Mental Breakdown

 I had a breakdown at the end of the service Sunday.

I made a mistake and read the wrong reading - totally my own fault. I practiced the right reading but the Liturgy was marked incorrectly (I'd marked it -- and somehow found the wrong reading in Exodus - totally sober). Then I apologized and had to decide whether to back up and chose the correct reading or go on with the psalm and I went on with the psalm which I got through correctly.

I sat down and was so embarrassed and started to feel like god was telling me to step down. I started hating on myself and missing Will and I fell into that deep well which usually only the people I feel closest to see and I was hiccup crying. My friend from the Tuesday group, Barbara,  came to me and told me that people care about me and "love" me but I don't feel the love of "people"  though I'm glad Barbara considers me a friend.  Then Susan and Nancy, her Mom, and Elizabeth the priest came over where I was picking up stuff to do my altar guild thing and they assured me that everyone makes mistakes. They finally calmed me down. Susan talked about her own therapist and her struggle with low self esteem.

Nancy gave me a hug and said not to believe "the enemy."  My friend Rev. Noah also uses that term.  Maybe it would be helpful to think of that force of self hatred as "the enemy." Maybe I'd be more interested in fighting it if it were outside of me.

I've been feeling really scared and hopeless about the world.  I keep thinking about buying a bigger, more dangerous gun.

Oh well. Protest against the Grifter this afternoon.  I hope that cheers me up. 

Missed Connections

 Dear Will:

A few events I wish I could tell you about, though I'm just as happy you're not alive to experience the era of the Grifter-in-Chief.  You were so scared when we came back to all the yellow ribbons in December, 2001. The McCarthy era gave you a bone deep fear of fascists.

The death of a lovely woman who was a terrible poet that you made fun of for years because I'd forced you to sit through a reading we shared. When one of my book group friends told me about her passing, I instantly felt a connection to you.

The final days of Marty's store. I remember when we joked for months about the billboard on Revere with her and her son in boxing gloves because they had the two different stores. And how delighted you were to get gossip about the son from Nancy W.

And in a happy circumstance, Sequel and I were walking the loop at Riverbend Park and near the metal draw horses we ran into an old friend of Birdy's! Not the dog ... he had gone over the rainbow bridge, but the female primate recognized me as Birdy's packleader.  She was also a long ago former student.  She understood Sequel's name immediately!

 And finally, I was thinking about Jim A.'s tomato comments and how much we laughed at them for years after the meeting in Chicago.

I'm more often able to miss you now without crying.

Love always,

kake

 

BLECH Taxes

When I took in a folder of 1099s and other documents to my accountant today, I joshed with Dan, the administrative assistant.  He said the banks were slow getting the 1099s out and I said "Who knows if there's going to be a government in April or even if we'll have to pay taxes ever again."  Jk.

The Tribute Money by Peter Paul Rubens

 Back in the day, pre-2012, when Will did our taxes, every year was a struggle because until I actually did the taxes myself, I didn't really understand the process.  In the two years I was actually in charge of personally doing the taxes, I made mistakes each year, once in the government's favor, once in ours.  Now, because of the complexity of my finances (those two trusts), I have an accounting firm.

Nevertheless, I still need to collect the data of all my donations (sometimes given when I'm high) so I actually need to roll through my four main email accounts and my Paypal. (Used to be going through my checkbooks.) I no longer keep track of mileage to the doctor and Costco, however.  That's just a bit too much detail.

Looks like I've got good medical deductions this year since I no longer have dental insurance and had three major dental events. My donations were under 17 grand I think, though I'm not completely finished figuring them out.

This year my accountant's business has a new online program to help folks work through what they need to think about.  There are a lot of questions, some of which I have to leave up to the Ed Jones folks to answer as most of what goes on in my investments happens while I'm not watching.  For example, I know I have foreign investments but I don't know what they are or what they're doing (unless I actually read my portfolio). I trust the people who watch out for me.

Other questions focused on all the various things that might count as deductions. I found out that I hadn't paid two of my estimated taxes (I thought I had but the online machinery I used didn't work).  So paid those late. There was also a question about "gifts" and I found out that while no gifts under eighteen grand are counted, the IRS was interested in any amount of forgiven debt. I forgave an eight thousand dollar debt this year so I reported that but I'm not sure, from reading the rules, whether or not the forgivee will have to pay taxes on it. I don't think there are any tax associated implications for me.

I still have a few more documents to get in before Thursday, my deadline.  And then, if I've behaved as I have in the past, there will still be a few things missing and Chelsea will have to email me a list. 

I wouldn't be quite so annoyed by the whole business IF MY STREET WERE SNOWPLOWED. I know -- has nothing to do with the feds or the state but still, it's my most annoying relationship with any government agency.

Oh well. "Whose picture is on the coin?" Caesar's. So send all your fucking coins back to the dude.

I used to have a friend who protested government actions by not paying his taxes. I'd like to think I'd never do that but who knows what the future holds as our empire crumbles. Sometimes I think the Grifter in Chief is just chickens coming home to roost for a country that spent a century destabilizing other countries. I'm happy well Will isn't here to see what's happening but he'd be proud of me for continuing to take care of my few responsibilities.

 

Snow Business

 Dear Will:

You would have been amused at Sequel yesterday. She saw the snow monster and started barking at it!  You liked to point out the snow monster, both when you were you and when you had the dementia.

What I am missing about you today is our shared jokes, shared life references.  “Ebow.” “Puttin on the Ritz” “Hey hey, my my …” one of our earliest. The places we traveled and returned to in food and conversation. The year after visiting New Orleans when you made a habit of cooking some meals with “three peppers for the whole mouth treatment.” The year after England when we had tea.

But I lost you before I lost you. Before you lost the connections to our shared life, you sometimes asked, “Where have we traveled?” Or “What countries have we traveled to?” And I would list them and you would try to remember and you would remember fewer and fewer as time rivered our shared life to its finale.

But here in the present in multiple ways you are still with me. As when Sequel saw the same thing you did and barked. So she has a connection to you. You share a pareidolia.

And sadly, her bark also means I need to work harder on her being so talkative. I have the "no bark" tool. I need to remember to carry it.

I don’t know if you would like Sequel. She’s very alpha, unlike sweet Princess Birdy. She will not allow me to lie on her or hold tight to her to assert my dominance. So we’re working out our pack relationship with my using a lot more treating than I did with the princess.

Oh, and last weekend. The three shiny pennies right where I would see them - one beside my parking space at Newport, one in the house, one at the mailbox.  I’ve never given much weight to this particular superstition but I’ve known about it for decades (mostly from the occasional letter to Dear Abby. And last weekend I had a horrible embarrassment:  a brain fart and awhile reading the psalm. Ack!  So I need help from above after my horrible mistake … thanks you if you were responsible for my copper finds.

I miss you each day and yet I am entering my fourth year of your absence with Snake Energy. This will be a more functional year for me. Even Brezsny says so.

 

Love you always,

 

Kake

Better With God's Help

Yesterday I had brief interactions with two old friends (separately) who let me know they don't have any time for me anymore. 

It didn't break me.  (confetti toss, trumpet voluntary)

I did wind up crying for a couple of hours, off and on, but my chest didn't tighten and I didn't seek to harm myself.  I still want to tell each of them how sad they "make" me but I know it's only me making me sad. So I won't tell them. I'll write about it here because I know neither of them reads this. 

my mom used to climb these little hills

Not having my chest tighten was probably the result of the praying I've been doing. I've asked God to soften my heart.  I no longer have any anger at people who don't want to be with me. I understand it.

People want to be around someone who is cheerful and amiable. That's what dead Kathy told me.

Also, young people don't want to be around an old person, and other old people don't want to be around a sad old person.

So I'm doing my best to construct someone likable and happy go lucky.  It's not easy, especially when the tears are ready, especially when seeing people I love who don't love me back and are smiling at me and hugging me and then walking away as if the hug wasn't just like a slap.  But I understand that I'm sad and crazy and difficult and accept that people don't want to be around that. Also, when I do feel good, so many of the jokes that pop into my head are NSFW so I shut the fuck up rather than sharing.  This choice, while respectful, also reminds me that I don't fit in with the people I spend most of my time with.

Kathy would tell me it doesn't matter.  Just suck it up.  Accept the crumbs and call them a meal. That's what loving Jesus is supposed to do -- turn all the emotional love crumbs into a satisfying lunch. I've been praying on that, too. If God wants me to stay alive, I pray, "give me energy and tell me what the actual fuck I'm supposed to be doing."

I know that most everyone on earth has it worse than I.  I am very lucky and privileged to have warmth and food and safety and two poodles. And a cat.  It helps to remind myself of that. It's my narcissism that makes me want people who love me for myself.

Thank God for Diana (hi!). When I was broken on January 3 when I saw what I saw on FB and wanted so much just for the hurting to stop and the only way I knew to do that was to hurt myself, she called me and showed me that there was one person who liked me as I am and that I don't have to build someone to be with her.  I told her how most of my life I have prayed to be somebody different and she told me not to make such a prayer.  She told me I wasn't terrible.  Thank you, Diana.  And thank you again for the wonderful cup that expresses our friendship.

Diana rescued me, which is something broken EType4s seek.  And I recognize that right now I am not healthy.*

The problem is, of course, that I have to want to rescue myself, as I've been told over and over (and over and over and over and over). I need to grow a pair.  But where do I get the energy to want to do that?  I have money, so no need to do anything to get money.  There is no one who needs or depends on me except my animals and today I'll contact my lawyer to make sure to change the care person to my friend Lilli Ann -- she grew up with poodles and I trust her to know how to place one, should I die before them.  

"Now you have all the time to do what you love.  Just do what you love."

And what is that? What do I love to do besides get high and take hot baths like the captain of the Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B? In the past I've done art and written.

But what good is a collage if I can't show it to Will? What good is a poem if I can't read it to Will?  

Nevertheless, I keep trying to do things.  I keep taking classes. I keep blogging. I keep trying to surface.

But here's the Catch22 -- I have to be healthy enough to have the energy to rescue myself from my lack of health. How do I get the energy to rescue myself when I need to be rescued? I'll pray on it.

So, as the title says, I'm better.  Lots, lots better.  I'm not angry all the time.  I have had weeks during which I didn't cry (not lately but it's winter so wadayagonnado). I will get through this next month (the anniversaries of the rape and the family tragedy) by remaining in my addiction and then maybe, when spring comes, I'll try again to become mentally healthy and get off the pipe. We'll see. According to my previous calculations, I still have a year and a half for serious grief.

One thing I've learned during this grief journey is that it's not wise to make predictions.  And that's okay. What will be will be.  If God wants me to be more functional, the Good Lord will provide ways for that to happen.

You can't hurry God.  "He may not come when you want Him but he's right on time."

 

 

 

 

* From the Enneagram website

Unhealthy Levels

Level 7: When dreams fail, become self-inhibiting and angry at self, depressed and alienated from self and others, blocked and emotionally paralyzed. Ashamed of self, fatigued and unable to function.

Level 8: Tormented by delusional self-contempt, self-reproaches, self-hatred, and morbid thoughts: everything is a source of torment. Blaming others, they drive away anyone who tries to help them.

Level 9: Despairing, feel hopeless and become self-destructive, possibly abusing alcohol or drugs to escape. In the extreme: emotional breakdown or suicide is likely. Generally corresponds to the Avoidant, Depressive, and Narcissistic personality disorders.

when what I want to be is healthy:

Healthy Levels

Level 1 (At Their Best): Profoundly creative, expressing the personal and the universal, possibly in a work of art. Inspired, self-renewing and regenerating: able to transform all their experiences into something valuable: self-creative.

Level 2: Self-aware, introspective, on the “search for self,” aware of feelings and inner impulses. Sensitive and intuitive both to self and others: gentle, tactful, compassionate.

Level 3: Highly personal, individualistic, “true to self.” Self-revealing, emotionally honest, humane. Ironic view of self and life: can be serious and funny, vulnerable and emotionally strong.

 

Christmas

 Dear Will:

I missed you yesterday but I didn’t cry, except a little when listening to “In the Bleak Midwinter” but then that always makes me tear up a bit.

I set a place for you at breakfast.

I had champagne and an ersatz cream cheese omelette with sour cream and caviar. I like sometimes having champagne and caviar for a meal just because I can. It used to be only a traveler’s frivolity. But I realized that I can also enjoy it at home. You wouldn’t like it.

We shared 47 or 48 Christmases with each other, the first nearly two decades at the Hanson then Hanson/Williams house.  Christmases in which everyone received a multitude of presents. We continued the tradition of many presents when we had our own Christmases in the Bend house.  As late at 2023 we each had a few presents under the tree, though I bought all of them except for those from my sister and maybe a friend or two.  

It strikes me, as I write this, how much I have forgotten.  You were always our memory palace.  Until the palace burned down. 

We shared our first Christmas season in the Bend house in 1990 with my Mom who had “pre-inherited” to us a bunch of furniture a short time before. She was so tiny when she visited and almost disappeared under the covers of our big bed. She told me in private how she was happy to see the two of us so settled (unsaid: “after your period of separation.”) She died on January 8, 1991, just a year older than I am now.

We had many wonderful Christmas times together here in Bend, beginning with the housewarming party that first December when I had all my invited friends and colleagues bring Christmas decorations.  I wanted to introduce you and enjoy the party “flow through” of our new house. And for years after that I could connect each one of those Christmas decorations with the person who brought it. The only ones I can actually remember now are the ones from Lilli Ann LF and Hal G.  Lilli Ann, my first friend in Bend, gave us a gold colored bauble with a picture of her baby Kit on it.  Hal gave us a silver star that I, decades later, gave to Trinity to put on one of its trees and in the complications after Christmas, it got lost.  I was sad for awhile about that because Hal, my second friend in Bend and one that I hoped you would get to know because you’d both taught similar things, died two years later of prostate cancer. I remember you saying that you purposefully didn’t get to know him because you didn’t want to lose another friend.

So yesterday, Christmas day, the household was up early.  I had a protein shake before church. I was altar guild and reader for the 10:00 am service in Trinity.  I read the selection from Titus with great gusto. During clean up, three other AG women who weren’t on duty just stepped up to help. That felt great.

Among the things I can’t remember is how I spent Christmas Day, 2021, after you screamed at me and then, a short time later, went into your death coma. 

I don’t remember how long ago I bought the “new tree” after the one of many decades started shedding. I’ve been trying to get rid of it and will probably just take it to the dump to the dump to the dump dump dump around the 12th Day of Christmas. I still have many of our old tree decorations in storage in the basement, including the last of those I made as a child and two that Sally brought back from Mexico in 1963.

I can no longer bear a tree in the house but my need for retail therapy got me to buy myself a tree forest.

I am making a new way for myself. 

Love,

Kake

Last Piece written for Writing Love and Loss

We had our last Writing Love and Loss class tonight.  I missed last week because of google calendar user error.  I wrote this for tonight.

----------------------------

December 16, 2021

As we were waiting for the funeral home to carry my husband’s body away, I talked about oral sex. 

In what I assume now were slightly hysterical tones, I talked about how we got together in 1971 when I was barely 18 and he was 41.  How I’d followed him home after my Aunt Huldah’s birthday party, a late-into-the-night gab feast where a reefer was passed around my grandfather’s great, round, oak table. I told the hospice nurse and my friend Stacey the story of how I had seduced the skinny, bearded English professor. I reveled in having experienced such a non-traditional beginning for a marriage of almost five decades.

I called our for-profit hospice early that Boxing Day after waking and finding him in the same position in the hospital bed that he’d held since the terrible morning before. His temperature was 105 and he was unconscious.  I called the hospice but no one could get to me until 3 pm.  When the nurse arrived she almost immediately “called it,” as they say on medical TV.

I had thought I would want to clean him, as I had the old fellow who had been my hospice client back in the 90s.  That gentlemen, who was almost as skinny at his death as Will became, was my “client” (I was a volunteer) for almost 6 months.  As he was dying of lung cancer, he was also teaching me to play the guitar. He left the earth with far more of himself than my sweetheart.  Sadly, I wasn’t able to be at his death. I got the call that his dying was active right before I was to give a test at the college where I worked. I felt a responsibility to the school and my students and so missed my client’s actual death.  But when I finally arrived at his home, I was able to help the hospice nurse clean his body.  I had imagined at the time that I might do the same for my older husband some day.

But the day in 2021 when Will died, the nurse wasn’t focused on cleaning him.  She just did her job then waited with my friend and me as I babbled.   I was exhausted and giddy with relief. For the seven years I lived with his dementia I knew it would end in death. My goal had been to postpone the end as long as possible – until it wasn’t.  Until his 6 foot frame reduced to 112 pounds and he was eating only lemon drops and protein juice.

At the end, his life force was so strong that his body held on past its time.  The Hospice chaplain and I had spent hours the previous week, the week Will entered the hospital bed, telling him about the glories of the “other side.” Pastor Noah spoke mostly about the joy of being with Jesus.  I told my old sweetheart he would meet up with the cat and dog he had loved, June Jumpha and Princess Birdy.

 And then he was dead. At last the long struggle was over. I imagined in that moment that I would soon dive into dating, find a man or woman friend with benefits and become a Merry Widow.  For some reason, because I’d experienced pretty severe grief for the final four of the dementia years, I thought I’d be freed.  

Instead, my heart and mind became a scene of devastation.  I hadn’t understood that in spite of our life as friends, as private people, as psychologically separate individuals, being with him for fifty years was my foundation. He made it possible for me to live with my melancholia and manias without flying into madness. His were the eyes and arms that told me, no matter how great my sin, I would always be loved.

I have not felt at home in the world since he left it.