wallflowers

I don't write much about my ex-husband.

Not my children's-father-ex-husband.  I write about him.  A lot.  I am talking about my first ex-husband.  The one I married completely for love.

I know that sounds like a bit of a contradiction, to say you marry for love.  Of course you do, marry for love that is.  I did, but I did the first time without having any other requirement list to accompany the love.  Most of us don't.  A requirement list?  How much more unromantic could that be?  So I didn't have one.  Yes, he had to be single and heterosexual, breathing, born male, willing to live in my time zone if not in my zip code, and not have been convicted of any felonies that involved things we all would rather pretend did not exist in the world.

That said, he met 99% of my basic unwritten list.  He missed-by-this-much the being single part, since technically he was still married to his first ex wife at the time he popped the question to me, but that worked itself out within several weeks, and, since I said before, I was in love and had already said yes, this wait was just a footnote in what was planned as forever.

This was seriously before I saw the movie "Perks of Being a Wallflower".  I know, what can you learn from watching another person relive their high school trauma?  Just this:  You accept the love you think you deserve.

My ex was a great guy when I met him.  Funny.  Cute. Into me.  He could cook, he liked the same music, he was willing to learn to dance. I can remember our first kiss. I can remember the day he gave me my engagement ring.  I can remember the last time we made love.

I can also remember that he gave me pots and pans as a gift on our first Christmas.  He said it was so he could cook for me at my house. He worked most evenings as a chef for a restaurant, so I cooked for myself a lot.  I used my old pans.  I eventually bought for him a set of professional cookware that I still have hanging from a pot rack in my kitchen.  I love them.  That other set that he purchased me?  He took what was left of them when we split up.

I can remember that at first we went out dancing at the club we met in.  I loved to dance, and prior to meeting him was out in the clubs 3-4 days a week. Turns out he hated dancing. He never really learned the steps.  He didn't really want me dancing with anyone else (my gay friends excepted) and so, eventually, I stopped going dancing.

I remember the conversation we had early on about cheating.  About how I had never, not once, ever cheated on a boyfriend.  And while I had been unceremoniously dumped a couple times by boys who wanted to chase someone else, I had always appreciated the guys who did that over the guys who stepped out.  I wanted my ex to know that while I hoped he would not want to stop being with me, that if he was heading that way with someone else to please have the decency to end our relationship first before jumping into bed with someone else. I was totally in for doing the same. Wanna guess how well that ended up working?

In all that I somehow learned to accept less that what was presented.  I was presented with a "great guy" who initially was a dancer, a short-order cook, and a faithful partner. And when that was not fulfilled, I accepted it.  I mean, I had married the guy.  I had made the commitment without the requirements list.  I had married for love. I accepted the love I thought I deserved.

I did that a couple more times since then, accepting what I must have thought I deserved, sure (or convinced?) that I was too fat, to ugly, too stupid to deserve better. 

I have changed.  I think better of myself and my desires now, and have spent a little time thinking about how I got to that frame of mind in the first place. Family history, traumatic events, life, all just getting in my own way.  I might just be alone for a while more.  I am okay with that, because I  love myself a whole bunch now, and if accepting the love I think I deserve is true, I am getting everything I deserve, and more.

Remembering Seth...

I wrote this two years ago, on what would have been Seth's 10th birthday.

I am sharing it today, remebering his 12th birthday.

I am grateful that I had him in my life.  I am grateful I do not cry everyday anymore.  I am grateful I can smil when I think about him.  I am grateful for the two amazing children I live with and love every day that share his DNA.   I am grateful I can talk to others and hopefully help.  I am grateful for love.



AN ELITE MEMBERSHIP

I am a woman. That alone is enough to keep half the people out of the sub-set. I am also a mother, so a smaller group still. But then there is an "elite" group to which I belong, whose membership comes with every wish that I did not belong to it at all. It is the group of mothers who have immediate and unaltering knowledge that babies die. Their babies. My baby. Not the news report kind of dying, with a deep sigh at the loss. But the world-has-just-come-to-an-end-and-I-am-at-the-center kind of dying. Dead, before they took a breath. Still. Quiet.

My son Seth would have been ten years old today, February 8, 2011. All the positive thoughts of love and energy, and sadness that grandparents feel, and the wishes of the people I hold dear raining on me with the softness of a summer shower quiets my breath, and stills my heart. I feel it. All that goodness that lives in my life. I get that others feel sadness today, too. They all get to remember the excitement of a new baby, the tingling you get when you know someone you love is pregnant and hopeful, and all of the potential, each with their own kind of pain and loss when all that is suddenly pulled out from under them, like a rug. More like a trap door really, because there is a kind of free fall first, before they hit the bottom. For those in that "potential" group, the tumble is quick, the hit is hard, and there are others who also fell waiting to help you up.

Then there is my elite membership. The one I get by myself. The one that says I know he lived. I felt the little hiccup flutters, and the need to pee. I heard his heartbeat on a little staticy machine. I felt the kicks in the middle of the night, and voiced my annoyance at not being able to sleep, secretly thrilled that this little being picked me to be his mother. I would have plenty of time to get back at him later, with homework, and timeouts, and embarrassing pictures of him naked in the bathtub to show to his girlfriend right before the prom. He would play baseball, and love Barbie clothes, since truthfully, I call him HE now, but then I did not know for sure his gender. It did not matter. I would dress him in red and feed him graham crackers and build blanket forts and read him Harry Potter and Winnie the Pooh. He would know how to change the oil in the car. He would like neon colored band-aids. He could be tricked into drinking his milk if I gave it to him in a cup with a swirly straw, because everything tastes better through a swirly straw. He would like fish sticks.

I talked to him quietly, this baby in my belly. He could already make me cry with my ache to hold him, meet him, start the second phase of our existence together when my voice did not sound underwater to him, and his kicks would be playful under the fluffy white blanket I already had in the crib in the freshly-painted nursery.

Today, I will pick up Seth's brother and sister from school early, and we will go get balloons. Ten of them. We will take Sharpie markers and write love notes on each one while we sit in the car. We will drive to the beach, and release them all at once, and sit, with our toes in the sand and watch them drift away until we can't see them anymore. We will play at the beach, write wave wishes in the sand with an old piece of driftwood, and laugh. We will go get icecream. Four dishes. One for each of us, and one for us to share that would have been Seth's. We will argue about what kinds of toppings Seth would have liked, Haysten thinking that he needed more cookie dough, Mariah thinking he needed more candy, me, just wanting the whipped cream. We will laugh at that, too. We will have invited their dad to come with us, celebrate his son's life. He won't, but we have learned to let that go like the balloons.

I am part of an elite group. At the ten year mark, I still want my membership revoked.

Hand cramps and thought jewelry

What do normal people think about?

I mean, here I am having a conversation with myself about what to write down.  Do I write it in pencil or pen? Do I skip straight to the computer? If I do write it in pencil, do I erase or scratch out so if I needed the thought again later I would still have it, right there, all written down for me already?  And when writing in long hand instead of typing what kind of paper do I use? Do I even have any lined paper? Yes.  Get some from your ten-year-old’s notebook.  Don’t tell her you went into her room.  Wow, the room is messy.  Walk away, walk away.

All this while wondering why I am bothering to search.  I have nothing to write anyway.  Seems the only time I try to write lately is when everything gets all glued together in a giant jumble just needing to be sorted out. Like a tangle of necklaces at the bottom of the jewelry box.  The whole mass of chains, where no matter which strand I start with, I eventually follow the lead to a huge knot, all wrapped and snared with other strands, that I don’t have any clue where it is going.

My thoughts are like that today, and consequently, so is my writing.  Forgive me now, and know that I sincerely hope there is a some kind of conclusion to this madness, but sorta doubt it.  You are forewarned to stop reading now.  Do people really think like this?  Damn, we are all doomed.

I have been thinking a lot lately about a man I ran into the other day. I have known him since we were about 8, and we played baseball together growing up.  He wrote his phone number on my glove one time back then.  Years after, his then-girlfriend saw the phone number on my glove and she hit me.  I beat the crap out of her before finding out why she had punched me in the first place.  She got suspended for starting a fight, and I used the phone number on the glove to call the boy and tell him his girlfriend was retarded. (Yes, not politically correct, but I was 12, sue me)  They stayed a couple about another week if I remember, some junior high record I am sure, before they broke up forever and he and I were allowed to be friends again.  We kissed each other once, the Christmas we were both 17. I still remember how it tasted.

If he were to read this blog now, he would know it was him I was thinking and writing about in these wandering thoughts immediately.  At least I think he would.  Maybe not though, and since he probably will never see it, I could probably get away with admitting that in that tangled hot mess of thoughts have been lots about him.  Him dressed.  Him naked. Him at the beach, in my bed, flying a plane.  It is one of my current favorite thoughts actually.

And while I have been thinking about him in various, um, scenarios, I have also been thinking about remodeling my bathroom. A really awesome orange color on one wall with the rest a crisp white.  Sorta retro-modern.  Heated stone floors.

But that thought gives way to thoughts about a good friend.  Worried about him as work stress (involving having to deal with a suicide) makes for people he barely knows relying on him for more than his fair share.  I miss seeing him smile. And my thoughts become angry because I know there is not a damn thing I can do about it.

I think about my kids a lot.  My daughter is competing in the spelling bee, thinks her hair is weird, and is concerned she will not make any friends in middle school.  It is only 8 months away.  She is already counting it down.  I worry that she is missing the joy of fifth grade in the process.

Back to the boy for minute.  I really liked his moustache and goatee. And the salt and pepper color on his temples. And that he drinks coffee.

My son has been sleeping a bunch.  A combo of illness and a growth-spurt that put him in bed at 6:30 last night.  I think he is going to be tall.  Damn, I think I will have to buy him some more shoes.

Surprisingly, my ex hasn’t been hovering constantly (or much at all actually) in my thoughts.   I would think he would get some more air time considering he is about to begin divorce proceedings from his third wife, and un-amazingly they are both blaming me and my kids for their breakup But I am already bored with his drama so the thought usually go away pretty quickly.  He got a paragraph, whoo hoo.

Other thoughts in the cue:  Sesquesestration is a really long word for meaning I might be without a job for 22 days this year.  No work, no pay.

I think I could supplement my income by being a writer.  Note to self, start finding freelance work. Second note to self, start submitting manuscripts.

I like the taste of greenish bananas but I hate peeling them.  I bet my son could invent something so I wouldn’t have to do that.

Tight jeans look really good on fit 46-year-old men. Especially ones I have had a crush on for 30 plus years.

I really should have typed this to begin with.  My hand is cramping.  My thoughts are wandering.  Did I learn cursive in the fourth grade?  I really should take a refresher course.

I just looked up.  It is dark outside.  Does that happen that fast every day?  When was the last time I watched a sunset?

Maybe normal people do think this stuff and I am the only one crazy enough to write it in a public blog.  Not much coherent thought today, but I warned you. .  Not much coherent thought today, but I warned you. Normal is overrated. You feel more put together now, right? My job is done.

Courtroom confessional

I was raped in 1991.

Until today, there were about 6 people (not including cops, rape specialists, investigators, criminologists, prosecutors, attorneys, and a few more cops, but I don't really count them as "people") who I had told of my own volition.

The list does not include either of my ex husbands.  This list does not include any of my ex boyfriends or men I have dated.  This list did not include (except for one) any of my closest friends.  This list did not include even one family member. Not my cousins.  Not my brother.  Not my parents. Obviously I needed to write it in a blog 22 years later.

I made it through a day of hell, a week of crying, and about 4 months of court-related crap before I did my best to ignore it.

Now I am not asking for a single comment that says "oh".  I probably won't listen. In the purest sense of the word, the actual rape part of the whole thing has not effected me.  I have no lingering fear of sex (I quite enjoy it actually).  I have no problems with dark alleys or men looming near me, given that I have worked in prisons and in drug areas, and lived in sketchy areas.  What I do have is a total fear that my judgement is completely fucked up.

Here is the story.

I met "Dan" when my friend "Greg" introduced us at a party.  It was an April Fool's Day party and we were having a blast.  Dan and I hit it off immediately.  He was smart, and funny, and sexy.  We did the whole attraction dance and (in the days before cell phones) he asked for my number.  

The first date was fun, and we talked for hours.  So were dates two thru five.  Magical even.  Five dates in four weeks for a girl with a full time job and a guy in his third year of law school was golden.  Date six was on May Day, and a day of flying was planned.  Dan was a small craft pilot, and had a plane on loan for our use for the day.  Heaven.

Arriving back at his apartment I was ready to spend the whole evening telling him, and showing him, just how into him I was.  I never took my coat off.  He excused himself to the bathroom, and in the time it took me to look around the apartment and see a few of the photos and things, he had stuck a plunger full of meth into one of his veins and came out of his bathroom naked with a hard-on, and seriously ready to fuck and hit me.  He did both.

How I talked my way to safety, and how the police arrested him in his apartment, and how he confessed, well, that is all just logistics.

Fast forward to today.

I was asked to do some homework on "Why do you think you are not getting what you want?" as it relates to relationships and men in general.  My answer came in one simple word: fear.  Not fear of being raped.  Like I said, I enjoy sex, and am not afraid of being hurt physically.  My fear, it seems, is that my judgment about men is so fucked up, that even if a really nice guy wanted to love me and understand me, I would not believe for one second that he was sincere.  So instead, I pick familiar, which is guys who won't actually beat or rape me, but will do a damn good job of ignoring me, evading emotions, keeping their lives and trust distant, because I confuse that kind of familiar with safety.

So I figured out I don't get what I want because I don't trust anyone to be my safe place to fall.  I only trust them enough to get them in my life and then accommodate their needs.  Fucked up, much?

So I am learning that maybe there are safe good men out there, ones that are totally worthy of me, and I of them.  Trusting myself to know that is going to be the next step.  If you want to comment about THAT, I will listen.

"Bad Words" 101

I taught my daughter the meaning of the word FUCK last night.

 Please stop reading now if you are already offended.  I don’t actually care that you are offended, I just don’t want to hear about after I tell the story.  Should you feel the overwhelming need to comment on my parenting or personal style, please rethink that position, and then carry on with your life.

 So, back to the word FUCK.  As a wordsmith and writer by design, I love words.  All words.  I have always taught myself, and consequently my children, that there are no bad words.  (My mom would disagree, and I can recall the taste of soap in my mouth as I say that, but that is besides the point.)  Some words have just got a bad rap by being used so frequently as ways to hurt people that the word “bad” is applied to them without regard to context.  And sadly, because we have often ignored context, some hateful words are seen of as okay just because they don’t have a label as “bad” attached.  Case in point, kids calling each other geek, gimp, tard, fag, ho, and a plethora of other names have no idea what they are saying in relationship to how hurtful they might be.  Say the word fuck in the mix, as in “fuckin’ tard”, and even the youngest kids know that it is a problem.

 That is sorta how the conversation with my daughter started.  She wanted to know why fuck was a bad word.  Giving her my usual answer of “there are no bad words” was not going to cut it.  So I wanted to know the why and how of why she wanted to know.  Turns out some kids were having a conversation about a disease they heard of called “blue waffles” that only girls get from fucking.  Blue waffles?  Yeah, I hadn’t heard of it either, but my radar of kid slang always being on , I did know that “waffle”, like the words cookie, or muffin, was another name for a woman’s vagina.  A blue waffle would be a really nasty disease that you get from fucking that turns your “waffle” blue. 

 The internet was rife with info on this. Or should I say mis-info on this.  Yes, there is a graphic picture of a woman showing her vagina with obvious bruising and infection, and some colorful photo-shopping to make the whole thing look blue.  This blue waffle is all the talk among middle-schoolers, spreading the idea that a) the internet has the most accurate information, b) sexually transmitted diseases are only one sided (only women get this, apparently), c) that fucking was something bad and that if you did it, the photo is what you get for your effort.

 So when I told my daughter that no, you would not get a blue waffle for fucking, it lead to a further discussion of what FUCKING really was. 

 We started with the basic review that I had been teaching all along; where babies come from, what sperm is, why you have a period, how to keep yourself clean (with the vagina being self cleaning), and how boys are different in reproductive activity.  She was attentive, but rolled her eyes a few times because, really, she knows all this stuff, having had a very honest and open door childhood (for which I am grateful!).  “So what does FUCK have to do with all this, Mom?” “It is just a word that got a bad rap when it means having sex.”  “Oh, okay, I didn’t know that.  That’s cool.  Then why do people use it the way they do?”

 I was a little stumped here, and just told her that sometimes people are dumb.  That if some boy comes up and whispers in your ear that he wants to fuck you, it could mean that he wants to actually make love to you, or that he wants to hurt you.  Like every other word, it was all about context.  A guy yelling FUCK YOU to another guy, while drunk, in a bar, probably did not mean for it to be a good thing.  A woman saying FUCK ME in the midst of making love probably was just enjoying herself, and like everything else we do in life, had a preference right then for sex that was a little harder.  We jointly came up with things that sometimes we liked in different ways, such as running fast, or foot massages.  I told her sex was the same way, and as an adult she would probably choose with her partner all kinds of different things, including being fucked by consent.

I will stop now, because the conversation changed to all kinds of different roundabout topics that nvolved health and safety, and love, and respect, and disease, and more love. But mostly my daughter now has the knowledge of what the word fuck means in all it’s contexts.   I was more than a bit thrilled (secretly, because outwards signs of it would have been too uncool for my daughter) that she trusted me enough to ask, and that by the end of the discussion I think she had figured out that nothing really was off limits with me and her.  I mean, how fucking awesome is that?

 

 

 

What DOS did not teach me

This morning, after waking up without a hangover (thank god, and damn the wine was delicious), and deleting the drunk FB posts (also, thank god) I read a post by a friend to my own post.  I had simply said “delete…” to which the reply was “+ctrl+alt= new start”.

So it made me think about new starts and what is required to make them.  Could it be as simple as hitting three buttons at the same time, getting the desired result?  Ctrl+Alt+Del.  My next mantra.

Last night, in the midst of large amounts of wine, I had a conversation with a man, that until last night, I had been lusting for off and on for a few years.  Also, in the midst of large amounts of wine, this same man talked about himself, his previous “relationships” (read that as paid escorts), his current obsession, his neglect of his daughter, and his wife.  Yes, a wife, a girlfriend, a daughter from one of the “relationships”, and an empty bank account.

In the midst of the conversation (with large amounts of wine) I suddenly was no longer attracted to him.  He had crossed over, in my head, from someone worthy of my interest, to a creep.  The more he whined about how his daughter’s mother just wanted money from him, how his wife wouldn't let him get out of his husbandly duties (read that as they still fuck), and how the woman he is currently “in love with” (read that as wishing he was fucking) is using him for money like a whore and would not let him kiss her, I started laughing.   I had been drinking (large amounts of wine in case you missed that before) and all of a sudden this man was ridiculous.  Not just as a guy I lust(ed) after, but as a man in general.  He was pathetic and pussy whipped and neglectful.  He was digging himself into a shit hole and was trying to find a companion to join him down there.  Last night (in the midst of large amounts of wine) that someone was supposed to be me.

But that is not what this post is about. 

This is about how this morning I get to remember that conversation, and it gets to be like the three buttons on the computer.  CONTROL:  Yep, I had stayed in control (despite the soft lips and the large amounts of wine), ALT (as in alternative) I gave myself the alt of being fine with him leaving, and me going to my (very pretty clean sheets) bed alone, and the DEL (delete) of a mental block that large amounts of wine usually makes for me seeing men (read that as the guy in my house with the soft lips) as something I require. 

So the combo of CTRL+ALT+DEL really meaning a new start struck me as profound.  I get to control who I pick. I get to come up with the alternative.  I get to delete the old tapes and expectations, and more importantly the need to please someone (everyone?) when I feel like their hardships are so much worse than mine.  Yeah, this morning, fuck that.  It is how I am doing fine, and that I don’t just want the next thing or relationship in my life to be the same as the others.  Men who (with the help of large amounts of wine) feel fine about cheating on their wives can just get Ctrl+Alt+Del-ed.  Men who (with the help of large amounts of wine) decide that their children are expendable can also just get Ctrl+Alt+Del-ed.  Men who (with large amounts of wine) use sex as a way to control and then get offended by women who do the same, calling them whores, well, they get Ctrl+Alt+Del-ed too.

Me?  Well, I get to Ctrl+Alt+Del my evening by having a morning of writing, and drinking coffee, and being just fine with it.  New Starts all the time. How luck to have found those reset buttons work on me, too.

Table for three..oh, and the turtle

If I have to define family, I am pretty sure that I can't use the traditional definition.

I have me and my kids. The three of us are for sure the strongest bond of family in each of our respective lives.  We have rules.  We have expectations.  We have love.  We also have all the funny shit that only families will have, like being naked for breakfast, stealing each other's socks, and laughing hysterically at farts during the intense part of a movie we are cuddled on the couch together to watch. We have discussions, situational learning and teaching, and a whole lot of growing up.  We play.  We sing. We cry.

We also have other people in our family.  Yes, we count their dad.  At least we try to.  Every other weekend.  And when something is left in his car.  We count grandparents.  At least we try to. Once a week or so.  Or when we need a walk and some cookies.  We count friends. At least we try to.  As often as possible, because really, they are our family of choice, even when we only see them once a month, for breakfast, at an awful restaurant, halfway between houses, because we just had to see each other.  Or dropping everything we had planned so that we could go swimming instead.  Not a bad trade off on most days.  Family is like that.

We are connecting to other people through Social Justice Causes.  No, my kids don't actually call them Social Justice Causes. They think of it as just the right thing to do (and a damn lot of fun) when we volunteer to clean up the beach, or go to a dance party in support of Marriage Equality, or write letters through Amnesty International to help free a prisoner of conscience.  Yeah, building world family, too.

So when this morning I received an email, asking that I support the use of a "Stop and Discuss" form (I wrote about "fix it" tickets in my blog titles "All things can be fixed with duct tape") that my ex wants to use with the kids in his home (on those "every other weekend"s previously mentioned) I was actually amused by the list of family he has for the kids.  Seems there is him, his wife, my children, her three adult children, and the the household pets, including a turtle, who qualify as family.  Not his wife's children's father.  Not the roommates that also live in the house.  Not the grandparents, not the aunties, not the friends.  The pets.  Not me.

My children had already told me about this new form, the reworked fix-it ticket, and the whole "family" expectation.  I asked them about it, and how they felt.  The answer was predictable: they were pretty much ignoring it since the whole idea was, in their minds, stupid.  I asked them why they thought it was stupid.  And again, the answer was predictable: families don't work like that.

I explored it more with them as we drove home.  I learned they like our little family of three.  We have rules.  We have expectations.  We have love.    We are funny.  We play.  We sing.  We cry.   We talk about stuff immediately.  We respect boundaries.  We say we are sorry. We mean it when we do.  We don't do it again.  We have a lot of growing up to do, and damn, we are having fun in the process.  And family, well, giving each other "tickets" and "forms" was just not how we roll, and would not be used with those that we love in our real world.

I have now labeled the email, and pulled it into my "I'll get right on that" file.  And while I did a "I-need-some-validation-as-an-awesome-mom-and-beautiful-kick-ass-damn-right-I-am-a-member-of-my-children's-family-fuck-the-turtle-you-can-go-to-hell" moments for about five seconds when I first read the thing, I am over it, and know that I will not be using the form, any other stupid tricks to get respectful behavior out of my kids.  I don't need to, because they already are.  REAL family is like that.