I love Rob to bits. But I would never ever say that we are adorable. I would say we are friggin weird. And mostly annoying.

I mean, just look at this.  Friggin weird.

Feel free to look away.

Pushing myself like this and studying like this is doing tricky things in the dark corners of my mind. Making me feel like I need someone, anyone, to talk to.  But I do talk.  All day, everyday.  I just feel like I chop and change so much from one minute to the next that it is hard for anyone to get a picture of what is going on. One minute I can feel like I am going to kick this exam’s ass and the next I am certain I won’t make it through the three days of testing. Or this next six weeks of studying.

I am doing everything in my power to maintain my physical and mental health but it still seems to fall short.  I am hungry then sick to my stomach in an instant.  As a result, I am trying to keep myself to an eating schedule so I don’t get 4,000 calories in one day and 500 in another.  So far so good. But then there is the other side of me that is worried that this new eating schedule is a symptom of my feeling that I need to have something in control when everything feels like it is swimming.

Mentally I am trying to take breaks and let my mind wander.  Watch TV.  Bad TV.  Scary TV.  It seems to keep me thinking about other things better than Gilmore Girls. But then I guilt myself back to the grind and I don’t even know if that is healthy, normal.

I have entered into one of the hardest topics this week and I feel like I am drowning in it.  I am going over and over my notes and still, the words are falling out of my head.

And then there is the life outside of my panicked mind.  Rob and my family are ridiculously supportive and encouraging.  I have a quiet place to study and someone to cook me dinner.  I don’t even have to grocery shop or do laundry.  You would think I would have no complaints.  And I don’t.

No complaints about what is going on, on the outside.  What is going on inside my head is another story.

 One of the best days.

The therapist wasn’t much help.  She tried every avenue and we couldn’t figure out why bed terrified me.  As a six year old, it was hard to verbalize what I now have lived with for years.  I am afraid of being unable to fall asleep.  That possibility strikes panic into my body.  I would become so overwhelmed by the fear I would throw up.  But, the therapist decided my dad was beating me. Definitely not true.

I would lie awake at night, unable to sleep, and think about anything frightening or overwhelming, unable to fix my thoughts on something happy or relaxing.  I became afraid of the TV, lest there be a scary commercial or show on.  It would haunt me as I struggled to sleep that night.

Throughout elementary school the problem slowly faded, without anyone really figuring it out, but it cropped back up when I got to the end of middle school.  Somehow, even though my new therapist wasn’t much better, we came up with a better solution.  Just let her watch TV until she falls asleep.  I fell asleep to Martha Stewart for almost all of high school.  Martha Stewart was safe.  Martha Stewart had a soothing voice and there were no scary commercials on The Food Network.

I left for college and sleep wasn’t an issue for me for the first year or so.  But the fear came back in my sophomore year and then my junior year.  My senior year I was dating Rob long distance so it was worse than ever.  I never went on too little sleep, that wasn’t the problem.  The problem was that I would go to bed at 10, not fall asleep until 2, then not get up until 10.

And it has been back for about a year.

It resurfaces in times of stress and anxiety.  The first time it happened back when I was six, in the span of about two years I had experienced a lot of change for a kid.  My mom remarried, we moved, mom had my little brother, Nana had a stroke, Grandpa had open heart surgery, etc… But, as a six year old, it was hard to connect the dots.  I don’t think I really connected it until I was in college.

So here I am, in probably one of the most stressful times of my life, not sleeping.  Still not sleeping.

The sun is setting.

Finishing law school means moving away from some fucking awesome roommates.  And no, having roommates never meant I got divorced. Thanks everyone for making me feel like a married freak with roommates. Whatever.  It was fun to pretend to be sisterwives.

It means moving back in with your parents.  This house now includes four cats (none of which like each other) and six humans (who mostly like each other).  I waiver back and forth between being very pleased and very nervous.  Living with my family is generally pretty awesome.  But my family mixed in with the Bar..

Means… the Bar.  Bar study, full time.  I have spent a good seven hours this weekend studying.  Which is nearly nothing compared to what I am going to have to do soon, but if you consider that this weekend I also moved across LA County, celebrated Mother’s Day and landed myself in the ER, then seven hours seems pretty legit.

It means continuously clicking refresh, hoping for grades.  Please let me have passed everything. Note this is not titled “Graduating law school..”

And finally, for me, finishing law school means a trip to the ER for “just a virus.”  Thanks body, I appreciate it greatly.  If I could not sound like a frog by graduation day, that would be cool.

Jillian was sad.  Sunny helped.

Stormy made sure I learned Remedies. He was very stern.

Between my shoulder, my eyeballs, and now my wrist, law school may actually kill me.

I got new glasses and became instantly cooler.  But not really.

Rob built me a shed.  In a hat.  He has delicate English skin.

He looks much more at home in this.  And so much hotter.

I found these.  Me and Grandpa.  Mom at the British Museum in the 1970s.

Two finals down.  One paper, one final to go.

]]> http://wittytitlepending.com/2013/05/onward-and-onward/feed/ 4 http://wittytitlepending.com/2013/04/reeling/ http://wittytitlepending.com/2013/04/reeling/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2013 04:01:52 +0000 Jenifer http://wittytitlepending.com/?p=1849 Grief is a quiet thing, that sneaks up on me.  It catches in the back of my throat, when I least expect it.  It makes my eyes water and I am stuck deciding whether to have a good cry or whether PCH is a dangerous place for blurred vision.

Today I picked up my new wedding set.  Nana decided that it was time that I turn one of her diamonds into an engagement ring.  I have worn all day, but it wasn’t until I was on my way home that I started to think about him and what it would mean to him that I was wearing it.

I think I have spent the past couple of weeks reeling from the blow and it hasn’t properly sunk in until this week.  It was my first funeral.  I gave the eulogy and kept it together.. mostly.  I met new family.  I saw old friends.  I was told I look like my mother more times than I can count.  I got mistaken for my mother for the first time.  That was new.

I know I need to give myself time, but I don’t really have the time right now.  I have to take these finals and write this paper and pass the Bar so I can be the lawyer he wanted me to be.  For now grief is going to have to be something I fight back and push under the rug.  And my therapist said that is okay.  So it is okay.

In the week after it happened my life reached dizzying levels of insanity.  I have since pushed things back, reorganized, and just stopped trying in some instances.  I, and the Dean, agree, I just need to pass. Just need to pass.

I will likely do more than that, but that is my goal for now.

I am not a keep things quiet type of person.  But this I have.  I don’t want to put my grief on others who didn’t ask for it.  So here is where I speak, for now.

On a sidenote.  Holy diamond, Batman! I feel like I have a weapon.

No one ever tells you that when someone dies, their body isn’t magically taken away – poof! Off to the crematorium.  No one tells you that it actually takes several hours for the grim reaper and his sidekicks to arrive.  With paperwork.  And more paperwork.  And someone, somehow needs to find the urn.  STAT. He can’t go without the urn?  And your left wondering – is it more logical to hide an urn in the closet or under the sink? Surely not with the chips and cookies in the pantry.  The library seemed to make sense, but it isn’t there. Maybe in the garage?

Then you find the urn located inside a vault you didn’t know existed and you take another step forward. Breathe.

No one tells you that you will just feel like you need to call someone, anyone, so you aren’t just sitting there.  But the truth is, when people die of old age, there aren’t that many people to call.  Children? Check.  Siblings? Check.  Now what?

No one tells you that in between grief and crying your brain goes to normal things.  Like, why did I have that second cup of coffee?  Or, my God, I look like hell.  And then you feel guilty for even noticing your hair and then you feel guilty for not crying.  But really, no one can cry for hours straight.

No one tells you about grief in the time of Facebook.  There is no such thing as private mourning. You will feel overwhelmed by others want to tell the world of their loss.  And it is their grief too, so you don’t stop them.  Or maybe you just don’t have the energy to fight that battle.

There was a lot I was unprepared for, but what I did expect, and what has happened, is my want for quiet.  To be still. To hold close my memories and sift through the thoughts in my head.  To run on autopilot, to just go through the motions.  To just be left to my own devices, however odd those might appear to the outside world.  To write.  And write.  In a way that leaches this out.

To not be ready to talk just yet.

Thursday it started with a late night call from my mom.  Grandpa.  Come soon.

We’ve known. And we’ve grown weary of knowing and being anxious and waiting and things looking up and then falling right back down.  It is still soon.  But as to how soon, no one knows.

 He is tired. We are tired.  I think mom is the most tired. It is a difficult place to be, to see someone you love and know they are just.. ready.  But he is.  I think of how scary it must be.  And how scared he must be.

Nana isn’t ready to let go.  He hangs on for her.

I hurtled into my first day of study on little sleep and my thoughts elsewhere.  To be honest, they go to my mom more than anyone at times like this.  She has been fighting for the both of them for so long and she is so tired.  And at this point, it is close enough that legal documents need to be consulted, signed, notarized. Over and over.

 Jen, do you know…?

No. I really don’t.  I wish I did.

And I cry and I tell him I will make him proud.  “We will have a lawyer in the family,” he says to me from his hospital bed.

I smile and think, I hope so..

More on actual Bar study soon.. 

I first went to a chiropractor.  I had never been before and it was an interesting experience.  Lots of popping and cracking and such and working with the muscles around my shoulder blade.  It worked for awhile, but I ended up at a physical therapist.  And they agreed with my chiropractor, that it is down to my posture.  Mainly, that it currently involves sitting at a desk for hours on end.  Lets be honest, the rest of my life is going to involve sitting at a desk for hours on end.  The physical therapists massaged and stretched and taught me exercises and I was fine for about a year.

I don’t know if I have been working longer hours or have slipped back into bad habits, but the pain is back again and while it is definitely bearable, it is just annoying enough for me to want to do something about it.  I discussed it with my new doctor at my women’s yearly exam (fun times for everyone) and she wrote me a referral for acupuncture.

Um. What?

I am not opposed to alternative medicine or holistic healing or whatever the PC term is these days, I’d just never thought of it.  I sat on the referral for a couple of weeks because, really, I didn’t have time for more appointments in my life and I knew that it wasn’t going to be one appointment and badaboom I am cured.  But my shoulder was irritating me enough that I finally called my insurance and yes! they cover acupuncture. An hour later I had an appointment.

I googled extensively so I would know what to expect.  Acupuncturists often use a variety of techniques that were all foreign to me, but all the websites assured me that it was painless, so I thought, what is the worst that could happen?  A slightly weird experience and continued shoulder pain.  I was fine with that.

Well.  The experience was weird, but not off the charts weird.  Not even as weird as that time I saw a man dressed as a sea captain from the 1800s in Starbucks.

The acupuncture wasn’t just painless,  I couldn’t feel it at all.  Had he not told me there were needles all over my shoulder, I would have had no idea.  And it was nice lying under the heat lamp for awhile (I am always cold).

He didn’t just do acupuncture.  He also did cupping therapy.  I had read about cupping on the website and I knew it involved suctioning of the skin, but somehow I missed that it involved FIRE.  So when I heard an open flame above my shoulder (couldn’t see a thing!) all I thought was, Oh dear, please don’t light my hair on fire!

I am pleased to say he didn’t light my hair on fire, but I did leave with some excellent souvenirs (which, according to the interwebs and the acupuncturist, are totally normal).
right after

24 hours later

My shoulder pain has decreased significantly.  Like, for reals people. If I weren’t the one with the pain, I wouldn’t believe it. But here I am, with almost no pain in my shoulder and a follow up appointment for next Tuesday.

I will report back next week on my continued foray into this new world.