Hops and TT, thank you both so much. I can't tell you how much support and comfort I get from the words of people who I know truly understand, you know?
I am starting to pick up again, I think the depths of darkness that still come up from time to time suprise me - so intense and sometimes such huge revelations and realisations. So much pain, and yet we carry it with us for so long, don't we, and still manage to raise our kids and go to work and do the 'normal' stuff. Amazing, really.
But yes, things are starting to level out again. My car broke down yesterday. A friend came to collect my son while I waited for the breakdown lorry, my sister happened to be driving past and stopped to see if I was okay and then a friend's husband came to look at the car for me today, it's not worth repairing but he knows of a cheap one and is going to see if he can get it for me, I have experienced a lot of kindness from ordinary people! It is not a bad thing to be, I think I just haven't done it before! So it's new, and therefore scary, I suppose.
I am trying to pluck up the courage to ask out a man I know a little. He has done some work on the house a few times and is very sweet and kind. I can't quite get myself to do it yet.
Thank you both for your words and your kindness xx
So how are things with the car and that sweet guy? Or am I butting in?
tt
Ha ha, no, not butting in at all, TT, thanks for asking

Mr Maintenance Man isn't due back until the end of the month. That will be the last of the work that needs doing so if he says no there won't be an embarrassing meeting at a later date when he comes back to finish some jobs off! I'm not brave enough to ask him directly and don't want to do it that way because you can bet your life something will happen with my son at just that moment and I won't get the chance to anyway! So I'm going to write him a thank you note and just add that if he'd like a drink one evening here's my number, and hand it to him as he leaves. The idea of it really scares me. I am really bad with rejection and, of course, he might be married/have a girlfriend/gay/not interested. But I do need to do something to get myself out of this rut I am in so I'm hoping a little note isn't too pathetic??!!
The car was irreparable so I've got a new one, again organised by someone else who knew someone else - more kindness and people doing good things for me. I know I wrote on a thread here ages ago about something that a therapist did with me once. It was a situation I had to imagine, something along the lines of I went to a party, met ten people, seven liked me, three didn't, how did I feel? It hit me like a train, the thought of three people not liking me was soooooooooo completely unacceptable I honestly had trouble breathing and it was clearly a big issue for me (the seven people that liked me didn't register at all, it was the three that didn't that consumed me).
And I think I still have a problem with that. I focus a huge amount on people who don't phone, don't text, don't visit, don't want to get together - yet I meet with and chit chat to people all the time who are kind, sweet, caring - imperfect and ordinary, but definitely the sort of people I should be focusing on more. Yet for some reason I crave the ones who don't want me the most. I think perhaps I've been so sensitive? scared? of 'the sort of people who cause me problems' that I've focused on that and not enough on the ordinary people who are a perfectly good mixture of good, bad and indifferent, as we all are. So I think I need to really work on changing my focus. And aside from all of that, the new car was very cheap and it's great (it has cup holders, which my son thinks are 'awesome')
