life

Life is hard. And sometimes, a lot of times its not fair. When my life changed I let go of a lot. I lost a lot. I now see a lot of what I lost was given up voluntarily. By me. I gave up my hope. I gave up my dreams. I choose to focus on what was gone, to focus on the injustice. I didn't lose myself in the fire, I gave it away. I chose for it to be that way. It was not taken. It was surrendered. I felt myself at the whims of God. I cried for what was, what had been. That's then. I'm trying to take it back now. Tomorrow I can choose differently. Tomorrow is not then, its not today. Tomorrow I can choose to make this a new day in my life. I surrendered my will, my control to the smoke that filled the walls and the flames that consumed them. I am in charge. Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow I will choose not to feel sorry for myself. I will choose to smile. Life is hard. Life is frequently unfair. Life is not about avoiding the storms its about learning to dance in the rain. I want to dance again.

new pictures

These are the most recent picture taken earlier this afternoon. It may not seem like much but I hang onto each improvement as a lifeline, one small step closer to the end. I know this won't all magically go away the minute we move back in, but it begins a new chapter of healing, I hope.



these are a little dark, but the garage is almost totally done! Of course there is no electricity in the house yet, so I can't get a clear picture just yet, but it gives you an idea.

Brand new railing!!! Makes it look so much more finished, you know?

This one is where the fridge will go, eventually.

The kitchen...in progress. The cabinets look really nice so far. It still seems like they have so much to do we'll never get there. That's not true of course, but sometimes it feels that way.

getting through

The hard part, I have found, is not the event itself, it's when the long term everyday life kicks in, and you have to get through the day to day, dealing with the fall out the event caused. The rest of the world has forgotten and moved on, and yet the mess still remains for you to deal with. The world expects you to go on, and yet you want to scream "can't you see everything is different now?" But no, to them its not. Life plods onward and we are expected to continue to move through it as I always have. I am different now, not one of us will move through this unscathed, and we are still in the process of finding out who were are on the other side of this thing. Gabe seems to have bounced better than any of us, he just smiles and goes on with his day. Pat refuses to leave the house unless he absolutely has to, and mom had regressed to the point of being old. Then there's me, lost in the maze and trying to find an outlet for the resentment and anger that sometimes bubbles up just beneath the surface. It happens less often now, and I find better ways to deal with it as it does. I don't know if that's dealing with it, or just learning to accept it as a part of my life. I look at my son, and wonder who he is now. Where is the child I raised who wanted to go somewhere every minute of the day, who now wants to stay home. Part of me thinks, God why aren't we past this yet? I can't help but wonder how long this is supposed to take? I find myself looking for the light at the end of my tunnel, and there is none, at least not yet. I know in my head this too shall pass, but my heart is not convinced yet.

can't catch a break

I often wonder what I have done to deserve the path I am currently travelling. I am now dealing with Patricks school as they do not want to deal with him and his issues. He has been diagnosed with PTSD and we were trying some meds to combat the anxiety and the side effects were creating problems. Their response every time is to call me to come get him. This solves nothing. They don't want to set plans in place for the bahvavior they want to slap labels on him and not listen. Thankfully he has a great therapist who is helping me fight them and get what he needs. I'm so tired of life being hard. I'm so tired of constant roadblocks. I'm so tired of no one thing in my life right now coming the way I need it to. I'm just tired. But tomorrow is another day and I will get up and continue to fight for my boy because there is no one else willing to fight with me. My friends keep me moving. My love for my son is my only motivation. I can only hope I know what I'm doing.

new pictures

We have new pictures of progress to post! We have no flooring, and we have no railings around the stairs, but its slowly starting to look like a house again. The colors shown here are not totally true to life, since its only a cell phone used to take the pictures, but it gives you an idea of how its going to look. We're picking flooring out on Monday and I get so nervous that I'm going to pick it wrong, and we'll be stuck with ugly forever. Its slowly slowly starting to look like a real house.

This is my room, you get an idea of the blue on the walls. Its sort of a blue grey color.

This is Pat's room! He picked the orange out himself. I wasn't sure how I felt about it as first but its so sunny, I think it works.

Gabe's room, I love this shade of blue and he picked it himself.

this is the bathroom, upstairs, no paint of fixtures yet but at least its not black anymore!

Look for more pictures tomorrow!

me and Him

Someone asked me recently to go to church with him, and I said no. I considered it briefly and then decided that I just couldn't do it. not yet. I find myself wrestling with this still, although I hoped I would find some peace with this by now. I guess my schedule is a little different than the one Goad has planned for me. I found myself actually talking to Him this weekend for the first time in many months. I had thought maybe I was making progress with my anger. Then this morning, as I ponder the very difficult path my oldest has chose for himself, I found that same anger right there waiting for me. I think about what the last 6 months have been like, and what changes have taken place within my family as a direct result of it. Cause apparently, my life wasn't nearly hard enough already, someone felt the overwhelming need to make it just that much harder. As a single mom, dealing with my mom and work and school and kids and therapy, I really really needed something else to compete for my attention. I've taken some knocks in the last 36 years, some harder than others. After a short but unhappy marriage, and finding the inner me enough to walk away, to save myself, I thought things were getting better. I was in school, Pat was in therapy, and things were starting to show signs of life again. I actually believed the worst was behind us and all the hard work was going to start to pay off. And then, just as my back was turned and I was starting to feel pretty good, the rug was yanked out from under me, and we all got pushed back further then we had been when we began. Now we not only have to make up the progress we made, we have to do it damaged and hurt. don't get me wrong, we will get through this, there is simply no other choice. I'm just pissed that I have to. People have asked me how I can blame God for this, they say He had nothing to do with it. I don't see anyone else in charge around here, do you? Bottom line, I don't understand. People say to accept, that God knows what He's doing. This is God's will? This mind numbing, gut wrenching, angry, bitter place I'm walking through, is God's will? Why? Why is this my path? I find myself asking again and again, why this happened, not just to me, but to one of the sweetest and most sensitive boys I've ever had the privilege to know. and really, I think that's where the anger actually stems from. I don't really care what I go through, I know I can handle it. But this time, this time God decided to pick on one of my kids. And that's something I just can't accept. The real anger stems from the fact that they are hurting and I can't see anyone else to blame. Patrick and Gabe did not deserve this. They've done nothing. Patrick had enough to deal with on his own, this is too much. I can only hope God knows what He's doing, cause it sure as hell doesn't look like it from down here.

i wonder

Does where we've been color who we are now, or does the person we are currently remain pretty much the same no matter what sort of much we wander through on the way through life? I have often asked myself over the course of this particular bump in the road who I am, feeling very much like Jean Val Jean in Les Mis. Who am I? But now I have to ask if I ever really knew myself before this. I surrounded myself with my things, the little minutes that make up our small universe, comforted by the contents of my room, my stuff. I was able to point to it, and say this is me, this place this space. Was I always in search of my self, or did I used to know and lost it because of the shift this event caused? Its brought to the surface many things I thought long gone, long since buried, and yet now I find myself wrestling with them again. what makes me who I am, who we all are? am I me because of my friends, or in spite of them? I can only give factual answers, I am a mom, an ex wife, a sister, a woman. what else? I am a survivor, and sometimes a warrior. I find myself looking back on who I was 6 months ago, passably contented with the status quo, and not knowing of I was lost then too, only turning my head so I couldn't see, wouldn't see. I think its vital in each of our journeys that we ask ourselves this question at least once, and find an answer we are content with. I need to know who am i now? Who was I then? maybe in order to answer the first question, I must answer the second. I don't think we will be able to automatically return to our former lives the minute we return to the house. The trust we had in the universe has been badly shaken, and that will not be restored overnight. Maybe not at all. Its just how it works. I will be seeking the new normal, and can only hope I like what I find when I get there.

opportunities

I got the rare opportunity this weekend to see myself through the eyes of my friends, through the lens of who I was years ago. Rarely do we get the chance to take stock of ourselves via other people eyes. I remember so clearly who I was in school, and one minute back on campus and I can feel that person start to bubble top the surface. She was young, and very naive, although she would have denied it at the time, thinking herself worldly and mature. I look at myself now, a little battle scarred, but wiser. I don't remember being afraid then, but I am now, sometimes. I fear what might be, I fear was was and has been. School was marked for me with long periods of abject silliness, and those memories still make me smile. Not to say there weren't some dark places along the way, but I had people around me that cared what happened to me. I never appreciated the value of those people until now. Some of them I still talk to, some have fallen by the wayside. When we left school we said we'd be friends forever, and that didn't happen with all of them. I miss those we have misplaced along the way. The ones that remain are all the more valuable because they remain, for now I see how fragile and fleeting we sometimes are in each others life. I would not have made it through some dark scary things without these people there. And yet, I like the person I am now, more than the girl there was, in some ways. I no longer care what the world thinks, and that girl cared too much. I know now what I can do, because I've done it, I am doing it. Those people are still by my side, still willing to listen, and because of that, because of them, I am still here. Only now I see them for the value they hold. I am starting to believe, I just might find my way through this morass, because of these people. In each of them is a peice of who I would like to be, who I hope to become, and I can take that with me now.

going home

I had hoped getting away from my life might give me some perspective on it. I had hoped time in the silence of my own head might allow me a break. In a way, I was right. Thursday was 9 hours of my own thoughts and it was a unusual experience to say the least. I cant remember the last time I have been left alone in any kind of silence. My kids are still waiting for me at home and the stress of my life is not being put on hold. I'm simply separated myself from it for a few days. Patrick is still acting badly, Gabriel is still missing mom, and my mom is still falling apart. Why did I do this trip this weekend? There was a fair amount of guilt over leaving in the first place, feeling as if I was running away from my family. If it weren't for my kids, I wouldn't want to go home at all. But I also know all I would be doing is running away, and as I have proven in the past, running away only postpones the problems, not really fixes them. Patrick has been diagnosed with PTSD, and hes on Zoloft now. I don't know how I feel about that. It has taken the edge off the anxiety, and for the first time since the fire, he feels his sad. And probably feels his angry although he hasn't voiced that yet. He seems to be getting worse, not better, and I keep hoping if I can hang on just one more day I can get us through this. All this falls on to my shoulders and I worry that I'm not up to the challenge. I can only hope I am. At this point all I'm hoping is the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train. I want to fix this, and I can't. Even after the dark place I went through in college, I do not ever remember feeling so helpless and in effective before now. I'm still looking for control. But, yet this weekend was key to my own sanity. I remembered to laugh this weekend. I remembered I love my friends, and that no matter how it may feel I am not alone in this process. Just as I would have theirs, they have mine. That thought alone could see me through some very dark places, for I fear this journey has a few miles yet to go before I sleep. With friends like mine, I can do this. I hope.