Showing posts with label grief. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grief. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Questions and answers


My Koty and Lady with Dan on Boaty. Miss all of those!

My sweet Sadie. A gentle gentle soul


Nope. I didn't get to keep Phoebe. It's been the worst part of all of this. She was my little companion all day and all night. She slept with me, rode with me, sat with me. She was my little squirrel and I miss her so badly it kills.

No, the divorce isn't final yet. He keeps delaying it with his stupid antics. Filed a motion for interim possession of the home. So that gave me all of 2 weeks to move everything out. All of my possessions, furniture, piano, clothing, beds, dishes, all of it. Then he filed ANOTHER thing with the court informing them that he had to be "out of town" all last week for his imaginary job interviews. No one is going to hire him. He was summarily asked to vacate his job in May and his staff is under a gag order. No one can or will be able to give him a decent recommendation because he SUCKS.

I don't know when the court date is for the divorce proceedings. My guess is that Mr. Sunshine will attempt to delay it as much as possible because he is running out of money because he's UNEMPLOYED and refuses to even work part-time to make any money. His idea of working is to lazily fill out on online application for some job he'll never get and then take the dog for a hike or a "bicycle ride."

Yeah. That's tough.

No, I don't talk to him or see him or go anywhere near him. I cannot stand the sound of his voice or to even see him. It makes me nauseous. He's pretty much evil incarnate and looks so menacingly at me it scares the bejesus out of me.

I am okay. Yes. I am fine. I'm still reeling from the changes. I have been sleeping a LOT to catch up from the emotion and physical move I had to make so quickly. My arthritis is terrible and my back hurts all the time, but I'm able to sleep and that's been a blessing.

Eating again has been quite helpful, too. I bet I went days on end with nothing in my body but water and Rolaids and Pepto Bismol. I was barfing all the time from coughing and then the nerves. I have anxiety disorder which he KNEW and sort of used that to his advantage knowing that it was one more way he could control me by making me shaky and upset.

I've lost a lot of weight but have been able to eat again, so I hope to put back on about 10 pounds. Losing weight through nerves and being sick all the time is NOT the way to do it. Yuck.

When I know more about the divorce proceeding I will let you know. I have to attend a class this week on Family Law (it's free) since I am representing myself in court. I know that he also has to attend the same class but at a different date - I do not know what his date is. So, the divorce will happen after we both have attended the class.

In the meantime, I filed a motion for an expedited interim order for him to pay for my move. I'm asking him to pay for the money I had to shell out for the apartment and the movers. I cannot and could not afford it and he knows damn well that I have no money left because of everything he has lied about and done to me. I know I moved her under my own volition, but I would NEVER have moved here if he had actually told me the truth about his life and his job and his REAL intentions toward me. He married me thinking I was the Bank of Lisa. Jesus, did he get THAT wrong.

He's a sociopath. Mentally ill. It does not excuse his bad behavior but it gives me the slightest comfort to know that it's not me. I didn't do anything wrong by believing him. He's a very very talented liar. He was fond of saying "Well... I just didn't tell you the WHOLE truth.''

Hmmm. Sounds suspiciously like a lie to me. But what the hell do I know?

He got asked to leave his job for the same reason I'm divorcing him. Misogynists do not change their colors. He loves the aspect of control over women. It was clear to me that I was dealing with a somewhat dangerous person and I acted accordingly until I knew it was time for me to get out or get maimed or hurt in some other way. I don't think he'd kill me, but he certainly was so menacing the way he'd look at me. He just loved trying to control me through fear tactics, but never crossing the line enough to constitute abuse. It was all very subtle.

Then he'd tell me I was bat-shit crazy and needed to go back into therapy. That I was making all of this up. This was simply another tactic to attempt control over me. Make me think it was all made up in my pretty little head.

No, I don't know what his plans are with the house and everything. Last time I was there all the carpet was ripped up and he had a sample of a dark, cheap, brown carpet that it looks like he intended to have put in to replace the disgusting pee- and poop-stained carpet that he had in the house when I moved in.

He has no furniture.

I do know the neighbors have been helping take care of the dog and helping with the yard (the yard looks awful).

I don't know if he intends to sell it or rent it out as a Bed and Breakfast. I do know that he's gonna have a tough time selling the house in the condition it exists now. There is a mains support beam that was damaged in the last two big earthquakes we had in the last year. Two of them were in the 6.24 range and quite long in duration, so the house sank in the middle by almost an inch.

There is a retaining wall that is completely rotted out, so the front yard is gonna spill out onto the driveway at some point.

The roof is not new. It's 6 years old and needs some help.

The kitchen appliances are vintage from the 60s. Ancient.

The color scheme in the house is quite bold and will not be to very many people's liking. I also know from my real estate friends that an old log cabin home is not what sells in Alaska. People here like new construction and things that are shiny and pretty. There is nothing shiny about that house. Of course, that's why I loved it so much. It was OLD and decidedly NOT shiny. I like things that other people do not.

The garden, for instance, I let it go completely native wildflowers and very un-manicured. I like things the way they're SUPPOSED to be. Untamed and as nature intended. Of course, he's completely ruined it. Manicured the front to within an inch of its life. Cut back all the old lilacs, all the old plum, all the old roses. Cut back the laurels - not sure they'll bounce back after the horrible way he cut them during the last phase of their growing season.

He cut down the gorgeous spruce that was a shade/privacy plant claiming it was too close to the foundation. It wasn't. Somebody told him that in order to sell the house it needs to be visible from the road.

Well, what that means is now the people in the road can see INTO the house. There are no curtains. No privacy anymore. It's awful.

And, yes. I'm fine. I can lament my losses still. It's all very fresh. I have moved on in the physical sense, but the emotional part of me always lags. Jeez, I still miss my dogs and they've been gone for years and years. Lady died in 2007 and I STILL miss her so much.

Today would have been the 13th anniversary of my marriage to Dan. I still miss him, too. I think that if you truly loved someone or even something (like my houses that I loved) it's natural to grieve those losses.

If you don't grieve, then you never truly move on.

So, I think that covers the most of it. All the questions! All the time! I appreciate that you all are interested in my world and so much has happened in the last year, I totally understand the questions abound.

I'm just getting tired of talking about it. It consumes too much of my energy and that asshole doesn't deserve one more iota of my time or energy.

I appreciate your support, all of you. Financially, emotionally and some of you, physically, by helping me move. I SOOOO appreciate it.

Now it's time for me to get ready for work! The Anchorage Press awaits my brain shortly!

Ciao for now and thanks for reading.

xoxo




Thursday, October 30, 2014

Throwback Thursday and Other Musings

Happy almost Halloween!

So, I hung several strings of lights outside to be all festive and fun-like? It's so damn cold here all but one of the strings of lights stopped working. Now THAT's cold! I'm gonna see if I can fix at least one of the strings today - but one by one they just pooped out on me. I guess 18 degrees doesn't cut it for punkin lights.

At Russell Orchard on my recent trip to MA!
My husband, Mr. Big and Tall
on his first trip to Russell Orchard.





















Annnyywhooo, I recently went to Massachusetts, as you may be aware, and one of the best best best things you can possibly do when in MA in October is go to Russell Orchard (I know it as Gooddale Orchards). I've been going to this place for almost 30 years, so it holds a lot of wonderful, keen memories of the past.

I went there with my first husband, K. We were babies, of course back then. I was all of 23 the first time I met Ken and he was engaged to another person. He broke it off with her (which, I'm so sorry I caused you such pain, N) and then K and I started our torrid fling. It didn't take long for us to get engaged and then get married. We got married right before my 25th birthday. May 12th at the Annisquam Village Church in Gloucester, MA. We lived in a miniscule apartment in Rockport and then in an equally tiny apartment in downtown Gloucester.

Things fell apart quickly as my whale research career took off and K was a fisherman and was gone for long periods of time. We had no business getting married so young, but it seemed like a good idea at the time!

So, we officially divorced when I was 29.

I then hooked up with a boy, E, for 4 years. I adored E and still do to this day. But he was totally immature and cheated on me a bunch. That was a really painful breakup. Especially since I was LIVING in the same house with him and his wonderful Momma at the time. I moved out when he was on vacation. Best thing I ever did.

That's when I came to live in Salem, MA. It was the winter of 1995. I answered a classified ad in the paper for a roommate situation in a cute Victorian house on Carlton Street in Salem. I went for the interview - with the two other women tenants and the landlords. All were great (except the one tenant woman who had a penchant for skulls and vaginas (not even kidding)). And the other tenant woman is one of my best friends to this day! She and I were a constant in that house for 5 years and then we had the revolving roommate on the first floor.

There was skull/vagina lady, then came the vodka/Yankees woman, and then the girl who had "woman problems" and cooked Chinese herbs on the stove that made the whole house smell of death, dirt and poop. IT WAS DISGUSTING! Then there was the recluse who went on blind dates ALL THE TIME in unsafe places and sometimes late at night. My other roommate and I were petrified that she was going to end up being a statistic.

And then I met my second husband. OOOO, did I have it BAD for him! He teased me and made me laugh and his dog and my dog fell instantly in love! There were a bunch of dogs at the park in Salem Common but his dog, Koty and my dog, Lady were instantly besties! Just look at these two:

In our old kitchen. It was a restaurant before we moved in
so there was a big drain right under that rug! We had
3 pizza ovens that were my "cupboards" and stainless
tables and racks to store food and to cook! It was a
novelty for many years until we could afford to
make it an actual kitchen kitchen!

Koty helping us with the bait on the boat! The dogs loved boat rides.
Best friends until the very end.
This was the day Lady died.
I did this when we took Koty on his first solo walk after she died.
December 7th, 2007. She was one week away from her 14th birthday.
I have her ashes here with me now.
So, we lived an interesting a lovely life the four of us. We bought our big, beautiful house on Derby Street in Salem, made wonderful friends, bought an amazing boat that we used pretty much daily from early spring through October. We walked the dogs, my husband became wildly successful in his work, I started my own business doing flowers and small gardens for people...My husband's family was (and still is) the family I'd been missing since I moved so far from my own. They were kind, smart, fun, funny and loving people that welcomed me with open arms. It was a full-on love affair and I loved being married to him.

As Lady and Koty aged and then she died, things went sort of awry. Everything was off. Koty was miserable, my husband and I were devastated after losing Lady. We sort of started the long journey of growing apart. We still were best friends and had wonderful times, but he stopped being attracted to me and that was really really hard.

So, after three months of watching Koty mope around and be sad, we decided he needed a new friend to cheer him up. And we were TOTALLY right. We found this pathetic creature on Petfinder.com named Lady, which was weird enough - but she looked like Koty's sister! Look at these two! (We renamed her Sadie because it was too weird to call her Lady...)

Koty's new friend, Sadie. The world's OLDEST most pathetic creature.

 Sadie and Koty were not friends at the start. He was threatened (of course) by a new dog's presence in his domain. But we worked on making him feel secure in his status, and he quickly warmed up to Sadie. Sadie came from a pet hoarder in Tennessee. This person had 50 dogs in their house. All in varying states of disarray. Sadie had zero muscle tone and no incisors - she had learned to chew through cans to get into food (found that out the hard way). She didn't poop sometimes for days on end - we had to praise her for a basic bodily function...She learned over time that food was always gonna be there and that barking was okay (she never had barked in her whole life) and that pooping was good to do every day, too!

She had arthritis all through her spine and back legs and was certainly not 6 years old as I had been told! The vet and I think she was probably closer to 10 when we adopted her. She had an emergency splenectomy after a tumor burst in her spleen. So, that was fun. Then Koty got attacked by a fucking out of control American bulldog. The dog ripped his throat out (not exaggerating - I will not show the pictures - it's disgusting). Koty had to go through two extensive surgeries (over 250 stitches) to put him back together.

Then Koty got very sick about a year later with an inexplicable liver infection. We tried everything to get him well, but he had lost his fight. Koty died in September of 2011. He was almost 14.

By this time, Sadie had gotten ancient and had dementia really badly. She had depended on Koty for all of her cues. After he died, she screamed and cried most nights because she didn't know where she was and what was going on. I even slept on the couch in the living room so she could find me, but she still cried all the time. So we had to let her go just 2 weeks after Koty died.

I'm crying right now thinking about that terrible time. I knew that my husband and I were splitting - we had decided to stay together for the dogs' sake.

After Koty and Sadie died, we had to face harsh reality. We went through the motions, had our one last big Halloween bash - and we knew our marriage was over, but none of our party-goers knew except for two of our friends, Tom and Christine. It was a weird secret to carry around, but we didn't want to ruin our one big, last farewell party. It was farewell to everything that had been familiar for 13 years. Not a drop in the bucket.

I still miss my old house and my ex-husband and my beautiful dogs and my life back then. I felt like the luckiest soul on the planet for all of my blessings.

When it was all gone, I just didn't know how I could possibly carry on and start all over again. I was so beaten down by life and loss and both my Grandmas dying and my beloved Grandpa, then my beautiful friends Marilyn and Marcel...I just couldn't take one more shitty thing happening.

And then came N & K...These two ladies basically nursed me back to health. They made sure I was eating (I dropped like 25 pounds from not eating). They made sure I was getting out of bed (sometimes I'd lie and say I was up and N would inevitably call me back and call me out on my lies!!). They listened to me cry and grieve and they saved me from doing something terrible.

My family and a few choice friends were always there for me, too. I'm utterly SO very thankful for such wonderful souls in my life.

The chickens remembered me!! I had been there about 2 years ago and also have done some projects with the folks at Maitland Mountain Farm who keep the chickens running free in the summer at their farm in Salem! I had met "the girls" on several occasions as they were running about the property as we were in the greenhouses or picking flowers or hanging out on their big porch! The chickens are a hoot!
Each has her own personality and they love being talked to. So, the girls and I talked for a while when I was at Russell Orchard. This is where they stay for the winter in a big, comfy, warm coop.
Which brings me to the present. I met my husband while I was on an extended "vacation" in South Carolina. He contacted me on March 12th (which, incidentally, is the day that my second husband and I got engaged (and it's also his uncle's birthday!)). We never stopped talking from that day on. May 1st he came to visit me in South Carolina. We got engaged then and I decided to move to Alaska. By June 16th I was living here. Married again on July 5th. HOLY MOLY. What a life!


In the foothills of the Chugach Mountains last Sunday.

Thanks for reading! Have a safe and Happy Halloween!  

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

A Poem by Veronica A. Shoffstall

This poem was given to me by a friend when I felt very very alone. I found some of my journals today and read them. In the journals were my ups, downs, trials and tribulations. Concerts, dances, love, betrayal (not just by the boyz, but also my own betrayals), let-downs, happy times and sad times.

I found these writings to be so incredibly honest and poignant, given the gift of perspective that I happen to enjoy now.

After so much loss, what the hell choice do you have but to just. move. On.

So, this poem is not written by me (I wish I had that gift!). It is written by a sage soul, Veronica A. Shoffstall.

It's called:

After A While

After a while you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn that love doesn't mean leaving
and company doesn't always mean security
and you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises
and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of woman, not the grief of a child
and you learn to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain
for plans and futures have a way of falling down in mid fight

After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much so you plant your own
garden and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers
and you learn that you really can endure
you really are strong
you really do have worth
and you learn
and you learn
with every goodbye, you learn. . . . . . .