Potpourri

My thoughts are all over the map today, so this is going to be one of those posts that meander. Hope you don’t mind.

Well, I’m through with the first “first” of a year that’s going to be full of them. Our wedding anniversary was on the 27th, and it was a tough day to say the least. There are so many memories of that wondrous day that couldn’t help but squeeze through the armor I’d put on to protect myself from the worst of the pain. I wanted to drink for the first time in years. But my family was great—my son brought me coffee just as his father used to do, my son-in-law took me out to dinner, and his mother spent a good amount of the day with me. Shelley knows what this is like; she was widowed four years ago and still has her rough days.

I’ve lost 30 pounds in the past two-and-a-half months. It just keeps falling off even though I eat whatever I want; I simply get full really fast and I’ve never gone back to drinking Coke, diet or otherwise. I’ve gotten better about fixing food for myself, but I haven’t been eating much bacon and sausage and cinnamon rolls like I used to. Will always cooked breakfast for us, and those foods were at the top of his list. Strangely, I don’t miss them…I only miss the man who fixed them.

With all of this going on, I continue to marvel at the fact that I’m stable underneath the sadness. It’s hard to remember that I have a mental health diagnosis when I feel so good otherwise. Maybe I wasn’t as far off as everyone thought when I came up with the idea that my “illness” was really an existential crisis that was taking a long time to resolve. I also don’t understand how a person can be considered mentally ill when he or she is perfectly well. On one level, I know my meds are keeping the bipolar at bay and that’s why I’m doing so well; on another level I wonder why, if this really is an existential issue, it’s getting better rather than worse. After all, I’m a brand-new widow and must learn to re-define both myself and my life without my husband. I dunno…it’s all really weird and I don’t have all the answers. I somehow doubt I’m supposed to. But I’ll keep taking my meds just in case.

Then there’s the Presidential election. I can’t stand Donald Trump and think he really screwed the pooch with his poor performance in the first debate. On the other hand, I fear for the nation if Hillary Clinton gets to select the next Supreme Court justice(s), and her stances on abortion and immigration are deal breakers even if I were inclined to vote for her. I have never seen this country so divided as we are now; I think these candidates bring out the worst in everybody. It ought to be an interesting four years, no matter which one of them wins.

So go my thoughts on this last day of September. It’s only 40 days till our cruise, so I’m actually looking forward to the misery that is November. A week of pure enjoyment at sea, with a couple of days in New Orleans thrown in for extra fun. I can’t wait!