Of Earth and Stars

An entry for Week 6 of therealljidol. 

( On the run... )

The very last voicemail I have saved with my mother's voice is from January. In it, her voice is kind, but mildly exasperated.

"Tracy, we are just fine." Emphasis on fine, with a hint of annoyance that I have called her several days in a row to check in. I had good reason, as someone had taken advantage of her kindness, and her bank account, in an online scam that lasted for days. This just mere weeks after her own father's death.

Her voice changes tone, right back to sweetness. "We love you, okay? Don't worry about us so much. Call me if you need me. Bye."

I know she would tell me not to worry. I know she would tell me not to cry so much. I know she would hug me, hold me, maybe scold me in that same gentle way to tell me to keep moving forward. I know she would tell me that she would never want me to hurt in this way.

And yet, I do. I have mentally kicked myself a hundred times a day for not having more voicemails, for not having more photos, more videos.

I had the first dream about her the other night. In the first half she is gone, and yet, as dreams do, later she is there, alive, standing in her kitchen with her hair in a ponytail, saying something to me. When I wake up, I try to recall what was said, hoping there is some message hidden in the dreamscape that will help me feel better. I can't recall, and so I end up breaking into tears.

I want, so desperately, to feel that comfort of her presence. I sometimes wonder if I am listening carefully enough. Right now I still feel empty, raw. I have stood in front of her grave and talked to her - one minute sharing how everyone is coping; one minute letting her know how grateful I am for all that she gave to us; the next falling back on an apology, the fear and guilt that linger from the decisions we had to make, the questions that we couldn't answer, the things we couldn't know, in those last horrid few days.

I had expected that I would help take care of her, and dad, for at least another twenty years. It's hard not to run outdoors and scream out loud and shake my fists and kick at the sky.

I try to think of her patience, her calm, her assurances to "don't worry". My mother - my mother could rival Mother Theresa in levels of patience. I wish I had half the ability to conjure up that level of calm. Perhaps if I did, it wouldn't feel as if everything was spinning so wildly. My mom - even when annoyed, was never mean. And she was always positive. She always helped to push my anxiety away. She looked for the best in people, and she gave her best to people, and I think that is probably one of the greatest gifts she shared with me. I am trying, as I walk this walk, to follow in those footsteps. To give and accept kindnesses. To loved and be loved. To take care of others. To hold onto hope. It's hard - so unbearably hard, and yet I have her voice right there to remind me.

"We love you, okay? Don't worry about us so much."

Did you know that if you have an electrical outlet overheat in your home, it can smell fishy and/or like a dead animal? This is because the plastic components in the wall socket are often made of a urea-formaldehyde composite, that smells like death when it breaks down.

FYI, the smell will come and go from one day to the next - it may last a few minutes or a few hours, and sometimes it will disappear for a week only to return full vengeance -- all while you freak out about your cleaning skills, tear apart your cupboards, and entertain fears about the poor animal that may have climbed in your wall and died. It will intensify when there's a heavier load on the same circuit. Check the outlet. If it's hot, it's likely your culprit. Also, get it changed out ASAP, it is a huge fire hazard.

Spoken word:


This song makes me laugh and cry all at once:

"The thing I think we have to remember is that there is no finish line with depression, anxiety, or any other sort of mental illness. We’re on this path, and the path is constantly changing. Sometimes it’s flat and well-marked, and we can see all the way to the horizon....Other times, it’s so heavily shrouded in fog and mist, we can’t even see past our fingertips and we need someone to show us where the path is. And sometimes, we come to a wall that we don’t think we’ll ever get over. I’ve been staring at the base of that wall for weeks, and just now you helped me remember that there are always handholds to get up and over it."

-Tears in Rain, from wilwheaton.net

rainbow could use a little help with funds to help cover vet bills for kitty Jack. GoFundMe w/ rewards linked here.

Occasionally I wish there were a way to "favorite" DW posts to come back to them to read later. I realize there's both a) tabs in my browser window and b) the "memories" feature, but I occasionally wish I could do something similar to what I do with Twitter, which is to pin stuff I might not have time to read on the run and then come back to it later, where I can see all the pinned posts on a single page.

Tabs don't work well for that because I'd have 40,000 tabs open. Also, I read across multiple devices, and the tabs don't always sync up between devices based on the browswer. OneTab, which at least condenses everything to a single tab, doesn't really sync across browsers, either.

"Memories" is okay, except I like to keep "memories" more tailored towards, well, just that - stuff that you like so much that you want to keep it around forever and ever, and not just stuff that I want to set aside for a little bit.

I realize it's probably completely unworkable, but I can dream.

*jumps up and down and cries and laughs and skips around the yard*

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.

--Justice Anthony Kennedy, June 26, 2015

It feels like it's been several months (or maybe longer) since I've felt like, well, me. Despite the fact that I am actually a pretty positive/optimistic person and despite the fact that I'm mostly happy with my life (still want a house of my own, and maybe a change in job scenery, but not nearly motivated enough to do either of those things) - I often feel like I'm drowning under the anxiety and the negative voices. It's not so much that I feel depressed (although during particularly stressful times, or my favorite hormonal times, I sometimes do), but it's just that I don't always know who I am (or who I'm trying to be) anymore.

There are little things that add to it - the weight I seemed to have not-so-mysteriously put on, the terrible haircut that, even having grown out a bit, just does not feel like me, continuously losing the crap fight against my skin - I don't feel very attractive. And at other times, it's that I don't feel interesting - I've always suffered from the idea that I'm just not a creative, naturally talented and/or artistic person. I haven't picked up my guitar in ages. I worry that sometimes my ideas are just a mimicry of other opinions. Then there's the health crap - my stupid hip, which has been bothering me for almost two months and which I am sick of complaining about but which has pretty much taken one of my few releases from me; my inability to sleep through a night without interruption. Everything feels very mediocre, very not-good-enough.

I imagine that many people feel this way, and have to deal with a sort of clawing self-doubt that eats away at their happiness. I think what bothers me is that these feelings have been lingering a while. They often let up for a bit, as I find new things to amuse me and focus on those and the priorities. But I also worry that I've sort of accepted these self-criticisms and seem to be procrastinating on doing things that might make me feel better about myself. It's not that I don't practice self-care - I do, but it's mostly of the "have to have to get by" variety. I don't spoil myself in ways that count, but rather I make excuses of why a certain item/action will help lift my mood in a rather chaotic way. I keep thinking that there are things I could do to address my feeling unattractive; there are things I can do to exercise to gain some sanity (like cycling, if I can overcome the bike seat issues); there are things I can practice to try to challenge myself creatively.

But I'm just... exhausted. Not in a physical way. I have plenty of energy and am grateful for my health. It's more that ... I'm stuck in a sort of mental limbo of being where I don't know what comes next. So I'm just swimming. Just keep swimming swimming swimming. Which is okay, because sometimes when life is unpredictable or tumultuous, you need a good period of downtime and stability. But everything feels stale and kind of crummy, and I don't know what to do with that. I want to feel alive and passionate and interesting and sexy and fun and loveable and exciting. (And I know that I have people in my life that will tell me I am all of those things, which I am grateful for, but there's also the need to feel it on my own.) I don't know how to get myself to the point where I feel those things, where I have that confidence in myself again.

Maybe I need to set some goals, to find time to play, or just to sit and think about what it is I want to be doing with my time. I know I'm okay where I am, I just can't help but think that somewhere a better world is lurking.

Today I had a short hour to go for a run, in between the time L. came home from work and the time in which he needed to run back out again for gate-duty at a basketball game. I took off on my usual 5.0-mile route. My left knee felt a little stiff at first, but being a dumbasseager to get out, I decided instead of stopping and trying to work out the kinks, I'd just jog slowly (albeit a little stiffly and painfully) until it warmed up. It did warm up within the first half mile so that it wasn't painful.

On the first half of my route, a dog bounded across four lanes of traffic to chase me. It was not a particularly large or vicious dog, and I stopped as I heard it give chase, which made the dog stop, in the middle of the road, on the eastbound side of traffic (right next to me). This being a rather major highway, I started to panic a little, and so I tried to coax him to my side of the road, since he was closest to me. I thought, somewhat naively, that if I spoke to him in a calm/sweet voice he might listen and quit barking. He looked at me confused, but continued to bark. His owner, who lived in a house across the street, began yelling at him to come back, but he appeared to ignore her. I changed tactics and began using a rough voice to try to shoo him out of the road (traffic is still hurtling towards us), and this worked...except he bounded back across the median and into the lanes of oncoming traffic, onto the westbound side. I screamed at him to stop, of course he didn't - and thankfully, thankfully the traffic on that side was paying attention and slowed down/missed hitting him. Although neither of us was hurt, the whole thing shook me up a little. I ran the rest of that mile much faster.

On the way back, I passed by his home again, and made a point to cross to the median, at least, to avoid catching his eye. However, I know that if he'd ignored traffic the first time, he might do the same the next time. :/ Thankfully his owner appeared to have taken him inside. It's the first I've seen of him.

Another house I passed, which has the world's tiniest fence (it is, no shit, probably 2.5 feet high), now has two rather large, slightly intimidating dobermans who like to run to the fence and bark at me. I'm fine with them as long as they stay behind the fence, but I cannot get over how short that fence is.

Right before mile 4.0, another dog, that I'm aware of and sometimes anticipate, came bounding down his lane to chase me. This dog is much smaller, and although he has previously nipped at my ankles (never broken skin), he tends to turn tail and run if I gruffly shoo him off. So we did that whole routine, and somehow I didn't trip over him before he turned and rolled and scampered off, barking at me as I retreated.

I never quite know what to do with dogs when I'm running. I was raised with small dogs, and I love them...but I'm also really allergic to them so have elected not to keep one as an adult. There's also the point that when I was about 11 years old, I was riding a bike down a drive when I was attacked by two boxer bulldogs, one that took a good meaty hunk out of my arm, the other a small hunk out of my left leg, both of which required a hospital trip. (Thankfully the owner was outdoors to call them off.) So, I have a love and respect for dogs, but also a pretty reasonable fear of what they can do to me. My main concerns with the dogs are 1) they don't get hit by a car chasing me, as I'm alongside a very busy highway; and 2) they don't bite me, preferably. I imagine that the approaches needed depend on the dog, but is it best to try to sweet talk a barking dog (appear non-threatening), or try to shoo them on? Do I just run like hell and hope that they never catch up (doubtful, I'm kinda slow from a dog perspective)? I do my best to not step onto their property (but god knows the dogs think the property extends into the road!), or to provoke them by any means.

Because I was in a hurry to get back home before L. left again, I ran a little farther than I usually would (I usually stop and do a cool down/walk about a third of a mile before the house, but this time I just kept going since it was so close to his departure). Turns out I was able to catch him right as he was about to back out the driveway and grab a sweaty kiss. ;) So, all told I ended up running 5.44 miles (with the aforementioned interruptions). It was the warmest and sweatiest run I've had in a good six months, and I was dripping wet and tired and made for a cold shower the minute I got in the door.

Surprisingly, my left foot (which has been hideously painful after the past couple of runs) has not bothered me since, but I did notice a little swelling/creaky-grinding/pain in the left knee. *sigh* I should have been a good girl and stopped to stretch that out a little more at the start. Meanwhile, I've iced it and took an NSAID. Hopefully it'll be feeling better by Thursday.

Oh, and my pace was 10:58/mile. :) Not too bad, for that distance, for me, with two dog chases.