Your Feat, Not Mine.

I haven't done a WHOLE lot since leaving my Monday to Friday position at the radio group...and that's okay. I haven't had a lot of time to zone, just zone, and sort to figure out what's most important to me vs. what's most important to the world around me. Some things are in agreement. Some not so much.

I'm learning to be better to myself...which means the end of codependent behavior and a cessation to ego-saturating performance - something I don't often experience, but does happen from time to time.  I feel like an idiot because I've found that even though I know the best or right way to treat a person and a situation, I slip into the role of enabler.

I am better at being responsible and reasonable with friends than I am with family, but I'm not always good at keeping from being that PARENT, provider, puts herself last type with friends either. And with family, I am especially terrible at being...regular.

Growing up in a volatile household where I didn't know, one minute to the next, whether something would fly across the room at one of us (be it object or comment) or if something I said or did would cause enormous upset and then home would be a war zone of yelling and accusation and slammed doors and hatred....or if my pleading mother really would hold it against me if I didn't appease my stepdad or his kids with following the obnoxious rules and wishes, I felt, they didn't deserve to have. Not for how they treated us. Me.

I learned to "keep everybody okay," to the detriment of my feelings, and RATIONALITY. It's not because I care to be a martyr. I do not. It's because, and this is truer than true, I am afraid to lose the people I love.

I began to turn to God a lot at a very young age....around 7, 8.....because his words provided stability and very clear boundaries and more understanding than I received at home - certainly more compassion. If  I didn't have biblical stories, characters and principles to go to, I think I would be unreachable today; curled up in a closet, humming, rocking.

But, I did. Thank God I did, and had great examples of how people in pain took care of themselves, wound after wound, time and time again: They recognized God in their lives. They learned to view painful people through eyes of compassion. They relied on superhuman strength, that can only come from God, to move mountains. They acknowledged being broken and were willing to be made new.

I try to model after the people in the Bible to this day...but I don't always. I can't always. I still get scared and broken and all twisted up and don't know how to relate to people I'm in disagreement with when it comes to my deep needs and theirs. - Not surface stuff, and not core values, I'm good at disagreeing there!

Anyway, I'm in counseling to be less codependent, more able to let other people stand on their own two feet. Not mine.

Fuck, you know?

I have had three or four blog posts ready to write and now that I have access to a real computer with a working keyboard AND there's internet access...I cannot think of what to relay. 

I am staying south of Boston while my mom is in a city CCU with ultra filtration machine tubes stickin out of her neck. I spend 4-9 hours a day in the unit with her or wandering the hospital while procedures are done and I'm allowed back in.

The spin I'm in is....incredible to say the least.

1 week ago, I was standing in front of my classmates in a New York retreat center's chapel, eyes closed, heart wide open, mind quiet, emotions swelling, with a pair of hands on my shoulderss and another pair in my own, acceptin the appointment to treat God's people (meaning everyone I meet) with love and understanding.

I got ordained! It felt right to do - GOOD to do - smart to do...and authorized by God himself since I'd questioned time after time whether I should go through with it and become a real minister....and verses aimed me at Yes, do it. Yes.

Minutes after receiving the appointment to minister, I listened to my voicemail on my phone. My uncle was ranting about my mom's condition and told me to get to Boston right away. I called mom who told me to "graduate first" on Sunday...and I did, then she was admitted to the ER and I was driving to Boston from New York.

I do not know if docs can help my mom. I am not feeling great with my husband - not fighting just not feeling supported in what is the hardest time of my life. I miss my daughter who is at camp. I am in a hotel room for lack of a place close enough to mom to stay...where I wouldn't impose on anyone.  I am mostly alone and handling things like a weepy, over-sensitive loner with no direction.

1 week ago I had direction.

This week, there is a threat of losing my mom to CHF for good. I hit a car in a parking garage (fender scrape) and left my info with the office ppl there. I pissed off my husband for wanting to spend $30 more a night on a different hotel that didn't suck so much. My kid is afraid to get calls from me at camp cause her grandmother's in such bad shape. My GOOD knee has gone funky and is unstable. I walk funnier!  I have a bazillion things to do from home that I can't do from here. I am missing my job. I am missing my work, even. I can't do any of what I feel responsible for work-wise from here. I want to go home. I want to be with my mom. I want to sleep til it's all good again.

I feel sad. Very sad.

The good news is I am somehow still making very good food  choices. Maybe due to my mom being so so compromised.

I read my bible and pray and cry and pray.

That's...where I'm at. I hope you are OK.

Achey Me.

We're spending one on one time with Crackers (our cat) whenever we feel we can. He's up for being cuddled just a little. Mostly he wants to sit on his own, tucked away in the restroom on a towel I doubled up for him. He's moving pretty slowly and the phases our vet explained would happen are taking place. It's troubling letting your pet die on his own; yet, none of us is able to give a go ahead for euthanizing him. Either choice is a hard one...but we're pretty resolved to try comfort measures right now.

I feel bad for the times when he would hop up to be in my way and get some loving that I pushed him off or set him aside so he wouldn't be a nuisance or get in the way of what I was doing. Granted, I didn't do so EVERY time, but the times I did were pretty ignorant of me. It was only a few weeks ago. His decline has been rapid - too rapid - and heartbreaking, but we're trying to give him the dignity we'd give any one of our relatives who is dying by loving him the best we can while he's still among us.

It's the first we've ever done this. In the past, we've had a cat and two dogs who died very unexpectedly so there was no goodbye time, no extra TLC, no being with them through the scary part.

The vet believes Crackers understands what is happening and is doing what comes naturally to cats. We just love him so much.

I've had a horrible time with food all over again - and my ambition is half-hearted with just about everything. I'm sure some of it comes from worrying about and mourning my cat and some of it comes from worrying about my mom and stressing over her world of issues and some of it comes from that lonely feeling that happens when you realize at the bottom of your bottom there is no one to pull you out - it is really up to you and whatever faith you can muster.

If I didn't believe in God, I'd be an even deeper mess. But, I do. I really do. And I pray that we are doing what is right for Crackers and that we are being respectful as we hang with him these last days.