trying to get off the ledge

Things with Chris have been good. So, so amazingly good. And for some reason, I am completely terrified about this.

I don’t know where this stems from, and I’m trying to figure it out.
* Is it because we crashed and burned on Round One, and I’m afraid of history repeating itself? Could be.
* Is the problem that my new meds haven’t totally kicked in yet and I’m still dealing with a chemical imbalance that causes major anxiety? Entirely possible.
* Is it because one man who promised to love me forever did, in fact, leave me a little over 2 years ago? Probably at least partially.
* Is it rooted in self-worth issues that started when I was a kid and my dad told me I was fat when I was 5 years old? Maybe.
* Is it some mutated DNA strand handed down from my Puritan ancestors who believed that life was just hard work and misery and that nobody deserves to be happy? Hell if I know.

But it brings up this feeling that I call the Doom Cloud. It’s as if there’s a voice in the back of my head telling me that yes, things are good with Chris, but they’re TOO good. I’m too happy. This can’t possibly last, it has to end. At some point the proverbial clock is going to strike midnight and I’m going to turn back into a pumpkin.

So it’s like the anxiety is this weird self-defense mechanism that kicks in to prevent myself from being too happy. I guess my brain’s logic is that maybe then it won’t hurt as much when it all goes south. Which is stupid, because if it ever does come to that, it’s going to hurt like hell. I know that from past experience, and I imagine it’d be worse, because I feel even closer to him now.

The Doom Cloud is basically this black cloud on the horizon that you can’t avoid, you can’t *not* see it, you know it’s coming right at you, and it’s absolutely terrifying.

And the kicker is, he does everything right. He checks in with me every few hours with text messages. He goes out of his way to do nice things for me. On Tuesday night, I was having a hard time, but not really talking to him about it, I was just letting those little demons rattle around in my head. He seemed to somehow know, and he came over after the girls were asleep. We sat on the couch and he held me in his arms and petted my hair and talked to me for over two hours. Or rather, he made me talk about my feelings. Which is something I am still really terrible at doing, but he’s good at dragging it out of me. I didn’t know how much I really and truly needed that time with him until he was actually there.

He tells me he loves me over and over, and I believe him. He says he’s with me because he chose to be with me and he wants to be with me, and I believe him.

Then he tells me that I deserve to be happy and feel loved, and… on some level, I know that’s true, but I just can’t seem to internalize it.

Once, when I was apologizing for all of my neuroses, I said, “You know, your girlfriend may be batshit crazy, but on the up side, she really loves the hell out of you.” He told me that he’s been with many iterations of batshit crazy women, and he can handle my particular brand of crazy since it won’t involve him ending up at the ER at any point. (That’s a long story for another time.)

I told him that I’m terrified that at some point he’s going to get tired of constantly talking me off the ledge, and he’s going to decide I’m not worth the effort anymore.

He said, “I don’t know. Once you come off the ledge, you’re pretty damn fun.”

I’m trying, y’all. I’m trying to ignore the Doom Cloud. I’m trying to spend more time off the ledge than on it. I’m trying to just relax and soak it all in and be happy. I just didn’t expect it to be this damn hard.

May 17, 2013Permalink 5 Comments

Mother’s Day 2013

It just happened that this past weekend, the weekend of Mother’s Day, was also the weekend that Dave left and went back to Seattle.

(Side note on that: Dave may actually be looking for an apartment here to be around more often, but I’m kind of afraid to say too much about that until everything is set in stone. But I think it would be a really good thing if it works out, both for the girls to have more time with their dad, and for me to get a break on a semi-regular basis.)

Catie always has a really hard time with it when Dave leaves, so we have a tradition of doing something really fun the next day. It’s just to help distract her and make the transition a little easier. So, on Saturday, my dad and I took the girls to Monkey Joe’s (a big indoor bounce house place). I didn’t take any pictures because I was too busy corralling Lucy. It’s funny to me how different they are: I couldn’t even get Catie to set foot in a bounce house until she was nearly 4 years old, and Lucy – at not even two – makes me climb the giant-ass ladder on the biggest slide in the entire place to slide down it with her. She’d probably go by herself if I let her, but I’m afraid of the bigger kids trampling her. (Thank GOD I had the foresight to wear leggings under my dress.)

I was thinking about my Mother’s Day post last year, and it’s funny to me how similar this year is to last.

My dad and I taking the kids on an outing where they had a blast, check.

Catie and my mom working in the garden together, check.

Leaving the girls with my parents for a while so I could spend some time with Chris. Who I now call by name instead of “my friend” or The Guy. He calls me his girlfriend. I kind of love it.

And he remembered from last year that tulips are my favorite.

Kids let me sleep in, and got tulips from both my girls & my boyfriend. Pretty spectacular Mother's Day overall. Feeling grateful.

The girls – or I guess I should say, technically my mom – also gave me tulips. I mixed them together, and I think it’s a pretty gorgeous arrangement on my kitchen counter right now.

No going out to eat this year because of my diet, so we grilled veggies and meats and had a delicious picnic on my parents’ deck instead.

And of course, topped it off by dancing around the house with my girls after their baths. No Adele this year, it’s all the Xanadu soundtrack.

YouTube Preview Image

One major difference between this year and last year? On Sunday morning, Catie came into my room and said, “Mommy, I’ll take Lucy downstairs and play with her.”

Catie turned on cartoons and they played nicely and quietly together for over two hours. I didn’t drag my lazy butt out of bed until after 10:30 a.m. That right there is basically Single Mom Heaven.

Plus, you know, there’s the whole point of the day. How thankful I am for my own mom (who is amazing and does things like buy flowers so the kids can pretend they’re giving them to me), and also for these two girls who both call me Mommy.

If you're looking for the happiest nerd child on the planet, that would be mine, when she found out Skylanders were the toy in her Happy Meal. ("I better hold onto Lucy's for her." Uh-huh.)

Sometimes Lucy makes a certain face (like this crooked smile) & I realize I basically gave birth to myself. Weird.

They’re pretty awesome, I gotta say.

May 13, 2013Permalink Leave a comment

And it only took 7 years

In May of 2006, I found out I was pregnant with Catie.

I took this picture of myself in the bathroom mirror and captioned it, “Goodbye, waistline. It’s been fun.”

Good-bye waistline, it's been fun

Almost exactly 7 years later, that red shirt finally fits again.

This is the shirt I wore the day I found out I was pregnant with Catie. 7 years and 30 pounds later, it fits again. BOOM.

30 pounds down. I’m honestly not sure what my target weight is at this point, because all of my weight is distributed differently after having kids than it was before. (Oh, hello, widened child birthin’ hips!)

At one point, my goal was to get back in my size 10 jeans. But those jeans are over 7 years old and aren’t even in style anymore. And because I’m shaped differently, they give me flat Mom Ass. And nobody wants Mom Ass. So I’m going to have to figure out some other sort of defining metric as a goal.

So, even though I don’t know the end point, I’m really happy with how it’s going so far.

May 11, 2013Permalink 5 Comments

Texas roses

In the midst of all the relationship stuff (which is pretty damn awesome, btw), this past weekend, I flew to Austin, Texas, for my sister’s bridal shower/bachelorette party/general celebration of her awesomeness.

Hello, Texas!

Yep. That’s Texas, no doubt. (Also, I cut my arm on the barb wire fence while trying to take pictures of the damn longhorns, because clearly I am gifted.)

I flew in on Friday morning and hung out with the girls. We had lunch, went shopping, took naps (my favorite), then had a wine tasting and dinner at my sister’s condo. I have to give props to my sister’s friend Renee, who is SUPER organized and put all of this stuff together. Where I fail at being maid of honor because I suck at all of the little traditions, Renee picks up all the slack. She is a way better maid of honor than I could ever hope to be.

That night, we stayed up late singing along with 80s songs on my sister’s iPod, telling stories, and just generally goofing off. It was fantastic.

Saturday, we slept in and had brunch. Then most of the girls went out shopping, while I lounged around my sister’s condo, ate, and napped.

(Side note: I haven’t really blogged about it, but I’ve been dieting and working out a lot over the last couple months and I’ve been doing really well with it, but I decided that for one weekend, I was going to kick my diet to the curb. I ate carbs and cheese and drank booze and it was FANTASTIC. It was also surprisingly effective – by the time I got home on Sunday night, I couldn’t wait to get back to eating healthy on Monday.)

Saturday night, we met up with some of my sister’s local friends and had dinner.

Dinner to celebrate Tracy

Oh! See how I’m the tallest one there? I’m actually not, but I was wearing my sister’s really amazing wedge heels, which made me crazy tall. I loved them, and then after I got home, this showed up from Zappo’s on my doorstep.

Lookie what just came in the mail from my sister! Sorry to all the rest of y'all with sisters. Mine wins.

My sister found me a pair of wedges almost identical to hers and bought them for me. Sorry to all y’all with sisters. Mine wins.

Anyway, back to Texas. After dinner on Saturday night, we went to one of those karaoke places where you rent your own private room, so you only embarrass yourselves in front of your friends instead of a whole audience.

karaoke!

I have to say, I wasn’t totally into the karaoke idea because I had volunteered to be designated driver, and let’s face it, you need at least a couple of drinks for karaoke. But it ended up being pretty damn fun anyway.

blurry and out of focus, but this pretty much sums up the whole night

This picture is blurry and out of focus, but it pretty much sums up the whole night. (And yes, if you note the captions on the screen behind them? They were, in fact, singing “Copa Cabana.” Because why wouldn’t they be?)

I flew back to Raleigh on Sunday, and while I was happy to get home and hug my babies, it was a bummer to leave my sister and her friends, because they are such a blast to hang out with.

On the upside, I’ll see them all again in about six months at Tracy’s wedding. I already can’t wait.

May 8, 2013Permalink 2 Comments

The Guy, again

Man, two posts about my brain chemistry and I go and turn into one of those confessional type bloggers who pours their entire private life on the Internet. Watch out, here I go again.

VERY IMPORTANT WARNING: If you are part of my immediate or extended family, you will most likely want to skip this post. I’m about to say some things about myself that are definitely less than flattering.

So, when The Guy and I broke up, I was… not very nice about it. I didn’t handle it well, and I said a lot of very mean things about him (mostly on Twitter). I was hurt and angry. But there’s been a pretty major shift in the last couple of days, and I’m starting to recognize some of my own shortcomings.

Way back in March 2012, when The Guy and I first started dating, it was the beginning of what I can only refer to as my “Post-Divorce Slut Phase.” I’m not sugarcoating it, that’s what it was, really. I’m not particularly proud of my behavior, but I’ll own it. (And, well, ok, I admit that it was a lot of fun.) I think that my ego and my self-esteem had been so damaged by the end of my marriage, that I actively sought out positive reinforcement from other men. Lots of them. As in, I’d have to sit down and write out a list and think really hard to even try to remember exactly how many guys I slept with last year.

(See why I said my relatives should skip this post?)

I will say, because I feel like I need to, that the girls were never exposed to any of my behavior. The things I did only occurred when they were with a baby-sitter or Dave or my parents or whoever. And I’ve thought about how odd it might be for them when they’re older, if they find this blog and read this particular entry. All I can hope is that they’ll be old enough to understand.

So, The Guy? He knew that I was dating – and sleeping with – a lot of other guys at the same time that I was dating/sleeping with him. And he was ok with that. He had separated from his ex right around the same time that Dave and I split, so he wasn’t ready to jump into a serious relationship, just like I wasn’t.

(Random aside: I should have blogged a lot of this stuff as it happened last year. I probably could’ve gotten a major sponsorship from a condom company.)

But there was this weird chemical attraction that he and I had to each other. With other guys, I’d go out with/have sex with them a couple of times and then drop them like a hot potato for some reason or other. But I always came back to him. He just “got me,” in a way that nobody else I dated really seemed to get me.

At some point last fall, I decided that I was done with all of the other guys, and I only wanted to be with him. I realized that I had fallen in love with him – HARD – and that was that.

The problem was, while I was slutting it up all over town, he had been dating one other person besides me. So, basically, I was asking him to dump this other person and only focus on me. And when he hesitated, I interpreted that to mean that he didn’t really want me that much, and I ended it.

And that was that.

Fast-forward a few months. We haven’t talked since right after Christmas, and I saw that he clicked on my online dating profile. I saw that picture of his face and I burst into tears. I wasn’t expecting that – either seeing him or my reaction.

I tried to ignore it. Then, a few days later, I saw he clicked on it again.

I messaged him and said, “I’m genuinely curious: are you trying to torture me or yourself?”

That opened the floodgates. He told me he missed me, he still loves me, he called me Sweetie…

Then he said something to me that kind of struck a chord: I never once flat-out told him that I wanted a monogamous relationship.

I mean, I thought I did. I implied it. But I never actually said the words out loud.

And it brought home something that I learned during my divorce: I really and truly suck when it comes to communicating my needs in a relationship.

So. Huh. Whaddya know. Apparently that is not exclusive to the dynamic between Dave and me, it’s just how I am when I’m dating someone.

Basically, his version of the story is that I dropped a few hints, he didn’t immediately pick up on it, and when he couldn’t read my mind, I bolted.

I told this to a friend of mine, and his response was, “Wait. You’ve been miserable and in pain all this time, and it turns out it was self-inflicted?” And, yeah. It would seem that way, at least partially.

We’ve been talking and texting pretty much constantly over the past couple of days. We’ve agreed to meet for lunch – in a public place, no chance of any funny business happening – and sit down and really talk about what each of our needs/wants/expectations are, and see if there’s a chance we could work things out.

(I’m planning to write my stuff down in advance, since, you know, see above re: not being able to say that kind of thing out loud.)

Because lord help me, I do still love him. And I have missed him so, so much.

I don’t know where this is going. I guess I just have to wait and see. And I have to start forcing myself to work a lot harder on what I tell my kindergartner all the time: use your words.

Wish me luck, y’all. I think I’m going to need it.

April 30, 2013Permalink 12 Comments

digging my way out

Following up on that last post. I am… Well. Not better, necessarily, but ok.

I saw a psychiatrist. She’s weaning me off Lexapro, and switching me to a different anti-depressant (something called Viibryd, which I’ve never heard of, but allegedly it’s supposed to target anxiety, so: BINGO). And she also put me on a mood stabilizer, which sounds great (moods! stabilized!), but apparently it takes several weeks before I’ll start noticing that one.

Coming off Lexapro, btw, is pretty horrible. I’m dizzy and nauseated all the time. It’s like constantly having a case of motion sickness combined with the first trimester of pregnancy. No fun at all. But I think (I hope) that I’m past the worst of it now.

The doctor also told me that I need to work on establishing more boundaries in my life. Since I work from home most of the time, and then the kids are here, I don’t get out of the house often enough, and I need to work on making that happen. So I’m trying.

I saw my hairdresser yesterday, who I adore. I told her I wanted to do something different with my hair since I’m feeling so blah lately. She wisely wouldn’t let me chop it off, but she colored it a reddish-brown with gold highlights that I am absolutely in love with.

Amazing how a cut & color can improve one's mood. (And not that you can tell, but it's now reddish-brown with highlights and I loooove it!)

It’s kind of amazing how something as simple as changing my hair can improve my mood.

(But seriously, the bags under my eyes. For the love of God. If you want proof that I need more sleep, there ya go.)

Also, in the interest of “getting out of the house more often,” Kim’s daughter Jasmine (who is 16) came over and baby-sat for me last night. She played with the girls, fed them dinner, got them in their PJs, put them to bed, then she cleaned my kitchen and folded laundry. I love her. I’m going to try to see if I can get her to come baby-sit one evening a week or so, just so I can get out and have some non-work/mommy time occasionally.

And I don’t know if it was the time off from the kids, or the fact that I had a lot of fun last night, but this morning I felt great, and we got through an entire morning routine (eat breakfast, get dressed, pack lunches, off to school and daycare) without snapping or yelling at either of my kids even once. That’s kind of a miracle.

So, like I said, not really better, but ok. Hopefully I’ll get there soon.

April 26, 2013Permalink 4 Comments