So In reality there is no “going back to normal” anymore. At least not for me. Why do we want to? Isn’t our normal what sort of lead us to our not? Don’t we believe that we sort of brought this about? I don’t know if I blame humans for coronavirus but it’s a natural phenomenon created by something out of our hands and we think our hands are going to stop and control it? I also don’t think there are too many people on the planet and we needed less but where are all the people going to go soon? I don’t want to believe that my dad and Geoff and all of the people died to control population? It’s ridiculous and dehumanizes the stories. They were people and so were all of the others. But….

So I woke less angry and maybe it’s because I sat, or actually laid angry yesterday. I was on the cusp of a cold on Friday. I could feel it sneaking on the corner of my throat. People will think I have coronavirus if I have a cold. People think you have coronavirus even when you don’t. People will be afraid of me and try to make me afraid of myself. I’m in charge of my own fear people. Let’s get that straight now. Only I get to make me afraid of everything not anyone else. So I have a cold and I can’t scuba dive which I had tortured my mind all week into believing I should keep doing it. Then I read in class the dangers involved in diving with a cold or from taking cold medicine so I didn’t sleep an entire night worried I would get loose nitrogen bubbles and die. The next night I dreamt the bubbles were jawbreakers and they exploded in my body. I imploded with jawbreakers. So I canceled my scuba for the weekend. I am not giving up I’m just not doing it right now. My body is saying stop it. You are doing to much doing. My partner also cancelled. So it’s a win. She isn’t really my partner but they assigned us by process of elimination. She is preparing for a trip to the Red Sea really quick. Like in August she needs to be a good under water breather not afraid of herself. She isn’t going to be ready and if she goes I’ll worry about her. I don’t want to dive with anyone else after I learn with these people.

So I remember when I first signed up I got kind of upset I didn’t have a partner with me going to some tropical island to explore together. I called to cancel and he said if I had signed up with a partner they would split us up so we didn’t worry about each other. It’s like this was meant for me. I love a good crazy trust yourself exercise.

So why so angry? This routine excuse is getting old. Fuck routine. I don’t want to stew and marinate over not having my dad in my routine anymore. It’s not like he was living here he had his own life. He was just always kind of there. So I have to trick my mind into a nonsense he is everywhere now thought. It is going to be tricky to trick a mind that needs solid proof of life. This time I need solid proof of life after death. I have solid proof of death. He died and isn’t alive.

So this isn’t why I’m angry. I’m not over my dad dying I am just kind of tired of being not over my dad dying. I behaved in unusual ways to cope and now I’m exhausted from behaving in unusual ways. Maybe even kind of mad at myself. I felt uncertain of myself and afraid to do anything on my own. I spent time with company that I knew was wrong. I literally said it out loud. This isn’t a good idea and did it anyway.

So this is not really why I’m angry. I told someone I wanted to spend time with them. Then panicked when that someone said he did to and even answered. Then didn’t know what to say. Did I make him afraid? Or just me? Was I expecting a rejection? Foe sure I was. I haven’t seen him in over a year. I miss him and feel like a little piece of me is missing. He is a whole other story….I’m beating myself up over this for sure. I wish I was someone else. I spent the weekend wishing I was someone else. I started a social media page to even try to be someone else. I’m sharing with others and hate sharing like a kid with new toys at Christmas. I lose so much when I take the time for others to have solid proof of life. If it wasn’t shared it didn’t really happen? Or your not real? Or you don’t matter? I’m trying to be who I’m not? It won’t end well for me. I don’t moderate for myself well. I’ll get lost and spiny absorbed in others life’s and lose myself again. I wish I was someone else. That’s all it is. I want to be someone I’m not because who I am is confusing and complicated. I was once told I took too long to get to know. Like he was in a hurry. That he needed to hurry up and know me. Why? It haunts me and this was years ago and from someone who I knew about 4 minutes. We connected online and then had one conversation that was really one sided then he said I was to hard to get to know. What kind of man is this? He likes real easy women to know? Yes, he wanted to hook up and not really know me. I shut down this site. I learned more about me than I did anyone else while trying to learn more about anyone else but me.

So they don’t make a 3-1 soap for women? I just want a basic soap to wash that does it all. They do for men. What are the special ingredients for a soap like this for men but can’t be for women. I bought it and it even smells like men. I can’t even use it or I will smell like men. Musky woods and spicy. After I swim I just need to wash chlorine off not really wash dirt and grime. I bought a soap that the Walgreens lady said is all purpose. The label is like a book. It can wash pets and people and cars yet is friendly to the environment. What is it made of, rain? How can a soap be that all purpose and also earth friendly? I fell for it. It says it will basically save the planet with my use. That’s a tall order for soap when I am planning to use it to wash harsh pool chemicals off of me down a storm sewer.

So I don’t really know what is eating at me right now. It’s marinating into a gross stewy mess in my house. I didn’t clean. My bed isn’t made. I still have bacon grease on my counter and I spilled coffee and used a sock on my foot to clean it. My cat threw up. It’s dry and crusted right by his litter box. I have pillows flung about from the sofa. My table holds two days of things I didn’t put away. I broke a glass sitting to close to the edge of a 8 foot long table? I have cat litter and little match box cars under things and weird grease fur on my ceiling fan. It’s not really a gross mess it’s just more mess than me. I’m not messy in this way I’m clean and neat and everything has a place but I have a cold and am grumpy from real stretchy growth. I watched too much Netflix and want to recycle my tv? Into what? More TVs? I watched the same show for hours. Binge watched new girl. Of course I binge watched. I don’t moderate well. Then it made me feel sick. The word binge make me think of vomit making me think of my dried up cat vomit, making me want to vomit. I don’t have a routine and need to move on without one. But how do you move into a new routine without one? How do you adjust to your new growth?

So I don’t have coronavirus. I have a cold. I have a kid with boundary issues and she got a cold likely from someone else’s kid with boundary issues. They are kids they don’t know there bounds yet. I haven’t been around anyone who knowingly has it. I also am not around anyone as a habit since I was born. I didn’t need a six feet rule. In fact when it was made I wanted and needed hugs and touched from the world. My dad died and wanted comforted. I wanted a massage and a tattoo ans maybe elective surgery. I wanted all the things they said we couldn’t. Making a rule for me makes me want to break it? It’s just my nature. I make my own rules. I will stand 5’ 11” from you while we hold our breath. But I also won’t. I have to protect my daughter with special needs and apparently I’m also responsible for the lives of the entire world. But I’m not. You take care of you I take care of me. I have had to convince myself I didn’t have coronavirus a dozen times or more. Every sniffle and right muscle pain plus everyday I woke with no symptoms at all. Once I had Lyme disease and not coronavirus, I spent all my weekends in the woods in Missouri and knew that’s what it was when I showered and washed with a tick for at least two days while he drank my blood. I had a river digestive disease once. I drank river water not boiled long enough. Not shocked. I have had three colds. One sinus infection and no other reasons that weren’t just in my head. I naturally stay away from others and when they try to get 5’ 11” close to me it becomes a dance. I walk back. I step back they step forward. We dance to talk. I don’t like anyone this close to me to begin with.

So this is why I’m angry. I want someone close to me again. I had someone and now I don’t and I want to be someone else so someone will want to be. I am not talking about my dad. This is a thicker stewier mess than the loss of my dad. I spent the weekend grieving my marriage. My self talk is sloppy and stewy right now. It’s not too hard on me because maybe I’m not trying to be someone else, maybe I’m actually trying to be who I really am and am afraid of who this is since I’ve never really met her. Just barely I got a glimpse of this girl then my world spun out of control with everyone else. Now I need it to stop so I can see a little clearer. Not get off but still spinning so I can see straight. I have been spinning out of control and now need it back. Simple control of me. Not a routine just to find that glimpse again of her. She s there and I wish I was her again not I wish I was someone else. So I’m stewy today. Not angry. I need a new word for what I am so it’s stewy. I am marinating a mess of growth and it’s making me stewy. So that’s it.

Dear anxiety,

This is an open letter to you and who ever you are. No name, really. I’ve named you in the past just to have a name to yell at. But maybe you need calmly talked to. Maybe you need a nice calming name like, I can’t think of a calm name. Maybe Clair? Sometimes you are a phrase, what the fuck? Sometimes you are just me. So maybe it’s Heather. As light as a feather with a silent P. You are just me but I am not you.

When I told my mom about wanting to give up on scuba diving her first question was, did you have to buy the gear? Then she said it might not be for me , You get anxiety. I get it? Like it comes and goes? Like I’m calm and then I am anxious? not anxious then anxious? What did she mean, anxiety? Do you come and go? I feel like you are here to stay. I don’t get un-anxious. I don’t get calm and quiet. I can’t even hold still. You fuel even my body to move.

Last night I tricked you. I woke panicked about who knows what and I stayed put. I just didn’t want to get up. I was exhausted. I stayed horizontal in my bed and forced you to stop messing with me. My heart was beating wildly. I love a good wild beating heart, don’t get me wrong it’s a good clear sign of life and love but let me earn it. Let that heart race from a good race or a good love story. Or a good campfire story. Or just my own story. I don’t need wrestled in the evening hours of rest to feel alive. I need to just be me again.

So I closed my eyes and pretended I was under water. Breathing under water. Not like a fish. Like a person. In and out and in and out I didn’t use my nose. I didn’t hold my nose. I pretended I had a cold. Then I looked to see if any houses are for sale. I’ve always wanted a house. A quick Google search to stop whatever tickled me awake won’t hurt. Quickly I find that there are none. Lots but all gobbled up from so many others who can’t sleep and google houses. So I went to Pinterest. Why am I looking for a rabbit hole to fall in when I need to be breathing? but even rabbits need to breath in those holes. So I let myself find some calming, yes calming phrases about life. And love. And loss. A few good words. I was still not up and trying to make my hands busy. I was beating you. As you beat wildly through my body. At your own game? My own game?

I formulated a plan that says I am not giving up if I have to wait for my lack of tooth to finish this journey under water. I can’t find a good reason to push myself other than that’s all I know. Resting means giving up. Not doing anything is giving up. You want me to stop? Then I might as well turn around and go home or die.

I don’t want to name you as it will make me believe you are one and I am another. When we are the same. I am anxious not I get anxiety. that’s like saying I get a rash. Like it might come and go based on irritants around me. But even when not irritated you are there. I am not two people.

I feel like I, yes I have circled back. I lost once and found I felt lost. Then I lost someone so significant I felt lost again. Except this time I knew where to look and how to. I knew who and what and how and what to say and not. I knew who to let in and then when I saw it wrong I stopped. I attracted all the same kinds of people as last time I grieved this hard only this time I saw it coming. And stopped it. Then did what I know now to do when I am this lost. In grief.

I am still in grief not I get anxiety. I get grief. I am anxious and grieving. But anxiety is not me. I am me. So I’m going to make me breath under water so I can do it above better. I’m sorry it’s the best approach to this stage of grief. Which is growing through it. It’s the deepest fear I have. The one that says it’s the last one. But from now on that last one has to be real good in hopes it isn’t. I need some hope from anxiety. So I can grieve to hope again. For me.

Let’s focus, call it grounding or maybe not drowning but let’s think back. Tip toe into that deep end, or maybe sink and wonder there under water breathing, to when it was the quietest you have ever heard. Can that even be a thing? It’s so quiet I heard it? Guess what I heard? I heard, me. I signaled to go up and waited to be told what to do and then I slowly swam back up. I heard breath in and breath out. I panicked at the thought of being just 12 feet below ground breathing air that I supplied to me. Yes, I hooked it up and made this possible. I heard nothing but me for a minute. And it freaked me out then I bit real hard on those teeth I take it all out on and wanted to scream it was so new. So unusual to hear and see so clearly. He signaled to clear my ears then to signal ok. Then I crept slowly to the deep end. It isn’t as dark as it looks from above? Is it? It was darker looking up but kind of like a crystal sky. It rippled and crackled above me. He kept weighing me down. I wanted to fill those lungs and float right to the top and he wanted to sink me like a ton of bricks. Why? Because he was me once? Eager and anxious for that calming feeling that comes with total trust. He was once so uncertain of himself he dove this deep too. He was once you. Now he is him. And I was once you and now look where I am and you are?

Love,

Me

Trying something. I’m going to write out my irrational thoughts quickly before I take on an adventure today to try and breath calmly under water while I can’t even do it even above. I was up at 1:00 a.m. with my heart racing a thousand miles a minute. Just beating blood as fast as it can through my body. Why? Why does an anxious mind make the heart race? Why do racing thoughts make blood move quicker? My gums hurt. They are too full of blood from my racing thoughts. My teeth have little room to move and feel like they are floating in their own skin. One is missing and the others have been trying to adjust to life with out their last number 31. Moving and shifting and biting in places they’ve never been bitten before. The one tooth. Number 30? I don’t know how they number teeth. But it seems like it should be 30 but it could be number 29 and the 30 is on top. In a zigzag pattern. Seems wrong. Straight across and left to right like reading a book. Top first then the bottom. I’m guessing. Next to it was messed around with and chipped in the process of losing his partner who did most the work for him now is working extra hard to chew food carefully to protect sensitive blood pooling gums. But now I have an even number of teeth. So that’s good? Or it’s bad since I’ve lost so many to get to this number from them all banging into each other for half my life. They crack themselves from each other. They feel like they are really floating today. On a day i need them to feel in place and secure without their number 31. Not like a crevice is about to open and out will pour all my blood that pooled from my heart moving my blood so fast that the pool will fill with pooling blood and I won’t be able to see the red because colors look weird under water. It would be pink anyway. Just a little blood. Not a lot. It’s just a tooth adjusting to new life not really a crevice opening. I feel like my last updated version of my phone isn’t as smart. I feel like they have programmed them now to make us really think of words. It doesn’t pick up on the words we try to type fast like it used to. I could almost get a word typed from a racing thought and it would guess what word my mind was trying to quickly get out. Now either it can’t keep up with me today or phones are getting dumber so we can get smarter again.

What am I really afraid of? What was trying to torment me with thoughts yet came out as racing hearts and blood. I can’t seem to get to the core of it. I usually can nail it down pretty quick to what it is. It is irrational for sure. No doubt whatever has tickled my brain has little reason to be doing it. Isn’t that what tickling really is? There is no good reason to tickle someone. You might say to make them laugh? But it’s not always funny and doesn’t always tickle. Especially when you are tickly enough for them all. We real tickly people don’t actually need to be tickled. Or made to laugh. We do it to ourselves. Tickle someone who isn’t ticklish or says they aren’t anyway. It’s surprising to them. Is ticklish ones are aware and will fight the tickles. It won’t make us laugh it will haunt us on our dreams when our brain rests.

I think I’m worried about what will come out of my mouth when talked to. Maybe even if asked why I’m there. What would I say? How do you say what you don’t know? How do you say I don’t know? How do you not say it too? How do you say it’s actually very simple. It’s that deep rooted trust Im seeking. How can I find it if I don’t look everywhere and turn every stone. Not that I’m going to pick up stones under water and look but I’m going to look real deep under water and see if it’s a place I may be able to find it. Without my dad and even before I didn’t know where to look and even how. Or if to. I didn’t even know I was missing something. Missing? Is that the right word for a lack of trust in yourself? I don’t know that I’m missing it. I’m not hearing it? Seeing it and then feeling it? And I can’t touch it. It’s not something to touch. It’s that thing I have to believe in that isn’t a thing. It’s not an object I dropped and lost and will just pick up and put back in place like a barrette that has fallen.

This is such a personal private journey that I don’t want to even say why. I can’t breath often above water. I forget to. Maybe it will be easier to breath in a way and place we are told to not? Maybe it will be calming to be forced to control my breathing so I don’t panic and explode a lung. Or to be told to listen close so you can remember to adjust pressure so your teeth don’t hurt. Or listen when he says to add weights so you maintain stabilized space in water. Maybe it’s to listen when he says to stop or go. Or not to. Or dont. To listen when you tell yourself to stop or go or not to or don’t. It’s to listen.

The irrational fears of dying, teeth exploding, my lung exploding, my airways getting water in them, my eyeballs exploding. I’m not even sure why everything is exploding in my mind with this. I’m not going to die. Or i am. But I don’t know what good it will do me to think I am if I could anyway just getting to the pool to learn to scuba dive. That’s my story? She died on her way to the place she was so afraid of dying to go to. Disclaimer: by dying to go to we mean she was dying to go there not really afraid of dying when there. Just so afraid of even going to a place I’ve been dying to learn to do. She almost made it. Until she died getting there. It’s not going to happen or it could. But thinking it won’t stop it or create it. I have no control of when I die. Not if when. Dad is dead and that’s the reality. I will die and this is also true. Will it be today doing something I’m so afraid to do? Maybe. Does it make me more afraid knowing it could? No answer.

I am afraid of what will come out of my mouth. What will I say? How will I listen? Who am I listening to now? I can’t quite hear that tiny little quiet voice like I once did but barely did before it got lost in grief. It was so close to being heard. I was so close to being able to hear myself for once. Not all the noise but myself. I was so frustrated getting to this place. I tried too hard for so long to manipulate a process that isn’t in my hands. I tried everything I could to make things work. Then they all fell apart. Then I put them all back together on my own and found a place that I felt I could sit and listen to this little tiny voice that was talked over for so long only to have it drowned out once again. By the one thing that I’m supposed to be listening to. The universe. It was messed with and it messed back. And now my teeth are floating all around in my bloody mess.

I pushed my body and mind in a way I’ve never done before. I am trying to learn to breath under water. Scuba dive. I’m not even real sure why. I told him I was trying to learn to trust myself more. And I wanted to see shipwrecks in cold water. And rescue people in water lost. Which isn’t a rescue. It’s a find a body. Why would I want to find bodies? A recovery? But maybe rescue other divers? I want to calm my mind. I want to see tropical fish. Maybe the mussels growing on the ships in cold water. Not sure. I want to see shipwreck under water. But in cold water. Oh, I said that. Mostly I am curious. I just want to try it. I’m not sure why. I’m looking for something. My dad died. I want to trust myself again. In cold water. Did I say cold water? Oh I said that too. What haven’t I said? Nervous laughter.

It was very peaceful once they quit making us try things that scared me to death. The things I will need to know so I don’t actually die being scared. they are necessary training exercises. They are hard. They require zero error. They require me to listen but then to watch. They can’t talk under water so they talk with their hands so I have to watch. But first listen. Then not die. My head is pounding from breathing in a way I don’t. My nose is sore from having water in it, my eyes burn but didn’t explode in my mask making me picture I would need a new mask because mine has an eyeball in it. Nothing I worried about happened except everything I thought would happen happened. My tooth hurt when we got to the deep end. They felt like they were floating. Probably still in my pooling racing thoughts from my wild heart beats. We scooted slowly to the end and held our noses and blew pressure from our ears real slow but I bit down real hard on my regulator and hit the tooth next to the 31 that is gone and it hurt so bad I wanted to scream but I couldn’t and was under water. I saw for a second my teeth float away as my lungs filled with water. But none of that happened. The pool didn’t open up into a big crevice shifting of walls to expose teeth floating in the pool. It was a dream. I didn’t really see the reef walls move and turn into teeth. That’s the thing of nightmares when your subconscious gets to play when you finally sleep after months of tooth pain, scuba, and tooth relief. The brain is funny, like tickle my funny bone funny. When it gets to rest it doesn’t. It does what it wants and I get to wake in confusion. I almost would rather not sleep then to let my brain do what it wants. I woke in a panic stricken sweat of tangled sheets. One might say I should medicate to sleep but one would be wrong to suggest I let something control my mind that isn’t me but is me but is actually not because I got a break for a night. Anyway, my teeth weren’t floating or exploding. So I signaled to go up and we swam nice and slow back to the shallow end and then I came up. So at least I didn’t panic. But I almost did. Once I finish this I will never want to dive with anyone but these two men. Who will I trust to tell me to breath in nice and slow and out. I’ll have to do it myself. That’s why I’m here. There? Under water breathing so I can breath easier not under water. I can’t breath in my nose under water. That’s how a mask works. It doesn’t. It protects this precious airway from water and makes you use your mouth. But I use my nose to calm me when my mouth won’t do it. I will need to sit and meditate and practice not breathing with my nose. It’s all in my head. It all was. Except the tooth thing. That happened and I said it would and wasn’t shocked when it did but shocked it happened when it did because it hadn’t happened yet so I quit thinking it would then it surprised me like a little test at 12 feet if I would rise in panic or rise in calm. I didn’t rise in panic. Even though I thought for a minute let’s just pop up and get me this thing from my mouth. I am not easy to sink. Because I don’t keep air in and out like others. I breath in and never let the air all the way out and then breath back in hard. The bubbles bothered me. So I just didn’t make them a what does this mean for above water breathing I’m not properly exchanging my gases? I don’t let all my air out? But then I kept surfacing. They kept weighing me down with weights and my legs go all wild and I kick like a little kicker and can’t stay still. I felt like I was being forced to stay under water when my lungs say lets not exchange air right and make you float. But they want me to sink so I can exchange air below air. But I haven’t tricked my tickles yet. He held me down once, with just a finger. Once Had to hold my legs still for one of the tests. My legs like to move not stay floating. My body and mind don’t work well in situations they don’t know. I will be processing this chaos of an idea for a few days. I can not even make a paragraph. It’s all a streaming thought as one big thought because right now I don’t know what the fuck I am doing this for!! At least I said once I finish and not if. I didn’t even catch it to correct it. I remember typing it. I’m leaving it the first thought of a thousand that will follow. The thoughts will slowly get swallowed up in the crevice that has clearly opened into a fear so deep I can’t seem to float out of it. It won’t happen. I won’t let it. I’ll perfect it and get it. I’ll redo and test myself to be certain. I’ll surround myself with people who can move their arms in and out in a breath in and our motion and make me look at their eyes and see while also surrounding myself with those who are more afraid than me so I can do it back. Breath in and out. Wave my arms to calm someone else. Which will help me get out of my own cracked open floating tooth crevice of a bloody mess I made of pooling self doubt.

I wasn’t sure if I could write not just in the middle of the day but mid morning when I should be working but have a luxury of time off in the winter. A lighter schedule to account for the 60 plus hours a week I will work in spring. I often struggle to know what and where to be and how to be when I am not moving. At rest I am bored. I am anxious and restless and need to feel necessary. I swim and walk when I can’t hike and hike.

Today I packed up ready for a swim then planned to walk. My swim was just a regular swim. I was able to count my strokes and breaths and really swim. Really, an angry swim. Everyone around me in the pool was moving with grace and ease. The water lay calm except in lane 5. I was thrashing like a fish out of water. Or a whale emerging. Not sure but I could see the bubbles of my splash on the floor. I didn’t want to think about a single thing. Not my dad dying, my brother in law dying, anyone dying, viruses, global warming and politics. I have had enough. I was angry at this God Of the Universe for it all. For testing me. For making me have to trust me. For making me wait. For making me do anything I didn’t want to do. I have been angry for weeks. I came back from a nice restful time at the ocean after coming to terms that I couldn’t do or go any further. The ocean was a barrier now. It stopped me dead in my tracks and forced me to look back at my loss. Then my gains. Then the gain from the loss. How dare it tell me to grow when I have lost. Why can’t I not grow? Why can’t I do the opposite of grow? Die? Sit? Because it’s not time? I don’t get to chose. Or I do. I chose to sit for now.

I chose to live so I have to grow to. I don’t have thoughts of dying that are anymore different than really thoughts of living. How do I live now? How do I turn around from the edge of the planet and put my feet on the ground and make them walk back? How do I? There is no trail back. It’s just turn around and go back. From any direction you want. You chose.

I have had to really soak in the thoughts of seeing the ocean. Marinate the idea of getting to a place that dared me to sit down and try to shut up. I went to clean out my pack of all the shells collected. It is very full of shells! I collect rocks with holes on my anxious hikes and can’t wait to empty them into the bowl that holds my prized anxious holy rocks. These calm cool and collected shells sat untouched for a month. I don’t need that pack right now so why not let them cook a little in the bag until I can find a place to keep my not anxious prized shells. They don’t fit in yet. This idea of less anxious trips don’t have a bowl to belong in. They almost all have holes in them and most are rough and tumbled from being tossed about in the waves. I couldn’t find very many complete calm shells. It became my mission to find whole ones. The opposite of finding not hole rocks. I needed intact shells to show my wholeness. Lack of a hole. The bigness of getting to a less anxious place. Yet they all had holes. My wholy mess of holy shells is still marinating in my bag. Waiting until this not anxious feeling resolves.

It will. I’m formulating plans to take this barrier out of the equation. This big ocean can’t stop me. It did for now. But I sat and watched it and all it’s big unknowns tumble up over my feet and my daughter as she darted around like a dolphin talking to the ocean about not being afraid of it. I can just go below. Or on top and across. Nice try ocean. You’ve stopped me for a minute but you don’t know me yet. I stop and I go and nothing in between.

I’ve had to stop and think. I’ve been angry for so long. Quiet and dismissing my kids attention they seek from me. Quietly tucking them into bed early after TV dinners and popcorn. They are fed, clean and safe. I need space. From my own people. When what I really need is my own people. I’m angry my dad is the one I need to get me through my dad dying. He couldn’t have prepared someone? Hey, I could die and I have a little girl who will worry if you don’t make her stop. She can’t listen to herself until you tell her to. Tell her to listen. Tell her trust herself. Tell her to quiet the thoughts enough to listen to me again. She will. With your help.

Who would he have told? Placed an ad in some paper or online? Wanted: a male to help make my daughter feel less anxious. Meet me at the coffee house to discuss the few details I will give. This message will self destruct in 9 minutes. Like a speed dating app for dads who have anxious kids. Which is ridiculous. Also borderline creepy. No all the lines creepy.

I was going to walk, and packed up to walk and started to walk. In the rain. I normally love the rain. Today it is cold pellets plus rain. I don’t normally love anything about this. I had a mission in my head to get to a specific group of evergreens to chat about seasonal needle drop. I would have been soaked and miserable. For what? To educate people who won’t even go outside to look for themselves. They scroll all day looking for answers to a natural phenomenon of trees. How can we fix it? What can I do? Should we remove them? No, no and no. Let nature takes its natural course. What on earth are we learning from this pandemic? Anything? Patience? How to self sooth? How to apparently feel alone together by sharing we are alone. So the others alone feel less alone but they really are alone. What if we all said on our own together. If we changed one word and relied on ourselves. Can’t we just imagine we are not doing this all on our own but really we are. Do we all need cheerleaders?

I want a sense of normal too. But really what I want is a sense of routine. And my dad back to life. If I’m being honest. My new routine includes no routine and without my father. I’m angry about this plan. This angry non routine plan thé universe has not clearly laid out for me. I can’t see a single trail in my head. I see a big ocean. A border. A boundary. A stop sign. I can’t move forward because o am too afraid to turn around. I can’t stop looking forward at the big everything that I can’t do. So I sit. And pout and be angry in my pool lane 5.

My calm cool collected shells are still marinating in their calmness they brought that I don’t recognize. I’ve taken at least two baths a day when I don’t need to. My body is all done energizer bunny-ing through this mess of grief trail. I made it out and now I know I will have to make it back. I need to re-charge that bunny I suppose. I never knew I was someone who was re-chargeable. I thought I didn’t run out of juice. But I do and I did. And I sat with it for awhile and don’t want to get up. Because back is the way I came from and guess what that was. A squiggle mess of a woods to here. Here feels ok. To be here in my head feels ok. Not real welcoming since I am storming around angry in pools and nourishing my kids with boxed meals and early bedtimes.

I am in misery with tooth pain. I have committed my year to tooth care. Dental hygiene across the board. My youngest went first. She was destroying her teeth from her fear of life and drinking chocolate milk from a zippy cup for years. We had a little ceremony where we wrapped the cup up in tissue and boxed her up. Then wrapped her up and wrote her a note and thanked her for helping us through a hard time but we have to let go. Now the box lays at rest under my bed where she sometimes sleeps. She has 6 cavities. One tooth had to be pulled. We won’t be making these kinds of fear based choices anymore. She is a very brave little turtle. She even told the ocean.

My oldest daughter needs hers done under anesthesia and also requires a cardiac anesthesiologist to administer. She is a difficult turtle. Her special needs make her not want to even brush. She can’t grasp it. Not yet.

In the mean time my tooth cracked before we left for the ocean. It was supposed to be fixed last year but the virus made us all afraid and my dentist closed in fear too. Funny because I am actually afraid of a man afraid. We all are afraid. I wanted to be brave and take care of my teeth right when the rest of the world wanted me to be so scared of myself. I do this to myself, no one makes me afraid of me but me. But I also make me afraid of dental offices. My teeth are filled to the brim with silver fillings from my child hood fear of dental work. Also money not being available to address. These fillings are deep and close to nerves. They also are over 30 years old and done filling my teeth so now they crack them. When I talk they crack. My jaw is aligned wrong and my teeth grind just by being my teeth. I was born to crack my own teeth or not talk, ever. These cracks and crevices creat places I can’t clean. So the cracks and crevices creat cavities.

So I am now a grown up brave turtle ready to address cracked teeth and silver fillings. Except my dentist is making me be patient and monitor the tooth. When I want to rip it out. I dream of ripping my own teeth out. This is likely a nightmare. In the form of chaos where I fight wars in my sleep of internal turmoil in my life. I am battling the Vietnam war, super Mario brothers, I am always battling something when my brain try’s to rest at night. When my Brian rests it is just actually active. I recall less of my dreams when I actually sleep. So I recall almost all of my dreams. They are all war and teeth extractions. Real life mixed with my turmoil of navigating life without my father. Turning around.

The dentist knows I’m afraid of him as a profession he saw me karate kick him when he attempted to approach me with sharp numbing needles. Then jump from my chair, hold my breath, close my mouth, then finally cry. I cried though the entire thing. He talked softly to the tech about instruments he needed and pretended i wasn’t there. Then patted my head and said we wait little brave one. Brave? He called me brave. Little brave one. He saw I was afraid. Saw my tears and did his job so I may never have to see him see me afraid again.

He needs a new clock. It looked like it kept falling off the wall and cracked. Like my tooth. It hung all wrong like it was trying to find its true north. Like me. The picture frames all had at least one missing piece to the plastic frame of water soaked and dried flower prints. He had metal folding chairs. He was a cheap dentist? How can dental work be competitive in cost? Aren’t they all the same tools and procedures? He just doesn’t get into decor like the others, looking in thrift stores and garage sales, maybe his basement to furnish his rented space that was once some other place. I picked him out of random. I was leaving the grocery store in pain one day from my other fear of teeth times and saw his office while leaving. I didn’t research people. He is nice and a small man maybe from Greece. If he said more we would no doubt struggle with a language barrier but he says just basic things like little brave one and names his instruments. I don’t know my places people are from just where they are at. Everyone is from somewhere, does it matter? Does it in a hole matter who he is when he is fixing my life with me. I like him for his simplistic approach to his profession.

Little does he know or probably does that I am there for two reasons. My visits are two fold. I am conquering fears and addressing old one. Which are the same. Everything I am afraid of just weighs less when I know I can do it afraid. The baggage that comes with fear is heavy. It’s the heaviest of all the emotions to me. Sad is heavy and weight-y but it’s is more draggy. More blah blah. Kind of sad. You can’t use the word sad to describe sad. But it is a stop sign to me. Sad for me is stop. Stop and be sad. Because we both know. Both? Sad for me is angry. I am angry sad now that I am less anxious. The anxiousness of grief has settled down deep heavy as sad and sit. I can’t go until it isn’t so weight-y.

But I will go. I will be able to turn around and walk back the path of the grief unknown I came from. Once I’m done looking and formulating how to get below the barrier of the edge of the universe that stopped me in my tracks. Trying to say be afraid I dare you. Triple dog dare you. I pick truth and trust for now ocean. In my daughters words. I’m not afraid of you or me. I’m just afraid to turn around.

My therapist told me to imagine what my life would be like if I found someone who worked just half as hard as I do? Not even as hard. Half as hard.All good stories start with “my therapist told me…”

I should be writing out other things. Bigger ones than having someone with me again. I can’t quite wrap my brain around them though. They are too big. Too wrinkly. My dad died and I pretended to talk to him as if he were walking right next to me along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. I even pretended a set of footprints that were next to me were his. This pretend did nothing to sooth the ache that exists within the reality. It wasn’t his feet, he wasn’t there and I was talking to no one. But a small part of me wants to believe he heard. That those were his feet. Even though I had to at first turn and walk the other way to be going the same way as the feet then they wondered off to where they really belonged when I secretly wanted them to belong to the ocean and my dad walked right back off the edge of our universe into the unknown. And I couldn’t follow simply because I am still here and he is In another one that the only way to it is to walk off the edge of the planet into the water and there is a void in the beyond that you can’t see but just have to feel. Called heavens. And it’s managed by Gods. And there are clouds like pillows and feathers floating through the air that when you try to touch them they pop like bubbles but look like stars. Because they are. There is music playing softly on a piano as if you just walked into a piano bar. The air isn’t air but full of souls so thick it looks like smoky swirly air. Everyone talks in thoughts. There are trees. Because heavens can’t exist without trees. They take on different forms. Their roots in the air and their leaves below? Below what? The ground. Is there ground in heaven? What is it made of? Are there layers? Is it just space and the trees are floating around and are fed and nurtured by the smoky souls around them. Like they should be on this planet. They intertwine like a life form of their own.

Take me there. Not here. Let me move those feet to the wrinkle I see where the skyline just stops right where the sun looks like I can touch it. Where my thumb is as big as the ocean. Yet it’s thousands of miles and on the other side is just more land not heaven.

These feet were not his. The words I spoke softly to him out loud sounded like I was yelling. They echoed off the beach back to me. They went no where and really sounded so strange. Just simply “hey dad.” Sounded like what my first words ever to him likely sounded only he didn’t hear these just me. Me saying my first words to my dad not here. But there. I heard nothing back but the waves and wind. My daughter chatting softly to her blanket and my other daughter shouting to the universe about spaghetti. I felt nothing but cold sand beneath my feet.

This was painful for me. I felt I had reached a pivotal moment in grief where I was just going to let the waves come crashing into me, pull me under tumble me around then spit me back out. I’ll stand soaking wet and nearly dead from holding my breath and breath again. They will hurt. It always hurts to breath again when it hurts to not breath. Those first breaths after holding your breath hurt.

I’ve been holding my breath for months. My dad stopped and sometimes now I forget to. Since the ocean of waves of grief keep spitting me back out to the ground again I have to keep finding that ground again. I am exhausted from fighting it and decided I’m going to let it be what it is.

Grief-y. Wrinkly.

It is painful, fearful, messy, beautiful, vulnerable and itchy like tickly. It makes an anxious mind tickle our feet more than they usually do. We have to find answers and relieve the stagnate tickles that run up and down the body from mind to toes. I’ve been mildly electrocuted and it is a similar buzzing that we feel. Sometimes I try to tap it out the side of my head and hope it pops right out of my ear. I’ll pick it up and throw it away. This strange urge to resolve. To know and understand things that can’t be known and understood. Just felt. I feel so much that I feel I have no room left to feel the things we feel only.

I woke from a dream I slept an entire year. Not woke up and it was the next year. But woke hundreds of times to a day then went back to sleep and woke and it was 2022. It sounds like a dream but It became a nightmare. I was taking strange baths daily and wondering a childhood neighbors yard that I once believed held a ghost in their attic. The ghost haunted me daily. I remember waking in my sleep and waking in my wake to confusion about the day. I woke for real several times and went back to the next day in my sleep. I woke in a fit of sweat and turmoil of blankets. I nearly died one of the nights in my sleep from being tangled only to find it was just my daughters blanket she talks to and sleep with when she is gone with a giant hole wrapped around my neck in my wake.

I wake exhausted as if I worked out 365 days in my sleep. I woke overwhelmed with thoughts of global warming and the lackluster goals of recycling efforts of the entire world. I woke with concerns about my own carbon footprint. I woke with the thought that this virus came just in time. Wake up. I woke up thinking I need to wake up. I don’t put much thought into my daily consumptions, my daily output, my daily footprints. I’m not following others I’m just literally not making my own. One single set of lighter steps will matter. I won’t save the whole planet but I will save mine. One wrinkle at a time.

I can’t save the planet. It feels doomed and in dire need of a rebirth. Could we just explode and flutter off into the heavens and be chunks of planet. Who will know? What will the chunks run into? Will we be found smashing from our own orbit into others and land softly but leaving a big dent in their what? Ground? What will physically happen to the planet when we single handed destroy it? Our atmosphere is thinning and allowing more heat? We are going to burn? Our middle is super hot will we melt? Will it just be us to go and the planet will breath again in pain? Take in that big first deep breath after all the pain of holding it is gone. It will breath again when we all quit traipsing around it? What if we all stayed still? Is a day of rest enough? Can we undo what we did or are we now just too late? Like wrinkles. They really can’t be undone. Once your skin has wrinkles from age and wear and tear the skin can’t be unwrinkled. It’s now a wrinkle in time. These lotions that say so are saying buy me and believe me. They aren’t going to stop them. Then they say Buy more of me. Buy more of a different me. Buy more of anything to ease the pain of death. Wrinkles are patch work of death. And life.

I tried parting my hair on the wrong side. Meaning the right. I think my hair naturally parts in the middle. Except I always say on the left and put it on the left but when I am out in the woods for days and don’t even think about my hair I come home to it smack in the middle. It fixes itself without me manipulating it. I was just curious if my day would feel different if I made it go to the right. It wouldn’t stay. Not even a little bit. So I pulled it back in a bun still parted on the right. I felt out of balance and my sweater even felt wrong. I was unbalanced by thinking it wouldn’t matter at all. I undid it in about an hour. It fell to the left. My face looked more serious and my right side have its shape back. I changed my shape of my face by moving my hair?

I had to google. There is no good reason why some are one side and some are the other but if it’s on the left you are more logical, serious and often lead. My right side is my more creative side. It tries to dominate my entire brain. I spend a lot of time not just in my own head but on the right side of it. Maybe I part my hair to the left to fight my creative side and force logic and seriousness. I have a creative mind and am often free spirited but I can’t be all the time. I have to be flexible which is why probably my part belongs on the middle and often my part gets imparted and becomes a zigzagging wrinkle on top my head.

I never answered my therapists question directly to her. I answered with a question. If she is going to force me to think about something I will back. Imagine a life where I meet someone who works half as hard as I do?

How will this ever happen if we both don’t quit working half as hard as I do? He is out there. He is working half as hard as I am and busy. As am I. If I meet someone and they aren’t working half as hard as me then they should be so I can keep working as hard as I do. On my own isn’t my first choice it is my only one. I can’t imagine a life where someone wisks me away to tropical places, where someone buys me socks and knows I like coke with little ice from the fountain. I can’t imagine a life where I never have to text again because he is there and always will be and I am and always will be. I can’t imagine a life where someone works as hard as I do and takes time to say good morning. I can’t imagine even if I part my hair on the right and let all my creative energy go into it a life beyond the one I have made. It is unimaginable. Like the heavens.

Maybe I should keep my part in the middle for awhile and see if I can get some balance to this logical left and creative right. It naturally goes to the middle I am not naturally logical I am actually naturally illogical and full of creative thoughts that allow me to imagine a life beyond the edge of the universe that my dad was waiting for me to come walk with him and learn to talk to him, then he walked off to his heavens and swirled with floating trees made of souls. We are really just a big wrinkle at a time that no amount of lotion can unwrinkle even if we eat it right out of the jar which it doesn’t say not to do. We are folded and creased right in time until the next one.

Do I need to write? Let’s see? The tapping away of the screen is irritating me enough that I’m not sure I do. I am hyper-? What? Active. Vigilant. Sensitive. Aware. Which is it? I am hyper. Period. Unusually energetic. Even if sitting i am not. I am hyper. You can’t tell simply because I am at rest. My body says I’m at rest. I’m sitting, or laying or just not moving but my mind is telling me to go. That I can’t do not hyper. The longer I sit the more it goes. Like I’m being wound up. That my mind is going and going and turning and turning until my head feels like it might spin right off and it says go.

I always false started when racing. In track. I would stand there waiting to be allowed to go. Unsure of when the little fire would allow me to go. I would time it in my mind. I’ve waited long enough your wait is too long. I go. Everyone else can wait. Then we would be told to go back and wait. Wait? For who? And what? I was ready. I’ve been disqualified for being too eager to go. Out that right foot right behind the line. And wait? What about the left? He can’t wait. It’s that one big foot eager to go forward. He is the hyper one. The left foot it bigger than the right. If I had proper balance I would stay put? I can’t stand or the one toe is too cramped or the other has too much room. My feet have their own boundary issues in their little universe which is mine.

I often feel Im being pulled back and forth by my hair. Being held back and sometimes being pulled forward. I’m trying to read a book about a lady with too much broken chaos and although I relate her broken it isn’t the same as mine and so it’s a real fractured read. I love it but my take away is nothing specific other than there are other fractured hyper like minds trying to get unbroken when told we are broken when really we aren’t but are. But aren’t?

Ive been tired of being poked around by some like I’m not done yet. Checking me for readiness. Like we do meat. We cut it open a little and see how much blood is there. See how alive it is or isn’t then toss it back on to get more done. You are not ready, cook more. You are done enough for me. Too much blood still running through that meat to enjoy. Just the right amount for me. Not enough for me to keep alive though. What? I’m about to gross myself out. I have struggled with red meat for years. I’m not a vegetarian which I am always proudly announcing as if I’m proud I eat things that once had beating hearts with red blood and anxious minds and wind in their souls. But I enjoy meat. Just not always red. And often not birds. Sometimes not fish and rarely anything like a bug unless I didn’t know it.

Why does chicken not have red? I know its not considered red meat but don’t chickens bleed? Isn’t it red when it is oxygenated? There is just all those stringy veins? Where is all the chicken red blood? I tell others I love vegetables. I just prefer things that once grew from the earth and now are readily available for consumption. Unfortunately there are a lot of animals specifically grown and raised to eat so I assist. Not so much for enjoyment but I worry there will be too many animals in the world if we all decide not to eat them. Then what? Will they eat each other? What if we all decide to quit eating animals? What happens to all of them raised to be eaten? I juts eat red meat because it’s there? I should mentally protest this more often for more legitimate reasons.

I looked to try and find a dog. Not to eat. We don’t eat dogs. Well some do, but shouldn’t. This will not turn into a thought on people eating dogs. We don’t eat dogs. There are just too many. Are there that many people in the world that we could almost be certain everyone could have a pet? Is that the goal? If we all agreed to stop making more pets maybe there would be less pets with no homes? Same with people? I don’t want there to be too many animals left on the planet. Maybe that’s all that will remain someday. No humans left after the bat virus kept changing and we kept chasing and trying to control the universe only to find we never were in control. Bats are? Now dogs are? What about all the cows no one is eating? What will happen to all the minks? If they are raised for fur and no one is here to kill them for their fur or raise them for it? Or wear them at all.

My toenail came off my big toe. There isn’t the pain I thought that would occur from this just a simple tingle. A naked exposed vulnerable hyper toe. The top of my toe is naked and exposed and colder than the tops of my other toes. I never noticed it until my big toe who is too big for his left foot lost his jacket. My toenails are there to protect the top of my toe. My toe nail failed his owner. The owner of the big fat size bigger foot failed them all with her anxious mind she walked that toe to the point of having nothing to wear. Not even mink fur.

I can’t make shoes work for two feet that want different things in life. One wants bigger things than the other. One wants to take bigger steps. Leave a bigger print on life. Push boundaries. Only now it’s cold. But just the top of the big fat toe. I need a toe nail implant? Maybe it needs a special toe sock for lost nailed toes. I will be applying toe polish and not toenail polish just painting the top of my naked toe worried he is cold. Maybe a little play doe mold? It just feels weird with it gone. Will I get a new one? Why did this one fall out and where is his back up. My others keep growing? So my big toe is missing more than what was there but also what I can’t see?

Im throughly exhausted. I have slept and had dreams and nightmares like I’ve never slept and had dreams and nightmares. I lost two nephews to life in one. It felt so real I woke in tears for the loss of two people I haven’t seen in years. Do I miss them?

Last night I dreamt of weddings? I created an entire story. I wrote a story in my dream of a woman who found her new human man to be with her forever even with all her broken put back chaos and she couldn’t get married where she always dreamed of getting married because of the tides of the ocean. The moon and the pull of gravity keeps her from getting to the island of her dreams but being written in someone else’s dreams. She thinks quietly but loudly while her beautiful simple princess cut style dress she sees on Pinterest, the place of dreams of love that isn’t. It’s a very specific dress. One cut and made of dreams and promises and stitched with hope and trust again. Hand crafted by all the animals no one is eating left roaming the vast land of this universe. Like Cinderella. Because that’s the dream right? Wait, I’m writing it. It’s like nothing and everything.

Her dad is gone so who will give her away to this new man? Give her away? From who? She is not land to be traded for minks fur and red meat. From who? She was never owned. A free spirit roaming her own little vortex. She spends about 90 percent of her time in her own world.

Where did he go? She turns in the wind. He is still there. Why? Didn’t the tide wash him away. How did I get to the island and he is on the shore in the mountains. Is he waiting for me? He looks up. He speaks with no words but she hears them all. This is your island to see. Not mine. I am right here. She looks back confused. But you were right here? He says I still am. You reach out and the moon is in the way. Trying to hold you down. Hey moon move. I have to get back. I’m waiting for someone and no moon is going to get in my way. She lets the tide wash her back. Her dress is dripping with flowers from the ocean full of life and they walk towards the path.

What path? The one no one can see but choses. I chose you. I chose you. Even if the moon and tide and gravity tries to take you away. You are my universe. I am yours. These are our stars.

Maybe my dreams are preparing me for my awake life. Like practice. I am dreaming of things I miss but really never had. Someone who is my own universe. Someone who knows I have my own. Someone who knows I’m almost always not interested in his until occasionally our universes collide and the moons move and tide is right and we push and pull with our hair and then our universes explode into one bigger one for a moment.

Like when bubbles meet. They still are two but bigger. You can see the lines of the two bubbling around each other. Bending and moving with the wind and the light into each other but not through but also through. You can still see through the two even though it is now one.

Except that big hyper toe. He is so stubborn with his bigger foot print in your universe that he can’t stay in his own bubble. One foot is always testing the waters to that island. Hair being pulled away. One stays grounded while the other is being pulled by that tide for more. There are so many islands to see.

Not just the one universe with the one hyper naked toe…

I am told I need to write. I haven’t in so long. I don’t even know the last time I did, for me, anyway.

This is harder than I thought. Trying to get through holidays without my dad, my kids and even my ex. My ex? Why do I miss this? Because it was an image of what I expected. An image of so much. I am grieving the loss of something I never had? What I miss things I never had? How? Do I really miss them or just the idea and hope of what they would have been?

This is my first Christmas without my kids, my dad, but not the first without my ex. It’s not like he was always so there. I wrap the presents that I picked and bought with the money allowed to spend by him while drinking a glass of wine. My cheeks start to flush about half a glass in. I’m not a huge wine drinker but feel like I should relax to wrap, yet it requires such precision to accomplish. I can’t wrap. I am blessed with kids who have low standards for wrapping. I don’t do bows, or ribbons. This is the first year I bought labels. I rarely buy tape and have to use medical tape to wrap presents after weeks of telling my daughter we don’t use this tape for anything but for her wound care.

He wasn’t a sweater to me. I was a sweater to him? I was someone he thought he would try on to see if he could handle this kind of sweater over the one he had? Maybe I was doing the same? I’m not the sweater for him? I think I insulted him with my opinion of his current sweater. That I didn’t relate to that kind. Maybe he realized he needed the kind he had? Maybe he realized he didn’t need any kind, for awhile.

I haven’t needed a sweater for a long time and kind of want one. One to keep. Not one I take on and off. One to keep.

As I sit and wrap gifts alone for no one who will be here in the morning, I write out a label for my dad, who for sure won’t be here tomorrow. Or ever. It is a gift for my moms cat, who is really his cat but I wrote for dad, from me. Then cried until I could see tears puddling. I haven’t cried any puddles. I have cried and then stopped but I haven’t until I saw tears pooling on the paper below me.

I reached out to a few people. My most familiar sweaters.

One to tell me it will get easier, that he did once and I needed to hear it again. A strange fit.

One to tell me to send a picture of anything to remove the one I put of my dad with my daughter as a wallpaper, a familiar sweater.

One to say how hard this was, that I didn’t know how hard it would be. The oldest sweater.

He hasn’t answered. Not yet. He probably won’t. He has his own sweater issues.

He did right away but still seems to need me more than I can give. But still a comfy sweater.

And he told me to cry it out then write. Tim knows me better than I know myself. The one I wear the most since I knew I wanted one.

It’s the night before Christmas. I know everyone is somewhere so I’m not overly worried about someone being there for me. What I know is this.

It’s harder than I thought, I need to remove this wallpaper and I need to write. I actually don’t like sweaters. Just fleece.

It won’t make any sense. I haven’t written daily enough for it to make any sense. I haven’t written to my anxious mind in weeks. My sweater trying on has taken priority over the fact that I don’t even need one and never really liked sweaters. I mean I do, but I don’t need them on all the time. I had one for awhile and it was nice until it started to scratch and the tag irritated me. Or the sleeves weren’t long enough.

I don’t even know what I’m writing out anymore. Just thoughts on sweaters? Thoughts on a someone again? Thoughts on a no one ever again?

My dad being gone has made me feel like I have no one. That I need a sweater. I will sort through that. Someone told me I am his legacy? Could this be true? Could part of me be him? Not just genetics but actually who he was be me? Like I could live my life through him as of it was him? But me?

In another universe we are canoeing through the Boundary waters. In another universe we are climbing a 14 thousand foot mountain, in another universe we are rafting down the Colorado River. Can we? In another universe is there a Colorado river? A boundary waters ? And mountains? Or is something so much more? Words we don’t know? Languages and places we can’t fathom in another universe because we are in ours and you are in yours?

In another universe is there peace? What is peace? Is it not even a word? We have the word peace because we have had the word war. So there was war then peace. Hate then love. Love then hate. Peace then war.

We are at war. With ourselves. There is fear we shouldn’t feel. It was always there but we all have to be told to feel it now. If you don’t know to be afraid, are you? If you know to be afraid, are you? why are we so afraid? Of ourselves or others? If we don’t know the one single story of the one single persons tragedy than we can’t feel their pain? There are tragedies and pain even when we don’t know them. Is it selfish to not want to know? To want to stay in our own world. Our own little universe. The one with our own sweaters and waters we canoe.

I thought if I read a little news I would feel a little relief. I have no one to tell me the things I need to know anymore and don’t even know what I need to know. I do not feel informed, educated, or enlightened. I feel afraid I will lose my chin to a strange fungus, a rapidly changing virus might kill me and our government plays games like its fun. I feel…alone. Without a sweater.

I was thinking of something I needed to write but lost my thought when I saw a stink bug on my ceiling. I thought I was getting coronavirus. But it was a cold. Is this what everyone feels. We get a tickle in our throat and wonder, is this how it starts? I haven’t had a fever but I had a sore throat. I always get a sore throat this time of year. My kids are in day cares get everything. So do they. But this time it was just me. I haven’t been taking care of myself as well. Just them. So scared they will get it but not thinking of me. I haven’t been sleeping, eating right, taking zinc or any vitamins, I started swimming but is it too late? Did I already get it and myself and my kids will die? Or I will die and they will have to live with someone else? I do not like either scenario yet one will be true in some way. I don’t have coronavirus, I have what I always have. A cold. I increased my zinc to something and not nothing and started to drink water and force sleep. My cold lasted two days, if that. But for a day I feared I was to be feared. But I didn’t go about life with my cold so others would get it. I stayed and got over my cold so no one would get it and have to worry they had a deadly virus which might only be deadly because we get to hear about all the dead. What about all the alive?

What if he is my sweater? The one who knows that sometimes I don’t even need one but want one? He is a younger sweater that hasn’t done the work of a worn one yet? What if it is out of style? What if it is too scratchy sometimes? What if I hate the way it hits my wrist? What if it shrinks? What if it doesn’t? what if he doesn’t even want to be one?

I blame my therapist for this sweater thing. She uses her own life of trying on sweaters as a metaphor for trying on people. That we as people think that everyone we meet is meant to stay in our lives forever. That we don’t always get that some are just here to teach us something then to turn left. Maybe someday their left will meet with your right? You were on a path together then separated then met again. Like minds. Not on the same path but under the same sky? To meet again. To wear the sweater not just try it on.

How strange it is to write at night. I’m out of routine and can’t get to my old one and can’t make a new one. There are no routines any more. From a global pandemic I’ve learned to never have a routine again. And how to breath.

As I swam I thought I should ask them when swim lessons for kids will start again? One, because I want to know and two, to make small talk again. What do we talk about if not to ask questions of looking forward? There is so much to talk about but right now on everyone’s mind is what’s to come? Everyone’s mind? Is everyone thinking of this? Do some not think of anything? No one knows when swim lessons will start again I didn’t ask. I know the answer. I sort of wanted to ask about 12 different people to see what 12 different people will say. But I asked no one. Just swam and thought under murky water for awhile.

I was told my mind never stops. Do others? Are there people out there who have stopped minds? What do they think of? How do they resolve things and find answers? how do they sleep at night? How do they keep busy? What motivates someone with nothing on their mind? How do they keep things clean? Maybe they are not telling the truth? How would I know one way or another? Why do I care? I don’t really. Except today I do. I want to stop and think of nothing. All by myself. With no help.

As I swam I pretended I was in really dark murky water full of fish and things that are alive. The water was choppy. I don’t know what it’s like to swim in water like this except in my mind. It’s exactly like it sounds. Me swimming in my head in murky lake water. I kept taking in water on my left side when I turned to breath. Just the left. The right had it figured out for the day. The left I turned and the choppy wave crashed into me. I couldn’t swim straight at all. Could I swim across a lake? How do you stay straight with nothing to follow?I veered to the right. Consistently to the right almost into the lane lines twice. In the lake to the right would take me where? Likely to a cove or bay. Which is still across the lake, just not straight across. It’s veered to the right across. I’m sure the lifeguard was on guard today. Watching me swim all over the place in my choppy murky water mind.

I swim for basic control of something I can control when nothing is in my controls, same reason I clean. It’s simple control when the world is spinning out of control. Not just the world. My world. So I’m spinning and so is the world. I just need simple control. Of something.

I clean when I’m anxious. I know some one who has someone clean for him. I wondered what he did when he was anxious if he has someone anxious clean for him. It’s why she cleans. She may need the job or love it but cleaning calms the anxious. We are nesters by nature. Once every speck of dust is dusted, every crumb swept and grease fur from over the stove is clean. Then when everything is sorted of clutter and corners are tucked and things are placed properly away then we think we can rest. Except we don’t. There is no perfect order to a mind that needs and craves control. Unless. That simple control is turned within. To every simple breath taken. Even in choppy murky mind water. Choppy.

With every stroke I count and breath. And count and breath. Then I change the pattern of breathing and counting. Why? I don’t know. To exercise my lungs is what I’m telling myself. To inflate them for longer and then to not. Then to do short quick ones. I don’t know what I’m exercising them for or preparing my lungs for but they will be ready when it comes. Will I? My mind tells my body to breath but my body can’t say it back? They didn’t seem to be able to work together today. I turn one way and my body does one thing and my mind another. If I don’t breath right when I am in water I will drown. Or I will swallow water. Maybe just aspirate and take on fluid in the lungs and get pneumonia that makes them assume I have coronavirus since no one can look past coronavirus. I will die alone since no one can be with people dying of coronavirus. Then who will raise my kids? Is this what I’m preparing my lungs for? To live right? To breath? Only to die? Of course, I will have to die, so I need to live until I do. That’s what my lungs are preparing for. For my swim in murky water.

I wrote a letter to someone who I need to give space to. He is in the beginning steps of grief. Maybe was already there. I imagine he will not receive it or he will see it as junk. Toss my thoughts aside. I wish I could do this. Just toss them aside. As if unimportant. Maybe he will open it and read it, then say, dodged a bullet on this one? Or open it and not read it at all. People aren’t used to mail to read that is written. It’s strange and unorthodox. It’s sad. Maybe he doesn’t check his mail, it will sit and collect dust until his anxious cleaning lady runs out of things to clean and cleans the inside of his mailbox but she is afraid of surprises and can’t get herself to open the box in fear of a spider. So it will sit and entertain no one until a snow plow takes it out and knocks it off. Then he will say. I never really needed a mailbox anyway. My letter will go to where then? Can we decide not to have mailboxes? Maybe he will read it and still just go about his busy life and say nothing then years down the road we will cross paths on our sailboats in murky choppy water and say, hey, I remember you. I read your letter, my cleaning lady found it when the snow plow knocked over the mailbox, then he will laugh and say she screamed like a girl at a spider inside.

I don’t know what it was about this man but it was something not nothing. He is way out of my league. Wealthy, smart, attractive, put together, had a clean shirt, smelled nice. That’s not who looks at me. That’s not who talks to me. That’s not who listens to me. He is off his path and wondered into mine. Not I’m off mine and somehow on his. I wouldn’t recognize one full of life like that. So clean. And organized. I recognize the one I am on. The one I worked so hard to find and keep maintained. No one gets to come meandering out of the woods all lost and wreck my trail full of precious things I don’t want trampled. Only I know where and how to step and am not sure I want to show anyone how and where to step.

He would have said by now he wasn’t even remotely interested. He is suffering a significant loss and is very busy. I get that. But being me, my empathy is running over with empathy. Grief. It’s likely why we are sharing this path for a moment. You attract where you are, I am grieving and must radiate grief and am attracting others in the steps of grief. But aren’t we all in them in some way? Why him? Why now? And why for just a week with such intense curiosity? I’ve learned nothing yet. He hasn’t left my trail. He is still kind of on it and on pause. Like I kept going and he had to stop and pee. No one likes to pee in the woods with someone watching. It feels barbaric. Of course no one likes to pee and be watched anywhere. It feels private. In the woods it’s a primal instinct to just find a place not near water and off trail and pee but not in the woods it’s somewhere to go that everyone goes. It’s not so much instinct as convenient. I’m here, I should pee. There is a bathroom I should go. In the woods you just feel it and stop and wonder off and go. I’ve never had anyone really with me to know what happens. Do you wait or keep walking? Walking. They will catch up.

Why is he so clean? His fleece looked used but so new it was so clean. His nails looked chewed off to the point he almost got his fingers. Does he have scars? What brought him here? How did he first fall in love? Why? What is his favorite color? How can you pick just one? What was your first animal? What do you believe in? Do you ever think of just nothing? How?

I have shown significant restraint. I harbor thousands of questions for people. Especially ones with eyes like that and who radiate a sense of calm. Even if they aren’t they seem to have it down. I want others to come around me and feel calm not anxious. I leak anxious. Maybe those who are calm absorb what I leak and we balance out? That I’m not too much because they have space to take on my extra leaky murky choppy mind.

Once I was told someone knew I wasn’t interested in him anymore because I quit cleaning for him. He had his own messy murky water he couldn’t breath in and I kept trying to make so he could breath only to find out I couldn’t breath worried about his breathing. I got his Tupperware cabinet and his dishes all separated properly the way they should only to come to find them all in havoc again. He could not see past his messes to his messes. I quit cleaning up his messes. I started to see I had my own I wasn’t cleaning up while I was busy cleaning his up. I have to have time to clean my own grease with fur. I don’t have time for others grease with fur. Just my own.

As I swam and thought of all the questions of the future, which also looks murky, I found my water was clear. Not brown and murky like I imagined, it was choppy from the lady two lanes over swimming like a whale. I could not breath to my left because she was apparently trying a new way of swimming that made some waves. I wasn’t drowning. I was breathing. I could see the blue and white tile fine. The shadows of my arms pulling and moving water. The simple feel of the water moving across my face like I’m a dolphin. Now I’m a dolphin in my mind and I’m not even in the pool. Just clear headed breathing in the air.

What’s next? No idea. But I want a nice table and chairs and buffet for my kitchen so I can dress it up fancy for dinners no one wants to actually sit for. I want to tie bows around the chairs and dangle wreaths of eucalyptus from the backs. I want to have plates on top of plates with napkins and little bells or something on them to move before we eat. I want to run garland and candles no one will knock over and burn the whole house down. I want a chandelier dressed so fancy no one can see it’s a light. I want rosy cheeks from the glow of the warmth of a fireplace. I want to serve sloppy pie that bubbled over but tastes like hard work and a destroyed kitchen to make. I want to hear clinking glasses toasting to something. To what? To life.

I don’t know what has brought on this table setting. I’ve never had it? I see it or saw it once? Imagined it in my own life? But kept seeing my life on its place. Which isn’t any of the said above. Still good just not what I want. I want more. I want just the image of it.

I couldn’t do thanksgiving dinner this year on the day the calendar said to. My dad and brother in law are gone resting peacefully with other people gone and resting peacefully. Are they? Is it peaceful where they are? Is it even a place? Why can’t I just know? I didn’t want to look at my knife and see my dad, look at any pies and see him, hear my brother in law laugh but it wasn’t really there. I didn’t want to see the table set with out them. Not that we set it before but I didn’t want to even not see a table set without them. I didn’t want to hear anyone other than my dad say grace. Who would say it anyway? I didn’t want to carve a turkey. I didn’t want to wash any dishes that said it was thanksgiving without you. I didn’t want to see a single person. Hear a single person. Not even me.

So I did it on a day that wasn’t when the calendar says so. We do so much the calendar says all year long and look how far that’s gotten us. To today. What’s today? Same as the one before and the same as the one to come? Only with less people daily. Only with a bunch also being born. We aren’t getting less people. We are getting less of some people and gaining a bunch more to lose to gaining some more again. It’s the vicious cycle of life and death. We die and new people are born. Not the same ones born again. My dad isn’t coming back in any babies. He is within us if we listen. Which I can’t.

I am thankful for so much. But I am every day, not just the day I’m told to be. I talked to my dad instead of saying grace. So some day I can say grace with words my dad would have said. But I don’t know all the words yet. I cried when I cut anything. I cried when my blueberry pie insides were not thick enough. He wasn’t there to say. Hey you need this. Or next time try this. He is saying it but not for real. I can’t hear it because I refuse to listen to my inner voice in the version of my dad. I didn’t when he was here when I was mad and I won’t when he is not, because I’m mad. Not at him. At all the unanswered questions I have. All the things that go unanswered making me need to swim like I’m swimming in murky lake water somewhere in my head instead of swimming gracefully like a dolphin and now choppy like a whale like my lap swimming partner who splashed like she was saving herself. Wasn’t that what I was doing there? Aren’t we all trying to?

It’s the last month of this awful year. finally. Just one more month to get to the next year that we have no idea what will happen. Why are they waiting for a meeting to disperse the vaccine until two weeks from now? Isn’t this an emergency? Why aren’t they meeting right now? Is it that hard to coordinate the people involved or are there people involved who don’t want to be involved and can’t be coordinated? It just seems we should make this about priority. Maybe it is and I am not patient enough except I am. I lost two people and don’t want to lose anymore. I’ve waited awhile.

I woke 8 minutes too late. I just was cozy. It was simply that I was cozy. My alarm went off and I just wanted to stay warm for a minute or two or eight more. My daughter was next to me and it was comforting after her being gone for days with her dad for thanksgiving. I should be paying bills and shopping online right now for Christmas. But I can’t get anyone at the gas company to answer to take my money, it’s the one single company that I don’t have an app for to pay because they don’t have one. No one is working to take my money. I suppose it’s good since there is a rule that says they can’t turn power and gas off if you can’t pay. I can pay but can’t. No one is there. I don’t get a paper version so I will have to google the address to the gas people and pay.

I also don’t want to shop online this early. Not until I’ve worked out any leftover anxiety from the night the day before or even for the future. Then I can make better decisions? I have a purple tree for Christmas. Not pink like her dreams said but purple. We were overwhelmed with tree color choices when I found a place that paints flocked live trees. Pink was our pick until we were told it wasn’t dry. We had been touching it and it was dry. He said he could tell because it had a tiny little pencil scratching in the tag saying when it was flocked. That’s how you can tell? How are we to tell? It looked for sale and dry. He said I had to wait 24 hours. I don’t want to wait to make my daughters dreams come true. Then she found purple and it was all over. It was “dry” and also had the same pencil scratching with its flocked on date which was the same as the pink ones. I let it go. Dreams so rarely come true. I just wanted my little girls dreams to come true. Purple trees are what dreams are made of.

Could mine come true? Of course that night of her pink tree dreams I was dreaming I was being launched into space over and over in these little rocket chairs. I could feel the pressure change as I left the atmosphere each time. Then would slowly fall into the ocean. Once in my dream I was thrown off a bridge with a bungee cord. When I hit the water of the river I felt it. I woke sore and like I had been thrown off a bridge and hit water. Or launched into the atmosphere. This is not my dreams.

I dream of someone again. I have been. I have been saying it and feeling it and wanting it. Waiting for the universe to catapult someone into my orbit. Is that what this is? Why would he even be talking to me? Sharing? Asking me questions? Is it because I can make bows and beautiful arrangements? I took my nail polish off. My daughter painted my nails purple one day and because of my job it is half on. A lady thought I had smashed every finger and the nails were bruised. I hadn’t thought of that. Another lady told me guys notice these things. I reminded her that it was a lady who noticed they were half purple. She said, yes and she thought you smashed your hands. Why would guys notice this? She said I should paint my nails clear. Now I want to paint my nails clear so he will notice me. Except I think he already has. If I have to try it’s wrong. I know at some point you have to try and work for it but at first it shouldn’t be so hard it should feel natural. Like when a magnet sticks the right way to the fridge. It just works when it’s right.

I have to write this out in case it’s something that tries to consume me. I saw him pull in the parking lot. I was helping someone else. I pushed the cart to the store and he asked to take it from me. But looked right at me. I felt immediately nervous. Like I had seen him somewhere. Then he turned around and nearly took my shins off with the cart: he had two bleeding knuckles from something he must have done earlier. I went inside.

Then he was inside. I noticed his shoes. I do this now. I look at peoples shoes. I’m still trying to find shoes I like and keep looking at others to try. My feet are freezing in every pair I’ve bought and I don’t want cold feet. He entertained my shoe questions. Asked if I ran. I don’t. I can and have but I walk and am on my feet a lot. I want to run another marathon but right now a marathon would be hard to run with a mask and it would definitely be a super spreading event. So no marathons. I don’t get a virtual marathon. I can’t even fathom it. I ran my little half one once and want to do a better job. I want to run in my own shoes.

Then I got his number. Then we talked for hours. In text but I really can’t talk for hours on the phone and we aren’t supposed to be talking in person. Then I heard nothing. Then I did. Now I know things about a person I never knew. It is feeling too much like a dream come true. He feels like such a different kind of person to be in my path. What put him in my path? Or am i still off mine? Did he wander off his and get lost and find his way to mine or am I still squiggling around lost looking for my own? But why him? Am I reading too much into it at all? Is it a simple connection that is there but won’t ignite anything? How do you know? I do know. I felt it. Just barely but enough that I thought back to that moment and tried to make sure.

I come back to my worth always. I am worth someone who would think of me. Who will bring me a coke and know it needs little ice and has to be from the gas station. Who knows me. There is more to me than this but someday I want flower sent to me. Just to know what it feels like. There is more to me than this. But someday I dream of someone who will know I don’t need a place for him to put flowers when I die. Like my dad. That’s what my dreams are made of.

I am trying not to think at all about it. Think of me. My job and my life. I have a lot to think of. Yet I keep thinking of him. Trying to remember his eyes in case I don’t see them again.

I wasn’t even that anxious this morning. I can’t pay bills. I shouldn’t online shop before coffee and I should write even if I have nothing to really write about. I have no title and no anxious thoughts really. Just dreams I want to come true. It’s what dreams are made of.

Did I create me an entire anxious thought or was it there? I don’t know what dreams are made of? All I’ve done now is want to know more about what dreams are made of. Not just mine but now his. And others. Maybe his are to find someone who is less available? Independent. Strong willed and stubborn. Do these sound like dreams to come true? They are mine. Mine are the same. I want to find someone who can help me find what my dreams are made of. That’s what I can’t find. Maybe he can’t find his. Are we both lost? Did he wake one day and think, I need to take care of me and my life and see who appears. It will be someone who so seldom appears. That’s what happens when you focus on yourself. You don’t need someone for much. You want them. You dream of them. Think of them. But don’t really need them there. But sort of do if the shampoo bottle thing is stuck and won’t turn to open to allow you to pump the shampoo into your hand. So you have to unscrew the cap every time you wash your hair and some days just don’t even wash it. And some days want to cut the top off with a knife and have it forever open. Or dump it all out and buy a new one. Watching 7 dollars of shampoo go down the drain because the cap is defective and no one is there to open it. Because dreams don’t come true.

My kids being gone for several days made me lonely. Confusing me with I am alone thoughts. But I was lonely. I so rarely know what to do when they are gone. So I opened a twitter account. Which I will never use and it isn’t even attached to my name. It wasn’t a good decision. But I was lonely. I dream of not being lonely. Sometimes we just are. I wasn’t sad lonely but bored lonely. I wanted to talk and learn something about someone. I was curious. Like a toddler about the hows and whys and what ifs of another person. I dream of a lot. My dreams are made of so much. I spend 100 percent of my time day dreaming and rarely night dream. The kind that I have no control over. The dreams we don’t want to come true. They are fuzzy and make zero sense. They are made of thoughts of our brain at rest. Our brain is sleepy so it has its own dreams? And we daydream. Dreams are made up of dreams. We make the rest up. Do they come true? Depends on what it is made of?

I am a very routine person. Specifically because of my ability to be impulsive I am routine. The more routine I am the better I feel when for a moment I am not. When I allow myself some grace to accept that I have no control of the global pandemic. I just refuse to let it keep trying to control me. Not just the virus but the rules. I will keep wearing my mask when I’m around people in case I harbor deadly viruses but for the most part not being around people is my routine. It’s wrecked my life. I’ve lost people from it and know people sick. Not even that sick. Just sort of sick. You can’t say it’s like the flu because people will virtually slap you. But it sounds more like a cold. Maybe even like nothing but a test saying you have it. It sounds so deadly because it’s so sneaky and unknown. It sounds so deadly because we all know about it. It sounds so bad because they keep telling us how bad it is.

How many other unknown things are out there? What if we are so focused on controlling all the people from one thing that it’s a chance for something new to grow and sneak in. We can’t control the world. It has to keep spinning all by itself. The more people try to control it the more I feel it spinning out of control.

So I need my routine back. My dad died and he is not part of it anymore but he really wasn’t anyway. I’m a grown up and my dad wasn’t living here. My dad had his own routine now he has no routine. And I need mine back. He is still part of it in a way. In that pretend way. Where I feel him reminding me to keep my routine and not let the world try to make me so afraid. To take care of me. Because he knows I am so afraid all on my own. I make myself afraid without the help of anyone. I also refuse to let anyone make me afraid. That’s my job. And I’m pretty great at it. The world is fired.

I miss him. I knew I would. It hurts to have had to say goodbye. Maybe it won’t be forever? Maybe he will find his path and ours will cross again someday? Maybe he won’t? I don’t see it not and I also do. I don’t want to think of him. But I will. He impacted my life greatly. But he can’t be part of my routine. He wasn’t and I can’t have a new routine with chaos. That’s also my job.

It was good practice to open up to someone. In person. To allow someone to hold me again to allow someone to be there. I didn’t want it to be practice. But it was just the push I needed to see how far I’ve come. And where I want to go.

I want to allow someone to be there. Not in my routine but in my head. I can’t keep people out forever if I want to have someone again. I also can’t be around people right now in case they are trying to unknowingly spread a virus that will make me maybe sick or not. So how do you meet people in the midst of a global pandemic? Keep living your life. Keep taking your own steps and finding your own adventure. Chose your own. Then they appear. You stumble upon them randomly. They surprise you. They come form no where. Then impact your life and then go the other way or the same? Or no way at all.

I’m always in the woods in my journey in my head. It’s the only way I relate to life. If I can’t be there in real life I am in not. I am always walking a path one foot in front of the other. Then sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I’m resting. Sometimes I’m off the path. Sometimes I’m looking for a new one. Sometimes I’m chasing an armadillo. But its my adventure and I chose it.

I’ve felt the upset of my no routine in my gut. That’s where I feel it the most. My thoughts are too much and they get digested when they don’t have anywhere to go. Like here. They get swallowed and upset my gut. I’ve had to tell myself I haven’t had the gut sick version of coronavirus too many times when I know myself well enough to know my anxiety is digesting the leftovers it can’t. I know every sniffle i have is pollen, I know every heavy chest is weight of grief, I know that every struggle to breath is from holding my breath since my dad died. Afraid to breath on my own again. Now I know. I don’t have a deadly virus I have anxiety and am grieving.

This is not my new normal. It’s my new routine. And when they change it again I will make a new one. Until I get to one that last longer then a day. There is no school. There just isn’t. My kids aren’t learning anything over the internet other than how to rely on the internet. Which isn’t how I want them to live their lives. I want them to live their lives. Know how to breath, how to find balance, how to grieve, how to love, how to feel. Not do math. These are teachable things. All of them but the core of life is life. How to live it. I use some math. But mostly I don’t. I couldn’t do it well without my numbers moving so I found things that stay still in my head by using my hands and my body not my mind. My mind has better use at just keeping my hands busy. My kids are the same way.

I need the minutes in the morning to write out what’s inside so I don’t eat it and digest it. I need to hear the hum of the fridge and the trickle of the turtle tank before I hear anything else and can’t hear myself. I know there will be days I won’t be able to do it. I’m still grieving and sometimes 4:30 is too early for a heavy heart. But slowly I will get back to 4:30. I did 5:00 today. Will keep it at 5:00 for a week. If the kids happen to get to learn in person again I will go back to 4:30 but until they aren’t leaving I don’t need to.

My daughter wants a pink tree. I didn’t want a tree at all but know I have to put up a tree for them. Their dad did and I have to really do it now. So pink it is. I’ve never had a pink tree it might be fun to see how a pink tree can squiggle it’s way into our life. If might be fun to see where things go with him. It might be fun to just keep walking one foot in front of the other for awhile until something steers me off. Which is always me. I’m never steered off I do it to myself. I leave the trail I’m rarely forced off. I lose the trail not get lost. Right now I was both. But for awhile I see straight ahead. For awhile.