Driving to see my Aunt, I had my music going. Unfortunately, it wasn't uplifting music. My Dad was already there, and waiting for me. As I was crossing the bridge, and just a few miles to my exit, my emotions started building. I took the first exit after the bridge, pulled into a parking lot, and just bawled. I got myself together (so I thought) and called my cousin and asked if my dad was there. Long story short, I wanted them to call me when they knew my dad had left. Unfortunately, I hadn’t actually gotten myself together, and I was weeping hard on the phone. How freaking embarrassing. I couldn’t let my dad see me in that shape. I couldn’t let him see my pain, and then feel my pain and want to make it better, but there is nothing he can do. It’s been so hard on this wonderful man to see me suffering emotionally, mentally, and physically. There is so much I want, and will tell you about my dad later; and it is one of the silver linings to all the pain of this crisis.
So many emotions were hitting me. Earlier in the day, while running errands, it crept up on me again. I want my husband. I want to communicate with him. I want to be with him. The errands included a positive; I went to the consignment shop and bought smaller clothes. When I go back to work, my dress pants will literally fall down. Before I was on sick leave for my spine, I had to use safety pins or really tighten my belt. Now, they wouldn’t stay up without looking like clown pants! Now that is a feeling all women like me who have been over weight for a long time, that makes you feel SOOOOOO Good. Then I run just one more errand, and start to feel anxiety. What if I’m running around here being selfish and my Aunt dies before I get there! So I rush through Wal-Mart to get necessities (too hard to go to my usual place and run into someone). Take off to The Hospice House, and turn up the music. Ok, I’m feeling better, I’ll be there soon and the music is good. Then it started hitting me again.
While I was parked and sobbing, I called a friend, but she wasn’t home. I wanted to be with a friend. Then, that’s when it hit so hard. Building up stronger and stronger, I freaking wanted my husband!
You see, my Aunt raised my mother as a child because their mother had a nervous breakdown that lasted for many years. Since my Aunt felt as though my Mother was her “daughter” as much as her sister, she always took care of my mother. When my mother was just 16 years old, she left home and went to my Aunt’s, a big scary city, and my Aunt again took care of her like a mother does. Later, when my Mother’s husband died when my brother was only 3 months old, my Aunt was right there for her, helping her the way a mother would. The only vacations we took as a family was with my Aunt and Uncle. That’s because they took care of everything. When my Mother was getting close to death, had worn my Dad out beyond what a simple human could take, my Aunt was here. She stayed a week. During that week, a couple times she got weak, and felt ill, but she would stay up all night with Mother and me. Mother wouldn’t sleep at night for the last few weeks (maybe longer…but I’d have to ask my Dad). Hospice said that is because when they know they are going to die, they are afraid to go to sleep at night. My Aunt and I were SUPPOSED to be taking turns staying up with her at night. When it was my night, she’d go to bed, and then finally get up, and come sit in the room with Mother and me. My mother was talking non-stop all night long, she was so delusional and with the effects of her dementia and the morphine, she would just get up out of the bed! She didn’t realize she was physically unable. Sometimes she made it quite a ways, and would even dance, when I had left the room as was in the kitchen. When she went to the hospital just before the end, she kept getting out of bed. She could figure out how to un-attach the bed alarm (for fall risk patients). One morning when we weren’t there, she decided to get up, and she actually walked to the door, and that is when a wonderful nurse was right there and danced with her back to bed. She treated my Mother so sweet. She told her that if she got up again she wouldn’t dance, and she couldn’t have any candy because she was a bad girl. Oh my goodness, my Mother just loved that. She loved humor and sarcasm.
I miss my Mother so much right now. It’s this vicious cycle, I need her because my heart is broken, my world is upside down, or more like an Alice In Wonderland experience. I’m lost; I need to talk to her. Because I miss my mother, and want her so bad, then it makes me want my husband.
With my Aunt passing away right now, it’s just such emotional torment. But I stayed strong, and I thought about what my counselor said, and it hit me that I cannot call him (with any excuse), I can’t go to the house, text him, email him, or send him a song. I have to. I don’t know if this is because she wants me to be strong and not go backward any further, or if it’s because of what I have said to her, and my husband. I have pursued him from the very beginning, and when he came home and said he didn’t want to be there, I pursued him again. I want to be pursued. I want to feel wanted. If he can’t give me that, then I don’t want him. That’s really painful, but it’s just the truth. I don’t want to be with him if he isn’t crazy in love with me and wants to be with me. I don’t want to always wonder, if it was just because he felt guilty, or trapped, or the divorce process is so painful, that he wants to avoid it, and the only way is to not get a divorce.
Remember when he did his second 180? His words, I don’t want a divorce, probably said a lot. The divorce process being so painful and he was emotionally weak because it was 15 minutes to his birthday…he was weak and decided he didn’t want a divorce. But then, after that quickly wore off, he was running away fast and hard again. He probably thought he was managing it really well, strategically. Saying he wanted to go slow. And his demeanor around me….more distant, and not saying he wasn’t doing the divorce paperwork. He was going to ease me back on another 180, unlike the two before. Unfortunately, he’s not as good at his manipulation or I’m getting better at catching on.
.