Life Through The Eyes of Stacy

I find there are many things in my life I have to explain to people, agoraphobia being on the top of the list. See, its not just a topic I choose to blog on or an excuse to not go to the grocery store, agoraphobia is a debilitating problem that affects my entire family...Especially my kids. Imagine you are me and the phone rings. The school is calling to let you know that your daughter forgot her glasses at home (for the umpteenth time) and you need to bring them in ASAP. First I get hot like a heat wave took over and is running through my blood from my head to my feet. Then I am starting to sweat and get mad. "How could she forget them?" I argue out loud to myself. "Why doesn't she have her backup pair in her backpack instead of sitting in her room next to the main pair." I realize at that moment that she is only 10 years old and that at that age I forgot everything too...It's not her fault that I am sick. I am feeling like my heart is going to beat right ...

I learned tonight that a long-time friend of my family's passed away Monday. The mother,(I will call her Tracy) died of a heartattack like my Mom. I am only guessing at her age but she must have been around 58 years old. I grew up along side this other family since I was a baby. Tracy and her husband (I'll call him Joe) were best friends with my parents.Their daughter (Terry) was my bestfriend in my youth and their son (John) was close to my brother. Their family had already suffered the illness and death of the father, Joe, who had Huntington's disease about 15 years ago. There was a day when something happened so sad and regrettable that My parents and Tracy's Mom no longer spoke. It wasn't until my Mother passed away that our family and theirs connected again. They all attended her funeral last year. Death can certaintly put things in order, like how much someone means to us. Anyway, my friend lost her father a while ago and now her Mother on Monday. I imagin...

If you have been following my blog so far it is no surprise to you that I talk about heavy-duty stuff...I promise you, that is not going to be all that my blog has to offer but like therapy is for some,. getting the big topics out on the table can enable me to break them down, dissect and,hopefully, fix them. As a very thinned-skinned girl growing up, everything people said to me, even well intentioned people, was taken in and almost always turned around in my own head to become a negative thing. "I like your skirt" meant the person must hate my top or "You did a great job on this assignment must mean I did terribly on every other one.It was consuming me and man was it exhausting. I imagine for my close friends and family it must have been like egg shells all around me and no one really knew if they should come near. Looking back I see where my illness pushed people away. Sad. I grew up in a tiny rural town. The kind of town where cable didn't come along until I was ...

It seems you're wondering where I've went and you are looking. I am here far from you hiding. I had dreams of finally finding happiness with you, of being in love and loved, finally, by someone who was drawn to, respected and adored me. -A man who could see the world through my words and wouldn't try to fix it but instead help me color it brightly with hope and fully with love. If you are wondering where I went you weren't listening. I told you that my heart was breaking, that I was never going to be able to love again after you and my heart is holding me to that promise firmly. You are but just another man in this world letting me fall. ...Another person who showed me what could be then gave me what was so much less. Another heart that closed itself to my love before you truly ever let it in. Whether because you are not interested, not ready or just plain scared, you flirted with my happiness then stabbed it with your reality's edge. I cannot face you another day a...

Yesterday's blog was very hard to get into words and even more difficult to let in emotionally. I walked away feeling in one way like I had unloaded a great weight yet in the other way like I had opened a wound that finally tried to heal. One thing I want to say is this: I will always love my father. When i think back on my life as his daughter sure there are negatives, especially now,but all in all my father was my hero. He could put together and fix anything. He was the hardest working man I knew. Although he wasn't the kind of father who would sit and read books to me or play a game of catch with any of his children, he was, in his own way, very loving.I remember many times after falling and hurting myself the first thing that my father would do is yell at me and say things Like "I told you not to do that" and other such negative words, he would work 12 hours a day and then hide the rest of the day in his bedroom and when he did come out for dinner he would usually...

Something started to grow where only dried soil lay. Entangled in the roots of a dying pine tree, a seed began a journey to meet the world. The area was unkissed by the sun and out of the way of the rain except when it poured. Then it flooded. No reason did this flower have to gift itself to the world. Yet there it was; A bud as green and as alive as it was sturdy pushing up through the earth as if to say 'Hello.' No idea whatsoever what its face will be, whether some gorgeous annual or a dandelion weed. That doesn't seem to matter to this flower. It is used to fighting since it was just a seed cradled in the worst soil. The sun had to do some magic to shine its way through the tree boughs onto the dank and cold soil. The rain that came not at all or in puddles did not dry up norvwash away the life that so badly wanted to be. ~That is what our love should be.~ Working damn hard to grow and flourish through all the garbage and lack of good fortune to push through and grow pa...

Its 10 pm, the kids just went to bed (kinda like two tornadoes whipping about then landing into one place with the energy still reeling) and my husband is coming home early from work..Not much time to myself. No wonder I tend to be a night owl, only at night when they are asleep do I really get time to myself. Even then the cats take up much of my attention. Today I am bothered by the behavior of a friend. Although we have never met in person because we live 3,000 miles away, I considered this person my friend as well as they said they too considered me the same. Yet, a week or so has gone by (again) and to spite my sending two messages and forwarding this blog as well as some of my poetry, I have had no response from them. Sure, they could be having a busy week with many things taking up their time and the computer could possibly be the last thing on their mind but they have been on several times and this isn't the first time that this friend has done this to me. The friendship is...

What I am about to write about tonight is not easy for me. When thinking about the subject of my blog today this one kept getting shoved back in my head. That is exactly why I am going to do it, because I don't want to and forcing myself might help me with some of this emotion. ~So, when I was molested I was, as I stated in an earlier blog, about 7 years old, visiting my friends Grandparents house. To this day when I drive by the building where it happened I get sick to my stomach and have flashbacks.That day changed me in many ways. Suddenly I was embarrassed about my body and uncomfortable around men, even my own father. Oh yeah, and my father? He doesn't know about this even til today. Am I afraid he will find out buy reading this? No, my father will not read my blog, Period. He just won't...wouldn't cross his mind. I couldn't get him to read my poetry or even a card I would give him on his birthday. Besides, he is in his own world with his own stuff not talking ...

~I don't know anyone who finds saying goodbye easy. It's is one of life's many lessons that we all hope never to have to learn. The biggest death I ever had to endure until my Mother's was my Grandfather's death. He was my Mom's father. As a kid he lived near us. He was so much fun I remember. He would put plastic rain caps on his head, lipstick on his lips and pretend to be an old lady. Then he would pretend to pull peanut butter cups out of my ears. He was a ball of energy. But just as he became a great, consistent part of my life he was gone. He and my Grandmother soon moved to Florida. The berkshire weather chased them away. When he was diagnosed with cancer his illness and death was summed up for me with a week long trip to Florida followed by a phone call that he had passed away. I remember my Mother's reaction that moment that the news came in and for the years to come. She would speak of seeing him in her dreams and she would talk about him often. I...

It's sad to think that a loved one is always letting me down. Whether its because they hurt another loved one or didn't give me the time I am hoping for, it seems almost a sure bet that someone I care about is going to do or say (or not say) something to hurt me. So, this is where one of life's many wise saying comes in. We can't change other people only change how we react to what other people do (or some variation of that). I am forever feeling like I have to be the one to change~As a kid when I was needed to be the "good kid" because my brother was almost always in trouble with the police, as a teenager when I was depressed and had to hide my cutting so as not to draw attention to myself (which by the way, cutting is for several reasons, one of them being for attention) and now as an adult who is married with children and a family that is going all different ways but forward it seems. I know, "boo hoo" me, there are worse things to have like a di...

~There is something that happens to me once in a while that I have a very hard time describing. I don't mention it often but as It did happen today I am wondering if this happens to everyone? ~How do I describe it? Okay, when it happens I am sitting alone, it is quiet. For some reason i have stopped looking around or at anything of any importance and focused my eyes on one thing. Then it starts happening;I call it an "awakening" because over and over, like waking from a strange, unfamiliar place in a dream and into the comfort of my room, I come back to the room, back into my head. Some people might call it coming out of a trance except for the fact that I was never in a trance. In a minute or two I have gone from looking at something to the room and my mind says over and over the words "I am really here, I am REALLY here..." and my mind seems to have to sincerely take in the room and the fact that I, Stacy, am REALLY here in this room, in this body and of this...

It happens once a day at least...I am sitting watching tv or visiting a friend and it hits me' images in my head of a black and white cartoon perfectly lined with dark sturdy edges and clean, white graphics that turn suddenly gray and splotchy.Like someone took a crayon and scribbled all over yet the feeling is so much worse.I attribute it to my experience of being molested at 7 years old. ~Everything was a normal as possible for a kid of that age (see more blogs for more details on what "normal" for me was) and then in came the gray, the squiggles and the dark feelings. Although I am open about the fact that I was molested I also don't really like to talk about the details. After it happened it was years before I told anyone. I was in grade school when they called the school into the auditorium/lunchroom and someone stood before all of us describing what we now know as "good touch/bad touch".We were told by this stranger not to trust strangers ever and if s...

I am going to be honest, as an agoraphobic and a stay at home mom, I don't see or participate in anything too exciting. I wake up whenever my back can't take the bed anymore thanks to a hubby whose shift doesn't start until 3pm, I make myself a great big cup of coffee and slowly greet the day.I have had to learn to stay off of the computer since I have let it take over a big chunk of my life.Hey. I am a damn agoraphobic, the idea of showering, getting dressed and actually LEAVING the house scares the hell out of me.With Face book I can go as I am; noone will see my hair or whether I am still in my pajamas or not. The truth of why I am trying to stay off here? Long story short, I have been married 12 years and after losing my Mother about a year ago and my Dad a year before that (my dad is not deceased by the way, he is not my dad anymore since his stroke stole his real personality away), I was reaching out for help to the wrong people.I met and talked to other people inst...