So, How Are Things?

 Things, overall, are terrible. Like, I don’t know how to sheild y’all from that anymore. In fact, I can’t. I’m too tired.

As always, we are doing our best. We are learning, and growing, and improving every day. Per colloquial wisdom, that SHOULD mean we are getting better and better and things are improving. 

That only works if your level of improvement is faster than the level of things careening out of control. 

And in the last few months, those things have skyrocketed. 

And I just don’t have the strength anymore to take care of everyone else’s feelings around our life catastrophes. 

Which is partly why I’ve gone so radio silent - I can’t put a spin on our circumstances that gives ME hope, let alone anyone else.

And since “take care of other’s feelings” has been STAMPED INDELIBLY on my soul since I was three, that means when I am overwhelmed, when I am unable to be hopeful or encouraging or tie things up with a pretty bow, I go away. Because that’s better for everyone than having to deal with things that overwhelm ME.

Because I am supposed to be the strong one who takes care of everyone else.

It’s not working anymore. 

Things just are what they are, and despite my best efforts, what they are is pretty terrible. 

I think the reason that is so painful to say, is because it flies in the face of “But if you really are doing your best, things should be getting better!” Our best just isn’t good enough. And besides, that idea isn’t true. 

One of the major frustrations and points of despair is that if you do nothing, CERTAINLY nothing will change. If you do SOMETHING, maybe, if you’re lucky, things will get better. But that’s not a gauarantee. 

And we really really want it to be a gauarantee. So then we apply morality to it: what are you doing wrong, who do you need to forgive/apologize to, what should you confess, or we try to apply meaning, “everything happens for a reason,” “God will use this for good,” which emotionally bypasses with religious phrases (this results in spiritual abuse BTW) that right now, none of that matters. 

Right now, the struggle is real. The grief is real. The pain is real. 

Job’s friends did great UNTIL they opened their mouths and tried to give a reason for his suffering. (Job, surely you must have done SOMETHING!!!)

Our capacity to love effectively is in direct relation to our capacity to endure and be present WITH someone in their pain. 

Things are bad, y’all. 

Should I walk through things backwards? Forwards? I don’t know. 

We are doing our best, and our best isn’t nearly good enough. 

Yesterday was pretty good. We ate like hobbits, and we went for a two mile hike and several other small walks and activities. 

Please enjoy these pictures from yesterday. Then I had nightmares all night, woke up with a massive headache from neck pain, and totally drained and exhausted. 

So today isn’t going as great. 

We had my lab results Thursday. They’re not good, Rodney. 

In the last year, my fasting blood sugar and A1C (that’s your average blood sugar over the months), have tripled/doubled (respectively). 

I’m officially QUITE diabetic. 

Ergo the walking and hobbit diet. 

It’s high key triggered my orthorexia (eating disorder of being obsessed with eating healthy), and it’s a struggle to eat at ALL, because I feel like ALL food is bad. 

This is a terrible approach for diabetes, btw. 

We are going to pick up my new medications. I’m going to have to give myself INSULIN INJECTIONS every evening now. I’m hecking terrified of needles. And now I have to give myself a shot every day. 

Hopefully, this will be a short term thing, and we will get my careening sugar under control, and it won’t be forever. 

PS - if we are hanging out, DO NOT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT I CHOOSE TO EAT. 

1) I gauarantee I am obsessing about everything I put in my mouthWAY more than you are

2) I KNOW more than you about what I put in my mouth and how it will efffect me

3) Triggering the orthorexia is a real thing, and then I will not be able to eat for days, which is JUST AS BAD IF NOT WORSE. 

So like … just trust me that I know what is best for me when I eat.

And also be willing to go on a walk with me later, or move in other fun ways. I don’t need to do that every time, but sometimes I do. 

All this news came on the heels of Jordan being out of work for about two weeks. He still has his job, but his mental health absolutely PLUMMETED, and he was in a very dangerous space. He is doing better now, but it’s … 

I mean, when better means oh hey, I can go to my job, amd get through the day with LESS passive suicidal ideation, how good is that, really?

I mean, obvs, it’s better, and I’m thankful. I just want both of us to … feel good, y know?

Its all SO DISCOURAGING.

And like we are TRYING. I’ve been faithfully walking EVERY DAY. I’ve gotten stronger - that’s why we were able to go TWO WHOLE MILES yesterday, like it was basically nothing. That’s really cool! 

IT DIDN’T SOLVE MY DIABETES. 

Jordan’s still in chronic pain. That’s helping his depression soooooo much. (That is SARCASM.) Struggling to get his doctor to work with him on that. 

We’ve been working really hard on budgeting and saving and money management too,  and making progress. BUT THEN STUFF LIKE THIS HAPPENS AND IT ALL FEELS FUTILE. 

We haven’t been to church in weeks. We were going to go this weekend, but Jordan had a sore throat and woke up congested, and that’s enough of a barrier for us that it’s like OPE,  or going. 

I have come up with a term for us that I think explains things a bit better: I think we are spiritually disabled. 

And what I mean by that, is we have been so damaged, burned, and beaten by abusive churches and abusive people IN the church, that we need different kinds of support and more support to make church accessible to us. 

For example: going to church should feel good. 

Going to church, even though I’m as sure as I can be that our church is safe, is an ORDEAL. 

Which one of us will have a panic attack? Who will be triggered in church? Not to mention, our bodies get triggered at the THOUGH of church, and do things like shut down, have extreme fatigue, and depression will roll over us like a suffocating blanket. 

Not because of anything THIS church has done to us, but because of the very real harm we have experienced at churches and the hands of real church people. 

That’s the uncomfortable truth. 

It is uncomfortable for ME, and I know it’s uncomfortable for church people. I SEE a.l the dismissive talk and explanation about people who are deconstructing, have deconstructed, or are questioning or struggling with things that have happened in church. It always shifts the blame back onto the victim, 

If I could just forgive, if I could just get over it, not ALL churches/church people. 

It’s so much easier for everyone than to face the ugly truth: the church hurt me. 

And the consequences of the church hurting me, that I bear in my body and brain, is that church is mostly impossibly difficult for me. 

It’s easier to say I’m making a big deal out of nothing and overreacting, than it is to examine the church and hold systems and people accountable for being abusive, or cruel.

Ignorant or reactive cruelty is still just as destructive as intentional. 

I WATCH and experience that people would rather shut ME UP, than hold others accountable. 

It is no wonder that my body/brain freak out when I try to go to church. Long and painful experience has taught me BRUTALLY, that safe people and churches are the exception, not the rule.

We are trying to do good and healthy things that support us. But everything is SO OVERWHELMING. There is a job that dropped a couple weeks ago I was planning to apply for, and then THAT DAYJordan had to come home because of his mental health. And then that took up the next two weeks. 

And now I’m trying to cope with “Oh, btw, you have diabetes” and somehow I still have to apply with all the resume and application writing, 

Which is LITERALLY anathema to me. Paperwork is my Achilles heel and nemesis. 

But if I don’t manage to do All The Things, then it’s still somehow MY FAULT that my life doesn’t improve.

I feel like I’m in a straitjacket, stuck on a hamster wheel of doom, trying to keep my balance while spurts of flames jet at random intervals. 

Like a castle level in Mario. 

So … THERE IT ALL IS, FOLKS. THE UPDATE. 

I may update this blog again, I might not. I sleep a lot, and I struggle to do things, a LOT. And frankly, I am prioritizing doing the things that make me feel better instead of prioritizing keeping people in the loop. I can’t even respond to texts often, cuz MY internal pressure of “ok how do I not BURDEN them” is overwhelming. 

Ergo the blog. If it’s overwhelming, HA, YOU CAN STOP READING. And this way, if YOU want to know,you can know, and I don’t feel like I have to protect your feelings. 

Grover is very cute, he’s getting more cuddly. He’s very fluffy,