The last little bit

In April my friend Marie went into the local mental hospital, Brentwood.  She came to me one night and told me that her husband, Jack, had told her that after 14 years of marriage, he no longer loved her.  This sent her into a rage and she tried to kill herself.  Jack had stopped her.  Jack was going to put her in Brentwood so she might get better.  I asked her if she wanted me to help her pack.  She said, “Yes.”  I went across the street to help her pack. 

Marie would spend 10 days in Brentwood.  She was my best friend.  We spent almost every day together.  We had become friends no long before Momma Muriel died.  Her little wire hair Dachshund Buddy, would often wander across the street, threw my doggy door and into my bed.  I would call her and say, “You missing somebody?”  It was Marie who helped me get through many challenges in my life.  During those first few hard months after Momma Muriel died, I knew Marie would be coming over at 5 to drink a glass of wine with me.  I asked her to go to Novelle’s funeral with me, to make sure I didn’t spit in her coffin. 

Marie got mixed up in drugs. She came to me one day and told me she had a $200 a day meth habit, but that she had been clean for a few weeks.  I told her to stay clean or we would no longer be friends.  Slowly she would shut me out.  I knew she was back on drugs.

In April of 2014 I received a Facebook message from her.  I asked if she was done with drugs, and she told me she was.  She had been arrested and convicted on 3 felonies.  She had been clean for a year and a half.  Now clean to her was a relative term.  Marie was a drunk.  She would go threw a 5 liter box of wine in two days.  She stayed away from purple wines, because she drank so much it would turn her teeth purple.  She was also addicted to pain killers for her back and hip. 

Jack did pretty much everything for her.  Marie sat in her chair and drank most days.  Jack had bough her a car, and she had destroyed it.  She told me at one point, it had become a rolling meth lab.  We were both shocked when Jack told her he was no longer in love with her.  Jack was a great man of faith.  He told her he had been praying for two years, that he would fall back in love with her and it just never happened.  He would be willing to go to counseling, but was pretty sure he wanted a divorce.  After everything she had put him through, who could blame him. 

I was a wreck when Marie went to Brentwood.  I called her every day.  I had three or four panic attacks in that 10 day period.  I cried myself to sleep at night, more than once.  A week after Marie got home she was sitting at my kitchen table one night.  She began to tell me that she had breast cancer.  That they had found it with two blood test while she was at Brentwood.  They confirmed it with a mammography.  She then asked me how bad stage 3 was.  We were all pretty shaken up that night.  But something just did not sit well with me.  Her story did not seem plausible.  Why would they do all that at a psychiatric facility?  Could they?

I happened to have an appointment with my GYN the next morning.  I asked him some of these questions.  He told me there was no blood test for cancer.  And to have a mammography at a mental facility did not seem right.   Turns out it was all a lie.  When I confronted Jack with everything that had gone on, I asked him if she lied a lot.  Jack said, “Sometimes yes and sometimes no.” 

Everything came to a head the night Prince died, May 5^th, 2015.  I had taken Marie home from my house and confronted her there.  Buddy was still at my house.  Jay would drive over a bit later and bring Buddy home.  Prince wanted to ride with his dad.  We did not notice he was running after Jay.  I was outside, talking to Juno, when I heard Prince get hit on the road and scream.

We ran across the street.  He’s been hit, but he was not dead.  Marie had come out of her house, crying and asking what had happened.  Begging me to forgive her.   All of us took him back across the street to my house.  He was fading.  It would not be long.  Even if we floored it to the emergency vet, he would be dead by the time we arrived.  If he was going to die, let it be at home.  Juno and I lit some candles on my altar, burned some incense and called for the Gods and ancestors to come close.  We would need them now. 

Prince had been sick for about 6 weeks.  He had had what we thought was a heart attack one night.  I just woke up screaming and disorientated.  The next day the vet  diagnosed he with an enlarged heart. He was on medication, but he did not want to eat for us.  Every day was a struggle.  I wonder sometimes if Prince committed doggie suicide.  I wonder if he just didn’t want to live anymore.  Prince died in Jay’s arms an hour after being hit. This child who had been so abused and unwanted, passed in loving arms, and surrounded by his family.  We all took turns holding him.  We buried him the next day, next to Punka. 

Since his passing, we have built a little area I call “the grove.” around his and Punka’s graves, at Holda’s Well.  It is a small area covered in bricks, with seating places on either side.  Now I can sit with them alone, or with guests.  It is a great little peaceful spot, where I can listen and watch the birds and get internet reception on my tablet. 

I have not seen Marie since that night.  I do not blame her for Prince’s death.  I just want nothing to do with a liar.  I’ve had too many in my life.  Jay and I retain a good relationship with Jack and saw him recently. 

In June I had my year physical with my PCP.  I told him I was having terrible anxiety and several panic attacks a week.  He put me on Buspar and it has been a God send.  I have not felt this good since before Oma died when I was 6.  It took a few months to get me to feeling better.  August 6^th , I started writing again for the first time in many years.  I have written or edited almost every day since then. 

Ilsa

 

 

 

Goodbye Paige

I would watch Paige use men, and be used by them.  She brought one home named Kevin.  He stayed with us for a week.  Telling us he was going to remodel our bathroom for room and board.  We said that was great.  He tore apart my bathroom, and in the end stole over $1000 worth of tools from us.  When a person tells you that they are a 5 time felon, with warrants out for their arrest, and that they have stole in the past.  Believe them, and don’t let them in your house!  I had no idea until after he left that she had only been texting him for about 3 days before they met and shagged for the first time, or that he had been homeless.  He also seems to have had a drug problem.  He would take Paige’s car, at that point still legally my car, and disappear for hours at night.

The night Kevin left and we discovered everything that was missing, we of course called the cops.  Paige just laid in her room.  We met with the cop on the front porch, we were scared if he came in the house he would smell weed.  We hid that too.  We knew Paige had warrants out for her, because of old speeding tickets.  I did not want the cop to take her.  Finally he said, “I want to talk to her.”  He agreed he would take her in for her old warrants.  I went in to Paige who was laying in the room feeling sorry for herself, and told her to come out.   She refused.  I went out to the cop and told her she refused.  He said, “Either she comes out or I’m going in to get her.”  He believed her to be an accomplice in all of this, and she may very well have been.  I don’t know.  I went back and finally got her to come out.  Paige could be a hateful bitch, and gods was she one that night. 

The cop was polite to her and she was downright hateful, not mean, not rude, but downright hateful.  I have a problem with people who hate cops, since Jay’s Grandfather, Great-Grandfather, and Great Uncle were all police officers.  Given my history with Melinda and Paige, I have come to believe people who hate police, often have something to hide.

The Police officer asked for her birthday and full name.  She refused to give both.  Finally he told her, “Mam’ either you give me your birthday or I will hall you in for obstruction.”  Since I did not want that to happen, I told him both.  I should have let him take her.  Would have saved me so much trouble, but I didn’t.  Paige gave me this “go to hell” look, like you would not believe.  Didn’t she understand I was trying to save her???  She was mad at me for days after that.  They never did find our stuff or Kevin for that matter.  When I called the police later to discuss how the investigation was going, they told me they would also like to give me the number for Jerry Springer, because of how fucked up this shit was.

The next man she brought in, a few days later, was Vincent Stumblingbear. I will never forget him or his name.  He was a terrible drunk.  We went two rounds with him.  He promised to fix our bathroom for room and board as well.  We were hesitant, but said yes anyways.  He did lay most of the floor. I think he stayed a week.  Oh they were in love and they were going to get married.  Vincent was Native American.  Paige knew nothing of native peoples. She often insulted him and I had to correct her.  She told Vincent, “When we get married, why don’t you wear your regalia?” Which was totally insulting to him, regalia is for rituals and pow-wow, it is not a Halloween costume.  He and I both had to explain how insulting it was. Vincent had taken a shine to me, but then many of her fellows did. 

Vincent had only been here a few days when we came to understand he had a serious drinking problem.  One night he drank 2 fifths of vodka, another bottle of some purple liquid stuff that was not quite a fifth, and something else.  And he was still upright the next morning, when we found him.  He’d been wandering the woods all night long.  He had never been to bed.  Paige and him fought and he tried to hit her.  He stopped just in time.  It was enough to terrify me. 

Jay and I told Paige we wanted him gone, and he left.  But he would not stop calling.  Vincent promised to be a good boy, if he could come back, ‘cause he just loved Paige so much.  I begged Jay and finally he said yes.  I never told Jay about Vincent trying to hit Paige.  Jay told me later, if he had know that had happened, he would have never let him come back here. 

I told Vincent he could come back, but no alcohol.  I bought him beads to keep him busy.  I know that sounds condescending, but Vincent was a wonderful beadier and had been building regalia for years to support himself.  Vincent came back and made it 3 days with us.  He literally walked away.  He walked from my house, to the interstate, many miles away, and either caught a ride or walked back to his home more than an hour away. 

He showed back up a few days later, for his things.  Vincent, like many of Paige’s men, had a thing for me.  Many of her boyfriends, and I use that term loosely, thought Paige and I were a couple, and that they would get to fuck us both.  Vincent had proposed marriage to me at least twice.  I remained firm that I was happy where I was.  When he came to get his things, Paige was not here.  He hugged me a little too tight, and proposed to me again. 

I had been chopping vegetables when he came in.  When he left I grabbed a knife and ran and hid in the closet.  I flew into a panic attack and stayed in it, for what felt like hours. My pills did not help me that time.  I think I stayed in the closet until Paige found me like that, about two hours later.  Sorry my memory is a little fuzzy there.

In April of 2014, I would be robbed, proposed to twice and two old friends would come back into my life. Marie, you can read about her here in the last little bit, had messaged me on Facebook.  I had not seen her in a very long time.  I went to visit with her and when I came home, Paige was belligerent to me.  Telling me to get in the house and start doing house work.  She said, “I let you go and visit that woman.”  I was thinking, “Excuse me!  You let me!  Who the fuck do you think you are?”  but I said nothing as usual. 

Juno had messaged me a few days after Marie had, telling me I had been right about D & K all the time.  She said that she and Kay had a new home, they wanted to see me, and she was desperately sorry for what had happened between us.  I never expected that message.  I anxiously wanted to see her. 

When I got Juno’s message, I remember looking up from the phone at Paige and thinking, “I have my friends back now.  It’s time for you to leave bitch!”  The final straw came for me when one day she was mean to Tami.  Like I have told you before, you can do what you want to me, but when you start messing with friends, that’s it. I watched her fight with Tami.  I walked in the house to cool off and gather my thoughts.  I walked back out and let Paige have it.  I still don’t remember what I said to her.

Jay and I had no idea how to get her out of the house.  We knew she had nowhere to live, very little money, and that when she left there was a possibility she would take Jelly with her.  She and Jelly had become tight again, in the time she lived here.  I did not have the courage to tell her to get out, that I didn’t care what happened to her, and that she was not taking Jelly.  I wish to the Gods now I had.

Not long after our fight she began to date Dave, who worked in the café up the street.  The day after their first date he fell and broke his leg.  She came to me and said, “Dave fell and broke his leg.  I am going to go move in with him and take care of him.”  She did.  We called her soon after and said, we hoped the move would be permanent for her, and that she should come and get her stuff very soon.  She took Jelly with her. 

When Jay bought my new car in February of 2014 I had promised Paige my car. She had been driving it, for some time.  She had even started repairing it.  I saw Paige one more time, the day I sold her my car.  Jelly was I the back window.  It would be the last time I would ever see her.

Paige lived with Dave until September of 2014, when he threw her out.  She then went back to live with my parents.  They would spend over $3000 trying to help her out.   I was still not speaking to my mother at that time.  The whole time Jay had been begging me to go and get Jelly.  I said, “No.”  I was afraid of Paige that she would not give her back to us.  If she called the cops, I believed they would side with her.  Mom and Dad asked her to leave in December 2014.  She and I were still Facebook friends.  I got good and drunk one night, and told her what a bitch and what a slut she was.  I told her the only reason I was still friends with her on Facebook, was so I could keep tabs on Jelly.  She blocked me the next day.

Ten months later I have no idea where Paige is.  I have no idea if Jelly is alive or dead.  Many nights I kick myself.  I have no idea if Jelly is cold or hungry, no idea if she is being loved or has been passed off to someone else.  I wonder if she hates me?  If she goes to bed every night thinking her Momma gave her away?  Does she thinks she is bad or that she did something wrong?  I have no idea.  You have no idea how I weep for this child, or the guilt that consumes me because I would not fight for her.  I have finally had to give her to the Goddess.  I have begun lately to think of her as dead, and greave for her.  I have no way to tell her how sorry I am.  I may have to wait a lifetime, before I will ever find out what happened to her. I have tried to search for Paige on Facebook, so that I might poke around her page and check on Jelly.  But she seems to have left Facebook all together.  Even if I am not logged into Facebook I cannot find her. 

So you’ve got to be asking yourselves why does she telling me all these stories.  As I’ve written this timeline sequence I’ve asked myself the same thing.  I think I keep telling these tales not as a woe-is-me tale, but a warning to not be like me.  To stand up and fight for yourself, even if that means you might get knocked down by the consequences.  Mike, Mike D., Melinda, D and Paige, even Perro, all have taught me major lessons in life.  I think the biggest one is that you can’t save everyone.  You are not the Goddess!  It is not your job in life to take her place and try and save people.  My life has taught me, if you find someone you think you can help, DON’T!  You are impeding on the Goddesses work.  If you help them, they will never learn.  Yes you can save animals, you can save the rainforest, and you can save the earth, but you can’t save people.  They have to save themselves.  What you are trying to save them from is life lessons.  If the baby doesn’t fall, it never learns to walk.

I have always worn my heart on my sleeve.  I have had to learn to lock my heart away, and only let it out after a while.  With all of these people who have used me, you have to remember, I let them.  I have watched myself over the years go from being warm, bubby and gregarious to everyone I meet, to being slightly paranoid to meet anyone.  I have become hesitant of going out and slightly terrified crowds.  I have no idea if I make a new friend, when and if they will be the next to try and hurt me.  Everytime it happens, Jay and I sit in our little house and say, “Never again!  We will never help anyone else again!”

It sounds cruel, but you have to learn to protect yourself.  You don’t have to give away everything for your friends to like you.  They should like you for you, rich or poor.  If they don’t they are not worth your friendship.

Ilsa

Melinda goes to Jail

 In August of 2012 Melinda went to Jail.   She had always been funny about the police.  She had told us she had been sexual assaulted by an officer many years before.  One night in early August, she and her boyfriend were coming back from Alexandria, in her truck, and for whatever reason the cops in her town pulled her over, about 5 miles from her house.  The truck was registered in one of her son’s name, and the insurance was also in his name.  Melinda produced an expired out of state license.  Her boyfriend also produced an out of state license, as he had recently moved to Louisiana.  Melinda had been in Louisiana for 11 years.  She always gave me some bull shit about, somebody else had stolen her identity, and that’s why she had never got a new license.  I do believe she had a state issued ID however.  They usually don’t run you when you get those.

Since they were out of state, the police officer ran a nationwide search on their licenses.  My guess is to make sure the truck was not stolen.  Melinda’s boyfriend came up clean, but Melinda’s past had come back to haunt her.  She popped on a warrant out of Tennessee.  She was wanted for stealing an excess of $10,000.  The warrant seemed to have been issued about the time she moved to Louisiana.  She called me crying, told me she was being arrested, and to come and get JB. I got in the car and immediately drove the 15 or so miles to her. 

Melinda was booked into jail, and spent the next 17 days there while things were sorted out.  I was not involved in the process to bond her out, and after a few days one of JB’s brothers came to get him.  I think he had about 5 brothers or so.  I wrote Melinda in jail, went to see her, did what I could for her, and talked to her the phone.  Our Lughnasa ritual that year, consisted of us talking to her in jail.  We were on the phone in ritual circle, telling her how much we believed in her innocence, and how much we loved her.

About that time I had a conversation with one of her sons, because some of this stuff was just not adding up.   I begin to ask him a host of questions such as:

Is your mother a witch?  Did she raise your pagan?  Was your grandmother really a witch?  Is there a family tradition of witches in your family?  He told me no to all the above, and that as far as he knew, his mother had been raised a Jehovah Witness, and still was.

I asked him if she had worked as contractor and built houses, as she told us she had.  He said No.  That she had worked with them in the office, but never in the field.  Which made since to me.  Melinda had been having electrical problems for a long time in her house.  She said she knew all about electricity, but would not fix her problems.  A few weeks before she was arrested, Melinda had seen sparks coming from a socket in her bedroom.  She replaced it herself.   On our workday, Jay looked at the socket.  He found it was improperly installed.  He told me that if he had not fixed it could have burned the house down.  Now don’t you think someone with electrical experience should know how to redo a simple socket? 

I finally asked Melinda’s son if he thought the charges against his mother could be true?  Could she have really stolen the money?  He said, while he thought she would never steal from an individual, he believed she could defiantly steal from a company. 

This made a lot of since to me, occasionally she would tell me she had to borrow against her check. She told me she had something to do with payroll.  I knew she bought heavily on Ebay.  In cleaning out her house I found what had been an old bathroom, full of Ebay boxes.  Most of them contained yarn.  She called it her yarn room.  It was stacked floor to ceiling. It was on of those rooms that if you opened the door you would kill yourself.   It just did not add up.  Melinda was very poor, where in the hell was she getting money for that much yarn? 

Melinda was fired while she was in jail.  When she asked to come and get her things, she was told that the lawyers had advised against it.  She was told that everything she had had her hands on was now being scrutinized by accountants.  I still have no idea, if she had been stealing from her current job.  I have heard rumors, but I will not print them here.  It was my guess that if she was not allowed back on the property, she probable had been, and it had probable been a lot.

Melinda would spend her 50^th birthday in jail.  While she was there, she called to tell us that she thought she was pregnant.  This ruse she would keep up for months, even after she and were no long friends.  Melinda had told Juno, the baby was not viable, or she had miscarried. I forget which one.  We ran into Melinda’s old boyfriend some years later, he told us they had finally gone to the dr., who told them  she not pregnant.  When she insisted, she was.  The Dr. told them they had run the test twice and not only was she not pregnant, she had not been pregnant at any time as of late.  We were not the only ones she was conning.  

When Melinda got out of jail she refused to go home.  Even with JB she did not want to be alone in that house, so JB stayed with his brother, and she came to live with me.   That lasted all of two weeks.  You never really know someone, until you live with them.  Melinda showed us her true colors during that time. 

My feelings towards Melinda, as oh-highly-exalted-one, had begun to change that summer, as I watched the way she treated JB and me, while we worked so hard to clean her house.  There were few thank you’s, lots of discussion on how we had done it things wrong, and her unwillingness to help in most of that project.  I still have no idea if she cleaned between the times I was there.  I was beginning to see that everything was about Melinda.

On the one year anniversary of my hospitalization, I could feel my stress level rising.  I had a feeling that I was going to have another attack, and I was right.    Melinda had taken to cleaning my house, doing the wash and the cooking, all the while telling me how I was doing it wrong.  I never asked her to do any of that, she just took it upon herself.  I remember getting frustrated at Melinda, and going to be in my bedroom. I was sitting in Princess’ bed when Jay walked in.  I told him, “I’m going to pop.   You’ve got to get her out of my house!”  He said, “She’s your friend.  You get her out.” 

Within a few minutes I was in a full blown panic attack.  My pills did not help and I regressed to about 6 years old.  I spent most of that day coloring.  I was not taken to the hospital, to my great relief.  We knew it would pass.  Melinda could not have been more wonderful to me, while all this was going on.  She sat and colored with me, and fixed me grill cheese sandwiches.  It took most of the day, to “grow up,” but by the time I went to bed that night I felt like my normal self.  No one outside the family, and doctors had ever seen me have an attack.

I was still in counseling with Barb at the time.  I had a session with her not long after my attack.  I told her what was going on with Melinda.  Barb told me I needed to set boundaries with her.  I needed to start telling her, “No.” I did and that’s when things started getting really ugly. 

JB had gone back to school and had broken his arm.  Now whether his bullies did it, or he did it on accident, I was never really clear on.  So Melinda was terrified to drive, so we went to pick up JB and take him to the hospital.  He is in quite a bit of pain at this point.  Melinda is insistent that we must stop at the library to make copies, and then to the post office. “I must get Tennessee off my back,” she kept insisting.  She was more concerned about her own shit, then her child’s own pain.

The warrant Melinda had been arrested on was expired, but had never been taken out of the system.  When she called the clerk’s office, to find out who had filed charges against her, the folder was blank.  At least that is what she told me.  Who knows if it was true?  All they could tell her is the date that the incident was said to have occurred and where.  Melinda was released when Tennessee decided, they did not want her.  She was trying to prove her innocence, by mailing affidavits that she was not even in the county, where this had occurred, on the date in question. 

So she made me make all these stops, before we even could really get going, to take JB to the hospital.  We were about 15 miles from her house when she says, “Stop!  We’ve got to go back to the house.  I forgot to get the ham.”

“No Melinda.  I am tried, JB is hurting.  There are other things to eat at my house.”  I said.  I also knew that ham was more than two weeks old, and probable no good.  Melinda becomes angry and suddenly hits her phone hard against the car door.  Now it was a nice day and were ridding with the windows down.  So when she hit the phone against the door, it suddenly goes flying out the window, going 60 mph.  Melinda yells at me to pull over.  She has to have her phone.  I did, and I let her and JB search for it.  I was getting really tired of her attitude, the way she was treating me, and I was feeling like I was being used.

Ilsa

Code Strawberry

Well I had intended to post to y’all yesterday September 17^th, 2015, but my brain had other ideas.  Yesterday was a bad day.  It was Code Strawberry day.  That is my word for when all hell breaks loose.  Living with Anxiety, panic attacks and whatever else it is that I have, is often difficult.  I often have no warning as to when or where I will lose my mind.  It has made me kind of a recluse.  I am terrified I will have one of these while I am driving, and suddenly forget how to drive a car, or get to a place and not know how to get home.  The people who are around me know I have a code word, if for no reason what so ever, I saw STRAWBERRY, my friends know that I am about to go into an attack.  They know where my medication is, how to administer it to me, how to handle me, who to call and not to take me to the hospital.  My attacks leave me disoriented and confused, and sometimes unable to speak. I even carry paperwork with me telling first responders what to do with me, where my meds are, and not to stick me in the psych ward again.  It may take several hours, but it will pass.  The medicine usually helps, but then I have days like yesterday.

Yesterday I woke up fine.  I’d had a bit of a strong dream in that I was dreaming of Melinda.  You will meet her in my later posts.  I had been thinking about her before I went to bed, trying to figure out how best to tell that part of my story.  Melinda was not a violent character in my life, but just another one of those people, who kind of used me and then threw me to the wolves, after years of a deep friendship. 

When I woke up I was disoriented and confused.  I felt like I was swimming in molasses.  I felt like my brain was processing, but at a very, very slow speed.  I was on dial up basically.  My since of time and reality was off.   I had hoped to shake, whatever it was, off.  I got up and had breakfast, but it got no better.  An hour after I woke up I decided perhaps it was best I take a pill, just in case.  I did not want it to get worse.  The pill did not help.  Before I knew it I was breaking out the coloring books, not because I felt anxious and was trying to settle myself, no it was because I felt like I was about 6 years old. 

I knew what kind of animals I had, but I was unsure of their names.  I knew what year it was, where I was, who I was married to, and that I was living in a larger, older body.  I knew I was Ilsa, not someone else.  This is not the first time this has happened.  It happened the day I was hospitalized.  It happened a year to the date, when I had another major attack.  Most of that was brought on by stress I was under with Melinda.  But I have also had these attacks where they were not in context of a panic attack.  A few months after I was hospitalized, I woke up at 4 o’clock in the morning and suddenly felt like I was 6 years old and wanted to color.  And so that is what I did.  I went in my altar room, got out my colors and did that for about 2 hours.  When I was finished I ran to wake Jay up, stifled the urge to jump up and down on the bed, and woke him up to show the picture I had just colored for him.  He told me how wonderful it was, convinced me I needed sleep and to cuddle under the covers with him.  I did.  When I woke in the morning I was fine. 

Yesterday I was totally by myself.  After I took my pill I called to my therapist, who was very busy.  I told her I was safe and not a danger to myself or others, and was not going to drive my car.  I said, “I just wanted you to be able to talk to me in this state.”  I called Jay too.  Juno and Kay were not home, or I would have had them come over and sit with me.  After coloring for a while I looked out on the beautiful day and wanted to be part of it. 

But I knew I had to get dressed and take my meds.  Two things I was not terribly sure I knew how to do.  But I made it threw and was able to figure it all out.  I grabbed a quilt, some books from my childhood, water, my cell phone, my sunglasses, and of course lip gloss.  When was a kid I never went anywhere without my lip gloss.  I spread out my quilt on the grass, in as much of the shade as I could, put my bag down and then let out the goats and Mr. Henry the piggy.  We all happily visited for a while.  I texted Jay.  I was amazed that in that state I knew how to use modern technology, but I did. 

As I was laying outside it kind of let go of me and I came back to myself.  I was a bit confused and disoriented again, as to how I got outside on a blanket.  I knew I had done it, but had had little control over what I did.  I had been in that state for about 4 hours. 

I think I was angrier over losing most of my day, as I had things to do, and the things I had planned obviously, did not get done.  At that point I was just exhausted.  When Jay came home he ordered me to have a nap, whether I wanted one or not.  When I woke from my nap I was still confused.  It wasn’t until we had gone to bed last night, and I woke somewhere in the night, that I felt I was really back to myself. 

In the two with panic attacks attached to them I kind of spent the day growing up.  Yesterday I did not.  One moment I felt I was 6 years old, and ten minutes later I was in touch with my 40 year old self.

I wonder what the hell is wrong with me and if I will ever get any better?  I think part of the reason I am writing this blog is so that someone can help me and give me a good definition of what is going on with me both emotional, mentally and perhaps spiritually.  I have no doubt all three are connected.  Now y’all come back and tell me to get right with Jesus and it will stop, or that I’m possessed, and I will kick your fucking asses!

If you are suffering from mental illness I encourage you to have a code word as well, instructions you carry with you at all time, and educate those around you about what to do with you if this happens.  It might save you a trip to the psych ward, or save your very life. 

I hate to say it, but never underestimate the stupidity of people.  My roommate in college had terrible seizures.  She was allergic to all the medications available at the time, so she would have upwards of 7 Petit Mals a day.  It would never fail.  She would go missing for a few days, and then show back up.  I’d ask what happened and she would tell me she had a seizure walking to class, and woke up in the Psych Ward, again.   She also carried no identification on her that said she had seizures.  The first responders didn’t know what was happening to her and just thought she was crazy or on drugs, I guess.  I don’t want the same for you. 

Ilsa

Healing

On Thursday August 25^th, 2011 I had my first major panic attack.  I have covered the day and most if it’s events in a little crazy, just like me.  I had a massive panic attack, that made me regress me to a younger age, in fact I went so far back I ended up thinking I was in one of my past lives.  I have spoke of this day with some breath, but I have not discussed, so far, what happened to me after wards, nor have I discussed the spiritual aspects of this event.

For two weeks after I came home I had the worst headache of my life.  No medication could touch it.  I found it difficult to pray or to journey.  Now I have been journeying for a long time.  To journey, for me, means I put myself in a semi-trance state and go to visit the other side, where my dead and my animals are.  I have been doing this for at least as long as I have defined myself as Pagan, although my techniques have changed over the years.  It is often something I do in times of stress.  It gives me great comfort.

This is totally my UPG.  I tuck myself in bed, because I usually go to sleep at some point during the journey.  It is rare that I come back all the way back across to the land of the living.  The way I journey is, in my mind I stand on my front porch and look down at my outside altar, which is next to a great, big, old, tall Pine tree.  I call for Bifrost, the rainbow bridge, and Heimdall who controls it.  He comes to me on what like a wooden bridge painted a rainbow of colors, on both the walk way and the rails.  He ties up to the porch and I step on.  He is behind a great big, tall, desk with a wooden wheel attached to it, which is always on my left as I step on.  He greats me with a hug and sometimes a kiss and asks where I am going.  I tell him Holda’s Gardens, this is what I have come to call her lands over the years as I have never known the proper name for it.  Heimdall then asks for an offering.  I usually give him what I have had to eat that evening with a glass of sweet tea.  He seems to really like my tea.  It always makes him smile.  He thanks me and he directs the bridge, which acts a bit more like a boat, over the swirling and misty air. 

We soon come to the gate to Holda’s Gardens.  I see it as black wrought iron, filigreed, arch with a half doggie door.  Heimdal ties up the bridge to two statues or columns on either side of the bridge.  I don’t know it’s always kind of misty.  I open the door and go in.  Once I am safely on the other side, he takes off and tells me to call for him when I am ready to leave.  I enter what is essentially Holda’s yard.  Weather it is the front yard or the back I don’t know.  On the other side I find a sandy dirt road, that always feels good under my bare feet.  To the right is Holda’s House, to the left a line of trees that separates the house from the pond.  There is now a bench, in front of the trees, for me.  I often sit under these trees, on the ground with Punka in my lap looking out over the pond.  I do this especially when I’ve had  a bad day.  The sandy road stretches on past Holda’s mill, into the trees, and beyond to the pastures where my goats are.  I usually don’t go down that far.  My guess is this is where the livestock lives.  That area is very green and hilly, like at the base of a mountain or in a valley.

From the spot where I stand I can call any of my deceased animals to me.  It may take them a minute to come to me, as they have to quit what they are doing first.  I often see Precious the first, zoom past me on her wings, chasing the bunny, sometimes it is the other way around.  She informs me the chase is the important thing, not the catching.  So they take turns. 

Holda is almost always the first to greet me, wearing her white dress and her blue apron.  I almost always see her in her grandmotherly form, about age 50 or 60 I would guess.  Then Momma Muriel and Oma come out. Sometimes Father Frey is there as well.  It just all seems to depend on what I need. I can never really see their faces.  I think it is just too much for my human brain to process.  Sometimes we all go into the kitchen and I am fed some type of apple dessert, hot cider or coffee.  I know there is a rule about not eating in the other worlds, but I do not wish to offend her.  When I have refused to eat in the past she gets annoyed with me and says, “EAT!”  I am often surprised she does not slap me in the back of the head when I do this.  It is there I will catch them up on what I am doing and why I have come to visit: occasionally it is to cross a dead animal’s spirit over, sometimes I have a question, sometimes it is to ask for healing for a friend,  or I’ve had a bad day or I just miss them so much. 

Now if all this sounds bizarre or made up to you, I’m sorry.  It is simply how I experience the divine, and it works for me.  All this spiritual healing is about to get a little stranger.

Not long after I had been hospitalized for my first panic attack, Holda came to me in a dream and said, “I don’t want you to journey, work magic, or even pray until after your initiation.”  I was a bit confused, but I agreed to do as I was told.  Every time I tried to do any of this, it just made the headaches worse.  I would do just about anything to make the pain stop.  Holda then took me to a women, in a temple with lots of herbs hanging around her.  I don’t know who she was.  My guess is either Eir or Brigid.   

I asked, “Where we were going.” 

She said, “I am taking you to be healed.”

“Why can’t you heal me?” I asked

She told me she did not do this type of healing, or that I need healing she could not do.  I don’t remember. 

I then asked, “Who is she?”

“She is my sister,” is all she would reply.  I am still a bit befuddled.  As far as we know Holda has no sisters. It is my guess that she used this title to apply to another Goddess.

Within a few days, whenever I closed my eyes, I began to see another Goddess as if she was standing before me.  She had coal black hair, pale skin and red painted on lips.  She would take me to a Greek or Roman style temple.  She asked me to lay down on a stone platform like bed and roll on my right side.  She would then take a large bowl of water and pour it threw my left temple, and into my brain.  I kid you not, from my right temple would pour out snakes.  As she did this technique my headache would lessen, and I would find some relief.  For a long time I thought the snakes were symbols of my illness.  I wonder now if they instruments of her healing.  This went on for several weeks.

Towards the end I asked what her name was.  She told me her name was Danube, and that she was the Goddess of rivers.  I thought, “Oh I will have to look that up.”  She looked at me and said, “you will not find me,” and she was right.  I have yet to identify her.  I have yet to meet anyone who knows who she is. 

I went to two of my elders, in the community, in between being hospitalized and being initiated.  My HP and I were trying to decide if I should still be initiated given my then mental health status.  I believed Holda was telling me yes.  I had hoped a tarot card or rune reading would give me confirmation of that.  I also went to them to ask if they had any idea what had happened to me, and to see if they knew who this mystery goddess was.  They told me they did not know who the Goddess was, but that if she was helping me I should continue to work with her.  I don’t remember what the cards and runes said.  They brought out a Tibetan singing bowl to get a reading on my chakras.  I had a blockage in my 1^st and 2^nd, that I was not terribly surprised at. I am infertile after all.   I was also having a blockage in my crown chakra, something I had never had a problem with.  I wonder now if part of the headaches, was having all that energy stopped.  One of the elders did tell me, that it was not unusual, for pagans to have some type of mental break or psychotic event prior to their first initiation. 

Apparently after I left, one of the elders sent a nasty email to my HP, saying she should never consider initiating someone in my mental state.  Yeh she was not pleased with me about that one.  I did not know, until years later, that she did not like them.  Although we were never sworn to secrecy about anything in the coven, she did not like me talking about such matters with outsiders.  We decided to do the initiation anyways. 

On September 9^th, 2011 I was initiated as a witch into my HP’s coven.  I will only speak to you of one part that occurred during that ritual.  I consider the rest too sacred. At one point I was laid on the ground and covered with a black sheet.  When I arose I felt better than I had in weeks.  My headaches were gone.  There were pictures taken of that night, long since lost to me.  But in the one of me lying on the ground, you can see tons of orbs.  Upon closer inspection you could see a sickle with 13 different points.  The sickle is one of Holda’s holy symbols.   There could be no doubt that the initiation was her wish. 

Even though in a few years time I would be asked to leave the HP’s coven, I have never been sorry I was initiated.  I have never been sorry that I spent my time with them.  I am honored to have learned under the HP. 

Ilsa

Behind a big woman's eyes - Infertility, Weight, and Mental Illness

Warning –this one is good, but long

My diets continue until I am 18.  I graduated high school weighing about 180lb.  I started my period when I was 11, I began to have irregular periods by the time I was 15.  In college I am diagnosed with Hypothyroidism, a conditions which runs in my family.  It is known to make periods irregular and very heavy.  It is also known to make you gain weight.  Shorty after I meet Mike, and become sexual active,  I am put on birth control.  Their hope is it will also make my periods regular.  It does and it also makes me gain 30lb.  My breast swell past D’s and I have trouble walking until I get used to them.   I tip 200lb for the first time.  I quickly get off of it, but the weight stays.

I think one of the reasons I marry Mike is that I have felt all my life; no man will want me because I am so fat and therefore so ugly.  To have someone find me sexy and attractive, at least in the beginning, is a dream come true for me. While in college and in my abusive marriage to Mike I continue to gain weight. I hit 300lb for the first time.  I develop breathing problems and sleep paralysis.  I am taken to a lung specialist who undoes my bra and tells me part of my problem is I am wearing such a tight bra it is cutting off my air flow.  I am wearing a D.  I get new bras and measure in at 52 I.  My bras are now very expensive and come only from a specialty shop.  I am told the sleep paralysis is coming from the excessive stress I am under.  The Dr. also tells me I must immediately loose half my body weight. 

For the first time I join a gym.  I remember going in the bathroom to change into my work out clothes.  I come out shaking, terrified that people will make fun of me.  No one does.  I graduate and we move back home.  When I go to work for the car dealership they offer perks like helping you pay for a gym membership.  I sign up.  Not long after I leave Mike I have lost 50lb.  I continue working on my weight, at the gym and by joining Overeaters Anonymous (OA).  After I lose my job at the car dealership I continue to work out at the gym every day, writing my article for the paper and going to meetings.  In total I lose 87 pounds.  I plateau. I weight 217 lb. when I meet Jay.  Who could freaking careless how much I weigh.

After months of looking I am finally able to start a new job.  Losing weight and writing gets pushed to the side as I work and fall in love with Jay.  When we marry a year later I am at 245 lb and blissfully happy.  We have moved to Sabine Parish and there are no OA meetings for me to attend there.  The weight continues to creep back up.  There are attempts at walking and diet, but nothing sticks. We return home to Caddo Parish after Hurricane Rita.

Shortly before Momma Muriel dies in 2008 we begin the process for me to have my stomach stapled, RNY.  Mercifully I am turned down.  I have talked to many people since who have had the surgery, that are 10, 15 even 20 years out from their surgeries.  Their health is just deplorable, and for those who could not afford the plastic surgery afterwards, they look just as bad.  I am very, very glad I was turned down, but here is the major lesson I learned.  If you want to have your stomach stapled, and they send you to a psych evaluation, whatever you do, don’t tell them you are a witch.  I did and I am turned down because of it.  It takes us a while to get the evaluation from the insurance company.  The first lines read, “While Ilsa may present as possibly psychotic it is my opinion that she is just different, very different.  It is because of these differences that she may have experienced trouble in her life.”  While I passed the evaluation, it is my guess all the insurance company saw was the word “psychotic,” and that was enough to turn me down. 

We try again to diet and eat right in August of 2011.  We go to see the dietician the week before I have my first major panic attack.  I had been trying to measure my food and do as I had been told.  I still think it may have been one of the contributing factors to the attack.  When I go back into counseling in December of 2011 one of the goals during all this is to lose weight so I can get pregnant. 

Mike and I never tried to conceive a child.  Even though diagnosed with Hypothyroidism at age 18, my periods continue to be erratic.  I am unwilling to try birth control again after my first experience with it.  We settle on me taking Progesterone pills 10 days out of the month.  After I leave Mike I go in for a battery of tests.  Given what Mike was into I want to make sure he had not been cheating, and didn’t give me something.  He thankfully did not.  I am clean.  My new OB/GYN, however, diagnoses me with Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS).  I am given less than a 10% chance of ever conceiving naturally.  I am told it will take a team to get me pregnant. PCOS is a vicious cycle.  The added testosterone in your body makes you gain weight; the weight makes you produce more testosterone.  And round and round it goes.  The only treatment for PCOS is anti-testosterone birth control, Yasmin.  We find out later it causes gallbladder trouble. 

The day I meet Jay I tell him all the conditions I have, the medications I take and the meetings I attend.  I tell him that if he can’t deal with that, there is the door.  He stays.  PCOS is mentioned in that list but never discussed.  A month later we are standing in a Wal-Mart checkout line.  He is standing behind me, holding me and kissing my neck.  I am making baby talk with a cute baby in front of me.  He looks at the child and whispers in my ear, “What do you think?  In about a year? year and half?”  He’s asking me when I think we will have our first child.  I sputter.  Thank the Gods he can’t see the shock on my face.  I begin to unload the groceries onto the conveyer belt.  I said, “Did you just ask me what I think you asked me?”  I think he has just asked me to marry him.  I did not know that at the moment he said it, he had meant it as a joke.  But he said later, once he heard himself say it, he meant it.  He never expected my response. 

I begin with, “I have PCOS.  The doctors have told me I have a 10% chance of ever conceiving.  They have told me it will take a team to get me pregnant.  I think you are the man for the job.  Yes.”  I look up and he is smiling and his bright blue eyes are sparkling.  I follow up with, “if we can’t conceive we will adopt.  If we can’t adopt we will raise dogs.”

Since that day 12 ½ year ago Jay and I have tried to get pregnant.  Which is really hard when you have no periods.  For a while we try while I am on birth control, even taking prenatal vitamins which make me sick.  We go for long periods where we don’t try.  We try Progesterone.  We try Colmid twice, not only does it not work, I don’t even ovulate.  We have Jay checked early on.  The Dr’s tell us that he has the highest count they have ever seen.  My response is, “I must have some really broke shit then.”  The Dr’s send me home and tell me I cannot conceive because I am too fat.  To go home and come back after I have lost some weight.  I try, but nothing happens. I am routinely told it is my fault.  I am told to relax and when we finally give up it will happen. I am put on Metformin which chains me to a toilet with diarrhea for more than a year.  I am finally told the next step in infertility treatment is to give me shots in my stomach, which are not covered by insurance, and very expensive.  IVF is about $10,000 per treatment, not covered by insurance and may take as many as 7 times to work.  Besides having PCOS, I have been given no other reason why I cannot conceive.  They just look at me and throw medicine my way that doesn’t work.  It’s hell to be infertile and poor.

I look at my husband and often feel nothing but guilt, that I can’t give him a child with his beautiful blue eyes.  That I can’t give him a little piece of immortality.  That I can’t keep his line going.  My beautiful, wonderful, loving husband has nothing wrong with him.  It’s all on my end.  That eats at a woman.  I began to think that he needed to leave me and find another wife, so he could be a father.  That I should just end my life. 

I am blessed to have a friend like Juno, who has just a many mental problems as I do.  She is great in that I can share with her my crazy and suicidal thoughts and she understands.  One day sharing that I had been having these thought Juno says to me, “you know why you can’t kill yourself.”

“No why?”

“Jay is a wonderful man.  He is so kind hearted that if you die, who ever marries him may not be so kind to him and take advantage of him.  You have to stay alive to protect him.” 

That was one of those light bulb moments for me, game changing in my craziness.  I had to stay alive to protect him.  It has taken root in me.  Even sometimes in my moments of panic attacks I repeat this to myself.

Gods bless Jay, my weight has never been a problem for him.  He loves me just as I am.  He has never told me I was fat or asked me to lose weight for him.  He just looks at me with those loving blue eyes and kisses me.

We have attacked this from a spiritual point as well.  I know I have several closed chakras and have worked to open them.  I have begged and pleaded with Holda.  I have done spells for myself. I have attended high seat rituals to ask why I cannot conceive and when, if ever, I might.  I am told to be patient and that it is not yet time.  The last high seat we attend, Jay bless him, asks.  The oracle tells him she does not believe it will not happen without medical intervention. 

People say, “Well just lose weight.  Go on a diet. Eat more vegetables and fruit.”  They don’t work for me.  No matter what I do it won’t come off.  Fruits and vegetables are also terrible expensive.  I think many poor people, like me, are fat because they can only afford carbs and meat.  Vegetables are a luxury.  I am also really, really tired of well meaning people.  I have been coerced, cajoled and damn right bribed in the past to lose weight.  I have been promised makeovers if I lost weight.  I even had a fellow offer me a dollar a pound if I would lose weight. Why does everybody think it is there business??  Every time I was with my mom she would say something about my weight, until I finally told her it was an off topic subject.  If she started that shit while I was on the phone with her I would just hang up.  If I was at her home and she did it I would get up and leave.  I had to do this until finally she learned.  If she can’t love me and accept me for who I am, she doesn’t deserve to love me.

In the last year I have gone so far as to join a gym, exercise, give up sugar, and join OA again.  I lose 30lb initially and then gain it all back.  After a year of not losing I quit trying. I am now almost 40.  If I was to conceive at this point I am very high risk.  I have been told I will develop gestational diabetes.  I have high blood pressure and could develop preeclampsia.  At my age, my DNA has become sticky and means I could have a child with Down Syndrome or other abnormalities.  I am also on Buspar which could lead to a whole host of other problems.   At this point in my life it is not advisable for me to conceive. 

We have been asked, “Why don’t you adopt??”  I want to feel the baby move in me.  I want a baby who looks like Jay.  I want my own child.  A private adoption is about $20,000.  Most of the children in foster care have problems emotional, mental or physical.  I’m not even sure with my mental history they would let me adopt a child.  I’m not sure with my mental history I could handle one with problems.  Then there is the problem of our religion.  While Jay is Agnostic, I am a very loud, proud and out Pagan.  I talked with a friend of ours some years back.  She had just adopted her sister’s kids.  She told me, once they found out she was a witch they did not want to let her adopt her own flesh and blood.  Wonder what they would do with me.  While I am sure it is highly illegal, don’t doubt it’s being done and simply filed under another made up reason to deny people.

It’s not that I like being fat.  I often feel trapped in a failing body.  Being fat has just been part of my identity for so long that I don’t know any other way.  I am a bit terrified to be thin.  How will my soul live in such a little body?  A friend once said about me, “Yeh she’s big, but that’s because she has a big heart.”  Being 350lb is not easy.  I have frequent back spasms when I stand for more than a few minutes at a time or walk more than a few hundred feet.  I still can’t walk from here to the barn without being winded and hurting.  By the time I leave the house, walk to the barn, a few hundred feet away, put the goats away, and come back I am hurting and need to sit and rest.  My hip hurts me.  It started about 8 years ago.  I went into the hospital for it, they ex ray me and then tell me they can find nothing wrong with me.  I am convinced it is arthritis, and my possible be tied to my weight.  But have I mentioned it again to my Primary Care Physician, nope.  I am afraid he will do the tests and tell me, again, that there is nothing wrong with me.

I think the worst part about being fat is having occasionally to ride in the motorized cart at the store.  These are days when either my hip is hurting, I am having back spasms that won’t quit, or my Interstitial Cystitis pain is so bad that I can barely walk.  I am terrified of being taunted by others in the store.  The last time I had to use the cart I was with Jay at the grocery store.  I was trying to talk myself out of using it, he was trying to talk me into it.  Finally I gave in and said, “Okay but if anybody says anything to me, you beat them up!”  So when you pass a fat lady in a cart please be kind to her.  She may be riding it because of a pain you don’t know about and have nothing to do with her weight.  Just remember the lady riding in the cart may be me.

Yet the Buspar is doing something I am hesitant to discuss.  It’s a minor miracle that I am afraid might disappear or may just be a fluke if I talk about it.  But I must.  In the last few weeks I have noticed that I am eating less.  Not trying to, I am just full.  So full I can’t eat anymore.  I have to decide in my head, before hand, what and how much to eat because I know I can’t hold it all like I used to.  Last night I am thinking to myself.  I can’t have another piece of chicken, because I won’t have room for pudding.  I’ve never had to think like that.  I have so much more energy now I am even considering starting to go for walks in the fall.  But I know by saying all this I have broken the magical spell and I will go back to living in my nightgown before long, eating however I want. 

Ilsa