Lost

Fifty nine months and 6 days ago life as I knew it ceased to be.

At sixty-one I did not feel I had any time to lose.  At that point the average life expectancy for a woman was seventy-eight years old.  Since I was still working and not able to retire until 65 four years of that would be spent commuting in ridiculous traffic for threes hours a day and working on my job nine.  So from 65 to 78 I had maybe 7 good years and that is best case scenario.  At that point in your life, you really have no time to waste.  And here I sit here wondering how many days have gone by that I have no recollection of?  How many hours have I now spent sitting and staring into space; doing nothing and watching the hours of my life drift by?  Five years I have been existing like someone already dead that just hasn't fallen over yet.

These were the years we had worked and waited for.  We were going to travel and finally after 40 years of working and raising a family, get to enjoy a little of our lives before they were gone.  And here I sit day after day without the energy, stamina or desire to "do" anything.  I am wasting what time I've got left - living in a state of limbo - not dead - not living.  Just waiting.  I realize I'm doing this and I hate it but I cannot seem to find what it takes to pull out of this.  I seem to have lost my zest for life.  I've always been a goal-oriented person.  I make lists. I set five year goals, one year goals, monthly and daily goals. But now I have no goals.  Waking up that is my big goal.  What do you do when you have no direction? What do you live for if you have no dreams, no goals, no desires and no hope.

We do enjoy days together from time to time.  We talk a lot.  Unfortunately, "this" is mostly what we talk about.  We laugh and joke and I am certainly thankful for that.  But life isn't the same --not just in my family but in my head, in my spirit and in my heart.

I feel I am drifting aimlessly.  Sailing without navigation, without so much as a map and worse still without a destination.

I want to live life again.  I do.  I just can't seem to find my way out of this.  Writing used to be my life and now I try to write and I get lost and ramble.

How do you find your way back? Can you find your way back?  If so, pray tell how?

This is the result of being a survivor?

About as I always imagined.

Survivors - I always wondered at those people that build bomb shelters and stockpiled weapons, food and supplies - what would they have to live for in a world decimated by a nuclear bomb?  Why on earth would they want to survive?  Me --I've always said I hoped I'd go out with the first blast.

Now I really know how true that is.