Breaking Dams.

Life is so weird at times. One day everything seems to make perfect sense and then suddenly nothing does anymore. A lot of big changes have happened in the recent months, likely due to my excitement about being as healthy as I have been in a decade or more. But with a lot of change has come the inevitable anxiety. As adept as I have become at keeping it at bay occasionally the dam leaks and a small but significant amount of panic flows through.

Stress is a normal emotion. We feel stress before a big exam or work meeting. Most can choose to either use that energy into a positive force or let it negatively effect their lives. However a small group of people are not allowed this basic ability. Whether it is due to trauma or variations in their brain chemistry and memory the stress turns into anxiety. An anxiety so severe that medication is needed to simply get through the day. There is no off switch or a dial to turn it into something positive. It is just there. This ever present companion that builds up until it can not be self contained and panic ensues.

A lot of factors have led to my current dam break. In one month and nine days my daughter will have been dead for five years, my godfather nearly just was released from prison, I have made huge steps in my personal and working life, and I feel like I have neglected the most important aspect of my life. Me.

Good News?

An update is long in coming. I received good news for the first time yet from my doctors and have been celebrating a bit. Since the issues are no longer a concern I will share some of the story before .

My doctors were worried of me going into kidney failure. Years ago the blood disorder caused damage to my kidneys and arthritis can be known to attack the tissue there and cause more damage. The first abnormal test showed enough blood and protein that I was sent to a specialist. Between the first and the second test the amount tripled which caused a lot of concern that the damage may be progressing faster than they had thought. I knew that because of the original damage I was likely to have an issue eventually, but no one expected it to be so soon as twenty-two. Over several weeks of different testing and medication changes I finally got a call. While my kidney function is less than normal the actual damage is not so bad that I even need medication as of yet. Essentially this means that so long as no more damage occurs and I do not abuse my kidneys (which is difficult yet I have managed to cut down from several pots of coffee a day when I was a freshman in college to a cup every several days now) I should not need any treatment for it. Such a relief seeing as if I needed medication then it is simply a downward path towards needing a transplant once the medication is not effective. So now, at least for a time, I am free. I can live my life with one less burden!

Doomsweek.

Countdown Day 1 wasn't written because for me the last week has seemed like an endless day. An appointment has been scheduled for less than twelve hours from now. All the anxiety from waiting just in a single moment became overwhelming. It isn't like a panic attack but this fear. The kind that makes your heart sink into your stomach. I could find out from this doctor that I am slowly on the mend or that my body has failed me to the point I could need a transplant. It is not like the outcomes are two things I can compare; it is the entire spectrum of possibilities. So many people I know just want to ignore all the outcomes till we know for sure but I need to talk about them. I need to be able to say I am scared of what may come without being told to "it will all work out" or "think positive thoughts". I need just one person to say that no matter what is going on in my body that I can face it. I feel like I am almost being coddled by half the people and the other half go so far out of their way to pretend none of the health issues exist. I know some think that how they respond to me is what is best and I love them for trying but my needs are different than what they think. Because I feel unable to simply speak what I feel I manage to accept it and hold it in till I am out of time to face it (like now, only eight hours and thirty minutes before my appointment). Stress induced insomnia the night that will likely prevent any rest.

The Countdown. Day 2.

The higher doses of medication did not work. So still I am in pain with no obvious reason why. Tomorrow I will finally call the doctor and hope for a quick appointment for the next round of testing and experimenting with medications. Yet somehow I am finally calm. At peace if you will. I guess laying awake for six hours mentally making a plan for each known diagnoses you can finally start to accept whatever may come. I know nothing ever stays the same for long, not for me or anyone else.

The only thing that worries me now is the response of those around me. Few people know how to react to illness. They either make a huge deal out of it or try and ignore it; neither or which works. The only way to make the one sick not feel like an out cast or less human is to acknowledge it. Discuss it and find a way to incorporate a new routine that works for everyone involved. From doing something extra to help out when someone is in pain or fatigued to just listening when they need an ear to vent, bitch, or cry with. Some people are blessed to never know chronic sickness and for that I am thankful. But there is always empathy to be had for those we do not understand. I can empathize with how hard it is for them to deal and accept something so utterly out of their control like another persons health. Hopefully with the coming months as this chapter of my life unfolds the people I am around will empathize more and more with my situation.

So here I am, another night of insomnia due to this pain. It is now 6:44am. Which I guess means this is technically Monday but as I haven't slept I am calling it Sunday in this post at least. I will lay down again and try and rest some before finally getting to make the anticipated phone call.

The Countdown. Days 5, 4, and 3.

The waiting mostly continues. Only a small bit of information has been found and it isn't really good news. My second kidney test was worse than the first one which is not a good sign of things to come. The worst thing however has been the exhaustion. Mentally from the stress of not knowing still and physically from my health declining. Napping did not help and neither did forcing myself to get up and move and be productive; it was just constant exhaustion. The people I have been around have been truly helpful in their own ways so I am somehow holding on to the little strength I have left. It is hard though at times to realize how limited I am in comparison to others. Doing basic things are being harder and harder. Even my concentration level is slipping and things such as writing are getting more difficult. I have never been one for physical labor so not being able to carry things or move as quickly as others doesn't bother me so much. The mind is what I hate feeling out of control of. I love writing, not just typing things on a computer, but sitting in a nice spot with a pen and paper. Letting the words flow with no true purpose other than to just be. I can't seem to do that now. I try and the words will not come. Even as good as this blog is and talking with people about the stress nothing compares to that release of just letting go. Hopefully in the coming days as I learn at least a little bit more of my fate I will be able to start it again.


(Three days were written with my phone and had issues uploading. I edited them into one post just to make it easier on me.)

The Countdown. Day 6

I am a little late on this post. Spent day six of this trying to keep my mind occupied. Which, while mostly successful, it is impossible to do completely. Every time a muscle would tense, a joint ache, or I was heading to the bathroom yet again I had to wonder how bad everything going on in my body is. Will it get worse? Will I ever feel "normal"? The uncertainty is a million times more draining than the pain and discomfort I physically feel. Five more days till I learn anything new. I don't think it would be as bad if I didn't know the possible diagnoses. But I do. And I have researched them every spare second I have had. I have even stopped playing my game (which for anyone who knows me personally should explain how preoccupied this all has me) simply to try and learn more. I am scared, I never planned to be in this position again but yet, here I am. Waiting on more tests to find a diagnosis to find an appropriate course of action. But through all this I am still the one who feels the aches, pains, and knows my body better than a lab...and I for once have no doubts as to what is to come.

The Countdown. Day 7.

I want to start by saying thank you to those who have read any of my posts and either prayed or sent good thoughts my way (whichever you are into of course). You may never understand how much healing comes from this simply act of writing.

The last two weeks have been filled with so much uncertainty. Symptoms I have never experienced on top of the same ones I have dealt with for fifteen years. Something new and wrong is going on inside my body. I held out seeing my doctor for a while. To be honest as bad as the pain was I was more scared of going to my doctor than dealing with it. Every time I have gone it has been life altering news. I am starting to like my life and had finally adjusted to the other health issues. A new illness, if the past is any indicator, is followed by huge changes. From the death of my only daughter to being forced to drop out of college. I am not scared of another illness, I already know the likely diagnosis, treatment options, prognosis, etc. Yet I do not know what will accompany it. I have a week of my regular medications raised as a last attempt to rule out any minor causes for the symptoms before I receive the official diagnosis. I am not certain of what will come from it but I think this go around, as terrified as I am, I finally have a little bit of hope. My dearest friends and fellow angel mommies have been wonderful in dealing with my little mini meltdowns and they have brought me back up to where I need to be mentally. Times are still hard, I am still terrified, but with their help I found some sort of peace. I know my life is about to change in some way, big or small, but I have a wonderful group of people surrounding me during it.

So here comes the countdown till next Monday.

Four years, five months, two days.

I am sitting here this morning in a daze. Exhaustion mixed with this restlessness. Above my computer hangs three small little angels. One for each year old my daughter would be had she lived. This coming month is when she would be turning four. I can do nothing tonight but wonder what she would be like. Would she be a little princess playing with dolls or a tom boy playing with mud? Would she look like her daddy with piercing blue eyes or have my round brown stare? She would be old enough to go into preschool and be away from me. But she has already spent four years, five months, two days away from me. I sit here staring at these small angels and know I need to begin my search for a fourth. Every time I come close to losing it. The grief is physically painful. I want to be waking her up and getting her ready for day instead of trying to find a memorial for her.

Stress in Groups, Peace Alone

I used to love being around people. The music and the huge crowds in clubs, bars, and concerts was exhilarating to me. I had fun spending a few hours pampering myself before hand (nails, hair, makeup done so carefully that each bit was flawless). I lost that somehow. "Social Anxiety Disorder" is what professionals call it. I am terrified of and mostly avoid social situations. I can still have fun with people I know and I am comfortable with, which are now just a few. Not many friends have stuck around through the last diagnosis and the subsequent treatments. I mean when you are in your late teens early twenty you want to be out, not sitting in someones home while they recuperate from a chemo treatment. The friends I have now did not even come into my life until after that.

Now as I start to try and rediscover life after several years of hell I am struck by how simply interactions can turn into terrifying encounters. Walking through a hallway of a crowed bar has turned from just that into this maze of how to avoid the people there because I do not know them. I do not know what they are capable of. I don't know if it just that I am out of practice in being around people or if it is the PTSD rearing its ugly head making me question the motives of everyone around me. Even the people I know I find it difficult to trust on more than just a surface level, I know they would let nothing happen to me but all the while I can not allow a deeper trust to build.

Although I have to say that I am grateful for them, even if I can never seem to truly trust them. They have handled situations with my anxiety so well. From taking me home during a panic attack to simply coming up and hugging me tight enough that I can for a moment just bury my head and focus my breathing to calm down. I know they can never truly understand the fear that I have being out and
I love them for trying reaching out instead of distancing themselves from me.

But even with their support and with them making me smile after I am out of the anxiety inducing situation I can not explain the relief of being home, in my room, sitting in my tiny little chair. Normally I have to have a show playing in the background to distract me for them thoughts before sleep that often lead to the night flashbacks and panics...but tonight I am finally so calm just being alone that I doubt that will be an issue tonight. My mind is finally finding a place of peace, at least for this night. So for me, who lives on day at a time, it is enough.

The Great Sleep Dilemma

Today has just been one of those days. With all the pain and anxiety I have daily sleep is a rare commodity. Even going to bed early last night and "sleeping" through the night did not give any rest. I just seemed to hang on the edge of actual sleep, like it was a cliff that I was to scared to jump off. Seven straight hours of that then over twelve hours spent awake as I progressively enter a more zombified state.

Why is my subconscious so opposed to rest? With the PTSD I have horrible nightmares. Well not even nightmares because nightmares are like dreams, they exist only in the mind. The flashbacks when sleeping are rarely worse than those when I am awake and neither can be predicted with any accuracy. So why is sleep the thing that I just can't seem to find.

My pain level on a daily basis is higher than most peoples when they are even injured, yet I have felt this way for more than two thirds of my life. Given that same amount of time is when sleep has been increasingly more difficult. Yet even with the use of heavy narcotics, always prescribed, I have issues getting past the threshold into deep sleep.

Now it is not even eight at night and I am getting more fatigued by the second instead of the minute. Not even sure why I am taking the time to write this post. As I do though I have been wondering more and more of why this happens. Each tiny part of my life gives an explanation for why I just can not find sleep all the while there is evidence that the parts are not the only cause.

I have PTSD and flashbacks which cause panic, I have anxiety knowing that it might occur, I have severe daily pain but medications that alleviate it have not helped, and this has all been ongoing for fifteen years. Over the counter sleep aids have not worked and prescription medications have caused me to have rather disturbing hallucinations. Even during the more productive periods of therapy my sleep hasn't changed.

Thinking back I remember a brief respite though when I was writing poetry nearly every day, but the words for that seem to have swept up in the whirlwind of everything else. But even then my sleep was still far from what a doctor would consider normal. Instead of staying awake for three days before my system essentially crashed I would stay up for only two.

So what is my point of this, my resolve for the situation? I have no idea. I am truly lost in this. All I can do is keep living day by day. Study when I have the strength, try and find joy in small things, and write whatever I can to see if maybe I can get that little spark back that was the only help to me years ago. Who knows, maybe I will find it and begin to post some poetry as it comes.

Star-crossed Love

Valentines day is tomorrow. A day to celebrate love and relationships, having lost all connection to its brutal beginnings. It has me thinking about all the memories from Valentines past. I was given a stuffed gorilla from my parents in 1998 when I first got sick. I remember being in puppy love with my best friend and it snowing on Shabbot. I remember being taken to a fancy restaurant by my high school sweetheart and out into a nature preserve with an iHome to dance under the stars. I remember two injured people in their first apartment trying to make a romantic dinner with one in crutches and one in a knee brace. I was planning a wedding then.

It almost feels like a dream. He was the father of the baby girl I never got to hold. He was the one who saved up a while to buy me a more amazing ring than I could ever have expected. He was the one who was there holding me the night I found out how sick I was. He was with me the first time I was given an IV for the biologic and tried to make me comfortable during the chemotherapy. His family was with me when I found the perfect dress, his sisters came up with all kinds of ideas for the wedding (even if they were generally all pink related). We knew that when we had more children what the nursery would be. Then suddenly everything changed. All of the issue that we had ignored came to the forefront of our relationship. A cloudy day in the spring saw it all come to an end.

It will be two years soon since it ended. Most of it spent trying to find a way to make things work off and on but there was never a chance at that. I can't say that I am sad for it. A piece of me will always love him as Bethanni's father. I will remember those good times like dancing under the stars or walking along the lake side after he proposed. But I don't want to live with that past. I want a future that is simply that, a future.

I rarely remove anything from my social networking pages, mostly because there is really nothing that I post that I would have to hide or remove. However I think a time has come to do just that. I loved him very much but people really can change.

Happy Valentines Day to whoever reads this. Single or not, it can be a good day.

***This is something I wrote for him a while back after I began to realize that he and I were not "fated" if you will to be together. Hope you enjoy it.***

Your eyes are conflicted with looks of fear and longing, pain and desire. A haunting knowledge that the past becomes repeated in the future and that this moment is ever moving towards the present. You try and seem like everything is fine and that things can work out differently this time. There is this senseless stupidity between you and I that grows greater with each passing second. As your hesitant hands reach for mine I choose to break loose of this perpetual cycle of deceit. I know you. Love will not let you leave, so let's agree to disagree, star-crossed lovers is what we should forever be.

My Own Gordian Knot

So many things to write about yet I can not seem to focus on just one. Each thing seems to connect together in this Gordian knot. The myth behind the knot claimed who ever undid would be ruler over Asia, such immense power and authority for simply untying a rope. So if Alexander the Great, who eventually sliced through the rope to remove the knot and ruled, managed to use a sword to destroy his obstacle what can I use? It is not as if my memories and emotions are something material such a rope that I can just take a knife and cut, so what avenues does that leave me to slice with?

This legendary rope was tied to an ox-cart, a thing used for traveling and business. Just as in the legend this knot in my life has halted each other aspect of my life. I am disabled therefore I do not work, I attended school until my health finally gave out so much that I could not continue, I have issues simply trying to restart all of that because of my anxiety disorders...I have stopped moving through life and am tied up to this place sitting here at my computer day after day knowing I am made for some purpose but still stuck.

As I am sure for generations people tried to untie this cart using their own logic, the issue with that is simple. Individual logic is limited by the persons experience. Eventually enough things happen in life and our expertise is finally narrowed into a small way of thinking. This is not permanent however as the human mind is capable of constant change. Alexander the Great allowed himself to learn from some of the great men of his time and not just in one subject. Through his own experience and the knowledge of other matters passed on to him by wiser men he managed to find a way to sever the knot that held the cart.

So what can I, a sick and neurotic young woman take from this great legend? I know from experience that my own knowledge is not enough to conquer the challenge that is binding me to where I am. I have been trying that for far to long without a bit of success. Therefore I need the assistance of others not just in the topics that plague me but in as many areas that I can find. Only then will I be able to find the blade that can undo this knot in my life.

Pure Raw Fear

Life is confusing for me. I feel vulnerable in every social situation. It isn't because I don't like being out and about its just the uncertainty that comes with it. Every day things like of grocery shopping, seeing friends, calling the post office over a lost package just seem so difficult to me. With everyone in my past not knowing who the person on the phone or behind me in line makes all my senses go into overdrive. I know it is from the PTSD, from a trauma I am not ready to talk about just yet, and there is no way to make it stop. There is only coping mechanisms to prevent a panic...the thing is most of the methods that have worked for nine years aren't working as well. From last October till now each attack has been progressively worse in public. The triggers aren't the same and sometimes there doesn't even seem to be a trigger. The most recent started at a concert and for the next two nights and three days every time I tried to sleep the flashbacks came in nightmares. I wasn't able to wake up and make them stop and each time I woke up more physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted than I had been before. I finally gave in and started taking my anxiety medication...which has let me get a phenomenal five hours of sleep. Based on the fact it is a quarter till three AM and I am wide awake and anxious again I doubt I will get anymore for a while. I have been to trauma councilors off and on for years yet couldn't seem to mesh well enough with them to get anything out of the experience. I am calling yet another one Monday and hopefully it will work out better this time around. I just know right now that this panic is overwhelming. The attacks don't last long but they feel like an eternity. The flashbacks are like nothing else in this world; what I see morphs into what I saw years ago, each nerve screams the same signals to my mind and I physically and visually relive the same few minutes over and over until I can't take anymore and end in a complete panic. A feeling where the fear is so intense I feel like I have stopped living, air feels like fire in my lungs, all thought and reasoning cease, and the world around me feels like a blurry darkness. Complete and utter helplessness. There has to be a better way of coping than this...

The Truth Behind My Health

Fifteen years and two weeks. That is how long it has been since my first hospital admission. This time of the morning I was being transferred to a reverse isolation room at the children's hospital. As a seven year old you view illness as a passing cold or ear ache. The worst thing you can ever imagine is having the dreaded chicken pox again. I never would have been able to fathom how fragile my life had suddenly become.

Early on I was healthier than most kids with just the occasional ear infection and colds. Then one day a cold ended up being bronchitis, a common none dangerous Upper Respiratory Infection. I was given antibiotics, to high of dosage for a undersized seven year old girl. Once the doctors realized their error and stopped the drug I had developed a rash which they thought was just an allergy from the high dose of penicillin. They told my parents it was nothing to worry about. Over the next month the rash, consisting of simply these tiny pen point size red dots, spread from just a few on my legs to nearly a hundred. I got weaker and weaker. The night before my real terror began I remember going to Burlington to shop for something for my big sister. I was so weak and in so much pain that I had to sit inside the cart (on top of all the coats cause I, being melodramatic, didn't want to sit on the metal and get a waffle butt). After shopping we went and ate, I could barely eat and and to hold myself up with tables and chairs as we walked out. My mom was getting worried at that point and had my sister help me get dressed for bed. The next thing she heard was my sister screaming. The little spots had swollen so large that canyons had been created in my skin where the 5% that wasn't the rash was circling around swelling. Some began turning from black to red. I was rushed to the ER where in the short drive there my fever spiked to nearly 106 degrees. The next several hours were a blur. I remember doctors in double covers, masks, goggles. I remember hearing one doctor explaining that they believed I had something that if my arms and legs were not amputated, a word I didn't know but soon learned, that I would die. They had the consent forms in the room for surgery in case they were proven right. I had fifteen to twenty needles injecting me with things and removing fluid, mostly from my spine. I was in so much pain that from my isolation room on the far side of the ER the screams were heard in the waiting room. Once they ruled out me having surgery they were at a loss for what was wrong and transferred me to be admitted for more tests. Over the next while I was put through more needles, IVs, MRI's, x-rays, CT-scans, and hooked up to more monitors than I knew could exist. Finally they had a diagnosis. A rare blood disorder with no known cause or cure. It could either only surface once and I would go back to being healthy or it would be a chronic illness.

I assumed that I was going to get better, after all I didn't know what chronic meant so obviously once I was released from the hospital I would be fine and back to my old self of climbing trees and playing hid and seek outside for hours. I was wrong. Days after being released I was readmitted with strep-throat. The blood disorder had severely damaged my immune system. I was not able to fight of a little common infection in children on my own. I was back in the hospital, admitted, the night before Valentines day that same year. In just over a month I had spent more time in doctors offices and hospitals than I did at home. The blood disorder also caused moderate damage to my kidneys, I was looking at dialysis if they got any worse. My life lasted like this for several years. We simply assumed that the damage from the original illness was here to stay but that the blood disorder was a one time deal like they had said. Till a month after my twelfth birthday when I had my first recurrence. My nightmare started again. Another rash, more pain than I had ever felt in my life, more damaged kidneys, and knowing that this was never going to go away.

At fourteen I had another, milder, recurrence and again another at sixteen. When I was sixteen my knees, ankles, toes, elbows, wrists, and fingers turned bruised so much from the swelling they turned black. During this time the doctors assumed it was nothing more than an adolescent trying to get attention since I was very underweight, barely 80lbs at 5'2" and my parents had recently divorced. So they gave me a few weeks of medications and sent me home with a psych eval recommendation. I was so angry that no matter how I felt I refused to go to most doctors. I knew how my body felt and I knew I wasn't crazy...the last recurrence had triggered something else in my body, something worse, and no one would listen.

A week after my eighteenth birthday I suffered a trauma that no woman should ever have to. I lost my daughter (something I will have to talk about later for several reasons). I lost her and I had to know why. I spent the next summer calling every doctor from every specialty I could think of to get an appointment. My mother finally found someone to see me and within five minutes he referred me to a specialist. The specialist told me half way through the exam what she believed I had and why and that she would run tests to verify. Two weeks later I had my diagnosis. At nineteen I was told that I likely developed Psoriatic Arthritis as a result of the blood disorder. At sixteen the recurrence likely triggered Ankylosing Spondylitis, a progressive degenerative arthritis in my spine which can move to my organs. I was right, I hadn't been crazy and when it was confirmed I cried for a week. Then I say my OB/GYN and told her...the chances are that my body, my illness, is why I lost the person I loved the most.

For nearly three years I did treatments for it; chemotherapy, every several week IV sessions, giving myself shots, and taking at times up to twenty medications a day. I finally got medication free and felt healthy. Then once again I had a recurrence. I spent the summer of 2012 in my bed so sick and in so much pain I could not even sit up most days. By the end of it I wanted to again be medication free so I stopped my pain combo cold turkey which put me into what they called "heroin like withdrawal" for several days (bright side, never have any desire to try heroin!!). The last several months went smoothly, with only a few bad days where I needed anything to get by. But now it might be back, again. Small little dots on my legs that keep multiplying is all that has happened yet I am terrified. I know how it ends. I know the pain, the despair, what it means for my future. I am back on medication to try and prevent a full blown recurrence but they haven't worked for me ever. Each day I am feeling weaker and weaker and I can't do anything about it but let my body decide when to stop.

The complete helplessness is scary but the scarier thing is knowing the strain that this puts on people around me. I have never been one to be dependent on people even when sick but during recurrences I am lucky to be able to walk to the bathroom on my own. My parents are wonderful about it and do everything they can to help me but others in my life I hate them seeing me like that so I have always withdrawn from society to hide it. My friends know I am sick, I can't hide that. But only one or two know the true extent of my illness, my story. That is why I am writing it out, I am scared of being seeing pity on peoples faces or hearing them say well "try this remedy, it will help" when I have likely tried it and it failed. So here it is, the severity of my life.

For fifteen years and two weeks I have lived in excruciating pain. My joints are slowly degrading and my spine is fusing into a solid piece of bone. I could at any time have organ damage from inflammation of the tissue and have to wear glasses because of that reason. I could end up in a wheelchair due to simply extreme damage or even paralysis from my spinal issues. I already can not feel one two because of nerve damage which is getting slowly worse. These illnesses that I have can lead to other illnesses and the medications I have taken have left me much more likely to develop cancer. 

This could kill me in five years or fifty years. 

It likely already killed my daughter. 

 Please do not take this post the wrong way. I do not want pity etc. I simply want an understanding. I can't imagine life as a "healthy" any more than someone can imagine their life with chronic illness. It is scary, it is hard, it is painful, but I wouldn't change my life. You grow up fast when you are forced to face illness at every turn. I have learned so much about life from the ladies I had treatments with and the community of support from those who have been where I am and survived past this stage of life. My illness shaped me into me. I have grown strong enough to live with smile regardless of fears. I have learned to force my way through the pain. I have learned most to enjoy the simply parts of life that most people pass over without a thought. Spending a night staring into the sky, cuddling up on a couch with a great book and just turning the world off for a time. My life is painful but there is great beauty to be found through it.

Why This?

Every experience in life changes us in some way. Some may change our entire world and some may simply change our perspective of an inconsequential thing. We grow and evolve not on a daily basis but by each second that we draw breath. We all experience joy and we all experience pain. This is the basis of human life. Yet we are all unique. Each experience is, no matter how similar, changes us in different ways. The burning of a cake or a perfect desert; a birth or the loss of a loved one, a book read or a textbook slaved over. The joy or sorrow felt is left up to the individual. Many things have happened in my life that have changed me into who I am.

Some of the things that made me are common knowledge to those around me while others are still such painful memories I do not know if I can ever share them. I learned over a decade ago about the healing that can come from words. I also learned that I have a rather hard time verbally saying so many things; so I shall write them. I doubt this will be chronological or make any sense to anyone but me. There are days when I feel overwhelmed by the past, by the memories. Those days are suffocating and for twenty-two years I have suffered them in my head with no significant release. I felt the need to try and speak, to share, yet all I was able to do was write a few lines in a notebook. I hope to use this as a way to share more openly. I may post some writings from years past or do new ones. Or simply just write the words that I have ached to be able to say out loud.