An Unexpected Reunion

At the end of last year I finally confessed a crush on an old college friend that I’d reconnected with through FaceBook.  Over the last 4 years we’ve exchanged the ocassional message, some posts and pictures.  I had a small crush on him in college, but I was dating the ex husband at that time, so I did nothing.  FF to last year and I was finally determined to do something about it.  I was more than 3 years out of my marriage.  I’d dated a few men.  I knew what I wanted, and it was him.  He kept popping up in my dreams and I was getting more and more preoccuppied.  This was not normal for me.

So I sent him my phone number and told him to text me sometime.  We exchanged several hundred texts in a short period of time.  I was starting to suspect he might have feelings for me to.  The biggest issue I saw was proximity.  We live 2000 miles from each other.  It might as well be a zillion miles for how easy it is to actually see one another.

One night I went on a pub crawl with a girlfriend and a group of about 100 of her closest friends.  LOL  She’s definitely a social girl.  After a couple or ten beers, I confessed my affection for him via text.  I admitted I was fairly drunk, but that I needed that liquid courage to be able to tell him.  He was speachless.  The next day he told me he’d had a rather large crush on me while in college!

I was elated.  Over the course of the next couple months we texted or talked every single day.  We got to know each other on a more intimate level.  Finally we decided we needed to see each other.  We split the cost of a ticket and I headed to Oregon to see him.  I was scared to death.  I’m not the petite little girl I once was.  I’m a little more jaded.  But I’m also wiser and a more patient human being.  In short, i’d changed a lot and I worried he’d be disappointed that I wasn’t the same girl he knew nearly 20 years ago.

I contemplated drinking heavily on the plane to calm my nerves, but decided that could have disastrous results!

As I walked off the plane and headed to baggage claim I saw him.  He looked almost exactly the same.  Well, with a little less hair and maybe a few more pounds, like all people who have hit middle age.  He had a flower and a big smile. 

How to greet each other?  Such an awkward moment.  I walked up to him, he put his right arm around me and planted a kiss right on my eye!

Can’t Stay Silent For Long

Alright…this Chic-Fil-A nonsense finally has gotten me aggravated.I will not boycott Chic-Fil-A because I think he shouldn’t have said what he’s thinking. He’s allowed to his opinion. I will boycott Chic-Fil-A because I don’t want my $ going to support hate groups, if he really sends money to such groups. He’s allowed to his opinion and free speach of it, even if I think it’s backwards and stupid. And I think that the people saying he isn’t allowed to speak his mind are missing the whole point of freedom of speach. It’s not just for those that agree with us, it’s for everyone.

Not that I ever went to Chic-Fil-A before anyhow. LOL Never mind that speaking out like he did was a bad business move. He should have realized he was going to alienate a lot of potential customers. Read what the president of Marriott did or did not do in a similar situation. That’s smarter business.

Off my soapbox now…

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-26/god-and-gay-marriage-what-chick-fil-a-could-learn-from-marriott

Mid Life Crisis Averted, Hopefully

I turned 39 last week.  I’ve not been one who worried so much about age.  Or felt old.  Ever.  My 30th was not hard.  Turning 39 was weird, though.  Am I officially middle aged?  I think I am.  My father told me it’s only 11 years until I’m 50.  As a kid 11 years is a LONG ASS time.  Realizing how quickly time flies, that kind of sent me into a panic.  OMG, my life could very well be half over.  What have I done with my time?  What do I have left I want to do?  I’m dating someone who lives 2000 miles away.  That’s not a real life.  Crap, my oldest will be going to college in 7 short years.  Will we have enough money for that?  How will I ever retire?  What would I do with my time if I retire?  If I can’t retire because of money, will anyone still employ a senior citizen?  Will I be able to work.

Find me a paper bag so I can breath into it.

Need to remember to take it one step at a time.  Enjoy each day.  The big picture freaks me out.  But I am glad that I can say I extricated myself from a very shitty and abusive marriage and started on the path to a better life before I realized I was middle aged.  Doing all that while freaking out might have been harder than it already was.

Time to live..and with that I head home to pack and get ready for a new phase in my life.

Butterflies….

Packing It All Up…

I’m getting ready to move.

4 years ago, in June, I left my husband and moved in with my aunt while I figured things out.  In October I moved back in with him.  In February I filed for divorce.  He flipped the fuck out and landed himself in jail for domestic violence (which he claims was my fault, he did not need to go to jail, because trying to drag me down a flight of stairs was perfectly reasonable).  He was not allowed to move back home until I moved out.  So I was faced with deciding whether or not to stay or to move.  I moved. 

The house we lived in was his before we got married.  It never felt like my home, as he always referred to it as his.  And it held too many bad memories for me.  I can go around the house mentally, room by room and picture very hostile arguments in each of the rooms that left emotional scars on me.  I wanted a fresh start.  So in March I packed up my stuff and most of the kids’ things and rented a house about 5 miles away.

The divorce proceeded.  2 years after I first moved out, just 18 months after his night in jail, the divorce was final (or so I thought).  The house I was renting was put back on the market and the landlord wanted it vacated.  It was too small for me and my children so I did not want to buy it.  I found a house I loved and was all ready to buy when I lost my job.

I live in the metro Detroit area.  In Detroit nearly everyone is connected to the auto industry in some fashion.  When GM and Chrysler went bankrupt thousands of us lost our jobs either because we were employed by the auto companies or because their financial situation impacted our own employer’s financial situation.

In light of having lost my job, I withdrew my offer on the house and rented an apartment.  One that was spacious enough for me and my two children.  It was clean, nice, safe.  I was not keen on raising my kids in an apartment, but this place was not your ordinary apartment complex.  It wasn’t full of 20-something kids who just finished college and party all the time.  It was mostly single people in their 30s and 40s, or other parents/divorcees like me.  It was perfect.  But it was a little pricey.  Worth it, I was assured by family and friends.  And of course I wouldn’t be out of work long, would I?  I had my divorce settlement and some savings to tie me over.

Then I had to hire my lawyer again to get my divorce settlement.  I had no money coming in.  He wasn’t even paying child support yet (another reason why we had to go to court).  Money was going out faster than it was coming in.  I found a job in January  of the next year, 6 months after I’d been laid off.  It paid less than my previous job, but it was a job.  Things were tight financially.  I should have moved, but the thought of moving a 4^th time in 2 years made me want to cry in my coffee each morning.  So I stuck it out.

Then I lost my job again in October.  10 months after I started my job, the small company realized it just wasn’t growing like it had planned and I really wasn’t needed.  Sigh.  Luckily, I had a former boss/current friend who knew of a position with her current employer and I was employed 4 weeks later.  Yay!  Good money too.  Double Yay!  But by now I was behind on bills and playing catch up on things.  I should have moved then.  It was Christmas time now, and I didn’t know how to do Xmas and move.  So I stayed.

The new job was pretty good, a big challenge.  Then the company cancelled an organization wide trip in order to save money.  I found myself not as busy as I should have been.  I sensed it.  I was obviously getting a keen sense of when things were going sour.  5 months after I hired in, our team let all new hires go and the company put a hiring freeze on all organizations.  I was unemployed again.

I allowed myself one week to live in denial.  Hang with my boyfriend.  See my kids.  Then I attacked the job hunt with all I had.  I had a new job within a month.  I think this job is secure (knock on wood).  And I really like it.  But yet again, another month of unemployment took its toll on my bank account and I had to borrow money from a family member.  Time to suck it up and move.

My sister and I have had a hard relationship.  Sometimes we are close.  Sometimes we could seriously kill each other.   I blame my mother, but we have to work it out ourselves now.  She is a teacher who makes so very little money.   She has a new house and is struggling to pay off her student loans.  She asked if the kids and I wanted to live with her for a while.  I could save some money, but by paying half her mortgage as rent, she would benefit greatly too.  This decrease in rent is too good to pass up.  I can get caught up.  And quickly!

So, I’m moving in about 2 weeks I think.  Packing up a house for 3 of us  is a heck of a lot harder than it was in my single days.  I do not look forward to this.  However, I think it will be a very good thing for me, as I’ll be able to get myself back on track financially.  And teach myself some better budgeting habits.  I hope it will give my sister and me the chance to repair the issues in our relationship and be closer.  Already, just in the planning of it, I see we are doing better.  And my children said they didn’t know she was such a fun person, so this will let them become closer with their aunt as well.

But I’m feeling stressed.  I know our decision to join forces and help one another will be met with some “concern” from other family members.  Questions about our future will be raised.  Questions about why we must do this.  Questions about how we will handle disputes.  I don’t want to field them.  I feel as if doing this is the responsible thing for both of us, rather than us each living paycheck to paycheck because we got behind while unemployed.  She was unemployed for a while too.  Every time I make a life decision I find myself worrying/wondering what the family reaction will be and it tends to just give me a headache.

What? I’m still married?

When we first split up, my ex-husband and I did a pretty good job at being friendly.  We discussed the kids.  We traded days.  We did have some pretty big arguments interspersed in there too, though.  One such argument changed the course of our “co-parenting” relationship from that point on.

In August of 2010 we were supposed to be officially divorced.  In early September he was supposed to cut me a check for the money I was getting from the marriage.  On the phone one day he told me that he wasn’t going to give it to me.  He had a series of reasons why, that didn’t really add up to me and so I got angry.  Very angry.  I’d just been laid off and I needed that money.  So we argued.  I yelled.  He insulted me, and I hung up.

I waited a day and he didn’t change his mind, so I called my lawyer.  I was going to need legal assistance in getting my money.  It was going to cost me money to get my money.   Sounds fair, right?  Not.  After contacting my exhusband’s attorney we discovered that not only was he refusing to give me the settlement money, but he’d not signed the final paperwork and filed it.  I was still married.

The first order of business:  Get divorced finally.  A court order was granted forcing my ex to sign the papers and we were divorced about 6 weeks after we were supposed to be.  However, getting to this point wasn’t as simple as filing the motion and forcing him to sign the papers.

I filed the motion and was given a court date.  A couple days later, just about when he was going to be served with the papers I discovered he had an overseas vacation planned with some of his friends/family.  Can you see where this is going?  The court date interfered with that trip.

Not wanting to interfere with it, I tried to get the date rescheduled, but I just could not.  This resulted in my getting ambushed by his family, who was sure I did it on purpose.  I defended myself repeatedly.  Why would I do that?  How would I have even known?  But they were convinced that somehow I’d turned into a vindictive bitch overnight.  And ever since they’ve attacked every single move I’ve made, everything I’ve done, every sentence I’ve uttered.  In short, our families do not get a long anymore.  At all.

In truth, my ex could have avoided the whole thing if he’d just signed the papers in August when he was supposed to.  Or he could have avoided having to go to court by signing the papers before the court date and filing them.  So he really could have left town anyhow.  But he didn’t.  However, he never showed in court either.  So he skipped his trip blaming me, but never showed up.  This is when I started to realize he was turning this into a game.  And he was jerking me around.

So, I was finally divorced and he released his lawyer.  His lawyer actually wished me good luck in dealing with him.  And we went after the settlement.  We had another court appearance in October.  HE showed up stating that he’d finally sent me a check in the mail.  To my old address.  For less than the amount he owed me.  It took until December to get this squared away.  And it took until December to get the title to my car, medical insurance info for the children and various other things.  I was unemployed and I’d just shelled out $12,000 more than I should have had to, forcing my ex to actually divorce me and adhere to what we’d already agreed upon.  And through it all, his family regularly showed their hatred for me because I’d “obviously gone off the deep” end.

Honestly I still don’t know how they could think I was as horrible as they did.  I do not understand how they could seriously support his actions.  I often wonder what versions of the story they’ve heard because every “conversation” I’ve had with them resulted in my realizing they thought I had mental issues.  And they felt I should have let my ex do what he wanted.  They never seemed to understand that I have rights too.  You’ll see what I mean as I continue this tale in future posts.  Because in December of 2010 things were just getting heated up.

I am a work in progess

I think we all ask this question.  Many times over the course of our lives.  Figuring out who I am is no small task, and I bet it’s the same for anyone else who’s lucky enough to be alive.

I used to blog.  Then I quit.  I blogged through my divorce.  I quit because I’d hurt a few people with things I said.  I thought the blog was anonymous.  Turns out nothing is anonymous on the internet.  I made my apologies to those that I hurt and I shut down the blog, hoping to return one day.

I tried again a couple years ago.  I never gained momentum.  I didn’t know what to discuss. 

So here I am again.  I am not sure what I want this blog to be.  So for now I’ll use it for whatever feels right at the moment and hopefully I will figure out what I want to say over time.

Who am I?  I guess I started as a daughter.  Then I became a big sister.  As I grew I was a child of divorce and an alcoholic mother.  I became an adult.  An adult with emotional scars from a difficult childhood.  As I matured I became a girlfriend.  A girlfriend who was entirely too dependant upon someone else to make me happy.  I became a mother.  Then a wife.  Then an unhappily married wife.  An emotionally abused and codependant wife.  Now I’m a single mom.  Divorced.  A single mom learning who I am, so I can be defined by more than just a label explaining my relationships to others.

I want to be kind.  I want to be genuine.  I want to be fun.  Happy.  Relaxed.  I want to be known for my qualities.  The person I am on the inside.  My essence.

I am a work in progress; ever growing; ever changing.  I’ve grown and changed over the years.  I am not who I once was, but I am far from who I will become.