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So yeah, I promised to update my blog and I’ve been a monumental failure at it, because I have THE. BIGGEST. NEWS. EVER. I have had for 6 days, and I haven’t even written about it yet! Yes, I know some of you have been bitching for details. Gimme a break. I'm trying. So, in a last-ditch effort to share my little slice of HELL YES MY LIFE ROCKS, here goes.
So New Years Eve…me and Mr. P headed out to a little get-together at a friend’s house. It was a full moon (a BLUE moon, mind you) and we were both excited to have some kid-free time to enjoy each other. We had some questionable burgers (love ya dude, but really. Burgers first, Jager second) and had a great time laughing at said friend for his fraidy-cat antics. (don’t ask. It’s too stupid to even bother explaining.)
After all the silliness of the night, we gathered in the living room. We watched the ball drop, my wonderful man kissed me, and then immediately became noticeably nervous. He kicked 2009 to the curb, and then announced “well, now that that’s over, I want to start 2010 off the right way.” He dropped to one knee, pulled out a beautiful diamond solitaire, and asked me to marry him. Yes, fo’ serious. Of course I said yes, or else it would be totally retarded for me to proclaim this as BIGGEST. NEWS. EVER. I mean, who would do that. (Shaun says I still would because I’m a female, and female=mean, but I disagree.) Anyway, yes. The Southern Single Mama isn’t really so much single anymore. The woman who vowed to not make vows is shopping for wedding bands, beach wedding packages, and other “forever paraphernalia.” Hmm. Go figure… Told ya, strange things happen under full moons!
I remember riding in the car with my mother several years ago. It was just the two of us and we were traveling on the winding road heading down to the Buffalo River, where I spent most my summers during my childhood. The windows were down, the wind was blowing our hair all around, and Nanci Griffith was blaring on the stereo. The meaning of the song wasn’t particularly important, but the chorus was “once in a very blue moon.” I remember asking my mother what that meant, and she told me that it was a rare, special occasion. I learned later that it was really nothing more than a second full moon in a month. Either way, I grew up hearing my mother echo the phrase “once in a blue moon.”
Tomorrow is the last day of 2009. This year began with me being broken down to the very center of my soul. I rebuilt my life. I survived the absolute worst thing that has ever happened to me, and I’m a better person for having gone through it. Now, I will spend the last night of this year- and the first night of the next year- with a man who made me believe something that I had turned my back on. When I met him, I didn’t want to be in love. Not then, not ever again. I was determined to stay standing on my own 2 feet. But then, he walked into my life. He made me believe that I could be in love again. He made me believe that I could rely on someone to be there, and to stay. He’s proven it, too. I’ve shoved him away twice now. Each time was because I had the potential to be hurt badly. I figured that if I pushed him away, he couldn’t just walk away from me and leave me behind brokenhearted. But something strange happened. Both times, he came back. He came back and he didn’t leave. And now, I’ll be ringing in the New Year with him tomorrow night. And this year, something rare and special will happen. The New Year will be born under a blue moon. So, cheers! Here’s to faith, love, and hope.
I survived my first Christmas as a single mom. Although, really, I’m not sure how much of a single mom I am anymore. I guess a more appropriate description is “unmarried mother” because I’m not alone anymore. Truth be told, I haven’t been for a while. He’s there. He’s been there almost every day and every night for almost 3 months. Even before he was physically there, he was still there. I could call him any time of the day or night, and if he could, he would stop whatever he was doing just to listen to me when I needed to talk. But now, he’s really “for real” there. I used to go to bed alone and lay there for hours until I fell asleep. Now, I snuggle up next to him, with a huge dog lying at the foot of my bed, and I fall asleep feeling loved and cherished. I don’t know the last time I felt that….or actually, if I have ever felt that at all.
I still have my moments, though. Sometimes, something is said, or a word catches my attention, and I feel myself snapping back to reality. I feel kind of like an animal in the woods when they hear a sound that startles them. Their head pops up, they look all around them, and every step they take is taken with purpose. They keep going, but they do so with extreme caution, and they continue in that manner until they feel safe again. That’s what happens to me. My focus sharpens, I make no moves or sounds without purpose, and I hear that voice in my head that says “be careful, because this could be monumentally painful.” I have another voice, though. That voice says “It’s ok. He loves you, and like he’s told you, love is giving someone the power to destroy you, and trusting them not to.” And I trust him- and love him- completely. Eventually my fear subsides and I slip back into that comfortable feeling, and I have the courage to look into his eyes and see how he loves me...and then all is right in my world once again.
I suck balls. Not because I mean to. (I mean, this is all figurative, of course. If you are literally sucking balls, generally you DO mean to. But, in this case, I don’t mean to.) Yeah, so I haven’t written anything meaningful in, like, months. Whatthefuckever. Get over it. I don’t mean to suck balls. I have excuses, I’m just too lazy to bust them all out at the moment, so, deal. Mmmmkay? Grrreat. Thanks. Anyway, anyone who read and knows my life knows what’s up. Boyfriend, in love, shitty non-child-support-paying ex-husband, school sucks, that’s about as much of a recap as I can manage at the moment. I’ll do better, I promise. In the meantime, pet a kitten or something to make yourself feel better. Loves ya. Fo’ reals. (And yes, a lot of old posts were deleted. Some stuff I just wanted to leave alone for a while. So, fresh start and all that junk. Peace, foo's.)
I recently relived my first single mom survival story for a fellow blogger. I told her about how my husband left, and one day later, I watched the weather report in horror as an ice storm made its way to our area. I knew that I had firewood, although it was in the yard and wet from the rain. I told her about how I took off work early that day, picked up J and then went home, spending the next 2 hours hauling firewood by myself in the ice rain. I don't know what that selfish bastard was thinking, but my daughter would be safe and warm, period.
Many of my friends have commented on what an incredibly huge fucktard Tha Ex was for leaving me in that situation. (yes, I said fucktard. More on that in a moment.) I could be angry at him for being so selfish, but if you’re at the point that you’re willing to walk out on your family, what’s just a little more icing on your cake, right? You might as well leave them high and dry too. (well, not so dry, but you get the point.) One thing that I take pride on is learning from my experiences. What I learned from that experience is this- I CAN. Yes, by myself. I learned that I can be successfully independent, and out of that, my mantra was born. “FUCK YOU, I CAN DO IT MYSELF! I DON’T NEED YOU!” The past 8 months have taught me that the power of the F word is UH-MAY-ZING. There is truly nothing that satisfies me more in my time of anger and frustration than pulling out the good ol’ F-word, or any variation thereof. (Such as fucktard, fucker, fuckin’ A, fuckity fuck, or, when little ears are around and you must edit out of necessity, you can substitute with “FAAAARKLE!!!”) It’s all part of letting it out. It’s like a fart (another F word. Coincidence? I think not.) Anyway, as I was saying, it's like a fart. You have to let it out, or eventually, you will literally explode.
There are times when the reality of being a single parent comes crashing down with a devastating weight. Yesterday was one of those times. The [old] boyfriend got his first experience in “showing up” for J when we went to watch her program for VBS. After she was done with her part, the parents went up to the stage to collect the little ones, then back to sit down for the rest of the program. I got J, we sat down, and about that time she catches a glimpse of her dad. For the next 10 minutes, I had to argue and wrestle with her because she wanted to go back and see her dad, although she should have been sitting still watching the rest of the program.
Rewinding just a bit, J was with her dad this weekend. I got a call at about 10:30 a.m. Sunday that she was ready to come home. I was at The [old] boyfriend’s, so it was no big deal to walk up the street and get her. I arrive, and she is wearing jeans (when it was 90 degrees outside) and tennis shoes with no socks. I get her back to Josh’s and ask her what she’s had for breakfast. The answer is nothing. It was 11:00 a.m. and she hadn’t eaten anything all day. Later that day it was time to get her cleaned up for the program and I asked her if she had a bath this weekend. Nope. No bath, and hadn’t brushed her teeth all weekend. Basic necessities that are not being met, yet he did take her to the racetrack where he exposed her to yet another random girl, and this one even painted my child’s fingernails and toenails green. Awesome. So she’s filthy and hungry, but she got a mani/pedi out of the deal.
So back to the evening. J’s dad does as little as possible for her, yet she gets one look at him and begs to be with him. I take care of her 99% of the time and make sure her basic needs are being met, and she remains focused on missing her dad. Needless to say, The [old] boyfriend got a bit frustrated at the situation. We talked about it later and he says that he knows what’s coming- the day when J realizes that her dad is a total shit, and it’s going to break her heart and I’ll be left there to pick up the pieces. I listened to what he said, and my heart broke a little more with every word. Not because he was saying it, but because it’s all stuff that I’ve already thought about, and hearing someone outside of the situation say it made it real. I felt that all-too-familiar knot come back in my chest, and his words began to fade as my voice became louder in my head, with one word. ALONE. I’ll pick up the pieces of her heart, and I’ll do it alone. I rarely cry anymore, but as I drove home that evening, a few tears managed to escape. I felt overwhelmed yet again. I never asked for this, but it’s my reality. I didn’t choose it, and I don’t know why any man in his right mind would want to be a part of this.
I have had pretty much the same commute to work for 4 years now. It gets to a point where you recognize some of the cars that roll with you every day. You tend to know who is going to cut you off, who will let you in, and who you can roll with when traffic clears up enough to give you a straight shot to the next bottleneck. One of the vehicles I have come to recognize is an SUV from the Pulaski County Sheriff’s office. He’s a dick. Fo’ real. I don’t know what makes him think he can police the entire rush hour mob on his way to work, but that shithead sure does try. This morning, he was in the lane beside me and I was in front of another SUV. We were rolling about 68 in a 60. He comes up beside me and “boops” his siren! YES! On the interstate. He knows enough to know he can’t pull me over (I mean, he’s not even a patrol car! He’s like, a detective or something. I don’t think he even has a radar) but he still has something big enough up his ass to where he thinks he needs to be my daddy. He does the same thing to the SUV behind me. After another mile or so, the other SUV ends up beside me. The driver gets my attention and points at the sheriff’s vehicle and raises his hands in the air, as if to say, “did he just BOOP at us? O-M-G! What a fucker!” I nod my head back, mouthing the words “Ye-us! I know!!” We laugh, and roll on. So, consider this Fuck You Friday, Sheriff. You and your booping can kiss my ass.
