kids are resilient, huh?

This has got to be one of the biggest lines of shit that ever get uttered. Seriously.

Resilience: an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change (thank you Merriam-Webster.com)

Recover from or adjust easily....  seems to me that people who say kids are resilient forget the "easily" part of the definition.

What kids are is adaptable. (adapt: to make fit, often by modification). Adults too, for that matter. but I want to talk about kids tonight. Specifically, kids who through no fault of their own, have to suffer through their parents' divorces. These kids are adaptable. They make modifications, to make life somehow fit once again.

They do not recover from nor adjust easily to these changes.

There is nothing easy about divorce, especially for the kids. No matter how old they are. Nothing is easy.

And it sucks.

Tonight I logged into faceback, and there in bright blue letters against the white background, the son of one of my friends is now going by a new last name. My friend's maiden name. The name she took back after her divorce.

I don't know the reasons, and I don't know if this is a permanent change or just the anger of a young man coming out in a public "fuck you" to his dad/dad's family. But I do know that if someone has recovered from or adjusted easily to the divorce of his parents, if he is resilient, he doesn't willingly relinquish his father's name.

People who think kids are resilient are deluding themselves. Kids are adaptable. They will make changes. But it doesn't come easily. It comes at great cost.

There is nothing that is easy about a kid surviving their parents' divorce.

a little bit more wine...

and I'm going to turn into an adolescent girlfriend posting youtube links to all sorts of sappy love songs on my boyfriend's fb.

sigh

it's hard, missing someone so much it physically hurts sometimes.

but what a wondrous gift it is to have this man in my life. I am such a lucky woman. :)

TGIF

This has been one of those weeks that would have been so much better if it never started. I'm so glad it's over. Well, almost over. I still need to get through the afternoon at work, but thankfully I've been left alone in the office and it's really quiet. I need some quiet time.

This week has been one of those weeks that make me realize, yet again, that I need to make some changes.

I don't like to make changes. Change scares me. But remaining stagnant is even scarier.

self-sabotage

That's what I've been doing lately. Self-sabotage. Back-tracking, waiting for the other shoe to drop, worrying more about what could happen or seems to be happening, instead of focusing on the here-and-now.

I don't know if it's the time of year, time of month, phase of life, lifelong habits, mind-set, past trauma, or what. But I've been holding myself back, again. Caught in a pattern of not pushing myself to move forward, and by doing that, getting myself caught in the past.

I will give myself credit, I did realize it. This time. I'm not sure how long it took to figure it out, though. It's not like I was back to wallowing. Outwardly, I may even have given the appearance of moving forward. And to give myself credit, I have dealt with things in the past several months that were, in many ways, steps forward. I took care of some important issues, I bought a car, I've replaced several old appliances. I am making progress. I do know this.

But up in my head, there's that whole thinking too much thing going on. And it's very easy for me to get circular in my thinking, when I argue with myself. It's also much easier to believe what I want to believe, just because I want to believe it, without a lot of evidence to back it up.

(That doesn't mean I'm necessarily wrong. But it can mean I'm not always right. :p)

Anyway, I'm letting stuff take up too much space in my head, that shouldn't be there. That's how I self-sabotage these days. Allowing myself to spend way too much time thinking about things I have no control over and cannot change. It's not good. It takes from the time I should be spending doing other things, thinking about my goals and plan, working on myself, gearing up my job search, focusing on what will be because I will be doing it, not on what may happen because someone else might be doing something.

It's a new month, and almost a new year. No more waiting for a shoe (bitch boots or not) to drop. I'm finding other things to think about.

sigh, he's right

My boyfriend, that is. He mentioned more than once over this past weekend that I don't seem to believe that I'm worthy enough to be treated as well as he treats me. Perhaps I was a bit effusive in my appreciation.

The twisted thing is, intellectually I know I am. Looking over my blog, emotionally however, it seems I'm still catching up.

I really don't like it when signs of still needing to heal hit me like a 2x4.

Thanksgiving

I have so much to be thankful for. Sometimes it's so much easier to dwell on the bad stuff, but today driving home from work I got to think about the wonderful weekend I just had, and how good life is.

Sometimes, it's the little things, like quarters, a clean windshield, and a diet Coke, that let us know how much we're loved. But other times, it's the bigger things, like booking a flight for Thanksgiving weekend with only a few weeks notice, and meeting family members for the first time during a holiday, that show us how very important we are to someone else.

I realized today driving home that I had let myself get back into "waiting for the other shoe to drop" mode. Probably because, and no great surprise here, there's people out there still wanting to drop shoes on my head. But ya know, there's nothing I can do about that. Except of course, hope that the shoes that drop are a pair of rockin' black leather bitch boots. Because I could always use a pair of those. :p

Thanksgiving, then and now

4 years ago, Thanksgiving 2007, if I had only known what to look for, the red flags were flying all over the place.

In September 2007, we had gone out of state to the memorial service for now-ex's grandmother. After the service the conversation became about how we (extended family) had only been getting together for funerals, or so it seemed. Ex's aunt commented about how it would be nice to get together for a holiday, instead. Ex said he really did want to visit her, and see the property she had bought. So I made the suggestion that maybe we could come for a visit for that Thanksgiving. Ex really seemed to like that idea, so I went one step farther and volunteered to do the cooking, at his aunt's house.

2 months later, we're making this trip, and it seems like a major inconvenience to ex. He didn't help me get ready for the trip (I was packing up not only food, but small kitchen appliances to bring). He didn't even seem like he wanted to go, and all I wanted was a little help, and some appreciation for doing this for him.

We ended up sniping at each other for most of the trip. Somehow, it seemed to be my fault, too.

I didn't find out about him cheating until Sept 2008. But armed with plenty of knowledge from SI, and hindsight, it's obvious some stage of his affair had started by then, and ex was resenting me for having to spend the holiday with his family. 

Anyway, it's 4 years later. I don't know what the hell ex will be doing for Thanksgiving, and I don't really care. I do think he will be somewhere really missing my cooking, though.lol Otoh, I will be enjoying a wonderful Thanksgiving feast with my kids, my mom, and my boyfriend (who, btw, has already told me to put him to work in the kitchen tomorrow).

It's such a contrast. I usually try not to compare. Probably not too successfully, but I do try. Anyway, I'm sitting at work today, bored, with way too much time to think. I kind of wondered why Thanksgiving isn't a trigger for me, given what I know now. But I've decided that it doesn't matter.

What does matter is that I'm thankful for what I have, the people in my life, and for how far I've come in the past 4 years.

Life is good. :)  Happy Thanksgiving!