Missing Out

Yesterday I missed my Wednesday lunch at Sugarpearl listening to Mark Zane play his lovely tunes. Last night I missed the ladies of song playing at Sparky's. Today I will not be able to wander over to Sugarpearl to hear Joanne Perry strum her guitar and sing of lost loves and heartbreak and I could use a dose of that today. But it's simply not possible. There's too much pain to manage.

I've had my fair share of emotional pain. My mother was an alcoholic, I was raised by my father (not my biological dad, but he was the best part of my life ever) and stayed with him after they divorced, I married and divorced an alcoholic, had two children, a brilliant and talented boy who even at 37 continues to be challenging and a delightful girl who was my haven of sanity until she turned 30 and decided she no longer needed me and removed herself -- and my granddaughter -- from my life. I watched my father wrestle with a long illness and the aunt who was my mother substitute do the same. I survived several lousy relationships before finding the safety of Chris.

Add to that the whirlwind of the human resources world I worked in at the time where other people problems were dumped upon me to help solve and where I caused some problems myself, especially when I had to have those "we're going to let you go" talks.

Yes, I've had my share of emotional pain. But I learned to cope. I wrote a ton of lousy poems, and a couple of pretty good ones too. And I got through most everything as well as any human being could. I didn't lose my nickname of "Sunshine" and could still find the good thing in any situation.

BUT......(you knew there was a "but" there, didn't you?)......for over one solid year now I have been living in constant physical pain. My shoulder, although considerably better, still smarts, will never return to what is normal for most folks. Even though I'm able to knit and type again, it's not without some pain. And the leg pain I have....well, it doesn't seem as if that's going away any time soon either. I have not had a pain free day since....well, I can't even remember. And I can't do the things I used to do to distract me when emotional stuff was bringing me down......cook something elaborate for dinner, bake something scrumptious for dessert, put on music and dance like a fool, take Rupert for a long walk. That all involves standing and/or walking. And there's just too much pain when I do that.

Write some poetry, you say? OK....as soon as I figure out some good rhymes for the only word that escapes my lips these days....you know, the one they still bleep out on television? The rhymes I come up with: duck, truck, buck....well, maybe I'll end up with a country song or something. Let me go work on that and stop whining.