September 7, 2010 by Miss

I’m feeling restless.

I got out of town this weekend, on a quick weekend trip to Vegas with the family to celebrate my cousin’s 21st birthday. While we had a good time and it was nice to get away, by Saturday night I was ready to get back home. Once I got home, I saw that another cousin who didn’t join us in Vegas had gone camping with her husband.

I was jealous.

I figure it was partly because its been years since I’ve been camping and probably mostly because of the solidarity she had, the ability to get away and just be, with the person she loves.

I crave that, like I’m addicted to something I haven’t had in a very long time.

I want to sit around a campfire, and lay under the stars.

I want to sleep on the beach and let the sound of the waves soothe me.

I want to not move with someone, in one spot, for a long time. Just talking, forgetting how many minutes pass.

I’m restless but all I want to do is feel the quiet of night and not feel so alone.

Just breathe.

Just be.

Have an adventure. Live everyday like it’s a new adventure.

I’m just ready to feel like my life is going to start.

April 26, 2010 by Miss

… over what I’m putting here.

Time to just write, share, love.

March 19, 2010 by Miss

I’m famous, in my own head, for constantly feeling like I have shit figured out. This is usually during a high time in my life, when I’m deliriously happy, or at least fooling myself into thinking so, and then I sit here and brag about how good I have it.

Sometimes I’m an idiot.

With each year that passes, I’m becoming more and more aware of my surroundings, who I chose to allow in them, and how I chose to exert myself in certain situations.

A year ago, I thought I was happy. I was, on a lot of levels. On others, I was completely fooling myself into believing certain things. Things I thought would have a different ending. Things I believed deserved a different, better ending.  And today, when I look back, I want to point and laugh at myself as much as I want to shield myself from the pain I would eventually have, mostly at my own hand.  I trusted and I got burned by it. It happens. And because, while I tend to hate the general public, I have an optimistic outlook on the people I do trust, the people I do chose to consider friends, I will likely get burned again.

But each wound heals and with it comes another lesson learned. Believe me, I hold fast to these lessons and I’m so proud of myself because I can honestly say that I’ve learned a LOT this last year.

[As hard as you try to keep something the same, its change is inevitable. Adapting to that change is your responsibility alone, good or bad.]

[You should never have to do all the work to maintain a relationship, even more so when it's a friendship. It's hard to think the very best of someone and then have them turn around and let you down. But you'll survive.]

[Sometimes you will find people in completely unexpected places, that will turn around and change your life, like twitter. Or facebook chat.]

[If you're smart about it, you can allow your life to change.]

[Patience. Inevitability. Realistic expectations. That some people are so NOT what they seem to be and that we are all allowed a little bit of scandal here and there. ]

My 27th year was a good one. I’ve watched my son grow into his own more and more every day. I got the chance to fall in love again, and to have a first kiss. I got to see Chicago, and New York and I got to see both places with people that I love. I’ve gotten to dance, and laugh, and cry, and experience so much joy in so many different forms and I’ve gotten picked by some pretty amazing people who call me their friend.

As I start my 28th year, I’m happy. I’m excited for it, for my life despite my slight struggles. The good in my life far, FAR outweighs the bad. My love will be here in 20 days to be with me for a whole week. To meet my parents, my best friends and their kids, and most importantly, to surprise my son who’s been saying how tired he is of “only seeing him on the computer”. Little does he know… I’ve got plans on my calender with people I care deeply for and a trip to NY to plan and memories on top of memories to make.

And I? Am totally ready for all of it.

Let’s see what 28 has to teach me.

“Cheers Big Ears!”

January 13, 2010 by Miss

And we are barely even 12 days in…

Now that I’m not working, the things that annoyed me before, that I could easily ignore because I was distracted from them, are now in my face like, all day.

Enjoy!

~ Fan Pages on Facebook - Guess what? If I wanted to follow your blog’s fan page on Facebook, I would. I would have the first time you asked. I mean, if I don’t I might miss something right? Because your blog is already in my reader and I already follow you on twitter where you spam us every time you write a new post. Your fan page is totally going to give me new information, on top of my following the “real” you on Facebook too, where your twitterfeed is hooked up and you are probably using the NetworkedBlogs app. Guess what? Saturation is complete. No, I promise, it is. I don’t think I need to follow your fan page for you to know I support you. Plus, truth be told, you probably don’t read here and you certainly don’t comment so being your “fan” is low on my list of priorities. Oh and? This is a big one – if I unfollow your fan page, don’t re-invite me. You haven’t even acknowledged my presence in the better part of a year so um, yeah I don’t think so.

~Momspotting - For those not in the “know”, Sprint or some other crappy phone service sent free phones and a chunk of change to some bloggers in exchange for them tweeting about how they use technology in everyday life with their families or something. It’s pretty mind numbing. “I sent a text to my hubby to pick up tampons for me on the way home and I didn’t even have to leave the couch! #momspotting”. I’m totally not kidding. When is that shit going to end? Obviously you are using technology. It’s 2010. Half of us have phones that can access everything our computers can. This thing isn’t breaking any ground here.

~ Foursquare - Go check it out. Go check it out and if you can come back here and show me a GOOD reason why anyone would actually need to use this website, I’ll write a retraction. I’m serious. Basically, I can go to McDonalds and become its Mayor. AND let you know that I’m mayor of McDonalds on Facebook AND twitter and who knows where else. Excited??! Some places offer you free stuff like wifi and potatoes if you are the mayor. Hey! Guess what! I don’t fucking care where the hell you are and I certainly don’t want you to know where I am. If I did, I’d say “I’m shopping at Fresh and Easy bitches!” in 140 chars or less. And know what? It would be exactly the same. No wait, not true. I wouldn’t get a fake badge. Foursquare is completely worthless. Prove me wrong.

~ Words with Friends – UGH. Ok before you iPhone people start spouting off that I have iPhone envy, let me say this: I DO. iPhones are cool. HOWEVER, you are sacrificing good customer AND phone service and I’m not down with that. AT&T sucks major dick and every single one of you with iPhones know that is the fucking truth. Your phone is cool, that isn’t what this is about. This is about me having to see every damn few minutes “I’m so and so on words with friends! Come add me!” I dont know if the app tweets that for you automatically or what but it’s annoying. Also annoying? “.@iPhoneuser totally kicked my ass using ‘rodent’ on Words with Friends today! LOL haha OMG”  or “did you know that WWF won’t take ‘asshat’ as a real word? I totally would have beat @alsoannoying if it would! LOL OMG”. Knock that shit off people. We get it, you have iPhones and are playing Scrabble with them. CONGRATS.

So there you have it. Look at it this way, I have a lot of time on my hands so it’s probably not me, its you.

January 4, 2010 by Miss

So here I am, going on and on about how 2010 is going to be my year and how I can make it into whatever I want it to be and blah blah blah…

I got laid off today.

Not exactly what I meant 2010. Not at all.

Truth be told, I hated my job. I loathed my job. Just this morning, as I was walking up the stairs, “I wish I didn’t have to go in there” ran through my head. The last time I said that was at a job I had 5 years ago that was awful. To be honest, this job wasn’t as bad but it was still pretty terrible. “New (bitchy) management” had no clue what she was doing. She attempted to make us exclude our previous manager who knew the business inside and out and when we did have a question, she would just end up asking the other manager for the answer. It was pathetic. She completely fubar’d an otherwise good (time consuming, but much more logical) filing system for one she thought would save time. It didn’t. I would know, I was in charge of it. Stacks and stacks of paperwork filled my cubical.

I had recently gotten a raise. Finally received a review after it was long over due. I didn’t mention it because well… it was for 12 cents more an hour. That equaled 400 dollars more. A year. 400 dollars more a year. That isn’t even a car payment. They paid me just enough to show up, but no where close to enough to give a shit about that place.

Regardless of all that, I stayed because it was work. Because I got a paycheck every two weeks.

And now, I have no idea where my income is going to come from. That? Is a shitty feeling.

I’m hoping that this is the opportunity I need to really push myself to have a better life. I need to provide better for my son and one of my biggest goals this year was to move back out on my own. Maybe this is a jumping off point for that. Right now, I have no real plan or answers. But I have an amazing support system who is already helping me get in gear to find somewhere that can help me achieve these goals.

I’m thankful, I’m blessed, and things aren’t quite as scary as they were this afternoon.

January 2, 2010 by Miss

The hardest thing in life to learn is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
-David Russell

Have you ever used the term “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it?”

I’ve used it in many different ways. Sometimes it’s very effective. It gets the job done when calming a person and their “what if’s” down. Hell, it has calmed me down when I’ve given myself pep talks once in awhile.

The start of a new year, the start of a new decade brings me hope. In the last decade, I’ve had amazing things happen to me. Some of them were devastating, some were incredible.

I graduated from high school. I graduated from college. I became a mother. I was suddenly responsible for the LIFE of another human being. His survival depended on me. You will never know the weight of that responsibility until you become a parent. You will also never understand it’s enormity, or its breathtaking beauty.

In the decade we just closed, I lost myself. Time and time again. I rediscovered who I was as a woman, as a friend, and as a lover more than once. I learned that everyone who comes into my life, be it for good or bad, can teach me something important. I figured out that instead of settling for ok, I am allowed to have amazing, that love in every connotation knows absolutely NO bounds. I’ve found so many blessings in so many unexpected places and I’ve finally learned how to recognize them and embrace them.

You have no idea how lucky I am. Sometimes I have to remind myself and every single time I make that realization again, I’m blown away.

It’s 2010. The start of a new year, the start of a new decade. Every day I’m going to remind myself that I can do anything with the day ahead of me, that it’s only up to me to make the rest of my life something amazing.

Can you imagine what this decade will bring? The possibilities are so open and so endless that it takes my breath away.

When I’m reflecting on this decade, in 2020, I want it to be beautiful.

I know it will be.

Because that bridge is here, and I’m crossing it.

November 23, 2009 by Miss

For a long time, I’ve felt disconnected, unsettled. It’s hard to get to a certain place in your life where you feel familiar, where you are comforted by that familiarity. I know it might be hard to understand, but I’ve longed for some time for a home of my own.

With my ex, we had our own place(s) but they always felt like his. I always felt like a visitor. Growing up, things like this didn’t really cross my mind. But I always had one constant in my life. Our annual trip to San Fransisco.

The air is different there. Every year, the first night there, I would step outside our hotel room and just listen to the city, breathe it in. The chill in the air, the smell of the ocean. The way the city vibrates. It’s completely alive and I always felt that.

It’s hard for people to understand why I love that city so much. Sometimes I don’t really understand it. But no matter, maybe when I am there this weekend, I’ll realize why. Or maybe, I’ll just remember how the city makes me feel, and revel in it.

November 18, 2009 by Miss

Today marks 3 years since I left my marriage. It was the best thing I’ve ever done for myself and for my son. We are both happier and healthier for it.

I’ve learned so much in the last 3 years about myself, about love, and about life. I’m a better person than I was 3 years ago. I hold close to me my son, close friends that support and love me, and for the first time, an incredibly healthy relationship in which there is one small obstacle, one which WILL be overcome.

I’ve said this before but it needs to be said again:

Being with someone should compliment your life, not complicate it.

I truly believe that love is NOT an obligation. Love is a gift. Marriage is an extension of that gift. Born between two people who are compatible, who work WITH each other, not one for the other.

I see so many people, who are unhappy, who are not in love, but who don’t see a better choice for themselves. It’s painful for me to know that I have been in a marriage like that. It’s painful for me to sit silently and watch people I love suffer because they want better, but feel like they cant have it. Which is why I cant sit silently. Maybe, maybe someone, somewhere can read this and use this to ignite a fire of need, or wanting. Wanting for something better, for a happiness.

I want to love without giving more than I have to give. I want to love without trying more than anyone should ever have to try.

I want to be with someone who compliments my life and does not complicate it.

~

All those “wants”? I HAVE them.

I’m so happy to say, 3 years has passed and I’m in the best place I’ve ever been.

3 years and we are still smiling. We have no reason not to.

November 16, 2009 by Miss

I’m re-posting this from writing it over 2 years ago. It still holds true, as it is my story and it needs to be shared.

Abuse can be described in so many ways. None of them are pretty. Today I’m choosing to write about my personal experience with abuse. Why? Because maybe someone out there reading this is going through the same thing I did. Maybe they are in denial and think that what is happening to them isn’t abuse. Maybe they can see that they CAN get past this, that they CAN survive this. I did. This isn’t going to be pretty or pleasant to read. Abuse isn’t. But it is the facts as I remember them and it did happen to me.

From the age of around 15, I was verbally and physically abused by my boyfriend. I would eventually become his wife. The abuse that I received progressed slowly. I fell in love (well what I believed loved to be at that time) and once he knew that I was in love, he completely changed. He began with the verbal abuse, making comments here and there that I was fat, ugly, stupid, a moron, a slut, and my personal favorite: worthless. The physical abuse started a little later, when he learned that he could verbally abuse me and I wouldn’t fight back. He started with pinching the inside of my legs if we were sitting next to each other and I was saying something he didn’t like. Usually it was something that he thought I would make him look stupid over. It was always things like that. Anything that I said would usually set him off so eventually I just stopped giving out my opinion on things.

Once while I was still in high school and he was home on leave from the Navy, we kinda broke up over the phone. I had boxed up all his stuff and when he told me he was going to come get it the next morning, I left it sitting on my front porch. My parents had left for work and I was getting ready to take the bus when he showed up. He started banging on my front door and I really thought he was going to break it down so I opened it. He barged into the house and chased me upstairs. He didn’t like what I was wearing so he ripped my shirt down the middle. I remember him pressing me up against the wall with his hands wrapped around my neck. I was screaming so loud that the bus driver heard me from down the street, a block away. I managed to get to the phone and call the police but I hung up before I gave them my address. Once I hung that phone up, he let me go and sat on my bed defeated. He told me that I had ruined his Navy career and basically, ruined his life. The police came and handcuffed him and took him to the back of their cruiser. He stared at me from the back of the cop car and shook his head at me. I told them it was a mistake and they chastised me for making the call. They allowed him to drive me to school.

The only time that I was safe from this was when I was pregnant. Once my son was born, it started up again except now, I was a bad mom. I couldn’t do anything right when it came to our son. I don’t remember a lot of that time. Sleep deprivation will do that to a person. I know it didn’t get better. He had started to hit me, but he never left bruises. I would compliment on that talent during my braver moments.

Things just progressed from bad to worse. I guess as I got older, I stopped caring as much. I fought back sometimes but of course, never won. I pretended that I had been knocked out when he threw me to the ground and picked my head up and slammed it on the floor of our laundry room. He proceeded to slap me in the face a few times and eventually just dragged me outside and put my head in the dog bowl of water while he turned the hose on me to wake me up. I don’t even remember what we were arguing about. The last time that I threatened to leave and actually started to pack, he got angry and decided not to let me. He ended up stripping all my clothes off and laying on top of me for two hours until I “changed my mind”. He stripped me so that I couldn’t run away.

When it was bad, it was bad. I would literally just turn my brain off and wander away. I would think about something else, in that last year, my thoughts would go to R the most. I would think about something fun I did with my son. The power of  my love for my son is what saved my life. In my darkest of moments, I tried to figure out which would be easier: killing him, or killing myself. I planned his funeral in my head and told myself that I would never cry. There were times when he would go out at night drinking with his friends and I would pray that he wouldn’t come home and I honestly didn’t care what happened to him.

Abuse is powerful. Its hate in its purest of forms. And the worst thing is that it comes in so many different forms: animal, child, elderly, self, I could go on and on. This is why I blogged today. I didn’t do it for attention. I didn’t do it for anything other than awareness. Its not fun to remember these things. It still feels humiliating. Its embarrassing. It’s something I would never in a million years wish on anyone. But it did happen to me. And I hope that talking about it will help someone.

So that’s my story in a nutshell. If you think that you might be in this similar situation in any way shape or form, please visit the the website for The National Domestic Violence Hotline. Because guess what? YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

My ex was a rat bastard of a husband. I’m coming up on a personal anniversary this week and that is why I am posting this story. A lot has changed since he was this man. I’m not making excuses, nor do I ever forgive him for what he did to me. While I occasionally still see small glimpses of this boy, he has done a lot for himself to not be this anymore. Losing me did that. Will he ever be a different person? Probably not. But I don’t have to live with what he did to me anymore, he does. What he did to me, does not define me.

And it NEVER will.

November 9, 2009 by Miss

I am not in a good place today. Once a month, one day a year, a 24-36 hour period and I am pure hormones. Every little thing makes me tear up, or get angry, or harp on bitterness. It’s totally unhealthy and I shouldn’t leave the house on days like this. Usually it starts in the evening and carries on till the next day. I just can’t deal well with reality during this time and I blow things entirely out of proportion. Scary right?

Driving home, the sunset was so beautiful that I cried. I cried because I was watching it alone. I cried because I literally hurt from lack of physical contact. A hug, an arm to snuggle under, lips. It aches.

I got home and I totally lost it, knowing that my friend was being brave for her daughter while they both had to say goodbye to a man that made them a family again. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her daughter look at her dad the way she looked at him and their connection made me so happy for all of them. It also brought back the raw intensity of saying goodbye at an airport but I’m excited that she has days to count down, that she knows when she gets to see her love again. (92 days is NOTHING.)

I’m sitting here now wiping away tears, with a painful lump in my throat just writing this. Which tells me that I probably shouldn’t even have this page open.

So.

That’s all there is today. Let’s hope that I don’t need any tissues tomorrow. Back to curling up with Law and Order SVU.