Hi again. It's true. I went from living at home to living in USMC barracks to marriage.
I didn't really think about that until I found myself...single. I woke up one morning in a new apartment and I was alone. Alone in ways I had never thought of before. Now, understand that I had been alone many times before. In the service Skip was gone a lot, then in the ministry he was off to conferences and different things like that and I didn't go so I was alone. But, I wasn't single.
Now I was responsible for everything! I'm not talking about just taking out the trash and putting gas in the car, Oh, way more than that. People I knew looked at me with sort of a sad expression and a smile. I'm not feeling sorry for myself here, just explaining how different life suddenly was. Now, I had to work! I couldn't just hang out. I had an income from Skip's Social Security but it wasn't enough to cover everything. I had already tried to hold Skip's real estate business together, but that didn't work out. Not for lack of trying but rather for lack capability. I could do lots of parts of the job by myself but I didn't have the ability to do some very important parts. Add that to the state of grief I was in and I had nothing. So, I resigned and backed out of the real estate business and signed up at an employment agency to look for a temporary job.
Talk about stress. It came from everywhere. My mind was mush. Now, I'm usually pretty orgainized and when the pressure is on I make a list of to-do's for each day of the week so I wouldn't forget anything. It just didn't seem to work because I kept leaving things off the list. Sometimes because I didn't know about it. It's a whole different mindset to be totally responsible. There's no one to consort with, or take over part of the load. No one to reach in his pocket and pull out money to help pay for things. Now it was all up to me. Everything. Getting a job, holding a job, paying for living expenses, the car, food, personal needs, everything. And if there was gonna be any extras or fun, I had to have the money for those too. All that and I had to learn how to function in society in a whole new way. I'll tell ya, I sure felt the eyes of friends and family watching. Single has a whole different job description whether young or a Senior.
An experience I didn't expect and wasn't ready for. Single and Senior
Thanks for reading. I'll be back tomorrow. Blessings, Judy
