::Let Me Clear My Throat::

...and suddenly, your heart is stuck in your throat, and your knees shake, and you can't catch your breath or blink the tears away. This is the moment you break your own heart, and you can only stand with your forehead pressed against the closed door and your fists clenched, hoping to will it all away.  Realizing you're in love with someone you can't have is torture all on its own. Knowing there isn't shit you can do about it but let it consume you is like being burned alive. Walking away isn't an option. I don't know that I could even if it was.  We don't speak about feelings. They're the taboo elephant in the room, and the room is sealed up like a casket.  Talking about this stuff makes it too real, and this was only supposed to be 'fun'...I never expected it to go this far, or to be so much more.  That connection has been there from Day 1, and has grown and twisted like ivy on a trellis over time. Even in the beginning, it was more than physic...

I have a love/hate relationship with my own introspection. I love how I can be so attuned to myself and the inner workings of my own mind (thanks, years of meditation).   I kinda like how sometimes I over analyze things and manage to learn something about myself each time.  But I hate how that lesson is generally something negative.  I'm realizing that my life has been a series of 'almosts'.  Almost raised within a close knit, well-to-do family...except my father was the blackest of sheep and ostracized for being stupid, and his children were black by extension. Almost went to college and made something of myself...and then had a kid and watched those dreams go up in smoke. Almost got married...although I suppose that was a well dodged bullet.  Almost got that bad ass, major growth potential job that would have fixed me up for life...except old mistakes came back to haunt me, kicking me right the fuck off that ladder. Almost found love a few...

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...