Lazy video day

I’m exhausted.  I have stuff to say but I can’t even type correctly.  I listened to this today and Oh, My.  Gave me chills.  I know the video is the Twilight version but we are LISTENING people.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn6vVoJ-gk4

And now I hear from the opposing team

My first week of work I was rounding up my license’s for the new boss.  I wasn’t sure about one of them and really didn’t think it was the real one.  Bill had a tendency to take care of me with all of that stuff and I was even surprised I had them in my possession.  So in order to figure out if this was indeed the correct one I texted Kathy. The old secretary.  I asked her to check in my file in his office, she asked where I was working, someone had called to verify my employment there and *gasp* they wouldn’t tell her anything else.  Nosy bitch. This happened to be the day I fell apart at work so forgive me, I wasn’t thinking.  I told her where I was working.  And when she asked if I liked it?…I told her I hated it.

I’m sure it took her mere seconds to look up the address of my new company and figure out I was a mile up the road.  A mile up where none of them travel because there is a road that runs parallel with less traffic. 

Now I know that woman waddled her large ass back to Bill as quick as possible and filled him and Joey in on the news.  Why can’t I keep my trap shut?  It took four days for a text to come in from Joey.   The first I have heard from him in 7 months.  He said he had a job offer I might be interested in and to please call him.  I’m not going to lie….I set my phone down and took a step back.  Bill was in on this.  I know what happened the second I let those first texts send.  This was more of a trap and I could do this on my own.

It took every inch of will to text him back a No thanks, I have a job.  It would have been so easy to jump back into that comfort zone. Tucked up nice and close to Bill, but I couldn’t depend on those people anymore.  I took the notion that part of him still cares.  Part of the man I know is still there but I have to leave it at that.  I have made it this far on my own and I can damn well keep going.  I may hate my job but I got this stupid shitty ass job on my own and without his help. 

That was the first bit in 7 months.  The first crack into anything.  And when I pulled out of work the next day, sitting there at the intersection, was Bill.  Like I said, Kathy tells all. I took the green light and hit the gas in the other direction.

200th post

I’m at my 200th post.  Wow.  Apparently I have a lot to say, some of it I know I have repeated but I appreciate you bearing with me.  I specifically remember the day I started this blog.  I was sitting in my hallway sobbing, having just ended what would be my very last conversation to Bill.  Who the hell would understand that my life just crashed around me and the one person I reached out to just turned his back on me?  I sat at my computer through blurry eyes and googled “blogs.”  WordPress must have been the first thing to come up and I began typing.  You can tell from my first few post’s that I was just throwing anything out there.  Just wanting to put all of it somewhere.  Never in a million years did I guess anyone would read it, let alone give advice or in the long run having me give advice.  I don’t even think I really understood what a blog was. 

200 post’s later I think I have figured out the basics and I have come to know a group of you well and I can’t imagine my days without you.  I know, weird right?  I thank you for letting me into your lives and sharing your hopes, dreams, and fears with me as Lord knows I have thrown mine out there.  I tried to figure out what to do to mark this post seeing as I did 100 or so things about me for my 100th post.  I would link that but I’m to lazy right now.  So for this one I would like to throw out first, a few changes about myself since that first post, and then a few things I have learned from all of you.  Yes, you who lurk and you who comment and you who email me.  I’m so glad you are there and please stay. 

• That first post I sat and could hardly see through the tears and the pain.  I couldn’t function and it hurt so much to breathe.  Rock bottom.  I’m now managing to only miss him through doing laundry, a child performing a dance routine in the background while singing, and I’m not bawling. 
• I have learned how strong I am.  I knew this after Bear’s trial but it has been taken to a whole new step.  I am damn tough and I can make it through hell.  I have accomplished much more than I ever thought I would.
• I have learned how much I can do on my own.  Granted I have been forced to but I have faced so many fears.  Granted I’m quite certain the boogeyman is still out there but that is why there is a baseball bat next to my bed…and a gun.
• I have learned to be more selfish.  I think some of us really need to work hard at putting ourselves first sometimes and it has done me a world of good.
• I have learned the joys of true love and how wonderful it can make you feel and I have felt the absolute crushing of it.
• I have been able to look at a relationship and distinguish exactly what I want and deserve from here on out. 
• I have taken a step forward in my yoga practice by doing Bikram (hot) yoga. 
• I don’t have a lot of trust for people.  Perhaps this is good, perhaps bad, but it is something that has changed in me.
• Something else that has changed.  My sex life, or lack there of.  I know, I sound like such a guy in that department sometimes.
• My job status in life has changed immensely.
• My goals have changed from wanting a family and settling down to survival on my own.
• I have become so much closer to certain friends and have learned who many true friends are.  Helps cut down on the crap.
• I have realized how much I love to write and need that in my life. 
• I now know that if he came around the corner I could handle it much better today than I could 7 months ago.  And I have a plan in place for that.

From all of you I have learned…

• Unicorns shit skittles and rainbows on good days.  I have never read the word “unicorn” so much in my life.
• I learned that I am not alone.  So many people are going through heartbreak and loss.  It is absolutely amazing to know that somewhere there is someone else with the same thoughts.
• I learned that “affairs” happen.  I am not a dirty hore or anything else people like to call me.
• When I can’t sleep or I have had a really shitty day there is a blog that will make me laugh or an email in the middle of the day that will make me smile.  I cherish every one of those.
• When the day gets tough one of you will be out there to pat me on the head or tell me to get my ass up.  You are listening.
• When I go to my closet and close the door I will not transport anywhere.
• I would love to sit and have a drink with many of you, even if you don’t drink I will toast with you anyways.
• The world is really a small place.
• People are more than willing to offer their own opinion and advice even if you don’t want it or find it rude.
• I will be giddy everytime a comment is left for me. 
• Everyone has a mountain they are trying to climb.  It’s just that each of ours is different. 

More than anything I have learned that you have been a growing support that I am thankful for everyday!

 Thank you.

Thanksgiving weekend points

I’ve sat here for a while trying to figure out how to put my weekend down.  How to make the thoughts come out right.  My feelings have been  a tangled mess everywhere.  So I’ll just throw out the points.

• I was soooo looking forward to the long weekend.  After work on Wednesday my new co-workers invited me out to the bar with them.  I said no thanks and headed on my way.  I can’t connect with them.  I can’t possibly let them in on who I am.  I lost my last office family, I don’t want to do that again.  I just want to go to work, do my work and leave.  I’m not really in the mood to get past that hump either. 
• I’m giving this job 90 days.  Giving myself a goal helps.  I’ll give 100% and I’ll look in the mean time at other jobs.  Then I’ll decide from there.  I figure that is fair game. 
• I’m not much for being around family.  My friends are more my family and I found this weekend to be absolutely exhausting.  All the smiling and nodding when no one wants to talk about the obvious and I just want to scream YES WE ARE DIVORCING! I drank a lot.  There is more family togetherness tomorrow.
• The Holidays are hitting me like a rock.  I LOVE the Holidays.  I was one of those idiots out with my Mom and sister at 3am the day after Thanksgiving shopping.  All I could think about was Bill at home putting up his lights.  This was suppose to be what we were really waiting for together.  He was my Sparky. (National Lampoons) In the mean time Dustin is pretending this isn’t our last Holiday season together and sitting in his denial corner.  Great.  For the first time I wish I could wake up and Christmas is over.  I feel absolutely lost.
• If one more person tells me they are pregnant I’m going to lose my shit.  I stood in line at freakin Gymboree buying Bear Christmas clothes the other day and staring at the baby clothes realizing Bear isn’t little any more and I miss it.  My hopes of a baby are now long gone. 
• I feel pathetic that I wish more of my blog friends lived close by.  Someone who understands.  Granted Lisa is wonderful but a few more on my side would be great to share a martini with.
• His last day of work is on Monday and I’ll pretend it doesn’t bother me when it is killing me. 
• I’m exhausted but the thought of going to sleep in that cold bed once again is killing me.  The dreams have been horrible in the past couple of weeks.  He is there more than ever for some reason and no matter what I do he won’t go away.  Sometimes he is just laying next to me playing with my hair and I can still smell him or he is screaming at me to disappear.  Either way I’m waking up alone in a dead sweat.

 

Flowers and Rings

The news is in on the Cancun trip that Lisa took with Man on the Side and her husband and Oh yea, Man on the sides pregnant wife.  Yep, just two happy couples enjoing a trip to Cancun. 

Right….

Man on the sides wife sounds like she is catching on to the fact that her hubby likes Lisa better than her which meant they fought a lot.  Lisa and her husband managed to fight so bad in a drunken state that he took her passport and threatened to leave after he hit her and destroyed their room.  The good girl can hit back and inserted his balls in his throat long enough for her to grab her passport and go find Man on the side.  Man on white horse anyone? Lisa is now just trying to make it through the Holidays and I’m going to try to not hit her husband myself.

Perhaps there was only one happy couple there.  Lisa and her Man on the side.  While they didn’t get time to sneak away together they had lots of sweet talks, come hither looks and everything that makes a girl swoon (that is for you nysoonergirl) that is leading them to start to think of this as more than just sex and that perhaps they may love each other.  Because that is the words that are now falling out of their mouths to one another.

Upon return to the cold states her Man on the side gave me a call.  He told me he wanted to get Lisa something for Christmas.  A something that would then have to be from “me” that he could give her.  I almost drove off the road.  They are falling in deeper and I’m scared for the both of them. 

I felt jealous.  Honestly.  Won’t lie.  I admitted as much to Dustin and he looked at me like I was crazy and asked Why?  I’m not jealous of the affair part.  I’m jealous and miss the other parts.  The part where someone wants to give you a gift.  The little gifts Bill and I left for each other.  I miss the flowers he would leave on the seat of my truck or my desk.  Flowers were something I hated till he started giving them to me.  He was the first man who made them mean something.  It was the cards I would leave in his truck or the notes on his desk.  The coffee I would bring him in the morning and the Reese’s he would leave in my desk.  The little things that shows someone is thinking about you.  Dustin merely laughed at me and told me that was ridiculous.  But aren’t those the little things that keep the relationship going?  That keeps the surprise there?  So what if I feel that nostalgia.  Dustin could never give it to me. 

So on my way home tonight I bought myself some flowers and Man on the side is going to buy Lisa a Posey ring that says Believe in Love.

 

 

One last puzzle piece

I have been going through this thing lately where I have been trying to get Bear to not watch so much TV.  So to give her other options I suggested we pull out an old 1000 piece puzzle that my Grandma had given me a while back and tackle it.  I haven’t done a puzzle in, well, forever.  This will state how much of a dork I am, but I forgot how relaxing they could be.  Her and I set it up at the kitchen table, turned up the Christmas music and started it on Saturday evening. By Sunday she was dead bored with it and Dustin and I were addicted. 

We spent most of the day with her under the kitchen table setting up her Barbie wonderland (why is it under the table is so fun) and Dustin and I worked on the puzzle in a silence that was only interrupted by Bear thinking up new ideas for her Christmas list or singing all the wrong words to Rudolph.  You could look in our window and think we were the perfect family.  You wouldn’t have any idea that I was thinking about how much my life was that puzzle.  How I couldn’t get him out of my head.  How my nightmares and dreams have worsened in the past couple of weeks with him. 

You work and you twist the piece, swearing it goes in just that spot, when in reality you are so far off.  There is that satisfaction you get when it slips into place but then you have a new piece to tackle.  A new goal in life. I still don’t have my puzzle piece with him.  Where is it? We finished that puzzle last night and stood back.  Bear came out from under the table with a Barbie head in one hand and the half-dressed body in the other. (Damn knots in Barbie’s hair) She turned her head a little and said Oh, There is one piece missing. There was.  Right in the middle.  Glaring enough at you that you couldn’t call it over and done with.  We looked around but couldn’t find it. 

Damn those last pieces to the puzzle. 

My last therapy session happened this week

Hell of a week for me to have my last session with my therapist right? It wasn’t this set in stone date by any means.  A few weeks ago I finished this stack of papers, or worksheets if you will, on losing someone.  Since then our time has slowed down and there isn’t much left to say.  As helpful and wonderful as she has been I seem to know the answers myself already.  There isn’t much to say that hasn’t already been said. 

So halfway through my session she tells me she doesn’t think I need to come in anymore unless I really feel the need to.  This surprisingly didn’t freak me out any and she said she wanted to leave me with a few key things to think about….

• She believes I am one of the most mentally healthy people she knows and she sometimes feels as if I should be sitting in her chair.  I have apparently been one of her most favorite client in years.  Good ego boost.
• I should never feel there is a time limit on this. Not seeing her doesn’t mean I should now feel 100% better.  It just means the worst is over but I still need to handle my grief as it comes.  Not ignore it.
• I need to keep writing.  I know this, she knows this.  It has been one of the best things I have done.
• Use my support system.  Keep them in tack.
• Continue with the goals that Bill and I wanted to obtain even though he isn’t with me.  Like my trip to Wyoming.  I can do those just fine on my own.
• Be selfish.  This time is very much for self discovery and soul-searching.  Use it to the fullest extent.
• Don’t hold back the tears.  If I still feel the need to cling to the kitchen floor then I need to get it out but always remember I will get back up. 

After a few laughs and even a few tears she gave me a big hug and told me to call if I needed anything.  Then she caught me as I opened the door and made me promise to call her if he ever did come back around.  She laughed saying I didn’t even have to call her as a therapist, she just wanted to know what the explanation was too…and any other juicy details:) I told her no problem.  That would be the biggest post I have ever written.

Here is to taking that next step forward.

I made it four days

I made it four whole days.  Four days before the tears happened.  How fucking hard is it to be happy?  That is all I’m asking.  Just to enjoy what I do and be happy at the end of the day with my life.  I fucking try.  And I know I should be grateful because that is what Dustin keeps telling me and my Mom, well, she isn’t such a great support either.  But it has been four days at this stupid job and today was it.  I’m so overwhelmed and I can’t stay in that seat anymore and stare at the computer and pick through numbers.  Plus, the silence in there is deafening.  There is no one yelling from room to room and making jokes.  Just tapping on keyboards and murmurs into the phones.

I woke up this morning unable to breathe very well.  My heart was acting up and as I sat there training today I struggled to catch my breath and breathe through it but there was no where else to go.  There was no one that knows.  I couldn’t go around the corner to his office to have him make it better.  He wasn’t there to rub my back and give me a hug.  I need him to walk me through this like he always has.   

To make matters worse my boss came through at one point and called me Shanny.  He said everyone needed a nickname.  That is what Bill called me.  He was the only one I ever allowed to call me that because it is the dumbest nickname ever.  I looked my new boss straight in the eye and told him if he ever called me that again I would quit. It would not be tolerated.  He looked at me like my hair was on fire and walked out.  I turned back to the policy in front of me to check the name and of course it was Bill.  I made it to the bathroom before the tears started flowing. 

I’m figuring out why the hell they hired me.  It was to scoop up the fucking shit behind them and to have everything laid on my desk.  I’m better than this.  I worked for something better than this.  I have to start looking for something else already.  I won’ t quit but I sure as hell can’t quit looking for another job.

The new job

I started work Monday.  My new job.  My big girl job.  My next big step.  I put my heels back on and my cute outfit and set off.  Nerves were bouncing in my stomach so bad the night before but Dustin was having none of it.  No support.  Ok, I could do this.

I was immediately ushered into a meeting.  I haven’t sat in a Monday morning meeting in 8 months.  It was the first crash of my day.  I stood amongst strangers around the edge of the room while the important people sat around the conference table.  I used to be the one at that table next to the head honcho.  Here I was a nobody.  I tried to push it down and not think about him but I couldn’t help it.  These weren’t my people.  They were mostly women and middle age and dear God where was he?

I was shown to my cubicle and my original outlook about this job was plummeting.  You have to understand something.  My biggest goal coming out of High School was to never, ever, under any circumstances, have a cubicle job.  Here I was being shown to one without a window in sight.  My chance for advancement wouldn’t be an office but the same cubicle, just a pay hike.  I was certainly dumped down a few notches.  But I was suppose to be thankful and happy.  Yea, that was fading.  I was handed a 1,000 page commercial policy and was told to match up numbers.  Two hours in I almost started crying.  Then the other girl who started 3 weeks before me, in the same position, came over and said she is ready to quit and oh, how she hated it. 

There was no where for me to run.

He wasn’t around the corner to holler at.  There was no office for me to wonder into and have a sit down to make it better.  I even missed my old pain in the ass secretary.  It wasn’t home. 

I was expecting some sort of peace within myself.  Some sort of completion and there wasn’t any.  I was scared and had never felt so alone.  I was a few blocks away from him and I felt like I was at my first day of school in a new school and was drowning. 

I went straight to do two hours of yoga afterwards.

I wish I could say it has gotten better since Monday but it hasn’t.  I crave writing.  I didn’t realize how big of a deal this was for my soul but I miss you guys during the day.  I miss getting it out.  That is what I was meant to do.  I’m realizing this more and more.  I was beyond ecstatic to come home tonight and grab a glass of wine and catch up and type.  Does that make me pathetic? Probably.  But I have to tough it out and realize there are plenty of other people who don’t have a job.  But why do I feel like I’m doing more harm to the path in my life than good?

Saying goodbye to that last love

Callie and James met in college and quickly began dating.  She was my roommate.  James was Dustin’s roommate.  We spent hours on end together.  We took trips, drank too much, tutored each other, sat in class together, and began growing up together.  James had a baby back home that he had in High School with his girlfriend and he proved to be a great father.  Just wanted to make sure he did something successful in his life to care for that baby. 

We spent hours in our dorm room with James and Callie in the top bunk and Dustin and I below sharing stories and hiding our sexcapades.  We were our own family.  We were separated one summer when James had to go back home so we loaded up in the car and headed to Colorado to see him.  We saw concerts, met his family, went to Pikes Peak, and made incredible memories.  James and Callie were suppose to get married in the same way Dustin and I did.  Because wasn’t that the next step? Wasn’t that what came next?  His family loved her, they were a team.

During our senior year of college Dustin and I moved off campus to raise Bear and we lost touch with some of the friends.  We needed to grow up fast and they were enjoying the last of their care free college days.  What I didn’t know was that James and Callie broke up after graduation.  She says they were to young to handle the distance.  They didn’t know how to take the next step of growing up together because there was a lot of maturing for both of them to do.  It was a rocky ending that left them miles apart without a lot of closure. 

Callie eventually married, as did James.  They sent a few emails back and forth.  At one point 6 weeks ago she found old pictures of him and his son and emailed them to James.  That was the first of many emails they would share over the next 7 hours, well into early morning hours, together.  Callie asked if marriage was hard for him because it most certainly wasn’t what she anticipated.  He shared he was struggling in ways he never imagined with his own wife.  As late night hours have a way of doing things to you, they began sharing those deep secrets.  The ones they both had locked away.  The fact that they still loved each other.  The fact that they didn’t love their spouse as much as they had loved the other.  Between Callie and James there was never a forced love.  It was natural.  It was the stuff movies were made of.  Why didn’t they ever give themselves a second chance?  Because neither was sure if the other was willing. 

Callie saved all those emails from that night 6 weeks ago.  It would be the last contact she would have with James not knowing that this past week he would take his own life.  Not knowing that his wife, a  woman she had never met, would call and say More than anything he would want you there.  So, Dustin, Callie, and I piled back into a car to drive to Colorado.  We hadn’t seen each other in 5 years.  It felt like that time had melted away and here we were again.  Her husband tried to understand her desire to go with these people he didn’t know and say good-bye to a man she once loved.

We drove the same route, picking up another old friend along the way.  We discussed the how and the why’s which were merely guesses.  We stayed in the same hotel, and went to the same pizza place for cold beers.  We walked into his visitation and she grabbed my hand once we hit the door.  There was our James laying in a white casket with his favorite Red Sox cap on his head and in his hands he held the mini baseball bat Dustin and him bought the day they got their tattoos.  Callie gripped my hand and we let our tears flow.  We ended that night with to many rounds of beer and shared old memories as she shared the love she knows she still had for him. 

We marched hand and hand once more to his funeral the next day where his own son, now 11, stood a few feet from us. The picture that centered around all the flowers was one that Callie had taken at the park one day.  His sons Mom said gripping emotional words, his father had to be helped off the stage, his brothers shared memories of the light-hearted, funny James we all knew.  The questions we had about his wife grew more as she got up with a straight face and said some odd statements.  The family seemed to rally around everyone but her.  We felt we were missing out on some piece of the puzzle.   

Before we left his father and mother came up to Callie and gave her a big hug.  His father leaned in and choked up on his words.  He loved you.  I know more than anything how much he loved you.  He always did.

It was a quiet 10 hour drive home.  Every now and then you would hear her ask a question from the back seat.  Will her husband understand her grief?  How did James do it?  Why did he do it?  Had he been sad enough that there were no signs?  The same questions we had been asking all weekend and ones that none of us knew how to answer.  No one was really answering, just asking to the unknown. 

Dustin and I got home last night and I said Isn’t it amazing how 48 hours can change your life?  How it can give you new perspective?  He hadn’t said much all weekend.  He hadn’t so much as looked at me or held my hand.  His only answer was Yep.  With that he went to bed.