I don’t say that lightly. I know how hard it is. Two hours ago I was sobbing my eyeballs out, and an hour ago I was still sure that chucking my sites and everything that I have going on (or should I say, what little I have going on) was the only viable way to move forward.

It took a little time, and it took a lot of chewing and asking questions — of myself and of God. But way deep down, I knew that no matter how upset I got, I wasn’t in charge. What happens to me, and the direction I am supposed to go, is all up to GOD, not me. I can try to engineer everything and everybody, and yet God is still the Master In Command, and He will get me where I’m supposed to be, one way or another. (Kicking and screaming, or willingly — it’s up to me!)

Even as I bawled, I had to concede (begrudgingly at first) that this situation was a matter of faith, and harder still, I had to allow my faith to go to God in search of the answer. Oh man, was that hard! … because what if I didn’t like the answer???

God nudged me through the "coincidental" appearance of an email in my inbox just then.

(I put coincidental in quotes because I don’t really believe much of anything is coincidental.)

It was Pastor Rick Warren’s Daily Hope, "Is your job a mismatch for your gifts?"

What kind of job can I do to make money is exactly what I’ve been wrestling with for the last few months, and especially fervently in the past few days. And tonight’s setback was directly related to it. (It doesn’t even matter what happened; we all have things that go wrong as a result of our condition, and when those things happen, a person feels very small, inept and useless.)

Of course as a PTSDer, I took the setback to mean that everything I was doing was a failure, that nothing was working. My setback, and what it cost monetarily, made my little step forward on Monday seem miniscule and even frivolous. But it was a BIG step forward for me! It was a step OUT of the morasse! And yet the Normal Person measuring stick came along and smacked me upside the head, and it HURT!! :(

The email started out,

"God does not expect you to glorify Him with gifts you don’t have. But He does expect you to glorify Him with gifts you do have."

I don’t know what my gifts are right now, to be honest. I do know I have computer skills — running Linux/cPanel hosting servers, and working with WordPress. Matching those skills up to live websites has been a challenge, but that doesn’t mean the skills aren’t there. The problem is in execution, which is inherent with PTSD.

I kept reading to the end:

"Each of you should go on living according to the Lord’s gift to you …" (1 Corinthians 7:17, TEV) Pray about this – Are you in a job that doesn’t match who God made you to be, or are you exactly where God wants you to be?

What struck me was "or are you exactly where God wants you to be?"

Whoa… Maybe I am! Shortly after I discovered my screw-up, I kept asking myself, "when will this be done already?!" "When can I get back to normal life?" "How much more time do I have to put in before I can move on?" ……. but maybe I am here, going through the struggles of ON PURPOSE, be it for myself or for somebody else!

God is helping (allowing?) me to heal a little bit at a time, but there is so much else in my life that He hasn’t changed, that I’ve had to learn how to "keep on keepin’ on." Judging from my willingness to amplify a failure to justify throwing in the towel on everything, it looks like I need to get better at keeping on. I need to find the strength in keeping on, even when it gets really dark and desperate.

On the spiritual side, even though I am turning to God quickly in a crisis, my faith isn’t where it should be, and I am not serving God as well as I could. This was a test! A test by God? Or a test by Satan? Does it really matter? I failed either way. It showed I have a lot of work to do where my faith and handling of emotions is concerned.

On the clinical side, it is worth mentioning that I was already triggered from a confrontation 2 days ago. I slept 20 hours since then (not a typo — twenty!) and then this Pile of Sh*t spoiled up in front of me a few hours into the new day. And I’m PMSing.

I handled the original confrontation swimmingly :) but have been a pile of slug since then. A tornado could have ripped through, and not only would I not have heard it, but I wouldn’t have cared, either. That loud sucking sound you heard the last 48 hours was the vacuum in my brain as it tried to recuperate what the confrontation & my hormones had taken in just a couple short hours.

I mention this to point out, REMEMBER THE CONTEXT. Give yourself a little credit if you are triggered, if you are fragile, if your circumstances are a mess. Don’t worry, I was completely unwilling to give myself any credit at first. But then after I read the message from Pastor Rick, I realized that that isn’t reasonable. There is always context. Yes, we PTSDers are less capable (or incapable!) in some ways. But we are capable in other ways.

Is what you’re going through now helping to build a new ability? ##

Not that we don’t find it important! We do. We just can’t seem to get there. We’re busy surviving, and all…

I wish I had had this simple guide back during the "bad times." I do clean now (not Martha Stewart quality, but still in the "normal" range), but back then, I couldn’t even break it down into these simple AND EASY steps.

It’s a quick read. Maybe print it up and tack it to your fridge!

Dr Oz’s De-Clutter Checklist

Ellen Martin, organizing consultant for TLC’s "Hoarding: Buried Alive" series, shares 3 steps to help you de-clutter your life. Free your space and…

We’ve been taught all our lives to move up, up, UP! in life. Society measures success by accomplishment. If you’re not moving onward and upward, you’re a failure!

Pretty hard-core, eh?

And UTTERLY RIDICULOUS. As young idealistic people we idolize these measuring sticks… and we think nothing of looking down on anyone who doesn’t measure up. When we’re young, so full of vigor and life and potential, we haven’t experienced enough to have the necessary perspective to know those measuring sticks are pure bullshit. But we know what we have seen, and we believe that makes us experts, so we march right along not even realizing how utterly stupid we look. :)

I decided to make a Great Downgrade a few weeks ago.

I am an EMT. I developed PTSD as a result of a bad call in July 2006. I didn’t even have patient contact that night; I was the fire dept. photographer. It was that bad. Since then, I’ve been unable to go on medical calls.

This bothered me terribly every single freaking day since July 21, 2006, but there wasn’t a doggone thing I could do about it. I was trying to fix my head. But my head wasn’t listening to me, and there was no way in hell that I could go on calls.

I’ve loved being an EMT and wanted to be out there, doing my thing, making a difference. Helping other people is what I get out of bed for. It is my purpose. And EMS has been my calling for as long as I remember. I’ve been certified for over 17 years.

But now I couldn’t do it. I won’t go into the painful scenarios here, but bottom line, every call I did try wound up badly in my head. It was obvious I was best served staying home.

I forced my utterly broken PTSD brain through EMT recert in January 2008. One word: HELL. Ugh.

But by taking recert, I bought 2 more years of licensure to heal and get back in the saddle.

Well, two more years has arrived, and I had to make the Big Decision. Sh*t, or Get Off The Pot? :)

I am at 3.5 yrs post-trauma and my symptoms are only under fair control because I moved to a new home that is a "safe place." (The old place very much wasn’t safe. At all.) I’m doing better in that general, measuring-in-millimeters way, but when I heard a multi-patient call at the big sledding hill in December, as I listened to the fire chief & medics coordinate equipment and people, all I could think was "I am SO GLAD I am not having to deal with that." I was really, really glad to be free of the stress, confusion, coordination, details, (and of course carrying a Stokes basket 100+ feet up a steep hill).

That’s when I knew. I’d been feeling an aversion to complex calls for months. But the sledding hill call crystallized it for me: if it was still this far beyond my capabilities 3.5 yrs later, it wasn’t going to be sufficiently better anytime soon. In all brutal fairness, it was Time to Get Off The Pot.

So I am letting my EMT certification expire in June.

It’s very hard, letting go of accomplishment, status, special skillz and opportunities, especially when they were damn near your inspiration for breathing for years and years.

But I tell you what. The day I decided to let it go, I slept really well that night. Peace and confidence in my decision flooded over me almost instantly. I would no longer be branded "EMT", no longer carry the burdens and responsibilities the title brings. And I was thinking, "Ahhhhhhh."

Yes, I was concurrently mourning the loss — of course!! But at long last, this was a struggle that I had finally put to rest. I have pined and obsessed and ruminated on it every hour of the day & night, every day, for 1,262 days. The Downgrade is no small thing. This Downgrade is darn near everything. It feels like it’s all I’ve got left, after everything I’ve lost… even if I’m letting go of this one willingly, rather than having it wrenched out of my hands. But it’s still a loss. I’m still sad!

I have moments of "but I can do it!" – most days I have a dream of health flash through my mind, and I get all regretful and want to rush to the tech college’s website to quickly find another recert class before it’s too late! And then I remember the other 23.98 hours of the day where I am not strong, my mind is a flurry, I trigger easily, I sink further and further……. that would not be fair to my patients and it would not be fair to me.

I will help people in other ways. I will make a difference some other way. I know that is my calling. I am not sure how, yet, but I have my heart open and am listening for God’s guidance. He is who called me to EMS so many years ago. I know He will lead me again. :)

Wishing you the peace of a downgrade. ###

I’ve been sick the last 3 days. I adore people who can suck it up, put on their big girl panties and trudge off through daily life when they are sick; I’ve never been able to do that, not even when I was a kid. My immune system is touchier than most, so if I try to push through it, I am invariably 3/4 dead the next day. Seriously. Literally. Dead. Bad, bad stuff.

I learned this the really hard way back in the winter of 2003 when I contracted pneumonia twice. Not once. Twice. I spent six months in bed. I never, never, ever want to go through that again.

Incidentally, the Pneumonia Winter was also when I discovered the sheer joy of laptop computers. Seeing that I was going to be in bed for a protracted period of time, I bought a used tangerine iBook, so at least I could entertain my brain with the internet. I spent an enormous amount of time on the Country Business forums, which is how I caught the attention of editor Susan Wagner and ended up profiled in the March-April ’03 E-Commerce issue.

And no, they didn’t show pictures of me with my sickly ass in bed, although that would have been the most accurate picture at the time.

Anyway.

Life the last 2+ years has been a river of mental bits and pieces. It is barely contained by its banks, and I float and bob and flail wildly from one bit to the next, trying to hold on for dear life. The result is a thought and work pattern very similar to those with ADD. I bounce and boing from one thing to the next as they occur to me, and they occur to me when I am reminded by some random-ass thing I’m doing in the here & now.

Let’s not go into coping strategies right now — that is fodder for about sixteen blog posts over @ PTSDJourney. :)

The result of this roiling, random mess in my head is that I feel super *awesome* when I actually accomplish something. 99.999% of things I just barely work a little bit on, and then it gets dropped when I bounce to something else. So to actually see a project through start-to-finish, or get a project to the place I want it? is kick-butt.

Tonight I finally got one of my major website projects to where I want it, appearance-wise.

Five stars for me!!

I’ve been running this particular site for about 20 months now. It’s been through 4 templates. FOUR. Not counting the ones that I “tried on for size” for a few minutes and promptly abandoned. And finally, a template, with the colors I wanted — popped up. That, in a nutshell, was what I wanted. It looked and felt right. (Note: I’m not talking about this/The Bailey Daily site, I’m talking about different site that I haven’t discussed or divulged before. And it’s staying secret for awhile. Sorry!)

So I guess the moral of the story is, Persistence Pays! Hang in there!

Sometimes, especially with software and websites, sometimes you have to wait a good long while for the software to catch up to what you see in your mind’s eye. That’s what I was fighting here; it’s a WordPress site and there just weren’t any templates that looked quite right. Then one day I found this one, and tonight I got the bug in my bonnet to install it and fix it up.

I do still have to Widgetize the sidebars, but Automattic assures me that doing so is a fairly easy process.

As I want to relish the feeling of accomplishment for a while, and not erase it by inadvertently breaking the site (because you know if I start monkeying with it and break it, then I’m going to get pissed off and have to nail down where the problem is), I’m going to work on Widgetizing at a later date.

Actually it will be fairly soon, because I need to install Adsense and my Amazon links ASAP. The site has actually earned me about $8 in Adsense over 20 months’ time. (LOL!)

So, there’s hope for us bouncy flounderers. Hang in there. You’re bound to finish something eventually. :) ##

My nightly nightmares/night terrors ended September 20, 2008. There was a major life event in my family that occurred, and it was like someone flipped a switch in my head: Nightly Horrow Show = OFF.

It was not fixed by a pill, a ritual, therapy, controlled breathing, visualization, none of that. One of my major external influences changed, and apparently that made the ol’ amygdala calm down a little bit. Or something.

But tonight was night #4 of Nightmares & Disturbing Crap, and dammit, I’ve had enough of it. Nobody’s getting burned up or blown up, but it’s just shy of that. I wake up totally worn out and upset. I sit on the side of my bed trying to manually process them, "it was just a dream, it was just a dream, it isn’t real."

The "not real" part is a tough sell. My brain reallllly thinks…

it’s gotta be real — at least an element of it, in that psychic foreboding kinda way. It was just a dream I keep repeating to myself, rubbing my eyes, massaging forehead muscles that have been sore for days now, the subconscious tension squeezing my head in a constant never-easing vice. Just like the old days.

Oh hell, I don’t need to describe what they’re like, do I? When you’ve got The Nightmares, you know it. You know what they are.

They haven’t popped up out of the blue. I’ve been triggered. A firefighter was killed and 8 injured in an explosion downstate several days ago. I was already fragile due to the abnormally early arrival of my period, and ta-da, we had the Perfect Storm of body chemistry. The dumpster blew in St. Anna and the Shit cascaded in my head.

I’m craving carbs like crazy. Not like PMS-craving (any woman knows what that’s about, LOL) but brain chemistry craving… it’s like a brain drive. Sustenance, survival… not just "I want I want I want." I’m sleeping weird hours around-the-clock and exhausted all the time. When I wake from a 2-hr nap I feel good, and rested, then 35 minutes later I’m sinking into deep core tiredness and needing to sleep again. Somehow I can take 2- and 3-hr naps all day long and then go right back to sleep for the night at bedtime.

I’m obsessed with every movement outside my window, "who’s here? who’s here?" even though nobody’s here. Every blink of a headlight through the trees from the road makes my heart race. I stare. I watch. I hold my breath. Nobody comes after a couple of minutes so I let myself start to breathe again — really shallowly, so they can’t see me move. *sigh*

Tonight was a fun addition. Every time I slipped into REM sleep, I heard thunder. Really LOUD thunder, so loud it shakes the house & wakes me up, every time. FIVE TIMES IN A ROW. Oh, right… I did mention it’s a clear, bitterly cold moonlit January night in Wisconsin, right? The closest thunder is over 2,500 miles away. *snicker*

This time I just stayed awake, it was time to feed the cats anyway and obviously I wasn’t going to make any decent headway on the sleep front so long as my brain is stuck in Thunder Mode. (LOL!) But I am so tiiiiiirrrrrred……. what I would give for some real rest. *sigh*

I don’t know what the "answer" will be. I haven’t been triggered this bad since moving, and I think the only reason it isn’t worse is because of where I live now. (My new home is a "safe place," where my previous home was very much not safe. As in PTSD-safe, you guys know what I mean.) If I was living at the old place, I’d be a lump wadded up in a ball on the floor, rocking like a baby, glassy-eyed from the exhaustion of the constant panic, cowering from every little sound like a wild animal in the corner. Living in a safe place at least gives me some limited function, if only for the regular simple routines of the day, the mindless maintenance. The clock tells me what to do. As long as I don’t have to move much, I’m okay. I don’t have energy for much more than peeing or cooking noodles.

I am 3.5 yrs post-trauma. In some ways I have healed. When I’m not triggered, there are sweet, calm lights of hope shimmering through. But in other ways the injury is still a gaping lesion in my head that has only been covered by a very thin layer of skin. If something tears that skin open, there is the lesion again, festering and sensitive and sore and still very much broken underneath. It’s like the skin that gives the illusion of healing is just covering up what still lies broken underneath.

I have known this all along, I suppose, because I’ve backslid in recovery the last few months. The net gain has actually been a loss. But I am so wanting to be done with this already. I am so ready to move on, move forward. And then I get hit with a rough spot like this, and it’s all the more frustrating.

Despite my rational brain assuring me this is temporary, I don’t feel like it might be temporary. I fear that it’s permanent and I am back on the road of nightly night terrors with no end in sight — no end, because there was no magic pill, therapy, exercise, nothing I did to make them go away the first time. All I have is hope, prayer and faith. (And a person could reasonably argue I am pretty thin on those.)

Calm night music on now (Celtic Woman, Enya, and some piano solos by David Lanz and Wayne Gratz — the latter some favorites from happy college days 20 yrs ago) I’m going to roll over and try to catch a couple peaceful, recuperative hours of sleep………. ##

But once you make the decision to start looking for meds in Canada, well, you can’t help but ask questions. You should ask questions!!!

One, YES, they are a real company in Canada. Their website is NorthWestPharmacy.com. I have ordered from their site numerous times and every order has been handled by a real, live person with a distinctly Canadian accent. :) I always seem to talk to the same older lady on the phone, and she is a pleasure to work with.

The address on my bottle label is 101-20560 56th Ave., Langley, BC V3A 3Y8 with phone numbers 1-866-539-5330 and 604-530-0745. The label is professionally pre-printed, it is not the shoddy product of some kid’s laser or ink-jet printer. It’s an ordinary pharmacy-class label just like you’d see at your own local pharmacy.

Two, YES, the meds are real. At least mine are. I get the Canadian version of Wellbutrin XL. It comes in the original sealed bottle sent diretly from the manufacturer. This med is made by BIOVAIL® and the label has a legitimate-looking Lot # and Expiration date. (Looks identical to U.S. labels) The contents listed are Bupropion Hydrochloride, USP Extended Release Tablets. The contents are listed in English and French.

Three, YES, they are dispensed by a Canadian doctor, in concert with your U.S. doctor. You must have an Rx from your U.S. doctor, and you or your U.S. doctor must fax or snail-mail the Rx to Pharmawest. They will not fill your order without a real, live, U.S.-doctor issued Rx on file. They won’t even send a refill of an existing med if they don’t have a refill order on hand from your U.S. doctor. They are really tight and proper about this.

How I handle it: I have my U.S. doctor fax my Rx to Pharmawest. Pharmawest has my order already on-hand (I ordered online, and they telephoned me to confirm it) so when the Rx arrived there, they filled the order and sent it out.

Shipping: My meds are sent in a padded envelope via regular Canadian post. (Whatever they call it.) It arrives here in Wisconsin usually in 5 business days. Five!! which I think is crazy-fast. Their website says to plan on like 8-21 days, and that is what I plan on.

The ‘Don’t Freak Out’ Factor: Some meds will kick up side-effects when you change brands. Wellbutrin is one of those meds. Even though they are technically/theoretically the same drug, clearly there are manufacturing discrepancies between companies, so no 2 makes of the same med are identical. When I switched from the U.S.-original Wellbutrin to BIOVAIL®’s Wellbutrin, I had a mountain of side-effects crop up for 10 days straight. This is normal. It was not a sign that I got bad meds. I get the exact same reaction when I mis-count my pills, forget to re-order in time, and have to take my back-up generics from Walmart.

Overall, I have been very pleased with the service I’ve received from Pharmawest. I’ve never had any billing problems, my meds have always arrived, and my orders/refills are always handled promptly and professionally.

Go for it. :)

###

Anyway, don’t be worried if I don’t poke my head up here for a few days. I feel rotten and pretty much barely have the energy to roll myself up like a burrito in the covers and stare glassy-eyed at the TV. Bleh. ##

In the past couple of years, I’ve taken much closer stock, and finally this summer I think it finally sunk in that yes, everybody else really does see me looking that nasty EVERY DAY, ALL THE TIME. That really was me. And, Ewwwwwwwww.

So it was probably not a big surprise that one day this fall, I finally up and got pissed off enough to change it.

Today I shucked my jeans off as the shower was heating up, and was turning to head over to the scale, when something caught my eye. My thighs were narrower. Thinner, smaller, whatever — they were not as far across <——–> in the mirror. ‘Whoa! Where’d they go?’ I thought, and really looked in the mirror again to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. No, they really were a little smaller! Huh.

So I stepped on the scale. Sure enough, 2 lbs down from Tuesday.

So I’m losing about a 1/2 lb a day, which is fine. That’s 3.5 lbs/week, just a bit shy of what I’d been hoping for initially (5 lbs/week) but still totally workable. If this is the rate my body is comfortable at — seriously, that’s A-OK.

The holidays are going to be really tough though. I know, everybody bemoans the holidays :-P this is hardly new territory. But honestly I’ve never been trying to lose weight through the holidays before, and dangit, I’m leery of slowing progress. I’m so dang happy to be losing it, that I just can’t reconcile giving that up.

But then I think of stuffing, and turkey, and pumpkin pie ………………. OMG. These have been the joyous staples of the holidays my whole life. I’ve never cut back on food during the holidays. Ever.

(And don’t even make quips about "gee, no wonder you got where you are." Not true. My weight gain has been no different over the holidays than any other time of year, and for over 2.5 decades I was able to pig out at the holidays and not gain an ounce.)

But then, today, I had a couple hot dogs (no bun) & onions with mustard and a couple dill pickles and ….. you know, I was full, for a long time. It’s been a good 5.5 hrs. and I’m first now getting hungry again. After a couple hot dogs and pickles?! I wonder if the food was put in front of me, if I’d even eat that much, anyway!

I’m kind of thinking that maybe I should go ahead and make a dish of stuffing (going to make it w/ tons of celery, whole wheat bread, and w/ ground turkey mixed in) but then just plan on freezing 3/4 of it in small serving-size portions. Then I can grab one when I have a taste for it. And that way I get the happy-happy of holiday smells and tastes up-front, but it doesn’t go to waste, either. (And it’s less cooking I have to do later, too. Hah!)

So I’m kind of thinking that even with it being the holidays, that I probably won’t take bucketloads in serving sizes anyhow. It is still just as much the holidays if I still eat the things I like — everything :) — but not in mountainous portions. It’s not about volume, it’s about enjoying what you do eat. Hmmmmm.

For what it’s worth, I did pick up a small jug of Egg Nog at the grocery store. You know, the dairy case kind. :) It has like 180 cal. per 1/2 cup serving (OMG!!!) but, I decided that even if I only drink a little bit at a time, I am still enjoying it and it’s still worth buying.

(There’s definitely a pattern here — a belief that if I don’t wolf down every little scrap of the item before it spoils [4-5 days] that it’s not worth being bought in the first place; as if I am only deserving to eat apples and ground beef. That’s just not true and I have to break my brain of thinking that way.)

Didn’t happen.

I spent the next 7 days, ’til about Nov. 6th, gaining weight. I actually gained 4 lbs. back total (so I was at a net loss of 7). Essentially, I wasted/lost a month on a plateau, then 4 lb. gain. Urrrghhh!! That was seriously maddening.

It was all food-related, of course, I was eating too much and too much of the wrong thing. Even complex carbs just stick to me if I don’t eat them at about 1:10 with protein.

I finally figured this carb thing out though. It’s not just that I "love carbs" or am a "Carbohydrate Addict" or even that I’m "pre-diabetic" (the last being my mother’s explanation for the panoply of odd symptoms).

I’m Sugar Sensitive. Sugar is a drug to my brain. Literally. This is a brain chemistry thing… low baseline serotonin and beta-endorphins, leading to more serotonin and beta-endorphin receptors in each synapse, which creates an extra-big "hit" of serotonin and its partner beta-endorphin when I eat sugar or simple carbs. I am an addict. Physically, addicted. Because of how my brain has been built from the start …….. structure which incidentally also causes depression (check), anxiety (check), and clearly contributes to my PTSD.

So now that I understand my tempestuous relationship with sugar, I’m finding it much easier not only to not eat it (I don’t want it), but when I do crave it, I’m listening to my body and just eating a little. No drama, no resisting, no struggle … just up and eat some. *shrug* This is a long-term battle, and I’m not going to be able to cut it out 100% right now. But I can slowly work in that direction. :)

Since that discovery, I’ve dropped 6 lbs in 10 days. For a net total of 13 GONE.

And I’m not hungry, and I’m not eating much at all. :) Now if I could just get rid of this damn migraine (hormones again, *sigh*) I’d be golden.

They were soooo nice. :)

We met in the food court actually (isn’t that where you meet all your internet friends for the first time?! LOL) where I got a pile of Chinese food for $5.46 … I mean like, a mountain of food. It was obscene. And incredibly beautiful. Mom and I picked at the doggone thing for over an hour — and there was still food left over!!

(There are times I seriously miss living in the city — and that was one of those moments… we have zero variety up here. It’s boring little grocery store fare, or "fancy" grocery store fare for $45 + your first-born, or it sucks to be you.)

I then struggled through 2+ hours of shoe shopping. This is the eternal ritual: finding a pair of shoes that fits right. It’s always been like climbing Mt. Rushmore in a straight-jacket. My feet are picky as hell. Now that I have these excellent arch supports from the Good Feet Store, life is better …….. but I soon discovered you can’t just chuck your arch supports in any old shoe and be able to wear it. Some were too wide, some too narrow, some too tight, one rolled outward really badly, several rolled inward really badly … and WTF is with Reebok gluing their insoles in their damn shoes anyway?! Hello?? Dear Reebok: you’ve lost a longtime loyal customer (20+ years!), because you glue in your insoles! Stupid, stupid, stupid. Nobody else glues their insoles in. Just Reebok. Apparently they’re special. *roll eyes* Yeah … special enough to be left on the shelf!

So, given that I lost my hiking boots a few months ago (I think while changing out of my fire gear on the highway ……….. but I don’t know for sure??), I did at least find a pair of mens’ athletic shoes that will sufficiently substitute as hiking shoes. Didn’t find a single pair of womens’ shoes that were workable *roll eyes* but the mens’ shoes were a hit-it-out-of-the-park home run.

So the hunt for everyday shoes continues. *sigh*

I then screwed together all the bits of courage I had as we went to pick up our kitty at the vet. Our dead kitty, who’d been cremated. I was okay ’til we pulled in the parking lot. As we pulled up to the place, exactly 1 hour before the time we’d walked out when he died that night in September, those God-awful feelings all came flooding back. That horrible weekend, that horrible night. The worry, anxiousness, desperation, concern, love for my baby, frustration … and utter suffocating helplessness. The helplessness, that’s what really ripped me up. There wasn’t a single thing we could do to fix him, he just looked up at me with those sweet soul-filled eyes, trusting and loving me, looking to me for answers and security, clinging to me desperately as I held him as close as I could… broken. And I couldn’t fix him. It broke my heart. What do you do with that???? He could not be fixed. He was broken forever. As was my heart.

We had him put to sleep. It was the right thing to do, but an absolutely horrible thing to do. Even though we saved him from massive pain and suffering, I still wrestle with the simple act of taking a life — and a life I loved with all my heart, no less. I know he is happier now (I mean, I know this) but there is something in my soul that rages and reels at taking a life. Taking a life! There is no greater, purer Power that we can see with our own eyes, than life. To kill that life … that core part of me *rebukes* it. Who am I to take such a thing from someone else??? Yes, even an animal. To me, it means no less, it is no less, if it has four legs or two.

He was tucked in a little black-and-white kitty-shaped tin, in a paper bag with ribbons tied to the handle. The bag had been carefully labeled with his name. And tucked inside was a pawprint. A little print of his sweet little paw … a paw I couldn’t have back. A little paw I would never kiss again, or play with, or tickle, or gently touch. A paw that would never reach out to touch my hand again, nor cling to my shoulder for dear life as his eyes implored me to protect and love him forever. Seeing that, that’s when I really came unglued.

It all flooded back so vividly, so wholly, the emotion of it just swallowing me up. We climbed back in the car and I just sat there and cried.

But I held on. Because something I’ve learned the last few weeks, is that I can feel pain, but it won’t kill me. I can hang on and endure it, ride the wave, and push through, and it will in the very least dump me washed-up on some sh*tty abandoned shore somewhere. But it won’t carry me away forever, and it won’t kill me. It does end (or at least ebb), and I then I can crawl up to higher ground and brush myself off.

Sitting in the dark car, the parking lot illuminated by the yellowed glow of a magnesium streetlight, the same scene of that fateful night swirling and awash in my tears, I knew that I had to feel the pain and ride its wave, in order to deal with it. This part of the ride had to be ridden in order to process it and put it to rest. The rational side of me recognized that this was a normal way to feel, and so it was okay to ride it out and feel it for what it was. I didn’t die on the trail. This wouldn’t kill, or even mortally maim me, here in the car. I would be okay.

And I was. It took awhile. We shed our tears, we voiced our regrets, we mopped up our faces with paper towels, took a deep breath and pulled out of the parking lot. We had our boy back. And we brought him home where he belonged. Our baby is back home by his Mamas.

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