by Band Back Together | Jan 12, 2019 | Divorce, Family, Heartbreak, Parenting |
I have so many different stories I want/need to share with The Band, it is hard for me to sit down and write just one. I think I have one that needs to come out now before I explode, though.
In another life, I was married to my high school sweetheart. I was an Army wife and a stay-at-home mom, and I think I was pretty damn good at it. I thought things were perfect. Sure, things could have been better, but the grass is always greener, right?
My husband left for Iraq before our 3 kids were even in school. He was gone for 2 years. A lifetime happened in those years he was away. We grew as a family. He came home expecting us to be the same, and we weren’t. He came home from Iraq and was expected to be a family man, father, husband again after being a bachelor of sorts while he was gone. Things happened; we divorced. It is still hard for me to accept. He was my world! I’m moving and trying to get past it, though.
I do pretty well until he calls and says things like “I love you,” “I miss you,” “I want us again.” I try really, really hard not to, but sometimes I fold. I do love him, miss him. This last time though, I told him NO. Not until you are no longer with your girlfriend. Not until we go to counseling as a family, a couple, and you alone. I also told him that I want more than just to be with him: I want my kids to have their DAD. They deserve that. I told him taking them for a couple hours every couple months and canceling on them 9 times out of 10 is not all right. I am NOT covering for him anymore. He agreed. Promised to take the kids 3 times now.
And guess what? He has canceled every. single. time. I have been wiping tears and hugging hurt little people for 2 weeks now. He doesn’t get it. He always says “sorry, something came up.” I tell him “take them with you,” and his response is “I can’t afford it.” WHAT! I am raising our children with NO help from you! Nothing. Okay, I just started getting child support again, but I am not talking about the money; I mean emotionally, physically. They just want to be with you. They don’t care if you sit on the couch or in the car. They would LOVE to just be near you. Believe me.
I am so tired of covering for him. I can’t handle the questions: “Am I not good enough for Daddy?” “Why am I not special enough?” “Do I have to change so he will love me?”
How do I answer those? I don’t think my hugs and answers are enough anymore. I think my kids, my little hearts, are starting to think I am just blowing smoke.
Help me, The Band. How do I fix their hurt?
by Band Back Together | Jan 12, 2019 | Happiness |
Have y’all had Cuties? The adorable little clementine/mandarin orange hybrid that comes in the little wooden crate?
What? You haven’t? Oh, you don’t know what you’re missing.
They’re tiny. And orange. And sweet. And delicious.
They are super easy to peel. Did I mention they’re tiny?
Cuties are my dose of happy.
And they’re my dose of Vitamin C.
What are YOU happy for today?
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What is YOUR dose of happy for today?
We want to know!
Share it with the world on your blog and then link up below, tweet it out (hashtag #DOHMonday #WithTheBand) or share it on Facebook. Whatever you want to do, do it. Just find a bit of happy in this Monday!
by Band Back Together | Jan 11, 2019 | Compassion, Coping With Losing A Friend, Friend Loss, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss, Sadness |
Today, my heart is broken. Some people that touch your life just become part of your journey. Diontae and I met in the summer of 2015. He had transferred to Olive Branch as an Assistant Manager and I was a part-time head cashier. We were the new kids, so we closed together a lot. When you spend as much time with people as we did, you make connections.
Diontae became my work husband. We kidded about this all of the time, but we had each others backs. You all know the person. The one that you go to complain to so you don’t take the stress of the job home to your family. The person who just GETS the struggles of the day to day grind of your store. You learn each other’s kids names, talk about your families, dish about the newest gossip.
I thank the stars for him at that time in my life.
I left that store in April of 2017 for personal reasons. At the time, he was my direct supervisor. The first person I called when I walked out of my store was him, my work husband. He understood why I did what I did. Yet I felt horrible, because I was losing an important person in my life.
I came back to the same company in May of this year, just at a different store. The first time I called him for some information for a customer at my current store, he told me that my old position was open and that he wanted me back. Every time I spoke to him, he’d say the same thing.
Today my heart is broken.
My first work husband is dead. He left behind a daughter and a family that loved him deeply. He also left behind a work family that loved him wholeheartedly.
Today, the world is a little less bright without Diontae in it.
by Band Back Together | Jan 10, 2019 | Coping With A Dysfunctional Family, Family, Mental Health, Pediatric Mental Illness |
This weekend will kick-off further pictorial evidence of just how perfect my family is.
Click- Tonight Prince, the ten-year old, will have another baseball game where he is sure to steal home and score an imperative run to keep up the team’s winning streak and their first place position in the league.
Click- Tomorrow my husband will MC the antique car show that the local board of elected officials I sit on is hosting, while I hand out plaques to the runners of the 5k who donated money to the Disaster Victims in the next state.
Click- Sunday will be my husband’s birthday and Mother’s Day.
Click – Wednesday my oldest, my only daughter, will turn twenty-two.
Click- Thursday is Award’s Day at Prince’s elementary school, where he will no doubt again receive the school’s “Medal of Good Conduct Award,” and the coveted “Leadership Award,” since he is clearly the perfect child.
Click- Friday my oldest will graduate from University with her 3rd degree. Did I mention she has been to Congress and the United Nations?
We should probably dress in white shirts and head to the beach and find some grass and have pictures taken in the breeze. I mean, we are so very perfect, aren’t we?
I don’t understand why I haven’t written a book on how to be the perfect mother of perfect children. I should TOTALLY be on the cover of Perfect Magazine and stuff. GEEZ.
Oh wait.
I forgot.
You know the way people don’t want to bring up cancer? Or say the name of a child that has passed away? The way “if we don’t talk about it, it won’t hurt as much.”
Bullshit.
I have another child, “My Dude.” He is nineteen years old. I love him. I don’t call him “My Dude,” because it sounds cool, I do this because I hope one day he will be able to apply for a job and his future employers won’t google him and see the things I have written about his struggles; my shitty job raising him.
He is from me. He is mine. He is just as much as the other two are, and I WILL NOT be taking a family freaking portrait until he is in it. I don’t care if he’s wearing a tin foil hat in that portrait; we will wear matching tin foil hats, dammit.
My Dude was missing for a bit and yesterday on my “humor blog,” I lost my mind. I posted about my mental breakdown. The lovelies from BB2G came flying in and offered to let me vent here.
In addition to a kazillion other people on the internet who sent me virtual hugs and pulled me from the mental pool of snot and self pity and fear, I wanted to personally thank you.
I am not a strong mom. I am just a mom. A screwed-up, flying-by-the-seat-of-my-probably-on backwards-who-knows-thong. Second guessing every move but acting damn sure of myself in front of the shorter people. Arguing with the hired help (The Doctors). Trying to help My Dude battle the demons only he can see. So when you think I am strong, remember I freak out 1 day out of 365.
He and others with mental illness live with it, 24/7, 365.
I cannot imagine that hell.
So to every mother who feels judged, feels like a failure, who has a kid that is overstimulated and screaming and kicking, who is glared at by strangers, sitting in a car line, wanting to give up or just to run away, I need you to know this. Please take it to heart.
When you look out of the window and see that perfect family with the perfect kids and the perfect house; the family that looks like they just stepped out of the magazine; they are just as broken and off-balance as the rest of us. We are all broken beings surviving the best we can. It really is all we can do.
No matter what your battle, please remember you are not alone.
xo,
PEACH OUT
by Band Back Together | Jan 9, 2019 | Agoraphobia, Fear, Social Isolation |
Sitting in My Corner Chair
By Clifford Myers
Where I sit—
In my corner chair,
where I put on weight
and grow out hair—
Watch TV
without a care
sit and stir
and blankly stare
at the blankest page
without a word
just thoughts on things
I may have heard—
I may have lived
if I wasn’t scared
and sat all day
in my corner chair.
