Pool lessons

[Zues126]

Hi Jelly, thank you for replying! I'm very glad to hear the update and have you around.

That is a predicament with the move. I'm all for you going, but it is a hard sacrifice to be away from your family too. I don't know the right thing to do. I know my family is scattered all over the world these days, but somehow we are still here for each other when it really matters. Maybe you can move and start a new life with your man and still stay close when the chips are down. Don't let money stand in the way at least, when you make this move you're investing a lot more than money already, might as well go all in.

Well, it's been a hard week for my family. My sister, the one who I've had a fragile relationship as she was an accomplice to XW during her wayward period and ultimately bff's through the divorce, has had her life crash down. She is 41 and has had a hard life from angry divorcing parents as a child, to heroin addiction from her late teens through her 20s, to a pretty abusive relationship through her 30s. It's like a spiral where she was dealt a tough hand and made some bad choices and they have rippled through her life and no matter how hard she's tried to get back on top of it she's struggled to come out on top.

The last year or two it seemed like she broke through. There is a guy that she has known for a long time but despite a strong friendship kept a distance because he too came from a checkered background and that's where she knew him from. She wanted to avoid that. But years later he'd straightened up his life and they reconnected and eventually fell in love. I can't describe the 18 months they had together, it was romantic and passionate and filled her life up, like the Titanic love affair that never ended. It was culminating with wedding plans for this summer. It seems like I just rsvp'd the invitations.

She came home Sunday and found him dead. Overdose. Apparently he had an old friend that was desperate to score something and he finally agreed to help out and made a connection for him. Not sure what prompted him to the lapse for sure, but I know they'd recently suffered a huge loss. See, after a lifetime of gradually resigning herself to never becoming a mom (she was recently single at 40 and had given up), she had gotten pregnant and was an expecting mother. Well, she miscarried and they just lost the baby. This was obviously devastating. Regardless of why, this man made a horrible mistake and didn't get any more chances.

Now my sister is suffering the loss of her fiance and love of her life on top of the loss of the children she thought she'd have with him. And she kind of had all of her eggs in one basket, he was her world. Given her past and the road she's been down I really don't know how she'll make it through, every purpose she had and her identity has been revoked utterly. I'm at a loss. It's so profoundly shocking how you can truly lose everything.

I was with her today and will be again tomorrow and the next day and will go from there. I'm looking at pictures with her and listening to stories about him. What can I do?

Meanwhile my son isn't doing well with it. He's dealt with a lot and never really recovered, so events like this trigger him in frightening ways. He had to leave school today and wasn't in a good spot. It wasn't my night with him but I arranged to see him, after I left my sisters we went for a drive and talked for an hour or so. I'm not up to duplicating what I shared with him but it was what I was given to say and I think, despite feeling totally helpless, I think I found a way to help. Both by being there and in some other ways too. He's a good boy and I believe he will find his way through.

So now I'm just shot.

In general I feel super solid right now. I feel like I went through a 3 1/2 year boot camp and I am prepared to do whatever is in front of me. It's funny, I was a bad husband in many ways and cringe at how immature I behaved. For the first time I feel like I'm a strong man.

Doodler, if you're reading this, I've been a Jordan Peterson fan as well. I love what he says about reducing suffering. He uses the example of standing up tall so when your parents die you can help organize the funeral and say a few good words instead of sobbing in the corner and getting into fights with your siblings. JP also is the first person I've ever heard who appears to make the same case for marriage that I've made. It's pretty validating. Maybe another post I'll mention the key words that will call up that video clip, I wanted to share but not my point right now. But I booked VIP tickets to a JP lecture coming to MPLS and am taking my best friend. I played a JP clip for my friend and he likes him as much as I do so we're going to go to his gathering and even meet him after the show briefly. That's something to look forward to.

What a day. I'm still in so much shock I am just stunned and in 'task completion' mode. But please, a moment of silence for my sister's sitch. Thank you all.