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

[Dawn of Hope]

Beatrice, thanks so much for posting to me. I do appreciate it, even if it has taken me 3 months to respond ... I find that it's not healthy for me to be here on the boards all the time the way I was in the beginning, but I am still grateful for anyone who wants to respond to me. I'll have to add that book to the list. (I read probably 100 fictional books for every nonfiction one, but I haven't completely given up hope on getting myself to read nonfiction.) I am so glad to hear that you are living your life fully again, as you put it. It's a bit different for me, since I don't think I've been living my life fully since the age of 13 (when the depression started), so for me it's not just a matter of finding my way back to a modified version of what I was enjoying before the bomb; it's basically going to involve a complete makeover of my psyche.

The whole matter of H's having financial obligations to W's is a thorny one. I'll just say that H's also have a clear (even Biblical) obligation to be faithful to their W's, and I'm not making an issue of that at present either, because it would be like spitting into the wind.

My house finally went on the market about six weeks ago, and there have been about a dozen showings, and we've dropped the price once already. I've gotten burned out to the point where I'll vacuum and such before a showing, but I figure that whatever I don't get to (like vacuuming the pool) before the showing, they can just lump it. This house is 30 years old and wasn't built with top-quality materials and workmanship, but it has a good-sized in-ground pool, a hot tub in the (fully finished) basement, three bedrooms, three full baths, a wet bar, a dance floor, a pool room, a yard with some truly hideous and overgrown bushes, and a fence that is overdue for replacement (part of it fell down 2 weeks after going on the market). This is far too much house for one person to take care of alone, at least unless that person has a lot more energy or time or money than I do. Especially since I also have three cats, two of whom are seniors, one of whom has been refusing to use the litterbox at all for the last several years, and the other of whom has been very sick, sometimes to the point of making an average of four messes on the floor or bed every day, and who needs three or four medications every day. And I'm running my own business and trying to keep from drowning financially, with minimal success. And this doesn't even mention that I am fighting the overwhelmingly life-sucking effects of depression with no medication, no therapy, and a minimum of societal support in my life. So if a potential buyer is bothered because the pool is green on the bottom, fine, but I'm not going to feel guilty about it. I am DONE feeling guilty about things which are beyond what a reasonable person could be expected to handle, or are not my fault. Okay, rant over.

I was just reading through the rest of this thread, which I started almost 2 years ago. One of the things which struck me was how little I have progressed in that time. I'm still feeling and thinking and acting in similar ways. I think I have changed in that time, but not as much as some do under similar circumstances. I was doing reasonably well with detachment two years ago, but I'm doing better now. I had hoped to be a lot farther along by now in releasing anger and unforgiveness, but I feel pretty stuck there.