Saturday, July 30, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Wednesday, the 20th
It's been a while hasn't it? A few days at least. I don't really have much to say the past couple of days, we've been incredibly busy. I finally got my license today (yay) but that's really the extent of the news.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Sunday the Seventeenth
I didn't post yesterday because I didn't find the time to, so today's post will be a recap of yesterday and if I find anything interesting to say I may add it in later.
Why do I bother explaining these things?
Anyway, yesterday we went to the DOL about an hour and a half away so I could take my driver's test and finally get my license (at 20. I know, it's sad). But it turned out that they were booked until wednesday, so we now have an early-morning driving test on Wednesday. After that the day was mostly errands. We went to the sprint repair site to get my phone fixed (the speaker had suddenly decided to quit on us) and then to Dearest's coworker's house to borrow a steam cleaner. There we spent probably a good hour and a half listening to him talk about all of his projects. They're really cool projects and I think they're really beautiful, it's amazing that he's been able to do so much of them himself. Then back to the sprint store to grab my fixed phone and home to steam the carpet.
Except that I promptly fell asleep on the couch. Apparently psyching myself up for the driving test and then not doing it ended up leaving me with what my mom used to call "adrenaline poisoning" - basically, I had a whole bunch of adrenaline in my system that had nowhere to go and nothing to do so it made me really really tired and cranky. What I really needed was a nap, but I knew that I had to steam the floor and make dinner and do other such things.
Dearest is an angel. He sent me to bed with the dog for cuddles and steamed the floor for me while I slept. I must have been out cold for about four hours so apparently I *really* needed that nap. Then he took me out to dinner.
So that was my day, and my awesome husband made sure it turned out all right, and then we went to sleep.
Why do I bother explaining these things?
Anyway, yesterday we went to the DOL about an hour and a half away so I could take my driver's test and finally get my license (at 20. I know, it's sad). But it turned out that they were booked until wednesday, so we now have an early-morning driving test on Wednesday. After that the day was mostly errands. We went to the sprint repair site to get my phone fixed (the speaker had suddenly decided to quit on us) and then to Dearest's coworker's house to borrow a steam cleaner. There we spent probably a good hour and a half listening to him talk about all of his projects. They're really cool projects and I think they're really beautiful, it's amazing that he's been able to do so much of them himself. Then back to the sprint store to grab my fixed phone and home to steam the carpet.
Except that I promptly fell asleep on the couch. Apparently psyching myself up for the driving test and then not doing it ended up leaving me with what my mom used to call "adrenaline poisoning" - basically, I had a whole bunch of adrenaline in my system that had nowhere to go and nothing to do so it made me really really tired and cranky. What I really needed was a nap, but I knew that I had to steam the floor and make dinner and do other such things.
Dearest is an angel. He sent me to bed with the dog for cuddles and steamed the floor for me while I slept. I must have been out cold for about four hours so apparently I *really* needed that nap. Then he took me out to dinner.
So that was my day, and my awesome husband made sure it turned out all right, and then we went to sleep.
Friday, July 15, 2011
J
I have spent a portion of today probing the wounds and bruises that were there last year, blind to whether they actually remain until I feel the pain or sting. It would seem I have mostly healed.
I still feel...slighted. I still want to walk into his precious circle and make sure they know exactly the type of person he is, exactly the things he did, exactly how he hurt me - and then turned me into the bad guy. I still want to run into him one day and see shock in his eyes at how well I'm doing. Shock, and shame. I want to see him feel ashamed for doing what he did to me, and I want to see him hurt. I want to see that he knows that it's all his fault, and I want it to hurt him.
So maybe I'm not fully healed yet. Maybe I haven't fully forgiven.
I'm going to stop now before I start crying.
I still feel...slighted. I still want to walk into his precious circle and make sure they know exactly the type of person he is, exactly the things he did, exactly how he hurt me - and then turned me into the bad guy. I still want to run into him one day and see shock in his eyes at how well I'm doing. Shock, and shame. I want to see him feel ashamed for doing what he did to me, and I want to see him hurt. I want to see that he knows that it's all his fault, and I want it to hurt him.
So maybe I'm not fully healed yet. Maybe I haven't fully forgiven.
I'm going to stop now before I start crying.
Friday 7-15-11
It seems that the older I get, the faster years go by. Wasn't it *just* January? I'm sure May was only last week. Over and over again I find myself asking "where did that time go?" and "What in the world did I do with it?"
At noon we'll officially be halfway through the month. Can you believe that? I can't.
July has been a month of awesome growth for our little family unit here. Dearest's health has improved dramatically - at least, it seems that way. With him on the valium at night to keep muscle spasms from happening his overall quality of life has greatly improved. Hopefully when the perscription runs out we won't find that it's only the valium. I have faith, though.
My personal walk and relationship with God is growing...slowly. I still hit patches where I can't feel his presence or that connection I crave so much, but I'm getting better at having faith and doing what I know I should anyway, instead of getting mad and giving up. My personal development is also continuing...slowly. But continuing. I made a decision today to stop letting myself deviate from my eating plan, and I think that's going to have effect in a big way. So far I only took that one walk this week, but I suppose we'll see what happens with that. As I develop discipline by making the little decisions (like deciding that no, I'm not going to make myself a big plate of french fries for lunch) that discipline will make it easier to do the bigger things - like taking a walk.
Our business is also growing. The difference isn't very perceivable yet, but we've grown as a couple and as individuals so much in just the past month, and gotten our hands on a bunch of new tools, there's no way the business can't grow from here.
This is just the start of my day, but I think it's going to be a good day.
At noon we'll officially be halfway through the month. Can you believe that? I can't.
July has been a month of awesome growth for our little family unit here. Dearest's health has improved dramatically - at least, it seems that way. With him on the valium at night to keep muscle spasms from happening his overall quality of life has greatly improved. Hopefully when the perscription runs out we won't find that it's only the valium. I have faith, though.
My personal walk and relationship with God is growing...slowly. I still hit patches where I can't feel his presence or that connection I crave so much, but I'm getting better at having faith and doing what I know I should anyway, instead of getting mad and giving up. My personal development is also continuing...slowly. But continuing. I made a decision today to stop letting myself deviate from my eating plan, and I think that's going to have effect in a big way. So far I only took that one walk this week, but I suppose we'll see what happens with that. As I develop discipline by making the little decisions (like deciding that no, I'm not going to make myself a big plate of french fries for lunch) that discipline will make it easier to do the bigger things - like taking a walk.
Our business is also growing. The difference isn't very perceivable yet, but we've grown as a couple and as individuals so much in just the past month, and gotten our hands on a bunch of new tools, there's no way the business can't grow from here.
This is just the start of my day, but I think it's going to be a good day.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Thursday part two
How productive have I been today? I suppose that depends on how you define the word "productive"
In any case, the answer is: Not very. At least that's how it feels. Sure, I spent six freaking hours going through the jumble of pots and pans and lids and plastics and dishes in my kitchen cabinets. Yes, I know that shouldn't take six hours. But really, you have NO idea just how much of a dolt his ex was, how bad she was at organizing/cleaning/putting stuff away/anything that was work, or just how OCD I get when I do something like that.
That said, I have a crapton of practically brand new dishes, table settings, electric skillets, etc. Apparently they were wedding presents. Although who in their right mind would give something so nice to such a lazy and unappreciative person as her, I don't know. I also don't know who was under the impression that she even knew how to use a crock-pot, much less what to cook in it. All of these things were wasted on her.
But, now I know that I have them. The only questions remaining are: What do I use first and what am I making?
Anyway, back on track, I spent six hours going through the pots and pans partially because it really needed to be done and partially because I knew (or at least thought I knew) that getting that big project done and then getting the big project of steaming the living room floor done would work out to be enough work for the day and then I'd get the menial stuff and smaller projects done tomorrow.
But then my steamer broke. More than broke. It was broke before because she-who-shall-not-be-named apparently had no idea how to take care of it, or concern for the fact that she was doing it wrong. When I moved in the poor thing was in disrepair. Having never in it's two year life been emptied, it was filled with dog piss diluted by water and all molded over (thank God for LOC multi-purpose cleaner!). Also, the roller thing that actually scrubs the carpet as you're going over it had been snapped out in such a way that it could no longer be put back in.
Nonetheless, the brave little steamer kept working - sort of. It still put water into the carpet and sucked it back out, the dirt and whatnot from the carpet coming with the water, so it worked well enough for the time being, until we could afford the time and money it would take to go look for a new one.
Well, today it quit. It was making funny noises when I first started it, but I just chalked that up to not having been used in a while. I did a portion of the floor that was cleaner first, to get it all clean so I would have a good comparison for the high-traffic areas as I was cleaning them.
Then it made an even weirder noise, and I started smelling something like burned plastic, and there was some smoke.
So I haven't steamed the floor, which means that in the time that I spent trying to steam the floor, i could have gotten other things done. It also means that the six hours I spent sorting the dishes could have been better allocated to something else, something that would have been more visibly different and left me looking less like a slob.
Oh well. I guess tomorrow will be better.
In any case, the answer is: Not very. At least that's how it feels. Sure, I spent six freaking hours going through the jumble of pots and pans and lids and plastics and dishes in my kitchen cabinets. Yes, I know that shouldn't take six hours. But really, you have NO idea just how much of a dolt his ex was, how bad she was at organizing/cleaning/putting stuff away/anything that was work, or just how OCD I get when I do something like that.
That said, I have a crapton of practically brand new dishes, table settings, electric skillets, etc. Apparently they were wedding presents. Although who in their right mind would give something so nice to such a lazy and unappreciative person as her, I don't know. I also don't know who was under the impression that she even knew how to use a crock-pot, much less what to cook in it. All of these things were wasted on her.
But, now I know that I have them. The only questions remaining are: What do I use first and what am I making?
Anyway, back on track, I spent six hours going through the pots and pans partially because it really needed to be done and partially because I knew (or at least thought I knew) that getting that big project done and then getting the big project of steaming the living room floor done would work out to be enough work for the day and then I'd get the menial stuff and smaller projects done tomorrow.
But then my steamer broke. More than broke. It was broke before because she-who-shall-not-be-named apparently had no idea how to take care of it, or concern for the fact that she was doing it wrong. When I moved in the poor thing was in disrepair. Having never in it's two year life been emptied, it was filled with dog piss diluted by water and all molded over (thank God for LOC multi-purpose cleaner!). Also, the roller thing that actually scrubs the carpet as you're going over it had been snapped out in such a way that it could no longer be put back in.
Nonetheless, the brave little steamer kept working - sort of. It still put water into the carpet and sucked it back out, the dirt and whatnot from the carpet coming with the water, so it worked well enough for the time being, until we could afford the time and money it would take to go look for a new one.
Well, today it quit. It was making funny noises when I first started it, but I just chalked that up to not having been used in a while. I did a portion of the floor that was cleaner first, to get it all clean so I would have a good comparison for the high-traffic areas as I was cleaning them.
Then it made an even weirder noise, and I started smelling something like burned plastic, and there was some smoke.
So I haven't steamed the floor, which means that in the time that I spent trying to steam the floor, i could have gotten other things done. It also means that the six hours I spent sorting the dishes could have been better allocated to something else, something that would have been more visibly different and left me looking less like a slob.
Oh well. I guess tomorrow will be better.
Thursday the fourteenth
Just as a side note, sort of, I feel terribly silly about that last post.
I did eventually get in touch with him again yesterday. We've decided to be friends again. I'm...wary...not sure if it will work out with the history of weird between us. But we'll see what happens.
Moving right along here:
Today is Thursday! There's nothing especially significant about Thursday or even about this Thursday, but I think it's worthy of the exclamation point anyway.
I have a lot to do today. And at the moment I have very little energy. But we shall see what happens. I may post later, but I may not. I don't know. Isn't that lovely?
I did eventually get in touch with him again yesterday. We've decided to be friends again. I'm...wary...not sure if it will work out with the history of weird between us. But we'll see what happens.
Moving right along here:
Today is Thursday! There's nothing especially significant about Thursday or even about this Thursday, but I think it's worthy of the exclamation point anyway.
I have a lot to do today. And at the moment I have very little energy. But we shall see what happens. I may post later, but I may not. I don't know. Isn't that lovely?
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Things that shouldn't bother me
Today:
He blocked me. Or deleted his accounts, or something.
This shouldn't bother me. I messed it up, wanted too much, should have just stuck with him as a friend and then I hurt him badly. But...it bothers me.
This really, really shouldn't bother me! It's not like I want any sort of romantic relationship. And a friendship is probably impossible. Our conversations were strained at best, me trying to make him jealous to see if he still cared - for some reason I don't understand - and him...well...
He kinda stopped being the guy who was my best friend shortly after everything blew up in our faces. Or at least, he stopped being that guy around me.
It shouldn't bother me, it really shouldn't. His life is his life, mine is mine. When I got married he severed the relationship for good with that letter...and I agreed. I felt happy at the time, he'd be moving on and doing better and whatnot and I wouldn't have the guilt of totally ruining someone's life on my conscience.
But he was still my best friend for a long time. And the time we spent together in person just being best friends was the best part of being in that weird little town with his family who was quite frankly...we'll just be nice and call them weird.
We should have just stayed friends, realized when I moved in that it wasn't working the way we thought it would and immediately reverted to just staying friends.
Not that I can honestly say I regret anything. I think. I mean, after all, every decision - and it does seem like *EVERY* decision - for the past five years has come together to bring me here, to my awesome husband and my getting better every day life.
It shouldn't bother me. It really shouldn't. Not being able to reach out, to breach that closed door, to just say hi to...well I guess he's not my best friend anymore. It shouldn't bother me. Not having his attention shouldn't bother me. I think that maybe he's finally forgotten about me and that really shouldn't bother me.
But it does.
Damn the emotions I don't understand.
Edit:
Well, looks like his facebook is still up..and it looks like he's fully moved on and forgotten.
Why in the world does this bother me?
So, uh, now I feel stupid. He didn't block me or anything, I just had the wrong info.
Still, looking at his fb, it looks like he's moved on.
I have no idea why this matters to me.
He blocked me. Or deleted his accounts, or something.
This shouldn't bother me. I messed it up, wanted too much, should have just stuck with him as a friend and then I hurt him badly. But...it bothers me.
This really, really shouldn't bother me! It's not like I want any sort of romantic relationship. And a friendship is probably impossible. Our conversations were strained at best, me trying to make him jealous to see if he still cared - for some reason I don't understand - and him...well...
He kinda stopped being the guy who was my best friend shortly after everything blew up in our faces. Or at least, he stopped being that guy around me.
It shouldn't bother me, it really shouldn't. His life is his life, mine is mine. When I got married he severed the relationship for good with that letter...and I agreed. I felt happy at the time, he'd be moving on and doing better and whatnot and I wouldn't have the guilt of totally ruining someone's life on my conscience.
But he was still my best friend for a long time. And the time we spent together in person just being best friends was the best part of being in that weird little town with his family who was quite frankly...we'll just be nice and call them weird.
We should have just stayed friends, realized when I moved in that it wasn't working the way we thought it would and immediately reverted to just staying friends.
Not that I can honestly say I regret anything. I think. I mean, after all, every decision - and it does seem like *EVERY* decision - for the past five years has come together to bring me here, to my awesome husband and my getting better every day life.
It shouldn't bother me. It really shouldn't. Not being able to reach out, to breach that closed door, to just say hi to...well I guess he's not my best friend anymore. It shouldn't bother me. Not having his attention shouldn't bother me. I think that maybe he's finally forgotten about me and that really shouldn't bother me.
But it does.
Damn the emotions I don't understand.
Edit:
Well, looks like his facebook is still up..and it looks like he's fully moved on and forgotten.
Why in the world does this bother me?
So, uh, now I feel stupid. He didn't block me or anything, I just had the wrong info.
Still, looking at his fb, it looks like he's moved on.
I have no idea why this matters to me.
July 13. Wednedsay.
Today...what can I say about today?
I finally took a walk this morning. First one in ages. Well, first morning walk anyway. Dearest and I stopped walking when it got cold and just never really picked it up again. It felt good. I found my limit, didn't push myself past it to be honest. But it felt really good to finally get some concentrated exercise, instead of relying on sex and walking up the stairs to burn calories.
The past two days of sticking to my diet plan have paid off. It's not very difficult when I'm not in the house. Today, I flubbed. But that's okay, I'll do better tomorrow. Plus I walked today. That's gotta count for something. Anyway, I'm down to 236 this morning from 240 so I've gotta be doing something right. I don't usually fluctuate that much just in normal day-to-day stuff.
I stayed home today, didn't go to the office with Dearest like I normally do. It was a combination of things: There's no money left on my Starbucks card (big, fat, tears of despair), I had forgotten to wash my jeans, and we were expecting company tonight and I wanted to straighten up. Even when you don't think you're home long enough to make a mess, not being home at all for a few days adds up fast. Especially if you were a little bit lazy on the days you were home.
I must admit, I didn't get much done that can be visibly recognized. Some laundry, some dishes, sure. Scrubbed the shower - which was getting a little blech - and used the mop that's basically a sponge on a stick to try to get the mold off the corners, tops of the walls, and ceiling in the bathroom.
I'd like to take a moment to point out that I have nothing to do with the growth of this mold. Dearest's last wife (before me) and her terrible habits combined with the poor ventilation in the room and the steam from the shower on at least a daily basis did that. I just have to clean it up.
Anyway back to what I was talking about. I also straightened and vacuumed the living room. To be honest I would have liked to get more done but doing the healthy thing is taking a little bit out of me for starters. Being quite *un*fit, physical activity takes a lot out of me for now. So despite taking my medication like a good girl (someone give me a cookie?) I was a bit lethargic today.
ADHD meds, by the way. They help me focus and usually the focus gives me more energy to do stuff but not today. Which sort of brings me back to what I was talking about...again. I got a bit of researching done, a lot of mental preparation for the company we were expecting. Not just any company, a young lady who we are helping to start her own business. It's awesome stuff, and totally fun, and a component of what we do within our own business.
But she cancelled.
So now I'm sitting here feeling silly for putting so much effort into making sure that I knew what I needed to know and had all the resources available to me when and where I needed them and so on - instead of cleaning my house. But maybe she'll reschedule for tomorrow or another evening and then I'll already be prepared.
I'm planning on staying home tomorrow too, so hopefully I'll get stuff cleaned then.
I finally took a walk this morning. First one in ages. Well, first morning walk anyway. Dearest and I stopped walking when it got cold and just never really picked it up again. It felt good. I found my limit, didn't push myself past it to be honest. But it felt really good to finally get some concentrated exercise, instead of relying on sex and walking up the stairs to burn calories.
The past two days of sticking to my diet plan have paid off. It's not very difficult when I'm not in the house. Today, I flubbed. But that's okay, I'll do better tomorrow. Plus I walked today. That's gotta count for something. Anyway, I'm down to 236 this morning from 240 so I've gotta be doing something right. I don't usually fluctuate that much just in normal day-to-day stuff.
I stayed home today, didn't go to the office with Dearest like I normally do. It was a combination of things: There's no money left on my Starbucks card (big, fat, tears of despair), I had forgotten to wash my jeans, and we were expecting company tonight and I wanted to straighten up. Even when you don't think you're home long enough to make a mess, not being home at all for a few days adds up fast. Especially if you were a little bit lazy on the days you were home.
I must admit, I didn't get much done that can be visibly recognized. Some laundry, some dishes, sure. Scrubbed the shower - which was getting a little blech - and used the mop that's basically a sponge on a stick to try to get the mold off the corners, tops of the walls, and ceiling in the bathroom.
I'd like to take a moment to point out that I have nothing to do with the growth of this mold. Dearest's last wife (before me) and her terrible habits combined with the poor ventilation in the room and the steam from the shower on at least a daily basis did that. I just have to clean it up.
Anyway back to what I was talking about. I also straightened and vacuumed the living room. To be honest I would have liked to get more done but doing the healthy thing is taking a little bit out of me for starters. Being quite *un*fit, physical activity takes a lot out of me for now. So despite taking my medication like a good girl (someone give me a cookie?) I was a bit lethargic today.
ADHD meds, by the way. They help me focus and usually the focus gives me more energy to do stuff but not today. Which sort of brings me back to what I was talking about...again. I got a bit of researching done, a lot of mental preparation for the company we were expecting. Not just any company, a young lady who we are helping to start her own business. It's awesome stuff, and totally fun, and a component of what we do within our own business.
But she cancelled.
So now I'm sitting here feeling silly for putting so much effort into making sure that I knew what I needed to know and had all the resources available to me when and where I needed them and so on - instead of cleaning my house. But maybe she'll reschedule for tomorrow or another evening and then I'll already be prepared.
I'm planning on staying home tomorrow too, so hopefully I'll get stuff cleaned then.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Post One. July 12, 2011. Tuesday
I'm not sure yet how I feel about today. I woke up feeling all right, and somewhere between there an now I kind of just crashed.
Granted, my blood sugar drops faster than I'm used to with these meds and I let my meds lapse for about half an hour. I think there may be more to it though. I may be a coward, unable to strike up a conversation with anyone. Or, that particular environment may be a bit emotionally toxic. I tend to feel a bit...blah...after leaving that one Starbucks, so maybe that's it. All of the energy of people with no real hope for the future and no interest in gaining hope, so busy drinking the poison that they don't care that I'm standing there holding out the antidote.
I'm very opinionated, by the way.
It occurs to me that people may end up reading this who don't know me, and who (obviously) haven't read my other journals over the past year so don't know what the heck is going on. Allow me to give you some information.
I'm Laura. I'm almost 20. I'm married. I own a business. I have chemical imbalance problems that requiire some medication to remedy - though the amount that I take is barely considered a trace amount. The meds are like eyeglasses...but for my brain. When they're in my system everything is focused and clear, and I can actually see what is going on.
What else? Did I mention that I'm almost 20 and newly married? That means I often get....overemotional. I also have a pretty big vocabulary and don't always fully understand the emotional impact of my words so I use the wrong ones. I also sometimes know exactly what I'm saying and how it's being percieved but in my altered emotional state it makes perfect sense to use that particular word or phrase when in reality it makes no sense at all.
I'm still learning. If we're talking in terms of actual real-world experience, I'm probably about a year old. Fortunately I have an amazing husband who *usually* gets me (how much can a man ever really understand a woman, after all) and a couple of mentors who have good heads on their shoulders and a lot of experience under their belts. Plus, I have my faith.
About that, I'm working on it. I'm not anywhere near perfect. I often screw up. But I've recently committed to really, really working on myself and one of the things I'm working on is my faith.
My story, in breif, is this:
I'm the oldest child, the firstborn, which means I'm the ones my parents accidentally screwed up the most on. I don't blame them - at least I try not to anymore. They've really done what they thought was best with what they had.
I had a spoiled-rotten early childhood as a single child and then I suddenly had two brothers about 13 months apart from each other. Throughout the course of the next, oh, thirteen or fourteen years I got three more siblings.
We grew up poor. Lower-middle class if that.
As a child I was mean, and misinformed, and overzealous. Thus, I had no friends. This may have had something to do with psychological damage I wasn't aware I had from repeated instances of sexual abuse that I didn't remember until later on in life. Repressed memories are ... well, often difficult to handle or understand. And play a major role in how you react to the world around you.
Sometime in middle school I started to figure out who I was, and I started being nicer. And I had friends. But then for some reason I figured out that I was weird and got insecure and tried to be normal, and then I had no friends again. This was an on-again, off-again process throughout high school.
Somewhere in high school my parents split up and it was rough. Then they got back together and it was rougher. I didn't actually recover from that for a long time, and I'm still dealing with a lot of emotional damage from that. But I'm dealing with it and that's the important part. I gained a lot of weight during that time, indulging my sweet tooth until it developed into a full-on obsession with eating as much food as possible at any given time. By the end of that ordeal I weighed somewhere around 260. I'm still working on that one, too. More on that later.
I had an online best friend for...a long time...who eventually turned into an online boyfriend who, at the end of Junior year, turned into an in-person boyfriend. That went badly. We were good best pals, but really bad mates. Within a month or so of running away from home and moving in with him, I was back home. We hurt each other a lot. He's still pretty special to me, and probably always will be, but for his sake - and maybe even for mine - we don't talk anymore.
Two weeks later, still damaged and refusing to accept my family as they were (and chemically unstable, which I didn't know until recently and could have had a major impact on the overall situation), I left again. I moved in with another online boyfriend, this one I'd only known for two weeks but convinced myself I was in love with. He lived in what I considered to be a whole other world, the alternate lifestyle of BDSM. I thought I knew what I was getting into and that I could handle it, I had no idea.
That relationship quickly turned into an abusive one and went under. The physical force was something I was expecting, but there was also some pretty severe emotional and psychological abuse, coupled with periods of neglect and super-high stress. I stuck with it anyway. I wasn't about to run home again and I was convinced that I loved him, that there was just something wrong with me, the whole typical abused-woman stockholm-syndrome deal. Between all of this and the chemical imbalance I didn't know about, I tumbled into a severe depressive cycle and contemplated suicide several times.
My best friend beat me to it. As much as I regret and mourn the loss of him, his death - and how the guy I was with reacted to it - was the shock my system needed. I started looking around, and with the help of some very intelligent women in the "community" I saw what I'd refused to see before. But I still refused to admit to what I was seeing. I tried to salvage the relationship, even tried the "just being friends" thing, and every attempt just added rocks to the landslide that was already in progress.
Sounds like my life was crap to this point? Yeah...it mostly was. But then came the bright spot.
Dearest, my husband.
We met because I needed to live somewhere other than with the man we'll call "J" and Dearest had an extra room in his house. He also had a wife. In my damaged state, he was my safest bet.
Here's the part where you'll probably lose some respect for me. Keep in mind that at this point I had walked away from all religion and morality. Which means I was basically just so much flotsam and jetsam.
I rented the room Dearest had to offer and moved in sooner than I thought I would - as in the weekend after I met him. We met on a Wednesday and that Saturday we got together to talk about the conditions of renting (also the day that J kindly decided to kick me out early and have biased third party pack up what they percieved to be mine and leave it in a parking lot for me to pick up). Somewhere between first meeting him and the move-in, I decided I was going to seduce him. I don't remember exactly what was going through my mind. I've burned the journals that held those thoughts since they also contained so much of J and indulging my pyromaniac urges once in a while proves therapeutic.
By the end of the night on Saturday, we were having an affair.
Obviously, him being so willing a participant meant the relationship was screwed up from the get-go and it turned out to be yet another situation where I didn't have any clue what I was really getting into. But I survived it, despite several attempts on my sanity, health, and general well-being from the slighted party in the process. Evetually she left, and they divorced. I say eventually but it was only about two months.
So there it is, I was a homewrecker. Sinners saved by grace, anyone?
As it turned out she was cheating too, not that it really matters now. She had a screwy world perspective and an unrealistic idea of marriage and...well, I could go on but this isn't about her.
Dearest has been a true bright spot though. He got me through a lot of the crap that I had to deal with following my severely damaging relationship (and the equally severely damaging break-off of that relationship) with J. I'm talking nightmares I'd wake up screaming and spasming from, irrational fears, emotional baggage up the wazoo, a couple of health issues, and a need for some SERIOUS reprogramming thanks to the oddly subtle and effective brainwashing J implimented - however unconsciously.
I started a business, somewhere in all the drama following the split with J and my mentors...well, I didn't exactly have them. My fault, really. I hid from them because I was embarrassed about my past and the things I'd done - and allowed to be done to me. I was ashamed of my damage.
I found my true salvation in church, the one place I'd been running from for close to three years at that point. I know three years doesn't sound like a lot, but consider that I'm 20. Three years is an eternety.
For a while my relationship with Dearest had some rough patches. Between my damage from my past, his damage from his past, both of us being staunchly anti-religion for a while (him much longer than me since he's got 12 years on me), and neither of us having any idea how to properly pull off a healthy relationship...let's just say we were in trouble. Big trouble.
But it turns out that the start to our salvation was in the business I had started, and the system of mentors and people who have gone before us therein. We went to a big conference, met a whole bunch of people who just had something we wanted - inner peace, happiness, that kind of thing - and got a book that was influential in saving our relationship.
All of this inspired us to try out church, so we church-hopped for a while before trying one of the larger curches (I think they're actually considered a mega-church) in the area. CFC (Christian Faith Center) (www.christianfaithcenter.cc) quickly became our home. The pastoral family (mom, dad, and one of the three kids are all pastors at the church) is amazing and the sermons we hear are always on-queue with what we need in our lives at that time. We got saved in December, Dearest for the first time in a long time, me for the...fifth, sixth, fifty-second? (I think that growing up in the church I did was a disadvantage. I was constantly being reborn...and never going anywhere past that).
After that our lives started seriously turning around. We've experienced some troubles - medical stuff, mostly. Plus backlash from the divorce and the struggle to get out of debt while running a business together. Fortunately our mentors are amazing and the business model we're using coupled with the mentorship and growth system is ... just phenominal, really. I feel so blessed.
Dearest and I were married in May, by the way.
Throughout the whole thing, all of the suckage and damage and crap, I feel like I've been guided. I look back and I can't think of any descisions along the way from, gosh, twelve years old onward, that could have been made differently without having a serious impact on whether or not I even met Dearest. Not to mention whether I would have been ready for him, whether I would have met the guy who introduced us to our mentors, whether we would have gone to church, any of it. ...With the possible exception of all the extra doughnuts, birthday cake, cheeseburgers, etc.
By the way, God, thanks. Again. It's pretty amazing the way you put all of that together.
This is probably one of those things you're going to find me musing over a lot.
Oh yeah, I'm long-winded too. And I have the writing style of a storyteller - Basically, I try to type it the way I think it would sound if I were saying it and that means it often ends up looking a little weird. Gramarically incorrect, occasional misspelled or made up word, so on and so forth.
So...that's my story to this point. I look back now on the person I was a year ago when I left J and met Dearest....and I'm amazed. Amazed that I was ever there, amazed at how far I've come, amazed that God still has some freaking patience for me and even more amazed that my husband does! I feel so incredibly blessed that sometimes it makes me cry. I'm...We're...finally on the right path. Finally.
I'll talk more about that, in another post. I think this one is more than long enough now and should be posted before I make it any more impossible to read in one setting.
Granted, my blood sugar drops faster than I'm used to with these meds and I let my meds lapse for about half an hour. I think there may be more to it though. I may be a coward, unable to strike up a conversation with anyone. Or, that particular environment may be a bit emotionally toxic. I tend to feel a bit...blah...after leaving that one Starbucks, so maybe that's it. All of the energy of people with no real hope for the future and no interest in gaining hope, so busy drinking the poison that they don't care that I'm standing there holding out the antidote.
I'm very opinionated, by the way.
It occurs to me that people may end up reading this who don't know me, and who (obviously) haven't read my other journals over the past year so don't know what the heck is going on. Allow me to give you some information.
I'm Laura. I'm almost 20. I'm married. I own a business. I have chemical imbalance problems that requiire some medication to remedy - though the amount that I take is barely considered a trace amount. The meds are like eyeglasses...but for my brain. When they're in my system everything is focused and clear, and I can actually see what is going on.
What else? Did I mention that I'm almost 20 and newly married? That means I often get....overemotional. I also have a pretty big vocabulary and don't always fully understand the emotional impact of my words so I use the wrong ones. I also sometimes know exactly what I'm saying and how it's being percieved but in my altered emotional state it makes perfect sense to use that particular word or phrase when in reality it makes no sense at all.
I'm still learning. If we're talking in terms of actual real-world experience, I'm probably about a year old. Fortunately I have an amazing husband who *usually* gets me (how much can a man ever really understand a woman, after all) and a couple of mentors who have good heads on their shoulders and a lot of experience under their belts. Plus, I have my faith.
About that, I'm working on it. I'm not anywhere near perfect. I often screw up. But I've recently committed to really, really working on myself and one of the things I'm working on is my faith.
My story, in breif, is this:
I'm the oldest child, the firstborn, which means I'm the ones my parents accidentally screwed up the most on. I don't blame them - at least I try not to anymore. They've really done what they thought was best with what they had.
I had a spoiled-rotten early childhood as a single child and then I suddenly had two brothers about 13 months apart from each other. Throughout the course of the next, oh, thirteen or fourteen years I got three more siblings.
We grew up poor. Lower-middle class if that.
As a child I was mean, and misinformed, and overzealous. Thus, I had no friends. This may have had something to do with psychological damage I wasn't aware I had from repeated instances of sexual abuse that I didn't remember until later on in life. Repressed memories are ... well, often difficult to handle or understand. And play a major role in how you react to the world around you.
Sometime in middle school I started to figure out who I was, and I started being nicer. And I had friends. But then for some reason I figured out that I was weird and got insecure and tried to be normal, and then I had no friends again. This was an on-again, off-again process throughout high school.
Somewhere in high school my parents split up and it was rough. Then they got back together and it was rougher. I didn't actually recover from that for a long time, and I'm still dealing with a lot of emotional damage from that. But I'm dealing with it and that's the important part. I gained a lot of weight during that time, indulging my sweet tooth until it developed into a full-on obsession with eating as much food as possible at any given time. By the end of that ordeal I weighed somewhere around 260. I'm still working on that one, too. More on that later.
I had an online best friend for...a long time...who eventually turned into an online boyfriend who, at the end of Junior year, turned into an in-person boyfriend. That went badly. We were good best pals, but really bad mates. Within a month or so of running away from home and moving in with him, I was back home. We hurt each other a lot. He's still pretty special to me, and probably always will be, but for his sake - and maybe even for mine - we don't talk anymore.
Two weeks later, still damaged and refusing to accept my family as they were (and chemically unstable, which I didn't know until recently and could have had a major impact on the overall situation), I left again. I moved in with another online boyfriend, this one I'd only known for two weeks but convinced myself I was in love with. He lived in what I considered to be a whole other world, the alternate lifestyle of BDSM. I thought I knew what I was getting into and that I could handle it, I had no idea.
That relationship quickly turned into an abusive one and went under. The physical force was something I was expecting, but there was also some pretty severe emotional and psychological abuse, coupled with periods of neglect and super-high stress. I stuck with it anyway. I wasn't about to run home again and I was convinced that I loved him, that there was just something wrong with me, the whole typical abused-woman stockholm-syndrome deal. Between all of this and the chemical imbalance I didn't know about, I tumbled into a severe depressive cycle and contemplated suicide several times.
My best friend beat me to it. As much as I regret and mourn the loss of him, his death - and how the guy I was with reacted to it - was the shock my system needed. I started looking around, and with the help of some very intelligent women in the "community" I saw what I'd refused to see before. But I still refused to admit to what I was seeing. I tried to salvage the relationship, even tried the "just being friends" thing, and every attempt just added rocks to the landslide that was already in progress.
Sounds like my life was crap to this point? Yeah...it mostly was. But then came the bright spot.
Dearest, my husband.
We met because I needed to live somewhere other than with the man we'll call "J" and Dearest had an extra room in his house. He also had a wife. In my damaged state, he was my safest bet.
Here's the part where you'll probably lose some respect for me. Keep in mind that at this point I had walked away from all religion and morality. Which means I was basically just so much flotsam and jetsam.
I rented the room Dearest had to offer and moved in sooner than I thought I would - as in the weekend after I met him. We met on a Wednesday and that Saturday we got together to talk about the conditions of renting (also the day that J kindly decided to kick me out early and have biased third party pack up what they percieved to be mine and leave it in a parking lot for me to pick up). Somewhere between first meeting him and the move-in, I decided I was going to seduce him. I don't remember exactly what was going through my mind. I've burned the journals that held those thoughts since they also contained so much of J and indulging my pyromaniac urges once in a while proves therapeutic.
By the end of the night on Saturday, we were having an affair.
Obviously, him being so willing a participant meant the relationship was screwed up from the get-go and it turned out to be yet another situation where I didn't have any clue what I was really getting into. But I survived it, despite several attempts on my sanity, health, and general well-being from the slighted party in the process. Evetually she left, and they divorced. I say eventually but it was only about two months.
So there it is, I was a homewrecker. Sinners saved by grace, anyone?
As it turned out she was cheating too, not that it really matters now. She had a screwy world perspective and an unrealistic idea of marriage and...well, I could go on but this isn't about her.
Dearest has been a true bright spot though. He got me through a lot of the crap that I had to deal with following my severely damaging relationship (and the equally severely damaging break-off of that relationship) with J. I'm talking nightmares I'd wake up screaming and spasming from, irrational fears, emotional baggage up the wazoo, a couple of health issues, and a need for some SERIOUS reprogramming thanks to the oddly subtle and effective brainwashing J implimented - however unconsciously.
I started a business, somewhere in all the drama following the split with J and my mentors...well, I didn't exactly have them. My fault, really. I hid from them because I was embarrassed about my past and the things I'd done - and allowed to be done to me. I was ashamed of my damage.
I found my true salvation in church, the one place I'd been running from for close to three years at that point. I know three years doesn't sound like a lot, but consider that I'm 20. Three years is an eternety.
For a while my relationship with Dearest had some rough patches. Between my damage from my past, his damage from his past, both of us being staunchly anti-religion for a while (him much longer than me since he's got 12 years on me), and neither of us having any idea how to properly pull off a healthy relationship...let's just say we were in trouble. Big trouble.
But it turns out that the start to our salvation was in the business I had started, and the system of mentors and people who have gone before us therein. We went to a big conference, met a whole bunch of people who just had something we wanted - inner peace, happiness, that kind of thing - and got a book that was influential in saving our relationship.
All of this inspired us to try out church, so we church-hopped for a while before trying one of the larger curches (I think they're actually considered a mega-church) in the area. CFC (Christian Faith Center) (www.christianfaithcenter.cc) quickly became our home. The pastoral family (mom, dad, and one of the three kids are all pastors at the church) is amazing and the sermons we hear are always on-queue with what we need in our lives at that time. We got saved in December, Dearest for the first time in a long time, me for the...fifth, sixth, fifty-second? (I think that growing up in the church I did was a disadvantage. I was constantly being reborn...and never going anywhere past that).
After that our lives started seriously turning around. We've experienced some troubles - medical stuff, mostly. Plus backlash from the divorce and the struggle to get out of debt while running a business together. Fortunately our mentors are amazing and the business model we're using coupled with the mentorship and growth system is ... just phenominal, really. I feel so blessed.
Dearest and I were married in May, by the way.
Throughout the whole thing, all of the suckage and damage and crap, I feel like I've been guided. I look back and I can't think of any descisions along the way from, gosh, twelve years old onward, that could have been made differently without having a serious impact on whether or not I even met Dearest. Not to mention whether I would have been ready for him, whether I would have met the guy who introduced us to our mentors, whether we would have gone to church, any of it. ...With the possible exception of all the extra doughnuts, birthday cake, cheeseburgers, etc.
By the way, God, thanks. Again. It's pretty amazing the way you put all of that together.
This is probably one of those things you're going to find me musing over a lot.
Oh yeah, I'm long-winded too. And I have the writing style of a storyteller - Basically, I try to type it the way I think it would sound if I were saying it and that means it often ends up looking a little weird. Gramarically incorrect, occasional misspelled or made up word, so on and so forth.
So...that's my story to this point. I look back now on the person I was a year ago when I left J and met Dearest....and I'm amazed. Amazed that I was ever there, amazed at how far I've come, amazed that God still has some freaking patience for me and even more amazed that my husband does! I feel so incredibly blessed that sometimes it makes me cry. I'm...We're...finally on the right path. Finally.
I'll talk more about that, in another post. I think this one is more than long enough now and should be posted before I make it any more impossible to read in one setting.
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