January 19, 2012 Greetings My Friend, Junior will be leaving for California in a couple of days. I am in a new to me state, in a new to me neighborhood and I will be on my own for a week. I want to go with him but money doesn’t seem to be there for the two of us and he is going to a funeral so I will be my own woman for a week. I find that I miss him already but I am also looking forward to filling my days without Junior being around. I do love to have someone around me. B may be coming out and that would be nice. Right now though I don’t know if she will or not so I plan on doing the days on my own. I am good with being alone though. My health continues to get better. I can’t do the amount of work I once did and I’m okay with that these days. I have been struggling with an ear infection and my energy level has stunk most of the week so I have watched DIY and sat a lot. Today though I am feeling like I might tackle a few projects and even taking a walk to the end of the road and back. Junior’s back is not getting any better. He went to the VA and they gave him another type of pain medication and we hope he will be back to working up a storm soon. I’ve started thinking that this may be the start of his doing less time in life and at first I was scared. How am I going to handle this man who is bigger and heavier than I am? That is a consistent worry I think on. Right after that thought pops into my head I think that God won’t give us anything we can’t handle and somehow God will make sure I can help this man I love. I tend to settle down in my worrying and take it a day at a time. I am no stranger to handicaps. To me Junior is about as whole as they come with a couple of struggles in his life. He is gentle with me. He is not angry because he can’t be what he once was. I remember watching him one morning as he put on his wool sock, then the foam insert and then the prosthesis and I wondered if he ever got tired of doing it or wondered what it would be like to not have to do that. His answer surprised me. He said he’s done it so long that he doesn’t know any other way. I felt he truly hasn’t spent the last 40 years wishing he was different and whole. He has taken what he was given and lived with it. When I watch Junior deal with his struggles in this way, I learn to handle what struggles I have. As a woman I tend to talk about my struggles. I deal with them by talking about them. I am not looking for sympathy I am trying to learn to deal with my struggle and I need to talk until I get it in my head. Junior often thinks I am looking for sympathy. Nope I am not. As I have dealt with neck pain due to arthritis I have talked. I tend to start to see when I started feeling the pain, what was I doing when it came on and then the next time I have an idea and begin to handle the discomfort sooner. The talking helps me see and then it helps me to change my routines so that the next time I won’t have it as deep. I’ve done that with my hypoglycemia as well. I have learned to eat every 4 hours or so and frankly I rarely have headaches and vomit these days. I stick to eating small amounts of food, eating frequently and now I don’t tend to talk about my struggle anymore. The eating small meals frequently also helps me with the hiatal hernia I have which is nice. These days I vomit a whole lot less than I was at one point and frankly that feels wonderful to me. I don’t have a need to bring up my struggles anymore because I am able to handle them. I do let Junior know if my stomach is upset or neck is hurting more for his information than for sympathy. To me that way he understands if I don’t enter into something or if I bark at him over something small. In my other life I had a tendency to not mention my struggles. A counselor told me to start mentioning them so that the people in my life would know what was going on. Unfortunately telling did little good because I was often teased even more so. I guess I have gotten in the habit of over mentioning my struggles. More than likely I’m trying real hard to be left alone and to let the other person know and I’m never sure if I’m being listened to so I keep bringing it up. Bad habit at this point but I am working on it and I often hear Junior tell me now that I am not mentioning my struggles like I once was. Prozac has been so helpful to me. I find that I still struggle with the hurts of life but I don’t stay in the pain as long and I am able to move past the pain. I still deal with moments of great fear and I know that this person can no longer hurt me but the fear still comes. At this point though I am able to see the fear, to accept it and to let it go. My friend told me that just because we are on medication for anxiety that we will still feel the anxiety but we will be able to deal with it and move on. She is so right. I still go over in my mind what went on in my life with the abusers who abused me. These days though I don’t dwell on it and I move into other things quickly….yup that feels good. May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet