8:56pm June 12, 2014

Thanks to everyone.

Who has been so nice about the family stuff. I guess it’s something everyone goes through if they don’t die first. Sort of like everyone’s going to become disabled if they don’t die first. So dealing with other people’s illness and potential death is part of not dying, meaning it’s part of living.

I’m starting to get feelings creeping through the numbness. And some of them are things like “who or what else can I lose?” And some of them are worry. And some of them are just this agitated stressy feeling. Which means that the dexamethasone is working and I haven’t run myself out of cortisol yet, which is good. Going into an adrenal crisis because my dad has cancer would not be good for me or anyone else in my family. Seems like rule number one is don’t add to anyone else’s stress.

Laura was in the ER today with a probably TIA. She’s probably still there awaiting brain scan results. She wasn’t going to tell me because she was afraid of making me freak out about losing “everyone”, but I told her I was kind of beyond worry at that point anyway. Not because of too little to worry about, but because my worry centers overloaded and shut down sometime last night.

I’ve been having strange dreams. Dreams that I normally associate with severe illness and hospitalization. It only dawned on me today, that these are dreams associated with death hanging around. Only it’s not me that death is hanging around, it’s hanging around my family now. So I’m getting the side-effects of noticing the presence of death, without the illness. (Death hanging around doesn’t mean that a person is about to die, immediately. It just means it’s possible, more possible than usual.)

So I’m having strange, intense dreams about landscapes that don’t exist and have never existed. But the dreams are about real places, at the same time. It’s just that the places in real life don’t look how they looked in the dreams. It’s the feeling of the place that’s real, the looks are just mind-noise trying to fill in the blanks. The places I was seeing were places relevant to the lives of my parents, rather than the dreams I normally have when it’s me that’s close to death, where it’s places relevant to my own life.

Places mean everything to me. They tell me things about myself, things about my family, things about who we are and where we’re from and what we mean. I don’t know why I get such intense place-dreams around death, but I do, and they’re far from meaningless. Often they show me something I need to be concentrating on.

Nobody makes it out of life alive.

Nobody dies alone.

The only way to die feeling alone, is to cut yourself off from love. To be too afraid, or too hateful, and your fear or hate becomes a barrier, and then you can die feeling alone.

But love is there when you die. Love is everywhere. And death is an opportunity to be open to that love in a way that you can’t, when you’re alive. And to fail to take that opportunity, will hurt you badly.

I don’t know when I realized that nobody dies alone.

Nobody dies alone because nobody is ever alone. The entire world is around you, ‘animate’ and 'inanimate’, and even 'inanimate’ things are company.

But it’s more than that.

Nobody dies alone because death is there. I don’t know what death is, exactly. I know I see it as a bright light, so clear you can’t see it, so bright you can’t help but perceive it, so suffused in love that it can’t be anything other than friendly. But it’s powerful, and it scares people, and people can shut themselves off to it. I don’t recommend doing so. You need to surrender to that love in the end.

And love is the only thing that will get anyone through death.

Love is the only way for the dying. Love is the only way for the survivors.

That’s what I have to do not to drown in terror and despair and depression, is to love. To love my family unconditionally and totally. That will help all of us. That’s all you can do.

Even if you’re potentially losing your father, your mother, and your grandmother all at once. I’ve watched all of their health deteriorating this year, I just… somehow I never put it all together until today, that all three of them might not be around much longer.

And now Laura’s having strokes and TIAs and stuff. I don’t think she’s in anywhere near as much danger, but it still makes me uneasy.

I’m glad I can feel again, a little. When I was younger and crises made me go numb, I thought it made me a monster. I’d lick my hands and spread the water over my face in an attempt to cry. And when that didn’t work I’d feel more like a monster, and a horrible faker at having human emotions. But now I’m learning that this severe numbness is just a severe stress response, and to treat it as seriously as any other stress response. I’m beginning to feel, around the edges. And honestly, feeling feels better, than disinterestedly watching Spike Lee movies while crocheting stuff I am barely interested in either. Although that was passing the time.

It makes me cry when people post lots of redwood pictures and I realize they might have had me in mind. And when people tell me little bits of supportive things. I may not be able to respond to everything (and please don’t expect me to respond to other sorts of things – I either will or I won’t, and I don’t control what I’m able to do right now) but I read everything and each message makes a difference. Don’t feel obligated, or anything, but thank you so much to everyone who did. It’s all the little things people on tumblr can do to show we care without doing much at all, that makes it so easy to show it sometimes, when it can be so hard to show caring in other ways. I’m normally horrible at showing I care about people, but tumblr has made it easier.

Thank you, again, seriously. I don’t know how I’m getting through this but I know I will. And nobody makes it out of here alive, they say.