Dear Hearts,
I have never gone this long in between blog posts.
I am sitting on my beautiful, luscious forest green couch in The House. I am alone. There is no noise—no neighbors, lawnmowers, cars, kids, nothing….silence.
I hurt. My hands hurt. My wrists hurt. My right arm (my mower starting arm) hurts. My back hurts. I have cuts, bites, bruises, and broken fingernails. All I want to do is sleep. Just curl up and sleep. Dad keeps saying that this is a marathon, not a sprint and that I have to pace myself. Yeah, I think I do. Otherwise, I am gonna burn out and lose several days instead of just taking a day or two off. I am fairly strong—but I have pushed it. Like I used to when I was teaching—always pushing it.
I decided to make House my Base of Operations. Going back and forth from PA Home to here will not work. There is SO FUCKING MUCH TO DO.
God said I couldn’t do it without Him. I believe in with my whole heart.
Mom helped me carefully wrap, label and box all the Barbies. Over 300 dolls. That in and of itself is an accomplishment. We also wrapped up my “favorite” Pocket Dragons and most of my Faeries. I have two “Favorite Barbie” containers and one bag of boxed-Barbies. Now, the books. I have to narrow down my Favorite Faeries.
Gaia and Johnny were here Monday and they helped box up books, including my grad school notebooks, which Mom wanted me to throw away. 11 boxes of books so far. Not yet half.
If a person has a tumor, malignant or benign, the doctors excise it. They don’t remove the whole limb or body part necessarily, just remove the tumor. And, even when Marcia (not that I am comparing this move to her breast cancer gene) had a double mastectomy, she had reconstruction. I have to—I get to—pick out which parts of my Old Life to take with me. Who is Kate Brigid Therese Kennedy? I actually have the privilege to choose who she is. She is not the 30-year-old in the pink “baby doll” dress and flower crown. She is not the teacher or the wife. She is not Pagan. Kate doesn’t have 30-year-old posters of movie stars, some dead, on the wall. Kate would if she could keep her life-size picture of Rick Grimes, but I am thinking that if G-Pa wasn’t okay with the 9 x 12 drawing I made for Gram, he is not going to be at all accepting of a five foot Rick Grimes poster.
I don’t need all the editions of those writing magazines. I am never going to read them! Yet, I saved them and so much more. Throw out the ugly panties and the ones that I have never found comfortable. I certainly don’t need all those students papers and copies Vanity Fair. I don’t need to the keep the copy of People I had in the first Nuthouse.
I took all the photos off my phone from 20 fucking 04 to mid 2016. I just don’t. They are backed up on my computer and external hard drive. I don’t need all the Barbie and ornament boxes from forever ago. I don’t need old mouse-eaten candles I got for my Wedding Shower, or newspapers from 2001.
I do like having a big house, but this six bedroom house did not bring me peace, happiness, joy, or contentment.
“Here I Stay” 8/1/12
That’s what I wrote directly above my bed on the wall under the windowsill. That was when I was determined to keep The House. The allusion I’m making is to a book—the woman was a ghost. She stayed in her house after she died. The postcard that I have under the quote is of a long ago member of the monarchy in a blue dress who withstood a siege to her castle, and whose ghost has never left.
I wrote that same quote in The Holy City above my bed. (My way smaller and comfortable bed.) I forget the date, but before I left I crossed out “Stay” and wrote “Live.”
There is no Life for me here, I think.
I have to stay focused…ahh, I just got it. The shark syndrome. Some sharks never stop moving, if they do, they die. I felt like that in college. As long as I am packing and not allowing the reasons for the packing to break through into my consciousness—it’s okay.
I reserve the right for an Epic Breakdown after this. An epic, bald-headed Brittany with an umbrella, Baby Jane, Cuckoo’s Nest breakdown.
Sometimes, I an overcome with emotion that I am leaving this house and this place. And, that’s okay—actually, I think that is supposed to happen.
Thank you God for allowing me to see one last time the Weeping Cherry and Tulip Tree in peak bloom. I didn’t take any pictures. I will never forget…
When Mom and I were packing my Barbies with utmost care, I saw more than a few that I bought because I thought I should (they were part of a collection, or “rare,” or they were limited edition.) More than a few of those dolls I don’t even like.
And Webkinz stuffies. Holy, Mother of Fuck! I was compensating for a very, very unhappy life.
None of these things will save my Life—will give me Life again. Those which I chose can be a part of my Life, but not the reason for my Life. If I don’t get Blue Chiffon Barbie—I will survive. I won’t survive if I can’t get God and Blush Barbie. But, I can survive without Blue Chiffon.
Yesterday in going through some grad books I came across this print-out. I found it on my laptop in less that five minutes. That fucking impressed me. But I digress. I thought I had come across a published author’s work—a woman who was published by Harvard. I started reading it and I was like, “Fuck. Goddamn. I wish I could write like this. This is good shit.” Then I realized I wrote it. My jaw literally dropped open.
I have a vague memory of writing this piece in and around 2009/2010—the first time in my adult life that my suicidal thoughts were real and serious. I was off my meds then. I thought that was the reason…one of the main reasons I did not kill myself in 2010 was because I was so deluded into believing that Arthur deserved the insurance money from my job and such. I figured there were suicide clauses. I thought about driving my car off the road. Not at the spot I talk about in the piece, but over potentially perilous road called the Hawks’ Nest. Mary Pickford filmed a silent film on that road. I didn’t tell Arthur or really even my therapist at the time because I was afraid of being locked up.
But, I remember Red, the other English teacher, having to take the day before Thanksgiving off to go to a funeral. I was jealous that the funeral wasn’t mine.
To just give a gist: I write a piece about killing myself and The Goddess comes to me and shows me It’s a Wonderful Life- style how I was living on the best X of where all my possible life choices might have taken me. And, of course how my death would have negatively impacted those around me. Eye roll. I was such a novice then!
2009-10 Piece Begin
I
I did not plan on killing myself that day. Oh, I’d planned on killing myself for a while. Looked forward to it, in fact. It became my warm blanket when day to day life became too much. Some small thing happened at school that in my self-loathing mind would push me under the overwhelming flood waiting to engulf me---I would think about death. What dreams may come…they couldn’t be worse that the reality I was living. The irony was that I had a good job that I hated and a loving husband who I thought hated me. I knew my parents would miss me, but I honestly believed everyone else would be better off without me. “Feelings of hopelessness” always has a little box next to it to check on the shrink’s depression questionnaire. “It’s a hopeless situation,” we say overly much. Until you have reached the bottom of hopelessness, the belief that as sure as you are standing in front of the mirror dressed for work, is as sure as you are that nothing will change or get better, only worse. True hopelessness is the blackest and most dismal place in the world. The thing about hopelessness like that is that it’s in your head and you can’t escape it.
So, I didn’t plan that day to kill myself. I was driving to school, I’m a teacher, and it was foggy, something which I took to be symbolic of my inner consciousness. I was coming over the ridge where you can see the whole valley laid out. The fog always gathers like a huge, fat sleeping cat in the valley. I imagine Avalon in those mists. I see the Tor and the priestesses lighting the early morning fires. That morning I could not see Avalon. I actually stopped the car in the middle of the road and tried so hard to imagine it that my eyes teared up. I could see nothing but the fog. Below that fog I knew was the river swollen with snow and ice. I could easily skid off the road if I were going too fast. I did a five point K turn—my high school driving instructor would be so disappointed. I drove back down the hill and then turned around in the driveway of an old farm. I put both hands on the steering wheel and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. As I came up onto the ridge again, I veered, skidded as I knew the insurance report would reflect, for the guard rail.
Weightlessness. My stomach lifted to my heart which has stopped. I saw the tops of the trees and then white. I closed my eyes and asked for forgiveness.
II
My first though wasn’t so much a thought as a sensation: horror. Horror that I had failed. Now they would lock me up with crazy people and I’d have to take pills out of a little pleated white cup in front of the nurse. And, they would shine a flashlight in my room at night to make sure I was there. I wouldn’t be able to shower or go to the bathroom alone. They would punish me for failing. Punish me for living.
The next sensation I felt was profound disappointment. This white marble room with it’s rich Celtic tapestries in green and burgundy was death. Death was beautiful, sure, but not the total absence of consciousness I had hoped for. Death had low lighting from flickering silver braziers. Shadows danced on the walls. Spirits? Ghosts? I still felt my body. There was no pain, yet I had certainly driven my car off a cliff. So, I couldn’t be alive, certainly there would be pain, if even a stinging scratch a throbbing bruise. I lay in a large wooden bed with the softest mattress I had ever felt. Covering me was a blood red silk duvet. I could have just closed my eyes and slept. Maybe I was dead. I was so tired.
That’s why I wanted to kill myself. I was tired of the fear and worry. Everyone has voices in their heads that comment on their lives. Those voices are just versions of us. I can’t even say that my voices were loud. Medication surely could have taken care of that. My voices were soft, but so constant. When you’re turning through the a.m. stations and all you get is static, that is what my voices were like. Only they were hateful.
You’re stupid. You’re a bad person. You’re a failure. You suck as a teacher. You are a terrible wife. You’re a failure. That cigarette you so enjoy is going to give you cancer. You’re husband will die of cancer and you’ll be alone. You spend too much money. You aren’t as good as anyone else. You are too short-tempered. You are a horrible writer. You are selfish. You are materialistic. You don’t pray enough. You don’t read enough. You don’t write enough. You don’t work enough. You’re mean to the dog. You don’t clean the cat box enough. You didn’t clean the bathroom enough. You’re hands aren’t clean. You’re breasts aren’t perky. You have a stomach paunch. You are ignorant. You’re house will burn down if you don’t check the stone seventy-two times. You need to check that you’re lunch is made right three times. You need to go through the contents of your purse four times. You need to check the door lock twenty-seven times. You need to remake the bed five times. You’re husband would be better without you. You’re students would be better off without you. You’re not good enough. You’ve made a mess out of you’re life. You’ve made a mess out of you’re life. You’ve made a mess out of you’re life. It is hopeless. Over and over and over. I was just so tired of the fear and worry. I was a slave to ritual and worry. In this bed, in this room, I could just sleep. So, I did.
III
When I woke up She was sitting on the edge of the bed. The sense of calmness that emanated from her was the kind of peace that I clutched at my pillow at night and prayed for. But, it never came. Here, with me was that peace. I must be dead. Was I in Heaven or Hell?
2009-10 Piece End
The next time I cracked—I took my world and everyone inside the event horizon with me. Go big, or go the fuck home.
I have been fighting the fight for a long time. I just finally got honest about it in the last few years.
Mom and Dad are very concerned—more so Mom I think—that I am going to kill myself if I am Here at The House alone too much. God—Christ will make it happen and I swore to Christ that from this Easter until the next I will not take my own life. I believe that God WILL make this move happen. I love you, Mom, and I get it. You just don’t live with that perspective. Don’t apologize! God has been working through you your whole fucking life. I think that’s why Dad is less concerned, because he has a similar perspective. Yes, you Daddy, Gaia, Johnny will help make this happen—but ultimately it’s God who is gonna make this happen.
I need time alone Here right now. I need to look at and slay me some fuckin’ demons. I also need to decide what parts of that life past to take with me. I am blessed and grateful. I get to pick what parts of life to take with me into Act II.
Is this gonna get worse before it gets better, Fuck yeah, I just gotta have the Faith that it will get better.
Smoke ‘em if ya’ got ‘em. God Bless
In the name of The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Mother Mary, Saint Brigid; Saint Jude; Saint Therese Lisieux; Saint Peter; Archangel Michael, and my Guardian Angel, Jed.
Grateful For:
Owning a mini-fridge/freezer
Family
Health
Ice cream
Muffins
Angel
Cigarettes
Faith
Fragile Hope
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