Maryann Austin

In April, we had planned a trip to Florida. For numerous reasons, including my recent diagnosis, we couldn't go. We had taken a trip there exactly one year prior. That trip was cut short as my mother had become very ill and entered hospice care in my home. But we recently rescheduled April's bamboozled travels. And, for the past several weeks, I have been very skillfully planning my execution of all that needed doing to pull it off this time. PSC makes a person tired. All. The. Time. But we got it all done, and we left the house at 4AM yesterday. I drove some of the way in the morning, but my husband did most of it. Thankfully. He and my son understand how I am and what this does to me. And they didn't complain about my falling asleep for much of the last leg of the drive. It looked like sleeping, but it felt like a cross between drunk, hungover, and dead. Other people with this disease know what I mean.    We arrived at this beautiful little rental home last evening.

When I went through a divorce years ago, it was a lot of work. I should say, the bad marriage and leaving it were a lot of work. By the time the actual divorce happened, I was adjusting. It was all the back and forth and contemplation of a decision that was draining. Oh how draining. Raised with lots of guilt, I constantly questioned myself. Am I doing wrong by splitting this relationship up? Am I giving up too easily? Am I just a drama queen who is exaggerating how unbearable it is? Separate from that situation, I had total faith in myself. I try to live with integrity. I try hard at everything and it takes a lot for me to throw in the towel. I am definitely not a drama queen. Just ask my extremely functional second husband to whom I am very happily married. Lastly, I bear a lot before I complain. All this knowledge about myself went out the window when it came to that bad relationship. What I ended up doing was this. I made detailed notes of all of the things my ex-husband had