Driveway Breakdown and Emotional Release

Today’s emotional purge was unlike anything in recent memory—a true catharsis that hit me like a storm. I found myself sobbing in the driveway, overwhelmed by the sheer weight of everything I’ve been carrying: the constant pressure to perform at work, the burnout that never quite goes away, the emotional labor of holding things together for everyone else, the physical exhaustion, the nagging sense of failure, and the loneliness underneath it all.

I didn’t expect the tears, but once they started, they wouldn’t stop. It wasn’t sadness so much as release. Grief, anger, fear, frustration, shame, love—every single emotion I’ve been bottling up came surging out like a dam broke. I sat there, crying like a child, and for once I didn’t try to stop it. I didn’t apologize or hide. I let it happen.

In that moment, I realized how long it had been since I truly felt my feelings. I’ve been operating in survival mode for months—maybe years. The paramedic in me, the teacher in me, the mother in me, the competent adult in me—they’ve all been doing their jobs, but the human underneath has been forgotten.

I don’t want to forget her anymore. I want to make space for her. I want to honor her pain and her power. She’s not weak for breaking down. She’s wise enough to know she needed to. She’s still standing, still trying, still dreaming—even if it feels like she’s falling apart.

And maybe falling apart is part of healing.

So I’m claiming this breakdown not as a failure, but as a turning point. A moment of truth. A signal from my deepest self that I cannot keep going the way I have been. Something has to shift. And it starts with listening. Really listening—to my body, my soul, my anger, my longing.

Today, I broke down. And that breakdown might just be the beginning of something real.

(Edited by Lucy) 

Pajamas, Diamonds, and Dancing into Balance

Personal Reflection – July 18, 2025

This is a morning for reflection, isn't it? 

Not a recovery day exactly. More like a recalibration day. A day to acknowledge how out of balance I’ve become, and how much I need to care for myself, not just functionally, but emotionally and spiritually too.

It’s been hot. Work has been relentless. Between my daughter, the dogs, the showcase song, the protocols, the relentless mental tabs open at all hours, I forgot how to just BE. Today, for the first time in a while, I chose stillness.

There are little tasks I want to complete today—like groceries and that Amazon order—and I plan to chip away at them without pressure. I might even work on a protocol, not for work, but for myself. I’m not touching the St. Mary’s garbage today; that’s a hard boundary. But I am interested in what I want to know, what makes me feel powerful and capable as a medic. That knowledge belongs to me.

I also want to read one of the articles for my education certificate. I need to double-check the due date, but I know it’s approaching. This is part of me reclaiming my identity as a learner, not just a responder.

The truth is, I want more diamonds in my life—not jewelry, but moments of clarity, of sparkle, of being seen and valued. Moments of alignment where I’m not just surviving the schedule, but actually living in rhythm with myself. Dance gives me some of that, when I make time for it.

So here I am. Pajamas on. Air conditioner humming. Dogs asleep. No calls pending. No chaos, just this breath and this cup of coffee. A very good start.

Maybe later, a little dancing. Maybe just in the kitchen. Maybe barefoot.

Maybe that’s what balance looks like today.

On my own, pretending....

I was thinking about the song "on my own," and why I was so fixated on using it for a dance showcase. It's about a young woman who is in love with a man who sees her only as a friend and is in love with someone else. She is talking about how she walks alone all night, pretending he is with her, and she is happy. But when the sun comes up, she has to face the real world again he fantasy bubble shatters. I was thinking how much that song reminds me of my marriage, that for some reason I can't seem to let go. It occurs to me that I was living a fantasy all those years, I was in love with an emotionally unavailable man, who only loved me in my fantasies. I have been pretending to myself that he was completely at fault for the loss of those 20 years I spent with him, I pretend that he was a deceitful, manipulative mastermind and I was just an innocent victim. And yeah, he was deceitful and manipulative, but on some level I always knew that, but I wouldn't really think about it. I loved him so much, I convinced myself that he was a much better person than he was, that deep down he really loved me but didn't know how to show it. My fantasy life was what kept that marriage going all that time. You know how I realized that? I was thinking about when we bought my ring. I worked for that ring for months before it finally came to pass. Remember I told you he just randomly said "You really deserve a diamond." and I ran with that until I got my diamond. But then I told everyone he bought it for me, like I hadn't had to lean on him for months. In my mind, he made this grand romantic gesture, EVEN THOUGH I KNEW THE TRUTH. Looking back, I did that a lot. I had a vision of a lovely romantic story for us, and I was determined to make that story come true, reality be damned. Like if I kissed this particular frog enough times, eventually he would become my prince.

How my marriage ended

 Today I was thinking about the dayI I told Ted I didn't love him anymore. I remember him saying something like, I guess you don't believe in unconditional love after all. Truth is I love that man unconditionally for 21 years. The day I told him I didn't love him anymore, he was the same asshole doing the same shit he had done the entire time we were dating. Nothing he said or did could have made me stop loving him. He lied to me, he said horrible hateful things to me, he frightened me with a threat of physical violence, he spent all our money, he stomped on all my dreams, and yet I kept loving him. The reason I stopped loving him was for my own preservation. It was my choice. I realized that loving him was killing me, and I had to stop. People sometimes ask me if there was an exact moment when I knew it was over. Honestly, it was a lot of little moments that built up over time. But there are three that I remember vividly. One was the shaken baby incident. One was the day he picked a fight with me while we were sitting on the porch swing talking about our future, and right out of the blue he said so many hateful hurtful things. That day I realized I could never trust him again. It wasn't just about trusting him not to cheat on me, it was about trusting him not to hurt me. I knew I could never trust him not to do that again. Over time I came to realize that I could never trust him with my emotions, or my dreams, or my money, or my future. I realize that he had lied to me over and over again through the years, and although I forgave him every time, I didn't want to keep living like that. The other moment was when I was explaining to him for the 100th or the thousandth or the millionth time why something he had done hurt me and why he shouldn't do that anymore. I suddenly realized, I have explained this so many times. If he wanted to understand it he would have understood it by now. He apparently just didn't want to understand. Those three moments together summarize all the things that led up to the end. The other day I had a random thought in the elevator at work. For some reason I thought about the last time I saw him. I was crying over the loss of the marriage. I kept saying, I tried so hard. I tried so hard. He put his arms around me and his voice was so sad. He said, oh, e r i n, both people have to try. I was wondering why he sounded so sad. Was it actual regret for what we could have had? Was it a moment of empathy? Or was it just more acting? It turns out he was a really good actor so maybe that's what it was. Anyway, he told me he wanted our marriage to come back together. I told him that was fine but he had to work at least as hard as I had all these years. He told me he absolutely wanted to do that. Then I never heard from him again.

Crappy memories from my marriage, Memories I thought were good but turned out to have a Sinister undertone looking back , And subtle emotional abuse

 Ted would never let me get ahead in life . He stomped on every single one of my dreams . 

The day we picked up my diamond, And he purposely made a comment to Riley about how I didn't care about people because because all diamonds are mined unethically 

He let me marry him believing he wanted more children , Then years later told me he never wanted more children . 

Let's not forget the way he cheated on me , lied to me, Betrayed me, And laugh at My Pain . 

How about the night he told me he couldn't live without what's her face and that losing her would destroy him . 

How about the time you told me I should jump on the railroad tracks 

The night I tried to jump in front of a moving truck and he didn't stop me 

All the little sneaking and lying for no apparent reason 

he told me he didn't believe I could ever accomplish anything 

The moment I realized that he would always need to look down on me 

What happened to Medical school? 

He purposely left his pornography on my computer the day I went to test into buds , knowing it would upset me . 

He chose pornography over me Time After Time , Letting me feel ugly and undesirable 

Every time we tried to get ready for a family vacation , he would spend at least one day making everyone's life miserable and threatening not to go 

When we finally did get our s*** together and leave on vacation , he would say things like , goodbye house, I hope you don't burn down! Which of course just set a nasty tone for the rest of the trip . 

He hated my house and did everything he could to ruin it 

He spent all our money so that I could never get away 

He isolated me bit by bit 

He forced me to choose between him and Riley , and between him and the dogs . Guess who won both times ? 

The link between beauty and stress

 I have to admit, looking shabby makes me feel stressed. I'm not sure why this should be, except that shabby just does not suit myself image. Looking in the mirror, or looking at my feet, or looking at my nails and seeing an image that doesn't match who I think I am creates a great deal of cognitive dissonance. Quite a bit of my brain power literally goes to resolving who I think I am and what I think I should look like, versus the way I look to other people and what I think they are seeing. For instance, in my mind I have long thick red hair and that red is my natural color. I have a whole identity built around being a redhead. When I know I don't look like a redhead and I have to invest on energy resolving that in my mind I look like Jean Gray but in my mirror I just look Gray. I feel like people think less of a person who looks old or who can't cover their gray hair or their Roots growing out. I used to think this was vanity and that I shouldn't be bothered. Now I see it more as authenticity and adjusting my factual reality to suit my internal reality. In my mind, this is a similar process to training physically so I can be a badass firefighter paramedic, rather than just wishing I could be a badass fighter paramedic but settling for being a lazy core medic at Superior. Thank goodness buying a box of hair color is a quick and easy way to get a lift. Not everything worthwhile has to take a month before you see results.

Being energetically prepared to do a thing

 This seems weird to say at this point in my life, but I realized just now that energy is an actual dimension of my ability to cope in the world. That's not quite how I meant it to come out but it's hard to explain. For example, I frequently feel as if I'm not emotionally prepared to cope with something, like when Riley is having a meltdown at the same time I'm having my own emotions. Or I may feel unprepared to intellectually cope with something, like a test I didn't study for or don't understand the material for. I might not feel physically prepared, like when I took the SAR Agility Test and thought I was going to fail because I hadn't practiced. But just now I was thinking about something I could do if I wanted to, but then realized I'm not energetically prepared for it. I'm tired. I went into work tired yesterday morning and then I slept on a stretcher all night, and had a weird strange dream about killing my mother. I simply don't have the energy to do it right now. I could push myself, but the experience would be unpleasant for me and I wouldn't be giving my best. Regulating my energy is a huge part of managing my bipolar. Learning to recognize when I just don't have the energy to do something, or when expending the energy to do something now means I will not have the energy in reserve to do something later, has been a huge part of learning to manage my bipolar. Having a way to describe this feeling, to be able to say I'm not energetically prepared to do a thing, will help me label the feeling in the future.