Everybody wants to talk, nobody wants to listen.

(Down down low – Christa Wells)

For a long time I have felt like there is some special power in “with” that just can’t be mimicked any other way.

 

This past week I keep coming back to this article ( https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/917062?nlid=131304_5402&src=wnl_dne_190827_mscpedit&uac=205476AZ&impID=2074334&faf=1 ) feeling like it was really special but not being able to put my finger on just why it was so important to me.

 

Today I got it.

 

The last line.

 

#supportisaverb

 

You don’t have to have anything tangible to give me. You don’t have to have the right words or even any words to say. You don’t need anything but to be there. With me.

 

Pain is isolating, but not doing it alone is such a relief. Not being scared away by my tears or my pain is so comforting.

 

Showing me like it says in The Healing Path (by Dan Allender) that it is not wrong to suffer.

 

 I cry a lot (just not in public if I can help it). And my ability to think logically is not the greatest…Yep, I short sheeted my bed this week because my favorite fitted sheet is in the dirty laundry basket because inside my head I could totally get laundry done and outside my head I couldn’t. And it worked fine until I discovered that I couldn’t roll over to grab my water bottle…and when I am grieving I get most of my fluids in at night so that was an issue… Some day I really am going to need to get that laundry done though…the last time I did it was the weekend after the accident and the wet laundry sat in the washer for about 12 hours because I kinda forgot it was still in there…and no, the sound coming from the washer wasn’t enough of a reminder to do it…I didn’t remember until my brother called me and I was recounting what I did in the day and realized uh oh, I started doing laundry, but there isn’t laundry hanging to dry anywhere so what did I actually do?! So yeah…until my brain is functioning at higher capacity I am also not in a rush to get the laundry completed. I still have like 20 clean pairs of underwear so it isn’t an emergency yet…

For Many Weeks

(Thousand Things – Christa Wells)

 

About a week before the accident I was in the middle of a post about when it feels like someone keeps smashing a big dark puffy cloud right in the middle of your silver lining. I deleted it because I was frustrated and decided there ain’t no silver lining anywhere ever…yeah, I can be a bit of a tornado of thoughts/emotion sometimes.

 

Y’all, there is at least a little bit of a silver lining. This girl who struggles to fit in has found that there really are people who will go out of their way to include her even when she has zero to give back…That means so much to me.

 

Third year with the things going on, the executive in my brain started taking vacations. Then two and a half years ago when I failed to match the first time the executive in my brain started having like a second home and staying away even more often…I learned to work with it and get all the things done on the occasions when the executive was in so there wasn’t as much chaos in life when the executive was away.

 

Then a little over a week ago my dad died. I’ve got a couple nights worth of sleep in the past three weeks. I was listening on repeat a couple days ago to Greeting Cards by Brian Regan. There are a lot of funny parts…but the part that I felt was really spot on was blank inside cards. “I’m sorry you’re feeling so blank inside. I feel like that myself sometimes.” That is kind of how I’ve been feeling.

 

I’m also feeling super overwhelmed. There are a lot of things that have been neglected for a long time. I wasn’t really very behind on things before the accident…and then everything that should have gotten done on my two weekends off didn’t get done. And now I am super behind. I don’t know how I’m ever going to catch up…and my overwhelmed I don’t know how to do this coping mechanism is generally to do nothing…

 

A lot of the things that need to get done I need to do myself – no one else is going to pick where I should apply this year or start to draft this year’s cover letter or update my CV or activate my debit card or anything like that…

 

But everyone wants to help and it is hard when I am so overwhelmed to even figure out what I need help with. It is overwhelming to try to figure out what in the world anyone could possibly do to help…and I am so social’ed out. This girl who used to be silent *can* play hostess now, but being constantly surrounded by people 24/7 for a week and a lot of those people at times being complete strangers is exhausting and used up any margin I might have had left to even figure out what I need beyond sleep. I need a lot of sleep. I also love love love people…but I also struggle hardcore when I am expected to come up with words to hold up my end of the conversation…especially when there is a lot of other things going on inside my head besides figuring out words.

 

I am starting to transition from not eating because the idea of putting anything in my mouth is just too much to not eating much because I don’t know what to eat. I never really understood when people said they didn’t have food, they only had ingredients, but now I get it. I know within my apartment I *could* theoretically make a meal, but the idea of figuring out how to do that is too hard, so Sunday I didn’t have breakfast, had half of a hot chocolate at church and for lunch I had a cucumber I brought home from church…lol, no wonder I was feeling dizzy by the end of the day…hashtag dehydration hashtag sleep deprivation hashtag too many people hashtag not enough calories…also, I have plenty of clothes to make it another couple weeks without running out of clothes…but my laundry basket is overflowing…and there is laundry detergent all over the floor in the kitchen that really needs to be cleaned up…so yeah…I guess I have needs and stuff, but delegating still seems way overwhelming…you ask me what I need and you just gave me a homework assignment if I do anything but give up and decide I have no needs…I can’t figure out what I need…but at least I have some idea of practical things that theoretically could be done…and that is a really good start I guess….by the time everyone has moved on and is done with my problems I’ll probably have it figured out…that’s how it usually goes…nope, no needs at all; okay now I need help – oh, you’ve moved on…but my mom sent me back with all the cereal no one there was going to eat so there is at least a higher probability of breakfast happening…but yeah, I still am probably going to struggle with coming up with lunch and dinner every day…and there is no promise that the breakfast will ever actually end up in my mouth…I’m trying…