Muchness and Light

Scratchin' and survivin'.... Hangin' in and jivin'.

I wrote my last blog post four days before an unexpected first date.

That was eight months ago.

I have been crafting this post for weeks or longer, debating and processing what I wanted to say and what the implications were for me and others. I have thought about who would see this—those loyal readers who’ve been with me from the very beginning, the new friends I have picked up in the 10 years since I started writing again, the people who were removed from my life by their own accord or by mine, those who I know still lurk from time to time for whatever reasons.

Like so many others, I met him online. In the aftermath of my last breakup, I spent some time with some of my girls and debriefed, both before and after Achilles’ tendon surgery. I wanted to have some fun and see what the dating landscape might look like, for whenever I decided I was ready to spend time with another man. I needed to heal, both physically and emotionally. I was still working and raising two young men and in the middle of grad school.

But there was this smile, this tilt of the head that intrigued me. It was simply lovely. Candidly bashful but brazenly joyful and mischievous. Real, complicated emotion captured at just the right angle. Just the right moment.

We realized quickly we had mutual friends, people I’d gone to high school with in Alabama in the late 80s. Similar sense of humor. Incessant, funny, deep, honest conversation started immediately.

The day after I wrote my last blog post.

I was still in a splint and on a blue knee scooter with a basket, but we both wanted to meet. Soon.

That was eight months ago.

Neither of us could have foreseen this, though I suppose no one ever does. But our respective breakups happened almost simultaneously. There was no intention of becoming really involved with this man, and I know he had no intention of jumping into another relationship.

Woobiee. My manister. He’s warm and fuzzy and comfortable. He is strong and supportive. He is present and mindful and considerate. He has done his work—really, with a professional!—and he is wholly encouraging of my continuing my work. He is brilliant and funny and caring. He is gregarious and generous. He is complicated and open and honest even when it’s difficult for him or for me. He is respectful of my boundaries, and I am encouraged by his words and his actions to defend them when necessary, without fear of recrimination.

He did what I asked him to do—which is the same thing I asked of myself—to be open to the possibility, truly willing to accept the consequence of each other, good or bad.

That was eight months ago.

I could gush ad infinitum about his qualities, and I share those words with him regularly. That’s not what this is about.

Muchness and Light was born out of my need to understand myself and to change. Ten years ago, I was unhappy and unhealthy and restless. I didn’t understand that my midlife crisis was beginning. To look back from the position of my life now, it’s startling to see the changes. I don’t know how 2010 Stephanie would feel about 2020 Stephanie and if she would have made the same choices, if she’d known what changes were coming.

Whatever intention I had then, I have achieved only a modicum of success by those standards. I did some writing. I saw some bands. I did a lot of therapy. I have been in and out of a string of relationships that became increasingly nuanced in their unhealthiness.

Whatever I hoped or planned for in 2010 and in the subsequent few years didn’t materialize in the ways I’d intended.

What I got was even better.

I have gotten two sons almost to adulthood. I have a close-knit core of friends who love me, and whom I adore, even when we can’t be together. I am six hours away from finishing my third college degree. I work at a job that I love, and I intend to add part-time teaching to my schedule as soon as graduate school is finished. I am in a relationship that is healthier and more secure than I have ever experienced.

From the very beginning of this process, I have written about how it’s all about the journey and not the destination. I was always open to the possibility of having my path twisted and turned in unexpected directions. I often chose the road less traveled, just to have something new to see along the way.

Above all else, I wanted to live an adventure. It didn’t matter the details, so long as I could talk to my friends and hang with my kids and listen to music and eat some good food and spend time with a romantic partner who offered reciprocity in care and honesty. Nothing ever has to be grand; I thrive on small moments strung together like colorful, random beads.

That journey took me in an unimaginable direction. When I started Muchness and Light, I desperately needed to hear my own voice. It was never public validation that I needed. Accolades and encouragement from others is always nice, but what I needed most was to know that I existed and had value. For a while, I searched for proof that I had value to others.

What I was really always looking for was the value I had to myself.

Over the last 10 years, I have struggled through the demise of my marriage, the financial and emotional aftermath of divorce, returning to college while working and raising two kids, health issues, and one unhealthy relationship after another. Sometimes I flailed and raged against the difficulty and the unfairness of it all, but I never stopped moving forward. Not once.

I still have days that I struggle. Life continues, and my journey is ongoing.

But I am content. Most days, I’m happy. Some days are darker than most. But I am generally content in my life. I am still defiant in being exactly who I am, but it’s no longer in reaction to other people or their bullshit. I am no longer screaming to hearing my own echo, just to know I exist.

Woobiee has admonished me from the beginning to be present, to avoid comparing the past to the present or looking too far outside the immediate moment. As I’ve discussed before, creating expectation spawns the possibility of disappointment, and I still believe that to be true. But expending significant energy on extensive emotional contingency plans is exhausting, and Woobiee makes it safe for me to relax and enjoy myself. He does not make me happy—that’s wholly on me—but he supports and encourages my happiness to the best of his ability, with as much effort as I expend in supporting and encouraging his.

Most days, I am centered and Self-led. I am integrated and whole, better able to handle stressors and insecurities. Not perfect, but better. Self-aware and Self-actualized and Self-controlled.

One of the things I have struggled with is how to handle Muchness and Light.

This blog has been a huge part of my journey, though admittedly decreasingly so over the past couple of years. As my work and school took a different direction, I turned to this outlet less and less. I am no less- Self-analytical—perhaps even more so—but I can hash out those deep explorations with an audience of one or two who know me intimately; I no longer need to hear myself to know I exist.

 I am a Real Girl.

So I have decided to put this on hold indefinitely. I will likely leave something up for a while, at least until I can get my files downloaded and park my domain names and figure out what I want to leave publicly available. For a while, I felt as if I were letting down 2010 Stephanie and 2013 Stephanie and any number of internal parts and iterations that have depended on this medium to be heard.

But I realized they don’t need that anymore, either. Muchness and Light was an invaluable tool, and it helped me to find the voice I lost over the years. It helped me learn to listen to myself and to advocate for myself, even and especially when there is no one else who will advocate for me. The support is always nice, but it’s ultimately Me who is responsible for Me, no matter when or where I am.

I wanted a life with no regrets. That’s impossible to achieve, really. To be wholly human is to be flawed; it is how we react to the consequences of our flaws that defines us.

But to be comfortable in my own skin is blessing. It is a merciful gift that I have given to myself. All I could tell my earlier Selfs is that it gets better, to just keep going.

I intend to still be going for a while, just not this direction.

Thank you to everyone who has encouraged me and supported me and challenged me. You have been an integral part of my journey. Some of you always will be; some of you may never have a place in my life again, nor mine in yours.

Wherever your journey takes you, I wish you well. I wish you good health and peace and the exact amount of adventure that you need. I wish you contentment and love.

Just as importantly, I wish the same things for myself, and I intend to do everything in my power to make that happen.

I deserve no less.

- StephQJ 5/16/2020

 

 

And I built a ship for two, it waits for me and you in the dew of the fields.

For me, love is the spark at the center of the universe, the absolute essence of truth and good. It’s the moment of origin at the Big Bang. It’s the snap of God’s fingers to create it all.

There is nothing more valuable to me, whether it’s romantic or platonic or familial. True love that cares and is concerned and active, not mimicry that makes someone seem a more palatable version of human.

Maybe it wouldn’t mean so much, and maybe I wouldn’t love so hard, had I not been hurt in the ways I was. For all of my exploration and self-evisceration, there is no way to know for sure. I don’t get a George Bailey Christmas, when I get to see how my life could have been different. I get the life I create from the rubble, sometimes balanced precariously across a glittery web of scars, littered with lost hopes and dreams.  

But through all of the discord, through all of the incessant buzzing inside me, there is a constant pulse, like a faint homing beacon at the center, echoing in my core, through the emptiest and most desolate parts of me. In me but outside me, like a marker for my path through and out to something bigger than me.

My path to God, to arcane truth and to wholeness.

Love.

If I’m quiet enough and still enough, I can find my way. There is a path. Maybe not for everyone, but it’s the only way I have left to go. Every other direction has been explored, defiantly and exhaustively.

My pasts are tangled like obstacles, certainly, and therapy has been vital in helping me to make sense of it all. To make sense of myself. And it is a process, occurring in the time in space in which I live. Even when I’m not in session, the work is still happening, consciously and un. A slice here and there of a valiant sword, and I can take another few steps. But sometimes it feels like those thorny vines close back up, fueled by their own blood and sometimes mine.

I’m fucking tired from the battle.

Sometimes I want to curl up and sleep, to let it all block out the sun. But every time I have relegated myself to dim solitude, I have been overcome with a greater fear of what hides in the dark, of the darkness itself. And I have taken one more swipe, in the desperate hope of finding someone, anyone, hidden in bramble, who will hold back the tangles for me to step ahead again. A simple man, tattered and bruised, but smiling and willing, offering me a hand to hold to steady me. His boots coated in stardust.

I don’t need him to slay my dragons. If there’s an evil enchantress in all of this, it’s me, desperately trying to protect my own heart.

But, God, that’s too much to ask of anyone. No mere mortal can be expected to love me like that.  And I don’t know that anyone could be ready or able, no matter how much he might want to be. I don’t know if I am ready to believe that someone else even could.

I am not selfish in my intent. I am willing to fight for him in the same ways, to cheer him on and to appreciate his efforts. He deserves someone who will wipe his brow and kiss his face gently and tell him that he’s on his own right path. He deserves someone who will protect him while he sleeps.

I want to be able to grasp his hand, to draw on his strength when I am lacking. I want to be able to call out in the dark and hear his voice as more than a distant echo that might just be my own.

I need the reassurance that comes from knowing someone who loves me is truly and completely there.

Consistency. Reliability.

I have stumbled upon men before, of course, as surprised to find them as they were to find me. But, in the end, they’ve all been nothing more than fever dreams, absurdities fleeting in the light and forgotten in detail if not in feeling. Distant echoes like a memory of thunder.

In my hurt, I have retreated, time and again, afraid of the fear that piles like more rubble, threatening to blot out the sun entirely in self-preservation.

Pandy says love isn’t worth having if we aren’t willing to risk self-annihilation. But I don’t think that destruction of myself is a measure of love. It’s a measure of fear, of protection from the pain of the burning sun on my skin after so many years of darkness. For me, it’s a way to maintain the darkness and comfort from the unknown. It is mimicry of martyrdom.

I want to live in the light. I want to be free of the tangles and the thorns. I want to let the sun burn them all away so that there is no more fight. To stop watering them with my own blood and tears.

I need open space and fresh air. I need the last battle through the brush to be freeing.

And I want to find the source of the pinging, in rhythm with my heart. I want to find the beacon that leads me home.

Because I believe that I will also find a simple man with dusty boots that shimmer. I believe that there will be an arcane, perfect smile and outstretched hands that glisten with dew.

And so I fight. Every day. Sometimes the battle is just to get out of bed and soothe my own fears. The hardest battles are fought in the middle of the night, awake and alone in the dark, knowing that what I want and need most is somewhere out there in a vast universe that is no larger than the breadth and depth of my heart.

The way out is through. I couldn’t go back, if I tried. So I keep moving forward, step after exhausted step, because I believe there is love to be found.

I believe there is love to be found for me.

 

 

We two have run about the hills and pulled the daisies fine. But we've wandered manys the weary foot since long, long ago.

What a year 2017 has been. Whether personally or politically, I wasn’t expecting the dramatic changes this year brought. I’m not quite sure what to expect for 2018, but I don’t imagine that it’ll be quiet.

After 27 years, I finally finished my bachelor’s degree. After more than ten years of pain, I had three levels of my cervical spine replaced and rebuilt. After three years, I ended my relationship with Rango. I had 182 Détente Days with DH—and I’m thankful for every single one.

The greatest lesson for me this year was that almost nothing will come according to my time frame. No matter how hard I work, how thoroughly I plan for any and every contingency, things occur at their own pace. The best-laid plans and all that jazz. It helps when I’m working with a goal in mind, but sometimes I still need the reminder to slow down and at least acknowledge the journey, regardless of the destination. Life is most pleasurable when I can enjoy the trek, but sometimes my path has been littered with difficult obstacles that were, at best, life lessons waiting to happen.

Because there was so much to deal with this year—which was really just a culmination of all the previous years—I went back into therapy. I’ve written a good bit about the Internal Family Systems model and how I’ve used it to deal with decades-old trauma that continues to impact my day-to-day. Part of the process includes understanding the role each subpersonality plays, the burden each carries, and the job each performs to keep the whole manageable and safe.

So, what happens when I know all of that? If the burden is lifted from the subpart, what the hell is she supposed to do now?

As I began the slow process of unburdening, I found different parts—Cissie and Stephie, Harley and Quinn, Pearl and Buttercup—who were lighter of load but who also couldn’t stay trapped in their compartments inside my head. Their work was done, and it did no one any good to keep them trapped in a dusty house, struggling to feel the light of day through an old, dirty window.

I imagined a garden for them. In my mind, it sits off to my left and back just a bit. I can hear the birds and see each blade of grass or petal of flower ripple in breezy sunlight. I can smell the earth and the life. It looks much like the yard in front of my actual house. As each subpart is unburdened, I invite them to go to the garden to play. I invite them to join Cissie on the trampoline, jumping until they’re breathless with laughter, hair mussed and clinging to their sweaty, warm necks. Sometimes Buttercup sits at the edge, bare legs dangling from the porch, dirty feet bouncing against the cool brick, and she sings. Her songs are sometimes little more than she or I can hear, but there is a hum of love whose confidence waxes and wanes but which never really fades away.

Sassafras still struggles. Sometimes I feel her very close to me, close on my immediately left and in need of reassurance when she feels overwhelmed by longing and nostalgia and confusion. But I remind her that we are still working, that I am still working. Although love may not come in the ways in which her heart has desperately imagined, it is always with her. I am always with her. But she is always free to put her burden down, just next to me, and join the others in the garden, even if just for a little while.

There are nameless, numerous others, only some of whom I’ve been fortunate enough to engage yet.

I am still working.

But if I am carrying each of them, and they are each carrying their burdens, then I am also carrying those burdens.

So tonight, as I close one year symbolically and open another, I am inviting those burdens to go into the garden, as well. Whether they be ghosts of Christmases past, unhealthy choices of present, or fears of what the future may or may not hold, I am opening the door for each of them to be free—and to be free myself of those weights.

I am offering one last toast to disappointment, to broken promises, and to unfulfilled dreams. I will drink once more to each and every lost love, all of whom mattered and will always matter, but who cannot continue to keep me mired in the past. I have accepted my fault, and I have accepted theirs, but I cannot continue to define expectations for my future based on the past actions of people I will never see or speak to again. They had opportunity not to be ghosts; I am cutting their chains loose and setting them free.

I wish each of them well as I sweep their dust out the door into the garden.

I’m going into 2018 with few expectations. I expect to continue doing my work and making myself healthy and whole. I expect to attempt new things. I expect to discover new things about myself.

I am superstitious about a few things, and New Year’s Eve is at the top of that list. How I spend that night is often indicative of the entirety of the following year. I can regale with tales of New Year’s Eve Omens for almost as many years as the Valentine’s Curse.

This year, I specifically chose to be at home with my babies. We cooked dinner together and piled up on the couch to watch The Little Prince. I rolled my eyes at the short-sighted, closed-minded grown-ups. I cried when he found his rose too late, overcome by baobabs. I gasped at the sudden lurch of my heart when the he met the snake in the desert one last time.

And I hugged my babies and told them I loved them for the millionth time, because I never want them to know what it feels like to question my love and my support. And I never want to know what it feels like not to give that love and support unconditionally.

So, I don’t know what’s coming. It will be what it is, when it is. But for now, for tonight, I am peacefully in my happiest of places, surrounded in love and comfort, quietly bidding farewell to the past.

I wish you all a peaceful, loving new year.

 

 

A million lights are dancing, and you are a shooting star.

As I wrote about a few weeks, I have been seeing someone new. I won’t wax poetic here; it’s simply too early to exalt him to the status of Blog Fodder, in and of himself. I hadn’t necessarily intended to get into a relationship—though maybe it’s still too early to even call it that—while also trying to work on my own stuff, much of which was highlighted and exacerbated by the ending of my relationship with Rango. But the fact is he presented as an opportunity worth exploring while I was beginning the process of self-reintegration.

Whether coincidental or due to some meaning I have assigned (or even thanks to that fickle bitch Fate), there are things about him that remind me strongly of Bounder. He is not another alcoholic, though he may well be overcoming a history as a dismissive-avoidant. He is not Bounder, however, and it is unfair of me to make direct comparisons. They are two different men, with different histories and stories, but there are moments that are striking, to say the least.

Because of this thing with Finn (so named because he is my huckleberry) and because of the end with Rango and because I sometimes pass him driving on the road between our houses, Bounder has been on my mind a lot. A lot a lot. It makes sense that he would be, but it set me off on a path of re-analysis and overthinking (again). I think I’ve dissected that relationship for the millionth time over the last few weeks, still looking for where exactly I went wrong. Because his shit is his shit—I can’t control how he acts or reacts or fails to act—all I can do is try to figure out what I screwed up. He told me numerous times that it wasn’t me, and I generally believe that, but I always dissect to the point of vivisection, flaying myself to a bloody, psychoanalyzed mess.

I do remember getting a text from him, a couple of days after we’d met. He said he was glad we could take things nice and slow. Except we didn’t. We started intensely, quickly, and that’s exactly how it continued. Within two hours of that text, I was making out with him in the parking lot of his office, a quick drive-by on my way home.

And that is where I failed him. Hurricane Sassafras was coming, no matter what he did. I didn’t really hear him and slow down. It wasn’t terribly caring on my part, no matter how unintentional the push was.

Finn also said he wanted to go slowly, I have tried to honor that. I have tried to dial back my impulses to forge full-steam into his world. There is something there worth exploring, and I don’t want to do it all in hindsight.

Which brings me back to Bounder.

Working within the IFS model, I have become very mindful of my feelings. I don’t just mean my emotions. When I feel something—anger, grief, sadness, longing, affection, attraction, love—I take note of where in my body I am processing the emotion. There is usually a physical locus of that energy. Because my strongest emotions are often tied up with what a subpersonality is processing in a given moment, I feel them in different places, which is effectively where each of those subparts resides. Harley and Quinn and Stephie and each of the others sits in a specific spot and pulls on my center from her point of reference. When I feel a subpart whose name I don’t know (who maybe I didn’t even realize existed) pull at my center, the emotional and physical feelings are often coupled with anxiety.

Because there has been so much thought of Bounder over the last few days and weeks, my anxiety has been really high at times. It has often felt like a pull from the right of my stomach. Sometimes it has been so bad that I would get nauseated and irritable, desperate to make the pain stop.

“What is that she’s feeling?” my therapist asked. “She may just want you to acknowledge her feelings. Can you tell what she wants?”

“She wants relief,” I replied. “She is hurt and angry and confused. She doesn’t understand how anyone could have something so precious as that kind of love in their damn hand and just walk away. It makes no sense, and it’s infuriating.”

This, of course, is wholly indicative of my fear of emotional abandonment. While that’s rooted deeply in my childhood, the feelings of hurt and betrayal and confusion are never more profound than when I think of Bounder. While I’m still angry at Rango for how he handled the boys during our break-up, I have dealt with my feelings toward him, kept what I needed to keep and shed the rest. Same for DH and Rex and others whose names and memories don’t really matter or impact me all that much anymore.

I explained to my therapist that the feelings are seated in this very specific location, that they can be overwhelming at times. And when I am most overwhelmed by something, I tend to dive into it head first, hoping to reach the bottom quickly and resurface cleansed.

But that never seems to happen with him, and I am forever in a loop of self-flagellation.

“Well,” she said, “first of all, she needs to know that you are simply witnessing the trauma again, a memory of it; it’s not actually happening again. You’re not being traumatized again.”

Okay. Just a ghost. Not real. Not happening now.

“And,” she continued, “she doesn’t have to feel that anymore. You don’t have to feel that anymore. That’s a lot of burden to have been carrying around for so long. She can let it go. You can let it go. Let the elements have it—they can take it—they can take a lot more than that. But she doesn’t have to feel that anymore.”

Wait—WHAT?!?

Even I could tell that my facial expression shifted in that moment. I was stunned, utterly baffled by the idea that it was okay not to keep feeling those emotions over and over, effectively retraumatizing myself every time. I have dealt with it repeatedly, and there is no healthy in dragging the futility of it all around, night after night.

And it makes sense. I had stopped feeling similar things for others long ago, in a healthy timeframe and in healthy ways. Why is he so special that I should continue to carry that burden?

In part, I think, it’s because he wouldn’t. Part of what happens during the emotional abandonment is that I’m left to feel whatever with no support, and I’m the only one feeling it. Maybe the other person is feeling something, but it never seems to be anywhere close to what I’m feeling, especially when the other person is a dismissive-avoidant who is so well-versed in compartmentalizing emotions away to protect themselves.

I have often railed against feeling like I was carrying it for both of us, because that was sometimes the only way to prove that the thing had ever happened, with no acknowledgement of grief coming from the other person. I am sure Bounder felt it in the darkest of times, but I know that he never faced me to tell me he was sorry for hurting me. His not acknowledging me and the hurt he created, his ignoring of me when he damn well knew it was the worst possible way to hurt me, made me feel worthless, especially to him. But that flew in the face of his telling me he loved me, of his moments of showing me deep, incredible love, and I could never reconcile the conflict of extremes no matter how much I psychologized him and myself.

But to think, to realize, that I don’t have to do that was foundationally shifting. I could feel the anxiety and the tension to the right of my stomach abate immediately. There was a deep sense of relief. She’s there, and she’s a little antsy about what she’s supposed to do now. If her job was to hold all that baggage, what is she going to do now that still allows her to be of use to the Self?

I had a dream once while Bounder and I were dating, one of those lucid nap dreams. I was standing outside a tall, wide, stone tower, trying to figure out how to get inside. I could hear a knocking from the inside, and I needed to let whomever was in there out. As I looked more, I realized the tower was his face, the details of his mouth and eyes and brows built from each brick. I climbed some scaffolding and began to chip away at this one high, white stone. It was the speck of light in his left eye.

Months later, he told me that I’d been like this force knocking on his walls, over and over and over, until he eventually poked his head out enough to see what was in the light.

I let light back into his darkness, and somehow that wasn’t worth staying for. And it’s not that I wasn’t worth it; it’s that he didn’t see himself as worth me. So convinced that he would hurt me in the end, he made it happen, pushing me unaware into the dark pool so that I felt like I would drown before I could resurface.

But in the same way I did it for him, I must do it for myself. I get to be the disco ball for myself, to reflect light and shine it brilliantly into my own dark corners. Disorienting and distracting at first, yes, but eventually it becomes a beautiful swirl worthy of dancing.

It is odd, a little unsettling, to think of life without the possibility of him. I gave up the possibility of him as a romantic partner long ago. Our life goals are different, and he would never be able to consistently meet my needs. But he was always this driving force of emotion and thought, even when we weren’t together, sometimes in contact and sometimes not. Music, in particular, became a daunting prospect for me, because everything could remind me of him.

And that’s her job now, that’s what she is supposed to do, to dance. She is lightened of her load. And she gets to pick the music she wants to dance to. She’s not trapped by the years-long playlists of Bounder songs. She doesn’t have to be afraid of hearing one of them in the grocery store and bursting into tears. She doesn’t have to listen for him in every new song. She can move freely again, not weighed down by his burden or mine. She can find the path that she lost, can move toward light and laughter and love, because she deserves that.

This wasn’t her fault.

And if we pass him on the road again? I don’t know. I could feel something; I could not. I may well never see him again. I’m not going to dwell on what might happen. Now I have different roads to explore and a different Stephanie to discover.

And there is dancing to be done.

 

 

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Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

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In the garden of memory, in the palace of dreams, that is where you and I shall meet.

Since my thyroid radiation in July, I’ve been struggling with still feeling like general crap. Fatigue and brain fog have been intermittently worse. A pretty leisurely two-mile walk with Rango and the boys recently wiped me out for two days. My bloodwork shows wildly-swinging levels of thyroid hormones, indicating that the regrown tissue is indeed dying off, though it may be months before it normalizes.

With that has also come more weight regain and self-recrimination and outright self-loathing.

I have tried to get back into the gym even semi-regularly. It’s hard enough to juggle work and school and kids successfully, and trying to find even six hours a week for myself in that is sometimes unmanageable. Of course I know the exercise will actually help me to feel better, but the fatigue that comes with hypothyroidism can be unimaginably oppressive.

Recently I started a series of virtual races through Yes.Fit. Of course I chose the Alice in Wonderland themed races. After I complete so many miles, as tracked by my Misfit activity tracker, my medal is sent to me automatically. As of today, I’ve completed three of the six Alice races, totaling more than 60 miles.

As it does every day, Facebook was kind enough to remind me this morning of memories from this day in previous years. I find it interesting to see how life has changed over the last few years, but I tend to face those reminders with some trepidation. I love the pictures and funny quotes from my boys from their younger days. Sometimes the memories are useless or now meaningless, or sometimes even too painful, and I’ll delete them. Sometimes I leave the painful ones, knowing those ghosts will haunt me again next year, because I’m either not ready to deal with them or I know they’re so important that I will need the reminders again.

But today, there were two things, from 2010 and 2011. Not surprising, there were pictures from a 2010 concert, of a band I loved then and love now. It was the second in a series of shows that were seminal for the changes that would come over the following two years. A year later, it was the memory that was down 99 of the 115 pounds in total weight loss. Yet another year later, I’d just separated from my now-ex-husband.

All of that has fueled my writing since 2010, which began with the realization that I’d lost my muchness--just like Alice in Wonderland.

I have said repeatedly over the last year that, for a variety of reasons, I felt like I was back in 2010 and didn’t know why I was reliving such similar circumstances. Regardless of the logistical changes and strides I know I have made, I have replayed the past in tandem with the present and come up with only confusion and emotional failure. I have continually grappled with figuring out which choice I didn’t make or should’ve made differently. I’ve tried to re-learn whatever lesson I obviously needed to repeat.

But somehow, I keep sliding farther and farther into the past. Where 2010 may have felt like a rabbit hole, 2016 is feeling more and more like the other side of a looking glass. Where then felt new and exciting and rebellious, now feels reflective and reversed and exhausting.

What is it? What did I miss? What do I need now that can only be retrieved from then?

It just so happens that Alice Through the Looking Glass comes out on DVD this week. Of course I saw it in the theater when it opened--how could I not?--but I really didn’t love it as much as I did the first one. It was beautiful, and I looked for the clues to my missing lessons, but the torment of Time was unsettling to me. I could willingly believe in a lost young woman traveling to surreal place and conquering her fears, but it was almost impossible for me to suspend my disbelief as the same woman mended old wounds.

But maybe that’s it. Maybe my path has been a big circle, and maybe the obstacle is an unturned stone.

Certainly I can pinpoint errors and mistakes and regrettable decisions, but I feel like I have done everything in my power to apologize and make amends for those actions. I would say I have done my best to move on, but I damn well know there are frozen moments that continue to haunt me.

I don’t know what it is, but there is something. It is maddening, appearing and disappearing, always just out of my reach.

So I’m starting back at the beginning, at Alice. I am literally retracing my steps, one foot in front of the other, until I can find a way to the next landmark on this destination. I don’t want to believe that I am personally destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over, that there is literally no way to avoid spiritual repetition. I’ve already seen the White Rabbit, I just passed the Cheshire Cat and am making my way toward the Mad Hatter. There is still the Caterpillar and the Queen of Hearts.

After that, I’m seriously considering the Pac-Man races, where I get to eat a series of brightly-colored ghosts.

Maybe I think too much but something's wrong.

Hi.

It's been a while.

This has happened before, where I've been quiet for a while—for far longer than I'd like or intended. This time, though, I haven't been quiet so much as I've just been biting my tongue.

It's been almost six months since I sat down to write for me. Oh, I've been writing, just not for myself. I've written for school—I'm now a senior pursuing a B.A. in Liberal Studies with a minor in Women and Gender Studies. I've written for work—I'm now a full-fledged, employed paralegal for a prestigious state agency. I've written various speeches for speaking engagements around the state—I have three more months to go as GOAL winner.

All of those have kept me very, very busy and feeling very rewarded. I work myself into a tizzy sometimes from the stress. I am striving to be the best possible student and employee and ambassador and mother and partner. It's naturally a lot of pressure, and absolutely no one is harder on me than I am on myself.

I tend to work at a frenetic pace that is exhausting. I am exacting and demanding of myself, sometimes pushing myself to a breaking point. One tiny slip-up, one slight mistake, and it feels like everything comes crashing down around me. For the last few months, Rango has found me more than once in a sobbing, fetal pile in the middle of the bed.

I've often thought out loud that I needed to take the time to come and write. Almost every day, I draft some blog post in my head but never quite get around to getting it onto the screen. There's always something to get in the way—school, work, errands, chores, kids, life.

In reality, it is me that has been getting in my own way.

With so much happening, with so very many demands on my time and energy, I've let some things slide. I finally had to recognize that the house won't be as clean as I would like. Sometimes popcorn and apples make a perfectly acceptable dinner.

There has also been less time to work out. There's been less energy to devote to working out. In taking care of the boys and the house and our world, there's been less effort to take care of me.

With that has come weight.

By no means have I regained all of the lost weight, but it has been slowly creeping up. Queen Frostine has told me for months that I needed to cut myself some slack.

"Look at everything you have going on," she admonished. "Don't be so hard on yourself."

"You're beautiful," Rango tells me every day. "You're not fat."

Before the divorce, before I went back to college and work, I had time to devote to it. I could walk for an hour or two every day before I hit the gym. I could carefully plan and prep meals for a week at a time. And I knew damn well that the weight wouldn't stay gone just because I wished it; I knew I would have to work at it for the rest of my life.

But I didn't, did I?

Tonight, I was trying on ill-fitting clothes, lamenting my spreading thighs. Rango found me crying in the bedroom, again. He told me, again, that I'm beautiful and not fat. He reminded me that I am so much more than my physicality.

In my head, I know he's right. In my head, I know that my worth—whether to other people or to myself—should not come from the size of my ass. But it is hard to make my heart believe that when I'm struggling with clothes that are ill-fitting because I haven't been doing what I should.

And there is shame. There is self-loathing and self-recrimination. Not so much because I'm not a size 8 but because I let this happen, again. Because I built so much of my story and my identity around the self-transformation that came about because of and during the weight loss, and now it feels hypocritical to let that have ever been a part of my story.

Looking for hangers in the closet, I saw a dress hanging and thought, "That's from when I was pretty."

And it doesn't seem fair that I have to choose between being pretty and being smart. It doesn't seem right that anyone, including myself, would put such pressure on me to be a great student and be a great paralegal and be a great ambassador and be a great mom and be a (sometimes) great partner and be as physically perfect as I can muster, given my inherent limitations.

I get it. No one but me is putting that pressure on me.

But that is how I validate my own existence. I strive to exceed expectations, even when it means exceeding every possible and anticipated expectation before I have any clue what they are. Because if I am not perfect, then I am a failure.

Yes, of course, I know how utterly ridiculous this self-imposed craziness is. In so many ways, I am my own albatross.

And so, I have avoided writing for months, sidestepping my fears and evading myself.

But there is catharsis in writing for me. This is the space in which I am most likely to be truly, sometimes brutally, honest with myself. This is how I have worked my head out when my life has felt like it was unraveling. This is where I have found the stones to lay my own path.

So I'm writing again. I'm crying again. But I'm writing.

This is not a passive-aggressive request for encouragement. This is not my wanting someone else to tell me how special I am.

This is Stephanie edging her way back to where she needs to be. This is me finding my voice again, because it is mine and it is valuable.

So I will try to do better, to be more consistent and to be more open, to make the time to take care of myself in the ways that are healthiest and most vital for me.

I've never been fearless. I've been headstrong and dogged but absolutely never fearless in my determination. But they are my fears, and I am determined to face them again.

It's time to reclaim my muchness.

 

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Ain't these tears in my eyes telling you.

Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

Don't believe that the world is empty, just too noisy to hear the sound.

Looking for something else, I realized this week that I haven't written a blog post in almost two months.

Two months? Really? How can that be??

Well, the last two months have been incomparably busy. I finished my internship and my last fifteen hours of classes to complete my Associate's degree. I started classes this week in my Bachelor's program. There have been several speaking engagements as a result of my GOAL award. Somewhere in there were four cats, two boys, and Rango.

And I'm still on the perpetual search for a job.

An employment recruiter asked me a few weeks ago, "What do you want to do?"

I immediately answered, "I don't know."

It's not that I don't have any idea of the direction I would like my career to go. I went to school to become a paralegal, and I have completed an excellent program of substantive training for the legal field.

But the list of what I don't want to do is much better defined. I don't want to do family law or bankruptcy law or real estate law. Those are necessary areas of the legal profession, and I have friends and family who are successful in each of those areas. They just don't seem to be the right fit for me.

This uncertainty is not the I-don't-know of my 20s, when I blew my chance at college the first time, when all I wanted was something easy and comfortable to drop into my lap and push me in a direction—while hopefully letting me veg out on the couch all day.

It's not the I-don't-know of my new-mom 30s, when "I don't know" really meant "no", when I was too polite to say what I wanted and to truly be myself, afraid of what I might lose by defying other people's expectations.

And it's not the I-don't-know of two years ago, when the daily mantra was a tear-streaked "I don't know! I don't know! I don't know!", when I was trying to find a way, any way, to survive.

Now, "I don't know" comes from exploration, from having so many options, from proof that I am good at something and worth far more than I was led to believe. Far more than I led myself to believe.

"I don't know" means I want to try everything and don't know where to start.

The other question that invariably comes during job interviews is, "Where do you want to be in five years?"

If the last five years have taught me nothing else, I know that whatever plans I make will almost assuredly be broken. Something is likely to come along and divert my path, alter my journey, and that I have to be willing and open to the possibility that can come when I expect nothing more than uncertainty.

Last night, in my first class with my new academic advisor, I was asked what my plan was for my major and for any graduate work I might want to do. Because I chose a Liberal Studies degree, I have some flexibility in the concentrations I'll pursue, based upon both what coursework I transferred in and what my plans may be going forward.

"Combined concentrations in Criminal Justice and Communications," I replied very pragmatically.

But then my advisor suggested that maybe there's something else, something that will better suit my intentions for myself as I continue to explore just what those intentions may be.

He asked me to be open to the possibility of me.

I still want and need direction right now. I feel rudderless, honestly, without definitive projects and contributions to make to a world outside my home.

Lately I've felt like I am drifting along my path right now, rather than actively traversing. I'm having to learn to stop my own panicked thrashing and just float, feeling the warm sun on my face and the water splashing across my cheeks as the river carries me where it needs me to be.

I don't know what's coming.

What I do know is that it will not be something I've done before. There is newness and opportunity close enough that I can feel it within reach as I approach it.

Now all I have to do is grab it and hold on. I'm almost where I'm supposed to be.

 

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Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

Huffington Post Article #3

Wonder if I'll ever bury the hatchet inside.

About the time Rango moved into the house with us, I started to realize that I was having a hard time with his past.

Due to the constraints of time and distance and the necessary logistics for the boys, he and I never spent a night in his apartment. He insists that the apartment was never more than a landing pad and that it never felt like home. While I do believe home for him became wherever I was within days of our meeting, part of me still feels like I never got the opportunity to... I don't know... mark that territory...?

It sounds stupid, I know. I feels stupid. Every time some ex comes up, I cringe.

I know part of my insecurity comes from my maladaptive attachment style, which was established in my childhood and then reinforced over and over and over (and over and over and over) in my adult dating life, especially in the two-and-a-half years after DH and I split. I'm a fragile cat, without a doubt, but so is Rango. Generally we are very careful and patient with one another's emotions, lovingly treading across the scarred battlefield of the other's heart.

But really, I have no idea why the hell I am so freaked out when some former relationship of his is mentioned. Because I took the brutally-open-and-honest approach while I was dating, Rango learned probably far more about me in those first days than maybe he wanted, especially my history with the fragile cats.

When you're divorced, or maybe it just happens at this age when you have a good deal of life experience, first date conversation inevitably turns to prior relationships. Were you married? Do you have kids? Why did you break up? First dates are basically an interview, after all—a chance to see if their fuckeduppedness will play well with your fuckeduppedness.

So he knew very quickly that I was living in the same house I'd lived in with my ex-husband. He knew my most painful ex lived just a few miles away and semi-regularly sees me in passing. He knew I'd had a very active dating and social life on the weekends before DH moved out of state and dropped regular contact with the boys.

Hell, I wrote a book about some of it.

In the semi-autobiographical Persona Non Grata, Tierney talks about how she has a hard time hearing about her husband, Sam's, relationship with his long-ago ex-girlfriend:

"I worried for years that you had loved her more than you loved me," I admitted one night.  I couldn't look at him when I said it.  I kept my gaze trained on the darkness in the woods behind our house.

"Why?  Why would you even think that?  Didn't I tell you every day that I loved you?  Couldn't you just believe that?"

"I believed you.  I still do.  But, Sam, you were so broken when you guys split.  I kept waiting for you to come home and tell me that she'd called, that she wanted you back.  I used to dream about it all the time."

I really didn't know that DH loved me more than he'd loved her until the day Max was born, more than seven years into our marriage.

And I know that love should never feel like a competition, but my head is sometimes a mess, and I sometimes feel like I am constantly at battle with the ghosts of the past. I am forever struggling to overcome my screwed up perceptions of how I think other people see me. Often this drives me to be bigger and better and faster and more. I feel like there is so much inherently wrong with me and about me, and that if I can perfect as many small things as possible then the huge amount of bad is still outweighed by lots of little good.

No one is harder on me than I am on myself.

I few weeks ago, I told Rango, "I won't feel secure until I've been with you longer than you've been with [your ex-wife]."

"But you already have."

I looked at him, puzzled. "You do remember that you were married for five years, don't you?"

"Yeah, but our relationship was over long before we even got married," he replied. "Emotionally, we were together for a week-and-a-half."

A few days later, we took our first trip together. Without the boys, we went to Texas for his sister's wedding, which also gave me the opportunity to meet and spend time with his family. We had a lovely couple of days in San Antonio, walking around Riverwalk and later dancing at the wedding, followed by a day in Houston.

 

Wedding Selfie #Sassafras #Rango #JenAndAli

A photo posted by Stephanie Quinn Jackson (@stephqj) on May 2, 2015 at 5:22pm PDT

DH and I had flown into San Antonio once, gone immediately to buy a car, and then drove straight home to Alabama. We passed through a section of Houston on the way. My 2012 trip to Austin by myself was my only real trip to Texas.

Rango spent his teen years in Texas, especially in and around Houston. He lived in various places before moving to Atlanta (to be with [his ex-wife]), but he still thinks of Texas as home. (Well, maybe until he met me.)

Although I'd never been to San Antonio, I set part of Persona Non Grata there. Tierney's life blows up (the climax without a climax) at the Marriott Riverwalk. I spent some time researching and wrote about what I'd never actually seen:

    I walked out from the hotel and turned onto the wide walkways along the river.  I knew there was a coffee shop nearby.  I ordered a frittata and took my coffee to a small table.  I ate slowly, trying to abate the nagging headache.

    I was tired but didn't want to hole up in my hotel room.  I spent a couple of hours exploring San Antonio.  I walked over little bridges and through lushly landscaped mini-parks.  I was impressed by the mix of modern and traditional, of historical and new. 

    I found a shady spot outside a coffee shop, sitting under a bright yellow umbrella.  It was still early, but the River Walk was bustling already with people ready for the new day.  I sketched the profile of a young woman sitting on a park bench, reading a book.  The face of the sleeping baby, parked in his stroller at his parents' table next to mine. 

 

Tierney is hanging out at the Riverwalk in San Antonio. #personanongrata #junkture

A photo posted by Stephanie Quinn Jackson (@stephqj) on May 2, 2015 at 11:21am PDT

Rango and I stayed at another Marriott a few blocks away. On Saturday morning, he happily walked with me to find the spot I'd written. We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant that was included in an earlier draft of PNG. (It was eventually cut and re-written because the scene was lifeless.) And while he knew this was a fictionalized account, that I'd never been to these places, he also knew we were living a moment from the fictionalized account of the events that triggered the metamorphosis that led, in part, to my divorce.

Never did he complain. Never did he express a jealous thought. Not once did he have to choke back an angry lump and leave the room to catch his breath and regain control.

But driving to Houston the next day, picked up by his best friend, some comment was made about an ex they shared. (Who am I to judge someone for dating their best friend's ex?) Sitting in the back seat of the car, I bristled at the mention, knowing full well that she was long, long before me, that the relationship was short-lived and didn't work for a reason, that he loves me more.

Days later, as we were talking about traveling again soon—something DH and I never did together—I told him I would never go to Sweden with him, because he went there to see a now-ex.

"But it's a beautiful country," he argued. "You would love to see it."

I'm sure I would, but I was never willing to go to New Orleans with DH (in theory, because we didn't travel together or take vacations) because India had lived there in her childhood and later gone on vacation there with DH.

I've talked before about how I am a hoarder of memories. Because I remember virtually everything, I hold onto a lot of shit on my big, broken brain. Combine that with my intense sentimentality, and my head is an emotional minefield that I can barely traverse—how the hell is anyone else supposed to get through?

What I realized is that I am more than willing to give Rango the chance to replace some of those memories. Sometimes, he does it and doesn't even know it. Maybe we're having an incredibly wonderful moment and a song comes on that would have previously tied me up in knots, a reminder of a past moment. While there are still songs I just can't bear to hear anymore, there are a few that are now associated with Rango. Maybe it's a trip to a place I've been before or only dreamt about with someone else.

His heart replaced theirs in that memory space.

His cautions that there are formative memories that cannot be replaced. Of course. No matter what he or I do, there's no possible way to replace everything, and I wouldn't want either of us to do that. What happened before is what has led us to here, to the place where our paths converged. It's all about the journey and not the destination.

Yes, I know that I am letting my own insecurities and fears get in my way. I loathe that I think and feel this way. I am repulsed by the dark, tangled emotions that swirl around inside me, ensnaring my thoughts and hijacking what should be a calm, normal moment.

The only way I know to fight the dark is with light. When I don't feel like my own, internal light is strong enough to illuminate the path, I turn into the disco ball, spinning and reflecting a broken, scattered mosaic of brilliance that can be as annoyingly blinding as it is charming in its kinetic chaos.

Through it all, Rango says he is more than happy to be in my shadow, to let me spin in the spotlight while he supports me. I want him to be where he is happy and comfortable. I don't want to ever lose him to the darkness that I refuse to face and enter.

But I really have no idea how to counter the jealousy. I don't know how to not feel like it's a competition, even though it's one I know I'd have won months ago. I don't have a clue how not to snarl back at any of his memories that I'm afraid are snarling at me.

 

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Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

You never know until you try.

For months now, I've been quiet. It hasn't been intentional, I assure you. I've lamented to Rango and the Castration Committee that I just haven't had time or energy to write. 

That's not entirely true.

I have been extremely busy with school. Between three classes and a very busy internship with the ACLU of Georgia, my time has been mostly filled with The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, various petitions for probate, and ongoing discussions with my professors and multiple legislators about the privacy concerns surrounding police use of body cameras.

 

Monday Morning Reflections on the Train #itsmarta #marta #train #Atlanta #manicmonday

A photo posted by Stephanie Quinn Jackson (@stephqj) on Mar 31, 2015 at 5:34am PDT

 

My regional GOAL interview seemed to go very well, though I won't know how well until next week. The state competition begins on April 22nd here in Atlanta. Finalists will be announced the first night, and they have to be prepared to compete again the next morning. While I had excellent feedback from my judging panel and others at Regionals, it could be that I'm not the right fit for the Technical College System of Georgia. Maybe I'm too opinionated or too loud or too brash. Then again, maybe I am the right fit.

Either way, I won't know for another week.

I've also been making the transition from single mom of two to attached mom of two. While Rango and I would've happily gotten married the weekend we met, we agreed that probably wasn't in the boys' best interest. After nine months of dating and entangling our lives, we sat down with the boys and asked them how they would feel if he moved in with us, making our home into OUR home.

They were agreeable. They were excited. They were ready.

There have been a few bumps here and there, but all in all it's going better than I was willing to allow myself to hope.

With most things, I tend to subscribe to the "Lowered Expectations" philosophy—expect nothing, and you'll never be disappointed. With regard to the GOAL competition, I'm living that mantra every single day. While I may be very well qualified to be the advocate for technical education in Georgia, there's only a 1 in 24 chance that I'm The One. So I don't get my hopes up. I don't plan about what color car I would pick out or which of our cars we would sell to pay the taxes on the new one.

 

But with Rango, I already have expectation. He has gently guided me to a place where it is okay to believe in someone else, to trust in someone else. And I do. I trust him to do what he tells me he's going to do. I believe that he will love me, actively, and be available for me, forever and always and no matter what.

And that's led me to have expectation for myself. Historically—at least over the last five years—I have hedged my bets. I always had a backup plan or the phone numbers of exes I stayed in contact with, just in case, even when those relationships were toxic for me. Even when those fragile cats would scratch and bite me, running away into the night, and then yowl loudly at my door a few nights later while I was still bleeding from their affront.

Now, there is no bet hedging. I blocked the numbers of my backup plans and made it difficult for them to reach me and vice versa. I took the remnants of old relationships—my wedding dress, the box of Bounder, the last bits of Absolem—and I burned them. I wanted to do something privately ceremonial, like burying the ashes in the backyard, but once the embers faded, I found there was no more energy to give to them. I was tired, and they didn't deserve my reserves.

That's all for Rango now.

He told me over the weekend that, for the first time in his life, he has no backup plan, either. We both always have friends and family we can turn to, but neither of us is propping open the door to possibility of failure. We're not stupid; we've each been divorced and know damn well what could happen.

But we also know now, after years of struggle and growth, what should happen.

We are open and honest, sometimes stupidly so. We are true to ourselves and to each other. We have forged a logistical and emotional partnership that is equal and based on mutual respect and care and love.

We argue sometimes. Sometimes when I'm especially bitchy, he'll just pointedly ask me if I'm going to be okay. He stays calm and lets my storm pass over him until it blows itself out.

At Regionals, the judging panel asked me where I thought I'd be in five years and how I intended to get there.

"I know you want a perfect answer," I replied, "but the honest truth is I don't know and I don't care. What I thought I'd be doing when I started my paralegal studies program is not at all what I'm actually doing a year later. Where I thought I'd be five years ago is nowhere close to where I actually am. So, yes, the answer is still that I don't know, but it's also that I'm excited to find out. I'm excited to explore opportunities and discover new talents and new challenges. I'll let you know where I am in five years."

Even if I don't move on to the next round or win another damn thing ever in my life, I am confident that I will continue to forge my path and make the best of whatever intersects with my journey. I have talent and skill and resourcefulness. I have two amazing sons and a spectacularly supportive life partner. I have loyal, wonderful friends and four warm, snuggly cats.

I don't need another thing.

 

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Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

I'm not here for your entertainment.

I felt like there was something missing in my day-to-day life.

I bought a new pair of shoes last week.

That, in and of itself, is not newsworthy.  I've tried really hard not to turn Muchness and Light into a journal of my daily activities, though I certainly have revealed more in this forum about my daily life than the average bear might share.  (My blog is my woods sometimes, isn't it?)

But I bought new sneakers.  They're black with teal laces and trim, plus a splash of hot pink—totally unlike the pink and purple that tend to attract me. 

The last time I bought sneakers was almost four years ago.  I'd started walking to feel better, taking the first steps toward what would be a 115 pound weight loss.  Those metallic magenta Nikes have carried me over at least 3,000 miles.  They adorned the major milestones of my last four years, and they were the strange, symbolic foundation for the deep transformations that took place within me.

Three Christmases ago—the last Christmas DH and I were together—I asked for new sneakers.  DH bought me a pair of pink and purple Nike Dual Fusion 2s that I picked out.  They were exactly what I wanted.  Exactly what I told him I wanted. 

Those shoes never fit right.

They were too high at the opening, rubbing uncomfortably against my ankles.  The toe box was cut strangely, and sometimes my pinky toes would go to sleep. 

I never wore them more than a dozen times, always going back to my well-worn metallic magentas. 

Those shoes became strangely symbolic of my marriage.  The ones I bought for myself, that I wore to protect me as I moved again through my life, were comfortable and supportive.  I've never met anyone else who had those same shoes.

The second pair were a gift I picked out—as I always did for gifts for myself.  They were something I asked for that DH gave me when he had a reason, but they were never right.  And I saw them everywhere on other people's feet.

I have been terrible about self-care during the last year-and-a-half.  My 115 pound weight loss is now a net of about 100 pounds.  I haven't been walking, let alone working out, with any kind of regularity.  My life is the boys and the house and work and school.  When I get free time, I am often too exhausted by everything else to even think about going for a lengthy walk. 

I'm not eating well or sleeping well.  I forget to take my medicine—the mandatory thyroid replacement hormone that will keep me functional and alive.  I'm cranky and bitchy from all of the stress that I know is taking a toll on my body, not to mention my mind. 

I am busting my ass right now to get through school and still try to work when I can, plus clean the house and do the laundry and sometimes cut the grass.  Max and Tricky need attention and time and care, and they deserve to have more than what's just leftover at the end of the day. 

So it's me who gets the leftovers.  It's Stephanie who fights with herself to get a little care and attention.  It's Stephanie who gets lost in her own shuffle and then feels like shit because she barely has the time and energy to touch base with the parts of her who fought so damn hard to unearth themselves from the minutiae that was killing her soul.

But if I don't take the time to care for me, I will have nothing left to give, especially to the boys.  I have to constantly remind myself that I am worth my own effort, even if it means I have to put down a textbook or tell a friend no or refuse to answer the phone.  Even if it means I have to drag my exhausted, flabby ass from the couch and put on my shoes and walk.

I put on my new shoes over the weekend and took the boys (also in their new shoes) to the local greenway.  I did three miles, and it felt good.  It felt right.  And my shoes didn't hurt my feet. 

One foot in front of the other.  That's the only way I'm making it out of this.  One step at a time.