::Let Me Clear My Throat::

Now that I've had a sadness purge, (and a little cry, thanks to Poppa and his perfectly timed phone call, as usual), I can unload the rest of the shit I've been carrying around. Life Update #1: Surgery : Things were going too well, and, true to form, anything good in my life is bound to fail, and this is no exception.  I was at the final turn with my process, and was about to reach the finish line and finally schedule my procedure. Unfortunately, my insurance coverage went belly up completely out of nowhere, crushing my surgery plans like Tonya Harding with a baton. I've since signed up with a new insurance provider, but I have no idea if I'll be able to continue my plans, or start over, or, worse, not have the ability to do it at all. I won't have insurance until the beginning of the year, and I know nothing as of now other than the fact that I'm fucking crushed by this.  I feel like I'm backsliding, and I'm really depressed about all of it. Li...

On paper, I am a woman. A daughter.  A sister. A mother. At home, I am a landfill.  A punching bag. A roommate. An invisible annoyance, like a bad smell you can't get rid of. I'm the fixer.  The payer of bills and solver of problems...yet outside of that, I am a nobody; a complete non-entity in my own house. Just someone that takes up space and makes sure all the boxes get checked, but still not quite a human person with needs and feelings. I basically do not exist unless someone needs or wants something, and once that need is fulfilled, they go right back to looking right past me, as if I was never there in the first place. People like to wax poetic about how tough mothers are, but never consider how tough it is to be one. They don't consider the possibility that the kids you bust your ass to raise will grow up and know how to shoot you in the heart. No mother is tough enough to withstand that, no matter how thick your armor is.  Mine have learned not onl...

It's been a year, give or take a few weeks, that things went belly up with Poppa for the last time. For the most part, I plowed though this time like a champ, using my anger and hurt at him as fuel to keep my emotions off and not think of him.  After everything that happened, him making snap judgments on me, not bothering to hear me out or just offer the support he should have as my best friend, it was like something snapped in me and I jumped right over sadness straight into 'Fuck You' mode.  No love was lost, I was just done. Or so I thought. Aside from my one emotional outburst after Kid 1 ran into him, I didn't shed any tears whatsoever.  The relationship was ash as far as I was concerned, and I feel like I got a break from the heartbreak it should have caused. Cool, I'm gonna cruise on with my life and do me. Fast forward to the last few weeks.  Like herpes, he started to flare up and slowly make his presence known in my brain again. It started with a few fl...

For all intents and purposes, Jones and I have calmed down...sort of.  I was juuuuust starting to get to that place where I had a good handle on my feels, and could pretty much keep them tucked away...but of course Mr Wonderful had to go and be wonderful again and now I'm back where we started. To be fair, he's been pretty great lately, but we've kept things platonic...cool. It made it easier for me to be rational around him and not want to jump his bones every time I saw him. But of course, I'm a full on sucker for his sweetness, and he's so thoughtful sometimes that it makes my head swim.Then all he has to do is flash that grin at me and I'm sucked right back into his vortex. Our so called 'incidents' have been few and far between recently, but that storm has been growing and brewing and finally made landfall in a big way earlier this week. Nothing even has to be said anymore- all it takes now is a look and I find myself pressed against his door...

I'm no stranger to strife. I've made a life out of it. For the last 6 weeks, however, I have been all but welded inside the Struggle Bus with zero hope for escape. Every attempt I made to find a suitable place failed.  I was still paying the bills, so saving money to move was impossible. I spend hundreds of dollars on background and credit checks for myself and the other adults in the house only to be denied  because of me.  When we finally got (reluctantly) approved for a perfect place, I watched it fall through right before we were to sign the lease. Every door was being slammed in my face.  My daughter and her boyfriend openly called me a loser to my face, and fuck if I didn't feel like one. I started to fall completely apart, and pulled away from all of them so I could drown myself in my own pity.  Nothing worked out in my favor. I was convinced for weeks that I would be homeless and alone by the end of this month. I resigned myself to the idea that Kid...

If Jones and I were a baseball team, you could say we finally knocked it out of the park. After many months of ridiculous sexual tension, timing was finally on our side, and it was worth every ounce of it's weight in dirty deeds.  I hoped doing so would finally 'scratch the itch' so to speak, but it had the complete opposite affect; I'm practically crawling out of my skin for more of him. I feel like I can't get close enough.  It now feels like I have my own sort of claim on him, and it's getting a bit hard to remain discreet; Now that I've had him in every way, I want to be able to have the freedom to touch him whenever I want to- graze my fingertips across his chest when he passes by.  Pat his delectable, muscular ass when I walk behind him. Kiss him hello or goodbye and not have to be awkward about it first. 75% of the time, Jones and I remain business as usual.  If you were an unassuming outsider, we would not arise any suspicion whatsoever. O...

There are times I can tell myself that I can stop this thing with Jones anytime I want. Times that I laugh at myself for being so bananas over someone I can never have and I wonder what the hell I'm doing.  I have a sassy, flamboyant little voice of reason sitting on my shoulder who brings me back down to earth after my little trips to the clouds.  That voice of reason gives me my reality check, and snaps me back to reality when I start getting all gushy. I rely on it and I need it. So WHYYYYYYY does it disappear as soon as I see his dumb face and and the dumb smile he gets when I approach him. Just when I thought I was out, he pulls me back in. I've taken some notes.  This man actively does things to make me like him. Just dumb things- little jokes and cute comments that make me smile and/or blush (he loves that), watching out the window for me to pull up and meeting me at the door with all of those things and his stupid ass handsome face and grin. Or he'll do bigge...

Ok, switching gears for a second. My post the other day reflected that nagging little bit of guilt over what I'm a part of. I know that what I'm doing with Jones is morally reprehensible, and being a person who has been 'the wife' for all intents and purposes, I know how damaging this could be if it got out. A good friend who I have confided in put a spin on things for me the other day, and I'm having a hard time finding an argument against it. In the span of 3 weeks, a mutual friend of ours went from a beautiful, lively mother of four to stage 4 terminal cancer patient. She's exactly my age, minus a day. If that doesn't show you how short life is, nothing will. Friend A broke it down- I'm generally a good person.  I'm not out to steal him or break up his family. I have no desire to hurt anyone. We are simply two consenting adults having fun, and eventually this will burn out, and nobody has to find out about our escapades. Life is fucking SHOR...

"No, I don't think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That's what's wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how." Mr. Jones must have Rhett Butler on speed dial. I've spent some time in the last 18 hours rolling around in a haze. It's safe to say that Jones and I can check another illicit incident off our list (whoops). All it took was a simple graze of fingers on my hip and I crumbled like a sand castle. He pushed me against the doorframe, and just looked at me with his stupid, sexy smirk, and my knees felt wobbly, then finally, blessedly, kissed me. We've kissed before, but it was just a couple of hurried smooches, like a snack before dinner. This time...oh. This was a 'bodies pressed together, up against the doorframe, lips sealed, just enough tongue, both of his hands buried in my hair, little moans, can't get close enough, please don't ever fucking stop, this must be what eupho...

Despite my recent violations, I want to make it clear that I respect the institute of marriage. Not only do I respect it, but I believe in it and covet it for myself, and generally take issue with those that have it and shit on it.  Like, how dare you take advantage of the fact that someone promised themselves to you by waving your genitals at someone else.  It's shitty and unfair, and if you're a knowing  accomplice in any of this genital waving (cough:me:cough), then you're just as shitty.  Which brings me to my existential crisis of the moment: By carrying on with Jones, am I irreparably damaging my carefully curated karma? It might sound stupid, but go with me here.  If you read me or know me personally, you know that I am a hardcore relationship person, and, aside from a few misfires over the years, have been single for the better part of a decade. What if this little thing sets back all my progress thus far and I end up a 55 year old single cat lady? Ok...

How is it possible for someone to slay you with just a look? Mr Jones and I have been keeping a low profile the last few weeks, and have not revisited our dirty dealings since the first time.  At first this pissed me off a little; there was zero acknowledgement of what happened the first week or so after we did things.  I'm a grown up and don't need validation, but he and I crossed a line that we can't come back from; I was hoping for a conspiratorial look or two, at the very least. Something that said, ' Hey we've seen each other naked, thanks for swallowing my load'. Alas, I got bupkis, and it became business as usual, but with with an emphasis on purposely ignoring what happened.  Guilt with a capital "GUH". I started to resign myself to the idea that what happened was a one shot deal, and he has now fucked me out of his system.  It kinda hurt, I can't lie, but that's my fault for being in my feelings for someone that can't return t...

...we got a thing going on. It's every shade of wrong, breaks every code, and could put me in karma jail for eternity.  But I can't stop it.  I don't want to stop it.  Having a dirty secret is a funny thing.  It's paramount that it stays between me and Jones, but all I want to do is talk about it.  All these feels are churning inside me, needing an outlet before I burst- UGH. Maybe I should start from the top. Mr Jones and I have known each other for some time. There was an instant mutual attraction from the second we met, but he was off limits and I respected that.  Still, we had undeniable, off the charts chemistry. We have very similar personalities, so we clicked immediately, beginning a sort of unorthodox friendship and skipping past the awkwardness of just getting to know someone. The attraction was always there, not really a secret, but just not something we addressed- I think we both realized early on that it was a dangerous thing. We we...

This is for the hard times. Those rough days. This is for the tough ones that carry the world on their backs, still managing a smile even while being crushed by it's weight. This is for the single parent who isn't allowed to crumble because there's no time for human emotion when someone else relies on you.  This is for the human being that stands in her kitchen, lonely and exhausted, sobbing silently to avoid the scornful questions of her observant children, because how dare you have a shred of human emotion, so she makes sure the trails of mascara are cleaned away before she turns her face to the world again.  This is for the days when everyone demands a piece of you, even when you barely have enough pieces just to keep yourself whole. This is for the sacrifices, the sleepless nights, the heartbreak, the loneliness, the feelings of desperation. The isolation. This is for the breakdowns, and the breakthroughs. This is for the darkness, and for those that struggle to find t...

It's been six months since my fallout with Poppa.  In that time, I didn't cry over any of this, even though there is clearly plenty to cry about.  I was too hurt and angry, and knew leaving him alone was for the best. I was essentially trying to scrub him out and forget I knew him. I didn't want to hurt about it so I buried it under the anger. I made a concentrated effort to not think about him and get on with my life, because what he did was unforgivable.  For the most part, I have been successful in just regarding him as someone I used to know.  Deep down it hurts, but the I remember why we 'broke up' and it makes it hurt less. I was doing so well..until the dreams started. Little things always remind me of him. Semi trucks, certain songs, characters in movies, random things like that. I acknowledge them when they cross my attention, and then let them pass.  There's no point in fighting the fact that he existed in my life, and made an impact on it, so I don...