Sundrip Journals
It came in the mail. I’m so happy to wear mine!
You are enough. The world is a better place with you in it.
Love, the person in front you.
I’ve gotten one person respond with a heartfelt thank you. I’ve gotten tears, a thanks from a boy who felt confident in his youth. One lady saw a way to make fast money, another said the world is a better place with me in it, too. Thank you for that!
I love this shirt.
Live Free. Create Well. Sundrip.
Joe fell asleep in death in my arms at age 16, from kidney failure, and other complications. He was a good boy.
Today is a bad, bad day.
Joe is still very clingy and needs a lot of reassurance. He’s got some issues but nothing like before where death seemed imminent.
Back when death looked imminent and he was laying under the bed with his little head out I said, “Michael Joseph, If I did anything to contribute to this, please forgive me.” I was thinking of the supplements or anything he could possibly have stepped in and cleaned off himself. I blame myself for everything, it only seemed normal to say, if this is my fault …
Well, I didn’t think it would make much of a difference, but I took him completely off that one supplement I had him on for dry skin. A few days later Joe looked a bit better but I wasn’t sure if it was just me. Now several more days later I know it’s not just me! Joe looks better! He spends a little time with me instead of under the bed. He’s mouthy again too. Lol
We have a little over 2 weeks before the vet. I’ll continue to reassure, observe and keep him comfortable. This is too much emotion! My heart can’t take this!
Michael Joseph Austin aka Joe Schmoe is 16 yrs old. He’s my little sidekick and my one employee . He often sleeps on the job though.
Faith
I’m home from a brief medical hospital stay but in the entry I’ve lead with emotional issues.
I have to admit I am emotionally excitable and I cry at the drop of a hat. Today I cried my eyes out concerning the CNA who left. I was crying because I hate being left. I hate the way she did it. She just walked out!
You know the company has lied (all the companies lie through their teeth up and down all the time). You mean to tell me they couldn’t find a lie this time so that her two weeks had advance notice? Lying is what they do. They couldn’t come up with something to make that transition easier instead of just boom she doesn’t work here anymore! and then for her to just walk in, I ask for breakfast she becomes irritated, says “don’t start with me. Today is not the day “ and walks out …….. it hurts deeply.
I’m so weepy today and I hate the fact that Mother’s Day is coming up cuz that’s all I’m seeing everywhere is Mother’s Day, Mother’s Day, Mother’s Day! I don’t even celebrate Mother’s Day but seeing it reminds me that my mother was mentally ill, cruel, unloving, and she left me too many times to count (saying it was my fault). My stomach hurts so badly. As heavy as that is, that isn’t why I was in the hospital.
I remembered something that will possibly help me move forward. This very materialistic, appearance conscious person, throws people away like candy wrappers. She can’t stand to be alone any length of time but if she can manipulate the support of others she’ll orchestrate an exit. The many exists she told me about we were while the person wasn’t home. It was planned behind their back. In other words, this is her MO. I’m just another piece of candy she got tired of and threw the wrapper on the ground. This is what she does.
It’s also hard knowing May 7th is the amputation anniversary date.
Hospital. I was in the hospital because of blood clots so painful I was writhing. My stomach turned violently but nothing came out. Violently! My complexion was off.
Of course they did every expensive test in the entire world and filled me with all sorts of stuff. But I come home with valuable information. I now have information that will help keep me out of the hospital so often. Sure wish I had it four months ago.
I was so exhausted when I came home that all I wanted to do was sleep. That did not happen. I had 5 necessary individuals to wait for, open the door and interact with before I could get some sleep. Coming home Friday was a long, long day.
Monday I’ll see my regular doctor. Wednesday I’ll see my Oncologist / Hematologist. I won’t get to talk to Dr D bc of medical appointments.
To keep me going I have the following:
I will not abuse food or myself. My CNA will help me take all of my medications. She will help me to make sure I am doing all of my ADLs. And I’ll make it. It won’t be that long before I’m back on my feet emotionally and physically.
Thank you for reading.
Little Duck
CONTENT – Suicide. Abuse with few specifics. High emotion and anger. Not a light entry.
I stayed in bed three days with the lights out. I fed the animals and went back to bed. The world felt too big and too dark. Now I’m in the weeping side of grief.
I was talking / weeping to my BFF that the memory of the various events is as clear as the day they happened. The fear was so incredible but someone had to do something!
My head is full. Sleep is a joke. I keep accidentally calling the cat by his name. It freaks me out a bit.
The image of him at age 3, turning and smiling that smile, it no longer makes me feel warm and sentimental. It makes me angry. I want to know if he would do things differently if he had the chance to learn the Gospel truth that “this too shall pass.” I’m angry.
I talked / blubbered to my BFF about how I can see better just how emotionally unwell my mother was. I can see how we ended up the way we were. I know the difficulty I have functioning even with my large support system. She had nothing. No information. No experts taking care of her mental health, like I have. She was shell shocked after the divorce and just lost. I pity her. No family who loved her. No friends to talk to intimately. No one to trust, and two kids in tow. Yeah, I pity her.
Her anger about life was coupled with mental illness, paranoia and OCD. It made every day a survival course. Here’s my thing, I see the paranoia clearly in her behavior, but I also know that her response to the paranoia was chosen and thought out. Her first choice was always violence. She said a person needs to be humiliated in order to learn. That’s not mental illness, that’s just messed up.
I always felt responsible for helping her feel better. If my mother cried, it all but destroyed me. I couldn’t stand to see her cry. She cried a lot in her room. I used to hang hearts all around the hallway and her room to prevent her from killing herself. It never crossed my mind that it’s the child who we’d lose to suicide. I was suicidal too, so was my sister. An entire family of suicidal people.
When I think about it, my sister and I were the focus of my mother’s paranoia. She always accused us of stealing, lying, etc.
As I sit here I still pity her. Pity feels much better than hate. Pity feels warranted.
I empathize with her being unprepared for the divorce and have two small children. I understand how things got crazy. I know she managed to keep a good job but still had us sleeping in the car. I know that her mental illness fueled that. But the violence, wow, just wow. That was always her first response, violence. You never knew what the heck she was plotting in retaliation for some false issue she accused you of. I couldn’t trust the moment, and once 3am hit, God help us bc it was about to get bad!
She hardly ever raised her voice, hardly ever cursed. She was a professional who men fawned over. She dressed well. At 5’10 she was a sight to see. Despite being pretty, my mother had one boyfriend when I was growing up. That is a whole different story.
I remember the last conversation I had with the child before the police took him away for good.
It was a house of horrors, period. I thought by getting him out of there he’d have a chance. Now I ask so many questions, did I do it soon enough? Were the things he endured from her too much to bear or was it an accumulation of things? Did I fail him? I can never forget the last night he was there. My God! My God! No one should be asked to endure that.
I know I didn’t fail him. I risked my life for him. Right now, holding his memory instead of his hand I think to myself, it should have been her, not him. But really, any suicide turns the world upside down and sets it on fire for a very long time. My heart is still in flames.
Faith
Content: Self love. Sundrip and social media. Death and dying. Sexual Assault.
We talked about shame and guilt. Guilt is for actions but shame describes who I am.
Self Love. We talked about fear as it relates to self love. I fear saying I’m worth loving because doing so means I have to fully accept that my mother was wrong. To a certain degree I still deny the full impact of her actions and what she allowed.
I know I have self love to a certain degree. I said I love you to myself for the first time ever.
An opportunity for further targeted psychological treatment has opened up to me. I’m not in the mental health space to accept it but the offer stands. The practitioner, aka Hippie Therapist, will allow me to video conference. This doesn’t replace Dr D.
Sundrip. I’ve said several times over the years that I’d like to walk away from Sundrip.com as it is now. I know in my heart I can’t simply shut things down. Sundrip is my baby, but I think it’s time to bring this to a change from what it is now. It has been definitively decided that I’m closing the blog part of Sundrip in five months time. Why 5 months? Three months are too few but 6 is too long. I need to take gradual steps. I’ve set a date.
This is going to be difficult but needed. The world has changed since I started this blog. The internet has changed. Honestly, I fear I have too much to lose by continuing as is.
Death and Dying. We spoke about how I gasp and sit up in bed because of feeling like I’m on the gurney, at the hospital being wheeled to a surgery I wasn’t expected to survive. That was 2018 but it still haunts me. For days I said goodbye to my friends. We wept and supported each other. I apologized for the hurt I was causing by being in that condition. I said goodbye to my long term therapist. I so did not want to hang up.
It felt like I had been given the death penalty and that at 11am (?) I was going to die.
That hallway was long. The room was cold. They asked me to take a deep breath. It felt like I was participating in my own death. I wasn’t supposed to survive that, so I felt like I was asked to take my last breath. Breathe deeply and go to sleep w a 15% chance of surviving. I took a deep breath in and exhaled the name of my God. The anesthesiologist was brilliant and supportive.
When I woke from a surgery done only a few times in the United States, the nightmare wasn’t over. Did I survive a 10 hour surgery only to bleed to death? The nurse held my juggler closed with her hands because I would not clot. Another nurse held the artery in my groan. Other means to stop the bleeding were used too but the main way they got it to stop was to clamp them manually w me awake.
Despite the violence in my childhood, I never begged my mother for my life or for her to stop. In the hospital that day, w the sheets turning red, I begged the nurse to please not let go. She said she wouldn’t. She said to be quiet, turn my head to the left and look up. Eventually I woke up in the arms of my friend. The first thing she said was, I never knew you were this sick. This is Lupus? She held me.
Amazingly, I only have one physical scar from the surgery to get all the blood clots. Despite the foot being dead, I had to wait 2 more months before they could amputate it. The skin began to slough off. That sight is burned in my head.
The recovery room after the blood clots surgery was interesting. My bed was in the middle of the room. It tipped in different degrees, went all the way to the floor and quite high up. I had my own nurse. I was her only patient. I still remember her name.
There was a large area w homey furniture to the right and down a step, other friends were allowed to stay. I was in complete shock and so was everyone else.
Daily, for five months they took my blood directly from the vein, not the IV. I understood why but it still felt like torture. Changing the bandages on my new stump sometimes took 2 hours. It was torture. I felt like I was going to crack.
Dr D and I are discussing possible emotional and cognitive issues as a result of the stroke. We don’t feel that Pseudobulbar affect (PBA) applies to the fullest extent, but we are exploring emotional differences since the stroke.
What I’m aware of at this point is that I’m unable to emotionally or physically cope. I feel like my insides are missing and have been replaced with a dark hole and overwhelming despair. I don’t feel like I can reach inside for strength because I feel hollow.
In 2020 I was assaulted. Where am I safe? How do I protect myself? I’m afraid.
I need mercy.
Faith
Art by: Faith Magdalene Austin
Art Title: Girl Inside
Media: Watercolor and Acrylic on 98 lb paper
Style: Raw, African Americana, Folk Art, Black Art
Finish: Sealed, signed,
Here’s a close up look at this very emotional piece of a girl with someone else inside.
SUNDRIP – Art for Life
www.sundrip.etsy.com
My physical wounds have healed faster than emotional wounds. There’s a real fear that time will pass, I’ll ‘look better’, and people will forget that on the inside I’m still struggling.
When all this first happened and for the entire 5 months, friends leaped to my assistance. I had more visitors than I knew what to do with. 🙂 I felt loved. Now that things are going back to my version of normal with Lupus, I fear being left and yet I know the fear is unfounded. My friends love me and I know it, and I know that they were there for me before all this happened. But there’s this fear that all the love and attention is going to stop, and I’ll fade right into the background and be forgotten. I like the feeling of being loved. It’s not entirely new but its new enough that with a taste of it I don’t want to let it go. Continue reading “Don’t Forget Me”
A video for friends.
At the end of the video I said these are my ‘frogs’ but only Cheesy the Chubby Frog stars in this short vid.
Continue reading “Cheesy the Chubby Frog and Aquarium Therapy”
Today is a quiet kind of day. I’m a tad bit on the depressed side. I think the poem is heavier in truth than anticipated. I just starting typing and stopped when I was done.
Monday will be here quickly and it’ll be time for therapy again.
I’m physically tired with very swollen feet. I’ve had them propped up for awhile. It hurts to walk.
I’ve got a few financial concerns but in the end things seems to work out. Every bill is paid in full. The cat has food, Pete has food and Pickle will have more on Tuesday.