Category: God

Day 59-No Contact

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Of all the things I have done in my life in the name of survival, this was the hardest.

2023 was hard on me.

It was the year I named, “The Year of Healing.”

It was the year I went all the way to the bottom.

It was the year I lost all my words.

2023 was the year the void began calling me back.

It was the year the pitch dark began creeping up around me again. I thought I had escaped it, that black hole, and put it well behind me, but it was just waiting. I began to feel it chasing me, luring me back to the quiet nothingness it contained.

I smiled at it, I cried acceptable tears, I put on my, ‘I’m fine’, cloak and showed up and acted appropriately.

I began the year heartbroken.

In December of 2022, my mom abandoned me for the last time. Two years after she talked me into moving next door, she came to me and told me she was moving. She had lived in the same place for 20 years, but now I was here, and she was leaving. To her it was moving on to bigger and better. To me it was a death.

She was abandoning me when I needed her most. Again.

I was left with no way to deny the feelings I had kept buried my entire life. My words could no longer cover their actions and the veil was slipping. The veil was torn off, on fire, burning and it left me in ashes. But no one noticed.

In April, my youngest son packed his room and got on a plane to begin his new life, 3000 miles away.

A week later, my 13-year-old dog died.

A week after that, on the day before our 14th wedding anniversary, my husband told me he thought we needed a do-over, we needed to start fresh. We had been separated from December of 2019 until May of 2022 and were together for our anniversary for the first time in four years and while I wasn’t expecting a surprise trip to Paris or anything, I thought for sure we would figure this out.

The day after our anniversary I told him I wanted a divorce. I loved him, but I could not play these games anymore. Either we were going forward, or we were not. He left work early and we went to the courthouse and filed. Our divorce became final on June 8th.

Within the space of six months, I felt as though I had lost everything that had ever mattered. And no one noticed.

I gave myself until August, and I would be better. In my mind I had already been grieving the loss of this marriage for three years and it was time to move on.

I spent the summer running. It has always been my response. When faced with the unbearable, I will take flight. When flight is denied me, I will turn and fight, but that has always been second choice.

I couldn’t run far enough or fast enough to get away from myself and by August I had pneumonia.

I had to come home. To a house empty of everyone and everything but me.

I began isolating myself, on purpose. I was sick and I needed to feel better.

By October I felt better physically, and I made it to my sister’s bachelorette party and to her wedding on the first of November.

Then it was Thanksgiving and I had no one to cook for and I was lonely, and I started acting that out. I was making choices that were not good for me, I was beginning to drink again, after 3 years, and I was putting myself in risky situations. I was not thinking clearly.

I got sick again. Just a cold, but it lingered.

By the end of November, I decided I needed to be by myself and process some emotions or I was never going to get better.

On November 27th, I went no contact.

I tried to explain this as best as I could, to those that would expect to see and hear from me, but I could not make them understand.

I silenced my phone and decided to sit here, with my feelings. I would spend Christmas alone and by New Years, I would be ok.

I spent Christmas Eve and day deep cleaning my kitchen. I felt good about it, I needed to purge and clear out some junk. New Years was coming, and I needed to be ready for new things. I did some crying, I listened to some angry music- loud, I screamed. I was purging, it felt good.

New Years Eve came, and I was sick again. There would be no celebrating my progress and there was no one to celebrate it with anyway. I had tried to plan a few different things with my family, but they were not interested in celebrating with me. I was disappointed and sad but by that evening I realized that I was less lonely alone than I had felt in all the years celebrating New Years by myself while my husband slept in the next room and I was asleep by 10:30, feeling pleased with my progress.

January set in and so did the bitter cold and my mood sunk deeper.

The sickness was lingering and the feelings were lingering.

It had been almost two months now and I was beginning to feel like I was going to be broken forever. I was beginning to accept the sadness that felt like a heavy, wet blanket. I carried it everywhere and I was tired of it and tired of trying to explain myself and tired of all the poking coming at me from those who I expected to understand. I was just tired and I began to think about the void, about just crawling in and letting the darkness overtake me. It was a familiar place and it was comforting to think about falling in, even though a part of me knew if I did that, I would not come back out this time.

I was still trying to maintain as minimal contact as possible but my desire to be left alone to process a lifetime of hurt was not being met with understanding or respect and by the middle of January, Day 52 to be exact, I turned a corner from sadness to anger.

I have been angry for a good deal of my life, and it was always unsafe to direct it where it should have been directed and I have held it within myself. I have never allowed myself to willingly direct it anywhere but this time, I allowed myself to feel it and I was uncomfortable. I felt guilty, I felt ashamed, I felt ungrateful.

I had been in the house for almost two months, it was cold and dark outside and maybe a touch of cabin fever was setting in, I knew I needed to do something physical, but I could barely breathe, nevermind move.

I went outside, got a sledgehammer from my shed and with every swing, I screamed out the things I was angry about as I beat the hell out of a barbeque grill my husband had left behind, then I laid on the ground staring at the sky and cried.  

That is when I remembered something I learned a while back, that grief is stored in the lungs, and I knew I had to get it out to survive.

And suddenly everything began to make sense. Laying on the ground, both tears and snot running down my face, gasping for air, crying a big ugly cry and there is a moment of clarity.  It was surreal. I got up laughing. I felt insane but free at the same time.

I have been called petty more times than I can count, and I have been told I am ‘living in the past’ and I need to let things go. Just last week, as a matter of fact, when I spoke of no longer accepting the role in this family that they gave me, that I did not ask for it, that I accepted it and I did my best to give them what they wanted of me, but it was not me and for years I have survived as an actor in the role they chose to give me and I was no longer interested in that role, I was called ‘bitter’.

Today I am not angry or bitter or living in the past or petty.

Today I accept that others are unwilling to see the damage caused to me by decisions made for me when I was a child.

Today I accept that they never will.

Today, I make the decision to no longer try to explain myself to those who are unwilling to see.

Today I accept that they are angry at me for taking time to myself to process that which should have been processed decades ago.

Today I am learning who I am with no outside influence.

Today I am learning not who I should be to be accepted, but that in fighting for acceptance, I unknowingly gave up on me.

Today I am integrating the parts of me that survived over the years and I am becoming someone new.

Today I am learning to be patient with the process because my timeline for healing is not necessarily in line with God’s.

Today I pray that even if I am not yet on my way up, that I have at least reached the bottom of the pit.

Today I know that I have faced the darkness again and even though I had to go deep this time, coming out was made easier because I let myself feel it and I let it touch me and I let it wrap itself around me and then when I was at my lowest, when I didn’t even have words or a voice left to speak with, when all I had was broken hearted sobs and sickness, when I was curled in a ball on the floor, I begged God to take it. And He did.

Today I accept that God let me live, when I thought He should have let me die- when for years, I thought he killed the wrong sister.

Today I am free to tell my story without censure.

I’m not saying it’s over. It may never be ‘over’ in the way i had wished.

It may never look the way I thought it was supposed to look.

I may still face the darkness.

I may not have found my tribe yet, but I know who they are now. Part of me has always known.

They are the broken, the addicted, the healing. They are those that others refuse to look at and those who are invisible. They are the ones who suffered in silence and put on a brave face anyway. 

They are the ones who have also seen the darkness and touched it. They are the ones who let the darkness engulf them because it felt like the safest place to be and they saw no other way and they were tired of fighting.

They are the ones whispered about at Christmas and every family gathering.

They are the shamed and guilty.

Today, I am okay being exactly who I am, exactly where I have been placed, even though I don’t know who I am yet, and I may never know why.

Today I am no longer a victim. 

Today I am a survivor, saved by the grace of God for a purpose as yet unknown to me.

And I’m ok with that.

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The Struggle

Posted in Change, God, mental illness, ptsd, starting over, substance abuseTagged , , Leave a comment

November 14, 2023

6:13 am

I awoke this morning with lyrics in my head. Nothing strange there, it happens all the time. I’ve always thought of it as God’s way of preparing me for my day, waking me up with a song.

Today it was a passage from Zach Williams, ‘The Struggle’,

“She struggles with addiction, she struggles to fit in-“

I laid there, unwilling to wake up, cold and trying to warm myself by putting my head under the covers and breathing into the space beneath.

It used to work when I was a kid. I have found that sleeping alone has its benefits, like taking the entire bed, sleeping sideways and diagonal, if I choose. No one tells me to scoot over and there is no one to stop me throwing all the blankets to the floor when I wake soaked in sweat from nightmares that still plague me, and I guess always will.

In the summer there is always a cooler side of the bed to roll to but waking alone on a chilly November morning is a totally different thing, something else I need to get used to, I guess. This new life.

I pack the pillows around myself and readjust and try to sink deeper into the bed-

“She takes too much medication, to cover up her tears- “

Then the internal dialogue begins-

“No, I don’t. I don’t do that anymore. I’m ok. I’m not crying anymore. Most of the time. I’m getting better. I just want to sleep more than 4 hours a night, God, and I can’t even take anything for that anymore, so, please…please, I’m begging you, just help me fall back asleep.”

“One pill to make her happy,

Too many make her sad.”

“I am happy now. Well, happier? I’m trying so hard not to be sad. I’m going to be happy. I am happy. No pills required; I am fine. I just want to sleep.”

I roll the other way and make a hole around my face so I can get some fresh air, knowing that if I keep tossing and turning, Kelton is going to think I am awake, and he will want to go out.

“Then she notices the Bible, in the hotel by her bed.”

Irritation begins to get the better of me at this point.

“I know. I don’t even know where my Bible is, I am not proud that it has been so long since I went to church that I couldn’t find it Sunday morning. I mean, where could it go? It has no legs, it’s here somewhere, I will find it. It’s not like we don’t talk every day- please just let me fall back asleep until the sun comes up-please…”

“She says, ‘I am weary, I am worn,

And I can’t take it anymore.”

“No, I really can’t, God. I am weary. I am worn. And I can’t take it anymore!! What?! What is it?!”

“You see this bottle, it’s been my only friend-“

“It’s not. It’s not my friend anymore. None of the bottles, none of the bags, none of the pills, none of the ‘medication’, nothing. I don’t have drug friends or human friends; you know all I have is you right now. I drink my water; I try to eat food. I go to bed at night, even though I know I won’t sleep, and I get up in the morning and I do what you say, even if it makes me say things I don’t really want to say and do things I don’t really want to do and sometimes people think my healing process and the things that I do in the name of healing are odd, but I know it’s okay because you told me so and these are the things that make me feel better. Or they will eventually. Why can’t I sleep a full night? Is this ever going to happen? Because this is my struggle right now, God, this is where I need you.”

I pulled the covers tighter and my mind wandered into fuzzy places, my body cold but my mind not yet willing to be awake, Zach Williams voice and words looping around foggy corners, around the bend and gone, then coming at me from another direction.

“I don’t need to be at work until 4 this afternoon and I do not want to be awake at 5 am.

I am grateful that my body doesn’t hurt today and that is not what keeps me from sleep. I am grateful that I do not have to pee too badly and there is no need for my feet to touch the floor because, once again, I woke naked with all the clothes I went to bed in, gone. T-shirt, hoodie, sweatpants, socks-How I can sleep through taking my clothes off every night, all those layers-but not make it to daylight just once a week? Why God?

“Please—I beg of you, just 2 more hours…”

“But here I am,

My heart to you I give-

Oh, Father, can you take away these sins? “

“What? What God? What did I do now? What?? Fine, I’m awake. What is it? Please tell me and then let me take a nap. Please, just say it!”

So, he does. And again, like usual, I don’t understand. Or I understand one thing. Full circle. I see it like a traffic circle. It’s a roundabout.

This is how he talks to me. This is when. Almost always. 4 am. Maybe it is morning in heaven. Maybe he never sleeps, and this is when he gets to me. The earth turns to a certain angle, and he sees me and says, “Oh, yeah, I have to tell her something, I’ll wake her gently with a song, or a whisper- and I do hate to shout but sometimes she needs that…”  

So before the ringing in my head gets too loud, here it is-

I guess I am a slow learner. Well, Slow learner- no, stubborn as fuck-yes. To my own detriment, might I add. I have never been one to do what I have been told.

Into the past:

It is 1997- maybe 1998. I can’t say I recall exactly. My mind was so addled at that point, I don’t even know if I knew what day it was- they were all the same. Wake up, figure out where we were going to get some shit, how much did we need to sell, what could we keep, would it be enough, how soon would that be?

I remember it was sunny, we were living on Dusty Lane in a one room house built of cement block. When you walked in the door you walked into the room we slept in, there was a couch and a bed. I don’t remember a tv but I’m sure there was one. To the left of the front door was a small kitchen and in the center was a small bathroom, with a shower and a toilet. The entire house was maybe 15’ by 30’. You could see everything as soon as you opened the front door.

I was jittery when I woke, and I took 2 Valiums. The orange ones. I needed to relax. And maybe eat more than a pack of Nabs before I snorted my first line. Today, before we could get down to the real business of getting and staying fucked up, we had to go sell a pound of pot to some dude named ‘Boo’ and go get some food.

Doing him a favor, we thought, (or maybe we were out of gallon Ziplocs) we weighed it up and divided it into ounces and stuffed 16 baggies of pot into an empty Saltine’s box and put it under the seat of the truck. Under my seat, of course. And off we went, just a regular day. We would sell this, grab some food on our way to meet the ‘big guy’, and all would be good. Just another day in paradise, right?

They were waiting for us a mile or so down the road. Two sheriffs’ cars sitting in the parking lot of an empty building, right on Main Street. And waiting they were.

As soon as they saw us round the bend, one car pulled into the road and the blue lights came on. They waved us into the parking lot, and I knew we were fucked. I just, for some reason, didn’t realize that selling marijuana was as ‘bad’ of a crime as it was. And I was feeling fine, the Valiums doing their job.

They came at us guns drawn, ordered us out and onto the ground.

I can see an old lady across the road, standing behind her screen door, watching. She just stood there. Staring. She watched as the female cop patted me down, as she put her hands all over me, as she pulled up my shirt with traffic passing by and checked in my bra, as she put her hands between my legs- I watched that old lady, watching us. I watched her watching and I lost it.

I pulled away and told that woman sheriff to get her fucking hands off me and I tugged my t shirt down and I was twisted in my shirt and she still had hold of my arms and I began kicking at her and somehow, before I knew what was happening, I got the first shot of pepper spray straight in my left eye and they were both on me.

By this time, Chris was sitting calmly in the back seat of the police car in handcuffs- and I had a fleeting thought- something about him being so calm and giving up so easily, and that woman was still staring from her doorway- “What are you staring at! Go in your fucking house, is this making you feel good in some way? Shut the fucking door! This is none of your fucking business!”

I never carried ID back then, no one needed to know who I was, I was nobody. I was everybody.

They asked my name and I refused to tell them, although I am quite sure that they knew.

I refused over and over.

Shephard was the name on the tag on the male officer’s shirt.

Chris was telling me to just tell them what they wanted from the backseat where he sat because he had already given up- so quickly- and I told him to shut up and one of the officers grabbed me and spun me around and I was looking into the male’s face and we had eye contact when he said, “Stop! Do you want me to spray you again? I’m going to do it again!”

He still had the can in his hand and without breaking eye contact, I said “Yes.”, and I watched as, in slow motion, he lifted that can and took aim for my right eye. I watched as it blinded me. The stinging was so intense I felt like my entire face was on fire. But I kept fighting.

The third and fourth shots came after he had me bent over the hood of the car and I was catching my breath, and I heard the cuffs. I began to kick my legs backward and I got a few shots in but none that helped me, and he lifted me and spun me back around and I got another shot in each eye for that.

All this time, Chris sat there. Peacefully, hands cuffed behind his back, in the back seat of the car. Fucker. Why didn’t he do anything?

I screamed for some water- for them to fix this, that I was on fucking fire and was told they had no water until we got to Dobson. If I wanted to feel better, I would just let them put me in the car and we could go.

That, somehow, did not reassure me so I rolled and kicked from the ground and took another shot to each eye before they managed to get the cuffs on me and get me seated beside Chris in the backseat. Officer Shephard ‘found’ a bottle of water and splashed some from it onto my face and slammed the car door.

I don’t remember the ride to Dobson. Probably because I was on fire and couldn’t see shit.

When we arrived, they put us in two separate rooms. Mine had a table with a chair on either side and a camera in the corner. They gave me a cup of water, asked me my name, which I again refused to tell them, and they left me alone.

So I raged. I flipped off the camera, I screamed at them to go fuck themselves, I paced, I screamed some more and every once in a while, an officer would poke his head in and ask if I was ready to talk. I would say, “Are you going to let me out of here? And they would say, “No.” So I would refuse. I somehow did not realize that it was not a game I was going to win.

Like I said, Stubborn as fuck.

Eventually, they came in and told me Chris had told them what they needed to know and naturally I assumed that meant he had told them that the pot wasn’t mine and they were now going to let me go.

I let them lead me out of the room and from there they led me to a cell.

Where they proceeded to take my clothes and some nice lady talked to me in a quiet voice and told me that I was lucky. I was in this cell because I was on suicide watch, that is why they had to take my clothes and shoelaces and they needed to make sure I wasn’t going to hurt myself.

She was sorry but she had to do more ‘searching’ and I didn’t understand what she meant, I was naked, where was she going to search? I found out.

She said I was lucky because they didn’t put me in gen pop and my boyfriend was calling around trying to get bail for us. She said hopefully I wouldn’t have to stay long.

I was desperate for a cigarette, and they had taken mine from me, but she found me a menthol and one match. One match because that was all I was allowed, and she was going to watch me smoke but it was the best menthol I’ve ever had and magically her voice and kindness and the nicotine began to calm me. Or maybe I was just done fighting.

She asked why I wouldn’t just tell them my name and I told her of the undignified things they had done to me, while everyone in the neighborhood watched and then she left me alone and went back to her desk and I laid on the steel cot, waiting.

Around 3 am, she came to me and handed me my clothes. Chris had made bail. It had taken him a minute because his family wanted to leave me in there and bail him out. Like I turned him bad.

I was charged with four felonies that day, Possession, Manufacturing, Intent to Distribute, and one misdemeanor, Failure to Comply.

I tried to break with him then, but the hold was still too strong, and he said he would pay for my lawyer, and he said he would get me out of it and getting arrested only stopped the steady flow of coke and meth for a minute.

So back and forth I went, going to moms for a week or so cleaning up, then he would call, and I would meet him, and it would get too heavy and back to mom’s I would go. I had no contact with my kids, I couldn’t keep a job, I couldn’t get a job, but my mom always had a bed and food and clean clothes.

Court dragged on and on and Chris kept telling me he was taking care of it, and I couldn’t see progress but in the end he did. We went to court and I listened as they repeated the charges against me and said that they were dropped and I pled guilty to failure to comply, because the lawyer said to and the judge told me again that I was lucky and they took Chris to jail and everyone told me how lucky I was that he took the fall for me and I kept using, even when he was in jail. I waited for him and cheated on him for drugs and told him I was ‘being good’ and wrote letters and visited him in county and drove to Goldsboro for visits when they moved him, and I kept business going. Because without it, what would I do? I did my almost 100 hours of community service and paid my price by cleaning toilets at a day care and picking up trash on the roadside and while he was away. I gave myself away to whoever had what I needed. And the using covered up how dirty I felt. Until it didn’t.

Then he got out. And he had to work, so somewhere he found some dude named George who had a crew of Mexicans who painted commercially, and he agreed to give us both a job. So, we painted. I sucked at it. Couldn’t cut a line for shit. Well, not paint lines anyway. I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying so at work I painted in silence. All day every day, Mostly, sober.

Then he found a new job installing drop ceilings in new schools that were going up everywhere.  That guy also offered to take me on- as a laborer, so I labored. They hired me as a joke, not thinking I would last but I worked like a man and eventually I proved myself. I would lift that grid and put it on my shoulders and haul it wherever they needed it. I cut tiles and I cleaned up and I became faster and better at installing tiles than their regular guy, so I got a raise and a new position. I climbed into the back of that van at the end of the day, tired and worn and we would pass around a joint or two, and the red lights on the highway would hypnotize me and I would relax, and I began to feel like I could do something. And without drugs, I slept at night.

One day I was leaving his mother’s house, to go to town and I came to the stop sign at the end of Prison Camp Road. As I was making a right hand turn onto 89, a sheriff was turning onto the road I was leaving. I caught a glimpse of his face, and we made eye contact, and I knew that fucker was coming after me, but I pretended he wasn’t, and I kept going. He made a U-turn and as I knew I had no inspection sticker, tags or insurance, I pulled into Oak Grove and pulled in front of the garage, like I was planning to go get my sticker and he pulled in behind me. I got out of the car and he rolled down his window. He said, ‘Hey Jackie,’ like we were friends and I looked at him and said, ‘Hey,’ back to the man who had aimed his pepper spray directly into my eyes, six times. He called me over to his car and motioned for me to get in the front seat, so I groaned and did as he asked.

“How are you doing?” He asked, like he cared.

“Fine.” I answered grudgingly.

“You know I can take you in, right? I know you weren’t heading here.”

“Well, I tried.” I smiled at him.

“I just want to talk to you for a minute, is that ok?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I was done. Give out. Resigned. I had to get out of here. Everyone knew me here and in a bad, bad way.

“Why did you do that? Why did you act that way that day?”

“I don’t know, Officer Shephard”, I said caustically. “I should have been really calm that day, as I wasn’t on anything but Valium. I should have been really relaxed.” I smirked at him.

“I’m sorry I had to do that to you,” he said in a different tone of voice than the one he had used on me the last time we met.

“Yeah, right.”

“I am. You can be ok. I want to see you make it. I want to see you get out.”

“I’m trying. I’m working. I’m doing what I’m supposed to.”

“You may need to leave him.”

“I know. But I can’t right now. I’m trying. I’m working. I don’t even have an illegal car without him. I don’t really know how.”

“I’ll tell you what, I’m going to give you a warning, and if you come back and show proof of insurance and registration, I can let you go.” He handed me the warning.

“I will,” I sighed in resignation, “Thank you.”

“I want you to be ok,” he said as I was opening the door, “I don’t want to see you anymore.” I got out of the car and leaned in before I shut the door and said, “Not to be an asshole, but I really don’t want to see you anymore, either”, and I grinned at him as I closed the door, and I walked back to my illegal car that I was pretty sure Chris got in trade for drugs.

Shortly after that the kids father agreed to let me see them and a month or so later, I told Chris I was going to Alabama for 2 weeks to see them before summer vacation was over.

I got in that car and drove it to Alabama and long story short, put my kids in it and drove it to Maine. With no insurance, no registration, no title and on a donut tire. Definitely planning on never seeing Officer Shephard again. Escape.

I got out and twenty years went by. Exactly 20.

For those 20 years I was in survival mode. I thought I had healed from things and that I had put the past behind me, and I was good. I got my kids back and I got married and my husband and I raised them and sent them off into this big, scary world. I drank like a fish for those twenty years. I endured 2 stays in the psych ward and two more suicide watches.  

We began fighting more and more and I quit drinking, and his drinking became heavier, and I became more and more weary of it. And then he told me to go.

Where was I to go? Back to Mom and a warm bed and a hot meal, I guess. Starting over. Fuck.

So I came back, angry as fuck. I came back hurt and broken and alone, and when I came back, it all hit me straight in the face. Everything. I hadn’t healed anything. I just ran. And now I was running back. WTF.

I ran from Maine at 16 in shame, and then back to it at 29, in shame. Now, I had to go back to North Carolina. In shame. To a place where I had been on my worst behavior. To a place where I had lost everything.

Fucking starting over. It was demoralizing and depressing. I was so angry. I raged. I cried. Covid came and locked me in the house by myself and I realized I didn’t like myself that much.

Here I was, in a strange place, with strange customs and friendly to your face people. Neighbors who wanted to hang out and feed me, what was wrong with these people in the South? Where I come from strangers don’t talk to each other. Why couldn’t they just leave me alone? Aren’t they supposed to stay home too? I was mean to so many people, just because they wouldn’t leave me alone to hurt.

My brother in law told me about a guy who needed someone to work a few hours a week, and I thought about it for a second, but as my husband and I were only separated and I still had access to our bank accounts, I didn’t need the money, so when I found out where the job was I declined to go talk to the guy.

A year and a half later, it came up again and I brushed that off. ‘My husband and I were going to try to reconcile. I didn’t want to be tied down, I had other things to do, I’m not going there’, I said to myself.

Reconciliation was not for us and at the beginning of this summer we divorced, so last week when my brother-in-law again mentioned this guy maybe needing help, and me wondering how I’m going to pay my bills, I thought to myself, “This is the third time he has mentioned this. You can at least just go home and comb your hair and go talk to the guy. Man up!” I prayed a quick prayer, just, “If this is your plan, God, let him be there, because I don’t know if I can be brave enough to go in there more than once. But I’ll do it because it keeps coming at me, fine, I’ll do it.”

Yesterday morning, I got up sick to my stomach. I washed and combed my hair. I got dressed. I made myself choke down a cinnamon roll. I took care of the dogs and the chickens, and I got in the car and drove to Oak Grove for my first day of work.

I walked in and found out that the owner had decided to find a reference for me from someone who wasn’t family and found out that the guy he had called for a reference was someone I didn’t really like and had recently told to go fuck himself. Quite loudly. In front of other people, including his wife. (I went home that day feeling like an asshole and said a prayer for him because I didn’t know how his wife could stand him and maybe if he felt better, he would be nicer.)

I worked my full shift yesterday with my head held high.  I smiled. I hoped that no one would recognize me from who I was. I wondered if I had slept with any of these old men who hang out here now. I hope not. But the sad fact is, I don’t know. I don’t remember their names. And I wouldn’t remember their faces because I never really looked. But that is who I was. That is not who I am today.

But chances are someday somebody will recognize me.

I stood smoking a cigarette on break, looking at that spot in the parking lot, and remembering the sheriff’s words. How he just wanted me to make it and he was sorry.

This morning I woke up to that song. And the image of that roundabout.

I am going to be ok. I am going to make it.  Whatever that is.

But I had to come full circle. The roundabout. I kept trying to get off and go in other directions, but you can’t heal until you face the things that broke you.

I’ve battled myself, demons, dragons, everyone around me, even God. I have not listened and been stubborn. I have been broken, stomped on, eyes blacked and teeth knocked out.

I will go in tonight, knowing I haven’t slept and I will do my best.

Every day I learn and remember more of who I am.

I’m a fucking warrior. That’s who I am. A fucking warrior. And I will keep fighting.

I just want to be on the right side these days.

Who is Robert Card?

Posted in Depression, forgiveness, God, mental illness, ptsd, substance abuseTagged , , , Leave a comment

A Dissenting Opinion

This question is all over the headlines.

There is only one way I can answer this, and not all of it will be the popular opinion. Probably most of it won’t, but that’s fine.

I knew him before he was born.

His aunt was my best friend through school from sixth grade on through. In my teens, I babysat him.

I moved away for many years and when I came back and married, he was right there, on the periphery, a best friend of my husband’s nephew.

I knew he was in the Army Reserves and he worked with my dad and my brother-in-law. He hit on my sister at my wedding, and he raised a son.

He built a house and for help putting a roof on before the snow flew one year, he traded my oldest son a car.

It was a piece of shit Ford Escort, and the passenger floorboard was rotted out, so you had to be careful where you put your feet when you got in, but my two oldest children happily drove to school and wrestling practice and work and he gave them freedom and independence.

Another son played horseshoes with him every Wednesday night during the summer.

He is a human being, like you and me. Imperfect, but trying.

The Robert Card I know is a good man. Even though he did a terrible thing.

The night before last, he allegedly shot a classmate of another son of mine, along with too many others.

He may not have deployed, but he signed up to potentially trade his life, so we have the freedom to make shit up and speculate on who he is and spread rumors and innuendo and point blame and vilify him, when in fact, the blame lies on all of us.

How many times have these mass shootings happened and afterward it came out that the shooter had tried to get help and couldn’t or something like it? How many times have we heard we need gun control?

All of them? That’s just a guess, I bet its pretty spot on.

I, like every other Mainer, was glued to the news and Facebook Wednesday night. I did not sleep. I haven’t slept yet, two days later.

Like many others, I watched the flight tracker- (why did we need that when we could hear the helicopter?) and I wondered why they weren’t going up the river, why they only went down as far as the dam. He parked at a boat landing, and he is from Maine, as were all the police officers searching at that time. Why not up the river? So easy to get away, I thought. Why were they making it so easy?

I saw the reporters outside of the hospitals and listened while they told us nothing. I saw talking heads and commentators from away and the next day watched Janet Mills in disgust. All of them saying nothing and falling right into line.

Don’t get me wrong. I lost a sister to murder at twelve years old and I get it. I know personally what will happen to a family. How people deal differently. Some will go inside, and some will act out. Some will turn to drugs to escape the horror and families fall apart. I know how you don’t talk about it and how all the things you say are wrong. We break. Due to our mental health.

I read about how he was schizophrenic, which to my knowledge he was not, and how ‘everyone in town knew to stay away from the Card’s, they are fanatical gun people’. WTF. Fucking media. I never heard that and I lived next door for a lot of my life. I read about how it’s the guns and it was his politics and shit that, in the end, is all just wasted air and words from people who know nothing.

It makes me wonder about what other lies they have force-fed us. All the other mass shootings. There are so many these days that we are all numb to it. Until it happens to you, in your neighborhood and everyone begins to take sides.

There was and still is so much bullshit being thrown around, that I stopped watching the news and Facebook and started praying instead. And I’ll keep doing it. And when and if they catch him, I will log in to see the eyes of a boy I knew his whole life, even if we were not close and I hadn’t seen him in a few years and I will cry, probably a big ugly cry, like the ones of the last few days.

I will speak now because I know that even though he was never deployed and never saw any ‘real action’, he still got broken. He cracked and there was no one to pick him up. I know he was clearly at war with his own mind and there was no one who did anything. And I know this because I have been there. Because I have fought against a system that was broken for my entire life.

Unless the list of wounded tips the scales, it appears that most of those killed were of a certain demographic group.

I will speak because I know from personal experience that when you go into a psych ward their biggest goal is to ‘stabilize’ you. That usually means copious amounts of drugs until you are drooling and can’t think, so how could you hurt yourself or anybody else. And then you are on your own. Just stay on your medication. But you don’t. Because you can’t think, and you can’t function, and you can’t feel your life. So they begin by switching things up, try this pill and this one and this one, on and off medications while they tell you to go to therapy and ‘fake it until you make it’, but you can’t because now you don’t even know who you are. But if you are at least able to show up at work and continue to function as society says you should, then you are ‘getting better’. And in the end you have been on 1,800 different medications and you still feel like shit. And you are still hearing voices and you are still seeing things that are not there and you still feel as though everyone is against you, and they say they are not, but the truth is that now you are somehow, ‘less than’ the person you used to be. And you know it to be true because it is inside you.

So you’re angry because you still don’t know what the fuck happened to get you here and now your family is against you and the world is against you and you begin to take it out on everyone around you. You lose your family, your friends, your children, everyone you care for. And you don’t understand why. If they still speak to you, they do it cautiously, slowly gauging your mood. And this hurts. And on it goes.

I am not saying this is what happened to Robbie. I am saying this is my own experience and the experience of many others.

Men in this country are fucked. We teach them to man up and not cry and tell them to figure things out on their own. We expect them to be strong and not show weakness. We do not teach people to feel it until you heal it, we teach them to fake it till you make it. And it fails.

Then we tell them to be soft and because you shed a tear or can’t get your shit together, you are not a real man.

And for those with mental illness, and for our veterans, especially, our country has failed them and in turn, failed us.

Our country is us.

We have failed spectacularly.

The time it takes to heal a cracked mind is not acceptable in this country. The methods required are not as mainstream as they would lead us to believe.

Healing is hard, it requires much introspection, if you are to succeed. Which requires time in the quiet and nature. It requires sitting still. It sometimes looks like just plain remembering to eat a meal and drink your water and to have a solid bedtime routine, so you sleep at night. It is accepting your own failures and your weaknesses and figuring out how to go on. One teeny, tiny step at a time. It is learning how to quiet your own mind and when you can’t, it is learning to sit with it and question what it is that is unsettling you and it is seeing the ugly answers. Then it is actually doing something about it, while you feel as though you are walking through three feet of snow in a blizzard. It is inching forward while it feels as though you are sliding backwards. It sucks. There is no easy timeline.

But time is money, right? Let’s all medicate and get back to work. Money, money, money.

With every one of these incidents, more people crack.

With every one of these incidents more prescriptions for antidepressants and antianxiety medications go up. You are welcome, big pharma. Go fuck yourselves.

With every one of these incidents, people rage more and more about guns. Thank you but I want my people to have guns. If I didn’t believe in the constitution, I would live elsewhere. If you wish to sit here blind and rely on our government to protect you, you can go, I’m fine with that.

History books are filled with tyrannical governments. Except for the parts where they have begun to try and change history.

I watched as people commented about how this doesn’t happen in countries where guns are banned, like the UK. Well, duh. But remember the Revolutionary War? The reason for the second amendment? England went to war against their own countrymen in the United States? Yeah, ok. I’ll keep mine, if you don’t want any, that’s fine. Like most gun owners, I will do my best to protect you too.

Last night I watched in horror as the search warrant was executed at Robbie’s family home.

While the police and every law enforcement agency for miles sat a quarter of a mile from the house I grew up in and made a show of calling out to him to come out, I listened for the shots that would end his life, while deep inside I knew he wasn’t there because he is smarter than that.

Then the camera panned and I saw the throngs of people lining the road and I knew those weren’t Bowdoin’s people. That was the media. And, instantly I thought of Waco. I hated that my mind went there, but things were beginning to get a weird déjà vu feeling.

I thought about the helicopter track, and I thought about how he threatened his unit, which is against the law. I thought about how they sent him home. I thought about how Maine has no ‘red law.’ And things started feeling too convenient.

And why lights out in Bowdoin last night, while the ‘search’ was underway?

I would want all my lights on, so he knows I’m home, and he doesn’t come in to face my guns.

I saw the reports of his search history and his likes and of how I have Google searched somewhere along the lines of all those things and I wondered what they would say about me.

I watched them at his family home and knew he was too smart to be in there and too smart to have a phone on him. He is a Mainer, born and raised, a man who when he signed the papers dedicating himself to the service, during a time when we were ‘in conflict,’ he signed knowing he may go and not come back. And he did that for you and me.

He was trained by our military and grew up in the woods of Maine. C’mon now.

And we are searching the river today? Two days later? When his car was found there Wednesday night? Seriously.  Draining a river? I didn’t even know that was possible.

Do I need to say it again? Trained by the military and Maine.

I am wondering about so many things right now. And my mind has gone into some dark rooms I did not desire it to go.

When they let him go, were they hoping he would shoot up his unit? Then they would kill him there and it would be just another mental soldier. We need gun control, turn the page.

Did he surprise them with this attack on family people? On regular people out for a good time on a random Wednesday night?

I can almost guarantee, although it will never be said, that they knew his likes and dislikes and searches long before yesterday. Because if they want to they will know yours and they will know mine, and we can’t stop it.

Robert Card is a good man who got a raw deal and he hurt a shit ton of people and, if they get the chance, they will scapegoat him.

I have seen the calls for his head.

An election year is coming, and this is all sure convenient. It is not what party you belong to. I really don’t care. I myself don’t believe in any of them anymore. We have watched them fail us again and again and the only thing you could do at this point is break it down and start over, and I don’t trust one politician to do that.

They will use this to distract us from what is going on elsewhere, they will use this to get more tax money to put into their pockets, while we all suffer and hide from ‘the fanatical gunmen that roam our streets’. All the while talking about how ‘the system is broken’ and they will go and make more drugs that dumb us down and make us more docile and ready to follow.

We failed Robert Card and we failed the victims families and I am disgusted, as you should be.

Are we the people ready to make some real changes? Can we unite? Or are we going to let them tear us apart?

I fear that they will shoot him down, Bonnie and Clyde style, regardless of whether he has guns on him, in effect, murdering my family’s friend in the name of public safety and gun control, ensuring we will never hear his side. I pray he is brought in alive so the families of the victims can have some closure, even though that’s not a real thing. There is never closure.

I know that right now, I pray he has a chance to make his amends to God and all those he hurt. That’s another challenge for those of us weak enough to get broken by something. You then face everyone with the full knowledge of what you did while you were ‘out of your mind.’ I just pray he gets a chance to.

And for now, all I can think, as Veteran’s Day is almost upon us and with a mustard seed of faith, is “Run, Robbie, Run.

Update: May you rest in the peace you yearned for. Thank you for your service.

Run

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Thursday April 1, 2021 2:15 pm

The need to run is on me again.

What is it, God? What am I not getting?

What do you do when the place you ran to becomes the place you want to run from?

When the walls start closing in.. is this fight or flight? Or just flight?

I know it’s something in me. Something deep inside.

It feels primal.

My throat starts closing up.

I’m paralyzed.

What makes me need it? I know it’s me now.

What do I do with that?

Scream? Cry? Curl up in a ball and MAKE myself be still?

It never works. I think it makes it worse in the end.

Because I have forced myself to hold it… to keep it together.

To smile when I don’t want to.

To talk. Force conversation.

It’s agonizing.

I just want to go.

Nowhere in particular.

Where no one knows my name.

Where I can be on the outside who I am on the inside.

Where people get that.

Without judgements.

Where is that? Where is that place? Why can’t I find it?

Am I not brave enough?

Willing enough?

Are my eyes not open enough?

Am I just too broken?

I need you.

Is it true? What they say?

Are you right here beside me?

Protect me, God. Can you protect me from myself?

Does every lesson have to be learned the hard way?

I love you.

Thank you.

It’s not you, it’s me

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I am a lone wolf with only survival in mind.

I have gone rogue, a pariah.

I am breaking off from the pack,

Shielding myself from this obscure world.

I need to change my line of sight, get a broader view, escape the fog.

Like a locust I have gone underground,

To undergo my own life process.

To feed and grow,

Before tunneling my way into the light with my brood and unfolding my wings to fly into freedom.

I am a solitary figure in turbulent seas,

Through the rolling thunder and jagged lightning,

I search for signs of land.

For a safe harbor.

Soon I’ll reach the peak of the mountain.

Soon the sun will come out.

Soon the ground will warm up.

I will emerge full,

Transfigured,

Purged.

November 6, 2020

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Friday. 9:41 am

3 days with God on that.

The hurt my heart feels is a profound sadness.

It paralyzed me. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t eat.

It’s that I can’t understand.

How is that they don’t know…?

How is it that they can’t see…?

When it was written so long ago?

Update- found this 4 last clover while I was waiting for this to upload… it’s only my second this year…I know what it means to me…

What God Taught Me Today….

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                                                                                                            Sunday June 28, 2020

                                                                                                                                11:35 am

This might seem like a simple lesson.

One I should have already known.

One that we all should be born knowing.

God knows my name. He knows my name; he knows your name. He knows all the names of the ones he has called.

He knows our ways. He knows the way I think, He knows the things I battle with- every day.

He knows the beliefs and the values he put in my heart.

He knows that each one of us is different.

He already knows this.

He knows the secrets in our hearts.

We are told to ‘love our neighbor as we love ourselves…’

I have always struggled with this and I never knew why until today.

I don’t hate people or anything, but I have struggled with the idea that I must love others more than myself, I guess.

I have felt guilty, in some fashion, for most of my adult life it seems like. Guilty when I put others first, guilty when I did not.

This morning I woke with the message that God knows my name.

If I compromise my values and beliefs and just myself because it makes somebody else feel better, then I am doing no justice to God. I am not being true to the person God made me to be. I am, in fact, hurting my relationship with God, with others, and with myself.

The Bible may tell me to ‘love my neighbor’ but it does not say that I am to do this if doing so will damage my relationship with God.

It does not say that I need to have a relationship with ‘my neighbor’.  I do not have to talk to them every day. I do not have to be involved in their lives; I must only love them.

Sometimes I don’t write things because I am afraid of what others will think.

Stupid.

God knows my name.

If I want to sing and dance with joy,

If I want to talk to myself or have human conversations with the dog,

If I want to laugh out loud at my own dumb jokes-

If I want to crack up alone while everyone else in the room looks at me funny,

If I want to love,

If I want to let go,

It’s all ok.

God knows my name.

My name is Jacquelyn Lee Crosman.

10 Things to remember for Tomorrow

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I lay down tonight to rest with chills along my spine after a friend sent me a photo of the letter she was given by her work that allows her to leave her house and go to the nursing home where she works, explaining that she is essential to the care of her patients and must be allowed on there road. Another- in a different state informed me she had just gotten back from a walk and received the news that after 4:30 this afternoon she would not be permitted to leave her home for at least the next few weeks.

I feel as if I am living in a movie. It is too surreal. I I am sure it’s only a matter of time before these restrictions are in place in every state. When it hit me that ‘they’ could effectively lock us in and basically imprison us in our own homes, I felt a wave of panic wash over me.

It is with these thoughts and circumstances in mind that I will say to you tonight (and remind myself to practice tomorrow and in the days to come),

‘1. Be safe out there- and guard yourselves.

2. Love each other.

3. Remember that everyone is feeling the same fear and uncertainty that you are, so be compassionate.

4. If someone is on your mind, by all means, reach out. Yours may be the voice they need to hear on the other end of the line tonight.

5. ‘Do unto others, as you would have done unto you.’ Matthew 7:12

6. We are all in this together and that is how we will get through- together. It’s the only way.

7. Be patient. God’s timeline is not the same as ours.

8. Squeeze in some quiet moments and decompress with some deep breaths.

9. Remember God has your back and you can talk to him anytime you need.

10. It feels so different when I say to myself, ‘I’m isolating for health reasons.’, than when I say to myself, ‘They’re going to lock me in! ‘ I think I prefer to keep this voluntary… if at all possible. I may have to reframe that train of thought in my mind many times before this is over.

⁶Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4 6-7

    Time out

    Posted in God, grateful, StepsTagged , Leave a comment

    Today- this new life we are all in now- together and ‘socially distanced’- It’s hard. Each of us is figuring out where we are on our own. We are not all in the same place or of the same mindset. I need to take a time out.

    Today-I choose to quarantine myself and my household because of the love that I have for you.

    Today- I am frustrated by the people out there that still do not believe that the Corona is a real thing. It’s ‘just a cold’, I have heard. It is ‘natural selection’ and ‘population control’. ‘Only old people die’… ‘It’s just something made up to panic the people.’ I have heard some ridiculous things.

    Today- I am grateful for the ‘old people’. I love my old people. My mom and my dad. They’re my old people. My grandparents are gone now, and honestly, I’m glad I don’t have to worry about them through this. Do you have old people? Grandparents? Aunts, uncles? People with heart problems, diabetes, cancer? Immuno-suppressed?  Do you know anyone like that? I do.

     I am grateful to the ones who are wise. The ones who are smart enough to know to have toilet paper and canned goods in their cabinet. The ones who plant gardens and can teach us how to can food and use leftovers and who know how to get by with what we have on hand. The ones with the knowledge and wisdom to get us through whatever comes after this quarantine that half of America is not abiding by. I love old people. They have great stories. They have lived lives, raised children and grandchildren. They have been through recessions and depressions. They have fought the wars that allow us the freedom to not abide by quarantines. They fought the wars that allow us to disregard common sense and turn around and put their lives at risk.

     Thank you to the ‘old people.’ I was taught to respect my elders and to abide by them. It’s the way I was raised. Maybe that’s just me, I don’t know.

    Today- I will respect my elders by staying away from them. And everyone else. In the hope that his thing will run its course as quickly as possible. And we can get to figuring out a new normal. And it will be a new normal. Things will not be the same.

    Thank you, old people, for the life lessons. I, for one, was listening.

    Today- I would appreciate if others respected my wishes and showed their love by NOT coming by. By not going in and out. Thank you for showing me your love in this way. For today. I’ll be happy to see you when the danger has passed.

    I have been to the airport twice in the last 10 days, dropping off and picking up and getting everyone where they needed to be. I have been to stores and stocked up like the rest of America. I have potentially been in contact with many, many people from many regions. Because I love you, I ask you to stay away. Because I love your grandparents and don’t want to be the reason you lose them, I will stay in my house. You’re welcome.

    Today- I know that I am not the only one who is anxious. I know I am not the only one who is frustrated, bored, hating the smell of Lysol and tired of the dryness left in my hands from all the handwashing.

    Today I am trying to take a moment to talk to God when I get frustrated and afraid. Afraid of the future that I have no control over. We can’t be afraid of that. To remind myself of that I talk to God. I ask him to slow me down, I ask him to put His words in my mouth, because I tend to speak before I think sometimes. I ask him to not let me think crazy thoughts about now and the future. I’ve read my Bible. I guess maybe we should have been expecting this. We just didn’t know what it would look like.

    Today I know this. He has us. If we talk to Him, listen for Him and obey Him- He will be here and we will find him. Then there is the God willing part- of course- I have to know that if God doesn’t want something that I want, I will not get it and I have to be okay with that. I have to not fight him and still try to get what I want and I have to stop more often and reassess my steps.

    Today I know this. Battles are not won by armies of soldiers who think each of them knows best. God’s battles are won by armies of soldiers who are willing to obey and trust in Him. I am willing to do this. I will not argue.

    That’s a good thing to do in this quarantine- slow down. It won’t hurt anyone. Spend time with the people in your house, get to know them better. Play games- if you’re lucky you can go out in your yard. Rake, look at flowers, get ready to plant something. Shovel snow- spread it out in the driveway so it melts faster, so you can see grass sooner- whatever- no one says you can’t do these things. Enjoy meals together- by now I’m sure there is enough food in the cabinet- play Playstation or X-Box, do some puzzles. Clean your house, throw things out, rearrange the furniture. Whatever. Do projects you have been putting off. I’m sure you have plenty you can do at home. Quit smoking- go on a diet- do some exercises. All the things you have been putting off until you have time. You have time now. Thank you, God. For this moment in time. I love you.