Triggggggered

So I am sitting here after being checked in by the very young and kind front desk lady.  I swear the vibe in there is very similar to an airport terminal awaiting to board an aircraft and I'm hoping through that door is a trip to another place, another moment from this one..
It's always a little rough to sit in the OBGYN waiting rooms.  There is always an over abundance of expectant women with their loving husbands waiting to see ultra sounds of their little ones.

Wouldn't that be cool.

But on the contrary some are just there for their yearly, you can always tell because they look a little less tense.

Me, I'm just waiting for relief.

It seems to take eternity, especially when you are nervous.  I am trying to conceal my worry with writing at this very moment. I am back to see Dr. P today because I am to receive trigger point injections again.  I have previously wrote in regards to this and still never seem to remember the exact emotions I feel.

They called my name and it felt in a brief moment like an echo. I got up to head to my destination.

The first step is always blood pressure and weight.  I was talking so much to mask my nerves that the machine wouldn't take and she finally had to kindly tell me to stop talking.
It was normal.
Then I was weighed. 116.  Seems I've lost quite a few pounds.

We head back to the room and the kind nurse asks me roughly 237492349 questions on what I'm allergic to and how I feel.
After we had gotten to know each other like a script I've recited so many times that I've committed it to memory, she did what happens every time,

"Please undress from the waist down, someone will be right in"

I take off my sweat pants and underwear and neatly fold them on the chair.  I do something I never do; I kept my socks on.  As you well know, I don't do socks when I take my clothes off. It stresses me out.  But today seemed different.

I laid back and looked to my right and there was a picture of a setting sun on the water.
My destination.

I began to think of something my father said today to me, Embrace the suck....
Lately there has been a lot of suck in my life. The feeling lately of being taken for granted.  The feeling of putting myself into all I do and having nothing for myself.  I put every single ounce of all who I am in my job, in my relationship and in other random little parts of my life.
It's been so rough of me mentally. Very rough. Not sleeping. Not eating.
I've shut down in all aspects of my life.
Except one.

In the room, I kind of feel tears welling up in my eyes and I began to pray the Hail Mary and the Lord's Prayer, back to back, in a whisper because it's just for Him and I.

There is a knock at the door,
"Come in"

It wasn't Dr. P it was her PA, we will call her Dr. T.  Well Dr. T is this super skinny, beautiful, soft spoken little angel.  I really wanted to ask her where she got her skirt from.

She came in with a nurse who had the best resting bitch face I had ever seen in my life, and the only time she opened her mouth it was to ask if I wanted to hold her hand.

Dr. T placed little x's on my body to pin point each area she was going to insert the injections.
There were at the time 9 sharpied X's on my body.

She then asked me the most horrifying thing I've ever heard in my entire human life.
"Would you like an internal shot as well"

Excuse me...what...

My face must have looked horrified, the only words that could leave my lips were,
"That's a thing...."

She began to explain how it would really help my condition, but as she asked me the 1.25" needle was in the nurses hands and I couldn't even imagine putting that inside of me or wanting to even remotely do that at all.
It was a no from me dog.

I told her I would think about it for the next round.

I was all prepped and I was laying back becoming anxious again and I finally looked at that beautiful  RBF and said please hold my hand.

The first few are always the worse. But the lidocaine takes control and the last few you feel nothing.  The soreness is coming though. We decided on 10 shots due to the amount of serum left in the vial this time.

After she finishes, I lay there and she tells me to not get up too fast. Move when I am ready.
I don't cry this time.

I have three more appointments scheduled, two being in the month of December.

I have found through all of my reflection and inner thoughts that I have been putting everything under the sun over myself: my feelings, my mental health, my physical health, my sanity.

I matter too.
God I matter too.

I'm worn so thin that I have just shut down.
How do you come back from that.
I just need to breathe.

God I matter too.

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance: noun

the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.

Today is a day that I cannot forget.

I am writing it so late because I wanted to make sure I knew what my thoughts meant and how I feel about today.

One year ago was the surgery that changed my life.

Today-

I was walking through the park with my love Lane, my beautiful dog, that has been their for me as an emotional support throughout my transformation.

As I spoke previously in regards to her, I picked out my Lane during the pinnacle of my break up with my ex that I was living with.

She was suppose to selfishly fill my void of love that I was no longer getting.

Which is crazy now that I think about it because I wasn't actually getting the love I desired/deserved any ways.

But anyways, we were walking through the park on this exquisite afternoon.

79 degrees, sunny, a light breeze; utter transcendence, especially for February.

I began to think about the trees and their existence. It was weird, so I stopped.

I thought about where I was this day last year. I was in a hospital bed.

I remember that this exact moment last year, I was in a hospital bed was so high on morphine that I knew the only thing I needed to do was press the bright green button to make things disappear.

Or at least help forget that I had a catheter in.

As I passed through the trees deep in my thoughts, I looked out on people there at the park. They were running, playing on the play ground, people were laying in hammocks, people were walking their dogs, and people were walking as a family with their babies in strollers.

I thought about them as individuals. Living souls. Students taking a break from class to enjoy a day that could have been stressful due to a test, a young girl going on a run desiring to be skinnier, a man reading on a table trying to find peace.

We all have something in common. We have all different frames of reference. We have all been through something. No one can look at me and see the road I have traveled.

People don't look at me and know my story. And I cannot look at these people and know their stories.

It's impossible.

I could nerd out and look at statistics and say the CDC says nearly 1 in 5 women have been raped so there was at least 5 of us there.

I could say according to the Cancer Research page 50% people will be diagnosed with cancer so that's, at least, 15 people there or someone they know.

Everyone has something. I remember when my biggest problem was, "does this shirt make me look fat"..

I fixate on other things to avoid this.

My favorite book in the whole world was my favorite book long before this. All of this.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower. (Not the movie. I don't even want to talk about that movie)

This book made me feel things that I can never put in my own words. I don't feel like I am clever enough to say the things I feel in a way that is poetic enough to draw justice to the actual feeling.

Through all my feelings today this is how I feel about where I am mentally,

"I think if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it won't change the fact that they are upset. And even if some one else has it much worse, that doesn't change the fact that you have what you have."

I no longer feel sorry for myself. I did for too long. I have for too long. I do wish things were simple again. Simple, back when walking through the park was a way to get to the swing set and I would just pump my legs up and down and no longer care if I didn't get the job, if he didn't call me back, if I didn't have bills to pay, if I didn't care that she didn't want to be my friend.

I wish that. But you can't go back.

They don't tell you what could happen because, people pray everywhere that it doesn't. But it does.

The best thing you can do is figure out how to swim against the rushing current and pray that you don't drown.

This day has changed me forever. I lost a part of myself, but in return I gained my life. I gained a perspective about others that I never knew existed and when you become less selfish you gain that.

I will never forget today. I will never forget how I felt. I will never forget how I feel. I will never forget what I learned. I will never forget who I lost. I won't ever forget not because I don't want to. It's because I can't forget.

Maybe it is sad that these are now memories. And maybe it's not sad. 

At a Loss

Why.

How.

I don't understand.

Today, I attended a funeral.  One that I would have hoped to never have to attend.
My dear friend. One of the closest girlfriends I have had in years.
She lost her baby.

He was fighting an uphill battle from the very beginning.
He was a strong one, though.

What do you say.  What do you do in these situations.  How do you help.  

There is no right answer, and most of the time, you can do nothing.
You let them know you love them, and you are there for them.


It's this feeling of trying to figure out how they feel and try to do right by them.

I can never feel what they feel.  Only those who have lost can understand, kind of.

Everyone's pain is different; everyone's loss is different.

I try and imagine; I can't.

They are such good people.  How does something like this happen to good people.

I don't understand.

I have been struggling with faith for sometime now, especially with motherhood being ripped from my hands, but through all this, I can only feel that this little, innocent baby was taken to Heaven.
I have to believe that.
I have to believe that he was called up for a bigger reason than any of us could possibly understand.
I have to believe that there is more and that the pure existence isn't just a cruel joke that means nothing.  

This life is not about just happiness; is it about finding joy even in the hardest of times.  We live this life on earth to understand and learn what it is to love, and what it is to feel pain.
You cannot truly have one without the other.

I was told when I was younger that God tests the strong ones to see if we can persevere.
That was a way to push forward and I have to believe this is true.

I pray for all who have ever gone through this.  I pray no one ever has to endure a casket that small.  I pray that any one who does have to go through something so tragic, keeps the strong faith and love that I witnessed between those two who lost their child.

I pray that she knows that, even though her son was given to God so early,  she is still a mother.
I have to try to understand.

Trip To The Vagina Doctor

In honor of going to see my gynecologist over 15 times in the last 5 months; let's talk about the dreaded adventures to the vagina doctor.

 Going to see your OBGYN is the most terrifying, required adventure on earth.

Once a year, if you are lucky to only go once a year, as a woman, you are required to go see this man, or woman that you pay to violate you.

For science.

I remember my very first adventure to see the gynecologist.  I was 17 years old.  I wanted to start taking birth control because, back when I use to  bleed once a month, it use to be the worst experience of my whole.

It was like a real life murder.  From the inside out. All of my insides hated me and I would have to get into this fetal position and pray to all things that were holy that I was going to go to church more, if Jesus would just take the pain away.

He didn't, so I had to go see this woman about some pills.

I wasn't ready for a man to analyze what I had to work with.
I still didn't exactly know what I was doing with it anyways, so no need for a man to stare at it and professionally tell me about my downstairs business.

I can't for the life of me remember her name, but she was a military doctor.  She was tall, dark, and handsome.  She was my commentator, and coach.  She would tell me what she was doing when she was doing it, and then would tell me how good of a job I was doing.

I wasn't doing anything, other than staring up at this poster of a beach to tell me to escape to somewhere else and to make sure I never made eye contact with her.

It was anything but enjoyable.

Nowadays, I am a lot less awkward about it.

I have since been to multiple doctors to see my business.  
And I love my current one now.  I trust her with all my goods.

I can't say I am still not awkward about it.

How could you not be.

My post-operation meeting was last Tuesday, and it went really well.  Everything is going according to plan.
Minus the whole fact that my scar tissue is not going to go down.  She told me that I could go to a plastic surgeon to fix it.

This news did cause me to go into a full on panic attack because this is my worst nightmare.
She basically told me that this "cliff" I have on my stomach is
PERMANENT.

I would never see a plastic surgeon for my stomach. I would go for some better like boobs or bigger lips, but not a tummy tuck.  They called it a mommy tuck.

A mommy tuck.

What the hell kind of shit is that.  

I guess I am going to start looking for high-waisted bikini bottoms.  This is bullshit.

Cut me some slack body.
Haven't I made enough sacrifices? 

Sweating in Church

So yesterday was Ash Wednesday.

Okay, before I get started, I must explain a little about myself.
I grew up in a Catholic family.
I, even, taught religious education.
We were hoping it was going to give me some guidance.

I attend as often anymore.
It's not that, I don't believe in something bigger than me, or I think that organized religion is a crock of shit.  I just have too many questions, and growing up in the Catholic religion; asking questions was not exactly acceptable.

If I go to church now a days, it is to please my mother.  She is super religious, and if it makes her happy, I am there.
So as my parents relatively go every weekend, I go on Jesus' Birthday, Mother's day, Easter, and that's about it.
The longest services, naturally.
I have no particular interest in the priests at the church I attend, I mean they are stand up dudes but, their english is not so great, and for someone who has to watch movies with subtitles, we can see my struggles.

I didn't realize until we pulled up that, I had a hole in my shirt right over my boob exposing my red sports bra.
Yeah I am surprised I didn't catch fire when I walked in yesterday.
I like to keep it as classy as possible.

At the service, I was sitting there in my own thoughts like I normally do. I try not to sing because it's very similar to a dying cat, so I like to spare myself from as much judgement as possible.
I make eye contact with the alter boy who looks to be about 16.
I weirdly look at him because, he looks identical to the guy I have been seeing, so I try to keep my thoughts as Christ-like as possible.

After the singing, the standing, the kneeling, (sounds like a Weird Al Version of a Jack Johnson song) We get to the gospel, like I said earlier, the english...not so good.
So I try and listen as hard as possible,  they mention something about hypocrites and the synagogs, and the praying in your room.
I could relate.
When I pray,  I talk to God like he is my homie, I'm like...
Sup God, It's Kelsey again.  Thank you again for not listening to my prayers back when I wanted to marry that drug-dealer.   But I was just seeing what's up, and if like you were having a good day but I seriously need a favor..

Well we then go up for Ashes.
After this goes down, and I am back at my seat; I am in my own thoughts again.
As I am thinking there, I look up and there is this little baby, probably about 6 months old (that age could be completely off; I have no perception of age), and she is cute.
And I don't normally think babies are super cute that early, but this one was different.
She was wearing a red shirt with a heart on it, and a red Gerbera daisy in her hair.
She looked dead in my eyes, and I looked into hers.
She turned her head when her mother, who was stunning, kept walking by.
It's like she stole a part of my soul.

I swear, I do not have baby fever.  I do not want a baby right now.  I am not trying to trick some dude into getting me pregnant.
(That last one is funny...Because you know....it's impossible...)

But, I think something takes you over, and you start recognizing things more when something is called to your attention, or if you are looking for it.
For example: A red car.  You notice more red cars if you are looking for them.

I think you get the picture.

This baby looked at me, and I looked at her, and I realized that I might never have that situation happen to me, you know carrying my midget person that has like half my DNA at church up to get ashes.
 really don't ever worry about babies in my every day life, and when I do I write about it.

I straight up ugly cried in church.

No single tears, I mean it was quiet, but I sobbed with a lot of very visible tears.  It was awful.
I couldn't stop.
So at this point I am wearing a shirt that is  too large on me with a hole in it exposing my bra, and I am sobbing.
As a whole, I looked like a needed more Jesus, then the service was offering.

I guess it could have been worse, I normally fall asleep in church, so I guess I am moving up in the world.

Pray for me.