It's like a line from a song I like, "If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me, threatening the life it belongs to." (Anna Nalick "Breathe (2 a.m.)"). I keep wanting to write and I keep putting it off like it will go away if I ignore the feeling. But I can't ignore it anymore, so here goes.
It's been a crazy summer. And I do mean crazy. Meds changing crazy. Almost hospital time crazy. But I managed to keep the balance tipped in my favor and I came out on top--I think. At least I didn't go to the hospital and that's a win for me. Yay me.
Sometimes for me the world seems so big and frightening that going to the hospital seems like a safe place. I'm enclosed, I'm closed off, I have no choices to make, all the decisions are made for me. A normal person--a sane person--would view that as horrible, which is how I know that I'm going out of whack. Because really, the hospital sucks. The food is awful. The beds are hard. The rooms are cold. The chairs are hard. And I really hate being there, except when I need to be there.
But like I said, I didn't get to that point this summer, although I came close. I knew I wasn't going back there if I could help it, and I didn't. We moved instead. Yeah, part of what had me crazy was living in a fifth-wheel with four other people, three of them under 10. And I can honestly say that anyone would feel crazy after a few months of that. So we put of getting a house, since that was going to take longer than we anticipated, and we got an apartment. (If I'm repeating here, I'm sorry, I didn't go back and read my last blog post.) We love it, we're happy, we fit comfortably for the most part, and we have everything taken care of--no maintenance for us. Julianne loves her school, so we know where we will be looking for a house when we are ready to move so overall it's been a great decision.
And I got a car finally. A 1997 Buick LeSabre. Big ole beast of a car that holds us all and has a trunk for additional passengers if need be. We paid $500 for it, and it was truly a steal. We are going to put in a new stereo and fix a few things that are minor and one major thing: the air conditioner. Probably when we're done we'll have put $1000 into it, still well below blue-book. And honestly, with no car payment, I'm very content to drive it for as long as it will last. There are so many things we need to save up to get and not having a car payment makes it that much easier.
So my brain is functioning relatively well, my three younger kids are doing well, our living conditions are good, there's not much for me to complain about. That's all the good in my life.
Sadly, I cannot say the same for a good friend of mine. Glenda has done my hair practically the whole time I lived in Klamath Falls, and I just adore her. We became close during a hard time in her life, an when I lost my baby we became closer. So when I found out she had stage 4 cancer I was shocked, to say the least. She was always healthy and took good care of herself, so she is the last person you'd think of getting sick. Then I got word that they downgraded it to stage 3, that she was responding well to treatment, and they gave her two years. I was relieved because I knew I'd be able to see her again, and after hearing stage 4 and thinking weeks, there were a lot of things I wanted to tell her.
Then came the news that she was bad, really bad, that she was taken to the hospital and they didn't expect her to come home. The emotional roller coaster was almost too much to handle. I am heartbroken for her husband and her mother. Her dad died a few years back, so this loss is an even greater blow for them. I am griefstricken for her son, who is barely in his 30s and shouldn't lose his mother this young.
I'm also grieving for the loss of a friend who never heard how much she meant to me. I wanted to thank her for being there for me when my baby died, for being willing to listen to me talk about her after everyone else had forgotten. I wanted to tell her how much it meant to me that she went through all my pregnancies with me, with the mood swings and the discomforts, and didn't once make me feel like I was anything but normal. I wanted her to know that she was the first person in town that I told I had bi-polar disorder, and because of her acceptance and support I was able to open up more with others. I wanted to say that she always made me feel beautiful on the inside as well as the outside, and that I love her for all those things.
One day I'll get to say these things to her, but today they are stuck in my throat and in my heart. Today the tears sit behind my eyes because I still can't believe that when I get back to Klamath Falls I won't be able to stop in at the salon and see her at her station working on someone. Today I face the reality that cancer kills people, you can't always beat it, and pinning on a ribbon or running in a race or writing your bra color on your Facebook wall doesn't change that. Today I'm reminded again that there is no guarantee of tomorrow, so do your best with your today.
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