Starting Over Wonderful

What breaks my heart the most

2012-03-07T23:16:00.000-05:00

The current situation: Navigating Joint Custody with a Jerk.

Photo credit: betterworldbooks.com

(This book is in my Amazon shopping cart, just waiting for me to scrape together the extra funds to actually purchase; yes, I am that broke these days)

Admission: I need to find a rest stop on this journey. Immediately.

I'm just about five months into this long-ass separation and frankly, I'm reaching my stress threshold and feeling very emotionally drained. Having a STBX that is not only a douche canoe, but that is also completely uncooperative and unreasonable, is costing me time, money and emotional and physical strength. Time and money I don't have and strength I can not afford to lose.

There is no escape from the fuckery. Not yet, anyway. Wherever my wonderful future is, it seems very far away right now. Like a blip on a very far off horizon.

Given that the STBX is untrustworthy and manipulative, I anticipated our divorce being high-conflict early on in our marriage, well before I even gave leaving serious consideration. The fear of having to go through what I am now going through is undeniably what kept me hanging on to our broken marriage much longer than I should have. Thankfully, that fear was fleeting versus paralyzing.

Unfortunately knowing is only half the battle and, with the STBX, every single thing is a battle. I am trying to not let his douchery get the best of me (because that is exactly what he wants, let's not forget), but I seriously just need a fucking break from the insanity of it all. What he is putting me through is pretty much what he threatened to put me through if I left him all those months ago, and for probably the first time in his life he is doing everything in his power to try and keep his word.

Why? One word: revenge.

By exhausting me through lengthy, costly, conflict over every issue, while he stonewalls, is uncooperative, dishonest and withholding of information, he is trying to ruin me financially and emotionally. This is his way of making me "pay" for leaving. Classic narcissistic behavior. Not to mention, disgusting and despicable!

The thing taxing me the most about it all? The issue keeping me up at night, at war with insomnia, despite being utterly exhausted?

Our son is not his father's number one priority.

For the ~~haters~~ record, I'm not alleging that the STBX does not care about or that he doesn't love our son. That is not what I am saying at all, so take a deep breath. Instead, his actions speak volumes that he loves himself more. That fact alone is why he is deserving of the name "douche canoe". When evaluating his behavior, choices and attitude over the last five months, him being a douche canoe more often than not is pretty obvious to anyone with an IQ over 65 that's not blinded by direct emotional entanglement (yes, I see you haters from the other side!).

For five months now, the STBX has done nothing but inflict harm, stress, hardship and anything else he can think of on me, the mother of his child. His desire to seek revenge for me leaving, even though it was his behavior and poor choices that ultimately drove me away (scared for my life, I might add), is more of a priority for him than our son's best interests and well-being.

Unfortunately, this is all really not that surprising to me. The man threatened to kidnap our child so I would "never see him again" when we were first separating. He also threatened to choke me in front of our child so that he would know what a "cunt" I really was. Only douche canoes make those sorts of threats.

Expected or not, surprising or not, ... it is still really painful and hard for me to accept. The child that will ultimately be hurt in the end is mine. As his mother, my heart just breaks for him.

As a parent, I can not empathize with anyone that puts their own selfish needs over their innocent child(ren)'s. The pain of having to deal with my son having a vengeful and vindictive father is a thousand times worse than both the pain of realizing our marriage was a complete and utter failure, and not-to-mention mistake, and the grief of leaving it.

When you need to love yourself

2012-03-06T07:12:00.000-05:00

If I loved him more ... If I love him enough ...

The preambles to the hopeless thoughts that ran through my mind all too often throughout my entire relationship with the STBX now make me cringe. Especially if I ruminate about where those preambles usually led.

If I love him enough, we won't fight so much.

If I loved him more, things wouldn't be so difficult.

If I love him enough ... he'll tune in, instead of tune out ... he won't drink so much or so often ... he'll stop lying to me ... he'll stop obsessing over pornography and start wanting me ... we'll share real intimacy ...

If I loved him more ... he wouldn't treat me so badly ... he would stop blaming me for his weaknesses ... he will change ... he will grow up.

If I love him enough ... I might be good enough ...

If I loved him more ... he'll start to love me.

Sadly, I used to base a lot of my self-worth on how happy and satisfied my relentless giving made the STBX. My identity within our relationship, both before and after marriage, depended largely on my ability to prove my unwavering devotion, no matter how many times I was wronged, mistreated, lied to or taken for granted. It was established early on, for a variety of reasons (some my own fault, some his), that this was to forever be my role for our lives together. Initially, I found this role fulfilling and I was happy to pour everything I had into loving him, despite not even half of what I was putting in coming back to me, in either love or appreciation, on any regular basis. If I wasn't getting the love that I wanted or needed from him, I would think to myself things like, "He will show me love when I love him more." or, "He will love me more if I love him enough".

I didn't realize that in loving him so much, I wasn't loving myself nearly enough.

Until our son was born.

Soon after C came into our lives it became painstakingly obvious that I couldn't keep up with the demands of my "role" in addition to the demands of being a new mother. Perpetually giving, giving and then giving some more to now, an infant son, in addition to an unappreciative, disengaged and unloving husband left me empty just weeks after giving birth. I was drained; finished. Almost immediately, my well was completely depleted at a time when I needed fuel reserves more than I ever had before in all of my life.

With C being just 6 weeks old, I found myself staring down a long road of colic, infant reflux and breastfeeding struggles. Somehow, I instinctively knew that something had to change if we were going to survive. Mamma-bear instinct trumps those of a wife and lover any day. True Story.

Honestly, how I escaped the lifeless grip of postpartum depression with all that I was going through is beyond me.

Somehow, I just knew that I had to start giving back to myself, loving myself, fueling my own desires through self-respect and self-appreciation, else I would fall into a depressive state of despair while our son suffered from the fallout. I had to find a way to refuel, because time and time again the STBX had proven that he was incapable of providing me with the kind of love and support that truly filled me up.

I remember thinking, "If I love me enough ..." before letting my instincts take over.

Mamma-bear instinct, coupled with an incredible desire to be the best mother I could possibly be, showed me that loving myself more than anything or anyone else was not selfish. Instead, it was necessary not only for survival, but also in order to thrive in motherhood.

It was like C became the center of my universe and everything just started to make sense.

I stopped dancing on my head trying to keep the STBX happy in order to prove my worth. All I cared about for months was the health and happiness of our precious baby. In serving his needs as his mother, I no longer had the time or energy to waste on relentless desperation to satisfy the STBX and his selfish needs. My worth became founded in my ability to handle motherhood with finesse and joy while the STBX's drinking habits escalated, his lies grew and he continued to fester an unchecked pornography fetish.

When survival-mode subsided, and as I settled into my new role as a mother while C grew from newborn to baby, I sought to redefine my role with the STBX in light of my new-found love for myself. I finally appreciated my own worth and I had had enough of being mistreated. In addition, my Mamma-bear instinct transformed into an overwhelming desire to protect our son from the ridiculous choices the STBX was making almost daily. Much to the STBX's loathing, I started establishing boundaries and drawing lines of respect no longer allowing him to cross. I stopped pretending to not know about the porn. I called him out on his lies. I confronted his manipulation. Most importantly, I stopped forgiving him over and over again for repeated mistreatment. I began to put my foot down.

Needless to say, when I stopped pouring my love and adoration all over him regardless of whatever shit sandwich he had grown accustomed to serving up to me regularly, the fighting went from bad to horrendous.

It was over between us by C's first birthday.

In my opinion, the STBX couldn't handle me appreciating and having respect for myself because that would mean that he would have to do the same if we were to stay together. He resented such high "expectations" and he told me repeatedly in those last few months that the majority of our problems were because I didn't love him enough. I was "selfish".

If I didn't love myself, I might have believed him.

In the end, I finally realized that I could never love the STBX more than myself ever again without compromising my self-respect, worth and identity. I also learned that merely loving the STBX would never, ever be enough. Through the fuckery that's gone on since we have been separated, I'm learning more and more that that last part there is not my fault.

Hopefully, when he's old enough, our son will someday understand how Mommy had to love herself most, so that she could love him the best, despite Daddy not loving her nearly enough.

Why, yes I'm perfect. Didn't you know?

2012-03-05T23:04:00.002-05:00

My counters are never cluttered, I manage all of my financial obligations impeccably, my toddler only eats wholesome, organic, well-balanced -- and of course, let's be serious -- homemade meals, I never fall behind with laundry or housework (because obviously, I never procrastinate), I kick ass as a full-time patent examiner while being on fire with my photography and blogging extra curriculars, I have an amazing boyfriend with no problems of his own AND, what just may be the the very icing on my perfection-cake, I never get pimples and I have yet to sprout a single grey hair. I also have my divorce totally behind me emotionally and totally in.da.bag. in every other aspect.

I also never yell, make mistakes, judge people or say the wrong thing at the wrong time because I let my emotions get the best of me. My emotions never get the best of me.

I am the portrait of perfection.

Oh and not just at life, but at being a mother. Why do you think I left the douche canoe that is my STBX anyway? When you're perfect, you so obviously don't need a husband. Duh!

Please pardon me while I gallop off into the sunset of all that is wonderful, riding my high-horse of ... well, my high horse of delusion.

Enough already.

Starting this blog, I never imagined that in my desperate attempts to pick up the broken pieces of my so-very-shattered existence and move on to somewhere and/or something more wonderful for the sake of my own sanity and survival, and for the sake my son's bests interests, ... well, I just never imagined being accused of being self righteous or even sanctimonious. Frankly, I find the notion that through this blog, I am somehow riding a sort of interweb high-horse proclaiming that my shit does not stink, absolutely absurd.

My shit does indeedy stink. Sometimes, I even have to light a match and turn on a fan.

I am not perfect. I'm not proclaiming to be perfect through this blogging adventure and I am not trying to make any part of my life out to be some freakin' fairy tale where I, the heroine, make zero mistakes of my own.

I make plenty of mistakes, almost daily, and I am the farthest thing from perfect.

I don't even want to be perfect. I literally shudder at the notion. Perfect, to me anyway, is the epitome of boring. Dull. A snooze-fest. Where can I take a nap and never wake up, I'm so bored? You know? I would rather die a slow painful death (like the one I would have suffered had I stayed married to the douche canoe) than live day after day being perfectly boring.

So, in an effort to be as honest as phenomenally possible while journeying from crying over my failed disaster of a marriage towards flying onward and upward towards all that is wonderful and happy, here are the top reasons that I can think of as to why I am so not perfect. Or, stated another way, here are the top reasons why I believe life with me could never be dull.

Phenom's List of Imperfection

Or, Phenom's Top Contributors to the "Cray Cray Crazy" that is her life

At least twice a week, I "lose" my keys and waste a large chunk of precious time that I'll never get back, looking for them. It drives anyone that's ever lived with me totally bonkers. Hell, it would drive me bonkers too, except at almost thirty years young and diagnosed ADHD, by now I'm used to constantly looking for crap that I've misplaced. I'm a total airhead when it comes to stuff. Knowing where it is. Keeping it organized. Both concepts escape me on a regular basis. I have gotten better with the organizational skillz over the years (if you'll only excuse the piles of mail, magazines and paperwork about to take over my kitchen), but the misplacing things in odd places in a moment of distraction just seems to never get any better for me. It never fails: I get distracted while on the phone with the oil guy, listening to him price out the $700-800 its going to cost me to refill so that we can stay warm for the rest of the winter, and I put my keys down in the freezer while grabbing a frozen dinner to throw in the microwave. I'm sure aging (read, dementia) will just make this part of my life a whole hell-of-a-lot more interesting.

If you are a like-minded adult and you piss me off enough through dishing out fuckery, injustice or just plain old asinine behavior, I will probably yell and/or call you a derogatory name or two. Like douche canoe. Or asshat. That's just how I roll. Want to avoid a verbal assault? Don't provoke the Irish, hot-tempered beast that lives inside of me. I use up all of my patience and will to keep frustration levels at a minimum throughout the day-to-day of being a single, working parent to a very young child ... I can not, or rather will not, waste a single ounce of patience reserved for mommyhood on anyone or anything that does not deserve painstaking efforts to keep my cool and play nice. Yes, I hang up on telemarketers only after I've screamed "I'm on the 'do not call' list, asshole!" Some ignorants believe yelling to be a symptom of one's lack of self control. I, however, view myself as a passionate and out-spoken person who yells as a way to vent my frustrations thereby keeping my temper in check so that I don't have to resort to excessive violence and gunning down people who piss me off.

I bite off more than I can chew and, subsequently, choke on occasion. In short, I over-commit and stretch myself thin. Instead of moving forward towards something wonderful, I sometimes find myself spinning around in chaos never really moving anywhere coherent. Example: I owe edited photography to at least four clients and I am more than just a couple of months behind with my start-up. Unfortunately, because I spend so much time blogging instead of working my full-time paying job, managing the shit show that is my separation and divorce, raising my toddler, cleaning up after an obnoxious and very large dog and taking care of myself ... well, I just can't seem to give my photography the attention it deserves right now. I keep putting it on the back burner. I keep procrastinating. Why? Oh, because I obviously suck and will never turn my hobby into a real business through this self-sabotage that I am just so perfect at! (if you are one of the people I owe pictures to and you are reading this, I will get them to you very soon and I am so sincerely sorry for the delay!)

I sometimes ignore my child and/or let him entertain himself while the TV is tuned to the Sprout channel. Someone please call social services (I'm being sarcastic, FYI. Until someone invents a sarcasm font, I'll occasionally have to spell that out for you). Now, for the record, I do not attend to this blog during C's waking hours, unless he is not in my care. But I do have to use the potty, heat up frozen dinners, brew endless pots of coffee, pluck my eyebrows and play with the dog so, on occasion, I like to test the theory of unstructured play by letting C practice self-sufficiency and independence. In all honesty, 30 minute intervals of sitting on the floor playing with a one and a half year old is all I can muster for my own attention span. Maybe that makes me a horrible mother? I don't know. What I do know is that I have ADHD and I'm doing the best I can while I trudge through this divorce while working full-time. I do play with C, one-on-one, down on the floor every single day for at least a half hour before dinner and a half hour after dinner. Hopefully, I get some kind of credit for actually getting down on the floor to play with my child on a regular basis. No? Whatever. Have I mentioned yet that this blog is not about self-validation either? I'm not a narcissist. I leave that up to the STBX. Anyway ... I guess what I'm basically admitting is that not only am I not a perfect mom, but I don't even think I'm the "best" mom. I am just a single, loving, hard-working mom doing the best she can with the hand she's been dealt. And I love my kid more than life itself and he knows it.

I could probably list a few more imperfections on my part, but these four have got to be my biggest "problems". Is this "a lot", I'm not entirely sure. All I know is that I'm imperfect. I'm classic ADHD, a yeller when angry or upset, I have horrible personal management skillz and motherhood is sometimes not all its cracked up to be.

Stated another way, life with me is busy, passionate, never dull or predictable and totally full of LOVE through the mistakes, shit that stinks, imperfections and hypocrisies.

I may not be perfect, but I sure as hell am working on being wonderful. No one ever said wonderful had to be perfect.

Phenom: Uncut and Uncensored

2012-03-02T11:58:00.002-05:00

There's something terribly wrong with the family court system in this country. Just saying that here, on the public interwebs, regardless that this is my very own personal blog ... well, some family court judge somewhere will probably try to shut me down as soon as my inflammatory statements circle around to the right places.

My son: acting judge in a mock courtroom, just his size.
He knows something is eff'd up too, just look at his face!

To be the assclown that I so am (why oh why hasn't a font for conveying utter sarcasm been invented yet?), I'll even go so far as to allege that the family court system is not only unfair, corrupt and totally biased to those with unlimited amounts of cash, but it also seems to exist in its own little fairyland of a bubble within our justice system where "justice" is not served under the letter of the law as it is in other court systems in this country. Divorcing couples are at the mercy of which lawyer has the judge in their back pocket and custody fights are so complicatedly crazy, I would need to write 100 more blog posts just to get started on the insanity of it all. Then there's litigation abuse the court system is oblivious to, that narcissistic sociopaths are so very aware of and are using to their manipulative advantages ... and, you can forget about serving and protecting the "best interests" of the children. That concept is such an utter failure, it makes me sick to my stomach. But, I digress ....

Now, I'm new to this whole arena, as I have only been legally separated from the STBX since early October of last year (believe me you, this separation IS dragging on forever and a day and I think I might wither away and die if the actual divorce phase takes as long). I'm also totally inexperienced since we didn't fight over our custody arrangement (we have joint legal custody and I have primary physical custody, if you're really that ~~nosy~~ curious). Instead, we agreed outright how to arrange the custody given the circumstances at the time. We've actually only had one contested hearing to settle disputed contingencies for visitation, with a follow-up hearing now set for this June. That's it.

Accordingly, I really am a newbie on this subject and maybe, given that fact, I should just keep my mouth shut.

But I won't.

I was brought up to believe that one small voice can make a huge difference in the world and for that alone, I will never shut up when I feel that certain things must be said. Some say I'm sassy, others might just say that I'm a loud-mouth (er, bitch), I say that I'm just being honest. To me, shutting up when things are going horribly wrong would be no worse than spreading lies to paint a picture that things are instead going blissfully right. I was also taught not to tell lies, so there you go. My Momma is very proud, don't you worry.

Another reason why I won't put a sock in it? Why I won't ever stop flappin' my gums? Oh those pesky little civil liberties afforded to me through the Constitution of this place that I call home .... most importantly, the First Amendment of that Constitution.

Freedom Of MotherLovin' Speech, Baby. As a blogger, I take that right seriously. Very, very seriously.

The family court systems should also be taking that right seriously when handing down decisions and court orders, but they're not. Just ask Anthony Morelli. Or Marc Byron. Regardless of whether or not I think these two men are douches is beside the point. Douches have civil rights too, you know.

This is getting way out of hand.

I keep hearing stories throughout the blogsphere and in the media that my right to say things like, "Yo, my STBX is a douche canoe y'all" is actively being threatened by an already defunct and corrupt family court system, and the gears inside my brain have come to a screeching halt to the point where I can't concentrate on anything else for awhile; except maybe fantasies of parading down Constitution Avenue with a bull horn shouting "Douche Canoe! Douche Canoe!" over and over until I'm rightfully arrested for disturbing the peace, not for simply stating my opinions.

Getting arrested wouldn't be very productive, now would it? I've cooled down enough over the past couple of days since the Marc Byron story first broke to realize that. I'm opinionated, not delusional.

I'm also motivated. Motivated to do what exactly at this point, I'm not so sure yet. Stay tuned. I'm sure it will be wonderful. While I sit and think about what road to travel next here on my journey to start over, I will come here to my blog and maintain that I will NOT shut the fuck up in the meantime. As fellow divorcee and kick-ass blogger, Mikalee Byerman, has also proudly declared in the face of being threatened to do just that by her own douche canoe of an ex.

I'm also going to encourage you, faithful reader, to partner up with Anthony Morelli and his on-going campaign to save the right to free speech in custody cases. He may be a douche, but the man has just cause.

Moreover, if you're totally ambitious like me and the known injustices of the family court system has really lit a fire under your ass (mine is burning, let me tell you!), you can also team up with Tina Swithin over at onemomsbattle.com and join her campaign to change the family court system back to serving and protecting the best interests of our children.

If the recent travesty of the Susan Powell case has taught us anything, it's that something needs to change and nothing will ever change for the better if we all just shut the fuck up while things are at their worst.

Judgey Wudgey was a Bear

2012-02-21T10:15:00.000-05:00

Wait. That's not how that nursery rhyme goes, is it?

Fuzzy wuzzy was a bitch ...

Shit, that ain't right either! Maybe my head is what is truly fuzzy from lack of adequate sleep?

Photo Credit: firstwivesworld.com

Last night I stayed up finishing, or rather doing, since it never really is ever finished, huge heaps of laundry while also paying bills, organizing my office and working on a case for my real job. I also couldn't sleep because I'm a tad broke at the moment and balancing a single, divorcing mother's budget before bed is equivalent to taking an insomnia-pill in place of a sleeping-pill. I'm in pretty desperate need of that highly-coveted green paper with the dead presidents printed on it.

Attorney fees thus far now hover around $6,000, before either of us even files for divorce, and while our house teeters precariously between hopeful short-sale and foreclosure no-man's land. I could have a coronary from the stress any day now, I swear ...

In case I needed a reminder that my number one priority is to care and provide for my son as a single, divorcing mother (um, I didn't), my first blogsphere-hater has stepped-up, rather uninvited. Thank GAWED, she said something! I'm such a "bad mother", I might have spent all my time blogging and completely forgot about all of my priorities and responsibilities.

*smirk*

In all honesty, I'm actually thankful for the hater cowardly "sharing". I mean, okay okay ... her name is "Jess" something; the tiny avatar fronting the private/hidden blogger profile is a tad less pitiful than taking a dump on someone's blog while hiding behind the pseudonym of "anonymous". But only by a cunt-hair, which I'm sure she has plenty of. She probably spends so much time being such an awesome mother compared to me, she hasn't shaved her bikini-line since before her first kid was conceived. Good mother's don't have time for that.

*smirk*, again.

Anyway, why am I thankful for the hater? Well, she inspired quite a few readers to throw me some virtual ass-slaps, words of encouragement and all around positive support (awe, super warm fuzzies, for real) and she brought a fairly large amount of traffic here that's quite unusual for me so many days out from the most recent post going up. Most importantly, the hater's lame tirade reminded me how little I care about the negative opinions of others when those opinions are nothing but hateful spite void of even the tiniest crumb of constructive criticism.

And that's the key, I think. My head is clearing now as I write this ...

The judgement and criticism of others isn't worth anything if its constructive merit doesn't stack up against the constructive merit of your own personal judgement and criticism.

Haters are gonna hate. People are always going to throw rocks at things that shine. That's just the way it goes and it's been that way since Moses wore short pants. So, whenever you're faced with judgement (and if you're going through a divorce, you will be faced with mountains of it), try to pause somehow while dodging the onslaught of an attack and attempt to identify and weigh the attacker's constructive merit. Resist the urge to either completely internalize or completely dismiss the negativity and instead, search for the truth, if any exists at all. In order to do this successfully, you'll need to start criticizing yourself constructively on a regular basis. Otherwise, at gut-check time you'll be out of practice so you'll be pummeled regardless -- truth or no truth flung at you with the rest of the mud and shit -- and it will undoubtedly bring you down every single time.

You need to learn how to judge yourself so that the judgement of others only matters to you if it stacks up against your own.

How do you "judge" yourself? Learn to be self-critical without beating yourself up or harping on your faults to the point that you become depressed, but practice this type of soul-searching regularly so you may become not only aware of your own truths and your own falsities, but familiar with them.

Take whatever stigmas and stereotypical labels out there that you are aware of and play "myth busters" with yourself, your life and whatever situation you might be in. Take any negativity you've experienced, whether self-inflicted, from someone or something external, fabricated in your own mind or actually thrown your way from a "hater", and consider what could possibly make the negativity true and what could possibly make it false. Since YOU are ultimately the only person that knows what's best for your own life, you are your best judge of what is true or false about your own life.

If this little game of self-judgment is practiced somewhat regularly in your mind, you'll find yourself much better prepared for war; taking mud slung at you from anyone at face value for what its worth, while dodging the rest of the shit that comes with an attack. Then, when you tell people (especially haters and naysayers!) that you don't care what they think, you'll actually mean it more often than not! In this life, fuzzy wuzzy may have been a bear but judgey wudgey IS always a bitch ... and what better time to learn how to put that bitch in her place while you're going through something as harrowing as divorce before turning 30?

"Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgement we pass on ourselves." ~ Nathaniel Branden

When merely working for a living is no longer your idea of living

2012-02-15T04:35:00.000-05:00

A shot from my first gig shooting maternity
Photo credit: ME!

If I think about it, I’ve always had a creative side and theroots of my creativity run deep. My family tree is chock full of fairly successfulartists, musicians, photographers; a multitude of ingenious talent. So really, I guess I’m finding it a tad peculiarthat it’s taken me almost 30 whole years to finally have the nerve to reachdown into the very depths of me, pull that creativity out, blow the dust off andpolish it up real nice for it to be put to good use.

It took a bad marriage to the wrong person and its fast andpainful demise, becoming a single mother to the most precious gift there canever be and being stuck in a stagnant career of almost seven years for me to getto this place. This place of overwhelming desire to start over and to do so in a way that isnothing but wonderful.

I've realized that I don’t want tojust work for a living. Instead, I want to live while I work. And I want toenjoy living.

I want to use mycreativity to do something fulfilling. I want to start over wonderful in somany aspects and my career and what I do to bring home the bacon shouldn't beexcluded in this self-renovation process. I don’t want to be 50 years old and still working full-timein the same exact job that I’m working now. I might as well have stayed in my shitfestof a marriage, because the eventual death of me would be the same essentially. Inthe end.

And I need more than that.

I deserve more. I owe it to myself.

Someday. That's what I keep telling myself. But not in that sing-song-voice people use when they don't actually mean it. I say "someday" with a mean, punctuated and fierce determination.

Actually, I’m a prime example of why 18 years-young, fresh high-school graduates should not bolt off to top-notch colleges with price tagsof $30-40K/year, gaily declared as majoring in “Biomedical Engineering” for pursuit of alife-long career doing whatever it is that biomedical engineers do. In case youdon’t already know, I have an engineering degree but I am not employed as a realengineer. Instead, I examine patent applications for methods and devices of biomedical engineering applications forthe U.S. Patent Office.

Note, this blog and the opinions expressed therein are myown and do not reflect those of the federal government, the Department ofCommerce, the U.S. Patent Office or any sub-entities or employees thereof. (I’vebeen waiting to find a place to stick that bureaucratic clause!)

In a nutshell, I decide whether or not other people’s engineering marvels are worthy of patent protection underthe principles of patent law (trust me; it’s really not that interesting socool ya jets … and no, I don’t want to hear about the super “invention” you've coined up in your garage). Becoming a patent examiner wasn’t a life-long dreamof mine; rather, it was one of the few career options I had available to me uponrealizing I had earned a degree (with some heavy-duty student loans tied to it)in a field I had zero desire of actually practicing.

Admission: when my step-dad first suggested I pursueengineering during the whole college search of high-school’s Junior Year, Iscoffed “I don’t want to drive trains” because that’s how dense I was at thetime. Book smarts? -- done and done. Common sense? -- a work in progress. Shamefully, when it truly came down to deciding between liberal artsand what was being dubbed as the more “practical” options by those guiding me,I chose practical with dollar signs in my eyes thinking that by pursuing engineering,I had a greater chance of striking it rich. What I would eventually learn, in additionto differential equations, how-to-kick-ass at beruit (if you call it beer-pong, I will cut you) andthe total suckage of student loans, was that I would rather slowly gauge my eyesout with a jagged piece of glass over the span of a 40-year career thanactually work as an engineer day in and day out over said same length of time.Yes, I graduated with a 3.0 from a top-notch school while simultaneously working30/hours a week and partying just as much. But did I enjoy engineering? To say,“not at all” would be a horrific understatement.

So, currently, I’m working as a patent examiner for going onseven years now. It pays the bills and as a divorcing woman, that’s imperative forthe foreseeable future. For the record, I do enjoy the job most of thetime and I am fairly decent at it. There are a lot of perks (did I mention thatI work from home 100 percent of the time?) and the benefits and stability ofgovernment work are unmatched in this economy. I don’t anticipate leaving thejob within the next decade. I do, however, anticipate loathing its utter lack of creative expression well before my 40th birthday looms.

Before that happens, though, I have a plan. I’m building this blog in addition to my freelance photography start-up founded in the midst of my separation. Next comes a professional website for the integration of both and some possible marketing. My five-year goal is to have enough success somewhere with mycreative endeavors where I can maybe drop down to being a patent examinerpart-time versus full time.

I'm making this proclamation here as a sort of personal contract with myself. You know, that oddity where things seem more "real" or "true" when you can read them in 12 pt font?

If I continue to turn out exquisite work like I didthis past week during my first real maternity photo session, I'll be that much more confident that my plan is a realistic one with an extraordinary amount ofpotential. That’s what I call wonderful. How about you?

Another shot from my first gig shooting maternity
Photo Credit: again, ME! :)

Learning My Truths, Episode 2

2012-02-07T09:53:00.001-05:00

Learned truth: I'll never have a poker face, never mind master one. But I'm sure going to try!

I'll never learn how to relax my face into that blank expression one needs to form, as if its second nature no less, to win big at Texas hold'em. Or to win any other gamble in life for that matter. If I'm holding a full house, the induced glee felt in anticipating winning the pot is not only written all over my face, but rather stamped, sealed and hand-delivered to my opponent. That knowing twinkle in my eye I can't figure out how to dim gives it away every single time. So, I lose. That hand, and then the next five.

I have no poker face. (Lady Gaga would be thoroughly disappointed, I'm sure.)

The woman with a thousand different faces.
Photo credit: mtv.com

If I am bursting at the seems with happiness, it shows. Likewise, if I am feeling miserable I tend to look the same outright. How I really feel at any particular moment in life is usually not all that difficult to discern, even for the most undiscerning of people. An observer need not even know me all that well to figure me out.

Sometimes, wearing my feelings as if they're nothing more than a catchy accessory to an already well-put-together outfit bodes well for me. Other times, its more like being worthy of being in one of those fashion disaster spreads all the gossip mags print after major red carpet events. Except this is my life, for real, and this isn't Hollywood. There is no red carpet. Ever. Just a stained, faded, dog-hair-covered drabish green one that would be the first thing I would rip out of the house I am renting if I were able to buy it.

On the one hand, my expressiveness can often be an attractive and appealing quality. I've been told that I have charisma and that because I am easy to read, I am easy to like. This aspect of my personality has not only helped me land almost every single job I've ever interviewed for since I was old enough to even get a job, but I've never really had any trouble making friends, or even with dating. Kuddos to me! I can't help but take a little pride in knowing that my bubbly and outgoing personality is infectious and contagious. I love to spread the love! (And, did I mention that I can be corny? -- Consider yourself hereby warned from this point forward.)

On the other hand, my lack of emotional control gets me into trouble. Unfortunately for me, I'm finding this hard and fast truth out through the perils of divorce, court for the same and co-parenting trials and tribulations with a narcissist. It is something I need to work on for sure, and since self-awareness is usually the first step towards personal change and growth I am already well on my way. But I need help and I'm not afraid to ask for it. (I'm talking to you, faithful reader. Feel free to throw some advice my way below in the comments section ... How do you keep your emotions in check?)

Recently, I've spent some time reading up on ways to keep myself stoic when negotiating aspects of our divorce with the STBX. I've consulted with friends, my attorney and various other resources and so-help-me God, I will learn how to appear as cool as a cucumber when I want nothing else but to rage and bite someone's head off (oh, okay fine -- the STBX's head served on a platter is maybe a fantasy I have had once or twice since leaving him). I know that is what is in our son's best interests no matter what happens from this point forward ... no matter how much the STBX lies, connives and manipulates his parents, his attorney or our judge (and God-forbid, someday our son), I have to master my poker face. If for no other reason but to prevent the STBX from ever feeling a single ounce of satisfaction from being able to get under my skin ever again ... that would be victory on my end well worth the effort. The ultimate jackpot in the gamble of divorce, no?

Pseudo Long-Distance

2012-01-30T05:07:00.000-05:00

I’m a single parent. Mr. Handsome is a single parent.

We both work.

Saying our time together is “limited” would be a laughableunderstatement if I didn’t miss him so ridiculously most of the time. So, while I’mnot exactly laughing, I am trying to make the best of it. Trying would be the operative word. Flailing is more what it feels like 99.9% of the time. At least onmy end. I get the feeling from him that he’s managing the aspects of ourrelationship that make us feel like we live 300 miles apart, instead of just 30or so, a lot better than I am. Maybe that’s an illusion, or maybe he’s justmore mature, patient, and reasonable than I am.

Who knows?

All I really know is that I need to try and focus on thepositives of our little predicament before I go stir crazy. I am an impatientwoman. When it comes to my dating history, I’ve been accustomed to having what Iwant, when I want it. Never in my life have these flaws of mine (ADHD, anyone?)been more apparent than now. I’ve never been involved in a real long-distancerelationship in all my life, and I’m certainly starting to think I avoided suchpredicaments in past relationships on purpose. In fact, I can’t think of oneinstance where I’ve dated someone that wasn’t as available as I wanted them tobe (within reason, of course). So, needless to say, this pseudo long-distancething is throwing me for a loop.

I’m antsy.

I’m impatient.

Sometimes, I think that it sucks.

If falling for someone with limited availability is supposedto be some sort of learning experience, I’m certainly paying attention.

As previously let on, I am sort-of falling head over heelsfor Mr. Handsome. For the first time in my life I may have picked someone I’mactually compatible with. There’s also an undeniable connection andset-the-room-on-fire chemistry, so I’m pretty sure that sticking it out to seewhere it goes is totally worth it.

I’m willing to look on the bright side of thepseudo-distance:

1.) I’m forced to take it slow. I’m an impulsiveperson, who’s not only in-tune with my feelings but who also wears them on my sleeve;it’s not hard to see how I could rush into something too fast. Like a fool. I’msupposed to be starting over wonderful, living phenomenal and all that happycrap here. I can’t be acting like a fool.

2.) Infatuation-induced foolishness aside, the infatuationitself is real and we both know that for a fact. There’s no guessing, just as thereare no games. If we didn't really like one another, neither of us would botherwith the other. We’re both too unavailable and busy raising our respectivekids alone to waste the precious time we do have playing mind games about howwe feel.

If those two positives are not representative of a foundationfor building something healthy and meaningful, then I am still as stupid aboutrelationships as I was more than half a decade ago when I was first dating the STBX. I would like to think that is not the case.Otherwise, why the hell am I writing this blog? No one wants to take advicefrom a self-proclaimed moron.

How did I get here?

2012-01-28T12:44:00.000-05:00

Closure is essential to moving on. Whether you're trying to move on from a past failure, mistake, loss of a loved one through death or divorce ... it really doesn't matter what exactly it is that you're trying to move on from. You need closure to get to that place -- in both your mind and your heart -- where you can ultimately, just let go of the emotional pain and mental anguish that's got you firmly anchored in personal turmoil.

Without closure you're just hanging on. Immobilized.

J, my pooch, doesn't hang on to the ugly.
Neither should you.

You can't move on towards anything wonderful if the boat you're sailing in has its anchor thrown out into the sea of craziness around you. Either you'll just paddle furiously and spin around in circles because you're anchor has caught a rock and is firmly held in one spot, or you'll exhaust yourself trying to paddle forward against the tide as your anchor, the dead weight of nothing-but-baggage, drags along the the bottom surfaces of the murky waters you might happen to find yourself floating in.

So, how does one achieve closure?

I'll tell you how I did it, but first let me tell you this: how I move on, achieve closure and let go of past hurts and disappointments is unique to ME. How you might achieve the same in whatever moving on process you are trying to navigate would be the same for you: unique and as individual as you are.

That is the biggest lesson of all. If you walk away from this blog with nothing else but that one truth, my job here is done.

My timeline, rate of recovery, ability to forgive and let go -- essentially, my starting over wonderful, living life phenomenal journey -- is as unique to me as your own life's journey is to you. So, you could read what I have to say and take nothing from it, essentially, because everyone's emotional makeup is as different as their genetic one. When it comes to grieving a loss, or even falling in love, the how, why and when for one person will always be different than the next's. No two people are the same. Likewise, neither are their experiences or their emotional investments in the same. Too soon for one person might be just long enough for another; or even too long (Oh-MY-God-Is-It-Over-Yet!?!!!).

With that, here's what I've learned about achieving closure so that you can move on once you've gotten to that peaceful place.

Closure that is real and complete will only be found within yourself. Do not expect whatever it is that you are trying to move on from to give it to you. Breaking up with someone? Don't expect the ex-lover to somehow bring you the peace you need to get a grip and move on. That's crazy talk! Think about it this way: when someone you love dies, you don't expect that person who's no longer here on this earth to just give you whatever it is you need to be at peace with the loss. You have to grieve, reflect, learn and find closure in your own mind and heart in order to move on when someone you cherish passes away. Well, what makes you think moving on from anything else in this life would be any different? It's not.

Feel whatever it is that you really feel and don't let anyone tell you how you should feel. When I finally left my marriage, I was so over it and ready to just put it behind me. I had spent the entire relationship fighting for it and grieving what wasn't there, all while pretending to be something we weren't for those watching, by the time I got out of the mess, I was just out. I was done. It was over. The pain that I felt after leaving paled in comparison to the pain I endured through it all. I was hurting more for the lost hopes and dreams then the loss of him per se. And, yes, I was scared of what lie ahead in the unknowns of starting over. But other feelings I had were these: joy, excitement, utter and complete relief to have gotten out when I did, happiness for both me and my son and ultimately, gratitude. It wasn't until I really started to let myself feel these feelings in the wake of my separation that I found myself moving on. At first, I allowed well-meaning friends and family telling me how I should feel, and what was okay or not okay, prevent me from expressing how I really felt wholeheartedly and outwardly. Don't do that. Be true to your feelings whatever they may be. If you want to shout from the fucking rooftops how angry you are, how sad you are, or how ridiculously happy you are to have escaped the biggest mistake of your life then DO IT. And don't should all over yourself in the process.

Learn what it really means to forgive, but don't fool yourself in believing that you have to forget. That saying "forgive and forget" is hogwash. Whether you have to forgive yourself for making a mistake or failing to achieve a goal, or you are trying to forgive someone that has hurt you, it is important to take the lessons learned with you as you move forward on your journey. Forget the pain and all the nitty gritty details, yes. But forgive and remember. Also, another lesson you will have to learn here is that forgiveness isn't about excusing yourself or another person for what was done. Instead, it's about growing as a person and learning how to let go, all while remembering that achieving that is what makes you the bigger person. Forgiveness gives YOU the ultimate power and strength and once you realize you have that, you can really move on.

When fate steps in ...

2012-01-27T00:08:00.000-05:00

It is amazing, really.

You’re traveling along on your own little journey, lost inyour own little world, and out of nowhere it seems, the right something (or dareI even say, someone?) crosses paths with yours. When I say right, I mean thatcertain something (and yes okay, possibly someone) who’s sudden, un-expectedpresence makes you stop dead-in-your-tracks so that you can catch your breath.

Because it’s just what you needed. The realization takesyour breath away.

And you can’t believe your luck that it just showed up oneday, out of the blue, when you weren’t even looking for anything like it. Whenyou didn’t even know that it was just the thing you’ve been missing in yourtravels all along.

So, you take it with you as you continue onward.

You embrace it.

You’re grateful for it.

You give it all you’ve got. For what it’s worth, it changes you enough where youre-evaluate where you’re going and how you plan to get there.

For some, that certain, perfect something could be just theright job opportunity where taking it opens the door of possibilities for themost fulfilling and rewarding career imagined. For me, that certain, perfect something might actually be asomeone.

So far, I feel as if I cannot get enough. Enough of hispresence, his voice, his hands. His eyes locked with mine. I swear, every timehe kisses me my heart breaks wide open wanting to give back to him every feelinghe gives me.

Truthfully, I’ve had to stop and catch my breath quite a fewtimes since we met. There was an immediate connection and the feelings werethere fast, furious and without any sort of warning. I didn’t want to believethat any of it was real or even possible, so at one point early on, I tried toturn around and travel off in a different direction away from him.

But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I came right back to where he wasstanding; waiting patiently.

And I’m embracing it.

And not only am I grateful to have met him, but the significanceof him waiting it out while I stumbled around in disbelief in the beginningdoes not go unnoticed.

I want to give it all I’ve got, as if I’ve got nothing tolose and like I’ve never been hurt before. For what it's worth, he's wonderful and where this is going could change everything.

Single Mom Goes Stag

2012-01-25T07:07:00.000-05:00

Me in the infamous dress

Every woman, whether single, married, separated, divorced -- or whatever -- should attend the 30th birthday party of a friend before they themselves turn the big 3-Ohh. You know the classic bucket-list? Well, add this little adventure to your “things to do before I’m old” list.

I’m sure my take on the whole experience is completely unique to me as an individual, and with respect to where I am in life right now, but there are lessons to be learned for any woman by attending any sort of party or event on her own. If that party or event celebrates an unavoidable milestone that you yourself will face at some point, either willingly or begrudgingly, even better! More perspective, I say!

So, what did I learn by attending a birthday-bash all-by-my lonesome? First, I learned what was needed to actually get my ass to the party when my date had to cancel. Once there, I unexpectedly learned a few new things about myself and where I am at on this journey to start over.

Single Mom Goes Stag = Total Eye Opener!!

Part I – Get your ass off the couch. Go to the party.

When you’re feelinglost as to what to do with yourself when your much-anticipated date cancelsbecause his kid is sick, you should calla guidance counselor, otherwise known as a trusted friend, to help you find youway again. This person should preferably be listed on your speed dial. Most importantly, they should have a proven trackrecord for being practical in times of stress and uncertainty.

I didn’t spend toomuch time fretting around my house feeling totally lost as to what to do aboutmy cancelled date before calling a close friend for some guidance. I hid thesexy red dress bought for my sexy date in the downstairs closet and then calledthe first qualifying friend in my contact list as the tears of disappointment spilleddown my cheeks. Upon answering, my friend first comforted me of course, but shedidn’t waste too much time when it came to dishing out the sound and practicaladvice that I definitely needed to hear. She talked me out of staying home alone for the evening (which I didseriously consider doing – the horror!) and she reasoned with me rationally whenI irrationally toyed with the idea of going to my cancelled date’s house tohang out with him instead of going to the party (did I want C to get sickagain!?!). She also bolstered my self confidence and encouraged me to attendthe party alone, sans sexy date, but still wearing the sexy red dress.

Most ofus need the compassion, support and guidance of our friends when life throws usoff the road we are on and you’ve landed in a ditch somewhere. It doesn’tmatter how “strong” you may be on your own, because you can still find yourselflost and uncertain on your journey towards being wonderful. It is friendships that give you guidance and strength when you need it the most; when yourreserves are low and when you’ve lost your way. So, if you find yourselflost for any reason in life, call one of your own personalguidance counselors. Call a friend.

Feeling nervous? Dressing to impresswill get you out of your door and through the party doors. To exude an outward appearance of self-confidence,no matter how nervous you may actuallyfeel walking into the party alone, dress as if you’ll be walking in to theevent with a sexy date on your arm instead of just your purse. Taking care of yourself and beingfabulously put-together will make you feel good. Feeling good and lookinggood will automatically garner respect from the other party goers, which will furtherbuild up your self-confidence. And, since appearing confident garners even morerespect from others, well it’s not too hard to see how such a cyclic processlike this just needs a kick start from you, the stag party-goer, to get it intohigh gear. Slip into those sexy heels, wrap yourself up in the latest fashiontrend that exemplifies your personality and knock ‘em dead! I wore the sexy reddress bought intentionally for my much-anticipated date. I told myself that I owed the dress the party, cancelled dateor not. And,to my surprise, my sexy red dress turned into a conversation starter on morethan one occasion while actually at the party. Bonus!

Part II – Pay attention as if you're your owndate. You just might learn something new about YOU!

I was nervous to go to the party alone forvarious reasons, but mostly – as much as it pains me to admit – I was apprehensive about what friends and acquaintances might think about my getting divorced before 30.That admission, as I drove myself to the party, shocked me. Up until that point, I hadn’t cared what any of my closefriends and family members thought about my divorce. The people in my life thatreally matter know the details, therefore I don’t carry guilt and shame aroundwith me as if I failed somehow. I don’t feel judged, for the most part. Theentire drive to the party, I had to gut-check myself and really dig deep withthe self pep-talk to remind myself that Idon’t want to be someone that cares what others think. Part of starting overincludes re-identification of who I am and what I stand for, and by going tothis party -- looking fly with my head held high -- well, I was reminded thatmy identify as I start over wonderful is MINE and not based at all by whatanyone thinks. My identity is defined by my choices and my actions. Saying you don’t care what others think ofyou is one thing. Believing it is another. And, obviously, going stag made me realize that I still need to work onthe latter.

Once I was at the party, I did end up having a blast. All of my nervousness and apprehensions fadedaway pretty quickly and I honestly did have a lot of fun. It was so nice to beout socializing with other like-minded adults, free from the confines oftoddler-land and my job. It wasliberating. Not only did the partyhelp me see that I needed the night out, but I drove home afterwards feeling deserving ofthe night out! I mingled around and met some new (fellow single!) people, which was awesome (more people to add to the guest list for my “I’m getting divorced”sex-toy party I plan on throwing this spring). I touched base with oldfriends (both single and married) from college and even though I did experience a few garbled thoughts of "are they judging me and my divorce?" mid-conversation once or twice, I was able to squash my own insecure worries fairly quickly.

Much to my surprise, I found I was able to float around the party pretty effortlessly between new and oldfriends, single and married friends. It was a relief to see that despiteeverything I’ve been through, I’m still an extrovert capable of having funwherever, with whomever. For a longtime, the STBX had me believing that I was a miserable person that didn’t knowhow to have fun anymore. Going stag to a party has made me see the ultimate untruth in suchbullshit.

Looking back on the night now, I’ve learned that notonly am I resourceful (I know when I need to call a friend for help!), but I am also way more resilient and brave thanI may have previously thought orgiven myself credit for. I wasso incredibly disappointed that my much-anticipated date with Mr. Handsome didn’thappen, but I pulled it together by the end of the day and ultimately did what was best for meregardless. I lifted my chin, thrust my chest out and me and my big(metaphorical) set of balls bounced back. Before my marriage,I would have sat home alone and wallowed if a similar situation had happened. Iwouldn’t have gone to a party alone if a date cancelled because I would have let my fears and lack ofconfidence get the best of me. Effectively, I would have let my friends downwho were expecting me to show up just because my date cancelled. I’mproud of myself for going to that party alone after having the big datewith Mr. Handsome fall through. That’s progress, personal growth and a wholelot of self-reflection yielded from just one little party turning into anawfully important night on this journey. I call that starting over wonderful. Howabout you?

What's been keeping me?

2012-01-19T00:47:00.001-05:00

I really work here, but from home.
So I guess I "virtually" work here.
Photo Credit: patentdocs.org

I'm super swamped examining patent applications lately. In case you didn't know, that gig is the only paying gig I have at the moment. I'm a social-media, internet junkie, wannabe freelance writer and/or photographer, purely for free. What I want to do to put food on the table and what I actually do to put food on the table don't line up exactly, but that's a different post for a different day.

On top of my job, and being a single mom to a toddler and sometimes-pain-in-the-ass dog, I've been spending my barely existent free-time these past few days answering 15 pages of fuckery, a.k.a. the discovery request from "the opposing counsel". There's a hearing regarding visitation scheduled two weeks from tomorrow. Visitation that we already drafted, hammered out and agreed to more than two weeks before Christmas. Visitation that only needed to be entered in as a court order along with a formal petition before the holidays, in order to be effective for the holidays.

Instead, the opposing counsel didn't file a visitation petition with the court until December 23rd. Much drama ensued and now we are going to court. It's complicated and ugly.

If I was a betting woman, I would put my money on the STBX not filing on time for the holiday visitation to take place so that his parents would get pissed off enough. If the STBX doesn't have visitation on a holiday, his parents don't by default. That being said, given that the ex-laws have more money than they know what to do with, and that they fit the profile of classic enablers, yeah ... it's not surprising in the least that this was the move played by the STBX in order to con some money out of them for paying legal fees. I was with the guy for 6 years. I know him better than I care to admit. Can we say, manipulative douche canoe? Why yes, I think we can. I saw the tactic coming from a mile away ...

Where gambling belongs. Trust me, I've been twice!

If I was a betting woman, I would also put my money on the STBX not formally filing to see his own kid in a timely manner because he is selfish. Plain and simple.
My guess is that he wanted to have the sick, twisted and dishonorable pleasure of telling whomever ignorant enough to listen "My bitch of an ex won't let me see our kid at Christmas. Feel bad for me. I'm a victim".

I'm sure his complaints about me at various holiday gatherings were just dripping with "boo-hoo"'s and "poor-me" whines, as if he marinaded in them since we separated. And he probably did. The classic manipulative narcissist is usually well-prepared for their theatrics. Honestly, I really don't care what he might have told members of "the other side" about me, but I do feel sorry for anyone that wasted their time having sympathy for him. The only sympathies I have surrounding this whole situation are for my poor little C-man who didn't get to spend time with his dad and grandparents at Christmas.

For what it's worth, I've been telling the STBX to file a visitation petition since before I even moved out of our house. I've told him in writing through multiple e-mails. I've screamed it to him when he's called me up to badger and harass me. I've told his parents.

I sincerely want our son to have time with his dad. I know how important it is. I just want the time and stipulations surrounding that time to be court-ordered due to the issues involved.

Since we separated, I've said, "I will not set up visitation informally due to the contingencies I am requesting, so please file a petition for visitation with the court as soon as possible so that you can have time with our son over the holidays". I've said this about ten different ways, at least fifty different times.

My repeated requests fell on deaf ears.

Infuriating doesn't even cover it.

By mid-November, I had started to have real doubts the STBX would follow through with his responsibilities. And my heart hurt for our son, so I kept pressing the issue through e-mails and phone calls to the ex-laws. The week of Thanksgiving, all parties finally started to negotiate. Once December rolled around, despite already struggling with my ever-mounting attorney fees, I took it upon myself to draft the proposal for visitation based on our e-mail negotiations at that point. I even had my attorney formalize the draft and send it off to the opposing counsel for filing concurrent with the petition to the court in the hopes that we could expedite the process on time for the holidays. Ten days after sending it off, my attorney followed up with the opposing counsel wondering why nothing had been filed. We didn't get an answer very quickly. In fact, we didn't hear back about anything until just a few days before Christmas, and shocker -- it was requested that I go along with the holiday visits informally until they could "get to" filing the visitation agreement as a court order. My attorney promptly advised me to hold my ground and not leave our son unattended with anyone until there was a court order in place.

When attempts to pressure me into informal visitation for the holidays failed (threats, lectures, more threats .. it was horrible), that's when the opposing counsel finally filed the petition with the court. On December 23rd. And our "agreement" is, of course, thrown out the window as every single portion of it is being contested.

So, that's what's been keeping me.

I've been staying up every night this week to answer ridiculous questions and to gather and provide evidence in support of my answers. I have at least four blog ideas in the works, but no real time to work on them. Not to mention the dwindling fridge contents, piles of laundry that continue to rise and the dust bunnies floating around every room of my house. There are just not enough hours in the day.

Some of the discovery request is legit. Especially considering the very real possibility that the STBX hasn't been completely honest with his legal representation. Throw the enabling and misinformed (and also, under-informed) ex-laws into the mix, and its enough to make anyone's head spin. Trust me, mine's been spinning around for a week now.

My biggest requests to the court are that a) visits be supervised by the ex-laws and b) that C is returned to me for bedtime each night. Until visitation is established with a baseline of consistency, regularity and stability -- and until the STBX establishes that he is competent and not going to abduct our child given the distance between our residences (and the threats to do just that!) -- both of these are imperative in my mind. I have a list of reasons and multiple sources of evidence in support of my requests. Prayers to all that be and all that ever was Holy in the family court system that we get a fair judge that takes things like recent emergency protective orders into serious consideration!! My heart leaps into my throat with panic just thinking about all of this. I've never taken anxiety meds before, but for some reason, "I need a Xanax" keeps floating across my prefrontal cortex.

Most of the discovery request is a giant pile of horse-shit served with a lightly toasted shit sandwich on the side. Example: the STBX is contesting being court ordered to "not consume or ingest alcohol or illegal drugs" before visits with our son. Yes, you read that correctly. I had to read it five or six times myself before my brain actually registered that part of the fuckery as being for real.

In fact, as I tear through it, most of the fuckery looks like this:

Opposing counsel: Why is it necessary for the petitioner (that's the douche canoe, STBX) to give the respondent 30-days notice for cancelling or seeking to reschedule a visit?

My answer: Because 30-days notice was originally the petitioner's idea (see e-mail evidencing such and such sent to me on such and such date). In addition, it makes reasonable sense to require this notice since visits are proposed by the petitioner to be only one weekend per month, preferably the third weekend of each month (see e-mail evidencing such sent to me on such and such date). In order to realistically accommodate rescheduling for either party, for example swaps for the second or fourth weekend, 30-days notice is necessary. Unless the petitioner can provide a reasonable, convincing and evidence-based argument why 30-days notice would present an undue burden on him, taking into consideration the flight and travel accommodations he will have to make each month, I see no reason why he can't provide 30-days notice of cancelling a visit or seeking to reschedule a visit.

See what I mean? Fuckery. There is no other word.

*Head desk*

Anyway, intriguing and interesting blog posts that more accurately align with the theme of this blog, starting over wonderful, are coming very soon. I promise. They're just on the back burner for now while I deal with this shit fest. I do plan on tackling what I learned from going stag to a party first and foremost. Sooooo, stay tuned!!!

In the mean time, I want to thank you all for the love and support you've been giving me so far on this amazing journey. It is much appreciated. I'll leave you with the breathtaking sight of my backyard to hold you over ...

Note: my love birds have left me, but the view still inspires doesn't it?

Chin up, chest out

2012-01-14T15:50:00.002-05:00

Lesson in dating a single dad when you're a single mom ... dates will be cancelled when kids are sick. And it will suck. And the "absence makes the heart grow fonder" concept will apply.

I was supposed to go to a party tonight with Mr. Handsome, but his little girl has the puking plague that C had last week, along with the rest of New England, so instead I'm going at it alone. I can't just say that I'm strong with a big (metaphorical) set of balls. I must prove it. At least to myself at a bare minimum. Besides, I owe it to the sexy dress I bought for the party to rock it like I just lost 25 lbs on the divorce diet (cuz I did). And I owe it to my friends from college who will be there and who I haven't seen in almost 7 years. Chin up, chest out. I'm doing this. I can do this. Walking into a party solo might just actually be a giant testament to how far I have come so far on my journey towards being wonderful. Strength is wonderful, along with just the right amount of self-confidence without bordering on over confident or cocky. No one likes a cocky bitch. I'll tell you one thing though, feeling confident enough to walk into a party post marriage-fail, without the date that I wanted oh so badly, is just about one of the biggest moves I've ever made for my self-esteem.

P.S. Oh and C was returned from visitation on time without too much conflict. Hope the next two visits go just as smoothly for everyone's sake. And I also hope he isn't too much of a cranky pants for my Mom tonight when she comes over to babysit.

Need a bit to process

2012-01-14T11:07:00.002-05:00

... this has to be the hardest day yet as a single (almost divorced) mom.

I dropped C off for his first visit with his dad this morning and then I cried like a baby most of the way home. [The visits for this weekend were informally set up and agreed upon, by the way, and doing it this way totally against my wishes from day one ... but, I'm just following advice for my legal representation.]

It didn't help that C threw a fit when I left and I could hear him screaming as I shut the door behind me and walked to my car. My heart cracked as I was leaving him and then it shattered into a million tiny jagged-edge pieces as I drove away. He's not like that when he is dropped off at daycare anymore, so I knew that the tears and fierce leg gripping (I had to peal him off me) was a sign that he was distressed about being left there.

Hold on while I stop for a moment and try to breath more slowly. Hyperventilating right now won't help matters.

....

Done. Where was I?

Oh yeah. We have a court hearing to battle out the stipulations and contingencies for visitation next month. I'm supposed to be using the time this weekend that C is with his father to catch up on some work and to try to put more of the evidence together for the 15-page discovery request, a.k.a. fuckery and total BS, received from "the opposing counsel" last week. You know you have some serious shit going in in your life when you get formal documents sent to you with those words in the "From" field of the cover letter.

Instead, I can't concentrate. On.Anything. I put a cup of tea on, forgot about it, and then once it was nice and cold remembered it sitting there waiting for me.

That's when I decided to come here and vent. This post is not thought out, it's just me rambling and trying to process my feelings. I don't think I'm getting very far.

I miss my baby. After him being at daycare all week long, Saturdays are suppossed to be OUR time together. Mommy and C-Man time. We snuggle under the blankets in my bed and play peak-a-boo. We have breakfast together. We play.

I miss my baby.

And, to make matters worse, I'm constantly having to remind the STBX that our son is just a baby. You would think you wouldn't have to remind a child's father of such obvious truth, but in my case I do.

Why I got hitched when I should've ditched

2012-01-13T12:55:00.000-05:00

Tina, of One Mom's Battle, recently wrote a post answering some tough questions posed by a reader and I was so inspired, I just had to follow suit and tackle the same self-reflective challenge. It was asked (and I'm paraphrasing here just a tad): Why did you marry the STBX in the first place? What was the issue with your self esteem, your sense of right or wrong and your boundaries that led you to marry someone like him?

Common sense says that if I haven't figured this much out by now, I'm likely to make the same sort of mistakes all over again, subsequently derailing this journey of mine. In order to get to where I'm going, I have to know where I've been, right? Thankfully, the mental clarity that comes with letting go and moving on has allowed me to easily pinpoint a majority of the specifics as to why I got married in the first place.

Here's how I see it looking back. I've been told a few times recently that hindsight is 20-20. Ain't that the truth?

The STBX was your stereotypical "bad guy". You know the type I'm talking about. No higher education, the comedic trouble-maker, loved to party, totally unpredictable etc. Then, of course, there's the whole asshole attitude problem and cocky sense of entitlement of the bad guy. For most of my twenties, the following equation ruled: unpredictable + excitingly different from me + cocky attitude + some sort of challenge = total attraction. Before you start wondering how I could be so stupid given my level of intelligence and all of that, I'll have you know that the "thug love" phenomena is so common its been studied by numerous professionals. I am not the first woman to fall prey to the addictive dopamine-high that often comes from falling for the bad guy.

As a woman, mother nature gifted me with the instinctive drive to nurture. That means by genetic and evolutionary predisposition, I naturally sought out to improve the STBX. The whole idea of "fixing" him was appealing and I mistakenly thought that if I was his source of influence for positive change, he would be forever grateful and he would never leave. I have since learned that you can't ever really change another person. If they do end up changing for you, and not for themselves, they'll end up resenting you for it and treating you accordingly. Not to mention, most of the changes won't stick. The STBX literally became a project that I had to constantly deal with, keep in check and tend to, and all that focus on him was just an unhealthy way for me to avoid facing what needed fixing in my own life. It was also exhausting after awhile to the point where some of my own negative qualities ended up magnified more than I care to divulge.

Opposites do not attract, they retract. Paula Abdul 's "Opposites Attract" is a multi-million dollar myth that I grew up singing and believing to be true. Trust me, I had to learn this one the hard way. The STBX and I were total opposites in almost every important aspect and instead of thinking this might pose a problem for long-term commitment and stability, we chalked it up to being interesting and complimentary to one another. I am an extrovert, he's an introvert. I am ambitious and somewhat impulsive, he is passive and always calculating (or, rather, manipulative). I am chatty and can strike up a conversation with almost anyone, and he doesn't speak unless spoken to. The list goes on and having so many differences in everything from personal interests to personality traits caused a whole lot of conflict on a pretty regular basis. Ironically, we were never able to resolve much of the conflict because we were so different. For most of our relationship, he had me believing that last part there was most often my fault. It took a long time for me to figure out that belief was due to the gas-lighting he was so ridiculously good at.

I had low self-esteem. By being with a "bad guy", I was unknowingly reinforcing every negative belief I had about myself regarding what I was worth and what I deserved. I wasn't strong enough (or so I believed at that time) to deal with the pain of the end of the relationship. I cared too much about what other people would think if I called off the wedding. I was afraid to be alone while living 450+ miles away from my friends and family. I didn't have the self-confidence going into the marriage to turn around and run, so instead I was left wondering if I was making a huge mistake in saying "I do" as I was saying it.

The STBX is narcissistic. I didn't know this walking down the aisle, but it didn't take long after we exchanged rings for me suspect it. My suspicions were confirmed in marriage counseling where it became clear that I had married a pathological liar and a manipulator who had gone to great lengths to hide serious problems from me the entire time we were together. I had been bamboozled all along. First, he charmed me by dropping the bad guy persona and taking on one of the hard-working family man. Once we were engaged, he had me, hook, line and sinker ... and that's when the mind fuck began. Regularly, he began fueling my low-self esteem by "teaching" me just what levels of bullshit dished out from him I was expected to put up with since I was nerdy, undesirable, not that attractive, too argumentative, too controlling and too bitchy for anyone to ever love me like he did. These types of lessons (read, brain washing), on top of the gas-lighting previously mentioned, usually occurred after promises had been broken, lies of his had been uncovered and the sham he had created to lure me into marrying him was threatening collapse. Over time, he would cycle between building me up and breaking me down to the point where I no longer trusted my feelings or my instincts, so I rationalized away the doubts that I had. Red flags? I pretended not to see them because I didn't have faith in my judgement of them being real warnings that I should heed. And whenever he told me that I was the crazy one, I believed him. At least for the short while between saying "yes" and "I do".

Editorial note: Title credit for this post goes to the amazing Joelle Caputa, author of this article of a similar title, and the upcoming and destined-to-be best seller, Trash the Dress: Stories of Celebrating Divorce in your 20s.

Learning My Truths, Episode 1

2012-01-12T15:02:00.001-05:00

Learned truth: when it comes to dating, multitasking is not for me.

By the way, it should be baseball season already.
Photo credit: Werner Kunz

You may have noticed from my previous post, I'm sort of into someone (affectionately dubbed, "Mr. Handsome"), as hard as I may have tried to pretend otherwise since we first met over two months ago. Instead, I tentatively entertained that whole idea of "playing-the-field".

As I ventured out into the game, I noticed that I was hesitant and that I kept Mr. Handsome on my team as not only a player, but to me he was the MVP. Needless to say, it took me a few weeks to figure out what the hell game I was even playing and why. Oh, and how badly I sucked at it.

It took time and circumstance ... a couple of dates with other players, getting through the holidays with C, managing a few co-parenting ring-dingers with the STBX. Then, all of a sudden, New Years came around and I found myself overwhelmed, exhausted and only really wanting my self-proclaimed MVP to be the one that I lay down and take a time out with. It was as if I became momentarily delirious from sleep-deprivation causing my sub-conscious to find a voice loud enough for me to hear. I heard: Newsflash! This just in from the farthest depths of your brain: you are horrible with multitasking most of the time, so what on earth would make you think you could successfully apply that concept to dating as a single working Mother with a very busy life? Are you stupid? Haven't you learned anything in your almost 30 years? Jeez Louise!

Upon realizing these truths, thanks to that voice in my head, I immediately accepted them. I didn't fight them or stuff them back down where they had been hiding since puberty. That's what growth is all about, isn't it?

Photo Credit: Jonnie Write, theunsecretshopper.com

Not long after this epiphany, I informed anyone that may have been interested that I liked Mr. Handsome enough to know that I should only be pursuing him for the time being. I reasoned it would serve me best to only focus on one thing at a time right now. I thrive when I can take it one thing, one step, one event at a time. I owe it to the starting over wonderful aspect of my life to not only embrace who I am and what I am capable of, but also what I am not capable of. There's also the whole limit of my free time to consider too and, let's face it, squeezing in anything meaningful with one person is going to be a juggling act all on its own.

I am so proud of myself for realizing my truths, accepting them and not pretending to be someone or something that I am not. I feel ridiculously satisfied and at peace with myself having officially quit the play-the-field dating ~~game~~ conundrum for good. It is just not for me. I am not suited for it.

Oh and telling the other players, prospects, suitors; whatever you want to call the whole two of them ... well, it was the first time in my single life, both before and after the failed marriage, that I have ever been outwardly open and honest about where I stood with potential suitors in the dating game. In my past, I usually tried to entertain and captivate any and all suitors because a) I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, b) I never really knew what I wanted, so having multiple options usually boded well for me and c) I had zero self-confidence and enjoyed the superficial validation that playing-the field often provided. I would pretend to be a carefree player, but faltered in my swagger so badly it is no wonder that I usually ended up thrown from the game swiftly with multiple errors on my record.

I look back on past dating experiences and just have to laugh at how young, naive and stupid I was. Where was my backbone?

I needed to go through what I've been through in order to grow one, I guess.

For the record, I am not saying that I only want to pursue Mr. Handsome and no one else because I am in love. Right now, it is too soon to be sure of anything I'm feeling ... except maybe that I'm a bit smitten. You know, that phase in the beginning of something-quite-possibly-amazing when you walk around grinning at nothing and no one at least twenty times a day? Still, I don't naively believe he is "The One" in the same way I mistook the STBX to be 7 years ago. I'm too guarded for that these days. But our connection and chemistry does make me think that fate had something to do with him coming into my life when he did. It's not serious ~~yet~~, but it does have serious potential.

If I am wrong and it doesn't work out, I will be disappointed and even a bit sad all things considered, but I will be okay.

"Everything happens for a reason" has got to be one of the few cliche's I wholeheartedly believe.

Where's my reality TV camera crew?

2012-01-12T10:59:00.003-05:00

I seriously think that the actual day-to-day crazy of my life would be excellent TV fodder for trashy and shallow Americans who like to peep in on the chaos of other people's lives. You know that turkey-neck syndrome we all get when we drive by a fender bender on the highway? Don't even try to lie, you know you do it. We all do. I hereby admit outright that I can be slightly trashy and shallow too from time to time, so don't feel bad.

Want proof?

My future BFF!
Photo Credit: kategosselinhaircut.com

I cried when "Jon & Kate Plus 8" ended, cheered Kate on when "Kate Plus 8" aired and then cried again when the spin-off cancelled (even if it was mediocre compared to its predecessor). I shit you not, but real tears fell from my eyes many times throughout my love affair with the Gosselins. I relished every minute spent watching that train wreck all the way back to their first specials broadcast on the Discovery Channel. I even own a copy of "Multiple Blessings". How lame, right?

If I am going to be totally honest here, I think Kate Gosselin and I might get along really well if we were to meet one day. We are both extroverts and we both married douche canoes whom we ended up divorcing. We could be like instant BFFs. I could teach her how to get a real job and she could teach me how to organize my oppressive ADHD-induced piles of stuff that might take over my house some day if I am not careful. (Kate, if you read this ... I truly support you, despite the train wreck aired on national television, and I do think you rocked your divorce with the utmost of dignity. I only hope that I can do the same through mine. Cheers!)

Anyway, the quirky, eyebrow raising, unexpected "interesting" of my life that seems to pop up whenever I seem to think things like "I've soooo got this" will never cease to amaze me. For an outsider looking in, its probably laugh-out-loud hilarious. For me, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. Learning how to laugh at myself and not take things so seriously is one of my goals on this journey of starting over wonderful. I get better at it every day.

Evidence that I'm making progress on learning how to laugh at my own ridiculousness came up one evening last week. The whole experience and sequence of events that night would have been perfect for the pilot episode of my reality show, too!

First, you need a little background info: for the past two months or so I've been sort of seeing, or at least getting to know, a fellow single dad with a baby girl just 4 days older than C. He sort of just showed up in my life soon after I moved back to New England. He has a crazy ex issue. I have a crazy ex issue. He has custody, I have custody. He is an engineer, I am an engineer. He lost his house and "the dream", and well yeah. So have I. The similarities and things in common continue, but I won't bore you with them all just yet. I will refer to him from this point forward as Mr. Handsome and all that's important to know here is we've been pining for one another for weeks and I've been holding off since we met because I like him, think we could have something real, and I did NOT want him to fall into that rebound grey area that can come about after a break-up. Two months ago, I wasn't entirely ready to open my life up to the idea of new love. I am now and feel safe from the perils of rebound.

Now that you know all that, you should also know that the night in question was a much anticipated get together where both of us knew that certain things might happen. We had had a couple of dates prior to this night and on the most recent one, the chemistry from just kissing was enough to either set the room on fire or make me believe I was 16 again and in the back seat of my first real flame's red camero.

I had cleaned my room, put fresh sheets on my bed, lit candles. You get it. After sending flirty texts back and forth for ~~what seemed like forever~~ days, do I have to explain why we were already making out fifteen minutes after he showed up and only thirty minutes after I had put C to bed for the night? Sparks were flying. I was weak in the knees and It.Was.Awesome.

Until I heard C start to cry from his room.

I say to Mr. Handsome, "Let me go check on him, I'll be right back." I say to myself, "Please just let him need his pacifier for the love of God!"

As I opened the door to C's room and flip on the light, I take in the following scene: C is sitting up in the middle of his crib projectile vomiting in a 180 degree arc around himself. As I leap across his room to reach him, I'm thinking to myself "This is not happening!! This is a dream (or, rather, a nightmare)!! This stuff only happens on TV!! Why Why Why?????"

Can you see why I should have a production crew following me around?

I was seriously freaking out at first. One one hand I was worried about C and if this was to be the start of a 24-48 hour puking plague that I would undoubtedly catch, and on the other hand I was mortified. I was also trying not to puke myself, as I tend to be a reactionary barfer.

Mr. Handsome calls from the other room "Everything all right?" He knows that it isn't. Puke noises are unmistakable and the vomit smell had wafted through the entire house in a matter of seconds. What happened next was amazing, though. Not only did I quickly learn that I had no reason to be embarrassed, but I actually laughed through the events that followed.

As I loved on and kissed my little barf man of a baby, changed his PJs and then cleaned up his vomit covered crib (not really in that order), I did shake my head a lot in disbelief. But I couldn't stop laughing about it either. Mr. Handsome offered to help with the clean up, but there is no way I would have let him because that's just gross. Instead, he sat with C, comforted him and they played peek-a-boo while I cleaned up barf. It was because of how comfortable and at ease with the whole thing that he seemed to be that I was able to go on like I did, without tears or frustration. As I scrubbed and changed sheets and sprayed Lysol everywhere, I smiled and laughed to myself. It was just ridiculous!! Invite Mr. Handsome over for some overdue sexy-time (hey, single Moms have needs too!) and spend 45 minutes cleaning up puke. Sexy!!! Cue the cameras!

After my precious (and pale looking) C was finally back to bed and I had started laundry and changed my shirt, I asked Mr. Handsome if he wanted to rain check our evening given the puke. I was already surprised and pretty much floored with how he handled the whole puking ordeal in the first place, on top of unexpectedly meeting C, so I had to really concentrate on keeping my jaw from hanging open when he insisted on staying for a bit longer. I didn't have to focus on my mouth for long before his was on mine and his hands were all over me again. He has the most amazing hands, by the way. The kind that really hold you and pull you in when he kisses you. Hands that not only know what they are doing, but that are also both strong and tender.

Twenty minutes of kissing and talking and both of us laughing about the irony of the puking incident on our first night together, my shirt came off. Before I knew it, I was on top of him giving him my smoothest, most sexy googly eyes, as I went to take off my bra. His eyes were totally focused on me and I could tell he was enjoying the view of me in front of him like that. Just taking me in with his eyes. It was one of those sensual moments you just close your eyes and remember over and over when you're alone ... and (because this is MY crazy life, remember?) it quickly came to a screeching halt when a half eaten toddler cookie proceeded to fall out of my bra in a big crumbly mess landing all over Mr. Handsome and my bed (was C saving that for later or something, how the hell did that get there!?!!!)

We both busted out laughing.

In my head, I was screaming and wondering where the hell my production crew was. But also, my heart was sort of melting because of how comfortable he was making me feel, even if the events of the night had embarrassing written all over them. And it was just too ridiculous and funny not to laugh.

I couldn't make this stuff up even if I tried.

Thank you, DivorcedBefore30.com

2012-01-04T13:48:00.002-05:00

Please head over and check out my guest post, "The Day I Knew" over on the awesome Divorced Before 30 blog. I admittedly stalked divorce support blogs and the like when I was contemplating leaving my marriage and DivorcedBefore30.com was one of the ones out there that I frequented during the decision phase of leaving, so I am truly honored to be featured. And to be the first parent to guest post ... my head is already swelling!! I'm going to have big hair and a big head if I don't come down to earth soon. I should go down and spend an hour or so in my trashed laundry room for some self-imposed deflation of my ego.

Anyway, a few weeks after that day, the day I knew, I went back and looked over the photographs I had taken. This one of C just says it all for me. Even though he had fun at the farm just being a kid and even though he seemed oblivious to the war going on between his parents, the truth is right there in his eyes. When I look at this picture, I know for sure -- beyond any doubt that ever was -- that leaving my very bad marriage was the absolute very best thing I could do for my child. I am grateful that I had the strength and support to get out while he is too young to remember all of the fighting, all of the dysfunction and all of the tears. I am thankful to courageous, strong and beautifully talented women out there like those found at DivorcedBefore30.com for sharing their stories, their kindness, their heartache and, ultimately, their love and support on the web.

Without them, I might still be married and miserable. I might still be dying a slow death. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The concept of sharing

2012-01-03T06:42:00.011-05:00

C's ability to share thus far, at the precious age of almost 16 months, is to outstretch his hand, item firmly grasped, offering for you touch the prized possession in a way that would make you think that he's going to actually hand it over. As soon as you are effectively fooled by his offering, he'll swiftly withdraw the item back towards his body in a protective clutch with facial expressions and a twinkle in his eye that clearly convey thoughts of "Gotchya!" on his end. He recognizes the phrase "Can you share?" and this is his attempt at doing so when prompted. He obviously still needs more practice.

He isn't the only one.

Most children need to practice sharing things because it is natural and instinctive to want to keep things for yourself. Most schools teach turn taking and teamwork to enforce the concept and instill the value of sharing. The institution of sharing is usually high on the list of priorities of most parents when it comes to teaching good principals to their kids. Yadda, yadda, yadda ... when we share we all get a chance at something and our lives are more pleasant and productive ... yadda, yadda, yadda ... it is better to be giving and sharing with others makes us happy. Yadda. Yadda. Yadda.

I do not want to share my child.

I do not want to have to divide holidays and birthdays and soon, every third weekend. Sure, it will be nice to have a free babysitter now and again, but I don't want to have to share C with anyone if I don't really want to on any one particular day. Not even his own family. And I am ashamed to say, not even with his own father.

But that is the honest truth.

Some child psychology experts speculate that toddlers like C have such difficulty understanding the concept of sharing because they can't see things from another person's perspective. Their brain development isn't advanced enough that early on in the game to really grasp the concept of empathy, so naturally the concept of sharing befuddles them too. As they grow, if parents and other like-minded adults challenge toddlers to flex their little empathy muscles through development of awareness of their own feelings and how they impact the feelings of others, the concept of sharing becomes natural and desirable by preschool age, instead of forced and done only when they're being told to do so.

If I take that knowledge and apply it to my own adult resistance with sharing and how it applies to co-parenting and separation/divorce, I guess I need to learn how to have some empathy for the STBX and the ex-laws. It seems impossible right now. I'm having a very hard time seeing things from their point of view. I do not understand where they are coming from.

I especially don't understand the STBX or where he is coming from. ~~Ever.~~ 99% of the time. I don't understand him because, unlike him, I am not a narcissist. As we go through this divorce process and try to carve out parenting time for the both of us, and visitation for C with his paternal grandparents etc., while I'm generally governed by my obligations as a single working mother trying to do what is best of for our son, the STBX seems to be governed by his feelings alone and he is continually only thinking about what is best for him, over what is best for C. It is infuriating. And mind boggling. And exactly why it has been over 3 months since we legally separated and C hasn't seen his dad once. No court order has been put into place, although both sides are feverishly working on sealing the deal soon. I do not want to receive my attorney's next bill in the mail. My palms start sweating just thinking about it.

The STBX is angry and in turn has been dragging his heals through this process as his way of dealing with his anger. He let his anger rule over the holidays instead of getting things done to set up time with C for Christmas. It was heartbreaking for everyone involved, even me. As much as I didn't want to share C per se, it broke my heart that he didn't see his Dad for Christmas. The angry STBX would never be able to see that emotion coming from my side. He established early on in our marriage his inability to be empathetic towards me.

He is angry, but over what exactly, well I am not so sure anymore. He may still be angry that I left. He is probably angry that I have custody. It really doesn't matter, I guess because he is just plain old angry. I can see this emotion's firm grasp over him every single time we have communication (by e-mail only, I won't discuss things with him on the phone any more). Just because I can see the emotion and am impacted by it, doesn't mean I understand it. I don't want to share our child with someone who is so angry in a way that I don't understand. It scares me. It makes me nervous. It freaks me the fuck out. I am very unsure if the STBX has the ability to own up to his obligations to shield C from emotional heartache, his adult issues and inappropriate stories of how and why we are getting divorced.

Soon enough, I'm going to be forced to share C with him anyway. I am hoping that it goes smoothly and that with time and practice, I'll get better at it. In the mean time, I'm going to continue to try and see things from the STBX's perspective. Try to have empathy for the narcissistic co-parent as much as it may drive me bananas. It is our son's only hope at normalcy as he learns to share his time between his Mom and Dad at the precious age of one and a half.

I vow to learn all I can about having a healthy attitude re: sharing my most precious gift in the world with the one person I don't trust as far as I could throw. I have a feeling it will be my greatest challenge yet. I know in my gut that the greatest lesson of all that I can teach C is to have empathy for others and the best way I can do that is to myself practice empathy for both him and his Dad no matter how hard it is. Hopefully, he'll learn by my example and he'll learn to be the most giving happy-go-lucky sharer on the playground. Fingers crossed.

Love Birds

2012-01-03T01:30:00.001-05:00

Did you know that swans generally mate for life? I did not until just a few moments ago (thanks Wikipedia!) and now I am trying to figure out if the two love bird's in my backyard pond at my rental house are mocking me or if they are there as some sore of divine inspiration?

When the white surrender flag is raised

2011-12-30T04:59:00.010-05:00

The beginning of the end ...

My mom had just left to head back to MA after a week long visit with us. We had had a great week together. We visited DC, took the baby to the Zoo, had some great family meals together etc. She had even helped me clean the house during her stay; since I had been so busy between working and being a new mom our house was near disaster. Our son was 7 months old and I was inside tending to him. Maybe I had just finished nursing him? I’m not really sure and don’t remember the preamble to this story all that well. It isn't what is important really. The STBX was outside mowing the lawn and I was standing in front of our sofa holding the baby when his pacifier fell to the floor and rolled under the sofa and into the darkness. I quickly swooped down, baby still in my arms, and blindly reached under the sofa to retrieve it. Instead of pulling out the pacifier, however, I pulled out an old white T-shirt of my husbands. I remember hoisting the baby up on my hip as he started to cry for his pacifier, and proceeding to just stare at what I was holding in disgusted disbelief. It wasn't just some random shirt that had gotten misplaced while folding laundry in the living room and then never put away. No. It was crusty and covered in yellow-crusted dried-up spooge stains. I was mortified. Beyond mortified. My cheeks still turn red to this day just thinking about how I felt holding that disgusting rag in one hand, as I held our innocent child in the other.

"What if my mother had found this while she was helping me clean!?!!"

The question ran through my mind over and over at a furious pace as I stormed outside barefoot; screaming baby in one arm, spooge-rag waving like a flag in the other. “What the f*ck is this?” I yelled, as I ran up to him shoving it right into his face. He cut the lawn mower’s engine, took one look at me (I must have looked crazy pissed) and then another at his spooge-rag and had the audacity to say “I don’t know” very, VERY unconvincingly. And defensively too! I'm telling you. My STBX has some freakin' nerve. Needless to say, I flipped out. I screamed a bunch of obscenities, threatened that I was leaving, with my baby still in my arms and still crying for his pacifier mind you, and then I threw the disgusting shirt down to the ground before storming back in the house.

This incident was the fourth or fifth occurrence of his hidden pornography addiction blown wide open since I had gotten pregnant. Each time, he promised it wouldn’t happen anymore. That he didn’t do it that often. That it wasn’t an obsession. That it wouldn’t impact me anymore. That our own intimacy would get better. The lies and broken promises go on and on. I would later find out he looked almost daily. I would later find out that he looked while riding the commuter rail to work via his cell phone. I would later find out that he looked while at work. I would later find out that he paid for it behind my back with credit cards I didn't know about. When I found out that much, I stopped trying to uncover his habits and instead started planning my escape from the hell that I was in. It was over at that point and I didn't want to know any more. The uncovering of that dirty spooge-rag found under our sofa that day was like the white surrender flag going up on my ability to handle the bullshit anymore. And it was stained; just like our marriage was.

Single?

2011-12-29T10:48:00.005-05:00

In my head and in my heart, I'm single.

On paper, well that depends. On some I check the box for "married" and often find I'm fighting with myself not to scrawl "not for long!" with a large dose of sarcasm adjacent the absurdity. I find that description of myself written down on paper a mockery of my progress thus far at starting over. A bad joke right there in front of me in black and white that I can't ignore. At C's recent well check appointment with his new pediatrician, I checked "divorced" and penned in "will be" above the status as a way to sort of cope. I remember feeling smug as I handed the clipboard back to the receptionist. I didn't feel nearly as smug when I almost had to call the STBX to ask for our insurance information for C because my ADHD brain had caused me to show up as a new patient without my damn proof of insurance. It's now a week past his appointment and I still can't find the card. (Note to self: call insurance company before C's next appointment and request 3rd replacement card in the past 2 years. And give myself a smack for good measure.)

Technically, I'm separated and awaiting my divorce. We're pretty much settled on the uncontested route, since by the time all is said and done there will be nothing left between us to divide. As sad as that reality is, it is also a major relief. By the time the state of residence allows us to get a divorce (the waiting period is one long ass year from the date of separation), the ~~dream~~ home will have sold under short-sale with the bank (fingers crossed!) and debts will have been settled through my financial planning and the STBX's personal bankruptcy. Such a short marriage doesn't leave much for a couple to battle over in court, thank God. I guess that part of turning 30 and getting a divorce will be a blessing. We're too young to fight over pensions and retirement and it really just isn't worth the legal costs.

Technicalities aside, I'm single. I want to be, anyway. I feel single. And I'm pretty positive that I'm ready to be single. As the New Year approaches, and this starting over journey really gets underway, I'm crazy anxious to get my feet wet with dating again. As infrequently as my life allows. Because, let's face it ... I'm a single working mother with a photography hobby and somewhat of a social life with friends and family. My free time is limited and my availability is even more restricted.

Some might argue that I am not ready because I'm not divorced just yet. But I beg to differ and I'll tell you why I don't agree. This is my blog and I can do that.

Yes, I know that divorce is devastating and dating before that part is finished might be a bad idea on one hand if I haven't resolved all of the issues that contributed to the downfall of my marriage. But on the other hand, I am the one that left. I am the one that walked out. I am the one that decided I had had enough of the unhealthy relationship. I emotionally started grieving the "end" of it all six months before I physically got out of there. I feel like the initial heart-break part of the grieving process is really taking stage behind me now. Does it still hurt? Of course! Am I still actively cycling through the different stages of grief? No, not really. Getting through the holidays last week really proved that part for me. Solidified it, actually.

I know I am ready because not only do I feel comfortable with the idea of the STBX being with other women, I find that I don't give a rat's ass. I honestly hope he does hook up with some women in the near future. I would view that as healthier than fueling his pornography addiction, so as twisted as it may seem to some not in my shoes ... hooking up with real women on his part would be a step in the right direction in my mind. For our son's sake. I know that C needs a father with a healthy attitude about sex and some sort of respect for the opposite sex. Dating for the STBX might help him achieve that. Then again, maybe not. As I said, what he does with dating really doesn't phase me. I say "Cheers!" to him and sincerely wish him happy hunting.

I also know that I am ready because I know where my boundaries are and feel that I'm confident enough to voice them if necessary. I want to date; I don't want a rebound. I may be single of the mind and heart, but on paper I'm separated. And until I can check the box for "divorced" without any handwritten annotations, I am smart enough to know that I don't want my Facebook status to read "It's Complicated". Complicated does not belong on this journey toward wonderful.

If I really do meet Mr. Wonderfully-Right-For-Me before my divorce is final, he'll wait it out. He'll take it slow. He'll respect me and my boundaries. Resolving the issues of my marriage: why I said "I do" in the first place and what led to its fast dissolution, has given me both the wisdom and courage to know that is what I deserve from a man at this stage in the game. And that right there is the biggest argument of all that I can make as to why I am ready to put myself out there. Single? There is no question about it. I'm just ready.

Views of Mine

2011-12-15T21:19:00.000-05:00

I'm really busy these days. "Duh", you say? Yeah, I know.

Holidays = busy

Christmas = Stressmas

First quarter-end deadline at the Patent Office since leaving VA and my failed marriage = motivation to go lay out on the frozen blacktop naked and hope that when a truck runs me over, I've already died from a stress-induced stroke.

But alas, I am trying to embrace the joy of the season. Remember?

So, to get back in the mood of all that wondefulness and such, I figured I would share with you a few "views" of mine that always seem to make me smile. When I see these things, I am instantly redirected and somehow freed from whatever it is that's trying to drag me off my path towards ~~starting over~~ living wonderful.

My backyard view at the house I'm renting.

Getting up at the crack of dawn isn't really so bad when this is the view out the kitchen window. Oh and drinking coffee while viewing increases the wow factor, I tell you!

This is J, my over-excited and full-of-love dog.

She is my BFF. Even if I do have to pick up her poop. Since I work from home, we are inseparable and she fairs worse off when left somewhere without me than my 15 month old son does. Most days, she is my shadow and I trip over her a lot. Which is amazing to me, really, because she is 90 freakin' pounds of sweetness laying right behind me. How do I not see her?

The decorated tree.

Mostly because I view putting it up and decorating it all by my lonesome as a triumph in the divorce process. I am proud of the progress I've made so far and my decorated Christmas tree is a symbol of my accomplishments towards living wonderful.

C and J "bonding".

I'm calling it that to fool my brain. As cute as they are together,it is very hard not to think of all the disgusting grossness that it really actually is when my son shares his food with the so not starving dog. I've recently witnessed C holding out a cracker to J for her to lick, and then continuing to munch on it himself after she's effectively frosted his snack in dog slobber.

My child, fast asleep.

I don't really think I need to explain this one to anyone out there reading this that is a mother, single or not. When my child is asleep, it's pure heaven. Seriously, I swear that I can hear angels singing and see doves flying around my house while everything, including the dirty dishes in the sink and unkempt counters, is wrapped in a cloudy beautiful haze.

Well, I hope my views have enlightened you as much as they do me. Well, maybe that isn't quite possible per se. More realistically, I hope at least one of my views made you smile. Just sharing them with you made me smile and feel all happy and stuff. That's what I call wonderful!

Breakup 101, Episode 2

2011-12-14T02:26:00.000-05:00

Don't just survive the holidays post break-up. Thrive. Embrace them. Enjoy yourself, your friends and your family.

I know, you're thinking "Yeah, right!" with an enthusiastic "As If!" eye roll and maybe a hand gesture or two straight out of Clueless circa 1995. But hear me out. I also thought similar advice read over at Divorced Before 30 was a bunch of horseshit. I could not wrap my head around the 2011 Holiday Season being anything but miserable. How could I possibly embrace the "joy" of the season in the midst of the divorce process? Over the last month and a half, I've been determined to somehow figure it out. Here's what I've learned so far, in no particular order:

1.) Give yourself plenty of time to face those first Holidays post break-up. Accept that they are coming well in advance. Don't bury your head in the sand or hide under the covers refusing to wake up and smell the hot chocolate.

The first thing I did was put my Christmas tree up a week after Halloween. I thought I was crazy, and so did some of my friends, but I just knew that I needed the extra few weeks to really accept that this holiday season would be my first as a single mom. So, I put C to bed one night, drank two glasses of wine and then proceeded to drag the 9 foot pre-lit fakeness that the STBX and I had bought together last year -- that I wanted nothing other than to light on fire, watch burn and then send the charred remains through a wood chipper (or the fake tree equivalent) -- well, I dragged that sucker in its huge box up an entire flight of stairs while ascending backwards on my ass so that I wouldn't fall with it and break my neck. I swear I wasn't drunk. That beast was heavy!

Once it was up in my living room, I felt pretty damn proud of myself.

I stood back, admired my talents at assembling the tree all-by-my-superwoman-self, drank another glass of wine and then went to bed. And it stood like that in my living room, properly gated off from the destructiveness that is my toddler, for a good solid week before I could bring myself to put any ornaments on it. I think I had to get used to seeing it on a day-to-day basis to actually accept that no matter what changes I might be going through in my personal life, the holidays were coming around whether I liked it or not.

2) Get rid of old sentimental keepsakes, ornaments etc. and buy one or two new holiday keepsakes to celebrate moving on and your new life.

OK, so I'll be honest and admit that I haven't exactly gotten "rid" of the bride and groom ornaments I collected over the last couple of years. But I did take them out of my ornament box, wrap them in tissue paper and stick them in a drawer I never open with a few other things I plan on sending back to the STBX some day. I'm actually thinking of sending them to him this year with a card as a Christmas "gift" so that he'll have to deal with the emotions tied to them too, but I can't decide if that will be healing for me in some way, or just too vindictive and mean to even be healthy.

I did hang this ornament on the tree and I must say, it is now my favorite and the most meaningful to me. Moving back to New England to be near friends and family during this time in my life after being in Virginia for 6.5 years with the STBX has been the best decision I could have made so far in the divorce process.

4) Watch a holiday movie, purely for laughs, that is NOT a love story. If it makes you smile, laugh and forget about the misery that you're been going through at all, watch it a few more times between now and New Years.

I've chosen "Elf" as my replaying movie this season (haha, "smiling's my favorite!"). Another holiday classic that would do just fine for this purpose is "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation". I'm sure there are more, but I'm not really a movie buff and you probably get my point.

5) Avoid "Black Friday" shopping and any other hot and crowded display of consumer American craziness like the plague. Do all your shopping either online or at off peak hours in not-so-popular stores.

You're post break-up and you don't have the energy, patience or will to properly deal with stupid people or crowds with an ounce of class or any manners. 'Nuff said. You will loose your shit on an incompetent check out woman, who doesn't know how to enter in your Kohl's cash, and instead charges the full amount to your credit card causing the other shoppers in line behind you to wonder just how recently you were let out of the insane asylum and if they should maybe switch lines. This is of course, just a fabrication, and not at all what happened to me recently while out shopping with my cranky toddler in tow among 10,000 other batshit crazy people with too many coupons that don't know how to drive. *sigh*

Failure to heed the above advice will cause you to fall a week or two behind in your acceptance of the approaching holidays and could derail all efforts to actually embrace them.

6.) Know that you are not the lowest scum of the earth if you don't send out holiday cards this year. Tell everyone you've gone tree-hugger and are giving the Earth the ultimate gift by saving trees for Christmas.

And if you do send out a card, pick something simple and generic foregoing the family photo and/or the newsletter-like update on your now single status. Your lone name on the sentiment will be plenty self-explanatory. Find joy in the fact that your "send to" list has been dramatically reduced automatically. If you want to reduce your list further, only send cards out to those who actually send you a card. If I follow this last bit of advice myself, so far I'm sending out less than twenty cards compared to the eighty or so sent out last year. That is called winning, my friends.

7) Experience the magic of the season through the eyes of a little one.

Whether it is your own kiddo, a niece or nephew or you have to borrow the experience of children from a friend etc., watch one kid's eyes light up while watching the 1964 television special "Ruldolph" for the first time, or after sitting on Santa's lap at the mall, and your heart will instantly warm. For me, its been seeing my son's awe of our decorated tree that has helped me to not scoff off the magic of the season. I don't have any chance of him sitting with Santa for at least a few more years given the fear-induced meltdown we experienced at the mall a couple of weekends ago, so his amazement with our tree will have to do for now.

So, that's all I've figured out so far. I made it through Thanksgiving without gaining any weight, have simplified my holiday season "to-do's", tried to have some patience with myself in the process and am still working on embracing the joy of the season as best I can. If not for me, at least for my son. My focus is purely on him and not me, because the true meaning for this time of year is about being thankful and sharing with the ones you love. And the love I have for him is something to be celebrated, married or not. Divorced or not. With or without Santa.

The Wounded Wife

2011-12-09T20:53:00.003-05:00

In a chapter of the the book The Silent War called "The Wounded Wife,"author Henry Rogers reprints "Emily's Story". I’m posting it here because I am not ready to share my own story of my porn addicted husband and this one does a pretty wonderful job of putting my feelings about the experience into perspective.

I write this out of love. Love for the porn addict, love for his wife, and most of all for the children. I pray this chapter is used for God's glory and honor, that it might somehow prevent families from being destroyed.

I remember listening to a panel of women James Dobson had on his radio program. They talked about being married for over 20 years and discovering their husbands were involved in pornography. It seemed so unfathomable to me that someone could be deceived for so long. I remember thinking how stupid those women were. Little did I realize I would be one of those women less than a month later.

It was like a birth process. Pain, agony, sweat, tears, hours of intense hurt, and finally truth. My husband is a porn addict. I heard it. I reacted. For two weeks I was numb. Numb to after 20+ years knowing something was wrong, but not knowing what. A relief to finally know the truth. A relief to now live in reality in light and truth rather than the unreality of darkness and deception. My husband would never tell me the secrets of his past before our marriage. I always thought if I loved him enough some day he would tell me. If I loved him enough. . . .

We always had a difficult marriage. My husband was always withdrawn and quiet. I thought I could help him. I was outgoing, attractive, and spontaneous. In our marriage I could never do anything good enough. I was constantly criticized and put down. I thought it was me so I started a self-improvement program, more counseling, more semi nars. I learned more was never enough. My world stopped, knowing something had died in me.

My husband always seemed to be "tuned out" in another world. He worked long hours and often fell into bed at 2 a.m. I missed him. I begged him to come home. I raised the kids as he pursued his career. I told myself I needed to help him. I poured my heart and soul into his endeavor supporting and encouraging. There were still problems. When he was home he would go into his office and read his books, newspapers, and reports, and again I would cry myself to sleep. I had others confront him. I gave this man every chance to tell me about his pornography addiction. Lies weave other lies. Secrets kill. Comparisons kill. I feel every time he looked at an image and masturbated he took away a part of me that God intended to be mine. I remember seeing him masturbate and he was in his own world, set on his own pleasure, stimulated and excited by images of women he didn't know. It was a feeling of betrayal and heart-wrenching emptiness that a woman feels when she learns that her husband is living a lie.

Pornography tears at the very thread of a woman and her femininity. My heart was ripped and uprooted thrown somewhere into a desert with no place to find refuge. It's as if I wasn't enough. Not sexy enough. Not beautiful enough. Not thin enough. Not exciting enough. Women get significance from their relationships with their husbands and when he turns to another for satisfaction it cuts her deeply at the core.

I started buying sexy nighties, acting sexier, and suddenly I realized I was bowing down to an idol. It hurt that he chose not to tell me ... to not allow me to come alongside him as his helper. To this day he refuses to see the pain that he caused. It amazes me as a wife how we are involved in every other area of a man's life his profit margin, his ability to manage, everything but when it comes to pornography, it's hidden in deception. A man's way seems right to a man. Porn addiction is very selfish. It takes and takes and doesn't give back. It's all for the user's pleasure.

Another lie is that porn does not hurt anyone. Such a web of deception. 'And they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality, for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness' (Eph. 4:19). There are consequences and the stakes get higher. It takes one lie to cover another. It saddens me how men can compartmentalize this sin. He has the little wife over here with precious children and this nasty sin over here for his private time, justifying it because he still loves his wife and children. You can't walk simultaneously in the darkness and the light.

I'm a wife. I'm a wife of a porn addict. I'm relieved to know what it is, though I always knew something was wrong. Tears. Pain. Disgust. Betrayal. To face the death of a husband would be better than this. A widow has the support of the church. A porn addict leaves shame and divorce. It would be easier if he were dead. We wouldn't have to face the public humiliation and shame.

Today is a new day. It's early morning and I must get breakfast for my children. I take each day as it comes now. Just for today. My husband still chooses his sin and refuses to take responsibility for it. I have to let him go and let the Lord deal with him. I can no longer be his excuse, his enabler. It's a new day and I'm moving on and my Deliverer is by my side. He is faithful. He will never leave me nor forsake me. He will never break His promise. To a woman who has been betrayed, this is my comfort. Hear my cry.

When bombs explode

2011-12-05T05:43:00.001-05:00

The STBX and I conceived a baby on our wedding night. It was totally not planned. We were going to wait a couple of years to have kids actually, so when I was a few days late less than three weeks after we came home from the wedding, I nearly had a heart attack! My shock and fear quickly melted into surprising bliss and excitement and by the time we went for our first sonogram, I was already in love with the tiny being growing inside of me. I thought it was the most romantic thing in the world to conceive a child the night we got married. The STBX wasn't exactly as thrilled as I was, but he seemed genuinely happy about the change of plans after the initial shock wore off. Seemed.

I remember driving to our sonogram appointment like it was yesterday. I can hear our conversation and laughter in my ears. I can feel my slightly bloated 9-week stomach under my hands. I can smell the car. It’s like the memory is as real to my senses as the present moment is. We were both grinning from ear to ear and talking about how excited we were to hear the heart beat and catch a first glimpse of our precious baby. He was driving and I kept leaning over to kiss him and be affectionate. We hadn’t argued at all in weeks. Things were going great and I remember thinking to myself, “I knew we would be better after the wedding nonsense was over! And now we are going to have a baby; Life can’t get much better than this!”

I had no idea about the bomb that was just waiting to go off on us at the doctor’s office.

I remember lying there half naked, exposed, the STBX on one side of me and the nurse on the other. The doctor kept moving the wand around and around searching, but there was no baby on the screen no matter how many uncomfortable swirls up towards my uterus he tried. The silence was deafening as we all stared at the empty screen for what seemed like forever. I remember squinting my eyes over and over again to fight back the tears and maybe try and will what I felt in my heart to exist to just appear before us on the screen. Nothing happened. After an eternity of staring at nothing, I just started wailing over and over again “Where is my baby? Where is my baby?” until I was convulsing in hysterical sobs. The poor nurse tried to comfort me, because honestly, the STBX didn’t really understand the implications of the doctor saying phrases like “empty gestational sac” and “blighted ovum” right away. He was like a deer in headlights staring at me and didn’t know what to do. I would like to think that he was horrified and scared. I would like to think that in the chaos of such an emotional bomb going off on us, thoughts like "You're actually not going to have a baby" overwhelmed him and broke his heart.

But, such was not the case at all. In time, I learned that his inability to comfort me in a way that should have been naturally reflexive in response to our newly built dream blowing up in our faces had to do with his inability to have empathy for me and what I was experiencing. He couldn't empathize with my devastation. With my grief. I learned this definitively after I went through the traumatic ordeal of a D&C to medically handle the miscarriage a few days later, and he acted like taking the day off of work to bring me to the surgery center was a huge inconvenience to him. We argued the morning of and he basically admitted to me in the heat of the moment that he barely viewed the loss as anything more than one would view a glass of spilled milk. And he wasted no time telling me to “get over it all ready” a week after the surgery. I was still bleeding when his heartless words cut me like a knife to the heart.

I didn't know what to think after that. In the aftermath, I wasn't just heartbroken over losing a baby that we hadn't even planned for, but I was heartbroken because it was painfully obvious that the man I married wasn't there for me the first time I, as his wife, needed him to be a strong and supportive husband. It was our first test as a married couple, and I couldn't ignore the fact that we had failed. For some reason, I trudged onward anyway thinking that something else would come along in our lives to fill the void created by his lack of empathy. Nothing ever did.

30 is the new 20. At least it's mine.

2011-12-04T10:17:00.001-05:00

This morning, I stumbled over to Elizabeth Tannen's bog post, "The End of the Twenties: An Ode" and had a sort of revelation.

In my marriage, I too was excited, enthused and eager to turn 30. I wasn't scared at all and I didn't feel old. I felt like I was just living, and feeling fantastic at that. I was doing it all. I had my career and my man, our dream home and our first son all bundled up and ready to move on forward with me from the disasters and stress that come with living in my twenties into the tranquility that seemed to await me in my thirties. In my twenties, I spent most of my energies trying to figure it all out and now going into my thirties, being married and settled down, I obviously had succeeded and could just relax, right?

Wrong.

In my twenties, I had sort of defined myself. Through trail and error of the course of a decade, I had learned that I was confident, out-spoken, kind of an internet social media junkie and more passionate about my stance on various topics than I was at 18 or 19. I was happy (or so I thought) and knew that I controlled my own destiny (or so I thought). I also thought that as long as I had the stability and comfort of my marriage, I -- and effectively, we as a family -- could get through anything. I thought I knew where I stood with others, especially with my husband and our love for one another and our child (and any future children), and I was set to work out all of my flaws as the next part of learning to grow and succeed in life. I was done with figuring myself out. I was ready to fine-tune the wonderful that was me. I was done with carving out a path for myself, but instead ready to decorate where I was at in each moment in time and with every step on each road of the journey I had started.

Wrong.

Most of what I thought turned out to just be so wrong, words can't even describe just how wrong.

Now that my marriage has failed, I'm not as excited or enthused to be turning 30. It's like I'll be perpetually stuck in the mind-set of my twenties because with the separation and an impending divorce, it's as if I am now on a journey of re-definition for myself. I'm still the same confident, out-spoken and passionate woman and mother ... but everything I had come to know and think about what lie ahead for me has been erased. The road map of my life is completely different than I expected and I have to figure it all out again.

Sometimes, just thinking about that part, the figuring it all out again part, is just exhausting. I don't have the same energy that I did a decade ago. But I do have more drive and more focus. I tend not to waste time and, let's face it, you waste a lot of time in your twenties. I'm a 29 year-old about-to-turn 30 single working mother, I don't have time to waste. I'm starting over at 30 and feel hardly different at all than I when I was 20. Well, minus the stretch marks, laugh lines and lack of confidence in at least knowing that I can and will be wonderful no.matter.what.

Show me the money!

2011-11-30T03:07:00.002-05:00

In the short two months (almost) that have flown by since the STBX and I officially separated, I have already accumulated $1,800 in attorney fees. How the? That's about $34/day for my attorney and the only thing that's been handled to completion is our custody agreement. We have joint legal custody, I have primary physical custody and it was agreed that I could relocate with C as it was in his best interest (there is that phrase again!). My attorney handled the custody agreement and relocation provision with flair, finesse and most importantly, efficiency. It was signed within a week and a half of our separation and subsequently filed with the court.

That's it.

That's all that has been settled. For an initial $1,200 retainer and an additional $600 for the next phase. You can pick your jaw up off the floor now.

Child support has been calculated as that was the very next thing my attorney initiated, but I have yet to see a dime since both the STBX and his attorney are actively stonewalling my attorney's attempts to get payments started earlier than the day the judge will sign the filed motion into agreement (um, yeah that's not 'til January). No visitation petition has been filed, our house is entering foreclosure because we are behind with getting the short sale application together and just the idea of ~~litigating~~ negotiating a settlement agreement makes me want to slit my wrists.

I try to be a financially savvy individual (thanks Grampa!), but I'm not always successful (thanks ADHD!) and I'm totally feeling the pressure of the continued attorney bills that are going to come my way through the process ahead. And as much as I can hope and pray that we can negotiate and/or mediate and do what is best for our child, my gut is telling me that the STBX is seeking revenge on me for escaping his web of lies and manipulation through leaving swiftly and abruptly ... I anticipate misguided attempts to "get back at me" through the court system regardless of what impact that may have on me or our child. Did I mention that he is stalling on paying child support?

I'm currently living "in the red" so-to-speak and after draining all of the available savings I did have to pack up and leave the STBX, I am freaking just a tad. I don't like living paycheck to paycheck. Looking back, I lived like that with the STBX and sacrificed the peace of mind I wanted in life in favor of supporting him and his dreams of everything bigger and better. Because that's what married people do. Support one another with the hope that love will make up the difference for whatever isn't fair.

Now I'm the one with the dreams of living bigger and better and I will move on better than I lived in my marriage. I didn't bust my rear in college to have nothing to show for it. I want every possible advantage I can have for C and raising him over the next 18+ years and I will always put his needs over my own. You know, that's part of my plan for this whole starting over wonderful thing ... new dreams, bigger and better dreams. But I am at a loss as to how I am going to do any of it when I have a STBX who's goal is to do nothing but ruin me financially and take me to the cleaners. It is totally not what you read about. This is not the middle-aged divorce where the homemaker wife gets custody and wants to take the non-custodial cheating bastard father for all he is worth. No. This was a starter marriage where the breadwinner (that's me) is both initiating the divorce and has custody. This is a non-custodial STBX trying to take me to the cleaners for revenge purposes only because his free-loading off of me has been effectively terminated. Even if I was an Emmy-award winning writer for some twisted soap opera (I'm guessing, because I don't watch that crap) I still wouldn't be able to make this shit up.

How do I start over wonderful?

Uggghhhh (that's my groaning, in case you didn't catch that) ... I guess I'm still just trying to figure it all out. I hope ~~the small lot~~ all of you reading this can bear with me with my last few negative posts as I try to sort out this mess that I am currently in the middle of. I'm not interested in money per se, I do just want to be wonderful (as the great Marilyn Monroe once said), but I also don't want to be so broke I'm living on ramen noodles and don't have an emergency fund. I have a dog and a baby and I just moved back to New England at the beginning of winter. An emergency is just waiting to happen.

I guess the positive out of all this stress and uncertainty would be that I know, beyond any doubt at all, that if I had stayed in my marriage I would have lost a lot more than money and financial stability. I would have lost myself, my values and my strength. I would have lost my will to live wonderful. Because despite all that I've already lost I still have all of those essentials, therefore I am hopeful. I am living my truths and I know who I am. I have values and I am strong. Maybe that is all I really need to start over wonderful.

When you're jealous of your married friends,

2011-11-29T13:59:00.000-05:00

... tell them. It brings humility to the situation and will prevent you from seething with resentment. If they love you and are close friends that you can count on, they'll understand and love you even more for your honesty.

Within a year or so of my engagement, two of my close girlfriends had also gotten engaged. Our weddings were within the same time frame two years later. We all had babies soon into our marriage; all three of us had boys. You could call us the three musketeers, but we were never all "buddy buddy" like that and we each live in a different state. I'm actually surprised that I've been able to maintain a solid friendship with them given the distance issue. I have ADHD and maintaining friendships is not my strong point normally, let alone when there are hundreds of miles of physical separation involved. It's not that I'm an inconsiderate bitch or an un-loyal confidant, I'm just absent minded and tend to live in the moment. If you aren't in my face on a regular basis, literally, I struggle with maintaining meaningful contact. Normally. But not with these girls and maybe one or two other select individuals in my life.

Anyway, both of my good long-distance friends are now pregnant with baby number two. I've known about one for awhile (she is due in March) and I just found out about the other this morning (she is due in July). While I am incredibly happy for them both and extend congratulations sincerely, my immediate reaction to hearing the news each time was for my eyes to turn green with envy and then fill up with tears.

The root of jealousy is fear, I've been told ... so I guess I should just sit down and and say outright that I am freaked the f* out about my future. I don't know when or even if I'll ever have another baby. And that scares the crap out of me. It is what I am most angry and disappointed about when it comes to the abomination that was my marriage. I am trying to start over wonderful and I know that in order to do that I must try to remain positive and trudge onward and upward. But I sometimes can't help it if my brain turns to a mush of nothing but toxic-thought soup.

I was an only child until I was seven. My two siblings, that I love dearly and that I don't ever think of as anything BUT my full-fledged sister and full-fledged brother are in fact, my half sister and half brother. We have different fathers. Growing up, I longed for a sibling closer in age to me because not only was being the built-in babysitter a total drag, but I was lonely and sometimes resented that they had a Dad and I didn't. Because of all that, I never wanted C to have such a big age gap between him and any future siblings. And I definitely didn't bring him into this world thinking that he would be from a broken home someday. The STBX and I were going to start TTC baby number two this spring, but that plan blew up in my pretty little face before I even tracked a single ovulation cycle post breastfeeding. I actually just found the charts I had printed up from babycenter.com the other day while unpacking some more boxes in my office and I promptly sent them through the shredder.

I feel like I've been cheated out of my dreams for both myself and C. It sucks royal monkey butt and I am scared.

I'm also nervous and apprehensive about what will happen to my friendships with all of my married friends. With the announcement of a second pregnancy and hearing about other friends doing other married-life things, I'm forced to wonder where I will stand with such people as their lives continue to evolve in holy matrimony while I start over as a divorced single mom. It is almost like trying to stay friends with the childless after you've had a baby. Sometimes, it just doesn't work out if you're not on the same page with people.

Liars are thieves.

2011-11-27T13:19:00.001-05:00

A lot of people have asked me what caused the dissolution of my marriage. A lot of people are nosy, I guess. But if I'm going to share here and on my Facebook page about going through divorce and starting over wonderful, I probably should explain, at least partially, how my fairy tale turned into a nightmare in just about 2 years flat.

Going into the relationship, I already knew the STBX struggled on and off with drinking issues. I naively thought that my love for him and my strength was enough to keep it under wraps. Especially since we broke up years ago for about eight months total time and he had gone above and beyond during that break-up to convince me that I would never again be made to feel like alcohol was more important than I was ever again. Us being together was the second chance; the second time around. I thought those demons were behind us. I thought wrong (obviously, duh) and I learned through our engagement and into the first part of our marriage that the drinking and the issues surrounding it were just the tip of the iceberg. Yes, I'll admit now that I had doubts while we were still engaged. There were red flags and I stupidly ignored them. I made excuses for him and for myself and I carried on with wedding plans despite it all. I was an idiot and fell prey to almost every rationale in this article as to why I got hitched anyway when I should have ditched.

The biggest problem in my marriage, that I can see anyway from my perspective (because of course, there are two people in a marriage and there are two sides to ever "story"), was that the STBX was a stranger to the truth. He was a liar and a manipulator. He played with me, for more reasons that I'll probably ever know. Most of all, it was because he was selfish. And probably also because he wanted to have some sort of control over me, the natural type-A controller. He lied to me about everything in the end. He would lie to me about things that were important (like where half of his paycheck was going and what credit cards he was opening without my knowledge) and he would lie to me about things that weren't important (like what he had had for lunch that day). The "iceberg" we were standing on together was a melting rock of lies that melted out from under us as time ticked on. And granted, with every lie uncovered my need to chip away at the berg some more in a desperate attempt to find any bit of truth I could just grew and grew until I became a police woman in my own home. It brought out the worst in me and was fuel to whatever dysfunctional fire existed in me. It made me crazy. It made me think I was going crazy. It made me lose sense of reality and my sense of self. And it made me angry. It made me so angry, I started to wonder if I would ever be happy again since the anger was all encompassing.

The STBX and his lies stole from me. Stole my confidence in both the life we had built together and in myself. Took away any ounce of trust that ever existed between us and replaced trust with suspicion, doubt and paranoia. Because that's what a liar does. A liar is the same as a thief except what they are ultimately stealing from you isn't material, it's emotional. It isn't physical, but instead is only your perception of the physical and actual. A liar steals reality from you and holds it in the web of deception they spin around you until you are lost in a sticky mess to the point of no return. Until you don't even trust yourself or your own emotions.

Liars are thieves.

I may be the one that left, but it still hurts.

2011-11-23T22:26:00.000-05:00

For the record, yes I am starting over and the goal is indeed to start over "wonderful", whatever that may mean. But this blogging crap is supposed to be a journey to get there and I should probably warn you now ... I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about half the time or even where I am exactly on this journey towards wonderful. Sometimes, I'm driving ahead full throttle with the rear-view mirror torn off while C happily babbles behind me in his car seat. The windows are down, the wind is in my hair and commercial-free radio plays all of my favorite songs. And we are just fine. Other times, I'm broken down on the side of the road with a flat tire, no spare and a cell phone with no signal. Oh and C is with me and he's hungry and/or tired and I'm more-than-likely out of fresh diapers. Most of the time, I think I'm just making wrong turns and getting the direction towards where ever wonderful actually is completely confused.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and it will be my first holiday on this new journey. It will be my first big social gathering with family without the STBX by my side. And I'm sure there will be questions ~~that I don't want to answer~~ and discussions ~~that I'm more than sick of having~~, and all the while the only thing I really need is the sympathy and compassion we as humans always tend to give the dumpee and not the dumper in these situations. Because I'm hurting too. The only difference between the pain I'm going through right now and the pain the STBX might be going through is that I've been experiencing the emotional hell that comes with being abandoned since I was 6 months pregnant with our son and he's only just now experiencing it.

Frankly, I am sick of hurting and know that it is time to get beyond the hurt. Separating right before the holidays has to be the only part of leaving that I didn't think through all that well.

The child's "best interests"

2011-11-22T22:36:00.001-05:00

I have said, read and written about the "best interests" of my son, C, so many times in the last three days, it's as if the phrase is on repeat in my brain the same way that damn Adele's, "Someone Like You" was stuck last week. And, for the record, I hate that song. If I ever date again, I'll be trying to find a man that is nothing like the STBX. But that's another blog post for another day ...

Anyway, where was I going with this?

What does it mean, exactly, when a parent, lawyer or courts say that something is or isn't in a child's "best interest"? As much as I use this phrase in my day-to-day battles with the STBX, I might only partly know what it means and my opinion is probably (more than likely) at least partially biased given that I grew C inside me, gave birth to him (when was the last time you pushed something the size of a bowling ball out of your vagina?) and subsequently fell in love with him so deeply I suddenly can't breathe whenever I am forced to even think about him being in any sort of harm.

I'm currently at the early stages of visitation disagreements with the STBX. We don't have a court ordered agreement in place yet and it is about to get ugly. In short, I am seeking supervised visitation and I have contingency requests. My ideas of what is appropriate given the circumstances lands me oh say, on the east coast of the continental United States, if you wanted to equate where I am with all of this to a geographical location. The STBX doesn't just want overnights, he wants them to start right away, after months of not seeing our son, and he wants 2-3 nights at a time. This is without disputing my desire for supervision or most of the evidence available supporting my contingencies. So basically, his ideas of what is appropriate given the circumstances land him, geographically speaking in relation to me, not on the west coast ... not in China ... not even on Mars. He's in another galaxy where the alien life forms he's walking around with raise their alien babies through plate-glass bubbles while machines beat the kiddos with whips.

Needless to say, I've been communicating feverishly with my attorney, with my family and even with the STBX's parents about our one year old son's "best interests" being safeguarded through this process. Discussions about the mental stability of the STBX have also taken place, along with lots of swearing to myself, stressing and feeling terrified about the possible court battles that lie ahead and forgetting to eat lunch both days so far this week.

Anyway, back to my point. What exactly am I trying to protect? (Oh and pardon me for the randomness in my writing today, but due to the disastrously horrendous timing of the current national drug shortages, my ADHD is totally under-medicated at the moment and stress is high).

I am trying to protect my sweet and sensitive innocent child's "best interests". The best interests of the child. My child. My baby. To me, any pre-verbal child in diapers is still a baby. Call him a toddler if you will, but toddlers are just bigger babies that can walk, climb and get into everything you've thought you baby-proofed.

To start trying to asses what the phrase on repeat in my head actually means, I would have to first argue that yes, my son's rights do necessarily include a loving, stable and supportive relationship with both of his parents; but what may or may not be right doesn't automatically equate to what is in his best interests. Not always, anyway. And it would seem obvious, to most individuals with some basic parental instinct and common sense, that what is best for the child would trump either parent's desires and needs with regards to their relationships with the child.

Fundamentally, my son's mental, emotional and physical well being is the basic determination of what may or may not be in his "best interests". On a deeper level, his age, maturity, and both intellectual and emotional development impact those basics. No matter how biased I may be as his mother, no one is going to be able to convince me that spending the night away from me, away from his home and stable routines, and ripped from his sense of security at the precious age of 14 months is in his "best interests".

So far, at least the STBX's parents are in agreement with me and with other experts about the potential harm and risks at stake given the current circumstances and C's age, development thus far and his high-needs temperament (I've read the Dr. Sears The Fussy Baby Book so many times, the cover fell off). Last I heard, the STBX's parents are in the process of sending a retrieval spaceship to whatever galaxy of insane the STBX seems to be residing on these days before things get out of hand. I anticipate a crash landing.

I miss my cleaning service.

2011-11-21T00:32:00.000-05:00

When my marriage was on the rocks, I convinced the STBX that we get a cleaning service. I had wanted one for a long time, but couldn't justify the money until I was a working Mom with an infant and a less than supportive husband. The biweekly cleaning service started concurrent with the biweekly marriage counseling and I miss the former now as much as I loathed the latter then.

Something has got to give somewhere or I am not sleeping for at least another year.

Maybe when my divorce becomes final, I'll actually find the time to sleep and get everything done. For now, I am struggling trying to keep up with everything I want to do, everything I have to do and those pesky things I ought to do. And it just occurred to me, writing that sentence out, that that is the order of which I have been doing most things these days. My emotions have been on such a roller coaster ride since I packed up my son, dog and life and moved 400+ miles from my marital "home" in VA back to my real home, where I was born and raised. Doing things that appeal to me over things that need or ought to get done has been my way of dealing, I guess ... and that needs to stop. Like, yesterday.

The act of physically separating took three weeks between packing, moving, unpacking (somewhat) and finding C suitable daycare near the house I am renting. So that leaves me entering the holiday season about three weeks behind with work, living in a house only about two thirds of the way unpacked and less than halfway cleaned to my standard of clean, trying to manage the paperwork aspects of the short sale of said marital "home" and the beginning stages of our divorce (did I mention that I have ADHD and piles of unfilled paperwork are my nemesis?) .... and all while being a full-time single Mom ...

Until I sit down and figure out a new budget and future savings plan, I can't even think about hiring a cleaning service. But seriously, I need a house manager to take care of all the stuff that needs to get done in order for me to sit down and figure out my budget. And I know without even looking at all of my bills that winning the lottery is a more likely scenario than the fantasy where I can afford to pay someone to take care of all my piles of crap and do things like order, address and mail out Christmas cards.

It is a catch-22 and this blog post is nothing but me procrastinating from doing something that needs to get done. Once again, I chose to do something I wanted to do because it made me feel better for a fleeting moment. As soon as I push "publish" that moment will be gone.

Breakup 101, Episode 1

2011-11-18T20:39:00.000-05:00

Change your bed karma.

After struggling to fall asleep every single night for the first week of my separation, I went out to Bed Bath & Beyond and bought myself, not just new sheets, but new sheets, a new down comforter, a new duvet cover, new pillowcases and 4 new pillows. And I bought the most girly and silky-satin feeling ones I could find, not because I usually am all that girly with my home decor, but just because I could. Frankly, I didn't care if I ended up spending (or rather, charging) $1,000 dollars (I only spent $600, and I only charged half) ... but I was leaving that store with an entire new place to fall asleep no matter what.

No matter how many times I washed the old sheets and blankets, they still smelled like him. Two of the pillow cases still had bleached out smears from the prescription face wash he sometimes used for the strange scalp acne he had on the back of his head. And I couldn't wash out the memories.

In my new sheets, under my warm comforter that he never would have allowed due to being one who sleeps way too hot (like, think human radiator), with my head on fresh pillows that he hasn't ever laid his head on to dream, I feel free to dream new dreams. Free to make new memories, even if most of them these day only involve waking up at 4 AM to a dog who snores and hogs the bed and a 14 month old little munchkin who does the same. I've changed my bed karma, literally and metaphorically, and unlike Miranda from Sex and the City ("If you build it, he will come") I'm not looking for anyone new to share it with. There isn't any room.

No longer lonely

2011-11-18T09:38:00.001-05:00

I came the realization this week that part of why I'm "doing well" or "better" so soon into the separation phase of my divorce is because even though I am alone (romantically, anyway) I am no longer lonely.

In my marriage, I was so incredibly lonely towards the end. Why is that? I'm not really sure and I don't know if I can define it, but I'll try. It is hard to describe or even define loneliness because not only is it subjective, but its also relative. Even though most dictionaries broadly assert loneliness as being synonymous with feelings brought on by a person simply being alone, most psychologist experts would more specifically define it as a subjective deficit in the quality and/or quantity of social relationships resulting in unpleasant feelings such as a gnawing or aching distress and dissatisfaction of attachments or lack thereof. And I'm pretty sure that feelings of loneliness are intricately linked with a depressive state for the person who is feeling lonely. Like the two feelings, although distinct, overlap one another.

The relationship I had with my STBX became so dissatisfying that feeling lonely even when we were together all the time became the number one emotion I experienced on a daily basis. Since he was lying to me regularly, the lines of communication started to fail and I didn't trust him any more. Not being able to trust him, made me feel more alone than I ever felt in my life. Not being able to communicate with him, made me feel alone. It got to the point where he would look me in the eye and lie to me, and I would immediately know that he was a million miles away, and I would feel the loneliness just wash over me in a way that the ocean tide does when you stand at the water's edge, feet dug into the sand, kind of stuck there on the edge of the world with nothing out in front of you but empty water.

My STBX was a classic procrastinator, manipulator and blamer who never kept his word. He would say what I wanted to hear to appease me, but then hardly follow through with reliable actions that matched up to his words. He was insincere and it compounded my loneliness.

Now that I have left him, I am alone in the world with just my son and my dog in the day-to-day, but I don't feel lonely. Probably because I have walked away from a marriage where the actual quality of the relationship we had didn't line up with my expectations or dreams for that relationship. I am not disappointed on a daily basis because the only person I rely on for fulfillment right now is myself. I cultivate the quality of my relationship with myself and I am satisfied with all that I am doing to start over wonderful. Wonderful and anything but lonely.

Divorce + Facebook = Trouble?

2011-11-15T01:16:00.000-05:00

In light of my recent separation and impending divorce (and some recent drama, I might add), I just finished de-friending and subsequently blocking my STBX and every single member of his family on Facebook. It felt so liberating. Kind of like growing your hair out for years, pulling it up into a ponytail at the crown of your head and then just cutting it off in one big swoop with the sharpest scissors you can get your hands on. My head feels lighter; less weighed down; and almost as if I can actually hold it up a little higher. Who knows if being "friends" with my STBX or his family members would allow him to find out information that could be used against me in court, but I'm not taking any chances. Whatever you share online these days can (and will be) used against you in court.

Now that I've picked the weeds and cleaned up my friend-list, I am free to post stuff like, "So relieved to be free from that lying, manipulative, porn-addicted DRUNK bastard!!" etc. without having to worry about receiving an e-mail from some offended ex-law that I probably never liked in the first place. Not that I would post stuff like that regularly, but it is nice to know that what I am posting, sharing and liking on Facebook is no longer being watched by "the other side".

My MIL and STBX are now complaining, however, that they can't see pictures of C as often as they would like (I am a freelance photographer on the side, so I post a substantial number of pictures of my little man on a regular basis). I don't know how to remedy this for them and don't really know if I should. Sure, I can send a picture here and there by e-mail, but share my personal photography -- my craft, my art -- with them as often as I upload it to Facebook? I really don't think I'm obligated to do that. I haven't responded to my MIL regarding the pictures sharing, but I did tell my STBX that if he wanted pictures of our son to take some himself when and if he ever gets visitation. He, of course, would have to file for visitation to get it and he hasn't yet. It's been five long weeks and no visitation request has been filed ... its sad, really. Maybe he was using my Facebook page as a way to "visit" with our son and now that he can't see pictures of him anymore that will be just the motivation he needs to actually get up and do something about setting up visitation. I won't hold my breath.

I was married. I'm now separated. I will be divorced.

2011-11-08T13:17:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my blog!

I am a 29 year old single mother to a beautiful, smart and thriving one year old boy (who I will refer to as "C" here) and a overly-friendly (and over-sized) female lab mix (who I will refer to as "J" here). I'll be turning 30 and getting a divorce within the same year. I figured a blog would be an excellent way for me to turn the train wreck of my life into something positive. A way for me to document starting over at a time where most people are just settling down. Ultimately, it will be a way for me to heal and to grow into the most wonderful version of me possible.

"I'm not interested in money, I just want to be wonderful." ~ Marilyn Monroe

A month ago today, I woke up and swallowed the cold hard pill of my reality. I had fallen in love with and married a bad person. That's all there was to it. And I was so sick and tired of being the only person in the relationship actually trying to make it work, it was exactly the right dosage of acceptance that I needed to get the hell out. I had had one too many days of misery; of abuse; of mind games and gas-lighting. Of arguing. I was sick of being made to feel like material things were more important than me. More important than our son. I was sick of the drinking and the porn addiction, and I was especially sick of the lying. I knew that the only way to get better was to leave. It was as if I swallowed the cold hard truth of what really was going on and washed it down with tall glass of common sense and self respect. I decided to finally start respecting myself again and with that new-found self respect, I climbed out of a moldering stew of dysfunction. I am going to learn to live again. I am escaping destruction at the hands of a narcissistic sociopath. I will be free and I will be wonderful. I will be more than wonderful.

Editor's Note: To find out more about who writes this stuff, please head over to my about page, "Who is Phenom?".