Despite My Feelings

I don’t think I’ve ever expected or at least pictured having a long fulfilled life. I think this is a reason I don’t believe I deserve a good life. I think that’s why I don’t invest in parts of my life that others do. I make sure my “roots” are easy to move. There are many factors as to why. Probably many that I’m not even aware of.

For a while, I wanted to leave the midwest and go back to the east coast (which I think a part of me will always want that). Unlike most of my family, I deeply love Maryland and it’ll be in my blood forever. I believe I can be happy without living in Maryland or any of the east coast states. I do believe my love for the coast makes it hard for me to put roots down. For the longest time, I didn’t have any reason to, especially once my aunt died. I wanted to go back to the place I loved, especially when feeling like I was running out of time.

I don’t come from people who live long and if you look at the ages they died, I am about halfway through my life. I do believe their lifestyles played a part in that. There are days when my brain doesn’t work and I can’t control my movements and lose my ability to think. I automatically think about my mom, and the what-if of developing the disease that killed her. I don’t believe we know which strain of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) my mom had. We believe CJD was transmitted to my mom by contaminated meat. Even if that was the case, she had the strain when she had me. Who knows if it could have been transmitted to me. There is a genetic strain of CJD, and there is a 50% chance that the child could develop it. Since there is so little known about CJD, there is no official determination. When I do have my days when I can’t control my body and can’t talk, I wonder. For most of my life, I’ve had trouble with talking, which got worse when my mom died. So, these things can be from something other than CJD, but I think I will always wonder on the days that are worse than normal.

Ever since mom, I have felt pressure to do life at a rapid pace.

I am trying to learn how to relieve that pressure. Partially to continue healing parts of me that need stability. The stability that moving around will not give. I have also found people who help give me some of that stability. I do believe I’d still feel that stability no matter where I went, but it would of course be different.

I worked five graduation ceremonies this past weekend. It reminded me of a feeling I once had before I lost the trust of a place I loved. A community that I once trusted and loved. Especially the people in the maintenance department. Those people became my family, and now I have to relearn to trust them. Despite them not being the reason why I lost the trust. I admitted to myself recently that I don’t want to forgive. I think it is because my trust was so deep. I do not trust easily, let alone trusting after having my trust broken. If there is any hope for me to rebuild that trust (or at least some of it) I am going to have to forgive. I don’t know yet how that’s gonna happen.

I love the community around the place I am wanting to trust again. That I believe is what’s pushing me to attempt this rebuilding of trust and forgiveness. Me staying after something like this isn’t in me. Everything in me wants to give up on it and stop it from taking any more of my time and attention. Unfortunately or maybe fortunately (depending on how you look at it) my love for my little town is what’s going to force me to rebuild extremely broken trust.

I think to do that I have to personally feel secure.

I have found people who make me feel safe and secure. Honestly, that’s something I’ve never truly felt since Mom. I think being close to stability is still a vital piece in my healing. Despite, feeling all that I do.