#To seek out new life

[tothemaxi]

SPACE:

THE FINAL FRONTIER.

THESE ARE THE VOYAGES OF THE STARSHIP ENTERPRISE.

ITS FIVE-YEAR MISSION:

TO EXPLORE NEW WORLDS;

TO SEEK OUT NEW LIFE

AND NEW CIVILIZATIONS;

AND TO BOLDLY GO

WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE!

[walkthevalley]

It's my 1 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

This blog was started in the beginning of the absolute darkest season of my life. I thought it might act as a sort of sanity project. I figured if someone could get something good out of this God-forsaken time of my life, then at least it wouldn't be COMPLETELY pointless. Because I couldn't imagine that all this suffering, all this pain, all this aftermath of being robbed of what I held most prized and precious, could be for no purpose. It just COULDN'T be completely irrational, without reason, a random senseless act of spiritual and emotional violence with no rationale. I knew I'd always been unlucky despite being part Irish, but this was a new level of bad luck and I couldn't swallow the idea that it was a random targeted hit of abuse without some sort of purpose. Martyrdom seemed more tenable than whatever it was I was going through, because at least martyrs are considered special and noble and get posthumous honor for their sacrifice. So I decided to start this sanity project in case someone, somewhere out there in the great big wide world, needed something that I could provide in this damned season, which is the point of my life at which I knew I was damned to live without joy, without goodness, without fulfillment. I was responsible for picking up the pieces of all my broken dreams and putting them in the recycle bin in case someone else could use a piece to build their perfect life. Then my hollow and hopeless future may at least have a tiny dose of purpose...for someone else. Always for someone else. Never for me. I was a fool to think I could enjoy my life for me.

My first few posts on Walk the Valley were, admittedly, masks. I was pretending to be okay, or at least better than I actually was. I was pretending to be well forward on my journey of healing, putting out the image of a strong woman who don't need no man, who may get knocked down but gets right back up and spits on the ground he walks on. I was just pretending. I mean--don't take that the wrong way, what I said was absolutely honest, and I was actually trying to heal, and I don't think what I said before needs to be thrown out--but I was fooling myself. I was trying to put up the image that I was okay, when the truth was that every day I was faced with how dead I was inside and how merciless it was to force my body to carry on when my soul was gone. I was, not to put too fine a point on it, the walking dead. Twice in this season of my life, I flirted with the idea of allowing my body to match my soul. For more on that, read The Flames of Advent: Hope here on Walk the Valley. Probably should come with a trigger warning, as if what I've said so far hasn't needed one as well.

That post about the First Flame of Advent describes the pivotal time in this walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, this blog's namesake, at which my healing became real. Everything before that, well-meaning as it was, was nothing but a band-aid; the Hope candle was the beginning of my real journey of healing, beginning with the super-invasive surgery where they crack your ribs open and butterfly your chest so they can reach your heart, and you basically die for a minute while someone holds your heart in their hands. If you don't like graphic stuff, sorry, go find another blog because here I tell it like it is and imagery is my strong suit.

The heart is a fascinating organ and it can actually legitimately break with enough emotional trauma. This is a great video explaining the relevant heart anatomy and this is a quick detail of the bioscience of why this happens. Enjoy the bioscience behind that, and think before you break another heart.

I guarantee that had someone taken a chest x-ray of me last August, they would have seen tako-tsubo cardiomyopathy, described in the video I linked. Had someone been able to look inside my left ventricular apex, they would have seen those tendons snapped in half. I know what the Hell I felt. My physical heart was broken just as much as my emotional heart was, and the beginning of that healing came the day before Thanksgiving (so, three months later), when I hit rock bottom.

Most people don't realize ... rock bottom is your friend. Be grateful for rock bottom. Rock bottom saves you from being incinerated in the core of the earth.

We call it rock bottom as if it's the worst place you could possibly be. "Nowhere to go but up," somebody remarks glibly, not knowing what else to say but not willing to actually do anything to help either.

But rock bottom has another name. Geologists call it bedrock.

Bedrock is actually the best, most solid, most stable ground you could ever want to build on. Unless you're building on or near a fault line, rock bottom is the absolute best place to start building. It's the most solid foundation you could ask for.

So the next time you're at rock bottom and someone says, "Nowhere to go but up," reply, "Nothing left to do but start building." My smart ass would add, "I don't suppose you'd offer your help?" but you do you, sweetheart. You don't have to be the snarky-shark I am.

So, here we are one year later.

A year of learning the true meaning of healing, of pain, of Hamlet's soliloquy, of rock bottom, of rebirth.

One year later, I now understand that someone did need something out of this blog. Someone did need what I had to say about all this. Someone did need to be understood, to see their own experiences written down to know they're not alone. Someone did need Walk the Valley.

That someone was me.

What say you all, another year?

I believe I have a couple more Flames of Advent to write about.

[winged-bat]

werewolf bernard x witch tim

[suddencolds]

// personal

how strange it is to observe yourself changing

[tetzoro]

gooooooooood MORNING !! happy wednesday friendz ! we made it to hump day yipeeee !! have the bestest day, i’m cheering on all of youuu ! ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و

[deathsmallcaps]

I realize that tumblr largely attracts insular nerds but I really want to do something extroverted for New Year’s Eve. Does anyone have keywords or suggestions for sites to find affordable but fun NYE events? Or do yall just go to a busy town and find a fun spot?

Please do not offer me advice past NYE 2024 thank you

[sn-613]

Man, its wild kinda-kinning Sun Wukong (from the original jttw novel)

What i mean is, Wukong before he got stuck under a mountain was actually a LOT like me as a kid…. I have since grown up and am a much different person, but sometimes its like shoot, thanks mom for raising me right bc look at what I couldve become 😭

[sydmarch]

it was so stupidly difficult to find any nutritionist who has experience with arfid & takes insurance so after having to go through all these referrals my therapist sent me & jumping through hoops I lowkey hate the lady lmao feels like such a waste of time & energy

[aj-lenoire]

i’ve been rewatching inside job and firstly i’m still super bummed netflix cancelled it but secondly i don’t quite know how the animators managed with such a simple style but the way reagan and staedtler look at each other is so soft and sweet and it’s legit making me tear up

[anthromimicry]

[if-loki-was-a-fox]

I really wish I could have like. Sims style needs bars so I could better judge if inexplicable sadness is caused by too much or not enough of The Character. That would make my life so much easier

[deathlonging]

every day and every night i feel a stupendous regret for not having majored in math

[blujayonthewing]

I've thought a lot about the several thousand year old gnome druid we met who was just bitter and jaded and had spent most of those millennia sitting in one place not doing anything in particular except mourning her tiefling wife who'd died millennia ago, and how disgusted and infuriated with her melliwyk is, personally but also as a gnome herself-- and I'm thinking about it again like. honestly I think it goes beyond general cultural values; that level of willful ongoing stagnation and joyless nihilism is probably completely seriously a gnomish sin

[into-the-milgramverse]

Fuuta crash out when

(don't mind the tags, i'm talking to fuuta)

[yrlocalghost]

oh i think i figured out how to articulate something???

[teethpaste]

It’s so weird how the body will try and protect you like. I am incapable of feeling grief right now. I know it will hit me like a fucking Mac truck in about a month

When I was here in Ireland in July thinking my grandma had days to live, because the doctors told us so, and urged everyone stateside to drop what they were doing and come to Ireland for goodbyes, I was torn up. I was the first one here because I was already in Dublin on business and luckily my job just let me work from Ireland for about 2 months. So that happened. But then she got palliative chemo, and somehow here she is, 5 months later, against the odds in stage 4 lung cancer. I can tell she is so tired. I feel like she was holding on for this holiday and that as soon as I leave Ireland come December 29, it’s going to happen quickly. Which I hate to even write into existence, but sometimes, you just feel it.

And I hope it doesn’t. But I also don’t want her to be in pain. Chemo ravages the body. Her last treatment was over a month ago but the cancer has spread through her whole body and it is wearing her down. She went from still bartending at 77 and going out with her friends weekly + walking the 2 mile trek into town everyday, to finding out she a tumor overtaking her right lung (completely collapsed at this point) from years of smoking. I was sitting with her at the table the other night before I went to the pub, painting her nails, and she asked “can we talk about something morbid”

Things hardly feel morbid these days. So I tell her yes, of course. I feel like I have this desensitized view around death now. Or I’m numb to it. Like my body remembers watching my dad die and is like HEY ITS FINE, don’t be sad in the moment. Because you can’t be. You have things to do. Then you can cave in on yourself.

Anyways, when I told her sure we can, she then got embarasssd and I had to beg a little for her to tell me . She then says “right. Because I know you’ll have the energy to handle”. She just tells me how she wants to be presented for her wake. No makeup, but make sure her eyebrows are done. Hair with a bandana. Jean shirt. Nails painted. Cowboy boots on that she never got to wear in Vegas this year. She starts telling me about where jewelry is and what she wants in a service. I listen and file it away.

I still think I’m stuck on “because you’ll have the energy to handle”. I think about when my dad died, my mom and sister were inconsolable. About how it happened so quickly and we as humans make it very complicated. Do you know how hard it is to transfer a body across state lines? The hospital doesn’t tell you what to do. I had to google so many funeral homes that morning. I think about those people too. The sanitized nature of conversations. The first place I called didnt say any niceties. They immediately went to prices so I hung up. Second place was more of the same and the third place asked me how I was doing and if I wanted to share anything about him. So I went with them. My dad didn’t leave a will so I had to pull the trigger on weather to cremate or bury. I went with the former and was sick for months thinking I made the wrong choice but one day a few months ago my mom found a random letter he wrote, tossed behind his living room chair, where he noted cremation was a better option bc of the $ and finally that guilt left me.

Did you know that when you list you’re an organ donor on your license, they have to call the family? And when they call, there is light elevator music playing in the background, and mere hours after your person dies, a woman with a nasally voice will calmly ask, “May we take his skin and eyes?” I felt like I was in a cronenberg movie. I remember being so shocked at the matter of factness of the question. Being disturbed but thankful neither my mom or sister were doing this part. I remember saying “why would you want that, do you know how he died? How are those parts even usable” and she paused . And “hmm’d” and as she began to speak I said “no we won’t be donating”.

Anyways. I’m trying to be present while I’m here in Ireland for the holidays. I want to cry but I can’t. This is the last time Christmas will feel like Christmas. I’ve never much liked the holiday. But after my dad died I’ve hated thanksgiving and Christmas even more. Being with my grandma here in Ireland makes it feel like that “magic” is still there a little. But I know it will be completely gone by this time next year and I hate that.

I also worry bout my mom and how she’s taking it. She lost her dad in 2023, her husband in 2024 and now her mom’s dying. That’s how it goes I guess. I stayed in tonight but she went out to the pubs with her friends and came home absolutely trashed. She made it up the stairs before I heard her start violently vomiting. It’s always strange when you switch places with your folks. I took off her clothes and got her changed into Pjs. Brought her water and crackers. She laid with her head in my lap as I stared at the wall. Being around this kind of stuff always makes me wonder if I’ll regret not having kids. Like the fact that when I’m her age, and my grandmas age, I’ll effectively be alone. Like yes there are friends etc but I won’t have children or grand children. Just makes me feel weird.

Anyways now it’s 6 in the morning and I’m going on a run in the 22 degree morning air. Bye bye.