Only-Child Syndrome

There is so much to say ...

Family, cancer, failing grades, all things that could be used to describe where I am right now but I know its all temporary one way or the other ...

I'm not ready to write about any of it just yet though ....

No Reason to Whine ...

There is something to be said about change, and this year the change was saving myself the cost of a bottle of Advil and Gatorade.

The two weeks leading up to New Years was especially rough on Smitten and I. We both have very different feelings on New Years Eve and the tension about if we would or wouldn’t be together ate at both of us. We would have these half conversations yet never really decide if we would spend the evening together or not.

Looking back we just weren’t communicating on the whole event in itself and probably caused each other more grief than it should have. The thing that we are both learning is that with a 10 yr age gap, there are some things that we hold very differently, no matter what we see eye to eye on. I was already aware of Smitten’s rough holiday spirit in the first place due to things that have nothing to do with me, but I didn’t get that it could bleed into New Years. I also didn’t take in account that he’s had his fair share of New Years, and big shin digs or even little ones that included the elements of big ones like fancy shoes or something.

What he didn’t understand or take in to consideration is that I’m 10 years younger, a silly girl and didn’t give a damn about getting dressed up. That overall if it was grilled cheese, video games, and cheap champagne it wouldn’t matter. My point for New Years was a way to celebrate the changes in our lives in the past year; the new jobs, the growing relationship. None of it had to do with shiny shoes at all.

All those points once talked out, and an actual plan in place fore the evening became moot when a conference call on Tuesday late in the game came in to play; he was booked on a plane to Denver for NYE. I’ll admit I was mad, but I understand work. I understand the last quarter push, hitting numbers, maxing compensation or barely making the cut. I could be pissed about silly hats and streamers but there was no way I could be upset about work. So my silly girl New Years with the person I love was off the table.

So, what does a girl do when all her “plans” fail and she doesn’t get her way, an only child at that? If she is me then she ends up with her extended family playing with kids, and laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. It was junk food for 10 and Taboo because really what could be better? My family was amazing at being miserable with me, which was their plan on all along.

No, New Years wasn’t anywhere close to a repeat of last year. I was awake at 7 am this morning, no hangover, and no second hand kisses. All in all it wasn’t bad either. It was just another reminder that I am growing up, and what is important one year won’t always be what is important the next.

I’ve got a sick Smitten on a plane headed home now where the hard part will be convincing him to let me feed him Nyquil and force some rest, regardless of which bowl game might be on today.

Another old year turns into another new one ....

I wish that last year I’d written a real New Year’s post on my last blog. Something that I could look back on and see if I really cut the mustard in 2008, but the only thing I really said was “DAMN I’M HOT”. Yes I was feeling VERY shallow come the end of last year.

 So, instead I will highlight 2008 old school bullet style:

• Had my friendship with Lust flourish and fizzle while learning so much about myself. I am lucky to know him, and will be happy when someday we can meet in the middle. Just because I don’t think we can be close friends now doesn’t mean that I don’t look forward the future where we can.

• Changed jobs successfully and upgraded my pay scale. I don’t feel any richer, but the change was much needed. I feel it was a step up even though at times I miss my old job like crazy.
• Continued to further my education and keep my 4.0 in place.
• Got a trainer and at least for a good while kept up a good pace of course the past month I’ve crashed burned, but that’s what is great about New Years and getting to start all over. (I still think I’m hot though, don’t be fooled)
• Turned 30. Nothing else needs to be said.
• Found a real relationship with an amazing man who still believes that mix cd’s make girls swoon,  never calls me cute and thinks football is a religion. (all qualities that I totally lo It’s not always the easiest relationship, but it's not that hard either, although sometimes my posts might not always just say that.

 What will I do in 2009?

• Work on my finances and become more stable even with the economy taking a nose dive.

• Continue to spend time with my trainer and remain healthy. (and HAWT)
• Work hard in school but try to remember to breathe, and not always take myself so seriously.
• Rekindle friendships. There are many people who may not know that I think of them almost everyday and miss them dearly.
• Work on both my emotional and spiritual well being.
  
• Spend more time with my family immediate, and further out. I always want to make sure to spend plenty of time with BMOC before he's grown, and leaving for school.
  
• Continue to build my relationship because any man who throws this on a CD full of other “love songs” makes me smile in ways that I can’t even begin to put in words.
  

 

Happiness & Bliss? The stuff that fairy tales are made of ....

The thing about happiness & bliss is that if every relationship was always rainbows and sunshine we’d all fall in love with the first person we ever dated. It would all be easy and we’d marry at 12 and live happily ever after.

The truth is in the same day you can totally blog about what a g33k your boyfriend is, and how much you love him; later in the day you can totally be on the verge of wanting to kill one another and questioning it all.

Today is one of those days when things are tougher than they normally are, and I have to continue to remind myself again that if it was all easy then there would be no Only-Child and Smitten in the first place. Today is one of those days when you just keep breathing even through the tears.

I know that as hard as is today for both of us, that tomorrow will be another day and we will pick up at happiness and bliss and will be better for the rain of today.

Relationships take a lot of work. A lot more than at times I’ve been prepared to expect or even give but the rewards are worth it. Happiness and bliss might only live forever in fairy tales and candy land, but I've decided that I’ll take my chances with some hard work and the love that grows because of it. At the end of the day that’s the love that makes it thru thick or thin. 

Stupid for Love ?

Show me a person who has been in love, and I’ll show you someone who has done something stupid in the name of love. I think we have all done something that looking back we wish we could take back.

Maybe had we really looked at the person we loved we would have seen the signs that no matter what stupid act we did they weren’t going to be the person in our future. Or maybe we did see it, and still couldn’t stop the impulse because the feeling of being in love is so much better than the feeling of being lonely.

I myself have fallen victim to the stupidity that love can bring. Starry eyed and hopeful even when I knew that I should have been focusing more on the reality of the situation and used less of my energy trying to be the person I thought my partner wanted or needed. Did it make me wrong? Did I feel any less in love at the time.

I will be honest sometimes that warm fuzzy feeling is exactly what I needed. It made getting up in the morning all the better. That feeling of knowing that one person at least in the moment loved me good or bad, even if that love was fleeting or maybe wasn’t love at all. The feeling someone understood me, and accepted me for who I was, a feeling that can’t be replaced.

When I hear someone say I don’t think I’ll ever fall in love again it makes me sad. I understand the logical thought process because once the relationship is over the heartache begins. I don’t however feel that way. I have worked very hard to not be bitter from the last time I thought I was in love.  A task not easily accomplished.

I have worked very hard to convince myself that I am worthy of love. Something that hasn’t been easy over the past two years, and at times I’ve doubted myself more than once. Something that I’ve continued to do, but after you’ve been burned when do you start to trust someone else? When do you give up the ghost and at the same time stop being so stupid about the fear of love? 

It can seem to be a damned if you do, and damned if you situation. So you have to decide; will you be stupid in love or just plain stupid.

When it comes to love? Which one is right? That unfortunately doesn’t come in any book, and you can’t Google it. Trust me, I have tried.

What do I care what I say when I'm drunk???

The thing about assuming is that you are bound to get it wrong eventually; even when in the end you will be right. It’s a tricky line to walk and you either can get out early and in the end take the blame, or you can hold on and then be discarded in some nice throw off way. No matter what anyone says, there are only two ways to go; get dumped or be dumped. Admit it, play stupid, the chance is that you will still  be friends or you won’t but it won’t take long to figure out which side of the line you tow.

So what does that mean?

It means that friendships become difficult, and lines ones blurred get drilled in the sand. It means that no matter how much you care or how much you love; minus the romantic you still love and feel. If we could just shut it off, why would we ever go through the motion? Why would we allow our self to feel? If we could just decide that we don’t care; then where do we turn it off; all of it.

It’s not about love; it’s about how you feel at the end of the day. It’s about how someone makes you feel about yourself at the end of the day. It’s not about forever; it’s not even about right now. At the end of the day it’s only about how high or low you can hang your esteem. (At least in my only child perception)

I personally have hit a wall; where I go from here doesn’t even compute.

The sky is indeed falling ...

Disclaimer: This is one of those rambles that doesn’t mean much from the outside, but between the lines it speaks volumes or my creativity just seems that much better when ambien induced.

Less than a month away and the sky is falling, and I’m trying to figure out how to keep my head above water. That and every other bad life takes a turn for the worse, bump in the road cliché you can think of. I’d like to thank identity theft, Bell County, and lawyers with fees for more than the actual cost of the incident.

I’m not getting into details at the moment, but I’ve spent most of the evening in tears save for a few laughs, and unwarranted victory dances. Now I’m stuck in my head and no matter how much my body knows I need sleep my head just won’t seem to allow it.

The silver lining; I might know my language of love which sounds extremely self help-ish and maybe a little gay but eye opening on so many levels. It is however some break through in regards to communication and what is important to me, and will hopefully prove helpful in the future.

 

 

 

The Greatness that is BMOC …

Anyone who may recall what I was like when the then 10 yr old sniveling brat entered my life will tell you I WAS NOT HAPPY!  Now, from a rational point of view what the hell at 23 did it really matter that I was gaining a step sibling? Honestly, not a damn thing. That didn’t stop me at times letting my mother know that I was on to her. I just KNEW she loved him more than me. What is worse is that I actually felt at times that she loved him more than me; her OWN daughter. *shudder* I have a flair for the dramatics there is no doubt about it.

Looking back it is easy to see what a fucking nightmare I must have been to deal with. Of course he knows none of this, and instead only knows the good that came from him coming into my life.  Not even today does he know what he did for me at that point in my life, how in some ways he saved me from myself. My family knows, his family knows, and I hope there never comes a point where he will need to know, but writing about it might put into perspective exactly how important that he is to me and my sanity.

When BMOC and I started building a relationship I never expected him to be as cool as he was. He was so much like me, except a boy of course. He played sports, watched sports, loved to get dirty. Everything I was at his age, and on a 10 year old level we had a connection. The thing that I got to bring to the table was support. I was at every game I could be, and made time in the middle of the week, or weekends to pick him up and go do silly things. Movies, lunch, anything that got him out of the house and got us alone with one another. At times he had to be reminded that at the end of the day I was not his friend so to speak, and yes I was a grown up no matter how often I didn’t show it. There were times when that lesson was harder to teach, but there was no denying that I lived for being a part of his life. Literally.

To say that BMOC saved me is an understatement. At the time we were building our relationship, my own personal relationship was going to hell. My ex who would be my ex more than once in my life had already began his long battle of beating me down to the point that I beat myself down without prompting. When I was at home I was only a shell of myself, and very rarely had a positive spin on life as a whole. I was doing nothing more than walking through the motions. It was at this time I very seriously thought about walking away from it all if you will. I’ll never forget making the call to my mother and laying it out and how fast her and my step father came running. The packed me up, what few belongings I had and took me home. I was back in counseling the next day, and every night my step father would come and check on me. Something I did not know until over a year later, how he looked over me to make sure that I was ok. In the end however it wasn’t being brought home that made the thoughts stop, it wasn’t the love of my mother or my step father that made me feel better about my life. At the end of the day it was something that BMOC’s uncle said to me that put things into perspective.

“I don’t know what we would have told BMOC about you, had you done something to truly hurt yourself.” “He loves you, and talks about you non-stop and all the time that you guys spend together.” “There is no way at 10 he would be able to process what you would have decided to do, and instead we would have lied to him about your whereabouts.” “Next time you feel that low, if it’s not your mother or father or even you step-father that makes you stop to think; think about him.”

Those words are exactly what I needed to hear, at exactly the time I needed to hear them. No matter how selfish I could be, and with what little regard to my family. When it came to BMOC I couldn’t hurt him in that way. Probably because no matter if he understood it yet, or if he will ever understand it I knew where he was in his life, and I was living proof of where he could end up without the support of loved ones. I had to make sure that I remained part of that support.

All of that is what drives me to our relationship as it is today. I can’t even begin to describe how proud I am of him. Last year he was successful as a freshman with sports, girls, etc but this year as he starts his sophomore year he is leaps and bounds ahead. Not only will he be playing Varsity Football, which come on FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS people! He is also holding down a 3.6 GPA, has remained grounded as much as I would expect anyone at his age to be, and at his level of accomplishment, but he has also become grateful for what he has, and what he is given.

This weekend as I took part of my Sunday to run him to the mall for school clothes shopping he wasn’t the whiney I want kid that I had dealt with before. Instead he was the grown up, this is what I need, how much I have to spend, and thank you kid that he’s grown into. He was grateful for the stuff that I personally bought him, something I would not have done had he thrown a fit over some label this or that, but he was also reasonable in his requests. He is becoming a man, and it’s easy to see that but at the same time it’s funny to still see the little boy in him.

The other thing that amazes me is how much our personal relationship has grown. He tells me things; things I know he would never tell someone he didn’t trust. It feels like an “us” against them kind of thing. The them being our parents of course, and I have held that confidence on more than one occasion. My theory is, if he’s not hurting someone, or himself then I am not going to pull the grown up judgmental card, and instead trust he’s smart enough to make the right choices.  The choices that I know he is capable of making because regardless if he’s on varsity this or that, or girl a or b likes him; he is a kind, smart, funny, and lovable person. He is a leader, and therefore someone others look up to, someone that at times even I look up to.

 

Sacrifice for the sake of Sacrifice

My life is not built around sacrifice by any means. I am single, have no children and therefore give up very little in life for the sake of someone else. I don’t know if that this makes me a bad person; a taker overall. I mean I do charity work, give blood, I am a donor, but I’m not sure those things count much towards sacrifice. It’s not to say in life I haven’t sacrificed, but it has been a long time since I gave up something for someone else; to meet someone else’s wants or needs. My mother would tell you that it’s all my grandmother’s fault, but I’ll tell you that I am selfish, not intentionally mind you but I am out for me in most situations. That is not to be said that for someone I call a friend I wouldn’t give the shirt off my back. My selfishness is an oxymoron of sorts.

Lately I have turned my world upside down for someone. This is something that has pulled me out of my comfort zone, and I’ll be honest I haven’t handled it well. I’ve actually made an ass out of myself twice now because of fear of the unknown. It hurts to be reminded of your sacrifice, especially after a bottle of Jager. (It doesn’t get much more honest than that)

At times I am down right angry with how much I’ve given up in order to truly let myself be with someone, and don’t feel that I am getting much in return. Patience is not my strong suit, and although changes are happening they aren’t the changes that are most important to me. They aren’t the changes that make things for me any better. Instead I continue to try and be respectful, and open, and giving, and all the things that I am not very good at. I have to admit that I am becoming bitter about it all. My passive aggressiveness is starting to show, and I really do wonder how much longer I can stand in the shadows of my own life, bending for the sake of someone else.

This isn’t to say that I am ungrateful for the person in my life. When we are together there is no other place I’d rather be. The looks and small grazes of touch make me feel complete and happy. I need, crave, and want that attention on more frequent bases. I want weekends, not every weekend, but weekends where it feels like there is something more, that there is a future of more.

I wonder if I made the wrong choice, but only time will tell that. It doesn’t mean that  at times I don’t resent what I have changed, or what I’ve given up, and that seems to be what I need to work through now. Those are MY problems, and I can recognize that. I know that they are my issues, and I need to decide what I can live with, and live without. I need to figure out how to see it for what it can be, and less of what it is for now.

Separation Anxiety …

I know that I posted that WanderLust and I broke up the other day, but today the real break up took place. My friend MoodyBitch preaches about needing two months of separation before you can break the oxytocin  that is needed for real separation. I don’t know that I totally believe it, but I can say that a  break in the  bond can only help both of us move forward.

There is no doubt that I didn’t want to have to give up my friendship/relationship with WanderLust, even with my new relationship on the rise. No, I just wanted us to pretend that we didn’t spend the last seven months in a pseudo relationship. The reason that I say this is because anyone who knows us mutually will tell you all about the relationship we have presented. I wanted us to be just friends, no real emotional attachment, no Sundays on the couch and no pushing buttons to give each other hell. I wanted him to be able to avoid all of those things on his own, and for  me to be the innocent bystander. That is what all I wanted, but the sad truth is hearing about what he was, or wasn’t doing since his move made me nothing but sad and probably a little jealous.  I don’t have a real reason except for I am an only child, and do not want to share or hear about his good times. Selfish? Hell fucking YEAH! Irrational, OMG YES. Do I feel sorry for it? No, because Wanderlust knows me just well enough to know that it is not totally unexpected from me, that it means how much I care for him, sexually or friendship wise..

So what now? After a conversation filled with tears; I had to come clean and the fact is we do need to break the bond. We need some space, and that means no talking. That means no calling him, txting him, or im'ing him to bitch, gripe, complain. It means no wine “tastings” that end up with sleepovers. I wanted to be a better person, and explained that to him.. I wanted to BE ok with our friendship, his moving on, but I can’t change who I am. He knows me, he cares for me, maybe even luvs me, and he knows that no matter how much I change; how many changes I make. He will always be who he is to me, and I will always want to remember OUR memories.

What is next? Lust and I came to an agreement about contacting one another. I made it clear that if he needed me, he should pick up the phone, and if I needed him I would do the same. Anything other than that we would just not talk for as Moody says "at least two months." She will tell you that WanderLust is an amazing man, a great friend, and funny as fuck. He is lots of wonderful things, more than even I can tell you, and without a doubt I need him in my life. I just need him two months from from now. I need to give myself a chance to get what I want, deserve, and then figure out how we fit. He deserves that.

In all my posting about Lust, which please don’t think will be going away; even with a two month break; I am pretty sure he will turn up again. He is more than an important fixture of who I feel I am, especially now. The truth be told, Smitten is just as amazing. Today he took me out to celebrate a recent upgrade in my life. One that I will talk about soon, but he took me in spite of what might be considered his own hard times. He still wanted to celebrate my excitement, achievement, and was only a little offended when I tried to pay the bill. I won’t go into details yet, but there are some to come. So the lessons learned for today?

Lust is not your average man. He’s passed that. Smitten is by far the same. Some women go their whole lives never having a great friend in their life, or even a great relationship. If life continues to twist and turn; I will be lucky enough to say I have had both, and then some.  I will be fortunate enough to say that I have an amazing man on both sides of the coin. I will be smart enough to admit it.