Ok, been a while....

Let's see, what's been happening. Well, my latest obsession, electoral politics, paid off handsomly when Barack Obama was elected on Nov. 4th. Like many, I wept tears of joy, relief, sadness, grief, you name it. I have moved on to obsessively reading everything I can get my hands on that deconstructs both the Obama and McCain campaigns and find myself feeling quite awestruck about the effectiveness of the Obama strategy. They really dug in and focused on the 50 state approach that Dean was promoting and the payoff is rather sweet. And to think that Sarah Palin had the gall to mock community organizing, which appropriately was the undoing of her lofty and utterly outrageous aspirations. Ahhh sweet victory...

Now I am trying to keep my fears for Obama and his family's safety from overcoming my happiness at his election. Watching the 60 minutes interivew the other night, I kept having this sense of excitement coupled with a sense of dread, wondering if it is possible that this man and his family can survive this presidency. I have faith in his protection but the looming anniversary of Kennedy's murder makes me nervous all the same.

In other arenas life goes on much as usual...work remains somewhat unfulfilling and the tone of State government has grown so dour that it feels at times that all is lost. There is so much that the children and families who receive the services our agency oversees need that we are unable to provide or unwilling to figure out how to provide that it makes the effort feel futile. The rising poverty will undoubtedly create a higher demand while the shrinking financial pot will make meeting that demand even more difficult. The impending Holidays are likely to be anything but merry for many.

Home life continues to challenge tremendously. I have reached a point where the choice is clear but the ability to exercise it does not yet exist. I am financially trapped in a relationship I no longer want and feel like there is no end in sight. The future losses that will accompany its end are hard to imagine. This is the result of my own tendency to build my life around another, a tendency which I seem to repeat over and over again...and one I will need to be keenly aware of should I ever consider another romantic entanglement in the future (though that thought seems totally unimaginable at the present moment). For now I live in a house of tension.

My girls, on the other hand, are thriving in spite of it. They are my constant affirmation that I am not completely screwed up, that I do have good instincts as a mother and that although there will surely be tough times ahead, I can honestly say I am raising good people. That is a miracle in itself and one I need to remind myself of almost constantly. The choices that I have made, especially the ones I would like to use to beat myself up, have not caused permanent damage that cannot be ameliorated. There will be resentments and pain, no parent can totally escape that. But in the end I think that the world will be a better place because of my children being in it.

Long time no post

Dang it I just can't get into the groove of this. Plus I vascillate between wanting others to read it and not wanting them too, especially because I vented so strongly in my first feldgling posts about my girl...so it's not like I will be sending her or anyone we know to the blog. Which is a bummer because if Iwant to morph it into something more public or generic I would have to go back and delete those posts. I guess that's doable but then those posts were the truth of those days just like this one is the truth of today. And I still get maniacly pissed at my girl all the time and would probably find myself posting about it in the future...hmmmm just not sure what to do.

In any event much of my attention lately has been on the upcoming election - 3weeks! - and the incredible amount of fucking up being committed by the McCain campaign. I wouldn't ever in a million years vote republican and I have been in Obama's corner for a long time. I think I am quite frankly stunned at what a colossal screw up McCain has shown himself to be as the election approaches. In picking Sarah Palin, the most uniquely unqualified VP candidate in history (sorry Dan Quayle, you've been replaced), in refusing to articulate any policy statements about anything, in inciting racism and fear at rallies and in wandering around like someone who forgot to take their Aracept during a debate. It's as though the universe has stacked the deck so high against McCain that there is no way that he can recvover. It'a about damn time too.

Other than that I have been trying to deal with my anger towards my parents as related to my mother's breast cancer and their usual self absorbed reaction to it. I have anger issues, it seems. Maybe I am more like McCain than I care to admit! I think I am trying to find a way to be OK with being angry. I don't want to become an angry person...but then I realize I am in many ways. So it's hard to strike a balance.

I am also more and more obsessed with wanting to take better care of myself and at the same time realizing that I am a pretty lazy person. I keep thinking that results will motivate me while at the same time not doing anything to create results.

I am so fucking human.

I really mean it this time

OK so I know I said I was going to post more frequently on this blog but I haven't lived up to it. Oh well, what can I say? After some of my first few posts were so laden with anger I felt sort of sheepish to post when I am not angry...but the anger posts are necessary for me, they help me to clarify and figure out what's bugging me and give me a chance to just vent like a maniac. The thing is I am not always like that and I have this problem with the idea that I am a changeable person. I really get stuck sometimes, thinking that if I take a certain position on something there is absolutely no room for changing my mind. I must have picked this notion up as a kid and it's caused me a lot of grief over the years. The funny thing is that I change my external situation all the time, partners, jobs, apartments / houses you name it I am frequently changing something. So then I wonder if that's a way to over compensate for this strange inner belief that the one thing I can't change is my mind. But by making all those other changes I am changing my mind...oh what the fuck it's so complicated isn't it?

Anyway, things are relatively steady right now. As much as I have painted a very negative view of my girlfriend, remember, that was just venting! We're in a better place now than we have been in the past, things seem to be solidifying for us as a couple. I am learning acceptance of her and probably more importantly of myself. I realize that much of the anger I put out there about her is really about my own fears and insecurities. I have been working in therapy to admit them, which is painful enough, but to also try to get rid or minimize them which is excruciating. But it's working and it feels really good.

My kids are on vacation with their stepmother / step grandmother so we're living it up. Partied like rock stars over the weekend and even bought "Rock Band" to back it up. It's a lot harder than I imagined but I am getting the hang of it. I do enjoy the feeling of strapping on that fake guitar and whaling on those fake drums! Maybe I missed my calling...if there is such a thing as a calling to play fake instruments in the comfort of your own living room.

I have been trying to keep up with my reading, news/blogs/mags/books, you name it. It feeds me! Although it does make me nervous at times when I see the nastiness that goes on in blog-land. I am grateful that no one has read this one as far as I know but on the other hand it excites me to imagine it getting read...maybe I will get brave someday and let other people know about it but for now I feel OK with being unknown out there. I do comment once in a while on other blogs, not very often though. I am not sure my fragile ego could take what I see out there if someone really disliked this blog.

Well that's good for today. Hopefully I won't go so long before I make myself do this again...

OK, so I think I am back to square one. I am back in that feeling of wanting to be single again. It's a feeling that comes around for me over and over again, only this time it's different, I feel it not in anger but more as a possibility. Like a promise to myself that I can have what I want and I don't have to sacrifice it anymore.

I have been listening to a book about the law of attraction and it's helping me to see that I am living a life of "don't wants" and that I focus on that way too much. I am stuck in a pattern of negative thought, feeling and energy, all in a vain attempt to figure out what's wrong with me, Jan, my parents, my kids, my boss, you name it. I am finally coming to realize that staying in this emotional pit of anger is holding me back and making me feel stuck (and sick). For the longest time I have waited for a sign, something to come from the outside, that will "unstick" me. I waited to change, I waited for everyone else to change. I see now that all this waiting is the reason I am stuck.

I tried to break up with Jan not long after we got together. Something in my intuition was telling me it wasn't the right time, or she wasn't the right person, or I wasn't the right person for her. But she pulled me back. I have been trying to break up with her about every three months or so ever since, and in the meantime I have ramped up the stakes all along, by moving in with her, sharing a house and all the responsibilities that entails, bringing us together with the kids to try to make a family and so on, and in the meantime I want out. Every time I get really solid with that decision, she manages to break me down and I stay. So I am waiting now for the right time to tell her and I really think that the only way is for me to start making plans and being absolutely ready.

There is a part of me that is incredibly sad to think that this is going to happen again. There's a part of me that knows that other people are going to be "disappointed" that we are breaking up. There's a part of me that knows that I am going to hurt Jan tremendously by doing this. But none of that makes staying somewhere that is causing me this pain worth it. The pain is emotional, spiritual, and physical. I have been sick the whole time we have been together, and I realize now that it's because I needed something from her that I wasn't getting so I had to create a way to get it. I am manifesting what is missing in our relationship with illness, and I can't do that to my body anymore.

I have to stop waiting for things to change and change them myself.

An open letter to my father:

I am told I need to write this to you even though I am resisting doing it. I feel that by taking the time to write it I am giving something up, my time, my energy, my pride, you name it.

Whatever the case I am going to try to write down some thoughts about being in St Croix with you this Spring. Mainly about how your seeming inability to censor yourself causes pain for me. You are constantly describing women in sexual terms, young girls too. Girls the same age as your granddaughters. It reminds me of when I was their age and I was constantly worried about my breast size and whether or not I would ever "measure up", a fear that led me into too many scary and painful sexual situations (the biggie being the time I gave you the chance to grant me approval). I realize I was desperate to prove that I could be wanted with my little A cup body, and it made me have a totally distorted understanding of what power is. I though I was powerful because I could attract sex, that I was in control when I gave it away so easily, that I would be truly appreciated once I showed ho "good" I was at it.

Some days I even question whether or not identifying as gay was a swing of the pendulum in the other direction, a way to throw all that sexualization of me by you in your face. It's like I needed to take myself out of the running for your sick thoughts, but I probably just fueled them on a whole new level. Now I have to worry about bringing my friends around because I am sure it is so utterly titillating for you.

So now almost 12 years since I came out, after a marriage, two failed relationships, and one that I question daily, I am trying to figure out if any decision I have made about relationships has been about what I want. I find I am almost totally incapable of trusting myself to know what that is. I can't settle down, I can't be happy where I am, I crave aloneness so that I don't have to trust another person because I don't trust myself. I am on a see-saw of emotion every day, wanting to embrace my life and relationship with Jan one minute and wanting to reject and abandon it the next. I never get through one singe day without it being a tug of war between those two extremes.

I believe that it was the schizophrenic nature of my childhood that causes this blocking for me. On one hand you extol the virtues of feminism and on the other you are all about tits and ass. You try to come off as the sensitive enlightened guy and yet you speak to my mother like she's incompetent, useless, not sexy and weak. You expect everyone to bend to your will and you act like a spoiled two year old when you don't get your way. You aren't willing to do anything for yourself and you're killing yourself with alcohol.

All of this makes me reluctant to bring Rachel and Sarah around because you have no impulse control. They are aware of it and thankfully they see it as something wrong with you and not with them. This is why the girls will not be spending the summer with you and Mom. It's not about them wanting to work locally, it's about me not wanting to worry about what you're going to do or say that will cross the line. It's about not wanting them to have porn sites featuring girls as young looking as them pop up on your computer. It's about how much you drink and that you drive when you're drinking. It's about the way you talk to Mom and belittle her and think it's perfectly acceptable.

Ok so after I wrote the post the other day slamming my girlfriend I felt bad about it and by the end of the night I had convinced myself that it was really my parents and not her that I was angry with and that I was being unfairly critical of her. That lasted about a day and now the anger is back. I don't know why I have such a hard time accepting that the way I feel is the way I feel and that I need to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

In the meantime I was in the tub last night thinking about my anger towards my parents...well really I started thinking about a conversation I had just had with my younger daughter in which I felt particularly ineffective as a parent. The problem was that she got herself into a situation that was causing her great stress and by the time she opened up to me about it there wasn't much I could do to help her. So when I pointed that out to her she became even more frustated and began to take her anger at herself out on me. Well, she's thirteen so what would I expect?

So in the tub I got to thinking about it all and how I let my feelings about my parents dictate way too much of my feelings about myself and that maybe I need to shift to focusing on my own kids and my parenting of them in order to get out of the rut. That seemed like a fairly reasonable idea so I think I will go with it. It's not always going to be easy but I think my kids deserve a parent who isn't still stuck in her own emotional adolescence.

Ok, back to my girlfriend. The thing is that every time I am around her or she calls me while I am at work I get this burning pit in my stomach. I dread to see her car pull into the driveway after work. I feel like she is so judgemental and such a reactor and I do not choose that for myself so why do I accept it from her? I am furious with myself for letting this go so long. I feel like I have literally condemmed myself to a life of misery with her because I don't want another break up for me or for my kids. But I FUCKING HATE HER. No, make that I FUCKING HATE MYSELF WHEN I AM AROUND HER. That would be more accurate. I can be having a perfectly nice day and she will call me at work and I feel the stomach pit come on and then it's over, I am angry and bitter and bitchy toward her the rest of the day.

I know she deserves better and so do I. I have tried and tried to turn this around and it doesn't work. I resent her presence in my life and in the kids lives and I wish she would take the fucking hint and just LEAVE. But she won't because, see, she loves me. But what the fuck - if this is her grand version of what being in love is, take it elsewhere I am not interested.

Right now, anyway...

I woke up this morning st around 5:30. Felt OK for a few minutes, then the anxiety started creeping in. Relatively quickly it turned into anger. Bad anger, gut churning anger, if I don't stay angry I am going to cry like a baby anger. About what I am not totally sure. I suspect, though, that is is because my girlfriend is coming home today after staying with a friend's daughter for two nights. I don't have a specific complaint, she didn't do anything to piss me off (well, that's an overstatement, she does things all the time that piss me off), and yet the idea of her being home makes me want to scream and cry and run away.

I am tired of pretending that I want this relationship to work. I am tired of stuffing my feelings all the time when I know it's going to hurt only me in the end. I am tired of living with someone so self righteous, so totally incapable of personal insight, so completely convinced of her own superiority that I want to drag her down into the depths of my own anger and shove it in her fave. Repeatedly and often. I feel like I am so on the edge.

I need to start making plans. I need to stop trying to fake this. I don't love her. I don't even like her. She's rude, overbearing. insecure and an intellectual midget. She sees everything in black and white and can't get her head around the grey. She thinks she the God given authority on parenting yet she's abandoned two kids she's helped to raise. She's a total asshole. And her breath smells like ass.

I have to stop focusing on what I would be giving up if I leave her and concentrate on what I will gain. I will be able to parent my kids the way I want to. I will be able to choose who I spend my time with. I will read all the time and not have her bugging me for attention. I will be able to attend to my own needs on my terms in my way without having to constantly defend myself. I won't have to withhold information because I am afraid of how she will react, even when I know her reaction is ridiculous. I won't have to feel guilty for not wanting to have sex with her.

I want to be in charge of my life again.

Long Time Coming

OK trying this again...

Seems like every time I start one of these (blogs, that is), I post for about a month and then lose interest. So here we go again? Maybe. I do know that I have been itching to journal lately and that I can't find my journal that is made of actual bound paper on which I write with an actual pen...so this will have to suffice. And, maybe, surpass.

So much to say I don't hardly know where to begin. I started this blog just shy of my 41st birthday and now 42 is less than a month away. How can that be? Not to mention that my cousin who I bounced on my knees at four months recently turned 30. That itself is unbelievable to me. Add that my parents are pushing seventy (well, if pushing starts at 65 anyway) and I am the mother of not one but two teenagers and you have a head that spins sometimes with the craziness of it all. I feel like David Byrne, constantly wanting to say to myself "Well, how did I get here?"

It's a long and winding story and one that will undoubtedly unfold over time, if I manage to not lose interest in telling it again. To try to sum it up in one post would overhwelm so I was thinking I would start with some basics.

Year of my birth: 1966
Place of my birth: Amsterdam, NY
One sibling, a brother, three years older
Where I grew up: Claverack, Cobleskill, Albany before age 6, then Fayetteville NY from age 6 to age 23, Geneva NY for College
Where I have lived for 19 years: Capital Region of New York State, sometimes in Schenectady, sometimes in Albany, very briefly in Clifton Park, now back in Schenectady

That's probably enough for now. Clearly, my horizons in life haven't been very horizon-like. I have done some traveling, but for the most part I have stayed within the confines of New York state. I have a hard time imagining living in another state although the idea of a shorter, less snowy winter is gaining in appeal every year. So as my kids get older and start looking to spread their wings I might be looking to do the same, at least part time. My dream life would be to live somewhere warm during the winter months, maybe South Carolina, and on the Cape in the Summer. Someday, perhaps.

For now though I live and work here in the hub of New York State government. It's an interesting place to be, especially in recent days as our governor, who was elected in a landslide and pretty much proclaimed that he was a superhero, fell so stunningly from grace. Because I work in a state office there was a sense among us that we "owned" this story, we would possibly be effected on a more tangible level than non state workers. We huddled around radios and computers as each shocking detail was revealed. We theorized about how a person could be so stupid, so arrogant, did he want to get caught? What was he thinking? Why do men always think with their dicks? etc....Of course, it's a few weeks later now and we have a new governor, who made a statement almost immediately after taking office about his own extra-marital indiscretions, and the dust has settled. It was a fun distraction while it lasted.