What happens when we aren't paying attention

Thanks for your comments about the Burning Man link that I posted.

This is what happens when I'm not paying attention. I actually have 3 blogs now. (I just started a new one this week.) I had MEANT to post that link on one of the other blogs. If I had done that hardly anyone would have seen it probably, and I doubt I would have gotten any comments. Instead I posted it here even though it had nothing really to do with Al-Anon, and look at that... some of you liked it!  :-)

So now I have your attention let me tell you about the third blog. I'm not going to give you a link and tell you to read it though. It's about taking care of me. Today is -1. Tomorrow is September 1st and I am setting goals for myself to lose weight and eat better. Tomorrow I begin. I've been warming up to this for about a week, but tomorrow is the official start date. The ice cream is out of the freezer and chips are no longer going on my plate. By the middle of March I want to see a lower number on that scale. I have a number in mind of course. I don't know if my plan is drastic enough to get to that number but I guess time will tell. My third blog is about losing that weight and it is tied into the website that I am using to help motivate me in that direction.

My husband has done quite well in losing the pounds, and if he can do it I know I can do it too.I am going to miss my friends Ben, Jerry, Bart, Breyer, and a few others but I know what I want for my birthday and it's up to me to make it happen.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

"Somebody"

When I started this blog I wasn't sure if anyone I knew would read it. I wasn't sure if I wanted to connect it to my real life even. I thought it might just be this anonymous alter ego thing that I put out there and no one knew the real me. I think the anonymous part is important part of Al-Anon. However that is slowly changing over time. I'm learning to connect myself to the blog. I'm also starting to take myself seriously as a writer outside the blog world, and I'm starting to put more effort into it. I'm realizing that I have hobbies and skills that are actually useful, even if no one but me acknowledges them. I'm hoping to feed and nurture these parts of me better than I have been for the last few years. In doing so I should gain my sense of "self" back again, something I have a habit of losing over and over again. Too often in life I am "A Cute Girl's Mom" or "Wife of Somebody Important". Rarely am I "Somebody". Need to work on that I guess, over and over.


And this blog post strikes me as something that I might cross over to my other blog as well, at least in parts. Hmm... another thing I never planned to do. I hope no one is offended at me doing this. It just seems so fitting to be posting it on both places. The post started as something about "writing" but evolved into the whole "Somebody" thing.

Repeat--

In doing so I should gain my sense of "self" back again, something I have a habit of losing over and over again.... Need to work on that I guess, over and over.

crap about my mother

I posted a couple of weeks ago about my mother asking for some jewelry to be returned to her. I couldn't find the jewelry and my mother was insistent that I had it.

So Saturday morning my daughter and I went over to my mother's yard sale. She wasn't set up close enough to the road for many people to see her, and she hadn't advertised in the paper. I decided I'd better just give her some small things, and hang on to the bigger ones for a charity donation. So my daughter and I pulled in, and my mom explained that the landlord's wife had told her to keep it small. So she was away from the road and trying to make everyone happy. While we talked I poked around. I gave my daughter a bag and told her to put whatever she wanted in it, and I'd pay my mom for it. That kept my daughter busy. Then I noticed something on one of the tables- my grandmother's jewelry. Not all of it, but it was the earrings that my mother had insisted were in my possession. I pointed them out to my mom. I was expecting an apology of some sort. I never got one. I think this upset me more than anything. I'm not upset that she is selling the clip-on earrings. I don't need them myself. I'm upset that she accused me, then accused me some more, and had them in her possession the whole time. Plus, all she wanted them for was to sell them. After a while some more friends of my mother's came. One was an ex-boyfriend of hers. He noted that she was selling a fishing pole that he had given her. No apology about that either, and he didn't offer to buy it back. After his buddy made a rude remark, I decided it was time to leave. Other adventures awaited my daughter and I.

Skip forward to Saturday night, and dinner with my father and his girlfriend. I repeated this story about the jewelry and the lack of apology. My father laughed and told his girlfriend. This kind of behavior is just so typical of my mother. It didn't upset him the way it upset me of course, but I think he understands some of my pain.

When I left my mother's apartment on Saturday morning I told her that our weekend was full and we wouldn't be back. Still, she called my house Saturday while I was out to ask me to come back to get the few things I had left. I called her back and told her I'd get it on Mother's Day. Then on Sunday I drove by her apartment on the way to the grocery store. I thought about stopping but saw that she wasn't home. She still wasn't home when I drove by again on my way home. Then after I got home she showed up at my place, on her scooter/moped thing wanting me to come over to her house. I told her we were having lunch and then on our way out again. Again, "I will see you on Mother's Day".. well she doesn't want to wait that long to get rid of the stuff. That's fine with me. If someone else can give her a hand before I can, great. Not the answers she wanted though. She wanted my world to revolve around hers. I can tell. It didn't. I held my ground.

Some day I will have to try to explain things to my daughter. I'm already searching for ways. My daughter got a bag full of stuffed animals and a brand new 1999 Barbie that was still in the box. Might have been a collector's item, but not anymore. My daughter didn't understand the frustration or hear the anger I was feeling. I'm glad now, but some day I will have to warn her because I know the day will come when my mother lashes out at her in some way. I hope my daughter doesn't cry the same way I have over the years. I am just waiting for the other shoe to fall.

Feeling split between worlds

In trying to think about what to post about today I am finding myself split between different worlds. That in itself opens another direction to go in. I think a lot of us Al-Anons feel split between worlds. There is the outside world where most people do not know what we endure in our homes, and then there is the chaos that we go home to (or went home to as children/teens/spouses/etc). I think that is a post topic for another day. Maybe someone else out there wants to take it up, be my guest.

At work we are nearing the end of the Spring semester and the fiscal year. The last couple of weeks have been busy. It's almost over though, and I can taste the summer just around the corner. Summer is slower for me at work, and I savor it sometimes. Right now I am looking forward to it probably because I've been too busy this week. I'm not motivated to work today, and wishing I had a day off.

On the home front, I talked to my mother last night. What was that about not picking up someone else's baggage? Yeah. Good words, and I remembered them as she rattled on about some drama between herself and my brother. My brother and I are not close, and it seems like whenever my brother is getting along with my mom, I'm not. Whenever they have a fight, my mom comes to me. I don't get it. So the latest drama is that my mom is mad at my brother and his "woman" (ex-wife/girlfriend/mother of one of his son's). She is trying to draw me into the drama, and you know what? I'm NOT PICKING UP THAT BAGGAGE. Yup. Good words. Practicing my self-care and letting it go. My brother was labeled ADD as a kid, and whether that's his issue or drugs or whatever is his problem, I don't know. I detached from him a long time ago. I tried to save him once. Tried to give him love and support, with boundaries and when he didn't like those boundaries and the guidelines I insisted on, I detached with love. It's been tough love ever since with him. I wish dealing with my mom was that easy for me. Anyway, the problem is theirs, not mine. I love them both, always will, but I will not get sucked in.

I do plan to stop at my mom's apartment Saturday morning, alone, to see what she is selling in her yard sale, and maybe donate a couple of things, but I won't stay long. I promised my husband that. I have other things to do with my life than spend it in her toxic world.