Hi LMo, I can't believe I didn't reply to your post. Thank you for your words. I've been away, and thinking, and just living, and am now trying to remember why exactly I didn't respond immediately. I realise that I've moved on, just a little, since then and think I may have just needed some time to process things.

Interesting how long things take to go from becoming words to something more, something in the blood. Like the biblical 'word made flesh'.

Being away physically made a huge difference. Unbelievable. To remove the body is also to remove the mind from whatever is stressing it. Seems perfectly obvious now. Which is not to say that the mind and body are equally removed. Not at all. Sometimes removing the body brings the mind closer, but in a different way. Sometimes it creates a space for 'sentimental love', as Erich Fromm calls it in "The Art of Loving". Though he means it negatively, it can also be a resuscitation of something deeper that gets ripped to shreds in the analytical focus on problems and shortcomings.

I guess my point is that finding the right words for things is all well and good, but no substitute for feeling the same things. And feeling things takes a lot longer than finding the right words, because, as you said, 'melding the mind and the emotions' is the hard bit.

Not that I'm done, not at all, but I'm in a different place. And increasingly able to find my way back to that place, with increasingly less effort, when things go a bit pear-shaped. I'm relying more on different friends, and find myself listening and sharing in their lives more. I'm re-realising my own strengths and being a bit kinder to myself as regards my weaknesses.

My husband is, I think, reaching some kind of crisis point. And I'm trying to accept that there's little I can do to help. I feel increasingly distanced, the odd 'burp' when I get angry that he's so utterly self-involved, but then I remember that it's at least a partial function of his depression and let it go.

For the moment, this is as good as it gets. And the weather, even in this rainy, soggy country has been good, and the swimming in the sea wonderful and the ceilis by the lake amusing.
So I enjoy what's on offer; my little car, the sun, my friends, my cat, my garden, my family - far flung though they are. I'm glad I'm alive, and not dead as I wanted to be, and that's cool.

Excuse me in advance for any future 'burps' which may bring me back here in a different state of mind. I'll be back, either way.