It's a Mad World

I know what you're thinking, you're usually right but this time you're wrong. No, I am not writing some sad, I have no mother cause she joined a cult and I left and she shuns me so I'm having an orphans brunch blog.

But you are right that I'm having an orphans brunch today. :)

Is it so bad? As long as you stay off social media, which I usually do these days, you don't have to see all those posts about how much everyone loves their mom and they're all so happy about it.

I'm happy for them. My life went on a different path. Maybe a darker one but definitely the one I'm meant to be on. My guy works nights and I work days so I stay up late to spend time with him which is why I'm still awake with him. I told him "I'll probably cry about Linda tomorrow." He encourages me to write. He always buys me flowers on Mothers Day and I always buy his flowers for his mom but this weekend was crazy at the flower shop. I've never seen anything like it. Despite the fact that I'm not close to her and we were crazy busy I made her a lovely bouquet.

After working 11 hours straight I was talking to my bestie about the perils of self-improvement. I haven't really felt like myself lately and I think that's because I'm changing. I was so exhausted I just put on Netflix and there was this one scene with these two girls who were best friends and they were going through some crazy stuff exactly like what I had gone through once. I paused it and talked to my girl.

I was like, do you remember that time we thought I was pregnant? It's only happened once. We left work and came to my place to pee on a stick and figure it out. Three minutes is a long time So we decided to sit on the floor and smoke what we thought would be our last cigarette. Why were we sitting on the floor. Who knows? She was so excited. I was freaked out. The guy was not great but he was super cute so I decided as usual to focus on the positive. If I am, I am having the cutest little baby ever.

She and I had a whole plan to buy a house together and both have kids and live happily ever after. Life however doesn't always let you make the plans. Not long after I ended up in the hospital and lost 60% of my blood. It wasn't great. We weren't together at the time but you know that guy who always has my back? He showed up. He always does. As hard as it is for me to trust anyone anymore, I trust him. Literally with my life at this point.

I never ended up having a baby. My bestie? She got married and had two beautiful children. That part was great. One of us at least got to be a mother.

What I take away from that is that life can have multiple different outcomes. Snap your fingers! Make one different decision and life can change forever. Like those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books we read as kids, never knowing that most of life isn't choice. It's 50/50. One of the best friends I've ever had was beautiful, smart, ate healthy, barely drank, never smoked in her life. Cancer three times. Died. And here I still am.

Is Mother's Day my most hated holiday? Slightly ahead of Father's Day but yes. I have a lot of friends who at this point have lost their mother to death. It's better and worse that she's still alive. I wish her the best, but she's almost become a faint memory, like someone I used to know back in the day and never really got along with all that well. On the other hand it sucks having parents who treat you like you're the one who is dead while they're still alive.

I've found mothers and aunts and sisters and nieces on the outside, they are my family now. Not to mention that great guy sitting across from me. I still have a tiny bit of blood family left. I don't know how I'll feel when I wake up, but I think this might just be the year I don't cry over Linda or Helena (stepmom, another story for another day). I don't have everything I want, but I have enough to be happy. :)

Sullivan out.

Aunt Jane and I. Circa none of your goddamn business. 

This is about Nothing.

well it's happened. i feel like i need to write, but i have nothing to say. not entirely true, i have lots of things to say. but there are thing i protect and won't talk about, like family and friends. unless it's positive. if you want to know who in my family has the worst secrets (and it's a toss up, spoiler alert!) you'll have to wait for the book, which will only be published after i die. :)

speaking of death, jay was amazed last night to hear i'd already planned every detail if max's funeral. hey, he's a big dog, he's not doing to live forever. i've planned my funeral, why shouldn't i plan his? his is going to be so much cuter than mine. when all you do is work and study sometimes your mind wanders.

i'm a planner. i figure i feel too much, been through too much. i'm a pisces, so whatever you feel about anything, double that, add in some drama and then double it again. if max just dropped dead they'd probably have to put me in a psych ward. he is the best thing that ever happened to me. that homeless helpless huge puppy. i always call him my love because he is. with my funeral no one is coming. (except a very small guest list, you're probably not on it and i've paid jay to get bouncers.) max though, is everyone's dog and it would be selfish of me not to share the grief this time. so i plan it now, halfway thorough his life and i get 5 years to come to peace with it. which we all know i never will but at least i'll be better prepared.

turns out, both my "kids" are almost exactly me. max is having a sleepover party tonight so i'm home alone with rosie. she kinda scares me. if max exudes the please love me, i'll do anything for you side of me, rosie is the other side of the bed. hey, i know how to stand up for myself and i've been doing it for years. that's why y'all love me right? i've done the brave honest thing till it hurt. rosie takes it one step further. i could learn a thing or two from that tiny little kitten. jay says rosies' go-to is: lick, lick, BITE. she's your friend. until she's not. then she makes you bleed. for all my friends with kids, this excludes children, she respects them and would never bite your child. please don't be afraid to come over.  

in the end, she spends a lot of time in her cage. she'll scratch until you bleed, then go pee on your bed. she'll eat your flowers just because she knows you love them more than anything else in the home. stuff you don't care about? she'll never touch it. but she WILL destroy your roses. the cage never teaches her a lesson. it's almost like she likes it in there, quiet time alone to contemplate how she'll take over the world. she becomes totally calm. it's disturbing. she is however very loving and loyal to her half-life partner (cause cats never die) max.

at the end of the day, all i can say is thank the universe i have a boyfriend / man-friend/ lover/ husband/ best friend whatever you want to call him, who would notice i was missing if i died and come find me before rosie ate half my face because i wasn't able to feed her. this whole blog is very morbid but if you were in my messed up head, you'd think it's really funny. i'm laughing :)

sullivan out.

Being Brave

Re-post! I thought this was relevant considering the fact that I am going to attempt to stay up all night on Friday for CAMH's One Brave Night event. Y'all know I have to work all week and then try to stay awake all night. We're raising money to support the organization that supports those living with mental health issues. A lot of brave people have dealt with depression and we can get better if we do the hard work to get there. But we need a little help along the way. :)

There's still time to donate - this is the link! Click click! Ps. If you do donate please buy me a sleep pass. For $20 I can sleep for an hour. :)

I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave. 
- E. M. Forster

Courage is a quality that is difficult to develop, because it forces you to look in the mirror and realize who you are and then have the balls to go out there and be better than that.

I know many courageous people. And being brave doesn't mean we always succeed. (Game of Thrones taught us all that fact.) Sometimes it just means we take on a task, not knowing if we'll be good at it or not. Not knowing the outcome. Maybe we even think we will fail. But we show up and try.

This happens in careers, in families, in relationships, in finding peace of mind, in overcoming addictions, in ending a relationship that's not working and being alone again, in confronting an important ex, in applying for a job you know you won't get, in pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone and meeting someone new, in telling your family the truth about who you are, in telling someone you love them when you aren't sure they will say it back. In being true to yourself.

But we find courage and bravery in that part of ourselves that we didn't know we had and do it anyway.

If we were never brave, no one would make friends, become lovers, get married, have children, follow their dreams, because we could fail. Sometimes it's our mistakes that shape our future and, in the end, make us successful.

And hey, at the end of the day, if our attempt at being courageous doesn't work, we have a friend who will give us a hug, a dog who will sleep at our feet, and maybe even a glass of wine to sip as we look out the window of our fabulous but very expensive downtown apartment and think about how to wake up tomorrow and try to be brave all over again.

Sullivan out.

Love in a Hopeless Place

"I saw you screaming but no one can hear. You almost feel ashamed that someone could be that important, that without them you feel like nothing. No one will ever understand how much it hurts. You feel hopeless, like nothing can save you. And when it's over and it's gone you almost wish you could have all that bad stuff back, so that you could have the good." - Rihanna

My ex-boyfriend, Steve, probably was one of the only guys on here to have a real name. No "Vienna", " The American", "Irish". He was just Steve. He had a lot of opinions on everything. He told me that I could do better with this blog. He said: "you could just tell the truth". 

The truth I want to tell myself is always to put the positive spin on everything. It actually helps with someone who suffers from depression. Writing it down, saying everything is actually okay, makes you feel better. 

This week though, things haven't been better and I'll tell the truth. I tried to check myself into the hospital yesterday because I feel like I'm right back where I was a few years ago. That sucks, right? All that progress, all that healing, all that work. You will never win though with the Jehovah's Witnesses. They will come out of the shadows and sucker punch you when you are least expecting it. Your mom and sister will never choose you over them. And you will go through the same little hell you were in years ago anytime they cut you off again. 

Do I know I have an army of other people behind me? Yes. Does it make their actions hurt less? No. 

Spencer came to the hospital with me. 

The doctors: Does she sleep?

Spencer: No, she doesn't. 

They decided not to keep me and sent me home with a paper on feeling sad and some 1-800 numbers to call if I needed help. 

At least this time though I tried to do something. Last time I took three bottles of pills and went to bed, hoping not to wake up. 

I think the hardest part about this time is for the last five years, I held out hope that I could leave the Witnesses and still get my family back. I worked at it, I was honest with them - about this blog, about the article I did for that magazine. And everything seemed to be fine. 

Now I know I can't go back. I can't risk my career, my friendships, my life, for people who will never love me for who I am. I am NOT a Jehovah's Witness. 

Sullivan out. 

The Beloved

Well, me and being sick had a good run but like with everything and everyone else, eventually I had to break this relationship off. The tide has finally shifted and I'm back to work full time now. 

It was weird in the beginning. After being through so much and getting so down and low, I was a different person coming back to the office. I lost 25 lbs and that great place that I thought I was at just before I left, where I felt so hopeful that I would become successful at what I wanted to be. No, I just lost that too.

I realized something though. When I'm at work, I want to give it my best. I do not however want that to define me. I am so appreciative of where I am with work and the people I get to see 5 days a week, but there has to be more to life than just that. My family, my friends, my volunteer work. I attach a huge significance to all of those aspects of life as well.  

My boss is a Rockstar. Most people probably couldn't keep up with him even if he was in a coma. He's driven and oh-so-smart. 

He's always looking for ways for our team to be more productive, so he had all of us to do a personality test before I left. Everyone else killed it. Their dominant traits were Power, Prestige, Innovation. They got cool names like "The Change Agent", "The Trendsetter", "The Mastermind", "The Architect". I got "The Beloved". Apparently my dominant traits are being passionate, loyal and sincere. I'm genuine, no hidden agenda. Empathetic. Comforting. Welcoming, accepting, NURTURING. Expressive. Engaging. I could go on but I won't. You get the idea. 

I will never be the boss. I sighed as I printed it off and added it to his pile of profiles on all the better people than me that we have on our team.

By that I mean better at work. I'm not sure how most of them are in their real lives, they all seem pretty great. I'll tell you a secret though, before I took the test, when I was looking over all of the possible outcomes for who I was, as much as I'd love to be a super star, I just wanted to be "The Beloved". That's all I've ever wanted. And I guess I'm okay with it. 

Sullivan out.  

PS. It's Scorpion season. Happy Birthday to all my lovely Scorpios out there. Most of y'all have really hurt my feelings at some point...but I'm stubborn love all the way. Love you!