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A tale of two sisters

A tale of two sisters

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I haven’t written about my sister since she died. (I cannot even express how hard that sentence was to write. I had to stop writing because I couldn’t catch my breath.) I don’t know why I haven’t talked about her. Writing was how I processed everything when my Mom died. But with my sister? It’s just not there. The words. The feelings are there. It’s like someone took hundreds of LiteBrite pieces and threw them on the floor. Where once there was a bright, beautiful picture of my sister and me, there’s now just a jumbled pile of faded, dull pieces of plastic that have no rhyme or reason. No light behind them. I know I have to pick up those pieces. Some people say I can make a new image with them. One where I shine for both of us. But seriously, how do you make half of a Lite Brite shine? I want to take every damn piece and hurl it across the room. It doesn’t work without both of us. Suggesting it would is ridiculous. It will never shine as it did before. Never. The whole damn Lite Brite has been shattered beyond repair.

So, how do I find a new reality? How do I find a new me without her?

I wish there were a name for someone who loses their sibling. If you lose your parents, you are an orphan. If you lose your husband, you’re a widow. If you lose your sister, you are … lost? Alone? Sisterless? She was my person.

There were times she would withdraw into herself and not return texts or phone calls, and it would piss me off. Oh, that would piss me off so much! And she heard about it. But, you see, I did that, too. And we always came back to each other and talked about things. That’s the thing. We always came back to each other.

We used to send each other quotes or songs that reminded us of each other. Sometimes they were funny. Sometimes they were meant to say “I see you and I am here.” Sometimes they were just “Hey! Get me this on Amazon.” (Not much of the latter one because we didn’t have that kind of money but it was fun. I was very close to getting that T-Rex costume I want.) It was our way of always staying connected through the good times and the bad. It was our way of reminding one another that we had each other’s backs. For life.

When we were young

I could never imagine “for life” would be cut so short.

The turning point in our relationship was when I asked her to be the maid of honor at my wedding. She was shocked. Her initial response was to ask if I wouldn’t rather have a friend or someone closer to me fill that role. When I told her that was exactly who she was and I couldn’t imagine anyone else, well, I think that was the first time in as long as I could remember that she hugged me- without trying to strangle me down in a wrestling hold. A real hug. It was the best feeling in the world. It marked the transition from dueling sisters to real friends.

Oh, and as friends, we did have fun. I am sure we were responsible for my Dad’s grey hair and the hair he lost. We tended to revert a bit to giggling kids when we got together. Once our funny bone was tapped, we were gone. Everything was going to be funny. Family get-togethers? Forget about it! We weren’t going to check how much longer something had to cook or if we had enough clean dishes for the crew. Nope. We had to leave the room to laugh at something. To express the ridiculousness of something that happened or was said. Sometimes it was just because we needed to laugh and wanted some sister time.

I still laugh about one of the times she visited me for an extended time. It was a full house. All three of my kids. Both of her boys. Me and my husband. And Chelle. Well, if you know anything about me or my family, you can well imagine we didn’t have a quiet house. (Still, one of my greatest joys when it’s a full, loud house.) There were boys peacock calling each other from one end of the house to the other. Two of the kids playing a very intense Wii game. The Dobie loving the action with an occasion bark. One kid watching TV. I’m just walking through the house trying to talk over it while I am trying to clean the kitchen or grab laundry or bark orders to one group of kids or another. Well, there Michelle sat on the couch flipping through a People magazine as calm as can be and said, “Boy is your house loud.” Never looking up (and her voice never above a normal conversational tone) and just went right on reading her magazine. It struck me at that moment it was the perfect Jenn vs Michelle moment. I’m swimming through the chaos not even noticing it was loud and chaotic while she was very aware and totally unflappable (and slightly amused) by it.

We were best friends. We had a relationship no one in this world was privy to. We had a bond that no one in this world had. We had secrets that no one in this world will ever know. She and I had something that I will never have with anyone else in this world. No one knows what we had because it was ours. No one. Because that’s what sisters do for each other. They carry each others’ secrets, share each others’ joys, and share each others’ burdens. No one can know one hundred percent about another person and I don’t claim to here. We weren’t perfect but we were pretty damn good sisters to each other.

I don’t know how to do this. I have picked up the phone more than once to call her and tell her about the latest thing I found on Amazon. Or the latest celebrity gossip. Or the calls I go to make when I need her the most. When I am hurting. When I am scared about life changes. When I need to talk to her about our kids in college and how much we miss them. Or to cry over a really hard situation we should be helping each other through but that I am now navigating all alone.

And the phone call that is the worst of the worst, when the only person I want to talk to and the only person who knows me the way she did, the person who could help me through my pain is the one phone call I want to make to make the most. I want to talk about how much it hurts that my sister died. And how hard it is. And how fucking hard it is to breathe sometimes because I cannot imagine this world without her. She was my person. She would know what to say. If she didn’t, she would at least talk to me and help me through it. She would be with me. And now? She is the only person who can never help me through this and it sucks. It is the hardest thing I have ever had to deal with in my life.

This hurts. Oh, my sweet lord, this hurts. Unlike anything. And I know I will never be the person I was before she died. There is “before Jenn” and “after Jenn” and my job is to make sure that I find a way to make “after Jenn” have a life that means something. For her. For me. For all of us that were left behind.

But for now? I’m going to have to try to figure out what that picture looks like. I don’t know how. But I will. In time.

Missing my Mom and hoping she would be proud of me

Missing my Mom and hoping she would be proud of me

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Not a day goes by when I don’t think of and miss my Mom. Sometimes the grief still sneaks up on me in an overwhelming way and comes pouring out of my eyes. Take today for example. Gabby and I were talking about a movie sequel/ prequel and I casually said, ” But I don’t want her mom to die.” Boom! Before I knew it, the tears were streaming down my cheeks.

It still doesn’t make sense to my heart how I can live in a world where my Mom doesn’t exist. It just doesn’t work right. I still need her. I will always need her.

January 6th is the anniversary of her passing.

Passing. That sounds so easy. She passed. No. Just no. She was ripped from this world and left a void that can never be filled. Longing for her words or hugs never to receive them. Advice I need but will never get. Adventures we were supposed to share that never happened. Grandkids that are pretty damn awesome that will never know for themselves how amazing and hilarious their grandma was. She didn’t pass. She was brutally ripped away by a disease that is cruel and terrifying and one that is considered the “sister” to mine. In some ways that has helped me understand her in ways I couldn’t when she was alive. How’s that for a ironically sick twist?

Oh God I miss my Mom. My heart just does not understand. Time doesn’t make it easier. It just changes things. But the pain stays. The longing that I have no idea how to put into words but tugs at me in a relentless and unyielding way stays. Some days it rips my heart out through my tear ducts before I even realize it’s happening.

Damn. I just wish she was here to see my kids and to see who her baby girl has become. I hope she’d be proud of me as a mother. That’s my heart. I wish she knew me now.

I love you, Mom.

Won’t you be my neighbor?

Won’t you be my neighbor?

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of the Internet and how creates strong communities. Well, at least that has been the word that has been used so much lately. I suppose now the word community is more appropriate it. But there was a time when that seemed too formal. Too “organized” for what organically came to be back then. I started officially writing online in 1995 with an online journal on Live Journal. That was pretty much just throwing words out there. But in 2003 I started this blog. (Happy belated birthday, blog. You look good for 14 years old!) That is what in the blogging community considers an OG blogger. When we blogged, it was just blogging.

We weren’t Facebooking, Tweeting, Instagramming, etc. To see what was happening with one another, we’d hop online and read each other’s blog. We’d leave a comment and move on to our next friend’s blog. To me, it was more like a neighborhood. We would visit one another’s home, catch up,  and then we’d go catch up with another neighbor. It was close-knit. If someone was going through a rough time, we rallied around them. If someone wasn’t going to be “home” for an extended period, we would house-sit for each other. ( Also known as handing the keys to your blog over to another blogger so they can guest blog for you so you never had an empty day on your blog.) On weekends, we would have a neighborhood block party where we would gather and drink *kook-aid (*not a typo) and chat with each other in our version of real-time. If you put out the call for help, it was there. I don’t know how I would’ve gotten through my Mom’s long, horrible hospital stay and her death without my “neighbors” and their support. They lifted me up and reminded me I wasn’t alone.

In 2005 I was introduced to a tiny little grassroots company and new community named BlogHer. I almost didn’t go to their first conference until a long conversation with one of their founders, Lisa Stone, who not only talked me into going but into speaking on a panel. It was the best decision I could have made. From the conference, I began to work for BlogHer as a writer, helped kick-off their ad network and did whatever they needed behind the scenes for their ’06 conference. (Not to mention speaking at three of the conferences and being a part of a morning keynote.) I wouldn’t trade those early days working for BlogHer for anything. It was amazing watching many of my neighbors become part of that community of BlogHers.

I met many friends through my neighborhood and the many communities I have belonged to over the years. In 2007, BlogHer exploded into a conference that had huge numbers of attendees and vendors and parties etc. It was exciting to see the growth, especially when I was there watching from the grassroots level. (I am so thankful to have beenworking there at the very beginning and grateful I wasn’t there at the end.) I  got to know so many new bloggers through BlogHer. It was in 2007 that I met a handful of bloggers I’m still friends with today. Real friends. Not just computer friends. Heart friends.

Almost two weeks ago, Anissa, an OG blogger died. Anissa was hilarious, kind and my kind of crazy. I first met her on a BlogHer trip to the Ford plant in Chicago. You see, there were six of us who had “alternative departure times” and therefore we were late getting to the bus. So, the big fancy charter bus was full, so the six of us rode in a small charter-ish bus. Best outcome ever! We all laughed until our abs hurt. Anissa and I had a similar sense of humor and riffed off of each other perfectly. It was a blast. (I made some awesome friends on that bus that day that are still real, close friends today.)   Every time Anissa and I saw each other after that at BlogHer, we always shared at least one or two smart-ass remarks. We weren’t close but we had moments that made me laugh. So, when I heard that she died, I literally began sobbing. Right there is the waiting room of the eye doctor with the girls. Someone who has survived so much and who has a personality that is larger than life and is so young isn’t supposed to just suddenly die. Not someone so loved, so needed by her family, so adored by her friends. It’s so hard to wrap my mind around it. It just hit hard. It hurt hard. My heart has so many things I want to say but I honestly don’t know how to say it. The quote on Anissa’s about section by Erma Bombeck is one she lived by and I hope I live up to as well.

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and I could say, “I used everything you gave me.”

That week wasn’t over with me yet. There are so many things going on, rushing to force  themselves out of my brain through my fingers, and I am having one hell of a hard time trying to sort through them. Trying to figure out what to share and what not to. I found a friend from school died. I’m not ready to talk about that yet. But that was within a couple of days of Anissa’s passing. I also struggle with what is medical to help you understand me a bit better and what is boring medical and what is scary medical. (Most recently, I had a bad reaction to medications I was taking. Not only was it making things worse, it made me insanely angry, irrational, and suicidal. Not a good combo with the things in my Universe at the time.) Also?  You know how when you look really sad and kind of lost people will tell you look like you lost your best friend? So, that  actually did happen. I’d tell you it’s a long story and share it but in all honesty I don’t know the story so I can’t share it. My take away is that I won’t let anyone use a certain word as a term of endearment for me again when it is used one week before walking away with ease … hell, I have no idea. However, one of the best gifts Anissa could have given me was helping me work through serious issues & things happening on my own. That was a blessing in disguise.

Anyhoo, while looking for the picture of the six charter-ish bus gang, I went back and looked at pictures from BlogHers from years past. From ’05 when I walked into a conference where I only knew people I  had read online. And seeing how I found a tribe that got me. I still love those ladies I made friends with that year. It was a new and wonderful experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything. And then came ’06. Oh, BlogHer ’06! I laughed my ass off all weekend. I danced even without music. I “hugged” statues. I took a nose-dive into a hot tub. All of which was caught on camera. I laughed so hard looking at those pictures and remembering how it all came with such ease even though it was such a hard time for me. Then ’07 where I finally met THE Busy Mom. We can sum  up ’07 with one word: CHEESE. Enough said. I could go on and on. For years this was BlogHer for me. I am so grateful for the many friends It brought into my life. The community that brought me neighbors, so to speak.

There is so much going on  in my life right now. Some good and some that is too hard to really talk about here or now. But I am glad to be back. I’m just going to go about dusting things off around here. Rearranging the furniture. Take down some old pictures that don’t belong on the walls anymore. Put up some new ones without 80’s hair. It’s time to clear out the cobwebs, shake out the rugs, and get back to me & writing.

 

 

 

Hiding from the world but I can’t hide from myself

Hiding from the world but I can’t hide from myself

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The past few months have been kind of crazy around here. A lot of changes. For me and for my son. Let’s just say it might have been easier and cheaper to just get a double room in a hospital than it has been to pay co-pay after co-pay and gas and prescriptions etc all to get a big fat “We don’t know.” My son, he whose name shall not be typed, is going through his own situation that I will write about (because we could use some advice in one area) but not until he reads it and gives me the okay to tell his story.

For years I have suffered with migraines. It was one of the factors that led me down the path to my addiction issues. The last few months I have been suffering worse than I ever have. But I’ve had other complications thrown in to confuse things. So I have see a few specialists. With each new doctor comes new tests, new theories and new medications.

You see, having a mom who had MS, a cousin with Lupus, and  a grandmother with Parkinson’s, it can tend to freak a girl out when “autoimmune” is tossed around in casual medical conversations with my doctors. Especially when I already have been diagnosed with an autoimmune issue when I was pregnant. I’ll admit it. It scares me. I’ve never seen myself as strong as the people I know who fight with these autoimmune issues. I don’t know how I would handle it if something showed up.

And of course while we are figuring out what is wrong, the doctors want to manage my symptoms and try to eliminate them.

I hate seeing so many pill bottles on my counter. I hate the rattle of pill bottles in my purse. It makes me feel like I am failing. I’m not even on any narcotics or anything that is considered “addictive.” But? It still looks and sounds like “addict Jenn” and I don’t want to ever be her again.

Don’t get me wrong, I am careful. And my doctors are very aware of  my situation. But being on as many meds as I am for any reason is discouraging. Especially the Prednisone.

Let me just say here, I hate with the passion a thousand suns the steroids and what the effects they have on me.  When the doctor prescribed them a while back she warned me that I was on a very high dose. She even added in, “On this dosage it is not totally uncommon to hallucinate so be sure to let me know immediately if you do.” Wait. What??

I haven’t hallucinated. Though I wish the way my body was so fat and puffy was a hallucination. Even before the medications that are packing on the puff like someone is inflating me or like a giant puffer fish, I had been putting on weight and been fighting it with everything to keep it from taking over. I took a spin class. (It was a fail but I tried.) I work out at home. I walk. I have tried to watch what I eat. But the weight is hanging on to me like I’m about to hibernate for a decade or so. It hurts to hide from the world in shame.

And that was before I started on Prednisone and watched my body puff up in strange ways and plummet my self esteem even lower. I realized how much I am truly hiding from people. Friends. Family. Acquaintances. I don’t want to be the fattest woman in the room. I don’t want to be ashamed to meet my kids’ friends and their parents. I don’t like being ashamed to meet anyone my husband works with because he deserves the woman he married not the ginormous, puffy and medically screwed up woman he is now stuck with. I’ve avoided trips because I don’t want people to see me. Hell, I’ve even avoided video chatting with people I love but don’t get to see very often because of the shame of how I look right now.

I am hoping with the neurologist we have now- together with a specialist she is working with- we will figure out what is so out of whack with my body and I can come off of the medications. I can feel like myself again. So I can look like myself again. Sometimes I forget that I look like I do and when I see a picture or a video, I burst into tears. And that pisses me off because how damn vain am I that I care so much about that when one of  the reasons I look like I do is because of the medication I am on to try to make me feel better. Right now, I am blessed that they have not found something scary causing my headaches, dizziness, fatigue, high blood pressure etc etc. They are managing these things.

So until we know what I am facing (and Lord willing it is something easy to deal with and minor), I will not be discouraged by the counter full of pill bottles.  I will not beat myself up at the rattle of a pill bottle in my purse. And most of all, I will try to remember that the outside is just a shell and people who love me care about the inside. I’m not there yet. And I am still hiding. But I can tell you I am trying. I’ve been through tougher times and come out on top. Here’s to hoping I do it again…

Haters gonna hate. Trolls gonna troll. So…this writer’s gonna write. No matter what they say or do.

Haters gonna hate. Trolls gonna troll. So…this writer’s gonna write. No matter what they say or do.

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This year I broke my own rule that I established almost 9 years ago when I first started blogging: I would never let haters keep me from blogging.

But I did.

I didn’t consciously plan to stop blogging. I just didn’t want to write about things that were going on in my life. And? That’s what I do here. I have blogged through the good and the bad. I have blogged through the happiest times in my life and the most heartbreaking. But this? This was something that I chose not to talk about both here and in real life.

This is the first time I have discussed it. It is the first time even many close to me will be finding out how bad things became.

When things started to go wrong, they went really wrong very quickly. People I truly cared about and considered friends were overnight enemies. People I trusted were suddenly tearing me down in a way I have not seen outside a bad Lifetime movie or sitcom making fun of Mean Moms. But it wasn’t funny. What these people did to me almost destroyed me. And I don’t mean that figuratively. It almost cost me everything.  (Yes, my sobriety, my life and my family.) And at the time they did it with joy, pride and smugness. From Facebook posts to unfounded rumors,  there was no where I could go where I was not faced with the fallout from these people. (Now let me say right now, I made mistakes. I was not perfect. I know that. But no matter what mistakes I made, no one deserves the public and private crap that was thrown my way.)

You are free to choose but you are not free from the consequence of your choice.

I was lost as to how to handle such cruelness. After speaking with trusted friends and mentors who knew first hand what was happening, I decided to just keep my mouth shut.

There is a difference between giving up and knowing when you’ve had enough.

I was not going to fight back. I was not going to stand there and defend something that surely people who knew me knew was crap. Maybe that was the right choice. Maybe it wasn’t. In the end I lost way more than I bargained for. Not just friends. (Were they really friends to begin with?) I lost my ability to trust. You see I have always lived by the motto “Everyone is good until or unless they show you otherwise.” I have always trusted so easily. Clint and I would argue over this as time and time again I would get my heart broken. Still. I could not imagine keeping people at arms length all the time. I love people. Even when they hurt me, everyone deserves a second chance.  It’s how I live my life. Or at least it was how I had up to that point.

But they showed me that was a naive and ridiculous way to think.

So, I built a wall so tall and so strong around me no one can get in. I pushed away everyone. I isolated. I retreated. My health suffered. My family suffered. My friends suffered. My very outlook on life suffered. May they never know the feeling of being bullied to the edge of that cliff between life and death. (It is important to note that this situation did not cause this reaction alone. It just helped pushed me over the edge. There were really rough things going on in my life that were pushing me to my limit.)

There were days I spent the entire day in bed gripping the covers with all of my strength so as to have something physical to keep me grounded. As I cried and begged to find something within me to get up to be the mom and wife I knew I needed to be. I was drowning in a despair that I wanted to swallow me up.  At the time I thought maybe I was the horrible person they said I was. Maybe I didn’t deserve to live. I sank so low into that dark place, I almost couldn’t crawl out of it. I almost didn’t want to.

When you love people and love being with people, isolating yourself from everyone goes against your very soul. But it is what I did to survive. Not to live. To survive. And it was the worst thing I could have done for myself.

I guess by isolating me from all that I loved in my community in that sense they won.

I blessed that at the end of this past summer I was able to meet up with women I consider closer than friends and more like sisters. They love me as I am. They can take the dark and the light. They know how to show me the good. When I met with them they literally and figuratively wrapped their loving arms around me and I found healing with them. I truly laughed from the heart again. I cried with one of them one night and it was okay to do that because she sat and cried with me. She reminded me that everyone has stuff and it can’t define us negatively but should make us better. But what she did that night that will forever make me love her like a sister? She cried with me. She listened. Her heart hurt with mine. She loved me without any conditions. And she cried with me. I will forever be thankful for that moment she gave me. It meant more to me than she will ever know. Not for nothing but it made all the difference in the world to me.

Even when it came to blogging. I just couldn’t do it. I knew some of these people who wanted to destroy me, who hated me with every thing they had, who would gleefully watch me disappear into nothingness, they were reading it. It started to feel like my blog was being violated. Like they were coming into my home to find things to mock. I hated the idea. I mean, it made me my heart break and my skin crawl thinking of it.

So I stopped.

And they won.

You see, I never dealt with bullies as a kid. I had no patience for them. Not as a victim and not as someone seeing it happen. I have no tolerance. As an adult to know that there are grown women who truly wish the worst for me and would probably rejoice at any harm coming my way is a very surreal experience.  Now, since all of this happened, I have found a truce in my heart.

I wish them peace. I hope whatever pain they have within them finds healing. I wish them the kind of inner contentment that every person deserves.

Now, if you are still with me and read this far, thank you. The whole point of this is to let it out and let it go. I will not talk about it again. I will start 2012 with a new attitude, a new heart and a new outlook.  And? I will blog. Just do me a favor. If you don’t like me, don’t come here. If you wish me ill, please don’t come here. If you want to hurt me, please just go away. This is my home and I am reclaiming it.

 

High Fructose Corn Borgs? I’d rather just have 30 days of truth.

High Fructose Corn Borgs? I’d rather just have 30 days of truth.

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I take a step back from blogging and what happens? Mud gets slung, we travel back in time to the days of Star Trek when it was actually watched  and name calling ensues. What are y’all drinking, people, because it takes some serious balls for many of those involved to say the things that were said and then step back and continue to call themselves experts.  Go to time out, people. Or as my dear friends and I have agreed to: The Shuddup and Blog movement.

Remember blogging? We told stories. We laughed together.  We cried together. We joined together to support each other in our writing and in our personal lives. We gathered to share ideas and blogging topics. We were a community. Not out to slash each others’ blogging throats. We were not out to out do each other in our doing right, doing good and doing things the way they “should be done” according to a jury of YOU. Sure, things got ugly when blogger A didn’t like blogger B and said something nasty. But we never felt the need to call each other out, call each other names or call each other unethical.

I own my words. My opinions are not for sale. My integrity is in tact. And? I do not have to tear anyone down to back up my own opinions. Sure, I do reviews and if I do, it is because I like the product. I do not do the reviews for money, gift cards or the incredible fame it brings me. (Ha!) If I don’t like a product or the company behind it, I won’t do it. It is that simple. If I feel strongly about it, I may explain why *I* cannot do it but I do not feel it is my place to tell *you* what to write about. For some, they have the words for it, the passion for it and they truly feel it is important to share what they know and/or disagree with about certain companies or policies. That is them. This is me.

Wow. There is a tangent i didn’t mean to go off on tonight. See what happens when I ignore the Interwebs for a while?

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So, yeah, life has decided to kick my butt lately and I have put blogging way back on the back burner. I’ve  been taking care of my family, working on the books, volunteering, and basically trying to play catch up with life. I feel like I am  constantly playing catch up. Yet, even with all of that going on, I have such peace in  my life this year, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’m happy. Content. In a great place in my life. One way I’m going to work on getting the blogging habit and mojo back is to do the challenge that many bloggers are taking up.  It’s a way to really reach inside and dig deep into your heart and soul and answer some tough questions.  Can I open up that fully knowing I have people here–right here in my every day life– who would love hearing anything bad about me and who celebrate my every downfall, hurt or failing?  Am I willing to open myself up knowing people like that may be reading? Yes. Because they have no power over me. No one controls how I feel about me, my life or my decisions except me. Me.  Tomorrow I will start this. Join me if you’d like or come back in 30 days.  My goal is to do this every day and in the evening catch up on other types of blogging as well. We’ll see. I’m not going to jump in promising the moon when I may not reach that far. But I am going to try!

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