if you build it...

so.

the world is trash and i hate everything.

but.

the world does keep turning and the sun does keep fucking appearing every morning, so i guess i need to knock the dirt off my boots and just keep fucking going.

so. fine. you fucking win universe.

i'll actually do the thing that i know i'm supposed to do when everything turns to shit: i'll fucking write.

FINE.

i'm so fucking annoyed right now.

fine. i'll do the thing that helps. 

AND WHEN IT WORKS AND IT DOES HELP...

what?

i'll be better?

YEAH. I GET IT.

fine.

i'll fucking write.

so.

the world is shit and i hate everything, and when that happens i like to dream about a better place. shocking, earth shattering information right there.

i'm sure i'm absoluely the only person that does that.

for, well, forever, my dream place has been a little single wide trailer on a little piece of land.

i'm still mad i passed up the opportunity to buy a trailer and a 1/4 plot for $2000 back in 1998 because my mom convinced me it was trashy.

damnit.

i dream about it all the time. a little air stream, a little singlewide. just a little place on a little piece of land. that's it.

having kids, it was never practical. we had to be in town near schools so they could walk home or to daycare while i was at work.

we had THE BEST set up for years when we first moved to spokane- school was 4 blocks one direction, daycare was 4 blocks beyond that, work was less than a mile the other direction and the grocery store was only two blocks past work. it was a DREAM. little stand alone house, fenced back yard, washer and dryer, enough bedrooms that i was able to have a live in nanny/friend for a while.

then the landlord forgot to pay his mortgage and we got kicked out 2 weeks before it went to auction. 

fast forward to now and it's just me.

my studio apartment is tiny and perfect. 

and now tiny house living is a thing.

holy.

fuck.

ya'll, i have a serious pinterest addiction to tiny houses.

i. am. OBSESSED. with tiny house living.

dirty little secret: i applied to go back to community college to get an interior design degree so i can design tiny houses.

long story short i was accepted! yay! but applied to the wrong school that doesn't have the program and now have to start again and then depression and then here we are and i haven't applied again.

BUT.

tiny house living.

omg.

my dream is to buy a trailer park or a piece of land and make a tiny house community.

a tiny house every other lot, the buffer spaces are a shared community garden, a pet area, a shop/garage for oil changes/auto repair/wood working/whatever, one is an open shared yard area, you get the idea.

AND, step further, the intentional community is for kids aging out of the foster system. provide a place for them to learn to build a safe, stable home in an intentional community of shared experience. rent would go toward hiring local people from the community to come in and teach classes available to help the community to learn how to start out a stable adult life. cooking classes, budgeting classes, yoga classes, oil changes, change a tire, how to make doctors appointments, time management, how to apply to jobs, how to interview, basic home repairs...again, you get the idea.

just, a safe place to help fill in some of the gaps that may have been overlooked because i don't think it's any big secret how chaotic and challenging the foster system can be and how some of these kids age out with no where to go.

they say: be the thing you needed.

i needed help when i started out. i was a 17 year old kid with a kid.

i didn't have a lot of room for mistakes.

i could have used a safe place.

so, how amazing would it be to help make that for someone else?

in a gorgeous little trailer park of tiny houses.

so.

there. i did it.

i wrote.

i focused on something that energizes me and excites me.

and i fucking feel better.

ARE YOU HAPPY UNIVERSE?

the world is trash and i hate everything

so. normally when i write i try to not whine, not pity party, not complain without solution, i try to find some silver lining. i try to...i don't know what the fuck i try to do.

i vomit out what's in my brain, but through a filter.

filter is fucking off today.

i fucking hate EVERYTHING.

i fucking LOATHE my job. this isn't the first job i've said that about but this is the worst.

i had a job where the girlfriend of the owner threatened to burn down the building with me inside (she thought i slept with him to get the job. not so much).

i had a job where a coworker would grope my breasts every time he walked by my desk (and the female owner let him apologize by hugging me).

i had a job where i was accused of trying to blackmail the boss AFTER i had already resigned (because i turned him in to HR for illegally bypassing the bidding process for on site contractor work).

i had a job where i listened to coworkers complain about what trash single moms are. the same coworker would go on racist rants about the BLM movement (back during the ferguson protests), LGBTQIA, any minority group.

i had a job where the owner defended a political manifesto stating gays should be killed if they wouldn't convert to being straight.

i had a job where the owner was a literal pimp (it was a furniture store as a cover business).

but this job...holy fuck man. this job is worse than all those. i've been employed a little over 9 months and i dread waking up every day. my entire job is to spend all day talking to comcast, verizon, att, all the nationally recognized WORST customer service platforms. all while corporate is shoving metrics and performance requirements down our throats while in the midst of a pandemic that has us working from home, paying for our own internet and now requiring us to use our personal devices to "help" transition their platform update (with zero compensation). they promise a great insurance package and forget to tell you the deductible is cost prohibitive. they intentionally list their jobs with zero insight into what the *actual* work is, and then require you to be a specialist from your first day on the job (even with zero training) while paying a non-living wage. they have an HR team that pretends to care and want to help and then management that punishes you for speaking out. they have executive leadership telling us we need to make sure to use our vacation time because it costs the company too much money if we don't.

WHERE THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO TAKE A VACATION RIGHT NOW YOU ABSOLUTE FUCKING TWATS?

i dread clocking in every day. i cry on a daily basis because i hate it SO MUCH.

and so i try to find something else. 

i apply to any and every job i might even tangentially be qualified for or be able to learn.

i search every job board i can find on a daily basis.

i go on IN PERSON interviews, during a fucking pandemic, just to never ever hear from a fucking company again.

I RISKED GOING TO AN HVAC COMPANY FOR AN INTERVIEW JUST TO BE GHOSTED.

a fucking HVAC company. their 50 employees are in and out of houses and businesses ALL DAY LONG. and i risked going there for an in person interview just to be fucking treated like i don't fucking exist. just straight up ghosted. "...we'll call you tomorrow either way..." and expect me to fucking believe it.

i've lost a handful of friends since this fucking pandemic bullshit started and i didn't have many to begin with.

i've been isolated for MONTHS with my only human interaction being the curb side pick up orders at target or fred meyer. 

even stella is fucking sick of me.

i have daily thoughts of death again.

my anxiety is off the fucking charts.

i smoke weed constantly to try to calm my thoughts and allow my mind a few minutes of non-terrible death filled thinking only to be told i can't apply for jobs because they drug screen.

i fucking HATE everything.

i'm lonely.

i'm terrified.

i have no one to TALK to and bounce ideas off and stop me when i spiral.

yeah, i can snapchat or text but it isn't the same.

i'm just....

it's bad right now.

july is the start of a few fucking MONTHS for me every year. and i know memories only hold the power we let them. i know we control our own thoughts.

buy july is when tyra and roman died. when steve had his TBI that led to his suicide. july is my mother's and my oldest son's birthday. july leads into august when my dad and anne and christopher died.

i fucking DREAD this time of year. all the milestones.

this year is 10 years since my dad died.

ten fucking years.

what happened in the last 10 years? i had to cut all communication with my mother because she chooses to stay married to a pedophile. both my kids had to leave my home due to violence and threats (and drugs for the younger one). my career has been absolutely destroyed. my finances have been gutted. my mental heath has been absolutely wrecked.

and i know.

I KNOW ALL THE FUCKING THINGS.

i know i have to be the one to change my thinking and my behaviors.

i have to be the one to make things better.

i have to find the positive. i have to find the solutions. i have to...all the self help books. i get it.  i know.

i know if you only focus on the negative, the negative will be all you see.

i know good things have happened. i do have good memories and good experiences. 

but they're fucking few and far between.
 
and i'm so fucking tired.

i've been trying to make things better for 22 years, alone, with no help.

i've done therapy. financial workshops. tried to learn cooking. educated myself. tried new things. searched for better answers. tried every out of the box idea. i've done religion, spirituality. i've meditated and prayed and tried fucking tarot cards.

i have tried for twenty two years to make a better life and here i am.

and i fucking hate it and everything is terrible.

i'm tired of middle aged white dudes fucking up my career.

i'm tired of all ages of dudes fucking up my self worth and self image.

i'm tired of abusive relationships and shitty behaviors.

i'm tired of rape and sexual assault.

i'm tired of body shaming and mocking my intelligence and my beliefs.

i'm fucking tired.

i'm tired of constantly feeling not enough. worthless.

i'm tired of being told over and over it's my fault. it's up to me. i have to make it better.

I'VE BEEN TRYING MY ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE TO MAKE ME BETTER.

and i'm still a fucking pile of shit that gets stepped on and ground down.

i'm tired of being the one trying to sort out and change generational trauma.

i'm fucking tired.

i don't know what else to do.

i don't know what else to try.

i need fucking help.

i need someone to help me process ideas. someone to listen and rell me when i'm being a fucking asshole and when it's fucking valid.

i need someone to hug me and stroke my hair and tell me it will be all right even if it won't be.

i need someone else to worry about the groceries and the bills and the laundry and meals and cleaning.

stella will help with the eating, but she's absolute shit at meal prep.

i fucking hate everything so much.

everything feels like swimming through quicksand with fucking cement shoes right now.

oh, and the world is fucking ending too.

i hate it all. all of it.

i'm so fucking tired.

acceptance

one of the most annoying things possible is when the universe thinks it's being funny.

i sat down to meditate tonight and asked the universe for a word to focus on.

things have been...pretty rough lately. it's been getting pretty dark.

i had a meeting today that could possibly result in some major stress relief (intentionally vague until the outcome is settled), but right now i have all this stress in my brain. this meeting, work, life, the world, and with everything going on and is now the right time for ANYTHING? but now is the only time we have...my brain has just been on full OVERTHINK mode, so i decided to use my therapy tools, do what i know works for me and sit down and meditate on it.

and i asked the universe for a word to focus my meditation on:

ACCEPTANCE

backtrack just a bit: one of my forms of stress relief the last few weeks has been crafting and making things (and plants. so many plants). one of the projects that i did was using some of the clay you can bake to make a bunch of little meditation stones. they're nothing fancy, just little discs of all shapes and sizes.

words are incredibly powerful to me, so i'm taking these meditation stones and writing the words that are given to me when i meditate. reminders of different moments of struggle or clarity or insight or just MOMENTS.

and tonight when i asked for a word to write down, the word was ACCEPTANCE.

i am, if nothing else, a complete nerd, and, in true nerd fashion, i wanted to make sure i had an accurate definition before i started meditating.

so i looked up acceptance.

if you're me, in my brain, i think of acceptance as: well fuck. this is going to suck but i gotta get through it. grant me the serenity to ACCEPT the things i cannot change.

the definition technically is: willingness to tolerate a difficult situation.

*sigh*

yup.

that sounds about right.

learn to accept things. learn to tolerate things. be willing to trudge through the shit storm.

but then the universe, in it's grand sense of humor, reminded me via google of the OTHER meaning of acceptance:

the action of consenting to receive or undertake something offered.

you get ACCEPTED into college. you accept a marriage proposal. you accept an award.

 
and, i just have to say. DAMN IT UNIVERSE.  well played, good sir, well played.

for real though, how fucking annoying is that? here's a word that can have two VERY different meanings. HAVE FUN MEDITATING ON THAT ONE.

i'm so annoyed.

but, meditate i did and it really hit like a 2x4: HEY DUMBASS. MAYBE QUIT FOCUSING ON JUST THE NEGATIVE? stop letting that be your knee jerk reaction to everything? 

the first direction my brain went with the word was the negative connotation. the depressing connotation. the ugly perspective. of course i have to ACCEPT whatever is coming. UGH. FINE. whatever. i don't get it but i'll find a way to deal with it.

i get in this...trench of survival and negativity and here's this whole other perspective sitting out there just being like HEY, WHAT'S UP? I'M A POSSIBILITY TOO YOU KNOW!

not so gentle reminder from the universe that i have A LOT of work still to do on perspective.

that's hard ALL THE TIME, let alone in the middle of a giant shit sandwich.

i need to remember that there's still good out there. there's still an ember of hope glowing among the ashes.

and not to be too much of a drama queen, but holy fuck am i sitting on a massive pile of ashes.

i feel like job and i could kick it over a cup of coffee and really bond.

if you're not familiar with the parable of job, basically god and satan got in a pissing match and decided to FUCK UP this dudes life to settle a bet. they took away his farm, his family, his health, they just massively WRECKED this dudes entire life. it was to the point job was sitting on a pile of ashes, rending his garments SCREAMING at the heavens. and holy fuck do i feel that.

i've lost my family, battled mental health, money is gone, jobs have come and gone. i have had *plenty* of nights of screaming at the heavens.

but somewhere in that giant pile of ashes there is still a glowing ember of good. of hope.

i have to admit, this isn't the first time the universe has kicked my ass about this lesson.

i tend to find negative things really easy. it's easier to believe the bad over the good. it's easier to just know things are going to go against you. it's just easier not to get your hopes up. it's less painful to plan on everything being terrible from the beginning.

i see the daily headlines and i think, "...oh, well yeah. of course."

all the bad news, all the BREAKING HEADLINES, all the uncovered secrets, all the terrible, terrible things people do...it doesn't surprise me. of course things are terrible. of course people do terrible things.

DID YOU NOT KNOW THAT?

how are people still shocked by the pure ugly nasty nature of human beings?

doesn't everyone experience/see that on a regular basis?

maybe it's a trauma response. maybe it's a bad habit. maybe it's a pessimistic personality.

the negative has always made sense to me. it's easier to believe. easier to grasp. easier to understand.

even when something good happens, my initial reaction is, "...what's the catch?' or "...wait for it..." 

i don't even allow myself a moment to enjoy the good that's happening because i'm so caught up in looking for the negative. i'm waiting for the 2 on a 1-2 punch.

BUT

there's still good.

even if i haven't learned to sit in the moment, there is still good happening.

good things still happen. people are still nice and kind and thoughtful. people still help each other. friends still lend a shoulder to cry on. strangers still pay it forward at a drive thru. the good guy does win sometimes. 


i don't know what will happen tomorrow or a week from tomorrow.

i don't know if it will be good or bad.

probably plenty of both.

but i do know there's more than one negative option.

not just a willingness to tolerate a difficult situation.

the action of consenting to receive or undertake something offered.

i need to work on seeing more than one thing. i need to work on looking for the positive. i need to work on finding more perspectives.

acceptance.

universe, you tricky bastard, thanks for the reminder.

mental health care

a little over a year ago i signed a contract with my therapist that i would not end my life or self harm before my next session.

it wasn't a REAL contract. there was no double signature, stamped and notarized agreement.

it was a hastily written agreement on a yellow sheet of legal paper with her signature and mine.

to me, it's a real contract. i still think about it every day.

self harm has never been my thing. suicide has never been my thing.

pervasive thoughts of death and how little i care about staying alive from day to day? that's my thing.

"i've had a good run" is something i say all the time, half joking (because it hasn't been good), half resigning or almost welcoming the thought of things being over.

it's not great.

today i had a call with HR about some concerns i've raised at work and some problems that have developed in my department.

today is not a good brain day for me. yesterday was a TERRIBLE work day, i was still reeling from that, while dreading the resulting call with HR (it's like being called into the principal's office no matter how old you are).

today started out rough.

the first thing anyone asks you in any meeting is "Hi, how are you?"

i should say, the first thing anyone who DOESN'T KNOW ME asks is...

i don't bullshit. i gave that up a long time ago.

with the guidance and honest feedback from friends i've learned to be a little more...tactful when i answer (thanks to a good friend who chewed my ass for being too blunt to a poor drive thru worker on my way to my dad's funeral), but i will always answer honestly.

today i had to remember that my honest answers can be terrifying, even when tactful.

if you ask me "are you ok," and i'm NOT ok, that's the anwer you'll get.

when you're talking to HR, that takes on a different life.

today they both asked me at the start of the call if i was ok and i answered honestly NOPE.

they were both concerned by my reply, and thankfully so. i do appreciate they HEARD my answer instead of just brushing it off as part of introductory conversation or an employee with a greivance.

i then followed up and explained: NO, i'm not ok. BUT, i own and control that answer. no, i am not at risk for self harm. no, you do not need to be concerned. i am not ok, but i have the tools, the practice, and the self awareness to know it's an issue i'm working on.

my mental health, my response to my mental health, my behavior around my mental health is MY work to do. it is MINE to own and be responsible for.

i thankfully have had access to enough therapy at different times to know that answering honestly is what works best for me. you can't fight something you can't face. i know my demons by name. i am very open talking about my specific struggles because when you SAY it it takes away some of the power, some of the fear. it gives you a specific thing to work on.

i know mental health care is still a devise topic. so many people are still ashamed. so many people still think it's imaginary or "that time of the month" or someone being difficult. so many people have been straight up abused or tortured for their mental health issues (so thankful i'm not a kennedy).

and here comes the soap box:

MENTAL HEALTH IS NO DIFFERENT THAN ANY OTHER KIND OF HEALTH ISSUE.

you heart can have electrical wiring issues and doctors will give you a medication for that.

you pancreas can have a chemical imbalance and doctors will give you a medication for that.

your reflexes and response times can be slow and doctors will treat that.

your muscles can be damaged and injured and doctors will treat that.

WHY IS IT ANY DIFFERENT FOR THE BRAIN?

if you tear a hamstring you will have medical help, therapy, a treatment plan that is openly discussed and adjusted to achieve the peak recovery.

why not make that available for a traumatic brain injury?

NEEDING MENTAL HEALTH CARE IS NOT A