I'm engaged!

What an exciting day to be working if one must work!

A really exciting email from the man above the make of my dreams and a nice bottle of wine from an appreciative customer occurring within a matter of 24 hours notwithstanding, not to mention the extra cheddar I'm earning today (yo!) by filling in for my old job, last night will stand as one of the single most important and exciting events to have ever graced my life.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, or non-existent audience, I announce that upon my arrival home last night, my boyfriend of a year and a half proposed.

                                                                                     

Oh, this is NO ordinary story. It may SOUND ordinary. But it is not. It's just not.

No. The words you see printed in dreadful, plain, and non-spectacular black and white are just that: misrepresented in ALL of their glory. ALL. See, 'cause there are all these sparkly, electrical, zapping little fireworks that explode tiny pops all over every word. The formation, angle, and essence of each word is a radiated corona of euphoric triumph.

There were no plans for at least two years. We had talked early on about things. We had goals. We were in common thread about the future. We had both been married before. There was by no means a rush. 

And then, one day, without so much as a warning, save for the really exciting email mentioned at the start, I came home from an ordinary day at work, slipped into my ordinary grub garb, and had been tinkering around with ordinary chores when I turned around to see my super sexy boyfriend in the doorway of the spare room.

The email I had received was a ring sizing chart. I couldn't even catch my breath at the prospect of him looking at rings at work AND him having a moment to email me about it. Another email followed with a photo of a ring twice as beautiful as I had dreamed. The email said to measure my finger so that I could be surprised in a few years.

The sexy man in the doorway was looking at me. He was being his normal attentive self. I thought nothing of it and smiled. (I love it when he is near me.) We spoke of the email. I found myself trying to catch my breath again as I prattled about the email. He mentioned something about not being able to keep surprises for the second time that day and laughed. I didn't catch it. I was just trying to calm myself down from the memory of the photo from the email and keep my head level.

Finally, he reiterated his feelings for me, told me he wanted to be with me for the rest of his life, and, just as I was thinking about how I felt the same way, he reached into the hallway where the washer is, and pulled out a silver box.

He said my name, asked "will you marry me," and went down on his knee. The ring had come to life, from the page on the computer screen earlier that day to the real life thing of precious beauty, right in front of my face.

I was more stunned for words than I ever dreamed I would be, shouted a jubilant, exuberant "YES!" and squeezed his neck for five straight minutes.

It is fantastic. A triply spark-tastic glowing rainbow of fantastic

 

In Love

I am ridiculously, shamelessly, unabashedly, and, for the most part, blatantly... in love.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. It has finally happened. You heard it here, folks. After more than a decade of ins, outs, baggage, mistakes, stupidity, real tragedy, obnoxious tragedy, beautiful things and beautiful stings, I have finally found that kind of puppy dog love that I have only ever scoffed about and watched fade from my eyes before it began at multiple junctions and stops in my life.

Now, that being said, I don't mean to sound bitter. I am not. Really I am not. I have always believed that that kind of love exists--even before I knew it could exist for me; and when I found that it could exist for me, it was kind of taken and smashed around a bit until there was nothing left. In plain terms, I only had a jaded, vague idea of what true love was, what it would mean for me, and accepted it would never fall in my lap exactly the way it did because of the examples I had as a kid (marred and unhealthy), and ultimately lacked vision and resource for how to save that love as recurring cancer and medical hoopla created more stress than young love and immature mexiwegians could handle.

Or stupid. I don't mean to sound stupid, either. Nothing is more awkward than watching gangly teenagers in love and sucking face in public. Except for having someone over thirty proclaiming to be in love all over a blog and having to read it.

But I came to understand a different kind of jadedness that comes from perceiving love was undeserved and viewing it in a negative or incorrect light, to the end that it was tossed away and the opportunity was lost. It wasn't. Or maybe it was. But it doesn't really matter anymore, to the end that everyone involved in this story has moved forward and marched on. (Even though parts do matter very much. Some things just cannot be so indifferently regarded...)

And with the evolution of conquering doubts and fears, so come the possibilities. Possibilities of love. Possibilities of finding someone on a dating match website. Possibilities of finding that someone. Possibilities of doing the one thing you want to do: taking all of your life experiences and matching those to someone who understands them and wants the same things you do. Namely, to fight for love and for each other and safeguard each other from the state of the world today, in a world where good and evil is dividing more extremely every day. Possibilities of finding that kind of best friend. That kind of best friend...

And for well over a year, that is who and what I've found in Trevor.

I have wanted this for SO LONG. I have wanted this wayyyyyy more than I ever admitted. What I have with this man right now is what I have always never dared to wish I would eventually have. This is what my daughters are already starting to get giddy about, remind me of myself, this is what I thought I had but never did. This is what I was always afraid to have. This is what's possible.

It is not negating the days and letters spent trying to justify getting married the way I did, because I still stand by my choices, even though things changed; it is not even negating the bullshit stint I pulled going cross-country trying to get out of that marriage and attach like a dummy magnet to an emotionally manipulating butt nugget, a butt nugget whose lies I wanted to be true.

But it IS a new beginning. It is definitely something that I don't feel I have to go solo on. I have found someone who seems to be my match. I feel we are complimentary to each other as much as we are symmetrically matched. Our stories and our values and our goals are so similar. He makes me laugh. We are at home with each other. There is mutual respect. There is love. Sacrificial love.

Things

You know, it was really crazy. The day I lost my mind. I did a soap opera thing, pulled this stunt. And, for what little defense there can be of such a brainless and jackass move, I can only say it was born out of this warped and contaminated place of being emotionally vulnerable.

At the end of the day, I do indeed struggle with what percentage is mine to own. I was of what I thought to be sound mind and bearing, making a decision--what felt like the very first decision of my entire life of choices--and taking my own life in my own hands.

I thought what I was doing was taking the first step, the initiative. Showing my girls my example how to take charge of their lives, to never lose themselves or be lost.

I thought I was doing the right thing, or at least the only thing, that could be done. In the sea of choices I had up until then and for several days, months, and years thereafter, I mistakenly felt that there were none. I felt like there were none the day I lost my damned mind.

And it was, by hook or by crook, without doubt a ticket out. The day I lost my mind was actually a culmination of preceding moments of not actually taking charge of my life as I should have, but it was also the ticket I needed to get out of a life I wasn't so much trying to escape, but erroneously trying to correct.

And so, because of that, there is a tendency to blame only myself, to think of only what I am responsible for, to look inward and not outward, because trying to be a person with integrity means owning what you did wrong just to accept responsibility and not point fingers.

But I have spent a life time turning in on myself like that and it spiral into different if equally negative outcomes, which I over and done with. I have also learned that there is a difference between blaming others to deflect your own guilt and knowing when the other guy was just a fucking asshole and you fell into his pack of lies because you needed so desperately needed to believe in something because everything and everyone around you was so suffocatingly unaware.

I thank God every day that I am where I am, even with the pain I've experienced and the pain I'm currently going through; that I'm not there. I thank God because I'm no longer in harm's way. I'm no longer stressed to the max every day. I no longer have to suffer the presence of him in my life. I have a beautiful life with an amazing boyfriend. It sucks that my girls aren't here and that the reason is because of the asshole ex, but I'm happy they are thriving with their father, a good man and good dad, and that I have a family here with the boyfriend. 

Considering all the ways I have fucked up in the last 15, almost 16 years, I am blessed with the fortunes of being surrounded by two beautiful daughters, one step daughter, a fantastic boyfriend, friends and extended family who love me.

Write a letter to your 16-year old self

What an absolutely great idea. I read it somewhere, probably on my Facebook feed, because that's all the social interaction I get outside the house these days. Minus work. Well, yeah, so my job is pretty socially interactive. So I guess I don't really know what I'm talking about. Especially on account of being entirely and intrinsically happy to not have to do anything in the evenings. That and the fact that I get the social buzz for the one side of my split personality at work and then I get to be totally introverted, quiet, and anti-people in the evenings for the other side.

ANYWAY...

I caught a glimpse of that on my feed and it stuck with me. I mean, there has to be reflective and therapeutic power in that. And for me personally it flags and goes along with the theme of writing my daughters their own personal letters for Christmas. Maybe because they're both teenagers and writing a letter to my teen self will be very revealing. Maybe because I feel like I've messed up their lives so bad and need to ensure, in some way, that despite their unorthodox lives, and the physical distance between us was forced to be because of some stupid twit decision I made three years ago, that we are as close as I feel us to be.

In either or whatever case, it would go something like this:


"Dear Amy,

 I don't know whether to shake you or bite my tongue yet again! You deserve compassion but you're not standing up for yourself. Stand up for yourself! And only do it from a place that comes from your heart and from thinking about the situation, not a defensive, ready-made stance. 

Don't be afraid. Don't go on people-please autopilot. It's gonna be hard. All of it. It's gonna hurt sometimes. Decisions that seem to go against the grain or that will piss people off, even your parents. But don't use that strong sense of intolerance for injustice to beak off to people and then cower when it's important. Use it authentically. You're not going to make all people happy all the time. You're only going to have you and your morals to go off of once all the people you tried to please abandon you.

And I know you feel like it's selfish to think of yourself--at all--but you HAVE to take care of you from the inside out. If you don't now, trust me, no one else will. And no one else can. No one is going to EVER be able to read your mind; or know your likes and dislikes better than you, and who better than you to teach those around you how to love you? If you don't do it, who's going to do it? Don't wait for someone else to do it. That's toxic as hell!

Your mom and dad are going through some rough shit that they don't know how to overcome and even more importantly (to them) don't know how to parent past. They are doing the best they can, but they are from an era and generation where they are a little more selfish than the generation before them, and they've both had their own hard roads to get to this point. They shouldn't be together, but that's not your problem. Try not to worry, you will be all right. Just don't let their depression and inadequacies rain on you. And never, ever forget that even in their flawed human moments, all their good was instilled in you and all of your good morals would not be without them.

Just keep your head up. Keep holding onto God. Keep praying. Use more logic and less emotion. Dig deep, pull hard, never do anything or make any decision, however small, without thinking about what you want and then be ready to embrace the consequences. Belly up, buck up, and pull up your boot straps and FACE the consequences. Be happy there ARE consequences. And remember you are never really alone. People will come and go in your life, some will stay, some will love you regardless of circumstance, and some will hurt you, but even when there are no people, there is God. And His Son. And the Holy Spirit. And THAT Holy Trinity will always surround you with people who are attracted to that same entity.

Remember that a real man will do 3 things for his woman: He will protect her physically, spiritually, and emotionally. Remember to check any red flag in any character you meet and think about it. Don't ignore it simply because you're trying to see the good in a person. If you make a wrong decision and hurt people, make it right. But make a decision. Stand for something.

Most importantly, follow your heart and use deliberate, conscious thought always. Things will happen in your life that are unexpected. Good, bad, terrible, attrocious, wonderful and miraculous. Don't let the emotion of pain carry you away into a life of panic, fear, and terror; and never get so wrapped up in elation that you forget who you are, because at the end of the day, it's important to be wholesome, grounded, and eyes focused on the main prize--God and self respect. Everything will follow that, as long as you lead with it.

Quit being so nice."

Bar fight

Oh-kh-hayy now. Ri-i-ight. AS IF. Seriously? I mean REALLY. Are you fucking kidding me? You've GOT to be kidding. Just plain ridiculous.

It's been over a year. A WHOLE YEAR. No, wait. OVER a year. Well over a year. A year and a half. An entire fucking year and a half. And things were awkward well before we quit dating anyway! You didn't pull your weight before we even split; and at the very least I came to understand that I was a dispensable portion of your life by your lackluster efforts to keep me involved, which really wasn't even the bottom line reason for not dating you any more, but certainly a factor nonetheless. And the drinking. OhmaLOHRD the drinking. I don't have to be in a single other toxic relationship to know that I wasn't even gonna GO there. Ugh.

I mean are you for REAL? Are you really, really fucking for real? Seriously. No. Nuh-uh. Nope. Wasn't it bad enough that you were absolutely obliterated by the sauce just in time to greet people at the door at the top of last year's party? What. The. Fuck. Is wrong with you??? Yeah. Remember that? Do you? Yeah, lemme flip a little reminder at you. I was the girl with the boyfriend you were eyeballing and wavering and slapping through dinner, making everyone feel awkward and cross.

You also swore at the CEO of the company, even though that had nothing to do with me.

And all of that, absolute and pure fucking bullshit as that was, could almost be understood, at least where that shit behavior pertains to you or myself, because it had only been some time since I jumped ship. But this year? Saying stupid fucking bullshit because your insecurities outweigh one iota of good sense? Now? That extreme? Excuse me, Person I Will Never Again Regain Respect For, when the fuck did Soloman die and make you king of anything?

What a stupidass rhetorical question. Of COURSE nobody died and made you king. You're just another jackass with insecurities. A jackass who has ruined the only two company Christmas parties I've been to. A jackass who had to open his big, cha-chee mouth and spit vulgar things out of his mouth because he couldn't even handle being passed in the hallway to the washroom by the "new" (of over a year now) boyfriend.

Whatever, you sad piece of work. I hope you find what you're looking for because I certainly will not go to another staff function for as long as you are employed there. That's why I came back and shoved you at the bar and made you break your glass. Shut your fuckin' mouth!

Wolves

I think about it. I think about it all the time. I don't want to. Of all the things that are on the list that ranges from top to bottom of my most favorite things to think about to the very least favorite, this most definitely falls to the bowels of the underworld part of any amoebic cell of thought-range.

So. I do what most other apparently (if only externally) with-it people do. I chuck it out, toss it over to the rails when the radar of my brain picks up the thought like an annoying beep, I flush it away with a cringe that starts from my eyes and finishes through my shuttering shoulders, sometimes physically, sometimes just psychosomatically. I shake it out of my wrists like I'm flicking water droplets from my finger tips. Then I take a deep breath and remember to thank God that I'm not there anymore and that the present is the best place to be.

But it's hard to not let it go.

It's very challenging to let it go with a wisp and a fairy godmother-like woosh of the wand because I am reminded of it every day even, reminded of that hell I once lived, because the purgative present is a living reminder of a very fucked up place I once was and the very fucked up decision(s) I made.

Their giggles, their laughter, their bickering, their now-drenched lives of teenage dramahood, their stories, their tears, and their smiles all skimmed off my every day life because he couldn't do it and because I chose to go for something that ignored every red flag that popped up.

I find myself in pretty fortunate circumstances now. I take a look around and without having to shift my eyes downward in the shame I know I more deservedly ought to dress myself in, I'm doing well even for a kind of person who would have never sacrificed their children and their friendships or torched bridges behind them to follow a sick wolf in sheep's clothing. I have, in no particular order, a host of magnanimous blessings in my life and around me for which I am deeply, intrinsically grateful for. The highest sense of authentic living. Real friends, real family, but most crucial and critical, a return to the real me and a sense of center.

But that didn't come from the wolf saving me, like he would like to believe and (if he is reading this) would like to try and remind me. It came from the beautiful, if painful-as-hell lesson God worked into the creation of our ungrateful souls and creation as a whole that true growth is not without pain. And, thusly, that greater pain (and suffering) is for greater growth. But ALSO... that pain is not only just temporary, but is sweet in the context of a whole, entire span of life.

This is not to say the pain I am suffering for the consequences of my decisions is my saving grace. That is the purgative punishment for my decisions.

It is only saying that for the part that has been pain born of love (bringing my daughters to live with their dad)--the missing out on every day life, the terrifying lack of me in their day-to-day toils and tribulations at this most influential part of their lives (adolescence)--is not something I wanted and is something I struggle with every day.

And it's just that for a moment, just a little tiny moment of each day, the magnitude of the situation hits me like ton of bricks. And I can't help it. Because every. Single. Day. Goes by that I miss them and feel this complicated, twisted crunch of sadness because there are there and I am here.

These are consequences, folks. Good old fashioned consequences.

It has occurred to me with some (much) forethought (as well as afterthought, pre-thought, over-thought-out or on-the-rag thought) that it's time to admit some new things aloud.

See, I've discovered, and have been long suspecting as much, how the effects of bad relationships linger, even when you think you're tough; and consequently how I roll with the times in and out of situations that or have attempted to arrange the closure of those effects.

Thing number two, I am more emotional than all the emotional people I know. Um. Yeah. Way more. Like, still-don't-want-to-admit-it-but-have-done-some-work-in-that-area blowby. Yeah. Like Harley with their admitted oil leak problems that they've worked and worked over the years and in the different models of motorcycles to reduce and eliminate and, until recently, struggled with even in their newer models.

Not that anyone really cares. Or for those that would hypothetically ever read this, see it, and honestly perceive where I'm going with this, it's not as though very many of those hypothetical few could relate entirely because, well, I don't even understand why I'm as emotional as I remember mi abuelita being--I'm an extremely emotional person. People just don't get that.

I've always known this. I've conceded it. I've tried denying parts of it. I've struggled for 34 years, 3 months, some odd days to overcome it, to be stronger than my emotions. I've been brick-wall stopped in my tracks because of it, I've had more than my share of relationship problems because of it, and I've made some pretty wild-ass, dumbass, hair-brained, wtf-are-you-thinking decisions because of it.

And still, for as much as I've learned about myself and that hairy monster that feels like an imbalance of emotion, and for how much I've tried to restructure my thoughts and self-control around it, it still finds its way into my language, making me cringe and cry and be humiliated in yet another aftermath of explosion wherein the emotional layer of blubber created or formed in me is the undercurrent which has poisoned even my subconscious.

Making it worse is knowing that I have emotional females in my family who get most of this, who are also emotional, who get the temperamental feelings and get the easy tear-jerker feelings, married successfully for ten, fifteen, twenty years. I couldn't even handle it for ten in my marriage, and already at a year, this relationship has already been tainted with my inability to rework what makes me tick.

I realize that is a supremely negative way to look at it. It is not as though I am entirely and solely responsible for the outcomes in any given situation where there are two people with two individual ways of thinking sometimes collide.

It's just that now I am in a loving, committed-from-both-sides, normal relationship wherein I feel loved and respected by a man I truly love and respect, and my occasional drop of the ball in remembering the bigger picture and position of relativity still wreaks havoc on what should have been a simple conversation. (A two-minute blip turned into an hour-plus conversation, discussion, then battle in which the discussion of breaking up came up. Again.)

For the record, I think it is so wrong to bring breaking up into the mix if you're not really seriously resolved to follow through.

And now, I'm left with a hazy after-glow that is far closer to a fog, because what had started with an intention to resolve something without being confrontational actually turned into a full-blown, full on confrontation anyway.

The daze that is left over in the wake of all of this just makes me crazy! I usually march forward and onward because there's no point in spinning out. Spinning out is an old game I used to play.

But there are a few conclusions or conditions, at least, to consider.

My upbringing for sure.

Hair

Goooooood evening, non-existent readers! This is my return to blogging! Oh yes, yes it is. Nay, it is my return to me. And it is a positive return, people. P-O-S-I-T-I-V-E, I tell you.

Today was the day I managed to acquire a good chunk of myself and restore (or capping off the general restoration process that has been my life since moving to this province) a part of me that has long been missing.

Perhaps in my dad's terms, I have regained my center, for a lack of better way to put it. Or maybe it's the perfect way to put it, if you consider the rhythm of this post. Or maybe it's not a good way to put it at all whatsoever in the least because I haven't found my center since I never really followed my dad's advice to do what he did to find himself and be okay with being alone.

But striving to find that inner balance, even when once struck, is an on-going project of the human experience and none of us are the same as another. Not even our parents, as much as we grow up to learn that their ways weren't so bad.

And at the end of the day, I know what kind of decision I'm making--good or bad--and finding myself has never been that difficult of a feat. I grew up the oldest sister and the only girl. Sometimes there just wasn't anything else to do BUT be alone and figure out if what I wanted any given day was to be a girly girl or play with Tonka Trucks, G.I. Joes, Castle Greyskull OR... just do whatever my own thing was!

And then, once upon a time, long ago, in another dimension and in another time when I was stupid and not in a good place, I did stupid things. Stupid things! Can you imagine! Stupid things which have had consequences, far reaching consequences and long-time, suckass effects, which conspired in its beautiful and twisted way to rip open a very beautiful, very priceless lesson.

Never let go of who you are. And never, ever surround yourself with anyone--ANY-ONE--who does not require you to be the best person you can be.

Learning this changes nothing about your immediate circumstances. It doesn't make you rich.  It doesn't change your coworkers' attitudes. It doesn't undo the stupid parts. It doesn't even provide guarantees that you'll be a good person. But it does set the stage for a much richer, healthier, happier experience for being the best person you can be, especially if you are a good person with good morals.

Trevor has unwittingly taught me more of this than he realizes and definitely more than he would ever take credit for. Just by being a solid, normal, real, beautiful man person in my life. Not by making my life anything I wished for (although he kind has done that as a side bonus), but by being my equal.

But I take credit, too. I take credit for the work where I did it. And praise Our Lord for guiding me when I was doing the work and praise Him for filling in the gaps when I wasn't.

And so, after remembering all the things I used to love and do that I had forgotten, after dropping activities in rapid succession or taking up things I didn't want to take on, after doing things for people for so long and not balancing things for myself, and after making decisions that were so unbelievably, effing retarded or extreme, after spending and wasting tears on the wrong expenditure of time or persons, after emotionally extrapolating every last morsel of control I tried to have and didn't, I got so unbelievably pissed for waiting so long to pull my head out of my ass and realized, once again, that the choice to wake up and STAY awake is a constant, ever-existing, repeating one.

My hair which had gotten so long had started to become a symbol of this baggage, a reminder of when I started growing it. I had taken pride in taking care of it, it became a habit. So in a "last" wave of  conscious living, I chopped it off. Seven inches. And did this:

I do believe I have not written in a while. I am at a place right now where I don't even know why any more. I don't really have the time any more, but I also feel like I have nothing to write or perhaps too many topics on which to concentrate on.

I also tend to go in waves. Huge, ginormous, moody, menopausal, barbaric, and just plain wave waves. Writer's block. Constipated temperament. Work is bugging me, life is a blissful swirl of ups and downs. But either of those carry risks that I've started forgetting how to overcome.

Right now, I have been working on a prompt given to me by a fellow writer, so I'm going to go work on that. I am also working on my novel, which has come further along than any other piece I've started, save for my memoir, which I used to call 'autobiography' on very loose implications. The latter word being something saved for someone of high importance like royalty, political officials, world changers. I am no such thing. But that has fallen by the wayside and I've about three trillion other pieces of work I'd like to finish in addition to figuring out where the next place in my novel the characters are going, even to say which characters will be introduced and how I will introduce conflict and realistic controversy. I'd like to finish something. I've never finished anything. College, written pieces, my marriage. Always bailed or dropped the ball.

But I digress, this is not about retrospect or any such wistful spinning out over things in the past that I cannot change. This is simply about writing for the sake of writing, even if it produces nothing, which can only be a canal for which production WILL eventually take place. Much like fiber supplements help keep you regular.

Anyways...

It has occurred to me with great strength what great blessings I am surrounded with.

It has also occurred to me with equally strong, cringing (and yet blessed) luminosity what an entire waste of time I have made myself part of in certain sections of time of my past.

It is because the two are juxtaposed that I feel strongly about both points. So strongly, in fact, that instead of focusing on the negative aspects of the negative side, I take immense comfort and joy of the positive: all of the blessings that have come from me getting my ass out of harm's way just in the nick of time, several times in several moments of my history.