My real life girlfriend, Sarah, over at Downtown Southern posted this activity on her blog. I loved it so much that I stole it and decided to try it here. She'll forgive me later for the thievery. Or, she'll just steal something of mine to get back at me. Sarah, can I suggest maybe the pile of "to-do" items sitting on my desk at work? No? Okay. . .have it your way, then.
Here goes. . . .
I'm weird because:
- I love the smell of cleaning products
- I hate dressing up to go out
- I love to wear pant suits to work
- I have made a career out of talking to people but get incredibly nervous in crowds. I also don't like to be approached by strangers. Stranger Danger.
- I have entire conversations with my dog
- I have stage fright in public bathrooms. It will literally take me a few minutes just to talk myself into doing my "business" if anyone else is in there.
- In college, I used to drive to my mom's house (about 5 miles from my dorm) to do #2 (see reason above)
- I love buying shoes but only for my son.
- My friends have to dress me--I have no sense of fashion but my son is always dressed like a little GQ model
- I dip my french fries in sour cream (yes, Sarah. . .your Wendy's frosty and french fries reminded me of this)
- I'm currently obsessed with chewing ice but only the ice from the ice machine at work. It's softer than any ice I've ever had before. Does that make me an ice connoisseur?
- When my son is at his dad's house, I can't sleep unless I have his blanket somewhere in my bed.
- I cannot function properly if there are dirty dishes in my sink yet I HATE emptying the dishwasher
- I would rather clean a toilet than sweep the floor--I hate to sweep but I love to mop (I think it's because I get to smell the floor cleaner when mopping.)
I'm a bad friend because:
- I'm horrible about calling my friends regularly and checking in on them
- I forget birthdays. Like, really important ones.
- I sometimes get too wrapped up in my own issues to truly be as present for my friends as I feel I should be
I'm a good friend because:
- I love my friends intensely and deeply
- I will give my friends the shirt off my back if I need to. But only if I have a cami underneath.
- I can make my friends laugh when they are sad or angry.
- I will spend hours talking to my friends to try to talk them through their problems or help them see something from a different angle.
I'm sad because:
- I'm going through a really rough time with my son's father. He's being very mean and combative with me which isn't making it any easier. I just wish we could find a way to be friends. Or at least civil with one another.
- I don't get to spend as much time with my son as I wish I could. My ex and I currently split him pretty much 50/50 and seven months after the split, it's still a really hard concept to grasp that I don't have my baby bear with me every single day.
- I wish I made more money at my job.
- I can't seem to find financial security and I continue to struggle month to month to try to get myself out of debt
- I have friends who are going through a hard time and I'm not sure how to be there for them
- There are mean people in this world who get a kick out of hurting others
- I don't get to see my family as much as I would like to since we are all spread out across the country and even the world with my dad living in Germany.
- I feel like I'll never truly find happiness and love with a partner. There seem like there are so many great guys out there but they're all either married or gay. I know I probably just have a dim view about it on account of what I'm dealing with right now, but I fear being alone for the rest of my life.
I'm happy because:
- Christmas is coming. I love Christmas. Really love it.
- My son is happy and healthy. He's funny and smart. He's beautiful. All those things make me very happy
- I have some really great friends who love and support me even when I'm being a pill
- So far, I've managed to keep my household together and I feel like I get a little bit stronger each day in terms of being able to stand on my own two feet.
I'm excited for:
- Christmas
- To graduate in May of 2012
- A trip over to Europe with my son to see my dad and step-mom
- Next weekend getting to see my Mommy in DC
- All of the days off this month that I get to spend with my son
- The annual party that I'm throwing in January
- (IF) the day ever arriving that my house is FINALLY in the condition that I feel that I can stop stressing over the DIY projects and just relax. And breathe. And revel in the gloriousness of being able to say "it's D-O-N-E!"
If you decide to do this yourself, leave a comment linking to the post in your blog so that I can read it!
The truth of the matter is, this post is very hard for me to write. While I really truly enjoy sharing my life with all of you readers, there are some things that I just don't like to share. Not because I'm all that private, I'm really kind of an open book. More because it's hard to put into words what you don't understand yourself. So, in this post, I've done what I can to put my relationship status into words.
My ex (because I don't really know what else to call him) or BD (short for "Baby Daddy") and I were together for almost 8 years, engaged for over five years but never did make it down the aisle. It was a very up and down relationship for pretty much all of those 8 years. We're both stubborn and opinionated people who don't really know how to comprimise. . .a combination which doesn't mix well in a relationship. Essentially, when it was good between us, it was GREAT and when it was bad, it was REALLY BAD. Anyways, we talked many times about going our seperate ways over the course of those 8 years but just never did. For whatever reason, we stuck it out. Of course, we had our beautiful son during that time so that made the relationship take on an entirely different flavor. Instead of making decisions for what was best for us, we began making decisions that I think were clouded by what we thought was best for Ty. Anyways, the fact that we were parents seemed to make it more difficult to make a decision and stick to it.
Over the last couple of years, our relationship really seemed to slide downhill for several reasons. One of those reasons was because instead of fighting for our relationship anymore, I just kind of "gave up". I guess I kind of adopted this approach of "if he's going to act this way or that way, he's going to pay the consequences". I didn't mean it in a dominating way, I had just spent so much time fighting to keep our relationship on the right course and I guess I realized after a while that he didn't put as much energy into it. Therefore, I just kind of started sitting back and letting nature take its course. I guess I knew long before it happened what was going to actually happen.
Despite the fact that I had seemingly "mellowed out" in his eyes (because I wasn't constantly fighting with him about this or that), didn't mean that things weren't as bad as they had always been. In fact, in many ways, they were worse. Rather than actually talking about our issues (or yelling. . .depends on who you ask), I was internalizing alot more. I was angry and hurt and feeling hopeless but I was doing it all silently. BD has this very self centered approach to the way he lives his life: as long as he is happy, he can't understand why anyone else would have any problems with anything. He's not willing to engage in conversation about anything unless he also sees it as a problem. So, his problem was that he felt like I was always yelling at him. Therefore, we had talks about that. Once I stopped yelling at him, we stopped having talks. He got what he wanted. But, I still wasn't happy. He was, so there was nothing to discuss. In his mind. In mine, our relationship was continuing to dissolve right before my eyes.
In April of this year, I finally hit my breaking point. I begged him to move out of the house that I had purchased a year earlier. Literally, a sobbing tearful me collapsed into a pile on my living room floor and begged him to just move out and not make me stay in this relationship anymore. That's another thing about BD. . .he would NEVER have been the one to break off the relationship. He would rather live for the rest of his life in an unhappy relationship than to be the one to shoulder the responsibility for actually breaking things off. That became abundantly clear to me and I knew I had to be the one to break it off if it was going to be done. True to form, he still reminds me that I'm the one who broke it off any chance he gets. Anyways, he moved out that month and I thought I would start figuring out how to live my life as a single mom and move forward in life. Yeah. . .I had another thing coming.
Like I've said before, when things were good with us, they were really good. BD is a great guy. Everyone loves him, he has tons of friends, he's hilarious to be around, and he has a heart of gold. If you're not his partner. When you're his partner, he's still a great guy, he's just got some fatal flaws. For instance, he has zero ability to comprimise or even attempt to see things from someone else's point of view. When you're a friend, that's not quite as big of a deal. You kind of agree to disagree and move on. When you're his partner and the mother of his child, that doesn't work as well. It was like we were in this constant power struggle. However, when we were in two seperate houses, the power struggle issue seemed to even out. He's in charge of his domain and I'm in charge of mine. We're both happy. We started getting along better than I think we have in eight years. We started communicating better and have over the last 6 months, tried to figure out if/how we were going to be able to reconcile and come back together. Afterall, things have been great off and on for the last 6 months.
However, I have some serious serious doubts. One of BD's biggest issues has been the way I talk to him. He feels that, at times, I'm to controlling and that I speak down to him. He laid out a specific way that he wants us to communicate. So, over the last few months, I've tried very hard to do just that. I've tried to make him happy. Problem is, apparently, he doesn't feel he should play by the same rules. When he gets angry or frustrated, he talks to me in whatever tone and manner he chooses. Now, Rome wasn't built in a day, right? Any positive change is going to take time. So, I try to see past the emotions which are driving the behavior and I attempt to talk about it. I point out that he doesn't like being spoken to that way, so why should I be subjected to the same thing? He doesn't see it that way. He sees it that I've pissed him off and therefore, I caused him to act that way. Yeah, you see the same problem I do? Here's another one for you: I think in the entire 8 years we've been together, I could count on one hand the number of times this guy has ever apologized to me for anything. He not only lacks the ability to see where he has wronged, it's like the words "I'm sorry" or "I was wrong" are completely absent from his vocabulary. So, when he's done something to make me mad or hurt my feelings, I don't even get an apology for it. He's actually told me that I need to "move past it" before when I have asked for an apology. Are you flipping kidding me?
I guess the reason that I write this post is because I recognize that the presence of my son's father in some of the pictures that I post may be misleading or confusing. Trust me, it's misleading and confusing to me too at times! What I want to express to you is that I'm trying to sort out my crazy life right now and I'm trying to find the strength to make the right decisions and until I do that, there may be what seems like a back-and-forth presence of my son's father. I honestly don't know how to refer to him. At this point, he's not really my ex but he's not really my boyfriend either. I just don't feel that our relationship is strong enough to call him my boyfriend but there's still more relationship existing than I have with an ex. I guess we're kind of like ghosts: stuck between two worlds.
