Who needs friends

While shopping this evening I ran into an acquaintance from the divorced/widowed support group I was part of shortly after John passed away whom I hadn't seen in a very long time. I say she is an acquaintance because I honestly don't know how I feel about the word "friend". I have never had much luck with friendships, my most recent one ended up with her accusing me of having an affair with her husband which came completely out of nowhere. I was very upset for having been accused but said nothing to defend myself because if she were truly a friend she would know better than to accuse me of that especially after what I have gone through in regards to John being unfaithful. There is only one person in this world that I would wish that on and I doubt if the slut who had an affair with my husband will ever find someone stupid enough to marry her.

But that is besides the point, the point is that I just didn't have the energy to care enough to try to make her see how stupid she was acting. The reason her marriage fell apart had nothing to do with me or any other outside person. I would guess that it had more to do with her own actions and the stress of marrying a man who had never had kids and suddenly giving him a family of pre-teens who were a handful.... to put it as nicely as possible.

By the time this accusation came around, I honestly didn't care enough to invest even the breath it would have taken to try to fix the situation. Let her believe what she wishes.... the "friendship" was obviously a joke and I didn't really care enough to go through the trouble of cutting the ties. After John died, so many of my relationships fell to the wayside.... did it really matter that there was one more?

I know that having friends is important and when I am sitting here feeling sorry for myself I do wish that I had an adult friend to share things with but then I realize that having a friendship would take time and my time and energy feel stretched so thin right now that I just can't imagine having anything more to give to anyone other than my kids. Is it fair to seek a friendship when I know that it would be extremely one-sided due to a lack of interest on my part? Right now, my mind is so wrapped around all of my own sadness and pain that it is hard for me to let others in because I feel too fragile to dare risk any more pain. Can you really have a friendship if you are so busy putting up walls that prevent others from really getting to know you?

John was my best friend and I never imagined him doing anything to hurt me as much as I am now hurting. If you can't trust the one person you have pledged your heart, life and soul to.... who can you trust? And then when that trust is broken, when you bury the pieces of your former life in a little box, can you ever really be whole enough to let others in?

I want to have friends, but I also want to make sure that I am ready to be a friend before I really pursue any further relationships. Don't get me wrong, I do have friends, good friends who have been very patient with my distance as I try to put myself together. I also have would-be-friends who have reached out to me, even as I build those hard to scale walls around me. Sadly, I still feel too raw to let anyone too close, I still need these walls to protect me from more pain than I can handle.

I just hope that when I get to the point that I am ready to let people in, there will still be people around who care enough to still want to be my friend. As to the acquaintance I mentioned earlier, in my heart you are more than an acquaintance, you are my friend, I am just not very good at showing it. I hope that you were able to see that in my eyes when I walked away. I am still so very sad.... I don't want to burden anyone else with this sadness.... but please don't give up on me. I am hoping that very soon, I will be ready to accept the friendship you have extended to me time and time again.... I just hope that at that point, it won't be too late.

Tricks not Treats

So it was a year, almost to the day, between my last two posts. I can't help but wonder what it is about this time of year that makes me ready to let go of the past and of course the flip side of that is what happens to make that motivation go away? I obviously haven't dealt with it if I find myself back in nearly the same place year after year.

First I think it must have something to do with the fact that the calendar year is almost over which of course means that another anniversary of John's death is right around the corner. I also just realized that Halloween is when I first started seeing signs of how sick John was. He loved taking the kids trick-or-treating. In fact there were some years where the weather was too cold so I would stay home and pass out candy and he would be out there for as long as the kids wanted to trick-or-treat. Our last Halloween together Caitlyn was 3. She was dressed up as a cute little witch and I remember the three of us going together. The older kids were with their friends and I think my sister and nephew went for a short time but they left early. As we got towards the end of the trick-or-treating, Caitlyn started complaining about being tired. When a 3yr old is tired, they are TIRED and no amount of coaxing is going to get them to belive that there isn't much farther to go before they get home. She wanted to be carried and there was no convincing her to walk. John was always the first to pick her up, regardless if his back hurt or if he was tired, he always carried the kids, there was never a time prior to this night that I carried one of the kids if he was there as well. But that night, we were about a block and half away from home and there was no way he could carry her. His cough was so rough, his lungs hurt from what he thought was the coughing and he just didn't have the strength to carry her. I remember picking her up and joking that he must really be sick. He was quiet, I just figured he was tired but thinking about it now I wonder if deep inside he had an idea of how sick he really was.

Now that I think about it, I realize that Halloween was definitely the turning point between John being well and us finding out he had cancer. He was also sick for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. Writing it down of course I can see how I should have known there was something very serious going on. But at the time, I honestly had no clue. Yes he was sick, yes he had a cough that didn't go away, and in the back of my mind I did notice some weight loss and he was definitely irritable but we all had colds at some time or another that fall, and with his smoking, him having a cough didn't seem too odd. He was always on the thin side so in my mind I just figured it was old age, his dad was on the very thin side as well and he lived past 80. As for him being crabby, well he wasn't exactly Pollyanna. He was forever seeing the gloom in things, even when he was happy he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was used to his different moods and didn't think much of it.

Besides all that, in my mind I just couldn't imagine that a thing like cancer would hit so close to our family. Yes, you hear all of the statistics, but really that happens to other people, not to us. As I think of that last Halloween and how it represents his health quickly fading, I feel my stomach clench as I picture him slowly, walking next to me as I carried Caitlyn in my arms 4 years ago. Never would I have guessed that it would be our last one together. I feel ill as I realize that I still have to live through the memories of all of the other holidays that are right around the corner.

I feel ill because in my mind I do blame myself for not asking more questions when they kept diagnosing him with bronchitis, why didn't I make them do more tests when the antibiotics obviously weren't working? He was taking his first round of medicine that Halloween, I honestly expected him to get better. I am angry because I can't perfectly picture that night, I have images of Caitlyn her little witch costume and striped tights, I can see her tripping up the stairs, her trick-or-treat bag a little too big for her to carry, but what I can't see is John. Did he talk or was he in too much pain, did he have a good night or was he hurting too much to enjoy it, was I patient with his slower pace or did I get irritated? I don't know. I will never know because we aren't always given the gift of knowing when a loved one is going to die.

We always hear that we need to treasure every moment as if it were our last, always tell your loved ones how much you care because you never know when that final goodbye might come, enjoy your children's childhood because it disappears in a second. We hear those cliches but they don't really hit home until we send our baby off to college, we bury our loved ones in the ground and we lay in our hospital beds knowing that the days truly are numbered and we are too sick to enjoy them.

Is that part of my pain? Not only saying goodbye but knowing that with each year that goes by my days here are numbered as well. I focus every holiday season on making sure the kids have the best holiday ever, I focus on making sure that I stay happy and upbeat so that they don't have bad holiday memories of their mom who was always sad or crying, I focus on buying, buying, buying because after all retail therapy is a good temporary fix. And then New Years comes and I do my best to escape my house, go to a hotel with the kids so that I don't have to lay in my room and remember the very last time we ushered in a New Year together. I don't have to start counting down the days until we find out how sick he really is. But that escape can only last so long and despite my best intentions for THIS year to be the one when I finally get my shit together I eventually can't hold up the facade that all is well and I crash.

I can't fall apart, I can't cry, I can't scream or yell.... I hold it in. Bury the pain in mindless tasks and food. And just when I think I can't take it anymore, I finally am able to distract myself from the pain when the cold, gloomy weather turns warm and sunny. I can focus on summer vacations, swimming with the kids, camping, roadtrips, they are all a nice temporary fix until fall rolls around and the pain starts creeping into my mind and I find myself here desperately trying to pour the pain out through my fingers as they click and clack against the keyboard.

I don't want to continue this cycle again. I want to be done with mourning, I want to be done being sad, I want to be done with the guilt and anger and hate. Hopefully I am finally turning that corner. I have never put the pieces together in quite this way. As I write it, I find myself having a "duh" moment, why didn't I realize all of this before? Maybe I wasn't ready, maybe I am just stupid, all I know is that I am not going to stop. I am not going to stop writing until I have emptied every last sad, crappy, negative thought. And when I am done doing that I am going to get rid of the anger and the hate and every other energy draining feeling. I am tired of letting these sad and depressing memories live in my head. I am strong, there is no doubt that I am strong but now it is time to use that strength to deal with the pain, and it is far beyond time that I use that strength to finally start living. Living in the present and not in the past.

So from here on out, I will work through the lifes' "tricks" and will truly make time for the "treats" that my life has to offer.

Letting Go

I have no idea how long it's been since the last time I blogged. I decided to not look at my old posts before writing again. I am pretty sure that this will be close to the last blog I wrote because I feel like I am in the same damn place. I have not been able to let go of the pain of losing John, and even more so the pain of finding out he was unfaithful and had another child with someone else shortly after Caitlyn was born. More times than not I wake up and will replay what I could have, should have done when I blindly ignored what was right in front of my face.

I don't know how to let go of the pain that is killing me inside because I don't know how to forgive. How do I forgive the man that I held in my arms as he took his last breath? How do I forgive the woman who was sleeping with my husband while pretending to be my friend? How do I let go of the bitterness and anger when I still feel so much towards them both?

I know, I know.... when you hold hate towards someone you are not only keeping them in your life but you are giving them more power than they deserve as well as keeping yourself at a standstill. I want to let go, I just don't know how. I am ready to move forward with my life but every time I try to confront the pain that eats me up I push it back down because I am so afraid that if I take it out to examine it, it will consume me even more than it already is.

So I have stopped writing and I continue to push the pain deeper and deeper inside. I don't know how else to confront what I am really feeling except through words. I don't have anyone to talk to, or should I say that I don't want to talk to anyone because I don't think that anyone could really understand what I am going through. I can't live with this pain anymore. I want to let it go, I want to let go of the anger.

I have so much anger, I scare myself sometimes.

How do you let go? When the person you are angry at is dead? How do you forgive someone who has hurt you more than you could ever imagine hurting? My life is going to be at a standstill until I figure out how to move on.

So I am going to write, I have no idea what I am going to write but I do know that I will purge it all out here. I have to let it go, I have to forgive. John is dead, he doesn't have to live with the consequences of his actions, the skank slut he slept with obviously has no morals so she isn't going to feel remorse for her actions, the "family and friends" who have turned their backs on the kids and I since John passed away obviously don't care so it is time for me to stop caring as well.

I don't think one post is going to fix this, I don't think that the want to let go is going to make it happen. But ignoring the situation is also not going to do much to get me past this anger and pain. So this is the start.

Day 1 to getting my life back.

Ok.... so about 15 minutes ago, right after writing the previous sentence, there was a loud CRACK and the power went out. No lights, no computer, nothing. It made me jump out of my chair! I am all about signs so the first thing I think, well after I think how thankful I am for Blogger's autosave, is that I need to get my ass in gear. Obviously, someone, somewhere agrees with what I have been writing and it is time to get off my ass and make shit happen.

So for today, my first day of however many it takes to work through all of the bullshit, I am going to get rid of the shit that I can actually see. No more clutter in my room, no more boxes of papers that need to be sorted through, no more piles of laundry that need my attention which distract me from the real issues in my life.

And isn't that really the issue? My life isn't being lived to the fullest. As long as I am carrying this extra emotional and physical (clutter, excess pounds, etc.) weight I will never be free to enjoy the life I am meant to live. I am so fucking sick of being sad I could SCREAM! But unfortunately, I am going to have to deal with the sad, and with the anger and all of the other bullshit before I can truly move on.

No more hiding. Time to take action, time to live. Wish me strength because I am going to need it!