doing things, while I have the energy, seeing as it seems to be so fleeting.

via

 

 

Hand on My Back

It is late, almost 3:00 a.m. on Sunday morning.  I woke up at 1:30 a.m. with terrific nightmares, the sweats, and a pounding heart.  This happens anywhere between once per week, to three or four times per week.  Lately, the nightmares have been getting better.  Of course, they are still there, but they hadn’t been affecting me as much.

So far, I have been able to keep things pretty steady even in the face of the insurmountable nightmares, night terrors, whatever you want to call them.  There are certain things that tend to set me off, however, and there have been no shortage of these *things.”

Many of my dreams are nightmares within which it is the end of the world (quite literally), and I am running to save my life.  Running from being raped, being beaten, frantically searching for a person (usually my sister) or an animal (always Kizzie).  In most cases, my sister or Kizzie are also being beaten, raped, tortured.  I have been through plenty of nasty domestic violence, but these scenes from my sleeping brain are quite vivid.

The dreams share similarities of what I feel in real life, and here lately, with the attacks in Paris and a person in my inner circle who constantly talks about the end of the world (as we know it), I get more and more hyped up into these nightmares.  I have learned to tell the person in my inner circle to not talk about these things around me, but as the world turns, some people have very little filter, or at the very least, not much ability to slap the muzzle on themselves when it comes things they find so very *true.*

So while my body screams out to lay down, my contrary brain shoots messages that all is not well, things are not safe, staying awake (at this point) is necessary.  I have been dealing with this problem for most of my adult life, and even a bit into childhood and adolescence — the bad dreams.  They come and they go, wax and wane, intensify and fade.

At some point, I decide I am safe and release the death grip I have on the computer mouse, ease myself out of my computer chair, and lie down.  At this point in my life, I have LarBear, and I use him as a tool, and snuggle up to him and get extra kisses and fall asleep with his hand in the middle of my back, no doubt with him able to feel the steady thump-thump of my heart.

For every nastiness about Bipolar Disorder, PTSD, Anxiety, and the lot, there is a warm hand on my back, held out from the man I love more on this world than anything, and that, my friends, is something to be ever grateful for.  Nightmares come and go, true love doesn’t fade.

via

O.K., Wild One!

Okay, so maybe “wild” isn’t the right word.  Hypomania?  Mania, even?  What started out as just some “really great” feelings has evolved into something more.  I’m not sleeping but three or four hours a night, and those hours aren’t all at one time.  Nightmares have come on with an even greater vengeance.  I find my thoughts to be confused and jumbled and quite speedy, my speech is pressured, and one day seems to capture ten different mood shifts.

No bueno, my friends.  I did go to see the amazing psychiatrist last week and he increased my Lithium and added Seroquel as a PRN show-stopper of sorts, but I have had little relief.  Especially in the sleep department.  My tolerance for other humans has begun to shrink, and even my feelings of empathy for the puppies in my life who struggle with fireworks and thunder and every other loud noise have been diminished.

I miss blogging every day, but most days I find that I just don’t have much to say.  Or much to say that I think bears repeating from my tired old brain.  Sometimes I think I should just throw it out there anyway, but I don’t.  I admire bloggers who do it day-in-and-out, and maybe I’ll get back there some day.  I think I would have a hard time throwing RosieSmrtiePants away altogether, and don’t think that day is coming anytime soon.  Maybe I could embrace a weekly blogging schedule.  You know, a SCHEDULE.  Gah!

So many things in life are better these days, so it is really aggravating to me that I must still be on the bipolar circus ride of up-down-all-around.  I have resigned myself to think that perhaps it will ALWAYS be that way.  I mean, if the past 33 years is any indication anyway.  I comfort myself by reminding Rosa that at least the current state of affairs does not 100% revolve around depression and anxiety.  Yay for mania (except, ick, really) for keeping things interesting and here’s to a goal of no hysterical crying for 24 hours.

We all have goals, am I right?  ;). Sure do love y’all!

Who I Am

Here we are, Day 37 post DSB-break-up.  I couldn’t be more thrilled with my new-found freedom, spare time, lack of anxiety, and re-connection with family.  I mean thrilled, over-the-moon.  What I am less thrilled with is the basic and simple fact that I have to work, REALLY HARD, at figuring out this new life again.

You know, what it means to be single, to not be tied down.  While I used to have a very rigid schedule, everything is very loose now.  It bothers me, to a degree.  I feel like I am reinventing Rosa, and in a way, I guess I am.  The Rosa of the past two years put up with way too much shit, had her self-esteem slowly chipped away, and mentally blocked out all of the “wrongness” that was the relationship with DSB.

But I see it now.  I see it clearly.  I see where I should have stood my ground, made different choices, forced him to leave much earlier in the game.  The minute he tried keeping me from my family, or badmouthing them, I should have ended it.  I didn’t, and I have nightmares about it, frankly.  About how I gave up my family for a relationship that really wasn’t all that great, or healthy.

 

I feel a lot of shame, am actually really burdened down by shame and guilt.  The Rosa of the last two years is not the Rosa I want to be.  And I’m changing things, sometimes in little steps, sometimes in huge leaps of faith.  It’s hard, though.  I have great family and friend support, but I am lacking something.  I think I know what it is, but I’m not positive.  What I think I am facing is a deep sense of uncertainty and insecurity.

Because I feel like I’m reinventing myself, I also feel like I don’t know who I really am.  I’m uncertain about what I like and don’t like, what I will put up with and I won’t.  I worry that my reactions to certain things are either over-the-top or not intense enough.  I feel wildly varying emotions about so many issues, so many people, so many subjects, and just so many things.  And along with that, I have had two cycles in the past month, and just when I’m feeling good, something crops up and I feel like all the progress I have made has been obliterated.

I’m not saying that’s how it is, but just that it FEELS that way.  I feel lost a lot of the time, and a lot of the time I’m putting on a happy face when inside I’m in a rage about something or I’m so agitated I can barely focus on what it is I’m supposed to be doing.  Lost.  Lost.  Lost.  I am like a ship out at sea that has lost it’s navigational system.  No way back to dry land, to safety.  But isn’t it safe HERE?  NOW?

I am good with life changing, but it seems so huge, so dramatic.  I feel like a totally different person now than when I was with DSB.  It feels good to be able to do what I want to be, but there is so much uncertainty now.  Before, I knew where I had to be at what times and what I was supposed to be doing.  Now, there is no plan, there is no schedule.  I’m living life flying by the seat of my pants and it terrifies me.  I don’t feel secure in this person I am trying to be and I feel very unsure about what I should be doing on a minute-to-minute basis.  Before, it was all planned out and orchestrated.  Now, well, like I said!  Seat of your pants!

When this song first came out, my grandpa had passed, but my grandma was still around.  I’d substitute Grandma’s name for the one in the song, and the line about looking like my dad and momma being my biggest fan were (and still are) SO TRUE.  This song really grounded me during a time where, again, I didn’t know who I was.  I’ve listened to it four times now on repeat, after writing everything above (which frankly, needed to come out either way), and it is grounding me again, like it once did back when times were rough.

If I live to be a hundred
And never see the seven wonders
That’ll be alright
If I don’t make it to the big leagues
If I never win a Grammy
I’m gonna be just fine
Cause I know exactly who I am

I am Rosemary’s granddaughter
The spitting image of my father
And when the day is done my momma’s still my biggest fan
Sometimes I’m clueless and I’m clumsy
But I’ve got friends that love me
And they know just where I stand
It’s all a part of me
And that’s who I am

So when I make a big mistake
And when I fall flat on my face
I know I’ll be alright
Should my tender heart be broken
I will cry those teardrops knowing
I will be just fine
Cause nothing changes who I am

I am Rosemary’s granddaughter
The spitting image of my father
And when the day is done my momma’s still my biggest fan
Sometimes I’m clueless and I’m clumsy
But I’ve got friends that love me
And they know just where I stand
It’s all a part of me
And that’s who I am

I’m a saint and I’m a sinner
I’m a loser; I’m a winner
I am steady and unstable
I’m young, but I am able

I am Rosemary’s granddaughter
The spitting image of my father
And when the day is done my momma’s still my biggest fan
Sometimes I’m clueless and I’m clumsy
But I’ve got friends that love me
And they know where I stand
It’s all a part of me
And that’s who I am

I am Rosemary’s granddaughter
The spitting image of my father
And when the day is done my momma’s still my biggest fan
Sometimes I’m clueless and I’m clumsy
But I’ve got friends that love me
And they know where I stand
It’s all a part of me
And that’s who I am
That’s who I am

 

 

Hazy Memories, Please

I was going to do today’s Daily Prompt about memories, but I decided I needed to take a rest and just put my feet up for a bit first.  When I came home after work today, I felt tired and just really out-of-sorts.  We have all been working really hard the past few weeks and it’s starting to take it’s toll.  I almost never nap, but today was different.

As soon as I came home, the first things I did were to get more water and to play with the Kizzer dog for a good half hour.  I then sat, smoking, staring at my computer screen.  I didn’t have the energy to catch up on blog reading and I didn’t feel like writing.  I just felt like laying down.  So I did, expecting that the amazingness I felt as soon as I did would linger but that I would stay awake.

In the five years since I received my CPAP, it has come to the point where I literally can’t fall asleep without it.  And haven’t.  Until today.  I woke up two hours later and felt refreshed.  At least a little less pissy.  And I started to think about memories.

I had a dream about DSB just before I woke up.  In the dream, I was crying my heart out and begging him to stay.  He said nothing.  I cried some more.  He left.  I woke up with this strong tug in my heart and then I realized, “oh yeah, I’m not missing him.”  And I’m not.  I’m not really even missing the good times, because I see them so clearly now for what they are.

Memories.  The Daily Prompt wants to know if “vivid and recent” or “those that time has covered in a sweet haze” are better.  I really don’t think I have a clear answer to that.  The memories I prefer are the good ones — and it doesn’t matter if they’re 10 minutes or 30 years old.  You can have a really good memory that is old and vivid, just as you can have a new memory that is sweetly hazy.

Bipolar disorder does something to your memory and I know Goddess of Mindfulness has explained it, several pdocs have, and I’ve looked it up.  In the midst of an episode, you might not retain memories well, and you might not be able to retrieve already existing memories well.  I don’t remember the science of it, but that’s the gist.

I am thankful every morning that I wake up, and don’t have a trauma-based nightmare.  I think of these nightmares as those traumatic memories coming alive while I’m sleeping.  They can eat your shit up.  Fast.  When I start to have them, I know something is awry, and I do something about it.  Fast.

I have memories from two to three years ago that are bathed in the haze of mania, and I’m glad those memories aren’t vivid.  I did some seriously stupid shit during that time.  Just as I have memories bathed in a haze of depression for other, more, many times in my life.  I don’t like most of those memories, because when you’re depressed, you tend to only remember the bad stuff.

So, Mr. Daily Prompt — I prefer my memories to be of any age, but I would prefer the hazed version.  Life day to day in my world is vivid enough — I don’t need them racing around in my head, replaying all day and night.

 

Collection of Thoughts

 

In the past, I struggled with nightmares.  Trauma-induced nightmares that would wake me up, breathless and sweating.  I’m pleased to say that with a good healthy kick of Prazosin, and years of therapy, I don’t have those dreams often anymore.  Now when I dream, it is usually right around the end of the world and I am fighting.  With guns.  And saving people.  And looking for my dogs.  And my sister.  These aren’t nightmares, per say, but they are unpleasant.  I also have a lot of dreams about showing up places inappropriately dressed.  I don’t believe in dream interpretation, but I can imagine what some people would say about that.  It is funny, though, to only  have two types of dreams:  end of the world dreams and inappropriately naked dreams.  I’d like a little more variety.

 

 

I like this.  It spoke to me, but I didn’t hear it.  OK, kidding, obviously.  There is so much truth in this quote, though.

DSB:  What’s for dinner?

Me:  *silence*

DSB:  What’s wrong?  What happened?

Me:  *silence*

DSB:  Do you not want to talk about it right now?

Me:  *nodding head*

DSB:  Come see me when you’re fit to have this conversation, because we ARE having this conversation.

And what I was trying to do was keep from crying, but he thought I was mad about something.  Sometimes the tears come for no reason, and they will not go away.  And he doesn’t get that, even when I explain it.  Emotional times around my household lately.

 

 

Word to you, Mr. Oscar Wilde.  When I was growing up, I wrote tons of poetry.  Now, I can’t even read it.  It’s to the point where, if a poem shows up in my reader, I just delete it.  I can’t go there.  All that time I spent gushing out my emotions on paper, in poetry form — that time is over and long gone and, while I wish I could still write like that, I appreciate the medicated and unable-to-write-or-read-poetry version of Rosa better.  But Mr. Wilde is right, I am living it.  You can’t read it or see it, but it lives on.

 

Amen to that.  I’ve been through times when I’ve had tons of “friends,” who really I could probably only call acquaintances, and some not even that.  Now I have a very very few friends, and they mean more to me, and are more to me, than any 790 Facebook friends I used to have.  It’s funny who we choose to share our life with, and I think the better quality comes from sharing it less, but sharing it with people who get it more.

 

 

 

 

Linger in Safety

Daily Prompt:  Linger

When I was alone, I feared the night.  I feared the dark, but mostly I feared my bed for the haunting nightmares it brought me.  My pup, Kizzie, was a small consolation, but she is not much of a snuggler and preferred to lie resting against my legs or on my feet.  With none other than my dog for protection (a fierce and happy 20 pound fireball, who might only lick you to death, at that), I would lie down, close my eyes, and wait for the demons in my subconscious to break through in REM sleep.

I spent years being alone literally in bed and alone with someone in bed, fearing the night.  Being alone with someone was almost worse, because they never understood.  It came to a point where my mental health would start disintegrating around nightfall.  My depression would increase, I was hyper-vigilant, my mind wound over itself over and over.  Nightfall would often find me crying, loudly, for no apparent reason, other than it was night.  I could not seem to console myself, or tell myself tonight might be better.  Because it never was.

When I met DSB, that all, very slowly, began to change.  I began to be less preoccupied with night, and learned to watch funny movies and eat popcorn as the sky fell dark beyond the curtained window.  I learned to never watch horror movies, or sad movies before bed.  I learned that there were two someones in my house that would fight to the death for me if something bad were to happen, in the night.

I had DSB and I had his dog, Rascal, and I felt safe for the first time in a long while.  Not only did I start feeling safer during the day, I started to feel safe at 5:00pm and beyond.  DSB, Rascal, Kizzie, and I would all spend 5:00pm and after doing things that I imagine couples and their child-dogs do around the country.  Cook dinner.  Reminisce about the day.  Talk about our failures, our triumphs, our dreams.  There were biscuits for the pups, Kool-Aid for me, and coffee (always coffee) for DSB.

I began to treasure the time between 5:00pm and 10:00pm.  Good things happened in that space.  There were a lot of hugs and kisses and dog licks, but there was also a warm and sweet and full feeling in my chest.  DSB made me feel like I could do anything, go anywhere, be anyone in those first few months.  He saved me from myself, from depression and anger and disappointment.

We had the longest talks, about anything, about nothing, about everything.  I learned to calm myself in the hours leading up to bedtime, and DSB taught me how to do that.  With his words, his gestures,  his smiles, his stories of life.  I began to relax.

Even now, the time between 5:00pm and 10:00pm is probably my favorite.  It has been two years since DSB kick-started the hard work it would take for me to make my peace with bedtime.  We developed a routine and stuck by it and life was predictable.  I learned that I needed a nighttime routine and we found one and stuck with it.

Those golden hours between coming home and making supper to slipping into bed and turning on my Kindle seem too short, sometimes.  I want to make them last, I want to linger in them and take in every small detail to store in my memory.  I never want to lose this time, and I will never forget how it feels to not feel safe, because I treasure so much the safety that I feel now.

Grief Anniversaries Compounding More Grief

I am so glad this weekend is over.  I’m glad DSB’s surgery is over and now everything is on the steady with that.  I’m glad I have the first round of inventory entered into the computer.  I beyond love love love my dishwasher for enabling me to keep a very clean kitchen at all times, although it was constantly being cooked in by a very messy DSB.  I am thankful for Klonopin, even though I get tired of taking it.  But mostly, I am just glad the first five days of 2014 are over, because I don’t think I could take much more.

I have spent more time today crying and boo-hooing and angsting and sobbing and catastrophizing today than I care to spend in about a month.  I mean, the waterworks will just not shut off.  The negative tapes were churning away in my head and I just felt so sad and hopeless.  And I couldn’t figure out why.

And I’m not saying this is the only reason, but it is likely a factor.  My grandmother died two years ago yesterday, and today would have been her birthday.  I wasn’t particularly close to my grandmother, but it was her death two years ago that sent me over the deep end.  I firmly believe that I probably wouldn’t have taken such a nosedive if that terrible timing hadn’t ended up the way it did.

I have a lot of my grandparents’ furniture in my house.  I bought some new silverware yesterday, and I cried when I found some of my grandparents’ old silverware tucked underneath some more current items.  Cheap steak knives is what they are.  Except they don’t look cheap.  And are probably not.  They were Grandpa’s and thinking about him and those steak knives brings a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes just thinking about it.

Isn’t it awful how grief compounds grief?  I’m over my grandmother being dead, and it’s only been a couple of years.  My grandpa is a whole ‘nother story.  He died in 2004 to be exact.  He died exactly 14 days after my 25th birthday.  I distinctly remember that I was on the Atkins diet at that time, and I heard the call right as I was starting to eat a steak dinner.  I couldn’t ever eat that particular blend of seasonings again.

There was a huge thunderstorm going on and I can remember the Big Dawg picking me up and taking me to the Assisted Living place where my grandparents had been living.  There was a big empty room, and Grandpa was on a stretcher, all wrapped up in white sheets.  And I totally lost it.

And I still do lose it, thinking of him.  I think of all the things I wish he had been able to see, to do.  I wish he had been able to meet DSB, to go fishing again, to make terrible soup, to hold his favorite dog, to see my sister get married and have her little boy.  He has so much to be proud of, and I can’t help but think that he absolutely MUST be up there looking over.  I don’t know how I would or could go on if at least some part of me didn’t believe that.

And maybe that’s strange to not know if there is a God, but to be certain there is a heaven.  I really don’t care.  I pray rarely, but I do talk to Grandpa, and the Bird Lady.  And I really do think sometimes they answer me back.  And I light a little candle and I send a thought, and that’s enough for me.  So that’s what I’m going to go do.  Light a candle.  Take a Klonopin.  Pray for dreamless sleep.

Amen.