Emotional Damage

 I know we all watch TikTok and hear that sound clip of a guy saying, “Emotional DAMAGE!” And it’s hilarious. I laugh at that stuff too, but my psychologist side is coming out in this post. Yes, I am trained therapist working on licensure right now, I work in opiate addiction and I see so much of my own problems in it. Counter transference is a real thing, y’all.

Last night while I was working my second job (trust me, having only written 1 book and I’m not a licensed therapist yet, writing doesn’t pay the bills either), my car brakes started grinding. I couldn’t work Lyft for the night, I feared I wouldn’t have transportation and I’d be bumming rides all week until my garage could find time for me in my schedule and I couldn’t pay for the work and OH MY GOD HOW DOES ANYBODY SURVIVE IN THIS CAPITALIST HELLSCAPE OF MODERN AMERICA?!?! I have been on emotional overload for almost 14 hours, but my garage was able to fix it today. As a bonus, they had this awesome book in their free book basket in the lobby, which made my morning!

The relief is palpable. But I keep thinking about how I can identify now what emotional overload is like in my body and knowing it meant I needed rest and self care.  And I remember feeling this way and not knowing if it was ever going to go away and trying to work through it. That was such a horrible way to live. 

Don’t take this as a flex that I can identify emotional overload and figure out what I need to do to calm down. It’s not. This is literally YEARS of therapy and emotional work and learning boundaries, not just with others, but with myself. Nobody ever taught me to self-soothe and to care for myself. I absorbed stress from my caregivers as a child and took it on as my own, and felt responsible for it. I’m not. And it’s okay to do things that nourish yourself and fulfill you and to invest in your own mental and emotional health. I get annoyed with people who throw any kind of self care you’ve done for yourself in your face as selfish and irresponsible. Self care isn’t selfish. It’s necessary for survival.

In short, TL,DR: you can’t pour from an empty cup, so don’t try to power through your stress, it doesn’t help. 

The Handwriting Dilemma

 Okay, I'm gonna admit something I hate about myself and about myself as a writer: I have terrible handwriting.

Let's not Panic- I Already Have

I have been keeping something quiet for the last month and it’s been difficult. I don’t like posts to stir sympathy and living in my own trauma to get attention (I swear I’m not trying to get attention with this post), but it’s easier to post this on social media and control the narrative myself as opposed to it getting around in gossip: I have skin cancer.

Cult of Terrorism

I'm reflecting on yesterday's coup attempt and I watched it yesterday as it unfolded on NBC NOW and CNN. Donald Trump made statements encouraging the rally-goers yesterday to overtake Capitol Hill to stop the confirmation of Biden's win in the electoral college. People looted Capitol Hill and terrorized the staff and Congresspeople, scaled the walls, pointed their guns, threatened police and security guards, and raided personal offices.

I'm still having panic attacks from it. I was terrorized.

Remembering 2020

2020 was a tough year for everybody.

It was for me, too.

I'm so glad it's over, but I realized it was important to really sit in and realize what it meant.

The worst health pandemic happened, obviously. And I don't feel that we had good leadership through it. I broke my own rule that I wasn't going to talk about political things on my author Facebook, and I ended up talking about it because it was a matter of life or death.

People I know and loved died from COVID.

I lost an incredibly close friendship suddenly because she said some really horrible things that weren't true. It was hard and there was a lot of grief, as if there was an actual death.

With work and my internship, I couldn't be there for my mother like she needed as a widow, and we decided with my sister, as a family, it was best for her to move out of the country to live with my sister and her family for her mental health and to avoid isolation.

There was more coming to terms with my father's passing and the grief. 

I'm middle-aged. This means my life is half-over; and while parts of it feel wasted, I'm able to reflect on why it got wasted.

At the end of the year, there was a terrorist bombing in downtown Nashville which was shocking and upset our sense of comfort and safety and community here in the Nashville area.

But while this is a season of life, good things happened, too.

I found I was much more capable than I thought. I was faced with challenges with my internship and discovered how good I was at solving problems on my own.

I discovered even more capable I am as an adult. Adulting doesn't seem so bad now.

I'm making choices about where to go in life as an adult.

There was another good thing in writing: I found a good development editor/coach who helped me with finishing a draft of the first Magi Chronicles book.

While my life is half over, I realized I needed to take the time to enjoy my situation more- even alone and in quarantine, not wish for it to "hurry up and be over with" like I keep hearing out of people. I want to enjoy my life so much more and treasure the rest of it. So I created ways to enjoy the social distancing and improve myself. 

My mother is in a better place living with my sister-- and I'm going to go visit them once I'm done with grad school in July. I'm sad she left the country, but it's for the best for her health. With my father having passed, I'm realizing how fragile life is. And how important not wasting your life is.

A vaccine has been created and is being distributed among the American public for COVID.

I made better friends and recognized some dangerous personality traits I've been attracted to and need to stay away from.

I'm capable. So much so. 

We elected a better president and so far, the American Congress could shift to better leadership, pending Georgia's runoff election. I am so proud of the resistance that got Trump out of the White House as of January 20th, and I feel confident that a majority of Americans are intelligent to see poor leadership and what happens when they don't get involved in democracy-- and it DOES work.

As much as I've been shamed for spreading my politics, I am feeling much more stable in stating what I stand for with excellent reason why I do that make sense. I've a better support community when it comes to my political beliefs and we've seen it in action in this year's election. 

I'm learning how resourceful I can be, which I am thankful for. I think that's the theme I'm going to work on this year: being resourceful and self-reliant. But, my coffee maker broke on New Year's Eve. 2020 messed me with one last time! Thank goodness I had a French Press.

Grief is a Funny Thing

I went into my graduate program to help families with the tough things that happen in life: marriage, family fights, family conflicts, and among other things, death. I didn't think I'd be going through surviving one, especially during the program.

On May 6th, 2019, my father passed away. We sat with him and waited for it to happen once the doctors told us it was starting. This went on for about two weeks, one of my brothers, my sister, my siblings-in-law, and my mother and I were there at his last breath. This is the only time I've ever missed a graduate school class so far.

There will be a lot of "I" and "me" statements in this blog, and I apologize for this, it will seem really selfish. It's a blog really about myself and my experiences.

Daddy's military medals

I got emotional that day. I passed a few tears, but I didn't weep uncontrollably. But all I could think about was how to honor my father. Death is something we try to pretend doesn't happen in our society. There's such a fear surrounding it and it's controversial to speak of. But it's a part of life. If it gives you the "heebie-jeebies," as my mother says, this blog probably isn't for you.

5 Weeks Out!

So the breast reduction saga continues...

At the three week appointment, they gave me the okay to sleep at night without a bra on. I'm doing research, and so much of it points to bras making breasts sag and droop due to impeding and damaging chest, back, and shoulder issues. They also gave me permission to sleep on my side again and to stretch and I am sleeping so much better! The promised my breasts would start to fill out from underneath more. They took out my "deep" stitches, too, which pinched a little. I have lost most of my scabs except the sites where my suture ends and stitches were sticking out. Most of them have dissolved, though. I love picking at scabs for no good reason. It has been torture not to! I can also take ibuprofen again.

It's been a challenge for me. I honestly thought at about 10 days post-op that I was disfigured and might need breast implants to look "normal" again. My breasts hadn't started to fill out underneath yet. It's starting, and I'm noticing it, but it's going slowly. They don't quite look like I hoped they would right off the bat, but I'm trying not to beat myself up. It takes time to heal. A lot of it and patience is not a virtue I am particularly good at. The Breast Reduction support group in Facebook has been very, very helpful for me as well.

I am loving being able to stretch again. My muscles were getting so stiff and sore in my back and shoulders. They're allowing me to do light exercise like walking and lift up to thirty pounds now, so I can do more household chores. All I can think about is how much upper body muscle mass I will have lost between now and when I'm fully healed. It's still weird to see myself and get used to my world without my formerly uncomfortable/large breasts getting in my way (or catching my dropped food, but whatever).

So, I've been doing alright so far, but this week threw me for a loop. I got sick on Monday (booooo!) and started losing my voice. Most people wouldn't get so upset about it, but I work in telephone customer care (one self-published book doesn't quite pay the bills). It's messed with my voice and my work, which is quite frustrating. I think the megadose of antibiotics I got at surgery protected me from bacteria infections for a while, but, 'Tis the Season! So many of my friends have gotten the flu and bad colds, and I haven't. I got my flu shot in October though, so even I do get the flu, it won't be so bad, or at worst, deadly. We have a vaccine for a reason, and it's especially important to take advantage of it if you are not immunocompromised. Please don't pelt me with anti-vax comments, I have no patience for it. I have managed to get through my work week so far, fingers crossed that Mucinex DM keeps doing the trick, too.

I got back into cross-stitch, and I'm making so much progress on my current one! I can't believe how much fun I'm having with it. I needed a break from crochet for a few minutes, anyway. The one I'm currently making is from a kit, Lavender and Lace series, Celtic Christmas by Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it! I started on it back in 2017, but had to put it down several times for various reasons (mostly school-related). I'm finally getting into it! It should look like this when I'm finished:

There's also another four I have the patterns for, which I've already purchased identical Aida fabrics for all of them, which are the other four seasons. Cross-stitch is so rewarding for me, I haven't been doing it very much since I started the path to grad school, but it really is rewarding and satisfying. I wish I could afford to get my works professionally framed, though. I have two cross-stitches on an end table in my living room that don't quite fit the frames themselves are going to need some adjustment.

I hope you all finding ways to entertain yourselves in January! I usually find January the most boring and depressing month because it's cold, there's no big holidays (save for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which some nasty people don't feel like celebrating, boo on them!) and we're all in a money crunch from Christmas. February gets better, though, with Valentine's Day, African American History Month and the Super Bowl (I am tickled pink that the Patriots didn't get it)!

What are you looking forward to in February?