Hooray!!!
Thanks, chickies!! You are the best!!!
(buys REALLY bodacious crap-slogging shoes)
Are they red?
Good goin'!!!
I wouldn't trade our chickies/lionesses (depending on mood) for nuthin'.
Nuthin!!!
aaaaah yeah! Good job! So, you didn't even need to make the trip to Athens? Wow, you ARE good!
Thanks, lilk. I still have to go to straighten out the Summer class imbroglio--and take the placement test--but I got my three 3000-level English classes SEWED UP via the buzzard method.
Thanks!!!!
<scanning for female equivalent of spiking football and doing silly dance>
And, HOORAY for LILK and her educational adventure!!!!!
Heeheehee...... <happy dancing>
Lash
I've been reading along here & not saying much.
I am
so delighted with this latest development!
Well done! I'm very happy for you.
Lash--
You're making your own "luck". Great!
Smiling, happydancing for both Lash and littleK!
Joining Jo in dancing a celebration, congratulation dance for Lash.
You and littlek are inspirations!
Promise we'll all do this crazy happydance at the first a2k meet we can all get to!!
Thanks, dearies!!!
Inspirations! Really, now.....
Lash wrote:Promise we'll all do this crazy happydance at the first a2k meet we can all get to!!
Thanks, dearies!!!
Y
You're thinking you will be invited?
I'll be in the parking lot.
I never read these. Don't "believe" in them--but this was a funny coincidence. On myspace, somebody sent me a birthday horoscope:
Cancer (Jun 21 - Jul 22)
You may nostalgically long for more certainty than you presently have. You crave security -- both emotional and practical -- but subconscious drives are pulling you off the well-traveled roads and into the deep woods where everything seems more magical, yet also less predictable. Enjoy the detour; you'll return to the main highway soon enough.
Wow. I practically quoted that in my a2k bio.
<purses lips>
Look for the girl with the broken smile...ask her if she wants to stay a while... - 2005-12-30
After the conversation about divorce, we stayed together for three uneventful years. I decided to focus on the kids, and that was enough for me at the time. I camped out with the Girl Scouts, and was the loudest cheerleader at my son's rec ball games, soccer, every season's sporting event. I made myself happy in them. And, I squirreled away a little cash here and there for the day the kids were old enough to choose the parent they wanted to live with. I was told a child of 14 could likely choose their custodial parent in a divorce. My youngest was 8 when all this happened; however, my son was 11, and I really didn't think a judge would split them up, or award cusody of my little daughter to her father. Sometimes I wanted to kill him. I was devoted to them--there wasn't anything I wouldn't do for them--for their best interests. That hasn't changed.
I was violently pissed that I had to endure more of his bullshit, and I was becoming sick, worrying all the time about having stuff turned off, bills not paid, and what new disaster lurked around the next corner. I did OK living like this for about three years, but I found out a woman (a person) needs love, self-esteem. Something. Some reason to live. Children shouldn't be burdened with keeping their mother alive. It was a shitty way to live. I'd always had a moderate baseline of depression--but in about 1997, it was full throttle. I wanted to die. Consciously, there was no way I would leave my children--subconsciously, I was losing significant ground. Things were going badly. I didn't recognize myself in the mirror. I didn't even think about my appearance. People who have been really depressed know how you are just removed from life, even though you're still walking around in it. I just want to scream to young women--get the hell away fom men who kill your soul, men addicted to alcohol. I don't care if you love them or not. They are sucking the life out of you.
I didn't even notice a new guy at work, except to think it was intrusive for him to try to start conversations with me. I was sitting in there, in the dark, relieving everyone of my presence and me, of theirs. I didn't want to meet new people. I didn't want to talk to the old ones. I didn't have enough money to buy lunch at work, and I didn't have an appetite, so for the hour lunch break, I sat in an unused room on the campus. I didn't think anything of it. I guess, though, it was the subject of conversation. I was so checked out, I didn't really see him--I couldn't tell you what he looked like at the time--I just knew he intruded on the time I tried to rest my head. It was a big room, set up for the patients to watch TV, but they rarely used that room, and never did during my lunch break, and he asked me if I minded him sitting in there and watching TV and eating his lunch.
Later, I found out friends had put him up to being friendly to me, to see if it would shake me out of my gloom. That was embarrassing. I had not thought of another man. The thought was foreign, as foreign as it is now.
The things that happen, happened. I used to think that cheaters were amoral slitherers, who lasciviously sought people to screw for the sake of screwing. That sterling upbringing. I had no idea it could sneak up on you. Of course, everyone is still accountable for their decision. He had long fulfilled his favor to my friends. Weight dropped off of me; people remarked they didn't know I had colorful clothes in my closet. My appearance and my mood changed dramatically. In later years, I read one of those Cosmo articles with a check list of What To Look For When Your Spouse Is Cheating. I was a poster child for an extramarital affair. And, this was before we had sex. We talked for six months before seeing each other away from work. We went fishing on his boat, we went dancing, we "dated" for another three months. I thought I was in love with him. Of course, I was in love with the way he made me feel. I had so desperately needed to feel something. I threw everything I believed out the window. I would divorce my husband and be this man's lover, and raise my children alone.
We had a passionate, romantic affair, and a good deal of it was videotaped by my father-in-law's PI. The old guy told my husband in his dad's office that he should think hard about whether or not he wanted our marriage to survive. He said over half of the couples he investigated stayed together, if the accusing spouse didn't see the tapes. Not one couple who had seen the tapes stayed together.
He didn't watch them.
I didn't know any of this when I admitted I'd been having the affair. The most bizarre thing...when I admitted it, the first thing he said was "Stay with me. This is as much my fault as it is yours. Let's start over." Not at all what I expected. But, as usual, it wasn't that simple.
____________________________
My steps in this recounting are a bit more tentative now. I loved my husband. A lot of this casts him in a negative light. I consider him a better person than I was. My children adore him to this day. As do I. I was raw when I wrote this months ago. Still raw at times.
I was only able to write one additional excerpt. I've never been able to finish. I don't know that I will. If not, it has been a distinct kindness to allow me to ...say it. Thank you.
Lash--
Thank you.
Hold your dominion.
