Category: deep stuff

grandparents

My granddad has  been moved to a rehabilitation hospital.  Lots of physical therapy for him.  Still not an excellent health report yet, but he’s improved some.

Biological grandmother, the one I just met,  is in the hospital.  I’ve tried a couple times to go see her, but the door has been closed with nurses inside doing their nurse stuff both times.  Bad timing on my part, I guess.  Makes me nervous.  I only just met her.  I still have questions that only she could answer now that my biological dad has passed away.

Thinking good thoughts for both of them.  Hoping for good things.

My Granddad

My grandfather is scheduled for two heart surgeries this week.  The risk is high, and there’s a high probability that he could pass away in surgery.  His heart is weak enough that he will die quickly without the surgery, so the procedure really is a roll of the dice.

Minime and I went to see him today.  I brought him Swiss Cake Rolls.  When I was little, I would raid his Little Debbie stash for Swiss Cake Rolls after school, so I figure I probably owe him a few hundred snack cakes.

He’s not my biological grandfather, but he never treated me any differently than any of the other grandkids (unlike his now deceased spouse who went out of her way when I was a kid to make me feel like shit).  He would bring me wallpaper sample books when they replaced them with new ones at the hardware store so I can enjoy crafty awesomeness.  He made me yummy homemade biscuits and gravy on Sunday mornings that were memorable enough that I named a cat “Biscuits N Gravy” when her fur reminded me of the colors of  childhood Sunday breakfast.  He encouraged me to read and he always had a stack of books he was working through by his bed.

I hope he pulls through these surgeries, but he does not seem afraid so I will not be afraid, either.  He has lived an exciting life, growing up in a house with no electricity or running water, making moonshine, racing cars, marrying, having kids, having grandkids, finding a second chance at love after his wife passed away and enjoying his great grandchildren.  He had his first heart attack when I was in high school and has proven quite the survivor.

Think good thoughts.

Divination

Maybe you believe in intuition, precognition, clairvoyance, divination…and maybe you don’t.
I won’t go into great depth about my belief system, but I will say I believe humans have more intuition or sixth sense than they choose to acknowledge. It’s a new world of high tech barrages of information, and we ignore what we sense, ignore what we feel and push forward with life at a ridiculous pace.
I like tarot cards for getting in touch with the vibration of the universe, and I have been reading them since I was younger than my child is now. Some people think it’s of the Devil himself or witchcraft to use tarot cards; I think of it as just a tool to express intuition and see it as interesting and thought-provoking. I’m pretty good with them, and with or without the cards, I am reasonably intuitive (though sometimes, I ignore all the warning bells of intuition and then end up getting totally screwed).
I am writing all this down only because I had something happen today that has never, ever happened to me in 25 years of reading tarot spreads…I did a quick reading for someone else, their past, present and future. I wrote it all down and made notes of how I thought the cards should be interpreted and slid the cards back in the deck in three separate places.
I decided afterward to do my own reading since I had the cards out and shuffled and thought and shuffled some more before feeling like, okay, this is it…and for myself, I pulled the same cards, same order and nearly jumped out of my skin, goose bumps and chills all over. That has never happened to me, never before in years of pulling cards, and has me so weirded out I put the cards away completely out of sight. I don’t know what it means, not certain, and I will revisit it when I’m calmer…I could make some guesses now about what it means, but my cage is momentarily rattled. First time for everything…

I still miss them

When Chris was murdered, it took me weeks to stop crying.  Every song we’d ever talked about since middle school made me choke up, and there were so many songs because music was one of our biggest common bonds that I would find myself crying in the grocery store to the songs playing through the aisles.  With time, it got easier.  Time didn’t make me understand the “why” of it, his sudden death, but it hurt less often.  I could think of happy memories and not fall apart, but I still miss him.  This morning on the way to work, I heard one of the last songs we talked about before he was killed, a cover song done by Agent Orange, and I had to stop the car.  I was just seized with this huge sudden wave of grief out of nowhere.  I miss Chris.  I miss my friend and his humor and his photography and his brilliance, one of the smartest people I’ve ever known.

When Kevin died in his 30s from colon cancer, I was furious with the universe.  Cancer is for old people and we weren’t old.  He was just a year older than me.  By the time I got my motorcycle endorsement on my driver’s license, he was too sick to ride with me, so we never got to do that.  I remember when we were dating, just kids, and he couldn’t afford to send me flowers for Valentine’s Day because the florists jacked the price way up for delivery…but cash and carry flowers were affordable, so he had one of his friends bring the flowers to me like a delivery.  That level of kindness and effort set a bar that I don’t think anyone else has ever matched.  Kevin told me I was important, unique, special and worthwhile at a time in my life when I didn’t believe I was any of those things…and many years later, before he passed away, we got to talk and he told me that sparkle in my eye, my energy, was one of a kind and that he was so blessed to know me, and I wept and wept and wept on the spot.  Sincerity and honesty, saying things from the heart uncensored, so rare, but that was his gift; there was no BS, just a purity in the things he would say.  Any song from Cinderella’s “Night Songs” album reminds me of him, makes me smile.  I saw someone on a black Hayabusa the other day, and there was that grief, popping up like a damn jack in the box out of nowhere, and filling my eyes with tears.  I am a better person for the time I knew him.

I still talk to them sometimes.  Call me crazy; I don’t give a damn.   In the car, alone, sometimes I’ll tell Chris and Kevin I miss them, I love them and that I think of them often, because I do, it’s all true.

I miss Clay, too, and wonder if there was anything I could have said or done…I saw him the night before he took his life and I never had a single worry that he’d do such a thing.  Was I blind or did he just hide it well?  And Gracie and the drugs…damn it, life doesn’t have to be a drugged up haze and chasing that escape took you from us too soon.

Gone too quickly, all of you.  You are missed.  You are not forgotten.  You are alive every time I remember you, every moment recalled.  Thank you for every laugh, every song, every story.

i just realized…

I realized that several songs I’ve been hitting repeat on actually tell a little story when I string them all together.

Scars—I tear myself open, I sew myself shut, my weakness is that I care too much…I can’t help you fix yourself, but at least I can say I tried.

Burn—I trusted you, broke me down and you screwed me over…You’re gonna get what you deserve, I wanna watch you burn.

To Be Loved–I’ll never give up, I’ll never give in, I just wanna be loved…Take your past, burn it up and let it go…Carry on, I’m stronger than you’ll ever know.

Screw You

It’s a good thing for the world and for me that my blog was down for a long enough window of time that I mentally edited myself before spewing bile via the keyboard.  What I have to say isn’t nice, but this is sure as hell an edited and subdued version of what I originally had in mind to type up.

Despite handling most of this total bullshit from last fall to the last month with grace, dignity, kindness, compassion and even love, deep down I am angry.  The anger manifests itself in the nightmares I have; it pops up when I catch myself grinding my teeth so hard my head hurts…so I think I have to share some of it to begin to let the anger go.  There’s that saying that hanging onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.  I don’t want to drink the poison anymore.

So, a lot of this anger is for one person, one man whose secrets and sins I still hold close to the vest, and yep, I could have spilled them all right here, all on Facebook, all via mass text and email to those that think you’re Mr. Wholesome SuperDuper.  I hold them all, though, because  despite being put through hell, I am still a kind and respectful person.  I won’t tell your secrets, and I won’t point out all the lies you told that you think I believed because my fingers would fall off typing them all…but I will set myself free from some of my rage, and I don’t have to detail the specifics to let go of some of it.

Screw you.  Screw you for being a liar.  Screw you for being disrespectful to our relationship.  Screw you for wasting my time when you knew from before we ever dated that I wanted a committed partner for life, a family and a stable life together, not some half-assed bullshit roller coaster ride from hell.  Screw you for letting me take care of you when you couldn’t do it for yourself but then hightailing it outta sight when I so desperately needed compassion and care for the first time in all those years.  Screw you for taking advantage of my kindness and generosity–both my emotional generosity and my financial generosity. Screw you for being so self-absorbed that you were the only one who deserved rest, downtime and fun while leaving your dirty laundry for me, literally, like I was a fucking maid service.  Screw you for lying about anything and everything relentlessly.  Screw you for thinking I was dumb enough that I didn’t know better.  Most of all, screw you for absolutely pissing all over nearly 15 years of friendship; while the parting of ways may have been inevitable, we didn’t have to part ways on shitty terms, but you chose to act maliciously, selfishly and without regard for my feelings, you self-absorbed fuck.  I didn’t deserve any of that shit.  I have never been perfect, but my come-from place all these years has been one of love, forgiveness and compassion, and I didn’t deserve any of the torment and heartbreak you doled out.  I deserved honor and respect and love and loyalty.

I am not a victim, though; it’s not that kind of situation.  I am 100% guilty of forgiving you when I should’ve shown you both middle fingers before I turned around and walked away years ago.  I should have walked away at the first lie or even the second, but I gave you compassion, and with compassion and time, the love grew deeper until it became harder and harder for me to walk away despite the repetition of your dishonest choices.  I made these mistakes, thinking you were human and you’d learn and you’d do better, that you’d realize I wasn’t your ex-wife and this was an all new playing field, a new shot at life…but you never tried to do better and the time passed and I let you stay in my life.  I wanted to believe you’d stop doing the dumb things, so I let you stay around, and that was my mistake.  I should have walked away the first time you disrespected our relationship, the first time you made me feel less than loved or less than important.  Hindsight makes the patterns all so clear and so obvious, and there’s so much I deliberately chose not to see or not to believe in the fog of love.  I am at fault for accepting less than I deserved.  Sure, I’m also at fault for being a bitch when I’m tired as hell, snappy when I’m miserably lonely and hateful when I just want to be taken care of instead of being the caregiver for the universe 24/7, but those moments weren’t the constant of our life together and you know it.  I don’t care what story you spin.  I don’t care what bullshit tale you tell: the truth is that you fucked it all up, you dicked me over and you didn’t even have the balls to apologize.  Screw you.

There are also a few other people out there that deserve a salute.  To those that back-stabbed, screw you.  To those that took credit for my hard work, screw you.  To those that thought nothing of lying to me while calling themselves friends, screw you, too.  To those that let me down deliberately and left me twisting in the wind, screw every last one of you.  These are people who made willful, knowing decisions to step on me and my feelings, to use me for their own benefit; there’s a difference in accidentally hurting someone and in making it your life’s work.  Particularly in the office environment, it’s hard to escape some of these people who behave this way.  My silence day to day doesn’t mean I’m okay with how you’ve conducted yourself, it just means you’re a waste of my time and energy.  Screw you.

I deserve good things.  I deserve kindness, love and loyalty.  I deserve fidelity.  I deserve to laugh and smile and enjoy the ride we’re on.  I deserve a steadfast commitment and honesty.  I deserve friendship and trust.  I deserve romance and to have a good life with a good person at my side who values the same things I do.  I won’t settle for less.  Life’s too short.

Next Step

Today I took a step in the right direction, the forward direction, but it still didn’t feel good.  It actually felt pretty sickening and I’ve been more than a little bummed about it all day.  I worry too much about others; I care too damn much.  I probably care more about others than they even care about themselves, and I know in this case, I’m caring far more about someone else’s welfare than they are about mine…but it didn’t make the step any easier.

But that’s what I must do, what we all must do, one foot in front of the other, one step at a time.  I wanted all this to be different.  This is not the planned path, because I sure as hell wouldn’t plan to drag my bleeding soul across gravel, salt and fire for weeks on end, and that’s what I’ve been living.  Good things are coming, they have to be.

falling, failing

i was given reason to have hope, to smile. i didn’t invent it or wish it or imagine it. it was real.
so…it hurt like hell when the rug was jerked out from under me. falling for the 100th time is still falling all the same.
i read somewhere today that failing and making mistakes is good. failing means you’re trying, doing, reaching. i should take comfort in my failures, i suppose, because failing a lot means i’ve tried a lot.

Sting is a sage on Valentine’s Day

if i ever lose my faith in you……………and of course, if you love somebody, set them free

but you know, loyal katbox readers, if i set somebody any f*ckin’ more free than i already have, i’d have to travel back in time and make sure we’d never actually crossed paths, which would be near impossible, considering all the places, all the times, fate has merged the paths when i wasn’t even expecting it. arg.

sigh.  what else can sting share with us as this day draws to a close? ah. desert rose.  i dream of love as time runs through my hand.  yeah.  so happy valentine’s day, my friends; may all your matters of the heart be kind and gentle, may you find love and truth and happiness, and go to sleep knowing someone somewhere is thinking of you, friends of mine.

the mole of doom: what, universe, what?!? i’m listening!

As an alarmingly pale person, I see the dermatologist once a year to check any little moles and whatevers, make sure all is right in the world.  I’ve been reasonably good to my skin as an adult, but as a kid who played soccer three seasons a year every year from age six or so into my twenties, starting back in the days when no one used sunscreen…well hell, back then people slathered themselves with a weird concoction of baby oil and iodine and would lay out on aluminum foil like salmon fillets on the grill.  In those days that lacked sunblock, I remember getting a burn on the tops of my feet one year at the beach that was so bad I couldn’t walk for two days without bursting into tears.  I remember burning so bad I blistered all over my chest and shoulders every single summer.

Nowadays, I sunscreen the hell out of myself and I wear a hat of some kind if I’m gonna be out in the sun for any substantial length of time.  Some of you have mocked me for my uncool random baseball hats (these are also known primarily as “hats I stole from my Dad”), but who was whining about their sunburn a few hours later?  Not me and my scary hat hair, nope. 

But still I go to the dermatologist each year and generally all’s well…except just ahead of this scheduled visit, I noticed a little teeeeeeeeeeenytiny mole was different, it was changing.  Suddenly it was darker.  And then it was spreading.  And then it wasn’t flat anymore.  And in the span of just  a couple weeks tripled in size from being a tiny speck to being a topographic map of Florida.  It is still fairly small, but the changes in it were rapid and obvious.

So I pointed the mole of doom out to the dermatologist first thing at my appointment today and he squinted at the spot (smack between my boobs) and said, “Oh that’s gotta go.  We’ll want to test it for skin cancer and we should just go ahead and remove it.  We’ll punch that out for a biopsy and stitch you up.  Sign a surgical consent form and we’ll get you scheduled ASAP.”

His friendly nurse then explained how they’d use a “cookie cutter” tool to remove the mole and depending how deep they had to go to “get it all out” would determine if the stitches involved would dissolve on their own or if they’d have to be removed at a later appointment.  She went on to say that they would call me with biopsy results whether they were good or bad, then she shooed me off to get on the appointment book for this procedure.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.  Biopsy.  That’s a scary word, a word they use on a lot of really sick patients on episodes of House.  I know it’s routine for every questionable anomaly that’s removed from your skin, they wanna test it and know all about it, and I’m sure this will be fine, especially since I’m on top of it so quickly.  But still.  Yikes.

There’s been a lot of pondering and reflecting on mortality and the fragility of life and seizing the day in the last 18 months or so for me.  A dear friend was murdered, my best friend flatlined a couple times in the hospital and my first serious high school beau has colon cancer.  I’ve made many changes in my life since early 2007, purging toxic people from my social circle who were causing me more harm than good…I’ve said no more often to things that drain me (no, we’re not selling cookie dough door to door) and said yes to more of the things that I love (a hot bubble bath and a glass of wine are good medicine).  I’m not perfect, but I’m doing better on giving more attention to the real life meaningful things and letting the rest of the nonsense of the world go on by.  So…….what, Universe? What? What do I need to know? What are you trying to tell me?  Have I not pondered my own mortality enough that you have to throw a biopsy my way to shake things up?  I feel like I’ve seized the hell out of some days in 2008, that I’ve lived and loved and so what now? What am I supposed to learn from this exercise?  It remains to be seen, I suppose.

My “procedure” is Monday.  Ouch in advance–I’m poking the spot right now where they’ll punch a hole and put stitches, right on my breastbone, not a squishy soft spot with lots of cushion, nope.  So on Monday, send flowers and money and a pony and jewelry, I like jewelry, and dark chocolate from The Chocolate Fetish…but in true Kat form, I will point out that sending me “feel better” gifts on Monday does not excuse you from buying me a Christmas gift.