Well, thing have certainly changed for me on the mother-in-law front... she has become completely unmanageable now. She does weird things to wake us up and do us harm in the middle of the night. Last night, she called the police at 1:00 am. Claimed that we had locked her out of the house, and probably that we were abusing her in various ways. She had done a sort of "dry run" of calling the police a few days ago, and even though she had been waiting for them when they arrived, and opened the door for them as though expecting and anticipating them, she denied calling them at all. She told me that she couldn't have called them, because the internet was up... but the internet had actually been down most of the day. So she not only called the police on a false pretense, she lied about doing so.

Last night, she made no pretense, but the fact that she lied to the 911 operator was obvious. The police told me to go to family court and get her Baker-Acted, which is a fancy legal way of saying to get her committed against her will for a 3-day observation period, because she is a threat to herself or others.

I'm not waiting for a judge, though. On the advice of several good friends, I'm having a mental health professional come over to talk to her. We're giving her an ultimatum: go to an Assisted Living Facility, NOW, today, or I will have you committed to a hospital by the Baker Act.

My husband talked to her this morning about what she did to us last night. She claimed that she called 911 at 1:00 am...because he got home late and she was worried. Heh heh, what a crock of crap, because he'd arrived home at 11:00 pm, at least 2 hours prior to her calling the copes. He removed the telephone extension from her room, and gave her 35 cents to go to a payphone.

Meanwhile, I got about an hour's sleep last night. I'm already sick with a bad cold or a light flu (plus all the other niceties I have to deal with).

On my own mental health front... hubby and I have talked some more, and even though I don't have the kind of answers I really wanted about why our marriage has totally bitten the dust... I have come to a tentative acceptance about the fact that he is no longer in love with me. There's nothing I can do about it at this point anyway. He waited too long to be honest with himself or with me, and in the name of sparing my feelings and glossing over his own discontent, his own feelings for me died. He killed them, which was the opposite of what he had actually wanted. He admits that. He has taken responsibilty for the fact that in spite of never wanting to hurt me this way, he's hurt me more than anyone else ever has. He says he will just have to live with that for the rest of his life (instead of living in the love he thought would always be there between us).

I can't make the stupid jerk love me. I would be a stupid jerk myself for trying. So after a great quantity of tears and weeping, I began to accept, just a little bit, the notion of being his friend.

We were always friends. It's just that we were NEVER "just friends."

I would still like my life back. But that's never going to happen. It's fallen off the face of the earth, the way that they say Western California will eventually fall into the ocean.

It's not fair that someone else can take my life, wrench it away from me, deprive me of the closeness that I have depended upon for so very long... and then just move on into his own happiness, happily ever after, with a new (and better) love. No, not fair at all. But it happenned.

I can hate him forever, or I can have some kind of life. Those are my only choices. Once again, I choose life. For right now, I have family. None of us are really sure what our position is within this family -- Amy and I talked about how I've felt displaced... since I'm not in a position to be his wife, and she wants to nurture him, which is only natural because she loves him. I told her that I am so accustomed to being "chief cook and bottle-washer," so to speak, and now I don't know what the heck I am. She told me she was just as bewildered about what to call herself, too. Strangely enough, that made me feel a lot better.

Neither of them wants me to leave. Neither of them particularly wants me to divorce him. I'm pretty sure that I will eventually divorce him and move out, but for right now, we all seem to need each other, even though none of us can exactly say what it is we want or where it is we're going. So I'm more comfortable, though by no means am I totally fine.

I now have an appointment at the county hospital's mental health center for evaluation on 12/30. I'm gonna need some help again... probably forever, because I probably have beaucoup underlying brain chemical problems anyway... but at least I haven't had to go to the crisis center, and I didn't have to be hauled away by Rescue. I came close, but I didn't cross that line.

One of the things that threw me that close to the edge was the fact that I had been looking forward to having a decent spate of holidays. Thanksgiving and Xmas have been thorns in my side for many years. Last year was kind of a breakthrough, however, and I was really not sad at all. So I had been looking forward to a totally fine Turkey Day and all. Until my life blew up in face, that is. And suddenly, I have to start all over again, facing almost 3 months of painful holidays. I actually broke down and wept while sitting on a bus bench the other day.

It's not going to be the holiday season I wanted it to be, but now I'm thinking it will be OK. I hope.

Bright Blessings,
Lil