the rain became a downpour

1/6/26

Today R texted me a picture of H having a snack- he’s currently out with Hunter, doing our laundry and running errands. I mentioned that there were no vegetables in the snack H was eating in the picture. And then when R texted that he forgot the soap for the laundry, I quickly suggested salt, or baking soda or vinegar as substitutes. Then some time passed, and I realized just how grateful I was to have him – my husband, my partner, who’s a really nice and smart guy and super compatible with me, to parent our child with, and I texted R thank you for doing the laundry and taking care of the baby, and underneath my message, it said “Delivered”. And then after that, I texted “te amo”, and was waiting and waiting to see the “Delivered” notification under this message. when it wasn’t going through, I started getting a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. started thinking like, what if he never knows? What if he gets in an accident and never comes back and never knew that I loved him? What if he doesn’t know right now at this moment, and it’s my fault because I just keep pointing out faults like no veggies in the kid’s snack, and didn’t say it or mean it or live it enough? And then tears just suddenly poured, because, for some reason, I got so sad that everyone I had ever met or dealt with or talked to face-to-face or online in my whole life – that they all didn’t know that I loved them – that my “te amo” – was never fully delivered, that I had left love out of any interaction that I’d ever had. That I had ever led anyone to think that I didn’t love them. It was all more of a feeling, but if i had to put it into words, that was the thought.  it made me cry so hard.

i realized one of the biggest frustrations in my life is not being able to physically reach things above me because of my height. Like it really bothers and pisses me off, needing to turn and get stools and chairs all the time to complete simple tasks that R can easily just reach up and do. But then i realized like, i’m pretty lucky to be able to say that that’s one of my biggest frustrations- like i know it could be much, much worse. I’ll take it. 

1/7/26

feeling heavy tonight. First, on the drive between Whole Foods to the restaurant where we had dinner, R told me that one of our friends, to whom we were close- seeing him at nearly all family gatherings, going over to his house to eat, who visited our old house frequently to bbq with R, who helped us a lot with moving and things- just got arrested by ice. He was in a van going to work, that they pulled over to search. Then a bit later, near the end of our dinner, I got this text from Forward Blue: “Kristi Noem’s ICE just murdered a U.S. Citizen in cold blood…” but I didn’t get to look up the story until a few hours later, when R was putting Hunter to bed. I watched the video of how boldly the agent shot 3x through the civilian woman’s driver’s side window, and it … sank my heart like an anchor. Then I got up and tried to start getting ready for bed, but sadness slowed my whole body down. One prominent thought I had was that I couldn’t grieve that much about this shooting. Not because it didn’t grieve me, but because I felt like I already grieved the most when all of this was being put into place. Like ten months ago, when I first heard about the arrogance and informality and aggressiveness and power-hungriness of ice, I grieved the most then – the sadness saturated me the most then- because I knew something like this would and could happen. And now today it’s happened- murder, death- the worst stuff- but I feel like my body systems…can’t handle grieving much more. Like my grief is at capacity. idk if our friend is cold or hungry or scared or hurt, or where he is. when i washed my hands in the bathroom tonight, i touched the same bar of hand soap he touched, when it was by the sink in our old house.  

1/9/26

yesterday morning was the first time in forever I’ve been able to put on my Nike running shoes again. Since feet had been bad, I’d been wearing the same open-back wide leather mules everywhere, or my wide crocs for more stability – they were all I could stand. if situation called for more normal-looking shoes like going out to a restaurant, I forced myself into my widest sneakers, which are all black, a size too big and I’d leave the laces super loose. But it’s better now, and I slipped my feet into the snug nikes and went for a run. It was alternately raining with breaks of sun, and I went out when it was sunny, and came back when it was starting to drizzle, and just as I shut the door to our trailer and walked into my room, the rain became a downpour.