I think I finally have the answer. I’m done.

I think I have it figured out. Finally.

There I was today. Sitting in my car at the Outback Steak House. One of those Blooming Onions… I think they are called. Great taste if you like onions, and also great for cleaning out your sinuses. I mean… who wants to die with blocked sinuses ?

And then… I just started crying. Sitting there, and crying. I tried to dry my eyes… but the tears wouldn’t stop. Then I started to drive home… back to my apartment. That didn’t take long.

I sat in my parking space for awhile. And yes, I was still crying. I loaded up the groceries that I still had in the car from yesterday… and trundled up to my apartment.

I opened the door, and my first thought was to look for Mollie. Was my little kitty still asleep, or had she come to greet me?

I have been reacting like this a lot. And then eventually it hits me that Mollie T Cat is no longer physically here. I took her to the vet to be “put to sleep” on February 10… barely a week and a half ago. Mollie went into a seizure right there on the examining table. My poor little baby was flailing around… not in control of herself.

The vet tech picked her up and took her into the back, and then brought her back out to me… all calmed down. Mollie T was still awake, but I knew it was time. I am sure that she did, too. I gently picked her up from the vet tech… kissed her on her sweet forehead… and said to her “Thank you for sharing your life with me.”

Those were my last words to Miss Mollie. Fifteen minutes later she was gone.

I have missed her immensely since then.

Back to today. Mollie T was all I had left… just as I was all Mollie T had. I have lost everything else in my life. Everything.

I want to make it clear that it was not just losing Mollie T. But…

I am just so tired of all of this. I am exhausted. It just does not make any sense whatsoever to play this silly game of life any longer.

So… I am done. I am finished. This afternoon I called my cardiologist’s office at the hospital and canceled my next appointment. Then, I called my internist… the “primary care physician” they insisted I get assigned to me. You know, the one that it took four months on the waiting list for them to call me and “put me on the “appointment waiting list.” After that… getting an appointment only took three months.

So… I’ve got a “clean slate” as far as that is concerned. I did not want to be taking up space on an appointment slot, and then not show up… and by not doing so… keep that time from being used by someone else. That part, I felt good about.

And then… after making those calls… as I said… it all finally became clear. It’s over. Crying, and trying to write through my tears… I wrote… “It’s over.”

I am done. I am finished. I am simply going to stay in my apartment. Or, as I call it… my “cave.” Sooner or later my damaged heart will stop. Sooner or later my aortic valve… with its severe stenosis… will close up completely. I will then pass out, and in a very short time… it will be over.

Until then… I will continue to make myself reasonably comfortable… but I am simply going to stay right here until I die.

I feel so much better now.

My Trip to Peru…

It’s just a few minutes after six o’clock in the morning.

I was about to go back to bed just now. In fact, I had already climbed into bed when my soul nudged my brain, and pushed me back out of bed to write about this.

Last night I had one of my squiglets of a dream. I had gone to Peru, or some South American place, and was sitting in a doctor’s office, or at least in a desk behind where a doctor was seated at her desk… while she was talking to someone else.

I knew that by my just sitting there, that sooner or later she would be bound to turn to her left… and see me sitting behind her… quietly.

Finally she turned, saw me, and… seeing the acne damage and scarring on my face… gently reached out her hand to my face, and said… more in her gestures than her voice… “here, my dear… let me take a look at you.”

Her gentle hands reached my face… touched it, and as her fingers brushed oh so caringly across my cheeks… she said… “oh, my child… .”

It turns out she was a dermatologist… and somehow I found my way… going several thousand miles to her office in Peru.

Her kindness was obvious. But then came what I dreaded. “Honey, I think it’s best to just leave you as you are.”

Her eyes were so full of regret. So full of sorrow.

I could say that my heart sank. But it didn’t. It was more a feeling of “chagrin.” Of resignation. I was me. I was as I had become. I was as I always would be.

—————

So, as I was lying in bed just now… so tired and wanting to go back to sleep… my body fought, or perhaps tussled with my psyche, my soul and my brain… to go back to sleep… but I could not. So I got back up and wrote.

—————

Is this the trauma that has driven, or shackled my life ? Is this what tried to shape my life, and what I have been trying to somehow either overcome, or at least learn to live with… until that peaceful day came when the hurt was no more ?

I don’t know. Or perhaps I just think I don’t know. Or do I ?

Is my terror… my personal distaste or total turn-off… what has brought me here ? In many ways it appears to be so.

Perhaps I have just now thought of, and added, a fourth “defining moment” to the first three… of the little girl screaming at me at fifteen, of my running out of Bills after trying on a raincoat and seeing myself in the mirror, and then listening to the phone-tapped conversations between Jackie and that bastard ?

The day in the hospital after my acne surgery. My facial sanding. The day after the sanding-disk removed the top two layers of my facial skin. I remember when I told Jackie and fuck-face that I really didn’t feel any pain, and then somehow slowly and hesitatingly got up from my hospital bed to take a look at my totally gauze-wrapped face in the mirror… and seeing the bandages thoroughly soaked in blood staring back at me from inside the mirror.

I fainted. I went down to the floor. I didn’t totally lose consciousness… and somehow got back into bed. Maybe with help from some of the nurses, I don’t remember.

All of this came back to me… or came to me just now as a coalesced thought… perhaps as another piece of the Post Traumatic Stress that has been a partner to me for perhaps the last fifty-three years. Perhaps…

My Defining Moments in Comic Sans MS using “large” and “medium” font and HTML

Thinking back… I can remember three “defining moments.” I guess I should be calling them three “defining quilting squares.”

They happened. Long time ago. The grocery check-out line, the trip to Bills at Great Lakes Mall, and the phone-tapping. That pretty much did it.

There I was. In the check-out line at the Pick’n’Pay grocery store with my mother. I was fifteen at the time. I had a pretty bad case of cystic acne… and it was really in a heavily broken-out stage.

I was in front of the grocery cart, unloading the groceries. There was a little girl about three years old in the child-seat in the cart in front of me. As I was unloading my groceries, she looked up at me, and pointed straight at my face… and started screaming. Crying her eyes out, and about as frightened as a little girl could be.

Looking at my cystic-acne face… scared the “livin’ daylights” outta her.

I was crushed. I just wanted to die. Here I was… already hurting with my acne. And here was a perfect example of the “me” I would carry with me for the rest of my life: a grotesque monster who scares little girls, and makes them cry.

I have never recovered.

Trying Comic Sans MS again… X-Large, Large and Medium HTML

For some strange reason, I cannot seem to be able to copy and paste anything written in Comic Sans MS… and put it into one of my WordPress blog posts. Let me try this.

For some strange reason, I cannot seem to be able to copy and paste anything written in Comic Sans MS… and put it into one of my WordPress blog posts. Let me try this.

For some strange reason, I cannot seem to be able to copy and paste anything written in Comic Sans MS… and put it into one
of my WordPress blog posts. Let me try this.

For some strange reason, I cannot seem to be able to copy and paste anything written in Comic Sans MS… and put it into one of my WordPress blog posts. Let me try this.

My Next Post Starts Out With Comic Sans… Just re-write it… this is Comic Sans – medium

For some strange reason, I cannot seem to be able to copy and paste anything written in Comic Sans MS… and put it into one of my WordPress blog posts.  Let me try this.

For some strange reason, I cannot seem to be able to copy and paste anything written in Comic Sans MS… and put it into one of my WordPress blog posts.  Let me try this.

For some strange reason, I cannot seem to be able to copy and paste anything written in Comic Sans MS… and put it into one of my WordPress blog posts. Let me try this.

How Do I Get This To Be In Comic Sans ?

For some strange reason, I cannot seem to be able to copy and paste anything written in Comic Sans MS… and put it into one of my WordPress blog posts.  Let me try this.

For some strange reason, I cannot seem to be able to copy and paste anything written in Comic Sans MS… and put it into one of my WordPress blog posts.  Let me try this.

For some strange reason, I cannot seem to be able to copy and paste anything written in Comic Sans MS… and put it into one of my WordPress blog posts.  Let me try this.

Defining Moments… The First of Three…

Thinking back… I can remember three “defining moments.”  I guess I should be calling them three “defining quilting squares.”

They happened.  Long time ago.  The grocery check-out line, the trip to Bills at Great Lakes Mall, and the phone-tapping.  That pretty much did it.

There I was.  In the check-out line at the Pick’n’Pay grocery store with my mother.  I was fifteen at the time.  I had a pretty bad case of cystic acne… and it was really in a heavily broken-out stage.

I was in front of the grocery cart, unloading the groceries.  There was a little girl about three years old in the child-seat in the cart in front of me.  As I was unloading my groceries, she looked up at me, and pointed straight at my face… and started screaming.  Crying her eyes out, and about as frightened as a little girl could be.

Looking at my cystic-acne face… scared the “livin’ daylights” outta her.

I was crushed.  I just wanted to die.  Here I was… already hurting with my acne.  And here was a perfect example of the “me” I would carry with me for the rest of my life:  a grotesque monster who scares little girls, and makes them cry.

I have never recovered.

How Do I Make New Quilting Squares ?

There just has to be a way for me to start making new quilting squares.  The old ones seem to just wear on me.  Actually… they’re wearing me down.

What’s the secret ?  Will Stephanie help me find the secret ?  My Secret ?

I have these damn “defining moments” that seem to “root” me.  And, being so rooted… the way I have “grown”… if I can use such a term… seems “set.”

Many things I have read seem to tell me that this “set” can be “re-set.”  Does my memory stretch back far enough that I think it was called “Cognitive Therapy ?”

I’m not sure.  I’ll have to Google it… and see.

There just has to be a way for me to start making new quilting squares.  The old ones seem to just wear on me.  Actually… they’re wearing me down.

What’s the secret ?  Will Stephanie help me find the secret ?  My Secret ?

I have these damn “defining moments” that seem to “root” me.  And, being so rooted… the way I have “grown”… if I can use such a term… seems “set.”

Many things I have read seem to tell me that this “set” can be “re-set.”  Does my memory stretch back far enough that I think it was called “Cognitive Therapy ?”

I’m not sure.  I’ll have to Google it… and see.

A Birthday Dinner is What They Call It…

I’m not sure what I expected.  Well… actually, I guess I am.  Spent time, allotted time, time parceled-out.  That’s more like what it was.

It was having a Birthday Lunch with my daughter Robin.  Maybe I expect too much.  Perhaps I should change around the saying of “under-promise, over-deliver” to “under-expect, over-receive ?”

Or perhaps to “under-expect, be satisfied with whatever I get ?”

Well… that doesn’t work either.  After something like this, my mind usually goes to the closet and takes out the pity-whip.  I then use it on myself… perhaps telling myself without knowing it… that the emotional pain I got is what I deserved… because I was only “thinking of myself” instead of thinking of others.

I always think of others.  But once in a great while, I guess I make that horrid mistake of hoping that it just might be “my turn.”

Of course… after the bawl is over… I tell myself that that’s what I get for thinking of myself again.  But really… when IS is my turn ?  Or, do I even GET a turn ?

Days and Nights

Somehow I seem to have turned my personal clock, and my own circadian rhythms upside down lately.  I am either bored, or melancholic during the day, and I end up taking naps.

Then… some nights, like last night, I end up sitting at my computer screen until 2:00am… and then waddling off to bed… hopefully to sleepie-pie land.  But last night… I could not sleep.  So, I stayed there… my head tucked in the fluffiness of my pillow, and listened to what is played overnight on NPR.  The BBC World “feed.”

Interesting interviews… and of course, now that we’re in the middle of it… more and more news and commentary about what is going on in Egypt.  I ended up doing that… as I had no luck falling asleep… and finally got up about 6:45am.

I had several cups of coffee… which is supposed to keep me awake.  I watched about an hour of “Morning Joe”… watched some more news, had a bowl of chicken soup for breakfast, and then… finally felt tired enough… so back to bed I went… and finally got up about 10:45am.  About a two-hour nap.

Today… this afternoon… I watched the movie GroundHog Day… most appropriately.  I may have dozed just a tad while watching it, but have not had another nap… which is to say I have managed not to retreat back to the sheltered womb of my bed and my pillow… and taken another nap.

So far… the morning nap, and a short ”resting my eyes” while the movie was on.

So… how to sleep tonight ?  Or, will I sleep tonight ?  Or will I do what I usually do… which is park myself in front of this screen… try and find some Blogger or WordPress tutorials to read or watch, or try and figure out how to replace the default ”themes” with ones that are more interesting, and more “me.”

I am tired.  I am bored.  I am yawning.  I am fighting taking a nap.  I can do this.  Mebbe.