Faith is a Necessary Ingredient for Belief

I am currently reading Christopher Kitchen’s book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Page 71 hits home for me especially:

If one must have faith in order to believe something, or believe IN something, then the likelihood of that something having any truth or value is considerably diminished.

I have to admit, it is in the area of faith I most struggle with. I don’t believe. I keep trying, again and again and ultimately, I lack the very faith that is needed in order to fully believe in a deity, one that created the earth in six days, one that created man from dust and woman from his ribs, one that determines who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. I simply do not believe that such a deity exists. 

But what does faith mean? Looking it up on Google, I found the following definition: 

strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof. 

Apprehension in this case means understanding. Rather than proof, that’s the rub. Faith is the substitute for proof because you need to have faith due to the absence of truth. In fact, in some cases, it is faith DESPITE proof, despite logic. Because if you look at some of these stories logically, they don’t make any sense. In order to make sense of them, you have to have faith. In order to believe, you have to have faith. I don’t have faith. I expect proof. I expect things to make sense and religion has never really made any sense to me despite how hard to try to make it make sense. I ask too many questions, too many difficult questions that no one can answer. And no one ever tries to. Why is that? Because they don’t need the answers, they already  have faith.

To be honest, the better question is why do I need faith? Why do I need to believe? Well, supposedly, it’s so that I don’t go to hell. But I don’t believe in hell either. Or heaven for that matter. When we die, we die. Our existence after death is no different than the existence we had before birth or rather lack thereof. It’s a horrifying thought only because we are alive now and the thought of not being alive can be rather frightening. And yet, there are people incredibly concerned about the state of my soul, more so than I am. And, rather ironically, these are people who should be far more concerned about the state of their own soul as, based on their system of beliefs, they are or have done things that are very much out of line with what they believe and yet, it is MY unbelieving soul they are worried about. Murder, adultery, lying, they can just ask their god for forgiveness and all is good but because I don’t believe, I have an automatic one way ticket to hell that these people feel if they can just get me to believe, if they can just get me to have faith, they will win one over to their side and save my soul from eternal damnation in the process.

If only it were that easy. But it’s not. I don’t have faith. I require proof. I want my morals to have a reason for being besides, “Because god says so!” That doesn't work for me. I need more than that. If anything, the proof has been the opposite. The stories are not based on reality but tales told by a primitive society to explain things that are now mostly explained by science. It is something that provides comfort to people, yes, but it is also something that is used to control people and stagnate process.

And yet, I still struggle with the fact I don’t believe. I fear rejection, something that happened in my own marriage because I did not believe as my husband wanted me to. And so anytime it comes up that someone may look down on me because of my lack of belief, I become very concerned. Trauma is triggered and I become very distraught and emotional, afraid of rejection from anyone who is close to me. I sense a good part of this is because my own belief system is still being formed, raw and unsure from the years of my marriage where I lost love, affection, and intimacy because I failed to believe.

However, the more I try to believe, the less I am able to. I search and I read and I end up determining that I cannot believe that which others want me to believe. It is too out there for me and the lack of evidence doesn’t help. There is no evidence for much of what is in the Bible. There simply isn’t. Belief requires faith and faith is something I just do not have.

The Final Countdown

🎶 He's leavin' for Korea

But still it's farewell

And maybe he'll come back

To the US, who can tell?

I guess there is no one to blame

He's leaving ground (leaving ground)

Will things ever be the same again?

It's the final countdown

The final countdown 🎶

I couldn't resist.

After less than 18 months in the United States, John is heading back to South Korea. It didn't take much. High inflation, housing prices, lack of connection with his children, all of these things pushed him to decide it just wasn't working out here and he would do better as a parent sending money from afar. 

Not that he really did all that much to try and connect with his children while he was here. But really, being here just kept him from doing what he enjoyed which was experiencing another culture, learning another language, and teaching ESL.

It's hard to not be bitter about it. It's hard not to feel that this is his way of punishing me for ending our marriage, by making sure I had to take care of the children and everything on my own. However, it sort of backfired on him because leaving for almost three years, the girls and I have become quite close and he lost the relationship he had with Isabelle. He blames me for that, that he's not close to either of them but even after he returned, he didn't make that much of an effort towards their relationship. He expected it to be easy, just as he did with our marriage, and he took them for granted.

And now he's leaving again. The girls are happy about it. I have a lot of mixed feelings. Nothing towards him personally, those feelings are dead and buried six feet under. But I hate how easy it seems for him to just leave, with no concrete plans as to when he will return. I strongly suspect that one of these times, he is not going to come back. He's just going to stay over there forever. I mean, why would he? Things aren't easy here right now. Over there, for him, they are much easier. As far as that all goes, I can't really blame him. It just puts this huge ass load on me that at times is just completely and utterly exhausting. 

But he never really did take on his share of the parenting. It was always on me to do it all and usually while also making sure he functions so that he didn't lose his job and out is into an even worse situation. So at least over there, he's a little more stable. Over there, he's not my concern so long as the child support gets here.

I know I got through all of this before and Natalie was the age Isabelle is now and Isabelle was in middle school. I was still working in the office and I had a lousy car and there were a lot of things I didn't know them that I know now. I have gotten through it all before and I have no doubt I can get through it again. I mean, we got through a pandemic for crying out loud. But it is definitely not going to be easy. There will probably be a lot of tears and a lot of anger towards him I won't be able to express to him. The resentment at times will come up and those will all be feelings I will have to deal with. I will have to juggle my job and the girls and figure out how I'm going to do it all when there really isn't anyone there for me to rely on. 

And at times, the utter loneliness will be hard as fuck to deal with. Because that's one of those things about having a co-parent and a spouse (if you're lucky), having someone to help carry some of that weight of day to day living, day to day taking care of the kids. Without one, you're just swimming in that vast ocean of life on your own, trying not to drown in the waves.

The necessity of having strong personal moral values.

Moral values tend to come up a lot when discussing the difference between believers and non-believers. It's often believed that non-believers do not have any values at all. That's simply not true. Us non-believers do have values; we do have morals. However, they are not based on a single text as it can be with many believers. That is not to say a non-believer can't draw morals from that single text because they certainly can. However, there are many places one can find morals and values to draw from. The important thing is that we decide what those morals and values are and stick to them.

If there is anything I have learned from life is that without deeply held personal morals, we are subject to the waves and winds of life, at risk of being dragged along by anyone who comes around. We can't always assume that those around us have the best of intentions for us. They might but ultimately, most people tend to think of themselves, their needs and wants, so it is best we go in ahead of time knowing exactly what is important to us, what values we hold dear so that we can stick to those values at those times we are tested by the difficulties and challenges of life that are sure to come at us.

Just because there isn't someone watching over us judging us and deciding on our final destination after death doesn't mean we can get off scott free here. Our values define who we are and the kind of person we want to be. Our conscious judges us and that can be just as bad if not worse than the idea of any deity judging us. After all, you're stuck with yourself for life. You should be able to at least like yourself.

I'm finding more and more the importance of this when I contemplate going back out into the dating world again. In the past, my morals haven't been very strong. I allowed things that in reality, I resented greatly. And the result of that was to be married to someone I found I really did not like. And now, I definitely don't like him. If I were to meet him at this stage of my life, I probably would not have gotten involved with him or would likely break the relationship off before it became too serious. I learned that certain things can be a big red flag and not to see just what I want to see but to look at if this person's values are compatible with my own.

It's not easy. I have spent much of my life being a people pleaser. I want people to like me, I want to be accepted. And sometimes, that has meant ignoring that little voice in my head that says something is not right here. Sometimes that has meant staying in something that wasn't good for me such as my marriage for far longer than I should have. Sometimes that has meant ignoring my needs and not taking care of them as I should. And by doing all of that, I'm not creating a life that is worth living for me. Instead, I'm placing myself into a hell of my own making and that's really not a good place to be.

So yes, morals and values should be important to non-believers. Not because there is some all seeing deity watching us like a creepy stalker but because going against those values do us more harm than good. But we can't even begin to defend those morals and values until we know what they are. That's the important piece of the puzzle.

Father's Day is never an easy day for me...

 ... neither is Mother's Day but Father's Day in particular is hard because it is just before the anniversary and tends to trigger the beginnings of the grief I tend to go through as that time draws near. 

This year, my mother called two days before and towards the end of our conversation, happened to mention that my dad was feeling lonely, that he feels forgotten by the Wisconsin side of his family (my sister and I) and would like to hear from us. I told her I would see but that this month is kind of difficult for that. 

She talked to my sister afterwards and she said the same thing, maybe but probably not during June because the PTSD tends to get really bad. And this prompted my mom to say she never realized it was that bad for us. And it led me to realize that being where they are, neither are really aware of the impact of that day for us. That we both still struggle with PTSD, that the memory of what happened that day is still very vivid in our mind and can be triggered by any number of things. 

Their current world is very small and narrow and they don't really have any concept of what's going on beyond the prison walls. And because of that, they really don't have an understanding of what it is we go through on a day to day basis. I'm not sure if they struggle with any issues from that day or not. I'm not sure I want to know. 

It's a tricky dance in the mind to have any kind of a relationship with them. That I have one at all is by establishing some pretty firm boundaries. Still, it takes some mental gymnastics to have anything to do with them. My brother hasn't had any contact with my mother since the day she was sentenced over 18 years ago. It was years after before I was able to visit my mother for the first time and I still have not nor do I plan to visit my father. Email is about the extent of it.

June comes and with it more of the reminders, more of the grief and emotions. And so that becomes a struggle and the lines blur and make it harder to connect to them at all.

And no doubt there will be those who wonder why it is even there, why remember, why not move on. And I wish it were that easy. But it's not. Big events like that change the fabric of your life in a monumental way. We still read the names of all those who died on September 11, still have that moment of silence. People are still impacted by what happened that day. This is no different except for the size. Only one person was killed, two families affected but it still is a major event and thus, not one so easily forgotten.

Some not so random thoughts on an Easter Sunday.

I'm currently sitting at work, waiting for calls to come in on a day that for many is a holiday or rather a holy day, one of the big ones the majority of Christians celebrate. To be fair, probably the holy day that differentiates Christians from any other religion. 

It has been years since I had gone to an Easter mass, decades I would say. John celebrated Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, not Easter. And it, like Halloween, was not a hill I really wanted to battle. Besides, the DofUB were a pain enough to deal with with the requirements of having to deleaven the house first and then go an entire week without any leavening at all. I just didn't bother unless the girls wanted to do something with it and then maybe I would put something together but Christmas was always the big one for me. And once I came to identify more as an atheist, I simply didn't see the point.

And so seeing everyone getting together for another holiday, there are a mixture of feelings. On one hand, I still very much struggle with the concept of the existence of a deity at all, much less one so fleshed out as the one in the Bible. There are still too many questions in my head, too many things that do not make any sense to me at all.

And yet, I do feel there is something beyond me. It's hard for me to really explain though. I don't know what it is, just something more. Maybe it's the sense of the vastness of space, of the universe. I don't know. There are things I feel the be true within me, things that are important to me, my values and morals so to speak. What exactly it is connected to, that I'm not so sure about.

It's something I never really got to explore being married to John. With him, I either believed what he believed or nothing. And that certainly didn't make things easy. It was just easier not to believe in anything at all, easier not to figure out what I did believe. Not that it mattered, whether I believed or didn't believe, it was a way for him to be morally superior over me because I didn't believe what he believed and his beliefs were the only true ones.

And now, after being divorced for almost 3 1/2 years and living on my own for close to four, I'm slowly starting to try and figure out just what I believe. It isn't easy. I'm realizing that there is a lot of baggage I carry from my marriage that has some effect. There are a lot of voices out there too. There is no one set of beliefs, one school of thought. There are thousands, perhaps even millions. Figuring out what I believe in the midst of that is a huge challenge.

But I feel it is something I need to figure out for myself in order to be true to myself and be the most authentic me I can be. 

Thoughts about Valentine's Day.

It's that time of year where social media feeds has everyone in a relationship going ga-ga over their significant other. On my fourth Valentine's Day post divorce I can't help but feel a little cynical. To be fair, even when I was with John, Valentine's Day had more issues than romance. Our first Valentine's Day was also our nine month anniversary. John was pulled over while driving on a revoked license. He was arrested. I was with him but couldn't drive so we ended up stranded in a small town in Wisconsin for the next almost 24 hours before we took a bus home. I then promptly dropped out of school to go down to Madison and live with him to help him out. And no one really tried to talk me out of this either which I find very strange now.

Subsequent Valentine's Days ended with John being fired from a job or illness, or something else. So I learned quickly to keep my expectations for that day very low. Nonetheless, who doesn't enjoy a little romance?

But that's kind of the thing. Romance or sex or what have you, but love is so much more than that. It's communication. It's being honest with the person you are with. It's following through on plans and promises you have made. It's commitment.

When I look around at many of the relationships I see today, my former marriage included, I don't see much of that. It is a very rare relationship I see that has this. I find that to be very sad and, to be a little honest, it has me rather cynical at times about the likelihood of finding a healthy and happy relationship of my own. Just doesn't seem very possible.

A Lot of Thoughts on my Mind These Days

Trying this on my phone. We'll see how it works. I've been getting back out there in as far as seeing what the possibilities are relationship wise. It's been eye opening to say the least. There are possibilities I never considered as far as relationships go and it has me asking myself a lot of questions including whether I even want a full time relationship. 

My years with John were difficult and not just for me but for the girls too. We did not feel safe to be who we were. Did not feel safe to explore and figure out what our values were. The last three years plus has given all of us space for that and one concern I continue to have is bringing anyone into that safe space full time, merging that person's life into ours and trying to adjust to their values and their beliefs.

It has me extra sensitive unfortunately. I did not feel safe to assert my independence living at home. Any attempt on my part to grow, to become more independent was met with anger and at times even rage. My parents' response could be very extreme because they wanted that control. So every step to independence was a threat to them.

When the murder happened, it stopped that process cold. I got married and had a family but I traded any desire for independence for a marriage that I became absolutely powerless in. And I played a part in that powerlessness because I was afraid to try and assert any independence. I did that and look what happened. Besides, I was supposed to do my part in being a good wife and independence within a marriage is not good, I thought.

It has taken a lot of years and a ton of therapy to question that and eventually start to have my own mind again. I came to realize that for me, having a life worth living started with becoming more independent so I did not need to rely on someone in my life.

And that was not an easy process. John fought me every single step of the way. He made attempts to sabotage me when I went back to school. He constantly berated me for not doing my duties as a mother and as a wife. He withdrew his affection.

And part of that process in becoming independent was realizing that the marriage could not be saved and part of that process included accepting the fact that I may be alone for the rest of my life if I left John. That that was a risk I would be taking. That I would be doing this alone. That may have been the hardest part for me.

Once I accepted that, I was able to move to the next step of ending the marriage. And for almost two years after that, I dealt with being alone.

And now, that next stage starts. Because I realize that there is a possibility out there, that maybe I can find someone again but with that comes a tremendous fear that I will make the same mistakes as before, that I will become desperate for that love and affection that I will start to give up those pieces of myself that are important to me.

And so at times, those fears have been triggered and a lot of emotions are coming up that I haven't had to deal with being alone. And they are at times very very difficult emotions and I find I am not handling them well.

I'm still trying to figure out who I am and what I believe and what my values are at the age of 41. Most people have this all figured out already but I don't because I never felt safe enough to. And at times, I do wonder if I will ever feel secure enough or safe enough to be fully in a relationship with someone. And right now, I really don't know.

And Yet, the Story Continues...

Fourteen months is entirely too long to update in a mere journal entry. Suffice to say, I'm still here, still moving day by day, still figuring out my place in this world and in this life I have. It's been interesting, to say the least. At one time, I honestly thought once my marriage was over that would be it, I would never have a snowball's chance in hell of ever finding anyone. But, while I'm not sure if I'll be ready to go into a relationship anytime soon, I do have more optimism that that day may come again someday and that John was not my only chance of finding love and being loved.

It is sort of fascinating though how things turn out. How a decision made one day leads to an opportunity another day. And that sometimes, the best thing to do is take a chance, take that risk, and see what happens. I did this when I went back to school, in hopes of getting a degree that would get me a job and help me be more independent whether I remained in my marriage or not. I did this when I decided to no longer wait for someone, that if I someday wanted a relationship, I needed to first go out and figure out what I want instead of just knowing what I did NOT want (there is a difference). And that has brought about some results that has me seeing myself differently and that has been rather empowering.

This year though has not been without it's massive challenges. We are still technically in the middle of a pandemic (though really it's pretty much endemic at this point). Last year the girls schooled virtually for a good part of the year. This was a huge challenge for both of them and they both really really struggled. John finally returned from Korea in April which added its own challenging especially as he has his own beliefs in as far as the pandemic goes and has no issues telling everyone just how he feels about it too whether they want to hear it or not. Tact and diplomacy has never been his strong points. And I don't think it would be so bad if it was adults he would rant to but he instead rants to the girls and they don't know what to do with that. They have to go along with what the adults tell them to do. They want nothing more than for things to be normal and things still aren't totally normal. That's just the reality.

And, while I had hoped that him returning would mean maybe a little more time to myself, a little more of a break, that has yet to materialize. He has no ability to have the girls overnight. He picks them up from school and takes them on occasion for a couple of hours to go bowling or out to eat. That's it. So, still the parent who does it all pretty much except now I deal with accusations that I'm deliberately keeping the girls from him or excluding him from their lives. Someday, I will radically accept that I will never ever win with him. When that day comes, I will be able to leave behind a lot of that stress. Whether that will happen before or AFTER the girls grow up, that remains to be seen.

In the meantime, I keep on keeping on. Somedays, I have my breakdowns and outbursts. But then, I stand up, dust myself off, and continue on. All I can do. I've made it this far having dealt with worse.

I can't do this anymore.

 I'm holding by the very thinnest of threads, trying to scream, my voice silent or it seems to be because no one seems to hear me. Can anyone hear me? I say I'm not doing well. I haven't been able to work for most of this month. I'm lonely, SO damn lonely for human contact, for someone, SOMEONE to give a damn and spend some time with me, actually ask me how I am doing and be there for ME without me having to give SO MUCH in return. I try and I try and I try to give people what they want but I never get back nearly what I give and it hurts, it HURTS. I just want someone to care what actually happens to me. If I were to disappear, would anyone even notice? Would anyone even care? I don't know anymore. I'm tired of fighting. I'm tired of being strong. I'm ALWAYS having to be strong. I'm sick to death of it. I don't want to be strong and have to keep going on in the face of all this shit. Because no one notices when you're strong, no one is there for you when you're strong. They just ignore you. I'm so tired of doing this all alone. It wasn't supposed to be this way. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Have I not gone through enough in my life? Do I not deserve some fucking happiness? I'm just so so damn tired of it all.

Where were you on September 11, 2001?

It's one of those pivotal events in world history. That moment where, again, the world is turned upside down. Assumptions you had of your world are shaken and you don't quite know what to do. That was September 11th for me. And to this day, I still think it had a major effect on my parents and led to the events that occurred less than 2 years later.

I do remember that day though. I was a resident assistant at the time at the local Catholic university. I had been on rounds the night before and the last set of rounds are at midnight so by the time I got to bed it was pretty late. I was running a little late turning in my pager and the on-call binder so I was rushing. I had an appointment later that morning and needed to get ready. I remember hearing the radio when I came in and putting away the pager and binder. I'm just about to leave when the head of residence life stopped me. He asked if I heard that two planes had been hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center. Now, color me a tad clueless because I didn't know exactly what buildings those were but I knew it was a huge deal and the first thought that crossed my head was to call my mom.

I rushed back to my room which was on the fifth floor of the adjoining building. I tried to call my mom (back then, it was still good old landline telephones on the wall with cords) but didn't reach her. I called John, told him to turn on the TV. I called my mom again. This time she answered. I told her what happened and her response was, "What?" in her typical fashion. She did eventually either get the TV on or the radio going and got the news. I still had my appointment so I got ready as did she since she was taking me to my appointment. She picked me up a short time later and we sit in the car and listen to the news on the way to my appointment.

Later, we're back on campus and she's having lunch with me. The large TV in the student union is playing scenes of the towers' collapse over and over. Students are quiet, not boisterously loud as they usually are. It was surreal and I remember sitting with my mom eating lunch and her commenting that it reminded her of when John F. Kennedy was killed. She was a senior in high school at the time.

Another thing I remember that day is how blue and clear the sky was. It was a beautiful September day and any days like that now reminds me of the tragedy. It's hard to believe that it's been 19 years now. My oldest daughter obviously was not yet around, would be another 4 years before she would be born. And they've learned about it, heard about it of course but it's a story to them. In fact, we were watching an episode of Criminal Minds that was on something regarding biological chemical warfare and anthrax was mentioned. I happened to say I remember when all of that went down in 2001. And Natalie looks at me and was just astounded. She thought it was just something made up on a show. No, it was very much real but for these kids, it's just a part of history.

And now, they're living in their own history in the making with Covid-19. All of these stories, all of these things that happen in our lifetimes that become part of the history of the world, but really when it comes down to it, outside of those events, life moves on, people move on, and the world continues.

A World Turned Upside Down

Right now, it's about the best way to describe it. The girls are back in school...virtually. After the um disaster of the last quarter of the 2019-2020 school year, the districts at least prepared for this coming year to be pretty much anything. And right now, that's virtual. Last Tuesday was the "official" first day of school but it was a first day of school like no other. I drove Natalie to her high school to pick up her supplies and her violin for orchestra. You drove into the parking lot at your assigned time, the person noted the name we had on the sheet in the windshield, and called into a walkie talkie to let them know who was there for their supplies. It felt surreal. These last six months have felt surreal and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Isabelle at least was able to go into the building and see her teacher. First, we had to have our masks and we had to fill out a survey saying we did not currently have any symptoms of Covid-19. At the door, they took our temperature and then we were able to go in. Her teacher had on a mask and had went over all the stuff with Isabelle on her iPad so she would be ready for class the following Tuesday since it was going to take awhile for everyone to get their supplies. He helped her collect all of her supplies and that was it, more or less. No putting supplies in their desks or lockers. No hugs. No seeing other classmates. Again, very surreal. So that was the first day of school for both of them.

Natalie had gotten her laptop about two weeks before but I hadn't had a chance to do anything with it and wouldn't you know, when I do, it's the night before she's supposed to log on and I run into technical issues. Go figure. But working 45 hours a week just did not give me much time to get things done. I decided then and there I needed a break. And that's what I have been doing. I have taken some time off of work to get a much needed mental health break and to be avail to deal with all the technical issues that have so far come up with Natalie's schooling. I imagine there will be issues tomorrow as well when both of them go online for classes. Hopefully, by the time I go back on Thursday, these hiccups will be few and far between. I have no idea otherwise how I'm going to make everything work.

It's been exhausting and frankly, I'm kind of tired of feeling like I live in a dystopian novel.

Is it so much to ask to have someone there for me?

 I'm tired of being alone. I'm tired of carrying the load by myself. For close to two years, I have been alone dealing with all the trials and tribulations of being a single mother with two girls. I've dealt with the illnesses, the parent teacher conferences, the various afterschool activities, the show choir competitions, the pains, the sorrows, the frustrations with school work, and now a fucking pandemic that never seems to end.

And I'm just tired of not having someone there for me to help me. I'm tired of not having a moment to myself to just cry and cry hard, cry until I'm empty inside and all the poison inside of me has been washed away. I'm tired of having to smile, to say I'm doing okay, call after call after fucking call. I have to be happy. I can't let anyone know how I really feel. And day in and day out it is like this. There's no time, no break for me. The only way at this point I'm going to get a break is a trip to the hospital.

And I'm screaming out loud and no one hears me. I am screaming in the dark and in the void and I may as well be in space. No one hears me. My pain is becoming all encompassing and I can't get anyone to see who can help. I need help where is everyone? We're in the middle of a pandemic. That's great. That doesn't change the fact that I need someone now. I need someone to take care of me. And there's no one there. I'm alone and I will always be alone.

Pandemic Thoughts Day 3

From April 15, 2020

How will the world change after all of this is over? Will there be more people working from home? Will schools do more online? Will people change their careers and how they view their lives? What will change for me? What would such a world be like?

Let’s say schools do more from home and people are home more. We stay home and we don’t go out as often but I don’t know this doesn’t seem right either. There are a lot of people who have no desire to work from home or remain at home. They want to go out and do things and be productive. The idea of just being idle at home with nothing to do doesn’t appeal to a lot of people but may it’s something that could be more and more necessary? Is this a one time thing? Will this be something that happens again and again? The last major pandemic was the Spanish flu of 1918. There hasn’t been anything this major in over 100 years. So would it be another 100 years before we face this kind of monster again? Or will there be other pandemics that come and threaten our very existence?

Humans do seem to struggle with doing what is right. So many people want to get out and go out and don’t want to remain at home. Some of it is understandably the need to be able to survive and work is the only means to do so. So how would that change? The idea of a universal basic income could come into play. So if people had the ability to get paid no matter if they worked or not, would that help with something like this? As jobs become more scarce due to automation and robotics (and wouldn’t something like this push the need for automation even more?), the need for a universal basic income would increase.

Surrogates hit on the idea of robots replacing humans out in the real world while humans stayed inside and controlled the humans from their safe environment. This was seen recently with a graduation in Japan where robots were used to collect the diploma and the students were present by means of a tablet used as the head of the robot and the student was present on the tablet via a meeting app of some sort. As robotics improves, something like what came about in surrogates could become more of a possibility and what’s not to like about that idea although, when you think about it, there are always those who wish to experience things for real and not virtually.

Going along these lines, the need for virtual stimulation may also increase. Broadway has been cut for the time being and many experiences of late have been done virtually. What better way than to have a virtual reality that would more closely match how it feels to go to those places. And eventually, from there we would get to holodecks. Though I think that the computer processing speed needed for something like that would be astronomical. But it would be a way for things to be experienced when it is not possible to experience those things in person.

So many problems need to be addressed that this pandemic has laid bare. The need for universal healthcare is huge. People are dying because they do not have the ability to get the healthcare they need when they need it. Insurance costs are high, and care is high and not everything is covered. Those who are the most vulnerable are the ones who do not have the insurance they need to get the care they need. And so many countries have found a way around this but the US has not and that needs to change.

I fear though that much will remain the same. It may take something even more dire to get through to people that the way things are is not the way things need to be. So many are more concerned with themselves, with the fact that THEY are locked up inside, that THEIR rights are being infringed on because they are not allowed to go where they want to go when they want to go. They don’t see that their actions have consequences or really care. I can’t say I really understand that. We are not merely individuals. We are a part of something larger, part of a larger human collective. We should work together to take care of each other and take care of our planet. Thinking only of ourselves is not going to help us in the long run. We are tied together and need to work together for the betterment of all. Sadly though, some people are just too selfish to understand this.

How can we get that to change, to get this idea that we are all part of one world, that we need to work together, how can we get that through to everyone? What does it take to do that? Apparently not a major pandemic because it is all too easy to see that the individual is still more important, that money is the be all and end all of everything. How do we leave such a system, a system where wealth is the ultimate goal for many people? How were they able to get people to no longer need money in Star Trek? That is never really talked about. People worked and still did things but were not paid. Obviously food was available to everyone. How do you even start to go about making that possible? Is it possible?

Can our world change from what we currently have to something that is better for all of us? Religion looks at this as being a form of heaven though for many the idea of heaven is to be ruled by a supreme being and only those willing to follow his every command would be allowed to live. That doesn’t quite strike me as a heaven I would want to be a part of. However, it does seem that people are not going to go into this willingly, there has to be some sort of government that leads us in that direction. But that is problematic as well. How then can we make our world better than it is?

Pandemic Thoughts Day 2

From April 14th...

So, today is day two, the challenge is to write something that is deliberately bad. Not sure what that means exactly. Are we writing a grammatically bad sentence? Are we to write something that just makes one cringe like the examples I saw today of writing men have done describing women that are not even remotely realistic? There’s a joke I’ve seen regarding how the year 2020 is a short story that’s been written by a fourth grader. My fourth grader took massive offense to that. But when you look at it, it does seem like this year has been more of a disaster movie than anything else. My sister keeps saying the world is going to end because we now have the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I don’t know about that but this has not been a good start to what was supposed to be a shiny brand new decade. I wonder if that’s what people in the 1930’s thought too.

Going back to bad writing. My ex-husband lives in South Korea and occasionally shares some of the cringeworthy bits of writing he’s seen on labels where they try to use English. On one hand, I feel I’m being mean to even make mention of it because I know that English is a difficult language. On the other hand, if you want to find bad writing, translations are definitely the place to find them. So, he bought a thing of grapes. The package is labeled “fresh raisins”. Uh...okay. Below that is the following: eating right through the full and healthy life for born in an attempt to protect the brand. Uh...say WHAT?! I don’t even know how to figure out what that is supposed to say. And that’s not the first time I’ve seen writing like that but it was definitely the most recent. I have no doubt that it has to do with the way Korean is written vs the way English is written as far as sentence structure and whatnot but still, I can’t even begin to make sense of that sentence. And this is a label on an item that you would buy in the store.

So, realizing now that we’ve all been schooling/working from home for four weeks now. It has definitely been a challenge and my youngest Isabelle seems to be feeling it the most. She doesn’t really have anyone to talk to or play online with when her sister is busy and I’m working so she’s having to spend a lot of time alone. Her dad being 6000 miles away doesn’t help. And with it looking more and more like school won’t resume this year, she got a little emotional. I can’t blame her. I would be too. Something like this is hard on a kid her age. They should be out and about, meeting up with their friends and playing outside at recess and they can’t. The weather is very slowly (I live in Wisconsin afterall), getting warmer and nicer and yet they can’t get out and really do anything. Parks are closed. They can’t meet with their friends. It’s looking more and more like this will continue on through the summer months. At the very least, you can’t plan anything because there’s no end date. Yes, the current stay at home mandate is set to expire next Friday but slowly, articles are coming out saying that this will likely not be the case so it’s just a matter of time before it gets extended.

Eventually though, this will all end at some point. It has to. Obviously, we can’t spend the rest of our lives in this limbo so there has to be an end to this. We just don’t know when that will be and we don’t know exactly how it will come about. I don’t think anyone really knows. The president sure doesn’t. He keeps saying we’ll be back in business by such a date and everyone then has to tell him that that is not likely. But what is needed to get us all back to normal is not a sure thing either. There are some ideas out there such as being able to test more people and having more supplies. The goal is to flatten the curve and keep hospitals from being overwhelmed but how can that be kept up for the long term? The virus has not gone away and is not likely to go away anytime in the near future. People will continue to be susceptible to getting this because no one has natural immunity to yet. And people who have gotten it even are not necessarily immune from getting it again. Letting everyone get it at once though is not an option either. Too many people will die if that happens.

So we wait and survive each and every day. I’m very thankful I’m still working and I have a job and money coming in. Not everyone is fortunate and I’m also very thankful that my job is not one where I”m having to interact with people in person. This virus cannot be transferred over the phone so I’m safe at home so long as I stay at home. That’s not always easy because there’s food that needs to be bought and I do have necessary appointments I need to keep but for the most part, I’m extremely fortunate in my situation. Not everyone is and those challenges are real. This is a very difficult time for a lot of people and not knowing when it is going to end doesn’t make that any easier.

Once all of this is over, I do wonder if we will all go back to the way things were or if things will be different and if so, will those differences be better or worse? The Black Death, if I recall, brought in the renaissance and ended the dark ages. So, what changes, if any, will we see once this is all over and done with? Perhaps that’s something to be explored... 

Pandemic Thoughts from April

Finally getting around to posting these? Anyway, this was actually written back in April when I was trying to do more writing. Four months later isn't too bad...

It’s been awhile since I’ve really done any writing. I always seem to have ideas swirling around in my head but getting it from there to the paper is not so easy. It is far too easy for me to decide to do something else and these days, it’s even easier. It’s hard to do much of anything when you are more or less confined to your house and all future plans are on hold if not canceled. It all just kind of hangs in the air, and you’re waiting because that’s all you can do is wait for life to return to normal again or at least some semblance of normal because really, after something like this, can the world ever really get back to normal?

You see all of these disaster movies where the world is affected by some big disaster or another. Maybe it’s a meteor. Maybe it’s a catastrophic global storm. Or maybe the world for some reason or another comes just to the brink of total annihilation. The end of the movie always ends with things having stopped and the pieces needing to be put back together but you don’t see how that happens. You suppose that it WILL happen because somehow it HAS to but you don’t see how that will be. You don’t see how people will pick up the pieces of their lives again and go back to living. 

We obsess over the disaster, the drama of the disaster itself. We like to watch things be destroyed or fall apart. We want to root for the characters who make it against all odds. But in reality, when it’s all over and done with, we don’t really want to watch how people will pick up the pieces of their lives and put them back together. We don’t want to see that because that’s not as much fun. It’s not easy, it doesn’t have a neat little ending. Picking up the pieces is messy and drawn out and complicated. People don’t like that as much. People want their happy endings and will get that even if it means that the happen ending doesn’t really show what happens AFTER. And the AFTER part is important too. But we never get to see that.

Independence Day actually showed a little bit of this but it sort of glossed over a lot of it too. You see Bill Pullman’s character still suffering from flashbacks and having some sort of physical issue and maybe mental issues as well but it’s not really explained what happened. Other characters have issues as well but you don’t see the process from the event to the now as to how they got there. You’re just briefly introduced and the story goes on.

Then you have dystopian movies/novels. Those are even more interesting in that they are the result of a disaster and it creates this world that is totally foreign to our own but you’re not shown how it gets there, it is just suddenly there. Sometimes, you may get a brief glimpse, usually in a voice over or news report type things that goes into a little bit of how something came to be but again, not enough to really give you an idea.

I was thinking of the movie Surrogates the other day. And I realize that with the pandemic we are currently experiencing that something like that can easily come as a result of that. I mean, in Japan, you have a graduation where robots are used in the place of students and the “heads” of the robots are tablets with the students coming in from Zoom or something like that. So you have these robot bodies that can accept their diploma and everything and then the students themselves are present through remote video conferencing. So, this is in a sense a very basic form of what surrogates ultimately becomes. In the movie, you have these robot people controlled by a person at home, a person who never leaves their house except in this robotic body. Right now, being out in person is not safe. You can become ill, very ill and even die from this virus that has no vaccine and no cure. So, the idea of a surrogate going out for you, working for you, shopping for you, etc, and if everyone had one then you wouldn’t need to worry about people going out, everyone would be in their homes, safe. Seems crazy in theory but if the right people put it into play, not so farfetched of an idea when you think about it. It’s whether people could handle being inside all day operating a robot of themselves. I think some can but others might have a harder time with that.

Until something like that comes to fruition or a vaccine comes out or we all just get totally sick to death of staying inside that we no longer care if we get it or not, we’re kind of stuck. And that has been a challenge. Even trying to stay home for two weeks to limit the amount of time I’m going out is hard but I know I have enough food here at home and I know that at the moment I don’t need to go out before next Wednesday. It’s hard though, day in and day out not having anywhere to go or really anything to do. It really does show that there is something to day to day living just having something to look forward to each day. When you can’t really plan ahead, it just makes life that much more challenging to get through. You really do have to take it day by day or you just go insane.

So yeah, that’s where we are all at right now, this 13th day of April in the year 2020. I turn 40 in just under 26 weeks and I really did not remotely anticipate my 40th year of life going like this. This is something we are most definitely not going to forget anytime soon, something that will be remembered and told by my children to their grandchildren and their great grandchildren. We just have to survive this whole thing first.

There are days it is really hard to do this all alone.

 John's contract was supposed to end August 20th. Shortly after that, he was supposed to be coming home. He extended his contract another six months. It's just until the director finds a replacement, he tells me. He's having a harder time right now due to the pandemic. And while I don't doubt that in the least, I also know that the director is not going to be motivated to find someone any sooner than he has to. Why when he has someone locked down already for six months?

John signed the first contract literally either the day of or the day after he was served divorce papers for the second time. So when we sat down with Isabelle to tell her, he gave her a double whammy. Daddy was going to Korea and also was no longer going to be married to Mommy. He left for Chicago in a rental on August 27, 2018 and has not been back since. The plan was that the girls spend some time over in Korea with him. But he was going to have to foot the expenses for everything. Somehow the girls were going to have to get over there as neither of them were over 18. It never happened. Finances and me not being able to take the time off needed to do it got in the way last summer and this year, it's been COVID-19. So for close to two years now I have been a single parent, parenting these two girls with no help because their dad is more than 6000 miles away.

Don't get me wrong, my girls are both troopers and have helped out a lot in the past two years and both have really taken on responsibilities and I can't complain too much on that end. But when one of them is still in elementary school, still prone to catching those illnesses, one thing that happens is that she gets sick and I have to stay home from work. There's no one to help with that, no one to shoulder that responsibility. There are times the emotions get over-powering as they tend to do in pre-teen and teenage girls. And that too has been mine to deal with alone. There's no one else to take on some of that for me. So there have been times when the responsibilities get a little overwhelming, when the day to day gets to be a little too much and there's no one else there to take any of that on. Because 6000 miles is pretty damn far away.

I was diagnosed with diabetes back in February. There's a family history of it so the doctors have been watching me for over 20 years, since my older brother was diagnosed at 25 (he gets it from both his parents while I just get it from our mom). I was 9 when my mother was diagnosed. Ten months after her diagnosis, she was hospitalized for the first time with pancreatitis. That worried me because who will take the girls if I get sick? And then COVID-19 hit the US and everything shut down and we all stayed home, away from everyone and it all got so much harder.

June is hard enough for me and this year was no exception. So I was vulnerable and needing a distraction and that distraction came in the most unexpected way. I wasn't looking for a relationship, was not even pursuing one because I felt I wasn't ready. Still so much I needed to figure out. And while I was lonely, I had my freedom. And having been in a relationship for almost my entire adult life at this point, and having fought so hard and paid so much for that freedom, I wasn't looking to give that up so quickly.

But I had forgotten how good it felt to be wanted, to be desired, to be touched by as simple a touch as a hand on my leg and I got swept up in that. And it was a distraction from the usual pain the end of June brings.

I knew it wasn't love, wasn't even a relationship, was very careful to keep that in my mind, very careful in how and who I told about it. Because at any moment it could pop like a bubble. And it did. And all it really did was leave me feeling empty and even more alone... 

With school starting up again in the middle of a pandemic, there was so much to consider, so much to figure out, so much to decide and again, I was alone in dealing with all of it. I had to make that decision alone. I had to decide what to do knowing that there were problems and risks with either option because while there was a third option, currently working 45 hours a week was not going to allow homeschooling to be much of an option not when school was starting soon. But that was what John was pushing. That was what he wanted me to do because public schools teach kids things they shouldn't be learning, they are making this whole pandemic thing political and not allowing things to be normal like they were in 2019 and as long as things were not normal, they shouldn't be in school. And again because he doesn't seem to get it: I HAVE TO MAKE THIS CHOICE KNOWING I AM THE ONLY ONE HERE RIGHT NOW TO DO THIS! And this doesn't seem to sink in with him.

And so I have done what has become necessary to do because one, he is not here and two he has no intention of coming back before March and I have made this entirely too easy for him to do this because I have not kept him from contacting the girls. I have not kept him from being a part of their lives. Technology makes that easy but he's still 6000 miles away and not here to help me but he will definitely try to dictate, try to tell me what I'm doing wrong, how I should be taking care of his children because obviously, I don't do things the way he would because I'm not following his beliefs. And all I can say if it's that much of an issue, he needs to come back. So I blocked him on Facebook. Because he only uses messenger though he does text Natalie and he is able to send me emails. I don't need it anymore. I don't need the judgments, the constant questions, the condemnation of everything I do. I was done. I am done. But I sure don't feel any less alone. 

Is it really like riding a bicycle?

Last night, someone commented on a picture I had posted sometime back on Instagram. I didn't think much of it because it's not the first time and to be kind of honest, one of my least favorite things about Instagram, you can't seem to get more private of a setting and for some odd reason, I seem to have quite a few men following me. I posted another picture, this one more recent and one where I'm not wearing make-up. I had posted it on Facebook because I had recently dyed my hair but beyond that, it was pretty much me. And a little while later, I'm engaged in a conversation with the someone who commented on my other picture.

It's weird because just over 20 years ago, I engaged in a conversation with someone due to his profile, and he didn't even have a picture. It was just a goofy username with gender and location and two lines from a poem I'm very familiar with: Robert Frost's "Stopping in the Woods on a Snowy Evening". That's all it took for me to meet my future husband. I was 18 years old, less than a month from graduating high school and I was home on prom night. We met in person 13 days later and the rest, as they say, was history.

Twenty years later, I'm not so confident in myself. I wasn't entirely confident then either but more so then than now. Now, I'm a bit heavier, a bit older, and have a lot more grey hair (because yes, I did have at least SOME grey hair at almost 19!). I was starting to wonder just what in the hell I was doing and told my daughter that I'm probably going to end up being one of those crazy cat ladies. Her response was that she could see me more as the crazy corgi lady. Either way, the thought of even going down that path to another relationship terrifies me.

And then the grief hits a little, grief that things didn't go the way they "should have". There's grief in the fact that I miss him but at the same time was lost  and couldn't even remotely be myself with him here. And worse, that my oldest daughter could not be herself with him here. But 20 years makes for a difficult habit to break and I have to say it's a good thing he's 6000 miles away.

It was this time last year that I was getting the process going for the divorce. He was actually served the papers the day after my youngest daughter's birthday (since he was looking to leave for Korea at some point, we had to move and get things going so that it could be mostly done before he left). There were definitely a lot of what ifs and fear and things I wasn't sure about and there's been a lot I have dealt with and made it through the other side of. While at times this amazes me, at other times, I feel like I've been on survival mode, not really sure where I'm heading.

Again, I have to figure out what I want out of my life, what I want out of a relationship, if I even WANT a relationship. Getting divorced seemed to have been a breeze in comparison. And dang it, it really doesn't help when he pays bills for me and sends me flowers, a bear, chocolates, and a smiley face balloon for Mother's Day. Why does it have to all be so dang complicated?!

The Hardest Part of Being Divorced?

I would have to say it's the loneliness. For all as much as people say they hate your spouse, as much as they go on and on about how the relationship is unhealthy and you should be rid of him, for how much they say yeah, they'll help you once he's gone and so on and so forth, once he is...crickets. I've been hearing nothing but crickets for the last seven plus months now since my divorce finalized November 30th. Heck, I was hearing crickets even before then, after John left for South Korea last August. People in my family don't call to see how I'm doing. I have had a friend who has called and people will ask when I attend our monthly meet ups but for the most part, crickets if not outright implied, "Suck it up Buttercup," when I do ask for help.

I am a single mother of two children whose father currently resides in South Korea. I work 40 hours a week M-F. I also work at a call center where I am on the phone most of the day and I'm hearing impaired. What most people don't know is that when you are hearing impaired, it takes more energy to get what you need from conversations than you would if you were not hard of hearing. I had note takers when I went to college from 2014 to 2017 because of this. The idea was for me to be able to not wear myself out as much trying to take in the information because there were people there to take the notes for me. And they transcribed everything that was said in class (when they could, student responses were not always easy to hear). I rely on lipreading as a secondary way to catch the things I miss from my hearing difficulties. I don't have this option on a phone. Unfortunately, call center jobs tend to be the better paying ones. Oh, and because of the hearing, my speech isn't always perfect. Most people hear it as an accent but it does tend to mean that when I have to spell names out (which I do frequently), I have to overly do it because people aren't always able to understand me. I can't just spell out letters, I often have to add, "as in ..." to it especially Os and Rs because for some reason, people seem to hear my saying R as saying O. So again, EXHAUSTING.

On top of this, I struggle with a mental health disorder that worsens considerably during the summer months due to PTSD. I was a witness to a murder back in 2003 in my apartment. My mother broke into my apartment because she had had a fight with my BIL the night before and he was over there with my sister trying to keep me level because my mother had psychologically harassed me because I wouldn't agree with her when she kept saying he deserved to be killed. Moments after she broke into my apartment and started hitting my BIL, my father followed her in with a hunting rifle and shot my BIL three times with no warning, no threats, kicking in my bedroom door when my BIL tried to escape from him. Three consecutive shots with little time in between. He died in my bedroom. So, the end of June gets pretty rough for me and when you go from that to 4th of July with all the fire crackers and extra fireworks that can sound like gun fire, yeah, not a fun time of year. Add in Father's Day and from mid-June on, I'm a bit of an emotional wreck.

Crickets. And even better, I figured out one of my triggers is massive amounts of loneliness most likely due to the fact that I was taken down to the police station, after witnessing this, put into a break room, and left alone for THREE HOURS. I even had a little bit of blood on my face from when my mother broke the window on my door because I was in front of the door trying to block it. No one looked me over. I had to take care of it myself. My sister was taken to the hospital, looked over because she was 21 weeks pregnant and my dad had kicked her. She had her husband's family and a few members of our family with her. I had no one for three hours running a play by play of this murder in my head (well after I tried to call every single person I could possibly think of whose number I had memorized or saved on my cell phone but I eventually ran out of people to call). John was in Korea then too. We were only engaged at the time but we got married literally 15 weeks later. I moved our wedding date up just to get him home. Because even then, after going through something like that, I had hardly anyone there for me. And we won't discuss what the legal system put me through.

My relationship with John was not a healthy one. We were very much codependent on each other, both due to crappy family. It took me forever to leave an unhealthy, controlling marriage because ultimately, I had to accept the fact that I was going to have to do this alone. I would never have anyone helping me or really by my side despite what they would say to the contrary. I would be the one to have to take care of everything and everyone and I would have to do it ALONE. Still, it's really freaking lonely and I really could use some help. My house is a disaster. I can't keep up with the cleaning. At some point, I'll probably have to suck it up and get enough money together to hire someone to help me with it but I'm afraid too someone might turn me in to CPS because of it. Not that it's so bad we have bugs or mice or anything like that but I know from past experiences, that that is one thing children CAN be removed for. I have a lot of clutter, things that need to be gotten rid of. But that takes time and a larger vehicle and neither of those are things I have right now.

People ask why women go back to abusive partners and do it so often. Well, pretty easy to answer. A lot of them don't have the support and/or resources they need to make it on their own. Not to mention, the abuse from the former partner tends to leave her with low self-esteem and a lack of confidence. That doesn't make it easy for anyone to make friends or even have ways to meet people. And if the former partner is good at love bombing, it can have even more of an effect on someone who is already in a vulnerable state.

I had family who made sure to make me feel like I was nothing but a huge burden. When I was staying with an older sister and things got delayed with us going over to Korea, they allowed their power to be disconnected. Only it was Wisconsin in the winter so it didn't get fully disconnected but was this weird half hour on, half hour off deal that massively traumatized my then three year old daughter. I ended up leaving and going into town to stay with my younger sister.

What doesn't kill you tends to make you stronger but it still really freaking sucks sometimes because I can't do everything alone. I'm just one person. And for a species that is supposed to be a social species and help each other out, we really suck sometimes and instead are selfish, isolating, and ostracizing. I'm doing it. I'm getting through each day somehow, but I hate that it has to be such a fight some days. It shouldn't have to be this hard, we should be there for each other but we're not. And family especially can be rather disappointing in that regard.

Come What May...

Watching Moulin Rouge the other night I'm reminded of this quote from Macbeth:

Come what come may, Time and the hour run through the roughest day.

This has been a quote often in my mind, in fact it used to be one I used on a very old blog I kept on Diaryland back in the early aughts. I discovered it taking a Shakespeare class in spring of 2002 and it became a very much appropriate one to remember just over a year later when I would go through one of the "roughest" days of my life.

This last year has been a series of somewhat rough days and yet, they have passed. The "what ifs" came, were answered, and went and I have managed to survive an entire school year without the girls' father in the same country, with very little help from family. There are days I have cried, raged a little, and wanted very much to quit but I managed to get through. In that time too, I quietly finalized my divorce from my husband, something done with little fanfare. The time since then has passed fairly quickly as well, past the six month point.

And now it is summer, something that seemed very much far away when temperatures were down to an insanely low -33 at one point (that's actual temperature, the windchill was even lower). The business of the school year is done and now we settle into that day by day leisurely summer schedule. I expect those days to pass quickly, they always do and it won't be long before another school year starts its approach. John will be gone another year so it will be just me and the girls again. At least now, I have almost a full year to look back on, children who are a year older, and a little bit more of a peace of mind that I can get through this.

I think the most challenging thing now is the loneliness that creeps up on me. And yet, the thought of getting into another relationship does not thrill me. I spent so much of my time being someone I was not in a relationship that fulfilled me less and less that I have no desire to go through that again and while there are probably plenty of people who would not be that way, I can't help but want to be more selfish with my time. At the same time, I wish for a little more help, a few more people asking how I am especially as I have ended a relationship I spent almost literally my entire adult life in thus far. Unfortunately, it seems the ones closest to me are simply too involved in their lives to really care and I grow tired of asking for help from them because it's usually the same result.

Ironically enough, these very same people will tell me how to take care of my children including telling me that I shouldn't send them to Korea to see their father. Not that they will do anything as far as taking them for any length of time so I can maybe get a break, a little bit of a breather, some space to cry. If they do help, I'm expected to be there the full time, not have other things to do (like go out and pay my lawyer or look at a newer, more reliable car because it was the only day off I would have on a business day for the next two weeks). In other words, their resentment is noticeable and I long ago decided that I would not ever EVER be in the position to be a burden to anyone. Been there, done that, simply will not go through it again.

I listen to music, a lot, and look for songs that empower when I can. While Natalie was in show choir this last year, they performed a song that hit home, a song done by Kelly Clarkson called Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You). The refrain pretty much nails it:

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Stand a little taller
Doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone
What doesn't kill you makes a fighter
Footsteps even lighter
Doesn't mean I'm over 'cause you're gone

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, stronger
Just me, myself and I
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Stand a little taller
Doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone

It's a good song, one on my playlist I play a lot especially when I need that reminder.

John's been gone over nine months now. It's just been me and the two girls for that whole time. We've gotten through a school year with a lot of challenges, events, snow days, illnesses, appointments, field trips, holidays (that we can actually celebrate now without worrying about how he will react to it), new traditions, old traditions that had to be changed or tweaked a little, tears, slammed doors, good days, bad days, rainy days, snowy days, hot days, really freaking cold days, and so on.

And it's not just that. In the past, I have always had someone I stayed with, someone I relied on at least a little bit for something whether that was transportation, money, housing, so on. Other than child support, and John paying a few things here and there because he can, I've been staying in my own place, driving my own car, working and earning the money needed to pay the bills, and doing what it takes. At the age of 38, that's big and not something I could do at any other time. It took me a long time to get to this point too.

There's more to do and I'm sure there will be more challenges yet to go; come what may.

Big Changes on the Horizon

And they're kind of freaking me out! After almost 8 years of being back in the US, John has decided it was time to go back to teaching in South Korea. There's been a lot of changes already this past year with me getting a full-time job but he's been wanting to do this for awhile and with other decisions that have been made, he decided that now was the time. I tend to forget though how fast things go when he gets a position. There's usually not more than a month before he has to actually be there from the time he is hired. In this case, it was about three weeks before we figure he's to get on the plane to get there. In the meantime, the documents all have to be sent to South Korea (this can't be done electronically either so it's a huge pain AND expense) to be viewed by immigration. He needs to get his visa approved. He needs to get a plane ticket (that part the school handles at least but still!) and since he's likely flying out of Chicago, we have to get him there. And all of this is be finalized by mid-August.

If that's not stressful enough, August is the month before school starts and all the things that go with that: school supply shopping, clothes shopping, open house, final get togethers, and so on. And then there's all that needs to be prepared before he goes like transferring the car payments to my account, clearing out the locket we've had, cleaning out the car since I will be driving it more, and so on. After August 13, give or take a day or so, I will be on my own with two kids, working full-time, and with a driver's license that's so new, it's still probationary (I don't get my REAL driver's license for another year). I've yet to drive in snow and I live in Wisconsin where winter is inevitable. So yeah, I'm kind of freaking out in that every so often at work, I feel like I'm having a panic attack.

Marsha Linehan who created Dialectical Behavior Therapy used to talk about mindfulness and being in the current moment. And one way she really kind of brings the point home is when she says to picture yourself walking. And imagine situations where you are walking. She has three in particular: walking to the bathroom, walking to accept an award, and walking to the guillotine. Obviously, you're going to feel differently with each one. But the point is to get to where even if you're walking to the guillotine, you feel the same as you would walking to the bathroom, neutral. The idea is to focus on the moment, to focus on JUST walking.

I have scoffed at this because sorry, walking to the guillotine is just going to freak me out period. But it brings up a point too. What can you do about it? What can you control in this moment? Looking ahead, in this case, only makes it worse. Instead, by focusing on the moment you are in, the suffering lessens.

It is something I'm really struggling with right now because all my brain thinks about is the "what ifs". What do I do if this happens? How do I handle this? And some of these may well happen, others may not and in the meantime, the panic is real.

So yeah, definitely struggling with that emotional mind thing right now, and not being as mindful as I could be.