Barking Mad

Stream of Consciousness - You're Only as Sick as Your Secrets

 

I'm not sure where I first heard the phrase, "You're only as sick as your secrets" but it's stuck with me for a very long time and it wasn't until very recently that I realized how true it is. 

Secrets are poison for the soul, the mind and the body.  I am living, walking, talking proof of this.

Some days I want to come out here and completely unburden myself of all the nasty crap that's wedged deep within the recesses of my soul...the things that keep me from truly being free to embrace the life I want to lead and to root out the sickness inside and make way for the healthy.

I've been very honest - to the point of almost being brutally honest, out here about my life, the things that have shaped me into the woman I am, or I guess the woman I am and the deficits of spirit that I've lived with for such a long time.  It's no longer a secret that I am a morbidly obese woman who is taking steps to change the path her life is on - permanent steps.  It's not a big secret that for the most part I got myself into this situation after losing a child.

However, there are secrets that I still keep tightly tucked away inside that are slowly eating away at my heart, my soul and my mind.  One of those secrets I am legally bound to keep which is unfortunate because I think it needs to be told.  I think people need to know about The Very Bad Thing at least so that it never happens to another person again.  However, because I don't want to find myself in trouble, legally speaking, I'll never open that pandora's box.

Then there's the secret about my relationship with my kids...so many have asked what really happened to cause this huge chasm between myself and my older kids from my first marriage?  It's not really a secret per se, just something I don't share because in all honesty?  It makes me look like the horrible mother I am.   It all really boils down to the very simple fact that I had a nervous breakdown a few years after Joshua died.  I was overwhelmed with the task of raising three small children when my heart was shattered into a million pieces.   I never grieved his loss.  Instead, I ate.  The stress of his loss and  the fact that I blamed myself for Joshua's death and therefore didn't feel good enough to be a mother to my three remaining children was compounded by the fact that my first marriage was never built on a foundation of love, trust and mutual respect.  We were two kids forced into getting married...I literally walked down the aisle, five months pregnant.  I wanted to wait. To others around us this was unacceptable. We were told to get married and married we got!

Everything came to a head in the spring of 1995 when my aunt Meta died.  She was everything to me.  She helped raise me.  Some of my fondest memories of childhood are those where I spent time with her (she was technically my great-aunt, but I never thought of her that way), and my other aunts, her sisters, Wilhelmina and Gertrude.  When my mother and biological father divorced, I was only three.  Aunt Meta took care of me while my mother worked one and sometimes two jobs.  For several years while I was growing up, I would spend weekends, holidays and summer vacations with her.  In many ways my aunt was like a mother and grandmother to me.  She was also one of my biggest cheerleaders and ultimately, my confidant, despite the fact that she was well into her late 70's, (she was born in 1905) during my teen years.  Sometimes, during the most tumultuous and rebellious periods of my adolescence, she was also my advocate. 

Aunt Meta was a beautiful woman, even in her senior years.  Despite the fact that she never married, she led a very interesting life and I grew up with stories of how the old dutch Hoogendjk side of our family came over from Holland and how they settled in the Covina area of southern California.  They established some of the very first citrus groves in the area. 

When I was very small, I would often sleep with my aunt in her old, dark mahogany four-poster bed. I'd drift off to sleep while she told me stories about growing up at the turn of the 20th century.  She told me stories of what life was like, as a teenager, during WWI and then as a grown woman in her late 30's amidst the tumult of WWII.  She fascinated me with her recollections of life during a time when common staples used by families all over the United States were being rationed and how they would sit around the radio at night and listen for news of the war.

My aunt's death was yet another cruel blow, despite the fact that by the time she died, her health had failed her in catastrophic ways.  Holding telephone conversations with her by the time she started to decline rapidly was nearly impossible as she suffered from dementia and was incredibly paranoid of almost everyone.   Whilst I know her death gave her the ultimate reprieve from a body that no longer functioned and a mind that had crumbled, it was still incredibly hard on me.  My former husband, children, and I were living well below the poverty level at the time which made traveling from Washington state to southern California for my aunt's funeral out of the question.

Her loss was the final straw in my world where stress was the norm and not an occasional event. When my aunt died, she took to her grave, one of my biggest secrets.  It was something I should have told someone else about but I told her.  She didn't know who I should tell and frankly I think she was so completely and utterly unglued by what I shared with her that she wasn't sure what the appropriate thing to do would have been.  She knew that my fear kept me silent...the same exact way it does today.

In the early summer of 1995 after a particularly nasty fight between my former spouse and I, I left to go stay with a friend in Colorado Springs, CO.  I left the children behind.  I always intended to take a break and come back for them.  I was slowly losing control of my emotions and ability to cope with things on a daily basis. 

There was a lot of speculation about whether I was having an affair with the person I went to stay with.  I wasn't.  I stayed with a close friend and his elderly mother.  I was in CO for about two months and then went to Alabama for about another month and then returned to Washington; to my family. I missed my children desperately and ached to be near them.  However, I wasn't sure where my marriage stood and being that I was confused about that, it was a constant bone of contention between my former husband, "M", and myself. 

I had been back in Washington for nearly a month when I came home from work one day and the house was emptied of nearly every single thing, including my children.  M had cleared out, completely.  I was heartbroken. I knew though that there was little I could do about it.  With no local family or any close friends or the financial resources available to fight a long and ugly custody battle, I saw the writing on the wall.  I felt as small and insignificant as a gnat and withdrew almost completely into myself.

There are other things that played into all of this...things that are of some consequence, but the bottom line is the same.  I was the absentee parent.  I could barely fight for my own life, so I didn't see how I could fight for my kids. This "secret" that rests in the murky depths of my soul has so much to do with me not feeling deserving of fighting for my own life.  No one truly stood up for me when I was younger, and I never learned how to stand up for myself...until just very recently. I never once felt capable of fighting for my children, something that I will regret until the day I die.

I've been accused of "abdicating" my role as a mother to my three older children, and if that's the way you see it, there's little I can do to change your perception of me.  Those that are closest to me know that is not how things truly happened but it also doesn't absolve me of the fact that for more than eight years, I was absent from my older childrens lives.  Over the years I have tried to make amends for not being there.  Meg and I are still a work in progress and even as close as we are, there are still times when my absence in her life plays a huge role in how we relate to one another as mother and daughter today.  As far as my boys?  Well, it's no secret that things have not worked out so smoothly in that respect.  Time will tell if I am capable of trying to stabilize the very precarious bridge that my relationship with my sons rests upon.

In a way, when the Very Bad Thing (and I know so many of you are getting sick of me referring to it that way, and I really, quite desperately wish I could talk about it.  But the case has been settled and as such, there is nothing to talk about.) happened, it not only destroyed me, but it forced me to get the help I needed to deal with this secret that lies buried so deep below the surface.  As emotionally and physically nasty, foul and repugnant as The Very Bad Thing was, it tore me down to nothing so that I could begin the long process of rebuilding myself.  In doing so, I shared this long kept secret with my psychiatric team and began the journey towards realizing that what happened, the issue behind the secret and then The Very Bad Thing were not my fault but because for so long I'd blamed myself about things that had happened - things that never should have happened.

Harboring this secret caused me to bury myself emotionally and then physically.  From dealing with what happened to me as a young girl, to dealing with a highly dysfunctional marriage, not coping after the death of my son, and then completely falling apart after The Very Bad Thing. So much of the dysfunction in my life is a result of this damned secret! 

So now I'm writing about things in the best way I know how.  I know I say too much, yet at the same time am so vague as to not say anything at all.  But it's the best way I know how to deal with this.

What I want to say is this - to the person who started me on a life full of blame, guilt, and secrets.  I doubt you read this, I don't even know if you know this place exists, but on the off chance you do, know this... What you did to me, how you took advantage of your position in my life was wrong!  I was a toy for you to play with back then and I didn't know any better.  I was too terrified to say anything to anyone except to an old lady who was both disgusted and afraid herself to say anything.  I didn't know how to cope with what was done to me so I tried to make myself unattractive.  I've been doing that ever since.  Now?  No more!

You no longer hold the power to make me feel like I need to bury the beautiful girl I was or the woman I am.  For too long I have hid myself so that no one else will look at me the way you did, do the things you did to me, and take advantage of me the way you did.  You are everything that is evil and wrong in the world.  For every pound I shed, I divest myself of the dirtiness and horribleness I've felt about myself since you came into my life.  I will never be able to replace what you took away from me, but I can build upon the skeleton that you left me with.  I can make her strong, healthy, vibrant, and more than that, alive!  Alive in a way that she never was.  For every pound I lose, I gain several more in power...power that you took away from me.  

I don't hate you.  Yes, I feel something akin to contempt for you but I also feel very sorry for the pathetic and miserable person you...a person who got off on doing the things you did to a young girl who wasn't able to defend herself. 

I think you should also know that in taking my power back, I told this nasty little secret to not only my psychiatrist but to a few people in my life that needed to know.  I no longer want to be as sick as this secret has kept me.  I deserve to be the woman I was always supposed to be! 

 

Will I Ever Fit In?

 

You know you really need to sit down and just write when your four year old tells you that you're annoying her and then asks you to "Please mumma, go write lots of words on your computer!  You don't play Princess and the Frog like I want you to!"  Of course, somehow I always mange to end up being the frog.  Never once have I landed the sweet gig of being the princess.  Heck, I can't even manage to ever be Cinderella when we play that game!  I don't even get to be one of the mean step-sisters, or even the evil step-mother.  Nope!  Who does Gaby deign to let me play?  Gus, one of the mice.  That's right...the rotund (albeit he's very cute, at least I've got that going for me!), less than coordinated, newcomer to Cinderella's merry troupe of vermin mice.

So when I asked Gaby if she wanted to work on our "Kindness Project", (I mentioned this in yesterdays brief post), she just rolled her eyes and very emphatically told me, "Later! Now just move offa my swamp!"  So much for blog fodder...blog fodder which I was really excited about, because she was really excited about doing it.  "Was" being the operative word. 

In a way it's kind of a good thing that we didn't get around to finishing our project today because something has been eating away at me for a few weeks and I wasn't sure if I could find the words to write about it, without sounding like the girl who never gets asked to dance.

I have written a lot about being "that mom", the one who has lost the child and is forced to wear that loss like a huge scarlet A across my chest.   That's not something that will ever go away. I won't ever completely fit in around other mothers who are unbroken and whole.  I've also written a great deal about my life as a morbidly obese woman and how I have struggled with that for more than two decades now.  The weight will go away.  I'm more determined now than ever to become healthy and strong...not only physically but mentally as well.  However, as much as the stigma of belonging to the "That Mom" club will be ever present in my life, I wonder if the shame of being so physically repugnant will ever go away?

Let's be honest, shall we?  Fat people, especially really, horribly  morbidly obese people are overlooked, made fun of, laughed at, belittled, demeaned, and denigrated in almost every way possible.  Not only do we often times not physically fit in (airplane seats anyone?), we also don't socially fit in...regardless of where we are.  Oh sure, there's the funny fat guy at almost every party, but outside of his sense of humor, how much do you really know about him?  Do you know what his passions in life are or what he thinks about anything outside of being funny?  What is the funny guy like outside of the social setting where you're likely to come across him for a few minutes?  Do you even honestly want to know anything more about him?

You probably don't because you see people like him much the same way people view those with leprosy.  Here's the thing though...fat isn't contagious.  If I sneeze near you, or cough in your general direction, you won't automatically sprout love handles, nor will the buttons pop off of your blouse or trousers, and you probably won't end up having to sign up with Jenny Craig after sitting near me on the bus.  The way some people act around us though, you'd think we were no better than a common criminal. 

Simply put, we don't fit in with all the cool kids.

Oh sure, you're probably sitting there going, "But Audrey, some of my closest friends are fat!" And maybe that's true.  Perhaps you're able to see beyond the excess weight, the clothes that don't fit well, the unease this person has when he or she eats around you because they think you're watching everything they put in their mouths...maybe you are in fact able to look behind their eyes and see the human being that lives underneath all that adipose tissue.  The fact remains, you're one of the few that can actually do that.  Most people see us as gross blights on the pretty landscape of the earth.

Of course, at the rate Americans are gaining weight, I suppose many of us don't even realize that we aren't just overweight, we are obese!  Maybe some of us just don't see it.  Don't want to see it.

I see people look at me with disgust every day.  EVERY SINGLE DAY.   That photo (I apologize for the quality, I took it at night on my way home from the store, and it was raining!), I posted above?  That's the sign that greats you as you drive into the small town I live in.   I live in Saratoga Springs, a beautiful, affluent area of upstate New York, situated at the foothills of the Adirondacks...and one of the things this area is famous for is health.  HEALTH!  And then there's me.  I just moved here, I'm having a difficult time adjusting, and everywhere I look there are beautiful people with horses who are proud of their history...oh and their health.  Did I mention the health thing already? 

If people don't look at me with disgust, they just don't see me.  They see right past me, like I'm not even there.  I go into stores where men will open the door for every attractive and fit woman that walks in, but when I walk in, it's as if they don't see me.  Don't get me wrong, I can open the door myself.  It's just a common courtesy that I notice is not extended to me...even when I have Gaby with me.  I can't even begin to count the number of times I have seen this happen before, not just with me, but with other obese women.   They are not offered the same courtesy as those who are fit and attractive.  It's not just doors that aren't opened (I can't even begin to count the number of "career" doors that have been slammed in my face because of my weight.  Yes radio Program Directors, I'm talking about YOU!  Yes employment agencies, I'm talking about YOU!) for the obese, it's the level of service we don't receive, the niceties that people neglect to give us, the smiles that go un-returned because of what we look like.

What happens when I lose the weight?  Are you still going to see me as the woman who used to be fatally obese?  Will you worry that I'll gain it all back and therefore be unattractive again? Will I fit into your world once I fit into normal size clothes? Are you all of a sudden going to open the door at Macy's for me?  Run out to grab my cart at the grocery store on your way in with the rest of the carts?  Smile back at me when I smile at you?

More than wondering if you'll all finally accept me for the person I am, I wonder if I'll ever see myself as acceptable?  I know, within every cell of my being, that I'm worthy of the changes I'm making, but I wonder how I'll ever wash off the stigma that's been so very long associated with who I am?

One of these days I'm going to stop hiding behind my family and my kids when we take pictures together.  I won't feel like I have to hide the horribleness of myself behind others...

 

   

Will you finally notice me then?

 

Constructive Destruction - Finding a Phoenix Amongst the Ashes

I Want to be The Biggest Loser

I have applied to be a contestant on NBC's The Biggest Loser. 

I am morbidly obese enough, and to such a degree, to make me an ideal candidate for The Biggest Loser.

OH.MY.GOD.

I don't believe I'm actually putting this out here for my tens of readers - and well OK, the probably one thousand or so more that I emailed and asked for support, encouragement, prayers, and wishes for good luck.

The actual decision to do this was made a while ago; the day I sat on the toilet seat and it broke and ended up breaking open a damn of anger and feelings I have, for too long, buried. 

For those who follow me on Facebook, you already knew that I was going to apply for the show.  For some reason it wasn't as hard to admit it out there (probably because I know that as someone who posts status updates like, "...thinks she could definitely meet her weight loss goal if she had to pedal to use her computer." and "...just read a list of 100 Things to do Before You Die' and was surprised that 'yell for help' wasn't one of them!" that there aren't too many people reading what I have to say anyhow!), but putting the words down here...well it's been difficult, to say the least. 

I've worried almost incessantly about what you'd think of me if you knew there was more to me than just the floating head-shots that I post...that are all I ever post! 

Like this...

 

...and this...

 

Or even this one...

 

I have never, ever, online anywhere, posted a full-length body shot of myself.  Especially not out here in Bloggywood where, on the rare occasion, the catty-ness level surpasses that found on The Real Housewives of New Jersey/Orange County/New York/Atlanta.

Being a photographer, I know how to tilt my head and angle the camera in order to not capture my four bulging chins and my neck encased in so much adipose tissue as to make it barely discernible as neck.  I wear enough make-up to put a clown to shame and I spend a lot of time arranging my hair so that it hides as much of my face-fat, as possible.  I don't PhotoShop pictures of myself, but I certainly don't put enough out there to show how really big I am. 

Living With the Constant Fear of Being Rejected Because of How I Look

Up until now I've been in abject fear of the reaction and the disgust.  It's one of the biggest reasons I became a recluse and refuse to go to any sort of conventions like BlogHer, Blissdom, Mom 2.0 or any of the other ones. It's also the reason I do my grocery shopping as late as possible - so I don't have to deal with the stares of all the people, looking at what the really fat lady put into her shopping cart.  I didn't want to see the shocked and horrified expressions on your face when you finally meet me face to face. Until recently I've been so completely consumed by worry over what everyone would think of me. 

As women, we judge one another so harshly and often times we are so cruel to one another because of how we look.  I didn't want the friendships I've formed out here, some very close, to dissolve because I was not the person you'd built me up, in your head, to be.  Because I've been living through fear-tinted windows for a very long time, I didn't realize how these thoughts did a huge disservice to all of you...the people I'm afraid to meet and interact with.

A Very Heavy Burden

Let's be honest...you all know I've been candid about my issues surrounding my weight, especially the struggles I've had with it since The Very Bad Thing happened more than two years ago.  You know that as a result of that, I developed an eating disorder, bulimia.  Despite being bulimic, I still managed to gain 125+lbs [on an already morbidly obese frame] in less than two years time.  Obviously, bulimia was more of a control tool than what I had insanely thought it could be...a means to lose weight, or at the very least, help keep me from gaining more weight.  In the end, it just made me sicker and helped shove me deeper into the abyss of depression I was drowning in.  The bulimia was controlling me...not the other way around. 

Although The Very Bad Thing was one of the worst, most devastating, humiliating, demeaning and foul things I have ever been through, it opened up wounds that had never really closed and forced me to deal with them.  Going through what I did in the aftermath of TVBT nearly destroyed me in almost every way possible. In dealing with other hurts and issues from my past, I was forced to tear away the veneer of the past twenty years, and really deal with what was eating me and in turn, making me eat. With the help of a wonderful psychiatric team, I have been doing the work of tearing myself down so that I could prepare to build myself up again.

Over the past three years out here, I have laid bare the deepest wounds and scars on my heart and soul...the loss of my two-year-old son, Joshua.  What I haven't told you is that while I was merely overweight after his birth, and then the subsequent birth of my twins (who were only six months old when I lost Joshua), after he died, I went into a tailspin that left me eating nearly everything in sight, rather than grieving for my son.  It was so bad in fact, and started so early after his death, that I remember very vividly driving from Joshua's burial to the wake and thinking about the food that had been catered by good friends of ours; thinking about how I couldn't wait to eat and eat eat...It was far easier to think about food than it was to think about laying that precious little boy in the ground. So I buried myself in food, and in turn, in fat. 

I Insulated myself with mounds and mounds of food.  It was more than comforting.  It was a friend who wouldn't leave me, wouldn't die on me. I wouldn't have to bury it and mourn it's loss or absence in my life. 

I didn't grieve Joshua's death...rather, I ate. And ate, and ate. 

From the moment Joshua died, I blamed myself. I think, on some level, I also thought that all the eating would put an early end to my pain and I'd sooner, rather than later, be with my son again and be there for him the way I obviously had failed to do the night he died. In doing so, I've been dying a slow and horrible death.  Very simply put, for almost twenty years, I have been slowly and methodically burying myself alive under all of this fat. 

However...the old me is under there, dying to be the new me!  She's there...can you see her?

 

I am Giving Myself Permission to Live Again

That's all changing though!  The day I sat down on the toilet seat and it broke under the strain of my weight was the day I began to live again. It was the day I finally got angry and said ENOUGH! 

It was the day I broke, into a million little pieces and cried, and yelled and screamed for everything I've lost.  I broke myself so that I could mend myself.

It was the day I decided I wanted to live, genuinely wanted to live! 

It was the day I told myself that no more were people going to tell me, to my face, that I had such a pretty face but was too fat to be truly beautiful!

It was the day that I saw myself not solely as a morbidly obese woman, but saw the real person I am inside...the wife who adores and loves her husband, the mother who strives to make amends for past mistakes and works very hard to prove that she's worthwhile as a parent!

It was the day that I took all of my clothes off and looked in the mirror...actually looked at myself and saw the woman buried deep inside, begging to be let out in order to live her life and prove that she's more than just a mound of jiggling flesh, packed tightly into unattractive clothing, hidden under hundreds of excess pounds!  

It was the day that I decided hiding from the rest of the world in an effort to avoid the cruel snickers and accusing stares wasn't doing me any good and that in order to live in the world, I needed to start living in the world!

It was the day that I decided to make good on my promise to Gareth that I'd give New York a chance, and the people of our new little town, and start to integrate myself into society once more.

It was the day I finally gave myself permission to love myself again and to live my life and celebrate the person that I am and never ever let another human being make me feel less-than for being more-than what is considered ideal or perfect!

It was the day I decided to love myself enough to take care of myself!

**********

I choose The Biggest Loser because I know it will give me the best chance at reclaiming my life in a manner which I'll find comforting.  Yeah, I know...how can parading around, with my flab hanging out, in a sports bra and bike shorts, on national TV, being weighed weekly in front of millions of viewers, be comforting?   

I'll be there with other people, waging the same war, under similar burdens who have traveled their own roads that led them to the place where they realized they needed to make some intense and extreme changes in order to reclaim ownership of their lives, and stop living to eat and start eating to live! I know I'm up to the challenge and I'm so ready for the hard work.  I also know that I can't do it alone...that I need help, I need to be pushed and I need guidance from people who know what they're doing and have proven it time and time again.  It gives me added incentive to reach out to the folks at The Biggest Loser because our personal health insurance coverage doesn't so much as cover anything remotely connected to weight loss.

All of this brings me full circle...to you, my readers and friends.  I'm asking for your support and encouragement.  I'm asking you to stand behind me as I move forward and reclaim what I've let others take from me, and what I've given away freely...my life.  I fully intend on at least getting in front of the show's producers and going through whatever paces they put me through.  I hope that you'll all be there with me, cheering me on as I work hard to enjoy the life I've been so richly blessed with.  When I first started working on the application for the show and thinking about my video submission, I thought, "What the hell, I've got nothing to lose!"  But see, I do...I have everything to lose - my life if I don't do it, and all this weight if I do, do it.

And yeah...I don't just want to be on The Biggest Loser...I WANT TO BE THE BIGGEST LOSER!

  

P.S. To follow my adventures (keeping my fingers crossed that I get chosen for season 10 of The Biggest Loser), you can follow me on Twitter ... Barking_Mad

 

My Pregnant Brain!

 

So much has been going on lately, but not much of it is physical - nope, most of it is mental. In fact, at times, I've got so much mental noise going on, that I feel as if my brain is surely going to ooze out of my nose, ears and mouth.

I can't even count the number of posts where I've said I was either going to let loose out here, or had this, that or another subject I really wanted to write about, or that I wanted to post photos from some adventure we went on and...well, it never materializes.   I can't get anything out of my head and onto paper - so to speak because there's so much stuff cramped up in there and it's all jockeying for a spot at the front...to be let out that it causes a huge snarl-up of brainy traffic, if that makes any sense. 

Often times it's quite literally as if my brain itself is pregnant...11 months along and labor is no where in sight.   Hence the title of this post. 

What?  You thought I was actually PREGNANT?  Nope, sorry about that.

The Move to New York

Everyone keeps asking me how I like it here.   I don't know.  It's white, and gray, naked and frozen. The people move fast but seem nice enough.  I am numb to everything around me right now.  I'm still unpacking and worrying about the house back in Maine.  Maybe when the spring thaw hits I'll be able to feel a bit more of the "soul" of this place we now call home.  Until then I'm just kind of treading water I guess.

Oh, but there is this little tidbit...the lake that sits directly in front of the house, in all it's frozen mass, is actually pretty damned creepy late at night.   It makes these God-awful sounds and half time time, if I find myself outside after darkfall and I hear this huge almost space-like groaning and heaving sound, I haul ass back into the house.  I don't know what the hell the sound is, or where exactly it's coming from but it genuinely creeps me out.   Gareth thinks it might be the noise of the ice moving around...or something like that.  Whatever it is, it's very chilling.

Gaby

My little ray of sunshine in the form of a curly headed, bedimpled imp, has not adjusted well to the move.  She has had such a difficult time getting settled and liking this place.  I have tried earnestly to not vocalize or even show how homesick I am for Maine, and I think I've done a pretty good job...but my darling girl says her "heart hurts and wants to go home to the old house, to Maine." 

I know we've not even been here six weeks yet and in that short frame of time so much has happened.  Immediately before that she had a fairly stable routine and then her daddy lost his job, there was a lot of stress about our home, Meg left for the USAF, her daddy got a new job, he moved, then we moved, Matt went back to Seattle (I wish I could elaborate on that, but I can't...just know that what led to it was extremely traumatic for all of us, but most especially Gaby),  then we went on a quick trip to Texas to see Meg, and then back to the house to the continued monotony of days spent inside, unpacking, reading, playing games with mommy and generally being bored out of her little mind. 

Gaby misses her big sister in the worst way and sometimes it breaks my heart to hear her talk about her.  When she got off the phone after talking to her last night and wishing her big sister a happy 20th birthday, she collapsed into a heap of tears on my bed and the sounds that came out of that tiny body were almost mournful and brought me to my knees with sympathy for her. 

Added to all this is Gaby's desire to go back to school again.  It was out of necessity that we even had her in the Montessori in Maine.  I was still in outpatient treatment and in other therapy twice a week.  Truth be told, I should be there again, but that's a story for another day...She misses the routine, the friends, and the fun.  I've tried building a routine similar to what she had back in Maine, but she's tiring of it and I can't say I blame her.  We just don't know if school, even another part time Montessori is in our budget right now. 

Unfortunately because her birthday falls so late in the year, she won't begin kindergarten until the fall of 2011.  I'm trying to decide how important a pre-k program really is.  All of my other children were in preschool for 3 days out of the week by the time they were 4.  But that wasn't my choice...my former in-laws impressed upon me the importance of it.  Right now, I don't know if I'm smart enough to try and replicate that in my own home...plus, the big thing that's lacking...friends. Plus...and I'm not bragging (although show me a parent who never says that when speaking about their children and I'll show you a parent who is lying!) or being vain, but she's smart.  I mean, really quite bright and loves challenges and LOVES to learn.  She loved the structure to her days back at the Montessori in Maine and fell in love with learning French and she had just started tumbling classes within the school itself.   Her mommy doesn't "tumble" unless it's going down the stairs outside after a good snowfall.  

What's a mom to do?   All of this makes me feel quite inept at being a good parent to her.  I've been thinking about putting her either into dance or gymnastics but as our budget is still quite tight and New York is not the cheapest state to live in, that might have to wait. 

I'm hoping with the spring thaw will come my own thawing towards this place and a renewed sense of wanting to explore and see what's around here.  And then with the blooming summer and warmer weather, we'll have the lake literally at our door step and a chance to swim and float our days away...of course, I say that now but the thought of anyone looking at me in a swim suit or even shorts and the ridicule that often accompanies it, makes me fearful that people will pity Gaby for being stuck with a mom like me.  It's not all about me,  yet at times, it still is.  So um yeah, I'm still pretty fucked up.  Sadly, it's my kid that's paying for it.

Not all is lost though...

I am working through my issues and battling my demons.  Sometimes they win the occasional battle and sometimes I manage to pull out a victory.  The war is not lost though and I'll keep fighting because really, what other choice is there?

Along those lines and dealing with demons, a lot changed inside my head after I published this post, about forgiving the man who hit and killed my son, all those many years ago.   It was cathartic and opened up so many other possibilities of things I might be capable of.  One of those is reaching out to the girl (and she was merely that, a girl), who was watching Josh the night he was killed.  I have never spoken to her.  We talked to her before we left that evening...we kissed Josh goodbye and told her to call us immediately if she needed us.  The phone did ring but...well, you all can surmise what happened from there.

I want to talk to her.  I've ached and longed to talk to her for almost 20 years.  Immediately after Josh's death her parents refused to let us talk to her.  Their fear was that it might traumatize her, or that we'd be angry and she'd slip back into the catatonic state she was in immediately after his death.  You see...she saw the small pickup truck hit him.  When she realized what direction he had run and looked that way, that's when the impact occurred.   I can't even begin to imagine how awful that must have been for someone so young.  She was 18 when it happened.  I was only 20.  Both of us children still.

I need to talk to her.  I've needed to all these years.  She was the last person to be with my son before he died.  My last memory of Josh is of him standing at her front door, screaming for his mommy.  She has other memories of him I will never have.  I'd love to hear her account of what happened...we really never even got the full story.

Please know I don't want to point the finger in blame.  I no longer hold any acrimony towards her.  I want to talk to her and hear her voice and have her hear mine...I want my words to be loving and thoughtful and careful.  Most of all I want to release her from the burden of blaming herself for his death.  I know that burden has been heavy these long years and I think that Joshua's mother is one of the only people that can help her unencumber herself of that heavy weight.

I never wanted to write about this openly because I didn't want my former husband, Josh's father, or my former in-laws, who I bear a great deal of anger towards, to read this and judge me.  I also, very selfishly wanted to reach out to this woman on my own...without any competition from my former husband.  I know that's incredibly selfish. 

This weighs on my mind greatly.  So much so that I've begun to search for her.  No easy task, that. I only know where her parents were located as of 2001.  So far, based on that, my search has netted me nothing useful.  But I'm going to keep trying.  It's important to me.  

Not Quite Darwin Award-Worthy, but Close Enough!

I continue to live up to my nick-name, "Trauma Magnet."

Last month in an attempt to repair the wings on one of Gaby's mini Tinker Bell dolls, I super-glued myself to Disney's beloved muse.

 

Considering that I have a fairly volatile history with superglue, upon learning of my latest dumbass stunt, Gareth has hidden the superglue and written to the company (as well as many of my other well meaning friends and family members) and asked them to put a small picture of me on all superglue containers alerting sales people to the fact that I should NOT be sold the product.  

Another case in point...lately I've taken to eating flax seed right out of the bag.  I love the stuff!  Too much is a bad thing though, I can unfortunately tell you.  Also, chasing several handfuls of flax seed with low carb beer right before bed is a REALLY REALLY INCREDIBLY BAD THING!  Take my word for it.  Just don't do it.  Otherwise you'll be up all night with hallucinatory dreams so real you'll think there's a damned Nazi in your bedroom about to eat your cat. 

So there you have it...just a few of the things currently plaguing me. 

 

Being Quiet in the Midst of a Storm

  

I spent a lot of this past week thinking about my life and where I want it to go and how I want to get there.  This is the first time I've just taken the time to sit back, despite the flurry of activity going on around me, to really sit down and consider what I want the rest of my life to look like and more importantly, what I want me to look like and trying to convince myself that the person I desperately want to be; I deserve to be.

Amidst the chaos of unpacking (I started to dig back into all of the boxes again, after spending more than two weeks simply not giving a damn about not being able to find my mixer, measuring cups or the rest of my bras and Gareth's boxers!), trying to help Gaby deal with the difficult process of adjusting to a new home, (this hasn't been easy - she's outwardly expressing what I'm feeling inwardly but don't share...ever!), and start a project I've been wanting to start forever, I sat back on Thursday afternoon and was absolutely still, inside and out.  A wicked wind storm was blowing outside with winds in excess of 55mph blasting the house and blowing snow off the frozen lake which sits in front of the house, directly onto our deck.

As I sat and watched the sun set over the lake and turn all that ice into so much gold crystal, I was awed by how intensely beautiful it was, despite temps hovering around -10F and the wind uprooting trees, scattering trash bins everywhere, and causing power snaps here and there.  Despite the natural violence, it was still beautiful and I was struck with the question of whether or not, in my search to figure out my place in life, if I will be able to resurrect any sort of beauty out of what has been an emotionally violent two years. 

I've destroyed my body by adding an additional 125lbs to an already obese frame, and then made matters worse by trying to control everything with bulimia.  I have no idea what sort of damage I've done to my heart but I'm certain that it hasn't escaped my abuse, unscathed.

With another particularly hard gust of wind that hit the house, I sighed and finally realized that whilst I've hit rock bottom, I know that this isn't where I want to remain.  From a purely physical standpoint, I can't stay here.  Simply put, I'll die.  Sooner rather than later.

  

Every once in while it takes something as powerful as a wind storm to clean the slate of today and make room for tomorrow.   I sat back and watched the winds blow the clouds from the previous storm, out to the west and wondered if I'm at the point in my life where the clouds are clearing and I can start to see the rough beauty of my own life and start to make something of it?  Is there enough of the foundation left to rebuild something stronger, more resilient, and beautiful?

I'm going to be quiet more often, especially in the midst of a storm...sometimes it's when I hear things the clearest.