During even the smallest moments of our lives, our actions can mean the world to someone. We must hold onto those moments with all we are.
This is their story:
We met at the bus stop.
You see, I was working at this place seven years back, and buses had to be taken to reach the institution. I was in a teaching position. She was in the library.
We got talking after bumping into each other at the same bus stop, boarding the same bus and getting off at the same stop every day. We were the same age. She was single and I was not.
Her long hair she carefully tied into a bun and soon we became friendly enough for me to intentionally pull out her hair clip and release her hair. She’d beg me to not do it; tying the hair down was “such a chore,” she’d exclaim, but I could not escape the fun of it. We’d chat all the way to the office, then chat all the way back.
She held her umbrella for me when it rained, because I hated carrying umbrellas, and she wouldn’t let me get wet. She claim to be fake-upset with me, but she always shared her umbrella.
Six months later, I changed jobs and I no longer needed the bus. I no longer stood at the stop. I no longer waited for her to arrive, so that we could catch up on our day (she lived at a hostel nearby the bus stop).
I recall catching a glimpse of her standing at the bus stop, while I was driving towards my new office one morning. The bus stop was no longer on my usual route, but I had broken my daily route that day. She was looking away; our eyes did not meet.
Then one evening, we bumped into each other while running errands. You wouldn’t have noticed that we hadn’t been seeing each other. While we were both in a hurry, the warmth was overwhelming. She invited me over to her hostel, but I refused, saying that I’d come by some other day.
Then I did not run into her at all. She crossed my mind now and again – I considered visiting her “one of these days,” but it just never happened.
Several months later, I ran into another ex-colleague. We’d worked in the same department, and rode the same bus to and from work. When the conversation veered toward M, the librarian, my ex-colleague suddenly got very serious.
M had been diagnosed with some brain-related issue and was undergoing treatment. I never got full details of what had happened. She’d had to get her long hair chopped off. She was still working but as she became progressively weaker, she eventually stopped working.
One day, she collapsed after a brain hemorrhage and never came out of it.
“Do you know what M used to say about you?” my ex-colleague asked.
“What?”
“Now I have neither the hair, nor the hair-puller.”
I cannot believe that M thought of me in her last few months.
What I put aside with procrastination and life-getting-in-my-way, has now become unachievable.
She is no longer there.
I instinctively look out for her every time I pass the bus stop.
She will never be found there. But that should not stop me for silently acknowledging the place that brought two strangers together.
Addiction is a beast that spins yarns of lies that we often believe.
These are the struggles an addict faces:
Encased in a swishing bell jar of beer, my brain screams at me. Hungover. Again.
I am a professional. It would astonish my co-workers to know that I am holding back vomit while they talk to me, that I was awake mere hours ago, drinking, drinking, drinking.
My body is almost used to this dull feeling of the next day. I used to take a day off when I felt this shitty, but now it’s more often than not, so I am accustomed to this silver fish headache razoring my head.
Addiction is the root of my family tree, and I tell myself, I am no where near as bad as most everyone else in my family. I justify the excess even though I know this is not healthy.
Healthy should be my goal… But, I poison myself.
When it’s not alcohol, it’s food. Consumption is key for me, it seems.
My beautiful friend has been working on her dissertation for years. She explained to me once that her inner voice tells her only smart people deserve a Ph.D., so she doesn’t deserve this distinction. She is brilliant, but her mind lies to her.
I feel like I don’t deserve to be healthy. To be sober. To be thin.
If I wanted those things, wouldn’t I just achieve them? I have always achieved everything I have set my sights on.
Instead, it seems, I’m content to wallow in the murky bottle, to deny myself nutrients and instead eat processed garbage.
I have worked so hard on so many areas of my life that I feel like I just need a break. My breaks include booze and fried food. Why?
Comfort food makes me feel very uncomfortable. And yet, I choose to eat this way every day.
I want to be my best self, and yet, maybe this is it.
i’ve written before about my love hate relationship with the pump… well, mostly about the hate portion. its rhythmic sucking makes me sing little songs to its always irritating tempo. then they mix around with the gymboree songs already stuck in my head. then i realize how badly i really do need the prozac and ativan.
i don’t know for sure how long it’s going to last. i’m trying to be realistic about the prospect of having cancer, undergoing chemo and pumping for (hopefully only) six months. it’s kind of like starting out nursing. i tried to limit my expectations of myself. i said i’d aim for six months and then see if i could go for a year. that seemed ridiculously long to me at the time, much like pumping for six months does now. but a year came and went and well, here we are.
my husband, nugget daddy, stayed down at my parents’ last night so nugget and i have been left to fend for ourselves for the majority of the past two days, save for a playdate and lasagna drop off yesterday afternoon.
i didn’t get to pump at all yesterday. i can’t pump in front of my daughter, nugget. that would be like asking your pregnant best friend to take you to happy hour. i meant to pump last night once she went to sleep, but i fell asleep, too. my boobs had been angry ever since.
nugget likes to have her naps with me, but this limits my options for the duration of naptime as to what i can actually accomplish with twenty pounds of sleeping toddler strapped to my chest, lovely though as she feels snuggled against me. her grandmamie puts her to sleep in the stroller and i bribed her into it with chocolate chips this afternoon so i could pump, finally, and subsequently blog about it. lucky you!
i was so angry the first few times i pumped after starting chemo. it was like rubbing salt in the wounds. i couldn’t nurse nugget and i had to stand uncomfortably in the bathroom watching my milk fill up plastic bottles instead of a happy baby. and then as i would dump the ounces of heartache down the sink a new wound would appear like a gaping mouth to catch my salty tears and sting my aching soul. what a waste.
you won’t find much if you google “cancer” and “breastfeeding” except for articles about nursing after breast cancer. “chemo” and “breastfeeding” yields the same contraindication tagline over and over, and “cancer” and “breastmilk” mostly just points you to article after article about this guy who drank breastmilk to fight his prostate cancer. those, mostly sensational and local news, articles mention milk banks selling milk to cancer patients when they have excess available to sell. it costs $3 an ounce.
i’ve had plenty of time to think about that guy and those $3 ounces while making up songs to the pump’s rhythm and calculating how much i’d just poured down the drain. warning! here comes the crunchy freaky part. squee! maybe you want to stop reading, uptight next door neighbor guy or old school grandpa, maybe there’s a golf game you’d rather be watching. okay, so seriously, why the fuck would i want to keep dumping my milk down the drain when other cancer patients are paying good money to get their hands on it? i don’t know what exactly it might do for me, but it sure won’t be doing anything at the bottom of the sink that’s for sure. so i sucked it up and sucked it down.
it was sort of gross at first, though why exactly i’m not sure. i think it was the temperature. i can’t think of any beverage i regularly consume at body temperature. but now i’m used to it and pleased by thought that i might actually be doing something to help save my own life.
so, now i have a new goal. i want to pump twice a day for the whole six months, or however long it might be. i know i might get sick. i know i might have to stop if i do. but if i approach it the way i did breastfeeding, then maybe i can make it through. maybe if i tell all of you about my plan then i’ll be hell-bent on reaching my goal. maybe some mother out there trolling the interwebs for a glimmer of hope will find my blog now, instead of all the other useless crap i found.
When I started Band Back Together, it was sort of a nebulous concept for a blog. Most group blogs I’d ever seen were strictly controlled and stuck to one subject. Or they weren’t controlled – or worse, forums – at all and Internet Mole People (my word for trolls) abounded. And having the resource pages available for the broad range of categories, well I hadn’t seen that either. When I had to explain the concept of the blog, I couldn’t.
I just knew that Band Back Together was going to go somewhere, I just didn’t know exactly, well, where.
On a Monday in the middle of September, Band Back Together was launched. I’d put out a call for some stories the Friday before so that the site would have some stuff on it initially, hoping that filling it with other stories (besides my own) would make people feel more encouraged to submit. It was hard to explain that the site wasn’t another Superblog of Bloggers. It was just, well, us.
I think I slept a total of six hours that weekend, trying to get the site ready for the launch.
We launched and the server crashed and burned. I had to frantically scramble around to get a new one set up (whatever that means).
I’m not a numbers person, but I think that you should see this:
In the past 2.5 months, we’ve published 460 posts (there are 25 more waiting to be published).
We have moderated and actually published 2,600 comments.
As if those numbers aren’t staggering enough, here is where my mind is truly blown.
Are you ready?
Just. Holy balls, Pranksters:
486 people.
486 people have signed up in 2.5 months to WRITE on this site. 486 people have signed up to pour their heart and soul out onto a blank WordPress document, exposing all of their secrets and letting their demons, at long last, out.
Four-hundred. Eighty-six. People.
Those are the people I can measure. The people who have bothered to take the time to fill out a profile, even if they’ve never been able to spill their words out through their fingers. They are here. Youare here.
There are others, of course. Those of you who read silently, tirelessly in the background, sending prayers and love to the writers who write on this site, which is really your site, every day.
Band Back Together may have once been my site, but it is no longer, which is precisely as it should be. This was never meant to be my site. This is not another tired Super Bloggers site where I sit around with my friends and tell the same old shit. It’s so much more than that. The site goes beyond everything I ever expected it could do.
I’m honored to be a part of this site and I am humbled by each of you. Every comment matters. Every word you write is read by someone else. Your stories matter. You matter.
I forgot to add that Band Back Together has been the best therapy for me I have had in YEARS! Not only has it set words into the universe that I have been dying to say, it also made me realize I am not alone. I will forever –eva –eva applaud you for this.
And I love (and post at) Band Back Together. I think it’s a great site and has so much potential to grow into something AMAZING.
I lurk around on Band Back Together almost every day. There are so many beautiful stories there. I feel that it really is making a difference in people’s lives.
I LOVE Band Back Together! TY TY for starting it. I just started my own blog last week. And Band Back Together is the reason. I realized I liked getting my feelings out. I liked writing for me. It helped me. I like telling my stories and being humorous. I also like telling my dark stories. So TY again. But most of all I LOVE the community of Band Back Together. Everyone there is so supportive and caring. People need that. Especially during the dark days.
There are more, many more, just like it.
I did not write them myself. Nor did I pay anyone to write them. I just thought you should be aware. It is your site, after all
We have a Facebook Page we have Networked Ourselves on their Networked Blogs AND we’re on The Twitter.
Just, you know, let people know that Their Band is ready for them to join, okay?
And in the meantime, WRITE HARD, Pranksters, WRITE HARD. Can’t wait to see what happens here in 2011.
(We also have shirts.)
Update (I’d written this post on Saturday): I wanted to thank everyone who has taken the time to tweet and promote their stories and others from their personal Twitter, Facebook profiles and blogs. I think that seeing stories connected to real people – real people that you know – I think that really helps to make each of your stories real. And you ARE all real, I think, unless you’re actually robots, in which case, WELL PLAYED ROBOTS.
The outpouring of support in the past two days has been tremendous. You continue to amaze me.
Not going to be happy and light, right? Well, you just never know.
This is my 5th Xmas without my love. He was a Xmas maniac, loved everything about it. Our house was lovingly dubbed (by me) the Xmas whorehouse, since it was so covered in lights and knick-knacks and crap, it was amazing we could even live in it; but we did, and loved it. Each year my husband lovingly put together a CD of Xmas music that we used as our card/gift. He collected Xmas music, you see, and, the more awful it was, the better…he LOVED bad Xmas music as much as he loved good. We had a lot of talented friends, so each year we’d also include one cut on the CD that someone we knew sang. The year Tom died I made one, final CD. It had a few really fun cuts on it, it had to, but it was mostly sad, aching, and a tribute to Tom. I included 3 songs that he sang on it, and every year, including this one, it catches me up short to hear his beautiful voice. I decorate the house and the tree (way less whorishly) and listen to the CD’s and have my self a merry little sobfest, replete with alcoholic beverage of my choice and a box of Kleenex.
It’s very hard on our son too. I think this year has been a little better because he is working at something he loves, and is working a LOT of hours. When he gets home though, he tends to close himself in his room and play piano, mostly sad, indie dirges he either writes himself or has learned to play. It’s good, it’s how he handles his feelings.
He’s the one who actually puts up the tree and lights it. That used to be Tom’s job, and then I’d decorate. But now it’s fallen to the wonder-boy, and he bitches and moans all the way through the process; his own little sobfest.
I miss him. I miss him so very much, more than I can express. He was my guy, and there is a vast, gaping hole where he was.
And so often I rail against the unfairness of it. It is so unfair that MY husband had to die! It is so shitty that MY kid has to live without a father, had to be a teen without a father. On and on and on…I could go on forever about the unfairness of it. About the goddamn WHY-ME-ness of it.
Lately, however, there has been this little, insistent-but-kind voice in my head asking me “why NOT you? What makes you so special that bad things aren’t supposed to happen in your life. Look around, look on this board you’re writing on, everyone on here has earned the right to SCREAM why me! Why are you not supposed to be going through this? Who of your friends would be a better choice?” maybe it’s just insistent and not so kind, that asshole voice!)
And, I’ve gotta say, I’m starting to listen, at least a little bit. I’m trying to measure my bitterness by tsp vs. tbsp. I’m looking around and seeing that others have it bad too, maybe worse.
I am sad still…grief doesn’t go away, it just is. Xmas is a hard time for me, and then in January it’s the dead date, so… I miss him. I’d kill to have our old life back. That’s all the truth, and has been for the (almost) 5 years he’s been dead.
But the house looks beautiful, and my siblings and their kids will come over on Xmas Eve, as usual. And I have a wonderful son and a great present for wonder boy this year that I’m so excited to give him. I had the best husband and the greatest love that I could ever wish for…why not me for all of that too?
Because that little voice is also there to remind me of the good things, if I listen.
And that’s my Christmas post, and with it comes hugs and love and peace for everyone here on Band Back Together (another one of the good things I have to remember).
You had been my friend for 13 long years when you raped me.
You were my best friend’s husband, my son’s god-father.
You were someone I always trusted and could count on.
That one fateful night we were hanging out at Downtown Disney and I got drunk I told you I didn’t want any more, but you kept buying shots. Looking back now, I see this was your plan. I passed out on the way home, only to wake up with you on top of me. I tried to push you off, screaming NO and fighting to push you off me, but you just covered my mouth and told me to shut the fuck up and that you knew I wanted it too.
I passed out again.
The next thing I knew, I woke up in the morning next to my husband. I knew what had happened the night before. I heard your wife out in the kitchen with your kids and my son.
I tried to forget, tried to pretend nothing happened. I tried to go on with my life, but my marriage fell apart for various reasons.
Years have gone by. Six to be exact.
Then I get a phone call from your wife. She is crying and upset. She fills me in on the past year, that you guys were having problems. Then she drops the bomb – you had killed yourself.
Now I feel like I can’t tell anyone what happened. To tell your wife, one of my closest friends, would ruin her and tear apart our friendship. It has been too long to tell anyone else. So now I must live with this.
You have forever changed me. I can’t trust people anymore, even those closest to me. I am glad you are gone. As selfish as it is, I am glad you are not a constant reminder of that bad moment in my life.
