moving on

Summer is Different This Year

/ Cassie / Leave a comment

The past few summers have been a shit show. I mean, I’m sure there’s a better way to put it, but why sugar coat it. They were.

There’s the summer three years ago when I sat around every single day trying to find the courage to tell my husband that I was leaving. The amount of stress and exhaustion were enough to kill me…and I’m pretty sure they almost did.

There’s the summer two years ago where I was still scared of doing anything wrong. Anything at all that could make me somehow lose my kids. And the guilt of leaving was still so fresh that I constantly gave in to unhealthy behaviors simply to stay afloat.

Last summer was the worst. Going through the divorce and custody battle caused my anxiety to be at an all time high. I was nervous going anywhere even when I didn’t have the kids because something could go wrong. I couldn’t make one wrong decision or one single misstep because it could come back to bit me in the ass. I actually think I have slight PTSD from my custody/divorce battle. I actually had to turn my email notifications off my phone because hearing the ding reminded me of all the emails from my lawyer and I actually start to shut down.

This is the first summer where I finally feel free. Free to go on vacations with and without the kids. Free to make decisions without constantly worrying about what someone else might think or make an issue of. Free to mention Joe’s name without worrying about the repercussions.

It’s an amazing feeling, but you know what’s funny? It’s almost like a piece of me is missing now. I held on to all that worry, all that anxiety, all that anger for so long, that there is a void. What do I worry about now? What do I think about now? What should I do now?

Luckily, it’s still summer and for the first time in forever I can allow myself to find these answers. I can allow myself to figure out who I am or who I want to be. And most importantly I can actually allow myself to breathe.

896 days

/ Cassie / Leave a comment

896 days.

After 896 days it is all finally over.
896 days of fighting.
896 days of dealing with lies and betrayal.
896 days of stress and crying.

It’s all over.

In the past 896 days I have changed more than I could ever put into words. I have grown up. I have started fighting for myself. I stopped giving in. I stopped caring about the opinions of others.

And I have never been more proud of myself. Not when I put myself through college and graduate school. Not when I trained for a marathon. Not when I left, what was my “grownup home”, for the last time.

And as I sit here, fresh from court, lounging on my couch in pajamas and eating cold pizza while watching Gossip Girl, I can’t even begin to concentrate on the fact that part of my life has ended. That a door has officially closed. A door I worked so hard to keep open for 15 years.

Today is the beginning of my life. The life that I have created. The life that I have worked for. The life that I deserve.

Just a few tweaks

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It’s my last day at home before school starts back up without the kids, so I allowed myself to have a rather lazy morning. I stayed in bed until 9. Got some stuff done around the house. Ate a random breakfast/lunch combination around 11. Worked on a budget for next month, complete with cash envelopes. Binge watched way too much Gilmore Girls while doing all of this. You know, the usual.

I finally decided around 1 to get into the shower because after a week of knots and dry shampoo it was time to wash my hair. As I’m standing there dragging the bamboo comb through my hair, hating how long I know it was going to take to wash my hair, eyeing the amount of hair now in my comb after fighting with the knots, I decided the only logical thing was to grab the scissors from my desk drawer and chop a few inches off.

So I did.

As I shampooed my much shorter hair in the shower, it occurred to me that this haircut could be a mistake. It might look like crap. I have no idea what I am doing. People go to school for this nonsense and here I am hacking away at a pony tail with a pair of scissors that came with my boyfriends tool kit. And then, right as I was yelling at myself for being such a damn fool, I did something I don’t normally do.

I told myself to stop.

There is nothing that can be done about this now, so beating myself up about the choice wasn’t doing anyone any good, especially not me.

I can sit here all day long and regret this decision. I can let it make me sad and depressed. I can berate myself for being so spontaneous and not thinking things through…again. I could do all of these things. And usually I would.

But today I realized that even if I put all this energy into being sad and feeling regret, my hair will still be short. The inches of hair will still be in the trash. Nothing at this point will change that. So why waste the effort and the energy. Time to move on, hope for the best, and if not, invest in more pony tail holders (THANK GOD, it still is long enough to be pulled back).

You know what, though? It doesn’t look that bad. I mean, it needs a few tweaks here and there, but for the most part, I’m pretty happy with it. Just like my life. I realize now, I’m pretty happy where I am in my journey. I just need a few tweaks here and there.

Sounds about right.

The Things We’re Not Supposed to Say

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I’m supposed to be at the doctor today, 10 weeks pregnant, giddy from the idea of hearing my baby’s heartbeat and maybe getting a sonogram. Instead I’m sitting in my pajamas trying to get comfortable with the idea that I just had a miscarriage. As in JUST. As in this morning. On the day I’m supposed to confirm that everything is ok, it most definitely is not.

We knew this was a possibility. The numbers were low early on. The measurements were slow early on. Everything was being treated with a grain of salt. There was always a 50/50 chance of things going either way. Things could be fine…or not. So for six long and hard weeks we played the waiting game. Always waiting for the next appointment. Always waiting for a definitive answer that things really were OK. Or even that things really weren’t OK. Something more than the 50%.

Because while the 50% may have been a blessing for some, it was slowly and ferociously eating at my soul. Never knowing what was what. Never having control. Never being about to do ANYTHING to help this situation. I cried a lot. And slept a lot. As do most people at the beginnings of their pregnancy. But really it was more than that. It was the constant weight of the wondering and hoping while also trying to be realistic that was crushing me.

But now, it’s over.

This is not my first miscarriage, but it is by far and away the hardest one yet to endure. There was the ectopic before Max. And the miscarriage before Max. And the miscarriage after Oliver on Mother’s Day. And the miscarriage the day Charlotte turned 10 weeks old. This is obviously not my first time here. But this one is different. Not only is it because it is with someone new, someone who I love more than anything, someone who I wanted to share this very special and sacred thing with. Not only because I was further along than any of the others and literally had to feel the miscarriage. Not those things. With each miscarriage before there was always the idea of trying again. That there will be more opportunities. And at this point in my life, I just don’t think that’s true.

And I know we’re not supposed to talk about these things. We’re not supposed to put this shit in the universe. It’s all supposed to be unsaid and hidden, deep down in the core of our soul. But really, why? Because we might make someone else uncomfortable? That’s mostly why I write instead of talk. You can read it if you want. Or not. That’s your choice. But I’m sad and hurting and to me, keeping it inside makes it worse. It makes me feel like it’s my fault. It makes me feel like this is something I should be ashamed of. It makes me feel like I’m alone.

AND. NONE. OF. THAT. IS. TRUE.

So I’m going to pick myself up and put on some running clothes. I’m going to open the blinds and let some sunshine in. I’m going focus on the things that I can do now: a second cup of coffee, hot tubs, hiking part of the Appalachian Trail in April, running, wine, brie, and so many other things. While I know it won’t take the pain away, it will remind me that I’m still here. I have still have things to do. I can still make plans to make my life extraordinary.

And I can hug my three little miracles a little tighter each night knowing they truly are a gift to me every single day.

Half Life

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“Please mom? Can we go the waterfall way?”  all three kids shout from the backseat in unison.

It’s just a dam.  And half the time it’s off and there’s no “waterfall” anyway.  But it means 20 extra minutes with the kids, singing the Despicable Me 3 soundtrack at the top of our lungs before dropping them off to their father.

So I always say yes.  Always.

This is the part of divorce that I wasn’t prepared for…the part where I see my kids less.  While I am a full time teacher, I am a mom first and foremost. I made breakfast each morning.  I packed the lunches, signed the permission slips, did the homework.  I made dinner each night.  I did the baths and showers and the bedtime routine and then also the house cleanup after bedtime routine before slumping exhaustedly and somewhat defeatedly into the couch for the rest of the evening.  365 days a year this is what I did.

It’s not the case anymore.  Two days a week I don’t see them at all.  I always feel like I’m going to be happy about having a break.  “Yay!  No kids tonight!  I can relax, or watch TV, or sleep in a little bit tomorrow morning!”  But that feeling lasts for about an hour and then I just want them with me.

It’s because of this whole half time phenomena that it took me so long to leave.  It was an unhappy and unhealthy marriage for far too long but I couldn’t not see my kids every day.  I assumed they would fall apart.  But in reality, I seem to do way more falling apart without them.  And no matter the sadness we feel at being apart sometimes, we are all happier.  All of us.

I think back on last year and get nauseous knowing how much I put them through when I couldn’t leave, but I couldn’t stay.  The shortness of breath.  The tightness in my chest.  They rush in when I think of last year, a panic attack on the brink every single time. It’s the year I would take back if I could ever take back anything.

But I can’t take it back.  It’s there.  It happened.  It changed us.  It scathed us.  It traumatized us.  But it also taught us.

It taught me it was ok to not see my littles every single day if that meant a better quality of life for all of us.  It taught me to leave the pile of legos for the night if that meant feeling like they were here when they weren’t.  It taught me to put down the phone and really be present in the moments because they were no longer unlimited.

And no matter how much longer it makes the drive, always say yes to waterfalls.

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Lost and Found

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I seem to have lost myself.  And my will.  And my motivation.  And I can’t seem to find any of them.

I think back to last summer.  Training for the NYC marathon.  Running almost every day, even in the heat. 50 pounds lighter than I am now (the shame).  Happier kids.  Happier life.  Happier marriage.  I sit here and I wonder…what the fuck happened?

When I think about it, I tend to place the blame on other people and situations.  This person came into my life.  This person left.  Work became harder.  A third baby was added.  Time and money were short, as were tempers and understanding.  All of this things can take the blame for my unhappiness, the lack of motivation, the weigh gain, the drinking gain, the indiscretions.

And none of that blame is actually working to fix the problem.  It’s making me a victim.  And I hate being the victim.

Maybe, instead of placing the blame and over analyzing the past year I can suck it up and move on.  Who cares how I got to this place?  Does it really even matter?  The point is, I’m here.  And I need to find my way out.  I know no one can do this for me.  I have to find my way on my own.  But it’s HARD.

I can say, things seem to be headed in the right direction and my support system, though smaller by a few people, is incredibly mighty.  I’m learning to ask for help.  I’m learning to accept help when it’s offered.  Homelife is becoming more concrete, and sound, and loving.

And now to work on the rest.

I’m not used to baby steps.  I’m not used to slow progress.  I’m not  patient person.  When I want something, I want it now.  But with that, my life seems to be a bunch of random “One step forward, two steps back” mishaps.  So maybe now, I go slow.  Take each day and change at a snails pace. Work to strengthen everything instead of just fixing is for a minute.

Maybe going slow isn’t so bad.  Maybe it’s just what need to find where I’m hiding.

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Complacency, Love, and the Weather

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As is too often with these posts, I start by saying…it’s been too long since I have written anything new.  I could blame work, school, kids, life,  but really that would only be the icing on a cake too tall to tackle.  The real problem is myself and even that is not enough to explain what has happened to me over the past few months.  As is usually the case I am torn between being happy (complacent) with the life I have and wanting (needing) something more.

While I feel like I say it every year, this one, by far, has been the hardest one to navigate.  Between friendships found, and lost, and found, the bumpy and panic inducing ride that is 11 years of marriage, losing and finding myself over and over again, and simply finding time to breathe through it all, I feel like I’ve been broken and put back together so many times that I wonder if all my pieces have survived.

 

I wonder, sometimes, if my biggest problem is more simple than I realize.  That maybe my expectations for people and their behaviors are simply too high. Mostly, I feel that people will never meet mine and am forever doomed to sit and silence and ponder if it’s them or me.  And yet, why ponder?  I know it’s me. I simply assume everyone puts forth the same amount of everything I do: love, effort, understanding, movement, change.  And when they don’t I am undoubtably dissapointed.  “They” say expectation is the root of all heartache and this is something I wholeheartedly believe.  But do we give up, accept this, and work to assimilate to the “others”; the ones that we feel are disappointing us?  Decide to live in quiet complacency, knowing we could have it worse?  That maybe if we just let things go, decide to give up what we feel we need, that we could live an almost happy life?

Or do we simply wait?  Wait for the changes we are asking for.  Wait for love we know we need and deserve. Wait for a life we know we are not going to simply exist in…but actually live in.

The conundrum exists: do you hope for the hurricane or simply enjoy the calm and still air of almost?  Sometimes, the hurricane is worth it.  It’s beautiful and perfect in its power and destruction, changing the landscape of your life forever, tearing down the extraneous walls you’ve built up to keep things out (or in).  Other times it simply destroys everything, coming and going in meer moments, leaving an empty hole where something stable (maybe not profound or amazing), but stable used to be.

I’m watching people take these leaps and bounds in their lives and am becoming completely envious. Picking up and moving away.  Finding a new and meaningful job.  Leaving behind a mediocre life for a great one. For a while, it was hard to watch their journey because of the jealousy.  What luck to get exactly what you want; what you’ve been hoping for. They made it looked so easy.  But now, I know it is their bravery I covet.  The sheer courage to say “This is what I want and I’m going to go for it.”  They decided take some action instead of sitting around and talking, wondering, or even writing about it.  Taking the risk in the hurricane, even if it destroys everything.

No matter how much back and forth I do in these situations, deep down, I know what it is that I want.

And it’s time to go and buy an umbrella.

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We’ll all float on Ok.

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I don’t seem to know who I am anymore.

Not so long ago I felt like I had it all figured out.  I’m a mom.  I’m a runner.  I’m a teacher.  I’m a friend.  Things were going well.  I had a wonderful new daughter, two amazing boys, and a fantastic support system of friends and family.  I literally had no complaints and was perfectly content any happy.

And then I broke…again.

This wasn’t like the first time I felt that I had broke, when my dad had died.  When that happened I feel apart all at once so it was almost easier to out myself back together.  The pieces were right there and easier to find, not scattered over space and time.

I wish I could say I knew the exact moment that it happened, but really it was a series of events that started small, each one separately almost microscopic in size, but together crumbled my world into a million pieces.

I cut back on my running and dropped out of the NYC marathon.

An old friend came back into my life just when I thought I was finally over our past.

I lost a person in my life who I thought was a good friend.

The separation began…and ended…and began…and changed so much that I don’t even know where we are at this point.

Most recently I’ve done things I probably shouldn’t have.  I’ve eaten things I probably shouldn’t have.  I’ve stopped running altogether.  With each passing day, the numbers on the scale keep inching closer to where I said I never wanted to be again.  And the worst part of it all is that I just don’t seem to care.  Not about being a bad person, or losing certain people from my life, or even losing everything I worked for.  None of it.

I feel like I’m on the roundabout on the playground spinning more and more out of control each day.  The sad part is that I know I’m the one that’s pushing it to go faster and faster.  I am in complete and utter control of this and I can’t seem to jump off and just stop. Because I know that when I do I’m going to break even more from the impact.  I know that I’m really going to have to work to find all the pieces and put myself back together again.  Not only in the “now” but in the past too.  The task seems daunting and so impossible that 99% of the time I don’t even have the desire to try.

But then, out of the blue, today happened.  The 1%.  The one glimmer of hope I had been hoping for.

We’re driving to the park and the library and all three kids are squeezed into the back seat.  Charlotte is singing along to Modest Mouse playing in the background while Oliver and Max argued about how many sheep are in an adjoining field.  The sun was shining in the blue sky as wispy clouds float by, my hand out the window rising and falling in the warm air.  I finally felt it.  What I had been longing to feel for so long lately.  A sense of peace and contentment.   A sense of placement.

This is where I was supposed to be.  Maybe not forever, but at least for right now.

And with that tiny feeling of hope, I know that pretty soon I’ll have enough courage to make the leap off the roundabout.  And maybe, just maybe, my feet will actually hit the ground and I’ll be able to pick myself up and begin to collect all the pieces.

And so we begin

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“I dare you to train for a marathon, and not have it change your life.”  ~Susan Sidoriak

Tomorrow’s the day. The day I take a breath. The day I move on. The day I continue moving forward. The day I put the past behind me.  The day I emerge from the ashes that is my mistakes.  The day I work for what I want. The day I make my plans a reality.

Tomorrow’s the day I begin training for the TCS New York City Marathon.  It’s going to be hard.  It’s going to be rough, on both me and the ones closest to me. It’s going to be life changing and that’s what I’m counting on.

I’m excited and petrified.  I’m ready and not ready. I’m worried and surprisingly calm.  I’m all this and more.  I’m a myriad of emotions I don’t even have words for.

Tomorrow’s the day…the day I become who I was meant to become.

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Faker

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“I feel like a big faker because I’ve been putting my life back together, and nobody knows.” ~Stephen Chbosky

I tend to harbor a lot of anxiety in my every day life.  Little things; money, family, and work, creep in periodically and make me a little on edge.  To be honest, this anxiety is probably felt more by my family than by me, which I know is not fair. But these are small things…the things that most of us face on a daily basis, and while they are anxiety inducing, they are not true fears.

I do have a fear though.  Just thinking about it can stop me in my tracks, unable to breathe or even see.  I am completely and unequivocally scared of dying.  It’s not really the dying part, per say, but more so the fear of simply not existing or my life, as I know it, being over.   When I start to think about it, I mean REALLY think about it, I reach a state of full on panic and I can barely get out of it.  I don’t know if it has something to do with me being too egotistical to understand that the world can and will go on without me or simply that  I wasn’t raised religiously, therefor I don’t really have any beliefs about heaven or the after life, but I’ve had this fear for as long as I can remember.

When I was little I would shuffle into my parent’s room in the middle of the night to tell them I was scared of dying.  It was never the dark, or monsters, or any of the “normal” kid fears, but dying.  The would roll over, tell me we would talk about it in the morning, and go back to sleep.  We never really did talk about it though. My dad, raised Catholic, believed in heaven and hell.  My mom believed our souls were reincarnated.  I had neither of these safety nets to fall back on so the fear continued to grow.

But why am I telling you all this?  Mostly because while this fear should make me more motivated to reach my goals, should motivate me to become the best person I can be, should motivate me to live life to the fullest, it doesn’t.  I’m constantly writing these posts about how life is short, that we only have a limited time to really do and be who we want, that we have to embrace change to really move ourselves and I do none of it.  I write about it, sure, but I don’t make any moves toward action.

And…I have no idea why.  I am so scared of the idea of ceasing to exist without being truly happy and making a lasting, positive impression on the world that I literally have a panic attack.  I clench up, I can’t breathe, my blood pressure and heart rate spike almost uncontrollably until I’m able to talk myself down, and yet I can’t follow through on ideas and plans without quitting or talking myself out of them.

Why am I scared of making these big leaps and changes?  You’d think the fear of a short lived life, unfulfilled, unhappy life would be enough to catapult me into change, but it’s not.  Ultimately, it’s a combination of factors that can stand seamlessly alone, but together gather strength as the fear of judgement from others.

I can sit here all day from my throne in my judgement free zone (really the arm chair in my living room) and spout off about how we all need to take ourselves seriously, that we need to do the things that make up happy, that life’s too short to care about what other people think, YOLO and all that but when it comes out of my mouth, it’s pretty much just a pile of crap because while I’m talking the talk, I’m not walking the walk.

I live in constant fear of judgment of others.  Yes, I post my running pictures, but only head shots because even though I lost almost 80 pounds no one wants to see me in my running tights.

Yes, I post pictures of my miles of running, but have you ever noticed that I cut the times off all of them because I know that when people see the time it took me to run one mile, many of them will realize they can actually WALK faster than that.

Yes, I talk about one day completing a marathon, but there is no way I’d ever tell anyone that I want to do that because I know the judgements would come because I just BARELY finished my half marathon and wasn’t very graceful in all the complaining I was doing in the end.

Yes, I complain about how I could be a better mother and wife and make all these plans in my head where I resolve to do so, and five minutes later I am yelling or bitching about something.

Yes, I sit enviously looking at people on Facebook (yet another thing that needs to go) while they follow their dreams and live fearless and unencumbered lives and again I make plans and have absolutely no follow through.

So, basically, what I’ve amounted to in all my “carpe diem”-ness is a blog with a lot of fancy words, but not a lot of action.

What does this mean?  Where do I go?  What action will I take?  I don’t know.  But I’m ready to do something, anything, to prove that I have a life worth living.

I can’t live a life in vain anymore.

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