Here in lies a collection of things I want need to get off my chest.

Dear Customer, when I am assisting your wife in the store, don’t yell at her. It embarrasses us both and really makes me wonder if you are the cause of that split lip she has.

Dear Friend, when you use my computer and see I have tabs open for “PTSD from Domestic Abuse”, “Depression” and “Finding Help”, don’t raise your eyebrow and say “Really?!?” in that incredulous way. I match 90 percent of the listed symptoms, and we both know my behavior is not exactly normal. You can put on a tuxedo and I can put on The Clone’s old prom dress and we can dance and pretend to laugh, or you can be the rock for me you’ve always been. I’m choosing to give you the benefit of the doubt, because I think you were most likely blind-sided.

Dear Co-Worker, when you call me over to you and we have a little conversation, and then I walk away and your eyes are glued to my butt, I totally know you are staring.

Dear Different Friend, thanks for not thinking I am batchit crazy, even though we both know I am.

Dear Washing Machine, why don’t you run yourself once in a while? You’ve lived here two years now, you know where I keep your soap!

Dear Self, why don’t you stop being so busy and take the time to listen to your own head? Might do you a little bit of good.

Dear God, please help my other friend, the one I haven’t mentioned here so far.

Dear Grandmother, I got side-tracked driving yesterday and headed to your house. I still miss you.

Dear Blank-on-purpose, I’m glad you’ve started looking at me again.

Dear Grandma, thanks for teaching me to make a lemon pie from lemons and not a box. I don’t remember how to do it, but I had such a good time in your kitchen that day.

Dear Daddy, I would give anything if I had just kept you on the phone a little longer the day before you died. I am so very glad you called.

Dear Other Friend, please let me meet you where you are. I’ve got a flashlight and a map, and I am willing to help you out of that place you are in.

This is an interesting picture of me, huh? All my lighting fixtures were off and I was just sitting in the glow of my laptop screen. I’m taking a mental health day today. I have some posts I need to write, and I have some jobs I need to do, and a schedule I need to make and I just woke up feeling like I wanted to stay in bed. Bleh. As son as I started writing, though, I felt better. Note to self: if you are a writer, you must write. Maybe even sometimes when you think you don’t feel like it.

Tina posted an article this week that really struck home with me. Like her, I have some big issues going on right now, and while I tend to be pretty open and honest on this blog, somethings I am just not ready to put out there. I probably will be able to later, once the lessons are learned and I have some sort of closure, but right now, I am still in that phase I described a few weeks ago, where the images are flashing through my mind and no words can get out. At least not words fit for public consumption.

I’ve actually been thinking about doing some journaling during this blogging dry season. It just seems weird to go back to pen and ink when the internet has been my medium for so long now. But I know that I definitely don’t like the places I go when I keep the stories in, so something has to give. Anyone know how to get digital images into a paper journal? Hahaha, I slay me!

Things I used to do:
read
write
blog (not the same as writing)
make stuff
play with my kids
take pictures
have a clean house
cook real food
eat (instead of smoke) to regulate my blood sugar and moods
exercise

Apparently, someone gave diet pills to my ego while I wasn’t looking because now I:
let myself be intimidated
wait
scream silently for someone to rescue me

Things I plan to do starting immediately:
all of the first list above and
plant more flowers
stand up for myself
hit publish/quit self censoring

That ought to be a good start, don’t you think?

And if anybody ever tells you depression won’t kill you, they lie. Sorta. It really only eats your soul out of you and leaves a husk.

First off, let me offer an apology. I missed out SPS last Sunday for the first time in over 2 years of doing it. I left for Anson County around 7am and returned around 10:30 pm. It was a joyous day and I was so caught up in it that I forgot to snap and send a picture for you all. I have a good memory, but it’s not like computer memory: it doesn’t remember everything I enter. Moving on.

Today has been an exceedingly large day. I spent quite a bit of it catching up with Ang. I’ve been working 7 days a week lately and I have missed her. Yes, I said seven. I tried to get away with claiming only six on Sunday, and That One looked at me with one eyebrow raised, and I had to admit that he was right: it’s really been seven. Sigh. So.

I spent my day off at home today, being off. And then I got a phone call that pretty much gave me Sundays off for a least a while. At first I was quite bent, but I’ve since decided that it may be a good thing. Ain’t nothing catching God by surprise, and if there is one thing I have felt convicted about lately it is that I *never* take time to sit and be still with Him. Never. Cause I am always busy. Busy means “don’t have to deal”. You do see how handy that could be for someone in a major depression, right? Someone coping with great personal upheaval? Yes. Speaking of which.

Apparently retreating into my room and away from my family in order to be depressed alone isn’t working real well for them. Apparently, the time has now come to be real in front of them. Mary Poppins has bad days. Weeks. Years. Also.

I kicked the corner of the bathroom cabinet door right between the tendons on the front of my ankle. Oh my word, the pain. Cuss cuss.

Yep. someone touched the lens, but this was the best of the lot. I really need to look at the instruction book and figure this camera out!

This has been an interesting week. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way. I’ve been watching a couple of my friends struggle with issues for which I have no answers. The one I truly have no advice for, and the other just wants time and space to settle things within themselves. It’s hard for me to just stand by and wait, I want to *do something*, because I do not like seeing those I care about hurt.

I did do some other things, though. My answer to big stress is hard work, so I mowed my yard and pulled out the matted grass tufts and planted flowers Friday night. The stargazer lilies we planted last week are blooming now. Aren’t they lovely?

I guess it’s time to go mow the backyard now, cause you know what today brought, right? Yep, more stress. Nothing like coming to see your ex walking out of your bedroom. Whattheheck, yk? And then there’s that other situation, the one that requires the waiting I hate. Yep, definitely time for yard work.

Hmm, I don’t even have a title for this post. Mostly because I have no idea what I am going to say. There, I thought of a title. It will work, I suppose.

You know, one of my favorite things to say to my angsty friends is “take your happy where you find it”. I say that the Guitar Guy quite a bit and I also say it to Micheal and Jane. The thing is, we aren’t promised happiness at all. Joy, yes, happiness, no. Now, I believe that Christ came to give us life, and life more abundantly, but happiness, it is the gravy. Or the butter if you happen to be That One who dislikes gravy. How can anyone not like gravy? Seriously, the mind boggles. How am I supposed to serve the weiner schnitzel and he will not partake of the delectable sauce? Oops, got side tracked. The point I was making is that I am happy. And there is a peace in my life. There is so much more I want to say here, but that is as much as I can get out for now. The rest of the words are bottle necked in my mental throat, and only images are coming through.

Do you do that? Get so …full of thoughts and ideas that you aren’t using words to think anymore, but only images? And not like a slideshow, where one goes smoothly into another, but more like those little cartoon flip books, the ones where you use your thumb to control the flip rate, and the little pictures seem to move. That’s how I think sometimes, only the images aren’t necessarily connected to one another but are separate. And eventually, it resolves until only one image and one word remain. They go together, and then it is done and I can type again. Sometimes I can go back and replay the show and share with you what is on my heart and mind and sometimes I cannot and sometimes I choose not to do so.

Once upon a time, there was a girl…….. she didn’t take ephedra diet pills, but her mind still raced. And she chose not to finish the story today.

how time slips away? Wasn’t that a song somewhere? I looked at the blog yesterday and realized I had gone over a week with no real post, only a couple of self portraits. It’s not for lack of blog fodder, I tell you. It’s lack of time to write it all down, and also (for some of it) a lack of words. How do you explain a heart expanding like blown glass until it is so thin and fragile it looks like a child’s bubble, and then it fissures until it is completely crazed, but still holds together? Are there words for that? Maybe so.

How do you describe recoiling from physical contact, and then pivoting in place to embrace it? How do you find a way to heal from abuse when you have to deal with your abuser almost daily? And how do you describe realizing you invited your own abuse with just a little help from your friends and family? What about describing having a story to tell that it so important, vital even, and being afraid to share? And finally, how do you describe what it feels like to take a breath when your chest is compressed by emotion and you feel as small and insignificant and fragile as wet onion skin? When you feel like the very breath you crave will rip you apart?

Did you know that sometimes the events of a life are like fire? As we go though life, we pick up a lot of dirt. Living just piles up on us, and we, our true selves, get buried under the detritus of that living. Now and again, and I am finding out through talking to my friends that its around 40, its time for a purge, time to come face to face with who you are and who you were meant to be, and if you are blessed life begins to burn you up. In that fire, the yucky stuff can fall away, and you can find your real self again.

My real self is still a little girl in a whole lot of ways. She wants to feel her daddy hug her one more time. She wants to be safe. She wants to giggle in delight, and run and soar like a kite, but often, she sits in the corner and rocks herself because….no one else is doing it.

My real self is also 40something. WonderWoman, strong and sure and confident and capable. Mary Poppins, solving the problems of all my friends. Barbie, with a fake plastic smile. Energizer Bunny, with boundless energy. And also the little old lady who lived in a shoe. And the caretaker of that precious little girl rocking herself in the corner.

My real self is also a crone, looking out through eyes of age, recoiling from the pain in people and yet compelled to alleviate it. Wise from experience, but too weak to speak loud enough for her warnings to be heard. Moving through and touching this one and that one and giving comfort by the laying on of hands. Smiling and loving and holding and feeding and patpatrubbing all your troubles away. Little girl all grown up, giving what she didn’t get. Grandmother.

Eventually, maybe the three will merge in the fire. I’m thinking that would be an okay thing. I hope the crone can give the little old lady who lived in the shoe some good tips before my kids end up rocking themselves in the corner.

Maybe I should stick to describing sports gifts, it might be easier on all of us.

Today’s story is not about today, but rather about people in general, about human life as we live it. I happened to walk into my kitchen today to see the sun glinting off this set of handcuffs, and the image looked interesting so I grabbed the camera to capture it. While I was grabbing the camera, the wearer stood up and the sun went behind the clouds. This picture is as close as I could come to re-creating the moment, and it’s a fail. But when I was cropping it, which I usually don’t do to my Project 365 pics (oooh, did you catch that? We are 365ing again!!), I realized it was a great image to go with the post I warned you was coming a few days ago, the one about sinning and why we do it.

Recently, I had an intense experience with God’s mercy and grace. I’ve been saved a long time, since I was a young child, but I finally “got it”. I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to earn love. God’s love, men’s love, my parent’s love, people’s love. And I have failed, and failed miserably at it most of the time. The other night, I came face to face with God’s free grace and boundless love, a love that remains no matter what. I can’t earn it, because it’s already mine. It can’t be lessened by my actions because my actions have nothing to do with it. God loves me because I exist. He brought me into existence and He loves me. He loves me when I do what He wants me to do, and He loves me when I don’t. And nothing I do will ever change that. Do you realize how powerful that is?

Now, let’s explore that sin thing. I said the other day that we sin because we are sinners, and not the other way around. Mortal man can no more avoid sin that he can avoid breathing. Somehow, everyday, we will sin: we’ll become angry for no good reason, we’ll covet, we’ll think badly of someone, we’ll be selfish or unkind, we will do that which displeases God. Pastor has lately been saying that man could not keep the rules when there was only one (don’t eat from that tree), and how much less can we keep them now, when there are so many??? Now, that isn’t to say we should not try to avoid sin, but just that when we do fail, we don’t lose God’s love. Since we didn’t merit to begin with, we don’t lose it.

God’s free salvation is for everyone. Even for me, wretch that I am. Even for you. Free means free, even for me. He loves me. He loves me. He loves me. No matter what. As my bff Ang. said, think about that book that you read to your babies Love You Forever, and that’s how God feels about you. Right now. Yesterday. Tomorrow and all the tomorrows after that, forever and ever and ever. He loves you.

Now then, you probably noticed the list I mentioned way up there had a lot more than God’s love on it. I thought I was going to be able to tell that story today as part of this one, but I find I cannot yet do that. Those handcuffs really go with that other, still untold story, but I am leaving them because…I don’t have another picture for today, and because this one is a powerful reminder of where I have been.