Update

 I can see I haven't posted in some time.  Today is hot.  Almost 80 degrees on the 12th of April.  Robin had a stroke on 9/23/22.  He was diagnosed with Stage IV prostate cancer shortly after Thanksgiving. He had another stroke on 3/13/23.   I cannot even begin to start writing about any of this.  We go on, as people do who have not made it through.  We go on. 

Losing It

 Either Robin leaves or I find Theo a home, cancel the fence at Lowe's and pay whatever they charge me, and I vanish. I can't do this much longer.  I really can't. 

Theo deserves a home where people are alive and well.  I am dying by degrees living with this man who looks like death.  No joy.  Darkness every day...I can't take much more.  I can't.  My kids don't fucking care.  They only care about what is happening to their father.  Do any of them think I am serious when I say I have had enough?  No.  They don't care.  They don't say or do anything.  I am so sick of living like this.  This is not living. 

My loves

 I am pretty tired, my loves. I hope I have time to figure out how to believe in my right to keep living.  I love you guys so much.  I don't know that there is much left for me to accomplish on this Earth, but I do believe the grandbabies need grandparents, so I keep pushing myself to be here for them.  And, for me. I don't want you to think at all that I don't want to be here because I do.  I am just worn out  But, I am not done.  Who knows what the future holds?  Maybe the best years are going to be in the third third part of my existence on this planet.  I do not know. 

I am too old and too young

 I am too old to know what it would feel like to be younger and in love.  I can never know that, ever again.  I weep for not ever knowing. Maybe it isn't that big of a deal, but I will never know, and that is what I must let go of. 

Things were not good when I got married.  From the marriage came the greatest joys of my life, and I really don't know why I am typing that in because my kids and grandkids know how much I love them. 

Well, Jay, therapist dude, I don't think I need you.  I think I have this figured out, but I will talk to you a few more times and appease you and do some worksheets. 

Not Going Anywhere

 So, I am free now, and I have removed the clip from my hair and cut my bangs.  I feel like 50 pounds have been removed from my body (it needs 50 more on top of that).  I am free. 

Yep

 “As you get older, you really just want to be surrounded by good people. People who are good for you, good to you and good for your soul.”

Second therapy session

 My new therapist gave me an assignment. Pages 18 & 19 from the ACT downloadable worksheets.  Granted, he gave them at the end of the session, but I have this feeling that worksheets are the answer to everything for him, though I may be judging harshly because I am pissed off.  I am pissed off that, after looking at the worksheets and thinking about how I will respond to the prompts, I know now that I will not make any changes to my life at this time.  How is that for worksheet effectiveness?  Pretty damned good. 

Mindsets

 Fixed Mindset:

"Believing that your qualities are carved in stone--the fixed mindset--creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over.  If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character--well, then you'd better prove that you have a healthy dose of them.  It simply wouldn't do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics."

Growth Mindset:

"There's another mindset in which these traits are not simply a hand you're dealt and have to live with, always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you're secretly worried it's a pair of tens. In this mindset, the hand you're dealt is just the starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way--in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments--everyone can change and grow through application and experience."

From the book Mindsets by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D. 

Midnight

 

Louise Gluck 

Sufjan Stevens - The Dress Looks Nice On You

Sufjan Stevens - Chicago

All Things Go

 I have made a lot of mistakes...not just in my mind, but in my mind, I make more, I think. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_-cUdmdWgU

Derek Walcott Poem

 Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Thinking

 Thinking about something Dixie said when we were talking last week.  I don't remember what she was saying at the time, but she had been talking about things you do when you're drunk and how smoking weed and driving isn't DUI driving, etc. I told her about the time she brought Sunny and Skyla to stay at the condo with Becca and me, and that Sunny threw her pot on the table and said, "Dixie said you were cool with it." I told Sunny that I didn't care who smoked pot, but that I didn't smoke pot, and I didn't want it in the condo. She said she was cool with that and took it to her car.  I told Dixie it upset me that she violated my feelings and completely ignored my asking that she not bring pot with her. She told me she wouldn't.  I was telling her about that and some other times when she seemed to have total disregard for my feelings, and though I never used those words, whatever I was telling her at one particular point in time brought these words from her mouth: "I feel like I'm being attacked."  I stopped talking, and I said, "Really? You do?" And she said yes, she did.  I apologized and said a friend should never feel like another friend is attacking her.  I haven't felt like talking to her since.  If I can say something to her that makes her feel attacked, and she's tough and will call BS and tell the truth, then I have to question the kind of friend I am, as I often do, by the way.  

Daughter Detox keeps coming to mind. The book I read about how to detox from an unloving mother.  The author talks about the inability for unloved daughters to form lasting friendships or relationships.  That is me alright, whether it is a result of being an unloved daughter or my own inability to know how to do the dance. 

Decisions

 So, I have decided to start seeing a therapist.  There are no therapists in this town that I would see, so I found one on Psychology Today.  He is located in Louisville and is a PsyD.  We will talk on the phone tomorrow and go from there.  I have been so ready for this, but now I feel anxious and ridiculous, like what do I have to complain or talk about?  I'm mostly just lonely.  He can't do much with that except make suggestions.  

We'll see how this goes. 

On the plus side (which is really the minus side), I have lost 14 pounds since September 4th, 2021.  I lost most of it by 11/04/21.  I didn't gain over the holidays, but I didn't lose either.  At the doctor last Wednesday (1/12/21), I weighed 247.2 pounds.  I never thought I would see the day that I would say I was quite pleased to weight that amount, but for several years now, I have been over 250. I weighed 265.8  on 9/03/21, but the next day, I weighed 263.2, so I am using that weight to gauge how much weight I have lost.  So, that's a loss of 16 going by the scales at the doctor's office, but I weigh two more than that on my scales. Only 90 more pounds to lose. Woot woot!  I'm being facetious.  That's just incredulous that I can weigh so much, but it is what it is, and I do weigh this much. 

On Memory

 

Destitute Orphans

 

Evening Blue

 A Slash Of Blue

A slash of Blue –

A sweep of Gray –

Some scarlet patches on the way,

Compose an Evening Sky –

A little purple – slipped between –

Some Ruby Trousers hurried on …

Emily Dickinson

An Unfree Life

 “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

-- Albert Camus

A More Simple Life

 “I think perhaps we want a more conscientious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of always deferring hope to the next generation. We're tired of hearing the politicians and priests and cautious reformers (and the husbands!) coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have plans for a Utopia already made; just give us a bit more time and we'll produce it; trust us; we're wiser than you.' For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now - and we're going to try our hands at it. All we want is - everything for all of us! For every housewife and every longshoreman and every Hindu nationalist and every teacher. We want everything. We sha'n't get it. So we sha'n't ever be content -”

― Sinclair Lewis, Main Street