Life and Its Twist and Turns

It has been a long time between postings. Some things have happened that made me look at my life and what's important to me. It started a bit back when the pressure at work began to affect my health. I have periodically had issues with stress affecting my GI system only once where it became serious, to the point where the doctors thought they may need to remove my colon. I had gone from about 135 lbs ( a reasonable weight for my frame) to about 110 lbs in about 4 weeks. I could not keep food in my system. I had my first colonoscopy at the age of 20. I had hip bones sticking out and visible ribs, something unusual for me after puberty. This time stress has caused an ulcer although there was a time when stomach cancer couldn't be ruled out. The thought of the latter absolutely terrified me. I know what that can mean and it was not something I wanted to go through alone but I would have to. I didn't know if I would be strong enough to do that, I feared I wouldn't be. I wouldn't ask what's left of my family to be with me through that and I don't think any of them could do it. I saw how they reacted to our parents' illnesses and deaths. I was wired differently than most of my family. I did watch my mom go through all the days in the hospital after dad's femoral artery bypass and his strokes and saw the similarities with her. But even we were different. Her emotions were never as close to the surface as mine are. You could never tell what hurt her emotionally whereas that shows all over my face. She saw what I did and how I reacted and thought I'd be a good doctor. What she didn't understand was how much it hurt me to see people hurt and to have to inflict more pain on them to eventually fix the problem. I could take apart a frog or pig or even a human heart but I couldn't pith the frog or decapitate the rat or inject the rabbit. I once told her, once it was dead I could do anything, but I couldn't do it when they were alive. I couldn't take blood from my lab partner, I couldn't demonstrate how to inject insulin on a person. I couldn't do anything I perceived as possibly giving pain, no matter how little.

Then there was the allergic reaction that never got address until the IT group wanted the loaner back. I realized I am over corporate life. There is no humanity there. It's time to move onto the next part of my life. My plans for retirement wasn't sitting in a chair in front of the TV, I do that nightly to try to remove the corporate day from my mind. It was to move onto a business of my own, the business changed a few times but it was something of mine, Something I controlled and something where people left in better spirits than when they came in. So at times, it was a restaurant, or a boutique but now it's a B&B. It has been for a while actually. I had found a great house in Bath NC with a deep water dock that could fit 4 boats. But Welcome got sold and I needed to move on. I looked at places in Greensboro and High Point when I lived there and had some possibilities. But then mom's and dad's health started to slide and I knew I needed to go back to NJ. So I put that desire on hold and did what needed to be done. Don't think I regret what I did, I don't. I reconnected with people I hadn't seen for a long time, I made new friends, and took a relationship to a different level. But it's coming to the time for me to take care of me. Because I can't expect anyone else to do that. I had thought Robert and I would be taking this on together, but that was not the future for us. We had gotten each other through many rough times but God or Fate decided he had been challenged enough or that I needed another challenge and he was gone. Now someone has come back into my life and I find myself on dangerous ground. He asked me at one point in a conversation, could you go back home again. I answered no not back to where you were but that a new chapter could be written. Robert and I walked out of each others lives several times, once because of his mom, once because I wanted more than he was willing to give but we always came back together. Life was better with him in mine and I think it was the same for him. I mean who would hang with someone who turned down 2 proposals and on the third, put a condition that was almost impossible for him to attain? But he did when I did just that. I knew new chapters could be written by old lovers and friends. But in saying that, the new chapter does build on the old and those old hurts need to be dealt with if they haven't been already. The relationship and trust needs to be rebuilt because, hopefully, you aren't the same person now that you were at 25. Or maybe you are and the other person need to decide if they are able to deal with that. Anyway, I don't know if by saying new chapters could be written I led him to believe that I want it to happen. I don't even know if that's what I want and what the chapters are to be. Is it just friendship or more? Then there is the issue that he's married , maybe unhappily, but still married. I'm not even sure what he wants, I initiated contact but we broke it off for various reasons and now he initiated it. Does he just need to talk to someone who is on his side, an outside observer or something else? Too much is unknown and I need to reign in my emotions, fantasies and imagination and deal with reality once I figure that out. Perhaps I need a good Gibbs smack to bring me back to my senses. I need to get back to my Sock Madness sock, Round 2 is on and one of 33 spots is mine. Here my progress so far.  I need the rest of the foot and a second to match.