Ayn's Multiple World

Ok, this is a little forward, right?

Good morning this is me again. I’m sorry if me again hasn’t been here as much as I should be. In one respect I think that things build up and then I have to spend extra time, but since I can remember so little it’s not extra time at all. It’s more like a vacuum of time.

It’s about 9:45 am and I’m at work right now. I was just up front on a few errands and had to stop by to correct one of my clients whose behavior problems landed her in Sr.’s office already this morning. I spent a good part of the morning with her yesterday as well. I can’t go into the details, but there’s no doubt we will stick with her until we see a change in behavior that people can live with. Rules are – you can’t hurt yourself and you can’t hurt others. If you violate those principles you have to deal with staff. *Sigh*

We’ll go up in 15 minutes to see how she is doing. She was give 5 things she’s done wrong in the last couple of hours. She has to remember them and hopefully draw a picture representing those things. We’ll see. If she’s come also under the thumb of Sr. Theresa no doubt the client will be in for a long day.

Ok, let that go.

JuDee just sent a picture of a truck that is all decorated and detailed with pictures of heroes and we sent it on to Nathan through CS. He does truck and trailer detailing so we thought he might appreciate the work of someone else. Maybe he’s seen it already, but just in case.

We’re going to try to get back to work in not too long like we did the other day.

I’m not sure though if that day the writing had gotten to the blog. Pretty haphazard I’m afraid. You’ve heard this drill before. Somewhere between Facebook and the Pirates, I’m getting lost. That’s not such a good thing. I am going to have to get more orientated back to work and writing, but as a I say that I wonder … how are my Farm plants and trees doing? Yup, yup also on Facebook. They opened up the doors too so that you can have more neighbors. That seemed like a real good idea. We took for neighbors only people who were actively playing the game and had progressed some.

Ok, now it’s 11:20 am. Might as well not have mentioned the farm – we had to accept the gifts from people because they were stacking up. We had 36 of them waiting at facebook and 95 of them waiting at the farm. We still now have about 85 left, but we took the animals out and placed them in their pens – as you can imagine the rest of the gifts are various trees.

We finally got to level 15 so we were able to buy more land. We just planted potatoes and watermelon on the two sides where they added on to our plot. This puts the part with the farm animals into the farm a bit, but that’s ok. Everything is up for grabs the next time I go in. I’m not sure what we’re going to do next. It’s off-centered and some of the trees are hard to harvest so I’m going to need putting some walking space between them.

It’s never predictable what kinds of stuff you are going to be gifted, so it’s hard to plan on how to plant the little fruit forest. If you are not planting trees close and to the back or sides of the farm then they cover over good planting areas. I think that’s one of the purposes. Trees don’t pull in as much as plants so you want to have space left over for them to pull in any kind of income worth having.

Ann. Why are we thinking of the farms when there is work to be had. Hmm? Girl … this is a bit sad. I know. So you don’t want to talk about stuff like that? Ok, well I’m not really saying that directly, but we do have stuff to be getting done. Hmm? I know, but I don’t want to do that stuff. SHHH… let’s not even go there.

Why don’t we make it a process to get past something to be going somewhere? If you want you can add pictures from yesterday in later … Because all the pictures have been going to Facebook and not to the blog. Have you noticed that?

Hmm, while we are here … why don’t we try clearing up a few things? There are a couple things about family that I especially want to get noted.

Rich came home last night and as he often does – he’s riled up by the time he walks in the door. He had just seen his daughter, so I suppose I could have guessed that much. The only thing I heard about the visit was that she reading me on Twitter.

She’s still doing searches to find things about me. Rich pointed out two things she now knew. First was what Bob ate the other night out – but actually that was a partial truth. I didn’t put down what he ate, I just put down that we’d gone out.

The second thing was that I like peanut butter on torillas. Well as you can imagine none of these things could really hurt anyone, but she’s using them as an excuse to her father that I’m dragging his name all over the Internet.

She had done this before with the Gastric Bypass site, so I should have expected I suppose that she’d continue to look. I really hope she’s got some better things to do because I’m not of that great of interest, but obviously I am of interest – most likely because I’m new and because Rich won’t talk about me. She’s searching for anything which could be informative.

There’s something that I haven’t gone to Rich about yet because its still new to my thoughts, but I’m wondering if this is going to be a pattern that Jillian spends valuable time trying to warn her father that there is something wrong with who I am or what I do.

That part hadn’t occurred to me before – that she might be protective and think of me so negatively that I become some kind of threat or danger she must ward off. In general, I don’t know how girls in general think about their fathers. I didn’t have a good relationship with my father, but I knew I entertained thoughts of “the other woman” who was interested in him – Sandy and how they were getting along.

Most often I thought of Sandy as someone I hoped wouldn’t leave my father, because if she were gone, I might expect to need taking care of him myself. I don’t think Jillian has that kind of relationship with her father directly, in that it can be long periods of time between her checking up on him and it seems that most of the business between them is “checking in” on other family members and very little of it is about what Rich is actually doing.

She might now about Rich going fishing with or without Bob – or that the boat was purchased or that her father had gotten out to do cards or golf. She might know he’s doing a game or had a hard day at the office, but she has just a little idea I think of what all that is about. I don’t think that Rich explains much of his work with the kids or much about fishing except for the fact that he does it. I don’t think the kids really want to know much about the ins and outs of the father’s life.

Most often over the years the kids will connect through, but more than anything I think they bring their problems – especially monetary to Rich. Other than that – I think they check in with each other in general and when talking to one, they are generally asking questions of the other. Somehow I think if you can hear what someone is doing or thinking than your world is more organized as you slip the assorted details into place.

I can see this when thinking of Jillian, but I have to admit that I’m probably not much different. After Rich gets home from visiting family, friends, work, or and an event, I am also asking for information so that I can sort it and put it into my “Ann’s” place.

I think this is why sometimes I get to the point of not talking to people very much. It’s just a matter of sorting information. I know that new thoughts or feelings can also arise, and those feelings of joy and pleasure make it worth while to grasp the meanings various people hold.

But, somehow the word testify comes to mind. I use the term lightly because I very rarely use the word. But, in this general way – we are testifying about the life of others. When someone has information on another, then they feel like somehow they’ve captured a bit of its essence. This wouldn’t be very different for when we do tasks or events. If I travel to Mt. Rushmore, then I hold it somewhere in my head a set of explanations to justify my thought processes of the event or location, or perhaps the people that I met on the way or in getting there. More visits I would like to think would make me become a more rounded human being capable of seeing past a very small internal world.

Some of this is what I enjoy about watching the news. When I watch CNN – incessantly I am taking in the world at it’s farthest reaches of general news coverage. It’s not quite like tuning into public broadcasting or the Nat Geo stations, but its something like that. If I were more interested in the World through Federation Wrestling, baseball, foods, or basket weaving, I would devote more of my time to all that.

Mostly though I think I’m into trying to explain to myselves what is happening as I make small contacts in the world and at that … I have to make very small contacts, because I tend to get overwhelmed.

It seems for a length of time we’ve been trying to process the difficulties Rich’s family present. This is in one respect through Jillian and her curiosity – we’d like to not think she’s vehement; Chris through his anger and frustration, Jon through withdrawal or the mother through her charges and upsets.

One of the things that happened yesterday to Rich was that he went to the courthouse for the first time in over two years to see what was going on with his trial. As expected the attorney asked to be dropped from the case and this was granted by the judge. Rich was surprised I think in that he wasn’t able to speak at all to the judge. We’d told him this beforehand, but he was still in a mindset that of course someone would listen.

I don’t know what he thought directly of being that put-off. He did seem to speak up at least once in what he calls defending the wife. He questioned why he continues to do that regardless of what she’s hitting him with. He basically explained that although the judge wanted to progress the case in 3 weeks – his wife was going to be out of town for 4 weeks.

He seemed to think that the other attorney was appreciative of this so that he didn’t have to break a court date when she was found not to be home.

I am not clear as to what next has to happen. I think basically, that Rich needs to receive from the wife’s attorney their counter-proposal and then he has to say fine … then let’s have it settled. I think he asked the attorney and the attorney had to ask the wife if it was ok that he mediate the situation – I have a sense of this being ok with the lawyer mostly because Rich seemed to indicate that he’d pay both attorneys fees just to make this all go away.

Also added to that was that both men though the wife was still lost in lala land as to my kids paternity. I don’t know why she keeps doing this.

After Rich told me about the Twitter account and his daughter, I went back to make sure that it was ok. I had erased most of it it turned out, but not all of it. I had given a Readers’ Digest version of my life including critical junctures which included Rich coming into my life.

After looking at that I decided as I must have the last time – that I was going to leave it up for Jillian and her mother. I know that if Jillian knows most like the mother is soon to follow. To some tired extent of the situation it is a choice I am making though I know that it isn’t Rich’s choice. But, there has to be some point of me putting my foot down and in saying enough’s enough. One day I will tell the world of me – MAYBE … so I might as well start here.

Maybe its not overly traditional, but neither am I. I think I’ll jog over there and get a copy of what I wrote. It struck me last night as kind of complainy and a bit chopped up, but it gets the general stuff down. I guess in one respect I’d rather have her read and understand where Rich comes into my life rather than to put my boys through the idiot testing which would make it feel like she has more control over my sons than I do. I know if this becomes an inevitability I’m going to need getting over it, but I think I’ll save a little room for being pissed off in the boys defense.

Ok, hold on … for better or worse might as well include a copy of the material in question now. You could figure that Rich wouldn’t be overly pleased, but I figure this is about me and my life and as indicated throughout our life I have severe problems in not wanting to dissociate any more of my life than is necessary. Rich let it slip again last night his intent and he knew I caught him up with it, but it was too late to take back.

Basically, he’s setting up me being in hiding from his family for an additional 10 years or more. I just remembered complaining loudly – you WANT me to be INVISABLE FOR TEN MORE YEARS?!!!

I’m REALLY against that thought.

I’m a writer person who wants to be heard.

OK anyway here’s the Readers Digest

Readers' Digest Version

I was born in Minneapolis, MN on Wednesday, July 18, 1959. I am now 48 years old. My mother was 18 years old and I was her second child. My sister soon followed. I was born on a hot, uncomfortable day and they had trouble crossing town because of a parade that is held every year in Minneapolis. My first house was a small two-flat. We lived on the second floor and when I was about 1 ½ years old, my brother about 3-4 years old fell out of the porch window. After that we moved to the NE suburb of Blaine, which was about 17 miles away. It was a new development and everyone had dirt in their yard. We were one of the first four families to move in on the block and had one of the only four 2 story houses. All the other places were ranch homes.

I was abused as a child. My grandfather sexually abused me, my mother and father physically abused me and the family in its entirety was psychology, emotionally, and spiritually destructive. It was very bad.

That being said, you might guess that I have some issues. Our first suicidal attempt took place when we were about 11 years old. We received some help with that through a counselor, but we got through most of it by paying attention to what was going on in school and in scouting. Although, our early years we struggled trying to keep caught up, by the time we got to high school we came out of the fog and decided to try applying ourselves to school seriously – most likely for positive attention. We received mostly straight “As” and was in band, doing office work, and participating in volleyball, cross country skiing, and softball. We were captain of the team in two of the sports. We lived for doing well for the coaches where we couldn’t do well in our family. We were still getting hit and kicked there at 17 years of age.

By the end of my senior year something amazing happened. First, my father was hospitalized for being depressed and suicidal, and then after that my mother and father decided to get a divorce. My brother was away at school, so there was a meeting with my mother, father, sister and myself. Our parents gave the two of us a choice of which we would be living with … my sister bawled. It was one of those times in life you know you are setting precedent for the rest of your life. I saw three things … my father was stating a new view on life, where he admitted errors in bringing us up, he was on the road 3 ½ days a week, and I didn’t like the thought of moving in with my mother’s new boyfriend. So that being said, we stayed with my father and since he had my sister and us, we got the house.

That didn’t last long, because by fall of that year, I was going to be attending college in Winona, MN 2 ½ hours south of the city. It was the most beautiful campus I ever saw, was small, and they seemed to want me. There was a lot of work in between. My father had told us my senior year that he didn’t have a penny to go toward school, but the good news was that I should be able to get a loan, because he was very poor. Was like ok. That’s not really fair, but he also said that from that point on, we would be on our own, and it wasn’t as if he had anything to say about my future, my grades, or my nothing. That was excellent incentive to be moving on. I couldn’t stand the house, my family, or anything that had happened.

I can’t say at that point I really understood the abuse. I had blocked out a lot of the sexual stuff, but not the overtones, made at every family gathering. The abuse with my grandfather had stopped one Christmas when he reached around to grab my breast and I knocked him down. Well, not really that way, but close. I swung around at him, and because he was drunk, it didn’t take much to topple him. That was enough of all that. He apologized on his death bed. Hmm, that happened when I was 17 too. It was a big year.

I met the Christian brothers before I started my actual classes at the St. Mary’s University of Minnesota. There were 3 … one was Brother Julius, Brother Jerome, and BJ for Brother John. I was in the human development program that Brother Julius taught, and I knew the other two through cross country skiing. It was a small school and the recruiter had told them about me. The brothers had groomed a trail through the bluffs around the school and they invited me to ski with them the Birkebeiner. Believe me … it’s a very long race.

I met my future husband a couple months into my freshman year. He was a senior who had taken a good handful of psychology classes. I was on the volleyball team and had met him through some of the other players who were doing intramurals. Patty had gotten me out to a basketball game with him and had said, Maury … you will like Ann, she asks lots of questions, and then turned to me and said, Ann … you will like Maury, he has all the answers. We were pretty much swept off our feet. We’d had a light romance our senior year, but it wasn’t like this. This was much more. We met in October, and by about December we were umm “messin around.”

We had talked and because of his Catholic background and me not knowing about anything serious in that nature … we tried to hold back and I never used contraception or birth control. This worked for about 3 years. For my junior year, Maury went north 6 hours to do an internship, and we decided to go to Norway because we could. My “good” grandmother was Norwegian and it was a sense of connecting – doing something important all on my own. When we got back though and he’d come down for a big intramural game, we were umm together, and got pregnant.

We were married at about 5 month’s pregnancy – June of 1980. My son Maury was born in November, 1980, my second son was born April 1982, and my third son was born February 1984. Umm, then we had our tubes tided. It had been ok though, because during school I was taking courses in Human development, and I thought this was a natural pause in developing some humans. Eh, it was “our line.” We lived near his parents in Chicago and Oak Park. There were many stories there. Mostly though, he was a Victorian House Painter, we helped him with the business, and we bought and sold houses that we’d live in, fix-up, and then sell.

We lived in two Oak Park houses and two Elgin houses and had 3 apartment buildings before we divorced. I can’t tell you all the reasons why … I remember that was about the time we were really going crazy and his mother was pushing him to get out of the marriage. He had also been going out without my knowledge and fallen for another woman. They moved in-together in a house bought also without my knowledge before the divorce was final.

How crazy was I - pretty crazy. When Maury Pat was 4 years old I had been angry for the two older kids for trashing their bedroom, and I picked him up and shook him. I went downstairs and was so distraught by my behavior I opened the yellow pages and called a counselor. I started sessions immediately and have never stopped since.

Another was added later who could do medications. At first they thought that I was bi-polar and depressed. I loved my kids like the dickens and was protective of them, but our energy seemed often zapped. It was better about the time of moving into the big 18 room Victorian in Elgin, because I’d gotten involved in the Boys schools and education. But, with the marriage I was being stressed because of the amount of time he was out of the house.

In 1990 I ended up in the hospital on the mental ward. I had scheduled ourselves to go back to finish school, but was going up against my husband a lot. I just remember there was a lot of anger. After about 7 weeks in the hospital, the insurance money had worn off. Money from extra apartments we’d owned were quit deeded over to other family members and my husband put me on disability with the state. The hospital said I couldn’t stay without insurance, and she said I think you are still suicidal and my best bet would be that you get out of the house by going to school. So, I left. But, things didn’t get better. I was hospitalized while at school in the hospital in Winona, and then again after my husband told me that if I went back to school he’d make sure there was a divorce, I would never see my kids, and the doors to the house would be locked.

That was the thing keeping me in the marriage. I couldn’t see how I could get out with my kids … I had no means to support them. I was afraid of my husband and he had told me and the doctors that he had wanted to kill me. I couldn’t and never did understand why. I’d never hurt my kids after that first time. I was a doting mother, and I had been his best friend.

Things got really crazy the second time hospitalized in Winona. I was put in a locked room with only a mattress. The only visitors were the two brothers Jerome and BJ. BJ brought me my slippers to protect my feet. When they visited they sat near the cold floor with me. The hospital didn’t know what to do with me. We were strange and we were suicidal. A favored brother-in-law was egged on by my sister-in-law to come up and get me. If he hadn’t come up they were going to release me to the State insane asylum. The promise he made them was that I be brought immediately to another psych ward in Chicago. He found the University of Illinois because they were reputed to be good and they accepted the Medicaid and Medicare funding I was on now.

That stay was 2 months long. They had made a new diagnosis of me after meeting in a very large room with about 30 staff present. Dr. Philip Woollcott had presided and I found out from one of the male nurses I’d started relating to that I had depression and I had chronic suicidality, and I had dissociative identity disorder.

I asked Joe the nurse what that was and he said I had multiple personality disorder. He helped me piece together some of my behavior changes. I think I’d seen Sybil, but at that time I had no real knowledge that I could be like that and be given that kind of a psychiatric title. I could handle depression – hell almost everyone has that, right? But, MPD … that was different.

The hospital was going to release me under the care of Dr. Woollcott, who I would initially see three times a week, but the condition was that I couldn’t move back in with my husband. It was decided financially the only way to do it was to move into one of the lower floor apartments on our Victorian. So my husband lived upstairs, and the kids slept up there, but would go back and forth from one household to another. For the second time in my marriage I got a job. I was a cashier at a large hardware store. That lasted, and my marriage lasted for 1 ½ years. We did the marriage counseling thing, but he’d started going to AA meetings and that’s where he met his future wife. The divorce took about 2 ½ years to finalize … I ended up with the house, which was enough to put money down on another and enough to pay for the divorce lawyer. He was crooked and took from us $18,000.

Much to the Judges dismay, Maury finally gave up the custody battle and let me have the three boys. That lasted for 3 years. I had tried to be a court reporter, and had ended up under the guidance of the state. When the court reporting didn’t work, they decided to put me in a program in Chicago – JVS. I was pretty high level, but their highest level was to teach people computers so we could become a secretary. I learned how to do word processing and was assisting the staff when I got the calling for my first REAL job. The same agency had needed someone to do payroll for the workshop portion of the program. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. I was recommended to Rich by Sean, who got the recommendation through Dianne the typing instructor.

It was a bit hairy at times, but it seemed to be working for the most part. I would catch the metra 2 blocks away from my new place with the boys, and get out at Union Station and only have to walk two blocks to the JVS I was stationed at. I worked the full 6 months that my part-time status would allow, but they didn’t want to lose me. So, they gave me the title of shipping and receiving clerk. It was more money and it was full time. That was a pretty big deal. There was something else that had happened. Rich and us fell into a relationship by the end of October that year, 1994. He was my boss and had seen me affronted by several other male relations. I think he felt protective of me, but was also interested in me because of my intelligence, which was something I didn't believe in at the time. The thing with Rich was that he was married. He told me that I wasn’t to worry about that part, that that was his part. Well, naturally it wasn’t that clean, but it was the basics. 1 ½ years into employment I became the production coordinator. I was responsible for getting the work out to 100 clients – who would be trained by 3 specialists to do the work. I shared an office with Rich, his middle man, and the payroll computer. I kept doing payroll til I left.

Basically, the end had come after many attempts of my ex to come back and change up in that he decided he wanted the boys after all which I wasn’t for. It got very bad, and very expensive. I put about $20,000 on one credit card and about $10,000 on another fighting for custody and trying to put groceries on the table. Finally, we saw our accountant and he told us convincingly how bad the situation was. He said that we were going to need looking for subsidized housing. But, I swore on that trip home, to my son Maury who had accompanied me that I wouldn’t make him and his brothers live through it. Several things then happened. The boys went to live with their father; I lost the kids, the animals, the house, and my life. I had seen Dr. Woollcott for 7 years, and we’d been back to the hospital for smaller spurts, but this was too much for us and we again were back to the hospital.

By good fortune Joe the nurse was still there. What he said was basically, we were at the bottom of our life, and that there was nowhere else to go, but up. He said this would be a good time to go back and get our education. So, we gave up the job and boyfriend and doctor and went back to Winona, MN. Well, mostly. The boyfriend stuck it out with us. He’d come visit about every 3-4 weeks. We still went under.

The biggest problem was that the relationship that we desperately needed with the brothers fell through. BJ our favorite Christian Brother over 20 years had turned our relationship on one occasion sexual with one of our younger parts and that proved too much for us.

We had another major breakdown and ended up at the Mayo clinic where they did an ECT – six times. I couldn’t remember much after that. But, I got the assistance to finish school when the cobwebs cleared by the good Dr. Luttmers who was the head of the academic psych department. He was the one that I told about BJ and he’d made sure I got the help I needed, even though things seemed at the time to be so extreme. I didn’t know a month from graduation what I was going to do. Rich had the biggest hand in that. He convinced me that the boys needed me to be in a relationship and I needed them and he needed me and maybe I needed him. He helped me find my job and he helped me find my apartment all within about 3 days. He had done some homework.

I’ve worked now at my job for 8 years. I am a cross between a counselor and a social worker for adults with developmental disabilities. I work at a small Catholic non-profit so I also do accreditation work, staff training and program development. There were a couple of hospitalizations, one when my dad and his wife died. But, things are going pretty good now. It’s been about 4 years since I was in. Dr. Woollcott was going to retire, but he hooked me up with Dr. Marvin, and we’ve been seeing him now for the last 8 years. Twice, then once a week he has given us his patient ear. I can’t stop the part about being a multiple and sometimes depressed, but he’s made life possible.

There are a couple of other things of importance. We haven’t been able to stop eating since the incidents with BJ and the shock treatment. We went in ten years time from 140 pounds to 330 pounds. We’ve picked up problems physically with the weight, such as diabetes, sleep apnea, cholesterol, and arthritis in our spine and knees. Because of all this, we can only walk or stand for about 3-5 minutes. This puts a serious dapper on most things that we could be doing with our life. As negative as this seems, something else happened this year. After 14 years of being Rich’s mistress, he finally broke free in April of this year. We’ve been living together since. I’ve got more reason to live than I ever have had. I love my boys and they love me. But, it is different when someone wants to live and be with you … To this I say God Bless.

Ok, if it’s weight surgery we need to survive, then that’s what’s going to happen … good luck to us, good luck to you … you do now see the part of living in the zoo though, right? Just things are better now.

Ok, so that’s about it. Now we’re back in real time. I read over it again after I cut and pasted … there were a few grammatical changes, but for the most part I left it pretty much the way it was. I don’t know which part of us wrote it, but I didn’t want to interfere too much.

Hmm, then for us to be more just like us we checked on our Pirates. We’d earned enough money to put down on a trading center. We had extra bays sitting there before hand and because we got a couple more crew members, we were enabled to buy another banana plantation.

That didn’t take too long. We’re trying to make sure that we don’t actually play out the fighting game. That’s the part that takes the most amount of time. These changes might seem insignificant to you, but to us … every step in the right direction helps.

I’m not sure where we left off with Jillian and her father and all that stuff that puts me in their eyesight. I might have said it before, but we’d be just as good to let Jillian and her family knows this much about us. It’s the basics of where we have come from. I know that Rich would rather paint this rosy picture of us, but the truth is that we’ve come from some really messed up corners of the world.

Up to the doctors taking over and then Rich knowing us through work we’d been pretty crazy. Some of the time since has been the same. To be fair though if you knew mental illness you would see the progression of having gone from an abusive family to what became an abusive spouse and then we added to that some additional abusive relationships.

I guess that might call to mind – could we think of our relationship to Rich being abusive. I haven’t thought about this in so many words directly. I have to say up front that as far as physical and sexual abuse – Rich has never even hinted that he was anywhere other than honorable. Rich has always been gentle with us, which I suppose is one of the reasons the doctors have always accepted him as our love relationship.

The one that would be more called to question is Rich’s emotional abuse. I’m going to start this by immediately saying that NO I don’t think Rich is emotionally abusive, though there are some things that would be called into question.

The first part is Rich’s protectiveness. I don’t know if he would be like this without my particular problems, but then again I see it with his marital relationship. Rich is extremely protective to the point where sometimes it gets frustrating. I’m talking about the kinds of stuff like me getting up from my place on the couch or computer chair to leave the room and Rich wants to know where we are going. This hasn’t been evident all along, but we are conscious of it now and so will say something to its affect.

When I’m aware that he’s asking a question, I try to put it in the context it originated from. Most likely Rich is showing an interest in me and I should appreciate his concern. BUT, it’s just the living room. I should be able to get up, go to the bathroom, get something from the kitchen or possibly change my clothes in the bedroom without him knowing where or what I am doing.

I don’t say this to hurt him, because I think his major concern is making sure we as a system don’t do anything wrong. Where it is at my most frustration is when I’m doing something that I want to do to please him – like when I get up to go for the coffee pot so I can fill his cup. Ok, sure sometimes it’s for sneaky stuff like getting a fudgicle – but still even at that – I shouldn’t have to get or not get Rich’s approval when I’m doing something as simple as taking something from the freezer.

Rich has complained many times because I haven’t gotten up out of the living room to be doing something for myself, but the situation is that if I hadn’t stayed at home and done very little he would have probably been driven up the wall. There’s been a long standing joke about him telling me in a surprise about his whereabouts so that I can get rid of the other guy. I have to smile tongue and cheek as I’m saying this, because he knows that I go barely any place without his knowledge – and most often by his consent.

Maybe though at some point he questioned whether or not I’d find someone to replace him. I think that BJ was in a position of trying to replace Rich, but we hadn’t put him in that situation. I think BJ figured that if I’d go out with a married man that I might also be with him and carry that secret. I don’t want to go into all that, but there was no way we could have done another secret relationship or to have turned our head to the allowance of a younger part being out and abused. We’d gotten way past that. It was a shake to our system by what happened with BJ and maybe now in context it is easier to see why Rich is protective of us.

I don’t know what his end was in knowing that while he stayed in Chicago, I was up in Winona having been abused by BJ, and helped by those professionals into the hospital and into sessions of ECT. I suppose that Rich couldn’t have though much other than I was in the hands of reliable professionals.

I think that Rich came up sometime while I was in the hospital, but then again maybe he didn’t. I remember him telling me to write down his name and telephone number with an explanation of who he was so in case I came out of the treatments without my memory – I would have some contact back to him.

I did lose my memory for a month or two. But, I’m pretty sure if Rich hadn’t come up while I was in the hospital, he would have come up afterward to check on me for himself. I don’t know how he felt about that entire situation, because we weren’t capable of taking in the situation for ourselves. There are just a few things I’d remember.

During the hospital I remembered going down on a bed and waiting for the treatment with other clients waiting too. I remember finding myself in the lounge area and having someone tell me – you don’t remember anything do you? Do you remember who I am or why you are here? We didn’t. I don’t think I even remembered who we were – just that we were in a hospital and we just needed to do whatever they said.

I don’t know why I’m going back into all that. I’m not sure the connection from this point to where I was before we talked about the hospitalization.

I know that it’s in general a warning situation when we start thinking too much about hospitals as some kind of safety opposed to being out here in the real world.

We are worried about our lack of interest and concern with what I’m supposed to be doing for work. Sister thinks I’m doing stuff like CARF, but we haven’t picked it up again for sometime.

Outside it is a gloomy rainy day. We have the window cracked open and we’ve appreciated the extra hushed quiet. I’m thinking though that I wish I could see Rich again or hear from him. I think he was supposed to come in today and I think he was supposed to go to a game. I don’t know if he WILL come in, because I think he had to go be a manager at JVS, but I’m pretty sure there will be no game. More than likely he’s going to want to go to the grocery store tonight, because he was trying to squeeze it in even with the game.

He says that we’re almost out of fudsicles which is his response when we tell him that he doesn’t have to go. We can’t jump our mind over the fear of not having fudsicles. In that respect I know we have to do whatever it is that is necessary to let him go – and that it would be better if we could go with him.

We’ve reached some kind of compromise in that he says now that we can spend $5 all by ourselves. Hmm, I think this is what we were talking about. Rich was so protective that he couldn’t before trust us to go to the store on our own because of his thoughts that we might spend too much at the store that would be bad for us.

I think in any outside arena it could be called into question whether it was odd that we as a system couldn’t spend $5 at the grocery store all by ourselves. We have to give Rich credit because he would know if things were too hard for us more than anyone … with the exception of perhaps Dr. Marvin. Sometimes we will stretch our abilities with Rich or work or any other part of our life, but then we still go back to Dr. Marvin to talk it over and check it out. Is this ok? Do I have a case here … can we tell Rich we really want to spend at least $5?

Somewhere in the figuring out phase of all this, Rich had said he would give us $10. We then backed him way up and off of that point. No way $10 was he crazy??? We didn’t know if we could handle $5. That almost be like throwing the baby away with the bathwater! Unfortunately, in some ways it might seem almost literal.

Rich is pretty much I guess going into his preparedness stage before he goes away.

Our mind has had a hard time grasping that he will be gone for such a long time. I don’t think anything has been said over the last couple of days, but his fishing partner had to have backed out and they weren’t sure if Rich were getting a replacement which meant that he might be fishing on his own.

Rich really isn’t against that thought because it gives him more time and space to figure out his new boat and it would allow him to be going fishing tomorrow instead of Friday night. He’s really all for going early.

Rich in general is pretty stressed out. Yup yup we had to have emergency relations last night *giggle* Well you know … ok, we’re not going there but … there IS a lot of stress for him! We’ve been trying to accommodate Rich’s needs in that he’s had a couple days of not feeling well. His stomach was bothering him and he was in and out of the washroom. He said that seemed to pretty much go away after getting past court yesterday. I know him well enough though to know that it would really help getting him back outside and fishing.

BUT, that means that we need to help him in taking care of ourselves. I’m not sure why the need exactly to have us go shopping at this time of our life, but I can see the writing on the wall.

We did good in massaging him the other day for a couple of hours when he was sick and we did a pretty good job of following him to the store on Saturday and Sunday.

I think. Now I’m not sure. I think though maybe Friday or Saturday we were with Rich? I remember going to his mail box, the library and maybe somewhere else with him. I think though that he got sick and had to come home which had upset us because we had it in our mind that we needed to go get a gift for his mother.

Oh yeah … we also went to the fishing store. That’s when we asked if we were staying far enough back … meaning he’d gotten ahead of himself in walking and we found ourselves following him aimlessly. I think what happens in general are that guys get toward the fishy store and they start going loose at the knees. I’ve seen a lot of guys jogging down the aisles cuz they can’t get close enough to their chase without being besides themselves in eagerness!

Rich answered the phone at one point and then as soon as he was off he was telling me something about what he purchased. I asked … did you even hear what that other person said or were you shopping in your head. He looked at me and admitted shopping. I said, “I thought so.”

At one point he had me go sit down because we’d found a place and I’d been getting dizzy. I didn’t think I could go on for long, but he still had other needs. It was ok, but we were still in a place in our head that the world was coming at us at an overwhelming pace. I remember there being a woman with her child and she was having a hard time controlling him because all he wanted to do was to go up and down the escalator. The escalator seemed to much for us and we remember admiring the boy’s confidence in himself.

I think we went out one night maybe that night to some place we got some rib stuff.

I don’t know which city we were in … just knew it was one of those western suburbs.

We had a heck of a time figuring out which bottle of hot spicy sauce we would use on our French fries. It kept us entertained for a long time while Rich was eating. We forgot though about eating our rib tips, so not much got eaten before we’d filled up on French fries. That and lemonade. They have good lemonade.

Sometime too we figured out with Rich that we might be breaking out because of the pillow or pillow case. We noticed it because it usually happened on only one side of our face. That’s the precedent that happened when Rich came in last night because he had two new pillows. He’s been complaining for a long time about needing a new one and our concern put him over the top in need to do something now mode.

That was really nice of him, but somebody gave him a hard time saying stuff about keeping loyalties to pillows of over 30 years. He really wasn’t going to be lured into that argument, but it’s still fairly something we got to get over. I think he made concessions by saying we could use the old pillows in the living room, but that wouldn’t take care of the original problem in us breaking out.

Are we following any particular conversation btw? I don’t know what we are trying to say, but there’s this other part we should say something about too. Mostly because we went with Rich on Mother’s Day shopping for his Mom and then we went to her house and then too there was stuff we wanted to say about the boys.

I don’t know how it is that we’ve been able to think of anything lately, because we aren’t processing our thoughts proper. I think this started about the time of needing to go in for the deposition and in Jillian’s over-abundant need to insert her in the relationship between Rich and us. Is it like that? Well maybe not all the way but something like that. We still haven’t figured out if she has noble reasoning with her thoughts. So far though she seems to be protecting Rich from us because she thinks we’re out to ruin him. That’s not such a good place, but she’s absolutely no reason to trust us. She’s only read a couple hundred pages from us.

I know that seems to be enough from her viewpoint to be coming to some headway, but there’s a whole lot more to us than just that. I really haven’t been taken with her patience, but then again for the most part she’s just living her life independently with her woman and however that gets split up … Her father seems to have stayed away from it except when Jillian’s in need. What I’m trying to say here is that she’s figured most of her life out on her own so in that respect with her work AND her being a student – she’s showed a lot of self-patience. So for now we’ll think about things on the good side.

Maybe if we go out with Rich tonight we can figure out some other stuff. This another 10 year plan … well that’s not going to go. I could see the need to finish the divorce, but sometime we gotta meet and that’s going to be pretty traumatic and scary and even traumatic and scary to Rich. But, usually those things work out.

I’m really happy with where we are going with the relationship to his mother.

Ok, I think we’re up to this part now. We should say something of Sunday … our apology for all those other days we’ve missed I don’t know where we were. I’m sorry.

Sunday we got ready to go so that we were leaving the house at 10:30 am with Rich.

We went to IKEA. Rich and us on the way home from dinner the night before had gone through a lot of figuring. I think if Jillian were here, she could go through this sort of thing too, but well for now it’s just been Rich and us. How it happened the night before was that we started talking about what kind of things that could be gotten for Rich’s mother’s day gift. I would say an idea and then Rich or us would add to that to either continue the shopping thought or to dismiss it. We went through this for about 40 minutes. I would say how about this, or how about that.

At some point we’d suggested new crystal serving dishes, because his mother serves meals out of pans and plastic dishes. Rich took that up to be a good thing, but he wasn’t so sold on the crystal part. I was worried that he wasn’t going to get something good enough, but I’d seen during Christmas that not so much gets spent on gifts so to some degree I’d have to settle down and pick his choice. Before we got to that point, I told him that I didn’t trust him and that the decision would have to go through my approval. Rich was very patient. He said how about I let you contribute to ideas, but that he would make the decision.

We gave it a quick think through. We know our case was sunk in the water. He was right in that it was his mother and it would have to be his choice. Ok, ok … so be it, but he had to listen to us too!

Hmm maybe this goes back to the part about getting a $5 bill to spend money at the grocery store – no matter what!

I’d never been to IKEA, but Rich knew about it through Jillian. It’s where she’d gotten her bedroom furniture. On that concern to make a long story short – I HATED THE PLACE! I’m pretty sure you could get a good deal, but it was a lot of generic items, not many choices, and they thread you through their complete store by making you follow arrows and only going through narrow passage ways to get from one part to another. I’d never been to a store where they treated you like you were on an amusement ride. MAN! I was pretty beat when I finished. This whole idea of shopping is fairly new to us and it didn’t take a whole lot before we were overwhelmed.

There was so much around us and everything was barely presentable on skids and pallets and I felt like in the game candyland … I was never going to make it to the end. Then to make things worse they shoved at us a whole lot of self serve cash registers and only a couple real employees. I think the store must have had at least 4 people … half of them were trying to beat up customers!

Rich let us go though when we very crankily asked to find some place to sit down.

They had a small deli type thing by the door and from there I’m pretty sure we were horting and snorting. YEEGADS. NEVER would I go back in a store like that.

It took me a while to calm us down. We were all out of sorts. We couldn’t believe it that when we found Rich again that he’d paid for the items but that they were not in a bag. WHAT is UP with THAT! He said you had to buy bags and so he didn’t want one. OH MY GOSH that set off a whole new thing in the cheapness of a place. BUT then we hadn’t been shopping for a long time and so we asked Rich if that was peculiar to this store or if they weren’t all like that. He said it was pretty much just this store. YEKKS!

He calmed us down by a couple of things. He said that we’d stop at Walgreens closer to his mothers and we’d pick up a bag and tissue and we asserted and a card too, right!?? Right!

We don’t remember much of the rest of that car ride except at one stop or another there were cookies involved. I think Rich was still trying to settle down his stomach from the day before and he probably knew it would calm me down so we all went with that.

As far as the actual purchasing of item – We had not much say about the dishes.

Rich got one large bowl and three veggie size bowls. We didn’t like them because they were just regular and not crystal and they were PLAIN OFF_WHITE! BLAH! Rich’s point was that they would go with anything. He couldn’t remember what color dishes she had, but thought it was something white or blue. I didn’t think it seemed like a very warm and inviting gift, so I came up with the idea of getting placemats too.

I reminded him of the ones we’d used the last few times that hadn’t been washed or maybe were too old to come fully clean. I DIDN’T want to embarrass her but I figured it be a good idea in giving them with the bowl.

I overran Rich on the quantity item. He thought 4 placements and I thought 6.

Actually the ones he let me choose there were only 6 left so that really worked out, but my thought was there would be enough for Bud and his mom and us and Rich and his brother and one more for the stuff in the middle. Or any other arrangement. It wouldn’t have been enough to cover Rich’s two nieces being there and I felt bad about that, but we were stretching Rich’s limits. He insisted that his mother wouldn’t use a candle … HMPF! Warm, we needed to bring it more warm!

When we got to the Walgreen’s Rich went in by himself encouraged by me. We were still too close to the other store where a cow seemed to be delivered through our internal shocks that we figured it be better for us to stay in the car and reconnect with the computer. Rich had made sure we knew no computer at his mother’s house, but as it turned out he spent most of his free time with Bud on their computer HMPFF

Rich came back in an average amount of time with his stuff. I was waiting patiently
while he packed stuff in the back. I did call out not to forget bringing up the card so he could sign it before we got there. He followed through and we said as he was adjusting himself – let me see, let me see! He opened it up for us, but then we saw something that seemed a bit odd.

We said it says birthday? Rich says yeah it was his mom’s birthday. We said …. No I don’t think so. But, then we got confused. We knew enough to figure out though that it was really supposed to be mothers’s Day. We had to repeat that a couple of times before Rich figured it out. He’d gotten a card and bag that said Happy BIRTHDAY! Oh Lordy … he said he almost got birthday tissue too, but something changed his mind – BUT it wasn’t that he’d figured out the day.

I felt so bad for him. YEEKS I gotta GO though! More later …

posted by Ann Marie @ 5/13/2009 04:04:00 PM Comments: 0