Dilemma

A friend posed a question to me today:

Which would be easier – to have an internet friend that you really enjoy and like just disappear -

Or would it be less painful for the friend to tell you and everyone else on the blog that she’s dying and will be lucky to live out the year. And when she disappears, she really has just slipped away.

I don’t know the answer to that question. I would feel anger and betrayal if my friend just disappeared and we never knew why. On the other hand I’ve been in groups before where someone seeking attention plays the dying card and it is not a pretty situation.  I don’t think this woman wants to be perceived as someone with an illness. I think she would want her last months to have some normalcy and this would be a place she could be assured of being treated as a person and not a dying person. Where she wouldn’t have to talk about illness and treatment options and quality of life.

She probably should have thought about this before she joined such a group, but she surely had no idea she was going to fall so hopelessly in love with all of them.

I’ll have to give it some thought so I can give my friend a thoughtful answer.

Good Day

It was a great St Patrick’s Day. I can’t remember a better one. Along with some friends, we celebrated another friend’s birthday on the Interent. I hope we made him understand how much we cherish him and his friendship.

I so wish that stupid movie had not screwed up and totally ruined a perfectly wonderful sentiment, but since I’m the only one who see this, plus my friend Mindy when she needs to check on me, I’m just going to say it.

This friend, who’s birthday we celebrate on St Patrick’s Day, really does inspire us to be better people.

I wish him many happy returns and a long life to come.

You are a wonderful man and we all adore you.

Going Crazy

We had a small tornado Tuesday night. Not particularly newsworthy, other than the fact that it’s just too early in the year for this to happen. I freaked the heck out, disturbing some of my online friends with my particular brand of crazy. I’m scared of storms, but I can usually handle it without terrorizing the people around me.

So, I got up the next morning and there was some destruction, some corregated tin from a neighbor’s building that suffered some damage. I had some limbs down.

I was out checking on things when my friend Adam drove up to make sure the house was still standing. He told me he’d be back in a couple of hours with his crew and would clear away the debris.

Adam has been so good about helping me since Ray passed. But it’s not fair. He won’t let me pay him, other than letting me cook for him occasionally, and I feel really bad that he feels responsible to help me like this. I’ve had 2 part time guys since Ray died, and neither has lasted longer than a week. I don’t understand it. I pay a really good wage and there’s not that much to do.

Anyway, after Adam left, I decided that no, by god, he wasn’t going to have to do this for me, so I went and got the farm truck and got the limb saw and started on the clean up. I was doing pretty well until the saw caught up and I jerked it back and my foot slipped, I guess, and I ran that limb saw straight across my thigh as I fell backward.

It sliced my jeans and the blood started pouring and I headed for the house, knowing I had to get it cleaned up before Adam got back. I stuck the saw in the shrubs by the back porch and went into the utility room bath and got my jeans off. I grabbed a roll of paper towels from the utility room and started mopping up my leg. I could tell it was deep, but I thought it would be ok if I could just get the bleeding to stop. It slowed a lot and I was trying to figure out how to bandage a cut that long when Adam appeared in the bathroom door. God, there I stood in my yard coat and panties with a gob of paper towels held to the inside of my thigh and a pile of bloody paper towels on the sink and the floor. He said, “how bad?” and I just shrugged and said it would be all right and he didn’t say a word, he just turned around and I heard him going up the stairs. He came back with a pair of my sweat pants and he stood there and cut one leg of the pants off and helped me get dressed. He got a towel and put it over the cut and scooped me up and hauled me out to my car  and told his guys what to do and where to go when they were done.

He yelled at me all the way to town. We sat in the emergency room for a little while and then I went in and they sewed me up and gave me some antibiotics and some pain pills and sent me home and told me not to drive until Monday.

He brought me back home, hardly saying a word. I just sat there and bawled the whole way. I felt so bad.  What would have taken him a half an hour to clear up in my yard, ended up costing him 3 hours because I was too stupid to do what he told me.

He told me I had to sell the farm, that I wasn’t capable of taking care of anything. He’s right, but this is my home, I don’t want to go. I wish I had paid more attention to how this place is run. I wish i were just stronger so I could do the physical things that needed doing. I wish Ray hadn’t died. I’m so mad.

So, here I sit. Stuck in the house. For the whole weekend. Yesterday was a REALLY long day. I didn’t do anything so I wasn’t a bit tired last night. So this morning, I could barely drag myself out of bed.

 

I don’t know how much more I can go through. I honest to god don’t. This just isnt’ worth it.

A Conundrum

It was just inevitable, I think, that when I finally developed real feelings for someone, there is no possibility of a relationship, because he loves someone else. They are no longer together, but they will be forever linked in a way that will hold no place for me. I could probably carve out a small space for me in his heart, but I don’t think that would ever be enough. I need to come first with him, not share first place or worse yet, be runner up.

The smartest thing I could do for myself is to walk away. But I’m not smart or strong enough to do that.

He’s going to start pushing for more and I can’t say no to him. I’m on my way to getting my heart broken.

Don’t say I didn’t warn me.

Grief

The very last member of my family died this morning. He had a stroke yesterday and died this morning. He was 76 years old so it’s not a tragedy, but it was unexpected. He was the strongest man I know and I thought he would live forever.

I was at home playing on the internet with my other family when I got a phone call. It was 11 pm and I had just gotten the dogs in and was getting ready to go upstairs to bed. The phone call was from a friend who is a Sheriff’s Deputy.

He called to tell me that the ambulance had taken Ray to the hospital and I might want to get there as soon as I could. I knew  it was bad.

They wouldn’t let me go back to him in the emergency room because I’m not technically his family. I couldn’t even lie and say I was his granddaughter because it’s pretty obvious I’m not his granddaughter. And it’s a small town. They know us.

He was finally taken to a room and I went up. The first thing I saw on the door was the DNR notice. I ripped it down and ran down the hall to the nurses station where I could see Ray’s doctor standing. I shoved it in front of him and said, “What? What is this?”

He pulled me into a room and closed the door. He told me that Ray had presented the doctor with his Living Will 6 months ago at his last visit. And the DNR order was included.

I went back and entered Ray’s room. The light was dim, but I could tell he was unconscious. I sat down and held his hand. It was so quiet in that room. Only the beep of the monitor. Nurses came in and out to check the machines and the saline drip. I asked one of them if he was in pain and she said no, that the doctor had ordered a light pain med, just in case, but there was no sign he was in distress.

I sat with him until an hour ago when his heart stopped beating and he breathed no more.

First Date

I have a first date with a man this weekend. First dates are so exciting. All the possibilities. Will you have fun, what if you don’t have fun? What if you like him, what if you can’t stand him after 5 minutes in?

I haven’t gone out with anyone who doesn’t already know me for ages.

I don’t know how to act. He’s a lot older than me and I really want to make a good impression. Make him realize how solid and dependable I am. That I’m not a child or childish.

A friend told me to just be myself. Which self? The person I am in the morning? I would love to be that person all day.  I seem to steadily devolve as the day wears on. By bedtime, which I fight with every fibre of my being, I’m spinning.

So, I’m anxious and it’s getting worse as the  week wears on.

I have a hard time hiding anxiety. I have about 100 tells and you don’t even have to be perceptive to spot them. By the time Friday night rolls around, I will have either chewed my bottom lip off or wrung all the skin off my fingers.

I don’t know why I’m putting myself through this. I’m fine alone. I have everything I need.

I am so glad I’m not writing this for anyone other than myself.

More ramblings

I have abandoment issues.  Yeah, me and everybody else, right?  I tell myself that  at least I recognize that fact and I try to work around and through those issues. I try not to take it so personally when people tell me “no” or don’t pay attention to me.

Oh, who am I kidding? I totally take it personally and I have never once been able to “work through my issues”. That is such bullshit.

I break into a million pieces  when I’m rejected, even if the rejection is only in my own mind.

I got chewed out tonight. It was my own fault. I pushed and I pushed and I pushed until someone pushed back and finally let me have it. And then I can say, “see? I knew you didn’t ‘love’ me.”

I am such a cliche. I would have contempt for somebody as rotten as I am, if I ever met anyone that bad.

Why no, I’m not self absorbed. Whatever gave you that idea.