Underwater

That's what it feels like these days; that I'm underwater, struggling to make it to the surface and breath again. Drawing that breath, that simple single breath that would be so lovely, that would mean life.

There is no constant state of bliss here, or even acceptance or in fact any kind of even, consistent existence; an even calm breathing in and out. It's like I spend all my time and energy trying to create that; trying to get to the surface and breath again. Part of that is merely living, I know that. We spend a good part of each day recreating or lives in one way or another wanting tomorrow to be better, happier, stronger. But it's more than that. It seems that each step forward I take knocks me backwards two steps in ways I couldn't anticipate.

Give you an example. I bought a treadmill about four months ago. I used to be a runner, doing two or three miles a day when I was in my twenties and I loved it. I have no illusions about running again; I don't think me knees will allow it. But I had hoped to do some fast walking on the treadmill, timing myself, pacing myself and building endurance and muscle. See that was what started this; endurance. I weed wacked the yard. By the time I got done I was seriously winded and exhausted. I decided that 46 was not supposed to feel like that. What I now understand is that it wasn't just being out of shape that did it, it was more than that. But I bought the treadmill hoping to regain some endurance and seriously thought it was as easy as that to do. For many people it may indeed be that easy. But after almost 20 months my body has still not recovered from Celiacs and a hemoglobin of 7 and vitamin and mineral deficiencies and all that comes with this disorder.

I can't just go out and recreate my body. My body can't stand the strain just yet. And I'm frustrated because maybe it never will. Maybe this is as good as life will ever get. No one knows how completely I can recover, not the doctors, not me, no one. I've built up some endurance and some additional muscle. I can weed wack the yard without passing out. Yes, it's better than it was after four months of working out. But with that has come pain, very slow recovery, tendinitis and a plateau I can't get off.

Every time I think I understand the depths of this disease, the reach it has into my life, my past, my future I realize I've misjudged it yet again. I thought I would simply get better and better and that was how I would progress. But perhaps there is a limit to what I can do in the future. I hate limitations. It's one thing to not want to do this or that. For a long while there I didn't want to power walk or run. It never entered my mind for years. But now that I want it I've found I can't just have it if I work hard and behave myself. That idea that you can have anything you want if you try hard enough has it's limitations. I hate limitations. I can't work out more than three or four times a week or my body is incredibly sore and just getting out bed in the morning is hard. Forty six isn't supposed to feel like this, but apparently forth six with Celiac Disease is. My vitamin and mineral levels are still low. And I'm still weeding out allergies and intolerances. Okay, I'm also still trying to accept that I have allergies and food intolerances. But hey, you try avoiding corn and see how far you get!

Fooking Shieetteee

Okay, once again, in case you missed it the last time you I AM NOT AMUSED! Got it? I AM NOT AMUSED ONE FUCKING LITTLE BIT.

With all the work you've got to do in this world how on earth and heaven do you find time to fuck with me? Come on, you got cyclones and tornados and earthquakes in your arsenal, why bother with penny anty nonsense like fucking with my little insignificant life? Go fuck with a continent or two and leave me alone for awhile okay? How hard would that be?

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See, there's a problem for people with Celiac disease that no one really thinks or talks much about. We're damned if we do and damned if we don't, forever stuck in this no man's land in between your worlds of experience knowledge and attitudes. I will attempt to explain. But given how fucked my head is right now I make no guarantees.

I shop more and more at the organic store; necessity really, they carry gluten free products no one else does. But the organic industry thinks all things organic are good for you. This would include small organic farmers. Here in lies the issue. Strawberry farmers in California almost universally grow strawberries on a synthetic bedding material that is at best, well, plastic. Organic farmers prefer older more organic methods. This would mean they grow them on straw. In theory I should be able to buy California grown strawberries and be safe. But I bought some from the organic store, from an organic grower who believes straw, which is essentially wheat and barley shaft, is a far superior growing method. The strawberries grown that way are simply cross contaminated from birth with gluten, no way around it, no way to wash it off. I didn't know that. Nor did I know about organic strawberry farmers until this week.

I bought and ate some organic strawberries grown on straw Thursday. I was deathly violently ill Thursday night. Accidental gluten has never made me this sick before. My body has become more sensitive as time goes on. That scares me. I was close to calling an ambulance Thursday night. Fortunately the abdominal distress came and went within an hour after I upchucked everything in my stomach and then some. But the side effects then began to set in. The rage and depression came back with a vengance yesterday and today. I know this will pass, but I hate it. And the more I understand about myself, the more I also understand about my mother and I hate that too. I hate being anything like her even for a day. And today is mothers day. Fuck fuck fuck. I'm afraid to go out. I need to go to the store, but I'm afraid of what I'll say if anyone mistakenly wishes me a Happy Mother's Day. I should wear a sign or something if I do go out.

I've been sitting here thinking. I realize now she never was much of a mother, not ever really. I don't think she knew how to be and I don't think she really tried. I grew up without a whole lot of nurturing. So I've been seeking that from other people, in bits and pieces when my pride would allow me, and doing without, and now lastly trying to figure out how to nurture myself. That is a recent development and I don't think I understood on a conscious level that I was doing that. I get it now. I have no fucking clue how, but I get that I have been trying to do that the last few months in bits and pieces. It's nice when the subconscious and the conscious finally start to read each other. So what the fuck do I do with Mothers Day? I never really had a mother. I'll never have one. You can't go back, you can't recapture or recreate or even reinvent. There is no one out there who can make up for twenty five years of abuse and neglect and abandonment. I've never felt so alone. I know, I know, it's the gluten talking too, but Gods it's just so fucking hard.

It's Too Enormous

It was just too enormous a task no matter how you look at it. And it's a lesson to be learned. I spent a couple weekends early this month going through what was left of my parents house. I say left because my oldest sister took many things we'd specifically asked her to leave that belonged to all of us; namly family pictures, slides and documents. I wouldn't say I'm angry with her. For me to be angry would mean that I'd thought she was capable of better. I fully expected her to do worse than she did. I would not have been surprised if she'd dragged everything in the house out onto the back lawn and set fire to it. Many of the documents and photos we found we found because she simply missed them. There was just so much. Imagine what a family of six would accumulate - if no one every threw anything out - over the course of fifty years. That's about how long the house has been in our family, since it was built in 1954. There were boxes of stuff and we had to look through every box to be sure we weren't tossing anything important or wanted or needed.

It was exhausting and draining and mind numbing and heartbreaking. I think I came home with about eight boxes of things. Mind you all things I couldn't stand to see left behind. And there is still a large piece of furniture sitting in my friends house in Woodland Hills that I need to find a way to get home to me here. I couldn't stand to see that secretary go to a stranger, or get lost to time or worse dumpstered. So I took it, and I will find a way to get it up here.

I brought home old everyday china we used to use growing up that my mother never threw out. Thank the Gods she didn't throw it out. They are of course classic vintage patterns now. But it's more than that. It's a visceral connection that I have to this china. The touch, the colors, the feel is something rooted so deep in my soul. It was like coming home to touch them again. I hadn't held any of it in probably twenty or thirty years, but my body instantly remembered the feel and the weight and the colors. It would have been like abandoning a part of me to leave it behind.

And my grandfathers books. I took all of his books that were there; all his old books with the yellowing pages and the old spines and the lovely old book smells. Many of them have either my father or my grandfathers names written into the front cover. They're like an anchor of sorts, a connection so deep as to be almost unfathomable. We share that literature, those stories, the love of good books and storytellers and words and rhyme. The line is unbroken from grandfather to son to daughter. There is something shared by all three of us, some quirk of DNA or maybe just upbringing that makes us gravitate towards lovely lovely books with hard spines and words on pages.

I took many of my father's books as well. The collection was so vast though, and many of them were beyond me. I only understand so much about astronomy and there were too many technical books that I will never grasp. He and I always approached the night sky differently. He saw "The Winter Sky" and the stars in their place and which ones were visible and which would need a telescope and he knew where to find what he was looking for, where to look past the horrizon. While I would lay there and just marvel at them. It's always been one of the reasons I live up here, so I can see them all. No one in L.A. sees stars anymore; at least not in the sky. They see one or two and call themselves lucky. I see billions every night and am overwhelmed by the enormity and depth of the sky beyond our planet.

And I took what slides of my father's we could find, and his slide viewers. There is lesson in photograph there. Take more pictures of people. Twenty years from now no one will care what kind of roses you grew in the back yard, or how well your orchids bloomed in 1967. But they will want to see photos of grandmother and grandfather and the kids with the new puppy. Still the images of us he did capture made up for alot. I had forgotten so many things I saw in those slides. I'd forgotten about the old white station wagon, and the summer he put the first pool up, and those hedious matching sailor outfits, and how much he loved my mother. There were so many pictures he took of just her. I don't think she knew how often he captured her, how often he aimed for her and her alone, taking the picture just becuase she stood there. I truely hope at some point she understood how much he loved her. It would kill me to think she never understood or indulged it or even realized it. I doubt she returned the love. I wonder if she ever even understood what love is. But I hope she realized how much he loved her even if she couldn't return it. How hopeless a wish is that? Still I cling to it because I can't bare to think she was that oblivious. His love was there, all over those slides, screaming from them. What a wonderful quiet man he was.

So with the help of a few friends my sister and I went through it all and decided what to take and what to leave behind. It was daunting and traumatizing and gut wrenching. It still is. By now it is all gone. The Salvation Army came and took the furniture none of us wanted, and the knick knacks and the books. And what they didn't take the contractor dumpstered. And he has begun working on the house. And soon he will be done. And soon it will go on the market to be sold to strangers. And it will be gone from my life forever, never to touch or stand in again and I don't know how that will feel. I know it's not normal in this day and age for people to keep a house for fifty plus years, let alone grow up in the one same house. How does it feel to drive past a home you grew up in and know you're not welcome in it, that it belongs to strangers? I don't know, it's never happened to me. I don't think I could. I will go and see it one last time when he'd done renovating it. I want to see it happy again and repaired and beautiful. That is what this has all been about after all. But I will never willingly drive by it again. I don't think. I don't think I could stand it. Better it live in memory and go on from this point to be someone elses home. Bless and keep another family my friend.