While my classes are online making every day a potential school day, Wednesday seems to be the week day I get the most done.

Bank drive thru from the inside.

Flip flops off, work shoes on. This is my stash kept at work. I can drive in the flats so I wear them in.

My 5-year-old leaves me math to show me he loves me. While the signage is off or not at all, it’s addition if you look at the numbers in sequence. For the top one, the thing at the end is his plus sign.

This, btw, is the proper way to tell a math geek you love them.

As I sit here typing this on my phone, no less than 3 hours after it was due to drop, we’ll make item 1 on that list:

Write some blog posts to schedule to drop. I always write ahead. I can rearrange if something comes up that is time sensitive.

Fill out Luke’s application to school next year. Not technically due yet but on my desk and needs done eventually. Don’t want to last minute it.

School work. Not that I would forget, but if I’m making a to-do list school will forever be on the list now.

Speaking of school, group meeting Friday! Forgetting would be bad since I run the damn thing.  I don’t mean it when I say “damn thing” just fyi.

Work event Saturday after work. Need to be sure to remember. We are sponsoring, so I’ll be out talking to people.

I didn’t get my laundry done last weekend so I need to catch up this weekend.

Start a new book with Lucas.

Finish my current book. It is so boring though. Important, but boring.

Evaluate my financial goal plan. Make sure I’m on task. Something is due soon. I think it is the refinance of the car. Must be sure!

Take a look at the passport process. Fill out the application. Does it require money? Probably.

Postpone the passport process awhile longer due to lack of funds.

Try and find time to sleep. Haha! Good one!

Twenty-Six and a half years ago, Pat Engebrecht lost her daughter to Borderline Personality Disorder.  At the age of 29, after years of failed attempts, many hospital stays, struggles with sexuality and the loss of an eye from a police shooting to the face in a hospital parking lot, and a life lived with mental pain and anguish, LauraJo succeeded in taking her own life.  She had a life filled with success as she was an accomplished tennis star, writer, musician, artist, friend, daughter, sister.  But as we are all too aware, sometimes that isn’t enough.

Depression knows no reason.  You can’t tell the angry or sad voice in you that you have too much going well for you to be this hurt.  If it chooses to sink its claws in you, love is not always enough.

25, 30 years ago, BPD was only just emerging in the world of mental health diagnosis.  Too few saw it as a legitimate diagnosis and those who did simply didn’t know how to treat it.  30 years later, to be honest, we aren’t much better off.  Even with DBT and the latest medication there to offer, for all too many, BPD is a death sentence, and most of us are terminal.

Our own hands leave those floundering over our loss, wondering what went wrong.  Could they have done anything different?  What caused our mental anguish?  What were we thinking?

These days we have the online world of blogs to try to show the inner workings of our minds.  30 years ago, LauraJo had her journals.  What we put on public display, LauraJo kept locked up in a chest she crafted with her own hands.  It was 2 decades before her mother, Pat, could bear to open the journals and read them.  Inside was the inner workings of a suffering mind.  The ups and downs chronicled in painful detail.

Pat took those journals, added her thoughts and details of what was going on in her daughter’s life at the time of each entry, and created a book that she hopes, and I know, can make a difference.

I know in my heart that if LauraJo had lived to see the internet, she’d be fighting the fight of awareness and proper treatment, while helping to fight stigma, along with us.  However, we lost her 10 years too early.  In her place we have this beautiful work.

A book showing that despite popular opinions of her time and ours, BPD isn’t always a result of poor parenting.  A book showing mothers, fathers, and friends that their love was received, but the hurt went further than any amount of love could fix.  It shows those of us who might be contemplating suicide exact how those we love will be effected.  “No one will even miss me.  They’ll be better off without me.”  This book is 304 pages of evidence that we’ll always be missed, by all those we have touched with our lives, and no one is ever better off without us.

Pat took the pain of the loss of her amazing daughter, and used it to create a book that shows us how suicide effects all those left behind, how suicide can happen despite love and success, and the inner working of a troubled mind.

This book is not an easy read.  No book on the subject ever could be.  I had to read it in bits and pieces as my heart broke a little more with each page.  Broke for a daughter in so much pain with life, and a mother in pain with the loss of life that even she saw coming.  She fought so hard to keep her daughter with her, but reader and mother alike knew it was only a matter of time.

Please go get this book.  There is a CD of LauraJo’s music out there as well.  I recommend listening to the CD first and then during as a companion.

This book will move you.  This book will break your heart.  This book will show you what it’s really like.  It’s real.  It’s uncensored.  It has heart, hurt and loss.

I’m not sure what happened to cause us to drift.  We weren’t extremely close to begin with.  We hadn’t known each other long enough to reach extremely close.  She is a wonderful person and we got along well, the time just hadn’t been put into it.

She lived not too far out, but not down the street.  We both had kids.  My mental health was going down the tubes.  I feel like there was something more as well, but I don’t recall.  It wasn’t a big blow-out fight or anything dramatic between us.  Life just prevented us from hanging out and so we kind of drifted.

But we did keep in touch over various social media.  So I knew the major events of her life, and she knew mine, even if the fine details weren’t being discussed.

When Lisa moved and I questioned how I was going to find myself in a kayak again, Faith spoke up with there being local places that kayaks could be rented, she just didn’t know where and she didn’t have the guts to do it.

At least not alone.

Faced with all of my social life leaving the state, and hearing an offer of an old acquaintance wanting to give things a go, I didn’t miss the opportunity.

I sought Lisa’s advice on where to go, I planned well in advance with Faith when we could do this.

And yesterday I found myself in 1 of 2 rented kayaks, Faith in the other, and off we went on adventure.  An adventure we’ll never forget.  The trip we bought, which is self guided with instruction on where to get in and what to look for to get out, was promised to be 1-2 hours.  We took 3, with an hour of it sitting in our boats, anchored to the side of the river, just catching up on 8 years of history away from one another.  It was like we were never apart.  It was easy.  For all my social anxiety and awkwardness, it was so easy.

We got stuck, we found ourselves going through fast water spots backwards with little control of our boats.  We laughed.  We cried out in half terror, half amusement.  I found myself sitting in the middle of a river when we were too stuck to move without someone getting out.  I pulled her through it, working hard to not lose my boat in the process, and at one point just sat in the water up to my waist, to catch my breath.  I’ll tell you though, my hip was sore from sitting so cramped for so long, and that water was instant relief.

We came out soaked head to toe and thrilled with the experience.  We were a sight.  We elicited laughs from fellow boatmen, who were better at it than we.  But we made it to the end, proud, soar, and not the ones lamenting the loss of keys and socks to the river.

And we came out knowing that while we can’t get together weekly, she lives an hour or so away, gas isn’t cheap and time isn’t limitless, we will make at least once a month happen.  She works closer to me than she lives, so we’ll do the occasional dinner.  Her son is a couple of years older than Thomas, we’ll get the kids together somewhere roughly half way between our homes.  She and I will kayak or canoe again at the end of the season.

I’m not without hope.

I have Faith.

It’s meaning has increased for me, recently, as I truly appreciate all that he is for me. As he struggles to comfort me in an agony he can’t fix. That he can’t even suggest I throw a pill at because this is life, not mental illness.  Both of us knowing that he is so very much, but can’t be it all.

There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more

So this struggle with words over the past week or two is astounding.  I’ve written plenty, sure, but not what I really need to talk about.  What I really need to bring up.

I feel this hole within me that only tears seem able to fill.  But the thing about tears is that they drain out of this hole quickly so I’m left with this need to refill the hole with more tears.  All while searching for something that just maybe won’t drain as quickly.  Nearly collapsing when I turn a corner out of line of sight of others at work, all activity stops for a minute of my body shaking with sobs fed from tears that won’t come, because I don’t have time to cry just then, but I can’t hold the anguish in so it has to escape as quickly as it can before I can reign it in.  No one check the vault tapes.  Those are private moments that don’t involve the green stuff.

I’m not suicidal.  That would be ridiculous.  I’m responding to life, and this emptiness I’m feeling won’t last.  I’m not self sabotaging.  That would only make things worse for me.  So clearly skills are working and I will pull through.  This isn’t even BPD.  I say that with no doubt or hesitation.  Anyone wondering how I know isn’t paying attention.

I’m working 50 hours weeks.  It’s a job I love.  A boss and team that makes me feel important daily, unlike I have ever felt before.  I’m working 50 hour weeks week after week while raising 3 kids and going to school.  I love every bit every one of those 3, but I’m tired.  I thrive under pressure and I adore a packed schedule, but I too must rest.  I too have my breaking point.

We have no staff at work.  No tellers, anyway.  The other side of the room is beautifully staffed.  Except that they end up having to run teller windows because we have no tellers.  So we must pick between one side of the room or the other having no staff.

It isn’t even the lack of staff alone that has me feeling this way.  We have a solid team.  We are Human Sigma 6 three times running for a combined 18 months.  There is no higher honor when it comes to customer and employee loyalty.  We set the bar others strive for.  Our staff is currently small.  But it’s solid.  “This is my family, I found it all on my own.  It’s little and broken but still good.  Yeah, still good.”  Our numbers need to triple behind the line but who we have is the best damn team you could ask for.  So where others would fall apart, we hold strong and show you WHY you are loyal to our branch, customer and employee alike.

It’s the reason we are short that has me hollow.  We didn’t lose our last 2 tellers because they were done with us and simply took a different job down the street.  Life decisions took them far away, from my world.  One to Chicago and one to New York and with it went what little local and true friendship I really have.  My branch is my family, but those were the two that made a point of hanging out with my weekly outside of work.  Board games or bars.  Pool or Kayaking.  Climbing or Walking.  Those girls showed me what real friendship was actually like.  Lisa was the first real, solid, healthy friendship I’ve had ever in all my years.  I met her when I was 20-fucking-8-years-old.  28 years of thinking unhealthy settling was the best I could have.  The best I deserved.

Years of asking what the hell is wrong with me?  What the fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck is wrong with me?  Is it me?  Is it you?  In thinking that there is either something wrong with everyone else, or simply something wrong with me.  As much as I’d like to think I really was born with an over abundance of awesome and the rest of the world just can’t handle it, the reality is that if it seems like everyone around you is an asshole, you have to seriously consider that the problem is actually you and they are responding to what you are putting out there.

I am the Sheldon Cooper of my word.  Only less brilliant and I really am crazy.  “My family had me tested.”  I could get away with it if I was some super genius.  Or regular genius.  But despite being a human calculator, all I am is the sole member of my bank team that actually likes math.

A tired, lonely, empty, human calculator.  If only I ran on batteries and not heart.

Instead, I’m all heart and as such it breaks over and over and over.  As you walk away from 10 years of, admitted unhealthy friendship, over a pair of shoes.  As my local close friendship moves away.  As I reach out to you for companionship and you show no interest.  As I see how socially awkward I really am but don’t know how to fix it.  As I know based on well establish pattern that the majority of the people in my life who have been the closest to me, tolerated me the best, I’ve never met face-to-face because I’m best when there is an entire internet between us.  Which would be glorious if going to a movie together didn’t involve having to find a movie that starts at the same time despite time zones.  If going to the bar or playing board games didn’t involve plane tickets.  And I don’t mean to diminish that friendship because these people I may have never met, at least not yet, would be there for me for me in a second, shovel in hand, asking who I know with a decent backyard.  They laugh.  But not because they don’t agree.

But as amazing as that friendship is, it isn’t enough  Not since I have learned what it is to have a regular girl’s night, in or out of the house, just hanging out not caring about a thing but spending time together.

I have a few I could work into my life more.  I girl I went to school with who has a kid Sambam’s age.  We talk about setting up play-dates.  She is about 10 minutes away  A girl I knew a long time ago that I’ve causally kept in contact with over the past few years.  We’re going kayaking next Saturday, in fact.  She is the furthest at an hour or so away.  Another woman I met at work as a customer, who is fun and I’ve hung out with her a few times.  She lives about half way between the other two.  But you know the difference between a friend, or even best friend, and an acquaintance?  While you can indeed hang out with both, one fills a deeply driven need, the other fills an afternoon.  And that’s Ok.  Not everyone should to be everyone’s BFFOREVER!  But I could appreciate the acquaintances more, because I’m sadly currently incapable of appreciating them as much as they deserve, if I had a local BFFOREVER.

I have fun with acquaintances.  Girlfriends know my soul.  And that’s what I need.  Someone local who would never need to read a word I wrote because they already knew it all.

Yes, that’s what I need.

I need to fill this hole.  With something that lasts longer than tears.  The vault is getting soggy.