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For anyone who appreciates art in any form, I recommend you visit Artscape if you’re ever in the area. 

Taken from their website: “Artscape is America's largest free arts festival, attracting 350,000+ attendees over three days. Artscape features 150+ fine artists, fashion designers and craftspeople; visual art exhibits on and off-site, including exhibitions, outdoor sculpture, art cars, photography and the Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize; incredible live concerts on outdoor stages; a full schedule of performing arts including dance, opera, theater, film, experimental music and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; family events such as hands-on projects, demonstrations, competitions, children's entertainers and street theater; and a delicious, international menu of food and beverages that is available throughout the festival site. Artscape's total economic impact on Baltimore City is $25.97 million.”

Or more simply put, it’s ginormous, artsy, hot, awesome, and full of food trucks. We’ve gone every year we’ve lived here and this year was the best because we went before it got too crowded, and at probably the coolest time it will be over the next 3 days. Anyway, I just wanted to share a few of my favorite items we broke down and bought:

The above piece was something both Jacob and I were completed enamored by. 

She never wants to sit still and these are the best I’ve gotten of her so far.

Jacob and I just had a great walk around our neighborhood and I saw so many awesome things I didn’t know were right around me. I’ve always liked the murals in Baltimore. The art is really one of the few things I love about it here. I’m taking my camera next time for some urban photography and there’s a very small community garden square I didn’t know existed. Then I found in the block across from my house in the center is another memorial park that doesn’t have much but a fence and a gazebo-like structure, but it has trees, grass, and I saw tons of fireflies tonight. 

The past couple months have been hard. And I mean hard. When I think about, it’s still not quite 3 months since Mimi died. Writing that out doesn’t even feel real. I don’t think I’ve fully grieved or coped with this issue. I’d like to have a good cry about it, but I haven’t in over a month or two. I was kind of dealing with it for a while, but then more grief got added on top of that and I just stopped. My body and brain said “no more” and that was that and everything came to a stop. I don’t want to go into more details than necessary, but my family in Minnesota doesn’t want anything to do with me based on some arguments that may be petty to some, but strike right into my soul and shake who I am as a person. Along with my grandparents and my mom, she raised me. I wasn’t just another one of her nieces. I know that. Mom knows that. Mimi’s best friend knows that and even made sure to tell me before I left Minnesota that Mimi always considered me the daughter she never had. But then when I got to claim some items that were my grandparents, promised to me by Mimi last year as next in line when we cleaned my grandparents house, and didn’t show my cousins the full inventory of everything I picked out without asking them first, I became the enemy. If I had thought they’d have cared about any of this stuff I would have asked first. A lot of stuff I wanted were leftovers from what survived my grandparent’s house purge that all these same cousins also go to go through without me being there, and it’s all that is left of my HOME. This became a fight about entitlement and also a fight that I did not participate back in by responding to mean facebook statuses and comments and text messages. Honestly, I was ready to kill myself over what these people said about me, and their lack of understanding. I don’t think they want to understand. They want to be right. I can’t stand confrontation, and at the time this was going down I was not in any sort of shape to have these conversations. 

The fact is, they all have siblings, some have spouses, children, other cousins, a mom, a dad, both a maternal and paternal side of the family, and a set of grandparents still living. Not that that diminishes their loss at all, but Mimi and Mom was what I had left. Period. And now it’s just my mom. And for some reason the fact that I don’t live in Minnesota seems to play a part to these people who all live in the same exact county together. They don’t know what true loneliness is when you lose a home. On top of my grief for Mimi, I’m grieving the loss of my family. I know at some point I’ll have to address it, but for the time being I have no idea where to start, but it’s eating me alive. It’s to a point where I’m actually scared to post anything on facebook, because I know it will be completely ignored by family. This has deterred me from posting day to day musings, when I go out and do something fun, things I’m looking forward to, and I don’t even want to put pictures there. I wish they knew how deeply and badly they hurt me, and I know if I communicated that would help because maybe they don’t know. But why did it still have to birth such terrible messages, and things I KNOW have been talked about me to other people in Minnesota. But I don’t have that communication in me because I’m so hurt still. They didn’t even ask me to write the obituary, which I did for Grandma and Grandpa and so she got something kind of generic. I’d also like to add I had to find out cause of death through reading the paper. My name was nowhere in the survivor’s list, but the cat I insisted Mimi get as a companion was listed by name.

This brings me to my next topic: nightmares. They’re controlling my life. They are so graphic and horrific they ruin entire days. I’ve never known dreams like this until I experienced death. These dreams always revolve around Grandma, Grandpa, and Mimi. The most recent heartbreaking one was that Mimi had died and I was so sad I couldn’t share the extra Harry Potter stuff that just came out with her. She suddenly was barely alive, but not for much longer she said, and I frantically started reading to her about Ilvermorny and the new houses because she could die any minute before I finished sharing it with her. 

I’ve thought about starting to write out the dreams in the mornings right after I have them to get them off my chest. I also don’t think that when I tell people I have nightmares, they understand the severity and gravity of these dreams. I don’t know if it would help, but I do find I need to talk about them sometimes. These nightmares keep me from sleeping well, and have aided my brain’s war it has waged against me. My anxiety and depression have flared up, but I’m on the maximum dose of my medication. My brain actually spent all night this past Sunday hurling insults at me and telling me how awful and fat I was so I had to sleep on the floor and all these other hurtful thoughts, and because I don’t want to lie here, I entertained these hurtful thoughts for a moment, and many times wish I weren’t here. 

From here I’d like to point out that I have been seeing a therapist regularly. However, the one I’ve had the past year wasn’t a great match for me.We were very different and instead of looking forward to therapy like I had in the past, I dreaded it. My last session with that therapist was last month and at the end of this month I get a new one while having a short break from therapy. I got to meet the new one for a few minutes, but I didn’t get much else of a reading off of her. I really hope she’s willing to help me sort through and deal with the issues causing me the most pain right now, where as my other therapist was obsessed with connecting all my present pain back to its origins when I was a kid. (Not that that wasn’t helpful- I learned a lot, but right now my present issues are overwhelming.) 

My biggest struggle with my brain and body right now is my weight. I have just ballooned up and earlier I thought I might be brave enough to post my weight here, but I’m finding I’m not comfortable with that. Once I had my knee surgery, it was hard getting back to the gym. Then Mimi died. And then insert excuse after excuse. I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life and I think it’s killing me in more ways than one. But with how depressed and sad I am, it feels impossible to find the motivation to get moving. Most days I call a success if I can even get fully dressed and take a shower. Sometimes the only way I can deal with my feelings is to go to sleep so I won’t actively be thinking of them- which then prompts nightmares sometimes. I have to find a way to work up from that while I have these chains pulling me backwards in every direction. I need to loosen and eventually cut those chains. All this seems so daunting right now.

One of the things I’m going to try and go back to is the method of mindfulness and meditation. That has always helped with my anxiety a bit, but I’m ready to go more deeply into meditations. When Grandma died it was one of the things that helped me through. I’m finding it difficult though without having practiced much to be able to dive back in. I’m going to set up a space of my own and start doing small daily goals to get into the habit. There’s also this Buddhist and Meditation center I’ve been meaning to check out since I moved out here, and today I finally said, “I need to go to a class and be somewhat proactive” so I registered for a beginners mindfulness and meditation class a week from this Saturday. It will be good practice I’m hoping will help me get back into the habit. I’ve also being researching finding a Reiki Master for additional therapy. Right now I’m willing to try just about anything, if I can only find the motivation to try.

I’m feeling pretty drained now. My head has been spinning and there’s more to be said, but that’s enough for tonight. It continues to be bad, but with spots of sunshine that I find in my cats, my new camera, and a few fun outings Jacob and I do. It’s also been hard because Jacob’s studying for the Bar, but that’s an entirely different thing in itself. 

Except for Sadie. She’s being a poop.

I’ve got some stuff I’m hoping to sit down and write about soon. I need some kind of change in how I do things to try and stop this war my mind has waged against me, but in the meantime, I got a new toy! I finally bought a nice camera after holding out probably too long. It’s a Canon Rebel T6. There’s SO much to learn, but I’m excited. Here are my first pictures...of my cats of course. (Remember, they’re my first ones, so they’re far from perfect, especially the one of Tali being out of focus.)