That's Just How I Feel

I am coming up on the anniversary of one of the worst days of my life.  I've written of it before, so you may guess what it is.  March 13, 2012 was the last day of my so called 'normal' life. Our life as Gary and Marsha.  It was the day I had to switch gears and become someone else and then someone different yet again later until that train ride ended on October 17, 2012 and Gary died.

Lately I have been very out of sorts in my head, my thoughts and my body.  I have spent a good deal of time trying to rid myself of doubt, mistrust and self loathing and so I read about adrenal fatigue, hormones and metabolism.  Emotions, mindfulness, and digestion- they are amazingly all connected to make up our wholeness.

Tonight I was going through some folders within my yahoo mail account.  The folder named Gary is full of the newsy emails I sent out to friends and family about the ups and downs of Gary's last six months of treatment and life.  Included were letters to and from his employer about insurance, COBRA and other 'housekeeping' items that I needed to handle after the fact.  I read my words and they seem very analytical and to the point without a hint of sadness.  The one thing I noticed in each was my gratitude for what every person along the way did for me to help with Gary's insurance and estate matters. I typed my heartfelt THANK YOU to every person I emailed.  I hope they could sense how much I really meant it.

I sit here now three years later and I am overcome with sadness because I am still feeling very alone and know that this grief is not over nor will it ever be. I have someone in my life now, yes, but its not the easy comfortable relationship that I had with my husband.  Not that I could expect my new love to be anyone other than who he is, shaped by his life as someone else's husband. I know I love him and he loves me, but there's so much more that goes into the investment of another person's heart at this stage of our lives.

We humans seem to have so many expectations of our lives; what we will do in certain aspects of our life, who we will be with and what we will feel.  So how's that working out for ya?  It sure hasn't for me.  Even now, I can't say that I truly trust anyone to have my best interests at heart.

My thoughts fluctuate throughout the day.  Like doing the Limbo- "how LOW can you go?" Most of the mornings are pretty good but then toward evening starts a decline in hopefulness.  I really shouldn't be blogging as I circle the drain...

So this March 13, is also a Friday the 13th.  DM is going to be at NASCAR for three days without me.  I don't have any plans, but may take a day to just do NOTHING. I probably won't be blogging either.  Maybe I will take a bath in the middle of the day.  Yeah, or meditate.  That's just how I feel...

 "Everything will be alright in the end... if it's not alright, then it's not yet the end."
     'Sonny' from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

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Blog Within a blog: Rubberband Ball

I started a post 2 weeks ago with the intention of trying to explain to myself and anyone else who reads this blog what it feels like to be me nowadays.  Its not pretty, that's fer sure.  This is what I wrote and saved it in draft form because I could not put anymore feelings into it at the time.

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Rubberband Ball    

That is what I picture myself as looking like inside my head and heart now.  I don't like it one bit.  I have been avoiding putting these emotions down on on cyber paper until now. Its past time to face this, though.

My existence is so confused and mixed up with emotions of my weight loss, weight gain, falling in love with a messed up divorced person and my still active grief over the loss of Gary.

Its been a roller coaster of emotional eating and drinking combined with feel good emotions of being deeper and deeper in love with someone and getting to know both myself and him more each day.

I am not a close follower of The Biggest Loser, but I do know that whenever I see shows about people who lose weight, there is always a lot of crying involved.  The metamorphosis from a seemingly obese unlovable blob of humanity into someone thin who is suddenly worth more to society may be striking to observers, but gut-wrenchingly emotional to the person who changes into something new via weight loss.  One literally does enter a new life, and I am a far different person than I was a year ago.

Add to this, the seemingly simple mode of living as a thin person while learning to live with someone else and bend to their desires and emotions and way of living and you've got a very unhealthy recipe for eating not for health but almost as a death wish to fail. 
I can't explain how many times I have used food yet again to dull my senses because I am overloaded with fear of the unknown.  Fear of doing the wrong thing is my biggest worry right up there with worrying about finances and health insurance costs.

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This whole act of living is actually harder than I thought it would be.  Harder than a year ago.  Harder than it should be or has to be, I believe.

Here's the deal. My head is at odds with my reality, and no, I don't expect anyone to understand that idea.  I have a relationship with a man who I am learning more about every day.  Someone who could maybe even be a life partner if fate will allow.  This man was attracted to me in part because of my looks, although he did say I could 'stand to gain some weight'.  He now says I look 'fine' and I used to be 'gaunt'. I don't think I looked 'gaunt', but I am in agreement that the loss of 86 lbs doesn't make one into a super model of perfect proportions.  So I have gained enough to 'look good' in DM's eyes, but now I am frantic that it will not stop. I just can't do this all over AGAIN.  Too old; too TIRED!

Losing fat is 99% nutrition and 1% exercise.  That is even more true for postmenopausal women.  I am wading through all the nuances of having the messed up metabolism and thoughts of a postmenopausal woman even though I've been at this game for 10 years already.
I know, I know, TMI is being mouthed at the computer screens right now!  Facts are facts though and the fact that women of a certain age just do not and cannot respond to eating and fat loss the same way as a 25 year old male weight lifter.  Nope. No way.

So I am trying to figure this one out.  Put the metabolic puzzle together.  I am in pieces on the table of life and only I can fit the puzzle back into a pretty picture.

I can be helped to learn how to handle my thoughts through mindfulness like Jill Coleman teaches on jillfit.com. 

I keep up with Metabolic Effects Menopausal Weight Loss plan which is actually still more self discovery into what will clear the cobwebs and lead me into an effortless co-existence with food.  I had 'the talk' with DM about how he can support me by basically shutting up and not telling me what he thinks I should eat.  We both know that I can't afford to gain any more fat and be satisfied with the outcome.  Will I start going nuts and weighing myself every hour?  Not anymore. This is not about weight, this is about fat and fitting into clothes.  Waaaay more important than numbers on a scale.

Wish me luck and I'll keep you blog posted.
Rough seas ahead indeed!

Shorthand

I think a lot about hands.  My hands, which are rough and have gnawed cuticles and discolored nails. Gary's hands, large and strong and calloused. My DM's equipment drivers' hands which are older than mine and smaller than Gary's but are there to reach out for me and my own hands to connect us in an effort to understand me.

I was going back and reading some of the early blogposts on this blog.  Postings that hurt to read even now.  If I had to read them out loud to someone, I would not be able to do so without breaking down crying.

The angst with which I've written some of the blogposts were about my feelings as being the victim of the unfairness of Gary's death.  The unfairness of being left alone and not having any say in the matter.  The feeling of alone-ness that no one ever expects or asks for.

My DM is an unwitting victim of some of these same feelings and emotions.  He tells me what he can handle telling me.  I use my hands to hug him, touch his face and hold his hands as we sit on the couch and lean on each other.

But am I really lending him a much needed 'helping hand'?  Am I giving him a 'hand up'?
Not always, and that's really too bad.  He needs it and deserves it.

I may be farther away from my encounter with devastation, but still I should remember how it feels to be left in the ditch feeling like an abandoned puppy.  I SHOULD remember how I felt when I was the one who was promised that I'd be called and 'taken care of' by old friends who melted away in the shadows.  Yet, here I am, the one person who should empathize with DM's burdens and I'm still all wrapped up in my feelings for him and what HE can do for ME!  What the....?

My hands have done a lot of caregiving: first for little boys and then for Gary.  My hands have done a lot of typing on this blog for myself in effort to make it through my dark days.  Now my hands need to get busy and offer assistance and whatever else they can to someone who needs them and can benefit from my experiences with grief.  Paybacks don't have to be a bitch when its for someone you love and whom you love back.  Time to be handy for someone else.

Looking out for Happy

I was born into a neighborhood of homes all built in the late 50's.  Our homes were similarly outfitted with linoleum floored kitchens and patchwork carpeted bedrooms and hallways of various colors. There were usually 3-4 bedrooms on one level sharing one bathroom.  How did we live like this?  Deplorable and inadequate by my standards today.  I've since been spoiled by too many houses with master suites containing separate jacuzzi tubs and big showers.  I've stepped out onto porcelain tile with in-floor heating.  Comfort not even imagined in our childhood homes.

Because there were so many kids in every home, we spilled out over the neighborhood and had friends in just about every home.  Of course everyone got to know the bathrooms of every home because you would have 'to go' wherever you were playing.

The neighbors across the street had a fairly large, long bathroom.  It could accommodate about 4 kids at once to easily use the toilet and then wash hands.  This home had pink fixtures, linoleum tile of pink with black accent tile.  I remember being part of making up games to get from the toilet to the sink pretending that the black tiles were rocks and the pink tile was the swamp.  The swamp held alligators that would grab your leg and pull you in if you couldn't hop from one safe black tile 'rock' to another.  Thank goodness the 'rocks' were close enough for most little kids to hop to the safety of the vanity. I don't recall anyone being lost to an alligator.

This entire memory came to me today as I was walking the dog this morning.  I do a lot of thinking when walking Robbie.  Why this happened started from the stream of thought I'd been immersed in about happiness.  I read some insightful email messages that inspire me to think and work through all sorts of emotions and just ways we can think ourselves into living better lives.

Do you ever get asked, "Are you happy?"  Do you ever ask yourself the same question? If you were to be asked that question, I'll bet you can come up with all sorts of reasons your life sucks and that you are not happy, but if this or that were to occur then BAM you'd be happy as a clam.

Early this morning I stumbled across the thought that being happy is not a static state that we can ever, ever get to or live in.  Not gonna happen.  But here's the light bulb that clicked on in my head this morning:  I asked DM if he were happy.  "Well, maybe if or when(blah blah blah blah blah) comes about then I'll be happy," he answered.  That's when I realized I asked the question the wrong way and so I tried again.  "No, I mean are you happy right NOW- in this moment?"  And he answered "Yes. Being here with you, I am happy."  Of course this made ME happy too!

You probably know where I'm going with this.  These little acknowledgements of being happy are like the black tile 'rocks' that let us hop just beyond the reach of the alligators in life's swamp.  You have to look ahead to see the next one.  You have to be ready and you have to LOOK for them.

I can't force myself to 'BE happy' anymore that I can tell DM to 'BE Happy'.  But if we LOOK for those tiny moments of happy in our day and make sure to feel it and be aware of it, I think it could get us to a place where we can then see other future happy moments.  String these together and you've got a pretty satisfying life to look forward to.  
 :o)

Poetic Justice

I've posted before about my grandma.  I only had one, on my mom's side so she and my grandpa were pretty special and we 4 kids were treated very special by them.  How lucky we were now that I look back.

My grandma was a clipper and a saver of clippings from magazines and newspapers.  She liked poetry and writings of musings.  She saved many of these for scrapbooks but some were tucked away in boxes or books or drawers.  I have run across some of these in the past few years as I have kept and gone through her sewing kits and some of the boxes of little treasures she kept that I now have.

Grandma made her presence known to me just last week.  It was on her birthday in fact.  Just goes to show that there is something about a spirit that is out there reminding us of the important things in our lives.  This find I came across is a newspaper clipping from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader newspaper.  Like most newspapers, back in the day it published a much wider variety of articles and what would be considered 'fluff' by today's tight budget standards of what it important.

The clipping is called Portraits by John C. Metcalfe.  I googled his name and found he was a writer who started first as an FBI agent. Interesting how the paths we start out on diverge into many directions. This writing of his is titled, "Wondering".  I can see why grandma liked it.  She was good at remembering those who have passed on and this so much reminds me of her now and of all the people I have known and loved who have passed on.  Here it is in its entirety:

Wondering

I wonder if you think of me
When night is drawing near
And in the shadows of your room
The walls around you disappear
I wonder if your quiet thoughts
of only me are anymore
When in the silent velvet blue
The moon is tapping at your door
I wonder if the twinkling stars
That dangle from the clouds above
Remind you of my whispered words
In promise of eternal love
I wonder if the yellow light
That breaks upon the early dawn
Still holds a tender memory
For now so long I have been gone
I wonder if you dream of me
When cloudless skies are baby blue
Because across each day and night
My thoughts are constantly of you.
© 1961 Field Enterprise, Inc

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I like that I seem to have inherited an appreciation from grandma, even though recent, for poetry.  I also inherited her interest in art and drawing and painting.  I have long done drawing and painting and now have turned to writing and poetry as an outlet for my thoughts these days.

I have written many poems mostly personal for my Dear Man(DM).  Most of these are based in new discoveries about myself and my feelings about our lives together.

Two of the poems that I can share are simple.  I feel like my sophistication as a poet is infantile.  I can't say that it will ever mature either; but the ideas keep coming to me so I write them down for him and for us.

First is a Haiku, which, as everyone knows is a basic form of poetry that even beginners can master.
It is simple, but for me expands on a true breakthrough of how I react to someone really looking into my eyes all the way to my soul:

Eyes

Eyes look into mine
Seeing me as no one has
I learn to look back

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And in the last few days, I've been lucky enough to have learned so much more about DM because he opens up and speaks to me like no one has before.  Here is how I put it into words:

Dreams

He tells me his dreams- an amazing thing!
To share thoughts with others is a daring, rare scheme.
Surprising - Delightful - Vivid with color,
A rich treasure never given me by another.

The gift of his insights cannot be forgotten
Born in heart's midnight, not easily gotten.
It comes from his mind, it is spoken with breath
Now abides in my heart and held tight in soul's depth

Thanks Grandma, and happy birthday.  Love, Marsha

Coming Undone

Have you ever been at a point, or have you been in a moment, or have you felt you are in a time that you wish you could just freeze frame time? When you could make the world -STOP- until you could catch your breath and catch up with your feelings?  I have and I do and that time is now!

I have had these little bursts of light and energy before, but not for many, many years.  They were back when I was in other loves long ago. I would just have that instant realization that, "Wow!(this is what people said before OMG came along)- I am soooo lucky and I know it! I love this person I'm with and I want this feeling to last forever!"

OK, so the other day I asked my dear man where he saw us in six months.  He quickly answered, "Living together in one house and being happy there."  A day later he asked me the same question.  I gave him a roundabout answer worthy of a politician's response to a direct question in a political debate.  In other words, he got no satisfactory answer.  He asked me again one early morning, "You never answered my question.  Where do you see us in six months?"  I could only answer with a sentence starting with the words, "I hope..."  I am very aware that everything is tenuous, including our relationship.  Now why should I think this, when I'm coming off of a relatively strong solid relationship that lasted for 37 years of my life?  I understand what it is to live with stability. I also know what it is like to not have it at all.

If you have read my blogs, you know that I don't make a very good optimist.  I think the worst, plan for it and cross my fingers that I am wrong.  If that glass does end up being 51% full, then surprise and rejoicing ensues.  That is why I hope for the best but expect the worst.  I could be the president of Skeptics Anonymous, but I even have my doubts that I'd get enough votes for that....

So when I come across something so exciting, wonderful and joyous as a person who cares and wants to be that 'forever person' to me, I sincerely want to believe it can actually be true.  Except, there is a tugging at the coat tails of my heart reminding me that NOTHING LASTS FOREVER.  And I wonder when that other 'forever shoe' will drop and I am left feeling stoopid for daring to believe I could attain happiness again.

Six months into the future may as well be six years from now.  I scan my horizon and look for clouds.  These endless sunny days of southern Arizona stretch to the jagged outlines of the mountains surrounding my desert but they give no clues. I hate uncertainty.  So even though I've fallen for and have had a helluva lotta fun with this guy after feeling lower than shit for more than two years, I want to know deep down what forever feels like and that I do deserve it and have waited long enough to begin feeling alive again.

Maybe none of us is meant to know this, though.  Is this our undoing? Is this how we sometimes become undone?

Its always been a matter of trust.

I have major major trust issues, or rather, I should say I have developed major trust issues.  I didn't know this about myself until maybe 3 weeks ago. It really sucks, too.  I am not used to these recurrent feelings, having never had them in my 37 years with Gary.

I have gotten relationship advice about my love life again from well meaning people.  You know the types- those, 'Do as I say, not as I did' type people.  Never mind that no two situations involving people are ever the same.  Ever. 

I listen to the advice and admonitions and I start to cave into the doomsday scenarios playing out in my head.  O.M.G.  What have I done?  What am I getting into?  How could I not see this coming? How can I be so naive in my 50's fergodsake?

The doubt gathers around me like a gas and I start to feel so low that I want to curl up into a ball.  I wait until the 'perp' aka, my beloved one, now turned asshole in my mind finally calls or stops by, not realizing he has walked into a buzzsaw of my accusations  So I look at him like he is Satan and I lay into him, telling him what he has been doing to me while he looks at me like I am from outer space.  Actually, I do feel like an alien and I hate what doubt can do to destroy what is between us.

After taking as much as he can take of my baseless accusations, he admits he is a messed up man trying to get through his own adjustment to being divorced.  He then asks if I need space.  No, what I need is to rediscover trust.  Trust in myself this time.  Trust that I am not being an idiot for taking on someone who is vulnerable, and imperfect and who was the first to admit this to me.  Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.  This also goes for he who is without fear and doubt and imperfections.  Humanity is chock full of us. For this very reason, I don't carry stones around in my hands to throw.

I love this guy and I am finding out that in order to trust him, I have to trust my instincts, my gut and mySELF first and foremost.  No one else but me, and me alone can make the right and wrong decisions for my life. 

Like Billy Joel wrote:
"The core remains of what began with a passionate start."
My guy and our relationship are still in the passionate start mode.  It is a core that is growing rings of trust around it. Like all of us as individuals, it is a Work In Progress.

What about those advice givers who just KNOW they have the answers for me? In reality they are just parts of the great guessing game of life and I know that we are all just along for the ride.

In Marsha We Trust.  Because, in the end, Marsha is all I can trust!