So news first... for the last two decades or so, doctors have marveled at how my heart murmurs and wrote orders for echocardiograms which I neglected to fulfill... and if they gave me the paper copy, I would throw it in the nearest receptacle after leaving the office. My heart's like every other muscle in my body, and it's gonna break just like the rest of them have done or will do. It will do what it wants, and I will not be able to stop it. The latest doctor I've seen marveled at it on my first visit, and we discussed a few visits later... What happens after I get the echo? And since I've no intention of prolonging this life through the means my parents have used to prolong theirs, it's always seemed pointless to me to bother with it. If there's not a pill I can take to make it bearable, why muck with it? 

But this year... the middle of my back been's causing greater pain that normal... kinda near where my lungs are... and my depression's gotten worse, and my meds don't work quite as well as they used to do, and I'm too hopeless these days. Almost as bad as I was four years ago. Four years ago I was in fuck it mode. I was waiting on the good Lord to take me, assuming I was worthy of the rescue. Knowing my history, I'm more likely bound to be raging at the surface or sinking in the abyss of the river Styx. And maybe if I could fix my heart to doctors' best ability, maybe that'll alleviate the depression and the pain in my back. It's in my legs, too. It's basically everywhere. It makes me tired. 

This doctor let me listen to my heart, and then he let me listen to his. Mine sounds pretty bad, yall. Not at all what it should sound like. Not a clean thump thump but a whoosh whoosh whoosh, like the sound water makes when it is pushed through a flapping door. And the thump thump is buried underneath that. I can hear it in my head at night as I'm trying to sleep. He said mine's something like a three or four. I'm thinking of cancer stages... three or four can't be good.

I'm housesitting for a friend. She introduced me to another friend who lives on her street, and that woman asked me to care for her cat, Roxy. I housesat for another friend before sitting for this one, and the cat's needs overlapped. 

I'm barely hanging on to sanity right now. I've quit drinking because the doctor prescribed new medicine to alleviate the rage and firmly ordered me to stop drinking.

In the past few years, I've come to know that I would've been a horrible teacher, and know I'm seeing I would've been a much worse mother. And I can't tend house worth a damn because I'm too concerned with myself and nothing else.

The cat made a mess on the carpet. I cleaned it up but failed to clean out the machine after... mostly because I was too afraid of breaking it. I suspect she'll never ask me to care for her cat again. I can tell you, when I went into the house today to find it still not there (I'd asked her if I could use it the day before), I texted see if I could borrow the cleaner to clean up the piss on the rug of the friend who introduced me to the cat... she texted me: I think I don’t actually want all of everyone’s pet poopoo in it. I’m sorry. It’s hard enough for me to clean it out after cleaning up Roxys messes. The day before she'd agreed to let me borrow it but bring it back so they could use it if the cat made a mess. But today, I got that text. So either the folks who are now watching their cat used it to clean up a mess one of their animals had made in their home OR they'd complained to this woman that I'd left it foul. 

So the three dogs here... they exhaust me, and I'm feeling more like I should ask this friend to find someone else to watch them in the future because I'm doing such a lousy job of it. These are puppies. Can you imagine how shitty I'd be with children??

All these dreams I've had... they die ugly deaths... one by one. 

And so now... now, I very much would love to be that hermit.

When I Was a Child...

That Scripture from Matthew or wherever... it doesn't matter, does it? Yall know what it says... I spoke like a child... 

I speak like a child all the time. Most of the time it's because I am so stinking happy I can't control it. Like I can't control it when I'm mad or sad or bad. I take drugs for that... lots of them actually. So the gleeful gal or the banshee... whichever has the reins... you can only see a small percentage of the giddy or the gorey. On a whim last Saturday, I cut my hair OFF (again)--something I'd not done in almost twenty years. I did it because when I looked in the mirror, I felt like a haggard, lonely woman, and the feeling did not sit well with me... but what finally drove me to do it was the vision that in five years or so my hair could be barely there on the top of my head and straggly threads on the back and sides... and that vision made me feel SO. MUCH. UGLIER. And yes, I know... I'm made in Christ's image, and it's easy to run those words through my head, but as they do so, it's in a tone that's mocking and demented... because I go outside and the words seem to hold no value. And yes, I know that's my faith wavering. I know it.

Once upon a time I worked at a bookstore, and one of its managers told me she thought of me as fearless. When I asked her why she'd chosen that word, she said something to the effect of that no matter how much I struggle when out and about in my days, I get up and go out, and that is fearless.

I do it because I have to do it. Just like when during my school days, and this is something my mother marvels at still, I never said I don't want to go or asked if I could stay home. Yall. My father was the superintendent. OF. COURSE. Like I COULD ask that. Like they'd let me stay home.

We're doing Priscilla Shirer's Elijah study at church. It's a good one--hard-hitting, as a study should be. I hadn't worked on it this past week. One of the questions we addressed today (NOT phrased as it should be because my book's in my car, and I'm upstairs in my room and too lazy to get it because I know yall'll get the point) what's something you've wanted and not gotten? I've wanted requited, romantic love, independence from my parents, and financial stability. I've never known these things. And reading them, I felt like a child. Seeing this in print just drives the hurt in a little bit deeper... and it's been a hurt that's lasted for the better part of three decades. I bent my head and allowed myself to feel that hurt but reined it in just before tears fell. And I carried myself through that study well enough this morning. I'm always SO happy to go to study because there are SO many women there whom I love and take pleasure in spending time with them. But the pleasure and the joy are sucked out like a vacuum at the conclusion... the room gets grayer and grayer and grows more and more silent... and I am there taking out the trash. Just before the last people left, I'd overheard some who lead the ministry talk about needing someone to lead the giving tree and thought, "THAT. I can totally rock that." So eager was I to help, so pleased that I could use my gifts for good, I shouted, "I'll help." Like a first grader eager to help her teacher. Childish. 

Moments before this, I'd marveled at how much more youthful I felt because of this haircut. I feel like I'm ten years younger. At least.

And then the people left... and all the things whammied me. The immaturity of my life--the lack of a spouse, the lack of children, the lack of a romantic relationship, the lack of independence, the lack of funds in my account, the lack of being able to lead when I so often feel called to do so. Who would put a child in charge? That's crazy right? All these women, they have the husbands, the children, the independence (though I'm sure most would say they don't... because of the husbands and the children), the funds in their accounts, the ability to lead (and don't tell me yall don't, because I know danged well who rules those houses).

I cried like a little girl, yall. I walked into that sanctuary, sanitized my hands and let my fingers feel the piano keys played earlier that morning by a gifted man as we'd worshipped. There is so much music in me, and yet, I lack the ability to play it--the hand-width, coordination and strength. I prayed: The highs are so high, Lord, and the lows are so low. And it's hard to dance with the devil on my back, but I do not have the strength to shake him. You do, though. So please, God, get him off me.

My throat hurts. It started, interestingly enough, not long before I joined in a Bible Study Fellowship study of Romans. There's some line in there, something like, Your throat is an open grave.

I try to sing in church, but my throat REALLY hurts after the second song or so. So I sit, and let the music swirl around me... and then I start thinking the devil's sat me down, so I force myself back up and I tell myself to sing anyway. But it hurts, and singing was the thing that saved me in my childhood. Always. I'd walk the streets of my neighborhood and sing Bette Midler's The Rose... and the song was always a prayer, and I had such confidence that in the winter I would know love. And yall, when I'd sing that song, it was always with the love of a good man in mind. I needed to sing it because the boys I knew were so unbearably cruel. The men I've known have been.

Winter's never come, though.

I have buried myself. I have boxed myself in. Stunted my growth.

Yall might think it's easy for me to unload. It's not. I might have shared about my physical aches... it's easy for me to complain about those, yall, because they HURT and are so plentiful that I can't help myself. But once upon a time I was a champion internalizer like my brothers, like my parents. And about five years after I started blogging, I began to use this site as a sort of therapy. I'd type. Lots. And it would help. Hardly anyone I knew read it, and that's okay. That was PERFECT because I didn't feel as though I burdened anyone with any of it. 

I didn't start unloading the baggage upon my friends until about four years ago or so. And there is such guilt and shame in me for burdening them. Such hatred because I cannot carry my cross with grace like all the others do. And I lean heavily on the words they've said back to me... but they are words. And I, like any writer, know words can be like vapor.

Howdy!

I'm here today because I cannot post on my Wordpress site because I haven't been able to pay the webhosting stuff... something like two hundred bucks, which I don't have because I'm a child when it comes to managing money.

I lost one of my part-time gigs at the end of May. The other's hours would've been bumped up to about thirty-five a week, which is more than I've worked in at one job in five years... but the owner keeps a black Lab mix on the premises, and while I can hold my own around other dogs (friendly reminder, I'm pathetically allergic to pretty much everything), this dog makes me vomit so I spent May and June trying to find other work, and those searches proved more promising that in the past, which gave me hope... which was crushed, and every time it was I sunk a lot deeper into depression. At the end of June I gave up. So I'm working at the shop with the dog. If you're the praying sort, PLEASE put some up for me that I can work this job through December because I gave the man my word I would.

Also pray that I can get a better grip on my finances.

My life feels as though it's coming off the rails. Pray for better highway vision. Thank you.