my month of sleeping on couches is OVER!

right now i'm sitting on my new bright and cozy bed. the mattress is something luxuriously plush and tall and comfy, and something i'd never have bought for myself so i am SO LUCKY to have inherited it from my generous sister and brother-in-law. the bedding, a bright red with cream circles that looks very sixties-esque, is new as of last night. it's the perfect mismatch with my bright blue walls and hardwood flooring. and the biggest bonus of all, of course, was that last night (my first night with my new bed).....

I SLEPT LIKE A FREAKING BABY.

now imagined that's underlined twice, with asterisks at each end for emphasis. why? why is this such a big deal? beds are for sleeping. is it really blogworthy for me to be going all mattress crazy on my blog? do i really need to throw in (yet again. oops.) that i SLEPT LIKE A FREAKING BABY?

meh.....probably not. but look at it this way. i'm someone who has had some pretty major back problems the past few years. these existed before any of other health issues, and grew to be even worse due to the nature of the health issues that later arrived and made themselves at home.

so very recently, things were getting BAD for my back. every time i slept on my old, hard as a board bed, i'd wake up in agony and take about ten minutes to slowly move each limb to the edge of the bed, and then slowly try to stand. dressing took FOREVER because i had to sit down to put most of my clothes on and couldn't bend over to put my socks on without much discomfort and i'll admit, unkindly words of the sailor variety.

let's just say, i stopped sleeping on that bed because it was doing damage to me. i have literally been sleeping on couches for the last month, trying to buy a mattress. and then, i got one for free. and a really, really good one too.

aww it's november. so sure, i'm thankful. and what great motivation too ;) right now i'm writing from my bed, which i so often loved to do before. now i''m back in my big cozy bed and loving it. this is how you spend sunday nights man. i'm writing the night away on a very exciting project......playing WoW and reading.

multitasking is good, my friends.
especially when you have a giant comfy bed to do it in!!


;)

this is how my brain works in the fall/winter (is coming!) sorry couldn't help that....anyway.....

the past few months of my life have been difficult.
trust me, at this point....i'm REALLY sick of saying that. i'm sick of it being my motto- that's what it feels like. but let me say, it's led me to some really good realizations and changes so, it's not wasted.

it's never wasted, life being hard. i'm really starting to understand that.

my great grandma passed away in the beginning of september, and a cycle began. i couldn't see it then, but now with the benefit of hindsight i can. her death brought a sharp reality into my brain and my heart and really every part of me, that i had never experienced before. i began to get a little morbidly interested in death. i was dealing with all parts of it. the physical loss of a person. seeing a person's body and knowing that their soul is missing. wondering, where that goes. wondering, if we remain conscious through everything, do we become pure matter without consciousness? so many thoughts.

and then not long after my great grandma passed away, taking with her this presence that had existed before i was born and had been there my entire life so far......a whole different aspect of death came in from the other side. scout, for all intents and purposes my baby. dying. dying. and then gone.


and after lying on the floor at the vet's office, holding scout's face so that our eyes were staring right into each other's and our noses touched, and i watched the life slowly ebb from him and i was still holding him. crying hysterically because death once again was here. and i didn't know what to do. it quickly took my great grandma and it quickly took my companion and child. and my world was just kind of rocked. it was rocked while suddenly death seemed to be the only thing i could thing about. death, in all its stages and exactly what it is and does. and at the same time, the season is changing from gentle fall to harsher whisperings of winter, with early darkness and promised snows.....


and i am just like, what the hell.

k life, just calm the eff down for a moment. let me breathe. my anxiety starts causing panic attacks and my meds need to be adjusted. and then, something bad happens. a week later, i'm down with pouchitis again. i'm starting to realize that i am doing certain things to myself sub-consciously. that i am internalizing guilt and shame and anger, and that these things are attacking me now the same way they were attacking my colon. and i'm realizing i'm setting myself up for a crappy life if i don't check myself and fast. reigning in my self-loathing, so i can actually get healthy. that is all i want, i realize. all i want.

so here i admit, i have issues. everybody has their own. but mine are just.....they're issues born from trauma. i didn't understand that these kind of issues don't just go away with a little affirmation in the mornings, or whatever. i have issues directly related to the fact that my life was about being sick, potentially dying, and just surviving day-to-day. my life has been survival. and just that. so while in some aspects i've certainly matured beyond my years. it's obvious to me whenever i'm around my peers. it's also obvious that my social skills are lacking, and that's directly related to me being very isolated when i was sick. i was missing out on years of emotional growth in very basic ways, while making emotional growth into advanced stages in other ways. i have a deep understanding about pain and loss, and the special horror of your body destroying itself so systemically. like a program gone wrong, and suddenly it's just going into shutdown and your  heart and your spirit are screaming. this isn't what you wanted! and not so young. the physical and mental/emotional are at odds. and having your body become the grounds of a civil war between your soul, your core, and the physical. it's a mess.

i didn't really understand, even with all my preparations, what kind of mark sickness and surgery were going to leave on me. what kind of isolation i really sank into. like a big bathtub full of icy water. nearly two years since my first surgery, and i still can hardly fathom it.  it's still hard to look at the pictures. my health hasn't gotten THAT much better. i do not feel "done" with this yet, and i'd hoped that i would be at this point.

i've  always been an intense person. but all of that, and the mark it's left on me, has made me even more intense. i'm trying to learn what to dial down, and what is actually good intensity. i'm trying really hard to be a good person, because i feel like i wasn't made a "good person", with traits that lend well toward goodness. ha! if anything, i have a host of traits that lend toward selfishness, vanity, impatience with myself, and the deep-down, marrow-deep belief that i am not worth anything. i have a temper, i can be calculating. i have some tendencies that would lend well to me being a sleazy person, not caring about anything but living this life- and living it the way i want to.

but then there's a whole other side-just less developed, where good traits have been fed and watered in recent years. if i care for them, if i tend to them, can they overtake the rottenness that is already there?

i want to be a GOOD PERSON. it sure doesn't sound glamorous at all, but i've never cared much for glamor anyway. i think i have the makings of both a lousy person and a good one (don't we all?) but i think the good things are in the beginning stages of being able to overpower the bad, finally. it will be a process long and slow. but that's what life is, right?

ps- i want to be a good person. i'm not all that stoked on being a completely sane person ;)  though...heh. the greatest artists and writers never are. my intensity fans the flame of my creativity, so though dialed-down it may become.....


......it will never disappear.

yeah, i'm awake.

a rude awakening that my perspective is way off. that i always, always, ALWAYS expect the worst and react that way to everything. that i do not communicate well, despite my intentions. that i expect passive-aggressiveness, for everything to really mean something else. i grew up with that such a part of my life that now, it's burrowed into my brain. i feel stupid, and ashamed and i'm tired. sometimes i feel like i have nothing good to offer anybody. really.

the beauty of it

once you understand your own capacity, the depth of feeling you can have for other people and creatures and things, then you know exactly who and what to really let in. you decide exactly who you're going to love, respect, and cherish and anything else. you decide who and what you might only tolerate to add to the greater good of your life. nobody else decides it for you. you decide who and what are really worth making space and time for. and that's the beauty of it! nobody can force you to love them, respect them, like them or even make room for them. and you can't decide that for anybody else. and it's not an insult, it's human nature. we are all so different. we will not all love or respect or like each other the same way, we may not want everybody who wants to be in our lives to be there. sometimes there simply isn't any room for what certain people or things bring you.

 and that's okay.

life IS made of moments

i've heard that phrase a thousand times and dismissed it as trite or trying too hard. "everyday life isn't that poetic," i'd scoff. this was me, sick, after all. and my "moments" were spent in pretty non-poetic ways.

but i've had a change of heart. don't i always? life absolutely IS made of moments. all different kinds. they don't have to be poetic to matter, though there are plenty that are and do. i've realized that life is made of moments, as i've tried harder and harder to capture them in some way.

the why is simple. everyone now likes to photograph and note just about everything they do. it's part of culture to "share" and therefore make everything shareable. for me, it's a little different. my short-term memory is a little like dory's from finding nemo. ;) this is yet another unexplained bit of fun in the endless parade of "weird things my body has decided to do" since getting sick/being treated/having surgeries. my memory used to be sharp as a tack and endless. i was good at remembering just about everything, especially things i didn't want to. ;)

now? it's hard to explain the stretches of emptiness where memories should be. it's not like it's THAT bad, that i'm losing it or something. it's just...not very much time has to pass, and things begin to fade. not all that slowly, and suddenly, an event or time has a single image attached to it that i remember. and that's it. a dozen little things may have transpired but it have a fixed image of just one. just some random moment that i can recall, and not much else. the irony in my life truly is never-ending....right? anyone who knows me, has heard me talk about this and would probably agree.

anyway....this summer, i decided i really wanted to try and snag myself more "moments" by taking a lot of pictures. yes, i get razzed for this. no, i don't care. ;) for me, it's the difference between having a wonderful night with friends and remembering two seconds of us sitting by the fire versus, looking at a picture and remembering an ENTIRE conversation because of one word i typed in below it for myself to look back on later. it's the difference between SUMMER: LONG NIGHTS HOT DAYS and, remembering all the different nights and the things i did, longboarding down the canyon and the conversations around the fire and the camping and the stargazing and getting ice cream and making dinner and my sister's wedding and the salt flats at sunrise with the ruki's for my aunt's wedding and and and....the list is endless. and the days? instead of ME AND BEKAH WENT PLACES it's, we went up the canyon and ran around sundance, explored parks in alpine and orem and went to the mall where she picked out dozens of pairs of crazy leggings.

 yes, i have pictures and little blurbs of key words for these things and i remember them because of it. i'm not embarrassed that this is how i have learned to remember things, since my memory has gone to pot after the medications and the anesthesia and maybe even because of the emotional trauma of my illness and the bag, etc. i don't want or mean to sound dramatic. this is just a fact of the past few years of my life, the reality of my everyday existence for awhile. there was a lot of time spent in drug-induced hazes, gray space in my bed or in a hospital. "medicated" was my middle name.

actually, i'm proud. i have a summer to look back on, filled with moments. made up of them, even. and this time, they won't fade.

finito

oh my goodness, the relief.

i have made solid decisions. changes. set my course and grabbed a compass. FINALLY. finally after months of floundering and wandering with no sense of direction, i know where i want to go.

work begins tomorrow, and i am ready. i have set sail things that i have no business keeping harbored any longer. taking old adages to heart and moving forward. learning what serves a purpose, and what doesn't. it sounds a little cold and calculating, and maybe it is. but i didn't fight for my health the past few years to live the life i've had for the last  (much too) long while. so, here it goes.done. kaput.



auf wiedersehen, goodbye.

consequences

sometimes i just feel like my actions don't deserve half of the crap i'm putting up with right now. like i'm the butt of a constant, lousy joke.