Tag Archives: milestones

When a Former Spouse Passes Away

Two years ago, I learned that a former spouse had passed away. He’s the subject of most of the early posts on this blog as I worked through my very short, very difficult marriage to him. By any definition, he was a full narcissist and therefore a problematic person with whom to try to have a relationship.

I was surprised to hear from his daughter who let me know about it; she didn’t provide any additional details. It was very kind of her to do that as I know that she had had very significant issues with him as well and had stopped communicating with him just after I initiated divorce proceedings.

Learning that he’s gone produced a bit of a reaction – it has taken me two years to write about it – with some feelings anticipated (relief, solace), and others not (anger, guilt). His departure has meant that I no longer need to worry about how he sometimes tried to track me down online, at work or through my family or friends, even many years after our divorce.

I suddenly began to feel a lot more secure. But then there was the guilt around being relieved at another’s passing as well as a real freshening of the anger I felt at the stalking and the need for additional safety precautions as well as for what he did to my finances and the time it took me to recoup.

This experience as well as my experience as a combat veteran has lead me to conclude that often, the fallout from traumatic or extremely difficult experiences doesn’t go away completely. These experiences lessen, they lighten. I can forget about them for long periods. The anger drops off. Even the details can become hazy. But disappear entirely? Nope.

There was the death of the marriage; in this case, it was stillborn even though it took me several months to put all the signs together. Then there’s the death of the former spouse, with its odd sense of unclosure closure. It’s a very mixed bag. Because regardless of what the experts say, some things just don’t fold neatly into a drawer that can be closed and locked forever. They grow smaller and smaller all the time, but you can still see their smoke on the horizon, no matter how far away you are.

What a Difference a Year Makes!

I was recently thinking about where I was this time last year, both literally and figuratively.

November 7, 2022, Northwest Territories. A relatively small snowfall covering my truck.
November 28, 2022, Northwest Territories. The eaves of my house over the living room windows.

2023

I didn’t have a November 7 picture from this year, so here is November 9, 2023, Penticton, British Columbia.
November 28, 2023, Dominicana. Sand, but no snow!

I loved working in the Northwest Territories, but I am happy to be where I am now – a lot warmer, whether that’s Dominicana or Penticton.

Good-bye August, Hello September

Summer is in its last three weeks and autumn is on the doorstep, shifting from one foot to the other as it awaits its turn. I always find this time of year to be a turning point, not just seasonally but in so many other ways, as well. In the northern hemisphere, the slower pace of summer comes to a halt as students return to school and many people either recommence work after holidays or resume a more regular work tempo.

A nearby beach.

Personally, I am transitioning as well and will retire in two months. Normally I would be back in the north (an impossibility right now regardless, since most people have been evacuated due to the forest fires), firing on all cylinders and pushing the pace, but not this August. My career-driven life of many, many years is slowing down, and although I am considering some contract work, I feel both strange and elated.

Lush summer trees.

Strange because all this is different … and elated because all this is different. There’s the slow good-bye, the considerations of what comes next … many things to which I’ve been looking forward. Still, I feel a bit contradictory: like I should be much busier than I am, even though I don’t need to be and don’t want to be. It might take a little time to regroup and become this new life.

Late-summer anemones.

Like it is for everything and everyone else in the northern hemisphere right now, autumn is on my doorstep. It’s both a beautiful time and a sad time, but it’s also my time.

A WP Anniversary

Yesterday WP sent me this.

I forgot that it was my anniversary. For the most part, blogging has been fun and I have “met” many great people, some of whom I feel as if I know.

A flower from my M.

Unfortunately, only a very few of the bloggers that I started following in those early days are still here, but others have come along, and the life wheel has continued turning.

An Okanagan willow tree.

I have also changed. I started out (very rustily) writing about narcissism, but over the years I gradually dropped it and now haven’t written about it for a long time.

Lots of other changes occurred during these years. My M and I had some significant career changes, we moved from one province to another, and I took on a last big career job in the north while maintaining our Okanagan home. M retired. We will be moving again next month, but this time, only to the other end of town. We have been busy!

Flying. It’s the best.

I will soon be retiring myself; in fact I am in my last 18 months of formal working time.

So what’s up 18 months from now? We’ll be starting work on a book about local wine, and I’ll spend some leisure time in a Cessna. It’s exciting, and I’m looking forward to the next chapters. 🙂

A Blogging Anniversary

I recently got a notification that I’ve been on WP for seven years now.

It has been a growing, very changeable period. I started with wanting to share an experience, and through writing about that experience, I was able to sort through what happened and how it happened and how I had contributed to it. I wanted my blog to be informative for others, and more importantly, I wanted it to be a sort of catharsis. But, as with so much of life, it turned out that I had much more to learn than to share.

So, what happened? I didn’t know it then, but I started with a question about being a human being. I was asking, where in my head do I come from? And later, where in OUR heads we do WE come from? And still later, where in our heads are we going?

This blogging experience became a journey of interior exploration which became a journey of exterior exploration, an exploration of others and how they bounce off me, how I bounce off them, and how that bouncing changes us, even if only in the smallest of ways.

When I was much younger, I used to think that everything changes. Then I thought that nothing changes. Then I realised that in between the everything and the nothing is a world of life, that if I spent too much time worrying how I should change or not change, or how others should change, that nothing would change.

Which is really interesting, because physically, lots has changed, and that lead to a further discovery of inner landscapes that I didn’t know were there. I did a 360.° What comes around goes around. 😉

In the last seven years, I got married. I moved to a different province to take a job in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. Then I moved, sort of, again, this time to take a job in Canada’s north. My home is in BC and I have another home, a “work home” in the Northwest Territories.

I am now an administrator and the buck stops with me. It was scary at first but I have become more comfortable as I have become more experienced. I am paid very well; I am at the top of the earning capacity for my profession, something I thought I would never achieve. I didn’t even think of it as a possibility, but now it’s a reality and I’m grateful.

My M retired. About three to four years from now, so will I. We have started looking for another home; it will likely be our last one.

As I have changed, so has the content of this blog. I started with posting about narcissism, then I slowly started posting about lots of other things. I still post about narcissism and still read about it, but it’s less dominant for me now.

My readership has changed lots too. The vast majority of the bloggers I followed in the first couple of years have stopped posting. A few announced that they were leaving. Sadly, a few passed away. Others have completely revamped their content and moved on to other topics as well.

Some of those first blogs that I started to follow are still here and I love that I’ve gotten to “know” these bloggers so well, even though we’ve never met and in some cases, I don’t even know their real names. I don’t post under my real name either – I post under my grandmother’s name. I remain cautious about the old ex-narcissist still lurking out there behind his computer screen.

Those I have followed for years now have changed too, and I have enjoyed that they have shared those changes. Some of the changes were planned major departures from the previous, others much more subtle. These bloggers welcomed me, enveloped me, and challenged me to think or feel or see in a different way. Thank you. 🙂

I initially wasn’t sure how this whole blogging thing was supposed to work, but I got the hang of it. I still remember thinking that it was pretty amazing that someone would click “follow,” that people would want to read or look at what I have here. It still amazes me.

Having said that though, blogging is kind of odd. We say a whole lot about ourselves, either directly or indirectly, and we put it out there for others to look at, comment on, and to decide whether they like it or not, literally.

All of the photos in this post are of roads. They were taken through the windshield of our blue Ford truck while we were travelling rather long distances. M and I very much enjoy our long drives. We talk, we think, we daydream. These roads all lead to places large and small, unique, ugly, barren or dazzling. But really, in the end, it’s the journey, isn’t it?

Kind of like blogging. 🙂

Things I Learned from Rudy

After a short illness, our darling Rudy passed away this morning. We love you, sweetie dog.

Lynette d'Arty-Cross's avatarIn the Net! - Pictures and Stories of Life

My sweetie Rudy My sweetie Rudy

Rudy is my dog. Well, he’s technically my son’s dog, but he has lived with me for most of his life. Rudy readily adopted M into his pack and now hates it when M is away. Recently, he also adopted B, M’s son.

Rudy is an amazing dog. And he’s about to turn 15. We’re not sure exactly when he’s turning 15 because he was an SPCA dog. But it’s within the next three months, most likely around the end of February or beginning of March. Rudy is in excellent health and is still living a full life. His hearing and eyesight are not quite what they used to be and he’s got a little arthritis, but those things aren’t holding him back at all.

So in honour of Rudy’s 15th birthday, and in honour of the fabulous guy that he is, I’m going to share with…

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Changing, Moving, Growing

IMG_20151004_165227When I realized that change was headed my way, I didn’t realize that it was going to be this intense.

In July, we sold our house in preparation for a move next year. We packed up all our stuff and trucked it to a rental. I whined about that a couple of posts ago.

However, life is not always orderly nor predictable (nor should it be). In late August, the opportunity for a great job came up. I interviewed, and a couple of days later I accepted their offer.

The job was 1000 km. away in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. Wine country. Some of the best wine in the world.

Real wine.

I was on my way west (even though I’m not a young man) inside of a week with my car packed to the rafters, my poor Rudy dog parked in a kennel and my dear M left on the prairies to finish up a work contract.

Now I live near all those wine grape vines you see in the top photo.

After finding a long-stay motel to reside in and starting my new job on August 31, I immediately got sick. Go figure.

There was sniffing, snorting, blowing and wheezing. A cough that came out of my bootlaces. A jackhammer headache that doubled in intensity every time I coughed. Aches and pains in my muscles that could have been caused by digging the equivalent of the English Channel tunnel but weren’t. I sounded like a four-pack-a-day, 60-year smoker. If I laughed, I broke into a cough. Sneezing turned into a chain of mini-eruptions with attendant lava flow. I was feverishly hot and cold at the same time.

And through it all, I kept working. New job and all that. I was the queen of hand sanitizer, giant tissues and elbow coughing.

Then it started to go away.

I started to feel better.

I started to get cocky. I’m like that.

Then I started to feel really, really bad. I woke up one morning feeling like I needed to get the bolt in my neck tightened.

Which would have been all fine if my name had been Frankenstein.

But it’s not.

I decided to investigate by taking a look in the bathroom mirror.

I looked like I was wearing a turtleneck sweater with an inflation device inserted into the neck part.

The side of my neck was swollen from my ear to my shoulder and the pain that accompanied it was intense. My tonsils were swollen. My ear ached and crackled. I could hear everything inside my mouth but nothing outside.

A secondary infection had taken up residence. Yum.

It’s still not gone but I’m about to start my second round of antibiotics, for which I am eternally (and internally) grateful.

Nevertheless Continue reading Changing, Moving, Growing

Age? What’s Good for Cheese Is Good for People??

I’m pissed off. About ageism, that is.

I was just at a store picking up some necessaries for my new abode and got treated like a doddering old fool at the till. And the thing is, I’m not much older than that cashier is.

I’ve noticed this more and more lately. The penchant for people to automatically think that I don’t know how to use a debit card. That I have no idea what the internet is. A couple of days ago, I was asked by a bank employee if I use online banking.

“What was that sonny? Speak up! I can’t hear you! Frontline spanking? Is that what you said? You oughtta be ashamed of yourself. What would your mother say if she knew you were talking like that to a customer?” Of course, I was just thinking this. But I felt like saying it. In a loud, high-pitched, whiny voice.

Yikes.

I’ve been using online banking for 15 years. I’ve had a debit card for, I don’t know, probably about 30.

People keep calling me “dear” too. Does getting older automatically imply that I’m in some sort of relationship with you? A few days ago, I politely asked a waiter to stop calling me “dear.” He kept doing it anyway.

People who use that word also have a special voice that goes along with it, too. There’s this patronizing, condescending tone, like they’re talking to a half-deaf half-wit. Just give me some pablum and a glass of warm milk and let me be on my way. Don’t let my clippy clop bother you as I head for the door, if I can find it.

Holy bloody hell.

And another thing is that my husband, who is five years older than me, doesn’t get treated like this.

He’s a guy! He still has all his faculties! His hearing! His virility! His drive! He’s vital and living!

While on the other hand, I have one foot on a banana peel and the other in my grave.

I’ve faced a lot of discrimination in my life. Nowhere near as bad as what some people have had to deal with, but still.

My guidance counsellor in high school told me that I couldn’t be a pilot. (You’re not a guy!)

People gave me suspicious looks when they heard my very French surname. (You’re not English!)

Military combat? (You’re REALLY not a guy.)

But the government says I can, so f**k off.

Yes. I’m 50-something. Yes. I’m female. It doesn’t mean that I live under a rock with only my walker and my knitting for company. And, I’m not a cheese.

So get with it, “youngsters.” Just treat us older people like … well, like people.

Have you faced ageism in action?