Instagram filters

I remember being 30 and seeing the world through 30 year old eyes.  The filter on my eyes was probably heavily influenced by a subconscious biological need to continue my DNA regardless of whether I was aware of it or not.  It was garish and short of attention.  Clingy and shallow.

Now at 50, I realize how different the world looks and it amazes me.  The biological filter is gone, but has been replaced with so many more.  Fear is probably the most dramatic.  Fear of not being what my son needs.  Fear of losing my parents, my job, myself.  Fear that there never was a myself.  The filter of drifting.  Wanting to be understood but knowing that not only will it not be possible but no one is going to try.  The inability to scream out my fear.  The filter of giving up.

I wouldn't lay odds that I will have over another decade.  I have Barrett's and my longevity is at the whim of a switch.  But I have a son whom I can't burden on anyone else.  I have no one else to leave him with.  He'll be a traumatized, teenage fireball of chaos.  I hope and pray my time doesn't end before he's out of high school.  He deserves more than that.  So much more than that.  I need to keep my fingers crossed and my karma good for another decade.  The filter of desperation and loneliness.  

Besides my son I have one other driver and that's my desperation to help animals.  To somehow stop all the violence.  Its alive.  It recognizes its family.  It's afraid, it dreams, it has wishes and needs like everyone else.  There is nothing ok in slitting open his or her throat and cutting its body apart.  But whenever I open my mouth to communicate, I stumble and just make others angry.  Because of me, they plant their feet firm in their cognitive dissonance.  The filter of failure.  The filter of not knowing what the hell purpose I've been given breath.  Maybe that's why my throat is rotting.

Looking out through these eyes, the world is so big.

Should I start a different blog? I'm a different person. 10 years later.

Hi.

I read through the stuff I'd written many years ago and I remember all those feelings and I'm impressed I wrote them all down so eloquently.  It's also amazing that I made it out of that time period alive.

But I did.  Somehow.  With Missy's help and lots and lots of wasted time filled with distractions.

This is me now with the love of my life.

But he's growing up quickly and I will soon be alone again.  I've already been experiencing it and it's like a drowning.  And I don't have the support around me that I did before.

I'm trying to prepare and find things that I want to do with my life when I'm living for myself again.  I'm worried these things I'm cultivating will not be the inner tube I need to stay afloat, but might be more of a bath toy that I'll be taking under the waters when I can't kick anymore.

Quite a bit has changed since I posted last

I'm re-purposing this blog to track my success (or not) with my goals for this year. Lon and I are in agreement and hopefully he'll keep me to task.

My goals for this year are:
1. Eat responsibly
2. Spend money responsibly
3. Work on my house
4. Determine the path to take to start a family. Whether this is go to a fertility clinic or adopt, dunno.
5. Be a good friend
6. Have more faith. Faith in me, the universe, God, work, etc. Faith in me is the hardest, honestly.

What has changed since I posted last:
1. I am happy with Shawn. He loves me though he'll never say it. He kept me sane through this holiday and I recognize how lucky I am to have met him.
2. I have discovered that to adopt a child I will be spending a minimum of $30k, which involves taking out a loan, and between repaying it and paying for infant day care and diapers, etc. I can't afford it. I will have to figure something out. IUI's however are between $200 and $2k per try (not sure what the cost of donor material is, if its even available here), but I'm going to research that path, though I think I would rather adopt. I'm doing my very best to not give up.
3. I am learning to play bass guitar. I like it its fun, but when I wake up in the morning I've been having the worst wrist joint pain which frightens me. Muscle pain would go away, but this is joint pain. We'll see.
4. A number of my friends are in trial periods in their lives and I need to make sure I'm there for them as they're here for me.

So far this morning I haven't made any positive choices, but when I do, I'll put them here.

Three things

I've noticed myself trying to find reasons why my relationship with Shawn may be ending soon, and each time I do, I realize that I'm seeing things that aren't really there. That made me wonder, this morning, what is motivating me to look for things that are wrong? Why am I undermining this like I sabotaged my marriage?

So I sat in today's team meeting and asked myself some direct questions.

What do I want?
1. I want to laugh and have things to look forward to
2. I want to love someone and be loved in return
3. I want to have a family

Really its that simple.

So as far as those three items relate to Shawn, I have the first with him. The second, I only have half of. I love him but he doesn't love me. Which is ok, really. We went into this with the notion that this was about right now and not the future and that there wouldn't be any expectations. It was my own stupid fault for falling in love, but I do that. But at the end, I don't have #2 requirement met. And #3 will never happen with Shawn, so that's not met either.

What does that mean?
1. My relationship with Shawn is short term and I have to keep that in mind so I'm not so dependent upon him for my happiness
2. I need to tone down on my feelings for him. To start, I need to make sure that neither I nor anyone else refers to him as my 'boyfriend'. We're friends, really. It makes me sad, but really that's what we went into this looking for and that's what it is. See a duck and call it a duck.
3. It shows some of the underlying reasons why I resent James so much right now. 'Family' wasn't his dream, he didn't even want it when it was presented to him, why does he get it and I don't?

What effect will the identifying those three things have on the short term?
1. Dunno. But I need to maybe start to focus on myself - things like running and goals like 3M and similar things that end up making me feel empty but are good distractions short term.
2. I need to refocus my brain off of Shawn. Distance myself from the places and people that are part of the shared world. I still want to be his friend, but I need to guard my sanity.
3. I want to work on my house. That's the best way to shore up my own psyche.

What effect will the identifying of those three things have on the long term?
1. Dunno. Not like one can go out and find someone worthy of my love and who would love me back. Not like one can go out and get a family, especially when one is single and broke. So lots of dunnos.
2. Need to be up front with my BFF M, who with her dearest heart, tries to make me feel better when I'm sad like this by reminding me that I'm part of her family, but it only makes it worse in some ways. Like denying a starving man food, but letting him look at other people eating. Its sometimes worse. She loves me, but she doesn't understand that part I think.

The other day in San Marcos when we went tubing, I nearly drowned. I went down a "chute" and got pulled under, swallowed some water, so much pain, I had no air in my lungs, and when I started to get my head out of the water, got pulled into the second chute and got pulled under again. I got to feel what drowning felt like. Luckily, I was able to get my feet lodged in a rock before I got pulled into the third chute or I would have really drowned. No lifeguards there and no one would have known til my brain had been gone. So now the memory of it is a new anxiety, but in a way its a good metaphor for right now. Its been a beautiful ride in the sunlight under the trees but in the end I'm pulled in the current out of control and if I don't find something to stick my foot into to stop this, I'll not make it out again.

-erin

Tonight is Sunday.

Tonight is Sunday. I ran a long run tonight and feel pretty good. I feel decently content with my life but at the same time I don't want to be alone for the rest of it and I'm not sure what that means. Its been an interesting month.

On a sad note, Teddie Dog is dying and my mom is torn up inside. Maybe though this will help her deal with her guilt about Grandpa. I hope so. I don't like to see her suffer the same pain at her own hands over and over.

I think I'll watch a movie tonight to distract myself from falling into melancholy.

I miss you James but I know that things happen for a reason and that you life will likely be better without me in it. I wish there had been a way to fix the things that broke us apart, but we'd been trying to fix those things for most of our 13 years and they were only getting worse. I hope you're having a good night.

Silence

The past week has been windy and there's always been a wind chime ringing somewhere in someone's yard. The roof has been creaking, there's always been something.

Tonight its silent.

Not everyone's a mommy

I want my heart to stop beating.