Anyway…

I settled for STBX because I thought that he was someone that would fulfill what my family wanted for me — stable provider who was relatively kind to me and seemed to be supportive and liked children. Partly my choice of STBX was based on the fact that, as a rebound from a VERY bad relationship, he looked very good in comparison with the previous boyfriends. Partly I was wooed by the flowers and gifts, interest and gentleness that came from him BEFORE we were engaged. And that disappeared immediately after we were married, which should have been a hint that he didn’t care anymore…

The point is not what happened, but the fact that I SETTLED for someone that I wasn’t sure of because I felt that I was ready to enter the next part of my life — I was ready to be married and I was ready to start a family (at 23!!) and here was someone that seemed “good enough” to fill the role of husband, father and provider and who SEEMED a good match for me in the role of mate.

And that didn’t work out very well, did it? Like I stated before, it really didn’t take long before he was embarassed by me, when he took the opportunity to live away from home, and before I was just another stupid “purchase” tossed aside and taken for granted. And in the end the constant loneliness of being in a marriage with someone who really didn’t want to get to know me, and who wanted to believe I was cheating on him was too much. And I left.

Yes, I know… it doesn’t seem to be common for women to leave, from what I understand often the women ask the men to leave, and they retain the home until the house can be sold… but in my case I knew STBX would not leave the house AND provide support for the kids so I could pay the bills, and that left me little choice but to seek shelter somewhere else. And I left.

And I entered into yet another relationship disaster.

Only THIS disaster didn’t look like the first one. This one looked very very different.

Instead of being embarassed by me and wanting to keep me hidden, K seemed to glorify me, and to hold me up as some prize or goddess that he had been awarded by the Gods. But the problem was that he seemed to be holding me up to some divine standards — he expected me to feel exactly the same way about him that he felt about me, and I just didn’t.

For the most part K was very good to me… but there were moments when he clearly thought I had failed to live up to his standards of what our relationship was that he made me feel very very small, and very very unhappy. And the problem was that the unhappiness stayed, the relationship was quickly permeated by the feeling of unhappiness from him that I didn’t love him enough or in the way he wanted, and my unhappiness because I didn’t know why I didn’t feel the same way.

He treated me sometimes like a goddess, sometimes like a child, and it was always a very large discrepancy from what it was that I wanted. He would glorify me, telling me how lucky he was to have me, how he never thought he’d be this happy. And then at other times I felt like he was “raising” me, like I was a child-like thing to him, to be cradled and cared for, to be taught to be the right way… the way he treated me mirrored VERY closely the way he treated his only child. And that was a bit disturbing to me.

I never felt like an equal with K. I felt like I was either seen as “better” than he could deserve, or as if I were something to be cared for and protected, like a bunny or a child. And I didn’t want that. Because in the end, when I openned my eyes and saw for myself that this wasn’t working for me, I couldn’t really explain why to him or myself. It just wasn’t RIGHT for me, and honestly that should have been enough.

But it wasn’t, as he used every reason, every uncomfortable feeling, every issue that differentiated us to “improve” and every “improvement” as a reason to backlash against the fact that I didn’t feel as strongly as he did. And in the end it was very much a whiptail effect — as I felt disconnected he reacted by overdoing and overcompensating, and that made my feeling of discomfort worse, which would lead to him attacking my reasons and pushing harder to make it up to me by being more like what he thought I wanted.

But the very soul of the issue was not religon, tidiness, child rearing, hobbies, interests, or friends. It wasn’t getting out and having fun or relaxing. It wasn’t communicating. It wasn’t money or financial choices. It was just a feeling that we were not mates, not partners, and the fact that there was more guilt and obligation than care and love in the situation.

And I also found it creepy that, after the fact, I found out that K had made an oath to HIS GODS (not my Gods, not ME, not even himself, but to HIS Gods) to protect me from being abused again. I find this creepy in the same way I always think it is creepy when Christian people “pray” for you, its a feeling that you’re not able to entreat your OWN diety or Dieties on your own behalf, but that you are so spiritually deficient that you need someone else to take on spiritual responsibility on my behalf. Yuck.

I deny his right to do this, and therefor his worry that he is an “oath breaker” since the oath is not HIS, since he has no right to my spirit as he is not my mate/partner/husband… I have not given him a part of my spirit… and I don’t APPRECIATE the idea of being protected or guided or saved without being ASKED first.

So, yeah. I didn’t like being doted on because I felt too much like a pampered pet or an indulged child and not much like a fully capable adult woman who’s views and education had bearing on the focus of the relationship.

So… what DO I want?

I want a true partner, not someone who pats me on the head and gives me things, solves my problems for me, or who spouts on about undying love and how I am the only thing that makes him happy. I want someone that truely makes me happy, who I smile when I think of him. I want someone who knows that I am strong and capable, and can push me to get over my fears and do the things that I want to and need to, instead of being mired in self doubt.

I don’t want to be someone’s WORLD, I want to be part of their world.

I want someone positive. STBX was always negative about me and our outlook, K was just all around negative in almost everything he did and said (to the point of actually telling me he was thinking his life was OVER when I didn’t want to be with him anymore, and refusing to accept that feelings had changed). I want to move on with my positive life, I want to feel open and free to explore things inside myself and outside without being told that its stupid or embarassing or needs to be hidden.

And I am at the point, really, in my life where I want someone because I want a mate and partner, not because i NEED one. Maybe I never REALLY needed a relationship, maybe i never really did. I firmly believe that the only reason I settled for STBX was because I was “ready” to have kids and I wanted a settled man for that. I picked wrong. But at 20 I didn’t know that I had YEARS left to have children.

Now I can’t have children. I mourn the loss of my fertility, because I liked having children, being pregant. I know there is still posibility, somewhere down the line (should I ever be able to get divorced from STBX) if I want to. Did I have children with the wrong person? He isn’t a bad father, for all that he was neglectful as a husband. But I do wish I had been with someone who would have loved and supported me through and after pregnancies…

I would like another child… but at my age, given the fact that most men I know already HAVE children, I don’t think its likely.

So my weeks tend to start around 5pm on Sundays… I know, an unusual time, but that’s how it is. Either I recieve my children back into my home at this time or STBX picks them up to go to his house at this time… and so this is the demarcation between the time I am a parent and the time I am lonely. I have the cats, I have friends, but for the most part I miss my kids the weeks they are gone and crave the weeks they are here.

And so begins a new week for me.

The kids are home, I don’t necessarily need to deal with the ex for a while (other than the 2 weekly calls they are to make to him, the Festival of Trees perfomance that GirlChild will be in on Saturday, and the exchange next Sunday) other than the occassional email where he pokes at me for some reason or other. Its good not to have to deal with him all the time, almost like when we were married and he was gone to the mines for a week at a time. Gods, you know that your relationship has failed when you can’t wait for your spouse to go away and leave you alone for a week!!

So, anyway… the week has so far started off with a bit of a bang (laugh).

On monday, despite having checked my cell (which I use as an alarm) I slept in and we didn’t get up until 7:20am. Which, isn’t all that bad, except, but we usually leave the house for the babysitters at 7:30!

So I ran around getting the kids up, the laundry in (GirlChild had an accident in her bed when I turned on the light and she suddenly woke up…oops), made sure they had breakfast to go, their lunches, and started supper for us (crock pot pot roast) while Boychild got his things together and fed the kitties. Of course, with my luck, the windows on the car were frosted, so I spent another 5 minutes dealing with that!! Oh the joys of almost winter.

But the rest of the day was relatively uneventful, as days go. I processed the pay and time cards and had that sent off to the payroll department by 10am. I found another contact in the hotel industry, and she managed to find us 10 rooms (all at the same hotel) for the December 4th night that we needed, so it looks like the Christmas party is on again … if only I can hunt down DEFINATE numbers and names of who is and is not going to attend. Which means I will have to deal with my tires this weekend if possible because I’d rather drive down there and then I could check out the wool store and the Chapters while I’m there before driving back… oh the joys! If I get a day off for this I am spending it doing my OWN thing and not worrying about getting a flight back!

And so I wrote a few diary entries for my Open Diary (because there are just things that don’t need to be out here for everyone, and I don’t feel like being accused of throwing things in the face of the purple elephant again).. and I got caught up on a lot of things, and I got home and picked up the kids and inspected the pot roast (next time I think I will use more water or the “med” setting, but it was overall good). I started the potatoes and made the gravy and defrosted the buns.

While we were waiting for supper to cook I knit a bit, chatted a bit, and read a chapter of “Inkheart” to the kids.

Supper over, I plopped GirlChild into the tub and read another chapter of “Inkheart” to her while she bathed. Got her out, got her dressed and hair brushed out. Then I ran the water for BoyChild (since he needs privacy now that he’s and went to wash the dishes in the kitchen. Apparently in the 5 minutes between starting the water and coming in to check on the water, BoyChild decided to do something with the tap, which resulted in the shower knob on the tap being pulled right off.

Sigh.

So now I have to figure out how to fix that…

By the time they were both washed and dressed it was bedtime. So I got them set up for tooth brushing. Then we did the books, the songs, and lights out…

Thank GODS!!

Lately I have been reviewing my online strategies. My former friend is one that I will never likely come across again, and part of that reason is that I do a lot of dialoging online (what with having the kids around every second week) through various IM type things (ICQ, AIM/iChat,GTalk, Y!, Skype… yes… I do a lot of that). I am fairly easy to find online, if someone knows my aliases and knows approximately where to look for me. I am a networker, and yet, I ‘hide’ in plain sight. I am everywhere, but getting a hold of me is harder than it sounds becasue I don’t always answer and I am so used to being pinged and checked and talked to that I am also used to deleting users and denying access to me. I don’t have a landline phone, so I am harder to pin down and my address is not accessible in the phone book.

I have other friends who avoid being identified online. Who use only what they need to online and stay off otherwise, prefering to only interact with live people. I have a few friends who are online more than I am, preferring online interaction as their primary contact point. And I am in the middle. I use online interaction a lot – I actually LOVE getting email and having email discussions with people, I IM, I talk to people on Skype, I blog, I post on OD, I do twitter, and I am randomly doing a podcast. But my goal is always to reach out, to connect, to weave new friends into my life, and reconnect with people I haven’t seen or talked to for a long time… and ultimately meet up and interact in person. I crave meeting up with new and old friends. I love talking in person… and I like getting out of my house and moving beyond myself.

But I have always been a person who is both very private and very open at the same time. There are things, deep hidden things, that I hold sacred to myself, things I will never discuss because they are MINE. Like precious pebbles, I have never spoken or written about these things — secret shames, secret joys, sheer unadulterated moments of happiness or sorrow — because they are mine and I do not need to do so. There are a great deal of things that I have never spoken or written about (online or in a paper journal) and I never will. Some are in regards to promises made, some are just the unwillingness to commit the memories to words that will always be incomplete. It is how I am. I have 10 years of memories on open diary, and yet there are significant moments and periods of time I have never written about. Same with paper journals… I have 20 years of paper journals saved in my home… and yet I have things  do not wish or need to open up to eleviate the joy or sorrow, and so I have left them unsaid…

Somethings will always be only mine…

But there is a perception that, because I write so much, I write everything, I spill everything out for everyone to see all the time, and that has never been the case. I write a lot. But there are still things that I will not write about, not even if I thought they were private and only I could read them… because I know better than that. If it is something I don’t want anyone to know about, if it is somethign I want to keep only for myself, I do not write it out anywhere — not a text file on my computer, not a note to self, not in the daytimer or secret diary or journal or using secret codes. I need these things for myself and to share them would, in some way, diminish who I am.

I have a geis on me, a sacred promise to keep the secrets to myself. Its been the primary cornerstone of my life. It drove STBX nuts that there were things I never talked about… things I thought were too insignificant to discuss, the tiny loves of my past, the stories of me that have so far contributed to who I am today. I keep my silence… I practice my craft, and I try to create myself around the pearls of my experiences. Some of the most beautiful things have been created by the layers of joy and pain that come from being able to hold silence in your words…

That has been something I have been thinking about, a lot. Is it a matter of trust that I have hidden from so many people? I know I am different to different friends. I have shared memories with some that I lack with others, secrets deeply entrenched between us since childhood, teen angsty fights or fears, and the hurts of adulthood… and yet with others things have been on the surface. So what makes the best type of friend? I don’t know…

But it does hurt more when you have to lose one that knows your deepest fears, when you have to turn away someone who can’t know you because you need to hold things sacred and private.

I’ve always known that…