My One-Eighty

Yesterday was an OK day on the surface, but underneath was too hard. Monday was also a great day, on a lot of levels, but also hard. Monday was Livi's family birthday. Payton and Amaya came up. Any time I have all three of my kids together, it is a great day. But it was also several hours spent with Dan. I thought that didn't bother me, as he didn't get on my nerves as bad as usual, but it seems that is its own, different type of problem.  Dan used salt when cooking supper but didn't measure it and didn't bother to tell me until after supper. Ash told me he felt bad about it - but I call bullshit on that. He sabotaged me when we were still together so it would be ridiculous to believe he cares more now that I am no longer his problem.  That upset me - mostly at myself - for not expecting it. I know I am an optimist. I hate that about myself. I want to think good things about people, even when they have shown me the flaw of that kind of thinking. Optimism? Stupidity?...

Do I have value? It seems like such an obvious answer. All people have value. I am a people, therefore I have value. Is that it? Is my only value that value intrinsic to me as a member of the human race? Does having involuntary muscle activity, such as breathing or a heartbeat, give me value? Only for the purposes of science. I am worthy. I have immense value.  My friends see my value. I am learning to see what they see.  I have been telling this to myself - no, I have been reading it out loud to myself - for several weeks now. DJ and I worked this out as an affirmation I could accept as the truth. DJ reminds me to read it often and I put it as the login screen on my laptop. I was reading it every time I woke up my laptop - which was two to three times a day until I got my company laptop. Now I only open my laptop a couple times a week. Certainly not enough to ingrain a new truth.  But the bigger problem was that even though I told DJ I could accept this as a truth, I lie...

It has been over a month now since Ash and I got a place of our own, leaving Dan and Livi in the old apartment. It has been a stretch. When I left, Dan and I were planning to re-evaluate when the old lease is up April 30, our 18th wedding anniversary. We were still planning to go to therapy and see if we could find a way to be on the same team again. Less than a week after I moved out, Dan told me he would not be joining me for therapy. He said it wasn't going to help. I really like our new place, but from an emotional standpoint, it's been a real mixed bag. The ambient stress level is so much lower for me now that Dan and I are not in the same place, I feel good about coming home in a way that I hadn't even realized I was missing. I miss my Dan. Not the guy who is there now, but the guy who promised not to let me drown the first week after he moved into my apartment when I was stressing about bills. The seahorse (stay-at-home-dad) who was the primary caregiver to our two t...

DJ was asking me some hard questions tonight. He likes to do that. He was asking me about what I deserve. He asked why I deserve to have people help me. I told him that I'm not sure I do. He asked if I deserve to be happy. I don't think so. So he asked if I deserve to be miserable. I told him I don't think I "deserve" to be happy OR miserable. He then asked why I deserve to be meh. He asked if I have the right to be happy. Words are powerful. They are important to me. If I am to figure out what I deserve or have a right to, first I have to come to terms with definitions. So many people say, "it's just semantics," as if the flavor and context of our language doesn't matter. But it does. Communication is vital. Semantics is one of my strengths. This is why I write. To share my ideas in a way that others can understand. I'll spend ten minutes agonizing over one word, to make sure it is just right, and lends the right air to my monologue. I am a ...

I am not really sure where to start. I am not really sure how I feel. I have definitely, without a doubt, started a new chapter. I did not want this. I did my best to find another answer. I just could not do it anymore. I could not continue to fight against the one person who promised to fight with me and for me.  I used to joke that I would never go through another divorce. My plan was to run Dan over with my pickup if things came to that. It has come to that and I don't have a truck anymore, so here we are. Right where I never thought I would be. I never imagined this ending for us.  The reasons I had to leave are the exact opposites of the reasons I fell in love with Dan. He had my back. He supported me. He watched for ways to pick up slack. He fought for me to not let people take advantage of me. He fought me to not sacrifice myself to the point of harming myself to help someone else. He was a buffer for me when I was too close to a situation and argued with me not to take...

  Meet Fiona. She is a baby hippo and she weighed about a hundred pounds. Why does that matter beside that she's just freakin' adorable? Because that is how much weight I have worked off! I have forgotten to weigh in the last two days, and I finally remembered today. My goal was to finally break below 250 lbs. I've been disappointed for the last two months on that and I have really been struggling with cravings and horrible food choices for the last month, so I was nervous about what my numbers were going to look like. But I did it! I worked off another 7.1 pounds this months, taking me to 245.5 pounds. Not only did I crush that 250 mark, FINALLY, but I also broke the 100 pounds worked off mark! I am now down 101.7 pounds, so when you find that cute baby Fiona with a dozen Krispy Kremes, you'll have found what I've gotten rid of. I can't believe I've made it this far, but I have about this much farther still to go. I had honestly forgotten how close I was to...

I am viewing the world through a thick veil or fog. Maybe more of a smog. It makes it hard to see, but it can also choke me at times. It is hard to see happiness through it. I cannot take a deep breath, both for the toxicity in the air around me and the, once again, chronic back pain caused by the constant level of stress. Shallow breathing makes it hard to laugh. My eyes sting from the acrid smoke and tear up with little provocation. I cannot tell if I am moving forward or walking in circles. I cannot see if this cloud is little or gigantic. I don't know if it is stationary and I can walk out of it if I could find my way, or if it is clinging to me in such a way that I cannot escape it. Tiny little things that used to annoy me now weigh me down so heavily that it is almost physical. I have to consciously fight their grappling to avoid falling into the pit they are trying to drag me into. I am trying to evaluate the causes of this toxicity so that I can resolve it. There is the con...