soft ears, tail wags, broken heart

 I had to put my dog down. She was 13 years old and the best dog I could imagine. 

Watching a dog get old is a sneaky thing. She would follow me around and play as hard as she used to, but as time went on she was around less and less, sleeping a little bit longer or lingering on the couch when I half heartedly offered a walk. She went deaf so she sometimes didn't meet me at the door when I got home, but I always knew when she saw me, she would jump around and dance. 
My preschooler always made a point to pet her or miss her dog food bowl and cover the floor when feeding her. She lost bladder control and he would help me make sure she was on her bed or pee pads when she laid down. I still remember her last walk where she reluctantly but obediently followed him around.

I hate how the harder you love something, the more it hurts to lose it. 

She loaded up in the car with a wag and I'm not sure if she knew and she was just ready to go or if she really just liked car rides. I told her she was a good dog, the best dog. She stuck her head out the window. I cried. 

The decision is always second guessed. I don't know why dogs live so much longer than different parts of their body can function. She was deaf and her kidneys were shutting down, but still I thought maybe I should wait a little longer. I'm not sure for what. Maybe just to not have to say goodbye or have these feelings like -what if- and -I should have- that linger around any decision with such a finality as death. 

My preschooler still won't talk about her. I don't think I've cried this much in a long time. Something about the intersection of post partum hormones, losing my best friend, and having to return to work is really making me feel like I'm in emotional freefall. I can't stop crying and crying. I feel like I'm sliding backwards down a muddy slope, trying to catch my footing but falling as I claw my way forward.

I almost followed her pawprints in the snow from the last time she wandered out of the yard, down the block, and down the hill past the neighborhood. I don't know what I was looking for, maybe clinging to a little part of her odd decision making or what she wanted to do or maybe looking for clues about what shut down her kidneys so that I can be mad at something in particular like the final clue that would make me feel better as I swear vengeance against some concrete enemy. I drove to where the pawprints became untraceable and cried some more. And today as the snow pummels down, her iced up pawprints are slowly becoming erased by the fresh snow. And I cried. 

I thought taking her in while I was on leave would be easier. Like I had all this free time to clean the carpets and set things straight, but now all my free time is just absorbed in sad remembrances and second guessing myself. 

There's something about the dogs I've had that mark different times in my life based on the decades that I had them during. I had my teenage through 20s dog; the dappy but loveable floppy eared friend who listened to all my different heartbreaks through the years, lived through the college years and couch surfing after, the apartment fire, breakups and break ins and break downs in crappy cars. Then there was this dog, the last 20s through the almost 40 when I thought I would have a farm, trained her to herd sheep, bravely took on an attack pig, traveled through harvest season after harvest season, went on camping trips, played in the ocean, and took on my kids as though they were the most important thing in her pack. When I went into labor I couldn't find her anywhere in the middle of the night, but come to find her cuddled next to the bed of my sleeping kid. She could sense when you needed cheered up and she always seemed like she was trying to guess what would make you happy. We got rid on the sheep as she got older and she didn't mind. I left my farm job, moved to an apartment, stopped training foster dogs, got a house, and she came along for the ride. 

Time slows us all  down. Family grows, changes, branches die. Our saturday morning routine changed so much through the years. She used to sneak into bed in the morning and sneak out just as quickly if she was discovered and given attention. She was a working dog through and through. I hope she didn't hurt or suffer. I wonder how long I will hurt me to miss her. 

Treading water in an overfilled aquarium

 It's the end of 2021 and the cold rain continues outside. I'm glad it's in the 40s or else we would have more snow than we could manage. I notice every creak in my body as if it's held together with glue and string and one wrong move throws off the entire delicate balance. I'm hoping to make some grand sweeping resolution to grow stronger in the new year, but honestly, I am barely able to make the resolution to get these thoughts rambling in my head out into words. I wake up and grab onto the day but it feels like I'm holding sand as it flows downward and leaves me holding nothing at the end of the day.

I'm on maternity leave. I love staying home and getting baby snuggles all day every day. Baby has a stuffy nose today and my anxiety ridden brain has self-diagnosed COVID as of course it's the worst possible scenario and not just a snotty nose from winter time. It's impossible to sit down without thinking of what is going to go wrong. 

Elderly multigravida is what my discharge paperwork said. I feel so old and wise, but really my body is falling apart and it took me so long to realize the warm fuzzy feelings from having family... which I equate entirely to hormone imbalances that evolutionarily discourage us from leaving our young in the woods due to lack of sleep and completely irrational demands of motherhood. My brain feels like it's glitching and I can't connect the dots or I'm staring at something but I can't find the word for it. 

There is one thing for certain - at this moment I am sober and so happy to at least have that. 

It feels different, less highs and lows. More stable. Less chasing my tail, feeling like crap, mental fog, wishing I was at a different state of mind. I'm doing that thing that everyone who takes a step back from the rat race does - evaluating whether I want to go back. My pay isn't the greatest and some days is really stressful, but some days I put the stress in there where it doesn't really belong. I try too hard or push more than the clients are ready to go. The courts push hard in one direction and the client is running in the opposite direction. My confidence is low but I kinda muddle through some of the toughest conversations of my life thinking -how the fuck do most therapists continue to know what to say- or -am I doing this right?

I am holding so many things in my head like an overstuffed aquarium that needs cleaned out. I need to write. I need to talk. Need to process. And within all of these fears is this sense of dread that baby is growing and getting bigger and I will forget. I don't want to forget. I want to hold on to everything. And my 4 year old is demanding as ever and I try to be everything for him too, but I'm on 1 hours sleep at a time and physically falling apart. 

So no grand sweeping gestures. No resolutions to run a marathon. I do want to slowly build my strength back up, take care of myself, let out these thoughts, sort them, catalog them with these pictures, these snuggles, these wild hormones that make me feel like all the world is so full of love but so full of destruction and disease at the same time. I think I need to make a list. More for myself than anything. I don't want to hold myself to weird, impossible standards, but I do need to figure out what I'm trying to do and how I can get there. I'm splattered right now and treading water. 

Supervisor Exit

 I am 4 months pregnant, still feeling the long haul, and I feel like a worm on the sidewalk drying out in the sun. 

I keep thinking things will get better, but they stay the same. The muscle soreness is still there. The joint pain, brain fog, trouble climbing stairs without being winded.. all still there. I curl up in a ball on my bed most days and try not to cry. I wonder if I'll ever be normal again. I wonder if walking will be as effortless as it was in the past.

And I can't help but wonder if things would be better or worse if I still had my super physical job. Forced exercise may help strengthen, but if I collapse after a day when I work second floor, I cannot imagine pulling pumps and hoses from tank to tank, picking up case after case, scrubbing tanks, lifting barrels. 

I was so sad after losing my last pregnancy that all I could think about was another one. Then I got COVID right around Christmas and thought -oh, I'll be over this in two weeks and be fine. Then the shot became available and I thought -oh, I should get this when it's available because I don't know when I will be able to have this offer again. 
I'm not sure if the symptoms never subsided or got worse after each dose. Then I got pregnant so I guess all those infertility conspiracy theories are out the window based on my personal case study. The stress of the virus delayed my period after COVID so when I was late the next month, I assumed it was the vaccine. the tiredness got worse and then when I felt nauseous when brushing my teeth, I knew I needed to take a test.

I stopped therapy after 2 expensive sessions. I fucking know self care bullshit. I don't need someone telling me that I should take warm baths and do things to take care of myself. I fucking know that. This is different than that. This is a visceral hurt that is stressing my entire system. This is wondering if I'm annoying everyone by complaining of being sore constantly when they ask me why I'm curled up in a chair instead of doing something. I can't move.

I started eating an anti-inflammatory diet. It helps a bit with the joint pain, but not the breathing or brain fog and headaches. I'm second trimester so I got all excited when I read my energy should return. It's half there. My mind woke back up a bit, but my body still feels like a dried up worm. 

My supervisor at work quit. Super mixed feelings about that. I know she was often frustrated. But now I have major fears of the unknown as she was the only supervisor I knew. My classmates had either great supervisors or horror stories. One of the horror stories may be my new supervisor. 

So I'm still in limbo. I'm between two different programs in two different offices throughout the week and I'm not sure if I stayed at the one office to stay with my supervisor. I just want to do a good job. I feel more pressure at this job than I ever have before. 

And then chuck some pregnancy hormones and irritability on top of all that stress and nerve pain and that's pretty much where I'm at right now. I have a super cute, nearly 4 year old that is the best part of my day. But some days when everything gets to me, I just isolate and cry. 

I wonder what "better" looks like. I'm not saying ideal. But just better. I got a smart watch and a symptom tracker to see if there's any day to day change. But work stress is the icing on the shit cake right now. The good clients I have are the best parts of my day. The court ordered, non-compliant, shit clients who don't want to work or listen or even be there are the shit part of my day layered on top of feeling like a pile of garbage. And now I don't have the support of my supervisor, so I'm standing alone in a shit storm wondering how the fuck I got here and where to go now. 

Transfer

 I am being transferred again.

I kinda knew my office wasn't that busy and the lead doc was kinda gutting what few staff we had. I kept jumping up and down in attempts to get my clients to show up, to trust me, to work with me, but most said they had a new counselor every few months so they weren't interested. Oh, I thought, -but I'm not going anywhere. HA! How naïve. I have been moved 5 different times in less than a year with this community nonprofit. I should have known better.

My supervisor told me during our weekly supervision that I was moving in one week and they did not have a counselor to transfer my caseload to. It seemed very haphazard and not thought out. I tried not to, but I cried. 
The counseling relationship is one where you both establish trust. And now I was to just leave, some clients I wouldn't even have a chance to say goodbye to and that stung. I understand some things need to happen, but this seemed unnecessarily jarring and difficult to swallow. 

I guess I could go into office politics now. I'm still trying to figure it out. I did not know that so many in the helping profession could be so different and at times toxic to one another. At times I feel like I'm just pretending to play doctor. Like it's not real because it's just a conversation. It's just me. And why the fuck would anyone want to sit down with me and chat. And how the fuck am I supposed to help them.

I enrolled myself in therapy. It's stuuuuuupid fucking expensive because my insurance does not take it and I'm worried I will know what she is going to say or she is not going to say anything helpful. At first, I thought it was to process my health issues lately, but now I can't sleep and my mind is racing from this work stuff and my boyfriend is tired of hearing about it.

I applied for other jobs but I don't feel comfortable leaving yet. There are still so many things that I do not know but need to learn. And -in these uncertain times... you know. It's hard to walk away from a sure thing. 

Do you ever talk to someone and wonder if they are great or they are the problem? Or maybe there are so many broken parts that there is no one specific problem but everything is just broken and ductaped enough to make it work, but barely. 

In good news, I held it together for the most part. I have learned to bite my tongue when I don't know who to trust. But it is not how I want to work. I wish I could be open and build something positive that would not keep me up at night. I wish I could speak my mind or collaborate instead of not know who to trust or what not to say. 
I feel these waves of stress emotions that are overwhelming and I cannot let them go when I come home. I may fall asleep, but I wake up in the middle of the night and can not shut my brain off. I keep going over different scenarios and wondering what I should say and how I should say it. I appreciate that my brain is in problem solving mode, but I really want to shut it off and get some rest. 

So I guess now I'm taking my own advice- write things down. The difficulty is when I'm not sure what others are going to say, I expand the scenarios to these infinite amounts where I'm about to articulate perfectly what I want to say. ---but in reality, it doesn't really work like that. 

COVID and lost love

 The past week has been rough. I go to work, get exhausted right after lunch, then come home and collapse. In fact, the past month.... or few months have been rough.
In November, I went in for an ultrasound and found my baby had stopped growing 4 weeks prior. One pill and a few super uncomfortable days later I bled and cried for a week. 

Then in December, I woke up with a tickle in my throat and just to be safe, I called off work. But you can't just call off for one day with COVID so I went out and got a test, 3-5 days for the results right before Christmas and I imagined all the things I would get done in my quarantine time. The next day, I felt weaker, and by the third day my joints started seizing up with screaming pain. I tried to cancel Christmas with family, my brother was furious and still wanted a "normal" Christmas at his house with no masks. I declined and hunkered down with a very energetic 3 year old also in quarantine just to be safe. By day 4, the muscle aches started and all I could do was lay around. Day 5, my taste became dull and I could barely smell. I would chug coffee and eat Tylenol in the morning and hobble around to get to the basics before completely falling out in the afternoon.

Two weeks recovery was not long enough and searches online provided bleak outcomes for others recovering from the virus. Thankfully, no one else in my house tested positive, but they got quarantined as well so we all hung out watching Super Wings and doing a ton of art projects while I watched from the couch or went to bed. I made it my goal to drink all the tea in my giant tea drawer that was overflowing. I made it through about half before I had to go back to work.

My sick time was through and I got back to seeing clients, but I ached so bad I could barely move. I kept a heater by my chair and wore three layers and a scarf that doubled as a blanket. My appetite didn't come back, I couldn't taste anyway, and I kept chugging tea. I got down to the weird loose leaf green teas and the bagged ginger and kept going. I let the leaves bloom straight in the cup in hopes that some magic green tea energy would activate something in me that would stop aching so much.

My second week back at work the health dept came with the first round of the shot. I never want to get COVID again so while I may have been hesitant before, I definitely had decided to get it. But I read immunity and waiting and blah blah blah so I asked. They said it should be fine, but my reaction may be more severe since I just had COVID. 
I felt so proud of myself for being brave. I didn't pass out. I barely cried. I just talked to co-workers, saw the head boss, chatted with the nurse that COVID tested me into a bloody nose, and I took my shot. 
It took a few hours before the soreness really hit. The fatigue had clenched down on me by the evening, and the following day I woke up crying. My symptoms had come back with a vengeance. It felt like the worst of my COVID days when I was fighting the virus. I would go to work, limp through, and then go home and crash. I slept from right after work until the next day for work, waking up for an hour or so to eat dinner and then go back to sleep. And I wouldn't feel rested after, just tired and sore. 

I think between the miscarriage and the corona, my body has aged 10+ years in just the past few months. I ache. I am winded walking up stairs. I worry when I wake up that something new will hurt. But I am so grateful at how healthy I am because there were times when I was trying to breathe that I thought -if this gets worse, I can see why people don't live. I could feel it. I am a mass of sinew and bone with skin stretched over as my brain pushes my flesh to turn the head, to move the fingers, to pull air into the lungs. I could feel the immune response and the attack as it would rest in one of my joints for a day, holding that joint captive in agony until migrating to a different joint or vertebrate in my upper or lower back. I try to feel the air as it passes through my windpipe, down into my lungs and I wonder if I'm getting enough carbon dioxide out in order to keep my brain functioning. I wonder if walking would tax this body to the point of breaking and I may pass out. 

I take a lot of baths now. I try to relax or stretch, but nothing changes. So I cry a little, I let myself feel it and I let my mind wonder to -what if this never goes away. And then I set that thought down and walk away. 

Spending 2 weeks at home and not going anywhere is not something I would have ever thought to do. That time helped me realize I need to take time to not do anything. I do wish I could have had that time off and not felt like a steaming pile of garbage, but maybe not being able to do anything was an extra vacation on top of not going to work. It was a way for me to forgive myself for not vacuuming or for learning every character on my kid's favorite show. It was ok for me to have all my projects that I started just sit there and not get finished. 

I'm still recovering. I hope I'm on the mend. The pain is in my left shoulder and my right foot right now. Maybe in the morning it will have migrated and set up camp somewhere else. I am not sure how long I will feel this way. I do know that I hope that vaccine works cause I never want to feel this way again. Well, except for the second dose....... ugh.  

I Miss You

It's been awhile since I've had obsessive thoughts about something or someone. I used to fall hard for people who didn't return the feeling and my brain would repeat over and over events that happened as if there was something I could unlock and figure out how to make them love me. I would repeat a song over and over again in a sad attempt to unlock the secrets behind the hook, the beat, the tone, one part of the quiver in the voice that could free me from my obsession on repeat. I found the only way to get a song out of my head is to play it. But then sometimes that song needs played over and over again to fully process and push through that feeling. 

Right now I am pushing through a super sappy song that reminds me of heartbreak from forever ago and for you readers who would like to fall along and perhaps get it stuck in your head too, it's I Miss You by Incubus. It's pretty much 1999 sappy rock ballad to the max, with that masculinity that is fringed with a twinge of heartache without having to go into the typical rap rock to get the point across. There's a part that pulls between the chorus and the verse that drones on with voices and then falls away that just solidifies that longing feeling of walking away from something or someone that you love but still holds on. 

And I'm fairly convinced that I've completely lost my mind. I feel like someone took pruning loppers to where my spine is in order to separate my head from the rest of my body. Or maybe it's just pinched and my body is numb but my brain is stuck on repeat in the sappiest point I've been in forever. 

I can't even describe what I am missing. It's just this overarching feeling of floating through my days completely detached or in shock and I feel like my feet aren't even on the ground or the ground doesn't even exist.

I need to put a seed in the ground and watch it grow. I need to look forward. I am pulling myself back into this slow moving, slightly distorted, guitar driven whispers of something that I thought I had. When life splinters and branches into a different direction, it's hard not to think of the possibilities if life had gone right instead of taking a sharp left. 

It's funny how I sit down with people and talk through their obsessive thoughts like I know what the fuck I'm talking about. Perhaps if I had someone to talk to, I could process these irrational thoughts. I'm not even sure what I miss other than that feeling of security, like I know what I'm doing or where I'm going. I can't explain. I'm 5 months sober. Maybe I'm shifting again. Maybe life shifted and I'm having trouble keeping up. Maybe fucking mercury is in retrograde. Maybe I need to let go of thinking I have my shit together and be honest with other people that I don't. Maybe I can say my head has detached from my body but I'm still walking around like I know where I'm going. Maybe I'm jealous of people who don't care. Maybe I'm getting too much sleep and my dreams are wandering far into the depths of places I don't want to go. 

I don't fucking know. I do hope I finally hit the point where I can listen to something else. I hope I can unlock the puzzle of what is bothering me enough to make it stop. I want to make it stop. I need to move on instead of missing something that I cannot go back to. 

Devastation, but Maybe Cautious Optimism

 It has been a rough few weeks.

I thought I had my shit together. I got thrown into an internship that I had been studying for but still felt ill prepared at a site that seemed a bit low on staff. I took on as much as I could and LOVED the work. I was given a lot of freedom and I ran things the way I wanted, meeting with my supervisor once a week just to make sure I was on the right track.

Our numbers kept going down and then suddenly all staff get pulled in and told our site is closing. I was devastated, but wearing masks is helpful in situations such as these. The paper ones aren't as good at hiding tears as the cloth ones, but I tried to hold it together. We were then instructed to go out and put on a solid front for the clients who would have to merge with a different site. They were devastated. I was devastated. I was told that HR would talk to me within the next few days.

I'm not sure how to articulate the stress of having 3 years of classes hanging over my head with required hours to graduate in December being linked to where I was hired on for health insurance for me and my kid. It's a lot of debt to lose my internship now. I was also hurt and worried for the girls. One client came into my office who was in her final few weeks and broke down that she couldn't finish without me. My boss said she can't say much, but can share that I'm not leaving and I'll be around to help.

It was a quick move, two days later I was sitting on a couch in a different residential setting after teaching my final group therapy session at the old site. It was like the first day on the job but with 5 scared people looking to me for guidance when I was still adjusting to the change as well.

The new site was a different from a theoretical standpoint. It's weird to know this and look back at the times I was in counseling and guess what theoretical standpoint each of those counselors was operating from. This site is big into AA. I come from trauma based supervision. The clients that moved from my site quickly noticed the difference.
AA and 12 steps seem to be more methodical. Trauma based dives deep and asks why or "where did this idea come from?" I learned to dig and find the source. When you use drugs for so many years, you don't really think "why do I use?" It's a valid question and one of my favorite to ask. I found that once I pulled out as many reasons that kept them in active use, I could start knocking them down with facts, brain chemistry, assertiveness training, and thought-feeling correlation through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) but they had to come up with their list first. 
12 step programs walks everyone through a series of questions and pushes going to meetings and reading the "Big Book." 

Anyway, I worked my way in and was so nervous the first few times I led group. My previous supervisor just let me go and said she would let me know if I was doing something wrong. These supervisors are much more involved, which of course makes me anxious. 

What I learned is that over the past few months and feverishly reading, I've absorbed a shit ton of material and can lead 3 hour discussions easily without having to rely on handouts as much. I learned that engaging people is an art, some people who initially hate you may eventually change their mind, and an easy way to make friends at a new place is to take the most hated job from all your coworkers while not complaining. The only problem is that once I took the most dreaded job, they started to expect it and HR called again and placed me at another site.

Now was my turn to be devastated. I had my few clients left from the other site, but I had been running about a group per day with the other residents. I adjusted to their program and worked my way into it. My new site director paid me a compliment which really helped reaffirm that I like working in this field and especially with women. 

My last day at that site was so perfect. I got to run music therapy with my 4 favorite songs and then go into how to meditate before bed to let go of the day. I did notes, chatted with residents, chatted with staff, tried to hide my tears, played volleyball with staff and clients, and then sat in the living room with a client I am very close to and had such a good conversation while other clients came and sat around and listened. 

My heart is breaking right now. I wish I could have stayed. I didn't know I would like working with that population so much but the pain from their stories and how they were trying to get through it by destroying themselves is so amazing to work through. 
I walked away from there with part of my heart still with them. And I thought that maybe I'm not a good fit for this job because I'm too much of an empath. But fuck, that's a hard way to leave someone after I've invested so much mental energy into figuring out where they are coming from and how to help them stop destroying themselves in spite of their own best efforts. I have this fear in the pit of my stomach, this dull ache all over like walking away was not right or that there was something more I could have done to fight to work at that site. 
But I got transferred. I picked the available position within the company and in a few days, I get to see how things go. It's going to be different, but maybe I'll learn different things. 

I think one of my clients was poking at me for leaving her. I wasn't sure what she wanted from me and she is the one I warned about only being around temporarily. I don't know how I'm going to go from seeing someone every day and having such long talks about everything that is going on in her world to...  nothing. 
I'm struggling with what I can and what I cannot control. I know she needs to stand on her own two feet, but this is like telling her that and then taking the rug out from underneath her. I understand why she was poking at me. She was wondering if I was still alive and in there and trying to help her. It's just making me miserable now, but I know the other staff at that site will be fine. She is a bit dramatic at times, but her life has been pretty turbulent so I understand. 
I just want to reach out but I'm not sure how or why. She has a long way to go in recovery and I was only one tiny piece of it. I cannot hold her hand all the time, but I feel like I'm walking away far too soon. 
I only hope that she falls back and regroups. 

I guess I look back at the people who made a huge impact on my life and I see them in different time zones of my life. I look back at the good and the bad events like time stamps and scars I hold onto. I hope she keeps the good parts and builds on them. I hope she stays well. 

I prefer when clients graduate out of the program. I've been able to better walk away knowing that I've done everything I could to work through things that were holding them back. I don't feel like I was finished and I had to walk away. 

I wish them all well. I'm not sure what my next chapter looks like. I am trying to stay optimistic.