friends…

It’s been an odd six months or so.

A friend of mine at work says that I am always willing to listen to other people’s problems and to be everyone’s mama, but that I’m rarely willing to ask anyone for their help. Mike once said that he could name the people I was really honest and vulnerable with on one hand and still have still have fingers left over. Multiple fingers. I’ve always kinda played things close to the vest, but since we moved here, and I had to make new friends, I’m a little slow to trust. I admit it.

Of those people Mike was counting, one of those few was a dear girl that I talked to either via email or text on a near daily basis for approximately 15 years. And then some things happened in her life last fall and we weren’t in touch any longer. We used to tease that she was the keeper of the dark secrets of my soul. It’s a little embarrassing how sad it is to no longer have a keeper of those dark secrets. Another close friend is a girl who is no longer in my life at all for reasons beyond my control. I’ve been left a little adrift in the last six months of so in terms of my old friends.

God bless those few who are still hanging in there with me.

But it’s a challenge now to move past the place I’m at with my new friends here and to find those friends with whom I can really find that honest and vulnerable place. It often feels like my friends here are segmented… the Christian friend, the shopping friend, the mama friend… And so many of them are so much younger than me and don’t have quite the life experience to be quite ready to deal with those dark secrets of my soul.

And in the end, how do I really know who to trust?

But I strongly believe that my relationship with Mike is better when I have girlfriends to talk to… he isn’t supposed to be my girlfriend. I need to have someone to talk to, to have listen to my thoughts and my crazies, and it isn’t supposed to be him all the time. So I suppose I need to work on my trust issues and put myself out there a little bit.

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Tagged with: Friends

revisiting old habits

We all have our bad habits, those things we know are bad for us and that most days are well within our control. Mine are fairly limited and quite frankly, not that horrid. I go to Starbucks too often. I pull my cuticles. I am vain about my skin and my hair. I am a bit controlling. Maybe more than a bit.

But my forever companion bad habit is that ugly voice in my head telling me that I’m fat and unattractive and all manner of unappealing things. The voice has been quiet for quite some time now… years, in fact. The last few months, though, that voice has enjoyed a resurgence, a renaissance. Frankly, it’s having a big fat party that I didn’t really offer to host but that seems to be in full swing anyway.

Mike has commented on it repeatedly, unhappily, that he’s not quite sure what’s up with my ugly voice, with my new preoccupation with numbers and sizes and figures and such. And I had really gotten past that. I pointed out to him that the last few months have been pretty stressful for me… work has been, well, work … and I’ve been dealing with personal issues without the support system of  two of my besties.

Whenever there’s an opportunity, the ugly voice is gonna make an appearance. These last five or six months have just been a breeding ground for bad body image issues. Despite the fact that I’ve lost weight during that time. Actual fact has little to do with what the voices say in my head.

Whenever things seem a little too out of control to a control girl like me, I need to control something. And I can’t manage to get my house to look pristine because there are too many other people in this house with me to be able to accomplish that. So I turn inward, and I need to make my body look a certain way. It’s how it’s always been. And I’m finding that I’m sinking deeper into this every day. Now, being aware of it certainly helps because at least I know it’s going on. And Mike sees it and calls me on it daily, so there’s no danger of it becoming a big deal.

It’s just annoying that I know it’s happening and I know why it’s happening but still I can’t quite stop it. So it makes me moody and melancholy. And while I’m feeling fat, people are complimenting me on how I look, and I don’t believe them, and it’s a horrible cycle that I know too well.

I know I need to pray about it, but quite frankly, between the cancer and the child issues and the general losses, this hasn’t seemed to make my prayer rotation. You know, the rotating list in my head that I pray whenever I get a chance. This hasn’t made the list. I suppose now that God has graciously answered some of those other prayers, maybe I should add this one to the list.

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Muddling through

I am tired in my bones. Every fiber of my heart aches.

Part of my job is to do the worrying on behalf of my clients, and I assured someone yesterday that if, and when, she needed to worry, I would let her know. I assured her that I’m quite good at worrying. We laughed, and she seemed comforted, which was my goal.

I have had a stressful few weeks, personally, of late. But in an odd twist of fate, I haven’t actually been worrying too much. I have instead found myself praying, a far more comforting and productive endeavor.

Now, I am still crazy concerned for those loved ones and friends who have health concerns. And my heart still is heavy for loved ones and friends who are dealing with life problems. And I miss the part of the support system that I used to enjoy but no longer have.

But I’m not worrying. I’m praying.

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the day after…

One of the advantages of having older kids is that the day after Christmas, when they’re playing with their new toys, they really don’t require my attention to do so. So now that family has flown home, I’m alone with a hot cup of chai enjoying a few peaceful moments.

This was, quite simply, one of my best Christmases ever. My brother and his family flew over on Wednesday, and we had the best visit. We did just exactly nothing. Pretty much. We had one toddler, one bossy seven-year-old, one mouthy 12-year-old, and one quiet 13-year-old to entertain us old folks. We stayed up late playing games, went out to get ice cream, drove around to see Christmas lights and got yummy pizza at the fun place downtown, and Nicole and I shopped and got mani-pedis. A groovy time was had by all.

And my picky eater nephew told me on his way out that the food was good.

My parents don’t speak to any of their siblings for various reasons, the most simple being that they just don’t agree on things, and my folks aren’t willing to abide by the agree to disagree theory. John and I and Nicole and I work hard to build relationships between ourselves and between our kids because we don’t want that to happen to us. Visits like this are good for all of us. I felt badly, though, because I know my grandmother missed all of us, wished there was a way that she and my grandfather could have been here with us all.

We were joined, however, by Mike’s brother and nephew and by our adopted grandparents here in Florida. Nana and Pops joined us for Christmas Eve lunch, and we all had a super time. As we talked about it later, John talked about how easy it was, which is characteristically unlike meals with our parents. He commented on how lovely they are toward us when they have no actual ties to us. How our own family really ought to be that way.

As I look across my neat and clean dining room/front room, I think about my brother saying last night at dinner that since they arrived, my house had exploded. And at that point, it did look a bit like that. It was the best explosion we’d participated in as a family in quite some time.

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Tagged with: Christmas • Family • love

24 - books

I have always loved to read. Eliza has a set of books that say “books are the magic ket that take you where you want to be.” I love that. I love how they transport me and encourage me and inspire me. I’m thankful to live in a place where all sorts of books are freely available to me.

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Tagged with: NaBloPoMo