fear

You’re Gonna Miss This.

/ catacosmosis / 1 Comment

One day, you will sit alone and look through old photos that seem like they were taken just yesterday but really, those moments are so far away. They’ve become memories, and a life that you once lived… Treasure good and happy, joy and thrill filled moments…indulge in those moments – whether experienced with those you care for or experienced alone – while you’re taking the photos and living the experience. Make them count. When they become just a memory, never look back at them with regret, because in those moments you were alive. You were living – not just existing. And being alive and not just existing is what life is really all about about. It is always “the good old days,” in one way or another… Never forget that.

“You’re gonna miss this

You’re gonna want this back

You’re gonna wish these days hadn’t gone by so fast

These are some good times

So take a good look around

You may not know it now

But you’re gonna miss this

You’re gonna’ miss this

Yeah

You’re gonna’ miss this…”

To those of you who have commented on different posts, dm’d, texted, or even called and I haven’t been able to speak to you with everything going on, I’m sorry and I truly appreciate your kindness and your concern for my mom, for my son, for my family, and for me. It means so much – even if I can’t respond right away I see you and feel you there. Love y’all…so very much. It breaks my heart open to be able to receive, and thus continue to give, love…and have hope. ❤️

#memories #summer #goodtimes #wine #water #warmth #sunset #goodolddays #love #hope #gratitude #keepgoing #changeisinevitable #growthisnotlinear #growthisnecessary

What the “Bad Apple” Analogy REALLY Taught Me

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It might be one thirty in the morning but it is still Sunday, so Reverend Sister Christy is going to preach. We having church.

Today’s topic is: Don’t give up a good apple in your life just because you see a blemish and mistake it for a worm.

Misery may love company. But you know what miserable people really want? To be heard even in their silence. To be cared about even when they’re misunderstood. To be thought of even though they may not want to be seen. Even if they can’t or don’t want to express themselves or respond…they need to know they still matter, not tossed to the side because they or their struggles make you uncomfortable.

Why? Because disconnection is not humanly reasonable even if a human being doesn’t have the ability to express themselves – and all people are not going to express themselves in ways you can understand when they DO express themselves. We are meant to be a collective, supporting each other, even if it’s just with a comforting smile and soft eyes, or a simple, “Hey there, I was thinking about you and I’m here if you need me.”

People don’t necessarily always want or know how to express themselves. They may not necessarily want that. But what everyone wants and needs, whether they express it or not, is to have the option.

So get down off your high horse, Herod Agrippas of the world, and sit down and LET PEOPLE BE EXPRESSIVE in whatever ways they can be even if you can’t understand those expressions – and as long as they’re not abusing you in any way, if you don’t have anything nice to say or don’t know what to say? Just say so.

Stop punishing people just because you have your own issues and double standards, Herod Agrippas of the world. Get rid of those double standards, and if you have your own issues? Work on them rather than personifying them.

I won’t even say “as long as they’re not hurting you,” because you know what? SOMETIMES THE TRUTH HURTS. Abuse is different. But just because someone’s behavior or choices bothers you, or you don’t agree with them, doesn’t make them invalid or constitute a behaviors they should be punished for by someone with their own flaws and faults. NONE of us are perfect – and for all who would argue that the biblical God was, he himself was not perfect and he KNEW that after he screwed up “man” (see https://lifehopeandtruth.com/god/who-is-god/genesis-6/).

Here’s the thing: You aren’t living someone else’s experience. THEY ARE. So be kind in the ways you can be, even if it is to explain to them that you can’t be of help to them. Be thoughtful. Add some good to the world by shutting up and just offering to listen, even if they don’t want to talk. TRUST ME – that matters. It counts. It’s worth the effort in the long term, even if it angers them or seemingly stresses them, if you truly care for them.

No. Don’t give up a good apple in your life just because you see a blemish and mistake it for a worm.

I can’t – and that’s OK.

/ catacosmosis / 1 Comment

I can’t, and that’s ok to know and to accept and to feel and to express. That’s what this post is about. I know I haven’t really updated here and none of you will know what is going on in full but basically my mom has been living with me and… Well…

There comes a point where you have to accept what you can not do and stop letting people keep trying to convince you that you can do in their “motivational” ways. Sure, they’re trying to help.

But when I say I CAN NOT DO THIS BY MYSELF I need people to understand something: i am doing this BY MYSELF and it’s not working – and it’s not about not wanting to. It’s not about not believing in myself. It’s not about the inconvenience. It’s not even about my own mental health (though it should be). It’s about LITERALLY not being able to care for someone with these needs BY MYSELF, and raise my son and care properly for him. I’m not sorry that that will always come first. I AM legally responsible for him, he’s a minor. And he can’t help me with this. And…she’s not really even my mother. Never has been, by blood or otherwise.

It’s about debilitating migraines. It’s about health issues I had long before this ever started.

It’s about I PHYSICALLY am not strong enough to help someone who refuses to help me help them – lifting dead weight every five minutes to go to the bathroom? Nope. Can’t handle it. Especially with a migraine. Getting her in the tub? Impossible. So we improvise with bowls of water and a tub chair OUTSIDE the tub. Getting her to eat? Also impossible. Which doesn’t help with her strength issues. Getting her to get out of the bed and sit up without arguing and telling me how disappointed and ashamed of me my dad would be that I am trying to make her do something she doesn’t want to do – on his birthday yesterday, when she knew how upset I was – because she KNOWS what she’s doing and she just wants to hurt me.

This is not the dementia. This is just her being hateful and stubborn, naturally. Does she even have dementia? No. Not according to the doctors. She checks out fine. So this is just an angry, bitter, mean, frail and weak old woman who needs help with physical things 24/7 and is being verbally and emotionally abusive to the only person who can keep her out of the one place she doesn’t want to go – the nursing home.

Can I even get her in a nursing home? I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this much – I’m going forward with trying because the few people who have even dealt with her for a half hour at her home or dealt with her at church or even the beauty shop over the past few years have straight up told me that she is faking a lot of this and how she acts when I’m not around.

When my helping you hurts me to a point where I am literally sick all the time? I can’t help you anymore. And I will no longer try. This is my honest, heartbreaking statement: if she wants to do it her way, I will take her to the hospital and leave her there and refuse to care for her. They can’t put her on the street. I don’t know what they’ll do with her but it’s not my concern – I have NO binding, legal obligation to be responsible for her. Why? Because she won’t LET me – and maybe that’s been a blessing in disguise.

She’s already getting bedsores because she won’t move and wants to lay in piss diapers and fights me to change her. It absolutely ridiculous.

I don’t care about how it looks if I do take care of her or if I don’t. It’s not about that. I don’t want accolades for doing it, and I don’t give a damn if people think I’m horrible for not being able to do it. But I can’t do it. I can’t care for someone with these needs BY MYSELF, and raise my son and care properly for him. I’m not sorry that that will always come first. I AM legally responsible for him, he’s a minor. And he can’t help me with this.

It’s always going to be a never ending battle I’m never ever going to win. I have finally accepted that.

Now. To take more meds and pray my head quits and I can fucking breathe for five minutes without feeling nauseous and debilitated.

Wary Faith.

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Whatever it is you’re going through right now I want you to know you aren’t alone. And it might feel like you are. It might feel like a million things are piling up on you and you don’t know if it’ll get heavier or how much more you can bear.

And you might not know who to turn to or even where to start.

Because suddenly all of this just hit you at once.

It’s like you’re floating on the surface but below no one can see you are flustered and kicking for your life just to stay afloat.

You look fine.

You smile when you have to.

When someone asks, “how you are?” you say, “good.”

But part of you wishes you weren’t so good at faking it. Part of you wishes someone would call your bluff and say, “I know you’re lying, what’s wrong?”

We’ve been told the best thing to do is lie. So we lie to ourselves saying everything is fine. We lie to everyone else saying we can handle it. Whatever that it is.

Then it just becomes too much.

I’m here to tell you it’s okay if things aren’t going well right now. It’s okay if you’re hurting. It’s okay if you want to fall apart and scream at the top of your lungs because things outside your control are happening that you don’t understand. You’re trying to find clarity in moments of confusion. You are trying to put a band-aid on the pain you’re repressing hoping it heals, but you know you’re just covering it up. Then something else comes out of left field only to hurt you more.

You go to bed at night and you’re just laying there not sleeping, and you don’t want to play the pity card of “why me?” or “why did this happen?” How much worse can things get, only to watch it play out even more?

You’re trying to piece yourself back together but you’re cutting your fingers in the process, and honestly, you don’t even remember what it feels like to be whole or completely happy.

You hate that being happy is so hard to achieve right now.

But more than that you hate that no one sees it.

You’re holding back tears and putting on a brave face because it isn’t socially acceptable to start crying in the middle of a workday. Not when people need you. Not when people look up to you. Not when people are watching your every move like your life is a show for their entertainment.

Just when something starts to shift and there’s even a little bit of light, someone has to come and ruin your day. It’s a snide comment. It’s criticism. It’s one little thing or conversation that almost puts you over the edge.

Like everyone in the universe is out to get you. And it isn’t like you to be this negative or pessimistic. But everyone has those days that turn to weeks and sometimes months where nothing seems to work in their favor.

Despite being given every reason to be mean to others and treat them the way they have treated you, you don’t. You replace their unkindness with silence. You replace disrespect with being the bigger person. You replace someone going after you with keeping your head down and mouth shut.

And they judge you for the things you do and they judge you for the things you don’t.

It’s like they have a target on your back, watching your every move waiting for you to mess up. So every step you take is a little more cautious. How quick everyone is to judge you for the little things you do wrong and they forget what you did right.

I know what it’s like to feel that way.

I know what it’s like to not understand any of it.

And you just keep trying. Trying to make them happy as well as yourself only to learn whichever way you change, someone isn’t going to like it.

You want to trust people but every time you have, every time you’ve let your guard down, they’ve gotten close enough to hurt you. So you learn to expect the worst of people, while still trying your best and giving your best to those who don’t deserve it.

Caring deeply about others is both your greatest strength and weakness.

It’s that strength that everyone seems to rely on, even though you don’t know where it’s even coming from.

It’s the energy to never let people down and constantly say “yes” even though you’re tired.

It’s the light you shine in other’s lives and the compassion to look at someone and you can tell when they’re having a tough day because you know what faking it looks like. You ask them how they are doing, even though no one has asked you lately.

It’s keeping it together when someone else is falling apart even when you want to, you still manage to be the arms holding them.

It’s admirable to be like that.

And even though people don’t give you the credit you deserve or even utter the words “thank you,” you keep being exactly how you are and you don’t change.

As hard as it is to be someone like you, you realize how rare it is too.

So when the world gives you every reason to change – every reason to treat others the way they treat you, every reason to hurt others because maybe someone broke your heart – you don’t. I want to thank you for being that type of person.

It’s people like you we need most in the world. So whatever pain or confusion or difficult life situations you’re going through, I want you to know you’ve made it through everything leading up to this and there’s strength within you, you don’t even realize.

Don’t be afraid to fall apart if you have to.

Don’t be afraid to cry if you need that.

Don’t be afraid of any of this.

Because it will get better. Sometimes though, things get worse before they get better. But on the other end of that is something really great waiting for you.

Keep fighting for everything you know you deserve because you will get it.

via Wary Faith.

There is No Logic in This | Dementia

/ catacosmosis / 10 Comments

Yesterday was the worst day. I don’t know why, but life always seems to implode (or explode) with everything at once. Yesterday I battled with my own body and began to battle again with my mind and my thoughts. I laid down in the afternoon to nap and I missed a phone call from my mom.

About two hours later I was awakened by a phone call from the hospital. We rushed up there and were told that she had been wandering again (not so much wandering as making more poor decisions, having it in her head that it was a good idea to walk 3 miles to a store, which she has attempted to do several times since the beginning of this year). She has so far not fallen on these little escapades but this time she made it about two or so miles before she did fall.

I believe that she passed out because she refuses to eat properly and she’s also very weak and feeble to begin with, so I am not surprised. I have begged her not to do this, making that very argument and explaining how dangerous it really is. In fact, the last time, a neighbor picked her up around the same place she fell yesterday and she was walking IN THE MIDDLE OF A TWO LANE ROAD with curves and fast traffic.

I also believe that she hit the pavement so hard that she had to have knocked herself out because she hit the pavement hard enough to bust her chin all the way across and knock all of her teeth out of line as well as broke two teeth. She has a major swollen bruise on her temple and severely bruised ribs as well as scrapes and contusions on her hands, arms and legs. Today she looks like she lost a fight with Mike Tyson.

I’m not sure how long she laid there before she called me because, again, I don’t feel like anybody could take a blow like that without being knocked out for at least a short period of time, but eventually she tried to call me and I was asleep. #guilt Three people passed by to offer help – she refused help so the first two just drove on without even calling an ambulance, while the third person refused to move her and called an ambulance but then left before the ambulance arrived.

There was at least a 40 minute time frame between the time that she fell and the time that an ambulance arrived which means that she laid on the side of the road (possibly in the road for a period of time) for that long miraculously not getting hit, robbed or otherwise hurt.

This is the final straw for me and I can no longer accept the fight that I have been fighting for so long to prevent her from living alone. I will no longer allow – regardless of the fight to come with her – her to live alone. I will be raising hell with the doctor and I will sue on my own if I have to for guardianship. I have had DHR on my mother‘s case for over a year and two months and still have had no appointment with a lawyer – nothing.

The state is a waste of time and the American medical system is a waste of time. The doctor at the ER understood my concern and tried to find a way to hold my mother for at least 72 hours whether it be a psych eval or a need to be monitored physically but because she answered three or four questions correctly like “what is your name,” “what year is it,” and, “who is the president?” and because her vitals were good and her test results were negative for any breaks or internal damage, she could not be held against her will.

Now, go back and read this story again and tell me why, just because she says “I’m OK,” she could not be held. What kind of decision making and what kind of serious ridiculous danger does a person need to put themselves in – she is clearly a danger to herself and needs to be evaluated – yet there is no ability to hold her? She needs to be given the proper care and I do not have the power to make that happen because I have no legal power when it comes to my mother.

She refuses to offer me any leniency or cooperate with me and I am done with being put in the position of a doctor telling me “you need to take care of your mom” and me knowing I need to do certain things to take care of my mom, but yet being pushed away and out of the picture by my mom and the doctors – it’s a total cluster fuck and I am about to lose my mind.

If I thought I was losing my mind a year ago, well I had no idea how bad it could really get – and I know it’s only going to get worse.

Hello depression, extreme and uncontrollable anxiety and overwhelm. Welcome back.

Losing…

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It is 6:19AM. I opened my eyes to a faint light beginning to creep through filmy windows and as I began to awaken, I awakened to a realization that I have lost all faith in the what we call “the American healthcare system.” It is willful blindness to believe in it.

There are great people who work for it – people who care and give their all to make sure the sick are well attended and made comfortable. But they work for the system – a system that doesn’t allow them to follow their heart, only the money trail. A system that doesn’t allow them to make decisions based on their gut but forces their hand to do what the rules say is allowed and not what is right.

Now it is 7:06AM, and the light is bright enough to make the film on the windows seem to disappear. The film over my eyes, however, has not, and will not. That said, I am too tired and too weak to fight today.

The pain in both my heart and my uterus hold me down. I don’t mind being here. It’s the place I’ve spent the most time and it’s gotten pretty comfortable. So now, as my eyes grow heavy again, I bid my faith and my life as I know it a bittersweet goodbye.

Signs and Encouragement

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My friend Dawn shared a video that touches on something that I have been considering and trying to figure out how to express for a long time. Thank you so much for sharing this, Dawn. I have had SUCH turmoil in my spirit for SO long about the things shared in this video – and now, that’s just gone.

Before 2015, and even for a short time after my father died – while I was still in denial – I was who and what Dawn expresses throughout this video. I believed. I didn’t believe in religion – I had already fought my battles with that and overcome and undone the hold religion had had on me as a child and teenager, because of the way it was so misused and so abusive and manipulative. I had not (and still have not) completely overcome the trauma of that abuse, but I am much farther down the road of recovery. I didn’t believe in “that” God – but in the Source. A higher power. An energy. And I believed in signs.

I believed in our ability as humans to connect with higher spiritual energies and forces and to receive guidance and to guide others. I knew that I had a gift and that I always had – I was able to understand that part of the reason I was so strongly opposed to religion was that I had always been more connected to that source than to buildings and books and that the source was found in the natural world that I had adored and revered throughout my life. I believed in the power of nature to heal, to guide, to teach, and to comfort. I believed in life, and not death.

I had faith – so much faith. I was positive and more happy and at peace with life and with myself than I had ever been, and all just felt right. Real. And yes, peaceful, even in times of pain and struggle. Even though I was at this place and knew I had been awakened and was living with my eyes and my heart open, I struggled with the physical complication of depression and anxiety – not because I didn’t believe in good or higher power or whatever you want to label it but because my body didn’t manage its chemicals very well.

When my best friend was diagnosed with cancer, and I was going through a loss of a different kind along with that terrifying and excruciating experience with my best friend, I held fast to my faith despite the creeping depression. My father died unexpectedly one week after the one year anniversary of her diagnosis with terminal cancer, and I continued to hold fast, knowing that he had been prepared and ready for his own death for some time. He had struggled and suffered for many years, and though his death was unexpected (diabetic coma leading to stroke and then to the sepsis which eventually shut down his body one organ at a time over the course of five days), he was at rest. At peace.

For another 8 months my best friend fought and struggled and suffered, and I was there. I was there until she pushed me away and asked me not to be. She did this with many, to be fair – she was afraid, she lost her ability to cope, and instead of realizing t was a brain tumor and fear speaking for her I believed it was what she really wanted and thought I was respecting her wishes. Weeks went by and during this time my faith began to waiver and my grip began to loosen on that rope that had always held me through those difficult times. She passed away 8 months to the day that we buried my father, and in that moment, part of my soul quite literally died along with her.

Since then I have struggled. I slipped so far down that taking my own life was an option and something I planned out and would have followed through with and completed had something inside me not spoken up and cried out to my husband for help. I don’t know why that happened, aside from my fear of leaving my son without a mother and destroying him, but it did happen and because of his help, and my willingness to fight a really fucked up system, I was able to finally get the help and the medication that I desperately needed. I still struggle. I still rarely leave my home. But in so many ways, I AM better.

In the spiritual areas, though? I have continued to struggle the hardest there. To founder. To nearly drown only to be held afloat by the tiniest life preserver with the thinnest thread attaching it to me. That life preserver has been comprised of my son, of music, of art and photography, and my unwillingness to just pretend like I’ve been ok. I found more strength in vulnerability and allowing myself to share my reality than in “faking it.” Only through doing that was I able to cross paths with some of the most healing people I’ve had touch my life in the past year. People who have encouraged me to continue to share and to have faith and hope, if not in healing, and the possibility of mending and growing and learning to live with the ache of grief, loss, and the “not understanding” or not having the answers or the closure I thought I needed.

Dawn has always been one of those people, and I am so grateful. Even though Dawn and I may be on slightly different paths in career and life in general in many ways, we also share things in common that connect us in very special ways – cancer, loss, grief, “the struggle,” seeking the way (whatever that may be for each of us) – and, what she expresses here about “giving it all away” is so accurate and in tune with where I am…

And that is the other issue that’s been weighing on me: the issue of why I give away (or dump out, as someone once said to me, and I can’t help but laugh at that because it’s so close to true so much of the time) so much stuff – just give it away with no real concern about marketing it or branding it or selling it. “Why do you just give all this creativity and energy away for free? You don’t even try to gain followers or build your brand.”

Because…I don’t want to. I create for the same reason that I breathe. I don’t WANT to make money from it. Making money from it takes away the spiritual connection and soul that I want to express. I LIKE giving myself away, as it were. I LIKE sharing myself and my creative stuff.

I used to like working on computers and tinkering and writing weird programs and so on, and then when I let people convince me to turn it into a career the heart got lost. It became stress. The same thing happened with my photography. I let people convince me to “work harder” and to get into shows and to build a site to sell it and so on, and it became stress instead of joy.

I don’t need to sell these things and I don’t want to sell them. I don’t feel like they can be valued by a price tag and that if they are then it somehow takes away from the true value of what is there. You can’t put a price tag on peace – your own or anyone else’s. It is PRICELESS. And if anything I have to offer can bring that to me or to anyone who shares in my creative endeavors, it’s absolutely worth the “freedom” – at many levels.

Ultimately, as Dawn shares, it’s healing for me to “give it away” because it’s healing for me to create – it’s my PURPOSE to create. I’m going to create regardless and if I feel that giving it away and even just possibly being of help to someone else, even if inadvertently, can be a part of that process…well, why shouldn’t that be free? A lack of monetary value doesn’t make that worth nothing. At least, not in my soul…

Sharing is priceless. It helps me to believe – and it helps me to believe even more when other people cross paths with me via my creative sharing and say, “hey, I believe, too!” or better yet, “hey, I know the struggle so well but I’m hanging on, too. Let’s hang on together. Let’s learn together. Let’s share. Let’s grow together.” Those people exist. Many of you who are regular readers of my blogs, or listeners of my music, or followers of my photography, have shared with me that you are those people.

While I love that others find success in selling their creativity and I even often purchase it from them, it’s just not something I want to do with the things I share creatively online. I need that connection – at least right now, that connection is worth far more to me than money ever will be. I want to be better. I am, at this time, extremely blessed to be able to survive and work on becoming better and not worry whether there will be food in our mouths or clothes on our backs or a roof over our heads without me having to sell my soul to cover it. I am so thankful for that – for my family.

I’m SO grateful that Dawn’s shared this and that it’s available for me to share with you. This has been on my heart for so long and I’ve not been able to figure it out until now. Thank you again, Dawn. So much!!

I encourage you to watch Dawn’s video and listen to her story, which you can do by clicking here. In many ways – especially the spiritual things she speaks about – it mirrors who I was and who I am re-becoming. It inspires me to continue to seek my own heart and hear it, as well as that of whatever this higher power has to offer me.

I hope that you will find some inspiration or encouragement in it, as well…

All the love,

C.