My Blah-Blah-Blog

Dear Mom:

Somehow we’ve made it through the past 10 years without you! It still hurts – it makes my throat burn – to think about you and what you went through, how unfair it is that you were so sick and had to go.

On a happier note, we’re cared for by people YOU knew. Want to hear a funny story?

In October about 4 years ago I was looking for a church to go to in Raleigh. Not a religious church who pushed their own agenda down my throat, but a place I could go and find God apart from religious rule and domination. I tried out this one place that felt like it was the place for me to be.

It wasn’t but 10 minutes into my visit that it dawned on me that holy heck, this was the church YOU had attended, and that pastor guy talking is the guy who did your funeral!

It didn’t take long for them to realize who I was, and we were drawn into a family full of love and care. They’ve loved us and cared for us countless times. I can’t help but think that you did that, that you are up somewhere watching down on us, sending people our way to help us the way you would have wanted to.

Every year I blog or post something telling you how proud you’d be of your grandkids. They’re amazing. Your granddaughter makes faces like you did, she has a laugh that sounds like yours sometimes, she even stands like you did when you were on the phone, one hand hooked on the back of your pants. And your son, he’s amazing and brilliant. He has your talent for drawing and thinking things through as black and white!

I do my best to help them through hard times, and boy has it been hard. I could have used you around many times, but somehow I find it in myself how to move on, push through, and make it. I know you’d be awful proud of all of us here. You’d have loved your son’s wedding (omg after 10 years!!!), you’d have loved that your sister came for us and was there when you couldn’t be. We’ve met up with friends from high school! You’d LOVE facebook, Mad Men – I can see you working in their phone switchboard room. 

We’d visit you every day if we could, and you could bake all the cookies you wanted with your grandbabies, and take them shopping and to the park. 

I wish you were here oh so much, and I wish I could go back and undo things that cannot now be undone.

But this is life as we will know it, and perhaps it’s true that we’re only in each other’s lives for a season, for a short time. And while we didn’t get along, probably really hated each other at times, I’m thankful for the time we did have. I remember fondly the good times and how you created a childhood of magic and wonder for me. I remember the movie marathons and the munchy food binges. And I remember hiding the dirty dishes in the oven when company showed up unexpectedly.

I can pretend you hear this as I write it and it offers me some comfort. Please do go talk God’s ear off and ask Him to send a little help our way. We could use it!

We love you, we miss you.

It was my birthday in February, 2000. My mom was exhausted after baking a special cake for me. She’d taken some cake decorating classes and was quite the artiste when it came to decorating. She made me a killer Hello Kitty cake – it was awesome. But she was SO tired at the end of the day, more tired than I’d ever seen her. She was on oxygen 24/7 by now, more than ever before. She hated the cannula (the part that fits under your nose for oxygen to flow in) and yanked it off every time we took pictures of her and the baby. She didn’t want us to remember her that way.

She wasn’t able to go with us to the museum in Raleigh and stayed at home instead. She was too tired to help bathe the baby or do anything strenuous and when I left I realized the trip wasn’t as nice as it could have been.

I returned to Colorado, worried but I put it out of my mind. How many times had we heard she was really really sick, or that things were taking a turn for the worse? This surely was another short-term setback; she’d be fine soon enough. I went back to my troubles in my own life and got a job to help get my mind on better things.

In August I got a call that she was very ill. My dad was leaving for work at 6 am and returning home around 8 or 9 pm to take care of her through the night. My brother would help as he could during the day, but he was busy with his own work. I decided I’d come out with my daughter, now 15 months old, and I’d help take care of her. At first I wasn’t “allowed’ to, but after begging and pleading to help care for my mom, my husband consented to let me go.

I was shocked by what I saw. To this day these memories have been as painful as the original experience, and I hope with time, and retelling our story, that the pain will lessen and that I can focus only on the good times.

My mother was practically immobile. She sat in a wheelchair or some other chair in the living room. She was unable to sleep in her bed, it was too painful and uncomfortable. She had water developing in her lungs, her heart, and her body puffed up with the water which would sometimes seep out of her pores. It was horrible.

We had to bathe her in a chair in the bathroom, she had to use a potty chair to use the toilet. She was humiliated and embarrassed to say the least.

One day she was trying to rest in the guest room while I cleaned up some dishes. I heard a crash and ran to the room to find her on the floor in a seizure, her pill tray knocked over and her medicines spilled all over the floor. Two feet away was my 15 month old, hand reaching for the brightly colored pills. I didn’t know who to grab first or what to do. I grabbed my daughter, shoving her out of the room while calling to my mom. My mom came out of the seizure, unaware of what happened, and I helped her to her bed. She assured me she was fine and I realized my mom was really sick this time. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. How do you begin to prepare yourself to walk down the path where there is no life at the end? How do you spend the final weeks, days with someone you know will soon be gone?

I would lay in bed at night, listening to my mom cry out in pain as my dad tried to bathe her. I was so mad. I cursed God for being so horrible to treat her this way, after all the years she’d shared her faith in Him, her belief in Him. He was cruel, unkind and unfair. I told Him that if He didn’t heal my mother or relieve her of her pain soon, then I’d never tell my daughter about Him, I’d never allow her to set foot in a church to worship such a loveless being.

A few days later, I got a phone call from Colorado. My husband was having an affair, there was mention of a pregnancy, and all at once my world as I knew it was as bad as it could possibly be. My brain paused all that was around me. I think I could have wandered into a busy street and not have realized it I was so upset.

I had to go back to Colorado. I wasn’t equipped for this hardship. I couldn’t take care of my mother. I couldn’t administer the new drugs directly into her heart through a experimental procedural machine thingie that my brother was trained to help clean up and monitor. I didn’t know what to do if she had another seizure. She was in and out of the hospital, I couldn’t take it anymore. And now this other mess, what to do?

I left her is what I did. She begged, she pleaded, she threatened. She even said if I returned she’d have social services come after me for bringing my daughter back to Colorado and back to the unknown. I told her I’d never speak to her ever again if she did. It was horrible. But I left.

We didn’t talk much. I moved in with a friend for a few weeks til I got my head on straight.

I was at Wal-Mart on the morning of September 30th when I got the phone call.

My mom was dead.

I wasn’t sure how it was possible, maybe she was asleep. Why do our brains think that it is possible to receive a death notification as an accident?

I’d just talked to her a few days before. She was out of sorts, unfocused. She hadn’t slept for days and I was mad that she didn’t sound interested in our conversation. The last thing I ever spoke to my mom was “Why don’t you call me back when you aren’t so busy with something else?”

She was afraid of being alone when she died. We promised her she wouldn’t be. But even my dad and brother needed SOME sleep, and one night while she was in the hospital, they left. The doctor’s gave her some medicine to help her sleep. At some point in the early hours of the morning, her lungs filled with water and she pretty much drowned in her sleep. Alone.

Somehow I made it back to North Carolina. Somehow we made it through the wake and the funeral. Somehow we made it through the awful realization of what had happened. It was fast, so fast. Surely for her it was not fast enough: the pain, the medicine, the horribly painful procedures and tests that left her sore and bruised for days. The apathy her family had for her condition, how we thought it was just another bad round that would end up just fine.

Somehow we made it through those days, weeks, months. Somehow we still make it through the years.

Every year I think about my mom a little more than usual both on the day she was born and on the day she died. 

On the anniversary of her death, I usually like to “write” her a letter, telling her how much I miss her and how much she would have loved her grandkids. She knew my daughter, my oldest, but I didn’t have my son until about a year and a half after she died.

This year, however, I thought I’d sit down and share a little bit about my mom with you all. Those of you who are my facebook friends and come read my blog often, I’d bet on it that my mom would have friended you on facebook too as a mutual friend of mine. She was like that – she liked to be friends with my friends!

My mom was born in New Jersey – I think. I’ve had a Benadryl before bed tonight and my brain is fuzzy. Well, no matter. She was born in New Jersey or New York, new something but not New Mexico.

It was from my mom that my brother and I developed our love of reading, writing, arts, travel, history and old movies. She introduced me to Rogers and Hammerstein, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald, and numerous other classics. She could whip up a bedtime story to rival any storyteller; I’ve often heard her siblings share memories of her character Mr. Nobody which was so sad they’d be left in tears.

She made moving an adventure, which must not have been easy for a young mom traveling with two young kids to and fro Germany and around the US  so much that it seemed it was almost every year we had to move. She’d make it exciting for us and we’d get books from the library about our new destination and she’d save shoeboxes for my brother and I and fill them with treats and goodies ONLY for the plane ride or car trip.

My mom is also responsible for my spiritual upbringing. My mother grew up Catholic and her personality and the way she was wired deemed she’d be the judge of your soul only second to God.  She meant well and just wanted everyone to find the same hope she believed she had, a hope for life eternal, a hope for the expectation of answered prayers. Until her dying day she *knew* God would heal her sick body, even if that healing came in the form of her passing from this world to the next.

I’m sure she offended many with her black-and-white thinking. There was no grey for my mom, and she’d argue her way through without budging on her own beliefs. She wasn’t very skilled in accepting others beliefs when they differed so much from hers, but she loved those even more fiercely than those who had like a like mind about religion and spirituality. It was those she prayed for hours and hours into the night, hoping that they would some day catch a glimmer of the God she served.

My mom was pretty healthy to my recollection until 1988 or so. I have bits and pieces of her getting sick, I mostly remember her mentioning her shoes didn’t fit much and she was in and out of doctor appointments. Then one day we got the news: she had a disease – Arthritic Systemic Sclerosis, or Scleroderma. I remember them telling us she was sick, that sometimes people with this disease only lived for a year, some maybe longer, and that we would be reassigned from our post in Germany to a base in Aberdeen, Maryland.

I don’t recall being terribly upset, it was a hard pill to swallow either way. I was probably more upset about moving (again!?!?) and leaving my good friends (again!??!) than my mother’s impending death.

It was for the next few years that we lived with the stress of tests, test results and doctor visits and the never-changing prognosis “you could have about a year left to live.” After a while none of us really cared, and at some point it was declared that the disease was in remission. While my mom didn’t get better, she didn’t get worse, and that was a good thing.

However, she couldn’t climb stairs or walk long distances without becoming incredibly winded and out of breath. She didn’t have much physical stamina and coughing spells plagued her constantly. But she plodded along and was overjoyed when my daughter – her first and, at the time only, grandchild was born. She couldn’t travel to Colorado for the birth but sent treats and gifts in the mail. 3 months after the birth, she met my daughter and fell in love instantly.

In February of 2000 I was visiting my folks. I was young, married, a new mom and was struggling with an abusive relationship. I wasn’t sure what to do and I didn’t want to tell my parents the whole truth of my situation. Instead I tried to enjoy our visits as much as I could. This time would be different, this would be the last time I’d see my mom in this good of shape.

I just posted this song on Facebook. It’s one of my favorites and always makes me feel better when I’m bummin’ quite a bit.

Lately I’ve been feeling like moving along myself. Not just moving along from broken relationships, but moving along from this entire place. I’ve got the curse of an Army Brat – the one where you feel compelled to move every year or three. I’ve done pretty well with it lately, usually you can just rearrange furniture to sate your desire for relocation, but sometimes it’s a call that I actually choose to follow.

Now that I’m a mummy with two kids, I have to be careful not to pack up and run off when the whim hits me: it’s important for these kids to have roots and a community.

Recent months have got me itching to pack up and move somewhere else though. I’m craving a small town similar to those seen on TV or movies – the little town where everyone knows everyone else, the fire department still puts up a Nativity scene at Christmas time and nobody has a problem with it, the whole town goes to the Homecoming parade and game in the fall when the leaves are turning gold and red and orange and the smell of fall is in the air, the town where kids play outside and are invited into the neighbor’s house for cookies and you’re sitting on your porch waving at those who drive by. You know, the town from Dennis the Menace, or Steel Magnolias, or Baby Boom… heck it’s even the town Mystic Falls on the Vampire Diaries.

Tell me those places still exist, please. (Sans vampires of course).

That’s what I want so badly right now.

But how does one pack up an entire 3-bedroom townhouse and hit the road into the unknown? How do you get a job that you know you’ll like when you’ve never been to the town you want to move to? What about moving THEN finding a job? Where do you stay? How do you rent a house when the city you want to move to is hundreds of miles away?

I’m not sure, but if you know, please let me know. This girl is ready for a do-over. I’m ready to leave behind more than my fair share of demons here.

Until then… well, I’ll try to move along as best as I can, but I really don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere.

So what happened to them you may be wondering…

Well, we broke it off, again. I guess I did more of the breaking off.

It hurt like hell. He didn’t see it as me trying to save both of us from heartache, he just thought I’m being selfish because I want too much.

I don’t think I’m being selfish. I’m giving him the chance to find the right one, too.

If I had a nickel for every time I wished this would work out, I would have a nice savings account. But I’m not too silly not to know when it’s time to walk away.

I’m doing it because I love him and want the best for him.

And I love myself too.

And so I put on my big girl pants, and I walk away.

It makes my chest tight. It makes me feel nauseated in my heart (is that even possible!?!? Yes.) I walk away knowing that he’ll find someone else and it will be perfect and it hurts because it wasn’t me.

But that seems to be the trend lately. Ugh.

I try to keep my hopes up that maybe, maybe somewhere out there is a man whose heart is set the same way mine is, who sees a relationship as a stepping stone to something more, who knows he wants to share his life with someone else, and will choose me to be that person. He’s not afraid of it, for whatever reason.

But you know I won’t get my hopes up too high. And I definitely won’t get excited about it. That’s just my way of doing things.

PS a note to all you women – appreciate your man if you have one, k?

PPS a note to all you wannabe Bridezillas, stop being bitches. You’re ruining it for the rest of us.

I hope I’ve proved my point that I’ve never been the wannabe Bridezilla, I’ve never manipulated, forced or coerced anyone into marrying me. I’ve never stomped around demanding expensive baubles for my left ring finger, none of the nonsense I’ve seen many women do.

I did get caught up in the prospect, I did allow myself to think it through and share my feelings and thoughts by a respectful and open boyfriend.

But after realizing that the two of us are on different planets when it comes to the WHEN of it all, I know when it’s time to walk away. And I’m doing it for the good of TWO not just one.

So it distresses me, hurts me, makes me feel pretty damn sad, when I hear things (and by hear things I mean read facebook posts) that refer to women as only wanting long-term commitments, or all women want is everything you’ve got (a man).

Seriously?

Since when did wanting a family become a bad thing in today’s society? What is with all these men who run as fast as they can when a woman acts like a woman? (Hey don’t you get me wrong, many women don’t want to ever be married and/or have a family. That’s cool. I get it.) I’m talking about the women who grew up wanting a family, a woman who sees a husband as a wonderful lovely thing to have in her life.

Why are so many men bashing marriage and commitment? “Don’t do it” they say. “She’s after your soul” “She’s after your money” “She’s trying to trap you”. Are you FECKING KIDDING ME!?!?

I’m sorry that loving you enough to commit my life to you is going after your soul. I’m sorry that I want to have what a lot of other normal and healthy people have – but to you that means I want to trap you. Or that I’m after your money.

It makes me sad.

I have to say it’s no wonder. With divorce rates out of control and single parents everywhere, generations are losing the GOOD part of what it means to be married. And those who are stuck in bad marriages – because they really did let themselves be trapped by a manipulative man or woman – are bitter about it and think they’re doing a service to single folks. I have news for you. Shutthehellup because you are the one who let it happen. If you didn’t want it or weren’t ready for it, you should have walked away dumbass. Don’t act all macho now because you are embarrassed that you let yourself get into this mess.

Kids don’t know what it means to have two parents in the same house anymore, so what was norm for the past few generations is now foreign to new generations.

What was taboo not quite 40 years ago (living together) is okay now. I support living together before getting married. Heck, I support living together even if you aren’t thinking of getting married. It works better logistically and it saves everyone money.

But the point is, you are still TOGETHER. You are still building a bond between the two of you. Ever have a new friend that after a sleepover was your new bestie? Imagine what it’s like in a love relationship between two people. I really do believe God intended for us to be with someone. Whether it’s one someone or ten in a lifetime, we certainly weren’t meant to be alone.

So here’s my final point.

If you don’t want to get married – not now or not ever – I respect that. It’s cool. I’m glad you know what you want when you want it.

But don’t, DO NOT date someone (and by date I mean an intimate relationship with someone for many months) who does want to get married – now or in the near future (or in the later future). It’s not fair to them.

If you do want to get married – now or in the future – I respect that.

But don’t, DO NOT date someone who does not want to get married. It’s not fair to them.

Perhaps you should both be adults about it and move on. And neither of you should make rude comments about the other because of their own personal desires. It’s not necessary. It hurts the other person. It makes you look foolish and shallow.

Where was I?

Ah yes, back to the drama that is my life.

So there I was, trying to be calm and cool that this man was talking some serious stuff, and while we couldn’t yet say the “M” word, we’d pretty much come to the conclusion that we’d like to work in that direction, first off by working on the relationship with the kids.

But at some point I realized that there was more to this than I figured – it wasn’t so much a statement that he wanted to be with me really. Here’s what we figured out, and there’s a very big difference here: I wanted this to happen, in my heart I really did. And all it took to get to that point was to work on a few issues and voila, bliss. All I wanted was for him to actually SAY it to me – that this was what he wanted – me in his life forever – and then I’d get on the ball and work like crazy-mad to get the ball rolling, get the kids situation worked out and anything else that posed a hindrance to our relationship.

The problem? The fly in our chardonnay? His feelings were different – semantics if you please – but it struck a blow to my ever-fragile feelings. IF we could work out the kids situation and anything else that posed a hindrance to our relationship, then MAYBE he’d be willing to think the “M” word. Maybe.

No guarantees for either of us. Mostly for me. Why do you say? Because I’d be putting my heart and soul into a relationship – into a potential MARRIAGE (there, I said it) without knowing if that’s really where we’d end up. Sure, something could happen along the way and it wouldn’t work out, but at least we’d known we’d tried.

But this was different. He still wasn’t sure. And he was still quick to say that this wasn’t something he wanted to see happen any time soon, and I’m not talking 6 months or a year boys and girls. I’m talking 5 years. 8 years. 10 years.

I love you, but by then, well, it just won’t be feasible for me anymore. While I’m not old, not anywhere close to be old, I am staring time down the barrel and if I ever want to have another child, it’s gotta be sooner rather than later.

All the old stuff comes back up. My timeline is in the next few years, his? The next decade.

So who wins here? Who loses? Does he give up his freedom to take on this huge responsibility? Do I give up my last years of opportunity to have a baby?

Yet again I told myself that this can’t possibly work.

I told myself that I’m putting time and effort into something that he really doesn’t want.

And now, more than ever, I’m getting more and more annoyed that he wants me to act like his wife, but he doesn’t want me to be his wife.

And now, more than ever, I want to say to him PISS OR GET OFF THE POT!!!!

So, because HE brought up the whole “M” thing – meaning he is the one who went there and brought it up, he opened up that part of me that always put that away. I didn’t hope for it, wish for it, I pretty much was sure it wouldn’t happen, and here he goes throwing the possibility my way…

…and now I realize that is what I want. More than anything.

And this time in my life, I don’t think I’m willing to give Me up again. I don’t think I’m willing to sacrifice for someone else again. I lost myself to Hitler my ex-husband, I lost every bit of my SELF to him. It took me a long time to find Me again. I can’t do it again. No matter how much I love you, I can’t do it again.

I remember my mom aaalllwwwaaayyysss saying to me “To thine own self be true” (it’s Shakespeare).

That means a lot to me now, coming out of a place of co-dependence, doing everything for everyone else to keep them happy. I don’t want to be that woman anymore.

I have to be true to myself.

ME.

And in being true to myself, I’m giving him an out too. Which brings me to my next post which has left me feeling very angry this morning.

I knew that if this man and I were to be together that it would take an Act of God to make it happen. He was dead set against kids – maybe having his own in the future, the faaar out future – but going anywhere with me and my kids stirred up in him feelings of “DO NOT LIKE” which hurt me because my kids aren’t bad kids. They don’t flick boogers on other people, they don’t hit or bite, they don’t run around like monkeys ignoring every word I say. They’re good. But he didn’t like it if other people (uhm strangers!) assumed he was the dad.

I get it. I really get it. Everyone is different, not everyone likes kids (you don’t see me rushing to help out at church in the nursery/Sunday school do you!?). I’d never want to push anything on anyone, I already told you that.

Anyhoo. Months and months ago I was feeling bad about our relationship, wishing things were different. I decided to put in an application for such an Act of God so I prayed “Hey God, if this is meant to happen, it’s going to take ManDude being okay with kids. And right now I think that is pretty much impossible. But, if we’re supposed to be together, if you really did bring him into my life to be mine, and for me to be his, well, things have gotta change. TYVM The End.”

That was months ago.

So now I get a call, or maybe an email. I think it was a phone call. It was my man… and he’d been doing a lot of thinking. I prepared myself to stick to our break-up since there was no way this was going to work out. I didn’t want to fall back into our very own personalized cycle of get together and break up… so I wasn’t sure this was going to be a conversation I really wanted to have. Again.

To my surprise, he wanted to take steps to being more serious with me. Of course neither of us could spit out the “M” word, but he felt he wanted more out of our relationship, and was taking great strides (and I really do mean that) to make steps to improve his relationship with the kids. He’d gotten books to read and wanted to spend time with them. He even manned up and admitted having a negative attitude that prevented him from ever enjoying the time with all of us.

I was impressed, but doubtful. I hoped this wasn’t just a dangling carrot to get us back together. Some women (and men too I’m sure) have been put on indefinite relationship hold with promises of “trying this out” and “thinking about this” and I didn’t want that. I also didn’t want to expose my kids to something that wasn’t going to last either.

But he sounded so sincere. I thought maybe he really did want to see what life with us would be like. We talked about it as much as our comfort zones would allow. We even sat down with my pastor to get some good advice – and did we ever.

Getting married was an obvious next-step in a relationship like ours, but we all approached the subject with caution. Me because I didn’t want to get excited AT ALL because I knew this could not work out, Me because I didn’t want to feel like my actions were pressuring HIM into something. I kept my thoughts to myself as best as I could. He needed some space and some time to think this through.

But one day I was thinking about the wonderful and beautiful possibility that maybe this man had chosen ME – and maybe someone wanted me to be around in his life for forever. It was a beautiful feeling, I felt alive and good and happy. After all we’ve been through, it seemed like there were better times ahead, and I’d never have to be alone again and I could heave a big sigh and know that all was well in the world.

And about 5 minutes later I chided myself for being silly and set about to shut down my thoughts and feelings and emotions and get back to being practical and not expecting, not assuming.

It was like a lovely little flower had blossomed in too-early spring, peeking it’s lovely head above the snow, only to be snatched up by some lovely little flower eating bird all too soon.

I was willing to give him as much time as he needed, especially since he was working hard on his own stuff. But soon I’d realize something that was far hurtful than anything else I’d experienced in our relationship up to this point.

When I was younger, I learned the lesson of “Don’t get excited too soon” and “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”  Ever tormented by the “We’ll see” response from my mom on whether or not I could have a sleepover, attend a function, go somewhere, I would get all excited as I anticipated a “yes” response. Those were few and far between however, and it wasn’t long that I learned not to anticipate or expect anything. It was a lot easier to not deal with the disappointment all the time – that high to low crash. And when a “yes” did finally come, it was almost even better, but by the time I was almost out of high school, I’d managed to suppress my feelings so much that even getting to do something I wanted to do became an anticlimactic event.

Here I am in my adult life and I’m pretty much the same. I’ve learned to shut down my emotions for the most part because of dealing with so much negativity for a very long time. I don’t get excited about much nowadays because I know there’s always a chance for something to fall through or not work out or people to bail on you. It happens, it’s life. I’m not a Debby Downer, I just don’t like to be disappointed.

When I started dating this great guy a little more than a year ago, I realized that while he and I fit into all the cutesy relationship molds of fitting together: he was the yin to my yang, we fit together like two pieces of a puzzle, we’re two birds of a feather etc etc, there was one big problem. I want a traditional family. I’d like to be married and enjoy the wonderment that is two souls coming together to love each other forever and grow old together. I’d like to have a baby with said mate, joining the two of us together in a new little person.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with feelings like that. It’s how men and women were created, to want someone else, to be with someone else. Regardless of your views of marriage, there are still a lot of people in the world who want to have that other someone in their life in a commitment of experiencing life together.

Well, that’s not what he wants, at least not right now. And, being the sensible person that I am, I didn’t get all bent out of shape about it. I did have my own little time of turmoil of wondering if I should stick to the relationship just because we were so damn good together. But after a while, thoughts that I was second guessing myself crept in. I started to feel like while this guy was probably the closest thing to my Mr. Right that I would ever get, maybe I was missing someone else at the same time, someone who shared the same desires that I had.

I let him know what I wanted in life, and he let me know what he wanted. After quite some time of considering and talk of ending our relationship, and actually doing so for a whopping 24 hours, I decided that I loved this man more than I had ever loved anyone, and I’d rather spend some time with him – as much as possible – than to walk off without him and have nothing.

I decided that I’d give up or put on hold the things I wanted: a family unit.  After all, I could never push him into something he didn’t want or wasn’t ready for. I knew I was taking a big risk by giving up my own desires: doing that in the past got me stuck in an unhealthy and unsafe relationship, and it caused a lot of damage. But this was different – this guy, while selfish in many ways (and I mean putting self first, not Scrooge-like or uncaring for others) was not going to intentionally inflict harm or pain on me. He just wasn’t giving up on what he wanted.

I could wait for him to change his mind and maybe in a few years if we were still together then he and I would be on the same page for our lives, but the risks here are obvious. What if he changes his mind about ME? What if I’M not on the same page anymore? What if I can’t have any more children? So many what if’s were scary for me, but after spending a good almost 10 years alone, I didn’t want to lose the happiness that he brought to my life NOW.

We got back together again, but part of my heart was hurt and broken. Subconsciously I felt rejected and uncared for because I was willing to sacrifice for our relationship but he wasn’t, nor did he seem to notice or care that I would give up so much for him.

This became a huge burden for me to keep to myself, but as I always do, I shoved my emotions deep down inside and ignored them, and I forced myself to only look at the good times of the relationship.

Throughout our whole dating experience, I never was the girl who would drop hints (or make outright demands) that we get married. 3, 6, 9 and 12-month anniversaries came and went and I never expected that he’d surprise me with a confession of his undying love for me. I never expected that he’d choose me to be his one and only, I never expected that he’d love me the way I loved him and saw me as the rest of who he was.

I was never that girlfriend, and I tried to love and accept him for what he was, and where he was in life, too.

But something has to give when all you do is give to everyone else in life, and one day you realize that you’ve neglected yourself for so long that you don’t know who you are. And when that time comes in the midst of losing a job and dealing with other not-so-normal stresses, you realize that you don’t have the energy to keep all these people happy all the time, feeling like you’re getting not much in return.

I felt like he was getting his cake and eating it too. I felt like I was keeping nothing for myself, but giving all away. I felt like I was cheating myself out of the life I truly wanted and I also felt like I was doing a disservice to my children, who were a constant source of strain on our relationship since he was not used to kids and saw them as an an interruption and nuisance to our relationship.

So we had yet another one of our talks, or maybe it was an email. I’m not sure what happened, but I decided that this just wasn’t working out because after 13 months of dating, we couldn’t progress.

He wanted to be with me as often as possible, he wanted every benefit that a woman would give a husband – but yet we can’t get a place together, we can’t do things with the kids because it makes him uncomfortable, we can’t talk about what getting married would look like because – in his tongue in cheek manner – he’d say that I was after his soul (and his money ha ha isn’t that funny).

It just didn’t make sense to play house with someone who wanted to play house but didn’t want to play house. Yeah you read that right.

So we ended it. He went out of town for a few days and we didn’t see each other or talk much.

Then, he surprised me.

I’m leaving

I’m going away

I’m getting in a taxi

heading to the airport

He doesn’t stop me.

My heart breaks.