[Curiosity]

Thank you for the update on Gracie… these wonderful beings give us so much in their lives, and they teach us so many important lessons. I am glad but unsurprised that you are navigating this with grace and compassion.

[Treasur]

A little update....nothing much to say about MLC or unpleasant spouses, fortunately finally feeling long behind me now 

The vet increased Gracie’s medication and after about a week or so, the results were marked. She is now having a lot of seizure-free days or at most one a day. And more like a spasm than a seizure. Still no idea of the cause - tests so far ruled things out rather than ruling them in -  but the fact that the medication has had this effect makes it likely that it isn’t a brain tumour which was my fear. Lining up to be a warm day here and, as we speak, Gracie is mooching around in the garden while I drink my morning coffee. And i’m pleased to report that her dolly diva qualities have returned in full force too - she has made peace with the fan if it’s set on low as she likes a little breeze on her fur during her cat siesta but thinks the watering hose is a monster and pounces it with venom  She would probably also tell you that her improvement is actually down to smelly fish and cheesy Dreamies 

I grew up in warm countries so find it easy to adjust to early mornings and late evenings for activity outside, and inside in the cool during the heat of the day. I really like the smell of a morning just before it starts to warm up. And soft evenings when it is still warm. Made a couple of new local friends here through helping out with a bit of public garden which has old roses in it....nice too bc when I stroll past, I feel a little sense of connection.

Have done some lovely things in the last few weeks. A visit from an old chum saw late night swigging of pink fizz in the still pretty overgrown garden. A trip to a country house nearby with another chum and her son. Lunch with another. A quirky unexpected pop in to a local Green Party meeting with another who wanted a wing woman. And early morning strawberry picking tomorrow followed by brunch with another chum. It’s all go here lol. Plus actually (finally) making some progress on building my new working life pattern and some plans and schemes. And on top of that, just taken delivery of a dehydrator so about to pick herbs here to dry. And I have a new freezer arriving on Monday so I am getting excited about the delights of ice cubes and ice cream just as a bit of a heatwave hits here.

Imho there isn’t much good to say about the hideous tornado of MLC as a life experience. Or PTSD for that matter. I’ve never been comfortable with the concept of horrific things happening for some kind of personal improvement silver lining......sometimes bad stuff just happens to you or around you that isn’t about you or for you. But I do find myself tremendously grateful now for anything and everything good and sweet and soft that comes along. And I can’t begin to tell you how lovely it is to have a functioning brain and spirit and memory again  And to live without fear of the next hand grenade over the metaphorical wall. We are living in strange and rather uneasy times, it seems to me, and these are times when gratitude for small joys and a toolbox for managing one’s own anxiety feel like superpowers almost.

Although I do find it irritating that the very best weather to pick strawberries in is also the kind of weather when standing over a boiling pan making jam is not so pleasant 

My reason for posting this little update is partly to let you know about Gracie’s progress bc I so appreciated your care and concern. But another reason perhaps is to share a glimmer of life on the other side for newbies...it isn’t perfect, it isn’t how life used to be and it took a great deal of time and faith and kindness from others to get here. But there was a long time when I honestly felt I would never feel happy or at ease or normal again....I was wrong and if any of you reading this feel that way right now, you are probably wrong too. Your life on the other side may look quite different from mine....but it is there and it will eventually be a life that feels like yours instead of some crazy chaos rained down on your head by someone you loved.  No one deserves an eggshell life or to feel consistently belittled or afraid......regardless of the reasons for it or how we explain it happening to ourselves....and life is sweeter and easier without it even though it also brings lost treasures to accept along the way. Jmo.

[Curiosity]

Treasur, I’m so happy to hear that Gracie is doing much better. I think pets in general are special and wonderful, but will always have a soft spot for cats. As for the rest of your post, it’s beautifully said and so very important - particularly the idea that true happiness and contentment can be found on the other side of the trauma of BD; it may look different for each one of us, and it may look different than we had expected it to look, but that doesn’t make it any less real.

I also appreciate your point that just because we find strength and resilience in rebuilding our lives after a loved one’s MLC, that doesn’t mean the MLC is something for which to be grateful. Being grateful for the lessons we learn and the coping skills we develop doesn’t translate to MLC being a positive influence in our lives. We rebuild and move forward and find authenticity in our lives despite MLC, not because of it.

Thank you for your wisdom, thoughtfulness, and eloquence. And, of course, for sharing the updates about Gracie and about you.

[MadLuv]

Treasur- So glad to hear about Gracie. Looks like you have an abundance of friends all around you and new ones to boot!! How lovely. I agree with everything you said on not always in agreement with “everything happens for a reason “ yet finding comfort in that if everything is going to happen than at least try to find a reason to keep going and live the life in front of you as you can’t make anyone love you or change for you. What we can do is love ourselves and the path we find ourselves on. Thank you for your wise words to me and to others I have read. At some point it all sinks in. I’m not 100% but I am well on my way to survival and seeing a content life ahead.

[xyzcf]

Great news about Gracie, you outings with your chums, picking strawberries and making jam!

I’ve never been comfortable with the concept of horrific things happening for some kind of personal improvement silver lining......sometimes bad stuff just happens to you or around you that isn’t about you or for you.

I am totally in agreement with you! There are all these ideas floating around that suffering and hardship are good for you, or the one I least like is "you will have something better coming into your life".

Staying stuck in this ideology prevents us from experiencing life...but I do think it takes the LBSer some time to switch to the place where they do not want to feel this heaviness anymore...and so you let go and discover a different life.

But there was a long time when I honestly felt I would never feel happy or at ease or normal again....I was wrong

I think we all have experienced this, some for longer than others. But it does come to an end, the page turns and a new chapter begins.

Thanks as always for your wise words! Give Gracie and extra treat (and spoil yourself with one as well...my "treats" are chocolate.

[Evermore]

Lovely news about Gracie. And as usual I agree with your reflections on this crisis not being something to be grateful for even if we’re quite happy these days with the new life we’ve made for ourselves.

Re your strawberries, have you tried dehydrating them? Dehydrated strawberries are the bomb! (And might make the ‘standing in front of the hot jammy stove’ time a tiny bit shorter!)

[MomOfSteel]

Thank you for sharing your wise words.  I don’t think I could muster being grateful for this MLC journey if my life depended on it.  Why should anyone be grateful they were betrayed and walked away from?  I hope you are right that the ease of life will come back at some point and my memory.  I still can’t remember anything and it’s getting old.

[Dragonfly33]

Tresur it's lovely to hear Gracie is getting better. Your words are very reassuring. I am in a position right now thinking if life would get better especially that D is looming over my head constantly. Hearing your experience being on the other side has been very helpful and reassuring that there is life after this.

[Schratz66]

So glad to hear about Gracie feeling better. That just makes my day. Like you I thought I would never be happy again, but while life is different it is good in so many ways and having to accept that we cannot control a whole lot at times has made me more accepting all the way around.
I would be totally content to retire near the sea and become the old woman and the sea with a few animals by my side and just breathing in peace each and every day.

[Treasur]

Had one of those funny days yesterday when old and new memories collide. I know you all know what that can feel like. Don’t get me wrong, it was a lovely day and it’s really nice to see how far I have come from where I was  Had tickets to a small outdoor concert and the friend who was going to come could no longer make it, so on impulse I asked one of my new neighbours, Sheila, if she’d like to join me. I don’t know her very well yet but she’s an interesting woman, Scottish and quirky, so I am looking forward to getting to know her better. The concert was at a place called Snape Maltings, quite well known in the music world bc of its links to Benjamin Britten. It’s a beautiful set of old brick buildings sitting on the banks of an estuary surrounded by reed beds. About half an hour from here, I used to go a lot years ago, for concerts or walks or lunches, and one of my favourite plant nurseries is close by which is set up in the walled kitchen garden of an old country house. So, Sheila and me bowled off in my little car and had an afternoon of strolling amongst plants, tea and cake and then went to the concert.

The concert was terrific but, at least for me, one of those types of jazz where you sort of have to surf the music until you get it. We were sat on the top level of a set of low bleachers, listening to the music while a breeze came off the estuary. And then I suddenly realised that right in front of me on the other side of the bleachers was a white wooden stepped bridge. The bridge takes you past the main building, over a small stream and over to the reed beds which are dotted with sculptures. And I suddenly had one of those vivid flashes of memory. In Nov 2015, so before BD as such but just after my h had become quite weird, we had walked over that bridge and surprisingly bumped into a couple we knew. This was a time when my then h was in London, I was still in our old marital house and we had met in the middle.....and our friends lived in our old village some miles away. It was a time when my h had essentially stopped talking to me, wouldn’t explain what was going on, refused to come home but asking me to ‘not give up on him’ and saying that he was having some kind of mental health crisis  and I was completely bewildered by this strange stranger in front of me. I was frightened for him but not yet frightened of him. So it was pretty awkward to not feel like ourselves and to bump into our friends  both of us were grey and gaunt and jittery....i’ve never asked my friends what they thought when they bumped into us, but i’m sure we must have seemed not quite right somehow to them. One of those chats you have as a couple in the car going home when you say ‘was it me or was that a bit weird.....?’ 

What I felt looking at that little bridge was a huge swell of compassion for that old me. I truly had no idea what was going on and I was trying so hard to do my best to support the person I loved. It was only a few months after my father had died and my mother was just starting to fast track into her dementia. I wasn’t sleeping or eating, and I just had no idea what was going on. Tbh even now I have no idea really what was actually going on at the time bc lies leave a lot of unknowns, don’t they, even if it did not occur to me at the time that my h might be lying. And of course I had no idea of how things would evolve, how much worse it would get, how much my life was going to unravel, that we would get divorced, that he would marry someone else, that my mother would soon no longer know who I was or be able to even speak, that my life would be threatened, that I would end up where I have having survived cancer and PTSD,  that I would never see or speak to him again. I simply had no clue. These were unimaginable things to me. Until they weren’t 

But I felt nothing but compassion for that brave little old me. And a big question mark about my then h because I don’t think I know much more now than I did then about what he was thinking or feeling on that walk. I didn’t feel angry or even grief which I have often felt at those memories in the past. I just felt compassion for how normal my responses were in such an abnormal situation and a kind of respect for how very hard I tried to understand and support something/someone incomprehensible and unsupportable. I could see the love in that rather than seeing the foolishness of it. That I would have thought myself fortunate to have been loved that way and that much. That I did not give up on my beloved until I really had no choice left but to do so. And that it was the past not the present....which is always a gift to see post-ptsd 

Back to other news....
Gracie continues to do very well on this medication. She has not had a seizure in weeks now. She is chasing flies outside in the garden as I write this. Tbh that also seemed unimaginable a few months ago so being wrong also delivers good things, doesn’t it?
This new house and garden and town are finally starting to feel a bit more like mine after 5 months or so here,  and that’s good too. I realise now that perhaps as a residue of a lot of unwanted change, one can hold back a bit from seeing something as a settled spot. Which is understandable but a rather tiring half-life way to live. I have had more of a full diary in the last couple of months than I have had for years, both work and socially, and that’s a good thing too. I have plans and goals. I see a future. I found a great new hairdresser. I start a new yoga course next week. I am thinking about contacting my old Italian teacher or if it’s time to learn to play golf. I am working with my own coach, someone with a very different kind of coaching angle than mine, to do some of my own rebuilding work. (Bc decent coaches use coaches too if they get stuck lol) And that has been challenging (in a good way) and surprisingly (to me) rather fun. I have a sense of momentum. I have many tomatoes. I have made jam again. I have been decluttering and selling stuff on eBay that I no longer want or need. I am thinking about bulbs to plant for spring and what to do about my allotment now I have moved. And how I will keep warm this winter in this new little house with our looming energy crisis. These are all normal things but, as some of you know, for a while these normal things felt as if they would never be normal again. It’s a strange quiet warm kind of victory over events....but a victory nonetheless.

So that’s a little snapshot from me and Gracie on our little bit of the planet