Tag: love

About Me

Awkward Encounters and Discovering Myself

Autumn

A random woman walked into my house today.

Okay, so that was an exaggeration. She opened the door slightly, my dog went totally crazy with barking and rushed at the door, so she closed it and quickly hurried off. I followed outside to see what the heck, and with a huge amount of embarrassment and number of apologies, she explained that she had the wrong house and she was actually going over to my neighbor’s. She also said that my dog was a great guard dog.

So that happened.

I probably should keep my door locked more, if only because it’s one of those neighborhoods where all the houses are similar. I’ve even driven past my own place when I wasn’t paying close enough attention.

In other news I had a cavity filled recently, and the one thing the assistant asked me was if I was going to travel anywhere for Spring Break. I kind of had a moment of, “Why are we talking about Spring Break in February?” Followed by that awkward feeling of, “I’m not going to find any common ground with this person.” Which was fine, because for the majority of the time my tooth was getting drilled and I couldn’t have participated in the conversation if I had wanted to. Which I didn’t, because I actually really hate traveling. Ha ha, so grumpy.

Personally I would have preferred it if the topic had been, “Nice snowstorm we recently had,” or even, “What’s your favorite flavor of ramen?” A vague, “What do you do for fun?” would have brought out a conversation about Netflix. Oh, yes, I recently started watching Squid Game. I love it, and I can totally see why it’s so popular.

But travel?

Well, that’s just too privileged. Like I have the money for that.

Then afterwards my face hurt for the rest of the day. Unfortunately I’m always sensitive to … everything. I never bounce right back from anything. 😅

Ever since then I’ve been thinking about socializing. I’m a lot better at it now than I used to be, but I still hit moments where I don’t know how to work with someone, and I’ve been reminding myself that it’s okay. No, I’m not reverting to being quiet and shy, I’m just not vibing with someone (is that what the kids say?). That same day at the dentist’s office, I had a wonderful conversation with the receptionist while half my mouth was paralyzed. And it’s fine. Not everyone catches each other’s wavelength, and I don’t have to connect with anyone I don’t want to.

It’s just awkward sometimes, knowing that I’ve been blossoming into the world lately, and yet I’m also still that person who sometimes has nothing to say. Both are the true me, and they can coexist without negating each other.

Because that’s what I’m doing right now: discovering the real me. Not the version that had to play up femininity or stand quietly on the sidelines so someone else could grab all the attention. I don’t exist in any sort of support role managing someone else’s life and image anymore.

Just my life, my image.

Whatever that is.

About Me

Finding Freedom in Being Single: A Middle-Aged Perspective

Autumn

Now that I’ve hit my late 30’s, I’ve become aware of the trend to marry and have the spouse do all the hard work of raising kids and securing stability, only to then turn around and dump that spouse to coast through the easier part of life with someone else.

Rude.

Sometimes the word ‘love’ is tossed around like it’s magical justification, but love has nothing to do with it — love doesn’t inspire people to hurt everyone around them. If you ask me (which nobody did), it’s not simply about laziness; it’s about erasing the one person who knows that they didn’t build their life on their own merit.

They didn’t really get up at 2am to feed the baby every night, but they’ll certainly tell their next partner that they did.

It’s about controlling the narrative.

Not putting up with the person who’s far from their best self because they’re overworked and exhausted.

Anyway, we don’t want to sound bitter, though maybe wiser. Getting older makes one realize just how many people have the dressings but not the substance. Stolen light.

The longer that I’m single, the more I want to stay this way. It’s a relief to never hear the words, “What’s for dinner” or “That’s your job”. I picked out the sheets for my bed based solely on my own preferences. I like that my driving revolves around safety and patience, so I never feel trapped in the passenger seat while someone else grows too competitive for comfort.

Not to mention escaping all the marriage advice that seems to always boil down to: the woman is at fault.

When you’re divorced, there’s this unspoken assumption that you’re supposed to miss the companionship. Sometimes its self-imposed in an attempt to justify why you got married in the first place. Was the companionship worth it? In my case, no. “Companionship” seemed to involve a lot of tiptoeing, a lot of disappointments, and a lot of feeling eclipsed. It was the sort of companionship that makes watching TV alone feel more restful and fulfilling. So I don’t miss it.

Speaking of TV, I bought a new one for my birthday and set it up in my bedroom. After years and years of hearing all about how TV is brainwashing, I now have it playing almost constantly. I love brainwashing. Can’t get enough of it. I want to be brainwashed day and night. Yup, that brainwashing sure feels liberating.

Even though my income is a fraction of what it used to be, I feel like I have more money now that every purchase is no longer subjected to someone else’s gaze. Anyone who thinks that it only matters if you have something to hide has never lived under that perpetual scowl of disapproval. It’s the sort of thing that becomes clear in its absence, how something as simple as a facial expression can suck out so much joy and motivation.

About Me

Coping with False Allegations in Co-Parenting

Autumn

Back in November I hurt my knee, and now when I sit for too long my calf muscle becomes tight and painful. I probably should have started wearing some sort of knee brace back when the injury happened, but I could never muster up the motivation to buy one. Modern life is rather tricky when sitting triggers pain like this.

I keep thinking about last summer when he made allegations of neglect against me, filed with the court with no investigation or evidence, in an effort to gain full custody. I answered the door with all the kids eating in the dining room, had the papers served to me, and had to hold it all together while keeping everything a secret.

A few days ago I learned that he had been going around telling people that I was neglecting the kids around the same time — including when we had been out on coparenting activities together.

I had suspected it. I’ve watched enough Dr Ramani to know that this sort of behavior is typical for a certain personality type, but the confirmation feels like an entirely different beast.

It hurts to remember how I had been running myself ragged trying to achieve everything single-handedly, while at the same time he was spreading false allegations against me. Heck, I even coordinated and paid for weekly picnics to get him to spend more time with the kids, and that was his response. Brush your teeth, brush your hair, three meals a day, laundry laundry laundry, homeschooling, soothe tears and fix problems, put up with him telling me I’m a bad mother for letting the toddler get more than three feet away from me on the sidewalk, spend all my money on things the children need while I go without, rinse and repeat day after day after day.

Only to be accused of negligence.

The silver lining is that my hard work was so obvious, the people who knew me didn’t believe it for a second and were enormously horrified at his behavior. I wouldn’t be where I am today if his actions hadn’t spoken of how badly I needed help to get through.

Now here I am and I can’t get it off of my mind. Logically I know why it happened — as I’ve said, I’ve watched enough Dr Ramani to understand it. That doesn’t stop it from feeling like a core wound. I had always dedicated every moment of every day to the well being of my children, and now it’s permanently on record with the court that he had made the allegations against me. The part where he didn’t have any evidence against me is a footnote at the very end.

And the violation of learning that he had been accusing me of negligence just outside of earshot? I don’t know how I feel about that.

Maybe this is the sort of post that qualifies as “too personal” or too emotional, but writing helps me process. If we always keep our stories secret then we’ll never know how many others have endured and survived similar, and we need to know that we aren’t alone.

About Me

Facing Life’s Surreal Challenges: My Journey

Autumn

I have lots of moments throughout the day when I’m overcome with the surreal thought of, “How is this my life?”

I’m not sure how much I should publicly share. Parts of it make me think of the line, “Lawyers clean up all details / since daddy had to lie” from the song End of Innocence by Don Henley, and the title itself feels apt enough.

There are days when it’s easier to lose myself in a list of things that have to be done, and not think about the big picture of what I’m doing. My heart stops every time the doorbell rings, and I wish that this wasn’t my reality.

Events are traveling through the neighborhood grapevine faster than I would have ever expected, but by now I have surrendered my pride and laid everything bare. People are more supportive than I anticipated, and I like how they periodically check in with me. I don’t really care if it’s morbid curiosity or genuine concern, as long as I have people surrounding me through all this.

I still feel hopelessly lost. I keep wondering when that feeling will fade, when something will come together and start to feel solid, but instead everything under my feet keeps crumbling.

And I don’t even know how much I should share, because it’s moved into the legal sphere now.

For all my life, I heard divorce talked about like it was an ending. In reality, it’s a beginning. Sometimes people take it as permission to punish you, to erase you, to make your life as miserable as they can. After all, why should they care? They’ve already moved on to their new partner, and you’re just a loose end and a failure. An object that no longer serves a purpose.

But I’m not.

I will not be erased. I will not surrender my life just because someone thinks that my existence is inconvenient now.

And the legal sphere is where I still have rights and a voice — where my story still matters.

So as much as I wish it had never been pushed this far, as unreal as it feels to be going through these events, I will not surrender. Not with everything that’s at stake.

About Me

Embracing Self-Confidence Post-Divorce

Autumn

I’ve been feeling really good about my physical appearance lately.

I find it very affirming that divorced me has healthier coloring and less bloating. Divorced me is more confident in my own body. Divorced me is better at socializing with complete strangers.

Not that I’m claiming rampant improvements across the board. I still haven’t figured out a huge portion of my life, so being able to smile at my reflection in the mirror feels like a small win.

I think that I’ve been doing a lot of internal improvements, particularly with rewriting my internal self to embrace the idea that I don’t have to be invisible. I’ve been working to join the “warm social world,” and have been pleasantly surprised at how many people respond positively to my comments about the weather (and other various small talk topics). Instead of being constantly self-critical and internalizing far too much, I just aim to be friendly and curious, and let everything else be as it is.

Awhile ago I mentioned that I’ve been trying to emulate what I think a strong and admirable character would do in my shoes. I admit that I feel plenty of pressure to throw myself out there and pursue success (why haven’t you found a real job yet?), but I think it’s important to fix the parts of me that led me to rock bottom, so to speak. Otherwise I might end up playing out the same story with new costumes.

And when I think of myself as the bleeding heart who was terrified of the spotlight, I realize how inevitable my fate was.

Not that I want to stop being empathic and supportive. Rather, I know that I need to do a better job of letting people go when I get bad vibes from them — something I witnessed in myself more recently when I kept a conversation going with someone who I strongly felt like they had huge red flags surrounding them, and I absolutely hated talking to them. I probably should have ghosted them, but I kept feeling guilty every time I didn’t reply.

So I really want to internalize the idea that it’s not wrong to protect myself from people who clash with me. It’s not wrong to prioritize people who make me feel safe to be around.

I don’t have to be the one who’s always understanding. I don’t have to be the one who’s patient and never gives up. I don’t have to be anyone’s savior — and I have learned to acknowledge the hubris that drives that particular ideology in the first place.

Phrases like, “No one understands me” are red flags, not challenges. Don’t try to be better and prove otherwise. Save the empathy and support for someone who appreciates it.

About Me

Finding Purpose After Divorce: A Personal Journey

Autumn

A divorce was a huge blow to my philosophical foundation.

For my entire life, I was unapologetically a believer in Love. After all, I had Venus in Pisces in my astrological chart, so there was no chance that I wouldn’t go through life full of whimsy and romance. If you do your best to be good to someone, then they’ll be good to you in return, right? Cue happily ever after?

Except … no.

Maybe the world isn’t full of people who are trying to do their best. Maybe there are too many personality disorders who are all too willing to exploit others. Maybe selfish transactional-ism is the law of the land, and you should never believe anyone who claims otherwise.

And maybe there is no such thing as partners for life anymore. Maybe society is just too broken.

Throughout the entire process, I stated repeatedly that I didn’t want a divorce and that I opposed the idea, but he had done something back in April (that I haven’t the guts to talk about) that resulted in an enormous amount of social pressure on me to go through with it. From complete strangers, to boot. And given that he was solid in his decision to dump me, there wasn’t anything to fight for. Everyone around me said that it was for the best.

Worldview be damned.

But then, what do I believe in now?

One of my biggest fears is to end up as a bitter old woman, that people get together and blow off steam about over coffee because I’m that difficult to put up with. So eventually I have to find a new purpose — that is my end goal here.

And it dawned on me that my philosophical foundation was bigger than I had previously realized.

I’m still a mother, still doing my best day after day to love and support my children, homeschooling them, sharing in their interests, and cleaning up after them — my first duty is to them and their well-being.

I still have an image of the sort of person I want to be, full of life and optimism, wise yet forever untainted by the hardships of life.

Maybe my happily ever after doesn’t include a male partner, but I’m not lonely. I still have people to love, and who love me in return. I can still have an open heart.

Life doesn’t run a clear course
It flows through from within
It’s supposed to take you places and leave markings on your skin

Poets of the Fall – Love Will Come to You

About Me

Embracing Change: My Journey After Divorce

Autumn

It’s been a very bad year.

I’m still pretty scared to talk about specifics, so suffice to say that I had a plethora of brand new experiences, met a variety of people, and stepped well outside of my comfort zone in ways that I never would have imagined.

Oh, and I’m also now divorced.

Turns out that you can spend years working your butt off to love and care for your soulmate, only to have it turn out that you’re the wrong “context” for them and they don’t want to be with you anymore. Oh, and they also loathe the way you state the obvious. And the way you associate concepts together. And, and, and …

Maybe one day my heart will stop hemorrhaging.

You know all those statistics that claim that women fare better emotionally after divorces? Not true in my case. Aside from the soul-crushing devastation, there’s the intense feelings of betrayal and rejection, as well as feeling like a defective failure at life. Did this happen because I’m too fat? I dunno. Better stop eating just in case.

Only I know I’m not fat. It’s the stress and pain triggering body dysmorphia — my subconscious attempt to take control of something that’s completely out of my control. Even if I weighed only 90lbs and had the flattest abs in the world, I’d still be discarded. I’m still “that” woman.

So I’ve spent hours and hours crying until I was too dehydrated and exhausted to keep crying. I’ve had numerous meltdowns, and moments when it felt like I didn’t have the strength to keep living. Life doesn’t come with a pause button that lets you get your feet back underneath you, it just keeps plowing ahead no matter what’s going on, and getting dragged along leaves you feeling even more banged up.

Then one day I woke up and I felt like eating again. So it is true that time does eventually heal some wounds.

Though I am now dirt-eating poor.

I looked into getting a job or attending an online community college, but those options didn’t feel remotely right for me. You know how it is when everything you built up over the years gets abruptly yanked out from underneath you, you feel trapped in an aimless free fall where absolutely nothing could possibly get worse than it already is, and you say to yourself, “Well, I did always want to earn a living as a writer.”

That’s what I’m going to do.

I’m going to earn a living as a writer. It’s not just about getting by, but finding a new purpose in life — a reason for everything, and a means to express the hurt.

When I feel sad, I can research and implement marketing tactics to keep myself distracted (especially now that I know that I can survive far outside of my comfort zone). I can write about how much I hate men in my novels (facetious exaggeration, don’t take that seriously). I can start churning out as much fiction as I can possibly write, and I will build a new life for myself that can’t be unraveled so easily. And I will do it all while still cooking delicious dinners and homeschooling my children, because I can be that awesome no matter how hard it is. Sleep is overrated anyway.

I’ve spent the last few months telling myself over and over, “If you want things to be different, then you have to do something different.”

And I’m starting to feel ready to do something different.

art

Love

Autumn

I joined Night Cafe for making AI art, because while each creation costs “credits,” they offer a lot more options and control over what you can make.

Every day, Night Cafe holds a contest where they announce a theme for members to submit AI art, then people vote on the entries — the one that averages the highest rating wins.

A few days ago, the theme was “Love.” After spending some time thinking about it, I decided what I wanted to do, and after a few tries, managed to create this image:

It was something of a trick, and I repeatedly specified that I wanted a “normal baby,” — with negative prompts for things like, “scary,” and “creepy.” I discovered earlier in my playing around with Stable Diffusion, that the AI has a hard time understanding what constitutes a “cute baby.”

Nightmare fuel

As much as I would have liked to have a dad present in a loving family portrait, the addition was beyond my current skill level. But, as a picture of a mother and baby, I’m really pleased with what I was able to create.

Motherhood has been getting dumped on for the last 50 years, to the point where women have internalized the misogynistic messages. You aren’t “just a mom.” You aren’t “wasting your life.” You ARE contributing to society — by raising and shaping the next generation. Please, stop listening to those toxic messages and learn to love yourself and what you are doing. Motherhood really is beautiful and important.

I wasn’t the only one who submitted a picture of a mother with a baby for this contest — a huge number of other people did, too. The winning picture was of an old man and woman, illustrating that Love is spending your life with someone.

Funny how it’s artificial intelligence that is revealing what people actually feel in their hearts.

About Me

Love

Autumn

Last year or so, I got into an online argument with someone. 😀

I don’t, usually. I’m perfectly aware that it’s a fruitless waste of time, so why bother, etc, etc, etc. But this one guy was all, “Men don’t need women,” and I wanted to blow off some steam.

Women are really only necessary if you want a future for humankind.

Anyway, that guy elaborated his comment to mean that love flows in one direction, going God -> Man -> Woman -> Child. God loves men, men love women, women love children, but children apparently don’t love anything? Except for maybe their pet cat. And cats love food. No arguments there.

Ha ha, I can’t even blog about this without making fun of it.

So, according to this guy’s logic, men get all their love from God, and therefore don’t need women.

I imagine that this guy’s life story is very lonely and depressing.

Love is significantly more interconnected than that. I know that as a mother, I feel an enormous amount of love from my children. They like to pick flowers for me, or climb to the top of the jungle gym and shout, “MOM I LOVE YOU!” They also love Dad, and like to get his favorite candy at the grocery store, or help him with his work.

As a family, we all very much love each other. The idea of one of us not needing the others is absurd.

Don’t go around assuming that men don’t need love from their wives and children — they very much do. Far more than they let on, too.

byautumnrain.com

About Me

Romance

Autumn

This month, my husband and I celebrate 12 years together.

It was one of those “love-at-first-sight” whirlwind romances that everyone insists is unrealistic and guaranteed to fail. Yet here we still are, and there’s no one else I’d rather go through the fall of civilization with. 😉

So…

Don’t let the critics and naysayers stop you from making your own destiny.