wineandchaos.com

I have a hard time shutting my brain down. Every time Jeremy is out of town for work I find myself working until 1,2, 3 am and I realize MY GOD I would be a flipping CEO somewhere with no life if I didn’t have him to ground me and make sure I relax EVER. I can’t take credit for this ridiculous work ethic, I just naturally have it. I wish it would calm the fuck down, to be honest.

This leads me into what I got on here to talk about. I was going through a box of my old high school and college notebooks and folders tonight and as I was reading through it, I remembered just how much I love to learn and how much I love getting new and challenging information, and working it into my frame of reference. I don’t get to debate the causes of World War 1 or the rise of nationalism and the immense damage it did in modern Europe, and I miss it. I miss hearing a new theory or reading information and having a ding in my brain as I can see events connecting across centuries and countries. This stuff truly excites me, and it always has. I worked tirelessly then on it and it made me think about how I am living without it since I quite clearly, am not working at a university as I always intended.

Then I had that familiar “ding”. What keeps my brain humming and gives me gobs of energy now is business. Specifically my businesses. There is nothing that excites me more right now than challenging myself with something that I love and that I think is worth doing. I always have to do more, to learn more, and to be more. But I love it. I love it as much as I love learning about and debating history and the human condition. This has taken the place of academia for me.

I really love how sales ties into all that. I have always loved to study people throughout history and how they react to things and how they learn, change, and persevere. People are amazing. AMAZING. I admire the hell of people and what connects them as well as what separates them. I am highly perceptive to people and what is unique about them, and this is what makes me a good salesperson. Because of this, I LOVE being in sales. I love constantly changing and challenging myself to be the perfect person that the client needs me to be at that exact moment in time. Because when I do my job right, I have made a difference in someone’s day in a positive way.

I love how trends change and yet revolve and recycle and I have to constantly keep up and also look back to predict the market or I lose out. When I make a mistake, I love the knowledge that I have gained from losing money (is there a more effective way to learn a lesson than by losing money ?!?)

I love that even though I am not directly using my degree, I have found a way to tie it into my adult life and I feel immeasurably lucky that I have found something that I love to do. I didn’t always know this about myself – I floundered after college, big time. I had a job I hated (office work, NOT FOR ME!), followed by more waitressing, which can be profitable, but it just wasn’t where I was working, followed by my pawn shop job which I actually kind of loved but had it’s own set of issues, followed by stay at home motherhood which I lasted in without having a job for about 3 months. Then came eBay. My businesses have grown naturally from there. I never set out to do this, but damn am I glad I trusted my gut and kept making moves in this direction. I have a LONG WAY to go before I am “done” and happy with where I am at in my own business world but – where I am at right now, while overwhelmingly busy and constantly challenged, is pretty awesome.

Aside from family, isn’t this what life is about? Finding something to get our brains whirring so life isn’t monotonous and depressing?

No matter what you have to do to live, if it is mind numbing and awful – find some time to let your mind wander and pay attention to where it wanders. When you find the thing that  makes it “ping” – stop – take note – and figure out a way to work that into your every day.

I promise it makes a huge difference. But you might sleep less 😉

I’m not often over revealing or sappy about my marriage. But today I am going to be. Today is our 9 year wedding anniversary and though we are apart (damn work travel!), I feel as close to him as always.

Are you guys ready for me to embarrass myself with some teenage poetry? Well you’re in luck!!

I started dating Jeremy when I was only 19 years old – and I knew after our first kiss that he would one day be my husband. I wrote this at 19.

Redemption

glimpsed in a gentle blue gaze

rushing me into truth –

a state of naturalness and purity

lost since the hours

of tea party and pretend –

returning with a realization

of hopelessness without another.

I have heard often from family members that they hope nothing ever happens to be because Jeremy wouldn’t be able to handle life without me. Everyone, however, thinks that I would be fine if the situation were reversed.  I am a strong person, I definitely portray that and i know others see it. I am here to tell you that Jeremy is where I get my strength. He is where I rest when I am weary, he is where I get support when I am doing something scary, he is who shares in my every fear, joy, idea, and crazy scheme <3

There will never be the proper words to explain what this man means to me, but as the sentiment in my poem describes, he brought magic back into my life that I hadn’t seen since childhood. He gave me purpose, and a clear direction of who I needed to be and where my life was headed.

I do nothing without thinking of how it will affect him, our life, and our children, and I know he does the same. There is nothing more in the world that I could ask for in a partner and I am lucky beyond all belief that he not only exists, but that I found him.

So here is to 9 years married to you my love, we may not have gifts and cards for each other or some fantastic date planned, but our souls are connected constantly and every day we celebrate our love even if it’s as simple as an understanding look.

Thank you for proposing to my crazy ass and thank you even more for putting up with me all this time 😉

Come hell or high water for our 10 year we are taking a damn vacation!

I have been wanting to write this entire week but have been trying not to because I don’t want this to be a sounding board for negativity, depression, and things that leave people worse after reading them instead of better. But ultimately, I write in here to sort through and process thoughts that are milling about in my head making it difficult for me to otherwise use my brain properly. I am definitely at a stand off here within myself and need to work some things out.

There are some difficult things happening with my family at this time (kind of ongoing really, but there are times that it gets better or worse and right now it’s the latter). It is a situation that deeply affects me and everyone around me yet there just is little I can actually do about it. I have to sit and watch things burn from the sidelines and then deal with the aftermath of the fire and it is very difficult for me to do time and again.

I found out Monday night that a woman who lives a few blocks from me took her own life after taking the lives of her twin daughters. It was violent, awful, and I can’t believe that it happened. I met her when I was pregnant with Owen and was out garage sale-ing. I stopped at her house as she was having a sale and Max wanted to play because her girls were his age and outside playing in their very fun backyard. She invited him to play and me to sit, and we talked for a couple hours as the kids played on the playground, in the bouncy house, and in the sandbox. He had a blast. The kids played on a couple more occasions but I have not seen her recently. Regardless of that, I remember her and her children clearly as they were sweet and kind little girls – just what you’d imagine them to be. She was a good mom. She only fed the kids organic food, took them to PT for issues stemming from them being twins in the womb, and cared deeply about their happiness and development. We talked about potty training and her mom chided us for not having pushed our kids to be fully potty trained and we laughed and said we were both letting them go at their own pace. I am certain that if you had told her then what would transpire in less than 2 years she would have been appalled. This was not an evil person.

I am having a hard time reconciling these 2 people. That the same woman who welcomed me, Max, and later Owen into her home was the same woman who could do what she did. It tears me up deeply that she was so disturbed that she thought that what she did was the best thing for her babies. I believe that most people who do things like this are so deluded that they believe in their heart of hearts that they are doing the right thing. For that, I can’t blame her. I can’t blame someone for having such a severe mental delusion. However, as a mother, and someone who knew those kids… I can’t forgive her. I can understand that she was not nearly rational, but I cannot forgive. I pride myself on being empathetic and forgiving but I have not been able to be that person this time around. Maybe in time I will be, I’d like to think that I will. This whole thing has shaken me on a level that I don’t know how to deal with. Those little girls just started kindergarten, just like Max. I can imagine them getting dressed up in their little uniforms for the first time and excitedly walking the halls, making their first friends and hoping their teacher was nice. How scared and horrified those same little girls must have been on Monday in their last moments of life.

In and amongst all of this, I see pictures of floods ruining people’s homes and lives. Babies floating in rubbermaid bins and dogs clinging to pipes so that they do not drown. This weather in Texas seems almost biblical in it’s severity.

This week feels like the end of times. So much tragedy, so much sadness and loss.

Yet my dear husband, unbeknownst to me, went to the house on the now infamous Reed street and left flowers from our garden before work. There are now crosses, and more flowers. People in the community coming together to mourn and give what little support they know how. It’s meager, but it is all we have to offer.

There are people who are working countless and constant hours to rescue those who are trapped in the clutches of Harvey. Carrying dogs, women, babies, and others through the waters. Neighbors searching for those who need help in their canoes. A friend of mine is opening up her house to shelter a dog who will need a home until he can go back to his own. All across the world, people are helping.

In times of tragedy and uncertainty, people band together, and it is beautiful.

In times of fear and sadness, there are still children laughing and playing.

A hummingbird was fluttering around my garden yesterday, blissfully unaware of the human world.

There is beauty in the world if you look for it. I think that’s really the key – to look for it. To acknowledge that there are terrible things that can and will happen, to offer what help and support you can, and then to look for the beauty in the remains.

None of this makes the journey any easier, but it’s so important to know – even if it’s in the very back of your mind- that there are still things to make you happy, reasons to smile, pretty things to look at, children to teach and play with, and people who need you to be present and happy. What we do and how we feel so greatly affects those around us.

If this is the end of times, let’s go out with as much grace as possible – loving and helping those around us.

And until the day when the world is no more, take care of yourself friends. I am pretty damn certain that if anyone, and I mean ANYONE reached out in a crisis, that whoever they called would drop whatever they were doing to help. I have known too many people who have killed themselves because they thought it was the best or only solution. It isn’t. It wasn’t and it isn’t. Please let me be your lifeline. If you ever need me, call, text, message, yell if you’re close enough. If you know anyone who needs help and won’t talk to anyone they know and doesn’t want to call a hotline, give them my number. I will always help as much as I can. Any time day or night.

I love you all dearly and hope that you can recognize the beauty around you, because the world is amazing and it needs you in it.

And for those of you weren’t able to get the help you needed, rest in peace. Not a day goes by where I don’t think of you Mike Traverso – what an asset to this planet you were with your genuine smile, heart of gold, and kind nature. I couldn’t have picked a better first crush and have always measured boyfriends by the yardstick of how big your heart was. I will remember you with love always.

Celisa, I hope that you have found somewhere to rest with no more weight on your shoulders. Makayla and Addison, I hope you are eternally playing and loved in the arms of God.

To the immediate family members of these people and so many others, I hope that you are able to find the tiniest piece of beauty so that you know there is hope, however far away, of a better day.

I just finished watching “Big Little Lies” on HBO. I watched the first episode when I was staying the night at someone’s house and didn’t know what else to watch. It seemed like it was going to be frivolous and probably trite. I watched that first episode and didn’t think I was going to watch the rest. I left it for several months.

A couple weeks ago, something told me to pick it back up and watch the 2nd, see if it got any more worthwhile than the gossipy rich housewives drama I initially pegged it as (I HATE reality tv and anything that resembles it. Like hate. Loathe. With a fiery passion. It’s demeaning, cheap, and I think it personifies the decline of civilization.)

I watched the 2nd episode and thought… ok… there is more to this.

I don’t watch tv very often – I just get twitchy if I sit for too long (my own neuroses at play) so when I see a show through, it usually has some significance to me.

I just finished the last episode and it really resonated with me. All throughout the show you get to know these generally highly privileged, educated, and white upper class women (with a couple exceptions) who are at their forefront greatly flawed. They were all very real. There was much conflict amongst the female characters in the show and personally, I could identify with every single one of them. They all made mistakes, but they all had intentions that I could identify with and understand. I still wasn’t sure where this was all headed but I was intrigued.

In the last moments of the finale, all of these women dropped their cattiness and defenses and came together in a moment – an instant of dire importance that reminded me what I adore about the human race and the female gender in particular. Women have high emotions and we tend to read into things more than we should – we get offended, we get hurt, and we get defensive. However. I challenge any of you to tell me that in the right circumstance – you wouldn’t throw that aside and help your worst nemesis if she was vulnerable and needed you. The capacity for heartfelt apology and and true selflessness is something I think every woman possesses if she looks deep enough.

I felt the same way about that commercial that was floating around a couple years ago – I don’t even remember what it was for!!!! But it was gorgeous. It focused on all opposing groups of mothers – those that bottle fed, breast fed, baby wearers, working mothers, etc etc. They all were feuding in their silly groups and then someone’s stroller started rolling down a hill – every.single.person. stopped what they were doing and chased it with every fibre of their being. Nobody gave a shit about differences – it was all about saving that child. That’s what humanity is at it’s core. We all have our own frame of references and we see things differently, perceive things differently, and have had very opposing experiences. But. mental health issues aside, we all at our core are trying our best to be good people for ourselves and those that we love deeply. We would all put everything aside in times of distress.

This is one of the things I love so much about studying history – the people. The people who go through unimaginable amounts of horror, and then get up and band together with their neighbor so they don’t have to as well. People are resilient, beautiful, vulnerable, and kind. We all are, we only have to take off the jaded shades and the chips on our shoulders and allow ourselves to be.

10 years ago today the final Harry Potter (The Deathly Hollows) book was published. I was in Moscow and was DESPERATE to find it in English so I could devour it on my insanely long plane ride home. I walked all over the city checking bookstores (I did not have a functional cell phone and had limited internet access – remember those days ?!? and YES I did get lost. more than once) and I. was. determined. Finally, I saw the book in the window (in cyrillic of course) and ran inside and there it was. In English.  I will never forget the feeling I had picking it up, holding it to my chest, inhaling that new book smell, and knowing that what I held in my hands was the end to an era. That as desperately bad as I wanted to read the end of the story, how heartbroken I would be to read that last sentence — the word that would close the chapter to my childhood.

I will never forget how Harry Potter found me. In grade school, once a week we had a library day where we had to check out a book. I loved this. However, I had a very good friend who was not into reading (hey Salina!! 😉 ) and she grabbed a book because she had to, then handed it to me asking if I wanted to read it. It was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I shrugged and took it, and I would never look back. I read that third book first and although yes, it was a bit confusing, I was IN LOVE. I quickly checked out the first two and finished them in the same week. But what now? There were no more! This started my love affair with fantasy. I read SO many other series waiting for each Harry Potter book to come out. The list is staggering.

Up until that muggy summer in Moscow in 2007, Harry Potter was an integral part of my youth. I could not imagine life without the anticipation of the next book. I cracked that book on the plane and had to slow myself – I was reading SO fast and my heart was racing. But I had to slow down, I had 10+ hours and was stuck in the middle of an approximately 7 person aisle. I took a deep breath and  read every sentence and every word as if it was giving me oxygen. I still finished it on that plane before I got to Chicago. I felt a deep sense of sadness. The way you feel when your favorite tv show comes to an end after 7 seasons (cough cough Gilmore Girls) or when your child has his last day of preschool (waahhhhh he starts KINDERGARTEN next month!).

I cannot put into words what this world of magic did for me during those pivotal years of my life that I spent feeling out of place and unsure of who I was. It was a world where nothing was as it seemed and kindness and courage mattered more than anything. It encouraged love, inclusiveness, condemned racism and lauded perseverance and differences. It taught me that I could find beauty and magic in the world around me (“Happiness can be found in the darkest of times if one only remembers to turn on the light.”)  That I was lucky beyond words to have my family and the kind of inherent love that many did not. To be kind because you never knew what the person next to you had experienced or the battles they were fighting. Most of all, it taught me that I could be whoever I wanted to be if it was important enough to fight for.

I have never stopped fighting to be that girl, and I never will <3

I cannot imagine a better atmosphere for writing. I am sitting outside on my patio with thunder in the distance, the air cool and wet from rain only moments before. The air smells like I am only steps from a lake and coffee tastes like vacation.

Couldn’t pass up an opportunity to write in this.

I spent my youth and teenage years reading. I still read nightly, but I do not devote nearly as much time to it as I used to due to adult life (I KNOW you guys know what I’m talking about here – free time is at a premium!) ANYWAY I absolutely loved classic literature when I was younger (still do!) because it opened me up to all kinds of knowledge and life views and experiences that I was desperate for. I also LOVE that the common threads of humanity are woven across centuries – people are people no matter where and when they lived. This is probably why I like studying history so much. Anyhow, there are lots of books that impacted the way I view life but today, I have one in particular (and specifically one quote!) that I want to talk about (pretty sure I sound like an English professor, and you thought you got AWAY from school! MUAHAHA!) Candide.

The quote, translated is this: “We must cultivate our own garden”

(well it varies depending on the translation, but essentially this is it. You get the point.)

A VERY quick synopsis of Candide (if you haven’t read it, or just have forgotten about it like  a normal human being because you read it a million years ago in school and you’re not a freak like me) is that the title character, Candide, is a young naive man who goes through and encounters a series of RIDICULOUSLY terrible situations (we’re talking Monty Python level ridiculously terrible) and the man (his tutor, essentially)  he is traveling with is quick to remind him that no matter what is happening, they are living in the “best of all possible worlds” (said to the man who is missing limbs and was sold into slavery by his mother, for example.) He is optimistic to a point of absurdity. The book is a satire on certain philosophies and religion but I won’t get into all that. PS I absolutely love satire, so if you see a lot of that in this blog, well now you know why 😉

The quote “We must cultivate our own garden.” is at the end of the book, and essentially means that YOU are responsible for your circumstances and if you want to live a meaningful life, then you need to cultivate it. Fate is not responsible for your success or your happiness and sometimes things suck. Life is not always grand. If you want any spot of happiness, you need to figure out what it is you are trying to attain, and work on it.

I think of this often – I think about what I want out of life as a whole, what I want to achieve that month or even that day,  and then I make a plan and work on it. Sure there are moments of random, times of serendipity and times of terrible things that I could have done nothing about – but what I do WITH those things, how I handle them, THAT – I control. I cultivate an environment that enables me to persevere and learn the best way that I am able. There is no better example of this than actually cultivating a literal garden (which is why, I believe, Voltaire uses that analogy.) You prepare your earth, choose what to plant and when, take care of it, and watch what you have cultivated flourish. If you make a mistake, sometimes it’s the end of the plant, and sometimes it’s not. But do you give up? Or do you cut it back, tend to it frequently, and try to bring it back?

I know which person I am, which are you?

Does anyone else ever look in the mirror and go “HOT DAMN! I look GOOD!” and other times you look in the mirror and you’re like “Holy Shit. Why do lifeforms even talk to me?” This is me from day to day or probably even hour to hour… I don’t really keep track of those thoughts, probably as a self preservation tool.

My point here is that if our own opinions of something as trivial as how we look in a mirror (which LET’S BE HONEST! is ALWAYS the same give take 1 lb or some makeup or a cuter shirt) then how ridiculous is it that we don’t realize how much perception dictates how we see people and the world around us?

How I see things literally differs in my own head depending on my mood and circumstances. I might wake up one morning and be THRILLED that the sun is shining – it’s going to be a beautiful day, and we’re going to do this and that and life is GRAND! I might wake up and the sun is shining and UGH it hasn’t rained in 12 days and I am living in SCORCHED EARTH and I have to close all my curtains and hide in the basement so me and my vampiric children don’t start sizzling.

Now apply this to social issues.

What I see is different from what YOU see, from what your neighbor sees, from what your mother or husband or children see. You might all be looking at a bush and you think “gross, that’s scraggly as hell. Ugh If I wasn’t SO busy I could pull that out and landscape that area – maybe next year” Your mother sees “Why hasn’t she trimmed that What have I done that she cares so little for where she lives I must have gone wrong somewhere?” Your neighbor sees ” That mother is always playing with her children, what a lovely family to live next door to.” your kid sees ” I am SO hiding in that! It will be hilarious! They won’t be able to find me!” Your husband sees nothing because men don’t give a shit about bushes.

Perception is everything. I once heard a quote and I have abided by it for many years. It was “just because they don’t love you as you want them to, doesn’t mean they don’t love you the best way they know how.” I apply this to my friendships, familial relationships, and even my marriage. People do their best. You do your best. Sometimes the way you love someone is completely different than the way someone else does but it means no less or no more. Some people show their love by words, other by physical means, other by actions. No one is right or wrong. We all do things in our own way in our own time. I feel that this way of thinking can truly cross bridges in rocky relationships. How often do we feel like so & so doesn’t reciprocate? But they usually are. Just maybe not in a way you’re picking up on.

Perception is all the difference in a good mood vs a bad mood. In productive vs I am watching netflix all day and crying.

I choose to believe that most everyone (MOST – gotta allow for the crazies!) is doing their best. That most everyone is trying to better themselves and the people they love. Some of us do a better job than others, but we’re all trying our best. At the end of the day, we’re all human, and we’re all working from our own frame of reference  – it’s just that some of us have rosier glasses than others.

So I posted on FB a couple days ago about Mad Max and how he loves “Where is my mind” by The Pixies.

I cannot get over his response. It is making me appreciate his brain in a way that I can’t accurately describe – and isn’t that the point of music? Really of art of any kind? To give credence to a feeling when words escape you?

What does it say about a 4 (almost 5) year old that his favorite songs are “First” and “WIMM”?

To me it means that he must be incredibly incredibly complex. His answer (for those of you who missed it) when I asked him why he liked this song so much was

“Because it looks like a construction site – but it’s a song.”

Does he identify with construction sites past the point of normalcy for little boys?? And by normalcy I mean your basic “ooohhh machines!”. Does the chaos, noise, and his love for metal and engines reflect his mind?.

I imagine that the ADHD represents the chaos – it must he very hard for him to pin down any one thought or emotion at any given time so chaotic chords (and machinery) must sound familiar to him in an innate way. An internal noise he hasn’t identified but is always just intrinsically there.

What about the Asperger’s and the sensory processing disorder? He is torn (I personally feel) between these and the ADHD because while the ADHD can cause him kind to be all over the place, the Asp can make him feel out of place and make him want to focus on the things that ground him. That is UNDOUBTEDLY machinery. He was born with the mind of an engineer and it is truly amazing to watch him create, and tinker with engines. The chaos internally is that he DESPERATELY wants to focus on the things that he loves, but he has a very hard time doing so – and this triggers high emotion and poor behavior that can be confusing when you’re not in tune to what’s going on for him,

Maybe that’s why he likes construction sites and this song. I can see the similarity.

But that he, a 4 year old, could somehow make that connection, and vocalize it is beyond me.

Thank you, special boy for being in my life and helping me to understand how complex and intelligent children can be. They are so much more than we often give them credit for <3

Or maybe he just likes machines 😉 

We all have moments. Moments where we lose it and think that things can’t get any worse than they already are. We have moments when we break down and cry until our head aches and our face is red and on fire. I actually like to let myself do this when I’m feeling overwhelmed because once the headache afterwards is gone, I feel emotionally purged – like I faced my fear, dealt with the worst it, and came out the other side. It gives me mental energy and clarity.

This post was supposed to be about grief. I read an article a little while ago (you know, scrolling through FB when I should have been making my grocery list or doing any number of other productive things) about the loss of a child. I didn’t want to click on it, but I had to. Because I like to deal with my feelings, and in some twisted way feel like if I deal with these feelings, and confront these fears, that this won’t happen to my kids (trust me, I know that’s idiocy but not everything we do is logical). It’s such an overwhelming thought – to even so much as take the quickest glimpse into your future – a future that might not have your baby in it. It’s just wrong. It’s wrong per nature.

So I read this article and some of the comments from other mothers who had lost a child and I cried. I cried for them, because NO ONE should have to lose a child. I cried for the fear of losing one of my boys, and I thought about how if I lost them both I could just shrivel up and die but if I only lost one… I would somehow have to keep being a person. I would have to be wife, and mother to one, and also grieve the loss while putting up a convincing front. I don’t know how I would do it, I don’t know how anyone does, truly. The feeling of desolation inside must be constantly sickening.

I like to confront these feelings when the opportunity arises because it makes me glad – SO glad that I have chaotic fucking insane days and moments where I LOSE MY SHIT. Where I think WHAT ELSE CAN HAPPEN?!? Tantrums, crying, slamming doors, legos everywhere, vomiting, frozen pizza for dinner AGAIN, husband traveling, family imploding… and I think. Thank God. Thank God for the shitheads that make me bang my head into things on purpose. If I ever lost a son, I would give ANYTHING to be back in one of these “terrible” moments. Inspirational quotes are generally pretty obnoxious to me because (not that they’re bad quotes!) but because when people parrot, to me, it doesn’t tell me anything about who they are. Tell me something YOU said, not something someone else said, BUT I digress – one of those quotes that you see floating around that goes something like… we wouldn’t appreciate the sun if we didn’t have the rain – or something to that tune. I LOVE the sentiment there. And I might view this a little differently than normal. As in, I confront emotionally scary shit as much as I can because it grounds me and gives me ammo to deal with those tough days and moments. Not that it makes all the tough stuff sunny and unicorns, but it does put things into perspective. Perspective is something that is SEVERELY lacking in the world in my own experience with people and It’s something that I personally try and shed publicly as much as I can get away with without being hugely obnoxious.

Perspective breeds understanding, humility, patience, and kindness. It helps us to see others through THEIR world and not our own. Reality is different for every single person, and wouldn’t everyone’s lives be better if I and you took the time, and truly put ourselves emotionally and mentally into situations that are difficult – but help us understand why. Once we understand why, we can be empathetic and kind and most importantly, NOT AFRAID of the unknown. Emotional education is just as important as academic education.

As far as not having a solid theme throughout a post, I’d say this is a contender for best (worst?!?) ever! But I’m tired and emotionally spent. But I feel better. Like I can sleep now with a clear head and without thoughts racing keeping me awake.

I needed this blog more than I thought.