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.
Showing posts with label starting over. Show all posts
Showing posts with label starting over. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Friday, June 30, 2017
We Finally moved...
This is your catch up as lots of changes have taken place since my last post in 2016. Seems like "change" has been the theme song of all of this. About the only thing that hasn't changed is my frame of mind.
We have moved from what was our home of 23 years to our supposed to be a down-sized, home to retire in. So my version of down-sizing is going from three bedrooms and two and a half baths to four bedrooms and three full baths and I know that doesn't sound like down-sizing. But actually the square footage is about the same. It is not any bigger and actually seems smaller and it is all under one roof. We went from 26 acres to less than 1 acre --so it really is.
Actually that took place a full year ago now. We left the area and moved 102 miles from our previous home. We left my daughter and son in law and all of her boys which does not seem like the smartest thing I've ever done but in a way I did it "for" her. I was getting so clingy until I was sucking up her life. She wanted to stop wallowing in all of this. She got a new puppy to fill a hole in her heart and that gave her something to focus on besides tragedy. She somehow convinced herself to just let go of wondering what happened and go with what she had. She was tired of crying and being depressed and she wanted to get back to life. And she's young and I absolutely wanted her to do that. I would want nothing less for her. That of course is what I want for me too. It just has not come. But I felt like if we continued to stay close to her - I would keep her pulled into my drama and prevent her from moving forward.
And...we needed a fresh start. We needed to be somewhere where everything was new and different so that it was clearly apparent that nothing was the same so that I might stop expecting it to be the same. So I could stop seeing Brian everywhere and waiting for Paxton to come through the door.
I needed a change in my church although that was scary and I really didn't think we would ever have a chance of becoming comfortable anywhere else at this age and with this hanging over us. But I needed fresh spiritual blood in my veins. I had been disappointed in the lack of spiritual support during my faith crisis and that was not helping my attitude any.
We moved what seemed the equivalent of "halfway" between my two existing children. Although my son actually lives in NC and my daughter in NW Georgia and we are in NE Georgia it constituted "halfway" because we are twenty miles from each of his two daughters. He will regularly come to visit them. And he said he would never come to our old house again after the funeral and going on three years later - he never has. So we tried to make it easier on him to come visit and actually easier than it would have been had we actually been halfway. However, to be honest he doesn't come here either. He is another casualty of all of this.
We are now seventeen miles from my best friend Kathie as opposed to 85 miles. For the first time in over 30 years we can see each other more than twice a year. She came to our house in the summer, we went to hers for New Year's Eve.
In our old home I really had no close friends. I had good neighbors and I had church family but not real intimate friends with history and longtime loyalty. And Kathie has kept me out of the closet. She has refused to let me go and live in the darkness. She helped me decorate the new home or I would still be living out of boxes and not caring one bit. She helped me purge some of the mountains of stuff we ended up moving with us She made me put up a Christmas Tree --at least a little one. She drags me shopping and the four of us have a standing almost weekly dinner date. She has helped me transition to the area by recommending doctors, restaurants, shopping etc. and has made this a lot easier than I ever expected it to be.
Here, we are 35 miles closer to my sister as well and though that isn't close it is half as far as we were. She is doing okay - not good but it is a day by day thing and still at times I need to take her to the clinic and this allows us to see much more of each other. We can meet for dinner halfway which helps too.
And as I said, I'm now 20 miles from my two granddaughters that I seldom got to see and now I'm getting to catch up and be a part of their lives.
I am still fifty miles from work but I'm no worse off and maybe a little better in that it is all interstate and my commute though bad, is not as long time-wise. And after being here a year - I wonder why this wasn't the obvious choice for us all along. Only because of leaving my daughter and my church did we not consider it for so long.
So there actually was a method to the madness. And hopefully someday that property will sell and we will be out from under all that upkeep.
Probably the biggest advantage to moving here though was that we are anonymous. No one turns all the way around in their chair and stares when we walk in a restaurant or the post office or the bank. No one pins us down and asks us uncomfortable questions. No one refuses to work for us. Still not sure how we will build an intimate close relationship with the members of the new church we've chosen and keep such a huge secret but for now anonymous feels pretty good; almost normal.
It just sort of seems like a huge deception and we haven't yet worked out all the kinks of whether we will or whether we won't ever tell them. I tend toward wanting to "rip the Band-Aid off" and just go ahead and see if they are who they say they are but Donald does not. He is happy there and doesn't want to rock the boat and take the chance. So until we are on the same page and prepared to take whatever outcome we get - we are just enjoying the small semblance of normalcy in their not-knowing. I realize it is a trust issue but I don't think I could take it if they turned their backs and started judging us or looked at us differently or started shying away from us. So for now - we've chosen to maintain the anonymity and deal with the guilt of the deception...in church no less!
We have moved from what was our home of 23 years to our supposed to be a down-sized, home to retire in. So my version of down-sizing is going from three bedrooms and two and a half baths to four bedrooms and three full baths and I know that doesn't sound like down-sizing. But actually the square footage is about the same. It is not any bigger and actually seems smaller and it is all under one roof. We went from 26 acres to less than 1 acre --so it really is.
Actually that took place a full year ago now. We left the area and moved 102 miles from our previous home. We left my daughter and son in law and all of her boys which does not seem like the smartest thing I've ever done but in a way I did it "for" her. I was getting so clingy until I was sucking up her life. She wanted to stop wallowing in all of this. She got a new puppy to fill a hole in her heart and that gave her something to focus on besides tragedy. She somehow convinced herself to just let go of wondering what happened and go with what she had. She was tired of crying and being depressed and she wanted to get back to life. And she's young and I absolutely wanted her to do that. I would want nothing less for her. That of course is what I want for me too. It just has not come. But I felt like if we continued to stay close to her - I would keep her pulled into my drama and prevent her from moving forward.
And...we needed a fresh start. We needed to be somewhere where everything was new and different so that it was clearly apparent that nothing was the same so that I might stop expecting it to be the same. So I could stop seeing Brian everywhere and waiting for Paxton to come through the door.
I needed a change in my church although that was scary and I really didn't think we would ever have a chance of becoming comfortable anywhere else at this age and with this hanging over us. But I needed fresh spiritual blood in my veins. I had been disappointed in the lack of spiritual support during my faith crisis and that was not helping my attitude any.
We moved what seemed the equivalent of "halfway" between my two existing children. Although my son actually lives in NC and my daughter in NW Georgia and we are in NE Georgia it constituted "halfway" because we are twenty miles from each of his two daughters. He will regularly come to visit them. And he said he would never come to our old house again after the funeral and going on three years later - he never has. So we tried to make it easier on him to come visit and actually easier than it would have been had we actually been halfway. However, to be honest he doesn't come here either. He is another casualty of all of this.
We are now seventeen miles from my best friend Kathie as opposed to 85 miles. For the first time in over 30 years we can see each other more than twice a year. She came to our house in the summer, we went to hers for New Year's Eve.
In our old home I really had no close friends. I had good neighbors and I had church family but not real intimate friends with history and longtime loyalty. And Kathie has kept me out of the closet. She has refused to let me go and live in the darkness. She helped me decorate the new home or I would still be living out of boxes and not caring one bit. She helped me purge some of the mountains of stuff we ended up moving with us She made me put up a Christmas Tree --at least a little one. She drags me shopping and the four of us have a standing almost weekly dinner date. She has helped me transition to the area by recommending doctors, restaurants, shopping etc. and has made this a lot easier than I ever expected it to be.
Here, we are 35 miles closer to my sister as well and though that isn't close it is half as far as we were. She is doing okay - not good but it is a day by day thing and still at times I need to take her to the clinic and this allows us to see much more of each other. We can meet for dinner halfway which helps too.
And as I said, I'm now 20 miles from my two granddaughters that I seldom got to see and now I'm getting to catch up and be a part of their lives.
I am still fifty miles from work but I'm no worse off and maybe a little better in that it is all interstate and my commute though bad, is not as long time-wise. And after being here a year - I wonder why this wasn't the obvious choice for us all along. Only because of leaving my daughter and my church did we not consider it for so long.
So there actually was a method to the madness. And hopefully someday that property will sell and we will be out from under all that upkeep.
Probably the biggest advantage to moving here though was that we are anonymous. No one turns all the way around in their chair and stares when we walk in a restaurant or the post office or the bank. No one pins us down and asks us uncomfortable questions. No one refuses to work for us. Still not sure how we will build an intimate close relationship with the members of the new church we've chosen and keep such a huge secret but for now anonymous feels pretty good; almost normal.
It just sort of seems like a huge deception and we haven't yet worked out all the kinks of whether we will or whether we won't ever tell them. I tend toward wanting to "rip the Band-Aid off" and just go ahead and see if they are who they say they are but Donald does not. He is happy there and doesn't want to rock the boat and take the chance. So until we are on the same page and prepared to take whatever outcome we get - we are just enjoying the small semblance of normalcy in their not-knowing. I realize it is a trust issue but I don't think I could take it if they turned their backs and started judging us or looked at us differently or started shying away from us. So for now - we've chosen to maintain the anonymity and deal with the guilt of the deception...in church no less!
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