Here I am, again

It's been a few months and if I'm back, that generally means that things have gone to hell in a hand basket. When I feel sorry for myself, I come back here and read all of the horrible, heartbreaking posts from last year. Yes, I like to review my past pity parties to make sure that the one I'm currently having for myself is worthy of me.

Looks like I'm destined to spend another summer single. Don't people realize that summer is not the best time to leave me to my own devices? I have too much unstructured time and do ridiculous things. I really don't even want to relive some of the indiscretions of last summer. In my defense though-most of those occurred under the influence of alcohol so I'm going to stand by the fact that I can not be held accountable for my actions.

More than that though, I get lonely. After the kids go to bed and the house is unbelievably quiet-there is no one to turn to for conversation, for support, for a laugh or to get me a drink of water. There's no one to laugh at my ridiculous tears anytime someone gets married, has a baby, dies, cries, gets into an argument or wins something on TV. There's nobody there who gets me and knows just what I need when I need it.

I have learned a lot in the last 9 months. I've learned about trust and faith and courage. I've learned that not everyone is mean and hateful, that sometimes others do care. I've learned that I can do just about anything I need to do in order to survive-except kill spiders or hornets. I'll still call my parents for that. I've managed to maintain a home on my own for almost an entire year. I've taken huge steps and learned a lot about myself.

I've also learned that the only person you can control in a relationship is yourself. You can't control how your partner feels or will react. I've learned that 2 people can love each other, but might not be able to maintain a relationship. I've learned that "you can love someone with all your heart, for all the right reasons and in a moment they can choose to walk away...Love them anyway"

I've learned what I want out of life, what I value in a partner and what I deserve in this life. I've learned that it's easier to walk away from someone you despise than from someone you love...but sometimes you have no choice.

I've also learned that I really like beer...and bacon. But that's neither here nor there. I can thank Lee for a lot of things, but my hips and my thighs refuse to thank him for those 2 diet killing items.

I know I'll be ok-I understand this was a learning experience. I don't know what lesson I was supposed to learn from this-maybe it'll make sense to me someday. Until then I'll look back fondly on the last 9 months. It was one hell of a ride...and in the words of Garth Brooks "I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss the dance"

Eleanor Roosevelt said "Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission." I have told many people that many times over the years. Why then is it so difficult to remember that myself? Why is it that some people are so unhappy with their lives that they have to make everyone else just as miserable? Why is it that I'm still having to deal with his need to control me even though we are now divorced? Why is it that I still allow him to make me feel so negatively about myself?

I was feeling pretty content with my life and everything that's going on in it. I even made my relationship "facebook official." Now I'm feeling all of those insecurities all over again. I feel like something's going to catch me off guard, something's going to go horribly wrong, that everything that I am so happy with right now is going to be taken away from me. Why is does my brain function this way? Why is it that I can't convince my brain of the things I know in my heart to be true?

I feel like I have only 2 emotions. Anxious and only slightly anxious. I feel like I'm never really going to be confident and content. That there will never be a time where I don't second guess everything I hear, that there will never be a time when I am confident and secure in my life. I'm afraid that I will never be "fixed" that I am too damaged to ever be normal.

I saw a baby today. An itty bitty teeny tiny little 8 pound baby. I saw her little nose, her little fingers and smelled her little baby smell. My arms itched to hold her, but my eyes deceived me and I started to cry-even though I told myself when she walked in that I wouldn't. I wonder how I will be able to handle my best friend having a baby, how I will handle my sister having a new baby. I am so unbelievably happy for them and their families and yet so unbelievably angry that I will never experience that again-and that it wasn't my decision. I'm angry that someone else got to decide for me that I will never again experience those new baby things.

I worry that I'll never be "enough." I wasn't enough to keep my husband, a man that I had invested 15 years with, faithful. I couldn't keep him happy. We had 15 years worth of history, we had children together and I couldn't keep him happy. How can I possibly keep Lee, someone wonderful, amazing and so deserving of a wonderful life, happy and coming back? Will I ever feel like a worthy human being?

Christmas has come and gone. Overall this Christmas was the best Christmas I've had in a long time. I was able to relax and enjoy the days of celebration with my family. I didn't freak out about the kids making a mess, the tree is still up in the living room and there was no fighting. But there were a lot of tears. I was an emotional mess because everything was so different. My sister wasn't home, my brother didn't come down Christmas morning, my cousins and aunt and uncle didn't attend the party, my family was entirely different. There had been so many changes all at once that it was like it wasn't even the same celebration.

I was an emotional mess because of all of the changes and because I'm so unbelievably happy with my new life. BUT- I'm so happy that I'm wondering when it's all going to come crashing down. This all seems way too good to be true. I honestly don't feel like I deserve the wonderfulness that I am living. I feel like my emotional meltdowns are going to drive him away. I feel like I cry daily and can't really explain to him exactly why I'm crying. He thinks that there is something wrong and I try to explain that I'm not crying because something's wrong, but because everything is right. It's so frustrating to be the girl who cries all the time.

I'm feeling unbelievably insecure today and am really feeling like I need a ton of reassurance and really don't know how to find it without seeming like a whiney brat. I feel like I've heard the line "my phone is dying. I'm going to turn it off till I leave work, I'll call you when I get home" a million times. I didn't sleep well and the phone call never came. Apparently he didn't get home from work until 1 am. I know in my heart that he is an unbelievably honest person and has never given me any reason to not trust him-unfortunately my mind likes to play games with me and convince me of things that I know aren't true. I can't punish him and make him pay for Vern's mistakes forever. I wonder if I'll ever get to a place where I can trust people. I really don't want to feel this way forever.

Today will be a rant about something else. My body. I know I should be proud of the progress I've made in the last year. I know I should focus on the positive changes that I've made and of how much healthier I am than I was 18 months ago-but I'm finding that to be a bigger challenge now than it's ever been. I remember looking in the mirror in August of 2009 weighing nearly 200 pounds and crying. I remember wondering how I allowed myself to get to that point and I remember promising myself that I would again weigh 145 pounds and then I would be happy. Well, now 15 months later I weigh less than the 145 pound goal I set for myself and wouldn't you know it-I'm still not happy.

I know that my body looks totally different than it did before. I am aware that I wore a size 6 skirt to our Thanksgiving dinner-and a size small shirt. I am aware that the sweat pants I wore on Sunday were a small. I know for a fact that my clothing is smaller- I just don't really feel like my body is any smaller. I look in the mirror each morning and see my jiggily thighs, my flabby arms, my squishy stomach. I look in the mirror and I still want to cry. I stand in the shower and obsess over the fact that my thighs touch each other. I HATE the fact that I have such a poor body image. I am disgusted by the fact that I place such value on a number on the scale. And I hate even more that these feelings of disgust and hatred don't help me to eat better or to work out more.

I hate that I can't be happy with who I am. I hate that I can't look in the mirror and find anything that I like about myself. I hate that I look at pictures of myself and even though I'm 60 pounds lighter than I was 15 months ago-I still feel like a huge, fat, disgusting disgrace.

I made a deal with myself last Monday that I was going to go an entire week without saying anything negative about my body. And I did. I made it an entire week. But now it's day 8 and I looked in the mirror this morning and wanted to cry- again. I am so irritated with my inability to find something positive about my appearance.

Ugh. Monday

I have decided I really dislike Mondays. I've always kind of had that "I really don't want to go back to work" feeling-mostly because of how hectic my days (and evenings and nights) are during the work week, but now I dislike them for an entirely different reason. He leaves on Mondays. I really don't like seeing him pack up his clothes, I hate saying good bye at 5 am and I despise hearing his truck back out of my driveway. I don't like all of those things because I know that it'll be 5 days before I get to see him again.

I have spent a lot of time figuring out if this is what I really want. Do I only want a weekend relationship. And the answer overwhelmingly is I'd rather have him 3 days a week than 0 days a week. I have gone over this a million times and I am positive that I am happy with our relationship. I have imagined how it would feel if he were gone and I was scared with the answer. I realized that I have allowed myself to feel for another human being. I have allowed him access to my heart, to my mind-to everything that I am. I realized that I am in love with this man. The man who tries harder than anyone I know to make me happy. The man who fixes things that have been broken for years. The man who will give my kids piggy back rides, lets them steal his socks, spins them in circles, who will wrestle and will try out all of the greatest "finishers." The man who watches me cry and lets me see that it hurts him. The man who understands my love of Christmas. The man who calls me every night before bed and talks to me for an hour.

Now that I know that I love this man-I have an even bigger problem. I refuse to be the one to say it first. I need to hear it from him so that I know he means it-so I know he isn't just saying it back. My heart aches to tell him just how much he means to me. I want so badly to tell him-but I know that saying it at the wrong time could ruin everything we have and I really do not want to do that. I can not count the number of times I have said it to a closing door after he's gone through it, or as I've watched his truck drive away, but I know with absolute certainty that I mean it.

I hate Mondays because that is one more missed opportunity-and because I know that I have to wait 5 more days for another chance.

It's amazing how quickly a day can go from wonderful to all wrong. Thanksgiving was everything I had hoped it would be. I started out the day so very thankful for everything that I have. I am thankful for the changes I have made, thankful for the people I get to surround myself with, I am thankful for my childrens' laughter, the list goes on and on and on. Dinner was wonderful. I am glad I got to share it with people that I love. I will admit I was unbelievably nervous having invited my new friend to spend the holiday with us. I was afraid I would mess up the food, or he'd laugh at my improvisation with the chairs, or that any number of things would go wrong. In the end-only the sink broke. Which he was wonderful enough to fix for me.

After everything was cleaned up and there was no evidence remaining that this thing we called Thanksgiving had even existed, we all sat down in the living room for some Mythbusters and football. And then everything went to hell. His phone rang. He ignored a phone call. He clicked "listen to voicemail later" and a flood of emotions came rushing back. I sat on the couch and cried. Huge tears rolling down my face because of that one action. Not because he ignored the phone call-but because I realized how much he truly matters to me. I realized that I have let myself feel for him, allowed him into my heart and I realized how much it would kill me if he were to hurt me the way my ex-husband had hurt me. I recalled numerous times we'd be at a restaurant, driving down the road, spending time together as a family and his phone would ring and he'd ignore it. Not because he didn't want to be bothered, but because it was one of his other women. It took awhile for me to be able to explain this to the new friend-mainly because I didn't really know how to go about explaining it to him. But I did and I felt a little better. Then anxiety set in and I thought "am I going to drive him away? Will my insecurities scare him? Will they make me not worth the effort?" He says he understands. He says it's ok and that I don't need to apologize. I really want to believe him-but trust is hard to rebuild. I know with each passing day that he's gone I learn to trust a little more-and each time he comes back-I learn to trust even more than when he's gone. I know eventually one day I will be "normal" again. Afterall-it took a long time to "ruin" me and it's going to take even longer to "fix" me. I just hope that he thinks I'm special enough for him to stick around and see me fixed...

I hate you

Today I would like to say a great big huge "I hate you" to my insecurities. I hate the fact that I can't believe things that in my heart I know to be true. I hate that my brain tries to deceive me and get me to believe things I know can't possibly be. I really wish that I could go through each day without this sinking feeling in my stomach. I wish I wasn't constantly waiting for the next huge disappointment. I hate that I can't believe in myself and can't trust that people might actually like me.

I know that everything happens for a reason. I know that I was destined to go through what I went through in order to make me appreciate what I do have. I know that I am learning a lesson in trust and in faith. I know that I should believe in myself, and I should believe him and I should trust in God, but after the life I've lived-it's hard to trust anyone.

I really wish I could be a self confident, self assured woman who never wondered if people were being truthful and honest. I wish I could wake up every morning KNOWING that everything was going to be ok. I wish that could just trust that God knows what he's doing.

I feel like I'm never quite good enough. I'm not the prettiest, the funniest, the smartest. I'm not the best at anything that I do. I'm just an average human being who wants nothing more than to make the people she loves happy and most days I feel like a horrible failure. I know that life isn't a competition and that there will always be somebody faster, smarter, prettier, funnier-but just once I would like to be told I was the best at something.

I hope that someday I will be able to look in the mirror and be ok with what I see. I hope that someday I will look at myself and believe that other people can and do like me, but looking at myself right now it doesn't seem like that day will come anytime soon.