A New Chapter

[Painter]

SadHub, let us hear about what you plan! I love planning and tossing ideas around. I know it can be hard to muster up any excitement about the future when we're in the middle of unmeasurable pain. Initially, all I wanted was to find a place with a empty beach and turquoise water... Like I needed the sunlight and peaceful ocean to soothe my depression. I'm further ahead now, and enjoying more interaction and staying busy. The more I do it, the more rare the sudden stomach churns and pressing tears become.

Phoebe, I'm so glad your therapist agrees with me! Also want to hear about your travel plans!

So the trip... We plan on starting in Venice, visit Tuscany, Florence and Pisa, (and attend a cooking class for my son and a painting class for me), then drive along the coastline and visit the French Riviera (hopefully with another cooking class and more art), visit Barcelona (more cooking and art), drive along the coast to Gibraltar, then up to Lisbon (where we want to - you guessed it! - cook and paint). Can you tell what our passions are?

I've been to that area before on an extended stay with my son when he was perhaps 9 and we still lived in Europe, but he doesn't remember a whole lot. It will be so fun to go there with him as an adult and revisit some of the places we saw then, and places that are new to us both - on a much more generous budget this time! I went on a visit there with H, as well, but I don't think it will make it difficult. We'll see, it's over a year into the future.

It's interesting. For the last several days, I have had the urge to include something about how H is acting, some bad memory, some analysis about what went wrong - but every time, I've deleted it or decided to skip it before I even typed it out. It's not something I want to think about anymore, because I feel it pollutes what I want my life to be about. I'm sure the distance and minimal contact is helping.

Maybe I'll come back to it at some point, but for now, I honestly can't be bothered. It seems pointless and negative.