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.