i'm sitting in my parents' living room, staring out the window at the small two-lane sorta-highway that runs by their house. they're out in the middle of garden country, with huge industrial nurseries clustered together and growing everything from conifers to japanese ornamental cherry trees and wisteria. big business, where a yearly budget of $30 million is somewhere around the numbers they work with.
it's kinda like the boondocks, but not quite. but with nothing but plant life, two-lane highways, and a local coyote pack feeling at home in a place with no street lamps, it can feel like the middle of nowhere at times. though the middle of the night on a full moon, especially after a snow, is particularly enchanting out here.
right now, the gentle ripple of the cats' water fountain and the occasional truck passing through is all i can hear. well, that, and one of the cats snoring on the recliner next to me. i suppose when you're a 20+ pound cat, snoring's a way of life.
lately, i've been acutely sensitive to stress. even something as minor as knowing i have to be somewhere on a particular day is enough to be halfway to debilitating because my constitution's just so shot. and at my parents', even if none of my problems are fixed, something about feeling this safe...helps. maybe it's muscle tension, because as i hear my massage therapist tell me time and again, that's where i store everything. tense muscles means even my smooth muscles can't relax, and the more stressed out i am, the more i end up with the dry heaves. even on zofran, it can get bad enough that i still can't keep anything down.
vicious, vicious cycles. and the ER bills are piling up.
but that's not so much a worry. that's what payment plans are for. no, what has me so puzzled is this thing called "growing up." a few years ago, i used to resent doing the right thing. don't get me wrong, i'd still do it, but the pain of responsibility and integrity was at times almost physical. i would sigh and gripe about how growing up sucks and doing the right thing was at times damned...inconvenient.
well, maybe i've grown up since then. maybe i've just grown out of my childish selfishness and self-centeredness. (i like to think so, anyway!) or maybe it's just simply that my priorities have changed, and in light of what's truly important everything else just seems expendable.
i've learned that if a situation or a person is making it difficult to do what's right, then they're not in alignment with my honor and integrity which i've worked damn hard over the years to foster. "the right thing to do is only difficult when surrounded by fucktards." in light of that, it's easy to give up what's not important.
what's important now? this is the Year of the Basics. honesty is a basic. so is honor, integrity, and doing everything in my power to raise the iGoddess child right.
so i sent the ex-bf an electronic olive branch. i emailed him, asking if he truly wanted to be a family. it was a simple yes-or-no question, but it took several replies back and forth to get any kind of answer out of him. stubborn son of a bitch.
y'know, tony robbins says that cynical people are cowards. they don't want to trust, or believe in love, and are always believing the worst of a situation so they can protect themselves from getting hurt. that's not smart, that's chicken. he locked himself down so that what happened to him in the past won't ever happen again, instead of making smarter choices, changing a few habits, and trusting the right people.
love is always a far better shield than cynicism. true self love and a thorough knowledge of your own self worth is far better immunity to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune than being meaner than a "potential" enemy. and love and joy are far better healers than time and cynical coping mechanisms.
and love heals clean, with no scars.
i stand by my decision to be a single mom if i feel i must. honestly, i don't know if the problems that created our impasse have solutions. but we're sitting down tomorrow morning with a mediator to find out. it was for love i left, i told him, and for love i'm trying again.
my goals, as always, are to be true to myself (not compromise my self-worth or integrity), and to embrace full responsibility as this baby's mother by doing what i believe is best for it.
so, i dunno. we'll see.
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2 comments:
Something about this post just reached out and grabbed at my heartstrings. I remember when I was divorced and a single mom, I used to take the kids to visit at my parent's house. A lot of times we would spend the night. I would lay in my old bed in my childhood room with the flowered wallpaper and wonder how in the hell I was going to make it on my own as a single parent. And just for the time I was in their house, it felt so safe, like I didn't have to face anything. But somehow life just keeps moving forward and my visits there now are fewer and farther between. I've grown up a bit since those days but I still remember how safe and comforting it felt to go back to something so comfortable and familiar when I needed it. I really hope you guys can work this out. I'm proud of you for taking the step to reach out. Whatever the outcome, you are strong and amazing and have so many wonderful times ahead with your baby.
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