grumpety grump grump

It's that time of year. My Womb Escapement Anniversary is tomorrow. (Thank you, Daria, for the title.) Yesterday I was so angry over nothing that I scrubbed my house down. I was mad at the dust, mad at the whatsits needing to be swept from my floor. Mad at the cat for defiling the floor with his cat litter. Angry at everything.

Babbling about my qualities

I've been thinking about my qualities as a partner...

Cleaning is Cathartic??

Ok, so I know cleaning can be cathartic. I just didn't expect the boil-over of anger that burned through my soul as I was scrubbing grease off of my stove this afternoon.

Earlier in the day I was doing great. Feeling calm, peaceful, happy. Listened to the morning session of General Conference. Sat down and read a book. Went and did laundry when prodded by L. Who hugged me and looked at me with this goofy grinny look and called me his queen and made me melt all over with gratitude and love and conviction that I'd fight anyone and do anything for this man. Then we came home and vacuumed, noticed the counters were in need of a good cleaning, and then BAM!  Not so good.

Pissed off. Angry. Scrubbing for all I was worth as years of resentment and anger poured out into the suds.

Who worked two jobs with two toddlers for years? Me. Why? Because Mr. Man had racked up TEN credit cards that needed paying off. And then got sick and was in the hospital for a month. Lost his job. And then didn't want to apply for another one when he was recovered.

I had to call his mom, who then bullied him into putting in applications and wrote a resume for him. Bought him dress clothes for interviews.

Mr Man who was upset when I quit my job to be a stay at home mom because -- believe it or not, I don't care,-- God TOLD me to. Audibly. Sternly. "You need to BE A MOM. YOUR CHILDREN NEED YOU."  And they did. So I did.

So he quit his. Because his job was expecting him to try to sell stuff, and he didn't like sales.

And then got sick again and nearly died when we couldn't pay bills. And had both kidneys removed because he has this horrible disease, and my brother gave him a kidney to keep him alive. And my kids were traumatized and my oldest needed anger management therapy. I miscarried twins and it was this big huge thing we all lived through while living with his parents.

And then when he was better, he again refused to get a job because he was disabled because he'd had a transplant. Although he wasn't disabled. He was in great health. His version of a job was Primerica, which IS SALES!!!

And I shook with anger as these memories rolled over me, pissed off and angry that I did my best to raise my kids, to get a degree I could use if he died. And he was angry that I wasn't using my degree to get a job.

And I was angry. ANGRY that he had a degree that he refused to use. He'd started school again to work in IT and didn't finish. He racked up thousands of dollars in student loans that will never be paid off.

I'm angry that after I left, I found out that apparently he'd been doing all the work raising the kids, cleaning the house, while I just sat around and did nothing. For 26 years.

Now. I did a lot of nothing while in the depths of depression. This is true. But I was always changing diapers, potty training, and doing what little I could when I was sunk low in the depths. But when I wasn't, I was doing Girl Scouts and involved and doing my best to teach and play and read and volunteer at schools, braid hair at midnight and worry and feel guilt over all the things I did wrong and, and, and, and,  you know... all that stuff that goes into momhood that no one ever really understands until they've been a mom. Or a parent figure.

AND that whole time trying to deflect Mr. Man's anger from them to me. Because I could take the irrational shouting and yelling about people not pushing the garbage far enough down. Or eating the wrong piece of cheese without putting it on bread. Or opening a bag of cheese when there was one already open. The shouting and anger that would go on for half an hour or more. That had my daughters convinced life wasn't even worth living because they could never do anything right. Could never please him.

Angry at the years of effort I put in, trying to change, trying to be good enough, trying to measure up and consistently failing. Angry that my marriage experience has more bad memories than good.

Don't get me wrong. There were good things. I have six kids. There was at least one part of the marriage that worked. But the constant anger we lived with overshadows everything.

I shook and ground my teeth as I scrubbed. Decided I should probably write this out. Because if it's bubbling up, it must be ready to leave.

You know anger is a secondary emotion, right? It covers hurt. Anger is so much easier to feel than the pain. And oh boy does it hurt. It hurts that I was never, ever good enough. Not good enough to try to work and provide for. Not good enough to try to control a temper. Not good enough, period.

It hurts so much that the idea of ever getting married again makes me want to slap the person who invented the idea of shackling me to someone, telling me I'd live happily ever after ... FOREVER.

Yeah, well, I don't want forever with that. I refuse to have forever with that. I'm worth more than that. And I much prefer the happiness I've found now, even if it is only for this life, than what I had before. Because what I had before hurt. It picked away at me until I broke.

I have an awesome support system. I have so much to be grateful for. So much in life to look forward to and live for. I don't want to spend my life resenting the last 26 years. I don't want to spend the rest of my life bitter and angry.

I am lovable. I am loved. And that is amazing.

I feel so much better after writing that all out.

Run-on sentences be damned, that felt good to purge.

Emotions. I have them.

Today my car decided to overheat on the way to work. Massively. Not completely destructively, but bad enough that we sat on the side of the freeway for 20 minutes.

My interpretation of the terminology is this: my car is allergic to its radiator fluid, threw up most of it in my parking stall last night, and continued to spew out what we force fed it on the limping drive home. My poor mechanical baby is sick.

I have no skills in the area of fixing this. This terrifies me on that level that hates feeling out of control.

Writing Wednesday: Shadowrun: Whisper's brainstorm.

Every other Saturday I play Shadowrun. When I first created this character, I had rudimentary knowledge about how the game worked, absolutely no idea how to play a caster, and pretty much relied on the GM and one of my gaming buddies for help with the basic creation. So, here I am, half a year later without much clue who this gal is and why she does what she does.

As I did for my D&D character, I am doing an introduction diary entry. Well, that's the plan. After I work through my thoughts on Whisper's stats and creation and stuff, it will probably be me freestyle writing as I figure out her motivations and back story.

Here's what I'm working with:

Those Damned Demons

Friday night I had an experience that reinforced the why's of my divorce. I'm not going to go into detail.

What I will say is that the rest of the weekend I struggled with the old familiar insecurities that I thought I'd fought through and won.

Why am I not lovable?
What is so very, very wrong with me??
Why am I not worth any effort?
Why don't I deserve the same treatment as a stranger on the street?

You'd think after 26 years I'd have the answers to these questions.

I don't.

Logically, I know the truth: I *am* lovable. I *do* deserve the same politeness and respect that a stranger on the street receives.

However, wow, once these demons get resurrected, they are nasty little insidious buggers that take a LOT of effort to shut up and silence.

Let me tell ya, I'm quite aware of my imperfections. I can write a big long list if anyone's curious. I tend to rip up and/or burn the list once I flip and describe two positive attributes for each negative -- but trust me, I can make a list!

One of the wonderful things about life is that most people are lovable in spite of - or because of - their imperfections. And happy day, I'm one of those. Some people even find a few of my idiosyncracies adorable.

There was a reason I left and I'm a stronger person for having the guts to do it. And to stick with it.

It's nice that I can talk to myself about it, but it's even better when I get a hug from someone I trust who reinforces that I am loved. No matter what.

Wednesday Writing: D&D Journal

I play D&D 5e every other Friday and after having some rp issues, I decided that I needed to write a journal entry for my character. This accomplishes two things for me:
1 - I am writing!
2 - I begin to understand the character more, so my role-playing choices are more in line with her not with me.

This time around, I picked a paladin. Never played a paladin before, but every pally I've played with has been a self-righteous law abiding member of society. Sooooo, I went a different route.

Stipulations of the game: We all had to be human. No, we didn't get the human bonus. We were given specific stats to apply as we wished: 18, 18, 14, 14, 10, 8

My stats ended up as follows: STR 14, DEX 10, CON 18, INT 8, WIS 14, CHA 18

Those of you familiar with gaming stats will recognize the significance of an 8 intelligence. It makes for some really fun game-play. It also explains the grammar and thoughts in the journal entry below.

Widget's Introduction
Read this with a super-thick Russian accent and you're good to go.

---

Ick. Money issues suck

There's a long story behind my life at this point, but for the next little while, I'm the parent who gets to pay child support.

For those in the know about why I'm getting divorced, I'll just say that he asked quite strongly for the opportunity to actually BE a dad. In order for him to make that possible, I felt he needed to be the full-time parent. Because if he is going to really do it, really be there for them, my children deserve that. My young ones aren't happy about it, not happy about the divorce itself, but it is what it is.

Aaaaaaanyway

My divorce isn't even final yet, but ORS has gotten involved. They have decided the amount determined by Davis County Court system's online help system is about $100 too little per paycheck.  AND they objected to the way we'd agreed to handle healthcare for the kids. No, I don't have to pay all of it, but I do have to pay half.

This sounds like I'm a horrible mother who doesn't want to take care of her babies. That is not the case. What IS the case is that this impacts my ability to pay rent and buy groceries and pay utilities so that I can live.

When my kids come over, I need to have the funds to buy the extra groceries. I need to be able to buy them shoes and pumpkins for school projects and things that sometimes get overlooked.

I was just given the quote for my health insurance, and I'm not going to lie - I'm panicking a bit. Money issues always make me panic. Especially when it threatens having a roof over my head.

There's nothing like the memory of being evicted in the middle of a Wyoming blizzard at the age of 10 with nowhere to go but the car to make current reality hard to resolve.

My roommate continues to tell me it's going to be ok. He's done the math and shown me. He's not wrong. But my feels don't agree with the logic.

Ever have that issue?

One year later and another post about death

One of my best friends died Saturday night.

I suppose calling her my best friend is a true statement. She was by far a better friend to me than I  was to her. We were opposites.

She was an extrovert who loved company and to be surrounded by people. I am an introvert who is perfectly happy alone in my cave.

She was agnostic. I am very religious. We learned quickly that one cannot argue faith with logic. But we also learned that it was pretty damned awesome to have differing points of view --and differing core values and beliefs -- yet still be able to be friends and confidants.

She said what she thought. Period. I try to be as diplomatic as I can because I hate confrontation and I especially hate hurting people's feelings. She couldn't understand why people didn't see the logic in what she was saying, regardless of how she said it. Quite often she couldn't understand why others were offended.

Saying that, it's understandable when I say that she was that one friend who got on my very last nerve, but I loved her anyway. Even when she hurt my feelings. And she loved me anyway. Even when my distance hurt her feelings.

She was fun. She was imaginative. She loved books. She loved to giggle and was extremely ticklish. She hated the sun. She loved, loved, loved animals and nature. She'd offer the last twenty dollars in her bank account to any of her friends if she thought they needed it. She loved getting presents for people and took a lot of time picking out the right thing, wanting it to be something they'd love.

She loved movies. She loved magic and worlds with different rules than ours. She immersed herself in World of Warcraft because she loved the mounts and the pets and the story lines and the achievements and the people she met online.

26 years of friendship -- with its ups and downs almost like a marriage. And I'm angry. I'm angry at myself for not getting over some of the hurts enough to spend more time with her at the end. I'm angry that the cancer changed her personality, made her hard to be around, made her not-Peggy.

I'm angry that I hurt so much, even though the cancer was eating her up from the insides out. At the end, she was starving to death because the tumors had grown into her intestines so much they were pinched completely off. She couldn't digest food because it couldn't get in there.

Her death was a release from all of the discomforts and pain and frustrations she's had over the last five years. So many things in her body had stopped functioning properly.

I'm angry that my last hours with her, giving her a last farewell foot-zone and putting her to sleep, were not enough. That I couldn't do much more than offer what temporary comfort I could. I couldn't fix anything.

I could hug her. I could hug her husband. I could let her vent at me the same way she let me vent to her. Anything and everything was talked about in venting sessions and there was no lasting judgement.

I know that if she's existing on another plane she's released from her non-functioning body.  (She firmly insisted death was death; there was nothing else but decomposition into her essential atomic bits - so she may very well refuse to exist in the afterlife out of pure stubbornness.) But if she's there, there's no more diabetes. No more super bad back pain from scoliosis. No more chronic fatigue. No more feeling the tumors growing inside of her. No more forgetting what she was saying halfway through her sentences.

I know all this, I believe all this, and yet I'm here, angry, pissed off, wanting to flip off the world and stare at the wall and listen to sad, sad music because nothing feels right.

There will be no Peggy logging into the game late at night wondering if anyone wants to do dailies. No texts telling me about the coolest book she'd just read. Or the yummy food Aaron made for dinner. Or the hummingbirds that came to visit the flowers she planted. Or the cute animals at the zoo she'd seen.

*sigh*

I thought typing my thoughts out would help me sleep. But it's not working.

Instead I'm thinking of our goodbye. Which wasn't said. We just said, "I love you" as I left her hospital room. But before I left, she looked at me with her big green eyes and asked if I was happy. She wanted so badly for me to be happy.

And that, at least, I could do. I could look her in the eye and assure her that I am happy. I love my life. It's not easy. Divorce sucks and it's hard, but my life is so much better now than it has been for... well, it feels like forever. Deep down the core of me is at peace. I feel good. I'm free, my wings can spread and fly, and I'm suddenly good enough. I'm still the same old me that I've always been, but that same old me is good enough and lovable and an okay person. Wow, that's amazing.

So it wasn't hard to tell her that I'm happy. I feel like that would and did (and does) make her happy for me.

It doesn't change the fact that I'm upset that she's gone. That I'm upset that cancer took her away long before she died. But now she's actually dead. Dead.

I have a file of photos I took years ago during college called "Dead Peggy." She was a model I used for one of my art projects. Now that just seems so wrong.

Death sucks. I don't care if it's a natural part of life. It sucks.

Aaron's right; it's Sucktember. I'm glad it's over.

I miss my grandma. I miss my Peggy.

My grandma died today.

I've read accounts of people who were with loved ones at the time of death. It's supposed to be this peaceful, quiet last sigh where everyone is sad together but knows their loved one has moved on, guided by family and friends who preceded them to the afterlife. Everyone then continues with their lives, comforted through their grief, knowing that it will all be okay, fine, and dandy and the rest of us will feel that way, too.

I'll tell you what it was like for me.

Terrifying. Sweet. Horrible. Tender, yet gut-wrenching.