Eating Disorder

Mar 26 2021

“They call me Mimi but my name is Lucia….”

I have been having a busy week. I had my six month checkup for my lung cancer surgery last September, with a CAT-Scan with contrast media, and follow up with the surgeon. I am very aware that breathing is a different experience for me, and not for the better, but I am adjusting. I even gained five pounds, which is a significant for me.

My chronic anorexia, and the experience of being inexplicably abandoned by someone who swore his love and commitment to me, only to be followed up by ghosting me, made the recovery almost impossible. Without love, it took away my strength to recover, and my will to live. But I am made of tougher stuff and survived in spite of it.

Today is very early spring, and I have reason for optimism and looking ahead. I am attaching a photo of my son and my grand-daughter, Piper Starling Connolly, who visited me a week ago, making me very happy. Kensie is standing by my side, where she can always be found.

I am reminded of Mimi’s aria in Act. 1 of the opera, La Boheme, set in Paris, my favorite city in the world. I would like to share it as an ode to spring for all of us, and to my own victory over death and despair. Mimi is forced to face her own mortality by the end of Act 3, as shall we all. But in Act I, there is flirting, laughter, and the hope that only comes in spring. Find it on YouTube to listen to the beautiful melody. The words follow:

“They call me Mimi, but my name is Lucy.

I embroider flowers, roses and lilies on silk.

I am peaceful and happy; it is my pass time.

I like these things. They have so sweet a smell,

They speak of love, of spring, of chimera, these things

That have poetic names….. do you understand me?

Yes, they call me Mimi, why, I do not know….

Alone, I make my lunch for myself,

I do not always go to mass.

But I pray a lot to the Lord.

I live alone and cook for myself. Alone….

But when the thaw comes, the first sun is mine!

The first kiss of April is mine!

Rose buds in a vase, leaf and buds

I watch them. The flowers I make,

They do not have an odor

Rose buds in a vase,

Leaf by leaf, I watch it

The gentle perfume of a flower!

But the flowers I make

Ah me, they do not have any odor!

About me, I would not know how to tell.

I am only your neighbor come to bother you!”

From Act I of the Italian opera La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini

Libretto: Giuseppe Giacosa

Mar 21 2021

I would like to think it is getting better at Blyss with Kensey

Today, I awoke slowly. Over the weekend, it was time to turn the clocks ahead so we are in “Daylight Savings Time”, that gives us more sunlight in the afternoon and evening. That gives me time to give my dog a second or third walk in the late afternoon or after dinner. It is usually the warmer time of year, so I am out more, working in my garden or talking to the passers by, or my neighbors. My home, and home town, are particularly conducive to this. All I have to do is get up and live and I find myself enjoying the idyllic surroundings with which I am blessed.

I have been more blessed in past times because I had lived with several borzoi, as many as five or six at a time. That is a memory bourgeoning with bliss running over, especially when our litter was born. Then my last husband, Bob, was alive. Bob, who was taken from me almost violently, was ravaged by pancreatic cancer at the age of 56, ten years ago this week in 2021. I came across some photos this weekend during happy times, in particular, the time of our wedding in 2000. We looked so happy. I declared myself a “Millenium Bride”! looked so amazingly beautiful and young. I do not look that way anymore. The last twenty years have been cruel. I have had cancer twice, and lived through the ravages of two nervous breakdowns. Sadly, I recovered and did well on my own after Bob was gone, and missed him terribly, knowing we would have been happy together again, but it was too late. Following his passing, I have just endured ten years of bitter loneliness as I have dated one loser, liar, basket case cripple after another, looking for love. I am a woman who craves human love, never having had it as a child.

Today, I am no longer able to keep borzoi, I am just too frail from having lost so much weight during my illnesses. I am still active, however, in my clubs, I participate in Meet the Breeds when it is in NY City, and I am an active member of the Borzoi Club of America. However, I have ventured into the world of Silken Windhounds and I am currently living with the irresistible “Kensie”, from the Wind ‘n Satin Kennel of Mary Childs in Ohio. A more precious creature with a princess attitude cannot be found. She is loved and adored by all who meet her. She knew instantly I was her person and what her job was. She is a jewel of a dog, so much like a borzoi in every way, just half the size. I will admit, she does not have the “drama” of a borzoi, but in every way, she is just perfect. I was profoundly depressed when she came. My maintenance medications were all increased, and with her presence in the home, and the structure caring for another living creature creates in your life, I began to feel better quickly. The same thing that would have made me happy as a child makes me happy as an elderly woman today.

Mar 01 2021

Another Facebook Wisdom; Any and all wisdom is required.

I would like to share from “Notes from a crazy soul” on Facebook:

“There comes a time in life, when you walk away from it all, the drama and people who create it. Surround yourself with people who make you laugh, forget the bad, and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right. Pray for he one’s who don’t. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is part of life. Getting back up again is living.”

With that quote in mind, I realize how much I fail to succeed in living a life of wisdom. Instead, I am tested with tragedies that fly by with the speed of a tennis ball I cannot see, but only hear the Hisssssss of it speeding across my face, just missing me, barely. The impact would be damaging, somehow fortunately it misses me, but the effect is the same. This pattern has followed me throughout my life. It began with my parents who created their own domestic tragedy of a marriage and imposed it on their children. It left us, their children, stuck in the place where they failed, unable to go back or unable to move forward. The accuracy of this pattern in my life is stunning. In every relationship, all I have to do is sit back, smile, and wait for it to happen.

One day in 2002, I had the opportunity to buy a young male borzoi. He was very sweet and beautiful, and I embraced him to my heart. I felt a love I never thought I knew. He was followed by several others, including two bitches, and we bred a litter and kept a male. After a short while, I realize I had been changed by this experience and felt protected for the first time in my life. Love had found me at last and changed me forever. When one of those first borzoi died suddenly, in 2008, I became very ill. I had never grieved like that before. In 2019, my last borzoi passed away. I told myself I was fine and was doing well. A myth. A year later I was diagnosed with anorexia and bipolar depression and had to make serious choices regarding my treatment. In addition, between 2013 and 2020, I had cancer twice, each one requiring surgery. My parents’ legacy was still alive and well. They won after all.

Unexpectedly, I met a magical and new man in 2020 who swore his undying love for me after finding me and my dog pictures on Facebook. He told me I could trust him. I was his everything, especially, his future. One evening, a simple conversation turned suddenly aggressive and he left me. It took about one minute and he was gone. Although I begged him to return, and he did, he created another dramatic scene few months later, leaving me alone again. I felt like a fool for trusting him, but he put on a great show of a man in love and I believed it, even in the face of many contradictions.

It is experiences like this that I must be wary of, and not just me, but everyone. I don’t care if you are a man, since I am sure there are insincere, manipulative, ingenuine women in the world, as well. But I have accrued such a long list of men covering the last ten years of my life that I have been a widow trying to exploit me, men who had no love in their hearts for me whatsoever, that I wonder if I should end this quest once and for all. They all had nothing to offer beyond smoke and mirrors, and when they grow tired of their game, they create a scene and leave. I know I have many true friend and it is to them that I must turn. I have Kensie, my new Silken Windhound, by my side, to replace my former borzoi, and she makes me smile. Life is hard but there are little things that make it sweet, and downy pillows on which to rest my head and dream.