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[Clematis]

I know what you mean, Marty. I often think twice before "liking" something. But when someone says they "like" my post, I choose to interpret it as their being supportive of me and not, for example, that they liked it that I cried all day or whatever it was. 

[KATPILOT]

Gwen he knows of your struggles. They help guide us in ways we cannot understand and the signs don't always catch our attention. We often dream what we don't remember. I was told by a medium that they are closest to us when we sleep.  That light sleep REM just before we wake I think is the time we are most likely to receive their effect on us. When you just leave your lover at the airport , at that moment when they turn and go through security, is that not a moment when you feel a sudden "miss you so much" moment? I believe sometimes even though I wasn't consciously dreaming about Kathy, she was with me because I would wake up thinking how I miss her so much. It's as if she was with me and turned to walk through security and then I woke up. I woke to that same feeling and maybe it's all in my head but that's where she is most of the time anyway. 

You know the cool thing about dying is you leave the body behind. Steve, Kathy, all of them are free from what hurt. What's left is the soul and spirit. That is the awesome part and possibilities are endless.

Laura that's exactly how I see it. I feel I am supportive when a sad or hard moment is expressed and I hit the like button. Then there are times when I like it because someone made me laugh. I suppose a quick comment to say "Funny" or "Hug" would keep it more clear but we don't always have time to write responses. As long as we don't over think things, we'll be fine.

[mittam99]

I think the like button is a very good forum "tool". There are times we read a post and it's helpful, or makes us laugh, or it touches our heart. We may not know how to respond in words so hitting the like button is a great way to acknowledge the post. On my own forum, the like button also prevents many one word posts like " thanks" or "cool". 

Just my two cents. Oh wait, with inflation maybe that's a nickel.

[Margm]

3 hours ago, KATPILOT said:

They help guide us in ways we cannot understand and the signs don't always catch our attention.

Well, if Billy wants to help me today I sure won't turn down his help.  I think what I wrote about him not jumping in to save me when the water was only waist deep is a good analogy for what I am facing right now.  He was with me when we started this move, I need his help right now.  This water is over my head.  I wonder if he is standing on the dock laughing now.  I can walk, I can lift things,  I just do not have the use of my brain and heart.  I cannot get organized.  And I cannot swim.

[MartyT]

My dear Marg, as a wife and the mother of two sons, mine was a very masculine household ~ and as my boys grew older, I quickly learned that guys and gals have a very different sense of humor. Guys will laugh at stuff that we girls don't think is funny at all ~ especially when we think we're damsels in distress and we expect them to act as gentlemen and come to our rescue. They know us better than anyone, and they know that underneath it all, we're probably just as strong as they are, if not more so. 

Maybe another way to look at it is this: Billy knew that once you realized the water wasn't that deep, you would find your footing and make your own way out of that water.

Sometimes I wish with all my might that someone will come to my rescue, until I realize that the only person who can save me is me, and I really am capable of figuring my own way out.

As Brad often reminds us with the wise words of Christopher Robin,

"There is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." 

♥

[Clematis]

24 minutes ago, Marg M said:

...I can walk, I can lift things,  I just do not have the use of my brain and heart.  I cannot get organized.  And I cannot swim.

I know what you mean, Marg. This is just how I feel...I may not be so good at lifting since the car accident, but the chiropractor is working on that one and it will get better. The use of the heart and brain is a problem, and organization is impossible. I have a friend who has been helping me. She had been in an office job at the local paper where they paid her a pittance and stressed her to the max. I told her she should work for me because not only would I pay her more but she could be the boss. Ultimately I have veto power over some things that I can't/won't let go of, but she organizes and gets me going. My friend Greg is the same. Without them I am totally lost-like a kite whose string has been cut.

I suppose that's why the typical advice is to not move or make any other big changes in the first year. In my case, I thought that since I had ten or so weeks off in the summer I could pull it off, especially since my dad's house where I am staying and my own house are so close. But still I am moving and all of the work of sorting and tossing I still have to do. Finding myself in the middle of the stream, as you are, Marg, I realize that the water is way over my head as well. I had a deep and long relationship with my father, which was complicated by many things. In the end I totally took care of him. There are so many unresolved issues around his stuff, our history, and his absence. I feel it is way too soon to be going through his things. I am doing it anyway, but I'm not ready, and it seems that you aren't ready either. But here we are.

I've gone back through your posts and have had trouble connecting the dots about why you are moving, as well as from where and to where, but I do have the sense that you felt that you felt desperate about getting it underway. For different reasons, I have also felt desperate. I have acquired an additional contract for the upcoming school year and so I will have more work (and more income) this coming school year, which is good. The problem is that I'll have less time to do anything after the school year begins. This last year I had the least work since I started doing contract work. It was good timing for a light load, given that my father was declining as things turned out. But it seemed to me that if I didn't get the move pulled off before summer, it would be waiting until NEXT summer, and I would be saddled with two houses and their respective upkeep and expenses for a full year. It didn't seem like much of an option... Six weeks and counting before the school year starts...

[Margm]

35 minutes ago, MartyT said:

Maybe another way to look at it is this: Billy knew that once you realized the water wasn't that deep, you would find your footing and make your own way out of that water.

Sometimes I wish with all my might that someone will come to my rescue, until I realize that the only person who can save me is me, and I really am capable of figuring my own way out.

As Brad often reminds us with the wise words of Christopher Robin,

"There is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." 

Okay, just had another major mini-breakdown, happens too often.  I think I have never felt so alone, and I am not alone, except for Billy.  It is like the birds grow up and leave the nest.  Billy was old enough to leave our nest, but I was not ready for him to fly.  These breakdowns are happening too often.  I don't trust the person who was "sent in" to help me.  

Mama always told me the story of the "dog in the manger" and he was guarding the hay to keep any of the farm animals from eating it though he could not eat it himself.  That is what I am doing.  I cannot let loose of things I cannot use, will never use, and our kids did not "take after their dad" except in the artsy department.  

I have not had these breakdowns like this from the first few days after he left.  

So, like Christopher Robin said: "There is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." 

[Margm]

Laura, I carried all those weights out to the garage.  I am not supposed to be lifting, but dammit, it was like they were a road block in my way.  Can you believe the man took vitamins, lifted weights, was so health conscious but swallowed that nicotine poison all over his body, all in every vital organ.  Could take crazy things like argenine, folic acid, B12, acetyl-L-carnitine with alpha lipoic acid, and all kinds of things ordered from vitamin house to build him up, but could not give up the thing that tore him down.  I guess we all are a little crazy, only my family were poster families for all disorders.  And the queen of them all is still standing and I have more things wrong than they did.  Sure didn't help lifting those weights.  Suicide by stupidity.  

[Gwenivere]

8 hours ago, KATPILOT said:

  I was told by a medium that they are closest to us when we sleep.  That light sleep REM just before we wake I think is the time we are most likely to receive their effect on us. 

You know the cool thing about dying is you leave the body behind. Steve, Kathy, all of them are free from what hurt. What's left is the soul and spirit. That is the awesome part and possibilities are endless.

I don't know if it comes from me or them, but I do know that waking is by far the worst part of my day.  Dreams or no dreams.  It is when my mind knows the truth of facing another day without him.  It's my very first thought.  Sometimes there is panic, others just pure pain.  I'm amazed I can sleep at all, but maybe it is because he is with me in some way.  It also helps not to be surrounded by the memories everything in this house evokes as I go thru the day and evening.  A friend told me is was a very thin veil between our world and the next, it was a resonance that created the problem of being able to link the two.  Like what you said about them being free of a body.  How does someone without one communicate to a physical world?  They can't speak, move anything or touch us now.  Perhaps they feel the frustration we do in that respect.  I guess it's awesome, I just wish I could talk to him about it and learn about the changes.  The only thing I know for sure is his pain is gone.  I also think our worldly negative feelings are gone too.  He does not feel guilt, anger,  frustration or resentment anymore.  There are people I am still trying to forgive and I feel Steve has no need of that now.  Much bigger things to experience than the failings of some.  Including me.  

[Clematis]

Marg, I know what you mean about the nicotine-addiction can do funny things to one's thinking. My ex-H used to smoke - cigarettes and dope, but he thought drinking a lot of carrot juice would negate the effect of the tobacco and dope. He also thought that celery was dangerous unless it was organic, saying, "it's just a sponge for chemicals!" Apparently when he was a kid he saw or did the classic science experiment where they stick celery into water with food coloring so the kids can see the capillary action occur. He was not convinced by my retort that the celery experiment is merely a graphic depiction of what all plants do, and nothing special about celery. Ok, so celery is dangerous and smoking Camels is ok because they don't have a dangerous and scary filter?

My ex was charming and had an amazing memory for lyrics, but he was a big dope-hence the ex part. He decided that he couldn't handle the stress of working at his cush job, and so he would quit his job, , work 3-4 months a year, we would sell the house and we would go live in his Teepee in the woods near Flagstaff. At 7000 ft elevation where it can hit 20 degrees below zero. He thought that I was going to bear him children in this setting, the dope! I lived with him in the teepee for a summer once and it was a bit much...outhouse, wood stove, spiders and mice everywhere, taking showers from a "solar shower" bag hung from a tree. And people a mile down the road had indoor plumbing-hot AND cold, real walls, a roof, and possibly even a furnace! Why live in the 20th century as if you were living in the 18th? He just didn't want to work hard enough to make the money to pay for housing and utilities. I figured I could take better care of myself and left, since he could not be dissuaded.

Marg, you might wanna think about having some younger and stronger people help with lifting stuff-perhaps even a stray male here and there could be coaxed into lifting some stuff for you rather than injuring yourself. I know as well as anyone that the cost of flattering them by the request may be your own humility in having to ask, but it's worth it.

[Margm]

47 minutes ago, Clematis said:

Marg, you might wanna think about having some younger and stronger people

Got some football players coming Friday.  Not too much to lift though.  EXCEPT boxes of books.

[Clematis]

Football players-that is good! I'll settle for anyone who looks like they may be stronger than I, although it is difficult to ask. I'm getting better at it, though. I used to be terrible and not only would I not ask for help but would rebuff any help that was offered. Oh, yeah-I'm 5'4" and don't need no help from nobody! Just a tad ridiculous was I... 

[Margm]

There is no rhyme or reason to my moving except we were on our way to doing that before the sickness brought him down.  I finished what we started, and nothing makes much sense now.  My connecting the dots is like a tattoo artist trying to go from freckle to freckle.  No set pattern, no picture when it is done.  Right at this moment I do not know why I am doing this.  I don't want to stay where we were leaving, where he left me.  This is not home.  Top parish in Louisiana is our home.  Both of ours.  Born, school, graduated, other school, married, children, their graduation, then we were free to RV.  Joke on us.  We were never free.  Billy is the only free one.  I see a house that is 50 years old and gonna need a new roof one of these days, needs plumbing fixed, need updating on lots of stuff.  My heart is not in it.  I want to be where I have no responsibility for mechanical or house. If the plumbing goes out, I want the company I rent from to fix it and one of these days I want to have enough concentration to read again, just read my Kindle.  That and find a church I feel good in.  Find faith in.  

[Margm]

Has not been put on the market yet, just showed people around in this messy house.  They are talking to lawyer tomorrow.  Not gonna get my hopes up.  They came out of no where.  Of course, I did put my hands on Billy's urn this morning, our daughter is going through one of her manic anger phases and I have never had to go through it without him.  I did take two Xanax today, will take one tonight.  Billy always told me not to answer back, to just let it lie, and I honored what he always wished I would do and I did not fight back.  I let it lie this time.  It has died down.  I hope he is happy.  

[Widowedbysuicide]

Be good to yourself.  Do what you can that works for you, feels good, or seems right.  Hugs

[kayc]

Marg,

Are you safe around your daughter?  If not, related or not, call for help if you need it.  I don't know how bad her manic phases gets but I worked with someone like that once (boss' sister) and she hauled off and hit me in the back while I was busy working!  Just saying, keep yourself safe, can mend fences with her later but you come first!

[Margm]

It has gotten her in trouble before.  I wonder why they keep trying stupid medications when none work.  I won't say nothing else.  We are careful.  

[Clematis]

Yeah, that can be dangerous. I had a friend who had serious bipolar-the kind that goes totally manic. I thought she was going to kill me when we were on a trip to San Diego together. I was halfway through grad school and had no idea what I was dealing with. I was terrified. Later, I worked in a prison setting with quite a number of people with bipolar, who were there for the things they did when they were manic. Finding a workable medication or combo of meds can be a long period of trial and error that may never lead to success. Or the drugs may be working and then they don't. Or the person decides to stop taking them. It's a dicey situation. 

[Margm]

And yet so many of your most creative people are bipolar.  It tends to give some people special talents.  My son is an artist.  My dad could pick up any musical instrument and play it.  Kelli is a photographer.  Many of your composers and many of your actors are bipolar. They said they would have to pull Churchill off the walls and if it were not for his advisers, bad things would have happened.  I would read books about them for years.  One of the top psychiatrists that writes books is bipolar.  My psychiatrist was bipolar.  Yet, sometimes they do go off the rails.  My son goes without medicine and handles things lots easier than my daughter on so many medications.  He loses his artistic talent on medications.  He is what they call a rapid cycler though. I have seen my dad "trip the light fantastic" and see him so low in depression and he would get angry because he could not understand his own emotions.  It is a sad disease, but if they can keep it under some control it is within reach of normalcy.  I have lived with it my whole life, but yet I am just a chronic depressive.  

Money is a bad problem.  The psychiatrist that writes about it said she went into a downtown NY City drug store and because snake kits were on sale, she bought them all.  Kelli has problems with this.  If it is on sale, she will buy it, whether she has a use for it or not.   

[Clematis]

I am a school psychologist and I have developed a bell curve inside my brain-it comes up everywhere in how I think about things. My observation is that people who tend to be out on the end of the bell curve in one area tend to be out on the extreme end in other areas. Abnormal IQ is essentially extreme creativity, and people out there do not think normal thoughts. By definition they are abnormal, and that doesn't make people happy or well-balanced. It also does not give them good social skills, although some of that can be developed with effort. There is a fair amount of research about creativity and madness.

I know what you mean about the bipolar...it is also on a continuum. I have never been officially diagnosed with cyclothymia, but it would hard to deny. A lot of ups and downs and changes, and it's tied to the creativity, without a doubt. I try hard to cover up what I can and not go off the rails. Nevertheless, my issues are rather moderate and I seem to have found a balance. When I was younger I tried to cover up anything that someone might find unusual and that was a mistake because I was rightly seen as fake. Now I am running around with a flower in my hair and very artsy skirts and BIrks on my feet, my cello is in a costumed case, is on Facebook, and subscribes to the Rolling Stone. I have synesthesia, sense things from flowers/fruits, and paint the three dimensional lines I feel in music. Fortunately I have focused enough on developing professional competence that people sense that and take me seriously. Nevertheless, I always feel lucky and like I am getting away with something if I can be myself, even a little toned down, and navigate the world without being crushed. I do live in a creative area and that helps.

Anyway, about the bipolar, I think the degree of it is everything. Severe bipolar is serious enough to destroy a person's life, and milder versions are much more common-especially in gifted people-and tend to be more manageable. Nevertheless, having a lot of energy can make people crazy just being around it. I should shut up and go to bed...poor Marty has to read all of this. I am trying to be more concise, but it's hard.

[Margm]

My sister is a genius intellectually.  Always graduated the very first of her many degrees.  Mama always said there was a fine line between genius and insanity.  What is insane to one person is just another person's cultural differences.  One of our friends rode about 300 miles with my sister once, a friend of my husband's, and he told him he did not understand a word she said the whole trip.  This is not really a difference in normal and abnormal.  This is a difference in talking about things one considers intellectual and talking to a person who just has a lot of common sense but no "book learning."  We don't live life on book learning and you can talk where regular people understand you.  The difference in all people is what I described to my grandson, the way he understood it for years afterwards and quoted it.  Some people have loose screws in their head and some people just plain have lost their screws out of the hole they belong in.  Bless his heart, narcotics have opened up the screw holes into his brain and his are lost.  Some of "us" have loose screws in our brain and the screw holes mine are screwed into are becoming very lax.  

The only thing that ever made sense to me was when someone told me that "normal" was only a spot on the washing machine dial.  Many times I feel my writings are "word salads" but when they are, I just consider the source.  No apology.  My screws are rattling around in my head lately.  And then, there are the cultural differences we feel most comfortable in. 

[Clematis]

Your mama was right-in some ways. I find the topic of intelligence and how people view it to be endlessly fascinating, which is part of the reason I ended up in a career where I test IQ for a living. The problem with intelligence is that there are different kinds-verbal, visual-spatial, social, musical, and so on. I had a course on intelligence theory-there are many. One guy came up with a grid in which there were 256 kinds (and combinations) of intelligence. Most tests have 4 or 5 clusters that get a score and also a "g", which is general or overall IQ. After testing hundreds of people, I have found that people in the middle are the happiest and the best adjusted, and also that the people who are a little above average think the people who are way above them are total idiots. The people with stellar IQ's tend to be the most neurotic. Many of them have huge gaps in between their strengths and weaknesses and that makes them insecure. To a person with a super high IQ, a dip into the average range is a dip that makes them feel like an idiot. Many highly gifted people don't even finish high school, much less college or grad school, and the schools in our country have no more idea how to deal with gifted kids than they did when I was a kid. It's really tragic, because as a culture we are taking many of our best brains and "kicking them to the curb". And what happens to a person like this? They end up in some low paid job, working for someone who isn't anywhere near as smart as them, who thinks they are a total idiot, because the person with a stellar IQ is by definition "not normal" and has creative ideas that only another really smart person would "get".

In going through my father's stuff, I have found at least 6 books on obscure words that most people don't know. I get rid of them the second I see them-they are worthless. The point of communication-is communicating and if you can't do it well, you've missed the boat. Most smart people have bigger vocabularies that average people, but the more words you use that your listener doesn't understand, the more they just think you're a jerk. When I was a kid I was picked on mercilessly in school and I just took it because I was picked on at home. My dad told me when I was about 11 that I should just tell them any of them that they were a "pusillanimous churl". Even as a kid, I knew that would only make things worse. I have spent a lot of my life, and certainly since studying to be a school psychologist, learning how to express sophisticated ideas in ordinary language. I want people to be able to understand me when I am talking or writing. I think I have done pretty well at it, and I'm proud of it.

I go to meetings as a school psychologist and explain the results to the team, which includes other masters level professionals, teachers, teacher aides, administrators, parents, and sometimes the student. I am only doing an evaluation, but they are working or living with the student and they really know more than I do-I am just putting it into numbers. I really work hard to gather a LOT of information about a student from the people who know them best-especially the parents. I try hard to write my reports so that they are easy to read-by anyone, and at the meeting I work hard to explain the results so that everyone there understands what I am saying and what it means-especially the parents. I also talk to the parents on the phone about the results, generally for somewhere around an hour, for which I am not paid. I figure that it's their right to have the advantage of everything I know and they are the ones that will be around that student as he or she grows up, maybe goes to college, and learns to navigate the world. If they understand their child's brain, they should be more helpful to the child.

The hardest thing I ever do at work is to tell parents-for the first time-that their child's IQ falls in the range of what we used to call "mental retardation", but now we call it "intellectual disability". It doesn't matter what you call it-to learn your child has an IQ at 70 or below is devastating news, although the parents naturally are hoping their fears were wrong. I think the best compliment I have ever received was from a third grade teacher who had seen me do this several times. She once said (to a handful of teachers) after a meeting, "You know, if someone had to tell me that my child was mentally retarded, I would want it to be Laura."

Well, anyway, I hope that was helpful-or at least interesting... It was kind of long...

[Margm]

It was interesting Laura.  But, factual results will give you the best automobile mechanic around with the lowest IQ.  You can have a very high IQ and wind up at the end of your life with nothing but your high IQ while the auto mechanic learned to put a safety net under his low IQ and can live quite well.  Life is very interesting, until it isn't anymore.  Your job sounds very time consuming and you are a dedicated person.  I admire that.  

[Clematis]

You are right-but this mechanic probably had strengths in certain areas like visual-spatial skills and possibly quantitative reasoning, with relative deficits in reading skills, which would make it difficult for him to perform in school without significant intervention, assistance, and accommodations. Probably good at sports and doing anything with his hands. Probably good at making friends and loves animals. Those things are way more important in the long run than having a huge vocabulary. If a musician, probably learns better by ear and finds learning to read music tortuous.

What I described above is a classic profile for a person who would have the potential to be a great mechanic, or even an engineer if the whole profile was lifted about a bit higher. Most school psychologists and other psychologists who do this kind of work find that the "g" is almost meaningless, and if you are trying to help a kid who is struggling in school and feeling like an idiot because some things are hard, you have to help them find their strengths and use them to the hilt to compensate for their weaknesses-like reading, and then helping them get to a reading level so that they can do the reading they need to be a mechanic. Then they are set and can have a successful career, a good life, set aside for a retirement, and all that. Probably do better in the long run than a person with a very high IQ with a masters degree in music, art, French literature, philosophy and so on. 

[Margm]

I never knew about the safety nets of retirement until I married Billy in 1961.  He had been working two years and was looking forward to retirement.  After five years I talked him into taking out the lump sum retirement and going to a job that could have killed him.  We never could find enough money to pay back that lump sum, so he had to work 5 more years plus three years for a higher retirement.  It made it where we could retire on the very same day.  Lesson learned.  We were never rich and lived paycheck to paycheck, but the retirement was great and he got to live `18 years of it.  I wish we could have squeezed out a few more years, but it was fixed where neither of us missed out on the other's retirement.  That was him, not me.  He was the smart one.