My Real Christmas List

 Random reflection:  When it comes to relationships, we're always taught that abuse is wrong and that we should never tolerate it.  For some reason, the examples always seem to show only romantic relationships. What happens when we are in a toxic friendship?

If there's any one thing that I can be most proud of myself as a person, it is that while I have absolutely zero trouble burning bridges while I am standing on it when it's necessary, I have not knowingly made a person regret being good to me.  I cannot say that same about most people that are in my life, past and current.

I am very much the same person to your face as I am to your back.  I do not have time to gossip or be petty and I won't make time for it.  

Anyways, onto the point that has fallen out of the lottery ball pit that is my head.

I don't ask for a lot from anyone.  Maybe that's why all my past relationships have failed.  I have always worried about what everyone has wanted, and I never focused on what I needed to be happy. I mean, one year I lied and told the local library that my aunt was my child so I could get her a library card. When she was little, a few years before I was born, our family experienced a tragedy and had to up and leave town immediately, so her sister didn't return a library book the previous summer and the librarian wouldn't let her get a library card because of it, and for 45 years, her heart was broken, and I wanted to make it better by any means necessary.  

Because that's just who I am.  But that is also what Christmas Magic is all about.  When in reality, it's the way that people should be caring about each other every single day, but I digress because, my penchant for a good rant.

When I was pregnant with my son, I worked at a restaurant chain in Ellsworth that isn't there anymore.  On Route 1 from Bucksport to Ellsworth, there is what used to be a flea market that is now abandoned, or the landowner isn't doing anything with it at this time.  On top of the old sign, is a horse.  For some unexplainable reason, I need it.  I have needed it for 20 years.  Do I have any idea what I would do with such a thing once it is in my possession?  Absolutely not. Am I going to find out who the landowner is and explain my strange covet over this object and the fact that the Universe has spoken, and I need it?  Also no. Can I explain why?  Absolutely not.

However, I need someone in my life, who is determined to be a permanent fixture who will see the inner workings of my mind and doesn't run or malfunction, who understands me enough to get it.  Someone who doesn't judge me and maybe, just maybe, gets me the thing. No matter how stupid it might seem to them. And yes, I understand I get can get the majority of things myself, but that isn't the point that my shriveled-up Grinch heart is trying to make. I am truly convinced that true love is deader than Jimmy Hoffa, and I need someone to prove me wrong. Just. One. Fucking. Time.

So far those unexplainably coveted things would be:

That horse on top of the random sign on Route 1.

#13 of the Quantum Leap comic book series, I already have 1-12, of 13.

The entire DVD series of Dr. Who but understands why I only want to watch the seasons with Matt Smith in them.  #amyandroryforever

Amazing sex, every day.

Space, literally and figuratively.

Looks at me like I am magic even when I am obviously a bog witch.

Someone who will help me hang my great grandfather's sign.

Someone who will produce a lighter when I get a look on my face that signifies that we need to sage a place.

Lets me watch TV with the subtitles and understands that it helps me hear better.

A room covered in star and planet stickers.

Someone who can translate if my day calls for booze or ice cream and hands them over as needed.

A blanket fort, but only with a mattress on the floor of it, because we're fucking old, and floors hurt us.  Or maybe just a blanket fort over the bed, much less work and mess to clean up.

Someone who understands that reading puts me to sleep, and I have this undying want to read The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, so they read it to me instead. 

Someone to sit my ass down and watch the Lord of the Rings series with me, because I'm worried it has The Last Unicorn and NeverEnding Story vibes and well, childhood trauma. And to rewatch those other ones with me too.

To be just as stubborn as me, but also whose love language is communication and acts of service just like mine.

Someone to prove me wrong about love.

Someone who understand that the look on my face translates into the need to watch Star Wars, Star Trek, or a serial killer documentary.

Someone who loves to make the bed because while I absolutely love and want to crawl into a made bed every day, it is completely unrealistic to accomplish something like this myself when I usually have 10 minutes to haul ass out the door and make it to work on time.  Preferably after we have the amazing sex listed above.

A date where we lay on the ground in a field magically not covered in bugs and watch the sky.

A trip to a planetarium. 

A date to crack a geode at a rock shop.

Walk around an antique flea market and get to see every inch of it.  This will require me to be either dehydrated, or if they really loved me, they would call ahead to make sure they have a bathroom, because childbirth.

All of the above, but where they would just get it that I might be so excited I would cry. But also, the kind of person who understands why I feel like these things are the most important ones of all; or maybe that they don't need to understand, but that for one time in my entire life, I actually mean enough to them to give me these things.

Ode To The New Guy

 I just about lost my wits

When you started talking in front of the children about tits

You talked to my child about drugs

And then asked if he's sharing his nugs

My dear friend has lost her brain

Losing my shit in your general direction, I did refrain

Your grave I did mentally dig

While you were acting in my house like a mansplaining pig

My favorite was when you likened eating sugar to smoking crack

Listening to your drunken banter was the straw on the camel's back

My favorite rock you told us, as if you knew, that it was volcanic

It was actually sedimentary, your bullshit was tragic

When you disrespectfully came back in my house with an open beer

I should have kicked you out on your rear

I draw the line at bossing me around in my house

I should have sprayed you like a louse

You didn't wash your hands when you peed

She thinks she's landed quite a steed

I'd like to pack you in a box

And send you off to the Land of Lost Socks

Dude, your vibe is absolutely atrocious

And yet, my friend simply sees you as precocious

As harrowing as this evening was

I for sure cannot handle you, even if I had a buzz

No sir, not at all

Was your presence a ball

I do not like you here nor there

I do not like you anywhere

The smell of ashtray and beer just about caused emesis

You do not want me for a nemesis

But keeping my mouth shut I shan't

Because harm coming to her and the children, it can't

It's evident that you're a leach

Yet she's convinced you're a peach

The bad energy I did gather

Being near you again, I would not rather

No sir, not at all

I do not like you, big or small

Please excuse yourself out of her life

Stop causing all of this strife

She's stuck on you like white on rice

Her brain isn't working to think twice

There is a calm in sticking to what you know

And this is why you have to go

On Dating 3

There just comes a time where you have to accept the fact that you've been through enough and protect your peace at all costs.

I have genuinely given up on dating and the idea of.  I have deleted all profiles on all apps.  I have only one on Hinge, that I never use, but for some reason I intermittently feel like throwing myself into the fuckboy filled trust fall that is the proverbial "out there".  There is that ever-dreaded question of "What are you looking for?"  I mean, who is ever going to completely align with that? And what person asks that before even meeting or getting to know another person to know what they might want from directly that person. It's basically become code for "say you're a douchebag without actually telling me you're a douchebag".  I mean come on, maybe from Larry I just want a night of the best sex that I've had in year (10 months, but who the fuck is counting).  But maybe from Sir Tall, Quiet, and Makes My Brain Shut Off Just Existing that I've had a secret crush on since junior year geometry I want to Netflix and chill every night for the remainder of my life, and not once have I had the balls to tell him that.

I guess the best way that I can put it, is that I would like to not die alone.  I mean come on, at least one person needs to be sad at my funeral. All of the relationships in my life until now have been entirely about what everyone else needs.  I've been single for several years and have been focusing on my life and doing what's best for me.  For me, a partner is a nice to have, but definitely not so necessary that I would do anything to have one and anyone who has followed me on this rollercoaster knows that hasn't always been the case.

I know that I have trouble letting people in. But I am an awesome friend. Although I have had to cut off a couple of friendships that I am currently still trying to sift through the rubble of.  I miss them terribly, but I simply couldn't go on being treated like I was and of course everything was status quo until I spoke up and said no more.  I do have a tendency to keep things inside until I can't anymore because I am so afraid of being rejected, which I find odd because under the right circumstances I also have a compulsion to burn bridges while I am standing on them. 

Everyone just seems so driven to be something they aren't. I just want to meet one person who is who they say they are all the time. Pinterest what? Fuck that shit, give me an antique store that hasn't been dusted in twenty years. I like geeky things - Star Wars, Star Trek, I have numbers 1-12 of 13 of the Quantum Leap comic books I'm pretty proud of.  I was that girl who would rather walk around in the woods rock hunting and building rockets or fishing with my dad as a kid.  I prefer to spend a day being quiet outside or in a dive bar than some loud concert or pretentious restaurant any day. 

I don't have to spend every waking moment of my day worrying about what someone else is doing. I don't have to worry about whether or not I'm being lied to. I get to spend my days doing what I want without having to worry constantly about what someone else is feeling, and I don't see why I would need to be in a rush to compromise that. I am certain that once you feel the exhilaration that is feeling nothing in the general direction of someone who once had you like Pinocchio, you would also go out of your way to never allow another person to have that control ever again.  

It's totally not a trauma response.  I'm fine. God I need to get laid.

In comparison to the relationships of others that I have observed, I wouldn't say that they've all been a shit show, but even the best of critics watching the highlight reel that is my attempt at love would say it was definitely along the lines of a friendly clusterfuck.

I have better things to do.

My Wrestler

 I can't stop thinking about you.

Feeling you.

Your hands.

Your eyes.

Your breath.

Mixed with mine.

Your nervousness.

Your lips.

On mine.

That warm summer night.

This control you have over me.

Primordial.

Longing.

Needing.

Your hands on my body.

Come back to Maine, J.

Please.

I need you.

Just one more time.

Forever.

Hanging Up

I hate feelings.  I have said before that I experience them like a crash test dummy;  ignoring them until I'm drowning and broken, without a choice.  Four years ago, during the holiday season, I was given therapy homework to write about what I have for a really good coping mechanism, and one that I fail at miserably.  

Hence the subject of this post.  This one tips the scale both ways, depending on the day.

It has taken me 19 years, 2 months, and a day, to say out loud the reason why my brain is wired to treat my son the way that I do.

I've been getting run over by the freight train of self realization lately, and I think it has a lot to do with the amount of processing that I have had to do.  I'm in a new place, both figuratively and literally, where I am completely unable to reach for the old familiar attempts at stuffing the proverbial "it" down.

My son.

Until the day that he was born, his name was going to be Connor.  At the time of my pregnancy, the Laci Peterson case was all you could see on the television.

It's not a secret that I've been a single mom for 21 years.  The story behind it, is kept for those who are interested in knowing.  The story behind that story, is close to the chest.  Like, took me 15 years to say out loud.  I tell it a little more freely now that my children know, but it's still not ever going to be public information.

Back to the task at hand - I didn't take my meds today, so bare with me, squirrel brain is real, and it's even worse when you have been finally embossed with the correct label and you forget to take the substances preventing you from procrastinating for another 19 years.

I named my son after me.  Kind of.  Until I was 22, my nickname was Jessie to anyone who knew me.  For ten years after he was born, I stopped using it, and while I don't know why, it feels good to use it again.  The entire time I was pregnant with him, my favorite movie was Hanging Up, with Meg Ryan and Walter Matthau. Meg Ryan's character, is me.  Watch it.  You will understand. 

These scenes makes me feel so much.  

My least favorite memory, turned reoccurring nightmare:

My favorite name for a boy was always Jesse, so I said to myself, "Fuck it.  Men do it all the time, and under these circumstances, who the hell is around to stop me?"

He was born on his due date.  I almost died giving birth to him while everyone who came to "coach" was worried about the baby and paying attention to him, the doctor was doing everything she could to keep me alive, and nobody cared to check on me.  For three days, it was just me and him together in the room at the hospital.  Reighan was so excited to be a sister.  

I had to muster up the energy to drive to Bangor to get his lay-away at Walmart that I had started for him.  According to the doctor, I was supposed to have two more weeks.  I was signing forms and the attendant at the desk had gone back to get the box.  I felt the double stroller jostling around but I just figured it was my toddler being herself, bebopping away to the overhead music.  She was very speech delayed, most everything that came out of her cherub-like mouth didn't make any sense to anyone but her.  I can still hear her say, clear as day and with as much conviction a  tiny big sister can muster, "THAT'S MINE."  

I turned around, to find an empty rear stroller seat.  A woman was walking out of the service desk area with my baby!!!!  After chasing her through the store and trying to navigate a cumbersome double stroller through early 2000's Walmart, I finally caught up to her, ripped him out of her arms while she screamed like a banshee that I was taking her baby.  Her boyfriend had been using the bathroom and left her outside waiting for him.  She was out on a day pass from Acadia Hospital - for those who don't know, it's a mental health facility in Maine.

Until today's therapy session, where I emptied my guts, probably more than I have in the entire 6 years I've known this mans, I have merely given everyone else the Cliff's notes version.  Minus the trauma. Even now, just forcing myself to remember everything, reliving it in detail, my entire body feels like it's been dipped in an ice bath. Last night, I couldn't get rid of it. It was an octopus suctioned to my face.

For 19 years, 2 months, and a day, my brain has been wired to protect at all costs.

"Allow yourself to grieve; you have to if you're going to keep your sanity."  Something that his teacher told me when I noticed a sudden personality change in forth grade.  I was so quick to jump to the defensive with that statement.

"First of all, I was never sane to begin with.  I'm fine.  I've got this".  

Turns out, it the hardest truth I had to swallow.  I had it like I was wrestling a greased piglet.  

No matter what is happening, no matter how tired of it I am, no matter how much abuse I endure, no matter how I get treated in ways that I would NEVER tolerate from someone that I was dating.  But my brain is programmed by something primordial.  I have to protect him.  

Whenever he is hurting, I do everything in my power to make it stop.  You want this new thing you did nothing to earn?  Sure thing!  You have made a complete mess of the house that we live in?  Oh that's fine, I'll spend my entire day off cleaning up after you.  Spending my days on a continuous Mary Go Round of trying to decide what to mention that is going wrong so that something will get better.  It doesn't.  Saying no to him about something as nonchalant as frozen mac and cheese last week sent him into a tirade via text message for twenty-five minutes about how I screwed him up as a child and got him help and medication that fucked up his brain chemistry permanently.  And there is zero reasoning in his mind that this is definitely not how it works.

For the past three months, he is not taking his medication to help manage his bipolar disorder. To the detriment of my own mental health, I have allowed defeat to sneak its way into my mind like an octopus in a bottle. 

I have been passively suicidal for years.  

Things have been so bad, that at the end of the day I am finding myself with absolutely nothing left to give to the point where I took my good streak at school and failed my past two classes miserably.  Easy ones, that I loved and simply didn't have the brain power to put effort into.  I should have passed both with an A.  I don't want to be home. I can't get anything done with him around because he just explodes into an argument if I even ask him something as simple as to pick up his dirty dishes that were sitting in front of him all day with dried food on them, or to put his dirty socks in the laundry pile - that is behind the couch he is sitting on when he does it.  If we are having a civil conversation, and he doesn't hear something that I said, his entire being changes and beats me down with verbal attacks until I admit that I didn't say it and apologize.

This past weekend in an effort to save him I did the one thing that I never wanted to do.  I called the police, and I had them take him to the hospital. Saturday, he was no longer safe in more ways than I can lay out here.  It simply isn't my story to tell right now. 

The kicker, 

I work for NAMI.  I teach courses, run support groups - plural.  I am a peer support specialist.  

I cannot help my own child.   

Tonight, I told him that he had to leave. He was screaming at me about the pizza crust that I had bought so he could make homemade pizza for dinner not working for him. I gave him 48 hours to find somewhere else.  He won't.  Since that day at Walmart, I have never felt so helpless and scared as a mom in my life.  For five days now.  Things are slowly, and hopefully, clearing. He has to want it for himself.  I know that. I just know that I am so tired of feeling so broken.  

"Sometimes to be heard, you have to hang up."

Adequate

 Kids, today's word is Adequate.

Not capable, not loved, not included.

ADEQUATE

This is how I feel when I push myself to the breaking point.

And I do, every time.

I do it at work, in the kitchen creating food for other people, at other people's houses, at events.

I don't get invited to anything that I see people that I'm friends on Facebook doing.  I've never been the one who has been included, ever.  I cannot explain with words how it feels to be this isolated, so I'll give you some examples.

I was always adequate enough to talk to people in school, but I was never invited to hang out afterwards.  I was never invited to a single birthday party or party, at all.  I was adequate enough to graduate with a C+ average.

I have always been adequate enough to sleep with, but never enough to stick around for.

I have always been adequate enough to be friends with when there's something I can do to benefit you, like taking care of you when you are sick, but never enough to take care of when I am.

Fast forward through the crap that was the first 33 years of my life....

The year was 2016.

In January, I had been dating someone new.  Mr. Seven Year Itch was making my life a living hell in every way that he could; catfishing me, stalking me, pretending to be my friend.  Drugged and raped me with my children in the other room.  Bring on the protection order and court hearing.  The anxiety disorder and constant panic attacks.  The inability to shower if I was home alone.  The inability to be alone, at all.  The binge drinking, the sex, the serial dating.  The changing of my hair and dying it after the two year journey I had been on to heal that part of myself and the subsequent blow to my psyche that I wasn't strong enough to handle it. The stuffing it down because I couldn't live if I didn't. Adequate.

In November, a complete breakdown and I couldn't hang.  Took almost the entire month off. Started to heal, started new medication, started therapy.  Wrote a lot to get it out, but not all of it.  Just enough.  Adequate.

New Year's Eve, my aunt eloped in her living room after telling everyone they were just coming over for a house warming party. I made cupcakes and a wedding cake that looked like it could be a house warming cake, complete with a tree made from tootsie rolls and spearmint leaves.  It took me hours. I felt adequate. 

By March 2017 I was pretending I wasn't a complete mess.  I was working full time at my job at the switchboard, and had just signed up to go full time with Oncology so I was working two jobs, raising two teenagers alone, juggling dating 2 men at once and neither that amounted to anything, and barely living.  Adequate.

April Fool's Day, my other aunt got married.  She eloped and gave me 24 hours notice about it.  I could have just let her do it alone, but I had to be there.  I had to make the cake and take the pictures.  I needed to be there for her.  I needed to feel needed, and, adequate.

She harassed me nonstop for the pictures for days after when I was so burnt out that I was barely alive. "Yes, let me drop everything for this thing that I'm doing for you, for free!!"  I'll just be dying over here in the corner.  

She didn't talk to me for months, and I was left to deal with everything I was going through alone. Not adequate enough to be heard, just adequate enough to be expected of.

Every family event, busting my butt to be perfect.  Baking and cooking and helping out until my body collapsed because I am convinced I won't be included if I didn't make multiple things for everyone to enjoy. Surprise! I'm still not included.  Still not adequate enough.

I don't get close to people so I don't feel the sting.  See, I lied there.  I always feel the sting.  As said in a different post, even when I say that I give zero fucks, there's still 30% still hanging on for dear life.  I'm always that single girl, the one without a partner who doesn't get invited to the card games, to camp to hang out and laugh with.  A person who is worth getting to know, at all.

The one time that I was actually happy in a relationship, and thought it was real, that I might have actually found what everyone else in my life has.  Found out he was sex offender a month prior to the end of the relationship (10 months in).  My entire family loved him.  I was adequate enough to be included for the first time ever.

When it ended and I told my (now former) best friend (the one I had since I was 6), she was at the beginning of her mental health downward spiral that she is very much still riding (I will get to that in a different post), she blew the entire situation out of proportion, and messaged every single one of my family members that she knew, and told them about what I had found out.  She also told them that I had dated three other sex offenders in the past, still have no idea where that came from (not true)...I needed to be saved....on and on.  I was cut off from my entire family.  They didn't unfriend me on social media, of course.  I was just a kid spanked and sitting in time out in a dark corner for writing on the wall with permanent marker, even though it said "I love you mommy".  Did any of them actually talk to me about it?  Did any of them care that I had no idea what life I had been living for almost an entire year and my heart was destroyed and my life was turned completely upside down in the blink of an eye?  Do they care that I have completely given up on dating and that I now will never get to know what it's like to have what they have? You know the answer already. She and I didn't talk for almost a year after that, by the way.

They did however, follow me like I was some murderer trying to kidnap their children when we all went to the Lumberjack show when my sister was up last July.  The kids all wanted a rock from the big chest they were selling and in my effort to be an aunt that I always wanted the privilege to be, I had them all come with me because I wanted to do something special.  Growing up, whenever I went somewhere with dad I always got rocks.  It was important to me that I carry on that tradition.  The looks on their faces when they learned they didn't have to pick just one stone, but got to pick out a whole bags worth, meant everything to me. 

Trying to give my niece a treat when I had gone out of my way to make stuff that was allergen free so she could get to enjoy something, my sister in law barked at me to ask her mother if it was okay, as if I had no idea how to take care of a child.  The same sister in law who, who when I was excited and sharing with my family about the new promotion that I had coming at work (in an effort seem adequate enough to be liked) smugly replied "Everyone is so short staffed they're letting anyone cover now." For the first time in my life, I have a career in which I feel like this is what I should be doing.  Like I have finally found that thing that I was made to do.  I have my own office and the entirety of my job is to be happy for complete strangers all day long.  It basically threw boiling acid on my joy.  I bought pizza for lunch for everyone that day despite the fact that it almost broke my budget.  To be adequate.

I can live without feeling everything that I was made to feel that entire week, ever again.  Who am I kidding?  I feel that way every time I remember. 

I cannot, however, stop feeling the sting knowing that I am never going to be adequate enough to have the privilege of sleepovers, dance parties, tea parties, being needed for babysitting, teaching them all the cool stuff I know in the kitchen and about science.  I'm just the sister who's different, who's always the odd one out, who isn't supposed to be allowed to have feelings - I am the dramatic one, afterall.

They can say all they want about how dramatic and over the top that I am, how much of a liar I am.  They aren't here helping me in any capacity that adds value to my life.  They can judge me all they want about how I've raised my kids, by myself, without their involvement.  They can hate me all they want for saying anything about this, but if they took a second to realize, it took me an entire year of feeling this way before I said anything at all.

My sister will be home again in two weeks and I was so excited about it, that I had also gotten the week off so that I could enjoy it.  It also falls on finals week.  My daughter is coming home for a couple of days so that she can see everyone.  I may cancel my vacation time and work.  Every fiber of my being already feels like the Cowardly Lion right before he jumps through the window of the Wizard's castle.  

Or I may keep my vacation and spend it doing anything else than be treated like an outsider in my own family.  I suppose time will tell.

Freight Train of Self Realization

Buckle up Bitches.

I haven't attempted to write anything here since April.  Not for lack of fodder, but when you spend your entire day, both at work and school at a computer, even doing something so simple for myself is too much. 

I have changed.  A lot.  I am finding myself more and more excited to be alone.  There isn't anything I have to worry about when there isn't another person around.  I don't have to constantly be worried about whether or not I'm being lied to, what the other person is doing, bending over backwards to make another person like me and heaven forbid I want them to stay.  Maybe I never wanted them to stay.  Who knows.  Life is better this way, and it's that is not me giving up on the idea of ever finding the proverbial "one", I'm just no longer available for what doesn't mutually benefit me.

Give this Friday evening as an example of my growth.

To start with background:

There is a man that I met in 2016 when things for me, mentally, were at their worst.  Just coming out of a huge breakup from  Mr. Seven Year Itch, post assault that changed the entire wiring of my brain.  I was a mess.  For three years, weekly, we would get together once or twice a week.  We talked about everything.  It was nice.  Of course eventually I fell and of course, it ended abruptly. I didn't write an actual blog piece about him until now because I really liked what we had and something in me wanted to fiercely protect it.  So much to the point that I never let him be a part of my life and in that 3 years he might have spent a total of 15 minutes inside of my home, because I realize now that it was my subconscious protecting myself from him. A lot of what I published in mid 2019 was regarding that.

Fast forward to a year out to the end and he randomly messages and wants to grab dinner.  I go.  He unexpectedly apologizes.  He is heart broken because this new girl is treating him badly, he was ready to propose and he needed a friend.  Guys, I don't know if you have ever experienced this, so bear with me while I try to explain what I am experiencing, as it is foreign to me as well.

I felt nothing.

I kept waiting for the rush of "I told you so", "Take that", pity, excitement to see him again, something.  

Nothing. 

Fast forward the past couple of years since.  He got dumped in spectacular fashion. I have, I guess you can put it as more than healed.  We still see each other when timing allows, and as a friend, I thoroughly enjoy hanging out with him.  I have slept with him when I had an itch to scratch that I couldn't reach myself. I guess the disconnect now is that I don't swoon when I see an invite to come over.  I don't put my life on hold waiting for it. On Memorial Day, I invited him and a couple of other friends over for dinner.  I never would have dreamed of doing that before.  It just didn't feel like such a big deal anymore.  He came.  We hung out as friends.  It was nice. 

Protecting my peace has become paramount to me. There is some sort of roadblock put up in front of me where I don't have any emotional attachment to him anymore. And given what I used to feel about him, it's freaking me out that I feel so little.

Back to Friday.  It's been six years since we first met. 

I grabbed dinner on my way over. We watched a couple of episodes of Picard, which made my nerd brain light up with glee. But when we were deciding on what to watch, I saw it.  Her name as a profile listed under his accounts for streaming services.  He still lets her use him even after the way she treated him. I was never good enough for that - as the one who treated him well. As I watched the show, that marinated throughout my being, invading my mind like acid.  

The cork that was holding in all the rage I didn't even know I have been holding in has been launched into outer space.

In the most unceremonious way that I can be, I am done.  Finally, completely, totally, done. No crying, no whining and asking why I'm not good enough and why he wouldn't choose me or why he's holding onto a shitty person when I am right in front of him in all of my amazingness that he refuses to see.

I am enough.  Too much maybe, because I refuse for another second to settle for excuses.  He found less.  He knows that. But if that's what he still wants, so be it.  

In every relationship that I have been in, I have always been stuck in the role of curvy fantasy fulfiller.  The something to do when you have nothing else to do. Not once, even to my ex husband, that I married, was I ever good enough to be the one to change or stick around for.  The one to commit to.  The one, at all. 

Hell, one of my ex's lied to my face about seeing my modeling photos online, and stuck to his story about it for months until I confronted him about a comment - that he made on one of them 90 days before meeting me! He knew exactly who I was, and what I did, and he lied to my face about it.  Mr. Seven Year Itch had, multiple times over, a second life, controlled every aspect of my life (For. Seven. Fucking. Years), stalked me, drugged and sexually assaulted me with my children in the other room and I still took him back.  I cannot even tell you how sick I feel knowing that the woman he is with now, and lives with has 3 daughters. He is a monster that belongs in jail for what he did to not only me, but his ex wife and more women than I can count.  My Guru, I am pretty sure that straw that broke the camel's back. I have no idea how on Earth I believed myself to be the exception when his rule was a haram. And I knew that! 

**insert moment of silence for my brain cells that just jumped to their death.**

Yeah, all of the one night stands and sleeping around were great.  They served their place at their time.  It's just not ever going to be what I need in my life to be happy anymore.

I just think that I have gotten better at severing what doesn't serve me anymore. I cringe at the thought of my past, but I am so hopeful for my future.

Don't kill yourself over a person guys.  They'll just bring someone else to your funeral.

J.M.

 It was a year into my breakup, and I created a profile on plenty of fish. You respectfully messaged me and found out with delight that we're both in the same town. Trying to be smart for a change, had you meet me down at the waterfront. We said our niceties and decided to go eat at a local Chinese restaurant. As soon as I got in the car and saw your profile, I froze. I asked you your last name even though I already knew, and I almost stopped breathing when you said it out loud.

I don't know if you ever knew this, but you're that guy. The guy who was a couple of years ahead of me in school, and the second that I would see you in the hall I was completely incapable of everything that I knew up until that point. You said that nobody ever said that to you before.

I really liked you. I kept catching myself being nervous but completely fine with it. We migrated from the restaurant to the other local bar of the road and had a couple of drinks and talked some more.  Someone decided to go for a drive because we didn't want the night to end.

We went to the lake. Talked more and the second your lips hit mine I knew it was over. You were always a part of me. Something from another time.  

I died waiting for you. 

You contacted me a couple of years ago. It was shortly before my relationship ended. You're coming back to Maine, you complimented my blog and made me feel the same way. I really wanted to see you. Then suddenly you blocked me.

Just know that I can't stop thinking about what you do with your lips when you're nervous. 

Day Drinking

when my body is at the point of exhaustion 

and my brain is a scattered mess

which we both know is nothing unusual 

my heart still beats your name

The bartender must have thought we were insane

middle of the afternoon on a Thursday

it felt like we were the only two people inside an Irish pub

and you could feel my body wanting to jump out of my dress 

when you ran your hands down my side

and I could feel your entire being pressed against me

I let you pay the tab 

and told you I'd meet you outside 

but I took the back door 

and you took the front 

I can't remember how I got home 

but I remember thinking cold pickles and gin were a good idea

and falling asleep naked to reruns of Parks and Rec

and dreaming of all the lives we almost lived 

and on dark days when I think I could maybe be over it

I wonder if maybe I might ever find you again 

and I need to know to keep this heart beating 

for another four hundred years 

if that's what it takes because I still owe you half a tab 

and at least one more lifetime

TED Talk

I don't know about you, but i thought that "getting healthy" emotionally was like vanquishing this inner demon and having this huge amount of success, but in reality it's just giving broken pieces of yourself soft hugs while sitting in the junk drawer of your own existence.

Here we go with another blog post where I am a real human.

The apartment is shaping up to be something I think I could live in forever.  Slowly learning the city and the little side streets and the tricks to avoiding the shitty traffic.  Door Dash is a wonderful invention.  Both kids are still home.  Things would most likely go much smoother and I would be done unpacking in under a century if, big if, my dear daughter would stop moving everything that I unpacked because she didn't like how I set it up.  

I feel like both children deserve their own posts sometime soon.  I have been working on that carefully. It's a lot.

This past Sunday, in an effort to hunker down and get something accomplished that was going to make my life a little more functional, I made myself focus on my bedroom.  I'm pretty excited.  I didn't get everything that needs to be taken care of done, but "don't let perfect get in the way of better" has been the motto of my anxiety.  Just before I moved, we got hit with a rain storm and it caused my old basement to flood.  Unfortunately in my effort to downsize prior to moving, I sold some of my storage shelves and my son had put some stuff on the floor and that included a box of what appeared to be old letters and things my mom saved that she left after coming to get the remainder of her stuff that she stored there.  They got wet, but I just put them up on another high shelf.  I almost threw them out when I was cleaning, but something (Nana) told me to go through them to see if something was worth keeping.  I decided that I was going to take the time to go through those boxes.  I found a bunch of stuff that my siblings and I made.  Some things were ruined, but not as much as I was expecting.  I also found a bunch of letters between my parents when they were in school along with some things that my siblings and I created when we were little that she kept.  

Wait for it.......

I found a letter, written by my mother in January 1980, meaning she was 15 years old.

She was upset that she started her period, because she didn't know how else to show my dad that she loved him other than to give him a baby and it's all she wants.

Wait for it......

My mother.  Who had me a week after turning 17.

The bitch who made my life hell until I cut ties.  

Who every time she got mad at me as a kid told me, that I, a child, was a mistake.  The one that I would bend over backwards to please no matter what it did to me because I was convinced that it was me who was the crazy one.

The person that I was sad about not having to talk to when I need a mom.  Because that's truly the thing that I have needed more than anything, or at least it feels that way because I didn't have her and yet, somehow managed to survive without.

Let that sink in.  I sure have.  And it was all I will ever need again to remember that cutting ties with someone, regardless of why and who they are, if they are not bringing you peace, then peace the fuck out.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.