running
I am going
towards a finish
towards a beginning
towards a crossroads
towards you
towards me
towards us
two words
that don't belong
together
love
leaving
alliteration notwithstanding

running
I am going
to be free
to be strong
to be here

We have your dreams for sale.

I want to get a really good planner that I can draw and scribble and notate in, much like I used to do on my wall calendars, back in the day.

I need to commit to some patterns, with the leeway for some sideways motion. I like structure, I just don't like unyielding structure. Structure, like most other things in my life, must exist in the gray matter between life's black and white absolutes. My Bug is about to enter Kindergarten, my Boo is more independent (although still insistent that my presence is mostly necessary), and my HMLA has his new job, so I can, in theory, come home to write on my lunch hour, since I already come home to bask in the silence and do dishes and laundry if there are any to get ahead with. School is steadily progressing and I am in my last term of foundational courses; after this term it's psych courses all day, e'ryday, beginning with neuropsychology(!). I need my writing, though. It's one of the last few things I need to make room for in this rehabilitation and renovation of our lives together. We made it through the fire, and much like a burnt lawn, we're growing up greener for it.

Just Breathe

I feel like I'm going to pass out. Like, need to put my head between my legs and breathe for a minute. Not because of anything bad, well, it does accentuate poor decisions currently being made by other people, but the news is good. The news is overwhelming. I think I'm in shock.

Suddenly, suddenly, my already positive progression towards a more stable financial future has been sped up by light years. (I know that's not a scientifically sound analogy, but it's what it feels like.)

For some background, my father had co-signed on a personal loan for me so that I could consolidate credit card debts, back taxes from self-employment overdue, and my car payment, so that I could have one payment per month. It was a grand total of $30,000. I have been paying steadily for the past 4 years, and figured I had about 4 more years until it was done. Or, sooner, if I could turn my degree that I am obtaining in 2019, into a job advancement with a pay raise.

Today's paycheck is the one that made this month's loan payment, and I was informed that it was the last one I had to make. Because, my parent's said, my brother had gotten married this year, and they had helped fund his dream wedding. When I got married, the hubs and I went down to the courthouse the afternoon before I was scheduled to give birth to our second daughter and, without telling anyone, we got married by the judge in the tiny gazebo next to the pond, with our oldest daughter as our best of everything. It's one of the weird things no one else can understand but that my hubs and I thought was highly entertaining; my brother in law didn't even know we'd gotten married until a year later. We just kind of let the news trickle out as it did. Like I said, it was amusing to us and the marriage was really only about and between us anyway. We had talked about maybe, in the future sometime, having a "wedding" that would be more like a big anniversary party. (I never wanted a white wedding, anyway, I've always wanted a red wedding dress.) I never asked or expected my parents to fund a wedding of mine. Apparently, my parents have been plotting for years to give me my "wedding fund", by paying my personal loan in full once I reached the amount they had set aside as fair for my wedding, in regards to what they helped fund for my brother's wedding.

I reached that amount today, and now my biggest debt (outside of school loans) is paid. It's paid. It's paid. I cried. I'm still in shock. I'm so awed and grateful.

I'm also just heartbroken that today put an impediment in the way of my family's future happiness, and until I can get someone to talk to me, and really hear me, and really listen to me, and really believe in me.....there's no guarantee that impediment won't become a wall, which will then become a gulf, which will then become the ocean between continents.

I will never understand choosing anger over love, darkness over light, or hope over despair. Especially when the hardest part of the turning had already occurred, and we were already in the home stretch.

What have you done?

Now, I can increase my endeavors towards accelerating my schooling and my life coach certification and establishing myself outside of my "day job".

'Tis the song, the sigh of the weary
Hard times, hard times come again no more
Many days you have lingered
Around my cabin door
Oh hard times come again no more

Don't Look Back in Anger, or Forward either for that matter

I still have hope.

Perhaps naively, or in a fantastically optimistic way.

but

I still have hope. I have to have it. I have to believe that somehow, somehow, somehow, you will be able to re-see the truth of me. I have to believe it. I have to believe it until you do.

It can't really be impossible, can it?

Everybody Sings the Song

Stay with me
I have climbed mountains for you
I have been half-drowned in ditches
for you, I have
lost my voice, my voice
has broken and then
been reborn.
Stay.
Don't just linger on
in time
in memory
in pixels and particles of light
that hang suspended
like storylines,
stay for the credit
stay for the end
and even beyond that
into the light that follows.
Stay
your hand, your anger
stay the execution
the ending
the finality of
goodbye, a sentence
an order
that jails us into
black and white and denies
us
denies us the option
of each other.
Stay.

Run, Girl

Well, I guess all of my outdoor walk/run workouts have paid off. I made a triumphant return to the elliptical after months of inaction, and did an easy 4.18 miles, burning 581 calories - this is easily double what I was averaging on the elliptical prior to my hiatus. I watched the first episode of the Man in the High Castle during this run, so I guess that'll be my running show for now. Next goal is 5 miles per episode, then. Afterward, I lay in the tanning bed for 5 minutes and got so excited when I realized that for the first time in over 5 years (thank you pregnancies) I could feel the outline of my hip bones and the dip in my stomach when I lay down on my back. I can't focus on it too much, the elephant graveyard is hidden in the rhapsodizing over bones, but I did want to note that it was exciting in a completely non-disordered way.

So, here's another song dedication to me, because I love to work out to this one:

A Song Dedication

Sometimes it's hard to see that the path offered up ahead of you is leading to somewhere wonderful, if you're always looking down. Take it one step at a time, and you could find your way out of the darkness, and back to me.

I wouldn't leave you in times of trouble
we never could have come this far
...
What will it take till you believe in me
the way that I believe in you?

The Things We Let Slip Loose

Following my little epiphany about the baton drop of laughter on my part, I was reminded late last night, and again this morning, of something that my husband used to do at the beginning of our relationship that I loved the most. One of the things that had impressed me so much, when we began to ease from friendship into love, was how well he could read my emotions on my face. He could do this so well, that he was most adept at calling me out for my "Mona Lisa smile", as he termed it. I think he felt very proud of times when he caught me smiling on the inside, and he could tell by the most tiny and subtle change to the lines of my mouth. That's when I knew that he really saw me. It was one of my favorite things he did.

Lately, he doesn't seem able to read my facial expressions accurately at all, often misconstruing looks of concern as anger, or looks of soft forgiveness as sharp rebuke. It's very confusing to me. And I can't even remember the last time he said something to me about my "Mona Lisa smile" for him, although I know I still do it at times.

My point here being, besides reminiscence, that I think we all run the risk of letting things slip away from us that helped cement our relationships. Not just between lovers, but friends as well. So maybe, take a moment and think about some little things, some little ways of being, that maybe, maybe, you've let slip away from you in regards to those you love. Try to pick them up again. Rub the dust off of them and I guarantee you will find they are just as comfortable and comforting as they were in the beginning. But maybe, now, they will be a little more precious.

I'm Laughing with You

Depending on the context within which you meet me, you may or may not know that I love to make people laugh. I love to cheer people up. I personally love to laugh, and often find myself laughing over things that have happened eons before but upon recollection strike me with glee all over again. To me, laughter really is the best medicine. One of the worst casualties of my marriage is that of our laughter. My husband and I began as friends and we used to laugh all the time together. All. The. Time. In fact, it was one of the things my husband loved the most about me, was how often I made him laugh. Even when I wasn't even trying to do so! He stopped laughing at me, though, but to be fair, I think I stopped being funny. I think I stopped trying to cheer him up. I never stopped trying to comfort or encourage him, but I stopped using humor as a means of effecting healing moments. I've been thinking about it, and sometimes it feels like a chicken vs egg scenario, but it's kind of hard to laugh when someone has stopped being funny, stopped trying to be cheery, stopped trying to tickle the smile out with words or actions. So, I think this one is a baton I dropped. I got so serious about being things or ways I thought I should be, but really maybe never really was intended to be, that I stopped being some really essential parts of who I am. So, in light of that revelation, here's a song dedication to the laughter in my marriage: