Don't Stop Moving

The reasons I am writing this will vary drastically, dramatically from the reasons why you were get angry with, agree with, disagree with, dismiss, or scoff at what I have to say up here on my soapbox, but regardless of how you feel about this, it's the truth: my truth. I want you to read this. Don't disregard this, whatever you feel about it.

We always hear two things when we are down. "Don't worry, things can only get better from here," and "there is always someone else who has it worse than you." For the first one, I can tell you from personal, first-hand experience that that is a bold-faced, outright lie. For the second one, there are few things truer.

My childhood....was bi-polar. Every single day of it. Beauty and ugliness, sorrow and joy, anger and exhiliration. The details are not important, or rather, for the sake of those involved, I will not go into details. From my first (real) boyfriend, things were....bi-polar. So many good memories, so many painful memories. The first one left me because I said no to a threesome with him and his best friend. The next one "took his birthday present" when I was passed out drunk at his 21st birthday party, which I spent $800 on to throw him. One guy left me in the middle of the night, then told me months later in an e-mail that he loved me, but he had to leave, and if he had said goodbye, he would never have been able to leave. Another one was physically violent. Emotional abuse. Psychological abuse. Mental abuse. Seems like I'm trying a little bit of everything. Then the accident - broken foot, knee, leg, arm, punctured lung, burn marks, glass in my skin, fractured nose, chipped teeth. Then the miscarriage.

Nothing has ever come as close to completely breaking me as the miscarriage did. I laid there on my tan leather couch and cried for days, not eating, just crying, barely sleeping....just crying. Then I got sick and even though I hadn't eaten in days I was throwing up. I write. A lot. I couldn't write. I couldn't bring myself to do anything. For all my command of language and thesaurus mind, I can find no word to encompass what I felt. Empty. Desolate. Barren. Nothing adequately describes that.

Still, I must insert a story here that I can neither identify fully with nor honestly fathom the horror and desperation of.

Beth. She was a homeless woman I met when I was working for Valero. She was such a sweet, beautiful, kind-hearted person. The kind that remains alive in our memories for our whole lives. At the age of 8, she walked into her house after school to find her mother overdosed on heroine on the kitchen floor. A few minutes later, her sister walked in. She pushed her sister into the bathroom so she would not have to see what she had seen. Having not known their father too well, maladjustment to life with their father is an understatement. To be fair, she said her father was a good man, he just did not know how to deal with two daughters. He married them off as soon as was legally convenient, and Beth found herself married to a man three times her age when she was 13.

She eventually divorced him, though she had bore three children by the time she did. Two boys and the youngest a girl. Her oldest boy died at 17 in a car accident. Serendipity, too, is not always kind. One day, after school, her daughter, who had epilepsy, died of seizure in Beth's arms. She died....convulsing and drowning in air....in her mother's arms. At the age of 8.

Beth could not get up. She started drinking and hasn't stopped since. She is 50-ish, homeless, junkie, alcoholic, in and out of abusive relationships with various homeless men and vagrants. I couldn't save her. I tried. She couldn't get up, then she got to the point where she did not want to get up. To sober up after who knows how many years of drowning away the sorrow she had not the strength to handle at the time would be devastating to her.

I don't know too many people's true life stories. As a society, we don't tell the bad things too often, not in their entirety anyway. We talk about how we got laid last weekend or high last night or drunk at so-and-so's party and had such a wild time. We talk about the things we think will make other people think we are cool, things that will make people like us because we have been trained, educated, brainwashed, developed to fear loneliness. Even when we are single, we dread the silent nights. So we fill those spaces with friends and alcohol and internet and television. The ambient emptiness would be too much to handle.

But I know some people's stories. Some are like Beth. They just don't get up. Some are strange, like they were born without the ability to feel and therefore nothing fazes them, nothing stops them, nothing floors them. Me?

I've been told two things consistently through out my life. First is that I am strange. I don't care. I am endearing. I smile as I write that, but truth be told, I do care. I won't lie and tell you the silent emptiness doesn't terrify me. But I fill that with music, writing, photography.

Music is a huge part of my life. It can drag back memories I tried to forget, wished not to forget. Make me cry. Make me want to be a pyro. Make me want to scream and punch things and throw an all out tantrum. Make me smile. Make me horny. Make me peaceful. Make me want to dance. Make me want to run. Make me want to save someone, myself, even. Make me thankful, angry, sad, alive.

I try hard not to conform to a mold that would make who I really am disappear into the clutches of what the media says we should be. But sometimes I slip. Bad. Secondly, I am told that I am strong, have to be to have gotten through everything I have.

This is not the truth. This is no where near the truth. The reality between what I am and what people often perceive me to be creates a gulf, trench....a whole universe of difference.

For those of you like me, you will read this, and your heart will break, because you don't want to know that someone else has gone through the same aching, itching desperation as you have. We can't stop. Period.

We see the probable, not the possible, but the probable end to our story if we stop. People mistake this for strength or for insensitivity, and deep down inside we know that both of these play a factor, but the largest part of our story is that we fear not moving. We fear the world and existence crumbling from underneath us, the emptiness within that festers and grows in the night like a refridgerator science project opening up and swallowing us whole, the ambient silence that deafens us when the night takes our sight and that one sense is heightened. We move forward, even if we can't run, we walk, we limp, we crawl forward, because to not move is to give up, and to give up is death.

I laid there on that couch, and if it hadn't been for my son, my beautiful, wonderful, smart, funny, God-sent son....I would have laid there until that silence and emptiness did swallow me and I ceased to exist.

But there is more to this story. Don't stop now. There are lessons to be learned, heartaches and regrets meant for pondering.

Save me. It's not a question, answer, demand, request. It's a mentality. Not necessarily of ourselves, either. Some of us are looking for someone to save because in saving them, perhaps we can save a part of ourselves we need to protect.

But we get to the point where love and protection and strength give out like bad knees beneath us and our solid ground ages and becomes as quicksad.

Stop enabling people.

We think we have to act a certain way, say certain things, agree, acquiese, to show our love for someone. Don't let my mistake be your mistake. Loving someone does not entail enabling them. We all have our vices. Our crutches. Whatever mine is, whatever yours is, whatever the stranger you will pass tomorrows is. Smoking. Drinking. Drugs. Money. Pornography. Speed. Adrenaline. Some worse than others. Whatever it is that keeps someone from dealing with what they need to deal with. We enable.

If you love someone, don't enable them. Do not fall with them, because when you are both on the ground, there will be no one to help you up. Staying out and getting too drunk to understand what you're thinking and getting high to the point of laying on the floor because that is what the other person wants is not the way to be strong for them. Letting them do this, even if you don't, because you know that they "need" this is not the way to love someone.

If you love someone, love them. Be strong for them, protect them, even when it means protecting them from themselves. Because in the end, if the whole world is dragging us down, we have no recourse, and this is not justifiable.



Crying in the shower. Scratching at the place on my chest where I can feel the sorrow.pain.depression.anger.regrets.desperation trying to engulf me and break me. Suicidal thoughts. The darkest place where no one can find you. I've been there. I moved forward. Crawling most times, not running, walking, or even limping....but crawling forward to a light that seems too far away to be possible, to be attainable....move forward.

God carried me through this. I say I crawled, but God carried me through everything. WAIT. Even if you don't factor God into your equation, don't stop moving. Quit enabling. Do it for yourself. Do it for those you love. Do it for those who love you. One day you will look back on your life and realize that you wouldn't change a thing. Because if you had, you would not have what you have now or at the point you realize that if one second, one movement of your life had been different, then you would not have your child, the love of your life, the wisdom, the strength that you will have in that moment. And in that moment, you will reclaim something you lost when you lost your innocence. You will see the beauty in the stillness, feel the lightning coursing through your veins.

Don't stop moving.

Drunken Suspicions

If you're in a long distance relationship, or if you're in a relationship where things aren't going so well, do not, I repeat, do not contact your man when you are inebriated unless you're in a particularly happy mood. If the alcohol is taining your view with unfounded suspicions, do not call him, e-mail him, text him, or otherwise contact him in any way. In fact, try not to think about the things you're thinking, because this is one of those side effects of alcohol that can lead to unnecessary heartache.

Number One Rule

Don't ever delve in to their past. You will always emerge heartabroken.

Does Your Man Work Hard?

Well, I've been talking to some guys, from various places, various walks of life, backgrounds. One works as a manager for a fast food restaurant, putting in too many hours for his salary to be decent, but he does it for his kids. Another man works on houses, buys them, fixes them up, and sells them. He is ex-military. Another is in the military, and has spent a lot of time overseas.

These men put in a lot of hours to put food on the table, and two out of three said their ex-girlfriends/wives did not work. These men did not get off of work and go out to bars with their buddies or haunt local strip joints or disappear without a trace. They went to work. They came home. Maybe they didn't have a lot of time to spend at home, but it wasn't for lack of love for their women, or any misdeeds.

And they were cheated on. More than once. Sometimes by different girls, sometimes by the same girl multiple times. When they asked for the reason, it was always the same.

"You're never home, you're always at work."

What? I'm sorry. A woman should be so lucky to have a hardworking, honest, faithful man. Okay, so he's not home all the time, but that's not a reason to go out and cheat on someone. If you think you're lonely now, how do you think you're going to feel when this decent man is gone because you couldn't keep your legs closed, and the guy you cheated on him with is on to the next easy thing?

Appreciate what you have, because if you don't, you're going to lose it.

If your man is one of these work-to-death guys, appreciate him for what he is, and be grateful for everything that he is not.

Finances

This is probably only part of the financial situation, but this deals mainly with who is working and handling the finances.

Once again, I did a poll of guys and asked them six questions.

1. Who works - you, your girl, or both?
***I got a variety of answers on this. Mostly, both worked, but I did get a few where the woman worked, some because the guy was disabled, and a few where neither of them worked.
2. If given the opportunity, would you support her and tell her to quit her job if she wanted?
***Every guy said yes to this.
3. Would you rather she work & you stay home?
***I did not get a single yes to this, but I did get one that stayed home by force, not by choice, who wished it wasn't like this.
4. Would it/does it bother you if she made/makes more money?
***I did not get a single yes on this, either. Most guys just said no, but one guy did go into detail about how competition in the relationship led to pain and hardship.
5. Would you want to be in charge of finances or would you rather she do it?
***I got an equal amount of 3 answers: both should be in charge, it doesn't matter, and she should be in charge.
6. Do you think men or women spend money more frivolously?
***All guys said that guys spend money more frivolously, with the exception of one, who said both men and women spent too much money on indulgences. I loved one guy's answer: guys have more expensive toys.

So there it is. According to this particular survey, it looks like certain old fashionries aren't dead, like...the guy wanting to support the girl. :)

Do You Tell Your Man You've Been Hit On?

It's been my experience that telling your boyfriend/husband that another man has hit on you is okay in the beginning of the relationship, but that down the road it can cause problems. If you and your man have been together for a while, if there is any part of his mind that believes that you are bored with the relationship, or if he is insecure, then telling him about how the new guy at work hit on you or that you had a five minute conversation with a random stranger while waiting in the grocery line may not be the best policy. This could lead to a plethora of problems.

If your boyfriend believes that you believe that you're too good for him or that you could do better, and he has it in his head that you are just waiting for something better to come along before you flee the scene, then he might take it upon himself to do the deed first. Or, if you're in an argument and he feels like throwing things in your face, he might just tell you to move in with one of your admirers.

However, according to my survey, most guys "say," notice the quotation marks, that another guy hitting on their girl can be an ego boost to both of them, as long as the girl doesn't take too much stock in the flirtation. So with this particular situation, you really have to judge your man's character and self-esteem before you decide that telling him every detail of your life is the best thing for your relationship. Of course, if you're telling him to make him jealous because you feel that he does not appreciate you, that is a whole different ballgame in which the players have other problems, spoken of or not, which need to be addressed before continuing in the relationship.

What Do Guys Hate?

So I took a (kind of) poll yesterday. I asked random guys (friends, strangers, family), two questions.

#1 - Tell me something about a girl you dated (past or present), that you absolutely could not stand about her.

#2 - What is one thing that a girl could do that, even if you loved her, would push you away completely?

The most common answers to the first question were as follows:

a.) Controlling - whether it come to money, or just in general, guys do not like to be controlled by their girlfriend.

b.) Lying - about anything at all. Which is strange, because I think that is the #1 thing on most girls' lists that would drive them mad. And most guys lie. To me anyway.

I also got "talking ghetto," asking the same thing over and over again, not allowing him to hug and kiss her, not allowing him to masturbate, drugs, lack of hygiene and the double standards of oral sex. I got some pretty interesting answers.

And the most common answers to the second question.

a.) Cheating - this is the most commonly answered to the question.

b.) Nothing - quite a few guys said that if they loved the girl, nothing could push them away.

I also got smoking, getting pregnant so she could stay home and collect welfare.






So, I was talking to one of the guys who answered the questions for my survey, a complete stranger, and talking to him made me realize some things about men and women. I think a lot of people concentrate on the differences and try to teach people about how to cope with those differences, which is good, I'm not saying anything bad about that, but I think in doing that, we overlook the similarities, and that can be a bad thing.

One thing that this stranger had questions for me about, was the control issue. When it came to bed. We were talking about how a lot of guys answered control for the first question, and I mentioned that unless the guy is into the whole being controlled by a woman thing, that most men avoided it and were annoyed by it. He said that he was little into being controlled by a woman, even though he had said that her being controlling was something he could not stand about her.

Apparently, men and women have this issue in common. I think a lot of women get into the idea that they want a man to be in control, when what they really mean is they want a man to be dominating in bed. When it bleeds over into other areas of their lives, it can become overbearing and somewhat annoying. What I learned from Mister Stranger, is that it is the same way with men. He said that he thought he wanted a woman who was a bit controlling, when what he really wanted was a woman who was controlling in bed.

But when it comes to that, there really has to be some boundaries and equality, or else even that will become overbearing and quite annoying. For most relationships, the woman being domineering in bed all the time or vice versa will wear on, probably, both parties. If it's the woman who is in control, and who initiates sex all the time, she will probably start to feel unwanted if the man never initiates it himself, and she will also start to feel that her femininity is slipping if she is too domineering. If it's the man who is in control and initiating sex all the time, he will also probably feel unwanted because the woman never initiates it, and begin to question his masculinity.

One thing, though, is that when the woman becomes too controlling in areas of the relationship other than in bed, it begins to suffocate most men, and they start to feel as though they are no longer the man in the relationship, like their whole life revolves around this woman who demands all of his attention no matter what else is going on in his life.

I talked to another stranger, Mister Stranger No. 2, who told me that when a guy is away from the girl, that is his time to unwind and be alone. Regardless of whether the girl is a nag or not, sometimes being around someone constantly becomes, in and of itself, a nag, and even if it is a few hours alone just driving around, he needs that space. No. 2 also told me that with guys, if a girl is too clingy, too needy, and shows too much how dependant she is on her man, that the man will begin to feel that he can do anything and get away with it because of how much the girl wants him, and that can actually lead to the guy cheating.

It's like a child. A child will push the limits, a little bit at a time, to see how much they can get away with. The same holds true with some men, according to No. 2, and their relationships. A woman who has puppy dog eyes and makes excuses for her man no matter what he does, well, it leaves the door open for temptation to see how far they can go.

No. 2 told me not to call my boyfriend. He told me to let him breathe and to let him call me on his own time. But it had been nine hours since he told me he would call me back, and that is a long time in my book, so I decided to call him. Big mistake. How big? Well, let's just say he said he was thinking about calling it quits, that he was going to hang up before he said anything else he might regret, then proceeded to hang up his phone and turn it off.

So. Learn from my mistake girls. Even if they say they will call you back at 1:30 in the afternoon, and 10:30 pm rolls around...don't call them. Especially if your relationship is already in jeopardy.

The Ten Rules of Girlfriend Etiquette

Well, these are what I can come up with at the moment based on my own experience.

1. This is the most important. And it's complicated. You need to let your boyfriend know that you want him, but not that you need him. Even if you do. This entails not being clingy, not calling him every few hours when you're not together, not asking a gazillion questions about what he's done when you're apart, and not giving him a play by play of everything you do while you're not together.

2. Have a life outside of him. Seriously. This will come in handy in the event that things go to hell. Because right now, I have no life outside of him, and I'm blogging. About him.

3. Find something that he really likes, whether it be video games, SyFy, sports, whatever, and spend at least three hours each week doing that with him. If it means you're in Game Stop every time there is a new WoW or CoD, supporting his favorite football team, or you're glued to SyFy every time Stargate comes on, make sure you take an interest in his own interests.

4. Do not expect anything. This is something my boyfriend told me. "Whenever you're expecting a certain reaction out of me, 99.9% of the time you're going to be disappointed." And he was right. No comforting when I was crying. No sympathy when I was depressed or frustrated. And I was disappointed a lot. So don't expect him to do what you want or need, because you're only leading yourself down the path of...what? That's right. Disappointment.

5. Well, expect one thing. When you're sick, you may or may not have a guy who is going to make you chicken soup and bring you a glass of orange juice, but if he is sick, make damn sure that you're there with the remote, chicken soup, orange juice, and whatever favorite snack food he likes.

6. Give him his time alone. Going back to #3, this does not mean smother him every time he is playing video games, screaming touchdown, or getting in touch with his inner scientist. He will want time alone, without you blabbing at him or kissing him or wanting to cuddle. So, going back to #2, make sure you have something to do outside of him. I used to have my poetry, but when he entered my life, I stopped almost everything else, except him. This is extremely unhealthy.

7. If you're going to keep a log of everything he does wrong, do it in a journal or in a notebook. Don't bring it up every time you're in an argument, don't use one of his own faults as an excuse for your faults. And never, ever fall into the trap of "an eye for an eye." If he lies to you, this does not in any way give you the right to lie to him. Keep your own morals, not his.

8. If you talk about your problems to your friends and they give you advice, do not let him know. Men, at least the ones I have been with, have a serious problem with girls talking about their personal lives with their friends. I think it gives them the feeling that their masculinity is being questioned. Oh, but believe me, they do the same thing, whether it's to their friends, co-workers, mothers, brothers, whatever. Have no illusions about that.

9. If you have a boyfriend who calls you at work just to tell you he loves you, it's probably safe to say you can do the same. But if you don't hear a peep from him at your job, it stands to reason that if you call him at work just to tell him you love him or that you're feeling a little under the weather, really, anything short of you've been in an accident and you're in the hospital or you're having the baby, he's probably not going to be happy to hear from you.

10. Always be aware that this multi-tasking thing is really a female thing more than anything. Literally. Whether he's focused on his job, a Cowboys game, a SyFy original, or the newest game of guns and violence, don't expect him to file a word you say about your day, your sorrows, your joys, or anything else while he is immersed.


I guess that's it for now.

The Conundrum

When I met my boyfriend online, I decided to try to avoid all the normal mistakes people, or I, at least, normally make in the beginning stages of relationships. We had plenty of time to talk, so I tried my hardest to give him every detail of who I am, the good and the bad.

I told him about how moody I can be, how heat makes me cranky, and how clingy I can be. He told me that if he didn't take the bad then he didn't deserve the good, that since his body temperature ran higher than most people's, I'd probably have the A/C on even in winter, and that clingy was good because it would make him feel needed, wanted.

I even told him what I was doing. Bearing all my imperfections for him so he could decide whether he thought he could handle me before we went any further with our relationship.

On his part, well... He called me everyday, multiple times a day. He listened to my problems, and comforted me as best he could over the phone. He told me that he liked to cuddle and he liked to cook. He had custody of his three kids, and it sounded like one of his twin boys would get along great with my son, and that the other twin was usually around his sister, the oldest. He said that he didn't lie because it all came out in the wash anyway.

As much as I tried to avoid the awkward "oh, you're not who I thought you were stage," it didn't work out like that.

One of the biggest problems early on in our relationship was the accident that my son and I were in. On March 21, 2009, I was driving my son to my job to meet some of my friends, then we were going to go to the McDonald's near my boyfriend's job so we could have lunch with him on his lunch break.

We never made it. I swerved to avoid hitting a tractor who was driving half on the side of the road, half in my lane, and ended up playing a doomed game of chicken with a truck coming the opposite direction. We hit head on. My son sustained internal injuries and had to have a foot of his intestines removed. He recovered quickly, however, and was out of the hospital in 10 days, much to my relief.

I, on the other hand, broke my right foot, my left femur (in two places), my left arm (in two places), shattered my left knee, suffered a collapsed lung and a punctured lung, as well as a fractured nose, a burn on my left foot from the engine, and glass beneath my skin on various places on my body. I was also in the hospital for 10 days, then moved to a nursing and rehabilitation facility for 35 days, and sent home to heal more, with the help of a home health care professional and physical therapists and occupational therapists.

I was in a wheelchair until October, when, with the help of my boyfriend, was able to walk with the aid of a walker, and eventually came to use only a cane to assist me.

The problem, though, is that if you've ever been in a situation similar to mine, or you have had to take care of someone who went through something similar, then you know the toll it can take on all parties involved. In the weeks directly following the accident, I could barely move my right arm, which was the only limb completely unaffected in the wreck, and I couldn't do anything for myself. My boyfriend was there for the first two weeks non-stop. Then he went back to work. But he still came by every morning and every night on his way home.

I didn't go back to work until September. Even now, it was hard for me to do very much that required being on my feet for more than an hour at a time.

The thing is, the lies started small. He posted a video online and told me he made it for me, this was back before we were even together, but it was really for another girl who he had also had an interest in at the time. Then, after the accident, he received a phone call, which he didn't answer. I asked him who it was, and he said it was his mother. But it hadn't been his mother's ring tone. So I asked to see his phone. It had been his ex-wife. He had no reason to lie to me. We had never had any kind of argument about her because he constantly expressed his hate for her, plus, she had the kids for the moment, and I knew he had to talk to her about them. I didn't understand it. He said that he didn't want to have to explain himself to my parents, who had been visiting me in the nursing facility that day, too.

Then I found his criminal background.

I had asked him online if he had ever been in jail or prison, if he had ever been arrested. He had told me no to all of the question. Wow. There was the whopper of a lie.

Plus, he wasn't the warm, caring person in real life that he had been on this virtual world of the web. No, he has a very unique talent. He doesn't just ignore someone when he is particularly bothered by them or tired of an argument, he gives them an existential crisis. Literally. He can ignore someone, or me, at least, so completely, that one begins to wonder if one actually exists. In fact, sometimes I wondered if I had died in the accident and he had just kept on living in our house.

And the mood swings? He does not handle them, he ignores them. He doesn't comfort me at all anymore. He is too preoccupied with himself. The heat issue? Not a problem. The clingy issue? A huge issue.

We got into an argument once and he just got up and walked away, and was getting into his car. He said not to bother calling him because he was turning his phone off. I thought he was leaving for good, so I wheeled my wheelchair down the ramp after him, but the wheel went off the side of the ramp and I ended up falling out of the chair. He gets out of the car, cussing at me, and calling me a child.

This is usually the way it is when I get overly emotional with him. Whether it is trying to give him a massage after a hard day (he tells me no, he's fine), or telling him how much I miss him when he is away (he says that this is just the way it has to be), he does not like for me to show any kind of emotion because he doesn't. He is cold and calculating.

So the question is - how should a girlfriend act around her man? Apparently, there is whole book of etiquette out there on it that I have not read yet. So I am going to feel it out on my own.

I haven't called him in over 6 hours, and I am not going to call him until he calls me. That's a start. Because I always feel like I am bothering him when I do. Like earlier, I called him and he was sewing his boots together, and he constantly grumbled about having to do it with one hand because he was talking to me. And yesterday when I called him, it was that he was trying to get his niece to eat, and instead he was talking to me.

He went back to New Mexico about a week and a half ago. I miss him. I feel miserable without him. Apparently, it is not the same for him.

So I need to stop being such a girl and cowboy up, I suppose. Stop being clingy, stop calling him every morning when I wake up. Stop being so emotional about how much I miss him.

The future blogs probably won't be this long. This is just to let you know what is going on and why I am doing this.