shirleybutsurely

[shirleybutsurely]

Reflections

Things I must not forget: 

1. I cannot change the core of who I am, my needs, and my functions for the sake of a relationship. I must not apologize for what I need and who I am. 

2. I must prioritize my own opinions and beliefs first. Why? This is against everything that God tells me. It’s deceptive, but it’s because I need to unlearn bad habits to relearn good ones. I must learn to prioritize myself, then learn how important it is to prioritize others for the sake of loving them, not for the sake of being loved. 

3. I handle most circumstances with openness and grace. This is a gift He gave me, and I am thankful for it.

4. Love has no room for fear. If there is fear, it is not love--it is manipulation.

5. I must pray for 2 things equally: that I can depend less on others and more on God and be satisfied in Him alone. and for Him to make my relationships stronger because He has called us to live in community and depend on one another. 

[shirleybutsurely]

LUPITA NYONG’O for The Edit by Net-A-Porter (2019), ph. Paola Kudacki.

[shirleybutsurely]

Saturday night

ensconced in Your presence,

my head rests easy tonight.

[shirleybutsurely]

“Women speaking of mirrors and prettiness make it all too clear that even for pretty women, mirrors are the foci of anxious, not gratified, narcissism. The woman who knows beyond a doubt that she is beautiful exists aplenty in male novelists’ imaginations; I have yet to find her in women’s books or women’s memoirs or in life. Women spend a lot of time looking in mirrors, but the “compulsion to visualize the self” is a phrase Moers uses of women in her chapter on Gothic freaks and horrors; the compulsion is a constant check on one’s (possible) beauty, not an enjoyment of it.”

— Joanna Russ, “Aesthetics,” How to Suppress Women’s Writing (1983).  (via warmlove)

[shirleybutsurely]

it’s never too late!!!!!

Caricatures of the Spectre of Influenza

So I put off getting my flu shot in 2018…

Y’know, I ain’t around these parts too much anymore (Yahoo can go huff a dong), but I just wanted to tell y’all my tale of the 2018/2019 holiday season…

December 17-20: Got the flu (later confirmed to be one of the strains protected by this season’s vaccine). Felt shite, took cold meds, still felt shite but not so much that I could justify not starting the Q1 spreadsheets at work.

Dec 21: Knew the crackles in my lungs were pneumonia. Couldn’t keep my blood oxygen above 90%. Went to the ER that night. They wanted to send me home. I said “I know something is wrong, I would be very uncomfortable going home.” They managed to find a bed in the hospital, said “fine, we’ll give you observation until tomorrow.”

Dec 22: Decompensated quickly. Parents apparently came up north, though I don’t remember seeing them before I woke up again. Couldn’t get aortic O2 saturation above 65% so I ended up intubated.

Late Dec 22-Early Dec 30: Completely unconscious, with the first two days on paralytics so that the ventilator did 100% of my breathing. The 36 hours on either side of my sedation are completely blank in my memory.

At some point my secondary infection (which was never discerned, though extensive testing for bacteria and fungi was done) caused me to become critically ill, and there were preparations made to fly my to Mayo for ECMO. Thankfully, the high-dosage steroid treatment they gave me when I started getting worse helped, and I began improving slowly.

Dec 31: I start to see the world again. My first “memories” are strange delusions brought on by the anesthetics. I thought I had been in a coma for 6 years, and that I was in Cleveland. Why the fuck would I be in CLEVELAND?

I remember seeing the news, something about New Year’s Eve. I fell back asleep, into Seroquel dreams.

Jan 1: My memories start genuinely coming back. I discovered I was too weak to extend my arm fully, and too shaky to eat Jell-O. The Jell-O DID get delightfully wobbly, though.

Jan 2: Little Raven’s Birthday. Finally get out of ICU. Moved up to the general wards. Still can’t breathe easily. Food is vile-tasting. Can barely eat. Choke down a lemon bar and cry about how much better Brendan’s were and how much I miss my brother and how I refuse to make my parents go through that again.

Jan 3: Manage my first wobbly steps with a walker. The floor hurts my knees and feet. The blood in my eyes is finally being cleared by my body.

Jan 3-5: Slow improvement. Slow for an otherwise-healthy young adult, at least. It feels like forever. My dad and I watched an unbearable amount of cross-country ski qualifying races for the Olympic teams. There’s a terrifying night-vision cam in my hospital room, which wouldn’t bother me if it didn’t have a creepy smiley face.

Jan 5-9: Transitional care, getting physical and occupational therapy. I finally got home to my apartment (and cat!) that afternoon. I spent the next week regaining my strength and seeing specialists to try and find out why I got so sick. Consensus so far is “flu sucks and you’re unlucky?” I’m hoping to have better answers next month at my secondary follow-ups.

I aged my husband and parents about a decade during my hospital stay. I missed a month of work and am still fixing problems that arose with the backlog.

My Christmas dinner was a 10% dextrose solution, since I was still paralyzed and couldn’t have anything down my NG tube yet. New Year’s Eve drinks? “GIVE ME SOME FUCKING WATER!” - but not being able to have any, because I was still overloaded with fluid due to the standard protocol to prevent hypoperfusion when someone goes into septic shock.

Just to make it clear: I would not have survived without the tens of thousands of hours of training and practice that my medical team devoted their lives to acquiring. I would not have survived without the millions of hours of research and trials that allowed the machines that kept me monitored, cooled when my fever continued to spike, and breathing in a life-sustaining way when my lungs weren’t able to exchange gasses.

I am a fat bitch, but I am physically active, eat fairly decently, and don’t smoke or drink excessively. I am not someone who “should” be threatened by deadly complications due to influenza-caused pneumonia. Yet I was. 

And YOU could be, too. Get yer flu shot, if you can. If you can’t, yell at others until they do.

It’s not too late in the season, trust me. People still die in March. People like you.

[shirleybutsurely]

When you love snow

[shirleybutsurely]

[shirleybutsurely]

“Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen.”

— Anne Lamott

[shirleybutsurely]

One of the best feelings in the world

Nothing beats a 30 minute traffic-free toll-free drive into the city, finding street parking within 5 minutes, and setting up camp at an empty DD with a gift card. 

[shirleybutsurely]

please look at this picture i just found on google images

[shirleybutsurely]

“The Capture of Innocence” photographed by Jiro Konami for Vogue Japan March 2019

Stylist: Saori Masuda Hair & Makeup: Yuya Nara

[shirleybutsurely]

how I know

Today I found myself boiling in a pot of crimson fury 

Anything thrown my way would’ve been burned to tar 

This emotion is something I feel myself experiencing increasingly these days

My judgment, my pride, swelling up accordingly to my age 

But pitiful without actual wisdom.

In the midst of my hot isolation 

He floated in through the doors and found me 

And offered me his kind eyes and velvet spirit

In that moment there was no one else I wanted to see or be comforted by 

And I knew-- 

[shirleybutsurely]

ANNIE HSIAO-CHING WANG

ARTIST

[shirleybutsurely]

just another day thinking about my future

you are like the unmoving rocks at the bottom of a grand waterfall

the great oak that just shivers in a storm

the shot put which lands with determination

a strong wind for the leaves in autumn.

while I am the streaming river

which sometimes rushes 

I can also be the ocean

pushing and pulling, in and out of the land.

[shirleybutsurely]

be good to yourself

do your future self a favor 

make the bed in the morning

and smooth out the wrinkles on the edges

so your shadow can cast without perversion/

do your future self a favor

do not forget the “seen” message

exchange your sloth for kindness

and speak as you would like to receive/

do your future self a favor

memorize your signature 

master each loop and zag 

until you can recognize it with eyes closed/

[shirleybutsurely]

a different sort of #InMyFeelings challenge

15 things that bring you joy that happen outside of monumental events/traveling/holidays/milestones...5 that happen daily, 5 weekly, and 5 monthly. if you see this, do it!

Dailies: 

1) when he’s excited to share something about his day with me 

2) a power workout

3) the morning sun that peeps onto my jade plant

4) feeling confident in your outfit 

5) eating healthy delicious food 

Weeklies:

1) Spotify discover weekly

2) Sunday mornings

3) having fresh groceries in your fridge 

4) getting a spontaneous text from a friend

5) an outing off campus

Monthlies:

1) coming home to Turtle 

2) tasting family cooking

3) the week after you stop menstruating

4) prayer meetings on Saturday mornings

5) special dates with him 

[shirleybutsurely]

mood

emotionally + sartorially ready for fall and its ephemeral but glorious atmosphere