"Stay With Me"

I have to count my blessings. This year alone has been filled with huge presents and big milestones. And I, for one, find the music hitting the airwaves these past few years has been really good, too. That really helps. Anyone who knows me knows that music is my breath, my blood, and ora-like extension of myself. When you just can't find anything flipping through the stations, listening to the countdowns, or on TV (especially there, with all the music talent reality shows!), you know you're hooped.

But in my life. Hopefully, not speaking prematurely, the meeting with the banker tonight was just the cherry on top. Back a few years, I was somehow miraculously blessed to get a brand new car and finance it myself. Shortly before that, I had secured a small-limit credit card with funds and work on my credit with small purchases. In between getting the card and the car, I started working for Ford, wherein I established I could provide for myself. Meagerly and just barely, mind you, what with the mega overdraft that's lingered around since a certain greasy creep was in my life, but there still existed a perseverance, I'd like to think.

Struggling since divorce to get on my feet, like any other Jane Smith, wondering if I'd ever get above water. Dreaming of a time where I'd at least be able to make it a little past each paycheck AND not have to depend on anyone to do it. Straining and popping veins over trying to stay in control of my finances and debts while watching those paychecks fluctuate in take-home pay, either because I'd forgotten some irregular expense or because the lady upstairs made a mistake. Wondering if I could be responsible--truly responsible--with money enough to earn good credit.

But all of that happening in and around and amongst beautiful things like an engagement ring, a proposal, life with a man who helps me to see and remember all the good and beautiful things in life, there is hope and relief and a view of the horizon. Trevor hasn't given up on me. He is the very model of a good man, the kind your mother would want you to bring home, but also a good partner and a very best friend. While we go through life on our individual paths as companions for the other, we also come together and without becoming an unhealthy, fused couple; and I have felt, for the very first time in my life, a sense of individuality joined just perfectly with a sense of belonging, being involved in a common goal, a sense of having someone who, of his own free agent, is on my side completely.

And with that, the very starting point for me to see and look for the positive things. I think other people in my life have probably frustrated themselves trying to get me to see these things for myself--and I knew I needed to--but I had to get to that point by myself. Even though I still struggle with remembering to see the good things, I feel like I have help somehow. I feel like it comes more easily. And I feel like I have someone in my corner to help me when I forget.

It feels good to breathe.

Tempers

Just a few words for tonight.

I've learned quite a lot from this relationship and being in it. It's a lot like polishing rocks or going through finishing school. Kind of messy and uncomfortable and at times heart-breaking, but with beautiful results.

If I could pass any wisdom I've learned from going through this to my daughters, it would be to hold fast, be patient, and stay true to yourself. Because the ride is rough and uncertain and people will always criticize some part of you, and it's the criticism that can cripple, but it is far more important to learn the skills it takes to let it flow off you like water from a duck's back.

Because all defensiveness flows from insecurity.

You can't control what others say and you can't always control how you're going to feel about criticism, especially the kind that pokes at our vulnerable hot spots, but you CAN set yourself up for success by giving yourself an out that buys you time or have a few preset actions that you can take (and practice) to help you stay calm.

You can avoid unnecessary stress that comes from fights if you do this. You won't always avoid fighting, but you can cut down on the number of times you actually have to argue about something.

It also appeals to the "just having to say" what you have to say feeling, because you're being reasonable in your mind before you have to make the fight out loud.



SO many times I have acted or reacted hotly because I have felt attacked or critiqued unjustly, sometimes righteously so, but mostly not. Most, if not a majority, of the occasions with compulsion to speak out and defend against injustice (dammit!), once unveiled (in a number of ways but mostly after a hellacious verbal duke-out) are, in reality, one of two things: 1) born out of an underdeveloped sense of perspective or 2) the huge insecurity that comes with being wrong. It's not that I can't be wrong---I'm very okay with it. I just had to learn how to be okay with it, and then I had to learn about being gracious even if I knew I was right.

It has soured and tainted ALL of the relationships I've ever been in. Friendships, courtships, family, my marriage. I could psychoanalyze it all day long (and I have already done so) as to where that all came to be, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that having a hot temper is not a cultural thing or an environmental thing or genetic thing. It is a you thing or a me thing. It is lacking patience in every facet of resolution, it is near-sighted, and an excuse to refrain from taking responsibility for how you see things, regardless of who or what taught you what you know or didn't teach you what you ought to know.

This has been a life long battle.

I couldn't  help but feel this huge injustice when I went out into the world and started experiencing lots of heavy, super-adult kinds of situations being as immature as I was. I felt like any time someone considered me to be an adult, it was a fluke. Yet I felt a lot of frustration over having to deal with abnormal life-changers without ever having gotten my footing.

But I want my girls to do better than me and their grandparents before them. I can finally, finally say it doesn't really matter if  Mom and Dad messed up or that I made stupid decisions that I can't change. What matters is that I don't want my girls to take on my deficiencies. And I want to equip them with the tools to do more than me. I would love it if we could avoid living the phrase "the sins of the [father] are passed onto the [son]." And Dad always said, "M'ija, make your weakness your strength."

After much bump-and-bruising, I have found someone who has seen me through this part of my life, lived it with me, is real and still loves me. It's made me a better person.

The Power of Flower

So, for a little prospective trip down memory lane, today's ramble comes from the reaction I received today from a newly turned sixteen-year-old. My oldest daughter hit her sweet sixteen just this past Sunday, on Easter Sunday, on the year it was my ex's turn to have the girls for the holiday; and as such I didn't get to see her. I wondered amongst great pangs of grief what I could do from six hours away to make her day special. The Quinceañera she asked about maybe getting last year was, in no way made a reality. I didn't get one, and my dad was the Mexican in the family, so why bother handing down another lost and meaningless tradition? Especially now that it's mainly just another reason for rich and fake latinos to show off their money and we live in Canada where were were not, and still are not, surrounded by an extensive Hispanic community?

She was not going to get a car. Her father works two jobs. I'm hundreds of miles away living paycheck to paycheck. I thought about arranging a delivery of video camera accessories to show up at her door, but how would I know if she would still use them? And if she was still interested in making videos? And what I got the wrong kind of tripod or external microphone? The beauty products things has been way overdone. Money is a kind of copout and bland and pretty much the ordinary. Even though teenagers love money.

Flowers. She had never received flowers. Probably from anyone, but especially never at school, much less a job or other public place. Probably certainly not even in non-public places. Ohh, how I hoped this would brighten her day!

Flowers seem so... passive. I thought. I like getting flowers, but not every women really cares about that. When another gal from works gets them, it's all very nice and well, happy for them, but meh, seems like they're an overdone medium. And I don't have to get them. It's not like I'd probably even miss not getting any, just because it hasn't happened very many times and I have no expectations of getting them. Like. Ever.

However, I have received them at work and it has been quite lovely. And I know that my daughter has never had that experience. And while I thought about the possibility of being the plain, old mom that ruins her first set of flowers from a boy, I still thought it would be okay. I still thought it would brighten her day. And it still won't ruin the moment she gets them from a special someone, because those will be from him, or them, or whoever else that isn't me.

Fortunately for me, her father works in her school, so he was able to capture her reaction and text it to me. But the reaction I received from her choked me up even more. She told me (and I'm paraphrasing) through thick and thin, we will always love each other, that the distance may make us momentarily and temporarily bitter about the nature of our arrangement, but that nothing could ever stand in the way of that love.

These were words of a SIXTEEN year old. Sixteen! A child! And a young lady! My young lady! While standing from the vantage of a mother who, on one hand, would expect no less of the child I raised, I can't help but be enormously heart-exploded about it!

There are adults in the world, adults who I'm surrounded by, good and bad, for crying out loud, with less fortitude and contemplative reflection than that. But most hard- and heart-hitting is that moment. The moment. The moment you thought, as a parent, you ruined because of the ways you reacted to all the hard knocks of life actually dissolves into this time-traveling sort of undoing, where the actual beauty lies right before your face --- the beauty of your flesh and blood coming at you to say all the things you were trying to teach her, from her own lips, in her own way, completely stripped of influence.

For one second in time, you realize the influences that have surrounded her, but you also identify the pure light in her soul where, in that second, she's saying from her own heart, her own mind.

For one, tiny, mini, millisecond of time, all of the hard work you put in, all of the hours spent toiling over their well-being, all of the mistakes you scoured over, all of the lullabies you sang announce their worth in a loud, eye-blinding light when the free-agent voice of your child comes back to you with words like that.

She is the first lesson I ever had in unconditionally loving another human being. She has made me a better person, but also a better daughter and inspires me as a mother. I love you, Rori. Happy Sweet 16!

Un-acquired Brain Injury

So. Some of the things that bother me the most, still, have to do with the head trauma I had (and have had) to experience and work through with practically zero support, some of the left over trailing feelings of completely ignored injustice from when I was married, and the overall madness of the things I feel I was taught to know (i.e. the way I actually processed the ideals my dad was trying to instill as a kid, versus trying to understand and incorporate his intent.)

It's occurred to me more than once to start journaling through that, but I just haven't. I dropped that ball when my marriage started swirling down the toilet. I quit writing about things I needed to process because I was still going through them. Sure, I was able to write swiftly, grandly, and dramatically about becoming a mom my first year of university, and all the tales that ensued because that had been another life. Another time. With other people. And I had moved to Canada. Writing about the life and stages of being a single kid-mom was easy while sitting from the vantage point of a married woman with two kids.

But married life was three life times ago. And I still haven't written things down past the first date with my ex. Meeting the new gal at work has unwittingly emphasized that for me. Little conversations with her over a cig in the smoke shack at work and a few stories from her have reminded me of that part of the story that involved my concussion. I learned there was an acquired brain injury support group right here in town. That would have been helpful to have fifteen years ago.

Of all the elements listed at the top of this entry, I'd like to zero in on the things that led to my concussion, but also everything else I had to deal with coming out of that haze because, well, I just haven't yet. And right now, it's been at the forefront of my thoughts since having brain injury discussions with my coworker. I realized that I haven't really talked about it. Not like I needed to achieve closure, anyway, and that's largely in part due to the stupefying lack of support surrounding the event.

There was none for me, and who the hell really knew or cared that I struggled to gather my wits about me, combated shitty memory loss, or fought with the demonic frustration that I encountered daily (getting lost on a campus I'd already spent two years on, losing my keys or homework papers, forgetting my bassoon fingerings, for fuck's sake) while still trying to be a mother. Don't even get me started on that part of those days. I barely remembered being a mom.

Because of all that I experienced during that time, what somehow made it all very much worse is not that no one but NO one seemed to have any clue as to how brain injuries affect people and that ignorance and apathy abounded in circles around me -- even those closest to me. It was that my mother was a nurse and knew, at least from a theoretical, textbook vantage point, what brain injuries are and how they affect patients; and still said nothing to defend me when I told my uncle (a man as close to me as my own father) to fuck off.

Sweet little subplot to the nightmare of surviving a hellacious roll-over just outside of my hometown, my head being bashed on the ground like a rag doll until the vehicle came to a stop, tearing apart the muscles in my then-fiancée's back and shoulders, and my year-old daughter being ejected from the vehicle with merely a scratch, is the ginormous custody clusterphuck between my parents at that specific time.

According to all the accounts I received post-fog/haze (and probably some during, although I'm sure I could never recall), my kid brother was stashed away somewhere "safe" by my dad in attempt to "hide" him from my mom, who had flown all the way from Nevada after hearing about the accident, with my brother, who didn't want to live with her anymore. Dad wouldn't give up my brother's location, cops got involved, an arrest was made, and a night in jail was spent.

All remaining family members were related to my mom and naturally sided with her. And, as the three of us immediate family were trying to recover at Grandpa's house, I vaguely remember looking out the front room window seeing my dad pull up and hearing my uncle say, "oh here comes the jackass." The night I hurled the F bomb at my uncle.

I just think my father made SO much sense, too, what with his irrational passion for avenging a child's custody arrangement and all, when a) the custodial parent is successful, stable, and primarily concerned about getting to Wyoming because of the accident and b) my ex and I were recovering from a fricking accident! It not only created drama for my mother, who was accused of being the creator of the drama, but just like always, Amy got pushed to the back of everyone's thoughts. Including the major head trauma that prohibits me from remembering, even to this day, the least of those first few days, weeks, months.... maybe years...

But of course I was going to defend my dad. I guess. In the stunted, limited capacity that I was able to defend him. It's not that I didn't agree with my uncle, it's just that I couldn't. Not on principle and certainly not when those principles and emotions and just about anything irrational was of searing, heightened, pressing urgency and, at that time, the only brain function I had.

To the back burner the accident went, and with it the presence of mind from anyone around me to consider the idea that maybe, just maybe, Amy wasn't being herself. Nope. The order of things which followed is still a blur, but I only remember wanting to flee because Grandpa was furious, the old Zephyr he was going to give us to take back to our college town was being taken away, a night at a hotel we couldn't afford...

None of this was supposed to be like this. Jumbled wires crossing. The concussive hit we all took. The sheer seven-ton weight of fault and responsibility on my shoulders that didn't even hit me in full until I got the photos of the metal carcass that used to be the Tracker. Nothing processed in a timely fashion. Upon leaving town -- two weeks later (it was only supposed to be a two-day trip) -- we passed the area where the Geo Tracker flipped three times to a halt on its roof. Was that it? I pointed and asked. For the first of what would be several hundred more times. Yes, it was, my ex answered patiently. Then with a sigh. Then in frustration and eventually irritation. What happened again?

Fumbling my way through life getting back into the swing of the school year was probably, by far out of all the stunts I've ever pulled or been responsible for, the second-hardest set of consequences I've ever had to deal with. The effects of the events of a split-second moment have been endlessly far-reaching. Yet, no  one to this day has given a shit about it. All I got was a "there, there" and a huge guilt trip about telling my uncle "f*** you."

Not that it was up to other people to give a shit. In the end, there is always a way around blocks in the road of life. It's just that I never lamented this in the way that I needed to because I was too busy trying to get back to normal to pay attention to how virtually ignored I was. Truly a recurring theme in my life.

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.

Creo que es importante de escribir mas en espanol. Voy a escribir mas en espanol, con los accentos correcto... tanto...