Mental Health

Quit Smoking.

/ Self Saving Warrior Princess / Leave a comment

Really real post about the flying motorcycle with insight into my brain and my world if you want it.

Five years ago today I wanted a cigarette and was having a hard time leaving the porch.

It was 5 days after Parker and I got out of the homeless shelter. My anxiety was in full swing. I finally had a safe space again and was having a hard time leaving it.

Kidlet had come to stay with us. Our first time having him for more than a few hours in 6 months. It was like his 3rd day with us.

Parker finally agreed to go to the corner store to get me smokes after I drove her nuts. She didn’t want to go but you know… telling me no typically ended in melt downs and being out of smokes didn’t make it any better. Kidlet went with her.

They were walking down the sidewalk. How much more freak can an accident be?

Motorcycle gets hit by car, goes airborne, hits Parker in the head, lands on Kidlet. Kidlet caught a flying motorcycle cause he’s badass like that.

I still hear his screams in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital. I still remember the driver telling me “as bad as the screams are, it’s worse when they are silent.” And how much that both comforted me and chilled me to the bone.

Kidlet got through that like a champ and started showing his nature of resilience and grit and smiles in the face of bullshit challenges that are totally unfair.

Parker had a “moderate” concussion that I don’t think any of the doctors took seriously enough. It’s one of many things that I kept fighting and advocating and “what the fuck-ing” in the midst of all of her head problems but…. yet another “overweight emotional woman” situation and I won’t get on that soap box right now.

All cause I wanted a cigarette.

And yeah yeah . . . Not my fault, could have happened to anyone. But if I would have gotten my own damn shit, or not have smoked in the first place.

And you wonder why sometimes it’s so so hard for me to ask for help or accept help….

Or tell people no. Or not offer help to others when they are having a hard time asking or blah blah blah.

So so many layers and I know why I do a lot of what I do. And knowing so many of the whys make it harder to untangle.

Tension

/ Self Saving Warrior Princess / Leave a comment

Really real widow post:

The memory posts are getting closer and closer to the two year mark but I’ve felt it in my chest for weeks. My anxiety is making me nauseas and as much as I know I need to live and thrive and not revert to survival mode it’s taking everything in me just to put one foot in front of the other.

I feel like I’m functioning within this constant whirlwind. I’m making the motions, I’m doing the things but my head is screaming to get out. Run. Every noise is danger. Every sudden movement is something I need to react to. I’m on edge. I want to puke. My brain is so so loud. I’m afraid of messing it all up.

Everything feels like tension and tension is palpable even where it has nothing to do with me. But tension is triggering as fuck for me.

(Trigger warning: Talk about Parker’s actual death here (but not suicide really)…. more than some will be comfortable hearing but not actually graphic, just the kind of shit our society doesn’t talk about)
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Parker and I fought before she died. The kind of verbal fight that had us going to our own corners to chill out. Except, the only “real” conversation after that was a text she sent me saying “I love you, I’m sorry”

Later when I went to bed and she was already sleeping I remembered thinking “she must be okay, she must understand, the tension is gone.” But typically it never mattered if she was sleeping. If we were fighting the tension stayed until we talked it out.

The next morning when I went to wake her I realized she was dead.

Ghost wives are no longer angry and so there wasn’t tension.

Tension is hugely triggering and while it’s always been a problem for me, I hate seeing people around me upset. Now, that tension in the air, that fight or flight response….

Right now I shut down. I’m on edge and I don’t know how to respond. Stores make me feel agoraphobic again, I want to lock myself in the house and not leave.

I am feeling everybody’s everything’s.

What if it’s my fault. What will the outcome be.

When will the next feeling of tension cause the next snowball of events like that time did?

My body is waiting for that need to react.

And meanwhile I’m sitting in a car, typing this, posting it, so I can put on a totally okay face and NSO another derby event because while all of this is happening and I’m trying so so hard not to lean too much on anyone, especially those closest to me because that’s how people die, that’s how I push them away, that’s how I become too much….

I keep putting one foot in front of the other and trying to live and thrive and not just survive because I have seen the alternative.

Tension fucking sucks.

Widowing Ain’t Easy.

(No time to edit, pardon typos please)