It's Been a LONG Winter

                             

                                          Why am I Single ???? 

Why on earth am I sitting in the house on this beautiful fall day, at the end of September ?  I wanted to write.  All this stuff in my head and I wanted to get it out.  I also wanted to be sitting outside and try to do this on my tablet.  Well, the tablet was Dead, dead.  I hardly ever use it.  I do when I travel, but that's been a while.  Actually, I feel like I need a vacation.  I would be happy with a weekend up north right now.  Our weather will start getting cold probably within a month or so.  Hoping later.  I hate paying the utility bill!  The price of everything right now is out of control.  My groceries are so much more, as everyone's is.  I don't make bad money, but I've got too much going out every month.  Newer car, higher insurance, credit cards, mortgage, blah, blah.  

I'm trying to charge the tablet to use in the future.  It didn't want to charge but realized after googling it, that I need to use a certain charger.  Frustrating.  My computer wiz kid is not available at the moment.  He always helps me with things like this.  Hopefully I leave it on this charger it will work..... Did I tell you modern technology frustrates me ? Ugh.  

So I'm stuck in the house, at dinner time. Still early I usually eat later than 5:30.  Dinner, what to eat ?  When you are doing it single, it's a big question... I thought about inviting a friend over... I did do some stuff around the house earlier.  Laundry, and started cleaning the eaves.  I got the ones on the back of the house done.  I'll do the front later this week.  I don't think they are as bad as the back.  Most of my trees are in the back of the house.  I had laundry to do, a bed to change, misc. chores.  I kept telling myself to load my bike and go to the bike path.  This sounds crazy, but I really didn't feel like putting make up on to go.  And NO, I wouldn't go there without it.  I'm a little vain, when it comes to my looks.  I'll admit it.  This is part of my story that I want to finally share with you.  For years, 17 I think I was told I wasn't pretty enough, I wasn't thin enough, no one would want me, I've had 4 kids.  Well maybe it wasn't 17 years of hearing that but probably at least 10 or so.  I did not hear those words early on in my relationship to my first husband.  Yes, here is the moral of my story, part of it anyway.  

Maybe I should go way back to when I was a child.  A child that learned to tolerate abuse.  I experienced my first sexual abuse when I was maybe 7 or 8.  Not really sure, I think in my mind I tried to block most of it out.  I just remember being a young girl, innocent.  I liked to wear dresses.  I felt pretty.  We went to visit my grandparents, they were step not blood related to me, as they were my step father's parents.  I remember maybe after dinner, before dessert my step grandfather wanted me to sit on the couch with him.  Remember I said I am innocent, I know nothing of any kind of sexual abuse Yet.  I think maybe twice he tried to put his hand under my dress in my panties. Of course I pulled away from him, and left the couch.  I didn't say anything, just went into the kitchen where my family was, and then I think I went outside.  I just wanted to leave, but didn't know what to do.  I was a kid! No one had ever touched me like that.  When it came time for dessert, I think I didn't want any.  When it was time to go home, I did not hug my step grandfather, just my step grandma.  Any time we went there in the future, I avoided being around him at all.  It was difficult as it was a very small house, maybe 4 or 5 rooms.  I don't remember being asked why I wouldn't be near him.  Maybe I did hug him but not really.... I didn't tell anyone.  I remember I wanted to tell someone, but didn't know who.  

I remember going to his funeral.  I think I was 10.  Think I wore my Easter outfit. I remember feeling relief, he was gone.  I never had any kind of love for him, that I can think of.  I also remember thinking was it my fault as to what he did to me? Crazy thought because I was a kid.... really didn't know much about anything.  Of course I did nothing wrong.  Years later finding out as a teenager he had done the same to at least one of my sisters, and female cousins.  Sick pervert.  He was messed up for sure.  That's just one of my secrets.  

I don't know when some of the same started with my step dad.  I remember my sister Dawn and I being together in the bath tub, with our underwear on.  He was helping us.  I think this was after his father the pervert passed away.  My mom was on a bowling league, with my aunts and grandma.  Bowling leagues back then were a big thing.  My step dad was watching us.  I am the oldest, my sister Dawn was 4 years younger than me.  Tami, his bio daughter with my mom, was 6 years younger than me.  The only thing I think happened is he tried to touch me after I went to bed.  I told him to stop and leave me alone.  He said something to me, like I might like it.  OMG, he has inherited his father's sick twisted pervert ways.  I don't remember it happening again, not until we moved.  

I am trying to recall all of this, the age I was.  I think when we moved to Jackson, from Vandercook lake I was maybe 11.  I was still in elementary school.  I did go to an elementary school not far from our house that I walked to after we moved.  I was sad to leave my friends I had made.  We still kept in touch and got some weekends to stay with each other sometimes.  The next episode of my step dad touching me I think I was still in elementary school.  I know I was developing breasts, etc. I was a pretty blonde, with light freckles. My mom said I could let my hair grow, and maybe get my ears pierced in the future.  I was growing up.  I don't think I had started my period as yet, but think I did at age 12.  I was asleep in my own bed, in my own room.  My two sisters shared the larger bedroom.  I think my mom was gone again maybe bowling, I don't know.  He was there with us girls.  He came in my room, and was in bed with me, he had his hand in my panties touching me.  Again, telling me I might like it.  I woke to him doing that.  I pushed him away, and yelled to leave me alone or I was going to tell my mom.  He said she won't believe you... I felt so gross, dirty, cried myself back to sleep.  The days after I barely talked to him.  I ignored him really.  When we had dinner, we had rules, no elbows on the table, do not answer the phone, only my parents could.  If it was a friend they were to call back after dinner.  We were to eat everything on our plate.  Normal things I think back then.  

In all ways our family looked completely normal.  My mom was petite, pretty, outgoing.  My step dad was taller maybe 5 ft 9, actually handsome, everyone used to say he looked something like Paul Newman.  He worked hard at a shop.  My mom quit her job to stay home with us girls.  She eventually started a day care.  I was in my teens when she did that.  I know I helped a lot if I wasn't involved in a school activity.  I was the neighborhood babysitter.  I was known as a good cook too.  My sisters seemed normal.  We had block parties, and holiday parties, my parents were well liked.  Mom was on the PTA, and was a girl schout leader.  My step dad was a mechanic and welder by trade, and helped most of the guys in the neighborhood with their cars, bikes.  We had a loving family.  My mom had 3 brothers, and 3 sisters.  I had a wonderful grandmother.  Two of my aunts lived close by.  I became like a daughter to my mom's youngest sister Sally.  She was my person.  We talked about everything.  Between her and my Grandma, I felt safe.  

The abuse didn't happen any more, if so, only once.  As I said I have blocked a lot of those events out.  I went to counseling on/off for years and finally started talking of my childhood.  Of course this wasn't until after I was married, and separated, from my first husband.  Through counseling, and my journaling, which I had done since I was probably 11 or 12.  Back then we had diaries.  I think my aunt bought me my first one.  I did like writing my feelings out.  It seemed to help, and still does.  This is why I started doing this blog instead of journaling.  I still journal.  I also have a steno pad by my computer on my desk, and I write details of the day down.  Remember I told you before, aging... Sucks!  My aunt taught to keep track of things, be detail orientated.  I am.  Sometimes too much.  Especially when I tell a story, You don't need to know every detail.  It's funny because my up north guy is so much like me in that respect.  I laugh thinking about it.  I saw him recently, but that's another story.... Back to the journaling.  Counselors told me through the years to keep a journal, write what I was feeling, what was happening in my life, and did I know why I felt the way I did.  I told all of them, I've been doing that for years.  It helped keep me from doing drugs, not the illegal ones, I'm talking the anxiety ones.  Yes, I had anxiety if I thought too much about my past.  As I said I don't remember my step father touching me anymore.  The thing is I had love for this man.  In all other ways he was a good man.  He worked hard, and provided for our family.  I just didn't like him, not necessarily him but what he had done to me.  

Throughout my childhood I went to church.  Not with parents but with my Aunt Sally.  I know I went to a small neighborhood church when I was young, after we moved to Jackson from Grayling, my hometown.  I don't remember everything, but I know I accepted Jesus.   I do remember thinking in my later childhood "how could God let this happen to me?"  Why did my step dad do what he did if he loved me?  At a young age this can be so confusing.  I didn't understand, at all.  

As I have said from the outside world our family looked normal.  No one knew what had went on, with me.  I kept it to myself, I think until I was a little older.  I had been going to church with my aunt.  I don't know what possessed me to tell her what had happened at home.  In the normal home, on the corner of Greenwood, with the man who was well liked in the neighborhood.  I think she was shocked.  She must of told my grandma, because I remember both of them were there when confronting my mother.  She didn't want to believe it.  But I think she knew things weren't right.  I didn't really have much of a relationship with my step father until I was an older teen.  I know my aunt and grandma knew I wasn't lying.  As I said, with these women, I felt safe.  I could talk to them.  I never had that relationship with my mother.  I was the oldest, and a lot was of expected out of me.  I had chores, and my other sisters did too, as they got older.  I would later in life learn my mother had her own secrets.  

To not have this post be so long, I will continue it another day.  This is part of my life.  This is why I think I have chosen the wrong men many times.  I have learned to tolerate bad behavior.  I put up with emotional and physical abuse from my first husband, who I had loved very much.  I met him when I was I think 19.  
The chemistry was intense.  I had no idea what would happen in the later years with him.  But you name it, he did it to me.  Lie, cheat, steal, abuse in all kinds of ways. He was a master manipulator, and a con man.  I tried to stay away from men like that in the future.  I do believe he somewhat ruined me to know they are good men out there.  I do know there are a lot of controlling ones.  I can't live my life like that.  I won't get into all of it, that's another post, which I will share another time.  I'll just say that jealousy is a horrible trait.  Run from anyone that is like this.  A little jealousy is different.  But that man was insanely jealous.  Talk about anxiety.  

As I sit here and put all of these words on this blog, it brings back a lot of memories.  Some of them, not so good.  Actually terrible, that it makes my stomach ache, and head hurt.  I have tried very hard to move on from that horrible past, whether it was the abuse I suffered as a child, or the abuse I went through in my marriage.  It's a process.  I am no longer in counseling.  I've went through a lot of it, different times in my life.  I think the greatest counselor is God.  I continue to write my feelings down on paper, and talk to God every day.  I talk to friends and have really gotten to know myself.  I am still healing from so many things.  Relationships that didn't work out, for one reason or another.  The good men I've walked away from, that I could kick myself for.  Falling in love with a married man.  Falling in love with a controlling man, getting engaged, and realizing I had to leave.  Getting involved with a selfish man.  Feeling inadequate from losing a job I had for almost 13 years, having health issues that the job brought on. My life is much different now.  

I am grateful for so much.  I am still getting to know myself.  That hurt child that didn't understand.  I think I am single right now because I need more time with myself.  God knows what I am going through, yet again.  I have peace in my home. No one yelling at me, telling me I'm not good enough.  I can sit on my patio in the cool mornings, and listen to nature.  My thoughts come together, as I am not in chaos.  My home is my safe haven.  Some day I might want a man to share life with, to what capacity I am not yet sure.  I am no longer tolerating disrespect, bad behavior, lies.  If I have a man in my life, he needs to be my friend, and I need to feel safe.  I don't know where he is.  I just cancelled dating subscriptions, yet again.  There are a few I am still chatting with.  There are a couple of ex's that want me to spend time with them again.  Right this moment, I am not actively pursuing that.  I might be a bit lonely, but I think in my solitude, I am able to find some relief.  

It's now October 1st, and a beautiful fall day.  I am going to get out and get fresh air today, maybe ride my bike on the bike path.  I am going to continue to enjoy my life.  I pray you will as well.  

Be blessed.  Thanks for reading.... Debi  : )