Long ago, around 20 years or so, I had a dream.

It wasn’t a glamorous dream.  It wasn’t a glittery dream. It wasn’t a blazing, take over the world dream. It wasn’t something that would get me lauded in halls of fame or infamy…

It was just a dream, a goal, a Path.

Somewhere on the Path I laid down my pack, sighed in resignation, and took another road. I took a road that was touted as “Better” and “Leading to Success” and “Stable”… I took the Path that made my family happy, “oh look, she’ll have a career, she’ll be able to look after her self!” and made my (now ex) husband happy, “oh thank God she will get a job that will PAY for the lifestyle I want without being an embarrassment to me”… and that made everything think I was a sensible, mature, adult…

I walked away from the Path that led to my dream – it was too “uncertain”, there was “no money in it”, it was too “new agey, woo woo”… and no one believed I could “make anything of” myself in that career.  

I would like to say I actually TRIED to make the new Path work, but my heart wasn’t in it. I tried my hardest to veer off the Path, to show those who had pooh-poohed my dream SEE that I wasn’t meant to be an office drone.  But I was good at school, and I made my way successfully through a program by finding the few things that were interesting enough to potentially work towards.

My heart wasn’t in it. Instead of planning a grand career that would take theEx and I to wonderful new heights of wealth (or debt the way he spent) I was planning a family and a simple, happy, impossible (since we had different ideas of this) life with children and a SMALL, modest home. While my husband wanted the grand dream home, 2 cars, all the toys and trinkets, I wanted FAMILY and love and a partner who would be part of my life.

I sabotaged my marriage. I got pregnant early on the new Path to my career and had to slow down  and then mere weeks before I was to finally graduate, at the beginning of a Gods-Honest CAREER path, I chose to have my daughter rather  than take the brass ring. With that choice to parent rather than follow the Path set for me, the death knell rang on my marriage.

Now… 3 years out of my marriage, 7 years out of school, 10 years out from the original divergence I am starting to wonder – what was so WRONG about the original DREAM that everyone steered me down the other Path?

Why can’t I find a way, even 10 years late, to follow a dream? Maybe my dream won’t make me wealthy… but its probably not destined to drive me to the poor house either.  Perhaps I won’t be wildly successful, but I might be at peace with MYSELF and who and what I am. Maybe I will disappoint those who love me… but maybe they will learn that they don’t always know what is best for me?

There is nothing really WRONG in becoming the person I want to be – even after a 10 year detour.

I wanted to update on Friday, I really did… but it just wasn’t to be.

So here I will start again…

Things that just SUCKED ASS last week:

My Ex Husband

As per usual I got a lot of stress from my (now OFFICIALLY) Ex-Husband in the form of emails. While he doesn’t necessarily have the cahones to confront me in person, I often get email missives in which he basically threatens to financially destroy my life (or that his financial downfall, because of ME, will cause me financial destruction) if I don’t do what he wants me to do.

Currently he is freaking out about the child support that he owes for 2009 and what exactly constitutes “income”. The email read in such a way that if I don’t agree to his personal valuation of the situation he and his lawyer will argue that the originally AGREED TO amount of income, the amount in the officially signed and SEALED COURT ORDER, will be disputed by him and he will make me pay back whatever amount it was that he paid me in 2009.

Now, I am not sure I want to battle this out in court… I mean, if I battle it out what, really, will I win other than his “financial ruin” and a huge temper tantrum and MAYBE a max of $5000 in back support that I will have to have him garnished to actually ever see – An ulcer? Migraines?

I have to tell you that I am TIRED… DEAD TIRED… of having him think that because he has money and I don’t that he can decide everything for US. There is no “US” anymore. There is ME and there is HIM… and we share the kids ONLY because I can’t get a lawyer to seriously look at pursuing custody in my province.

Right now I am all for making him sweat because I am not answering his emails or bowing to his pressure to do things HIS way. I know for one that he can’t take back the original amount that was agreed upon in the court order of support because it was MUTALLY agreed on. But more than that, I have more immediate concerns in my life right now.

My Car

In the last few weeks my car hasn’t been running all that well, and, because I no longer have savings to draw on if something screws up, I have been avoiding taking it into a mechanic. I haven’t had positive experiences with mechanics, as a single woman, and I dread taking my car in on my own knowing that it means that I am at the mercy of someone who KNOWS they have me over a barrel. So I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to get my male coworkers to help me with finding a trustworthy mechanic to look my car over.

I have been worrying because something is wrong and I absolutely rely on my car. Without a car I can’t get to and from work (there is no public transportation to the town my job is in), getting groceries, picking up my kids, getting them to and from the babysitter/school…

Right now, I don’t have a safety net in my life … so I do for myself. But that means that if my car was incapacitated I don’t have help to get myself back in order easily. That’s a bit scary.

Noodle/Reg and his father changed out my spark plugs this weekend, and I got a coworker to change out the “ignition wires” and things are working a BIT better but a reported “clunk” sound that I can’t replicate, the fact that my “check engine” light is still on, and there seems to be some lingering hesitation when shifting has me concerned.  Just to have the “check engine” light off will cost me $60… with the potential of them finding a bevy of other faults with the vehicle that will cost me dearly…

 I can’t afford to spend TOO much fixing it, but I can’t afford to not have a car OR to get a new one right now. So the not knowing what is wrong has me worried.

My car is a much more IMMEDIATE need than dealing with theEx.

  The Good things

The BoyFriend

I have to confess that when I first agreed to try things again with Reg I was skeptical. The first go round ended silently, with sighs of relief and regret. But the 4 months break we had really seems to have clarified what direction I am going in my life – and what I want to work towards. I am seeing changes in my life – I have my own home, I’m making my own decisions for the first time in my life – and I like that, I don’t want to start living only for another person again.

At the same time, a good relationship, hope for the dream of a family life again someday (although not too soon), is something I want in my life as well.

I don’t want to jinx anything… I am well aware that this go-round is in the early stages, and I am aware that it was just about this time (~10 weeks)  into the first go-round that the sudden changes started to happen between Reg and I.  I am not deluded into believing (yet) that things might have permanently corrected themselves.  But I am hopeful at the way things are going… the communication is now there, we have discussed hopes, plans and dreams, we’ve gone on dates, and just focused talking and loving each other.

There is hope.

It’s been times and times and times better so far than it was before the break, which makes me believe that the break was necessary for any hope of this working out.

The Home

I love my home. Yes, the additional costs involved in home ownership (I have condo fees and property taxes on top of my mortgage payments) make it equal a bit more than I was paying at the other place… but I’m not paying as much in utilities and I don’t have the constant stress of bad neighbors, a bad neighborhood, sudden 20% increases in rent, or dealing with an absentee landlord.

Yes, it does mean I have to be a lot more frugal, that’s for sure. I have a goal of consolidating the remainder of my debt and getting out of debt within the next 2 years so I can get some things I really want – a real bed (with mattress) and dresser for myself, a couch for my living room, finishing my basement (potentially into a spare bedroom/rumpus room). 

This summer I think I will be cutting back my cable and internet to basics (high speed light internet, basic cable) and potentially getting rid of my VoIP home phone as well… I need to find room in my budget to get myself some new clothes and allow myself the freedom to do activities (yoga, Nia, Tae Kwon Do) without grinding into debt to do it. I am tired of constantly worrying about expenses while wasting money on things I don’t need/use or overspending on things that I don’t really need. I am going to have to decide what it is that my kids will be involved in during the summer – theEx wants all sorts of things to be half paid for by me knowing I can’t afford as much as him— while balancing family outings and my own summer travels.

I need to learn to budget and organize and be MINDFUL and PRESENT with things – buy less foods that will be wasted, smaller meals, cheaper meals, bulk buying and doing once a month cooking/freezer stocking (OAMC). I have cut back on spending on myself, on meals out, and on unnecessary things for the kids and house and am working on being happy with what we do have.

Having my own place is just so much better than renting ever was, and I am glad for that. So greatful that I am going to make sure I keep moving forward and making things better all the time.

Dance

This year I took the plunge and did something I have wanted to do for a VERY long time… I enrolled in an adult beginner Irish Dance class. While I haven’t done any dance for over 20 years (the last class I took I was 15) this was something I wanted to do and I did it.

We’re embarking on our 2010 recital (Friday, June 11 in Saskatoon… be there (laugh)) and I’m pretty excited. Girl Child’s beginner class will be performing that night as well… so it’s a family affair.  I hope that at least my parents will come this time, if only for GirlChild…  I’d like to get a picture of us together in our dance uniforms.

If at all possible I want to continue taking Irish dance next year. Heck, I gotta at least PERFECT one of the beginner jigs

• Light jig (almost!)
• Single jig (halfway?)
• Slip jig (hahahaha)

So what were your sucktastic and great things last week?

I’ve been silent lately.

Not sure how to proceed with things, what to say, what to keep to myself. I remind myself, a personal mantra, that I have a right to keep things to myself until I am ready to let them go into the world. I have the right to my silences. I have the right to sit in contemplation. I have the right to make space my own.

The month’s theme seems to be creating my own space.  I have been working towards the internal and external aspects of making my life my OWN. I have been examining my clutter – physical objects, emotional baggage, social expectations, mental patterns, spiritual concepts – and trying to let go of the things that are holding me back from a more authentic life. It has been about taking stock and making plans and examining dreams and revising what the worldspace I have created for myself.

My life is about making ME happy. For years and years and years I have been led to believe that it was selfish of me to live my life to make me happy. No, I was put on this earth to serve a PURPOSE. That PURPOSE was intimately related to this amorphous god-type being in the sky. The messages I got were that I was to grow up to complete school, get a husband, have kids, be a housewife, mother, keep a house, cook, clean… and likely work full time outside of the house on top of it all. I was to give up the “foolish” things that I loved that wouldn’t fit into the world I was being told to want — I was supposed to WANT a man who could “take care of me”, 2 kids, to spend all day being someone’s assistant and all night taking care of my family… I wasn’t supposed to work on MYSELF because the message that I got was that I wasn’t as important as the roles I was to play.

I WAS MISERABLE.

And I don’t want to be that way anymore.

Yes, the roles I play are important, but they aren’t more important than me being HAPPY. It is important to be a good parent, but can a miserably unhappy or tuned out parent be a truly GOOD parent? Yes, its great to be a good employee, but how productive am I when I am unhappy at work? What kind of friend am I if I am depressed or stressed or worried or if I simply do not know how I feel about things?

I am still unpacking the contents of my soul, looking at the things that make me happy.  It’s a personal process, not really one that is easily shared. I pull something out… examine it, try it on for size, adjust it, and move around looking at how it fits me – not only the ME I am now but the ME I am becoming the ME I want to become – and I don’t really WANT to be influenced by another’s perception of what is right for ME no matter how much they care about me.  It’s been slow going mostly because I haven’t had enough pieces of time to spend alone – sometimes I have the kids, sometimes I have social obligations, sometimes I have family obligations, sometimes friends want time, sometimes I don’t feel ready – and so I have been putting things off.

And so I am going through the focus on me, rather than focusing on what makes someone else (whether that someone else is theEx, the kids, a friend, a man, family, work… ) happy.

It’s hard to go against my internal grain, though and it has been a process of one step forward and 2 steps back.

In January I decided to make changes and live for myself.  I had made a huge, TERRIFYING, set of leaps to change my life. I paid off debt and got a mortgage for my own home.  At the same time I became single, which also helped me focus more on my finances (I no longer hosted extra people in my home every weekend, I no longer had to make long distance phone calls, I no longer had to have a fancy cable package, I no longer bought movies). I took the opportunity to try and change some of the situation that had made me miserable, I started deciding how to make my life the way I wanted, not the way someone else wanted for me.

I’m sticking to it. Even with things changing (aren’t they always?) I am standing firm on making my life and my home MINE… its an affirmation of what I want, and my promise to myself to discover what it is that I want for me.  

It’s NOT selfish to make your life YOURS… and to follow your dreams.