That Sinking Feeling

Reaching for air, light, freedom

It' Easter and I'm not really in the celebratory mood.  (That's why you don't make important decisions based on emotions, you'll totally eff it up.)  I celebrate Christmas, Easter (or zombie messiah chocolate bunny day as my atheist friend refers to it as), and my birthday all year long.  I don't wait anymore to celebrate things because every day is a gift.  Why not celebrate the birth of our Savior, His death, and His resurrection on a daily basis?  That's just me.


I'm still being inundated with bags and totes of stuff to sort through due to my brother and his wife relocating to my room.  This is the same frenzied feeling I had when I was moving home.  Back in 2008, I was moving home, and U was moving into my apartment because she had been recently evicted from her place.  Someone bought the property and decided to bulldoze that little gem in the rough known as Echo Park...West Side Gritty, not East Side Pretty.  The timing was amazing.  I was planning to move back eventually to my little nest in Eagle Rock and needed to sublet.  She needed a place because hers wouldn't exist in the next few months to follow, and well, the rest is history.

So once again, I'm deciding what to keep, what to donate, and what to .... hide....  We all have our secrets and thankfully I have a girlfriend who knows my deepest skeletons so she'll be helping me remove questionable items. lol.  I almost feel like I'm being forced again to decide RIGHT NOW what to keep or toss and it's really pissing me off.  This is another episode of having no control of my life right now and it pretty much stinks.

It's as if I'm drowning again.  Before I was drowning in debt, then rehabilitation, and now decisions.  How do I get rid of old things and still hold on to myself?  I know we are not what we own, but I'm sentimental, I can't help it.  NO need to call Hoarders, I promise to do what I must.

Landslide

A landslide is always ready to happen.   It takes but a moment, an intense occurrence in order for it to be set off.

For me that was the accident, but this huge paradigm shift was set in motion years ago as many momentous life events are.

A couple of years ago I had abnormal cells on my uterus and had a few biopsies done in order to determine whether the cells were benign or malignant (read cancerous).  After a few tests, they were, well, just abnormal.  Seems perfectly normal to me that my life was abnormal.  I went through several rounds of hormone adjustment/replacement therapy and my hormones haven't been the same since.  In fact all of this "therapy" had set off regular bouts of PMS; mood swings, tenderness, cramps, crying...the works.

Since my return home, K's hormones have been setting the pheromone pace around here and well, when she's cycling, I'm cycling...sigh.

My brother and his wife live with us and have decided to move into my old room, next to his, because it's bigger.  It makes sense, they shouldn't be living in a tiny room when a bigger one is available, and let's face it, I won't be living in that room anytime soon.  (It's on the 2nd floor, a place I won't be going for a while.)  It's so close and so far.

Today they brought down the contents of my closet.  A typical girl's closet.  Clothing worn to death, clothing that I hoped to fit in after dieting and exercising and such, things I just had to have because they were on sale, and a few pieces that just felt like a dream that I could wear over and over and over again, the "timeless" pieces.

As I sorted through the items, I went through the lyrics of a song, Landslide by Fleetwood Mac.


I took my love and I took it down
Climbed a mountain and turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Till the landslide brought it down

donate...

give away...

maybe mom, M or U, or even K would like these...

I was giving myself away and didn't care.  They were just pieces of clothing.  Towards the end, I found old work smocks and badges that signified some of the first changes of my life.  In 1997 I had moved out and got a new job at the same time and had no choice but to make it work.  These work pieces reminded me of those times.   I felt independent, strong, tired.  Then I came across more mature pieces, suits from a time when I tried to get into business for myself....that didn't work out.  A D.U.I. assured the end of that chapter.  Even the prom dress that I wore in 1993 was of no interest to me..."donate"...

The last piece I came across in the last pile for the night had the jacket I was wearing when I was hit by the car and paralyzed.  The Landslide was set off.  I examined it for signs of trauma, dirt, scrapes, something!  There was nothing.  Like the accident never happened...."donate"...move on.


Oh, mirror in the sky - What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changin' ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
I don't know, I don't know

I kept a few pieces and "heed & hawed" over a few that I eventually kept others to remember myself by.  It wasn't much.  Months ago I heard this song and realized that I was afraid of changing, that I was addicted to my old life, to who I was. It will never be.  I need to let go, move on, go on to the next chapter..."keep", or shall I say "keepsake".

Well, I've been afraid of changin'
Because I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder, even children get older
And I'm getting older, too


A new chapter is in progress.  Listening to emo songs while having a cocktail are not helping me emotionally right now.  With God's strength I'm understanding that though the path is present, yet unclear, that God's will is at hand.  I pray for clarity, strength, and peace daily.

Oddly enough, "Life Goes On" by the Beatles has begun at this very moment, lol.  Ob la di, Ob la da.  A sign?  Maybe, Ok, it IS a sign.  Life goes on...


So, take my love, take it down
Climb a mountain and turn around
And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Well, the landslide will bring it down
The landslide will bring it down 

Though changes will happen in your life, don't be afraid.  Sure, they will hurt, you will struggle, but by the grace of God, loved ones: friends, family, unexpected strangers, will be there to encourage and carry you.  Trust in God and go forward.  Don't get stuck being addicted to who you were and move on. 

You can't open the next chapter of the book until you close the last one.

Sexual Healing

It's something that I don't publicly discuss, or rather it's something that people don't want to discuss with me.  It's that white elephant that no one points out.  Even within the safety and security of the Spinal Cord Injury support group that I attend, we don't talk about it much, but when we do, we go all out.  Because everyone's level of injury differs, we all have different amounts of physical return that we experience.  Some have sensation, others have movement, and there are those lucky few that have both.  I've seen sexual aids, devices, furniture, and videos that show how a sexual relationship is possible.  I think it's cheezeballs but whatever.  Guys definitely still have it way easier than women who suffer from paralysis and there are those out there who will contradict me, but I see way more able-bodied women with paralyzed men opposed to the reverse situation.




Whatever traces of testosterone are in me sometimes insight a sexual riot in my brain.  Maybe it's the not knowing of what sex will be like in the future that causes me to over imagine different scenarios. Oddly enough, I think about it at a male pace, meaning almost constantly.  And I don't think of it as a disabled person, I go through the memories of having an able body,  meeting someone so incredible where the sexual chemistry is on fire and you just want to, well for lack of words, fuck.  Sounds crude, but hot sweaty amazing sex was always more fun than just "doing it". lol sorry.  We all have preferences.  I have to throw in the disclaimer that I liked porn from a very VERY young age.  The kind of thing where you discover it "on accident" and like other drugs, just like it.  It's always in the back of my mind, but it's not like I'm some maniac that collects it, lol.


I've tasted the pleasures of a sexual relationship and of course I love it, but don't be fooled, I was pretty conservative.  It wasn't with many people, and it wasn't all the time.  I still have a very spiritual side that reminds me that there is more to life than the physical and that sex is still something special, even to me.  (Only a woman would say that.... lol)


Now as far as the paralysis goes, I know that I'm physically unable to have sex like before.  Physical inability has awoken mental ability.  I think about it because I have a freedom to.  What everyone thinks about me is none of my business and I reserve the right to have mental, emotional, and spiritual freedom.  We only live but one life and I am not afraid anymore.


This statement is for whoever I end up spending the rest of my life with.  I may not hold you or be able to lay with you in a way that lovers do, but my kisses are golden, my love is genuine, and my spirit is amazing.  Our life will not be easy, but what marriage is?  I promise you that it will be an amazing life and with God's help, it will be out of this world!




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO8-9OWzPOQ&feature=fvwrel&wl_token=OeF1qWnEA2sWlQwp7ifK1nHeTV18MTMwMjY2NDk3MA%3D%3D&wl_id=gO8-9OWzPOQ