when I pass by all the people say: just another guy on the lost highway

Tonight is the 8th anniversary of my marriage, but I am alone. This is not news to some, maybe to others, and maybe it's irrelevant to many. but to me it seems significant.
Thinking back on our time together, eleven years, it seems that the turning point came early on: a Fourth of July, very soon after our first year together, after declarations of love - which I personally do not give easily, had been made.
I was moving into my first home, a newly independent mother and college graduate. I was a bilingual education teacher enamored with the new cultures where I found myself daily and with this new relationship, one that actually felt real and adult, capable of blossoming along with me.
Simultaneously, he was divorced, moving out of his childhood home which he had purchased and struggling to survive as a single man, a part-time dad. I can understand this now, but certainly not then, and while I'm sure his perspective is different, he had not tread these waters before either.
I often wonder if examining these early years will reveal the answers of what was to come, an overshadowing of my own history? Maybe this is simply hindsight, or, what I often succumb to when writing: literary appeal? But surely there were lines being drawn at this time: powershifts and independence, loneliness, selfishness and fear ribboning around each of us, pulling us tight where we could not breathe, where we'd trip and bleed because we tied the ribbons together too tightly. There was blame and anger and pulling and stretching those ribbons into the skin like wires until flow was cut off to other parts. Yet when one bled, the other held the cool cloth, despite our own ribboned appendages, ribcages, teeth, and hearts. It became a weary kind of dance we did, to untangle the ribbons, each independently without twists or chinks, retying some tighter, letting some flow loose, but never ever letting go of the end of our strand.
So we worked through that next year with ribbons and scissors, trying to cut out and create a fit for us and for a while the future looked good, that maybe we 'd tied our hearts together just right, pehaps even with ribbon to spare; just enough silken spiral with which to spin ourselves a little bit free, just enough to lash the ribbon too tightly together heart-to-heart, breast-to-mouth, just enough to hang ourselves.
We tied and untied those ribbons for years, not paying attention when the ends began to unravel, and maybe we even stopped caring about our own ends of ribbon,at least i did mine, breaking the ties in anger and frustration only to lash the ends back together over and over. Can you imagine the mess? Not to mention tied up in this was one, then two homes, two, then three children, dogs, cars, bills, and then maybe nothing but a goddamn mess of string.
This story is about me though. I'm writing my way out of that web, the only way I know how, with words.
I collect lonely people, and like spoons, knives, and forks, all clanking together in the same drawer, we all belong, without fitting together. I know lonely like the rise and fall of my labored breath, like I know exactly when the cough will end, when my lungs will finally give in and spit out their ransom. I know lonely people. Broken birds. They are all around me, strung along throughout my life in sentence. Each though, a small constellation bringning me some light in the dark. I like the dark, something many don't understand, but if you do, you do, and if you do, then I'll bet somewhere along the way, our stars have crossed.
When I think about it, some maybe were not as lonely as I thought or as they presented themselves to be. I've been called mysterious more than once, but it's a falsehood. It's simply shy and alone. Alone isn't bad though, and that is the fact I have the most problem bringing to paper. The romance of lonely is hard to relsease to words. I know more than one pseudo-lonely soul made their way past my door for a night or two before I wisened up to their lack of real lonesome appeal. Too much bravado, too many words spoken and not enough whispers, a lack of something tangible in the dark. And the older I got, after I was married, when random nights spent unalone became a thousand and one nights alone with other people, I started to crane my ear to the chime of the computer, where the other lonelies, the truly alone, sat in some other place in some other world, our interactions a silent radioactive arc in which the only ways we lay entwined were with the words we spun.
I've now lost many of these friends. I know it is a direct result of the people I choose to interact with, though by no fault of anything other than faulty genes. I might be losing my husband in an entire different manner. I worry I am losing my almost-teenaged son. These losses have created a lethargy in me that somedays feels to heavy to overcome, and while I often felt a self pity that my suffering has gone unnoticed, I know that I turned away from any peering eyes into my despair. Because that is what lonely people do. We are alone. It's not a fault or a chemical problem, it just is. and along the way, I lost first one friend, then another, then my world, strung together by wirds was turned upside down by words untrue and I felt like concrete was being poured on my already drowning body and I could not, did not, care to breathe.
Caring for another lonely person, a bird I cannot fix, gives me purpose. It's a secret I've long kept concealed and which I know now to be futile, but I don't care. I cannot fix anyone, but the intent to try, a co-dependent tsumani, gives me some reason to listen, again. And here I leave a millions words unwritten, unsure who might read and what might be inferred, when I know all I have done is put thought to "paper." How easy it might be to slide down and allow my own words to become untrue, tied together only to buoy my lonely heart?

being lonely is a habit, like smoking or taking drugs - I quit them both, but man was it rough

I haven't been myself for sometime now. Probably a few years, but particularly the past 2 years and most acutely the past 10 months. I know the reasons for a lot of this. It's just that I kept believing that I was in a funk and that I'd snap out of it. I mean, we all go down in the hole from time to time, don't we? The thing is, I haven't been able to crawl out. I am in deep. I finally decided it was time to give myself a diagnosis. Situational depression is certainly part of it, but the past 10 months can only be filed away in one place that I can see: Post traumatic stress disorder. I have nearly every symptom listed and it's all following a catastropichally horrid even that took place January 13th and has unfoled over the past 10 months.

Symptoms of PTSD fall into three main categories:

1. "Reliving" the event, which disturbs day-to-day activity
•Flashback episodes, where the event seems to be happening again and again
•Repeated upsetting memories of the event
•Repeated nightmares of the event
•Strong, uncomfortable reactions to situations that remind you of the event

2. Avoidance
•Emotional "numbing," or feeling as though you don't care about anything
•Feeling detached
•Being unable to remember important aspects of the trauma
•Having a lack of interest in normal activities
•Showing less of your moods
•Avoiding places, people, or thoughts that remind you of the event
•Feeling like you have no future

3. Arousal
•Difficulty concentrating
•Startling easily
•Having an exaggerated response to things that startle you
•Feeling more aware (hypervigilance)
•Feeling irritable or having outbursts of anger
•Having trouble falling or staying asleep


Just writing about this makes me want to cry. I've been hiding out in my house in the shroud of my fear as if my fear and vigilance will protect me.

I've realized that I have not got much faith. I mean, yes, I have always been a person who has prayed for guidance and help, for protection of myself or my children, to express gratitude. But I've never had faith that 'god knows' what's best, or that things happen for a reason or that if I just put my faith and trust into a power greater than myself that things will happen as they should. I'm terrified to relase that kind of control, even if that control is an illusion.

It's an angry circle that I can't get out of. I haven't even been doing treatments, if I'm to be really honest. I just don't care. I don't have the motivation to do anything than the basic requirements. I am miserable, but I don't know how to get out of it. I will make plans: get on the treadmill, sew something, do just one treatment for the day - but when the time comes, I just can't. I take my kids to school; I do the housework required of me; I teach my class and grade the students' papers. I do what I have to do, but that's where it all ends.

Quit moping. Get it together. You're crazy. It will be good for you. Just do it. you're selfish. Let it go. Stop living in fear. It's your own fault. If only you'd...

all these words swirl around me, in my own head and spit out by others. Some mean well, some are angry with me. Everyone is probably frustrated.

I am not trying to be like this. Honest to god. If I could afford a psychiatrist I'd go. Though meds, meds, meds. The answer to everything, right?

I just can't help it. Certain painfu episodes play over and over in my head. I imagine people gloating at my pain. I want to hurt somewhere besides my heart. I want to stop hurting. I think I've cried everyday for 10 months. That's like 300 days of tears. I hold my fear so tightly. I was doing OK, maybe up until we returned from Costa Rica and then things - precariously built up - toppled over and I've been stuck under the rubble since.

I don't want help. I do. I don't want someone to pull me from my bed and slap some sense into me, but maybe I need it. I have never been like this before and I keep waiting for it to end. But some of my thoughts don't have an ending that ends well.

If I didn't have my kids - as much as I feel like a crap mom - I don't know where I'd be. Maybe somewhere tropical, maybe dead. They are a buoy. They keep me here, grounded, but also they keep me here. Running away isn't as easy with two lives under your care.

I don't want responses. I don't want to hear anyone cares, I want to be me again. I want the hurting to stop. I want to stop being afraid. I wish for a faith strong enough to carry me through

"Jesus and Mary, can you carry us through this ocean into the arms of forgiveness."

I'm hoping for a sign, pray that I'm anything but fine

They say ("they" being my grandma's friends...as in "they say" you shouldn't do this or "they say" you should always do that). So, "they" say there are 7 stages to grief.

Once I realized that grief was as good an explanation of any for what was happening to me, I started to actually pay attention to what was happening. Being academic and somewhat of a nerd can be helpful when you're so caught up in the hornet's nest in your head and car wreck of your heart that you need a moment to regroup. You do that by being a nerd. You read books on your situation and take notes; you dog ear pages and refer back to other books you've read for a totally unrelated reason. In this research for maning, I came to grief. I was trying to explain to someone that my emotion was coming in waves: sorrow, anger, fear. Each were erupting, sometimes without notice, and often overlapping one another; the push and pull of the emotions playing like the tide on my already damaged heart.

The epiphany of grief lit up as I remembered quoting Joan Didion from her book The Year of Magical Thinking in my thesis (close to being done, but quite railroaded by recent events) as she described the waves her grief came in following the death of her husband.

I realized that in a way, I have suffered a death. The death of all I believed was true up until Jan. 14th 2011. Life now comes in two stages: before and after. If I look at pictures I have to think: was that before, or after? Songs, letters, cards - any memnto, any memory or keepsake all get sorted into those same before and after piles. And from after until now, that was the death. There is no truth in that pile. It's void. It's a mirage, it's shit. So the new pile, the one starting January 15th is the rebirth pile. That's the reincarnation of all that was the before pile. and there isn't much there yet in that new category, a few crumbs maybe, and even those keep getting swept away when the tide rolls in.

Back to grief.

Seven stages:
1) shock and denial
2)Pain and guilt
3)anger and bargaining
4)depression, reflection, loneliness
5)The upward turn
6)Reconstruction and working through
7)acceptance and hope

So of course these stages aren't worked through in the order they are necessarily represented here, and they can overlap; some may last longer than others. I am not even sure that I believed in this kind of thing until I was mired in the muck of it. But here I am, and I am desperately trying to reach toward the final idea of hope. Acceptance too, I suppose.

Denial, that came first. That's been a way of life, we know this by now. But denial lasted all the way up until the proof was being smashed into my face like one does with a dog that shits in the house (we don't do that to our new puppy, btw). The shock was immediate. It was an actual physical response. Cold, shaking, unclear thinking. I still think I am in shock. Sometimes when I think about all that has happened, I find my heart beating fast and I feel I might hypervenilate.

The pain was also immediate and it's an ache to the core like nothing I have ever known save for the death of a loved one. I wrote about this as well when I was writing my personal piece for my thesis and I likened it to a cast iron skillet being wedged into my chest.

I wondered over and over, what had I done? Was this my fault? What could I have done better, different? If only I had done this or that this way or that way. I still wonder. I wonder if I am handling things now the way I should. Nothing I do feels right.

Anger. Punching biting kicking scrathing yelling seething spitting cussing despising hating hurting destroying broken finger broken heart broken promises broken life

Despression, relfection, lonliness. I have been in this stage for long before before and after started. I see now with more clarity why I was feeling depressed. A long cycle of things that started when after started. I have always been a bit lonley. I kind of like it that way. Reflection is a daily occuracne for me. The only difference is now my daily activites are interrupted by reflection in a way that isn' very productive. One minute I am shoveling out from three feet of snow, the next I am lost in thought and sent spiraling back through the previous three stages to the point i feel I am back at the startting place all over again.

The upward turn. Every day is an upward turn. Despite all the downward spiraling, the reeling back, the constant feeling like I am a hanster on a wheel spinning and apinning and getting no where, everyday that we're still here, every hour longer I go than I've gone before without completely losing it, those all feel like upward turns. I am still waiting for some moment when I truly feel some kind of "I see the light!" clarity. It's still very very dark here.

Reconstruction and working through is happening as I type and is all integrated into the upward turn. It's slow like molasses, but I pray to god just as sweet.

Acceptance and hope. This one seems the hardest. Not the hope, but the accpetance. Not only of what has happened but of my role in it as well. Because nothing is my fault. But something has to reflect my responsibility to the life both before and after and up until the rebrith, and then including that as well. I didn't make the choices that were made, but I was there when the making was being done. I have to accept that I wasn't there as fully present as I should have been (unless this train of thought means i need to go back to pain and guilt?) oy.

So, there it is. My journey. I never liked the journey metaphor for my life with CF, and I like it even less for my new life reincarnate. But I'm not sure what other idea works for this except to say that I'm there at that fork in the road, the road less traveled, the road not taken. My prayers are raw and deep and yearning. I'm begging for a sign, for the knowledge that I have indeed opted to follow the right road.

your hair was wild, your eyes were bright, you were in a rage

There is so much saddness assosciated with CF. I mean, it's not like this is a big surprize, but it just kind of hit me. We're all chased by these CF demons.

I stumbled acorss something I wrote about 10+ years ago, long before I gave CF the time of day. It's interesting to me, despite heavy denial how it was always there. (disclaimer: this is by no means a great piece of writing I am trying to post, but only the sentiment that was with me long before I ever ackowledged it)

greasy hair, pimply face, congested lungs full of thick salty chunky frothy yellow gunk. It makes its appearance every morning unwanted and unannounced but she is forced to acknowledge it. An unwanted visitor, a guest that has much overstayed its welcome. She tries daily to force it out, but it won't leave. It fades, it spreads, it glares at its audience, "I am here, invading her body, wracking her with spasms, forcing her to live with my invasion and you must watch and wonder and feel sorry for her." She is forced to assume its foulness as its represenative while it laughs inside. circa 1997-98

And it's all entwined, isn't it? Where do I end and Cf begins? I no longer feel like I know. My weekend was kind of sad. I get it, the lonley bug, every now and then. And I know just how to fix it. Except I am trying not to fix it that way anymore.

Having kids saved me from myself, I know that. I know the path I was on with my life and it wasn't good. And it's not like those demons aren't still here (oh, my little monkey), I've just tightened my reigns. Sorta. Plenty of times I've let the horses loose for a gallop, I just haven't let go again. yet.

But this weekend my husband was being...well, I just felt unappreciated and I while I pondered laying down in the street to be run over by a bus, because you know, then they'll love you, once you're gone, I relaized that Cf leaves me in a total different place at 31 than it did at 21.

I am afraid of so much now. As much as I was ready to pack my bags and head for the hills this weekend, I am afraid of Cf now. Suddenly, I need help. What a hard thing to swallow. I want to say NO! I need NO ONE! That has always been my motto. I need no one. But I realized that I do. I need support, I need understanding. I need it because of CF. Because I am supposed to be strong and sassy and independent. And why is CF stripping this from me? Why am I letting it? And is it Cf I should blame, or it that just an easy out?