A good cry on the train

Ah yes, the couch thing.

I still remember the liberating feeling I had when I decided to hang a beloved poster above my bed. My ex had hated it, so it had spent years in the closet. I remember standing on the bed, hammering a nail into the wall...that was the exact moment when I realized that being single would have a lot of advantages.

Wait 'til you go grocery shopping and only have to spend money on what YOU want. (That was another epiphany.)

Sound good, Joe

Any time spent by the ocean is good, imho, especially if you've got asses to watch.

(In Britain we call them donkeys, and they're very popular with the kids on the sands at Blackpool or Brighton.)

I did the grocery thing the other night. Here in the city where no one has any time to do anything, the citizens order their food delivered. (It's actually cheaper because you are in total control of what you buy because you are not standing in the middle of aisles of distractions. OH, look! Capers are on Special!! It's called Fresh Direct and they have everything any market, supermarket or gourmet market would have.)

Thursday, I went to the website (crap. I have to use her initals to sign in. )
I punch up Jonathan's List. (We each had lists of the foods we wanted.)
Next I punched up what we called "The Ususal" tp, napkins, cleaners etc.
Next I went to her list and hit Delete.
Delightful and sad, but mostly delightful.
The total was less than half of what we were spending. Duh.
Then I went to the Money program to change the Budget amount for groceries.

Fresh Direct guy came to deliver last night about seven thirty. Didn't need the handtruck.
====
Oh, I finally did tell someone. Omar is our UPS driver.
(Always make friends with people who deliver in NYC. Always tip nicely. My mail carrier, Shirley, and I are on first name basis. We have had no screw-ups with the splitting up of the mails. Okay.)
So Omar and I have always joshed about how many packages L used to get. (A lot) He was kidding me Thursday night that he didn't seem to have as many as before and that he needed some more work.
Heh heh.
Omar is great. Once he waited until almost nine PM for one of us to get home because he could tell the package was computer equipment and, unlike the packages from Old Navy, he didn't want to leave it by the door as usual.
I told him she had left.
I told him that everything was okay.
With me.
With her.
I told him that I would try to get more stuff sent to me via UPS.
He was stunned.
He was on the way to another apartment so we just shook hands.

That's New York, kids, you tell the news to the UPS driver before you call your younger brother.

Joe(maybe because my younger brother broke stuff. Omar doesn't)Nation

and because, while Omar is a good person, he doesn't matter to you in the wider scheme. Your brother is different.

BTW. Tips for young players. I am a creature of habit. It took me 2 YEARS to recognise there was a whole other side of the bed I wasn't exploiting.

If you're going to be even vaguely miserable, you may as well spread out and be comfortable.

Well Joe, you broke the ice and finally told someone face to face. Omar was the first, right? It'll be easier now.

Omar, what can the matter be?
Two old ladies locked in the lavatory
They've been there from Monday to Saturday
Nobody knew they were there.

Hi, EOE - that's not quite right: Joe is too much of a gentleman to explain that some of us here, who did get to learn in person about his recent problems, reacted by generating a whole lot of non-white noise, unlike the polite Omar. That's the noise Joe was worried about, not the sound of a crashing airplane...

To continue with additions to the many positive ideas already posted on how to improve the situation: is a trip to the countryside, preferably involving company of dogs and horses, within the realm of possibility? As in, Joe, do you know anybody with a farm within reasonable distance?

High Seas wrote:
No, but I did go to the beach for the same reason. The silence was wonderful. The surf sound was wonderful. The feel of the warm sand under my feet and the toasty roasty broiling under the August sun was wonderful. (Did I just say toasty roasty? Okay. I had wine with dinner.
I had dinner tonight with my younger brother and his wife and their two precious children. The kids drew on the table cloth and the adults talked of almost anything besides my present condition. Which is another way of creating white noise and I throughedly enjoyed myself.

I sleep in the middle of the bed.

Tomorrow my best friend is driving in from NJ. I am meeting him at the apartment at noon and then we shall go and see if tequila shines in the afternoon sunshine somewhere down by the West Side Tribeca Docks.

I told my boss today. I made it sound as if it were a separation because L needs to be on my health plan for a little while more. We should know more, I said, by the first of the year. Yes. I certainly will know more.

I know now sometimes this is like a death. I see something or hear something or read something and instinctively say "Oh, I must remember to tell L about this." I did this sort of thing for two years after my dad died. Twice I found myself on the phone dialing his number well after the grass was green on his gravesite. Our brains are the slower of the hearts and minds pair. The heart knows well in advance, the brain is the one who keeps plodding ahead. It's not avoidence, it's lack of comprehension.

Joe(I don't believe it either.)Nation

Joe(every man)Nation

I have been struggling to come up with the proper "short version" analogy...

I think it is Scrabble.

You pour out the tiles anew, flip them all over and then...

What you spell is up to you, but all the old synapses still trigger.

You have to sort it upstairs as it works for you, and let the world know what is comfortable, and workable.

(kudos and understanding on the insurance / work front...)

RH

Joe, I've been reading along, not knowing what to say, but realizing how many good people are on a2k and that we all should be grateful for having each other.

Some posts have been pure beauty and all have been loving and supportive.

I hope you do fully realize how admired you are and how loved you are, even by those of us who have never posted much but have stayed in the background, reading and enjoying the company.

This thread will surely be helpful to others who go through something like this in the future. It is helpful to know that others are also weepy, then happy, then angry, then OK, if only for the next few hours.

To me, this is one of the classic threads that appear once in a while on a2k, with an appeal to all of us who have been through extremely painful personal experiences. It helps to share the pain, even in silence, just listening and taking in all the love and all the wisdom.

Joe wrote


It floors me, Joe, that you have the best understanding of any of us, and you're the one in the thick of it. So measured, so aware. Do you ever just want to kick a tree?

Hey Joe (comprehension is bleugh) Nation

personally...

you go through feelings you never realised you had. You see things you never saw before. You do things you would not have done if you were still together. Sometimes the sand under your feet will be a little hotter... sometimes, it'll be so hot but you won't even feel the pain of walking on it. The rain may have bothered you in the past, now it may fall on you and you will feel it like a stinging sensation that hurts like hell, or a wonderful feeling of the rain washing everything, including the tears that are mixed with the rain, away. The stars may seem brighter, or they may dull so you have to search for them. The heart may feel numb or it may hurt so bad you wish you could just rip it right on out.

All the feelings... they come and go - they get enhanced, they feel dead - theres no kinda in between - coz your emotions are rollercoasting you thru to the next day.

Not telling people - it's easier not to tell. Talking to relative strangers - so, so much easier.

It is like a death Joe - tho some would condemn that feeling - but that matters not - it feels like it just the same. It feels as tho not only someone has died, but they have taken the very being from you too. Half of you is missing. No right arm, no left leg - you're just wobbling around all over the place. It takes so much work to start living again - there is no timeframe. There is no-one that can make you feel better. Personally speaking - it will come - it will also try to elude you too - sometimes it feels better to live in the "depths" than swim to the shore and start to take the steps onto the beach and the warm sand.

Feeling just normal can sometimes feel worse - acting normal can be the mask. You will do it. One day you'll wake up and think "cr*p - not gonna do this anymore" and forge ahead - the next day you might not feel quite so strong - no timeframes - just do what you can to get through. E ventually the good days will become more, the not so good days will lessen, and the real f*d up days will just be once in a while days. There will always be those days - just to remind you that after that day has gone and a new one has started - that it can feel better.

No timeframes.

Hope today with your best friend was a good day.

You are doing great Joe (your nephew/nieces loved drawing on the tablecloth) Nation - you are.

So...does it shine?

I sent you a bunch of little things. You should get the package by Thursday or so. There's this little place in Utica Square that packages up everything for a small fee and ships it for you. Very convenient. I specifically asked them to send it by UPS so I could write, "Hello, Omar!" on the box, but they only do FedEx. (Rats.) Don't worry, I sent it with no sig required. Hope you enjoy...

i had that moment when i was in Linens&Things.... I passed these curtains...they were off white, with little embroidered flowers... it looked like something a city grandma (the kind of a grandma that would also have a lovely antique tea set...not my village grandma who fixed us treats made of egg yolk and sugar and wiped our mouths with her skirt...but i digress). i passed them, because E always hated curtains, and especially anything that might be qualified as frilly. After a few steps, lightbulb went off. There is no E to tell me what curtains to hang! They are my Victory & Freedom curtains and I love them still, dragging them along with me to The Hague. They will be the first thing I hang in a new place to make myself feel at home.

YAY! Good for you, Dag!

Such good friends. Except for Dag who is going to the Hague without asking me if she could go, or if I wanted to go along.

I mean, really.

And a care package is on the way! Perfect timing because I have to see our super on Wednesday to give him a set of the new keys. There is a little crazy part of me that keeps thinking I am going to lock myself out.

(New York doors automatically lock when they close so people are forever found standing in the hallway in their underwear. "I was just going to put the trashbag down the chute. I put a shoe in the door but it shut anyway." No one now has any keys to this place except me. So if I lock myself out, I have to walk up to the locksmith on 181st St in my underwear.

Hm. I could use a thrill.... .
No. No, as President Nixon once said "That wouldn't be right." Of course, he was lying.

So I am making sets of keys for the super, one of my fellow board members and, this is the crazy part, I keep thinking I need to find a way to hide a set of keys outside somewhere where no one can find them. "Including you, you dope," my brain says to me, "or they will find them and MAGICALLY know exactly what apartment they go to."
um.
"Hey, I saw the guy who runs all the time digging under this bush a couple a days ago with a spoon."
"That guy? I know his apartment number."
"Jackpot"

Joe(And my dreams are getting as strange as these daydreams.)Nation

Oh PS: Tequila shines. More on that tonight. Long day today, everyone is on vacation so I'm working about fourteen hours today.

Musee des Beaux Arts W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
1940

Tks, Edgar, for reminding us of arguably the greatest painter of all times:
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bruegel/

I said COME TO EUROPE FOR A GRAND TOUR, STARTING IN AMSTERDAM!!!

there. i feel good now.

i remember the fears of getting locked out, or worse. i had recurring dream that i'm going through a heart attack and knew that my housemates won't find me until i start decomposing, since we have completely opposite schedules. oh the inconvenience of that!
you will feel better if there's an extra set of keys kicking around somewhere. they make those fake stones that are hollow inside....and everybody can recognize as fake stones... or you can give a spare set to kickycan...ummm... or not.

Joe, I just found this thread and didn't know what you were experiencing. I've been so self-absorbed with my own grief, I didn't think I had any tears left, but I found some to cry for your grief.

I think getting a pet will give you someone to love. A pet will love you unconditionally for as long as it lives.

Just think, Dyslexia lived with Fred the Parrot for years. Now he also has Diane, Sally and Dante to love. Fred doesn't mind.

BBB