Old

Sorting through old, old emails on my gmail account, looking for something inspiring, just made it very clear to me that I'm good at losing people. It kind of make me nervous.

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return." Moulin Rouge

Look how close I've come (I'm far away)

Dr. Linton said: "Kristyn, you started grieving three years ago. Your grieving didn't begin with his death, it ended."
Wow. I knew I paid her for a reason.
The issue is this: I want to tell my story, but I don't want to tarnish anyone's memories... even Patrick's. I just want to write truth, and make people understand. Except, I think the ones I really want to understand already do.
I can be alone again. I can write.
I know who I am again.

"And I don't know who I am without you, I only know that I should..." Missy Higgins

Violent mood swings

Thursday I see the shrink for the first time since Bryan died. She is going to flip the fuck out that I haven't been there sooner. But, I'm well-medicated and I've had people taking care of me for the past four weeks; I haven't needed her. Doesn't that mean she's done her job well?
I'm starting to get my focus back at work, and I'm able to finish my shifts now. I'm paying my own bills and taking care of legal and financial shit on my own, which I never thought I would be capable of doing. I'm still not writing, because for the most part I'm not ready to be alone yet. But I've been out with friends and spending a lot of time catching up with people I never had time for in the past few years. I guess that's what's called having a life and not just surviving.
I'm a little manic today. That's to be expected after a solid year of unwavering stress and depression. Dr.Linton will prescribe downers; I won't take them. That's how that will go down.
Now I'm going to buy beer, and possibly cry that I'm not allowed to see Ella because Patrick doesn't love me. At least all my friends are standing by me, and the rest of my family. That's all I need.
No one else was at home with me for the past year, no one else knows what went on in that place. That makes it no one else's fucking business what I do with my life now. I never have needed approval. I'm glad of that fact now.

Lady Lazarus, by Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart----
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash ---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

Broken Things

I'm moving forward. I feel it every day. I'm still carrying guilt that I don't need, but I see light. And I feel alive again.
I'm not sick any more. No migraine meds. No IC meds. No stomach meds.
It's sad that it took a tragedy to let me be me again.

Cruel and Clumsy

Hard day.
Work was easy, once I showed up. But I came home and started answering emails from the past few weeks, re-reading things I had forgotten. Dealing with the charity that's taking the dialysis stuff. Trying to find out what's up with my "survivor benefits" check. It just hit me... the guilt that my brain knows I shouldn't feel but my heart feels anyway. Desolation. Self-recriminations. Anger. A lot of anger. Irrational fear that all of this will be with me forever.
Is it irrational? Maybe it does stay with you forever.
I need to write. I need to be alone and just feel it, get it out. But I'm scared.
I'm not actually as strong as people think I am; I've just been borrowing strength from someone else, and I need to wean myself off of that. I have to be able to stand up on my own. Soon.