Well, here’s a thing I know: I’ve been using social media to try to communicate and connect with the people around me.

It’s not working very well. 

Big life changes are getting brushed aside, lost in shuffle of Donald Trump articles and recipe videos. 

Or maybe no one cares? It’s hard to tell. 

What I’m feeling so acutely is that likes, emoji, double taps are all a counterfeit for real human connection. 

Nothing beats real words from a person to another person. And I think that’s what we all actually need. Connection. To feel like some really cares. To see a human make some effort to reach out to another human. 

Social media is my job and I like my job. But I don’t want it to infiltrate my life in the way that it is. It doesn’t feel very healthy. And it certainly doesn’t feel very authentic. It’s like watching a sunset on tv when you could just go outside and see the real thing. 

I don’t want to keep doing this, stuck in this artificial world we all experience through the screens on our phones. I want more. I want real. And I don’t want to keep feeling lost in the shuffle. 

Last night I spent over an hour with Honor reminding him of who he really is. That he is smart and kind and sweet and brave and good at math and reading and computers. He’s been believing the lies that the kids in his class are telling him: that he’s stupid, that he’s a “book worm” (apparently a high insult), that he’s not athletic. Aside from the mama-bear rage that this incites in me, I also feel guilt.

I’m telling Honor all of these things that I know are true about him, telling him over and over again to believe the truth about himself, not the lies other people tell, and I worry that he got this propensity from me. I had to laugh at the irony of ME telling this to anyone. Last time I saw my therapist he asked me, “When are you going to start believing that you’re a really cool person?”

I think Honor and I both get caught up in the fact that, yes, people are actually communicating things that are not true to us: That we are unimportant or stupid, unloved or un-liked, that we are not worth someone’s time, love or attention. I think I needed someone to acknowledge to me, YES, this is actually what someone is saying to you with their actions. Yes, Honor, they are telling you lies. Yes, it’s actually happening, it’s not all in your head. You are validated.

I told Honor last night that when someone tells him that he’s bad at math that that’s actually pretty funny because he isn’t bad at math, we’ve got the test scores to prove it. I asked him what he would think if someone told me I was bad at knitting. That’s pretty ridiculous, I’m not, I’ve got the sweaters to prove it. I wanted to normalize to him that people can say things that we don’t have to believe.

I think I have some pretty deep and valid abandonment issues so my default is to always believe that I’m unimportant, unloved, alone. All I want so deeply is to be considered. I’ve come to see that my problem is that I only believe the truth about myself when someone is telling me that I’m important, loved, surrounded.

I need to believe those things are true.
Even when someone is telling me that they’re not.

It’s hard to be 11 and on your way to middle school where the kids are only going to get meaner. (It’s hard to be 33, too.) I want so badly to instill these concepts into Honor now, to give him an inner peace that will get him through anything. I don’t want him to have to be learning these lessons in adulthood when he has 30 years of baggage and lies to wade through. I hope, hope, hope that undoing 33 years of lies I’ve so willingly swallowed will give me the wisdom to help Honor learn to believe what is true about himself.

When am I going to start believing that I’m a really cool person? I think now sounds good.

Today Honor told me that he wishes he could be in middle school now so he wouldn’t have to go back to his school. Apparently some of the kids have started a rumor that Honor is paying someone to have sex with him. He’s 11.

He doesn’t know who started the rumor but his classmates keep coming up to him asking him how much he’s paying.

Kids can be such dicks.

Today I am tired. I’m tired of dealing with the consequences of a choice I didn’t make and a life I didn’t want. I’m tried of walking into my kid’s school and feeling like a failure and feelingjudged because I can’t fit a full amount of parenting into half the time. I’m tired of not having my kids all the time, sending them to their dad’s @thegotogirl might have just shushed some high schoolers.house when they’re hurting or struggling, not knowing if they will be taken care of the way I want them to be.

I’m tired of paying for the fact that I counted on someone to keep his word both during and after marriage, and I’ve been constantly let down. I’m frustrated that there are ties that I can’t just walk away from when all I want to do is walk away. Cut the ties. Be finished. And get to move on.

I’m just so tired of things being hard.

It’s Monday morning, the 4th day of my “week off.” I woke up early, took the kids to school, worked out really hard at the gym and then found myself leaning up against the kitchen counter in my sweaty workout clothes while I waited for the espresso maker to heat up, switching frantically between apps on my phone in a desperate attempt to find something to fill me up. What the hell am I doing? I am so tired. Deep-into-my-bones tired. Something that feels like a week or a month off won’t cure, isn’t curing.

Over the last few weeks everything has melted down, like nuclear meltdown. There are a hundred people needing me and pulling me and asking me questions and waiting for replies and needing things that only I can do and I’m wondering how I can do it all. Because I really want to do it all. Every single bit of it. And I’m trying to figure out if I can… how I can. Josh got mad at me the other day, “Why do you take care of everyone but yourself?” I don’t know. Why do I want to be all things to all people? I think it’s time to go back to therapy.

It seems like every single thing in my life is weighing on me, even if it shouldn’t be. It feels like my brain ping-pongs back and forth, back and forth between all of the things I’m worrying about. So many things feel like they’re really, really hard right now. Work and money and clinic and kids… oh the kids… I’m pretty sure that Josh has mascara on the shoulder of every tee shirt he owns. Last week I mustered up the courage to say the scary words, “I’m really not OK.”

I’m looking at my house. It’s filthy. Like really, really filthy. I don’t remember the last time I had the energy to really clean it. Right now there’s a moth on the floor that the kids squished last week, with bright green guts plastered to the floor boards, shouting to me that I should have cleaned it up days ago. I’m so tired.

I need to get my sprinklers going. I don’t know how. I hate asking for help. I hate being a single mom. It is SO HARD. I hate saying that because I hate thinking what my life would be like if I were living the alternative.

I think, now that it’s been two years, that I am starting to feel the secondary pain of getting divorced. I’m past the heartbreak and the loss and the grief (and also the grateful buoyancy and relief that freedom brings) and now I’m onto realizing how trained I’ve been to expect rejection at every turn. How shocking it is when Josh takes an interest in my life, that he’s there, always there, no matter what. I can’t get used to it. I feel really, really damaged. Now I’m grappling with trying to figure out how to have a relationship with a healthy person who loves me with everything. I just seem to flinch every time he makes a move. And I’m scared. All the time, scared. What if it doesn’t work out? What if it DOES work out? What if I make the wrong choice.. again? Can I trust him with my heart and my life? I want to… so bad. These questions run through my mind everyday, all the time, always. And underneath it all is this tiny thread of hope, gold and shining. Maybe I can make a good choice this time, maybe things will work out for me, maybe I do deserve this and maybe I can actually have it? Maybe? Really?

I’m watching the kids feel, really feel, the weight of having divorced parents. And I can’t fix that for them or take it away. It is so hard. We bring our kids into the world and all we want to do it protect them from the inevitable heartbreak. Instead we are the ones to break their hearts. This doesn’t feel very much like winning.

I’m reading books by authors that I love and I just get angry at them. Rickelle had to remind me the other day, “Everyone’s life looks charmed in a book.” They talk about walking through hard times surrounded by their families and I don’t feel surrounded at all. I keep mourning things I lost a long time ago. And I have to keep reminding myself that I am surrounded, just maybe not the same way other people are. On a particularly rough night a couple of weeks ago, Josh sent out a text and my people showed up around a campfire in my back yard. I sat there tired and fragile and they took turns talking about who I am to them and how much the love me, filling my empty heart back up. They reminded me: I AM loved, I DO belong to something bigger than myself. I CAN trust. They won’t leave.

My propensity is to feel alone. To feel like I have to do everything by myself because the past has shown me that asking for help doesn’t always end up in getting help. I’m so used to taking it. Taking disrespect, taking burdens, taking extra work, taking responsibility… that I don’t know how to let someone else carry the burden. I don’t even know how to hand it off. And I don’t know how to trust that I will actually get help, in the way I need it, when I do ask for it.

I’m sitting in this space of not knowing how to fix anything, but knowing that I can’t keep going like this. I don’t know how to ask for help and I really need it. I don’t want to give anything up, but figuring out how to juggle it all is weighing so heavily on me. All the things I need or want to do are feeling overwhelming when I think about doing them all by myself. I don’t have any answers, but here are all my questions.

So, really, I guess this is just me saying, I’m not even going to pretend right now that I have it all together.

I’ve been writing this post in my head for the last two and a half years. It’s been two and a half years since Jim said he didn’t want to be with me anymore. Today he moved out and by the time this post goes live, we will have told the children that he is leaving. I dread that moment more than anything I’ve ever done.

I’ve fought so hard for this marriage, probably harder than I should have. I’ve compromised myself in ways and have been so desperate that I’m ashamed of the disrespect I’ve shown myself. I’ve been fighting for an amazing man, not seeing that I lost that man a long time ago. The man who moved out today was nothing like the one I married 11 years ago.

To say that the last 2.5 years have been difficult would, perhaps, be the biggest understatement I have ever made. The last 2.5 years have been absolutely tortuous. And I wouldn’t take a minute of it back. I’ve come such a long way while I waited in limbo. I’ve learned and accepted so much about myself and I’ve seen how God has been preparing me for this very moment. I’ve seen how, even in this, he has a plan for me and it’s good and not bad and there will be a future. I’ve been sifting through the layers of loss for so long that I feel as though I’m coming to the end… to acceptance. I’m eager, almost excited, to move forward. I don’t know what the future holds, but that’s terribly thrilling to me. I don’t really believe that life gives us do-overs, but I almost feel as though I have one. A second chance anyway.

I feel sad, but loved and very hopeful. I know we’re going to be ok. I’m worried about managing two little broken hearts, but I’m counting on grace to hold onto us – my little family that went from 4 to 3 today.

(I’m writing this not for pity or sympathy, but because, as often as I’m ashamed to admit I’ve participated in it, I detest gossip. I feel it’s better coming from the “horse’s mouth” than from someone who heard from someone else who heard from someone else. And I’m also writing this because I feel as though I’ve been living with this secret for so long. I’ve hated how protecting my family’s privacy has caused me to be unauthentic at times. Without authenticity, how can we truly have friendships? I’m ready to live my life out loud and in the light.)

I’ve recently fallen victim to the gossip monster. Haven’t we all participated in a gossip fest here or there? Gossip is always the most fun when it’s of the juicy variety but it’s so different when you’re the one looking at it from the other side realizing that this is your LIFE people are effing with. It’s so hard to feel so helpless while everyone whispers behind your back.

Really, I get it, it’s so easy to just talk. It seems like words shouldn’t hurt someone so much. But it’s so interesting how words are really the sharpest weapon. How telling someone this one little, seemingly harmless piece of information shouldn’t unleash such a wildfire. Oh, but it does.

I’ve learned my lesson, the hard way of course, and I suspect that I may be learning this one for a long time. I desire so much to have a character of gentleness, one that can be trusted at all costs, and this is just one step in the path to that. It seems we humans always learn and are changed when we are walking through fire, not when the going is smooth and easy. So I will take this wildfire and learn my lesson and remember how to be worthy of trust the next time I run into a juicy bit of information.

Step one you say we need to talk
She walks you say sit down it’s just a talk
She smiles politely back at you
You stare politely right on through
Some sort of window to your right
As she goes left and you stay right
Between the lines of fear and blame
You begin to wonder why you came

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

Let her know that you know best
Cause after all you do know best
Try to slip past her defense
Without granting innocence
Lay down a list of what is wrong
The things you’ve told her all along
And pray to God she hears you
And pray to God she hears you

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

As she begins to raise her voice
You lower yours and grant her one last choice
Drive until you lose the road
Or break with the ones you’ve followed
She will do one of two things
She will admit to everything
Or she’ll say she’s just not the same
And you’ll begin to wonder why you came

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

–The Fray

In the last week we’ve reached the pinnacle of Honor’s naughtiness. He has gotten to the point where he absolutely refuses to comply with anything I’m telling him to do. In turn, I’ve tried anything that I can think of to get him in line. Tuesday I implemented a point system that Eden immediately took to. The kids have a list of chores (some mandatory and some optional) that they need to do to earn points. Once a certain amount of points are earned, they can choose a reward (like going to Chuck E. Cheese). They can also loose points for bad behavior. Eden has a whole bunch of points, Honor has none.

I’ve taken away all of Honor’s toys, he’s lost all his computer and t.v. privileges, and he still doesn’t care. There is no discipline that I give to him that he cares about. And, yes, it’s just me… for Jim he behaves. I don’t know what to do, I can’t allow him to completely disregard me, to completely ignore what I tell him. As it is, he’s putting himself and others in danger – today he disobeyed me and as a result Tuck got ahold of a large piece of fried chicken and ate the whole thing, bones and all. The other day Honor threw a CD at Eden and barely missed her eye.

I don’t know what to do other than watch his every move and be extremely consistent. He gets away with nothing, no matter how much he has worn me down. I don’t understand his behavior because he can also be extremely sweet and loving and I know is completely capable of behaving because he does it for Jim. I’m at a loss and I’m miserable and I don’t know what to do.

Friday I spent the morning at the dentist’s office. I need a crown for a cracked tooth, so the dentist prepared the tooth for the crown and fitted me with a temporary crown until the permanent one could be made. While he was doing all the work, he got really close to the nerve and determined that I would probably need to have a root canal as well. Because, you know, my teeth love me. So I’ve spent the weekend hopped up on drugs.

Today was especially bad, so far I’ve tried darvocet, vicodin and percodan and nothing is killing the pain. I’m not quite sure what to do as the dentist is going out of town for Christmas. I hate this.