into this space please insert all the things i cannot and willnot leave behind for posterity about the many things i feel about the man who I divorced. let that be as powerful as saying I married him. why should i keep valuing one over the other?
i’ve got pizza sitting next to me that crisped up in the oven and i’m debating very seriously whether burning the roof of my mouth is worth it.
i’m planting things but have zero faith that i will ever get them into the ground because they are so spindly. and i am thrilled that the word ‘spindly’ is still around.
plus, how many carrots will my kids eat, realistically?
i wish i really drank, like on the regular, so that it was part of my life. isn’t that an absurd wish? now, when stressed or emotionally stretched out, i don’t have an easy fix… or if i do have a glass of wine, i have a headache before i even feel a buzz. so. that seems a miss. but i miss it, that brain shutdown, what we call the fall of ‘inhibitions’ but are really just normally healthy boundaries? i want to shed them more often and still manage to watch out for my kids, as a functioning fucked up adult. Does that make sense?
I am worried that i’m not going to regain my proofreading clients when this is done, and that i’ll be back to a square i don’t want to be on.
I am aware that if I were isolated like this and still married like I was, that I would be one of the people you should be worried about, the isolation and the misery combining to unsafe.
The mental health of all of us in my house right now is becoming my ringadembells item, and i’m just as unhinged as they are, but am the grownup. I am reminding them that all the feelings are okay and that they all will pass, with time, and that nobody has a ‘right’ way to be. its all i can do, that and feed them.
my kids have too much screen time. i’ll care later. i obviously care now, but see item previous item, and include ‘screentime guilt’ on the list of feelings that moms are allowed to have and to let pass.
my eyes constantly fill with tears for and of these kids and these times… sometimes it is overwhelm, and disbelief, and sometimes it is laughter and those are the best times.
yesterday i wrote in a hurry, unconsidered. it was almost as if i were still sitting in my car, ready to go to breakfast, and i turned from cancelling a date to the computer. almost like that…. and so, if you didn’t understand it, i am with you.
i have a friend in ‘pastoral care’ who likes to grimace (she’s so beautiful, it doesn’t even bear any relationship to a grimace…its amazing) and say… ‘another fucking growth opportunity’…. and thats how i’m feeling today.
i’m fine, its fine… really. i just feel impatient with the learning curve i am on, regarding me and alcohol and the ability (or not), that i have regarding it, moving forward. Grammatically that last sentence was a doozy. and i’m not sure it has any flow. but i can’t look at it anymore.
moving on.
i don’t heavily subscribe to the notion that you must learn a lesson in order to move on… like… complete step 4 of the ladder before you can take step 5. I’m all nimble on the ladder folks… think mountain goat on a Himalayan.
but this? i have gone on first dates with nice men who decided to be drunk for that meeting. (like, startlingly drunk.) i have dated for months a man who needed to nap frequently because of alcohol and pot usage, and also was affected physically. (eyebrows) i have browsed a million and a half photos of men holding beers, at bars, on beaches with beers, at bars… with beers. i was turned down for one meeting because i DON’T smoke pot… I had a first date who drank so much he was unable to drive home. (and i liked him anyways…) . . . i’m not even drinking anymore myself, really. i just can’t stomach it. (literally, as it turns out… me and hangovers are a serious thing, and thats with just one drink.) but also, my kids are seriously freaked out if i have a glass of wine with my spaghetti.
and yes, there is part of me that thinks i am a ‘mark’ for this particular trouble. and so i wonder about the universe and the lesson that i have yet to learn.
/again and again and again. kate, you must practice saying no to alcohol. kate, you must practice knowing yourself.
kate, you must learn more and more about your own fears and insecurities. all the time, focus on them all the damn time, because you will be pushed and plucked and placed into situations where you will be nudged,
making the first date is really easy for me. choosing to face the second is much more daunting i think . . . its the challenge to my system, a challenge to my arrogance that demands that i not have ‘feelings’… a second date demands consideration, i think.
maybe this is why i tend to just have first dates that last for months. its a simple act of self-protection. call it what you will. its worked for me up until this point, but it strains now, pulls against the bit.
i’m just tired.
i wanted to have breakfast out today, but my date had a hangover and needed extra time to recover. so i gave him some.
