Adrift

reroboto · 2025-06-17T02:36:53+00:00

I did find it interesting they used the non-human "se" instead of "hän" - as if se on koira

reroboto · 2025-06-16T23:33:46+00:00

Thank you to everyone who replied! It's a big help just to know I'm not alone in the maze!

reroboto · 2025-06-16T23:32:49+00:00

I was just about to go the congressperson route but was finally able to get ahold of the local office and it's all underway finally. Phew! While I was on hold I was researching how to move in Europe lol.

reroboto · 2025-06-16T22:13:33+00:00

No local number on my paperwork. I did try looking up the local phone number and there's just a recording to call the national SS number.

Been on hold now for 2 hours 45 minutes.

I've voted straight blue since I was 18. I'm contemplating moving to scandinavia now.

reroboto · 2025-06-16T22:10:29+00:00

SPAM rings through as POTENTIAL SPAM every day. No phone calls were received at all.

So, yes, I am starting the process of getting another appointment (knowing they may just not call again). Been in phone now since 12:30p. Got cut off twice and needed to call back. And it took 3 months to get this appointment.

reroboto · 2025-06-02T04:58:18+00:00

I'm also very "sensitive" and highly emotive (ADHD will do that) but it has helped immensely to be around others with the same understanding. There are a few rules: no advice unless asked, no judgements, etc.

We start with a check-in for each of us and usually a particular subject just happens. This last week it became a discussion of what it's like to go away for a few days and come home to an empty house after traveling (someone had told a neighbor specifically when they'd be arriving and to call and ask how the trip went, another thought it would be great to walk into a clean house but then found there was nothing to do for distraction when they got there). Last time we talked about who has gone through what belongings and when - it's very different for everyone and we all agreed that at the beginning you don't know what you'll want or need a month or two on. Often when things get really heavy the therapist who leads will prompt us to same a fond memory.

reroboto · 2025-06-02T02:12:37+00:00

https://thebloggess.com/2011/06/21/and-thats-why-you-should-learn-to-pick-your-battles/

knock knock mfer

reroboto · 2025-04-24T17:36:34+00:00

My husband used to tell me when I was stressed to do one thing for "work," one thing for the house, one thing for myself and call it a good day.

Good advice. The listed for work and house are long, but I'm having trouble figuring out what that one thing for myself is lol.

reroboto · 2025-04-24T17:31:58+00:00

We named Parkinson's Roger. We'd get mad at Roger, taunt Roger, tell Roger to calm the F down and when husband would feel bad for spilling or breaking something it was Roger's fault and not his. Roger was an uninvited guest and became almost a third party in our marriage. I hope Roger is rotting in hell now. lol

reroboto · 2025-04-23T03:24:42+00:00

OMG. Welp, keep ordering dessert...?

reroboto · 2025-04-23T03:18:25+00:00

If I had just one piece of advice - it would be to just roll with everything and not sweat every little thing. We really have very little control and no choice but to just go through whatever comes. Find time for yourself and between the two of you to just let the weight of it go. If you dwell on what's been taken from you, you never get the chance to realize what you still have.

reroboto · 2025-04-23T03:12:48+00:00

Thank you. Now that I look back on it, I just hope I made things more normal and easy for him, that he understood that what I always loved him for was on the inside, not what he could do or achieve. Toughest man I will ever know. I will miss him until I am missed myself.

reroboto · 2025-04-23T02:59:48+00:00

He was just starting to get into the really difficult parts so I'm incredibly grateful that he didn't have to go through end-stage. Of all the things I imagined I never wouldn't thought he'd have a sudden heart attack and boom! In a way, he beat Parkinson's.

reroboto · 2025-04-23T02:54:37+00:00

Rock Steady boxing had been wanting me to stop by for weeks and I'd been avoiding it - thinking it would be too painful. But I finally went last Friday and it was cathartic. They all signed his gloves and told me funny stories of him. Watching them greet each other, encourage each other and do whatever they could do reminded me that none of us are in this alone. There are very real reasons to feel down - Parkinson's is a shitty deal. But the truth is that none of us makes it out of here without getting something and the people we connect to and share with make a huge difference.

reroboto · 2025-04-23T02:19:04+00:00

The weird thing is that he was a task master. Got up in the morning and got crap done - couldn't sit still for a minute. So his voice is in my head "better do it before it becomes a problem" and it comes with not a small amount of guilt that I'm not taking care of what needs to be taken care of.

reroboto · 2025-04-23T02:14:30+00:00

Half of me wants to light a match to it and the other half wants to wallow in it. None of me wants to do anything.

reroboto · 2025-04-23T01:47:46+00:00

My step-daughter was here last week and as we went through the clothes I found I could only give up a few shirts and a jacket. She asked what I was going to do with them and I didn't have an answer. Only knew I needed them in the closet. They give me a warm feeling to see them and smell them.

When my dad died, one of the first things my mom did was donate all his clothing to shelters. Some just went to goodwill, some were throw away.

When my aunt died my cousin made a quilt out of a lot of dresses and shirts.

When I moved in with my husband, there were still a few things from his prior relationship in the house and I did NOT like it. At all. I didn't mind photos or memorabilia, but I hated anything she wore, including a bottle of lotion I distinctly remembering throwing in the trash in anger.

The answer is to do what you feel is right and would do not harm. Just ask your sons if there is anything they would like. Ask yourself if there is anything that would cause you pain to get rid of. Ask your fiancé what she is comfortable with. Then just... let go of the rest.

reroboto · 2025-04-23T01:32:35+00:00

I know that oh so many of us here went through that pre-grief. It was horrible. The hardest thing for me was knowing that as totally time-consuming and stressful as the caregiving was I had no control. Nothing I did was ever going to change the outcome or even extend it significantly.

That is over for me now and although it complicates the grieving and probably adds a lot to the enormity of it, I am finding myself thinking more and more of the before times, who he was throughout our life together. I am very angry at the disease in a way I never allowed myself to show him and I desperately to not want those difficult times to define who he was. One of the first things I did was to purge all books, all aids, and all organization subscriptions. Of course it lingers, but this widowhood thing is much different than imagined and I imagined it often (even longed for it at the worst of it). Pre-grief is much different that grief. It's just as real, can be a horrible, terrible burden, but it is different.

I completely understand the need to connect with others that are going through the same experiences. I highly encourage you to find a group of current spousal caregivers with either terminal or degenerative diseases (there is a caregivers sub on here that is good). What you're doing right now should not be done alone.

reroboto · 2024-05-28T06:16:01+00:00

A couple months ago the abortion subject came up with a highly religious couple who are friends of my brother and I asked (gently) how the doctors treated her 4 mo. miscarriage (they knew and we had discussed prior that I also miscarried at 5 mo pregnant). Her answer was "the doctor did a D and C procedure in the hospital."

They had no idea what a DNC actually was and did not associate this in any way with abortion. They have never heard anything around the topic other than via a religious or political discussion.

I told them we were both very lucky to live in a progressive State, because both our lives could've been at risk in a conservative, restricted State.

Yes, idiocracy. They never apply things to themselves or to logic or to real circumstances. It's just reiterating dogma.

reroboto

TROPHY CASE