Nov 20 2011

Made It Through The Weekend

I got through the weekend without anything disastrous happening. I didn’t drink (much) and I didn’t watch The Bourne Identity or The Wrestler. Thursday night I went to my writing class reunion (although at the last minute I thought seriously about not going because I didn’t like my story). The teacher asked me to read first, which was good, I like to get it over with. People said they liked the story, which was about having cancer, and there was a good discussion about it afterwards. The teacher said this would be very helpful to other people who might be in the same medical situation as I was, as well as to family and friends who don’t know what to do. She told me to send it into the health sections of newspapers.

Yesterday I spend the day with my friend’s husband B. Before that I met my running group and ran faster and farther than I have since my surgery! Then I picked up B and we went to a Finnish Festival in a local church, which was so crowded, I didn’t like it much. We left there and went to a holiday craft show about 45 minutes away, which was held in a HUGE high school ( just looked it up and they have 2100 students, about the same as my kids’ high school. It seemed so big.) This show was spread out all over the place. I bought some jalapeno peanuts and a bottle of olive oil.

It was fun doing something with someone on the weekend. My husband doesn’t do anything with me on the weekends.

Today I went out for a one hour power walk on the trail, then made blueberry pancakes. I did laundry and a bit of organizational stuff, then some errands and grocery shopping. My friend, her husband and I were thinking of going to a movie, but I don’t think that is going to happen.

So it was good. Now if I can get through Thanksgiving all will be well.

I’m already getting worried about my therapy session after Thanksgiving. Last year that was one of the worst sessions we have had, it was a total disaster. I don’t want a replay of that.

Jan 25 2011

Writing Class Recap 1/24/11

Last night’s writing class reunion was really wonderful. We met in a lovely home belonging to one of the women who was in a class previous to my class. She had a really cool fireplace, it was gas, but it looked like dirt on fire. There were seventeen people there, plus the teacher, which is quite a crowd considering everyone reads a story. There wasn’t much time for feedback unfortunately, the question and answer period after each story is really nice normally, I feel we can really get to know each other that way. On the other hand, it is very encouraging that so many people come out to these meetings; it’s like having a bunch of people with whom to have a common bond.

I read my story about my grandmother, and passed around a collage of photos I had made of her. Everyone seemed to like the story, the teacher commented on my use of dialogue. I have never really written dialogue before and it is a little tricky. I didn’t know whether or not to use “She said”….”She replied” etc, so I didn’t. While reading the story I was able to use my tone of voice and timing to convey who was talking, but I don’t know if it would work if someone is reading it.

There is an 83 year old woman in the group. She took a bad fall a couple of months ago and ended up in rehab. She wrote a story about it, and it was quite amazing. I would never want to go through what she went through, but she came out the other end and is able to still attend writing class reunions. Some other people wrote about friends and family members who are ill, or who have died after long illnesses. These circumstances seem like ones that NEED to be written about. I admire anyone who can read their stories without crying, like I do. I made it through my whole story without crying, until the last sentence. I couldn’t read it, so I just pretended it wasn’t there.

I did cry during some of the other stories. Sigh. Just too emotional I guess.

One of the women in the class wrote about her career as a flight attendant. The first time I met her she read a story about her experience volunteering in Burma. She is going to Cambodia in the middle of February for three months. Today I emailed her to find out more about her volunteer work overseas and she invited me out to lunch with her this weekend to learn more about the organization for whom she works. This is an NGO and the commitment is no less than three months. She said she will bring photos too and explain the whole process to me. I am actually looking forward to it.

Jan 23 2011

Weekend Update

Hi! I’m still here. Life has been progressing. Here is what is going on:

1. My daughter IM’d me Friday and said she dropped out of sorority rush. She did not get invited back to either of the two sororities that she wanted, but she did get an invitation back to a house that she was not interested in joining. So she dropped out. She said that many of her friends also did not get invited back to their first or second choices, so they also dropped out. There were more girls than usual rushing this year. 600 girls went through rush, and 450 got bids. This year’s freshman class is very girl heavy. Most universities in the US are girl heavy, but this year’s class at her school is even more girl heavy than average. She seemed sad, although that could be my perception. It is hard to judge emotion through aol instant messenger.

2. I spent the day yesterday and today going through old photos and scanning them, uploading them to flickr and facebook. What started this was an email from my writing class teacher – tomorrow is our meeting and one of the topics is to write about a person in our life. This is good because I had already written a story about my grandmother (I posted it here a while ago). The teacher mentioned that if we do tackle this subject that we bring in photos of the person we are writing about, so I have been weeding through many many albums and boxes of photos that I have in my house. I ended up not only scanning photos of grandma, but other relatives and lots of pics of my children. This led to lots of conversation on facebook with relatives and friends. Kind of nice. My daughter, who is not my friend on facebook, saw the pics through my son’s facebook, with whom I am a friend on facebook. She requested that I open my photos to “friends of friends” so that she could see all of the photos and tag herself.

3. This led to me looking at her photos, which she has open to “friends of friends” and I noticed lots of pics of her and her friends at school, including one with a boy. They are sitting on someone’s bed and he has his arm around her. Hmmmm….. She has many photos of herself with lots of girls, and few boys. I’m glad that she has a strong social network, especially considering the fact that she did not get into the sororities that she wanted.

4. One thing particularly bothering me about the sorority situation is that one of the sororities that she wanted is a Jewish sorority – an official Jewish sorority. The fact that they deny entry to girls who are not pretty enough, or not popular enough, is bothering me. It is one thing for a purely social sorority to do this, but an official religious sorority excluding people because of their lack of random qualifications, is troubling to me. Maybe it is sour grapes, I do not know.

5. Therapy is coming up in two days. There may be snow, so perhaps I won’t be able to get there. I have been thinking about therapy this weekend, how a few weeks ago I showed J my slideshow and told him my feelings about how my life has changed since my children have grown. I felt very connected to him that day; he seemed to really understand what I was saying. But the next two sessions didn’t feel as connected. The first session after the connected one was a “problem solving” session – where J told me his ideas about what I can do with my life (volunteer until I become a grandmother). Last week’s session was about my view about aging, and I felt he was somewhat judgmental and that he didn’t understand me at all. This is sometimes a pattern with us – feeling that connection one week, and then a total disconnect for a few weeks afterwards. Is this me or him? Is he intimidated by the connection, and sabotages it in order to keep his distance? Or am I intimidated by it, and I sabotage it in order to keep my distance? Of course, I think it is him. But I am at the point in therapy where I know that this could totally be me and not him. I am, unfortunately, not at the point where I can tell the difference. I had told J last week that I was going to send him some stories I had written about growing up with illness in my family, and about my nephew’s illness, so that I could explain my feelings about sickness and aging. But I didn’t send him those stories. Why? I am afraid of what might happen if I send them and he still doesn’t understand. If I don’t send them, I have a good excuse for his not understanding my issues. But if I send them and he still doesn’t understand I will have sadness and frustration and emotional pain. So I will revert to my default mode – which is denial. I think this might be something good to talk about in therapy, but on the other hand I am afraid J will not want to talk about this. That he wants to talk about my “real” issues and my weekly experiences, not about my feelings about therapy and about him. Sigh. I want to go back to two weeks ago when I felt understood and even relief about having shared a painful part of my life with a positive result.

6. Tomorrow is writing class reunion. I am looking forward to it. I will share the story of my grandmother and pass around some photos of her. I found a photo of her with me as a baby, and I have selected a couple of her as I remember her – in her 80’s and 90’s. My mother’s cousin K, whose father was a brother to my mother’s father, and I had an email exchange today after I posted pics of her on facebook. He related some stories and feelings that he had about my grandfather, who died when I was 6 months old, so I don’t remember him at all. K was 10 years old when my grandfather died and he loved my grandfather. He said he was his favorite uncle, and his father’s favorite brother. I sent him the story I wrote about my grandmother and he wrote back right away saying he read it and how much he loved the story – that the love I had for my grandmother came through in every word. K lives in Canada, and I haven’t seen him in years and years. I would love to go visit him, of all of our family members I think he and I have the most in common. I should plan a trip to see him.

Jan 17 2011

Indecision

I can’t remember ever having been as indecisive as I have been lately. I have always prided myself on my ability to make decisions – good , quick decisions.

But there are two things in my life right now that I can’t decide on at all. The first is the writing class. I can’t decide whether or not to take it. I told myself that if there were still spaces available a week before it starts that I would sign up. That date came and went and I did nothing. I checked today and it seems they are still accepting students, the class starts tomorrow night. I just can’t decide.

The second thing has to do with the writing class as well. I want to send out an email to everyone in my writing class asking if anyone wants to get together for coffee and chatting. Not to write, because that is what the monthly meetings are for, but just for the sake of getting together. One thing holding me back is the fact that I was the “runaway” student who made a big deal out of dropping out of the class and then came back – so melodramatic. The other thing is that there was a woman in our class who was different from everyone else. The teacher didn’t like her and didn’t like her being in the class. She frequently had to ask her to stop talking. When I got my first invitation to the writing class reunion the teacher said that she didn’t invite everyone. I was hesitant to talk about the reunion with anyone from my class for fear that they weren’t included. Finally I emailed the teacher and asked her who was and wasn’t invited. She said that everyone was invited except Jane. She felt that Jane changed the dynamics of the class, and not for the better.

I have mixed feelings about Jane. I liked her, I think she had important things to say and good insights. But she was very unfocused, her stories were hard to follow and she frequently interjected comments into them while she was reading. She talked quite a lot and didn’t realize that she was preventing others from talking. But I liked her, although I can understand the teacher not wanting to include her.

If I email my old classmates to see if they want to get together I don’t know whether to include Jane. I don’t know if the others know that she is excluded from the reunions. It seems like a messy situation, and I don’t like messy. So I have been avoiding emailing. What I might do is email just the people from my class that I felt closest to, thereby avoiding the problem of excluding one person. I don’t know. So now more and more time is going by and I am doing nothing. It’s very frustrating.

Jan 12 2011

Choosing A New Name

I think there is nothing more boring than listening to someone else’s dreams. I don’t know if anyone else feels this way. So I will make this brief.

I have very weird dreams when I am on wellbutrin. Vivid, lengthy, bizarre, but sometimes they make sense if I think hard enough. I don’t usually try too hard to figure them out.

A couple of weeks ago I dreamed that I was pregnant and had a baby. I have had dreams of this sort over the years. It is not surprising that I would have this dream now, considering what has been on my mind lately.

Two nights ago I dreamed that I had to choose a new name for myself. I was at a writing class reunion, it was outside in a big field, and there were about fifty people there (usually there are ten to fifteen). There were so many people that the teacher had to divide the class in two. I had to wait outside until it was my group’s turn. And while out there I had to choose a new name for myself.

I was envious of others who were choosing interesting names, names that had ironic twists to them, like Ima Soybean Farmer. I couldn’t think of anything so interesting. What I ended up choosing was Jenna Parker Delacroix.

I woke up in the morning and though “What the hell?” I didn’t think too much about what choosing a new name meant, I was just trying to figure out where that name came from. I still don’t know.

But later it occurred to me that choosing a new name is perhaps a metaphor for choosing a new life? A new role in life? Is my unconscious that clever?

In case you were wondering, Harriet M. Welch is not my real name. It is the name of my favorite childhood character – Harriet the Spy who I loved beginning at age 10 in fourth grade. I feel a bond with Harriet.

But perhaps I am really going to be Jenna Parker Delacroix at some point. I have to find out more about her and see if it fits. I wonder what she is like, what her interests are, what she is passionate about. She has a hell of a more interesting name than mine.

Dec 13 2010

A New Week

My daughter came home yesterday. I made us a nice “Thanksgiving” dinner and everyone liked it and we sat at the table and ate together and had fun. Then they all cleaned up because I had to go do an errand for my boss.

I slept pretty well last night – just woke up once and was able to go right back to sleep. So I feel good this morning. Tonight is another writing class reunion, and I am going to read my flying story. It was originally written for the topic “A turning point” but tonight’s topic is loves and hates, so I kind of revised it into a story about how I hate my phobias. I’m feeling the start of the anxiety that I felt before the last writing class reunion. I don’t know who will be there, I hate not knowing. I don’t know if anyone from my class with be there, I don’t even know who is invited.

I drank too much before and during the last writing class reunion, so I am going to be trying to be very mindful of what and how much I am drinking and eating tonight. I only need one glass of wine to feel more relaxed, three is a bit much.

Nov 21 2010

Writing Class Reunion

I haven’t been feeling well. Wednesday I had a migraine all day, and for the past few days I’ve been waking up with a sore throat. This morning my stomach was bothering me. I’ve been tired too. I’ve been taking Cold-eze and today I got some vitamin c and Nyquil. I haven’t come down with anything, but it’s festering.

So Wednesday night was the writing class reunion. There were two other people there from my class, and the rest were people from previous classes. The average age was probably 70. To my left was a woman who is 84. She recently took a bad fall and was in ICU and rehab and a nursing home for a few weeks, but now is back at home. Very nice, very frail. Her story was handwritten and she doesn’t have an email address. She wrote about her parent’s reaction to her sudden wedding (which took place around 1945). She later told me that her husband died in 1979, he was about 50 years old. She has seven children. I drove her home (no one else volunteered, even though most everyone there knew her). I’m not too keen on old people, I’m a children person myself. I think most people, if they had to pick the young ones or the old ones, would choose one over the other. My sister loves old people, I love young people. This woman was making me a little nervous getting into and out of my car, but she was pretty good at it. She learned the techniques in occupational therapy.

Next was a woman a little older than me who wrote about a humanitarian trip she took to Burma, or Bangladesh, or someplace like that. But the story wasn’t really about her trip (which I wanted to hear more about) it was about how she accidently sent an email to a whole group of her contacts instead of just one person.

Beside her was a woman about my mother’s age, married to the man sitting to my right. This was the second marriage for both of them. She wrote about the camping trips she took with her kids in the 1970’s.

On the couch were the two people from my class. One wrote about her mother, who if she was alive today would be in her late 90’s. She was ahead of her time, she lived in Denmark and went to college to become a chemical engineer. It was a fascinating story, about how she juggled her roles as a professional with her role as a traditional mother. The other woman from my class, who is married to a minister and who spent time in Africa doing missionary work with her husband and children, wrote about trying to find her purpose now that her children are a little bit older and she has more freedom. I related to her story quite a bit.

Then there was Kyle. As soon as he walked in I was intrigued by him. He has white hair, but it is long and shaggy. A pierced ear with a dangly turquoise earring. His style of dress reminded me of a writer like Kurt Vonnegut or John Irving (not that I really know how they dress, but I imagine them dressing like this). He was older than he looks, he said early 70’s. He looked so progressive, but then he said he is an Episcopalian minister. Episcopalians mean business, don’t they? When he arrived people were asking about his friend. His friend, a pediatrician, was riding his bike and got hit by a truck. He is now in the shock trauma unit at the hospital. Kyle said he is doing well because he can breathe and talk. I said, “That is good?” Apparently that is better than he was a few weeks ago, when he couldn’t breathe or talk. He has substantial injuries.

Kyle wrote a story that I thought would be about first love. He was 16 in the story and taking a girl out. They were driving and he looked away from the wheel to kiss the girl. He got into an accident which left another man paralyzed from the waist down permanently. It was a powerful story.

Next was a woman who wrote about trying to get something fixed, I can’t even remember what it was, and the frustration she had talking to the “robot” at the customer service department. Then the man married to the camping woman, who wrote about how during his first marriage to an Irish woman (he is Jewish) he would bring in green bagels to work every St. Patrick’s Day.

I read my story about running in the Army 10 Miler. I thought it went well. After each person reads, we discuss their story a bit. I talked about the race a little more in the discussion and how patriotic it was. Mr. Green Bagels said, “I didn’t get that impression from your story. You didn’t write about that at all.” Yes, Mr. Green Bagels, you are correct, I did not write about that. The story was actually about my struggle with the race and myself, I just happened to elaborate a bit more on the race in the discussion. Other people talked about people they knew, relatives, children, friends, who have run marathons, and the intensity they have experienced. Kyle commented that he liked my coach’s advice, “Run the mile you’re in.” He agreed with me that is good advice for life.

I was anxious before class, so I stopped at a restaurant at the mall and had two glasses of wine. Then there was wine at class – since it was in the teacher’s apartment rather than the writing center wine is allowed, which was fine with me. I don’t think I realized how much I drank though. I didn’t feel too well Thursday morning. I woke up craving soda. That hasn’t happened in a long time, since New Year’s Day I think. I had a whole can of Dr. Pepper.

I had sent my flying story to my flying therapist and she emailed me yesterday telling me that she loved the story and wants to put it on her website. Wow! She says she also thinks it will be helpful for her new clients to read it. That made me feel good. She was taking a trial flight with two clients yesterday and was anxious to see how security was since I had told her about the bodyscanners and pat downs. My daughter flew home Friday night and at her concourse there were just the regular metal detectors and no pat downs that she saw. That was a relief! She goes back in a week, and I know there are bodyscanners at our airport, because I had to go through one in August. I’m trying not to dwell on that right now though. It’s going to be such a busy travel day next Sunday that I’m sure the security people will have so much to do, there won’t be time to send too many people through the bodyscanners. Metal detectors are much quicker.

Nov 14 2010

An Unexpected Email

Last night I got an email from the woman who taught my writing class. She said she was having a class reunion at her apartment on Wednesday night, but since her apartment isn’t very large she can’t invite everyone, and the first x number of people to respond can come. After that she will send out another email saying there is no more room. I don’t know who else she sent this to because the email addresses are hidden. But in her words, “I am not inviting everyone who has taken the class — only those who already regularly attend the reunion group and a few members of the last class. I really don’t have room for everyone, as those who have been here know. This is for people who really want to keep writing about their life.”

I’m so surprised that she included me, and I am trying to figure out who she didn’t include from my class. She said she only invited a few members from the last class (which was my class). There were about ten of us in the class, and since I “dropped out” for two out of the six classes I would think she wouldn’t consider me a serious contender. I have no idea why I am on her list!

I thought I’d better take advantage of this, I don’t know why, but my intuition says I should go. So I RSVP’d quickly, offering to bring food (it’s easy to make friends when you bring food), and she said she would gladly accept food. There is also a writing assignment, which I wasn’t expecting, duh, for some reason I thought this was just a social event. She suggested these topics:

Breaking free (interpreted however you want)
A lesson learned
A person important in my life (conveying what they were like, focusing on one or two “telling details” and a story or two)
Gratitude. Thanks. Something appropriate for Thanksgiving.

Since I don’t have much time I am going to work on the race story I wrote here. It can loosely be defined as fitting into one or more of those themes, but she also said we can feel free to write about whatever we choose. I can’t do anything emotional, can’t go there again! I have to be a big girl from now on.

I have no idea what to expect. And being in her apartment, rather than in the writing center, can be interesting as well. Warmer? More vulnerable? Cozier? And with new people, and not all of the regulars. I wish I knew who she invited so that I can talk to them in advance of the reunion. I don’t know. It is this Wednesday – I’ll write about it and let you know how it goes.

Oct 23 2010

Sensing vs Intuition

I’m thinking about these personality preferences of sensing and intuition. I so often feel like J doesn’t get me. I can’t say I don’t feel understood by him, just that it takes longer and with more explanation from me, and frequently with misunderstandings along the way. I can’t just say something and a light bulb goes off in his head. That never happens. And sometimes I think he understands, but then later on he’ll say something and I realize he never understood at all. So then I have to explain and then he’ll get it. He doesn’t read between the lines, he doesn’t seem to pick up on the unsaid things, and he focuses so much on details that he misses the big picture. He is very much in the here and now, very concrete, very literal. So when I say “I wanted to cancel my appointment today because I didn’t want you to see me” he’ll reply, “I can turn around.” It makes so much sense that he would respond that way when you think about his preference for sensing rather than intuition. And it makes total sense that I would want him to say “Why don’t you want me to see you?” when you take into account my preference for intuition. If I was person who could speak up and be in the here and now, instead of having to process things hours and days later, I think we could work out misunderstandings more quickly. But I’m not.

A couple of things that show his lack of understanding lately have to do with the writing class. He thought I dropped out of the class because I was worried that my classmates would find me weird and crazy. I had never said that, I had told him that the class was too emotional for me, and I don’t like to show emotion and we even talked about how growing up I was taught not to show emotion. I don’t really know what went wrong there, that he didn’t understand why I dropped out of the class.

And then when I gave him my stories to read he didn’t understand why I found them emotional. He said they were historic and factual and where did I think they veered into emotional. So I went back and read some of them and found the sections that made me cry when I read them. But maybe they aren’t emotional? Here are some of those sections:

And then there was healthy, mature-for-my-age, me. Apparently I was toilet trained in five minutes, no one’s house ever had to be child proofed for me, and I could sit at the Howard Johnson’s restaurant with the grownups and be perfectly behaved. I tried not to bother my parents because they had so much to deal with already, between my father and my sister. No one ever told me to leave them alone, go take care of myself, or anything of that sort. I just took it upon myself to not be a burden. I kept everything inside, all of my worries, my accomplishments, my feelings. I somehow felt I would bother my parents if I had anything to say.

But ultimately he did die. He went into a coma. I drove to New Jersey with the kids, and my sister was there with her son. Her son was 1 year old, my children were 5 and 7. We were all with my dad in his room. And then we got hungry. I volunteered to go across the street to the grocery store to get some food for everyone, because that is what I did. I stepped up to the plate and took care of things. But when I got back my dad was dead. He just stopped breathing. He didn’t look any different when he was dead than when he was alive. It’s just that no breath was coming in and out. After 8 years of illness, it was finally over. And I was buying turkey and rye bread.

Harriet spent her days trying to prove to herself that she was good enough and her nights fantasizing about her death. She ran, expressed her ideas through creative activities, and watched Jason Bourne movies. She was always seeking something elusive and never quite within reach, but she was continually unable to figure out what that elusive thing was or where to go to find it.

He is right – there is no emotion in those words. There are no “feeling” words, it is written like a newspaper article. I never say “I was sad that my father died” or anything along those lines.

But sometimes when I read a newspaper article I get teary eyed, or even cry outright. If I read an article about a child who dies, or a mother who has gone missing, it stirs emotion in me despite the journalistic quality of the writing. Does writing have to be emotional to stir emotion?

My story about my foster child had people in the class crying, and it is written in the same style. I even tried to keep my writing understated in that story to avoid overdramatizing traumatic events. How about this paragraph, there is no emotion in here, but people were crying:

Jack lived with his newly adopted mother for three years. Again, something went terribly wrong. Jack and his adopted brother would show up at school with bruises and cuts on their bodies. Neither boy told anyone what was going on, but ultimately Jack broke down and revealed to his third grade teacher the atrocities that were occurring at home. The bruises on his body were from the electrical cords that she would lash him with. The cuts on his brother’s head were from the hair clippers that his mother would use to cut his hair – so roughly and close cut that she would cut through the skin. Jack told his teacher that when his brother misbehaved he would have to stand facing the corner for hours.

Maybe my writing isn’t emotional, and I am blowing things way out of proportion. I know the stories were emotional for me to read, but I can’t explain why. Maybe because I know the emotion that I was feeling at the time the events happened? But perhaps I haven’t conveyed those feelings in my writing, so there is a disconnect between the words and my display of emotion. So now I am doubting my writing ability as well as my level of mental functioning. J doesn’t think the stories are emotional, another piece of evidence that we see things differently I suppose.

Oct 21 2010

Writing Class and My Foster Child

Writing class was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Last night was the last session. I wrote about my foster child, which is why I can’t post my story on my blog, it is confidential. For some reason I read my story first, I think the teacher thinks it will reduce my anxiety if I get it over with. My story was technically longer than I it was supposed to be, we have a 5 minute limit. But they said it was ok. I cried while I was reading it, which surprised me, I didn’t think I would get emotional. But I continued on…until the last paragraph. I couldn’t finish, so I gave it to the woman next to me to read.

Other people were crying while I read the story. And we had quite a long discussion afterwards, which doesn’t usually happen because we are on a tight time schedule so that everyone has time to read. They wanted to know more about my foster child and the CASA program, and my teacher said that my story could probably be published in the Sunday magazine section of our newspaper – and this is a major newspaper, it’s circulation is 800,000 on Sundays according to Wikipedia. Unfortunately I can’t publish anything about my foster child.

One woman in the class, who is a human rights activist, told me of a phenomenon whereby people working with trauma survivors take on some of the trauma themselves. She told me this is particularly true of sensitive people. Another person told me that she is surprised I would take on this role because I am so sensitive. I think she said I have a tender heart. That’s a nice phrase. I’m not sure about the trauma passing along to another person, not sure if that is possible, but it is interesting.

I told the class that I am especially emotional about my foster child right now because of the fact that I am stepping down as his advocate. I told them that he said that he wants to consider me a lifelong friend and what he said in a text to me the other day when I asked him if he thinks he still needs an advocate:

It ok if i dnt have 1 u did all i wanted be a blessing to some1 else so u can change thier life like u did minr

I’ve actually been wanting to get another tattoo, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I was waiting to see if something would come to me. Now I know, I think I would like those words on my tattoo “be a blessing to some1 else so u can change thier life like u did minr”. Just like that. He certainly changed my life.

At the end of the class we exchanged hugs and said goodbyes. I got emotional again, particularly with two of the women who I feel a kinship with, and the 81 year old guy with the dazzling blue eyes. One of the women, the one who encouraged me to come back to the class by telling me she was writing less emotional pieces to share with the class, told me that she has never met anyone like me. She meant it in a good way. That was really nice of her to say. She is 15 years younger than me, but I feel like she could be my friend. I hope we all keep in touch or have meet ups.

Meanwhile, all of this emotion is taking its toll on me. Yesterday I had an attack of low blood sugar at the grocery store, which was combined with a bit of a panic attack. I bought a sweetened iced tea and sat on a bench outside the store. I wasn’t sure how I would get back to work, it’s only a half mile walk, but I was feeling so faint and shaky. I don’t know, I guess it passed and I made it back. Shivering and sweating and shaking.

My eyes are so puffy and red it looks like I’ve been in a fight. I’m either crying or on the verge of tears at every moment. I’m reading articles about suicide. Don’t worry, I’m not going to do it. I’m a planner, not impulsive. I just like to have a plan.

I am angry at myself for letting J’s words get to me so badly. I thought I was doing pretty well for the last month and a half, I was even looking at my calendar trying to figure out when my next fall down the rabbit hole would be, since they occur about every three months. But that god damn stupid running conversation sent me into a spiral. And our session this week didn’t really help me. He apologized and said he might have been a jerk, but I keep thinking if I was a better person, or if he cared about me, he wouldn’t have been a jerk. That I somehow caused all of this and it’s my fault that I am now suffering because of it.

I just don’t know what to do to feel better.