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Being Old With Chronic Pain plus Loneliness

Chronic Pain | Last Active: Apr 5, 2022 | Replies (192)
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@audreyb

I am 84 yo and find myself so isolated people are people but many are prejudiced and make friends w those who speak their language the place I live in was once restricted to people over 55 then a new owner bought the mobile home park and since then the families who bought houses are almost 100 % Spanish speaking and some don't even speak English. I am college educated.have a master of Science degree inAdult and
Community Education and am a former Native New Yorker. I am finding it so hard to communicate with neighbors especially on an intellectual level I am not interested in gossip re neighbors business and although I attend an exercise class 3 x a week land have reached out to others in an attempt to develop friends it has not happened I have only one sibling who lives in another state and no relatives in the state in which I now reside. I love jazz,photography and reading. I am not comfortable attending large parties,etc as I am afraid of social rejection. I am a member of a. Minority group both racially and sexually (lesbian) and know what it feels like to be unfairly judged by others. I am decent, lovable and neat. I just can't seem to fit in. It's a. B.

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Replies to "I am 84 yo and find myself so isolated people are people but many are prejudiced..."
Jim, Volunteer Mentor | @jimhd | Feb 17, 2018

@audreyb

I apologise for the delay in responding to your note. I'm kind of behind schedule, and the posts are piling up.

I'm also a native New Yorker and college educated. My degree is in music with a piano focus. Actually I have a double degree, the other half is theology. My wife is a native Californian, who has a Math degree from Cal Berkeley.

I'll be 67 for a few more months, but I've been retired for 12 years. I had to retire at 55 because of depression, anxiety, PTSD and multiple suicide attempts. I checked myself into a facility that was brand new, built for treatment of people like me who were suicide attempt survivors. I was there for 6 weeks - they weren't really happy that I stayed that long, but I was so far down that I knew if I went home any sooner, I wouldn't have been alive much longer.

So, I had to retire because I was too disabled to do my job. I was a minister of music for 25 years, then a pastor for ten. Two years before I retired, it was fortunate that we bought a home on ten acres in the country. We sold a home we had bought in 1976 in Merced, CA. Having held onto it for 28 years, renting it to friends, we made enough to roll the profit over to a property, rented it out for two years, then we retired and moved here, mortgage free. I don't know how we could survive if we had a mortgage. Social Security doesn't make a person rich, does it.

I'm blessed to have a quiet place to live. There's a lot of work to take care of the place, but it's well worth it. If I die before my wife, she'll have to sell the place and move to town. She's never pushed a lawn mower and isn't interested in learning how. I'm glad to have a riding mower. Because of neuropathy, I couldn't walk behind a mower to mow the lawns.

It's time for me to get to sleep, so I can't write more tonight. I'll try to be more prompt in my responses in the future.

Jim

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