Tag: grateful

  • The Body Keeps Score

    Trigger Warning: effects of extreme domestic violence discussed

    You know, it’s only been in about the last year and a half that I realized that that version of me, in that picture below, had actually saved someone’s life, in realtime, about a year and a half or so prior to this photograph.

    Just like November’s are hard, February’s are hard for an entirely different reason.

    I had an awful dream last night. I dreamed that someone I love very much wanted to kill me, and had already killed someone else I love. I spent a good deal of that dream attempting to hide, always to be found. I woke up before anything actually happened to me.

    And I thought it was an odd dream to have, and then I realized that today is February 2.

    The body keeps score. My subconscious knew exactly what time of year this is.

    And the reality is, I lead a remarkably privileged life. We have a nice home, we can pay our bills, Jared has a phenomenal job, my children are getting world-class educations. I have great friends and even as an adult I am still spoiled rotten by my family.

    And still….. the body keeps score.

    Tomorrow February 3, will be the 25th anniversary of one of the most horrific days of my life.

    In the journal in the photo below, there is a gap between January 4, 2001 and March 26, 2001.

    I’m sure I didn’t think much about why I wasn’t writing at the time.

    And it wasn’t until about a year ago that I really started to shuffle through that old journal of mine with a different kind of analysis than I’d ever done before, to see exactly what was going through my mind, looking at my brain as a young 20-something through the eyes of my mid-40’s self.

    I bought that journal with the boyfriend of the time’s encouragement. He knew I had kept journals throughout my childhood and into high school, and he took me to Borders and probably paid for it.

    There are only 2-3 entries before that January to March gap.

    But, those entries held just enough information to tell him, when he probably read it, exactly where he was standing in my headspace despite the fact that we lived together at the time.

    I’ve always been a very transparent writer. It’s just who I am; it’s how I process the world.

    And so, when I decided I wanted to go out on a date with someone else on February 3, 2001, I knew for a fact it was going to be a messy thing. I knew the man I lived with— the man who had claimed me as his own for six years at that point— the man who had known all along that I’d long been involved with some guy who was now an attorney in another state for over two years at that point— I knew he wouldn’t take it well; I knew that I was beholden to him for half the rent of our two-bedroom apartment in a very nice neighborhood in Toco Hills.

    I knew I had to break up with him for the millionth time.

    I had zero, zero idea that the breakup would stick this go-round for very different reasons than it ever had before.

    As traumatic as my college years were on a variety of fronts, there is only one week to which I am aware of in which my actual life was in danger, and that was the week between Saturday, February 3, 2001 and Saturday, February 10, 2001: the week between a blade and a door locked in the dark.

    And the police were involved, and the officer told the boyfriend that no judge would take my word for anything if the other party decided to press charges against the boyfriend.

    Which is why, when something arguably more sinister— a psychiatrist called it psychological torture in 2022— when something more sinister happened a week later, it didn’t even occur to me to contact the authorities. I was sure I was going to die that night of February 10, 2001, but the gravity of what exactly occurred didn’t occur to me at all until years and years later.

    I just called my parents the next day, while the boyfriend was at work, and told them I needed the rest of the rent money; that I wanted to see other people and the boyfriend was being “unreasonable.”

    So yeah, that dream from last night didn’t make a great deal of sense until I stopped to really think, and remembered, “oh yes, it is February.”

    The body keeps score. My brain— this brain of mine that ruminates so very much, still processing probably three lifetime’s worth of trauma, keeps score.

    And I write. To this day; I am terrified of this individual. Much like another individual I faced in the last year, I faced this person in person first probably 13 or so years ago as a tolerance exercise. I have solid reasons to know in my brain I am likely safe from him for a variety of reasons due to his likely current circumstances. But on some level I am always afraid he’ll show up at my house. I sleep with the lights off out of a type of forced exposure therapy now but for so much of our married lives, Jared and I have slept with the lights on such that our children grew up sleeping with the lights on even. He is not the only reason I am afraid of every man I meet, but he’s one of the bigger reasons.

    And today, my puppy Abby is getting her mouth, probably long overdue, seen about. And Jared, upon hearing what anniversary it is, and, taking pity on me for my poor toe that seems to not want to heal yet, came home in the middle of this morning to take the trash to the street for me.

    And I dragged my camera out of my bag— this camera I have been avoiding for weeks because I do that when I am hiding, and I found the photo of myself from probably late 2002, taken probably by this really great guy I dated for a while before Jared came along. And I found the journal only for the photo but this is not the time of year for dissecting it, just now.

    And today’s agenda is to work on the jute bag I started, and to hold my camera even though I don’t feel much like taking pictures, and to remember that today is 2026, not 2001.

  • This Young Man is a Future Grinnellian!!

    There are no words, but I’m going to write some anyway.

    In 2005, I moved to this little middle-of-nowhere-Iowa town named Grinnell, because Jared, my new husband, worked for them at the time.

    And in 2006, because Jared had been employed for Grinnell over two years at the time, Grinnell provided six weeks of paid paternity leave for Jared when I gave birth to our oldest son, Porter. At the time, Jared had just started his Master’s of Library Science program at the University of Iowa, and because Grinnell was very generous Jared was able to fully concentrate on only his schoolwork and Porter and me for the full first six weeks of Porter’s life. Porter was in the University of Iowa NICU for five and a half of those weeks, so it was very, very, very nice to not be without our normal income during that tumultuous time.

    And, Jared was in school to begin with at the University of Iowa because Grinnell College was paying for his Master’s program.

    And, when we received the bill for Porter’s NICU stay, we paid a grand total of $210 of Porter’s $500k medical bill thanks to Grinnell’s very generous medical benefits.

    And, our middle son, Liam, this year applied to Grinnell College for Early Decision 2.

    And not only did Liam get into Grinnell College…..he received so much in scholarships and other aid that it is going to cost less than 1/3 of what it would cost for housing and meals alone at UGA, even counting that he’d likely receive the HOPE and Zell Miller Scholarships.

    As I said, there are no words. I am so very beyond grateful, and very, very, very proud of and for Liam, and so very excited that Liam will have an opportunity to be a part of the very wonderfully diverse and vibrant culture that is Grinnell College.

  • Facing a Fear: I Did It

    I do not like dealing with my toenails. At all.

    When I was a little girl, my Mama had to hold me down to let them cut my toenails.

    It was bad. Really.

    The issue is compounded by the fact that with the scoliosis and spinal fusion, I actually can’t get to my toes super well at all. I can cut my own toenails as an adult, but it is not the easiest thing in the world.

    So when my big left toenail became fungal three years ago, I was filled with a sort of existential dread.

    And immediately, within the month, I went to a podiatrist, who promptly told me it didn’t look like a typical fungus and that I should come back in a year if it was giving me trouble.

    Three years later, it had mostly stopped growing the entirety of those three years and it was clear it was indeed a fungal infection.

    So last September, I faced it and went to the podiatrist, sure they would remove it that very day.

    Turns out podiatrist offices don’t work that way.

    She gave me some ketoconazole and told me to use it and Vicks and she didn’t know how long it would take to clear up; when I mentioned removal she said it was an option.

    Then in December when I mentioned the whole episode to my dermatologist at my appointment there, she said that the ketoconazole was going to do nothing, and gave me some weird enamel paint stuff that made my nail hard and told me to file it weekly.

    That stuff took away permanently any hope of actually cutting my toenails, and actually, for some reason the toenail started growing into the base of my toenail bed, backwards.

    And the backwards growth was what promptly sent me back to the podiatrist last week, begging to have the whole thing just taken off permanently.

    Which is no small thing, because of that whole fear of people messing with my toenails.

    And in fact, the fear is so bad that one of my greatest all-time primal fears ever has ever been someone prying off my toenails.

    So yesterday, as I sat just after having my left big toe injected with local anesthetic to deaden it, I posted this on Facebook:

    “So one of my most primal fears is having my toenails, specifically my big toenails, pried off. No joke, in the midst of the only time I had to be restrained due to psychiatric reasons, the delusion of the day was that they were restraining me to pry my big toenails off.

    So what am I sitting in the podiatrist’s chair waiting on? To have my left big toenail removed, permanently.

    It’s been fungal for at least 3 years but it has given me trouble with ingrown issues since I was a child.

    I am ecastatic it will be gone permanently, and not worried about the cosmetics, and I guess technically today is an achievement and exercise in facing one of my worst fears, all by myself since Jared is at work.

    And the dr says I made it through the worst part, which was the deadening injections.

    And I can go shopping for stuff for the weekend’s weather, too.

    I don’t normally keep my phone with me during Dr appts but she said it was fine for distracting myself.”

    The doctor said afterward, with my having told her about the fear, and told her nurse about the fear, beforehand, that she’d made sure she deadened it well and made sure to let it sit long enough to for sure be effective because she really didn’t want to have to come back in and poke me with a needle again after having hurt me with the procedure.

    But sure enough, the procedure itself took like 5 minutes, maybe 10 max, and it was not bad at all. I took a photo I will spare the world after, in fact– you know, with photography being my coping mechanism for everything and all– of the exposed toe bed before it got wrapped up in the bandage post procedure. I’d taken a photo of it before the procedure started, too, for posterity.

    And pretty much the rest of my whole morning and yesterday during the day was set up for success, because I’d done the very thing I was afraid of most as a child, probably. And that’s saying something considering they cut me open on front and back and messed with my innards in a very dramatic fashion for that scoliosis surgery.

  • Randomness

    You know what? I sure have missed writing.

    Also, randomness: I’m pretty darn good at Russian on Duolingo. Apparently there were hidden subconscious benefits to spending a good amount of time in my toddler years in a college language lab, as Russian, Greek, and Spanish are all fairly intuitive in addition to the French I did actually study.

    And, there’s a new job to get ready for, and I am glad.

    And it’s nearly tax season, and I am glad about that, too.

    But, it’s bedtime. And with said job on the horizon, routine is becoming super-duper important.

    And apparently my back is really messed up. I don’t know why my spine is a corkscrew, but it is.

    Poor Abby has to have a dental on February 2; she has an infection in her mouth and will have to have several teeth pulled too. I guess that comes from us not brushing her teeth– sorry girl. She’s been a trooper but we finally got her to the vet today. I am so thankful my therapy dog only has to have a dental and it was nothing worse to worry about. I was afraid she had kidney issues.

    Aside from the trip to the vet, it was a good day.

    I’m thankful to be getting back into the headspace that I can concentrate on writing. It’s been a long winter and I am grateful that the fictionalized memoir is still a project on the horizon. It may take me a decade to write, but will be well-worth it.

  • On The Bus

    I’ve been on the struggle bus for a while now.

    For years and years, actually.

    Jared is the one who named it the “struggle bus.” 

    This winter is actually slightly more bearable because of the shears in the house. 

    Light helps.

    And even though I am on the struggle bus, there are small mercies.

    A new job.

    A fun New Year’s Eve.

    New tires on my car that make it formidable in the rain.

    Mastering the French pin up-do.

    Figuring out that why yes, I can live without cheese in my life. And be happier for it.

    Figuring out that why yes, I can be happier without some people in my life, too.

    Figuring out that even life without the GFX is pretty darn great. 

    My hair is growing. It’s longer now than it’s been in probably 11 years or so. I forgot that when it gets to a certain length, the ends in the front underneath get curly on their own. Completely forgot that at all. It’s well on its way to being as long as it was on the 404 page.

    And there is terror, and I haven’t been writing.

    It’s mostly been survival mode.

    There are new routines with the new year, and the future is bright. 

    Maybe life is the struggle bus.

    It’s a pretty darn wild ride.

    There is hope. At least I’m on the bus.