Vows, undeserved

So, we usually do Secret Subject Swap where we each get a prompt someone else submitted and no one knows who got what until the day we publish. It's been a blast writing and reading so many different perspectives, but it's been a lot of years now, and most people have sort of fallen off doing these challenges. I've kept going even with intense insomnia that keeps me from writing as well as I used to in part because this has been such a big part of my life for so long and because I know having a deadline keeps me writing. But mostly I just wasn't ready to say goodbye to people whose only real connection to me is these posts. But for the second time in just a couple years, one of the few regulars passed away. Today, our post is about her. Every prompt is hers, a memorial post from everyone in a way, and honestly probably one of our last as a group. It's been rad, y'all. I might still be here righting but I'm just not sure right now.




My “Secret Subject” is:

What is the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to you in public? Tell us about it.

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I've never had a soul crushingly embarrassing experience that I can reflect back on and still think was as mortifying as it appeared at the time. There have been little things here or there. There were times in my childhood that I thought I'd never be free of the weight of but looking back now I wonder what the big deal even was. Nothing that seemed soul crushingly embarrassing at the time has remained so. Does it count if it wasn't necessarily embarrassing at the time and just increasingly got worse?

Because I was married to a dumb asshole. And I married that dumbasshole in front of dozens of people who knew he was a dumbasshole and couldn't for the life of them get me to see it and he turned into an even bigger dumbasshole than even any of them could have predicted.

And I think about it with the complicated lenses of present me and it is fucking mortifying how naive I was and God all of it is just so goddamn sad.

I married someone who wasn't even an adult yet. For that matter neither was I. We weren't even 25 when we got together and moved in together. We weren't even 25 when we got married a year later. I had a kid at 25. With that dumbasshole. And instead of growing up together, he just seemed to constantly reverse. Every step forward he might make would come crashing to a halt then he backpedaled. He lied. About everything all the time. And when he got caught I was the bad guy for accusing him. He spent money like he actually had the ability to keep a full time job. He refused to learn how to do even the easiest of tasks and once just before I found out I was pregnant he let his still teenaged best friend pull him around the yard with the lawnmower and ended up in the emergency room. He gaslit me and punched holes in things. He drank too much too often He cheated at the end. It was so many things that left me looking like an absolute fool.

And the worst is when I tried talking to my friends or my mom, it was "well told you so" from them and "you expect too much out of men" from her. Maybe I do but I don't think that means stick with someone that makes me hate myself.

We split and he put every woman he ever dated above my kid for years. He wouldn't pay child support. He left me all the bills then begged me for a place to stay with one of his girlfriends or they'd be homeless but wouldn't pay rent and left me sitting with her many nights while he went out cheating on her so I had to be the one to comfort my ex's newbie. He constantly stole money out of my checking account and laughed about it to our friends who laughed at me with him especially when he'd insist I was just the crazy ex who'd die alone. He has a kid with one of these women that he's never seen. He's never paid her a dime. And then he knocked someone up who demanded he marry her or not see his kid again so he did and for a few years he really gave it a half hearted effort. He had kid after kid with this woman that he admitted in private he couldn't stand. He asked me to give her makeup tips. And fashion advice. He let her treat my kid like shit and they both made him uncomfortable with the way they talked about him. He didn't even have so much as a toothbrush at their house and when he eventually asked to not be treated that way and to have things there like he was part of their family too, they stopped speaking to him. Right after he came out of the closet and endured many a gay joke and being called princess all the time.

He hasn't spoken to his own kid in years. He missed every single bit of his own child's teens because he's a dumbasshole and I just keep being increasingly mortified that I was ever so fucking stupid.

Forever, every single time I hear the name Erik, I'm going to be embarrassed. But Im absolutely over the moon about the fact that he ended up with the life he deserves stuck with someone he doesn't like with kids he didn't plan on and absolutely fucking miserable. Good job, buddy. Karma got you.

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Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

On Rituals and Loss

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.


My words were: prison, austerity, lurking, skunk, snuggles.


They were submitted by: http://www.bookwormkitchen.com/

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Recently someone very close to me lost his grandmother. I'm certain the whole world felt that loss. She was an amazing lady whose 89 years were filled to the brim with love, warmth, and kindness.

This loss has been hard on him, and I've tried every way possible to be supportive (but to be honest I am just not equipped to be all that great at things like this. Maybe I'm just too dependent on rationalizing things, on throwing out emotion for logic). I did the whole family/visitation/funeral stuff even though I wasn't feeling well and had zero energy to do it, and I tried to provide as much of an emotional shield from it all as I could, but I know it wasn't enough. We sat at the funeral in stony silence as two non-family members took turns talking about generic traits and repeating the same stories over and over again. Despite saying her pastor saying he'd known the woman for over 2 years, he didn't have a clue that her entire family calls her Maw-maw and mispronounced it several more times even after he was corrected. Small town cliches about everyone knowing everyone else are simply that--cliches.

We've talked often since then about how weird our death traditions are and how unsatisfying it was for him to be a part of it. A skunk could have sprayed right on him, and I think it would have been more fulfilling than the things these two men shared about the #1 love of his life. Why let a strangers' broad descriptions be the last memories created about you?

So in the spirit of sharing something more real, I want to share my own Maw-maw story.

Brandon and I had been friends/hetero life mates for a few years before I actually met his grandma. The thought of it alone was extremely intimidating. I knew how much he looked up to her and loved her, and I also knew how most of the rest of his family felt about me--that I was some kind of horribly bad influence with my liberal ideas and tattoos. I certainly wasn't up to many of their perceived social status.

We had been walking the woods on her property looking at some of the outbuildings and enjoying being outside when he asked if I'd like to come in to meet her. It was a hot Georgia evening, and I had on short sleeves. I asked him if he was nuts. There was no way I would meet her without having more of my arms covered. He pulled me toward the house anyway and told me it would be fine.

If I'd known how lovely she would be, I would have met her a lot sooner. She didn't double take or even so much as let her gaze linger on my tattoos. It was like they were just...any other part of me. She talked to me like she had known me for ages, asked about my son who she already adored after just a few meetings, and respected me like she would anyone else. She offered cake and something to drink and to teach me how to sew anytime I wanted. There wasn't so much as a hint of what other family members had been like towards even the idea of me. She was the same every time I saw her. Even sitting around the house in her pjs at 89 years old on her bad days, she was the epitome of beauty, and it absolutely radiated from her. There was no way you could leave a visit with her and not be affected by her, inspired.

That's who she was--an unconditionally loving, nonjudgmental, warm, caring, compassionate, independent (and sometimes stubborn), inspiring woman who was beautiful inside and out, who provided for her family with hard work for years on her own, through easy times and those of austerity. Her faith was strong, but it wasn't the crutch to be judgmental the way so many people seem to use it. And the times she grew up in while so different from the culture in the time in which I knew her were never a prison of excuses to be ugly or spread hate. She was the person to go to if you needed snuggles no questions asked and always had the goods if you needed to eat your feelings. In every possible way, she was good. And she was wholeheartedly loved.

I know with every fiber of my being that she had no lurking doubts about that--about how much love she had felt and shared in her lifetime. Perhaps we all have questions towards the end. Maybe we wonder if we got it all right, if we could have done more or done things differently. Maybe that's a part of it all. But she died the same way she lived--surrounded by love. And that's the best thing any of us could ever hope for.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado http://www.bakinginatornado.com/2017/12/who-you-are-in-january-use-your-words.html

Cognitive Script https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/2017/12/lost-at-zoo-uyw.html

The Blogging 911 http://theblogging911.com/blog

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Bergham Chronicles https://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-last-one-useyourwords.html

Southern Belle Charm http://www.southernbellecharm.com

Bookworm in the Kitchen http://www.bookwormkitchen.com/

Part-Time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2017/12/use-your-words-best-of-intentions.html