Hi All,
I am seriously behind in both my correspondence and in posting replies to questions from the Ask AG page. We just returned from a four-day trip to see my older daughter’s graduation (which was the 3rd 10 hour round trip I have made in 18 days). The graduation was wonderful but quite busy. The trip was also complicated in that my husband accidentally sideswiped a bike messenger in Manhattan the day we arrived. We immediately stopped and got out to assist him and he was, thank heaven, fine aside from a limp. We called 911 and they sent an ambulance. The police officer who took our report was very calm and assuring but as you can imagine it was pretty stressful, not to mention we now have a huge pile of paperwork and insurance hassle ahead of us.
We are incredibly proud of our daughter, who graduated cum laude with her BA and it was a happy occasion. But it also marked her officially moving out of our home (we left her at a friends and will be returning in August to move her into an apartment) and I have been sadder about this than I expected to be.
We have an ongoing problem in our family right now which is very much under control but triggering me on a level which is debilitating. I am back seeing BN weekly and he is working very hard, but even still I am managing an ongoing shame storm. When we got up this morning, I heard from a close friend of mine from work that his MIL, who has lived with them, for a number of years had died quite suddenly. I am close with both him and his wife, whom I worked with a number of years ago and we meet regularly. He is a very stoic guy but when he heard my voice he totally fell apart on the phone sobbing. He told me he called me because he didn’t want to fall apart on his wife. Both my husband and I knew her mother and just adored her; she was a lovely woman and we are grieving in our own right. We also feel terrible as we lost my MIL in a very similar situation around five years ago, so we have an idea of what they are going through. Last, but not least I have been struggling with feeling like an online community that once felt very safe, no longer is. This has been exacerbated by the persistence of one particular member who has attacked me multiple times, publicly and privately in that community as well as other places. No matter how much I tell myself I am not in any real danger, my system gets seriously activated. I am feeling scared and fragile and ashamed and like I am way too much for anyone to handle right now. But at my last session, BN looked me dead in the eye and said to me “I do not understand why you think you have to go through this alone?” It was an excellent question and in an attempt to answer it, I thought I would try NOT going it alone. Thanks for listening.
If you are waiting for an answer from me, you are not forgotten. I appreciate everyone’s patience. I miss being around more.
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