“Lord,,,,,,Take the Wheel!”

I love this expression!  I heard it from my boss.  It is a great expression for when everything becomes so muddled up and impossible to deal with, which, by the way, happens a lot at the place that I work.

I like to think of this expression as a shorter version of the “Serenity Prayer”.  I use this prayer a lot in my personal life.  I have to.  Since my daughter died, it’s hard to deal sometimes with my life.

I know a lot of people have a lot of horrible things happening to them as well and believe me, I sympathize.  I accept though, that no one gets through this life without feeling some pain and it is what you do with that pain which matters.

Fortunately or unfortunately for me, depending on how you want to look at it, I always seem to have to muddle through the “what ifs” and the “what am I doing to create this situation?” and the “what can I do different to change this” kind of thing first before I get to the conclusion of “letting it go” and letting my higher power take care of it.

It’s just the way I am and there doesn’t seem to be any way of getting around that process.  Believe me, I’ve tried!

I don’t think a lot of people know that I am an introspective kind of person.  I am always looking inside myself to try and figure out what I can do different to change some situations in my life.  

The lesson I learn from going through the thought processes I go through is that some things are not meant to change.  At least not in my time, but maybe in my Higher Power’s time and it’s only when I get to that conclusion that I feel peace.

Along with that sense of peacefulness that I feel after tormenting myself from being so long with the thoughts, I also am reminded that I am me.  There is no one like me and there is no one who can replace me.  

I still have the capability to love someone who is present in my life or chooses not to be.

I also do not have to teach people to hate someone else or put someone else down in order to have those people love me.  

I have always known that I am enough for me and it is someone else’s loss that they will not get to experience something more than what they have been told up to this point.  I believe that someday they will open their minds and open their hearts and they will be capable of figuring things out for themselves.

My greatest fear used to be that the unthinkable and unsayable would happen to my children.  Now that something horrible has happened, there is less fear once I get it all figured out.

I sometimes get caught up in the fear that I will not get to experience what I think that I am entitled to experience because of who I am.  It is that that keeps me in a place of unrest.  

It is only when I work through the fear and the feeling that I need to do something to change things that my fear dissipates.  

That’s when I know that what I’m doing is the right thing for me to do.  It just feels right!

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

Painful Lessons

I wish I knew why my life is the way it is.

I know, an understatement, right?

Was it all pre-determined before I even arrived on this planet or what?

I’m not looking for pity or attention or anything else from anyone, I am just trying to rid my head of my thoughts.

I find that writing helps me to quell the turmoil in my head.  If I get the thoughts out and get them written down somewhere, it helps to quiet my mind so that I can focus on what it is I have to do in the moment that I am living in.

Being alone is not the easiest thing for me to be.  It is something that I am still learning how to be.  I have had a lifetime of being surrounded by a lot of people, first with my parents and siblings and then with my son and my daughter. 

When my son was in high school he moved in with his father then it was my daughter and I and we lived together until her death in 2003.

After my daughter died, my son and his wife offered me a place to live with them but even in my shattered, grieving mind, I was coherent enough to know that that would NOT have been a very smart or good move for me.

Firstly, because their marriage was in trouble.  Secondly, because I knew that what she probably wanted was a live-in babysitter and as much as I love my grandchildren, I did not want to be in a position where I had no power over my own life.  Thirdly, I knew me and I knew her and I knew that I could not keep my mouth shut about her behavior and I did not want to be fighting with my son about his wife so I decided to just stay where I was at.

It’s now been almost twelve years since Katie died.  The first five or six years I was still on my grief roller-coaster ride over Katie’s death and I was grateful that I did not live with anyone.   I had the freedom to feel any way that I was feeling….I did not have to “act” any particular way if someone was uncomfortable with my sadness.

As it is, I have since found out that even though I did not live with anyone, my sadness affected some of my relationships.  I wish someone had told me at the time but that is neither here nor there, all I can do is the best I can do, today.

It is when I am alone and don’t have anywhere that I have to be when I think the most about what I do not have in my life.  I’m not talking about things.  I’m talking about people.  I try to focus on what I do have and try feeling grateful for that but the negative thoughts always seem to find their way into my head and take over my thoughts. 

Staying busy and trying to be productive is the best way I know to not be focusing on what is not in my life.  I am trying to accept that my life is the way it is supposed to be.  I have no control over people, places and things and what will be, will be.

I believe that it is purposeful that I am alone.  Perhaps the lesson is just that I am supposed to learn to live by myself and be totally self-sufficient and the only way I will learn that is to have it in my life.

I just don’t always like the way it feels when I’m learning how to do it.

 

 

Letting Go

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they need to see that for some things you just need to let them go.  Things like situations that you try your darndest to rectify and nothing you do is ever enough.  Your efforts sometimes may even make the situation worse if you do not stop. 

I am at that point with a situation in my life.  I have to let it go because my self-worth is deteriorating as a result of my still trying.

The one thing about myself that I constantly have to work at is keeping my self-esteem in check.  

High self-esteem is not a natural occurrence for me….it is something I have had to build up over my lifetime and it is an ongoing effort to maintain.  If anything, it is a natural occurrence for me to want to tear myself down….especially if with all my efforts, situations do not change or get better.

Also, what does not help is that I have had plenty of people in my life who want to tear me down too.  It’s kind of like a “catch 22”, when you have low self-esteem your actions give it away.   Everything you do says who you are.  People who have less self-esteem are attracted to you because of it….the cycle just keeps going.

What is very true about me too, is that I am a stubborn person….very.  I really hate to quit or give up on something until I have exhausted every idea that I can think of and it still does not change the situation.

Some people seem to know right away to give up on a situation.  I do not.  I believe that we are given situations in our lives to teach us things about ourselves.  I just don’t know how much or how little I am supposed to do before I give up, or give in to it.  Perhaps for me that is the lesson here to be learned.

When I begin to feel like who I am as a person is compromised because of all that I am willing to do to get someone to see me as valuable and worth while in their lives is when I finally see that it is time for me to let go of the situation.

People are going to see what they want to see no matter what I do or how well I treat them.  Some people just do not have inside of them what it is I want for them to have.  They are not capable of giving me what it is that I want so I have to just rely on myself and do the thing that is best for me in the long run…….let go of the situation and believe that everything is going to turn out just the way it is supposed to.

 

Another Suicide

It’s been a long, cold winter this year or maybe it just seems that way to a lot of people when you live it day to day…..I know it seems to be that way for me some days, at least.  When there are so many days in a row with the temperatures being so low and you feel so cold all of the time and no matter how many layers you put on, you still feel that chill in your bones.

I wonder if that’s how it is when you have thoughts about suicide……is it like being in the middle of a bad period in your life, and you feel like it’s been like this now for a very long time, and you ask yourself, is it ever going to be any different and decide, at that moment, in that instant, that blink of an eye that it won’t ever be different, and in one single act, you extinguish your life?

I wish I knew.  It’s been what I’ve been wrestling with for the last 10 years….trying to make sense of what does not make sense to me.

As far as feeling depressed about the weather, I think it’s fairly easy to feel hope again very quickly because everyone knows that in only a couple month’s time, it will be warm again……..this is what we know to be true…..it is proven every year, again and again and we can tolerate the cold until it gets warm.

I do not understand suicide……don’t know if I ever will!  

Like knowing that the weather will eventually change, we all really do know that eventually, circumstances and situations will change in our lives as well…..that’s life!  What makes some people not want to hold on and stick it out until those changes take place?

Friday a neighbor of mine, who lives across from me on the other side of the parking lot told me that her friend, Sherry, of 28 years who lives just across the street from her, with 2 kids, took her own life.   She started to cry as she said,  “I stopped her 2 times before from doing it…..they just took her out.”

I wonder what makes a person tolerate their life and everything going on in their lives up to that point and in a split second decide to just not tolerate it any longer?

As anyone who reads my blog knows, my own daughter Katie took her own life a little over 10 years ago in our home.   I have been trying to make sense of it ever since. 

I am not angry with Katie for taking her own life.  I have never felt anger towards her for doing this….I just feel so much, incredible sadness and heartache that it has to be this way….that I have to live out the rest of my life without my precious daughter with me here on this earth……I loved every single moment of the time that we spent together on this planet.  Although I feel so blessed  for the time that I did have with Katie, I still wanted, no that’s I want more time….28 years was just not enough for me.

What I do feel angry about is that there is so much stigma attached to suicide, mental illness, depression, etc. that people who have thoughts of suicide sometimes keep it all inside of themselves without telling anyone because they feel ashamed of themselves, their thoughts or their feelings.  

I am angry too, and tortured by the fact that my daughter died all alone in her dark room……all by herself.  The amount of pain and lonliness that she must have felt at that very moment crushes my heart and has caused me to gasp for breath at times in the beginning of this journey I’m on. 

I know first hand about the stigma.  As a matter of fact I started learning about it the night Katie died.   Some of the first responders to my apartment were treating me with so much blatant disrespect after they discovered that she might have taken her own life.  I remember being looked at with disgust and being talked down to.  

I even remember one fireman asking me if there was anyone he could call….I thought he cared that my daughter had just died and I gave him my sister’s number.   What I heard him say to her next disgusted me and I grabbed the phone out of his hand.  He coldly and matter of factly said to her, “Your niece just killed herself, can you come over?”

I don’t know if they immediately thought that it must be my fault because I was a bad mother and therefore didn’t deserve any respect or consideration or that she just didn’t matter because she took her own life.  It wasn’t until later after the detectives and state police arrived that anyone showed any kind of compassion for me about my daughter having just died.

Unbelievable to me now too, is the fact that when that whole experience was happening, I was standing there feeling like I had done something wrong………the stigma attached to suicide was there.  

I used to wonder why……why me…..why my daughter?  What have I done to have this terrible thing happen in my life?  What I think now is why not my daughter?  In God’s eyes we are all equal….suicide can happen in anyone’s family.  Now I ask myself, what am I supposed to do with this experience?  Katie’s life, and death were not a waste and I know I am supposed to do something for some good to come out of it.

“Every 16 minutes in the United States someone dies by suicide…..every 17 minutes someone is left to try and make sense of it.” ,  according to the latest statistics from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention  (AFSP).  In 2003, the year that Katie died, it was someone dying by suicide every 18 minutes….that means death by suicide is increasing.

After Katie’s death by suicide, I immediately wanted to get involved in helping to prevent another suicide from happening ever again.  I did not want for another family to feel what I was feeling.  I did not want to see another person die by their own hand after feeling so bad and hopeless about their lives.  I thought that my efforts would stop another suicide from ever happening again.   I was so naive!

For the first couple of years after Katie died, I tried to become involved with the local Survivors of Suicide group…..people who were surviving the loss of their loved one dying by suicide.  They organized a yearly community walk that I became involved in and I walked with them for a few years but always felt like it just was not enough.

I went to the planning of the walk meetings and suggested a change in where the walk took place because I thought the place they were walking was not public enough.  I suggested too, more advertising about the walk because I didn’t see it advertised enough in newspapers or on tv.

When I realized there wouldn’t be any changes, I stopped going to the meetings and only participated in the walk the day of the walk to show my support for suicide awareness and then I’d go right back home again and not do anything more for another year.  

To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what else I could do except keep speaking up about my daughter and suicide every time someone would bring up the topic of their children, make jokes about suicide or respond to people’s gestures like putting their fingers to their head, implying it was a gun and they were going to pull the trigger or gesturing like they are pulling a noose tight around their necks.

Two years ago I found out that the local walk place had been changed to the city near the community where the walk had been held every year.  I started to feel hopeful again that suicide prevention would get the notoriety it deserved and more people would actually get to see all of us walking for such a worthy cause.

Disappointment again!  The walk actually started at the civic center on the main street of the city.  This is what gave me hope.  But the route we walked was not down main street and up and around that block area.

We walked down a side street in front of the city hall, across the street where you could gain access to the highway and also led to a park near the river.  The sidewalk we walked on was in the park,  located parallel to a busy street that leads away from the city with many businesses on the land between the two.   Not only that, at the measured mile marked point of the walk, we simply turned around and walked back the same way we had come from…….again, no one really saw us walking and I asked myself, what’s the point?

Some of you may say, but at least they’re doing something and you’re right, they are!   I commend them for that.  

For me though, I want to see billboards and large signs all over the place with the message for people having suicidal thoughts or with mental disease or depression, etc., to know they are not losers….they are valuable and worthwhile and someone does care if they are here on this planet.  I want for them to know it!  Maybe this will help them to help themselves.

Maybe these signs will also help people who do not suffer from these afflictions to understand that mental illness is an illness and most of them are treatable.  Perhaps that would remove some of the fear that some people feel as well and help, in the long run, to remove the stigma attached to suicide, mental illness, depression, etc.

In the support group I belong to, Fran, mother of Justin, died last year, used to end her posts with a quote something like this, (sorry,can’t remember exact quote), I am one person, I cannot do it all, but I will do what I can.

I feel the same as Fran.  I am only one person but I will make the most of any opportunity I am given to shed some light on the subject of suicide and mental illness and the stigma surrounding it whenever I can.

Thank you for reading.

 

Are There Really Hidden Messages in Dreams?

          Rarely now do I dream anymore……or if I do, I don’t remember dreaming after I wake up.  This morning when I woke up, I actually remembered dreaming,  and, somewhat of what had happened in my dream.   As a matter of fact, it was the end of the dream that brought me into “awake” land.

         When I first opened my eyes and was drifting into being awake, it’s like I had forgotten for a second that I had just been in dreamland.   When my brain started to engage in the world of being awake, I remembered and I asked myself, “what was that about?”

          Dreams to me are always so strange.  A lot of the times not much of it really makes any sense to me.   I had a book about dream interpretation once and tried to make sense of what I was dreaming but it still never did. 

           Sometimes my dreams make such little sense to me that I’m embarressed to tell anyone about them because they just sound so silly.  But y’all know how it is…….you always want to tell someone, right?  Well me too!

           As a matter of fact, right now I am so tempted to tell every single one of you about the dream I had this morning but I’m thinking it is just too weird to share on here with so many people.

           Ah, well, what the heck?…….here goes.

      I remember flipping through the clothes on hangers, on racks at the thrift store.   Just standing there, flipping, checking out every single item, making sure not to miss out on finding something really good to buy. 

           I sensed someone standing right next to me, someone I knew.  I knew somehow that this person was actually with me, checking out everything also as I was flipping through all the clothes.  We were there together.

         All of a sudden, from out of nowhere, President Obama was right there next to me and said something to us just to be friendly.  I can’t remember what it was he said and then he was gone just as quickly as he had appeared.   Then all of a sudden, I was face to face with Mrs. Obama with one of their daughters.   I then took it upon myself to introduce myself to her and her daughter.  Then when I went to introduce the person I was with to them, I realized that it was my own daughter Katie that I had been shopping with…….and that is when I awoke from my dream.

          So you see how crazy that dream is?   How the heck do you interpret something like that?

          Like always, I did my best to try and make sense of that dream.    What I think, is that yesterday was the first time I’ve actually seen my son Adam in quite a while. 

          Between his job being what it is and his living over an hour from where I live, we do not see each other face to face a lot.   So I was really happy to see him.   Also, I’ve been thinking about the President’s  Innauguration. 

          So my explanation of my dream is that because I finally got to see my son after not seeing him for such a long while, I was more relaxed and restful last night as I slept.  I think that being relaxed is more condusive to dreaming and remembering that I had dreamt.     I think too, because of those conditions, it made me more able to remember what had happened in my dream as well.

         I think the President and his family were there only because I was thinking about the Innauguration.   My daughter Katie, I believe was there too because, again,  I was so relaxed.   One thing that I do believe is that your loved ones who have passed on do visit you in your dreams but I believe that you have to be in a relaxed state of mind so that you are aware of when they visit.

           So there it is.  See what I mean about weird?