I just want to pet all the dogs

I think I am avoiding real life.  In real life we are a two income family.  Half of our income comes from Scott, half from the person that I was before July.  I am forever grateful for everyone that donated to the go fund me page.  I have been so self conscious about that.  But without it we would be in big financial trouble.  It also allowed Scott to be home for 3 months.  I don’t even remember what we did during that time but sleep a lot.  It seems a blur.  Thanks to the fund and unemployment I have been able to grieve in private.  But I have to get back to work.  But I don’t know what to do.  I had the job that was a great fit for me.  It was ruined by the greed and narcissism of a small number of people.  I didn’t get a chance to grieve the loss of my job because something so much worse happen.

How do I apply and interview.  I can see it, “Please hire me I only cry 8 times a day now”.  I am pretty sure that interview won’t go long.  I can’t imagine trying to “sell” myself.  How do I sell something so broken, so sad and so inefficient.  The solution is to work for myself.  But that takes time and money I don’t have right now.  I am moving down the path of being a college planner for families in my community.  Parents would pay me to help their child navigate the complicated world of applying for college.  I won’t be working with the Ivy League kids, but the ones like Hayley.  Kids that want to stay in the PNW maybe go South.  I think I would be good at it.  It will require more schooling and the time to build up clients before I am back on track.

Option two is my dream.  Actually Hayley’s too.  We even wrote a business plan together.  We wanted to open a self dog wash here in Sammamish.  Similar to a car wash for dogs.  There is one at Marymoor that is no frills.  Mine would have tools to groom your dog, leave the mess and go home happy.  We have the name, Bark Club.  We had the marketing ideas and how we would get it started.  Our fantasy was to open where Yo Plateau was.  Hayley thought it would be cool to have it where she had her first job.  She and Henry would work there in the summer.  I could bring one of our dogs to work with me.  That was the plan, the goal.

But I am currently paralyzed by my grief and the financial challenges of either option.  How do I stop worrying and step forward?  Can I step forward?  That would feel like leaving Hayley behind.  I am still in the denial phase.  This can’t be happening, I will wake up soon.  I have survived every type of life challenge you can imagine starting in the 5th grade.  It shaped me in positive ways.  It is probably while I am still standing.  I went to a different school each year until High School.  You could become an introvert and not get close to anyone so it won’t hurt when you move again.  But what I did was get close to people quickly and hang on tight even when I left.  Thanks to social media I have friendships that survived Kindergarten, Junior High and High School.  I have new friends that I grasped in my time of need while leaning on the old ones too.  I think the reason I was able to get close to people quickly was that I was alway looking for that unconditional love.  Love that was not dependent on behavior, grades, or all the things marriages demand of us.  I finally had that with Hayley.  I love my Henry so much it hurts to let him out of my sight each day.  But Hayley was built like me, she had my personality, we thought the same way, she was truly my soul mate in a way that Scott or Henry can never match.  I don’t know if it was being the first born or female or both.  But my best friend was my daughter.  Where was I going with this?………….

Oh yeah, being able to move to the next phase, working again.  Contributing to supporting my family.  I think this writing is taking me down a path of how this challenge is different than all of the others.  In the past, there were things that didn’t change when something major did.  There was always something that I could cling too as the same.  In Junior High, when I moved and left my best friend.  We wrote letters and talked on the phone.  I knew that I could reach out to him whenever I needed to.  What I am missing now, there is no going back.  My family is not the same, my personality is not even the same.  How do you move to the next step when it seems so daunting.

I am a clutter bug.  I like that description better than hoarder.  I think that the moving around a lot left this need to hold on to my “stuff”.  The problem is that this house has a gorgeous floorplan, but no fucking storage!  I am not sure what moron gave us a soaring 2nd floor ceiling in our front room but teeny tiny closets.  And god forbid you give us a closet in every room.  Seriously.  So here is what happens with items that I can’t part with, say I will deal with or need later.  Walk to garage door, open and toss in to the mounds of clutter.  Add the fact right now we have a new bathtub and vanity sitting in there for our master bath and you have a huge problem.  We have boxes from when my Dad died.  Things I need to go through and decide what to keep.  My Dad died 12 years ago.  Then we have boxes of Scott’s parent’s stuff.  Don’t forget that a couple of weeks before surgery, Hayley gutted her room.  College dorm life had taught her to try to live clutter free.  She wanted a new room and all that had to do with childhood or pre-college life was put in bins and boxes and you guessed it put in the garage.  When she came home for the summer she also put all of her dorm stuff in my bonus room/office.  We painted her room.  She got new bedroom furniture.  The plan was we would move her stuff back in as she recovered.  She had visions of laying in bed propped up with pillows with a drink with a straw, while she bossed me around and told me what to keep and where to decorate.  That didn’t happen.  My office even has duffle bags from the dorm yet to be unpacked.  Laundry that was in her hamper.  The garage has a box of dance trophies, purses, and stuffed animals, pillow pets in huge black trash bags.  What do I do?  Today when we worked on the garage with our Uhaul truck for a dump run it was brutal.  It was like this:

Scott holds up a box of old work stuff.  “Fuck yeah, let me toss that”.  Then the garden products.  Scott you can’t keep it, if we need that preen we will get some but have you seen the yard?  It is beyond what preen can do, toss it.  Then it is “Omg there is a box from her dorm with her favorite clothes.  Remember when she blamed you and Henry for throwing it away because she thought for sure it was in a garbage bag?  Yeah she was pissed”.  Figures it was in the garage.  “Oh wait, Hayley touched that, you can’t toss it”  “OMG, look she made this vase”  “OH shit that wipe board has her Western count down in her own writing, that stays” “I remember when we got those bears at the zoo two Christmas Eves ago” You got it, “that stays”.  If we had just cleaned the garage a year ago it would be so much easier.  We would not know what we were missing.  Scott really helped me understand the emotional connection to this stuff when he said something about the puppy.  He said “it feels so weird that she never met Finn, she would have liked him”  “She would have loved him, she wanted a golden retriever, this was not an accident Scott.  Plus she had a hand in it, the card “open when you want another dog” that was a deal closer for you.  She told you to get the dog”  “Maybe she is reincarnated as the dog”  “Scott how much have you had to drink?  First if it was her he would be a bigger asshole and for sure would take big dumbs in front of Henry’s bedroom door.  Second, time to lay off the Gin.”

The garage has been our shame for over 10 years.  Scott would always open it and grab the mower and shut it quickly in case a neighbor saw our dirty little secret.  We would lock the door and put a sign “please leave closed” when we would have a party.  I have friends now that I have let see it because we need help and I don’t care about much anymore.  They all say, “oh honey you are not the only one who has a garage that looks like this”  I think they are full of shit.  I have a friend that said when we started this project, “our garage is a mess I need to work on that too”.  What?  Their garage has a car covered for protection and no clutter.  Is there imaginary shit I am not seeing?  This would be someone I would never let see my garage.  I know we will feel better when the garage and the inside of the house is clutter free.  But how do you do that.  Everything here was here when Hayley lived here.  That makes it special in my mind.  Yes, I know there is a show for this and that is exactly why they send a psychologist with the hosts.

Don’t get me started on clothes.  Because I have gone through 6 sizes in the past 5 years.  I have wardrobes in each size.  It feels like such a waste and failure to get rid of anything smaller than what I am now.  This would not be a problem and probably is pretty common if we did not have the stupid triangle shaped closet from hell.  So no where but baskets on the floor to put these clothes.

Where was I going with this?………Oh yeah, moving to the next step.  I feel that I can’t for the following reasons in no particular order:

1. Financially impossible to do what I really want
2. I can’t throw away items that Hayley touched
3. If I do something new, Hayley won’t know about it
4. I cannot go back to work full time until the clutter is cleaned up and the house is nice and tidy
5. I don’t have the energy to do any of the above
6. Xanax does not help
7. The future does not include Hayley

I am going to make a list and just try to check items off.  Go through a box a day.  Get rid of a bag of clothes or junk a day.  Sign up for that entrepreneur class.  In theory this sounds like a smart plan, but that is the thing about grief.  Plans never happen as planned.  You don’t know when you won’t be able to move for a day.  You don’t know when you will have to stop and scream and weep.  You don’t know how bad the physical pain of your loss will be each day.  Hayley used to say “I just want to pet all the dogs”, maybe that is my answer.