"I'm not ashamed - i'm gonna show my scar"

TWO YEARS.

Billy left us two years ago and while the world has been a much quieter place, We carry on and we sing about him, speak about him and his spirit is alive in SO many of us. The music he loved brings us great memories, and moments to bawl our eyes out. But music is what has helped hold me together in the pain of losing my dearest and very first friend, a sibling who helped me to make it through the toughest times. Little did I know his leaving this world so early would be the toughest times yet. And what did I look to in those darkest moments? MUSIC. Some turned to Faith, some turned to therapy, so didn’t turn to anything or anyone. In those first few months, I immersed myself in music. I would go out for a drive, by myself, and play songs that i could sing along or scream along to. Even in the days we were in Virginia Beach, music came to comfort me, to help me confront my feelings, my pain. I feel that Bill would send me this music – i turn on the radio and The Offspring’s “Gone Away” would instantly start. Another day, i’m driving around in the freezing rain, feeling despondent and lost, and the radio begins Smashing Pumpkins ‘Muzzle’, which i feel is Bill’s song. It’s not a song you would usually hear on the radio. I sang along and sobbed through it and ended up stopping the car, screaming alone in the car, angry at those people that blew up New York, angry at Sarcoid for existing, and even angry at Bill for leaving me, for leaving us. After bruising my hands and arms from beating the car, right afterwards “Your Spirit’s Alive” by the Dropkick Murphys came on – and i felt the hint through the music. Bill’s spirit is alive, in me, in all of us, in our nephews and my daughter. Two years later, my scar of loss is still healing, and it opens up here and there to help me get the hurt out some more. But I feel that peace has finally started to come to me. Somehow, i woke up yesterday morning and felt OK. I felt Bill smiling at me from somewhere and telling me he was ok, and get up and have an AWESOME day. Which is exactly what i did. I will continue to Carry On, live my life to the fullest and honor my brother however I can. THANK YOU to everyone who has supported us, Bill’s Friends and Family, through these two years. I leave you with my usual signature of lyrics. These being from My Chemical Romance, from a CD given to me by a great lady and I hope she knows how much it means to me, even all these years later.

“And when you're gone we want you all to know

We'll carry on, We'll carry on
And though you're dead and gone believe me
Your memory will carry on
We'll carry on
Until my heart I can't contain it
The anthem won't explain it”

Well, we are mostly moved into our new home. Our home! To bring y’all up to speed, my awesome mother in law, Momma T, sold her smaller house with the tiny apartment and bought a large two family home, for Michael, Cass and I to share with her. She did this to help us out, and i am eternally grateful. We moved in last Tuesday, and to put it bluntly, the former tenants left it a freakin mess. They left a ton of junk in the basement, attic, and second floor. They left the place so dirty that i’ve only been able to put a dent in it. I finished the kitchen last night. The walls all need to be redone. the stripping of wallpaper and painting of walls will happen soon. We will also need to pull up the disgusting wall to wall carpet, that is so stained in places i cannot imagine living like that. utterly gross. They even left half-filled ashtrays and cigarette butts! All the drawers in the kitchen had crumbs and spilled food in them. There is a layer of dust everywhere. Our stove is unusable. And so many other things i could list – but all in all, WE HAVE A PERMANENT HOME!!!!! And we get to make it our own. So i am really looking forward to that. i’ve never done any kind of home improvement.
Maybe I can call Ty Pennington to come over and help. heh heh heh...

But really, if anyone has any advice/help/ideas, let me know. It’s appreciated. I also want to have a painting party soon. If anyone likes to paint and is local, let me know!! I am also trying to figure out the whole pulling up old carpet thing. I am hoping we have decent floors underneath.



I hope everyone had a good Halloween/Blessed Samhain! We had a good time. Cassidy wore her mermaid costume and was very happy with her red hair. :) we did lots of trick or treating and saw Jack Skellington! The week before Cass and I met my lovely friend Kim (who I worked with at Target Pharmacy when I lived in the Poconos) and her family in Salem. Cass and I went on the Ghost Hunt tour with them and we visited a really lovely shop called Crow Haven Corner. I used to be a Witch and have kind of stopped all religious type practice for a few years now..but being in that shop i felt such a sense of peace i had not felt in a very long time.

Hmmm. Something to think about.

music

you know how music can totally own your soul? your spirit? how it can heal wounds? ease pain? well, it does that for me. every time i find myself losing it, i scramble for something to soothe me, or something to get ANGRY with, or just something to put in my head besides the madness or pain or anger i don't feel like dealing with at the moment. I will put on that album from the 80s that brings tears to my eyes, or find that song i downloaded of that goddess with a ukelele covering a song that makes me feel like someone totally gets me. some days it's only Billie Joe that i want to hear. this angry punk boy grown up to write songs that made me feel things i had not let myself feel in a long time. Music..sometimes i feel like it is my true religion.

my new life...

My new life, it has less teeth. lower blood sugar. a sick tummy. a less scrambled brain. blood work. more energy. it has the same wonderful amount of love and smiles, troubles and falls. I feel different. i feel like a weight was lifted from my shoulders. these years and years of wondering why, WHY do i not feel right? Why can't i do well in the things i want? why can't i concentrate?? why can't i remember things, important things? why did i do things i am so regretful for? WHY??

So after months and months of talk therapy, Monique mentions ADD. I have mentioned that two of my sisters have it. I began reading about it and talking to people, and after a few weeks i see a psychologist for testing, talk and such. we speak for almost 2 hours, me answering questions for her and describing things. She had requested and received my school records from middle school and high school, and she gave me the official diagnosis.NOT bipolar. ADD. for years i felt like nothing was ever going to be right, even with great people in my life and a loving family and a baby. i just never feel like things are OK. every day, i'm waiting for the bad thing to happen. day in day out, which is then causing me huge amounts of anxiety i can't control.

i began meditating a while ago at MOnique's urging and it has been helping a bit, but the problem was i could NEVER set my mind to it..it would be off wandering, looking for the shiny thing it just saw. I feel now this may be a possibility as last night i tried it before bed. i fell asleep at midnight and did not wake up until Mike came in to kiss me goodbye at 6. this is HUGE for me. i ususally wake uup 10-15 times a night to check that Mike is ok, that Cass is ok. i try to get back to sleep and then those demons enter my brain and scare the crap out of me. Last night, i fought those demons as hard as i could. i asked them to get out of my head, let me be. GIVE ME PEACE. and they left. my dreams were full of win. i think there were turbines even!

This past monday i began taking Adderall. i also started taking iron pills to help my blood. Additionally i went back to face one of my biggest fears - The Dentist. My teeth have been falling apart for a few years and even getting cleanings were painful. i now have a very good hygenist and a very cool and nice dentist. No one judged me, picked on me or hurt me. everything was done with a smile and with respect. afterward, Dr. M and i spoke about what had to be the next step: oral surgery. the removal of 5 teeth. and something to replace them. i'm ready to do this now. i am not afraid. it is going to be ok.

after writing all this, the first thing that comes to mind is "I miss Bill". i want to call him and hear his voice but instead i just talk to him in othe ways. i know he hears me. i know he's there. but man, a years and 3 months later, i'm still feeling like a chunk was ripped out of my heart.

Thanks for reading my blog.

I pity the fool who plays a trick on me today!

Well, i don’t know of any fools i pity at the moment. I do know that this new Blog Every Day Of The Month might drive me nutty, but i am willing to try it. Today i don’t have much of anything to chat about. At least not now, but i will try again later tonight. Later, after LOST has messed with my head and someone else has been voted off Idol.

Sweetness Follows, Part One.

*note* i wrote this about 6 months ago and have re read it a thousand times. i've decided i want to start writing Part Two but not before i share Part One of this. Thank you for reading and comments are appreciated.

It's these little things, they can pull you under.

Live your life filled with joy and wonder.

I always knew this altogether thunder

was lost in our little lives.

Oh, oh, but sweetness follows.

Writing about R.E.M. and the impact they have had upon me since i was 13 years old

is something i have been trying to do for a long time.

The music is such a soundtrack of my life and even my first real love story.

It began when i bought the first album i ever purchased on my own – Murmur.

Through all the little fandoms and phases, they were always true and always what i wanted to listen to in every mood i had.

Many days i would play them over and over again and wore out tapes like crazy. I

n between classes, Michael Stipe’s voice would soothe me when they kids

at school made fun of my non name brand clothing

or not perfect hairstyle, or not being as smart or ‘cool’.

My face would read “Fuck you, you turds”

but my heart was breaking in a million pieces.

Why’re you trying to second guess me?

I am tired of second guessing

what will be your look this season?

Who will be your book this season?

I crushed on the boy at school who wore the REM tour shirt and played guitar, and had the Stipe-esque look and sound. He was shy and quiet but on stage he just blew me away. At the school dance i did not have a date, i just hung to the side, watching in awe as they covered one of my favorite songs...

We are young despite the years

we are concern

we are hope despite the times

all of the sudden, these days

Happy throngs, take this joy

wherever, wherever you go.

He left that year (our Junior year) to go to a special music school and i moved on. I met new friends outside of school during my summer job at a 7-11, especially a sweet boy from The Big City. I found people equally passionate about music. 1987 was the year i graduated high school, experienced my first real relationship, learned a lot about myself, went to a prom and my beloved grandmother passed away. The loss of her took away my love for painting and it was hard to listen to any music for some time. it was hard to be myself at all. i lost touch with a lot but when Document came out and i heard “It’s the end of the world..” i felt that it was the perfect theme for how i was feeling. My life was so very different. No school, not having to do anything but work and put money away to move to a place where i could be among musicians and artists and feel like i belonged.

Singer sing me a given, singer sing me a song

Standing on the shoulders of giants

everybody’s looking on

(Old man don’t lay so still you’re not yet young,

There’s time to teach, point to point,

Point observation, children carry reservations).

Standing on the shoulders of giants leaves me cold

A mean idea to call my own (call my own),

a hundred million birds fly away, away, away.

I think i listened to this song (King Of Birds) a hundred million times. The music that this band gave to me guided me to feel again, to be able to take those steps that i needed to make important changes. Green came out the next year and things grew brighter and stronger. I was living the life i wanted. I was assisting my aunt in raising her sons after her husband died suddenly and did everything i could to make her life easier. I went to see REM at Madison Square Garden and i felt like a crazy person because i cried through the whole show. Seeing Stipe for real had a huge impression on me. The whole band being right before me was unreal. I felt like i was in another world and sang every song and worshipped at the altar of my musical heroes. It was like a religious experience.

This is my world

And I am the world leader pretend

This is my life

And this is my time

I have been given the freedom

To do as I see fit

A couple of years pass. There is more sadness and moving around. I lose my godmother to AIDS. My Stepdad suffers from manic depression. My brother’s best friend dies in a car accident. I moved home to be close to my mother because she is hurting so much from her sister dying and her husband’s illness. I decide to get a job at a local factory. It is so boring but I made decent money and i was able to help out Mom, and still feed my music habit and buy art supplies. Patrice, my younger sister, is dating a New Kid On the Block and i am going to concerts with her – this was NOT as bad as it sounds. We had a lot of fun back then – but i was really missing something in my heart. I’d dated off and on. I had a sweet long distance relationship with a guy from Illinois who thought he was the next Depeche Mode. He was very talented and even wrote me a song. I wish a had a copy of it still. But even so, through all the people i’d dated, i never felt IT. That moment where you are struck down and you feel that mixture of attraction, physically and mentally. My friends all spoke of it, but it had never really knocked me on my ass the way it was about to.

Dreams they complicate my life

I was sitting at my work area and completing the mindless task i did for 8 hours a day. There were a couple of people that came in and tested our work to make sure they were correct. Today i noticed someone i’d never really noticed before. He was a handsome person, but something about him made my heart race. For days, i would look up the 6 times he came in to do the testing. I would try to catch his eye. But i always got shy and stopped. I decided to just worry about other things and forget him. Guys that i liked never liked me back anyway. Weeks later, i was outside in the little picnicky area and heard The Smiths playing from a car. My ears perked up and i tried to follow the sound. Someone here listens to the Smiths?? Cool! I see a beat-up old Volvo and inside is That Guy! I walk back to my eating place and giggle to myself.

The crush is back on!

My heart thrown open wide

In this near wild heaven

Not near enough.

Little by little i tried to know him. I learned his name (Michael) and what he did there (Science Lab Guy). He and i finally had a conversation after a co worker found out i liked him. We three had lunch and Michael asked if i read comics. Comics? Huh? Yes folks, this was the person that got me into comics. He came in the next morning and brought me a bag of goodies. Some issues of GrimJack and the Watchmen graphic novel. This was followed by The Flaming Carrot, Zot! And OMG The Sandman!! :) every day we would chat and have the best conversations and laugh and really enjoy the budding friendship. I never even thought to ask about his home life. And then i did. He was married with two children. My reaction was so good though, i was so proud of myself - i was excited to hear about his family. In my heart though, i was a little broken. Not surprised, because that was what i’d come to expect. This was during the summer that Out Of Time came out. I accepted this news and decided i would just enjoy the really great friend i had made, however much i wanted to kiss his beautiful smile every time i saw him.

Every whisper

Of every waking hour

I’mChoosing my confessions

Trying to keep an eye on you

Like a hurt lost and blinded fool
Oh now i’ve said too much...

End of Part One.

Things of late, in bullets!

• Cassidy, Patrice and I went to IKEA this past Saturday. Cassidy saw a baby with a mole and said ‘Mama, that baby has a boo boo!’, and i said ‘no honey, that is a mole or a beauty mark’. Upon hearing this, she started yelling ‘MOLE! MOLE!’ and pointing at the baby. I pushed the cart as fast as i could to get away while saying ‘Cass, don’t say that please’ and she said ‘ok. We ran into them 3 more times and Cass would whisper ‘Mama, that baby does NOT have a boo boo’.


• I am currently wearing my gloves while typing because it is FRIGGIN COLD and they don’t have proper heat in this area of our building. They keep making excuses and complained about the space heaters we had. I suggested we all buy Snuggies and charge them to our work account.


• I am uncomfortable with one of the people Facebook keeps suggesting i add. Everytime i see this jerk’s face i yearn to pummel him with fists of Jenne fury. I want to say “FACEBOOK!!! Stop suggesting i add that giant ass candle dickwad!”
  
• When i wrote ‘dickwad’ above, it made me think of Bill or Ted (of the Excellent Adventures) yelling ‘you medieval dickweed!!’ I also enjoy that i added dickwad and dickweed to my Word dictionary.


• At work i am ‘Jenne’ but 70% of my co workers write my name as Jen or Jenn. My feet are now really cold too.


• Cassidy heard speed metal for the first time yesterday. We were listening to the WFNX morning show on the way to daycare and they were playing bits from some new music releases. One band was called “Lamb Of God’ and the music started. I looked at Cass and her eyes grew wide and she started singing along with it like this “RAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!” and kinda banging her head. They stopped it and started playing something from the Jonas Brothers movie soundtrack and she said ‘ Mama, can they play the RAAAAH Monster Music again?’ my brother would be proud. We used to love moshing in our house to that kind of stuff years ago and freaking out Mom.


• I’m still tired and still waiting on test results but thankful for a really great husband who is so encouraging, helpful and kind. Having hugs from him every day makes a lot of crap very very bearable. Not to mention all the great things he does and says.


• Thanks, Husband Man. xox

PS: Cassidy Says "What you talkin bout, WILLIS?!?"