Another Party

I am over tired and not feeling well.  My son has been sick for days and the last couple of days he has been REALLY sick.  His fiancee has been sick all week.

 I was really sick  today especially.  However, I still had to keep moving.  I figure if my son can be sick, drive an hour to work in nasty traffic, drive into downtown Cincy and sit through town hall meetings, then drive home through bumper to bumper traffic then I can do what I have to do around here and be sick.

I just get upset every now and then because I seem to be left to do all the cleaning...and dishes...and cooking.  I feel like a non-person.  They just don't think.

Then it makes me angry in another way because even though I can forgive the divorce...cuz...the divorce itself I have made peace with.  It is HOW he did it that I get angry about still.  I lose my job and have no visible means of support and he wants to divorce me.  Anyone with a conscience would not do that to someone else...especially someone that has been there for THEM through everything.  25 years of taking care of him, picking him up and dusting him off and that is what I get. THAT is what is going to take me a while to get over.

I suppose the dinner I had with Jean last night stirred things up too.  She had a very horrible husband and put her through a lot.  I have friends whose exes were terrible and put them through a lot.  I have realized that my divorce, itself, was not that bad.  So he decided to try and replace me with some low life nut job.  His problem.  The only things that I am angry about is his dumping me right after I lost a job AND suggesting I sell the house...so that the kids and I could live on the street???

Yeah..when I am not feeling well I can get pretty bitchy.

Adendum:  I woke up with that whole thing on my mind again.  I had told Jean that I just had no desire to be with another guy.  She told me she went through that for a while too but it would come back.

But here is what my mind must have figured out in my sleep cuz it was the light bulb that woke me up:  he did not care about me.  I had not cared about me either.  I had put all of my heart into caring about my family and just wanting some care back...that I had nothing left to care about myself with.  And because I had not cared about myself, why should he?  I am not really giving him an excuse.  There is no excuse.  And I can write him off with "he is what he is" and this is true. But the fact remains, I cared more about his feelings than I cared about my own.  I have mourned something that was never going to happen.  I have mourned the fact that I had cared about him but he didn't care about me.  I have spent a lot of time and energy on that instead of learning to care about ME!  And THAT is why I am not ready for someone else to be in my life, yet.  Someone needs to care about ME...and that someone is me.  I need to care about me.

I look in the mirror and it shows that I don't care about me.  If I had cared about me, I wouldn't have put on so much weight!  By the time I put all of my heart and soul into my family, I had nothing left for me!  So now, I am learning.  It is like going through physical therapy...retraining.

I keep telling myself, 'once I get used to my job' or 'once the holidays are over' or 'once my son is moved out and settled'...and that will take place right after the holidays.  But, will I have another excuse for putting myself on the back burner?  It is sad when I have to MAKE myself care about myself.  Why is that so hard?  I need to realize my own worth.

I am not sure why that is so hard for me.  I know, I could blame it on my mother like everyone else.  She expected a lot out of me, yet, she would put me down too.  She accused me of being self centered and selfish.  She told me I wasn't creative enough to think outside the box.  And because of the negatives, I have done nothing but put others before myself and I have done a lot of thinking outside the box and learning to be self sufficient.

And because of all of that, it gave others the excuse to treat me like they didn't need to help me and that I didn't matter.

But I do need help...and I DO matter.  And I need to realize that too.