Writing as a form of healing

[MartyT]

Speaking of witches . . .

[Margm]

Yep, fixing to go get on my broom and go to the store.  Big family fuss but I need to be away in my own place.  The thing is, I go to my home, family is there too.  This is no one's problems but my own. Too many people depend on me, and I enable them, it is not their fault.  Fixing to fly away.  Marty, I wanted to put a "B" on the word instead of a "W," but both fit me right now.

[MartyT]

Standing up for yourself and practicing good self-care do not fit the definition of that word, dear Marg, whether you spell it with a "B" or a "W." I wish you could be as accommodating toward yourself as you are toward all those people who depend on you.  ♥

[Margm]

Gotta find a backbone.  Billy was mine, and I have to learn to stand up for myself.  Lot of family dynamics involved.  Maybe that seedy motel in the middle of Texas is not a bad idea.  Cannot do that with a 95 year old mom and two middle aged kids.  They don't call us the hamburger generation because we eat so many. 

 

[Margm]

There are a lot of things I forget doing.  Sometime after Billy passed, I wrote pages of my feelings.  I had three separate notebooks with writings in them. (I was cleaning out papers) Just like  buying things I do not remember where or when.  I read a few pages, not many, and it was like pouring salt into an open wound.  I write on here.  I can be as morose as I want to be, but I don't have to go back and read them.  I will not write in a notebook to read later.  I threw them all away and did not mind doing it.  "One size indeed does not fit all."

I see writing about not fitting in with anyone.  No relatives, no friends to depend on.  Kinda like eating German Chocolate Cake, a little is good, but you will get sick if you have too much. 

I am depended on to be in three places.  I am needed here for many reasons, but the main one is to babysit my mom.  I am going to be gone for a month.. I pay my daughter to sit with her.   I went all last week trying to figure out how we could keep my mom on the Alzheimer's unit.  She needs constant care.  For monetary reasons I cannot go into, nothing can be done.  My sister is ill.  If I get one seen about the other suffers.  Friday I will sign over any rights I have to any part of my mother's house or land or anything in the house.  This is no problem for me, but if both of them "go" then I am afraid I will be stuck with all the home loans.  This is an impossible situation and my kids will never be stuck with me for any reason.    

My house in Arkansas is occupied again.  I am going to clean house and buy a lot of paint brushes.  The internet, DISH, and utilities will be turned off at the end of April.  Whatever happens after that is not on me.  The keys will be given to the realtor.  I don't really care about "finding myself." I just want to try to live "on my own."

So, if you have no one, if you have no friends, please wish for a happy medium.  Sometimes more is not better.  I don't know how I am going to handle this, but suffice it to say, I hate hurting peoples feelings.  When I had cancer I had teenaged girl problems and a son who was on drugs problem..  And, did not know if I was going to die or not.  I found a stupid little poem I wrote for myself back then.

"I'm not that important, life does go on; if I was not here, then I'd be gone."  Silly little ditty of my feelings then and fits me perfectly right now.

[kevin]

Marg, your direction appears clear.....your poem is spot on, none of us are that important. I sound like a broken record but the only way to live for today    , is remove past clutter....And that does help in removing that trapped feeling......Good luck

[Margm]

I went back to my old post.  It was seven months on the 17th.  I don't think I need to remind people, I really am different.  We all hurt so bad.  I cannot look at recent pictures of Billy.  My daughter posted one on FB of me huddled up to his hospital bed, holding his arm.  I can never see that picture again.  In cleaning out this house I saw my old Billy, or should I say my younger Billy.  Last year, taking pictures of his fly fishing, I can look at those.  Pictures after he got sick I cannot look at them. Yet, we are all so different.  My daughter had a tattoo of one of his fishing flies with his name as a tribute.  Her partner (who you cannot stick a pin between tattoos) had a tribute tattooed.  Pictures posted.  I have a beautiful wooden urn where I placed a cross with (you guessed it) purple stones on top.  I put my hands on it each morning, each night.  But, he is not there.  I walk to get the mail and usually a cardinal appears.  None yesterday, but I found a $20 bill laying in the ditch next to the mailboxes.  No, I do not feel he put it there, but my cardinal did not come either.

In the books I read on grief, they tell you to keep a journal.  I have noticed that journal helps so  many people on this forum.  Again, we know I am different.  I kept finding my little journals where I would post a date and tell how I felt at that time.  Every time I read how I felt in October, November, or at Christmas it was like having a huge, gaping open wound and salt or alcohol was poured into the open wound..  Letting go of his death mask took a lot of doing and still it does haunt me at times I did not want it to. I know Billy, I knew Billy.  He was a proud man and he would be horrified for me to remember this.  Seeing my mom with her head back, her mouth open, I ran from that house hysterical when my sister came home. My sister wrote me she does not know how to talk to me.  That is okay, I feel better when she does not talk to me.  I saw my sister-in-law pass away.  There was no movement, no facial movement at all. Her eyes stayed closed.  Her mouth was closed.  The only way I knew she had died was the cover on her bed located above her chest quit moving.  No facial grimace.  Just a clock winding down and stopping.  I was the only one in the room with her.

My mother has Alzheimer's, an aneurysm next to her heart and another somewhere.  She manages to get around.  She manages to strike her head on everything.  She hurts herself all the time.  She will be 95 in less than two weeks.  She wants to be with all her family that has gone on.  I can remember in my childhood days, she used to wring the neck of chickens to pluck, singe (ugh) and then fry.  I, as a young child was terrified when she would do this.  A chicken will flop around forever when it is already dead.  Mama used to throw a tub on top of them.  Somehow my idea of taking those pills and going way out in the woods where no one would find me until hunting season seems so much kinder to those left behind.  Mama is just like the chicken thrown under the tub.  She is gone but she is still flopping under that tub.  You just sometimes wonder why.  Why to everything.  I know I am not the only person with loss, I have not taken so much Tylenol that I do not have empathy for others and no one has an answer to "why" for anything.

When Scott was a little child and would do something wrong I would say "why did you do it?"  His answer was always "I don't know."  He still remembers this as a middle aged adult, my question and his answer, and he says "Mama, I really did not know why."  Well..............neither do I.

[kayc]

Still, I wish George would leave me a $20 bill.   I don't know why some have to suffer so long like my mom and yours, doesn't seem right but then I guess the good lord never asked my opinion, just giving it all the same.  

I have a couple of pictures up of George and I look at them often, but still, to sit and go through a box or album of pictures, that would be too hard.  I keep them all the same, of course.  I have pictures of his family that I don't even know who they are and he's not here to tell me.  Someday maybe I'll take a trip to Roseburg to see his sister Melissa and have her help me identify them.  But not likely.  I haven't heard from his family since his service and most of them didn't even come for that...except his one brother that wanted stuff.  His family didn't give a fig about him and I don't get why.  He was the most caring of the whole lot of them.

I like the idea of the fly tattoo.  I have one of George and my symbol and his name under it, it's someplace unmentionable so I'm the only one who knows it's there, but it's like he has his mark on me and that's only fitting.  The Baptists would have a fit if they knew, I don't really care.  I think God has a whole lot more to judge than tattoos.  

Maybe your cardinal will appear tomorrow.

[Margm]

We discussed having rings tattooed.  They sure  would have been easier to find. (I am deleting what I wrote up till this point.  Kay, you saw it and in personally talking to you, I think you understand me.  I do think I have gotten into religion a little too much.  I want to find my faith, I will find it if I am given time, but I should not criticize my former faith.  Your a good friend Kay.  

[kayc]

Your church sounds so different than mine. I was a broken woman when I first came to the church in 2000, having just been divorced by my husband of 23 years.  No one asked questions, which I appreciated, because I didn't want to get into it, he is my kids' dad regardless of our differences, and this is a small town.  The Nazarene Church where I came from did enough tongues wagging for both of them.  But this one is a conservative Baptist Church, and I believe in their theology, if not their politics.  I don't discuss politics with them, differing as I do with most of them.  My good friend Virgie that moved back to TX was from this church and her and I saw eye to eye on most things, regardless of what the rest of them thought.  I don't like judgmental churches & people, nor ones that try to run your life.  I think grace is something we all need a bigger dose of, both on the giving and the receiving.