Someday.

Someday it will be me.

It will be that moment no one likes to think about. Or even say out loud.

Saying goodbye…forever.

Today is day one of many goodbyes to our Grandmother.

It doesn’t come as a shocker. It was not sudden or painful.

It was just time.

Ninety-six years of time.

Blessed time.

But five years without her sweetheart.

So yes…it was just time.

Time to say goodbye to all of us here, and hello to her sweetheart again.

I am trying desperately to remember this…we were blessed. We had her for so long. And now it is time for her to be at peace.

I told her it was okay (we all did), I whispered it in her ear, told her I loved her, many times…we had several weeks with her to say goodbye, as she slowly declined into a peaceful eternal sleep.

But I am still so heartbroken…

I will miss her…my husband and children and sisters and Aunts and Uncles and cousins…we will all miss her.

She was amazing…stylish, classy, funny, devoted and fierce.

She would be hard to forget.

So I will continue to tell stories about her to my children and remind myself of all the beautiful memories we had with her.

She was like a second mother to me and my sisters through some very tough years for our mother and her painful divorce from our father. Our grandmother stepped in and protected us and hugged us and made us smile, when our mother just couldn’t. I don’t hold this against our mother…it was actually a gift. We were able to create a special bond with our Grandmother.

We are forever grateful.

Tonight, is our first of many goodbyes and many tears…some sad but many happy.

We were all blessed to be loved and adored by our Grandmother, Mother, Aunt, Mother-in-law, friend, sister…

 

Thank you, Gram, for just being you…

Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality. ~Emily Dickinson

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We Most Likely Won’t Be Friends Anymore After I Vote On November 8th.

I am voting on Tuesday, as we all should. But I have decided to stick with my gut, and vote with my heart. I will be writing Bernie Sanders in. He told his supporters months ago, to not listen to him if he tried to convince us to vote for someone else.

And I trust he is right.

Otherwise, I am stuck with voting for two humans…a man and a woman…who are, combined, the most loathed candidates at one time in U.S. Presidential election history.

Both equally shady. Both equally disturbing.

I won’t tell anyone who to vote for, but I sure have had many people attempt to convince me to drop the Bernie act, or else.

I see it as a much bigger problem though.

We can be bullied into voting for one of two people who most likely will wind up having to be pardoned or impeached. I choose to save our country a little time a money, and be more optimistic.

We had a candidate that crushed the GOP candidates in almost every poll. We had a candidate that surpassed the other choice in many polls and won a shocking number of states in the primary…

But somehow he lost. We let him go.

We really needed someone-anyone like him to revive this self-destructive country from even more potential damage.

We should have been focusing on what was truth and what we needed to heal as a nation from years of failing healthcare, violence against each other, hate, low wages…

Instead we were distracted with even more violence and hate and even more of a headache with more insane plans for healthcare, how to stop violence, and creating jobs and equality for all.

We were told we were not sensitive enough to blacks, to gays, to police, to refugees…we were told to hate the other side even more because the Orange guy said racist and bigoted things. We were told to hate the lady in the pantsuit because…well, because she is a lady.

We never stopped to look around at the rubble…of the senseless murders of all the blacks and gays and police we were all too busy hating on.

The smoke is so thick in front of our eyes…

We have been blinded by the media and government…this hate never went away. Martin Luther King Jr. lead the path to transparency to seek truth and justice…but it wasn’t over yet.

It never really went away.

The Orange guy says all those dirty little secrets that have been whispered for ages…he spoke truths for those who were silenced by the media and government…and that’s ok in my book. We were fooled. We began to think people were more empathetic towards each other…enlightened after too many years of hate. These folks never decided to be more open-minded or more liberal. They kept talking, but no one was listening…until now.

The Orange guy handed them the megaphone on a silver platter…for ALL the world to hear…yes, world, this is how many Americans still feel. They are full of hate and fear and loathing for all things different-sexuality, abortion, race…nothing has changed.

And as for that lady…I wouldn’t give her that dignified title as a Lady…

She may have a vagina, but she has the balls of a hundred men.

To brazenly try to walk back in the White House as the rightful heir after she and her husband and their entourage of thugs were ever so nicely kicked to the curb…for many good reasons.

So now we are to forget about all their scandals, and all the hate speech the Orange guy spews and celebrate Tuesday night as we elect one of two criminal psychopaths? We are to cheer and to praise God he won/she won? That it is finally over?

Wednesday will be a hangover that will last for four very long years…

America made the wrong choices…for both parties.

 

I will not tell you to write in Bernie (although if you want to, that’s great!), but we need to reflect on how we got to this point, and how we will survive four years of pure hell. We had plenty of options on both sides…and now we have come to this…

I will have to live with your choices…I voted for Bernie. And I will not be told to or bullied into voting for either of your candidates. I will not make this bed…

You can make the bed…I won’t be lying in it.

 

 

Moving On.

I am not perfect.

I hold grudges.

I pout.

I even have had my share of temper tantrums.

I have had more battles and bickered with friends and family over my lifetime than I can remember.

But I also love.

I love too much sometimes. I dive deep into relationships and friendships, and that must muddle things a bit over time, I guess…

I don’t know…

Life is hard enough. I cannot muddle things anymore.

I thought I was learning that lesson a lot in the past year.

Life and death are the truest lessons of this.

Nothing is more bone chilling than death and dying to put things into perspective for a person.

Then you have the beauty of life to give balance to the loss or death of loved ones…

New babies, new loves, new life.

These are the moments that make me stop and realize…

Cut the crap out…it’s time to grow up.

No more bickering with my sisters as if we were still in high school and fighting over the mirror in the bathroom, or over clothes or remote controls. No more getting in to each other’s business and cutting a wedge so deep between us, that the gap is still not fully repaired.

No more saying what I feel like saying, whether it hurts someone or not, because I was an angry selfish teenager and young adult who hated her parents and life in general. Or as a mother or wife or friend who is miserable because she hasn’t fulfilled her dreams and passions, so she will take it out on everyone else around her…

I cannot be her anymore…time to move on.

I am not perfect.

I still make some of those mistakes as a middle aged mother/wife/sister/daughter…and friend.

I say too much. Or at least I used to. I needed a wake up call…you would have thought all the challenges over the past year would be enough…

The lightbulb went on many times, (or maybe I should say someone was flicking the light switch and on and off to test the circuits) trying to get me to realize all the anger, jealousy and hate was not necessary or needed…but I wasn’t paying attention.

That lightbulb was shining bright about a week ago when I saw an old friend and realized how foolish I can be.

It was almost two years since we spoke…over dumb stuff…that didn’t seem so dumb at the time. And we just let it all go…just like that. After building on a friendship for over eleven years, it was over.

I say it all the time, I believe everything happens for a reason…not sure why that all happened, but I guess it needed to…we needed time apart to figure life out.

Yet I found myself sobbing on my old friend’s shoulder (in public at a local benefit after too many cheap beers), apologizing and laughing and crying as if nothing had ever happened between us…

And letting go…

Of anger, temper tantrums, pouting, jealousy, and sadness…

I won’t say too much anymore to deliberately hurt someone because of my own misery…not because I have nothing to say, but what value is there on being opinionated or bossy or just a plain old jerk?

I am painting myself out to be a pretty big bitch right now, and I am actually a pretty nice person…just a lot on my brain and heaviness in my heart.

Such a weight lifted off my heavy heart…

Things may never be exactly as they were with me and my old friend, but it is so refreshing to know if we see each other, the tension won’t be there anymore… just smiles, and hugs and love and support.

And in another sense,( Moving On being my title for this blog), I need to move on from other relationships…ones that I have tried for most of my adult life to keep afloat, and they just keep drifting away. I think those relationships are safe to say, “Bon Voyage” and wish them well on their journey to their next chapter in life…

Without me in it.

I have written of these relationships before because I have an inner struggle with truly and completely let it go. Not sure if it is from guilt or just wanting to give it one more try, or because I am a glutton for punishment…or maybe it is because I am too nice and let people walk all over me…

Whatever the reason, I need to let it go as well…

I need to stick to my guns, and lift the anchor, and let that ship sail…no guilt or anger at myself…just peace knowing I tried. And tried some more…

And focus on the people who have always been in my life, even after returning from a mini vacation from our friendship, or those who were not sure of whether they should stay or go, but wind up staying by my side…these people help define me. They tell me to cut the crap…

The imperfect mother/wife/sister/daughter…and friend. The woman who vents on a blog to the world about big things and little things.

I don’t know if I am tired and getting old, but venting on a blog is about all I can manage anymore…fighting is for the birds…I have more important things to do like being a better wife/daughter/sister/mother and friend…

And moving on…

 

Back to The Plantains.

So I really thought I was fooling myself. I even tried to mentally to lie to myself this morning when I stepped off of the scale. It was thirteen NOT ten or eleven or even twelve…it was a whopping thirteen pounds that I have gained over the past several months.

I have fooled myself into thinking one chip or cracker or treat over the holiday was okay. Which then made it okay for two or three more treats.

It amounted to many little pieces of candy after Halloween. And handfuls of chips and gooey dip over Thanksgiving. AND pie. I enjoyed myself thoroughly. All this cheating I swore I would never do again. But I did.

Until my pants were getting tighter, and my stomach began to bloat like I was six months pregnant. My skin is covered in dry scaly patches and my hair…well it is back to thin scraggly nothingness.

I am disappointed and depressed. In myself. It is all my fault.

I began stress eating over the summer after countless hours and days visiting my ailing Father-in-law in the hospital and helping my mother-in-law at their home. By no means am I blaming them. I blame myself for using the excuse of quick cafeteria bites and on-the-go burgers, and caving in here and there because I just didn’t have the time or mental capacity to care what I was eating. I own the fact that I turned the cheek to a salad bar and chose “protein” by means of crispy crunchy chicken tenders. Or gluten free breads/pastas/pizza crusts.

These foods are not my friends…clean eating is. It is probably for all of us, but my body responded so well to it. I felt great, had more energy, my skin was healing…so the self-sabotage is even more upsetting to me. Especially after I begged my Father-in-law to seek healing through nutrition, and then I shamefully chose to give up on my own journey of healing.

Today I seek my happy place again. I am looking for healing again. A healthy gut and healthy mind. To stay focused and teach my family to eat well. Maybe not to the extreme I need to, but enough for them to be well and feel great.

I enjoyed my gluten free pizza crusts the most…but then the regular cheese and sauces just added to mission of letting go of my health.

My plantain pizzas took some getting used to. And they will again. After indulging, it is time to get real. I owe it to myself and my body and my family to find my wellness again.

Christmas will be challenging, in many ways. It will be our first Christmas without my Father-in-law who loved all things Christmas and we shared it with them every year. I cannot cave into stressful eating. I cannot let parties where treats are served up with loads of sugar and fat and calories, make me cheat. I need to be strong for my husband and children and my family, and especially for my Father-in-law who believed in me…

Back to the plantains.

The Choice.

Warning…many will take offense. Some will hate me. Or pretend they do not know me anymore. Some will even pity me…

That is THEIR choice.

It was about ninety degrees on June 1, 1991. It felt like 110 in the shade as I lay on the steaming hot pavement in my own vomit…retching. Sobbing.

I will never forget this day…ever.

It was a few weeks before I was barely about to graduate high school. I had just fooled them all at my senior prom. I could have kept up the facade for a little longer…but I didn’t have a choice, I was told this was the only way out…

As an adult now, I realize I did have a choice.

But when you run away from home, or get kicked out and are reliant on others…you feel like you have no choice.

I woke up on the table after being sedated, in the midst of it all…the loud noise, the lights, the people hovering over me.

I believe that is the moment that haunts me the most…waking, even groggy still from sedation, knowing what was happening. More so than the cowardly way I slumped in my chair in the waiting room before it began…wondering if the others were feeling the same way as me.

I cried myself to sleep in the back of the car, begging for fresh air to cool my face, covered in dried vomit and tears.

Somehow I managed to make it to my bed, and awakened hours later…pain so bad I could tear my own heart out…not physical pain so much, but because it was my heart that was aching…

And the empty feeling in my belly. I clawed at my stomach screaming to make this madness stop. To undo what had happened.

Next thing, I am given a Valium…out cold again.

I was in a dark place mentally back then…before this all happened.

It was literally my first time…and then I was pregnant. A senior in high school. An aspiring fashion designer. A child who just wanted her divorced parents’ love and for them to stop fighting.

Well, this got their attention alright. They found out a while later…they shed no tears for me…just more anger and pain. I was ashamed. I kept my story to myself… I was absolved of my sin by a priest after my family found out. Time to forget it forever…put it behind me.

SHAME.

I live with this every second of every day.

I couldn’t put it behind me. Even as life moved on.

But in no way shape or form, did life fill the void in my belly...in my heart.

Did I want a child at eighteen? No…I had no clue what I would have done. But there is not one day since June 1, 1991 that I do not think of him…I know in my heart it was a boy.

I swore God would never allow me to be happy again…my Catholic guilt growing larger everyday.

God was good enough to let me heal enough to graduate and temporarily mend things with my family…but I knew that he would punish me. The little girl in me said I would never be a mommy because of what I did that day.

Almost five years later, I was granted a gift. After almost losing my baby and  my life during my pregnancy, God gave us a beautiful baby girl…I lost an ovary through it all, but I felt like I had truly been absolved…that there was a God and that I had to suffer a little to finally appreciate what I had.

And I did. Life was challenging then, but I had this beautiful baby and thought I would never have any more after losing an ovary and all that my body went through to deliver her safely. And yet I was given a second chance… 

I had to embrace it.

Three more amazingly beautiful children later and almost nineteen years of a happy marriage with a husband who has heard this all and held me as I cried over and over, and I feel like God forgave me…but why am I still not forgiving myself? Is it that Catholic guilt or shame? Or simply because it truly wasn’t my choice?

I cringe everytime I read an article on this topic. I cry. I mourn. I had a choice. Maybe I made the wrong one, but my life would be very different today if I had fought back and said to them that  I had a choice in the matter.

He didn’t love me…and I didn’t love him.

Yes I was a fool…but I was just looking for love after years of being lost and made a terrible mistake.

I will never tell anyone to rid the world of abortion… There. I said it.

Abortion.

It is an ugly word. Our world has made it ugly.

But what about that girl who is raped or molested?

What about the girl like me?

What would I have done?

I would have been sent packing to live on the streets pregnant and alone…fearful of what my very catholic family would say…or maybe worse…maybe I would have killed myself or attempted to from the deep depression and shame that was setting in.

Or maybe turn to adoption…but that was never an option for some reason and I was too naive to think these things through as an eighteen year old fighting the world and everyone in it.

Do I believe that maybe I could have beaten the odds?

Found the strength to fight back and keep my child?

Found a way to finish school and pursue my dreams as an artist?

Make it work?

Hell yeah…I thought that an hour ago, and last week, or last summer when I almost had a nervous breakdown about the lie I have lived with for so long.

I know girls that did beat the odds and persevered alone with their child…yes, they have struggled to make ends meet and finish school and find love again while raising a child alone…

Some will say I gave up too easily.

Shame on me.

But even more shame for hiding it…it is part of who I am…he was part of me and will forever be my fifth child…my first. I ache for him, as any mother would over a child lost…even more so when I see how cruel life can be and take our loved ones away in an instant.

So why voluntarily do it?

My eighteen year old self said she did it because it was the only way out and because they told her to.

My Forty-something year old self says it was the shame and guilt that the scared girl couldn’t bare to face.

She did though. Faced all of it…

Took countless blows to the chin, and then when the dust settled, tucked her dirty little secret away…until now.

We all have choices in this life…and we have to live with the consquences each and everyday.

I feel that hot pavement from that day on my face twenty-four years ago like I  am living that moment now…it was a choice…one that will follow me like a dark cloud till the day I die.

Judge me, hate me, pray for me.

Do whatever you like. But I will not lie or hide this part of me anymore. My older girls know my story now. As a lesson to make better choices…but no one should make those choices for you…no one.

Today I honor the love that I lost, and all that I have gained…most importantly…

Truth.

I smile today…I am owning this. My first ever tattoo…proudly wearing a badge forever of all my babies…four born, one lost, and one gained.

Flattery.

Sitting at an intersection the other day, I noticed it.

The heavy stare. The primitive instinct.  The male bonding.

Thankfully I was not on the receiving end of it.  Otherwise my face would be crimson, and I would probably trip and fall as I ran for the nearest tree to hind behind.

A beautiful woman crosses the street.  Two men sitting inside a cafe at the window, stare her down simultaneously. Not sure if one tapped the other to look up, or they both had an instinctive radar for heels and long hair blowing in the wind.

I sat at the intersection staring at the men…wondering why.

Why do they do this? I know I have stared briefly at a good-looking male from time to time, but look away immediately for fear of him catching me glance at him, so I have kept my stares down to a half of a second.

These men seemed to stare for minutes…pondering something…not sure sure I care to know what…but definitely thinking about something.

It must be some strange form of flattery from men.

If they can find minutes to stare someone down like this, it must mean that this woman is something these men only dream about or just plain old lust.

For some reason,  I cannot get past it feeling invasive or rude. Almost a sort of harassment.

A woman should feel confident and beautiful at all times, not as if she is taking part in creating a scene in guy’s mind of some disturbing fantasy.

I am more of a sincere flattery kind of girl.

A few months ago, my husband’s friend was chatting with us at a restaurant. He then turned to me as we were leaving, and said how he noticed that I had looked very different after losing a lot of weight, and in front of my husband, he told me how he thought I looked great. 

That takes guts. That is a gentleman. He dared to be honest in front my husband and to my face. I was speechless.

Yes, I was slightly embarrassed at someone noticing my transformation, but as we talked about it about it later that night, I realized it was just so sweet.

My husband stood proudly next to me.

I stand taller now, realizing that I should be more confident.

If I was that woman the other day crossing the street, and felt the glare on me, I would shrivel.

It must truly be a primitive instinct for some men…or maybe even all men. I get it.

But if a man wants to win a woman’s heart or make her smile…or just make her day a little brighter, walk over to her, tap her on the shoulder, and tell her this…

“Excuse Miss. But I just wanted to let you know that you look beautiful. That your efforts to leave your home and feel confident and pretty today, have not gone unnoticed. Have a wonderful day”…I truly believe she will be taken aback at first, but then make her smile for the rest of the day as she recalls that moment…and I am pretty sure, the man will too.

Wacky Women.

  I am not sure I can stomach one more story on this disturbing topic….Wacky Women.

     And People Magazine on my Facebook news feed seems to find every single wacko in this country.

     Either People is obsessed with making us women look like we are out of control, deranged, psychopaths… or it really and truly is becoming a tragic state of affairs in our country.

     Are hormones the culprit? Combined with stress/single-parenting/abusive family history?

     Torturing their children. Murdering them. Hiding them in a freezer while you still live in that house with two other children. Stabbing your spouse       over salsa??????

WHY?

These are just a few of the nauseating and insane examples of my constant updates from People (which I am about to unfollow due to lack of mindless celebrity gossip and enough violent and heartbreaking stories to create years of Lifetime movies) and even local news in our quiet little beach town…“used a large meat cleaver to threaten a male acquaintance”.  Why does one need to own a meat cleaver in the first place?

All joking aside…what IS going on in this world? T.M.I.?

Social media overload when there is nothing else to talk about? Or are women really and truly going mad?

My healthy side would love to blame gluten and G.M.O.’s.

And my p.m.s.’ing self would love to blame hormonal imbalances.

I fear menopause may make me crazy. I skip over that show Snapped whenever it is on, afraid I may be like one of those crazy mommas some day. When I have the rare opportunity to have complete control of the remote, I go straight for the happy-go-lucky channels…DIY…cooking…home decorating…with the occasional splurge of Real Housewife drama to make me feel like a grownup.  But then I wonder how these crazy fame/money-hungry women found rich men insane enough to marry their sorry diva butts to show off on national t.v.  And most importantly, why  am I putting more money in their lazy/sorry pockets by watching them whine and complain behind each other’s backs , making asses of themselves in public, all due to large doses of wine since breakfast.

I added People to my long lists of “likes” way back when Facebook was just getting started with poking and snowball fights. Up until recently, the articles were what was to be expected. How awesome Kim Kardashian’s rear end looked in black leggings for the millionth time or what celebrity Mom left the hospital in her size 2 skinny jeans after delivering a baby…all due to breastfeeding of course.

These wacky women posts have replaced my idiotic celebrity gossip with horror that keeps me up at night.

Where are these women hiding? 

 I hope I never tick one of them off at the playground.

It is definitely not just women, regardless of what People magazine says…it is a wacky world.

I will take the good with the bad yet again as I did when I was a kid (always watch the scary movie first, then the comedy).

I will read the bad news first about us wacky women in our wacky world when I pick up a copy of People (no more newsfeed on Facebook for me) at the Doctor’s office, then check in with Celebrity News on who Leonardo DiCaprio is dating this week.

Pinning Things And P.M.S.

Warning: This blog is written by my alter ego, who shows up

once a month for an unwanted visit…sometimes staying a little longer than we want her too.

She is rude, annoying, and causes upheaval in my household every time she visits.

I promise to not let her get a hold of my blog again in the future.

I never knew Pinterest could be so therapeutic.

I just sat in silence for ten minutes pinning the heck out of stuff on Pinterest in search for a recipe to fulfill a craving  that my alter ego is in search of, instead I wound up looking into a cure for why I am so cranky today.

I honestly do know why I am cranky right now…

AND why my two teenage daughters are as well…

“We’re All In This Together”

 

(insert sarcasm and catchy teen movie music)

 

For years it was about three weeks of hell-taking turns p.m.s.’ing in this house. One of us down for the count, then another…and another.

Tip-toeing around each other, trying to be supportive yet cursing each other out under our breath.

And then we started that beautiful, yet wicked balance of hormonal harmony… How exciting for my husband and friends and family…be done with it all around the same time, and then our true sweet selves come home as the alter egos pack their bags and leave.

When I am not p.m.s.’ing, I truly do sympathize with my husband and the other males in our lives for all that we put them through on our hormonal roller coaster rides.

I do.

Not today…but maybe in a week or two I will care again. Because right now, I swear at some points in the day, I truly think there is Male P.M.S.

 In actuality, this is obviously just them reacting to our charming alter ego.

So back to the grand world of pinning stuff…there are dozens, if not hundreds of remedies, articles, quotes, and images all relating to the terrible, not so nice world of P.M.S.

The quotes mock us…but made me laugh…for the first time all day.

The images tell us what we should eat…avoiding all cravings…

Not gonna happen. 

I will just head back over to the page of all things gooey and chocolate.

The articles… after reading one or two remedies/cures/explanations, my oh-so-charming self started saying “blah, blah, blah…I get it” (not very nice of me, but it is sadly how it goes).

I despise this time of the month.

But fear what the next chapter of middle-aged hormonal imbalance will bring…so I guess I will tolerate this chapter a little longer, and try to be on my best behavior.

I will take my vitamins. I will avoid all things sweet. I will not drink alcohol. I will smile and persevere… 

All lies.

 

At least I am being honest.

 I will admit the card quotes on Pinterest are truly making me smile…

Bonus for day one of Alter Ego vs. The Real Me.

 I will try my best to be good…in a bad sort of way.