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.