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I’m done, too…. Have been for quite some time now. I think it hit me when I worked so hard to repair a friendship and support the person’s new life not realizing or fully accepting that we weren’t really friends at all until I was accused of “stalking” because I added the person’s new boyfriend as a friend on a Facebook “without asking permission.”

Who the hell asks permission to be friends with a friend’s boyfriend if they are truly friends, especially when they are 30+ years older than you and it is extremely clear that you have zero interest in drama and only have an interest in getting to know and support people?

That experience taught me that it is very rarely about you but almost always about some insecurity or issue that someone else has when they do something completely ridiculous like that. I’d done nothing but prove myself forgiving, trustworthy and kind up to that point but that day, in the blink of an eye, I was done.

I was angry, and I was hurt. I’d done nothing but listen to this friend go on about not wanting to disappoint anyone by going on with life and had been encouraging and, I hope, uplifting about it all. I gave a hundred percent to making an effort to support this person’s new life and to encourage them to live it however they saw fit to live it, not worrying about the judgments of others.

I felt insulted and used as a human being. And, ultimately? It had very little if anything to do with me. It had to do with that person’s own lack of trust, whether in me or the boyfriend or whomever. It had to do with their lack of actual concern about me, and that day that lack of concern slapped me in the face out of nowhere.

That day, I didn’t give up on the person, I finally saw my own self worth and let that person go, like I should have done all the other times that person had walked out of my life, instead of trying so hard to make what was not meant to be in my life work in some way.

This post really spoke to me. Sometimes you’re gonna love or care for people at different levels and in different ways that are never going to truly care about you. Sometimes, they’re gonna say they do but their actions are actions that speak more loudly to their lack of care and concern than the other way around.

The following re-blogged post was me that day, and every day since in any situation where I feel used or mistreated, and I didn’t even realize it until this moment. I have learned to truly be done without questioning when my heart says it’s time.

It feels good to be done.

Sweet Serenity Blogg

I’m done holding the door open for people and wondering what I’ve done wrong instead of realizing it’s their loss.

I’m done trying to give people a reason to stay when in reality, I shouldn’t want someone who doesn’t want to be here.

I’m done investing time and energy into people who just don’t care.

I’m done picking myself apart for people who only ever took everything I had to give and left once they realized I didn’t have more in me.

I’m done saying sorry to people who should be the one apologizing.

I’m done letting guilt eat away at me when I shouldn’t

I’m done fixating upon my flaws and trying to win people over when there are so many people who wouldn’t like me if I changed.

I’m done pretending to be someone I’m not simply to fit the mold of their expectations. 

I’m done trying so…

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I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything. —Alice Walker

Mextures Formula: FCIDCYX

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Sitting with Mama alone in her bedroom

She opened her eyes, and then squeezed my hand

She said, I have to go now, my time here is over

And with her final word, she tried to help me understand

Mama whispered softly, Time will ease your pain

Life’s about changing, nothing ever stays the same

And she said, How can I help you to say goodbye

It’s OK to hurt, and it’s OK to cry

Come, let me hold you and I will try

How can I help you to say goodbye?

How can I help you to say goodbye?

—Karen Taylor-Good, Burton Collins

Mextures Formula: GDRSIDA

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It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.

—Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

Mextures Formula: CLABPXZ

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I have spent a lot of time thinking about this in the last couple of days:  At this time in my life it’s not even about ups or downs or moods…it’s about bad days and good days. People say that you can choose to have a good day just by having a positive thought when you wake up, or by praying or meditating when you wake up – all sorts of different things like that, usually involving gratitude for something, even just life itself. I find that extremely difficult some days, and completely untrue on those days, as witnessed by my past couple of posts.

I don’t think that the power of positive thinking is always enough. There is nothing I can EVER do to change things with my mother. I can not cure dementia. I can not change her. I can not change the situation as it is at this time. Same thing with grief – I can not change the fact that my father and my best friend are dead. They are not coming back. In those instances, people will say it’s down to acceptance and that is true. I can get behind that, to some extent, although as most of you know I don’t believe in such a thing as an end to grief…

I was listening to music earlier while I was folding laundry and this song came on called, “Breathe Me,” by Sia. It hit me in my gut like a bad piece of chicken. We can take responsibility all we want to, we can take action all we want to, but sometimes it just hurts. Sometimes we are just lost. Sometimes we are just hurt. Sometimes we are just afraid. Sometimes we are all of those things and more, all at once, and we are completely overwhelmed. That’s where I’ve been.

Yesterday a friend of mine told me, “Now I’m gonna say this and I just want you to listen to me. I don’t want you to use (anything) as a crutch. You’re STRONG. You walk around with a shaved head because you want to! You don’t care what people think…” She went on… So last night I laid in bed, in my pitch black and freezing cold bedroom trying to stave off an impending migraine (unsuccessful, by the way), and I let all she’d said float around in my head. And ultimately, two things stood out to me.

I do have a crutch. It is alcohol. And it is a waste of time – it doesn’t accomplish anything positive, except momentary lapses in the ability to feel things. And, strength is relative. People see different things as examples of strength. The fact this person, who has been through more than I ever imagined when I first met her, completely rebuilt her life and walks around with such an air of confidence even my shaved head is in awe – for this person to say to me, “you are stronger than this. You ARE STRONG,” humbled me in a way that I couldn’t understand. Of course, that led to more thoughts and more considerations and a whole lot of writing in my journal…but I fell asleep knowing that I did not want to drink today.

And I didn’t.

And I don’t know why. I don’t know what changed.

I do know that by lunch time tomorrow I’ll be craving alcohol like the drought ridden fields crave rain…and I don’t know what I’ll do about that. Probably text or call her, or my cousin, or my therapist…maybe go to the feed store and hang out. I don’t know. But I do know this much – if you really want to make a change, you will do it.

I haven’t smoked in over 24 hours, haven’t had a drink in over 24 hours, and the only reason is because I just wanted to see if I could. I didn’t tell anyone until later in the day today, when I was at the feed store. I didn’t keep it to myself because I was afraid I would fail. I kept it to myself because I only wanted it to be about me and what I wanted.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But I do know that I don’t feel the same way I felt a few days ago when I was battling the suicidal ideation and the complete lack of regard for my life, my health, or my Be-ing. I don’t know what changed… I think mostly, it was being seen, and being cared for, and being spoken to in a way that wasn’t at all what I expected.

I always said I would never allow another “Dorie” into my life – or at least that there would never be another her. I think I may have changed my mind…or my heart… You never know who is going to walk into your life, or when.

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Therapy used to be the bane of my existence. Now that I have the best therapist on the planet (for me) via BetterHelp, it’s not so bad. The whole thing revolves around my time schedule – which can be pretty chaotic – and finally finding (or being gifted by the universe?) a therapist who GETS ME is priceless.

That said, it doesn’t change my thoughts or feelings. It helps me to express them in a safer environment than any other, but the reality is that my kind of depression doesn’t ever really go away. It’s up and down, it doesn’t flip but it rises and falls. And with my mom? It’s basically a pit of hell.

I think the thing that brings me down the most is watching this all play out and not being able to do a damned thing about it. Dementia is like that. No matter what you do, it’s gonna progress. Maybe slowly, maybe quickly. Maybe meds help. They don’t if you’re fighting with the person to even take them.

Mostly, the whole situation makes me both miss AND respect my dad so much more. Sometimes I am so angry that he is gone. Most of the time time I’m just sad. Sad at a level that isn’t just melancholy or blue, but at a level that is a thunderstorm – dark clouds and pouring rain, raging winds and thunder in my head. Sad at a level that I can barely breathe through these days.

But here I am. That counts for something, I suppose. Even still, I feel so useless to everyone around me. I feel useless to my mom because she won’t LET me be useful to her. I feel useless to everyone else because, well, depression. I just stay in my room, and read. I cry but I don’t know why as it doesn’t really let anything out. I wish that someday I would be able to find the words to describe this experience just in case I make it past it and have an opportunity to help someone else.

I hope you all have a pleasant weekend. I appreciate your correspondences and your kindness more than you know. You help me more than you know.

All the love,

C.

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Today someone asked me a whole lot of questions about different things. The one that stuck out the most for me was about how I felt about dealing with the situation with my mother, and if I felt like a bad daughter. It didn’t take more than a nano second for me to yell, “HELL NO I don’t feel like I’m being a bad daughter – I think what’s going on is that I’m sick and tired of being treated like one.”

It’s triggering many things, from depression and hurt in general, to bad dreams and weird memories from my childhood… Not that life isn’t difficult for all of us at some point in time, and all the time for some people, but that’s the thing I’m feeling the most. It’s just all so difficult. I told my mother’s doctor just last week I no longer wanted to be her guardian (something I’ve been fighting to be named as for over a year) and that I was willing to lose the land and even my horses at this point if it meant that she was cared for. I feel like I just can’t deal with it anymore.

As far as drinking – I shared a while back that I was concerned about how much I was drinking. Truth be told I’ve been using alcohol as a sort of escape for a long time, just not to this level. I had quit for a while but I just picked it right back up because, well, in the simplest of terms, fuck it. I know it’s not the answer and I know it’s not healthy (at a number of levels) but right now I really just don’t care.

I really don’t care about anything right now… I feel very much like I could hide away and stay gone for a very long time and be perfectly OK with that. I really can’t even find my words today – which is also unusual.

I’m angry. I’m depressed. I’m not well. And honestly, I don’t care. I’m ok with not being ok. And right now I’m ok with drinking myself to death. I don’t care if that sounds selfish to some, or if it’s something others can’t understand. Raw me here. I don’t want to walk in these shoes anymore. I don’t really want to walk at all. And I’m not even writing this under the influence of alcohol. I’m also not writing it for attention. I write. That’s it.