life

November 7, 2024

Death and Destruction Await

My life has never been wonderful. On that same note it hasn’t been terrible either. I would call it balance. Any trials I have endured have only made me stronger. However… I am waiting for the moment that my only trials are “am I going to have enough time off for my vacation” as opposed to “are they going to round me up into a camp because I’m a degenerate?”

There was a brief moment at the beginning of 2019 where everything was looking up. I had finally passed my exam to get my license (after a 6 year journey) and I graduated with my AA from the community college Summa Cum Laude. Everything seemed so achievable. Then in July the world took a nasty fucking turn and all of it slipped through my fingers.

It began with the chaotic path my mother led us down. Her “kookiness” became more severe and we took her back to the neurologist who had previously claimed she was just “stressed.” The second effort produced her alzheimer’s diagnosis. The friday after my father fell, hit his head on the bathroom counter, and died. I had to figure out what to do with my mother who could very clearly not live on her own, and who INSISTED she would not live with me and my husband because we weren’t “christians” as she put it.

That august when my husband returned to teaching he was starting to show signs of his ALS. It would take an entire year, during a fucking pandemic, that would reveal his terminal diagnosis. So I was left to care for my dying husband and my mentally incapacitated mother, all during a fucking pandemic that could have been avoided if Trump hadn’t been such a giant piece of shit.

And here we are… in the face of all of this people voted for the convicted felon over the prosecutor. Voted for the man who has said repeatedly he would weaponize our government to suit his needs. For his own benefit. Yet… “when he was president things were affordable!” Jesus, people are fucking stupid.

Because of his win I have entered, what I lovingly refer to as, my villain era. I have gone through emotional hell, all on my own, only to watch my friends and family betray me for their own self interest. I genuinely hope he does everything, EVERYTHING he said he would. I want him to burn this fucking country to the ground. Make everyone suffer. Don’t hold back trumpy. Do it. Fuck them. I no longer care about my own self preservation. I eagerly await the christian nationalist hellscape he WILL create. Because at the end, I’m fucked regardless. Might as well enjoy some popcorn before the entire theater burns to the ground.

I will have zero, ZERO empathy for anyone. And the moment one fucking person says “I didn’t know” I’m going to shove them to the fucking ground and say, “yes, you goddamn did. Because I fucking tried to tell you. Everyone did. But you were just too fucking selfish to think of the bigger picture.”

In the face of all of this turmoil and sadness throughout the last 5 years of my life, I have found the peace to accept and welcome death. My expiration may or may not be dictated in the stars, but I like to think that it is. Through all my soul searching to comprehend all of this chaos has brought me to the belief of reincarnation and that everything is genuinely happening all at once. There is no such thing as time, just the prism in our mind that refracts and reflects it into a single finite moment. So, as I am typing this I believe I have been born and have passed. And ultimately, the world will go on without me. I was such an insignificant part of the overall tapestry of existence, but knowing that means I can be and do whatever I want. Whatever brings me joy.

My final thought on life is that, we are here to find understanding to the human condition. To comprehend life and it’s static fragility.

Everything I have loved has been taken from me (apart from the BF) and I’m still here. Life goes on…

May 2, 2024

Memories and Missed Opportunities

Last night was strange…

I went to bed and in the midst of my mumbling thoughts I started to think about the most random of memories of my husband. Little things, like when I would kiss his neck or the way he would tap his glass as he would take a drink. Then in morphed into thinking of our final day together.

He woke up and was madly messaging all of the people he’s been corresponding with these past few months. Then when he finally got up we watched The Birdcage. For the life of me I can’t even remember what else we watched. I had wanted us to bookend everything with a re-watch of Philadelphia but from behind his mask he firmly said no.

Once it got close to time, we retired to the bedroom and set up chairs all around the bed. We watched an episode of Taskmaster until the nurse got there. She wrote out the instructions to administer the drugs and split. (Which was not the plan by the way, but that is a blog post for another time.)

At 5:30 we took off his mask and waited. Almost exactly 6 hours later he was gone.

I replayed this over and over last night… Thinking of him lying in bed afterwards, there but not. He looked so peaceful. I would go in there and check on him, brush his hair. I could hear his voice screaming in my head “Josh, that is so weird. That’s a dead body. Gross.”

These memories made me miss him so much. I started to cry but stopped myself because I didn’t want to wake up Tony.

Last night I dreamed of Charlie and I adopting a child. We were asking my parents questions about what we would need and they were excited to meet their grandchild. It was such a lovely dream that I didn’t want to wake up. I got to have my family back for a very brief moment of time.

Charlie had said one time that he would be willing to have kids if we adopted. At the time I didn’t want that, I’d rather have a biological child of my own, but I figured if he was willing to meet me halfway I should too. Shortly after his tune changed and he didn’t want kids. This would be the pattern over the course of our relationship, mostly because we had yet to find our groove. We didn’t know what made us work and how to accommodate our shortcomings. By the time we had figured them out and became a stronger couple, we were in the midst of having an open relationship and he wouldn’t want to bring a child into that. Which is a fair assessment.

Then he was diagnosed with ALS.

In hindsight I am glad we never brought children into our relationship. It would have made everything exceptionally difficult, especially once I had to raise them and take care of Charlie all while trying to process my and our child’s grief. Maddening.

I think Charlie would have been an amazing dad. He was so patient and kind. They also would have been fucking spoiled. I know it. Between him and my parents… the kid would have never wanted for anything.

The thought of adopting now just breaks my heart. They would never get to know one of the greatest people of my life. Charlie would be some myth or legend, yet the reality would be so much more.

I’m glad I at least got to feel it in a dream.

March 22, 2018

A Seer Reads the Stones

It’s going to be hard, but doable, not to read into the actions and words during this time. When I’m left with no answers and my mind is searching for some sense of stability or ‘realness’ I begin to look for the answers around me. Like when Charlie sleeps on the complete opposite side of the bed, where he used to hog all of it, is that a subliminal message that he’s trying to get away? Or when the last two days he’s been chatty and we’ve spent the evening holding each other and talking, and then it doesn’t happen is it different? Did something change?

The answers I divine to why are all stupid and probably not true. The further proof of this fact is that these are all my interpretations of perceived realities. For all I know the bed just feels bigger because of how I feel right now. I feel small and insignificant. Thus the spaces in between are vast and seemingly unending.

Then, like last night, charlie was tired and spoke very little and quickly turned around and fell asleep. Not at all like the past two nights. I could see that as he’s getting closer to this other dude or it was just that he’s a 40 year old man who is currently juggling a husband and a boyfriend. I could very well see how that in itself is exhausting and when you’re tired, you’re tired. (Not saying 40 is old.)

The thing about reading our own meaning into anything is that the pendulum can swing either way. It doesn’t matter what the facts are, they can be read in such a way that it is misinterpreted as negative. Case a point, Charlie was reading into my actions as wanting him to end the relationship because I couldn’t do it myself. In reality I was angry at him because I knew about the Derek thing and instead of talking to him or asking him about it I chose to keep it to myself which further drove a rift into our relationship. I was angry. As it also turned out, I was genuinely furious with and blamed him for our dog Klause getting out of the yard back in November. It was these things that made me angry with him and I was very cold to him as a response. It had nothing to do with me wanting to end the relationship, but that’s how he saw it.

Instead of talking to him and voicing these fears I kept them bottled up inside. They festered and made me feel something else entirely. If I had just done the “adult” thing and had a discussion about all of it, none of this may have transpired. My reality may have looked totally different. Yet, even that, right there, is me reading into it.

I want to think that “looking for answers” is a natural human response. It is our way of attempting to take the control back in a situation in which we feel we have none. We don’t like uncertainty and living in a “zen-like” state of letting life wash over us is against our usual factory defaults.

July 20, 2016

Joshua Revised

For the past few days I felt as though I had been regressing from my transformation after my completion of the Landmark Forum, causing me to panic that a return of the whiny bitch that used to run my life. To combat the potential relapse I started trying on different reasons for my cantankerous attitude. The one that held the most truth was that I hadn’t written something in awhile and it was wearing on me. I am a writer after all and if a writer doesn’t do his craft he begins to grow weary and out of shape.

So let me backtrack a bit. I’m sure I threw out some words or phrases that are absolutely foreign to most, making one ask “what is landmark forum?” I’m glad that question piqued your interest as it has become a large part of my existence.

Honestly when I first heard of it I was absolutely hesitant. It sounded like some weird cult bent on getting money. And At the time I thought that was my voice telling me that, but little did I know it was the voice of the pissed off 5 year old that was running the show. I can proudly say that now he has been put to bed in the past and won’t wake again. (That’s right, I killed him.)

The forum is pricey. Don’t get me wrong. I lucked out because the man that saved me from the most miserable job offered to change my life again and put out the $652 to get me enrolled. Even then I did it because I felt pressured to do it, but that was just another story I was telling myself. No one can make one do something he doesn’t want to do. What I know now is that the real me was begging, pleading for change. My life had fallen into a rut and all I was doing to get myself out was spin my tires and drag me further down. (Like they said often in the forum: “the more things change the more they stay the…”)

When the day of my forum arrived I told myself that I didn’t want to waste Steve’s money and I opened up my heart, ears, and mind to whatever change the forum had to offer. I didn’t want to say that I didn’t bother to at least try. Plus, my boss said it changed his life and I wanted the same.

Real change didn’t come until day two when one of the others in the forum read a letter he had written to his deceased mother. His honesty and pain struck a chord with me I could not comprehend and during the first break I called my mother and mended my fences.

Following later in the day we did an exercise where we dredged our past of fear and extracted it from our lives. In the course of an hour (which truthfully did not feel that long) I realized how much stock I put into wanting people to love and accept me. It went all the way back to first grade. Memories I had long forgotten were pulled up with this muck and actual snot. As a result of this exercise I discovered that I carried a physical manifestation of my pain in the form of sinus problems. Every instance when my nasal passage got stuffed up rushed through my minds eye and I found the connection. And when I was finished the amount of snot draining from my nose was embarrassing. I mean… Legit strings hanging from my nose down to the pool on the carpet.

Left raw and exposed the leader, Jerry, polished us up and I came out transformed. The baggage of the past was stripped away and all I had left was the possibility of my future.

One of the craziest and most fulfilling side effects of the forum is that my addiction is gone. I mean… Gone. I say it and feel it without the faintest hint of doubt. I couldn’t be happier. For so long that bull shit plagued my life and now it is gone.

Now left with me, the real me, I have so many things I want to accomplish. Things I will accomplish. First of all will be the promise I made to the entire forum on the final night: “I will create a future for myself and my life by BEING integrity.”