“I don't wish to be everything to everyone, but I would like to be something to someone.” - Javan
"I've got everything I want, but still I want more." Ani Difranco
2/22/11 was one day for the record books. Although I cannot say exactly what happened for the sanctity of others, I was pretty bad ass that day.
I saved someone's life. Not kidding. I assure you the circumstances were interesting, the kind of stuff that good suspense is made of; sudden logging out of phones at work, driving 90 on the highway with no seat belt, hitting a patch of ice, nearly skidding out, going to a seemingly empty house, police being called...
It was exciting; the kind of excitement I hope to never repeat.
Today was day zero. Today, was the year anniversary of those events which made a friendship more concrete, created challenges and the day that everything wasn't quite the same, a really sad time that ended up much happier than it could of.
Although I felt helpless, I also did enough. It all started out with an email of a concerned coworker.
"I don't know what's up, our friend just isn't acting right." he said
He sent me the letter. He was right. It was textbook.
I didn't even think. I immediately logged out of my phone, I told my boss "I'll be back later, I have to take care of this now." and I didn't look back. I didn't even tell my co-worker that I was leaving. I just asked where he thought our friend might be. Then I drove 90 on M14... but luckily I didn't completely spin out, it could have been so bad; I could feel the top half of the car swaying.
I prayed.
"God, if you exist, please." I said "Spare my friend. It's a simple request, my friend has so much to do with their life. I don't ask for much, but please, just spare my friend. I will not doubt your existence again, and will forever be your faithful servant. Now, we'll discuss later which one of you buggers is up there pulling the strings, but for now, please leave logistics out of this and save my friend."
I drove to their house, they had not parked the car where they normally did. I thought they were not home.
So I went to a couple of the places my co worker mentioned... No car. No car=no friend.
I arrived home about a half an hour after leaving work.
I called the police, they asked why I was looking.
I simply quoted the message given to me by my coworker.
They went looking.
I went looking again, then called the police after the second time through the gardens.
They found my friend. They would only tell me that they were in the ER, and they were safe.
That was at my friend's request. I went looking around the ER. I did not see my friend, I walked back out.
They WERE at home.
Had I gone in, I would have found my friend.
I don't handle the sight of blood very well.
My friend had nearly bled out.
I did the right thing.
Today was Day Zero.
I bought my friend flowers and taco bell. We sat in my living room talking about the day's events.
Every day I thank the universe for giving them another shot at living. I'd be lost without them.
Think you can't handle it? Think you might remove yourself from the equation? Know someone who's thinking about it, talking about being "brave"? Be a REAL hero, PREVENT ANOTHER DAY ZERO. Living life with scars it still living. Remove the stigma. Speak out and save the day.
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
1-800-273-TALK
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Monday, February 20, 2012
The talk and the walk
Something happened a few weeks ago, something I haven't really felt I should discuss... but I think I need to just to wrap my brain around it.
It starts with a brand old cell phone.
I had upgraded my cell phone in December with the intention of giving my daughter the old one I was upgrading from. It isn't much, but it does have android and bunches of geek toys for my budding geek. She's 12, so with appropriate supervision I don't feel this phone will be any trouble for her.
I may have been wrong, in hindsight.
She told me as we were switching phones that she needed to make sure to delete her text messages from the old phone. Now, the few times I have upgraded to a new phone, I remembered my old phone forgetting all of my info, whether my memory was wrong or what, I'll never know.
The old phone's message history did not erase, and after about the 20th time of her telling me she really needed to erase her texts, even after I had assured her it wasn't a problem... I decided I better find out what was in there that she was so intent on deleting.
Now Lily, she is my oldest, she's also my only daughter. I feel sometimes I live a bit to vicariously through her, she's like my clone, looks just like me, and worst yet, acts just like me.
So, I was expecting the kind of messages I used to write with a pen and paper to my friends in school.. and there were some of those.
there were also racy pictures, not too bad, but enough to raise my eyebrow.
there was also cyber sex type texting, not at ALL something I felt she should have been even thinking about.
So, she texted with the boy... she said that she loved him and wanted to spend more time with him. His number came in from Florida.
He talked of getting his licence.
He texted pictures of the car he wants to get.
and he texted how he wanted to do it to my little girl...
This little boy is lucky I do not have his junk in hand to feed it to him.
Also, in a crazy effort to try to get rid of this boy, Lily started texting him pictures where she made herself up to look like she had a black eye. (I had wondered why she wanted black eyeliner and black eyeshadow, but meh...) and texts that she had been chained to a pole all night one night. This boy child was appropriately concerned.
So, I blocked him using google voice, which is something you can bind to a cell phone's telephone number.
But I somehow suspect it didn't end there. That was almost 3 weeks ago.
I get this email from my ex this week, Lily has requested to go to a theme park in Florida, and he graciously accepted her request. They are going on one of her school breaks...
Why does this seem to be like a REALLY bad idea?
My ex says she'll never be alone... but did he ever consider that she doesn't want to be kept?
I tried to explain this to him, but he says I am too worried, that he'll be able to keep her safe... I have no reason to believe otherwise... but seriously... The cell phone's area code comes from the same area as the theme park they are going to...
I wish I could just turn my brain off.
It starts with a brand old cell phone.
I had upgraded my cell phone in December with the intention of giving my daughter the old one I was upgrading from. It isn't much, but it does have android and bunches of geek toys for my budding geek. She's 12, so with appropriate supervision I don't feel this phone will be any trouble for her.
I may have been wrong, in hindsight.
She told me as we were switching phones that she needed to make sure to delete her text messages from the old phone. Now, the few times I have upgraded to a new phone, I remembered my old phone forgetting all of my info, whether my memory was wrong or what, I'll never know.
The old phone's message history did not erase, and after about the 20th time of her telling me she really needed to erase her texts, even after I had assured her it wasn't a problem... I decided I better find out what was in there that she was so intent on deleting.
Now Lily, she is my oldest, she's also my only daughter. I feel sometimes I live a bit to vicariously through her, she's like my clone, looks just like me, and worst yet, acts just like me.
So, I was expecting the kind of messages I used to write with a pen and paper to my friends in school.. and there were some of those.
there were also racy pictures, not too bad, but enough to raise my eyebrow.
there was also cyber sex type texting, not at ALL something I felt she should have been even thinking about.
So, she texted with the boy... she said that she loved him and wanted to spend more time with him. His number came in from Florida.
He talked of getting his licence.
He texted pictures of the car he wants to get.
and he texted how he wanted to do it to my little girl...
This little boy is lucky I do not have his junk in hand to feed it to him.
Also, in a crazy effort to try to get rid of this boy, Lily started texting him pictures where she made herself up to look like she had a black eye. (I had wondered why she wanted black eyeliner and black eyeshadow, but meh...) and texts that she had been chained to a pole all night one night. This boy child was appropriately concerned.
So, I blocked him using google voice, which is something you can bind to a cell phone's telephone number.
But I somehow suspect it didn't end there. That was almost 3 weeks ago.
I get this email from my ex this week, Lily has requested to go to a theme park in Florida, and he graciously accepted her request. They are going on one of her school breaks...
Why does this seem to be like a REALLY bad idea?
My ex says she'll never be alone... but did he ever consider that she doesn't want to be kept?
I tried to explain this to him, but he says I am too worried, that he'll be able to keep her safe... I have no reason to believe otherwise... but seriously... The cell phone's area code comes from the same area as the theme park they are going to...
I wish I could just turn my brain off.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Press "#1" for progress
The Living Room is almost clean, kids room is as clean as a kid's room gets; when you let the kids do the cleaning.
Even the husband chipped in. I ran over to grab my friend and my carpet cleaner, my friend had a few errands so we ran them, and I got this frantic call from my husband, who had obviously been crying...
"Are you coming home or are you just leaving us here?" he said when he called.
"Are you coming home or are you just leaving us here?" he said when he called.
"I'm in the driveway." I say
"Google said you're in Dearborn..."
"I can assure you," I said almost laughing "that I haven't been, nor will I be in Dearborn today, I'm in the drive now. I'll be in within a few minutes."
And I came in, Paul was in the bathroom, the kids were playing games in the living room.
And he gave me a big hug and said that he missed me.
I was gone an hour.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Better today
I just wanted to let concerned parties know that everything is improving, for now. I remain cautiously optimistic.
Rearing it's ugly head
So, a few weeks ago, my kids got a hold of my computer, and I have literally no fucking clue what they did to it.
All I know is one minute, it was working fine, screen on, no rainbow streaks, next, rainbow streaks and making like the video card was about to die. So, I pounded on the top of the machine, and voila, magic, working computer again. Having said that, occasionally the video card of doom and destruction comes back to misbehave and otherwise cause trouble.
My loyal readers all know that I am contemplating a divorce, and rather you are pro or con, I just need to write this out and allow myself time to process what I'm thinking about. This will be awkward, because my husband is one of the 2 folks who subscribe to my blog.
Now does he actually read it, no, but he does subscribe... and I guess that's where the problems begin.
Paul and I have a relationship based on friendship. That friendship is based on a couple of college pals who decided to hook up sometime after my separation from my ex, basically on a dare. I say dare because people started spreading rumors well before Paul and I started sleeping together that we WERE sleeping together. Now... if you figure everyone is already talking about it, you don't very well have and excuse to not follow through with it. In my mind, I was going to lose custody of my child due to this rumor any how, I figured, meh.
In the time that Paul and I started living together, we got quite fond of one another. We bought rats, settled down and occasionally took road trips to visit other friends in far off cities.
And he watched me go crazy for a bit after my ex and I finally divorced, after the abuse and didn't really bat an eyelash about any of it.
Every night, we'd sit down at about 9, I'd write my novel, and he'd sit and read as I wrote it.
and we'd have tea. About midnight we'd roll off to bed in our separate rooms, or we would go over to White castle and grab some sliders before playing some video games. We'd roll out of bed about 230p and head to our job at the student newspaper. Sometimes we'd have to be up earlier to conduct interviews, or other things you do to prepare articles, but it wasn't terribly common.
I had decided to attempt to transfer to Northwestern. But I just chickened out.
Then things got serious, but things were still good. I have happy memories of waking up each day and having a new adventure with my best pal.
When he proposed to me, I wasn't shocked. I was happy, I said yes.
We started to plan our wedding, then lo and behold I ended up pregnant. Now, we had been trying to conceive, but figured we had a poor shot at it due to the meds Paul was on.
we kind of had a a shot gun wedding of sorts a few weeks before Ev was born, just to insure he could be covered by the insurance.
And things were still good, for a while.
Round about 07 is when things started to turn south.
I hit a bout of depression head on while pregnant with Dan. Not getting out of bed for days at a time, having a homeless person shacked up in one of our rooms... Sciatica so bad that I could not walk, not coping with anything. Everyone kept saying "that baby is coming early." but just like Dan, not wanting to break the rules or upset anyone, he was right on time. I was devastated Dan missed Christmas in 06, I remember crying a lot about it. Meanwhile Paul was working overtime and stressed, and simply could not be made available. He started getting migraines which we later found out were toothaches, we spent much time in the ER. But, no seizures.
We managed to get the homeless lady to move, we hoped it was a nice place for her, but still... you know, family always comes first in these matters.
I had to beg Paul to come home the day of labor. One of his co-workers, (and a friend of our family) said he practically had to drag him out of the store.
He got home, and he and I waited... and finally at about 3 in the morning on 1/6/07, there was Dan. The midwife had a migraine that night, and Dan was a very modest boy, so for the first several minutes of his life, he was Kathleen. Poor guy...
Paul stayed home from work the entire week to take care of the new member of the family; and promptly spend 90% of his time on hockey forums, even during midwife visits. The midwives tried to engage him in conversation, but to no avail, he only wanted to type and retype the stats which were so familiar from his childhood. At first, I was somewhat patient, I didn't like it, but I dealt with it.
Then, more and more of his time was spent there. He and I had a tradition then of sitting and playing world of warcraft together. That was the only thing I could get him to quit the forums for. And it was fun, and things were still somewhat ok, although I was admittedly annoyed.
Then, we moved from one place to another. This was mid 07. Paul at the same time moved to a new position at a different store. I begged and pleaded with him not to take the position, but as his friends at work told me, he was forced into the position.
Then came the seizures. 2 in 2 weeks, unheard of for the past several years of Paul's life. We took him to the ER, they put him on a drug, Keppra which caused him to be moodier than a 12 year old in puberty.
One minute, fine, next, psychotic rage. Also, it was making his seizures worse.
And I begged his doc to take him off of the drug, she insisted this was the right tool for the job. I thought she was the wrong tool for the job, but, the apathy began to kick in, and Paul showed no real interest in getting a new doctor.
Once he was off Keppra, the mood swings continued and got less and less severe, but still exist to this day. He did not have these kind of severe mood swings to my knowledge before this drug was introduced, but his parents tell me at one point he was in psych ER, but for another much worse issue where he was hitting people. He never hit anyone here... his brother, sure, but no one here, and my wall... yes, the wall...
So over this time he's become more and more apathetic in regard to his condition and his life. The CPS case didn't really change that, but it did give me time away, and time for absence to make my heart grow fonder... or fungus... who knows.
At first, our days apart were spent on Yahoo talking to one another, then as time went on, he was on less and less... and I'd check the hockey forums and his activity on those forums became higher and higher. To Paul's credit, he was severely fucked up at this point, and could hardly remember his name half of the time. But he stopped logging into yahoo altogether, and there were entire weeks where I did not hear anything out of him because of our opposing schedules.
Then came the OMGWTF Surprise pregnancy....
Yeah.
We had sex maybe 2 or 3 times during this period, and somehow my stupid ass body decides, woo, this is a great time to get my dumb ass pregnant. Fuck you, uterus, fuck you hard.
Paul and I are always very careful about sex, this is why up until that point we only had 2 kids, if we weren't we'd probably be in double digits by now.
Paul was able to be present for the birth, but he had to call his manager, who nearly had an aneurysm when Paul called off. I was about ready to walk my crowning ass on over there and kick someone. HARD, in the nuts, with a dull chainsaw. This was right after my midwives had managed to calm me down enough to start concentrating on labor, they were mad this guy had nearly set us back another half an hour...
They were tired, had been here all night...
The first few weeks of caring for a newborn without a Daddy in the house were... hard. excruciatingly hard. When Daddy could not be reached on Yahoo at all anymore... that became a real issue. So, I tried to get him on diablo 2... which we both still had, but nada. We met up on there once.
Then finally, Daddy was allowed to come home for real, 2 years after the whole ugly business started.
And things were okish for a while. We didn't kill each other.
Then Paul lost his job, and he was unable to function.... and I gave him time, and more time... and the house got dirtier. Right now, my house looks like a tornado came through it. The dishes are done, but only after I went into a Hulk induced dish doing session, which I left in the middle of, Paul picked up where I left off but...
I'm calm. But lost... I've lost my best friend... to depression? To keppra? Seizures?
I don't know, but he's not here anymore... and I just don't know if I can handle the way things are.
I do everything, and the things I don't do, detailed instructions must be left. Although his wit is here, his intelligence is lacking, the banter we once enjoyed is gone.
Maybe it is I who has changed? Maybe I just grew up...
Two songs that I've had on repeat all day:
Nobody loves you like me, Lyrics, Jonathan Coulton
Nobody loves you like me, video
Still fighting it, Ben Folds lyric video
All I know is one minute, it was working fine, screen on, no rainbow streaks, next, rainbow streaks and making like the video card was about to die. So, I pounded on the top of the machine, and voila, magic, working computer again. Having said that, occasionally the video card of doom and destruction comes back to misbehave and otherwise cause trouble.
My loyal readers all know that I am contemplating a divorce, and rather you are pro or con, I just need to write this out and allow myself time to process what I'm thinking about. This will be awkward, because my husband is one of the 2 folks who subscribe to my blog.
Now does he actually read it, no, but he does subscribe... and I guess that's where the problems begin.
Paul and I have a relationship based on friendship. That friendship is based on a couple of college pals who decided to hook up sometime after my separation from my ex, basically on a dare. I say dare because people started spreading rumors well before Paul and I started sleeping together that we WERE sleeping together. Now... if you figure everyone is already talking about it, you don't very well have and excuse to not follow through with it. In my mind, I was going to lose custody of my child due to this rumor any how, I figured, meh.
In the time that Paul and I started living together, we got quite fond of one another. We bought rats, settled down and occasionally took road trips to visit other friends in far off cities.
And he watched me go crazy for a bit after my ex and I finally divorced, after the abuse and didn't really bat an eyelash about any of it.
Every night, we'd sit down at about 9, I'd write my novel, and he'd sit and read as I wrote it.
and we'd have tea. About midnight we'd roll off to bed in our separate rooms, or we would go over to White castle and grab some sliders before playing some video games. We'd roll out of bed about 230p and head to our job at the student newspaper. Sometimes we'd have to be up earlier to conduct interviews, or other things you do to prepare articles, but it wasn't terribly common.
I had decided to attempt to transfer to Northwestern. But I just chickened out.
Then things got serious, but things were still good. I have happy memories of waking up each day and having a new adventure with my best pal.
When he proposed to me, I wasn't shocked. I was happy, I said yes.
We started to plan our wedding, then lo and behold I ended up pregnant. Now, we had been trying to conceive, but figured we had a poor shot at it due to the meds Paul was on.
we kind of had a a shot gun wedding of sorts a few weeks before Ev was born, just to insure he could be covered by the insurance.
And things were still good, for a while.
Round about 07 is when things started to turn south.
I hit a bout of depression head on while pregnant with Dan. Not getting out of bed for days at a time, having a homeless person shacked up in one of our rooms... Sciatica so bad that I could not walk, not coping with anything. Everyone kept saying "that baby is coming early." but just like Dan, not wanting to break the rules or upset anyone, he was right on time. I was devastated Dan missed Christmas in 06, I remember crying a lot about it. Meanwhile Paul was working overtime and stressed, and simply could not be made available. He started getting migraines which we later found out were toothaches, we spent much time in the ER. But, no seizures.
We managed to get the homeless lady to move, we hoped it was a nice place for her, but still... you know, family always comes first in these matters.
I had to beg Paul to come home the day of labor. One of his co-workers, (and a friend of our family) said he practically had to drag him out of the store.
He got home, and he and I waited... and finally at about 3 in the morning on 1/6/07, there was Dan. The midwife had a migraine that night, and Dan was a very modest boy, so for the first several minutes of his life, he was Kathleen. Poor guy...
Paul stayed home from work the entire week to take care of the new member of the family; and promptly spend 90% of his time on hockey forums, even during midwife visits. The midwives tried to engage him in conversation, but to no avail, he only wanted to type and retype the stats which were so familiar from his childhood. At first, I was somewhat patient, I didn't like it, but I dealt with it.
Then, more and more of his time was spent there. He and I had a tradition then of sitting and playing world of warcraft together. That was the only thing I could get him to quit the forums for. And it was fun, and things were still somewhat ok, although I was admittedly annoyed.
Then, we moved from one place to another. This was mid 07. Paul at the same time moved to a new position at a different store. I begged and pleaded with him not to take the position, but as his friends at work told me, he was forced into the position.
Then came the seizures. 2 in 2 weeks, unheard of for the past several years of Paul's life. We took him to the ER, they put him on a drug, Keppra which caused him to be moodier than a 12 year old in puberty.
One minute, fine, next, psychotic rage. Also, it was making his seizures worse.
And I begged his doc to take him off of the drug, she insisted this was the right tool for the job. I thought she was the wrong tool for the job, but, the apathy began to kick in, and Paul showed no real interest in getting a new doctor.
Once he was off Keppra, the mood swings continued and got less and less severe, but still exist to this day. He did not have these kind of severe mood swings to my knowledge before this drug was introduced, but his parents tell me at one point he was in psych ER, but for another much worse issue where he was hitting people. He never hit anyone here... his brother, sure, but no one here, and my wall... yes, the wall...
So over this time he's become more and more apathetic in regard to his condition and his life. The CPS case didn't really change that, but it did give me time away, and time for absence to make my heart grow fonder... or fungus... who knows.
At first, our days apart were spent on Yahoo talking to one another, then as time went on, he was on less and less... and I'd check the hockey forums and his activity on those forums became higher and higher. To Paul's credit, he was severely fucked up at this point, and could hardly remember his name half of the time. But he stopped logging into yahoo altogether, and there were entire weeks where I did not hear anything out of him because of our opposing schedules.
Then came the OMGWTF Surprise pregnancy....
Yeah.
We had sex maybe 2 or 3 times during this period, and somehow my stupid ass body decides, woo, this is a great time to get my dumb ass pregnant. Fuck you, uterus, fuck you hard.
Paul and I are always very careful about sex, this is why up until that point we only had 2 kids, if we weren't we'd probably be in double digits by now.
Paul was able to be present for the birth, but he had to call his manager, who nearly had an aneurysm when Paul called off. I was about ready to walk my crowning ass on over there and kick someone. HARD, in the nuts, with a dull chainsaw. This was right after my midwives had managed to calm me down enough to start concentrating on labor, they were mad this guy had nearly set us back another half an hour...
They were tired, had been here all night...
The first few weeks of caring for a newborn without a Daddy in the house were... hard. excruciatingly hard. When Daddy could not be reached on Yahoo at all anymore... that became a real issue. So, I tried to get him on diablo 2... which we both still had, but nada. We met up on there once.
Then finally, Daddy was allowed to come home for real, 2 years after the whole ugly business started.
And things were okish for a while. We didn't kill each other.
Then Paul lost his job, and he was unable to function.... and I gave him time, and more time... and the house got dirtier. Right now, my house looks like a tornado came through it. The dishes are done, but only after I went into a Hulk induced dish doing session, which I left in the middle of, Paul picked up where I left off but...
I'm calm. But lost... I've lost my best friend... to depression? To keppra? Seizures?
I don't know, but he's not here anymore... and I just don't know if I can handle the way things are.
I do everything, and the things I don't do, detailed instructions must be left. Although his wit is here, his intelligence is lacking, the banter we once enjoyed is gone.
Maybe it is I who has changed? Maybe I just grew up...
Two songs that I've had on repeat all day:
Nobody loves you like me, Lyrics, Jonathan Coulton
Nobody loves you like me, video
Still fighting it, Ben Folds lyric video
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