What drives you? What moves you? What makes you cry out in vain? Would you be willing to see it all differently or are you content in everything being the same. According to what some say I should only care about my happiness and move on to greener pastures. There are some that would never accept the blasé ways of my husband. There are others who wouldn’t put up with the same attitude towards the housework. When I was sick for those two and a bit weeks waiting for the inevitable to come out and be displayed I could barely lift my head. I used to dress daily, blog, read, violin if I could but during that time every time I moved my head would swell and my stomach would expel. I knew that it was my role in the house to keep to the house and keep the child and the multitude of animals fed but when your spouse hardly recognizes you you want to bash your head against the wall. This morning alone I had to stagger the three dogs going outside. If I don’t the 150 pound pup will destroy the senior and my little terrier. He doesn’t mean to but all that pent up energy makes him too rough to be outside with the others. With the noise complaint we had recently about the dogs I have to be on their tails if they begin to act up, which means now leaving the door. It wouldn’t be so overly annoying but when my husband has taken up sleeping on the couch so we don’t wake him up during the night I just want to pull my hair out and shake my head awake.

I guess it all depends on how you define your life and the things that you can accept and live with. My eyes are set on permanent roll and my stomach in in knots with anticipation. I guess this is why they say to have a long engagement. I didn’t want to be like everybody else my age. You had those who were happily married since high school with there perfect life and even more beautiful kids. They have history, a foundation that will withstand the hands of time but when you are looking at the barrel of a loaded shotgun nearing 40 you take matters into your own hands. There is nothing wrong with this but my heart has always been more traditional. . There was no way after making it this long that I was going to have my story end as a single mother. I never thought as I was working on my vision board at 36 that it was possible for it all to change. I did as we assigned and let me future pour onto the board. I wasn’t going to let my dreams stop on paper I needed something I was going to believe. I hung it on my wall with pride and looked at it everyday. I hoped for the possible I always dreamed I could find a way.

When you begin to believe so hard that your story was predetermined and all you have to do is watch it unfold it is hard not to look for signs and the hidden treasures found within. Getting pregnant while I was going back to school felt like a nightmare in my eyes. I was dating a man I just met a few months before and everything about us was leaning towards the not so perfect. Maybe it was because we were so different. Maybe it was because we were set in our ways. Maybe it was because of the scars of those who hurt us were worn so obvious on our sleeves. Coming together we seemed like a tragic outcome but it somehow seems like a perfect fit. Now when I think about it maybe it was my blunt honesty in our troubles that made others scream and throw a fit. You wouldn’t believe how many people tell me to leave and move on. Single mothers do it all the time. I know they do and I am very proud and in admiration of their strength. I have been mentally and physically abused through decades of my life. I know what it feels like to be cheated on and I know how it feels to be somebody else’s last option. That feeling of I am only with you until the one I want actually calls. That feeling of you are good enough for intimacy but not good enough to commit a future too.

I think that is what is most annoying about everything that it is that I have come to see. The ways my eyes have been opened because of previous pain. The way that I have seen others worry about the fate and future of their children The horror stories we read about ex’s murdering their children and then turning on themselves. We are so broken as a society that we have put our happiness as the move prized possession on Earth. The denomination of that currency though is not something so many can find. Moments in life make us happy but what happens when all those moments are gone. We wonder why suicide is highest among men from their 40-50’s. Imagine being a man going to work 50 -60 hours a day to provide for a his family. This role could easily be reversed with the woman providing and the man doing the nurturing but we are so backwards in our thinking that we make it impossible for the woman to do just that. Our families should be most important not the value of the pay check that they bring home. That money though HAS to be most important everything we are depends on it. We need a house, food, power, clothes, cars, games, jewellery…the list goes on. What happens when it all gets taken away do we still have each other? As a man going through a divorce he almost always loses everything. The house, the girl, the car, the American Dream. Of course you would turn to alcohol and drugs to escape your new reality. The ex can say see what I was living with but we hardly recognized how hard we pushed them into being that way. I saw this in my husband when our house was getting more and more out of control. I could appreciate his frustration as we all have our roles to fill what got harder for me to accept is the tragic truth of reality.

What drives me is this passion to honour and do right by my family. We all need a light source to keep out the darkness. I am moved by the ways that people respond when you put yourself out there and try to do right. I love the way that when you open the lines of communication a more honest experience comes out. What makes me cry out is the way we fail to recognize the incredible differences between all of us yet we all came from the same place. I wish we could see the raw realism that combines to make the world a beautiful place. It’s the differences in the abnormal that make us all feel and look the same.