I’m two weeks away from getting married. I tried to make sure that my mom would be invited, but sadly she showed her ass about a month ago and I haven’t talked to her since. Because of that, and my no bullshit tolerance policy, her invite has been revoked. Instead, my brother will be there with my grandmother as our two witnesses. Hey, I tried. I tried for the fourteen millionth time to make her apart of something involving my life, and she blew up and threw it all away to play victim to something that wasn’t even a big deal. At one point during her verbal tirade, I put her on speaker phone and let Andy listen in as she dissolved into tears about how when she had no place to go, I wouldn’t let her live with me, but I moved my grandmother in, without a second thought. I reminded her that when Chesley left me for that lazy-eyed, anorexic, pill-popping bitch … and my daughter and I had nowhere to go, her hospitality only extended about an arms length (which is to say that we were allowed to stay there as long as her crack-smoking boyfriend allowed it), and then she tossed us out on the streets. I slept in my car when I didn’t have my daughter, and we stayed in hotels the rest of the time. Those were difficult times, and my mother didn’t care. Of course, when I brought that up to my narcissist mother, she saw the story an entirely different way. According to her, I had men (I was dating one guy) coming in and our of her apartment (that was being paid for by another man who had no idea of the crack head boyfriend my mom had living in there), and that I wasn’t paying any bills to help her. She couldn’t afford for us to live there – (even though I had a full-time job and did give her money.) She ended up getting hysterical screaming and I hung up on her. But at least Andy got to hear first-hand the kind of shit she pulls when she gets in one of her moods.

Having those two things happen one right after the other (Chesley beating, cheating, then throwing me and my daughter out for another woman, and then my mom throwing us out because her boyfriend didn’t like us) ….. it really, really helped me grow as a person. From that moment on, everything that I had, was something that I bought and worked hard to obtain. I always knew that if something else ever happened and I lost another man in my life, that at least the things (and the house) were mine. I will never put my daughter through something like that again.Granted, she was so young that she doesn’t remember, but I do. And I remember how scared I was that we were going to end up sleeping in the streets while Chesley went on with his life playing house with another woman. I mean, they did eventually get married, and now they are getting divorced … karma does its due justice in time, I suppose. 

So, no mother and no father at my wedding in two weeks (which is just court house formalities anyway) …. but more than I would admit to anyone, I really wish it were different. I wish I had at least one of the two there to witness my happiness. None of them care, though. Not a single one. A mom, a biological dad, and a step-dad …. and not one of them gives a shit. At 30 years old, I really shouldn’t let it bother me … but sometimes it does. Sometimes it does way more than it should. And I hate that I let that little bit of weakness in. I hate that I wish I had them. I wish I didn’t care. These people are out living their lives while you have people like my uncle, who was an amazing father …dead at 45 years old. I think about him a lot. July will be a year that he’s been gone. He was a wonderful father. Men like that shouldn’t die at 45. It leaves the world with less people like him and more people like my parents. 

Everything else is on track. We get Andy’s kids for a week starting next Saturday. Then we are getting married, and then life will continue on as normal … except I will have a new last name and a great guy to go with it. 

Andy and I went and got our marriage license yesterday. That was kind of exciting. I mean, I did the marriage thing eleven years ago and that lasted all of eight months. I know how the whole process goes – but at least this time I’m marrying someone that I actually want to marry. Someone that I can see myself spending the rest of my life with. Someone that I have known for almost twenty years, but never really saw because I was 12 and he was 17. I told him that if I knew then what I know now, I would have walked into his room when I was 12 and told him that one day we would be married. Then we laughed at how asinine that would have sounded back in 1998. 

We decided to do a simple courthouse wedding, because we just can’t afford to go all out and do something lavish. Not only that, but I don’t really talk to a lot of people, and I don’t even know who would show up to a wedding of mine. I have really become so introverted in my own shell, perfectly content to spend all of my time with Andy and our kids. I don’t like to party or go out drinking. I speak to a few of my friends of Facebook but very rarely see them in person. I think my closest friends that I have known the longest, live ten minutes down the road, and I haven’t seen them in over ten years. I exert all of my energy throughout the week on my patients. On the weekends I spend my time with Andy because we don’t get to see each other very much through the week. Typically I’m exhausted on the weekends and I’m in bed by midnight, despite sleeping in. Now that Julie is almost twelve, I am afforded the luxury of sleeping in without worrying about my kid needing something fixed to breakfast, or that she’s going to roam outside and play in the street. I must say, I am enjoying this stage of her life. I was not for the baby years. I was a decent mother, but I could have been better. There are times where I miss her younger years, but for the most part I am thrilled at how independent she is; how smart and quick-thinking.

Chesley has finally given up and moved on. Once he realized that I wasn’t leaving Andy to get back with him, he slowed down on the subtle remarks though he did let me know one last time that he has to live with how he treated me every day, and he has to live with what he lost. 

This morning, Andy told me that I make him the happiest that he’s ever been. It was nice conformation. Sometimes, because he isn’t the most affectionate man, I often wonder if he’s just comfortable with me, or if he’s really happy. When he tells me things like this it makes me happy. It gives me hope. He gives me hope.  

I’ve been doing a lot of browsing in the ‘Infidelity’ tag here on WordPress. Mostly I come across the blogs of women that have been cheated on by their husbands of 15+ years. Some they have found have been doing it for years and years and years. Others are new to the game. Then there are these blogs of people that are doing the cheating. I think I was taken by surprise, because I don’t think I’d ever blog about something so …. wrong? I don’t think that’s the word I’m looking for, but I lack better verbage this morning. 

Nobody is perfect. I understand that. But I can also say with great confidence that I understand being cheated on and I understand cheating. It’s happened to me and I’ve done it before. Let me explain to you how it feels from both sides. 

Cheating

It’s the thrill of having someone to come home to, while at the same time having something new and exciting on the side. It’s the ultimate game of life that you get to play. You have to be sneaky, cover your tracks, come up with clever excuses all in the pursuit of someone that you lust after or even think that you love. You may have children and feel stuck in the proverbial housewife role, and need something that just makes you feel alive again. You could be like I was, and living in an abusive relationship at home and need to feel the comforting arms of another person that tells you just how special you are. You could just be an asshole that likes to cut their cake and eat it too. There are so many reasons that a person strays outside of their marriage/relationship. There are always excuses, there are always “well if they didn’t do this … I wouldn’t …” and it’s all crap. All of it. You have to constantly lie so much that you begin to lose track of what lie you told for what story. You get sloppy in your work. You think the person you’re committed too is none-the-wiser. If you’re a man that’s cheating, trust and damn believe that women have some crazy intuition. We know when something is off. I’m not a man, so I’m not sure how unsuspecting men are when it comes to their spouse running around. I know that I never got physically caught doing anything when I was in my early twenties – but there were times that I would have to make sure I wore my hair down, or used enough foundation to cover up an accidental hickey. I became withdrawn from my partner, uninterested in anything he had to say about anything. The more he hit me, the more I pulled away. 

But I should have just left him. I should have packed my stuff and walked out of the door. I shouldn’t have cheated. Granted, he never found out, and I was lucky that he didn’t. It was with someone very close to him, and he probably would have killed me. I’m pretty sure of it, actually. People don’t deserve to die for reasons like those, but at least he would have been more justified to come after me than the reasons he used when he was hitting me for the floor not being swept correctly, or the laundry not being folded by the time he got home. If he hit me for that, imagine what would have happened if he would have found out. 

You really do put yourself in danger when you do things like this. No matter how calm, and cool, and collected you think someone is … when you push them to limits of hurt that they haven’t felt before, well … crimes of passion have that name for a reason. I think his second wife cheated on him and he ended up driving his car through the IHop she worked at. 

Being Cheated On

Here’s the big one. I don’t think there is any other pain quite like finding out the person that you are completely devoted to, has decided that you just aren’t good enough to satisfy their every need. They have essentially said “Hey, love having you at home to cook my food, clean up, take care of the kids, work full-time, and give it up to me whenever I feel like it, but there’s just something that I’m not getting from you. I like the hot, younger version of you. I like who you used to look like before age and wrinkles crept in. You’re too familiar. You’re too … you.” And suddenly, being you isn’t good enough. And once you find that out, it is something that sticks with you forever. 

In an instant, you lose faith in everyone, everything, and especially yourself. You are destroyed from the inside out. You look in the mirror and hate everything looking back at you.  You burst into tears at random times throughout the day. You are essentially grieving the death of something that was once very much alive. You go through denial, anger, sadness, acceptance, and then eventually you move on, but you’re never the same. Everything in the house reminds you of them. Places that you go remind you of them. Songs on the radio are all suddenly very sad. You can’t eat, you can’t sleep without crying, you can’t function anymore. Who you are is changed. You are changed forever. You become damaged goods for the next person whom you won’t trust for God-knows how long. You have been destroyed by someone that doesn’t even deserve to have that part of you. But you can’t help it, because you love them, because that’s what you are supposed to do. You just did a better job of it than they did. And you’re the one that gets to suffer. 

Something else I have learned is that Karma is one monster of something you don’t want to mess with. After the cheating I did on the abusive guy, even without him finding out about what I did, he cheated on me and left me for someone else. He was just the first in a line of many that would cheat and leave me. Every time I thought karma was finished with  me; that I couldn’t possibly pay anymore penance than I already had … here she came again with her teeth grinding and a smile on her face. And because he also cheated on me years after I cheated on him … Karma swooped around and got him seven years later with the destruction of his marriage. I was the first one he called, wanting to get back together. Never again. Not only have I grown as a person, I would never want to run the risk of cheating on someone ever again – and since the person I cheated on him with is still very much in his life, there is no way I could do it. Not only that, but I’m not willing to have my ass beat anymore. No man will ever put his hands on me. Ever again.

I say all of this, because I have been reading so many blogs. I have blog friends that simply don’t want to live anymore, and it has been over two years since they were cheated on and left. They can’t move on, they can’t let go of the hurt, and the pain is so bad that they just want to end it all. And it’s heartbreaking to see that one action can destroy an entire person. One lady is rebuilding her marriage after she quietly followed the actions of her husband while he was screwing some girl in town that wanted him to leave his wife and kids for her. She tracked his moves, recorded his phone calls, installed software on his computer, and a multitude of other things and sat back until she felt the time was right to let him know just how much she knew. There is another blogger that is trying their hardest to work through the affair, but there are triggers that send them crying at the most random times and it effects their relationship. 

When you do this stuff, you destroy so many people in the process. You are selfish and uncaring about anything or anyone else. And I can honestly say that, because I did it. I was in those shoes. I was a horrible person. What I did was disgusting and I deserved everything that came to me because of it. 

And if you’re cheating, you do too. 

Thanksgiving Holidays felt a lot shorter than it was. Probably because Andy and I spent nine hours on the road Thursday and then thirteen hours on the road Sunday going to and from Indiana. Traffic was hell on the way home, but I was stuck in the car with Andy and his amazing singing. I always figured he could carry a tune based on him playing around with singing silly stuff …. but I had no idea just how good he was. 

We had a great time with the kids. We went to Fort Wayne on Friday and then Indianapolis on Saturday. We did some indoor swimming, at which time both kids tried to drown one another so that was short-lived. It was nice to see Andy laugh and smile in all the ways that he does when he has a children with him. It was also nice to spend time with him, away from my grams and his mom and the chaos of the house. 

I haven’t heard much from Chesley since I turned his offer down of him being mine “forever”. I don’t know if it was just the shock to his ego that someone would actually turned him down, or if he’s butt-hurt and licking his wounds. Or maybe he has just always used me for personal gain and cares not one bit about me beyond that. If I can’t service his life, he won’t take the time to keep up with me. His loss, though. I waited a long time for him to get his crap together so we could give it another go. I guess it was God’s way of saying “Um, he beat the crap out of you. He’s never going to change.” 

I don’t know how many times I can give one person multiple chances to change. It never really works out that way. I guess in the back of my mind, I figured that Chesley has finally seen what it is to be with the worst kind of person, and because of that he would treat me better. 

But there isn’t anyone on this planet that I would sacrifice my current relationship for. I fully intend to be Mrs. Czeck by the end of March. Not that I’m sure how he financially thinks we can pull a wedding off. I still just wish we could go down to the courthouse and do it and be done with it. So many dramatics to become legally bound to someone, I swear. So much unnecessary money spent on something that lasts a few hours. I don’t know. I’m not trying to knock down those that have done it, I just don’t personally see the big deal on if you do it in a huge church with 500 people or if you do it in the court house with two witnesses. But, whatever he wants, I will try my best to deliver. 

Christmas is fast approaching and it makes me nervous; the amount of money we are about to spend on all of these children. Julie wants a new laptop and some expensive markers that last forever for her drawing. The older they get, the more expensive they get. I always thought it the other way around. I was wrong. So wrong. 

Let’s keep pushing forward. The weekend is almost here. 

Chesley and his wife are separating, again. Of course this time it’s “for real” …. as if they haven’t done this a hundred times over the past seven years. It goes as it always does; I don’t hear from him for months and months and then out of nowhere I’m blasted with text messages about their problems and how alone he is, and how bad his anxiety is, how much he needs my friendship and help to get him through some of these times. I’m always there for him, despite our past and his abuse. I forgave him a long time ago for what he did to me. But, just because I have, doesn’t mean the scars aren’t still there. It also doesn’t mean I won’t always love him in some way. 

What always floors me are his assumptions that he and I can just pick up where we left off. He knows and understands that I’m engaged to Andy, and still I get a text message last night from him saying that he has found the perfect house for us, and he starts naming all of the specs. He said he promises that he will be mine forever, that he won’t make that mistake again. It made me so sad for him. I know how his mind works. And once upon a time I knew him better than anyone on the planet. Once upon a time he would come home from work, throw his keys on the counter, tell me the truck needed gas and he needed cigarettes and off I’d go after having worked a full day myself. I washed his clothes, I cooked for him, sex whenever he wanted, stayed up late so he wasn’t alone, lie in bed on work nights talking to him because he just felt like he needed too. He still cheated on me, he still left me, and he still married her. Now seven years later, everything that I told him was going to happen, did happen. I told him years ago that there would come a day he would realize what he threw away. And it’s not that I’m some prize in the looks department, but I am very submissive in catering to my man’s every need. It’s just my personality. 

To top it off, his brother was messaging me all day yesterday telling me about how he and Chesley talk about me every day while they are working together, and how much Chesley is still in love with me and believes we were meant to be. 

I felt absolutely nothing but sadness for him. No butterflies, no entertaining thoughts of “what if” …. there was nothing. After seven years of being apart and after ten years of knowing him, I can honestly say that I feel nothing romantic for him. I wouldn’t trade Andy for a million Chesley’s or anyone else. If I were with someone else, perhaps it is something I would consider as long as I knew he took his medication like he was supposed to. But with Andy? Not a chance. Nobody will ever hold a candle to him. 

I guess the hardest part of all of this is knowing that Chesley needs me because I am what he depends on when shit goes bad. And for the first time, I have to tell him that I can only be there for him from a distance, because it wouldn’t be right or fair to Andy that I get involved in his life on a deeper level than distant friendship. I don’t think it would be good for me to. And a flaw that I have is that I try to make sure I can fix everyone and everything around me. I try to make sure people know they can depend on me no matter what. And this time …. I just can’t. Because what Chesley wants is me back with him. The way he operates is on an “all or nothing” mindset. And this time, I’m not willing to throw everything away on the one man I never thought I’d get over. 

But I did. And all I can do is pray for him, as I did last night. I really hope he finds happiness with someone that will treat him the way that I did. 

This will be mine and Andy’s first Christmas together, next month. Despite how long we’ve had this ….. relationship thing going on. When he lived here two years ago, he moved down in March and was gone the day after Thanksgiving. I spent an entire year and a half without him, and now here he is again, having moved back in May (I think). I’m kind of excited to finally wake up with him on Christmas and turn on the fireplace and sit near the tree and just be together.

Thursday we are leaving in the morning and making the 11 hour drive to Indiana to stay for the weekend. We haven’t seen his kids since the first week of August, and we miss them …. plus we love road trips, plus I need to get out of that house for a few days where I can spend some time with just him (and the kids) and not have interfering parties. My grandmother has become an increasingly difficult pain in the ass as of late. No matter what I do to appease her, she finds something new to complain about. She gets upset if she doesn’t have money to spend. I make sure she has money. She walks around the house dictating when things need to be done despite the fact that both Andy and I work full-time. I told her yesterday that it took her three weeks just to unpack her bedroom, yet she expects us to have the entire house done? She threw in my face that she’s ‘disabled’ … to which I shot back at her that she was disabled on Percocet. And on and on it goes, so that she is always the victim, I’m the only one that will open my mouth to her, so she’s always mad at me. Andy didn’t even like the way she talked to him yesterday and I made sure to mention it to her, as she will end up losing the only one in that house that feels sorry for her and stops by her room to talk to her at night. I ignore her as much as possible when she gets in these moods. I’m not going to placate a temper tantrum from a 71 year old.

I talked to my mom this weekend for a little bit, but it’s always the same story with her. It’s almost like she tries to see how much she can complain about being wrong with her body in the fifteen minutes I can tolerate having her on the phone. She’s always sick, she always only has “a little bit left to live” …. and this has been going on for ten years or so. Nobody believes it. When she actually does die nobody will know from what. I’m pretty sure she’s still on illegal drugs, and I know she’s on pain pills. It makes me sad that my mother has turned out this way, but at least her children all learned from her mistakes; neither my brother or myself do drugs. We’ve both dabbled in weed, but nothing heavier. 

My brother will be with his wife and family for Thanksgiving, then he will spend time with his dad and that side of the family. I don’t ever see my mother, my Uncle is dead, my aunt is so beside herself from his death that she’s just a shell of a person barely making it through life. She’s even told me that she doesn’t care if she dies and she’s certainly not scared too, anymore. I don’t have a dad, my daughter will be gone to the Bahama’s for Christmas with her step-mom. I hope Andy doesn’t question why I cling to him and his family so much. He’s all that I have some days. Him and our kids. I spend so much alone time in my head that when I resurface into the world, sometimes it scares me. Lately I’ve been so aware of my own mortality. I thought to myself last night that if we were offered a potion to be able to live forever, I think I’d take it – if both of us could. If Julie wanted too. If his kids did as well. As much as I love God and the idea of being with my family one day, and in Heaven … I worry that Andy and I will not be together there. And I know such things sound very trivial in comparison to other things – but I have fought really hard for him, and I have hurt and grieved over not having him. When I pray at night, I pray for my list of usual things: my family, the anger in the world, the sick and dying …. and then I always always pray that God not take my kid from me and that He not take Andy from me. I ask Him to give us at least another 50 years together.

Of course I know that our lives and destinies have already been mapped out, long before we ever got here – but I figure it doesn’t hurt to at least put it out there, that I’d like more time. 

And then I wonder if we’re in the midst of a holy war that Revelations talks about. And if we are, does that mean that the Rapture is coming soon? And if it does, and we are ascended into Heaven, will it be before or after the Tribulation? I guess it depends on what you believe. I like to believe in Pre-Tribulation Rapture. Some people believe in Post-Tribulation Rapture. I worry all of the time that I have unknowingly taken the Mark of the Beast (they are getting clever with these RFID chips) – and if I unknowingly do it, am I held accountable? 

I think the older I get, the more anxiety ridden I’m becoming. These kinds of things have always been in the back of my mind, but it’s only recently that they have come to the front – especially in light of all of these extremist attacks and vows to attack more and harder. They are killing for a religion that doesn’t believe in the things they believe, and it makes me sad for Muslims. It makes me sad to see the ignorance that comes from Christians as they spew their hatred towards the Muslim religion. It all just makes me so sad. 

I really do think we are getting closer to the end here. And I hope that it isn’t painful for us that believe. And I hope it’s an eye-opener to those that don’t believe. I don’t think God is as harsh as the Bible makes Him to be. I believe in homosexuals going to heaven. I don’t believe that you necessarily have to be saved to get to Heaven. I believe God understands why people have different faiths and that there isn’t just “one” right one. It makes me an extreme left-wing Christian, but I’m okay with that. 

I don’t think I’ve adjusted to time change yet and I definitely haven’t adjusted to waking up an hour earlier. It has rained here for the past two weeks with only one day (other than today) where it wasn’t pissing all over the road on the drive to and from work. Monday night it took me an hour and 15 minutes to get home because of the rain. This morning I took a different route to work and made it here in 30 minutes.

When it’s dark by 6:00, I start yawning because my internal clock is like “Oh, we are mere moments away from sleep time!!!” and it get’s all excited, and then eventually just get’s mad that I’m still awake. But Monday night I did get home at almost 7 after fighting traffic, going to the grocery store, cooking dinner, cleaning the kitchen, vacuuming the floor, and doing laundry. I thought it a major accomplishment. Last night I just kind of zombied my way around the house, waiting for 10:00 to get here so I could have an excuse to go to bed. I try to wait for Andy to get home (which lately hasn’t been until around 9:00) and then he has to shower and sit on the toilet and watch YouTube videos for thirty minutes.

His brother got drunk Friday night and there was a fight between him and Andy. Lots of screaming at him, screaming at me, me threatening to call the cops. It was pretty bad. My nerves were frazzled. I hate fighting, I hate violence of any kind. Everyone walked around all weekend in a mood. Tim is an alcoholic whether he will admit it or not. He will never get help for it, and I fear that it is the thing that will most likely kill him one day. And to top it off, when he’s that drunk and looking to argue, it’s bad news. He doesn’t care that his kids and mine were in the house while he was screaming and cursing. At some point he threatened to kill Andy, and Andy pulled a knife on him. It’s nothing like the sibling arguments they had as children. I mean, they would slam each other into walls and stuff, but nothing like this. Then again, Tim didn’t drink when he was 15. As of the last ten years he has started drinking pretty heavily.

I had to cut ties with Charlie and block him completely. Even though I pay for his cell phone service, he seemed to feel entitled to consider upgrading his phone and therefore adding onto my monthly bill. When I told him no, that Andy would not like that, he threw a shit fit and started cursing and saying things about Andy. You can run your mouth to me and call me names, but I draw the line at calling him names. I suspended his phone service, told him to figure it out himself, and blocked him. Now that he doesn’t know where I live, I don’t have to worry about him showing up and killing me in my sleep.

We’re broke, but we’re happy. Every time I look at Andy I take a moment to ask God to please not take him away from me. I can’t fathom the thought of having to lie in bed and go to sleep knowing that I will never see him again. I read too many stories of people passing away at a young age from this illness or that, and it’s usually the one’s that have very few warning signs of symptoms. Every so often I will go through this ‘mortality thinking’ and really grasp how short life is. Even best case scenario, Andy and I only have 40 to 50 years left together – and that’s if old age takes us and not one of the billions of other things that could do it.

I don’t like these thoughts; they scare me.

I know he’s been baptized through the Catholic church as a child, but he is also Agnostic and I worry that even after we die, will we ever be with each other?

This way of thinking will pass in a few weeks, and stay gone for a couple of years before it resurfaces, but I really hate it. I’ve been reading on ALS lately, and different kinds of cancers, and it all just worries me. It’s hard not to do it when you see patients every day battling this illness or that illness, and then you lose a few of them and think to yourself for the first time that 65 years old is really young.

*Sighs*

Well, he finally got everything out of our house and out of Maggie’s storage unit. It took us 12 hours on Saturday and another 6 hours Sunday, but we did it. Andy can hardly move, I’m sore as hell, and Tim helped a good bit on Saturday, but by Sunday he was pretty much done with the moving help. The one friend I asked to help me on Saturday, said she’d be there – and then the night before canceled because of not having a babysitter. Strangely enough she has a babysitter any other time she needs to do something. But hey, it is what it is. This is why I don’t ask for peoples help. This is why I always make sure that I don’t get my hopes built up in people; they are predictably unpredictable. The only person you can ever really depend on is yourself.

I do know that Andy and I make a great team – as both friends, a couple, and just as people in general. We busted ass this weekend getting everything moved. Last night he was in so much pain, he lay on the bed in the fetal position and I rubbed some of the tightness in his muscles while he lie there and we talked about everything that happened this weekend. And then he lay beside me and we held hands for about thirty minutes because he said he made him feel better. His brother has been high and drunk most of the weekend, and while he’s happy during his inebriation – he is also annoying as hell. His children don’t listen to him when he tells them to do something, and he just laughs and tells them over and over again the same exact thing that they aren’t listening to. Ugh. My biggest peeve is undisciplined children. Andy’s kids listen for the most part (and when they don’t, he isn’t afraid to put his hand to their ass), my kid listens. These kids do not. Andy and I are really hoping that his mom and his brother won’t live there long and that eventually they will find their own place to live. We could certainly handle the bills on our own. Granted, we wouldn’t have a lot of extra play money, but that’s just a small price to pay, I think. My dislike of other peoples children should probably bother me, but it doesn’t. Most kids today just walk all over their parents – and that is the part I don’t like. And I don’t like noise. I was just raised in a quiet (or else) house, and I’ve always been introverted and submissive and everything that isn’t dominating. And I enjoy that part of myself.

Andy is the opposite of me, and I love that about him. He pushes me to do things that I wouldn’t normally do because of my introversion, and I enjoy them. He also understands my need to get away from everyone and recharge myself. He really and truly is the best man I have ever met in the entire planet. The only thing that anyone (namely that nasty Canadian bitch) could ever say about our relationship is that he has an issue with touching. And at least I know it isn’t just me; when he was here at my work getting an eye exam, he had a difficult time letting the doctor touch him. I have come to understand that this is a real thing and nothing personal against me.

But at least I’m happy with him and not struggling to release myself from the grasp of my overbearing materialist nasty bitch of a mother.

Sorry, some things about her just make me mad. I shouldn’t allow her to take up space in my head, but after what she wrote about me, it’s difficult.

Julie started her new school this morning and I’m nervous for her. I hope the kids are nice to her. I hope that she learns her way around fast and makes friends quickly. I don’t want her to hate where she is and become depressed. I want her to have a wonderful childhood full of normal experiences.

It took me an hour to get to work this morning. I’m used to a 10 minute commute. That’s going to take some adjusting for sure. I did NOT want to get up at 5:45 this morning – and even then I was rushing. Ugh.

So begins another week.

The other day I gave some advice that wasn’t asked for, but then again it was also written in WordPress with the comments option enabled, and so to a normal person that means “leave advice on how you think to best handle this situation.”

To a narcissist, it means “Only leave advice if it’s something you know I want to hear and that will play along with my pity party.”

And even though I don’t know this girl personally, I have been reading her WP for a year and a half, following along on her bullshit ride of bouncing back and forth between her sadness in men, her mistreatment of her current boyfriend, her fat-shaming and then total denial of it, and her complaints about her sister and her mother, both of whom she is 100% exactly like.

She didn’t like what I had to say. She said I was insensitive and went into a lecture about how I’m supposed to treat people with anxiety issues, and how she’s a study of psychiatry. Clearly she knows things I don’t know. And because I don’t suffer from anxiety, I guess I just couldn’t possibly understand anything at all about her.

One of the good things about schools in North Carolina is that once you get into High School you are allowed to take one college course every year throughout your 4 year high school curriculum – and you earn college credit to do it. Guess what I took?

Do I talk about it? No. Why? Because I would never brag about having taken a class that I have no degree in. You can sit through any lecture or course, do the work, and at the end of the day, if you don’t have that piece of paper – it doesn’t really matter. Not to most people. Not to a job. I couldn’t go out right now and become a therapist because I took four years of psychology-based college courses in High School.

There’s a difference between anxiety and narcissism. The lines are clearly defined. But not to a narcissist. They wear a potato sack on top of their Gucci outfit and call themselves humble. Meanwhile, they sit in hierarchy, supreme above everyone else and their troubles, because oh, you could never be going through anything nearly as bad as what they have experienced. If you have a headache, they have a migraine. If you sprained your ankle, they broke their’s. And on and on the story goes. You will never be in any kind of pain close to what they are. Ever.

She even wrote a new journal entry dedicated to all of the people that have abandoned her in the past years, or have done her wrong, or attacked her – me included. She took everything she knew about me from Word Press and wrote what she really thought of me. She didn’t hold back. And I’m glad. Because at least I know now what she actually thinks about me and the life I lead. And that reason alone is exactly why I don’t have very many female friends under my radar. This is what happens when the claws come out.

If I were of weaker character, what she said about me could have sent me into some sort of depression that I may never have come out of. It was equivalent to bullying. It’s the stuff that people commit suicide over. I’ve certainly lost friends to reasons less than having my entire past laid out in a journal entry, followed by judging from her as a jury and judge all-in-one.

For just a moment, my blinding rage ran rampant, and I seriously considered sending the URL link of her WordPress to both her ex-boyfriend and her current boyfriend so that they could see all of the horrible things she talks about in regard to them. I wanted her current boyfriend to see how back and forth she is, always comparing him to being less than what her ex-boyfriend is. I wanted to destroy her the way that she was trying to tear me down. That was my first impulse reaction.

Instead, I sat on that option for 24 hours, and thought long and hard about what I wanted to do with all of this new information and judgement about how I think I’m so much better than everyone else. On Sunday I sent her a message via Facebook and told her that I apologized for any hurt that I caused her, because it wasn’t my intention. I wished her well in her adventures with her boyfriend, and I left it at that.

Now, because she is so much like my mother this situation is going to go one of two ways. Either she will completely ignore me, claiming that she has no time for such nonsense. Or, she will respond back with repetitive things about how much I hurt her and how I just don’t understand her pain and her life and her road to recovery (one of which she is not even on). I would be very shocked and surprised if she just simply said “thank you for the apology and I wish you well, too.”  ….. in all of my years of knowing narcissists, this will never be a response from them.

To say that I hope she never has children is an understatement. She will give that child the very same life that I had from my mother. No child deserves to have a parent like that. Ever.

What she wrote about me wasn’t anything I haven’t heard before from my mom. Hell, my mom could have been the one to write it if I didn’t know who actually wrote it.

Even if I don’t understand anxiety because I don’t have it, I do understand excuses when I see them. She won’t drive or get a license. She won’t work outside of her home because of her “crippling anxiety” yet she is just fine to go out to eat food constantly or go shopping with her boyfriend, or go on family vacations and spend her parents money.

Honey, you don’t get to fucking pick and choose when you have anxiety. These are called excuses to being a lazy ass bitch that lives off of her mommy and daddy all the while she’s verbally abusing her boyfriend because he doesn’t do exactly what she wants, exactly when she wants it.

And she says I have problems. Maybe so. But at least I acknowledge them.

Every so often I will look back at where I was in this blog a year and two years ago. This morning I looked back and saw that around this time two years ago was when I went through Andy’s phone and we had an argument. He told me he was like his mother in the respect that he will never want to be married again, that he didn’t love me like that, and that one day I would find someone to marry me that deserved me. I had written in here that one day he would regret that he left me. I said that it may take twenty years, but he would one day understand the loneliness that he put me through by leaving me.

A year ago, around this time, was when I saw the messages between Charlie and another woman, and how he told her that he wished he could make love to her the right way, and how much he had always loved her. I saw that and locked myself in the bathroom and sobbed and sobbed while he pleaded on the other side of the door that it meant nothing, that he was just drunk, and that he loved me. It was from that moment on that I just didn’t care about Charlie the same way anymore. You see, last July I had resolved myself to the fact that Andy wasn’t coming back, that he had moved on and dated someone else, and I just needed to be happy. I put my full focus on Charlie and ignored Andy whenever he would say something even remotely sweet. I was considering marriage, even though I was really considering not taking his last name since it’s “Bottoms” …. and I just don’t like that. But I was gearing up in a very serious frame of mind for him, despite the fighting and how unalike we were. I think I had given up on Andy ever coming back, and at least Charlie had promised that no matter what we went through, no matter how much we fought, he would always be there, he would always come back to me. So, why not? I loved him, he was there for me even if his temper flared and he acted like an asshole.

But then that happened with that woman. And that was it for me. From that moment forward, I looked at him in a different light. He was no better than the others, and I wasn’t about to settle for someone that I could find anywhere in the world. I wasn’t going to settle for someone that could get drunk and in an instant talk to someone else the way that he did without giving me a second thought. To his credit, he straightened up from that moment on, we hardly ever had a disagreement. But, I also turned to smoking weed at night whenever I didn’t have Julie, just to shut out everything. I was coping in all the wrong ways. I smoked myself into oblivion for five months, and then realized that this life was going bad, not better.

When I broke it off with Charlie, it crushed me because it was hurting him. I knew it was the right thing for me, but I hated myself for doing what I had to do to be happy. Even if Andy hadn’t of come back, Charlie and I wouldn’t have made it. I didn’t trust him anymore. And even though two years ago I found those messages that Andy had sent to his ex-girlfriend, it was done when he and I weren’t together anymore, he was just living here until he could move back. He even made it very clear to me after that moment that what he discussed with anyone else wasn’t my business. I understood that, but it still hurt.

Andy and I aren’t perfect by any means. We bicker every so often. A few weeks ago he railed on me for being a passenger driver because he doesn’t like being insulted in anything that he does. It made me cry, we stayed away from each other for an hour or so, then I text him while he was somewhere in the mall and told him I was sorry, he apologized as well, and we moved on.

He was supposed to go up to Indiana at the end of the week to see the kids. I couldn’t get the time off of work. But money is still tight so he will have to put off going up there until Thanksgiving … but at least I can go with him then to see the kids. It made me really sad to think that I would be without him for three days. I hate he can’t see the kids as soon as he wants, but I’m kind of glad that I will get to go with him next month, and that I don’t have to be without him next week.

I’m in the process of getting Julie transferred to her new school that she will start in two weeks. I don’t even think we are half way packed and we are moving in 13 days. I need to buckle down and really go through Julie’s room and get rid of things she doesn’t play with anymore. That’s the part I’m dreading the most. She has so much crap in her room. *sighs*

Tim and Crystal and their kids will be moving in with us. The good side to that is that they will be paying rent which will take a burden off of me for some of it. The downside is that the house is going to be slam packed with people, and considering mine and Crystal’s past with her thoughts that I want her husband, I just feel kind of nervous about the entire thing. I spent some time with Tim last year (after Charlie did what he did … I’m a firm believer in quid pro quo no matter what way it’s going) and I could have had a relationship with Tim then if I wanted – the cards were all laid out on the table. But every time I was hanging out with Tim, all I could think about was Andy. For three years I’ve only ever wanted Andy, no matter who I’m with. But you can’t tell a jealous person that. Not when they are hell-bent in how they think.

But, after reading how I was two years ago and last year, I can at least say that right now everything is calm, I am happy, and I feel like everything may just work out after all.