Surviving

November 22, 2021

 I just read my last blog. I was pretty hopeful that day... at least I was trying to sound hopeful. I can't remember how I felt that day. Usually, re-reading my words takes me back to where I was when I wrote them... but I didn't have that experience this morning. Maybe I wanted to be more hopeful than I actually was that day. Whatever I was feeling on July 27th that prompted me to write that hope-filled post, it was short lived.

I haven't written or painted since then. 

Honestly, I haven't done much of anything...just  survived. Day by day, minute by minute - that's what life has become over the past 10 years... just surviving. I  spend each day putting one foot in front of the other. I have adopted a habit of encouraging myself, which helps.

"Just get out of bed. Laying here will just make you have to rush and you know how you hate to rush. Just get up. You can do this. Get out of bed. That's all you have to do right now. Just get up and get some caffiene. You have plenty of time to let it do its job. Dont worry about anything else right now. Just get out of bed."

"Just get your shower. You know it will make you feel better. You can have a good cry. It's okay. Noone will know. Okay - now you have to get out of the shower or you are gonna be late."

"Spend some time on your hair. That's non-negotiable. Your hair is the one thing you still have going for you and having your hair fixed makes you look like you care- and put on some make up. Like Nan says - You might feel better if you put on a little lipstick."

Truth be told, once I get the outside looking like everything is okay, the inside can just stay on auto pilot. No one asks "how are you?" or "are you okay today?" if everything on the outside looks like it's supposed to.

The rest of my day is made up of "just do the next thing" ...

Go to work

Do what Blake and Gage need me to do

Try to be helpful

Go home

Do something to pass the time until I can sleep - and pray that sleep comes quickly and easily.

Dreamless nights are the best nights, when I just slip off into nothingness and stay there... until the alarm goes off.

The past 10 years have been an endless cycle of just getting thru the time between waking up and going to sleep.

I don't know what happened that changed me. I don't remember any one traumatic event that changed me from someone who creates to someone who survives...but something happened. Something killed me sometime in my very early 40s and I have spent the time since then waiting to stop breathing so that this can be over. Living was easy. Surviving is hard.

I don't want to continue on like this. 

There was a time when I wrote what I felt. I just opened up my soul and let the words flow. I didn't go back and spell check or grammar check or try to make sure that any of it even made sense. I just opened up and bled over the keyboard. When I read the words I wrote back then, I can remember how I felt when I wrote them. When I read what I've written over the past 10 years, I feel nothing. I don't think I've been honest. I think I've written what I want people to read- tried to project the image of me that I want them to see. 

I don't want to do that anymore.

I keep saying that I started writing for me. "In the Battle" started out as my way to put words to my feelings as I battled cancer - and so may other things. My battles got harder - so much harder than cancer - and it wasn't as easy to come up with acceptable words to describe my feelings. So, instead I tried to be a point of encouragement - but I simply don't have it in me to encourage anyone anymore. 

I need the freedom to open up my soul and let the words bleed out.

I'm not sure how to do this. Writing is my outlet. Writing is how I sort thru the stuff that traffic-jams my brain. Writing is how I remember who I am and why I'm here. What I need to write - what I need to work thru  - isn't really anything that anyone else needs to read... at least not until I get to the other side of it. 

So I think I may blog without publishing - at least for a while.

That being said - if you are reading this - whenever it is published - 

Thanks for sitting with me in the dark.

Big hugs - 

K