Home.

I love the life I lead. I love the (brave) new world I’ve built for myself here. I love everyone around me – all of these people I didn’t know four months ago, who are intertwined in my story now. I love the aspects of my life that didn’t exist before.

But I want to go home. Real home. Just for a few days.

For a few days I want to go to sleep in my old bed – a bed that knew more restless nights than restful ones. A bed that is soaked to the core and coated in memories of pain upon pain upon pain. A bed I used to lay in and dream about having the life I have now.

I want to go home, so I can crawl into that bed and cry.

I want to cry surrounded by walls that are used to containing my tears, walls that know how to stay standing in the face of whatever it is I’m feeling. I want to cry covered by the blankets that have kept out the cold, harsh reality and kept in my dreams when I just wasn’t strong enough to get up. I want to cry looking out the window and seeing the view I saw every time I cried until I went and upended my world four months ago.

I’m tired.

There, I said it. A word that I use all the time, still, but the implications of which I’ve been pretending no longer exist.

My (brave) new world is intense. I wouldn’t change a thing, but I feel physically, mentally and emotionally wrung out by all that has happened since August. I have everything I was hoping to have, everything is going so well, and being happy about that is exhausting me. I never stop moving. I never stop feeling. (I never stop feeling like I’m missing out on things, whether I spend time in my new world or my old world. I’m always torn between the two – I want to be in both at once.) I never stop missing people.

“I miss you.”

Tomorrow, I’ll go home. I’m so overwhelmed I just want to cry. I wouldn’t change a thing.

~~~

Ella

Song Quote:

Must be love on the brain, that’s got me feeling this way. -Love on the Brain, Rihanna

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Just Stop

Stop.

Stop the onslaught of time and how it rushes through your fingers like the sand you scoop by the sea.

Stop the pressure of the future that you can’t figure out and how it weighs on your mind all the time.

Stop doubting that you can and will do incredible things with your life and your talents and your passion for everything you love.

Stop feeling so small. Stop crying in the middle of the night, gasping for breath on your blue carpet because your life is not what you imagined it would be. Stop letting the fear get the better of you.

Just stop.

 

~~~

Life is the ups and the downs as much as it is the benign. I would never choose not to feel all of this, because all of this is what it’s all about. As always, I thank you for the kind comments you leave. You don’t even know me, and yet you know my lowest moments. Life is a journey and I’ve found myself with you along for the ride, and that is truly a gift.

Love,

Ella

 

Song Quote:

We’ve got younger faces than our hearts are letting on. -Novels, Rusty Clanton (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc5X66kFIMg)

A Cry Guide: For Your Pleasure

So you need a cry party?

A true crier needs no audience. Ladies, remember, cry for yourself and nobody else. If you don’t cry for yourself, who will?

Find the perfect time when you can be alone. Purposely leave your tissues far away to add the lovely element of dragging your limp, heaving body to them.

Pretty tissues are advised

As you feel the tears start, encourage them to keep coming. The more the merrier. When the moment feels right, begin keening sounds. With every breath hike the volume until reaching desired level. The aim is to achieve a point where you’re screaming out your pain and the tears are nothing but a sidekick.

All done? If you left tears behind, tidy them up with a tissue. Discretion is advised. No one can take away the special moments if they don’t know about them.

Did that cry make you feel better? I know I feel better.

Until we cry again,

Ella

Song Quote:

It’s all right to cry, even my dad does sometimes. So don’t wipe your eyes, tears remind you you’re alive. –Even My Dad Does Sometimes, Ed Sheeran

Teardrops on the Stairs

I left a path of teardrops on the stairs today. I think I’m going crazy. I walked in a circle, sat in a circle, turned in a circle.

I cried today. I cried because I needed to scream. In the rare few hours with the house to myself I wandered around and trailed tears behind me. I cried on the floor. I cried on a chair. Tears and tears and tears and tears.

Today I let myself feel the self-pity and fall apart. I let myself cry and cry and cry.

My body is rocking. Rocking back and forth as my brain tries to cope with the pain it’s sending, so distraught over causing its own demise. I blame you, brain.

I cried because I’m angry. I’ve lost so much in my life because of this and I feel my future slipping through my fingers. The decisions, the important and meaningful decisions, are being made not by me but by my illness, whose existence I’ve been bearing upon myself, by myself, for the last four years.

I wish I could end this on some uplifting note of how I carry myself gracefully and nobly through the pain, but I cannot. Today I bowed beneath the pain, I broke. The task is to build myself up again, but I can’t locate the part in me that knows how to do that. Maybe it broke.

Today I left a trail of tears on the stairs, and I can’t find a tissue to clean it up. I fear someone else will slip as I have.

Ella.

Song Quote:

You’ve been crying out for forever, but forever’s come and gone. -When You Break, Bear’s Den

Cousins’ Babies

I pretty much looked like this when I found out the news…

 

A few days ago, my mom gave me the good news: my cousin’s wife is pregnant. I smiled, we laughed, and then I started crying.

I’m the youngest in my family, and therefore never got to have little ones in the house that weren’t, well… me. This is the difference between my friends and me: they have baby cousins, and I have cousins’ babies. My oldest cousin, the one who is soon to be a third time father, was 25 when I was born. He’s the oldest of the oldest (my dad’s older sister), and she got married young, and I’m the youngest of the youngest (my dad), who got married late. There you go.

Anyway, back to babies. I love ‘em.

I truly, truly, simply adore them so much. I don’t think I can even describe it. I just feel this connection to them (don’t let your mind make this sentence creepy). My family and friends have decided I have “baby heaven”, which contrary to its literal meaning (=where babies go when they are no longer alive) actually means I look and feel like I’m in heaven when I see babies.

As of now, I have five cousin’s babies (a new one two weeks ago!), but god willing, soon there will be eight. It’s so amazing!!!!! Two of the soon-to-be babies are girls, and the third is as of yet unknown. I can’t wait until they’re born, and we have this whole next generation in our family! Eight babies. That’s a lot. The oldest is… four? So technically she’s not a baby anymore, but still. Also, two of the new ones are meant to be born within a month of each other, so birthdays every year are going to be super cute.

I love babies!!!! I don’t think this is going anywhere. It’s mainly just, I LOVE BABIES.

Oh, I can tell you why I cried, I guess. I was in a bad mood that day, because of how horribly sick I was feeling, and my mom was trying to cheer me up a bit. I had been in school when my cousin, his wife and their two daughters came over, so I wasn’t around when the news was shared. I was alone at home with my mom, and she came and sat down near me on the couch and told me. I got this immediate grin on my face, so wide it hurt my cheeks and jaw terribly, but I couldn’t stop smiling. The two of us were smiling really wide, and then we just started laughing a bit. But instead of laughing a bit more, I started crying. The tears were falling freely. My cat, Squirt, is amazing, and I will tell you why. The second after I start crying, he’s there: it doesn’t matter where in the house I am and he is, if I start crying, he shows up and purrs next to me.

I don’t have a particularly close relationship with him, not like the rest of my family members, but the two of us (me and the cat) have come to terms with this, and we just live amicably side-by-side. He doesn’t sleep on my bed, I don’t sleep on his, but I’ll fill up his food and he won’t scratch me. That kind of thing, you know. But this, the crying dates – they mean a lot to me. Thanks, kitty.

Anywho, I started crying about the new baby, and Squirt came and purred on me. My mom didn’t want me touching my face while I had cat on me, so she brought a tissue and kind of stuck it in the collar of me shirt to collect the tears. I just kept thinking how awesome (in the literal sense awe) it is that my cousin’s wife has a person growing inside her right now, and that in a few months time she and my cousin are going to welcome another beautiful human being into their family. I may only be sixteen, and therefore wholly unready to start a family, but I already know that I have a whole lot of love in my heart, and I’m going to start my own family one day, and love each and every member with the whole of my being.

I can’t wait. I love babies.

The world can be awesome.

Yours truly,

The coolest cousin-ish thing ever,

Ella

 

Song Quote:

I was sixteen with an open heart…. When I was dumb and the world was young.

–Beautiful, Ben Rector

 

 

On a sadder note, the baby that was born two weeks ago was born into hard times. My cousin’s husband’s brother (the baby’s uncle) passed away shortly before she was born. Her middle name is his. I send all of that love that’s in my heart to the family. I can’t even imagine what you all must be going through.