Tag: motherhood

Long Division

How does one separate something that has taken years to build? It could have taken 2 years, or 20, but each day you added bricks and build a foundation, walls, windows… it develops into a fortress to protect you from the world. This fortress is supposed to be impenetrable. It shields all the inhabitants inside. So how, and where, does one even start to take it down? Do you burn the drawbridge? Trebuchet the shit out of the exterior? It’s hard to know, I guess. Circumstances often dictate the destruction of your fort.

But what do you do if you’re not mad, but have simply decided that this fort is shit, and you don’t want to live there anymore? Do you attempt to keep the status quo until arrangements change? Do you still burn the drawbridge and trebuchet the exterior? What about a volatile situation? What then? When inside the fortress is nothing but pure chaos, and there’s fires everywhere? How does one process getting everyone to safety? What does safety even look like, when you’re bed is in flames? Are there really any survivors? Nobody escapes totally unscathed, right?

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And there’s the long division. Strangely enough, if you never unpack, it’s easier to move. But now, we must sift through every. single. thing. to determine what belongs to whom, or who gets it in the dividing process. Then, there’s the others in the fortress… what becomes of them? The friends? You know everyone chooses sides, whether or not they consciously chose a side. Even family chooses sides, despite best efforts. It’s like we drew a line, and everyone decides which side they’ll forever stand on.

What I’ve determined is the worst of all, is the feeling of sudden emptiness. Loneliness. You once had a sounding board to share in your trials and triumphs with. Now, there’s friends or family, but it’s not the same. I want to share my joys and sorrows with someone who is in the fortress WITH me. We are fighting on the same side, in the same battles. People outside the fort, they just can’t appreciate the inner workings of your brain and heart, without first having to explain yourself. That is fucking exhausting. Constantly going over the same stuff, all the time. I just want to have my heart safely in the hands of someone I don’t have to “preface” with. New is positively exciting. Electric. But old, it’s comforting, familiar. That’s not to say I want a damn thing to do with this decaying rubble, but there’s something to be said for the familiar.

My heart aches for what it doesn’t have. My mind longs for a simple life. My intuition knows that this has expired and that it’s no longer home for me. Now what do I do with myself?

 

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Love is a choice

Life, like love, is messy and complicated, difficult and flat out hard. We want it to be fun and exciting, but things bog us down, make us heavy. The trick to love, is to fight through that hard and find the things that are beautiful.

There have been times where I’m at my heaviest, and I see something so simple, a glimmer in time, and it makes me feel weightless for just a moment. It’s the breadcrumb that keeps me going. The trail leading me to the next bend in the pathway.

My life has been particularly heavy as of late, and it’s got no chance of lifting in the near future. I’ve been seething with anger at people who could have chosen love. I’ve been shattered by words and deeds, crushed by apathy and indifference. Everything has been flipped upside down.

However, just like love, hate is a choice. I can choose to be angry, sad, and destructive toward myself and others. But what good would come of it? My child would see a mother who is consumed by loathing and frustration. A mother set on destruction- destroying the ones who hurt her, and all the bonds for both sides.

I choose love. Through the fear and anger, the betrayal and malice. I choose love. Letting the anger consume me isn’t doing anyone any favors, especially my kid. I need to be a whole person, one who models the life I want to teach. I need to find the grace in what is otherwise a heartbreaking situation. For me, for my daughter.

Am I still hurt? Sure. Pissed off? Yup. But am I going to waste another moment of my life hating someone? Nobody got time for for that.

Ironically, the year of forced growth has put some important things into perspective for me. The last several years have been a bizarre re-enactment of a previous chapter in my life, but instead of playing the “me” role, I’m the other person. I see now, with glaring clarity what I did to completely derail and sabotage my own life back then. It’s taken much longer than I’d like to admit for me to come to that conclusion, but I got here.

Not only do I now recognize my shortcomings in great detail, but I perfectly understand how they felt during that time. I’ve been beating myself up for more than a decade, because I didn’t completely understand both sides of the equation. But here we are. Lesson learned. Because life is messy and complicated, it couldn’t be quite so easy to extricate from as the first time, since, it took me so fucking long to learn it. However, I’m here now in the right place. It feels terrible in every way. Lesson learned. And through it all, I choose love. It’s all I’ve got left.

Thanks for reading.

Photo credit: wordporn

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Fight or flight

It has become increasingly difficult to focus on my day job. Not only am I bored by the tasks and lack of opportunity for growth, but I also have so many other things in the works. I am working on becoming my own boss and business owner and trying to maintain some shred of hope, given the political climate in this country.

I’ve never felt such a direct and opposite “pulling” force between my fight and flight sides. Part of me wants to try and keep some semblance of the life I lead, to not lose hope, to fight the good fight and create the life I am meant for. But on the other hand, there is something strongly pulling me away from all that, telling me that my family is more important and getting them the hell out of this dumpster before it blows sky high. I just want to run away somewhere safe and hope there’s a life to come back to in four years.

Between social media and the mainstream media, I’m overwhelmed and saddened. The alternative media is equally disheartening. We are living in a very sad time for human rights and social responsibility. It can be paralyzing, and right now, I feel paralyzed with glimmers of motivation and action. It simply weighs heavy on my heart that the world is not shaping up to be a place where people are free to love and marry whomever they choose, that health is only for the wealthy, and that life is largely not affordable for those that work for a living. It is saddening. And those of us that were working toward those things, hoping beyond hope for those things, are devastated. The feeling is real.

Finding happiness in the destruction of everything we hold dear as a nation borders on impossible. The only thing keeping my head above water is my physical and moral obligation to not fuck up for my kid. She knows nothing of the world, of politics. She is content being a toddler and little else. She loves her parents, her pets, eating snacks, and good music. If only everything were that simple. But her smile makes my day worth the struggle. What else is there? My husband, gardening, pets that we care for… they’re the crux of my life. They are the catalyst to happiness, since happiness comes from within. My family makes me want to be a better person, to keep waking up every day, and to be happy when it’s appropriate.

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Day 37- Gratitude Project

I’m grateful that babies aren’t judgemental. She doesn’t care if my hair looks like a family of rats have recently taken up residence in it. She doesn’t care that my boobs are lopsided, I’ve put on a few pounds, or my skin is oily. She only cares that I’m there, and that I love her. I’m grateful for that. 

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