but I can see glimpses of light shining through. 


I would love to report I am a ok, but it is more of a roller coaster ride, one minute, doing the things, doing great, half way feel good, the next the coaster slams down into a valley. Right now the valley dips are much slighter than last week. That is a good thing, the contemplation of the imminent doom of Re isn't so intense. Some thoughts of disappearing or hiding out but none quite as permanent as last week's mental death threats.


My biggest thing right this very minute, the insane exhaustion and the inability to sleep!!! It is awful. I finally fell asleep good about 3 am Saturday night, for some unknown reason the pups decided that my bed was the WWE ring before 6 yesterday morning. Last night I just KNEW I had it in the bag! A great night sleep coming right up! I was tired. Little sleep all weekend, worked multiple shifts at the restaurant, I planted floors and fixed the porch up... I had done lots of the things. And.... wonk wonk waaaaaa. Awful night of sleep! Toss and turned with a million things running through my mind, drift off, wake up in a panic and burning up, think some more, calm heart down.. drift off, wake up.. rinse repeat. This pattern makes for a very non functional morning, and possibly a danger to society, at the very least it leaves me drained of energy and just unable to people in any way that should be accepted.


Since this "episode" began I have been just drained. Emotionally, Mentally and Physically.. I try to push through each of these every day, even though I know that this is just no way at all to live. Not happily anyway. I have tried to make some choices for myself to at the very least keep me from hitting the Valley of Death again. I have forced myself out in public, I have worked every chance I had, I have forgone the 430 am wake ups in exchange for the few uninterrupted hours of sleep I do get which seem to be between 3 and 6, I have spent time with family and friends, I have created a beautiful porch sitting area complete with colorful plants, all the while fighting this inner demon. Sometimes I think that If I don't speak out that even those closest to me wouldn't know how bad the inner turmoil is, but if you look closely I think you would probably find that my laugh doesn't quite come from happiness, my smile doesn't reach my eyes, my hugs aren't touching your soul, my presence lingers of darkness instead of light. I don't want it to be this way. In fact, I don't want to feel happiness, I want to feel joy. I don't want to feel a hug, I want to feel love. I don't want to feel contentment, I want to feel passion. I don't want to feel living, I want to feel purpose. Until I find the balance and the way off of this insane amusement park ride all I can do is keep doing the things while faking the funk, and that includes some not so lovely choices, like limiting the 430 am wake ups from 5 days a week to what I can physically handle, to forcing myself in to places with people I know love me even though my brain is trying to tell me they are better off if I don't show, it is doing the things that walk a fine line between doing the things to keep going and doing the things to wrap up and the determination to make it.


I have had numerous people tell me they hate to hear me speak of my own death. My self inflicted death I should say. To me it comes as natural as telling you about the color of shirt I am going to wear tomorrow.  I can actual laugh about it, it doesn't make it funny but it does make it normal. It desensitizes the topic by speaking so outwardly about how I feel. And you know what ... it is ok for me to talk about it. Chances are I SHOULD talk about it because if I don't you have no idea how much darkness has creeped in, and if you don't know who would throw me a life line. A literal life line. I do find it quite frustrating that all over the world wide webs, news programs, and in personal debates and communication you could find the topic of abortion over the last week so so. There are so many on different sides of the fence, and there are actually varying ranges of that fence, we can as a society freely and openly discuss a topic as "taboo" as abortion but heaven forbid (see what I did there) I say out loud. "I want to die" everyone shies away and doesn't know what to say or do! Let's not even discuss if you are working in a cooperate setting and call off, the truth there is you must lie! All of a sudden your crippling depression is "The Cold" you get every few months. This only leads to further issues as people are passing you tissues and cough drops when what you really need is a hand on your shoulder and a kind word of understanding.


We need people that are willing to listen, not just hear the words but listen. Listen to the inflection. Listen to the pain. Listen to the tiny changes. Listen to the peal for help. And we need to people to not be afraid to reach out that helping hand even if that hand is out side of their comfort zone. A wise man once told me that the magic happens out side of your comfort circle, please understand magic happens even in the not so fun things if you take the time to step out of your box. You literally could save someones life. Some of the simpler things that could have or would have helped me these past few days:

• Hey I see you struggling, I am coming to get you we are going to sit on the beach for 30 minutes
• What can I do to lighten your load? Do you have some outsourcing I can help you with.
• Hey. I just want to say hey and let you know I am here if you want to talk.. or if you don't want to talk.. I am just here.
• Talk to me about what this death looks like to you, what does it look like after you are gone. Can I share with you what I see?
• I know you are exhausted, please don't worry about Reboot, we got this until you can get back, take care of your mind, body and soul so you can return.
• Let's have coffee.
• Let's grab a drink and catch up.

Some of these did happen, some of them didn't, what matters is there are a few people who can see past the scary of my life and try to hold my hand through it. But we should rally better! A terminal cancer patient, food, rest, memories, hugs, love... I could go on and on about what is showered upon those last days. People pray for miracles, people wish they could do more to save their friend of family member but their hands are tied, yet they do and do and use kind words and offer support.  A terminally depressed patient, strange looks, whispers, just be happy snarky comments, impatience, and indifference you see where I am going here yes? They die... then all the people say I wish I could have done more.... and right there in front of them the whole time was the miracle to save this person, it was just easier to look away than to out stretch their hand in support.


I still don't know what my exact purpose is but I do know that part of it is to get people to understand.

Peace and Love

Re

When I name these posts I usually google the title for a related image. Today came up with nothing. How is invisibly broken not a thing? It needs to be a thing. Maybe I will be the one to make it something. Maybe that will be the title to my book .. you know the invisible one. Either way.... Invisibly Broken is the best description I can come up with for myself at the moment.


Some of you know.. some of you don't. On Sunday a dark storm hit unlike one I have seen in quite a while. Don't get me wrong, the darkness usually shows up about every 3 months or so, and it is no fun, and it is really nothing to make light off but compared to what reared its ugly head on Sunday those were shirt tail breezes. I was fine on Saturday. I even said to my dearest friend, look at me being fine through Mother's Day! I truly believed at that moment I was. Sunday I worked brunch it was the insanity we thought it would be but I was fine... or so I thought. I thought wrong. Just a few hours after leaving the restaurant my brain did a nose dive plummet into the darkest depths of hell.  My own personal hell, where my brain tells me that I am worthless, I am a fraud, I am a pathetic waste of space, and humanity would be better off without me. As the winds of self loathing and doubt whipped around me, in washed the crashing waves of pain. Yes physically manifested pain. If I had not known better I would have sworn I had either the worst case of flu possible or I had been run over by a truck going 90 and then galloped on by a zebra and baby kangaroo. As the tears would not stop I contemplated my purpose and my existence, after not coming up with anything meaningful, thoughts shifted to how to make my death look mysterious and nonsuicidal.  Lucky for me, everything was too messy or too involved and I just didn't have the energy to pull it off.  I say lucky for me but honestly I am still not back to a place that I feel lucky to be alive. It's more of a life in the fog and mire at the moment, with everything being weighed down with a thick blanket of February molasses. Have I mentioned I truly hate being sticky?

I reached out to people I felt needed to know, all of them had an encouraging word. Maybe I didn't express in quite enough detail exactly where I was because most had a nonchalant.. power through, chin up, you can do it quip of a speech then they moved on to other topics. In my head I was screaming.. "I AM CALLING TO SAY GOODBYE TO YOU..I am never going to speak to you again... please come save me, I don't care what the next door neighbors dog did to your cousins lama or that your hair cut was horrible! Ok maybe I care about that last part I don't want you at my funeral party looking like a reject from 1982". But you get my point... they couldn't see, they couldn't hear, and they couldn't understand where I was. I was invisibly broken and felt like I would be invisibly dead.  I some how made it through Monday doing some things here and there that may help me in the future, the entire time my brain was saying, this is so stupid, you won't succeed at this either, hell you aren't even planning on living long enough to get to the second appointment, why are you throwing away money that could be better used to bury your stupid ass.  I went anyway in a very robotic type action... I called to get the house cleaned, I had the yard mowed, I did the laundry, I went to work.  You don't want to leave these things for someone else...


More on this in a moment.


During my stint in hell the one place that I could and still find peace is at the restaurant, it's the place that was safe after Deanna's accident. The place that as I walked through the door I could hang up this darkness for just a little while.  As I breezed through the doors on Monday afternoon over an hour early for my shift I blew the dust off of the peg, threw off the invisible cloak of pain, and tossed it aside in a familiar but slightly out of practiced manner. It worked... I returned again on Tuesday... Thursday... today... (Wednesday I didn't fair as well as the other nights but that is neither here nor there) my point is it is so incredibly important to have that space where you know... know matter what you are going to be ok! Even if you are surrounded by really sharp knives.  As I leave there at night... regardless if I want it to or not the cloak of darkness trails along with me, it is just a little bit lighter each time.


One of the crappiest things about this episode wasn't so much the constant thoughts of death, trust me, they scare you so much more than they scare me. I would gladly lay down with death if it meant my brain was at peace for more than a few hours at a time, no that wasn't the crappiest. I didn't go to Reboot. It wasn't that I just didn't go... I physically could not. Between the exhaustion, the pain, and the panic attacks just tossed in for fun I could not get out the door. So I didn't, for 4 days. I returned today and it proved to be as hard as I imagined. Before I could get to my jeep this morning my hands were sweating, my heart was racing and I physically wanted to vomit. My heart kept saying "just go.. go you damn fool!" And my brain chimed in and said.. "you stupid fraud. How are you going to face these people, who counted on you, who depended on you to be there, who looked to you for guidance and direction, you let every one of them down. You're no coach. You're no friend. You are nothing. You should have gone with the "accidentally fell in the tiger pit at the zoo while drunk" idea.. no one would have suspected."  I literally had to force myself to shut the jeep door, but I went, and spent an hour and 15 minutes trying not to cry in shame, because I can't be who I promised them.


I can't even be who I promised me I would be.


I came home, paid all the bills, made an appointment to fix my windshield, I mailed the check for the June vacation.. and once again reported that I was doing the things. I have been doing the things... the things that look oddly like moving forward but every so often feel just like wrapping up..


I can call you.. I can talk to you about old lady in piggly wiggly who slipped on a grape and knocked out the cashier with a flying frozen cornish hen and you may never know. I may run into you while you are out buying your third removed step brothers baby by your mama's sister a onsie and you may never know. I can comment on your post about your fatty skinny 2 year old (that maybe really happened....) and you may never know. You can text me, email me, call me, you can be my friend, my brother, my lover, or my mother... and you may never know.


But right now... right this minute... you know.


My wish for this world is that we start to see the invisibly broken and hear them. Know that the pain they are in is not a place they want to be but a place that has manifested from some dark corner of their brain and even when it doesn't look like it they really are trying to claw their way out of the closet where they are hidden behind the worn out shoes no one remembers.


As for me... right this minute.. I am going to keep doing the things... and regardless of which ever side I land on my toilet will be clean!


Love and Peace,

Re