Entry 7 – December 23, 2024


There is something different about the mornings after a near death experience. As if the sun is brighter, and I’m much more aware of the warmth even when the air is bitter cold. 

Ryan asked me to wake up earlier to take walks with him in the morning. It’s hard to explain how much I love this and how much regret I would have had if I didn’t get this chance again. The mornings are frosty this late in the year. My body doesn’t like the cold, but it doesn’t matter, spending this time with him is invaluable. I’ll give up my toes to frostbite if that means I get to walk with him again and again.

In a few short months we will be in a similar situation. Day by day, his heart surgery looms closer and more inevitable. I can imagine the worst possible outcomes, but I have to trust that he’ll be okay. I can’t borrow tomorrow’s worries. Today is the most important day, and I need to make sure to feel that way about every today that comes next.

Feet first, I have a tendency to stare at my boots while walking. At least the ground ahead, if not my boots. The seasons have passed far too quickly, and I feel like I’m stuck in one spot watching the earth tilt. I painted a dead lady covered in moss for my birthday. In a few days I’ll be auctioning it off on my instagram via livestream. It’s a self portrait reminder of how I feel right now. It’s beautiful, but I don’t want to hold onto it. I don’t want to be reminded of this time. Pain does not hold fond memories and I would rather simply live with the lessons, not the bonus prize emotional baggage. 

“This is no way to sell a painting, Erica. This is not the way to convince your audience to take you seriously. You must bleed and they must believe you enjoy bleeding for them.” I’m assuming that’s what I’m supposed to tell myself. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I keep having this dream that I’m late for something. I’m wandering around my hometown, as if I’m a ghost. It’s dark and misty. There is no one around but me. 

Maybe it’s a memory.

I’ve forgotten a lot of pain. If the world ever gets a chance to read my book, you’ll learn some of the things I remember. There are still memories I uncover from time to time that I had previously looked back on with fondness, only to later realize how tragic they really were. 

It makes me miss my siblings.

My own thoughts and musings hit me again when I think of them. Specifically, when I thought about how each of my siblings are different orientations of each other. We all have the same two parents, so the DNA starts out with the same structure. The variation depends on the circumstances of the environment from there. At least, that’s how I envision it. I’m not a scientist and I have no real knowledge of DNA outside of a surface level understanding. It’s not literally true, but I find it fascinating how the configurations can vary so wildly among siblings. Somehow we’re still drawn to one another. No matter how estranged we become.

I’ve walked alone in the snow many times. It doesn’t bother me to be alone. In all honesty, I prefer it to hiding or being quiet to not disturb the contrary. Some days the cold does bite through to my bones, but I’m thankful that Ryan enjoys walking in the cold with me. I’m thankful that I don’t have to walk alone for now.

Entry 6 – December 15, 2024


Ryan and I have been watching a lot of House. He hasn’t seen the ending, yet. I binge watched the show in it’s entirety back in 2015 when I was living in the Village. That was a different time for many reasons and I have forgotten most of the show. 

I didn’t forget House and Wilson’s Sherlock/Watson relationship, however. Throughout this series we’ve decided that he is similar to House and I am similar to Wilson. Every now and again House will do something that Ryan would definitely do in real life, and I joke that’s him. He reciprocates when Wilson inevitably does something that I would do. It’s fun. I’ve missed him.

He’s doing much better physically than he was a month ago. Mentally, he’s preparing for the next season where heart surgery is imminent. I’m terrified. 

If you know the ending of House, don’t spoil it yet. I’m certain our fate will be different, but poetically similar. Ride or die.

In the next month or so I’ll be posting more on my social media about a few things I’ve decided to pursue. We will see how that goes. I have, in the past, been notorious for starting things and not finishing them. Since all this happened, it’s forced me to really consider why I don’t end up doing the things I say I want to do. Why do I start things and then not finish them? It’s just a matter of being lazy and setting myself up for failure with unrealistic expectations from the jump. It’s a lack of planning, patience, and devotion.

I must be persistent, because life doesn’t stop.

Maybe if I share my goals I’ll stick with them. I want to win a world title in Brazilian Jujitsu. At some point, I want to sell my book, but I’ve been told that I need more of an online presence in order to be sellable. (This is a good way to start that.) I want to have a job (or own a business) where I can write and have money to treat my friends to vacations.

But ultimately, I can’t wait for that life to come to me. I must be willing to chase it. “Just gotta have faith and keep pushing. Push til you win.” Ryan just said that as I was writing this, and it’s fitting. He’s still unemployed. Our loved ones are aging and dying. We have each other and a handful of friends. We deserve to win.

We all deserve to win. We need each other to get there.

For the first time in over 10 years, my phone is no longer on silent at night. This isn’t an open invitation to call me at all hours, but it is an open invitation to call me anytime you need me. I’m ready to be the person I claim to be. Fighting god, man, or whatever fresh hell tries to do harm.

This will not be what breaks me.

Entry 5 – November 24, 2024


Yesterday it snowed, even though it also seems like yesterday was September. The leaves changed and fell without my attention. My attention being focused solely on Ryan’s recovery for the past two months. 

After all these weeks he’s finally walking without pain and beginning to regain his independence. I couldn’t be more grateful. 

It’s crazy how much I’ve taken for granted over the years. How many things I should have been thankful for at the time. How often I didn’t say things that were important because I thought that it would be impolite. How much I stifled myself to fit what I thought others wanted to see and how much I beat myself down when I didn’t fulfill that expectation.

I’ve never considered myself weak, so telling me I’m strong is essentially telling me my name is Erica. That’s a given. Strength is not what’s required here anyway. It’s honesty and the ability to speak up when something isn’t right. 

Ryan shouldn’t have had to be readmitted to the hospital last month. The doctors should have listened to him the first time and they probably would’ve found the infection in his spine. We should have pushed harder for the PICC line the first visit. But we thought “doctors know best.”

That isn’t always the case, as much as we all like to think so. Doctors and healthcare professionals are humans with human bodies and brains. They make human mistakes.

Humans make mistakes. It’s what we do. It’s how we learn and grow. Sometimes those mistakes don’t really affect us all that much and other times they can lead to the most detrimental consequences. The worst part is that sometimes you don’t really know when choices are bad from the start. You could trust your gut, but sometimes those instincts seem wrong. You gaslight yourself into believing you’re wrong. 

For anyone who has had the fortune to read my book “Hello There, Kris Peraldo,” you know that I’ve seen my share of narcissistic behaviors. I’ve villainized myself. Treated myself with distrust and disrespect. I neglected my needs and pushed away so many people because I didn’t think they wanted to hear me repeat myself over and over again.

But if I’ve learned anything, I’ve learned that friends don’t abandon you when you’re at your lowest. They may step away and give you space, but real friends will always have your back. Even when you’re being stupid and selfish. And especially when you’ve finally learned what a terrible mistake your ex was and you need a bottle of wine, Adele, and girl talk to celebrate losing 190lbs of dead weight. 

The moral here is that I’m grateful that the mistakes that were made weren’t fatal. I’m happy that I get to spend another year on this side of the ground with my husband. I’m thankful for everything that has happened this year – good, bad, and ugly. 

All this shit only makes me want to live my life and love every second I get to spend on this earth.

Entry 4 – November 14, 2024


Today was an especially difficult day as a caregiver. I’m losing my sense of self and I’m falling into a very dark place.

Monday marks one week since returning home after the second hospital visit. Although I’m happy to be sleeping in my own bed, I’m emotionally exhausted. I don’t think I’m strong enough to keep doing this alone, but I always have a tendency to isolate myself when things get hard. 

Illness seems to press a wedge between me and others. As if this is happening to me, and I am being punished. 

If I’m being punished, I don’t know what I have done to deserve this fate. 

It’s a Wednesday night and I’m making pasta for one. Standing in the kitchen waiting for my water to boil. Watching the tiny little bubbles form on the bottom of the small pot and rise to the surface to dissipate into steam. I can feel the heat on the back of my hands.

This time of year would usually be filled with gym sweat followed by dining room conversations and a casual stroll around the block in the brisk autumn breeze. I’d give anything for that kind of evening tonight.

Ryan has lost confidence in his body. I see progress in his movement daily, but he’s convinced it’s over and taking too long to heal. In a week, he’s got an interview for a job with a company that he’s been trying to get in with for years. He doesn’t think he will be able to sit or stand for the three hour zoom interview. His unemployment ends in 5 weeks. Adding him to my insurance is $500/month.

It seems that all I’m doing is complaining and spinning my wheels in the mud. I feel like a burden for even speaking about this, but I don’t know what else to do. 

The world is on fire now, but mine has been ashes for weeks.

I genuinely don’t know what to do. Without a doubt, I have cried as much and as hard as I did when Kris died. At least I have Ryan here, enough to tell him all the things I couldn’t bring myself to tell Kris. They say that love is left in the unsaid and missing, but I don’t want him to ever feel like he’s alone or unloved. It would be too much to make the same mistake twice in the same lifetime. 

With everything that is in me, I cannot give up no matter how hard this gets.

The past few weeks have given me a lot of time to reflect between the intermittent panic. Maybe it’s partially sleep deprivation, or maybe it’s the constant feeling of someone needing me at all hours of the day. Either one would have reaffirmed my feelings to choose team no babies. I don’t want anyone to depend on me, except for me. I’ve also realized that I’m clinically depressed and I probably always have been. 

A friend recommended I try a sleep aid, because my insomnia is back. The one I decided to ask my doctor for a sample of was also an antidepressant. I’ve never felt more like myself. It could be that for the first time in weeks, I got a good night’s sleep. However, I’ve had good sleep in the past and it’s never made me this productive or clear headed.

Good sleep doesn’t make the crisp autumn air feel less lonesome when you’re walking through your favorite path without your favorite person. The echoes of the crunchy leaves are louder than they should be. The wind is colder than it should be. Everything seems to be a little less bright and a little more dull. Yes, this could be temporary because Ryan is still bedridden, but something tells me that this ache has been here for longer than this crisis.

There is somehow a familiar pain of loss resurfacing with every day we face this challenge, and the longer it presses on, the lonelier life becomes. The lonelier I become, and the more used to it I feel. As if this is my new life, and I should accept it.

How many times must I be broken and reformed?

As many as it takes, I reckon.

Entry 3 – November 3, 2024


The harshest reality is knowing that the outside world keeps going even when your world has come to an abrupt halt. Even when I’ve picked myself up off the floor from every depressive episode before, it still shocks me when I realize the days still passed without me. Time keeps edging closer to the darkness and everyone else moves on like it’s another day. 

To everyone else it is just another day. 

Ryan and I left the hospital on Monday evening, later than expected. He still couldn’t walk, but he insisted he should go home to sleep instead of the hospital bed. This stay likely cost us another $20k on top of the first one. Our neighbor, Emily, was the only one around that late to help me get him inside. 

Have you ever tried to walk with a 200lbs weighted vest in a swimming pool? I haven’t, but I imagine that what Emily and I experienced on Monday night was similar.

There is an ache in my soul that I cannot seem to soothe. I spent so many hours and days wasting away on my cell phone or in meetings. The hours go by. The time slips away. Suddenly, I’m 35 with a career and a husband. I don’t have a reliable social life. If I’m not at home, I’m at work or the gym. I have no desire for children. All I want to do is spend time in the gym and write. It’s obsessive. 

I’ve been convinced that I’m too tired to do anything more. I should spend my down time on a screen or in bed. The quality time I’m seeking is fleeting. I have to try each time in order to focus on the present, but the ever approaching end of the road is looming. What is this all for?

Then everything stops.

At least everything stops for you. For everyone else, the present builds upon itself while you fade behind. The only way to catch up seems to be to ignore all the space in between. That space where you were dragging yourself out of bed to care for every other person in your home while attempting to heal yourself. I’m still on the floor, but my body has kept moving forward with time. Somehow I’ve managed to be in two places at once. My therapist would have told me I was dissociating, and she would be right. I haven’t stopped these daytime astral projections. What clever name could you call this? I’m not sleeping, and I’m far from daydreaming. It’s an out of body experience. As if I’m using a remote control to guide my body while my mind stays asleep in bed. It’s the opposite of astral projection. My soul has left an astral indentation on my bedroom floor, and I can’t quite pick her back up. 

Remember when Peter Pan’s shadow kept running away? I need Wendy to sew my soul back to my body. That won’t happen until Ryan gets better. I so miss being able to be a real person instead of this crumbling shell facade, pretending to have it together. 

I’m falling apart, and I’m terrified that we won’t be able to recover from this.

Entry 2 – October 27, 2024


I should start from the beginning, shouldn’t I?

My mental health has been slowly deteriorating for the past year or so, along with Ryan’s. As much as anyone told me I should speak to them, or call them, or tell them anything pertinent to my life. I just couldn’t. Since my last relationship, I have found it hard to trust my small circle of friends and chosen family with anything, let alone my feelings.

Simply put, I was starting to think that he and I were no longer on the same page, but I didn’t know who to talk to about it. He has been struggling to find purpose for the last few years, and it started to wear on me. I never blamed him for my feelings – I simply thought that it was an internal struggle and that I would get over it. The more I blamed myself, however, the less interested in life I became. The less interested in my life I became, I should say. 

Counting the same number of ceiling tiles in a hospital room for days on end really makes you consider what matters to you. (There are 46, by the way.) Although, I can’t say I ever thought Ryan didn’t matter to me, only that I wasn’t sure what I was doing anymore. I knew I loved him, but I started to question if my love was enough.

Let’s go back to a year ago when I was confronted by the idea that my goals were not aligned with where I was physically or financially. It’s all I could think about, and I wanted to focus on training more while building a business. Although I mentioned this to Ryan, he was struggling with his own goals and mine (from my perspective) didn’t seem to be as important. The perspective is important here, because that was not at all true. 

I was overthinking.

Now look at me, I’m telling strangers on the internet about all my deep dark thoughts regarding my relationship with my favorite person. From overthinking to oversharing in T-1 year. 

Ryan is a scientist. He loves science and biochemistry. There are only two things that come before me in his mind. First, his precious kitty, Chance. Second, lifting heavy shit. For him, science and lifting are fundamental characteristics of his personality. If you take those away, he’s a shell. Today, he’s a shell of himself. He doesn’t have a job and now he doesn’t have physical activity. He’s sitting in a hospital bed nodding off from narcotics in the most agonizing pain I’ve ever seen. This is going to make us both insane and broke.

I thought his depressive state over the past year was simply him adjusting and preparing to pivot his career. I internalized his responses and actions as something I was doing. I was prepared to leave, because I thought I was bad for him. I thought I wasn’t doing enough and that he would be better off without me. I wanted to be better and I wanted him to be better, but I didn’t know what to do to fix whatever seemed to be broken.

We were both depressed and we each thought that the other one didn’t want to be with us anymore. Sometimes you lie to yourself and believe it without any evidence. 

My world suddenly stopped on September 28 for the second time in my life, and I was met with the harsh reminder that everything moves forward even if you don’t. Ryan was laying in his bed, drenched in cold sweats as I begged him to let me call an ambulance. He pushed it off for days because he doesn’t have health insurance. (Something I previously suggested he needed for emergencies.) He was septic with a 6 cm abscess on his glute. We spent 8 days in the hospital and they sent him home on 10 days of antibiotics. 4 days after the last dose of antibiotics, we returned to the hospital because the back pain he was experiencing had him bedridden. Neither of us wanted to be back here, especially so close to my birthday.

Now I’m sitting here, listening to the rhythmic sounds of him napping, hoping this infection is finally being treated correctly. Glad he’s finally getting some sleep, even if it’s not deep sleep.

I’m so scared I might lose him. 

Truthfully, I was scared to lose him a month ago, too. Not for the same reason, but a void would have been there. He is my best friend. I know a lot of people say that about their partner or spouse, but I mean that. Even believing I didn’t want to be married didn’t stop me from seeing him as the best person I know. Ryan will always be the person I want beside me through any fight I face. 

Fight with me, fight for me, and fight me. I didn’t know that’s what I was looking for in a partner, but that’s what I found on every level. 

He will make it out of this. We will make it out of this. Bruised, beaten and held together by duct tape and dreams. I have to believe that we’re strong enough to fight this. It’s what we were made to do.

Entry 1 – October 26, 2024


This is not a story. It’s not a poem. It’s a little bit of both and I’ll try to clarify as I go, but I need to tell you something or I may explode. There is no moral. No happy ending in sight. There is only strength. There is only suffering at this point. I’m certain it can get darker in here, but I can’t tell if there are any more lights, aside from the hope that burns bright within me. If I tell you the ending, I would have had clairvoyance the entire time. 

The autumn air is chilly, and I’m sitting by a window sill on the fourth floor of a hospital building after having had a fight with my husband about a peanut butter sandwich that inevitably ended up in the garbage. 

A month ago, I thought I wanted a divorce. Fast forward to now and I don’t know what I’m going to do if he dies here. Life or the universe or whatever cosmic being is adding these twists for comedic effect must really be enjoying the 180 I have done with my emotions the past 30 plus days. It’s almost the end of October, my favorite month of the year, and I’ve barely been outside to enjoy it. 

I can see the leaves on the trees and foliage below me. It’s a beautiful cascade of hues painting the greenery. When I was in college, I used to sit on the second or third floor of the library at a large window overlooking the campus. This specific spot makes me think of that. There’s a single cloud rolling by in an otherwise open blue sky that looks like a cartoon turtle. The parking garage, full of cars owned by the staff and people who are in a similar predicament as myself, sits across the way and I can see the dingy white sides contrasting against the colorful trees.

This is not how I thought I would be spending my 35th birthday. Honestly, I was hoping for the sushi I was promised and a day of binge watching my favorite shows. All I can think about are the echoes of Ryan’s voice saying “you deserve more” as the tears fill his desperate eyes. I would say he was right, but I am doubtful knowing what I know. Knowing how I felt only a few days before he became ill. Knowing that I would have left him then. Not knowing that now, after seeing him at his most vulnerable, I never could.

I don’t know what that says about me or our relationship. I can’t explain how this peanut butter sandwich in the garbage can shows me that I’m more committed than ever, but it does. Maybe it’s because I know my stubbornness and his will always clash. Or perhaps it’s because that’s the thing I love about him the most, for better or worse.

Today would have been a beautiful day for a wedding, and coincidentally that’s where I’m supposed to be right now. Instead I’m sitting here, typing this, and hoping that maybe tomorrow will be better. Maybe this afternoon will be better. Maybe 20 minutes from now will be better. It has to get better at some point, right?