Brutal Honesty

Sophie tagged me for some Honest Scrap, which i think translates into unload some true crap about yourself. I appreciate the tag, I feel so accepted now. ;) I’m supposed to share 10 honest things about myself and then tag 7 others. I am going to take a pass on tagging 7 others. I haven't really been around this bloggy circle long enough to even know 7 other bloggers to tag. I'll give you the 10 honest things, with a bit of a catch. I am doing two lists. If you want simple, random little truths just read the first one. If you want the deep down ugly stuff then go ahead and read the 2nd list. Most of them will be things that I have been meaning to blog about but haven't done yet. I will get the subject out there in this post and follow up with more detailed posts soon. (or hopefully soon) here we go then



the shiny happy list:

1) i am 36, look like i'm 26, sometimes act like i'm 6 but feel like i'm 56
2) i recently dyed my hair light golden brown. well, that is what it said on the box... really it turned out dark, nowhere in the neighborhood of golden, brown.
3) i am the youngest of 5 kids and my parents have been married for more than 50 years. i came from a pretty dysfunction free family (i managed to find the dysfunction all by myself)
4) i cry when i see my kids perform in school concerts or plays
5) i cry at sappy movies (hmm.. i cry a lot)
6) i grew up with a corn field in my back yard
7) i read the first Twilight book in 3 days and the 2nd one in 2. I am just getting ready to start on the 3rd. I need to read it and the 4th by Christmas because they are actually gifts for Dot and I am reading them myself before I wrap them up for her. yes, i know that's terrible!
8) my favorite holiday is halloween because i love making costumes
9) i would much rather give a gift than receive one
10) my favorite food in the world is fresh baked bread

now for the brutal list:


1) I lost my job (part of which was to order office supplies) for making purchases that were not in the best interest of the company. And yes, this one will have a follow up post because it's something that will take explanation. Explanation but not excuses and that my friends is the tough part.

2) I have not been without a guy in my life since I was 16. I have always had a new boyfriend before leaving the one I was already with. This one will need to a post or two as well.

3) I have always made the worst possible choices in my life. In that way I have not been a very good person in the past. (just look back at 1 and 2 for proof) I have decided to change that though.

4) I have this weird fear of talking to people on the phone. I never call anyone because I am afraid I am interrupting their life with my call. And as far as calling businesses I am just really freaked out at the idea of having to call and talk to someone. I have no idea why that is, but I have been that way as long as I can remember.

5) If my marriage wasn't so screwed up right now and if I could afford it I would adopt as many kids as I could afford to raise. I love children but hate pregnancy and childbirth. Plus it makes me cry to know there are children in the world who are without families to love and care for them and I would love to give at least one of them what they are missing. It breaks my heart that I will probably never get to actually do this.

6) I am scared that I screwed up a really good friendship when I slipped. This guy is a good friend of ours, Hubs and mine. And I am aware that this guy had as much a part in my slip as I did and I am totally not owning all the blame. But I am still worried about our friendship. (this one will probably have a post of it's own eventually too)

7) we are a family of 5 living in a 2 bedroom apartment because it is all we can afford right now

8) I tend to avoid my family (parents, bros and sisters) because I feel like the loser of the family and I am embarrassed of my life right now.

9) When I first learned about the things Hub was doing online I tried a lot of crazy stuff to get his attention back on me. I didn't know about sex addiction yet and didn't understand the real problem. I thought if I did certain things he would want to be with me more. (this is very likely to be the subject of some posts, but for now it's hard to think about let alone write about)

10) I have really low self esteem and I am terribly afraid that I will pass that trait on to my kids.

One Special Moment

He held me close. I could feel his arms around me pulling me tighter, closer in to his warmth. I felt his hand, hard and calloused rubbing my back. Soothing cirlces of contact swirling across my skin. The stubble on his cheek scraped along my cheek, my temple, my forehead as he lifted his head to kiss me gently on my hair. I burrowed my face into his neck breathing in the old, familiar scent. "I miss you" I whispered. "I miss you too," he answered back as he held me even closer.

For a small while at least, Hub and I shared something special. A few moments of forgetting the past and letting go of the pain. We held on closely knowing it wouldn't last for long. But still, we held on.

I Slipped

I did it. I slipped over the edge. I am no longer on the verge.

I hate to admit it. I do. I hate to admit it. But I don't hate that I did it. Oh boy does that need an explanation though. Because the reason I don't hate that I did it surprised the shit out of me.

I learned something tonight. As much pain as he's caused, as much crap as he's done... I still love Hub. I still want Hub. I still desire Hub.

This slip, this flirtation gone too far was a lesson on my own feelings. I am not sure I like what I learned tonight. But I needed to learn it.

(the rest of this is going to be very real and very revealing so back away now if you don't want to go down that road with me)

I wanted to know that I could find pleasure elsewhere. I wanted to know I wasn't dependent on Hub for this. But I am. The fact remains that he is the best of my life sexually. And I freaking hate it! I didn't want it to be true. But it is. I spent the evening with another man and when it was over all I wanted was to be with Hub. Hell, during it all I wanted was to be with Hub. To be with the man that knows how and where and when and what and well... he knows me, he knows what I like. We'll leave it at that.

Now I am even more angry and frustrated. Angry with Hub for screwing up what we had. For taking what seemed like the perfect relationship and turning it all into this big mess that it is. We should be happy damn it!

So what I learned upset me but at the same time it made me realize that if Hub can somehow find his way through the crap, if he chooses to fight the addiction and win... well, then maybe we really do have a future. Maybe, just maybe, we can be happy. For real this time.

On The Verge

I am on the verge of doing something stupid. I know it's stupid. And childish. And selfish. I know all that and still I am dangerously teetering on the edge of going over into the land of revenge.

No. Revenge is not the right word. I am not considering doing this out of spite.

Lonliness. Hurt. The desire to be needed, to be wanted. That is what has me at this point.

I simple flirtation could become more. My mind tells me I have the right. My heart tells me it needs this. My body screams to be touched. What's left to tell me NO?

SCREAMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so bored and lonely right now that I could SCREAM!!!

I want friendship. I want companionship. I want what I used to have!!!

Tears are threatening to fall. I fight them and fight them. I am sick to death of crying over all that has gone wrong in my life.

I want to skip to the happy ending. Or at least to the happy part.

The Fall of Hub: part 1

Hub worked in professional sports. I won't mention what team or even what sport. That's not really important. It is simply the fact that he lived in that world that matters.

It is a world like nothing I had ever seen before. Through the years I never stopped being amazed at how people went out of their way to do things for these men. Gifts, expensive gifts, were thrown their way regularly. It was almost unheard of to pay for a meal when going out to eat. There were some guys who had people buying all their groceries for them and even cooking their meals. I do not mean that they hired someone to do these things. That would have made sense. No, this was something else entirely. This was young woman doing these things for them simply to be near them. For to be near them was to hold out a hope that perhaps they would notice you. Getting noticed gave them the brief hope of becoming a girlfriend and then a wife. (of course there were much, much worse things these women did to get noticed) There were even families who would do things for these men in hopes that they would take notice of their daughters. Parents who actually hoped for their daughter to get involved with an athlete so that they could have something to brag about to their friends.

It is a crazy world. One that I never felt comfortable being near, let alone being in.

Hub was not an athlete, he was a trainer. Somehow that made me feel secure about our relationship. At least at first. I knew women threw themselves at the athletes and I would never have gotten involved with one of them. I knew the risks, and it was one I never would have taken. Or at least I thought I hadn't taken the risk. Little did I know that women would try to climb the ladder, so to speak. It was like getting your foot into the door. You could sleep with someone working in the front office, then move up to the training staff, from there on to the players. That was a fact Hub didn't bother to mention to me, until it was too late.

I am getting a bit ahead of myself in this story though. All that comes later. First there were the good times.

It was by accident that I got involved with a man working in pro sports in the first place. It was the off season when I met him. He was simply a man I took interest in, and he took interest in me. It was after months of casually running into each other at different places that we had our first date. It was on that first date that I learned what he did for a living. I guess I would be lying if I said that I wasn't impressed a bit myself. While I certainly wasn't a groupie out to find a way to get in with the players, I was a fan of the team. The idea of going to games for free and of getting to go into the "off limits" areas of the arena was appealing as well. Still, it was more the man than the job that had my interest. He was good, kind, funny and he spent a great deal of time with me. Almost always wanting to be with me. He seemed perfect. A year later we were married.

I was stunned at first to be a part of this new way of life. Then I was impressed by it. Getting into any club in town without having to stand in line was awesome. Having the alcohol flow freely was great too. I do indeed mean free. We never once paid for a drink in all the times we went out. We went to expensive restaurants, ordered whatever we wanted off the menu and never paid for that either. It was an amazing life. Impressive for sure, but one I never really felt comfortable in.

I am, and have always been, a blue jeans and t-shirt kind of girl. I now had a husband telling me that I needed to dress in nice clothes and that skirts were preferable. I was supposed to look and act a certain way. For his sake I tried to change the way I looked. I bought the clothes I hated to wear, I wore high heal shoes although I struggled to walk in them, and I went to the salon to get my hair colored and styled. I made the physical changes. It was made clear to him in no uncertain terms though that I had no intention of changing who I really was. If he wanted someone who would act a certain way, then he should have found someone who was indeed that way. He fell in love with the real me and if that wasn't good enough around his friends and co-workers that was too damn bad. He actually apologized and told me I was right and that I should be me because that was the woman he loved.

I will continue this another time. I am to the point where I learned about his past and I am not up for telling that at the moment.

Existence

I am struggling with my very existence right now. I am so tired of existing. I wish I didn't. It's not that I seek death. I simply wish that I had never existed. How much easier must it be to never had to exist in this life. To never have had to feel pain and loss and betrayal. To exist is to feel and I've had quite enough of feeling right now.

I must reaffirm that I do not seek death. I would never take my life. Perhaps I would feel differently if I didn't have children. However, I do have them and they are my reason for drawing every breath. I can not imagine them having to live without me and I will never purposely take myself away from them. They are like oxygen, food, water, blood... all the givers of life that keep my heart beating.

Certainly thought of taking my life once occurred to me. I wonder if there is a soul in this world who has not had the idea flicker in their mind, even if just for a brief second? I remember when the pain of my husband's lies and betrayal were fresh. How difficult it was to do the simple act of drawing breath. How sleep would not come without the aid of medication. My whole world had shifted and every little thing felt wrong.

I've wasted too much thought and word on such a grim topic. For it is not death I long for. Merely to have never existed. Oh, the bliss of never having had to spend a day in this world.

I do exist though, and have for three and a half decades now. I must find a way to accept this existence. I would prefer to change it if I could. To that effect I am making small changes. However, the change that would make the most difference I can not make. As much as it would do me good to walk away from the man who has caused me to hate my existence, I can not. Again, a decision I make for my children. For us much as I have dreamed of leaving, I can not imagine doing so in a way that would not be devastating to my precious babies. It does them little good for me to exist as I do though. As a hollow and wounded shell.

I muddle through and search for small ways to change my current existence.

The Walls

I am building up walls around me. Every part of me. There are walls around my heart now. Walls I will not let my husband through. He's done too much damage to my heart, and I can't risk letting him through the walls. I don't think my heart could handle any more of his damaging behaviours.

At night in bed I build walls around my body. Real walls. I lay as close to the wall as possible, as far from my husband as I can get. Between us I place a body pillow and a blanket. My own wall of protection. My wall that lets him know not to touch me. The wall doesn't matter though. He wouldn't try to touch me anyway. It's just my way of saying "don't". He'd rather touch himself, touch his computer than touch me.

So, the walls go up. Up around me and around my heart. The walls are getting bigger. Soon, I don't think anything will get through. Not even civil conversation.

How I wish there were no need for the walls.

Avoidance

I've been neglecting this blog. Except it's not really neglect. It's avoidance. I've been avoiding this blog because as much as I want to face my demons... I don't want to face my demons.

I need to look back. To dissect all that went wrong. To learn from it. To move on from. And to never make those mistakes again.

I need it. And I want it. and still....

I'd rather keep my head buried in the sand. Never looking back.

I'd rather struggle blindly forward and hope it will all turn out well. But I know the folly in that. I know there is no going forward, without first looking back.

If not now... then when? I must stop the avoidance.

open hearts

I read the address on the piece of paper again. I was familiar with the street name but it was not one I generally drove on. In fact, in certain parts of town at least, it was a street I avoided. It ran through downtown and I had been on that part of the street before. It was an area full of shops, restaurants and clubs. However the further North you traveled on this street the further into the part of town I avoided you went.

That was where I was going now. Beyond my comfort zone and into a part of town I had spent the past twenty years avoiding. Avoiding it first because my parents avoided it and then as I was old enough to navigate the city myself, avoiding it by my own choice. There was no way to avoid it now though. The address was right there on the crumpled piece of paper beside me on the seat. This was where I had to go.

My twelve year old son sat in the passenger seat, keeping an eye out for addresses on the rundown buildings we were passing. We came to a twisted intersection with streets going at random angles from each other on the opposite sides. "Ok, where do we go now?" I asked quietly. My son pointed to a street twisting a bit to the Northwest, "I think this street continues over there" he said. I smiled over at him, "I think you're right buddy. Thanks."


I kept the irony of the situation to myself. The reason for the twisting jumble and randomness of direction each road took was the railroad tracks. The tracks cut through in such a way that the roads could not continue on in a straight pattern. The irony? We were crossing over the tracks. How many times had I heard the expression "the wrong side of the tracks". Well, we were certainly headed for the wrong side of the tracks now.

A few short blocks up the road I saw the building we were looking for. Open Hearts Ministries. That was the name on the paper at my side. Crumpled from the days I had picked it up reading it again and again, telling myself it hadn't come to this. There was no way I was really going to have to do this. That morning I had opened the cupboards and realized that, yes, I really did have to do this. A couple of packs of instant noodles and a half jar of peanut butter stared back at me, telling me it was time.

I found a spot to park, it was the last one. The lot was full. We were not the only family here for help. Still, I felt less than myself. Less than what I should be. This was not a place we belonged. We were not the kind of people that needed help like this. As we walked to the building I reminded myself that we were. We were exactly the kind of people that needed the help. It didn't make us less, just like it didn't make any of these people less. It's easier to tell yourself these things than it is to make yourself believe them.

We walked in and saw two rows of chairs facing each other. Many of the seats were already taken. At the end of the rows was a small desk. Already standing at the desk was a woman with a small child and behind her a man on his own. I got in line behind them, telling my son to find us a couple of seats.

When it was my turn at the desk the woman asked if I had ever been there before. "No," was my answer. She handed me a sheet of paper and a pencil and told me to fill the form out bring it back up to her. I sat down next to my son and filled out the paperwork. It was simple, really not much to it. Names and ages of everyone in the house, income and source of income, a few things like that. The last line of the form asked "why do you need assistance?". My hands had been shaking the whole time I had been filling out the form. Now my whole body began to shake. Why do I need assistance? I had been asking myself that very question. Why was I at this point in my life? What had brought me down to this? What if I had only made different choices? I know that is not what they were looking for with this simple question on their form, but it was the information I had been looking for in my mind for months.

I finished the form by writing that I had lost my job and had not been able to find a new one yet. Then I took the form to the lady at the desk and she said they would call me back soon. I had never done anything like this before so I payed close attention to what everyone else was doing. No one really looked around much. They would quietly talk to the people with them or stare down at their own feet. Nobody made eye contact. They all felt like me I decided. None of them felt like this was where they belonged. None of them knew the answers to why they were really here.

I noticed that when your name was called you went off to the right with someone. Just a few short minutes later you would come out and go to a different waiting area. It was just a few more minutes after that your name would be called again and you would go through a door. It seemed a quick process once it got started. I looked over at my son and told him it shouldn't be too long and we would be out of there. He smiled at me and started talking about school. I knew he was trying to distract me, and probably himself, from the reality of where we were and what we were doing. He is an amazingly good kid.

The man who had been in front of me in line was called back. Things were moving quickly. We would be next. It was just another minute and my name was called. We got up and went with an older man off the right. We sat down at a desk where he asked for proof of our address and income. I dug out the things I had brought with me from my purse. He went to make copies and was back quickly. He chatted with my son just a bit about his school as I signed a couple of things and then he told us to go to the far waiting area. We made our way out and sat as close to the big door as we could get. When my name was called I just wanted to get through that door and out of there as quickly as I could.

Less than a minute later my name was called and we stepped through the door. We walked into a hallway and were pointed to a window just a few steps down. There in the window was a woman with a smile and three big bags of groceries. The man in the hallway offered to help us out to the car with them. We accepted his help and walked quickly to the car where we put the bags in the trunk. "Bless You," the man said as he walked back inside.

We got into the car and I was about to start it when I noticed my son glance back to the trunk where the bags were sitting. "Why don't you climb back there and see if there is anything you can snack on while we drive home" I told him. He dove into the back seat and began to dig through the bags. He rattled off items as he sifted through them. "There are frozen pizzas and eggs and couple loaves of bread. There's a bunch of canned stuff too." Then he dug into another bag. "Cinnamon rolls!" he shouted. "Well bring them up here" I told him. He sat back down in his seat and opened the package. "Let's split one," I told him "so you and your brother and sister can have the rest for breakfast tomorrow." He carefully tore one in half and handed me a piece before biting into his own half.

We drove home talking about how good the cinnamon rolls tasted and then about school some more. The mood was different on the drive home than it had been on the way there. The dreaded task was over. I had walked into the Open Hearts Ministry and asked for food to feed my children. It had been hard to do. Hard to accept that I needed to do it. Now it was done and my heart was lighter. My mind at peace, even if just for a little while. I had done what I needed to do and now I knew that I could do it again if I had to. And today...
today my kids would eat well.

MY rock bottom

Hitting rock bottom is a term most often associated with drugs or alcohol. Neither of these things were factors in my fall. For me hitting rock bottom was a matter of failure. Failing to keep a good relationship with my husband. Failing to be an example of a good, responsible adult to my children. Failing to keep my job. Failing to be a truly good person. Failing as a person. Personal failure. Financial failure. Spiritual failure.

Failing = Falling


It's a frightening thing to wake up one day and realize you have no money. NONE! No way to pay the rent, the bills, or even to buy food. Even more frightening is the realization that you have done this to yourself and your family and you somehow failed to see what was happening until it was too late.

For me, this is rock bottom and the rocks are sharp and painful.