Atalist's Dungeon

 rage overtook me tonight.  I didn't expect it.  It wasn't like I was angry to start today, today started like any other day... and then I looked outside. The weather turned and turned and turned. It proved that it is unpredictable as anything today, but still. I was fine. It wasn't until I was on my way home that it hit. My bonus daughter is sick. Her school has a covid outbreak but apparently, it didn't affect her cohort? but still, she is sick. I should preface that I am not mad at her, I would never be mad at her for something that was out of her control like getting sick. Admittedly she has not been the best with hygiene but that is teenagers for you. We have all been there. But still, she is sick and it is worrying.  I came home and immediately tried to book her a covid test, to be met with frustration that they can't get her in until Wednesday. Fuck. Okay. I call her mom as there were appointments on Tuesday and am met with the third degree.. " well that...

 More recently I suffered a loss. It was distant to me as this person is someone I hadn't seen for quite some time, however, I felt it. I felt it wash over me and felt the sadness knowing that the tomorrow will carry on and she will remain. It resonated with me that her children have to go on without her as that is something I have been struggling with, having it loom. I also remembered her as she was to me, funny, kind, mom to all. Someone who wanted to know you and took great care to get the right gift or to make sure they were understood. Someone who laughed and wanted to play a game or too just for some fun. She was also a person who liked to crack a few jokes and then laugh at herself when she was unintentionally funnier than she herself had anticipated.  This loss was a hard one. Now, I have been removed from being her daughter-in-law for 13 years and yet, she was once family. I cared for her and that feeling does not dissipate just because you are no longer tied to her ...

 Fuck you radio strikes again.  I spoke with my mother on Friday and she couldn't stop telling me how much she loves me and how she would be lost without me. She wanted to tell me how much she had been appreciating what we have been doing for her and all I could do was squirm. It sent chills down my spine because I am so used to waiting for the other shoe to drop, not necessarily from her but just in general. She is a similar person in the sense that she will tell me how she feels exactly before the bad hits. The calm before the storm if you will. So her telling me these lovely things I want to hear comes at a price of being wary of what is to come. I don't have the capacity to just enjoy them as I have been conditioned into this response I have. I realize I titled this fuck you radio and I will get to that, but some information before I get to it.  We talked about her equipment, her care, and her bills, and the general minutia of things that I am handling. I am managing ...

 This past weekend. Was glorious.  I took the time to unplug, sleep, eat, and play with my kids. To just be a family, not have my phone in my hand constantly, not checking in on people to see what is going on. Just to be mundane ... and it was marvelous. I cooked a turkey dinner with my mother-in-law, we spent time. Sunday we slept and went for walks. I went grocery shopping and the kids played together. We ran around playing hide and seek and just to remember what it was like to be a kid. It was fun, it was more than fun, it was therapeutic. The only thing missing was quality time with my husband but I know that will come this week. We will find the time. I need to find the time for him and I.  I was here, I ran and chased and played hide and seek with my kids. It was beautiful and a blessing. In such a shitty time, it is important to look for joy. I found it. I lived in the mundane and it was wonderful. 

 The water calms me. It always has had a calming effect. I dive in, no matter the temperature and I slow, I feel my body relax and the simple and salient become clear. I can reason and I can figure out even the darkest or toughest problems. It feels like there are not enough baths or showers in the world in the winter or dark time... but that is why I have always connected to the summer. It is why that time is always a time where I can breathe, just breathe. Find the rhythm in the movement as my body slices through the water. All major concerns slip a little for me to concentrate on the feel of being one with the deep.  I am a water baby, always have been but it is more than that. I connect with the water, I connect with her. She is living and moving and I understand her. I understand why she will change course, I understand her destructive side and the side which is entirely still and at peace. I think I connect and understand it so much because it is a kindred spirit. It is ...

 I have been busy.  Keeping my head down and doing all of the tasks but I am burnt out.  The emotional work that I have been doing is vast and expansive. I have been doing a lot. I know this and my family knows this. I needed time away. I am here and yet I can't shut it down. I can't stop. I can't take a breath because I know the work doesn't end while I am away.  I have had all these mixed emotions and feelings about everything. I am scattered and then today I hear that one of my lifelines is retiring and leaving his profession. One less lifeline and a whole lot more anxiety. I should be okay, I understand the world carries on but I am going to miss him.  I was hit hard by one of the people that I cared for deeply passing. He was a friend that I hadn't seen in a while and was another lifeline through a brutal time in my life. His passing shook me as he taught me how to move past. He taught me to open my heart to all the experiences and to smile through whatever...

Your grief  Your grief is not mine.  Your grief does not overrule mine.  While we may be going through grief together over the same situation, your grief does not supersede what others are feeling. When I tell you how I am feeling, it is not a competition. It is not a who has it worse or who's grief is deserving of validation. Everyone is entitled to grieve.  like the rock thrown into the pond, the ripples of a loss echo out. Each makes the water tremor in a different way. The ripples move in their own way and are felt differently. Grief is the same. We inhabit the same space and yet our response is different. We handle it, we are affected by it differently. make no mistake everyone will feel it, but don't be a narcissist and tell me that your grief is more important or invalidates my own because it is yours. 

 I am dealing with a great deal of guilt these days.  With back to school and resuming the regular programming,  I am filled with anxiety, worry, and guilt. Guilt that I cannot be up with my parents to help them through this, anxiety, and the worry of what is going on up there and how I can possibly mitigate any of the trouble or difficult times. My mind runs on overdrive trying to remember appointments for mom, scheduling for kids, and the general mishmash of work. When I am up with my parents I am feeling guilt about not being with the kids as that time is precious and fleeting, when I am home I am feeling guilty because I also recognize that time with my mother is precious and finite as well. It's not enough to want to accomplish the impossible, I have to beat myself up over it too. My father keeps telling me that I am doing more than my fair share and that it is okay, but when I hear the quiver in his voice or the worry, I cannot help but feel panicked. I worry about ...

 Life is hard. Things are bad. There's my quick update.  I am tired. More tired than I have been. My weekends are supposed to be there to recharge, but no more. My weekends are full of worry, full of work, and full of logistics. I am trying everything I can to keep it together, to be there for my family but I am burning out. Tensions are running high and I am not tolerating any bullshit. None in fact.  My mother has been given a terminal diagnosis. It would be similar to saying an abbreviated sentence as in a way, cancer has made her its prisoner. leptomeningeal carcinomatosis. 2-4 Months and that in itself hurts. But she is being affected in such a way that she is okay, in her world things are fine. In our world, it is an entirely different story. We are hustling, we are coordinating and my dad is merely surviving taking care of my mom and we are feeling it. People are talking to us about hospice and the end of her journey and it all seems like a fucking nightmare. ...

 Okay, Story Time!  I went to the hospital as I usually do to go visit my mother and I ran smack dab into Jim. Yes, Jim. We had talked a little bit prior to all of this as he was having problems getting family to see his mother and was curious how my sister and I got away with both of us being able to go with dad. Dad and I went to visit and after our visit, we rushed to the elevator. When we stepped out on the first floor, an awkward visit ensued. It was strange and weird to see this person I had spent so much time hating in front of me. I just didn't have it in me to carry on the rage of hating him or really to care. It was also weird to see the passages of time on their faces (Jim and Shauna) and see the laughs, hardships stretched across their expressions. I know it shouldn't have perplexed me as much as it did, but I cannot help but think back to my past and wonder if I had challenged things earlier if my life would have gotten me to the same spot. It also made me appreci...

 An amazing author stated that "pain demands to be felt" and I feel it. I feel it keenly now. This rollercoaster has been nothing but traumatic. Like the little kid on a ride they found out quickly was too much, this all seems too much. I am not prepared for what is to come and yet, I feel all of it, like a blade cutting through flesh, it is sharp and hard and yet the pain dulls and settles in for the long haul.  I know I am not going to heal from this. Forever changed, I will carry this scar. The biggest scar I have ever experienced in my life. Traumas on top of traumas, this will be the hardest thing I will experience. I say experience but really it is enduring. I will endure this for the sake of those around me but to endure my love surviving something my mother will not. It is a fucked up thing to think about. That there is a finite amount of time with her and that time is exceedingly running out. I never thought or even imagined this is how this would go and yet here we ...

 Today has been a day full of conundrums of my personal history. I went to the hospital to visit my mom and was confronted with none other than the fuckwad that murdered my friend. When you run into people that you have absolute hatred for, you say you are going to do all these things, say all of these things to the asshole... but reality can be different. I couldn't believe I was in an elevator with him. I was surprised when he recognized my face and was promptly told to be quiet by the correctional officers accompanying him. It wasn't until I stopped hyperventilating and got out of the elevator that I could compose myself. he said thank you to me for holding pressing the automatic buttons for the door and yet all I could say was, don't you fucking thank me and I ran. I called my friend while on the run and I was breathless. I was in shock... but it was more that I couldn't believe that happened.  that a man, that damn near cut off my friend's head... was up and wa...

 Looking at the love my parents have and the relationship they have I feel so blessed by my husband. Douglas, you are everything I needed, everything I wanted, and the love I deserved. I remember a while back you told me after watching a couple of movies that we accept the love we deserve and I felt for the longest time I was under-valuing myself. I didn't see myself for who I was and the things I had to offer. It took me by surprise on the weekend when my cousin was boasting about who I was that I was shocked and embarrassed but all the things she said were true. I have never connected the dots to who I was and yet, you, my amazing Douglas did. You try to remind me who I am and how wonderful that is. You talked to my dad today about how I was your favourite person ever and that in itself is high praise because of the company you keep. You are incredible and I feel incredibly lucky to have found someone who takes things in stride... the things I worry about. You work tirelessly to ...

I am not wanting to be where I am right now. Not physically, physically I am next to my husband and that is always a good place. That is especially true given that today is our anniversary but today was a hard day.  Today was the understanding and the recognition of undeniable truths. My mother is dying. All of it is bullshit, but there are little moments in the mania that she smiles and for a second, is cognizant of where she is and I see a glimmer of the mom I have always known. The stubborn and funny person, the staunchly independent, and the brave and courageous... there is a person inhabiting space in my mom at the moment. That person is afraid, frail, delicate, and scary. She is unpredictable and does not understand what is going on. That is the person I am getting to know right now and it is hard.  I am also dealing with the grief and acceptance that what was is now gone, and where we find ourselves now is in for a world of change. I continually say I am not prepared an...

 I am not okay.  Let's start there.  Nothing about a close family member dying is okay. It is utter bullshit.  Objectively I understand that it is the plight of the human condition. I also understand that we make choices in life and those choices lead us down a path that we cannot un-walk. It is normative but at the same time, nothing about this feels normal. It feels broken.  Everything is broken. I am broken.  I get that grief is a process, hell I studied the Kubler-ross cycle in school and I wrote an emotional envelope about grief. I know quite a bit about the grief cycle but at the same time, it is different to go through it. It's different to know that it is coming.  I am not okay and nothing is okay, but maybe that in itself is okay. I have been learning that not being okay in this instance is normative and if you are okay there is something inherently wrong with you. I am trying, trying the best I can to manage all of this and I can't, I just ca...

 I feel nothing and everything all at once.  When someone receives terrible news there are multiple ways to take it... For me, I feel empty, like the air has gone out of the room. Colours are dull and faded and the only light left is fake. It is such a worldless feeling. Where nothing matters and every second slogs on and yet I feel everything, acutely.  I am being dragged through and my heart is not shattering because it is not made of glass, and yet... it is a heart. It beats and is material. It is soft and its purpose is to slog on. It feels like it has been removed from my chest and has been dragged on the floor. Full of slivers and lint and yet it still beats.  My children and my family are the reason it still beats. Not in a climactic sort of end it all if things are going poorly... that has never been me... but they are the beats that pull my heart to feel, to smile, and to know that the world is not entirely void of colour. They make me smile and pull me out ...

 I learned today from a very knowledgeable Reverand that screaming "fuck" out into the universe is a prayer. I did not know this. Having screamed this out into the universe multiple times this year, I truly feel it. I am trying, I really am. I am trying to hold it all together. To support my children, my family, my husband...and sometimes that means screaming, yelling, being frustrated and crying.  It means letting myself feel all the emotions and letting them wash over me. It means dealing with whatever anxiety and stressors I have.  my support group seems to have shrunk mostly because I cannot call on those people to be in my bubble right now... but are they gone? no. They are just tucked neatly away into their own bubble "praying" the same way I am.  Screaming fuck into the universe with all manner of zeal is religious experience. 

 I am exhausted.  Like many of you reading this, I have been rolling with the punches of covid restrictions and with the issues surrounding such an aggressive disease and I am tired. This has been grueling for all of us and I feel like we are doing the best we can. Some of us are so exhausted that we have given up the cause and are no longer restricting movement and gathering... I feel this. I miss people, and yet I know it is in the best interest of everyone not to gather. My mother is my main reason, but there are many. I don't know how long my mother has left, to be honest, no one knows how long they have... but having a brain tumor makes you think about these things. It is a fuck of a thing to deal with in the midst of a pandemic and all the while, the exhaustion with the rules and now helping my family go through the process of trying to radiate and shrink her tumor and fight for all the time we can muster is doubly exhausting. I will do it... but it is not the fight that...

 Time heals all wounds... So much anecdotal bullshit. Time doesn't heal wounds. People grow, but the wounds remain. We just learn to live with them. I am realizing that the trauma of all the things I have gone through in my life is like exploding paradoxes. They happen but there is no clear understanding of what I have just gone through and they blow up like fireworks. Almost instantaneous and with very little warning. I am thinking back to when the boys came into the world and how it was life-altering, but I did not know just how altering it would be. I knew I would love them but it is so much more than that. It is a paradigm shift. Like all of these exploding paradoxes, they are good and bad. Well, I am going through another. With my mother and her diagnosis. She is okay until she is not. When she is not it is world-shattering and I feel frozen with helplessness. So I ramp it up into overdrive. I go a million miles a minute in my mind doing all the things. This has always been th...

E xperiencing fuck you radio today. When you go through something and then all of a sudden the perfect song finds you. It is so cathartic to lose yourself in the melody and just roll with the song and let whatever emotions come. life hasn't exactly been easy, but there have been bright spots. My mom's birthday was lovely. Challenging at times but still lovely to spend time with family. There have also been joys with the kids. Doing experiments and having cuddles and smiles when normally I wouldn't be able to. I almost forgot that my mom had cancer and that life likes to kick you when you are happy. My birthday came and I was excited and looking forward to the day... well fuck you universe. It just took one look at me and said, how like life... and then I got a phone call that mom has a brain tumor. Fuck. the last few days have been filled with immense and intense purpose. Keeping everyone updated, okay, fed, driven to where they need to be, clothed,  etc. There was a great ...

 I have been struggling to find the words to explain things.  I had a breakdown last night. Complete with an ugly cry, where I couldn't breathe. I felt claustrophobic. The world felt closed in. I could feel it tightly around me. Living through a pandemic hasn't been easy and I have felt that I have been doing all of this with the utmost composure and holding it all together. I thought, until last night. And then it hit. My husband for all of his virtues struggled to help last night. He tried to highlight things, things that I took as offensive. Things like, "do you think you are the only one struggling?", as an example. No, but that does not mean that what I am going through doesn't matter. I was not trying to illustrate how I was feeling superseded other's emotions, more so that plainly, I was not alright.  It is unusual that I am not alright... I roll with things, I adapt. Last night there was no adapt, only a flood of emotion coming out of me.  All of this ...