Missing Out And Comeuppance

The many red, orange, fuschia, whatever-coloured flags I missed or was missing or kept ignoring altogether being one ginormous ball of wrong notwithstanding, the apex was more than I could stand and more than I was willing to process.

I still haven't properly assessed all that went wrong in my marriage, for many reasons, but that same lacking sense of being able to categorize even the least of whose responsibilities were whose added just as much to the panic then as it does to the empty, unanswered-for heartache after. For as long as I could remember, life consisted of dealing only with each moment in that exact moment even after cancer faded further into the background but joints were taking over. I tried to quit putting life on hold while life was, indeed, on hold - doing crafts and activities with the girls while they were still little to redirect their attention from the pain their dad was in, taking lunches to his work at the school with them in tow because he was getting intravenous antibiotics pumped into him, picking crab apples, having makeover parties, having them help me pick dandelions from the front yard, planning birthday parties... Appearance. Always appearances. But there was always the pain. His pain. His excruciating, walking on crumbled-to-dust joints at a whopping 6-foot, 6-inch frame pain.

It was always existent.

I never noticed the deterioration between us until K came home from his last, his fourth, joint replacement. If memory serves correctly, we were sitting in the girls' new blow-up pool we'd set up for the youngest's birthday party, just him and me. I thought he'd finally be happy. Relieved. Pain free. I theorized that everything would all fall into place with the last of his joint installments. After all, he'd been more than apologetic for his perma-grump demeanor for the three years preceding the first replacement (a shoulder). I had driven all eight hours south with the girls to pick him up from the hospital just post-op in our new van as he gingerly propped himself in, where not even seconds later he turned to the girls and smiled and immediately apologized to them for being so grumpy. He seemed more like himself and explained that the pain felt different, better. A healing pain, he had said. I was so relieved for him. For us. Think what this would mean. If one joint could produce that much relief, how much more would four of them? Two crumbling hips and two crumbling shoulders replaced with brand new, shiny metal ones? 

I don't know what I was expecting. Truth be told, I'm sure I added to K's stress and misery. Ask anyone who really knew me then - it was hard to make up my mind or know where I stood but especially difficult to see a consistent reaction from me. But there would be no more apologies. There would be no more connection. And, for each medical appointment that the girls and I sat inside the tiny airport for, to watch the workers use a massive mobile lift to raise and lower his wheelchair, there wasn't even a smile for me.

I don't know. I've considered lots that maybe K was just so beaten down by the cards he was dealt that he lost the person I met. I've also quite realized from the way my current relationship has helped me heal and grow that I am a very hard person to read and very hard to get close to. I think a combination of those things are to blame. I figure an indescretion that I had once, which I had confessed to Kyle in utter shame and guilt, with the brother of one of his friends, drove a wedge between us. Even though I had thought a huge sign way back then for us to talk and for K to dump me on my ass, or understand it, even though I still made it my resolve to expiate my sin and show my devotion, even though I felt like shit for... well... I still do, I somehow still felt that we were moving past it. But maybe we weren't. We never talked about that indescretion. I just held it in silence for a year until I couldn't hold it in anymore and was crying and when I blubbered it out, expecting a sharp, negative reaction, he just held me and told me could understand how it could have happened. Something that had been torturing me for a year and the next day, after my scene, it was like nothing happened.

So there we were, sitting in the pool in the middle of the day. And I heard it. I heard my voice. Nagging. Whatever was bothering me, it was coming out of my face and I hated it. I wasn't supposed to be nagging. Nagging was wrong. 

I wanted to cry so hard but I only got angry. What was wrong with me? Why was I feeling so... blank? It was disappointment and unfulfillment, I would only begin to label many, many years after. And panic.

I don't remember the words I harped shortly after snapping, but I knew I couldn't believe it. I knew I didn't want to live waiting like I had been. In my Hispanic flair and drama that spat finality into everything, somewhere in there was a question, "what do you want to do" and a few "I dunno"s, but then the "d" word. Divorce. Just like that. Enter inner screaming stage right. Floods of thoughts about waiting, waiting, forever waiting to start our marriage, about that indescretion, about all the times I had mistreated him, all the memories that I would cling to for dear life of our very short dating period when he was sick in the hospital, the days and days (even amidst ALL of my terrible mistakes) of sitting at the hospital with him, asking the doctors questions, learning t-cell counts and stem cell procedures, feeling as lost as a transient expat could possibly feel in strange, unfamiliar surroundings, people, life-threatening diseases, and two small baby girls to care for. All of it. All of the injustices I thought would be healed because we were together. All the hope I had for the future. Robbed. Just like that. Even worse, I felt that it was all my fault.

There was something so intrinsically wrong that I could not 'straighten' myself up or find resolve or another solution to manipulate the picture in my mind's eye to something more pleasant, like I had been doing for all the years up to that point. I realized I had been doing the redirect thing for yeeeeears. Clinging onto memories of the two or three real dates we went on, the time he read me poems by the river, the hours-long coffee we discovered each other, going to our first party as a couple, even memories that weren't ours together but that made me think of him - the jazz fest the year I graduated where he sang and I listened, the Ernie skit he did in the talent show and everyone booed because he didn't win. All of the things that I had left to feel good about. Gone. Today was here right now and those things couldn't hold me anymore. I remember standing over the ironing board at work the next day, ironing quilt patches like a zombie, praying that no one would notice or ask me if something was wrong. I didn't talk. Much. I couldn't believe it was happening. I couldn't believe that neither of us rejected the idea. I wished I hadn't brought it up. I wished he'd have vehemently objected. And the biggest gut-churn, for me, was where do you even start. How do you drop that bomb after having looked like the couple that could survive the husband's trio of cancer diagnoses and joints?


Because, and this is what bothers me most about this, even now as I write, to me it appeared as though K didn't seem interested in saving the relationship at all. Be it a combination of my bullheaded temper, the freakouts I would sometimes have, his trepidation toward me because of that, all of the pain meds taking their toll, or what, I just think he left it up to me. I was a pretty unhappy person, too, even though I tried to fake it, but I was never unhappy about marrying him. The most excruciating part of my divorce and grief was trying to reconcile being on statistic side of the fence while still holding and standing by the decision I made to marry him - I have never, not even to this day, regretted that decision. I probably took his peace-making, sometimes withdrawn, ways with me as disinterest. I'll probably never know. Maybe he did somewhere earnestly want to make it work but didn't know where to start. But the cycle was never stopped. I ended up having a clumsy, bungled, botched up affair and before that could happen again with M, I hightailed it to Quebec.


But I got my comeuppance.

A New Era

It's time for a little self-reflection. Some "thy shalt not bullshit thyself" talk. Some ripped down reassessment.

First of all, I have been walking and working through the monsoon-type level damage from several years ago for the past three years. I gave up on my blog (there's no point, no one reads it) because there was no reason to talk about any of it along the way, because anything in the middle of it would have been (and was) gravely unsatisfactory and unsubstantial. 

Secondly, I have not once stopped thinking about how my actions (severe and monstrously unbalanced) have affected others in the five years that have passed since that futile and utterly depraved stunt. I have thought about the people I lied to. I have thought about the friends I betrayed. I've thought about the friendships I still mourn. I get angry for trusting the wrong people. And angry for not trusting the right people. Who needs prison when you put yourself in your own mental incarceration?

I have also spent an UNGODLY amount of hours, days, nights poring first in the beginning and easing up over time about the "What Have I Done" factor and the "What The Hell Was I Thinking" vomitorium. To the effect that, although lighter now, I still cringe.

I've thought about emailing the people whose opinions I ever cared most about more than a thousand times and consistently coming to the deduction that it would a) be too soon or b) only dig up the past and old feelings, regardless of answering for those transgressions. I've also asked myself and contemplated and discerned the answer to wondering who the hell were my real friends. I seriously had no clue. Everyone was my friend, yet no one was my friend. And above it all, I needed a good counsellor and probably heavy medication.

I had somehow managed to train myself to ignore every red flag in the book. First it started with a few ignored white flags (using the color of warning spectrum), then a few yellow, then orange ones. Finally the red. 

Whatever it was that started the trend, whatever place it developed into habit is irrelevant. I finally realized my fears, on one side and spectrum of my life, are what drove me. Not a sense of self. Not love. Nothing. I was person who didn't know what she stood for.

That's a long time to be lacking substance.



Thirdly, I could be easily convinced to know that no one probably thinks about it any more, doesn't care. Or for anyone who may, occasionally, have had a brief thought of it, what I was or what I meant to them and how I could go so wrong, it's in the catalogue of things that can be easily put away.

I am, however, fourthly, still too embarrassed by the way I went about it, who (one person) I went with, how long I was away for, to ever, ever tell people any more than just a simple "we split up." I don't feel the need to be so brutally forthright about all my sins with new acquaintences. But I don't make the confession of how I did it, never mind the details of the actual night I saw my house for the last time, to good friends until a good, substantial amount of time, conversation and trust has been exchanged first. Because I am still that embarrassed about it, or if not, at least very, very self-conscious.

Fifthly, I can't recall a time in my life in all the highs and lows of everything I've experienced or in being a highly and overemotional person where I was ever as relieved to be out of a situation as I was the final days of what I guess you could call that 'relationship'. The best term would have been terrifyingly, embarrassingly dysfunctional arrangement with a narcissist. I'm still relieved. And it's been a long while.

Last of all, I've prayed that I would heal, that those I abandoned would heal, and that it would become something I could refer to as being in the past. Shun it, hate it, grow it, learn it, understand it, still suffer it, it's slowly and in strides taking its place in the back seat. This doesn't mean it isn't still fresh as hell some days. It just means I can breathe a little easier, find resolve, and feel the loosening of the knot in my stomach; and still hope and pray that the ones I truly, deeply hurt know, still, how very much sorry I still am.

Three Blessings Challenge, Day 3

I don't know why this is difficult today. I can't think of anything off the top of my head. And it really bothers me. Am I really that negative? That I can't think of anything?

Three Blessings Challenge - 3 Things That Went Well Today and Why
 
1.) Today I didn't have to do my squats, although I'm really proud of myself for keeping at the routine.
 
2.) I got to have the late lunch.

3.) Trevor made supper.


Why

1.) Because it was the rest-day of the squat sets.
 
2.) Because it's quiet, I get to work in peace for an hour, and then I get my lunch hour to myself.
 
3.) Because he had pulled chicken out of the freezer last night and then wanted BBQ chicken tonight and started the BBQ when he got home, which is before the time I get home.

Why It Happened

1.) Because I went along with the prescribed layout as per the challenge


2.) Because that's the way the schedule was written.

3.) Because he can, and I love him.

A Lenten Thing?

One of the best, longest friends I've ever had emailed me this in one of our standard, traditional epistle-length email exchanges and I just kind of dismissed it because, well, a certain hippo-flapjack ex of mine had brought it up during a conversation and it made me so uncomfortable I nearly cried. That was because of one million other things going wrong at that point, but that's another rant and ramble for another time. 

Anyway, she knows pretty much every gory detail of my life. We share similar levels of tribulations - not comparing the incidents themselves, but the distraught level of emotional fallout from collateral destruction - and values. We share a LOT about the guilty Catholic thing when we branch out from traditionalist views. We debate our differences of opinion with a HUGELY developed, renewed respect. So she offered this concept to me to take it for what it was worth.

Then she told me she had her own blog! So I read through it only to find she had responded to this exercise. A normally otherwise very private person, she bared it all, and I could just feel her pain. It had been very healing for her and Lord knows we all need healing where we can get it. 

So, in the spirit of digging in, of self-helping myself all the way to the moon, of trying to just be able to put it all away, of tipping my glass to her, I will dissect and strip down my own mess.

Chakra Meditation

1. Root Chakra (Earth chakra) located at the base of the spine. It has to do with survival, and is blocked by fear. What are you most afraid of?

   I don't really know what I'm most afraid of. I'm afraid of getting bad credit, of forgetting to pay bills on time, of never, ever, ever seeing the light of day with my $4500 overdraft debt. I'm afraid I'll never get to spend money freely or without guilt. Money. I'm afraid of money and how the way I deal with it will affect my daughters' abilities to manage it (or not). I don't know why it's such a big thing. I certainly have never had it, so it's not like I've had the chance to be superficial about it. Probably comes from the way it was always a ginormous, ever-present clamp-down, kill-joy in my childhood. It's what scares me the most.

   I'm quite starkly afraid that I'll mess my daughters' well-being/sanity/ability to process things in life for what I've put them through generically, but also more precisely for the point in time I hightailed it across thousands of miles away from everything that was familiar to them on a fucked up mental whim. I'm afraid of how they'll see me after they've grown and become adults with adult life experience. I'm afraid that I say too much to them or too little. That they'll see me as fragile or frantic. That I'll miss that one piece of advice that could have been a tool for them in the real world. Unstable. I'm afraid they'll have their own dysfunctions in their own future relationships because they watched me hypocritically tout morals and religion that I outright contradicted in the way that I treated their father, the way I handled (or didn't handle) the shortcomings I was dealt, and the way that I left or entered subsequent relationships.

2. Water Chakra- located in the lower abdomen. It has to do with pleasure,and is blocked by guilt. What do you blame yourself for?

   I blame myself for a LOT of things. I blame myself for the way I initiated my divorce. I blame myself for lacking integrity. I blame myself for dragging my kids through every part of of my entire messy process. I blame myself for ignoring any semblance of intuition for so long that I gravely and meticulously conditioned myself into missing BIG red multiple flags. I blame myself for allowing myself to be led four-THOUSAND kilometers away, across the country, and for following. I blame myself for not stopping it. I blame myself for lying to everyone around me. For lying to them because I was lying to myself. For never cementing my values before or after being married (in the way that is ME). For being a divorced Catholic. For having a heavy hand in the outcome of my girls living apart and them having to live away from me in the first place. I blame myself for not trusting in and applying the same gut feeling about being the mother I desired to be ON my own self during circumstances that were in and out of my control. I blame myself for being a skittish ditzbag. I blame myself for allowing the social experiment I started so long ago of initially wanting to allow for all opinions of all kinds to turn me into this waffling daisy of a wimp that could be easily swayed with the wind.

3. Fire Chakra- located in the stomach. It has to do with willpower, and is blocked by shame. What are you ashamed of? What are your biggest disappointments in yourself?

  
   I'm ashamed of being a liar at the most critical junctions in my life. I'm ashamed of knowing better and doing the opposite. I'm ashamed of the mistakes that have resulted in the decay and subsequent trashing of a marriage that could have gone the route of dissolution in a much more civil, logical, rational way; and exactly the mistakes that resulted in the destruction of my daughters' spirits. I am SUPER ashamed of going to Quebec - the how, the why, and who I went with. I'm ashamed of having EVER knowing him, much less going with him anywhere. I'm ashamed to have been sexted by any of the losers in the small town we lived in. I'm ashamed that I quit holding my marriage as the most precious, valuable thing on earth. I'm ashamed of things far too humiliating to mention on here, even for this exercise.
   
   My biggest disappointment is being a waffling, indecisive ninny because I only wanted to consider other peoples' views. What started out as an experiment in accommodating others with what I thought was an open mind (trying to be loving, accepting, or empathetic) was something that actually turned and whipped an unprepared, unstable me in the face. I had never made the time to plant my values for ME before letting everyone else's values move me like the wind blows. In other words, lacking committment.

4. Heart Chakra- located in the the heart, or center of the chest. It has to do with love, and is blocked by grief. Lay all your grief out in front of you. 

   
   Grief. My grief lies in all the people I've hurt. My grief comes from wanting to repair friendships that I will never get back. My grief lies in losing friends because of the above-mentioned stunt. I have a lot of grief in the lacking relationships I have with my parents and brothers, either because I've put strain on our ties by moving here or writing lashing emails or because because none of us know how (nor have the desire) to maintain them. I have lingering grief over the first few years spent in Canada with all the cancer stuff, feeling alone and lonely, no recourse. And lingering grief over how I handled my life in college because I had very little help, because I wasn't aware of my options, because I just didn't have the life experience or the maturity to span out or reach out. I have grief over the car accident we were in. Still. I have huge grief over being a divorced woman. Whatever stigma that carries or that anyone could judge me by is still just a drop in the bucket of how I harshly I sear that on myself.

5. Sun Chakra- located in the throat. It has to do with truth, and is blocked by lies. What are the lies you tell yourself?

   Lies that I tell myself - this is a good one. I try to make sure I'm not lying to myself anymore, be transparent and truthful, but a real big one I struggle with now is that living with my fiancee will be all right if this or that certain thing can be reached - like - our annulments. That it's not okay now, but that it "will be." That it's okay that he's not even officially divorced, that if I get my annulment, even if he gets his when that part happens, that somehow everything will be okay. That my ex getting remarried without even going the annulment (Catholic annulment) route is okay.

   I've told myself so many lies before this life that I just can't get into them here. If my daughters were to read this, I would rather they not see that lesson here, but in discussions over what self-lies are. And as far as truly seeing myself - I know I am not a really great person and certainly not above myself in my life or in my faith ideas.

6. Light Chakra- located in the center of the forehead. It has to do with insight, and is blocked by illusion. What are the negative thoughts that you have? What don't you trust about yourself?

   Illusion! This is a good one! I have been the championing queen of illusion, delusion, and disillusionment! I had been SO negative throughout the whole of my life! My negative thoughts now seem to have come into check. But anyway, here goes. Negative thoughts. That I'm not smart or savvy. That I'm fat. That I'm going to royally screw up at work. That I'll never make good money. That quitting college means I'm a giver-upper. That I've already done so much damage in my girls' lives that they don't even realize right now. That I don't know my brothers and they don't know me. That I must be a real pain-in-the-ass, hard-to-understand person because my parents don't talk to me about my life or ask questions - I have to gab it all out, thus exacerbating the talks-too-much stigma.

7. Thought Chakra- located at the crown of the head. It has to do with pure cosmic energy, and is blocked by earthly attachment. What attaches you to this world?

    Far too much, I'm afraid. Unfinished business. Mainly my sins. Sins of the purgatory kind. My spiritual status - I don't want to die before I've had the chance to make my status in God's eyes right. Which means trusting in Him to move closer to Him, which means letting go of having to "fix" this situation in my life by "waiting out" the whole divorce/annulment process, which means also letting go of one ideal for another reality and kind of "sinking" back into a life that involves worldly worries.



http://celiasasia.weebly.com/

Three Blessings Challenge, Day 2

I'm still doing this. I'm still doing this. I'm STILL. Doing this.

Three Blessings Challenge - 3 Things That Went Well Today and Why

1.) I got to sleep in

2.) I got to see my friend Crystal

3.) I got to get groceries alone

Why


1.) I've been running long and strong and hard all week and sleeping in is such a rare circumstance in my life. Besides that, it was guilt-free sleeping in. After far too many years, I'm finally really good about getting up in the morning. Making good time, starting the day, which wasn't like before. Before, I used to feel a lot of sadness about not getting enough sleep. It made me feel like I was constantly running against myself and would only get up because guilt of duty prompted me out of bed. It induced a lot of hardship and I hadn't known how to change it. I don't know what's changed exactly, but I'm so happy to know that it has. I'm much happier now, much more satisfied with.... what... I don't know, but it's so very nice to know that when I have the rare chance to sleep in, I can; AND that I just don't have to do it that much anymore. Maybe it's because I'm in an environment where that's supported and my better half gets it, maybe it's just because I'm getting older and those changes that come with age compel me to get up earlier regularly, maybe I'm just a heck of a lot happier and that just affects everything. But sleeping in is still a reward that doesn't have to happen anywhere near as much anymore and I really enjoy it when I get the chance.

    *plus, I got to camp out with Trevor on the couch, who's been recovering from his tonsillectomy for two weeks!

2.) I really didn't think she had to work today and was surprised when I texted her to see if our girls could get together to learn that I wouldn't get to see her, but she's just someone who makes you happy to hang out with her; and so I went to see her at work. We used to work together, but I've since changed jobs and got to visit her in the temporary trailer where they've got all the personnel housed until the rest of the new building is constructed and the two departments are merged.

3.) I really hate grocery shopping. Or at least I used to. It is the ultimate drag chore. I don't remember how I ever survived it in my married life, and I sure the hell hated doing it with the narcissistic ex, but I have hated the whole haggling of it. Trying to figure out what groceries really cost, as you stand there in the middle of the aisle, trying to subdivide in your head and figure out the cost per unit, the weight or volume per unit, while comparing and contrasting, for every single item you place in your cart, shrewdly calculating if that thing on sale is really on sale or if getting the generic brand will do. And let's not even get started on the Air Miles thing! Sure they put the Air Miles item on sale, but it's still expensive and you have to buy multiples. UGH. Up until now, I have hated every aspect of it. The math, the standing around, the aisle-blocking, the navigating other cart drivers, the suspense of whether the cashier can bag the items properly, the gut-punch of the total, the toting it out all out to your car, and finally getting it in your house PLUS putting them all away.

But I have since learned that, for some crazy reason, Trevor views going together as quality time and has assured me that he likes it when I'm there and we talk about grocery stuff together. I have a hard time seeing that way, but try not to grumble my way through the process so that we can have some semblance of enjoying it. But it takes a long time to do it that way; and I'm really good at going straight in, getting exactly what's on the list, and marching out. So doing it the chatty, aisle-meandering, quality time way is good and been good for me, but it takes a long time. And so today, not only did we actually go through the flyers before I ventured out and comprise a list of essentials, but I got to bee line for each item in the store and get out. Yes, there was haggling, which used to make me feel so stupid because I would never calculate properly, but I got out; and I think this job I have and the relationship I'm in have helped me exercise my brain. Both require me to think. A LOT. And this is a good thing. If you've read any of my previous entries, especially on the car accident I was in, you'd understand. It doesn't hurt to think anymore. Both job and boyfriend have been just exactly the loving and challenging boot camp I've needed for my brain. And going grocery shopping alone was therapeutic and cathartic.

Why It Happened  

1.) Getting to sleep in happened because I didn't have anything to be up for, no obligations, no kids to pick up, and all my house cleaning had gotten done yesterday. Because Trevor loves me and wanted me to be close. Because of a lot of good things.

2.) I got to see Crystal because I know where she works, because I have a car that had gas in it, because I know how to drive.

3.) Grocery shopping happened because we are able to sustain ourselves, because even though we're not quite in over our heads in debt, we're able to decide on those things as a team. Because Trevor has higher standards than I do about what we eat and is able to provide for us in that way. Because we are blessed. Because God provides for all of his children, the least and the neediest, and we are certainly not that and he still provides us in the middle ground. Amen!

Three Blessings Challenge

I made this up myself. Well, sort of. Actually, it's not that far of a stretch from any other three-day, 7-day, 30-day challenge, nor did I think up the idea at all. I just assembled two other people's ideas - other challenges I've seen (and some I've completed) and this article about training your brain to be happy; and figured I would turn them into a challenge for myself.

Challenge is a word that seems to draw more ambition out of me than say, "diet" or "excercise routine" and, well, the article linked to above was just the last straw, the last kick in the pants I needed to get back into blogging and/or journalling. I love writing. I've missed it. But I've also learned that moving out of a small, cramped town still does not remove the absolute necessity of discretion in subject matter and composition style, so I'm pretty much flooped as I like to bitch about things.

But that's where we are. The constant struggle to refrain from negativity. I've waffled between the worlds of positivity and negativity since before I even started this blog and still I struggle. This blog was initially meant to be a vehicle for that struggle and venting in a safe place. But unfortunately I learned that as audience-less as this blog is, it has fallen - more than one time - upon the eyes of just a few right people - or wrong; and it's given me occasion to step back, become more chompy and bitter and figure out what I need to do differently.

While reading, rereading, and more reading on every morsel of discerned piece of advice that I could possibly acquire in the segmented fractions of time that I have to do so, it has finally sunk into my brain that I do, indeed, need to do more positive thinking exercises. At last, there is no way around the very central fact that 1) I need to do this and 2) it's okay.

Heavy sigh. It's okay. It's actually OK to do this. It's ok.

It's. OH. KAY.

To go through the motions of an exercise that earlier in my life I would have written off as cheesy, bullshit garbage.

Because of the following reasons:

1.) I used to think counselors were bullshit, garbage fluffballs of do-no-good, help-thwarting la-la land dwellers, (some really are)

2.) I thought I had too many and too deep of a problem to get anyone to understand; beyond what any fluffball piece of sugary anecdote piece of crap advice could hope to inject,

3.) When I finally started to see their good and had the beautiful opportunity to talk to a few really good ones, I thought I had WAY too much stuff to work out - way more than the average life - that it would take time and committment that I just didn't have or want and was absolutely irate about having to schedule in appointments to order to continue,

4.) The idea that I couldn't get myself through something, anything, of the trials I'd been through, irritated the piss out of me. Surely the way I survived was the kickassest way. It was the Cazares way. It did just fine, thankyouverymuch, and wasn't I kickassy enough for everyone to see that?

 5.) My dad confirmed that counselors/therapists/psychologists were just bullshit, too, when I young. Before I even took my first step into the real world or had my first real taste of obstacles, I wasn't going to stand a chance in hell of resembling anything close to a healthy adult.

And... why, I wonder, was I so negative?

The problem is and has been for a lonnnnnnnng, terribly long, time affecting just about every. single. relationship. I've ever been in.

Ever.

Since the history of Amy Maria Cazares.

Huge and apocalyptic defensiveness. To seed and seep into every pore and vein within my tentacle grasp. Write the word "defensiveness". Circle it. Now draw all the branches out with the names of every perceivable consequence of that word written on each branch until you're blue in the face or exhausted or both. There. Now you have some idea of the havoc I've wreaked on people. And, consequently, how I've distorted the SHIT out of everything with every single emotion I've ever tinkered with.

From the Old Amy to the Now Amy, I'd like to think I've moved my way from thinking like a cavewoman to a smart person, with more fully formed ideas and logic, rationale, common sense (REAL common sense, not the relative common sense.) But it's still there. That urge to growl, snap, force those I love to cow down before me, lash out. I might as well be the hunter and the gatherer.

But all those reasons for thinking help, getting help, or seeking out help was so "cheesy" are also exactly why, finally, now it's okay. I finally read enough articles, talked to enough people, and struggled enough with my stupid, damning pride through plenty enough years to finally get it through my stubborn, super thick skull that I can see that, yes, these are signs. Signs that point to the need to do something to help myself. To practice what I cannot preach.

So with that, just like with any routine of discipline, much like music lessons or sports abilities, you have to practice what you're not good at with steady rigor and patient repetitiveness. And since I've got that going for me (the ability to play piano), which is nice, I am ready and able to practice what I'm not good with. Being positive. I am taking the advice of the above-mentioned article and turning it into a challenge.

Three Blessings Challenge - 3 Things That Went Well Today and Why

1.) I got the house clean

2.) I got to blast the kids' music in the car

3.) I finally got back to blogging

Why


1.) I felt accomplished. It got cleaned the way I like it. It was nice to move around and feel relief that piles weren't running rampant and taking over. And Trevor was home to enjoy it with after.

2.) It made the girls smile and be surprised. I got to be the cool mom for a sec. I got to be "that" mom for a moment. The weather was the most beautiful day of the season thus far. And it took me back to being a kid wishing she could drive and jam to her music. And I got to do that for my kid self, but also garner my daughter's smile.

3.) I enjoy writing and I love being able to put myself into my work and now I have something I can put all of that excitement into in a constructive but unhampered way.

Why It Happened


1.) I had an EDO today. I had time. God blessed me with a government job after much heartache in other jobs.

2.) I just got in the car without balking about gas. I just enjoyed my car, used the sound system, revved the EcoBoost that gives it balls, took corners a little too fast because my car maneuvers like a dream, picked up Ce's friends all over town to take them to a cute little get-together. I wanted to make Celia and her friends happy and at ease.

3.) Because I finally bit the bullet. Because I finally paid attention to signs that were so evident and clear that I could no longer just shirk them away. God was more persistent and stubborn than me. PRAISE IT!





http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/08/here-are-the-things-that-are-proven-to-make-y/

Thank God my grandmother was a seamstress

I don't even know why I try. Well, I do. But. It's just an on-going, constant, never-ending, up-hill battle with money. The harder I work, the less money I make. I don't seem to be working smarter, just harder. And for what? What am I gaining? More of the same unless I change my circumstances. 

Which I'm trying to do.

This isn't even remotely about wanting hords of money. Or having what everyone else has. I really, truly am content living very basically. It's about not having enough to provide adequately for things my family needs. I don't even have enough for my very piddling "basics" that some might call frilly. Make-up and hairspray. Deodorant. I seemed to be doing better on less, somehow, even though I probably really wasn't; and I'm just trying to figure out the suffocating question of how NOT changing my frugal, tight-ass spending habits all this time is adding up to being SUPER behind when I was just starting to move ahead from the not-so-bad behind!

I've gone over my statements, transactions. Other than the $45 I spent on three outfits that I desperately needed (so many of my clothes right now are patched up or getting holes, snags, or tears!), I haven't spent a frivolous red cent in the past three months.

I have to stretch everything. Make every single cent count.

I hate my job.

Not really. I just hate how hard I work for so little pay. I just hate that I'm supposedly a 'star' at what I do and have been told that I would succeed in other departments quite well, but that I "can't" be paid any more for what I do now.

I feel stabbed in the feet, hands, and back.

I just want to know what happened! What happened to being rewarded for a job well done? What happened to what I was trying to start? Savings, even ass-clenchingly tighter budgeting? What the hell happened in the meeting upstairs between my two bosses? What in the hell happened that made it okay for me to bring home, literally, hundreds less per month than the advisors, who've all been there a sum total of time less than I have? With a job that is only one - ONE - component of the whole spectrum of my position?

I'm not even questioning this for the sake of what's fair or not. I'm befuddled that I could be so blindsided with such an enormous lack of self-assessment. The nagging question is there. How? How does a person who can do every job and perform every role and master all of the positions there are in on section of a place get paid the least? I do exactly the same thing that each and every role does, AT the same time, on any given day.

I wear hidden holes and patches to work.

Day 2 Positivity Challenge

1) Looting through hords of history and digging through the ole memory bank to scrounge up old passwords and old emails (because one leads to another, of course, in the search of old files which connect to each other; and the green grass grew all around, all around...) in order to find photos for a 5-photo composite for the Beautiful challenge and, in the process, finding old, old forgotten photos. The brilliant plus? Being able to get into Photobucket, an account I thought I'd lost, and find photos I was thrilled to find. (And some not.)

2) Being trusted, despite all the superficial jokes, at my place of employment to get my job done, to be the one people can rely on.

Okay, only two. Posting late. And number 2 completely flopped in my face today. Fail.

Positivity Challenges

So I got nominated for the 3-day, 3-statement trend of sorts on Facebook today, but I'm going to keep going with trying ten a day on here because there really are more than three every day!

1) Trevor is learning Spanish as I type! He has his head phones on and is going through the introduction courses outlined on StudySpanish.com, repeating the vocal examples and trying to see if I understand. ¡Que maravilloso!

2) Waking up to cuddles with a certain adorable little 8-year-old who, for some reason, loves me!

3) Little games and big acts of love by same said 8-year-old who, on her own accord, "cleaned" the entire tub as well as the bathroom sink, and picked up her dad's clothes off the floor! I don't know what she cleaned them with, but man, does she make my heart smile!

4) Looking at my ring today. One full karat. For me. Brand new. For the rest of my life. For the REST of my life! No more having to play games, shop around, haggle, cry over hords of distressed dissatisfaction ever again! Just one person, the same person, the consistency and the awe of this perfectly imperfect man. Sign of hope and beacon of all the good one person can have in their life, for the wretched soul who never believed they'd get a second chance and a new lease on life.

5) Big giant hug out from Trev of the blue when doing laundry today. Just because.

6) In general, (today, yes, but in general) being able to put a positive spin on an outlook I'd have seen more negatively in the past. I kind of wonder about this mindset process as a whole, actually. Did I always have this chip on my shoulder? Where did it come from? Was I always this barky and negative? Most importantly, could I have maybe had a chance to get out of the house, change my circumstances for what I wanted, and handled single motherhood and newlywed life thereafter with a lot better outlook overall (i.e. without the damned struggle to make it from one memorization problem to the next) if I had never gotten into an accident that left me hella disoriented with absolutely zero resources for brain injuries? Who knows. At least I'm noticing that those tendency is shifting and evolving. My language is changing. My perceptions are fuller. The constant pressure in my chest from fear and needless expectations is decreasing exponentially. Yes!

7) Phone call from my girls telling me they were home and chatting about their experiences with family in Seattle and in California.

8) FINALLY finding one of those advertised clothes shoppy things on Facebook that is a line of tops that I WOULD wear and could buy from.

9) Watching our favourite TV shows to relax on a Sunday night.

10) Ice cream runs.

Counting all the a**holes in the room...

"Counting all the assholes in the room, well I'm definitely not alone..."

One of my FAVOURITE Volbeat verses. 

I love it because it doesn't put the singer of the lyrics (whether it's Michael Poulsen or me in the shower or you in the car) on a pre-supposed soap box about themselves in and amongst the company they willingly or unwillingly keep. It's a self-aware, no-bullshit statement about shitty behaviour. More or less. The lyrics go on to expand the statement.

I say this because I'm definitely not alone. Nope. I'm just professional about it. Or at least I try to be. Maybe it's my job, or maybe it's just because I've just been an infinitely nice person my whole life, in where I've always understood and respected that people who serve you food, cut your hair, wash your car, pump your gas, or bring you that next size up are to be respected because THEY ARE SERVING YOU, but I-i-i-i-i would never show up to a busy, insanely populated business and place and make demands around closing time. I know I would certainly never throw a passive-aggressive temper tantrum in which I'm giving the workers their options of what they should do for me while cussing out someone on my cell phone (where the hell are we, New York?) and pacing like a peacock, emphasis on the last four letters, inside and outside the front doors. Surely, I wouldn't do all of that and not notice that the nice lady on the end staying after hours to ensure that I got my prized possession returned to me and paper work completed promptly; and then LEAVE on her, leave all the employees who were staying late, all the employees whose lives were suspended for my selfish purposes, to pause and stand agape at my big-fish-in-a-little-pond superiority.

At least I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. Counting all the assholes in the room...

For the sake of balance and empathy, yes, if I were a hot shot big whig (in the middle of a farming state?) with lawyer-type deadlines and traveling with duress, I may be irked that I had to wait a meager twenty minutes after day's end to retrieve the end product of service requested.

But let's get real here: you called, you wanted shoved into a line up that pushed other customers (who were there first) to the side, we accommodated anyway, we told you five o'clock, and you called three, four times to check on the status of your order well before then (try all day), we continued to tell you five o'clock and you were still mad and dissatisfied.

The only thing I will give you is that we weren't done by five. We made you wait a half hour extra. For a job you demanded get done ahead of others who were ahead of you. Our bad?

At least you're not the only one in the room...

"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!