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Thursday, July 28, 2016

Shimalimma dingdong.

In my inner world, I have been busy.  I think, in the last few years, all my intuition and all of my energy has been spent on figuring out, trying to prevent, anticipating and muddling through. now that i am doing so much less of that, my intuition and energy are more free to play... and i realize the depth and complication of my love for mixing it up. metaphor, analogy, connections, these are my linguistical gymnastics, and this play of my mind is something i can really get carried away with...
other things i love?

i love paper cutouts, those beautiful shadow landscapes of the small. a stark cameo, a scene of edges. I don't need to acquire them, even, but I have a deep appreciation for their existence.

i'm a fan of screen door: the slams and swings, and the feels, between screen and wood, another landscape of texture, i suppose.

kid voices at play in the yard. indistinct yells and game rules being decided. nothing better.

kitchen table empty. never ever happens, but i do love it, in imagination... love seeing the grain of the wood, the false promise that things have found their places to be.

the deepest teal, the almost blue.

the sobbing sadness which won't let me burn love letters, and the unbelievably painful 'yet' that waits.

ah. there is, of course, so much more. but these are bits ... tids...

Monday, July 25, 2016

POST-its..

I'm still doing allright, my toes are sandy right now as we've just returned from a few hours at the beach. I'm doing allright with a few glitches, here and there.  Its become more important for me to track my cycles, as I need to hang on for dear life during the pre-menstruation ride.  Its helpful to know there is relief in sight. very. the moon, man.  the moon.



My eight asked me today if the oceans would just be a pool if the moon exploded... and all i could think about was The Last Airbender movie... did you see it? the world 'bathed in fire' when the moon spirit is crushed... my kids and I love that movie.  I think my three hasn't got a memory of it....

Too much time still spent thinking about J. Way too much. what? where? why? It was a long fifteen years, and I can't shake it off like he can, I guess.

I took a pottery class and LOVED it, had beginners luck the first class and will have something to bring home and photograph and be proud grandma to, sometime in August. The instructor was divorced and I listened to him talk about how lovely it was for he and his former wife, and just almost stuck my face in the clay in sorrow, for the not-niceness that I have going on internally, and the deep pain that I feel every time I see J.

not nice.

I danced with total freedom to Michael Jackson in the kitchen this morning.  It was awesome.  It freaked out the kids, and I kept on keeping on... total freedom doesn't really happen that often, it seems...

I'm getting more in touch with old friends, who've been through divorce, and its been very educational.  There is an awful lot of time needed for women, and a lot of anger and bitterness here and there, in pockets. time time time.

I have got that one in my pocket.  lots of it.

I'm not posting much here because it is actually hectic most of the time here, and even my 'one whole day' where J has the kids is not free and unplanned... but I am posting on instagram @wifemotherexpletive , if you want to see more stuff.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Therapy, bitches, therapy.

I am now seeing two therapists, to help me... help me. One, Susan, is new.  She was a name on a list, to help with divorce and with issues of codependency and addiction. As it happens, her methodology is incredibly woo-woo, and a perfect fit for me.  We talk about the body, and where the emotions lie therein, hello chakras?!, and then address emotions specifically, with curiosity, asking what emotions of protection, anger, sadness, self-criticism are serving my larger purpose in life. It is totally woo-woo, and lovely, and I feel very bolstered by the experience. I see her every week, believe it or not, and it is fab.

Chakra Carol is once a month, although I am not sure why I don't do it more, except that the planning of how to deal with childcare of all three for a longer period of time is probably the ticket. Summer. She takes my calls, too, and I've had to take her up on her generosity on that one, more than once. Today she told me I was all normal, the feeling of self-worthlessness were part and parcel of divorce, and I was okay, moving in the right direction.  Sometimes something as simple as someone you trust telling you this, is enough.  Today it was. Feeling worthless is pretty damn hard to bear.

It's amazing what the fears can be. They are legitimate, yes, but from a place of inconsistent emotion. For example: being afraid that the kids will love 'her' more, because it will always be 'fun', because there is no 'discipline' or 'no' coming anytime soon.  Can you imagine being afraid that your kids will love someone more than they love you/? But the proof is in the ex, right? If he can, they can. It is an query I hope you never know. It is completely devastating, this fear.

It doesn't matter that J says that he says all the floofy stuff to the kids, like how lucky they are to have me as a mother. He obviously doesn't think it true, or he wouldn't be trying to get them to fall in love with another woman like he did.  there is something to that. and then, nothing, at the same time.

But it isn't a true emotion, this fear. Rooting myself in the role of my life, realizing the power of my presence, my loving, fun, consistent and giving presence in the world is very tough, inconsistent right now, but not impossible. I just need to look at the good minutes, the shimmers in the summer doldrums, the baby pictures, the summer pictures, the magic I have made in this beautiful house, to feel more of my own rock in the life of these kids. It is all a trip.

It is also true that the kids are not their father. Nor are they me, thank god. They don't carry his personality in their skins, they are individuals on their own right and they can see for themselves what love has, in all its guises. So there is that.

There is a lot. a lot a lot a lot.
and a lot of therapy is making me a whirlwind on the inside.  but i'm hoping that by focusing so intently, i find myself in a much better spot when it all finally subsides.

in the quiet, the coming storm. in the quiet, the receding storm.
you dig?

Friday, July 8, 2016

There is so much.

there is so much I do not understand.

If my elven eleven can actually articulate that he is not ready to meet his dad's girlfriend, I do not understand why the meeting will go on . (Tonight)

When my mother is mad at me for being too flexible, because my eight year old asked if the girlfriend was coming to his birthday party five months from now and I did not dismiss it out-of-hand but just said a lot of blaghblah about time and whatnot... and I say, 'what choice do I have really? What choice is there?', I am met with silence.

How freaking telephones carried voices through telephone wires, and now through space, to satellites and back.

How I can make people laugh while I am contemplating jumping off the roof. (In theory, in emotion, but not in reality.) My three year old told me I was beautiful when I put on a dress the other day, beautiful like daddy's girlfriend. She hasn't met her yet. (Tonight)
I did walk away quickly after saying thank you, sweetie. I did.

This is a transition to end all transitions and the only good thing about it, is that I will never do it again. I must say.


Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Single mama goes hippy. Not hipster, hippy.

In this, my first summer of single parenting, I've got a long list of things to do. Today it is raining, so all bets are off and I'm hoping everyone sleeps real late, and gets ready to color and do play dough. Think my eleven elven will do this? Heh.

While our list has a lot of kid-driven choices, there are also some of mine. few, but some. And I'm always so happy when we accomplish our things, I'm feeling proud for the experiences and happiness that I'm gifting my kids.

There is this small part of me, though, that is curious about how much I am gifting to others all the time, and wonders about gifting myself. It is true that I often have fun on these outings, almost always really, and watching them have fun is a gift in and of itself. But since I spent so much of my failed marriage arranging and easing and enabling, I am finding myself in a large query about it all.
and my job as housewife-notwife and stay at home mom is basically about constantly gifting others, in its very essence.

It wasn't the way to go in the marriage, for me, and what if there is something more that I am overlooking in the new relationship I've got with my kids? What if my gifting them these times is somehow missing some component that has to do with my own gifts? Does this make sense?

Last night was a new moon, the Fourth of July, and a first night home all-together, all-alone in a few days. Sleepover party, sleepover with dad, sleepover for fireworks... Now, just us. I made a fire for us, and we wrote our wishes on paper and sent them to the sky. My wish for more openness and magic and a more fluid relationship to the time that I need for all this processing was made more palpable by the focus I put on the process. I found it very powerful. The kids were drawn in, away from the television, towards the fire, the yard, the play, the focus. I've got to figure out how to draw them into my own inner life, not 'into' maybe, but shared, seeing what is increasingly important to me, the intangibles, the hopes, the fireflies against the darkness...

the lense is blurred, but there has to be a sparkle, there has to be.

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Growing Things

My eldest has turned eleven. He is a rare creature, so sweet, so sensitive, his light shines through easily, and though he has been clouded by the separation of his parents, he is shining still.  He has always carried his Light lightly, and it is remarkable, and so he is.  Eleven. Elven.

There was a family party, complete with his dad shooting hoops and all his surviving grandparents, and even a visiting cousin.  It was 'normal' for the new time.  I think it was a bit overwhelming for me, watching what is still technically my husband shooting hoops and playing with my kids exactly as would have occurred a year ago. But now I look at his body that is so familiar and yet cannot help but dwell on how he is loving someone else with that whole body. Internal, external. It is so surreal, so much of a stranger.

It brings forth a wild understanding, tree trunk gnarled, that while he is so familiar, there is little I know about him anymore. I like not knowing, honestly, as so much of it I was tired of hearing, and am tired of hearing, and would love to never sit through again. But there are things that I have forgotten, that are probably good things, like how he uses his poetry in riddles for the kids to suss meaning from wordplay.

He is finally learning how to take responsibility for the kids, all three at once, as he has now had opportunity these six months. It was not something he understood when he lived here. Maybe that was on me, but I think it the natural division of labor, gone wrong. But now he knows, and watching the relationships of the children with him, shift because of it, is another growing thing. They, and I, have more trust in him.  A sapling, perhaps.

It is mildly interesting to notice my twist, a man that I used to know, internal external, and do not want to know anymore, and what happens when there is an outside force. Realizing what a bad husband and partner he was for me, and still having the twist is sharp sometimes. I don't judge myself too harshly for it, as I don't take action beyond my inner world and we have all seen much much worse. I take comfort that I am not slashing tires, or making angry gestures to the world.  I would wish myself more immune, but I can vaguely sense it coming, this flat immunity. Again, I don't know what it will look like.  But there is something bright at the end of this tunnel, something bright.  Fools's gold? Chrome in a diner? Diamonds? Prisms? Sunlight in the morning? Brightness, and I'll take it in whatever form it arrives.