Ayn's Multiple World

Not that Coast is clear ... just safer

Good morning. This is us. Things seem to be slowing down a little though things are still somewhat discombobulated. We need to discuss for a moment the situation with Rich’s daughter. She and Rich talked a bit last night and from what Rich says … she had found the stuff over at Obesity Help.

Hmm, we were just over there again and we erased what was left over there. We had erased the blog part from when we’d figured out that might be where Jillian was getting the information. But, we’d forgotten about the pictures part. We might have gotten one set erased before, but we’d forgotten the second set. We skimmed over the comments under the pictures this time. I felt bad that they had to go, but I know that it wouldn’t be a good thing to have them up where they could be shown about.

I felt bad though in that they’d done such a good representative job of kinda showing things about who we are. Being over at OH.com was a part of our life we’d gone through, but we didn’t want to confuse the issues more than was necessary. We were pretty sure Jillian would have a hard time not showing them to her mother. As it is we know that she’s done a lot of printing from the site, so she might have that set of pictures anyway. If so then it will be done as it is. Nothing to stop that.

Reading over the comments to the pictures, there is nothing that I’m embarrassed about. They had explained a good part of my life and how we think of ourselves pretty well. I wish I would have read the blog part a little better before having erased all that to have gotten a perspective of what she’d been reading. But, I still believe in there being a God and that things usually work out for the better if there is patience enough.

Rich talked to Jillian last night and from what he said it was the OH.com site that gave her those couple hundred pages she printed. I was very relieved that she hadn’t found the big blog, though I know that some day in her and our future … she’ll have access to all that was written here. The reason my life has been as secretive as it is is because I don’t want to upset Rich and how he’s chosen to take care of his family. I know that he loves them dearly and would do about anything to save them harm.

Why he ended up with me … it’s hard to tell. We asked him last night why he puts up with us, because we are so much trouble. He said something about long ago he’d figured out we were pretty ok. Yes, yes … he’s a mushmellow!

Mmm … just got done with a 10-12 minute petting of Missy – I know when she needs extra support, because she will do that piranha thing going from one side of me to the other while meowing. I find if I just put my coffee cup aside and tap on the table to invite her up, that she will hop up, pace a little then let me pet her for a short while as she is purring madly. Hehehe we’ll just call her super kitty!
Eventually, though I need to type or get some fresh coffee or some such nonsense.

*Sigh* Sometimes like this we almost fall asleep with her she gets us so relaxed.

*Double Sigh*

Not sure where we left off … but as to Rich’s daughter and the OH.com blog … well I think most of that is gone now. It was a little sad because it had been like our calling card.

We had figured out a way to back up our main blog – both parts yesterday. It took us all afternoon to do it. It was pretty painstaking, but not as bad as it had been while editing in that we didn’t have to read it all while doing it. I left it on my work computer, but today I’ll have to get it over to my flash drive and then to the home computer … and when the new computer comes in we will back it up there too. I don’t really know how much space we have on the flash drive – I know we erased some stuff not sure how much though.

We kept track of how many pages there were as we were copying/pasting over to Word.

Most of it was done month to month, but the older AMW was copied over and fixed per year. In total for that writing effort it had been 4,555 pages long. That’s a lot of writing. You might imagine then how crazy we’d gotten when we thought that Jillian could have had a means of erasing it. That’s like 10 books!

It was a lot of work not to have backed up. So maybe the circumstance of needing to figure out a way will be beneficial to us in the long run.

We still didn’t get the whole of it backed up in that we just got a couple of the smaller blogs backed-up. There didn’t seem to be an efficient way to be doing that because it wasn’t copy/pasting correctly. I’m not sure what was happening with that, but given time we’ll try to finish that all up today as well. It had gotten though to the point that we were backing up just one entry at a time and that particular journal was 454 entries long. It was taking then TOO long. Hopefully we’ll come up with something.

I can’t believe we’ve written 4,555 pages on Ayn’s Multiple World. And that’s that little a number because the pictures didn’t transfer over from the old AOL journal.

Let’s see that’s then like over 2 pages per day every day for the last 6 years.

That’s pretty something I would think!

The process and result enabled us to get past our fears not only of someone erasing our work, but as well in putting things in proportion. If she had copied a couple hundred pages like she stated, that would mean she’d only had access to less than 5% of our work. It’s still substantial, but left us with some privacy for the time being.

Like we had said Rich had talked to her last night. He said afterward that she’s curious about the multiplicity and had said she’d watched Sybil and wanted to know if it was anything like that. Of course Rich had to say no. EVERYone has seen Sybil and uses it as the basis for comparison. I’m pretty used to it by now and think it’s kinda funny.

Rich said also that she thought we write very well and that she’d read the whole thing so probably knows more about me than Rich … well, I’m not sure which of them made that statement, but certainly one of the two. Man! We’re the ones that wrote 4555 pages and even WE don’t understand us!

Rich and his daughter are making some kind of compromise and we complained a bit because while those two were working out my life, they were neglecting that I might have something to do with it. Jillian is saying that her mother wants three things. First to make sure her family money didn’t go over to us, second that my children aren’t Rich’s and third wants straight information on how long Rich and I’ve been together – with some side information that states he is living with us.

Some of that might seem somewhat reasonable … but, it still means a breach of my privacy. Rich is saying that he can arrange all that without asking me first or assuming that I’d want all that information out to her. Why would I want her to know what I spend my money on?

We talked to both Joe and Maury last night and we’d mentioned it to Thom too when we had IM’d with him yesterday. All three boys know that their paternity is being questioned by her as well as the boys father knowing about it. I still think this is bordering on crazy. That was one of Jillian’s things is to appreciate that through the writing that we’d only gotten together with Rich in October of 1994.

She’s still questioning the part that this has been happening since she was about 13 years old.

I can’t do anything about that. I do know that during those years Rich thought it better for his family that they didn’t know of the relationship and that he was going to raise them with the mother the best he could. I think they discussed whether or not that was a good idea, but in general the past is past.

Some of the pictures viewed over on the OH.com site showed some inside our house views. It had shown where the computer was, the arrangement of the living room, and the balcony. Jillian seemed surprised that she could see so much into her Dad’s life and I think that was actually good for her. She’s asked so many times to understand his living situation better. It probably helps her with mental images of knowing that her father is ok. I’m glad for her on that part. But, I think that’s more relevant to her than possibly her brothers.

Rich said he was going to talk to Chris by the weekend of a few things like how long we’d been together and him living with us. That’s probably a healthy set of things to tell him.

I’m not sure what a raucous it is going to involve. Almost nearly everything the wife takes as a personal affront on her. She like begs for information and then when she gets it she’s too overwhelmed and needs lots of extra support. I guess that’s not too much different from us though.

Yesterday we were on the phone with Dr. Marvin several times due to the suicidality. We’re still not sure why it happens, but know that it’s in part due to our being overwhelmed and not having more concrete patterns for handling things. He said thought that we handled it better yesterday than we’d handled it in the past and that we’d really gotten much further into our trust of the situation being only temporary.

He was trying to advocate that we should be mad at Jillian for the invasion of privacy. We couldn’t get mad at her because we saw her doing something we’d do the same our self if given the opportunity. But, Dr. Marvin was saying that we were blaming ourselves and taking it out on ourselves self-destructively. That can’t be a real good idea. He encouraged that we continue to write about it as our adult avenue of responsibility in handling the situation. So, of course here we are … as in all those other days.

We still have to view things as if Jillian or her brothers or mother was reading this journal right this moment. That’s still a little overwhelming. Yesterday for the first time we addressed Jillian in the work. If I were to do the same here I’d want her to know that we don’t mean her or her family any ill will.

I guess to explain my side of how things have turned out these last more than a dozen years, would be to say that Rich and us have had an understanding all this time that I wouldn’t interfere with his life independent of me, nor him me – with special concern over the families.

I think if you’d read back far enough ago, you would know that my boys had learned of the situation from me about a dozen years ago. This was because my relationship with them is more open – most likely because we weren’t in the same situation of Rich as being married. For us telling the boys came 4 years into the relationship had begun. The final divorce had been put through after over 3 years of separation.

We’d seen Rich only on the nights that they were with their father. There were a lot of differences back then that we won’t go into now again, but the main thing is I handled things with my boys and he handled things with his kids each as we wanted for our own families. I gave that much privacy to Rich … because I believe he knew more about raising his own family than I did. This is not to say I always agreed with him. Some things like the homosexuality were a lot harder for him to relate to than it had been me. I think we also each had a helpful perspective of family life in general from having been one step removed, but always the decisions on what and when things were to happen each rested with ourselves for our own families.

So anyway … that’s about it for the morning. I’m grateful for another day of being here and we’re hoping this last bunch of self-destructive thinking can be put to rest. I don’t think we’ve changed much in that we’re still coping badly with some of our bigger problems, but at least now we’re much more conscious of what’s happening and we have our help in line. I’m grateful for the time that Dr. Marvin gave us today and hoping we can give him a short note today … just saying that we are ok and that we’ll talk about what happened on Thursday. That would be a good place to be, right?

posted by Ann Marie @ 3/24/2009 07:01:00 AM Comments: 0