It has been a little over 3 years since the last time I wrote an entry here as an Open Diary refugee - the site is coming back soon and I am excited for that! I am looking forward to seeing all of my high school and college life come back to me - I think I started that diary in 2000 or 2001. Wow.
I’m here because I remember writing always being something cathartic to me, and something I loved. Summing up my day or week, processing and unpacking emotions (however ugly or intense) in a safe place that I would not be judged. Or maybe I would be judged, but those people could hit that little ‘X’ in the top right corner and go elsewhere. So I’m here. A lot has changed in 3 years. I reread my last entry that was full of angry and sadness and loneliness, and it hurt my heart. I honestly feel like a different person, like I can look at that woman objectively and from the outside in a mature way.
A quick update would be that I am not teaching anymore, but not because the State of South Carolina took my license. We moved again, to Columbia, and I just couldn’t find a job. Instead I worked for the Y there, which was awful. It was a grind until you die and then grind some more job - nights, weekends, calls and texts and emails constantly. For someone who already had struggled with making boundaries for work, it was hell. I managed after-school and camp programs (like I did before teaching).
I broke my leg and ankle at work in February, requiring surgery, and during the time I was out Nick got a new job offer in Charlotte. So off we went again! We’ve moved 11 times in 10 years. I stuck with the Y through camp in the summer, and then took some much needed time off. In October, I got a part time job in the criminal justice department of a large substance abuse center. It is boring, but my boss and coworkers are so wonderful, and really boring is great right now. It is exactly what I need. I decided to finally pursue my long term dream of going back to school for art therapy. First to check off my list is a Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, followed by post graduate certification in Creative/Expressive Art Therapy. I’ve been accepted into one of the three programs that I applied to, and will hear back from the other two about interviews sometime in January. Either way, I’m back to school next year!
I will be the 2nd person in my family with a Masters, the 1st woman though.
My relationship with my father in law has mended over time, and we are close. But he is battling alcoholism, and it is getting to the point where Nick and his brothers want to sit down and talk to him. He is open about his struggles, and is highly functioning, but his health has very quickly declined. Nick’s step mom is 15 or so years older than him, and he looks much older than she does. We want him around as long as possible - he is a sweet man who has worked hard his entire life. And if any of us do end up having kiddos, we want ‘Daddy G’ to be there with ‘Nana’. One thing I told Nick is that I just don’t want him to have to watch his father go through what my grandfather went through in 2008, he died because of his addiction to alcohol. It ripped my family to shreds and those wounds have still not healed, and it was horrific to watch him go through DTs and die unhappy and miserable. I don’t think that Nick’s family would fight like mine, but it would still be awful.
My friends and I have gotten closer over the past three years, and feel so much more open with one another about struggles, happiness, and everything there is. We have a group text and talk daily back and forth. Sometimes sharing just a selfie or funny pictures/GIFs, sometimes talking about or day or problems, sometimes just rambling about life’s randomness. It feels good. We are a group of 6 very different women in different areas of life, but it is wonderful. It feels good to have friends in my pocket basically, some of whom have known me for 20 years almost. Since we were 10 or 11. Some of whom I met in college.
My relationship with my family is still an anxiety filled struggle a good bit of the time to be honest. My biological mom and I have gotten closer, but her flakiness still hurts sometimes. Sometimes thinking about my own feelings of abandonment related to her refusal to talk to me or help me hurts still. Sometimes I feel like she is close to me because I am the ‘easiest’ one right now - self-sufficient, and mostly adulting correctly. My younger sister is struggling and it breaks my heart. We saw her over Christmas for the first time in about 2 years, she has lost a significant amount of weight (although it isn’t unhealthy looking right now) and all I can see is someone who is so afraid of everything, and so depressed and angry. She showed a lot of attention seeking behavior the evening we saw her, throwing up information about relationships with married men in open marriages, drug use, and eventually that she wanted to blow out her brains and her kids brains. My bio mom took the bait at one point and it ended up being a ‘who wanted to kill themselves’ more contest. She had to one up everyone with how awful her life is, no one understands her, no one gets how hard it is, etc. I was relieved to go to Nick’s family’s home the next day, but left feeling terrible and anxious about K (sister). I am upset with her on one hand because she ruined Christmas for my mom and stepdad, and her outbursts were unnecessary. And her life is hard and bad because of her own poor decision making, it isn’t anyone else’s fault. On the other hand I feel just terrible for her. She has no coping skills, no emotional maturity, and struggles deeply every day. Angry outbursts threatening suicide are a means for her to sooth herself - an outburst like that makes her feel better with that quick and intense emotional release. She is the only one of us 5 that is struggling like this, so I’m sure that she feels jealousy. She also doesn’t see that everyone is wounded because we are human, and everyone struggles to get where we are. She just sees (for example) that Nick and I live in a nice apartment, in a nice city, with nice cars, with good jobs, etc. She doesn’t see (and won’t see it because even though I’ve tried to open up to her with struggles we have had in the past trying to help her feel less alone) that we’ve struggled to pay rent, with bad jobs, with broken down cars we couldn’t afford to fix, with unemployment and layoffs, with barely scraping buy to keep the lights on and food in the fridge too.
I want to start texting her more often - I didn’t have her phone number before.
My grandma-mom is still alive and although we are going through a good ‘phase’ with talking lightly, me checking on her and grandad-dad regularly, visits when I’m back in our home town, etc. I still experience anxiety because of the past when I dial their number or pull into their driveway. We’ve been so on and off over the years, but as they both age and their health continues to decline…I just don’t want to have regrets, you know? Yes, they were at times cruel to me. Yes, they were not the best. But they were what I had, all I had many times. And I wasn’t beaten, although emotional scars are there. I always had a bed and shelter and always had food even if it was ramen or hot dogs for a week until payday. The rest of my family mostly just doesn’t talk at all. Nikki does. That’s about it.
I have this deep and secret desire to have kids, like 4, because I have such great memories of family gatherings when I was a little kid. There were a ton of us. My mom is one of 5, so is grandma-mom. Everyone had kids and everyone was always around. I miss that. At the same time, I am afraid of having kids at all because my upbringing ended up being unstable and many times, unhappy. Most times, unhappy. We were pretty poor - it could have been worse, I know that, but there were a lot of struggles. I’m scared of ending up unstable for some reason and deeply wounding my children. I still struggle with anxiety and depression, and I worry about that also affecting future children. Although I am healthy now, and plan on being in therapy while I am in school (and probably after that for most of my life - it is good for you!) that doesn’t mean that I won’t have anymore panic attacks, or depressive episodes in the future.
Anyway. I hope to continue writing in this little diary for the time being - probably until OD is back. And hopefully I will write in OD after that and continue there. It feels good to type my thoughts out again, it has been too long.
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