Apologies to those who will wade through this. It has nothing to do with running (I haven't run a step since Jan. 2, in part because of what I'm about to describe). But I need to get something down, and it's a little safer here than on Facebook, in part because none of you actually know me. However, there is a Utah angle in this, so you Beehivers/Utahns stay tuned if you can tolerate everything else.
I've been divorced for six years now (she left me, and I did not want her to leave). However, I quickly decided we were better off apart. We're at least civil to each other, and she lives 1000 miles away which helps us stay that way. It took me about a year to dip my toes in the dating pool, with varying degrees of success. Most of what success I have had has come through internet dating sites, which have their own set of risks. Most of those risks, I think, have actually happened to me in the last five years, but nevertheless, I persisted :)
So I found a woman last summer who was herself dipping her toes in the water as her own marriage fell apart (divorce still not final, BTW). We dated for two or three months, then she backed off for a couple months, then we got back together around Thanksgiving. There are some red flags in her background, but I've never dated a woman who didn't have red flags so I wouldn't know what to do with one. But boy, those red flags have come home to roost.
Three times in the last month she has gotten overwhelmed with her situation, with the pending divorce, with the abusive jackass to whom she remains married, with her dad who is keeping her kids for now, etc., etc. And when that happens, she disappears. And I do mean disappears. She is very good at not being found, probably due to practice in hiding from her ex-to-be. Disappearing also means sleeping in her car. This woman can sleep anywhere, including in the middle of a crowded basketball arena with 17,000 raucous fans (I witnessed that firsthand), and she says her little car is actually fairly comfortable.
In the past, she also dealt with these stresses by self-medicating. She is no longer self-medicating, so having to actually face these head on instead of better living through chemistry is a new experience. And she is not handling the new experience very well.
In the past couple of weeks, she disappeared, popped up for one afternoon, disappeared again, then popped up again this afternoon (which meant 9 or 10 straight nights sleeping in that little car). And when she walked into my place today, she was literally shaking from head to toe with anxiety. She does have prescribed medication for anxiety, and is taking it, but right now it's not adequate. I kept her there for two hours, before I had to go to work on the overnight shift. A mutual friend took her to a meeting, stayed with her for several hours, and is now staying with her at my house while I am working, for which I am grateful. I get to take over the watch at 7 a.m.
You may be saying, Spiderpig, this woman is trouble, get away from her. And you're not wrong. Only trouble is, I care for her. A lot. And as I said, every woman in my life, including the one I was married to for 26 years, had major red flags, so I'm used to dealing with them. I also found that when she was incommunicado for the past week, I had the same feeling I had when my wife was seriously ill and hospitalized -- a dread that I might lose her (is she dead? is she in the hospital? is she self-medicating again?). Seeing her walk in the door this afternoon, panic attack or no, was a huge relief. So that's where I am, and I want to keep her around as long as she will let me. (As an added bonus, I'm very fond of those two kids her dad is keeping, and they are fond of me). This will not be easy for me. I have to learn to give her her space when she's in panic mode, which is difficult for me; I want to fix things, but these things can't be fixed. All I can do is give her unyielding support and whatever stability I can lend to her life. But any difficulty I may experience is far outweighed by what she's going through.
Now to Part Two, which is where we get to the Utah angle. My son is now 26. We thought he graduated from college two years ago. Turns out he didn't; he was seven credit hours short, which his adviser conveniently failed to point out. He went through the graduation ceremony (how was that approved 7 hours short?), then a few months later they sent him a letter which he never received, stating that the diploma wasn't forthcoming because he hadn't earned it yet. A copy of that letter was finally re-sent and received last month.
You would also think that some of this would have surfaced as he looked for employment and potential employers looked over his transcript and saw there was no degree at the end of it. It didn't, because he has never made any significant effort to find a job. The reason? The same thing that afflicts my new significant other: Anxiety. He isn't shaking like a leaf, but the thought of getting out and asking for work paralyzes him. Yes, Dear Old Dad made it way too easy for him for the past two years, for which I beat myself up regularly. I encouraged him regularly to look for work, and he went through the motions of online jobhunting, but never more than that. I think he had one actual interview in the last two years.
So anyway, the ex, who has a master's degree in social work, did some research and decided that what Junior has is "failure to launch". Yes, as in the Matthew McConnaughey movie of the same name, which I had never heard of until recently. But I agree with her diagnosis. It turns out that there is a facility in St. George that specializes in treating failure to launch, and I will be bringing him to Washington County next month for that treatment. Weird coincidence that it's in a city I visited because of running, having done StG 26.2 in 2013. Current plan is to fly to Vegas and drive up, but I could change that to a 2600 mile driving trip. Depending, I suppose, on how badly the airlines want to squeeze me.
The goal is to get him through the treatment, finish his degree this fall, and hopefully he will be accepted into a program in which Americans go to Japan for two or three years to teach English in Japanese schools. He is a Japanophile, with four years of college Japanese, so he has a strong interest in that. And he hopes that in turn, that experience, if he is accepted, will open up other opportunities for Japanese linguists.
The turmoil of my son and my girlfriend this year has contributed to my failure to run, but basically it's still just lack of motivation to get out of bed/off the couch and put one foot in front of the other. Yesterday was the local marathon, and seeing my friends put dozens of marathon posts and pictures on Facebook is sort of stirring the old obsession. So maybe I'll get back on the roads soon. Fortunately I have managed not to let my weight balloon too much despite the inactivity; I have gained less than 10 pounds since I ran London last April (I'm going back to London this April, and there's a bib there for me, but I'm not using it).
Five gold stars to anyone who slogged through this, or perhaps just pity for the boredom I've induced. But I needed to write this. And if you wanna rip on me for sticking with this basket case, go ahead. I probably need some unbiased opinions.
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