shishnit.org

Everytime I consider why I blog and consider quitting something happens to me that prompts me to remember why I started and how much it impacts me without my realizing it. I recently got an email from someone who told me her husband got a vasectomy without her knowledge or their having truly discussed it.  It was a done deal when she found out.  If you’re a long time reader here you know that she was able to google this and find my blog.  Why?  Because my ex did this same thing oh so many years ago.

This recent email reminded me….of things I had really moved away from.  Forgetting is ok…but being reminded almost always means that I take a long look around and exude a huge sigh of relief because my current landscape is so different than the one of the past.

Last night my very best friend sent me an email that included:

*** and I are broken up? on the verge of broken up? is he cheating on me?  with a  19 year old?  who the fuck knows. she’s our neighbor, is also a cop - they were in the Academy together, and she was posted here with him, so he rented out his house next door to hers. its been a nightmare that’s been building, that blew up over a month ago and hasn’t really settled since. they have sister shifts, so they have the same days off together. the days that he’s working, we get along fine enough, and there are even hints of reconciliation. mild hints mind you.  on the days they have off together, like today and yesterday, he’s cold and never home. I know for a fact that he doesn’t see, or rarely sees, any of his other friends anymore - he’s either spending time with her or out somewhere on his own.   of course he’s been denying it, though he doesn’t actually say “No I’m not having an affair”. but she’s 19. he’s 35. WTF?  pretty sick “friendship” if you ask me…

While still reeling from that email and trying to figure out just how do you help someone that is 2,182 km away except to offer emotional support.  But you know..I want to do so much more.  I really wanted to sit down and cry.  This morning I mentioned it to my best friend in Florida and she wrote me back and her email included:

*Husband* and I had a big blow up last night.  My *middle teenage son* was in the living room messing around with the girls and *Husband* told the girls to go over to their little table (also in the living room) and finish their dinners.  Shortly after that, *middle teenage son* calls for the girls to come over and give him a hug.  I was reading the paper, the TV was on, so I didn’t really pay attention.  *Husband* was watching and came completely unglued.  He got up, smacked *middle teenage son* hard in the arm and proceeded to cuss him out.  He made a physical threat to *middle teenage son* and used the F word up and down as he was screaming.  We were all upset, including the girls, of course.  He felt like *middle teenage son* was undermining his parenting and making him look bad because Daddy wants them to eat but *middle teenage son* says its okay to get up from the table. 

Oh boy oh boy oh boy.  Her *husband* is generally a great guy.  They seem to be experiencing a lot of stress with stepparenting and meshing their family together.  This is rather common these days.

So one of my close friends has her long time live in boyfriend cheating on her with his co-worker/neighbor. We all know I can relate.  My other friend is experiencing anger issues, something else I can relate with.  Then a random emailer, someone I don’t know…is out there experiencing the pain of the loss of any future children with her husband.

Geesh…life does not feel fair or good with all of this.  I want to somehow help everyone feel better, be happier, overcome all this pain.  So difficult.

And yet…then there’s that part of me that wonders if you get so much pain in life and have I personally received all that I might have coming….am I too happy right now?  Oh man…it all just makes me want to cower behind my awesome husband where it now feels safe and warm.

Rick….he’s so fantastic….it scares me.  Will I ever stop fearing the other shoe dropping?  Am I too lucky these days?

p.s. how jacked is it that my best friend in life knows now what it feels like to have her man boinking the neighbor too?  come on…what the hell???

A few months ago I took a picture of my night stand to compete with a picture of rude cactus’ nightstand photo. He has a lot of books on his nightstand but I believe I beat him. I place all new purchases on my nightstand so that I can peruse each night and decide what I want to read. I have tried to clear them away on a regular basis but the fact remains that I love to read in bed and therefore my books migrate to that area. I cannot avoid my natural instinct to behave this way. I am a reading animal.

This is what my nightstand looked like before today:

I’ve been jonesing for one of those spine bookcases to put into that room to make the books at least look neat and clean. Overstock was sold out and finally last week they came back into stock so I nabbed one. I have spine bookcase love……lots of it.

Then about a month ago I fell in love with a lamp. A ridiculously expensive lamp sold by a ridiculously priced store. This is that expensive lamp. Nice eh…but seriously $198 and no lampshade and that doesn’t include shipping!!

So I hunted around the Internet and I found this etsy shopI told her what I was looking for and she was beyond amazing to work with. She made several lamps to give me choices and was simply amazing to converse with no less. The lamp arrived today and I’m in lamp love. Total lamp love people!!! Look…..

I totally love it. If you like it and want to get your own lamp to love….go see her She really is a sweetheart and does very nice work. This lamp is well constructed and was so well packed for shipment. Thank you!!!

Also check out my new bookcase…..love that too….but perhaps not as much as the lamp.

check out Chloe’s toy laying on the floor…teehee…

There’s only been one consistent thing that I have missed throughout all the years since my ex-husband and I split and that is the one aspect that no one else can possibly truly and 100% replace.  My ex and I always parented together.  In the years since the divorce it’s been difficult at best to feel a part of the parenting partnership when Keith was with him rather than with me.  I have long told him how I felt, what I thought, what I saw and what should happen. I have long felt unheard.  This week I have felt heard.  I don’t know if it’s my imagination or my lust to be heard by him as a mother and perhaps I’m still in an emotional haze, but we were together handling things for Keith.  And this volcano of “missing” that feeling of two birth parents wishing and wanting and leveraging for the best for their son came bubbling to the surface.

Today I enrolled Keith in a program for school.  A program I will not discuss at length here because I love my son so fucking much it is a bottomless ache, an endless desire, an all consuming ocean of never-ending waves of emotion.  While enrolling him, I filled out about a half dozen pieces of paperwork.  I listed myself as the FIRST contact; the FIRST name was mine under my child’s name.  For a few moments I felt triumphant as I’ve thought about all the paperwork I didn’t have the privilege to fill out as his father was deemed (through no court of law) the residential or custodial parent despite our forward thinking much thought out “joint” custody arrangement.  Simply put my son had to go to one school and short of living on top of each other, he could never do that without living in one set spot.  I always thought he needed a male figure in his life and his father was the only one we’ve both got to be his father…his real father.

Sometimes my personal hatred and pain over that divorce and loss has probably clouded me and my judgment.  I am far from perfect.  Mostly it has been torturous to relinquish so much of my maternal instincts throughout this process over the years.  I have spent days on end, weeks on end…sometimes even months on end without seeing my son, never owning up to it, never being able to face it or talk about it.  At times I began to feel that he was my son, a beautiful picture in a frame, the son who had his friends and his life precisely 10 miles away.  As though he forgot me.  But…I never forgot him.  I never wanted to force him to come to me; I never wanted to dictate his comings and goings just because of a silly thing called divorce. I wanted to bear the brunt of all of the pain that rolled out of that divorce all by myself regardless of whether it was right or wrong.

Today I got up early, I drove to my ex-husbands house and I enrolled my son all by myself, and his father NEEDED me to do it.  His words were “you gotta pony up and do this” but if truth be told I wanted to. I’ve always wanted to. I’ve always wanted to do it all.  I have just been so fucking scared.  So terrified of fucking it all up.  And in that being scared, perhaps I have.  I will not spend months beating myself up.

I will just remind myself daily that I want my name first under my son’s name on those forms, all forms. I am his mother and I want to do those things.  Yes to many mothers the day to day minutia is not fun, it’s not rewarding it can be downright dreadful to be the one that runs for the t-shirt, takes the kid to the spring concert, provides the lunch money (only for said child to lose it etc).

I’ve been robbed of those day to day events, those things that are barely visible to the naked eye after years of parenthood.  And I never had the courage to acknowledge just how much it hurt and how much I missed it and how much it sometimes still pisses me off a lot.

In that moment when I wrote my name as the first contact…..something inside me healed over.  There where this sense of loss was a sense of self knowledge and pride came.  I AM HIS MOTHER.  No matter what I am YOUR MOTHER.  You said “yes mother” to me ten thousand times today in that irritated angst riddled teenager way and you really had no idea did you..just how much I love you even when you mess up, even when you’re lost, and mostly because you don’t have to be perfect for my heart to spill open at the mere mention of your name. 

That’s the thing…when you are someone’s mother no one can rob you of your baby boy.  No one said being a Mother was easy….but no matter the challenges….you are always going to be worth it. 

And this week….ever since Monday….I have not had enough rocks.  I am angry, despondent and frustrated.  I wish I WAS 16 because when you’re 16 you think you “KNOW” everything.   Right now I know nothing.