Living As All of Me

[HannahOne]

The Pilates class was AMAZING and I am going back on Monday!

There was a male teacher and two men in the class. The teacher was humble and made jokes throughout. He stayed on his mat and corrected verbally when needed. The room was beautiful and light. Everyone was kind. A woman handed me a ring when I needed one.

Afterward I felt so alive. Not exhausted and sore like after weightlifting or elliptical. Just alive. I have been reading a bit about Joseph Pilates and his method is very interesting. It's about opposites, balance, vitality, mind-body connection. I was a bit dubious about Pilates as in the last I associated it with my time in LA and the "keep it tight" ladies. But it's nothing to do with appearance actually. It's about presence and a way of being alive, like an animal. Joe even talks about animals and "pandiculation" which is somewhat akin to Peter Levine's animal post-trauma tremors. I'm here for it.

New obsession unlocked. Dopamine and happiness ensues.

[HannahOne]

Talking with some friends today about food got me thinking. I have mini potatoes and broccoli in the air fryer right now and I just mixed up a Greek yogurt sauce with lemon juice, garlic and salt. I'll swirl the yogurt sauce on the plate and put the vegetables on top. Yum.

I can make what I want. I can buy what I need. I can have my yum.

Growing up there wasn't enough food. A few red delicious apples in the fridge, a head of iceberg. A bag of white bread. I'd eat the bread one raw slice at a time, rolled up into a ball so it had more bite to it. Eat the head of lettuce for dinner watching Popeye. It didn't make me strong. Eat the apple, hoping another would magically appear before I got hungry again.

After my sibling was born when I was almost 7, there was more food. More often a PBJ or a bowl of cheerios with milk poured for me. And more to forage from as needed. The occasional chicken and rice left me sitting at the table in the dark till 9 pm, refusing to eat it. I don't know why. Once I sat there till midnight.

Sometimes I still ate the dog biscuits for old time's sake.

By the time I was twelve the fridge was generally full and more meals. I didn't like the meals. After growing up on raw cereal and apples, a big bowl of chili was revolting. I started making my own meals from what we had. Or didn't eat.

In college appeared the miracle of the cafeteria. You could push your tray down a line and rows and rows of steaming hot food, take as much as you want, only what you want. I lived abroad for a year in England and France. The figs! The goat cheese! The Indian curry! The BREAD! Picking rosemary off the mountain side right before a goat went to grab it, and putting the leaves of it in my tomato sauce. That was the life.

I got married a month after graduating. I walked to the grocery every day. My poor partner was subjected to a variety of awful dishes but ate without complaint. I learned over time. When the kids came along it was breastmilk, then homemade sweet potato puree, organic everything. As they grew, chicken pot pies, homemade chicken noodle soup, and their favorite, tacos. We followed Ellen Satter, division of responsibility. I chose where they ate and when, at the table at meal and snack times. They chose what to eat and how much. Always deconstructed meals, with the chicken pot pie always bread, salad, always a "safe" food." No one left hungry. No one sat there for hours alone in the dark. I ate what they liked. Tacos, ok fine.

A few years ago a friend hosted me for lunch on a regular basis. I loved the food and started making it myself. She ate Mediterranean style, for health, but it was so delicious. Lentil soups, goat cheese salads, salmon and potatoes, steamed green beans with garlic. Hence this yogurt and vegetable meal I'm having now. Very South of France. Thank you, kind friend, for feeding me so many lunches. I guess part of me was still a hungry kid.

All grown up now, my kids male their own meals. Today I entered the kitchen to find the oldest singing opera and frying up a steak. The youngest was fake crying loudly, apparently to make the dog feel guilty. I had to check it wasn't real crying. Nope. No crying here. That one opened the fridge and started pulling out vegetables. I had plans for those vegetables... I kept quiet. Half an hour later she presented a stir fry. Yum.

[sanmagic7]

so very glad for you, hannah1, that you were able to grow out of that nutrition-poor environment and find foods (and enough of them) that you enjoy, could eat as much of as you wanted, and felt nourished and satisfied.  that's so wonderful!

pilates sounds like it hit the spot for you.  i love when that happens.  personally, i think we get more out of whatever we're doing when we're doing it for an organic reason.  enjoy enjoy!  love and hugs

[TheBigBlue]

Hannah,
Reading this felt like watching a long arc bend toward care. From a child trying to quiet hunger with bread rolled into a ball, to someone who made sure no one sat alone in the dark at the table. That's a powerful shift.

And the image at the end with opera, stir fry, and a kitchen full of food and life, feels like something important was rebuilt there.

I'm glad you get to have your yum now. 💛 

[HannahOne]

SanMAgic7 and TheBigBlue, thank you for following and commenting, and validating my celebration and happiness. I am amazed at how good I can feel how often. It was a Long five years of severe depression. I am really coming back alive and enjoying life, feeling much more present more of the time, and being more embodied, eating and moving. The more I take care of my body, the better I feel emotionally, too.  Thank you for being on the "journey" of coming out of the storm.

[HannahOne]

I went to Pilates/yoga today but the man wasn't teaching. The teacher began chanting and I felt very alarmed. I don't want religious yoga. Her ego also felt all over the place, she clearly enjoyed herself chanting and I didn't feel included in the chant, if that makes sense. It was like she was surrounding herself with a wall of ego noise. It felt like being around a narcissist, that sense that you're just an object of their performance. I can't say of course anything about the woman, it was probably entirely an EF on my end. But I didn't like the feeling at all. I froze for a minute, it was embarrassing to roll up my mat and go and I didn't want to offend. But I know that if I don't allow myself to leave things that don't work for me I wont' want to try anything new and I'll go back to bed. If I made myself sit there and tried to talk myself into feeling ok, I'd end up dissociated, when the entire point of Pilates and yoga is to be present. I can't be here. so I left. If I can't be here, then I need to go somewhere I can be. I quietly rolled up my mat and left and I felt really good about leaving. I will go back Friday when the man is teaching and pay more attention to who is teaching on the schedule. I came home and made pesto vegetables and Fasolika. I am eating like before the pandemic and feeling better and better. I will get healthier. Fasolika for the heart, pesto for the bones.

I saw the surgeon this morning before the non-yoga. I liked the surgeon who did the first procedure but the aftercare was no good and I had some wound healing problems. Because of my genetic disorder I don't heal well and make weird scar formation. So I got a new surgeon that is within network and is said to be very good. But today she is pushing me to start the medication while she consults with an expert in my genetic condition. I'm confident she is my best option. So fine. I give up, and I will start it this week. I hope it won't make me utterly miserable. My primary care doctor wrote me on the portal and said that she saw the note and is increase my nerve pain medication to try to compensate for the chemopreventive. She also prescribed a statin and a bone density pill. Heart and bones. I hate both of those medications. and that's part of what I wanted to avoid by doing surgery. But again, fine. Fine fine fine. Whatever. I will take all the medications and keep exercising and eating well and see what happens.

I feel like in some ways I am catching up with myself. Looking at my hands, they are 50 year old hands. Older than I feel. But all parts of me are starting to accept, it's over. I'm an adult. I won't get what I thought I needed. Turns out, I don't need it, I survived without it. I won't become who I would have been. Turns out, I don't need to become anything other than what I am. Who knew? Parts of me are shocked, their hands falling open, disappointed---was all their work for nothing? No, friends...how to explain---it was needed then, but now is not then. And now, now what? They'll need to find new jobs. Anyone want to be chief pig petter? Anyone want to be a red-tailed hawk watcher? Anyone want to be in charge of activating the core in Pilates? Who wants to snap the ends off the green beans? Not so glorious, I know, as Survivor in Chief. It feels like a demotion, but it's a demotion to the hard ground. Feel your heartbeat? Feel your shin bones against your arms?

A demotion of sorts, an early retirement. But being All of Me at 50 is cool, too. I promote it wholeheartedly. I can make my own food, take myself to and fro, come and go at will. I am starting to be-bop again, be-bopping around the planet, here and there, not so much pressure. There's not the feeling of guilt, fear, doom, grasping. All that drove me so hard, to be "successful" as I then defined it, to be safe. I'm not so driven now. It's a downshift. Parts of me worry, I'm stepping off the rat race? I'm leaving the cheese? I guess so? Volunteering at the wildlife refuge isn't going to net me a cushy retirement. But I really need to be here and now, now. In a year? Maybe things will shift. I have a few more clients work to finish and then I can take a break from my business. We are not having to spend so much to care for the kids now so there is room to step back. And room to step forward, into new things that just make me happy. Hello, Homer the pig! Hello, red-tailed hawk!

The house is in disarray from the weekend, there's craft stuff all over the table I see. I need to run laundry, dishes, mop the floors for the week. I need to make a crockpot full of chicken. I have mounds of clothes all over the bed where I tried things on for fun. And the poodle shredded some paper wrappers. I will be-bop to the chores, not frantically, not parentified, not overwhelmed. As the adult I am, taking care of business. "Hearts and Bones" playing on the Alexa.

[sanmagic7]

hannah1, the idea of growing older is an interesting one, in my book.  altho we may look different - such as 50-yr.-old hands, i do believe it's our spirit that really counts here.  many people have already given up.  my daughter used to work at a condo building when she was in her 20's , lots of older people there, and she told me she couldn't count the times people would be standing at her desk telling her not to get old.  she wondered about that, and when she told me, she said 'what did they want me to do?  stop living when i turned 40?'

i'm just glad you're still enjoying living, even tho it has its ups and downs.  be-bopping around the planet, taking advantage of what your age has given you, like choices, perspectives, perceptions, knowledge, etc.  it is an adventure, isn't it?

i'm also glad you were able to pull up your mat and leave an environment that didn't include you.  that's an autonomy you might not have had when you were younger.  well done!  love and hugs

[HannahOne]

SanMagic7, yes hooray for autonomy!  

[HannahOne]

I am waiting for child to finish ballet class. In the "Asian cafe" where I am waiting, maudlin country music is making me weepy. The whole experience is bizarre. The wonderful smell of dim sum, and "Rollin' down the highway...." on the radio, guitar wailing.... sniffle snuffle. Ye gods, what is this music?

A bit of a hard day. I had to go to the DMV. Need I say more? I couldn't find my license when it was time to leave. Then trees were down all over and I had to keep turning around. When I got there I dissociated when what I tried to explain was shut down. Ridiculously I was given a driver's license with my name changed, without my consent. By the end of it I couldn't even talk and was seeing stars. They refused to use the name on my social security card and passport, because of RealID rules. Whatever. Call me Sally, call me Jane, call me a Biscuit and butter me up. What's in a name, anyway. The fact that now my DL and my passport don't match should cause me some interesting problems in the future.

On the way out, I had to pay for parking and two men were struggling with the machine. While waiting to pay, I saw the problem and showed them it was card only. I got nervous, a woman standing there holding my wallet in my hand. They seemed nervous too, white lady standing there white lady-ing all over the place I guess. Neither spoke good English and they were lost. I showed them where the DMV was and walked them to it because it was a labyrinth of side roads. He had just come from my home state, he said. How'd you like it? I asked? Colder than here, we agreed. I decided to stick around for a minute and sure enough the man came and found me with the paper in his hand. "Purchaser name? Sign?" You're the purchaser I told him. Print here, sign here. The form was unintelligible to me as native English speaker. I did my best. He was very appreciative and I felt really good about the interaction. I gave him a thumbs up and left.

I am a terrible parallel parker, and as I was leaving he was coming out. He saw me doing 15 infinitesimal K turns LOL, and came jogging over to stand behind my car and wave his hand to "keep going" and then "stop" until I was out of the spot. I rolled down my window to thank him.

I'm thinking that teaching ESL reading might be something I really like to do. I like to enable people to access the world. I was given opportunity, I was given a chance. I want to help others have the same.

I came home and the house is still messy from tearing it apart looking for my license--which was in my coat pocket. I'm a little forgetful again lately. I feel overwhelmed about these stupid medical decisions and the back and forth and that I don't want any of it and the oncologist, the surgeons can't agree what makes the most sense with my condition. I pulled in the driveway to find the neighbor had put up a new violently white fence. It looks horrific, I don't know if it was our fence or his he partly tore down to put up this monstrosity but it runs directly into our old brown fence, it's just ridiculous. He should have at least let us know what he was doing. Did he get a permit, is it on the property line? I felt upset about it. Then I was afraid to walk the dogs.

Got myself to go to PT, arrived ten minutes late, they called me as I was pulling in. Didn't do a very good workout, couldn't make eye contact with the PT or say anything, my tongue felt huge in my mouth. Tripped on the strap around my legs, tripped over the mat on the ground. "What's up today?" "Tired I guess." Why am I even trying to get in shape? I can't remember who ever wanted to do this.

Came home and laid on the floor till the kids got home. Made snacks, checked in, got the daily download, shared outrage at the outrageous and a chuckle at the ridiculous. Drove kid to dance.

This is an example of a not good day for me. Where I'm not plugged in, things aren't going well, I don't seem to have the skills I need, everything feels wrong. I feel very defeated. I am reminding myself growing up seemed impossible. I felt defeated often, or a fear of defeat, a crushed feeling I had to quickly put aside and overcome so I could get back out there and hit that calculus test. But the feeling remains sometimes, it hangs around. Defeat, wrong, everything out of control, I'm flailing or invisible or off. Everything feels impossible. I feel I am not a human, not on the human level. And it's hopeless to improve, to catch up, to get myself together, to find my license, to have the right name, to parallel park, to navigate around trees without crying. To know the fence rules and be worthy of being fence-informed.

Tomorrow is another day. I resolve to get my partner to hire some men to paint the deck, look at our fence and advise, and take down a few trees. And power wash the house. Neither of us can do these things. I hope he won't argue. Inside the house, I'll make steady progress on restoring order this week. When the environment isn't neat as a pin I feel like I'm living in my FOO house, neglected, water leaks, no hot water, no heat....neglected. It's a horrible feeling of shame and... defeat. Our house is in great shape, it just needs some spring sprucing on the outside. And I'll put the inside right.

Frank, give me strength. Will this music ever stop? I am going to go walk around outside in the cold. I will drive home, I will hope to sleep, and try again tomorrow.

[NarcKiddo]

I've been away for a few days and am now catching up on journals.

I was particularly interested to read about the chanting yoga teacher. Yoga is something I have always felt I ought to do but nothing about it appeals. I also dislike exercise class environments (to put it mildly). During covid lockdowns our gym made all the classes available online so I tried a yoga class and the woman chanted. It put me off completely. I stuck out the entire class and realised that most of the mobility/stretching work I do is pretty much yoga-based anyway. But had it been a real life class I think I would also have had the urge to walk out. Whether I would have had the guts is another thing altogether. Well done to you for doing so.

I'm sorry you've just had a not good day. I hope tomorrow is better.

[HannahOne]

Thanks for reading, NarcKiddo. I'm so glad you can do the stretching. It really feels amazing. I was reading that Joe Pilates talked about "pandiculation," it's about stretching, rhythm, resetting the nervous system. Animals do it. Yoga has some of that in there, some nervous system resetting.

The chanting just triggers the life out of me. I didn't expect it because the other teacher played rock and roll during class. My personal opinion is that chanting affects the nervous system, that's why so many religions use it, and for me personally, it feels too close to dissociation or hypnosis. To me personally chanting feels like someone trying to shut down my thinking brain, turn off my prefrontal cortex and that feeling is very scary to me, I don't feel safe to be vulnerable like that in a group of people. Granted I have a bunch of religious trauma. I think this lady was just enjoying the sound of her own voice LOL but it really bothered me and yes I'm glad I left! Not traumatizing myself is step one. Not forcing myself to experience things that I find noxious, even if it doesn't make sense, even if I unknowingly signed up for it, even if it's already happening. That's important for my own sense of safety.

[sanmagic7]

hey, hannah1, i lost the post i already wrote, so in a nutshell, i hope you're doing better today.  and i also hope you never have any problems due to having 2 names now on ID's. 

i'm with you on chanting, or any of that other nervous system stuff, like singing bowls, certain meditation 'music', tai chi, those kinds of things.  they just don't fit w/ my own energy, and make me feel worse rather than better.  just another way of pointing out how very different we all are in ways/methods that work for us or don't.  keep taking care of you as best you can.  love and hugs

[HannahOne]

Sometimes songs from growing up come to my mind. Hours spent in the backseat of a car, sliding around, no seatbelt, windows down, no A/C, looking for something. Today it's this oldie and goodie:

And when I see the sign that points one way
The lot we used to pass by every day

Just walk away, Renée
You won't see me follow you back home
The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same
You're not to blame

From deep inside the tears that I'm forced to cry
From deep inside the pain that I chose to hide

Just walk away, Renée
You won't see me follow you back home
Now, as the rain beats down upon my weary eyes
For me it cries

Just walk away, Renée
You won't see me follow you back home
Now, as the rain beats down upon my weary eyes
For me it cries

Your name and mine inside a heart upon a wall
Still finds a way to haunt me though they're so small

Just walk away, Renée
You won't see me follow you back home
The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same
You're not to blame

Maudlin, silly. Weirdly resonant. My brain picked up anything it could use in the scrapyard of my surroundings and held it. Any bit of care to hold onto: the rain cries for me. Anything of language, anything poetry, anything that could communicate or carry or contain something of All of Me: from deep inside. My name in a heart on a wall. I'm still here. Here I am. Just walk away, HannahOne. I will walk away, and not follow anyone back home. I'm not to blame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDfrW5cWqMU

I found a most beautiful version by Linda Rondstadt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTXC-iWRefg&t=123s

[HannahOne]

TW for sad stuff, health stuff, existential drama and trauma.

When I started this journal I had no idea what was coming my way.

A thing about CPTSD---there's so many things about it, aren't there?

A thing about CPTSD for me, and I don't know if this is a character flaw of mine?

A thing about CPTSD is that for me, every major life event is weighted with it.

I hate that. I want to change that. I want my life to overshadow CPTSD. I want to be bigger than CPTSD. I want to be stronger than CPTSD. I don't want the * to have ground me down. I feel like I've failed to heal properly, I have not overcome it. That makes me enraged. I will NOT be overshadowed. I gave up 20 something years to abuse, LET ME GO.

And yet I can't be a person to whom it did not happen.

Right? I can heal, but how much? I can heal, but not to the point of becoming someone to whom it didn't happen.

Is this healed, am I healed enough? What's enough?

I can't not see my treatment as punishment. I know it is not. I would never think that of anyone else. It wouldn't occur to me. I would feel only compassion and grief for anyone else. So I know it cannot be true.

I cried all night, and I feel better now.

Getting busy living includes time for crying. Crying is part of living.

The young HannahOnes are outraged and enraged that this treatment is happening. No matter how I tell them I'm so lucky, it was so early, it's all cut out, I'm only doing recurrence prevention now and making sure. No matter how I explain how rich you have to be to have health care in America, how I am middle-class now, how privileged I am to have a safe house to heal in, how I have my own car and can drive to the doctor, how I can have all the food I want. How I have heat and AC and electricity and hot water. They're just flipping their lids.

They feel I have let them down, not kept my promise.

I promised an amazing life, a life that would make it all worth it.

I cannot deliver.

No matter how good my life is, I don't think it would matter, because it can't be worth it. It just can't. The suffering was wrong, so wrong, so cruel.

A thing about CPTSD is that the older I get and the more I heal, the more capacity I have to take delivery of what happened to me.

In that sense, healing makes it all worse.

the more I heal, the worse I feel in a way. Because I come out of denial, I integrate it more. The mother that I am is absolutely appalled. Appalled that I was left in my crib while my parents partied in another apartment down the hall. Appalled at the beatings. Appalled at the lack of care and provision. Appalled at how I was used.

I can't make it up to these little ones, I can't make it worth it. I feel them looking at me with big eyes, asking me what I've done for them. Have I vindicated them, have I made it right, have I gotten them justice, have I brought them healing in a silver cup? I have not.

I'm only bringing them more punishment. That's how it feels.

Once I had insects in my house many years ago. The man wanted to treat it with poison. I was so upset about the poison because I had a small toddler. finally My therapist told me to STOP calling it poison and call it treatment.

I need to do the same now I need to think of it as treatment, not poison. I need to think of it as surgery, not being attacked with a knife and left worse off, damaged. I need to think of the pain I'll feel as freedom and healing. I need to feel this is a choice even though I am ending up having no actual choices. Choose life, HannahOne, choose life.

I am going to try using the kind of imagery that I've been talking about. I'm going to bring a healing rainbow, like the rainbow blanket SanMagic 7 gave me. I'm going to stand under a healing waterfall. I'm going to try to wash away this heavy guilt I feel. I'm going to let this existential burden flow away from me. It is in a way not mine, although I am very identified with it. Actually it was imposed on me. I had to have it to survive. I no longer need it. I'm going to try to bring rainbow water to all my inner children in little silver cups and I'm going to apologize to each one. My God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't get you out sooner. I'm sorry I had no choices but bad ones that hurt and cost so much. I'm sorry I didn't vindicate you. I'm sorry there is no justice. I'm sorry I couldn't make a life amazing enough, enough to make it make sense, make it ok, make it worth it. Nothing could be worth hurting you like that. I'm sorry I did not keep my promises. And yet here I am. And life happens and it's complicated. It can still be a good life. This is temporary. Life will go on. That doesn't change the past. It doesn't help the suffering I experienced. Come with me into the present. Come further away from that despair and horror. Come into the now. Look at my dog, my rabbit. Be here with me where things are ok. They were not ok. But now they are.

I don't know how to do this, what else to do. I don't know if I should try to find a therapist. I don't know if I should try medication. I don't know how to heal more. I'm tired of trying. I'm truly tired. I cannot make this right. It just has to be what it is. I just have to feel it. And life will flow on how it does. For all my life I've pushed the river. I think I am surrendering. It hurts so bad because I promised myself so many promises. It feels like such a failure and such a loss. I feel defeated. And I never felt defeated. No matter how long I was beaten or how pinned down I was I never felt defeat. I felt only waiting, sprung, for my moment to arrive and I spent decades finding and creating those moments, moments when All of Me could fully arrive. Moments when I married, graduated, landed jobs, graduated again, landed another job, produced a child, produced a book, galloped a horse on a beach, climbed a mountain in China, at a crepe in Paris. I made my life as big as I could to contain the multitude of my pain. To be bigger than the pain. Bigger than the losses.

And now I'm just not. I can't make my life bigger. I'm too tired. And no matter how big I made it, it won't solve the suffering of the past. I have to let it go and move forward into the future. It will be hard enough to go through all of this with all the intense triggers I have around medical stuff, around my body, safety, touch, pain being applied to me. It's going to feel like the torture of the past no matter that it's healing. I cannot deal with this and also carry the existential weight of the promises I made that I would suffer no more as an adult. What a beautiful, sweet, naive little promise. I mean, how adorable. Six year old me promising myself that life out of that house would be a bed of roses. It's ok, HannahOne. It was a great idea, what a smart, smart little cookie. To promise myself a cookie the size of Manhattan in order to get through those grueling minutes of pain.

Life is not a cookie. And I'm an adult now, and I can take it. I can do this. I can handle it. If I let go more, I will be able to go forward more. I'm truly sorry I could not make a cookie the size of Manhattan. But All of Me is safe now. All of Me is safe. This suffering is not that suffering. I am choosing to get medical treatment. Medical treatment is not abuse. Medical treatment is not torture. I am taking care of my body so I can live longer and better in the future. A future that must remain unknown. That will not be a giant cookie. But will not be the abuse of the past, it cannot be, because it can never be the past. The future can be good. Is what I have left. I must live with what I have left.

[sanmagic7]

hannah1, i hear you loud and clear.  i can't tell you how many times i've felt similarly that every year of recovery felt worse, i felt worse.  you said it beautifully, tho, and it's something i've just recently realized - all the healing i kept doing, all the research, all the discovery about myself simply laid open the rawness underneath that much more, and i felt worse.  couldn't understand it when i kept hearing from others who were in recovery about how much better they kept feeling as they learned this and that.  come to think of it, most of them were 12-step people, and they went down a different road at times than i did.

the depth of our trauma, the width of it, the length of it can have an all-encompassing feel.  i've said many times that my traumas have tainted every part of my life, triggers are everywhere because of that, and there's been a feeling of not being able to escape it.  it's been cruel, difficult, painful, confusing for so long.  but it's been just this year that i've somehow felt a click, a change, and i'm finally, on the whole, feeling better than i have since i began recovery/therapy 40 yrs. ago.  i didn't come to any of this till i was in my late 30's, and, unfortunately, i ended up with a narc therapist for my very first one, who set me back quite a few years.  however, i've also found some good ones who have encouraged me to keep moving forward.  and i know i couldn't have come to this stage now w/o them.

so, yes, i think a good, trauma-informed therapist, one who will go at your pace, will listen to and hear you, might be your next step.  maybe you can try that thought out, see how it fits.  best to you, and know you're not alone.  love and hugs