admit what I really want

date again. Just date—not necessarily fall in love, get married, get laid—I’m a cautious woman. I don’t want to find another sociopath.

BUT someone to go to the opera with (besides my daughter) would be nice. My son is leaving the nest, and it’s time I re-invented myself a bit. With this nearly 20 lb weight loss I’m feeling a little more confident and ready to have an adventure.

My psychologist has been nagging at me to try match.com. I did try it not long after the DDD, but it was an abysmal experience. Of course, I was no where ready to be dating at that time, so I won’t blame match.com for the problem.

So, I screwed up my courage and signed back on last night. I’m still buffing up my profile, and trying to find a picture to post. I would NEVER have done that before, but I’d rather know on the front end that someone likes my outsides than to have them disappointed.

I used to worrry about the students discovering my profile. But why? Don’t most people want to meet people, and in this day it’s not such an easy thing for a single parent. I think I’m going to have to own that I want to meet people, and leave it at that.

I’ll keep you posted!

more time to spend here.

This has been the longest dry spell that I can remember since I started on 43 things in 2005. Forget using it to help me get things done: I use this site for the moral support you all offer and because I’m interested in everyone’s lives. Without it, I go into 43t withdrawal.

It’s not pretty. In involves a sense of things left undone as I lumber up the stairs to bed. I MISS my friends!

But it’s been probably the most difficult semester I can remember. It’s not necessarily work. I think it’s mostly that I started 3 weeks into the term, already far behind, and what would have been a challenging term became an impossible one. And having so much difficulty typing has made me feel crazed when I’ve only been on the computer for a few hours. A whole day is impossible now.

So just know that you are cared about, and that I miss the gang. Hopefully, I’ll be past that hump in a few weeks and can resume happily chattering away here again.

is that I still had my mother and grandmother to buy Christmas presents for. It’s a silly thing, but there you have it.

I will sublimate; I will buy gifts for people who need them instead. And I will remember many good Christmases past.

(But I do still wish in this season that they were still with me.)

what I really want is to keep dropping weight like this.

It’s a little scary the impact it’s had on my self-esteem.

15 pounds feels like a lot of weight. Mostly, it gives me back a sense of some level of control. It’s rotten to diet for a year and a half so carefully, only to have your weight go up. I’ve been a stranger in a strange body.

Now I notice each little thing. The way my pants slide down. My flatter stomach. My increased energy.

I just really, really want this to continue. If I lost another 50 pounds, I’d be back to my baseline weight before I got sick. That’s a lot to lose, so I will think about it in 10 pound increments, with a reward for each 10 pounds.

I ordered my first reward tonight….something I’ve been wanting for about a year. Luckily I can afford it with the sales that are on now.

I talked to a therapist today about this vague, foggy depression that seems to have settled in. As far as I can tell, it has a bit to do with Son-child preparing to go off to college next year, and a sense of detachment and social isolation. And, well, feeling incomplete. And, of course, it has to do with the DDD.

I have great difficulty talking about it. At the most concrete level, it seems that it has something to do with an urge to be dating again, and not really knowing how to go about it at my age. Of course, the idea of dating conjures up all kinds of worries about what Ex did and how I missed for so many years his sociopathy. And then, I worry about whether my ongoing medical problems will just wipe me out as a social partner.

It’s not that I want to get married again. I really can’t see doing that, although I suppose anything is possible. I would like good company though, and I have a sense of yearning that’s hard to ignore.

This may take just rolling up my sleeves and jumping in. We talked about various things I can do—from going to more group activities to even trying on-line dating (ugh!). At least I’m thinking through some actions to take, instead of just wallowing in my depression. My therapist thinks my inability to release my focus from ex might have something to do with just not dating anyone else. Makes sense; but the solution seems daunting.

I found out my oncologist is engaged for heaven’s sake, to one of the nurses in the office. Hurmph! Worse yet, it turns out he was having a fling with her before he was divorced (I have a friend in the office now.).

Well.

That is not attractive behavior. It’s sort of disappointing, in its way, because I really admired him. Which just goes to show you: Be careful in who you admire. It may be that they are not the person they appear to be.

I am still in a fog. Maybe a fog of my own making; maybe a fog of old hurts disguising what really comes at me out of the darkness. Maybe what comes at me is better than I believe.

But what I really want is to be the one moving, not the one waiting.

I have always been the one moving. I have been the one who got away, the one who makes decisions, who takes a risk. My biggest risk lately has been to walk a horse. This is not me. I feel not me.

It is this: A Saturday morning, and I feel like there is nothing to wake up to. The children are at their dad’s, and soon one of mine will be gone to college. I wish back all the moments I had with him, but they will not come home. Anymore than my belated motherhood will come back to me.

I never really figured myself for one who would be permanently single. I HATE being permanently single. If ever one was built to be in a relationship, it would be me, but I find myself drifting, drifting….in a fog….and nothing happens.

That, I’m just cynical enough to believe, is an effect of gaining the weight. Having it burst upon me with a steriod frenzy, changing my body into the body of a women I never even recognize in pictures. It very effectively stopped married men from hitting on me at conferences. But I want my old body back!!!!! With the diabetes, and the way I’m eating now, I have begun to lose weight. Who knew more calories and protein would do it? Ten pounds is gone, but with my body I’ve learned that 5 pounds at least can come and go in a day. At any rate, I am at least a little hopeful that I could turn back into who I was.

It’s hard to remember who I was. I remember even after the separation having a party. For Halloween. It was really fun, attended by everyone I knew. Now, I haven’t had a party since then.

Why haven’t I had a party since then?

It feels like something is broken inside, and I can’t fix it. Like somewhere amid all the crap Ex slung at me, some of it stuck, and I think of myself as this crazy, wounded, incompetent person, who can’t even have a party, for Christ’s sake. As if I had “Nutso” branded on my forehead and nothing will wipe off the stain.

If that had been all, well, maybe we could proceed on with our life. But I’ve had 4 years of a boss calling me a loser and making my life impossible every way he can. He completely reinforced what I was already feeling: That there is nothing special about me.

And I stopped.

I just stopped. Like a heart. And I haven’t been shocked back into action. I am waiting…for what? For God to pound me hard enough to start my heart again?

I may DO all the things a person does. But I do not FEEL. I work on data till 11:30 on a Friday night….I sleep till 9:00 and make myself take a bath…I iron clothes and hang them all straight in a row, but I can barely make myself put them away. I can barely make myself get up.

What is this misery that comes at me with its teeth bared at random intervals?

I deal with it by dodging it. I dodge, thank the Lord I am safe, and then I go on, as if that weren’t another near miss. I fall down stairs, have car accidents, get weird tumors—enough drama for anyone, but still, but still, I feel like I’m missing it. Like I’m missing life.

I want, I want a real life. With real people in it, who love me and want me here. I want to see my way clear to building that life and not just existing every day, waiting for something to change. I want to become a do-er again, that girl that made things happen.

I want to heal myself.

I really have a crush on my oncologist. I’ve been feeling this way for a year, since I found out he’s now divorced, and it’s driving me crazy.

We have more of a friendship than a doctor-patient relationship. He used to do research and enjoys my stories of the oddball antics involved in grantsmanship. He asks about the kids without fail and knows their personalities by now. He’s intelligent and compassionate, and how often do I meet that combination?!

In fact, I’ve about decided that we’re perfect for each other, except for the minor fact that he examines my breasts once a year. That seems inconveniently wrong, somehow. I’d switch to his partner, but then I wouldn’t see him. Besides, he likes me too well to let me die.

What’s a girl to do? I wish I knew if he likes me or just likes my jokes. Why isn’t it okay for a woman to ask a man out? Argh!

_{sometimes I’d really like to be me before the amputation. I’d say I’d like to be “whole,” but I feel whole now, and it’s such a tiny amputation. But I’d just really not like to have to explain it sometimes. And I’d really rather not have it hurt.}

is to stop having dreams about me Ex. Yep, they are back, ever since I initiated the arbitration a few weeks ago. They are the same warm, semi-sexual dreams I was having before the accident last fall (after which he was such a pain that I quit dreaming about him).

I think I get it. I don’t want HIM. I want to be in a relationship. I’m tired of being alone, and I miss the everyday comforts of being married. Boy, that’s a lot to admit, coming from miss Icantakecareofmyself.

I should get out more. I go to work (where men are younger or married), home (no men), the barn (all the men are horses) and that’s about it.

Perhaps it’s time to come out of my shell. I’m not sure how one does that.