coming to terms

I will never be perfect, blonde (I was once and I will never go back), my body will never bounce back to its once youthful glow. I am covered in scars, marks, highly visible veins, and loose, old lady like skin. Underneath it all I have a heart of gold that is highly guarded but will do anything to crack a smile on a loved ones face. I’d move mountains to make them happy. I am also highly empathetic and take on the vibes from those around me and it sucks. I love that I can feel things so deeply but it means I feel everything intensified.

I am going through separation not only from my spouse but from my kids as well. My kids still live at their home and come to stay with me sometimes. Within a matter of months I lost my apartment, car, and most of my belongings due to flooding and the discovery of asbestos. The flooding has hit me pretty hard and it’s not so much the loss, yes I lost some pretty special, irreplaceable stuff but the fear and panic of those hours watching the water invade my home and not being able to do a thing about it have broken a piece of me I am not sure can be fixed. At times, I have become irritable, forgetful, sometimes reckless with my decisions, lonely, impulsive, and depressed. I won’t always answer when you call. I have always had major highs and lows but this is a whole other ball of wax.

Last week, I made the decision I had been dreading for a long time under the encouragement of my primary doctor. I made an appointment for therapy. The appointment is tomorrow and that makes me anxious in itself.  I am high functioning and can carry on when necessary but there have been a few occasions in the last 2 months where I couldn’t carry on. What upset me the most about one of them is that I reached out to a few people for help and I was blown off. (If you were one of them and are reading, please don’t be offended. I hold no ill will and understand) Perhaps because I had never reached out before, IDK. I can’t and won’t get into detail here. I typically go off on my own to deal with problems before I share them, if I share them.  I have flashbacks and triggers can be as simple as seeing pictures of things, remembering  something and then realizing something in the memory was taken from me. I have since come in contact with a few items I thought I would never see again. What I managed to pack into my car that wasn’t destroyed anyway, I have since put in my storage closet outside. I can’t bring them inside my new place because they trigger.  I have a couple of outlets. Music being a major one and my 2 twin souls as I like to call them. Some of us are lucky if we find one, I have two. The 3 of us are pretty fucked up but I can speak without fear or judgement and it makes me love them that much more. One I have known for years while the other only made their appearance a little more than a month ago. Problem there is, sometimes even though I know I could, I don’t always go to them either. I don’t know how this appointment will go, I can only hope for the best. 

That said, I read a post today that questioned, “If you had a reset button for your life, would you push it”? Absofuckinglutely not! I still believe in destiny and that what is meant to be will be. I also believe that our love, pain, loss, struggles, triumphs, and victories, continuously shape who we are. Sometimes that’s how we have to learn.. because there is no other way aside from experience. I’m still working on me. I have been for 6yrs now and I’m not done. It will be an endless journey til the day I die. My journey of self discovery and care began with that night I thought I was going to die of a heart attack. It planted a seed that I tended for a couple of years before I had the courage “sprout”and start making changes in myself. Change can be scary, but it’s the only way we’ll grow. 

I’m doing the best I can, with what I have. I wish I had a little more support some days but it is what it is. It’s taken me 30 something yrs to make the step into therapy.  

A song came to mind when I read the topic on what you would do with a switch and Garth Brooks, The Dance came to mind

“Our lives are better left to chance, I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance” 

https://youtu.be/2Ru1M6dY0cY

This is where I will leave you

Until next time,

Rising Phoenix, lover of song and dance, swore I’d never let anyone call me Jenny again, I miss you -Jen

And I cry…

It’s been almost 8weeks since my life turned upside down thanks to flooding from Hurricane Matthew on October 8th, 2016.

In a nutshell, no one expected much from this storm in our area but boy, were we wrong. 

I was alone in my apartment watching a show on Netflix and noticed how high the water was getting outside. We expected wind gusts and rain just not as much as we got. by 8pm Saturday night on Oct 8, there was already 2-3 inches of water where my car was parked in the lot in front of my building. I needed to go to the store and wanted to do it before it got any worse, wind-wise. As soon as I pulled out onto the main road, Lynhaven Parkway I already began to regret my decision to leave. The road was flooding on both sides, I had to drive in the middle of the two lane road to get  through safely. I opted to hit 7-11 and then go back home. The ride was scary, visibility was bad, and the roads were becoming rivers. It still didn’t set in my mind that it would  get bad enough in the complex where I lived. I got out of my car for the last time ever that night as it would soon become engulfed in water. 

It was 11pm when I noticed the water creeping up to my back door and I glanced out the front windows to see the parking lot where the water was creeping up the walkway to the front of my building. By 11:20pm water was creeping in from every possible way, first the baseboards in my living room and the track of the sliding glass door, I frantically started moving things off the floor in an attempt to save what I could hoping the water would stop before it got any deeper. That’s when I noticed it creeping into my front door and through the pipe openings in the bathroom. I kept moving things til the water got ankle deep and I grabbed towels to dry my feet, my tablet, phone, charger, cigarettes and some junk I grabbed from 7-11 and made camp on my bed watching as the water continued to rise around me. I don’t know that I had ever been more scared, yet calm in my life. I retreated, knowing there was  nothing I could do and no one was going to be able to get to me.  I fell asleep before the water made it to the base of my bed and woke again about 2am to see the water was that high. It seemed to have stopped but it wasn’t going anywhere. I stayed in bed til 8am when the water had mostly receded from my apartment at least and then got up to look around. I couldn’t believe it. Some things had floated down the hall, there was water in the bottom of my chest of drawers, the drawer under my oven, and there was still an inch or so of water in the kitchen where an earth worm floated by me.

I went back to my bed and watched out my open window the brave ones that chose to wade through the water out front that got to be waist deep in some spots. I wasn’t necessarily in denial but didn’t know what else to do. I smoked in the apartment which I NEVER do. I was alone. I watched all day out the window, made a video I posted online of a walk through of my apartment and I couldn’t speak through part of it because I had choked up.

I’m looking around at my life collections, books, vinyl records, dvd/Blu-ray and Vhs tapes  ruined, 2 of them irreplaceable  my wedding and my son’s ultrasound tape. I just realized as I type that those were there. I had handled everything pretty well aside from a few emotional outbursts here and there. I remained positive for the most part until today. 

To catch anyone unaware up to speed, my car was totalled, my apartment had a foot worth of water damage the complex was going to repair and put me in a hotel until they were finished. On 10-21 I got word my lease was terminated on grounds that asbestos was discovered while they opened up the walls. The complex was going to extend my hotel stay to Nov 2nd. I had until then to find a new car and new home which I did, reluctantly. I missed my car terribly and I left alot behind in the apartment because I thought I was going back within a month. Not anymore, they began asbestos abatement and told me that they would save what they could and it could be 5 months before I could get anything left behind that was deemed “safe”. I left with a couple uniforms for work , my laptop, tv, a few electronics, and enough clothes to get me through a few weeks and shoes. Not much really. The only things I would have had to replace at that point would have been furniture. Not anymore thanks to asbestos. Until you are put in a position like this, you will never fully understand what this is like. I used to collect lighthouses, Minions, Nightmare Before Christmas items, movies, books, cds. All of it, gone. I had a guitar and viola in one closet along with Rock band instruments for my Wii, a sewing machine,  a Donovan  McNabb Official Jersey, costumes for Halloween, my cap and gown from graduation, my wedding dress,  a formal gown, various dresses,  a multitude of jackets, and other clothes. I had a closet dedicated to work uniforms from both jobs. 4 yrs in my current position meant at least 20 uniform shirts alone. There were unofficial shirts we would wear for special occasions special ordered. My kids baby books, my 3 pairs of cowboy boots that I absolutely loved.. gone. This is not even half of it. I see photos and there are things I recognize that were left behind and I either get angry or I cry. I have had nightmares from the night of, and have also had a few anxiety attacks more recently when a memory comes back. I am NOT okay. 
The tip of the iceberg hit today when I found out there were items to be claimed from my apartment but they were under a tarp outside in the fucking rain! I went over to check it out only to see the reality that a 4-5ft pile of shit wrapped in a tarp was all that remained of my 2 bedroom apartment and I couldn’t even really get into it in the rain. It wasn’t sheltered and it sat in the grass and mud. I felt sick. It was happening all over again. I had  a glimmer of hope that SOMETHING remained. I drove home and sobbed. I hate this and I wish no one would ever have to go through this. 

There will be someone that says… “Those things are THINGS and you survived, blah blah blah” I am well aware that things are replaceable and I do still believe that things happen for a reason but it doesn’t lessen the pain of the reality of now. I really do fear I will never get over this to the point where I have decided I won’t collect anything anymore. If I can’t eat it, drive it, use it for my kids, f*ck it, or enjoy it daily, I don’t want to waste my money on it. I am changed forever. I don’t view possessions the same way anymore. I don’t buy it if I don’t NEED it. Some will say that’s a good thing and others won’t agree but it is growth and I’ve learned a few very hard lessons in a short amount of time. I will continue to survive and get stronger each day. As much as I’d like to be, I am not done yet. 

Eye of the Tiger,

Rising Phoenix, Jill of most trades, survivor- Jen