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Originally Posted by abaya
But you know what?.. in my opinion, life is about learning to make mistakes and look stupid, yet to do so with confidence and grace. And I don't mean Grace, your Grace. I mean with learning how to fall down, pick yourself up, and say to yourself, "I'm fine, and I don't care if someone just saw that mistake. I am a better person because of it." and to be able to function without your Grace.
Also, look at what you are missing when she is just across the country.. what would happen if she died in an accident tomorrow? How would you cope, Gilda?
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I'm sorry I didn't see this before. I don't want to seem like a pity whore, which was what I was doing the last couple of days, but I don't want to ignore a direct question, which would be rude after I opened the discussion. If these were meant as rhetorical quesions just ignore this response. This is more to help me listen to myself think than anything anyway, and I'll probably come back and delete this tomorrow.
I don't think I would. She's my life, my shield, my safe place. I've built my life around making her happy. I'm not good at very many things. I have a lot of talent as a teacher, and work damn hard to be the best I can at that. I'm not a natural, but hard work makes up for that deficit. I'm a master Scrabble player. Sissy needed me for awhile, but not anymore. Grace is the one constant, the one thing in my life that is an absolute sure thing.
It would be like when I lost Katie. I lost myself for years afterwards, having only school as a way to escape from life. I tried attaching myself to anyone who would have me, but couldn't find someone to fill that empty spot Katie left when she died. It took me years to realize nothing and nobody ever would, that I'll always have a hole where she used to be that will never heal.
I lost my parents when they found out I was gay. Another hole that I'll never be able to fill, a wound that will never heal.
Losing Grace would leave me with another empty place in my soul that would never heal. I don't know if I could deal with that again. There's a section in one of the Spenser books where Spenser tells Paul that the riskiest thing he ever did was to let Susan into his life, then to let Paul in. Because by doing that, he gave them the power to hurt him, a power nobody posessed until he gave to them, and once he did, it wasn't something he could take back. I'm not sure how that's relevant, but it just seemed as if it was.
Throwing myself into work and graduate school so that I had no time for a personal life left me with no time to worry about myself. Bathe, work, class, study, eat, repeat. It kept me somewhat sane and functional. I suppose I could do that again.
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I don't know what else to say. I accept that you are who you are, but at some level it sounds very much like you are unhappy with the way things are, and that you justify yourself with very detailed self-analysis and thinking
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I think I'm just in a low place because I have an arm that is never going to heal fully, and I'm in a new place where I don't know anybody, and in a new job that's more than a little scary (not the work, that I know I'll be good at), and in a new place that doesn't feel like home, and I can't take care of my part of the family responsibilities by doing the cooking cleaning, and I'm lonely because Grace is across the country and Sissy is off doing . . . something, whatever, most nights. (I'll find out tomorrow what she did tonight. I don't know how she can do that, just take off with no plan, but she seems to enjoy that sort of thing.) Leaving me alone at night, feeling empty because all those connections I have to the world are broken, if only for a little while, so I came here, filled with self pity and wanting attention, and ended up abusing the help people were offering by constantly arguing.
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instead of really going out there and taking real risks in uncomfortable situations. It is because of this discontent that I really encourage you to get out there, try some really awful, uncomfortable things, over and over and over again (this is a form of cognitive therapy), and eventually... you WILL change. But only if you want to.
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Doing awful, uncomfortable things over and over again will make me feel better? I'm not sure if I agree with you there. I don't really see the benefit, but I'll consider it.
By the way, I tried lurkette's little experiment. At least a little bit of it. While on campus today, I asked someone where the cafeteria was. He was probably a student, about six feet tall, 200 pounds, dressed in jeans, flip-flops, and a Tommy t-shirt. He stared at me for a few seconds, looking from my legs to my cast then back to my legs then off to the side as he talked, made fun of my broken nose, then gave me directions. I wasn't hurt, as lurkette said, I was still safe. But it was just a little bit creepy the way he kept staring at me without looking me in the eye. The only good part about it was when it was over and I put some space between us.
Picking a guy twice my size as a first test subject was not a good idea. Anyway, my conclusion here is that something about me made this guy uncomfortable, given how he reacted. Maybe he's shy, too, and doesn't like being asked for directions.
I need to do this two more times, and at least once pick someone like me and see how she reacts. I'll try one time tomorrow and report what happens.
Grace comes home tomorrow night. Yay! I get to be back in my "happy place
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Gilda