Self-Affirmation

Long nights of half-sleep

Anxiety over the nothing

Plodding through the tight stomach days

Living for the sunshine on my face

Slowly shrugging off the nonproductive habits

Learning to be okay with it all

Looking at life from a fair perspective

Taking stock of where I am and how I got myself here

Assessing what’s really important

Letting myself be human, even in my own eyes

Taking responsibility

Setting a better example for my children

Trying to put my life back together

Reminding myself what I can be capable of

Allowing myself to hope

Setting my sights on what I deserve

Communicating in positive ways

Developing better tools to relate

I will be okay.

I will be OKAY.

Brain scans, and other things

So, I came home from work yesterday to find a voicemail on my message machine from the eye doctor’s assistant saying they had already scheduled my MRI appointment for this coming Monday. I have to arrive an hour early so they can give me the little pill that makes it okay to shove me all the way in that tight little tube and leave me there for an hour while all the horrible noises go on all around me. And since they’re giving me the little pill, I have to have someone to drive me home.

This is ridiculous. I have such a high tolerance to the little pill, they could give me three or four and I could still pass a field sobriety test without blinking. Oh, I know it’s procedure, its protocol, it’s for the hospital’s safety as well as my own… but it’s still stupid. Now I have to hope my husband will be available to drive me all the way uptown in the middle of the day Monday, which I won’t know until he gets back from Italy, which won’t be until late Sunday night, by which time it will be far too late to reschedule. Arrrgh, why do things have to be so complicated all the time?? On a lighter note, I started taking the medication he prescribed, and maybe it’s too soon to tell, but my eye seems steadier already…

I thought it would be nice housesitting for a week while my husband was away, being back in my house again, but I find that staying there as a visitor is really bizarre and frustrating. Things are weird right now; I’m feeling pulled halfway between two worlds – the married world and the separated world, and I don’t feel like I belong entirely in either one right now. I feel… displaced, I guess. It’s an odd feeling, and I don’t know quite what to do with it.

Part of me is sure that eventually I will move back home and resume my marriage. But another part of me believes that to do so would only continue the unhappiness I had been feeling for years. Things seem much better now, but is it only because I’m gone? He treats me differently, but is it only because he’s trying to get me back home? Would it last, or would he go back to being the same indifferent, distant roommate he was before? I know this is why we are in counseling. And it’s early yet. But I just wish there were easy answers, and I know there aren’t. What to do, what to do??

So Long, 2008…

 

Well, this has been one of the most bizarre years of my adult life.

I entered it in a stable marriage, a secure job, a comfortable house, and good financial status.

I am leaving it in a state of separation, a job I worry about keeping, a cold basement apartment, and never enough cash to stretch from one pay day to the next.

It’s been interesting.

In between there have been lost loves, internet relationships, and plenty of heartache and heartbreak. It has been tough learning to be on my own, but I really think I am making progress. It’s hard, and it’s lonely, but if there’s one resolution I make for 2009, it will be that I refuse to sacrifice my self, my personality, my happiness, to appease a man. I have rediscovered what it’s like to really be able to just be me… and I like me.

My husband and I are getting along well, spending some time together, and will start counseling in January. But I have been very clear that I have made no promises, aloud or inferred, that I will be returning home. It seems I like him as a friend, but as a husband? I still have no idea if we’ll ever get back to that point. Much change is needed.

My kids will return from my parent’s place in Southern Utah on Sunday; I have missed them and can’t wait to see their little faces again (reminding myself they’re just not so little anymore). School starts up again Monday, and life resumes as normal again for everyone… well, as normal as it can be right now.

So what will 2009 bring? Hard to imagine. So many things in the air right now, I can’t possibly predict what might happen next… but stay tuned,  faithful readers, it’s sure to be entertaining!

Magpye’s ‘Life Sucks’ Poem

 

 

Stumbling blind

Reaching wildly

Finding no purchase

The sound of dark, smell of cold

I am enveloped in lonliness

I see

But I do not see

I feel

But feeling is excrutiating

I fight

But the struggle pulls me further under

Until I cannot breathe

Voices around me

As if from underwater

Unreal, distorted

Time is a sharp wire that winds ever tighter around me

I scream

But no one wants to hear

I am truly alone

Relationship Confusion

So… these are the things I am dealing with. My husband and I are considering reconciling. I know he wants to, and there are parts of me telling me I want to. But I have to be so, so careful about making sure they are the right parts of me, and they want to for the right reasons… there are a million reasons why my life would be so much easier if I went back home. Life on my own has been extremely hard, much harder than I ever expected, and at times brutally depressing. Not to mention that financially I have never been more challenged, ever.

But after all I have been through, the things I have learned about myself, the me I have discovered since I have had the freedom to be this me, I worry that all that is for nothing if I just turn around and go back home. Granted, I would not be considering it if I did not still have deep feelings for my husband, but I can’t forget that I spent years being deeply unhappy there. Maybe it sounds shallow, but I don’t want to give up my Captain’s Quarters, my pirate flags, my pirate bathroom… those things are ME, and I know I would lose those if I went back. I like those parts of me. He never understood it.

I feel like he really wants to rush back into a relationship, and as much as it is nice to have some closeness with him again, I really worry about taking things too fast. I was kind of glad that we couldn’t get in with the counselor until January, I felt like that put a little mandatory waiting time in place. I don’t know if he really understands the level of commitment to change I will require before I consider giving up my independent life, hard as it is, to come back. I know right now he feels motivated and willing to change, but he has made so many promises in the past, and never kept any of them. Work always comes first, then the boys, then the gym, then sleep, then hunting, then… what ever else he might be forgetting. Helloooo?

I know if we are going to move forward, IF, then my main responsibility is putting those grudges behind me. It’s just hard to trust again. I want to… but it’s hard, I so don’t want to be hurt again, it’s so demoralizing to practically live for someone who tends to forget you exist. It’s taken me these many months to start building back my sense of self-value, and that has been one of the best things to come of this separation for me. I don’t want to lose that.

I hope being around more and opening the lines of communication isn’t giving him the idea that we are automatically getting back together, he has already suggested I move back home first and then we start counseling, and I was like, ‘no way!’ Maybe I need to discuss that with him openly to make sure there are no misunderstandings about where we stand.

Communication….. isn’t that always what it comes down to in the end??

Good Riddance to a Turkey of a Turkey Day

Well this year, things were changed up a bit. Due to the separation, instead of my husband and I hosting the perfect dinner assembled effortlessly through years of practice, my brother and his wife stepped up and offered to host the occasion.

It just wasn’t the same.

I had invited my ex to our dinner, partly because he has no other family with which to spend the holiday, and partly to be nice and show that we can be civil and share in these events for the sake of our kids. It was for the most part alright, until he spotted the lighter burns on my wrists and started hounding me about whether or not they were accidental. I do not, and will not lie, and so my only option was to simply refuse to discuss it. He was pissed, but I stood firm and he eventually dropped it.

Other than the flat tire, my parents judging my drinking, my stepdad’s neverending wierdness, and the like, we all basically survived. It was just… wierd.

R was supposed to have been here by now. I have no idea when/if he is ever coming now. I feel like he is avoiding me. He’s never in the chat room anymore, and if I can get a two-word text from him, thats twice the size of normal. Who knows what will happen… surely not me at this point. Limbo Limbo, that sure is me….

Can someone please just kill me now?

Seriously. I would really appreciate it – it would be such  nice reprieve from the ups and downs, highs and lows, good and bads that are completely wearing me out. R and I are quits, and it ended badly – very badly. R is a manic depressive and went manic all over me in a public chatroom while all our friends and acquaintances sat back and watched. It was awful, humiliating, and devastating. Everything I have tried to do to help him he threw in my face as being controlling and pushy, told me how stupid I was for expecting I could “fix him just by being the wonder that is me”. OUCH. I never wanted to fix the guy… I just wanted to love him. It goes on from there, but I really don’t want to go over it all again. Needless to say, the meeting is off. The worst part is that he accused me of never accepting him for who he was… that really frosts my ass, you know? I knew exactly who he was, and I was willing to roll up my sleeves and deal with it, and he tells me I never accepted him. Dammit. He knew right where to hit where it hurts. I agonized over his pain, all I wanted to do was try to make it better. Shame on me.

Stupid, stupid, stupid…

Well, I guess I blew it again. This time I went into the chat room where R and I always meet, and I went under a different name, because he always does, and I thought maybe I’d show him how it felt not to know who you were talking to.

Long story short, BIG MISTAKE. He was in under a different name and we got in a huge fight not even knowing who we were and now it seems the whole chat room I have frequented for months as my solace in a lonely life hates me. I don’t know that he has been saying things about me, so I won’t make assumptions, but something is very strange about the sudden hatefest going on in the room where everybody knew and liked me. And I can hardly get him to talk to me because he doesn’t think I understand his point of view about what started the whole thing. I do now. But it was still a scary side of him I had never seen before and it shocked me.

So… what now? I don’t know… are we done? I wish I knew. Part of me says if he can be like that, I need to take my leave. But honestly, a bigger part of me still deeply cares for him and is extremely dismayed over what has happened. I don’t want to let go. But I don’t know that it’s my choice anymore.

Hey, Newsflash… Magpye screws up again. Stupid, stupid me.

No happy ending for the Magpye

So… I got dumped. In an EMAIL.
Right after I got written up.
It was an AWESOME friday.
I have spent the rest of the weekend drinking beer and crying, what else is there to say?
I just don’t know how much more I can really take; I really don’t. It’s SOOOOO not funny anymore.

SSDD

I am so freaking depressed.

I try so hard to keep my chin up and keep smiling, and I just don’t know what I’m doing it for, or who I think I’m fooling.

I have to take my dog back in to see the vet tomorrow. She is concerned that there is something wrong with him that he is acting MORE aggressive since being fixed, and she’s talking about the possibility of him needing to be ‘medicated’.  I just can’t afford that.

I know Mike has to be home from his trip by now, but he won’t answer my calls or emails. Obviously that doesn’t bode well for our relationship. Damn.

I get paid Friday, and half that check is already gone for bills and such. I feel like I will never get caught up, let alone ahead. How will I ever get to where I can afford to retain an attorney for my divorce? Which apparently I need to complete for Mike to take me seriously? If there’s even a chance left, that is, which I don’t know, because he’s nonexistent at the moment.

I feel like I am walking a tightrope in a high wind, and there’s no net. How the Hell did I get up here?

Oh yeah … I believed.