Streams of Consciousness

While cleaning the bottomless pit which is my room, I found a poem that I don't remember writing, but I know I felt this stuff, so it's just a matter of not remembering WHEN I wrote it. It seems to be sometime in late 2007 from the wording, because it's about Annie, but before I really started delving into what was really in my mind about losing her.


Annie

After all these years
I find that you stayed
in my heart,
So much so that losing you
brought pain I thought
wouldn't be possible,
We had been in contact
so rarely that I thought
the connection was gone,
But I was wrong,
Obviously,
Because my heart
said otherwise,
It knew you were gone,
And that I had lost
something irreplaceable.

-----------------

It still speaks to me, which is why I'm posting it. There are poems I come across that I hadn't put into my collection but had written on the fly that don't stand up to the test of time. This one still works, so I'll add it to my collection. I have enough for a book, I just wish getting poetry published paid!

My writer's block is so bad right now that I couldn't even write a post on Annie's birthday. I started to, but it was weak and wasn't going anywhere, so I didn't finish it. I wanted to write one, I did the Chinese food and a drink to toast her with, and I wanted to write something for her, but it wasn't happening. There's no poetry at this point, after almost two and a half years I still miss her, but I have no concrete thoughts about it, just general loss that's in the background a lot. October almost mangled me completely and I thought it was never going to stop. I think part of the cluster headaches/serious sinus blockage I was getting were psychological. I've written before about how much I hate October. I love Halloween, but that's the last day of the month, the day I get to chase away the hate and the wrongness that has become October for me. Annie's birthday is a week later, and the day after that, everything was good again. No more pain. That's what makes me think that it was at least partly psychological. The timing was just too perfect. I have to get it right in my head before October comes next year, because I can't handle another one like that. I'd never experienced pain like that before. I thought my left cheekbone was going to explode, and I don't get headaches. I have to find a way to get rid of the hate I feel. G would tell me I'm crazy for hating a month, that it doesn't make sense. Of course it doesn't. Emotions don't make sense, they're emotions. There's no logic involved. Every day at stores, on tv, on the radio, always a reminder of what took Annie away from me. All that goddamn pink all over the place, you can't get away from it. Ribbons all over the place, on everything. All month I get reminded that she's gone and why. It's too much. I thought I'd managed to handle it after last year, but obviously it's still a problem. How do you get over hate for something like that? A month, a color, a cause. A worthy cause, but one that creates pain in my heart because it took Annie away. I should fight for the cause, but I couldn't handle being around it like that, talking about it or whatever way I decided to do it. Ignoring it is impossible, as I've found out, and as much as outwardly I had a grip on it, subconsciously my mind turned on me in a big way. Part of me obviously still hurts so much over losing Annie that it caused me to be in severe pain for weeks. Maybe if I could write, get some poetry working again, it would get it out of my head finally. Emotions this deep can only be gotten rid of by writing. Hopefully the block can be broken soon.

Earlier today my cousin mentioned that her mom had told her that I used to play the cello.  I told her that was a long time ago, and that I had to stop playing partway through high school.  Nobody but me knows the reason, and it probably wouldn't make sense to anybody else.  Mom was ticked at me for YEARS after I quit, , because she'd always wanted to learn to play an instrument, but hadn't had the chance.  She thought I would regret it later on.  If I'd stopped playing for a different reason, maybe I would, but as it is, I don't regret it.  I had no choice really.  

I started playing in the fourth grade.  I was okay, but not a prodigy or anything.  I was decent through junior high.  When I got to high school, I found myself trying to keep up.  I kept at it, trying like hell to play music that was sometimes too difficult for me, because Papa was there.  He thought I could do it, and while he was there I believed.  I always felt like I was struggling, but I kept pushing.  Then he was laid off, and the next school year they had two other teachers in his place.  One was my junior high orchestra teacher, who thought I was good, but the other one was the high school choir teacher.  Papa had always said that I would be first chair the next year once the senior who was first chair graduated, but when the school year started the choir teacher decided that the freshman girl who was coming into the orchestra was going to be first chair.  There was no reason she should be, but he liked her, so he picked her.  I asked if we could at least have tryouts, but he refused.  After I heard that, I was sitting there waiting for the teacher to show up for class, and I decided to leave.  I decided right then to quit.  It was worth it to me to fight for the integrity of the orchestra, because it was what Papa would've done.  I spent that hour in the library.  A week later the other teacher, my junior high orchestra teacher, came up to the library to talk to me.  She begged me to come back, and said that she had talked the other teacher into having tryouts.  So I went back.  Papa had said he would come back to see us, and I didn't want him to think I'd given up.  

To shorten the story, tryouts went back and forth.  Sometimes I won first chair, and sometimes the freshman did.  Just before the Christmas concert she won it, but I learned the solo part in Handel's Messiah anyway.  Good thing too.  The night of the concert came, we were in the middle of it, and the solo part came.  She started playing, but after two measures she couldn't play, because she obviously hadn't learned it.  I started playing, saving the orchestra and the choir a lof of hassle.  When it was over I thought the teacher would at least acknowledge what I'd done.  I didn't expect groveling at my feet or anything, just maybe a simple thank you.  I got nothing.  That burned me, because I'd saved his big Christmas concert, which he did every year with the choir.  I wasn't as willing to go along with the plan after that, but I did what I had to do.  The freshman had friends in the orchestra, and in the week leading up would try to psych me out so that she would win first chair.  I had felt safe in orchestra the year before, but in tenth grade I just felt like I had to fight all the time.  It was tiring.  ( the story continues....... )

I swore I would never get on Facebook.  I wasn't interested in having everybody from my past find me.  Then the radio show I listen to in the mornings got on Facebook, and the only way to see their page was to sign up.  I did, and then got curious.  I found my uncle who I lost contact with last year when he moved and changed jobs.  On his page was a cousin I hadn't seen since we were kids.  After my uncle accepted my friend request, _I_ got a friend request, from the cousin I'd seen on my uncle's page.  So I accepted and we sent messages back and forth for a while that night.  Since then I've found half a dozen people from my past.  I haven't friended them, and I'm not planning on it in the future.  I was too freaked that I'd found them. LOL  Some of them were from high school, and most of them haven't changed.  "They" (the elusive they who tell people what's what) say that you don't have to go to high school reunions anymore, you just have to go on Facebook.  Saves me time and energy, especially since I haven't been to a reunion since my fifth, and I didn't recognize half the people even then.  I also found two old teachers from my high school, and Annie's husband is even on Facebook.  I'm assuming because of the charter boat.  I only know it's his because it was on the friend list of one of the teachers from the high school. 

I refuse to get on Twitter.  I don't have the ability on my cell phone, and I don't do anything worthy of telling when I'm in front of the computer, so why bother?   

Okay, so it's not ALL new, but the tower is, and that's what matters.  I'd already changed out all the peripherals over the past couple years, so the tower was all I needed.  I only had 128 mbs. of RAM on the old machine, and I have no idea how pathetic the processor was.  Now I have 2 gigs of RAM, upgradeable to 4, and a 2.5 Ghz. dual core processor.  The old one was limping along and making me crazy, because it was like working with dial-up, and I have broadband!  I'll even be able to play new games on it as soon as I get a graphics card.  That comes next month, because the tower itself was the important part.  I was able to put my old hard drive in the tower, so with the 500 gig drive it came with, I have 600 gigs.  I think that's enough for a while. LOL   

Two years ago today Annie died.  I think I've handled this better than I've handled any of the other deaths I've had to deal with.  Normally when the anniversary of Papa's death came around in the old days, I'd be depressed all day.  Today I had to work, so there was no time to be depressed in the first place (and Annie would've had a FIT if I'd stayed home or had been too depressed to work because of her), but I saw it as a day to think about her and who she was somehow.  I couldn't think of anything at first, as a way to mark the day, but partway through the day it came to me.  I started thinking about what we used to do together outside of school, like going out to eat, and then I remembered that we got Chinese one time, probably around 25 years ago.  We had been running her errands after school, and she asked me if I wanted to go out to dinner.  I jumped at the chance of course.  She was big on Chinese food, so that's what we got.  Hell, when I was in high school she had Chinese decor in her house. 

When I remembered how much she was into Chinese food, I decided that for dinner I would get Chinese, and a bottle of wine to go with it.  Nothing fancy, I can't afford that and she wasn't into the high end stuff anyway.  I think she even drank beer, but I can't stand the stuff, and I KNOW she drank wine.  Celebrating our friendship seemed like the best thing I could do today, instead of pitching into the pit of despair.  I came home, and just before I ate, I saluted her picture.  I hadn't done it in a long time, and it seemed like good time to do it.  I still think she would've had a fit way back when if she'd known I did that at school, standing out in the hallway when nobody else was around, in a spot where I could see her but she couldn't see me, saluting her.  It was the only way I knew back then to show respect, because I wasn't used to doing things to outwardly show somebody respect.  

Today I remember Annie, but not in a way that makes me upset.  I remember her in a way that makes me think about the good times we had, the times when we were friends who did things together, and it didn't matter that I was more than 30 years younger than she was.  After high school we weren't teacher and student anymore, we were equal friends.  She knew I'd still fill in the gaps if she needed something done, just like I had when I was her assistant, and I did, especially when she was running around like a crazy person looking for something or couldn't handle putting one more grade in the grade book at the end of the year.  I'd read off the grades so she'd only have to do the writing.  In the last couple years before she retired I could tell she was a little on the frazzled side, and I thought she'd be done with it all when she finally did retire, but she couldn't stop teaching.  She subbed for years afterwards, until they spent half the year in Arizona and half the year up north.  

I hadn't planned on going off into reminiscing, but that's the way it works.  I start thinking about her, one memory leads to another and I'm off and running.  There's a lot of good to remember.  I've smiled more than a few times today. 



    

For the second month in a row my sister didn't come up with all the rent money she's supposed to contribute.  Luckily I had a little money saved up for the summer, and it was enough to make up the difference, but now I have no backup for the next couple months.  We had told her we couldn't cover for her again, but when she doesn't tell us until the day rent is due, we don't have a choice.  Anyway, Mom finally confronted her about it, and my sister said she didn't care.  She wrote this note about how she doesn't care about anything, let alone how we feel about her not coming up with the rent money.  That prompted Mom to finally have it out with her, which Mom doesn't normally do, because she doesn't do conflict.  She hates it, because she doesn't handle it well, but I have to hand it to her on this one, she held her own for a change.  

She now understands what I've known for a long time.  My sister hates us.  I think it's because we remind her of a past that she hasn't ever been able to come to terms with.  I know that physically I look a little like the biological father.  Not as much as I used to, because I'm older now and my face has changed, but enough for her to always be reminded.  Somehow she blames Mom for everything that happened when we were kids, when it was the biological father she should be blaming and understanding that Mom did what she could with completely crappy circumstances.  She had no coping skills, but she did what she could.  Yes, there were things she could've done differently, but when you're in the moment it's difficult to come up with just the right thing to do a lot of the time.  Things could've been a lot worse, so you have to give her that.  I understand this, but I've been through years of introspection and therapy, and my sister obviously hasn't done the work she needs to do to be halfway normal.  

Mom got so fed up that she told her that she could move out in the fall.  I guess when your kid essentially tells you that she hates you, you finally get a backbone and realize that you can do better without the hassle.  My sister told her that when she moves she's not going to let anybody know where she is.  You can't get a clearer declaration of hate than that.  Mom has done so much for her, more than she should have, but she doesn't care.  She's used her the whole time she's lived here, until recently, and now she doesn't want anything from her.  Except or money to cover her responsibilities of course.  She's 44 years old and can't be held responsible for anything.  It's always been a problem with her, but it's getting worse.  I know that it will be tighter financially without her living here, but Mom and I will be better off in every other way, so it'll be good.     

I haven't gone into much of my past here, but it might explain why I'm having such a difficult time accepting what my sister is doing.  My childhood was messed up.  The biological father was psychotic.  He hated me, and no, it wasn't in my mind, everybody in the house knew it. In my thirties I thought it was because he had felt guilty about what he had done but didn't know how to fix it, but I realized later that it was because I had wrecked his plan for his life, to do what he wanted without anybody knowing.  When I was fourteen and my little sister was eleven, she told me that he had taught her that I was bad, and that she shouldn't have anything to do with me.  We do okay now, but there's still a distance between us that will never be fixed, mostly because she was so young when those ideas were ingrained in her mind.  She acts like things are okay, but there's a phoniness to it and I can feel it.  My other sister is only a year younger than I am, and for most of our lives we were close and got along well for the most part.  She was in my wedding seventeen years ago.  Sometime in the last seven years or so she started to change.  Every year it gets a little worse.  She can't let go of the past, even though she was never the scapegoat as a kid, I was.  Yes, we were all affected by the instability we lived with, but somehow she blames me and Mom for what happened when we were victims as much, if not more, than she was.  We did the family therapy thing for years when we were growing up, but that kind of thing doesn't work when the crazy person lies to the therapist, and the kids don't understand enough about life to know what's really going on.  I didn't understand it all until I was in my forties.  I've worked through the things that haunted me and caused serious anxiety attacks for thirty years.  My sister hasn't, and won't.  She's been in therapy, but she won't allow anybody else to be involved, because then the therapist would hear the truth, and not the delusions she lives under.  She can't allow reality to enter the picture, because then she'd have to deal with it.  She'd have to stop blaming the wrong people for her problems, and blame the person who caused them.  I don't like being blamed just because I'm still around and the person who should be blamed took himself out because he was weak.  I was blamed for something I didn't did for twenty years of my life, and I refuse to put up with it again, which is why I don't bother talking to, or dealing with my sister.    

The reason I picked Papa as a male role model, the father I had always dreamed of, is because enough of my reality was so bad that I had to have something else to base a life on.  Without knowing it, Papa showed me that a person's destiny can be changed, if they want it.  I wanted it, and I made it happen.  I may still have some small glitches left, but I don't blame anybody for what happened except for the person who was responsible.  I went through three years of therapy that actually worked finally, after I had done as much work as I could on my own. You have to be willing to face the demons to make them go away, and it took a long time, but I did it.  My sister will never be able to do that because she can't admit that she has demons.  She can't be held responsible for anything, including her own problems.  She blames ADD, which I don't believe she has, just so that she doesn't have to fix anything.  The biological father blamed everybody but himself for his problems too, including me.  I see history repeating itself, but I don't have to be destroyed by it this time.  I survived the first time, I'm responsible for my own sanity, and she can be responsible for hers.  He tried to destroy me mentally and emotionally, but he didn't succeed.  I'm still here and he isn't.  Despite everything he tried to do to me, I'm strong, capable and loved.  He tried to convince me that I would be alone and friendless for the rest of my life, because he wanted me to suffer.  Well, guess what, I win.  I have everything he tried to take from me.  My sister was happy when I was out of work earlier this year, and as soon as I started working again, which was right around the time she stopped talking to Mom, her whole demeanor changed again.  She resents anything good that happens in my life, the way he did.  She doesn't realize just how much like him she's become.     

Three weeks ago Mom fell and mangled herself pretty well.  Hit her head really hard, dislocated the middle finger on her right hand which broke the top bone the middle of her hand, and hit her knee hard enough that it's still bigger than it should be.  I had to watch her for two weeks to make sure that she didn't have a serious head injury or brain bleed.  The CAT scan was  fine, but they said that there was a two week window where things could still show up, so I was paranoid the whole time.  My sister, who has been a problem for years, had stopped talking to Mom at the beginning of April because Mom had been so stupid as to try to give my sister something for her birthday.  Can you tell I'm being highly sarcastic?  My sister is crazy.  She gets it from the biological father.  She thinks that Mom and I are seriously screwed up and that she's okay, which tells you something right there.  She treats her friends great, but she treats us like garbage, but that was normal for her.  

What really bothers me is that she was home when I brought Mom home from the hospital.  She doesn't work on Fridays, so she heard everything that we talked about and saw what Mom looked like when she bothered to come out of her room.  She doesn't ask what had happened, didn't ask how Mom was, nothing.  She STILL hasn't asked, even three weeks later.  She doesn't care.  My youngest sister came over the day after it happened and freaked when she saw how bruised and banged up Mom was, so I knew it wasn't just me overreacting to Mom's injuries.  She was a mess and couldn't do all that much for herself.  I was doing everything around the house, and getting and doing for Mom because she couldn't get around very well the first week.  My crazy sister is no help, all she does is stay in her room when she's not at work, and won't help around the house at all.  

As high as my irritation with my sister was, it went through the roof last Sunday.  Last Sunday was Mother's Day.  Mom and I had the day planned because my other sister had shown up the day before to give Mom her presents.  Because I'd been so busy I was lucky to get Mom much of anything, but she liked what I got her.  Good thing I can download music and burn CD's on the computer, because that I didn't have to go out to get.  I have software so that I can print my own cards too.  I decided that because of what had happened that I had to give her a not funny card besides the usual funny card.  She liked that.    We got dinner, carry outs, so we had a nice quiet day.  That's where my problem is.  It was just the two of us.  My sister lives with us and she IGNORED Mother's Day.  She didn't say anything or give Mom anything, not even a card which is unforgiveable as far as I'm concerned.  It would've been anyway, but after what had happened three weeks ago, it was even worse.  We got lucky that she only has to deal with an annoying cast on her hand for another month or so.  She gets claustrophobic, so she gets a little crazy because of it, but she's dealing with it. 

If we didn't need her money for rent, I'd kick my sister out without even thinking about it.  She obviously hates us, so she's just using us for a place to live because she doesn't have money to live anywhere else.  SInce I can't kick her out, I have to live with  crazy bitch who hates my guts for things I didn't do.  My looks remind her of the past, a past she can't get over awhiand which she blames me AND Mom for.  She's crazy, and we can't do a damn thing about it.   

Yesterday when my cell phone rang, I wasn't expecting the number I saw.  It was somebody from my old job, asking if I was interested in coming back.  I said yes, and asked when they wanted me.  They said "Tomorrow".  Wow, after two and a half months, less than twenty four hours notice!  They called just in time.  I knew I couldn't find anything else, I couldn't go back to retail, I was losing brain cells rapidly from the lack of use, even with twice a week phone calls with G, and I was slowly turning into a slug.  I wasn't doing much of anything, mostly sitting watching tv and surfing the internet.  It was getting ugly.  After the phone call I felt my mood change.  I hadn't been depressed or anything, but my previous emotional strength had been seriously lacking.  I felt it come back yesterday, which was good.  Maybe it was confidence, because they called ME.  Not that it gave me any bargaining position or anything, but I was going to be working, and at the same place I had already been, without having to totally change my life.  

My second thought was realizing that it happened on March 30th.  For the past 22 years that day had always represented one of the worst days of my life.  I know intellectually that Papa had nothing to do with it, but there's that little part of me that thought maybe he wanted that day to finally mean something else for me, even if it wasn't in some huge way.  Instead of being very introspective the way I normally am on that day, I was happy for most of the day.  It was good.  This year represented the first time that there were more years SINCE Papa died than the years leading up to when it happened, and maybe getting the job back was a sign that things just might get better for a change.    

I've written about the fantasy world I had developed as a kid and kept going until I was in my mid twenties.  I've never written about specifics, but tonight, for some odd reason I decided to look up something that I had done in the story over twenty years ago.  I was big on melodrama, so dramatic story lines (it WAS essentially a soap opera LOL) were my forte.  I developed a storyline where one of the kids started regressing physically, and because I had no way of looking up obscure diseases at the time, it was the early 80's, I never named what he had.  It ended badly of course, and I always assumed that I had come up with something that could never really happen in real life, something that wasn't a real disease.  Well, tonight I Googled general terms and actually found the exact disease it would've been if I had had the internet and Google more than twenty years ago.  I was floored that I had nailed it so exactly, down to the exact age range that it would develop and how it would progress.  It was totally weird, reading the symptoms and the progression, because it just took me right back there, though in a detached way.  I was ME reading this stuff, not Molly reacting to something that happened way back that had been so totally traumatic that for a few years she lost her memory of a whole day.  It eventually came back to her, but even I couldn't remember it, so it was pretty traumatic all around.  I always reacted badly to some of the worse events, which made Molly react badly.  There was a whole story line that I had to totally give up on and pull a Bobby on Dallas kind of redo on it was so bad.  Anyway, I'm getting off the track here.  The idea that I pulled something out of the air that I never could've known about at the time is totally weird.  

I've been thinking of writing about the whole thing from the perspective of Molly's oldest daughter from her second marriage.  It would give it a whole different angle I think, and if I could pull it off, it could be totally cool.  It's not like I don't have the time for it now!

Today it became official that my layoff from work became a termination.  Last week I got the letter telling me that the manual states that if you're not called back by a month from the day that you were laid off that it terminates your employment.  I was a little panicked after the first couple weeks, wondering what I was going to do if they didn't call me back, but by the time I got the letter it didn't matter anymore, I knew it was done.  It's essentially the same reaction I had five days after my ex left.  His uncle told me that no matter what I did, he wasn't coming back, and at that moment I decided that I had plans and it didn't include chasing after somebody who didn't want me.  Same with the job.  I'm not going back to get the few little things I left in the desk, because except for the back scratcher they weren't particularly personal things.  I've decided that I need to do something different, and I'll do what I can, odd jobs here and there, online things, mystery shopper stuff, to make money, and eventually I'll get a real job again.  It's not like I don't have any money coming in, I still have the crossing guard job, so I'm not completely screwed.  I'm going to try to make some money writing, which is my dream job anyway.  If I can make money that way, I'll be happy, especially if it becomes a major source of my income.  It's slightly daunting having to start over after working steadily for as long as I have, eleven years straight, over seven at this one alone.  Sitting home is BORING as all get out, I'm so used to the routine of going to work.  With the ecomomy the way it is and the job market the way it is right now, I'm thinking that it's going to take a while to get a normal job, which is the other reason I'm just going to do what I can to make money.  I couldn't have done this ten years ago, but there are a lot of ways to make money through online avenues.  If I can come up with a business idea and figure out how to make a website, I might even go that route.  This could turn out to be a good thing in the long run.

I watched, and recorded the entire inauguration ceremony earlier today.  It was an amazing speech, but I didn't get emotional, which surprised me, because I got emotional on election night.  No, I have to be different. LOL  I'm watching and recording (DVD recorder, no VHS here!) the parade, and THIS is where I get emotional.  It's not even about Obama or what this day means.  It's the marching bands!  It's because of Papa, and every time I see a parade, I get emotional.  I saw him direct the marching band in the Homecoming parade when I was a freshman, all decked out in his maroon jacket, hat, and black pants.  He looked so cool, and you could tell he loved what he was doing.  It was freakin' cold that morning, but you couldn't tell by him.  He was in his element.  I can't help every time I see a parade on tv, or worse yet GO to a parade, I turn into a pile of mush if I'm not careful.  If Mom is in the room or with me at the parade, I have to control my reactions, because I'm not about to explain it, but if she's not, I either well up or just flat out start crying.  It's just that connection to Papa, it's strong when it comes to marching bands, and if I see the trombone players, I'm done for.  Like I said in the title, I'm a big doofus. LOL

It's baaaaack.  I have  the urge to write.  It had been a long time, but it finally came creeping back in.  The problem is, I get a few sentences in and I can't get any farther.  Annie read the first chapter of my book about four years ago, and said that I should take literary license and add dialog.  Today I thought I found a way to do that, but when I got into it, I couldn't think of any dialog.  I know the scene I want to write, but actually putting it into words isn't working.  The other idea was something about Annie.  A character study piece, but I get half a paragraph in and it all sounds trite and fake.  I have the ideas, but nothing wants to gel.  I don't know if there's just so much in my head that needs to get out that I can't narrow it down, or if I just have vague ideas with no substance.  Annie had the right idea to get my book on track, but it's up to me to make it happen, and I'm falling short.  It's been years since I wrote the first chapter, and I thought I couldn't do more because I couldn't remember what happened during the time of the beginning of the book.  Annie's insistence that I can take literary license and skew the truth a bit will help with that part, because as it is half the book is already speculation.  Nobody but me will know the things that aren't quite the solid gold truth, and it's not like changing things just a little will change the story.  The end is what's important, the journey was long enough so that a slight shift won't be felt in the space-time continuum.  The important things will still be there, the stuff I remember.  I just have to WRITE it, and that's what's stopping me right now.  It's aggravating to have finally felt the urge and not be able to do anything with it. I wish I could do like G does, and write a whole book in my head and not put anything on the screen or paper until it's perfect.  I can't manage that, I can't remember things if I don't get them down.  He's lucky that way.    

Mom has been spending a lot of time in my room watching tv, because the tv in the living room broke just before Christmas.  I have pictures of Annie and Papa next to my bed on my nightstand, and tonight Mom asked me who the picture of the woman was.  I told her it was Annie, and she couldn't believe it.  The last time SHE saw Annie was sometime in the 80's, so of course Annie at 75 wouldn't look like the person she knew way back when.  I couldn't tell her anything else, even though I've been thinking that I was going to have to if she brought up the pictures.  Just saying her name made my heart pound, because I thought I was going to have to say IT.  It's been a year and a half and I've still never told anybody that she died.  Yes, I wrote it on here, and I told a couple people in an email, but I've never said it to anybody out loud.  I had to try not to act panicky while we were talking about her, and Mom didn't seem to pick up on anything, so I think I'm safe.  Part of me is chicken, I don't like having to say stuff like that anyway, but in the past week or so I finally have reached the point where I feel a lot more like my old self, the strong confident me, not the one who for the past three months or so has been working to get past missing Annie all over again.  

I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to say it out loud.  So far there hasn't been a reason to have to, but that might change, and I don't know how I'll handle it.

I was all set to start arguing with the universe, to ask why again, why now, why why why, but then I thought about it.  There comes a time when you have to stop railing at the fates and start accepting.  You have to play the hand you're dealt.  Make do with what you have.  Anger and resentment only get you so far, and then you're stuck with it, having wasted too much time in the process.  It's always been so hard for me to get on with things after having to face an emotional challenge.  Having to reorganize my thinking, processing the new order of things has always taken too long, made it that much more difficult the next time, doubling or tripling the agony.  I have to get a grip, and realize that yes, it will happen again, but that it's going to happen and there isn't anything I can do about it.  It's the way of the universe, the way things are. 

There's a lot of talk about how atheists can't possibly be happy during this time of year, because they don't "believe".  Christians assume that they know what's in atheists' hearts, and they've decided that it isn't good.  I'm a Humanist, which means that I can still consider myself culturally Jewish and religiously atheistic.  I was raised with Christmas AND Hanukkah, because Mom's side of the family is Jewish and the biological father's side isn't.  We did the secular version of course, Santa and presents and the tree.  I'm a complete traditionalist when it comes to Christmas, we have to have a tree, there have to be presents, and we have to have Christmas music.  I love the music even if I don't believe what the songs say.  Mom raised us to have an open mind when it came to religion, to check out all of them and if we wanted to pick one, fine, but she wasn't going to decide for us.  She's agnostic, so she's never been big on religion either, so I started questioning things early.  I've been to Catholic Mass, Sunday school and an Easter service with friends when I was a kid, Jehovah Witness bible study (again with a friend when I was in high school), and to the synagogue a few times.  None of it impressed me, because I already knew that I didn't believe.  Even as a kid I knew I didn't believe any of it, so none of it swayed me.  When I was 30 I was in a class about the Jewish holidays at the synagogue where I'd gotten married, and I was fine with the class until we started learning about the High Holy Days.  Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the only truly religious holidays we have.  Most of the others are harvest festivals primarily.  Anyway, the rabbi started talking about God and fasting and asking for forgiveness for things we'd done wrong, and celebrating God in general for the New Year, and I started getting really uncomfortable.  As long as the classes stuck to the cultural aspects of the holidays I was fine, but adding the religious part bothered me enough to stop going.  That's when I started reading the big copy (this sucker's HUGE) of the Old Testament that my Grandpa had given us way back when.  I'd read some of it here and there before then, but I'd never really read it to question it.  It was then, after reading a lot of it, that I really understood what I believed, and I found a book about Jewish Humanism.  It fit my belief system really well, because I've always felt that people had the ability to make things the way they should be, even if it might take a while.  

I figured that all that background stuff was needed for this next part.  It really bothers me that people have such hate for atheists.  The governor of Michigan back in the 90's wrote an editorial in the  newspaper saying that atheists can't be good people and that they're amoral.  Religious people just can't understand that people who don't "believe" have decided on our own that for the good of society as a whole we should act in a way that doesn't hurt other people.  We act in a way that helps people when we can, or at least doesn't make things worse.  We do things out of a sense of obligation to other people, not to something supernatural that says if we do good then we'll get to go to a special place after we die, or if we do bad things we'll suffer for eternity.  Helping people should be done because it's what's right, not because we feel obligated to follow some dogma.  That will freak some people out, but it's the truth.  I'm not soulless, I'm not evil, but there are people who think I am just because I don't believe what they do.   

Last month we elected our first black president.  There are people who voted for him who will never vote for an atheist or a Humanist, even if that person has ideas that could save humanity.  What would happen to the country if the president didn't believe in God, but still believed in a better future for everybody, and knew how to get us there?  Would society crumble in the face of logic and reason without the outer wrapping of a supernatural power?  I don't think so.  But people are so afraid to find out, because people they listen to every Saturday or Sunday tell them that to work for the good of society is evil if they're not doing it for God.  It's silly really, but changing these peoples' minds is going to be next to impossible for at least another generation.  Maybe in another twenty years I'll see the first atheist president elected.  

Most of the year this doesn't bother me as much, but all those people who have decided that if you don't say Merry Christmas you hate America get on my nerves.  I don't even see saying Happy Holidays as being all inclusive, covering Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.  I've always thought that it covered Christmas and New Year's.  There are two holidays in a row, so it's a blanket statement, but there are people who can't stand the thought of being inclusive, so they have to impress on everybody that it's THEIR time of year, and nobody else is invited.  This is the time of year when EVERYBODY should be included, because it's supposed to be a time of peace and good will, but screw that if you don't believe what "they" think you should.   

After eight years of the hell that was the Bush presidency, we can finally fix the country.  Barack Obama is the new president, and it's a relief.  My confidence in the system has been restored after the past two elections.  This was a blow out, a landslide, whatever you want to call it, there was no way for McCain to win.  I cried, more than just teared up.  Ten years ago it happened that I cried when I got amazing news, because it was just such an amazing release after being so keyed up for so long.  I've been obsessed with this stuff for months, been so focused on wanting it to happen, but there was always that "will they steal it again" fear that didn't let me believe it until the numbers were so high that there was no doubt.  

This is a trancendent moment.  The tide has turned completely.  The younger generation, MY generation, will now be in charge.  No more "old guard", those of us with hope will now have a chance to put the country right with the rest of the world.  They were watching, and they're as happy as we are, because they don't have to fear what we'll do now.  They don't have to fear that we've slid into Idiocracy, which was something many of us thought was happening.  Palin was the next step down, and that's been averted.  We can go on from here and become the country that some of us have always known we could be.  We can make things better for all of us. 

Now the real work starts.

After being out of therapy for over a year and a half, I was noticing that in the past few weeks I was reacting to things the way I used to before therapy.  Getting frustrated easily, getting overemotional, things I recognized from the old days before the therapy started working.  As I've said before, October tends to get on my nerves, but until this year it didn't seem to affect me this much.  I still miss Annie more than I probably should after over a year, but it's also getting close to her birthday, so that might be coloring the situation.  Now that I've figured out the problem I have to get a handle on it so that I don't completely revert back to my old ways.  I wondered how I was going to do that until last night.  I went through a couple tubs that I have forgotten even existed, and the stuff in those tubs is OLD.  20+ years old.  In one of the tubs I found two things.  One I had completely forgotten about, and one that I had been thinking a little about, but knew that there were two different ones floating around somewhere.  The first one is a picture of Annie from back in the 80's when she was going strong.  It's a Polaroid from an instant camera, and for some reason part of the film would sometimes not come out as part of the picture.  I never understood what the problem was, but this is one of those pictures.  I kept it because most of her is in the shot, so it was worth keeping.  It was before she stopped coloring her hair, so it's still dark, which is a big difference from the recent picture I have of her.  



The other thing thing is this autograph book I had put together out of notebook paper for the end of my junior year.  There are only two pages filled, and five out of the six people who signed it were teachers (surprise surprise LOL).  Annie's is in the middle of the first page, and what she wrote proves again how she felt about me.  I was still her assistant, still a student, and we hadn't transferred to the point where I called her by her first name.  That's part of what makes what she wrote so extraordinary for a teacher to a student.  I'm thinking of scanning it just so that I can keep it longer than the paper might last, because it means so much.  Here's what it says:

"Jenny, I miss you each day this summer.  Have a good summer.  Give me a call sometime.  Truly - Mrs. Wolff"



She's the only person to ever call me Jenny, even now.  She didn't use it all the time, mostly just when she wrote my name in a note. like that one. (If you're wondering, I'm very good at reading handwriting other people have trouble with)  I don't know if she meant to say I miss or I'll miss, but the way it's written it seemed to cover the summer when I read it during the two months away from school, like she wrote it to be in the moment whenever I would read it back then.  Whatever she meant back then, what it tells me now was that she missed me as much as I missed her during those evil summers when I was stuck in the hell that was my life at home.  

I've put the picture up on the shelf that's below my tv, with the autograph book right behind it.  As much as I watch tv, I'm able to see the picture all the time.  It seems to help, to keep me on an even keel for the rest of this month, and to keep me on target after that.  Hopefully it'll work.  Annie was always able to keep me in the here and now, firmly in reality, so I'm thinking that seeing her all the time, back in her prime, will get me back to where I should be.

It seems I was right the other day when I wrote that to get past my anger that I would have to write about it.  Today I realized that I'm so over it, that I was even considering buying a new travel mug for the car that's got the pink ribbon on it.  I didn't even want to chuck the pocket mirror back at the teller at the bank today when she handed it to me and the cover on it was pink with the ribbon on it.  It's amazing how well it worked.  It's been over a year and a half since I stopped therapy, and my coping skills are actually in working order.  I was thinking about that the other day.  I never learned coping skills as a kid, and it's no wonder.  Neither Mom or the biological father had coping skills, so how could they teach us?  When the only examples you have growing up are either rage or anxiety, you're on your own.  You can't figure out how to handle ordinary frustrations, let alone extreme situations, so is it a surprise that I ended up with rage AND an anxiety problem?  I was able to get rid of the rage problem ten years ago, but it's only been in the past four years or so that I've been able to get rid of the anxiety problem.  With the three years of therapy and the immense help of G, I've been able to learn the coping skills, even if it's only a matter of writing about a problem so that it gets out of my head.  That's for extreme situations, because I can deal with the everyday frustrations without having to get worked up about them.