Tired Of Being Strong

[Guest Janka]

21 minutes ago, Cookie said:

Janka:  So sorry to hear about your troubles....big hug to you, Cookie

Thank you!So nice to hear something like that from you too.

Hugs from Janka

[kevin]

Home or auto repairs comes in three's.......brakes, windshield, and Vet costs all within three weeks..Taking trip to the coast tomorrow, chances are I'll get a chip in new windshield............Started my lawnmower today, Spring is close.....have a good evening....

[Guest]

My aspen are in bloom and tulips are breaking through the soil.  Time for more snow.

[Froggie4635]

Will be glad to see this month finish...it has held a lot of emotional triggers and I am tired.  I don't like wishing time away, and I know it is probably not just this month that has held triggers...each month coming up will hold their own.  The emotional back and forth in itself is tiring.  There are many evenings when I  get home from work, and after I take care of the furbabes and get my dinner over, I finally sit down and all the thoughts that have been going around in my head go silent, and are replaced by something mindless like the theme from "The Simpsons" while I play solitaire on my Kindle.  Especially by Friday.  Last night, while watching "Grey's Anatomy" I found myself crying...I know I am reaching that point of losing my strength to appear "normal".  I miss having Mark there to discuss what went on, or to hug me when something really sad happens.  Last night was all about the tearing apart of a marriage, and my heart ached.  I am so grateful for the wonderful (though NOT perfect) marriage I had with Mark.  I am just selfish and wanted MORE of it.  I find when I get emotional and stressed and tired that I get frustrated and it comes out like a bright red color.  Then I dissolve into tears.  Like the other morning when I could not get my babes to go out in the rain and go potty.  It was affecting my morning schedule and the more it went on, the more frustrated I got.  When it boiled over, I screamed and then began to cry.  How does one deal with anger when you really aren't angry at someone or something?  I am not angry at Mark...I don't feel he abandoned me.  How could I?  He didn't leave on purpose.  I can't logically be angry at him.  But the frustration comes from somewhere.  I guess I felt what little control I have was slipping away and I got angry.  I KNOW control is an illusion...but having something (schedule-wise) rigid, helps me deal day to day.  Anything else creates the feeling of being in a tailspin.  Even at almost 15 months out.  It is all so tiring.

[Margm]

I am back in my home parish.  One of Billy's and mine long ago friends, her brother passed away.  He was a colleague of Billy's, his sister was a childhood girlfriend of Billy's. She married one of Billy's friends, all hometown people.  I have talked to three of them this morning.  We were all friends when we were first married and only drifted apart when we all moved on to other places.  I am contemplating going to visitation. They only found out about Billy when I told them.  They grew up with him.  I am going to try to go.  Part of me wants to, part of me needs Billy to go with me.  So this stress messes with my illness and I might let it intrude. At an impasse.

[hollowheart]

4 hours ago, Froggie4635 said:

Will be glad to see this month finish...it has held a lot of emotional triggers and I am tired.  I don't like wishing time away, and I know it is probably not just this month that has held triggers...each month coming up will hold their own.  The emotional back and forth in itself is tiring.  There are many evenings when I  get home from work, and after I take care of the furbabes and get my dinner over, I finally sit down and all the thoughts that have been going around in my head go silent, and are replaced by something mindless like the theme from "The Simpsons" while I play solitaire on my Kindle.  Especially by Friday.  Last night, while watching "Grey's Anatomy" I found myself crying...I know I am reaching that point of losing my strength to appear "normal".  I miss having Mark there to discuss what went on, or to hug me when something really sad happens.  Last night was all about the tearing apart of a marriage, and my heart ached.  I am so grateful for the wonderful (though NOT perfect) marriage I had with Mark.  I am just selfish and wanted MORE of it.  I find when I get emotional and stressed and tired that I get frustrated and it comes out like a bright red color.  Then I dissolve into tears.  Like the other morning when I could not get my babes to go out in the rain and go potty.  It was affecting my morning schedule and the more it went on, the more frustrated I got.  When it boiled over, I screamed and then began to cry.  How does one deal with anger when you really aren't angry at someone or something?  I am not angry at Mark...I don't feel he abandoned me.  How could I?  He didn't leave on purpose.  I can't logically be angry at him.  But the frustration comes from somewhere.  I guess I felt what little control I have was slipping away and I got angry.  I KNOW control is an illusion...but having something (schedule-wise) rigid, helps me deal day to day.  Anything else creates the feeling of being in a tailspin.  Even at almost 15 months out.  It is all so tiring.

Froggie, I feel like I understand everything you said and feel the same way. (I love the The Simpsons too, by the way). I also get that quick frustration and anger. You actually are angry at something, you're angry at the situation. You're angry that this situation had to affect YOU and disrupt your life. I use the word "selfish" too, but really, it's not selfish. Our people were taken prematurely. So, to want them back for another 10, 20, or 30 years or more is not really selfish it's realistic to me. My Grandma was 103 when she died. We were all supposed to have this long with our loved ones.

 Sometimes I feel that 'going crazy' feeling again when I think to hard about the silence in my life. I miss my sister's voice, I miss just chatting with her and hearing her opinions and hearing her laugh and joke with me. That silence is loud as can be.

I get tired of trying to muddle through a situation that I'm forced to live in and deal with. I also hate that I want desperately to replace what I had with her but know that I can't. My therapist recommended some meet up groups that like to do the things we used to do. I'm thinking about it but am already frustrated that it won't be the same and will probably be worse. Trying to force fun in the company of strangers. I don't know. Maybe one day.

[Gwenivere]

Froggie.....

These are all things I struggle with daily.  It concerns me how 'unormal' I am feeling more than ever at 16 months.  But I do the math and that is a very long time to not have spoken to or touched the one we loved.  I am very affected by shows that remotely are similar to our life.  I had the TV  before bed last night, some movie was running and when I sat down it was a widow talking about how her husband died 5 years earlier from prostate cancer.   What were the odds?  Talk about crying!  

I don't know what to do with the anger I find in myself.   I know my dogs have gotten more than thier share of exposure for little things they do that are merely catalysts for what is inside me, it is not them, not to the point I lose it.  I'm not even sure what've am angry at when it happens because when I think of Steve is it pure sadness.  I did my stint of anger towards him.  I think frustration is the right word.  And it is exaggerated frustration.  Not what we were used to in our old life.  Plus we have to navigate it it alone.  Can't bounce it off our partners.  I know my illusion of control was shattered when Steve was diagnosed.  Never knew I had that illusion we had more of that than we think.  

We were retired so the job thing or structure has been hard to adapt to.  We had a good daily system and we're happy, even during some if the cancer time in the beginning.  I have volunteering, but it has become harder with no one to share it with.  I walk out and get hit with I have to go home and be alone.  The hardest thing is I find no pleasure in the small things anymore, even the ones I did alone.  I want to feel like taking my dogs to the dog park, but it seems too extreme an effort.  I have tonforcevmyself to do anything but sit and feel bad.  It is tiring.  Exhausting tho no one that has not experienced it would understand.  Especially since I was so active before.  I hate feeling this tired with nothing to show for it beyond just getting thru a day.  I still if there is a hell, this is it.

[Margm]

Well, I don't know if anyone read mine above, and girls, I cried before I left my daughter's house.  I have not been around many/if any of our friends for four months.  The last time I had been to this funeral home was my mother-in-law's funeral in the 1970's.  It was visitation for the brother of our good friends, and who we have not been in touch with since before all our kids graduated.  These were Billy's childhood friends and my good friends also.  I had to ask for Bettie, and she said "Im right here Margaret" and the years fell away.  I talked to Billy all the way to the funeral home and told him he had to help me.  I was so calm.  I know this was not much, but it was a giant step for me.  One of my other friends has been after me to meet her somewhere, so I called her up and made plans.  My sister was so proud of me.  And, I faced signing something without Billy.  So, I put him in parenthesis (Billy) between my first and last name.  I don't have to leave him out anymore.

[Gwenivere]

1 hour ago, Marg M said:

I faced signing something without Billy.  So, I put him in parenthesis (Billy) between my first and last name.  I don't have to leave him out anymore.

Many things I can't put his name on without creating problems (legally).  But I make sure when I make a donation or sometimes send a message to someone special, I always put his name or in memory of.

[Margm]

I hate my new checking account, it seems so naked and alone.  I have not closed. my old one.  It's not like he is going to be writing a check. I have a year, 8 more months

[kayc]

I have been traveling, just getting caught up here...it sounds like you've had a trying day, Margaret.  I bet you're glad it's over.

 

[Gwenivere]

When it came to banking, I talked to our lawyer and the bank.   They saw no need to take Steve off our checking account.  I'm so glad I didn't as that would have led to changing so many online bills that are deducted from it.  I knew he would never write another check so that made it a little easier.   All these kind of details are so mentally exhausting as they carry such emotional weight.  Hope you will be OK, Marg.

[Margm]

My credit union, long, lifelong, told me I had one year from time of death, so I changed to a local, many state offices, one.  The old one had offices in the southern part of the state.  But, somehow, other credit unions honor accounts of others.  That is why I could go to a credit union in Arkansas and deposit in mine in south Louisiana.  I don't like having anything without his name on it.  But, my understanding was I had to.  I get some consolation from seeing at the top of this page "Billy's 5th Kindle"

[Kpl48]

I haven't been as paralyzed by Andre's death. I've been going out with the friends I've made during the past year. I've even had short periods (3-3 days) of less pain when I think of him. It's like I'm doing what he told me to do before he died: "I want you to build a new life." He always thought of me, even when he was dying!

Today, reading your shares, I was reminded he was gone...not here with me physically. I haven't cried much for a few days, but now the tears and memories are flowing. I'm so grateful to know we all understand. Grief is really hard, isn't it?

[scba]

I'm having a "why" attack and I know there is no answer. But if I write it down, perhaps I will stop asking and I will be able to go to bed and sleep. Why our dream was taken away from us? We were in love, a sincere love, a truly committed love. This happened because I falled in love and stayed with a man who was sick? He told me to dump him, find a man with health and get all I wanted. but all i wanted was him. i stayed, so this is the natural consequence of my choice? I should carry grief better because I choose to stay? I'm so dammed tired, i told many times how i feel cheated by my beliefs in life and love.

[kayc]

scba,

All I can say is I'm sorry.

[Gwenivere]

Scba, so many questions run thru my head every day.  What if I never walked into the bar I met him?  What if his car had never broken died in my city and he continued on?  Where would I be today?  Would I have met someone else who didn't get cancer and die?  And then I think....would I have wanted the decades we had to have been any different?  Would I have loved someone else as deeply?   Would it have been the marriage I always wanted?  I was married once before. And while a good man, he didn't do for my heart what Steve did.  We'll never know for sure, but I trust my heart I made the right decision and now because in chose him, I now have to deal with the biggest loss ever.  Some find someone else down the line, but that won't be me.  The thing is we didn't think this time would ever come.  But time propels us forward in age and possible maladies.  So yes, I guess this is the price we pay.  What we have ask ourselves is.....was it worth it?  I know my answer.  

[hollowheart]

Scba, I have those 'why' moments too. Things that mean nothing to others were a big thing for me, like getting a car. I think about me and my sister couldn't wait for me to get a car and all I could think of was the freedom we'd finally have, and all the fun we'd have together going to places we couldn't get to before and doing just what we wanted. Now I think, why did this have to happen? I'm finally going to get a car and I probably won't even want to drive it. It's not fair I will have one without her. It's just not fair we waited so long for our fun and now we are robbed. Yet one more reason I stay so angry and moody.

[brat#2]

scba, I totally get the "why" questions. I think we all have asked them over and over and unfortunately there aren't any true answers, wish there were.  We just have to trust our hearts that we made the right choice of choosing the love and who we love.  I'm sure we have all wondered if it was worth it, but for me, yes it was, Dale was the best part of my life and made me a better person, so this pain, which I hate, was the price I pay for loving my love and soul mate.

[Guest]

“There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

~CARL JUNG~”

Personally, other than having Deedo die far too soon, there is nothing in my life I would change.  Throughout all of the darkness there have been bright angels who helped us as we navigated our lives.  Because of that April day in 1978 when a beautiful, ditzy, radiant gal walked into my life I have a lifetime of wonderful memories.  The challenges we faced have faded into a blur but the wonderful times, the children, the travels, the countless hours lost in each others company are what I remember of the past.  I'm a card carrying skeptic but Deedo was told of our meeting three months before we met.  She was in Germany and I was in Salt Lake City.  I had never been to Deutschland and she had never been to Utah.  Today my task is to try to find solace in my emptiness.  I am glad that if one of us had to leave first it was Deedo and not me.  I only wish it wasn't so soon, but then that's what we all wish regardless of the time we had with our loved ones.  I know that life is balance.  Day and night, happy and sad; I just never knew that all the happiness I had for so long would require the scales to balance so viciously, so painfully, so maliciously.

[KATPILOT]

Brad,

I love the way you speak about when you met and the lady Deedo is. We can just imagine what that day means to you. I go back and forth myself about which would have been best, my dying first or Kathy. Either way, one loses the other. I had already lived eleven years longer so that does become a factor as to her having to be left behind instead of me.

 

For me, life is out of balance now. Hopi's have a word for that Quanaskatzi, though I think I have the spelling wrong.

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

Steve - 

Life is out of balance.  It isn't making much sense for me.  I have lost my purpose.  

Deedo was a cougar as she was two years and ten months older.  You are right about Deedo, she is an amazing lady, just don't let her hear you calling her one, she always saw herself as a prank pulling, fun-loving, irreverent, obsessive/compulsive, best friend kind of tomboy.  There is a reason why the sun is not shining as brightly as it once did and I don't think it has anything to do with the degradation of its core.

One of the reasons I am glad she went first is she had suffered from ocular histoplasmosis for almost all of our married life.  It causes macular degeneration and while she could still do okay her vision was a limiting factor for full independence.  She would not have liked to have been forced into moving into our daughters home, whe was far too fiercely dependent for that.

[KATPILOT]

The correct spelling is Koyaanisqatsi  by the way.  Brad you have lost your purpose  alright and I can say I had too. I keep thinking there is something I'm suppose to do now but it has evaded me for these five years. Kathy and I believed in fate in that everything happens for a reason. This one sure has me beat but perhaps one day it will become evident.

During the eighties and early nineties I was fortunate to be able to fly a Hopi artist back and forth from Second Mesa.  Charles taught me  about life out of balance. I loved his view of life and the afterlife as well.  I ended up with a different understanding of death than I carried before.

I understand now why you felt it best you didn't go first.  I remember watching my dad and step mom as they were approaching 90 and helping each other walk  along.  There was something quite sweet about it. How great it would have been to watch out for each other and help one another through difficulties. Too bad neither you nor I got that chance but few do .

 

[Gwenivere]

1 hour ago, KATPILOT said:

I remember watching my dad and step mom as they were approaching 90 and helping each other walk  along.  There was something quite sweet about it. How great it would have been to watch out for each other and help one another through difficulties. Too bad neither you nor I got that chance but few do .

I was hoping for that myself.  I see older couples struggling, but they have each other.  We got to help on that last struggle, but it came too soon.  We didn't even have our walkers yet!  

[Guest]

There is something magical about watching nonagenarians helping each other navigate life.  We have a Post magazine cover framed on the wall in our bathroom that I always hoped would be Deedo and me some day.  Guess not now.