Long over due

Introductions.

I am not rude, I'm just careless, or I don't realize that someone who doesn't know me might actually stumble onto this blog.  They might be curious about 'pink socks'.  What sort of name is that?

It's a good question, I created this Blogger account years ago, shortly after I left my husband.  For the year before that time and for a few years after that, I was obsessed with pink under things.  Panties, bras and yes, socks.  I read somewhere that pink is a color we are drawn to when we need to be spoiled.  Boy did I need to be spoiled then.  I felt it was the way to nurture that starting over me.  To give me something warm and cozy and utterly girlie, to remind me that somewhere out there someone loves me, even if it's only me.

I don't know what happened but in the past year I've stopped seeking out pink underthings.  I don't even blink when I grab the dull grey panties I find in my drawer, for the record, they aren't grey because of neglect they are grey by color choice.

So that's something to ponder, grey underthings?  I think that might be the most anti woman color out there, so what am I telling myself now days?  This has actually given me cause for thought.  Could also be that deeper thing I'm seeing everywhere these days.

I really enjoy personal growth, enlightenment and self discovery.  I like that epiphany moments that all I manage is an awed shake of the head.  But usually those moments come with the feeling of moving forward in life.  Lately I haven't been getting those feelings, I just feel stuck, like I'm growing but not moving.

I'm wondering if I took the steps forward before, when I thought I'd learned the lesson, so now when it's all sunk in, I have no movement available.  Borrowing from the future to pay the present.  Even in personal growth it's a dangerous move.

And we are back to introductions, I won't give my name, pink socks works for that, but a few things I can say about me, I'm 40, a single mom with a wonderful, amazing and often times trying 11 year old boy.  I instantly like anyone who says good things about him.  He's difficult to enjoy sometimes, but he is a great person and every day I am amazed and proud that I've done such a fine job raising him.  Go ME!  I live in a small town in northern Washington, which works out well since I work in that same small town.  I like long walks on the beach, bent over searching the sand for sea glass, shells and heart shaped rocks.  One day I'd like to own a small hobby farm, with a few La Mancha goats, chickens, geese, ducks, rabbits, maybe a horse (I would like to ride) and a huge garden/orchard.  I'm old school I guess, I'd like to learn to can and 'put food by' and I'm not ashamed to admit that one of the things on my life list is to make a pair of knitted socks.  Can't explain, just something I'd like to do.  I'm also single and haven't had sex in ohhhhh forever now, something crazy like six years.  Before that single event it had been at least a year.

Thing is, I like sex.  Highly sexed but terribly low self esteem.  Might go back to the personality assessment, being an individualist means I'm sure that on some fundamental level I'm broken, or damaged or just not right.  Whatever it is, I know that I've always been this way.  I used to be timid, hiding in the shadows.  About half way through my marriage I got tired of the shadows and wanted to be seen.  Like when I went into a store to buy something, it's so much nicer if the shop workers actually see you, and help you, instead of scanning over you.  Do people even know when they do that?  In less than a second they regulate someone to nothing status.  So I tried to change, to be seen, it didn't work as I thought it would, so I gave up and went to sleep for the last year of my marriage.

When I forced myself awake I thought the world was my oyster all I had to do was step into it and anything could be mine.  That was four years ago.  I remember stepping into the world for a few moments, it was cruel so I ran back to the safety of who I have always been.  Making sure I fit into the expected role I have always played.

Since June, I have worked to fight out of the mold, to become who I want to be, not who I have always been.  It's hard.  People don't want you to change, they are comfortable knowing what you will do, who you are.  Changing the rules, admitting that you might do something completely unexpected, no one wants that sort of change.  Because it requires them to change too.  They have to give up their expectations of you or lose you.  It would seem a no brainer, just change the expectations, but it doesn't work that way.  Change is funny like that.

My cousin, she has decided to lose weight, so she is doing it, she's lost some crazy amount of weight in the past six months, and she looks pretty good.  But I can tell, it's hard for her, we all expect something of her, that she continue to be an eater, to be loud and mouthy and fat.  She wants something different.  I have always admired her drive, she's always felt like she deserves the best, it's never entered her head that anything less is what she should have.  And so she gets the best, well I used to think so, now days I question this, I don't want some younger man that I'm a sugar momma to.  I don't want the unpredictable life she's got going.  I want stable and secure.  I want to know I'm firmly rooted so I can soar.

Reality doesn't work that way.  I can't wait for my roots to settle in, I've got to soar while I still can, life is short and you never know when you won't wake up.  Live now.

I want to live like that, and right after I got out of the hospital and started to realize what had happened to me and what I'd gone through I thought that is how I want to be.  Fearless, bold, amazing.  Something to behold.  Slowly, day by day, life creeps in and robs me of those feelings, the possibilities.  I don't know how to be those things.  I don't know what living a fearless life looks like.  With no frame of reference I'm flying blind and I'm not very good at going someplace I've never been, unless I have a map, and guideposts.

I met a guidepost.  An amazing person who is bold and fearless and grabs life by the balls and doesn't let go.  OOOOO how my heart did sing at the prospect of a teacher.  Not much seems to be rubbing off on me though.  I still don't know how to pull my life together, to move forward in a confident manner.  I don't know how to get what I want, or even where the path is.  I'm afraid to keep asking for help, being tethered to the ground is probably not what those that soar dream about.  Then again, maybe they do, because they know that every tether they remove adds one more beautiful bird in the sky.  Metaphors.  Right now we are teaching similes to our after school group, and I'm working with it in third grade.

I actually enjoy the teaching parts when we are able to do it.  Doesn't happen so often but I'm thrilled when it does happen.  I feel effective.  I had such a moment today, four of the students I work with will be replaced with four new ones.  My current students have now tested at a level that means they no longer need me!  Means I'm doing something right.  Not bad for one very lost woman.  Perhaps I'm finding my way, after all.