Another Holiday

 Holidays have always been a difficult time for me. My naive fantasies of what a holiday celebration should look like with the stark reality of what my life looks like is hard. Despite loving my life and the choices have made I am cognizant that it looks different than what media would have me believe is the standard. Even this weekend, not a particularly big holiday but it still comes with pressure. My youngest asking me what we are doing for Memorial Day and me over hearing all the stay at home moms with the the money for two houses and cars that cost almost as much as my home talking about going to their shore home etc...For me and my family this long weekend looks like recovery. Both of my girls broke their foot and are in boots now. My youngest is still struggling with respiratory issues and we are heading to a new specialist this week. I cut down my job obligations when I left my 3rd temp job but I have been able to pick up more hours on my 2nd job and all I do is work. I work, I clean and take care of the house, I exercise and I sleep. I do little else with my life. And for right now that feels good. 

I did feel obligated to get the kids outside today. We headed to my sisters where we just literally sat and chatted, while I worked. My mom was there too. They complained about their spouses and I had nothing to complain about.  Sometimes I think about all my mom has sacrificed to be with my dad and I feel bad for her. They have been together since she has been 17 and he 19 and it was anything but easy. I used to beg for them to divorce. Their relationship is and always has been toxic. My dad is a good man with so many wonderful qualities but being a good communicator is not one of them. Sometimes I think he is just mean to my mom and I can not figure out why. And I see my mom resents him. It is just a cluster fuck and frankly there is too much peace in my life for me to find myself in a place like that. I would be lying if I did not think their relationship has not impacted my new found independence and need for peace in my home. I dont want to be my mom's age and have that horrible full body angst that only a man can fill me with. 

As I was driving home I drove past the neighbor's house and he has not called me like he usually does. I feel a little fucked up about this. I liked him boosting my confidence and making me feel wanted even though the thought of fucking anyone makes me cringe. I walked out of my house the other day and he was walking his dogs right in front of me. My kids were outside with me and I was talking to them and it is this him catching me in the wild and the two of us acting as though we dont see each other that I live for. I absolutely love the secret of it all. 

My mind is a little bit all over tonight, so I am skipping around a bit. My friend has been so busy this holiday weekend it makes me feel like I am not doing it right. She has had non-stop events and plans for days now and I am just sitting in my peaceful home working. I try to balance what I want and need and what my kids want and need and that's how we ended up at my sisters. My sisters house is wild. They have two very nice dogs and my kids love to interact and play with the dogs. They have a big yard and believe that the yard is for the kids to destroy and have fun in. For a visual, the kids Little Tykes play house that the kids played with for the last 12 years still sits in the yard. The kids have painted it, attached a mailbox to it, decorated with Christmas garland and filled in cracks with spray foam (just for fun). There are toys in the driveway at all times, and projects that are being worked on. Today my niece and daughter dug a river in the middle of the yard and got the hose out to fill it and added sticks and giant branches for bridges. That river will stay like that until the elements erode it away and they could not care less that there yard looks a mess. I half love it and half want to fix it. Im all for kids using my house and yard to be kids but they might take it a bit too far. But my kids LOVE it there.  They have a great inground pool but it is just too cold to swim yet. We all had pizza, we laughed, we relaxed and that is all I could ever hope for on a holiday weekend. I have to remind myself that I am not here to make anyone but myself happy, well my kids and then myself. 

I feel like I am in a growth and healing journey in my life right now. And maybe I cannot just open myself up to people like I could before as I am allowing myself to feel the feelings that I have been running from for so long. There are deep reasons, I assume, for my current feelings on sex. I do find myself seeing that I am using work as an escape from things I don't want to acknowledge. I am happy to work all day every day. I force myself to do the other things like cook for the kids and take a walk. It just feels nice in this mental protective cocoon. No wandering thoughts, no wondering how my life will go in the next chapter, no worries about the kids. I just let my mind get lost in the details of work and it feels so freeing. It's like what swimming does for my body. The weightlessness and freedom from pain and the soothing feel of the water. Work gives me that. I feel like sex used to give me that. And to be frank D ruined that for me. 

The Unfuckening

 The Unfuckening is a word my friend has used for years. She used it to describe the period of time of when her daughter came home from her Dad's house to her house. The child needed hours sometimes the rest of the day to realign. The change of being Daddy's daughter in his house to being Mommy's daughter in Mommy's house took time to adjust to. She would need time on the couch, sometimes being alone, sometimes cuddling, sometimes she would cry and sometimes she would yell. It was a definitive period of time in which she was not herself. This child I know so well would need so much space and soothing that I sometimes felt like I did not recognize her until the unfuckening was over. 

This is where I am at, or at least I hope. I hope I am in a period of time in which my mind and spirit are adjusting. I need peace and soothing and I will eventually come back to myself and people will recognize me again. 

The last day or two I have tried to imagine myself wanting to talk to a man again. It really all started with driving past one of those "We Buy Gold" shops the other day. I thought about gold and who just has gold laying around to sell. I dont have any gold and then D popped in my head. He always wore his gold chain with his charm that said Trinidad in the shape of the country on it. For so many years I remember seeing that gold chain lay on my breasts while he fucked me. I would watch the sweat on his chest bead up around the chain. .....Ok so as I am typing that I have a crazy urge to call him and beg him to come to me. I will not do that but dammit the instinct was there. 

As I go around life I dont think about D. For example, I dont miss him per se but there are things that make me feel like I might just find him and make him talk to me. Sometimes I think that he is embarrassed of his behavior and wants to forget it and therefore me. I mainly think he is mad about the wage garnishment now but that is a hill that I will die on. That was the right thing for me to do. If I lost good dick on that then so be it. 

When I look in on myself from the outside of my life I feel sadness for me. I can see how devastated this has left me. If I sit with that for too long it will be hard to go on. If I let myself believe that I will never see the man I loved that hard again it feels like I just quite catch my breath. 

There is a fine line between just leaving things where they are and not begging him to talk to me and completely offering my self and dignity to him again. There are days when this line feels like it will be crossed. It feels like I will never be happy again until he is in my bed again and that gold chain is dangling on my white skin. I text my friend every time I get there so she can talk me off the ledge. 

This past week I had a crazy bad stomach virus. It was so bad that I needed to go to the ER for fluids because I was unable to stand from dehydration. I got to the hospital, I had my daughter drop me off. I went to the desk alone, hunched over in pain, sweating profusely and the nurses attended to me. They took my temperature and got very worried (Spoiler Alert - the temp was wrong and I did not have a fever). The nurses were initially concerned that I was septic and moved very fast and in that moment I was finally able to cry. I have waited to cry for so long and I leaned into it. I was there for maybe 8 hours and I cried several times out of desperation and feeling so bad. I tried to let me self cry about D but the tears would instantly stop. I could not do it. I dont know what stops me. I suspect it's one of two things or a little of both. 1- perhaps I'm just so fucking pissed off at the way he treated me in the end that I cannot even believe that I would shed another tear for this piece of shit or 2- I am afraid to feel those feelings because they are so intense. 

Im just want to put out in to the universe that I am open to a dark-skin island man with a giant cock. I think that would help me turn the tide. And universe please let him have a job and a car and the emotional intelligence to be with me.