Well....I had "the chat" with two more couples that are my friends yesterday. One couple are neighbours, the other, are a couple from my dive team (Our Chief Instructor and his wife). My neighbours were awesome! They asked what I needed/wanted from them and they want to spend more time with me now. I never did socialize to much with the "gang" as I felt like I never quite fit in. And that is not just with my neighbours, that is just about me in general. Anyway, She now has me on the list for the next girls night out email and we chatted about make up, shoe sized, electrolysis, etc. And he offered to help out in my yard as he took early retirement and is looking for things to do, and he loves being outside. So that works for me....your classic "win/win". The interesting part of the conversation was that he told me that the guys in the "hood" who had seen Erin in the yard and coming and going from the car with grocery or shopping bags etc, thought that male me had a live in girlfriend. This was a bit upsetting to them as this women just appeared very quickly after my separation and they thought that I must have been having an affair prior to the separation. This upset them. Turns out, it was just me. In fact, the husband of the couple I was chatting with admitted that he did see Erin occasionally and had been checking me out!! We all had a good laugh at that! Long story short is that they can't wait to spend more time with Erin and are totally supportive in helping me with the rest of the "gang" but feel that it will be totally fine.
The second conversation with my dive buddies went equally well. They are totally on board, wanted to know I have their support and willing to help in anyway. They offered their home as a safe haven if I was having a bad day or feeling lonely, that I was welcome to drop in anytime as Erin. She is a nurse by training and offered already to help with aftercare when it comes time for SRS etc. They were both very confident that the rest of the dive team would be fine with it. There will probably be some "ribbing" at my expense, but with this group, if you don't get ribbed, that means you are not part of the team. It is kinda weird, but I know their motivations and I can deal with it. He said that as Chief Dive Instructor, he would intervene if anything made me uncomfortable and would let everyone know in advance his expectations for working and interacting with me. I am sure it will be fine, but good to know he has my back. He also agreed to let me to to "inactive status" should I need to at anytime to adjust to changes in my body and how they may impact some of my duties. Even so, there are lots of administrative things that also need to be done, so I could stay involved that way if I wanted to until I was ready to go back to active status. But all of this will be up to me. He will work with what I want. We both chatted about one member that is quite, how would you say.....abrupt??? He can come across as being quite rude if you don't know him. But he has PTSD from being deployed alot to Afghanistan and you learn to know that it is not meant with any malice, he just doesn't have a "filter" that always works. So we don't take it personally and we work with it.
All in all, it went really well and now have two more couples that are part of my support network and true friends. *phew*. It is all good.....
