You're such a charmer I can barely stand myself.

IM, Sarge seems to have a bad case of keyboard in mouth disease tonight. He thinks you're way older than 48, and that there's no hope for me since I'm 61 (60 actually - my birthday isn't until September). I beg to differ on the hope thing and as for government expiration dates, women are not MRE's.

We're Pandas. ;)

Take it tongue in cheek ladies. He was only funnin' wit ya.

I'm still wondering about the cellar being full of 'bitter old women'. I never really got that impression myself.

Are you ok Sarge?

Sarge believes we will all be amused by being called old. And at one time (i.e. the first instance) a reasonable proportion of us were. However it aged before he got tired of it. Which kinda shows he's just fine because that's pretty much situation normal for most guys....

Maybe he was attacked by a "cougar" and has gone on the offensive!

So, here in Ann Arbor, all our girls' travel hockey teams are called Cougars. Even the 10Us. That's kind of weird, don't you think? The boys are the Wolves, it's not even a match. Call them Vixens or something.... And all the moms sit in the bleachers with cougars shirts on..... and the dads too...... 'taint right

Well I don't really care too much about being called old. My teenagers do it all the time. I'm kinda desensitised. lol

I just thought it was a bit of a harsh comment and was surprised by the 'bitter' part the most. I don't think there are more women than men here who are or have been bitter about the past. We've all had times when we've felt that way. Mostly though, I think most women here are pretty reasonable considering some of the things some of us have been through over the years. Pretty freaking awesome comes to mind even.

what's so wrong about being bitter anyway? sure its not socially pleasent to be around, its not attractive, but there's plenty of shit one can live through that its completely reasonable to be bitter about.

there are ideologies that try to form delusions regarding it - "the secret" metaphysics, the belief in karma & comsic justice, or the aproach to life as a single "now" moment in order to devalue memories of the past and the fears of the future... but that's exactly what those things are - self delusions whose only use isn't to overcome anything but rather to not deal with things at all.

i'm not saying be stuck in it, i'm not saying form your personality around it, but why not be bitter when its reasonable?

Well, I really think that bitterness is just the urge for vengeance without the balls to actually enact it, so I'd call it a pretty weak emotion to start off with. I'd say it serves no purpose and stops you from moving forward with your life after adversity.

Yes I know that sounds judgemental, but I speak from experience. I've been bitter about things, but in the end the only one I was harming was myself and I guess maybe my kids too. What's the point in sitting around feeling sorry for yourself and wishing things were different? Things are as they are. You choose to move on, or you choose to sit and stagnate.

I choose moving on. :)

What Aliantha said.

you know what? at 18 i've had the balls to take care of finishing the job of raising a buisiness my father died in the start of so my mother can live off of it, and low and behold people saw my lack of exp and i got scammed again and again until i made something which barely covered the 2nd mortgage my father took to invest in it and her expenses, i've had the balls to not escape military draft even though i had the oppertunity and the only thing i learned from that is that i am really not the sort of person who can kill someone and forget about it because they are "the enemy" like every other soldier seems to easily do, i've had the balls to try and start and startup and getting into debt for which i ended up having to sell everything i had and work my ass off to get out of, i've had the balls to travel to a new country to learn skills (sales) that where at the time as alien to me as anything could be and after a good period of sucess and paying off most of mt debts a change in the company got our wages delayed until i had to leave and ended up homeless for two weeks, i've had the balls to travel to another country trusting in a woman i fall inlove with online, i've had the balls to emotionally adopt a child without any legal claims for who i could loose every moment, i've had the balls to stay there when she learned to use it as a gun to my head in every fight...and surprise surpise, eventually she pulled all the triggers.

i've being following my balls around for quite awhile, and you know what it gave me? a lot of shit. so far, having balls sucks ass, pun not intended.

now i know i am going to get up, i always find a way to get up and i always find solutions eventually, and the fact i can trust myself to do so is why i can make risky decisions in the first place.

but this crap has being leaving its mark, and right now everything i really want to do involves looking back and crossing a burned bridge that is no longer there. so even though i know myself well enough to eventually figure this shit out, right now, for the time being, i don't know how to get up, and i am not planing to force myself into convincing myself that the mark isn't there.

trac, my post was in no way meant to be personal or about you in any way. It's just my opinion, and I certainly don't think that pretending something didn't happen or didn't hurt is the best way to deal with things. In fact, acknowledging those things is imperative. Letting the negative feelings that you feel when you think of those things control your other thoughts is bad though. It shouldn't be all pervasive.

If I could get personal for a second though, I'd suggest that maybe if things are really that hard for you right now, and I can understand why they might be, maybe you need some help. It sounds a lot to me like you're maybe a bit clinically depressed, and maybe you could talk to a doctor about that? It could really help. I'm only saying this from reading your posts on this forum, so I don't really know what's going on inside your head, but you just seem to be having a lot of trouble coping right now.

naa, just being extremely self centered. its really the fact that this situation is still very fresh, one month and all, and if anything i'd say the transition from being a big walking pile of rage to sad and sorry for myself is only in the last few days. way to early to classify that as clinical depression.

so... who else is going to tell us something interesting regarding the age they are hitting which is probably not 40 but still worth commenting?