Distractions/deserving

I'm looking for more distractions lately. I don't know if that is good or bad. It just is. It's easier to just mindlessly watch anime with Libby (or read or play solitaire or stare into space) than it is to blog. 

Maybe it's not that I'm looking for more distractions. Maybe I'm just more easily distracted. 

I think deep thoughts when I'm in the shower. I even say to myself, that's where your next post should begin. But once I'm dry and dressed, it's gone. Kaput. 

People have shown me random acts of kindness lately. Sometimes it's from someone close. Sometimes it is a stranger.  From these people I've heard several times some variation on "you deserve it/you look like you deserve it." That's kind of weird. The random lady who used her freebie coupon to buy my cafe au lait at Starbucks said I looked like I deserve a cuppa coffee. Not needed, but deserved. 

How do I look deserving?  

Do I have some sort of brand on my forehead? (I've blogged about thinking I need a sign announcing my loss.  Did I secretly implement it?) Does deserving mean I look like I've won/done/accomplished something and should get a reward?  Seriously, I don't think I look like anything but that I've survived.  I feel like one of those bedraggled survivors of some terrible storm with my hair standing up and my eyes haunted.   I feel like I should look that way from the outside. I hope I don't. I hope I look like I've got it a little more together than that. But I'm not *that* hopeful.  

I'm just lost. And I'm at a loss. 

Im still looking for a way to deal with the pain. 

What I need to say.

Sometimes a blank page is too much. I look at it and wonder how I will ever have the words to say what I need to say. Go ahead. Hum John Mayer. I am. 

A long time ago Joslyn quoted the lyrics. And, I'll be honest, probably half the time that's on repeat in the soundtrack in my head. Someday, if anyone wants to know, I'll try to write about the whole soundtrack. Not tonight. 

Tonight it's about needing to say things. A lot of the time I don't want to say things. I don't want to blog. I don't want to talk. Most of all I don't want to cry. But I need to. I need to get things out of my head. 

I have a friend who is an artist. About 3-4 years ago he started making some very ugly art. Okay, I'm not an aficionado of more modern art (I'm partial to Impressionist), and I am sure that there are people who appreciate his more recent work. For me, though, the colors were too bold. The lines too sharp. The subject matter was dark or obscure or...ugly. It was cubist and surreal and subjective and interpretive. It's no real secret that I'm not taken with these works; I've told him. He had some beautiful work that he had done prior to this period that I really liked, and I wanted to know why the change. So, you know me, I asked.

He told me that these images were some that stemmed from his childhood. They had started haunting his thoughts and work. He knew that he had to work through it; he had to paint these images in order to move on, whatever the path might lead. 

I get it. I've got to work through the ugly.  

I've got to write the terrible/beautiful things. 

I've got to say the horrifying words. 

I ... need to say what I need to say. 

I don't have to like it. 

"Even if your hands are shakin'

And your faith is broken

Even as the eyes are closin'

Do it with your heart wide open

A wide heart"

Watch out, Krissi. Germany Trip 2015.

It's official. Unless something happens, Libby is going to Germany. And I am going to Germany, too. 

Why the separateness? Because Libby is convinced right now that I'm going just so I can ruin her freedom in Europe. 

But what she doesn't get is that I want to be on the same continent as she is. Just in case. Better still to be in the same country. I won't bother. I will only speak when spoken to. I won't mention sunscreen once!  I just need to be there. 

It's weird. Things happen. I know. They happened. 

Lightening probably won't strike twice. The odds are very slim. 

I'm just going to be there. What I really want is for her to experience life and a new world. I don't want to worry when she does. 

Can I blog at Starbucks?

I'm capable.  I just don't know if I can do this with my dignity intact. You know. Without crying.

It's cold outside. I feel cold inside, too. I need to get away and take Libby. I want to go someplace warmer. Someplace greener. 

I need to warm my fingers. Maybe tan my toes. Mostly, though, I need to breathe a little easier so that I can learn to live again. 

I don't know why that sounds like it would be easier away from here. 

(To answer the question, no. I can't blog at Starbucks and not cry. Thankfully, I was saved embarrassment when the Rabbi arrived for our coffee klatch.)

Really, though. Away would not be easier than here. Away is just different. Different without you guys.  And you guys in person are important. (And you guys far away are equally important.)

Yesterday Amy D came and stayed all day (until it was time to pick up Lib). What a blessing! Then today was a card from Rae Lynn (far away). Tomorrow I've got Joslyn and Ali and the grad school crew. 

That helps. A lot. 

Your calls (even when it just goes to voicemail) and I hear your voice. Your texts and FB message letting me know you're thinking about me. Your cards in the mail. Showing up randomly on my doorstep. Your blog comments. 

Huge. 

They let me know I'm not alone. I don't have to run away. I am loved. 

One foot in front of the other one

I'm tall. I remember when I really became tall. I had a hard time knowing where my feet were in 10th grade without looking.  Like a lot of tall people, I started watching my feet when I walked. 

I'm watching my feet again. I may tell myself that it's because of the ice and snow. Really it's because it's comfortable. 

It's easier to look at the near than the far. To look down than up. To focus on the immediate, not the distant. 

There is too much out there at times. It helps me to limit my stimuli. 

Focus on my feet. The middle distance. Somewhere besides where the pain lies. 

Something like life

I feel better today. That's on the relative scale of my life now.  Don't anyone get excited. 

I almost feel like I can see a glimmer of life. 

Honestly, that makes me cry, too. 

I feel overwhelmed. It's big out there. And that bigness is Katie-less. And I don't like that. 

Someone asked what is one thing I'd like to do. I'd like to travel with Libby. I always wanted to travel with my girls. I still want to travel with my girls. Just now I have just Libby. That hurts. 

There's a reality setting in that I want to reject. I can no longer live that little bit in unreality and disbelief. 

What I think about myself

I volunteered at the courthouse all day today.  Okay, not completely a full day, but I was there in the morning before 10 and left about 3:30. And it felt good. 

It was good to get out of the house. It was good to help people.

I like to think that I'm someone who focuses on others and on making the world a better place. I haven't done much of that lately. 

I have always thought of myself as an extrovert. Now, I'm more turned inward. I don't think this is a forever change, but it is now. 

I think more until I can't think anymore because it hurts. 

I was talking to Libby before she got out of bed this morning, and I was stroking her hair.  And I wept because I was thinking about the last time I stroked Katie's hair at the funeral home. 

Walking

I've started walking.  It's a part of my plan to try to get ready.  For what I still don't know.  I kinda think that just the activity of it--the thinking, processing part of it, the putting one foot in front of the other repetition--may be the journey or at least the metaphor in physical terms that I need. 

I"I'm not going to be stuck forever. See, I can still walk."

My life metaphor is now from surfing. I've heard surfers describe how it feels when they're crashed under by a huge wave. Maybe you've seen the scientific illustration and you have it in your head. Maybe you've seen the scene in the movies. 

It's the one where the surfer is crashed under and struggles to the surface only to be pounded under again and again and again in this awful, frightening cycle. 

That's been life since September 13. 

Death, funeral, funeral, breathe! First month anniversary, her birthday, breathe! Second month mark, thanksgiving, breathe! Cookie exchange, first Friday the 13th, Christmas, New Years, breathe!  And all the thousand smaller waves crashing me down in between. 

I was in that cycle. Barely time to breathe before being dragged back under like a rag doll. 

Probably why blogging was so hard. I was focusing on breathing. It took all of my concentration. I had to go old school back-to-the-basics. Drink. Eat. Pee. 

Now I'm walking. And starting to think, little by little. No headphones. I like listening to the sounds of life. 

Wonderful

Here is what I'm thinking of. It came from Joslyn from my last post. If you remember she came up with the entirety of the Kabir poem. The first two lines are:

"Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.

My shoulder is against yours."

Here is what she had to say about it:

1. 
   JHegelmeyerJanuary 11, 2014 at 10:05 PM

   I love those first two lines...just beautiful. It is about spirituality, about God, about Katie's presence, about friendship, about whatever it is we are looking for.

   Reply

I love the thought of Katie' shoulder against mine. We sat like that often, leaning on each other. It was one of the best things about her growing into her womanhood. She was no longer a child on my lap and hadn't been for several years. She became someone I could lean against. The relationship was evolving into a new stage that fascinated me. I could see her at 24, catch glimpses of the mother she would be at 34, see her smile as a grandmother. 

It was like a shimmer. A hologram where you can see both, one just a shimmer on the edge of the other. 

And I could see her heart. She had an old soul. Beautiful and kind. She dreamed about the kids she would have and what she would do with them. She was stockpiling ideas of places to go on her own and places she would go as a mom with her kids.  

That's something I haven't let myself think about.  I can't think about what she would have been.  She would have been wonderful because she was wonderful. 

Thinking

I saw this on some sign at my salon when I was there last. 

*******

Tell me, what is God? He is the breath inside the breath. 

Kabir, 15th century, Varanasi. 

*******

That's one of the things I've been contemplating lately. I've been in such a spiritual dry spell. I'm not angry with God. I'm just numb. I find comfort in the physical motions (crossing myself), but my prayers are like dust. I sometimes think that he's close enough to touch, but it don't have the energy to raise my arm. I don't even know if my fatigue is mental or emotional or both. (I mean that I know that my life is full of the fatigue of both, but metaphorically, I'm not sure about this instance.)

But this quote (which I cannot find through a simple internet search--someone else can tell me if they have better results. I really don't care if it's accurate because it has struck a chord within me) gives me comfort. 

I don't have to worry so much about praying. God is the breath inside [my] breath.  When I'm breathing, he is there. When my breath is for good and my words are kind, he is there. When my breath is of anger and my words are ugly, he is still there. He is in my breath. He is the spirit and the life within my breath. He is within me. Even when I don't feel him because of my hurt. 

New Year

A few things. 

I cry every time I hear Auld Lang Sine. That's the biggest reason I wanted to be home NYE. I didn't want to hear the song and cry. I can be a downer at home. I don't have to ruin it for everyone. 

I read Wild by Cheryl Strayed over my trip to Oklahoma. I'm struck by a couple of things from the book. I feel like there should be some outward manifestation of my grief. I talked to my friend Mary about it at lunch on NYE.  She was struck thinking about how mourning clothes are an outward symbol of mourning, how she always thought that was oppressive (so did I). Now I'm thinking that I get mourning clothes. It's so that people know without you having to tell them. So that people get why you're so screwed up inside. 

Second point is that I want to do something. What I don't know. So my resolution is exactly 31 days long. Day 1: walk a block, do one sit up, do one push up. Day 2: walk two blocks, do two sit ups, do two push ups. You get the pattern.  I figure this is not what my final plan is, but it will give me time to think and will get me ready for whatever it is. 

The holidays are behind me for another year. 

I realized on the 27th that I found out that I was pregnant with Katie on a Friday the 13th. Friday, February 13, 1998. We had laughed that we should have waited until Valentine's Day to do the test. (Libby was the 4th of July, 2000.)