Welcome to My Life

Reviewing 2013: Question 2 - Does Fear Hold Me Back?

Does fear hold you back from doing the things dreams are made of?
"Spiritual Newsletter (December 28, 2005)" 

I'm going to attempt to answer this question again and hope that my modem doesn't wander off into Internetland, which would mean that I have to manually reboot it again. This was the second time in December that this happened and I think that it has something to do with the weather. Now to stop bitching about the modem and answer the question.

Yes, fear does hold me back. In 2013, fear has held me back a lot and I'm getting sick and tired of it. I think my biggest problem this year has been the effects of Mom's death which resulted in loneliness. I'm by myself in this huge house and I don't like it. There are too many memories, they seem to haunt and cause me to think that I could have done something to prevent Mom's death. Logically, I know that isn't true, but I'm not dealing with logic. Mourning and grief have nothing to do with logic. I keep going over and over the years that led up to the doctor diagnosing Mom with Alzheimer's disease and I wonder if I missed the earlier symptoms of the disease. I wonder if catching the disease earlier would have given Mom a few more years. I wonder I had been aware of the disease earlier if, perhaps, Mom could have lived to be 100 years old like she wanted to.

I'm almost to the point of being afraid of what's going to happen in 2014. I miss Mom so much and I'm not sure I can go on without her sometimes, but then I have gone on without Mom since November 29, 2012. I guess I can go on without her for another twenty, thirty, or forty years. I know that in some ways things have gotten better for me in the past six or seven months. Sometimes I don't think they've gotten better but the have. I'm learning to do things by myself, I think a couple of times this year I even went to restaurant by myself. That was something that frightened me at the beginning of the year.

I'm learning to deal with the fear of being alone. I'm learning to deal with the memories that haunt my every waking hour or rather used to. Sometimes now the memories don't haunt me. Sometimes I can do something by myself that Mom and I used to do together. I miss the days when I looked forward to her coming home from the Adult Daycare Center, so that we could sit in the living room, watch television, and eat before she had to go to bed. I still don't know how to cook for one person. I don't know how to make coffee for one person. It's getting to the point where I don't like to warm coffee over in the microwave because I don't like the taste.

When Mom was alive I didn't mind the taste of warmed over coffee. I think that was because I knew that I didn't have to warm it over for the next two or three days. I still make a 12 cup carafe of coffee, but I only drink three or four cups. The next day I warm over two or three cups, which means I still have more coffee to warm over in the microwave the next day. I realized a few days ago that I no longer like the taste of warmed over coffee, but there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it because I keep making a twelve cup carafe of coffee when I make it fresh. I know this doesn't make sense, but I can't seem to make it any other way.

I don't like being alone. I don't like living in this house by myself. I don't like cooking for one person. Sometimes I don't like me. Sometimes I want to be someone else, but I can't be anyone else, so I guess I have to get used to being me. The times I least like being me are the times I'm loneliest and most afraid. I don't want to spend 2014 being lonely or feeling that I don't want to or like being me.

Thought of the Day: "Loneliness is my least favorite thing about life. The thing that I'm most worried about is just being alone without anybody to care for or someone who will care for me." - Anne Hathaway