Has anyone seen my get-up-and-go?

[Dawn of Hope]

SC and Maria, thanks so much for your encouragement! Especially Maria; you are so strong to be posting to other people despite the horrible stuff you are going through right now! Hugs!!

I love that, "when you have money, you deal with everything much much easier..." and would love to find that out for myself! I've never thought of myself as poor, but I've never felt rich, either...at least not in money. A lot of the teleseminars I've been listening to lately have to do with various aspects of making money, both on a mental/emotional level and on a practical/logistics level. I've gotten to the point of feeling overwhelmed and paralyzed, so I feel stuck, not knowing what to do next, so I just keep signing up for more teleseminars because that's the rut I'm in! See, I told you my big problem now is actually taking action!

SC, good that you still have that support from your H's family. Take note, this cousin is the only one who has even contacted me from H's family, much less given any verbal or practical support, so I am not holding my breath for the rest, especially H's immediate family. I don't know what H has told them about me or our sitch (he did claim that he had told his father "everything" [riiiiight!], and I told his sister myself), but the fact is that none of them ever truly warmed up to me (which I suppose is partially my fault), so it's not like I expect them to suddenly think I'm great despite whatever H is saying about me. Not that I really spend a lot of time on it, but it still hurts a little.

Last night I dreamed that I saw my FIL's phone list (everyone has one of those, right? List on the wall of frequently called numbers, emergency numbers, and such). And I saw on the list "(H's name) & (OW's name)" like they were living together or M. That was a bit disturbing.

Today I did something different for me. I went for a walk, which H and I used to do quite a lot, but I haven't done in months. For me, this was a small but significant step in the right direction, because I realized that I have been stuck in this rut of doing the same unproductive routine all the time. I finally broke out of it today, at least in a small way. This is the real face of depression: getting up every day and fighting the same battle you fought yesterday, to accomplish the smallest thing. Sometimes you even win that day's battle. And then you get up the next day and start back at the beginning with the same battle.

Today is the first time I have gone farther than the mailbox, or gotten dressed, since Tuesday or Wednesday. And...just down the street from my house, while I was on my walk, I saw the white dove again! (Or one just like it.) I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't gone for that walk, and yet there it was! It was at the edge of a roof, sitting in the gutter. Maybe nesting; it was still there when I walked back by, at least an hour later.

Anyway...I would like my life to improve dramatically all of a sudden, but maybe I need to adjust to the idea of just doing a little bit better each day than the one before. Maybe I need to concentrate on conquering molehills instead of mountains. Today, a walk; tomorrow, maybe I can get out my bicycle. Maybe the next day I can actually drive someplace to do something I enjoy, even if I am doing so alone.

Today I was thinking about the possibility of moving. I mean moving far away. I don't plan to ever give up on my H, or on our M, as I believe that God will see us as M for the rest of our lives, but I also believe that if our legal tie is broken, there won't be a lot of reason for me to stay in the city where I live, even though I have lived here for 20 years. I have lost many of my local friends in the M shakedown, and the few that are left are drifting away, either physically (the couple friends I leaned on most post-bomb are moving out of state for job reasons) or emotionally (my closest local friend is lost in her own MLC madness and I really don't enjoy being around her these days).

I moved here right after college, even before we were engaged, for H, because it is his hometown, and most of his family was here--all of the immediate family, and most of the extended. I was finally forced to look into moving elsewhere for my work, because I was having a trouble finding work in my field locally, but then I did find a job here, and before I lost it again a couple of months later, H and I were engaged, so I stayed. Now most of H's immediate family have scattered to faraway places, so only his brother (and BIL's 2 kids) are still local, and H and his brother have a tenuous R, although probably closer now that they have both ditched their W's (BIL got a D about 3 years ago).

My mother lives in the house I grew up in, 2 hours away, and although we are in touch every day (due to her fears regarding me living alone and having a suicidal history), I don't actually see her more than a handful of times in a year. I have no other relatives nearby other than H's family.

So...it occurred to me that if it came to that, I would be free to move wherever I wanted, and I started thinking about where I might like to move. It is difficult, because the places I am most fond of are all places I visited on vacation with H, and I am not yet detached enough not to think of that association. (Although that also has to do with why I want to move in the first place--too many places around here make me think of H, and on top of that, I don't want to run into him [especially with OW!] or the friends who have turned their backs on me.)

If I could eliminate that emotional connection, and if I had unlimited funds, I think I would like to live on the beach on the Florida panhandle during the spring and fall, Mackinac Island (in Michigan) during the summer, and a nice warm Caribbean island--maybe something in the Florida Keys--during the winter. I am limited in how much traveling I like to do--I like to be home with my cats and my own familiar things, so that might be a bit much, moving four times a year. But I have a while to think about it, regardless, and I need to come up with a way to be independently wealthy, too!

Okay, time to close up shop for the night; I'm done yammering for the moment, and you have all probably gone to sleep with my long-winded nonsense.

Peace,
Dawn