Even more ....

Now my husband is in the hospital with yet another blockage.  He has been having increasing angina, and ignoring it.  On Friday when he came home, he had to lean against the wall grabbing his chest and his lips were blue.  I've known for several months that there was another blockage forming, he had started getting tired in the evenings earlier and earlier and there's that damned intuition I have.  We went to the ER and he was later moved up to St. Joe's in Syracuse.  Since he was admitted on a Friday, there is nothing they can do but monitor him until Monday.

Both of my father's carotid arteries are significantly blocked, so surgery is coming up for him again, with a several day stay at the hospital.  He is sitting in his "throne" all day and my mother resentfully waits on him hand and foot.  She won't tell him to get up and do for himself, but she complains to others about it.  My grand daughter is continuing to challenge her mother, but my daughter isn't or can't enforce rules and boundaries.  It's become a dance, Rai pushes her limits, my daughter argues and struggles, but the boundaries move.  It's frustrating to me because I want to shake both of them, but it's not my fight.  My other daughter continues to "dance" with her estranged husband.  He insists that she must have only supervised visits with their 11 year old son, and she doesn't ask the court to drop the requirement, but complains to me about it.

I keep saying I don't know how much more I can take, and then something more happens.  It feels like I'm just going to collapse.  I want to just find a nice closet, crawl in and lock the door behind me.  Even though my husband has continued to try, I still feel so very alone.  Last night Simon and Garfunkle's song "I am a Rock" kept going through my head over and over.  I don't want that.  I want to be a part of life.  I want close friends, people that I can bitch and whine with, who will understand and bitch and whine back about their problems.  I want friends I can feel free to drop in on, who feel free to drop in on me and don't care about all the clutter.  I want to feel like a friend instead of a caregiver.  Goddess, what am I supposed to be learning right now, I can't find the lesson.

Hopefully I can find some of the answers as my counseling sessions continue.  I feel so lost right now, like I'm wandering blindly.

Taking baby steps

Well, I made the decision to let my husband come back home last Monday.  I did stay in the guest room until Wednesday.  The decision was complicated.  He is trying very hard to show me he's changing, being very affectionate, going out of his way to show me how much he appreciates me.  I found a therapist, I've seen her once already, he sees her later this week, then we'll go from there.  I pray that he's truly willing to make the changes.  We just hung out on Saturday, driving, ended up at the local outlet mall.  As we were walking towards one store, we went by a Kay's jewelry store and he says lets go in.  He decided he wanted to buy a diamond for me.  We've been married 17 years and I didn't have one.  We talked with the salespeople and came up with a design that I like, a price that I find reasonable, and it will match the wedding band (when I have it back on).  At dinner, I asked him why he decided to do that.  He said that it was kind of spur of the moment, but that he wanted me to know how serious he is.  We started talking about renewing our vows, made a couple tentative plans.  I need to talk to my high priestess and set up a time we can get together and talk about it a bit more.

Through all this, I still feel so guarded.  That's a good thing, I think.  I've asked him a time or two how long this will last, what happens when things go back to the way they were.  He says he's going to do his best not to let that happen.  Goddess, let it be so!  I don't know how long it will be, if ever, till I trust him again.  One day at a time, that's all I can deal with for now.