When you are two, life should be simple, life should be consistent.  Troll Baby turned two on August 8, and she is struggling with change, with inconsistency.  We don’t know right now how our life, our family, is going to work out.  Sometimes mommy and daddy do the family thing together, sometimes they don’t.  Sometimes mommy and daddy hug, sometimes we don’t.  When they do, she wants to get right in the middle of things, clinging to our legs or climbing between us. I can’t figure out if it’s because she wants to be a part of it, or because she is jealous and doesn’t understand why someone is taking her mommies attention.

When you are two, you can’t communicate very well what you are feeling, and mommy and daddy (or whoever is watching you) kind of has to guess.  Her brother is watching her this week, and he asked me if she is acting differently because she misses her daddy (not his fault, he had surgery and is currently inaccessible).  She can’t tell me the answer, but I would guess it to be because of that.  Some things are constant in Troll Baby’s life… She lives with me, I am there every morning and every night.  She goes to sleep in the same bed every night, says her prayers and snuggles up close with me.  Other things are not so constant.  I think she understands the concept of family, and would like to have it every day.  Sometimes at night, she asks for her daddy, taking my hand and saying “come on, dada.”

Right now, circumstances are forcing an extended period of time where we cannot see her dad.  She is acting out with the change in routine, has become more clingy, and reluctant to go to sleep at night.  At the park the other day, a family came in to take their child to swimming lessons.  She pointed to the mom, and asked me, “Mommy?”  I told her “Yes, that’s a mommy.”  She pointed to the dad, who although not hispanic, had a beard and wore a baseball cap like her dad.  She asked me, “Daddy?”  I said “Yes, that’s the little boys daddy.”  The whole time we waited for her brother to finish his swimming lesson, she kept walking over and just staring at this couple, and waving at them.  It makes me sad that maybe she feels like she is missing out on something that should be there every day in her life, and I don’t know how to fix it. I know how much she loves her daddy, and when he is with her, he is an absolutely great dad.  She is his miracle, and I can see how much she means to him.   I can’t imagine anyone ever filling his shoes.  He is her daddy, and no one can ever take his place.

She misses her sissy Tay Tay, who was watching her over the summer.  Tay Tay is her dad’s step-daughter, and although they are in no way legally or biologically related, I treat Tay like my daughter and their relationship like family.  This, I have some control over.  Tay and I stay in touch through Facebook, and I include her in activities with my kids whenever possible.  With Troll Baby’s daddy, things are harder.  There are many forces at work, and I don’t know where we stand as a couple or as a family.  There are things I can’t control, I have to give everything not knowing at this point whether or not at the end of the day if I will walk away as part of a relationship, or alone.  I have to be careful when I call, careful when I text, we aren’t friends on Facebook, I can’t be seen at his house.  I bounce between anger and depression and sudden joy when I get to be with him.  I am living on the hope that we may be working things out, that we may be looking at resolution soon.  I am clinging to those magic words, “I love you.” I am willing to do this, for my daughter, and because I still feel our relationship and our feelings are valid, because our future as a family and as a couple has so much potential.  But this is so hard, feeling as though I have to sit back and let someone else decide my future, and Troll Baby’s future.  I feel like I have no input, no influence… like I am just drifting along waiting to either be loved, or be set aside.  I can’t ask to be put first, our family time is dependent on someone else’s priority.  I dread every time our family is pulled apart, I am so afraid every time we hug goodbye that it’s the last time.

I know too that if we can’t make our family work, I can’t keep going on alone.  I deserve companionship and love, and my daughter deserves a stable, two parent family… a family that she can count on every day.  I can’t imagine right now taking that step, I am so in love with her daddy, and so certain of what is right.  Yet I am lonely, and I am stressed doing the single parent thing.  I know that one day, if we haven’t given our family a chance, someone else will.  I pray that it doesn’t become a choice I have to make.

Maybe I shouldn’t even be writing this, but sometimes I can’t stand not talking about it… I can’t stand being not being able to tell anyone how I feel, or the concerns I have, so I turn to the safety of these pages, in the knowledge no one reads this who will judge me for who I am, or the decisions I make.  If I talk to my friends, they don’t understand… The opinion is that I am either an idiot, or that I am selfish… No one knows the back story, or both sides of the story, no one understands the emotions involved.  Only the two principals, mommy and daddy… Everyone else just see’s a facade.

I did everything I thought was right, I followed all the rules, and it didn’t do shit for me.  So, please forgive me if I turn a cynical eye towards the god everyone said pray to, to the world that is just a bunch of crap IMHO…  I am not really mad at anyone, just myself for my own stupidity.  So, if you don’t mind, just leave me f*** alone for awhile while I go through the famous “grieving process.”  I am going to crawl up in a ball on the couch with Troll Baby, put on the Wonderpets, and pop some Prozac as soon as I can convince my doctor I am desperate enough to warrant it.

For all you alarmists, don’t freak out and thing that I am going to be all spaced out and neglect said Troll Baby. She won’t exist on Pop Tarts and spoiled milk, or sit around without clean diapers and baths.  I will push though my lethargy and do the mommy thing, just like I always so.  I will put on my happy face, go outside and push her in the swing, play in her pool, and take her and her brother to our retreat, the beach.

Well shit… no time to be depressed.  Just got a call that there is natural gas billowing out of the mail line of my house.  911 was called and here I go to make sure my crappy little house doesn’t blow up.

As I believe I have mentioned before, I dabbled in the personal ads game.  People turn to personal ads for many reasons…  Sometimes you genuinely are ready to pursue that “long term” relationship… Sometimes you are just looking to have fun, meet people, casually date… Sometimes, you just need someone to talk to.  That is why I turned to personal ads.  I am a single mom, with a little one at home.  I still am emotionally invested in someone else.  I can’t fathom moving on, committing emotionally to a new relationship.  It’s just not where I am at, the thought turns my stomach.  Right or wrong, I am hoping that I can regain what I have lost, jkjbring our friendship back to a relationship, and put the crap behind us and start anew.  So go ahead, and call me stupid.  Tell me I am naive.  (It won’t be the first time, that’s fr sure).  Cite me statistics, send me articles about why it will never happen.  I don’t give a rats behind what the experts, Dr. Phil, your best friend Jessica or your Aunt Bertha have to say about it.  I know what my heart says, and it says its not time to go on.

So, why the hell did I post personal ads?  Well frankly, I was lonely.  I don’t do the bar scene well, I like being home with my baby better than hanging out with the party girls.  With the relationship between my baby daddy and myself being vague, undefined, see-sawing and turned upside down, I really felt I had lost my best friend.  Without going into details, I was often angry and hurt, and tended to lash out, making things worse. Without him, I had no one to turn to, I felt lost, and I needed someone to talk to.  Hence, personal ads.  Here, I could go and send innocent flirtations, chat about things that didn’t matter, be made to feel like I was wanted.  I was in control.  I could walk away from the computer any time I didn’t the direction things were going.  I could purposely choose to talk to men whom I knew I would never want a long-term relationship.  I could just bide my time until “my time” finally came around.

The I started emailing with someone who seemed just the perfect friend.  type A (so not me), not looking for a relationship (perfect), kept talking to me when I told him I had no intentions of actually dating because my heart still belonged to another.  I could email him my latest trials, and he would give me his psycho-babble advice… I could talk about work, about how my adult children were doing, about anything, and he never ridiculed me, or put me down.  He made me ask questions, he challenged my beliefs, and he played the devils advocate.  Fine, I could appreciate that.  Then, I hit a particularly vulnerable point, and things shifted.  He wanted to meet.  For me, this was the “Hey, sure.. Let’s meet… This time next week I am going to be back together with the person who matters, and you and I will never see one another again, and it would be nice to meet the person who I have been emailing forever.”  So we met, and he was just as I pictured him.  Smug, so sure of himself and his opinions.  Totally not me.  But, it was fun to argue with someone, to just sit and be distracted by someone else’s voice besides the one in my head.

Well, next week didn’t happen the way I , what I expected didn’t materialize.  I was crushed.  I jumped to conclusions, I overreacted and lost it.  I turned to my “friend” to get advice, got the expected “I told you so, I’m a guy, I know how guys think.”  He invited me to dinner, and I accepted.  He cooked, I talked and drank to much wine, and things went a way I didn’t really want.  Hello walk of shame, at least in my own head.  After he walked away from my car, I sat there and cried, too sick to my stomach to drive.  The next day, he flooded my phone with messages I just deleted.  I told him, I wanted a friend to talk to about life, and suddenly it’s all about sexting… This isn’t what I want out of this.  He reassures me, that’s not what its all about, come over next week and we can just relax.  Well, maybe the push wasn’t as hard, but the game played out the same.  I knew I couldn’t do this.  There shouldn’t be a price to pay for friendship, or companionship.  Although it was never put into so many words, I knew there would always be that price, and I couldn’t pay it.  I couldn’t wait to walk out the door.

There are other dynamics to this story, there always are.  There is no happy ending, you can’t say everyone involved walked away unhurt.  Life isn’t that way.  Today I asked him to not contact me anymore, that I couldn’t continue a relationship that left me shamed and empty, that he could do better with someone who had the same goals for the relationship. With the brevity of his reply, I am guessing he senses the other night that I wasn’t really there (or else his pride is really hurt).  A friend helped me find the confidence to make this decision, and as I sit here this evening singing silly songs with my daughter, I feel such a sense of relief.  I hope my daughter is stronger than I as she grows up, and never purposely puts herself in a situation as emotionally degrading as the one I chose.

So personals, you won’t be seeing me again anytime soon.  To all those those women out there who are selling themselves short because they don’t feel they deserve any better… You are wrong.

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• Would you rent a friend? (guardian.co.uk)

So, I have been single for a while.  A lotta crap has been going on in life, I didn’t really want to date anyone in a serious fashion, but I wanted to have someone to talk to besides surly teens and toddlers.  So, I posted a Yahoo Personals ad, and a Match.com ad.  I talked to a lotta people, it was certainly entertaining, and it distracted me from the dismal reality of my own relationship limbo.

Meeting men through a personals site can be a total crap shoot.  You never know what gonna get thrown at you.  Now, there are your normal, everyday guys who seem to sincerely be looking for a relationship.  I never talked much to those guys…  I have Troll Baby with me, and having time for a real relationship was out of the question.  No sense starting something you don’t have the desire to finish.  So, I chatted with quite a few guys according to their entertainment value.  There are cougar hunters, which personally speaking, I think are highly annoying and more trouble then they are worth.  However, this group is great fun to chat with, they shower you with utterly ridiculous flirting, which keeps your skill set up in case you ever get a personal life again.  If I want to hang out with drunk, immature boys, I can always go over to my gf’s house.

This boy is too nice to be a cougar, even though he sure tries

She has numerous parties filled with drunk people ripe for observation (including numerous young guys who get more and more outrageous the more the longer the night goes on).   I make it a point to be the most sober adult of the bunch, it’s far more fun to watch drunks than to be one, IMHO.

Another variant that always pops up and gets quickly skipped are the old farts.  Even if you are an old dude, does your picture have to look like the Unibomber?  Even worse, like a Hells Angel my mothers age?  At least get a hair cut and trim your beard, so you don’t scare the crap outta me  if your picture pops up on my screen.

Then, there is the married guy.  This guy always wants to be ultra clandestine, talk in code and they never post a profile picture.  One of the first guys I ever chatted with fell into the married category.  He is my age, and I saw making the same mistake of being overwhelmed and giving up on his relationship that I had made.  I made it extremely clear from the beginning that I would never go out with him, but we could talk.  He told me about his marriage, his wife, children and two year old grandson.  I kept encouraging him to put the same time and effort into rekindling a relationship with his wife that he put into moping about how bored and unhappy he was.  I’m no relationship expert (obviously) but I know the mistakes I’ve made, and I shared them.  I gave him insight into the little things that make a woman light up and feel special.  I shared my woes, got a virtual shoulder to cry on.  Although we live in the same town, we never spoke on the phone or met face to face.  Eventually, I didn’t see him on IM anymore, and hoped for the best for him and his wife.  My crisis had passed, and I didn’t feel the need to renew my personals accounts.

Last week, a husband and wife came into the shop where I work as a graphic designer.  I designed an order of business cards, and the husband came to pick them up later that day.  He said something to my boss about how well they turned out, and how much his wife would like them.  My boss mentioned my name, and I hear this guy ask if he can come back and say hello.  Next thing I know, here is my mystery friend coming back and introducing himself.  He said that he too has canceled his personals account, and he’s trying to make things right with his wife.  I am so happy to hear that, and wish him luck, telling him I am glad all my nagging did some good.  In the end, I think he realized the same thing I have.  Diversions are just that… a temporary blip in life.  It’s far better to put your heart into something you already have a vested interest in.  It’s not the easiest route, but the potential payoff is far better.

It has come to my attention, deservedly, that I am biased in my writings about how life has been lately.  Yes, I have tried to be true to my feelings in this blog, put all my whining and complaining here because I can’t voice it to anyone in my personal life.  Here, I can write and pour my heart out, and not involve family in friends, and not keep crap bottled up inside.  Yet, I owe my daughter’s dad an apology.  Despite my own personal unhappiness, I have failed to acknowledge the fact that my daughter has an awesome dad, who loves her very much. He has always provided for her financially and emotionally, and showered her with love.  I think that is part of what makes things so hard.  We have this beautiful baby girl, a miracle baby, that he loves so very much.  He wanted a little girl forever, and he really is a good dad.  I know that any decisions he is making, she is a part of.  I can’t imagine the pain he feels on his end.  I know it sucks for him to not be a part of her everyday life.  He does his best to be here for her during the week while I am at work, and makes the most of that time that he can.  my daughter loves her daddy very much, and that means a lot.  She loves seeing pictures of her daddy on my screen saver.  I feel that’s part of why I have been such a freaking train wreck.  I know that any decision I make needs to resolve around her.  Maybe I have been unfair… It’s a lot easier for people to voice their anger and disappointment, than to take the time to acknowledge the good that people do.

During our time together, he tried to do the best to make life as perfect for me as possible.  I think a major frustration is that it was a goal impossible to reach.  He is  man of a different generation, a stronger, harder generation… and it was a losing battle for him to try and instill those values in my son and daughter. He and I came from a time when you got a job early in high school, where the things you bought, you worked for.  Money just didn’t get handed over, cleaning house and doing yard work were expected when you were part of a family.

I enforced my childrens lack of responsibility at home.  My children spent many years in an environment where the adult was incapable of demonstrating what it means to keep a house clean and maintained.  He would let the toilet and tub turn black with mold and mildew, and food filled pots and ans pile in the house until the odor would be overwhelming.  For many years after I first left my husband, I would pick up the kids from school, and then clean his house while I watched them after school.  When my daughter would be ill, or stay the weekend at my house, her dad would just let the dishes pile in the kitchen, because that was her chore.  I would feel so guilty when I would see that, especially when I knew she wasn’t feeling well, that I would clean up the mess.  When their dad was sick and let puke splatter on the bathroom walls and cabinet doors, I was the one who scrubbed the dried crud.  I kept up me efforts to maintain a sanitary environment at their dads house until my youngest son became able to crawl, and I couldn’t feel safe letting him on the floor.  It was shortly after this point that the kids moved in with me full time anyways.  When my children were with me, I let my guilt over leaving them with an alcoholic parent turn me into an overly indulgent, gotta make up for my ex-husbands meanness with being overly permissive and giving.  I have done that ever since I left their dad.  I also let my childhood, the abuse I suffered, get in the way of objective parenting of my children.  In addition to this, I overcompensated for my daughter at times, and let her illness become all consuming of  my time.  I know that addressing her illness was important, but I shouldn’t have let it cause me to neglect my relationship with my partner.

When Bill would try and instill responsibility and a work ethic in the kids, and they would come whining to me about being misunderstood, whatever, I let my fear of conflict get in the way of what he was trying to do with them.  I wanted him to be like me, praising every little effort they made, and he wanted me to be more like him, and be consistent with expecting responsible behavior.  I let this become a cycle which turned into anger and frustration between me and him. I should have stepped up and been a better partner and parent, but I let myself get overwhelmed and just gave up.  For this, I apologize.  He deserved better, deserved to have more support, more acknowledgment of how much I loved and appreciated him.  My children deserved better, they deserved a mom who was more involved, prepared them better for real life, and was less wishy washy.  I am still trying to figure out how to be a better mom, and my two older children are now adults.

So, why aren’t I saying this to him in person?  I try, but I cry too much and don’t make a lot of sense.  I get defensive and desperate.  Need to get over that someday.  I still want out relationship to work out, I still would do anything for that to happen.  I know I may have ruined those chances.  You cannot take back the past, you can only move forward.  I am not perfect, neither of us are.  We have both made mistakes.  I still believe however, that we are the very best people to parent our daughter.  No one will ever love her as much as we do, and I still feel that is something worth fighting for.