After My Fall (and Notes on Last Night's Troll at This Blog)

This was me two mornings ago when we returned from our morning walk with the dogs. As we neared our house, and I know not how it happened, I fell on the sidewalk, flat on my face. I also seem to have landed on the knuckles of my left hand and the palm of my right hand, and on my left knee.

Steve thinks I stepped off the sidewalk, turned my ankle, tried to right myself, and this caused the fall. It all happened so quickly, I honestly don't know precisely what took place: just that I was walking one minute and lying flat on my face on the sidewalk the next, worrying that I had broken my glasses and that our little Chris, whose leash I had been holding, would dash into the street. I am very grateful Steve was there to pick me up and walk me around the corner to our house, and then clean and dress the areas I banged up.

I'm telling you all of this now not because I'm a sympathy-hound — I hope — but to explain, in part, how it happens I did not notice the troll who came to this blog last night (this was during the night, actually, so I was asleep) and left a string of comments at postings dating back a number of years, kindly informing me that I am going to hell. In typical homophobic troll fashion, the person hides behind a cowardly pseudonym while he preaches his "gospel." And in typical troll fashion, the person had read my previous statement about how I am feeling conspicously ground down of late, after having lost a canine family member — and he chose that moment to mount his attack. This is how homophobic trolls behave. If they smell blood, they attack — homo lupus homini.

I will freely say that having to make the excruciating decision to have the life of a much-loved canine family member ended has put me considerably off-kilter, so that I wouldn't be at all surprised if being off-balance played a role in my careless misstep on Sunday, which resulted in my falling flat on my face on the sidewalk. I had already learned in a roundabout way last week that my brother and his son would be in town this weekend, and I knew that they would not be contacting me, since I have not heard from my brother or his children for some years now, after Steve and I extended a loan of some $40,000 to him to help him pay his credit card bills after he ended his marriage, and he then stopped paying that money back to us after he had repaid a few thousand dollars.

As he communicated to us that he would not pay the money back, he sent an exceedingly nasty email implying that we owed him the money, that we had benefitted ourselves financially from my mother's estate, and that he intended to pay no more back. (I was my mother's legal guardian in the years in which she suffered with dementia. I had that role because this same brother and his wife refused in any way to assist in caring for her. As that brother well knows, as a legally appointed guardian, there was absolutely no way I could take money from our mother's estate. I had to account for every penny. There was little left to the estate after my mother's gerontologist told me she needed to be in a nursing home, because I could no longer give her the level of care she needed at home. The nursing home ate up what little money my mother had — and I was glad to spend her savings for her use at the end of her life.)

So I was off-kilter Sunday, too, because I've been mulling over the — well, the word "cross" comes to mind: I've been mulling over the cross I cannot seem ever to lift from my shoulders, when it comes to how my family members choose to treat me, the way in which they have consistently repaid what Steve and I have seen as generosity and kindness with ugly lies and vituperation and hateful, exclusionary treatment of us. 

It's wearisome. I find myself tired. And I honestly don't know what to do except trudge along — well, these days, hobble, since the knee on which I landed Sunday is very sore — knowing that there's not a darned thing I can do to change any of this, any of what my family members do or communicate to Steve and me. If I had a choice, I'd have chosen not to learn that they were holding a family gathering yet again within days after we let go of Flora, and were not inviting us, not communicating with us.

But that's who they are and how they behave, and I cannot change them. What I can deal with is myself. I know that I need some rest and composure time these days, and will keep taking them, but wanted to update you in the meantime, especially after the malicious troll mounted his attack here last night. I'm trying to moderate the comments section here, but may miss items I should see, and am very grateful to Sarasi for emailing me and letting me know this morning what the person did during the night.

I would also appreciate your holding me in the light. Last evening, I began having floaters in my right eye, something I've never experienced before. Since I have read online that at least one cause of vitreous floaters can be intraocular hemmorhage following a blow to the head, I called my ophthalmologist when they began and asked what I need to do. I did fall on the right side of my face, and can see today that I have black spots in the corners of each eye but more so with the right eye, and that makes me wonder if the right eye is having the floaters now due to some hemorrhaging caused by my falling on my face. I think the bruised areas are due to the impact of the nosepiece of my glasses as I fell on my face.

The ophthalmologist told me I do need to have my eye looked at, and the clinic will try to work me in quickly for an exam. My hope is that they can have a look at me today. Meanwhile, I'll appreciate healing thoughts — and I send the same to you.