let's play stream of consciousness!

You are so beaufiful. Love that wedding shot - your happiness! And then the black and white at lunch with your babe. You both are so gorgoeous. Your eyes say it all. And of course, always appreciate a beautiful prego in a bathing suit!

Woman, you have had quite a 5-6 years but you've endured the storm of a broken dream and are making a new dream. It's different than you pictured but it's yours. There is no perfect ideal life. I am still mourning the loss of that idea. I know how it feels to bury that idea for good. It still makes me sad for my DD but I know the alternative would have been worse. To have stayed and tried to make it work with someone who was unwilling to do the work and be healthy. It is like trying to raise the dead. That was us in the sack as well!! Haha.. ugh, sigh.

Me: 2002 I was just getting comfy out in L.A. actually. Waiting tables, auditioning, figuring out "the business"- that there are oh, about a million other people who want to "make it". Had met the EX in 2001 at the restaurant where I was working and fell for him immediately. By 2002 he was done with L.A. so he decided to move back to NY- his home. We had been dating then a short on again off again/ even living together for a small stint. By this time it had cooled off a bit and he obviously was going nuts in L.A. (a red flag of things to come- he can't sit for too long in one spot). Felt better after he left, dated a little bit and by 2003 I had resigned myself to just finding a day job because I was sick of struggling and being poor and being hit on by drunken idiots for my paycheck. I got a job at high end spa as receptionist and spent my days with new- age massage therapists and kissing the asses of the elite Hollywood Hills livin' producer wives who were getting their fifth massage/facial of the week. Discovered yoga. Then out of nowhere I got a call from a kids touring theater show that I had auditioned for 10 months prior to travel the country for a year performing. Funny how life works like that. I guess God didn't agree with my plan to give up the biz. Or maybe it was all about getting me back with the EX. At any rate, I hopped on the tour bus gladly. BYe L.A.!

Three months into the tour I called up the EX to see how he was because of the blackout that I heard about on the news. It was just an excuse to call. He was in my thoughts. We met up in NYC when I was in NJ. Sparks flew again against my better judgement. The next year I toured and we spent hours on the phone a day and every few months he'd come out to a city and spend a few days or a week with me. Pretty sweet. By the end of tour we decided I should come back to east coast and settle down together? Crazy right. So there we are in NC in 2004 living together trying to be normal people. I got a "real job" for pharmaceutical co. and he at (big surprise), a restaurant. Not to bag on restaurant workers but for me, never again, it just breeds low behavior, cheating, drinking, blah blah. That was him. He put on a good front for a trial at a normal life though. I got my yoga certification in 2005. We married in 2006. I planned it all myself too Mags! Right after wedding moved to NY for a managing job for him at a well known restaurant. I gave up being close to family, friends, my yoga community for this job of his in his old hometown. Yet I was excited for a new start but when we got there things altered. Moved in w/ his parents. Then a month later got our own place. Found out we were pregnant. Whoops but yay! Slowly he drifted away. Not sleeping in same room either! Avoided me or was he just stressed about work? I was in denial. 12 days after birth of DD he confessed he wanted out and had been cheating since I was about 6 mos preggo with some bar wench that worked at his restaurant. Nice. So we hauled ass down to NC to be among friends and family after he made it clear that he was done. Now I can say thank God I'm here. I feel more whole now. Still sad angry depressed at times but have hope and insight to know that we have such a gap in what we believe to be a happy healthy existance. He now is trying to get his life together- AA at last! - but has not come to see DD and avoids my attempts to try to tie up loose ends of this divorce. Why are we the women who put the pieces back together of what was their choice to destroy? But I am so grateful for DD. She is fun, goofy, sweet, LOVE. AS much as I've just bagged on the EX believe me, I have never felt as free, excited, insane in love as I was with him. Even if the sex did suck. He was a fun adventure in skin. But that is all. THere was not much compassion but rather much selfishness and big giant huge lack of self awareness. It was different than what I had known previously so I jumped on it. Not to mention children of alcoholics tend to be drawn to alcoholics. That's another post.

SO here I am, five six yrs later. Making my own story.

Thanks for this therapy session!
Love you Mags!

I’ll start a few months before the millennium. It was fall ’99, I had just finished hiking the pacific crest trail (alone) and moved to Belize for the fall to work as a botanist and study for the GRE’s. Just before Christmas I met my twin sister in Hawaii to run a marathon and got really sick (kidney infection). So I watched the ball drop from my mom’s couch and a few weeks later packed up all my shit and moved to Boulder. I moved in with a yogini I met at the studio and got an internship at National Wildlife Federation where I met my future dh. We went skiing, he had a dui so no car and no license. I was still recovering my health, eating only raw foods, or this or that cleansing diet. He says I only ate steamed broccoli and tofu when we met. Lots of good sex in the patchouli palace. We both took too many days off work to drive around the state. He was still drinking too much, I did all the driving. I got into grad school in Vermont. He quit his job. I spent the summer leading trips in the Yukon, he tracked wolves in Idaho. We visited each other once that summer and I thought he was a dork. I knew I was supposed to marry him, and it depressed me. It took me years to get over that. Sometimes I’m still not over it. He followed me to Vermont for grad school that fall. He got his license back and got sober. He spent the year sleeping. And working in the suspension room at the grade school. I worked at school until 4am most mornings. Still sick to my stomach, still cleansing, started eating meat after 15 years. Still stinking up every room I entered with spectacular flatulence. Started teaching yoga after school each day. Ran two more marathons. Worked in Costa Rica as a botanist for a month. Graduated. Hiked the Continental Divide Trail with future dh. Was very depressed hiking this time. I just wanted to get to Mexico. 30 miles days, get it over with. My ACL’s were torn apart, my bones were cracked, my soul hurt. Though we were fighting almost every day (I thought he wanted to stop to smell the roses too often) Dh proposed to me in Glacier NP that summer He gave me a silver and turquoise ring from a cheesy tourist shop. We quit the trail after 2,000 miles because it was too cold and I couldn’t stop being too anxious to enjoy it. I woke up in Boulder, the next morning and went for a hike and smelled the sun for the first time in years. Didn’t know what to do next. Spent the winter in Boulder doing yoga, got turned down for several biology jobs. Back to Costa Rica to work. That’s when I started praying. Upstairs in the unheated mountain cabin, my students still asleep while I practiced. I asked for help. I need help I said. Tell me what to do. That was the first time. I went home and found a letter from the govt. offering me a job as a Park Ranger. Moved all our crap back east again. Got married for less than $2000 at my family’s house in Maine. It was stressful, entertaining 75 friends for three days. It was supposed to be fun, but I still didn’t know how to chill, my family pretty much absent and unavailable. I wore a vintage sequined gown and flip-flops. There was a rainbow. I kayaked five miles across the bay to get the bagels for brunch. Many references to kids in the wedding toasts. I didn’t know I wanted them then, that was 5 years ago. We moved back to Vermont that fall where DH got offered his old teaching job back. I taught yoga, free-lanced bio jobs, cut my twin off. On the phone I mean. No more dead-end therapy phone conversations with her, no more enabling. She moved to Chicago and transitioned. Phew. I couldn’t run anymore because me knees were shot. Yoga not helping anymore. Went to a yoga conference in SF that winter and John Friend told me “Life is Good, You’re job is to enjoy it” Really? It’s that simple. Yup. I took a deep breath for the first time. Ever? I went home and started teaching my yoga students to ‘shine like the sun’. We bought a trailer on 20 acres. We fixed it up. It was on a beautiful piece of land. In the green mountains. I took over a yoga studio and worked around the clock to build the business. I got pregnant and miscarried. And again. I started anti-depressants and skied every day. I loved the blue sky. Drove 45 minutes to see my therapist every week, good stuff. I taught yoga at the sculling camp and got to scull for the first time. That was way too much fun! We fostered a litter of puppies. Born right when my first baby would have been. We kept one and named her Ru. Light. There was a lot of dog shit to deal with. I got pregnant again in the fall. Studio and community yoga classes were going strong and I was even teaching ecology at the local colleges. We were finally making money and dh paid off all his debts. We bought our first loan-free car. I was so sick. I hated being pregnant. I got depressed but stayed off the meds. Carrying in wood over the top of my belly. Getting fatter and fatter. Making kale juice every morning. No sex. Not for a long time. Four long days of labor but dh and I did it together. My mom drove over from Maine and helped us deliver my first baby girl. My mom did ok. I forgave her a life-time of shit that day. Five hours of pushing turned me into the god damn Madonna (the real one DC!). Dh and I fell in love with each other and dd that summer. Spent all summer figuring out how to be parents and how to do it all just right (hah!). Starting to figure out who we are. Moved back to Maine in the fall and left Ru in Vermont. Fit ourselves and too many boxes of crap into my brother’s apartment building, a tiny shit hole. Put the 20 acres up for sale. It still breaks my heart but it was too far away from home. Dh floundered for the year working for my brother as a carpenter. I stayed home and got depressed again. Ugh. Taught a few yoga classes. He’s a shitty carpenter. So I got my ranger job back. When dd was 8months old, we decided she was sooo cute that we needed another one, that weekend we had sex and boom, pregnant. Sick again. Hating life, but not as bad as the first. Then dd1 started acting out. A lot. I started work and she started hitting her head on the walls. She was black and blue and red for the next eight months. We tried everything. So much crying, so little sleep, so much not knowing what to do, second guessing. Who cares about the one inside? At least it’s being quiet!. We moved three more times. Bought a dumb vinyl split-level ranch in the suburbs of southern Maine where we will never live again, but we lived there long enough to nest and have dd2. My mom helped deliver her too. Just in time for dd1’s bed time. We figured it out. Dh barely making it through school, but making it none-the-less. Back to Acadia to ranger, this time with two little girls. And what a great summer it was. All the pieces flying apart and coming back together, over and over. Dh got a job teaching in my hometown, so here we are. Dh and I are fighting up a storm, can't seem to say the right thing to each other. Taking everything personally. We're like a pair of sea anemones: no matter how softly you touch them, they still close up!. even though in many ways I’ve never been happier. I guess we’re not so good at transitions. The sky feels so wide open, here we are, this is it, I think he's scared of failing. I know I am, but I also know I have a whole lifetime to make it work here. No hurry. Who knows. But I think we’ll make it through, me and him. I just hope it gets more fun!