Running on E

 The phone rang today...again...the phone rings every day usually multiple times sometimes a week will have upwards of 25 to 30 calls all from the same source.  Not telemarketers, not robocalls, not bill calls, shoot even some of those people only call once a day or once a week asking if you want to save on your electric, or join some cause, or get a better rate on your car insurance.  You get the idea.  

Today will come off as me whining but I mean that's just how it is.  I think it's more than that but from where I'm sitting perspective is often skewed.

At any given moment there are so many things that have to be done.  Dealing with multiple family members who are in various stages of need for whatever reason.  Leading an amazing church with people who have been so supportive it's scary.  Helping a person I've known all my life with just about every part of regular living as possible, up to including medical decisions.  The list grows and so much has to be done and there is just no way to say it but that I don't know how to do the next thing.  

I guess what I know how to do doesn't matter, because I am doing the next thing, at least it seems like I am doing the next thing, things are getting done but the struggle is more than a little bit real, it's a lot bit real, like over the top real. I'm reminded of this episode of Seinfeld where Kramer is riding in a car with a guy, I think it was the guy trying to sell it, anyway the car was sitting on empty and they kept pushing the limit, trying to see just how far they could go on fumes.  It was pretty funny then.  The problem is that's a make believe world.  A world where a car can sit on empty and yet travel miles and miles and miles, the fun is in seeing just how far you can go, how far you can push it.  Which is the problem with today and the last days, weeks,  shoot months even.  It's not a make believe world we live it.  Believe me I wish it was, I wish this was all make believe, that we were living in some weird time bubble and once it popped the world would start to revolve the way it was meant to, where we don't live in a reality without.

Which is what is so hard.  I've been running on E and I know it, I can see it, I am living it and I know that it's not sustainable.  I live right now smack dab in the middle of this verse

just not for the right reason.  Paul is able to say I will boast in my weaknesses because it's in those weak areas that Christ is strong.  

I don't want to boast in the weaknesses, even as I know better, even though I know that God was not any where close to happy when May 16th happened I still find myself getting angry at Him, yelling at him, wanting to know what he was busy doing on that day to not have my back. To not protect the ones that are so important to living life.

My tank is empty and the guilt that I feel with saying that is at times crippling.  I don't have time for an empty tank.  I don't have the ability to not do, and so I keep going keep pushing and when I do stop when I do try and step away from the madness that is life, I end up feeling guilty for that too.  People need me and I am going to fail them, I'm going to miss something, I'm going to forget, the list goes on and on and the tank moves from fumes to nothing and still I keep going thinking there is going to come a point when there will be a chance for there to be something put back in the tank.  

I'm a living walking example of what it means to live in a place where it's obvious that there is no real way I can do this on my own, it's obvious that God's somehow pulling me through the mud of depression and anger guilt and all the rest.  I'm sure there will come a day when I am able to thank him for that but I'm just not there. 

I envy people that can look at the bad things that happen and see God's hand in a positive way working in them and through them and even through the situation.  I've said it before and I'll say it again.  I do not for a moment believe God did any of this, and that God is just as sad about it as I am, if I'm honest, more than I am for all the reasons anyone that has a slight knowledge of God knows.  Still doesn't change the fact that in this part of life and all that goes with this part of life, the human part of Aaron raises his fist and yells at a God who didn't have my back, even though I know better, and that's just it.  I do know better. 

But just because I know something doesn't mean I can accept it, and I'm just dumb enough to believe that God gets it and that's exactly why he is pulling me through all of this mess because he does love me not where I will be but where I am, even if where I am is so very very screwed up. 

So my tank is on empty and it doesn't matter and that's where life is.

See ya around the blog

The Problem with Hot Pockets...

As we sit at two days till 120 I am reminded of things that no one wants to be reminded of.  Tonight I went down to the deep freeze in the basement opened it up to grab some chicken to make for dinner.  You would think that a deep freeze is a safe place, except what I'm learning, what we are learning is there really is no safe place, there really is not time table, and there really is no better, there's today..and then there's tomorrow, and then it just keeps going.

I've tried to keep my thoughts and feelings in some semblance of order, and when bigger things hit I've tried to write them so I can, what I dunno, look back and get sad again.  It just feels important for some reason and I do it.  Maybe just so that I don't keep carrying so much in.  

This week has been harder than most.  I know that this is not news to people, I'm sure seeing me around reading what I write or whatever it's easy to understand that Aaron's not okay. Sometimes though it helps to know why I guess, who knows.  So this week's problem actually started a few weeks ago on a Sunday.  

We are in what I'm calling the gauntlet, that's the best way to describe it as far as I'm concerned. It's this time that starts with the beginning of the school year and culminates in the fall birthdays.  September 1, September 10, October 1, and October 7th.  My entrance into the Gauntlet came a couple Sunday's ago.  We were driving home, and if I've already told you this dear reader please just bare with me, as we were we hit the bike shop in Girard and all of a sudden it was just a day that I couldn't do anymore.  I came home shut my door and cried myself to sleep, the events pile up and at any given moment I run into things that I just don't really see myself doing again, even things that I loved and enjoy...in some cases am still very fond of just don't seem to be working out.

I'm a gamer, love video games and table top games and all of them, but there are entire games that I'm at the end of or really far into that Josie was either a part of, or would curl up and watch that I just can't bring myself to even turn on.  I'm literally at the final boss in a game that I played the week before the world stopped turning,  I did the fight like twice and then just shut it off, and though it defies logic, and though I know better it's like my brain tells me if I don't finish these things that I've started maybe just maybe I'll wake up and it will all be the replay of the nightmare I've had for the last 19 years give or take.  The one where I lose them to a horrible accident, except I don't wake up.  The game not being finished doesn't work it's magic, nor does keeping my Switch charged but not turning it on. Bringing myself to sit at a table and play with markers and cards and dice, moving my chosen piece around the board and collecting or figuring out or avoiding just doesn't work..Opening the game cupboard to find the covid 19 game she made stuck in with Monopoly and Risk or Clue just slams into me and makes me want to go away from everyone.

Sundays are hard but not the only hard day, any day where I have to do life can be hard.  And so the list of never agains gets added to...

Star Wars, which as most of you know is one of my favorite things, is just an off limits thing now.  I can't bring myself to watch them or read them or even think about them.  I've skipped Falcon and the Winter Soldier, as well as Loki, I can't imagine a Marvel anything, which is hard...I can wear the shirts, but turning it on just is a no go. 

Driving places can become an exercise in locating different ways to get places so that you don't have to see the park that she loved, or the place you rode bikes together, or ...or ...or...

Which brings me to last night and today....

Last night I went down to the deep freeze to see if we had something in it to make for dinner, as I was grabbing the chicken it happened again.  See I thought she had finished the last of her Hot Pockets.

 She liked em and she would many times get two and ask if I wanted one, or I would make her one, but see the box was gone because they were gone I thought, had been for a while since before the day life turned to hell...except they were't gone..there was one left tucked into the door of the fridge, must have fallen out and she stuck it in there, just touching it slammed into me and I went upstairs and cried and cried, ugly cried. I'm not a big hot pocket person but that was something that she would share with me, I still remember when I got the big box of them and her eyes when she saw it and her smile, I think she liked them because she could make them and share them.

Today taking some stuff back to the rehab place as I sat outside on the bench because I couldn't find my mask, which was in the back of the car after all, Facebook slammed into me again with a memory...this one from many years ago, of a little girl on her hands and knees in the sand doing the strangest thing. Crawling over the sand with her head down plowing rows into it.  She came over to me and wanted to know what I had in my hand, it was her sand art, and when asked what she was doing she said.."making a surprise for you. That's the thing about Josie...she always was making a surprise for someone.  Leaving a note on a smart fridge to be found not just months but years later, hiding among us imposters for people to find...making time capsules to open in the Summer...a summer that never came.. a time capsule that sits on my desk at home and stares at me pulling the tears from my eyes the sobs from my soul the anger and frustration and pain to the surface.  

All of these things make me just not want to exist.  I've said it multiple times. I just don't want to do this life thing without her.  I don't think any of us really want too but here we are.  Doing the next thing because that's all that can be done and to be honest sometimes not even that works.

And so there we are 120 days later and I'm not better off than I was on day one or day two or day ten.  In some ways it's worse, and that's what's so frustrating and maddening and terrifying.  Knowing that things can never be different, and so feeling that it would be so amazing if things just weren't.

See ya around the Blog...

Waves of Nope

The last few weeks have been harder than they should be.  I keep saying that to myself and a few other people and I mean lets be fair, all of them, myself included say the same thing.  I'm wrong, there's no right way to do grief, being sad is okay.  It's okay to not be okay.  I mean the list is pretty exhausting but I mean lets be clear.  I'm pretty exhausted.

If I look at the list of how messed up things are in the last three months it would be so self defeating which is probably why I feel so defeated so often.  I see all that has happened in life and I recognize the ways that I've discounted and tried to gloss over things in other peoples lives in the past, not because I don't care about them, or about what they are dealing with and going through, but because I thought they had to have an answer from me, and I thought that I must have the right answer.

Since the middle of August things have been even harder than they were, harder than I want them to be.  Entire days bring reminders that are so bitter sweet, and to be honest at this point they are more bitter than sweet.  We have entered this gauntlet with the start of school and leading through a mass of birthday's that culminate with October 7th and to be honest I just don't know how that day even is going to be able to exist.  I'd like to pull it out of the calander but that won't happen and the closer it comes, the closer we get to it the harder the days get.  It's like trying to walk when you're stuck in the rain and the mud has gotten on your shoes and it gets thicker and heavier and your entire being just wants to be done. To sit down in the mud and stop and let the rain flood whatever valley you're in and make it so you don't have to trudge anymore. 

That's where things have been since the 16th of August and it makes sense and it's sad and it's messed up and there are days that I just want to scream obscenities to anyone and anything that will listen.

This is the truth about grief that people don't ever get until they are doing it.  The truth about specific grief that is, is that no one really has a clue what triggers it, or how to work though it in a timely fashion.  It's like a stalker that waits, biding it's time until you are doing something completely un-related to the person you are grieving and then slams into you making every bit of emotion that has been balled up for however many days it was between the time you last cried, last felt, let dealt with all the stuff that you've been stuffing.  The sad thing is you come to realize that crying is not just a once in a while thing anymore it's still a daily thing and there are times that you just have to close the door and tell the world to go away.

That's where I'm sitting right now and the worst part of that is the guilt associated with doing that.  It's like I am not doing what I should for the rest of the people in the house, people I love and care for and just want to be okay, even though okay is not really on the table or even in the box at this point.

That's the thing, there are days when waves of nope crash all around me, and in those days I just want to say NOPE to everything that should be done, and I mean everything and the hard part is I know that's not really acceptable so I put my head down and push through and then the waves crash over me and I just can't.

That's it really, no scriptures today, no redeeming oh wow he's doing so well, he's coming through it.  Just wave after wave of nope...

See you around the blog.