The Wrong Life

Sometimes in therapy I learn something about myself that seems so new, or I get a brilliant new perspective or I see something I hadn't seen clearly before. I guess that's why going to therapy remains worth it. (Besides that whole life ring while I'm drowning in depression thing, of course.) Moments like that bring into sharp focus how for quite a few years I learned nothing new in therapy.

In my mind, I sometimes try to "re-do" my past, think that I can somehow "fix" things. I know it isn't rational: I'm not going to be able to make my family be alive again or change any of a number of other past traumas. But emotionally I feel as if I can do so if only I do it right.

People define themselves differently. In many places in the world, people define themselves by their place within their community. The Navaho people define themselves by their family connections. LIke the Navaho, so did I. Without my family, I feel cut off, I feel like there are huge gaping holes inside me that nothing can fill.

This is not how my life should be. I wanted to marry and have children: I would have made a terrific wife and mother. I am nurturing and loving and giving. The fact that no one ever wanted to marry me has long made me feel there is something wrong with me. I see so many people who have lifelong relationships, people who don't seem to have the qualities I have, people who are takers or who are high-maintenance, and I have to wonder what is wrong with me that no one wanted what I have to give.

My brother was supposed to be my friend when we grew up. He was supposed to be here with me after our parents died. Our children would have been friends and we would have spent a lot of time together.

When I'm Stronger

NOTE: This is an extraordinarily long post and delves into more detail in ugly places than normal. Don't feel you have to read it.

My therapist and i talked about journaling at my last appointment, referring to my last blog post and the epiphanies that came to me while journaling early one morning. Michele suggested I continue to journal when I first wake up because your mind is still open then; it hasn't put up the usual barriers it does once you get up and start your day. That was Monday. (We had to meet out of order due to Xmas, and we'll meet on Tuesday next week due to New Year's.)

So I started on Tuesday, two days ago. In less than 2 pages, memories of Mom bubbled up in my mind. These memories promptly turned into ones that hurt and disturbed me, memories I have shunned and shunted away, memories I don't feel able to deal with. i want to be able to deal with all my memories of Mom during the few, short months leading to her death with acceptance and equanimity. The set of memories that came to me Tuesday morning hurt. They scared me the way the events I remembered scared me. My stomach is tight just remembering my reactions on Tuesday. I cried a little, but held myself back from full immersion into the emotions those memories contained. I was strong enough to hold myself back from that. I tell myself I'll deal with those memories when I'm stronger.

Today, after I'd been home for about an hour and a half (I spent Xmas with other friends), I took a nap. it was a wonderful nap: a gentle sinking into unconsciousness under a warm, fluffy cloud of a comforter with the sun shining through the window onto my face. Then lovely vague dreams, and waking up feeling soft, pliable, and happy.

Somehow, ideas relating to my past rose up inside my mind. I remembered a memory from when I had to be nine months old: I was lying in a cool, twilight-dim room and knew I shouldn't cry or make a fuss, just wait for someone to come get me out of bed. I know I was 9 months old because I knew who was my regular babysitter at the time (I checked with Mom). It was my Aunt Nita. She and her sons always seemed kind of tense and unhappy, for very good reason: Uncle Jack was a drunk. He wasn't just an alcoholic — he drank himself into a stupor, drank himself into the gutter, and, when brought home by my father and/or his other brothers and put to bed, would promptly climb out a window and go back to yet another bar. As an infant, I was completely aware that I shouldn't cry, shouldn't upset that household, should wait to be picked up from my nap.

That memory came to me as a corroboration of how I could remember that my cousin's molesting me started when I was two. How can a two-year-old remember anything? How can a nine-month-old? But traumatic events can set memories into stone.

Christmas Memories: Sadness and Joy

I always loved Christmas while growing up because it was a big deal to us as a family gathering, both immediate and extended. For the first 11 years of my life, we got together with my dad's family on Christmas Eve, even at immense inconvenience to other family members, to open presents after midnight when my grandfather arrived from closing up the movie theater he managed. After that, the younger siblings (my dad's generation) rose up in protest and we began having our gatherings at a more suitable day and time and took to drawing names instead of giving gifts to everyone, another hardship on the younger families. Even with all the craziness and sometimes 35-40 people in a small, three-bedroom house, I loved the holidays. And Christmas morning was always just about the four of us: Mom, Dad, my little brother Jim, and me.

However, the year I was 16, we moved 1100 miles away from the town, and everyone, I’d known my entire life. At least that Christmas, it was still the four of us. Unfortunately, Dad died of a heart attack the following May (or March, I'm not sure after 35 years) and Mom insisted we stay where we were. So the Christmas I was 17, there was just Mom, Jim, and me. Mom wanted to make it something to remember as being different, so that it wouldn’t be a memory of loss — any more than it already was — but a new memory. So the three of us talked about it and decided to have lobster tail for Christmas Eve dinner! Mom had never cooked lobster of any sort before, but she asked the man at the fish counter where she bought the lobster. Jim and I made the salad and melted the butter and set the breakfast bar for our feast. We even had little glasses of wine with Mom's regular-sized glass. And it was a very fine meal! It was a nice way to start a new memory.

In addition, my brother and I were panic-stricken that there was no one to fill Mom’s stocking or give her gifts from Santa that year, so we did it. We bought small gifts for her stocking, and we went in together on a single gift for her from Santa. On Christmas morning, Mom quickly figured out who the 'elves' were who had surprised her by filling her stocking, but the look on her face when she found a package to her from 'Santa' was one of shock. I think she believed in Santa for a moment, or that an angel had reached down and given her a gift. Then she saw the smug looks on our faces and realized that her 'angels' were the two teenagers who were her anchor in this world.

By then, our extended families no longer extended. Our family was just the three of us.

Why I Don't Return There

Long drives lead me to long thoughts. Sometimes, they even lead to epiphanies. My recent drive down to Oregon lead me to a surprising one.

I have never been to a class reunion with the class I graduated with. In fact, since my mom moved away from there in '91, I have been back exactly once, for the wedding of my step-niece. I spent my last two years of high school and three summers between college sessions in that town, but have had no contact with my old friends since college, except for a very brief moment in the "greeting" line at my little brother's funeral.

I even looked them all up in Facebook a little while back. I think I mentioned that in a post not long after. Part of me felt an instant compulsion to get in touch with them all, to reignite old friendships if possible. And immediately upon the heels of that came a feeling of revulsion and anxiety so severe it was almost a panic attack and it gave me a pain deep in my abdomen. So I didn't do it.

Still, on occasion, the compulsion comes back. Put up a FB page in your old name, it says. Get in touch. But I ignore it.

The idea wandered again into my mind during my drive down to Oregon and I opened my mind to it so I could explore it. I don't remember why or how I lost contact with the last of my high school friends. I do remember a feeling of anger. After I broke up with my boyfriend, he was all nice to me about it, but managed to turn people against me behind my back. (And I'm sure he never told any of them about how he would call me — collect — from the base after he went into the service, crying about how much he hated it.) I was left with a couple of girlfriends with whom I spent my summers when we all returned home between college sessions. But for some reason, that ended and I don't know why. I don't remember.

So why do I always say no when an old high school (and post-college) friend gets in touch (via a mutual friend) to ask if I want to be found by the reunion search committee? Why the revulsion and the anxiety? I wanted to know.

It boils down to the fact that I hate that place. I hated that we moved there, away from the place and people I'd known all my life. I hated the pitiful excuse for a high school. My cat was shot a few months after we moved there, and I'm sure I know which of the neighborhood boys did it. My dad died of a heart attack in our backyard. My little brother is buried in a cemetery less than a mile from our old house. Even when we first moved there, I hated the house: I could barely stand being alone in it, even in the daytime. It felt bad in that house. I was gloriously happy when my mom and her husband moved away from that house and that town.

Therapy Hangover

Sometimes, when going through therapy, a person can experience what some call a "therapy hangover." This feeling can occur from extreme emotions experienced during therapy, from reaching a deep place during therapy, and from intense realizations or epiphanies reached during therapy. Usually this feeling doesn't come during or right after the therapy session, but a little while later.

I think that today I experienced a therapy hangover.

Today's therapy was good. I was feeling disappointed with myself for not achieving the goals I set at last week's session. I've been feeling disappointed in myself for not putting more time toward my freelance job and being behind in reaching my deadline. Those were the feelings we started off the session discussing. Fairly simple and normal stuff.

I tend to approach my sessions in a freestyle, stream-of-conscious style. I lose track of original points as some new thought or memory comes to mind and I chase after that. I've told my previous therapist and my current therapist about this tendency and given them permission to control the session more, but both of them have basically let me follow my paths and tangents.

Today, in particular, I think this tactic was useful. I went from being disappointed in my not reaching my goal for the week to disappointment in myself regarding work to having developed the feeling over years that I'm going to disappoint my employer eventually, so I might as well get it over with right away. (I tend to feel this with friends, too, but forgot to bring this up during therapy.) So I tend to do something that will disappoint: I take a sick day early in my employment, I change plans suddenly (such as not coming in on a day I was scheduled to be in the office, saying I'll work at home instead), and I don't always work as hard as I feel I should and can. I'm not just in the process of disappointing others — I'm disappointing myself.

Ideas and memories and feelings kept coming to mind as I spoke, such as my parents' insistence on straight A's, even though they couldn't do the work I was doing in school and they had no understanding for how hard math was for me, for example. I told my therapist that I'd tried not to internalize that mindset, but that I had anyway. Perfection is hard to live up to.

Memories of Mom: Gin!

To see the reason for my writing this "Memories of Mom" series, see the first post in the series.

My mom did not sew or knit or or even cook very well when I was a kid, so I didn't learn any of those traditionally female activities (although I really wish I'd learned to sew). She did teach me how to clean house and do the laundry, both of which I was grateful for when I got older, but they just weren't mother-daughter bonding activities.

Until I hit eight or nine, we really didn't do much in a parent-child sort of way other than the usual go on vacation, go shopping (which neither of us enjoyed), go to Disneyland as a family, etc. But nothing just us.

Then she decided I was old enough to learn to play cards. Perhaps my father had grown tired of being beaten by her because I didn't see her playing with him. Her game of choice was gin rummy.

When she was teaching me, she took her time and showed me which cards to play and why and how to play competitively. Then, once I had the basics down, her killer instincts kicked in and it was no longer Ms. Nice Mom. If I hadn't already learned not to cry when I lost a game, I'd have learned it quickly then.

She beat me — at cards — six ways from Sunday on a regular basis. No playing nice or letting me win. I had to learn and catch up on my own. And I did. Oh, I didn't achieve her ability to completely annihilate the other player: I don't think I have that killer instinct. But I started winning more often. Not as often as she did, but more than before. And I could see my progress, so I figured eventually I might get as good as her.

There was nothing she loved so much as slamming down her last card and shouting "Gin!" at the top of her lungs. Then she cackled her evil laugh. For such a sweet-looking, mild-mannered lady, she could be as evil as they come.

Memories of Mom: It Wasn't Very Funny at the Time

This is the second installment in the "good memories of Mom" project recommended by Judy, Judy, Judy to offset the unhappy memories that have been cycling through my memory lately. Mom's birthday is next Monday, which is probably why these thought-vultures have been circling. This series of good memories is the antidote. I've only just started, but it seems to be working.

From the time I was five until I was 12, my family and my aunt and uncle's family went car camping at a manmade lake in Northern California, on the border with Nevada, somewhat south of Lake Tahoe. We shared a boat and the vacation essentially consisted of parking our truck and camper and their camper-trailer in connecting campsites and spending our days on the other side of the lake, boating and water-skiing and generally goofing around. 

When I was younger, it was great fun, but as I grew older, it grew a bit tiresome on occasion. I was the only girl among a brother and a couple of cousins and, on our last 2 trips a half-brother as well. And I just did not relate to my mom or my aunt, but I usually was left in their company because ours was a very gender-stratified family. And the guys got to spend more time with the boat and do more fun things, to my way of thinking.

At the time of this story, I was 11 or 12. It was a windy day and we'd spent quite a bit of time and effort weighting down the ties for the tarp so the adults could sit in the shade. (They simply slathered us kids with sunscreen and hoped for the best.) My aunt had her small dog with her, a chihuahua-mix of some sort, and it was quite nervous about the flapping of the tarp when the wind gusted through.

A little after lunch, the guys took the boat out. The were going to ski around to other parts of the lake and generally goof off with the boat for awhile. But usually they were back within an hour or so. Not so this day.

Memories of Mom: the War of Water

My friend Judy,Judy,Judy gave me a lovely idea in her comment on my most recent post: to post good memories of my mom every day for awhile — until her birthday I think would be best — to offset the negative ones I've been remembering from just before she died. So here's today's good memory of Mom.

Mom was always the "grown-up" in the family, because my dad could be such a kid. It was always Mom who said "look out" and "be careful" and "are you sure you should ...". So when she let her inner child out to play, it was always a surprise and so much fun.

I grew up in So. Cal. We had a swimming pool from the time I was ten. We lived in a tract ranch-style house with sliding glass doors that led out to the backyard and the pool. One day while Mom had just finished washing the dishes in the sink (pre-dishwasher time), my dad said something to her. I don't know what it was, but she grabbed the sprayer next to the kitchen faucet, turned on the water, and let my dad have it! He was drenched.

Undeterred, Dad headed for the backyard and the faucet back there. Mom, meanwhile, filled a plastic cup with water and sent one of us kids out to throw it on my dad: my brother and I were entirely flexible about whose side we were on at any given time during a water fight. 

Mom and Dad proceeded to drench each other, us two kids, and parts of the house before deciding that the amount of water on the floor indoors and the cement outdoors was becoming hazardous. Then we all bent to the task of cleaning up.

There was no clear winner in the War of Water, but it has always filled me with wonder and laughter that my mom, the grown-up of the family, started the water fight, especially from the kitchen. She may have been the grown-up, but she had a tremendously mischievous inner child!

Thinking On My Center

The last part in my getting centered discussion with my therapist is the part that cognitive therapy has played, which is significant. As we discussed, I have tended to make other people or situations my center, my anchor, and my home, rather than making me be those things for myself.

On the cognitive side, I developed an external locus of control. I didn't learn young how to depend upon myself in a good way; I only learned the ways I couldn't depend upon others. Yet they still remained the loci from which all things came to me. But my therapist reminded me that we had in discussions come across things I have done in the past and present that showed me growing more independent from my family and standing on my own two feet. So her question to me was: what have I accomplished that proves to me that I am self-reliant and independent?

Being self-reliant and independent gives a person a center, an internal locus of control, and a firm place to ground themselves. Proving to myself that I have those qualities would go a long way toward helping me see that I have a center inside myself, just that it's been hidden and it may be undeveloped. It would prove that I am grounded at least a bit, no matter how high above the ground my feet feel.

So what have I done that proves self-reliance and independence? Well, for one thing, I left my family and moved halfway across the country. Part of my moving was to find work and a warm place to live. The other part was to cut the ties that had come to bind me to my family more closely than I was comfortable with. (I still feel guilty about that, as if I rejected my mom and grandma. I hope that goes away.) I relied upon myself to make the trip and find a new home successfully. I visited some other friends and family but didn't rely upon them for anything more than some company and a place to stay while I visited them. And I eventually found a warm place to live. The work part, not so much yet, but I continue to hope and to work on it. I kept driving until I found a reasonable place to look for work, even though I was ready to stop moving along at three weeks (it was five weeks before I stopped in Houston and another week before I decided to stay). I made these decisions alone.

Misplaced Heart

I lost my heart years ago and have been trying to get it back again. My heart is never entirely with me, never completely where I am; it's usually looking out the window or over the wall or across the sea. For awhile, my heart may sit beside me, whether it's in a cottage outside of Seattle, a rehabilitated ranch house along the Pacific Ocean, or an apartment next to a lake northeast of Houston, loving the place where I am. But after a year or two or four, my heart sprouts wings once again and flies off, telling me I don't love where I am, I never loved where I am, and urging me to leave. My heart is always making me chase after it.

I loved where I grew up. I loved my small town as it grew to the size of a small city. I loved my family's house. Okay, I didn't love the pink all over my bedroom, but the rest of the room was fine. I even, when I was much younger, loved myself and was my own friend. My heart was inside of me and in my family and my home. I was content.

But we moved. Daddy died. We fell apart, my family and I. And I didn't love where I lived.

Life changed so much then. I graduated from high school. I went to college. I moved between college and my family's home — which I had come to dislike a great deal — for school year and summer until I graduated yet again and remained in Seattle. There was never time to love a place or to find my heart or my center. And then, for a few years, I moved every time my lease was up until I moved in with two friends. We shared a house, these two young men and I, for a year and a half. One of them moved across the country for a job and my best friend and I found a great apartment to share for the next two and a half years, until we were heartily sick of one another.

I enjoyed the apartment a great deal. I enjoyed my next, with another friend, also a great deal. A year after that move came more changes in where I lived and who I lived with and how happy — or rather, unhappy — I was.

The Story of My Life - Part 2

As I explained in Part 1, my therapist told me that there is another way to look at my life, rather than the powerless, victimized, trauma-ridden way. She talked about it as telling stories about our lives and how we can choose to emphasize different things. I've learned to emphasize the sad and fearful things, but my life has had so much more than that to it.

So here's another way to look at the story of my life. Beware: this is even longer than Part 1. If you want, you can scroll to the end and just read the conclusions.

It's true that I was molested, became afraid of the dark, and was bullied for many years. But I didn't live with my cousin (or my grandfather) and wasn't around either too often for the most part. And I didn't live near my school peers who bullied me. So I had the room to build a stronger self than it first seemed.

Although victimized early, and having parents who were kind of clueless about how to raise me and what was going on in my life, I did some powerful things. There was the time I taught myself to ride a two-wheel bicycle in a day so that my parents would buy me one. Because we didn't live near my school friends and there was seldom anyone for me to play with, I learned to keep myself entertained  --- I was bad at most sports so the boys in the neighborhood didn't usually want to play with me if they were playing football or baseball, and none of the girls were my age. I enjoyed skating around the cul de sac for long periods, I loved to read and write and draw, and I liked pretending to be a detective or something else that required me to sneak around the neighborhood. I didn't retaliate against my bullies, nor did I become cynical and bitter. When things got better for me in 10th grade, I simply enjoyed my good fortune and made more friends.

Then I survived a move away from everything and everyone I'd ever known. I survived the death of my father from a heart attack. And I survived going away to college and even thrived there. I was wary enough and strong enough to take myself out of an uncomfortable situation and move out of my aunt and uncle's house and into on-campus housing. And I did begin the steps toward adulthood, something I didn't realize until I casually brought up the following story to my therapist. 

The Story of My Life - Part 1

There is a type of therapy called Narrative Therapy where you rewrite portions or all of your life highlighting different aspects than the ones you currently highlight. For example, these days I describe my life mainly by highlighting all the things that have happened to me where I was powerless and bad things happened. Wonder why I'm depressed and anxious?

But talking with my therapist this week, we discovered that I have other aspects that I could use to describe my life. For example, remember when I talked about not being self-differentiated from my mother, aka still having the uncut umbilical cord between us? Well, in another conversation, we discovered other stories where I had differentiated and done things that carry you on into independent adulthood.

By talking about how differently I can describe aspects of my life by what I choose to highlight, we got on the subject of how I could write a different version of my life and remind myself of all the good and powerful aspects I've shown in my past. It hasn't all been bad choices and powerless tragedies. So I'm going to do that. But first, here is the way I currently tell the story of my life, to myself and to others (well, some of it I only tell to others I am close enough to trust).

Wanted: Suggestions for Movies or Books on a Specific Topic

Specifically orphans, or children whose parents are terrible parents, so the children have to learn how to fend for themselves, trust themselves, and become adult on their own.

"Why such a specific topic?" you might be wondering. It was an idea from my therapist today. We were talking about my lack of individuation or separation from my family members the way most people do in the normal way of growing into an adult and how my people to separate from are all gone. "That's okay," said my therapist. "You'd be doing most of the work anyway." But it might have some effects. 

Then she came up with the idea of movies or books/series that might kind of serve as an inspiration and even as a guidebook for me, suggestions of how to get there from here.

So if you know of a book or series or a movie about a child in such a situation, please recommend it or them. (It has to have a happy ending, okay?)

Well, There's Yer Problem!

I've written about some challenging times in my childhood lately and they've not been entirely uplifting, especially the one previous to this. And I was intending to try to show some humor in that one. Be like The Bloggess, you know? Tell about some horrible life story with humor? I don't want to be a downer; I want to be funny! I want to attract you, my readers, and start conversations and connections.

But it's not working yet. Maybe because I'm not in a good enough place yet (even tho' The Bloggess writes while from the depths of her depressions and anxiety episodes). As you can see, I admire her greatly. I want to be able to talk about my life in a way that attracts and entertains readers rather than depresses them.

I have a lot of those sorts of stories, but by now I should be able to view them differently. My therapist said that you cannot get away from a wound until it's healed, and many of these wounds should have been at least addressed and soothed by my parents. I know they did the best they could. I just wish that in some ways it had been better. 

Usually with the practice (i.e., first) kid, you make your mistakes and you do things differently with the second. Well, with me, they treated me a lot like a little adult in some weird ways — expecting adult abilities and reactions and reasoning — and then treated my brother like an age-appropriate kid. I couldn't ask my mom about it when she was alive because she would do something that I found entirely out of character for her: she'd go into high-drama mode about what a horrible mother she had been for not doing XYZ and I'd have to leave off my issue and comforter her and tell her she was a great mom. Not. Useful. But effective in derailing me. I'm guessing she didn't like to say "I have no clue why."

I'll write some amusing stories later that will show the good side of my parents, I promise. And I'll try to find ways to write about my successes that don't emphasize how much I might have had to do them in the face of parental hurtfulness or simple negligence.

So stay with me. I will achieve humor if it's the last thing I do. But I'd rather it not be the last thing because then it would be kind of uselessly ironic.

Who Am I?

I was chatting with my BFF recently about the whole damned mental health issue:

Me:  Why does getting better mentally, at least for some of us, have to be like learning to walk again after getting a leg shot off, or getting a spinal injury? Why can't it be like getting over the flu? Relearning to think differently is a long, difficult, sucky, unpleasant prospect (and probably just as bad to do).

BFF:  Because it is much like learning to walk, or walk right.  For some of us, it's not "again".  This crap has been normal for far too long.

This crap has been normal for far too long. 

Normal. 

Normal for me is not the same as normal for someone else, for the most part. Sure, normal for us all is that the sun rises and sets every day and the earth revolves around the sun and we need certain combinations of gases to breath and nutrients to stay alive and etc. But normal for me also has come to include struggles with depression, anxiety, and pain; solitude and loneliness; and medications. My normal includes a lot of stuff that I hate. 

January Sucks

My boy, HS senior photo

As I wrote yesterday, my brother killed himself 29 years ago,  just days before my birthday. I always get depressed in January. I was also always used to having my family making a big deal out of my birthday, even as an adult. Mom called me every year on my birthday ever since I went away to college and sang Happy Birthday to me on the phone, even when I lived in the same city as she did. She called me with my brother, then with her second husband, then with my grandmother, then just her. But she always called and sang. So I'm feeling quite unhappy about January these days, even more than before.

My mom, HS senior photo

Because of my brother's suicide, every January hurts, but at least every year prior to last year I had my mom — whose own loss of a child was greater than I could imagine — for comfort and to take my mind off my birthday loss and pin it on birthday gains (such as all those additional years that are better than the alternative). I miss her voice.

Missing My Boy

He was born three years and almost nine months after me and he was always "my boy." He was my treasure and my gift and I'd have given my life for him. For a long time, I wished that our parents had died and at least left me him. 

But he died when he was 18; this coming week it will be 29 years since he killed himself, just days before my birthday. I always get depressed in January. 

The thing about suicide (which I conveniently chose to ignore when I was thinking hard about it, some time ago) is that you never get over that grief. It remains sharp, like a deep cut from a sharp knife. It gets better, but never entirely heals. Everyone I've ever talked to who survived a loved one's suicide tells me that. Even people who were friends, not even close, remain affected for years and years.

So every January I bleed inside. 

Family ... Kin ... Clan ... Tribe

What is 'family'? Who are they? What part do they have in your life ... and you in theirs?

All my life, 'family' meant people related to me by blood. We rarely included anyone from outside the blood-clan into our tribe. So members of my family had a huge impact on my life and on me, sometimes not so good. But good or bad, I loved my family more than my own life.

Mine wasn't the type of family that invited others in. Our parents didn't invite a friend each for my brother and me to take along on even short trips: we and sometimes our cousin(s) were supposed to be enough playmates for each other, and if you knew my cousins you'd know why this was a delusion. My parents had friends they spent time with, but there was a strong line between friend and family. And you never, ever asked favors of friends. 

The Estate Saga

Finally, I am near the end of my time as Executor of the Estate. It hasn't been fun and I haven't been great at it, but nothing's blown up and I made it through alive. (I was going to say "no one died" but that isn't quite accurate.)

I've got many tasks to accomplish in less than two weeks and I'm hoping for help that may not manifest for my hardest task. I thought to myself, what else can I do to make my life easier? That thought ran away as fast as it could, so I then decided I should blog about these next two weeks. Because it will all be so fun!

I flew into Portland Airport on Wednesday at about 11 am, but had to wait until 2 for the shuttle to the coast. A friend picked me up and took me to the store so I could buy some basic groceries, then brought me home. I ate ice cream for dinner; it just seemed the thing to do.

Thursday almost killed me: I spent the day and much of the night fearing and feeling as if I was going to barf. I stayed very still on the couch and I slept as much as I could. I did manage to get up long enough to see my realtor and sign a couple of things and talk. She rocks. She even volunteered to be "my place to stay" so I'm not losing the beach after all. 

My friend Sierra spent a few hours texting me amusing thoughts and pictures, and sent me a truly bad joke, just to amuse me and make me feel better. Sierra rocks, too.

Now it's Friday. I don't feel like barfing, but I'm being careful, which means I've accomplished nothing on my planned tasks. Nor did I walk on the beach. But I haven't moved backwards, so that's something. And the appraiser came by: they had better say that not only is this house worth what the buyers are paying for it but that they are getting a damned good deal! (Click through to see the interior shots, especially the living room and kitchen!)

As much as I hate giving up this house, both as my mom's home for 20 years and as my place to stay at the beach, I realized that I really couldn't live here on my own or keep it comfortably. It's my mom's home. Well, even tho' her second husband shared this home with her for more than half of that time, she re-did it after he died and it really is her house. I don't think I could ever make it my house, and it isn't exactly the house I'd buy if I were just out here picking out my own place. So it is okay that someone else will own it.

I also need to get over my anger and resentment over having to split the estate equally with the Steps. Here's why I'm angry and resentful: nothing in this house came from their father. When he and my mom got married, he had virtually nothing. My mom had a nice house and nice furniture that she bought with my dad. Second husband retired a year or two after marrying Mom and pretty much brought nothing money-wise to the marriage. Proceeds of the house my mom and dad bought allowed Mom and Second Husband to buy this house outright. And yet my mom, from some misguided feelings of being "fair," left equal shares of this house and its furnishings to her second husband's two daughters. And while they have both said a few times "let me know how I can help," they were empty offers because we all live in separate states and they weren't around or able to help me at all. Once the shares are distributed, they will add to the lives or retirements of the Steps, who have homes and jobs. My share will keep me from having to live in my car. In trying to be whatever her mind was thinking of as "fair," my mom practically left me hanging out to dry and was exceptionally unfair to her own daughter. Yeah, I really need to get over it. I just haven't figured out how yet.

I do love this house for many reasons, but not for the design or layout — it is pretty dark inside and completely misses most opportunities to bring light into the interior. (It truly is beautiful, it's just not my style.) I would happily take the kitchen and dining nook and place it into any house I ever live in again. It's within four or five blocks from the bluff overlooking the beach and out onto the ocean — with a several-story set of stairs down to the beach. And it's within walking distance of a grocery store and the main downtown strip, including my bank.

I'll continue the story of my love-hate affair with Lincoln City in another post. 

It's Friday night, and I'm signing off for the day.

The definition of family, part I

"Of all of these things, the greatest is love."

As everyone knows by now, my natal family is gone. I lost my dad in 1978, my little brother in 1983, and my mom last summer 2010. Yes, there are relatives, but none of them is as close to me as the most distant and lurk-ful of the Betties.

And therein lies the rub. My family believed in blood family but not in non-blood family (I think there were only two exceptions over the years). So I have no roadmap to follow. Simply learning to think "I still have a family" is no easy feat for me.

I have a friend I've known since I was 11, and we still communicate, but she has strong family bonds and her bonds to other friends are stronger than mine. Yet, when we are in contact it's like the intervening time — which might be years — didn't happen. Leah lives in Wisconsin.

My best friend is a man I've known since my junior year in college. We've been involved. We've been best friends. We've been furious with each other and said things that in most relationships would be unforgivable. And we've sat with each other thru death and grief. We've shared a house with another friend and an apartment between the two of us and for most of that time everyone thought we were an item, even tho' we had separate bedrooms. I didn't know that he was still in love with me until years later when he broke down after seeing me with the man I'd moved in with. (Stupidest decision ever, but that's another story.) Steve lives in Seattle.