I Hate the phrase “Stop and Smell a Rose…” But I do appreciate its meaning.

Something that I’ve figured out over the last year is that to expect everyday, or the majority of your days to be ‘good days,’ can be somewhat unrealistic. That’s not to says that you shouldn’t wake up everyday with the purpose to have a great day and to make great things happen, or to be productive…because you should! In fact I think you must, but the reality for most of us is that most days are going to feel very similar to the one before it…you’ll do the same things, see the same people, think the same thoughts. And for some of us, who sadly are predisposed to feel the awful effects of depression or anxiety, these repetitive days are likely to sway towards ‘bad days’ rather the ‘good days.’

 

I’ve learnt that when a good day actually ‘just happens’ to you, REVEL IN IT!! appreciate every moment of it. Write about it with such description that when you re-read it, it will bring you straight back to the way you felt then. Its a powerful tool when you’re feeling down, when you get stuck in your head and forget all of the wonderful people who love you and wonderful things you get to do and be a part of…you’ll go back and see it, you’ll feel it. Because believe me, the days aren’t all bad and you are so so so loved. It is a good life despite all of the bad.

 

(this post was sitting in my drafts from 8 months ago…it seems I was right and little did I know how soon the very bad days would begin to hit. I probably didn’t post it because it felt unfinished at the time. I dont care anymore.)

 

drowning

This isn’t who I was supposed to be. I was supposed to be stronger, happier and further along than I am. I wasn’t supposed to be the girl who is considering taking counseling, hell I was supposed to BE a councillor. This isn’t right it feels wrong. As an adult, I was supposed to blossom, not shrink. I wasn’t supposed to be the kid who moved out and became distant from my family, and who keeps huge areas of my life from my parents. That was not who I ever thought i’d be. Yet here I am.

My inner Dialogue

I’m sitting here after a very long day, (hair up, face washed, in pj’s) ready for bed. However, my brain seems to think that it is the morning and is raring to go. That’s one of the biggest tolls that anxiety takes on me. On what I now consider a good day, my mind is fairly inactive, sure it feels like I’m physically hauling a freight train behind me with every step, but at least all I have to worry about is moving, not about monitoring every thought that crosses my mind.

If it sounds absurd to be aware of your every thought, take a minute for me and imagine that nearly every thought that you have is negatively intended towards yourself. That what seems like the most innocent train of thought will morph into a horrifying inner speech so filled with verbal abuse that you couldn’t even imagine saying it to your worst enemy. However it doesn’t seem like it’s coming from your worst enemy, it’s coming from yourself, and who could possibly know you better than yourself? I think we have the tendency to believe that what we think as an absolute truth, which is part of the reason why we bounce our thoughts off of our friends. We either want to be supported in our ‘rightness’ or we wish to be told by another that we’re off base. Now for somebody who has an unaffected way of thinking it is ok to believe and accept their inner dialogue as true, as least until it becomes necessary to clarify wrong thinking. However, for a mind that is affected by anxiety, believing in what your mind tells you is similar to living with a bully that is ever present and privy to your deepest fears and insecurities.

 

I wish I couldn’t imagine

The tears are slowly sliding down my face, but I hardly notice anymore. What I do notice is the vice-like grip of grief and unbelievable sadness, crushing my insides. I can hear yet another siren going past on the highway, and instead of grimacing at the sound like I have for the last few months, it only deepens my sadness. The sirens never reached you, you were gone long before they were even called, but even so they’re still a type of trigger for me. I still picture you lying lifeless on the pavement, even though I know you were still in the car.  My mind’s eye can see the moment of impact, your neck snapping and your hair flying. Your delicate neck and your beautiful hair. I miss you. So many different things about you. It seems like I either drown in the grief or I am completely numb to the world. Last friday I sobbed, and until tonight…I really don’t particularly feel as though I experienced any emotion at all.

 

I can’t tell anyone these thoughts, they’d scare the shit out of them… they scare the shit out of me. The problem is I can’t shut them out. These images that my brain created haunt me…I’ll manage to go a day without think of them, but when I drift off to sleep I see her die, I feel her die. I feel the same sadness I felt when I found out. And I wonder…will it ever stop?

18 years

My dear sweet Taylore,

Today would have been you’re 18 birthday, and its been 23 days since you’ve been gone. You would have gone out to some fancy restaurant with friends and maybe family, and you would have ‘lived it up’ in a way that only you could. You were able to have fun regardless of the situation, who you were with, or where you were. No matter how awkward things really were somehow it was always fun, because you made sure that it would be. I remember the details of countless moments so clearly. I could stay up all night writing down and recording every detail of your life and the moments that we shared. There are so many. I hate that there won’t be any more. I hate that they’re done, that these moments which are so sharp and clear in my mind right now, may one day fade. I never want to forget you. I never want to wake up one morning and a realize that its been a few years since you’ve been gone, then 10 and eventually 20. I hate the hole that’s been left in my life without you there. And I hate that I can’t call you to say Happy Birthday today, and tell you what a beautiful woman you are becoming, how great your life is going to be and how much my life has been blessed by your existence. You wouldn’t believe me. You would think that I was lying and that there was no way you could ever impact my life, me who was your big sister in every way but blood. Younger siblings always seem to be looking up to their older siblings, subconsciously or not, it always seems to lie below the surface of every interaction. But Taylore, you changed me. You helped me to grow. You supported me and understood me in a way nobody else ever has. You knew and loved my crazy family as much as I did and because of that you could get just as mad and furious at them as I do, but it was ok. It was okay because you loved them regardless of what I told you. I never had a filter on around you. It was you and it was me. We were always 100 percent real and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that. I know you knew how much you meant to me, but I desperately hope that you were able to believe it deep down in your heart. I would love to think that I helped you with life and with your own burdens when you needed it, but the reality is, I think you were always the strong one. You helped me in this life and I am forever grateful. Thank you for sharing with me, your hopes and dreams, your joys and your pains, the stupid dramas of your stupid friends who you loved more than words can describe, thanks for doing this life with me. Happy Birthday lil sis, I miss you so very much.

Grieving in my sleep

Last night, for the first time since we lost her, I dreamed. Perhaps it was because i finally had some sort of closure from the funeral yesterday. It doesn’t matter, but I dreamt, and it was more vivid, horrendous, and awful than any I’ve had before. Yet somehow it felt to me like there was a profound encounter lying beneath the surface of what I can remember, but I just can’t quite lay my finger on it.

Here it goes, what I can remember….

*Amanda died on her way home from the funeral. In a car accident. At he four way stop between my house and great grandpas. T-boned. She was going to visit my family because they wouldn’t go visit her.*

This is not hard to interpret. It’s was the same way that we first heard that Tay had died. And despite my struggle with amanda, she knew her in a way I didn’t and visa versa. Together our memories and stories are whole. Together we keep her memory alive, all of her. In that way I feel connected to Tay by being connected to amanda.
Because of this my grieving mind pushed me to relive my sense of loss, but with amanda as a substitute.

Next: I was sitting in the field on the Far East side of our property. Only it wasn’t our actual fence line, It was the one that only exists in my dreams…I’ve been there before. I was with someone. It looked Dallas, but it wasn’t, they felt different. Different but extremely familiar. For a while I thought it was like Taylore, it was kinda like her eyes and soul, still however it was different. Whoever it was, We sat side by side grieving, gazing at the stars. Slowly a group of teens showed up on the opposite side of the fence. They didn’t see us and we were perfectly still. They drank and shouted, oblivious, and we looked on in sadness. Suddenly they lit a firework…it was beautiful and lit the country side. But the second one they lit shot to the ground and started the hill ablaze. I had jumped up in panic after the first firework, I knew they had to be stopped. But whoever it was that I was with pulled me back down gently with the saddest look I’ve ever seen in anyone’s eyes, with a finger to their lips they softly said ” No Sam”. Then they ushered me back up the hill, back towards the house. The fire raged around and behind us, but we just walked slowly, arm in arm and in perfect peace.
I knew later that the area was checked to find the cause of the fire but I had been saved from blame because that person had stopped me from crossing the fence.
Come to think of it maybe the person/ presence was Jesus. The soft brown eyes. The perfect calm/peace. They felt familiar, but in a new way. I woke the following morning with the name Melchizedek on my mind. I hadn’t the slightest clue why, however the name seemed to fit the figure who met me in my dreams.

(One week later)

After a week of reflecting on this encounter I am certain that it was Jesus. Not a Jesus that was created as figment of my day imagination in my dreams, but actually God. He was there bestowing peace in my mind, saving me from the terrors attacking my mind.

And When We Cry Together…

Something beautiful happens when you cry with someone. I don’t mean your immediate family, though that can be just as impactful, but I mean to address those moments when you really truly cry with another human being. You allow another person to see a raw, unfiltered, pure part of your soul and there’s no going back. You can never undo it, they can never unsee it, and in that moment things change. If you are lucky, they change for the better..but unfortunately it doesn’t always work that way. Humans are sinful creatures. Every last one of us are full of imperfections and covered in scars. Part of that sin means that though we are all flawed, we will still reject others when we see their flaws.

However I don’t want to write about those heartbreaking moments of rejection, because very recently I’ve been shown that it doesn’t always happen that way. Sometimes, when we are brave enough to show that deep (sometimes dark) part of our soul to a friend, they embrace it rather than recoil. Luckily for me when I broke, when I couldn’t hold myself together for another second, I fell apart in front of a true friend. Because instead of turning away, this friend helped put me back together piece by piece. And I realized, after I had made it through the worst of my ordeal, that we were no longer just friends. Something fundamental had changed. It’s the same element that would have changed if this friend had rejected my faults. You can no longer be just friends. Friends you can lie to, you can put on your happy face, and laugh, and make jokes, and tell them about your awesome life without them ever suspecting that you are falling apart inside. But the moment that this element changes, when someone sees your soul, they just know. They know when you lie, when your smile is fake, when your ‘happy mask’ is on they can see the hurt in your eyes. No amount of jokes you make or stories you tell will make them unsee…you.

And if all of this wasn’t enough, reaching this deeper level of friendship that is discovered when you bare your soul, this friend returned the honor to me. This friend cried. For me. With me. I saw a glimpse of this friend, that I’ve never seen before and can never unsee. Now, no matter what, things have shifted. We can still have fun and be casual, but in the back of my mind will always be the security and the safety of knowing that this person, has truly seen me, and yet has remained by my side.

My Name.

My name is Samantha. I’ve always liked it, It’s not too common yet not uncommon. It is a formal name in full, and it is easily shortened to Sam. Everyone calls me Sam, unless I interact with them on a strictly professional level, which I fortunately also happen to like. However there is this interesting thing that I’ve noticed gradually over the years, which hasn’t failed me yet. The moment somebody calls me Sammy. That is a name that has unintentionally been reserved for the people who care most for me. I’ve told maybe two people about this theme that I’ve noticed, so it is a completely uncoerced compliment. When a person calls me Sammy, I know exactly how that person feels about me, and where we are in our relationship. It has only happened a handful of times, naturally, I don’t make it a habit to become so close with everyone I meet. Only the people absolutely closest to me…who have actually seen the truest version of ‘me,’ have ever called me Sammy. And even those few who actually call me that, use the name rarely, and only in a completely affectionate way. But to me, it’s one of the sweetest sounding things for me to hear. Not because it’s my name, but because it is a word that speaks volumes to me.