Well, it was easy to name this post.  I truly wanted to do a Thanksgiving Day post, but I couldn’t seem to get the words onto the page.  So, here I am at the end of a long Black Friday that went pretty well (or so I thought) writing about my insanity.   I hope that if you read my posts, you don’t feel sorry for me.  I’m not looking for pity.  I’m looking for answers, and in a way that I don’t understand, writing this blog helps me.  It seems to have a mind of its own as I can’t always write about the topics that I want.  I’m learning to just go with whatever appears on the screen.

I am listening to Bruce, and I am covered in essential oils with names such as Valor, Peace & Calming, Frankincense, and Lavender.  Don’t even try to tell me that oils don’t work because I promise you they do.  Thirty minutes ago I was in the throes of a hysterical crying jag that popped up out of the blue.  It wasn’t a pretty cry; it was quite ugly.  In fact it was CRAZY, and my oils played a large part in stopping it.  I’m fairly certain that if someone had walked in on me, they would have either slapped me or tried to sedate me.  Thankfully it is just me, Sam, and Max here in my tiny house, and they don’t seem to mind my insanity.   Another reason to love animals:  hysteria doesn’t make them as uncomfortable as it does most humans!

You want to know what I was crying about???  I just kept thinking (and saying), “I want to “GO HOME!  I WANT TO GO HOME!!!! Please, can I just GO HOME?!”  But guess what?  I AM home.  I am in my parent’s RV in my hometown basically parked in my parent’s yard.  But it doesn’t seem like home.  Everyone always tells you that your home is NOT a house or things, but the people you love.  Well, the man who grounded me and kept me from floating away is gone.  And the mother who always “kept me real” while still believing in me is gone.  Fortunately, my dad has always been solid as a rock for me; however, he is struggling with his own great loss right now.  He is trying to help me, as I am trying to help him, but neither of us is fully able to escape our own pain.   Now, I believe strongly my husband and my mom are not truly gone.  They are here with me and always will be, but that is not enough to keep me from wafting in and out these days.  I need something solid.  I have become unmoored or unhinged or adrift….one of those words surely fits.

I have never been the most organized person, but I could always find things, and I like things to be clean and relatively neat.  I don’t like clutter, and I like things to have a place.  I can’t find a darn thing right now.  Truly.  This lack of organization in my life is NOT helping my craziness.  Nothing I have has a place anymore except all those things that are still in storage in Houston.  The ironic part of that is I don’t even know for sure what things are in storage because I had so many kind people helping me clean out the house quickly to avoid as much mold as possible.  Since I didn’t pack most of the boxes, I’m not exactly sure what survived and what didn’t.  This isn’t a long term problem.  I will find a place for my remaining “stuff” and get settled and organized somewhere sometime.  It just isn’t super helpful right now when I’m so disoriented already anyway.  I feel like it might help to have something concrete to hang onto.  Like a dining room table I could set with my grandmother’s china or a bookshelf with favorite pictures and books, or a garden I planted myself.  But maybe those things wouldn’t matter in the least.  I would most likely still be just as lost.

I blame all of this on Harvey.  In fact, I blame most bad things on Harvey.  Everything floated away in the flood.  All that rain just washed away my life.  It seems silly but also true.  Of course, I do have these incredible memories of the approximately 36 hours that we were in our neighbor’s garage apartment watching out the window as our house and neighborhood flooded.  As awful as that was, B and I were together.  During those moments, we were okay.  The stem cell transplant was successful at getting rid of the leukemia as far as we knew, and Bobby didn’t have pneumonia.  We had a cat in bag, a dog in a crate, and great neighbors that we got to know and love.  There were a few tears, but also a whole lot of prayers, love, gratitude, and laughter in that tiny space.  It was less than 3 months ago.  Amazing.  Less than 3 months ago I had a completely different life.

For some reason tonight, the song that I keep hearing in my head is Jimmy Buffett’s “He Went to Paris”.  If you are familiar with this song, you might be as confused as I am as to why the song that fits my frame of mind perfectly tonight is a song about an 86 year old war veteran looking for answers….to questions that bothered him so.  Of course, it IS Black Friday.  Maybe that explains everything.  That and Harvey.

Jimmy Buffett “He Went To Paris”