Life is short. Enjoy it!

I needed a break from myself. I'll update my 'confusion' tomorrow after seeing how my date with Eduardo #2 goes tonight.

In the mean time, I got this in my email this morning:

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, "How heavy is this glass of water?"
Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g.

The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on. "

"As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden."

"So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can."

So, my friend, why not take a while to just simply RELAX. Put down anything that may be a burden to you right now. Don't pick it up again until after you've rested a while.

Life is short.

Enjoy it!

This is the land of confusion #2

It never really had a chance
We'd never really make it through
I never think I'd believed
I believed I could get better with you
- Love is not enough by NIN

One of the things I find most troubling is how my view of love has changed. For many years, my picture was in the dictionary next to 'optimistic' with the title Pollyanna underneath. Have you seen the Friends episode of the day when Monica and Chandler are getting married? You first see Monica running in her pajamas out of her bedroom screaming 'I'm getting married today!" She, of course, falls flat on her face, bounces back up and screams, "I think I just cracked a rib but I don't care because today's my wedding day!" Yep, that was me.

I was madly in love and awoke 3 hours earlier then I needed to feeling like a little kid on Christmas morning. Despite the stress of the wedding itself (when do things ever go as planned?) it was beautiful and any time I started to get a wee bit stressed, my loving husband took me aside to hold me in his arms and calm me down.

Late that night, in our honeymoon suite, still glowing, hair still done up, sexy flowing lingerie, I climbed into bed next to this wonderful man of mine. As I snuggled up beside him, he rolled over, looked me in the eye, and said, "Oh my God. We got married. What the fuck did we do that for?"

**************************************************

The Boy and I had an interesting discussion last Friday night. This was before all of the Saturday bullshit, so I believe he was speaking honestly rather then out of anger. Anyway, I was letting him know that I had a date planned for Thursday; not with Eduardo but with Eduardo #2. Yes, I know that you guys aren't aware of the existence of Eduardo #2, but I'll need to save that for another installment of Fauve's Fucked Up Life. And The Boy wasn't aware of the existence of Eduardo #2 either so he, of course, started asking questions. And I told him. He's almost exactly like Eduardo #1 with the exception of being a few years older. They are both attractive, fun, well-educated (both are working on their doctorates), and well off financially. The Boy said to me, "How did you wind up with dad when you can obviously do so much better?"

Smart kid, eh?

Yes, smart he is…wise in the ways of love? No. You can't help who you fall in love with, I told him. At least, that's what I always thought to be true. There were many differences between The Paperweight and I. He was not the 'man of my dreams' as far as, well, external stuff (money, degrees, etc.). He just was who he was and I fell in love with him. And I, being the young naïve thing I was, truly believed that love was enough. Love conquers all. And as long as we had each other….yada yada yada.

I have since, and quite roughly, grown up.
And I hate it. I hate that I no longer believe. I hate that I've lost the magic of love. I hate that I no longer believe in 'true love'. I hate that I've come to not trust my feelings. I hate that I've come to believe that those feelings don't really exist. I hate that I've become cynical regarding the power of love. I hate...that I hate. Perhaps The Boy is right; that I can do so much better. But I ask myself, why? I know that I can care. I know that I can feel sexual attraction. But love?

This is the land of confusion #1

So much to say, so much on my mind, and I have no idea how or when it will come out. A lot of things going on in my world, some good, some bad, some drama, some sex…this will probably be done in multiple posts (hence the numbered title) because it's too much for me to deal with at one time (plus you all would be bored to tears). But at the moment I am writing this, I have no idea how I'm going to split this up. I'm just going to continue to type and what needs to come out will come out.

The Boy is home. I picked him up Friday afternoon after a week away at football camp. He seems much larger to me now. And much older. He also had a second scrimmage Saturday afternoon in which he did wonderfully well. And that's not just mom-speak, he really did. At his size, he's bound to stand up well, but this weekend he had the 'aggression' that he lacked at the first scrimmage. This was mostly do to the fact that he want to 'beat the living shit' out of his dad but his dad wasn't around so he took it out on some poor kid on the other team.

The Paperweight offered to come stay with The Girl Saturday morning so that I could attend the scrimmage without her. She bores easily and it was very far away, so we assumed this would be the easiest thing for everyone involved. And, mind you, this was The Paperweights idea. So he arrives at my house very early Saturday morning because The Boy and I had to leave at 7:30 am. The Girl was up eating breakfast while we were getting ready.

Okay, let me pause here for a second to add some additional info. The Girl is an extremely picky eater. If she had her way, she'd eat peanut butter sandwiches, man 'n cheese, and junk food. That's it. I, of course, do not buy candy or any other junk food. The worst we have is microwave popcorn. And even that is low butter and the little snack bags not the regular size bags. I figure, if it's not there, no one can eat it. I'm also not an argumentative kind of parent. I'm the type of mom who says 'this is what we are having for dinner'. The Girl says 'ew yuck I don't want that.' I say, 'then I guess you'll go hungry.' And that's the end of that. If she eats, fine. If she doesn't eat, fine. When she gets hungry enough, she'll eat. It always happens, so I just leave the food there and as soon as she realizes that she's really not getting anything else, she'll eat whatever I gave her.

The Paperweight says, 'what do you want for dinner?' she says 'cheese curls' he says, 'okay' and stops at the store to buy her cheese curls.
Swear. To. God.
I've seen it happen.
Repeatedly.
Know what he got her for her fourth birthday? He arrived at her party with one of those gift bags that held one new dvd and the rest was filled with candy. Anyway, this has been an ongoing problem since practically birth, but it's gotten worse since he moved out. He feels extremely guilty (which he should) so if The Girl says Jump, The Paperweight says How high?

Bored to tears yet?
Back to my house Saturday morning. The Girl is sitting in front of her breakfast consisting of a bowl of Kix and a glass of apple juice. She has taken exactly two bites in the last 20 minutes. She's waiting to make sure I'm really not going to give her the Gummi Bears that she has requested for breakfast. As I'm rushing around with The Boy, I hear the Paperweight say to The Girl "Are you done with this?" She, of course, says "Yes". So he takes it to dump it out. I immediately say, "Don't do that. She still needs to eat."

What followed next, you probably won't believe. I only do 1) because I was there and 2) I've lived this scene many times.

The Paperweight flipped the fuck out. Literally. In every sense of the phrase. And within 15 minutes of the breakfast conversation, I had had to throw him (literally, Thank God for Taebo!) out of my house because he had gotten worked up to the point that he had threatened to kill me. Out he was, front door locked, I told him to go cool his head off before he did something even more stupid. I go to check on The Girl and asked if she was okay. Her response was "Yeah. Why is daddy being mean?" (btw, how the hell do you answer a question like that?!?!) So what does The Paperweight do? Calm down and quit scaring the shit out of his kids? Hell, no. He walks around to my back patio and stands in front of the sliding glass doors so that I can see him. He points at me, says 'I'm going to get you', then makes the little finger-across-the-neck-slit-your-throat motion, then walks away.

Over a bowl of cereal.

It may or may not surprise you to know that this did not bother me all that much. I was terribly upset that this got started because I had honestly hoped that after having lived without him for 8 months that I was finally going to be done with this shit. I was terribly upset that my 4 yr old had seen the beginnings of this before I sent her off to her room. But the death threats? Didn't bother me at all. If I got upset and scared every time The Paperweight threatened to kill me….well, I would have died of fright years ago. Besides, I once had this man bend me over my living room couch and put a gun to the back of my head because I was 2 hours late coming home one night. I don't scare easily any more.

I flipped the bird towards the sliding glass door where The Paperweight had stood and turned to track down the kids and make sure they were okay. This is when I noticed, for the first time, that The Boy was in the corner of the dining room off to my right. He had heard every word his father had said. He had seen the slit-your-throat motion.

Yeah. Fuck.

The Boy came and stood directly in front of me and said, "If he lays one finger on you, you tell me and I'll beat the living shit out of him." Then he bent over, all 6'-1" of him, put his arms around me, put his head on my shoulder….and sobbed.

And I honestly believe, may God forgive my soul, that if The Paperweight had come back to my house at that moment, I would have killed him. Since I've been on my own for the last 8 months, The Paperweight isn't the only one to have a gun anymore. And I swear, I would have killed him.

I have discovered:

That having more food in my fridge, means having more food spoil before it is eaten requiring me to clean said fridge, which is a fate worse then scrubbing toilets.

That having one less person to clean up after, run errand fors, and/or pick-up from practice leaves me a ton of free time; which means I actually have to exercise after work since I no longer have an excuse not to.

That I can do one load of laundry every two days instead of two loads of laundry every day. Though when I am throwing that single load into the washer, there is no one leaning up against the laundry room door asking if they can help.

That The Girl can go about her evening in blissful peace away from the teasing, poking, tormenting reach of her arch-nemesis. Eliminating the need for me to repeat the phrase 'leave her alone' my standard 1,012 times each day. It also requires a lot of extra cuddles at bedtime when she stresses about where 'her Boy' is and when he is coming home.

I have discovered that life without The Boy is very clean...very quiet...

and very boring.

Too tired to think

but not to laugh...

Look how they massacred my boy

Yes, this week was the beginning of The Boy's first football camp. Day camp all this week - 7am to at least 6:30pm. Scrimmage Saturday Morning, then he leaves Sunday morning for 6 days at an away football camp. This being The Boy's first year, neither of us were sure of what to expect. Monday's practice went until 7:30pm. Yep. 12 1/2 hours of practice.

The Girl and I watched the last hour from the side lines of the practice field. [one question: what the hell are they putting in the water these days?!?! At 15 yrs-3 months old, The Boy stands at 6'-1" and, after a summer of 4 day-a-week 'conditioning', a muscular 195lbs. Yet, he looked like a toddler compared to some of the other players.] I was in awe of him. I've known pride before, but not like this. After 12 hours of practice on a sunny humid 86 degree day, The Boy not only continued to run sprints, but was at the head of the pack.

The Girl and I waited for him by the car while he walked from the practice fields to the locker rooms to grab his extra gear and duffle bag. When I saw him approach, I got out of the car so he could see where I was parked…and my jaw dropped. The filth covering both his arms from his shoulders to his wrists that I had seen from the sidelines, wasn't filth. It was blood and bruise and skin rubbed raw.

He didn't say much, just sank back in his exhaustion, only asked if I'd please stop for a milkshake.
I bought him two.
When we got home, I put The Girl in bed and attended to The Boy. He showered and stretched out on his bed while I brought him some Tylenol, ice packs and all the IcyHot I could find. He told me about his practice as I rubbed down his knees and put antibiotic cream on his wounds. We ended up talking for two hours.

This child of mine. This man-child. Struggling to be want he wants to be and become who he was meant to be. He's occasionally unsure of himself, sometimes exhausted by the effort required, and sometimes...just sometimes...made to bleed. And this boy, The Boy, my boy…wakes up the next day and does it all again.

My thoughts for the day

Why can't they make a thesaurus that just tells you the right word? But noooooo, I have to think of a word first. What good is that? If I could think of the right word, I wouldn't need the damn thesaurus in the first place...

Okay, okay. I can do better then that. From my email this morning:

Today's thought is:
Responsibility for Family Members

I can still remember my mother clutching her heart, threatening to have a heart attack and die, and blaming it on me.
--Anonymous

For some of us, the idea that we were responsible for other people's feelings had its roots in childhood and was established by members of our nuclear family. We may have been told that we made our mother or father miserable, leading directly to the idea that we were also responsible for making them happy. The idea that we are responsible for our parents' happiness or misery can instill exaggerated feelings of power and guilt in us.

We do not have this kind of power over our parents - over their feelings, or over the course of their lives. We do not have to allow them to have this kind of power over us.

Our parents did the best they could. But we still do not have to accept one belief from them that is not a healthy belief. They may be our parents, but they are not always right. We do not have to allow their destructive beliefs to control our feelings, our behaviors, our life, or us.

Today, I will begin the process of setting myself free from any self-defeating beliefs my parents passed on to me. I will strive for appropriate ideas and boundaries concerning how much power and how much responsibility I can actually have in my relationship with my parents.

Ain't that some profound shit?

"Sometimes the times when you don't know what you're doing is when you make the greatest discoveries about yourself."

I found this in my email this morning. This is probably the most accurate statement that can be made about the last 8 months. Some others that I've come across recently:

"I have learned that the worst thing in the world is not being alone; it is being where you don't want to be. Sure, I get lonely and depressed, but that was true when I was married, too. The last six months of my marriage were the lonliest of my entire life. Living alone is not half bad when compared to living alone with someone else."

Even if the most important person in your world rejects you, you are still real, and you are still okay. --Codependent No More

"You will survive, but it is wading through the crud that is so difficult. Your boots get stuck once in a while and you look back on the path that you were on, thinking to yourself that at least you know the way back. All of it is hard, but it is not fruitless. Through all of this you become a better person, stronger, more alive and you know for damn sure what you want out of life."

Can I have a big Amen?!?!
A girlfriend of mine sent me this recently:

"After all, it was he who ultimately couldn't take the stress, not you, so you can face whatever comes, bad days and all."

And no, I'm not having a bad day. In fact, quite the opposite. It was on the drive home yesterday that I realized what the strange feeling was that I was experiencing...contentment. I was content. I'm not skipping through life singing a happy tune. Not yet anyway. But I am content. Of the few things in life or about my life that I would like that I don't already have, I am well on my way to achieving. I have hope.

Foolish Games

I realize that I've never introduced you to my parents so let me do that now: Blog world these are my parents - Fred and Wilma. Fred and Wilma, this is blog world. How do you do? Pleased to meet ya. Charmed, I'm sure.

One thing I should warn you all about though. Fred and Wilma are crazy. Yep, you heard me right. Flippin' crazy. Fred has been diagnosed so (bi-polar disorder) but refused medication due to the fact that he's "fine, it's just the rest of the world that's fucked up". Wilma, well, her's is a little less obvious in the clinical sense. The Paperweight has said since the day he met her that she's evil. Yes, evil. We almost didn't get married because he wasn't sure he want to be related to her. I don't know if I'd call her evil…but I will say she's flippin' crazy.

I'll try to give you a little background, but I'm going to give you the Reader's Digest very condensed version, though Fred & Wilma probably deserve a blog dedicated to them alone.

Wilma was a nurse but never worked due to being a stay at home mom. They had us four kids in six years plus took in more then 25 foster kids over a ten year period.
Fred worked a lot. Manual labor mostly due to the fact that he was and still is illiterate.
We were very poor and very white trash.
Wilma has been a very conservative Catholic her entire life. The older she has gotten the more conservative she has become. As she entered her 60's she is now dangerously close to, if not already over the line, of what I would call religious mania. Also, as he has gotten older, Fred has begun joining her on this mania ride.
I have never known Fred and Wilma to be happy with their lives or with each other.
Fred and Wilma argue constantly and always have.
Because of all of this, unlike most parents who want their kids to do better then they did, Fred and Wilma are consistently self-serving, jealous, bitter, and will try to make you look and/or feel bad just so they don't feel so bad about their wasted lives.
Fred and Wilma are not at all happy that I filed for (gasp!) divorce.
Fred and Wilma have spent the last two months making snide comments about me, about me getting divorced, comments about how this will screw-up the kids, about how I shouldn't date and if I do date it's only because somebody wants to have sex with me and I'll probably end up pregnant. Comments like "we don't know how or why this has happened but I know it's not our fault because we've stayed married for 37 years." Comments to the effect of how I should be more grateful that Fred is in The Boy's life now that his father has left him…Um, yeah. The Paperweight has his problems (obviously because I'm divorcing him) but he talks to those kids every single day and is an active part of their lives. Not to mention that even on The Paperweight's worst parenting day, he was a better male role model then Fred's white trash bi-polar version of parenting could ever dream of being.

Or the really really short version:
My parents have been saying mean things to me and about me regarding my decision to get divorced.

Well, me being the stand-up-for-myself kind of girl I am, I very constructively asked them on Monday to stop it.
Stop making negative comments about me.
Stop making it sound like my getting divorced is the end of the world.
Accept the fact that I am capable of making my own decisions.
Accept the fact that the kids are happy, I'm happy, even The Paperweight is happy because this was the right thing to do.
I do not need you to save me or the kids because we are fine and The Paperweight is their father and takes an active role in their life.
Quit dangling the fact that you've 'stayed married for 37 years' up in the air because maybe you both would have been happy if you hadn't.
I'm tired of hearing you two argue constantly and bitch to me about the other one and then give me relationship advice all in the same breathe.
Please stop being so negative. It isn't good for the kids to hear and I don't want to hear it either.

Fred and Wilma's reaction? I've been disowned.
They will not be seeing us anymore and they 'hope the kids will understand'. This was after I was informed (via email) that perhaps Fred & Wilma could have been happy but they weren't because of me - I'm the reason why their marriage is so bad. (don't ask me to explain that because I can't. I think she was just trying to hurt me. But I know the difference between real and make-believe so who cares).
This was my response:
"This is your choice. I assumed I could ask my parents to not give me a hard time and that would be okay. If you’d prefer to not see us rather than act appropriately, then that’s okay with me."

I haven't heard from them since.

It was nice. Surreal, but nice.

I had a yard sale this weekend. My attic was dangerously over-flowing so it gave me the opportunity to clean it out while making some money, not to mention getting rid of the stuff The Paperweight left behind (yes, I got it in writing beforehand that this was okay to do). I would say the sale was successful (i.e. my attic is clean) without much effort.

Eduardo knew of the yard sale and had asked if he could 'drop by' hence the coming to my house and meeting my kids. I would say that too was successful (i.e. he thought my kids were adorable and well behaved - duh - and they…well, The Boy's only comment the next day was to ask how old he was because Eduardo has a baby-face. I think The Boy thought I was pulling a Mrs. Robinson. The Girl, who could never remember his name and has spent the last two days referring to him as 'that boy', wants to know when 'that boy' is coming back to play with her again.)

Eduardo showed up at the yard sale about 10am…which was about 10 minutes after The Paperweight showed up, almost 3 hours early.

Um, yeah….

Ironically, they both had the same reaction when I told them each that the other was there…."What do I care?"

The result?

After the introductions and small talk, in which The Paperweight was visibly impressed when asking Eduardo what he did and where he worked etc., they got along fabulously. Yep, I shit you not. The Paperweight joined us at the yard sale where for the next three hours, I sold stuff, The Girl ran around playing in the grass, and The Boy, The Paperweight, and Eduardo formed a triangle with their lawn chairs and discussed everything from work, to books, to music, to movies, to the prices of the items I was selling. I was, of course, a little leery at first, but I was never out of ear shot and soon just quit worrying about it.

The Paperweight has not mentioned it since and I'm not tempting fate by asking. Besides, what would I say? "So, what do you think? Cute, eh? And he's smart too!"

Eduardo has not mentioned The Paperweight either. He did, however, call me last night to tell me how impressed he was with my kids - "They are both very nice and well-mannered. You have done a wonderful job raising them."

You see me smiling all the way over there, can't you?

$20

On their wedding night, the young bride approached her new husband and asked for $20.00 for their first lovemaking encounter. In his highly aroused state, her husband readily agreed.

This scenario was repeated each time they made love, for more than 30 years, with him thinking that it was a cute way for her to afford new clothes and other incidentals that she needed.

Arriving home around noon one day, she was surprised to find her husband in a very drunken state. During the next few minutes, he explained that his employer was going through a process of corporate downsizing, and he had been let go. It was unlikely that, at the age of 59, he'd be able to find another position that paid anywhere near what he'd been earning, and therefore, they were financially ruined.

Calmly, his wife handed him a bank book which showed more than thirty years of steady deposits and interest totaling nearly$1 million. Then she showed him certificates of deposits issued by the bank which were worth over $2 million, and informed him that they were one of the largest depositors in the bank.

She explained that for the more than three decades she had "charged" him for sex, these holdings had multiplied and these were the results of her savings and investments. Faced with evidence of cash and investments worth over $3 million, her husband was so astounded he could barely speak, but finally he found his voice and blurted out, "If I'd had any idea what you were doing, I would have given you all my business!"

That's when she shot him.

You know, sometimes, men just don't know when to keep their mouths shut.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

From what I've read, and I've found that you tend to read a lot about relationships when your marriage is falling apart, people tend to lean towards one of two extremes: remembering only the positive about the ended relationship, which only makes you feel nostalgic, which leads to depression about what you 'lost'; and remembering only the negative, which leaves you bitter and depressed and a bad case of the poor-me's.

So, I hereby present two stories about The Paperweight, one good and one bad, in the hopes that I can continue to move forward. I want to remember both the positive and the negative and hopefully grow from both. This wasn't the 'best' thing about him and (unfortunetly) it's not the worst story either. It's just shit I've been thinking about lately...

First, the good...
We celebrated Thursdays. Just for the hell of it. The Paperweight told me when we started dating seriously that it annoyed him when people did things and/or bought gifts for those they loved when it was a holiday or special occassion but then ignored them the rest of the year. So we had Thursdays and we did something for the other just to show our love, from a small gift to an action, just something that acknowledged the other person. Like, I would write him a poem or he would leave a bottle of a favorite beverage of mine on the roof of my car to surprise me. My favorite was the day he stopped along the side of the road and picked me wild flowers. The Paperweight knew this was a favorite of mine so he did it once again after we were married, about a decade later. Both times completely unexpected and completely romantic.

And the bad (which is also pretty ugly)...
I have had bouts of depression off and on for the majority of my life. I have since resolved the issue; it turned out to actually be just a symptom of a medical problem but that's a whole other story for another day.
Anyway, I had been treated occassionally for depression for a number of years. A few years ago (about 7 years, I believe), I was going through a particularly bad spell. Depression, mood swings and suicidal thoughts to the point that I checked myself in to a hospital that had a depression clinic. The Paperweight visited daily and had The Boy call daily (he was only told I was sick). I was stuck on anti-depressents (again) and given information on a therapist I could see when I got out. I was there, oh, I don't know, 4 or 5 days. The meds had started to kick in and I was feeling much better. The Paperweight came to pick me up, I signed the discharge papers, and we headed home....where he proceeded, on the hour drive, to tell me what a complete and utter fuck-up I was and how bad I was screwing-up The Boy. By the time we arrived home I, of course, was a basketcase and THANK GOD The Boy was still at the sitter's. The Paperweight followed me upstairs to the bedroom where I put my suitcase on the bed and he proceeded to pull a loaded .45 out of the back of his waistband, handed it to me, and said "Won't don't you do everyone a favor and just kill yourself?"

Clarification

I was surprised by how varied the responses were to my last post. I will take each into account. However, I think too that I need to add some additional information.

First, he's not specifically coming over to meet the kids. The kids, of course, happen to live with me. However, The Boy won't be home all day so it will only be The Girl who would meet him.

Second, he would be introduced only as 'this is my friend, Eduardo' not 'this is mom's fuck buddy'. The Boy would know better, of course, but like I said, he won't be there.

Third, I'm not worried about the kids 'ruining' anything, because there really isn't anything to ruin. He's not my boyfriend...however

Fourth, yes, I think he might want more. Not more, like fall-in-love-and-get-married more, but definitely more then fuck-buddy more. That's what worries me because

Fifth, The Paperweight and I started out as fuck buddies, nothing more.