Tag Archives: health

Are You Prepared For Being A Friend of Mine?

Posted on by Standard 4

Here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know about me.

I’m extremely fearful, to the point it is an actual phobia, when it comes to going to the hospital. It has something to do with the way they smell and sound. One whiff of fear of spidersdisinfectant and the sweat of fear, coupled with some feminine, bored, muffled intercom voice communicating life and death in rainbow-colored codes, and I have been known to incapacitate myself with a full-blown panic attack.

A rumor that someone I know might be going in to the hospital for something is enough to make me hyperventilate and avoid Facebook, pigeons and voice mail for a week.

Because of this crippling effect on me, there is a kind of process I go through mentally before I’m going to step one foot into these sinister, stinky hubs of health. I’ve established an Is-It-Worth-It Checklist that I complete in my mind before I commit to visiting someone at the hospital.

Well, there are actually 2 lists – one for whether I should go for my own health, and the other for being a supportive, good friend.

The one for me is really just the one line of questioning – how bad does it hurt and will they give me excellent drugs to make it stop hurting?

The other, though, is kind of more complex, and until they start giving out the excellent drugs to the visitors, I’m probably always going to use it. It goes something like this:

Bird’s Is-It-Worth-It Checklist

1. How serious is the condition my friend is in the hospital for?

a.Could they possibly die? (Here I calculate the odds of survival, and adjust accordingly.)

Floating Petri Dish of Disease

Floating Petri Dish of Disease

b. Not life-threatening? Like plastic surgery or a mild heart-attack? (See you when you get out, dude!)

c. Odds are, this could be the end of the line for them. (What are the chances I’ll be seeing them in heaven? Just kidding! This one is unflinchingly rigid.)

2. Just how angry or hurt will they be if I just call them on the phone instead of physically going to the hospital?

a. Really, really angry? (Are they prone to kicking butt when displeased, and if so, can I take them down? Also, how bad will it hurt?)

b.Indifferent – (They’re super popular; they actually begin their recovery after they return home. The hospital visitors actually sign a guestbook walking into the patient’s room. $5 and a broke friend, my name can be there, too.)

c. Hard to tell – (They might act like they don’t care, but last time you did find a stuffed animal of yours boiling in the kitchen…It seemed like it was some kind of warning.)

d. They get the really cool drugs and won’t be lucid for weeks after they get out. (I’ll photoshop a picture of myself in front of the hospital, and presto! I’m a good friend!)

e.They hate visitors – I’d being doing them a favor! (I’ve never met someone I could use this one on.)

3. If I buy them a really cool get-well gift, can I get off the hook?awesome me

a. No. They’re flush with stuff, and a gift isn’t going to go very far with them unless I had to take out a loan to buy it. (Not likely these days.)

b. They practically live in a cardboard box. A gift certificate to Taco Bell will buy me a pass for the next three hospitalizations. (God bless Taco Bell’s Dollar Menu!)

c. Depends on the kind of gift. Am I willing to go to the mall (another phobia of mine, though to a much lesser degree) and spend the ridiculous amount of money they charge for something from Hot Topic or Victoria’s Secret? (I’ve never answered yes to this one. It’s included because eventually one of my friends will get a boob job, and this one will finally come into play.)

d. No. This friend isn’t superficial or materialistic. Next time, be pickier about the kinds of friends you want. :-)

4. Is it in any way possible to pretend I didn’t know they were in the hospital until they get out?

a. Yes, if I pretend I’ve just been super busy. Once upon a time, I could actually get away with this one. I’m notorious for being hard to get ahold of most of the time. These days, though, my friends all know me pretty well, (or I’ve already done this the first couple of times they were hospitalized), and this doesn’t fly anymore.

b. No. They ran ads on every television and radio station in Tulsa, left text messages and voice messages on every telephone I have, sent a telegram, two pigeon carriers,hilarious a note on my windshield, sent a note from my mother to my boss, and paid to have their name and room number written in the sky over my apartment. My presence is requested, and my absence will be noted and unhappily addressed when they are released.

5. How important is this friendship to me in the long run?

a. I can make new friends; giving me one of your kidneys doesn’t make us sisters under the skin, right? Actually, I find it pretty nerve-wracking to try to even talk to someone I don’t know, so this is a stupid thing to even be on my checklist. Still, it does cross my mind…

b. Will they quietly be hurt, or will I find a dead fish wrapped in newspaper on my doorstep? Quietly hurt, in my opinion, can actually be worse than a threat from the mafia that I’ll be sleeping with the fishes, especially since I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

c. Friendships are pretty important, and I really love this person a lot. Oh, fine!! I’ll go to the stupid hospital, but I’m not promising I won’t pee myself on your floor when I smell alcohol swabs, spray you with snot when I can’t breathe because I can mentally see the needle in your IV stabbing through the walls of your vein,  or puke in your trash can when that horrible intercom voice blares through my head. Hey! It’s what you wanted!! Still want me to be your friend??

I wanted to take a minute to thank the fellow bloggers that nominated me for some awards. I promise, I’ll try to get to those some time this weekend. Thank you so much!!fear of trust

– Bird

 

Goodbye, My Favorite Human.

Posted on by Standard 13

According to my journals, Chef’s official Midlife Crisis started on 10/16/2011. Well, actually, that is just when I became aware of it. From one minute to the next, I never images (1)knew what to expect from this person that I’d practically shared my entire adult life with. He’d be normal, and then quickly cold, withdrawn, reserved. I’d try to talk to him, and would be quickly silenced. I’d do things for him, and yet he’d hardly seem to notice, much less care. Where once we were inseparable, I’d find myself alone a lot, always sad or disappointed, or scared. When I found out why the personality had changed so quickly, I was foolishly not as concerned as I probably should have been. My entire family has grappled with addictions, me included, and while Chef & I had seemed to escape this lifestyle for decades, the naive part of me thought this would be temporary, and quickly addressed and fixed. Hmm. Seems I was wrong.

It’s been a whole year and a half since this ugly period of my life first raised its ugly head, and I’m sitting here in the tiny apartment that I love, marveling at how slowly time seemed to crawl by back then, and how quickly it had sped up to get me here.

As I mentioned before, T left Chef. Chef had been basically playing both ends towards the middle. He was constantly calling me/coming over, always full of promises of fixing things with me. He would go on long rants about how I was the mother of his children, his soul-mate, his best friend, and most importantly, his wife. On the other side, he was telling T that he’d been looking for love in all the wrong places, that he’d stayed with me for the children, that she was his best friend, his soul mate, and someday, would be his wife. I’m a girl. I can see how T would fall into this. Chef is convincing, especially if you don’t know him very well. But, as his problem with drugs increased, and his behavior became more and more erratic, she finally had to concede that I was indeed right — Chef wasn’t being truthful. Unlike me, T would dig for the truth quietly, unobtrusively, and frankly, she showed an amount of self-discipline that is kind of impressive to me. The first time I found a Love-Text from her on Chef’s phone at 5:30am one morning, a few months before I left, I woke Chef up by beating him in the head with his phone. :-) See? I didn’t decide to keep it to myself for awhile, to gather more evidence, and to confront him when there were no ways to wiggle out of it. I went for the jugular immediately.

imagesI dealt with a ton of emotions all along the way, and I’m still a bit unsteady some times. For the most part, I’m kind of over all of this. After T left him, and we confronted him together with our Notes of Comparison, I was able to accept that it was over. I watched this exhausted, stressed, frantic man try to baffle us both with b***s***, and a part of me felt relieved. Even completely healthy, this guy has been no picnic. I always felt, and still do, that back then, he was worth it. But, as I wrote about in Old Roy Dog Food, this disease had taken so much away from him, there just wasn’t enough bang for my buck, if you know what I mean. As each promise was broken, and each lie surfaced, a little bit of what I had always really loved about this human being would wither and die. And one day, the bad outweighed the good, and I was less likely to be broadsided with sadness at how all this had turned out. Instead, I had times I actually felt a little guilty. Because of his lack of addressing some health problems, he is sicker than he should be at this stage of the game. He already is needing some help physically, and I’m pretty sure, it is going to go downhill from here. I hope for the best, but I can’t say that I’m all that optimistic. What a stubborn man!! I can see God‘s hand in all of this, trying to get this man to look up, and even when he’s been told this by so many people in his life, he stubbornly refuses. And that is his right as a human being.

I wrote that we were supposed to start marriage counseling next week. Let me clarify, as I got some panicked comments. I have probably no faith whatsoever that our marriage has a snowball’s chance in hell of ever being resurrected from the dead. I am not simple or stupid. Nor am I a glutton for punishment, and I truly get nauseated at the thought of having to make myself somehow trust someone who pretty much callously tossed the trust it took me years to develop for him, aside like so much trash. I wanted to believe that our relationship had been real all these 20+ years, and in a way, I have that. Sober, he was a decent husband. Flawed, but then who isn’t? I can be a nightmare myself with my trust issues, hyper-vigilance, insomnia, and bouts of depression. He didn’t marry Mary Tyler Moore. But we worked hard, made a good life for ourselves and our children, and we all laughed a lot. The drug changed everything, as it will do, but it didn’t render my life before worthless. If anything, it put the past on a pedestal, and that is what almost crushed me. Remembering and longing for, and weeping over, the beautiful, beautiful past. Only the past had it’s own issues, and in the light of day, it didn’t have that angelic gleam. Our marriage had survived for so long because we were both willing to work really hard to keep it going. But when Chef bowed out, and I had finally quit trying to carry  it along on my own back, it died. And just because I wouldn’t let go, or he wouldn’t go away, it wasn’t any less dead. I think God knew that, and He was very patient with me as I came to understand that if He, Almighty Author of the Universe, Creator of Mankind,  won’t fiddle with man’s free will, I’m certainly not going to be able to either. It blows. But God isn’t a liar, and these are the rules. Love isn’t love if you don’t have a choice to not love. I didn’t want Chef to come back to me out of necessity. I wanted him to miss me, and to come back because he realized he loved me. That just never did happen.

Everything this last year and a half spun in the gravity of Chef’s choices, and while we are each dealing with our wounds — Chef, T, me, the kids, friends, etc. …. There really is no way to un-ring the bell. I won’t venture to say what Chef has learned about me through all of this. I’ve been one pissed off, angry, somewhat vengeful, hurt wife. But I know something about him now. I know what he is capable of saying about me, behind my back to people I consider my friends. I know what he is capable of doing to me when he is crossed. I know how cold those eyes can be when they watch me cry. I know how easily lies form in his heart, and how quickly they become truth to his mind.

 I know.

I just know too much, and while I sometimes like to see him when he’s sobered up, and he’s singing as he’s working on his wood projects, or see the occasional remembermischievousness that lights up his pretty brown eyes as he tells me a story he remembers from years ago, and hear him laugh at something I’ve said, there is a wall around my heart that doesn’t let him too near me. He had the keys to that heart, and he threw them away. They aren’t so easily given again, especially to the person who didn’t treasure them in the first place. He was my very favorite human on the earth. Now, he is too dangerous to my own self-image, my self-worth, and my self-esteem to be trusted. He’s been ousted, and no matter how much counseling I have with him, I don’t see myself trusting him again, ever. He hurt me. I don’t want to be hurt by him again.

I see Chef as very, very sick right now. On a spiritual level, he wouldn’t fall on the Rock and break, and so the Rock is crushing him. It’s horrible to watch, and painful to feel that bond between us severed. But the kind of person I’ve always been is not going to let this person die unloved, unwanted, and completely utterly alone. I can’t imagine how horrible and hopeless that must feel, nor do I ever want to. Until Chef’s dying breath, he’ll at least know he has one person who gives a rat’s butt whether he is alive or dead, and that person will be me. I most likely will not be his wife…but I will be his friend, even if he hasn’t been a very good friend back. And that’s okay.

The counseling sessions may or may not happen. Chef begged for an opportunity to have a mediator referee an honest, open dialogue between us. We don’t get very deep into anything constructive before one or both of us draws blood on the other. I’m hurt by him “falling in love” with someone else. He’s ….who knows? Angry. Pissed. Humiliated. Selfish. I’m really only guessing. My instincts believe that he takes out how he feels about himself on me, but I have no real proof of this. Either way, I have enough to address that I’m responsible for. I can’t shoulder his, too.  But I desire with all of my heart to communicate to him just how much this has cost me, how much I really loved our lives together before the drugs, and how thankful I am that I had so long with him before this all came crashing down. And I want to hear what was going through his mind that made me suddenly undesirable as his partner. I’m afraid to hear it, but I just need to know. And I think counseling would help us there. It would be some kind of closure for me.

So, that all being said, no, I’m not high on pot! I’m not flip-flopping around. I’m content that things are the way they are for a reason, and I hope God kicks satan right in the teeth with Chef, with me, and with T. In the meantime, I’ll just keep taking each day as it comes. Thank you for your concern, though. I really do appreciate it!

– Bird

Quick Word from Bird

Posted on by Standard 15

I don’t have time today to write one of my epic, wordy posts. I’ve been working on one, but alas! It isn’t ready, and I don’t want to post anything from the hip. I tend to think I jinx things when I write about them, and things seem to be going really well. I’m making no sudden movements. I don’t want Fate noticing me right now!!

I plan to finish up the other post this evening, but I thought I’d answer a few of the emails/comments/texts I received this last week. sadness

Yes. I’m still alive and kicking.

Yes. Chef’s girlfriend dumped him.

Chef blames her.

She blames Chef.

She doesn’t blame me, but knows I was the problem.

Chef blames me, but is glad I was the problem.

I remain unconvinced anyone knows anything anymore.

Chef & I are going to go to marriage counseling, starting next week.

It was Chef’s idea, but I figure what can it hurt?

I have a sneaking suspicion it might just be too late for me to ever go back to this marriage.

Ok. I think that’s about it for now. I don’t want to tip my hand just yet! Talk to you guys tonight!!

– Bird

 

My Heart’s A Traitor Bastard

Posted on by Standard 34

I cried today. A lot.

Now, if you’ve been following this blog for the last year and some months, you’re probably saying to yourself, so what? This girl has

You moved a girl-chipmunk into our hole, gave her my nuts (and yours), and everyone saw. But these flowers make it all better, baby. Give me a smooch.

You moved a girl-chipmunk into our hole, gave her my nuts (and yours…tsk, tsk), and all our chipmunk friends saw. Now I live in a rundown hole in the ghetto. But these flowers make it all better, baby. Give me a smooch.

been crying for over a year now. But the truth is, I’ve been relatively content the last few months, and tears haven’t been all that common. But in the last few weeks, a lot of stuff has been happening around me, and today, I finally broke down and had a nice, long cry-fest. Sometimes, tears are the only way to cleanse a wounded soul. And mine is sparkling clean right now.

I’m only guessing, but I think every jilted wife in the world has this secret fantasy that their wandering husband will wake up one day, kick the other woman to the curb, and come crawling back, professing their undying love between the heart-felt regrets for what they’d done to us.  It’s a stupid daydream in all it’s simple-ness; by the time the wanderer has wandered, there is a mountain of crap to be shoveled through before reconciliation can even be considered, and mere words don’t even begin to cut it. If , that is, reconciliation is even something these broken wives hope for. I’m betting there is more interest in seeing their husbands having a high-heeled shoe surgically removed from their a$$es than any kind of sorrowful regret / let’s-live-happily-ever-after moments. But I’m actually not one of these normal, broken women. As pathetic as it may sound, deep down in the hidden recesses of my heart, I wanted my husband to come back some day. And for some added humiliation, I’ll go ahead and admit it. I still love Chef. So much for being a secret bad-a$$ ninja woman. I’m a sap.

I’m a person that holds logic in high regard, and it is with no small amount of embarrassment that I admit this to you all. Despite all the betrayal, humiliation, and dashed hopes, I still wanted my husband to come and sweep me off my feet again. And that deep desire has been the bane of my existence for months now. While it’s true that I haven’t felt that excruciating pain like I did in the beginning, and I’ve been able to happily believe at some points that I was over him, I’ve noticed this disturbing trend in myself. The less angry I feel, the more I can still feel that love for him.

Will someone please shoot me?

The Chef and T Love Fest has been going downhill over at the old Homestead for a while now, and even my poor dogs look traumatized by the rather quick run this relationship seemed to have taken, almost from the minute they moved in together. It is a sterling example of the very truth that the old cliché preaches — the grass is never greener on the other side. I won’t pour out the intimate circumstances of the up-and-coming demise of their relationship…It is their story, and I’m only a third-party spectator with limited rights to it, but I will say this. I can’t say with any real honesty that I wasn’t a little happy to see it all fall to crap, and so quickly at that. So much for the next Romeo & Juliet romance.  :-)

I know.

It is a very ungodly attitude, but as I told you all before..I don’t have this Christian thing down yet when it comes to my separation and impending divorce. I still suffer from being a fallen human with a fallen nature. And as T has had to experience, in lesser degrees, some of the emotions I had experienced when she and my husband decided they were in love, I’ve found a lot of that crazy anger melting away. Turns out, revenge loses some of its charm without that anger to fuel it.

I actually dreamed of the time when T and Chef would get a taste of their own medicine, and yet, when it really actually happened, I found myself less gleeful than I had expected, and rather a little more sad for them. None of the major players in this creepy triangle are happy for the most part. Actually, I’m the one who seems to be enjoying my life more consistently. How weird is that?? Satan must be having a blast at the amount of misery he’s been able to spread around in my little circle. What a douche.

Which has led me back to my original thoughts. Would I take him back? I think the answer is maybe. On the one hand, forgiveness isn’t a problem for me. I can forgive him. But trust, on the opposite hand, is a huge problem in my life. And the trust is gone, gone, gone. But, what if he and I were to get counseling? Oh, please. I’ve tried how many counselors for lesser things in my life? And I’ve stuck with none of them. And he’s worse than I am about that kind of stuff. Then, I’ve asked myself if he really loved me, how could he have done all the stuff he did? And here’s where I get stuck. He couldn’t have, could he? His words these days are perfect, as usual, but I’m not a fool enough to believe this man I’ve lived with my entire adult life doesn’t know just what to say to manipulate me. But, where are the actions to back up the words? Until recently, there were none, but he’s starting to do little things that make me wonder.

And I just hate that!

This cartoon sums my life right now perfectly. Chef is chasing Bird...but what will happen if he catches her? Fried chicken?

This cartoon sums my life right now perfectly. Chef is chasing Bird…but what will happen if he catches her? Fried chicken?

Let’s face it. As long as Chef and Bird live in the same city, we’re always going to be connected. We both find it easy at times to slip back into the comfortably worn routines we’d had with one another all these years, and while I can’t say what it does for him, I can say it makes me long for those simpler, happier times I was secure in his love. And anymore, he voices more and more of his regret over all that has happened to our marriage and family, and more importantly (to me), his dissatisfaction with his new relationship. And now that she is setting up her own escape route, I’m faced with the decision…move on without him, or explore the possibility that this marriage might have a tiny chance if we were to work on it.

Today, all the stuff going on in my life, added to Chef’s very early morning visit to my apartment this morning, where he cried for hours over all that has happened, including hurting me, his children, and T, and his one, true humble apology added to his pleading for another chance, all culminated into a good cry this afternoon.

To my chagrin, not once did I even think about kicking him in the butt with my own high-heeled shoe. Instead, I just wanted God to take that lingering love for him out of my heart, or to just make this last year and a half disappear completely. I want a Do-Over.

And incidentally, God is completely blowing off my requests. I guess I’m always going to love Chef. I might never be his wife again, but the love is still there. And whether I like it or not, all of this really did happen. It isn’t just going to go away. Oh, my treacherous heart!!

Anyways, this is more of a mental health post than anything. I’d love to know if there are any other wives that wish they didn’t feel this vulnerable to their exes, like me.

– Bird


The Keeper of My Demons

Posted on by Standard 23

As I’ve been saying over the last few weeks, I’ve settled into a pleasant routine here in my ghetto apartment. For the most part, I wallsexist completely separate from Chef and I am growing to really appreciate that. However, I’m noticing a different routine that is forming, and I’m absolutely going to root this one out of my life. It is a new routine Chef and I have developed, and I had to really decide last night to be the one to stop it.

Chef and I can’t make it through one conversation without fighting anymore. All communication has finally broken down, and yet, I find myself trying to communicate with him about how all of his choices and decisions have hurt me anyways! And he, in turn, throws up every wall he can erect to make sure we don’t focus on his shortcomings, instead constantly diverting the subjects back to how I have reacted to the various insults I feel he and his girlfriend have launched at me.

He thinks I over-reacted to all of it. You have got to love the male mind. :-)

And, I, of course, think he’s awfully easy on himself given the different rings of hell he’s introduced to my life. I know. Typically Female.

There is no way for us to meet in the middle here, and the bickering and fighting is worthless. I want to stop it.

Now, in all fairness, I’m beating a dead dog here every time I launch into that tired line of reasoning with him ad nauseam.

Why every single stupid conversation has to come back to all the cheating, lying, sneaking around, and the mind-twisting move of installing his affair-partner into our home, in my bed, and letting her wear my clothes, is beyond me. I don’t even really want to talk about it anymore. And yet, without fail, he’ll make a snide comment about how I cost us millions of dollars by tanking a lawsuit we were in, (and yes, I did do that), and I’ll  just have to defend myself by throwing back in his face what he did that made me do that.

And then it’s on.

Another boring, merry-go-round argument, that we’ll just end up digressing to the point that we’re launching rather witty and clever, but also very mean, and somewhat childish names at one another….Again. Then, we’ll withdraw into our perspective corners of Tulsa,  and there will be no communication…for anywhere between one day to two weeks, depending on just how below the belt we attacked each other in our last round. It’s pathetic, and I’m sick of repeating this useless exercise.

The silence is peaceful, and just as I’m relaxing into not wondering what he is doing, or how he is faring, I’ll get a text message from him. Some of them have been super sweet; some nostalgic for the days we were happy; some lyrics to my favorite songs; some downright sad; and all of them have the power to soothe me enough that I immediately break my promise to myself to ignore him forever, and respond. I wish I could say I was able to withstand the lure for even an hour. Nope. I’m woefully sappy when it comes to those texts. It’s just disheartening how quickly I text him back, that tiny bit of hope sparking back to life in the back of my brain.

Then, it quickly falls to crap, and I’m sitting there remembering how I could have IGNORED that text, and this latest disrespectful event wouldn’t have happened. Hind-sight is 20/20…dammit, Bird!!

I’ve noticed lately that we don’t communicate with one another well at all. And I’m pondering the question — What do we really have to talk about anymore? Our lives aren’t continuing down the same paths. We aren’t working on a relationship. We don’t have little children that keep us connected. The children that we did raise are adults, and can be contacted directly without me. We have no reason to stay in touch. I miss the way we used to be able to finish each other’s sentences, but that connection is severed, and it is just a form of torture to have to go through these emotional sparing with each other just to come out on the other side with the knowledge that it is simply over. How many times do we need to repeat this stupid exercise? Oh, please.

What would happen if he actually was sorry? Would I welcome him back in my broken heart? Can a dozen love letters untangle this mess he left me in? Would I go back to being the girl I was before if he publicly denounced the twit he lives with now and proclaimed his love for me from the rooftops? No. You can’t un-ring the bell.  The rose-colored glasses are off, and I can see both of us much clearer. I’d never be able to pretend I didn’t know the depths of his ability to hurt those he swore to love, protect, and care for. I know what I’m capable of, too, when hurt beyond what I ever thought I’d be able to endure. I’m learning to trust myself all over again…But he’s been introduced to a part of me that he never knew was there either. The relationship has changed from the knowledge of who we are capable of being, and there’s no going back.

There was a time I could have forgiven all of this and set about patching our relationship back up, but that time has come and gone long ago. There’s too much damage done, and daily we stab at each other some more, for no constructive reasons at all. Do I really care if he ever misses me? Maybe. I’m human. But I can live without him being sorry. I can live without him taking responsibility. I can live without him…period. I prove that daily.

Should I continue to let him come and go as he pleases, I’m worried that even the good memories of him will be tainted by this new, sad, angry, sneering version I purposely walked away from…repeatedly.  I say Chef left me behind, but I’m the one who left the marriage because of his infidelity, lying, and general coldness. Sometimes, it is good to remember that I was the one who had the courage to walk away into the unknown future.

It’s sad to leave an old friend behind, but you just have to when they cease to be your friend, and are, instead, the keeper of all your demons.

So, today, I’m deciding YET AGAIN to let Chef fade out of my life for good. Hopefully, I’ll be able to withstand the draw of Hope! :-)

– Have a Lovely Friday!!!

Bird