My Promise

Every time, she leaves me whether it's to go to school or to visit her father, I always promise her. "I will come back. Mommy will always be here for you."

It's that promise that keeps me alive today. Because I swear, I want out.

Who Am I?

That is the question, my mom has challenged me to answer. You think it would come easy. I am this or I am that, but I find myself staring at a blank page with no real answer.

Let Me Let Go

I don't get it. The hell this man has put me throw. The pain he caused me, and now he has found new love and it hurts like hell. I should be celebrating. I should be dancing, yet I sit at home crying.

I thought I had let him go. I really did, but this news has made it very clear that I haven't, so God, you haven't heard much of my prayers lately, but I am down on my knees with this one -- Let Me Let go. Please, let me let go.

The Leap

"The jump is so frightening between where I am and where I want to be...because of all I may become I will close my eyes and leap!"
Author: Mary Anne Radmacher


I need to believe that more than ever today. There is some lesson in all this madness. I just have to find it and learn from it.

I am not dead

I am just…I don't have a word for it. Some days, I wake up delighted to take on the day, to seek out whatever new challenge there is. I am excited to be going to school to learning something new. Then on other days, just getting up is a chore. My motivation is lacking and all I want to do is sleep.

It's not depression really. It's honestly something I can't define. I just know that lately I am watching the seconds of my life tick away faster than I can keep up with. It is just a strange zone, abut will update more often. I promise.

One Day at a Time

I took some positive steps today. I hope that means the “happy pills” are kicking in. I actually got off the sofa and cleaned the house. Tonight for the first time in almost three weeks, I will be sleeping in my bed.

Tomorrow, I will talk to a professor about whether the program his school offers would be a good match for me. I am contemplating taking my writing and journalist skills into the digital world with a Masters in Digital Media. I actually get excited when I contemplate this prospect. I see possibilities with it.

Not so much with the job hunt. I came across two horror stories today that just fill me with dread.

One is a coworker who was laid off in June 2008, and she still hasn’t found a job. She is ready to give up. The other was a comment a perfect strange made in the supermarket.

I was there with the woman I consider the baby’s second mother, when she bumped into an old friend.

It was a casual question: “Are you still doing the medical thing?”

The stranger shook her head: “Nope, there were just no jobs. I took what I could. There were just no jobs anywhere.”

That is when everything inside me turns cold with fear. It’s the same thing I hear over and over again – no jobs.

But then there are stories like the one of another coworker who was laid off the same time as me. Within a week she had a new job.

Couldn’t I be one those lucky ones? Just this one time couldn’t I be? I am seriously trying not to stress it as I continue to send out resumes and look over job boards.

Right now I am looking at things like this. I made it through today. Tomorrow is yet to come, so just take it one day at time.

Me vs. Normal

Here is the thing about me; I am just a little bit touched. That’s how I like to describe it – just a little bit touched. Isn’t that better than saying I am slightly insane or that I suffer from chronic depression. Over the years I have develop ways to cope, to appear like one of the normals.

However, when shit happens I can’t keep up that façade. I need to withdraw from public light. I basically go into isolation. I don’t answer phone calls. I talk to no one. I see no one. It’s just me and all my crazy thoughts, going around and around in my head until finally they make sense. Only then do I emerge and let friends in.

I understand that other people do it differently. Normal people function differently. They let their friends in. They talk it out with friends. I can’t, not until I have some basic foundation to stand on.

I did that last week when I lost the job. I withdrew, turned off the phone, didn’t return phone calls. It was just me and the baby. I took pleasure in just watching her, while my thoughts tried to center themselves, to find some hope for the future.
Now according to one of my normal friends, I am rude hypocrite for doing that.

I know where she is coming from. She copes the normal way. For her that means talking to friend or at least a text that says, “I’m ok.” For that reason, I apologize to her. It seems that isn’t enough, and it’s precisely the reason I avoid friendships with people I consider normal.

If you aren’t a little bit touch in some way, then you aren’t going to understand how I cope. You are going to get upset, get offended and take it personally. You are going to tell me I am wrong that I need a better way to cope.

Then, I am just going to quietly back away from you because I have tried it the normal way and the pressure of trying to keep up the façade inevitable leads to me cracking, and I literally end up in the nuthouse. I have learnt that before I can deal with anyone, I have to deal with me, and unfortunately that means a withdrawal from the world.

My friends that are a bit touch get this. When I am in isolation, they will text, send me little words of hope, but don’t take offense that I don’t answer them. They wait for me to come to them, and welcome me with open arms when I do. The flipside is I have to deal with them when they get their little touch epos ides. However, like them, it’s always an open harm welcome when we emerge.

The point of this whole ramble is that I have lost a friend, in addition to a job – sigh. I need to stick to my own rules. Don’t ever become friend with a normal, no matter how nice they are. Why because it’s inevitable that when I sink into isolation they will get piss, and I will lose a friend when I am at my vulnerable point.

Dear God

Every night I go to bed, I utter the same pray to you: “Help me provide for her.”
When I was pregnant it was: “Help me provide for this new life.”

Instead, the pregnancy became complicated and I was put on three months of bed rest. Suddenly, my paycheck was cut in half. The mortgage grew and the bills piled up. In the end, I fell behind on the mortgage and now the house is in foreclosure.
She came and I got back to work. Income was coming in, but it wasn’t enough – not with daycare payments. That was a second mortgage. Then her father started the custody to avoid paying child support.

I wipe out my 401k. Half goes toward a lawyer for the baby and the other for a lawyer for the house. Now it looks like the house will be saved, but today, I lost my job. I can’t pay a mortgage now, even a reduced one. I was one of 50 laid off in what was the third round of cuts in a year and half. Hey, I was lucky to survive a year.

So tonight as I do every night, I will pray from the very depth of my soul. “Dear God, please help me provide for her.”

But looking at how the last year and half as gone, I don’t think he is listening.

Faith where are you?

I wake up exhausted and getting through the day wears me out. It‘s like I took a wrong turn somewhere and can’t seem to get back on the right path.

If I am honest with myself it is about money. I have some major financial issue coming up – decision about the mortgage and whether or not the state will continue to assist me with child care. I have been living with the uncertainty for so long; you think I would be use to it by now. But no -- it’s eating away at me. I want answers now so I can start planning. I also think part of the frustration is that now instead of waiting 6 to 9 months for answers – that was far away -- off in the distance. I now only have a month and a half. It’s so close. It’s like the closer it gets the more anxious I get.

The last six months have been good – financial. Despite the challenges we somehow survived, and I want to believe that whatever the decisions we will survive still, but it is so hard. I am overcome with the what ifs. What if the state says I make too much and I have to pay full price for daycare? That is $500 a month – where do I find that. What if…?

Faith – I need to have faith

Ready to Snap

Maybe it has something to do with half the electricity in my house dying at 2 a.m. this morning. One minute I was fast asleep listening to her on the baby monitor, the next it was dead silence. I jumped out of bed and looked on the monitor. It was working, but I couldn’t hear her. I rushed into her room and flip the switch to turn on the light – nothing.

At that time, I also noticed the AC was dead; everything on that side of the house was dead. I got a flashlight. First, I checked her, still breathing and still sleeping – good. I flip the circuit breaker, nothing. The lights, the AC, nothing – at last on that side of the house.

“There is nothing you can do,” I told myself. “Go back to bed, deal with it tomorrow.”

The problem was I laid there and couldn’t close my eyes. I couldn’t get my mind to stop racing through the possibility – electrical rewiring, the AC blew, or maybe both – with each thought I saw money on wings flying out the window.

I called my sister, and her husband. He rambled on about how it could be up to $4,000to rewire a house. That didn’t help. I went on the web to do some research. It didn’t help.

By 7 a.m. I am in tears and on the phone with my mom. “I can’t take anymore. It’s the money. I have no money left. More is going out than coming in. No more, no more,” I cried.

She calm me down and reminded me of what is important – the beautiful little one who by now was wake and making her demands. She suggested we make it McDonald’s morning, but first call the power company maybe it was something on their end.

I took her advice halfheartedly. After all giving my luck lately it couldn’t be the power company. It had to be something bigger, something more dramatic. My frantic mind demanded that. Thank the Lord, my frantic mind didn’t rule today. It was the power company issue – a fault neutral in the meter.

By the end of the day, the issue was fixed, but I haven’t been fixed. I am cranky, unhappy, worried and stressed out. It could be court date coming up. It could be the lack of sleep. It could just be life.

Blah

That is me these days…weeks. Next week, we have a court hearing coming up. It’s to address the issue of a paternity test, temporary visitation, custody and child support, and “MrNiceGuy” is making my life hell with lots of phone calls, instant messages and texts.

Basically, he doesn’t want the hearing. He wants us to go back to the proposed paternity settlement agreement , where he gets a $200 cut in child support, gets 6-12 months before he has to pay and can stop paying should he lose his job, yet again.

Needless to say, I have my issues with that proposal, and my attorney is pushing for the hearing. So “MrNiceGuy” is nowthreatening that if we have to go to a hearing, it’s going to get nasty. He will also try to get rotating custody where she spends one week with me another week with him. He is unemployed, but still can’t make time to spend one day in the week with her, but he wants a whole week. As a part of his threat he says, “I don’t want that, but if you push this I will have no choice.”

So yeah I am blah.

Justice Where is it?

I hate him. I really do. I never knew and never really felt what hate was until him. I HATE him. It’s a blinding I want to hurt, destroy him kind of hate, and it’s bad because its destroying me too. Every weekend it comes time to hand her over to him, it kills me. How can he in one breath deny her, but in the next make demands to see her and the courts insist he has a right.

He helps in no way with child support hasn’t since she was born, and yet I have to let him see her, play the great big daddy and take her to all sorts of places, yet next week I have a hearing to hand over my house to the bank. I am losing everything around me, and he still has it all. How the fuck can this be fair.

I was taught that in life if you were good and fair life would treat you that way too. Then where is the fairness, where is the justice. I want justice damit.

Today

...is one of those days, I would like to let the blood flow, just to stop this ache. Abandoned and alone just when I need them the most. Fuck family.

Dark Days

“Trust in the lord to take you through,” she says.

I remain silent. It offers little comfort. I am losing my faith in the lord. I am losing my faith in faith. I am losing hope.

It’s the third day in a row, a friend or a sitter is putting my little one to bed because I have to work. As I drive to my meeting, tears streaming down my face, I wonder why?

Why am I in this job?

Why do I sacrifice moments with her for a job where I am continually a target? Some days I am targeted by people in the community, and other’s a target in the workplace. For the past couple of weeks, I have been both.

Letters, emails from both sides to my bosses complaining, making accusations. Notes on websites --complaining, making accusations. This kind of focused, organized, irrational hatred is new to me. I am struggling with how to deal with it?

As a good friend of my mines put it, “You'd think things like this would be behind you after high school.”

I pull into the parking lot but don’t have the energy to get out. I am back to why?

There is no financial payout – not anymore. I don’t make enough to pay my bills – not anymore, not with a new baby. In fact, my home is about to be foreclosed on.

“You are in a noble profession,” I try to tell myself, but it doesn’t have that same feeling anymore. Usually, when I say that it would warm me, reassure me that I was making a difference. Now, I just feel fed up and frustrated. The nobility is gone. Now it’s just a job.

I find my warmth and nobility in her. It’s a marvel watching her discover her world a little more each day. She is trying to crawl. She squirms a little, then pulls up on all fours, rock back and forth, before collapsing back on her tummy. It’s a matter of moments, but each and every second is priceless.

It is in those moments that I have my focus. It in those moments I see light in the dark days.