Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

Good morning , LOLers! It’s a bright new day with unlimited possibilities. I spent part of the day yesterday with Colleen, my bestie and sister from another mother. She knows me as well as anyone in my family and she’s able to point things out to me that I might be too close to view objectively. I got a good night’s sleep with no weird dreams, celebrity sex dreams or otherwise. 

And I feel completely different this morning.

Breakups suck. Everyone on this planet has had or will have their heart broken at some point, and we gauge the emotional pain based upon how deeply we cared for and were committed to our former partner. Sometimes we feel like we dodged a bullet, and other times we feel as if our entire insides have been ripped out leaving us about as functional as the Walking Dead.

The first time Max and I broke up was the worst heartbreak of my life. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, and a good day was when I could wake up and make it to the shower before I started crying. I had been living in Vegas when we split and shortly after, went to Oklahoma to stay with my mom while she was going through chemotherapy and to try to put my own head back together. You can imagine the culture shock from Vegas to OK only added to my heartbreak and depression. But slowly I started to put myself back together and I measured my recovery not in feeling better, but in acknowledging that I didn’t feel as bad as the day before.  But this was the beginning of my on again, off again relationship with Max.

Three and a half years ago, we started back on again. At that point, I was still employed and going to school, and he had a home and obligations, so it wasn’t an ideal time for either of us to move to be together. We agreed to a long distance relationship for a specified number of years, and in spite of everything, we were making it work.

As I’ve said, I won’t go into the details of what precipitated this final breakup. But to be bluntly honest, I’d been willing to give up everything to move to his home, despite the fact I extremely dislike the area of the country where he lives. At the time it made sense, because he’s a homeowner, and the market still sucks and it would take forever to sell, probably at a lower price, blah blah, etc. But this morning, I feel a little angry at how little he’s been willing to concede over the last three years. I won’t deny that he’s been really supportive since my diabetes diagnosis and subsequent recovery and management, and encouraging in my job search. But the fact remains that I feel less valued at his reluctance to make concessions to my life, fully expecting to get his way to reduce the disruption to his own.

He’s not a bad man. He has some wonderful qualities or I would never have loved him the way I have for so many years. And I’ve always been aware of his faults and accepted them, knowing I couldn’t change him. But he is a selfish man, and ultimately this is what I cant live with.  But oddly enough, I’m not devastated. I’m not angry. I’m not bitter. I am deeply disappointed, though. His willingness to so blithely dismiss the depth and commitment of our relationship and me when he’d professed I was the most important thing in his life, has left me feeling completely unvalued to him.

But. Here’s the important thing. I know my own worth. I know what I brought to the table and contributed to the relationship and the depth of love and understanding that I gave to him. If he fails to recognize that once again, as he obviously has, then I realize there is nowhere left to go in the whole affair. I am finally finished and have him out of my system. He’s been like a drug to me for 15 years, whether we were together or apart. Yet I woke up this morning absolutely knowing I was done and he was out of my system for good. I could never want him back now because his latest act of selfishness closed the door to any future we may have had.

Instead of being a crying mess wondering what was wrong with me, wondering what I lacked that he couldn’t give me what I deserved, I woke up this morning knowing I deserve so much better and that there’s something inherently wrong in him to be willing to throw away what he himself claimed to be the greatest and best thing that had ever happened to him.

I may not have much right now. My future is very uncertain on many levels. But I have a future that is wholly my own. I have myself, which is a pretty damned awesome self. I have my self-respect. I have an open vista of possibilities before me. I may have just turned 48, but I still have the option to choose anything I want for my life. And that is something available to each and every one of us regardless of circumstances. Nothing is impossible. Regardless of your obligations, or commitments to family, children, or job, if you have a dream you have the power to make it happen. It may require sacrifice or finding a balance to make everything work. But no dream is too improbable.

I woke up this morning feeling renewed and clearheaded. I’m not sure what I want for my own life going forward. The only thing I know for certain is that I still need a full-time job. I’m partway there with the part-time job I just obtained. But the fulltime gig is necessary to rebuild my financial house. Other than that, I don’t have the first clue about what I want this next half of my life to look like. But I’m alive, I have my own inner strength as one of my best resources, and I trust completely in the Universe that everything really is going to be okay. It really is. And actually, I know its going to be better than okay. Its going to be stellar, because I have the ability to make it so.

I woke up this morning knowing it was time to dream a new dream.

Father's Day 2012

The man I call my father was not my biological father. I share DNA with a horrible man, an alcoholic, wife-beating child molester. My memories of this biological sire are fuzzy, for which I’m grateful. I have no wish to remember or honor the man who means little to me other than the sperm that brought Little Lainey Zygote into being.

The man I call my father married a woman with six unruly children ranging in ages from 18 to 4, three weeks after they met. This man did his best to love them and bring them into his heart as his own. And this man was good to my mother.

The man I call my father threatened my biological father with bodily harm the first time the sperm donor came to take me from my family. The second time, the man I call my father was away at work, and I was kidnapped. Later I was the center of a custody battle which the man I call my father willingly accepted the financial burden and fought as hard as my mother to get me back.

The man I call my father helped me learn to read before I was ever school-aged. He recognized my intelligence, and encouraged it. He was proud of the grades I made and always wanted to know what I didn’t understand when my grades weren’t up to snuff, instead of punishing me. He took me to the library and picked out children’s classics for me to read. He wanted all of us to be educated, and I can remember him saying once, “You may not ever have money, but you can have education and good manners.”  People still compliment me on my table manners to this day.

The man I call my father was a good man. But he was not a saint. He was very old fashioned in his opinions of how young ladies should behave, this being at the height of the Women’s Lib movement of the 70s. He was very strict with all of us, and unjustly stern with my brother. But again, he took on the financial responsibility, not only of raising us, but of the court costs of the adoption processes to adopt those six children who weren’t his. My oldest sister was already married and pregnant with her first child when he adopted those kids. She was afraid she would deliver before the papers were approved, because she wanted to put his name as her maiden name on the baby’s birth certificate. Another part of our family lore is that when they finally got me back from my biological father, I came home on my step-father’s birthday.

The man I call my father was unable to adopt me. The biological father would not allow it. And, unfortunately, the man I call my father was killed in a work accident just days before my 9^th birthday. But when I was 13, my mother had my name legally changed, and now I have the same last name as the man who I will always think of as my father.

I have often wondered how my life might have been different had he lived. I’ve grieved the loss of not knowing him as an adult. I’ve wondered how he might have advised me and steered me away from some of my bad decisions, especially with regards to the men I chose. Would he be proud of the strong, independent, educated woman I’ve become? Would he be disappointed that I chose not to give him grandchildren?

The man I call my father would be 87 if he’d lived. Probably a doddering old man now instead of the epic, giant of a hero my child’s mind remembers. But today I honor him and love him and miss him; all that he was, all I perceived him to be, and all he may have yet been.

The man I call my father was named Keith William Thomas, and I am proud that three of my nephews bear parts of his name. I look forward to learning who he is when I see him again when its my turn to go into the light. I look forward to his fatherly comfort and his guiding friendship.

No, he was not a saint, but he was a good man. The man I call my father was only my step-father and only in my life for a few short years. But he is my father and I am his daughter as surely as if it were his blood coursing through my veins.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy.

Some Sunday Thoughts

I went off on a bit of a tangent this morning on my Facebook page. My intent was not to sermonize or change anyone's point of view. It was just an expression of my thoughts concerning the recent growing theme of kindness I've been posting about lately.

Here are those posts, in order:

Just for the record, I'm not an atheist. I do believe in a loving Creator/Higher Power/God/Goddess/The Ultimate Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich. But all the biblical stuff, to me, is not much more than an historical record of a group of people. My God only wants us to love and learn. 

Oh...and another thing....some of you may be confused because lately I've been talking about kindness and love and how that may seem to conflict with some of the more sarcastic posts I put up. Here's how I see it: Humor is good. Laughing at a situation because of the humor and not because its maliciously making fun of something is an okay thing. We all have thoughts that are less than kind. But we choose to not act on them. And that's part of what makes sarcasm funny. We can ALL relate to frustration with others, and the thoughts we have of doing or saying something when we're frustrated, whether its someone in the express checkout lane with 40 items, or the kid that looks goofy-ridiculous with his pants down around his butt. But we have the thought, CHOOSE to not act on it, and laugh at the situation AND ourselves because we are so far from perfect. Some types of humor are NOT okay with me because they are so blatantly unkind. That's why you wont see them here. We're all just stumbling through life, a day at a time, trying to live, learn, and laugh. :) 

And while I'm on the subject...I have nothing against organized religion, per se. Some folks...probably even some of you LOLers find a great comfort and sense of community in the churches you attend. There is nothing wrong with drawing strength and sharing spirit with a group of like-minded people in my book. At one point in my life, the church I attended was mostly my whole world, and that was what I needed at that point in time. As I grew and changed, I found that didnt fit my own spiritual needs anymore. Church and love and spirituality are good things. But if any man or woman tells you that his/her ideology is the only ONE TRUE WAY...I'm sorry, but I call bullshit. God doesnt care how we arrive at our own truth of love being the greatest force in all the Universe. He only cares that we discover that gem, and then live it. Anything else is just a tool we've been given to help us on our journey. So my "making fun of Jesus and religion" is not done out of spite or mean-spirit. It is a tongue-in-cheek poke at all the things we're bombarded with as we search to find the still small voice inside ourselves that tells us within our own hearts and minds what is right and what is kind.