About two months after D’s mental and emotional breakdown and the near collapse of our marriage, my physical and mental health deteriorated visibly. In March, I was no longer the spunky, sweet, super-loving and all magnanimous wife who was deliberately over-affectionate and overattentive so that my husband would be saved from committing a grave sin of breaking his wife’s heart and of breaking up a family. Our family was saved and our marriage survived, but my health, both physical and mental, was falling apart.
It was a typical New England winter of times gone by. Recent winters had been mild, but January and February 2026 were brutally cold and snowy with grave financial and emotional consequences for many folks. A three-day blizzard dumped more than 3 feet of snow in Rhode Island; we are now still paying in installment a surcharge for the snow removal service we used six months ago. Even though we had to dig ourselves out at one point because our yard care/snow removal company didn’t show up for many days in a row, they still charged us a large amount above what we usually owe them for the monthly maintenance of our grounds.
What a dismal, heart-breaking and expensive winter! What a bleak beginning to the year! My happy spell that had started around the Fall of 2025 was completely broken when January 2026 came around. In my despair, my heart ached and I missed the cottage on High Street where our family used to be together happily. I questioned our decision to move out of Kentucky. We worked so hard together as a team to move our whole family out of the stagnant environment of that small town where nothing happens. And we were so over-the-moon with our new home and environment last July. How did things go so wrong after we achieved our objectives and arrived where we wanted to be?
Did we anger the Gods by having left behind everything and everyone we used to know and count on? We had had to be secretive about our plans because of the toxic nature of Edward Jones (if they had known of D’s intention to leave, they would have made it impossible for him to be employable) and the dysfunctional dynamics of D’s extended family (they constantly quarreled among themselves and are not trustworthy). Still, should we have just stuck it out with everything and everyone that was familiar? Should we have not taken the leap into the unknown that we believed would be better for our family? Were we disloyal and deserved to be punished? Did they whom we used to care about turn out to be vengeful and treacherous? How to live? Do we dream and strive to do what is best for us or just submit to the flowing current of society constituted of other people’s whims and wishes? Do we try to rise above mediocrity or just go along with the majority? I still don’t have the answer.
By Easter, I had started suffering from dysfunctional uterine bleeding as a physical response to excessive stress. I thought I was only having a longer-than-usual period that is quite normal during perimenopause. After I had gone for a doctor’s visit and got a prescription, the bleeding stopped and I felt a small surge of energy. With more energy, I wanted to do something to try to uplift my spirit above the gloom and doom I had lately succumbed to. I wanted to see beauty and something colorful and positive. With Easter on the horizon and the fluttering of Spring’s first breaths, my thought turned to flowers.
So, on a windy Monday during one of D’s business trips to Kentucky, I ventured out to buy flowers from Dave’s supermarket and pots from Home Depot to try to create an indoor Easter garden. Little did I know that my body was still very weak from the bleeding and that over-exerting myself physically outside in the wind would lead to a relapse. The day after my indoor garden had been planted, the bleeding resumed with even more intensity than ever before. I was forced to lay flat on the couch for many days on end, which led me straight to depression. Instead of feeling uplifted as I had expected, I was completely miserable. All because I wanted to plant and see pretty, cheerful flowers in my home so as to ward off the winter gloom in my heart.
Here they are — the flowers I paid for dearly with my health:
By Saturday morning of that week, it was clear to me that my bleeding was not going to be controlled by me just resting on the couch. I called my doctor’s office but they refused to call me back. I ended up having to call random doctors’ numbers, hoping that one of them would call and guide me as to what I needed to do. A doctor from North Scituate called me back and advised me to go to the emergency room at the Women and Infants’ Hospital in Providence. I called our kind neighbors Lauren and Barbara to ask them to help drive me there.
Bold, Slow and Intentional 