It Really Is Time

To grow up. To move forward. To not just 'get' over old fears but charge right the hell over them. To quit giving that little piece of ****-mentality any room in my brain. To go back to school. And to quit making a big deal out of it.

I realized with an absurd, aggravated, and earth-rattling heaviness yesterday that in trying to be a good, decent citizen my whole life long and be a good listener (a challenge back in the day as I have procured such nick-names as Blabber Mouth and Chatty Patty,) I let TOO many outside opinions seep into the inside my brain and became the wishy-washy, insecure, tormented and turmoil-ridden little creep that I was. Just read some of my older entries, you'll see. 

Okay, creep is a little too far. It just is a point of reference for how disgusted I am with this realization; and equally how frustrated.

I mean, retarded. It was absolutely retarded. Simply and finally just grabbing the realization like I was choke-holding it, it was an epiphany of the weary sort. Who woulda thunk. I thought epiphanies were supposed to be dowsed in light and make you feel like skipping all the way to school or something.

You have no idea how this whole idea has got me in a bit of a tizzy.  For no other reason than that is not how my parents raised me. Like I said in a bit part of a few entries ago: where the HELL did that monster come from?

There were two parts to this: 

1) The letting it soak in, the processing of information that had been lingering in the abodes of limbo for a time, the accepting it, the growing furiousness of wondering what in the hell "just" happened, the knowing full and damn well that it didn't actually just fly out of nowhere, and the overlapping madness of wanting to scream, yet again, it was ten or so excruciating years at my expense.

2) What. The. Ginormous. ____ Where in sam hell did she come from? 

I'm not that person. 

That is not how my parents raised me.

That is not even what I believe in being.

Did I ever mention that I think doormat people are the sorriest of people?

 

I don't really think anyone who knew me or knows me now would consider me a doormat, but there were doormat moments for sure.

It just doesn't make sense. When did I got from being a woman who knew what she wanted to being a scaredy-pants, little afraid-of-her-damned-shadow poser who tried to tap too hard into her old self?

Well I'll tell you what it was. I'll tell you how I got there. It was me listening to people and butting my head on brick walls. It was trying to value the opinion of others while slowly tuning out the dreams of my own heart. It was what morphed out of trying too hard to be a doormat and resenting the hell out of it. It was me forcing myself to be something I was not, and it was me making an effort and no one noticing. (So cheap!)

It was the anger and the insecurity of a person who tried so hard to be good, to do the right thing, was really dealing with some heavy crap on and on and on and on and on... along the way, and too backlogged with "whatthehellisgoingon!?" to pay attention until I was throwing syrup bottles at the wall across the kitchen. 

Or, it was feeling placated when I did try to pay attention to what was going on in and around me.  Several people, one at a time over time it felt, were simply trying to placate me or maybe placate a rage they felt on their own. Maybe me making enough gripes and slashing comments (many of which I wish I could take back) unearthed their own discontentment with feeling essentially trapped there. Who knows. I was just too inside the inside.

It was feeling cross about what was "right" for everyone else and nobody else at the same time versus what was right for Amy; and yet so rarely did what was right for me. Instead of being accountable for myself, I was accounting myself to everyone else, answering to them like a child.

It was discovering, albeit rudely, that finding a good ear was incrementally difficult to come by; and not only couldn't I get the help I needed nor rely on friends to simply say, "wow, that must've SUCKED", I didn't even get to have a 'my side' of the story without being linched for thinking the wrong way. 

I had just had enough of it.

Or I thought I had, anyway. 'Cause apparently, even after being sick of editing myself to death, I was still doing it. I was still, still saying what I thought people wanted to hear based on what truths they were able to bring to my attention. Did you catch that? I was listening to other people's opinions, digesting them, understanding their side, and trying to alter my perception to meld to some schmoozy hybrid of them both!

And then I did it one last time. With the so-called 'last' person in my satchel of people I angered to the hilt with my attempt to clean up the hot mess that I was, wanting to get control of myself AND feel validated, a final stroke of contempt plus this massive downstroke of irritating depressive moment yesterday, and it all came swirling together. That's what made me mad. Holy crap.

Have I ever let people influence me!

And then it occurred to me. Regardless of the lack of details, pertinent or otherwise, for anyone sitting on the outside of my skull, or even fragments of the story pieced together by outsiders--by anyone not directly influenced--there is only what's right for me, and what is right for my kids. There is conjecture and perception, and then there is truth. And, as much as I hate to say it, just because someone doesn't like my point of view, it doesn't mean I'm wrong and it doesn't mean I deserved nearly a tenth of what I got. It means, I made a choice.

And isn't it effing ironic that I had a whole entire life of being indecisive and letting everyone make decisions for me (or at least influence the hell out of mine) that when I finally started making my own, I would get very little respect for them.

And here's the thing. I can still hear the voices of the multitude of well-meaning people in my past saying their well-damaging things. 

I had grown monumentally resentful of it, too, relative to the time spent there. 

1 year = isolated hardship frustration times pi r-squared minus some joyous moments X 10 = clusterphuck to the nth. 

But...

...doesn't it just SAY something about me? Yah, what a kook I am, perphaps. Because I'm the only one to have moved in and moved out, with a hefty sum of time having been served on the inside, and being so absolutely "vocal" about it. (Who really knows who reads these things. It never serves me when I'm writing something cool, only the negative. Just ask whatever anonymous person it was who printed out one of my, shall we say, meaner entries some years ago and sent it to my bosses.)

But it should also speak to how hard I was trying to make it all work--living there, working, emoting, partying, sulking, crying, laughing, celebrating, mourning.... Taking my lemons and making lemonade, if you will. Doesn't anything speak for itself?

The worst part about this whole kind of dawning-on-me thing is that it really wasn't new or surprising. And it came laced with feeling dumbass-ey and feeling freaking justified all along. Weird.

The realization that I was drowning in that deforming mentality, rather than staying true to myself. It just sucks.

I mean, family can have their own way of screwing you up, true, but isolated northerners...

And to digress a bit more, yes, I know it wasn't just people back there, that it was just my own experience, that I am grouping the people I loved there/people I did not love/people who weren't even from there and therefore possibly stepping on their toes, and that yes, it wasn't all bad and yes, there were good times there, and yes, it's true that I should not be coloring the minds of whichever 2.3 people that read this with a negative opinion of a community that happily functions at a stunted level, and that yes, I know my contempt screams through every word. After all, there is much to be said (and will be said in an entry soon-ish to come) about the life I had with my kids there, and that was plenty positive.

But I am truly confident that I am not wholly out of line when I say that there is definitely a certain "mentality" because I did live there and did give it more than just a disgruntled chance. I've seen people who've lived there and left use air-quotes around the word 'mentality'.

 

I did my damned best to entrench myself there, live and bloom where I had been planted, and deal with all that I had been dealing with at that time in my life; and contrary to what I have been told in regards to post just like this one, I am not slapping people in the face. I'm slapping a mentality which does afford me some room to gripe. Not to mention that some of the dearest of my friends there admitted, or at least relented to, there being major disadvantages to living there.

I guess it just didn't didn't work for me. For whatever reason. My very two different, Gemini sides were very present through pretty much my whole ordeal there: from start to stop.

A rambling year in review: 2011 in some parts

-So yeah, I don't know. That's just what my thoughts are on it. I think the biggest thing, in rereading my religious entries, is that I am still not satisfied with my answers. Perhaps that may be because I don't know what question I am answering, and to figure that out directly would mean answering directly. It would mean taking a defined stand on something I specifically and intrinsically do not feel I can do, for I see the errors in representation on all sides.

-I had to put some barriers between me and an old friend recently. It really sucked, and I am rather sure she was on her way to doing the same before I even resolved to, but the real pisser of it all is that I was trying really hard to be the kind of friend she wanted and needed and still failed miserably (for a multitude of reasons both sides contributed to) while trying with great difficulty to overlook the fact that we both were probably always friends with each other out some sort of sense of condescending obligation. I mean, that's not to say our friendship was or is a farce. No. Never. But just ended up being more on the ritual side of a prolonged, long-distance relationship, and then when I tested the friendship by making a decision she could not stand by nor overcome, the ugly reality of it basically divided us. I really don't harbor a whole lot of ill will because she had to stand by her convictions and I had to stand by mine. But what compelled the need to put more than a little space between us, and it's more complicated than I give credit here, is that at the end of the day, she could not be there for me.

-I started playing bassoon again and realizing a huge portion of an old dream: to perform for a living. I did not make a living off of playing come true, but I DID get to just focus on playing, practicing, performing, and making some good friends for life while doing it. I realized that I have a ginormous fear of accomplishment and/or failure, and that to get past it, I had to suck up a buttload of old preconceptions and misguided notions. About myself. About others. About success and failure in general. And I did it French.

-Learning French was a much needed benefit and blessing. As a result, my vocabulary and ability to communicate has improved somewhat. I have found the ability to articulate more clearly and be more concise in my communications. Being that French is a more direct language and puts the kibosh on vague and otherwise useless constructs of language, I have figured out how to more accurately state no more or no less of a given main idea, which has helped in my writing, but has also aided in my personal psychology, making introspection and even moving forward more easily accessible. On top of that, I can now listen and appreciate French music and television much more as well as watch movies in French without subtitles. I can walk into my girls' school and utilize my newly acquired French-speaking skills. Overall, it has made my life a much richer experience.

-I never, ever, ever, EVER, ever. Ev-er. Want to live without my daughters ever again. And while that may be just exactly what happens as they go to live with their dad next year, I will scream it from the rooftops of Blogger here and through tensely clenched teeth: I. Do. Not. Want. This. At. All. It is not because of their father. In fact, if there was anybody else to take care of them when it's not me, I would rather it be him. But it is because living without them last year was absolutely hell. My entire adult life has been constructed with being a mother. I do not know who I am without them, nor do I really want to know. Whatever sweet moments of living like I was a freely independent woman and cohabiting with a crazy wonderful man that I just adore to have existed last year were intensely subdued with the pain of being without them and the terrible, terrible state of limbo I was in without them. My life is complete when they are with me. It doesn't matter that I will just have to deal with their absence when they leave home to go to university or whatever mission in life, what my mom said about that absence being like a practice run for me is the shittiest thing I've ever heard.

-I realized how negative I had become. Again. Who knows why or when, and it almost certainly has to do with the tremendous ups and downs of the last year, from divorce to epic disagreements with mon conjoint to living without my daughters, but in rejoining my children's lives to mine, my oldest has been keen to call me out on it point blank.

So, after a negativity/positivity quiz kind of acted like the final smack upside the head, I just kind of, sort of snapped out of it. I quit dwelling or brooding. I realized how easy I could do it. I realized that I couldn't handle boring without brooding, that I had brooded all last year, that I had gone back to brooding after successfully changing my outlook TO be glass-half-full back in the day. I realized that if my daughters could live through the kind of year they had and still be happy, well-adjusted children, well then, so the eff could I. I realized I don't like brooding. So I changed it back again.

It doesn't mean I'm cheery or with sunny disposition all the time. But it does mean that I have, yes, reassessed my life, realized that even with all the stresses of starting over, of tight budgeting, of cleaning up after everyone, of maxing out the overdraft, sewing holes in clothes (rather than getting new ones), scrambling to make rent---in addition to this being the THIRD time in my life that I've started out from scratch and been poor. as. fuck.---my life is still pretty good.

Maybe the third time's a charm. Maybe it's because I have this really cool French boyfriend that my daughters are trying to establish a relationship with. Maybe it's because people are so friendly in this town, or that I'm doing what I love for a part time job. Maybe it's because I have cool friends and a sweet neighbor lady and family that still loves me. Maybe I'm wiser now. Maybe it's because putting all the crap behind me is working and I'm not hiding behind anyone or anything anymore (even WITH the drama and scandal of what I did.) I don't know. But I just know that things are getting better. I know I am seeing signs of hope, joy, love, and exciting times passing my way and just as sure to come.

-Bottom line of the last year: not apologizing for myself ever again. This is not the same as being sorry for people I've hurt or mistakes I've made. But it is about correcting those mistakes, making right the wrongs, and moving forward. I have not always moved forward so decisively. In fact, I pretty much never have. I have blabbed to just about everyone I've had a problem with in email form while continuing to spin out on either 1) blame/wanting someone else to take the responsibility of any given gripe (early on) or 2) force their side of accountability. I will probably never quit trying to be a mirror towards people, but I will not be focusing on what I can show someone else--I will only be worrying about choosing the paths and turns I am taking to be happy and to bring happiness to myself.

In the words of a very dear friend in regards to all the naysayers and judgmental critics: f*** 'em.

Old thoughts, a letter never sent, good reading

Why would I want to go see what you bashed me with? On a site that I'm not interested in seeing? You tend to keep thinking I NEED help, when in reality, I've carved out a pretty hard ass road ALONE and acquired some pretty damned solid morals within my faith in spite of myself, keeping an open mind to all forms of wisdom: great works of art, of music, quotes worth immortalizing, literature.


I don't claim to have more wisdom than anyone or any 90-day program, but I find a very solid sense of the same things you are learning with this program in the skill set I already have and it just grates me that you keep telling me you think you know what I need. I think you just need to stick to knowing what you need because you're not very good at knowing what I need. Most of these programs are carved out of the same principles found in every good-moral book: the Torah, the Koran, the Bible, even great philosophers and literature giants. I'm not trying to impress anyone, You. I'm done dancing to the tune of everyone else's fiddle, and...


...just what am I supposed to do about everybody's hate? I will eventually have to go back sooner or later, and when that transpires, everyone's just gonna have to get over it sooner or later because the people MOST immediately affected by my oh-so-demonic move are already moving on. Also, I'm just not worth the hassle. They are not the ones I screwed over! I'm not divorcing them, I'm not tearing up their relationships, I'm not ruining their lives. The people who still hate me have a responsibility, like it or not, to tell me directly, to approach me, to confront me about, or shut the hell up. I don't want to be mean, but I am physically exhausted and emotionally drained from all the ways other people have felt so entitled to be that angry that even in their ANGER they try to control what they cannot because they lack compassion and understanding in spades. Even in seeing just how and what I brought on myself, here, even now, all these thousands of miles away, this truth cannot be veiled.


I understand that their anger stems from being hurt, confused, misunderstanding, hell even cultural differences and I can't blame them. I can't begin to tell you the torment I've felt over this, the hot tears I've cried, the soul-wracking sobs that come from being 1 person who suffers the opinions of many, but what does you telling me about everyone hating me do for anyone? Does it make you feel better? Do you think you are telling me something I am not wholly and completely 100% aware of? Is it supposed to make me feel worse? Teach me a lesson? Bestow something else, anything else, any other morsel of fruitful bearing, wherein it would just be better to move on? What good does it produce? How does it help you or me or anyone move on, feel better about the things that have transpired or heal deep wounds?


Hurt? Hell yeah, I understand that one. Pissed, yeah, for sure. But telling me not to come back? I still have reasons to come back and if you don't want to be one of them, I can and will respect that, but taking suggestions that don't really come out for my well-being is exactly the suffocating thing that I defied by leaving. All the friends that were close to me/us were friends first and foremost because they had important traits/qualities we found in each other worth saving, worth investing, worth smiling and laughing about, telling jokes, celebrating with. I'll take anything they have to say. But no one is going to tell me how to be me.


As for the lingering gossipy few, there are plenty of lakes around for them to take a long walk off a short pier. Everyone in that area of the world has something to say and I, for one, am not going to walk around like Hester Prinn with the scarlet letter branded to my forehead on account that I'm some abhorrent troll. In fact, I'm not even going to walk around as the least or the most of anything. I will not give a shit. Any. More. The very same noses that have been needlessly, bit-grabbingly poking up into my business up 'till now are all the very same noses that were okay to love me as long as I was doing exactly.... what.... they wanted. And you know what? None of them were around when I needed to talk and none of them stood by me along the way. I didn't make the move I did to protect and gainfully keep any semblage of popularity. The question is: why do YOU care if people hate me?


And as a last-ditch effort, I defend myself. If what I did, by leaving, was so horrible, then what about the good things I left there? Why isn't anyone thinking, well, you know, she was a good woman in X, Y, Z regard or remember the good things, or---for crying out loud---my children! Even though there was probably some silent, collective cheer when my girls went back to live with their father, I can tell you he didn't raise those girls all by himself and they didn't get to be sweet, spunky people that all my friends and all the nose-pickers claim to have say over without their mother! In fact, far from it. And. I was a good waitress. I used to teach there. I made friends from every gammut and circle I crossed. I was reliable. I threw my all into anything musical. I was a fairly productive member of society there. Everyone USED to like me. I knew I would have a lot of explaining to do, that my motion was severe, that it would sever many ties, but only did I expect to answer to those closest to me. I already committed far more than my share of energy in treating everyone with acute equality and niceness (even if they didn't deserve it) in attempting to get along with anyone at all costs. I'm done with it.


If not the past, if the good things I did in the past are somehow now negated, then so be it. I won't point out that I sent my girls to live thousands of miles away with their father pending a whole year. I won't mention that it was me respecting their choice. I won't point out that I could have made any number of battles for keeping them with me, could have made one vague excuse after another and won. I won't point out that I have come to rearrange my whole life around his job so that the girls will have parents that aren't split by plane tickets and geography. I won't point what a superiorly royal bitch I could have really been and wasn't.


The fact is and still remains that no one knew what was going on behind closed doors and worse, no one cared when I tried to even approach the subject. Just toss, toss, toss it under the rug. Don't talk about it, it's not that bad, it's not what you think it is, you're not thinking about it right. Ad nauseum.


People didn't see and people didn't care, so people didn't have a right to judge. The timing of it was messed, the action severe, but I point out: you didn't really give all that much a whoop anyway. But as I sat here once, with all the steaming hot indignation I felt, I couldn't help but see the ironic injustice of it all. All those who yelled at me from their social thrones on high, from their bacteria-cultured cells, through Facebook, behind my back (thanks for telling me)---the ones so hellbent to pin me to the wall---weren't there for the least or the most of the previous 12 years. None of them, not one, dropped by to help out when I was a single mom, alone and scared. Didn't come in to say hello when I had a dearly beloved husband sick and dying in the hospital. No one uttered a word of sympathy or pity in the whole existence of an altered life with an incapacitated husband, nor appreciation. Barely a word or gesture or measure of greeting, understanding, compassion at any single moment or angle of grief in my worst moments and muted support at the best. I wish I were exaggerating.


So then who.... tell me..... was there? Who could have possibly taken my hand and been able to give me the kind of real help and support and/or shove in the right direction I needed? Who was going to be willing to to be loving to me before my adjusted way of living went so far off track that I really felt like there was no one? How could anyone not of dedicated stamina help me figure it all out without exacerbating the world I made for myself? Who was there to think of anymore when I had no one? And who was going to help me so long as I was not willing to help myself?


No matter how many "shouldas" and "wouldas" and "couldas" that are infinitesimally born of the one and same problem, the fact is that I couldn't believe how changed things had become and I just finally had enough. I was fed up with being the kind of woman I swore I'd never become.

So, Why The Do-Over Do-Over

I had originally attempted to answer this question in another post, but ended up getting off subject in the worst way. Mainly, the emotional way. Nevertheless, I realized almost right away that my post entry had way less to do with the answer to that question than the emotions and defenses I was feeling at the time.

But rather than focus on just how embarrassing it was (somewhat still is), or how I felt a certain integrity not to re-edit it because there’s a certain element of standing by a work, even if it is flawed; or how learning about saying what you mean and meaning what you say mixes in with the old habits of overcorrecting and likely met with a variety of personal reactions (of which I had plenty), I’d rather just say it here like I intended to originally.

Besides, if I corrected the old one, it wouldn’t show up as a new post here, but rather stay buried in the year-ago collection of blog posts and get lost; and I feel confident that it’s not going to really matter to the least of my critics, nor do I care if it does—I just want to be able to look back and be satisfied to reread that I addressed it.

So, question. Why, I was asked, did I even have a do-over wedding-type shindig only to leave my husband 8 months later. How could I even think about doing that when so many people were present to witness the celebratory wedding we never had. It has been one of the top most lingering questions to keep surfacing this last year. It wasn’t just the one question itself, but also all what the answer represented, and a rather decisive maneuver to address it on my blog when I finally could answer it fully and honestly.

Answer. Number One. (And keep in mind, this was NOT an easy answer, nor an easy decision to come to in the very first place.) It was the quickest way to put a whole big patch over the whole thing. All the problems we were having. All the problems we were pushing under the rug. All the problems I tried bringing to the table and we never fixed. All the problems we tried scooping under the rug and never got counseling for. All the problems that bled into new ones, bigger ones, problems that we didn’t bring into our own lives (cancer and medical) breaching into ones that we did (too long a list now). Problems that metastasized into big, leprous, itchy tumors. Problems that caused us to consider divorce, not once, not twice, but at least three serious occasions in the past and in front of friends. Flatlined moments only dug out of long enough to fool myself back into the shredded union.

Number Two. I never thought, in probably a million years, that my life would flip over upside down on its head just months after. I was just not looking at the situation in my marriage honestly and was desperate to hide it, change it, make it work somehow, feel renewed, and give each other amnesty. I was hellbent on making it work ‘till the day I died, even resolving to be a Stepford wife if need be. I would take the final swallow in choking down what was left of me and operate at a shell level until the girls graduated and only reserve the real stuff for them (because it was the only way to compensate what K refused to give me--passion.) In many ways, I was like the wife of the alcoholic back in the day—the one who convinces herself that it will still work, that the terrible things going on inside her marriage only exist for a “tiny” reason, and compartmentalizes the situation so she can put it “over there” for an unspecified amount of time, until the next time. Only we were both part of the problem and I was compartmentalizing for two people—me and him. And I wouldn’t discover how bad it was or how hard I was working to choke it all down until I met someone who was able to drag me out from under all the layers of crap and point to the light.

Number Three. All of the layers of junk we had gone through, both inside and outside our marriage, whether it happened to us beyond our control or we brought it on ourselves in some way, was something I wanted to put behind us. I just wanted to really start over. I thought it was a great idea. I was inspired. I thought it would be a great way to throw away all the left-over ickies of life first afflicted with cancer and joint problems and then later infidelity. Or, like I said, a day of amnesty in our marriage and bumpy lives together. I wanted something normal and I really felt that it would be a good way to say a big ole “f*** you” to old attitudes, to people who couldn’t support us, nosy people, people who added to the demise of our relationship (including ourselves), and just celebrate something we never, ever had: a real wedding. I really believed that if we could give ourselves this treat, that we would feel more at liberty to be who we wanted to be with each other.

But….

It would take more than living in a small town and blaming everyone else to get past that. It would require a good, hard, honest look at myself. And it would take an even harder realization: that we already were what we were going to be, and that we contributed to our own demise. We had turned 180 degrees away from the day we got married.

Nothing can really happen without counseling and lots of support, which we received so little of, and when each of us had changed so much as a direct result of ignoring the issues. It was a small, isolated northern town with nowhere to go, nothing to do, very little aspirations, and people who care more about themselves than others or drinking themselves into oblivion. And where we had no family, no blood family anyway—the ones who love you regardless—people only can only go so far for you or, as in some cases, when there is something in it for them—like a snooping Tomcat or a glimpse at my boobs or ass, which I did nothing to bring on. Nothing. It was difficult to find help without judgment and we did not surround ourselves with people who could help us professionally or emotionally. Resources without traveling a good distance for them meant there was at least some risk of losing privacy, And we both had our own, separate hard times with reaching out to others. By the end, we didn’t know who to trust, and we only had ourselves to blame.

This I must say, though. Not every single person we met or knew there was like this, nor did they fit into this description, nor is it totally accurate or fair. But I am not talking about those people, and there were quite enough of the kind that did fit this description to make it difficult to live in a community where we, as a couple, depended on a support system that consisted of friends who could be as fickle as the wind and/or in no way obligated to us. Family absolutely mattered but ours continued to be far away and in the background, and we were only family to friends until their real family came home for the holidays. By the end, I just gave up trying to talk to people.

It should have been a sign in and of itself that I was not putting out the kind of quality person I wanted to be surrounded with by being defeatist about the things I could have done to save our marriage, but I had become so very tired of taking on more than half of the quality control for our union and excessive guilt three times over that I finally quit owning all the guilt of the whole marriage and started living like a person that knows it takes two to make it work. I just wanted to strip down the appearances we made even to each other and live a real life. I wanted K to make the call to the counselor, the psychologist who came in once a month from the teacher’s union. I wanted him to be the one to put in a last ditch effort to save us. To help me help us. To take some responsibility in an emotional matter. I wanted him to take the reins for a while, but not just in tasks, but in love and in passion.

But it takes two people to want this. Love is an action word. Be it that I’ve made mistakes—Lord knows I’m no angel—I know what devotion is; and I know that even in spite of myself, I backed up my fluffy words with actions. Anyone who can say that simply providing the basic necessities should suffice, well I would say I tried—oh god how I tried—to make it be enough, but it just doesn’t. Not for this girl, not for most passionate women. Not for me. It was not an easy decision to make.

And finally, when I could no longer deny it and no longer wanted to, I left. Bam. Just like that. Because it was my choice and because I’m a grown-ass woman (as my father might say.) Because I honestly didn’t think people would give two shits. Because people with family there just don’t realize how lucky they are. Because I was tired of haggling all of this AND my place in society without so much of a bottom line, a safety net, a support system, or a family. Because I was tired of allowing everyone else to make decisions for me. Because, as stupid as it sounds now, I thought it would be good that K wasn’t left alone. (In terms of the night I actually left, which itself hadn’t gone like I’d planned.) But most of all, because I was tired of grieving over my other half letting me go like a trap door on a stage long before I decided to leave and not caring about it, even when I brought it to the table as a concern.

Be it erred thinking or truths in reality based on perception, all of this was what was under the layers of the onion that our marriage became. I still grieve this because I believed in our love. I believed in our ability to make it work, to keep getting to know each other, and to get over obstacles. In all of my crazy quirks, mannerisms, nuances, plain dumb idiocy, forgetfulness, dizziness, airheaded and Gemini-ish blabbermouthy youth, never was I unrealistic about getting married or putting the work into it necessary to survive. Not even when any single link in the chain of the medical age robbed our lives of a real beginning, where the chain of THOSE events were never-ending. Nor did I forget the moments of magic we had once upon a time and in the beginning. But maybe I shouldn’t have had to do it so alone. Maybe I shouldn’t have had to do it so. damned. alone.

Why the Do-Over then...?

Well, because I had no idea, absolutely none, that what was coming was coming. No clue at all. I wouldn't have wanted it had someone told me it was going to happen, I would have rejected the notion entirely.

It is so entirely deceptive in its appearance, no matter how much I wish the world would understand. The unfolding of the treachery wounds me to tears even now. I understand how my friends feel. I understood it before they even knew it was coming, in the tender, quiet that was the space ahead of the storm. I understand how my girls feel. Their every corner and strain of their world torn; my every fiber longs for their well-being. I was concerned about how this would affect them even before leaving. I cried with them, I held them and comforted them when we landed here. I held them. I held them. I held them.

When I went back to fetch a few things, get my dog, and see my girls some two months after leaving, I saw the family picture we took. It had come in the mail after leaving. The picture was taken nearly moments before I knew I would go--that is, with things between the old us changing already and feeling more and more not meant to be, but before I even pondered such dramatic exit. I had wanted a professional family photo taken for ten years. How could I do this? My eyes fell upon the image, stacked among other wall hangings in the old entry way, and assaulted the part of my chest which still aches.

Nothing of this takes away from what my girls have been going through, how mortally this affected them. I knew it would. I prepared for it the best I could. And still I failed in one respect. In the respect of the world. But they grew, they healed, they even smiled. And my only concern is them. Not the world.

I did not see it coming. But I should have. Growing apart for years, there was refusal and denial about the actual state all around. We made it look good, but it was truly good for parts of it. It just wasn't enough. As long as we were taking turns at the wheel by ourselves and not working together to take responsibility, it would always be doomed.

" I really did feel like everything I did was about..."

I really did feel like everything I did was about 50%. I didn't want it to be that way, and I really tried putting 100% into everything, but as long I kept feeling let down no matter what kind of effort I was putting in, I knew something wasn't sitting right.

It wasn't as though I wanted these things to happen. It is, though, that I didn't make the decisions for something else to happen. I was, in part, looking for somewhere else to throw the blame if something went wrong. When I finally thought about what kind of decision I should have made, could make, and consequently did make, it was almost too much to bear. At first it was unthinkable. Then it was necessary. And it's like my dad told me (which I all-too-inconveniently forgot): If you don't make a decision, someone will make it for you. I let people make decisions for me for years without even realizing I had gotten in the habit of it. I did not realize it exactly like that. It explains so much. A puzzle piece in the big jigsaw of life. But then the other part to Dad's piece of advice is to make the decision and execute it. If it was right, then move forward, if it was wrong, make it right. Seems so simple, doesn't it. That's how easy it is for us to complicate things. Even as a woman who was raised to think like a guy and reconciled with the woman I really am, this makes sense. I complicated things ALL the time, unnecessarily. And why? Because I was too busy trying to "prove" something, to make it look good, all the while not investing with my whole heart. In a phrase: I was lying to myself.

And how bitter that seems!! How terribly raucous it is to put my life and the tremendous sorrow I have for the hurt I caused people into a simple paragraph! This was not an easy conclusion to come to. Not for one second. The elaboration of which I'll have to save for another entry, but suffice to say for this entry, it comes with heavy, heavy consequence and the duress of a summation of approximately 13 years. However, I am still not bitter.

And I was thinking about love. What it means. How we say it. How it is true. Most of all, in terms of myself and how my life has led me to really give it a good, hard look; and how it still means something, now more than ever. The other day, I was sitting on the bench outside staring at the supporting post of the balcony above, and the words "love" and "not enough" breeched my thoughts. Never in my wildest dreams did I think about my non-choice way of living exactly like that for a really long time, or that finally taking responsibility for my life, myself, and my actions (finally!) would bring me here, but neither did I think my life would unfold the way it did; and it occurred to me that sometimes, love just isn't enough.

Proper communication (learning how to speak the other person's language and giving it importance), matched fundamental values, short term goals, long term goals, and a solid base of all these things IS what's "enough", it's what sets the tone to the degree of compatibility, but most of the world gets automatically bored with the idea, especially because the advanced stages of love are not being taught--the crucial, underlying truths of what love can be. (There are marriage preparation-type courses for a reason! And yet we all cry that divorce is as easy as changing our snow tires.) The world is (and even I was, to a surprising degree) lacking in the concept of building a foundation, fundamental to the core of a relationship. Everyone gets to the point where they are at a loss for what to do after the "ohmygod I think I'm in love" love (or whatever version of thought gets us into the state of fundamentally unhappy couples) fades into something else. Here's a hint: it's supposed to mature. It becomes a decision then, an action, and it is love like that which supports the structure built on afore-mentioned foundation like layers of a pyramid: likes, dislikes, common interests. It is love that can sustain the soul during conflict of the initial layers and it grows from there, if nurtured, but it does not generally shake the foundation. Love grows, but it also transforms. Most of all, it is an action. Love is an action that requires sacrifice, but sacrifice comes in all forms--but usually means letting go of our pride, allowing our walls of defense to be softly penetrated, and when done right is the most tender, precious thing in the entire world, here or thereafter.

Things Not Allowed in Love: bitterness, lukewarmness, indifference, lack of action, blandness. That's what I think, anyway. Even intense negativity is better than absolute lack of participation, because at least it's dedicated in some way (although it doesn't have a good place in a relationship.)

Now. Here's the thing. None. Of. These. Things. Are. New to me. Not once, ever, in my existence as a wife of a cancer victim, or as a mother of two, or as a woman exposed to the attrocities of the world, or as a person whose sense of emotional awareness/perception was her own flogging, or as a person whose made a bazillion minor-to-major grave errors in her whole life, did I not live these things as best as I could. I knew, even if I struggled like an s.o.b. with knowing better, what love was supposed to be. How, exactly I can't describe, but it was always something intrinsically inscribed on the walls my soul. Perhaps taught to me through the faith my parents transcribed unto me, perhaps acquired through years of observations watching them miss the mark with each other every time they opened their mouths, watching other couples, watching the nuances and inconsistencies that created hardship and strife, but most of all, living exactly as I have lived, eff-ups and all. It has only become all the richer now...

Lest I become a sermon from on high, let me be perfectly clear that I am among the generalizations I have made. I have no more place to mention these things than say, a criminal or banished sinner. I am just, in a word, sharing.

...to be continued...

Tiny Bubble

I just want....

...my space. You know? I just put up with all kinds of people all day long and I have to chock away the urge to internalize it all--the general increase in societal rudeness, the general public disregard (whatever happened to the simple joy of human interaction?), my personal judgments (analyses) of where 'those' comments come from, 'those' attitudes. Then I try to prioritize, stay focused, positive, even upbeat, and be the comic relief so that there is some distraction from the daily mundane. I realize that I am being critical and try to "just not think" about any of it, go out for my break, have a smoke, and clear my head. But then a coworker's comment or passing misunderstanding will agitate something new and I'm left to battle a part of who I am to overcome my pettiness.

The fact is, I'm just a critical person. And it, for a lack of a better word, wounds me to admit it as much as it does to be it. For whatever optimism I am trying to impart on my daughters and pull for the world, it's almost as if it is lost on myself and I don't know how to just... change it. To just be different, as in, better. I bank on trying to bring my daughters up to be better than me. But it doesn't say much for where I'm at in the game. And so then I get stuck right there, spinning out on the thought that I need to lead by example, yet struggle with letting go of things, and therefore come up with nothing to get me unstuck. Except for maybe needing to understand why I am so critical, which would require letting go of a WHOLE lot of other shit, and might be something I considering figuring out right after posting this.

At any rate, by the end of the day it seems lately, I am peopled out and I bury myself in my laptop, and I find that what I am motioning through now partly resembles the motions of yore--when I was sitting alone six and seven months pregnant with my oldest in a bare-walled apartment, considering doing my homework and doing something of substantial value, but doing nothing in the end and staring at the antenna TV until I couldn't keep my eyes open. This behavior astonishes me on some level because not only has it been eons since those self-pitying prego moments, but I don't think I even resemble that same girl. The things that happened back then and the circumstances surrounding them are not even remotely the same.

And... I know how to search out my happiness besides there being a whole host of other blissfully good distractions in my life: my kids, my husband, my music. It's just that I can't believe I'm finally acknowledging that I need those moments where I can slip out of the house unnoticed and take a breather on the back deck.

Never Say Never

You know, some songs just capture that one feeling that is difficult, if not downright impossible, to capture in words or expressions. There are a whole host of these kinds of songs that make up the soundtrack of my life, as I'm sure most other people have, and if anyone knows me, they know that Collective Soul is the majority chunk of that soundtrack.

However, in my adult life, in the true wake of adult pains, pangs, triumphs, and tribulations, there have been few to ever capture the raw, visceral emotions that make up the human experience. The reasons we grow, we learn, smile, or close up, build walls, barriers. It can truly be said that the entire gift of music is that it can tell the story in a way that nothing else can, no matter what side of the scale.

But it isn't just a really emotional hook with empowering chord progressions in a rock song that does it. Many a number of classical pieces and composers have instilled the same raw, visceral, guttural instinct with something as simple as a passing tone in a matching phrase that appeases the cerebellum. Or as multiple layers (polyphony) of perfectly blended sections rise in a crescendo and resolve the aphrodisiac-like dissonance into a brilliantly pleasureful calm. Resolving the tonic from minor to major. The suspense of raised 5th with the sub dominant chord (a characteristically Spanish trait.) Phrases that create mystery and play with dynamic. It all just works together so well in both classical and in rock.

This is why I went into music. Less to teach it--or the technical side of it--than to pass on the vital, integral energy saturated in the soul that only music can bring out. I saw a girl on TV once who masterfully and intensely manipulate the black and white keys of a grand piano as she performed some classical piece (the name of which I wish I knew) on stage. Her stunning evening gown registered nothing in her mind as her wrists and arms were a concentrated flurry of well-executed timing, and she physically moved on the bench as though she were not encumbered by it. I was filled with awe. I remember looking up at my mom, pointing to the Miss America pageant we were watching, and specifically declared that I would "play piano like that some day."

A great many days have come and gone since then, but I recognize that as the moment I knew music was going to be my life. My dad bought my mom an upright piano for their anniversary some time in or around then and I bugged them about lessons almost immediately; and then fought them on having to practice until the plug was almost pulled. If something didn't come easy to me, I didn't want to work on it (a personality trait I would learn to struggle with for the rest of my life.) I changed piano teachers and took lessons for about another two years. All told, I got about three years of lessons in before the last teacher had to quit taking students to run her insurance business. Never took lessons after that, save for the few I'd get at music camp in the summers, never received any formal performing instruction, and along with my limited knowledge of the music world, moved into post-secondary education feeling under qualified and like a small fish in a big pond.

The point is that despite my dismay and reasons for throwing in the towel, by the time I dropped out of school, I got my level 6 proficiency, which would have gotten me into the Upper Division--and qualification to teach instrumental or vocal music--had I stayed, and it did instill, amongst the greater disappointments, a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. Since then, my life has changed in epic ways, but I've always had music to lift me up, help me escape, or deal with life. And I will always have those songs, those composers, those pieces to fall back on and be waiting for the next hook.

I would just like to go where people can't piss me off all the time. I wasn't built to settle here, or in a place like this; and it's not that I'm above settling down in any capacity, it's just that I cannot see myself growing up any more here. I feel like I've hit a brick wall, blatantly avoiding common friends, unwilling to "up-cheer" those needing to be impressed, and overall-ly withdrawing from the things and the situations I knew before. It sounds a bit like depression. That's because it is.

What do I have to be depressed about? Is this some premature mid-life crisis? I have no assignment to identity through my age--as in, I really don't care about that (although the age thing does play a part when thinking about what I am doing at 30 years of age.) However, the whole entire scope of what Kyle and I have learned coming here, suffering trauma at the yearling stages of our family, and consequently been fire-tested and bronzed with the whole gambit and gamut of running our lives as we have, is far from lost on us.

I have to wonder if it's just now, yet again, as "just now" learning has ALWAYS been with me, learning who I am. Finding myself. Learning what I want. Or... is this just typical no matter what you've been through? See, I find myself wondering if all this was just delayed progress--these times that come and launch me into the next stage of growth with the horrifying change on the horizon--that would have come earlier, say when I had been 20 and in college, without worry or say, 24 and focused on my career and/or getting married. Basically, the time period most people have to learn these things before launching into a family or career, instead of doing everything ass-backwards or, as Ozzy would say "going forward in reverse." ("It's just a sign of the times.")

What makes me so, so, so angry about this all, too, is that I suffered a lot at the hands my own fate chosen by my own decisions and it was even put to my face in much the same way by a friend, who made me feel like I was some princess chalking up all her life lessons to "happenstance." But even with the truth to be found in her words and the hard-hitting realization that a LOT of where I'm at has to do with my decisions, most, if not all, the decisions that I made were out of dire need, repressed anguish, desperation or simply trying to remain aloof to guilt. From early on, I acted tough but needed escape routes. It's not that I really chose this path for myself as in wanting what unfolded the way it has, to exist in this way, with deliberate decisions based on hard, cold consequences (do or die, mild or wild.) It's that, other than choosing to be a mom (and even then, it was about dealing with consequence than it was premeditated choice,) it was the path of least resistance. It's excruciatingly maddening to realize this at this stage in the game, but regardless of how I just chose to 'go along with it' or take the path of least resistance (thereby indicating the decision in and of itself), I had never taken responsibility for the control and the direction of my life, as per it fitting with Kyle's, nor had I owned up to accepting the consequences, good or bad.

So. Here we are, after all this... stuff. The "autopilot crux", the "marriage crux", the brick walls, the intense ups and the down lows, at another brick wall; but now? Now we are ready and somewhat prepared to take on the responsibility of our happiness, the current issue being location, but we have two daughters rooted in the community to tow with us whose safety and security we must consider. Whether we decide to stay or to move.

And so, I'm left to wonder what is best versus what is wanted and wondering if those two will ever intersect each other or destroy the other irreparably. Do we move closer to my mom, in a place where Kyle can grow professionally, and I can access the multitude of possibilities while giving the girls a new experience that they would never get here and eventually be grateful for? Or do we stay here to keep their worlds secure, forsaking our own contentment, living in the bland continuity of day-to-day small town business, suffering all the big fish that throw their unethical weight around so that we can be reduced to a prematurely stagnant family? Doesn't the way we stand out when we are around the girls' cousins say much about what's going on in our dynamic? If not to them, surely to me. And if we secure their minds by staying here, how much are we helping them if we are not truly content? There is no real sense of child-to-parent reliance then, no sense of being able to come to us, no sense of having to rely on us as parents to develop trust and dependence. If we are happy in the sense of real happiness (and not so much as in personal gratification), then can't that make us better providers? Would we not be able to help them through the adjustment of moving? The pains of the school yard? The trials of life? The weight of their world would shift in their eyes, then, causing them to be stronger, the pain yielding growth with an emphasis on the parental role they have not seen on us. How can we help them or love them or expect them to be strong if we are not strong? Pillars of tough love?

It's all coming 'round...