young widowhood

An Engineer will tell you the Glass is just Poorly Designed


A glass half full

Tomorrow Rob, my boyfriend, will finally arrive. He is driving down from Alberta which is a province in Canada. We met on the internet. Apropos considering how much of my life has been spent there in the last couple of years. Last year certainly. The message board we encountered each other on is a site for young widowed people. Not exactly somewhere you would think about finding love. And it wasn’t love. Not at first. It was a friendship.

As it turned out we both have the same need to communicate through the written word, and truthfully are probably much better at communicating that way. We exchanged emails that were more like letters of old, and it wasn’t long before IM’s began eating away sleep time the way grief once did, but I was a much happier person for it and, I assume, so was he.

We met in person for the first time the last weekend in February in Idaho. And yes, that is an odd romantic destination. It will always be a romantic place in my mind however. Now, two some weeks later, he is coming here to spend my spring break with me. In Arkansas. And before you think it, I refute utterly the idea that we might not have much of a clue about romantic getaways. It is not the setting that makes an encounter between two people romantic. It is the intent.

Selling My House


SALE

Image by Gerard Stolk presque 64 via Flickr

One of the more major things that has to be done in regards to moving to be with my boyfriend is selling the house where I live with my daughter. I actually find that a scarier prospect than quitting my job. I am not sure why.

The house represents nothing but the time that my husband was ill. It was my prison in many respects and yet the idea of getting it ready to sell threatens to swamp me emotionally. I think some of it is I will need help to get it ready and I hate asking for helping and letting people help me. Why? Probably my early life experiences have conditioned me to expect people to let me down. My past encounters with “help” have nearly always been that people are willing to help with what they perceive your needs to be rather than what those needs really are or what you would actually like them to do for you.

My initial feelings about this selling business is to just sell it as it is. Whatever I get, I get as long as I don’t sell it at a loss. I just don’t care that much and I really don’t have money to put into it. A fear I have about selling is that it will take time (though I think this is just a fear; something tells me it will sell before the summer ends) and then without a job, how will I pay the mortgage on it while waiting for someone to buy it. Which leads me to other money issues, how do I finish paying off my debts without a job?

I don’t want my boyfriend to do things like this for me.

Even though we have talked (very indirectly) about marriage, it makes me feel imcompetent. And maybe that is what it comes down to really. I am feeling as though I did a very poor job taking care of things this last year or so. I have some debt issues.

The house has updating and minor repair issues that have been neglected. If I were staying here and teaching next fall, I had planned to get all this stuff taken care of but the year’s end. The whole point of getting the master’s degree was to turn the financial situation, imposed on me by Will’s illness and death, around and I knew this woud take about a year.

Going to Canada cuts that time in half, leaves me jobless and with bills still to pay plus a house payment.

Details.

Yes and I know what I have said about details. They work themselves out.

Not calming the inner control freak who really hates for people to know when she is scrambling to come up with solutions to problems simply because she doesn’t want to admit that she is in a bit over her head. I know that the sensible thing to do is to tell R that I might need more time.

I don’t want to do that. Not because I am worried about his reaction. I honestly think he would tell me it isn’t a problem and we’ll do what we need to if I have to work the first semester before coming up.

I just know that taking those extra months will not make the transition easier. It might solve the money issues but for my daughter the better thing would be to go and not come back. It would be better for R and I as well. Trying to go back to the LDR thing will not be easy for either of us. So, of course the thing to do is talk with R about all of this. Why is that so hard?

Probably the money thing for a start. I don’t want him to know about the credit card debt. Half of it was emergencies – car and surgery but the rest was stuff that could have waited and wouldn’t have been an issue but for the emergencies that caught me off guard.

Why do I think knowing this might change his feelings for me? It won’t. It’s that conditinal love thing I learned growing up and really didn’t have enough time with my husband to fully shake.

Communication.

So important and so hard.

The “moving” in Moving On


Category:Ford vehicles

Image via Wikipedia

I have been thinking, well more than that really, about moving to be with my boyfriend.

He lives in Canada and I had planned to spend the summer with him anyway, but he would like me to just come up with my daughter and stay. It is an idea with many things going for it. Primary is that I love him and want to be with him, but there are secondary benefits as well. It would force me to get serious about what I want to do career-wise. He tells me he is okay with taking care of me and my daughter, so I don’t necessarily need to have a job lined up before I come up. I don’t know how I feel about that.

Perplexed really.

I have worked near continuously since I was 15 years old. Even though I know women who do the stay at home thing, I never really imagined myself doing that. I could write. There is a writing program at the university in Edmonton. I could take a class. Work on my writing. That novel I know is in me. K would be in school half days and I would have time. Staying at home, I don’t know. He asked me, what I think, was an important question last night.

Am I changing just to please him?

I have talked about learning to cook. We were talking about doing laundry which led to the inevitable ironing that I basically choose to ignore. Would I cook if it weren’t for him? Iron? I don’t enjoy cooking now but there was a time when, even though I wouldn’t have called it fun, I did it. For my daughter’s sake more than anything, I know I need to start doing it again. And I do iron when I need to. I just don’t see the need very often and I doubt much that would change (and truthfully, I have never been able to iron dress shirts properly. Memories of my mother’s pursed lips as she inspected my attempts are not buried too deeply in my mind).

There is a lot that needs to be done before I can go and live with him though. I wonder if we are being realistic about the time table. I felt more confident, too, before I told an old friend the other night about what I was planning. She rained pretty heavily on the parade. Some of her concern was unwarranted and based on the fact that I have delibrately kept some people out the the inner loop of my life in the past 6 months, but she made a few points.

It would be easier to do this I think were it not for the scary times of the last few years. They have made me crave safety more than I have in the past. I am still a little fragile though getting better. And then there is my daughter. There is this tremendous sense of responsibility and need to protect her from…..well….everything, and I know it is not realistic. I can’t make life perfect and risk free for her, and I know her well enough to know that what is most important for her is that I be in a place where I am happy. Her happiness mainly derives from mine right now.

There is still a lot to think about, plan and do.