The road to Texas is paved with beer, bbq and gas station burritos

I didn’t sleep well last night and I’m up way too early, so I thought I should do something more productive than reading random posts on Facebook and write a blog post.

They tried to act like they wouldn't
 miss each other at camp drop off

My little girl is finally on her way home and she’s flying for the first time—yes, flying on a plane, 30,000 feet in the air-- without her Mama. She’s 13, so I guess it’s time to let her spread her wings a little more but I’ll be glad when she’s on the ground and back in our home.

It’s been a crazy summer this year, full of the usual drama and even fuller of new experiences that make me rethink almost everything I thought was true about myself.

Some good, some bad, but all those experience have made us all grow as a family, in a good way.

Being away from the children for almost four weeks was almost too much for me to handle as a mother.   It was hard hearing those little voices on the other side of the phone and hearing the words, “I miss you” and “I want to come home” and having to just say “I love you” and not jump in the car to go see them.

There were times when I didn’t think I would ever catch my breath or stop feeling so sad. But they are back with me now and I guess we all have grown in our ways from that experience.

Once the kids got home, we all packed up and drove to Texas—and yes “all” includes my dear hubby who is happy to stay parked in Savannah.

Robby has never been to Texas with me before and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen when I gave him front row tickets to a part of my life that he has never seen.  But in true Robby fashion, he embraced the adventure and kept me laughing the entire trip.

Had to introduce Robby to Tractor Supply.

Something happens to me every time I get to Texas. No matter how long I’ve been gone, I seem to slide into this rhythm and relax a little. I get to really relax—my mom does all the shopping, cooking and cleaning and my dad takes the children and keeps them occupied with some of the weirdest babysitting techniques known to man.

My brothers make their way down to Dublin and it’s just like old times. We’re laughing, drinking beer, eating around the table, and telling stories that make my side hurt from laughing.  My kids idolize all of my siblings and can’t get enough of stories from our childhood.

Even though Texas holds some not so good memories, it also holds some of the best memories of my life. 

There are times when I think about moving back—what it would be like to be around my friends and my family instead of the new friends and family I’ve made here in Georgia.

If I’ve learned anything these past years, it’s that I know better than to say “it’s never gonna happen.”

The reason for the trip to Texas was to get Veronica a checkup at the hospital in Dallas with her foot surgeon. When you have something as rare as Arthrogryposis, you find things go better when you have a special doctor for each part of your body affected by the disease.

So, she has a knee guy, a shoe guy and a hand/arm guy. Unfortunately, two of those guys are in Dallas, but it’s worth the trip to get the job fixed right the first time.

Then after four fun filled days in my hometown of Dublin, we returned to the hospital and  dropped off my princess so she could ride a bus to go to summer camp with her other Arthrogryposis buddies at Camp Freedom in the Texas Hill Country for the week.

Love Uncle David and Uncle Luke

She has gone to that camp since she was 6 and she knew almost every kid going—I can’t wait to hear all her stories when she gets back.

And since she’s set for another foot surgery this fall, I have a feeling some of those friendly faces with show up at the hospital to see how she’s doing.

Life is weird. You never know who is going to walk into your life one day and become one of those people that you can’t believe you never met.

I look back one these past several years and wonder how I got to where I am today. I never would have thought I would have the job I have—I said I would never work at a newspaper again.

I never thought I would stay here in Savannah for so long or bring Robby home to Dublin for a visit—I said I would never get married again.

I never thought I would be sitting at home waiting for my little girl to get off a plane by herself and walk herself and her bags to her gate on her own—the doctors told me she would never walk on her own when she was a baby.

My "little" brother Luke

I guess the point is that we never know what tomorrow will bring. It’s easy to say “that will never be me.” But we all learn that it can so easily be you in the blink of an eye.

It takes mere seconds to meet someone that will change your life. It takes just a few more to make friendships and memories to last a lifetime.

But it also takes a lot of work and patience to make those relationships really good and even more to make them last.

I guess the big thing I’ve learned this summer, is that healthy relationships are worth the time and effort in the long run. Everyone gets busy and tired, but some people are still really good at making sure they stay in touch and take the time to make relationships work.

I realized I need to work harder on maintaining my old relationships in Texas. I’ve avoided them because I get so homesick sometimes and I don’t want to admit I miss a crappy little place in the middle of nowhere that serves the best damn gas station burritos in the world.

I realize I’ve been stuck in between Texas and Georgia for a while now—both pulling me in different directions. I’ll never leave Savannah; I’ll never move back to Texas. Why say never? Why not find something in between? Why not make more of an effort to have both?

It’s easier to watch life pass by on Facebook than to make the effort to get up, get out and embrace the people and places that make you happy. It’s hard to get passed the hurt and let people love you and take care of you—it’s hard but it’s not impossible.

Starting over doesn’t mean I have to close the door on the past. Starting over means I get to pick and choose who I want to come along on my second chance at happiness. It means I get decide and I get erase the dreaded “never” with “maybe” or “yes!”

Who wants a boring life?

Okay, so I only have five more days to go until I get my children back home with me. It's like I have a clock in  my head and I can hear the click, click, click of the seconds slowly passing by.

I got to have them for two nights for the 4^th of July. I just couldn’t soak enough in. Dropping them back off at their dad’s was harder than I thought it would be and I didn't think I would ever be able to catch my breath again.

It’s been a series of trying to keep busy long enough to take my mind off things so I can breathe for a minute without feeling like I’m going to start crying again. Just breathing is hard sometimes. It's like a huge piece of me is missing and I feel panicked. 

It’s not that I just miss them—there is a lot of other emotions and thoughts going through my head that make me worry.

But, during my time with children on July 4^th we had some awesome moments when I got the confirmation I needed to know that my children are going to be okay.

Jude took charge of setting up the canopy Robby bought. He helped carry heavy bags from the car without complaining too much and he gave me enough hugs to last a week. 

Veronica told me something I didn’t know could come from a teen girl’s mouth—she’s happy with herself just the way she is. She is planning to go to camp in a few weeks—it’s a camp just for children with Arthrogryposis, which is what she has.

She loves that camp because she gets to be herself while she is there. No one asks why she wears leg braces or what happened to her. They are just kids for a week getting to have a normal camp experience.

At the end of camp, there is a ceremony where the campers write their name on the camp sign and they get to make a little speech if they want. Veronica told me she already had her speech ready and she wanted me to hear it. So, while I carried her on my back to take her back to the car after fireworks, she recited her planned speech in my ear.

“People always say I have a good attitude and they don’t understand why I’m not mad about my legs, but I’m happy with being different. I like being different. I don’t want to be any other way.”

I was stunned. Most people go their entire life and never have that sense of clarity about their self-image, self-worth or self-esteem. But at 13 years old, she gets it.

It seems simple when she says it—“I’m glad I’m different. I don’t want to be like everyone else because that would be boring.”

Yes, it would be boring and sometimes I have to remind myself that while I may think I would like to have a boring life without all the drama, I know that a life worth living has to have the lows so you can truly cherish the highs.

This isn’t so much a low point for me right now—it’s just a place I had to be in order to truly treasure those little moments and hear what is going on around me. 

While it may sound creepy, I watched my children sleep the morning before I to dropped them off again. I watched their chests rise and lower with each breath and I felt comfort in their peaceful faces. I haven't had a moment like that in a long time--a moment where everything just stopped and got quiet and I took in the reality of the miracle of their lives and mine. 

And yes, I’m really mad and sad sometimes, but I  thank God for giving me those little moments of clarity to see what truly matters and to never take this crazy life  for granted. Because crazy can be good--it's not boring, and as my daughter says, who wants to be boring like everyone else?

Examining my point of view

In my last blog I wrote about the tricky topic of forgiveness. It’s funny how everyone looks at forgiveness differently.

Someone commented to me that they find others aren’t as quick to give them forgiveness. Someone else told me that they don’t feel the need to forgive someone they have no use for any more.

I made the comment that just because I forgive someone it doesn’t mean I want to have a relationship with them.

I think it shows we all have different ideas about forgiveness and what we expect from other people. Point of view seems to add to the trickiness of forgiveness.

Some people don’t feel like people forgive them, but maybe people are just tired of their crap and even if they do forgive, they don’t want to be subject to any more abuse?

Some people refuse to give forgiveness because they feel it make them look weak, but others could care less because they don’t want to have a relationship with the person anyway.

Who knows?

I’ve been reading an old journal I kept when I first started the divorce process with the ex from August 2009.

I wrote about how I was dumbfounded that he would call me on the phone, angry with me that I was filing for divorce. He said things like “I don’t deserve this” and tried to convince me I was overreacting—“You don’t have to do this,” he said

He continued to bring up a topic he brought up a lot with me—I never forgive him, I hold on to anger and never let things go.

That was his point of view and there was just enough truth in that statement to make second guess myself.

Technically speaking, I didn’t HAVE to follow through on the divorce. I didn’t HAVE to walk away from a 17-year relationship.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I didn’t follow through. There were plenty of times I second guessed myself and I got weak. 

There were many times when just filling out the paperwork in the attorney’s office was too much to complete.

When it came down to it, we were just two different points of view. He was of the mindset that things would be okay and that it was a waste of time to get a divorce. He was of the mindset that I should just forgive him and that everything would work itself out.

I was of the mindset that I could not waste another second of my life with a man who was fake—a man who only cared about his own wants and needs, a man who acted pious but was living a secret life and deceiving the woman who trusted him more than anyone else in the world, a man who was hurting his children by making their mommy a very sad person, a man who was hurting people who cared about our little family and hated seeing us miserable.

Sure, he said he was sorry. I have forgiven him.

But that doesn’t mean I want to be friends. It doesn’t mean that I’m not allowed to be mad sometimes.

It also means my tolerance for other people’s shenanigans and drama is very limited. Life is too short to put up with other people’s problems—especially when they live with the point of view that they are not the ones with the problem.

When I decided to go through with the divorce, my former brother-in-law called me to see if I would change my mind. He desperately wanted to help us reconcile. I appreciated his effort.

I explained that I had spent six months working on things and saw that the ex was never going to change his behavior. Not only was he not going to change, but he acted like everything was my fault.

I told him that I finally realized that God did not create me and give me life so I could live like that. Not only did I not deserve to live that way, but no one deserves to live that way.

No one deserves to be miserable.

But it’s not up to other people to make you happy either. You have to find it and sometimes it’s really hard.

Sometimes it means you have walk away from toxic relationships. Sometimes it means you have to look in the mirror and change your point of view. Sometimes it means you have to accept that you are the asshole in a relationship and sometimes it means you have to be the asshole and end an abusive relationship.

I think one of the hardest parts of walking away from my former life was accepting the fact that once I walked away, there was no turning back. That old life would be gone. And even more frightening was the fact that I would have no one else to blame for anther failed shot at life except for myself.

But nothing in life that is worth having and fighting for is easy. It’s really hard.

Not knowing if I would have to live the rest of my life alone was hard. Being away from my children these past weeks has been hard. Starting over financially was hard. Trying to restart my career at 39 is hard.

It’s humbling, it’s frustrating, it’s exhausting…

But walking away and cutting those ties is also exciting because you get the chance to do things again—do them better, make things better, make life better, make yourself better, make relationships better.

And no matter what your point of view is, when life is better, you know you are doing what is right and living life the way God meant for you to live it.

God, grant me the serenity ...

I’ve made it through the first week of the children being away at their father’s house—well, almost, 6 p.m. is technically one week.

I’ve never been away from them this long. They’ve never been away from me this long.

It’s tough. I wake up every morning, realize they are still gone and wonder if they are okay.

There were times when I was kid and my parents went out of town and left us with people. Sometimes it was strangers and most times it was my grandparents who lived in Seguin.

For the most part, we liked going to the house in Seguin. It was a huge home out in the country that had a trampoline (luckily we remembered where the holes were and where to jump) and sometimes it had a pool. But it always had lots of space to explore and it was always an adventure.

After a while, it was obvious my grandparents were tired of us and were irritated with my parents for not coming sooner to retrieve us.

But we were children and that also meant that our feelings were less important than adults—at least that was the way I grew up.

Instead of staying in the large house, we stayed in the “guest house.”

The guest house was really a small one-room trailer that didn’t have air conditioning for the first few years. Did I mention how hot south Texas gets in the summer?

It was also infested with mice, roaches and scorpions that would run across our legs at night time and wake us up.

But we had each other. I’m not sure what life would have been like if it had not been for my sister Amy and my brother David. Luke came around later and wasn’t subject to those “vacations” at people’s homes—mostly because we were able to stay home alone and could watch Luke while my parents were out of town.

It makes me feel comfort to know my children at least have each other while they are gone, but still it’s tough. It still sucks to be homesick.

Someone mentioned that I should have mentioned “forgiveness” in my last blog when I wrote about the unfairness of share custody.

It’s true on some levels, but for me forgiveness has been a tricky topic.

I think we are all programed to believe that we have to forgive people who have wronged us in order to move on and have healthy lives.

I know I believed that if I could just forgive my ex then everything would fall into place for me and we could all live happily ever after.

That is partly true.

You can forgive someone for something really bad and move on. I did.

I have forgiven my ex for causing us to have a divorce. I’m grateful every day that I was given the chance to get out of that doomed marriage and have the chance to have a normal and healthy marriage. It’s obvious now that he and I weren’t meant to be together forever, so I can easily forgive him for that.

I’m glad that the divorce led me to counseling where I had the chance to dig deep into my childhood and open my eyes to the fact that I had some serious issues that I needed to deal with in order to have normal, healthy relationships.

But forgiveness is something you have to do over and over again when you have to constantly deal with someone who is destructive, deceptive and hard to get along with.

It’s hard for me to constantly forgive over and over again, especially when I see my children sad.

My parents are reflective and humble enough to admit that leaving us with strangers and with grandparents who were not the best caregivers in the world was a mistake. They have apologized.

I forgive them.

It’s easy to forgive something like that—especially when the apology is sincere.

But if my parents continued to be destructive to me and my children, then that would bring in another level of me being angry with them. It would take me back to the times in my childhood when I needed them to protect us and they didn’t.

See, it’s hard to be truly forgiving and all “light” and “love” when someone says “sorry” out of one side of his mouth and then does the same old shit again and again.

So, yes, forgiveness is very important, but sometimes it comes down to finding forgiveness for yourself rather than others and sometimes we fail to see the difference or understand why we need to forgive ourselves.

I’m working to forgive myself for putting my children in this situation. Some days are easier than others.  It’s hard not to feel constant guilt when you are a parent—that’s how good parents are wired.

But guilt is a dangerous feeling that can force you to do things that are not healthy or make you feel so bad about yourself, you find yourself in a deep depression.

So, enough with the guilt already.  I’ll work on the forgiveness.  

And for the next week, I’m going to continue to stay as busy as possible and pray everything works out the way it was meant to be.

And when things get tough, I will continue to tell myself a simple prayer that has gotten me through a lot of the guilt that comes with divorce/co-parenting:

“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.”

Amen.

Time limit on sadness

Yesterday was my son’s birthday. Hard to believe he’s 10 years old.

I love my children’s birthdays. I always crawl in bed with them on the morning of their birthday so I can make sure I’m the first person to tell them Happy Birthday. I hold them and tell them the story about the day they were born.

Even my usually cranky teenager still looks forward to our morning snuggle and hearing about how my doctor was dressed as Santa for the hospital Christmas party and freaked me out when he came into my room to check on me the day after she was born.

Then I let them eat birthday cake for breakfast, or if they want, I make them pancakes with whipped cream. They get hot chocolate or a milkshake.

But I didn’t get to do that with Jude yesterday. I didn’t get to have my son in my home on his birthday. He was with the ex.

It was hard getting out of the bed yesterday morning, but I forced myself up and took a deep breath. I went running and got ready for work. I tried to stay as busy as possible at work and stay positive. I got through the day with only crying a little bit twice and I worked so quickly, I was completely done with all my work by 2:00.

As soon as the clock hit 3:20, I ran to my car so I could get to see my children from 4-6.

Why 4-6? Because that’s what the court says I can do. If the kids are with the ex on their birthday, I get to see my children from 4-6. Two hours.

Two freaking hours. Two stupid hours! AHHH!

I’ve ranted before that it makes me angry that the court can dictate when I get to see my children in this stupid shared custody arrangement. Why does it make me angry? Because I can’t believe I live in a world where a stranger can make decisions for the children I gave birth to.

And why does a stranger get to make these decisions for me? Because I made a mistake.

I made a big mistake. I trusted someone who lied to me and now I have a stupid shared custody agreement that made me go without my children on Thanksgiving, Christmas morning, and now my son’s birthday.

But I’m not the only person in the world who has to deal with this crap so I’m not going to go on and on about it. It’s not healthy to focus on the bad all the time.

Moving on means you have to change your way of thinking. I’ve been focused on that a lot lately. Of course moving on means you still get to cry sometimes and you still get angry—but you have to set a time limit for being angry and force yourself to find that happy place.

I had to change the way I was doing things. Fighting against the system and obsessing about it was literally killing me.

In the end, I know I will always have something special with my children that other people will never get to have and we’ll make it through this.

I mentioned in my last blog that I had to go back to counseling for a few sessions to get my feet grounded again. It didn’t take much “talking” to realize I had to change the way I was thinking because what I was doing was not working for me.

When I have a negative thought, I have to replace it with something positive. So when I wake up sad because I don’t have my little guy to snuggle with, I have to throw on the running shoes, find a playlist that reminds me of a time that was really happy for me and  turn it up and focus on what I can do for the day to make me happier.

When I’m tired of a quiet house, I have to get out and do something fun. I’m starting my Christmas shopping. I’m putting together scrapbooks I’ve wanted to do for years but never got around to doing.

I’m making plans with my husband to do things we can’t do with the children or to go places we’ve always wanted to go. I’m writing projects that I’ve been putting off. I even have a trip to Texas planned.

I’m doing anything I can think of that is positive, things that tap into that happy place.

That way, when I see things that remind me of the children that I will miss for the next few weeks, I can give myself a minute to cry or be sad or mad. And then it’s time to dust my hands off and say, “okay, that’s enough of that, now let’s do something fun.”

I'm lucky. I have a husband that loves me and goes out of his way to make me laugh and smile even though his heart is breaking over the children, too. Some days I have to cheer him up, but most days he reminds me that I have to shake off the sadness and so something that makes me smile. 

Life is too short to sit around shell-shocked over things you cannot control or people who are unpredictable and hurtful. Life is for the living and I’m going to live it the way it was meant to be lived. 

Sometimes life's not fair for a reason

People always say “life’s not fair.” Sometimes we say it in a whiney voice and sometimes we say it in an adult voice to calm someone around us. We all understand the basic sentiment that we can’t have everything we want, but it’s still hard not to feel like it’s “not fair.”

Every once in a while there are moments when we get some time away from the “life’s not fair”  moment and we have the perspective to realize that we were grateful we didn’t get what we thought we wanted. 

Sometimes we are glad that life wasn’t fair for that moment so that we could get to where we are now.

Right now there are certain aspects of my life that are not fair. They are not right. I have people making decisions for me and my family about “what’s fair” according to the law.

It’s not fair is an understatement in this moment.

But while I feel very strongly that what is happening to my family right now is not fair, I also realize that sometimes these things have to happen in order to get what is ultimately fair.

I have to believe that.

Because to believe that all this pain is happening for no reason is just too unbelievable to me. I can’t imagine that God would allow this to happen to no good reason and I pray for the day when I can look back and say, “Thank God this had to happen to open the door to a better life for my family.”

If only...

This has been one of the most up and down weeks I’ve had in a long time.

My poor husband has got to have sore feet from walking on eggshells these past few weeks.

One minute I’m happy and laughing, the next I’m mad and doing that thing where I bite my lip and look tired.

But it’s not my fault exactly. My life would be fine if things would just go the way I want them to go—that’s my attempt at humor.  

I got sick which is never good because I hate being sick and I don’t usually go to the doctor because I have no money.  I had some kind of inner ear thing that made my neck so sore I couldn’t move it and it hurt, a lot. I cried.

Robby called his friend who is a massage therapist and he came to the house. I cried again.

The relief his massage work gave me was too amazing for words. The thought that someone would do that for me was too much.

Asking for help is my weak spot, so I cried again later just because I’m so grateful to feel loved and partly because I’m embarrassed to need help.

Asking for help and letting people help me are probably my biggest weaknesses aside from trying to control things.

I went back to counseling this week also. I haven’t seen my counselor since before Robby and I got serious, and we’ll be married two years on Monday.

I can’t believe I’ve allowed myself to get to this point again—I thought I was past all the worry and stress and making myself sick.

It scares me because I’m still in the middle of this and I can’t see how this is affecting me or the people around me. I don’t have that perspective yet where I get to go, “Holy crap, I was a mess.”

It’s hard when you have to deal with a sociopath. You never know what to expect and if you are a recovering control freak like me, that’s a nightmare.

You never know when something will happen or when they will be angry with you or when they are trying to trick you or when they are just serious.

And then on top of that, my financial situation sucks but I like my job. I also know my job will never give me 

any kind of financial freedom so it’s super frustrating.

I can’t base my financial bailout on the lottery either which is tough because winning a million dollars would totally solve most of my problems right now—even half a million would be awesome. Maybe just one of those $50,000 scratch-offs, right?

Do you ever find yourself thinking that—if only….

If only, if only, if only!!!

I’m tired of thinking that “if only” this would happen then things would be better for me.

“If only” is probably not going to happen any time soon, if ever.

And the big problem with “if only” thinking is that it makes me feel like I have some sort of control over the situation and that because I’m not making things better, then I’m a failure.

So, the return of extreme guilt sets in, and what you do know? I’m back in therapy.

It’s hard to explain why I feel the way I do because I know I have nothing to feel guilty about, but I do.

I feel like I should be able to make things better—I should be able to protect my children better.

I am too smart to end up like this.

The problem is we all have weaknesses and sometimes we let life slowly trickle in and attack those weaknesses. Then over time, we get so worn down we don’t even recognize ourselves when we look in the mirror—all we see is this tired, old person who looks very unhappy and we have no idea how we got here.

So, it’s time, again, to lace up those boot straps and fight again, even though I’m freaking tired and I don’t feel well.

It’s time to let people help me. It’s time to focus on myself a little more. It’s time to tell the haters to shut the hell up. It’s time to get back to where I want to be in life—happy.

I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again and I’ll keep doing it until I take my last breath because I’ll be damned before I go back to how things used to be.