Christmas in July

 Why places are having Christmas in July in June is stumping me but I’ll take it. I need a little bit of Christmas. So!!! I’ve been looking into leaving the country in December for our Holiday. I look and look and look and I think it’s been decided on. This gives me something to be excited about so that couldn’t be better timing.

To be honest, I always want to go somewhere else for the holidays but have only once actually done it and then we took all the kids and my oldest sons wife too. Not this year. I want to commit to something that can’t easily be changed. I can’t spend, at least, the first half of the year in a crisis and then be all… Hey! Come darken my Christmas, please. That means that four of us are being booked into vacation plans on Monday and that’s all. Me, the husband, YM and youngest boy. We will be leaving mid December, I think. Squee!!!

Just an update type thing. No biggy.

Tracy 

YOU DON’T NEED PEOPLE WONDERING WHY WE BROKE APART

 GREAT PRETENDER HERE I GO………

I’m listening to that right now. Music and I have been spending a lot of time together lately. Music and art. Sooo many paintings. I just float for a couple of hours.

My oldest son spoke with my husband the other day. He spoke something to me just before that and said something to me that was hard to grasp from your child. I’ll spare you, for him and for me, but, I felt it shift. Life. Pain. History and here and now and what never will be. It was so furious and full of rage. This over baby food. But not. He told his dad that I’d told him that it was time he moved out on his own when he was younger and he feels nothing but rage about it and won’t speak to me until I can validate his pain…. He was 25 years old and we were moving to Texas in two weeks. He wanted to stay in AZ with his then girlfriend, now wife. He called it…. Get this, 

Childhood Trauma.

And spit verbal hate at me. ME. We were best friends before her. The jealousy of her has ruined it all. I don’t recognize him. It’s shifted. It wasn’t as traumatic as I’d thought it would be, then, I never thought I’d hear his hatred of me.

Spoke with the oldest daughter. There’s something wrong in her. She’s always been tough but it’s more than that. It will be long and slow with that one. The cobra mad at the world. Her medication isn’t correct anymore? Hard to ask that of the cobra looking for a reason to strike. So much of my mother being passed through blood. Thought for sure that I’d done everything humanly possible to curve that basic instinct at the base of the brain for decades of my mother’s bio family. DECADES. So many lost and angry souls. Tried to smother that with love. Not sure that that’s possible. 

However, we get to see the babies and that was the goal. Saw my love Lincoln tonight. He has filled a hole somehow but I can’t risk getting him ripped away and going through hell again. The only cure for that…. Love less? The option kills me.

—————————————-

The youngest boy had a biopsy done and as it turns out he has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome… Thanks to me.

This means that surgery will not help him. His muscles, joints, blood vessels, stretch. Our hands do tricks like bending our thumb to our wrists. We can sit, legs out and bend our knees in the wrong direction, same with elbows. AND it can cause heart problems so we’ll be seeing a cardiologist but that should be ok once things are monitored well. Really not worried so much about that. 

It’s hereditary and explains why my knee caps used to pop off and my hip joints let my legs fall out sometimes, my shoulders too.

It breaks my heart for him and he is let down but handling it very well. He says that he didn’t fail and he pushed his body as hard as it could go and he’s proud of that and so am I. That’s  all you can ask for. I’m very proud.

My Bad…..

 Sorry that I haven’t been around. I haven’t been doing my YouTube channel either. It’s just the way it is….

Two weekends ago, I had my mental health staycation and it was really nice. I did some therapy shopping and somehow ended up finding a new sofa sectional while I was at it. Because that was an impulse buy I decided to wait and ask myself, Self, do you need a new sofa? The answer is no but my emotional self wants to fill an empty hole in my heart and thinks that a sofa might do the trick. It won’t, but I’m still thinking it over!

I did get some adorable summer dresses and one really weird purchase…. A burnt gold velvet dress. Yes, I bought Ugg’s and a velvet dress. Neither of those things belong in the Texas summer but but but…. It’s going to be gorgeous in the fall and winter and, hello, velvet! With anklets and my Doc Marten Mary Janes…. So cute!!! Yes, I’m 53, but I’m not obligated to dress like a boring old woman!

I said that I needed to be around water and we had a spectacular thunderstorm with 10 inches of rain in just over an hour! I stood under a patio, closed my eyes, listened to the rain and smelled the fresh air. The wind blowing my hair around my head like a bent halo, my dress clinging to my body as it took in the misty splashes from the raindrops, tears or rain running down my freckled cheeks, nobody but me knows, held out my hands to feel the cool water bounce off my palms and roll down my wrists… and I loved it. I felt….. peaceful….. I stayed afloat.

I might have been in public…

 I was ok with that.

Thursday is my Lincoln’s birthday… His first birthday. 

We haven’t seen the grand babies in over a month. 

I think that says it all as to how things are going.

I know that I haven’t gotten around to my son’s diagnosis after the biopsy but I will. I’m just keeping my brain in neutral right now as much as possible. 

I’m deep diving into my art. I love it. I just check out and travel through time with my music and dance sometimes too. AirPods in. Noise cancellation on. My own world, there. Art, expression, concentration, watching nothing become something, seeing my emotions in it. This part was this song, that part was that song. Smiles, tears. Dance. Joy. Sadness. Warmth. Keeping my head above the dark water. You do what you gotta do.

Night Bears and cattails and the moon.

Me

Taking a Mental Vacay...

 This weekend we are working on my “Self Care”

Ya, a short vacation ordered by my psychiatrist. This is to unpack my mind. The constant think think think that’s never ending. 

I’m gonna drink a bit. Shop a lot ( already got started on that and on a whim, bought some cute black and pink Ugg’s. Pink has become my new favorite color of the moment and who would have guessed that?! Also, boots in the summer in Texas make no sense at all.... And that’s ok!) go to a museum, have a couple very nice dinners out, speak to no one, and not let my brain get it’s way. Also go to the water. Any body of water that’s clear and makes noise. Rippling, splashing, waving, noise. I need , really really need, the calming sense of water to prop me up. 

It’s been a struggle, the past few bits of time. 

Here’s where I’m going to be painfully honest.

It’s not a struggle.... It’s a fight. Full on,Fight Club Fight, to not sink into the black. 

My chest is so full of pain, anger, regret, confusion and disappointment, that it literally feels like weight crushing me. I feel like I need to shout as loudly as I possibly can to let out the pressure before I suffocate. Just drop to my knees and scream. 

It’s quite possible that strangers might find that disturbing though so... Mental/Emotional vacation.

I’m fighting to find my boot straps. I know they must be around here somewhere. Where did I leave them last?

Tracy