reflection

Evening Reflection 016: On Grieving and Forgiveness

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Daily Summary:
Yesterday felt like a productive day. I wrote, posted, packed up the cats, then came back to the rental house. Which, after going back to some of my previous writings, I never explained the conclusion of the living situation…

I was approved for the rental house where my brother and his partner were staying. They in turn were approved for the house they wanted to buy. We all moved into our new locations and have been doing well. All of my stuff is finally out of storage. I unpacked mom’s china for the first time in over 4 years. I have my “work” corkboard up and decorated with all of my Thank You notes and achievements and little things which hold fond memories for me. I need to decorate my “life” corkboard, but for the most part, everything is unpacked and arranged. The cats love how much space there is for them to run around and there are a billion windows for them to sun bask or lose their shit when they see a bird. It’s adorable. 

Anywho, I came back to the rental, made sure the cats were doing well after making the trip home in the cat carrier, started laundry, showered, and all that fun adulty stuff. Once I felt caught up with tasks at the house, I hopped in the car and made the short drive to a nearby gym. 

I had canceled my membership at the YMCA. Those locations, while not super far away, also are not close and I knew I wouldn’t be invested enough to drive out of my way to go to a place that I already halfway sort of didn’t like. 

This other gym is significantly closer and more in line with the type of goals I want to have for myself. And… AND… they have a sauna. I was sold before we even finished talking. They have a “happy little warm introvert box”. I would give part of my soul for that shit. Instead, all they wanted was part of my paycheck.

I get a discount due to my company. That’s sort of cool. Not going to lie, I wasn’t expecting anything when I name-dropped who I work for. Just felt like part of the conversation for me. 

I am going to be going to my first class today. It’s a spin class at 9:30. I’m hoping I do well. I’m hoping there are not a ton of people. 

Work was decent yesterday. I was able to finish a cross-stitch I was working on and began another. I sent an email to the Director of Global Training to see about setting up a meeting with her. I also got to spend some time chatting with my Team Lead. 

Ox ended up coming back to the rental after his D&D session ended. I was worried he came over out of a feeling of obligation or something equally as “not warm” feeling due to my #1 Concern yesterday. 

He assured me it wasn’t. It helped that he seemed to have no idea what I was talking about. Never mind that I had read both my writings to him during the few minutes we had before my workday started… 

Honestly, I’m not upset that he didn’t remember, or that it at the very least, didn’t make it to long-term memory. I’m glad my writing wasn’t a factor in his choice to come over. At the same time, I’m grateful for not spending the night alone in my own head. I think I would have faired better than on previous nights. It wasn’t something I was looking forward to finding out. 

I slept decently, which feels weird. I feel able to handle today and I’m looking forward to it being relatively productive. The highlight will be the sauna. Legit, I cannot put into words how much I am looking forward to finally feeling warm. 

Random Ramblings: Prompt 4-31
What do you think and feel about what your biggest champion thinks of you?


I… don’t really know how to answer this one. Do I write about what I feel about mom as my champion and her thoughts or do I write about myself as my champion and my thoughts?…

I guess I could do both. We’ll start with mom since that’s who I started with in the last writing. Woo structure. 

What do I feel about mom’s opinion of me, her support, faith in my ability, compassion, acceptance, non-judgment, love, and compassion? 

I feel warm, heard, seen, valued, safe, accepted, supported, loved, and cared for. I feel like I matter. 

It’s like when you’ve been cold and alone, lost outside in the woods in the snow and finally, someone finds you and wraps you in a warm, thick blanket. It has just the right amount of weight to make you feel secure without crushing you under the heaviness. 

Mom always made me feel like I belonged. 

What do I think about all of that…

That’s more complicated. I think that mom is right. I trust in her judgments. I believe in the way she treated people. I truly admire and respect the way she could be supportive of people without compromising her integrity. 

At the same time, my inner self is saying, “I don’t deserve that.”

But… is that truly my voice or is it the voice of my inner critic or another aspect of myself; a growth or tumor of negativity that isn’t my “true” voice? If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better to think of it more like another person saying “You don’t deserve that?”

If it is, then I think they can shut the fuck up. But what if it is me? True me? 

That thought makes me feel cold and alone again. Like the blanket is being forceable taken from me. Like someone is with mom and saying, “It’s her fault she got lost in the first place. She doesn’t deserve help or support. She deserves to walk the rest of the way back in the cold.”

I don’t like those feelings. They don’t feel compassionate or loving. They don’t feel accepting or foster feelings of belonging. 

I guess, at this point in my journey, I have a choice. Do I walk back with the voice which is mom, safe, loved, and cared for, or do I walk back with the voice of judgment, alienation, and worthlessness? 

I’m not sure if the evil voice is truly me… if it is, then I have a ways to go before I am truly my own champion. Until I am able to fill that role in a healthy way, I choose the voice of warmth and safety. 

What do I feel about myself as my champion?

I feel I could do it eventually. I think it’s something I can learn. I have doubts when it comes to the affirmations and support I give myself. I know it is tentative. I know I can be vicious and cruel and so anything positive or supportive is hesitantly heard, never fully accepted. I know it can be taken away, revoked at the slightest transgression. And since I have committed a very serious, major transgression, I don’t have a lot of faith in the kindness I am showing myself. 

I suppose that would be a lack of trust on my part. A valid lack of trust, which is sort of sad… I don’t trust myself to love myself the way mom does. 

I have more faith in my ability to be cruel to myself rather than supportive. 

What do I think about that…

I think it’s sad. It makes my heart heavy to know that ultimately, I don’t trust myself. 

The one person in the whole world I should be able to turn to and depend on… and I don’t trust her… 

And I suppose it’s more that it’s broken trust… There have been so many times in my life where I have not been there for myself. Where I have let those evil voices of self–doubt, shame, guilt, and insecurity assault my psyche. I have stood by and watched my inner core be beaten and bloodied and I did nothing to stop it…

I know I wasn’t there for myself in the past. How can I trust I will be there for myself now or in the future? 

Rising Strong doesn’t specifically talk about this topic, but it definitely has areas that are making me think about how I handle and cope with intense emotions. 

One of the sections talks about forgiveness and how in order to truly forgive you have to accept the death of something and grieve over its loss. 

I grieve over the death of version 1.0 of the relationship with Ox. I do so knowing that there is version 2.0 we are working on and towards. That is how I am able to forgive my actions regarding the relationship.

I grieve over the death of who I was before my actions. I do this to have forgiveness within myself which is what is allowing me to begin to find who I am. 

Maybe this is tied into that, or a slightly different facet. 

Maybe I need to grieve over the death of who I was as a support structure, too. That inner me that was never there, never helped, only watched me struggle… maybe I need to grieve for her, too. She was a part of me, but it feels like my story no longer has a spot for her. Much like the 8-year-old me isn’t the main focus of the story, or 21-year-old me, or 27-year-old me… I feel this is a split in the road and I am saying goodbye to something in me, a part of me, that I can no longer move forward with. 

It’s sad. It hurts. This is what I grieve. 33-year-old me. 

It’s not that she wasn’t good enough, because she was. She tried her best and her best was all she could do. I no longer fit into the 33-year-old me mold. I can’t go back to it. I can only move forward, and so maybe that’s what I have to do… Hug her goodbye with tears running down both our faces as I take the hand of the me that will become my champion and learn how to build trust with her. 

I know what I should feel in regards to a champion. Mom showed me what that felt like. I need to grieve who I was so I can become who I’m meant to be. Grieving sucks. I’m going to go sit with my emotions for a while. 

Letters to Mom 029: Worksheet 1 Reflection

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I’m writing to you again because I’m not going to have time to for the next few days. At least, not the type of time I would want to have, where I can sit, alone, uninterrupted or dictated by a time frame.

I can truly sit and write to you, now, in this moment, and so even though I’m still so raw over completing my worksheet, even though I want to quit and call today good, I’m writing to you instead.

Some of my answers bother me. I know I have strengths. Yet I said I don’t because I feel like I don’t. Answering, “learning I can survive your death sucks” also bothers me though with that one I don’t really know why…

I guess the biggest thing I took away from this first worksheet is clarity. I can articulate why your death is so hard for me now. It wasn’t simply because you died. It’s because my life changed and the biggest change is the lack of physical presence.

I guess that might seem obvious to others, but it wasn’t obvious to me. I had never had to explain it in quite that way before, and so the worksheet helped in that regard.

I also knew, for a while now, that my grief was more intense when I was tired and exhausted, but I didn’t know the why behind it. Sitting and diving into that aspect brought a deeper understanding of what I experience in those moments. You always had a special way of giving me a motivational boost when I felt like I had nothing left within me. You helped me power through, dig deep, not quit, not give in. I miss that. I miss your support and encouragement and positive reinforcement.

I feel, at least from this worksheet, that I need to work on emotional expression. Maybe that means I need to put more effort into writing since I know that’s an outlet that helps. Maybe I need to look into other methods of expression so I have more to employ other than writing. I don’t know, but I feel that is an area of extreme deficiency and one I would like to work on.

And yeah… the whole “Your death wasn’t the end of my world,”… I don’t know what to do with that. I’m not even sure what it is I feel when I read those words to myself. Guilt, maybe? Possibly even survivor’s guilt though I wasn’t the one who was sick and going through surgery after surgery.

I think that’s what I want to explore the most in my next counseling session, though “want” is a very relative term. It’s the section of the worksheet that stirs up the most confusion and dissonance within myself, so it’s the area that needs the most clarification. I don’t “want” to dig deep into emotions that suck, but the only way to get better is to do it, so I want to do it… Fucking emotional bullshit… -_-;

I work for the next three days. I won’t have a lot of time or energy to process through a lot of this any further than I have. LPN classes start in a week and a half. By the end of May, I’ll be a nurse. I got my very own stethoscope yesterday when I picked up the last of my books.

I think that would make you smile. Nurse Jen… Who would have thought that me, your child who passed out at the sight of blood, would be in nursing school…

I love you, mom. Thanks for listening to me.

Musing Moment 145: February Reflection

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I started writing last night but didn’t get very far and most of it was QQing over stupid shit, so this morning, after sleeping for 12 hours, I woke up and decided to delete my previous words.

Instead of flailing around instead of my brain, I instead want to write about the month of February. I unintentionally have been keeping my to-do lists. A few days ago I began cleaning out my notebook and thought it would be interesting to see what “major” things happened during the time frame for the lists I had. It was rather eye-opening how many tasks weren’t laundry or meal prepping or “wake up and shower”.

I want to list them here in my safe space to reflect on.

February Events

Received tax returns
Paid Allison back for surgery deposit
Jon moving confirmed
Began housing search
Apartment toured
Application for apartment filed
Apartment secured
Phone fight with Jon
Post created for 2019 completed cross-stitchings
Follow-up appointment with Endocrinologist
Post created on FB for cancer-free status
Emergency surgery for Dagger
Completed “Breaking Social Norms” assignment
Bought silicone collapsible containers
Bought miniatures for D&D campaign

Not all of these events are necessarily major in that they are life-altering, but they hit my reflection radar as moments that meant something to me. They were moments I kept my word, or invested effort into something important, or did something for myself. They were moments where I didn’t give up or pushed past my comfort zone.

Not all of these events are “good” events. Likewise, not all of them are “bad” events either. Some of them are more personal, while others are social-oriented, or school-related. Oddly enough, not a whole lot happened work-wise this past month. That will change with March since I’m now scheduled for my recertification.

Anywho… A lot happened regarding my brother moving, which took a lot of my time and mental energy. Countless phone calls and conversations with multiple people occurred. My FA, Jon, Ox, apartment staff. Information gathering and the like… It was a pretty big endeavor, one which got accomplished in full in the span of only a few weeks.

February wasn’t a bad month by any means, but it was an intense month. Reflecting back on my lists gives me an awareness of why I constantly feel tired or “peopled out”. It makes me wish I had kept my lists from January, the month where I survived my surgery, spent a week with my dad, went back to work, began my meds, and began adjusting to my self post-surgery.

This year has had a lot happen in a relatively short period of time. I think staying aware that my days aren’t “normal” is important since it’s so easy to give myself shit for “not doing better”.

Fuck that. I’m a fucking bawce. Look at all the crap I dealt with, took care of, and got done.

Going forward I will intentionally keep my to-do lists and make a habit of reflecting on what did or did not occur during that time frame. By doing this I hope to foster a more concrete feeling of acceptance not only with and for myself but also my efforts and occasional episodes of depleted energy. They happen for a reason and my lists help me stay aware of what those reasons are.

Musing Moments 111: Looking At The Future

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I don’t know why there’s such an outpouring of writing from me right now. I’ve already written twice in a roughly 12-hour span. Once to my mom, and once to recap a bit; picking up pieces from my shattered yesterday and putting them back in place.

Maybe that’s what all of the writing is for. Examining pieces.

Reflecting.

I guess that’s good. I know I need to sit and assess my mind and emotions. I need to clean house and organize the clutter I’ve let build up within myself.

Training went well. L and I actually had a pretty deep talk at the end. She’s started setting up obstacle courses for me. She makes me run them two or three times at the end of our sessions after I’ve strength trained and can feel my arms and legs doing their damnedest to fall off to avoid further abuse.

She always pushes me to beat my time, and so far I have.

Today, in between my second and third run, while I was sitting and trying to remember how to breathe, she said I was doing really well. With the Evil Voice in my head continuing its relentless harping of “what’s the point in all of this?” I asked her why, internally, felt like I wasn’t.

She asked what I meant and I explained how I don’t train how I used to or as often as I want so I feel like I’m failing there. I’m not where I want to be financially, so I’m failing there. Even in that moment, knowing that I had just beaten my time by twenty seconds, I didn’t feel like I did a good job so let’s add some sprinkled failure to all of the failure in my fail-tastic life.

I said I know logically I’m doing well but why do I not FEEL like I’m doing well?

She said sometimes we get like that. She mentioned that’s how she felt at her last job. How she hated it. How it kept her from everything she wanted. How she felt like all she was doing was spinning her wheels and going nowhere. She said I’m in the process of changing my situation and that I’m doing well and that I need to keep at it rather than getting frustrated or giving up.

I told her that lately on training days I’ve woken up and have thought about calling out; about  not showing and giving in to the sadness I constantly feel. She asked what I felt when I came in to train.

Me: Like I didn’t let it win.

I told her how our past sessions have felt more like physical therapy rather than training. I’ve felt injured and going to the gym forces my body to function in ways that it should but doesn’t want to. It hurts. It takes effort. It’s so much easier to stay at home in my pjs and do nothing. It’s easier to get sucked back into World of Warcraft and to medicate my life away with games.

But I don’t do that. I change into my compression gear. I make sure I have a full water bottle. I get in my car and I drive to the gym and even though I start out slower than normal, by the end I usually do feel better. Better enough to at least get through the things I need to get through for the day.

I told L how it always seems to be at the end of “the hard times” that I reach my limit and I find myself faltering. It’s now, at the end, just before things get better, where I feel I have no reserves; nothing left to give. Where I feel my will giving out and the darkness crushing down around me, trying one last time to force me down so far that I finally don’t stand back up; submitting to the oppressive weight I refused to bend to.

I have two weeks left. Less than that. A week and a half. I have six days of work. Only six. I can make it through that. I can hold on, by my fingertips if need be, for that long.

I WILL NOT BE BEATEN.

I don’t have to win. All I need to do is not lose. Six more days.

I have donating to do today and then studying. I have to rehang my new “business” corkboard since it fell down a few weeks ago. I have my “memory” corkboard in my room; the one with pictures, and letters, and Warrior Dash bibs, and hiking wristbands. It normally hangs above my computer, but since I can’t have that type of setup at the moment, I opted to keep my “memory” board in my room. I don’t want to share those moments with other people, so instead, I got a “business” board to hang above my computer in the dining room.

I bought it a few weeks ago. So far it has the class requirements for my RN degree so I can highlight the courses I’ve taken and visually see my progress. I have the transfer credits for English and Math, so I already have blue highlights over those classes. If I contest my psychology class I might be able to add another mark before I even get started.

This board is my reminder of what I’m working towards. Once RN is complete I can replace it with the physical therapist assistant sheet. Then BSN. Then MSN. Then my doctorate. Each time I reach a new milestone I can add a page on top of it, climbing my mountain one step, one course at a time.

This morning I printed off another paper to add to it. It’s the 52-week money challenge. I want to start that in January. That would be $1378 dollars saved. I don’t know what I want to do with that money. I want it to be my “Me” fund, though, which may seem stupid with how much I bitch about my credit card and “not having money”.

I want to have something for myself other than food and training.

I want to save that money so next year when I take a week off for my birthday I can go somewhere, alone, by myself. I don’t have to spend all of the money I save, but I can if I want to. I can do whatever I want with it because it’s MINE. It’s not for bills, or debt, or obligations. It’s my reward for holding shit together and doing everything I have to do.

It could be my new gear fund. It could be a new gi or a new solid state drive for my computer or a new keyboard instead of keeping the refurbished one I have that randomly double spaces all the time. it could be any number of things that I haven’t gotten for myself.

Maybe I could make it a biannual thing and start off at week 27. Actually, I really like that idea. That way it’s not a full year that I have to wait. I’ll need to ponder over this for a bit, but I like the way it feels at the moment.

I need to see if I can open a second savings account so I can keep that money separate from my normal savings, which has done nothing but diminish.

Kyle said he applied for his old Domino’s position. There’s a part of me that aches at the thought of him going back to a job he hates. I know there is probably a feeling of defeat for him in reapplying. At the same time, I’m grateful. I feel like that means he is keeping his word to me. He said he would apply for “jobs”. He specifically stated it wouldn’t be only CG jobs.

Even if it doesn’t pan out, I’m grateful for his actions.

If it does pan out I know it will help me feel better about having helped him. It would mean I could actually start putting money towards the credit card again. It would mean that Life would be progressing rather than staying stagnate in the mire I feel like I’ve waded into.

It would mean he’s pulling more of his own weight which takes the burden away from me. It would give me the ability to breathe again.

My main source of stress is money at the moment. Work sucks, but I know that’s getting ready to change. I’m getting ready to make more. I’m getting ready to have my days set and spaced out. It will be annoying but not what I would consider stressful. It’s known rather than unknown. It can be worked with and compensated for.

If I can hold on long enough for things to financially right themselves then the tension and uncertainty “should” go away. Then it becomes a matter of focusing on school.

I am stable with work, which was a goal for this year. It wasn’t purely financial stability I was trying to reach, but rather total Life stability.

I needed to come to terms with entering back into the workforce. I dealt with making a career change and getting my foot in the door for a completely different industry. I’ve actually progressed to the point of having goals again and even a roadmap for how to get to where I want to go.

Career-wise, I have a job which will work with me in regards to school. I have a team who cares about me and who supports me. I have a boss who is exceedingly understanding and who actually listens to me when we have conversations. And it’s not that I dislike my work. I dislike how demanding and unthoughtful the system is; how it makes sleep seem like a luxury we indulge in rather than a basic life necessity. I feel that’s most healthcare positions in general, though.

One CNA CANNOT give adequate care to 20 patients who all need to be bathed and dressed. Companies are too focused on bottom line and Excel sheets and metrics. Too many people with a business degree are in charge rather than people who have actually worked on the floor and who understand what their choices actually do. I feel most workers are treated as cells rather than as humans. We are digital text on a screen, expendable, deletable, rather than people with families, lives, goals, hobbies, fears, and insecurities.

I love my patients, and I love my team. I love that I help people and that my patients are grateful that I do the things I do. On days where I’m not overwhelmed with burnout, it does make my job feel like I have a purpose. I matter. My time matters. My actions matter, because all of it goes into keeping someone else alive. It goes into letting them go home to their husband or wife. It lets them go on trips to Tampa to celebrate their 20th anniversary. It lets them see their great grandbaby. It lets them have Thanksgiving.

I WILL NOT stay with this company, but for now, with the changes I hope school forces to happen, I think I’ll be able to stick it out another couple of years. I like the experience I’m getting. I like how I don’t mentally freak out when someone starts bottoming out from hypotension. I know what to do. I’m confident in my choices. I can stabilize the situation and get the required help I need. I’ve seen patients have seizures. I’ve seen a lot of things in my roughly eight months of working.

I want to keep working while going to school because I want the wisdom of experience as well as the knowledge of a degree. I do think if I’m able to find a balance with everything that I’ll be ok.

One of those things I’m considering is changing the time I attend my class in January. At the moment I have it set for 9:30 am. If I don’t get off work until roughly 9 pm it’s going to make training the in morning before school hard. I also do not want to be in the middle of Orlando rush hour traffic in the evening. It may be that training happens in the afternoon and plasma donation happens in the evening.

I could also look into going to a different donation center; one closer to school. Grocery shopping shouldn’t be too bad since there are several stores between here and school.

I guess this is a good sign. I’m acknowledging where there may be friction in the upcoming system and I’m brainstorming workarounds and alterations to relieve that friction. Like with laundry… Maybe it would be best to do it in the evenings when I get home from work. Shower first, toss everything into the wash then go about my evening for an hour, decompressing, eating dinner, prepping for the next day, before switching the wash to the dryer and going to sleep. That way it’s done and not an added item to my to-do list on school days. And even if I can’t tough it out for an hour, I can switch the wash to the dryer in the morning and still have it off of my to-do list before the day even starts.

I don’t know if this writing has really helped. I guess it has. I like how I acknowledged the actions I’m currently doing along with the actions of others. I like how I’ve reminded myself of what is in the very near future. And I like how I’ve changed work to a number of days rather than stretching it into the vast foreverness it felt like before.

Six days.

I have a countdown. I have an end before my restart.

I can do this.