It’s taken me a few days to be able to write. More than a few. Processing? Digesting? how one day I woke and decided since I couldn’t donate blood or become a live donor and that I can’t donate anything I’m currently needing, that I should fall from a plane. They say jump but there was no jumping it was falling. Sort of a roll out and in fact I was pulled out since I was attached to someone.

I planned it and didn’t think about until it was time to do it. I forced myself to not think of it so I wouldn’t accidentally overthink it and when I over think who know what I will come up with. So I didn’t think of it at all. So I would just do it. Just see what it was like to fall and be ok. Or not. To not hang on. To maybe feel like I was flying but I felt like I was falling with nothing to hang onto. So I let go. If I kept my arms in and don’t spread them out we would fall quicker and I would be heavier for the other jumper who pulled me from a plane two miles on the air.

I don’t have a bucket list. This wouldn’t even have been on it. I don’t think I need a bucket list. If I made one I would hurry through it. Afraid I made a list in case I die soon. Which is what it is essentially. How many of us go off and check items off on a bucket list? Why would we even make one? Why is it a bucket? Before we kick the bucket? Why do we say this? Is that even right? You could also look at a bucket list as a list we will never do. One we make that we feel we don’t have to hurry and complete as we have control of the inevitable. We think we won’t kick the bucket and we have time that we have a way to keep it from happening. Do we? No. That’s why we do them.

I know I don’t have control but I don’t live my life like I do. I live and am stuck in my head. I get stuck in my head. I have to step away really far to see it. Disconnect a little to reconnect. I have to apparently fall. Feel centered again. Grounded. It takes falling from a plane for me. Or it did for this. It was too extreme for me. Losing my father was too much. It tilted me out of balance too much. I was starting to sleep and avoid. I was falling and feeling like I wasn’t going to be ok when I fell. I was hanging on to something big. That big thing I can’t solve. Not the why did he die? But the what now? Who am I without my dad? Who was I anyway? I was just starting to feel a close connection with the universe which is a close connection to myself? They feel the same to me. And then my universe imploded in my mind. I lost my way. Because the one person who I felt kept me on my path is gone now. I have to dig deeper to find my way. To remember.

I look back and watch the videos and see the pictures and it feels like it didn’t happen. It was too fast. I can’t come up with a word to describe it. It takes several words because I displayed all emotions in the emotions flash card box. Fear. Brave. Sad. Happy. Exhilarated. Anxious. Angry. Embarrassed. Lust. I can’t describe the actual fall. Just all the moments up to it and after. In between just nothing. Free form emotion. Free for a minute. Light and unburdened. The only word is falling. I was falling.

It felt intimate, sitting inside a little plane on the floor facing each other I was told to put my foot between his legs and his legs were going to go around me. Facing each other while flying in the air to then attach to him to fall from a plane. I cried. He tapped my foot and gave me a thumbs up. I saw him say, you good? I said my dad died and I was so sad. That he would have loved this. He nodded and said he understood. Then looked out the window. Then back to me. Then smiled. Then said. Turn around and get on your knees….then he buckled us together and pulled me from the plane. He said just put your right foot right here next to mine. And then we were gone. Just like that. Complete trust in this stranger behind me. Complete trust in myself?

Not a single word can describe falling from a plane other than how I feel after falling and being ok. I feels like when you spin in circles fast and then stop and you feel like you might fall and finally you are not spinning in your head anymore. Everything looks and feels clearer after it stops. You can see straight again. See that path. At first I wonder off to the right as your body was just spinning to the right for so long it felt the natural pull to the right. Until you stop. Then the natural veer to the right resolves and you can go forward. You aren’t so dizzy with confusion. Lost. But that was the days following the fall from a plane. The actual fall. Nothing. Just nothing for once. He had to tap me twice to get me to let go. When I did. It worked. For a few seconds I carried nothing with me. No weight. No loss. No fear. I was scared to death but brave looks like fear for me. I felt nothing but the fall. The let go and the fall. The not hanging on. The fall. That’s all.

I am unlost again. Grounded. I fell and was ok. Not calm, uncalm, but not as anxious. I was struggling with significant loss. Not just my present loss of my father but grief pulls up all loss. It pulled all my losses to the surface. Some still painful: some I feel guilt for still feeling grief of the loss. Because I grew through the loss and gained. So why bring it back to the surface. As a reminder? Look, you did this before and grew through it and you can do it again. And again. It’s nearly impossible to find any potential growth from the loss of your dad but I once thought I would not find growth in the loss of a child I thought was coming. An image. I once grieved the idea and image of what expecting parents see and hope for. Then to be told your child has different needs. Then to feel like you lost something feels like guilt and shame when my gain was so significant I can’t even describe it to this day. No one needs to know really anyway. I feel special for having her. It makes no sense for me to have a child that requires the patience of what? A saint they say. Yet do we really have patience? I don’t. I just don’t show it. I am almost always on the verge of losing my shit when my name is called or her shoe is finally tied. I push her. I demand more from her than I probably should but I know she is part me and will want to be independent so I have to be sure she doesn’t burn an entire building Dow while making food in the microwave. I know I can get through my dads death when o look back at the loss I got through once but am revisiting today to help me feel like I did it once.

Why fall from a plane? It was the most extreme thing I could think of to do. And it worked. I didn’t feel desperate I was feeling just done. Like I could lay down and sleep and be ok just laying down and sleeping. But I have a lot to do and just can’t grief sleep all day. Just a few. Just enough that I felt pulled to the right and out of balance. Lost again off my trail I’ve picked to be on. It’s ok to wonder off to the right sometimes and be lost in the woods and not on the trail. That’s how we find us again. That’s how I find me again. That trust in myself and the universe again.

I am burdened with sad. I feel heavier than I should. Pants fit different, my feet feel heavy. Not a single thing I do makes me feel lighter. I bought lighter shoes. I’m wearing light weight pants and my hair is up. When it’s down it feels like it’s pulling my head to the ground.

I am sleeping too much. Maybe I am tired and that’s the reality but I rarely have tired reality that equals sleep. It is usually just tired and awake. With all the thoughts. I can not just fall asleep. I’ve had a glass of wine a night that helps. I’m intentionally trying to make things quiet enough to sleep. But I don’t really want to sleep. I want to figure things out. Except there is nothing to figure out anymore. So now what do I do? If I can’t figure them out what do I think of? I don’t know and am too afraid to know? I just don’t want to think at all? To feel numb again? Wasn’t I hère once? I used medications to “make it all stop”. Which it tried to do. I know a single glass of wine isn’t even going to work so I have to be certain I stop. I can’t always. But mostly I can. So I’ve gained some control of myself?

Once I thought I was an alcoholic, or once someone thought I was. I rarely even drank. Then I did when I was too sad. Then I didn’t. Then I did again once. Then not again for a long time. Then occasionally, then not. I don’t know that I look at alcohol as a need and something I look forward to. I have a lot of other things to look forward to. I don’t always want to not think or not feel. But sometimes it is just too much. I am just too much for myself. So how can I not be for someone else?

They have to just kind of be ok with themselves so I can deal with me? Deal with me? Why do I feel that one single sad moment in my time means I am not worthy? That I need dealt with? I am heavy and weighed down with all the sad I have tried to get through fast. It has me stuck now. Like I can’t move. Like I can’t breath. But I can sleep. I can eat and I can just barely do anything else. Right at a time I need to be learning to remote learn so my kids will be good grown ups that know math and science and how to stay away from people forever. I need to be thinking of my next step that is too scary, I am avoiding thinking of feelings of love for someone, I am avoiding thinking of new rules and ways of life that I don’t want to conform to out of fear it is in fact the new normal. I don’t want to think about my daughters struggles with life as a teenager with Down syndrome and then an adult with Down syndrome and the struggles as a child and infant she had with Down syndrome. Is she struggling? She can’t get some people to know what she is saying and it infuriates her. She can’t walk as fast as me and gets angry when I don’t go as slow as her. She gets pissed when no one gets that she should be able to eat the same thing every day. She is irritated with trees. Why are there so many trees? Which irritates me. She may not even struggle and I just think she does because I do. I want to carry all her struggles for her. But right now I’m too full of my own. And hers aren’t even real struggles. It is who she is. She just takes life at a different pace and sees life in a different way. One I can’t see. But can if I look past who I hoped she was going to be.

What do I even mean by that to this day? I never properly grieved a loss for a little girl I pictured would be mine. It’s almost too hard to think back that I was upset and felt a loss when told she had Down syndrome. What did I lose? Who? An image? That’s all it was. The thought that comes with carrying and growing a baby. Perfection.

I lost an image of perfection. So I gained in the end. Not that this is an end. But today I can see that perfection really is in the eye of the beholder. That maybe even perfect isn’t a thing. That I see it but someone else doesn’t so does that make it any less perfect or more perfect, or even not at all? Can we even say less or more perfect? Isn’t perfect all by itself the actual meaning? To make it less is not perfect at all anymore and to make it more is not? She is perfect to me but not to others? How can they not see it? I don’t even know that I consider her perfect. That’s such a harsh word. It feels harsh and judgy, full of criticism and expectations set by others for who we should be. It feels like an image only.

I didn’t think I was so full of this weight. That what was really weighing me down was Down syndrome. That I feel burdened not with my daughter but for her. She doesn’t need to carry the weight of weird blood work and funny rhythms of the heart. She doesn’t need to feel that she is any less than others. Does she anyway? I don’t think she even does? I think I worry that I do. I accept her for who she is but still wonder if I grieve who she wasn’t. Which only pushes me further into grief. All those steps of grief and I moved backwards. I know that they aren’t in an order but just given as a list of what to expect them we bounce around them daily or hourly based on outside factors and what life presents daily. I was growing through grief and then I went back. I ungrew? How can we get to grow through grief then go back to the beginning? Is it the beginning? Why are there steps at all? Why are they laid out as a step to take them to be down with? I feel depressed almost and most important I feel guilt for feeling any grief at all with the loss of just an image of perfection. That is not perfect.

Grief is being weird to me. I move around as if I am in tides. Which I have never been in except in a pretend wave pool at a water park. Which nearly drowned me. I fear the ocean for its size but most importantly its power. It’s surface area under water is bigger than land above. It has the most species of anything in one single place. I don’t even know if that’s true but in my head it is. I fear the waves pulling me under then I would die because I can’t breath under water and barely can above but want to see what’s alive under water. It’s ok I’m where I am? Feeling like I’m going to drown? How can anyone say that any single step of grief is ok to be in? Especially one so heavy and one where I could drown in my own grief in the air and not in actual water but am not even really drowning. I don’t want to grieve at all. I wanted to grow through it and jump into the steps of not grief next. Which is life? Living again. Breathing again. I know I am sad my dad is gone but not as sad as I get over the loss of a child I never even had. This will likely burden me my whole life. I could be stuck in these enormous waves. Which feels like I’m going to be pulled under water. But I’m on land. I could also not. That’s grief. Back and forth. In and out. Up and down.

So this weight is not lighter no matter what I wear. No matter how I feel, I guess I have to actually feel heavy to feel light again. She is an amazing stubborn teenager. She doesn’t drive and may never. She may not do some of the things I once imagined she would but maybe she can do the un-imaginable.

I am starving for affection. I knew this would happen too. It’s specifically why I have avoided getting close to anyone, ever. Not just since my marriage died. It’s likely even why it died. I killed it with my no affection rules. Don’t touch me, don’t get close to me, don’t love me, don’t do anything for me. Otherwise I will expect it, want it and crave it forever. There is no forever. This is deeper rooted than simply that I don’t believe there is a forever. It’s not that I don’t believe there is no forever, there just didn’t. There is just right now. I can’t guarantee a next so don’t touch me just in case it’s it? Is that it? Shouldn’t I want to be touched as much as possible, just in case next doesn’t come? No, it’s thé when next comes and the affection is gone. When they leave. Because they do. It feels deeper rooted even than a fear of being left. Or forgotten. There is a gigantic word for this fear. There is a word for all fears Im sure. Maybe even a word for the fear of fear words.

I woke too early this morning after weeks of avoidance sleep. That’s what I’m calling it. I’m not finally sleeping out of good health and sound mind. I’m avoidance sleeping. I’m sleeping to avoid pain, to avoid responsibility, to avoid affection, to avoid being awake even. I’m an awake kind of person. I’m kind of ok with it. So when I start to sleep well it’s because I’m not ok. I’ve avoided my morning routine, to sleep. Avoided time at night to catch up on remote learning training I need, to sleep, and I’m avoiding being held. To sleep. I’ve passed it up multiple times. I don’t want to be held in case I never get to be again? That sounds silly in my head. All things sound silly in my head once I’ve written them out. I can’t say them and hear how silly it is. When I’m talking il also still trying to listen to what is in my head at the same time. I’m too noisy even when I’m quite. I want to be held more than I’ve ever wanted to in my life. Right now. And forever. Even if it is just a minute. Maybe forever is a minute? Maybe in just a minute it will be forever?

My son is healthy sound sleeping. Not avoidance sleeping like me. He was on an opposite schedule for weeks. Mostly to be able to be up late to talk to his girlfriend. Then he decided she was becoming toxic and it ended and then hé avoidance slept for a week. I thought. But instead he had made a new friend. Not a girlfriend yet he says. But she has to sleep at night so he can’t chat all night long with her. So he slept. Because he likes her and wants to talk to her when she is free and that is usually when he sleeps. He de-reversed himself to spend time with someone. Do people do this? I asked him and he said, well I like her. That didn’t help. I don’t get what my son is saying. He likes someone so he is now taking better care of himself to be able to spend time with her? Why couldn’t he have done this for himself? Just wanted to take care of himself for himself? Why isn’t he learning that from me? I have been doing it for several years and stopped? Now I’m not taking care of me and hoping someone will change and want to be with me? I am reversed.

I should be taking care of myself and letting them take care of themself or not and not care one way or another because I would be so full of self care that I would be fine with their lack of. No room to also care for you since I have enough to care for.

Except I let him hold me. I was starved for affection for years, Now I’m craving affection. To be touched. They make a job like this, people who get paid to just cuddle. It confuses me and just makes me have a lot of questions about this person who craves this job. Do they crave the affection and can only find it in strangers who also can only find it in strangers? Do they crave it just no matter who it is? What happened to them to make them want to cuddle so much? How do they keep from feeling affection while cuddling? Do they have favorite people they cuddle with? Do they struggle not to get too close even though cuddling is getting close? How do you not? How do you?

I tried to hold myself this morning. I wrapped my arms all around me like a straight jacket might feel. Which I don’t know. But my arms are really long and can go way around me. Then squeezed. Too tight. Then not tight enough. Then I realized it was me and not him or anyone and cried. Then I did it again and pinched my arm. Still me. It’s not the same. No matter what I did it feels like me squeezing me. You can’t play with your own hair either. It doesn’t help to massage your own shoulders. Are we that connected with ourselves that we can’t sooth ourselves or is it a disconnect? If I hold my own hand across the street am I keeping me safe? Dépends on when I cross the street? And what thé universe has in store for me. She died walking across the street when struck by a car even though she was holding her own hand.

I tell my daughter to hold her hands when we go into stores so she doesn’t feel the urge to touch. We are these kinds of people. We have to touch to see. I often have to do this as well. I hold her hand to go anywhere. She demands it when she isn’t holding her own. I tell her to hold herself at night when she is away at her dads and misses me. That she should be able to feel comfort simply by hugging herself when I am really mad that her dad isn’t making sure this isn’t happening yet I know him well enough to know that he doesn’t. That he feels the same way. You should be able to not need me. Except I always did. I still do. Not him but a him. I didn’t sign up for any of this on my own. I didn’t sign up for it at all. It is my fate.

I am living out my fate. I made choices and some were made for me and now I am here. To what was once forever is now. And now I am here and want to be held in now until forever. Like I wanted at the beginning of now a forever ago. I just didn’t say so because I didn’t and still don’t know how to say. Hold me. Touch me. Love me.

I did it for someone and put so much effort expecting it back. It was the wrong someone? It still is? It isn’t going to ever be a someone? Is thé universe saying that’s it, you had a chance at affection and blew it so here you are now with no affection and starving for it. So hold yourself and be fine with it. It is a harsh reality but it is mine. I didn’t say and do what I needed for me for years and now ai don’t know how to say and do what I need in now, and am too afraid too recognize affection being offered. It feels suffocating. What is that word? Fear of affection? Philophobia. It sounds made up. All words that relate to fear sound made up. They sound like the beginning of the origin of the word plus the word phobia. Fear of being loved. I still just feel like I know what love is not but not yet what love is.

I woke determined to quit avoidance sleeping starting today. I have new plans for remote learning and new plans to try to fill my affection bucket. I can’t control in my head the remote learning decision and it is what it is now. Remote learning. My kids will be who they will be based on what I help them become. If I don’t show them they can’t see it. That’s how learning works. That’s why remote learning isn’t working for them. I am the parent. People go to college to want to teach kids to be smart kids. To teach them math, reading and science but I am the one who gets to teach them to be people. To be a kind human. That’s what I didn’t sign up for but did and didn’t know it.

I will just start being more affectionate. I tried this once. I just started hugging people. Being too close to people. Being too affectionate. I was held for awhile and now want it back and want it more. If I overdo it then I can find the balance I need. You can’t know how full your bucket should be until you over fill it.

I’m always ok on my own. I always have been and will always find a way to be if not. It’s not on my own I struggle with. Allowing someone in. Allowing the help. Allowing conversations. Understanding conversations. Understanding someone’s affection and compassion to me is because they see mine. But I don’t. Or can’t. I don’t care if someone doesn’t want to spend time with me. It is actually harder for me to. But I mind when they say they do and then don’t. Not can’t. Just don’t. The words are said and the actions don’t match.

If someone wants to spend time with you they will make the effort. I hear this a lot. If I think about myself. I want to spend time with him but can’t make the effort. Not won’t or don’t but I can’t. Logistics outweigh desire. Always. Not just geography but actual logistics. Not just time but actual things that are logical. There is sound reason. I have a very full busy life that requires so someone to be part of the entire thing not just part of me. Dinner with me is dinner with all of me. Time with me is time with all of me not just parts. I have to really open up and allow it. Then risk it, then think it, then do it. And I can’t. Do I like that there is something I can’t do? No. I want to spend time with lots of people but they have their own logical reasoning to also can’t. How does anyone ever spend time with anyone? Unless all the logical things are done and there is just room for me again? Was there ever just took for me?

I’ve spent the last few years on my own to allow room for growth to allow room for openness. Did I grow and fill that space on my own with my own? Now I have no room? I’m full of myself? Isn’t that a word? Egotistic. I don’t feel self important just important to myself. Are they the same? Am I so egotistical I can’t let anyone in? Probably a great question for my therapist.

She wants to pick apart a problem. I often feel I am not enough or that I am too much. One or the other? I don’t personally mind. Since I am full of importance I accept both thoughts yet they burden me? I get to a place I can’t say what I need and want. In fear it won’t be met or I am rejected. I bring a lot to the table she says. I usually feel I bring nothing but a super full table that is overflowing with chaos and it may even be broken and there isn’t room for anyone to sit because it is full of laptops for remote learning I can’t comprehend with my kids. Or my table is completely empty and lacks interest. She disagrees. It’s her job to disagree when I say things like this. If I said I offer a lot she would agree. It’s what she does for a job. To disagree when she thinks I am wrong. So we have to sort it out. She says. She points out I offer compassion and opportunity and love and various other words that don’t fit my vocabulary. How can she see them and I can’t? How can she see them and no one else can? Maybe I need to date a therapist? Someone who sees what she sees? No. I need to date no one.

What is dating anymore? Do we date? I never really did to begin with. I was friends with some one then we just became more. Then less. Then nothing. I don’t think we grew apart. We just didn’t grow together. My growth was one way and his was another. Not apart just not together. Looking back I can see it was never going to be a railroad track. I knew we would derail at some point. I kept waiting for it. Then got tired of how slow his side was growing the other way that I intentionally started going further away so it would fail. There was no hope so I needed to speed the process up? I intentionally angered him. I spent years knowing how not to. How to be quiet how to not feel how to not touch how to not be. For him. That I just started being me. And we finally derailed. In a firey hot mess that is still being extinguished. 6 years later we are still trying to put it out. Not a passion or love but the damage from the wreck of two people who couldn’t say what was what so we said nothing and let it end.

Now I am trying to find that railroad track again. The one I never had. I am still a single track train. It is getting exhausting. Or maybe I am both rails and not one. I don’t know if there are trains on one rail? Interdependence. Two single tracks running to make one single thing operate. Is it even possible. I met a couple yesterday who have been married for over 30 years. That doesn’t seem long given I was almost 20. They told me they have built two whole houses together. Not physically but been through the process of building million dollar homes and survived. I blinked. In a single train like thought I thought of all the things him and I went through. Lost babies, heart surgeries, g tubes, therapist for her, new houses that weren’t big enough for the growth we weren’t growing together on, lost friends in an accident, lost dogs, difficult kids, not million dollar homes. When I looked back and blinked again I am surprised we didn’t crash sooner. Everything we had been through should have brought us closer yet it is some of the most difficult things anyone can go through. I am not shocked we failed. Maybe we didn’t fail. We gave up? Maybe we didn’t give up. We both became what we needed to be to get through and neither one of us was really who we really were and are. We didn’t change. Nothing changed. We grew up from life then didn’t keep the train going. Life became a different kind of hard and we didn’t keep it going that way together.

I didn’t wake thinking I wanted to work through my failed marriage again. I have a therapist for that. Sometimes I don’t know what I need to work through. I slept again until I was woke by someone who wants to hang out with me but yet hasn’t really brought anything to my full or empty table yet. I know he can but he can’t right now. He has other thoughts that don’t seem to be like mine? He is consumed with his misery and I am trying to keep from becoming consumed with mine again. I did it once and don’t want to go back. I want to go forward and I want him to also go forward but I will crash again if I think I can keep his side going too. He may crash on his own. I don’t want to have a broken heart again. Then I stayed awake but sleepy and couldn’t breath. It was too hard. I couldn’t get a deep breath without a yawn. I steered my sleepy thoughts to wondering in a meadow with him and a blanket and thoughts of laying in a meadow and being held. I thought I would die. This lack of breathing can make me feel like I am about to die. That it is almost my last one because it is too hard to get one. That I can’t fill my lungs with enough air or maybe they have too much air and there isn’t room? I can stop it but then wake with a sore chest and jaw like I have been blowing up balloons all night.

I dreamt of being in a police investigation. Then when the police went into my house they saw my messy floor and table and then opened my fridge and saw I had chicken salad with a mr Meade on the container and then he said. So you were there? And then I started picking up Anna’s school papers I knocked off the table. I don’t even have a physical mess. But in my dreams last night it looked like my kitchen exploded with remote papers and computers. My mind is consumed with remote learning. Even though I give up on it: because that’s just one side of me giving up the other side has not and never will. The messy side gave up, my really controlling side says I still have control of something I can’t. I should get my two sides to be on the same train tracks?

My marriage didn’t fail and neither did I and I am not now. I am trying to work through what my therapist says I need to work through. Being enough for me. Not too much or too little but I am enough. I keep it written on a post it note in my car. Once it blew out and I stopped to go get it so I wasn’t accidentally littering the world with my therapeutic sticky notes. She is hoping I will see it enough and feel enough. Then when I meet others who don’t offer as much as me that I can’t see I am offering I feel not less or more but still enough. That I have to be careful not to offer more than I can. Because I can’t. I am enough. So I can’t give anything more or I will feel less. If you take from me or I offer I you have to in return enough that I don’t feel less. That’s how interdependence is supposed to work. We keep each other going not one or the other. It’s logistics. Train logistics. If the rails don’t go the same way exactly the same distance apart it will crash. It’s basic engineering and also basic mechanics and layout of train tracks. Are they perfect? What about a centimeter off? What about if a penny is on the track? Will that actually derail a train? Who inspects tracks? Does someone actually walk or drive that little truck that can change train tracks wheels? What else would that truck/train be doing? occasionally one may have to support another when there is weight given to another from an outside force. Like a bump on the road? Except we don’t want bumps on the tracks? No pennies? We want perfect laid out tracks. A train track may be a terrible example. It should be a great example but nothing is perfectly laid out. Except it feels like train tracks should be. My parents were that. The example. They somehow made the train move even with the bump and pennies on the tracks. Even with all train logistics failing them they didn’t derail. How? I should be what they are but I steered wrong years ago after something horrible happened and I shut down? Then I grew around that pain? Not through it. I allowed it to shape me into who I am. Some pain defines us. I was young and had to let it. No one told me not to and no one told me how to not. So I can’t now.

My therapist knows this. It’s what she wants to dig around and undo. Which means I will have to let her and allow me. Which I don’t. Or can’t?

I’ve been thinking…who doesn’t right? I always am. How can you not? Don’t think about it. People say. So you think of something else you don’t want to think about. Then the vicious cycle begins. Of thinking. Because you have to. Why do we? Why do we have to think? Why do we had to critical think? Over think? Re-think? Then think again. Why are we wired to think and some are just wired to instinct? Do other animals out there forethought and after thought and over thought into their actions? Our pollinators just do they don’t think about pollen. Bears just hibernate. Fish just swim. Birds fly. Humans just what? Think.

I want to control the world. I have controlling tendencies. Not of people so much. Or anything really. I really have the worst kind of controlling capabilities. I want everyone and everything to just control themselves. I want full control. It’s exhausting. To be in charge of so much control. Why can’t everyone just go when it’s their turn? Drive right? Be kind? Stop at a stop sign then go when they are supposed to. I have to fight the urge to get out of my car and direct traffic at 4 way stop signs. To not want to also direct flight patterns in the sky. To not want to pack every homeless person up and make them have a home and tell them to stay not homeless.

I want to be president. Who doesn’t? I ran for pretend president in junior high. I won. Of course I did. I wanted to run the entire country/junior high so I won. I wrote about being president. I don’t really want to be president I want the president to be a better president. I would be a terrible president. I would let everyone just make their decisions and try to think that everyone is capable of making their own decisions. And they are. Some are just better thinkers than others. I would let everyone just run rampant and think I have control by thinking everyone has control of themselves. Which some just don’t. Those some also don’t get to be controlled. I would actually not have any control at all. Even if someone can’t control themselves it doesn’t mean I get to. I don’t get to make someone not homeless who isn’t capable of keeping a home.

I have to let go. I have been trying. I have read back and seen I am getting somewhere. What gives? I woke the other day and decided my problem was that I didn’t have a partner. Not a partner anymore I’ve just never had a partner. I was married yes. But he wasn’t a partner. He was more a person in my area that slept in my bed sometimes and made babies with me and I fed him and kept all his things in order but he did none of that back for me. I also didn’t want him to keep anything in order for me. I keep my own order. And everyone else’s. But I can’t right now. I don’t have a full grasp on the decisions made to not teach our children in person and instead to make a bunch of 7 year olds have to learn to be super independent and to manage their time when they can’t even tell time yet. I don’t have a grasp on remote learning because I myself can’t grasp it. I can’t sit long enough to even log into a computer at best. How am I to teach my kids to use computers and technology when I am miles away from them? How do I remote learn with them when my job requires me to work from my job? How do I make her learn?

I don’t. I have to let go. Of remote learning. It doesn’t fit in our lives and I can’t make it. My kids have always been unique and can’t conform to rules that everyone else has to follow. Why should I make them start now? I won’t be able to. Something has to give. I don’t need a partner to come and do half to all of everything that is too hard for me. I need to be able to do it myself or not at all. It is the responsibility of my school system to administrate my kids education. A education plan should fit a child not the other way around. My responsibility is to be their parent. Both parents. I keep them as safe and healthy and educated as I can given what is laid out for me to administer. Which right now is nothing. I can’t be in two places at once. I can barely be in one.

I had to go back and add more to my thought of thinking. I am out of sorts with my lack of routine. I haven’t been waking at my time to write. I haven’t even been writing. I’ve been too thinky. Trying to hard to come up with a solution to something totally out of my control. Like everything is. I was tested for coronavirus. My daughter had to be so I did it with her to show how brave we are. She is actually braver than me I remind her. She didn’t have it and I knew it. She maybe had seasonal allergies and it flairs up more for her with asthma. It also could have been a cold. It could have been a viral infection that won’t kill her or anyone or it could kill us all. Who knows what she had. A doctor said. I don’t know, could be allergies, a cold or a virus. Like I had over thought before I even took her to an appointment she didn’t need to be at. I don’t take my kids to the doctor for things that need to be managed and run their course. I should not have sent her the day I did and I knew it. Or I knew it was close to not needing her to go. Her cough was too often. I knew she would use it to her advantage to go home. Not a bad cough but more often. I was not worried but I knew people would be. We have to be safe they said. I agree. She is too distracted from her cough to remote learn. I am told. I laugh. She is distracted but not from her cough and she isn’t remote learning because she can’t and now she has a cough to intentionally use to get out of it. She is coughing more to go home. I know this trick. I’ve used it myself. It worked. I wanted her out of that situation more that she did. So for now every time she coughs I will have her tested to prove she isn’t harboring a deadly but not super deadly but super contagious virus and them keep her home to build forts and practice independent while her older brother keeps her safe.

I slept last night from a single Benadryl chased with a single drink of wine. That’s all it took. I have a old or allergies or maybe a viral thing but not coronavirus and Benadryl will dry up the nose running but usually doesn’t make me drowsy, unless I add a sip of wine apparently. The fact that I set out to make myself sleep by forcing it unnaturally is a problem in itself. I have done this before and it nearly killed me. Not with this combination but with medications made by man to make people sleep. To turn it all off. I can’t be turned off. So today I feel groggy and lucky to be alive. My pants are weird and I will have an off day because I am in new pants. I don’t like new ones. I like my old ones but the knees are gone and I feel like I am in style yet I need cloth over my knees to protect them. So I have new pants. They are kind of pleated and look too fancy. I need a necklace today. Not any necklace but the one I once wore. My cameo. I haven’t worn it in years. It’s the one single thing bought for me that I can identify with. I am a mother first. I need it back on.

I can’t even sit where I am supposed to to write. All of my chairs are part of a massive fort. It’s engineering. I have her make a fort a day. Then she has to read in it. I also let her play. I hide the laptop and let her figure out how to play. She usually has tea parties. This week she had a tea party with our new baby turtles I have adopted. She scoops them out with slotted spoons and puts them in tea cups. At their spots. Then wonders off and forgets she is having a tea party with turtles. One turtle got away from the party. She didn’t tell me this until I went a few days later to change their water and only one turtle was present. Then she tells me one got away. Got away? It’s a turtle. I fear the cat actually ate it which makes me worry my cat will get sollmenila which isn’t spelled right at all. That was my moms fear when I got a turtle the first time. I assured her I was not planning to eat my turtle. Or likely play with it. Except I do play with it. He gets bored. Now he has company in his his little tank of little baby turtles my friend found. My friend who won’t get his life together. The one who I hike with but he is so broken. So broken I have imagined I will have to help make flowers for his last day. He doesn’t seem like he wants to really live. To do all the hard things that come with life. Guess what I can’t do? Make him.

I got off turtle topic. This missing turtle is ok turtle heaven or regular heaven or in no heaven at all but in my head he is no longer a living turtle. Everything dies. No one gets out of this alive. Even tea parties with children. But. In the middle of the night my oldest son comes and tells me the turtle is walking across the kitchen floor. All covered in under the fridge things and with a little injury to his soft shell. He is a soft shell turtle. So all turtles are accounted for and back being turtles alive and well. I have new rules for her now. In addition to fish we also don’t have tea parties with turtles. For now. We will have to think of different ways to play with the new baby turtles.

I have been sleeping. I thought it was from all the thinking I have been doing. That I am wearing myself out with thought. I tell my therapist this and she says. Like therapists do. Maybe it is an avoidance? That’s her job. To make me see things differently. I see things my way. Not her way or any other way. I am open minded enough to see a new way but not always understanding or accepting of new ways to see them. Especially when I don’t want to. She is also right. I am avoiding a lot. I don’t want to be woke in the middle of the night for sex. For someone to use my car. For weed. For texts. For anything. Those are all examples not real actually problems. I don’t want to think of remote learning. I don’t want to figure out where her assignments are in what drop down box. Because I can’t. I avoid when I can’t because of I could then I would but since I can’t I just don’t. So I sleep. And I don’t sleep. I’m not a natural sleeper. I am a natural waked. I can’t usually sleep so I don’t. Because I am usually avoiding sleep so I don’t accidentally die in my sleep.

I have tried to pay for coffee twice now with an insurance card. Shouldn’t it be covered? Not really tried to but pulled this card out instead of my debit. They look to much alike. My old one looked like my library card. So I’ve also tried to pay with a library card. Also not accepted. I just really need pumpkin spice today. Just take my insurance please. I slept too long and too hard and need coffee. I rarely need coffee just want it.

Wanted: someone to come in and take control of what is too hard for me. Side note. I won’t want you to or let you. I am stubborn, independent, intentionally difficult and full of chaotic critical over thinking. the single ad writes itself. I could also ad I need a driver. I don’t want to drive to anywhere so I need a driver. One who will stop and go when he is supposed to and one who knows I might need him to stop so I can get out and make everyone else stop right. But actually won’t let me out. I need to be told to sit like a dog. I need to be told to speak. To listen. I have to be talked to simply like a dog being given commands that are simple. When my not simple is too hard. Just stop and listen. He will say. Just stop and sit. Speak. I might take a minute to. Wait. I will think but not say. I can’t yet I might text you but not say. It will take me a minute to critically think through the simple command of sit. Speak. Listen. Wait. Wait is the worst. Just wait a minute. Wait? For what? How? My youngest says it to me. Wait for me mom. I say back I’m not waiting. I will keep walking and you will catch up. It sounds so mean even after I say it. But I can’t simply wait for anything that doesn’t need to be waited for. She wants me to wait so she has simple control of me. So she is right next to me at all times. So she can make sure I am fine. I know this trick. It’s mine.

Wait for me dad. Don’t walk so far ahead. I want to walk right next to you. Why do you walk so fast? I want to go that way too. Don’t go in the garage until I am ready, wait for me to go in the garage. The garden. I want to help with the bees. To work. Don’t die until I am ready dad. I wasn’t ready. He didn’t wait. He never did. Because he knew he didn’t need to. I’m not waiting Heather Anne. I’m going to the garage to work to the garden to work. I knew where he would be. He knew I knew where to be. Now I don’t know where I need to be. He is gone and didn’t wait and went ahead and died. Now where do I go? Now who tells me to sit to listen to speak. Now who? Me? How am I supposed to do that with all the thinking I do? What gives? Most of it can and should but can’t and won’t. The rest of the world needs me to think of all the thinking to run? I don’t make the world turn. I don’t run the country. I don’t make the rules. I barely even follow them. I don’t wait for anyone. So don’t tell me to wait but wait for me. I take a minute to think. So wait. But I can’t.

I haven’t been able to write. I haven’t even been able to think to write. I am way too noisy. I am agitated. Any little noise outside of me is too much noise. Right now someone’s car alarm is going off, again. It keeps going off. Like the wind is doing it. I want to smash the alarm or maybe the car.

I went to the woods yesterday. Alone. Not on my own. I was alone. I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t take anyone with me and woke furious that no one could go with me and even more furious I knew I still needed to go. Even more furious that I have no one to even take. I didn’t want to spend a single minute in the woods with myself. I have not forgotten how to be ok on my own I forgot how hard it is to be ok on my own. It was a recipe for disaster. I had images of falling a lot, being mad about other people being there. Bugs flying into my eyeballs, spider webs. I read one single review of the trail that said it was too rocky and difficult to walk and she pulled two spiders from her hair and noped her way back to the car. After a mile. I stopped after the first review. I know better than to try and base what a trail condition is like from other people points of view. What kind of mood was she in? What was her goal that day? Did she start a new medication? Is she recently out of rehab for an injury? I don’t know enough about the person who wrote the review to use it as a tool for my lack of plans. I will often call the park office and ask the rangers questions. They work the trails and travel the trails in all their moods and days so they usually say things like. Today a tree fell at a spot, or the creeks are running high today but the other day were not, there is a broken section of bridge, a sign got knocked down at this junction. We are logging in this area blazes may be absent, don’t follow the crews work roads by accident. You may see this flower in bloom. If you wait a week you may see this one.

I left with no knowledge of the trail I didn’t even print a map. I didn’t even want to go. I packed to stay the night but in my head I pictured getting there and leaving. Or getting there and hurrying. I don’t like to drive. I also recognize I am not a good driver. Not a bad one but a distracted one. The worst. I have been pulled over under the assumption I had been texting. I had not been. He assumed it based on my driving. He didn’t even see me texting but thought he saw me looking down and I swerved. I told him I was not texting but I am definitely distracted. I don’t even remember with what. Maybe a taco. Maybe a bug. Maybe I looked down just to look down.

I had to drive myself. I was so used to being driven. Which sometimes felt worse. I had no control. I had to sit and be driven by another distracted driver who needed control. I needed another steering wheel and brake pedal. Together the two distracted people could fill each other’s distracted ness and become one undistracted driver? Or we would crash into a cliff. If he turned his steering wheel one way and I did the other would it cancel the turns out and we would stay straight? What if he brakes while I accelerated. We would spin in place? Go nowhere. We never went anywhere. We spun in place and stayed straight from each of pulling away from each other. We were destined to crash.

I found where I assumed the trail was. It wasn’t clear and since I didn’t really plan I didn’t really know. I just picked this trail by process of elimination. There were no other trail heads in the area my memory told me I was supposed to be in.

I have the start of a cold. Not the start of coronavirus. I told my mom I was getting a cold and she said you better go get tested!! I said for a cold. She said for the virus. But I have had a hundred colds in my life. This is what a cold is for me. I have a scratchy throat, my eyes are wetter and I have a little post nasal drip. I do not have a virus. I knew better than to try to do anything with the early onset of cold symptoms for me. I am more agitated than normal and I am usually agitated in normal. So now I am over agitated.

I chose a holiday weekend to go. I broke a solid golden rule I have for me taught by my dad. Never travel to the woods on holiday weekends. That’s when everyone travels to the woods. The weather was stellar. The night sky has been amazing and we have a harvest moon. All the reasons for people to want to enjoy the outdoors. Problem is I want to too. Just not with them.

I made sort of a chose your own adventure kind of trail. I found a trail on the one trails site I use that shows a way into the state park without parking with everyone else to get into the state park. My lack of plan was to walk 8 miles to the state park with a connecting trail then I would play a little in the park and climb the lookout tower, find the falls and see the highest point in the state then I would turn around and walk to my car after sleeping a night somewhere. I didn’t account for really anything. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure this would work. I was not even fifty percent sure. I just headed that way in my car in an agitated state expecting it to maybe work. I would just guess if it didn’t.

As I am walking I hear squeaking. When you are in the woods a human is heard even when a mile away. We can’t help it. We sound like humans in the woods. Squeaky. Stompy. We don’t tread lightly. We clear are throats. We might hum. For me I could hear clearly a squeak from a tightened backpack. Mine does it too. There is one spot and no good reason why. I have looked for days and I know where it is but it is not a squeak to grease it is a friction squeak. I have tried padding that spot. Nothing stops the squeak. I was hearing his and I am sure he was hearing mine. I stopped to look at something. What? Oh a pile of cool mushrooms. Stood up and he was right there. Like 50 yards from me. It scared me right over to the ground off my feet. I just rocked over. I said. I knew I heard someone. And he said yes that was him squeaking back there. See, he knows the squeak. I accessed him quickly. Up and down taking in who he was fast. I like to know if I should feel threatened as soon as possible. I am a female in the woods. Alone.

His backpack had clearly been used a lot. He was super clean though and either that’s just how clean he is lucky to get his hiking clothes or he ruined his set and had to get new ones. He was wearing a super white top. I both get and don’t get the white thing. My dad was always shoving a long sleeve white shirt my way. It will reflect the sun. Why do I want to reflect the sun? I love when it warms up my obnoxious colors. You would see every little thing I got into in about 10 minutes if I was wearing white. I would like to see this guy in 4 days after he is done with his perfectly mapped out trip. He had no wedding ring. I don’t check this to see availability. I check it to see what or if they are committed to someone. That they have a person. I don’t and want one. I want that ring again to play with on my finger to remind me that someone made me a promise. I still play with the finger like it has a ring on it. This guy asks if I am ok. I had forgotten I was sitting after falling over when he startled me. I roll over to get up. My pack is too full of water in fear I won’t find water. Even though I am supposed to see a water fall in about 8 miles. I stand and he looks what? I can’t read him. He asks me where Im heading. I say my plan. He pulls out his laminated map he printed from the same site I use only he had printed his route with little dots showing specific places to stop and see or sleep and when to break and where he might find water. And he had little notes everywhere. I said. Look at your cute little map. He laughs and asks if I have one. I point to my head and say I am a chose my own adventure when I get there kind of person. He looks panicked. His eyes got big. I peak over at his map and he pulls it close to him. I’m not going to take it I think. Does he think that? Or is he holding it for his own protection and fear of not having one. In his head is he wondering, could he do that? Just leave and guess. In my head I’m thinking a perfect laid out plan is a plan for a failed perfect laid out plan. I don’t like to set myself up for failure so I don’t plan. I have all my basic things to help me get through what ever might happen. He looks at me and says. Oh good you have a gps. I say, oh this? Yeah, I don’t really know how to use it. I have it for the sos button and am still figuring the rest of the things out. I tell him that I figure someday it will come in handy. And that I assume I will have to hit the sos button to have someone else be saved. He laughs. He says that he runs across a lot of people he worries about on the trails after he passes them. I am not worried at all about this guy. He doesn’t seem worried about me. We both seem fine with our little plans. He is skilled for sure but must be like an engineer or someone who likes computers and printers and plans. He tells me to be safe and I say have fun and we will never see each other again. He will no doubt be fine. I will doubt my every move and still be fine.

I got turned around. Not just lost turned around but turned around and just went back. I had stopped to eat a snack and when I stood up I wondered in a circle on the flat glades and when I found the trail again I just started walking on it. Not noticing I was heading East and not west. I didn’t know for sure I was going west any way. I look down and notice a pile of fungus on a small log. It looked like one I had seen. Like exactly alike. As I am walking I look up and see a man and dog in front of me who had passed me coming from the other way. This didn’t make sense. Did he turn around? I climb over a log and see the little batch of red mushrooms. Then I look to my right and realize the sun is now in my right. I burst into tears. I am heading back to my car. Not to the park. I sit. I cry. I am mad. I look for a butterfly in hopes one appears and shows me my dad is with me. There are none and he isn’t with me he is dead. He is not a butterfly. It is a cute story to believe when I am less agitated and can look past the agitation and believe nonsense to help me grieve.

I am going home. I don’t want to walk here or anywhere. I don’t want to unagitate. I want to stay in the frame of mind forever. I remember I read a quote once that said something like this, when you feel like you don’t want to be in nature for even five minutes that’s when you should be for an hour. That’s not even close to what it said I just know it is something along those lines. I don’t want to sit with myself so that’s why I should. I don’t want to connect to nature so I should. I sit longer and stare at the piles of moss. They look so comfy I wish I could make a quilt from them and cover myself up and sleep here. What am I going to do? Sit here and cry forever? Give up? Push the sos button and make someone come get me so I can tell them I need rescued from myself? None of them. I’m going to cry and rest. Think.

I decide to keep going and when I got to the spot I assumed I made the mistake and headed back at I stopped. I looked around in circles and took in what I did. I just wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t in a zone to do this. I wanted to go back. So I went back. I noped my way back to the car without even thinking I was going back to my car. But now I am here. At this single spot that tricked me into thinking I should give up. That I should doubt me. I keep going. I am tripping about every single step on my right foot. My right foot keeps catching on everything protruding from the ground. I am breaking in new boots. This was not the time to break in new boots. Yet here I am on a holiday weekend in an over agitated state with new boots and too much water packed and the beginning of a cold. Might as well get this over with. Then, I see it. That butterfly I longed for just a few hours before. Right there in front of me. I closed my eyes and held them tight shut so I didn’t see it. I was willing it away. Then opened them and it was still there. Like it was waiting for me to go. It was hovering like a helicopter. Not fluttering all around busily looking for pollen. It was waiting for me to leave. I left. I looked back and it went about it’s fluttering business. I laugh. Out loud. And say. There you are. Just for fun. Just for a minute I say goodbye to my dad once again. And head west. The sun back on the side it belongs on and me back moving my agitated state ahead.

It is ridiculous to believe my dad is a butterfly messenger and it also ridiculous to believe he is not.

If I had to write a review for this trail it would be a terrible review for someone else to read. I would say things like. All the bugs flew into my eyes, but my eyes are in there way. They don’t expect an eyeball to be there. there are lots of spider webs. Every time I go through one I think of the momma spider having to start all over. It’s too rocky and my left foot is handling it better than my right. Its not too rocky. It is just rocky. It is a mountain made of billion years old rocks. There are trees down and you may have to crawl under them or climb over them. There is no water unless you pack too much and carry it. Or go when it has rained. I was agitated and want to blame the trail but the trail conditions don’t reflect my mood it’s the other way around. I am more annoyed that my right foot had forgotten to pick itself all the way up. I have my arms and hands out awaiting to fall and prepare to catch myself yet know when it happens my arms won’t do it and I will fall hard and face first. I will crack open my skull maybe even break a leg but my arms aren’t always ready for me to fall. I fall hard.

I cried again. After falling. I want out of this place so bad I am walking so bad. I had to regroup at least 3 times. No four. Once I soaked my feet in the cold water from the falls that was barely a trickle and I could barely get water filtered from it. I had to rest a lot. I have not pushed myself like this for too long. I have to remind myself I am not giving up I am resting. I am agitated over remote teaching and trying to work full time. I am agitated with confusion from someone who I met and I can’t figure out. When will I meet and attract people who are less complicated? I won’t. I would be bored. Less agitated. I don’t know how to be anything but.

Who am I when I am not anxious? I am not me. I am anxious. It’s who I am. Agitation makes me more anxious and even in a state of panic. I doubt myself and my abilities. I have been turned around and lost more times than have been on the right path and not turned around. I always think to myself how lucky I am to still be alive. I put myself in weird positions and then feel shocked when I am in weird positions. That I put myself in. I was asked for directions like 6 times. Once i helped a lady get back to her car. If I hadn’t shown up I am not sure what would have happened to her. She had almost no water left and was confused about her direction. I look at my gps and tell her she has .4 miles to the juncture before she will turn and to make sure she is going the right way to think about the sun being on her right side. I give her water. I have way too much and the weight is burdening me. I know I am .5 miles to the falls and can make me more water with my filter I also packed in case I find water. Given that one of my locations of interest is a waterfall there is little to no doubt I will find some water. Which I did. Just enough to filter what I gave away. I found that I can make waypoints in my gps tracker and can access it and see back where a spot was for mileage. That’s too hard to explain. I made a waypoint at my turn which is the turn she needs.

I keep approaching people. They ask how far until that same sign. I know the answer. I feel like I am on the trail the wrong way so many people keep coming up. There is no right or wrong way. Just my way and your way. I don’t know why people keep approaching me. I try to be unapproachable. I try to look like someone who should not be approached. But they keep approaching me.

In the end I finished my trail in a day. Not in 2 days. I walk fast when I’m agitated. I walk fast when I’m not, which isn’t a thing. I am just easily agitated. I wanted out of this woods. I was in no place to stay the night in this woods with all these squeaky people on a holiday weekend with new boots and early onset cold symptoms. There are too many people in one spot for me. One guy was talking so loud I could hear him as I walked away and looked to see he was over a mile behind me. When I first heard him talking I actually looked to see if he was carrying a microphone to amplify his voice. It was that loud.

So I am out of the woods. Literally. And physically. It did its job. I was agitated and still am but for a day it was somewhere that has a little less noise than where I have to be. Enough that for a few minutes I was here. Right there.

I haven’t written in several days, I thought it might be because I have nothing to write about, nothing to figure out or sort through and see. I was very wrong. Am very wrong. Nothing on my mind can be resolved. It can be tumbled and tumbled and tumbled and in the end the rocks will still need tumbled. Then I’ll keep tumbling them and then I will have no smooth rocks still. Because I will burn my motor up from tumbling.

This started the week of remote learning for 2/3 of my kids. So far in the 3 days of it they have not been able to access the remote learning or nothing has worked. My youngest basically plays all day and my oldest sleeps. Remoteless is not working. My kids need remotes. Need to be remoted. They don’t need plugged in. They are real life kids. Real live kids. They need a real live person for them to be able to see so they can hear so they can understand. This I can sort out and know but have little control over. We are trying too hard to control something that needs managed not controlled. As a result we are now trying to control everything. It is happening at a time in my life when I am learning to control less and let go of more. To let the universe do it for me.

Is a bigger picture to this all to teach us to let go? Who will listen? Who will not? I could get coronavirus? So could anyone. So little can be done about it anymore other than what we are doing. And in the end some are just not going to do it. People are going to die. A lot. The weak and sick and elderly will die. I have seen it and witnessed it. I’ve lost from it. I don’t want to believe still that there are too many people in the world but I still just believe there might be too many people in the world. Thé universe knows what it’s doing. How many years has it been? There is not balance in the world anymore? And we are fighting it to pieces. We will lose. Or some will lose. Or maybe it’s winning?

The planet needed a break. It needed something to say hey I’m exhausted from all the stomping around and footprints you leave and need to have less stomping around and footprints. We are supposed to only leave footprints when we go but when I go I see more than footprints. If I’m seeing it then the planet is feeling it.

The more in line I think I become with the universe the more the universe is aligned for me. The less I fight what is, the less I have to fight what is and the more I can listen to what is. The more I can finally hear. I can’t hear. I’m not deaf. I was asked once why don’t I hear what he says. Because I am listening too closely to everything I’m saying and can’t hear. I’m too noisy. First thing in the morning is the worst time to tell me what to do or ask me to do something. I wake noisy. I sometimes don’t wake and have been awake noisy all night. I’m exhausting to myself and when I’m quiet I’m actually the loudest I’ve ever been. When I’m talking I’m loud because I’m shouting over my own noise. I don’t have an inside or outside voice because I don’t know how to moderate my volume since I don’t know how to even moderate my volume no one can hear but me.

I am tense. I can tell by the pain in my sides. I’m holding tension in my shoulders. I am tense because of sex? Do people have sexual tension? Is it really a stress release? I didn’t have it for years and was tense and didn’t have sex to release tension. My tension just went away? Who studies this? Is this a study we do? We study whether or not sex can make us less tense? Can’t sex alone creat tension. You have it once and then you can’t have it again for years or weeks or hours or even minutes? What do people do? I know what people do? They go have sex. With anyone. They need it and have to have it. That’s not me. I remember when my dad died and all of a sudden I felt the loneliest I’ve ever been. And I kept trying to find someone to have sex with. Several people and no one would do it. I wasn’t tense I was lonely. It also wouldn’t have worked. It also wouldn’t have been a good idea. I also was starting to like someone. I also wanted sex not needed it.

I guess now I will say things like I remember when my dad died. I want this year to end. But I don’t want this year to end. I’m getting farther away from the date he died and it feels exactly like that. The date he died is getting farther away. The memory of his death is getting farther away. It hurts less not more. But I’m not ready to hurt less not more. I don’t want to rush the process of grief. My calendar still sits on the month he died. Someday I will have to put up a new calendar. Not today. It’s not moving until some other day.

I was asked what my goals will be for my 2nd grader this year. It was too hard. I should want her goals to be successful and not struggle with remote learning but I don’t want her to be comfortable with remote learning. I want her to be who I know she is and allowed to be who I know she is. Remoteless. Curious. Anxious. Wiggly. A really real live kid. I don’t want her to struggle of course but I want this to be a simple blimp on her life that will pass and she will adjust and adapt and be resilient and be able to go remote or remoteless.

I was asked her strengths. I dislike these character trait questions. A strength is in the eye of the beholder. They are also very situational. What I see as a strength for her some may see as a weakness. Her energy is high. I call this a strength unless she is in a situation she is told to bring her energy level down. Then it is a weakness. I try to keep her in situations that require high energy. She is very spirited. I love that description for her. She can be spirited. It’s not always her strength. She can’t sit well but our world has to have people who can’t sit well: otherwise who will do the things that need done that don’t require sitting well. Someday she could write this on her resume. I am a great non sitter.

This isn’t going to go well. I am never a very optimistic person and won’t start now. I am realistic with desires to want to be optimistic and never pessimistic. Things are just reality to me. It needs looked at closer and it needs adjusted because kids are adjustable and resilient but not all people are. Remote learning is being administered by a generation who was raised remote. We were raised by real live people. There are angry messages and social media platforms are exploding with chaos over remote learning. I want it to go well enough but not to be what we know. Just what we knew.

I am not sexually tense I am just tense. I’ve spent the week, not even a week trying to trouble shoot a microphone on a laptop so my 7 year old can remote access her teacher while she is sitting but not able to sit in a daycare that has just as many kids as her classroom would have if they were in school and in fact her daycare is operating out of an empty school. I am tense because I have had emails coming to me all week notifying me of where my 7 year old is supposed to be online and when when my 7 year old is not with me. I have a job to do. Do I email her? She doesn’t have an email or even know how to check email. I also don’t want her having email and checking emails. She has meetings. My child has meetings all day. I am tense for her. She doesn’t even know the pressure I feel for her or the pressure she should feel for her about having meetings all day. Instead of school all day. I am tense because no one is using turn signals and driving well including me. Even my turn signal makes too much noise. I am tense from being told to browse more and touch less in a bookstore. I am tense because I want a big long hike and don’t want to. I know when I don’t want to hike is exactly when I should. I don’t want to need to make more footprints when the universe is trying to say let’s all make less but she means less carbon not less real boots. Less trash. Less gas. Less emissions. Less buildings. Less people. I don’t even care if I am one of the too many. I may be? Anyone could be? I am just tense because I am tense. I get tense when there is tension to be gotten. I can’t tumble it because none of it can be over thought and tumbled and worked out. It can’t be controlled and I can’t even begin to try to. Everyone else is for me.

I’ve dreamt of silverware for two nights in a row. It’s just everywhere. I still wake terrified feeling but about cutlery. I can’t grasp anything else from the dreams other than putting silverware away. I try to grasp too much. Holding onto silverware all night long apparently.

I was asked how one stays so long with someone if miserable. The answer is both simple and not: I stayed simply because I was left alone. Which is what I like. Except I don’t. I never said I needed more because I don’t say I need more and neither did he. He needed more and found it, I needed more and ignored it. So I wouldn’t need more. It feels just too needy to need something from someone. Open this jar. Move this, do that. Say what I need. Do what I need. It’s just plain old too needy. But I did need more. I was exhausted. I am still exhausted. I do everything on my own. So I don’t have to rely on someone who won’t be able to give me what I need but don’t need but really need. Which is really what I want. I don’t need someone to open a jar. I will smash a jar open before I ask someone to open a jar. But…wipe away my tears, move my hair, wipe the dirt from my cheek, hold me, tell me it’s ok, tell me it’s not real, all the things stuck inside are not real. Just tell me something. Listen to something when I can’t. But want to but can’t. Take my hand up the hill over the water. Help me back up. Even if I say no. Isn’t that what all women want? Or maybe some men? Basic needs met but being wanted. Being looked after.

How to you look after someone without doing it for them? Aren’t we supposed to take care of each other? It things aren’t unhealthy then we should support them? I know in my head I could be a really great or really not great enabler. I get so frustrated when people won’t do for themselves what I know they can because I know I could, that I would do it for them. No matter what it is. Aside from murder or breaking laws. I would support unhealthy habits because I wouldn’t know they even had them. I might even know and not care as long as simple basic wants of mine are met. I’ll support your habits if you simply wipe away a tear stained cheek? That’s ridiculous. I know better. Don’t I. Didn’t I learn this once already?

This is why I avoid homeless people. Except sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I give them money only to know they won’t use it to like buy a house because it’s just 10 dollars. But they will buy something they just think they need. How can you be homeless and not want to just numb the feeling of being that homeless? They aren’t saving all that money to pay rent right? Or get a hotel room? How do you get back on your feet without someone who helps? Somewhere who helps? Even if it’s enabling? Isn’t it helping? Or not? How does someone pull themselves up from boot straps all on their own if they don’t even have boots?

I was there once. Helpless. Homeless. Nowhere. I didn’t stand on the corners and ask for help. I couldn’t pull myself up by boot straps either since I didn’t have boots. I found a place that helped me find boots. Not a boot store. People who demand you do it. Demand you find your way. They kept me safe from myself and from others. They showed me I can find my own boots. Which I did. Real boots. Then I walked in them. Found my way by not finding my way. How do you show someone else they can do the same? Without doing it for them? They have to want to.

How can you see anything else when all you saw was just one something for so long? What if you only saw yellow? Then red wouldn’t make sense? Can you be color blind with one color? Or is that just plain old blind? Color blind means not seeing colors. But you see black and white? Are there people who just see one color? How do you describe a color to someone? Oh you only see yellow? Let me tell you about blue. Then you describe an item that is blue to a person who sees it as yellow. How do they describe that what they see is yellow of thats all they’ve ever seen. You say the sky is blue and they say maybe. I see yellow. But do they if that’s all they knew and know and you can’t describe yellow. You could argue with them for hours about what a color is but they won’t be able to agree or disagree. How can you describe a sunset to someone who is blind? By how it made you feel. I felt like I was glowing it was so red. You could see my face it looked on fire. Except they can’t see so they can’t see that your face looked on fire or even what fire looked like. And they would say, what does fire look like and you would say what? Fire looks like fire. But it feels hot and warm. So what does yellow feel like? I would make a blind person crazy. I would want to make them know what colors were like.

I just want everyone to see things. See something better than what they see. Like I did once. How did I finally see what I see now after seeing what I did for so long? How? I can’t see back to see how I was able to see forward. I just felt it. It wasn’t anything other than a feeling. I felt weak. So weak that in my head my only option was to be stronger? I couldn’t get any weaker than I was. I hurt everywhere. I could barely cover with a blanket my body was so painful from tension. I could not breath. I could not live. Until I just wanted to. I had no idea that in that moment was the strongest I have ever been. That moment I did pull myself up by imaginary boot straps without any boots. I didn’t know what I would see. I didn’t know what I would feel. I just didn’t want to see and feel what I did. Yellow wasn’t enough. I wanted to see more. I knew there had to be. I’m not saying I only saw one color but I felt like I only saw one color for so long.

How can I help him see? I can’t. He has to want to. I want him to. That’s not enough. I’m not not enough but me wanting him to is not the same as him wanting to. I know he can and is capable but he doesn’t yet? How do you support? What’s that like? To just support someone? To make them do what they need to for themselves but also they need you for somethings they can’t need for themselves. It’s basic saying it. I need you to wipe these tears away. And see if they will. It’s basic I need you to help me I can’t get out of this mess. In my head I’m thinking stop getting into messes. But even I get into messes I can’t get out of without needing help. I don’t want it but need it. I just don’t say it. I am still blind when it comes to saying what I need which I’m turn will get what someone else needs back? I just see a few colors right now not all of them? Although I see all of them. I can see colors. But I can’t see past where I am to know what something is like I’ve never seen.

I have started the research process of why we used and when we started using mice and labyrinths for behavioral studies. I stopped myself. For now. It’s too fascinating and also too cruel to continue. I’m going to want to continue forever. There are mouse behavioral scientists. People who sit and plop mice into scenarios and record their every sniff in a corner and move they make to guess why it did it. Mice swim by instinct. This I didn’t know. Never once have I thought of dropping a mouse into a tub of water with a man made platform to see if it will get to then platform and how. I still do not want to do this to a mouse. In fact I think they should stop doing it to mice. We can’t do it to people? Mice are simple minded and can’t express their concerns with this process so we just use them? It seems cruel. All animal testing seems cruel. This is why I stopped. It was taking me down a path of knowing too much about cruelty to animals so we can compare them to us people. People can say why we smelled the corner before we turned left so we don’t use them. It’s less researchy.

I wanted a maze and I got one. Not a trail in the woods at all, but what I thought would be the painful process of registering 3 kids in 3 separate schools with 3 separate ways of learning this year. My oldest with special needs is in person. Her classroom is the only one in the entire school coming. Like 6 kids in a building meant for a thousand. My middle son is remote learning which won’t work. He is hands on and needs in person. Not to say he will fail but the system is going to fail him. My youngest is pretty much going to daycare all day long and the daycare will administer her remote learning as well so I can keep growing plants. She is sort of spirited and doesn’t sit well so I’m not sure how this will go for her. But she is young and adapts well so she might, except I don’t her I can’t sit still curious spirit crushed by sitting.

Navigating the process was like being in a maze. Each school had tables and shelves to coral us like cattle to get to places so we wouldn’t wonder astray and touch things and people. I felt like exactly what I felt like, a mouse in a maze. Not like cattle being coraled but a mouse in a maze. Cattle are too close to each other when coraled. We can’t be close to each other. They released us 7 at a time into the maze of registration. Plopped in it to see what we would do and how we would behave so they can make us behave even more. They even studied us. People standing around every corner to say no and not to and where to. It was not to see what we would do it was to make sure we wouldn’t do anything. But I got out. Through and alive. Alive is a little dramatic except I don’t feel like I was exposed to a deadly virus so I say alive.

My turtles aren’t dead. I thought they were because they were not moving. Not moving to me I suppose means dead. They were playing dead? That sleepy. They are too small and miss their mom? They were found while digging and now are swimming and playing dead in a little tank in my kitchen. When they were dead I covered them with a towel and told myself someone would have to remove them. The turtle coroner? I needed someone to look closer and confirm death and remove them so I didn’t have to. I don’t have a lot of pets so that when they die I don’t have to take care of them dead. I can’t. I want everything alive. And they were. I came back to remove them later since I don’t actually have anyone let alone a turtle coroner to remove them and they were just swimming away in their gross murky water. So not dead. This is why I’m not a coroner myself. I confuse sleeping with dead. Actually it’s just one reason.

I slept and was choked. I am not dead but I woke dead in my dreams. I didn’t want to fall asleep last night from fear of being chased in my sleep again and eventually my body said it had to sleep from all the people in a maze at school navigating. Then I woke choked. My airway felt closed up when I swallowed and tried to breath. I lied awake after this until morning. Researching mice.

I am trying to just embrace this sleep nightmare mess. It means something. I should be researched at night so someone can say why. I need someone to watch me sleep or help me sleep or just make sure I’m not dead from my sleep when I wake from my dying in my sleep. I need someone to remove dead animals but I need someone to make sure they aren’t dead apparently first. I need someone someday. Today actually.

That’s what the pyramid foundation was being made for. So I can build on top of it and add things that are on top of something solid, stable and secure. I’m finally safe and can keep building it. I don’t want it to be a pyramid in my head but once it’s in my head it’s in my head. Now I’m making a pyramid in life. How did they even do that then? Make pyramids? It seems impossible. Do we still make them? Are we still making pyramids in Egypt? I’m sure I will know when I wake from my Im dead in my sleep and to afraid to fall back to dead sleep. If I could go back in time it would be to be in Egypt and be on a crew who helped build pyramids just so I could see a pyramid being actually built so I know it really happened.

I am looking at the baby turtles now and they still look dead. They haven’t moved in about 20 minutes. When I first started watching them. Not a single movement. Not even when I move the tank. They are that alive. Not dead. Just sleeping. Dreaming turtle dreams.

I feel inadequate. Like I’ve failed and am not enough again. Back to not enough. I can’t be more. I can’t be there for anyone no more than they can be to remove turtles for me. I have to remove dead turtles for me myself. I have to check for turtle life myself. I missed my daughters thyroid function problems. I’ve been blaming her symptoms in my head on grief. She is eating more, sleeping less, gaining weight, erratic periods. But it is likely her thyroid. As it once was. Everything is about grief to me right now. Everything is dead or almost dead to me. Everything feels like it could end in a second.

I’m not enough for someone else because I’m still not enough for me? I’m not there yet? I’m close but not? Is that a thing? When I feel like enough for me then I will for someone else? Or they will be enough because I don’t need them for anything? So why are they there? For what? Are we just never enough and that’s why we need people? But we still struggle with not enough? Or is that me?

How do you be more? For a person? You don’t? You just do what we do and they do what they do and you never try? If no one ever tried no one would ever be together? Not everyone is listening to the universe and making no decisions and just letting the universe make them for them? Even though thé universe isn’t making them for them they are just made and they just do? What if we all got it? We all believed one solid thing and one single thing and it was true? What if there was perfect balance and rhythm to the universe because the universe was in control? It is? We fight it? We try to hard when we log on to shop for new people when the people we have aren’t enough and we can’t say so? We fight it when we try to find something better? Is that what he did? Looked for something better? Than me? Who is better than me? Today it seems everyone that is online and looking for someone is? Because they look so tempting online. They are fighting a universe in control. We are all sniffing around corners and trying to navigate in a maze. Like the mice. We are trying to decide left or right? We are all just trying? Are we trying or deciding anything? This won’t ever get resolved for me. I’m trying to ask questions with no answers. I’m making more as I go so I have more unanswered questions. Because there are too many and really just one. Who is in control?

I was able to go back to therapy. I thought I was just done since she was opening her own practice. I don’t think I will ever be done. Out of the blue she messages me and asks me for my same time slot back. She knows I will never be done. It came right when I needed it. When I feel stuck and lost. Like a rat in a maze? A person in a corn maze? A mouse in a maze?

But. Like some things do. The universe looks out for me?

It was too hard to get through my sisters husbands funeral. I made it through but I didn’t. I was sent a small video from a friend I’ve made through the inter webs of him driving through Colorado and seeing all of the Aspen trees and just thinking of me. He knows how much I love them. He is one of my distant friends. By miles. We met in my store originally and just immediately connected. I knew he had pain. I picked up on it from the first day I met him and his wife. They were adorable yet to me it seemed wrong and off. Out of balance. They were adorable separately but together they didn’t add up. Then he came in one day alone. His face tear stained and red. He was buying lots of plants for clearly lots of pain. I said nothing. Just sent him on. Then didn’t see him for months. Then connected on our Instagram page. Then we started talking. Then we opened up about our pain. Then we connected forever. He no longer had this wife and he knew a wife wasn’t what was for him for years and finally was able to fully be himself and recognize not to be afraid of himself. I adore him and his courage to be who he is. I find simple strength sometimes just by thinking of his pain. So weird right? I find comfort in your pain? I found peace knowing you also suffered? Yet, he did me too? Misery likes company?

My other friend is back to trying to online meet. Once when I tried it one of the questions was why I was online dating? I said to learn who I am through others. I never answered the questions right. Sometimes I even asked a question back to the question. Sometimes I was intentionally difficult to try to…to what? Be intentionally difficult? Show that I am difficult? Why? So no one will ever want to meet me? Or to show that sometimes I am just intentionally difficult? Either way no one ever wanted to meet me intentionally. No one seemed to be on there to actually meet anyone. Just look and kill time maybe? I did learn more about me than any single person on there. Or out there.

I need a hike. A good get lost kind. Not a small little 2 mile clear marked and simple path that has no way of being fucked up. A 20 mile loop that has turns not marked, some terrain and some confusion so I can mess the whole thing up and still come out alive. That kind of hike. The kind that makes me feel like I almost didn’t make it. I’ve created chaos all on my own that I need to uncreate. I have a 20 year old child who has messed with me enough I doubt who I am. An ex who has made me once again doubt who I am. A friend I can’t predict. A friend I miss. A solid pyramid base to move up to my next level of I don’t want to do this all on my own forever. Why did she use pyramids? She is right though. I have a foundation. A place to build from. So what’s next and how? Stuck in the corner of a maze for some reason.

I keep thinking about how when you boil eggs they get hard but when you boil potatoes they get soft. It makes no sense to me. Science is just cool? That’s why? That’s the answer I was given. We don’t really know or we do and I just don’t? It’s what they are made of. It depends on what you are made of how you will come out? Soft or hard? Like potatoes and eggs. We make a salad with both. They just both come out different. Some of us just come out harder after being boiled? Making it a metaphor for life isn’t working without thinking of boiling baby chickens and people. Then I can’t eat boiled eggs after thinking of people and chickens being boiled. it’s just a saying. It’s just boiled food. It’s just too much for me to make sense of. Who decides to boil an egg? Why? Who first boiled a chicken and thought, I will rip all the feathers from this animal and then boil it and rip it off it’s bones and then eat it? Why? I’m not a vegetarian it’s literally just birds. Birds can’t be unthought of for me to be eaten. In any form. Unless in salad and done fast and I don’t think about birds. Which is hard to do when you are eating a bird.

This is really the first difficult to impossible thing I’ve been through all on my own. My dad dying. Not alone but without medications, a tip toe into alcohol, and a controlling individual who told me how to or not to feel. This is all me and all my new found coping skills. I don’t even have an addiction to get me through this all? Because I know I could? So I don’t. I just have me and my woods. That’s how I get through. By getting out and through. I need a good maze. Like a little mouse or rat in a maze. I need a corn maze? Straw maze? I want to get to little corners and places that I will get pissed off and frustrated. Like I am right now. I can’t get out and turn around and find another one that I also can’t get out of. Then another. Then I want to sit and feel like I want to give up like I am right now. and think about giving up and just sitting there until what? I die? I’m killed? I fall asleep forever? I tell myself how silly it is to give up? I tell myself finally I am resting not giving up? Then I don’t give up because I don’t give up. I also don’t want to die or be killed in the woods a corn maze or a straw maze. I don’t want to fall asleep forever or I will be chased in my sleep forever. I want to keep going. And do it all over again. Give up but never give up. So I can get out.

I can only imagine what a rat thinks in a maze. Maybe not a corn maze but the ones that scientists use to watch mice and rats in mazes. Why? To see what? How we get out of things? How they do? Are our brains closely related to a rat or mouse? I don’t know which one they use? Who said let’s see what this rat does when we try to make him give up? Let’s watch this rat struggle. We do it to people with corn and straw mazes. Let’s see who can get out. I’m stuck in a corn maze today.

I ate my finger nails all the way off. It’s just an option of trimming that I tend to do when I get to anxious. Down to skin and even beyond skin. I can cut them and have been for a few years but occasionally I sit and can’t sit and then I eat my nails. Why do some of us chew off our nails? I do because I am haunted by bird eating anxiety and nightmares of bird eating anxiety and being chased and murdered in my sleep that feels like being chased in my wake. I get nightmares like a child still as an adult. For no good reason. Awake I’m thinking of what happened in my sleep. On top of what is happening in my wake. They are all mixed up from not actually being able to sleep some nights but when I do there are birds and exhausting chases to stay alive. Then I wake exhausted from staying alive in my sleep. While I’m awake. I’m exhausted from imaginary things. Why do some of us get nightmares as grown ups? I don’t have a super traumatic past to make me nightmare of being chased. I am just always being chased. My face was swollen last night in my chase in my sleep/ Not like I was beat up but like an allergic reaction. I couldn’t breath and woke in a sweat and panic. I fell from bed. All the way to the ground. I feel like I need a railing on my bed as much as I fall from bed as an adult.

Is it the few weeks I went with out therapy. I have to talk to someone for one full hour about whatever I want or I will have nightmares? Is it that I haven’t hiked properly to undo the chaos I created all on my own? Is it the anxiety of preparing for remote learning that will not work and my kids will never benefit from because they are hands on learners? Is it the anxiety of meeting someone who I am learning things from and they take my hand to help me through things? Is it the next pyramid level? Is it the dead turtles floating in my tank from being captured to keep? Is it the birds I’m eating? Is it the dead bug? The baby deer from years ago that had a broken leg and I know never made it but no way I could carry it miles to my car and then what? 9 hours in my car back to my state to what? Live? Is it my dad being gone? He hasn’t always been gone and I’ve always had nightmares. I’ve never been chased. Or almost murdered. That I know of. So why do I get them when I’m trying to rest. Because I can’t rest. I’m unrested. In a corn maze.