Such a cliche thing to say, but time really is like the sand in an hourglass these days for me. So much happens and so many things have come at me left and right lately, that I find myself surprised at how quickly time really is going by and then i realize each moment was a piece of sand with a particular memory attached to it.
My sister lost her best friend from childhood/teen years. When we moved to the Bay Area we went to a church all the years we lived there and i remember K & J, thick as thieves, like two peas in a pod. I spent many a Sunday on J's lap, right next to my sister. She would often come over and babysit us with my sister. She also had a special bond with me, because we shared the same name. My name is not a popular name, in fact it's a very rare name. I only ever knew two other people in my entire life that shared my name, and my sister's bff had a variation of my name. Same name, different spelling. As we grew older the joke between us was always the same when we parted ways. She would say, "Love you J, even though I'm the better J". Some times she would switch it up, but ultimately the message was there, we shared the same name and we were 9 years apart in age, but she was the better one because she was showing me life lessons just like my older sister was. And she did.
J was beautiful. Her and my sister were the prettiest girls I ever knew, and being a child I looked up to them. But they weren't just beautiful, they were like mothers to me. They taught me things, they shared with me, they pushed me away and they loved me. And when J met her soon to be husband i was immediately protective of her. This was MY J. And he was not allowed anywhere around around if i was there. For some reason, even at the age of a child, I knew the heart of a cheater. And so I nicknamed him Gaston, from the movie Beauty and the Beast. The Disney adaptation of this old story, put into character her soon to be husband. He was very attractive and handsome, but i never much cared for the way he treated J or looked at her.
That's all water under the bridge though, as beautiful J left this side of our lives right before her 41st birthday. She died in a car crash and it sent my world into a spin tail for a few moments because J not only shared my name but we grew up in similar homes. We both had grown up in the same church, her bff was my sister for many years, she'd stuck to a marriage which from what i gathered was full of darkness, and she had a big family like i did. 2 brothers and 2 sisters. And it made me so grateful that as of yet, i still have all my sisters alive on this earth and it reminded me that November is not my favorite month of the year, having been the same month that I lost my brother before I ever really got to know him. But it also has spurred me to not continue living my life as the wife of a man who neither honors me or loves me. I hope and pray that my big sis finds peace and calm regarding the loss of her dear friend and can only imagine how this will feel when the time comes for me to face this. But I am also in complete awe of my oldest sister. She truly loves, and she loves in a way that I have much to learn from.
My middle dd has also started presenting with a rash over the last two months that brings me to a standstill in time. It presents, it boils, she picks (she's a picker sadly), then it bruises and fades away. Now is the second time it has gone to bruising and I am left praying and clinging to the hope that this time it will resolve itself. In the meantime I am left to start the ball rolling, you see this was the same exact rash that DD#1 had at 10 months of age that no one could figure out for months. Finally on mother's intuition we drove her to the children's hossy after hours and insisted on a diagnoses and infectious disease specialist confirmed the diagnoses of Sweet's Syndrome, AKA Acute Febrile Neutrophilic Dermatosis. She was the 2nd case in 35 years to be diagnosed with it as a child, so they really didnt know much. So for now, we are just praying a lot. I have some calls into the pediatric specialist, but as of yet am not hearing much back. I'm hoping it goes away, especially since we were reassured how RARE this was in children. But for now, i hold my breath as a mother.
Onto the rest of my life, I find myself surprised. I've never been alone. I'm realizing this now. I had a brief break and was single for a few months before I met STBX, but never any length of period in my life was I single. I always needed to be with a guy and frantically searched for the next to be with. And i'm ashamed to admit, I fought this at the beginning of all of this. I thought, "OMG i want another baby, i have to find Mr. Right, date, get married, be together for a year and have a baby all before I'm 35". I was literally terrified of the time and how impossible it seemed. And now, as the days have passed into months (3 to be exact) I'm realizing that I have bigger dreams. I'm sad to put aside my dreams of having another baby, but the dreams I have are even greater than that and I'm finding that I may not want to be married ever again or have another baby. Because now I want more for myself. I want to get a great paying job, which I'm fully capable of and have been applying for. I want to possibly do another surrogacy. And then once my credit is repaired from the mess that STBX made of it, and I'm able. I want to buy my OWN home. One for me and my kids, STBX is welcome in it if he would like to contribute to the rent, but I want to by it on my own accord. One that I pick out, am approved for and choose on my own. I want to put myself through midwifery school (I've already found the perfect program) and then I want to run my own home birth practice out of my home that I bought on my own. And then I want to just raise my children, raise my practice and pay off my home. That is it. Those are the extent of my dreams right now and they sound heavenly to me. And the great thing, is they are within the realm of reality for me. I can do this, and I fully intend on it. And so I have slowly started the footwork to fulfill these dreams and suddenly dating, a relationship, marriage. . . none of those seem so important to me. I think this is the final gift of my divorce that I am getting, I finally get to realize MY dreams after 10.5 years of sacrificing myself for everyone else in my life.
Funny, how I had the blinders on. All these years I thought I needed love to survive . . .when in reality all I need is the ability to love others and not sacrifice myself in the name of love, to survive. I'm learning so much these days. At the beginning of this divorce I thought for sure that this would be the worst time in my life, but suddenly I'm realizing that these just very well may be the best days of my life.
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