Things that make ya go hmmmmm.

Aka - another post that’s all about randomosity!

– We have had our first (and second) casualty from the Tree. Sneaky little shits waited until I went to bed yesterday morning, then batted happily away until they broke one of my cheapo decorations. No great loss - but must step up the Kitten Training. Heh. Place your bets now…

– I find myself humming this morning. And randomly singing “It’s beginning to look a lot like CHRIStmas…” I’m finding it vaguely annoying. I blame lack of sleep - 2 hours or so - where the alarm rudely snapped me out of a lovely vague dream of some man dressed only in a red bow. Dammit.

– Why was I up so late? Whew. Seaaaarching and shoooooopping and comparing and beating my head against a wall, etc. You know, when the kids get bigger, the toys get smaller. You’d think this’d be good, but oh no! For some reason these smaller gifts are DIPPED IN SOLID GOLD. That’s the only reason to explain the prices!

However, through determination (sheer stubbornness, to be honest!) I managed to score something I think the boy and I can both live with (NO, it is NOT a cell phone. Nor is it the coveted Ipod.)

And also, Ebay is my friend. I can find *It* on Ebay. Whatever *It* is. Which is where I was able to snatch up something for the pup at much cheaper then store prices - NIB. Awesome. Now I just need to locate some MoonSand for her. As it’s the “ONE! THING! MAMA!” that she wants most of all.

The girl, she is another thing altogether. She isn’t sure WHAT she wants - other then a crockpot. So, it’s guessing time for her, but she’s such a good kid and a girlygirl, I’m sure some of my bargain finds will make her happy too. Man am I glad she loves to cook! mmmmmmmmyummy!

So, come 3am or so, I’d finished the online portion of my shopping to my satisfaction. Now come Dec. 20th when I get paid and do local shopping, I shall be much less frantic! Yay! Cuz then it’s all stocking stuffers and little things, and whew. This is probably why I’m humming.

– Course, I also find myself retreating into a solitude and hiding in general - a social recluse. There is a lot of talk of Kevin by the kids and understandably so, and I encourage that. Unfortunately it’s like stabbing myself all over again each time, too. So I put on a brave face, and we laugh, and sometimes cry, and remember what each empty millimeter of my heart was once filled with.

– I also wonder how it is that all of his friends have disappeared. Once swearing they’d be here, they wouldn’t forget, they’d make sure to check in on us and see if we needed anything…. there is no contact, no returning of phone calls, and no checking in. I quit trying, because I won’t force myself on anyone, but even the kids notice it. I just tell them everyone works through things in their own way - they miss Daddy too, and they just can’t handle it. Sometimes, though, I envy their ability to use the out of sight, out of mind method of coping - because while Kevin’s certainly out of sight, he’s by no means ever out of mind. It’d be easier if it were that way - but no one said love and loss was easy, hm? Let alone fair.

– Though, that said, I do wish the guy who donated the Ham to us last year would show up again with another one. That was some damn good eatin! YUM!

– This conflicting of emotions is leaving me humming with tears burning behind my eyes, as well as sleepless. So I will go to bed here soon as the pup is off to school, having finally worked myself into such exhaustion that not even Diet Crack Coke can permeate it.. I can fell it pressing against me, suffocating my will to sit here and find something, anything else to do rather then face my bed again.

– Unless, of course, that nameless hunk in the red ribbon shows up in again. Rawr. Then? Then! I shall go willingly to dreamland.

– Wouldn’t you?

tgif

It’s been a long week. You expect certain days when you’ve lost someone. There are dates that you know from the beginning that will strangle you from the inside, pressing at your mind, suffocating your thoughts, and forcing your carefully controlled reactions to overflow in copious amounts of mood swings and tears. You don’t expect the little things - like breaking the last brush in the house and having to open his toiletry bag to get the one you know is there, with strands of his hair still attached because you don’t have time to go to the store for a new one. Or using the last of his tube of toothpaste.
It’s the unexpected, random things and days that really, really suck.

I had a complete meltdown saturday night/sunday/monday. Despite my normal state of not sleeping, I retreated by telling the kids I had a headache, and slept for about 24 hours with only a couple hours of random wakefulness during sunday/monday. I still feel bad for it - but had it was the only way i could cope with the darkness that was swallowing me whole. They don’t seem any worse for wear, in fact they likely don’t remember it at all. The older two are quite capable of watching the pup and It wasn’t like I didn’t wake up when they did need me and tend to them. And they got to control the TV remote without my grumbling. So guilty irish woman inside me - shut up already. (that never works. just so you know. heh.)

Got a txt message from TBF wednesday night asking if I was ok. Finally got tired of typing on phone pad, and called - helped tremendously just to hear him. We figured it was just a delayed reaction from the beginning of the week. Course, now I know it may have been premonition.

So what is it that stopped me from calling him this morning? Stupid movie made a random comment ‘He was 43′ and i heard ‘He was 33′ and that, with a realization that nothing I have smells like him any longer, not his pillows, his clothing, anything - was all it took. 3 hours later, puffy-eyed and covered in used tissues and exhausted, and I’d stopped myself from calling and waking TBF up 80 gazzillion times. It was 3-4-5am, but he yells at me for not calling no matter what time it is.

So here I am. 30 minutes of sleep before the alarm went off. Eyes hot, puffy, scratchy. Abs aching. Body screaming for rest. And I can’t make *any* connection to day, time of day, anything that set this breakdown off other then watching a stupid movie and not even really hearing what was said because I was attempting to drift off to sleep.
I guess - it’s just one of *those* days.

*Those* days suck.

(Yes, I’m basically ok. I know it’s all part of the process. The process - btw - also sucks. No need for panic. Or interventions. Or drugs. [Although... heh. j/k] Or phone calls. Specially not phone calls, cuz soon as the pup’s off to school, I’m going to sleep. So - Nana, Auntie - I’m alright. Don’t panic. Sometimes, even my strength and control crumbles, s’all. Few hours sleep and I’ll be fine [And we all know what fine means - Fucked up, Irrational, Neurotic and Emotional.] and back to normal.)

liz_marcs: I Remember Townsend…

liz_marcs: I Remember Townsend…

Read it. I’ll wait.

Done? Good. I’ll be the first to admit I’m one of those American’s that just doesn’t pay attention to politics unless it directly affects me - and as a widowed white SAHM, not much really does in the broad spectrum. I don’t watch the news, I only read the ‘neighborly’ parts of the local paper (online, I don’t even subscribe), I’m more likely to know when Suri’s first pictures came out of who was able to “Make it work” on the latest Project Runway or who is the newest Superhero for Stan Lee. Even though those still have nothing to do with me personally - it allows me to keep a wall around me and mine in some attempt to protect them from the horrors that is the American Government. I’m not completely oblivious, I just choose not to spend all my time fighting the man or for the man. I have much more personal battles to fight.
Today is a day of rememberance for the familys of the 2996 who died and thousands more injured at Ground Zero. Many, many places are remembering, are gathering together to pay tribute, are still searching these five years later for some reason why, and someone to blame. I understand that search to lay blame on a far more personal level then I ever did before. Not because I knew someone there, or lost someone there, but because of my own far to recent personal tragedy.

Losing someone you love, unexpectedly, SUCKS. Losing someone so violently can only suck even more. Part of me, however, feels guilty. I can’t connect with those who of 9-11, and worse - I don’t want to. I avoid all of the tv shows, the movies, the sensationalization, the half-truths and lies of the media, the blogs of tribute today, everything that has happened over the past 5 years.  Part of me doesn’t want to know. Part of me doesn’t care. All of me doesn’t want to have to examine it as closely as it deserves in order to find a personal truth. I have my own demons - I don’t need yours, theirs, the world’s also laid at my feet. I am not strong enough for that.
And even then - someone says “9-11″ and I rememeber how MY truth went down, and how part of it is amusing even now because it was *so* Kevin, and how I ache that I’ve lost him, and how horrible the past year has been without him.

That morning he called - at ohmygodEarly - and told me to get up and turn on the TV, he’d call right back. It was something ungodly like 5am here. That detail escapes me, I just remember cussing him out because I should have been able to sleep another 2 hours before getting the kids up for school. I tuned in just as the second plane hit. I was watching as the towers fell. I saw each moment unfold on national tv all throughout the day - the fear for AirForce One, the hit on the pentegon, the terror in faces as the cameras captured every moment of this Life as a Movie event. The blue of the sky, the silence, the crash of the towers - I watched it all. It was unreal - surreal. I was very far removed from it all.

Then Kevin called again - and said “Get the guns. Make sure they’re loaded. I expect us to be hit, and expect Martial law.”

And I laughed. He was upset at me because of it, but man - I laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed some more. Why the hell would anyone hit Alaska? Seriously? Sure, we’ve got oil, and that’s where he was, but… why? This was centered on the part of America that people think matters - if anything, I worried for my friends in California more then myself. Yet I had to agree to check the guns, and be prepared for an invasion in my tiny town of BFE.

He was so frightened for his family, even as I continued to chuckle everytime he checked that I was prepared. I had gone to town and filled up the jeep with gas. I had made sure that I had bottled water, and batteries and the flashlights handy. I was prepared to grab the kids and head toward Anchorage if they hit the Agruim plant. It was so him, so Kevin, so… pessimistic. But then again, he always watched the news, paid attention, loved political debates almost as much as he loved religious debates - maybe he knew something I didn’t. And still, I laughed.

I didn’t cry about it until I saw the faces of the families, lines of grief stretched across their face, empty terror and agony in the bottomless pits of thier eyes. They never thought it would happen to THEM either. Mothers holding children now made fatherless, as the death tole rose, higher and higher. How I hated the media then - invading these people’s tragedy, forcing their way in to get firsthand reactions to something that should be so personal. And they’ve never stopped - specials on TLC this week include the story as told by the children who lost parents, and I want to scream, to grab the nearest newsguy and shake him.

My grief for Kevin is personal, palpable, and has not subsided since I lost him a year ago. I cannot imagine what these people must feel like seeing snippits of their lives viewed by millions, possible distorted, some achingly real, either way being layed out for the consumption of the masses.

That is my reality. I understand, in part, that their ache is the same as mine. I know that my tragedy will be forever remembered in love by friends, family, those who knew us. I know that my husband’s memory is handled with respect, because I demand it, and because he deserves it.

I am glad I was spared the loss of someone during 9-11. I wish I were spared my personal loss as well. I can only take days one at a time, and avoid what I cannot handle. I am sorry, to those who were directly affected, that my personal tragedy eclipses your own. I can only hope that you have personal friends and family that support you, as I do.

That is the best I can do.

Today…

So. today. It’s been… well, it’s been.

It’s been a full year. I can’t believe it most days, still - not that he’s gone, not that he’ll never come back, not that I and my kids have survived a full year without him. My heart is still broken, and when they say time will mend - clearly they mean plenty more time, because I still find myself consumed with the inability to breathe. I know I told the kids that we’d go out to the lake, but they haven’t mentioined it and I just can’t bring myself to go out there yet, to face the lake and where we gave him back to the land he loved. I just… can’t. If the kids brought it up - I would have. But a big part of me is oh so glad they didn’t. Maybe when they’re ready, I’ll be better able to do so.

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Someday

I’m angry.

Along the edges, I know why, and I suppose it’s understandable, but being who I am I just keep on going, but really, honestly, deep down? I’m furious.

Some people have gotten little tastes of it about stupid inconsequential things, and some of them have even decided to quit speaking to me. Can’t blame them, because it’s stupid - yet something I can vent on about without resorting to making everyone else feel like shit. Sure, it may be exhausting? But remember that the next time you expect me to listen to you.

Because more then being angry, I’m tired.

I’m tired of counting the days, and coming up with enough that they almost make a year. 353 days. Friday - day 356 marks the last time I saw him alive. Minutes, hours, days, months - almost a year. Time has become an emotional enemy.

I’m tired of looking at other people and their complaints and thinking - wtf? And I’m tired of the attempts of my brain to validate my experiences and make everything ok - ok that I still feel this way, or ok that others think I should be simply over it by now.

I’m tired of waiting for a blowup that really hasn’t ever happened. I’m tired of putting one foot in front of the other and topping it off off with a smile of the ‘No really, I’m ok.’ variety.

I’m tired of pretending that I don’t want to crawl into a hole and forget everything, when a lot of times, I really do. I’m tired of staring at blinking cursors of doom and empty photoshop documents and not seeing anything come forth from somewhere inside me like they used too.

I’m tired of the people that don’t understand that sometimes? I just need to be angry. It’ll pass. I’m tired of those who look at me with pity, but never understanding. I’m tired of feeling like the poster girl for grief and how it should be handled. I’m tired of the grief, too, and I hate the guilty feelings that overcome everything else when I think that way.

It takes time - I know. Someday I’ll wake up on a monday and manage not to think for half a second that he’s going to come home today only to look at the empty bed and realize that no, that’s not going to happen. Someday I’ll not jump everytime the phone rings at a certain time thinking it’s the first of many nightly phone calls - only to realize less then half a second later that’s not to be.

Someday, I may manage to pack away his things.

Someday, I may no longer hate his doctor with a fire that presses against my skin from the inside, causing an itch I want to dig at again and agian and again until I get some sort of relief within the bloodshed.

Someday, I may no longer look at my kids, and mix the gratitude for having them with the bone crushing ache that I’m the only parent they have left.

I found myself flipping channels today, and screaming at the stupid couple on tv who fought over why she gained so much weight. All I wanted to do is reach through the screen and shake them and scream “DON’T FUCK THIS UP YOU STUPID IDIOTS!” They still have time.

I’d give anything for a piece of our time back agian.

Someday, I’ll be ok.

Today is not that day.

Though dispite how it sounds - I’m kinda ok with that too. Just… venting.

(Aka - no need to call professional help. Or Nana Moosie. Heh.)