I Read Too Much

My middle little, the one who is extremely sassy, drama-prone, loud to the nth degree, impressionable, and full of genuine love wanted to go through scrapbooks tonight.  This should have sent alarm bells off in my head the minute I walked back in from my walk/run tonight.  (Yes, I tried to run even with my injury, yes, yes, yes!) I tried every tactic I could think of to deter this.  I made up one condition after another.  It wasn't so much that I didn't want to spend the time with her; I just didn't want to go through those blasted books.  Those books that I poured untold hours, obscene amounts of money, and unmeasurable amounts of love into creating.  I USED to scrapbook.  USED to . You know, back when preserving family memories meant something because forever wasn't supposed to end. We started off somewhere in the middle of her toddler years.  I was never good at chronological order.  I made that a goal with the littlest little, but ...

We've all heard some variation of the saying, "when one door closes another one opens."  I really hate that saying for many reasons.  I think the biggest reason is that a closing door is often looked at as the goodbye, the end.  The door can be gently closed, slammed shut, pushed in firmly, what have you.  However you look it, it is a severing of something - ties, time, plans, memories, relationships, etc.  But what if we look at it from the other side?  Not as the person on the outside, the one who no longer has access to what ever the thing may be.  What if we look at it from the inside?  Then that closed door could became a symbol of hope, comfort, and happiness.  I've had a lot of doors closed on me in the past 11 months.  Doors I never thought would.  I have also tried to open doors; doors that just wouldn't budge. As these doors closed, none by choice, until yesterday, but I will get to that lat...

She wore a baggy hoodie as she shuffled down the sidewalk.  Her face down cast while wisps of light brown hair slipped out from under her hood.  She's trying to run away, like every day before; run until there is no sidewalk left, but it doesn't, it doesn't end.  She can't run away from what's truly following her.  It is relentless.  It is fearless.  It is consuming. It has chased her for years.  Some years she has felt safe, she has felt it wasn't there and that she had finally outrun it, but she was wrong.  Dead wrong.  Because it was laying dormant.  That's what it does to make one think they have beaten it.  But it is merely waiting for one to let their guard down, and she did.  Now she is struggling to find a safe haven, a place where it can't reach her again. She'd tasted its sweetly intoxicating vileness before.  She tried to be strong, show others she was big enough to be...

They say that healing takes time, that getting over a major life event takes time.  But what manner of time are they talking about?  And who are these elusive "they"? We get time.  We know there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, so on and so forth.  But how do you truly account for the time it takes to "get over" something.  I need to be honest here.  I'm not over it.  I'm not, not completely - really.  I mean I was with him for the better part of 11 years.  Don't get me wrong.  I THOUGHT I was over it.  I THOUGHT my heart was healed.  Actually, I THOUGHT my mind was healed.  But I was more just hiding from it.  I think the true tell is the amount of time I still TALK about it.  And I do.  A LOT.  Truth, I talk about a lot of things a lot!  Heartache being the biggest one.  I'm going to get back to more lighthearted subject matters.  I know ...

I've done a lot of reading in the past week. I'm finally opening books I received for graduation and ones I bought for myself during bouts of clarity.  All I can say is, wow!  Holy geez people I wish I'd have cracked these puppies open straight away.  But, and here is the kicker, I wouldn't have been receptive to what they are saying.  Nope, not one lick.  That often happens when you turn off your listening ears and put on your own way of doing things.  I think what is most tragic is that over the course of several months I had heard what I knew to be truth, yet kept on keeping on.  We do that, don't we.  We tend to want what we think is best, most especially when it makes us happy and makes our heart smile.  I'm having a hard time now with negating the truth and fully accepting it.  But what I do know is this, I made a mistake.  Hear me out. We all know I run.  I use my time while running to clear my head and open my mi...

Have you ever been angry enough to fight?  Of course you have.   You are human.  Don't deny it.  It's alright.  There is no one here that will judge you.  I'm sure you are curious about why this topic, why now?  I mean I never got angry enough to fight in the whole past year.  That's just it.  I was.  I just didn't act it out in the way most people thought I should.  I didn't allow the hurt to produce the ugly side affects that anger can cause.  But now, now I want to share what I am angry about.  What I think all women should be angry about.  Truthfully, what all people should be angry about - the degradation of marriage. I will never deny the role I held in the breakdown of my marriage.  Sure, I wanted more than he could give. I wanted him to be someone he simply wasn't.  I wanted him to become a man that God had not created him to be.  It's ok.  I admit that.  I really do wish h...

I've gone back over a few things that I wrote for myself, those letters during the early months of the ex-Mr's journey elsewhere.  I marvel at the clarity I had during such a tumultuous period of my life.  Seriously, I sounded put together.  I sounded like a woman that really did know what she needed, or rather, where she needed to go.  I looked up and in for those answers.  I sought.  Continuously.  For strength and guidance.  I followed a pattern in those days, the ones between February and a couple weeks ago.  A clear pattern.  Actually, it became all the more earnest until June.  I broke in June.  I  used to pray people.  Daily.  I scrawled notes in the margins of my Bible, I penned letter after letter, I journaled extensively, all with the same theme - Father, guard my heart.  I knew.  I had been told.  I felt it.  Mostly, I knew especially when I stopped the waterfall of tears and...

Sleep eluded me last night.  It does that when my thoughts take over, when the words won't stop flowing.  I've written so much these past few days.  Some I've shared with you; much I have not.  It isn't that I won't, we all know that at some point I will to a degree, it's just that there are some thoughts that have to fully form.  The ideas have to put themselves together in just the right way.  Then there are those thoughts that no matter how much I care about you, I simply must save for myself.  These are my letters, my words, that I hold.  But, this post isn't about those. I fell asleep somewhere around 9:30pm with the light on, and my notebook, a pen, and a good book open beside me. I do that often.  I fall asleep in such a manner.  Truth is I have a couple notebooks, several pens, a couple dozen books - all started, none finished - tucked in my headboard.  That doesn't include the basket of running magazines on top of it...

Have you ever found yourself at that place where the holding on and the letting go are at war with one another? Truth, it's a terrible place to be.  No, seriously, it is.  I've been there a couple of times this past year.  I'd like to tell you that I've mastered this, that I'm the best EVER at taking things as they come and NOT having any thought/emotion/feeling/care about them. But I can't.  I never will, it's part of who I am.  Honestly, I think it is part of who we all are, even if it is just a bit. You see, I'm the kind of person that gives her all.  When  you are my friend I'll BE your friend.  I'll stick up for you, comfort you, provide for you, be there for you in the best way I can, I'll just be.  On the same note, I appreciate this consideration in return.  I also do this in all my relationships.  Right or wrong.  Some of them teach me that I'm far too giving, hell, many of them do, but again this is part of who I am...

Every year I anxiously await the ACD festival in town.  I know, most of the locals rue this time of year.  Truth, our bustling little burg does grow by an unfortunate number of national and international folks.  But, economy IS economy.  In the end we are all thankful for that.  Yet it is the other reason that I love this time of year.  September has long been one of my most favorite months.  There have been so many reasons to celebrate this month.  School is back in session, fall makes its official appearance, my grandma's birthday, my step-dad's birthday, many of my friends' birthdays, the ACD festival, the DeKalb County Free Fall Fair, and a plethora of other things.  Let's face it September rocks.  Well, until this year.  This year I have had to face, what is typically the entry to my favorite season, the onset of my favorite month with the cold hard facts - I have had to face it alone.  This has been the first year ...