Life challenges you everyday. The hardest thing to do is to face it and stare right back because it can all change within a blink of an eye. This post is here simply as a pause for thought. I'm so grateful for your good thoughts and for a positive outcome. I'll be back to my normal rants and stories tomorrow. But today, I am of very few words.

In this short Life by Emily Dickinson

In this short Life
That only lasts an hour
How much — how little — is
Within our power

I'm running out of time...English gent and I are running out of time....and all I can do is just shut my eyes and fall asleep because in some demented way I think it makes time go away. But it's the worst thing---because sleep to a depressed person is like a drug. While you're gone--the hit is real nice. You're asleep and away from pain. But when you wake up and the drift has worn off--time has still passed and you've just made it far worse for yourself. I just sometimes don't know how else to cope without aching so badly...

Dear Ethers,

I woke up this morning and I wasn’t feeling good.  Not in a feverish way, but in a mental way.  The sky was heavily clotted with gray and black clouds, there was a chill in the air, and it was a Sunday (never a good day for me).  It had been a lousy weekend after hearing about the news regarding my job and I had been kept up all night ruminating about my life and wondering what I was going to do.  I had to wake up early to go see a film (the last thing I wanted to do). On little sleep, I hauled ass and went.  It was a comedy and I barely cracked a smile.  

I was supposed to make my debut at the gym and start a whole healthy routine again, but all I wanted to do was get into bed and be comforted by the warm duvet and disappear.  I was in and out of consciousness having odd dreams and the night just ticked away.  Right now my heart is racing, I feel shaky, I haven’t eaten and I don’t think I could stomach much of anything anyway.  Facing tomorrow seems frightening.  English gent’s visa is up in 20 days and if he doesn’t get his paperwork in he has to go back to England.  They were really rough with him at the border—and buying a ticket is out of the question.  We need to turn in that paperwork if he is gonna stay in the States, but neither of us know what to do—do we bolt and go back to what we know (London) or hand over $2000 we really don’t have (and might be better spent on tickets to London and a deposit on a flat)?  Do we stay in America (he can’t leave the country for 6 months) and remain miserable trapped in a country or at least a city and a living situation that is unbearable?  And, we really only have days to decide.  Remain here or, like people on speed, pick up and pack up—as well as find a flat and jobs in the UK.  

I’m in a major mess.  I am so sorry that my posts have been depressing. I’m sure you guys miss my fun entries and my nutty stories.  But I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you what was really going on in my life.  

I wish I could take all my mistakes away (all of us do)—but everything just feels overwhelmingly too late.  English gent is like a fish out of water here and hates it—so I know he will inevitably want to go back to England–so why am I wasting my precious $2000?  I had so many problems in the UK–so I’m afraid to return but also eager for my freedom and its comforts that I know so well.  But who can help me there?  If I move, my parents won’t give me a dime, I don’t know what profession will take me on……………

Look, there are no more kind, comforting comments you lovely Ethers can make.  You have been INCREDIBLY supportive.  Too generous.  Nobody likes the girl who always is sad.  Nobody likes the girl who always is crying and complaining—especially when I’m sure each of you have your own problems.  I just use this forum as a platform to spew.  This is why I lose friends a lot of the time.  They see me one way, but then the dark-side comes out and they abandon me.

I gotta get back into bed.  I really don’t feel good.  My “Wish List” will be up and running–probably a bit later than normal tomorrow.  Wish me luck…..I hope I don’t get any un-welcomed news waiting for me from my job.  I also hope that English gent and I make the right decision…we’ve made so many bad ones.  Maybe even staying together this long—a whole other mess and saga you all know very well.

Thanks for your time…………and understanding.  I won’t always be like this.  I still have 8.5 months ahead of me on this blog—let’s hope by the end, I’ll be where I need to.  That’s the point of this—it’s my journey, right?  But those clock hands keep ticking and shoving me towards the future and I have to stop believing that if I lay on them and sleep they won’t move forwards.

Dedicatedly yours, 

—One of 365

How lucky. How very lucky. This is how an aged couple should feel after years of marriage. But many are bitter. Many haven't embraced in forever. Hands have become claws that scratch at one another---they are no longer for holding.

Dear Ethers, 

My grandparents met when they were 15 and 17 years old.  They are now 93 and 95.  Imagine.  That’s a long time to be with someone.  My grandfather was extraordinarily handsome.  My grandmother, though not as pretty in the face, was extremely attractive.  They dressed beautifully, went out with the chic crowd, and enjoyed a good martini.  My grandmother was a singer and was given a brilliant offer to go to Broadway.  My grandfather, a cartoonist, was asked to go to Hollywood to work for Disney.  Both had to give up their dreams to stay with each other because they felt it was unfair to make the other choose.  Foolish if you ask me, but those were the days of gallantry I suppose. 

My grandfather opened an advertising agency where he always drew his campaigns (it kept him artsy enough)and my grandmother had 3 sons—and she never stopped humming a tune.  If you asked them in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and 60’s if they were happy with their choice of not being rich or possibly famous, they would be smitten and say yes.  But now wizened and bitter, they have hated each other for at least 30 years.  

I have never known my grandmother to have ever slept in the same room as my grandfather and my grandmother dutifully cooks and cleans, but barely utters a word to him and leaves to play bridge with her girlfriends.  They constantly bring up old memories and argue and blame one another for their downfalls.  

My grandfather took to drawing celebrities (he is an amazing artist) and getting them autographed.  He has JFK, Babe Ruth, one of the Pope’s—you name it, he’s got it.  He’s worked years to make that collection.  When my grandmother is mad she tells him to “Go downstairs and trace something.”  And when he gets mad at her, he tells her that she’s never done a damned thing with her life.  I think he forgets that she ran his business (was his accountant) and raised his 3 boys.  

The irony is they look 20 years younger than they are and are (knock wood) in perfect health.  They drive, they live in their same house (no assisted living)—my grandfather plays rounds of golf on the weekends.    It’s like they are trying as hard as they can to beat the other one out from dying. Do you know how many widows would kill to have their husbands back from the dead and to be able to live their very last day with their partner?  Nope.  These two are so ungrateful.

When I asked my grandmother why she never divorced him, she said she felt it was too late.  Too late to leave and she felt too sorry for him.  He wouldn’t survive without her.   But I think she wouldn’t survive without him.  I don’t think she CAN remember life without him in it. 

They have never been warm and fuzzy people.  They’ve always been sharp, smart, kind but not empathetic.  I know they love me, but they are critical, never gave me gifts and when I stayed with them, were always trying to “improve” me.  I love them with all of my heart, but they always scare me.  They remind me of what could happen when love goes wrong.  When you stay with the wrong person and it becomes “too late.”  I think you become hardened, angry, critical, and your body can’t accept a hug because it hasn’t felt one in so long it’s forgotten the motion. 

I don’t know how much time I have left with them.  They live in Massachusetts and I see them maybe twice a year.  I smile when my grandmother tells me she loves “Sex and the City” or when my grandfather tells me he enjoys playing on the internet.  Can you imagine what these people have seen in their lifetime?  But, I’m afraid they can’t appreciate any of it.  All they can see is red.  Red for stealing each other’s lives.  They really are old dog’s that can’t be taught new tricks.  All that’s on their minds is what could have been. 

I look at English gent.  He has a beautiful face.  So did my grandfather.  I met him when he was a teenager.  So did my grandmother.  We gave up a lot to be together.  So did they.  And we aren’t even 60 and we already are seeing red.  I don’t want to see my hands, like my grandmother’s, filled with hose like veins sticking up from her flesh, clenching her fists while her diamond wedding ring glints in the light, furious. I don’t want to live with a man who is my roommate but also my gatekeeper from any other life. But, just like my grandmother, I can’t imagine life without him.  

Sometimes I see them, arms linked, walking down the street.   They have the same gait.  She’s speaking into his ear and he’s nodding.  And I know that they’d be dead long ago without each other.  Maybe it is the competitive fight that keeps them alive—but there is a lot of love and history too.  I wonder what my grandmother would have looked like on Broadway?  Her stage name was “Ethel Evans.”  And my grandfather?  What wonderful drawings he might have made with those talented hands.  But, then I wouldn’t be here to tell this tale.  For me, it worked out.  But for them—sometimes I wish they had parted ways and had their chance in the limelight instead of sitting in the dark grinding their teeth with anger.  I wonder who will go first—and whoever does, I know the other will, somewhere in their heart (as devastated as they will be) feel that once again, their show was stolen from them except this time they’ll have no one to be angry at any longer.

Dedicatedly yours,

—One of 365