Midlife Crisis: Support for Left Behind Spouses
Midlife Crisis => Our Community => Topic started by: Treasur on January 10, 2022, 03:06:47 AM
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Last thread https://mlcforum.theherosspouse.com/index.php?topic=11736.0;all#lastPost
Fettle is a northern English word which can be a verb or a noun. The noun means in a good state; the verb means to fix, adapt or repair something until it is in a good state. My father used it to describe those practical actions one takes as a woodworker or DIYer to fine-tune something or do the small adjustments until something works just as you need it to.
Fettling. It’s a nice word sound to me that smells like sawdust in my dad’s shed. I find it a very practical optimistic kind of word. :) and it was my dad’s birthday on the 8th. And it’s a pretty good description of where I am at the beginning of 2022. FML = Fettle My Life :)
I still have moments when I shake my head in wonder at how many years I got lost, what happened to the old life I rather liked and the very long list of things I wish I could have done differently. They come and go, but don’t usually stay for long nowadays bc I suppose I recognise that I can’t do anything useful with them most often. I have learned to let them sit quietly muttering to themselves in a chair in the corner while I try to focus on something else more productive or that makes me feel stronger or safer.
Christmas and New Year were, well, Covidish. Lots of half plans changed or cancelled as Omicron pulled its boots on here in the UK. The new normal mental weighing and balancing of risk, reward and responsibility that we have all learned to do over the last couple of years often with a mixed bag of information. Watching others reach similar or different decisions depending on their circumstances and viewpoints.
I said yes to a church Carol concert and service, yes to a Christmas Eve supper with a chum, yes to a Christmas Day walk with another and No to quite a lot of things. I decided to not visit my mother for Christmas bc on balance it didn’t seem logical to swoosh into a care home full of vulnerable folks when a highly transmissible variant that seemed to be able to evade vaccinations at least partially was active even if its severity was then not known. Spoke to my mother on a video call. Pretty short call bc she is non-verbal now, but she smiled as soon as she saw my face so that was something. (I howled like a small child after the call bc well it just hurts as those of you dealing with dementia in any way know. It’s sad and it hurts, even if an interaction goes ‘well’.) And then my mother got Covid anyway but fortunately was not ill enough to be in hospital although another resident was. And that means the care home is currently locked down for the moment bc both residents and staff are ill. Can’t imagine how difficult it must be to manage a care home or hospital ward right now in the UK. But it was comforting to know that I did not play any part in transmission.
So, Christmas and New Year were small, quiet, thin-skinned things with a side order of gratitude and peace. That may always be how it is. It seems terribly normal to me that one would feel a kind of sad yearning after losing one’s family at these family-flavoured seasons. It’s a time of echoes, isn’t it, for a lot of folks for different reasons?
I felt grateful for a Christmas lunch plated up by a chum. Ate off my best china with a glass of wine and appreciated the minimal washing up lol. Chuckled at the gift of a cat’s Santa outfit from a friend who does not understand that cats are not as amenable as dogs to this kind of folderol and that it should come with a first aid kit. I tried draping the coat over Gracie’s shoulders in hope of a photo at least and she gave me The Look. All cat owners know this look....it’s a mix of contempt and a red flag warning to go no further....I accepted reality, Gracie accepted turkey bits as an apology for even thinking about it. I made a home-baked ham and Christmas chutney to hand out to friends. I listened to Christmas music for the first time in years. I enjoyed some of my very nice gifts of wine, chocolate and a couple of good books. I knitted myself a beanie hat for the first time. I chatted to some chums on the phone. I found myself starting to plan what next, well plan might be over egging it, but intentions with details and timescales certainly. I took some good walks along a rather busy and windy beach bc we get lots of visitors where I live at this time of year. And a lot of rather cheerful dogs who are happy to wear Christmas outfits it seems :) (while cats sat inside in front of roaring fires snickering at their stupidity probably!)
I know that for most of us we are heading into a new year where quite a lot of things may not at all be what we hoped or intended or wanted. That there is a lot of fettling involved in either building a new life that fits who we have become. Or adapting ourselves to fit the life that we seem to find in front of us. Probably a bit of both. But I remind myself, and you if you need it, that fettling is almost always a trial and error process made up of lots of small adjustments rather than big steps. And that doing it is underpinned by a belief that better is possible, that you don’t have to throw your hands up and completely start from scratch or give up, bc a shaving here and a bit of oil and a nudge there can leave you with something that fits Goldilocks-like standards of ‘just right’ if you keep going in small steps. :)
I wish you all fine fettling in 2022.....
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Actually, now I think about, maybe we could all share some Fettling choices that have helped us here in case someone else finds them useful? :)
I think one of my most useful is teaching myself to focus on one thing I am doing at a time. Which sounds easy but actually can be quite tricky when your rebuilding to do list feels huge or completion or perfection feels a way aways. I have a sort of mental mantra ‘Right now, I am doing this’ whether it is talking to a friend on the phone or making a pie or doing a coaching session or going for a walk or reading a book. I try to give whatever I am doing my complete attention until it is done, whatever that looks like. And break things into smaller discrete pieces that take an hour or two if they are bigger, longer tasks. One thing at a time with full presence. Didn’t used to do things that way, but I find it seems to work better for my brain now :)
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I like it! New word, yay!! You know when my kids were growing up I picked unusual words to use with then they would have to ask “ what’s that mean” As adults now they have a very extensive vocabulary that has served then well.
Sounds like your holidays were much like mine. Uneventful, but just ok. I’m sorry about your mother. That has to be so difficult. I have lost both my parents to cancer and the Holidays now can be a little sad with the breakup of my family and my original core family and relatives mostly gone.
As you say. Try not to think or reflect to much and deal with the here and now and sometimes it’s ok just get through until you are at a place to rebuild a new.
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What is Christmas chutney- ingredients?
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What is Christmas chutney- ingredients?
Locally grown apples, red onion, a bit of brown sugar, vinegar and 1 tsp each of ground cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. So a hint of Christmas but not overpowering. It was lovely and the jars disappeared to new homes and thumbs up within a week! In fact, I was only left with one teeny jar for me! But used it too to make sausage rolls by spreading a bit on the pastry before adding the sausage meat and apple mix I usually use.
Made it in the slow cooker which was fab - you just reduce the amount of vinegar by about a third.
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What is Christmas chutney- ingredients?
Locally grown apples, red onion, a bit of brown sugar, vinegar and 1 tsp each of ground cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. So a hint of Christmas but not overpowering. It was lovely and the jars disappeared to new homes and thumbs up within a week!
Made it in the slow cooker which was fab - you just reduce the amount of vinegar by about a third.
Also fabulous with grilled cheese sourdough - yum. I think my appetite just came back. ;)
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What is Christmas chutney- ingredients?
Locally grown apples, red onion, a bit of brown sugar, vinegar and 1 tsp each of ground cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. So a hint of Christmas but not overpowering. It was lovely and the jars disappeared to new homes and thumbs up within a week!
Made it in the slow cooker which was fab - you just reduce the amount of vinegar by about a third.
Also fabulous with grilled cheese sourdough - yum. I think my appetite just came back. ;)
Ooh yes, that’s a good idea - might use the last of it for supper with goats cheese. Yum.
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Following along Treasur.
You really had me laughing over trying to put clothes on Grace. Really people, they obviously don't know about "The Look!" ONLY cats can pull it off.
I'm glad you made amends with the turkey. Nice move. ha ha
Hope you have a good year, Treasur. I'm also glad you could video chat with your mom, as hard as it must have been. She smiled for you.
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Welcome to your new thread Treasur and thanks for choosing such a great word. Your threads are great.
So glad you have Grace, and the beach. Happy your Mum smiled at you too, I know how hard that is though.
Looking forward to your thoughts in this thread, I’m glad you are here.
Rose 🌹
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Awww Treasur,
your posts always make me feel like i am curled up in front of a warm cozy fire with a good book. I too remind myself i must focus on one thing at a time at least 90% of the time. My "Fettling". for the year is to accept what it is today, move forward and not overwhelm myself with what it could be tomorrow.
Wishing you a very prosperous New Year
5hil
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I loved your opening post; as a fellow Brit I had never given much thought to the phrase in fine fettle before. Your tales of your walks, growing veg, preserving warms my heart. I wish you a wonderful year full of abundance.
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I'm glad you are still here and continuing to post Treasur. Yes, I agree at what a lovely picture that was painted for me in your description.
Kind thoughts towards the nursing home and I hope this wave of the sickness isn't devastating for the folks living there and the caregivers.
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Hmmm, well God/the Universe seems to have decided that I was making good enough progress to throw me some more things to fettle. Either that or my Plan A that was progressing nicely needs altering :)
On a side note, was listening to the Ten Percent Happier podcast this morning while working. (Heartily recommended, some interesting stuff on there including a recent podcast about how our skills base changes with age :) ) anyhoo, there was a podcast with the Gottman’s who sound like very nice people. I was half-listening bc I was busy doing something else and bc I no longer see some of this stuff as relevant to me :)
Two things struck me though. One was that the overarching tone of their POV just felt a million miles away from how my marriage ended. And it seemed just as bizarre now as then, but with hindsight, a lot of the ‘normal’ relationship stuff I read post BD just didn’t fit the circumstances at all. Like bringing a flan to a knife fight lol. Still find it reassuring sometimes to have those little validations of ‘yup, that really was a whole lot of WTFness, not normal for me at all’ :) And how unlikely it was that any ‘normal’ sorts of sultions like MC or honest conversations would have made any difference at all, so I am belatedly glad that I did not have to beat my head against particular types of walls :)
The second was that they talked about loyalty....about how it is a repeating everyday kind of choice, not a one off one. My experience, and I guess the same goes for many of us, is that every bit of any loyalty in my then h just evaporated seemingly overnight. Not just to me or our marriage, but to our pets, friends home, my family, financial obligations. Just pffft....all gone. Remarkable really. Although of course in reality it must have been happening unseen by me before BD or with the transfer of those localities to other people or things. And of course so obviously nothing to do with me or any of the other things that he had previously been loyal to for years. But of course, looking back, it really explains why from my POV I couldn’t understand why my h couldn’t end his marriage but still treat me with some compassion (at least for the other troubles in my life at the time) and decency. Or why I kept getting metaphorically punched in the face for expecting that he would and looking for signs of it.....well, until I stopped expecting it :) and started expecting contempt or indifference at best. And Mrs Gottman calls contempt the sulphuric acid of relationships which feels about right to me lol. I had to work pretty darned hard to not hate and feel contempt for my xh :) but, regardless of how he feels/felt and while I didn’t an to explain away the unacceptable, it never felt right to me to choose to hate someone I had loved so much for so long. I can live with that but I suspect it got easier as my xh disappeared out of sight. Less exposure to the hideous stuff made it easier to choose some weird kind of quiet backshelf kind of love....well maybe it’s not love tbh, just not hate if that makes sense.
Perhaps that is my version of a kind of loyalty to both of us? I don’t know.
Still, it’s an awful thing to do to someone who loves and trusts you, isn’t it, that kind of contempt and zero loyalty or respect? Simply beyond my comprehension even now. I have no idea how one might feel secure in being loyal to anything or anyone again were I in those shoes. But as I get older, I see loyalty as a much underpraised virtue. I wonder actually if it is a pretty common LBS characteristic, loyalty towards a whole bunch of things and people. Until circumstances force us to reshuffle our allegiances perhaps. :)
Will be back with an update later...
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Hi Treasur.
I'm just passing thro and catching up with a few old friends. Glad to hear your doing well and Fettling along. I think that describes
my life too although Im trying also to be more frugal too .. Such old words but seem to give comfort
Take care DW.
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Still, it’s an awful thing to do to someone who loves and trusts you, isn’t it, that kind of contempt and zero loyalty or respect? Simply beyond my comprehension even now
this is and has been my biggest hurdle. I am still friends with everyone I even dated. I just don’t dismiss people who have been significant in my life. So, to have the most significant one dismiss me is the hardest to get past. Throw the disconnect with the kids it’s maddening. When my daughter died my high school sent me a hand written lovely card expressing his own pain for me. When my husband left my college bf called me to tell me what a fool he was and it wasn’t me it was him. He has called me every month since to check on me. I tell you. Those encounters have saved me from devaluation of myself. It really is THEM and not us. Still, you wonder how they carry on. I don’t think it will ever be a well lived life for them. I truly don’t. Thank you for your always i insightful words Treasur. They always help me reflect
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Treasur,
It’s a difficult thing to accept that other people not just think and believe differently than us, but that maybe they aren’t even working with all the same parts. My exh didn’t think like I thought because he had no ability to empathize with anyone outside himself, and a complete inability to self analyze. He says now that he feels like it was a part of himself he had no access to at all for the past 30ish years, he said it’s like waking up and realizing you have only ever been using 25% of your brain.
How could he do this too me. Easy really, he never considered me at all. He felt jealous, and shameful, and less than and inferior…..so he did things to attempt to ease those feelings, one of those was flirt with someone else. And it worked, and it worked well so he continued to do it. It worked so well he began to feel clever and cunning and special and smart for having pulled the affair off and having been the center of 2 peoples affection. He convinced himself and everyone else I must have been bad and awful and deserving of it, else why did he feel so bad before and so much better now? Any attempts on my part to end the affair or even the deception that was fueling his feelings of being smart and clever as a mastermind, were obviously attacks. They were attacks on him and his happiness and his one chance to finally feel good about himself. And here I was the author of his misery (cause he was miserable before, and he isn’t now, so if you put 2+2 together…..)was my attempting to destroy everything and demanding he go back to how things were.
So he lashed out. He lashed out with every bit of hurt and rage and pain from everything that had ever hurt him. All the rejection and a abandonment and fear and rage he ever felt. And it felt good to finally stand up for himself. To not just lay down and take it. And of course the author of his misery objected to how he handled things and told him he was crazy and wrong and confused……gaslighting at its finest, but she was wrong she didn’t know he finally felt proud of himself, his ability to stand up for himself.
As long as there is someone else there to help him continue the story he made up in his head…..there’s really no reason to ever doubt it. The cognitive dissonance has no real incentive to end, in fact ending it would be an incredibly big emotional toll. As long as he can continue to project all his hurt and every emotional wound onto me then he doesn’t have to do the difficult part of feeling it. As long as he can just kept the whole thing running everything will be fine.
Then there is me. Trying to figure out how to make this a story about me….because of course well it happened too me and it sure as heck felt incredibly personal.
But then that’s partially just my ego. And partially me projecting my own value system, self work and empathy onto another person. Because the reality is if a person operated like me…..they really wouldn’t have done this to another person. Because if they thought like me or their heart was like mine…..the would have seen and known and understood the cost and the damage they were causing.
Sometimes I am reminded of my own blind panic at the height of my ptsd, I often wonder if that’s the space that exh just existed in. There is no way to tell what’s real, what’s the past or present, there’s just triggers and not triggers. You kind of just spend your time trying to run from triggers and huddle down in spaces that aren’t triggers and hoping it will end.
Sometimes the worst most damaging thing in the world is just a very unaware hurt person who is only doing whatever feels good to their very damaged nervous system without any further thought. Like a panicked animal in a trap attacking anyone who gets near them, or a drowning swimmer. They might never come out of that panicked response enough to realize what they did. Maybe it’s better they don’t, I don’t know. I’m not sure I would want to know that I did that to other people, it might make me harder for me to love and forgive.
Anyway
You know I am always sending you my love.
Courage
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Thank you for reminding me.
I don’t know if my xh had an MLC but I do have sound objective third party supported reasons to know he had a ‘something’.
With time, I forget that sometimes.
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Years out, it probably is worth the reminder that there was a ‘something’, but my reasons for that have changed I think. Initially it was bc I wanted to explain (and perhaps excuse a bit) why my h became what he became. I’m not sure that matters so much to me now. And I didn’t want to believe that this was who he was and that a large chunk of my life had been built on scary sand. But it is worth the reminder that there was nothing I could do about really bc it wasn’t about me. And it was just as bizarre an experience as it felt at the time and beyond my comprehension.. But still not of my creation. Like weather really.....my only choice was how wet I was prepared to get :)
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So, that little update I promised.....
My mother got coronavirus after Christmas, was ill but survived. Her care home was closed to visitors in January bc they had a few cases. They announced they were reopening, I booked a time to see my mother....and then they had a bout of norovirus so had to close again. My mother was ill again, but survived although she is increasingly frail now so diahorrea/vomiting is not good. They are just about to reopen....and my car broke down but it will be fixed tomorrow. My friend’s mother, who also had dementia but was in her 90s as opposed to in her 70s like my mother, died so lots of long walks talking out a lot of grief.
I started Italian lessons....mi chiami Treasur, ciao :).....and I started moving forward in cleaning up some of my life admin with both anxiety and success....and I started making progress on my Plan A of ‘what the next chapter of my work/life looks like’. :) I had actual real plans and timescales and s$it, go me. New work commitments, and more of them. There was a lot of good fettling going on. (Those of you who know my prior posts will know that for the longest time I could not even imagine a plan let alone put one into action so this was a big deal to me)
And then, my lovely landlord had a serious crisis in his own family a couple of weeks ago and got in touch to tell me that reluctantly his only way forward is to sell this house so he can do what he needs to do for his own family......so Gracie and me are having to look for a new home, and it is very hard/unlikely that I will be able to stay here in my little town by the sea bc it is a very expensive holiday spot for Londoners....ergo not many places to rent bc most are let as holiday homes. And it will take me another couple of years at least to get my finances back to a place where I might buy somewhere and I would never be able to afford here even so. Think over 500k for a 2 bed flat.... ::)
Well, the PTSD wolves returned in force. And brought puppies! Those of you who have got through PTSD will know what I mean.....the sad truth seems to be that I am much much better but my amygdala baseline seems to be set higher now. Grrr. I heard a woman on a podcast say that she has learned that her anxiety comes in two forms....an overwhelming pack of wolves and something that is a bit more like a relentless scratching noise at a window. This was definitely wolves :(, but the scratching takes effort and energy to manage too and I seem to be stuck with patches of that. I think that when you lose a lot, or after a lot of WTF, a bit of your brain knows these things are all too possible bc it happened before, so it’s a kind of tightrope act between Fear and Realism, good and bad.
So the wolves jumped around snarling about how I was going to lose everything that mattered to me once again and how afraid I should be and how powerless I am - my new friends, my allotment, my sense of safety, my little cat bc a lot o rental homes say no pets, my walks by the sea - while the puppies yipped about shame and how much less I was than I used to be and what an irretrievable mess my life was and what a big fat failure I am and how i’m all alone and how many years I have wasted. Gah. It was horrific tbh. I think the sense of shame about my own vulnerability, about how far I had fallen financially post BD and post PTSD was the worst of it.....horrid. It was a very noisy place in my head.
But
And it’s a big But
It lasted for about three days instead of the weeks/months it would have done before. It paused me but it didn’t freeze me. It did frighten me to feel like I felt and it has woken up some grief bits bc tbh I am tired of loss so having to accept more perhaps is not easy.
I knew that some of my brain was lying. Or that it was pretending it knew what actually it couldn’t know yet. Ah, that awful catastrophising and noisy self-doubt that trauma packs, eh?
I used the old Rule of 3 to decide not to rush around finding somewhere/anywhere bc I was afraid. And decided to catch my breath and THEN start thinking about what I wanted to do. Bc after a few days I could remind myself that I had a couple of months at least, that I do have choices, that I have cash in the bank that I didn’t have a year ago. And that maybe a new chapter will unfold differently, maybe better even, in a new place. That maybe here had given me a safe place but that maybe a new place will give me a different platform to build on.
And I was impressed by my ability to be honest with my friends (bc I did need to hide in my cave for a few days which they understood) and touched by how my new chums immediately wanted to fix my problem so they could keep me around lol. It’s a funny nice feeling to realise that you matter to people again when you had to train yourself to live so solo as I did. And so many offers of help and support and fixing (even if sometimes that’s a bit exhausting bc I hadn’t got to that bit of the page yet lol)....everything from options to help packing to storage to saying me and Gracie could move in with them if needed. Gosh.
And I started to think about what I might WANT, and the pros and cons of different possibilities, as opposed to what I thought I could GET....such a big difference, the difference between surviving and living imho. We can get stuck in survival I think....I susoect I was for a long time, years. And more and more I am musing on whether what I needed 3 years ago when I moved here might now have changed.....and maybe I needed a God post it note to see that how and where you build might be different from how and where you recover....
All work in progress, so i’ll let you all know how/when the new home hunting goes. It is possible, but probably unlikely, that I will find somewhere here as all my new chums want (and are harrying friends, neighbours and town bigwigs to find lol) so I am conscious of a slow goodbye process now every time I walk in my favourite spots. But maybe the Hello will be worth it, idk. It’s interesting to see how different it is thinking about where/how to live when you really only have yourself to think about. A bit of me likes the idea of a little house in the woods where I barely see anyone lol. Another bit of me thinks it would be better to live in a place where I have old friends or can meet new humans and where I can walk out to get a pint of milk rather than drive for 20 mins :) funnily enough three options have appeared - a cottage in the middle of nowhere lol, a small townhouse in a little town near where I used to live some years ago and a small cottage In a little village that my xh and me once visited and loved. Funny old universe.... :) I have held back from making appointments for a week or so until I felt a bit more settled in my own pros/cons and judgment....didn’t want to poke the universe until I felt able to say yes or no :)....so that work starts this week. Tbh I am also thinking about just going to visit a few towns/places to see how they feel to me before even making appointments to look at specific houses, if only to test my own gut feel on what’s next. So, we will see....right now I have no idea where I will be living in 3 months time but I feel more confident that I will find a good spot than I did at first :)
Just seems like God has some different kinds of fettling challenges in mind than I thought......
And surrounding all that, a sense that a lot of things in my country are a bit broken or stuck right now. Quite a lot going on here or coming to light that is just a different kind of WTF. Don’t know if it’s my age, or a post-Covid malaise bc a lot of folks I know are a bit ??? about quite a few things. And I have no words for the staggering insanity of what Mr Putin might be planning for Ukraine or how it might feel to live in Kiev right now.
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That is a great deal to cope with Treasur and as you say we are living in a very disturbed world. ( I live in the US which has it's own share of problems and my homeland is Canada and what has happened there in the last 3 weeks is shocking.)
I am sorry that you have not been able to see your mum. These shut downs and restrictions are very hard to just suck it up.
Our PTSD can be helped and healed somewhat with the work done and therapy.....but.....I know I am different now to how I respond to things...and "anxiety" is something that creeps in for even minor things, let alone something like having to move!
And this move is once again not of your own choosing, it's something that is "being done to you" so that makes it hard..and it is a big deal.
My home is my safe place. My community, so far away from my family are the people who I can ask to help me, if I need a ride for a medical procedure and am not allowed to drive, if I need to run something by regarding house repairs. I know someday I will need to move back to Canada, when I can't take care of things myself but I have no desire to (as well the weather here is so sunny and "warmer" than home that I am not inclined to move back north.)
It is true that we regain our equilibrium quicker than we used to.
I was just thinking of something I learned in nursing school 47 years ago, that I often used to consider what my life stress level was at...and that was the Hans Seyle Stress Scale. A very good way to understand how the combination of stressors can contribute to our own health and mental well being.
https://www.stress.org/holmes-rahe-stress-inventory
Thanks for sharing with us all that is going on in your life. Take your time to make the choices that feel best for you.
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And I started to think about what I might WANT, and the pros and cons of different possibilities...
Tbh I am also thinking about just going to visit a few towns/places to see how they feel to me before even making appointments to look at specific houses, if only to test my own gut feel on what’s next. So, we will see....
I did this, in the year after BD. I "auditioned" different places to live before I moved, and funny enough these are some of my best memories now, formed from a time when I was feeling so lost and heartbroken and devastated. I hope you find a place that feels wide open: safe and stable and full of possibilities.
. And I have no words for the staggering insanity of what Mr Putin might be planning for Ukraine or how it might feel to live in Kiev right now.
I remind myself of this when I do things like take the stress survey xyzcf just posted, where I scored off the charts: people living in Ukraine and elsewhere are not sitting comfortably right now taking stress surveys. So I guess even with my high score, I need to keep perspective and hope for a next chapter.
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Treasur,
Much turmoil has been thrown in your direction recently, it seems. I wish you strength, peace, and just the right amount of luck as you navigate these changes. What I will say, though, is that - whatever trauma was activated within you, and however much is still lingering - the sense I get from reading your update is of strength and peace, like on a fundamental level you know that you will be not just okay with whatever changes are coming, but you will use those changes as an opportunity for growth and learning. I wasn’t here when you were starting your healing process, so I can’t speak to how far you’ve come - but I can say that this quiet, sure strength and confidence in your ability to navigate all of this… well, you are truly an example of what it means to succeed in the whole LBS journey - and really, what it means more broadly to succeed in life. The details look different for each of us, but the underlying self awareness and courage are among the greatest things we can learn. Wishing you good things as you move forward with the decisions to come.
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Thinking of you, treasur. I learn so much from you, and admire your strength. I am so glad that many people local to you are stepping up.
x
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Treasur- your strength has seemed to alway guide you in the right direction. I will continue to follow and see where life brings you, but I have a feeling it will be to a new place of more growth
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Fingers crossed that you have a neighbor in your area that cannot stand the thought of you and Gracie moving away. Am envisioning a cottage on someone´s property that cries out for a person like you.
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Useful PTSD article which might be helpful to someone here https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/27/i-dont-know-who-i-am-any-more-working-through-trauma-is-about-reconnecting
I must admit that for me that sense of not being able to find myself was by far the worst bit of PTSD for me, way worse than the flashbacks, or memory problems or physical shaking or even the vomiting lol. Bc I couldn’t see how I was ever going to find something when I had no idea of what I was looking for but couldn’t see how I could be the old me either. Which led to a feeling of deep despair, a feeling of being adrift I suppose, and a belief that recovery was impossible and literally inconceivable. (Spoiler alert - I was wrong)
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Lord, fixers are exhausting! Even when you know their intentions are good....I feel suitably remorseful for any time i’ve been one tbh
A local chum yesterday simply refused to believe that I have money in the bank but won’t be able to get a mortgage for 2-3 years if then bc of the damage that MLC/PTSD did to my credit score and income. She asked, then refused to take my ‘no’ for a ‘no’ and launched into a ‘well, I can’t believe that, you need to do x and y’. Unusually for me, I became a bit testy ::)
And my neighbour just stopped me and did much the same but with a scheme of how I could qualify for social housing bc I am no eligible for that bc too much money lol. If I tell you that his scheme involved getting on a train to France, opening a bank account and fraudulently hiding money there.....well, I got a bit testy again. ::)
My house hunt is not going well. Not many houses to rent in this county. My car is broken. My mother is ill again. My landlord has just accepted an offer so the clock is ticking. Well, it feels more like one of those Bond style guillotines lol. And it’s raining so Gracie is grumpy. And i’m not sleeping well. Everything in my life is now infected by uncertainty. And I want to find the right kind of spot, not just a beggars can’t be choosers spot. It’s not easy. Fortunately my good LBS skills and natural optimism can be intentionally powered up every day but my word, it’s exhausting.
I wonder why we humans jump into fixing with a list of ‘you should do’ so quickly? Why we don’t go instead to ‘what could I do that would be helpful’? Another chum here did just that.....plus reminding me that I have a track record of being a very good problem solver and that I have made lemonade from far worse lemons lol....she is acting as my chauffeur to go look at a house tomorrow plus buying us a pub lunch. Much more helpful :)
Fixing is kind of inherently disrespectful, isn't It? Or so it seems to me. It carries an underpinning of ‘you’re too x to have thought of y and I am wiser’. I am conscious of my shame atm, well fear too, but shame is sloshing around. I owned my first property at 21.....I ran an international business I owned for over 25 years....I have fallen a long way financially from where I was. And I feel shame about where I am now, that I am as vulnerable and constrained as I am. Ha ha, and I have learned that shame makes me testy lol. My wise local chum and I were talking about this yesterday....I needed to talk in a warm safe place with a friend and a sympathetic schnauzer it turns out :).....and she challenged me a bit by asking if shame means I feel it’s my fault, that i’m to blame for what happened to me. That regret makes sense, but shame implies either competition against some expected standard in some way or that I am blaming myself. She’s right of course....and it was useful that she poked me to think about it bc shame is rather debilitating when you are trying to launch into the unknown :)
A lot of thing happened to me. Like weather. My only reasonable criticism of myself is perhaps that I didn’t know I needed an umbrella or that I stayed in the rain too long so got really, really wet. But it is also true that I do feel responsible for not safeguarding myself better, not for having PTSD but maybe for exposing myself to the point when I was vulnerable to it, maybe for not getting treatment earlier. I was not responsible for a lot of what brought me to this spot in life, so feel no shame about it, but I think I feel shame that I did not cope with it better. It’s perhaps a kind of arrogance. Which is weird bc, even if I didn’t do so well, I did the best I was able to do at the time.....even if it wasn’t much cop lol....and yet the shame is still there. Odd. And it’s an unfamiliar acquaintance bc I never experienced shame for the first fifty or so years of my life....odd and humbling tbh.
Today is a fresh day. I am having coffee. Grumpy Gracie is asleep on the bed. I will call my walking chum and go out for a wet walk and then start making house calls and working through my moving to do list. Bc I am packing even though I have no idea where I will be going :) which in a strange way is a rather nice return of pre-ptsd efficiency and multi-tasking :) I have a couple of months yet. I’ll figure a good next place out. I always have done so far and I will again. But my Babe-ishness is a bit under pressure so prayers and good thoughts gratefully received from afar :) (and no fixer resoinses please lol bc I am not so nice when I am testy :) )
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Was hoping that your landlord would not get an offer so quickly. Even moving when it´s your own choice is stressful so moving when it´s not adds a heap more. You are a person with grit so even though you are being uprooted, you may go through transplant shock but will put down new roots.
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Moving is unsettling at baseline. I hope you can find the perfect place and soon. Fixers I think while trying to help it seems like they are uncomfortable with the way other people are feeling and instead of offering empathy try to insist they have the answers. Well, at least that’s how I view it. It sounds like you have a great friend though who truly is being helpful and supportive. I feel like those people are rare gems in life.
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Treasur,
Might I say that you are being a bit hard on yourself. Having to move is yet another situation that was not in your control. You didn't decide that a move would be a good thing and now you are left with finding a place that is the right one for you and all the other hassles of moving. And, as you explained, you seem like you will have to rent....in your past you owned a home, in the past you could get a mortgage...any one of these is "draining" for lack of a better word.
My home, which I fortunately own, is my "safe" place. People "tell" me all the time...why are you living in such a big house by yourself....like somehow this is a ridiculous thing to think that a lone women could possibly take care of "all this" herself. As though I have not carefully weighed the financial implications, and the "work" involved.....
People just want everything to be better, the way they see it would be better.
Even Mr. xyzcf, when we were dividing up assets suggested to me that I could move to this apartment complex that backs on to a parking lot of a Home Depot. I guess he thought he was being "helpful".
Anyway Treasur just wanted to send you a hug and please continue to let us know how the house hunting is going. And do not apologize for being "testy"...there is a lot going on in our lives both personally and globally.
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Well, I am darned fortunate in my friends, that’s for sure :)
Think my Greek neighbour felt a bit bad at his fixy behaviour this morning so he just turned up with a dish of stifado for my supper :) lovely on a cold rainy day with some creamy mash and a glass of red wine :)
And another chum dropped by to offer chauffeuring help and practical support even though she isn’t having an easy time currently either.
And some HS encouragement too :)
Good kind humans are like gold, aren’t they? Such a contrast to the MLC folks and their chums. Every time I see folks gathering on the borders to help Ukrainian strangers, it is a reminder of just how much good and light we can create in even the darkest of times. And every little bit of it helps.
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To say you sound amazing in your calmness is an understatement. I am keeping my fingers crossed that you and grumpy gracie will soon have a new home. Fixers can be exhausting when they do not take No for an answer.......while I am a partial fixer I accept when people do not like my suggestion and am not pushy....good luck with the house hunt....fingers crossed
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Sounds like you are surrounded by really good hearted people. That’s everything!!
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I am, MadLuv, I am.
A little bit of good news. I have found a new place which is now 90% certain. Not here but in a little market town about 20 minutes away. And it looks as if I will be moving by the end of the month. Ha ha, so as you can imagine I am multi-tasking like a MF :) But I have a very strong feeling that the new little house - a small quirky Victorian cottage close to the centre of a town with an old marketplace and wiggly little streets of old buildings - is actually just right for my next chapter. I was very very scared. I am now rather excited if still a bit scared :)
One of the most surprising gifts of events is that I have experienced a feeling of the old Me coming back online.....the busy Me who juggled lots of balls, got stuff done that seemed impossible, charms nice new humans to want to help me and feel they can trust me, the optimistic me, the Me with a plan. That’s a really nice feeling, slightly odd, but really nice.
Anyhoo, the next few weeks are a multitasking whirlwind but I wanted you all to know that it looks like me and Miss Gracie are going to be ok. And that we are excited about a new adventure :)
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How wonderful! I love the thought of being able to walk to everything. Will this impact your allotment?
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Will keep my current allotment until the autumn but apply for a new one in the new place in September :)
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Treasur, I’m so happy that it looks like your next chapter will have just the right setting! If there’s one thing we learn in all of this, it is resilience. You have displayed an extraordinary amount during this time of upheaval, and it appears that your efforts will have a good result. Best of luck with all of the multitasking to come.
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The last few days have been full of Goodness.
Too long a list to roll out here. The kindness of strangers when my little old car, that used to be my father’s car, hit a crisis and I didn’t know what to do. Practical help with moving chores from neighbours and new chums. Delight from old chums about my new chapter. And a huge bunch of pale pink roses from a relatively new neighbour sad that i’m going. A huge list of Goodness.
I don’t say this to tweak the nose of those of you still fighting your way through the abyss. Lord knows I remember the darkness of that place. But I wanted to share a realisation that has crept up on me through this scary process of the last few weeks suddenly having life upended again. Which is that my life has always worked this way. Or it did before BD. The unexpected delights of others kindness and creativity, given and received. The joy of unexpected happy solutions to tricksy problems. A big old platform of optimism. An unguarded life. I’m not sure I have words to describe the feeling of my life working like my life always used to again. Or the slowly dawning realisation that it did, and does, bc of how I do Me in conjunction with other humans. I never believed I would feel like that again, feel like my life felt like Me again, but I was wrong. It’s like a warm bath tbh. And worth sticking it out for. My former h gained a lot from that energy bc it attracts good things and good people....but it was always springing from me. I have no idea if he has now made his own version in his own life, but he did not take mine when he obliterated the old shared life. And the PTSD Pac-Man didn’t take it away forever either.
So, practically speaking, me and Gracie will take on the lease of the new house on the 21st and leave here on the 31st. The house here is full of boxes and bubble wrap and random appliances in the sitting room; Gracie is unimpressed by the new decor so sneers slightly on her way to snooze on the end of my bed :) That gives me time to do some painting and prep in the new place (fortunately sans feline assistance lol) before the new little cottage is filled up with furniture. Ha ha, more fettling. The sun is shining here, a few very warm Spring days are forecast for the next couple of weeks. Little car is now in the hands of some lovely chaps who love old cars so she too will get her new chapter just as I get mine. My last health check was a thumbs up. My mother is still alive after covid and norovirus, and soon I will work out a way to get there for a visit without a car. And I have just found out that the new little cottage, which I knew by number, actually has a name....Appletree Cottage. Isn’t that lovely?
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Appletree Cottage. How lovely. It’s autumn here and we’re having lovely weather as well. I’m so glad you’re falling on your feet T. And I absolutely understand what you mean about your life working like it used to because of You and the way you work in the world. I’m experiencing that a bit myself and am grateful for it. As always lovely to read your update.
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I’m happy for you Treasur that you have found a new home and that your are beginning a new chapter in your life. You deserve all the good things in life. I hope to be like you, that after all the $h!te your H made you go through, there is still no trace of bitterness in you. The way you talk to people here shows only kindness and resilience.
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Treasur- that name is so quaint. I can hardly wait to get to where you are. I have seen moments of it, so I know it’s possible. Still more work to do. I hope your are surrounded by all good people when you move. Goodness is always there as is happiness. It’s good to read this to remind is it’s on the horizon !!
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So happy for your Appletree Cottage. :) I wish you a smooth transition and move.
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A funny thing happened on the way to the
forum new house lol.
The diamond fell out of my engagement ring somewhere between here and there or there and here. It was a tension set small diamond and in years of gardening and all kinds of hauling stuff around that had never happened even though I never took it off.
After the divorce, I moved it to my right hand. The first time it came out was when I moved here in 2018. Caught it on a door and it pinged out. I was really distraught but then found it on the floor and got it reset. And then, without my noticing, it happened again yesterday.
Yesterday was another day full of Goodness. Sunshine. Met new neighbours who seemed very nice. And a neighbour cockapoo called Maggie who will doubtless set up a ‘who’s the real diva’ competition with Gracie lol.. New landlords turned up with a bottle of fizz and a housewarming card. And the new house has a really nice feel to it. Plus a chum here hosted me for supper thinking i’d have been too busy to want to cook. All good stuff.
And then I spotted the missing diamond ::)
What was interesting though was my reaction to it....I was lightly miffed as you would be about any missing diamond in a piece of jewellery but not distressed or distraught. It used to mean so much to me and now, without my being conscious of it, it no longer does although it is irreplaceable of course as the one chosen by my then about to be h in 2003. Isn’t that funny? I guess I have detached more than I noticed from these kinds of things and from what they used to mean to me. I will keep my eye out today in case I see it....although it really is a VERY small diamond lol....but i feel a bit hey ho about it, just another thing to fettle or not at some point when I have head space.
Onwards and upwards. Boxes to pack. Paint being delivered. Change of address stuff to do.
Just thought i’d share this though as an example to newbies that you may not always feel how you feel now. Although to be fair, i’m a shockingly slow learner, so it took me six years or so :D :D :D
Oh and it was my xh’s birthday on Sunday and I forgot until I realised the date yesterday :)
Life moves forward......
PS now isn’t that funny....I just found the diamond at the bottom of my handbag ??? It had obviously fallen out as I was getting paperwork and new keys in and out of my bag yesterday. What was the chance? Bizarre. Ah well, God/the universe obviously thinks it still belongs with me. I’ll tuck it away for repair when I have time :)
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Wow, on the diamond! You know on your reaction to the diamond I have a little bit of a story like that on my mothers. My D31 went to visit her cousin for her bday. I asked to her get my Moms engagement ring from her BF. She sent a picture of it and all the diamonds were gone. I said, I still want it.
My D31 came home and never gave it to me. Weeks went by and I finally asked. She said, I got drunk and fell in the snow outside and the ring must have came out. We couldn’t find it. So, she just said nothing???? I said, what? Why didn’t you tell me. She said, we hoped we could find it. I said well that’s disappointing and that was all I said. She never apologized or anything.
I moved on from it. It is just a object. I would have loved to have it, but it wont change my life. If you don't find your diamond maybe you can replace it with a different stone. Maybe your birth stone. Maybe it’s a sign? I know some are skeptical of signs and I have always hated the “ everything happens for a reason” ( I always had a hard time after my daughters death with that one) but I do think that there is some truth to it.
Good to hear you had had a warm welcome in your new space. 😊
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Diamond lost...found...lost...then found again. All occurring b/c the universe is reminding you that you are detaching in a way and in the time that only you could do. At least that is my take on it anyway.
Your new place sounds wonderful. And I have no doubt you will make it magical for you and Gracie in no time.
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I am so happy for your new place, Appletree Cottage sounds just right!
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Congrats on the successful move! I'm a slow learner too! 5 years on and things are fine for the first time!
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Looking forward to reading about you and Gracie's new adventures at Appletree Cottage.
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Well, finally, I am out and in! Fair to say that the moving process was hard work and did not go according to plan lol. Snow, gales and a moving team halved by covid made it all more difficult so my moving ‘day’ ended up being a game of two halves - part one on Thursday followed by part two on Monday. A blown down tree, a couple of small breakages, a chest of drawers that won’t fit up the twisty cottage stairs, a car still in the shop, no broadband....and why is it that the one box you really need is always lurking underneath ten others lol....but also some very welcoming new neighbours, a bunch of daffodils from a random stranger, kind helpful chums and a house that ‘feels’ right. Plus a new garden to play with. I was very impressed and reassured though by how my system coped with it all :) such a clear signal of how far I have recovered from how I was a few years ago. Grateful for that.
It’s an interesting process in unpacking to see markers of an old life and to find oneself reflecting without pain on things that might or might not fit a new chapter. I have a ridiculous number of champagne glasses ::)
So, lots of fettling still to do here. Tbh the new house looks like an old fashioned junk shop right now when you have to clamber over a pile of boxes to find a hidden sofa treasure lol. But it feels like good fettling if that makes sense. Fettling for good purpose. Fettling that is about more than survival. Fun fettling. And Gracie the cat has been surprisingly good....she has commandeered the main bedroom which is a pocket of calm order and likes playing with empty boxes it seems :)
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(https://media.giphy.com/media/ciwAC8vb2YlC758Wcq/giphy-downsized-large.gif)
New exercise routine for Gracie?
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All in all sounds like a pretty good move. When you write about your new place and for that matter the old, both sound so quaint. Maybe you just have a good picker for homes. Enjoy your new garden after you dig through those boxes. Lots to look forward to. Specially welcoming neighbors. That in itself makes it a good start.
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I'm glad the new place feels right. My kitty loves boxes too.
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Congratulations, Treasur, on finding your home for this next chapter. I am glad to hear you and Gracie are settling in.
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Congrats on the new space. Hopefully a change of location is therapeutic. Despite how much moving stinks, there really is something about a fresh start.
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So glad you are home. I spent the last 3 days moving all of H's paintings and supplies into storage. I have not touched the room since he physically checked out 12/19. It was his room with 40 years of paintings, easels, painting supplies, books etc. My 4 year old granddaughter and 2 year old grandson are coming for Easter. I made the decision to empty the room and not worry about them getting into stuff. I will say it was an emotional challenge but i now have a very clean sitting room.
Enjoy the creation of your new home.
5hil
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It has been a couple of days of a surprising kind of fettling, the kind you do without quite realising you were. Inside fettling perhaps :) Sharing in case anyone else here experiences something similar years on in their own recovery and wonders if they are normal :)
Had an eye test with an optician, first one in years and years bc well BD, PTSD and pandemic. They recommended varifocals. Which was going to be staggeringly expensive. And I felt that I could not make a decision to save my life. It was a triggering feeling, not even sure why tbh. So, as we do with those transferable skills from our trip through Hell, I used the rule of 3. Told them I needed time to think and would come back the next day. Slept on it.....and decided then that my current life didn’t need varifocals as I was quite content to use two different glasses for different tasks....and that spending £600 on a solution I didn’t feel committed to didn’t work for me either. So I got there.....ended up with a £100 set of new reading glasses instead...but it was odd to see how I can still freeze in indecision over such a simple thing and to hear that snarky critical inner voice (you all know the one lol) wake up and start shouting at me.
Little car was ready to pick up on Thursday. I knew I felt uneasy; I could feel it physically but again wasn’t sure why. I needed to get a train for a 50 minute journey to where little car was, a local town I/we used to spend time in. All went well....lovely men came to preen their mechanics feathers as they showed me their work...one did the welding, another whispered to the electrics, another had sorted out the immobiliser....it was a den of classic car geeks and they stood together waving me off as I drove away :) But, belatedly en route, I realised why I felt uneasy....it was my first time on a train since I threw up on my shoes unable to board one in idk 2019?...a train that took me right through the countryside stations where we used to live....to a town where I used to pick up my h from his office and go via when I was working in London. It was like a memory trip ::) But you know what? I did it and it didn’t hurt. Felt slightly spacy, as if that old life was far away and a different person, but it didn’t hurt. Or make me throw up on my shoes which was good bc I was wearing some particularly snazzy ones :)
And then Friday was my mother’s 80th birthday so I drove up to see her in the place where my old life blew up, just over an hour away from my new home, having not driven at all for months by this point. Those of you with experience of loved ones with dementia will, I suspect, know that it always hurts to see them regardless of how any visit goes. It is never ‘nice’ or ‘normal’ imho, just somewhere on a sliding scale of ok vs not ok. And I could not help but think of how I wished her birthday were being celebrated as it would have been before her life and mine imploded, how much I yearned to be able to be the daughter I was with the mother I had. And on the drive I noticed that, although I am no longer in the grip of PTSD, that residue of anxiety does not take much to prod awake. Had I remembered a cake knife? Should I wear a mask? Would she recognise me? Was all this birthday stuff just nonsensical folderol when someone’s dementia is so advanced? Would the car be ok? And what if it broke down again? Endless anxiety blips popping up having to be swatted down......its exhausting to live with such a noisy uncertain head isn’t it? But again, I did it. And again the kindness of others helped. My uncle came although he hates seeing her like this. The staff who know her well now and see her as a person still. That little glimmer when we locked eyes and her eyes smiled and I knew she knew who I was, just for a moment. A moment when she looked at my masked uncle, who sounds so much like a louder version of my dad and has his eyes, tilted her head like an inquisitive bird and then giggled at him. And my own ability to be calmly cheerful when she started throwing things like an exasperated toddler and make jokes about being able to save the cake from sailing across the room. (For a frail creature, my mum has a surprisingly good throwing arm....all those muscles honed from years of nursing I suspect :) )
So, today, I feel rather proud of myself. Much left still to fettle but I did good these last few days. And it is rather nice to feel proud of myself again :) How comforting it is to me now to know that I tried my best even when it wasn’t very good, that I kept going, that I did everything in my power to honour and respect my loved ones even when it was hard, that I have allowed other good folks to show up in my life, that I have accepted help when I needed it, that my own dark places did not eat me entirely. I feel like a little tiny hero in my own life tbh....and I have not felt like that before. That is not nothing in the course of a life. Oh, and that snazzy shoes matter again :)
Off to a local charity plant sale shortly, set up in a small arboretum a couple of minutes from my new home. A couple coming to pick up a big filing cabinet I no longer need. Uncle coming for brunch on Monday. Another chum coming to visit next week. Work and to do stuff and plans and schemes and company.....I actually have a working diary again with stuff in it, remarkable.....and Gracie is bombing around the house like Usain Bolt to remind me that I have been awol for the last couple of days so she needs cat ‘Me’ time today when I will do weeding and she will do pouncing on invisible things with a chirruping commentary until we are both exhausted and curl up for the evening with a good book and a glass of wine!
Life is nothing like it was tbh, but it’s good enough, more than good enough in many ways
It gets better, my friends, it really does get better......
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Treasur, I’m continually awed by your strength and grace and insight, and it’s precisely because of experiences like these (and the way you reflect on them). None of this journey is easy, and getting through it to heal and grow in your new life is admirable, no matter what that new life looks like. If you had chosen to start over in a place where you would never have a single experience that triggered memories of your past trauma, that would still be completely admirable. And if it had happened that you were able to live those experiences without being affected by your prior trauma, it would still be completely admirable that you were able to live the life you chose, on your terms. But to face those triggers, to push through them and to make your way in the world despite them - well, I’m glad that you are proud of yourself because the gentle strength it takes to do that, that is an accomplishment that merits some pride.
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What a great update Treasur….as always actually
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I was rather brave today bc I really did not want to do what needed to be done.
At the weekend, Gracie showed signs of having seizures. I don’t know why yet and I truly wanted to believe that it wasn’t what I thought it was. This morning I knew we had to go to the vet but oh, my soul just does not want more bad things to tackle....but i’m her human and it goes with the job.
The blood tests came back clear so that rules out toxins or side-effects of other illnesses. So it is either epilepsy, a stroke or a brain tumour. Waiting for further results but it might be that the cause is impossible to pin down. And choices will need to be made without 100% certainty.
She is 3. And it breaks my heart to see my proud elegant little Grace have a spasm and fall off a chair, to not be able to let her out to play in the garden with me bc climbing tall fences as she will is no longer safe.
She does not seem to be in pain or distress, but life just changed again and I don’t know what the best course of action will be tbh.
I’m tired of loss and fettling new problems. I’ll be better tomorrow but today I am just sad and frustrated and unsure what will be the right path for her and me. And it seems so unfair to my gorgeous young Grace.
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Oh, treasur, I am so sorry. More losses and hard things to deal with. And I so know how you feel, on all fronts. On top of all our family mess my cat as well has had a horrible diagnoses and I've had to make all sorts of choices I just wish I didn't have to deal with at all. For the record the cat is still with us several years later (longer than expected), but there is much uncertainty.
And it's not at all fair to Grace, nor to you.
My heart goes out to you.
x
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So sorry to hear about Gracie. Pets are also like family so when they get sick, it’s also hard and painful for us. If my dog pukes because of something she ate, I would be panicking already. I hope the vet will be able to help Gracie. Hugs to you.
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Wow Gracie is part of our family. Sending you strength and mega virtual hugs.
5hil
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Oh no, I just had to make that tough choice with my beautiful Bailey . I’m so sorry you are having to even think about this . the unconditional love of our animals can not even be measured. I’m so very sorry and will send positive thought both your way.
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I am very sorry to hear about Gracie. As others have said, our pets give us unconditional love and really help us in so many ways.
Hope it is something that can be treated easily. Let us know.
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Oh my gosh Treasur, I can't tell you how sorry I am to hear about little Gracie.
I know how much she means to you.
I pray they can come up with some answers to help her.
Grace was so blessed to have found such a good mom.
I remember how hard it was for you to lose your other cat who had been with you through so much...and I'm sorry I don't remember his name, it's right on the tip of my tongue.
Please let us know how things go.
{{Big Hug}}
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Very sorry to hear that Gracie is poorly Treasur. Sending big hugs.
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A few vets have said here that the LBS life skills we acquire turn out to be pretty useful for lots of other things, and that has proved to be so here too.
In the course of a day, after posting here, I was able to wrestle my mind back to a more useful place. I don’t know what the cause or prognosis is for Gracie....so just like not knowing post BD etc, I can choose how I think about it. I can choose to operate on the belief right now, in the absence of other info, that there will be some anti-convulsants medication that will work and that I am a creative human who will figure out a way to help Gracie live differently but well. If that changes, I’ll adapt to that. I should hear from the vet today or tomorrow about the last set of tests and i’ll figure It out from there.
But oh my goodness, she’s a spunky little cat, full of love and head butt purrs regardless. And I have been buttressed by love and kindness from friends in RL, from you guys, from strangers in a pet store overhearing my conversation about potential options and popping up to say that their cat/dog has epilepsy and is doing well on medication some years later :) kindness....its a darned superpower, isn’t it?
So, as I am writing this morning, Gracie is curled up snoozing in a patch of sunlight at the end of my bed. No seizures yet this morning but tuna for breakfast :) the sun is shining after a rainy grey day yesterday and the birds are singing. A chum is swinging by later this morning to take us both to a garden centre a few miles away that neither of us have visited before which is built in the walled garden of an old Manor House. There will be tea and cake. Me and Gracie have had a bit of a scary rollercoaster couple of months, that’s true, but we have survived that and we are surrounded by love and support whatever unfolds. And there is always tuna and cake ;)
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Hi Treasur, good to hear Gracie us fine again.
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How IS Gracie doing Treasur? I love a head butt purry kitty. Our Swaggie kitty is still so very much missed and when I read your post up there about Gracie sleeping in the sun it brought back vividly what it was like to spend time with her. I’m hoping Gracie is doing well and you have some good options for medication treatment. I’m also hoping that this weekend there is more cake and tuna! Xx
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Gracie is still unwell unfortunately. None of the tests showed anything which is good and bad bc it would help to have a cause. Meanwhile I feel like I am obsessively watching her every move. Ha ha, i’m saying that to a bunch of LBS, right? ??? :)
So I am (trying) to start her on anti-convulsant meds at the vet’s suggestion. But she was off her food yesterday, perhaps bc she has had a few seizures just as she is about to eat, so the simple choice of mixing it with her food was a no-go. Which meant finding out that she does not much like taking medicine from a syringe ::) But also that she forgives me after a couple of minutes and wants to cuddle. And after a couple of hours, she was playing with her favourite ball for the first time in over a week. Which means this morning an early trip to the shop for tuna and sardines and out with the syringe again. It will probably take a week to see any real difference.....and of course if it is something like an aggressive brain tumour, the meds will make no real difference. So, right now, idk. But it is one of those times when being solo feels harder and I am aware that I am trying to keep faith while also steeling myself for the worst options which might come down the tracks. The old LBS hope for the best and prepare for the worst, but oh my, I am nervous of more lost loves in my life. Not easy at all. But what an affectionate little girl she is, even though she has been poked and prodded more in the last fortnight than in her entire life to date.
So, a tuna and cake weekend again I think. Sun shining after rain here yesterday so I will medicate by tackling some brambles and a bit of digging. And Gracie will snooze in a pocket of sunshine listening to the radio :)
I’ll let you all know how it goes but thank you for your thoughts and prayers for my much-loved little grey cat girl x
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Sun is shining here after rain as well in the Southern Hemisphere. I’m so sorry you haven’t any better news for Gracie yet. Enjoy the snoozy sunshine and peace with your little grey girl.
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So sorry to hear about Gracie Treasur. i thought she’s already ok. How old is she now? I can imagine your worries as I have my own pet. It must be heartbreaking to see her having seizures. Hang in there Treasur. Sending you both hugs and prayers.
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She’s only 3, Dragonfly, so it’s a hard thing to adapt to.
A conversation with a chum yesterday came out of gossiping about two mutual friends. We are fond of them both but have decided to call them The Rigidity Sistets bc they have a very particular window on the world. And of course they dislike each other heartily lol. She said, en passant, how lucky she feels to have an ability to appreciate the good in a given moment even when other things are not so great....and that it is something we have in common. And she’s right.
So, in that spirit, Gracie and medication was a bit of a struggle for a couple of days. I don’t know if she or me were more stressed about it tbh. But I found a way (please don’t laugh too much ::) ).....I put a small amount mixed with the liquid food on a dish, lie on the kitchen rug with her, we exchange a couple of head boops and some admiring chat, I hand feed a couple of mouthfuls and we’re off to the races. Much relief for her and me :) idk what the cause is, idk if it can be fixed by meds....and it is a bit too early to tell....but I can see that she is more Gracie-like, less tentative in herself, more playful. So, for now, things are ok :)
Gracie says I need to go to the post office and then come back to chillax with her (which usually involves me working and her asleep on a chair close by lol), so i’ll leave it at that. All shall be well, all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well....just important to stop and look at those things, isn’t it, regardless of the other stuff? :)
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Awww, love the Gracie meds approach and so glad she seems to be more Gracie ❤️
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Oh Treasur no one would ever laugh at you for loving her and trying to be a comfort to her by laying with her while she takes her meds. Got my eyes a bit misty.
I'm glad she is a bit more herself.
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Treasur I love how you love,
It's great to hear there are options for Gracie. One time when my dog was having a hard time delivering her puppies i laid down with her. I rubbed her belly and caressed her body until every puppy was born all 10 of them.
Sending you a lot of hugs,
5hil
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Aw, it sounds like Gracie hit the jackpot in the “dog mom” lottery! I hope you continue to see improvement for Gracie.
A little self disclosure, ..I’m a big lover of dogs!!! 🐕 🐕🐕🤣
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So sorry your pretty kitty is struggling right now. You've had enough pain with losing your other kitty, was his name Louis? Like Thunder, I can't quite remember for sure.
Sending you and Gracie some thoughts and prayers from afar.
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Treasur How is Gracie now? Sometimes I also hand feed Luna when she doesn’t like to eat. Or I act like I am eating her food for her to get jealous and eventually eats her food. I hope this meds would help Gracie. Hugs to both of you.
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Thank you all so much for being concerned about Gracie.
It’s hard to tell if the medication is working....I think it is a little, less cluster seizures and she has a gap of a few hours in the middle of the day when she doesn’t have any, but I am trying not to make a judgment yet bc it is too early. And obviously something bad is causing this even if we can’t pin down what the cause is, so the future feels a bit dark tbh. Understandable.....I have had a lot of losses in the last few years and dread another one. And yes, Faith, how kind of you to remember Louis. Letting him go broke my heart when I wasn’t sure I had much left to break. But it’s the price of loving these small creatures that give us so much, isn’t it?
Blood tests are scheduled for the 8th and I suspect the next step will be to increase the dosage bc she is on the lowest dose possible right now. The weather has improved here and she’s a bit frustrated she can’t be outside in the garden but has colonised my bed as her morning snooze spot.
I am doing the LBS 101 thing of leaning into the gifts of each day and marvelling at how much this little elegant creature trusts me, how quick she is to come for a cuddle and how much I enjoy the sound of her purr close by. And adapting to the smell of sardines at 7am lol.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. :D
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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!)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 :)
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Treasur- I read your words and they could have been mine ( if I could write and insightfully and eloquently) I see my story past and future playing out so similarly. Sometimes ( for me atleast) the hardest part to healing was accepting that I fought the hard battle with no actual weapon, but still proud now looking back that I also gave it my all. Thank you again for sharing
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As I sit here drinking my morning coffee I appreciate how well you put into words what so many of us felt or are feeling. And that is strangely reassuring.
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. ....... I wasn’t sleeping or eating, and I just had no idea what was going on. ......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 I would never see or speak to him again. I simply had no clue. These were unimaginable things to me. Until they weren’t :)
I really miss the old me.
I have a great deal of anxiety about things...maybe I would have had anyway and I guess I control it as best as I can...therapy, exercise, yoga, gardening, socializing with others, medication when I have to. I know when I enter into one of these "anxiety states" that I am being ridiculous...in an episode this week (all because I have an infected finger that didn't respond to the first antibiotic) I did realize that at the bottom of these times is fear.....I think that something triggers me and then initiates my reptilian brain and viola....fear. (actually I just looked that up on the internet and it validates that this is so).
This is a snippet of what I was reading:
The amygdala is the emotional center of the brain so it’s where you get feelings like pleasure, fear, anxiety and anger. The amygdala also attaches emotion to your memories, so it’s got an important role in determining how strongly those memories are stored. Memories that have some robust emotional meaning tend to be the ones that stick. It plays a key role in forming new memories specifically related to fear. Fearful memories are able to be formed after only a few repetitions.
In fact, your amygdala is always on point scanning for any threats in your environment. This can be anything from a tiger about to eat you to your partner keeping their mouth open when they’re eating. The problem is that your amygdala is a diva and overreacts to everything so treats these “threats” the same!
I just remembered a little phrase Mr. xyzcf used to say when watching our cat intensely gaze at something :
"Is it a moth or an axe murderer?" (all those memories stored in our brains).
So it doesn't matter how real the danger is, our body's response is the same.
Then I watch the news and see so many many people around the world suffering and there is such a disconnect because I have been given so much...and if I cannot find "her", the woman I once was, that's on me...she is in there somewhere waiting to be set free.
I am a firm believer in many of the things you listed. I started golfing after BD, I golf twice a week and I find it very therapeutic. When I am ready to hit the ball, there is this moment when all the monkey braining stops and the focus is only on that little ball and how far it will fly (or not). Yoga has the same effect....quieting my nervous system, making room in my chest to breath.
I am glad to hear that Gracie is better! I have not had a dog for 17 months, and I think a dog would be good for me (I had three dogs over a period of 37 years) but something holds me back from getting another one...I can come up with a whole list of reasons why I shouldn't...and therein lies a problem for me..."fear" gets in the way of my fully living. So I guess that is the next thing to work on.
Sorry to ramble on, your writing this morning just had me thinking.
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.
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I miss the old me too, xyzcf.
And recognise that feeling of learning to live with an amygdala that just seems to be set at a higher baseline than it used to be.
I think, perhaps, that I am just learning that there may be a difference between reducing the effect of Fear (and for me this kind of Fear, the one that spirals, always comes with a big F and feels quite different from normal fear( and learning to get a life on the other side of it. The first used many of the things you describe when the goal was to turn down the volume on my nervous system. The second, and I think this is what I am trying to learn to do now but it’s early days, is to see if I can return to a life without the Fear. The first feels like surviving, the latter like trying to live a life that feels more normal again. Hard to put into words but they feel different to me.
So, get a dog, xyzcf, just like I got Gracie.....it’s a choice to reclaim some part of your own version of normal imho. And Fear tells more lies than even an MLCer :)
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I post on other people’s threads still, but I find I no longer have so much to say on mine. However, I also know that we all welcome the odd update from those who we have supported or been supported by, from people we feel we know a little and care about.
I had a birthday a couple of weeks ago. Well, it turned into a kind of birthday week and a half lol. Being honest with myself, my birthdays now come with a small undertow of sadness that my family are no longer around to say happy birthday. Particularly that my mother doesn’t know it’s my birthday. I wish that little undertow of sadness were not there on special days or events, but I find it easier to just accept that it is how it is. But oh my word, lots of other folks went out of their way to send me love or show their pleasure that I am on the planet still. So I had a lovely birthday with just the right amount of folderol. :)
I have been working with my own coach for a couple of months now. I have found it surprisingly difficult at times as well as even more helpful than I thought it would be. Quite gritty at times actually. Which is funny as it’s my trade too, isn’t it? :) My biggest win I think is that, finally, I have a sense of personal momentum. It feels as if I am really building something as opposed to a kind of surviving with go faster stripes. But it’s true to say too that the feeling of momentum is sometimes earned through some scary sludge moments. So, I press on.....
I do find myself resenting the fear feelings and triggers, the PTSD and life residue, every time it pops up. It seems terribly unfair somehow that I still have it on my radar screen even if it is so much less than before. Even though I have worked so hard to find ways to temper it that work. I hate that punched in the gut feeling, really I hate it. I resent the need to wrestle with my own amygdala at times or how a relatively small cluster of life stuff can wake it up, even though at the same time I am grateful for now understanding enough to know that my amygdala is not me. And it’s useful as a coach....in fact I had a conversation only recently with someone unpicking the difference when you are having a problem solving conversation with your amygdala vs one with your frontal cortex.
I suppose it still feels as if my nervous system’s baseline is set higher than it was for the first fifty or so years of my life.....not as high as it was, true enough, but still higher than feels normal or natural for me. And I resent the energy that wrestling it into place sometimes takes. The sort of intentionality and effort that it requires sometimes. Will it always be set higher than I might wish? Idk. Maybe. Maybe not given that it is not as high as it was when I couldn’t imagine a time when I would live without a constant sense of an alarm going ‘Parp, parp’. But it feels unfair somehow and my mental five year old stamps her foot about it.....
Gracie is doing very well indeed. Last seizure was 16th August. She is due an MOT check up next week but so far so good. And she has definitely returned to her baseline of chatty feline assertiveness which is lovely. Although it wasn’t so lovely when I found her face-planted in my buttered toast last week and refusing to even move when I shouted at her ; just a side look to say ‘finders keepers’ while she kept slurping!
My mum is much the same, perhaps slightly worse. She has had a few falls in the last few months and recently broker her arm again. Really tbh there is no one observably home when I see her. That always hurts to see but I count my blessings that she is not distressed, just elsewhere.
Bar my occasional amygdala parps, and the odd unwanted life consequences of what happened, I am not unhappy. I am often relatively content and at peace. I am ok. And, if my future POV follows the path of my past POV as seems possible, I am heading in the direction of better than ok bit by bit. But gosh, the scale of the damage that was created seems rather disproportionate to any of my mistakes or failings as a person or spouse, so I allow myself those foot stamping small tantrum moments when they pop up. They never last that long :)
So I send all of you a hello nod, an encouraging hug and a little bit of autumn sunshine from my garden. Am off to pull weeds and cut back shrubbery now :)
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Happy belated Birthday Treasur.
I'm so glad Gracie is doing well, it's horrible when our pets are unwell, so it's great she's on the mend.
I always say it but your posts are so wonderfully written. I imagine you have several books in you!
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Happy birthday!
My mom had Alzheimer's. It was hard to see her physically look like my mom but her eyes were vacant. I only hope that she was ok inside...sometimes she seemed "scared". I guess not knowing what was going on.
Gracie sounds mischievous and fun. Great companionship.
But gosh, the scale of the damage that was created seems rather disproportionate to any of my mistakes or failings as a person or spouse,
The scale of the damage is far beyond anything I would have expected and it continues to linger even though I wish it would not. I think that is true for many of us, although some seem to resolve it somehow.
However, and I know you know this, any mistakes or failures we might have had did not cause their crisis. We are collateral damage and bare the scars. I see my husband and he seems very pleased with his life, which is not at all a life I would choose. It is so very different from the life we built and shared.
We pick up the pieces of ourselves and are grateful for the times when we are experiencing joy and excitement. But there is a shadow, the memories remain embedded in my heart of what once was and how life could be for both of us together. But that is not what he wants.
I do think it is understandable that we feel sadness, for we are beings that feel a wide range of emotions. I am not sure the MLCer feels much of anything.
Understanding how our amygdala contributes to this fear and how our nervous system responds is really helpful to bring me back to a more relaxed state. I was going to restorative yoga classes twice a week which seemed to help me maintain this state but I was traveling and then I got sick...I notice a difference when I am not practicing that regularly.
Thank you for sharing how you are doing. It is very helpful to others. Thank you also for all the time you take to respond to people on HS. Some of the things you talk about are often not explained well on the outside world and in order for us to regain our balance, it is helpful to know what our brains and nervous system are doing...as well as knowing that none of us are alone in how we are feeling.
Years ago, many of us met up in person in various locations around the world, and those few days were some of the best therapy for me. To meet others who I knew quite well from the forum in person, there was an instant connection and a huge "relief" that the thoughts and feelings I had were shared by others.....because people that had never had this happen to them, really didn't understand.
Give Gracie an extra treat and enjoy your day!
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Happy Birthday, treasur!
I'm glad you had a good day, and I, too, want to thank you for continuing to post; your insights and ability to pick things apart into their component pieces helps us all see a bit more clearly, I get so much from this even many years down the line.
And I'm so glad Gracie is doing well!
x
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Sending you belated good wishes for your birthday, and thanks for all that you contribute within this community. I am so happy that you are loved and celebrated on your birthday, even if it looks a bit different than it used to.
I’m grateful for your continued updates - it’s not quite the same to just see your posts in other threads, and the updates about how you (and Gracie, of course) are doing. So happy to know you are both well, and that she is refined enough to enjoy a nice piece of buttered toast now and again.
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Thank you all for your happy wishes :)
even if it looks a bit different than it used to.
Well, yes. Quite a lot of things are.
Was lightly musing while weeding in early light this morning. (Nuts, I know, but I like the calm of autumn morning as the birds wake up and autumn light is nice!)
Ignoring the whys and whatnots, the reality is that someone I trusted thought it was ok to unilaterally destroy much of my old life when I was at my most vulnerable bc of other events or that my suffering was an acceotable price for their happiness.....there were so many middle paths not taken. I find now, as a vet, that makes me a little cynical about some things in a way I wish I were not....but i’d feel silly or as if I hadn’t been paying attention if I weren’t. At the same time, in a magic bit of dissonance, I am usually profoundly touched by how remarkably kind, loving and thoughtful we humans can be. It can be a head-scratcher lol.
As time and my perspective has moved forward, I find my take on MLC is different than it used to be. I believe it exists, that some folks can just unravel....but I also think that we humans can encounter situations where we give ourselves permission to treat other humans horribly. And that there are components of someone’s character that enable them to do this. Necessary but not sufficient character traits. A kind of immature human San Andreas fault line, if you like. Hard to predict but sometimes easier to see with hindsight.
More importantly, for LBS, I think we have to acknowledge that there is a fine and tricky line between seeing MLC as an explanation and seeing it as a partial justification. Or even a kind of distracting glitter that can segue into a kind of soft denial of things in front of our nose. It’s so understandable, isn’t it, that very human need to explain why something happened to us and why we couldn’t foresee it or do much to prevent it happening? At a very simple level, I suspect it is how our hind brains seek to protect us in future....if x happened bc of y, then I can stop it happening now by doing z or prevent it happening again by being on the lookout for y. So normal. The big lesson for me, I think, is to respect the power of the mindf**k and do whatever we need to do to remove ourselves from it, to honour our own normal whatever anyone else thinks about it.
There are some big simple lessons hidden in our messes, aren’t there?
That we suffer more when we hang on to things. That trauma has a real effect on wellbeing. That you don’t have to hate someone, or even be particularly angry, to say No or Enough. That if things quack like a duck etc, they are more often than not a duck. That you can’t Nice or Reason someone out of wanting to abuse or devalue or leave you. That boundaries feel weird before they feel comfortable. That we really only control, and sometimes then to a limited degree, what lives on our side of the street. That we have much less influence than we think on other people’s side of the street, but also much less responsibility, obligation or accountability. And that sometimes really big horrible sh&t happens around us not because of us :)
Years on, I honestly pretty much don’t know why what happened happened. I can hypothesise but I din’t know. Which is uncomfortable tbh. Years on, I honestly don’t know if my former h ever loved or valued me or my family at all. Bc my version of common sense says that you don’t do some of the things he did, or didn’t do, over and over again for years, had that been so. And that’s uncomfortable too bc it leaves me not knowing the reality of something like 50% of over 20 years....what’s that, about 20% of my adult life? And feeling like the only thing I could have done to avoid the horror of what happened was never married or trusted my then h. To see what I couldn’t see or know what I didn’t know. And of course, that choice is beyond my control too lol. And all of that acceptance of reality stuff sucks. I kept trying to join the dots for years and years bc I did not want to swallow that loss and those feelings too. None of it is what I wanted for my life or my future or my past or my family. But it was what I got ::), so eventually I suppose it felt necessary to accept some things in order to stop chewing on them.
My experience is a sample of one though, of course it is, and the evolution from a h that started being very weird and was under psychiatric care to a remarried vanisher who went poof is not the same as every experience here. It does seem to me though that being aware in oneself of that tricky line between explanation (to oneself) and soft glitter (about the spouse) is important. That both things can be true....that a spouse unravels into something unrecognisably weird in a situation beyond your control or comprehension AND that, without glitter, this person has shown you that they are capable of doing what they did to you given certain conditions and part of their mindset finds it acceptable enough to do it more than once or for an extended period of time. I have no idea how, having seen that, one can build anything good with that unless you see a thousand green flags over an equally long period that both the conditions and their mindset have fundamentally changed. And it’s a jolly difficult thing to assess someone else’s insides from the outside, isn’t it? And a bit tiring too perhaps to invest a lot of hypervigilant energy in watching lol.
It’s not my place to tell anyone else what to do about their spouse. After all, my score was 0-1 on the marriage front - with a lot of injury time ha ha. But, as a vet, I suppose I have to acknowledge my own cynicism about the utility of playing the MLC game with operating rules shaped by the MLCer or awol spouse. And the value of glitter lol. For most of us, this truly terrible and life altering thing happens and usually keeps happening for quite a while. And it upends us to greater or lesser degrees. There are very few examples of good reconciliation building after that kind of scourging....not none, but very few. But there are more examples of hard won ‘pretty good but different’ life building here. Which is why for me when I post now, I keep my opinions about MLC and marriages and reconnections et al (mostly) to myself and focus on trying to gently encourage LBS to accept what they see as a current observable reality, step back from mindf**kery (their own and others) when they feel ready and to begin inch by inch to work out what to do with the different version of their lives and their own normal.
To fettle ourselves and our own presents and futures, I suppose :)
Not sure that always makes me an appealing voice lol. But I hope it makes me an honest and supportive one when as you say, Curiosity, it all ‘looks a bit different than it used to’ :)
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Treasur I don't post much but do keep track of various threads. Just wanted to say what a great read and we seem to be in similar places and mindsets as I also have been pondering these same thoughts. Thank you so much for sharing it with us with such clarity.
To me your voice is always appealing. Nothing is more appealing than honesty (specially with self) and wisdom!
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Happy belated birthday! I feel like every time I read any of your posts they help me to consider things slightly differently or cause me to reflect. It really is invaluable. There really is something about autumn mornings that are peaceful. I find the crisp air and lack of people noise calming so early morning gardening sounds great to me.
I think for most of us trying to wrap our brains around how someone could treat us this way is natural. In these situations though we really won’t ever have a clear answer. I know it’s something I struggle with and find myself gradually letting go of needing to fully understand. I suppose the only way to fully understand would be if I was going to do the same thing and well, I would rather not be that kind of person. I think you are spot on that we try in order to protect ourselves in the future and I suppose failing to even try to protect ourselves from this type of damage wouldn’t be very smart.
Your observations on the type of people who do this are also very keen as usual. At first it seems pretty natural to need something (MLC) to blame. Nothing is ever really quite that simple though with human behavior. I know my stbx certainly fits the description of having character traits that allow him to do this. I suppose he always did but as he aged he stopped fighting those less desirable traits. Sometimes I wonder if the real lesson in this is truly learning to try and shape ourself and our own character as that’s all We can control anyway. As people have reached out in love and kindness and support, I find myself wanting to pay that forward. It makes me think of Darwin. We’ve all experienced an evolutionary event in our lives that is forcing us to adapt and and change. How we ultimately do evolve is up to us and what work we put in. I may always have the shadows of what was lost but I get to chose what those shadows lead me to. Maybe the damage makes it harder to ever love with the same abandon that was once possible but maybe it helps us to be more purposeful and thoughtful and that isn’t nothing is it? MLCers seem to often have an event that sets off their own evolution or regression or whatever you would term it and at some level at least they are responsible for the choices they make too.
So many more good points as well that I want to think through more fully but have to haul myself out of bed to get kids off to school.
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I have to say, Treasur, that I find your form of honestly - gentle but unyielding, loving but firm, to be very appealing. You offer new perspectives to struggling people, all the while showing great respect for their choices and emotional responses.
I have been thinking a lot about the things you describe here. I’m not sure why I have been thinking back on the early part of W’s crisis… maybe it’s that part of my brain that thinks of the perfect comeback an hour after it would have been useful in a debate. But I was thinking about W saying that I was her best friend, even as she was hoping to form new traditions with her limerent object. She was so hurt, so shocked that I was unsure about whether we could be any sort of friends at all after things settled out. And it comes down to the fact that, MLC or not, she still chose to emotionally abandon me and to betray the promises she made to me. She chose to not talk to me about things that affected me. I mean, a lot of people have some version of “unraveling” in their lives - MLC, response to a massive life change, illness, accident - and we change as a result of it. Our commitments are still our commitments, and breaking those will have consequences. And the consequences in this case include a shift in my boundaries - and I don’t know what the new boundaries would have looked like, but my close friends are people whom I trust, and people with whom the relationship is truly reciprocal. So, as you point out, even if there were still some love there, that would in no way preclude my saying No to a friendship with her. I think we have seen that from several of our vets here.
Please know that my description of things looking “a bit different” was intentional understatement and in no way meant to minimize what has changed and what you have built for yourself. I find you to be an incredible example of what it means to thrive after an unforeseen trauma.
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Now, just to share a little oddity - partly bc who gets it other than you guys lol, partly bc I hope it is a little hopeful light for those behind me - this morning I woke up from a dream of my former h. Long time since that has happened, so I can only assume that my thoughts in my last post stirred up some subconscious sludge ::)
In my dream, we were literally moving into a new house and he announced that he was leaving. All I managed to splutter was why he hadn’t said something before we signed the papers the previous week....he sort of shrugged, packed a small bag and said he didn’t know then. In my dream I felt exactly the same sensation of a huge gut punch. He did a kind of jaunty shrug, said nothing else and off he went, leaving me surrounded by boxes. But when I woke, i wasn’t distressed...the feeling didn’t carry through to waking....it was more a kind of ‘well what a weird and s$itty things to do’ feeling. And on I went with my day :) It was just a bit odd bc it really is a very long time since my xh has appeared in my dreams and it was sufficiently vivid that I saw details of his face that I have almost forgotten in real life.
And of course it is incredibly common here that BD coincides with exactly this kind of big life event....holidays, weddings, funerals, house moves. MLCers seem to be have a nose for doing the worst things at the worst times with a jaunty shrug ::)
But the bit that mattered to me is that the effect on waking was less than a minute.
It wasn’t very different from having a dream where I was having dinner with Mr Trump, say, or a pink elephant :)
That wasn’t so in the past so, for any of you feeling distressed by your dreams right now, please be reassured that it won’t always be this way x
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Treasur,
Reassuring that you have got to a place in your life where dreaming of your xH doesn’t send you spiraling.
I, like I’m sure other Newbies on here, get a lot of comfort in knowing, like all the vets say, it will get better/easier in time. That’s good to know when I’m sure for many of us, a good percentage of our waking hours are spent thinking about the MLCer and their actions, let alone when we are asleep!
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Belated happy birthday Treasur, so sorry for this late post. Thank you for sharing about your dream. It’s very reassuring to know that even though later on you will still have these sort of dreams, you don’t wake up anymore crying or having chest pains. You must have had triggers during the day that you dreamt of him again. I usually have triggers when I dream of him. I’ve been actually dreaming about my h very often nowadays and like your dream, he is also leaving me and just ignoring me. My trigger I think is the upcoming divorce proceedings in November. The closer it gets the more I dream about him. Crazy what they left us with. But hearing from your experience I am hopeful that I’ll get there someday.
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Wonder if that is your sub-conscious reminding you how far you've come. Always amazing considering where we started. You are right though--it is nearly impossible to see how we will ever find our way through the muck. And yet we all do. One way or another. Life goes on and it can be even better, or just as good but different, than before.
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It does, KIT. I still remember a time when I couldn’t even begin to see it, you too probably, but you’re right. Different but with good bits too. And the odd thorn tbh.
Lots of Christmas Hoo ha (should that be Ho ha?) in the shops and streets here, now that Halloween is over. Tbh, even all these years on, I notice that I approach Christmas a bit like approaching a large dog of uncertain temperament.....I am never entirely sure how much certain things might hurt, I think. Or how I feel about things I used to love so much. So, each Christmas feels like a kind of experiment.....oh, that’s nice or oooh, that’s weird or oof, that stings. So, for instance, I smiled like a child at the lights on my little high street but cried quietly trying to choose a card for my Mum. I have no plans; i’m not sure what I want to do but it will creep up on me, i’m sure. There are people and places I could ask to go or invite, just not sure what I need. I am also so aware that I am not the only human who finds these family times hard without a family to play with. Easy to forget that until you have personal experience of it, isn’t it?
I think I am going to get a Christmas tree though. Which will be Gracie’s first :) and my first since just after BD. As Gracie seems to like scaling curtains when she is the feline equivalent of bored, I have no doubt she will see a tree as a fun challenge! Always used to like a real tree but I find myself reluctant to kill one now, so it will either be a white artificial one or a growing one in a pot. The first is a bit environmentally dubious for my taste perhaps and the second a bit expensive to get a cat proof size and just for me...so I don’t know. But the fact that I am even contemplating these things is a difference from a few years ago in itself. I find nowadays I kind of have to mentally wrestle with what these kinds of rituals actually mean to me and I miss a time when I didn’t.
Miss Gracie passed her vet MOT with flying colours. To all of our surprise, given that we still have no idea what caused her seizures, the medication is doing it’s job even better than me and the young vet hoped it would. And with no noticeable side effects. Now, that’s a thing to feel grateful for, isn’t it! She has not had even a rattle for months. It has started to get a little chilly in the evenings here so Gracie has a new habit, along with mine of going to bed with a hot water bottle and a good book earlier....she flips up the brocade coverlet and creates a nest where she leans on me/the hot water bottle and sleep purrs for hours. There is something very soporific about an invisible cat purr so both of us sleep well :)
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Lots of Christmas Hoo ha (should that be Ho ha?)
;)
Great news about Gracie. I hope you find "your" tree, one that works for you and Miss G.
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Making new traditions.
These holidays are hard. One thing that helps me is to remember that he is only one part of my life.....I place him to the side and then allow so much more to come into my focus.....
I bought a prelit artifical tree after BD. We always had real trees but I never had to secure it and didn't want that much "work". I also started a new tradition, that everywhere I travelled, I purchased an exquisite Christmas decoration...not the "tacky" ones but a truly beautiful memento from where ever I had been...and so each year, these remind me of the wonderful times and places that I have memories of without him ( because many of the decorations I still have "such as First Christmas together do cause a reaction in me).
It is an intense emotional season, filled with memories including those from our childhood. Missing loved ones who have passed and sometimes it is such a relief just to get through all the festivities.
But you know, it's not just LBSers who experience this. My friends also talk to me about how these holidays trigger things in them.....
As with anything else, it is a choice we make...do we delight in the sparkle and music and parties or do we say "bah humbug" and turn away from the possibility that it might hurt us to participate in this time.....
I have learned that turning away from things in the long run was to my own detriment.
So let the festivities begin. I choose to go see a Children's Chorale concert, to bake a variety of cookies (mainly from my mother and mother in laws recipes still written on cards in their handwriting), send Christmas cards, to decorate, find gifts that will be appreciated, have dinner parties here and also find time for long walks and to relax, watch the Christmas specials and surround myself with people who love and care about me.
As with all things related to this loss, it takes years to create a new normal for these special times...each year adding a new tradition, even something small that "amuses" you.....
Let us know how Gracie reacts to the tree!
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I notice that I approach Christmas a bit like approaching a large dog of uncertain temperament.....I am never entirely sure how much certain things might hurt
Yes, this is exactly the feeling! You’ve described it so well. I also feel this way about Christmas (and many other ‘events’ through the year (Father’s Day, birthdays etc). Like you I’ve found it has gotten a little easier as the years go on, but there’s always trepidation.
Such good news about Gracie doing so well. We lost our Maggles-kitty last year and the bedtime cuddles/purs are one of the things I miss the most (we used to laugh that ‘oh Maggie’s is in her spot I see’ (which was my lap) and that I wouldn’t even notice, I was so used to her being there). D21 and I visited her cousin the other day and we were both ridiculously excited because she has a cuddly purry kitty. We spent a lot of the visit in a bedroom cuddling and cooing. I hope as Nas said, that you find ‘your tree’ and that together you create a lovely new tradition.
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Well, look at that, while I was heming and hawing, the universe decided that a 6ft white artificial tree for Miss Grace to admire/play with is just the ticket. A neighbour a street away was selling one they bought in lockdown for £5 because they have decided to go for a real tree this year now their kids are older...... :)
My old boy Louis always used to fixate on one particular bauble each year.....no reason why that one and not another, and it wasn’t always the same bauble....in fact it became a family joke each year calling it Bob the Bauble. His sister meanwhile would simply sneer at the tree and stroll away disinterested. We shall see how.Gracie does it next month :)
Just remembered a really lovely thing my former h did for me one year. We always used to make a bit of an event of getting and decorating a tree usually in the first week of December or so. But in 2014 I was working in Atlanta until a few days before Christmas....my then h got a tree and decorated it as a surprise for when I got back....lovely thing for him to do and i’d forgotten
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I had my tree up first week of November. It just feels cozy to have a Christmas tree. I also have an artificial one now as I don’t have a lift and it would be a challenge to haul the tree all the way to the 2nd floor. Lol. Luna fortunately is quite behaved and the Christmas balls are still in tact. My xH was never interested in Christmas trees. It was just me buying the real Christmass tree every year and decorated it. I used to get the biggest one lol. Christmas is my favourite season, it’s the birthday of my grandma as well. It reminds me of our big family celebrating my grandma’s birthday.
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How is Gracie doing with the tree Treasur?
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So far, so good, Faith. I’ve been trying to outwit her so let the tree stand naked for a few days in the hope that she’d find it boring by the time I decorated it.....planning on doing that today so we’ll see lol
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I read your Jan 2022 post as current by mistake. Nonetheless, your phrase about the holidays being a "time of echos" was poignant.
Sometimes that feels sad and sometimes it feels good to remember certain things. I've lost both parents now, one to dementia and one to a quick illness. And I lost a spouse to MLC.
My dad, fortunately, would say that "life is for the living".
That phrase helped me through MLC and the divorce once I had healed enough to build my new life. As many on this site know, healing became my #1 goal once I grasped that the old marriage was deceased, whether he "came back" or not. I put "came back" in quotes because there was no "back" to come to. There was only forward and new. Took me a very looooooooooong time to grasp that.
Life, although changed, is for the living. If you read that with a slight change in emphasis of the "for the living" part to mean "for the living of it", you can see why that was so helpful to me as I forged ahead to a new life that, at the time, was not my preference and was thrust upon me.
I've been very lucky to be a generally happy person. When MLC hit and I faced the pain and mental anguish the one thing I promised myself was to do everything I could to heal and get back to my generally happy baseline.
I am so glad that I did and that I embraced the living of life as best I could. Because who knows what the future had in store if I had continued with my old life? We really don't know what tomorrow can bring.
So as we have "times of echos", I try to shed a few tears to loss and then remember happy things about them too.
After losing a parent to dementia, I realize the preciousness and humanness of memories. We aren't really present without them. And I also realize that life is for the living. If we dwell in longing for the echos then we rob ourselves of the future. Why do that?
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Great post Reinventing.
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And I also realize that life is for the living. If we dwell in longing for the echos then we rob ourselves of the future. Why do that?
I wanted to reply on your thread so I didn’t hijack Treasures thread , but this is such an important thing to discuss. It just came up in my therapy a while back. I said, I lost both my parents and my daughter and I have been able to move forward and put it behind me. Not that I don’t miss them, but it is almost like coming to a realization that this is just how it is. I can’t change it and we all have our lives mapped out and the time we are to be here. I said, so does it make me cold that I am able to move on? And then why did I struggle so much with my XH being gone and am able to move forward without my own child. She said, are you numb? No. Did your parents or daughter have a choice leaving?, no. She said, so what is different? He left and had a choice? They left and didn’t. She said, so why are you here? To figure out how to move on. She said and you are because you are doing the work.
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It’s a mild Christmas Eve morning here and I just wanted to take the opportunity to wish every single one of you, those that post and those who just read this forum, the most happy and peaceful Christmas that you can reach this year. For those early on, it might be a tiny moment of breathing out or a small bit of something that brings comfort amidst the chaos. For those of us further on, it may be different than we enjoyed before with a few old echoes, but still worth pausing to give thanks for what we have repaired, rebuilt and recreated regardless of the storm. Every single bit, big or small, is not nothing and I hope you can give yourselves a pat on the back at Christmas for your own resilience no matter how imperfect.
Whether you are a person of faith or not, the core messages of Christmas always seem to me to be about hope, kindness and our capacity for joy. And these can be gifts to ourselves as well as gifts received from other humans. Every one is worth a small hurrah imho. I’ve always thought there is something very simply human about a festive season, at least in the Northern hemisphere, that is grafted on to the Solstice....about light and warmth in the middle of dark and cold with the promise of Spring to come. For those of you who post to support and validate others, thank you. For me, and for others here you may never meet, this forum can be like a lit Christmas tree, a warm blanket or a mug of hot chocolate on a day when we run out of steam. That matters so much when we feel so little, doesn’t it? So, thank you from me to each and every one of you. From my house to yours. X
And a special virtual hug to any of our friends in the US who are caught up in the very bad weather affecting some areas. Hunker down, stay safe, take care of those you love and who love you.
As is often the case in the last few years, my own half-plans tumbled like dominoes. Our own bad weather, a lot of strikes hitting everything from post to trains to hospitals and some reappearance of Covid. My plans were modest lol....but fell over anyway. But hey, we LBS get really good at adapting, don’t we? And finding the small good stuff. I am happy, and a bit surprised, to report that Gracie’s Christmas tree is still standing and the twinkling lights are lovely. For Christmas Day itself, when my plans with others fell over, I used that marvellous Rule of 3 to think what I wanted most for Christmas....and it was simply to see my Mum. So I will drive up there very early on Christmas morning and pop by to see my Uncle, who has not been well, afterwards. As those of you who have experience of advanced dementia know, it will likely not be the Mum I miss so much and visits are inherently unpredictable....but I want whatever bit of my Mum is still here. That’s enough. I will take small gifts and get to see her face and read to her from Heidi, one of her favourite books. I can love her without getting anything back. And the hidden gift for me in that is to see that I am not in the fragile place I used to be and that I can carry things that might sadden me in a smaller suitcase than I did. And how could I forget....Gracie has not had one seizure since August so the medication is obviously working....that was a surprise for both me and the young vet....what a blessing right there! (Which I remind myself of every time she is her normal rather mischievous diva self :) )
Today I will make mince pies and sausage rolls while listening to Kings College Choir sing carols. I will go to Midnight Mass with old friends where I used to live and give them some of my baking as well as taking some along to my Uncle tomorrow. Gracie and me will have smoked salmon and a glass of fizz when I get back (well, no fizz for Gracie although she finds the bubbles interesting lol), and I will shift my Christmas Day to Boxing Day to unwrap the gifts from kind friends under my tree, go for a nice long walk with a chum, glug some good wine and cook myself (and Gracie) a Christmas lunch. Lots of blessings to count and I will count every single one. Oh, and I might watch Babe again as a bit of inspiration!
I wish you all the best Christmas you can create and the hope that 2023 will be a good year for you. Xxx
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Merry Christmas Treasur.
Your words have meant a lot to me in 2022. Thank you, hope you and Gracie have a lovely Crimbo.
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Belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year Treasur
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Sometimes I ask myself why I post here still and when/if it is time to stop.
I respond to posts I think mostly bc if something I post helps someone else avoid slipping into PTSD or digging themselves out of it, that’s good. And sometimes bc I know how important it is to feel heard and seen. And not crazy lol.
I think I post on my own threads at those times when I need to put words to something and feel that this is the only tribe that will get it. Both what i’m saying and why, even now years on, I need to say it out loud. So thank you in advance to anyone reading.....that’s a gift in itself :)
Good stuff first. Am digging in my new-ish garden making a vegetable area....something I could have done just about when I first got here 10 months ago but just couldn’t quite. All kinds of reasons, you know that feeling I know, but I felt bad that I hadn’t. So I feel good that I am now. Gracie is just fine - no seizures at all and back to her normal opinionated self. Christmas was low key for me but some nice bits were very nice indeed. And I bounced into January full of va-voom.....
Then I took a big fall backwards in my mental wellbeing, almost out of nowhere, so it caught me out a bit. There are contributing reasons for it tbh.....my Uncle is going through some scans and diagnoses and it might be not so good news, my mother’s functioning has disappeared off a cliff rather suddenly and I might need to make some difficult choices in the next few weeks, a friend said something implying that she believes I am not ‘over it’ or where I should be and shared her own rather negative POV about how the world works (which she has a right to feel but it really isn’t how my bones are built, but it had me full of self-doubt and a bit of shame for a few weeks), i’m not good in the cold and it got very cold here for a while although it has warmed up now, and a lot of things going on in the UK and the world make me feel rather despairing. But that wasn't It really......the best I can come up with is that I suddenly felt normal enough to realise just how much of my confidence had been shredded over the last few years. I felt so small and feeble all over again and I didn’t like it all.
So I had to step backwards quite a way to move forwards again. Very sludgy feeling. Which made me feel very cross with myself and the universe indeed :) I started digging and pruning, hoping to find some confidence and purpose in the effort. Or at least be able to burn my despair in my little garden incinerator lol. And I think it’s working. Slowly but it’s working.
This morning I decided to burn my journals. Written from the end of 2015 when weird things started happening through BD in 2016 and until idk about 2019 or so when I stopped. I’d never read them. I’m not sure how many there were, maybe a dozen. But I think I kept them bc I was afraid that they were my only accurate memory source....large chunks of those years I can’t remember at all, it’s like PTSD ate my memories :) But I knew too that I would never read them which was weird. So I just kept them in a box in a cupboard. And this morning I am burning them bc I don’t need them anymore. Which feels like a very big deal to me. Ha ha, only here would people get that, I suspect. And I am telling myself that the fire will burn off the bad stuff in them and the good stuff - the love, the effort, the hope - will be dug into the soul of my veggie beds to produce marvellous tasty green things that will make me feel good.
Weird experience though to have felt/feel this way after so many years. As I was burning them, flickers of memories popped up - not so much of events, more of how desperate I was, how lost and alone I felt. Tbh for a few minutes I felt rather ashamed of all the emotional backflips and carefully constructed words that I tried to use in the hope that my h would be kinder and more honest with me, that he would care about me and our life together....i was pretty pathetic for quite a long time. But I also thought how extraordinary it is to be on the receiving end of someone who won’t or can’t treat you with some small acts of kindness when you are that vulnerable. Who not only doesn’t make it better, but seems to choose to act in ways that make it harder and more insane. So I gave that me a retrospective hug, poor soul. And i’ll look forward to happy beans and courgettes in that bed :)
But my, those WTF times and PTSD years were horrific. I am slightly surprised that I am still here to tell the tale. But grateful that I am.
Thank you for listening xxxx
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Hi, treasur,
I, for one, am truly grateful that you continue to post here, even though I am among the oldest of old-timers here I still learn so much from you. Thank you!
I also burned my journals a few years ago; I think it says something good that I'm not exactly sure how many years ago it now was, but much for the same reasons you mention. I had written loads, it was my way of getting it all out in so many ways. Burning them was a very good thing. I felt much lighter afterwards, and haven't missed them one jot.
It took a few more years for me to get rid of all the e-mails; I must have had 10 years' worth between my H and myself, including all the horribly hurtful ones. I started wondering why I was keeping them, but even then it took quite a while for me to press delete. I think it may have been also to document things and not rely on my memory; perhaps it was wishing that I would later have ones that showed "progress", or something like that.
I finally decided that it didn't matter, that if there were ever "progress" that I could deal with it without all that baggage, and the whole folder went into the bin. Being electronic things kept popping up for a while, and who knows, perhaps they are all in there somewhere, but definitely not where I might see them again. And that was an extremely good thing for me.
Since then there have been one or two other things that I've found that I was holding on to for reasons that were no longer clear or applicable, and I've been able to get rid of those as well. It is very healing and life affirming, I've found, and I also believe that should something change that would allow some kind of connection that having got rid of all that might even make it easier. At any rate that isn't an option on the table so it's nothing I need to worry about, but it feels good to know that I'm me, and that I'm good.
I, too, am grateful that you are here!
x
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Thanks, Trust - strangely reassuring and encouraging to know it’s not just me :)
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Good morning Treasur.
But my, those WTF times and PTSD years were horrific. I am slightly surprised that I am still here to tell the tale. But grateful that I am.
You wondered :Sometimes I ask myself why I post here still and when/if it is time to stop.
As you know, I have been posting for a very long time. I didn't identify that I was suffering from trauma for many years, nobody suggested that and I tried to hide behind false smiles and saying "I'm fine" because people (including myself) would have thought I was not very "healthy" to be in such despair because my husband left me. These things happen all the time and people "recover", find a new love, even a part of me would question myself....he's only a man, and not a very good man at that.
Yet still I was stuck, frozen inside a chunk of ice, unable to feel joy.
One of the many reasons for writing here and responding to others is because we found a "diagnosis" and treatment that allowed us to feel alive again. My first therapist certainly didn't suggest PTSD but we talk quite a bit to other members about this being a possibility.
Our whole world as we knew it was blown apart to smithereens.....it makes such sense to me now but it didn't back then.
And so, we write to perhaps help others identify sooner what is causing them so much pain, and ways to get through it.
I thank you and all members who take the time to write to others...I know how very much it means to people to have a response to their posts....this internet family who shows some kindness and caring...ah yes....as you know...that to me is so very important..I am not in favour of the "tough love" approach to LBSers.....we are so very wounded and other than some words on a page, we do not really know how badly wounded the writer of the post may be....that is probably part of being a nurse, but I digress.
I shredded all the journals. Like you, I never reread any of them and I didn't want my daughter finding them after I am gone or reading them....they served a purpose....sometimes I had to write and write and those pages were very dark, very black, very disturbing so they are gone.
I am trying to clean up my emails and came across a file I forgot I had from people I had communicated with after BD....they need to go. But I am trying to get financial and identity stuff cleared off at the moment....those handy files that I keep all my receipts etc are not so helpful if your email gets hacked and the information is used for the hacker's purposes....didn't think about that when I first started "saving" everything electronically.
His emails I still have. I think the reason that I kept each one, was "proof" to me that he he had not forgotten me. There are not any words of his feelings or reasons for leaving in any of them and earlier ones contained information that was needed legally, trustandlove reminded me about them...I guess it just became a habit to file them in "folders" ( I like things organized!)
You know the whole concept about pass it on...I think that is what we try to do, share experiences, share knowledge and support one another with the reality "you will not always feel this way". I benefitted so much from those who showed how much they cared about me, I value the friendships I made and the instant recognition when I actually met several members in person .....even still I communicate with others.
I have been reading about what maintains our health and one of the important determinants is community. We need others in our lives. During COVID, the social isolation, lack of touch and activities that were closed really has hurt many people. HS is a community and one we need not be afraid to show our true selves to.
I share you love of gardening and in my head am looking out at the yard thinking about the flowers and gardens I shall have and how to improve things. I am grateful for this space and the neighbourhood I live in which is like living in a park.....I remember when I made the decision to stay here, I thought Colorado might be a good healing place and it has been...nature does that.
People do leave HS but in my experience of talking to others who don't post anymore, they never forget the lessons they learn here and the help that they received.
I am glad that Gracie is well.
Then I took a big fall backwards in my mental wellbeing, almost out of nowhere, so it caught me out a bit.
You listed several good reasons for a setback, family health issues, the state of the world, the cold and dark of winter.....in my lifetime, I do not remember ever living through such troubling times...everyday there is something else to "fear"...during my late teens, I was aware of the cold war and that was concerning, but in between then and now, things seemed more settled. Not so now.
I don't have many people I can discuss my concerns with. Politically, I have to be so careful what I say unless I know that someone shares common beliefs. Living alone, that person who I would talk to throughout the day when the news reported on current events is not here to work through the things that trouble me....so many reasons why at times we fall backwards. It's ok, as long as we can get ourselves back up again.
I too thank you for all the time you take to respond to people on HS.
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Treasur- quite courageous to burn your journals and I can see that would be freeing. I have a box of “proof” and “calendars of things that were happening” I have found going back to them once in a while when something else surfaces has helped clear my head of unknowns. I know that those checks have almost ceased, but I think I will keep them and leave them for my kids. Maybe they will be able to answer more questions.
This happened to my Dad and he left me a box after he died and it was eye opening for me and at a mature age to handle it all. I felt I understood better what happened and it did in fact help me heal from my parents divorce. You have to have a reason to keep or a reason to get rid of. Everyone that has the courage to share their journey and insight on this page is a blessing to those in the early days. None of forget those desperate months and for some years.
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Dear Treasur
I‘m so sorry that you had those $h!tety moments. It’s nice to hear your updates in your own thread. It gives us hope that we will all be ok like you. Like you I also journaled a lot and the things that I‘d written there were mostly me trying to beg for love from my exh or me being so miserable. In the past I would read them and they just made me so sad and cry, feeling pity for myself. I have been thinking as well of burning them and like you, a part of me didn’t want to because it‘s the only memory I have that’s being documented of what really happened. I recorded everything that happened because at that time my xh was gaslighting me. I wanted to assure myself that what happened was real and not imagined. How crazy is that. I‘m going to burn mine one of these days too when I am ready. Hugs to you Treasur. Thank you for sharing.
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Treasur,
I know I’m not alone in being very grateful that you, and other long time HS posters return to journal and document your lives, whether it’s concerning H’s W’s XH’s XW’s, just getting in with your lives or even new loved ones. It’s so reassuring to hear your stories. Each of you has a unique take on what you have been through and still are going through. So thank you and as long as you still write on here you will be appreciated!
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I recorded everything that happened because at that time my xh was gaslighting me. I wanted to assure myself that what happened was real and not imagined. How crazy is that.
I think that this gaslighting, which happens leading up to BD, BD, and after BD (especially right after BD when we are so very vulnerable), is so damaging. Especially when we are hanging on to every interaction, conversation, as having meaning.
We haven't even had the chance to grasp the situation--OW/OM, their fantasy land minds, financial connivings--to realize how very vulnerable we are.
It's a wonder that we do heal and build our lives from the ashes as well as we do. Kudos to the LBS.
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Very glad you are here Treasur. Here's to a kind of baptism of fire and all those beautiful things that will grow and give you pleasure as you sit in your garden.
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I'm another that is always glad you are still around Treasur.
I saved a post on FB the other day about dealing with chronic grief, because I am one of those people that needs to be reminded of these things over and over. It's all stuff you know but hearing it again and again I have found helpful for getting my little lizard-brain to really BELIEVE it (so thank you for all your reminders!). The post discussed how you speak to yourself about your grief, and I won't bother posting it all here (because it's all basic stuff). But the title was worth posting: Your grief is not being graded. It's a good reminder to me that we all heal/deal at different rates and that we shouldn't have expectations for how long that SHOULD take.
I'm so glad also that your Gracie is doing so well. xx
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Your grief is not being graded.
What a very good and useful phrase. Quite so.
Funnily enough.....and idk if this is your experience too, Evermore.....the most harsh and consistent judge of my ‘progress’ or perspective in these years has always been me. Which is weird, right? I don’t think anyone else has ever said anything so harsh or unkind to me as I said to myself.
I can recall a time a few years ago when I realised I had this big mental calendar, ticking like a loud clock in the crocodile’s stomach like in Peter Pan though lol, that made me feel that ‘wherever’ I was wasn’t quick enough or far enough or how I should be. And then a moment of insight that the clock was an imaginary one that I had created, it wasn’t actually real. And that beating myself up had not actually made one jot of positive difference either lol. So nput the clock/calendar away which was quite nice :)
Not such good news about my uncle. Found out yesterday that he has kidney cancer....a large active growth on one kidney and smaller signs on the second. So he is booked in to have the tumour removed on one in 6 weeks time and then idk, guess it depends on what any biopsy tells them. He is being very matter of fact and wanting to treat it like no big deal, so I am mirroring that, but of course it is a big deal and 6 weeks sounds like a long time to me. But we support folks best by respecting how they want to approach things, don’t we? And he knows I am here to talk to if he needs that.
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I’m so sorry Treasure. That really is a big deal. I can absolutely understand why you would feel a little ‘set back’.
I’m thinking it might be helpful after all to cut and paste the FB post here after all: “How do you talk to yourself about your grief?
Do you find yourself saying things like “I should be further along by now” or “I thought I was past this”?
Or maybe you’ve thought something like “I was doing so well…what happened?”
If any of these thoughts sound familiar, you’re definitely not alone.
But, please remember: your grief is not being graded. I know sometimes it feels like it is, whether on your own grading scale or someone else’s. But, it’s not on any specific timeline. It’s not one-size-fits-all. And it’s definitely not linear.
Some days will be heavier than others. Some days, the triggers will be obvious, and some days they will not.
Please don’t weigh your heart down with overwhelming expectations for yourself or your processing. Please don’t judge yourself for the days the grief hits hard and leaves you winded and wounded. Please don’t feel guilty for the days that joy trickles in. Please be gentle with yourself as you navigate the ups and downs of your grief, as you figure out how to acknowledge the tension that’s created in a heart that’s known great love and great loss. This is a lifelong process.
There’s no set grade, only grace.
For you. For me. For every grieving heart. 🙏🏻❤️”
Typing on my phone so sorry if formatting sucks.
Hugs Treasur. Sending good thoughts for your uncle.
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Little update from my bit of the planet.
Uncle survived the surgery although he is in quite a bit of post-op discomfort. They ended up having to remove one kidney entirely which is a concern bc the remaining kidney has growths too albeit slower-growing. His timing was pretty good as junior doctors are on strike here right now. Having said that, I have been a bit horrified by the lack of any post op follow through....no advice on diet, no wound check up and no conversation with a doctor about what might need to happen next. He is supposed to have a follow up scan in a few weeks so hopefully he will get some information then....
Was due to visit my Mum but the care home called to say she has tested positive for Covid. They have had a bit of a surge in the care home so tested everyone. Apparently she is not seriously unwell with it but still, it’s a concern. And it means I can’t visit for a little while.
Spring is finally showing up here and that always makes me feel better; lots of time spent outside, a little sunshine and some lovely bright green spring growth along with lots of birdsong.
Had a slightly odd conversation with an old chum this week about her romantic travails. I’ve known her for almost 40 years and she is a pretty decent and interesting kind of human. A sort of mix between a Labrador puppy and a bright orange rose with thorns. Horrible family history which means that I understand her lens even when I don’t agree with it. Or when she doesn’t see it and it’s not my place to state the (to me) obvious. She has an adopted teenage daughter and has never been married or lived with a partner....a long history of romantic dramas with emotionally unavailable men (much like her father tbh who was a toxic a$$hat as a parent imho).
About 7 or 8 years ago she had an off and on relationship with a man called H.....he was separated from his off-on partner of some decades...young adult children, a busy job, not great at communicating emotionally, his own history of mental health struggles. Lots of drama and she eventually pulled the plug on it reluctantly. And then recently he reappeared in her life. In the intervening years, his partner had moved back in and back out and back in. He had young adult children with addiction issues and now grandchildren who were at risk of being removed from the family if he didn’t foster them. Oh, and a ‘secret’ young adult daughter in Canada about the same age as his oldest daughter bc he was unfaithful to his then partner when she was pregnant, didn’t know about the daughter for years, had some kind of relationship for a while but recently she cut him off. Lots of mess, right? My goodness....
Apparently, according to my chum, he has told his live- in partner that he wants to be with my friend and his solution - after 2 months of a hot and heavy emotional ( but not physical, my friends choice to largely protect herself emotionally) romance, his ‘plan’ is that he will just move in with her and her daughter, leaving his ‘partner’ in the flat he owns....so tbh technically my friend is an ow. Probably for the second time. And this man - in his early 60s as is my friend - has more historic red flags as a reliable adult partner than a whole host of Chinese parades ::)
What was interesting about the conversation was hearing her rather (to me) odd lens. And extraordinary blind spots about her own draw towards these kind of less than straightforward chaps who do a lot of pursuit (with words) and distance (with actions). How her focus is almost solely on what he ‘needs to change’ for their relationship to work out, how full of a fixy to do list for him she is, how teenagerish her language is about how he’s changed and their passionate ‘twu luv’, how almost callous she sounds - and she is not a callous woman usually - about the impact of H’s choice on an already rather disordered family set up with a lot of messy history or what a new life with a man with a big messy extended family might mean practically, how she sees herself as at least partly the answer to his real happiness and vice versa. And tbh how she is not even considering her own lack of partnership experience let alone his track record ::) As I listened to her (and you can all imagine that there were many things I did not say in the spirit of horses to water etc :) ), I was struck that it was a very ow type of conversation, that I could imagine the ow in my h’s situation saying much the same to her friends..... And my friend is (normally) a very smart, highly educated independent rather admirable woman, not an immature idiot. It was an interesting visit to how ow heads might work tbh....
What did I say? Well, I care about her and of course the information I have is only via her. I tried to encourage her to set and keep her own self-care boundaries, to do things to detach from his (and her) emotional rollercoaster, to remind her that there was a great deal that she could not know about his family/partner relationships and that all these other people were real people with their own legitimate feelings about H and his history, that tbh a lot of this was simply not about her and not about his relationship with her, to cool her jets, maybe reflect on the difference between love and attachment with a good IC, and see if H’s actions over time met his words. What I didn’t say - bc it would have been futile, hurtful and beyond her ability to hear imho - is that she is playing out her own baggage wounds of ‘getting’ an emotionally unavailable man, that H comes with a huge amount of baggage himself that is unlikely to magically disappear in his early 60s and that even if she gets what she wants, she is like.y to find herself wishing she hadn’t. It’s like watching a slow motion car wreck tbh. And bc I love her, all I can think of to do is be a safe place for her to figure her own mess out when she gets to that point.
But oh my goodness...who would want this kind of drama?
I suspect tbh that, regardless of what we tell ourselves for a while as LBS, what I am hearing from my friend is probably a pretty accurate window into these kind of relationships. Bc I am not involved, it is easy to see that the chances of this working out well for anyone involved are virtually zero....and that even if they ‘end up together’, they will do so as two damaged folks surrounded by chaos trying to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear....I can’t see anything good coming from any of it and it’s seems obvious to me that my friend simply does not get how far from normal or healthy any of it is bc she is blinded by her own baggage and her own wants.
I am very grateful this morning that this kind of ow world is as alien to me now as it ever was.
But it’s an odd experience to see it playing out in a friend who I love and respect.
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Glad to hear your uncle's surgery went okay, though not happy to hear of the awful post-surgery stress that comes in the form of "what the hell comes next"? In my experience, it's crazy that it takes a more-than-considerable amount of energy (that the one undergoing surgery and any other treatments/side effects DOES NOT have) to gather information and advocate for oneself. I just had a surgery this past Friday for an issue stemming from a previous huge surgery that no one prepared me for and that I understandably didn't have the appropriate knowledge/foresight (not to mention emotional bandwidth) to consider/anticipate. Really angering, honestly. I didn't go to medical school, so the people around me who did and are charged with helping me should have been guiding me.
This is where I found online support groups invaluable. The ability to go to a group and say "This is what is happening in my situation right now, what should I be looking out for, what questions should I be asking?" is helpful. Obviously it's all other people's unique experiences and you have to verify everything, but it helps to hear about experiences people have had that you would never have anticipated.
so tbh technically my friend is an ow.
Not a technicality, imo. She appears, from what you've written, to be an OW of her own very deliberate choice to be one.
There's no situation where you should be talking to another person's partner about your desire to be with them. Or that you have feelings for them at all. Once that is a part of the conversation, you've already long crossed the line.
I'm recovering from surgery, in pain and fairly medicated, so I'll avoid what could end up to be a very lengthy amount of rambling on this topic, lol. I'll share a few incomplete thoughts, but this could be a great discussion thread. I do think it's an important reminder that, as much as we would like to believe all OPs are unhinged and pure evil, a good amount of them are just people - people with their own unhealed issues and a lack of emotional intelligence to see past their desperate desire to be "loved."
The other thing it made me think of is how much I actually disagree with the idea that we can't control how we feel. I mean, sure, we feel how we feel, but we can control what we do with those feelings. We can definitely control whether we take the feeling and dissect it to see how much of it really has to do with our own "stuff" (to use a catchall word).
Imagine the chaos if we lived in a world where no one could control how they feel? Yikes... (I know, I know, the world is chaos already...but just imagine this on top of it...)
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Couldn’t agree more, Nas.
I hope you are recovering from your surgery well. Tbh I think one of our growing realisations here is that our National Health Service - for all its benefits - has evolved into more of a National Hospital Service. A lot of the joined up bits of the overall healthcare system are simply not functioning well for a variety of reasons that have all been several years in the making.
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......who do a lot of pursuit (with words) and distance (with actions)
I was struck by this succinct way of saying this.
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Isn’t just odd how easily some can jump from one relationship into the next? It is just bizarre to me always. My X got bored so easily with life and I always saw that, but we would have to move for work and the new city and job would be enough for a while. Then it had to be a new car every 2 years. I guess that got boring and so then OW came along. Sounds like you’re intelligent friend may be a bit lonely and needy in life and her intelligence may have disguised that for some time. Thats what I jumped to in my head at least. 🤷♀️ otherwise why would an intelligent woman not see the bouquet of red flags being handed back to her.
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It was my mother’s birthday yesterday so I went to visit with perfume and flowers. No cake bc she has now reached a stage where feeding herself is rarely possible. I could write a long list of all the things that dementia has taken from her and me, but I won’t.
What I actually took from my visit is how remarkably strong love can be despite all of it. For any LBS like me, without children or other close family members you love, our ex/spouses do a bit of a hatchet job on the concept of love itself, don’t they? But it isn’t true....their take on love might not be the good stuff, but it does not mean that the good stuff is not out there and not remarkable when you brush against it. Nowadays, my mother and me mostly communicate with our eyes.....when our eyes meet, I see hers light up and I know she knows me and loves me every bit as much as she always did. Often she giggles....no idea why but recently she seems to find me pretty funny lol. There are so many things we can no longer do together that we used to do to show our love for each other, that’s true....but I am a bit humbled by how remarkably strong love is and how it somehow seems to find a way to reach round the most limiting circumstances.
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My mom had dementia for about 12 years. I am grateful that she continued to recognize her children.
Her favourite thing was hard candy. She lived in a facility near my brother ( I of course had left her and the rest of the family behind trasping the world with Mr. xyzcf) and my brother had to buy a bagful fofcandy or her every week. I too would bring her flowers when I would visit and she would come to my brother's house and we'd gather together as a family.
She liked playing Bingo (one card only and the staff would help her with that) and she loved the sing-a-longs...especially the songs from WWII era.
I miss them..my mum, my dad and my sister. Next week, I am traveling to Canada for 10 days and will see all of my family (in 4 different locations). I have a brother, nieces and nephews, their spouses and children...and we shall laugh and eat and talk about Granny and Papa.... I'll travel by train between cities which is something that is very nostalgic and beautiful for me....so many memories.
.but I am a bit humbled by how remarkably strong love is and how it somehow seems to find a way to reach round the most limiting circumstances.
It does indeed. Glad you were able to spend her birthday with her.
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Gosh Treasur- it was a sad yet sweet read on your mom. Reading your story on your mom it brought to mind how much loss has happened. I lost both my parents to cancer and my Dad’s went into his brain. When he would talk towards the end he would say street names from his childhood state rather than the ones he was living in now, which made driving directions difficult from him, except for me. I always knew what street converted to the other. One day he wanted a can from
Sears. My step monster ( did not like) brought him tools, paint etc. he was so frustrated. My sister was visiting him and called me as I lived in another state. They were both crying. He was yelling at them in frustration and they didnt know what he wanted and right away I knew. I said, get him can of coke from the fridge. It was bought at sears. They did and he said simply, thanks, that’s all I wanted. So, I think of that always. That even when lost I saw him and knew him and understood him. Just like you see you mom now in a look. Those moments will bring you a life time of comfort.
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As some of you might know, we have a coronation here today. Given that our new Queen was an ow when Charles was married to Diana, it’s interesting to observe how unsettled a lot of folks here, even enthusiastic monarchists, are about the idea of her as Queen. Even though some kind of our more ‘hoorah’ press are trying quite hard to big both her and Charles up as a ‘twu luv’ story, or that she’s a nice woman and Diana wasn’t perfect either, people seem to be accepting it but not overkeen on it if that makes sense. Surprisingly long memories actually. A largely unvoiced feeling that she isn’t ‘our’ Queen even if she is ‘his’ or ‘the’ Queen and that it reflects poorly on his character and ability to honour serious vows.......it’s interesting to observe. This article (from one of our more monarchist and right wing papers probably sums it up pretty well https://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-12053029/AMANDA-PLATELL-wish-King-Charles-not-making-Camilla-Queen-today.html or this one from a more left wing POV https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/05/the-guardian-view-on-the-coronation-crowds-the-public-are-crucial-for-royalty )
And of course it creates some hiccups around some of the core issues underpinning our kind of monarchy with his role as the head of a state Church that still does not approve of divorce or remarriage,...lots of odd circles to square all round regardless of what one thinks about the players involved personally. The coronation service is actually a deeply religious one, founded on the idea of a monarch being chosen by God, not just about bunting and cake and dressing up.)
There’s a kind of polite ambivalence about it, even if (just about) the majority of Brits prefer the idea of a monarchy to an alternative as head of state or like the pageantry of it as a particularly English thing. (I say English bc there is a difference in how Scots, Welsh and Irish see the most narcotic given our history.....just as there is in countries that were part of an old Empire who still have the King as a legacy head of state). Like the concept of marriage post-divorce perhaps, once you are forced by circumstances to shine a bright light on it, it throws up some mud, doesn’t it? And of course the wider context of our society and what kind of country we are, or want to be, is rather different than in 1953.
Never been much of a monarchist (in the spirit of full disclosure) and it seems self-evident to me that it both symbolises something about our culture and is inherently undemocratic at the same time....like most people here, I respected the Queen as a link to a previous age and as embodying a kind of national service outside of politics, even if I was not a fan of a monarchical system. So, largely meh about it....but even I have raised an internal eyebrow at the active involvement of Camilla’s grandchildren in the coronation service and found myself uncomfortable with a certain ‘cake and eat it’ principle or how over the years the public were lied to that Camilla would not be a ‘real’ Queen but some other kind of role. ::) Tbh I have always found it a bit odd when people abuse their marital vows with seeming aplomb and then choose to marry again wanting those vows to be seen as something different, as if the first set didn’t count somehow bc they decided they didn’t ::) People’s personal relationships are one thing, but once you start on putting legal or collective recognition around them, it can raise some not so straightforward inconsistencies, I think. I didn’t used to think this way but, like a lot of others, realising that it took two to get married in a public way but only one to get divorced regardless has made me uncertain about a lot of things I used to assume were true :) And I didn’t have to make public vows to be chosen by God as a monarch or role model for a church lol.
Has made me wonder if that is what life is always like for ow down the line, or at least when dealing with people who know some of the history. A polite ambivalence at best or the karmic consequences of broken things that you and others all know you both broke. I don’t think I would like to be an ow.....even one with a daily hairdresser and a big crown lol.
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A little update and some musing on the ripple effect of lies.
My friend who was embroiled in the drama of a late life OW romance? Predictably - bc even given the little I know about the man involved, he has a long history of creating hurtful messes in other peoples lives, of big words and opposite actions - some kind of s$it hit the fan and it ended. My friend was very hurt, too hurt to want to talk about the details which I have respected. I am relieved though bc I saw nothing good in hitching her and her daughters life to his wagon. Whatever happened has made her decide she needs serious therapy to change the kind of men she finds appealing bc she sees her own pattern and she has already started to work with someone. I love my friend and want her to be happy, so I hope that this will be helpful to her. The man involved has, I suspect, simply gone back to his previous life with his live-in partner, doubtless bewailing how sadz he is…..
A chum of mine talked to me yesterday about an employee who she described as a ‘pathological liar’. Caught out lying about a phone call with a client that never actually happened, the list of lies are now popping up like fleas…lying about his mother dying, a car accident, where he was when he wasn’t at a scheduled meeting. My friend, even though she has no emotional investment in this person, told me that for a couple of days she just felt bewildered by the scale of the lies to the extent that she doubted her own eyes even. That it just felt a bit insane. That his doubling-down on lies made her feel gaslit and off-kilter and how weird it was that his reaction to being caught was rage and even more lies. She did say that it had made her realise a bit more what it might have felt like to have a spouse of decades behave like this and how confusing and overwhelming it must have felt for me.
And in another story, there is a well-known morning show presenter here who has been caught in lying for years about his affair with a much younger staff member. Married for decades with two daughters, there was a big hoo ha here when he publicly came out as gay in 2020….much self-flagellating tears, celebrity go you and acknowledgement of his wonderful supportive wife and family respecting who he ‘really is’. Turns out he had been having an affair for years with a young show runner barely out of his teens and lied about it to everyone, including his family of course. What a great way to thank a wife who showed you such respect and love after your grand announcement, eh? The wife - predictably, and they are still legally married - is saying nothing but it’s interesting to see how shocked and angry so many of his colleagues and others seem to feel that he lied to them. From the cheap seats, I find myself thinking how odd it is that we can be so shocked when someone who we know has lied about big things to those closest to him turns out to be y’know a liar…..
Oh and our ex-PM is still, y’know, lying about some new things that have come to light. And another friend recently elected as a local councillor was in shock when another friend, also elected, wants her to cover up a lie that she doesn’t want to go to a public councillor event bc she has a Pilates class so is claiming to be ill to get out of it……
Liars do create a lot of drama and self doubt seemingly, don’t they?
My only takeaway from it all is how insidious and destructive lies are. They take our feet out from under us. I have become rather allergic to people who use lies as a primary go to in their toolbox tbh. They cause a lot of damage and make me want to cross over to the other side of the street. I can’t begin to comprehend their mindset….but, years on, I find it vaguely comforting that others who are much less invested in a lying person than I was still feel a similar kind of disorienting WTF as I did.
More and more, I find like that old anti-drug advert, I just want to loudly say ‘just say No’ to anyone who lies like this. I wish we had a community version of a Naughty Step.
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Glad to hear your friend has finally realized it. I really hate it when people lie especially if they know it’s going to hurt other people. My xh lied so much and until the end I didn’t know which ones of what he said were the truth. And he’s just so good at it. He would tell half truths and half lies. You just can’t be with this people because it will become a very unhealthy relationship. And lies will always come back to you when you least expect them. Some people are just like that unfortunately.
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Liars suck and being lied to sucks, for sure. Being lied to about everything by someone who is supposed to care about you sucks even more. Being lied to in a way that makes you question your own reality or it makes it feel like the person lying to you is doing so to firetruck with you because they know all of your traumas and sore spots is deeply painful.
I think I would give a little grace to the morning show presenter situation. I don’t know any of the details of course, but I do know someone in my previous life who is much older than me and for a long time was married to a woman and then came out as gay and left his marriage. A lot of factors go into a person denying a huge part of themselves and feeling that they have to conform to heterosexual norms. I think it’s different from the self-serving, selfish and entitled way that narcissists and MLCers carry on with their destructive behavior claiming that it’s because they never felt they were able to be true to themselves or live the life they wanted blah blah blah.
Affairs are never okay, and my heart really breaks for this man’s wife, but I think I wouldn’t put this situation in the same category as the others. It has all the same destruction, and the wife is left in the same position of looking back on the life she’s lead and wondering which parts were real, but now of course knowing (perhaps with more clarity and those of us here) that some parts were not what she thought they were. It’s very sad all around.
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It is sad, Nas.
But tbh I see liars as an equal opportunity thing.
There was a great deal of compassion for both him and his wife when he came out. People increasingly understand that sexuality and gender can be more complicated than we might think, right? But imho it does not give someone a sexuality-related hall pass to have an affair for years…or continue to lie about it while proclaiming to be publicly and maritally transparent…..or abuse a position of work power with a young person who was 15 when they met. If one changed the genders involved, if it were a married man with a young girl in her late teens, this would still seem like a tremendous and destructive betrayal and failing of character on many fronts surely? Why is it different bc he is gay? How is that different from a straight married man in his 50s wanting to have an ow or multiple ow?
I’m not claiming this is an MLC issue - nor the other two real life examples - just an example of the tremendous ripples that deceit and a sense of entitlement can create. Regardless of gender or sexual preference.
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I think lies are the ultimate betrayal. In talking with affairs. Everything starts with a lie. A lie to oneself to carry on the betrayal. The lie to your spouse to continue the betrayal. Those are the lies that cut deepest and hurt to the core. They for me are and were the worst. In ordinary life a person that lies if not intimately or personally involved with my life I just find as a character flaw of someone I would not want to or do not want to have to interact with. Yet, I can see it right away and find it bizarre. Does that trait always exist in a person that has a MLC? I often wonder that. In my XH I think it may have. In a small way when needed to avoid conflict. Maybe all people that lie are avoidant in some way.
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Don’t post much about myself any longer - not much to say - but I like to show up when I see signs of others struggling with what look like trauma signs. Heard this the other day https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/something-was-wrong/id1447286743?i=1000462962215 which is a therapist giving the best overview that I’ve ever heard of some of the different options you can consider if you feel you need help and why different things work for different people differently :)
I’m having a bit of a blip day myself today which I am having to puff through. Nothing life-threatening, but a combination of things has activated my alert system. In fact, one of them is a really nice thing - a friend coming to stay and we are going to a local music festival tomorrow to see one of my favourite bands. The things are all things that your head tells you are positive, constructive, getting back to normal life kinds of things….and I am duly pleased with myself that I can now do things that I could not before. But oh my goodness, it’s like a hammer of anxiety in my head and I can feel that my default all day is to breathe shallowly high up in my chest like a gasping fish so I have to keep stopping and calming my system down. I hate that I still can feel this way but i also am grateful that it is only a pale echo of how I used to feel. I am rather amazed that I survived my PTSD years at all tbh. :)
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And I did it and it got better
Three big scary things in a 24 hour window. Things I could not have done last year. One full of potential emotional triggers.
Feeling good about that.
Just wanted to share for anyone here struggling in the long grass of PTSD or depression who doubts that they will ever feel better or closer to normal again. Bc if it happened with me, albeit taking longer than I’d have wished lol, it can happen with you too.
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This is really good to read Treasur. I imagine that part of the recovery is recognizing the 'blips' for what they are. I don't suppose it dampens them, but at least you now know they will dissipate, and that you will be able to function despite the feelings. It must feel like you have come a long way. I hope you had a wonderful time at the festival.
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Glad you regained your balance. I still have times , mostly deep sadness. Memories of what was and what could have been...they pass...and I accept that this is my norm, not just because of PTSD, but a normal response to grief of a great loss.
As we have said, MLC, the gift that keeps on giving. Glad things are better now for you.
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Nice! Happy to hear about the wins. Three big and frightening things in a day seems impressive under any circumstance.
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New Thread time!
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