I slept very little last night.  A long cured case of sleep apnea (over a year) crept back up on me and I woke up gasping for air what felt like every few minutes.  It was annoying as all hell since I was and am very tired, but in retrospect, I can see how aptly it reflects the last several months of my life.  I’ll get comfortable and think things are going to be peaceful and almost tolerable for a while and then before I know it, I’m drowning again.  It was something I needed to see and feel to get a good, objective evaluation of how things are.

Lately, it seems as though every part of my life has been under attack.  Things I thought were solid and assured turned to dust.  It is only in looking back that I can see the cracks that I ignored rather than repairing right on the spot.  It is always so easy looking back instead of forward.  The heat of battle is not the time to be your most objective, I’ve found.  It’s hard to swing a sword and keep track of every other thing that is happening around you.

I’ve dropped my fair share of baskets this past year (Rebecca Wells reference).  I’ve been up and I”ve been down and now I am just trying to find my balance somewhere in the middle.  As I mentioned in my previous entry, I lost myself somewhere along the way and since I wrote that out to you, I have come a long way in re-establishing my own identity again.  It’s scary how caught up we can get in what others want us to be or what we think others want us to be.  It sneaks up on you and pretty soon you don’t even recognize the person looking back at you in the mirror.

Interestingly enough, I spent several days “faking” being myself.  I put on my old clothes, my old jewelry and went through some of the motions of what I used to do.  Little by little, it all started to come back again.  I feel so much happier, so much more peaceful and so much more comfortable in my own skin.  I care less (this actually means “not at all”) about what other people think.  It has left me with a little more of an edge than I’ve ever had and I’m getting used to that. 

The people around me are starting to get used to me drawing lines on what I do and don’t want.  Don’t wear my shoes when you go outside.  I don’t care if my feet are a nice, average size that you almost fit into either way.  I don’t care that my shoes are often centrally located and easy to get to while yours are flung somewhere around your room.  Don’t wear my damned shoes. 

You promised you’d have your room clean by a certain time and I even let you pick when that would be.  Get your room clean instead of playing video games.

For too long I’ve been holding true to my promises to people and making excuses for them when they don’t follow through on their promises to me. 

I guess I’m just not as understanding as I used to be.

That doesn’t mean I’m not grateful.  The website I started recently, “Attitudes of Gratitude,” has been a wonderful tool for me to re-focus my attention to the positive things in my life as a primary interest.  My goal right now is to empower the people around me to do and be differently rather than making it easy for them not to follow through on their promises and to expect and allow less from themselves.

I don’t expect people to be perfect by a long shot, but in my life, this type of attitude was common place and honestly, more likely to happen than the following through parts.  That doesn’t prepare my kids for what the real world is like where “life rewards action.”  It doesn’t teach my husband the behaviors that I’ll tolerate in my life and the ones that I will not.  It teaches people that no matter what they do, I’m good with it and for it.

That’s a door mat.

That’s not me… or at least, it wasn’t before in my authentic me.

Now it’s not me again and that’s an adjustment for the people around me.  I have great kids.  My husband is a good man.  I don’t doubt those facts at all.  I do know that this life situation has slipped into a ditch where it doesn’t need to be and if I have to pull it out by myself, then I will.  Either way, I’m getting back onto the road again and those who aren’t with me can sit their asses down in the ditch and stay there.

This is the beginning of my harvest this year and I am grateful for it to the extreme.  I know the winds of change are blowing and I welcome them.  I am facing the East where new beginnings lie and I feel a gale force howling into me, stripping things clean and blowing away all of the scattered debris and mess.  There’s nothing I like better than a good storm.

I won’t say this summer was the last time I’ll let myself get walked on.  It’s bound to happen now and then.  I will, however, say it’s the last time I will willingly lie down in the dirt and invite it, however.

I’ve gone from being “Queen of It All” to being “The Only Horseman of the Apocalypse You’ll Ever Need” to being “Queen of Quite a Lot.”  Let me tell you, folks, uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. 

Oh yes:

In cradle of the rude imperious surge
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them
With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown

Self-proclaimed or DNA appointed, it ain’t easy being queen of everything.  Virgos are notorious control freaks and it is hard for us to know when to stand up and when to let things roll past for a while, letting the world turn a time or two while life unfolds.

I am working hard to find that perfect mix in the eye of the storm.  My plan for now is just to enjoy life.  Plenty of things have arisen, some even in the past few days, that make me feel singled out and picked on.  What are the chances that the job Eric has had secured for months, targeted to specific days that worked perfectly with my annual trip to L.A. would be postponed indefinitely a day before he was to begin the actual work?  It would have been so easy for that one little brick in the wall, that one tiny circumstance, to have played out like it was planned.  I would have a comfortable, relaxed trip without monetary concern.  Right up until the day the damned things was supposed to start, it was a green-lit go all the way.  Now that money is just *gone* and it’s unknown when it will return into play again. 

What are the chances that after months and months of everything going well with Eric’s school funds he receives every month, that in this very month, *some guy* would neglect to fax over an essential paper to the Veterans Administration saying that Eric is taking summer classes, is still enrolled in college full time and is working like mad?  “Whoops, sorry about that.”  “Whoops, sorry about that” resulted in Eric having his monthly payment end up being 2 weeks late and his contract for his work study program still trying to get worked out.  Meanwhile, he doesn’t get paid for the 3 weeks of work he has invested into the VA. 

Whoops.

I get tired of hearing my own hard luck stories.  I get tired of getting up again like a Weeble only to get knocked over one more time.  But what is the alternative?  Life is to be lived and I am not going to walk through it consumed with fear and going into “duck and cover” mode every few minutes.  I’ve lived it extensively both ways and in the end, you wind up in the same place anyway.  Before I go into a hole in the ground with no guarantees of anything after that, I am going to experience life to the fullest and not let my finances or the ingratitude and selfishness of others define me and who I am.  That part of my life is over and I am grateful for the lessons it presented to me. 

If it has made me less comfortable to be around, then that is an adjustment people will have to make.  Mama’s tired and mama needs energy to live. 

So I am off to have a great time in Van Nuys with my GH folks, loving every minute of it and making adjustments as I need to in order to get by.  Regardless, there is adventure out there to be had and I’m going to go get me some of it. 

I’ve breastfed babies literally and husbands figuratively for more than 2/3 of my life.  Now it’s my turn.