indigos journal

i gave in.

i’m already kicking myself. and feeling guilty.

but i gave in.

cassidy couldn’t find anyone to take sparky. today is the deadline…so the only other option was putting her down. a robust, healthy cat. and i gave in when she asked us to take her. supposedly for only a couple of weeks. but things with cassidy are never as fast as she says they are going to be. besides…it’s not like she has any money to get a place to live.

so why did i do it? because i felt guilty. and because i have a really hard time saying no. and maybe, deep down, because we still think if we are good enough, then she will love us and treat us right. and, deep down, when i say “she” we are really meaning our mother. there is and has always been so much mom stuff whenever we are dealing with cassidy.

i know it’s not logical. i know that nothing we can say or do will make our mother or cassidy happy with us. but knowing that in our head doesn’t seem to convince littles.

and we are especially vulnerable to it right now…at a time when our therapist is not happy with us. cause there is definitely a lot of mom stuff that gets triggered with her.

in so many ways we have gotten a lot stronger and more self-confident. but in some ways we can still be triggered pretty easily.

does that ever change?

and we are continuing to feel much sadness and aloneness. the feelings are very much like when we were a teenager.

we woke up this morning with “You and Me of the 10,000 Wars” in our head. it is an early Indigo Girls song. (i’m sure most of you knew that already.) so we’ve been playing that album (Nomads Indians Saints) a lot today.

when it got to “the girl with the weight of the world in her hands” it brought back a lot of memories. we remember being a teenager…being so alone and in so much pain. feeling like everyone could see our pain (it seemed so obvious to us) and that they just didn’t care. or too busy with their happiness and busy with their plans.
and i think back on that girl that i was, and think that she was so wise. i can easily see “the way she smiles so knowingly at me gives me the shivers” applying to her.
so much from that song resonated with us. so much of their stuff does.

The Girl with the Weight of the World in her Hands

(© Indigo Girls. All rights reserved. )

She won’t recover from her losses,
She’s not chosen this path, but she watches who it crosses
Maybe move to the right, maybe move to the left
So we can all see her pain she wears like a banner on her chest
And we all say it’s sad, and we think it’s a shame
And she’s called to our attention, but we do not call her name,
The girl with the weight of the world in her hands.

We’re busy with our happiness, busy with our plans
I wonder if alone she wants it taken from her hands
But if things didn’t get any harder
She might miss her sacred chance to go a consecrated martyr,
The girl with the weight of the world in her hands.

I wonder which saint that lives inside a bead
will grant her consolation when she counts upon her need
It makes us all angry though we feign to care
But who will be the scale to weigh the cross she has to bear,
The girl with the weight of the world in her hands.

“Is the glass half-full or empty?” I ask her as I fill it
She said it doesn’t really matter, pretty soon you’re bound to spill it.
With the half logic language of the sermon she delivers
And the way she smiles so knowingly at me gives me the shivers
I pull the blanket higher when I’m finally safe at home
And she’ll take a hundred with her, but she always sleeps alone,
The girl with the weight of the world in her hands.

and then….

“I woke up this morning, grey dawn,
with a prayer on my breath.
I lost something precious,
God’ll save me from losing myself…
I think I know what’s wrong
Pushing the needle too far. ”

(excerpt from Pushing the Needle too Far by Indigo Girls)

we definitely thought we lost something…that we were missing something that everyone else seemed to have…and that was why we were so unhappy…and if we could just figure out the right thing to say or do or whatever….then maybe we could be happy.

i could go on forever…the indigo girls early work touched us in so many ways. listening to it now brings back all those feelings of hopelessness, of pain, of loneliness, of sadness, of longing….but also a sense of hope. because someone out there did know what all this shit felt like. and suddenly i had a few words for all this stuff that i couldn’t normally describe.

i guess i am just rambling…reminiscing…it just helps to get it out when the emotions hit so hard…expecially since the first time around we really were all alone with them. i never want us to be that alone again.

we were doing really well.  we were getting lots accomplished and feeling pretty good.

but now…not so much.  i think it all started in therapy.  the kids took our charts to show linda.  we were all so proud of all we’ve been doing.  at the end, they said to her, “do you think it’s ok that on days we work at safeco we don’t do housework?  we still been doin our tasks.”

and she said that was ok with her.  then she said. “what’s not ok with me is that you’re not drinking water.”

she didn’t say that she was concerned that we’re not drinking water.  even though i’m sure that is where she’s coming from.

so we are left pretty depressed and feeling alone.

and kinda  angry!  cause her know that we have trouble drinkin water!  and her know its because of the before.  so we mad that she not bein understandin.

 i think that the fact that we’ve been trying to increase our intake of water should make her happy.  but of course not.  we’re just not doing enough.

now someone inside says that if we’re supposed to be drinking water, then that is all we can drink.  it’s water or nothing.

anyway…i feel really silly…that something so small should throw us so far.  in fact, we missed a whole day!  we went to bed around 3 in the morning tuesday night/wednesday morning.  the next thing we know it is 11pm on wednesday night.  we very rarely  sleep that long.  so we were up for maybe an hour and then went back to bed until around 10 this morning.  we don’t want to be awake right now, but we have to…we have to go to the stupid dentist.

well…my dentist isn’t stupid. in fact, he seems pretty smart.  but we really hate going.

and….we had a couple of intense dreams.  one was a hospital dream.  (and no hospital to go to in waking life!)  the other was one of those back-in-utah-stuck-with-the-family dreams.

but we’re not triggered or anything.

the heat…the allergies…we don’t want to move at all today, much less clean this stupid apartment. but inspections start tomorrow.

what i would give for a private (non-housing) one bedroom apartment with carpet, a bathtub and air conditioning.

we woke up today with a horrible headache. after taking some medicine for it we just went back to sleep. being awake in that much pain was just too hard.

soon this stupid inspection thing will be over for another year. and even if we keep our apartment clean like this, which is the goal, i think we will still be really stressed out over the stupid inspections. the lady was just so mean.

my hope is that they will come tomorrow when i am gone at safeco field. that way i don’t even have to deal with them face to face.

we saw some pictures that chorus members took while on the tour to the rocky mountain states. (including salt lake city, utah…which is where i am from) it was nice to see the pictures. but i didn’t realize how homesick they would make me feel. not for the people, but for the nature. the surroundings. as glorious as the mountains and water is here, it is not like the stuff from the rocky mountain areas and the utah desert. i knew that i missed it, but i didn’t realize just how much. it made me really sad…i don’t know if i will ever see it all again. i love living here…but i miss that too.

we seem to be making progress on the whole shower issue. we have taken a shower three times this week…compared to once every 1-3 weeks. the first two times this week were still a struggle, even though it is getting better. but then tonight i wanted to take a cold shower cause it is so blasted hot. so i said to everyone, “is it ok with you guys if i take a shower?” and i was so surprised when the only response was “sure.”

i am really proud of everyone in the system for how hard they are working on this issue. it has been scary and hard. but it seems to be paying off so far.

it has been a very full and brave day, even though it is only 3:00. we went and got a haircut from a woman we know. when we were there she had us try some fresh cherries. we have never had fresh cherries before. just processed. so we were very brave and tried some. they were very good. so she gave us a little bit to bring home. she also had us try some fresh beets and she showed us/told us how to prepare them. we haven’t had fresh beets before either. just canned ones. they were really good too, although not as good as the cherries.

then she asked us to go with her to pike place on the way to bring me home. we found a parking place right outside a mee sum place. she bought us a pork hum bow. you guessed it. we never had one before. we were especially brave here, because it was completely new and a food type that we don’t eat. but we did try it and it was really good. there were some tastes in it that were new to us, but they weren’t bad.

we are just really proud cause food is such a big scary issue for us. and we tried 3 new things today! that is way huge. and it is cool that we liked all of them. we like cherries best, then hum bow, then beets.

and our hair is short again which makes the boys and the dykes really happy. we need a shower though cause it is way itchy.

gots to clean now and get ready for group.

it has been oh so long since we wrote. first we weren’t writing because we were recovering from surgery and then so sick. and then life just seemed to dump so much on us that we couldn’t cope with writing. it seemed like a huge challenge; an overwhelming prospect.

BUT….

we have missed it so much. we always feel better when we are able to get our words and thoughts and feelings out of our head. left alone inside they seem to fester. and often they get pretty stinky. so, here i am trying to get in the habit of airing them out once again.

and i would like to think that the people who read my journal have missed seeing my words.

mostly we are doing ok. we have sadness and pissiness because bruce died. she meant a lot to us. but these feelings aren’t as intense as they were several weeks ago (just after it all happened) because we were able to do a lot of grieving and processing then. because at that time we knew that she would die.

we are having to go back to the basics on a lot of stuff. we have not been doing well with time, and so we don’t realize how long it has been since we shower, or eat, or do housework, or any number of things. so we’ve gone back to having a chart that lists all our tasks and housework. when we’ve done something the kids get to put a star sticker (or, really, any sticker they like) on that item for that day. we are trying really hard to be gentle with ourselves, because most things don’t happen as often as they should. the important thing, i figure, is to be making the effort.

an we gets a star for writin in our journal! we been wantin to do that for long time. so we putted it on our chart.

the bigs been working on journal/website. the myriads switched us to this new place and we likes it way better. it easier to do. we still gots long ways to go with it though.

in therapy we been dealin with lots of memories bout showers. cause we been trying to work with why showers are so hard and scary and overwhelming.

we cant wait til this stupid spection is done. we dont like them at all. the lady is mean. it be lots of stress worryin bout it.

we gotta stop now cause a lady is comin to get us to give us a haircut.