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...

Relationship readiness

I just took a quiz on my readiness to embark on or otherwise "handle" the treacherous waters that can be a relationship. I didn't even understand the results. Or. Rather. They weren't obvious, conclusive, bite-you-in-the-face results. I almost prefer the more stereotypical and blunt Cosmo-style (*bullshit), totally predictable, (*bullshit) results that lock you into a box. I had to wade through the various "sections" to figure out my results. I need it a little more spelled out for me than that. I hate searching around the lines and having to put it together myself. Mainly because I'm impatient. But mostly because I hate concentrating, too.

Anyway, it got me thinking. The stupid quiz. The questions were lined out such that I had occasion to reflect on both my strengths AND my utterly hot and touchy points. I took the quiz merely and only out of sick, morbid curiosity. I usually hate them. They're so cheesy. And how could some blank, standardized, impersonal, non-human, black-and-white pot shot tell ME how I am? It can't. It can't sit there and tell you in a relate-able way that yeah, those years of playing nurse to a cancer-stricken hubby three times in a year and a half with small children in a new world with no redemption and psycho aunts (all of which were super traumatizing to an immature 21-year-old) sucks really bad. It can't soothe the pain of falling out of love with a gorgeous, culture-riffic man who couldn't find the help he needed before the relationship imploded on itself. It can't lend understanding to why you put up those walls, drew boundaries, or pulled some shit stunt.

But it can, and did, just provoke reflection, if not irritation. Just the concept alone, the title of this post (which is already too pukey to reiterate) invokes a big, grudgey, eye-rolling groan because I have, I do stress, always been able to pull my shit together. I just haven't always been able to get there in a rational way. . .

So. The provocation and irritation was good. I learned stuff.

Movin' on up!

I just went and published three drafts I had going without absolutely zero regard for their correctness. I feel good about this. There are some thoughts I wish I would have finished because now I do not know what they were. However, I could finally hear the real me speak through them. Pretty nice, considering I've struggled quite a long time to make my voice come out my writing.

I've talked about changes in my life that I did not elaborate on and now that I have a moment and the inclination to do so, I will.

First, I've been working on a story. An actual, honest-to-goodness, novel-type story that I've been able to move past the mere first lines, expand the idea of. As we speak (well, who's we? There's certainly no conversation going on here), I have just over 6,000 words. I'm very pleased with this. I don't know where the storyline will take me. I don't "do" plots or organized character analyses ahead of time, so it's just gonna kinda go where I feel it needs to go. It's not that I have this uppity standard of not doing things that would be more likely to set me up for success, it's just that I don't perform as well when I'm trying so hard to write conforming to guidelines; and I love the whole idea of not knowing where I'm going.

Most authors I've talked to agree that one tends to be sidetracked many times from the original idea so that the finished piece would have not resembled most of their ideas anyway, so I'm not too caught up about it; but even if they had strictly warned me that I would be tied and cinched to a whipping pole and be beaten by other writers and be the bane of existence in the writing world for not following an outline or certain model, I'm quite sure I still would risk doing it my way anyway.

It really helps to bounce my story off of other writers, a group of them I've found since moving here (yay!) and have them be generally VERY supportive. And positive. I have given more thought to the characters themselves, though, and into their development as opposed to an "idea" of a person, so that their interactions are more real. This is important in any novel, but especially important for me because this novel-esque thing I'm working on is 1) my first attempt to find my own style by way of inspiration through the writing styles of John Grisham, Dan Brown, Paolo Coehlo, and 2) contains pretty strong religious themes and undertones. I do not want a book that is about seeing the world differently to be about a religious agenda or shallow characters, as per the norm for this particular genre of writing.

So. There ya go.

Secondly, I started working. I was doing my piano accompaniment gig, but in the yearning and ultimate goal of becoming financially independent (lonnnnng-ass story as to why THAT has been slow coming to fruition,) I applied for 3 different jobs, figuring I'd start there, get my foot in the door, step back into the work force, and at least be working like a hella cray-cray woman making some extra cheddar (yo) to supplement what my crazy Frenchman/Quebecois boy-toy was making as a teacher. (Things were more expensive here than we'd anticipated and we had a very hard time trying to keep above water getting moved in.) (To put it mildly and NOT including all the hard time we had just trying to keep our relationship afloat.)

Welp. I landed the receptionist one, working part time in the afternoons and on Saturdays, at the local Ford dealership here. A month later, I got a call back for the mechanic apprenticeship! Okay, great, but by then I was loving my receptionist position and not wanting to give it up. Lo and behold the apprenticeship guy, who had a business maintaining and repairing forklifts, agreed to accomodate my schedule. By the end of that week, I was playing piano in the mornings, playing receptionist in the afternoons, and entering into one-day weekends because I was apprenticing my way to forklift heaven on Mondays.

So it was great! I was bringing all these various sources of income, helping the cause, helping to loosen the belt that was our financial situation. It started taking some of the strain off my relationship, I started to feel I had direction, (which was especially important when my girls left to live with their dad and I was feeling fifty thousand different shades of indignation about it), and it was working out even better than I'd hoped because all of my employers and coworkers were agreeable, real, and admittedly flawed human beings.

But I was starting to feel admittedly drawn away from the mechanic thing. Which really bothered me! You must understand that it has either been music or mechanics pretty much since I could remember breaking down outside a Holiday Inn in Bismarck, ND cerca 1998 looking for jobs. I loved knowing how things worked, I loved solving problems and working with my hands, and I do admit to liking the attention it got me at times. But I could do that as a musician or as a mechanic. All of that got put on hold when I got married, dropped out of school, and focused on being mom in the isolated, distant lands of the Canadian north. So when I was looking for jobs, saw the apprenticeship, went for the interview, I was more than a little excited. Until I realized it was for forklifts, which are their own thing and more under heavy duty. Whichhhh... would've been okay because I had several years' experience working at a crusher, the inner and outer workings of which I grew to love and take pride in doing: maintenance, increasing performance and production, knowing every grease fitting, every nook, every cranny, and never-ending learning. But it was a lot harder all around than working on a car. (At least I think so.) 

Try crawling in there and changing screens and prying down on the metal to get the braces back on. Yeah, in the blue thing in the middle there. Yep. We had a white one. I knew the guts out of that machine.

I couldn't figure out if it was because I was only committing one day a week to the whole apprenticing thing, if it was because it was heavy duty mechanics (versus auto mechanics,) or what, but it started to get tiring; and being someone's lackey one day of the week was hard, in the sense that it would take months of full-time lackey-ing to build any substantial cred with the customers and the guy himself. But here I was, only one day a week, and I was perfectly okay with being a part-time receptionist.   Still, I was eager and committed to see where the one-day-a-week thing would go, and if I would get more time with him once the piano gig was up for the summer.

Different kind of moonlighting

(...you know you're reading geek territory when you see THAT sign on a blog space...)



Fast forward to three weeks ago, I go in for my shift at the dealership and I get summoned upstairs. I didn't feel like I was in trouble, but I thought that maybe I was just going to get a few pointers on how to do certain things, or not do them, and be on my merry way.

But when I got up there, I was met in the board room with 4 people. The same two who were in my interview, but then also the service manager from our dealership and the manager of our sister dealership in the city.

To make what I could turn into a long, suspenseful story short, I got approached about what essentially boiled down to a promotion. Not only full time, but salary pay plus commission.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?

It will be my first job EVER that I am on a salary. It will be my first job EVER that will utilize every little flipping thing I've ever learned into a cumulative concentration. It will be the first job I've EVER had that does not require me compromising on a dream I've had or as a means to get somewhere else. It gets me close to the garage and it has me dealing with people. It is a job that can be respected, it is a position I can be proud of, and most of all, is a job that I can safely and happily tuck my music aside for. Because teacher or no, I will always have my music.

I don't have to feel ashamed about my dropping out of college and/or having no certifications or, if you can believe it, not doing music. Not doing music!!! That... is a first.

Without intending it to be, this could very much be a major, major goal line for me and there will be time and opportunity TO work on credentials as I move through the different training rings with the dealership.

Plus my dad knows exactly what I'm talking about now when I call him up to talk about the recent happenings...

What to write about! I really am in a ripe old mood, and there have been a lot, like a buttload TON, of positive changes happening in my life recently, but I just don't know where I sit with them. I'll figure that out later in my downtime. You know, when I'm not...

this.

http://www.ign.com/images/games/whacked-xbox-17531/413376

I. Hate. Change.

I mean, who doesn't? I am certain, too, that even people who embrace change still suffer some stress. At least a little bit.

For me, I have come to recognize and see change in the most 'ridiculous' of things. Things I didn't even see like that because I had had SO much change (constant flux) from an overload of overlapping events (and therefore consequential stress in my life) that the compounded nature of change alone had me five shades of under the red before I even woke up.

But in being a badass, I have had to un-be a badass to figure out how this all worked. I had to get real and I had to be honest with myself about how I felt about things.

Yadda, yadda, yadda, suffice it all to say that change today comes in the form of a puppy. Yes, I took the dive and relented to the puppy-acquiring that my youngest has been aching for since her dog of 7 years was put down last spring. And, being the change-hater that I am, have resisted all manners of pleading, but not without really, truly wanting to give my girl something she so very much deserves, is so mature to handle, is all around so grounded and dedicated to handle.

I'm really trying to be positive here, but this whole thing sucks. What can I do about it?

And that is the main question. What can I do about it? What can I, freakin' Amy M. Cazares, of the world at large and now living in a state of limbo, freakin' DO about it? About any of it. 

It feels like nothing. It feels like I can do nothing about it. It feels like rain. Like rain of purgatory and yet negative consequence from making one decision and multiple decisions, whose outcomes I do not get to control  and were always with the earnest effort to be engaged in my own life, no matter HOW stupid the outcome in retrospect. 

It does make me feel lost. Okay? Yes. I do. I feel absolutely lost with impatience some days. There, I said it. Happy now?

But not just that. All of it. All. Of. It. All of the rest of my experience. It is linked in every single way that my rational brain (as well as the words of others banging around my head) has told me it is not. "Oh, those things were separate." "Oh, you didn't do this." "Oh this is your fault." "Oh, you were thinking about this wrong." "Oh, I'm just so opinionated I can't shut my mouth but will cover my flaw by telling you that you asked for."

"Well, thank you, Captain Hindsight!"

It is about the summation of no-excuses, bracing-the-consequences decisions I have made in my life that, even if not always full-hearted, were always accompanied with a full-on brace for the consequences.

Even with all the stupid shit I have ever done (and what, exactly, was all that again?) and "I-never-thought"s and deafening blows of some of the most unkind things I have ever heard from people I loved and trusted, I still held the belief I have always made decisions, fully embraced for the consequences. 

But yet, here I sitting still, trying to listen for what God wants from me; and all I get are the voices of close friends and family past overriding--with much negativity, mind you--the voice to my own soul, banging around the insides of my skull like a record that's skipping.

Those decisions might have been made out of wanting to take the path of least resistance, they might have been impulsive, they might have resulted in a range of choke-on-your-own-spit results, but no matter how wiggly or squiggly or panicked or occasionally peppered with "WHATTHEGINORMOUSFUCKARE YOU DOING, Amy?!", nothing has even come close to the barrage of rocks that are people who you never realized were so judgmental throwing every kind of insulting commentary over the surround.

It is humiliating. 

It makes you feel incapacitated. It makes a sane person feel insane.

And now what of it? What came of their jeering and judgment, their opinions and their beliefs? Nothing! I get empty, cold, fruitlessness coming up every time in the immediate gall of my stomach because I cared so much about another person's opinions, that I practically sold my soul to get their approval. 

But when I crawled into the mutilated constitution of my soul, trying to reconstruct it and make the foundation more deeply entrenched in the spirituality of my God and NOT other people's opinions (of which there is a grand variety and of which I had managed to let affect me way more than I'd intended), I found there the tiniest pearl of reprieve and forgiveness that allowed me the space to make better decisions in my ardent desire to unite with the Lord one day, and in the meantime, decisions that were made by me for me.

Extreme? Hell yes. Necessary? Even more so. There is only one chance, one life, one moment to being on track with God. That is right now. It doesn't have to make sense to others. It never had to.

People just have to shut up about it. I'm not asking them to get on board with me I saw its brilliance and experienced the first cool drink of water I had tasted in years of wandering in the desert, I knew what anyone else thought did not--and would not--matter. Not in the way I had let it matter in the past, to be sure.

So then, to try in vain to quell the anger that comes from feeling such merciless, plain ignorance, I go back. I review what brought me here. And do so with even more righteous anger because all . . . I have ever been trying to do, no matter what, is fight for what I want. And I wonder, since when, on God's green earth, were a single one of them, in the tiniest of accolades or experience-drenched, good-willed-but-not in my shoes? 

When were they ever dealing with what I have had to deal with? 

How were any of them being influenced and exposed by the things I was exposed to, by choice or by mere witness? 

I have never whined about this for the majority of my life! But still I am being subjected to the opinion's of many, like a barrage of rocks thrown from catapults surrounding the castle wall. It is true as my dad said that if "three people tell you that you have a monkey on your face, you'd better start looking," but that does not, in any way, apply to the hords of people over my lifetime

There is one thing and that thing and this other one over here---a collage of things people have said that I have earnestly deliberated on, took to heart

And taking it down a few notches or a hundred, in the far less caustic approach, I really feel that that those passing down the advice did not realize how caustic their "help" was. And not because it speaks to my defensiveness (although it did in the beginning), but because it shrieks wild banchee levels of sound how little

And I never had the skills that so

And the thing that rustles my jimmies so bad that I have the crawlie of the century is about/how/that NO one's supposed to talk about it. Just. Hush-hush, there now. We don't talk about a mother's pain. We don't talk about our pain like that. It's negative. It's wrong. Just supposed to shut up and take it, I guess? Is that right? Suffer it and swallow it down because it somehow was begotten of our sins? Isn't that the biggest load of horse hooey you ever heard!

Oh, I've heard it, boy. Mm-n-yehhhp.

I put the two baby photos I had of the girls in the bathroom, and it made me feel a lot better about the situation of them living not here, living away.

I'm glad I did it, and it couldn't have worked out any better. Both photos are of the girls around 1 year of age. The one with my oldest was taken backstage of a band concert in college. The one of my youngest is of her smashing her first birthday cake, the mess covering every inch of her chubby little legs, arms, and face while sitting in her high chair.

One is a magnet that adheres to the metal outlet cover on the left-facing wall. The other is a ceramic frame that sits just below the magnet on the counter.

I wasn't exactly thinking about those details or of how the arrangement of the photos in the bathroom would actually serve to soothe my aching heart, but they did exactly that. I look at those babies and remember the most important thing. I remember something that can never be taken away from me or from them. Something which will ensure the bond that each girl and I have enriched upon since their births. It is the fact that I am the one who gave birth to them.

Why I have stupid fears and doubts about that bond diminishing: comparison. Comparison to how I grew up, which I see as always having both parents in the house. Comparison to a quick glance of the mothers of their friends, who live in their homes with them. Assumptions and facts and probabilities in my brain which include statistics of adults who are dysfunctional because their mothers were not involved in their lives, the significant difference it makes to have the mother in the home during the most critical years of a child's development (the teen years), and the entire stigma of being the mother who does not live in the children's home.

Parenting books, magazines, articles, and an abundance of scientific as well as theoretical garbage on the world wide junkyard are primarily written with the assumption that the mother is in the home--and--the one reading the book.

There is a LOT of material--situations, comparisons, generalizations, and/or assumptions--out there enough to help a mother flog herself verily.

But here is why I keep from spinning out: I remember that my parents were awful together. I don't know if or how I would have dealt with my mom being out of the house had they separated then and she had been the one to choose another domicile. But I do know a lot of divorced/divorcing people who work it out. And I never chose anything over my girls. My choice to live without them was only a secondary consequence to choosing to support them going with their hearts. Which meant them wanting to live with Dad, who is a good, kind, loving father.

You never know what other people are going through. You never know what goes on behind closed doors. Those other mothers who are still living their children's homes who even seem like the primary caregivers and perfectly put-together women still have their own misgivings and go about their business, which may or may not be working against or for their own child's well-being. And. They still share the responsibility with their husband.

In the case of mothers who are primary care-givers who are divorced or separated still have to share custody with the father.

And, as I am finding and gathering pieces of other mothers' stories, not all mothers are the primary caregivers, even in the case of loving mothers, because of the way things panned out between parents and children.

Why else: Not all mothers are totally clued into their child's well-being, their spiritual development, and yet there still exists a bond between mother and child.

Even mothers who don't deserve to be called moms are bonded to their children, if for no other reason than being the person who labored to bring them into the world. Even the most deeply disturbed kinds of people who conduct their lives out of issues stemming from their mother still have that bond.

This is nothing like that. I have been engaged with them and their lives since before they were born, which I contribute to having outstanding morals and ever-growing faith, instilled into me by my parents from birth. I have realized that my ardent desire to have them with me because I am their mother and no one can love them like me blocked me from relenting to seeing that I could rely on the good man and father that my ex is.

There aren't a lot of single mothers who can rely on the father of her children, even when she wants to. But I can. Even though it is humiliating as hell to realize, even though they are there and not here, my reliance upon higher powers has brought me to an acceptance that is able to override a very easy place to spin out: what I'm doing with my life.

Finally: I believe with such depth and founded concreteness that the One who loves us and died for us has seen fit to show me these things, in this way, with such clarity because of His grace, on which my reliance depends. He has blessed me with beautiful, clear, understanding daughters. He has blessed me with the thoughts that have turned, realizing my reliance upon His Aid, into sheerly clear and full understanding of my pain of living without my girls. He has blessed me and surrounded me with the presence of His Spirit through the love and support of others--my family, my friends, my real reality.

So when I see those pictures, I feel better. That is my reality. I see them every day, many times a day, whether I'm thinking about other things or I'm thinking about them. The pain in my heart for their absence is never far, but putting those photos in a place where I spend time doing one of my favorite things--putting on makeup--I see them right there with me. And in that instant, for every instance there is, I think of my two, very bright, very beautiful adolescent teen and pre-teen, what they are doing, knowing they are happy, knowing that they have been accepting of their new world. And it quells the need to call my girls my babies all the time, lest I become a mother who cannot grow herself.

The edifying bottom line: I am none of those and conversely, none of those people or two situations are alike. My situation is my own, my arrangement and my relationship with my daughters is individual. I am grateful and I am thankful.