So, I'm finally ACTIVELY pursuing my CBE certification. It's great to finally be headed in the right direction, though I am not entirely sure what direction that is. There will be copious amounts of reading and writing done as I try to sprint through this by the end of winter. Not that I haven't already done copious amounts of reading, but this is specific books instead of just scholarly journals and the like. I'm noticing changes in myself as I learn. I'm no longer 100% in the natural birth camp, but I'm still nowhere near ready to step into the medicalized camp.
As I move through the activities and the reading though, I find myself approaching more of a middle ground on the subject of birth. True, I'd never sign up for an elective caesarean or induction or epidural, I've never been to the birthing area of the hospital (something that I have to find a way to do without hyperventilating), and I'm not totally sold on modern medicine giving us the best outcomes available... I am rational enough to believe that it's not the end of the world if babies are born by these methods. I'm beginning to understand both culturally and individually why a woman might choose those things. I'm never going to be the woman who proclaims that home birth is the only way to go for every woman, every time... it's not. I'm not one of those "trust birth" folks who plays Monday Morning Quarterback over a woman's birth story, though I admit I did study some of those stories pretty hard before deciding what kind of birth I wanted and tried to imagine alternate possibilities- how the outcome or experience could have been altered by not choosing to do intervention A or B. I'm also not one of those people so swayed by the convenience and magic of modern medicine as to believe that the hospital is the only place for women to ever birth... because it's not, either.
I may drop helpful hints or post 'timely information' when I have friends or relatives due near a holiday, or gently counsel someone that they DO have options and they CAN say no if something doesn't feel right, but I cannot choose their birth for them. It's not my birth. The best I can do is offer education so all the choices really do exist for that woman. How bizarre is that? To exist in a middle ground?
My stance has gone through quite a change since I began reading about and talking about birth. Before I was ever pregnant, I believed that hospitals were where a woman had to go because there was NO option. A year before I became pregnant, I began to read- not only were there other options for birth, but all those options were local to me. I began to ask myself what I would want from a birth, research what felt most in line with what I would want, and decided home birth is what would best suit my needs for low intervention and privacy as long as I remained low-risk.
When I started immersing myself in the stories and culture of home birth, I became enamored with the idea that all women should have the option... heck, that it should be the first choice for every birth! Then I actually gave birth at home- and I rode the wave of good hormones and extra-awesomeness that comes from doing the 'impossible'-and I believe for awhile I was like a street-side Christian, crowing the good news for natural birth and homebirth everywhere for a year. Now I'm settling down.
I have talked to and read the stories of women of all walks of life... some have had crappy doctors and amazing midwives. Some have had crappy midwives and outstanding doctors. Some have had traumatic births at home, in birth centers, and at hospitals. Some have had mind-blowing, beautiful, peaceful births at any or all of those places. Medications have failed, or worked too well. It's led me to a grey area in my beliefs, an evolution of thought in which neither an absolute good nor an absolute evil can exist. What works for one woman is not necessarily the thing that will work for the rest of us.
I feel like I'm waking up from a long sleep, and that I've changed and grown. Growing hurts and takes lots of energy, and needs to be fed.
I need more input. I'm hungry.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
The business of being broke... or how I got my hippie card revoked.
dToday I got my hippie card revoked. Sure, I still grow my own food, seek the most sustainable lifestyle I can, and do things that aren't mainstream, but I found it impossible to find a reason to join the local chapter of Occupy this weekend. Oh, I'm sure if I tried I could find something to be angry about and go hold a sign, but that would be a bit of nipping the hand that feeds me since I work for a bank. They treat me well and my little threesome survives on what I make, so I'm okay with wherever I fall in the percentages. Plus, it was a gloriously sunny, warm, amazingly bright day for me to spend unhindered with my son and husband and house- the three entities I am most entwined with. We worked the yard as a threesome today until hubs had to go rest and spent the rest of the day limping and wincing. Then munchkin and I played in sidewalk and finger paints. It was simple contentedness that I needed today. Time and space to decompress and soak up the final rays of the season.
I'm drifting off course again. You know, I am a horrible story teller. Every story has side stories. This one is no different! So, the revocation of said hippie card. Here's the deal. If you haven't noticed, our world is in suck mode right now. Things are bad all over, have been for years. There are people looking for reasons all over the place. Things are not so awful for me. Well, if you go by the numbers- I'm a horrifying mess and should be avoided at all costs because my numbers are negative enough that it could cause a black hole in the universe. By less stringent measures- say my satisfaction index or the scale in my dining room- life is pretty damn good. It hasn't always been and may not always be as good as this, but it's pretty damn good right now. I just learned to be happy with less.
By my personal satisfaction index...
I have it good. I have a wonderfully faithful husband who drives me crazy sometimes, but hey, that's life. I have a kid who astounds me with what he can learn in a day. They both fill my life to the brim. I have a good job, a great boss, and a pretty decent company to work for. They keep paying me to show up, even though I don't feel like even a remotely decent employee some days. My boss extends lots of mercy to me for my inability to retain knowledge and my need to go pump breastmilk ever so often. I wish I had more social opportunities outside of home and work, but it's not a requirement for me to be up to my eyeballs with stuff to do. I wish I could be a stay-at-home-mom, or get my nursing degree, but the universe is a mysterious place and it could happen someday. For right now, I am content with where I am and the people I spend my time with.
By my scale...
I'm hovering right at 150lbs. That means I'm eating pretty decently.
By the numbers...
I am thirty years old. In sixty days and some change I will be thirty-one. I have one child, am on my second marriage. I have a student loan equal to about $1700 for every year I've been on the planet. Add to that a mortgage, a car note, the insanely high 'budget' plan for natural gas heating, water, three credit cards, insurance (including life insurance enough to cover all of it incase one of us croaks). I have very minimal savings, but I try to put away a little bit every pay period. My goal is to dig out of this hole within the next ten years.
I have a BS in Psychology, an MBA with a focus on Human Resources, and a cancelled acceptance letter to the Baker School of Nursing from 2002. Yep, I was somehow afraid I'd be underemployed and unable to pay off the student loans for $8000/semester at Baker, so I switched from pursuing nursing to my old fascination with Psychology (my first mistake), because at the time we believed so strongly that an education meant an amazing job. I suppose it could have, had I pushed for internships instead of paying jobs. Or if I had pushed for social opportunities and volunteer work to put my elbows up against other, more important elbows, but I prefer things simple and hate kissing ass. So, I didn't. I do intend to enroll in nursing school in a year or two if life permits. Get back on my original track and be who I used to want to be. But for now, I'm a back office clerk in a large corporation, and for the most part I'm content. I guess I don't belong fully in the 99% because I am content with my life. I don't mind that my taxes go to support our troops, our veterans, my friends who hit a low spot. I know that if my job were to come to an end, I'd find another job. Or several. It's how I'm built. Every opportunity is found in times of difficulty.
My last twelve years of adulthood have seen some monumental failures in judgment. Epic failures such as taking out a full-on car loan for my first new-ish car, then a year later having to pay the dealership $3500 to take the car back (out of pocket) since I couldn't afford to take my car overseas. Buying a $1100 laptop, then two years later buying a $1400 desktop. A $300 set of pots and pans. A decorator bed frame. Stemware. Makeup. Junk food. Booze. A few rounds for a few bars. Maxing out a credit card on impulse buys and stupidity, paying it off, then doing it again. Discover has received over $10,000 in payments from me in this cycle... and have another $3k coming to them (after which, I'm slamming that card shut). I can't really say I have a damned thing to show for these decisions. The desktop computer is now a paperweight, the clothes and accessories don't fit the person I've grown into literally or figuratively. Many impulse buys have now become goodwill donations. But I am owning up to it. I did stupid things for a decade and two years ago I decided that if I want a future, I have to start with my habits and make some changes before I find myself so far down the rabbit hole that even Alice couldn't find me.
That's right. I am broke because I did stupid things. I didn't have great monetary role models growing up- my birth mom married for financial backup, my dad and 'real'(adopted) mom struggled on one income with five kids. They did some 'creative' things which were the best they could do at the time, but in hindsight were not the best example for us kids. Plus, I have an independent (stubborn) streak and didn't want to wait until I could afford stuff, I wanted NOW. So I did. I bought on a whim without any thought to what I was doing or what the impact might be in the future. I didn't figure I'd ever settle down and have a kid. I was a free agent. I was going to be thin and sexy and single forever. Then I wasn't. Then I woke up one day unable to really breathe because I felt the crushing weight of my stupidity as I paid bills (near the end of my pregnancy, maybe the hormones were talking a bit as well), and put a halt to lots of things THAT DAY.
My plan to get out of the hole:
1) Only buy stuff we NEED. If there's room in the budget for a little extra, we shop craigslist first, but only if it's something we both agree on and can see an extended use for. Obviously, with my husband this takes a little extra work. His meds make him a little less resistant to impulse buys and make me more likely to be the bad guy on any given day.
2) Simplify life. We don't need a big cable package. We don't need to eat out. We don't need to eat packaged foods. We don't need oodles of meat. We don't need to follow fashion trends. We don't need two cars. We don't need to go out to the movies or to buy new DVDs every two Tuesdays. We had to rethink our whole outlook on life. Find out what reallllllly mattered to us.
3) Start saying 'I CAN' or 'WE can'. We do have access to a bajillion recipes for free online. We can learn to build things. We can learn to sew things. We can learn to cook things. We can learn to grow things. We can save money for X item. We can have a yard sale for the big ticket luxuries.
4) Write down obligations. Keep them.
5) Make goals. Write them down. Take action steps to them.
6) Own the screw ups. If I don't own my mistakes, I will continue to make them. It's simple as knowing history. I have to own the fact that I could have had an extra $10,000 or so to save or do other things with had I not made impulse purchases with a credit card. I have to own the fact that I am responsible for my financial reality and my financial future. I have to own the fact that only I can save myself from me, which is a miracle some days.
7) Forgive myself. Forgive myself for doing stupid things. Promise myself to slap myself if I think I might do stupid again. It stings sometimes to look back at what I could have done differently, but it's all part of the growing I needed to do here.
I do worry from time to time that my stupidity may have also led to my family size being limited to the size of a Lithium atom (but Lithium makes folks happy, right?). I would like my son to have at least one sibling, but looking at things realistically, I can't guarantee that our family situation can support that with stability. I also can't ask others to feed and clothe us for my lack of management skills and my need to procreate, so it's a hard choice we have to make. We may just wing it and see what happens, but I won't risk losing our home just to expand the family.
So, I own it. I may not own much, but I own that. Twelve years of trying to outspend Congress on my way to a great life, and I may have shortchanged myself in the process. So, I'm working on being happy with the 'is' so I can be happier with the 'to be'.
I'm drifting off course again. You know, I am a horrible story teller. Every story has side stories. This one is no different! So, the revocation of said hippie card. Here's the deal. If you haven't noticed, our world is in suck mode right now. Things are bad all over, have been for years. There are people looking for reasons all over the place. Things are not so awful for me. Well, if you go by the numbers- I'm a horrifying mess and should be avoided at all costs because my numbers are negative enough that it could cause a black hole in the universe. By less stringent measures- say my satisfaction index or the scale in my dining room- life is pretty damn good. It hasn't always been and may not always be as good as this, but it's pretty damn good right now. I just learned to be happy with less.
By my personal satisfaction index...
I have it good. I have a wonderfully faithful husband who drives me crazy sometimes, but hey, that's life. I have a kid who astounds me with what he can learn in a day. They both fill my life to the brim. I have a good job, a great boss, and a pretty decent company to work for. They keep paying me to show up, even though I don't feel like even a remotely decent employee some days. My boss extends lots of mercy to me for my inability to retain knowledge and my need to go pump breastmilk ever so often. I wish I had more social opportunities outside of home and work, but it's not a requirement for me to be up to my eyeballs with stuff to do. I wish I could be a stay-at-home-mom, or get my nursing degree, but the universe is a mysterious place and it could happen someday. For right now, I am content with where I am and the people I spend my time with.
By my scale...
I'm hovering right at 150lbs. That means I'm eating pretty decently.
By the numbers...
I am thirty years old. In sixty days and some change I will be thirty-one. I have one child, am on my second marriage. I have a student loan equal to about $1700 for every year I've been on the planet. Add to that a mortgage, a car note, the insanely high 'budget' plan for natural gas heating, water, three credit cards, insurance (including life insurance enough to cover all of it incase one of us croaks). I have very minimal savings, but I try to put away a little bit every pay period. My goal is to dig out of this hole within the next ten years.
I have a BS in Psychology, an MBA with a focus on Human Resources, and a cancelled acceptance letter to the Baker School of Nursing from 2002. Yep, I was somehow afraid I'd be underemployed and unable to pay off the student loans for $8000/semester at Baker, so I switched from pursuing nursing to my old fascination with Psychology (my first mistake), because at the time we believed so strongly that an education meant an amazing job. I suppose it could have, had I pushed for internships instead of paying jobs. Or if I had pushed for social opportunities and volunteer work to put my elbows up against other, more important elbows, but I prefer things simple and hate kissing ass. So, I didn't. I do intend to enroll in nursing school in a year or two if life permits. Get back on my original track and be who I used to want to be. But for now, I'm a back office clerk in a large corporation, and for the most part I'm content. I guess I don't belong fully in the 99% because I am content with my life. I don't mind that my taxes go to support our troops, our veterans, my friends who hit a low spot. I know that if my job were to come to an end, I'd find another job. Or several. It's how I'm built. Every opportunity is found in times of difficulty.
My last twelve years of adulthood have seen some monumental failures in judgment. Epic failures such as taking out a full-on car loan for my first new-ish car, then a year later having to pay the dealership $3500 to take the car back (out of pocket) since I couldn't afford to take my car overseas. Buying a $1100 laptop, then two years later buying a $1400 desktop. A $300 set of pots and pans. A decorator bed frame. Stemware. Makeup. Junk food. Booze. A few rounds for a few bars. Maxing out a credit card on impulse buys and stupidity, paying it off, then doing it again. Discover has received over $10,000 in payments from me in this cycle... and have another $3k coming to them (after which, I'm slamming that card shut). I can't really say I have a damned thing to show for these decisions. The desktop computer is now a paperweight, the clothes and accessories don't fit the person I've grown into literally or figuratively. Many impulse buys have now become goodwill donations. But I am owning up to it. I did stupid things for a decade and two years ago I decided that if I want a future, I have to start with my habits and make some changes before I find myself so far down the rabbit hole that even Alice couldn't find me.
That's right. I am broke because I did stupid things. I didn't have great monetary role models growing up- my birth mom married for financial backup, my dad and 'real'(adopted) mom struggled on one income with five kids. They did some 'creative' things which were the best they could do at the time, but in hindsight were not the best example for us kids. Plus, I have an independent (stubborn) streak and didn't want to wait until I could afford stuff, I wanted NOW. So I did. I bought on a whim without any thought to what I was doing or what the impact might be in the future. I didn't figure I'd ever settle down and have a kid. I was a free agent. I was going to be thin and sexy and single forever. Then I wasn't. Then I woke up one day unable to really breathe because I felt the crushing weight of my stupidity as I paid bills (near the end of my pregnancy, maybe the hormones were talking a bit as well), and put a halt to lots of things THAT DAY.
My plan to get out of the hole:
1) Only buy stuff we NEED. If there's room in the budget for a little extra, we shop craigslist first, but only if it's something we both agree on and can see an extended use for. Obviously, with my husband this takes a little extra work. His meds make him a little less resistant to impulse buys and make me more likely to be the bad guy on any given day.
2) Simplify life. We don't need a big cable package. We don't need to eat out. We don't need to eat packaged foods. We don't need oodles of meat. We don't need to follow fashion trends. We don't need two cars. We don't need to go out to the movies or to buy new DVDs every two Tuesdays. We had to rethink our whole outlook on life. Find out what reallllllly mattered to us.
3) Start saying 'I CAN' or 'WE can'. We do have access to a bajillion recipes for free online. We can learn to build things. We can learn to sew things. We can learn to cook things. We can learn to grow things. We can save money for X item. We can have a yard sale for the big ticket luxuries.
4) Write down obligations. Keep them.
5) Make goals. Write them down. Take action steps to them.
6) Own the screw ups. If I don't own my mistakes, I will continue to make them. It's simple as knowing history. I have to own the fact that I could have had an extra $10,000 or so to save or do other things with had I not made impulse purchases with a credit card. I have to own the fact that I am responsible for my financial reality and my financial future. I have to own the fact that only I can save myself from me, which is a miracle some days.
7) Forgive myself. Forgive myself for doing stupid things. Promise myself to slap myself if I think I might do stupid again. It stings sometimes to look back at what I could have done differently, but it's all part of the growing I needed to do here.
I do worry from time to time that my stupidity may have also led to my family size being limited to the size of a Lithium atom (but Lithium makes folks happy, right?). I would like my son to have at least one sibling, but looking at things realistically, I can't guarantee that our family situation can support that with stability. I also can't ask others to feed and clothe us for my lack of management skills and my need to procreate, so it's a hard choice we have to make. We may just wing it and see what happens, but I won't risk losing our home just to expand the family.
So, I own it. I may not own much, but I own that. Twelve years of trying to outspend Congress on my way to a great life, and I may have shortchanged myself in the process. So, I'm working on being happy with the 'is' so I can be happier with the 'to be'.
Friday, September 30, 2011
A day in the life of the able-bodied wife.
I am the able-bodied spouse in my house. My husband is a non-combat-injured, disabled veteran. I am a capable, organized, strong-willed, physically strong woman. I am a driven perfectionist by nature, who is working with a less-than-perfect situation. I have chosen a strange, non-conformist lifestyle by choosing to marry this man. I don't talk about it much because that's just what it is. There is stress. There is pain. There is frustration. There is joy. There is love. It is what it is. I realize it's not as bad as many people have it. I'm grateful that things are the way they are, even when they suck.
My husband is 33. Ten years ago, he was a happy, healthy, active guy who heard our nation's call to arms and answered it by choosing one of the most difficult jobs in the army, Forward Observer. Not exactly the most civilian-adaptable career choice, but recruiters don't tell their young enlistees this, and this guy was planning to do this for a VERY long time when he signed up. He certainly didn't expect to fall and hurt himself while helping move the new furniture into his barracks in Korea, nor did he expect to have someone shut a huge iron gate on his arm in Germany. Each of those injuries created a permanent wound that there isn't a surgical fix for. He left the army with not only these injuries, but he had also lost his ability to physically compete in the sports he once loved, perform jobs he once loved, and had not picked up any useful new job skills through his service that could translate to a life outside the army. It was very much like starting over from scratch for him. It was not in his original plans and was a HUGE adjustment. He is still adjusting in many ways.
It's just the everyday stupid shit that no one plans on that can forever alter the course of a life. Each of those injuries slightly altered his life trajectory. One could even argue that these injuries saved his life by making him undeployable. The guy who took his place downrange did not come home. My husband did... which still makes him incredibly sad. It makes me sad for him, but at the same time, had it not all happened as it did, what *would* my life look like? Would I be married at all? Would I be a mother? Hard to tell. In either case, I live a mildly isolated lifestyle because there are not many people around me who can relate to my lifestyle. Most people simply don't get why I married him in the first place since he
I daily do the little things, and many of the big things that make civilized life possible in our household. Sometimes that means putting aside my own needs and wants to make sure my husband and son are taken care of, but that's sorta part of the wife/mom job description in the first place. There are days when my husband quite literally cannot move (after working on a big project, during heavy weather systems, after a rough day with the kid, etc.) and our shared duties become my duties, period. Not many people understand how or why I 'put up with it', because in our great age of feminism, it looks like I'm the subservient doormat of a wife. The way I see it, I'm treating a man how I'd like to be treated if found in a similar situation. I walk the fine line between making it possible for him to live as independent a life as he can and doing too much. If I do too much, I make him feel like less of a person. If I do too little, I put too much pressure on him to do more than he is able. It has taken me nearly six years to get to where I understand what he truly needs me to do. That is mostly just being 'here' when he needs me. That's not to say I don't get it wrong from time to time.
I am never really off duty as his wife. Our life is a never-ending stream of paperwork from the VA, appointments to keep, medications to remember, reactions to watch out for with the meds, lots of explaining to others why we live the way we do. It's a strange kind of normal even for us. My husband does his best to be a part of my world and to integrate as much as possible into the able-bodied world. He loves yardwork, so we've had to find adaptive tools, and I tend to remain on standby while he works in the yard to make sure he doesn't aggravate his issues or give himself heatstroke in an effort to show the world he can still DO something. He likes to do home improvement projects, I standby to pick up the slack or to call in reinforcements to make sure he *can* do what he sets out to do. I help fill out and manage paperwork. I keep track of finances. I remind my husband that he is loved, because it's pretty easy to forget some days.
He is loved. Very much so. This is a man who is loyal to a fault. He doesn't do illicit drugs, troll the bars late at night, search for porn when I'm out, or any other act of bastardry I've had committed against me in a relationship. On his good days he's got a great sense of humor. He's socially awkward like me, but bless his heart he tries when I drag him to uncomfortable social functions. He loves me for who I am, not for what my dress size is. He trusts me. He treats me with dignity and respect. He stands up for me and stands with me in times of tragedy or trial in my life. He has seen me at my worst and never walked away from me. On top of all of this- he is a damn good father to our son. His body may be limited, but his heart is not.
For all the things he is to me, he is still a man with limitations to the outside world. He lives in an odd sort of limbo in our society. He is a stay-at-home dad. He's not exactly welcome at mommy-and-me playtime, and similarly unwelcome in the circle of men. Schoolwork is complicated for him by the fact that he may have to read the same chapter three times just to absorb part of it. Not many employers have shown interest in boosting their quotas of 'handicapped' employees in such a tight job market, either. When you're choosing an employee- do you go for the guys who are fully physically able, or do you go for the equally qualified guy who needs a little more time and some reasonable modifications to his work load?
There are those who think it's an abomination that my husband receives any sort of assistance from the government through the VA Health System for his 'invisible' disabilities. From those folks I have learned that in order for anyone to truly qualify as disabled, they must first be missing limbs or visibly and horribly disfigured. Or mentally handicapped in an obvious way- preferably with helmets and other external gear so no one has to guess. For a guy to look absolutely normal and to have all his limbs intact, and to not have some cool and heroic story to explain how he came to be injured, well, he's just not handicapped enough for anyone to really care.
He is working daily on rebuilding his life from the ground up. He had to learn how to cope with debilitating pain on a daily basis in order to back down on his pain meds enough to actually have a life. He is going to school to learn a trade that might some day support our family. He has to improvise quite often in order to adapt this world to fit his needs because let's face it- even for able-bodied people, this world is not user-friendly sometimes. So, our goal each day is to do a little better than the day before. We keep working out the bugs together, but always working toward giving him the independence and autonomy he deserves and so badly needs.
I hurt for him because he hurts both physically and mentally. To be a man in a society that places a high premium on a man's ability to be physical and to be a provider in a body that doesn't allow a man to be physical or to fully provide is hard. Being unable to wrestle and roughhouse with his son is hard. Knowing so many people who went downrange and came home under a blanket of stars and stripes is hard. Knowing that his whole existence was altered by a faulty piece of concrete is hard. I watch him struggle daily with pain that can't be fixed and meds that can't go away, and hope that someday modern medicine will find a way to fix him and make him whole again so he can enjoy life as a young man with a family does. My husband is 33, but feels eighty. It's hard to watch someone you love hurt so much and know that whatever you do to help might hurt more, either emotionally or physically, it might hurt more... but that doesn't stop me from being here and trying. His physical state does not make him unloveable. It may make him difficult to get along with some days, but I sure do love this man.
I wish I could say that I was ever the patient and doting wife, but truth is, there are days when I get so incredibly frustrated that I have difficulty holding back the flow of tears because I just want things to be normal. Not 'normal' as applies to us, but NORMAL as applies to most other families- a normal that doesn't involve medication schedules, lifting limits, memory problems, personality changes from meds, lack of understanding from those around us, adaptive equipment, and him being able to be a part of the traditional world of men as he'd like to do. I do. I despise the medications he has to take to be able to function. I especially despise the medications that make him drowsy and change his personality. I want a day to come where his body CAN be repaired, and he CAN do what he wants to do without limitations. That he can mow the yard like the neighbor guys do, then go play ball with his son instead of being immobilized by pain afterwards. With current medical technology, it's not going to happen, so it is what it is.
My husband is one of the many invisible people with disabilities among us. So, here I am telling the world about him. Maybe someone else will benefit. Maybe more people will see and understand.
My husband is 33. Ten years ago, he was a happy, healthy, active guy who heard our nation's call to arms and answered it by choosing one of the most difficult jobs in the army, Forward Observer. Not exactly the most civilian-adaptable career choice, but recruiters don't tell their young enlistees this, and this guy was planning to do this for a VERY long time when he signed up. He certainly didn't expect to fall and hurt himself while helping move the new furniture into his barracks in Korea, nor did he expect to have someone shut a huge iron gate on his arm in Germany. Each of those injuries created a permanent wound that there isn't a surgical fix for. He left the army with not only these injuries, but he had also lost his ability to physically compete in the sports he once loved, perform jobs he once loved, and had not picked up any useful new job skills through his service that could translate to a life outside the army. It was very much like starting over from scratch for him. It was not in his original plans and was a HUGE adjustment. He is still adjusting in many ways.
It's just the everyday stupid shit that no one plans on that can forever alter the course of a life. Each of those injuries slightly altered his life trajectory. One could even argue that these injuries saved his life by making him undeployable. The guy who took his place downrange did not come home. My husband did... which still makes him incredibly sad. It makes me sad for him, but at the same time, had it not all happened as it did, what *would* my life look like? Would I be married at all? Would I be a mother? Hard to tell. In either case, I live a mildly isolated lifestyle because there are not many people around me who can relate to my lifestyle. Most people simply don't get why I married him in the first place since he
I daily do the little things, and many of the big things that make civilized life possible in our household. Sometimes that means putting aside my own needs and wants to make sure my husband and son are taken care of, but that's sorta part of the wife/mom job description in the first place. There are days when my husband quite literally cannot move (after working on a big project, during heavy weather systems, after a rough day with the kid, etc.) and our shared duties become my duties, period. Not many people understand how or why I 'put up with it', because in our great age of feminism, it looks like I'm the subservient doormat of a wife. The way I see it, I'm treating a man how I'd like to be treated if found in a similar situation. I walk the fine line between making it possible for him to live as independent a life as he can and doing too much. If I do too much, I make him feel like less of a person. If I do too little, I put too much pressure on him to do more than he is able. It has taken me nearly six years to get to where I understand what he truly needs me to do. That is mostly just being 'here' when he needs me. That's not to say I don't get it wrong from time to time.
I am never really off duty as his wife. Our life is a never-ending stream of paperwork from the VA, appointments to keep, medications to remember, reactions to watch out for with the meds, lots of explaining to others why we live the way we do. It's a strange kind of normal even for us. My husband does his best to be a part of my world and to integrate as much as possible into the able-bodied world. He loves yardwork, so we've had to find adaptive tools, and I tend to remain on standby while he works in the yard to make sure he doesn't aggravate his issues or give himself heatstroke in an effort to show the world he can still DO something. He likes to do home improvement projects, I standby to pick up the slack or to call in reinforcements to make sure he *can* do what he sets out to do. I help fill out and manage paperwork. I keep track of finances. I remind my husband that he is loved, because it's pretty easy to forget some days.
He is loved. Very much so. This is a man who is loyal to a fault. He doesn't do illicit drugs, troll the bars late at night, search for porn when I'm out, or any other act of bastardry I've had committed against me in a relationship. On his good days he's got a great sense of humor. He's socially awkward like me, but bless his heart he tries when I drag him to uncomfortable social functions. He loves me for who I am, not for what my dress size is. He trusts me. He treats me with dignity and respect. He stands up for me and stands with me in times of tragedy or trial in my life. He has seen me at my worst and never walked away from me. On top of all of this- he is a damn good father to our son. His body may be limited, but his heart is not.
For all the things he is to me, he is still a man with limitations to the outside world. He lives in an odd sort of limbo in our society. He is a stay-at-home dad. He's not exactly welcome at mommy-and-me playtime, and similarly unwelcome in the circle of men. Schoolwork is complicated for him by the fact that he may have to read the same chapter three times just to absorb part of it. Not many employers have shown interest in boosting their quotas of 'handicapped' employees in such a tight job market, either. When you're choosing an employee- do you go for the guys who are fully physically able, or do you go for the equally qualified guy who needs a little more time and some reasonable modifications to his work load?
There are those who think it's an abomination that my husband receives any sort of assistance from the government through the VA Health System for his 'invisible' disabilities. From those folks I have learned that in order for anyone to truly qualify as disabled, they must first be missing limbs or visibly and horribly disfigured. Or mentally handicapped in an obvious way- preferably with helmets and other external gear so no one has to guess. For a guy to look absolutely normal and to have all his limbs intact, and to not have some cool and heroic story to explain how he came to be injured, well, he's just not handicapped enough for anyone to really care.
He is working daily on rebuilding his life from the ground up. He had to learn how to cope with debilitating pain on a daily basis in order to back down on his pain meds enough to actually have a life. He is going to school to learn a trade that might some day support our family. He has to improvise quite often in order to adapt this world to fit his needs because let's face it- even for able-bodied people, this world is not user-friendly sometimes. So, our goal each day is to do a little better than the day before. We keep working out the bugs together, but always working toward giving him the independence and autonomy he deserves and so badly needs.
I hurt for him because he hurts both physically and mentally. To be a man in a society that places a high premium on a man's ability to be physical and to be a provider in a body that doesn't allow a man to be physical or to fully provide is hard. Being unable to wrestle and roughhouse with his son is hard. Knowing so many people who went downrange and came home under a blanket of stars and stripes is hard. Knowing that his whole existence was altered by a faulty piece of concrete is hard. I watch him struggle daily with pain that can't be fixed and meds that can't go away, and hope that someday modern medicine will find a way to fix him and make him whole again so he can enjoy life as a young man with a family does. My husband is 33, but feels eighty. It's hard to watch someone you love hurt so much and know that whatever you do to help might hurt more, either emotionally or physically, it might hurt more... but that doesn't stop me from being here and trying. His physical state does not make him unloveable. It may make him difficult to get along with some days, but I sure do love this man.
I wish I could say that I was ever the patient and doting wife, but truth is, there are days when I get so incredibly frustrated that I have difficulty holding back the flow of tears because I just want things to be normal. Not 'normal' as applies to us, but NORMAL as applies to most other families- a normal that doesn't involve medication schedules, lifting limits, memory problems, personality changes from meds, lack of understanding from those around us, adaptive equipment, and him being able to be a part of the traditional world of men as he'd like to do. I do. I despise the medications he has to take to be able to function. I especially despise the medications that make him drowsy and change his personality. I want a day to come where his body CAN be repaired, and he CAN do what he wants to do without limitations. That he can mow the yard like the neighbor guys do, then go play ball with his son instead of being immobilized by pain afterwards. With current medical technology, it's not going to happen, so it is what it is.
My husband is one of the many invisible people with disabilities among us. So, here I am telling the world about him. Maybe someone else will benefit. Maybe more people will see and understand.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Welcome to the Circle, little sister.
(To one specific sister at the moment, though I mean it for all of you, and eventually my little brother, when he finds a good woman to settle down with...)
Welcome to motherhood, little one. I know you're not all the way there, you still have some months to go before you get to meet that sweet little girl you're carrying, but even so, you are still a mother who is making the best decisions possible for your child every day. Even before the baby arrives, you're learning about her and preparing a place for her in your life. Sometimes that's almost as hard to do as it is once the baby has arrived.
I have so much confidence in how strong and amazing you are as a woman, and how great a parent you will be. You are going to do a great job. You were born to do this!
Motherhood is a great gift. There is no other relationship you will have on this earth as amazing and special as the one you are entering into. When you first look at your baby- when you see those little eyes and hands and feet for the first time in your arms- you know that child has your heart wrapped up in those tiny fingers, and your heart will feel so huge in your chest. You'll know in that moment that you are superwoman, and that you'd move mountains and fight off wolves barehanded for that small baby if you had to. Of course there will also be days when you don't feel so super. There will be ups and downs, and some days you'll wonder if you can really handle this child, how you can possibly do it with so little sleep... and on those days you'll discover a different strength.
Birth is an amazing and life-changing event by whatever means it occurs. I believe that a healthy baby is NOT all that matters, and hope that the birth you have is not only the birth you want, but is also one where you and your baby are treated with respect and love and kindness to get you off to the best start possible when you meet that beautiful baby. It is an intense experience to go through, and only you can go through it. It's like running a marathon- all your friends and loved ones can support you to the starting line, hand out drinks and snacks while you're running, but only you can run the race yourself. No one can run the race for you, and you're a different person at the finish line than you were at the starting line because of the experience. Run that race how you choose, and know that I will be cheering for you all the way through.
You will be swarmed with advice givers of all kinds the moment you give birth, if not before. I have some advice for you myself. So, here goes.
1. No matter who is giving you the advice, you don't have to follow it (except for these four pieces of advice, because my advice is more awesome like that). It could be a friend, a family member, a doctor, someone from church, some random stranger. It doesn't matter. If the advice doesn't seem right to you, or seems like something that you are not comfortable with, you can say no. You don't have to do what everyone else says because this is your child, and you are a strong, capable person even if you are young and this is your first time doing it. You get to make decisions for the first time about another person's life. It can be scary. You'll wonder if what you've chosen is okay sometimes, especially if everyone else seems to think it's weird or different... but if it feels right to you, keep going. (this includes whether or not your baby wears socks, what you feed them, who gets to hold them, how much they get held, etc.)
2. If you have a down day, or you have questions, or you just need someone to help you out, do not be afraid to ask. Ask your friends, ask your family, ask your co-workers. Do not hesitate to get people to help you in the first year or two- parenting is a challenge, and we were not meant to do it alone. It really does take a village (just watch out for idiots in your village)!
3. Don't be afraid of being imperfect. Even when we do all the 'right' things, someone else thinks you're doing it wrong. There is no such thing as a perfect parent. There's what works for you, what works for me, what works for so-and-so, but no one thing will work for everyone... because your baby is yours.
4. Don't be afraid to learn more. Every day more knowledge is added to the world about everything, and when we know better, we do better. :-)
So, that's it. I, of course have loads of knowledge on other things about birth and babies, and breastfeeding, and other stuff. I'm here if you need me. I'm only a text or call away. Or skype. In other words, even from nearly 1000 miles away, I'm backing you all the way to the finish line lady.
-<3, Me.
Welcome to motherhood, little one. I know you're not all the way there, you still have some months to go before you get to meet that sweet little girl you're carrying, but even so, you are still a mother who is making the best decisions possible for your child every day. Even before the baby arrives, you're learning about her and preparing a place for her in your life. Sometimes that's almost as hard to do as it is once the baby has arrived.
I have so much confidence in how strong and amazing you are as a woman, and how great a parent you will be. You are going to do a great job. You were born to do this!
Motherhood is a great gift. There is no other relationship you will have on this earth as amazing and special as the one you are entering into. When you first look at your baby- when you see those little eyes and hands and feet for the first time in your arms- you know that child has your heart wrapped up in those tiny fingers, and your heart will feel so huge in your chest. You'll know in that moment that you are superwoman, and that you'd move mountains and fight off wolves barehanded for that small baby if you had to. Of course there will also be days when you don't feel so super. There will be ups and downs, and some days you'll wonder if you can really handle this child, how you can possibly do it with so little sleep... and on those days you'll discover a different strength.
Birth is an amazing and life-changing event by whatever means it occurs. I believe that a healthy baby is NOT all that matters, and hope that the birth you have is not only the birth you want, but is also one where you and your baby are treated with respect and love and kindness to get you off to the best start possible when you meet that beautiful baby. It is an intense experience to go through, and only you can go through it. It's like running a marathon- all your friends and loved ones can support you to the starting line, hand out drinks and snacks while you're running, but only you can run the race yourself. No one can run the race for you, and you're a different person at the finish line than you were at the starting line because of the experience. Run that race how you choose, and know that I will be cheering for you all the way through.
You will be swarmed with advice givers of all kinds the moment you give birth, if not before. I have some advice for you myself. So, here goes.
1. No matter who is giving you the advice, you don't have to follow it (except for these four pieces of advice, because my advice is more awesome like that). It could be a friend, a family member, a doctor, someone from church, some random stranger. It doesn't matter. If the advice doesn't seem right to you, or seems like something that you are not comfortable with, you can say no. You don't have to do what everyone else says because this is your child, and you are a strong, capable person even if you are young and this is your first time doing it. You get to make decisions for the first time about another person's life. It can be scary. You'll wonder if what you've chosen is okay sometimes, especially if everyone else seems to think it's weird or different... but if it feels right to you, keep going. (this includes whether or not your baby wears socks, what you feed them, who gets to hold them, how much they get held, etc.)
2. If you have a down day, or you have questions, or you just need someone to help you out, do not be afraid to ask. Ask your friends, ask your family, ask your co-workers. Do not hesitate to get people to help you in the first year or two- parenting is a challenge, and we were not meant to do it alone. It really does take a village (just watch out for idiots in your village)!
3. Don't be afraid of being imperfect. Even when we do all the 'right' things, someone else thinks you're doing it wrong. There is no such thing as a perfect parent. There's what works for you, what works for me, what works for so-and-so, but no one thing will work for everyone... because your baby is yours.
4. Don't be afraid to learn more. Every day more knowledge is added to the world about everything, and when we know better, we do better. :-)
So, that's it. I, of course have loads of knowledge on other things about birth and babies, and breastfeeding, and other stuff. I'm here if you need me. I'm only a text or call away. Or skype. In other words, even from nearly 1000 miles away, I'm backing you all the way to the finish line lady.
-<3, Me.
Monday, September 12, 2011
further down the rabbit hole...
In many ways, I'm putting my life back together. There are so many projects around this house that I had intended to get to at some point in the last three years, but for one reason or another I just never got around to it. Painting the bedroom. Scrubbing down baseboards. Untangling the mismatched pile of wreckage that is my office. These things were further derailed this spring when my birth mom decided to finally make good on her talk about moving up here... which you can guess didn't work out so well by the last post.
More stuff got piled into the office while she was here, and the level of disorganization is epic, if you ask me. I had kitchen utensils in my second-floor office, for crying out loud. This room is sort of a metaphor for what's been going on in my mind for a few years. A gradual pile up of things from old lives, some still useful, most not. I'd keep the door to the room closed all the time if it weren't for the cat who pries the door open to sun himself and to barf on the floor. So, it's a room of clutter and cat barf stains on un-sealed wood floors with dreadful beige paint and a tan ceiling. Worst. Room. Ever. But I decided to tackle it for the month of September. My thought process being that if I can unclutter and control a space, perhaps I can better control my thoughts and regain my focus. Because being in this rut sucks. I have things I need to do and just can't get moving because I keep circling back to this room. This one room.
Ahem. The office project. Yes.
Has a great ring to it, right?
So, the grown-up books all live in the office on grown-up shelves, and it's taking shape wonderfully. I'm gradually moving the flotsam out into a pile of garbage in the hallway neatly tagged and bagged for whatever mode of disposal (garbage, goodwill, recycle, shred) and unpacking the old dresser that's served as an inefficient supply cabinet for the last two years into nice little baskets on one of the bookshelves. Order is happening as chaos is simultaneously created by sifting through each of the copier paper boxes in the room. My crafting stuff found homes on top of the bookshelves. My sewing tackle box also went up and overhead. The whole wall is becoming an OCD masterpiece where even my husband will be able to find things!
It WAS all going good, anyway. Then I found the box marked "Lorelei's Artwork" in big, loopy letters. Not my handwriting. Hell, I haven't had artwork in years, I either realized that I had limited talent and stopped doing 'art' or I realized that nothing I made was really worth keeping and ditched it years ago. So, it had to be left over from Her being here. So, I unwrapped miles of newspaper in the box to find several ceramic projects of mine from middle school, an acrylic rendering of a still life involving rope, a horse skull, and two horse shoes- kinda odd composition. Then there was a layer of more newspaper. Then a ziploc bag containing newspaper clippings from her father's/my grandfather's funeral. Then a stack of pictures marked "Return to Randy" (one of her many exes). Then a few documents pertaining to a divorce and a pocket calendar from 1994-1995. Pivotal timeframe for me. So, I opened it.
Inside this calendar, I saw the exact dates for all the strange crap that happened in her final months with her fifth husband. And now it makes sense. Lovely.
More stuff got piled into the office while she was here, and the level of disorganization is epic, if you ask me. I had kitchen utensils in my second-floor office, for crying out loud. This room is sort of a metaphor for what's been going on in my mind for a few years. A gradual pile up of things from old lives, some still useful, most not. I'd keep the door to the room closed all the time if it weren't for the cat who pries the door open to sun himself and to barf on the floor. So, it's a room of clutter and cat barf stains on un-sealed wood floors with dreadful beige paint and a tan ceiling. Worst. Room. Ever. But I decided to tackle it for the month of September. My thought process being that if I can unclutter and control a space, perhaps I can better control my thoughts and regain my focus. Because being in this rut sucks. I have things I need to do and just can't get moving because I keep circling back to this room. This one room.
Ahem. The office project. Yes.
Has a great ring to it, right?
So, the grown-up books all live in the office on grown-up shelves, and it's taking shape wonderfully. I'm gradually moving the flotsam out into a pile of garbage in the hallway neatly tagged and bagged for whatever mode of disposal (garbage, goodwill, recycle, shred) and unpacking the old dresser that's served as an inefficient supply cabinet for the last two years into nice little baskets on one of the bookshelves. Order is happening as chaos is simultaneously created by sifting through each of the copier paper boxes in the room. My crafting stuff found homes on top of the bookshelves. My sewing tackle box also went up and overhead. The whole wall is becoming an OCD masterpiece where even my husband will be able to find things!
It WAS all going good, anyway. Then I found the box marked "Lorelei's Artwork" in big, loopy letters. Not my handwriting. Hell, I haven't had artwork in years, I either realized that I had limited talent and stopped doing 'art' or I realized that nothing I made was really worth keeping and ditched it years ago. So, it had to be left over from Her being here. So, I unwrapped miles of newspaper in the box to find several ceramic projects of mine from middle school, an acrylic rendering of a still life involving rope, a horse skull, and two horse shoes- kinda odd composition. Then there was a layer of more newspaper. Then a ziploc bag containing newspaper clippings from her father's/my grandfather's funeral. Then a stack of pictures marked "Return to Randy" (one of her many exes). Then a few documents pertaining to a divorce and a pocket calendar from 1994-1995. Pivotal timeframe for me. So, I opened it.
Inside this calendar, I saw the exact dates for all the strange crap that happened in her final months with her fifth husband. And now it makes sense. Lovely.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Opening the bag...
As with many posts, I've been sitting on this one for awhile and sorting through emotions to see if I still truly feel what I feel, and whether or not I can share it coherently. I've spent the last few months recovering from my mother's most recent departure from my life and analyzing the bigger picture to see if it was me or if it was her. I'm leaning more toward the latter as I go over our history time and again.
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I am a woman with four moms. My friend's mom who was there to stand in when mine wasn't, my stepmom who was the mom I needed and really didn't have to be, my sorta-stepmom who still claims me even though she hadn't heard from me in nearly 14 years, and my birth mom who dragged me along for 15 years then left me for greener pastures... but still claimed a stake in my accomplishments and bragged like she was responsible for me doing well in anything.
I may have learned lots from my birth mom, but damn if I can find any warm-fuzzies for her right now.
I, as many of my contemporaries and peers, had a f*cked up childhood. I helped raise my mom, and apparently, I failed. I was born in 1980 to two early-twenties, blue collar folks. Dad was a mechanic who could fix about anything with wheels and some things without. Mom was a drifter who could weld and do just about anything a guy could do- well, up until she ended up falling at work and earned a full-torso cast until her back healed. I'm still fuzzy on how they even came to be in the same town long enough for her to take notice of him, but they were, she did, they got married, and I was created. Then things went south sometime after I was born and she took off with me on this grand adventure of f*ckery.
I could just be sad for the times I was told we'd go to the park and didn't, or play dolls and didn't, but there was sooooo much more wrong with our relationship and life than that.
By the age of eight, I had memorized the numbers for the police, the sheriff, and my two closest living relatives. Not because it was something cool to do, but because occasionally, husband or boyfriend of the year would go off the deep end with the booze, or I'd wake up alone in the house in the middle of the night... neither are great scenarios when you're an eight year old.
When I was in third grade, I was not only qualified to help her make decisions on relationships (when to divorce/dump), but was also ready to take on house parties if her man of interest was also sporting a third grader. Imagine my confusion when after being taken to a house party one weekend, I shared for show/tell what I had done that weekend, and my teacher said something to the effect of "I don't think that's an appropriate activity for someone your age to participate in."
By the time I was ten I had moved more than twenty times, usually because we were moving out of one of her relationships. Some of the places we lived in were so far beyond an acceptable standard of living I wonder how none of the family members managed to call CPS. It was an odd life.
When I was a freshman in high school, she dumped me. Well, maybe not dumped. She had run out of date-able men where we lived and had hooked up with some cowboy from the Oklahoma/Kansas border area and gave me the option of either moving away from my friends to come live with her and her new (and infinitely creepy) boyfriend, or stay in the town I grew up in with someone who she used to be married to. I chose the latter. A year after that I moved to my real dad's house though for some stability away from her.
When I graduated high school, she and her meth-head husband (whom we will refer to as #6) came to my graduation party, but had to leave early to go score 'meds' for him. She was a rack of bones from shooting the shit herself, but the inner puppy in me was just happy mom came to my graduation. I didn't want to see the situation for what it was... a photo op for her picture frames and another story of my success as a human being for her to share with others.
A year after high school, mom and #6 took me on a 'family' trip to Colorado. I was 19. #6 decided that after a long day on the slopes, the responsible thing to do would be to go to Blackhawk, CO for some black jack and craps. All his (15 year old) son and I wanted was to find FOOD. We wanted to eat a meal. You have to be 21 to enter Blackhawk, CO. Two 'adults' in the car, two teens. She decided #6 had a great idea and told us that I was to pretend to be 21, the boy was to pretend to be 18, and we would sit quietly with a roll of quarters apiece until #6 had enjoyed himself fully and was ready to eat, too. It's all fun and games until the Gaming Commission agents show up... yeah, interrogation by the gaming commission was awesome. I was humiliated and ashamed for even allowing myself to go along with this idiotic plan.
When I turned 23, I married my first husband. A couple weeks before that though, we visited her. Come to think of it, we really hadn't even talked about marriage yet at that point... I did some stupid things back then, but I digress. I was 23 and smitten with a guy. I had brought him to meet her, and we were on our way to meet his mom. Mine thought it would be a great idea to go to a party at her friends' house where there was going to be booze, fireworks, and eventually food. The first two are always a bad combo. I was the only relatively sober person there, and because of her stellar decision making, had to stay at a party that I didn't even want to be at. I fell asleep in my chair and had to leave the party with third degree burns when her friend lost control of the drunken fireworks display.
When I divorced my first husband at 26, she was divorcing her seventh husband at the same time. She took it as a sign that we were like totally close and in tune and stuff. I took it as a sign that we both made REALLY BAD DECISIONS and that I had a cycle to break. Being 26 and starting over again from scratch sucks, but seeing a woman nearing 50 and starting over again and again and again and again... having nothing to show for all those years but a trail of paperwork of bad decision making and horrible financial management skills, well- that wasn't for me.
When I was in my 28th year, when I became pregnant. I lost the first pregnancy that year, but a month later conceived again. When I lost the first one, she was angry because she had already told all of her co-workers that she was going to be a grandma and now she wasn't. I was angry because she had the gall to say *that* to me as well as demand that I have a D&C done just to make sure "nothing was left behind"... believe me, after what I went through, nothing was left behind. I did however leave her behind when we conceived again. I left her out of the loop until around, oh, 14 weeks or so. I didn't even want to tell her then, but I slipped up and you can't un-ring that bell.
I spent the rest of the pregnancy with weekly phone calls from her demanding that I tell her names we'd picked out, the sex of the baby, and everything that we weren't even telling our *close* friends and relatives around here. I hated it. I hated talking to her because every call spiraled down into her demanding that we give her *something* because she's my mother. I wanted to give her nothing, because she was more of an anchor around my neck, or a group of crabs in a bucket, than she was the wind beneath my wings.
Four months after our son arrived (it's not like it was a surprise, she knew he was coming but didn't prepare or save any money for a trip up here), I had to spend $300 to get her up here to see our son. And it was like a negotiation to get her to plan for time off for this trip. Then she spent the time she was here either shit-faced, smoking, or obsessively cleaning our house. She managed to tell my husband that his depression was going to make me divorce him (yeah, because I was totally bluffing when I said "for better or for worse" in my vows...).
Fast forward to April of this year. After nearly two years of hearing every week how she wished she was closer and that she'd like to be a part of my and my son's life, she decided she was going to move here. To my house. We didn't believe her until she actually did it... and it was terrible. First came the obsessive cleaning. Then came the man-bashing. The re-telling to my husband that she was sure I'd leave him someday. Her pets destroying property. Her meltdowns. The confession that she was really drying out because her last week before she moved she spent in a drunken daze with the boyfriend she was leaving. The smoking. Ignoring her only grandson in favor of being on the phone all her waking hours. Telling people she shouldn't have given away her horse to move up here. Telling me that if there were ever a custody battle that no one would back me and she'd be all I had to help me keep my son. Telling me that she's never given up a pet, they're too important (but she's given me up three times now). Telling me that I just don't know how hard it is to quit substances (yeah, I totally don't. That's why I've been sober for five years and some change.), and that she just can't do it. She left me for the last time in June. After saying horrible things about and to me, my husband, and my child.
I'm sure some of her behavior could be explained by some psychiatric/psychological disorder words: narcisistic personality, bipolar disorder, disociative personality disorder, etc. I suppose she could be considered the reason I have a BS in Psychology, because I spent most of my life wondering what the hell was wrong with her.
I guess I can't say she didn't do *anything* for me. Through her bizarre behavior during my childhood, she inadvertently taught me several things.
1. Other people are not responsible for my happiness. Not spouses, friends, children, or even pets. I am responsible for choosing to either be happy or not. Nobody deserves that kind of expectation placed upon them, and by placing that expectation I will only be disappointed.
2. Commitment does not mean constantly looking for loopholes and reasons to leave. Commitment means being fully present and unswervingly dedicated to something- whether it's to a cause or to a relationship, if you're in, you're in. (yeah, I didn't learn that one from positive examples)
3. Marriage is between two people. Not two people, plus whomever would make one happy in the moment or would be a great piece of revenge. (see #1 above) Plus, it's damned complicated to add more than one person to a marriage...
4. Parenting is important. A full social calendar is not. My son will not be waking up completely alone in the house during his childhood, because I will be here. If I am not here, there will be someone here.
5. People are more important than things, pets, and the like. If it comes to a choice between a cat and my child or husband, I'd willingly put down the pet for them. Hell, I'd sacrifice the pet on an altar if it guaranteed my family's safety or something like that.
6. There is not a substance on this earth that can replace real love and happiness. Nothing will ever come out of a bottle to do that, and it's pointless to keep trying to find it there. So I don't.
7. There is no statute of limitations on the hurt you cause your child. Make commitments and keep them, no matter how small.
8. Just because you're related by blood does not mean you have to keep taking the same crap.
That's right. I have committed to breaking the cycle. I have no desire to even have her in my life anymore because it always ends with me being a bragging point for her and her leaving me for whatever makes her happy in the moment. So, it may seem cruel and callous, but I haven't talked to her since the day she left. She doesn't need or want me in her life, she wants the idea of me in her life. I'm sick of just being an idea. I'm more than an idea. I'm a person, dammit. I'm a person who deserves to be loved and cared for, who deserves real and meaningful relationships, not just some pretty postcard bragging right status.
After thirty years, I've established that I deserve better. So I have better. I still have three moms who are all of that and more.
_________________________________________________________________________________
I am a woman with four moms. My friend's mom who was there to stand in when mine wasn't, my stepmom who was the mom I needed and really didn't have to be, my sorta-stepmom who still claims me even though she hadn't heard from me in nearly 14 years, and my birth mom who dragged me along for 15 years then left me for greener pastures... but still claimed a stake in my accomplishments and bragged like she was responsible for me doing well in anything.
I may have learned lots from my birth mom, but damn if I can find any warm-fuzzies for her right now.
I, as many of my contemporaries and peers, had a f*cked up childhood. I helped raise my mom, and apparently, I failed. I was born in 1980 to two early-twenties, blue collar folks. Dad was a mechanic who could fix about anything with wheels and some things without. Mom was a drifter who could weld and do just about anything a guy could do- well, up until she ended up falling at work and earned a full-torso cast until her back healed. I'm still fuzzy on how they even came to be in the same town long enough for her to take notice of him, but they were, she did, they got married, and I was created. Then things went south sometime after I was born and she took off with me on this grand adventure of f*ckery.
I could just be sad for the times I was told we'd go to the park and didn't, or play dolls and didn't, but there was sooooo much more wrong with our relationship and life than that.
By the age of eight, I had memorized the numbers for the police, the sheriff, and my two closest living relatives. Not because it was something cool to do, but because occasionally, husband or boyfriend of the year would go off the deep end with the booze, or I'd wake up alone in the house in the middle of the night... neither are great scenarios when you're an eight year old.
When I was in third grade, I was not only qualified to help her make decisions on relationships (when to divorce/dump), but was also ready to take on house parties if her man of interest was also sporting a third grader. Imagine my confusion when after being taken to a house party one weekend, I shared for show/tell what I had done that weekend, and my teacher said something to the effect of "I don't think that's an appropriate activity for someone your age to participate in."
By the time I was ten I had moved more than twenty times, usually because we were moving out of one of her relationships. Some of the places we lived in were so far beyond an acceptable standard of living I wonder how none of the family members managed to call CPS. It was an odd life.
When I was a freshman in high school, she dumped me. Well, maybe not dumped. She had run out of date-able men where we lived and had hooked up with some cowboy from the Oklahoma/Kansas border area and gave me the option of either moving away from my friends to come live with her and her new (and infinitely creepy) boyfriend, or stay in the town I grew up in with someone who she used to be married to. I chose the latter. A year after that I moved to my real dad's house though for some stability away from her.
When I graduated high school, she and her meth-head husband (whom we will refer to as #6) came to my graduation party, but had to leave early to go score 'meds' for him. She was a rack of bones from shooting the shit herself, but the inner puppy in me was just happy mom came to my graduation. I didn't want to see the situation for what it was... a photo op for her picture frames and another story of my success as a human being for her to share with others.
A year after high school, mom and #6 took me on a 'family' trip to Colorado. I was 19. #6 decided that after a long day on the slopes, the responsible thing to do would be to go to Blackhawk, CO for some black jack and craps. All his (15 year old) son and I wanted was to find FOOD. We wanted to eat a meal. You have to be 21 to enter Blackhawk, CO. Two 'adults' in the car, two teens. She decided #6 had a great idea and told us that I was to pretend to be 21, the boy was to pretend to be 18, and we would sit quietly with a roll of quarters apiece until #6 had enjoyed himself fully and was ready to eat, too. It's all fun and games until the Gaming Commission agents show up... yeah, interrogation by the gaming commission was awesome. I was humiliated and ashamed for even allowing myself to go along with this idiotic plan.
When I turned 23, I married my first husband. A couple weeks before that though, we visited her. Come to think of it, we really hadn't even talked about marriage yet at that point... I did some stupid things back then, but I digress. I was 23 and smitten with a guy. I had brought him to meet her, and we were on our way to meet his mom. Mine thought it would be a great idea to go to a party at her friends' house where there was going to be booze, fireworks, and eventually food. The first two are always a bad combo. I was the only relatively sober person there, and because of her stellar decision making, had to stay at a party that I didn't even want to be at. I fell asleep in my chair and had to leave the party with third degree burns when her friend lost control of the drunken fireworks display.
When I divorced my first husband at 26, she was divorcing her seventh husband at the same time. She took it as a sign that we were like totally close and in tune and stuff. I took it as a sign that we both made REALLY BAD DECISIONS and that I had a cycle to break. Being 26 and starting over again from scratch sucks, but seeing a woman nearing 50 and starting over again and again and again and again... having nothing to show for all those years but a trail of paperwork of bad decision making and horrible financial management skills, well- that wasn't for me.
When I was in my 28th year, when I became pregnant. I lost the first pregnancy that year, but a month later conceived again. When I lost the first one, she was angry because she had already told all of her co-workers that she was going to be a grandma and now she wasn't. I was angry because she had the gall to say *that* to me as well as demand that I have a D&C done just to make sure "nothing was left behind"... believe me, after what I went through, nothing was left behind. I did however leave her behind when we conceived again. I left her out of the loop until around, oh, 14 weeks or so. I didn't even want to tell her then, but I slipped up and you can't un-ring that bell.
I spent the rest of the pregnancy with weekly phone calls from her demanding that I tell her names we'd picked out, the sex of the baby, and everything that we weren't even telling our *close* friends and relatives around here. I hated it. I hated talking to her because every call spiraled down into her demanding that we give her *something* because she's my mother. I wanted to give her nothing, because she was more of an anchor around my neck, or a group of crabs in a bucket, than she was the wind beneath my wings.
Four months after our son arrived (it's not like it was a surprise, she knew he was coming but didn't prepare or save any money for a trip up here), I had to spend $300 to get her up here to see our son. And it was like a negotiation to get her to plan for time off for this trip. Then she spent the time she was here either shit-faced, smoking, or obsessively cleaning our house. She managed to tell my husband that his depression was going to make me divorce him (yeah, because I was totally bluffing when I said "for better or for worse" in my vows...).
Fast forward to April of this year. After nearly two years of hearing every week how she wished she was closer and that she'd like to be a part of my and my son's life, she decided she was going to move here. To my house. We didn't believe her until she actually did it... and it was terrible. First came the obsessive cleaning. Then came the man-bashing. The re-telling to my husband that she was sure I'd leave him someday. Her pets destroying property. Her meltdowns. The confession that she was really drying out because her last week before she moved she spent in a drunken daze with the boyfriend she was leaving. The smoking. Ignoring her only grandson in favor of being on the phone all her waking hours. Telling people she shouldn't have given away her horse to move up here. Telling me that if there were ever a custody battle that no one would back me and she'd be all I had to help me keep my son. Telling me that she's never given up a pet, they're too important (but she's given me up three times now). Telling me that I just don't know how hard it is to quit substances (yeah, I totally don't. That's why I've been sober for five years and some change.), and that she just can't do it. She left me for the last time in June. After saying horrible things about and to me, my husband, and my child.
I'm sure some of her behavior could be explained by some psychiatric/psychological disorder words: narcisistic personality, bipolar disorder, disociative personality disorder, etc. I suppose she could be considered the reason I have a BS in Psychology, because I spent most of my life wondering what the hell was wrong with her.
I guess I can't say she didn't do *anything* for me. Through her bizarre behavior during my childhood, she inadvertently taught me several things.
1. Other people are not responsible for my happiness. Not spouses, friends, children, or even pets. I am responsible for choosing to either be happy or not. Nobody deserves that kind of expectation placed upon them, and by placing that expectation I will only be disappointed.
2. Commitment does not mean constantly looking for loopholes and reasons to leave. Commitment means being fully present and unswervingly dedicated to something- whether it's to a cause or to a relationship, if you're in, you're in. (yeah, I didn't learn that one from positive examples)
3. Marriage is between two people. Not two people, plus whomever would make one happy in the moment or would be a great piece of revenge. (see #1 above) Plus, it's damned complicated to add more than one person to a marriage...
4. Parenting is important. A full social calendar is not. My son will not be waking up completely alone in the house during his childhood, because I will be here. If I am not here, there will be someone here.
5. People are more important than things, pets, and the like. If it comes to a choice between a cat and my child or husband, I'd willingly put down the pet for them. Hell, I'd sacrifice the pet on an altar if it guaranteed my family's safety or something like that.
6. There is not a substance on this earth that can replace real love and happiness. Nothing will ever come out of a bottle to do that, and it's pointless to keep trying to find it there. So I don't.
7. There is no statute of limitations on the hurt you cause your child. Make commitments and keep them, no matter how small.
8. Just because you're related by blood does not mean you have to keep taking the same crap.
That's right. I have committed to breaking the cycle. I have no desire to even have her in my life anymore because it always ends with me being a bragging point for her and her leaving me for whatever makes her happy in the moment. So, it may seem cruel and callous, but I haven't talked to her since the day she left. She doesn't need or want me in her life, she wants the idea of me in her life. I'm sick of just being an idea. I'm more than an idea. I'm a person, dammit. I'm a person who deserves to be loved and cared for, who deserves real and meaningful relationships, not just some pretty postcard bragging right status.
After thirty years, I've established that I deserve better. So I have better. I still have three moms who are all of that and more.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Mama nose.
My husband thinks I'm crazy. I sometimes agree.
Something interesting happened to me when we conceived our son. For the first time in my life, I had a keen sense of smell. One would think that's a given- those who have met me know that my nose is out there a ways... a nice legacy of native American, German, and English heritage sloping off my face, but no- usually it was mildly stuffy and missed plenty of things. It was sudden. I went to bed one night perfectly fine, oblivious to the world of scents and was quite fine with that. The next morning, thanks to the hormones, I could smell the dog two floors beneath us. Or maybe just her bed in the corner of our room. Then my husband put on cologne, and I thought my head would explode. Then I arrived at work and was greeted by a cacophony of smells- body sprays, lotions, air fresheners, colognes, foods, dust, moldy office carpet, computers, printers, and a weird smoky smell that apparently I was the only one able to pick up... I smelled that alllll 39 weeks.
Now I'm 15.5 months postpartum. I still have a sense of smell like no other. It's like a bizarre evolutionary characteristic. I'm sure that at some point in the distant past when we were all living in caves and grunting at each other that this was a useful means of detecting whether a food source was going to help or harm one's offspring, but in our new and modern world... maybe not as necessary?
I love it sometimes though... I can tell about 30 seconds before my son gets upset about his diaper that it's wet. I can easily pinpoint what's gone funky in the fridge without much effort. I can tell my husband has been eating fast food before dinner (occasionally he stops for a 'snack' after class), and what he had to eat. I no longer have to measure aromatic spices for things like spaghetti, pumpkin pie, chili, tacos, or oatmeal raisin cookies because I can go by smell. I successfully discovered also that my husband had loosely connected the gas line on our stove when he installed it, it had passed the bubble test but still had a small, slow leak.
I am also not a fan of this superpower some days... like when my husband insists on putting fabric softener in the laundry, or wear cologne like he used to- I just prefer the smell of him, not covered in 'stuff'. I can smell my mother-in-law's perfume/air-freshener/laundry detergent/fabric softener combo when I walk in the door on the days she watches E... and can smell her on him for hours after she goes home. I am very sensitive to perfumes and some of them are quite nauseating still.
Anyone else deal with this? Does it ever go away?
Something interesting happened to me when we conceived our son. For the first time in my life, I had a keen sense of smell. One would think that's a given- those who have met me know that my nose is out there a ways... a nice legacy of native American, German, and English heritage sloping off my face, but no- usually it was mildly stuffy and missed plenty of things. It was sudden. I went to bed one night perfectly fine, oblivious to the world of scents and was quite fine with that. The next morning, thanks to the hormones, I could smell the dog two floors beneath us. Or maybe just her bed in the corner of our room. Then my husband put on cologne, and I thought my head would explode. Then I arrived at work and was greeted by a cacophony of smells- body sprays, lotions, air fresheners, colognes, foods, dust, moldy office carpet, computers, printers, and a weird smoky smell that apparently I was the only one able to pick up... I smelled that alllll 39 weeks.
Now I'm 15.5 months postpartum. I still have a sense of smell like no other. It's like a bizarre evolutionary characteristic. I'm sure that at some point in the distant past when we were all living in caves and grunting at each other that this was a useful means of detecting whether a food source was going to help or harm one's offspring, but in our new and modern world... maybe not as necessary?
I love it sometimes though... I can tell about 30 seconds before my son gets upset about his diaper that it's wet. I can easily pinpoint what's gone funky in the fridge without much effort. I can tell my husband has been eating fast food before dinner (occasionally he stops for a 'snack' after class), and what he had to eat. I no longer have to measure aromatic spices for things like spaghetti, pumpkin pie, chili, tacos, or oatmeal raisin cookies because I can go by smell. I successfully discovered also that my husband had loosely connected the gas line on our stove when he installed it, it had passed the bubble test but still had a small, slow leak.
I am also not a fan of this superpower some days... like when my husband insists on putting fabric softener in the laundry, or wear cologne like he used to- I just prefer the smell of him, not covered in 'stuff'. I can smell my mother-in-law's perfume/air-freshener/laundry detergent/fabric softener combo when I walk in the door on the days she watches E... and can smell her on him for hours after she goes home. I am very sensitive to perfumes and some of them are quite nauseating still.
Anyone else deal with this? Does it ever go away?
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