Posted on by She Never Sleeps

Rebirth

It’s been a good long while since I’ve published anything to this journal. Not long after my last post, there was a pandemic followed by the very real separation from my ex husband. And to be honest, a year ago this time, I was NOT doing well.

A year ago this time, I was depressed, heart-broken, apathetic. I wasn’t eating, drinking a bit too much to escape the long hours of the night, knowing full well The Dread would still be there when I awoke, sober and unwell. I cried a lot, face splotched, eyes red and swollen, stopping only to start again. Screamed into the gaping maw of the abyss, wishing I could vanish into The Aether, disintegrate into the culminated quintessence of the outer realms.

And then there were the moments of passivity. The lethargy keeping me in bed, unbathed and indifferent to the outside world.

At those junctures, I sat with the grief. It was uncomfortable. It was loathsome. It broke me in new ways which I had not before encountered. Were it not for the care and compassion of my roommate, I probably would have made some decisions of the Not-So-Great variety.

Time trudged. Wounds bled. Sleep rarely came.

Currently, I write this feeling quite disconnected from that place I was in a year ago. Though it didn’t originally feel like it, it didn’t take too long for the clock to pick up the pace. Hours turned into days, days into weeks, etc., etc. I eventually came to accept that what I was mourning was The Potential of What Could Have Been, not What Was. And that no matter what I did, no matter how much work I put in, no matter what I would sacrifice – it would simply never Be. We were two diametrically opposed people when it came to what was necessary for us to thrive in a relationship, let alone a marriage. And I could only be responsible for my part, not his.

I threw myself into work, art, pool. Finding things to fill the empty spaces in my schedule. Soon, solitude seemed like this girl’s new best friend. I could not and would not be emotionally available for anyone. I was an island. A Remote, smack dab in the middle of treacherous waters, guarded by jagged rocks, full of poisonous fruit and wildly violent animals, Island.

To say I was at peace with this would be a marked understatement.

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Over the summer, I slowly dipped my toes back into the dating pool. I went out for dinners. Multiples were duds. I questioned my worth. I considered a nunnery. I did manage to find a couple people I liked and were all around decent humans, but there still seemed to be an emptiness within. I was content with this, though. My Island approach was perfect in keeping myself a safe distance from any usurpers to my Peace.

During this time, I reconnected with an old acquaintance whom I hadn’t really spoken to in years. We always had a mutual respect for each other and genuinely found one another pleasant to be around in group settings, but nothing truly out of the ordinary. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t always felt drawn to his energy and person, but I knew nothing would ever come of that. A harmless personality crush of which I shoved to the back of my mind. And I knew nothing would come of it now as I was enjoying my life with zero romantic commitments or things of that nature. Bit by bit, we began to a build a real friendship which never had a chance to get off the ground because of life in general. There was an immediate comfortability, an unabashed openness in conversation, an exchange of the ups and downs we had both gone through in our lives.

A mutual understanding, empathy, and compassion for the traumas we suffered but survived. Devoid of pity or condescension. It was refreshing and ultimately freeing. No pretense, no facades, just two adults being straightforwardly earnest.

One day I woke up realizing… I had been usurped.

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It’s been a couple months now. I feel things with him that I never thought possible. A warmth, a genuine understanding of why I am who I am. We share knowledge of each other which has not been outwardly exchanged. Simply an unspoken comprehension of where we’ve been, what we’ve gone through, who we are at this very moment. I have never been as emotionally available and vulnerable as I am with him. Communication is constant and key. Neither one us has ever had the idealistic idiocy to believe in the romantic notion of “Love of My Life” but we cannot shake the kismet of our being together, considering the impressions we have made upon one another and all the ways we have come in and out of each other’s lives over the past decade.

“It was never the right time” is a phrase which comes and goes. We joke about the Universe and how we had to experience the things we did in order to find our way to This Place, where we both reside. We talk for hours and hours, late into the night, fighting through the bleary eyed arrival of sleepiness just to get in one last sentence. We are happy together, sad and “homesick” when we are apart.

It is all so vomit-inducing sappy.

I am okay with this. I am not who I was a year ago. I am new, I am open, I am reborn with all the enthusiasm and faith of someone who believes in Santa Clause and making wishes upon falling stars. I look forward to the future and whatever it may hold. I am in love with a person who loves Me. The Real Me, not the idea of or a projection of what they think I should be.

And it’s fucking beautiful.

Posted on by She Never Sleeps

It’s Not About The Waffles

I’ve taken a step back from journaling my life. I do that every now and again. Depending on how badly I want to hide from reality at hand is directly related to how long my sabbaticals last. I’ve been trying to push myself more lately, delve into the things which are currently spinning my head and heart into debris flecked tornadoes traveling in opposite directions… despite my natural ostrich-like instinct to bury my head in the sand.

But that isn’t progress, is it?

So. Since my husband and I have been in counseling, I’ve dug my heels into my marriage and have been full throttle, “We’re Gonna Fix This!” Perhaps it’s just the Virgo in me. Or Oldest Child Syndrome. Or a smattering of this, that, and the other. Who knows, we are who we are. However, it hasn’t been lost on me that this has slowly turned into a one person effort and now I have been left to pick apart and analyze what’s worth fighting for and what isn’t.

It often helps to have a person to bounce such things off of. A living breathing sounding board to offer their own insight and perspective. I have long been a person who will come to my own conclusions on my own time, not swayed by others thoughts and opinions on how I live my life. ( Just picture the “I Do What I Want” meme and you’ve got a clear idea of my personality) However, this doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the input of others experiences. In fact, lately I’ve been seeking exactly just that – other people’s own struggles which I consider similar to mine, not for advice or definitive answers, but for some unconventional form of catharsis. I recognize and value the worth of their own encounters, their personal stories. I consider it an absract variation of education. Learning through the trials and tribulations of friends, family, and strangers by osmosis.

I met with a friend not too long ago. And this was exactly that kind of situation. Commiseration over food and coffee. (That always helps) During the back and forth, he shared a story from decades past, when his 3 yo child asked him if he’d like to sit and have waffles with her. He politely declined, saying he wasn’t very hungry for waffles. She responded, “It’s not about the waffles, Dad.” Aside from learning his daughter was a tiny Confucious, it also was a lesson in Basic Life Meaning. After sharing that very amusing and profound anecdote, we discussed how that is a general application to any close human relationship. A few more laughs, a bit more coffee, and I left having a touch more perspective than with which I had originally arrived.

We’ve had Therapist Recommended *coughassignedcough* Date Nights. I’ve attempted to include him more in the activities I enjoy. There have been more-than-I-can-count Days and Nights where the politeness and courtesy is suffocating and I would just like an ounce of genuine person to person interaction. And while driving yesterday, when I asked (since he wasn’t working) if he’d like to show up to my pool match this week, I half-hoped there’d be a Yes to quiet the volume rising truth which my Heart has already known. Instead, “No. I’m gonna stay home. Why waste money on a sitter.”

In the back of my head, as my eyes teared up behind (thankfully) shielding sunglasses,  “It’s Not About The Waffles” danced around all the fragmented bits of my rationale. My Heart kicked me in the shins, muttering “I told You so.” I remained silent for the rest of the car ride and felt the familiar vacuity of loneliness. Intermingled in all of that, a memory (one of the very few) of my Dad telling me about a breakup of his while imparting onto me some sageness which I did not fully comprehend until years later.

“I stopped respecting her time. She invited me to a party and I said, No. I didn’t feel like it. She’s a busy person and she didn’t have to include me in her plans. I clearly didn’t think that was important enough for me just to spend some time with her and I realized this wasn’t going to work anymore. When someone stops caring to make Time for You or to appreciate the Time you are making for Them, then do each other a favor and stop wasting each other’s Time.”

Cold. Very. But the truth is seldom warm.

Posted on by She Never Sleeps

Lately

It is May 21 and the weather outside could have me fooled into thinking it is October. I don’t mind it. I’ve always loved the damp and chill, an opportunity for big thick comfy sweaters, many mugs of steaming beverages brimming with warmth and the excuse for not having to travel out into world unless absolutely necessary.

Though, it would still please me if I had to.

The light drizzle dampening denim covered legs, sliding off muddy soled, screaming red red rain boots, misting my hair like tiny beads of early morning dew on wispy blades of grass… I enjoy these small details. I don’t even mind the cold which comes with it. There is a freshness, an awakening, something which just shouts in your face, “HEY! You’re Fucking Alive!” Nothing like the burning, lazy, heat soaked days which leave you sticky and stagnant. A sweaty mess of discomfort. No. Days like these, I cherish.

On days like this, I am reminded of Lancaster. And Bristol. And almost all of the rest of England and of the love at that time which took me there. I am brought back to a period of adventure and curiosity. Of passion for Life and Living. And while that former version of self has long since grown and become something other, there had long been many instances where I missed that part of Me. I had chalked it up to furthering myself into adulthood. Into a new 2.0 representative of who I had become. I was fairly certain that the Woman of the past was no longer in existence.

Yet, not long ago on a colder Saturday night, I found myself free of immediate obligations. No husband. No small children. I was able to just go out and wander a bit, if I wanted to. I, naturally, didn’t feel the urge. I wanted to drown in streaming programming while I knit and kept the company of my cats. Yet, appealing to the logic of when was the next time I’d have this kind of freedom, I headed out.

Deciding to meet up with some friends, I spent a half hour looking for parking in a part of town booming with Trend and Cool. I hated it. I was already rueing my decision to make the trip into the city. After that battle, I found them in the bar, already filling up with people. And I hated that, too. But I was determined to see through the evening, if anything for the novelty of something different. Oh but wait – there’s a band playing and you know the guys and we should go check them out? At this point, I was considering calling it a night, but no. I agreed.

Here’s where my heart had a change. Three of us, walking to the next place, and my two friends stop to talk to a guitar player and his girlfriend with the ukelele, both sitting on the sidewalk, guitar case open for monetary gifts. They have a dog and he looks sleepy, but loved. They offer up a song and my friends say, Sure.

It’s about 40 degrees out, give or take. And this thin, scraggly looking guy starts playing one of the sweetest songs I’ve ever heard. His girlfriend, reminiscent of free love and hippies, joins in with her ukelele and soft fairy-like harmonic voice. My friends begin to dance and I am moved to take some record of this occurence.

And I realized I was smiling. Happy. Relishing this presence of spontaniety and True Beauty. I held up my phone to capture the best I could what was transpiring before my eyes… I didn’t do too well because I, also, was wrapped up in the vibrancy of the moment. I was vaguely aware of cars driving by, everyone walking past rapidly, in a hurry to get to the next bar/club/whathaveyou. For a brief interlude in time, I felt like all 5 of us were in a bubble, some magical window into a mirrored dimension of being able to experience and enjoy the Here and Now with no outside interruption.

Nothing lasts forever. The song ended, my friends gave them some cigarettes and cash, we kept going to the next place – but my heart felt lighter.

Joyous.

Alive.

So.

Lately, this has been on my mind. Of course, days like these… Days which remind me of previous excursions, long past days of foolhardy carefree whimsy, days which bring to mind bits and pieces of  the romantic and idealist I used to be… I am encouraged to once again find the magic and wonder of Living as opposed to simply Existing. I know now that those fanciful qualities I thought I lost to youth have only been shoved aside, forgotten and unused. The older a person becomes, the harder that feat. With age also comes some cynicism. Some convenience. Comfortablilty. All things which would hinder the search and stunt the growth of a curious soul. However, nothing which has been worth having has ever come easy, or so I’ve been told.

*shrugs*

I guess I’ll see.

 

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4/5/18 Maternal Guilt, In Short

Motherhood was never a driving goal of mine. Even as all my high school friends were off being impregnated by future absentee fathers, my only aspiration was to get out of my shitty poverty stricken neighborhood and maybe one day see the world.

Of course, youth + stupidity squashed those hopes fairly quick.

I wasn’t meant for motherhood. I knew it right away, although I couldn’t accept the bald truth of it. This is not to say that I did not love my first son – I have never loved any living human as much as I have my first child. Just looking at him every day broke my heart in different ways in which I had no idea how to handle. The overwhelming pain I felt in thinking that I wasn’t good enough to be the mother to this amazing tiny ball of perfection still lingers, 21 years later. Only in hindsight and more self-introspection that I care to admit, have I realized how much the absence of my own parents  affected my demeanor towards my son.  Of course, anyone on the outside looking in would say I’ve done a great job. How wonderful that he and I have such an amicable relationship.

They do not know that I walked away from him when he was 6 months old. That I thought he’d have a better life without me in it. They do not know that when he was a year old, I willingly handed over physical custody to his father and never legally fought for him because I was too scared that I would lose. The courts would see I wasn’t the right kind of “mom material” and I’d be deprived of any real communication or time spent with him. They do not know how much I drank (so much) while he was gone just to black out my guilt of not being the cookie cutter mold of what a “Good Mother” was supposed to be, that my status of Weekend Mom not only belittled my character in the eyes of others, but in my own as well.

But I loved him, albeit from a safe distance. In solitude, the ache of his absence would send me into fits of uncontrollable weeping. A handful of poems I wrote remain as a reminder of those times, but not one more than that because any attempt to  encapsulate my feelings about my life without his presence in it would spiral me further into a depression in which I was not keen to visit. Throughout the years, I never questioned that I still wasn’t worthy and constant arguments with his father (the “good” parent) didn’t help. The weight of my fears and doubts tempered any desire or attempt for the closeness I longed to have with my son.

However, as each year passed, as he grew into a young man and his childhood days receded as an ebbing tide, I accepted that imperfections and all, I was His Mother. I would like to say it was an overnight transformation in which I woke up and Voila, All Makes Sense and is Well and Good!, but that is not how life or personal growth works. I still wrestle with my guilty days, especially as I am now raising my two youngest in such a different manner. I find while I am spending time with them, running errands, singing songs, sewing up injured teddies – I am also ruing all of which I’ve missed from my first child’s formative years. However, I am also aware that even as just a weekend/summer mom, I tried the best I knew how to build a bond between the both of us. And as long as I am alive, there will always be room for improvement in that relationship.

We joke, we laugh, we text, we message.  We do have a better relationship than most. He has assured me time and again that he harbors no ill will towards me, that he never thought I was a “bad mom”. He has made it clear that I’ve always been Good Enough (and it makes him sad to know I felt any other way), which I still mostly struggle to believe. It is not something in which I’ve completely come to terms with, though little by little it sets in. He has grown into a man whom I am proud to call Son and I hope that one day I am the woman who he is proud to call Mom.

Posted on by She Never Sleeps

Contemplating Motherhood

On paper, I am a married stay-at-home mom of two toddler boys and one college bound dude who I brought into this world when I was very young and oh so many lives ago. I am aware that I am not conventional (this month, my hair is blue/purple and my new thing is cat leggings). I never have been, I doubt I ever will be. I have lived a life my own with so many mistakes and dumbass dangerous decisions, I am really freaking surprised that I am not only alive but intact. But here I am, the harried homemaker, switching out laundry, making meal plans for the week, budgeting groceries, wiping asses more often than should be permitted for one’s own sanity, and essentially – making sure nothing/no one is set on fire and/or dies. Added to this, my husband has been trying to talk me into signing the boys up for the intro soccer program called L’il Kickers. I balked not because I don’t encourage sports but because I have an extreme aversion to socializing and making nice with the Status Quo parental units.

I needed a break.

So, I had dinner with my best friend tonight. It was perfect. It was too long in the coming and I always chastise myself afterwards for not making more time for just the two of us to catch up. The pair of us are both incredibly different people but such kindred spirits with far too many similarities in the oddest of ways. I mention this because over the course of our meal, we touched upon one of our bonds – our mothers (funnily enough – didn’t even realize Mother’s Day was this Sunday) and how they simultaneously screwed us up in comparable fashions.

Of course, as grown adult women who have spent the better part of their life “fixing” themselves and coming to some sort of peace with the neglect and abuse of their own parent(s) constantly under the influence, we exchanged childhood anecdotes candidly with a shared laugh here, a silent nod of understanding there. We spoke of the long road to Self-Realization, the oft stumbled through path of trying to figure out how to love ourselves despite our inclination to do otherwise. We joked that we were surprised how well we turned out, despite having the moms that we did.

We delved further past our maternal caregivers and spoke of how it affected our life choices. She admitted to never wanting to have children for fear that she’d not be an affectionate enough parent, as she was often the whipping post for her alcoholic mother’s rages while her sister delighted in the attention and favoritism that was left after all anger and violence had been spent. I mentioned that I was glad I only had boys because I didn’t know if I’d be capable of mothering a girl, that I would teach my sons to never undervalue a female and to never make a woman feel uncomfortable in her own skin.

These were a few of the things we spoke about and eventually the evening tapered off nicely. I gave her a warm hug, promised that we’d hang out sooner than later, and then I headed home. During my drive, I thought of my little boys. I thought of how happy and full of life they were. How affectionate and sweet. How they hated leaving any park or playground because they didn’t want to leave their “new friends”. And just like that, I knew that I was being ridiculously unreasonable about the soccer program. I realized that I was stunting my own children’s formative steps into building friendships and early socialization. I understood that even after all these years, after all the supposed work I had put into becoming a “normal functioning” human being, that I still wasn’t done. I was purposely already putting up a wall between myself and the activity aka the other parents – whom I hadn’t even met – because I was still harboring underlying fears of rejection and not being liked and/or accepted.

As my South Side cousin would tell me, “Dang Girl. Dat Shit got real crazy quick.”

I cannot let my own trepidation bleed into the lives of my children. I have fought hard to get where I am at today and now I know that I’ve still yet farther to go. But for my boys, they need to know that their mother always tried. That their mother may not have always gotten it right, but damn it, she tried. It is, the very least, any mother can do.

 

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1/25/16 Kindness

Today is one of those days in which I cannot turn off the introspection. I often become lost in revelries, unwanted reminiscences of the past lives I’ve lived. Of the countless mistakes of youth, poor life choices, of the ridiculous and often dangerous situations I had put myself in – note, I’ve not mentioned regret. Regret isn’t something I have very much of, at least not in the grand scheme of things. My regrets are minuscule, mostly petty and even then, taken with a grain of salt. But I digress. I suppose I must mention this because I know that Regret isn’t very useful since every crap decision and horrible thing I may have done, with or without malicious intent, has brought me to the place where I am at right now.

That, and Kindness.

My brain has moments of elephantine recollection when it comes to people who have been genuinely good-hearted to me. The same with those who have abused my heart, soul, person, etc. I may forget birthdays, what I had for dinner last week and even plans I Just Made five minutes ago, but Kindness is something that has never gone unnoticed or forgotten.

I’ve stopped. I’ve stopped to look away from the screen because this is the hurdle. This is my mountain. To sit here and purposefully remember the less than ideal circumstances I either stumbled or boldly threw myself into, with little fear or concern of consequence or reprisal. It’s a bit more difficult than I had anticipated.

I remember being a teenage runaway and having the good fortune to not have to live on the streets when a girl I met and was briefly romantic with offered to let me stay with she and her mother, not just for a day or weeks, but months. I remember when at a party, my first girlfriend covered for my dandruff flakes as Dry Shampoo – “That happens to me, sometimes”, she smiled. The unspoken understanding and gratitude over escaping embarrassment is something that still sticks with me today. Another party, when the difference between the terms “pretty” and “attractive” were being discussed and I mentioned that my father said I was Attractive. I knew what my father had meant and I suppose the usually catty gay man involved in the conversation did as well. He leaned his body back, head tilted elegantly dramatic to one side, scrutinized me with his intensely blazing blues and said, “Mmm… I’ll give you pretty.” I abashedly took the compliment but I don’t think he’ll ever quite know just how much that meant to me at that time. Or maybe, he did. Maybe he saw the insecurity in my lowered gaze, the way I tried to hide my small underdeveloped body in giant thrift store flannels and oversized jeans. Maybe he knew how much I needed an assurance that I was of acceptable human stock.

Being laid up in bed not able to move, my boyfriend’s roommate coming in to talk to me, recommending books I’d like, pretending that I didn’t look like death warmed over. A mere acquaintance becoming one of my closest friends when he loaned me the money I needed to make rent. When I tried to pay him back, his smile and laugh damn near frightened me but he merely shook his head and pushed my hand holding the money away from him. “One day, someone might need a kind of help of their own. All I ask is that you return the favor.”

And maybe this won’t seem like an act of Kindness, but to me it was. A show of Mercy, after all, aren’t the two related? I was followed by a car on my walk home one night, far too many years and several lives ago. Two men jumped out, physically assaulted me, dragged me into the vehicle and I’m not sure what would have happened were it not for the driver. Was it my pleas for release? Did I remind him of a niece, a sister, a friend? I’m not sure, but he abruptly stopped the car and told my would be captors to let me out.

I ran… I ran to the first house I saw, crazed, crying, delirious. A couple, kind in their own way, let me in. Telling me it would be okay as they waited for the police to arrive. It hurts to revisit that particular memory. That was a day that shattered my remaining trust in humankind. But – BUT – Mercy. I was shown/given Mercy. And while it took me some time to feel safe again for something as simple as walking home, I still carry an appreciation for that man who told his cohorts, “Enough.” But do not mistake my gratitude for forgiveness. I do not nor will I ever free him of his guilt or culpability, but I suppose that’s a subject for another day.

But Kindness. This – each and every act, no matter how seemingly insignificant or of a grander scale, none of them are ever forgotten. Not a one is petty or trivial. From a stranger in front of me at the drive thru buying the coffee for the person behind them to an unexpected text from a friend reminding me that I’m loved, “You’re really kind of a bitchy pain in the ass, but I wouldn’t have you in my life any other way.” I hold all of these close to remind me that the smallest act of Kindness can carry a person who’s having a rough time of it just a bit further down the road. Every day, we run about minding our own business, barely thinking about the brief interactions we have with those bustling back and forth around us. It doesn’t hurt to put some good back in a world that so desperately needs it.  And of this I am ever mindful, especially on days like these where I am most pensive and somewhat blue.