Category Archives: Motherhood
Enough!
Cheese and Rice! I have managed to sad myself right into depression. But, I’m not having it! Nope. Enough.
If I had to analyze myself, I would say my mood of late has been a culmination of several pretty big events.
1) My Nannie, who was a HUGE bright loving light in my childhood, turned 90 on the 23rd. My mom went over to England to surprise her and to celebrate her birthday. I have to face the very real fact that the odds are I will never see my Nannie again.
2) Nic turns 18 next month. I’ve done post after post on how I feel about that (click on the ‘Motherhood’ category).
3) I think I’m having a mini-midlife meltdown. (My first clue might have been when I dyed my hair from natural blonde to brown.)
While I am grateful for everything I have, and blessed beyond my wildest dreams when it comes to friends, family and those most important things that cannot be bought, I worry.
I worry that I have no savings, no retirement plan, no health insurance to turn to with my very real health issues. Very easily interpreted by an imaginative mind into: I have no future.
4) I’m beat! Seriously tuckered out. It’s been a hell of a few years!
I stopped drinking, asked for a divorce, got the divorce, was almost homeless, was unemployed, moved, got a job, got my smile back and started a blog to share it all. Throughout all of that I’ve dealt with my heart condition, my lung disease and penny by penny, caught up with past due bills and by the grace of God – I made it!
But jeez – sometimes a nap is in order after such exertion. 😉
5) The tooth. This will be the last time I mention it. (Until I get it pulled, then I’m all up in your eyes with a post about that) But being physically knocked off my perch was the final straw for this camels back.
But here’s the thing –
- Not once have I wanted to drink through any of this.
- My Nannie is alive and amazing
- My son is here – and we have an outstanding relationship
- I am not hungry. (OK, I’m a little bit hungry lol, but I have food, just can’t chew)
- I am not homeless
- I can afford my medicine
- I woke up this morning
- the bills ARE paid
- I have an appointment to handle the tooth
I have got to focus on the positive, because God hasn’t let me down yet.
So what the heck am I doing not using that smile?
I’m glad I blogged about how I was feeling at the time though. I hope that maybe someone who feels like I felt, but wouldn’t say what I said – knows that there is ALWAYS the choice to decide to be happy anyway.
I am grateful. I am loved. I am human. And I’m going to have times when I feel overwhelmed – and those times will teach me how to be stronger, without putting armor on. I have learned to reach out. I have learned I don’t have to put on my wonder woman cape. I am enough.
I’ve done an awesome job of climbing over obstacles, and even though my muscles are a bit sore (I really should stretch before all that climbing), it’s so great to get to the other side.
Out of the dark, up and over into the light of my loved ones.
(Oh, and poor Teddy, getting dragged into such a somber post. I owe him his own. He’s been through a LOT with me.)
Car cursed
I’ll let it tell its own story. Prologue goes like this: my son took his girlfriend to the movies. Son and car returned at 10:30 pm.
I probably shouldn’t have joked with another lady in the waiting room (after we both noticed the ‘shock’ poster) that ‘knock on wood – I’ve NEVER had to buy those!’
Man announced (as I was now 2 hours late to work) “Your back shocks are dead – they are not doing a thing”.
Super.
Duper.
Not today buddy. Today I have spent 3/4 of my paycheck on these flipping tires.
Had to giggle when the salesman told me they would last 50,000 miles. I wanted to say that was probably longer than my car would last. But didn’t. It wasn’t that festive of an occasion and I was afraid my jesting would come out bitter.
I am totally, utterly, completely car cursed.
But! I am VERY blessed when it comes to my son coming out of them unscathed (twice now)
And when it comes to food product vandalism (mustard vs egg yolk)
So! I’ll count my blessings and avoid looking at, let alone counting, my bank account.
Picking up my basket
Last couple of days have been kitten-on-crack crazy!
To put it plainly, I dropped my basket. (If you’ve read Divine Secrets of the Ya–Ya Sisterhood you know what I mean by that).
The rift between my son and I, over the most ridiculous matter – fed itself with silence and grew. And grew. And grew.
Yesterday morning had me inelegantly dropping a toaster strudel and it’s plate onto his bed (I’m SO mature) and lead to him leaving without a hug or a goodbye.
So I spent yesterday at work in a daze. Physically ill. A little crying jag at my desk.
My last blog post is staying. It’s exactly how I felt at the time. Drama Queen sash please. And a little crown too?
This parenting stuff is HARD! I would literally give my life for this human that has the ability to mortally wound me with one cutting look.
Bonkers. Teddy Bonkers!
I came home to a boy behind closed-door again. I was so … sad. I crossed the line in the sand (his threshold) and went in.
I’ll spare you and my son all the in-between bits – but at one point I was told (well, technically he wasn’t talking to me, so I was IM’d) the sentence that I had made it almost 18 years without hearing. “I’ll move out as soon as I can”.
Now, I don’t want to stereotype, but I imagine most parents upon hearing that would chuckle to themselves and wish their offspring ‘good luck’, while knowing deep down their birds were not going to actually leap from the nest.
Not me.
Nope.
That sentence shot through me like a bullet. My gut suddenly had a brick placed in it. My eyes welled up and I furiously typed back in response to my sons words. (Yeah, we’ve really come to that. Typing to each other).
Fast forward to him cautiously coming out of his room after I fell apart and told him he has never ever, ever been told he had to move out – (man did he play me like a fiddle xbox!) and we mended our bridge.
I hugged him tight – tears streaming down my face, and I’m gulping air like … I’m not sure what gulps air?? You get the picture. As I sobbed “don’t SAY that – don’t ever SAY that” it dawned on me I was wound around his little finger tighter than unbreakable thread. (It’s apparent to me now that I’m going to need to buy a house … with a basement for my 40-year-old. Because whether he wants to take flight or not – I’m clearly not up to it).
The relief at the disappearance of the tension in the air was palpable.
We both joked and laughed. Then his joking got a little cocky. Then a little rude … and I looked at my almost-a-man boy and asked, with wet cheeks and racoon eyes:
“I thought the flu was going around, not asshole?”
Self. Indulge me.
Indulge me – and my foul mood.
You know, I read a friends blog who has Aspergers, and a common thread that I pull from her carefully woven words is that she is trying to process the world around her and her place in it. But what I feel from her words to a degree of envy, is that she knows herself.
I don’t know who I am anymore.
I feel, right now, like a bundle of contradictions – my muscles and my gut tight with the many facets of me that don’t play well with one another.
I despise liars, cannot stand to lie – yet lie to myself.
I cry at romantic movies, and a part of me yearns for the fairy tale ending, while the rest of me knows no one could possibly scale the walls I’ve built around me.
I abhor child abuse – and yet, just this afternoon I spat ugly words over the phone at my son after I perceived that he lied to me, when he was suddenly ‘not hungry’ after I asked him what he wanted from the shop for dinner rather than a drive thru. The sudden, let down, it’s-not-good-enough tone of his voice hit me where it hurt. I seethed. Thinking, ‘Ingrate’. And let him have it.
I might as well have slapped him, because I know how painful venomous words are.
I am impulsive and ugly. I am better alone.
I am always so desperate to please, then resentful that people take so much from me.
I am contradiction incarnate.
And now I am home – and the door to my sons room is closed, and the light is off. And we may as well be a thousand miles apart.
And we are.
I’m in my self-hatred and he is probably letting a nap take him after licking his wounds.
I won’t open his door.
I am stubborn. I am grateful for every day and painfully aware of how, without warning there can be no more days – and yet I squander them.
I don’t plan for the future.
I am content with ‘enough’, yet also settle.
I work hard – I give and I give all that I have. And I am tired. I am not well.
Somedays I only know what day it is because my pill-box reminds me.
I count my blessings, and neglect them.
I am 43 and responsible – and inside right now I just want to curl into the smallest ball I can muster and sob my soul right out of me.
I’ve never felt so alone, and yet have so many friends.
I say I’ll bare it all on my blog and yet, almost every post I find I edit in some way.
Well not this one.
Butters the brave (not)
My dog is very brave … when there is no danger.
The other evening, sitting outside reading, a shot could be heard in the distance. I’m used to these rural sounds. But evidently it scared Butters as she ran past my wicker chair into the house.
Thanks for leaving me out there trusty friend.
Last night at 10 ish, I heard thudding. I assumed it was my son church mousing around and hadn’t felt well that day – rolled over and went to sleep.
After midnight something woke me. I looked at the clock 12:30 am. My sturdy King sized bed shook as 3 succinct thuds vibrated through the thin walls.
Butters alerted – but didn’t rise.
I have long abandoned fear of the dark or of ‘bumps in the night’. Motherhood has that side effect. Up I got.
My first stop, Nic’s room.
He lay sleeping, the glow of the television lighting his face.
Okay.
I checked the side door window – nothing out there.
Purposely avoided the front door, for now, and checked the window from my bathroom at the other end of the home. Nothing I could see.
Alright – the front door. I parted the window blinds hoping there would not be a face. I felt pretty safe – I just dreaded being startled.
Deep breath.
Peek.
Nothing.
Hmmm.
I considered getting my knife – but decided against it. Opened the door for Butters to investigate.
Butters did not want to go outside.
This unnerved me more than the noise. If it was an innocuous source, she would have trotted out there, woofing her bravado.
I closed the door and checked all the locks and did the only thing I could do.
Went back to bed.
The mornings are dark. There was a sensation that something was ‘off’ at 6 am.
Usual routine is: I get up, use the bathroom, let the dog out, start the coffee, take breakfast in to Nic and make sure he’s awake.
I did those things and noticed Butters did not go far. In fact, she didn’t leave the porch.
Perhaps whatever visited us in the night left its scent – or perhaps she’s just a chicken with a good memory.
I noted the gate was closed.
I doubt a lurker would politely close my gate.
I’m hoping the thuds were from some night-time military testing in the mountains. But three separate thuds in a row? Odd.
As I waved goodbye to Nic, he said as he stepped off the porch ‘hope I don’t die!’
‘You?’ I answered, ‘You’re leaving the creepy zone.’!
That put a little pep in his step and off he went down the dark road.
Butters is currently on my bed as I type last nights events – staying safe from the memory of when she wasn’t brave?
Debauchery Soup 