Must... do... homework...

I love taking college courses online. But I also hate it. It's too easy to say I'll do it later or I'll do it tomorrow. If I were in a ground campus course, I could go to class for my couple hours a week, take a test and pull in an A. In the online environment, they are challenged to make a virtual attendance requirement. This is met by posting comments to peers on the classroom forum. Personally, I'd rather just do the test and submit the assignments. Oftentimes I find myself not having anything substantial to post in response to them, and I spend more time and energy trying to come up with something. How is this helping me learn the subject matter? It's not. Unfortunately, you can ace the quizzes and assignments and still get nailed for not meeting the attendance requirement. Bah. And on that note, I'd better go work out some spectacular postings. Weeeeee!

such a tough life....

It must be so hard to be a cat.... the stress must be overwhelming. You know, with all that being fed and petted, and the responsibility of having to catnap all the time. Poor thing...

Good things...

Ahhhhhh... a completely relaxed day today. Those are my favorites. I ran a couple errands in the early afternoon, after spending a lazy morning with my kids. We rambled through our belongings that are still mostly in a storage unit, pulling out a van full of the things we needed the soonest, and locating those we would come back for in the near future. A trip to the store and a shopping cart-full later, and our new fridge and freezer are stocked up. It's beginning to look a bit more like "home"!

I just finished another relaxing, hot shower in my new bathroom. I have to say, I have been thoroughly enjoying my hot showers! It's so relaxing, and I still get a silly smile when I think that no one else had ever been in my tub before me. It's the little things, I know!

The weather has wavered between horribly windy and raining, and quite nice out. It's been a great day to relax. We were fortunate to have a rain and wind free break while we were out. And the wind and rain only makes us want to snuggle up and relax now that we are home. I'm still broke, still have a million pressures and stressors out there... but for today, I don't care.

Cha… Cha… Changes!

Changes, changes, lots of changes… Definitely changes for the better, I think. There’s a lot of fear and uncertainty with changes, but also some excitement and adventure. There’s a potential for great things to happen as a result. I’m sure hoping for that.

The past years have been tough. Tough on me, and tough on my kids. Twelve and a half years ago, I married the father of my children. That turned out to be a terrible choice. He is not a horrible person, but had a horrible addiction, and just had no desire to even try to beat it. That resulted in an awful relationship for us and a rotten environment for our children. After trying to stick it out for five years, I realized that things were only getting worse, and not ever going to get better on the path we were on. My boys were old enough at that point that they were being impacted by the environment, and I was early in my pregnancy with our daughter, who would suffer the same fate. The final straw was the early morning that he came back to the friends’ house we were staying at, after being out drinking away his entire paycheck all weekend, and tried to steal the small amount of babysitting money I had in my purse because he needed gas. I was paid once a month for babysitting my friends’ children, and relied on that money alone to provide for my 2 and 4 year old sons. He worked full time, but had developed a routine of disappearing Friday nights with his paycheck, and returning penniless on Monday mornings to shower and change for work. For whatever reason, I just knew he was going to try to take my car when he needed gas that morning. I took the security tag out of it, so it wouldn’t start. I had never done that before, but just had a feeling I had better do so. Sure enough, he discovered the car wouldn’t start, and that the gas tank was full. He came into the bedroom I was sleeping in and searched for the purse I had hidden in a dresser drawer. I confronted him, and an argument ensued. At some point, he began to go for the dresser drawers, and I moved to block him from getting to the dresser. During this, he managed to shove me down to the floor. My friend came up the stairs upon hearing the argument begin and witnessed this. She yelled at him and told him he had to leave their home and not return. For the record, I was not injured, and I wholeheartedly do not believe it was an intentional act of violence on his part. He was just struggling over the dresser drawer. That doesn’t, however, make it right. It was the last straw. And I guess I was relieved. I remember my friends saying weeks later that they couldn’t believe how well I was taking things. I never cried. One friend said to the other that she knew at some point I was going to snap, and become an emotional wreck. I was about 4 months pregnant at the time, unemployed, going to school full time, staying with friends, and now a single parent… yet I was not devastated. This had been a long time coming. He’d been gone on weekends for some time by then. He’d also been staying out after work during the week until after bar time, then coming home to pass out until time to get ready to go back to work. My boys had spent months with only seeing him on rare occasions by that point. I had essentially been a single parent for quite some time already. Years of emotional abuse, and never knowing what the next moment would bring were over. I still didn’t know what the future was going to hold, but I knew it wasn’t going to involve the uncertainty of never knowing what reaction I was going to get from an alcoholic.

I moved into a townhouse with a good friend who was also a newly single parent. Things seemed to be looking up. Then I made a terrible choice. I blame it on pregnancy hormones now, and the emotional disaster that I really had allowed myself to become. Realistically though, I just wasn’t smart. I should have focused on becoming the person I needed to be, the person my children needed. But when you’re down and out, and someone pays the slightest bit of attention to you, it’s easy to get caught up in the moment. I’ve been told that “sometimes things just happen when you’re desperate and lonely.” I guess it applied in this situation. I jumped into a relationship with someone that I had known for years. Unfortunately, they were not good years. He was a friend of my brother, and the father of a child I babysat as a toddler. I knew firsthand that he had a toxic relationship with his wife, and that they had a relationship long history of being off-again, on-again. I also knew he was a chronic cheater, and had never been faithful to anyone ever. But he was just so nice. And charming. And he paid attention to me. Common sense went out the window, and I dove in without looking first. The next five years were the best and worst of my life. Honestly, the happy times were the happiest I have ever been. I had everything I ever wanted. Between us, we had 5 great kids. He was there from before my daughter was born, and she adored him. She called him Daddy and she had him wrapped around her little finger. My boys had no relationship with their father for the majority of this time, so they looked to him as a father figure as well. His ex was basically a waste of human skin, and a part-time parent at best, so I considered his boys as my own. She provided literally ZERO financial support, and next to no emotional support over the years we were together. Unfortunately, even being only a part-time person in her children’s lives, she managed to be a full time pain in my tuckus. She would spiral into our lives like a tornado, and disrupt everything whenever she was around. Then she would disappear, leaving chaos in her wake. He boys suffered as a result of her negligence and lack of parenting abilities. I remember B telling the Childhood Ministries Director at church “My mom doesn’t love me. I don’t know why she doesn’t love me. Fan’s not my real mom, but she’s my mom.” It broke my heart. Unfortunately, no matter what problems she inflicted on those boys, she always had the upper hand and got her way. J refused to ever stand up to her or make her become a responsible parent. Of course, this may have been due, in some part, to the fact that he had continued to sleep with her during the course of our relationship. Not only would standing up to her potentially interfere with that, but she had the upper hand because she had something to hold over him as well. Stupid. Stupid. It didn’t stop there. He cheated more times than I have desire or time to recount. Suffice it to say, there were multiple times and multiple women he chased when I wasn’t looking. Outside of all that though, I had everything I wanted. I worked part-time, and homeschooled my kids. I got his boys to and from school, played room mom to them, and went on the field trips and to the parties. I signed all the permission slips and went to conferences. I was the full time parent to all of our children, just like I always wanted. We had a house with a huge yard, in a great neighborhood, and we bought everything we wanted. He had all the toys he wanted, and I never lacked for anything. I was content and happy with our family. Obviously I was the only one. During the last year of our relationship he stalked and sought out a number of girls in an effort to pursue a relationship. This was, of course, without sharing any of his displeasure with me. In fact the very day I had lunch with a friend and had gathered all the information for the trip to Mexico I was planning for the two of us, I came home to email the information to him, only to find an EMAIL from him telling me he was leaving. I wasn’t even worth telling me to my face. By this point, he had already been in a relationship for quite some time with his new girlfriend. That was just true to his form, though. He never left a relationship until he was established in another. He lied to his ex when we started dated, and strung her along for quite some time, telling her we were not dating for months. They were even separated, yet he kept her strung along regardless. Presumably, he was making sure that we were going to work out before he cut ties with her again. I should not have been surprised that he did the same to me. Hindsight is always 20/20 though. I was beyond devastated. I do not have words. I’m still devastated. I probably always will be. I don’t know what hurt the most about it all. There was just so much. Aside from my own broken heart, I had to deal with the consequences as the related to my children. My children lost a father, as well as two brothers. I lost two sons. During this time, he continued to lie to me and my children. For the months it took him to actually move out, he told my children he would be around, and would still see them and spend time with them. He told my boys he would still take them to Tae Kwon Do. He told my daughter he was still going to be her Daddy. Everything was a lie. He left and never looked back. He never even once called, or tried to contact them, or ask how they were doing. After my kids sent him letters and pictures (10 months later), he and the boys sent a letter back to them, but that was it. Never a response after that, never anything he initiated, never asking to see them or asking if they were ok. Not a single day goes by to this day that they are not mentioned. Not a single day goes by that someone doesn’t ask about them. My daughter asks for him every day. She writes him letters and draws him pictures, and begs to have his phone number so she can call him and ask why he doesn’t love her. How do you fix that? I don’t know. He could have made all of this better, but he chose to make it as absolutely painful as possible. Up to, and even beyond, the last day until he left, he deliberately made choices that made it as painful and difficult as possible. He did this knowing it was going to destroy me, and my children. And yet, we all continued to love him.

Of all the mistakes in my life, being a single parent is the biggest “failure” that I count. Of all the things in life that I swore I would never be, a single parent was at the top of the list. That is just not the life I wanted for me or my children. And yet, I was foolish enough to make the terrible choices that put me back in that category twice. I allowed my children to be hurt again. That is the burden I am going to have to carry with me.

On to the changes…. Since J and the boys have left, we have had such turmoil. We continued to live in the same house anyway, which greatly irritated him. Apparently he wanted me to run off and curl up in a hole somewhere, since he was leaving. I figured my kids were losing enough; they were not going to lose their home too. Plus, I loved the location and neighborhood. I didn’t want to lose that on top of everything else I was losing. A year and a half later, we have put it all behind us, and have just moved to a new place. It was a painful move, yet also freeing. We had so many memories, good and bad at that place. I have been held in limbo and just emotionally stagnant the entire time. My emotional state has basically been a black hole. I’ve been living, and mostly functioning, but just barely. For the first time, I feel like maybe, just maybe, I can move on. I don’t know whether that will happen, but I sure hope so. It has been a hellacious move. Being a single parent truly sucks. Whoever said women can do anything is a fool. I cannot, nor do not WANT, to do everything. I much prefer being the partner, and not the sole leader. I definitely missed having someone there to help, to tell me what to do, to make sure it gets done. But we did it. We are in our new place, and it is great. The kids are happier about it than they thought. I am happier than I thought. I had horrible reservations at first, and was really not happy with the idea at all initially. But we are in a brand spanking new place, never been lived in. It’s hard to be unhappy when you look around that that! The kids were met by neighborhood kids the very first day. They have traded cell phone numbers, and made some new best friends. I actually WANT to do things around here. We don’t even have the furniture all in yet, as I’m still hoping for some muscle bound men to help with that part. But I have been planning on what is going to be placed where. The fog of depression is beginning to thin a bit, and I dare say I may actually CARE about something! Things are not over. Things are not miraculously fixed. But for the first time in a long time, I think that the changes in our life are going to work out for the best. We are no longer surrounded by the ghosts of what is lost, but moving forward into making a new future of whatever we want it to be. It’s not always going to be easy. We are still struggling with the loss, and the hurt, and the fact that each of us was just tossed aside and forgotten. For the first time though, it seems like maybe changes aren’t always for the worse.