If You're Going Through Hell

[Margm]

27 minutes ago, Kieron said:

I don't know where to put this mini-rant,

I put all my mini-rants, big rants, epiphanies, word salads here, if I can remember.  I went to one cancer survivor group meeting.  Left in the middle.  About three meetings at the Baptist Church for survivors of grief, I had forgot that people who had lost children would be there.  I left each time because of the loss of children.  Losing my other half was impossibly horrible but the loss of a child, please God, let me go first, that is all I can ask.

Anyhow, you have joined a group who all have obtained our PhD in Griefology and we all understand rants.  And approve of them.  Just sorry you were exposed to that part of life.   

[Gwenivere]

If the is one thing I’m becoming San expert at it is funding nothing seems to fall into place anymore.   It’s like some grief curse.  I don’t know how many times I’ve made plans like you, Kieron, and something happens or my mood changes.  Of course,  we aren’t going doing normal plans like a movie, taking a drive or walking our dogs.  We are trying things to help pain based lives now.  It’s a given that they will include pain or at least b in pulled emotionally in ways we never experienced.  I try and do things I always did but under it all is a whole new feeling that never leaves.  Even the times I have told stories about Steve and I catch up to me later when I’m alone.  And the in lies the the answer to it all.  Alone.  I never understood that saying ' alone in a crowd' as I do now.  

I was sitting on my porch last night thinking of this life wihout purpose and it hit me I am not dying fast enough.  The thoughts that come of this are so dark from lack of connection to someone that made us whole.  I’m so tired of being told he would not want me to feel this way.  Of course he wouldn’t.  But the people who tell me that have yet to come up with how one accomplishes that having not been here beyond their absurd suggestions of activities.  That creates more solitude because I learn not to say anything anymore.  

[Widowedbysuicide]

Hi @Kieron,

I certainly get the breach thing.  It has happened to me over the years while attending group therapy at mental health. I have been a client for nearly 30 years, not a worker, but it still rattles me deeply.  It seems to me that I am the one that feels the awkwardness while the other person is oblivious to the need to have confidentiality.  My difficulty with boundaries get tested far too often. 😵.  The part about getting mentally and physically prepared to attend has continued to be problematic but eventually I will get it right 😳.

I hope being able to rant here is helpful for you.  

Sorry you had one of 'those' days.

[Kieron]

Thanks, everyone.  In retrospect, I kind of wish I had stayed and stuck it out, because the facilitator was so kind and welcoming, but I know this former client lacks boundaries and would be wanting to know my story, and I didn't like working with him anyhow, and was relieved when he quit our services.  I'm just amazed that this random person from last summer shows up here of all places.  Only I would have this happen.

Ugh, what can ya do  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

3 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

 That creates more solitude because I learn not to say anything anymore.   

Gwen, that's so sadly and profoundly true.  I think I stay silent far more than I should.

 

37 minutes ago, Widowedbysuicide said:

 It seems to me that I am the one that feels the awkwardness while the other person is oblivious to the need to have confidentiality.

Aint that the truth!

[kayc]

Kieron,

I'm sorry, that "former client" must have left his brains at home!  People never cease to amaze me, sometimes in good ways, but days like that...in bad ways, truly.  I would have been dumbfounded, you didn't need that, he surely could have afforded you your privacy.  And then to get that in the mail, that's the last straw to (like Marty said) a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day!  (My daughter and I went and saw the play about two months after George died, it was great).  I hope today goes better for you!

And this going through hell title is a great catch-all for all these trying times!

[Margm]

Not sure but I think Cookie lives close to  the Nantahala (sp?) National Forest and think it is pretty far inland.  I think I read something about mudslides.  Cookie, if you are reading this, you must live in a most beautiful place.  I checked your profile and I believe it is probably one of the most beautiful parts of the  USA.  Let us hear from you if you keep electricity.  

 

[kayc]

Cullowhee, NC
It says the storm will affect this area morning to night
https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/cullowhee-nc/28723/weather-forecast/2096619

Heavy rain, winds, but it's hopeful that they're out tackling the damage already, hoping it's not hit as hard as some places.

 

 

 

[Margm]

When it hits the Gulf, we get fragments over 300 miles away.  

 

[Cookie]

On 9/16/2018 at 6:30 PM, kayc said:

Cullowhee, NC
It says the storm will affect this area morning to night
https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/cullowhee-nc/28723/weather-forecast/2096619

Heavy rain, winds, but it's hopeful that they're out tackling the damage already, hoping it's not hit as hard as some places.

 

 

 

I live in Cullowhee.......so strange to see this on here.  This was on the college campus but most places didn't get much of anything....we were really lucky because the forecast was for much worse.  Coookie

[Cookie]

On 9/16/2018 at 2:05 PM, Marg M said:

Not sure but I think Cookie lives close to  the Nantahala (sp?) National Forest and think it is pretty far inland.  I think I read something about mudslides.  Cookie, if you are reading this, you must live in a most beautiful place.  I checked your profile and I believe it is probably one of the most beautiful parts of the  USA.  Let us hear from you if you keep electricity.  

 

Marg:  Kept everything!  It missed us almost completely.  Spent hours digging trenches on my gravel road and thankfully they weren't necessary.  Yes, this is paradise, really.....I live on a hill with a beautiful view of the mountains.....a place John (mainly) and I built.  Think I have to leave it at some point because of upkeep, but boy is that going to be a hard one!  Hope you were all spared the effects of the hurricane.....hugs, Cookie

[MartyT]

So relieved to learn that you are safe and dry, Cookie! Thank you for checking in ❤️

[Margm]

2 hours ago, Cookie said:

Think I have to leave it at some point because of upkeep,

Cookie, you have a bunch of beautiful little towns around you.  I was not in your predicament, Billy was no house builder or real lover of houses.  He liked RV's and tents.  So did I.  Never was attached to anything but a Holiday Rambler RV and I cried when we traded it in on a house trailer.  But, I traveled the internet around where you live and it is beautiful.  It was so beautiful where we lived.  It was a paradise, but I could not stay there, the quiet was too loud.  

Very glad you are safe. 

[kayc]

Thanks for letting everyone know you're okay, Cookie, we have been concerned about everyone over there.  So relieved you're okay!  I'm sure you're beat, doing all that work!

[Cookie]

On ‎09‎/‎18‎/‎2018 at 2:43 PM, Marg M said:

Cookie, you have a bunch of beautiful little towns around you.  I was not in your predicament, Billy was no house builder or real lover of houses.  He liked RV's and tents.  So did I.  Never was attached to anything but a Holiday Rambler RV and I cried when we traded it in on a house trailer.  But, I traveled the internet around where you live and it is beautiful.  It was so beautiful where we lived.  It was a paradise, but I could not stay there, the quiet was too loud.  

Very glad you are safe. 

Thanks Marg:  I know what you mean by "the quiet was too loud."  Probably won't stay here....waiting for my daughter to finish grad school and get her feet under her.  She had come home from NYC where she had been living for 13 years to be with her dad before he died.  She decided to stay and start grad school, albeit, a couple years later.  Will be hard to leave, though.  I am originally from LA and it took me a while to get used to this country life but now it's home....been here for 45 years, more time than I spent in the city.  Just can't think about what will come....keep putting it off--too painful still. 

[Cookie]

Thanks all of you for your concerns; really touched me.  Looking for new poodle puppy....will share when it happens.  Hugs to all, Cookie

[Margm]

Cookie, next month will be three years.  He has not left me, I somehow feel he is around.  As long as there are clouds, I talk to Billy.  But........if it hurts me, I  don't do it.  

[Margm]

This week I learned my long-time friend has cancer just about everywhere there is a place to have it.  She will be 72 on September 29th.  I have a story to tell, I am putting it here.  Her life is worthy a book, but I won't put it where her friends and family can read it.  She was a coworker for 27 years.  When she was 14, she got pregnant and in those days (down south) girls got married.  She was a widow at 17 with a young son to raise.  She got her GED and she got married again.  We don't know if the first one was a prize or not, he did not live long enough to know.  Her second husband ran around on her but she had another little boy to raise by this time.  His girlfriend got pregnant and she even allowed him and his new wife to live with her awhile, being more friends with the wife than her old husband.  And that baby was her boy's brother and she loved him.  I'm sure there was anguish along the way, but she never showed it, she just got married again.  This one didn't last because he had children and hers and his did not get along, so another divorce.  If there was anguish, she never showed it, made a joke out of the disarray of her life.  Then she met the love of her life.  (Or at least, we will call him the last love of her life.)  Unfortunately, he was married, but he soon got a divorce and all went swimmingly well for a couple or three months.  They had a problem.   He could not understand her being jealous of his having affairs.  They took this to a marriage counselor and yes, again, we all would have a good laugh along with my friend at the end of this marriage.  Sorry folks, he and the counselor had a connection, both quit their  jobs and became preachers for the "cowboy church" that you have probably seen, or heard of.  That was her last.  Her oldest son, her mom and dad and she all bought mobile homes and moved them on a piece of land sort of like in the old westerns when the wagon trains would surround each other.  Her mom and dad and children, and all family had stood by her throughout all her trials and tribulations.  She never hung her head, she was well admired by us all, loved very much by her children and grandchildren and her parents most of all.  Her oldest son said "Mom, you don't have much luck with men, have you ever thought of trying women."  That was a standing joke we at the office laughed about.  

In these later years, she has taken care of her mom and dad with her mom passing away, I think, last year.  Her dad had passed a few years before.  I guess her work on Earth is done.

I think of her often.  No childhood, other than 14 years.  Her mom and dad were not slovenly parents, they were loving parents and an accident happened.  She  paid for it, over and over, and she made the best lemonade of the life lemons threw at her.  I am sure her children and grandchildren call her blessed.  I know I do.  It has been an honor to know this friend.  

One thing I did not put and my granddaughter and I have just finished Law and Order, SVU, so I need to put it.  I worked 11-7 for seven  years.  My friend was going to take my shift for it to work out better with her children.  (She had her mom and dad then).  My office was in the dungeon of the  hospital, underground.  It was night, so I didn't need a window.  The first night she took my  place a boy from the laboratory came down the elevator.  No one around at that hour of the night.  He grabbed her and took her upstairs to an unused room and was going to rape her.  She managed to plead with him because she had young children and she got loose and got the guards.  Strange, he had just graduated high school with honors.  He did go to jail.  If she had not taken my place, it would have been me and I shudder at that thought.  Sometimes we are survivors in this life of twists and turns.  

No rhyme or reason to this story and the lead player won't read it, and I would not want her to.  

[KarenK]

Marg,

I'm so sorry about your friend. Cancer is the scourge of the earth. It does not care how much you may have already suffered in life. My daughter went to hell and back with her first two marriages(fourteen yrs. and seven years). She had been married to the third one (who seemed to be THE one) for only two years, finally got her log cabin home and her horses, and was truly happy when cancer said "Wait, I can't let this continue." I wish for peace and no suffering for your friend.

[Margm]

I know Karen.  Just when things seem to be evening out.  

Just got word that she passed away a few minutes ago.  She did not make it to her birthday, but as much pain as she was in, I doubt she cared.  I'm sorry about your daughter and Billy and all the people this insidious disease has on all people.  It respects no one, not the rich, the poor, the young or the old.  And we are all the lesser for it.  

[kayc]

Wow, I'm sorry about your friend, Marg.  One thing you can say, she kept trying.  I've been made the brunt for all my marriages, but heck, I was a great wife to all of them, one thing you learn, you can't change anyone and you'd better be careful how you pick 'em!  I was 17 when I married the first time, didn't want to, but...long story.  At least I got George and our marriage was good.

Karen, your daughter went through a lot too, sometimes life doesn't seem too fair or kind.

[Margm]

Some times grief and loneliness weighs us down.  And, there are other times that we worry about all the grief, pain, illness, weights of the world on other members of our forum and you have to think "Well, I've made it nearly three years without Billy" and then I remember my grandma's statement that after 18 years, my grandfather's death seemed like yesterday.  My girls are off in Sugarland, Tx for my granddaughter to see the concert of an Australian singing group called 5-SOS (or the long way "Five Seconds of Summer).  They needed this time alone together and the trip down there (nearly five hours) went great.  Now they are on their way home, and I worry.

But all in all, other than the biggest loss of my life and missing him, and I talked to him in low lying gray clouds today.  I guess I am in pretty good shape, for the shape I am in, and my heart goes out to the rest of you.

I am reading my fairy tales, six series of books by Octavia Randolph starting with "Circle of Ceridwen" and it is about the dark ages, years between 800 and 900.  The names are hard to say, but I just call them what I want to call them.  

I hope you all get some sleep tonight.  

[Kieron]

Love that quote but there was never any "someday" for me.  I never stopped reading them.  I think stories, tales and myths have a lot to contribute to our own understanding of the world and ourselves.  ☺️

[kayc]

I agree, that's why I didn't read them to my children.  I think the "happily ever after" contributed to my view as a young person.

[KarenK]

Marg, your remark about being "in pretty good shape for the shape you are in" made me think of the old Kenny Rogers and The First Edition song "Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In".  So bored I looked up the lyrics and although the song was supposedly written as a deterrent for LSD users back in the day, a portion of the lyrics expressed somewhat familiar feeling to grieving(to me anyway). This is just unnecessary trivia on Saturday morning, I know.

I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and then I followed it in
I watched myself crawling out as I was a-crawling in
I got up so tight I couldn't unwind
I saw so much I broke my mind
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in

Funny, I do the same things with characters names in books. It's too tedious to wade through weird names so many times.  I have never been into historical or fairy tales. I stick mostly to "murder and mayhem". Maybe I was in law enforcement in my past life.  lol

[Margm]

35 minutes ago, KarenK said:

I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and then I followed it in
I watched myself crawling out as I was a-crawling in

Of course I remember the song.  And it reminds me of the old saying "If you find yourself in a hole, quit digging."  I loved my fairy tales.  Of course, a bear rode in the back seat of our big old Ford car when I stood between Mama and Daddy (no safety seats) back that many years ago.  I am so happy my mama told me all the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimm brothers.  She told me some that had been passed down through the German side of her great grandmother's tales, and my ear was glued to the story on Saturday mornings before TV of the program "Lets Pretend."  I am sure they made me afraid of wolves and bears, but the real monsters were not the flying dragons with fire for breath, the real monsters were humans, and they still are.  “The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous” John le Carré.  Mama quoted me Shakespeare and the Bible so much that sometimes I still get them mixed up.  

I kept a mystical, magical, mythical imagination until I lost Billy and it suddenly disappeared and it was like living in a flat land desert without trees, rocks, roads, or anything left to the imagination.  I have picked back up on some of that, hence talking to Billy in the clouds.  In my mystical bruised brain, he seems closer, and without Mama's gift of imagination, I could not do that.  She was a warped woman after something happened the first 10 years of my growing up.  I don't know what  it was.  She did leave me with that gift though.  Of course there is not a "happily ever after" and understanding that was not so hard, just very sad.  But, I would have been just as sad if I had not been told the fairy tales.  I appreciate C.S. Lewis, and to think, he lived while I was still young.