2012 was a long time ago.
A lifetime ago. It was also the last time I wrote here.
So much will change in 5 years. 5 years ago, that's when I started to change. Life cascaded from that point. I really have no idea what life will look like 5 years from now.
In the past five years I have advanced my career. While I wouldn't call myself successful, 13 year old me would be proud of the professional that I have become. I suppose that says a lot. About 13 year old me, and about 35 year old me.
I survived my daughter's elementary years. I am now raising a tween. The dreaded, awkward, middle school years. Full of anger, hormones, idiocy, and rivalry. Oh, and Kaitlyn has it tough, too.
I also survived a divorce.
I phrase that intentionally. I survived my divorce. It sounds dramatic, but it felt dramatic. And the fall out, well, it's a bit like being a survivor. At once, I am proud to be strong enough to survive severing ties with what I can acknowledge was a toxic relationship. I am no longer a lesser being. I am ME, and I am proud of who I am and what I can accomplish. I am a buoy for my daughter - that marker in the water that she can swim to, or try to swim past. I will not be the woman who taught my daughter her role in life was the supporting female role. She will be taught that hers in the main role, if she chooses to take it. It will be her choice if she chooses to take it.
But understand the other side to being a survivor. I am not a victim. If I choose to be stronger than that, no, better than that; then I am not the victim. But in a two sided role, if I am not the victim, then arguably there must be one. And if I am not the victim, then I must surely be the villain. It's a sad and typical scenario, isn't it? The sad tale of the single mother, or even the woman who filed first, making that mad choice to end the comfort of predictability.
At the end of it all, a man can be on his third wife, and that's just how his life went, but a single mother or divorced woman - she is an entity to be scorned and even feared. I am your cautionary tale. I am that reflection so many women see in the mirror and choose to cover up for shame. Shame at their own misery. Shame at their inability to change or address their own unhappiness.
Husbands fear me. Because if I can do it, if I can leave, what's to keep their wives at home, caring for their children like good little obedient wives. I have had more than one woman tell me that her husband did not want her to be friends with me because I was a bad influence. Simply because I was divorced.
If taking my own life into my hands is an example that the world wants to see as a band influence, then call me Jezebel.
I don't fall into statistics. I take not state aid. I carry my own benefits. I work - damned hard. I own my home. I care for my child. She has everything she needs and then some. I take care of my own. Those who are my few, precious tribal members, I will care for these people with my very last breath.
I live every day with alternating feelings of pride and terror.
And I do so in solitude. Inside. Inside it's just me. There's no one else living instead this head of mine.
My tribe is small now. I had a vast support group. Always someone to go somewhere or do something.
Now? Now, I feel those survivalist feelings of anger, fear, and resentment.
I know I am blessed, even and especially in my solitude. I know who is real, and who is not. And I know God is real, in all of this. Because he has given me some of the strongest members of my tribe. Friends that I have stood by through many years, have come back to stand by me now. For these precious friends, I will thank God and be grateful.
For the rest of you assholes, I have a vulgar activity in mind that I would like to suggest you do with yourself.
Maybe I won't change the world, but I damn sure had the power to change ME. I could have chosen to live my entire life stuck in a place devoid of acceptance, encouragement, or individualistic freedoms. I had a role to fill. A 1950s housewife kind of a role, and I was miserable at it. I was supposed to make other people envious of my life. Proper wife, proper mom, proper place. I was good at playing my part. I also had very little say in my own life decisions. Any act that was a betterment to myself or my career was met with scorn and retaliation. But that was my private life. The detriment that led to my divorce was, at the core, my business. One very slanted and insane side of that story routinely makes its rounds, and it's the only side. Because it's my business.
For those who are so afraid of me now, let me ask you, what is it you are truly afraid of? That I will pull you off your vanilla sprinkled path? Or is it that you are too afraid to look at your own life to even glance at what it's like when someone follows their heart?
Shun me, scorn me, say what you like. But you have to look in that mirror, same as I did for many years. I can look in the mirror and see myself now. How many of you can say the same?
