Thirty-Eight

Yes, I am still here world. For the few people who read this, I'm sure you have been wondering. I made a big announcement months ago, then fell off the face of the blogosphere. No worries. I just haven't had much time or desire to get on here. I started this blog just for myself, to try and work out all my "issues" about my life and my body and my mind. I don't think I intended for this blog to become such a focus on the negative aspects of my little world, but that's what happened. And I just really needed to take a step back from it for awhile. Like I've mentioned before, my other blogs are for friends and family to see all my photos, to hear about all the places A and I go, to catch up on our life since we live so very far away from everyone we know. So this blog was for me. I honestly intended for it to be a journal, and a bit of self-prescribed therapy. But it seemed as though all I ever did was dwell on the most horrible and depressing parts of my days. This weekend, I thought about this blog, and decided that it didn't HAVE to be so ugly and bitter and dark. Most of the time, therapy is about dealing with your problems and finding solutions to them, and incorporating the solutions into your real life. I wasn't doing any of that, I was just pissing and moaning here, and that is not the kind of "journal" I really wanted this to be. I thought this blog was wasting my time. It did feel good to write out some of the burdensome anger I was still feeling towards X, but even that flame eventually flickered out. After all, I haven't lived with the man for six years now, and I will never see him again. It is time I stopped even thinking about him at all. There is no room for my creepy former husband, in this world I now share with my amazing new husband. And now, many of the issues I had when I started this blog, have changed. My big life change that I announced back in October was that I got a full time job finally. It's just an office job, but it gives me a reason to get out of bed in the mornings, and makes me feel worthy and useful and needed and normal. So now instead of being stuck in my old prison of this lonely house, I am out the door at 7am and come crawling back home- exhausted in a good way- at 6pm. No time to sit around and feel so trapped, so depressed, so isolated. My boss tells me all the time what a wonderful job I'm doing, and how quickly I'm learning the work, and how she's happy to have found me. It's nice to be appreciated and wanted, even if it is at the office. A gets home an hour or two after me, and I feel as though I've barely had time to miss him. I still have my physical therapy once or twice a month, but I do still have really bad days where sometimes I don't think I will get through the pain. Now I've learned to rely on a heating pad instead of painkillers, and A will massage my hip and back and leg when it's unbearable, and there are nights where his caring touch is the only thing that brings me peace, and sleep. And recently A and I have discussed moving, even though we just bought this brand new house little over a year ago. He, too, feels the isolation on this dead end country road. The house is too big for just the two of us, the yard too huge and open. He loves working in the yard, refuses to pay a lawn service to mow, but he said these two acres are almost too much for him to manage, and it becomes a dreaded chore instead of a beloved and enjoyable afternoon outside. He said he knows this house is too much for me to manage, especially with my pain and the fact that my therapist has told me I absolutely MUST not vacuum or mop or lean over to clean, if I ever have hopes of getting better. Again he's offered a maid service, especially since I've gone back to work, but as always I've shunned his suggestions. No, I can't keep up with the housework, but hiring someone else to do it is just a reminder of my failure, so I would rather just deal with an always messy home. We bought this house under time constraints and pressure to relocate, but now I've learned that I'm not the only one unhappy here. I'm glad he opened up to me about it, and we've decided that 2010 is going to be the year where we build up our savings and take our time to find the right home for us, for the lifestyle we want. We do not need this monstrous cave of well over 5,000 square feet. It's just two adults and a few cats, after all. We want something smaller and cozier, with charm and warmth. Not this gigantic big box with its 20 foot ceilings and white walls that radiate nothing but cold. We both hate this place, it's sterile and boring and unfriendly, and we've been here long enough to also hate the little town that we picked out when we moved here. We've found another town, in a neighboring county. Closer to work, older homes, younger and more affluent residents, and an area that would promote a more active and healthy way of life for the both of us. Walking trails winding through all the close knit neighborhoods, everyone getting around on bicycles, several lakes for kayaking. This is what we both want, not to be stuck out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by old pasture land and twenty minutes from the nearest grocery store. 2009 ended on a positive note for me, and it's up to me to make the best of it, for both myself and A. He's a super special man, and I'm so happy he's my husband, but sometimes not even that is enough to sustain me. Although I see a brighter future, I still see this house and this town as a dead end. We didn't know any better when we moved here, we picked this town out from just looking at a map and had one weekend to find a house before the company transferred A over here. We felt our decisions were out of our control at that time, but now we are here and it's time to make the right decision for us, and BY us. We won't be moving any time soon I know, but just having that event out there when I scan my horizon, gives me something new and exciting to focus on. I want to get back to keeping up with this blog, because I do still have issues to work through, and I think if I use this blog the right way it could be beneficial for me