drafts and half posts
I wrote this nearly 2 years ago. It is incomplete but I like it regardless. There is so much more to say mostly about healing being a journey of fits and starts, about how the pain in the world has set me back abour ten years, how I secretly hate facebook for its' pretentiousness and derision but how I cling to it for the fast food version of true emotional intimacy which, ironically after all my efforts in healing and self-improvement, seems to be distinctly lacking in my life. My logistics are still the same; same job (5 years!), better car as of this summer, same locale, same therapists who have not retired...and no dates/relationships etc going on 3 years. I refuse to type the entirety of an entry on a smart phone and as I am between laptops, I will just end this here as a segue into my aforementioned draft of two years ago....P.S. 51, no grandchildren,neither daughter married and Rachel turning 30 (!!!) at the end of November...
Hello, LJ
I've been thinking a lot about you lately. I've missed you, in fact. You see, in the hapiness that is my new life, there is just life. It's still messy but normal messy as opposed to cra-cra messy.
Change did come in several forms. I feel like discussing some of them and hence, here I am.
Fifty
Yes, that happened. This March, I turned 50 years of age. Guess what? In the last ten years, my looks changed. My eternally youthful self actually looks much closer to my age. Most likely from years of tobacco consuption, this changing of my face wasn't brutal but for the first time, noticeable. The above pic is the best I could muster and from a very good hair day.
I am single. I haven't been on a date for nearly two years much less experienced any sort of emotional intimacy, save friendship, from a man who is not related to me. This is somewhat by default as I have noticed that women my age become invisible as if it's not possible that we are whole and still available. Conversely, after years of misadventures in dating (and I'm being kind to myself), I needed this time to heal.
I have been incubating. Culling my unhealthy parts with help through gifted therapists and through a series of life circumstances that have allowed that process to occur without impediment. I have been gleening from the chaff those things that were buried there of value. I have reassembled myself into someone whom I am comfortable being. Ironically, despite best past efforts, I have arrived at this place at an age which, in this reality, isn't conducive for finding true love. I'm still complex and my electic nature, while not so divergent, is still intact.
Abstinence
I undertook my second adolence 10 years ago. " The tale of Two Cities' principle was the theme for this chapter in my life but what look like the end turned out to be the beginning. Who knew that in order to keep my nursing license retroactive to my convictions for driving under the influence in 2007 and 2011, the nursing board could mandate so many things over a 3 year period including my total abstinence from all substances including alcohol and make me pay to prove it with mandatory random drug testing inclusive of the enzyme in urine which shows alcohol ingestion for up to 96 hrs after consumption?? This list continues- Attend mandatory weekly meetings with other nurses in my situation and pay for them?? Yes, please! Be mandated to attend therapy at my expense?? I'll take it! Self-disclose to my fairly new employer my situation and request they put themselves out by providing the required supervision and document it on a quarterly report for the BRN?? I'm all in! Allow an independent consultant for the board to review submitted paperwork from myself and my employer to establish my position meets the nursing board's requirements for a probationer prior to continuing my position there?? Thank you, sir- may I have another??
This has been my life for the last 33 months and you know what? It's the best thing that ever happened to me. In a life where the pieces never fit and the rug got pulled out from under me on a regular basis, I suddenly found myself with a complete jigsaw puzzle that I could assemble and a rug that was tacked to the floor. All the players were there. Don't ask me how but in a life in which I had wished for years for every type of person I had in the last 3 years to assist me, they finally were there en masse. It was if I had won the spiritual lottery.
Has it been easy? Surely you jest. It has been hard work. However, my tenacity finally has been used to accomplish something of merit in which, over time, I could see slow but monumentous changes. I discovered that PTSD along with depression was at the root of my life challenges and that after years of battling both, even with medication, I resorted to alcohol out of desperation. Three years of specialized trauma therapy has been the impetus for much of these changes being permenant and because of this, I really don't miss substances as they seem superfluous.
And now, it's almost over and with it, the situation is fading. All of the people who were introduced into my life for the sole purpose of assisting me on this journey have moved on. Even my therapists are retiring within the next year! I finally stayed and everyone else moved on each one for unrelated reasons. Although at first sad, I eventually found this miraculous as I realized the subliminty of it all!
January 12, 2017, I will be released from all requirements having satified all of them for the mandated time. I will be free but not just of this situation but of many things previously attached but unneeded and I find myself profoundly humbled and grateful beyond measure
Pedigree
I have a one now. Four years of a full-time nursing position in which I was required to be the sole clinician visiting people in their homes and making complex clinical decisions that sometimes required lifesaving measures with only the assistance of an MD or a nursing supervisor by phone. I thought after 15 years of hospital nursing, I had seen everything but nothing trumps being in the home of various patients and being involved in their family and personal dynamics as well as their health care habits on a weekly basis for sometimes 6 months or more. Nothing. I have learned a wealth of clinical knowledge, gained volumes of wisdom regarding living and dying well, observed the consequences of either resisting or applying planning, humility and acceptance of having an aging body with many limitations in order that one is care for well and safely
Hello, LJ
I've been thinking a lot about you lately. I've missed you, in fact. You see, in the hapiness that is my new life, there is just life. It's still messy but normal messy as opposed to cra-cra messy.
Change did come in several forms. I feel like discussing some of them and hence, here I am.
Fifty
Yes, that happened. This March, I turned 50 years of age. Guess what? In the last ten years, my looks changed. My eternally youthful self actually looks much closer to my age. Most likely from years of tobacco consuption, this changing of my face wasn't brutal but for the first time, noticeable. The above pic is the best I could muster and from a very good hair day.
I am single. I haven't been on a date for nearly two years much less experienced any sort of emotional intimacy, save friendship, from a man who is not related to me. This is somewhat by default as I have noticed that women my age become invisible as if it's not possible that we are whole and still available. Conversely, after years of misadventures in dating (and I'm being kind to myself), I needed this time to heal.
I have been incubating. Culling my unhealthy parts with help through gifted therapists and through a series of life circumstances that have allowed that process to occur without impediment. I have been gleening from the chaff those things that were buried there of value. I have reassembled myself into someone whom I am comfortable being. Ironically, despite best past efforts, I have arrived at this place at an age which, in this reality, isn't conducive for finding true love. I'm still complex and my electic nature, while not so divergent, is still intact.
Abstinence
I undertook my second adolence 10 years ago. " The tale of Two Cities' principle was the theme for this chapter in my life but what look like the end turned out to be the beginning. Who knew that in order to keep my nursing license retroactive to my convictions for driving under the influence in 2007 and 2011, the nursing board could mandate so many things over a 3 year period including my total abstinence from all substances including alcohol and make me pay to prove it with mandatory random drug testing inclusive of the enzyme in urine which shows alcohol ingestion for up to 96 hrs after consumption?? This list continues- Attend mandatory weekly meetings with other nurses in my situation and pay for them?? Yes, please! Be mandated to attend therapy at my expense?? I'll take it! Self-disclose to my fairly new employer my situation and request they put themselves out by providing the required supervision and document it on a quarterly report for the BRN?? I'm all in! Allow an independent consultant for the board to review submitted paperwork from myself and my employer to establish my position meets the nursing board's requirements for a probationer prior to continuing my position there?? Thank you, sir- may I have another??
This has been my life for the last 33 months and you know what? It's the best thing that ever happened to me. In a life where the pieces never fit and the rug got pulled out from under me on a regular basis, I suddenly found myself with a complete jigsaw puzzle that I could assemble and a rug that was tacked to the floor. All the players were there. Don't ask me how but in a life in which I had wished for years for every type of person I had in the last 3 years to assist me, they finally were there en masse. It was if I had won the spiritual lottery.
Has it been easy? Surely you jest. It has been hard work. However, my tenacity finally has been used to accomplish something of merit in which, over time, I could see slow but monumentous changes. I discovered that PTSD along with depression was at the root of my life challenges and that after years of battling both, even with medication, I resorted to alcohol out of desperation. Three years of specialized trauma therapy has been the impetus for much of these changes being permenant and because of this, I really don't miss substances as they seem superfluous.
And now, it's almost over and with it, the situation is fading. All of the people who were introduced into my life for the sole purpose of assisting me on this journey have moved on. Even my therapists are retiring within the next year! I finally stayed and everyone else moved on each one for unrelated reasons. Although at first sad, I eventually found this miraculous as I realized the subliminty of it all!
January 12, 2017, I will be released from all requirements having satified all of them for the mandated time. I will be free but not just of this situation but of many things previously attached but unneeded and I find myself profoundly humbled and grateful beyond measure
Pedigree
I have a one now. Four years of a full-time nursing position in which I was required to be the sole clinician visiting people in their homes and making complex clinical decisions that sometimes required lifesaving measures with only the assistance of an MD or a nursing supervisor by phone. I thought after 15 years of hospital nursing, I had seen everything but nothing trumps being in the home of various patients and being involved in their family and personal dynamics as well as their health care habits on a weekly basis for sometimes 6 months or more. Nothing. I have learned a wealth of clinical knowledge, gained volumes of wisdom regarding living and dying well, observed the consequences of either resisting or applying planning, humility and acceptance of having an aging body with many limitations in order that one is care for well and safely