(no subject)
I've lost two friends on the last 6 months. Neither are people I was close to anymore, but both people who got me through various parts of my life.
Marlene, the girl with the big hair and beautiful smile. She was younger than me, but only just. She kept me laughing while working a deadend job, but more importantly she inspired me after we had both left. She took her passion for photography and pursued it with courage. And she was a success.
And now this, one of my moms. I've said for years that the world gave me mothers when mine left. I've been blessed with women who have been there for me through the things my own mother wasn't. And, sadly, none of them are in my life anymore. Bobbie was a friend of my dad's who lived in his hometown. She and her husband helped raise my dad in some ways, they were a bit older than he was. But I knew her as a short round woman who gave wonderful hugs. She was a lunch lady for years, but in a school system that still cooked lunch every day, fresh. My dad was hooked on her chocolate cookies. I loved her homemade bread that she made every day to feed her husband and 3 kids. And we never left her without both, even when she drove from Illinois to Virginia for my college graduation.
With these losses, and other things in my life lately, I'm learning how selfish, or maybe self-centered I am. I'm chronically depressed, which is inherently a selfish disease. And when I give advice or try to listen to friends, I constantly interrupt, usually with my own perspectives of "when this happened to me". And now with these deaths, of people I did love, but who were ancillary to my current life, I seem to only focus on how this impacts me.
*************
I keep writing these long entries about where I am in life, and I just delete them. Because it really doesn't matter and it's all just the same whining. It still sucks. I'm lonely. I feel like I'm always making the wrong choices. And despite all these stupid fucking choices that leave me miserable, I'm still lucky and am left feeling unappreciative. Because how can I complain when I (at least for now) have this job that pays well, and when I have found a person I can imagine a future with? Instead of being grateful I cry about being fat, and hating my body, and being lonely, and missing my friends, and sometimes I even cry about getting married. And the more specific every day stuff - the toothache, the looming unemployment, the shin splints when I try to exercise, the recent allergy scare and attendant food paranoia, and the anxiety attacks that are becoming more common and more physically noticeable.
Marlene, the girl with the big hair and beautiful smile. She was younger than me, but only just. She kept me laughing while working a deadend job, but more importantly she inspired me after we had both left. She took her passion for photography and pursued it with courage. And she was a success.
And now this, one of my moms. I've said for years that the world gave me mothers when mine left. I've been blessed with women who have been there for me through the things my own mother wasn't. And, sadly, none of them are in my life anymore. Bobbie was a friend of my dad's who lived in his hometown. She and her husband helped raise my dad in some ways, they were a bit older than he was. But I knew her as a short round woman who gave wonderful hugs. She was a lunch lady for years, but in a school system that still cooked lunch every day, fresh. My dad was hooked on her chocolate cookies. I loved her homemade bread that she made every day to feed her husband and 3 kids. And we never left her without both, even when she drove from Illinois to Virginia for my college graduation.
With these losses, and other things in my life lately, I'm learning how selfish, or maybe self-centered I am. I'm chronically depressed, which is inherently a selfish disease. And when I give advice or try to listen to friends, I constantly interrupt, usually with my own perspectives of "when this happened to me". And now with these deaths, of people I did love, but who were ancillary to my current life, I seem to only focus on how this impacts me.
*************
I keep writing these long entries about where I am in life, and I just delete them. Because it really doesn't matter and it's all just the same whining. It still sucks. I'm lonely. I feel like I'm always making the wrong choices. And despite all these stupid fucking choices that leave me miserable, I'm still lucky and am left feeling unappreciative. Because how can I complain when I (at least for now) have this job that pays well, and when I have found a person I can imagine a future with? Instead of being grateful I cry about being fat, and hating my body, and being lonely, and missing my friends, and sometimes I even cry about getting married. And the more specific every day stuff - the toothache, the looming unemployment, the shin splints when I try to exercise, the recent allergy scare and attendant food paranoia, and the anxiety attacks that are becoming more common and more physically noticeable.