What Do You Want From Me?

As the blog has newly been relaunched, I feel like... brand new. I never go back and look at old posts, mostly because I will feel extremely self-conscious about the things that I write. Good and Catholic, you don't rehash the grief you feel over your cousin's death. You're supposed to just let it be. Overrun you like a kind of ferocious weed until you're consumed and immobilized it.

That's the polite thing to do.

I'm tired of being polite.

But I have to ask... what do you want from me?

I'm a nice, good girl. But that hasn't served me so far. Now I want to write posts that help me take apart my grief, not just of my cousin's death and Mom's illness but all that's been lost from that. While I was busy being a puddle on the floor... so much was lost. But now, I want to lay it out, like when a mechanic is fixing a Vintage car, and examine and inspect and then fix all the things that are broken...

And then put it back together.

I think that's the only way you become free from things.

I just wonder - because I'm a self-diagnosed people pleaser - is that what you want from me? I like this being a give and take, I love your comments, I love that this blog is something you relate to and I don't want you to be disappointed when you read a post.

I notice when I write something honest, truthful, raw, people will read... one person read for 171 minutes last week... but hardly anyone will comment. No comments as others read for 5, 10, 20 minutes.

"What are they thinking? Am I too much?" I am too much for them? I am. I am made of scary little scars that are all on the inside. I should only write happy posts. Put a smile on it. Keep the uncertainty on the inside. That would be for the best.

Who am I doing this for? I thought I was doing it for me. But maybe I'm really doing it for you.

So what do you want from me?

No, really, I'll do it. But you have to tell me. Do you want to talk about figuring your life out after it's thrown you a maddeningly huge gut punch? Can I talk about my cousin's death? Does it make you feel uncomfortable? Sometimes I think you guys think I have it more together than I do. It might be my fault. Sometimes, I'm very rah-rah. I need to tone that down a bit.

All of this started to gently cross my mind as I opened a Facebook and Twitter page for the blog. A lot of people started following me and I think I became shy... a little freaked out. To combat the uncomfortableness of that, I have to be witty, asurbic, sarcastic.

You wouldn't know the girl who writes on that Twitter account writes here. That girl is the me with the mask. She hides behind a wall, she dangles a sparkly ball to distract you from cousin's who are murdered and lives that are turned upside town and cousin's that have brain cancer and life choices that will break your heart and mother's that are sick and court cases and do we go for the death penalty?

Maybe going for the death penalty would be impolite.

I'm wrestling with this... I know people like me on Twitter but that girl... she's having a ball but she's not going to grow and change. She's not going to make the big decisions that I am determined to make this year - I think I want to leave Los Angeles. I think I want a new job. I know I want to live without so much fear and responsibility.

My cousin has brain cancer now.

I want to do the things he's wishing he did. And that is either the most brutally honest thing I have ever said or the most damn selfish or maybe it can be both.

Everything, all these thoughts, doubts, feelings came swirling around yesterday when I read the most beautiful essay on grief by someone who had lost his daughter.

The author spoke of how, after you lose someone unexpectedly, you become consumed with fear.

"Maybe what I’ve learned more about, for better or worse, is fear. I think I can pretty comfortably say I understand fear. I’ve learned to understand fear in and out... I live in fear. I’ve learned how randomly things can go wrong, horribly wrong, and I fear that moment, I fear that moment coming into existence. Logic be damned, it terrifies me."

I found myself nodding, yes, yes. That's how I feel. In a matter of a few paragraphs, the author had boiled down exactly how I feel... a feeling that seems to elude me as I try to turn it into words.

When I am in that uncomfortable place, I gloss it over with a lot of humor. I'm straddling both worlds.

I haven't faced the deep dark fear like the author expresses. You have to be in club to get it. You don't want to be in the club. But it's when... if terrible things happen with no warning and they are so terrible and so terrifying and so unspeakable that just NO ONE will speak of them -- how to you ever feel safe again?

How do you not just completely collapse and fold in on yourself? So nothing can touch you. Or hurt you. Yes. This is deep. Does it scare you? Will you not love me if I speak of scary things?

I can tell you this: I have lived like that and I don't WANT to anymore. But it's like, after something truly bad happens, your blood gets stamped with the "fear" DNA and it just corses through you becoming part of your whole being.

I guess what I'm saying, (Get to it, girl), is I need to talk about those fears more. I know that is everything that is holding me back in life. It's like I have the knowledge that life is short, that you better live it now because Good God, how fast it can be gone in a day.

And that is in one hand. And in the other is what I am going to do with that knowledge. Every week, through an adventure, I am trying to move the needle as they say... push it closer to the life I want to live and away from the life of fear.

Do yo want to hear about that?

What do you want from me?

***

What Do You Want From Me?

Adventure Bowl Do Something That Makes You Feel Like a Kid Again!

If you're life is busy and hectic with a list a mile long of errands, to do's and ASAPs, then you need a break. A JOY break.

When I found myself at my spiritual, emotional and exhaustion filled "bottom," I knew I had to do something about it. For me, I had a great motivator. It was coming up on my cousin's anniversary of death and I felt ashamed that instead of celebrating his life, instead of living the biggest fullest life that he would want me to live... I was stuck in bed, feeling lonely and alone. And hopeless.

So I pushed myself. One adventure a week. One thing to get me out of the house. One thing to help me find my joy.

It worked. As you know, I'm back at it again. And nothing makes me more excited than this week's adventure: "Do Something That Makes You Feel Like A Kid Again." Oh, man, I could think of a million!

Play Rundown, Swing on a swing, Blow Bubbles, go Ice Skating, Stand on my Skate Board and "surf" off the back of my friend's car. (But since I recently broke and had surgery on my shoulder... that will have to wait for another time!)

And then it came to me. I wanna ride a Ferris Wheel! I want to go way up high and feel thrilled and scared and laugh and eat cotton candy!

So it's on! I'm leaving right now and I CANNOT WAIT! When I pool crashed, I literally had this excited, "Nothing can stop me now" feeling that I'm getting already. It's that "kid excitement." I love that!

I'll update this post on Monday.

So, what's one thing YOU COULD DO this weekend that would make you feel like a kid again? Dying to hear :)


Ooo, and I know I can be a bad girl with infrequent postings, so please follow if you want to know when a new post is up!

Adventure Bowl
Do Something That Makes You Feel Like a Kid Again!

Matthew

Matthew is my cousin David's younger brother. Now Matthew is an only child after David was taken away from us by a raving lunatic who somehow slipped through the system and was let out of the crazy hospital too soon only to score some crystal meth and decide that that night he would really like to kill someone.

When I see Matthew, who we now call Matty, who is our baby, who walks on water, who we pay for everything when he is around to somewhat make up for having his brother be murdered, my heart kind of breaks and I always feel very emotional after.

It's because he is wise and smart and sensitive and forgiving and loving and commpassionate and has forgiven his brother's killer and is easy to make laugh AND he is LIV-LIV-LIVING. How easy it would be, to be the opposite of all these things.

He is touring with his band. After his brother died, I think he got the sense that, anything can happen at anytime, we are all so... unsafe from having our lives ripped out from underneath us all. I think he thought, "I'd rather have my life ripped out from underneath me living my dream and playing my guitar than stuck in a cubicle banging on a computer keyboard."

So he is touring in L.A. E, my sister came to town to see him. They are like new best friends, closer in age than Matty and I, yet their is this fierceness to E, fiercely protective and loving of him and I think if someone hurt him, they would have to deal with her and that would not be pretty.

He said to us this morning, "You guys treat me like I'm a baby." Yes, we do and we will. We don't want you to suffer or worry or want for anything ever again. No one can hurt you if we are here. Did you see the brick wall we built around you? No one can get to you without getting through us.

Then he talked about driving all over the U.S. of A., in a van, with his friends and he said, "It's amazing how kind everyone is, people are so friendly and nice. I needed to see that of humanity, it's very healing for me." I know he's speaking of David's murder, it's in the room again, which is always firsts jars me and then comforts me. He knows he is safe. He can talk about anything with us.

We kind of, me, he and E, took a drunken pact one night that we would not be like the generation before us, keeping secrets and telling lies and holding all the pain is. Matty said that night, "I feel like I lost my brother but I got three sisters in return."

He is a good boy. He says, "I love you" on the phone and he says "I love you" instead good-bye. Sometimes, I think he's the strongest one of all of us.

Matthew

For David, Who I (Double) Love & Miss

I can still remeber when my Aunt brought Baby David home. That's what we called him. Because he was a baby and his name was David. He was my cousin and the first Grandson in our generation... and we are Italian so that is very important. When people ask me what I remember about David, I lie. I lie because I don't want to say, "I remember that he loved bees and was fearless and would catch them by their wings... And I remember that I wrote a check for his funeral." Of all the things I thought when we were kids playing together (that he was bugging me, that if he stuck a bee in my face one more time there would be hell to pay, that I loved even though he wasn't much younger than me he would sit on my lap), I never thought, "I'm going to be writing a check for your funeral." I can still remember when the conversation was had, when the idea was floated. I jumped at the chance. It would make me feel better for the fact that my life was perfect, my sisters were alive and now there could be nice sandwiches and an open bar after the funeral. After the funeral you have for your baby cousin who is fearless who plays with bees and sits on your lap.

The idea of writing a check - who cares - it was not about the money but it was a pinnacle moment of: I AM A GROWN-UP. People die on me. And then I help pay for their funerals. "Don't tell anyone," I was told. It will make people feel bad, less than, fill-in-the-blank. When I was writing that check all I could think of was, "What else will I help pay for? Who else's eyes will I look into and have no idea they might be gone one day and all I will have left of them is a canceled check and a debit on my Bank of America card?

David's two year anniversary was yesterday. All I could think of was, exactly two years ago today, before the accident, before the police called my father thinking he was David's father to tell him the news, before my father had to call my uncle and tell him David was dead, before I called my father and had to hear the news, before I had to take out my red sparkly monkey check book holder that is not very grown-up, but obviously now was being used for grown-up things... my life was perfect.

Once it got turned on it's side and shook up and down and was never the same because of the things that happened and the things I know and the check I wrote. But I'm still standing. Sometimes barely. Sometimes I am laying down. For really long periods of time. Sometimes I am crying in bed and I am howling so loud that my dog howls with me... which makes me laugh and I stop and I comfort him and he comforts me. I am looking for the hope and the silver lining and the wrap-up sentence that UPLIFTS us all and INSPIRES us to move FORWARD. But today, I know none. Tomorrow, I hope tomorrow will be different.

For David, Who I (Double) Love & Miss

Depression Confession

You know what totally stinks? Figuring out you're not perfect. See, I had this whole idea that if I started this journey of digging myself out from underneath a landslide of grief, sadness, over-whelm-ed-ness (yes, I make up words) and lost-ed-ness, I would immdiately get a job, lose 30 pounds, never eat another bad thing for me, run 18 miles a day and meet a great guy. "When you name it, you claim it." So there I was in my apartment, day five into doing anything and everything I can to get out of this damn funk and... I was still chunky. No guy knocked at my door. I ate garlic bread... a lot of it. There might of been chocolate too, but that memory is unclear - DUE TO ALL THE WINE I DRANK. WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME? Oh, yeah... I'm not perfect.

Everytime I set myself up for perfection, I fail, beat myself up and where does that lead... THAT LEADS TO BED. And not in a sexy way.

I had the best example for perfection growing up. My Mom. She held down a full time job, went to Church twice a week, did everything in the house that needed to be done, volunteered endlessly (she used to take a blind woman for ice skating lessons - can you spell SAINT?) She could be freaking out at us for something we didn't do two seconds before we walked into a party but the second we walked through the door, the pagent smile came on, then the wave. It was like she flipped a switch, "EVERY THING IN MY LIFE IS PERFECT." But it wasn't perfect. She lost her own Mom to cancer at 19, my Dad had spent at least 20 years of my life sick - he had a heart transplant and years later a kidney transplant, my cousin Michael died when I was fourteen and David died just two years ago. But she was perfect. I can't remember her crying through any of it.

But that didn't last for long. My mother... and I'm really not trying to be flip here... literally, blew a gasket in December. All that perfect, all that stored up, pent up emotion exploded just days after Christmas. We took her to the hospital. We debated committing her. She was babbling all her family secrets because in her nervous breakdown state, there was no edit button. I said to my sister after: "She has spent our whole lives keeping all that in. And now, in ten minutes... it's out." Amazing. It made me sad to know she has been holding down the pain all along, all alone.

So here I am. I'm not perfect. And I AM TRYING SO HARD TO GET TO A PLACE WHERE I'M OKAY ABOUT THAT. If I harness all the time I try to be perfect and x (times it) by the time I beat myself up for not being perfect, that equals A LOT OF TIME where I could be doing something sooooo much better. Like blogging. Like reading the sweet replies people send me to let me know they are digging my journey. Ooo, and for cup cakes. Okay, maybe not cup cakes... a bath. A bath with no negative, beat-me-up dialogue going through my head. Because hey, I'm not perfect so why would I waste my time on that?

Depression Confession