A Letter to a Younger Me

Dear 18-year-old me,

The whole world is in front of you. I am so proud of the person you will become. You are stronger and braver than you know. Eventually, the world will catch up to your way of thinking.

You were never meant to be in a small pond, so be courageous enough to be a small fish in the big sea.

First, you will someday want to be the weight you were when you thought you were fat.

I know how much you wanted to travel, throw everything in your car and drive. That the fear of leaving your mother forced you to stay. I know that you feel that you are your mother’s keeper. You are not responsible for her choices or her wounds; she can survive without you. Although, It will take another 18 years for you to learn that. It never should have been your responsibility to heal her.

Your sister will always struggle with her addiction. Your relationship will only be close as long as she can use you. Her addiction is not your fault, no matter how much she will try to blame you.

Your dad’s other daughter will try to connect with you out of a sense of “family.” You will never be able to undo her mother’s stories about your existence. She will always believe she is better than you. She is not and will not bring you closer to your father.

You will get married young and become a mother too young. You will get stretchmarks, and hate being pregnant. You will feel like a failure many times. Motherhood is not a job for the faint of hearts. You will want to give up and feel unbelievable guilt.

Your children will be just as unique as you are and become amazing people.

You will make it to college and discover yourself in that process.

You will stay married for your kids longer than you should have, but you will, with grace, end that marriage.

The grace you carry will help you negative the shitty family members you choose in this lifetime. This is your superpower!

Unfortunately, you will be attracted to the same characteristic of your uncles and mom. Do not be horrified. What did you expect? They are your role models. Go to therapy and learn to deal with this.

Set boundaries.

Take adventures.

Lean into fear is not as scarier as it is in your head.

Spend more time with the family you do like, as some of them will die way too soon, and you wish you had done more.

Stop protecting everyone’s feelings at the expense of your own.

Stand your ground and stick to your boundaries; it’s not selfish.

Have sex a lot of it; it doesn’t make you a slut or a whore. Fuck anyone who will say that it does!

Your strength and independence will attract many men who will try to break you.

Yes, one or two will.

Reminder: Do NOT ever date a Republican, a Farmer, or a hunter.

You don’t deserve to be treated as if you are less than others because you are a woman; give those men a reason to fear you, not the other way around.

Keep picking yourself up; all the mistakes, missteps, and setbacks will make you wiser.

Most of all, be kind to yourself; you are loveable.

Love from your 42 year old self.

Mothering when it’s hard

Parenting over the last few months has been fucking shit show.

I am so grateful for how well A and R are coping,understanding how sometimes B just needs all of the attention and its depleting. The are both in therapy as we try to navigate letting R come back to live with us.

I am 100% a giver in situations… work from 8-5 had 100% of the attention

Art 100%

My kids 100%

I am present in the moment.

But this has not been the case for months and it’s exhausting when you feel completely out of balance and question every choice….

They all seem paralyzing.

Lately it’s been 75% B and 25% life, which sometimes divides into the negatives.

Every scenario I can come up comprises one or two of my children….

When B went to live with his dad and despite the overwhelming guilt, it was also a relief…

… Time for me to heal some wounds still left over from my marriage that B insisted on keeping open, time to give A and R peace and a chance to feel safe in their own home again. We had all been living on edge for over a year.

There was/is so much contempt in B’s eyes. The thing I regret the most was giving him permission to blame me for the divorce. He so desperately needed someone to blame, and couldn’t accept that his dad and I were both at fault. I was desperate for the turmoil to stop. He took that as permission to blame me for everything.

When his action over living with dad became uncontrollable angry and even rage and nothing worked I gave in and let him go. 

My struggle over the whole thing was a losing one regardless of the choice. He would use it against me later and tell me I chose his brother over him because I loved them more. And if kept with me, I wasn’t giving him enough time with his dad and he would continue to consume all of my energy and time with angry and rage.

The only moments he was ever happy was when it was just him and he got all of the attention when we were doing exactly what he wanted, but he wasn’t five year anymore and I have two other children that also need my attention.

Family games never end well, unless he could win and would end in an argument with hurt feelings.

After he left.  I tried in the only ways I could by making sure he stayed on track with school.  I was met with the phrase “get out of my life.”   My present made him worse…. As his grades and attendance continued to drop. When I stepped back for a few months. I was told he was doing better, but the reality was he was spinning even more out of control.

He was telling his dad everything his dad wanted to hear.

And his dad was telling me what he wanted to believe.

I can smell the bullshit a mile away. I have always had to be the bad cop with B his entire life.  I have tried to teach him empathy and remorse. I had tried to explain to him that honesty is the best policy, which he then only uses to be mean.  I had tried to teach him about cause and effect, being accountable not just for the bad but also the good. That all actions have consequences.

He wants a clean slate after instead of dealing with the cause and effect.

Now he wants to come home… this should be a good thing right.I should celebrate that my son wants to come home and he sees that I have always been there for him.

It shouldn’t make me lose my breath in fear… because nothing has changed between us let alone his brothers. He has as recently as last week threw a milk a container filled with water over the bathroom stall at A.

We have been working for months on getting him to a place where I felt like if he moved home. I would have my family back, but it doesn’t feel that way.

It creates this fire inside of me that is so filled with emotions that we don’t talk about as mothers, because a mother’s love is unconditional and mothers hold her children lovingly with an unbreakable bond.

B has pushed me away for four years… he only has come back because his dad kicked him out.  B won’t follow his rules and kept lying.  His cries for attention are worse than ever and I have tried to help get it all under control yet the thought of him moving in feels like a dark cloud over my home… and he is my son.

These feelings and thoughts all make me feel like a bad mom…. They are covered in overwhelming mom guilt.

I love him and know that he is hurting, and that there is something wrong. B is in therapy and it is helping  slowly, very slowly. He is  making some progress with showing up more consistently at school,yet we have not really touched the surface of what is causing all of this behavior. Deep down I feel like time is running out. He will be 18 went he starts his senior year… if he makes the grades to become a senior.

However, he is still trying to feed me the bullshit and will say you don’t get to tell me what do. He makes his own choices. This is usually after we have made a plan of action and he chose to do his own thing than doesn’t want to face the consequence for not following the plan.

I feel If I don’t’ regain control of him by the time he turns 18, I never will and  a part of me will have failed.

That doesn’t mean I will give up, but battle changes and it will get harder.  His current cries for help are dismissed because of his age… 17 caught between I want to be a man and still being a child. Yet there will be heavier consequence, if he continues on this path that I am so desperately trying to steer him away from.

Shaky Hands and Clenched Fists

The public beach was closing when I saw him walking down the path toward me and the beach. I stared at him in disbelief. This was my spot this was where I take my children. It’s where I recharge my energy, disconnect from the city, and reconnect to nature.

Is that really him…

Yes, it really fucking him.

In that moment, I have never wanted to cause someone physical pain as much I imaged about him.  As I glared at him and watched several violent scenarios play out in my head.

Somewhere in the background was reality and I hear “A” say, “MOM!”

Remembering that there were children everywhere, including my own children regardless of how much I want to punch this fucking coward. I couldn’t.

“A”, my middle child, had pulled me out of my vicious thoughts and saw this man, realizing why I was frantically packing up our beach stuff. I knew that no matter the amount of pain I wanted to cause him it would not be worth the consequences.

I told my children, who needed to collect their floats, that I had to go to the truck right now. “A” nodded and said they could grab the rest.

My hands were shaking as I pull my keys out and unlocked the truck. We were still going to have deflate the 6ft floaties to be able to leave. Yet, all I wanted to do was walk over and kick this man in the back of the knee and watch him fall or just fucking drive a way.

Driving away first was not an opinion. We absolutely could not get the floaties in the car without letting out most of the air of them. Although I had put some effort into trying to just shove them in the truck without much success.

We watched him walk away and head toward the camp grounds, “R” said, “Mom you okay?”

I said, “I will be, but we just need to go.”

He said, “I know mom, we will.”

“A” told me that the coward watched me walk off the beach and whisper something the others that he was with. “A” who is the sweetest and most forgive teenager said, “I wanted to punch him for looking at you.”

We laughed, and I said, “Fuck that guy, this was great a day!”

We drove home listen to powerful women singing about not needing a man. I hung out with friends who have been so supportive and truly seem to understand the extent of what this man has done to me for far too long and truly are the best thing that has come out of all of this.

I went to bed later than normal still angryish, which is not a place I like to be… yet I know that the angry I feel for him is so strong because of the love I thought he and I had.… I believed him and I opened heart and he let some else stomp on it for him.

I fell asleep thinking the common phrase that is said when his name is mentioned…

Fuck that guy!

At 4 am this morning. I woke up and my hands hurt so bad you would have thought that I had actually used them as weapons. I had slept most of the night with my hands clenched in fists.

They throbbed and ached to point that I could not fall back to sleep. I got up rubbed some icy/hot on them.

I pulled out my Louise Hay book and read the following:

Hands:  Hold and handle. Clutch and grip. Grasping and letting go. Caressing. Pinching. All ways of dealing with experiences.

Affirmation: I chose to handle all my experiences with love and with joy and with ease.

Arthritic Fingers – A desire to punish. Blame. Feeling victimized.

Affirmation: I see with love and understanding. I hold all my experiences up to the light of love.

ARTHRITIS: Feeling unloved, criticism, resentment.

Affirmation: I am love. I now choose to love and approve of myself. I see others with love.

I know I should release this angry that I feel towards this man.  I have let him go repeatedly with this peacefully wish. Even this time despite my hurt and the angry I felt towards myself for being the fool for believing in him.

I simply continued my path, the one that was set into motion long before him.

I didn’t expect to be that angry when/if I saw him again, but I was.  I probably will be for a while…. And as much I should repeat these affirmations because I know they work, I am not ready to release him with love and peace; for now….

FUCK THAT GUY!

The Fool and The Devil

This time was for me. Despite, knowing that there are people that going to say I deserve it.

Trust me there are parts of me that feels like I did.

The laws of Karma, right. I accept this as a Karmic lesson that I planned.

I am very good at putting the blame back on myself. I made choices. I knew what I was getting into. I know who he is, and I fell in love him repeatedly. I would just get to this place of moving forward and I’d let him pull me back in again and again. I was a willing participant.

I responded to his message “I’m single” and I let him back into heart and my life, way too fast and way to soon. I wanted to lead with heart this time; not with my brain or vagina.

I believed in the words that he was saying to me and for the first couple of months they were full of action.  Although, there were moments that I felt like what I was saying was not be heard, it out weighted the way my heart felt. The way he looked at me and told me it was always me. When he stopped the car in the middle of the street and told me he wanted to marry me. I said, “Fuck you, drive” He pleaded with how serious he was, and I bought into it.

The memories of the first time he said, “I love you.” rushed back to me.

Unconditional love or…

As things continued to get serious, I started recognizing patterns of the past. Actions that were all too familiar. Abruptly as if it was switch he was able to turn off, his words were empty of action and short in explanation. His fuse was shorter, and everything was my fault.

“U need to chill” was suddenly his response.

I carried the blame and faults during my entire marriage, and this was the road he and I were headed. It was NOT a road I wanted to go down again.

Despite of his faults, I wanted this to be real. I wanted the world to see that man I fell in love with in private. That there was this whole other part of this man and I was lucky enough to see. I have thought many things about this man that I love, and in time I will be able to say loved; but I never thought he was a coward. Now, I do.

It didn’t have to end that way it did.

Because of that event I will not let him into heart or my life ever again. Because now it feels like a cruel game and I release myself from this torture. I am tired of the energy. This relationship was once sexually freeing is now so wrapped in games and lies.

It doesn’t even matter if any of it was real.

Again, I was starting to feel like a secret, a place for him to escape.

I spent most of my life feeling like the rooms were full things left unsaid and unfelt.

I felt like my dad’s family treated me like secret child.  I have kept silent about both my abuse as a child and an adult. I continue to put myself in these situations to be mistreated over and over again, to repeat this cycle of torture.

During my divorce, as way to help me cope with the actions of my ex, my therapist gave this phrase: “We do what we know”

She never meant for me to unpack my acceptance in that phrase but to better help me understand why others can’t move past their choices.

I chose to unpack here. I chose to not only use this phrase to justify the behaviors of others, but I used it to justify my own.  I realize now that I let him keep my marital wounds open. For all the old secrets that he reminded me off, the ones I had healed. I let them become real again. I let myself be convinced that this was how it was because this is what I knew, it was familiar.

But if I know better than I can chose to do the unknown.

I used this phrase as excuse not to publish because the groups of people that once cherished made me feel wrong in the things that felt.  I let others convince me that my writing and art was done out of loneliness, even though at the time I didn’t feel lonely.

Emotional and vulnerable, yes.

I felt misunderstood.

For the recorded I am not lonely. I want to surround myself with people who embrace me for the unique way I see and feel the world even if it appears foolish in the end.  Because it’s okay to have loved and to have tried.

There are not a lot of things I need but I needed to give him this chance. I needed to feel it and I needed to know.

I accept my role as the fool, but I am also the lover, the empress, the magician, the healer, the artist, and the writer.

He was able to see all of those in me, but he was only able to burn the fool. The rest remains intact.

I will no longer participate in his wicked game.

Game over.

 

The Roller Coaster of Writing.

I have written dozens of short stories, poetry, and blog pieces. All through college we had groups of readers that would give feedback. Advising the writer on things that worked well and things that didn’t. Not having a steady group of readers, to help with feedback creates a whole new set of challenges. However, I have mange to muddle through writing without them.

At the end of 2016, the day after my 36^th birthday, I was presented with the opportunity to write an actually book. I have degree in creative writing, so it felt like it should be a no brainer, but it was both exciting and terrifying

What would I write about?

Our first couple of meetings were brain storming. I could simply dust off a couple of older long short stories that I had written in college. However, there was a subject that I had briefly touch on my other blog, that she was intrigued by.

I laughed into the phone nervously and said, “Well, I’ve always said someday I would write a book about the adventure, but really who wants to hear about that. Beside I don’t have an ending.”

We agreed that I should re-read the old stories, and she courage me start writing about my adventure, just to see how it made me feel. I started to writing and the words started to pour out of me, and within days of this conversation the adventure came to an actually end.

It felt like the universe was pushing me to tell this story, this adventure that I had jokingly said I would about write someday.

I have written for hours through the memories and moments that had caused me joy, confusion, and pain. I have changed names, dates, and locations turning it into a work of fiction. I have taken breaks from the story, and worked on different projects. I have had periods where I thought of giving up, because I was too emotionally connected. I have thrown a 60 page draft at the door of my studio. Screaming “I’m over this!”

I have burned rough drafts while I declared I was giving up and would tell a different story.

I started in January of 2017 over the months, I watched the story grow and shrink. I cut paragraphs and even pages. I moved flashbacks forward and back again. I sat in the warm sun and under the moon writing. I watched the season change with my story. By November, I finally had the ending. I had the story complete and now it was time to let others read it. It was time share my story.

I needed fresh points of views. Two out of my original four readers came through. Their grammar edits and comments raved over my “voice”, but I still couldn’t move forward. I was afraid that by opening up this story again. I would get sucked back into the nostalgic parts of the reality in which this story stemmed from.

I painted and worked on other creative projects. I knew that the March’s full moon cycle was going to be about writing. I completed my painted and sat with my story, slowly making grammar edits. I was now past my personal deadline for this book and need to move forward or completely abandoned it.

However, this unfinished version was driving me crazy, this had been a year of my life, it involved sweat, tears, blood, and joy.

Was I really willing to walk away out of fear of back sliding?

FUCK NO!

I sat in my room for 15 hours, editing and rewriting sections of my story, to give clarity to my readers. I was finally satisfy and ready for two more beta readers.

Now, I wait “patiently” for their developmental feedback.

This journey has been just as emotional and exciting as the actually adventure was. Even when I want to give up, I’m grateful for my friends, my mom and my writing coach who have all reminded me that it’s a story that should be told and my voice effortlessly tells it.