Hi,
I am not as good at doing new things for myself, or even planning them. I don’t know why, or maybe don’t know how.
Am I afraid? Maybe! Am I afraid of change? I believe so!
Today the sidewalks were clear enough for me to wheel to the library and exchange my books. That was about an hour of fresh air and the only exercise I can do.
I am a computer addict and read much online. I have two sites book-marked, one on compassion and one on virtues.
It’s 5:15 Pacific time and I have not yet eaten. I never get hungry, so if I’m busy I forget. (about 6:33 when I finished.)
I also have not cried in 15 years. I feel very empty about everything and just take a day at a time, so to speak. Yesterday, I planned for the Library today, but that would have been all shot to hell if it had snowed overnight!
I haven’t driven out of town for 4 years. I tank my car 4 xs per year. I live on a residential street, the last before downtown begins. I am one block away from where I need to go a lot…banks, re work and personal, drug store, and post office, so I don’t need the car. I take it for grocery shopping.
I know this doesn’t sound very healthy for me, but I cannot bring myself to go out and join a bridge club (don’t play) or some other senior’s event, as I don’t feel like a senior. I have to pull my life together to get into the thinking of my age group. I feel like 30.
It is difficult for some people to hang around with a disabled person, since I require accessibility, and don't do bowling and dancing as before, and some places just aren’t accessible to me, or maybe the dining room is, but the washroom is up a few steps. Infuriating! I don’t feel like joining groups for disabled persons. I have done that before (4 different ones) and it never worked out, as I am so independently disabled and not a whiner that I just don’t seem to fit. But in one I was President and held down about 6 other positions to keep things going, one being the Fundraiser. When I finally resigned my jobs, the group fell apart. I don’t want responsibility like that now.
But that’s the story of my life. Where do I fit in? I certainly was the scapegoat in my FOO. I believe therefore that is where my insecurities began. However, living as I do, I am feeling much more safe and secure, than ever before, in my life... yet we all know it is an escape!
I just don’t want people to know about my dysfunctional upbringing, that I never married, that my daughter is illegitimate, that my family was ashamed of me for that, that her father committed suicide, that I sometimes drank too much when the pain was too much, that I still resent my siblings for not visiting me in the hospital (I was there a year) and my daughter changed from age 5 to age 6 and I think our bond might been broken, since my sister, who had her, waited TWO months to bring her to see me, in spite of all her crying and asking for me. I was furious and was paying her and writing regularly asking her to bring her—but to time it for when I was face up on the stryker frame, not face down. People would come and talk to the back of my head. Only 2 ever got on the floor and looked up into my eyes.
When son-in-law dismissed me and I no longer saw daughter or my 2 grandkids, this same sister would drive all the way to see my daughter, take the kids for the weekend etc. and I was furious and jealous—was she trying to take my place as the grandmother/mother? I lived not far away and these long trips for her….. never did she come to see me.
Two years after the estrangement when I went into a crying jag (OK—I haven’t cried for 13 years) I couldn’t stop and she, by happenstance, dropped in to see me. I was yelling like a crazy fool in the parking lot as I unloaded my groceries and threw everything into her face and told her to get out of my life and out of my daughter’s life. I went to the doctor the next day and went on Zoloft.
Sis is a kindly soul and never meant any harm, but she hadn’t seen how it hurt me. She came again to see me and we talked it out, but some things I never forget when they cannot be undone.
My mother, spina bifida, scoliosis, was finally in a wheelchair at age 47, 13 years before my car crash. My eldest sister told me that her husband couldn’t stand to be around mom, since he was so uncomfortable with disabilities. I suppose we have to watch what we say, as then I was disabled and avoided him.
Even my mother didn’t come to the hospital for 2 weeks and I was at death’s door for 6 days, but knew people! Wouldn’t you mothers out there go immediately to the hospital if your child was in an awful, disabling car crash?…….or was it her own disability?
Well my dysfunctional family drove me crazy……… and now I live 2000 miles away from them all. Brother and sister (the one above) are coming to see me in July. I am not ecstatic about that!
Why am I 2000 miles away? This is where the psychopath of my life brought me. He is a flaming Narcissist with criminal history…I now know… and he was after my money…and they can be called psychopaths, a P/N. Not all Narcissists are psycho but all psychos are Ns.
In 6 months I realized I fallen in love with a puff of smoke and it took me FOUR long years to get out! I did so in June of 2002, and here I am.
Why 4 years? I couldn’t find an apt. One had a sunken tub; one had an uphill trip to throw out my garbage. One I had to buy a fridge and stove (I didn’t want to own anymore than what I had.) Another I had to buy a washer and dryer. There was only one accessible apt available and it was magnificent for only $2000/mo.
Now I have one I can manage except I cannot close the bathroom door. That’s a lot of fun!!
I apologize that this is so long, but it puts together some of the things I said in my first post! Is It Too Late?
Izzy.. who lives with shame, then is all smiling and friendly with the workmates, but ..don't they dare ever try to get close! to me!!!
