Lost and Broken

Tonight starts the first vacation I have had since Christmas last year. I was supposed to be "yelling" VACATIIIOOONNNN on FB, and headed to Summer's house right now, to attend the Bama/UT tailgate tomorrow. That was supposed to be the way I kicked things off before Steve and family members got into town for an epic week.

 And now it all feels unreachable. 

 I know it will still be a wonderful week, with a lot of love. But this is a horrible feeling. Like, when life keeps kicking you, and keeps kicking you, and keeps kicking you... you do what you can to stay positive. To not let it break you. You find the good things to focus on, to just attempt to not completely have a mental break. You say things like "Man, this vacation is going to be AWESOME." And then life is like, "Pshhh. Watch this."

 I don't know what God's plan was for taking my baby from me without any warning. I don't know if he wants to prove to me how strong I am. I feel like the tests I've had on that over the past 3 years have been enough. Losing my father. Losing my cat. Losing 3 grandparents. Losing friends. Not to mention the medical and personal emergencies. And that whole immigration thing. Why one more test? Why take the one true companion I had in life away from me? The reason I am not locked up somewhere in a straight-jacket. She was the one thing that I knew I had each day. Yes, I have the cats here too - but cats are cats. Mine are very affectionate, but even so, they're very self-sufficient. Allie knew that her smile brightened my whole world, even on the darkest days. That if she just sat next to me while I cried, or kissed my tears away, my mood instantly lifted. That no matter how many times she told me how mistreated she was, because she'd only been out 4 times in the last hour, and was given 6 treats instead of the 8 she wanted, I would still listen and give her a kiss to make sure she knew I loved her.

 For 10+ years, she gave me the best love. The unconditional, I-love-you-more-than-bacon love. She was hand-picked by God for me. Sure I thought I was looking for a cat that day. He knew I was looking for Allie. And now she's gone. And I can't stop crying. I'm writing this through tears streaming down my face. Every time I hear a noise outside, or the neighborhood kids yelling, I brace myself for the loud indignant bark that is supposed to come. And it doesn't. And I think about the fact it never will again. My whole world is forever changed. Again.

 And this time I don't know if I am strong enough to get through.

 Rest in Peace, my precious Allie. Mommy loves you with her whole heart.   

Mean Jean

It still doesn't feel real. I've shed a lot of tears over the past couple of weeks. We've been to her house twice to collect/clean out memories. But somehow, my brain is just not really registering that the last of my immediate family on Daddy's side is gone.

When I think of my childhood, I think of two things. Home (Atlanta), and East Tennessee. Mostly Rockwood. From the point I almost drowned at the lake house, to the piano lessons, to the Honeybee Tree game... SO much of my childhood memories are connected to my Nana. "Mean Jean" as she was referred to by our whole family. Which, if you knew her, was the silliest nickname. Given she didn't have a mean bone in her body. Smart aleck? Spunky? Funny? ABSOLUTELY (this runs in the Smith blood). Mean? Not even a little bit. I cannot think of one time in my childhood that Nana even scolded me. I'm sure they're probably there... I just don't remember them.

It's funny how you remember the stupid little things you'll miss when you lose somebody. I used to love to play in the flour canister when I was little. I loved how soft the flour felt between my fingers. I think I even had a little song/rhyme that went with it, but I certainly can't remember it. There might be family members that do. I also loved Nana's tea pitcher. It had this mixer built into the lid that you pumped to mix/stir the drink inside. Think like a TNT detonator. That's how I treated it, as I pumped it every time she made tea. Even in adulthood.

I'll never get to taste that tea again, or pump the mixer handle.

We went this past weekend to sort through as much as we could. Decades worth of memories/clutter is overwhelming. You want to take everything. It meant something to her, therefore it means something to us. But obviously, keeping everything isn't an option. So you have to somehow think realistically. 

I'm lucky that I just had to go through this with my own stuff 3+ years ago when I moved out of my apartment and in with Daddy, planning for my move to Canada (ONE DAY, AMIRITE?!). So I was able to shut off the Katie "BUT IT MEANS SOMETHING" brain, and only take the few little things that I knew I would treasure. Plus one big thing. Nana's house (not Nana herself; the house visits) to me was always about the piano. Even when I got older and didn't sit down to play it. I would plunk out a quick Hot Cross Buns or Chop Sticks, just to reconnect to my youth. It's now in Daddy's house, and will eventually be in mine & Steve's home. I plan on reteaching myself to play the basics, then progressing from there and actually doing what I should have done in my youth, and becoming a piano player - not just a piano plunker. 

This might be the view I'll miss the most. Oooh, baby baby! Buh-buh-buh-baby!

Most of the cousins know this view the best. It's just missing the lower branches to help you climb up to the top.

I remember when the branches of this tree were so low I would try and hide inside of them during hide and seek. 

Mama's tree

I didn't have the pic of me & Liz as kids in front of this tree handy for this then-and-now photo-op. But once I find it, I'll be sure and add it. 30 years later...

    

Finding a New Way To Be Me

This blog has become something else. A shade of it's former shoe self.

I need to find a new way to be me. It's a struggle. One that really no one but me knows about completely. I can count on (less than) one hand the people that know every place my brain has been in the last two years. And even then, I keep a lot to myself, so as not to burden anyone with my "sad story".

The problem is, my whole life - especially in adulthood, but even as I was young, I have always (admittedly, by my own fault) taken everyone else's problems on myself. Even when they didn't know I was. I would stay up nights, mentally exhausting myself on "How can I help them?" without ever breathing a word to them that I was thinking this, in hopes I could come up with a miracle cure for their issue. And would rarely - usually never - ask for help when I had a problem. I'd go out of my way to find a solution so no one had to be bothered with me. Or would just swallow the problem if it couldn't be resolved, and move on with my day. Super healthy, right?

I am incredibly blessed to be a strong willed/emotionally strong person. People have always told me this, but I never really saw what they meant before. I felt like every time I broke down crying to someone, I was being weak and/or making them "deal" with me when they already had so much going on in their lives to stress over. If I complained about not feeling well, I was just "whining". Seriously. My kidney stone ER visit years back? Other than me spinning a funny story about my adventures that day, and the Percocet loopiness in days to follow - I damn near live-tweeted the passing of the stone - no one knew what hell I went through during all of that. Other than the person I was living with that had to witness it so of course he knew, I fully confided in one person, because he knew what I was going through having lived it himself. My Daddy.

And that brings me to where I am now in life. While I am WELL AWARE I have ugly moments on social media (rage blackouts, as I call them), what people don't realize is they're a minuscule fraction of what has actually happened in my day/week/month. Like you hear about the people that bottle stuff up, then just explode? My rage blackouts are me exploding. That old way Katie did things was definitely not healthy. But I made it work. It was how I had always done things, and when a personal crisis hit, I went into "Save Everyone Else From my Shit" mode.

Times are different.

Too much has happened in the last two years (mainly bad, but some good as well) to change my mental/emotional state, that I have to find a new way to be me. I don't want to change who I am. I want to continue to do everything I can to help family, friends, and co-workers. Mentally, emotionally, financially - whatever I am able to do at the time. But I have to find a way to do this without sacrificing myself. This, without a doubt, is something I have to learn to do myself. It's no one's fault I've not done it in the past. While people may have asked me for help (many didn't), no one EVER asked me to hurt myself/put myself in a bad place in the process. I just have to find my new way. 

So This Is Life

So, yesterday was a year. A year that he left us, and heaven gained one of its best angels. For weeks, maybe even months, I prepared myself to be an emotional wreck that day. And yet, when it came, the tears didn't fall. I asked his friends/our family to share happy memories on Facebook so we could all smile and remember everything he meant to us. So I found myself checking Facebook all day to see if anything new had been posted to his timeline. The rest of the day I kept myself busy with things I knew wouldn't have sadness that might trigger a breakdown. So when the day ended and I'd made it through with only a few times of tears welling up, I thought "Huh. Maybe I am actually coming to terms with this."

Then this morning came.

I spent most of my getting-ready-for-work routine crying. Cried most of the way to work. Managed to pull it together, then in speaking with a co-worker that recently lost her Mom, broke again. I suddenly realized that it was because I was coming to terms with the fact that: this is now life. In the last year, it's kind of been "new". You know, it's only been a couple/few months... it's fresh, so it doesn't seem real. We were still dealing with settling his estate, there were constant reminders around. Yesterday apparently cemented in my mind that he's gone. It's been a year, and I really do have to learn how to deal with life without my Daddy/my friend.

Everything still seems so clear. Like it was hours ago. And this could be why the nurse kept asking/telling people to get me to leave the room more often than I was (hardly at all) in those last days. To scar me less, maybe? But I wouldn't have done it any differently. Even when I left so his friends/family/church family could have their time with him, I was ready to be back in the room with him. Those last few days I barely let go of his hand. We had Pandora playing and sang to him. The times I was in the room alone with him, I would talk to him in between singing. I wanted him to know we were there. I had "conversations" with him, just because I knew how he would respond if he could. Or maybe I was making him "respond" how I wanted him to... which he'd tell you was probably more accurate. The one day I asked him if he could wake up so we could sing Love Shack on karaoke and his thumb squeezed against my hand would be a good example of this (he hated singing that song and made sure I knew it, but always did it for me - his squeeze was his sign of protest). But the main reason I couldn't leave: I wanted to be there for him like he's always been there for me. I couldn't heal him. I couldn't take his pain. But I could be there to support/comfort him, as he had done for me so many times over the years. 

The people that tell me "time heals" clearly must have years under their belt, or are a lot stronger than me. I miss coming home and him singing to Allie (while I walked in the door) "Who can it beeeeeeeeee now?" I miss watching The Walking Dead with him, and him making fun of me the next day for every time I freaked because they got a little TOO close to killing Daryl Dixon. I miss going and watching Eddie & Debbie sing at Neil's with him/our friends. More than anything, and something I don't see myself ever getting over, I miss singing with him. Whether it were karaoke, at church, random songs we'd burst into when something on TV/someone said would trigger a song in our heads. 

I used to always tease him for the "wrong" things he gave me. Crazy bad eyesight, big feet, bad knees, etc etc etc. And he'd tell me that he used to be sane, then Liz cracked the wall of sanity, and I came barreling through. To which I'd respond first "Whatever. I think I could get accounts from your family proving otherwise." and then telling him all of the "bad" was balanced out by the fact he gave me a lot of my personality. I'm loud, silly, and many times what some would see as crazy. He called me his dramatic child. Because I may or may not have had moments of drama over the years. *places hand over entire family's mouth* But what he saw as drama, I saw as an extension of him. Problem is, when you put that personality into a female... :-). So he gave me some of my personality, my writing passion (hence the reason I'm expressing my emotions tonight through words), and my love of singing. Then of course I got lucky enough to have Mama give me the love of everything else artistic. Drawing, painting, sewing, etc. Between the two of them, I have so much potential. One day... haha.

I feel like this a good point to come to a close. We're all smiling (or at least, I am) and I hope that will get easier and easier to do as time passes. I miss you, Daddy. Heaven's choir is the best it's ever been. I promise to keep singing. 

All my love, 

Tater