New Year's Dose of Reality

I cannot let a day as significant as the first of a new decade go by without a post. I read my post from 1/1/09, which was the first to this blog and it scares me a little that I was dealing with the same things then as I am now - fear, resistance to change, financial hardship, still feeling grief about my husband's death and then the divorce from Husband #2. At that time I still was living in the house, not yet officially divorced and did not have to make the decision of moving out-of-state and taking the boys out of their current comfort zone. So I still was cultivating a sense of hope in my words and mood as I wrote on that day.

If anything, 2009 was worse than 2008. We all say, next year is sure to be better and improve, it can't get much worse, blah, blah, blah. But I think it can. I think it did. Why am I now forced to make a decision that isn't clear and results in good and bad whatever way I go? Why can't I be given a choice that is so easy to make because it clearly tips one way or the other?

I can choose to move, which will make my life easier but may greatly be detrimental to my boys. I am losing an opportunity to rejoin the ranks of more normal families, if there is such a thing. I want to live with a man, share my life, build a new one with a partner. What if this is my last shot at it? I don't move and the relationship can't be sustained because of the stress and strain with the physical distance between us?

If I stay, I will make great sacrifices with my emotions and health to continue to parent on my own, as well as attempting to maintain a long-distance relationship. It doesn't seem fair to have to make these decisions after what I have been through. There is no right or wrong choice here. Each has its strength and merits. But I do feel as though I am having to choose between love for myself and what is better or right for my sons.

I am honestly not sure I can endure this only parenting gig anymore. It is a backbreaking burden and I am so spent and now I'm cold too with the bleakness of winter.

I want my cake and to eat it too. To still be able to have a significant relationship with a great guy and to have my boys finish high school here. I just can't bear and seem to face the grief and adjustment that a major move out-of-state will involve.

The boys and I have talked today. They remain so resistant to the move. I wish life hadn't thrown me this new curve ball. I wish it were easier for me to pack up my stakes and throw caution to the wind and just take off for a new life. To treat it all as an adventure. But I'm not that way with my personality and I've been through too much to make me not be cautious and wary. I wish I were the type of parent that said, "Tough it out kids. This is the way it is, deal with it." But I'm not that mom either.

Never in a million years would I have thought last year that 12 months into the future I would be at this difficult and confusing crossroads. Frankly, I am sick and tired of life being so tough and inconsistent. Unless you can call hardship consistent.

Why did Sam have to be offered a job at this location? Why couldn't have something come through to him here in the Chicago area so our lives could have remained stable in that regard at least? Is it weak and immature to admit that I just don't seem to have the strength to handle this move? That I am unable to see the good that lies beyond the initial pain of the move?

Well, this is hardly the uplifting and hopeful post I'd wanted to compose for this day. But it is honest and real. So that is how I'll be starting this new year and decade. Not on a fluffy cloud of hope and optimism but one that is where I'm at - confused, sad, scared, unmotivated, dizzy with indecision, exhausted and regretful. All the stuff we shouldn't be on this day I suppose. But it's where I am.

Stability & Structure = Sanity

I cannot find the charger for the camcorder. It was in a wicker basket that I had on the baker's rack in the living room. All of the other storage baskets that were on the rack have been found except for this one. And of course the camcorder charger is the one thing in my entire home that I now need. Why does it always go like this? To be unable to locate the one item of importance to you when you most need it?

My oldest is cheerleader for the girl's touch football team game tonight (Powder Puff). A group of Junior and Senior boys is performing the half-time routine for the girls as a spoof. My son says it is hilarious! So I of course would like to tape it.

In the midst of all this chaos and confusion, the fact that my boys through it all have remained popular and active in school is one of the threads of sanity I have been able to hold on to!

There are still boxes to put away in our small new living space. My youngest son's room is still stacked with them (mainly books that need to be shelved). But it is tedious and not fun work, especially when there is limited time and you're doing it on your own.

This all brings to mind the need for stability and structure in our lives. My grief journey has ripped us of these necessities over the past years and it has taken a severe toll. To be living in a messy, unattractive home is disheartening and depressing. Then to add to that the inability to locate items that are important to you just brings on more frustration. And I still have three storage sheds to consolidate once the apartment is unpacked!

My girlfriend who has moved from her big suburban home into a townhome came into the store while I was working on Sat. night. We joked that we will probably still have boxes that remain unpacked until our next moves whenever they may be in the future!

I am devoting myself to the unpacking and organizing of the apartment this week. The storage sheds will have to wait for next week. I cannot deal with the discord and disharmony surrounding us. Our homes wherever they may be need to nurture, comfort and reassure us in this crazy, unpredictable world. Right now the only control I can exhibit and display is my ability to create some calm within this raging whirlwind of chaos. I know what to do and that has to be the task. I am going crazy here...

Today I am grateful:

1. For the gorgeous fall sunny day we had yesterday.
2. For scarecrows and hay bales.
3. For being able to throw out garbage daily instead of waiting for the weekly pickup when I lived in our home.
4. For the ability to be able to see my son cheer at tonight's game (that I don't have to work).
5. That at least I found the camcorder (which still has a couple minutes of time on it - maybe enough to tape a little of the routine tonight).