Still Living and Moving

I have neither disappeared into the real world, nor sunk to the depths of depression. I have alternated between being busy and tired. My friend Mark, of http://journals.aol.com/makemarc/SoberGayEx-Con/,put put it best in his comment on my last entry. After I enumerated the ways I am moving outward, he wrote, sardonically,

" What? You're not training for a triathlon?  Gee Margo, some people are so lazy!"

 

As always he has a good point, and I must be very careful about not rushing to add more "interesting" activities to my life, at least when I have so many "have to" ones-physical therapy. doctor's appointments, regular therapy appointments, some of which are an hour's drive away. Of course the problem is that the interesting things-like yoga, and "elder-sitting" a woman at a local nursing home are the ones I want to do! And I can't wait to start doing Gentle Touch/Guided Imagery at the hospital! And I am so grateful to have come this far.

 

Since I mentioned Marc, I may as well plug his Blog. He is a real writer, thoughtful, articulate, humorous, a passionate street warrior with a trash pick, doing daily battle with the trash on the streets of Hollywood, among a number of other things. He has been a clear minded support for me during difficult times because he can cut through my fog, straight to the heart of the matter. I appreciate him a lot, and hope others will add him to their daily reads, too.

 

As for me, I am 268 journal entries behind, and beginning to recognize I'll never catch up if I comment, though commenting is part of the journal experience for me. And I miss what is going on in people's lives! Perhaps I will catch up some in the next couple of weeks at my parent's house.

 

My mother called a while ago to ask me to come "help sort" through stuff for the move into elderly housing they will make this fall. I agreed immediately, of course. The only problem however, as she well knows, is that I can't lift or carry much because of my shoulder, she can't lift or carry anything because her only hand is gnarled and frozen from arthritis and being overworked for over 55 years, and m father can't lift or carry much because his emphysema has worsened a lot this last year. We'll be quite a trio! 

 

Actually, I suspect my mother just wants to look at her stuff with me nearby to listen to stories and decide what will go to who when they move into a smaller place. That I can certainly do, bad shoulder, walker and all. I serve as a kind of permission giver for her, though I'm sad she needs one. I tell her gently that it's okay to send Great Aunt Leila's hand embroidered napkins to Goodwill, and sell some of the silver we kids don't want to polish for the rest of our lives, as she has dutifully (and resentfully) polished for over 60 years now.

 

My life seems so much less encumbered than hers, less to polish, to clean, to insure, to worry about. I also understand she has a lifetime of possessions that she has polished, cleaned, insured and worried about, and letting go will be wrenching. And I must admit I have one or two items myself-mostly artwork-that I plan to posses as long as possible, which somehow also makes them possess me. But nothing I have to polish!  

 

I am taking my computer west with me. I have learned that, while they have steadfastly refused to touch a computer for years, claiming they have no need of one, somehow they always have computer tasks for me when I get there. I see them for two or three weeks a year, but they cheerfully save up their tasks for me to do on dial up!

 

All this means is I will be online some while I'm there, so I'll look for you, gentle readers, and once again return to J-Land a bit more.

 

Blessings Margo

 

Tags: busy with life, makemarcs Blog, sortingmy mother's life, 268 Blogs behind!

Moving out, Into the World

 

Inanna comes to teach about inner strength and inner wisdom. She had descended to the depths and returned, aware of what she had lost-all her outer trappings of Queenship-and aware of what she had gained-inner strength, and the ability to rule her people well. My descent began August 11, 2003, when I fell at work.

 

I didn't know then that I was going to lose many precious things. So much went: my career and marriage, which were such a strong part of my identity, and my connection with my partner's family who had become my own, and all but one of those I thought were friends, and financial security, and a reasonably pain free life, and 220 pounds, and all the food I loved, which had protected me from the world, and the list trails on, pathetically.

 

Inanna returned from the underworld to take up her duties again, to be a wise and fair and beloved Queen of her realm od Sumaria. I am called to begin a new life, too, one in which I am useful, but balanced, using what inner strength and wisdom I have garnered over the last few years, and indeed my whole life.

 

And I have actually begun to emerge, feeling naked, blinking my way into spring, like Persephone emerging from Hades, into the delighted arms of her mother, Demeter. Though I seem to have disappeared from J-Land, the truth is more that I have begun to have an outside life, and am finding it rather more exhausting than I'd anticipated. So I am resting or reading or sitting spaced out in front of the boob tube, instead of interacting with my friends on line. Eventually I will grow stronger and have more room for both lives-real and cyber-spaced.(My "computer friends" are very important to me, but Inanna came to push me out of my complacency, making me face outward for a bit.)

 

I finished the training for The Gentle Touch and Guided Imagery Program for the local hospital. My friend Robin (who runs the program) was right. I'm a natural, for two reasons.  I've spent a lot of time alone in hospitals where no one but nurses and aids touched me, and then very briefly with blood pressure cuffs, or holding my arm to draw blood. We all know how short handed the whole system is. I blame the administrations of hospitals for the shortage, not the nurses, who are almost always overworked, tired and cranky. (I apologize to all good nurses out there who really do connect with their patients, especially those patients who are totally alone. I wish I could run across you whenever I am hospitalized.)

 

I see the opportunity to go into a hospital and rub someone's feet or hands or head very gently for 15 minutes, pampering them in a way that is almost unthought of as a patient, to be quite amazing. And leading guided imagery, before or during the gentle touch, is a gift for both me and the patient. When done well, it gives us both sustainance. I've been doing guided imagery for myself and others for nearly 30 years. For those who wonder, guided imagery is a way to help someone slow their breathing, relax deeply, and get away from their pain and sometimes even body, while one guides them to go to some place of their choosing to "escape" the hospital for even a bit.

 

This is a poor description of guided imagery, but I've used it in my spiritual meditations, with Meg when she was hurting in someway, in my various women's groups over the years, and most recently, with the HIV+ inmates in prison. After settling down 18 frustrated, often angry or resentful inmates, felons and murderers and prostitutes. all at various stages of HIV/AIDS, I am not worried about doing it with one patient at a time while I massage his or her feet very, very gently! I won't be able to start, however, until I get back from visiting my parents from April 7 to the 21st.

 

I have also started a Yoga class. It's a small group-two of us-taught by my friend Jayne, who just got her teaching certificate. The second woman has arthritis. Jayne is adapting it to chair yoga, simple moves to start with. I am in serious pain by 20 minutes into the hour, but the movements are good for me, despite the pain. (One thing I learned during my first shoulder rehab is that it doesn't get better if it doesn't hurt. This may not be true for all injuries, but I'm remembering the pain all too well this second time around!) After an hour and a quarter, I am so tired I can barely drive home.

 

And now I have taken on another volunteer job. I am elder-sitting an Alzheimer's patient in a local convalescent home for 3 or 4 hours once a week. She fairly with it, can't talk much, but seems very happy. Unfortunately she wanders a bit, which is where I come in- I'm to help her to wander safely. Eventually, we'll be able to go out in my car for ice cream and visits to not-to-big stores. Apparently she panics in malls and Wal-Marts. (I understand this-neither place appeals much to me either.)

 

And I still have physical therapy twice a week and various doctor's appointments. Phew! Now that I've listed all this, no wonder I am tired all the rest of the time. No wonder I'm exhausted! I know that these activities are for now, for this first stage of moving outward after too many years of withdrawal due to one medical problem after another.

 

Inanna came to me to teach of Inner Strength and Inner Wisdom, to remind me how much I've gained and learned over the years, so that I can make my first moves into new life. I have emerged thin and wobbly but still ready to begin the journey into new life and the realm of the Wise Woman, the Crone.

 

Blessings, Margo

 

 

Tags: Inanna, inner strength, growth from pain, moving outwards, volunteer work.

Inner Journeys

As usual when I have disappeared for a couple of weeks, I have been struggling with a number of issues, and feeling down, being much too hard on myself. I only have to go back a year or two in this journal to remind myself that I do work on my issues in my own inimical way. I  actually am doing quite well these days. Then I have to ask myself why I need such reassurance when sometimes I really do know my worth. I still seem to need a lot of outside reassurance that I have worked hard-perhaps because so little has changed on the outside in the last four years. But I have indeed changed.

 

I am still at home, mostly, still in pain, still recovering from surgery, more alone really than ever before-all on the outside. On the inside, I keep on keeping on, working the issues brought up by the myths of goddesses whose names seem to rise up into my consciousness from somewhere deep inside (or maybe down from heaven), because I need the lesson.

 

A couple of weeks ago, I was happily driving along a nice back road, singing along to Mad Agnes (www.madagnes.com), when the name Inanna floated into my consciousness. My immediate response was, "Oh, no, not Inanna," and turn the volume up in the car. I sang louder, too. At home, I cleaned and fixed myself good protein and turned on the TV and the computer, and shut the name Inanna out. Firmly.

 

Unfortunately, I knew I was only putting off the inevitable, for my past experience with Inanna had been depression. Now, in case you are not caught up on you ancient Sumarian Goddess myths, Inanna was Ruler/Queen/Goddess of all of Sumaria, who decided she needed to visit her sister Erishkegal, Queen of the Underworld. She wanted to gain her sister's knowledge. Putting on seven layers of protective garments, she descended to the Underworld. At each gate, she had to take off one layer, until she faced her sister naked. Erishkegal immediately reduced her to a piece of rotting meat, hung on a pole.

 

Inanna first came to me many years ago now, before I was divorced from Meg's Dad, in the form of chronic, long-term Stygian depression. I truly was the meat on that pole, the emotional pain was so bad. Inanna was rescued, finally, to return to rule earth in a much wiser and insightful way, claiming and holding the wisdom she had gained in the underworld to herself, while ruling her country better than before her descent. I found a better antidepressant and went into therapy.

 

When Inannna's name drifted into my mind, all I could think of was that depression would once again move in and shut me down. Surprisingly, the depression which lurks just below my surface didn't deepen. A wise woman I know pointed out that I had already lived the first half of the myth, and needed to look at the second half, after Inanna returned to earth.

 

It was hard at first to imagine me, the me formed by such childhood pain that I surrounded myself by layers and layer of fat, as wise and insightful, holding my hard earned wisdom close to myself. Me, not squandering wisdom on the overly needy, Me, having the discernment to know when to share what I know about life, and when to keep it to myself, as Inanna does.

 

Then I passed a mirror. I am not the Margo I was, guarded by fat, wanting to please, to help everyone, anyone, so I could know I'm good, capable, worthy, valuable, and begging (passively aggressively) for outside assurances. I am at goal weight, I have traveled far without moving, and it will manifest in my life as time goes on. Not that I won't need outside assurance anymore, just less of it, and from the people in my life who I have come to value.

 

If none of this makes sense, it doesn't matter because I get it.

 

And I have begun to move out, open to attracting joy into my life. To manifest this, I asked Judi HeartSong to paint me a Goddess/Woman named Joy. She is the #7 of the latest Light Series (http://judithheartsong.blogspot.com/) At the bottom of the webpage look for "previous posts," and hit Light Series '07 to see the paintings. I asked her to do a Light Painting named Joy in November or December, saying there was no hurry, and She has been worth the wait! Once She is framed, She will join Hope, a Light painting Judi did for me nearly two years ago, when I needed hope was all I had to hold onto as I struggled through one medical problem after another. And I survived, on hope that rose from deep inside surgery after surgery after surgery, most of them alone

 

And so I am moving outwards, slowly,believing this year will be better than last. I am taking a 2 day training so I can volunteer with the Gentle Touch/Guided Imagery program at a local hospital. And I have joined a very small Yoga class run by a newly trained Yoga teacher who is a good friend. She wants to eventually work with yoga and the elderly or disabled, so I'll be her guinea pig, quite happily. And waiting for what comes next.

 

Enough for today, I bid you well.

 

Blessings, Margo

 

 

Tags: Inner journeys, Inanna, depression, hope, joy,

Interesting Experiences

Well, the last couple of weeks have had a few interesting experiences, though I have not been blogging regularly. Now, those of you who have never owned a house (and been hard pressed to make the mortgage at times) probably won't understand my excitement, but I got two new toilets (upstairs and down) and a pedestal sink. I simply got tired of toilets that ran, on and off, after flushing. Not every time, you understand, just whenever I forgot to check. Every time I did forget, each toilet would think, "Quick, she didn't check, run all night!" And they did.

 

Finally, fed up by the wasted water, I called my plumber to ask for a bid. He came and after I had accepted his bid and he was halfway out the door, I heard a voice tell him, "You know, I think I'll get a pedestal sink for the upstairs bathroom as well." I looked behind me for the voice, and realized the voice had come out of my own mouth. Now I had disliked the cabinet under that blue sink since the day I moved in 30 years ago. (I also hated the blue toilet, now replaced, and blue bathtub, still there, and the green shag rug, gone two days after we moved in.) I had not, however, planned to pay for a sink, but sure enough, by four o'clock the next afternoon, I had two great white toilets and a wonderful white pedestal sink. And two boxes of stuff that came out of the cabinet, of course.

 

The second surprising event was that I went on a date! Sort of. Now, don't get too excited. I didn't. I found her on Match.com, and she lives nearby. After a couple of e-mails and the exchange of phone numbers, we agreed to meet at a local grocery store-to go shopping for ingredients for a Death By Chocolate Cake (her idea, not mine, I am supposed to live on a strict food plan). And off we went, from one town to another, from store to store, each more full of goodies and sweets than the last. And she talked and talked and talked, trying to tell me everything about her extremely busy life, as we climbed in and out of her mega-van over and over (remember, I walk with a cane and have a bum right shoulder).

 

Now, don't get me wrong, I talked, too. Just not as much. Plus, I have not had an extremely busy last couple of years. I knowthe point of a "first date" is to get to know about someone, but I came away feeling that she has not had much experience at relationship in her life, especially when she told me she had not really dated in 20 years. I am looking for someone who is capable of healthy relationship, and I don't think she is. I'll see her again, I'm sure, because she does live an interesting, busy life. But only as a friend.

 

When I called up Meg to tell her I was going out (and to tell her my date's name, phone number and the area in which she lived), she told me, "Remember, Mom, you've gotta kiss a lotta frogs..." I answered like a 13 year old, " Meg, I'm not planning to kiss her!"  As I hung up, I could hear her roaring with laughter.

 

The third thing that has happened recently that I actually chose to skip the Super Bowl last night (not much of a surprise to anyone who knows me) to go to a UU Church to hear my favorite unknown trio, Mad Agnes. It's a "girl group" with a male singer, and no one is named Agnes. But, oh boy, can they do harmony. It's absolutely incredible. Plus some of their songs are so clever, and at the same time so poignant, that I am amazed. And the songs of one of them, Adrienne Jones, writes wonderfully clever lyrics. I have and listen often to all their CD's (all three of them) plus a couple done before they joined forces. Go and listen to them: http://www.madagnes.com. Buy a CD, send them off to England on the No Visible Means of Support Tour.

 

My life is still made up of mostly physical therapy and doctor's appointments, and days are still mostly long and lonely, but I am attempting to begin to find a life. And eventually I will have one that does not include toilets as a major excitement!

 

Blessings, Margo

Tags: two toilets and a pedestal sink, first date, Mad Agnes

Following Up

 

I want to take time to follow up on my last entry. I activated my "I've fallen and I can't get up" button system last week, and am wearing it around the house full time now. I find I am having mixed feelings about it. I keep saying to myself, "I'm only 57 years old! I'm too young to have to wear one of these!" Now, I know that age has nothing to do with disability, and disability only slows me down, it has not stopped me. I know I can feel any age I choose, with a bit of imagination, and can choose to feel-and act-young or old, one after the another, if I wish. But the refrain still echoes in my mind, "I'm only 57 years old..."

 

And I am quite aware that the button does nothing to help me not fall. It only helps if I fall so badly that I can't get up. So far I have always managed to get up (except for that one time, right after surgery, when I had to call the fire department for lift assistance, but even then I managed to scoot myself to the phone), so unless I break a hip or something, I am paying big bucks (for me) for something I hope I'll never use.

 

So I have been asked, how did I get here? Poorly controlled diabetes, over the course of more than thirty years. I was not bad the whole time. In good times, I controlled my blood sugars very well, balancing food, exercise and insulin well. In bad times I gave up, still giving myself insulin, but eating badly and not exercising. And I have been depressed on and off my whole life.

 

This lead to one of those invisible, under-discussed, exquisitely painful diseases: peripheral neuropathy. It happens when nerves die. I have a weird, almost unexplainably painful feeling/non-feeling situation in my feet. Huh? you say. I have numbness and buzzing and pin-and-needles and pain in my feet, and right arm and hand. The former is from diabetes, the latter from the injury to my arm. It is a kind of pain that only those who have it (and there are other causes beside diabetes) can understand. There is no way to explain that I actually have pain somewhere that is numb. And asleep. And buzzing. All at the same time.

 

The upshot of all this is that have very little feeling in my feet, no real sense of where they are in space, therefore where I am in space. Not only do I trip over my own feet, I trip over the floor as well, and, set free on a road, I walk like a drunk, wandering wobbly legged from one side of the road toward the other, three steps forward, one step back. Hence the walker. With it, I don't have the back and forth across the road problem. and am much less likely to trip over my own feet.

 

Diabetic neuropathy can also mess with inner organs-the heart (I had open heart surgery at age 43), the kidneys (OK so far) and body regulating systems (like blood pressure). Hence the orthoscopic hypotension, where my BP falls so drastically when I stand up.  Ironically, I didn't fall at 380+ pounds, somehow my weight kept me grounded. (Yes, I did fall at work and smashed my right arm, but that was because I had the phone cord wrapped around my feet.) Now, at 162 pounds, I'm on the ground all the time.

 

I am considering a housemate, though I've grown to love living alone. And a roommate will not keep me from falling. As I have said before, I try hard to stand still before I start, but don't always remember-like when I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. I land in the hall a lot.

 

Now, don't get me wrong. I sound as if I fall daily. This is not true at all. I go down a couple times a month, and rarely as spectacularly as two weekends ago. It is just often enough to make my daughter crazy, my friends worry, and me frustrated. I want to thank all those who commented with worry, concern and care on my last entry, and reassure all that I am trying very hard not to fall.

 

I think the best suggestion was to only fall on pillows. I am considering a couple of options. 1) to pillow the floor throughout the entire house or 2) to have a "pillow suit" made, one which will cover me from head to toe, leaving out only my eyes and nose. What do you think?

 

Blessings, Margo

Tags: peripheral neuropathy, silent disease, falling down

Be Careful...

 

Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.

 

After nearly three months "home bound" and rarely leaving the house, Workers' Comp decided I no longer needed an aide, therefore I am no longer stuck in the house-I have been freed! I can drive short distances, like to physical therapy.

 

I felt like a bird whose cage has suddenly been opened.

 

I decided I had to do something exciting now that I was out. I chose the Annual Neighborhood Progressive Christmas Dinner for my exciting event. It is a party that follows Christmas. We start at one house for appetizers, a second for salad, a third for entrees, and a final house for dessert. The celebrants include everyone who live in the fifteen houses in our little Historical District, kids, boyfriends, girlfriends, parents, grandparents, partners, anyone who happens to be around. It is a chance to catch up in winter, when most of us hibernate. 

 

For me, the exciting part was to be getting all dolled up to go-my first shower alone, nice clothes, make up, real shoes-as opposed the my 5x sweats and Birkenstocks I've been hanging out in. I planned go out and knock my neighbors dead with my whole get up. A few had all seen me grubby, cranky, and in pain, most had not seen me at all for the few months. Now I would have the opportunity to show off a bit, my whole weight loss, my one set of nice clothes that fit. And I knew it would get me out among people, a real struggle in my present life.

 

I was looking forward to it all week. Saturday dawned gray and gloomy, but I was happy. I went to physical therapy, discovered that driving on bumpy roads (the only kind we have in CT) is quite painful. I didn't care. Came home, took a nap, then a shower. In my 5x bathrobe, I wandered into the kitchen to start making the appetizer I was taking. My time line was set: make food, get dressed, find and apply makeup, find shoes, take cane and food and set off up the street.

 

Thinking of all this, I opened a my pantry door, reached in, then felt myself take a small step backwards, then another larger step. First I was surprised. Then the news flash sliced through my brain: "Oh sh*t, I am out of control."  And in that split second, I was. I reached for the doorknob, and missed. Blasting through my head was a mantra like cry: "Don't fall on your right shoulder!" I turned left, aiming for the table. My feet seemed to have a life if their own, pirouetting in a complex series of shambling moves over which I had no control. I missed the table because I was now moving faster and faster, reminiscent of an out of control whirling dervish.

 

By now I knew that I was going to go down. Unfortunately I was headed towards the edge of the kitchen counter. After that things got too complicated to document clearly. I know I hit the edge of the counter, turned enough to eventually land on my (left) buttock. Somehow or other, I scraped my inner arm (left), banged my left chin and shoulder, then landed on the floor, hitting my head on the pantry trim on the way down.

 

When everything came to a stop, I lay on the floor, holding the top of my head, trying to assess where I hurt. At first I thought I had just banged my shoulder and head. But when I sat up there was blood on the floor. I took my hands away, and the were bloody too.

 

My first thought was: "There goes the party."  I have promised Meg that anytime I fall, bang my head and bleed, I would call 911. So I did, grabbing a handful of napkins to staunch the flow of blood. The 911 operator told me to stay where I was. I told him I'd had to stand up to reach the phone, so I might as well go sit in the living room where I'd be comfortable.

 

Luckily I could grab some laundry in the dining room, because I did not want to greet the EMT's in my huge bathrobe. I found I had grabbed 5x sweats, but put them on anyway, trying to keep pressure on my wound, and talk to the 911 operator all at once. Then I sat there holding the phone and shaking.

 

But by now I was seeing the funny side of all this. The ambulance would arrive just as the entire neighborhood was heading toward cocktails. Sure enough, the ambulance rounded the corner and half a dozen neighbors came to huddle around the ambulance and worry. Claudia, God bless her, barged right past the EMT's to see if she could help.

 

So off to the hospital I went, giving the royal wave to neighbors as we bumped out of the village. [As an aside, if you have never ridden in an ambulance, and I hope you never do, the ride is very, very bumpy.] Sometime in the middle of all the chaos I had managed to call Meg, too, because she called Peggy, who

eventually arrived join me at the hospital.

 

We arrived at the ER to discover the waiting room overflowing, every cubicle filled, people lying on gurneys in the hall, nurses looking stressed, and the triage nurse frantic. She looked at me for 30 seconds and gave me my first big break of the day. She told the EMT's to take me right into Fast Track. As I got on the gurney, I began feeling silly... I shouldn't have called 911, I shouldn't make a big deal about hitting my head, there wasn't that much blood...

 

Peggy arrived and told me to shut up (that's what friends are for), and soon after, the doctor came in and said the same thing, only more nicely. He asked a lot of questions, peered at my head, and announced I had a mild to moderate concussion and needed stitches(!)  After rummaging around looking for the surgical stapler, he gave up, and actually put in three stitches. Soon after, I was out and on the way home.(This is Fast Track at its best, but, alas, one needs to arrive by ambulance to get into Fast Track quickly!)

 

I did actually make the third venue of the party, clean, but scraggly haired, in smaller sweatpants, but size 5x on top, so I didn't have to bother my head, no make up, wearing white socks and Birks, with a headache to end all headaches, and Peggy along to prop me up. I made a quick round to tell everybody that I was okay, while Peg ate some dinner, then retired home quickly to my recliner, where I am still sleeping these days. 

 

Such was my exciting event. Rather different from the one I had in mind. 

 

I am still grappling with this, my third trip to the ER due to bloody falls in the last year. I have ordered an emergency button to wear around my neck, which will be good if I ever fall and am not able to get up, but does nothing to stop me from falling. I am unwilling to say so to Meg, who worries way too much about me, but I'm falling way too often, and (so far) none of the dozen or so doctors I've talked to have as much as a suggestion to help-except to be careful.

 

And I am!

 

Unfortunately, it's just not possible to be aware every minute. Most of us spend a lot of time spacing out as we move from one room to another, or reach into the cupboard. And as soon as I drift a bit, my feet start drifting, too, off to one side, or backwards, because I have no sense of my feet, and where they are. This leads to not having a real sense of where I am in space, a dangerous thing, in my experience.

 

And this does  not take into account of my BP which drops twenty points when I stand up. This is easier to deal with- I just stand still for ten seconds until the dizziness passes. Except when I'm in a hurry and forget. But really, I'm much better at this than thinking about every step. My cardiologist actually put me on meds to raise my blood pressure, but it hasn't helped.

 

And such is life. I keep reminding myself that although I didn't have the 

experience I wanted, I'm still free from my stay-at-home constraints. I am not exactly jumping with joy in my life, but tomorrow I will drive myself to p.t. again. Maybe by next month I'll be strong enough to put my walker into the car, so I can go walking at the Casino or mall. By spring, I'll be into onto other things. And if I fall? I'll haul myself up, once again, and keep going. As usual.

 

Blessings, Margo

 

Happy New Year?

mood: pessimistic

 

Happy New Year to all. I have been browsing around and lots of people are making resolutions, optimistically looking forward to all the possibilities the years will offer. Needless to say, I am not one of them.

 

I know that Warrior Woman, that part of me that keeps me moving forward no matter what, is alive and doing her job. I am doing my physical therapy exercises at home as well as at the p.t. office. I've tried driving a couple of times, but still don't feel safe, so I have accepted another week or two of being home. I am thinking of places I can walk once I'm free to drive again. I have even answered an Internet match e-mail.(Thank you, Becky, you didn't think I'd take up your suggestion from several months ago seriously, did you?) But of course, I can't drive yet, so I can't get out there to meet anyone yet.

 

But I am not filled with enthusiasm about anything-a sure sign of depression. I am once again in the dark pit, and have been for quite a while. I am quite able to put on the happy face for a few hours, a day here or there, an entry or two here, but afterwards the smile goes and I am left alone in my house, with nobody to talk to and nothing to do.

 

Meg calls with questions about what to do in her life, and when I have asked her to take me to a doctor's appointment, she has complied. But if I ask too much, she makes me aware of it. Peggy calls most days, and drops by for brief visits on the weekend. I go for physical therapy twice a week. Other than that, I am alone at home and talk to no one. The days are long and the nights are filled with HGTV and the Discovery channels.

 

I rarely fall into blaming myself for being alone anymore. I do not believe it is something I do or did, or that I am unfriendly, or not worth being friends with. I know my strengths-compassion, a nonjudgmental attitude, self-awareness, inner strength and a stick-to-it-ness that kicks in whether I want it to or not. I know at least some of my faults-I am neurotically early, I am afraid of peoples' rage, I am such an introvert that I have to retreat to know what I am feeling. And perhaps worst of all, I was born with my cup half empty. Telling me to be optimistic is like telling a chronic depressive to just cheer up.

 

But none of this explains why I am so alone. People who have partners or families or friend they go out with or coworkers they like have no idea what it is like to speak to no one for literally days on end. No, this is not a pity party. It is a form of musing, to put life into perspective.

 

I think I am alone because life, the universe, fate, the gods, the Goddess, whatever, dealt me a series of long term blows and I had to let go of everything to concentrate on survival and then healing. There is no great plan to teach me some big lesson, although I have learned some things about myself, loyalty, and courage. There is no big reason, no Goddesses or fates or fairies who stepped in to smite me down like God did to Job. It all just is, and I cannot fix it right now. I can only keep going as I am.

 

I cannot screw up much enthusiasm this New Year. Each of the last three years has been miserable in its own different way. And I have kept on keeping on. I will do the same this year, blindly believing that things can only get better...or worse. Either way I will keep on keeping on.

 

Blessings, Margo