I am Thankful

When I start to get down on myself, or super stressed out, or frustrated, I will make a list in my head of all the things I have that money cannot buy, and that others may not:

a family who would do ANYTHING for me, who makes me laugh until I cry and encourages even my most seemingly hopeless of dreams, and even when they hate me they love me.

a best friend who I have known since I was four. who I can go months without seeing but can pick up like we've never been apart, who also just went out of her way to attend Aiden's 10th birthday party.  Things like this matter, especially when you're questioning a lot of your friendships as of lately.  I am a forever type person.  I don't get into things lightly whether it be friendships or relationships, and to have friendships fall apart for what feels like silly reasons, it makes the good ones, the ones that have made it through EVERYTHING all that much more important.

I have safety and security and a warm place to crawl into at night.  I  have a little person who relies on me and loves me and tells me so every chance he gets.  I have clean water.

Even if school is currently making me want to pull my hair out, and the thought of all of the student loan debt, and all of the work I still have to do, and how many times a day I want to just quit, I want to curl up into a ball and just quit, because I know that I am really good at that.  I can accomplish that.  What if I can't accomplish the rest of this?  When all of that gets me down, I have all of that other good stuff to fall back on.

That and a cup of warm coffee, and maybe a big hug or too from someone special.

We measure what we value.

 

One year.

Twelve Months.

Fifty two weeks.

Three hundred sixty five days.

 

A letter was put into a mailbox a year ago today, and it would take another week to make it to my former employer.  A year ago today my life changed and I didn't even know it yet.  I've been having a rough time of it, both today and yesterday, but I've been blessed in a hundred other ways, and so that is making up for a lot of the anger and resentment and a lot of the falling apart that I am really wanting to do right now.

 

I am right in the middle of my second semester back in school, I have a 3.85 GPA, and my first assignment in my class, a 21 page summary paper on a book came back as a 100%.  I also got an email from my advisor (who, funny enough, is also my instructor this session) with my degree audit for the coming year, and her suggestion for courses for next semester.  If I take one class this summer, am able to get my distance courses taken in the spring, and am able to find an internship, I will graduate next December.  That is best case scenario.  That is, Sadie buckles down and everything lines itself up, and tax return is hefty, and airline prices are decent, and internship works out, and work gives me time off, and the planets align PERFECT.  If not, we're talking spring or fall of 2015.  BUT, it is possible for me to do it by next year.

 

I can safely say that without what happened to me a year ago, that probably wouldn't be happening.  I spent a lot of nights on my computer, drinking, and surfing the web.  A lot of the colleges I sent out emails to I don't even remember.  I don't even really remember how I ended up coming across Union Institute. 

 

I am not the same person I was a year ago.  I am still not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.  Maybe its both.  I don't have that same trust that my life is just going to float along and everything is going to be dandy.  I don't trust people that I used to, that I probably should, in the same way that I should, any longer.  It may not seem like it, and I have opened up a lot more recently, but I am a lot more reserved about the things I do say.

 

I hate him.  I know I need to let that go and move on from that.  I know that carrying that around inside of me will poison me from the inside out, but I'm not quite ready to let that go.  I'm not quite ready to walk away from the karma train on that one.

 

However, I am going to boast on my accomplishments.  How far I have come.  How far I have clawed myself off of that couch that I laid on for six weeks straight watching Netflix next to the white Christmas tree, eating waffle cone Breyer's ice cream and living off of the $8 of cash I happened to have in my wallet over my son's birthday and Christmas came and went.  I picked myself up.  I dusted myself off, and I carried on.

 

Now, if I can only finish what I started.

 

If we look to another for our dreams they may never become our own... Scream and be FREE.

 

I have wanted to do this for years.  Never really sure which way to go about doing it, how to come up with the money for it, how to take the time.  I have spent nearly the last year of my life in this chronically depressing bubble of failed relationships, devoid friendships, and in a job that I don't really enjoy.  Not in the way that you should enjoy a job.  Materials Management at the hospital wasn't something I wanted to do my entire life, but it had become a position I was happy with, paid me well, and I probably got far too comfortable.  Even the worse things in our life can have a silver lining.  Mine was in being fired from a job and being unemployed for six weeks, I was able to finally figure out how I wanted to go about my schooling and trainings and certifications.

 

I have been a very passionate breastfeeding advocate since I can even remember.  I used to breast feed my Strawberry Shortcake doll.  Since having Aiden, I have helped several friends start and continue breast feeding their children.  I have been support for people I barely know through recommendations of friends.

 

This week, I am in Loveland, Colorado, amidst all of the flooding, and evacuations, and I'm attending a week long course where at the end, I will test for, and hopefully pass, for my CLC.  (Certified Lactation Counselor) 

 

This morning, at around 10 a.m., shortly before our first break of the day, we were watching a video that was made a few years ago about a hospital in the Phillippines.  This hospital had done away with any and all infant formula, the women crowded into huge rooms with hundreds of beds pushed together, the babies remaining with their mothers during their hospital stays.  In the crowded, terribly poor conditions, instead of seeing a rise in diseases or infant deaths, they saw the exact opposite. 

 

Mother's assisting each other with the breast feeding relationships.  Learning to express milk for pre-mature infants, and for the first time ever, this hospital was able to save enough money (about 6 million a year in U.S.dollars) in order to actually FEED its patients three meals a day, plus snacks, when before it was the family's responsibility to bring the patients food, or they simply didn't eat.  As I watched this video, watched these women who had virtually nothing but the clothes on their backs feed their babies, and their babies THRIVED.  In this conference room with about 40 to 50 other women, most of whom are nurses, and I started to tear up.

 

Not because of the video, even though it was touching.  But because I knew, with certainty, that this is what I was meant to do.

 

I am thirty years old, and I never thought I would be able to say what it was I wanted to do when I grew up.  Having a baby at 20, and everything just kind of gets put on the backburner.  Hopes, dreams, relationships, jobs, friendships.  Everything.  They all become secondary to your child and what your child needs and wants.  In coming here, in taking this course and going back to school, I knew it was something I would enjoy.  Well, I mean... obviously.  I've done it for free for friends and near strangers for the nearly ten years since I had and gave birth to Aiden.  I knew I'd enjoy it.  I never really expected to have the emotional reaction I did in the first two hours of a 40 hour week long course.

 

Maybe this is the feeling people in the church refer to as "the calling"?

 

I managed to hold my composure the entire day, only really losing it when I got back to my hotel room.  Then I cried happy/excited tears nonstop and nearly uncontrollably for forty-five minutes, changed my clothes and went down to the hotel restaurant.

 

I sat at the bar, armed with my homework for the night, ordered a beer and asked for a menu.  The bartender, a fairly attractive man much younger than I am, asked me softly if I was ok (tear stained and puffy post cry face and all) while he was pouring my draft beer.  (They didn't have Boulevard, WTF?!)  and I told him, "I have just figured out, for sure, what I am meant to do with my life."  He sat the beer in front of me, handed me a menu, and said, "Then you need some skin."  Offering a high-five, which I returned with much gusto. 

I Lost You (new prose)

I loved you in ways I can't explain. 
In ways I had never loved anyone before. 
In a way that made my stomach jump at just the thought of you. 
In a way where I could get lost for hours sitting next to you just talking. 
In a way that the days never seemed to have enough hours because there were always more words, 
more stories, 
more& more& more

but never enough time. 

I loved you in a way where I could be myself. 
All of myself with no apologies or hesitation. 
I loved your picky eating habits and the way you snored up against the back of my head that would actually pull me into my dreams. 
I loved your smelly feet and the way we would lay across each other on the couch, talking, 
laughing. 
Trying to watch movies but falling asleep. 

I loved you even when I did not love me,
and that scared me. 

I loved you even when I didn't deserve to love you. 

I loved you through pain and tears. 
Screaming matches and lost earrings. 
Misplaced iPods and broken cell phones which were thrown across empty rooms. 
Through all of the drunk and disorderly. 

I loved you through the bad movies and the hogged popcorn 
and the way you would kiss my hand. 
And my forehead. 
The way your hand fit into mine. 

I loved you even when I wasn't important enough to make your top four list, announced loudly to your friends at the bar, while I stood three feet away from you.

I loved you even when I hated you, 
when I feared losing you. 

I loved you when I lost you. 

I lost you. 

I lost you.

You've got to get the girl back.

I have to find a way to get ME back.  I've fallen on the weigh station of love and happiness over the last nine months, and I really need to start putting myself back together.  Back together completely.  And I had been doing so damn good.  so here we are, the beginning of July.  Time to set some damn goals.

Goals for July 2013.

• early morning gym workouts 4 -5 days a week.  
•  2-3 evenings spend an hour running/walking at the track either by myself, or with friends.
• lift, 2-3 days a week.  most likely Tuesdays and Thursdays.   It would do well to plan my running on lifting days, that way I get cardio in there too. 
• drink enough  water throughout the day to remain hydrated.
• read.  start and finish 2 books.
• lose 5 lbs.
• send more time in the sun, less time worrying about men and boys.  
• write.  more.  and elegantly.
• eat clean (er) with ONE cheat meal during the week.

If anyone is interested in joining me for any or all of these, let me know :)  I may throw in some Jillian Michael's the devil videos a couple times a week too :D

We've already said too much to make it new.

I'm not going to try to forget.  Maybe happiness is worth the chance of a bitter end.

Cause here at the end of the road... I don't really care who was right, I'll give you the last words tonight.

This post, or prose document, or heartfelt verbal vomit... whatever it actually turns out to be has been a very long time coming.  I know that.  I apologize for that.

I am going to share a few snip-its of things I've been writing over the months when I get a chance to actually put it down.  I feel like I've lost such a huge chunk of my being recently, and I'm not even sure I know who I am any longer.  I play it well.  I go to work.  I smile.  I do my job.  Then my evenings are spent alone as soon as Aiden goes to bed.  It's lonely and unfulfilled, and I'm not really sure how to go about changing that.  There is a simple answer, and that's for someone to pull his head out of his ass and realize what a great thing he had going, what he's missing, and for him to come and try to win me back.  Easy answer, easy solution, to a not easy at all problem.

I fill my hours with spaces of things too big for me to have room to think about you.  I wake up early and punish my body to extremes so I don't have to wonder what you're doing or who you're doing it with, or what you're thinking about or who you're thinking about.  I work.  I sleep.  I shop for groceries, I read and write and walk.  I want you out of my head and heart because you're too big.  You take up too much space with all of the pain you caused.  I can't have you living forever in all of my in-betweens.

On top of my most recent breakup, against all of my better judgement, D and I started talking again.  I was there for him in a time of great need, only in conversation, in a way that he wasn't there for me a year ago when my grandmother died.  He apologized for not being there the way I needed him to be.  It doesn't make everything "all better" but it did ease that hurt and resentment I have been carrying around for a year.  He told me things.  Things I think I had been waiting almost two years to hear from this man.  And it didn't make it "all better" but it helped.  It helped me to help him through his time of loss.  It helped me to feel the empathy for him that I needed to feel.  It helped me be his friend.

Then, He asked me to move away with him.

I want to run away with you.  I want to spend every beautiful evening wrapped in your arms, legs crooked into the back of my knees.  soft kisses and face stubble on my shoulder blades.

I want to move across the country with you. Start a new life.  Start a new me, a better me.  In a place where you are the only tie I have to my old life.  I don't want to lose you to this distance and this great wide open space.  I don't want to lose you to the mountains with their snow capped peaks and their beauty.  I want to live there with you, become your other half, your better half; and you mine.  

I want to be the beginning and the end of your days.  I want to hold your hand while watching the sunset over the top of those snow covered rocks, the beauty in everything diminishing around us by the way we feel for each other.  I want to tell you all of my secrets.  I want to show you all of me, every inch and imperfection.  I want to love you wildly and uncontrollably and never timidly.  

I want you to cradle my face in your hands and tell me that I'm the most beautiful thing you have ever seen.  I love you.  I just want you to be able to love me too.

Eighteen plus hours drive away from my family.  My friends.  My town.  The only place I have ever been able to call "home".  With every fiber of my being I want to run away with him and our children.  I want to put a snowsuit on Aiden and watch him snowboard down a mountain.  I want to go hiking, and biking.  I want to be, if only for a moment, not just Me from Nebraska.  I know I am so much more than that.  The only thing, THE ONLY THING that is keeping me here is my family.  I don't know if I could deal with the disappointment and the heartbreak on their end.  I don't know if I could stand to take Aiden away from his grandparents, even if it meant possibilities for me.  Where do you draw the line between being a parent and caring for your child in the best way you know how, and being able to tilt at your own windmills in order for your own happiness to shine through?

So I did the safe thing.  I told him no.  Not now.  Give me a few months.  "Let me see if you're still talking to me then, still saying the same things to me then."  He offered to work while I was finishing up school.  Help around the house and with the children, but to FINISH school.  In a place that is surrounded by so much natural beauty.  It feels like it should be right.  I should just be able to jump.  leap.  dive.

Last August, in my random notes journal I wrote, "I hope I am the ache in his heart he recognizes but can't get rid of."  I think that when he moves on, leaves without me, without us, this will remain true to both of us.

When I love someone, I love them completely.  Always.  Forever.  Through the good and the bad, the tears and the fights.  If I love you, I never let you go completely.

I'm still trying to figure out why I am so easy to let go of, forget about, and move on from.  Am I that generic that there are more like me, but better versions of me? 

All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arrive.

I have been blue for pretty much as long as I can remember.  Don't get me wrong, I am not ALWAYS blue, but I have to admit that the majority of my late teens and twenties have been spent in a state on suspended disbelief in a lot of the emotions I experience.  I have been on and off all cocktails of medications meant to make me happy, make me not as sad, make me numb, make my moods more even.  I have been in and out of one doomed relationship after another.  None of them making it too far, none of them making me feel what I thought I needed to be feeling.

I was always waiting for that shoe to drop.  Always waiting for someone better to come along so I would be kicked to the curb, again.  Waiting for my best friend to fall out of love with me.  Waiting for the one I loved to love me back.  Waiting, always waiting.  And worrying.

Something my shrink has told me since I started going to him nearly ten years ago (I was sent to him shortly after I had gotten pregnant - though I didn't know it yet - by my doctor who was worried about some intense mood swings she herself had witnessed... pregnancy hormones perhaps?) was that I am a worrier.  It is in my genes, it is something I will never be able to escape.  It is only ever something I am able to limit and control myself.  Worry about the things I can change, the people I can influence, and my reaction to them.  This is something I battle with every day.  People who know me, know this is no secret.  It becomes ever more apparent when I've been drinking.  My neediness, my desire to please, to put my own wants and needs on the back-burner.

2013 did not start out the way I had planned it to.  I started a new job.  I started back to school.  And I had my heart handed back to me, once again, by my best friend.  Then he disappeared.  I've only seen him once since, and it was my way of "ripping the band-aid off" and letting him know I was still there, still wanted him in my life.  I've gotten very little feedback from him on whether or not that's what he wants.  Either way, things are irreparably over with J.  In the sense of any romantic entanglement.  I hope more than anything that we'll eventually be able to get back to the point we were before this whole nightmare of a relationship began.

School is going well.  I am almost done with my first class, which will hopefully prove to be the hardest one this semester, and as of the first week in March, I'll be starting my coursework for Maternal Health.  If all pans out how I'm hoping it will, I should be set to graduate with my bachelors in a little over a year.  If money is where it needs to be, and I'm able to attend the courses outside of the university that are required and are a separate cost.  I am excited, and scared, and everything bundled into one gigantic emotion.

And I met R.  I'm not going to go into too much detail over this, but suffice it to say, he's different than anyone else I've ever met, or ever been with. We talk in a way that I can't with a lot of people.  He treats me in a way that I've never experienced before.  I know I don't come in fifth, or tenth, or last in his world.  He cooks for me, and encourages me.  It goes past all of that though.  Not only does he encourage me on my goals, but he is there willing to help me along with them.  Wednesdays we go to the gym together.  We push each other.  I teach him about nutrition.  He lets me feel his biceps. :)  Things are good.

Are they perfect?  Hell no.  They never will be.  I think I'm beginning to accept all that.  There are going to be challenges in certain aspects of my life at certain times.  Aiden is going to drive me crazy.  I will have issues at work.  I will fight with my boyfriend.  My apartment will be a pig sty.  But I have also learned that things fall apart so you can learn to put them back together.  Maybe not in the same way they were before, but perhaps a new way.  A better way.

I've hit bottom enough in my life, and kept going through all of the shit and the hell that it brought, and I have continued to keep breathing.  I have survived.  I will continue to do just that.  Is this my moment?