Let the Fear Guide, and Not Decide.

So, what I find interesting is the difference between people who seem to have natural confidence and those that do not. Confidence often, albeit not always, seems to correlate with some history or strong anticipation of "success." Some people have this natural confidence that is not based necessarily in their actual capabilities or history. In fact their confidence likely has a large part in influencing their success--that is the success stems partially from the pure non empirical confidence, and their confidence is not necessarily a reaction from their success. If there's anything I've learned in my many (many) years in post secondary education it is pure effort that is a bigger predictor of success, than any necessarily suspected intelligence level or previous success in primary education.

Now, that isn't to say that individual capabilities don't play a role in success. In fact knowing what you naturally excel at and what you don't-- and being able to accept that-- is a big role in building confidence. If I measured success by my natural mathematical abilities or visual-spatial intelligence I would largely consider myself on the far left end of the bell curve overall. But I accept that I suck at those things--honestly I am far below average in those areas, and in a noticeable way--but in these areas I simply put in enough effort, studied twice as hard, asked for as much help as I could and I passed on average or slightly above. Pushed myself into smack into the middle of the bell of aforementioned bell curve, in other words.

But I made sure that I picked a field that played to my natural strengths--which are hard to specify but lend themselves more to qualitative fields than quantitative--calculating a t-score in statistics is my Kryptonite, but writing a 25 page persuasive paper, or being able to have natural skills at making people feel comfortable to speak about awful things from their lives, or validated in doing so are right up my alley. 

I think insecure people--speaking from experience--worry that if they feel confident then they will slip up, or be unprepared for the inevitable time when life pulls the rug out from under them. That just when they feel comfortable enough to take a deep breath and think "maybe I do have it together, or maybe it will be okay" chaos will walk into their life and they will be thinking about how foolish they were that they things would be okay. Or that they actually understood the assignment. 

I know anyhow this has been my thought process, as well as subsequently many of my clients. I've been of the mind, especially back in college and grad school, that I had to keep my wildly intense fear of failure intake, in order to push myself to success. Had to be so terrified I would fail that I'd try twice as hard. The problem is is that it kind of worked. My fear didn't stop me, it pushed me. Which is the good that can come from fear. If you know Michael Myers has escaped from Smith's Grove and you hear a noise downstairs as you're getting ready for bed that sense of fear can get you ready to run or to fight. You can pick up the fire poker (or uncoiled coat hanger--nice improv Laurie) to buy yourself some time to run from the Shape. Fear is a great thing to have. When it becomes terror and it freezes you instead of readying you for fight or flight that is the problem. 

But what is the line? My fear didn't freeze me, and I feel it helped me with my success. But perhaps I would have succeeded without the fear? Perhaps I am wrong. Looking back I certainly could have distinguished the difference of healthy fear from catastrophizing. 

Ultimately I think it's okay if you don't feel confident all the time. I think it's okay if that lack of confidence creates fear that pushes you a little more. I think it's not okay to confuse healthy fear from terror and catastrophizing. And it's imperative to note that your lack of confidence in your abilities is likely an unreliable predictor of your potential success. There's a difference between knowing you objectively struggle with something (such as math for me) and letting that guide you, and simply "feeling" like you can't do something when there is no evidence you can't. I'm not a great shining example, but I will say that nearly everything I've succeeded at I initially didn't think I would. Now I know when I simply feel overwhelmed or fear failure that that doesn't predict success. I try my best to let only objective fact and history guide me. Not to beat the example to death here, but for example I'd be terrified to go back and try to get a degree in engineering, and I'd likely actually fail. And I actually likely would because I struggle with math and visual-spatial intelligence. I'm also pretty scared at going back to school and getting my PhD in Psychology. And I might fail. No guarantees of success. But in this field I've succeeded at it all so far. That's the fact, and the difference between letting fear decide and letting fear guide. 

*hops off soap box*

Every Life is a Pile of Good Things & Bad Things

 Hello again. It has been four years since my last confession. Actually more. 

Sorry, Sarah and I have been binging 'Evil' the past few weeks and the premise involves a priest, so I've been hearing a lot of confessions recently. 

I've used this blog to exercise my metaphorical demons before--coincidentally--but that's not really why I'm here today. 

My daughter, NOW A TEENAGER (WTF), and I were having a conversation last night and my having a blog came up (this one, as well as an older one that goes back to 2011...or maybe earlier) and surprisingly this was interesting to her. She somewhat encouraged me to write a new post. She made a comment that she didn't think her life was interesting enough to have anything to say. I told her that often my life isn't particularly interesting but I still find a lot to say (not that people are necessarily listening, but I still find it helpful to word vomit--at least every two to four years apparently). Maybe that's a personal quality but perhaps in the written form lives sound more interesting. There are a lot of stories that are popular that involve very ordinary people with very ordinary problems (mostly the whole of "literature" or "straight fiction") and so clearly there is some appeal in the ordinary. Not that I'm comparing this blog--mostly barren, barring about five or six posts over the last decade or so--to a best selling novel. 

Do I find I have much to say today? Not really. Speaking of barren. 

I have been thinking a lot about death, leaving a legacy, finally getting around to those things I've always wanted to do. Finish a novel for one. That's really the only undone dream left that haunts me. 

I've accepted that that an album isn't going to happen. I do think with a little bit of effort I could at least self-publish an album of material, that I think would be worth sharing. But looking at pros and cons, it just doesn't seem worth it. 

Also apparently I'm not going to become the greatest center fielder and number three hitter for the Seattle Mariners since Griffey. Feeling increasingly unlikely at 37. 

But finishing a novel is realistic. Potentially getting it published is a whole other dream, one that involves a fair bit of luck. But finishing it would satisfy me greatly. So you'd think I would have made it happen by now. But motivation is a fickle thing and, at the end of the day, I find myself putting it off. I mean I've got a story I work on every week or so, but it'll take another two to fifty years at the snail's pace I'm going. I'm able to not care about such things a fair amount of the time. But at any old moment during the day the lack of finishing can strike and haunt me. 

Does it matter? Should it be good enough that I have a career, two kids and a wife that I all think are pretty cool? In the end of things our planet will overheat to the point of eliminating all life on earth, and our planet will be consumed into a white dwarf star or something along those lines. I heard that this is the most likely scenario. At some point we'll all be forgotten, even those that are most memorable right now, so I suppose one could say it doesn't matter. 

To me it really comes down to what you'd want people to say at your funeral. What kind of person do you want to be remembered as? What kind of legacy do I want to leave for my kids?

 In my extended family most never went to college. Which is fine, there is a blue collar legacy for most of them. But that wasn't me, and it was hard believing that I could do it, because there was no blueprint. Having one parent who went to college increases the chances they will. Again, not saying that this is the most important thing--having a career you are happy with is most important. But if at least one of them are the kinds of humans who want a job that requires such training (I suspect one is...) I think that's helpful. So leaving a legacy that involves career success, as well as creative...that could be helpful for the children that--hopefully--outlive me. Ideally they don't outlive me any time particularly soon, but who knows. Knock on wood. 

Is wanting a legacy simply vanity? Maybe. Maybe it's okay to be forgotten. Most of us will. Not immediately, but eventually. Most of the celebrities of the day 100 years ago no remembers at all. A select few, but even the most temporarily memorable are just that. Temporarily memorable. 

 Every life is a pile of good things and bad things, as Doctor Who reminds us. Not finishing those projects we wanted...never putting that debut album out, never writing that novel, whatever it is. We could qualify as a bad thing. But the good things are there, regardless. So if you only worry about  doing these--as of yet-- undone things because you want to sleep at night, maybe that's okay. But also maybe that's a sign you're only trying to feel better by arbitrarily finishing something. Out of obligation rather than love. 

I don't know.   

But that's enough for the day. Raised too many questions without answers. Maybe this all sounds like its coming from a place of depression, but it's not. Just doing the "reoccuring outpouring of everything" as I once phrased it. 

*The full Doctor Who quote, which sits to the right of my desk reads..."Every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't always soften the bad but, vice versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant." 

I love this quote and its my guiding principle as a counselor. I try to add to the pile of good things. And help the bad things not make the good things seem unimportant. 

Also...watch 'Evil', on Paramount Plus. It rules. 

juli

I don’t remember the first time I met her. I rarely do when it comes to these things. I don’t remember the first time I met Sarah (either my wife or my sister…😉). Well, I recall the meeting, but not her (my wife, that is). I was hanging out with some of my friends and don’t quite recall her. Not the greatest story I suppose, but in my mind I met her at a party which she had snuck out to get to…which sounds a little cooler I think. But anyway, this isn’t about Sarah.

 It’s about Juli. It’s about three years since she died. Three years on May 25^th…although it all went down on May 24^th, so that’s really more the day in my mind. I remember that day well. Actually most of that month of May, which is also rare. But then it was a memorable month.

Asher was born on May 3^rd (almost May the 4^th…which would have pleased Chad, but I think Ash knew I was a bigger Doctor Who fan…). Juli died on May 25^th. Almost exactly three weeks where Ash and his grandmother existed in the same world. Actually she had the heart attack on the 24^th, so really the 25^th is more of a technicality. I’ve talked about this before, wrote a whole two or three paragraphs on it, so I’ll just briefly paraphrase myself. Essentially what I said was that the pain never really goes away. It fades, yes, and of course these things are different for everyone else. But what I wrote resonated with a lot of people, which I don’t say to brag or something, but just to note that what I feel is a common feeling. I think I thought there would be a time when the pain fades into just good memories, more or less. I didn’t think that I would think about Juli every single day. Literal. Not figural. Every single day. Sometimes its good memories…sometimes its bad memories. The worst are the memories from the day itself. May 24^th, 2017.

Juli was in the house, and Sarah wanted to go pick up a Craigslist thing she’d just bought. Sarah and I were just in a fight…something about parents, fittingly. I don’t recall exactly. I recall I didn’t want to go, but I knew she wanted me to go. Well, of course I like to be with her, but you don’t always want to jump in the car with someone you’re already fighting with. But I went along anyway and the fight quickly faded away. Ava was home…she was in school by then but this was mid to late afternoon. I recall Ava didn’t want to go with us. She wanted to stay behind with “Nina,” which is what Ava called Juli (Juli wanted to be called “Nana” but Ava always mispronounced it “Nina” when she was younger, so it stuck). We asked Juli and she said that that was fine. I remember Sarah and I were literally at the door to leave when Ava cried out that she had changed her mind and wanted to go. She really did seem upset, which was quite strange as she often stayed behind with Juli. I don’t believe in fate or anything like that…but that moment does seem somewhat fated to me. If Ava had stayed behind she would have seen Juli have that massive heart attack, and perhaps seen her die. Of course your mind always then thinks that maybe the EMTs had got there quicker, if Ava had remembered to call 911…we can’t know if Juli would have been able to remind her to do so. But, alternatively, perhaps the EMTs wouldn’t have got there at all. Or not until after we’d came home and seen her. Then there would have been no opportunity to say goodbye to her before we pulled life support…for whatever that moment was worth.

These are the things that your mind plays over and over. What if? It was a strong enough attack that it seems like it would have happened that way regardless. But, back to the moment we left to get the Craigslist thing.

Sarah and I quickly got over our fight and we were in fine spirits when we returned to the house. I remember laughing when we got out of the car to walk back in the house. There were no ambulances or EMTS there. Everything appeared normal. Except the neighbor was standing in our driveway. I remember thinking, for whatever reason, that he was there to make some kind of complaint. The only interaction I’d had with another neighbor was issues over parking placement. So I figured it might have been something about parking on the street or who knows. But he looked rather solemn and quickly we knew something had happened, although I can’t say I thought it was so grave or what it was exactly. I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something to the effect of she had a heart attack and collapsed and he had happened upon it. I still don’t know the exact sequence of events, or where exactly she was when it happened, but I didn’t think it was right to ask him about it. Sarah then asked if she seemed okay, which it still felt like she would be. Sarah’s dad had had heart issues before and gone to the hospital and everything had been fine. I’ll be honest, everyone thought that Juli would outlive him, so it was a great irony it happened the way it did. But the neighbor guy said that it had looked pretty bad. He didn’t say it quite that way, but he was having a problem putting it into words. He was the one that essentially told us there was a good chance she was going to die. We immediately got back into the car to drive to the Peacehealth on Mill Plain, which is about fifteen minutes away from the house. I remember Kevin—Sarah’s dad—calling and me answering (at least I think that’s how it happened, regardless, I remember this conversation). He asked if everything was okay and I said there was a chance…and then he sounded relieved. But I had to clarify that it didn’t look good…and that was the moment that our hope started to fall apart. I remember what Ava said on the way there…I remember the exact stretch of road we were on when she said it. When we pass by that way I often think about it. “I think I’m losing my buddy,” she said. Somehow she knew the gravity of the situation. It was the most heartbreaking thing I ever heard. She just knew.

I didn’t intend to write a recap of the events but it plays in my mind so often. I think about Juli every day, but luckily it isn’t always that day. Maybe only every other day.

As I said, I don’t remember the exact meeting with her. But I do remember her saying (at the time or in retrospect of this time, I can’t recall) essentially that I was different. Different, that is, when it came to other guy’s that had been interested in Sarah. Just like me Sarah hadn’t dated a whole lot, so it was really just guys who had wanted to date her. And I was different, according to Juli anyway. Now it was for real…I was marriage potential. But she wasn’t afraid of it. She was supportive right away. She thought I was the answer to their prayer’s for Sarah to meet a good man. I was never quite certain if I was fated to be that good man, but I’ve tried my best.

 It seems so bizarre, in retrospect, to think of someone being so supportive of a relationship between an 18 year old and a 16 year old. Somehow knowing that this was meant to be, as much as anyone ever can. That we would get married and have kids (I said I’d give her grandkids, because she badgered me about it, but that she had to wait until I was 25…Ava came a little earlier than the plan entailed). I mean I had just graduated high school and didn’t even have a job. I wouldn’t get one until Sarah and I had been dating for three months (WinCo cart clerk, baby!). She had confidence. I’m not sure Kevin had that same level of confidence but I think he trusted his wife about it. She said of course I was going to go to college and I would find a good job. I had no such confidence, and it wound up being six years before I started school…four years into Sarah and I’s marriage, and a year after Ava was born. She was one hundred percent sure. No one else in our lives was. My parents were not thrilled, which in retrospect I understand. Admittedly though, it made things difficult. Not having your parents share your excitement and plans was difficult, and I’ve never forgotten how that feels. Perhaps my mom will read this…probably…and its hard to type these words…but I have to be honest. It still hurts that they actively tried to sway us away from our decisions. They got married young and I think they were just trying to spare us those difficulties that they’d had. But that really didn’t come across with their actions and it just hurt me and drove us away. It also made Sarah having a good relationship with my family an impossibility, and it would be years before she grew close to them (which she did, eventually, and they have a good relationship…Mom considers her not just a daughter-in-law, but a friend). Regardless, Sarah and I weren’t to be stopped. I was fighting with my parents all the time after Sarah and I got together and Kevin and Juli let me move in. Which is crazy in retrospect but that’s just the kind of person she was (and Kevin still is). She knew we needed help. Kevin and her had also got together and knew the difficulty, but she wanted to be the person that they hadn’t had growing up. I don’t know if Sarah and I would have stayed together if she hadn’t been in our court.

Sarah I moved out eventually and got our own apartment. But a few years after we did I had two grand mal seizures and couldn’t work at my job because of the doctor’s orders. We really tried to get it together, and we could have possibly stayed if I had got my job back (I could work again after six months) but Sarah encouraged me to quit and to move in with her mom and Miles’s (Kevin and her had divorced in the meanwhile) house. I resisted at first and was absolutely against it. But I was miserable with my job, and going to college was at the same time was quite difficult. I eventually realized Sarah and Juli were right. So I quit my job and moved in. A few months later I transferred to WSU-Vancouver and got a part time work study job and I was more happy than I had been in years. During college Sarah and I had a few rough patches, because I went through I major bout of depression (even though life was better than ever) and I was mentally absent in my duties as a husband and a father during that time. I didn’t realize it at the time, but having her mom present and to help raise Ava potentially saved our relationship. Her mom and Miles were there to give us date nights, every week almost. We never had date nights for like three years after Ava was born and being able to go to the movies or hang out with friends made us feel young again, at least for those last few years she was alive. I remember we met our best friends Chad and Veronica right before the summer of ’14 and that summer we hung out with them almost every week it seemed like. We all got drunk and did stupid things and, at least for Sarah and I, we felt almost like teenagers again. We had one last summer as stupid kids.

Juli has been dead for nearly three years and things are not like that anymore. I feel firmly old and I understand things will never be that carefree again. But I am so grateful for those years where Juli was there to give us date nights whenever we needed one. Many times she was the one who ordered us to have one. She knew how hard it was being a young parent with not the greatest of means. She helped Sarah and I stay together more than once. I’m not sure I could have stayed in college if it wasn’t for her support. I don’t know if I would be two years into grad school without her help.

She knew I would get into grad school, she knew I would succeed. I did not, but when I did I could hear her words of celebration. I knew she would have, outside of Sarah, be my biggest cheerleader. She always was. I just had my first client as a counselor-in-training and I know she would have been over the moon thrilled for me. Knowing someone had your back like that…I took it for granted. Outside of Sarah I’ll never have that again. And that makes life seem a little grimmer, I’ll be honest. It’ll never have quite the same rosy, carefree glow.

To end on a slightly more positive note, I’ll quickly relay something that happened about two months ago. We were going through a bunch of Juli’s things and we stumbled upon a massive stash of Starbucks gift cards. She collected them, and there had to have been like 50-60 of them. In all practicality we decided to check if any of them had any money left. I wound up checking one by one, and sure enough a lot did have money on them. Some had like 12 bucks, some had 1.24. We uploaded them all to the Starbucks app, and it bought us several more trips to Starbucks. She was still paying our coffee, three years later. Even paid for one last date night trip there.

There isn’t much you can say that will help the pain. At some point things are more manageable of course. But it is always there. You carry it with you. And that hurts. It kills. But you carry it all with you. The pain, but also the memories. Even the good memories hurt sometimes, because you know there aren’t anymore. The finality of it all is something your brain can never quite grasp. In my mind it feels like we’re living in alternate timeline. Like we’re living in the alternate timeline from Back to the Future Part II, and somehow we can get back to the proper timeline where she lived. Where she is still there for us. But we go on. And we try to be good enough parents, friends, children, brothers or sisters that we will matter enough to hurt when we’re gone. We will wish that it won’t hurt, but the hurt just means that it was a damn good time while it was going.

                                                      

I’m writing to exercise my demons. I’m starting to think this is why I’ve had such problems writing novels. I’m just working on gutting out all the anxieties, unhappiness, et cetera inside of me. It’s not so much about as creating a story as it is getting rid of this excess. Cutting the fat. Stephen King once wrote in a foreword to one of his short story collections that we all have a mind-filter, and what doesn’t get filtered out, what’s too large to fall through, those are the things that shape our fears. And this is why interests and fear is so subjective. It’s a simple idea, but it’s a nice image. And I feel like this is getting rid of all the crud that doesn’t get automatically filtered out. I’ve got to try and exercise it on the page.

I feel better. Not sure what else to put down anymore, so I think this is the end.

Stuff That I’m Currently Pretty Into:

Music:

There isn’t an album or song I’m currently really feeling, I’ve been listening to a lot of classic pop-punk stuff, like ‘90s, early ‘00s. The perfect song I can think of to sum this up is probably ‘Stupid Kid’ by Alkaline Trio. Just fun, and from an era that makes more sense to me than this one. However ‘the Wonder Years’ just put out ‘Sister Cities’ a few weeks ago and I’m amping up to see them in May. It’s a solid album, if not as good as ‘No Closer to Heaven’, which is genuinely great.

TV:

Not much exciting going on now. Been re-discovering how much I love ‘Boy Meets World’ on Hulu mostly. Have just decided I’d like to finish season 1 of ‘Westworld’ since the second season is dropped like next week. Basically anything new has been barren since I finished ‘Mindhunter’ a couple months ago.

Movies:

Saw some great ones awhile ago, especially ‘Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri’. ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ is a total great time...Jeff Golblum as ‘the Grandmaster’. An easy pick. Re-invigorated not just my interest in the ‘Thor’ franchise but the MCU in general. Now I’m motivated to see ‘Black Panther’ so I’m ready to see ‘Infinity War’ at the end of the month.

Friends. What to say about friends that I haven’t already said somewhere else? I’ve written a lot of songs about troubles with friends (all based on real things). And of course there’s the ever popular Facebook vent post. Which I’ve done a time or two (perhaps more but I don’t care to recall). There was a lot of friend drama in 2017 for me. A lot of drama period. Although drama isn’t the word I want. It undermines the true emotion. There was a lot of broken promises, broken hearts. There’s a lot of scars. That isn’t over dramatization. There is such a thing as emotional scars, as anyone with PTSD will tell you. Or anyone who has a reasonable amount of emotional intelligence will tell you. These things I keep vague because I have to, and because I want to. I’m still friends with all those friends. I don’t regret doing so. That doesn’t mean that they are all friends with each other anymore, which they were before. Which is unfortunate, but entirely understandable. Of course this complicates things, and it also destroys a core friendship that we all shared that I deeply enjoyed, and that comes so rarely in our lives; especially as high school grows further and further in the rear view. I guess there’s just a lot to mourn this year. It’s that awful feeling that comes when you arrive at a fork in the road; where there is no correct answer, there is just one choice over another. And you’re at that point in your life when there’s no one to help you decide, or at the point when you realize there never really was. People can say “this worked for me, or that worked for me,” but you have to satisfy that inner voice inside of you, and the only that can hear that is you. You can try to describe to people what you hear, but in the end everyone has their own agendas, and you have to follow that voice until the end. We all do. To borrow a tired phrase; it’s a lonely road. And we walk alone. 

Friends. What to say about friends that I haven’t already said somewhere else? I’ve written a lot of songs about troubles with friends (all based on real things). And of course there’s the ever popular Facebook vent post. Which I’ve done a time or two (perhaps more but I don’t care to recall). There was a lot of friend drama in 2017 for me. A lot of drama period. Although drama isn’t the word I want. It undermines the true emotion. There was a lot of broken promises, broken hearts. There’s a lot of scars. That isn’t over dramatization. There is such a thing as emotional scars, as anyone with PTSD will tell you. Or anyone who has a reasonable amount of emotional intelligence will tell you. These things I keep vague because I have to, and because I want to. I’m still friends with all those friends. I don’t regret doing so. That doesn’t mean that they are all friends with each other anymore, which they were before. Which is unfortunate, but entirely understandable. Of course this complicates things, and it also destroys a core friendship that we all shared that I deeply enjoyed, and that comes so rarely in our lives, especially as high school grows further and further in the rear view. I guess there’s just a lot to mourn this year. It’s that awful feeling that comes when you arrive at a fork in the road, where there is no correct answer, there’s just one choice over another. And you’re at that point in your life when there’s no one to help you decide, or at the point when you realize there never really was. People can say “this worked for me, or that worked for me,” but you have to satisfy that inner voice inside of you, and the only that can hear that is you. You can try to describe to people what you hear, but in the end everyone has their own agendas, and you have to follow that voice until the end.

I Don’t Know

I don’t know. What I want to say, or what I want out of this. I suppose I want to feel better, because writing has always been an outlet for me. To let off steam. A release valve of the conscious...and the unconscious. Because, while I start off generally knowing the directions things will go, the narrative always veers more than I expect.  I think I’m trying to hold things together too much. Because I’m trying to make sure I keep myself together. Since I lost 50 lbs two years ago, and since I got on depression medication one year ago, I kept feeling like I had to keep myself in check. And, for about a year I feel like I did that. Julie’s death in May was certainly a blow, but afterwards I felt like I had escaped with my sanity intact. Asher’s birth in earlier May was such a blessing. I had the whole month of May off from work because we were expecting Asher in the first week. And then he came, albeit via a far more stressful C-section. The stress of his birth certaintly ensured he would be the last born. And I enjoyed my time off. And then came a Tuesday towards the end of the month. I was to return to work the very next day. Julie had came home from work early, since she had been sick the last couple weeks, since before Asher’s birth actually. She didn’t volunteer to go but her boss took one look at her and sent her home. Of course she would never recognize how sick she was; or she might have, but felt she had to work through it. She lived her whole life she had something to prove, and she had never slowed down. And she never did. It was nearly summer, and the sun was going down, so it was probably late evening: 7 or 8. Sarah had to pick something up on one of those Craigslist’s deals, it was a neighborhood about 15 minutes away. Right before we were supposed to leave we got into an argument about my mother. I don’t actually recall what it was about, just something involving my mother. I was so angry that I initially refused to leave with her. But she’s a stubborn woman and I relented. Ava asked to stay behind with “Nina.” Sarah asked her mom and she said it was fine. Right as we were about to leave, Ava began getting crying and ran out to the door to join us. So then we left Julie alone in bed (Miles was on a work trip in Louisiana) and went to pick up her item. We returned to the house probably about half an hour later, and things looked normal. I began to get out of the car when the neighbor from across the street, who rarely spoke to us, told Sarah that Julie had fell down in the yard. The look on his face immediately made concern run through you. He then began saying “it didnt look good” and said the paramedics hadn’t been able to get a pulse. He knew right then. I guess he didn’t want us to have false hope. I can remember the rest, but that doesn’t matter. That’s not for here I don’t think. The important thing is that I never saw her alive again. I saw her right after she died, at around one in the morning. Her face was grey. There was no life in it. I wanted to kiss her on the cheek, but I couldn’t get myself to do it. I was afraid. Seeing her that way was more frightening than I expected. She was covered with a sheet when I walked in, and as soon as they pulled it off I wished they would put it back again. I felt guilty for this. I allowed myself to touch her hair, and I told her “At your best, you were Nina.” I think I might have said goodbye. And that was it. I think maybe that’s what I came here to write. As soon as I started writing about it I felt relieved. I felt focused. I think that’s all for today. Goodbye.