Now for anyone who wasn’t around hundreds of blog posts ago, I was not raised by my Mom. We met for the first time when I was 15 and I was living in a foster home. It’s very surreal to meet a parent, and while it was a healing balm on the one hand, it began the most complex relationship and series of difficult lessons I’ve ever experienced.

It was spring of 1977 when I met Mom, I was 15 years old. I was young, insecure and searching to find my place… not my place in the world as I perceived many teenagers were doing, I wanted to figure out how I fit into a family. More than anything, I wanted to be “normal”.
Now I realize, that is what every 15 year old wants, regardless of their circumstances… at the time I thought it was just me, and just my circumstances.

Anyway, in the package my cousin sent was a bracelet that (unknown to her) I’d made for my Mom many years ago. There was also a poem that I wrote in May of 1977, about a week after meeting my Mom:

FOR MOTHER
Where am I going? Take my hand, show me the way
I want a home, peace, a place to rest and play.
I’m not looking at my future, just thinking about today
Listening to silence, I hear a soft voice say:
“I’ll show you how, where and why, just take my hand
We’ll go home, far across the sand.
And there’s a place of peace and rest
Follow me, I know what’s best.
I’ve been there, I know your dream
And that things aren’t always as bad as they may seem.
I’ve been around and know how you feel
I’ve felt your hurts, beleive me they’ll heal.
Don’t ever feel alone, I’ll be there
And no matter what, I’ll always care.
When you’re down and you cry
Come to me, I’ll listen and your tears, I’ll dry”
Now you’ve shown me where I’m going, shown me the way
You gave me a home, peace, a place to rest and play.

Take swear words for example…  if you use them as space fillers, it appears one does not know enough word to explain their thoughts or feelings.  I did allow my children to use curse words, but only if they used them appropriately.  If they slammed their finger in a door, yes… say “shit”.  These words are offensive to some, but if the intent is to offend, nothing beats a good curse word.

So, there are no “good” or “bad” words, just misused ones, to my way of thinking.  They are simply words to describe, to communicate, to evoke… and nothing more.  Use any word needed as long as it fits your thought or your intension.

I’ve tried to eliminate the concept of both “good” and “bad” from my list of labels.  Those labels tend to evoke either pressure or negativity as it relates to what ever I am describing.  When I eliminate the the labels, I simply have an experience.  Not a bad experience, but an experience that I perhaps learned from, that I gained something from, that I may or may not want to repeat.

I am trying the same concept with the word “should”.  That pressure inducing word that fills my “to-do” list with more items than can be completed in a 24 hours period.  ”Should” often leaves me feeling frustrated at best, incompetent at worst.  ”Should” very quickly becomes “have to”.  By the same token is its cousin, “shouldn’t”, which leads directly to “can’t” can also take a back seat to perhaps words that better fit what I am doing or how I am feeling.  I’ve realized that we place a lot of rules on ourselves with the words we use, a lot of pressure… and then we quantify that experience by using the labels “good” and “bad” on top of that.

I should breathe… and that’s about it.  Anything more than that is simply a choice, an experience… a flavor of life.

It started with husb verbalizing how no one finds him attractive anymore. His complaint make me feel like I’m not enough, it’s not good enough getting those affirmations from me, and I kind of understand that… who doesn’t need some “stranger affirmation” from time to time?.
To prove my theory (I suppose), I start looking and sure enough I find that he’s searching for his lost love on the internet and also some emails between him and a woman he once worked with whom he “was very close to” for a while.
I hate her by the way. She is everything I am not.
She drips with seduction and is very willing to supply it to the lonely and disheartened. She is one of those people who have the natural ability to make a man feel like he is the center of the universe. She is single and the world is her playground… nothing and no one is off-limits.
Along with finding these things came my own insecurities… and of course the explosive confrontation (that I could have handled much better).
After the dust settled, we realized that we are both disconnected from each other, we lead very separate lives from the same home base. Our life out-look is at polar opposites and we have very little in common and nothing at all to talk about.
Enter the marriage counselor.
2 sessions down, hundreds to go.

What I’m trying to figure out is how to be what he needs without losing me.
How to be true to myself without losing him.
How to flip the switch back to where we are friends again who simply enjoy each others company.
Or how to walk away…. I kind of refuse to believe there is a need for that just now, but the question looms anyway.

As for what I want… I have no idea.
I just don’t want *this*, for either of us.

I think the thing that pisses me off the most is how cliche` this all is.

it’s where I wash yesterday down the drain
and start today
all fresh and new

If you haven’t been there, check out the 5 year anniversary!

I couldn’t find my first… I’ve switched blogs since then, But here a link to my favorite

and a few pictures of oldies…