Another step towards the new

I went back and removed my old posts from high school tonight. Didn't delete them, but made them into drafts. There's only so much naivety that I want to share with the world, though I am quite aware that this blog is as dusty as the space behind my fridge. No one else reads this but me now, and when I am on the cusp on a life change, I come back and visit this space like an old friend. 

I ended up staying in Japan for 6 years because of corona. I am still here now. It is a quiet Friday evening in my tiny apartment. My cat, Percy, has climbed up onto the bathroom sink and is highly invested in knocking things off. The scent of damp laundry hangs in the air. 

Yes, I am still here now, but this part of my life is approaching its inevitable conclusion. Japan was always temporary, always transient. It was a heartbeat, an inhale, an exhale, a step forward. It was one year, then two, then five, then a surprise 6th. When I came here I was looking for answers, for a reason to live, for anything that was different than what I'd just come from. I was only starting out, and I was lost trying to find adulthood without my mother's guiding hand. 

And now here I am.

I have been in a dream. I have been living in one for years. I have trudged through mist and stumbled in mud. I have pulled myself out of whirlpools and here I am. A new future is burning its way through the fog. I have accepted an offer for graduate school this past Monday. I will be getting a degree in art. It is a new dream come to life. 

This may not seem like much of a triumph to others, but for me it is solid proof of my hopes and a quiet victory over my fears. It is another way I can tell I am still alive. That I am making progress, despite feeling like I've been in limbo for years. It is no secret that I have struggled with mental health all my life. My mother's death exacerbated everything, and I try my best to work with myself. 

Living here truly was a miracle. I don't think I could have come so far if I hadn't traveled to the other side of the world to do it. Though it is covered by postcards adorned with squiggly drawings, underneath, the white board on the wall reads out "POSITIVITY." 

I am trying, and I am doing better.

I'll leave off for now. Until next time. Have a great week. 

I am still here

Hey, everyone.

Or more like, no one. It's been years. I know no one uses this anymore. On a whim I decided to look back on this old blog. When last I wrote I was moving to Japan and was, to put it gently, a mess. I was clutching at everything I thought I knew about myself, only to discover as time went on that I was building a new person.

I will say I am better now. I've regained old hobbies and found new ones. I have a general hope for my future, and a plan. I'm working on making a portfolio for graduate school, and I will be applying next fall.

I will say that my writing skills have gotten significantly worse from disuse and a general love of internet lingo. My writing life now is a far cry from the weekly blogs I used to write in high school. (Not that those were particularly eloquent, if memory serves correctly.)

But, I am happier. I have a cat. If you recall my rabbit, Magnus, well, he died in an apartment explosion several months back. I'd left him in the care of my stepbrother and his wife, and the apartment flooded, and a gas line blew. It was heartbreaking. I was across the world, and it's no one's fault, but I wish the ending had been gentler. It's not something you could ever expect.

As for Percy, my cat. I got him in 2017 and he'll be two this upcoming January. He sleeps by my head every night. He has helped my soul considerably. He's a big cat, but even still, it's strange that such a little creature can carry so much of my joy.

I thought about Mom today while I was eating school lunch. My sixth graders didn't notice, which is good, because I'm sure my face went through a journey. What I took away from that trail of thoughts is the almost laughably cheesy sentiment that time is kind and also incredibly cruel. It blunts my memories of her, both the good and the bad recede into fog.

It's been nearly four years since she died. Since I stood in that gray hospital room. Since my life's path branched off from the line it'd been leading for 21 years.

I'm 25 now, and I'll be 26 in a few months. I'm going to Ireland with a friend in March. I will be spending another Christmas in Japan. I'm living my life again, and I wanted to let you know.

Until next time.

Have a great week.

distance

Hey everyone,

It's out of habit that I still say that, because back when I started this blog there were people that were on blogger. Now I don't really know of anyone. It's probably better that way, so I can just say these things and get them out without having to account for them.

I brought one of the lilies in our garden to my mom the other day.

I thought that they might be more meaningful if they came from my mom's garden, versus the store. I don't know. It's more comforting for me, really.

I was thinking of the picture mom drew that I talked about in the last post. She said she loved sunshine & flowers, and the day was beautiful. I awkwardly crouched by her gravestone and told her that it was "sunny out today." And by told her, I mean I quietly mumbled it because there was a lady chatting on her phone in the cemetery parking lot, and I didn't want to look like I was talking to myself, and I didn't want to look pathetic as I talked to my mom's grave.

I'm really very lonely.

I'm moving to the other side of the world in 14 days and I feel other than my family there are maybe one or two others that might miss me. Well, I know for sure Dani will miss me. She's told me and I'm going to miss her too. My pets will miss me as well, but people, not so much.

I wish I was leaving the country with a firmer foundation than I have right now. That makes it harder to leave, but it's also there when you crumble.

I've thrown out a lot of my possessions, and I'll have to leave even more behind and...there's something about that that's freeing, but it's still very lonely. I can't help but think that I'm throwing things out as a way to pacify the part of me that's missing my mother. Whenever I can't decide if I want to keep something, I tell myself, "Well, you already lost mom, what else could be that important?" and I throw it out.

Here is the picture from last week that I was talking about. With that said, I'm going to stop typing.

Want to live & Love family

Hey, everyone.

I was just doing laundry and I looked over and saw my mom's "joy box." It's a colorful pink box with foam letters spelling out "RoAnne's Joy Box" on the side. The joy box is what we stored all of the letters mom got from people during the two years she was fighting cancer.

I'd never really glanced at it too much, because it was full of letters and those tend to say the same thing. Maybe not. I'm going to investigate them. My mom is gone, and I don't think she'd mind anyway if I did read through some of them. Maybe I'll be able to pick up a story or two.

But anyway, there's a drawing of flowers in the box that I'd kind of glanced over every time I saw it. However, today I noticed it said "I love sunshine" in scribbly blue letters. I then realized it was my mom's handwriting. I pulled the poster out of the box and saw it for what it really was.

My mom drew a picture of flowers in a box and around the outside of the flowers are the phrases:

"I love sunshine"
"Want to live & Love family"
"Keeep going & praying"
"Life is good"
"unconditional Love"
"Sisters" with a heart drawn next to it, leading me to believe she drew this with Aunt Jane.
"Cancer sucks & is scary"
"Flowers are awesome"

I could tell she wrote this when she was getting radiation to the brain, because her handwriting was shaky, and some words were messed up, but it was her handwriting. And in her handwriting she had written that she wanted to live. These words echoed for me as a reminder of when last summer I was sitting on the porch with her and she told me that all she wanted was "more time with her kids."

Mom wanted to live so bad. Mom wanted to live and love family, and I really wanted that too. I, of course, started crying. Even now I can't exactly stop. It's been hard being home without her. I'm throwing a lot of my stuff away and getting ready to move to Japan. I feel like I can make a somewhat new start over there, but just because you go overseas, doesn't mean your problems disappear. I just miss her so much. I miss her every day. It's hard to believe that in 17 days it will be 6 months since she passed. I want to see her so badly, but I can't and it hurts so bad.

I wish the flower drawing had come true.

Hey, everyone. I'm having a hard time, so I'm just going to share some passages from my grief journal. Ready? Here we go.

From 2/15/15:

Eventually I'll be able to think of you and not be sad, instead I'll remember all the times we had together-not the times we didn't and wouldn't in the future. I'll be able to think, "I wish mom was here." in those moments. And then I'll remember the times you were.

When I read through my journal, I can remember each instance and each dream described with incredible visibility. I wonder if this will be the most vivid year of my life. I can recall so many painful things.

When I'm reading through this journal, I can see every place where my heart broke. There are a lot of entries where all I'm saying is, "Mom, I miss you so much. I want you back. Why did this happen? I miss you so much. It's just not fair." over and over again.

This weekend has been pretty awful for me. I feel very broken. Mother's Day is next weekend. It feels very cruel.

Have a great week.

mother's day is coming up

Hey everyone. It's Friday and I kind of missed a few Sundays, but I'm here now. Ready? Here we go.

After only 3 months since mom's passing, dad's already dating someone else. Her name is Jan and I feel like I already know too much about Jan without actually having met Jan yet. The thing is, Dorian already had to eat out with her and dad, and dad said he'd take me out to dinner too (he didn't mention Jan because he hasn't mentioned Jan at all to me yet. He probably doesn't think I know about her yet.) But the thing is, the next time I come home is next week for Mother's Day. I'm not sure if I want to meet Jan on Mother's Day weekend, and when I say I'm not sure, I mean I'm definitely sure.

Mother's Day is looming and I'm just worried about my mental health in this upcoming week. Last year, I had pneumonia at this time and couldn't go home for Mother's Day. I remember calling mom about it and feeling bad but she told me that it was alright because "we love each other." Well, that was the last mother's day we could have spent together. She's not here anymore, but I still know we love each other.

People don't get how hard it is to get up every day. I have to deal with everyone else's actions while trying to grieve at the same time. I'm trying to deal with Jan's existence as well as other such issues. I graduate in about a month.

I'm tired of dealing with things. I feel like I'm back in high school facing my senior graduation. I was really tired of everything then too.

I just wanted to drop in and talk a little, but now I'm done for tonight.

Have a great week.

Good things & bad things

Hey, everyone. It's not Sunday, but I'm in a place to talk, so I'm going to. Ready? Here we go.

I'm feeling very low right now, but before I discuss that, let me make an announcement. This Monday I received the email that I was accepted into the teaching program I wanted to be in. That means, I will be moving to Japan in July. This is a highly competitive program and I am proud to have been selected for it.

I've been running around all week to get more paperwork done. I swear, it never ends. It's okay after I get it done though because I feel very accomplished. I tell myself, with every step I take, I become more of an adult. I mean, I technically am an adult, but sometimes I feel very small.

I've felt stronger since Spring started, but Easter has me feeling pretty low. Typically it's one of my favorite holidays because of the surplus bunny stuffed animals and my favorite type of chocolate being on the shelf. However, it's also the first big holiday without my mom. I know that not everyone celebrates Easter, but my family always has a family reunion at my grandparent's house.

The last time we had a family reunion, my mom was still with us. I sat next to her at the table. I didn't know that that night she would fall and then the next day all the migraines would start and her health would decline. I didn't know and now here I am. Last year at this time my mom was still alive. I was looking at her pictures on facebook and there's one of her smiling from April 3rd.

I've said it a thousand times, but it's not fair. Since I've had a couple of good weeks, I feel like people expect me to be okay all the time now. Since I'm not actively crying in front of anyone, I feel like I'm expected to be alright. I'm really not okay. I'm miserable today. My emotions manifest themselves poorly too. I constantly think I'm annoying and whiny and I'll mention something about myself and it'll seem like I need my ego boosted, but really I just want a confirmation that I'm not garbage because I feel like I am a lot. And now I feel bad for needing that and I just keep telling myself that yes, I am garbage.

I know I'm not garbage, but it's hard to not feel like trash.

I was asked to be a panelist for my school's prospective student day, and everything was fine until it was mentioned that everyone was an Honor's student. I didn't do honors. I said I would before school started this year, but I didn't do it. It's not that I couldn't do it academically, I've made the Dean's list 9 times, but I started this school year with the knowledge that my mom was probably going to pass sometime this year. Of course I wasn't going to do that to myself. But it's still embarrassing to be in a position where you could've done honors and you didn't and now you're surrounded by people who did. And it's not that it's too hard for me to do, it's that my mother literally died and I would've had to drop it winter term anyway because I don't even know how I made it through winter term. I somehow got straight A's even though I was miserable every day.

I guess I'm just pissed that I feel inadequate even though I'm doing the best I can. But at the same time, I ask myself, "Am I doing the best I can?" Probably not. I should try harder. I always manage to make everyone else in the vicinity feel bad too. I feel like a constant burden to everyone around me.

What would really piss me off is if people thought I had it easy. I suppose that's childish to say, but just because I'm good at something doesn't mean it's easy necessarily. Yes, I have a job after graduation. Yes, I'm doing well academically. BUT my mother DIED. This is the same feeling I had in earlier posts where I said that I was doing fine, but I wasn't doing fine. You might say, no one is going to think you have it easy! But my little sister was told by her friends that they were jealous of her because she was only taking two classes in college because she had to drop two-three because mom died.

I'm just tired and sad and I have a lot of things coming up that I need to do. I have a presentation next Friday, and after that a hearing for my recital, and another admitted students day, more paperwork and who knows what else.

Have a great week.