This morning, my housemate/best friend? told me that she and her boyfriend are going to get a house together. He won't move in with her with me here, and she refuses to kick me out so he would move in.

What she proposed to me was that, if they get a place together, she wants to keep the house, and I would become the "caretaker" as it were. Staying in the house, looking after it, and paying the utilities in lieu of rent. There is a tenant, in a basement apartment. His rent, plus 30 dollars from me each month, will pay her mortgage. All well and good, right? She wants to keep the house, not sell it, so if she and her boyfriend break up, she'll have a place to come back to.

The thing is, I'll be all alone in the house. After 17 years together, Tina and I will be apart. I will NOT stand in the way of her finally having found someone who will be good to her... but I don't know if I can deal with being all alone again, like I was before we moved in together.

Back then, my life was on the rocks and I had no place to go. She needed someone to help her with her kids, and we were friends before that. I watched her daughter, my Goddaughter, grow from a baby, into a lovely young girl of 17. I helped wherever and whenever I could, finally coming to realize that that was going to be the closest thing to a daughter of my own, a family of my own, that I was ever going to have.

Tina (my friend) and I were never intimate. Not that I didn't want to be, but, like always, I wasn't what she wanted in a mate. So I respected her wishes and stayed friends, without benefits. I watched as she went through loser after loser. Each one just another float in a parade of losers... always hoping she'd find the "right one."

I've just ended, at least my part in it, a relationship that was, I found to my everlasting regret, mostly only in my mind. No blame, no hard feelings. This, on top of everything else that I'm going through now with my health issues, is something with which, I don't know if I can deal with. There'll be no one here to talk to. No one to share with. Just me in a big, empty house... all alone again.

Yes, I know. This all sounds like a one woman pity party, and I'm sorry about that. It seems the only way I can find ways to deal with things, is to write about them. Financially, I have no way to find a place to live that would be as cheap as the place I'm in. I'm now one of those people on a "limited budget," with only my meager Social Security check to live on, and a pittance each month from a small inheritance. I can't work any more, due to my breathing difficulties, and other physical problems.

Please understand. I do NOT want any assistance, financial or otherwise, from any of you! I will refuse, with thanks, any offers that might come from any of you. That's not why I'm writing this blog. I guess I'm just looking for any words of encouragement or whatever, from people who have become like family over the years... and as I said earlier, it helps me to write things out.

It's become glaringly apparent to me that my life is just one big, cruel joke... and I'm not in on the punch line. I'd cry, but I just finished putting my face on and I don't have the energy or the will to redo it.

Thanks for reading. If you want to comment, please do, even if it's a verbal ass kicking. I just need to know that I'm not completely alone, I guess.

Hugs 'n stuff,
Cathy