Why don’t school bus drivers have to have experience? None at all? Like not even driving? I heard this in the radio for new drivers this year. What about around kids? Just no experience at all? No driving experience? They should say some experience needed. They teach you all the school bus driving things? When? On the job? Before it? What about the guy training? Does he need experience?

What do you talk about on your last day of therapy? Nothing that can really be continued right? No big unresolved issues? There shouldn’t be any if I am done. It’s not my last day. Not even close. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to keep seeing her when she leaves to open her own practice. She thinks I should continue seeing her given my recent losses and now exploring new things. Meeting people. Bucket filling.

I spent the day wondering what to talk about with her. I wanted it to be just light and easy talk. Maybe about her new practice. Instead she opens up a whole new avenue of issues I have. I’ve known I have. How insecure I am. Really? On my last day? So I will need to find a way to keep seeing her? Therapists want us better right? Then what? There are plenty of people out there to talk to them. They like to be talked to? Therapists are people who like to be talked to. I like to talk. I need to talk so that I have less to say.

It is triggering for me to feel something that doesn’t quite sit right when things aren’t balanced. Triggering meaning it brings up something from something that happened once. Like really fragile glass breaking can stop me dead cold in my tracks. Not all glass breaking but brittle thin glass like a thin flower vase or country glass on old country glass windows.

My bucket is finally being filled she says. Someone is listening, tending to needs I’ve never had met. It almost feels like it’s really not allowed. Like I should stop it. It’s too close. These are my buckets no one fills them but me. The bucket never was filled by someone before how can I be certain it stays full? Doesn’t leak? What about too full? Why is there a bucket at all? Why can’t I be my own bucket filler? Because I can’t self validate? Because touching yourself is totally different than someone else? It’s almost electric. It’s shocking and I get goosebumps still.

I felt it not being full for a minute. Uncertainty. Questions not answered. Questions not asked. I panicked at the thought I was filling fuller except in one place and then I felt out of balance. My bucket is weird. Maybe I have two. I need to carry one in each hand so I’m balanced. Do they ever feel too full? Like a burden? What happens to bucket filling when they are full? How long can I hold them? And why can’t I get it out of my head that I am carrying weight of another? When it is actually weight I’ve been lacking. That I’ve felt empty and now am being felt complete. Why was I empty? Because I chose to have a bucket filler who didn’t know how to do it? He was actually a bucket thief. He knocked them over or I had to carry his. Why am I holding them out so far away from me with my arms out in my head? Why am I holding them at all in my head? Why aren’t they just sitting on the ground and being filled. I shouldn’t be carrying them at all.

I likely have drank a parasite from a river. I filtered most my water but towards the end of my hike my filter was clogging. The river was full of mica. Which looked like little diamond dust. So I boiled it once. But I am sure I didn’t boil it long enough I don’t have a lot of patience for boiling water. I usually forget I’m boiling it then I’m just heating and cooking a pan or cooking noodles until they are not noodles anymore and I need a new pan.

I drank this water and made two meals with it. Then two days later had diarrhea. Nothing else and just for about a week. I was just starting to get my appetite back when this came up. I can’t eat again. I was so worried to even call my doctor. I don’t even want to tell people in fear of being told I have corona virus.

I am looking for my bucket to be full. Not just sort of full. It’s been empty for so long. I just have to stop thinking I’m carrying them. That they are something I carry. They feel kind of heavy and like they shouldn’t be filled. But I know that’s just my insecurity I will have to work through. With my therapist so she has someone who talks to her.

I was stopped and asked by a little girl if she could pet my dads dog. I love when little kids do this because it means their parents taught them. Kids don’t naturally have restraint with animals. I then proceed to tell this little girl all about my dad and him dying. That the dog is skiddish around people nervous maybe that they know something about where his owner is? She asks what skiddish is. I say afraid. That he is out with me to learn to be out again with out his special person. That someday maybe she can pet him I hope. Even though I will likely never see her again. She asked questions and was so sweet. Then her mom rode up and said are you trying to make this lady let you pet the dog. And the little girl smiled and said I’m so sorry your dad died but was definitely talking to the dog. And the mom looked at me. I shrugged. The world put that right into my path today. I’m sure they rode away with an interesting and maybe deep conversation I hope anyway. My dads dog is still upset his person died and I’m trying to help him deal with it and it will likely turn into him helping me. Who saved who? I’ve seen the magnet on the car with the dog paw.

My sister is coronavirus free. She is a coronavirus survivor. Her husband is a coronavirus casualty, victim? Non survivor. She needs a shirt that says I kicked corona’s ass. She needs a shirt that says fuck coronavirus. She was sick over 30 days. Isolated and away from her dying spouse who she had to say goodby to via zoom. She didn’t get to touch him one last time. But she did? We just don’t know when it is going to be. The last time she did did she wonder if it would be the last? The last time i saw him I joked not to die of coronavirus. Why not joke right? I knew it might happen and hoped it wouldn’t but a joke seemed the way to say my goodbye I didn’t know was goodbye.

So since my dad died I’ve contracted a tick disease and now a parasite from river water. But not coronavirus. What in the world is the universe saying here? I would of course contract these things I go where no people are not where they are. I spend a lot of time in the woods and the rivers. I’m shocked it hasn’t happened more often. Do I need to be more careful? Always. I am not always thinking of the things I could take out with me from a wild place. I’m thinking of things I could take out with me from wilder places. Like a gas station pump handle or a debit card pad or a person who breaths too close to me.

Oh so not like me. I loved every minute though. You can make anything sound dirty if you just say it right. Try it. Say maybe you can clean her gutters. Or clean her door knobs. Eat her cheesecake. Anything. Some sound worse than dirty. I went to be with him. I needed him. Like right then when he did me. Then didn’t want to leave. He said I can’t kiss him all night yet I couldn’t find a reason I couldn’t. Then I found many. Why? Who says? It was too tempting and again I have a bucket I am trying to balance in my other hand while one is still being filled. Now it slowly is. How can I laugh so easy with him? How can he have such a great laugh? Why do we laugh so different? Why don’t we laugh in other languages? Why are some so big and some a giggle? Laughing is like it’s own language. We could all just talk in laugh. What language do you speak we would ask others? Who, me? You know, I speak laugh. Don’t we all?

He thought I hated him. I said I could never hate him. He said he has heard that before. But he hasn’t met someone like me before. I still don’t hate someone who I should but just can’t. Why? It’s a draining emotion. Like love. It really means something. It can’t be unsaid. Once you love you don’t get unlove. It’s my rule and should be everyone’s. Once you hate how do you love again? Can you hate then not hate? Is hate the absolute opposite of love? I don’t hate you. It is just a terrible word. I am dying to know it’s exact origin but going to restrain this search for now. It’s tabled. I don’t hate and won’t google hate.

My stomach is still rolling around a parasite this morning. It feels like food poisoning which I’ve had just once last year from ground beef that was recalled. My stomach is hollow and noisy and lacking no parasites in it. It is freaking me out that I have bugs in my tummy. I picture tadpoles. I don’t want them to grow and get comfy in there. I’m not supposed to keep the diarrhea from not happening. It has to get out. What a terrible topic yet one not often talked about. Our poop. I was raised by someone who asked what color was your poop. He had a liver disease and it was not unusual for us to chat about stools at diner. If I had an upset stomach that’s the question. Because it’s a clue. We love clues. They give us answers. Black and tarry?yellow and greasy?was it white?. Blue? Oh that was the blue icing from the cake.

So I’m going to keep on letting him help me fill my buckets and I’m going to his. I may not know how but I bet if I ask I could. Maybe I already am and there isn’t anything to ask. He keeps wanting to see me for reasons I can’t understand yet. We make a good bucket filling team maybe.

When something comes out of left field we are surprised right? Why? Why not right field? Or center? Are players surprised when they get out from a play out of left field only? Most plays shouldn’t be that surprising. They are players who play a game that doesn’t offer a ton of surprise. It’s skill, technique and attention.

Why did it turn into a catch phrase for life? Was someone sitting there one day watching baseball and the left fielder fielded a play to home and the runner to home was so surprised because its the one place the back is to the fielder? Then he threw to home and the runner was out! Or maybe safe? And the man in the stands yelled “man that came right out of left field” and it did. The runner was shocked. You can’t turn around and watch left field when running to home as well as the other bases? I have no idea but he came out of left field. I wasn’t watching and maybe running for home and hé came right out of left field.

Why did baseball even come into my head? I love baseball. Not like a die hard fan but it’s just always something that was on at my grandmas house. It was always something my son played. I just kind of fell into it. I can listen to it on the radio. It’s one of the few things I can listen to that isn’t music.

He came out of nowhere is where he came from. I was fine and doing ok. I was comfortable where I was. But also I was ready to be uncomfortable again. I knew it on my last solo backpack trip. I was frustrated I was on my own. I wanted someone there. I also knew I would do what I could to make sure the next year I took a trip I would not go at it solo. I can be solo but I didn’t want to be anymore.

So I stopped looking for someone to be with. I just quit and gave it to the universe to tangle and untangle then throw it out of left field when I’m running away. I’ll be surprised was my plan. I hate surprises. Also I hate the word hate. But I’m using it. Surprises are too surprising. Which sounds so obvious like how I don’t really like ice cream because it is too cold. It is the temperature of it. Strawberry Ice cream tastes different than a strawberry milk shake because it is colder.

I have a guy who keeps messaging me that shouldn’t be. This is not a surprise. It is not out of left field. I have seen it coming always. I’m also always watching for it. He struggles with something in the place he is in and is looking for something in me to fill that void. I’m onto it. I’ve tried telling him. I’ve tried to show him. Take care of you. I’m not a void filler. He needs to take care of what ever is not ok and not look for something from me that I can’t offer. I can’t offer void filling. He has a wife. He swears we are soul mates. I don’t know if I even believe in soul mates if I did I feel like it’s my daughter sometimes. If I did I feel like it could be anyone I wanted it to be if I just said it. Like he does. To try to get me to believe it. But I don’t feel it.

I want to be a better tax doer. So I keep doing them myself. The tax place is auditing me, again. I have to prove that I am who I say I am, again. I have to keep doing this for two reasons. One, so many people try to steal identities and falsely claim credits not due to them that I now have to prove I am due them. Also, I am so bad at taxes that the tax people aren’t even sure if I’m a person. I’m still not going to hire someone to do them. How hard can it be to do my taxes right?

My relationship status: entangled.

• involve (someone) in difficulties or complicated circumstances from which it is difficult to escape.

I am not in one is what it is. I am entangled in a situation for me that I put myself in by letting the universe try and untangle what was and straighten it out and send it back out. I let go. I had to. I was trying too hard to make the world do what I wanted it to. The world has had to untangle this before it can get itself back on the proper orbit that I won’t involve myself in again. Until now. Because it’s entangled. It’s difficult now. It started out as nothing in my head.

There is no rule that says my shoelaces have to match.

I keep giving money to homeless people. I can’t stop. Not a lot but more than I should be. I’m enabling. I’m not helping them. They need to maybe go backpacking. Get in the woods. Take it to the bush. Get out. Keep going. Connect with th nature. They will buy a beer. Maybe 6. Maybe something else. I don’t know but 13.00 isn’t going to get them on their feet or get them out on a backpack trip. They need to get on their own feet. They can’t go backpacking with me. I wish I could drive with my eyes closed. Not see them. Then they aren’t there.

I wanted someone to hike with. Then my dad died and I wanted him back. Then I wanted to sleep with someone. Not him just someone. To be comforted. Then I kept trying to make someone by using cheesecake as code for sex. Then I wanted to just wear a mans shirt. Grief was taking me all over the place.

He didn’t start of as that someone I thought I would be at here with. He started off as my hiking partner. That was what I saw him as. He also snuck his way in to that. Why? Did he want to hike that bad? He asked me once what I would be doing on weekend soon and I said when my kids go back to their dads I will be hiking every weekend. He said. Me too. I said oh. Really? You hike? He said. No. I said then….he said, I’m going with you. And then he did. And then he kept going.

I didn’t see it as anything more until recently. It just happened in my head one day. It was just the little kiss on the head in the middle of the night. I was thought of in the middle of the night. Such a girly little move in my head to think. Do I really need to be thought of in the middle of the night? Yes. The answer is yes. People want to be thought of often.

He came out of left field when I was in love with someone I couldn’t have. Someone not available. Someone I tried to make like me. Someone who showed me that can’t happen. Someone who I pictured being with me in my trips and hikes. Pictured so much I didn’t see who was right in front of me but came from nowhere. Some of the hikes it was like he wasn’t there. I was still just me hiking. I knew he was there but I still saw what I always saw. Felt what I always felt. He felt like an intruder in my space. Then he just kept getting into it. Then he got closer and closer and closer. That close that makes me panic.

I imagine the joy and happy I see in his face when he is out in the woods is even difficult for him to understand. He has had so much disappointment and let down for so long that he seems to expect it and even set it up to happen. Like he doesn’t know who he is when he isn’t in the woods. I’ve seen it. I’ve watched him find himself a little in the same place I did. I get to witness this change. He has to be kept entertained. Always seeing something and doing. I get this.

But he kept getting closer to me. Even when I kept moving away. In my head I was not going to allow anyone ever close to me again. Even though I wanted it. But I needed him to. I needed to feel that panic rise in my chest as someone put their arms around me again. So I can help it subside. It made me want more. Not less. I thought it would make me want less. Want it to go away. Want to run and hide. It did but I didn’t. But I am now.

I said I wanted more. And now I am making something out of nothing so I can feel an easy way out. I also am aware I’m doing it. Because it is easier. Which isn’t me. I don’t like easy. It’s too easy. Like ice cream is too cold and surprise are too surprising. The best I can do is write out what is in my head and hope it is read and considered. I someday want to be able to say these things. But it’s a lot of things to say. It’s still tangled up. Like a lot. I let go and then tried again to take control. Now it’s messy and entangled. Now I’m watching my back.

My mind is mixed up. I had 3/4 of a glass of wine last night which is 1/4 more than I am allowed by me before I don’t feel like me anymore. Before I lose control of my mind. It’s just enough to breath deep and think slower but not not think at all. Or worse. Think of the sad. I don’t want to think of the sad and confusing when 3/4 or a glass of wine is telling me it’s all worse than it is. I want to think of the sad at my normal rate of speed. Quickly and through it. Too slow and it lingers and mixes up with everything else. I dealt with a difficult situation with less control of my thoughts.

I am anxious times a hundred. What is that word? Why isn’t there more words for more anxious? Anxious doesn’t cover it properly and adding just super or more just adds another word making me anxiouser that I can’t be just anxious and not what? The anxiousest. Also not a word.

I am working through really tough laid out boundaries I’ve had for years that I really want moved. Laid out different. The boundaries from me to others as well as from others to me need changed. There is a moth that has 5 larvae stages. Not just the change from larvae to moth but 5 weeks of different larvae before becoming a moth. This is beyond fascinating to me. It would be so weird if humans had stages like moths. There may be a movie on the back of my mind that is about a human that cocoons. I think called just that. Cocoon. We just go from small versions of ourself to bigger. But a baby doesn’t resemble a grown up at all. They aren’t just little people we are less bone, fat and hair and teeth changes that I will never get why we lose an entire set and grow in an entire new set. Why? Pulling teeth from a child with special needs is the most bizarre experience I ever had. She didn’t get it at all. But she kept swallowing teeth. It may be even that odd with all my kids. So odd they decided let’s just do it ourselves because why is mom pulling all theteeth?

Anyway this moth gets to change his rules 5 times. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to lay out 5 new rules for myself and they will be a little further from me and closer to others and a little further from others to allow them closer to me. What? Or something. I am just afraid I will dive in. I am a dive right in person. Not a tip toer. I love that much. Too much. I’ve covered this in my head already. I’m an over lover. I suffocated a bird by cuddling it as a child. I just didn’t know you can’t cuddle with a bird. I used to worry I would roll onto my child when breast feeding. Just casually fall asleep while they are eating. Then they would die.

I don’t want to jump in here. I do. Trust me. I do. I have it laid out in my head in about 6 steps. One more than the moth has before he becomes a moth. I one upped the moth. Mine takes longer because I am human with teeth and not a big beautiful cecropia moth.

I research and talk about bugs when I don’t want to think about what I should be. I actually research lots of things but bugs are my go to. They love plants. We have a common bond. I grow their food. I pulled weeds the other day with aphids on it. Covered so thick my hand turned yellow from their little dead bodies smashed on my hand. I lost my lunch and still can’t eat without thinking about it. I had aphid bodies in my nails. I am so beyond mad that I didn’t just leave the viney weed they were on and not on my hibiscus. I should have used this as a biological control method but the vine was viney and I was avoiding seeing someone I need to not jump into deep water with, so I needed a place to hide. Also in hopes he would want to find me. Which he didn’t and I was both relieved and mad. Like I get when I play solo hide and seek. No one will play if you don’t tell them to. I don’t like not independent games though. I didn’t cooperate at softball, volleyball, or basketball. I could have but I didn’t want to play. I wanted to do what I wanted to do. Not play games with other people. Play hide and seek alone.

I had such an amazing time with someone that I can’t handle it. It made me see right into the future too far for even me. Dancing, laughing, holding hands, playing cards, all the way to will you make sure no one zooms with me when I die and make sure I die all on my own. See 6 steps.

I’m not afraid to die. I’m ok and I will be. It’s what life is sort of preparing us for. Death. The end of life. That’s why we live. So one day we can take that last breath with confidence that life was good and lived and now it’s good and dead.

That seemed morbid. But death is. That is the word to describe when you talk about unpleasant things like death. I don’t have an unhealthy interest just a normal amount of interest. Maybe even lack of. I just know one day we die. That’s all I know for sure about death. It’s certain. Like taxes. Life, I know for sure you can live but you have to work real hard at it. Fight for it and do it. Not try. Do.

There is no try just do.

That’s a quote from a tiny green thing called Yoda in Star Wars. I’ve never seen any of the Star Wars. I have not really seen a lot of things. I googled who Yoda was only to be confused why he is so wise and will need to watch Star Wars. All of them. I have a lot of living to do. Not try. Do.

Girls with hammers with flowers on them? I thought I would write about this but I am now consumed with doubt. Although I may need to get back to the fact I think my hammer needs to be dressed up a bit more.

What is my perfect scenario? No idea. I know what is not. How can you imagine something you have never had? Or did I think I did once? Does anyone even really have a perfect scenario? We make plans and have visions and then life happens. Why bother? Right? Or do we make perfect out of less than ideal scenarios to get us through less than ideal scenarios. Pretend perfect. Isn’t that half of what we see online or the front of a beautiful house? Is it perfect? That perfect house? What is perfect? Ed Sheeran knows. He wrote an entire song about someone who is perfect? What about tomorrow Ed? Is she always even when she’s not? Also i think one direction wrote one too. Maybe lots of people know more about perfect than me. Here is googles idea:

Perfect-

1. having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be.

As good as it is possible to be. Good enough? Not enough? In what scenario is this used? Perfect practice makes perfect piano playing. No mistakes allowed. Not just as good as you can possibly be but perfect. Free from faults. Played correct. Sat correct. perfect.

No dirty baseboards. No sticky kids, no talking, no cuddling, no nothing. Just perfect perfection scenarios so everyone sees perfect.

What if he is saying the same things to her he is to me? Doing the same things? Wasn’t I here once? At this place where I was the other? Not the only. How do you become an only without first being another? I will bail. No doubt. I expect to be hurt and should just get it out of the way now. I don’t want explanations and stories. I’ve heard them all. I also own know right to even know more. We are not a couple. We were nothing more than a moment in time we needed to get through? Right? Then I was asked what I thought we were. And I said what I hoped it could be or saw. It was the wrong answer but I answered based on what I want. Not what he wants.

I want more. I want to be an only woman. Not an only person but that one that is thought of when something good happens to them. Or bad. The one turned to not turned away from. The one I know won’t fuck up when I’m dying. The one who knows I don’t need flowers on my grave because there won’t be one. The one who knows the inside me not just the outside. The one who drilled through that to see inside is not perfect and never will be. It’s as good as it possibly can be given the scenarios I have been in. Like I hope Ed wrote about. Perfect for him. Someone else’s perfect scenario.

When we closed on our first home I was the second person told. By my husband who told someone more important to him first. It’s an odd feeling. Then I kept on hoping I could be enough or less or more? I kept waiting for my turn. Also so silly. Hindsight is hard to swallow. Why did I stay so long? Simple answer. What choice did I have given that I was taken of all my choices. I had none. Then I had had enough. Then too much then enough again. Then I had no choice which was no different than what I didn’t have anyway so why not chose a better life not just life. A better one.

I won’t understand this. Not even a little bit. I am lucky I have a few people who look out for me now. Friends they call them. But I wanted him to be one. Now I won’t know how to be one and also not the only one I thought I was. Why doesn’t it bother her too? Maybe they wait for me to be bothered then it solves itself? That’s how it went once. I left making it easier for him to continue his plan of me plus more. I feel forever ruined by the fact half my life was spent as a second to someone else then the other half I was a kid slash teenager. Now I feel like I have missed half my life.

I said I believed him when he said I was beautiful but that doesn’t mean I want to be with you when someone says this. Lots of people are beautiful. I think some are too but I don’t want to be with them. Lots of people are wonderful and amazing. It means very little said from another. I believe me but no one else.

A perfect scenario. As long as I can use hindsight, shame, regret and disappointment to fuel this desire. A perfect scenario for me is that from the beginning my sister was never raped. I never saw it. I never had to fear men. I then never fell for someone who emotionally and physically abused me half my life in a sneaky manner I never saw coming and still don’t know if I could and worry it will happen again. My gut feelings are off the compass messed up from my dad dying. I can’t have a proper gut feeling because my gut feels everything right now.

A perfect scenario is of course just that. A perfect scenario. A perfect outline of a sequence of events. I can’t lay one out any more than a movie filmmaker might be able to. It will never do as its laid out. Ad lib? Right. We ad lib. Make good enough. Deal. Cope. Move forward. A perfect scenario is a partner who is just that. Someone to count on. Rely on. To play catch with, fish with, kiss and hold hands, cry, touch, help them through things, they do back…I can’t even describe one. My plot thickens as my sequence of events has put me in a film even I can’t write a scene for.

I am overthinking something so simple. That nothing is about me. I could wear more makeup but why, dress more sexy, why. Behave more flirty, also why, behave more anything. By weird dressed up tools that don’t fix things but why. But I behave the way I behave based on the scenarios That played out for me that I never planned as a perfect scenario for me.

Emotional abuse is that. It is abuse. No bruises. No marks to see. No wounds to heal with surgery. It scars in places no one sees and no one wants to. It means digging deeper. Drilling through layers of scenes no one should ever be cast in. It means a perfect scenario once was to get out alive. Stay alive. To make sure everyone was quiet when they needed to be. Fed and asleep. Everything was in order. Nothing was broken. No one was angry; sad, happy or showed any emotion other than fear. Lucky for me I was already packed full of it. It just became the scene we lived in. Perfect. Sometimes it was. Because everything had to be or the chaos was a calm storm waiting to be a storm. That little quiet before it comes. Sometimes it stayed quiet. Forever. Too quiet. His scenario was silence. He knew it made me stew when nothing was said. Forcing me to say it all. Making me feel like I was the crazy one. A perfect scenario for him? That I was really the crazy one.

Was it alway bad? No. Sometimes it was good. When it’s good it is. Then you stay believing this is good. Even though it’s good because it was just bad.

I shouldn’t make assumptions. We make them when we lack accurate information and we make them when we fear asking for it. Both is where I am at right now. But. I’m comfortable here. Comfortable in what I laid out once as a perfect scenario. On my own. Why not? I have great tools that can fix things the way I know how to. None of these tools wear flowers.

I am too wonderful to be alone? That’s what I was told. I believe it. But hearing it feels to uncomfortable to be true. Does it mean they think they should be with me for this reason or just that someone should? That they are saying? Don’t worry, your time will come. Will it? Time keeps running out?

Was he asking me if I saw us as a scenario and I said yes only to find he was hoping I would say no? No, so he could not be just a someone for one someone. That’s ok. People do it. I was a someone else twice and didn’t know it, then did and didn’t care as long as someone wanted me. That’s what I did once. To see what was wrong with me I allowed myself this. Turns out that’s what was wrong with me. I was looking for others to tell me who I was not me telling me. I was looking to be someone’s again. Looking for something. Anything but me.

I know I miss my dad. I found some good solid closure on this. I know it will still sneak up but I am less unresolved on my spiritual end of things. I’m a little at peace with it. It was hard and it maybe didn’t have to be but grief is love with no where to go. And as much as I loved him I now have no where to send that love. It’s stuck. Or it is falling right for someone. I suspect it is landing on someone else and that is way to scary to not be an only person. By this I mean an only lover not only person at all. Someone I can see having fun with: talking with. Somebody to say hey when I die this….someone to send the bugs and things to and the ideas and chaos I have. A someone. A perfect scenario is a someone again who is not just a someone but I am his. My perfect scenario is for once I am someone’s someone too. Someone’s perfect for them scenario. I want to be someone else’s perfect scenario. Maybe not Ed’s idea but someone’s.

Back to the hammer thing. I was just raised to have tools that have a purpose. Don’t own a cute hammer or tools if they can’t fix things. I worried maybe this was a thing. I’m too self reliant and too self sufficient. I need no one. I want someone. I was raised this way. I have not enough girl tools. Just things men use and want to be the ones to use. But I could always make my hammer a little more fancy. I’m not sure why I would. Estwing didn’t make hammers to be cute. But they should and could and maybe they do I just don’t need a cute hammer. Do I need pink tools? Why do they make pink camo? That doesn’t make sense. You can’t camouflage in the woods while wearing pink? To be noted I don’t hunt I just have camouflage opinions for no good reason. I can hunt if I have to but thats a whole other story…

I can hammer with pretty hammers just not hammer well, as long as it’s not like a tiny little cute one with flowers designed to maybe tap in a thumb tack because a non dressed up regular hammer smashes them and the wall behind them. Maybe to chip ice out in a freezer that is frozen? I broke a freezer trying to use a grown up hammer to do this. I should have looked in my kids toys for a little kid hammer? Or use a rock. A rock makes a great hammer.

I am not girly like that. A carpenters daughter just has good tools. I don’t know all their names, uses and I hammer like a girl, really soft or I hammer like a jack hammer. I just want a good hammer to hammer bad. I am not one to be asked to hammer in trim nails or someone to put in thumb tacks. I am really not someone to ask to hammer anything at all just someone to ask if they have a hammer then I will present a good one. Then I will guard it with my life like it is an extension of my hand even though I am not the person to ask to use it.

I am one to ask when you want to split a rock wide open, destroy a wall coming down, or maybe just smash a pumpkin with it. Why? Because it’s a great hammer and can? A little cute hammer puts a hole in a pumpkin and I want to smash this pumpkin after Halloween.

I can pull nails from boards like a machine and I can hammer super cute like a little kid learning to hammer or like a girl. But I can’t dress my hammer up so guys think I hammer cute. It’s just a hammer.

A perfect scenario is someone who will get this right here and up there. I was less than perfect for someone once. Not their idea of perfect. Like Ed says. Which is a super sweet perfect song by the way. Then I stayed for so long expecting to be. That’s how much I love. Too much or not at all. Like I hammer. Super soft or just too much. Perfect scenario I am somewhere in between maybe?

I don’t even know anymore I confused myself so much up there. As I do. I worked myself into a story of just a single topic and obsessed and googled it looking for an answer to be told right on the internet of what a perfect scenario is. I googled perfect scenario and girl hammers.

The night I cried myself to sleep….Like a baby who needs to learn to self sooth.

I cried watching Hotel Transylvania. After watching Frozen 2 which I also cried through. Neither have a reason to cry about. I need to sleep but feel like I am about to cry myself to sleep. I have a good reason to cry but no good reason to sleep.

I never let my babies do this. Cry it out. I didn’t want them to self sooth. I wanted to be their mother and sooth them. Rock them. Hold them. Let them know they were safe. How scary of a world is this when we think our brand new babies need to self sooth? Do they need to self sooth because the world is so scary or is the world so scary from letting them self sooth? I don’t know what self soothing even is.

I didn’t get to self sooth. I cried too long and too hard. Waiting for someone to come and let me know I was safe. My parents couldn’t tolerate letting me cry it out. They loved me a lot and I loved them a lot. I’ve heard the stories. I cried. Like a lot. I was rarely allowed to cry myself to sleep. That kind that makes you whimper and sniffle all red and wet and puffy until you surrender and realize the world is a scary place and it’s just best to sleep or is it that it’s best to sleep because the world is a scary place? The kind that makes you breath shallow and fast when you are finally just exhausted and give in to rest.

Is this the root of my anxiety? I can’t self sooth still today. I am crying through movies that don’t make people cry and still don’t feel soothed. I feel confused about vampires and magical frozen lands. If I cry myself to sleep I will no doubt have the strangest dreams.

So Hotel Transylvania is the saddest movie I have ever seen tonight. Maybe ever. Why am I not watching like City of Angels or what? A Hallmark movie? What else is sad? Everything is sad tonight. I could be watching friends and cry. All I know is I am going to cry until I sleep. I’m going to self sooth as an adult. Since I didn’t as a child. Or maybe I did?

I want to be cuddled and don’t even know what being cuddled is? I was likely picked up and held until I stopped crying. Was that soothing or would I have stopped crying in the same amount of time if I was left to cry and be afraid? Was I still afraid even though I was being held? Should I try it now? Why not right? I want to be held and allowed to cry until I sleep. Like I did when I was a baby.

I slept like a baby. Because I cried like a baby until I couldn’t anymore. There was no one there to come pick me up and make me not cry. I dreamt the weirdest dreams. I remember some of them. I was in a theater and I had no pants on. My elementary school crush was there and couldn’t get his baby to stop crying. I took her. She needed to be held and her diaper was soaked. Then I went from room to room and everything was frozen. I couldn’t open the doors they were too cold. Luckily there were no vampires in this dream. I am scared of vampires. Then I woke. I look like I cried myself to sleep.

I wish I could remember when I was a baby what I was thinking when I cried inconsolably. Did I want picked up or left alone? Not even my parents knew. Right now I want picked up and held.

My calendar is stuck on April. Not stuck. I looked up now and it is just still on April. Time stopped when my dad died. Time stopped when the world stopped. Now I just want that calendar to stay on April forever. Should I write it on April 3, dad died. Then circle it like I do birthdays? Would that be odd? What if I write everyone who dies close to me and I end up with a calendar full of people who died not people who were born? No.

I feel less like I have cracked ribs but still like they are definitely cracked ribs. One sinus pocket is a little weird this morning. Like water is stuck in it which is exactly what happened. From white water rafting water went right up my nose. Then stayed. Now it is coming out. This happens when I swim. Water gets in and stays for a day or two then just falls out one day. My sinuses have been redone from my son smashing me in the face when I tickled him to wake him up when he was 5. So I don’t have coronavirus this morning either. Just water in the sinus pocket.

I remember my cat gagging and throwing up in the middle of the night. I thought she was in my dreams. Until I woke up. Then I saw.

Why that was important I don’t know.

I cry when someone asks how I am. I cry when I think about returning to work. I cry when I think about not crying at work. I have cried on the shoulder of the road. I cry now when I am about to fall asleep now. My daughter told me all the men who like us have died. That I need to shop for men. Specifically a dad. What? Where does she get these things? She is right. I can do this all alone but I didn’t sign up to and don’t want to. I can be mom and dad. I can camp, fish, hunt, boat, tie cool knots, climb trees, I have knives, I can cuss like a sailor, actually I can’t fish but I can eat fish and like the idea of someone fishing for me, and I’m indifferent about hunting, I can if I have to but my actual vision of hunting is a little more primal cave man style than what I’ve seen. But again if I needed to hunt to survive I would and could. Anyway, I don’t need to man shop. Or dad shop. She is right. All the men important to me are gone now. I panicked tonight with my son. I didn’t have my dad to call and come get him. And my kids dad is unapproachable. We worked it out.

I signed up for a dating site then I un-signed up then did it again and undid it again. I don’t know what is wrong with me. I don’t need someone I want someone. But I want them to appear as if I wasn’t looking. Which means I have to quit looking. But it also means so does he. Right? Right. So I fear, yes fear I will go at this all alone or on my own. I just don’t want to. I can. And I will but I didn’t want it and still don’t. Not on my own.

I plan to cry until I fall asleep tonight too. I need to. It gave me something to do. I just kept ruminating all the sad and it kept making me cry. I intentionally became an over thinker and not a moderate over thinker so I could cry so much I wore myself out to sleep. Like I did as a baby.

I don’t want to return to work. I want to stay home and stay alive. Forever. I want to hide and seek from the world. Problem is I will actually be waiting for someone to come find me. That’s how I play hide and seek. I hide super well then I wait and wait and wait to be found then I get mad when I hid so well or so long that no one does. That’s a win right? I won if everyone went home and I am still hidden or if no none even looked.

Fuck coronavirus. It has touched my life. I was told once it would, that it will everyone somehowWell it did me and will forever. It isn’t likely to change my approach to life. It is changing my approach about death. It is changing me as a person and has helped me learn more about my faith. To find a spiritual connection, to be able to get me through. That’s the only way through. To get through. Cry through the night, cry through the pain. Cry through it all. Cry to sleep.

Where did you go? I wasn’t expecting this. For you to die. I was just going about my life and yours ended. Like they do. You were doing better then you were just gone. Into the unknown.

You can’t say goodbye to people in real life. We have to die alone. We do anyway. Like that last moment is all you. We don’t take favorite people and blankets or stuffed animals. No sweatshirts that smell like crushes or your dad and favorite movies. No one can go with you. My sister zoomed her goodbyes. I would rather say no goodbye than say it over the world of the technology that has become our in real life. No zooming while I’m dying allowed.

You are with dad. And your parents. To that place people go that die. The unknown. I couldn’t cry right away. It was stuck. Stuck with other things I couldn’t get out. Other unknowns. Doubts and fears stuck from years of being told to keep them in. From years of thé known things.

The coronavirus won here. It is what you died from. I don’t want it to make me feel anymore or less afraid of it. I already am. I just don’t show it by hiding out or from my behavior. I still just go about my business and people still die. Only I now wash my hands more. I already keep distance and I already avoid people. But I am a face toucher. And I use my hands a lot. I am always moving my hair and rubbing my eyes and biting my nails. So I am now a constant hand washer. Since I’m a constant face toucher.

I worried I brought it home last night. That I went on vacation to an isolated place in the woods and where almost no people exist only to get it from the one moment in time I let my guard down, but I never do. Then I came home and like everyone I know dies including some I don’t know. My chest hurts on the left side from a silly fall. Is it how it starts? Is this it? I don’t know. It’s all unknown. I have a little tickle and my eye is watering. But just the one I fell on. I can’t cry but it is watering. I face planted into the ground with my eye and my left side.

I have thought this before. When my dad was sick I had diarrhea and worried that I had coronavirus even though he didn’t. I worried once when the pollen count was higher than usual, then one more time when I actually ended up having Lyme disease. I do not want to cry sometimes so I don’t get a runny sniffy nose and my brain says I have coronavirus. I have anxiety so a little pressure in my chest can also cause panic I have coronavirus. Panic on top of panic. I have worried I have coronavirus more than I have not.

So I am sore, not harboring a deadly virus. My side hurts likely from cracked ribs. It is soothing now that I have taken something to relax the area. I took an aleve. I’m not going to the doctor in fear I could also get coronavirus and for them to only tell me I have cracked ribs and to take medicine I am too afraid to take. Or they may tell me I have coronavirus and will die. I don’t know what they will tell me. It’s too unknown so I’m just not going and will let my cracked ribs heal and hope its not a virus and I don’t die.

My eye is watering from it being scratched from falling on it. I have a tickle in my throat because I always have a little tickle in my throat only this time my brain wants it to be the start of a deadly bat virus. I could have brought it back but it is so unlikely. It was also so unlikely my sister and her husband would get it too. They were so careful. It’s why I haven’t seen them since April. To protect us from each other. Now he is gone and I haven’t seen him since April and never will again.

I worried who’s next? Is it my daughter? She has a weakened immune system from her disability and heart issues. I heard someone say this was a way to weed out the weak. Is she weak?Was my dad? What about my brother? They are the strongest people I’ve ever known? Maybe it is weeding out the strong to show the weak who is strong? How to be strong. I don’t know. That is also ridiculous. It’s not weeding out anyone specific, just some people. It’s unknown why this is happening. Why would my mind go that way? I won’t be able to handle the loss of my daughter. Is it someone I’m not expecting so I should expect anyone?

I couldn’t cry at all. Then I couldn’t stop. Once my ribs felt less sore a dam broke. I just laid my dad to rest in my mind and now I have to my brother. Not in law. Just brother. That’s what he is to me. Was? But still is? He is just in that unknown place. My sister has to grieve her husband and her father in less than 6 months. It’s unfair. It all is. It is all too unknown.

I don’t know how to feel comfort today but my daughters idea was to tuck me into bed and cover me with her blanket which is really my grandmas blanket and to wear my new hiking friends sweatshirt, to cuddle with her bear, and to watch frozen 2. Into the unknown. I can’t form sentences to talk to people. I have other uncertainty mixed in with a whole new loss for me on top of a whole new loss for me. My dad died and now my brother. Too much loss. Too much unknown.

I was told I was beautiful. Why? That’s my first thought. I didn’t say it but I thought it. It is always thé word Im thinking. I always am thinking what I want to say and rarely say it. When I do it’s when it’s not the time and place? I don’t know when and what I am allowed to say and do? I wish I could say even half of what I think. And also wish I didn’t think half of what I wanted to say. I can write it. But not say it. What if its wrong? What if I am rejected? What if I am not enough? Too much? Wrong? Right? Even worse, what if I am right? What if it is good? What if I fall in love?

I need more therapy. My therapist is opening her own practice. I am super excited for her but my insurance may not allow me to follow her. Meaning I start over or I go into the more unknown alone. On my own. Take what she taught me for 5 years and go into the unknown. Question mark. I just wanted to write question mark and not use the question mark. I will worry about her new unknown. She is taking a big leap after taking so many. What if it’s too many? Not enough? Today she talked a lot about herself. I let her. It felt like she needed to. She is scared. I am scared for her and she is for me. We both are going into an unknown. She is going her way and I am mine. Or we may go the same way? Or no way at all?

I am into an unknown. Like the song says. It is playing now and was what I titled my story in my head before I heard the song or knew it was where I was headed. That’s how I felt and now I’m watching a childrens movie that portrays how I feel. An unknown for me is a person who isn’t like the person I knew but didn’t actually know. Someone who doesn’t hide their phone from me to hide a whole other life they have. Yet someone who has a whole other life than me. It’s unknown. I won’t ask questions. It was not allowed and now I don’t know what is. I’m in uncharted water. For me anyway. I am not called beautiful. I am not called many things. I am called nothing which can feel worse than being called not beautiful. Being ignored and isolated feels like you are worthless. This is me saying this. Some are told they are not beautiful but I was made to feel that. I was shown. Not told.

Into the unknown. I’ve done it before. Like my therapist says I am not a bridge to others. Someone for someone to be with until someone better comes along. That’s what I felt for years and still do. I have a post it note that says I am enough in my car. I need it in more places. I am not enough. I am too much. I am both. The doubt comes from known territory. The known not unknown. I know thé known. Anything unknown is that. Unknown. To hard to believe. It may need said as much as it wasn’t to be believed as a known from the unknown. Would someone say I was beautiful more than once for reasons not of their own? Just so I could hear it? Why? Why would they? Why do I need or want them too? I can’t see it myself? What mirror am I using? I don’t like mirrors. I don’t like photos of me. I don’t want to see what others see. I won’t see what others see. It’s too unknown.

This is going to be difficult. Not so much for me but for my sister. And my mother. They have lost so much. I have lost so much and now have two people who have lost so much. I have doubt and fears that I want to share but am afraid to. That’s the fear. I have a fear of fear. I am packed full of it. It’s a nightmare. I love big adventure and risks and exciting things but am scared to death of them. I have less than I used to pack but I am still over feared. Fear of the unknown. Usually it’s a fear of what I knew and know now it’s a fear of what I don’t know. The unknown. Right into it. Head on. Not face first. That hurts.

I am about to embark on a journey that is like none I have ever planned….

To be continued….

I imagine I will cry each time I am somewhere that I was last with my dad and now back to that he his now gone. As I drove through the mountains I cried. Just let them fall all the way into my lap. They made small puddles on my legs. I didn’t wipe them or stop them. I once was told maybe I would handle this better if I had a closer relationship with God. That I should just gather myself up and join a church. Let someone talk to me about God and believe what they believe. Would this help?

My brother in law is starting to get better. He had been fighting coronavirus since June 19. They sounded like they were about to give up. To quit fighting for him. Then he started to show improvements. On his own. Was it really anyone fighting for him? Maybe just with him?

How can you leave the mountains once here? How do you get so lucky to wake up and see the mountains every day? Is it luck? The way the air comes right out of the middle of them? The way the sun hits them and they look like little pockets of sun. Like the mountains are being kissed by the sun. Just some places. Kissed by who?

I don’t think a relationship with a God would make me have any less or more feelings about the loss of my father. If anything it could confuse it more. Couldn’t I just have a relationship with myself and believe what I want when I want to help me through when I need it? Yes. I get to decide what to believe and when. I like to imagine he is there. In the clouds. Or in the mist off the mountains, in the sunshine that hits the plants a certain way, in the ripples of the river. Around the backside of the logs with the fungus growing in it. In the steps I take. In the tears I cry. In the breaths I still take. He is there. He. My dad not a specific God. He can be everywhere right? He can be where ever I want him to be since he is not here anymore. He can be with me through everything since he can’t be with me. Right? Right. Because he is part of me and I am part of him. I am where I am because of him. So I can take him with me where ever I want and how ever I want.

The last time I was here in the mountains was with my dad. Anywhere I am somewhere that it was the last time with him will be hard. Not just hard but memorable. Not just memorable but sad. Not just sad but, but what? I’m out of words. I am not sure what words are left. Anywhere I go he isn’t anymore but I pretend he is is pretend. It’s not real. It’s made up. It’s imaginary so I can be ok with him not really being here. I am making things up so I can go places and live my life with out him here.

I came here, here to the mountains and the rivers to work through grief and it is working through me instead. Washing way over me. Like I wanted it to. Is that what is supposed to happen? That I will feel like I have no control. That grief will work through me instead. That it will consume me and I won’t know what to expect and how to manage or deal with it. That it will take me over and wash over me. I don’t get to decide right? It comes in big tall uncontrollable waves that will take me over and try to drown me. Right? Then I have to fight to surface again? How many times? Will each time get harder or easier?

So this entire trip has not been for not. It has been a little eye opening. Walking a little, not walking a little, resting when I say so or when I need to, finding some quiet, finding bugs, looking at trees, looking at the mountains, listening for birds, looking for my dad. Everywhere. He was everywhere. Because that’s what I want him to be. Behind every tree and in every corner. I wanted that when he was alive and I still want the same thing. That’s my belief. For today. To get through today because today the wave is winning.

I did not find what I was looking for. I went looking for the Ellicott Rock initials. Major Ellicott put them on a rock in 1811 to settle a dispute over boundary lines for the Carolinas? He found a rock or a place them initialed it. How do you even get into a place you are asked to settle this kind of dispute? How do you get into a dispute like this? Obviously our boundaries are laid out and we don’t dispute them anymore. Anyway It was nowhere. The initials. That’s what I needed to see. I never found them so they don’t feel real to me. I need to go back. And find them. I need to know if this is true not just believe it.

I froze in panic in a wave. For a second in my mind it took me over. I just literally sat and froze. I left thinking in my mind that grief was going to drown me then the opportunity presented itself and I froze. I forgot for a second to save myself. I could have just went right over. And let it win. Did I want it to? Did I want to be with my dad that much? Find him this much? I have a lot to live for. Almost too much. No way was I thinking this. In that second I was thinking. I don’t know how to save myself right now. I’m too sad. Who will save me?

I miss my kids. It has just been 4 days. I almost never go this long away from them. I love that they need me because then I’m needed. I need them. I know they are fine and they likely know I am fine. But this morning I woke just so sad as the mountains of this beautiful place wake up. As I wake up with them looking for things that aren’t real in amongst their fogs and little pockets of sunshine. Looking for my reason to wake up. They just do. Mountains sleep then they wake. Without a doubt. Without a reason. What’s mine now?

He is here. He just is. It’s the saddest I have felt since he died because I specifically took myself to a place I knew would do it. Because I knew I would feel him here with me. So of course I am crying. I wanted to. I want to and still want to. I want no one to stop me including myself. So when I look up and out and over and under I can go. Oh, he is right here. Not right where I left him but just right where he is. Where he will always be since he is nowhere really specific anymore.

So I took myself to a place to say goodbye. Like really goodbye. He is dead. That’s also ok. I don’t have to have a specific belief or be told to believe something to know the things I know. He isn’t really “here”. He isn’t in those ripples and little pockets of sunshine. It is my imagination. It’s soothing to think. But it’s not true. If it were true I would go looking for him in those pockets. I would save him from being under the water. Like I need to be saved too. I would tell him I need him here to help me still. I would tell him to get out from under the water and get back on land and help me save myself again. Get back to life. But I can’t. Here is what I can do.

Keep living. There is more to come. The things that took me to this place are all because of him. I am here looking at the river because he taught me to love the rivers. The land and to take care of myself. So when he was gone I could take myself to the rivers and places he taught me to love. He isn’t there. He isn’t with me. He is part of me. Forever.

I bundled up flowers. Picked from the road . One from me and my sisters and my mom. Also the same amount as my kids. Then tied them with a piece of plant and let them float away. Then cried. And let the tears go with them. To where things go in rivers. All over places. To deep water somewhere. Where grief is stored. That’s why deep water is so dark it is full of grief. There goes my imagination again….Someone might see the flowers. Maybe down river somewhere they will be standing there fishing. Fly fishing. Like my dad unsuccessfully did and they will see them float by. They will look thinking it is trash. But it’s not. They will know it’s special and from someone to someone else. Then let them keep going. Forever. There is always more to come he will think maybe? He will think of his own loss, cry his own tears which will join mine to their journey of the deep dark waters where we both keep grief. Once my imagination starts it can’t stop.

So my journey like never before was to look for a faith I was told was missing. That I would cope better if I had something specific or special to believe in. I do. I believe in myself. I believe the universe has this. That I don’t. That something bigger exists and that’s all I can do. Let it exist. Not question it. Let it go. Into the river with bundles of flowers for my dad. To float away and wash over rocks and shores and to the places where there is more to come.

I don’t know how an eyeball can hurt. But it can. I fell. Like face planted fell to my eye. Hiking on like the flattest driest and least likely place to fall. My legs were still shaking from a rafting trip I took where I seems to doubt I wanted to live for a second and I could barely hold myself up. I had a falls to see. The company hiking with me was on a mission and I wanted to keep up something fierce. I wanted to keep living. But gravity stopped me in my tracks to my face. Now my eyeball hurts. That’s life. There is more to come. I fall again. Down on my backside. But we see the falls.

I thought I would write about my specific journey. How different it was from my others when I started my opening sentence then left it for a few days. I do this sometimes. Write a sentence then let it go until I sort it out. Sometimes I never finish. Sometimes I can never stop.

So what’s to come came and went. It went into the river. I came to an understanding with myself that is enough for myself. What’s to come will come again and I will go again and embark on the journey needed to help things come and go again. That’s what to come. Life. Love. Loss. That’s what’s to come.

Have you talked to my dad? Seriously, when you were in that place that is in between here and not here. Did he tell you it’s not time. To come back to here. To our side no the other side. Is this possible? Did he tell you that you don’t get to fight as hard as you did to live this long to go now? From a virus. Did he tell you your new lungs have really just begun. This is a test for them. I hope you chatted and said goodbye, I’ll see you someday but not soon. I have to go back to my side not the other side.

I want to believe there is this place after we go from this place that is a place to go. The other side. I don’t want to go to nowhere and more importantly I don’t want everyone else to be nowhere. I want my dad to be somewhere else and just not here. Not just not here. I want this so bad today my chest feels heavy and full and I feel like I’m choking on a large cry. A cry I’ve been holding in too long. Oh, I’ve cried. My dad died, I cry all the time I feel. But I stop. I wipe them off and stop. Move on. I have to. What is the appropriate amount of time to cry? Sometimes I cry and tears don’t come out. Why? I am not drinking enough water? Is that how it works? Can I be all cried out? Sometimes they leak from one side. Only one half of me is sad? It’s usually the left? Do I have a tear duct issue? I should ask my doctor to check my tear duct. Maybe I should massage them like I had to with my babies. I might have a clogged tear duct as an adult. Full of dirt and dust. Or just not as sad as the other side?

I woke with end of life anxiety. Life ends and nothing else begins? Which is not true. Babies are born all the time. But they aren’t a baby of my dad. They are other people’s babies. People die and more people are born not the same people. There are too many questions involved with death to even think about. Do we lay there dying and decide we are done fighting? We lay there and just go. Let go. Quit living. Why? What’s better? What’s coming next? Is it better than the pain? Is it better than the love? Is it worth it? Why leave so many for something that is nothing?

I have to talk myself out of the end of life questions. I’m not curious and wanting to go I am upset I lost someone and don’t know where they are. I don’t want to join them. I just want someone to say. Here he is. And I will look and see it. Because I can’t feel it. People say, look there he is when pointing to a sunset. What? I see sunset. I can’t see past it. I can’t feel past it. I want to but I’m stuck somewhere between a hère and there too. My own side. I don’t know another side. My faith is stuck somewhere. Probably on the other side.

My brother in law is fighting coronavirus. It feels like he is winning. Or that the doctors are winning. Or who is winning and who are they fighting against? He will have a harder life when he survives this. But it will be made worth living. There are lessons to be learned and things to know from this man. He will show people things they didn’t know could be true. That’s what he has always done. That’s why my sister is with him. She believes. She is my dads daughter and has his faith. She knows this other side because she can feel it somehow and I can’t. We have the same father and share different beliefs? She is close to our father in a way I am not and I am in a way she is not. It’s how it works. My sister and her husbands love is so strong that it’s something I can’t understand. It’s not for me to. Just to watch. And learn. And believe.

Next to my father and my daughter, my brother in law, I should just call him my brother. I never had one and always wanted one and then I got one and now the other side wants one too. But I’m not done having him on my side. My brother is the strongest person I’ve ever known. And that’s a tough list to be on. He is a double lung recipient and now battling a virus that destroys lungs. And the virus isn’t winning? Or someone isn’t?Or something? Or they still could?

My extra anxious is being fueled by extra anxious making me well, extra extra anxious. I can tell I am when I use the same words over and over. I can tell I am when my eyes can’t stay on something. Like I can’t look at something for more than a few seconds. I can tell when I have more questions than answers and the questions don’t even have answers. I can tell when I type so fast that I’m trying to keep up with the string of thoughts running out of my mind through my arms and out of my hands. I can tell when I am doubting myself. When I accidentally plop my worth and value in other people and let them determine what I am worth to me. Like they say 2+2=nothing. You are worth nothing. Not 4. Just 0. I can tell when I wish I could stop the thoughts but then who will I be?

I am breathing more shallow. A deep breath is a yawn. Because I’m tired and exhausted from all the questions and activity the nights bring. I slept last night. So hard that I woke panicked I was dead. I slept and dreamt something and it was vague. I woke with vague memories of being in my bed for hours. I’m not used to not knowing things at the night. I can account for my where abouts all night long. If asked where I was at 1:00 a.m. I can with out a doubt say. Home. Not sleeping. Last night I don’t know where I was. Because I slept. I would be a terrible witness to crimes last night. I was asleep. Nice story? Were you really? Do you remember being asleep? Can you for sure say where you were? The detective would say. I worked myself up all week so much that my body finally won. My mind gave in. It’s so rare a treat I can’t accept it when I wake. I would tell the detective I know I slept because I feel sleepy. I feel like I slept. He would doubt me in squinty eyes and sit back and cross his arms. I would do the same back and stare him down daring him to doubt my night of rest. I don’t know what happened last night in the world. I was resting for once.

So I woke wanting to know if people talk to the dead when they are somewhere between life and death. And I want to know and I want my brother in law to wake up and say so, to say, yes, I saw him, he’s good and happy and wants you to be happy too. To look for him in places you feel something specific. It will come when you least expect it. Like in a shimmer in the creek or in a song of a bird. It will come. We talked. He is there. You don’t know where and that’s ok. It feels not ok still. Cry as long as you want or don’t want. Also, he said to get back to my side and keep living for my other daughter. It’s just not time to be here on the other side.

Thats all I want to hear so I can see it then feel it. Then believe it. Maybe I just told myself?

Why do I wake at 11:00 at night. It doesn’t matter when I fall asleep I will wake at 11:00. Last night I woke after an 8 minute dream about my ex not being able to get a baby somewhere but he was in the ocean. Then he was an octopus.

Between 11:00 and morning is when things happen for me. I’m trained to be someone who is alert between 11:00 and the next day. Years of being in the hospital with my daughter made me feel like being up at night is what we do. It’s what nurses do, not what we do. Someone comes in like every 30 minutes to check vitals. Someone comes in to clean or move or chart something. Someone comes in and turns lights on and off and check drips and buttons and flow rates on machines. You can’t sleep when someone comes in. You can’t sleep when upright in a chair next to machines keeping a child alive. You can’t sleep when if you do she could die. Then you missed the alive time.

I am chosen. That’s what some say. That a higher power picked me for my daughter with special needs. In an imaginary creative moment I can see this and feel this but in my reality I got pregnant and dna did things it does and with that comes genetic makeup of a child with extra love to offer. Yet extra medical needs from too much of a chromosome. It was science. So was I picked or is it just the way it is? Do these people say this to make themselves feel better for me? Do they assume I need to feel like I was chosen for some special assignment? That I had some special powers to be able to handle extra things? Do they say it because what else do you say when what you might feel is pity? Do they say it just to say it to say something? I love to guess what people are thinking as opposed to what is being said.

When I was a detassler I was chosen for special assignments. I was a good detassler. I was a crew boss. Quickly I became someone who needed to be. But I was always chosen to this silly task of being dropped off at fields by myself and doing the 100% pull rows the machine would forget. Because I was fast. And I could be alone. And get it done. Special mission detassling.

My daughter is a test of my patience and also my faith. Faith of which I don’t even really have. She tests my faith by making me sometimes feel I have faith. She gives me a little hope that I was chosen. That there is that great big something out there that said. Her. Pick her. She thinks she can’t handle it but I will help her see she can. She thinks she has no patience for her but she does. She thinks can’t but she can. Pick her, she will fight for her when she can’t fight for herself. Pick her. Then I’m embraced in the wings of an angel and whisped away into a world where I am just loved and embraced by wings of angels. Like I am.

She keeps hiding things from me. Her anxious and my anxious are fueling each other. She is onto me. She knows I’m leaving on a backpack trip this weekend and it will disrupt her routine significantly. She has uncertainty of her meals and her where abouts even though I’ve said them a thousand times. A thousand times she has done something and now for 4 days it will be not the same so she is going to just keep me from going. By hiding my gear and maps. I’ve been playing this all week. In the middle of the night she gets up and puts things in closets and under beds that I need to walk 50 miles. She put my map between my piano music. My water bottles under the sink. My backpack under her bed and my boots are outside. She has declared Im not hiking I am to feed her forever.

This detachment is painful but necessary going forward. It’s part of a bigger plan she isn’t yet part of. I need her to not always wonder where I am. I need her to be ok without me. I need her to be ok with others. I need her to want to be on her own. I need her to cover herself up. It’s there. More importantly I need me to be able to let her do these things. The detachment is more for me than her. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t believe she could live independently with just a little support and visits from her mom. I love her more than the words like love can describe but I do not want to live with her forever and cook her food forever. If this sounds mean it’s not. My goal is an independent woman. She can do it and I will show her she can like she has shown me so many things I didn’t think I could do, like show her things she can. And have faith.

So I wake at 11:00 at night like clockwork as of its my shift to work. I will fall back asleep. I don’t always but I do often. But I have things to check and do like a nurse coming to work for the night. Once I know all her order is in order so she can fall back asleep. She just lays down at night with things on her mind like her mother going hiking and leaving her in places she isn’t certain where the chicken nuggets will come from. She lays down and can’t sleep if the tv light is on. It’s the size of a star a light year away but as bright as the sun to her. She unplug electronics. She doesn’t like the turtle tank filter on. She doesn’t like toys left out by her sister. She can’t handle laundry not folded and put away. She can’t sleep unless her orange juice is right behind her head and ready for her when she wakes at 11:00 to hide her moms gear. She can’t sleep unless tucked in.

Oh we have tried them all, you are thinking now, all the medications and interventions we could do medically. She is 16. We have spent all her life. I’m sorry, I have spent all her life trying to figure this out. She has had 9 sleep studies. Guess how accurate a sleep study is when done on a child who doesn’t sleep for a sleep study because of the chaos and lights involved in a sleep study. We have seen pulmonologists, people who just guess she might have an obstructive airway given her disability of Down syndrome it is likely. We removed adenoids just in case. Not tonsils so she wouldn’t have extra issues with speech. I keep saying we like it wasn’t just me but maybe I mean her and I as a we. I tried once that she was itchy and we saw a skin doctor. Every sleep medicine we could. She always gets the least likely possible side effect from them. When I’m handed a pamphlet to read about medications for her I go immediately to the last lines that say least likely side effects then expect them. She once held her pee for 24 hours as a side effect. She can’t be drugged. She metabolizes different than most. Like her mother.

We make a good team. I know her so well it’s scary to imagine ever being away from her. Leaving her for a few days is more painful for me than her. She might not think this but I will cry at some point inconsolably on my trail for my kids. I will struggle to keep walking at least twice. Usually more but it is getting less. I will want to give up and go back home to make chicken nuggets and tuck her in. Who will tuck her in? She will lay there all night waiting to be properly tucked in. She is that stubborn. She may not be covered until I return. Is she thinking I won’t and she will never be covered again? I don’t know what she is thinking. That’s why I am so good for her. I love to guess what people are thinking and never actually be told. That’s why I was chosen?

I want to believe I was chosen. Who doesn’t want to be the chosen one right? Most people wouldn’t say this about raising a child with special needs but for me I feel like it’s an honor if in fact an angel with embracing wings was told to come pick me. I am wrapped in warm embraces of angel wings. They feel like my goose down sleeping bag that my daughter threw into the outside storage closet so I won’t leave her and never tuck her in again.

Detassling corn? In the middle of all of this string of thoughts I talk about being chosen to detassle corn? It’s not even a word says the red underline. Is it de-tassle? I am spelling it wrong? How on earth that even came out of my mind o will never know. I loved detassling though. I did feel honored to be dropped off and left at these fields to myself. I imagined they were islands. I would finish so quick I would have time to sometimes walk and play in the fields. Explore my island. I had the biggest crush on one of the guys that I detassled with. He was also a special mission detassler. I still have a crush on him. To this day. That’s when it was decided maybe? My higher power I doubt often said. Pick her. She can handle this. Look at her exploring this island of life.

I am thinking of all the corn rashes and the sun burn and the wet clothes dried caked muddy boots. The smell of the bus and all the open lunch boxes. The smell of my lunch box and it’s little ice pack. Why does an ice pack smells the way it does? it reminds me of when my dad came home from work as a carpenter and opened his lunch box. The smell of the purpose of life. Hard work. Being the chosen one.

I shouldn’t wait in lines with access to the whole wide world of hand towels at my fingertips. Do I need 8 new hand towels? Do I need a new shower curtain? I found one I like better than the last one I found but better than the one before that, that I bought even though I liked the one before that. I’ve never bought my own shower curtain. Or hand towels.

I shouldn’t access the whole wide world with the touch of a screen. I don’t need the whole wide world at my fingertips.

I shouldn’t go to Walgreens with the whole wide world in my hands. I have enough in my hands. They should put a basket by the door and say, hère put the whole wide world down while you wait. Just wait with yourself. It will be longer but worth it. Take some time to be with yourself. Not the hand towel world. Hand towels can wait. You can’t.

I shouldn’t get high. I shouldn’t even try. I cried like a baby for reasons I don’t like to talk about, things I should be talking about. And shouldn’t when I am high. I don’t remember things that happen but sort of do. I don’t have control of my mind. I don’t have control of myself or even a paddle. I shouldn’t get high. I shouldn’t be with people who don’t know some things about me when I’m not in control of my thoughts. I shouldn’t do so many things right now.

This was starting to sound like Dr. Suess the cat in the hat.
but our fish said, ‘no! no!
make that cat go away!
tell that cat in the hat
you do NOT want to play.
he should not be here.
he should not be about.
he should not be here
when your mother is out!’

I don’t know what I should be doing, neither does my mother. We should not be about or here or there. We should not be buying curtains, and painting walls and buying bedroom comforters. We shouldn’t move all his books and shelves and paint. He is not about anymore. He isn’t here or there. Can’t the books and shelves stay until forever? Grief is too great I should be crying. I should be sad. I should be laying in bed not eating and maybe drinking too much. I should be grieving. But what is grieving?

Hère are 7 stages of grief. Straight from the whole wide world of grief at my fingertips. Also something I shouldn’t do. Research stages of grief during stages of grief I am not even following.

• Shock and denial. This is a state of disbelief and numbed feelings.
• Pain and guilt. …
• Anger and bargaining. …
• Depression. …
• The upward turn. …
• Reconstruction and working through. …
• Acceptance and hope.

Where am I right now in these steps?

I bother people so much. My energy is too much. But isn’t that what attracts people to me from the beginning? I was told I text someone too much. What does that mean? I text what’s on my mind. I don’t need like big long chats through text I need nothing back. Just to know someone is there and cares that I have something on my mind. I shouldn’t be texting right now at all.

I shouldn’t be with people who also shouldn’t be with me. They barely can handle who they are let alone me who can’t handle who I am right now. I shouldn’t be with people who can’t be ok with their own thoughts. I make people think they should be high to be around me. Why am I in this place right now? I attract where I am in my life. I’ve seen it through the people who have left my various stages of growth these last few years. Alcoholics, drug users, abusive partners, widows, married men, people who don’t know who they are either. When will I get through a stage of growth that brings certainty and then attracts others who are. But then I am aware that’s where I am not afraid of what I don’t recognize as normal. A loss this great has attracted people who don’t want to really be with me? I don’t know. Grief is really behaving oddly for me.

I don’t know where I am in grief. I don’t think I I am anywhere. I don’t think I have felt shock or denial at all. I don’t have any guilt. I am in pain. I always have hope and I accept he is gone. I am not on an upward path. I’m not even on a path anymore. I’m just wondering aimlessly and letting someone else hold onto me for a little while. While I hang on to them for a little while. I shouldn’t be doing this either. I won’t not want to when it is over. Then I will always have to find someone to hold onto, which I shouldn’t but maybe should?

I shouldn’t be thinking of so many things when the only thing that is interesting is that my dad died. It’s all that’s on my mind except it never is in the forefront. It’s always back behind the rest of the I shouldn’t be thinking of things that are keeping me from thinking of the things I don’t want to. I should be thinking of him. Of my loss. Mine. How it is going to be. How picking up my daughter when she is sick is now a me thing not a grandpa thing. There is no grandpa to pick her up anymore. Who wants to think of that? Right. I shouldn’t be or I should be? I don’t have enough hand towels and the ones I have don’t say anything about me as a person. Because I just didn’t know who I am yet without my dad. I barely did when he was still the picking up sick daughter person.

What stage of grief is this? It’s confusion. Where is that in the steps? Is it working through? Is it bargaining? I don’t know where I should or shouldn’t be right now. I just know I should buy at least two hand towels that say. This is what I should or shouldn’t have done while not thinking of what I should or shouldn’t be thinking of. But they are where I was then whether I should or shouldn’t have. It’s done.