Suicide attempts by loved ones suffering from the cruelty of mental illness have been a devastating part of my life since I was 16 years old. That does something to your ability to process and respond outside of your own trauma.

Today, I gave God as much as I could give of that pain and the struggle to find my part in it all–both the build up to those breakdowns and my loved ones’ recovery thereafter.

I talked about how wishes don’t come true, and I blew the most breath I could muster at a wishflower all the same.

I cried and I cried out.

I thanked Him for every hour and begged for every one He can give.

Then I admitted the truth which sets one free even as it breaks the heart anew.

I am not the giver of life He is.

I don’t get to decide the way, the time, the why.

I just get to trust His love is bigger than time. His love is more than mine. I have no control over anything but my response to any given thing under the sun.

The truth hurts, but it’s a pain that addresses the wounds left behind by things beyond our control.

I’m always downgrading myself, my pain, my wisdom, my experience, my need, my value. You name it, and I’ll tell you it’s no big deal. Only, right now, life doesn’t feel like no big deal. It is heavy and bloated and sinking within my chest, and without check. I suppose this is what God is for, and what a therapist is about, and what friends are waiting around to be gracious about. So, why can’t I give any combination thereof any amount of this burden…or even a hint that it’s weighing me down?

Is it pride, this feeling–this fearing–that no one can or should take me on?

Is it self-sabotage to know you can’t breathe, and just keep gasping and grasping at straws in the form of television reruns instead of resting in your relationships?

Is it some other thing I can’t put words to because it’s just part of my wiring?

All I know is it’s not what I want today. Today, I want to cry about losing my mom until my eyes are as dry as this season I’m in. Today, I want to scream until God heals the wounds of mental illness spread among the generations of my family. Today, I want to melt away just long enough to come back together a better mess than I am right now. Today, I want someone to see my pain and not be shaken by it, not attempt to word it away, or offer comfort that means nothing to me. I want someone to cry with me and tell me this is all shit. I want outrage on my behalf, and I don’t want to turn it away by keeping it all together, or at least hiding it all under the heaps of time and distance between me and everyone and everything I love.

Instead of pursuing any bit of that, I’m typing because I at least need to say these things aloud…as aloud as a blog no one reads can be, anyway. This is a step toward not just letting it take me out. I may not be ready to call a friend, but I am ready to admit I have friends I can call. No one will shatter under the weight of my heartache but me. That sentence alone feels like a start.

It’s a day off for me, which is rare these days. If I’m not at work, I’m usually catching up around the house, running errands, or pricing items to resell. I’m in over my head, most likely, but we’re really trying to make this adventure work for us…without killing my love of all things days-gone-by, would be nice.

My approach has been to curate items I know someone will love, but waiting for perfect matches won’t always cover the space I’m renting, and it may never cover all the expenses of life. So, my husband and I walk a line of sorts, one written in chalk, but growing more permanent for me, and less so for him.

He sees how other people make their money, and their ends meet, by selling new stuff at lower prices than the stores currently carrying them. I see it, too, I just let it be their thing and have zero desire to make it mine. I’m too in love with the truly vintage and awesomely antique to let my space become one that belongs in a flea market.

Don’t get me wrong, flea markets are the jam. I’m just all for keeping things in their place, and maintaining the vibes each creates.

So, I fight the good fight by giving up my days off, most of the time. Acquiring, researching, pricing, listing, tagging, staging…whatever it takes to get ahead of the conversation again. I just cannot pour myself into something I don’t love and believe in, and I have zero desire to sell just for the sake of selling.

I’m all about rescuing things from time, and getting them into the right hands and homes. Nothing against bins divers, it’s just not for me. I love that it’s for them. Like, genuinely love it. I love the community of resellers and all the various avenues we tread. I love how we all share some of our secrets and all of our excitement. I cannot tell you how supportive and encouraging these new people in my life are to one another, and to me. It’s a wonderful thing to watch and be part of.

Today’s a day off. I’m not reminding you so much as I’m reminding myself.

Sure, my shelves need more items, and my items need to get off my living room floor. Sure, all these books aren’t gonna hop into my Etsy shop on their own. Sure, I could be washing a dish or ten or twenty million. My body needs other things, though, and that’s why I need to focus on today. Rest. Laughter. Daydreams. Repeat.

P.S. I hit publish and started working on books. Like I knew I would.

I thought I’d be dead by now. Something in me just couldn’t imagine lasting beyond 36. I’ve always been weird, what can I say.

Now that I’m 44, I can’t imagine squeezing everything in by the end of it all.

I make it to 83 in my imaginings, now.

Life has a way of changing how we see things, even imaginary ones. I think I’ve changed how I person, more than I’ve changed as a person. If that makes sense, you’re in the right place.

These days, I’m seen as a people person, and someone who is organized and hard working. I thought those things were always there, just less tapped into, I suppose. It’s funny how a different environment can invite you further into yourself that way.

I’m still a weirdo out loud, I just get to do it in front of people who see me consistently. I haven’t done that in decades.

I think that’s at least a fifth of what I love about my job in an antiques shop. We’ve got regulars and we’ve got newcomers. We’re the heart of the town, in the heart of downtown. I say I’m a vintage slinger, but I’m a bartender without the booze.

I meet a lot of people, but it’s the really seeing them that makes me happiest. I feel like I’ve found my place in this job, and it was already my favorite place these twenty years of wandering.

Full circles never stop.

Seasons. I don’t know that I like that word a whole lot these days. There’s too much promise and reasonable expectations attached to it. And repetition. At least when we’re slinging it about in regard to segments of our lives. It’s all hindsight poetic ish, or midst of hardship hooey to make us feel better about now because now isn’t forever. What if–and you may want to grab some pearls to clutch here–what if we just let now be now and let that be enough for us, for now. Hell, it’s lit er al ly all we have. So, it might as well be enough, or good enough, for now at the very least.

I guess I’m thinking of contentment, but it’s slathered in longing. Two things can occupy the same space when it’s metaphorical, you know. I cling to the reality “this too shall pass,” but I’m done with the cycle of seasons defining the passage of my life as though the dying away always leads to the death of a thing, which then leads to the life of another and back again. Blistering summers and blustering winters. Spring and fall grow shorter each time round, and I’m supposed to just be okay with that.

Well, I’m not okay.

I want dried leaves to fall like snowflakes on any given Sunday. Breaths of fresh air should always escape visible in the crisp of night. The heat should wilt one just enough for refreshing in the gentle wind weaving through wildflowers. Wish flowers and moss and crunching twigs should be littered with butterflies as hail falls in buckets. I’d like the sea air to reach the peaks of mountains one didn’t need to first ascend, too.

Maybe this is my first summer.

I remember nights under starlit skies, peering through the perfect-shade-of-red telescope my mom had gotten me for Valentine’s day. Those craters I’d stare at hold a different sort of wonder for me now. I suppose I’d never pieced together the terror in the beauty of it all. Pelted by time and space, displayed to some teenage jerk with notions that being small holds its own sort of peace. Thrust into the spotlight, chased through the months and years and decades and millennia–and somehow still never truly seen. An offshoot. A satellite. In orbit, and ever so predictable. Defined by relationship. Studied subject of conspiracy and of religion and of anything under the sun, but on its own, nothing so terribly interesting. We landed on the moon, left our junk, and pretty much Charlie Browned about it–I got a rock, style. There it is, just hanging mid-air, doing whatever it is a moon does to get by, and nothing more.