I wanted to tie this post to Josh Ritter's Wolves, but it's been done. Still it's the song I listened to on repeat in the car. I wonder if the wolves could be your fears. He finds them everywhere. To me that's my anxiety. Heartburn, indigestion. No not that. Fear in the pit of my stomach, churning. Nausea on an empty stomach.

There's a song, that fits wrapped around your shoulders, that can soothe me through it all. I know there is, but I don't remember discovering it. Razzle Dazzle Rose helps soothe me some. Is that a trumpet? Is that the soothing part? Maybe. Or her voice. Mostly Tracyanne Campbell's voice.

Rose, I'm feeling older 
Courage my love it makes me bolder

I need courage. I need hope. I need a hug.

I think getting outraged at the doctors office makes you crazy. Everyone else is speaking so calmly, why would you raise your voice? So I just smile and nod and try to make them feel better about my news. That's screwed up. Both versions. The one where I try not to make a big deal out of it and the one where you get emotional in public. Where is the inbetween?

I don't know if I can go through that surgery again from the beginning. I don't know if I can hold my head up every time I lose a part of myself. I want to feel whole again.

Labels: anxiety, Camera Obscura, emotions, Josh Ritter, mixes, pissed, processing, soothing songs, stress, surgery

It has been 3 weeks since I've seen my grandma.  I had plans to go up next weekend, but now I don't know what for.  She's not eating and the doctors won't give her a feeding tube because of her DNR. My dad returned home tonight, but I'm not sure why.  I have to think it's because he doesn't want to see her physically die in front of him.  I'm sure he'll be back up in a day or two.  I think I might be with him.

My therapist didn't have another evening session available for two weeks, and I told her it would be fine because I thought by then I would have seen my grandmother and would still have time.  Now I'm wondering if I'll have to cancel for a funeral.  I feel guilty, confused, wrong.  I wanted to start before things got worse so that I could deal with it in a healthy way.  So that I could still manage the other parts of my life.  So that I could have more clarity in the other parts of my life before this happened.

This is why I threw myself into my work.  To prepare for the moment when emotion overtakes logic and I can't do my work, can't be around people without crying.  I just keep thinking I'm going to disappoint them.  They're good people, but I don't want to burden them with my work, with my groups.

This feels like another one of those posts that I want to delete later.  Replace it with "death was coming and I was sad. and not ready.  and  afraid."

Labels: death, emotions, family

It is such a strange concept to me that people can wake up and not remember their dreams.  They can have such positive and negative impacts on my days.  They inspire me.  They can fill me with rage and motivation and ass kicking certainty.

I think this song speaks to my dreams.  You wake up and you feel one way.  You do all these things and you still feel that way. 

When I was younger I hated waking up when I was having a really good dream.  I would tell my mom I had to finish it and then I would fall back asleep and attempt to finish it.  I had a lot of dreams where I could fly, so clearly that was better than SAT prep first thing in the morning.

In college I had dreams about these perfect guys, maybe not perfect, but perfect for me.  The dreams had all that initial fall in love montage of feelings, that feeling when "are we going to kiss?" is the most exciting question in the world and your heart beats faster and you can't wipe that dumb smile off your face and you just feel warmer.  Like love is a feature you wear.  Those dreams put me in such great moods.  I was in college, I was young, I could have that glance across North Campus moment with anyone.

These days my dreams all center around my current doubt.  My cats show up in my dreams sometimes.  It's so odd, but it calms me in the dream too.  Unless they're in danger and then I am the angriest mama bear you've ever seen.  Some times Tess shows up in my dreams, but she's never in danger.  She's always just that smiling silent type. :)


One thing about my dreams - they make me so fucking vulnerable. The other night I dreamed that my two front teeth cracked halfway up and I was going to lose both teeth and I felt so ugly.  I was working from home and I still put makeup on to fight that feeling.

I'm not going to let these dreams keep me down.  I am not going to succumb a whole day's mood to them.  I'm not going to focus on the negative or try to investigate the negative possibilities.  I am, you guessed it, going to do my best to stay in the light.

Labels: be positive, dreams, emotions, I miss you., stay in the light

Found a gem in a YA book to ponder over. The book is called The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon.

"Human beings are not reasonable creatures. Instead of being ruled by logic, we are ruled by emotions. The world would be a happier place if the opposite were true," (Yoon 47).

Like logically I would have gone to bed early, had my dad drive me to work so that I would be early & catch up on my work there. Instead I stayed up organizing my email & creating a host packet and wound up tired as hell this morning. And yes, my parents are driving me to and from work while I'm in the cast. I can't turn my wrist and so my reaction time with my left hand is too slow to keep up with the aggressive drivers on my commute.

Anyway, I am all emotion. Even my memory is emotion based rather than fact based. Would logic all the way make me happier though? If logic incites happiness, an emotion, can it really be said it rules without it?

Labels: books, emotions, literary quotes, logic, Nicola Yoon, reading, reading challenge, reading list, The Sun is Also a Star

For some, dreams can have a lasting, memory like quality to them. A dream about a lover cheating can bring a person a seemingly unshakeable anger toward their lover - at least for a few hours or days while that person tries to rationalize the dream. As Gael García Bernal's character Stéphane says in The Science of Sleep, "In dreams, emotions are overwhelming."

A simple fabrication you create while trying to digest all the day's information, references to the past week, observations about the future. Once it stirs emotions, a dream can sour a day, create distance in a relationship or in my case, on a weekly basis, stir old feelings to the surface and fuck them every which way. You see, I have been having dreams about my ex again. They're dreams about adventures,  betrayal, and false memory-like feelings of love.

We didn't end things in a firestorm. We came to an agreed upon decision filled with logic and supported by facts. Facts and logic my head is well versed in, but my heart, ah my heart. Treacherous, emotional, easily swayed to love, my heart. Add a few emotionally crafted dreams to my reason and logic, and no historically documented farewell can hold up to this feeling of longing.

We were in each other's lives for over five years, yes, but we have been completely out of each other's lives for months. While there is much that I cherish from those years, there's much that I regret as well. Distance, ill fated decisions, moods, resentment, and yet, through it all, love. I support our decision to separate with reason and logic on my side, and with love we wished for happiness. So with love, one must support the other's need for a complete and total end of the friendship that laid the foundation for love to grow.

Is it the lack of familiar contact that allows for longing to resurface? Does time allow for facts and reason to blur? Or are the emotions created in dreams really that overwhelming?

Labels: dreams, emotions, Gael Garcia Bernal, longing, The Science of Sleep, We used to be friends.