Unlost

I dreamt of you. It wasn’t night, like dreaming is supposed to be it was day. I day dreamed and day slept. I was too weak to even walk today. You were giving me directions to pick my kids up. You said take a left then a bunch of rights. I said. Won’t that just get me back to the beginning? You said everywhere gets you somewhere. Then you were on a basketball court and I kept screaming at you “are you even there, dad. Dad. Can you even hear me?” Then woke from a daydream sweat that wasn’t a night sweat. I woke in tears. I was angry at my day dream. Angry I can’t hear you and you can’t hear me. Angry that m’y somewhere and everywhere feel nowhere.

Where did my purpose of life go?

I don’t know how to tell people how I feel. I know how to tell them how to guess how I feel. I don’t know how to ask for help. I don’t like to ask for help. I am even weaker now. Not just sad weak but now I’m Lyme disease weak.

Being in the places I have with him should be more like what people do after awhile. Maybe my standards are different . I need to know early on if you can walk miles, or drive across state lines with me to walk miles. It comes so easy though. Either I am making it that easy or it’s just naturally occurs as easy.

I asked him questions. I told him I had lots. I always do. I can ask like a toddler. It will feel like you are being interviewed if I’m not careful. I’ve been told this. I did speed dating once. Literally once. It was a fifteen minute slot to get to know someone. This should be my thing. I went in with thousands of questions ready to know someone in 15 minutes. Ready to determine my soul mate in a quarter of an hour.

It began. In my head a buzzer went off. It didn’t so you know. This wasn’t like a game show. Except in my head it was a competition. I needed to start quick. Then he stares at me. Like through me. Into me. I look away. No one gets to look into the depths of my soul without a little warning. I have questions first. I begin. He answers a few. I’m excited and go faster. He laughs. He is laughing at me, not with me. I’m not laughing. He would be a giraffe if he could be an animal. His biggest fear is snakes. I cringe. It’s also mine. How would we handle a snake scenario together? He loves surprises. This doesn’t match with the snake thing. They surprise you. They are sneaky like that.

He tells me I ask a lot of questions. I say. We only have 7 minutes left so… we need to keep going. He laughs and says. I just thought we would gaze into each other’s eyes and maybe share a little kiss. I say. I don’t think that’s how this works. He said, a light touch is enough for him. I am mad now because it’s also enough for me. Too much. That gaze into the eyes is right into them. I don’t want to look that deep. I wanted to surface scratch first. I wanted to know his dreams and goals not feel them. Hear them. I say, I have to go. He tells me time is not up yet. Except it is.

I asked him my first question and was presented with a follow up question. This confused me. I asked what animal he would be and he asked me if he had to worry about poachers. I hadn’t prepared for this. I said no of course not. Any animal is safe from harm in this scenario. He choses a gorilla. Because they are so beautiful. I tell him Jane Goodall is a hero of mine. No one knows this. It turned into a conversation of books. It lead to deeper things like fears. It lead to him saying some things are too personal for texting. I agreed. I hadn’t intended for my questions to take us down a serious path. It just did it. I didn’t stop it. Then I did.

When I asked what he would do with one day left to live, I guessed it before he said it. We had sort of talked about it once. Sugar gliding like wings off a cliff. He just thought it would be fun. This was his choice when given a last day. It’s a thing that seems to not be fail proof so likely would end in death. But you would fly until then.

I think I would take all my favorite foods and find myself a place at the Grand Canyon and sit and watch the sunset. I think if someone said, tomorrow you die. I would wait for it. I don’t think I would not. I don’t wait well but I picture sitting there and counting it down and waiting for my last breath. To see what the last one might be like. Also to see if this person who tells me tomorrow is it might be wrong. Who are they to say when I die? Would I get frustrated and stand up and catapult off the cliff. No? I might not die and then I would lay broken and in pain until I did. I probably would spend most of my time finding the perfect spot to sit. Or looking for rocks. Or wondering the trails. I wouldn’t be able to actually sit. I would do me things until then. I would pick at my food. I would likely wonder so far away from my things that I wouldn’t eat. Die on an empty stomach. Too busy to even eat. I would write people. I would put the letters in boxes and bury them. I would talk to the sky. Hope that my words travel to somewhere. Bounce off the cliff sides. I wouldn’t wait to die. I would plan to wait then get tired of waiting.

I intended to write about Lyme disease but steered right away from it to questions. I have felt off for several days. Weak in places I’m not weak. Legs nearly impossible to move. Stiff neck. I thought I was getting strep throat. I thought I was so sad I couldn’t walk. I had to be taken home. I sat in my greenhouse and cried. I got home and slept for 6 hours. Dreaming of my dad. He couldn’t hear me and I woke in a drenched sweat and a fever. Now I’m worried I have coronavirus.

I had ticks. I had one that no doubt was on me for several days. I must have washed him even for a few days. He just kept right on working on my tummy. I finally removed him three days after my trip when my mole looked bigger than I thought. Because it wasn’t a mole but a swollen full of blood tick. A few days later I developed a rash. I googled. It didn’t look like anything to worry about. Except I knew it was something to worry about. I waited a few weeks then when I couldn’t walk I finally went to the doctor. He said. You have Lyme disease. It’s likely early enough to be treated completely but we will have to wait and see. I will take a ridiculous strong antibiotic that when I read the side effects sounds like I will have Lyme disease as a side effect. I already felt these things. It also said to avoid prolonged exposure to sunlight. What?? I prolong expose to sunlight for a living. And for fun.

He said I don’t present with classic symptoms. The rash is unusual but it is in fact a rash at the site of a tick left too long. Including the swollen glands, my immune system is working super hard to fight it which makes this tick disease work harder. I know my immune system and so does my doctor. I will move into Lyme disease stages quicker than most. I don’t know how to do anything slow. Like meet people. Or have bug diseases.

I woke this morning with pain in my spine and my ankles. And under my armpits. One arm feels like I can’t put it all the way down. My rash is itchy. It hasn’t been but now it is.

I will have to eat with the antibiotic. I don’t want to eat. I am not eating well. It is something my doctor brought up. You have lost a lot of weight lady. Weight you can’t afford. You need to eat. I know I need to eat. I don’t want to. Last night I force fed myself a burrito. I choked. Then I was chewing and bit into something like a tooth. It was a tooth. My tooth. It broke. I hadn’t been able to go to the dentist because the whole world shut down a week before my teeth were supposed to get fixed from grinding them and breaking them. Now it broke and I panicked and I swallowed it. So now I can tell my doctor. I did eat. I ate my tooth. Calcium right?

I don’t want to talk about eating. I don’t even want to eat let alone write about it. I can’t sort it out. I feel ache in my tummy becasue it’s hollow. It’s empty like my chest feels with the void of my dad gone. I am a big void of empty things. I don’t know what to fill anything with. Nothing sounds good. Not even cake. I know I’m not ok when I don’t want cake. I’ve been eating fruit. That’s it. I ate so many grapes one day I felt pregnant.

I talked about being sad. I’m not depressed he said. I’m sad. He knows it. A loss like this is sad. To follow what I feel and feel it no matter where I am. To stop when I feel it. To go when I feel it. That masking it won’t help he can guarantee this. We both know my history with medications. I’m not one to medicate. I have to sort no matter the price and pain involved. Numbing it confuses my mind. I fight it. They medicate more. I fight harder. Then I am nothing. Again.

I feel again. That’s what I like. I was told how to feel. If to feel. When not and that I shouldn’t. Now I get to decide what is what. I decide I’m sad. Then show it. Then feel it. I decide I want to feel good. Then feel it.

I am relieved I was not so compounded with grief I couldn’t walk. It’s instead a bug disease. I am relieved I knew I had a tick bite and went and said so. If Lyme had progressed, without my knowledge of the tick who knows what they would have thought was wrong with me. I would have been tested for coronavirus 3 times. Like my dad. They wanted it to be coronavirus so bad they didn’t see or find what he really died from. They were blinded by corona. Everything was corona. He had unusual symptoms but maybe they are just new ones to share with the world. Maybe mine would have been. They would have said. Yes it is corona. Yes her tests keep coming back negative but we think now the test is being tricked by these new symptoms she presents. Just look at this rash. It’s like not other symptom the world has seen. Then I would have died. Like my dad.

I’m having unusual dreams. So far just three nights of them. Last night I was looking for jewelry. I had lots of necklaces. They were all a cameo necklace like the one my ex gave me that I kept. The one single thing he gave me that I couldn’t get rid of. A mother with a child cameo. My children. The one thing he gave me. Well. 4 things. He gave me being a mother.

I need my purpose of life back. It feels gone and empty. I have such a huge void in my life that I don’t know what I’m living for anymore. This doesn’t feel like I want to die it feels like I don’t remember what I was here for. I have felt this before. Lost. Is what I feel not lifeless. Not wanting no life. Just wanting unlost back.

I think it’s ok to wonder, wander? A little lost sometimes. I have before and was fine. I wondered so far off trail, I found new places and things while lost. I found I could get unlost. I found that lost wasn’t easy. I found that I didn’t just say oh, here I am, and bend over and pick me up and put me back. I found that I found me specifically by being lost. I got off that ferry from Isle Royale that first year and hopped onto the ground lighter from throwing away my heavy loads. and thought. I was right here and there the whole time. I was everywhere and somewhere. Unlost.

Everywhere gets you to somewhere.