Need prayers and support for a health concern

[AntoniaB]

Hi everyone--I stopped in and read about Tad's new job (yeah!!!) and then saw my old thread and the notes above so I thought I'd post. I got through my surgery fine and was home on the 3rd day. I was cleared for normal activity at 6 weeks though it took longer to be able to lift heavy things. I still have weird twinges sometimes and my incision is numb but that's normal, and I am not having any kind of side effects from the surgery. It ended being supracervical and I don't need hormone supplements so that worked out great for me. I'm of course immensely glad I had it done.

It was nice to have my family help out so much and other than that I paid for things I needed done and one of my friends did a shopping trip before she went to England for the summer and she helped out a lot. I am back to all normal things now.

One of the problems that cropped up is that when I was laid up a long time/inactive, my back and knee started to be very problematic, so I had to get xrays for my back (knee is Monday) and I'm in PT for that. It explains a lot. I have had slippage of my bottom vertebrae and it's been that way for years. So my back pain now all makes sense, and the PT is great. I joked with my therapist thank God for it because it's my only social life.

What the truth is is that it is the only thing keeping me from delving into depression badly as I seem to every summer. It's just that the summer holds most of my good memories of me and XH which are so far back I can hardly "feel" them anymore, and it also holds all the bad memories as all our problems occurred in summer months and all the anniversaries of ILYBINILWU and "I'm leaving you for OW" occurred in summer.

I think that with working on my physical health I'm not going to get sidetracked as badly as the past few summers where I had weeks at a time in depression-land, but I am having smaller segments of it and I'm not happy about it.

Of course I have a lot of work to do in summer as far as writing and so I can't be too big a slacker about that, and I "NEED" this time off from classes (I still teach one online class) to prep for fall as I have 2 new classes then. But when I'm depressed I can't do anything it seems.

I felt kind of bummed yesterday and so I went out and ended up meeting by chance a lot of acquaintances in the area for drinks, but when I came home I just got really bummed and probably had one drink too many and got a hangover today, so today is quite bad. I noticed that when it's summer I think I just can't have much alcohol. It tends to make me very sad and dwell.

Sometimes I think that I really fill my life with tons of stuff and don't continue to grieve and then when there is time I grieve HARD. I think it's just that it's now 4 years after everything and I want the pain of it all to be over and I'm afraid that it never really will be over.

XH is so in my head right now that it's driving me nuts. It's exhausting.

Back in November I did National Novel Writing Month to challenge myself, and I wrote an entire novel. The novel is entirely inspired by my story with XH. I took a myth that seemed to resonate with my story and I rewrote the myth and there is so much that is "real" behind the "fictional story". It was so easy to write some days I couldn't believe it. It just flowed. I have plans to write more for the character I based on me. I can see at least another novel if not a trilogy. It haunts me, this story. Some days it helps me and I feel very empowered when I think of new things to add. But other days it eats at me because I feel conflicted about whether I should be sinking energy into it or not. Right now it needs a very heavy revision/edit, and I know the work involved with something like that, and I don't "want" to do it. And yet I also feel like if I don't make myself do it, I'll never get out of the past in my own head. Another part of me worries that I'll put forth the effort and it won't help me at all.

Anyway that's where I'm at right now...having a bad day and feeling like I will never stop feeling guilty for not being in a better place "by now". I told my psychiatrist that I really thought that getting that surgery and goiing through it alone would "fix" me and it just hasn't. I think so many times I motivate myself to do things by saying "you will be so much stronger for this later" and yet so many issues still remain.

XH is still with OW and they bought a very nice house a few months back, the kind of house we always wanted, in a wonderful town by the beach. They are still not engaged. I find that very odd as they are now together longer than he and I were before we got married. I haven't spoken to him since over a year ago on an email. The desire to contact him is so terrible right now but it is pointless.

Anyway I think that brings things up to speed. Thanks agaiin everyone for the support during surgery. It made a difference.