Renewed

Let me tell you a story...

Circa 18 years ago I met a kid (we were both 16) who became my first love. We had significant hurdles to overcome (for a more complete picture see the post A pretty big bullet...point) and we didn't make it together. We were together a whopping 6 months before we, quite naturally (if you read the above post), unraveled.

I spent about 14 years with a baseless, albeit rational, fear of him not to mention a strong dislike until one day I decided I was done. I came to a life altering realization; he did nothing wrong. Not truly. And, as I've said in the above mentioned previous post, it had been oh so very long ago.

Time to move on.

So I did. I even went so far as to contact him to let him know that I had moved on and was open to a renewed friendship should he see himself willing and able.

A number of months went by and he finally contacted me back with a willingness to cultivate a new friendship, of which we began immediately.

Fast forward approximately 4 years, lots of life hurdles that we've worked through together, and near constant daily contact later, we find ourselves in a new situation.

We have fallen back in love with each other.  : )

Yay!

We presently only have one obstacle and that is distance. He is currently 1300 miles away. While he's been here for 1 visit and will be coming back out in less than 2 months, he won't be moving out here until the beginning of the year.

This has certainly been a boost in my life although I still struggle significantly with my depression and anxiety.

He and I are very well matched and understand each other in a way that neither of us has ever found in the past. We're very excited about the future and the possibilities that lie before us. We understand that no road is perfectly smooth but we look forward to tackling anything that comes our way together with teamwork, communication and understanding.

So there you have it. My big announcement. The newest update.

: )

Thoughts? Questions?

I forgot this part...Really?!?

Addendum to previous post---

The information about this older kiddo from oh-so-many-moon ago has not been shared with my 2 kiddos. The Boy's dad and I are unsure whether or not he's in a place that he'd be able to grasp the concept or be able to adequately deal with it at this point. The Littl'n could definitely handle it, but as we don't want The Boy to hear about it from his 3 year old sister, we haven't mentioned it to her either.

There. Maybe that's what felt missing.
Or have I still not plugged all the holes?? You tell me!

A pretty big bullet...point

  So, after that last sharing session, the next bullet point seems to be my having a 16 year old that I haven't seen in 14 years.
Not that I think you need the specifics of the process, or at least I really really hope that you don't need them as you're out of luck in getting them from me, you know what I mean. I'm already doing 2 "talks" with 2 separate kids, I'm not sure I can handle having one with you too. ;)

  Well, pretty obviously, I got knocked up at the tender age of 16 from a less than ready for the world fellow 16er. We were in a relationship, but we were 16. And we each had more than our share of shit to deal with at that point already. I had my family dynamic to deal with and was desperate for a way out, he had his shitty family dynamic to deal with and needed stability and someone to love him. He was already into drugs by that point and I knew it. He was pretty good at hiding it for the most part but as it was what I was raised with, it certainly wasn't hidden from me. I went ahead and denied it to others tho. (I'll go into more detail about our relationship in a later post)

  As is common, we weren't using any form of birth control. We knew the stakes and we gambled anyway.

  When we finally got confirmation that I was indeed pregnant (I had taken 3 at home tests, 2 of which were negative and the other didn't develop properly), he immediately "needed a break". LOL! Like that one couldn't have been called a mile away! When I got the positive results at Planned Parenthood it came with some counseling. I had already decided what the necessary course of action was and was set in my determination. So him taking a break had zero effect on the outcome except to just add to the story. ;)
  As a matter of fact, over the years, short of real abuse, I've always won the "worst ex-boyfriend" contest.
After a week long break he told me one morning that "it just isn't working". LOL
That's an interesting observation. How keen and perceptive.
Needless to say, I wasn't surprised in the slightest and took it pretty smoothly. I let it roll off my back for a while before I got all hormoney and weepy about it. But hey, it was my 1st relationship and I was pregnant so..I mean really. I was allowed.
  Anyway, over the course of the pregnancy he himself started 4 separate rumors as to why it couldn't possibly be his kid. Yeah, he went with the deny it's mine tactic.
The 1st rumor was that it couldn't possibly be his kid because I cheated on him. Well that was just freakin physically impossible. I was with him 24 hours a damn day. I practically lived at his  place. There were nights that I wouldn't even go home. Some only to shower, get new clothes, and then leave again. Gimme a break!
The 2nd and 3rd stories I always mix up their order but they were, the baby couldn't possibly be his because of all the drugs he had taken-they made him sterile. Well unless he was shooting up into his scrotum, and I mean like wayyyy up, that one's really not a front runner for truth. The 3rd being that since he used to have his scrotum pierced (all genital piercings were removed before anything happened with me I'll tell you that!) the baby couldn't possibly be his because he was sterile from the piercings. Again, unless that needle took a significant detour, not-a-gonna-happen baby!
The 4th and final rumor, and the one that went in to the legal denial of paternity, was that the baby couldn't possibly be his because he was satanic and as part of his standard rituals, the high priestess shared with him a potion that just happened to have a side effect of sterility. And he knew this by getting his doctor to do a sperm count which was ZERO.
Ummmm....riiiiiiiiight.....

Alright, so that was that.
  In the meantime, I picked out an amazing couple to adopt this very loved baby growing inside of me, we met several times, and it was wonderful. Truly. I never had even 1 second's pause about the choice of these fabulous people to raise this baby that was going to be a blessing to the world.

  So fast forward 14ish years and I reconnect with the ex, that up until that point had ALWAYS been solely referred to as The Asshole. Many people never knew his real name. But I had come a long way in those 14ish years. I finally came to accept the fact that what happened between us happened so very long ago when we were very different people in a crazy difficult situation. We were both 16 and scared. But he, of course, had drugs fueling him whereas I did not. He made the only choices he could at that point in his life. I hold no grudges or ill feelings.  As a matter of fact, he and I are now quite good friends. We've been there for each other through some major life stuff in the past almost 2 years and it's been great.
Now. He has asked me for information regarding this offspring of ours. He also prefaced his request with the statement that he fully realizes that he has no right to any of this info since he signed away his rights, in more ways than one, years ago. But he has been curious these past years and wanted to know basics. Sex, birth date, name, whereabouts, etc...
After a bit of thought I told him the date of birth but that was it. He's not aware of whether or not I have contact with the family/kiddo. I don't feel that it's my place to tell him. It will be entirely up to the kiddo in question. He understood and was grateful for what I gave him. It was at least something to tie to this unknown he's had for all these years.

  So that kind of brings us to now where I have a 16 year old that is newly aware of my existence (I just found out from Dad) and has a desire, somewhere within them, to contact me. I'm blissful, I'm anxious, I'm honored. I also have some guilt because I also learned that the kiddo has been dealing with depression and anxiety for about 3 years. Yep. The grand genes that his father and I bestowed upon this kiddo.... :( But, Dad says that they have been working on those issues and this is where we all find ourselves at the moment.

  So yeah.
  A second little dish on my life and how it has unfolded and is continuing to do so.
I'm sure that I've left some pertinent points out but my brain is having a hard time digging them out at the moment.
Feel free to ask any questions to fill in any blanks you think need filling. :) I'm always down to dish.

A hankerin' ?

So I've had this kind of itch to tell you a little bit more about me. Specifically about my past and my life as it has come to be. I'm not sure why but it's been hanging around my noggin. So I think I just might actually oblige, for those of you that may be interested in some of 'the back story'.

  I've thrown a few in the past when having to try to find a word that describes my childhood or rather a description of how it progressed such as; I was raised, I was brought up, or I grew up, etc... I was certainly not raised by anyone but myself. I did not have steady guardians nor were the unsteady ones of continual use.
I am an only child, only not. I have a most wonderful older half sister, by 5 years, that was adopted out to a very stable loving family when she was born. I met her just a few short months before our mother died back in 2007. Here comes the point when someone usually praises my mother for the smart and loving choice she made when she was oh so young. No. She had absolutely no choice in the matter. Not her decision.
Anywho. Then along comes me. I'm worth holding on to and torturing apparently. Just under a year later comes a little brother. I haven't the foggiest idea as to whether or not he's a half or full sibling. He was also adopted out when he was born. Hopefully to a similarly wonderful family as was graced with my sister.
And still, I remained.
Stuck with 2 drug and alcohol dependent parents that couldn't even stay together. They showed, at every imaginable turn, that they were completely incapable of making good decisions for themselves much less an infant in their care.
And still, I remained.
I was shuttled off to fully functioning, yet undeniably alcoholic, grandparents and an aunt/uncle/cousin at a consistently random rate. This predictable pattern of getting bounced around 'tween the fam continued until I was 10 when I was forced to choose, in front of everybody, whom I wanted to live with; my mom and the newest stepdad or the aunt/uncle/cousin grouping.
Yes indeed. 2 sets of alcoholic parents were actually physically fighting in front of me over who got to 'take' me. My mother against her older sister (that practically raised her). Forcing a 10 year old child to pick between stability and uncertainty. Between her mother, that she's "supposed" to live with, love, want to be with, and the aunt who could provide her with any and all necessities, love her, and actually acted like she wanted her around.
Like most kids would in that situation, I picked my mother even though it's not what I wanted. A kid is "supposed" to live with their parents, not their aunt and uncle (or their grandparents as had been the case several times). A kid is "supposed" to love their mom and want to be with them, want to be like them. Well, not this kid. I had learned from a very very early age that everything I saw from my mother was what NOT to do. I had learned to take care of myself from very very early on. So much so that I had had to learn how to take care of and deal with my parent.
A preschooler is NOT supposed to understand that you don't touch the little cut up straws and mirrors on the table. The scales and baggies on the shelf aren't to be played with. That you don't ask if mom's alright when you hear noises coming from the back room of a 'friend's' place. But me? I knew those things. I remember knowing those things. I can't tell you what state I lived in while in any given grade in elementary school, but I can tell you those other things.
Looking back now, while I only spent a little less than a third of my life getting tossed around to whomever would take me for whatever effing reason my mother couldn't, or didn't want to, be a mother, it has still played one of the biggest parts.
Maybe one of the hardest things is that I will NEVER get any answers to any of the bazillions of questions I could possibly ask. My mother (cancer), all 4 grandparents (cancer), 2 step grandparents (cancer too I believe), father (suicide 4 days before my 11th b-day), and 1 stepfather (ruptured ulcers as I was told), are all dead. My aunt and I no longer have a relationship other than that shared by blood. And that was an easy choice on my part. I was told a few years ago that she had stage 4 lung cancer but to my knowledge she is still alive and full of alcohol and attitude.

  So those were my humble beginnings. That's a nutshell of my Back Story. There are innumerable events within but that's the Cliff's Notes version that might give you just a little inkling into my wretched start and progression on this crazy crazy spinning ball of ours.
If you ever wonder how one gets a diagnosis list that reads like mine....there ya go.
 
  Consider yourself schooled in Crazy 101.