April Showers

Well here is is April and here I am blogging...amazing! I always hesitate to go back and read past posts because I have such a tendency to change my mind that I sometimes wish I could erase them. But then I realize that there's no need to, I felt that way that day and today I may feel differently. And there's not one thing wrong with that.

What I feel differently about today is yet again the state of my relationship. Had a good session with Mary last night, I am more clear but again feel overwhelmed by all that there will be to do in order to get where I want to be. Jan and I see our couples therapist later this week, I wonder, will I be able to lower the boom? I am so ready...but not ready...Jan must sense it because she tried a couple of times to bait me into a fight last night but I wouldn't play. She can't not know by now that the end is near. But like Mary said I need to go slowly, pick two or three things that I am not willing to compromise on and stick to my guns...she sees where this is headed though and thankfully I am starting to see it and be OK with it as well. Like she said, it won't be popular with everyone but everyone isn't the one who is living this life!

On other fronts, I didn't even get an interview for the position I applied for at PDP which pisses me off indeed. Girls are in California with their Dad for the week, having a blast I am sure. Miss them, hope they are soaking up every minute of it.

Wow I truly suck at this

Oh well, I do what I can, right?

Let me see, what's the latest? Survived the Holidays AND hosting Rachel's Sweet Sixteen Party, two incredible achievements if you ask me. The Holidays were pretty easy to get through, the gilrs make it fun and even though Christmas Eve was a bit of a cluster fuck at least it was over rather quickly.

Rachel's party was a big success, and quite frankly a chance for me to say a backhanded "fuck all y'all" to everyone who, when I came out and left my husband, had the audacity to berate me for what they feared would be the WORST THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO THOSE POOR INNOCENT CHILDREN...who have survived, no, thrived, as best as any could given the circumstances. Having my ex-husband, his wife and their three year old son at the party was just the icing on the cake! So yeah, that was a sweet bit of gloating I got to do and I damn well deserved the opportunity to do it.

Now we're in February, the shortest and third least annoying month of the year (after March and November). Jan just had knee surgery and is making a good recovery. We're in counseling which is helping and I continue to see Mary my amazing therapist and that is helping as well. I think maybe I am beginning to feel more hopeful about the relationship, at least less pessimistic. I still crave my alone time and fantasize about being alone full time but not as much as before. There are and will always be things about Jan that drive me batty and I know for certain there will be days I want to run far far away...but they're less frequent and easier for me to manage now that the lines of communication are opening up. I also have to be honest and take responsiblity for treating her like the enemy a lot of the time, something I was taught to do by watching my parents all these years.

We did decide to take advantage of what may be our last chance to go to Mexico, if only it were sooner, we have to get almost all the way through March before the trip but that will be quite an incentive to stay busy and make the time pass more quickly.

I applied for another job at PDP, haven't heard anything although I know from experience that their process is terribly slow. I don't know if I would be a serious contender for the job but I figured I have nothing to lose by throwing my hat in the ring, and a potential 25K annual salary increase to gain so it was a no brainer.

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.