Lost... Mind...

"I don't think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains."
~ Anne Frank

Once again I've been having, more times than not, my severest form of nausea. Last Wednesday and then again, Thursday, I just lost it.

I remember on Wednesday, it was late afternoon and I was in the kitchen probably trying to figure out if I could eat something since I had felt so sick all day long. And then my suffering was just too much for me to deal with and I started crying and screaming hysterically. I finally just laid down on the kitchen floor and wouldn't move. 

As I laid on the floor I remember that I tried to get my mind into a deep mental state. I wanted to go to a place where I didn't feel sick anymore. I kept my mind focusing on going deeper and deeper into a darkness, but I wasn't having success. I kept hearing things around me that brought me back to where I was. 

When one of my sisters (I have three) - the one who now lives an hour away - came by and I was so unresponsive to her she wanted to call 911, but my mom told her that it wouldn't do any good. I wanted to scream at her how stupid she was, how did she think after four years of just about every test imaginable did she think taking me to a generic hospital would help me in any way, but I kept silent. I just wanted her to go and leave me lying on the kitchen floor. It felt good to be lying there. I didn't want to be moved. I didn't want to go lie on my bed. My nausea seemed less pervasive as I laid there on my side. 

But before my sister left to go to her yoga class she told my mom if I didn't get up she was going to call 911. My mom begged me to get up from the floor because she couldn't lift me, and it was only because I didn't want to cause any more stress for my mom that I got up and went in her room to lay on her bed. But it just didn't feel the same; I could feel my nausea more on the comfort of that soft bed than I had on the hard floor. So, I slid down off the bed and lay on my mother's hardwood floor. 

My sister was concerned (but not concerned enough to miss out on her yoga class), but left me there. However, I still felt the nausea so terribly that I got up and went back to lay down where I had been when this all started: on the kitchen floor. 

I couldn't get back to that place I had been before my sister disrupted me; that place where I was feeling less and less of my nausea. As much as I tried to meditate again, I couldn't keep my feeling of utter sickness at bay. Then I started to feel the pain of lying on the hard floor. I was on my left side and I could feel pain at the bone in my left shoulder. I could feel pain where my hip and knees were. And I welcomed the pain. I concentrated on the pain, because anything, at that point, was better for me to feel than the nausea. 

I continued to lie there for so long that my arm and legs started to feel numb and I was glad for that, too. Anything that helped my mind be taken away from my sickness felt like a blessing. Finally, after over an hour, I knew that my sister would be coming back from her yoga class and, for the sake of my mom, I didn't want her to still find me lying there. I got up and went to lie on the couch downstairs. I was in what I call, "survival mode" and that day I had survived.

The next morning I still didn't feel well, but I just kept trying to function at the level I need to in order to make it through the day. I guess it was around 7:30 PM or so when I thought that I should try to eat something. And usually my go to item is a fruit smoothie; probably the healthiest thing I eat - it has a cup of blueberries and cherries each, soy milk, a nice, big dollop of Greek yogurt, a cup (or more) of regular vanilla yogurt, a tablespoon of dark chocolate cocoa and then blended thoroughly - and I put the berries and the soy milk in the blender and at that point that nausea that I had been staving off for so long just couldn't be blocked out any longer.

I went kind of crazy.

I started screaming at the top of my lungs. I don't know if words came out or not, I just know that I screamed. I threw over kitchen chairs and was glad that they hit the floor hard. I knew I wanted to throw and break things... glass things. But even in my state of rage I was rational enough to know that I didn't want to break those glass things in the house.

So, I ran to the cupboard where we keep glass jars, mason jars, and I grabbed one and then ran to the kitchen's sliding glass door which leads out onto a balcony, went out on it and  threw the glass jar as hard as I could at an old oak tree about thirty feet away. I missed. I ran back in the house and went to the cupboard again, this time grabbing as many jars as I could. I ran back out to the balcony, set the jars on a bench, and one by one picked them up throwing them at the tree. On my second throw I hit the jar against the tree and it was like the glass blew up. I liked the sound of shattering glass and I liked that fragments of it flew all over our grassy backyard. I had four more jars and each one I threw at the tree as hard as I could, but I missed with everyone of those. I ran back inside, and mind you, all the while I was screaming, and went to the cupboard only to find one more jar left. I grabbed it and went to stand on the balcony and face that oak tree one last time, but the jar flew just a foot or so to the left.

Our backyard was now littered with glass jars, and I even saw one which I had thrown so hard at the tree but missed, way down the hill in our neighbors yard. I think at the point, the only thing I cared about was that I had missed hitting the tree and didn't get to hear more of the shattering shards of glass. I wanted to break things.

By the time I had gone out on the balcony the second time my mom had come out of her room and was picking up the wooden kitchen chairs I had thrown down. And when she did that, picked them up, I threw them down again. "What are you doing?" she wanted to know. "I can't take it anymore. I can't take feeling so sick." "Stop it!" she said. "Would you rather me get in the car and go drive it into a wall?" I asked, as I grabbed the keys. I knew that getting in a car was not what I should do so I did the only other thing I could do with my anger. I threw more things.

I ran into our living room and threw over the big settee, the beautiful fabric chair, the iron fireplace poker and tools, and then I threw my phone against the blue-tiled floor. When my phone hit I saw pieces of it fly in different directions, but I didn't care. I was just glad I had one more thing I could break.

I couldn't quit screaming. My mom followed me frantically as I tried to wrought some form of destruction and I yelled at her to call my sister - the one that lives down the street. She didn't want to do it. "Call her!" I screamed, "I need help!" She still didn't want to do it. I think she didn't want my sister to see how crazy I had gone, but all that was going through my mind was, I needed someone to stop me, to calm me down, to hear my cry for help.

I ran back into the kitchen and screamed at my mom that if she wouldn't call my sister I would. Just give me her number I imploringly begged. "People always wonder at the funeral what they could have done to help. They never understand the why. Do you want that?" Finally she called her. I heard her say, "C. come over here. L. is going crazy." and she hung up.

I went back into the darkened living room, with its furniture tipped over or laying on its side, and I sat on the couch, now just crying. I was crying, but I was also calming down with the thought of my sister coming to help me.

It took her little more than five minutes to get to our house. When she came in the room she told my mom that maybe I needed to go to the hospital because my other sister had told her of my actions the night before. Both my mom and I said almost simultaneously, "A hospital can't do anything!" She thought they might be able to. I told her I had the best doctor in the area trying to find out what was wrong and help me get better and no hospital near us would be even close to as good as she was. I said, "The only way a hospital could help me is if they gave me a morphine drip and knocked me out so I wouldn't have to feel my nausea any longer." I wailed at her, "I can't take feeling so sick anymore! I just can't take it." I told her that it felt like I was dying. "It feels," I continued, "like what I imagine death feels like." She asked me if my doctor, Dr. M. knew all of this; had I told her all of it? Yes, I said, she knew.

I told her what she could do to help me in the moment. And what that was, would be to go to the website of a center that deals with Chiari malformation patients and find the patient application and help me fill it out. And that's what we did. She asked me all of the, on a scale of 1-10, questions, I answered her, she filled in the blanks and when we finished she went and got an envelope, put a stamp on it and wrote the address to send the form in. I told her it couldn't be sent until I got a copy of the MRI to go with it and she asked what that required and told me she would help to get it done.*

I had quit crying not long after my sister had arrived and I just sat there quietly on the couch, but just as sick as I ever was. I think I had exhausted my anger.

She wanted me to call my counselor, but it was 9:00 pm at night and I told her she wouldn't answer, it would just be calling her answering machine. But my sister got me to call her anyway and she answered. I really couldn't get words out and so I just handed the phone to my sister to let her explain what was happening. They talked for some time and finally I heard her scheduling an appointment for me. She then handed the phone back to me.

When my counselor talked to me she said, I wasn't having a breakdown, I was having anger. I told her that it was hard enough on me, but I hated the stress it put on my mother. And to that, she jokingly said, "It's not like you were running around chasing after your mother with a knife!" No, I thought, at least I wasn't doing that.

During the next few days I was better - and my better isn't really "better" it's just not my death feeling - and even feeling nausea, but without feeling like I'm dying from it, is a functional place for me to live. It's the place where my Zofran (anti-nausea medicine they use for chemo patients) works and I get some kind of relief.

Last night I was fortunate to have enough relief to celebrate my mom's 84th birthday. Sometimes I feel like the stress I have - the stress that I put her under - will be the cause of her death, but other people tell me it is more likely the cause for her to live.

Really, all I know how to do right now is try to survive, and sometimes I do it better than at other times.

*Although an MRI of my brain has shown that I have a condition (genetic) called a Chiari malformation, there are different levels of it... Chiari 0 - 4. I am a Chairi 0. A neurosurgeon where I am would say, has said, that me being a Chiari 0 is nothing, not causing my symptoms, but there is a center that I have read about that explains today's technology as not being good enough - because we are talking in millimeters - to say whether or not a Chiari 0 could be the problem or not. Their website explains that patients go for years with symptoms such as mine because they have a Chiari malformation, but that it isn't a 1 or above. They talk about last resort stuff - as in brain surgery - when your quality of life suffers. Well, my quality of life has been suffering for over four years now and so I am willing to find out from this center what they think and if they can help. Just a few millimeters of relief may be all that is keeping me from living normally. I don't know... but things have been set in motion to see.

Game Time

"Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely." ~ Henry Ford

In my previous post I alluded to the fact that I had needed a sign "badly." I did need a sign, but unlike most times when I do, I didn't ask for one. I guess God, or my angels, just knew I did need one.

The reason I needed a sign is because I've been having a really difficult time in my faith lately, or rather, lack thereof. And most of my angst and lack of faith was because I never seem to be able to make a relationship work. It's like I pick guys that say all the right things and then they do all the wrong things, i.e., they make me feel such hope and happiness and then leave... gone... with no clear understanding as to why. And I'm left with, WTF? I'm left with feelings of sadness and hurt... and longing for what I can't have...

I made an appointment to go back to my counselor - I hadn't seen her since October when I left to travel - because I felt like a sinking ship.

The first thing I said to, Mia, my counselor, when I saw her was, "I don't think I know how to be happy." That's pretty much the whole nine yards... I don't think I know how to be happy. It's like happiness just seems to allude me. I mean, of course, I have moments of happiness, but I don't know how to live "in" happiness. I want my dreams to come true. Period. I think I'm deserving of my dreams coming true. Period. 

And because they haven't come true, and keep not coming true, I start living in a place of fear and worry and doubt, but dreams or no dreams, I don't want to live a life like that. Period. 

Faith is the place where I want to live. Hope is the place where I want to live. Belief is the place I want to live. And I'm pretty sure that place is: happiness. 

So, I asked Mia what was blocking me from attaining living in that place called, happiness. She told me a couple of things.

First, she thinks that I am too rigid in what type of guy I want... like, he has to be this and this and this. I disagreed with her. I do believe I am open to whatever kind of guy the Universe wants to bring me, with the only caveat being, that he loves me as much as I love him. But she thinks I base my judgement too much on looks. I told her that I had to be attracted to the guy. She thinks attraction can come later. She thinks I can like a guy I'm not attracted to, but think is kind, and humorous, and intelligent, and then gradually become attracted to him. And she doesn't think I'm doing that. But I disagreed with her. I think I am open to that. It's happened with me before, but the guy was married so an intimate relationship wasn't possible. 

The second thing she talked about with me was, that the Universe wants me to have everything I desire, but that, yes, something was blocking me from being able to receive it. She suggested that I ask the Universe to give me a clear and understandable sign of where my blockage was coming from. As much as I believe in signs, I have to admit that I have doubt about how I could see, hear, read, or, any other way, of a getting a sign that triggered the understanding of where my being blocked from happiness is coming from. But, I guess I'm going to have to be open to that; open to asking and getting an answer to that seemingly very difficult question. 

Anyway, I have once again started to read things that are spiritual... a daily missalette - a book that contains the Catholic mass during each day of the year... morning and evening... is one of them. I think taking time to spend with God is the only way I can get back to my place of faith; it's the only way I know to keep myself lifted up by the light, rather than drown in the dark. 

Life seems like such a hard game to play, but at some point, if not master it, I want to become very good at playing it... and I suppose the hard parts of Life are where you learn to become a better player... getting through the hard parts seem to give you a greater knowledge of how to win... I'm ready to win big at the game of Life... 

Dreaming

"Within your heart, keep one still, secret spot where dreams may go." ~ Louise Driscoll

I went to my Chinese acupuncturist yesterday and when I got into the treatment room and lay down on a table similar to a massage one, she said, "I had a dream about you."

I hardly had time to register how interesting it was that this Chinese woman should have a dream about me, when she continued, "In my dream you had a baby." She went on to tell me  "Everyone seemed so surprised that you had a baby." She explained their surprise coming from the idea that I was older so how could I have had this baby. She then said, "But everyone was happy about you having the baby," and she continued, "and in my mind, I just thought, I had helped you have this baby." She finished by saying, "I didn't say, to all of the surprised people, that I had helped you in having this baby, but I knew that what I had done, did. It was a very happy time."

I just thought, wow, I had needed a sign very badly, and this Chinese doctor telling me of her vivid dream about me having a baby, seemed like as good a sign as any.

I know in our American culture dreams are thought of as just a part of subconscious thinking, not a foretelling of future events, but I wondered if the Chinese viewed dreams differently. So, I asked her, "Do the Chinese believe that dreams have real meaning, like, do they believe dreams can foretell future events?" And she answered, "Yes, many times they do."

Love Me Tinder, Love Me Sweet...

"When in doubt, risk it." ~ Holbrook Jackson

So, I got the Tinder app (free to download) about two months ago. Tinder is... crazy!

I'm sure in bigger cities it isn't as crazy as it is in smaller, more niche towns, like the one I live in. But as crazy as I think it is, it's also kind of addictive! Which means I pretty much love it!

If you're not familiar with Tinder here's a pretty thorough article on exactly how it works. When I first got on Tinder I just decided to leave the age range open from 18 - 50+, and I let the distance surrounding me be as far as I could... I mean, my feeling is, who knows where romance lies!

But nothing could have prepared me for how shocking Tinder was going to be! I think I've said in blog posts before that I'm fairly naive, and I've always been kinda "youngish" for my age. As an example, my sister, who was a freshman in high school, had to explain to me - a freshman in COLLEGE!!! - what a certain two-digit number meant in sex! I was always so clueless... at least when it came to the sexual realm, and although I'm a little less so now, I'm still not completely clued in. A lot of that, by now, at least, has to do with just not ever being in a long-term relationship, i.e., barely ever having a boyfriend!

But what shocked me on Tinder is what happened when I started "playing" it. As I said, I didn't "discriminate" on the basis of age, only on whether or not they were a.) cute and b.) seemingly interesting. So, I would just "like" any guy that met both my "a" and "b" criteria - and those guys were few and far between - I might "swipe left" - meaning you aren't interested in the guy and Tinder gets rid of him and pulls up the next guy - fifty times before I found what I was looking for. But most of the time the guys that met my "criteria" were 19-23!!! But, like I said, because I wasn't discriminating on age I'd "swipe right" on them - meaning you "liked" them - and I was sure that Tinder would just move me along to the next guy, but, nooooooo, almost every guy would come up and Tinder would say, "You're a Macth!"

What? I thought, the guy's 19! But not only would I "match" with these cute, young, seemingly interesting, guys, but they would write to me which was even more shocking, as in they wanted to text back and forth with me - which I did! And low, and behold, I found out within a few days of being on Tinder, young guys - and I mean A LOT of young guys! - have older woman fantasies!!! Hahaha! I swear, I was like, I can't believe this... but it's true! And now when I "like" a young, cute, seemingly interesting, guy I'm more surprised if he doesn't "match" with me! That's how crazy Tinder is!

Nevertheless, talk about an ego-booster, Tinder, at least for me, is it! And, who knows, maybe I'll find a young, awesome Tinder guy who wants to make a baby with me! As I've learned on Tinder... you never know what will surprise you!

Secret

"Throw back the shoulders, let the heart sing, let the eyes flash, let the mind be lifted up, look upward and say to yourself... Nothing is impossible!" ~ Norman Vincent Peale

How did I not know about Laura Linney having her first baby at age 49? What rock was I living under in January? OMG, I'm so happy to hear this news (even months later!)!

I have always loved Laura Linney. I've never been too enamored of any Hollywood actors or actresses - I've seen plenty of them up close and personal - I once helped Robert Downey Jr. spend $1500 on twenty different items in fifteen minutes (and, yes, this was during his druggy days!) - and I couldn't have cared less who he was.

But Laura Linney has always been, in my mind, in a different category... she's always seemed so down-to-earth and likable (I loved her in, Love Actually!), so non-Hollywood, but in a, I'm-still-perfectly-styled way, and so naturally beautiful. So, when I just found out she had her first baby at 49 it was with a great feeling of joy for her.

And then I read different news sites and website accounts of her pregnancy and after they state how thrilled they are for her, they go right into all the negative crap about women having babies so much later in life; they left no stone unturned on any negative angle you could possibly think of and I was just like, whatevs!

I refuse to let anyone tell me anything about what can or can not be achieved in the realm of getting pregnant later in life... REFUSE! And it's not sticking my head in the sand, so much as it is saying, you f@ckers (have I ever mentioned I can swear like a sailor?) don't know what is beyond the realm of what is your reality, but there is a thing called, my reality, and in my reality, as I've said before, the word, impossible, has within it the words, I'm possible!

And in that world, the world of, I'm possible, all I know how to do is dream, and dream and dream, until I finally wake up and realize I'm not dreaming anymore: my dreams have become my possible; my dreams have become my reality.

Game

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one." ~ Albert Einstein

Yay! After three months I finally had a period.

So, the last blood work done showed just what my doctor had said, that I had ovulated just prior to that blood draw, and I was going to have a period.

It's been proven that stressors on the body can cause significant hormonal changes, and those changes can have adverse affects on your menstrual cycle. So, I have no doubt traveling to New Zealand, my month there, and the 48 hours getting back home definitely got my body out of whack. I was so behind in my sleep that month that when I look back on that time, I'm like, how the hell did I do that?

Anyway, it feels great to have my period and of course now I can use my OV Watch and be clued in as to exactly when I'm going into the ovulation phase of my cycle. Which, at this point, at least until I find a freak'n guy, is pretty much just keeping me upbeat about how my body is working for me. When I do finally find, "the guy" knowing exactly when I'm ovulating will, of course, be crucial.

And, yes, I am still looking for "the guy" and I still expect to find, "the guy." Maybe not the "whole enchilada guy" but at least the one to make a baby with.

My Chinese doctor and my General Practice doctor are close to panic mode for me, but I just try to let them feel the panic, while I keep focused on the faith.

My Ami or Your Ami?

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." ~ Mark Twain

I got back from my trip to Miami and the Ultra Music Festival, one of the biggest EDM (Electronic Dance Music) events in the world. The part of Miami I mostly saw was gorgeous; a really beautiful city.

I got to Miami on Thursday evening and went to two different events. The first was outside at the old R.C. Cola Plant and of course I got lost trying to find it. I stopped in this sketchy-seeming area on Miami Ave., I parked my car, and walked hurriedly across the street into a small, corner bar with graffiti painted all over the outside of it, to inquire about directions.

When I walked in, and mind you this was about 10:30 at night, there were only three guys in there: the bartender on one side of the bar serving drinks and two guys on the other side of the bar receiving them. All three of the guys were Latino and all three looked at me in my bright, blood-orange, top and pale green, gingham skinny jeans, with red kicks as I walked toward them, and I just thought, I hope they're cool with me.

In my mind it coulda gone either way: they would go out of their way to help me, or they wouldn't. And it all had to do with territory. 

Every place in America, the world for that matter, depending on where you might go, there are pockets where you can be discriminated against... and it doesn't necessarily have to do with race... it can be gender, rich/poor, small town/big city, gay/straight, whatever. It's one of those cases where, you're like a fish-out-of-water, and the feeling you get from the rest of the people in the bar is, what are you doing in our pond? I had the same feeling at different times while I was in New Zealand; I walked into a place where the initial feeling I got was, what are you doing here, and why are you here? Hell, I sometimes get that same vibe from my best friend's husband and/or twelve year old daughter when I hang out at her house!

Anyway, I think my point is, it felt like foreign territory to me: in the sense that it was a hole-in-the-wall, graffiti-covered, bar in a sketchy part of Miami and I certainly wasn't looking like I "fit" in with that scene.

But, I ordered a beer like I was meant to be right where I was, introduced myself to the guys and then pronounced I was lost... which garnered a good laugh from them. So, I asked the guys if they knew where the old R.C. Cola Plant was 'cause I was going to an event there and one of the guys said he did. At that point I pulled up a seat to the bar, and got the guy to write the directions down for me. When he did, and assured me it would be easy to find, I ordered another beer for good measure and chatted with the guys some more. I told them that I was going to this club called, Space, after the first event and asked if they thought I should just leave my car at the R.C. Cola Plant event and take a taxi to Space. They said if I left my car at the old R.C. Cola Plant that would probably be the last time I ever saw my car!

Then, one of the guys, who I later found out was the owner, told me to come back to the bar after the first event and he would let me park my car in the back lot of the bar. He told me that by the time I got back from Club Space the gate to the small lot would be closed but I could just pull open the door and get my car.

So that's what I did. After the first event, which ended at 12:30 AM I went back to the bar - and at that point there were about ten more people in there, all guys, but for one girl, but the door was locked - they came and unlocked the door and let me in.

It turned out that all of the guys in the bar at that time were prolific and infamous Miami graffiti artist and so the talk going on was all about graffiti and artistic expression, etc. It was pretty interesting to find myself randomly in the middle of this group of people, learning their culture... the culture of being talented (but illegally "defacing" property!) graffiti artist.

And the discussion of making money at something they started off doing just for expression purposes and then, also, about the artist that they thought weren't the "real deal" who were making money at it, but only because they knew the business side of it, not because they were particularly talented. And, even though these guys' artistic medium was something I couldn't really fully fathom, I did understand completely the point about artistic talent versus business talent. And most artist have the one, but don't have the other, mostly because the business part takes too much time away from the love of doing the art. So, it was a good conversation, one, that in a million years, I wouldn't have been expecting to be in the middle of, in some small bar, in a "sketchy" Miami neighborhood, with its most talented and famous graffiti artist.

But I needed to be at my next event, Club Space, by 2:00 AM so I pulled a Superman. However, instead of the telephone booth, I went into the bathroom and totally changed my outfit into a little black dress, wearing my grandma's sixty year old hat from the '50's, and put on some blood red lipstick. I was ready to go clubbing... something I literally can not remember when I did last!

And the guys at the bar couldn't have been nicer when I was ready to leave, two of the beefier guys went out and hailed a cab for me and told the taxi driver, straight-up, to take me to Club Space... kinda making sure to let the cabbie know not to screw around with me. 

So, that's kinda how my whole time in Miami went with everything outside of Ultra. Because everything outside of the actual Ultra event didn't necessarily go too well, but I always seemed to have an "angel" type of person come into my life and make it all better. 

However, everything about Ultra was fantastic, worth every penny, and I had an amazing time. I even had some young guy ask me if I wanted to get up on his shoulders. I told him, as I am 6' tall, that I was pretty heavy, and he was like, no worries, so he bends down, I wrap my legs around his head, and the next thing I know I'm sitting atop his shoulders above the crowd. And it became even crazier because it was just at that moment that a rain shower hit and everyone in this massive crowd of people were jubilant because we were all so hot and sweaty and the rain felt so good and cold hitting our skin. 

Ultra was definitely a young-persons "game," but I'm glad that I got to play it for at least that one time in my life. 

Oh, and it was really funny about that sixty-year-old hat of my grandmother's that I wore to this hip Miami Club (which I didn't leave until after 4:00 in the morning... after having traveled to Miami earlier in the day!) because the hat was like an event in itself! I had so many twenty-something, hipsters come up to me and tell me how awesome my hat was I felt like I could definitely hang in the, Hipsterville club scene, with no problem.

Here's a video that shows what Ultra's about. You can get a feel for how crazy (but for me, super fun!) this festival was... another video of one of the main headliners (just skip the ad) and a few photos from the event... 

Like I've said before, traveling solo is often hard because you go to a place you aren't familiar with, where you don't know anyone; there's no one to rely on but yourself... but as difficult as it sometimes can be, the rewards of setting out into the unknown and conquering, in triumph, whatever comes your way, is where I get to find out who I really am, and its mostly by way of the random people, I fatefully meet, that I do...