These days I (we) are very blessed by all the help we are getting. My partner has a regular caseworker whom I also see once a month, and she now has "help" once a week: a cleaner comes on alternate Wednesdays and a home attendant comes on alternate Tuesdays on the opposite weeks. She only has to pay for one visit by the home attendant. Also, an agency that helps "the elderly who hoard" is sending an intern to try to shovel the place out, on alternate Wednesdays. No one has ever succeeded with this in the almost 40 years I've known my partner, but hope springs eternal. She also now has a "medical navigator", that is, a nursing student who takes her to doctors' appointments if they are not serious enough for her to need me there.
But the most recent blessing is a caregiver group that is just getting started, that meets once a month. I had gone to a weekly group at the LGBT senior services center but it was full of unmotivated depressives of both sexes, and bi-phobic "angry dykes" whom I am just so done with. I felt like the mentally healthiest person in the room (with one exception), which led me to conclude that I was in the wrong place. This new group is a mixed group, and the woman who runs it is a former opera singer, who was married to a famous opera singer, and is now an interfaith minister.
Yesterday, no one showed up, so it was just me and her. We talked a lot about singing, first. She told me about herself (because I had asked) and I told her my singing story, in chronological order, something I really have never done except in these "pages".
I also told her about what had been going on lately, most notably (I have not written about this here) an episode two weeks ago when I thought my partner was dying, because she made no sense when she spoke and kept going to sleep. I said that this, as a more serious manifestation of the gut-wrenching upset over my non-birthday, underscored that I (we) simply do not have close friends. Anyone I am close to emotionally doesn't live here any more, or is always somewhere else, and other people are, well, to be blunt, acquaintances. Not the sort of people you'd call in an emergency. I had called her cardiologist, but he told me to take her to an emergency room, which she refused. So, yes, it would have been so comforting to have a "family member" (don't have those) or equivalent to use as a sounding board, even someone who might come over and make an assessment. Finally I did call a professional home health aide from the church (who did things for my partner prior to her getting all this free help) and asked if she would take a look at my partner. She said she could do it Sunday after church (this was a Friday) so that was where we left things (my partner didn't look like she had had a stroke, and upon closer inspection didn't look like she was dying, so worse come to worse I would sit with her until then, or if she got really bad I could call 911). As it turned out, by the following morning, after having slept for 24 hours, my partner was back to her normal self. We figured either she had accidentally taken an extra allergy pill (she takes two at night that make her sleepy) or that the new generic the pharmacy had given her didn't agree with her (she is now back on the old generic). But again, this just underscored my need for close friends, and I haven't a clue where to find them. (I meet tons of people all the time, but as I have stressed, they are always busybusybusybusybusy either with family, work, or their endless time in the air galivanting hither and yon.)
When I mentioned this to the minister/counselor, she said "why don't you pray for a friend to manifest?" Then she added "be sure it's not someone needy who wants you to take care of her!" I wouldn't have thought of that, but what I did think of is that I need, first and foremost, someone who has time for me, and that's what no one has. (I don't mean "me" in the personal sense; these people don't have any time for anyone who is not a family member - some are now awash in four generations of these - or someone to "network" with.) So, we see each other when we see each other and exchange pleasantries, and even some sympathy where it's needed - and I get a lot of the latter on Facebook - but then everyone scurries home, or to another job, or a concert, or a meeting.
So I think the friend whom I want to manifest is a "grounded groundling". Not a loser (I have met quite a few of these at various groups), but someone who is looking to fill their life, rather than pare it down. Another groundling. Someone who doesn't have children or grandchildren, or money to travel (except maybe once a year for a vacation). Someone who is here. Who will be here tomorrow, here next week, here for lunch, here if I call and need help because well, they don't have anything all that important to do most of the time, certainly not after work hours. I think this health aide fits the bill. Of course if she takes care of my partner I will pay her (I have my partner's power of attorney so I can do that with her money, whether she "wants" the help or not.) But she said that I can call her any time.
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