Posts

Stronger

Image
Imagine it’s your sole mission after a tragic accident, caused by you and your own stupidity, to stop paying child support and have your ex wife served court documents to that end, from your hospital bed.  Imagine being such a self-centered, selfish prick that you don’t bother having a civilized discussion with her about next moves, or maybe reducing support for a time. No. You just go for the jugular, the kill shot, the blindside, knowing she has zero chance of taking care of the kids without your financial support that was mandated by the divorce decree you signed just a year prior.  One year. That’s all I got after twelve years of marriage, of being a stay at home mom, of staying by his side through all of his lies, gaslighting and narcissistic behavior. This man went from the Captain’s seat flying commercial airplanes, to stocking shelves at the local Chevy dealership. His boss wouldn’t even let him drive the service vehicle to deliver parts. I went to work driving a schoo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Broken Mirrors

Image
I had a drinking problem for years. It was always five o’clock somewhere and I craved the feeling of a good buzz. I drank to socialize. I drank to fuck. I drank to escape. I drank to stay skinny. I drank to be able to stand my own presence. I drank to embrace oblivion.  I slipped the bounds of my reality too many times, innumerable times, and made new ones that I can’t even remember.  Being with someone who was equally fond of the drink was like needing oxygen to breathe, but it’s also like looking in a broken mirror—you still recognize your reflection in all the cracks and broken pieces, but instead of getting a new mirror, you just stop looking at yourself.  I’ve had thirteen years now, of sober clarity, to remember and to reflect. To sit alone in silence, to face my worst demons, darkest fears, deepest pain, biggest insecurities and all my defects of character. To own my mistakes and feel remorse and regret and an ocean of fathomless sadness. To find my true self and t...
Post a Comment
Read more

I Stayed

Image
I stayed. I stayed despite the rampant rumors floating around about your sexual preferences.  I stayed. I stayed and was complicit many times, in making sure your breath didn’t smell like alcohol when the bottle to throttle rule had been bent and broken.  I stayed. I stayed when you didn’t come home, but instead got drunk with your friend and totaled a brand new sports car when I was home pregnant with our child.  I stayed. I stayed after I found lipstick on your uniform and on your underwear and you tried to gaslight me about it.  I stayed. I stayed when our newborn was barely five weeks old and you admitted having an affair. You boasted to my mom and dad that I would never leave you. And I didn’t.  I stayed.  I stayed while you and your mom fat shamed me instead of supporting me during the worst depression of my life.  I stayed. I stayed after, on vacation, you called me an ugly, fat, clueless, rock star want-to-be in front of our children.  I s...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Darkness Within

Image
Someone who I admire greatly said:  “I told you about the darkness not because I wanted your pity, but because I needed it to exist somewhere outside of me.”  My soul claimed those words and embraced them like a lover.  Writing gave me, gives me, a place to put my own darknesses. It doesn’t matter to me if anyone ever reads me. This I do for me. For my sanity.  Maybe someday, someone will claim my words and hold them close because they, too, have cracked themselves open to evict the demons that reside inside.  It is a brave thing to leash the thing you’ve sat in silence with for so long. Years and years of sadness, trauma, fear and heartache, layer after layer, I had to peel my own darkness off like a second skin. I mourned, I grieved through the pain. And I wrote.   I’m still picking at the pieces that remain.
Post a Comment
Read more

Better Broke

Image
My ex-husband and I mutually decided before getting married that because we were both unsupervised hellions growing up, I would quit my job as a flight attendant to be a stay at home mom whenever we had kids. It was a non negotiable as far as I was concerned, I wanted to raise my kids—ME, not a grandparent, not a daycare, babysitter, or to my initial disappointment, their own father because even as our first daughter was born, his drinking behavior was still that of an immature, irresponsible frat house boy. He was not a man.  Still isn’t.  I asked him once, when was he going to grow up and start acting like a responsible adult and he said this, verbatim, I’ll never forget it—MY grown up responsibility is to go out and make the money. And I think our marriage only lasted as long as it did because his job as a pilot meant he was gone a lot. I don’t think I could have survived him being home every single day. He might not have survived it, he gave me homicidal rage in those earl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Phoenix Rising

Image
I will never understand how people, even family—especially family—will think the worst of you based solely off of another’s word, like it’s infallible gospel. That word, that LIE left unchecked, festered over time. Silence from all sides created a reeking, infected wound and while trying to heal it, they poured salt into it, prolonging the suffering.  Actions will always speak louder than words. Always. So, while the world might see a successful, church going, doting, family centric, charismatic person—I see you. Your god sees you. I know enough about you by your actions, by how you treated me and my children, and my heart has forced you out over the years like a splinter.  We are strangers, all of us.  But I will be telling my story, unabridged, so there will be no misunderstanding about what happened to me and what led to the decisions I had to make for my survival—to do what was best at the time for my two young daughters, when not one person offered us a helping hand....
Post a Comment
Read more

Work in Progress

Image
In my author bio, I say that I’m an expert in failed relationships and how to pick the wrong guy, which I still maintain, is true. I included this little factoid because my first published work detailed a three year relationship in my early 20’s where I was the victim of domestic violence. TLDR—read the book.  I thought I would be giving more attention to my failed relationships, to help women recognize the red flags associated with toxic unions. Truth is, I couldn’t be bothered. Not until I healed the emotional scars left in the wake of two failed marriages and a situationship that had me trapped in a living hell for years.  My road to healing included a LOT of writing, some of my best work, still archived. One manuscript I’ve been staring at for almost ten years. I don’t know if it will ever see the light of day. It’s a mere twenty pages and only 2631 words. It’s my own personal, brutal truth—my worst nightmares cast into light and pulling it out of me felt like an exorcism....
Post a Comment
Read more