A typical fall day, grey and cold.

Hi Elizabeth,

You may have been pointing out that's not a sentence or more likely that's exactly the sort of thing you hang in front of what you're actually saying so the person has some context and doesn't have to guess which universe you're in when you just say the thing you're saying.

It was a typical late fall day, cold and grey, when I ate my sandwich. Somehow that adds meaning to eating the sandwich which it doesn't of course just as you might say it was a typical fall day, cold and grey when I was sad and lonely. If you snuck both sentences into a couple of paragraphs some percent of readers would suppose you were also sad and lonely when you ate your sandwich.

It was a typical fall day, grey and cold when I went woolly mammoth hunting which I didn't but some poor schmuck did and if I want to be grateful about something that's one place to start. Here's a stick. Go kill an elephant. For the tribe. Oh yah. Generation after generation did that so I could have central heating and I hoist my Arabian blend dark roast to all of you. Gaze your eyes on me the fruit of your labors. Oh yah. Makes the tears well up, doesn't it?

Thank you Elizabeth. I am having a nightmare day. I moved to a new PC a month ago and this morning it couldn't come up, couldn't diagnose, couldn't restore, and all this on a day when I absolutely had to get on the PC. So I switched to my old PC which has worked for five years without a hitch and it wouldn't come up or communicate with the screen. So I reset the new computer to come up clean having wiped all my files and finally that worked but now nothing else does. I've been restoring one program after another looking through my notes of old passwords and it has been a continuous nightmare right up until I wanted to sign on here to reply to you and couldn't remember that password either and never wrote it down. Finally I figured it out.

I have a long way to go and this beast hasn't updated to windows 8.1 yet. It's still in that dog's breakfast mode of 8.0. My email is on a favorite's tab for god's sake and I can't make out the blurry code thing I'm supposed to enter for my steam account. Four hours now of constant slogging and I've been in quite a state especially when I couldn't get the old one up where I'm storming around the house wondering if anything else wants to go wrong so loudly the cats ran away. The odds of that are astronomical.

We all know how thin we get stretched at times and everything going wrong today has brought that home where I'm just hanging on right now. Dianne is eating but it's not good and all these things have really got a hold of us each in our own ways. My ways are no less painful and ultimately not that different from anyone else's because the raw truth is that my world is shattered by the amount of pain I've absorbed these last eight years mainly from Dianne but also from what so many around us did. I have taken steps to resolve much of it but my willingness to freely trust while I invest emotion has been badly damaged. I know that because of the almost absurd concerns about what I may have said or done with nothing to trigger thoughts like that; offset by my sketching out what I could or couldn't do about it along with simultaneous thoughts that I may shut it off. None of that to the extent I do it, is normal.

In some ways I am my abused cat where the hurts came from other cats and so now you feel isolated from cats which is what you're supposed to be about. In all honesty my survival mannerisms have become greatly more polished but underneath I'm hoping to find some things I can emotionally invest in where those emotions plug into the kind of emotions I used to feel without the security team and armor. That's not the truth right now. Oh how I wish it were.

Well you sound so upbeat Wolf. Yes. I've learned to cope better. I really do kick out guilt when I see it. I feel both more balanced and more like myself. Those are good things and I appreciate them especially since I feel I worked hard for them. But I've known for well over a year for certain and always suspected that coming back from the things we survive is the really hard slogging. Even identifying that much less measuring it is so ethereal and wispy, it is extremely hard to articulate with any accuracy.

I'm not in a place that can tell. I would need perspective and I'm inside the thing. I don't want to believe that emotionally because we really do get badly beaten up and I want solace. I have to drive that intellectually by always reminding myself. This morning's four hour stress overload really was a nightmare and isn't over, but I won't be giving up anytime soon. Not because of any qualities. I just don't give up. I know because I was banging on the door of suicide sobbing that I had to get out and the answer was no, so it's just that it's the only way to go.

And I have this sanguine, analytical thing I do with occasional jaunt but the real truth is to believe and feel, and it's one more funny quirk to life that feeling good again is harder than enduring the bad that took it away.

Myrtle, we took the cat from the shelter that had been abused. I don't know who did what but it wasn't physical. She has been an eight year project and is one of two things that has happened during this awful time that has been good. She is having much more fun and is far more relaxed. I'm sure we could all benefit from the same treatment which is walking on egg shells while always pampering and nudging the edge. Many of my friends have rarely seen her because she always hides but she's right here now wanting a pat and jumps up on the table to get one if I don't pay enough attention. In the last six months I've taught her to speak and she now enjoys conversations. There, she just squeaked back.

That's true about how much we get hurt by friends and family. I know that and have deep scars to prove it a lot of which I talked about on this board. The thing is I also know now the day comes where if you want to get on with your life and feel semi human again, we're going to have to let as much of that go as we can. I know it's hard but it actually frees our chains not theirs. I know that because numerous players used to absolutely prey on my mind and they don't anymore. I can get a good head of steam up if I want to because I'm not stupid and remember all of it. But I am honestly making peace with myself and frankly my life is richer with them in it than the big empty I already have and don't like that much.

I don't give up. I can be beaten or killed and I can fall down and weep for myself like a little girl. I have no fear of either showing how weak I am or how strong because for me these moments are all real and part of it. Even typing this which is a lot like all of us talking to each other.

You want to know what was hard these last year? This board. I lost what I had and I miss it deeply. Hey, I miss Frank and PrisR and MoorsB and Carol and all kinds of people that were this board when my shipwreck hit the beach. I'm running out of things so fast my head spins at times. It isn't that there's anything wrong. It's just that I don't want change. There's a little boy inside here who doesn't want to touch any more hot stoves and doesn't want something else to turn on me just because I'm breathing. And I thought I was taking up too much air time. It was only when I realized it wasn't like that for me. I appreciated everything because it was in my world even the poop queen and then when we had accidents I got through it. People can pick what they want to read about and sometimes something is better than nothing.

At any rate, I'm off to one of the places I belong these days. It's full of wonderous things which are just as real as anything else. Someone will start the December thread although I'll come around later to check. I'm off to the lodge. I have a room there right into next year.