The Long and Winding Road

Oh it's been such a long, rocky and twisted road.
When I look back over the last year and a half...um, almost two years, I'm a little bit in awe of the events that have transpired and how I have been transformed.
It's interesting to realize just how well I can channel some things and how great I am at shutting others down.

Kerrie.
Still not quite sure I am over her death. Still not entirely sure that I don't harbor some of the blame. I know that I couldn't be the one to help her....but there is always that nagging and emotionally abusive  "what if" that hangs around and whispers in my ear in my lowest and weakest moments. Could I have saved her. What if I had checked in on her more often. Should I have moved in with her or she with me. Could I have dug deeper. Should I have been more aware. Whatever the whispers, it's too late.

Weight.
Oh the bane of my existence. I decided to take care of myself for once. I lost weight. 82lbs to be exact. The funny thing was is that I couldn't see it. Oh, I can now. I can look at pictures and see how I looked back then. Funny thing is I don't really remember being thinner.

My first love.
I know to many, probably most, the whole scenario is laughable, if not cringe-worthy. The summary in and of itself is the makings of a really bad made for TV movie. The platform of said romance being the springboard of my highest highs and the jumping off point of some of my lowest lows. Gee, isn't that what a relationship all about? It lasted longer than I anticipated and ended sooner than I wanted.  It unlocked an emotional door that I had never had the courage to open because I did not feel worthy. It made me aware that I am definitely the touchy-feely type of person I never thought I was. I like closeness and intimacy. I need and cherish affection.  It has also shown me what it feels like to have your heart pulled apart and to have little control over the emotions that follow.
I finally know how it feels to be kissed and loved. Although there are times I wish I didn't. I think my life was easier when I could just shut someone down by pulling the "never been there, never done that" routine.

Job changes, address changes, gaining new friends, being distanced from old friends, leaving family, leaving a church that was like family.  Nothing looks familiar.

I am still on my road, as we all are. I cannot see what is around the next bend, and don't know if I want to. I feel I am gearing up for the continuation of my journey. Packing away those things that I don't need right now, but may have to call upon sometime down the road. I am toughening my emotional callouses and trying to unload those hurts and pains.  I am strapping on the survival gear I shed so long ago and with head down, begin my trudge on down the road.
I fear I'm going to have a rocky uphill climb around that bend.....

What is it about me that is so appalling?
I would just like to know.
Is it my looks?  My weight?
How about my personality?
I am not dishonest person
I am not deceitful
Do I rub you the wrong way?
Do I embarrass you?
I gave you the best of me and you said it's not.
I opened up to you and you called me a liar.
I needed you.
I cared for you.
I laid my vulnerability at your feet and you crushed it with your heel.
Your perception of me is not reality.
Thank you for breaking my heart and showing me what my worth is.

Life.
we make it so complicated.
Really, there is an ends to justify the means.
Or better said, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

we smile to frown,
   we laugh to cry,
      we walk to stumble,
         we run to fall,
            we hope to disappoint,
               we serve to be turned away,
                  we love to be hurt,
                     we live to die.
Life.
It's really not that complicated.

I want to scream...
and cry and beat my fists on the ground.
I want to throw something...
into the ground and watch it shatter.
I am pissed.  I am so very very angry.
How dare she do this.
How dare she put me through this.
How dare she put her daughter through this.
How dare she break her father's already damaged heart.
I don't have the shoulders to carry this.
I don't have the strength to hold everyone up.
I can't stand to see her lying there.
I can't look into her lifeless eyes.
I can't bear the outcome.
I am terrified to hope.
I am terrified to let go.
I can't do this again.

Where do I go from here?

Have you ever been lost?  Arrived at a place you thought you knew, only to realize you had absolutely no idea where you were, or what direction to go from there?

In my journey...I really thought that I knew where I was going.  I had imagined it in my head many many times.  It's just that from where I stand, nothing looks like what I thought it would.  I seem to have miscalculated my direction.

I have others telling me where they think I am, and telling me the direction I should go.  I just don't know if I should follow their advice.  It's MY journey, you see.  I think that's why it looks so different.  I have adopted what other's journeys look like as my own.

And now I have realized that everyone's journey looks different.  There are different roads to arrive at similar destinations.

I just so badly want this journey to be over with.  To arrive at my destination and to move on.

In the Midst.

I was talking to my friend Lane'e the other day about a diet that I was starting.  It was the usual stuff back and forth, me being excited and gung-ho, Lane'e being her usual supportive and encouraging self.  In the midst of that conversation, I made a statement that seems to have lingered, like a bad dream or spicy food.
I stated that I couldn't expect my sister, who is an alcoholic, to control her alcoholism if I couldn't control what I ate.
It's sadly funny, then, that my sister lays in the Critical Care Unit at the hospital because of her inability to stop drinking.  That her body is shutting down or not working right because she has poisoned it.  What she is consuming is literally toxic to her system.

I find that funny because I am an addict.

The similarities cannot go unnoticed.  The hiding, the binging.  The excuses and lies. The cries for help, the
self  deprecation.
Food is my drug.  Not all food, just some types of food.  Wheat, sugar, processed, starches. And as I have just found out...sodium.
Fast food would be my poison of choice.  Hard to turn down.
Even when I realize I don't really like the taste.  Even when I am so full I could puke.  Even when...you get the picture.

Kerrie struggles through each day.  Feeling like a failure.  Trying to figure out why alcohol has such a hold over her.  Wanting desperately to walk away from what is killing her.  And I.  I pass judgement. I self righteously shake my head and wonder why she can't walk away.  "Who would want to feel that way?  Who would want to be in that much pain?"
I type this as I sit at the computer at the Coy's.  The empty Jack in the Box bag on the table.  The empty Taco Time bag sitting beside me. "No one will ever know" I tell myself.
I will get rid of the evidence, sure.  Just like my sister hid her Vodka bottles in the closet with the empty beer cans.
However, just as my sister's body is rejecting what she has done to it, so is mine.  I am bloated. My ankles are more that twice the size they should be.  My feet are so swollen I can't get my new shoes on and my knees have so much swelling, I can barely get up and down the stairs.  It's painful.

Why does she do that to herself?  I would ask, just as you would.
I wish I had an answer.  Chalk it up to being weak, feeling bad about oneself, stuffing emotions or just the substance being a "friend".  Whatever.  I don't know.

What I DO know is that in the midst of addiction, truth is better than a lie, being open is better than hiding, crying out shows strength, not weakness, and listening to positive reinforcement beats negative self talk.
And....that it's a long, winding road with a constant uphill battle.

I have faith in the friendships I have, and their support.
I pray that for my sister.

You're Going the Wrong Way?

Life just rolls along.

Have you ever been in a car and a vehicle in the on-coming lane of traffic flashes their brights at you?  Or been cruising along only to have someone drive up beside you motioning like mad men from their car window?

I was laughing about a scene in a movie with Dan the other day.  The movie is "Planes, Trains and Automobiles".  The scene entails John Candy driving a car on a freeway late on a winter's night.  Steve Martin is fast asleep in the passenger seat.
As John is driving, he looks over to see a car, across the median and driving in the same direcition as him.  They are frantically waving and yelling.  John rolls his window down and attempts to hear what the people in the other vehicle are trying so hard to tell him.  Finally he hears..."You're going the wrong way!" 
John Candy does what anyone in that situation would do....he laughs it off, chalks it up to the other driver having imbibed a little too much and says to himself, "How do THEY know which way I'm going"?

Obviously, JOHN is driving the wrong way on the freeway, only he finds out almost too late.

I sometimes feel like John Candy in that movie...and sometimes I feel like Steve Martin.

How often am I "driving along" thinking I am going the right way?  How often do others feel like they are yelling and waving and doing whatever they can to stop me?  How often am I the one "asleep" and not paying attention to those around me who may need a little direction?

I love that movie scene because it almost gleefully depicts our blatant shortcomings when it comes to paying attention to the road ahead of us. 

Which direction am I heading?  Am I paying attention?  Have I listened to those who have waved their arms, jumping up and down screaming, "You're going the wrong way"?

AM I going the right way?
I guess it's not the median, or the passengers, or the other vehicles on the road that need the attention.  My guess is that it's the markers, the telltale signs that let you know where you are, where to turn, and ultimately, in which direction you are heading.  On a highway, those consist of street signs and solid or broken colored lines.
Here's the question:

How does that look in my life?