Just believe

I have never put too much stock in "the power of positive thinking." In fact, I remember that in high school I was certain that if I thought I was going to get an A I would curse myself into getting a C but if I thought I had screwed up I would definitely get an A. It sure seemed like my grades had little to do with my effort or self evaluation, so it made sense to come up with a superstition to get me through the anxiety of waiting to see what random grade would be assigned to my work this time.

I took that superstition with me in life and felt that if I ever got too excited about something or started to get my hopes up I would definitely trash any chance of it happening. I know a lot of people have small superstitions about saying things out loud and jinxing their luck but I took it further and recited the negative in my head in order to appease the gods and have a small chance of getting what I wanted. This all convinced me and others that I was a pessimist.

The truth is I'm an optimist. A brilliant therapist once said that what I was actually doing was thinking positively because I was thinking negatively in order to achieve a positive outcome. Well that blew my mind. I started to reconsider my personality type which had been sporting that pessimist label since high school.

When that whole "The Secret" thing came out and got on Oprah and everywhere I took a chance on it. Maybe I could change my life with the power of belief. Maybe I was dooming myself by thinking about what I didn't want to have happen instead of what I did. After all, hadn't I created the triplet pregnancy merely by stating to anyone who would listen in the 4 months preceding my fertility treatment that I was going to have them? Like hell I was going to go through fertility treatment twice people, so I declared to the world that my one time was going to pay off. And what do you know? So I knew it seemed to work.

And so I tried, I really tried. I created one of those dream boards. I went out and purchased poster board and magazines and cut out pictures of what I wanted and what I hoped to achieve. I meditated on it daily. And, while I haven't looked at it in a while, I'm relatively certain I did not lose weight, start exercising, or become the highest earner in my Partylite region. Hmmm.

It just felt uncomfortable, all that positive thinking. I kept worrying that I was ruining things by getting my hopes up. I kept wondering if every stray negative thought had ruined the whole set up. I eventually hid the stupid board so I'd stop looking at it. And I stopped trying so hard.

But when we got the offer on the house and the quick close was part of the package, meaning we would be free to write offers on our own future home immediately, I got excited. I declared to the world that I was moving in January. Be it January 31st at midnight or not, I didn't care. I was not staying in this apartment a minute longer. So then the anxiety set in. Was I setting myself up for disappointment if January came and went without a house? We aren't buying an 'ok' house, this is going to the The One. How can I find that in a month? Then there started to be problems with our own home, the inspection, and now the appraisal fell far short of the value of our contract. What was happening here?

Was I experiencing a comeuppance? Was this my punishment for getting my hopes up? Should I stop stating that I was moving in January? Did I need to make it more clear that I was not just moving but moving into my new house in January in case the wicked fates decided to throw an earthquake to make me move out of the apartment and into some kind of gymnasium shelter somewhere just to make a point? What am I supposed to do?

I am holding fast to the belief that I am going to find my dream home in time to move Jan 31, but it terrifies me. I know our home has been just waiting for us to be free to make an offer on it and I believe things happen the way they're supposed to but what if I'm supposed to spend 6 more months in this apartment? Good lord. That just can't be right. So, Universe?

I AM MOVING INTO MY NEW HOME IN JANUARY.

Prove me wrong.

Inside my head

Inside my head I am a hot 25 year old redhead with great shoes and some extra cash to spend on myself whenever I want to. I am a reasonable size, I am highly educated (Masters in Education), entertaining to men and women, and pursuing my passion for rescuing animals, knowing it's my life's calling.

Inside my head I'm a great writer, who has several book ideas, mostly autobiographical in nature focusing on my crazy mother and my hilarious journey to my current position in life, and one trashy romance novel I'd like to try writing, although the sex parts make me blush to write.

Inside my head I am a cool, calm mom, who has a particularly accurate intuition into her childrens' needs and a head for handling too much at once, key for surviving a multiples household. In my head I am fair to a fault, always put others first and easily forgive.

Inside my head on a bad day I am fat, wrinkled, tired looking, lazy, a boring writer, running out of money, wasting my education, without a calling in life, an impatient mom who yells too much and prefers her iphone over her children's attention.

Inside my head it seems to be black and white, good or bad but never just average. In life I am completely tolerant of almost any failing in someone else, barring animal or human abuse, but inside my head I have no tolerance for my own. I berate myself in a way I would never do to my children, beat myself up in a way I would never show, and belittle and mock my minute to minute actions like some cruel abusive husband to myself.

Inside my head there is a small dark cloud that on most days stays isolated in a non-critical zone but on bad days spreads like a toxic plume from a burning oil spill until it fills my head and my vision with images black and violent to my psyche.

Inside my head there needs to be some major renovation, because children learn from their parents and I will not saddle another innocent child with the mindset of an addict or an addict's loved one. That crap won't fly anymore.

You know, sometimes our children save us from ourselves.

Obligation

Throughout my life I have had a struggle with people feeling obligated to me without cause. It started with boyfriends in college. You know the kind of relationships where, because you live in the same building and eat at the same cafeteria, you basically move in together on day 2? Well I would just be cruising along in that style when suddenly it would all come to a crashing halt. The reason? The dude felt "obligated" to spend an evening with me when he should have been studying so now he has to break up with me so his grade point average didn't suffer. I didn't ask him to spend every second with me and if he had just said something he might have found out that I was completely willing to give him the space he needed, so how did this happen?

In the same vein, I've helped more guys dump me or not even start relationships with me than I could count. I've had these crazy conversations where they're dancing around the fact that they are not really sure if they should or shouldn't kiss me or make a move and they always ended with me saying "if you have to think that hard about it, it probably means that it isn't the right thing to do." And so it ends. Are guys really that unsure of themselves that they wrestle with the first kiss out of some obligation to the fact that they had been flirting with me for a few days? Good god, then what? After the obligatory kiss then how long are you required to date me before you have fulfilled your obligation?

The final straw was when a guy was living with me, the guy right before my husband came along, and we were struggling pretty intensely with our relationship. One evening he and I are talking through our problems and I'm saying, once again, that if you have to think that hard about it it's probably not what you're supposed to be doing (being with me of course) when he drops the bomb: well I just felt obligated since I am living in your house....

Really?  Um, don't do me any favors?

The thing is, do I really seem so weak and breakable that if you disappoint me I'll fall apart? Is it really better to pretend to me that you're interested or even keep living with me than to cut it off clean and move on so I can find someone who really wanted to be with me? What the hell?

This crap pisses me off. I do not require jack from anyone. If you want to give? Give. If you want to be with me? Be with me. But I am no frail flower. I have stood on my own two feet, quite alone, for many years. The real fact is that I have a hard time leaning on someone. My husband has to struggle to help me because I'm unwilling to accept it. I do incredibly complicated dances to ensure that no one feels obligated to do anything for me or even reciprocate something I've done for them. I bend over backwards to make people feel free to screw me over if its what they need to get by. So apparently I'm living in opposite world. The more I try to keep people from feeling obligated the more they feel obligated I guess. Or rather, the people I tend to come into contact with are intensely guilty people, the kind who manufacture reasons they have to do things they don't want to do for people who don't want them to do it.

And even knowing this? I feel guilty that they feel obligated to me. There's the irony. I feel obligated to ease their obligation that they shouldn't even feel. Perhaps I should change tactics and assume everyone has an obligation to me and the guilt cycle might end.

I wonder, are there guilt free people walking this planet? I haven't met one yet.

And then it happened

The day I wrote about selling the house, we got an offer. And the next day we got a ratified contract. We may actually have sold the freaking house.

We may actually have sold the goddamned, dead weight, chain around my leg, holding me back from beginning my new life, pain in the arse HOUSE.

Now I think that's funny. Was I supposed to blog about the lessons I'd learned in my long tenure in this stupid apartment? If so, would that I had done it a wee bit earlier so I could spend christmas in a new home? Oh how irritating.

In any case, I am now on the hunt for the dream home. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am almost free of this crazy prison we call a temporary home. And that makes me completely crazy.

In fact, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel makes the tunnel feel like 100% of the crap it has been all along and I haven't admitted to or allowed myself to feel crappy about all this time. And so it hit me hard on the day after the ratified contract when I went to look at houses to buy and found not one with what I needed in it. And then I came home to sit in this uncomfortable place with all its problems and things that make life harder and I began to lose it.

And because I was already starting to lose it, it snowballed. The next day started terrible, stayed terrible in the middle and ended terribly. I tried to start over Friday and was defeated almost instantly. Saturday the baby started in on me at 4:20am. I had no chance to recover. I'm not sure what the formal name for it is but when you are losing your mind, there is this tendency for the world to keep kicking you while you're down. Or so it seems.

I hope to regain my balance soon, but it's tough. Knowing that I'm almost there but not there yet. And not knowing an absolute end date. Until I find our new home I can't make and end date and I am determined it's not going to be another 6 months but who can say when your dream house will appear? I have set my mind to the determination that I WILL be moving into our new home in January. That means I'd better work fast.

Anyone know of a great home for sale?

slacker Sunday photo

Nothin' but cute

An apology of sorts

I'm the child of an alcoholic. Actually two, but my mom was less obvious in her way until she got into pain pills. Then she was terribly obvious. But I was raised by a kind, gentle, friendly man who was a great success in life and generally happy until he drank too much. Then he got belligerent and argumentative.

My aunt is a lovely woman, I always refer to her as one of my favorite people in the world. That was always true and still is today despite what happens between us. I have never spent a lot of time judging people for their ways of coping with the pain life brings. Some choose God, some choose working themselves to death, some choose therapy and some choose addiction. My aunt became pregnant at an early age, married an abusive man, and in her early twenties had to decide between abuse and single motherhood of 4 children with a high school education. She then proceeded to help my grandfather through his old age until his death, my father through the loss of his son, then lose her own son to a stupid medical mistake and finally lose her best friend, my father, too early as well. I have the benefit of not being an addictive personality so I can't sit on my high horse and judge her decision to drink more each time a blow came. When she's sober she's wonderful. I love that woman. I wish I could be with her more often and I relish phone conversations and cards from her.

But I can't stand drunk people. I can't even stand my happy drunk husband when he's just celebrating in a seemingly appropriate manner. I get mad, uncomfortable, and close up. And put me with an angry drunk person who is someone I admire and look up to? I get mad.

And so I did, and I aired my anger here. And who knows if she ever read it or ever will. I hope in some ways she gets some of the message but not like that. I don't ever want to hurt her. She has never intended to hurt me and it's I who went in with unrealistic expectations of her and the situation. I knew her well enough to know what the risks were. I had no right to expect her to be a different person than she was. The problem was I hadn't ever been honest with myself about who she really was. And the childhood fantasy was finally over, nobody's fault, but over. And that's crushing. Add in my helpless feelings about my sick child and not being able to save my aunt from killing herself with the choices she's making and I felt doubly overwhelmed.

As for my cousin with the jerk husband? Who am I to judge a marriage? Many people might look at my marriage and not understand it. Everyone struggles in their relationships. Who am I to say what is and isn't worth it when someone will love you and raise a child with you? I am told he was in worse form than usual and who knows if he felt he needed to show off to me but whatever the case, I don't have the right to sit in judgement on that one either. I don't have to like him, but I have to suck it up if I want to spend time with her and I do.

Who knows, maybe I've burned these bridges. I hope not. Family is very important to me but I can't help my scars showing and my wounds bleeding in public sometimes. I happen to have a sharp weapon here in this blog and I have wielded it rarely and always with bad consequences. I like being honest but I have to be sure I'm ready for the results it may cause. And if I've hurt someone I love that's not ok. And if I spend hours feeling guilty then I know I've gone too far. At least I figure it out eventually.

And now it's off my chest.

A good list to have

Things NOT to do when trying to sell your house:

1. Believe it will sell quickly

2. Move into a tiny apartment with you 4 children because your house will surely sell fast if there are no children in it.

3. Pay lots of money to stage the house because it will make you hundreds of thousands of dollars more than you paid for the house. No really.

4. Pack lightly, like you were going on a vacation, because you'll only be in the apartment for 2 months max.

5. Don't bring the hand-me-downs for the baby because surely you'll have your stuff back in 2 months.

6. Put every decision and choice on hold because you'll be moving into your 'real house' soon and can do it then.

7. Continue to remember that every day you are in the apartment you are at LEAST 35 days from moving because that's how long it would take MINIMUM to get to closing if you got an offer on your house today.

8. Delay potty training your children until you are in your new house because you don't want them having accidents on the rental furniture or carpets.

9. Choose an apartment that is in the middle of a steep hill and the middle of nowhere so that any time you choose to walk your baby anywhere it involves an arse kicking climb and nothing to look forward to at the end.

10. Bother to even look at houses to buy since you can't buy them.

Please lord. Please sell my house and let me move into a real home. Please?