1:15am – Insomnia strikes again PLUS update

I hate this thing of not being able to sleep well anymore.  It’s a lifelong problem, though.  I go through shifts.  Months of sleeping just fine, then months of hardly sleeping at all.  

Today went well, for the first chunk of the day.  Laurie and I have been getting along a lot better the last few days.  We’ve been more respectful and considerate of each other, and it’s added a really sweet touch to our life together.  For the first time in a while, I feel like I genuinely LIKE my wife, though I ALWAYS love her.  There have been plenty of times when I liked her well enough, but for some reason, these last few days have felt more like it did when we were first getting to know each other, back in 2001.  I’m regaining my best friend, and I really really enjoy it.

Bipolar disorder, however, can’t just let things lie.  Of course not!  That would be WAY too easy.  I am a rapid cycler, which means I can switch from one extreme to the other almost instantaneously, which makes life for anyone around me difficult, to say the least.  I’ve been trying to be more analytical about it, I guess you’d say.  I’m trying to explain to Laurie that, while I’m feeling down, it’s not her fault.  It’s my brain acting like an idiot and making sure I just can’t attain happiness at the moment.  There are those horrible moments when I don’t even CARE that it’s my brain being stupid…I just want OUT of this constant turmoil.

But I have a lot of reasons to keep living.  I’m not suicidal anymore.  Haven’t been for a long time.  That doesn’t mean I don’t have a death wish sometimes, though.  It just means I won’t be the CAUSE of my own demise.  Not on purpose, anyway.  I can appreciate the morbid irony in the thought of stating that I’m not suicidal and then accidentally killing myself and earning a Darwin Award for it.

I went to Twilight today.  That’s where Memaw lived the last five years of her life.  It was the most uncomfortable situation I’ve ever been in, I think.  I visited with Darlene, Memaw’s former roommate, a little bit, and that went fine, but dealing with the staff when asking about Memaw’s walker and wheelchair was really really uncomfortable.  I don’t know if it was all in my head or what, but I kept feeling like they were giving me a "who the fuck cares?" attitude when I asked if they could locate those things for me.  Well, I the fuck care.  I don’t want the wheelchair or the walker.  In fact, we, as a family, decided that they could be donated to a person who needed but didn’t have them.  What I DID and DO want is a little apron thing that was tied to Memaw’s walker.  I am an INTENSELY sentimental person, and I want my wife to have that for HER walker.  The family has agreed that that is okay.

Then, I visited my cousin Lance.  He had a rough day, and he wanted to talk to me about it, so I went and visited him.  I was out there about four hours, and we had a nice visit.  Then, I started thinking about my parents, on the drive home.  That usually doesn’t bother me so much, but it really brought me down, this time.  So I got home in a depressed mood.

For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to watch a video of Nanny that was shot while we were down there in November or early December.  I realized later that I did, indeed, NEED to see that.  But at the time, I burst into tears again.  At my request, Laurie handed me one of Memaw’s blankets, and I hugged it tight until I stopped crying.

Losing both my grandmothers so close to each other has been really difficult.  I’m not unhappy for them.  I’m unhappy for all of us who are still here, missing them so much.  As I’ve said before, it may sound hypocritical of me to say I miss Nanny so badly, but if so, that’s just too damned bad.  She WAS my grandmother, and I ALWAYS loved her….always said it, whether I could quite show it or not.  But we made peace.  We both apologized, and we both accepted.  And I miss her so very very much.

Odd….Nanny died three days before my sister’s birthday.  Daddy died six days after my sister’s birthday (same sister, but 21 years before his mother, Nanny).  Memaw died eight days after my birthday.  To try to lighten things up a bit at a small gathering that Mama, MH, Johnny, and I had after Memaw’s funeral, I told Mama she better watch out on Valentine’s Day, which is my brother’s birthday.  Johnny didn’t think it was funny at all.  He got mad at me.  Mama kinda chuckled a little, but it wasn’t that funny to her, either.  Oh well, strike ten million for me.  I don’t care.  I mean, I DO care, but I don’t care, all at the same time.  Life is so weird.

This browser is acting funky, so I’m gonna wrap this entry up.  I’m okay, for the moment.  A little blue, but I’ll live.

 

Love to you all,

 

Hermy

 

 

 

Herman Forstmann

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