Restarting...again....I know...

...I'm lame. After the 'catastrophe' of last weekend, I allowed myself a week to wallow. Silly wallowing, selfish wallowing, destructive wallowing. I've hated every moment of it, yet it was just so...easy.

Here's the thing: it wasn't really a catastrophe. It was startling, it was a little wake up call, it was a reminder that I might not be able to be completely comfortable after all, that there's always a chance I have to put up or shut up and get the hell out. And to prepare for that, both physically and emotionally and financially.

But I've realized it could be worse. It could be SO much worse, this little life of mine. Yes, I am a lonely housewife. Yes, I took the easy road too many times and didn't end up at the destination I wanted in life. Yes, my daughter is not a perfect angel genius. Yes, my husband has demons and issues and there are things that we should get over that we can't get over.

I need to stop whining now, don't I?

Pressing the restart button. Again.

Because it feels so good when I stop...

Is that why we keep doing repetitive, possibly harmful behaviors? Ones that might just fuck over everything we've worked for and attempted to acheive? Ugh. I was just about to write a whole whiny blog about how nothing bad ever happens to me, so why am I such a whiny fucking baby when--WHAM! The big bad ghost of things past reared up and bitch slapped me today. And made me realize that yes, yes indeed I DO have a great life, a life I am and should damn well be grateful for and at any moment it could all just....float away...on a wave of beer and stress and low self-esteem.

Not my own. The person on whom I depend for all my rose-colored daily existence. I bitch about him, I take him for granted, I count on him to be the one that is strong and trustworthy and solid and not flaky. And then I am painfully reminded that he's human, that he's not living the life he wanted, that he needs someone to take care of him.

I think I dropped the ball. I'm trying to unknot my stomach enough to make the decision as to whether I should pick it up. I swore I wouldn't this time. But I don't think I really thought that 'this time' would actually happen. But it did. I think I have to pick it up though. Not just because I'm in no position, realistically or financially, not to; but because he needs me to pick it up. Because it's been almost eight years since this was something I needed to worry about and I think over those years I haven't been helping him enough. Not that I think that this is my fault, but I think it might be a little my fault. I don't think I'm helping, anyway.

What happened today was his choice, I get that. And he's sorry and won't do it again. And I heard that same thing over and over for a long time. And then it was all better. And now it isn't. I don't know what to do.

I am SO here right now...

So, did I ever tell you I went to therapy for a while? Actually, I was in and out of therapy a few times, but could only ever find therapists that wanted to talk about how everything that is wrong with me is my mother's fault and would I like more drugs? Not that either of those is necessarily bad. I do believe that some of my problem is my mother (which is one reason that I'm so distressed about how I interact with my daughter), and drugs would be great if I didn't overreact to them.

But.

I wanted therapy that would actually help me. Help me stop the stupid behaviors. Great, thanks, now I know where they came from; can we do the things that will stop them now? Can we work on cutting the loop in my head now? But no, they just wanted to keep talking about my mother and all the men I'd been sleeping with.

Then I accidentally fell into the best therapist ever. And what he did was amazing. He told me to cut the bullshit. To stop acting like a selfish brat and eventually I'd stop feeling like a selfish brat. That, no matter HOW I was feeling at any given moment, I needed to behave in accordance with my own internal moral compass and do the right thing. Eliminating cognitive dissonance would help.
So, for a year or two I:
quit smoking
had sex with my husband even when I didn't want to
didn't yell at my child (mostly)
talked to people I didn't know or like
wrote

I lived in the moment. I appreciated what I was doing. I....think I mostly may have just been in a repressive fugue.

I WANTED to do it. I did. I DO. But I think now there might have been a teensy tiny need for me to be spewing some "look what my mother did to me" crap.

So now I'm back to the spewing. Can I spew and be living in the moment and appreciating life and doing the right thing, no matter how depressed I am?

I'm going to give that one more week.

Then I'm going to work on how messed up I am when it comes to time, deadlines and scheduling.

(But I did lose enough weight in the last 3 weeks to fit into my skinny jeans that a month ago I couldn't pull over my thunder thighs, and I haven't had a cigarette...until today, and that was only because I was drinking with my BFF and just wanted one. Or four. But I'm good; patch back on now!)

Week 3 Am I Supposed to be This Tired?

Bleehhhhhh....Ugh. I thought going to the gym and eating right and not smoking were all supposed to magically make me feel BETTER. I allowed myself to rut for a couple of days, reading blogs, manically spitting out some crap to try to end my book, letting the laundry overflow and the bunny turds build up in the boxes. I deserved a break, right? I went to the gym three whole times last week! Come on! I should get a medal! I cleaned the whole house! Do I get a Kit Kat now?

So today I resolutely jumped out of bed (okay, not really. I'm soooo not a morning person. I ooze out of bed, squinting and wincing and turning off the lights in the rooms before I go into them. Then I sit on the futon next to the kid and watch Curious George with a cup of coffee that I wish was connected via IV to my carotid artery. No jumping.), washed my face and brushed my hair, made the kid breakfast and got her off to school WITHOUT YELLING ONCE, thank you very much, put on my sweats and tennies and folded a load of laundry and did the dishes and went to the gym. Movin' and shakin', that's me.

Now I'm beat. I was up too late last night, which usually happens after a good writers' group meeting. Great people in that group. They're all so supportive and positive about this silly little novel I'm writing, even though right now I'm writing crap. Anyway, I came home and did some emails for the group so I wouldn't forget to do them, then had to sit and drink a glass of wine and dissect EVERY critique from the group. Except for the one from the little religious lady whose only critique for me is that I shouldn't swear. I don't swear, my character does. It's a character flaw. In the character. So I was up too late. I'm sleeeepy today.

I need to go downtown for some errands, but I just don't know if it's gonna happen. I should tho. Fairly important errands; errands that a person who is trying to improve themselves wouldn't put off. Is this my week for working on my procrastination? Wait, I thought this was the week of Being Present.

Ok, then. Presently, I am going to sit my ass on the couch and read a book before picking up the girl from school.
I'll go downtown tomorrow.
And I'll experience and appreciate every moment of it.

Here Comes Week 3

Wow. Well, that was certainly depressing to read, isn't it? After rereading my post from yesterday, I felt like I'd been kicked in the gut, seeing my sick perspective all laid out like that. I've decided I need to at least try. I do love my daughter, I do. And I do think she's a cool kid; she's funny and has a great memory for odd little bits of information (like her mom), looks at every angle of every situation (like her dad), is really athletic and pretty. I can accept her for whom she is (who she is? I know the who/whom rule, but then I overthink it and get all bolloxed up on it) and cheer her on for everything she does.

But I really probably ought to figure out why so many of the things she does irritate me so much.

Come to think of it, everything irritates me lately. I feel like George Costanza on that episode where he was trying to get out of doing anything by walking around at work acting all pissed off all the time. What is that? I'm just so....pissy.

I get pissy when the wiener dog want to jump up on the sofa and sit on my lap, even thought I love snuggling with him.

I get pissy when the husband leaves a glass on the counter that has a puddle of milk in the bottom, even though the rest of the counter is covered in all my detritus from the day.

I get pissy when the phone rings; I don't want to talk to anyone, that's just too much effort, even though I'm lonely. Conversely, I get pissy when I call someone and they don't answer, even though I very rarely answer my own phone, even when it's someone I really want to talk to. Just too much effort.

I get pissy when I try to find something in the laundry room, which is a certifiable disaster area. MY disaster.

etc...
etc...
etc...

Am I a bitch? Maybe. I think it's just pissiness. Or PissiNess. Hormones? Probably. My face is looking like the astrological map lately, my boobs feel bruised all the time (sorry for the TMI), so the annoying woman-issues could be doing it. Depression? Yeah, pretty sure.

I'm good at reading. I'm good at reading self-help books and getting all excited and doing the whole "Yes I CAN!!!" cheer...for a few days or weeks or months. It's the doing of the needed behaviours that is hard for me. But I try. Then...meh...things start to get all dim and dreary and pissy again. It's just so hard to be a good person sometimes. I have maintenance issues. Meds don't work on me, they make me worse and/or ill.

Okay. So, here's my little plan. I'm going to keep up with the exercise thing. I'm going to increase it to four days a week this week. Exercise helps; it's that whole endorphin release stuff. New research has also shown that smoking makes PMS worse and makes depression worse (My GOD, are they EVER going to find something GOOD about smoking, please? Just one little thing, maybe, to make me feel better about being absolutely besotted with cigarettes and nicotine?), so being off of those might help with the cheerfulness.

I don't like being pissy. It's easy, it's convenient, it gives me a sick sense of power. I don't like it. I don't want to be pissy; I grew up with a pissy mum (I know, she's all cheery now, but she's had some revelations of her own over the last 20 years) and hated how that felt. I don't want that for G, and I'm pretty sure I'm much worse than my mom ever was. So I will be present; that's it. Just present. I will enjoy--no, I will experience just this one moment. I will do my best not to knee-jerk react.
Here comes week 3. Every little moment of it.

Day 12, Week 2: The Mother of all Bad Mums.

I have a daughter. Just one. We stopped with one because I knew my limitations; I'm not good with little kids, I am not the most patient of people, I'm selfish and saw how exhausted my friends who had more than one are. They never seemed happy with their children, only tired and angry all the time. I had a fantasy that with just one, we'd be so happy together, we'd be very bestest friends and do everything together. She'd love to read, wouldn't ever want to watch TV because playing with her awesome toys is so much better, she'd be able to solve complicated math and language problems and enjoy it, she'd be so creative and want to spend her days happily alone working on brilliant little projects she'd come up with. My life would be idyllic; my child would be a genius prodigy.

I think karma has decided to kick me in the ass.

She doesn't like to read. She has almost never independently sat down in front of her bookcase and started pulling out books and excitedly flipping through them. Getting her to read them is an exercise that needs earplugs. This is heartbreaking for me, the bibliophile author whose ultimate fantasy includes and endless library of books on a deserted tropical island. It also includes a yummy native man, but that's another blog.
She doesn't like to play with her toys. She wants toys; she wants everything she sees and, thanks mostly to overindulgent grandparents and a mother desperate to find something that she'll independently play with, she has two rooms overflowing with stuff. She wants more stuff, stuff that will just sit on her shelf and not get played with. She won't let her friends play with her stuff either.
She'd watch TV all day if I let her. She's not the kind of kid who can have the TV on in the background and still be playing; if it's on, she's a mesmerized veggie bump on the couch. (To be fair, I'm like that too. It's like the opposite of ADHD.)
She's cautious. Which is fine, except sometimes trying to get her to try something new is impossible. She's a watcher, and has been since she was about four months old. She has almost no exploration drive.

My kid is a boring, neurotic lump.

Don't get me wrong, I love her more than my own life. I remember in the hospital after she was born, having the sudden feeling like I would stand over her and growl at danger. That I would do anything for this silky, serenely wiggly, unfathomably lovely little being. I routinely embarrass myself by crying with pride and longing at every one of her accomplishments and performances. I was a neurotic new mum, scared for her and scared of her. I was so afraid of doing anything wrong, of having anyone think badly of my mothering skills, I think I smothered the joy out of all of it, of all of us. I spent the first two years manically finding activities for us to do, very rarely letting us just stay home and be ourselves, explore who she is.

I want nothing more than for her to be healthy and happy and content with herself.

But I seem to be having trouble accepting that her self is not what I think it should be. So I lose patience and get disappointed in her choices and responses, get impatient with the incessant "buts" and "what ifs" she can pose in any situation (my neurotic mother has instilled and nurtured the worrywort gene quite snugly in my daughter and it irritates the crap out of me with both of them). I yell. A lot. And then I hate myself, because I don't want her to grow up feeling bad about herself, not liking who she is, not knowing who she is, afraid to be brave because it might be wrong or might not be the right decision. I don't want her to someday have to blog about all her self-loathing and bad life choices.

Day 11--Week 2: Those Chicks Who Put Up With Me

All right. All that other uplifting and heartfelt crap I wrote before belongs on the Domestic Goddess blog. This is the other blog. The secret blog. The painfully honest blog where I'm not trying to impress an audience, but rather get all my stifling unconscious bullshit spewed and purged from the system.

Girls rule. My girlfriends rule. I love hanging out with them and laughing and drinking and smoking and being who I really am without having to plaster a ersatz smile on my face and wax poetic about the virtues of my god-like husband and my genius child. I can say the word 'fuck' and they don't bat an eye, much less feel the need to run to their bishop with extra tithing for the month and thereafter give me a wide berth in the hallways at the kids' school. They understand that I am doofy about rabbits, love Erasure and all things British. They get that I have serious self esteem issues that press me to make a complete ass of myself trying to pick up cute boys in bars after I've had a martini or four. They brave sub-zero temperatures so I can get my nicky fix every hour on the hour, twice that if I'm drinking. They don't care that I have a fashion sense so bad it's nearly negative, that I will always wear impractical shoes, and that my living room is purple. They call me on my bullshit but love me anyway. I probably don't deserve them, but they keep coming back.

So there.

I'm tired today. Tami made me drink tequila last night, which can never lead to anything good. Tequila in my system generally leads to me doing incredibly stupid things and thinking that I am one bad motherfucker. It also makes me puke. Luckily T makes a margarita I can stomach. And Sara made me cry. Stupid Mamma Mia, anyway. I need to find my ABBA cd now.

Okay, that's about enough of the self-indulgent blogging for today. I need to fix a bad chapter full of florid language and obvious 'telling not showing' narrative. Ugh. I think I've lost my mojo on this book. Four years, 160 pages, 100K or so words and it all comes down to sweating the last two chapters. This sucks. I think reading Stephanie Meyer has thrown my voice off. Maybe I should read a few Stephen King/Richard Bachman books to restart the decent writing cells in my prefrontal cortex. They've been poisoned by LDS vampire crap.

Over and Out.