Where did the magic go?

As Halloween approached this year I just couldn't get into it at all. I tried decorating but only the fall decorations made me happy...nothing Halloween at all. I couldn't figure it out. Usually Halloween is the first of the holidays each year that I actually go all out with on the decorations. Halloween came and went and that day all I wanted was for the day to be over. I had an uneasy feeling the entire day and I couldn't put my finger on it.


I was sitting here this morning catching up on some past posts when suddenly it hit me like a ton of bricks. 2 years ago on Halloween my husband was admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with diabetes. Even though he was released from the hospital a few days later and he didn't pass away until the end of February, I think that somewhere in my subconscious thoughts I have labeled that day as being the beginning of the end. The day he was diagnosed with the disease that would eventually lead to that blood clot that took him away from me.

The holiday season used to mean so much to me and I can already feel myself backing away from the idea of Thanksgiving too. I have received 4 invitations to different places for Thanksgiving and I haven't been able to accept any of them. Last year I expected to have a hard time through the holidays because they were my first without him. But this year, I thought that I would be able to let myself feel the magic again and I am disappointed to find that it seems the magic died the day Wayne did.

I got in trouble yesterday...

To preface this post, I first have to explain about something that has been going on that you aren't aware of because I haven't been blogging.  I've mentioned it in passing before, but never in great detail.  About 8 years ago I started loosing my hair.  It was only in small quantities and I didn't really notice it too much.  I knew that my hair was getting thinner, but it wasn't bad enough to bother me all that much.  Over the past 2 years this has gotten extremely worse and when pictures are taken of me now, my hair is so thin and my hairline is so far receded that it looks like I have practically no hair at all. In an effort to try and stop the hair loss process and potentially even reverse it my doctor referred me to my very first endocrinologist.  I saw her for the first time about 3 months ago and she did a bunch of tests.  I was re-diagnosed with PCOS. She changed all of my medications and wanted to immediately refer me for weight loss surgery but I talked her into giving me some more time to try to lose it on my own.  I don't have the money for the surgery and my insurance won't cover it. It was a far from pleasant experience let me tell you. Yesterday was my follow up appointment...and I haven't even started losing yet.

Yesterday I was told that I am killing myself.  I was told that in a matter of months I will be a full blown diabetic.  I was told that my risk of complications is much greater than that of others.  I was told that there is no pill that will fix my problems and unless I decide to do something about it, I will basically kill myself.

So, I guess now is about the time that I have to start pulling some of those things off of the back burner.  The problem is that I just don't know where to start.  The obvious place would be to start with the weight loss, but I don't have the foggiest clue how to do it.  It seems like I have tried everything but I can never stick to it.  I just don't have the strength or the will power to stick it out.  I don't want to do this but I can't just not do it either.  I don't want to fail again.

I'm scared.

The Back Burner

You have probably noticed that I tend to post a lot for a while and then I disappear for months at a time.  I know that this is really bad blogging etiquette but yet I still do it over and over again.  For a long time I have asked myself why I do this and the only answer I could come up with was to say that there wasn't really anything going on in my life worth writing about during those times.  I never once asked myself why I didn't have anything to write about, I just accepted it and let the blog sit there untouched until something came up that I decided was worth writing about.  That is until last week. 

I got this new digital scrapbooking software and I really wanted to try creating my own blog header.  I was working so hard on this new header when I finally asked myself why I was doing this when my blog is dormant.  Why bother?  I asked myself why it was dormant and gave myself the typical answer that there isn't anything going on in my life worth writing about.  But this time I didn't stop there; I kept asking "why?" until I got down to the root. I discovered a cycle that I tend to repeat no matter what is going on in my life.  As I face new challenges in my life I just tend to add them to the cycle.

The cycle begins with me coming to a decision that I need to "deal" with my challenges.  I list them all out and make goals for myself.  I generally start blogging at this point because I need a place to write these goals out, track them, vent, etc.  I dig down deep and really try with all my might to get through these challenges and to make some progress.  I psycho evaluate myself (yes I realize that even now this is exactly what I am doing) and tell myself all these stories about why this time it is going to be different.  Eventually the stress and emotional tole of all my issues starts to get to me and I start bundling them all up and putting them away.  The challenges don't go away I just choose not to deal with them anymore.  I "put them on the back burner" and just let them simmer.  I go into a form of hibernation where I get up, I go to work, I go home, and I go to sleep.  I don't have anything to write about because I'm IGNORING my life.  I am choosing not to deal with it.  Even if something does happen that I would normally write about I don't because the blog in and of itself is a reminder of those things that I am currently trying to ignore.  Then, eventually, something will happen which will trigger a sudden desire to pull everything out and try again.

Now that I have discovered the problem I am still not quite sure what to do about it.  I know that logically I should try just pulling out one or two of my dormant issues and deal with them completely before moving on to the next.  But, I just don't work that way.  Everything always seems so intricately bound together.  I can start just about anywhere in my list and link everything together in a giant circle.  My weight, infertility, being a widow, depression, loneliness, lack of social skills, deeply rooted insecurities, my weight...see, I told you.  I feel like I need to deal with everything as a whole but at the same time I know from 30 years of experience that working on it as a whole doesn't work.

I just don't understand

A friend said something to me last night that really made me start thinking.  It left me literally at a loss for words.  I have heard people talk about similar experiences but I was actually really surprised by my thought process as a result.

Last night we were watching a TV show about weddings and she made a comment about how if I ever got married again she would never let me wear a pink dress or a white one for that matter.  As a result our conversation kind of shifted to whether I would be open to getting married again or not (the answer to that is a whole different post).  She then made the comment that litterally left me speachless for a good time.  She said "If you do get married again it will have to be to another Mormon, because in the eyes of any other Christian you are going to hell."

Even writing about this now is bringing tears to my eyes.  Not so much tears of hurt (okay maybe a couple of those too), but mostly tears of sadness for all of the people out there who seem to think that this line of thinking is okay.  Maybe it is because I was raised in a church where I was NEVER taught this principal, but it leaves me heart broken that someone would believe this.  I can't imagine ever joining a church where it is taught that it doesn't matter how good a person is or what good deeds they do in life, they will still be sentensed to an eternity in hell just because they weren't able to filter through all of the religions out there and find the "one true church."

I just don't understand how someone can go through life and just unconditionally accept the idea that all of the good hearted people that they come into contact with will be thrown into a pit of hell, fire, and damnation just because they don't believe in one specific religion.  I don't understand how anyone would be willing to just accept this and not question it.