I wanted to take a moment and say thank you so much for your support. Writing is everything to me and it means even more to know that people enjoy and support my passion.
I wanted to take a moment to encourage you to go check out my older posts and entries. Just scroll to the bottom to the archives and let me know what you think.
There are entries of poetry, and even more vulnerable posts about motherhood, and dealing with my daughter’s mental illness, and autistic diagnosis.
Again, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your support and love. And I look forward to continuing this journey with you.
Oh lover, I have looked into the eyes of pure bliss and pleasure. I met you in secret, in the fields of weed flowers where we rolled around, temporarily forgetting the world. I feel no pain in this meeting while you stroke two fingers down my back.
Pushing my hair behind my ears, you trigger chill bumps that shiver up my spine the same way they shivered up my spine years ago. When you are apart from me, I envision the next time we will meet and my clothes will peel from my skin.
Tell me you’ll meet me here again tomorrow where our eyes can meet once more.
I can’t fathom any second of my world if you are not in it. Every adventure we embark on is a dream in which I check off of my list.
Pull your body as close to mine as is humanly possible. Press your lips so firmly against mine, that I need to come up for air.
Build this life with me climbing each and every mountain together.
Make love to me as if it will be the last time, each time.
I remember each and every field we’ve walked in, each path we’ve discovered, and envision the limitless life that can be ahead of us.
I would smile walking with you in a hurricane, laughing as we run from the rain. This life we are building is exciting and fills me with hope. A hope I have never experienced before. When I say I love you, it’s a feeling I can’t explain. It’s a word I have never used in the way I am using it for you.
When I am speaking of you and I say family, it is new because it is a family feeling that I have never had with anyone else. It means future, a finality, eternal.
I will adventure with you til the end of my days as long as you remember to meet me in the fields when things get tough. As long as your hand is in mine while we walk or crawl through the hard journeys. I’ll hold you up when you need strength, and take care of you like you deserve, because you fulfil these same loves in my life.
I love you. I love us. And I love this life we are building. And if we ever get separated, you will know where to find me…….
but only to sledgehammer them away with breaths of unfathomable strength.
Unleash the beast within you,
lying dormant in wait for you to believe in the gifts that you yourself hold the power to.
The weights of this world have nothing on a beautiful,
relentless,
untouchably powerful,
sexy,
woman warrior.
Take that power,
face the demons in your mind,
and those standing in the vicinity of you,
and say the word that will send them to their final resting place…
Freedom.”
When I wrote this, I had no idea it would become a mantra that I would find myself reading back to myself time and time again. I actually wrote it to encourage and empower a girlfriend of mine. It’s crazy how, as writers, sometimes we can write things that are meant for others, and the individual piece ends up changing our own worlds.
It is true as women, we haven’t always felt as though we are at the top of the food chain. At times, just based on our genders, we are shoved aside, not picked or not first pick for the careers that we are the most qualified for, ignored by majorities under the assumption that we are dumb, underestimated on a daily basis, and largely just expected, even in 2021, to simply pop out children and stand in the kitchen.
Ladies, retribution is in a firm, brave, and courageous flip of your hair. A stance of a warrior. A sway of a big, beautiful, wide set of thick-woman hips strolling down this path with a strong mission. We don’t always recognize the power that lies within us. It is there. Waiting for us to grab it and use it. Waiting for us to own it.
I will always wear my scars like a beautiful lipstick. Smooth in color, strength in a smile, and unstoppably confident knowing that at any given time, I could power up, look myself in the mirror, and know that even in a battle for one, I am the lion who comes out last.
You know how they say “when it rains it pours”? Well, I hate that saying. Mostly because of how much truth it can hold. It’s amazing just how much can change in a year in your body. Each day, a mystery in a bad way. So much so that honestly, you dread going to sleep because you have no clue what the next day holds for you. One day to the next, completely exhausting. And all you truly want is to enjoy the happiness you finally have in your life.
You might remember in the last entry of this series all of my diagnosises up to this point. Fibromyalgia, Lupus, Arthritis, Dystonia, and the latest up that point, COPD.
It has been a whirlwind even since that last post. My vitamins have been out of whack, my fatigue has been in overload, my breathing has seen some very bad days, and some good days.
I want to go back for a moment to 2019. Towards the end of November 2019, I woke up one morning feeling as though I had a large grape sitting in my throat. After a couple hours went by, that grape began to feel more like I had a golf ball sitting in my throat. I decided at that point that I should go to the emergency room. The ER doctor did xrays, and some swabs for strep and told me I had tonsilitis. I was completely baffled considering I haven’t had tonsils since I was 11 years old. He gave me a steroid shot and sent me on my way. The steroid shot did seem to help the swelling in my throat go down. However, a couple of days later, I felt just absolutely horrible. I couldn’t breathe and just felt like complete crap. Two days after that, the hospital called me and said my strep culture had came back positive. A week from then, I was even worse so I went to a walk in clinic. I was so short of breath that by this point, I could barely even get up out of the recliner I had been sleeping in. I found out at this point that I had pneumonia. I stayed deathly sick for the next month.
Over the next year, I had a couple of problems here and there with my breathing and while at one walk in clinic visit, I mentioned how from time to time, my throat swells up and feel like a golf ball in sitting in it. That particular doctor told me that if it continued, I needed to get my thyroid checked.
By November of 2020, I was exhausted. I had since been diagnosed with Lupus along with all of my other things and was feeling beat down. And just like a repeat of the year before, I began to get so sick again. Next came a slew of doctor’s visits, and even a couple of ambulance calls. By January of 2021, I had had enough. I had my doctor refer me to a pulmonary specialist and of course, as stated before, after breathing tests, and a catscan of my lungs, was diagnosed with COPD (stage 3).
Over the past year, I have had problems with the thing (golf ball) swelling up in my throat and began to notice that certain foods triggered it. So, one by one, I began cancelling foods out. I can’t eat pizza, can’t eat spaghetti, can’t eat sloppy joes, can’t eat blah blah blah. But over the past 2 months, it began to swell and not go down. So, my primary doctor set me up for an ultrasound on my thyroid.
Fast forward to last week. My primary doctor’s office called me to set up a slew of appointments discussed in our last appointment. Before she let me go, I had to press her to remind her of my ultrasound and she looked in my file and realized that they were in there. I was immediatley scared as she told me they found multiple nodules on my thyroid.
Now, I wait. I wait with this golf ball in my throat. The thyroid specialist couldn’t get me in until July 28th. And I am also waiting on a GI specialist appointment because I am having so much trouble swallowing.
I’m overwhelmed with so much frustration. My primary doctor for years moved to the beach and didn’t tell any of his patients and I got stuck with a doctor that is very old and only works 2 days a week, which I am quickly realizing is not available enough for me with all of my health problems. He also seems very absent minded and confused which frustrates me greatly. I have decided that as soon as all of my referrals are set up, I am finding another primary doctor immediately.
It’s heartbreaking and so frustrating to be surrounded by doctors whom you feel don’t care about you. The only one I can say cares a great deal about me is my pulmonary doctor. He is incredible.
I daydream all of the time. I dream of what life could be like without all of these health problems. I have an incredible daughter who has a whole future ahead of her, and a man whom I am so in love with that sometimes I want to pinch myself. I want to spend my entire life with him. I want that to be a long life.
I embrace and cherish every moment in my life now. The sun’s brightness feels different on my skin. When my significant other and I are working with our plants and garden in our yard, it is the greatest times I cherish. Cooking meals for him and my daughter are moments that I don’t take for granted. Making them muffins so they have a great breakfast snack. Making his lunches every night before work the next day means everything to me. To be providing for others while I can, and praying that I can do it for many years to come.
I don’t dwell on these appointments coming up. I can’t. I would lose my mind entirely with obsession if I am not careful. Life is too important to focus on things you can’t change. I want to love. With my whole heart. And even if the only adventures I go on right now are the ones in the garden with him, or in the car going down the road with my daughter, they are the greatest adventures in the whole wide world.
When you’re younger, you never dream of getting to the day where you have to begin to watch any of your loved ones dwindle away. The truth is, you also plow through your own life thinking you’re untouchable. Eating what you want, doing spontaneous things with an indirect carelessness. Never thinking of the later in life consequences that will be waiting. When those days come, they slam into you like a ton of bricks.
I can remember very clearly the seldom good memories that surround my adolescent years. I can tell you with absolution that most every one of them involve my grandparents. They hold such a huge piece of this puzzle that has been my life.
I can hear my grandmother’s laugh. Her incredible sense of humor lit up the entire room every single second she was present, and you absolutely noticed when she wasn’t around. Her immense sense of innocence from the time she grew up in was so humbling, and honestly to us growing up, hilarious. No matter what, she loved people with her whole heart. Even when they treated her unfair or unloving. She was the direct reflection of Christ. She cooked the greatest of meals, and had a perfect medical remedy for any sickness or ailment you were suffering. It was all right there in a medical search book that was almost bigger than she was.
The most fondest of times throughout my life was watching the love between her and my grandfather. 70 years of marriage and not a second of love lost. A type of relationship that will almost die with their generation. Her being 16 when they married, and living of poverty that most people only read about. I’ve heard time and time again, throughout my entire life, the horrors of their starvation, kids left wanting, tears from not knowing what they were going to do, but also the beautiful stories of togetherness, all the way up until the time my grandfather miraculously got the job that would change their life forever. It’s a story for the books. A story for the world. In the most humbling of sorts, and I want to hear it over and over. I hear something new every time that I do. The part that strikes me as rare, and as the realest form of love, is the fact that throughout all of these years of struggles and fear, they never faltered in their love for one another and their family. They never gave up on each other, even when they wanted to.
My grandmother, the great mother of this whole family, went through so much in her life. An alcoholic father, and a detached and seemingly emotionless mother. Yet, when you meet her, she is one of the most selfless, caring, and loving people you will ever meet in your life. She is one of the rarities that go through trauma, struggles and strife, and make it out in the end making the tough decision to not only not let it define her, but also choosing to love all people right where they are. She incredibly chose to love them with an unconditional love and kindness that is immeasurable. No matter what you were going through, she saw through the bad and could always find the good in anyone.
I can look back on an extensive amount of time I took for granted with my grandparents. Beautiful times I simply flushed down the toilet being selfish, being absent, and most of all, being angry in the most evil of ways. The way I spoke to them and the way I treated them and walked all over them is something that haunts me to this day. Being overly passive, they let me walk all over them. And absolutely never gave up on me. They are two that I can say with absolute certainty, that 100% believed in me, and loved me through every very horrible moment up to this very day. They were and are the reason that I learned the very basic of skills that started me out in this world and kept me alive in the hardest of times. Times that someone of such a young age should never have to experience. I credit them for the gift of prayers, protection, and immense amounts of love that at that time, and sometimes even now, I didn’t and don’t understand, and definitely didn’t and don’t feel I deserve. But my grandmother, she is the one that stands out. My best friend, my confidant. The one person I have always ran to when things were crumbling and completely hopeless. Always having the greatest words of encouragement, and never failing to remind me that I was capable of anything and everything in this great big world.
I never, not in a million years, thought that I would watch my grandparents dwindle away to nothing. My grandfather, now 92, is ate up with Parkinson’s disease, shaking and stumbling around, stubbornly, on a walker, and stumbling around like the tin man. He spends all of his days planted on the couch, a prisoner to his body, falling asleep and drooling on himself. I try to reach back in my mind and picture him out in his building tinkering with a new project, perfectly manicuring his perfect yard. Labeling everything, down to the fly-swatter and each lightbulb throughout the house with the date purchased, and/or the first date used. The memories of those days are fading from my memory, and being replaced with these sad days on repeat.
My grandmother, now going to be 87 this month, is just a shell of herself. Dementia tearing away at her entire being. You yearn in each moment with her to reach in and pull out that comforter, to watch her put on her signature red lipstick, to hear her incredibly encouraging words to pick you back up, but instead, each sad moment, current and long ago, playing on repeat in her mind like a skipping record. The recent death of her sister, the recent death of her pastor’s wife, her brother being in horrible health and on a defibrillator. All seeming to bounce around in her mind like a pinball machine and as each one makes its way to the front, she voices it again, as if it’s the first time.
We can’t and shouldn’t tell her any of the sad things anymore. Most in the family are the doing the selfish thing and telling her anyway. Which is the ultimate selfish act. It’s like writing in a diary that reads it back to you. I don’t. I no longer confide in her, or fish for her encouraging words. I cherish the days that they are offered naturally. There is no red lipstick, hair is never brushed, and she is always in the same outfit with the same house robe on top of it. She waddles around, door to door in the house, sitting blankly on the porch. Day in and day out, the same day over again. I want to hold her. I want to tell her everything is going to be ok.
She repeats a story to me. We took care of her mother who had and ultimately passed with Alzheimer’s disease. She has always repeated the same thing to me. I will go any way the Lord wants me to, I just ask him not to take my mind. And now, here it is. The one thing she didn’t want to happen. She still repeats it, even in her deteriorating state, that everyday she prays to hold onto her mind, and that home-health says she is doing great, even though we know she’s not.
I’m sure the black bird’s cry is louder than ever. I yearn to peek into that realm even if for just a moment to see what they’re seeing, to hear what they are hearing, to think what they are thinking, and to feel what they are feeling. But it’s for selfish reasons. If only just to comfort myself on the feeling of having already lost them, or even to understand it a bit better when it’s time for them to fly away swiftly with those waiting on them.
The grass grows up past the sidewalk now. The flowerbeds choked with weeds. Building in the backyard, in the past filled with noise of new projects being completed, now sitting in rot in the overgrown yard. A lonely shrill in the air. A sadness in the waiting and the not knowing. An almost beautiful feeling in thinking that every time you’re there with them, is the last. Teaching you, and forcing you to cherish each and every second of the time spent with the parts of them that are not already gone. For now, the black birds compete with the song of the blue birds, which is a lasting hope I’m holding onto.
