Ah, the weekend

Every askes "So what are you gonna do for the weekend". In my current situation, its almost like everyday is the weekend. The days I have medical appt's are busier but they are basically the same. I read, I write, I have contact with family and friends by phone or on-line. I see my wonderful health care aide Mayra, who I don't know what I would do without. Its like you know you would continue but it just wouldn't be so much fun. It is so intensely different going from working everyday of my life for 37 years since I was 16 to being home everyday because I can't work. I never dreamed anything like that would happen to me. I never pictured myself retiring even and now I can't picture myself working. Its like the bag of bones that never stopped has just fallen apart. I get exhausted even when I do nothing. I'm ashamed to admit it but its true and I have to make some sense of this. I have to look at myself honestly in everyway. Its not easy but I have to do it. I don't know that I will always feel this way. If I have learned anything from this experience its that we survive and we change. I have survived so very many different things in my life and until my illness I didn't really change, I'd think I did but I would fall into the same old patterns. Work, don't let yourself be human and never really be alone. I've had 3 husbands, 3 long term serious relationships and more brief encounters than I can remember. I always had someone on deck so to speak even if just as a friend that I knew if I wanted I could pull in to be more. I don't want to do that this time. It helps that I am alone and have little opportunity to meet anyone. I let my last guy know that I wasn't going back to him. It looks like we will be able to maintain a friendship. I hope that it stays that way. I met someone on line, in a strange way. I signed up for a variety of on-line dating services really just to gather information (yes, I am still writing books), so I saw people's profiles but was never able to communicate without giving credit card info which would only be charged if you used it for a certain period of time. Anyway, I attempted to respond even though it should not have worked, it did. So I met someone new. And as tomorrow we will have been seeing each other for 3 weeks. Odd to count weeks isn't it. It seems like we are being open and honest with each other and that makes it the first relationship where I have been me right from the start. It is also the first one in which I am also honest with myself. I have no expections. He is someone I really really like. I miss him when he's not around but I guess I am holding my heart back and keeping it out of things. I have never really done that before. I am tired of being brokenhearted. I have been brokenhearted I guess all my life starting with my family of origin to my last long term relationship. I put everything into it and it never ends good. I want this relationship to be good no matter where it goes or doesn't go. I've been going through my old LP's and 45's and I realized how much of my music was about pain and learning how not to feel. The greatest musicians of my youth was Simon and Garfunkel. They touched other emotions but "Sound of Silence" and "I am a Rock" were the anthems of my youth. I played the album, Parsely, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme", over and over and over. I know all the words to almost every song on every album. I believe I have every album they did together and solo. I read old journals and old poetry that I wrote and the newer ones and the feeling never changes. I have always felt so empty, alone and hurt. And I always wanted to be alone. Now I am but for the first time mostly due to forces beyond my control I am alone with me. It feels strange but not bad. I think I may have finally found what I was always looking for-me. I am facing things differently. Sometimes I feel happy and sometimes I let myself sob. A mental health professional might say I have mood swings (I used to be a mental health professional). Now I would just say I'm living life and that isn't a sign of illness it is a sign of wellness. There is nothing to fear about being who we really are. At least not today. Tomorrow or even later today I may feel differently but you know what that's ok. That's normal.