2012

2012... man, where do I start? :)

The year obviously started off with great potential, considering that I started it with someone totally amazing who helped me remember how to just smile and have fun. Someone who reminded me what it feels like to have good friends who care about you.. and who care enough to be honest, too.

That set the tone for the rest of the year, though I still had some major hurdles to overcome just to get back to living like a "normal person".

I got my license back and got a car that worked for me and my kids. We got our independence back and I was able to get a job that kept me on my feet and that I enjoyed most of the time.

I finally was able to reach past my fear of failure and disappointment and set some major goals for myself, and did what it took to make those things happen. I got my GED. I got my passport. I went to Thailand and ate gross food (haha).

I became a better, more patient mother to my children.. more emotionally "present" for them and much stronger.

I made some major steps toward securing an emotionally fulfilling AND financially independent future for me and my children and am now feeling confident in my ability to take care of my family.

I let go of some things that were very hard to let go of, but that were weighing me down in many ways. This opened up room in my life for new, better things. Although I was scared that nothing would fill the empty spaces, they were filled with love and happiness and emotional growth that I couldn't have attained any other way.

I slowly but surely began loving myself, more every day, and am sure this will be a continuous lesson throughout my life. Because of that, I was/am able to love other people more openly and fully and opened myself up to a great relationship with a guy who loves me completely for who I am and also sees my full potential and encourages me to live it.

2012 has been the best year of my life so far, but I plan to make 2013 give it a run for its money. :)

(phew... that was difficult)

(thanks SDL for the idea)

The inevitable unknown

I haven't been posting much lately. I've posted some poetry on my facebook notes... most of it pretty depressing. But 95% of the time, the only time I write good poetry is when I'm heartbroken, so, there ya go.

I feel like I'm in limbo lately, but today I realized that even in limbo, the universe and I are somehow working together to make things happen.

I can't even describe where I am at right now as "Depression" although I do cry, frequently. I get frustrated, I want to scream, I want to tear my hair out... I think I won't survive another day without transportation and choices and my own space.
There are many things I am frustrated about. SO many.

But time goes by very reliably, no matter how slowly or quickly we think it's going to. And we find ourselves looking back at the time when we said "I can't make it that long, I just can't."

As of today, I have exactly 1 month until I can get my driver's license back.
I only have to make it one more month before I can do the things I like to do again.

And while i've been sitting mourning the loss of my entire life, my life has actually been going on, and even growing, right in front of my blind eyes.

I got a job, practically overnight, at a place that I felt was very beneath me. As far as skill level? It is. I can do so much more. But does that mean it's beneath me? Is it so wrong for anyone to learn what it's like to do hard but mundane manual labor for a not-so-great wage... to REALLY work for a living? To be exhausted and overwhelmed, but get a paycheck at the end of the week and be able to feed your kids.....
I have learned to be grateful. Because there are people who wish they had my job, even as I'm wishing I didn't.

And now, I have two jobs. One that I feel completely UNDER qualified for. Life is funny. I mean, it's really funny. The universe, if it has some kind of personality (which it must) is probably laughing it's ass off at me right now.
I'm going to be an accountant for a trucking company. I started training today, and the guy that has been doing it stared at me blankly like I was a f***ing idiot when I couldn't pull  the solution for 6% of $1800 out of my ass in 0.5 seconds. I'm a smart girl, and I aced every math class I ever took. But I'm not good with percentages unless they're .. you know, 10, 20, 50.. 100... LOL.
That's what calculators are for.
Well, this guy looks down on me cause I have to use a calculator. Oh well.

The thing is.. I'm learning to be humble. In two very different ways. And I'm learning to be grateful. Because one job has taught me that I am not superior to any other human being who works in a factory just because I have musical talents or a high IQ or a pretty face (well, pretty when I paint it).
And the other job is teaching me that I have a lot to learn... but I can do it. I can get to a place in life... I have a doorway... to a place where I will be able to get a good-paying job that will support my family. Without having to go through years of school, I will have this on my resume. I don't even "Deserve" this job, but it's being handed to me on a silver platter.
Sometimes, the universe DOES do me favors. Sometimes.
Maybe, if I'm being honest... it's constantly in the process of doing me a big freaking favor.

If I forget that again, someone please direct me back to this post.
If I hadn't gotten in that car accident, if I hadn't gotten the DUI, if I hadn't lost EVERYTHING and had to move back in with my parents and even become a bad mom for a while.... I may never have even met the people giving me this awesome job.
I got to spend a lot of time getting to know my kids again, finding out what it's like to be a stay at home mom again, learning to jump on the bed with my 2 yr old and read stories to my 6 yr old.
I found out that your parents never stop being your parents, even when you're almost 30 yrs old. That good parents like mine are there for you even when you act like you hate them for it.
That my mom will never stop holding me when I cry, even if she doesn't have any answers... Nothing's better than a hug from your mom when you feel hopeless.
And THAT reminded me that if I, at 27 yrs old, still need my mom, even if i've been pushing my parents away for 10+ years.... my babies will need me many years from now, too.
I needed to learn that, somehow.

While I've been mourning my past life and freedom, someone or something or some energy has NEVER stopped planning for me, opening doors for me, paving paths for me to become someone better and stronger... to have a better life.
Why? I don't know.
But I'm glad.

I have no idea where I'm going to be a year from now, but for once, even though this year was terrible, horrible, scary, emotional, lonely, and full of loss.... I am grateful because every piece has formed a picture that is starting to make a little bit of sense.

And in just the next month I am facing my love moving literally across the world for an entire year. Without any promises made.
I'm scared, but for the first time, a little bit of me can trust that even if it's not necessarily the picture I had in mind (although it might BE)..... some kind of beautiful picture will come about. Again. From every experience.
I've no doubt that he and I will love each other for the rest of our lives. I don't know if we'll be together. Clearly, sometimes we will be apart.

But I'm taking the moments. The moments with the kids when I feel connected again. When I feel loved and needed. When I find myself doing "good mom" things that I didn't feel capable of.
The moments when I feel loved by the man I love, even if it's not my perfect picture right now.
the moments when I see people truly trying to help me and be there for me in my hour of need.

It's all kind of beautiful. You just have to wait and see.

Purely rambling...

I feel like I need to start doing those writing exercises where you just write/type everything that pops into your head for an allotted amount of time.

I've never felt so.. emptied of words, but full of SOMETHING that I have to get out.

Ha, ha, I know there are people out there with messed up minds like me that are going to laugh at that. But seriously.

I've been thinking a lot about the similarities and differences between ME... and between my life now, and my life a year ago.

A year ago, I probably weighed about 13 lbs less. Yup, that's right. And I kind of was enjoying it, even though it was extraordinarily unhealthy. I was unhappy, drinking heavily, and not eating. I had bleeding intestinal ulcers that I left untreated and that was when I started taking massive doses of my benzodiazapenes and narcotic painkillers .. you know, to kill the "pain" (mainly the emotional pain). Smart of me.

I planned out my own death, to be carried out on New Years Eve...
I also began a spiritual journey that has changed my life. It has been difficult, in many ways, and in the beginning, I thought that my first "epiphany" would fix everything. That I'd finally be happy and attract all the things I wanted into my life, magically...

Like most journeys, it's been a lot longer than I expected. With more speed-bumps.
And clearly, I didn't die on New Years Eve. I spent it with the man I loved, which is exactly what I wanted to do.
And probably a week later, we got in a fight and didn't speak again for several weeks (not that this is an anomaly in our relationship).

A year ago, many people walked out of my life. It was the beginning of something like a mass exodus.. people realizing that they couldn't fix me, they couldn't even make me feel better. I had made up my mind.
A select few stayed. Like those who sit at the bed of a hopelessly comatose patient, holding their hand, speaking words that may or may not be heard, and just waiting. Knowing the end could come, but staying anyway.

Those few people, I have developed such an immense love and respect for, I couldn't possibly put it into words.

The rest, I don't blame. Some have come back into my life. Others have shut and locked the door to revisiting friendship.

For a moment, during this period of time, I found a profound sense of childlike joy, in the discovery and acceptance of a spiritual path that has probably been calling to me for years.
From mid-November til shortly after New Years, I was quite happy, despite many losses in my life. I had hope for the year to come. Things weren't perfect, not by any means, but... I saw the man I love frequently, I had my own place for Christmas, I decorated it with the kids.. I found a new sense of direction and hope.

When Dan and I "split up" again, it hit me hard, as it always does, but I managed to get on with life, as I always do. I got my tax return and planned many things.. to re-do the floor in my living room, to take Sophia to disneyland for her birthday, finally... to take a vacation on my own.

Then, in March, my car got totalled. Cue me, slowly but surely falling into a pit of depression. I had no job, no transportation.. was stuck at home almost constantly with two children.. Eli was, as always, a huge challenge, and I was very lonely. Dan came back into my life, but in the enigmatic, flighty way that he does at times when he's even further from "sure" than normal.
In May, I lost it completely. Dan vacated, and for good reason, but not without leaving some scars that will always be .. present.

I waited, I made phone calls, I pushed for a settlement on my car. I needed a car, and then things would be ok. I overdosed a couple times. I found it hard to breathe, to move, to be awake or to be asleep. I just wanted it to be over. I was alone. I couldn't even perform the one job that meant anything to me in this world -- being my kids' mom.

When I finally got my settlement (in June), 2 weeks later, the 2nd week of July, I set off for California with Sophia, to take the trip I'd promised her for 3 long years. Disneyland, and a chance to get to know her "Dad" a little bit.

truth? It was hell for me. She had a great time, and I'm glad we did it.

And I came back to an email from Dan. a simple, one-sentence email that silently gave the invitation to revisit.. whatever we were. To be friends again. That said.. "I still care."

I had a month of ... happy. I went to American Idol auditions, and auditions for The Voice. Didn't get anywhere with either, which was depressing. And then ... other things transpired... bad luck after bad choice after bad luck ... I managed to get a DUI when I wasn't even drunk. I managed to get Dan in trouble at work while trying to keep things from blowing up. I managed to get EVERYTHING taken away from me. Everything except my children, and as it has been, I've barely been hanging onto them. Hanging on for dear life.. selfishly.. they are all I have had to hold onto.

And I look back on a year ago when I really had... the world in my hands. And I wasn't grateful. I wanted to end my life. I was impatient, petulant, childish.
And I think.. had I been more grateful, would things be different now?

and as I sit with my second drink of the night in hand... having been sleeping on my parents' floor for 3 months now... having taken my allotment of pills for the night... wishing that pure oblivion could BE an option, I wonder...

if I were more grateful NOW.... what could change? Could I avoid falling deeper into this pit?
What if I said... yes, tomorrow I start a job in a factory line, which sounds primitive to me. I'll be working 13 hr swing shifts.
Yes, I still have no car and no driver's license.
Yes, the man I love is now living 7 hours away, and soon will be living a world away.

But do I have the world in my hands?
Didn't I have the world in my hands earlier tonight, when I held my 2 yr old's hand and jumped on the bed? I don't remember the last time I jumped on the bed.... but his laughter is addictive. His happiness... contagious.
Didn't I have the world in my hands when my daughter hugged me for no reason and said she loved me? (which is a rarity in her "grown up" 6 yr old world.)

By being grateful, I can't get my license back. I can't get a better job, yet. I can't make someone decide to make a commitment to me that would ease the ache in my heart that never quite lets up.

Technically, all it would change is how I view things....
And perhaps that's all that really matters, in the end. Because if I could go back to a year ago, knowing what I know now, I'd be deliriously happy.
I didn't know anything then.
Perhaps I know nothing know.
I just don't want to look back in a year and say "god, I wish I had been grateful then, for what I had."

I Hate Loving, Dammit.

Seriously.

I know this is unhealthy and uninspiring, but I've got to get it out.

What is WRONG with me?

What girl in their right mind wouldn't fall at the feet of a man who offers her every FREAKIN THING she's ever asked for or wished for silently.. who accepts the baggage and even loves it.. who worships things I hate about myself?
What's wrong with me?
Why I am I so dead set on loving someone BACK, on worshiping them back?

I have to sadly admit that honestly.. loving someone is way better than being loved. And while I love being loved... the few times I have truly felt that way, for a moment.. I love loving even more. A lot more.

And It Is Necessary.
It is an absolute must.
I can't be with someone that I don't feel completely unreasonable adoration for. I can't be with someone that I love if I'm not head-over-heels-stupid-in-love with them.

As I'm sitting here contemplating how much easier my life could get if I could just get over this stupid obsession with loving someone, I'm really mad.
I was telling a friend the other night that THIS is one of the prime reasons I became atheist. And it's true. I CANNOT believe in a "god" that has any control over anything that would allow this bullshit.
Falling in love with people who don't give a crap about you... Other people falling in love with you and you loving them for it but not falling IN love with them... heartbreak, all over the fuckin place. It's not cool, man! IF YOU'RE UP THERE, DO YOU HEAR ME?

nah, you never have..
but really.

It's inane.
I've wasted 4 years of my life holding my heart out to a man... holding it out, dripping blood and guts and tears and willing to DIE for the chance to see him take it and appreciate all the times it's beat for him. All the times it's skipped a beat a two. All the times I've wished it'd stop altogether, and all the times I've listened to his heart and willed mine into beating exactly in time.

It's fucking inane.

That, "it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" stuff? B.S.!!! I call B.S.
It is better not to know what that kind of love feels like..
and to just settle happily into something peaceful, easy, and ... without passion. Without angst. Without tears. Without sleepless nights where I look myself in the eye in the mirror at 5 am and don't recognize my own face from all the crying and begging and pleading with... air. Nothing. Empty space.

I deserve not to fucking know the kind of joy I've known because I deserve not to have to feel this pain.
I shouldn't have to inflict it on someone else either. Someone that I truly love. Deeply. Someone who feels a little more like "home" every day, because he takes care of me... Because he's amazing. I love him. He deserves for me to give him my all, and I CAN'T right now (nor do I know if I will ever)!!!! And it makes me crazy.

"deserve".. what a stupid word. I know that.
But tonight I'm being stupid. And I deserve for the man that I've given my all, my best, and my everything to, to give me something big in return.
I can't say I'm not holding out for it, even as I'm giving up hope. I let him go a little more every day, but at the oddest and most inopportune moments, I find a stubborn strand of my heart hanging on for dear life.. or death.. whatever the case may be.
it's hanging on, and I can't cut it loose.

Lord have I tried. I have done my best. I have failed.

So this begs the question --
do I buckle down and accept the love from someone I can't love equally, because.. it would be so GOOD for my kids to have that stability (every kind of stability).. it would probably be good for me, to be treated well. To know what it's like to be seen as someone amazing, not just a piece of amazing .. uh.. something... (ha...) It would be good for me to not be stressed to the point of staying in bed, crying until 4 or 5 pm many days, only jumping out of bed to avert the worst disasters my 2 yr old can conjure up.

Or.... do I stop being such a fucking pussy, figure out a way (though I have tried, SO FUCKING GODDAMN HARD) to do this on my own, and just accept that I will never have that little piece of heaven? Or... hope that someday I'll get over it. forget it.. and find that heaven somewhere else? in the arms of someone who truly deserves ME?

I want to see life as beautiful, and many days, I do.
But tonight, it is uglified in all it's fucking glory. I want to punch it in the face.
it
isn't
fair.

there, I said it. I'm an immature 13 yr old in a 27 yr old's body with a mom haircut.
It's not fair.

I can do anything for...

It's hard to know what to write when you haven't written for so long.

You'd think I'd be busting at the seams with anecdotes or inspiration or.. something. But Life has left me feeling pretty empty, lately.

However, I was pretty determined to write a blog tonight. It's better than writing another stupid email, or a million facebook status updates.

I've been thinking about how I really wish I was one of those super-witty blog writers like EVERYONE ELSE I KNOW .. I probably could be... I AM the girl who joked her way through the most painful labor/childbirth in the known history of the world. seriously. I was asking for a gun to shoot myself and cracking jokes in between contractions.
But. I'm not feeling witty lately, not at all. And while I'm still cracking jokes in between disasters and nervous breakdowns, I don't have a lot to say that I feel anyone could benefit from. Laugh at. Cry with. Anything.

While I was sitting here thinking about what I could possibly write that would tie any of what's going on in my life into a blog post, the stuff about labor and childbirth and shooting myself and my life right now and yoga (yeah, yoga) all brought it together for me.

I can do anything 10 times. (Sit-ups in yoga). I can do anything for 5 minutes (horrifically intense contractions + pushing a watermelon sized item through a pea-sized hole). I can do anything for one day (put aside my own misery, drama, loathing of my situation, and desire to RUN AWAY FROM ALL OF THIS.. for my kids).

So.
I can do anything.
I don't really want to admit that because if life piles anything more on top of what I'm already doing, I'm ... not going to take it very well. I will cry and hit things and smoke a cigarette and protest and say "I WILL NOT, CANNOT do this. I'm done. I give up. I quit."
and then I'll fuckin do it, because I can do anything for 5 minutes, 10 times, a day, a week...

four months..?

I can miss my brother for 3 and a half years and will miss him every day until we get to meet on the same "plane" again.
I can be lonely for a whole day. Every day. For the rest of my life, if I have to. Even if it's until I'm 80. I did it today, so I can do it tomorrow.

I can live where I have to live even if I really don't like it, and give up control of my life, and sleep on the floor and listen to underhanded comments whispered about my parenting and my bad life skills and try to make ends meet and play with my kids when I'd rather be sleeping. I can do that until I find a way to fix it.

I can miss the man I love the most in this world for four months, not knowing what will happen after those four months, because I did it today, yesterday, and for the past month, and I will do it tomorrow too. And I might do it for the rest of my life.

But I can do anything.

I can pull my daughter out of the charter school that I pushed so hard to get her into and homeschool her because I'm being taught another lesson about never saying never. I never was going to homeschool my kids, especially not my social butterfly. But this is what she needs. And I can do anything.

And if I can do anything, I can eventually get back into my own place, be my kids' mom, get my license back, work 2 jobs. I can record a demo CD, I can make money off of playing for weddings and events, I can pound the pavement until someone notices me. I can do it forever. I can find a career that supports my family, and I can push aside my disabilities and make it work. One day at a time.
Cause I can do anything for a day.

I can do anything.
Fuck, that really sucks to admit. ;)

Really Big Love

It's about taking your daughter to Disneyland and letting it be about her, and about her and her dad (no matter how much it hurt me), and about her and her sister.. and not about me.

It's about doing what I have to do to stay healthy, even if it doesn't make me look like the "perfect" I'd like to be. That's a really big love, for me, and for my kids.

It's about letting yourself fall again, for the hundredth time, even though nothing is certain and little is likely, because some love is so big that you don't get to go around or get over it.. you just get in and go through it, and sometimes there's no end, because love is an infinite thing. Infinite, but ever-changing, and when you can change and evolve and still love someone bigger every day as they change and evolve too...

Regardless of what happens on the journey, that's a beautiful thing.

My love is huge-mongous. For my kids, for my friends, for HIM, and .. for me.

Briefly (maybe..), about Blindness, "Justice", and Healing..

All this talk about the Casey Anthony trial has me sitting at the computer in a bit of awe over how passionate people are about "bringing people to justice" for their crimes.

I understand the reason and place for putting someone away in prison, that they may not cause more harm than already done.

I do not understand this eye-for-an-eye concept. "An eye for an eye makes the world go blind", does it not? Thank you Gandhi.

I don't necessarily believe in A God. I'm agnostic. I believe in god-like, and goddess-like ascended beings. I think there are lots of those. I KNOW that when we pass on after this life we go on to a place where we are welcomed with loving arms, and helped to heal any wounds we may have left over. I know that we get a lot of really cool retrospection, which as we all know, is a superior teacher.
Best of all, we get peace. Unless we didn't learn the lessons we needed to learn. And then we get to try again.
So, all of that is pretty cool, I think.

And for a kid who was murdered by her mother (saying she was -- I don't know, and have no opinion on it) or anyone else... the kid is absolutely innocent. Even the worst of criminals are only held down in their own hells by their OWN guilt and their OWN inability to take the lesson, learn from it, and yes, "atone", in our own ways. Nobody does it to us. We do it. We have to. You can kill a murderer, but it won't make them a better person, and it wont' change what happened. And guess what? it won't create justice, either. It just creates more violence, bad energy. Pain.

(if you read WAAAAY back in the beginning of my blog, I talk about a past life regression in which I got to forgive a father from another life for his crimes against me... trust me, he was in hell all this time, and I wasn't. And it was a beautiful thing to help set him free from that.. He was holding himself down, nobody else..)

So.. all those loving people on a higher vibration (or, God, if you believe that, or Jesus, or Heavenly Father..) who are there to guide us along.. do you think they're going to take this little girl and say "hey, we're not going to help you be at peace or go on with your journey until your mom is brutally punished, made to feel pain beyond belief, or murdered, herself?" No, they are there waiting to lovingly heal and help her along. Both of them, actually.
I bet that little girl LOVES her mom, regardless, because that's how little kids are.
I bet she wants her to heal. Only through healing will this kind of cycle of crime STOP.

Umm...

I'm just gonna let you think about that one for a while.

And then let's move on to the mom.
Let's say she's messed up enough (if she did this) that she's not feeling guilt or pain over it right now.
Do we know her whole story? Do we know what she's been through? No..
we do know that what she allegedly did is absolutely horrifying. Absolutely. And definitely wrong... definitely. Taking away someone's choice to live this life? Horrible.. right?

RIGHT?..........

But eventually, she is going to learn the lessons she needs to learn. Whether it's right now, or after she dies a natural death, or some point down the road in this life she may realize what she's done and try to end her pain by taking her own life, but that's not going to work either..
cause she's got a big lesson to learn. Which makes her no less or more than any of us.. she's just a little further behind on the learning curve.

I know it sounds like I'm trivializing something horrible. I'm not.
But until we learn to look at each person from a place of complete love and compassion, and that includes murderers, rapists, abusers, etc... we have not learned our lesson either.

Hell is our own self-inflicted state of being, and we will all go there at some point, for some reason. Sometimes more than once. And we will never stop going there until we are living from a place of complete love and compassion for ourSELVES and all others.

Let Caylee be at peace. Know that she is, and be at peace with that yourself. If your goal is to go make someone else feel pain because they made someone feel pain, nobody's going to be very happy in the end. Least of all you.
Let it go, let "God". Hug your own babies and be glad you aren't Casey Anthony. Begin a cycle of healing instead of continuing a cycle of pain. Take one more little step toward living from your heart and loving all you come into contact with.

Make peace. Be peace.