August 8, 2012 Greetings My Friend, Men! I love my husband and at times he drives me nuts! I love his manly ways and sometimes he is about as foreign as they get. In my relationship classes I have learned and have begun to understand the differences between men and women. They have helped me understand that foreign person I reside with. Through the years I have learned that women tend to have a need to talk. I sure do. I do a lot of my figuring out life with my mouth. I talk about relationships with friends, I talk about health issues, I talk about my fears and a whole host of things to be honest. I talk, I am a woman and words move me. When I drop a letter off to a mailbox while we are out I often run back to the car if the weather is bad, I run like a girl. I have my wrist limp and to the side. Junior finds it funny and adorable and always has a silly grin on his face when he sees me run. I am a girl. I run like a girl. He likes me because I am a girl. When we were first married I found myself waking up early. I would wait 8hrs and then ask Junior if he would wake up so I could talk. For the first time in my life I had someone interested in all the thoughts that rattle around my brain. We spent many Saturday mornings in bed chatting, laughing and me talking the morning away. As I grew more comfortable in the marriage I did not need to chat so much. As I struggle through all my health issues I talk. When I learned I needed to eat every 4 hours with my hypoglycemia I talked about it until it became my habit. As I struggled with neck pain due to arthritis I talked about it until I knew the symptoms and then I dealt with it sooner. Unfortunately I struggled with fear from a life time of abuse and yes I also talked a whole lot about my fear. Mr. Wonderful understood and he didn’t. For a man when they face struggles they do something about them. As a woman, I talk about my struggle and then do something. Mr. Wonderful did not understand my fear. He did not understand how helpless I felt and frankly grew tired of hearing about my fear. I was waiting for Him to show up and hurt me. As I learned he would never hit me I felt he tried to attack me through my family so I talked about that. He became everyone’s best friend in my family. His family never even tried to contact me. He was their brother and they stuck up for their brother. I felt so alone at times and did not know how to cope with no family that seemed to claim me. It was hard and I quit going to people’s homes for fear of him showing up there. For my whole life I wanted to be loved, to be wanted by family. I understood our children’s confusion to some extent and tried to not taint them with my thoughts. I left them alone a lot. I did not want to run their Dad down, he is their Dad. Still that alone feeling overwhelmed me beyond words. Mr. Wonderful due to his crazy growing up years learned to let go of relationships. As a woman, relationships drive me. I want to nurture, to care, to give and be in relationship. I wanted to be a mother from the time I was a young girl. When the kids had to work through their struggles well I tended to pull away if I felt that was what they wanted. The years alone has helped me to draw real close to Junior. I trust him. I don’t discuss his every flaw with my friends. The counselor we were seeing taught me to turn to Junior first and I am ever grateful that I learned that. I trust Junior with my life. So he drives me crazy as well. As I keep stating I have been working hard to overcome since I had cancer. Life in general has been a huge struggle for me. I lost my energy, my get up and go. I realize I have also been dealing with depression and the Prozac has helped me to regain a measure of my energy. Of course taking that spill did not help in the whole process. I am mending and once again I am sitting more than I’d like to. That feels like the way retirement has gone so far. One step forward and about five backward so the Prozac started helping and I started walking and doing more then I fell and here I sit yet again. Doing my walk is a huge struggle. I come home winded and I don’t even do the whole route. Going to appointments wear me out and the next day I sleep a lot. I am struggling to do most things. As Junior and I were talking I heard again how lazy I am. That hurts beyond words. I am trying to overcome, to do and to be and he thinks I am lazy. I don’t have the stamina that Junior has. He is amazing with his back being so bad, with a foot missing; he does a whole lot of things. He is renovating our house and he is doing a wonderful job. For me, I am learning how to overcome and get back. I have started walking several times only to quit because I couldn’t do it. I have learned how to cook with a make shift kitchen and then I quit because I fell. I am trying the hardest I can and Junior thinks I am lazy. Junior has been dealing with health issues for decades. This is my first decade with health issue after health issue plaguing me. I start to overcome and then I am slammed with something else. I did not think I would have these many this young. So I am dealing with issues, trying to overcome and I find the whole process to be overwhelming. Junior is too good of a man to hold my anger against him. I tell him he has hurt my feelings. I go about doing what I can when I can and frankly again Junior is too good of a guy to derail this relationship over his comment that I am lazy. I take my struggle to God and God tends to comfort me, help me move on. We are in a fallen world so as wonderful as marriage can be….because we are in a fallen world; well we have those moments of bewilderment. God guides me, comforts me and I move on. May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet