Debilyn: I do hope you are not going to try to get that heavy air conditioner into the window by yourself? Can a neighbor help you with it? I don't like the fact that the tenants shorted you and of course they knew it wouldn't be okay. They're adults aren't they? Maybe they can come up and put the air conditioner in for you? Help to make amends for shorting you on the rent? As for your son, well...remember how you believe to love them as they are or is this a Mom being concerned something might be wrong with your son? And then to the friend - maybe you are being protected by your HP from something you can't see? Plus, its hot! When I add all these things up, what comes to me is the word powerless. You are powerless over your tenant, your son, the weather, your friend's comings and goings, your strength and limitations. Is that bothering you today, sister?

-- Edited by grateful2be on Saturday 12th of July 2014 07:50:47 PM

Hugs, Debilyn! I would love to come and spend time with you! Go ahead and vent away! I find that the summer heat sometimes puts me in quite a surly mood, at times. Sending you lots of support!

(((Deb))) I hear you and know this is hard for you.

Glad you are here.

Hugs Deb - We are your friends too you know. It's not like you have nobody. If we all lived close to you, we'd probably be headed to your house now to cheer you up :)

There is nothing wrong with you, Debilyn of Oregon. You are a kind, gracious, loving, funny, resourceful, and apparently very strong physically in that you can put an ac in your window. I would have dropped the thing on me and my cats and watched it tear up my floor right after it crushed my feet. You are willing to risk putting yourself out there for and with others. I don't know why folks don't always reach back - I've experienced that in my own life - but it isn't because of me. It is because they are who they are and intuitively I know that if I want any kind of relationship to their scared little souls, I'll have to do the work sometimes. We are a nation who has turned away from true community that you and I experienced growing up. We walked and biked more than we drove. Our schools, churches, bakeries, gas stations, dime stores and drugstores were usually no more than a mile or so away from our homes and well within walking distance on cold and warm days. We ate together, played together, prayed together and knew how to be neighbors to each other. Today's culture is driven by technology, security(money), and surface relationships as in "networking," e-mailing, texting and making judgments via the internet on people we have never met.

I share the same hunger you do, Debilyn, at times. The hunger for genuine community and neighbors looking out for each other and each other's children. The Amish may not utilize electricity and they may use shunning as a discipline tool, but they still do much of what we experienced as children that is in many ways lost to us. Obesity and diabetes in our nation is more due to eating our feelings and feeling the lack of joy of being human than it is due to the amount of fat and sugar that is in our diets to my way of thinking. The antidepressants that are sold by the billions cannot replace the need for kitchen conversations, meals, card playing or helping our neighbor repair a garage, clean out a basement, host a yard sale or delight in a homemade meal of fried chicken, potato salad, applesauce spice cake near the lake or in a park with family or friends. We don't know how to share our lives together anymore and fb just doesn't take the place of human touch, human voice, human laughter or human tears.

I know my opinion is outside the topic of alcoholism and yet I do think that recovery helps to shine the light on what we have lost and in what ways we can help to regain it. You are doing what helps to build community and helps to cherish other human beings, Debilyn. Don't stop. Keep going. Sometimes being a prophet is a lonely business and in making room on your land and in your home for you, your animals and friends and strangers alike, I see you announcing to those who will listen or at least feel it that we need each other to be fully alive and fully human and to cherish ourselves and each other up close and personal. Not just on the air. (((D))) I, like the others, ache to be where you are, sister. I'd love to come and spend the day with you. I'd bring something good to eat and a little gift for you, too. We wouldn't have to entertain each other. We could just be with each other, enjoy nature together, tell our stories and maybe play a game or watch a movie together with home popped popcorn and tasty beverage that might or might not contain sugar.

I can get like this too, it will pass. I hope I dont offend you but have you thought about a dating website, maybe some nice dates would perk you up, nice meal, company, lots of women I know take charge of their social life with these sites. Just a suggestion.x

Hey you, yeah you ((((debilyn))) I'm so glad you posted about this. I go through this too. I am always the one to initiate the calls, plans etc. I don't do fb. Honestly, being here at this board is just enough with the rest of what I have to do to live a life.  I think everyone is becoming so impersonal in their interactions with other people. I know my bf doesn't hear from his kids unless he calls.  In new sobriety he turned this inward thinking they were rejecting him for past mistakes.  It's not the case, they are very loving toward him when with him but it's not anywhere as often as one would like. I feel disappointed too, had all these ideas of getting to know them more and sharing time all of us together.  As far as girlfriends, same deal. I have to send the email state my case in the subject line so it doesn't get buried among all their emails. Helloooo does anyone check email anymore.  I am not joining fb. I am not making up a life there with a perfect family and perfect pictures of my perfect adventures and communicating with loved ones through a box. Bf's dau said to him last time we met dad, we have to get you hooked up with face time. I responded and said, this is face time and feel free to come around any time you'd like. The kids laughed but we don't think it's funny. We love them and miss them but their priorities are different. Their grandmother joked about how one of the kids pops in once a month to repay a loan but always centered it around getting a homecooked dinner. We don't live as close as grandma and we don't lend money.

So... here is how I've resolved this for myself.  Does the good time or talking with these people I love and care about mean more to me than my pride?  I've come to terms with the fact that I'm likely not going to get what I want as far as people reaching out first and I'm accepting that.  I went out with one of my closest gf this past week. We talked about my possibly joining her on a weekend away she had planned which happened last weekend. She totally forgot me. She usually goes on her own. I called her on it at dinner.  I said how do you just forget a person??? She had a heart to heart with me and said she'd told her husband awhile back that I might be going with her. She said she had a lot going on lately and spaced on it. She asked me to please not be hurt and that she was sorry.  I've been friends with her for ten years. She would drop anything and run for me anytime day or night if it was in her capacity to do so.  I trust that and her.  I'm sensitive and sentimental and have less peeps than I use to like you debilyn, less family obligations as a result. How important is it?  The friends I have today are true friends. I'm not perfect by a long shot and they love me as I am. I'm trying to do the same where they are concerned.

As far as those four women, that's a tough one. It can be hard to coordinate something where everyone is available. Why not go forward with whoever can make it? If there's no interest, move on like you've decided. They're not a good investment of your energy. Look how many of us have responded with the same issue with people. We could all hang out together if we lived near one another. We're  not unique and we're not wrong for feeling let down and disappointed by other people's inattentiveness. I'm choosing to take each situation one by one and decide who I still want to hang out with and who I don't.  You know the difference, you know when you're in the company of healthy people. When I've chosen well, I'm out with people who speak and interact respectfully toward me and our interactions are lighthearted even when we discuss more serious things that are happening in our lives. Our top priority is to have a good time. I can count on one hand how many of these very close friends I have. I hope to have more. I think it's taken time, patience and forgiveness to find who out who my true friends are.  Know you're loved here ((debilyn)))  T