Happy Anniversary, Mike. I love you.

DJ at the lake, Kodak Pony 135

I’ve given this blog a lot of thought over the past week. Why do I do this? What am I getting out of it? Where do I want to take it in the future?

I started writing here after the birth of my last child. I had seven kids under the age of twelve, three still at home. We were going through a traumatic custody battle. My life was full of drama. Court dates. Police reports. Every day was a struggle to maintain some sort of normalcy for the kids. It isn’t surprising that my content consisted mainly of memes and complaints. I needed the support of the blogging community because I was overwhelmed. I felt comfortable writing about the difficulties because my kids didn’t have access to the internet and they were too young to care.

As time went by, things settled down. I wrote more the good stuff… the kids and daily life in our family. My primary audience was my extended family and people in similar situations [blended or large families]. The problem was that as I grew, so did my kids. I now have girls in high school, with access to the internet and friends that check in on them. I don’t want to write about some of the more personal things because it bothers the girls. High school is hard enough without the added ‘Your MOM has a BLOG!’ thing.

So, here we are. I fully intended to take this site down, but something Kim said made me think. “We’re just evolving!”  I’m changing. My life is changing. Shouldn’t this blog change with me? I’m at a point in my life where, in just a few short months, I won’t have any kids at home during the day. I will have options. Opportunity. I could get a job, or go back to school. I’m starting to think about what I want to do and not what I have to do. That’s a good feeling. But the sense of excitement and possibility wouldn’t make sense without knowing the journey I’ve been through. The little victories would be meaningless out of context. Instead of forgetting where I’ve been, I’m going to embrace it, accept it and move on.

I’ll still be writing about the family, but there may be times I password protect posts. I will continue writing about photography because that is where my interest lies. I plan to write more about the world around me, my observations and things that I want to remember. In other words, this blog will become more about me as a person and less about me as a mom.

I hope that you will continue with me on this journey…

Pillar of strength, calm in the eye of the storm, cornerstone of the family… All the things I should be but I’m not feeling it. I seriously wish I had an ‘off’ switch in my brain. When will I begin to accept that even though I’m not perfect I’m still ok? I have a storm of negativity swirling around in my head and I need to GET OVER IT ALREADY. Life isn’t that bad. Shit happens. Why do I feel like I need to be perfect? It’s never going to happen so the longer I feel like that the longer I’lll feel unworthy.

While I’m at it, here are a few more letters I’d like to write:

Dear Bleu,
St. Patrick’s Day or not, pinching is never okay. I’m glad you fessed up and told me yourself so I wasn’t surprised by the call from the school but still… Use your powers for good.

Dear Mikal,
You will not be a teenager for another three weeks. Please avoid the excessive use of attitude. And? How did MY hairspray turn into THE hairspray after YOUR hairspray (the one you wouldn’t share) ran out?

Dear Pharmacy,
Why did you give me a full refill of thyroid meds but only a half refill of the crazy pills? You should know by now that I avoid you whenever possible. Don’t force me to visit you twice a month. It just isn’t right.

Dear Loving Husband,
Thank you for helping me finish hanging the light. The end.

What about you? Do you have any letters you’d like to leave in the comments? 

Me, first year of high school The picture on the left is how I felt and the one on the right is how I tried to act.

Memory is a funny thing. We tend to remember situations as we felt them, not as they really happened. How many times have you been at a family gathering sharing stories and someone doesn’t remember something or remembers it differently? It happens to me all the time.

I’ve been going through some of my old pictures and papers, trying to understand myself a little better. What I remember doesn’t always fit with what I find. My mother saved all of my medical and school records along with letters and pictures. I’ve spent the last thirty odd years hating myself. The main reason is that I always felt like a fraud. The way I was feeling didn’t match the way I behaved or the way I tried to portray myself to others. I never felt good enough for my parents, but I always felt different/better than most of the kids at school. There was a lot of pain in my heart, most of it self inflicted.

Based only on my memory, I would have told you that I never opened up to my parents. But looking through some old letters, I found a few notes I wrote to my father when he was working out of town:

“The other day in advisement period there was a fight. It was on a concrete floor and our teacher had left so they didn’t get caught. One of the guys didn’t even get a bruise. The other guy was mutilated. The first one put the other guys face on the ground (facing up) and jumped on it with hiking boots. There was blood on the floor. I was really scared and upset.”

“One of my good friends Buddy has had a really bad week. Tuesday was his birthday. The weekend before, two of his friends had gotten in a fight and one had shot the other. On Tuesday, the one that got shot died. We’ve had a pretty exciting time this week cause the guy that shot him came back to school on Wednesday. That was kind of scary too.”

I don’t remember talking to my parents about any of this at all, although I do recall being terrified of going to school. In another letter, the one that included these pictures, I wrote about wanting to be a model. I had gone on a diet and lost seven pounds, but didn’t think that it showed enough so I was going to try and lose some more weight. I can look at these pictures now and see that I was very thin. At the time, I couldn’t bear to look at myself because I felt so fat.

Obviously, I wasn’t as alienated as I felt. I was talking to my parents about a lot of the stuff going on in my life. So why did I feel so alone? Fast forward to today. I have two teenagers in the house. I talk to them all the time and feel like I have a pretty good idea about what goes on in their lives. Am I missing something? Are they telling me something that I’m not hearing? I don’t want my kids to grow up feeling alone.

I am so grateful that my mom kept all of these things. I wish that I had the same insight into her life. Now that I am a mother, I have more appreciation for what she went through and how hard things were for her. It would be nice to be able to have a window into her head and see what she was thinking and feeling. Maybe this blog can give my own kids that gift when they are older. I have a filing cabinet where I keep things for them. I have a file for each kid for every year and stick in pictures, report cards, notes they have written, etc. Someday, I will give them a box full of memories. I hope that they will be good ones…

“Family life is full of major and minor crises—the ups and downs of health, success and failure in career, marriage, and divorce—and all kinds of characters. It is tied to places and events and histories. With all of these felt details, life etches itself into memory and personality. It’s difficult to imagine anything more nourishing to the soul.” Thomas More

Overwhelmed and under appreciated. Any parent will tell you that sometimes those feelings come with the territory. With allergies and an ear infection piled on top of my usual ailments, I’ve been just a wee bit cranky. If ever there was a time for a tantrum, this is it. Unfortunately, kids are the only ones that can act like children and get away with it. I’ve been sucking it up as much as possible, but a girl can only take so much…

Mike gave me a time out and I came to our office to clean and organize photos. I downloaded the pictures from the digital camera to get it ready for the party tomorrow and found a surprise video. THIS IS WHAT GETS ME THROUGH THE BAD DAYS!

unexpected from kristyk on Vimeo.

I love my kids!