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Aunt Ty died years ago. I did not witness her death but I witnessed her dying. Aunt Jackie and Aunt Celia, in that order, were the next closest kin who watched Ty suffer. Now they are all dead. I’m the only one who remembers and there’s something devastating about that. At Aunt Ty’s funeral, everyone was grieving properly, crying quietly, nodding yes to the preacher who spoke well of her even though he didn’t know her. And at the end, there were terrible choked sobs that broke out. They were my sobs, bitter and miserable. Then there was a collective intake of breath and they all joined in, sobbing as they rightfully should have, assuring me I was not alone.
It’s sort of like a yard sale. I have a lot of this and that on my mind. Here’s a basic truth about me: rumination is a gift. I don’t know if it’s real or imagined, but I think it gets old, my talking about my breakup, my depression. So I blog to get it out and try to give the people around me a little peace.
I feel better, even if I’m not really. Even if it doesn’t last. Distractions are good things. My house, my blog, my this-and-that help me to not dwell so much.
Still. I worry about my future with men. Truly. In therapy, what has come about is that I think my relationships with men are doomed to fail. It is a belief, something that feels real and true and absolute. I don’t know how to combat it. Once I make a date to meet a man, it starts a countdown to the end of our relationship. I literally hear the clock ticking. A good friend of mine said, you’ve been put through the ringer, don’t be so hard on yourself. Another said, don’t make other men pay for what’s been done to you.
One theory is, in some ways, I chose my previous relationship because he was obviously flawed, so I didn’t have to wonder what was going to go wrong. That feels both true and not-completely-true. If one relationship, one that by all accounts was not good for me, if that one relationship can create so much sorrow, can spiral me this far down, how am I ever going to survive dating? Was it coincidence? That this dysfunctional relationship and breakup simply corresponded and exacerbated a depressive episode I would have had anyway? I want someone to tell me I’m not weak.
I’m so tired of ambivalence.
Ramblings of a Medicated Lady: Words of Woe by Loria Taylor 
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