How often do we compare and contrast stuff then make
ourselves feel terrible?? Often, lets say often.
I have a default trait to isolate myself. I am at a constant
push and pull of isolating myself and reaching out all my peoples. Not dogs.
Dogs don’t count I’ve realized. I tend to roll up into a ball and sit in denial
believing the worlds stopped for me even though I know it hasn’t. I am like a rolly polly in that way. Personally,
I struggle with people living at me.
Every time someone says they are going on a trip I want to roll up into
a ball because WE aren’t going on a trip. We never go on trips, what a disaster
we are! When I see photos of friends having fun with actual real live people
AND sometimes even with dogs, BOTH at the same time!! I freak out over that too.
Stupid over achievers. When I hear about people having fun and looking happy, I
stuff my face with food and tumblr, pinterest the shit out of the rest of my
day. I can’t handle people constantly LIVING AT ME!! This is much too much.
One of the main reasons this has become a problem of mine is
because when you’re homeless there is no such thing as normal. The weight is
always there and you are always hurting, aching, longing. Its going to be one
year in April. One whole year of
living in our car and trying to keep our sanity. Yes, I am having an extremely
hard time with it. So many stories,
tears, screams, and SO much fucking frustration. This has been happening for a
whole year now guys. All of it, for a
year!!!! Are you having trouble swallowing that? ‘Cause I sure am. It
doesn’t seem such a long time ago when I was writing about only three months
and the stupid sand getting in my contacts case. There are times I get lost in
a day dream and think what if its all been a dream?? Yeah just wait, soon someone is going to come
to wake me up, pat my back and tell me its all been a terrible, no good dream.
But of course that doesn’t happen. I don’t get to experience the sigh of relief
that I’ve been desperately hoping to feel. It’s not a dream and I am already
awake. Its hard, this whole life thing.
I tend to get stuck in this phase of feeling like people are
gone living their lives and I’m here waiting for my life to begin. It’s hard
not to get stuck in that place because things are ten times more easier when
you have a home and stability. I keep telling myself that when I get a place I
am going to do this and that and be all around super awesome. I can’t keep up with daily routines if every day
is uncontrollably different. If I don’t have the simple luxury of a place to
live then yes naturally I will feel defeated and sad and stressed. I will feel
all the stuff there is to feel but when I really think about it every day for
the rest of my life will be uncontrollable and hard. I will always feel many
things, all at once too. Emotion has never been a lonely street for me. Stuff
will always get lost, broken and I will try to learn to carry on anyway, one stupid
limp at a time. I have absolute no control
over the universe and the happenings it sends to me. Things will continue to not
work out no matter how much better I try to do things. People will always seem
happier than I am. People will always seem to have good stuff happening to them.
All those things will continue to be true and weigh me down but if I just stop
focusing on everyone elses life and how much more good things seem to be
happening to them then maybe I can be
awakened from my fear. Instead I should try to focus on how much good stuff
is happening to me, in my life, right now. Good things happen to me
too. All the time. I just need to be awake and paying attention to feel it. Be
present, Analaura. Do what you can with what you got, yeah that.
About maybe two years ago, we had a place. It was a
wonderful two bedroom apartment with a long patio in the back. It was near bus
transits and the freeway. We moved in and I began to decorate it into a home,
our home. It was everything that I wanted coming together. I thought to myself
this is it, this is when things fall into place and become perfect and normal
like everyone elses. My mom had just transitioned into working in a new office
with one of the lawyers shes known for years. Celest was doing well in school.
Things were supposed to be running smoothly now. I was wrong, of course, within
about two weeks I began getting these outrageously strong stomach pains and
extreme nausea. My plans to get a job and maybe a couple college classes went
straight into the garbage disposal. It got so bad that I couldn’t smell any
food or eat it because of the extreme nausea. That was the worst because
throwing up is horrible but wanting to throw up without actually doing so is
torture. I woke up at 5 every morning crouching and moaning in pain. I lost
about 20 or thirty pounds. I was in and out of the emergency room every week or
so and since this was before Obamacare I had no health insurance so the bills
were stacking up by the thousands. We
brought my grandma to stay with us for a while to be with me the days my mom couldn’t.
I was in horrible health and I spent my days reading, sleeping and humming to
myself from pain. They couldn’t find anything wrong with me and all they
prescribe were strong nausea pills that put me to sleep for hours at a time so
I refrained from using them. My mom couldn’t concentrate at work because of it
all so she ended up quitting in order for her to take care of me and her
sanity. I was in the hospital many Saturdays and still trying to go to church
every Sunday. Still trying to show up, hiding all the IV bandages with long
sleeves. I would try to show up for lifes stuff in hopes that I would get
better and be able to get back to my plan of stability. I was sick for almost a
year. I hid it very well though from friends and since I never talked to
extended family that was a non-issue. It all went exactly how I didn’t plan
them to. Awesome. NOT. Things never work out the way we plan for them to. Things
go wrong all the time and we have to continue to keep re-adjusting. We
eventually moved out of that place and then transitioned into a trailer in some
ones backyard. Then from there we get to here, to now. I have recovered since
then and still to this day don’t really have a clear idea of what went on with
my body. I was told by a holistic doctor who is now practicing in modern
medicine that all the stress and feelings I had with me while being homeless
for whatever time were being released from my body. She said our bodies go into
survival mode when we are stressed which only lasts from a couple minutes, to a
day, maybe weeks but my body was that way for months so now that all that stuff
was no longer needed it was trying to release it all. It had to re-learn how to function without
survival mode. My body was trying to recuperate but had trouble in the process.
Did that make any sense?? Point is, I did
what I could with what I had then. I don’t know if we get a place once again my
health will spiral again but I do know, well what I’ve learned and learning is that
no matter how many times things go wrong and they are plenty that will, I will still
be here tomorrow. I will make it through even though sometimes it feels much
too hard to. I will make it to tomorrow. I am so much more resilient than I
remember to give myself credit for.
The thing about my life right now is that it’s happening so
there is no waiting for it to begin. I tend to go into that state of mind where
I sit and wait and watch life happen to other people then get even more depressed
because I want to be experiencing life like that too. Oh how often I forget
that I am already in it and living it. I’m alive, damn it! I can’t continue to
wait for things to stop falling apart because I will be left waiting for the
rest of my life. Fear and pain and the mess of life will always be here. Glennon
was right; my friends aren’t living AT
ME but maybe possibly trying to live WITH ME. They are right there feeling
all the stuffs. Coping, re-adjusting, creating, doing what they can with what
they’ve got. I am practicing to not retreat into my default of isolation and
spread those wings of mine and realize that good things are happening to me too
not just to other people. I don’t have it down but the more I practice moving
with life and its people the more I am able to get through all the pain that’s demanding
to be felt in me. The more I am able to feel all the good things.
I will still be here
tomorrow.
I will still try to show up for life’s stuff
with IV bandages and limps and tear stained cheeks and sad eyes. All of that
and more.
I will readjust and resist the whispers that tell me to surrender.
“You
will know me,
Constantly
blooming and never surrendering”
(excerpt
from Lullabies)
The two photos below are from two different friends at two
random times many weeks apart but they carried so much love during times I had
returned to isolation. They were sent to me completely random but the moment I got them
was absolutely magnificent. These women reminded me that what I've been doing with what I've got has been enough because I've kept making it to tomorrow. I
beat myself black and blue so so often and then retreat because I can forget
how much strength I've had to have in order to keep on moving forward. I kept showing
up for all of lifes stuff and for that I am one hell of a bad-ass. I forget that
much too often. WE forget that much too often.
We keep on making it to the tomorrows when some of the todays are unbearable. That’s bad-ass. If anything I am overachieving just by still being here tomorrow, still
alive and moving forward.
Still soaring and raging against the whispers of surrender.
“…because
its easier not to try again, its easier to hide whatevers left of your heart
and soul, its easier to pretend that you are eternally broken than to risk
being broken again, but you know what, that’s okay, because things get worse
and then they get better and then they get unbearable and that’s life, you end
up getting unbeatable, you learn to duck when you must and dive when you
should, you learn to live expecting death around every corner, and you learn
how to come to life every time death slaps you in the face. Just trust in
yourself more than you trust in sadness or in happiness all the same, trust
that life is worth the risk and the resistance, and you- you- will be ok, even
if things fail to be.”
--Vazaki Nada
“You
are so good. So good, you’re always feeling so much. And sometimes it feels
like you’re gonna bust wide open from all the feeling, don’t it? People like
you are the best in the world, but you sure do suffer for it.”
-Silas
House, This is My Heart for You
