They say life happens, whether it happens while we’re making other plans or it happens so we must deal with it or one of many other overused cliches meant to help usher us into reality. I’m not quite sure who “they” are but they definitely hit the nail on the head with this one. Life happens without a doubt.
My writing has been put on a back burner for a couple months now. Both my ongoing blogs and the books I have in the works have been delayed. It is not that I have lost interest or my passion or that I have run out of topics to write about. Far from it. My mental health and my journey towards mental wellness are still very much a priority and are nothing I would ever give up. Life just happened.
On a high note – after almost a year battling my insurance company over covering my Deplin, I finally won my last external appeal. CDPHP has yet to start paying for it, but it has been deemed medically necessary by outside sources with the ability to overrule their decision. It is a huge victory and more than worthy of a large celebratory post, but again, life happened.
On a very low and tragic note, I have hit some painfully rough waters with the man I love. There is no need for anyone to prepare themselves for the drama or heartache of a love grown sour for we are still very much together. Our relationship is truly one of the best things in my life right now. It was a different sort of heartache.
His father had been ill. Terminally ill. We understood he did not have much more time with us, but we had expected much more than what we had been given. It went so quickly from an untimely fall to a trip to the emergency room to the intensive care unit to hospice. No one was ready. I know that no one is ever truly ready for such a loss but it all happened so quickly. Too quickly.
I’ve spent the last year deconstructing and reconstructing myself piece by piece. I’m by no means back together quite yet. I am a work in progress in every way. But everything going on with myself was cast aside on the back burner so that I could be there for the man I love. There wasn’t even a question in my mind. I had to be there.
The man I love is a good man. Beyond good, in my opinion, but I’m far from impartial. He has been through a lot in his life – we are kindred spirits in that sense. He has such a warm, loving and compassionate heart. And life had torn it clear in two. Nothing, not my writing nor even my own well-being, was as important to me as being there however I could for him.
This was his Dad. He had already lost his mother a few years ago and was still recovering from that. Losing both parents leaves a hole, an emptiness that nothing else can ever truly fill. Life had rendered him an orphan. I knew that feeling all too well and I could not leave him to face it alone.
Hospice itself was beyond agonizing. Nothing in life can prepare you for watching someone who was once larger than life slowly fade away. I’ve been there myself, as well. Hospice is where my father spent his final days as his cancer ate him alive. Though every moment of the days in hospice with his father held me in a death grip, threatening to pull me back into the past with my father, there was nowhere else I could be but at his side while he spent his final days with his own.
Next came going through the motions of the final preparations and the flurry of condolences that come with a great loss. Though the words are heartfelt and well-meaning, they cannot even begin to penetrate the numbness that comes with the realization that someone who has always been there is truly gone. I understood completely how he felt and where he was mentally and emotionally because I have been there myself. It is a feeling you never forget.
As they often say – “When it rains, it pours”. Life was not satisfied with dealing that one large heart-wrenching blow. The last couple months provided a steady barrage of ill-timed hardships to rival even the most depressing country or blues song. His truck – the last vehicle his mother had driven – needed work to pass inspection and stay on the road. His boat – left to him by his father as a reminder of better days and a multitude of fishing trips together – wouldn’t start and needed repairs. His cat – given to him by his parents to help him through rough times in his past – was injured and needed to go to the vet. It was as if every aspect of his life that was tied to his parents was collapsing and crumbling under the weight of the tragedy of his father.
Add to the mix us scrambling to find a place together. Neither of us could continue to stay where we have each been nor did we honestly want to live separately any longer. One of the only truths we have embraced during these very uncertain times is that we not only wanted but that we NEEDED to be together. In the short time we’ve been a couple, we’ve become a rock for each other, that light we each cling to when trying to find our way out of the darkness. We understand each other in ways no one else ever has and find a comfort in one another that has been lacking from our lives. We belong together.
We eventually found a place in his old stomping ground out in the country, literally next door to where he had lived a few years prior. It is a small place and I’m honestly not sure how we will fit everything into it, but we will manage. It is familiar territory for him and we are together. It is home.
Since moving in, we honestly have not been as productive as we probably should have striven to be, but we both needed some downtime to catch our breath, recuperate and heal. Life has been overwhelming and we both honestly needed a break. Some avenues of our life have suffered a bit but we have been doing our best to keep going, take care of ourselves and each other.
Life happens. I’m numb to it at this point. I’m honestly not sure how I have managed to not crumble into a million tiny pieces by now but somehow I’m still going. I have to keep going because he needs me there. Like me, he is an orphan now. I have to keep going because I need to take care of myself, as well. We will be okay, though. We HAVE to be okay because in each other we have finally found what we’ve both been missing in our lives. We are both seriously overdue for our happily ever after.
We are going to get through this, get past it. We are going to find some way to heal and to keep going. We are going to be okay. We will survive and we will be okay.
They say to fake it until you make it, to keep telling yourself things until you believe it and it becomes truth. Again, I don’t know who “they” are, but they’ve been right about everything else so I’m hoping this pans out as well. I shall embrace my hopes for future wellness as my mantra, repeating them in the hope that in time they become reality. Because life has definitely happened and we need more than anything to be okay again.
Unlovable 