Strength rediscovered...

The one year anniversary of my return to North Carolina is rapidly approaching. I wasn’t exactly sure of the date, so I scrolled back through all of my facebook statuses to find it. (It was November 12, 2010). Talk about a trip down amnesia lane.

My brain never shuts up. I’m pretty sure I’ve said that here before. But truly...it’s never really quiet. I’m an over-analyzer and a deep thinker. I am both grateful for and irritated by this. My return to North Carolina was a huge (albeit quick) decision in my life, and I know I’ll be thinking about that decision and what led up to it and what has followed a lot in the coming weeks.

I have learned a lot in the past year. A lot about my weaknesses, things I need to work on...but also a lot about my capacity for strength. I forget that sometimes. It gets lost, it shuffles around in my busy brain...but eventually I always find it. I’ve learned who my friends are...and sadly, I’ve also learned that some people can’t find it within themselves to still be my friend. But, (and this is a very recent discovery...as in about 20 minutes ago) I have spent so much time concentrating on what is past, what is lost, what is gone, that I have shut out what is still there. I took myself out of the equation for what I thought was the sake of others, but what I really did was shut myself off. I am much more guarded now; the pain of losing someone I thought was my closest friend, from what I understand because she couldn’t accept me or my decisions any longer, cut very deep. It has bled into every other part of my life. Somewhere in the back of my brain (sometimes in the very front) is the same thought: there must be something deeply wrong with me. I’m no good. I’ve fucked everything up beyond repair. That thought, coupled with what is basically rejection, from basically one person, has clouded my judgement. Instead of focusing on what I do have in my life, I’ve been overwhelmingly focusing on what I’ve lost.

I have been through so much in the past year. I moved across the country for the second time in less than six months with nothing more than what fit in the trunk of my car, I struggled to get my own place, I continually struggle to keep it, I got divorced, I’ve grappled with the enormity of what my leaving and coming back is doing to my kids. I’ve continued to make some less than brilliant decisions along the way, but that’s life, isn’t it? At the end of the day, and I still have to tell myself this every day, the important thing is that I came back, even if that doesn’t always seem like enough. A lot of the time I still feel like a complete joke. And sometimes I feel like this is all just a bad dream, and maybe at some point I’ll wake up and I’ll feel safe and whole and a little less insecure.

Throughout everything, I am still comforted by the same truth: everything happens for a reason. Sometimes I struggle with what those reasons are, but I also know that I may never know. Think about it for just a little bit...we come in contact with people in our lives every day. Some we know, some we don’t. Think about the impact that each of us can have on someone else, no matter how small. Who have I met as a result of my move to and from Phoenix? Who has touched my life as a result of that? Which lives have I touched as a result of that? I know in my bones that I have made friends and met people and made connections that are as essential to my life as breathing, and none of it would have happened without that one decision.

I do battle every day with this over-active brain of mine. Happiness, peace, confidence...they are illusive and fleeting. But I am on a path. My path. I have to accept that, embrace it. Every single thing I’ve done has brought me to where I am right now. And where I am right now is where I’m supposed to be. There is so much peace in that realization. I am eternally grateful for everyone in my life right now. I may have lost some people along the way, but the ones I still have in my life are amazing. They are funny and kind and strong and a little crazy and perfect. They may not always be a part of my life, but they are now.

So I will continue to find my strength and embrace it, and be grateful for what and who I have, and know that I’m not alone. This is my life, my path...and even though I lose sight of it from time to time, I know it’s a pretty damn good one.

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

How do I answer their questions? How do I explain to a six-year-old, even a very smart one, why I left his father without tainting his image of his father? I won’t do that. When I get a point blank question, seemingly out of nowhere, about why I stopped living at his home...it renders me speechless. All I could do, what I will continue to do, is tell him how much I love him, how my leaving his father had nothing to do with him, how I love him forever, no matter what. And I have told and will tell my daughter the same thing.

I left my children. I left them. I made a choice, and a little over a year ago, I left my children and I gave my now ex-husband custody and I hid in Arizona for 5 months. There is so much more to it than that...but those are the basics. I left, and I hid.

As my father so eloquently says, don’t spend too much time kicking your own ass; the world will do that for you. There’s something to that advice...but I have spent a lifetime kicking my own ass, and it is a hard habit to break. It’s second nature.

Logically, I know that the past is the past, what’s done is done, insert-other-cliche-about-living-in-the-present here. I know that I made a choice and now I have to live with that choice and the consequences. I know that no matter how hard the road or how much I kick my own ass, that decision ultimately got me out of a really bad marriage. A marriage I had been trying to get out of for 2 years. Could I have done it any other way? Probably. But...this is how it played out. This is how it went down, and I have to deal with that.

I struggle every single day with what I did. Logically, I know that I did what I had to do at the time and I did the best I could. Logically, I know that I can’t change anything and that all I can do is move forward. But that is just my mind. Try telling that to my heart. In my heart I feel selfish. I miss my children. I don’t miss the life I left behind, but I miss my kids.

So I will continue to tell my kids I love them and spend as much time with them as I am allowed. For now. I will continue to work on myself, for I am, as always, a work in progress. I will try to stop kicking my own ass. Because that’s not really productive, is it? To kick my own ass for things that are done and can’t be changed...it serves no purpose. I know I have to figure out a way to stop focusing on the past and live in the present. I just don’t know how.

This whole experience has reminded me of something very important: being judgmental is pointless and hurtful. I've said this before and I'll say it again - until you've walked a mile in my shoes, you have no right to judge me or what I've done. Some people get that. Some people don't. I know I don't need the people who don't get that in my life, but it still hurts.

Suburbia=twitchy

Suburbia makes me twitchy.

Five or 6 years ago, it was all I wanted. The big house in the cookie cutter neighborhood, the white picket fence, the neighborly hospitality. The 2-car garage, the big backyard. I so desperately wanted that. I got it, I relished it. I tried so hard to be the person who would fit in, tried to do the right things and say the right things. For 6 years in that seemingly perfect neighborhood I repeatedly attempted to squish my round self into a square hole. It worked for a while. Until it stopped working. Then everything stopped working.

There is a part of me that realizes that I am vilifying suburbia. At least a little. But it still makes me twitchy. When I drive past subdivisions I can literally feel myself tensing up. Once I am back on a country road on the way to my house I breathe a little easier. Those cookie cutter houses symbolize everything I am not and everything I tried to be but couldn't manage.

I inadvertently took a short yet painful driving tour through my past this evening on the way home from Easter dinner at my mother's house. The pizza place that used to be the Thai place that he and I used to go to all the time when we were first dating. The house that used to be the bed and breakfast we got married at. The old route I used to take to drive the kids to preschool from that house in suburbia.

It brought back a lot of unpleasant memories, but it brought back some good ones too. I'm not sure which ones hurt more. I know in my heart and soul I made the right decision when I left him. But I think even the worst of relationships have some sweet and happy remnants when things end, even if those things are hard to remember at first. And I think that applies to friendships too.

I lost friends as a result of staying in Phoenix last summer. Some of these friendships were temporarily patched up upon my return. Most didn't make it though, for whatever reason. It hurt. It still hurts, and it will probably always hurt a little. I ended up rediscovering one friendship I thought I'd lost though. And I've come to realize something recently: this friend is possibly one of two people I've been lucky enough to know in my life who has never tried to change me. Not ever. She's never told me what I'm doing wrong or what I need to do differently or instructed me on how I should live my life. She just accepts me for who I am, listens to me when I'm sad, lets me cry, and laughs with me when life is good and even when it's not. I hope I do the same thing for her.

I'm learning that life itself is a process. It's not a series of absolutes. Life is always changing, flowing, moving. I am learning to grow and change with it. That's a process too though. I am grateful for so many things in my life, even when I feel too broken to remember what those things are. I love the time I get with my kids. I love my tiny, old house with all of it's charms and imperfections. I love my tiny, old house's lack of a white picket fence. I love my dog. I love the people who remain in my life and accept me for who I am, warts and all. Most importantly, and this may be the biggest process of all, I am learning to love and accept myself. Every part of myself. I know it all starts with that.

Suburbia still makes me twitchy though. Learning to get over that will be a part of the process too...

Corporate America...no thank you...

The whole concept of "corporate culture" makes me a little ill. On some level I get the whole "have-a-job-be-dedicated-to-it-and-do-it-well" thing, and I can appreciate and recognize it in my co-workers. I also know that not everyone is made the same. I, personally, want more than working within a "corporate culture" somewhere for the rest of my life. (Disclaimer: not that there is anything wrong with that - to each their own). Work for me is a means to an end. I pay my bills (or try to anyway) with whatever scratch I manage to come up with from my several menial jobs. Meanwhile I dream about writing, playing music, being creative.

This place is a huge joke. Never before in my life have I seen such a humongous cluster fuck in a corporate environment from a firsthand perspective. We temps are ignored and poorly trained, and we get to sit and push F2 and F3 all day. We don't know what we're doing or why we're doing it, but news flash: neither do the people who actually work here. No one has a clue! Half of everyone's time seems to be spent standing around and bullshitting while attempting to look important.

I feel extremely useless, bored and unproductive. So this is what I went to college for. Huh.

My choices are my own; my actions and my decisions brought me here, good and bad. I could have tried harder, studied more, chosen an actual career path. But then, I would probably be one of the ones standing around bullshitting while attempting to look important.

That's not me. Never has been really. Power suits, 9 to 5, "corporate culture"...that's just not me. I am t-shirts and jeans and naps and words and music. I have always been a little out there, a little different. Marched to my own drummer, if you will. I'm okay with that. I'm happy with that. I think I am better for it.

Now...time to stop just dreaming. Time to start creating.

Questions

The questions have started, in earnest.

There were a few here and there when I first came back from Phoenix. From S - "Mommy, do you still love my Daddy?" Things like that. (How do I answer that? How do I translate the real answer to that question for a 4-year-old little girl who loves princesses and still believes in happily ever after?).

The questions have become more frequent, and much more difficult to answer.

I had a conversation with C a few weekends ago over a Dr. Seuss matching game. I'm not sure what came over me, but I suddenly had to tell him how much I love him and how my leaving last summer had nothing to do with him or his sister. His question, which I stupidly was not prepared for, was "then what did it have to do with?"

I do not know how to answer these questions without hurting them more. I do not know how to answer these questions without saying mean and nasty (albeit true) things about their father. I refuse to do that to them. My mother did it to me, and I have not and I will not speak ill of him in front of or to them.

S likes to reminisce. She is constantly saying things like "remember when we went strawberry picking when I was a baby and I ate so many strawberries my face was all red?" She seems to have a "remember when?" for everything little thing.

Last night, as I was rinsing the shampoo out of her hair, she said, "Mommy, remember when we used to take a bath and if we didn't have a cup to rinse our hair you would tell us to put our head back and we'd rinse it with the water that comes out of the bathtub? That was fun. We used to take baths with you all the time. Mommy, why did you leave our home? Don't you miss us?"

It was like a sucker punch to the gut.

"Yes baby. I miss you every day I'm not with you. I missed you every day I was away."

The other question, the first one...that took a little longer for me to answer.

"When I first left I was only going to stay a few weeks. But I decided to stay because I needed to figure some things out."

Of course, what was going through my mind, what I almost said, was radically different. I stayed because I was broken. I stayed because I allowed your father to break me for 9 years and I didn't know how to put myself back together in North Carolina. I stayed because I didn't know what else to do. I stayed because I knew I could never support you on my own. I stayed because it was the only way I could ever really, truly, finally get away from your father for good. I stayed because I was tired and sad and lost and the desert held an unexpected and strange healing for my soul. I stayed because I'm selfish and horrible. I stayed because I found a friend...much more than a friend.

And I wanted to tell her that I came back because I missed her and her brother so much it hurt. I came back because I had to face it, all of it. I left my father and I left my friend and part of my heart in Phoenix when I left to come back here.

I didn't say any of that. All of that went through my head in about 10 seconds. And by the time I had given her my safe answer, she had already moved on to something else, something that didn't have anything to do with the pain I have caused, or any of the other adult things they bring up from time to time. She was already telling me all about her bath time doll, Belle, and her bathing suit and how her hair turns pink and how she likes yellow soap and yellow lotion because her skirt is yellow. But I know, underneath all of that kid stuff, the bigger questions are still there.

I know I need to let it go. I know I need to stop feeding all of this guilt, stop letting it have power over me. I need to let it go and move forward. But it is so hard. Much harder than I thought it would be, if that is possible at all. I'm back, I'm here, I get to hug them and kiss them and spend time with them. Even though part of my heart is still in Phoenix, I am here, and I need to focus on the future and all of it's possibilities.

But I wish there was some kind of instruction manual for these questions. I know there will be more, I know they'll probably never stop...I just wish I knew the best way to answer them.

Pavlov's Dog

I've been thinking a lot lately about technology. Cell phones, smartphones, tablets, what have you. I went over to the dark side last summer and got an iPhone. I had a teeny little iPod Nano, and I loved it...but I had seen firsthand the wonders of the iPhone and I WANTED ONE. Badly.

So in a fit of impatience and spontaneity, I marched myself into the local Apple store and I got my iPhone. Don't get me wrong, I love it. But...I am somewhat ashamed to admit that it has become an extension of me rather than a gadget meant for talking on the phone and occasional web surfing. Sometimes I feel like I should just go ahead and have it surgically removed from my person. When did we become so plugged in that we stopped being able to just be? I can't relax for two seconds without some sort of technological stimulation. I have literally forgotten how to just...be.

I woke up this morning eager to get started on some much-needed cleaning and organizing around the house. And my first thought was 'gee, I wish I had my teeny little iPod Nano so I could put it in my pocket and put in the earbuds and just listen to some music on full volume.' It kind of made me a little sad. Yes, I realize I can access my iPod from my iPhone, put it in my pocket and put in the earbuds and listen to some music on full volume. But this gadget is my phone, my email, my text messaging, my Facebook, my alarm clock, my distraction, my holder-of-many-fancy-apps. It's all too easy, too at-the-fingertips. And if I docked my iPhone and turned on the music or put in the earbuds it would inevitably be interrupted by a text or a phone call or a Facebook update. Sometimes I feel like Pavlov's dog...I hear that little tinkling glass alert and I drop what I'm doing and go running to it to find out who texted me!

As a spiritual person rather than a religious one, I usually just give up giving up things for Lent for Lent (process that one! lol), but if I did decide to give anything up for Lent this year, it would probably be using my iPhone for frivolous reasons.

Let's be honest, that's so not going to happen. Texting is convenient and sometimes helpful and the map function has turned me into someone who can get anywhere at all, rather than someone is hopelessly directionally challenged and could get lost in a paper bag. But I am going to try very hard to disconnect myself from the whole technology thing a bit. It definitely runs my life way too much, and I need to be running my life.

This whole living-by-myself thing has proved to be a challenge for me. I really thought it would be endless fabulousness...and it's not. But that's reality. And I am coming to terms with the fact that all the technology and wine and feeling sorry for myself has just been a series of distractions designed to keep me from doing what I should have been doing these last several months: figuring out who I am, and learning to like her. I'm working on that. It's something I'm going to have to work on every day. Along the way, hopefully I'll learn to just be while I'm at it...

Come here often? I'm new here.

Not really.

This is actually my 3rd trip to the blogosphere. I've been working really, really hard at not writing anything at all lately, a choice that doesn't really lend itself to blogging.

See, if I write, then I have to actually deal with stuff. You know, process all those wacky feelings and endless thoughts. And I have just not been up for that. For a long time. Apparently, I prefer to torture myself by not dealing with anything. I've just been letting it all wash over me, constantly. I am barraged with all of these random, erratic emotions and thoughts every single minute of every day. My.brain.never.stops.

But now, I think I am ready to deal with it all. Maybe. And I definitely think this is a good place to start.

We'll see.