Yes, Even Polar Bears Need Hugs (pt. 2)

My last post came off as, well… defensive.

I didn’t really answer any questions.  I feel a need to justify my choices, even when there’s no one out there to justify it to.  Even when I know that I’ve made the right choices, or done the best I could, I have this desire to garner approval from unknown entities that may or may not actually exist outside of my head.

I guess I desire that approval from within, as well.

It’s been said by some wiser than myself that it is not important to understand the things one does, so much as it is to understand that one has done them.  In that vein, there’s no sense in dwelling on the past and trying to understand “mistakes” one’s made, if one knows that pattern has existed and it’s time to do something different.

Nowhere to go but forward, right?

I had actually meant to address and embrace the truth in all those hurtful things that were said.   Because in every lie, there is a kernel of truth.  The image of an oyster and a grain of sand comes to mind.  A tiny speck of sand somehow finds its way into an oyster’s shell, which I imagine, might be a bit uncomfortable to the oyster.  But the oyster remains passive, doesn’t struggle against it (because, really, what means has it to do so?), and over time, the oyster sheds enough of itself to coat the sand and grow a pearl.

When others say hurtful things, regardless of the truth in those things, I want to turn their words into pearls.  Over time, my inner goodness will overpower the discomfort and pain those words can cause.

All that aside, I have a task at hand.  I am to explore the question: “Why did I wait so long to actively work on the divorce?”

Having said that understanding why and how the past happened isn’t as important as understanding and accepting that the past did happen, it’s a valid question that she asked, and she deserves the best answer I can give her.

I’ve taken my time to think about it because I don’t want to give an incomplete answer.

Was it because I was still in love with him, or attached to our life together?  No, oh nononono no.  I was so relieved when we broke up, and even more so when he moved out.  I’d been living a lie for years, and hadn’t known it.  He had bored me since before our first year was up, there was no challenge there, and for some reason, I refused to see it for a long time.

Actually, I was chicken shit.

I saw it in the last few years.  But didn’t do anything about it.  Confrontation of any sort gives me the runs.  I get panicky, fight-or-flight sets in.

In this situation, I think I did my part to make the marriage as unbearable as possible so that I wouldn’t have to be the one to call it off – or if I was the one, it would only be the logical conclusion.

Then once it was over, and I’d said the words, “I want a divorce,” why didn’t it follow that I jumped on that paperwork and filed immediately, instead of stalling?

What happened?

I pointed to the kids, and said, “They need their father.”  I pointed to myself and said, “I don’t need a lawyer.”  I refused to believe he was still capable of manipulating me.

First, it was money.  “I can’t afford a divorce.”  Then she said, “If you really want this, you’ll find a way to make it happen, and fast.”  I couldn’t argue the truth in that.

At first, I thought we could do it ourselves.  I bought a packet for $35 at Office Depot complete with a CD-Rom and how-to manual.  Filled out everything pertaining to me in the first week of having it, and gave him his share.  We agreed to meet once every two weeks to discuss the parenting plan and get everything notarized and filed.  Once every two weeks because it was clear that agreeing on the parenting plan was a daunting task.

After a month and a half, I realized I really couldn’t do it without outside help.  He could “understand my point of view” regarding what I feel the children need, but he couldn’t do it because, in his words, if he didn’t have the kids at least half the time, he would have to pay child support and he couldn’t afford that, and if he had them more, he wouldn’t be able to work because he couldn’t afford child care.

I stalled again.  This time because I was so uncomfortable with the struggle at hand and tired of struggling and I just didn’t want to face it.

I’m like a turtle.  I move slowly, and when I feel endangered, I pull my head and limbs into my shell.

This time, though, my best friend was having trouble with her ex-husband and the way he was treating their children, and she got fed up with him.  I took inspiration from her, and decided to grow a backbone myself.  I’d made up my mind to tell him what the arrangements were going to be, because I know what’s best for my kids, and I can point out how this arrangement is hurting them.  And then Pickle and my mom, while both admiring my nerve, suggested that I go ahead and get a lawyer lined up first, before telling him, just to be safe.

I called Legal Aid and got accepted, and got the paperwork.  I filled out most of the paperwork in the first few days, and only had  a few financial details to fill in before notarizing.

Then tax time came, and I decided to wait until the tax return came before filing it.  And I cleaned the house and accidentally threw the paperwork away.

It was about 3 weeks before I called the lawyer for new paperwork, because I was working during his office hours.  Why I didn’t think to leave a message in his off-hours, I don’t know.  Pickle thinks that, subconsciously, I was stalling again.

Once I called though, the paperwork arrived that week, and I had it all filled out, notarized, and turned in less than a week later.  Now, I’m waiting on the lawyer to file with the courts.  It’s in motion.

From the first DIY divorce packet in December to now, it’s been five months.  Pickle and I had been together for six months in December.  Her question, “If you were legitimately broken up with him before I came along, if that relationship was really over, why did it take you six months to start the whole process, and why has it taken you five months since that point to actually file the paperwork?” gives me pause.

I understand the first six months.  I was in a spirally, twisty place with no perspective.  Completely ungrounded, unbalanced.  I had no business being in a new relationship, and I knew it.  However, things happened as they did, and I didn’t have the strength or confidence to change it.  In retrospect, it may have been better or easier for Pickle if I had said, “Whoa, I’ve got baggage I need to sort through.  Let’s wait until my divorce is final, let’s just be friends for now, love each other from a distance.”  Heaven knows it would have afforded me the space (and motivation) to work on my shit.

Shoulda coulda woulda.  I don’t believe in regrets.  If anyone were to find themselves in the position I found myself, I now know what kind of advice I’d give, if asked.  But I don’t believe in regrets, and I do believe that things happen as they’re meant to, even if there are multiple paths one can take.

She and I had a lot of hurdles to jump.  We have a stronger relationship now for it.

But the last part of the question – why did it take me five months to get established at Point A?  Life happens and I’m a scatterbrain and blahdeblah… none of that helps me to be accountable for myself.

Filing wasn’t hard at all.  Once I got it done, I was amazed at how easy it was.  I’m known to make things harder for myself, a form of sabotage – when things are good, I have to go and complicate them.

I’ve known from a very early age that when life is going well, and everything is as it should be, I get very uncomfortable.  It’s like… something is going to go wrong eventually, so, subconsciously, why not just make something go wrong so that, at least, I know when it’s going to happen and how, and I’m the one in control.  I fear being out of control.  It’s probably my biggest fear, next to creatures with stingers.  But that one, I’m learning to conquer – and it’s related.  Bees and wasps, to me, are extremely unpredictable creatures, but I’m learning to watch them, to be able to predict their next move – and to be ok with it when I’m wrong and they land on me.

I want to be ok with it when life is good and things happen and it’s not my doing.

Even when it’s not my doing, I somehow find a way to make it my fault.  I know how to be sorry.  I know how to fix things that I’ve broken.  I don’t quite get plugging away through adverse conditions that I didn’t create.   If I don’t have myself to blame, I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know how to hold someone else accountable (well, on paper, I do, but practically speaking is a whole different matter).

Self-sabotage.  I think that’s what it is.  How much does she love me?  Do I even deserve her love?  Putting her emotions and psychological health through the wringer because, somehow, I don’t think I’m worthy.  And then… if she leaves me… it’s because I did something wrong.  And because I don’t deserve her, I knew it was coming all along.

Oh I know it’s horse crap.

I know she’s perfect for me, and we belong together.  I know this, my logical brain is very smart, and it tells that broken little girl inside me just how silly she’s being on a regular basis.

But even still, she’s still there, and she deserves her recognition, too.  That broken little girl.  And the more I’m aware that she’s working on me, the more I see how her patterns are affecting me and the choices I make, the more I can find ways to hold her and calm her and show her she’s worthy of love – from within and out

The other day, I had a dream.  I was riding an escalator up and passed an advertisement that I’d seen a few times already, earlier in the dream.  The ad featured a polar bear exhibit at the local zoo, and had the tagline, “Do Polar Bears Need Hugs?”

I woke in the morning with the strong feeling that my subconscious was trying to sell me on something.  I googled the question and got wonderful pictures of polar bears playing with each other and with other animals, hugging.  Heartwarming stuff.

I asked friends, what do you think?

The answers I got varied and really the concept that resonated with me most was this: No matter how strong one is, everyone needs a hug sometimes.  That is what keeps us strong.  One of my tasks right now may be simply to acknowledge a challenge, acknowledge that the source of that challenge may need some love, and move forward.  It may not be for me to give that love, but the simple task of recognizing the need for compassion or affection may be all it takes for me to go on.

That broken little girl in me needs a hug.  She tries so hard to be strong, and feels so bad when she’s not.

My Pickle needs all the hugs she can get.  I’ve put her through hell and back just to prove she loves me, and not even been aware.

This divorce needs compassion and love.  I may not be the one to give it, but I won’t stand in the way of it.  It’s a process of growth and change, and it’s fraught with challenges.

I’m on the escalator and moving up.

Life is good. Pickle loves me, I love me, our kids are amazing, and we’re all growing so fast.

In this season of growth…

Now that she’s working less and spending more time at home, I’m finding it harder and harder to keep up with the writing.

I’m totally smitten by her. Much to her chagrin, I’m sure, I’m like a lost little puppy dog at her heels. Which is probably why she felt for so long she never got any time to herself.

That used to be a good thing. But deceptively so. It’s a co-dependent thing. We lose our sense of self-identification when we don’t have time to ourselves.

She came to me in a time when many of my friends abandoned me, when I had to pack my things and move out of the home I’d lived in for three years – the only real home my kids had ever known. She came to me when my life was unsettled, and she settled me. She was security embodied.

We decided early on, for some reason unknown to both of us, that we were It. This relationship was going to work, no matter what.

I have never been in a relationship I’ve wanted to work so hard at, or had to work so hard at, as I have at times in this one. I have never cared so much about another individual’s well-being that I’ve pushed myself beyond my own comfort – beyond what I thought possible for me – to Grow.

Sadly, even my children, until relatively recently, didn’t push me as hard as she does. Children adapt to their environments. We adults should adapt to them – at least more so than I did for a long time.

We’ll be celebrating our first anniversary in one month. It’s bittersweet. We’ve made it this far, through a hellish year, and that’s something to celebrate. But I’m also still technically married to my ex. I’ve put off the divorce stuff – had a number of excuses.

We tried the DIY divorce, but I wasted months on trying to get him to agree with me on what the kids need. He disagrees. Finally, a couple of months ago, I realized that outside help was needed, and I just can’t do it on my own anymore. Then I went to the initial intake appointment with Legal Aid and they accepted my case and gave me paperwork. I filled it out immediately – and then lost it. Probably threw it out by accident. I’ve been meaning to call and have them send me new paperwork, but I’ve been working during office hours for the last three weeks.

Excuses.

I don’t know why I put it off. I don’t want to be married to him anymore. I don’t really want this hanging over my head. I know that I can’t even think about marrying her or raising babies with her until it’s all over with. She can’t even properly consider herself a step-parent to my kids because, until it’s all said and done, there’s still uncertainty as to where she stands.

I want it all to be done. I want it to fix itself. I want someone else to make it go away. I fix other people’s problems. I avoid my own like the plague.

She makes me face my own reality. It’s why we’ve made it this far, it’s why I’ve grown so much.

I wish I could give her something more than Pearl Jam tickets and a long-coveted book for our anniversary. Tomorrow being Monday, I will call the lawyer before I go to work, and get the new paperwork sent to me. First chance I get, I’ll get it notarized. With any luck, the ball will be rolling before the month is over, and maybe that’s something.

I’d originally set a goal to be divorced before the end of June. I’d still like to try to make that happen. A lot depends on him and how cooperative he is. But the delays on my end are done.

I want to give her some security, settle her like she did for me.

Am I a mirror, or something more peculiar?

Oh, co-dependency, you raging, monstrous bitch, you. I try and try to shake you off, and just when I think I’ve mustered the strength to resist you, you clutch my guts in your clammy claws and cling.

I tried to bite my tongue. I tried to wait until morning, to let the ooky feelings slowly ebb away, work themselves out in dreams. I really did try.

She came in at 3:30 this morning. No sense in stirring the pot then. No sense losing sleep when we both needed to be up at 8:30 to see the kids off to their Dad’s house. Let it go, I breathed to myself, a mantra meant to calm that panic welling up inside. Let it GO! I screamed in my head, a battle cry against the irrational.

I went to bed at midnight. She’d gone out with friends. A good thing, she needs to spend more time with them, she needs to spend more time without me. A good thing. I was ok with the concept.

When she’d left, though, I’d just finished putting the kids to bed. It’d been a difficult bedtime. The littlest was still popping up to tell me “just one more thing. I love you and I want to spend the whole day with you.” Sweet words, yes, and I hear them so often it’s begun to make me cringe.

And she left. After mentioning to me that she’d gotten to spend the day with everyone else but me. We got to hang out for a little bit earlier in the day, much earlier. But for hours, my brother and the kids had her all to themselves while I cleaned the house and puttered about. She had told my brother she’d go hang out with him downstairs for a bit. When I was done with the kids, she asked me to join her because she missed me, she wanted to cuddle.

I said no, I needed to stay upstairs because I didn’t think the kids were completely settled in. I’d rather put them back to bed already upstairs than have to run up and down stairs for an hour.

Half an hour later, she came up and got ready to go. Cuddled me for ten minutes, while I tried to be happy for her.

“This is going to be hard for you, tonight,” she observed.

I tried to play it off. “What are you talking about? I don’t know what you mean.”

She gave me a Look.

“It is going to be hard for me. It’s good for us, though. I’m trying to keep positive. I keep thinking about how little time we got today, and how little time we’ll get in the next three days because of the hours I’m working–”

“Oh, baby, please don’t,” she interrupted. “I told you yesterday I was going out and you said it was ok!”

“It is ok, I want you to go out. I’m just being honest – it is going to be hard for me.”

She called me later on when she was out for linguistic advice. Her friend was writing something and needed a synonym for “irritation.” I came up with “annoyance,” “vexation,” and “pet peeve.” And that was the end of the phone call.

After hanging up, I felt strangely wounded and… well… vexed. It felt like a pity call, a call she made out of guilt for leaving me at home. Like she made up an excuse to call me and see if I was still pouting. I hadn’t been until then, but then those clingy, clammy claws commenced to clutching again. Ugh.

Then at midnight, we spoke again. I asked when she anticipated being home – not really needing to hear a specific time, but wanting to know when to expect her. She said an hour, hour and a half.

“Ok,” I replied.”

“Why do you sound so… ehhh… about that?”

“I’m not.” A bald-faced lie, but I didn’t have any reason to be “ehh,” so I kept my mouth shut on that front.

“You don’t sound happy…”

“Well, am I supposed to? Am I supposed to feel one way or the other?” I tried to laugh it off.

“Oh, you hurt my head.”

She reads me so well. It doesn’t matter what form of communication – in person, on the phone, text – she knows when I’m bubbling over with conflicting feelings. She doesn’t always realize that I’m struggling with myself and not with her, and often, she’ll give me what she thinks I want (which is what the codependent part of me often does want) just to avoid a fight. When then ends up leading to – guess? A fight!

Last night she didn’t do that. She stayed out. I’m glad she did. She needs to be with friends more.

And instead of coming home at 1:00, 1:30, like she’d said, she walked in at 3:30. Let it go, just be glad she’s home. My mantra. Go back to sleep, it’ll be better to talk about in the morning.

She sat on the bed. “You’d be proud of me tonight. I played hero. I jump-started a car not once or twice, but five times tonight.”

Let it go, it’s cool, it’s fine, I silently told myself as my mouth spontaneously opened to declare, “Once? A hero, yeah. Maybe twice. Five times? That’s just stupid.” Oh my god, you didn’t. Go back to sleep, Let It Go.

She didn’t seem to notice my bitchiness, and kept going on about the night, how the folks should have listened to her in the first place, how they ended up going to Wal-Mart to get a new battery, and then my cauldron bubbled over.

Wait till morning. Let this shit go! NOT NOW. “So that’s why you’re just coming home now?”

I half listened to her excuses – that’s my department – to be flaky and then justify and come up with excuses. I don’t remember any of them. I tried to make myself go back to sleep.

Then she said, “I sat in the parking lot for the last hour, eating cheeseburgers.”

I sat up. “Why the fuck did you do that?”

“I knew I’d be in trouble.”

You dumb bitch. “You do realize you just made everything much harder for yourself than it had to be?” Also my department. WTF is going on here? “I was prepared for you to come in at 2:00, or even 2:30. I know you. If you’d walked in at 2:30, I might have grumbled for a second or given you a little bit of a hard time, but I would have let it go!”

“I knew I’d be in trouble. I knew you’d be mad.” She sounded so small. “I knew you’d be mad, and I just couldn’t handle it then. I couldn’t deal with it.”

Ugh. “You know, I’m not mad because you’re a bad person who did a bad thing. I’m mad because I love you and I worry about you and … if I didn’t care, I wouldn’t get mad!”

Silence.

“Now you’re getting mad,” I sighed.

“No, I’m not,” she answered. “I’m really not.” Then she kissed me, surprisingly sweetly. “I love you. I think we should get some sleep.” She rolled over and wrapped my arm around her the way she does.

I was out pretty quickly. I thought it would be ok in the morning. But this morning, as I rushed around the house, getting the kids ready for their Dad’s house, and she slept so soundly, I felt resentment.

I’ve been trying to figure out what that resentment is. It’s why I write, to puzzle this shit out.

She can go wherever she wants, do whatever she wants, and whenever she wants. She doesn’t have any obligation to me or the kids. And that’s the way it should be right now. I chose to settle down young and have my babies young. And, while it wasn’t necessarily the wrong choice or a bad choice, it was a choice that created more challenges for me.

As a result of that choice, I became a single mom of two kids. I parented on my own when I was still married, and nothing really changed after we separated. Now that I’m with her, I have to find this weird balance of knowing that I don’t have to do everything all by myself anymore, and not expecting too much from her because, let’s face it – they’re not her kids, and our relationship is still in diapers.

So… do I really resent myself for complicating my own life? I’m so very good at it. I’ve noticed all the things she did last night that set me on edge are mirrors of the things I do. I’m the one that makes things harder on myself, I’m the one who avoids, I’m the one who forgets to call or stays out too late, I’m the one who plays “hero” the same way five times when the third time should be different.

Last night, she was me, and it really upset me.

She was my reflection, and I didn’t like what I’d seen.

Sharing spaces

I have readers!!! Two, near as I can tell, and I don’t know anything about them except that my page is checked once or twice a day, and I feel all gooey inside! It’s happy-making because I don’t really publicize this blog much. I’m not really sure how, because I want it to be somewhat anonymous – I don’t want too many real-life friends reading what I write here, and knowing me personally; just about everywhere I am online, I have real-life friends who could follow a link to this fantastic journey and… that just makes me uncomfortable. And while this is mostly for me, to help me sort out my own pieces of the puzzle of life, I also want to put it out there for others who could be in a similar situation to the one I’m in. Because I know they’re out there, though there isn’t a whole lot out there for us by people like us. In my case, if I were a jar, I’d be labeled, “Differently-abled lesbian mom of two, divorcing from hetero marriage, reclaiming identity given up years ago.” Among other things. Moving on from this excitement, onto real things:

I’m an avid follower of Alphafemme, and the other day she made a post about moving in with her partner and the changes that will come with combining personal spaces and dealing with tendencies towards codependency. I absolutely related, 1110%, and it’s had me thinking on the subject pretty in-depth. Back in June, after my landlord realized that my ex had left the house and I was living there alone with my kids, he had a mini-freak out. He knew I’d been a stay-at-home mom for five years, and I didn’t have a job, so he assumed that I was going to have trouble paying. He didn’t ask, and so he didn’t know that I’d had money saved up to get me through the summer, and that I had a couple of potential roommates lined up, and handed me a very official piece of paper asking me to vacate the premises after the lease was up. We had a month-to-month lease, so that left me one month to find a place. I had to simultaneously conduct a job search and an apartment hunt. Because circumstances were as they were, and because my Love’s lease was also soon to be up and she was ready to move out of her apartment, we made a snap decision – mostly out of convenience – to go ahead and move in together. We’d been together for two months at this point. Very hasty, and could have been disastrous. As it turns out, it’s worked reasonably well given the short time we knew one another and the circumstances. We had a place lined up with another roommate, a parent friend of ours with a little boy the same age as mine, and the place was huge and totally affordable with the three of us adults throwing down. Unfortunately, he and his landlords had a disagreement and his landlords would not cooperate with his house hunt and he ended up not being able to move in with us. We found this out one week prior to move-in date. This left us with one week to find a place that would fit the two of us and the kids. We found the townhouse we’re in now, which was just barely affordable to us then and we’re struggling to make ends meet now. I’ve been working my job for 7 months, and I’m just now getting 30 hours a week, after having worked 12-24 most of my time there. We’ve gone beyond pinching pennies.

Up to recently, I attributed most of our stress to money issues and having kids. I’ve tried to give her time and space to herself, knowing that she didn’t get much, aside from when she sleeps; but because there aren’t many rooms in this very expensive house, oftentimes, I find myself leaving her “alone” in the same room. She gets her emotional and mental space, but the physical space is sorely lacking. I’d not noticed until she brought it up the other day. Both of us like to hole up in our room for downtime and peace, which means that we rarely ever end up being truly, physically alone. I get more time than she does, when the kids are in bed at night and she’s at work; it’s probably why I stay up til 1 am when I have to be up early in the morning – because I value that time so much. One of the commenter’s on Alphafemme’s post made the observation that, for a successful cohabiting relationship, it’s vital for each individual to have a space to call their own – a space where one cannot easily access the other, where permission must be granted to enter. We have nothing like that here. There’s just no room for it. This isn’t to say that it can’t be made – just that we didn’t have the space for it and so it just never occurred to us to create a space for it. It is becoming painfully obvious that we need it, however. I’m brewing up a storm of ideas though, thinking how it could be done so that we can have space from one another and the kids when we need it. I’ve come up with three so far: 1) Clean up the desk area in our room, plug in the headphones and crank up the tunes, and immerse ourselves in the task at hand; 2)Carry the laptop and headphones to whatever part of the house is empty and immerse ourselves in the task at hand; 3)Clean out the downstairs coat closet and create a private nook for being alone and getting things done. The first solution doesn’t allow for physical space, but one could easily trick herself into thinking she was alone if she had the music up sufficiently. The second solution would work better when the kiddos are at their dad’s house; otherwise, it could be a potential struggle. The third solution might actually be the best solution – if we could figure out where to put the pile of crap that currently inhabits the closet. Not just where to put it, but how to subdue that menacing mess, because, I tell you what, the closet, as it stands right now, kind of freaks me out.

After having spent all of yesterday in bed with her, doing absolutely nothing, I’ve also decided – and she’s agreed – that we need to make a regular commitment to getting out of the house together and doing something. Anything – even if it’s just a walk downtown. Once a week. Because yesterday should have felt blissfully relaxing. It didn’t. Because we spent that time in bed together doing what we always do when we share downtime: playing around on the stupid computer and sleeping. Granted, she really needed a day like that, where she didn’t need to move except to pee or eat, and that part of it was good for me, too. It just highlighted how much of our shared time is wasted on the mundane, rather than reinforcing the truly beautiful connection we have with one another. And we’ve agreed that going to the bar, going out to eat, going to the grocery store, and running errands do not count as “getting out” together.

Perhaps we should also make a commitment to tackling a project together once or twice a month… we did a collage piece together a couple of months ago, and we had so much fun with that. We collaged a shoebox with pictures of all the things we want to save money for, and it was a great way for us to get creative and silly together, while also sharing dreams and wishes with one another. We could do something like that again. Or… we could tackle that downstairs closet and create a cozy little nook to save both of us from going completely insane……..

Oh, the possibilities!!!

Introductory Post

I’ve decided to begin a sister blog to my original, with this one having the focus on what it means to be a lesbian and a mother.  I’ve been trying to find resources that are applicable to my situation, and there just don’t seem to be too many out there.  I’ve run across others looking for the same kinds of materials, and it’s a common frustration we share: we just can’t seem to find enough. 

My situation isn’t a unique one.  I was in a hetero marriage for over 9 years, and had two awesome and beautiful kids.  My husband and I split up, and several months later, I came out as a lesbian.  Not long after that, I fell in love with the most amazing woman, completely unexpectedly – I mean this was *not* in my plans at all, I was fully prepared to be a single mom for a while and take some time out from relationships.  But the Powers That Be (heretofore known as the PTB’s) had other designs in mind, and pulled our little puppet strings every way possible, so that two months into our relationship, we were living together and she was ready to commit to the kids.  We’ve now been together six months, and though it’s been really hard at times, there’s no end in sight. 

At any rate, my partner, whom I will refer to at present as Pickle (though I reserve the right to change that at any point in time), wants to be more of a parent to the kiddos, and they love the hell out of her and can’t get enough of her.  But there are boundary issues, and custody issues, and conflicts with their dad, and it’s been really hard on both of us, not to mention the kids. 

I just got a craving for nachos with jalapenos.  Oh yum.

And try as I might, I can’t find many resources for people in our situation: lesbians who fall in love with kids already in the picture.  I would love to hear from the voice of experience on the subject, and I hope to add my voice to the collective.  I want to put my thoughts out there in the hopes that they can help someone else muddle through their own complicated issues with divorce, parenting, sexual preference, and new relationships.If you’ve stumbled across my blog by chance or by intention, please feel free to friend me.  All entries here will be public, because I want my perspective to be shared.

As a side note: The title of this journal, and the name, is borrowed from the Delerium f/Sarah MacLachlan song “Silence”.  It is one of my all-time favorite songs, and my favorite of Sarah’s.  I also happen to love Delerium tremendously, and have other songs of theirs I like better, but that’s neither here nor there.  The point is, I wanted to point out that what I took from the song was an emphasis on living in the moment, not struggling against the waves that threaten to over come one in life, but sinking into them, thereby liberating oneself from fear.  I want to hold that sentiment true in this journal.  That is ultimately my goal.  To explore these issues, yes, but to do so from a perspective of letting go, and sinking into the waves, being free.

That said, I’m going to so sink into my pillows and catch a little sleep.

Blessings,
A.