Sometimes....

Sometimes, all you need is a great big bear-hug and someone you love to assure you it will all be alright, when it all seems like too much....

On Love

When I was a teen I knew I wanted to be a young mom.  Not a 16 year old mom (not that 19 was sooo much better); I took precautions to make sure I wasn't going to have to drop out of school and try to care for a baby.  But I was also raised that you get married and then have kids, so I was on the look out for my husband when I was 17.  I ended up married and pregnant (one had nothing to do with the other, btw) at 19.  My two awesome teens are 17 months apart.  I had thought at one point I would be a housewife and a mom and I wanted 5 kids.  HA!  Was I ever done at 2!!  But I was bored and naive and I felt like I had made a very wrong choice and instead of doing the right thing and ending it I looked to escape it.  I ended up leaving one bad relationship and heading into the gauntlet of another would-be relationship.  After 5 or so years it ended with me moving out into a 2 bedroom apartment with my children and learning how to live, for the first time, on my own.  I was okay at it and then the rent was jacked and I wasn't making enough.  And he and I had reconciled after only 6 months.  It was a needed break, but after 18 months, I moved back in with him for the security of 2 incomes and retry this thing called love.

Love is unconditional.  Love is patient.  Love is kind.  These are all words I thought I was living, but I really wasn't.  I never wanted to be "tied down".  I wanted to have a life besides just him.  I wanted to call the shots of my own life.  I was very selfish.  I didn't want him to know how I felt at any given time of the day.  I didn't want to let him in.  I guess the attitude was, "take me for who I am" and he did, at a price to himself.  He deserved more.  And I don't want to put him up on a pedestal or anything; he wasn't without his faults and baggage.  But I took far more than I gave.  And the more he asked of me, the further I backed off.  This was my wall; my protection.  He'd hurt me before, and I had been hurt by others and I just didn't want to let him in; I was done letting anyone into my life.  I had checked out of this relationship way before it ended.  And when it did, those few days before Christmas, I was relieved.

People used to ask me what "love" meant.  When I was a kid it was all romance and roses and champagne and fireplaces and bear-skin rugs.  When I was a teenager, it was hurt and trust.  I just wanted someone to fall all over me and  make me feel special.  When I was looking for Mr. Right, it was more about the best man for the job and choices were limited.  Don't get me wrong; he was a great guy; we just were very naive and very young to get married at that age.  And when that ended, then it was the champagne and roses and I was swept off my feet.  And the romance ended as quickly as it started so when the real life living came into play, I decided it was like a leap of faith.  My analogy may not make sense to you, but it did to me.
- Love is a relationship where there is total trust, protection and where two people compliment each other. -  So there I am, standing on a cliff and he asks me to jump, saying he'll catch me.  I look down and see my demise.  There is demise if  I let him catch me.  I don't want him to catch me.  I don't want anyone to catch me.  I can land on my own.  Ergo, I must be better off single.  I don't know what your judgement of me is; and to be honest, I have to answer for my life anyway, so it really only matters how I perceive myself.  I may look like I was the man-eater here, but I have had my fair share of hurt.  I didn't want to inflict myself on anyone.  I beat myself up pretty badly over it though, thinking I was the horrible person who just couldn't open myself up to anyone so I must be in the wrong.  I was broken, after all.

When T walked into my life both of us had been through the relationship wringer.  We agreed to take it slowly.  (This was a concept I had heard about but never been able to do... slowwwwllyyyy.... could I actually manage that?)  Instead we focused on trust, openness and handling each other's hearts with care.  I think what I now know, is that there is such a thing as "unconditional love".  I had no idea what that even was, except in relation to my kids.  Once the wall came down in Mexico, I understood it with my family.  Little by little, there are people in my life who I want to remain a part of it.  There's a certain give and take.  There are feelings and proverbial hearts and there is respect and honor, and good and bad times.  A wedding vow goes something like "have, hold, sickness, health, love, honor and cherish".  Will you take this man/woman?  Will you have him/her in your life, and in your heart?  Will you hold them when they need comfort or just because?  What if they get sick (and these days that is a LOADED question if you consider dependency issues, mental illnesses, or ailments!)  What if they're healthy?  Will you continue to stand by and support them?  Will you love him/her with all your heart, mind, body and spirit?  Will you honor him/her? His/her heart, feelings, and build him/her up and not cut him/her down, or berate or belittle, will you respect him/her always?  Will you cherish him/her and remind him/her that they mean the world to you?  Will you fight for his/her happiness as your own?  Will you protect him/her from the world when it all seems to be going against you?  When it's good, will you be there and be a part of it?  When it's bad, will you be there to support and help the other fight for his/her victory or will you bail?  It's so easy to bail these days.

I said the vow once and I broke it.  And the world believes and is teaching us all to take care of me first.  It teaches you to to be an individual and not to lose yourself in a relationship.  "Co-dependence" is a dirty word.  Where is the two-become-one line and what is healthy and what is not?  If my happiness is mine and his happiness is his, when do we take responsibility for the other's happiness or do we ever?  Relationships are so much more intricate than I ever thought; they grow and change.  And a life time is a long time!!  No relationship is perfect, and no relationship is ever always good.  I don't know the answers to this, but I can at least identify it now.

"What about you... are you happy in your relationship?" ~ Samantha Jones  
"I'm happy every day.  Not all day, everyday.  But, everyday." ~ Charlotte York-Goldenblatt ~ Sex and the City

Chapter 1 ~ Prequel

I had messed up in true J-style and now my relationship of 10 years was in the toilet. I needed to move out. It was the middle of December and a mere couple of weeks before Christmas. Not exactly the Christmas I was planning. The weekend I moved, the kids' dad helped me move, just the two of us. They were away that weekend; it was the way I wanted it. I had no couch. I bought a tray of sushi and a bottle of wine and sat on my empty living room floor and I was soooo relieved that it was finally over. I was a little scared... But I was highly optimistic. My house was perfect. Gleaming hardwood, tiles, custom kitchen, 3 bedrooms, jack n jill bathroom for the kids, and I had my own bathroom and a walk in closet the size of another bedroom. It was a little overwhelming and I was a drunken puddle of sushi and wine and tears on the floor of the living room.

At Christmas, it was kids' dad's turn to take them. I went home, sheepishly to my family for a few days to heal a little. My mom and I had a conversation in the garage one afternoon over coffee and a cigarette and she told me she thought I had ADD. Then my sister "A." showed up and between the two of them my life went from the square-peg-round-hole scenario to the glass-slipper effect. It made so much sense! They are both professionals in that field. I did not seek a formal diagnosis.

Now I had a reason why I made so many bad decisions knowing full well what the consequences were and not having the ability to stop myself from making them. I could see everything so clearly; when I would rock the boat, what my triggers were, why I always seemed to say the wrong thing and knowing it was wrong as soon as I finished my sentence. I sought behavioral therapy over medications. I'm still not medicated.

My point is: the happiness that I spoke of in the last post is directly related to this. All my life I had very little self esteem. I really can't blame that on parenting. Watch any parent. All they do is praise their kids and love them. No, I believe a lack of self-esteem comes from one's own self image. We only see in ourselves what we want to see. I saw myself as a rebel, a badass, a negative force to be reckoned with, the black sheep. It sounds harsh but I really didn't like myself at all. And when you can't like yourself, certainly the challenge is to love yourself. And you can't face yourself. So how in the world do you expect to face anyone else; to like them even? What if they hate you too? Build that wall, Jules! And that's exactly what I did. I kept everyone in my life at arm's length from me. If they can't get close they'll never know to hate you. What a sad and miserable existence!! My own family, my ex husband, my ex bf- no one was allowed in. Not even me.

Little by little, I opened myself up. I smiled at people because I have a nice smile and I'm happy. I saw a humanity in people I'd chosen for so long to ignore. Humanity is a beautiful thing! It's like a colourful painting of one's spirit! Everything; the good, the beautiful, the bad and the ugly; all a jumbled up abstract of their soul. Look at the light in a senior's eyes and imagine what they have seen in all of their years. Look at the homeless person who begs for your change and notice the lines of laughter around their eyes. And in the same glance, see the pain they are living. Practice empathy, sympathy and love. I'm not suggesting you clean out your change purse walking downtown, but treat one another with kindness. That, friends, is the beauty of humanity.

I used to think to get ahead in this world, as a woman, that if I was as cold as ice and a bitch and emotionless and if I commanded respect that I would be at the top of the man-eating food chain. I emulated women like that. You know the ones; they're the ones who always look like they have to shit. I've found that the better, more successful woman is the one who earns her respect because she treats others that way. You can still be smart and do the job with your eyes closed, in circles around the man but you have to be human.

After letting go of all that garbage I'd held onto for so long, I was as different as night and day. People responded to me differently; they were nice. They smiled, they talked to me pleasantly. What had I been hiding from? (Oh, right... Myself.)

And then I finally, finally learned how to love....

Chapter 28 ~ How I Even Ended Up Here

It was January 2010 and a girlfriend had moved back to town after being gone for a few years. We had a rocky start years before which ended up leading us to an amazing friendship. It was kinda cold that night, and she showed up in flip flops while I was in sweat pants and we drank a bottle (or was it two...maybe 3?) of wine and had a total girls night. I was newly single and had just moved into my own house.  By the end of the night, we'd sworn we were sisters separated at birth. For privacy purposes, she remains as S., my Twisted Sister, or my BFF.


Somehow we got to discussing our age and learning from mistakes and I said something about "taking a page out of the book of S." to which she replied, "I think my chapters need reconstructing!" and I responded that perhaps my chapters needed to be constructed, period."  Thus, Chapters Under Construction was invented.


In truth, it started when I went to Mexico 4 months later with another girlfriend. I blogged about our trip on Facebook under Notes and then continued after my trip, because in Mexico, something happened to me... I had a life changing experience.


I had never been to a real beach before. Yes, sandy beaches on the Great Lakes and I have been to the Pacific Ocean by means of Vancouver Island... but anyone who has done that and then experienced a tropical beach knows there is a world of difference. The water was warm and the sand was soft and squished between my toes. I was enamored with the ocean, its size and its power and I felt very small next to it. One night, I was walking along the beach and I was feeling the powerful waves pulling me from the shore as the tide came in and I went to sit on a rock nearby. I got that "small" feeling again. It wasn't a bad feeling, like belittling; no, it was more the feeling like realizing the vastness of the universe and I'm but a mere grain of sand in all of time. Suddenly, all the importance I thought I had was gone, but again not in a bad way. All my problems were insignificant in the grand scheme of all of this. I had a proverbial wall around me my whole life and these waves were battering it, hard. I started to cry. I didn't know why. I felt foolish for a brief moment, but it was late; there was no one around. And so I cried harder. I still didn't even know why, but I was in an unhappy relationship that I had tried, for months, to end; which was how I found myself recently single and living on my own (on again off again queen, right here). I was unhappy at my job. I needed to change my living situation. Every wave that came in pulled more of my wall away and I was feeling vulnerable... I felt like I could feel the "poison"; bitterness, hatred, grudges, and useless issues I was holding on to, leaving my body. I cried harder. I was almost surreal. I remember being in that moment, only I hadn't realized by the time the tears had stopped that hours had passed. I felt so cleansed. And peaceful. And something I had never really felt before; happiness. Real, genuine happiness, that comes from inner peace. It is an amazing feeling and one I have tried very hard to keep, since I've found it.


My wall was gone. Not my wisdom, but the wall, that I had built up for many, many years to shut people out, to shut out emotion, to shut out hurt and close myself off from the world. I thought I was protecting myself. Instead, I was failing to live, to experience, to love.


That experience changed my life, and I embarked on a journey of happiness from there on. I returned home from Mexico as a new person. And within a couple of weeks, I was single, jobless and had re-signed a lease on my home where my rent went up 200$ a month. I was fucked, to be honest. I'm a single mom... did I mention that?


I'll blog about the rest of that in the next entry...