No shape.

I was in no shape to write a post this morning, because i was not nearly coherent. Then Edurd had also told me that a computer uses 300 watts an hour and that made me think that with all of my blogging I really use up a lot of energy, and since I am going to be a poor woman soon, I don’t want to owe the energy company any money at the end of the year, So I felt uncomfortable about spending so much time behind the computer and had to find a solution.

So, this morning, instead of writing a post with my non coherent mind, I downloaded Google reader and added all the blogs that I read to it and I can now see them all in a jiffy and if they have been updated. Today I very quickly read through all of them with the result that I didn’t leave any encouraging comments anywhere, I was in such a hurry to get through them. I promise to be better tomorrow and actually comment, because I do know how to do that.

I also picked up an unexpected award from Debs at the Lehners in France and I certainly wasn’t expecting that, but am ever so grateful for it and sure appreciate it. Here it is:

Isn’t that sweet? I am sure that I am supposed to hand it to someone else, but it is something I can’t quite wrap my head around right now, so I will do that tomorrow. Please remind me to do that.

I have been feeling rushed all day, but in reality I am not getting much accomplished. I saw my SPN this morning and that was fine. I don’t know if she is 100% behind me on my divorce plans, but I can’t force her to be and time will tel how it will all work out. This does not mean that she is not supportive of me, she is just cautious. After our meeting, she had her meeting with the personality disorder team, so I will hear all about that next week.

Yesterday, I had a meeting with the activity coordinator at the psychiatric out patient clinic and I am starting 3 hours of ergo-therapy on Wednesdays starting tomorrow. No time to get nervous about it. I just jump in and do it. I will start 3 hours of creative therapy on June the 30th on Mondays. I am just full of bravery and will not back down this time. I am so full of myself right now and feel very brave, although I am the least little bit nervous, but I will get over that.

I had another treatment at the physiotherapist this afternoon and that is helping a lot. I will have one more treatment on Thursday and that is it. I should be alright after that. The ultrasound is helping me a lot.

Eduard and his girlfriend tried to find affordable housing for Eduard just across the border in Belgium this afternoon, but they have not come up with anything yet. It is becoming increasingly difficult for various reasons to have Eduard living here still and the situation is really unattainable. He comes and goes and I find it very uncomfortable, because I get used to him being home and get some of those old cozy feelings and I shouldn’t be having those. It’s much better if he is gone and I am on my own and just functioning that way then get all tenderhearted about him, which is inevitable when I hang around with him and I am having a weak moment, because I do get those. I must stay focused on the reality of the situation as it is and not on how I thought it was.

The obvious solution is that he moves in with his girlfriend for the time being until he gets his own place and I am all for that and would gladly pack his bag and all of his belongings. He needs to be gone from here. I need to get on with my life. I can’t do that if he keeps coming home every day and taking up his place again here. I need to deal with my feelings on my own and get that process started, I am now hampered in it every time.

I think for Eduard it is uncomfortable too, because he wants to get on with his other life and doesn’t feel comfortable doing that in my presence. I sure as hell hope we decide on something by this weekend. I know that we will both go through a process of grief and now we are just postponing it. It is inevitable that it happens. But once set upon the road, there is no turning back.

I have downloaded 8 CD’s to an MP3 player and I am listening to it now. It is pretty heavy duty music, no fooling around. I’ve got dEUS and Death Cab and Goo Goo Dolls and some very good Björk. I do so like her very much for her unexpectedness. I’ve got half the player filled up, so I will get some other neat stuff yet.

I will totally be truthful with you and tell you that today is not as easy a day as the last two weeks have been, but I have been informed that this is perfectly normal and that my emotions will cover a whole range. That this is to be expected and not to become discouraged by it. So, I will not. Nothing in life is only easy, there are always the hard bits too, but you climb across them or out of them and make it to the smoother areas again. Toady I am nostalgic for the good times Eduard and I had and they have a tendency to shine a little brighter maybe than they actually were. Nostalgia does that to you. I keep having to look at everything through these glasses of present day realism. Know a lost cause when I see it and not beat a dead horse. No, I’ve stopped doing that already.

How did you like that football game between the Netherlands and Italy? Was it great or what? We certainly had great big grins on or faces because of it. It gives us hope for the rest of the games. Maybe we will do alright.

Right, that’s it. I must go and watch some boring TV and have some decaf and then walk Jesker. My trusty and loyal four footed pal who never lets me down.

Ciao…

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Just a second!

Sunday morning. I tried to go back to bed this morning after I wrote the first post and I tried to get comfortable, but it was all just a battle for naught. My back hurt so much, that I would just drowse off for a little while and then wake up again from the pain and moan while I tried to get more comfortable. Eduard probably thought I was putting on quite a show, but it was just awful and I don’t know what to do, but sit in this office chair with a pillow in my backand type. I am really in agony unless I sit perfectly upright in this chair and barely move a muscle. I really should not type, but that is too boring and Eduard is still “sleeping”, so I can’t be looking for music now. Bah humbug! Here is a picture of Gandhi:

She looks a little mean in that one doesn’t she? Like she is saying, “If you do that one more time, I’ll scratch your eyes out.” She isn’t a mean cat at all, as a matter of fact, she is just a plain old sweetheart.

In the meantime, I have been doing something totally different. I accidentally ran into some very good Baroque music and made a 4 page playlist of that and now I am listening to it, which is rather pleasant and quite a change from all that other stuff I have been listening to. It is good for an orderly mind, it’s very mathematical. Very precise and aligned and squared off and measured. It’s good for the architect that hides in me and the little civil servant. You can picture that, can’t you? We have to keep an eye on that woman and see what she is up to. Can’t just having her roaming around without having a straight jacket handy. She may be the sort of person who is going to hamper all of Nora’s good efforts. Can’t have that.

Well, I may write some more later, we’ll see.

Monday morning in the wee hours. Eduard got up yesterday morning and did some housework for me and walked Jesker and then there was really not much for us to do, but sit and stare at each other without having much to discuss, because we have discussed everything we can up to now, so I suggested that he have another afternoon off and he did. He left on his bicycle with a bottle of water and his digital camera and his wallet and was gone for three hours, which was nice, because it gave me some breathing space in which I could just do what I wanted to do. I listened to music and started a new blog in Dutch.

Yes, I have never written in Dutch and I don’t know how well I am going to manage, because i also never read any Dutch blogs and I am going to have to find those, but I am going to give it a try. It will not be as comprehensive as this one, more short and to the point and a bit more business like. I don’t do emotions well in Dutch and it is not as much appreciated. The Dutch don’t like a lot of drama. They like self criticism, so the style of the blog will be a lot different.

When Eduard came back from his bike ride, we did briefly discuss getting paperwork organized for the mediator and the few pieces of furniture and household goods he is going to take with him when he moves out. It doesn’t amount to much. Just some odds and ends to get him started. He is going to get a lot of things at the goodwill store. Luckily, Eduard is one of those people who cares very little about how well decorated his place is and he doesn’t mind if nothing matches and is a bit old and worn. In this case, I do appreciate that. He doesn’t need to go to Ikea.

I really and truly appreciate the fact that I can own up to not being in love with my husband anymore, when before I thought that I very much was and that I would die without him. I believed in the love story of our marriage and I believed in the holiness of our love. I believed that together we were one and that we could not be separated, that one would be incomplete without the other.

Suddenly a switch got turned in my brain and I stopped believing all those things in an instant and I saw my husband for who he was, just an ordinary human being with all his faults and weaknesses, who also happened to have hurt me very much. I saw that my marriage was in very many ways dysfunctional and suffocating and that what I thought was love, was maybe really an extreme form of dependency. I saw that it was unhealthy for the both of us.

Seeing this so clearly, made me very determined to call a halt to it immediately, because I will not stay in a dysfunctional relationship, as I have been in two of those already and I know what harm they can do to your mental health. In this case the damage was incipient, because Eduard had been a benign partner and his actions had always been based on kindness, which made them nonetheless unhealthy. They allowed me to become very needy and dependent and dysfunctional and took away my believe in myself as an independently functioning human being. At the same time, it gave him an exaggerated sense of responsibility for me and made him believe that he was fully accountable for the wellbeing of us both 24 hours a day.

So, it is a good thing that we go our own way now. We need to let go of each other in order to survive and be the free people we are meant to be. Unfortunately, Eduard did not have a way to tell me this. He could only act it out by having an affair.

I won’t forgive him for the way he handled that. The way he went about lying about it and carrying on behind my back and making excuses and being a damn cheater. But I am divorcing him and I never have to worry about that anymore. The next woman will have to. What a relief.

My back is still not better, actually, i should say my side, because that where the pain radiates to. If I didn’t know better, I would think that there is something wrong with one of my kidneys. If things don’t get better by the end of this week, I will go back to the doctor. I think I need to be closely examined.

Well, you good people, I suppose I will go and try and write something in Dutch now. It is more like a homework assignment than a pure writing pleasure, but I do need the practice. I am not feeling the least bit artistic, so I am not posting any bits of art just now. Maybe someday soon again.

Have a great Monday. It’s the ultimate dragon slaying day, after all.

Ciao…

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A brand new day.

Wednesday 6:15 PM. I just woke up from a longish nap on the sofa. I was listening to my MP3 player with classical music on it and when Beethoven’s ninth symphnony came on I fell asleep and there is nothing better than to do that to “Ode to Joy.” I woke up two hours later to an tenor singing his heart out; I don’t know which song that was, something famous, I am sure. Let me tell you something, sleeping through two hours of classical music is very healthy for the mind, because when I woke up I felt extremely refreshed and ready to tackle whatever would come my way. So far no dragons have showed up and they had better not, because I am ready.

Eduard came away from his appointment with the psychiatrist this morning without a clear solution, like i secretely hoped for. Actually, he looked rather happy as he told me that what we should do is keep the dialog between us open and positive, when I could have sworn that we have been doing this all along and that we had reached an impasse in it and that this was the reason why Eduard went to see the psychiatrist. So, I guess we are back at point zero.

Eduard wants me to be patient with him and let the thing run its course although, in his words, it may take 2 to 3 or 10 to 15 years, who knows? Well, that’s exactly the problem isn’t it. I want the thing to have run its course now and I want it to be a closed chapter in my life and not one that I need to be reminded of every weekend and have my nose rubbed into. I am not talking only about what is happening now, but also the prehistory of it dating back to last year September. I feel sullied by that and as if I have been the victim of a crime that I keep being reminded of every weekend.

Anyway, I draw my hands off it and for me part of it is closed in that I no longer consider my ties with Eduard to be close. I have done away with intimacy and friendship and now just see him as someone I happen to share a living space with on a cordial basis. A solution will be found of a more permanent basis and it will be one that is most attractive to me. I will not be the victim of this rather unpleasant scene.

in spite of all of this, I feel good and I can find joy in my heart and contentment and love for the simple things, such as the animals and the music I listen to. Have you ever heard of Duffy? She has an album called Rockferry and I can highly recommend her. She sounds like a rock star from the early 60’s. Very cool! She is a newcomer on the scene and I think her album hasn’t been out that long. Look for her on Deezer or YouTube.

I am waking up from my naps in an ungrumpy way again and full of good hope. I am so filled with goodwill towards man and so full of positive feelings, I could probably move mountains if called for. I assume Mother Theresa felt this way all the time and so did Gandhi, no not our cat, I mean the famous one. Mahatma Gandhi. I wish I had the patience and the understanding of the human soul of those two people. Not that I have any desire to be canonized, God forbid.

I must stop writing now, as my husband has returned from his errand and has turned off my music and turned on the TV to watch the Belgian news, as we missed the Dutch news. Never mind, it will be on again at 8 o’clock. I’ll see you good people in the morning. Ciao…

Thursday 4:30 AM. Eduard has protested at the way I always picture him as a bad guy and reminds me that there were all those years that I was very sick and that he always took very good care of me and that he was very often very lonely. So, I am telling you about that now, because it is true. He never complained and he never criticised, he just carried it all on his shoulders. He never threatened to leave me, no matter how difficult it became. He was loyal and devoted and dependable. Very often i was near non-functioning and he just picked up wherever I left off. He spent many lonely days and weeks by himself when I laid in bed, too depressed to do anything.

Everybody I know is in great admiration of Eduard for the things he did for me then and for not leaving me when he had all the reasons in the world to. I suppose Eduard is saying to me, that I should have the patience with him now that he had with me then. Except that it doesn’t work that way, unless Eduard is suffering from a sickness now and he can’t help himself, but he says that he is not and that he is making a clear choice. Being with the other woman allows a part of him, that doesn’t come to expression in our marriage, to come to the surface and live and he does not want to suppress that part. He wants to give it room to breathe and come alive and exist. It is the part of him that was alive in his early 20’s when he was a bit of a rebel and a renegate and that definitely is not part of his life with me today.

So, I say, go and be that person then, go and do it, but he doesn’t want to be it full time. The rest of the time he wants to be with me, here, in this more normal life. This more bourgeois life. He wants both, he wants to have his cake and eat it too.

He is also unhappy with his condoned Saturday afternoon off and feels like it has taken all of the excitement out of the affair and he wants to go back underground when it was secretive and hidden. You can, of course, imagine what sort of stress this will create for me.

I see this ending up nowhere. Eduard is not to be cured from this obsession and I will never accept it, because I am not capable of it. It’s not some sort of stubbornness like Eduard claims it is, or a control issue. I am just emotionally incapable of handling this whole scene and I am looking forward to the day when I won’t have to anymore. I am mentally preparing myself for a divorce and during the day, when I am home alone, I imagine what that is like and if I am able. I will have to become more active outside this apartment and create more of a social circle, but I also know that there is special help for people like me with psychiatric disorders.

You mustn’t think that I am sitting here all down hearted, because I am not. I still see enough joy in life to savor it also. I am listening to some beautiful music through my head phones and Jesker is right here beside me. In a little while we will go for our morning walk after we have both taken our medications. I still look forward to each new day in the morning.

I am disappointed that my marriage is going to end on an issue like this. It seems such a terrible waste, when there are so many good ingredients. I have always claimed that I had a good marriage and a lovable husband. I suppose I didn’t quite know what I was talking about. Eduard has really surprised me in that he is willing to give up the marriage over an issue like this. I find it truly amazing.

Well, I am off to give Jesker his pills and take my own also. I hope you all have terribly interesting Thursday and that life treats you kindly.

Ciao…

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No Rush.

It is almost midnight and I am very slowly going to write a post, but I may not finish it all at once, because I already took my sleep medication, although I am finding it impossible to sleep as of yet. So, I got up out of bed and made myself a mug of coffee and parked myself behind the computer and we will see what happens.

Tonight my husband told me that he loves the other woman very much, in fact he loves her as much as he loves me and he can not and does not want to make a choice. I think that secretly he loves her more than he loves me and that this has enabled him to keep hurting me all this time, regardless of all the many times I have asked him to stop. He does not want to admit this thought, but he does not want to dismiss it either.

I think it is time for him to go. I think he needs to pack a bag and get on his motorcycle and move away from here, although it is going to hurt a lot, because I love him more than I love life itself, but I have reached the end of my rope. I am mentally and emotionally unable to do this weekend thing with the other woman any longer.

Spending time with my husband this Saturday afternoon, has made it clear to me how much I don’t want to continue that game anymore and how unable I am to do it. It feels like a cancer is eating away at my soul and I am going to die from it unless I get the right medicine and my husband has the right medicine, but he is unwilling to administer it.

It’s time for him to go and leave me be with my own sore heart which he has slowly been breaking into pieces all these months. Let him be with the woman he loves and watch the magic of his love wear off. He will see how common it all is and how ordinary and plain and simple and how it will be just like any other love, bare and naked.

Will I survive? Barely and with great difficulty. It will be a big struggle and I will fall apart. I am sure of it. I will fall to pieces and think I am lost and become distraught and think I am destroyed forever. But I will get over it, because I have the animals. Jesker most of all, he needs me. He needs a sane person to feed him and to walk him and to pet him. And the cats will need someone to feed them and clean the litter box and give them fresh milk and turn on the faucet for them when they are thirsty. I need to do those things.

This whole situation must be resolved one way or the other. It can not go on the way it is now. i am not able to continue in this manner. I am not capable.

I will be lonely and alone and I will wish for someone to come and hold my hand and let me cry on their shoulder, because my husband is the love of my life. But I dislike him immensely now and I am very angry at him and I feel very dishonored by him and abused.

Every day i show him much I love him in all my deeds and words, but it is not enough to permanently win his heart. I don’t know what else to do.

So I give him up. I let him go, but he can not come back, once he is gone , he has to stay gone, because I will have to switch off a button in my heart and soul. The Eduard space will be like a bunker and I will resist any attempts at recovery of the territory. That moment of disconnection starts Now! I declare myself a widow. Grieving will commence immediately and my husband sleeps the sleep of the innocent until morning.

Well, that’s all I have to tell you now.Thank your for being my listening eyes. There must be a book I can read about this somewhere. I wonder if I will feel different in the morning?

Ciao…

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Wobbly Wednesday.

I don’t actually know if my Wednesday is going to be wobbly, it just seemed like a good title for a post and I felt wobbly last night before I went to bed. I don’t quite know how I feel right now, because I still have to finish my first mug of coffee and my first cigarette. Whoa, and I’m already typing? Yes, I like to live dangerously and on the edge. I hope you realize that I mean emotionally wobbly, what other kind of wobbly is there, right? Well, I suppose I could have been wobbly because I was drunk, but I wasn’t, let me assure you of that.

Okay, I’ve got my second mug of coffee now, so I should be properly waking up any minute now. Remember I was the one who said that I cherished those first moments of waking up time in the morning and I really do. They are full of understated excitement at what is to come, some days are just more understated than others. Some days are so understated that the excitement is hard to find and there is only a dull curiosity. Some days there is only a dread of anticipation at what is to come. Some days I gather my courage together and dare myself to be excited anyway and hope that I can make something of it by sheer input and willpower. Today will have to be one of those days.

Aha, I speak in riddles. That’s because the husband and I had what is called a “serious” conversation yesterday in which I announced the limits of my flexibility and acceptance regarding our agreement, and during which I told him how absolutely impossible I find it to come up with these fine and admirable qualities of character every weekend and how terribly short of them I fall. That sort of put a damper on things and made the conversation kind of hopeless and we were unable to bring it to a satisfactory ending, leaving it open ended and unresolved.

I find myself going on an emotional roller coaster every weekend, no matter how often and how much I try to convince myself that I need not do this and that I am a mature human being who should be able to handle the situation with temerity and determination. Alas, I fall short of my own resolve and succumb to sadness and despair instead and waste three days on being an emotional debacle. I find that I can not share my husband and that my sense of honor and self esteem gets in the way of my supposed sense of “you ought to be able to do this.”

I also find that my trust in him has taken a downward dive and that I question everything he tells me and that I am constantly in a state of disbelief. This is possibly the biggest problem, because when trust is gone, you are left with a big gaping hole. He has told me so many versions of the same story that I am reluctant to believe any version of it now and I find myself short of believe and long on scepticism. Part of me believes that he tells me these different versions to spare my feelings and part of me believes that he tells them to deceive me, it is all equally bad.

I will not go into further details about that here, to spare us both the embarrassment, although you may think it is too late for that. It is hard to determine sometimes.

I had an intensive talk with my SPN and we were talking so intently that we ran out of time and have to continue our talk next week. I discussed divorce and moving out on my own and how that would be for me. The possibility of it. Having intense guidance when doing so, which I would definitely need considering my disorders. I discussed the possibility that I may not be in love with Eduard anymore now, but may just be acting out of a reflex. You know, I feel threatened, so I am holding on tight. I am definitely angry at him and that part of me doesn’t want to love him anymore. I am most obviously hurt.

I do have some amount of understanding for him, but only for the initial action, not for the subsequent actions. For what happened at the beginning, not for what is happening now. Not this continuing, conscious, well thought out operation. The state of my marriage does not warrant it.

Oh well, how depressing, really. I am not even going to insert any art in this post, it’s so pathetic.

I am listening to my MP3 player on the headphones. Linkin park! I am going to fill one MP3 player with nothing but rock bands. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Razorlight, Radiohead, Linkin Park, Gorillaz. All I have to do is get the CD’s from the library. Then I am going to sit with the headphones on and really rock. I really like bands that have good drummers that are clearly audible with that heavy hard boom.

I am going to end this post now. I am sorry that I turned out not to be so uplifting this morning, but I did have to unload a bit. Sorrow shared and all that. None of you have to get all upset for my sake, you know, it isn’t necessary.

Have a good day,

Ciao…

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This one’s for Wednesday.

3:30 PM. Today I had to admit to myself a truth that I had not wanted to admit to, namely that if it looks like a duck and it acts like a duck, it must be a duck. So, if it looks like a depression and it acts like a depression, it must be a depression and the minute I admitted that to myself, I knew I was right and I could stop pretending it was anything else.

Since then I have contemplated the whole thing and realized that this has been going on for about a week, or it has been on its way that long. The first signs of it showed up a week ago and I pretended not to notice and called them something else, which is fine except that at one point you have to face up to reality.

Now I can admit that I don’t feel that great and that everything feels like it requires an awful lot of effort, too much effort as a matter of fact and far more energy than I can garner. As a matter of fact, I just took a nap on the sofa and when I woke up, I felt a feeling of terrible dread at the thought of the things I had to do and knew I could not complete. Along with that came a slight feeling of disgust with myself at being that disabled. Well, cal it a major feeling of disgust and a feeling of doom. Those feelings of doom I was not having yesterday, or was pretending I wasn’t having.

I am an old hand at depression, so I am not that concerned. I’ll get through this one just fine and it is a mild depression so far, it isn’t a huge one. I don’t need to lie down in bed with it and suffer. I’ll make an adjustment to one of my medications and that is about all I can do there. Tomorrow I have an appointment with my SPN and we’ll discuss this further, but I don’t need to say much about it, because I get to do that all here. 🙂 You may be an unwilling audience, but then I suggest you stop reading, because I can’t promise you that I won’t bore you with this subject any more.

In the meantime, I am listening to Leonard Cohen, because he is one of Eduard’s favorite artists. Talk about being depressed! I find the man so sad and downhearted and I am just referring to his texts, of course. I don’t know how he is in real life and if he is still singing such sad songs nowadays. This is all his earlier work that we are listening to. I am always surprised at the choice of Eduard’s music, because it very often seems so downcast and he likes all the music from the late sixties and the romantic classics, which are not known for their cheerfulness.

Jeez, don’t listen to Leonard Cohen when you are depressed, it will plunge you in a hole. Ignore his texts. He is a Jewish boy singing about Jesus and nuns in a mournful way. Do not listen to the words!

6:00 PM. I fell asleep on the sofa again listening to Leonard’s mournful voice after I discussed Eduard’s choice of music with him. That didn’t make me much wiser, except to say that Eduard listens for nostalgic reasons. I can’t identify with that at all, because I don’t have nostalgia for times past, I am usually glad they are over and when I think back on times past, it is usually with some amount of discomfort. I am not big on nostalgia. I can listen to some music that is about 17 years old, because I associate it with my freedom and emancipation, but that is about it. Even with this music I have mixed feelings, such as, a lot of things shouldn’t have happened, but they did, regardless of my intentions.

When you finally, but still quite suddenly, leave a very long unhappy marriage, you have very mixed feelings about that. At least, I did. I felt as if I had escaped my inevitable fate, but I also felt like a traitor who had committed a betrayal. I left one kind of very heavy unhappiness behind me, but I carried another with me after that. Still, I did not go back. It would have been impossible. It would have been like asking a prisoner to go back to jail voluntarily. My ex-husband was my downfall and if I had gone back, I would have emotionally died, as I was slowly dying already. That all sounds very dramatic, but it is the truth. It is a horrible thing to be married to the last person on earth you should be married to.

Of course, you have to remember how young i was when I got married and how little I really knew my ex-husband. I was 17 and I had known him for 6 months and for three of those we were separated. Absence makes the heart grow fonder? I was taking a huge risk, but I didn’t realize it at the time. It is a shame that nobody around me warned me of the dangers and the pitfalls. I would maybe have gotten out when the writing appeared on the wall and not have been embarrassed and not have worried about saving face. Alas, that is all talking after the facts and it can’t be undone.

I am, however, left with a past that I am very sensitive about and that I have a hard time looking back upon, as I look back and see a lot of sadness and pain. I don’t look back nostalgically. Therefor, I feel robbed of a whole part of my life that I have to deny ever happened and don’t like to talk about, don’t even like to remember, can’t reminisce about with other people.

I had my older sister on the phone this morning and she remembered a vacation she spent with me back then and I hardly recalled what she was talking about, except that I got a great big feeling of discomfort and sadness and could only tell her that I did not like to look back on that time. For her it had been a great vacation, for me it had been something else altogether. Great discomfort and embarrassment and sadness.

You see how I put so much value into the marriage I am in now. It is very important to me that it is a success and not one that I’ll have to look back on with the same amount of discomfort and sadness. Not that I think it would be the case, but I would hate to lose it. It would horrify me.

I’ve just been busy artistically for about an hour and I feel so perked up now. That really did me a lot of good. It got a bunch of cobwebs out of my head. What do you call a bunch of cobwebs? A bevy of them? Or a swarm of them? No, I don’t think so. Either way, it worked. So, sitting behind the computer can be good for you.

I just got called by what I think was a colleague of Eduard trying to pull one over on me. She asked me how old I was and I said I was 83. Then she asked me if any of my family members were looking for work and I said that all my 24 grandchildren were on the dole and looking for a job and then she said, “Well, obviously Ma’am, you are making fun of me and are not at all serious,” and then she hung up. So, now I don’t know who it really was. Oh, well…

10:00 PM. I just slept on the sofa some more. It is all I seem to do. Now I am waiting for Eduard to get home, because he doesn’t have to work late tonight.

I feel a huge amount of shame and embarrassment because of the things I am writing down, when, in fact, I always write like this, don’t I? Now isn’t any different than any other times, is it? I am literally breaking out in a cold sweat because of it, but I am not backing down. I am letting it stand and damn the embarrassment and shame. Those feelings all come with feeling depressed, I am sure. It makes you feel so inadequate and small.

Oh, by the way. The image above is made from a digital collage by John Mora named “run.way.” Here it is:

John does wonderful work and if you’re not familiar with him, you should really visit his blog where he has several sites to look at his artwork. John is the master artist in digital work.

Oh lord, I am yawning something awful. I think I had better just go to bed and wait for Eduard there. I will not add to this in the morning. It has gotten long enough as it is. I will do something else if I happen to wake up early during the night.

Have yourself a good rest of the Tuesday or a good start of the Wednesday. Watch out for that first step, it’s what trips you up.

Ciao…

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Wanky Wooly Wednesday

Lake Wobegon Days.

Firstly, let me do a good deed for two people who made me smile especially wide when I read my comments tonight. All my comments make me smile as a rule, but these two made me smile more than usual and it is so funny that these two people both had the same sort of idea. They are Miss Understood and Stinking Billy who both sent me a silly poem that was just right to end the day with. I would like to give them this special award:

So, please pick it up and feel free to pass it on to others who made you smile today or any other day.

It’s a little past eleven PM on Tuesday night now. Eduard and I just came home from the film house where I leaned on the bar in my usual spot next to the nachos machine. A man and a woman came to stand there and they were obviously on a date, because the man said very apologetically to the woman, “Well, this is not the most romantic spot to drink our wine.” I could have told him that, because I eavesdrop on everybody and everybody feels that way about the nachos machine.

A funny thing happened. A volunteer colleague of Eduard tried to pick me up. He didn’t know who I was, but I knew who he was and I kept silent about who I was, so it was quite funny and we had a very animated conversation during which I was much flattered. His name is Milout and he comes from Morocco and speaks French fluently and his mother makes the best couscous. He talks very excitedly and with much body language and he is obviously an intelligent guy, but he was quite embarrassed when Eduard walked up to him and asked him in French if he was trying to pick up his wife. Milout said, “Oh no, she is your wife, surely not, you must be joking!” I was most charmed by this Arabic man who understands how to woo a woman. You don’t meet many men like that anymore.

Graffiti

Early Wednesday morning. I suddenly had to go to bed, I was overcome by sleep and nodding off behind the computer. That was before I took my sleeping pills, imagine me afterwards.

I discovered something about being wobbly on the bike. I realized since I had become so much calmer, that I did not need that much oxazepam anymore and that it was even starting to make me feel drugged. So, yesterday I cut back my massive dose of 200 mg to a more sensible dose of 80 mg, which is still a lot and suddenly I feel a lot more clearheaded. I needed them when I did and felt fine on them, but now that I don’t need them that much anymore , they make me feel drugged and drowsy. I am going to cut them down to 40 mg a day and stay on that amount, because I think I will always need a little and it is handy when I can increase the dose if I suddenly have to.

So, I am much less wobbly on the bike and can go at increasingly faster speeds now and that is ever so nice, like last night when it started to rain and we made it home by riding our bikes quickly between the raindrops and we hardly got wet. I am still having a tendency to veer to the right, but I feel much more secure now and that makes a lot of difference. I can’t quite say that I raced Eduard home, but I gave it a try anyway. He would always win that race. He’s like Speedy Gonzales.

Roadside Trees.

I saw my SPN in the morning. I told her about my newly acquired insights into my Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and she seemed relieved about that and said she had always been kept up to date about that by my psychiatrist and he had always shown her my emails to him about the subject. I showed her the notes I had made for myself and she asked if she could keep those. She said there is a bit of a waiting list for the personality disorder team, but that she would care for me in the meantime and that there should be no problem with the transfer of me from one caregiver to the next, that is all streamlined.

Actually, for me it is also a relief to have owned up to this bit of myself, especially when I read the various reports and letters about myself that I have always had the copies off in my big organizer. I was so obviously derailed and in such bad shape for such long time and there was such concern for me and my mental state of health. I have so stubbornly refused to see the writing on the wall these past 6 years or so, in the end I only hurt myself with that contrary attitude. It has to do with trusting other people and assuming that they have your best interests at heart.

I see it this way, manic depression is like an illness that you cope with and BPD is like a behavior disorder that you can teach yourself to change in.

Market Stall Shampoos.

Eduard and I wanted to have a cuddle moment yesterday afternoon, but we ended up having such serious talks about all sorts of things and then, worn out, I fell asleep. We are both going through a lot of changes right now and are discovering a lot about ourselves and each other. Sometimes it’s quite scary. I sometimes don’t know where we will end up. I do love him very much and am still very much in love with him. I realize that when I see him in a crowd, like last night at the café and I see him in comparison to other men, and I realize that I wouldn’t want anybody else. “It’s a puzzlement,” as the king of Siam said to Anna.

Oh, I am seeing the physiotherapist on Friday and I am looking forward very much as to what sort of therapy I am going to get. I am secretly hoping for massages, but I should be that lucky, right? “Please massage my back into the right place, thank you!”

I walked to my SPN’s office, which took me 30 minutes, and after that, I walked to the film house for some coffee and that took me about 30 minutes. I tried to walk straight up, but I think I may have given the appearance of a drunk woman. You know how drunk people really do their best to walk like they are stone sober? Well, I looked like that. I could have gotten a ticket for disorderly conduct.

Well, it’s time to hang up. I have to change my music download list. Fo
r some reason I thought it would be interesting to have a French rapper on it, but now it seems that every other song is one of his, so I am deleting him out of the system and I am going to find something better instead, so wish me luck. I was thinking of Linkin Park, but I think they may be a bit too hip for us middle aged folks.

Gotta set my priorities, am I hip or am I middle aged, or am I middle aged because I am hip?

Have a wanky wooly Wednesday and for all of you people who don’t have a queen, I say, try it, you may like it. There are some noble houses floating around Europe who could use a country to rule over symbolically. Then you wouldn’t have such abnormal moral expectations of your presidents. You could transfer all of those feelings to your Royal Houses. They’re good for that.

Ciao…

P.S. One for the road.

Market Stall Fabrics.

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Fortitude and stubborness.

It seems that I am bound to sit here all night writing posts. I am doomed to post writing, so it is very important that I point you to the post below this one which you really should read before this one here.

First for a new paragraph of Six sentences go here:

Hanging up Laundry.

Accolades will be received with the kindest of feelings and be hugged to my body for warmth. But that is not the post I am talking about, that one is down below. Once you’ve read that one, you can come back here.

I have actually gone to sleep for awhile but I am up and about again, after I started to drift off to sleep behind the computer. I had enough sense to safe this little bit of text in spite of my sleepiness.

I just read all of your comments that I received on my other post. You people don’t mess around, do you, you tell it straight like it is and that’s the way I like to hear it. So keep those comments coming to that one and this one as well, of course, but I got super feedback on the other one. You are all so righteously indignant for me and I need that after getting a bit of a brainwash here. Getting a bullshit story! It’s good to have friends like you who set me straight. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I need to hear the straight story, people.

I made some art last night, but now I have to find it as I forgot which folder I put it in. Hold on…there it is, at the top of the page, but I have lost the original image. They were stacked vegetable and fruit boxes. You’ll have to take my word for it, then. Scout’s honor.

The husband is still laying in bed having hopeful dreams, no doubt, that last night was all bit of a nightmare. Well, it was a bit of a nightmare, but that doesn’t make it less true. We’ll see what he is planning to do about his date today, as he didn’t want to discuss it last night, being very weary and having had too much wine too drink. I bet he’ll get up all cheerful an happy and pretend that nothing is basically wrong, except that Irene had a conniption fit that lasted 6 hours. But then she does have tendency to be mentally unstable, you know! A good night’s sleep will cure that. and some pills taken at the right time. Right!

I said tohim last night, “You two are a real right pair, you know, you don’t care what happens to someone else as long as you can be together.” Eduard says that basically it is my choice to react the way I do and that with time I’ll get over it. I think I will go and take my medicines now before I get overexcited again.

Okay, done that.My psychiatrist did increase my mood stabilizer yesterday and we’ll see if it has any effect, I should be able to tell fairly quickly in both the ups and downs, but that does not make me a mad woman who can’t reason and know when something is not right and goes against my better nature.! For God’s sake, I have been lied to.

Here is a portrait of me using lomography. I have to look the meaning of that word up.

Lomography emphasizes casual, snapshot photography. Characteristics such as over-saturated colors, off-kilter exposure, blurring, “happy accidents,” and alternative film processing are often considered part of the “Lomographic Technique.” Users are encouraged to take a lighthearted approach to their photography, and use these techniques to document everyday life, as the Lomo LC-A’s small size, simple controls, and ability to shoot in low light encourages candid photography, photo reportage, and photo vérité.

Well, you grow a little wiser every day, another word added to my vocabulary, although I think Lisa Sarsfield used it recently too on her photo page, which I have lost the link too.

I am so ready to get properly dressed now and to take on any battle I need to take on, although I know I’ve got all morning. I feel so damn righteous and he will make me feel like a child that always wants to get her way. Because he has been so good to me all these years. Talk about laying on the guilt!

Ciao, I must go powder my nose and put on my warpaint.

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A marriage by any other name

It’s the middle of the night. It had been my plan to sleep on the sofa, such as you do in “separation of table and bed,” but the sofa is not really that comfortable and I woke up prematurely with a very sore hip and a sore leg, so the actual legal definition of the term may not quite work out specifically and we will have to think of something else like a barbed wire fence that runs between our two mattresses. I think the main issue is that we no longer have nuptial relations and I don’t think there is any danger of that on my part and I doubt Eduard will force himself on me. Luckily, we have two separate mattresses and two separate duvets, so we do have some amount of privacy. Changing to my nightclothes is done in the bathroom. I don’t wear anything sexy or provocative. These are all my rules, that I insist on.

We will function in this apartment, because, for reasons I don’t want to get into yet, we must. We will be like two separate ships in the same harbor. We will each function here and do the chores that are expected of us to keep the place running and the animals well cared for. There will be no intimacy, no hugs, no kisses, no pats on the back, no happy to see you smiles. These are my rules, that I insist on.

There will be practical support, there will be little emotional support. We will not keep up appearances. We will not manifest ourselves as a happily married couple, because we will not be. I will take what I can get out of the situation and that is some amount of practical and financial security, which specifics I will explain more deeply at another time. Eduard gets a place to come home to and his laundry done and a somewhat safe haven to shelter from whatever storm he finds himself in. There will be no love to shelter him, These are all my rules, that I insist on.

There is no such thing as having your cake and eating it too. While you are happily nibbling away at the very good frosting on one side, someone else will come along and take away a solid portion of it at the other side and you don’t get that back. It will be lost to you forever. That is my take on the matter.

It looks like somebody won a hell of a lot, but in reality he is losing a hell of a lot, it just hasn’t dawned on him yet. He will have a marriage of convenience. How is that for what started of as pure romance and lasted for such a long time under that name?

P.S. We had two bears on our wedding cake, therefore the picture of them.

P.P.S. Just for a while, I can’t read your blogs, I can’t concentrate. Sorry!

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Sadness

Wednesday evening, 6:15 PM. I am afraid that I am not going to be able to post about my marriage predicaments for some time to come. I find myself in a situation quite dire and I dare not describe it here for fear of giving away my feelings and thoughts and having them be read by the wrong people.

Needless to say, the upbeat feeling that I had earlier today, is now gone and I constantly feel myself at the edge of a nervous breakdown. I cry a lot. Sometimes it feels like my world is coming to an end, at least my life as I knew it until now. I am caught between a rock and a hard place and there is no place of comfort to rest my weary head.

Fate is fooling me, God is jesting me, the heavens are not smiling on me. I don’t know who my husband is anymore.

I don’t know where I, as a manic depressive person, will end up, where the best place for me to be will be. We don’t have a track record of doing well on our own. Of course, I have the dog and Gadhi, but I have a disease that has a tendency to tun rampant and I am afraid that it will run rampant now. I long for a safe place to be.

It seems that over the years, I have made many mistakes. I didn’t know I was making them, I thought I was doing a good job. Now I hear I wasn’t. I am not allowed to have excuses, although I am not being accused outright, just sort of sideways.

I hear many things that are new to me and I am stunned into silence, unable to deny or defend. I am the accused. So many things have never been said. Are they being said now in the name of love and for whose love? Not mine I think.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together to witness the downfall of a woman. Her name is Irene, she is not even sweet anymore. She is bitter. I will change my name. I must make some images, maybe that will help…

P.S. This was my 500th post.

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