Jen

Fuck Valentine's indeed. I hate this "holiday." I just got past my wedding anniversary-- our 8th, but he's been gone four. Pretty soon I'll have been his widow longer than I was his wife. Fuck.

Me too. All the time.

Raymond, thank you for posting this. It feels ever so slightly hopeful, and even though I don't trust hope, I appreciate its presence-- elusive and transient as that may be. The kittens have grown large enough and bold enough not to want to cuddle much, so my daughter took matters into her own hands last week: I came home to a very friendly, very energetic, very awkward, and very large German Shepherd mix puppy! If nothing else, she doesn't let me sit still long enough to brood...

*hugs* There's no two ways about it. It sucks. :-/

I'm lying on the couch with the 5-month-old doberman/shepherd mix that my daughter decided on Wednesday that I needed. I should note that I have 6 cats already, 4 of them under a year old, plus my mom's aging Pom and three more cats outside. Oh, and a perpetually stoned rabbit. But Bella is extremely sweet, and she seems to help my daughter's anxiety-- besides, I need the exercise. My mom is sulking and won't speak to anyone. I'd much prefer to be in my bedroom, but filial duty requires me to stay in the living room until at least 9 pm. There are many advantages to this living arrangement, but my mother's passive-aggressive bitchiness is not one of them.

My deepest apologies for my flippant, off-the-cuff remark. It happened to be what I was thinking as I perused the last few posts on this thread, and I foolishly hit send. Those four words (and an emoji, mustn't forget) represent the whole extent of my interaction with Christopher, who is, I'm sure, a very nice person in (like all of us here) a lousy situation. At that particular moment I identified strongly with his expression of grief and loss regarding the absence of intimacy (physical and emotional). Silly me, I thought it was all right to say so in this thread, given its previously uncensored nature. My bad; won't happen again.

... though I'm not convinced that's a good thing. Guess it is for my family, who depend on me now more than ever-- my mom had to have knee surgery, so I basically do everything around the house, work full-time (still on nights), get the kids wherever they need to be, run all over town for groceries and appointments and so forth... you know, the full Wid Special. You wouldn't think I'd have time to brood over my pathetic state, but I'm lonely as hell. No end in sight. Hope y'all are better.

Where do I sign up?

Never forgotten. ♡

Hugs to you. I wish I knew a solution. All I know is that I'm lonely as hell and I don't understand what I have (or lack) that makes me basically invisible to other humans. On the bright side, I have two new kittens to cuddle...

Struggling today-- hopelessness, self-loathing, wondering why I'm still here. I realize that healthy, well-adjusted people don't feel this way about themselves, but I don't know how not to. I look back at my life and see so much wasted potential-- or maybe just the deluded belief that I ever had any. I try to look ahead, and there's.... nothing. Years and years of the same emptiness. I can't even blame it on widowhood-- I've reached the conclusion that it's an inherent flaw in my mechanism. When Jim was here, he gave me stability, safety, encouragement-- all the things I crave and can't provide for myself. Someone told me once, "We all have to learn to self-soothe." I'm trying, I really am... just can't manage it today.

A-fucking-men. And fuck the hospital chaplain whose father's day devotional included a pithy reference to god as "father of the fatherless and protector of widows." Yeah, whatever. Falling down on the job, as far as I can tell.

No words. All my love.

Fuck that I am lonely af and nothing I do seems to help. :-\

Deepest apologies for being late to this particular party-- I'll cop to being spectacularly unobservant; I had missed this altogether. That's not really a problem, since I don't really have anything to add, except... Let me cry. I know it's unattractive and indelicate and makes you supremely uncomfortable, but I'm generating more tears than I ever knew a person could produce, and they have to come out. Words? I have none. Intense and intractable pain? Oh, yes. I know you mean well, but patting my shoulder and telling me "It's all right" is patronizing and dismissive. I need to cry. Thank you. This is as true for me now as it was three years ago. I'm starting to leak just typing this. It's like there's a bottomless well of agony that I've managed to cap off, but the slightest little bump or knock jars it open and all that vast yawning misery overwhelms me again. In the early days I cried shamelessly around my family, my friends, my coworkers. Now I have to hide it from everyone. I duck my head, I hide behind my hair, I pretend my allergies are killing me. I lock myself in the bathroom. Anything to keep people from noticing that I'm crying again. Because I can't explain it at this point-- I don't have an excuse anymore. That particular statute of limitations has expired for me. The despair and the hopelessness... those haven't. And the tears still come.