Venting ... Venting ....

I shouldn't have to do this 38 minutes into Christmas Day ....

My mom overtook Santa ....

I only get to do it every other year as it is .... this is the last year that my oldest probably even remotely still believes ... and I go upstairs to do it and she did like half of it already .... because it was "late" ...

I say, "we didn't even get home when I was a kid until well after midnight"

She says, "well I was twenty years younger then"

I say, "well I'm twenty years younger now"

.... I didn't lash out ... made one comment when she said she was going to dump Santa's milk in the sink and I said I was going to drink it ... and otherwise I kept my mouth shut ...

But ... I am seriously pissed off ... I know she bought the stuff, I get it ... but my grandma almost always bought my Santa stuff ... and my parents actually got to play Santa ... and seriously ... every other year as it is ... one more freedom, one more thing she tried to take away from me and did pretty much end up ruining ... I couldn't do it my own way ... couldn't just do it myself ... or even with her help because we worked together or I was asking her to .... she just did it ... on her own ... and acted like it was nothing ...

This is a big deal to me ... the Santa thing only lasts so long as it is and I only get half that time already ... like I said ... vicariously parenting my children ... undermining my parenting and my control over them ... and the things around them ...

I feel violated and like another freedom and parenting right has been taken away from me ... and now in the morning we go back to smiling so my kids can enjoy their Christmas, but my flipping goodness ... can this shit stop already ...

Elation ...

Elation ... there is no other word I can use to describe how I feel about being able to see my honey tomorrow and every single day for the next week ...

My kids are super excited too ... it means more to me than any present I could ever get ... and no, my warden didn't change her plans or rules or whatever you want to call them, but we found an alternative at least for a while ...

So, I will have a week full of love and support from him ... and then the social events that we'll be attending will add to more of that ... Christmas, New Year's ... his birthday ... a week of celebration ... a week of love and support ...

Totally and completely ... elated :)

Friends, Hope & Isolation ....

Before I turn in tonight I just wanted to take a minute to breathe, to decompress to find a way to get some of these feelings out and make the stress subside ... at least slightly ...

First off, I will tell you all that have been reading my blogs lately ... that I do smile, I do laugh ... I do love my life ... I love my children ... I love my man ... I love my friends ... the three of them together make my world whole ... they keep me going ... they validate my feelings (even the negative ones) ... I am not depressed as a whole ... I am pissed off over a situation ... over living conditions I can't control ... over my parenting being undermined ... my relationship being compromised ... I am pissed off about being treated like a delinquent teenager ... when I have no reason to be ...

I am sad that I am isolated ... sad that I feel like I live in a prison with concrete walls and floors and one solitary, underground window with a grate on it to complete the feeling ... I am sad that my children have to live this way ...

I thrive on my solitude ... I do ... I like love my alone time .... but I came across a quote ... that helps me come to terms with why I love solitude and hate isolation;

“Solitude vivifies; isolation kills”  ... Joseph Roux

For me ... that says it all ... I could go on with other quotes that mean a lot to me right now ....

“Isolation is a dream killer” ... Barbara Sher

                                          or

“Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.” ... Thomas Carlyle

... both of which mean a lot to me as well right now ...


I embrace the negative feelings ... they are as important to human nature as the positive ones ... and I would rather feel amazingly strong negative feelings than not feel anything at all ... I would rather be pissed off than indifferent ... I would rather be depressed than indifferent ... I would rather be in pain than indifferent ....

Indifference is (in my dimestore psychology) a trait of a sociopath ... someone that feels no empathy for others ... indifference ... is almost ... inhuman ....

I embrace my emotions ... throughout the spectrum ... sometimes I am a doormat ... because I am way too empathetic ... but why would I want to change that ... why would I want to scale down the level of empathy I have for others?

I have hope that there will be a brighter future ... I have hope that my children will never have to live like this ... and I have knowledge that if they do ... I will not degrade them or undermine the things they hold most dear ... I do believe I am a victim of circumstance ... a victim of other people making decisions ... a victim of people wanting to help ... and getting frustrated that things aren't moving fast enough and in the end just giving me enough rope to hang myself with ... of digging me a deeper hole ... I have moved twice because I had no choice ... I have left two jobs because I had no choice ... I chose to be a stay at home mom ... which is the only choice that I personally made that left me in this place ... everything else was the result of someone trying to "help" me ... but just because I feel like a victim does not mean I'm moping in a corner not doing anything

I should be sleeping ...

I have to be up and getting ready for work in 8 hours ... I should be sleeping ... but I want to clear my mind first ... so that I can stand a chance of sleeping ... so I can stand a chance of not crying ... so I can stand a chance, well, of anything ...

I will say that I am grateful for the things I have been given ...I am highly aware that people have suffered greater losses, have lived under worse conditions and have suffered in general far more than I have ... and been given far less than I have been given ... however ... the wrongs done to them ... the suffering they endured ... does not justify the wrongs that have been done to me ... just because someone else "had it worse" ... doesn't mean that I'm not entitled to my own suffering, to my own angst, to my own disappointment and anger ...

Here is the thing ... in my last post about freedom ... I was emotional ... justifiably so ... but I admit I was emotional ...

Here is the thing about that ... I made one request for Christmas ... ONE ... I asked for nothing  material, nothing  monetary ... I asked for one single thing for Christmas ... to be able to spend some time, a week full of special moments, with the person I want to spend my time with most ... I made one wish for Christmas, one request ... and I was told no ... what made this all harder is in the "let me think about it" period ... she was sticky sweet, she bought me things I didn't ask for, didn't need ... like she was buttering me up to let me down ...

I have volunteered to give up things of monetary value ... I have offered to sacrifice things ... I have offered to do things ... I have done everything I can think of to make this happen ... to get my solitary Christmas wish ... and none of it was enough ... there is a lack of compassion ... a lack of caring ... a lack of loving ... a lack of

Freedom ....

So I asked the warden if my boyfriend could come stay with me for the week after Christmas ....which would allow us to spend Christmas, New Year's and his birthday together ... and allow us some time to hang out with friends, including his best friend that I have never met and he hasn't seen in three years since he has been serving in Afghanistan ...

The answer was he could stay for two days ... which is better than not at all ... I will say that ... although it's more of an insult than it is an offer to help ...

I am so over this all ... I would understand if I were some kind of addict or criminal, hell, I would understand if he was ... but neither of us are ... we are just two people trying to survive in an economy that sucks, in a job market that sucks ... and still maintain a relationship ....

Maintaining the relationship isn't really very hard ... but to be able to spend time together and to have to ask

Fake Plastic Mistletoe ... Archived From 11/25/2008

The opening words of the song below :

"Great, fake plastic mistletoe, wrap me a in a great big bow, and tear me apart. . . It's Christmastime, so open up the floodgates, tell me that it'll be late, and rip me apart"

So, I don't know that I even need to write anything in explanation . . . but from the time I can remember, from the time my dad and his siblings can remember, my grandmother hung mistletoe over her and my grandfather's bed . . . something I recall even as a child thinking was terribly romantic . . . so when I was 15 (the first year I wasn't "single" on Christmas) I followed in tradition (even though I definitely wasn't sleeping with the guy lol) . . . since then I've spent a few Christmas seasons single or barely dating someone . . . but this year just seems

Yes, I know I've Been Quiet ...

... so I'm going through one of those times right now where blogging is both my best friend and my worst enemy ...

I have feelings I can't explain ... feelings I can ... and then of course this blog is not anonymous .... so I have to be somewhat careful, guarded if you will, about what I say about certain situations, people, etc.,

The holidays are very hard for me for multiple reasons ... but mostly it's the pressure and the tug of war of both myself and my children .. and then I come off as uncaring and not wanting to spend time with people, which isn't true ... but I've spent a lot of time as a black sheep, and I emphasize a lot ...

I went through a phase right around my senior year of high school where I felt much the same way I do now ... but basically it comes down to this ... I play a very good black sheep from the sidelines ... so what is the purpose in joining a game, where further injury will inevitably be the only result? ... the bulk of my extended family has made it very clear to me that I am not in the "in crowd" through various actions & words ... I grew up as an only child and considered my two closest cousins (the third of my three cousins is much younger and always lived several states away) to be the closest thing to siblings I had ... it is clear that they never really felt that way about me (now mind you they had each other, they didn't have that only child thing going on) ... anyway, I included them in everything as I got older ... invited them to kids' birthday parties, baptisms, they