You could try to be friends.  It all depends on the what your status was with each other before the added complication of a relationship.  If you were friends before, being friends again should work out pretty well after some adjustment period.  If you weren't friends to begin with,it's nowhere near as easy.

For the last five months or so I've had absolutely nothing to say.  A million life altering things have happened to me and I have yet to feel the need to write, rant, or even talk about them.  So out of the slight urge that I have to simply write without expectation or agenda, here I am, sitting in my bed, writing in this lovely blog before I go about my day and return to life as I know it.

A month and a half of pneumonia stole most of my January and February.  Training for my new job at a bank stole the rest of February and subsequently, working has held my attention and time since then.  March was simply uneventful and the only thing that happened in April was the finalization of my divorce.  I do have feelings and opinions on that matter but that's for later.  May, I worked, camped with friends, and met someone who has changed my life around for the better.  And now, here in June, I'm preparing for a hugely important job interview as the part-time work at the bank is barely paying the bills and managing to keep me grumpy and bored at the same time.  And that's that.

Topics of interest...
The Divorce
Having all of the paperwork done, my last name changed, the rings off my finger, and the new address are footnotes in what it all really means.  To me, what it really means is that I can stop hurting now.  The pain of being so absolutely heartbroken can heal now, I can move on and see if I can ever trust anybody with that part of me again, and I can start forgiving myself for everything that happened, and everything that went wrong.  Most of which is already done.  I don't hurt nearly as much anymore, I don't think about him every day like I used to, I'm not terrified to tell someone I love them, and I'm starting to be okay with everything else.  My hang ups now are more on the fact that I'll forever be labeled as a divorcee.  That if I ever get married again it will be my second marriage and the thought will always be in everybody's head that I could screw it up again.  Heh.  That and I feel like a complete and utter loser.

The Job
Working for the bank that I work for is utter hell.  We have very few customers come in every day so I'm literally standing around for 4-8 hours being bored out of my mind with nothing to do.  On the off chance I get to work with someone I like, it's good.  But more often than not, I'm stuck working with the person who drives me absolutely crazy and who knows exactly what I think of him.  Eight hours of silence is NOT any better than eight hours of mindless small talk.  So I've started applying for new jobs and today I have an interview with a paint distribution company and I hope that I get it.  Right now my sanity depends on it.  Much better hours, much better pay, and benefits.  Aww that's the dream.  What a job to have health insurance again.

The New Guy
That's right folks, I'm dating again.  And by dating I mean I have one boyfriend that I spend pretty much every free second with either in person or in some other form of communication.  He is absolutely amazing.  He's everything I've ever wanted and more.  He's the guy who takes care of me, who I actually have fun with, laugh with, and smile with without having to force it.  And so far everything has been great.  We've both recently gotten out of pretty heinous relationships and while we're both over the former person, we're learning to heal and love and trust again together.  And it's working out really well.  So we'll see how that goes.  Because right now, I can see myself falling for this guy.  But at the same time, rushing and/or rebounding are not at all what I want either of us to do.  

That's it.  Three topics of interest for my life currently.  And now, off to get ready for the interview.
~Amy

For anybody who had any doubts, pneumonia does in fact suck.
It's been over a week now that I've been down for the count with this lovely sickness that has me quite literally plastered to the couch, unable to do much of anything.  Most of the time I can barely even manage to breathe, which let me tell you, is an awesome feeling.  When your ribs feel as though they've been cracked all over and are now caving in on your lungs at every single square inch, and you feel like just taking a breath might kill you, it sucks to be alive.
Add to that the fact that my head is unbelievably congested to the point where breathing through my nose is useless and my ears are constantly plugged and this lovely headache that comes from my seemingly hour long coughing fits is just delightful. 
The treck to the hospital where I spent the majority of my day yesterday was useless.  Not much they could do for me there as they are complete morons.
If you haven't guessed, I'm not the happiest of people today.
My laptop is broken so I am on the desktop until it gets fixed and returned to me which is hopefully tomorrow but we'll see.  Plus this.  Totally just not what I need right now.
But there's your update.  I feel like death.
I'm exhausted however I have quite literally slept all day.
And here I go.
More sleep.
Goodnight.
~Amy

"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over.  Out on the edge, you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center."
- Kurt Vonnegut

I wish I could find the words to say what I need to say right now.  In all honesty it seems impossible to do just that.  

Why do people only want what they had after it's too late?  After it's gone?  A year I spent trying to get him to want me.  And only now does he seem to.  Only now does he worry or express concern when I'm upset.  Only now does he call to talk and chat.  Only now does he feel compelled to hold onto me and give me the affection that I so badly craved.  So desperately needed. 

After I've left and after I've completely lost myself.  Now that I am entirely terrified of anything even remotely intimate.  Now that I do a pretty good job of hiding my emotions from absolutely everyone including myself; internalizing what I used to practically scream to the world.  I've gained some confidence back which has been quite the boost to my happiness.  I've spent almost all of the time I've been gone trying to correct the flaws that I have that caused his unhappiness in the hopes of never causing anybody any shred of it in the future.  But right now, I can only see my future alone.  Can only seem to have a firm grasp of it when I see myself in a dining room surrounded by the ones who have spent the last two months lifting me up and the last year letting me cry on their shoulder.  

At least the crying isn't an issue anymore.  I've somehow either suppressed my tears well enough, or have done such a good job of convincing everybody else that I'm alright that I've begun to believe it myself.

Things are better and happiness seems like a much more tangible notion.  My smiles are never faked, but they do mask a lot of conflicted emotions.  I'm just glad nobody can read my mind.  I'm not sure it'd make much sense to them.  I'm not sure it makes much sense to me, really. 

But reading the words "I love you" from him tonight made my heart stop, my breathing hitch, and turned my world upside down.  It's been months since it's been said.  Nearly a year since I believed it.  I'm not entirely sure I believe it now.   But that's another matter for another time.

A time when I don't have to wake up in 8 short hours and drive for 6-7 hours back home.  When I don't have two beautiful three month old nieces sleeping in their crib upstairs who could, and most likely will, wake up in a matter of minutes, craving formula, attention, or just plain cuddling.  And I, their dutiful servant, will give it to them.

Because that's what you do when you love someone.
~Amy

Slight mental breakdown, that last one.

I had my reasons that brought it about.  But none that need to be put into the public view.  I don't really relish the thought of my dirty laundry aired online even if it is by my own doing.


Onto my random thoughts and musings of the past week or so.

I love my nieces.  They are unequivocally the most adorable babies ever to be born.   They are loved to an infinite amount and will be spoiled every day, every hour, and ever second of their lives.  The mere fact that I've gone through multiple outfits every day of the past week due to being thrown up on more times than one can count is testimony to that.

I'm lonely.  Granted, currently, I have my sister and brother-in-law sitting right next to me, and we're socializing, on top of that I'm instant messaging with some friends.  Yet I feel entirely and utterly alone.  I know that when I go upstairs and lie down in my bed, there's not going to be anybody there waiting for me, or anybody following me up.  I haven't had a day go by that I haven't been lonely. At least not for a year or so.  I'm starting to feel good about myself which if you'd been inside my head at any point in the last year would show you that I'm making great strides in my life.  I'm actually to the point where I like who I am and if someone else doesn't, I brush it off and give it little to no attention.  The things that bother me about myself I'm working on changing if I can, and accepting them if I can't.  I'm starting to sound like an addict, reciting the serenity prayer.  But I'm fairly certain that there's some truth to that whole "Love thyself" thing.  

Seeing Ephriam this past week was heartbreaking.  I miss him.  I do.  Certain aspects of our relationship were refreshing and comforting.  That we could rag on each other at any time, and engage in some witty bickering back and forth.  That we never had forced conversation.  And certain other things.  Granted, those things combined still can't make up for the things that were lacking.  But it was nice to spend some time this time.  Even if it did end in me bawling the entire two and a half hour drive home.

I've got a week left here with my sister.  It's been nice.  I've thoroughly enjoyed spending time with my beautiful nieces, and being in a place where not only is pretty little expected of me, but everything I do is greatly appreciated.  I've always been close with my older sister and her husband is not only her perfect match, but he's a great guy. 

I have some more laundry to get done.  The perfect ending to the perfectly nostalgic day.  I could ramble on about the things I've been thinking about today, but I'm fairly certain that I'm not ready to do that just yet.
Until then...
~Amy

Wrong.  Dumb.  Entirely stupid.  Bad idea!

What the hell was I thinking?

At this point, it's just easier to drink my vodka and pink lemonade and hope for sleep.

Just.  There are no words.

To spite my hopes of yesterday, this morning I find that having three teenage girls in the house can be and often is very loud.  Especially for the newly deamed insomniac who goes to sleep far too late and wakes up far too early to be anything resembling healthy. 

It's Pumpkin Fest in my town now.  There are hundreds of pumpkins, dressed up, carved, and painted, adorning the courthouse lawn in the middle of downtown.  There's a carnival that even now has lights aglow on each and every mechanical ride that, during different daytime hours, is designed to make it's patrons either heave or stumble away from the exit in a fit of joy and adrenaline. I want to walk the town at three a.m. like I used to at this time of year.  There are no longer vendors sitting out on the sidewalk at their booths at that hour.  Just the remnants of them.  The tables with the banners across them, trusting that they'll be there when the owners return. The signs for the festival are still present as ever as they cling to lamposts and wave in the wind.  The pumpkins in the lawn are still brightly lit, and some even possess their own brand of light with a flicker of a flame every now and again.

It's my favorite time of year.  The leaves have mostly fallen from the trees and are lying haphazardly along sidewalks and roads.  The air isn't yet too cold for a jaunt downtown, but the wind still bites at your cheeks with the threat of winter, but no products of it just yet.  At that late hour, there isn't anybody to be seen.  It's a modernized ghost town.  The town can be yours for that hour or two. And when the businesses and temporary set ups come back to life, it's as if the world has been set aright again.

Today will be the last day for the year.  The last day of Pumpkin Fest. Some people, including myself, will make their last ditch efforts to overcome fears.  In my case, to brave the ferris wheel for the first time, alone.  For others, a multitude of other possibilities.  Come afternoon, the parade will begin and the streets will be filled with every resident of the town, battling for lawn space, and vying for that last sliver of uninterupted sunlight to warm them.  In a matter of hours, every trace of this past week will be gone.  The signs will be taken down, replaced by the usual "Welcome to Sycamore" banners that blend in with the scape of downtown, the carnival will pack itself up and leave, returning it's space to the parking lot of the theater that's been there since the beginning.  Businesses will go back to their normal business hours, and the pumpkins that were so diligently worked on will be tossed in the garbage without a care. 

As for me, I'll replace my downtown walks with slightly less active rolls.  I'll spend my time engrossed in the books that lately have been my life. Living vicariously through the characters that I become so very addicted to.  I'll continue searching for the inspiration to keep on writing the stories I've spent the last four years on, attempting to figure out what I want to say.  And the nights for walking through the leaves will be put on hold for some time until the snow of winter has melted. 

As a kid, this time of year was magical for entirely separate reasons.  The rush of the carnival rides, the laughter of the people surrounding me, the beautiful pumpkins who's creators I so envied.  It all aided in the enthrallment with the fall.  Now, it's more than that.  It's the people that I think about on nights like this one.  The memories that come flooding back to the forefront of my mind.  And those that it allows me to forget.  Wounds that it heals.  The smile that this time of year puts on my face and the genuine happiness that has seemed so foreign as of late. 

It seems so quaint to those unfamiliar with this yearly town tradition.  But to me, it's everything.  It's hope.

~Amy

This weekend proved extremely therapeutic.  I spent time with my nieces who are absolutely adorable, and talked with my brother in law as well as my sister.  I sorted through so many things in my head that it was almost overwhelming.  But in the long run, it helped me out.  

I've realized that I am going to be fine.  Better than fine.  I'm going to be me, I'm going to be happy, and maybe someday in the very far off future I'll fall in love again.  However, in order to do that last one, I need to get myself all straightened out.  Right now I'm still broken.  My heart and myself.  But I'm working on it.

Ephriam did call me last night and we did talk for a few minutes.  It was two in the morning and really, we both should have been asleep.  Especially seeing as I needed to be awake by seven at the latest.  But alas, the constant insomnia that I've been experiencing has yet to fade.  I'm still awake until at least 3:30 in the morning and I still wake up entirely exhausted.  I know that I should sleep, that I need it and that it's unhealthy not to sleep enough.  But someone needs to tell my brain that come 11 O'clock at night when it won't shut up for the life of me.  

I have a little over half an hour until I go to my interview.  I had a preliminary interview at the bank out here last week.  Today is my second interview there.  So here's hoping.  

Wish me luck.
~Amy

I'm leaving for Missouri in about half an hour.  Going to go visit my sister, brother in law, and my beautiful nieces.  It's the first time I'll be going down to that state without seeing Ephriam.  It's a little odd.  I know this is the way it needs to be, because I know it's what's best for me.  But I do find myself missing him more than I thought I would.  I miss plenty of other people too.  J.R., Becca, Emily, Jenn, and Amy.  But I miss him too. And I know I pretty much have no right to.  But I do.

Long story short, I'll be gone until late Monday night.  I'm looking forward to certain aspects of the trip such as who I'll be spending my time with but we'll just have to see I guess.

I want to write again.  The poetry that I used to write was never awe inspiring by any means but I do miss writing it.  So maybe I'll do that over the weekend.  Pen and paper always suited me better than typing on a computer did.  

I'm doing alright though.  I'm keeping busy and getting over things.  Forgiving not only him but myself as every day goes by.  I hadn't realized that I had needed to do that.  It just sort of happened.  My mom keeps telling me I need to go to counseling.  I don't really see a point to that.  Why would I pay for someone to listen to me vent and talk through my emotions and what's going on when I have this?  It's so much easier too.  Typing it and saying it aloud are two very different things.  Eventually, when I get to that point, I'll be able to say things without holding back.  Right now, I'm doing alright on my own.  And I know the first step is admitting there's a problem.  Just like an addiction.  And seeing as I had been addicted to him for so long, giving him everything I had inside of me for so long, I guess I should admit it.  But didn't I just do that?

And now, time to double check to make sure I have everything that I need for the weekend and be on my way.

See you Monday.
~Amy

It’s been said lately that I haven’t told anyone outside of Ephriam what my side of the story is.  So here it is.  I don’t make excuses, I don’t intend to hold back, and I’m not going to make any apologies that I don’t think are necessary.  The reason I’m putting this here for everyone to see is because it was said that I didn’t care about him.  And I did and do more than words can ever say or actions could ever express.  Here goes.

 

I left because I had given up.  Because I gave up.  Because after we had gone through everything that we did, I didn't know how to fix anything.  We had already talked about everything, I had said what I needed, he had said what he needed and after all attempts failed, I was left entirely heartbroken.  

He says I constantly needed proof of his love.  Which was true.  The entire time we were together I didn't feel like I was good enough for him.  Like I deserved him.  And I told him that, multiple times.  That he was too good for me.  I needed to be reminded that he loved me.  I needed to be showed if even it was just a kiss or just those three words telling me that he loved me.  But it never happened.  Instead, there was more distance.  There was less intimacy, and more rejection and after a long enough time, I knew that not only was it not going to change, but that my heart had already been shattered by all of it.  Yes, I needed to hear him say that he loved me as often as possible.  Not because I didn't know he loved me, but because I needed to be reassured that he knew it and that he thought I was good enough for him.  It would've been my security in my marriage.  Would've given me strength.  But I got nothing.  I got rejected.  I got shot down, and I got told that he loved me only when I was in a bad mood that he thought he might have caused which ended up being a few times a month.  Maybe I'm too needy and clingy, but I needed more than that.   More often than that.  I told him everything that I needed and it never happened.  Not until the last two weeks.  And even then, it was as a side note.  It was that he was doing something else with the majority of his focus and attention and he’d suddenly remember that I was there and he’d say something.  So yes, I suppose he was trying at the end.  But after the last year in which I’d been rejected and ignored and forgotten about, it wasn’t enough anymore. 

 

I’m an affectionate person.  I need to be held onto.  I need to be kissed, hugged, and everything that goes along with expressing those emotions when you’re in love.   But every time I tried to kiss him I got pushed away quite literally.  I wasn’t allowed to hug him because he was always trying to get to something other than me.  I couldn’t ask him anything about himself because he was too busy dealing with everything on his own while I sat a few yards away from him feeling entirely abandoned.  I told him what I needed.  That all I wanted was him.  For him to tell me that he loved me, to show interest in me, to kiss me and let me know that he still wanted me.  And all I got were empty promises and more and more rejection coupled with absolute heartbreak. 

 

I tried to give him everything that I was.  Everything that I am.  I loved with all of my heart and I just wanted him.  But he rejected that.  He says I took it too personally which is also true.  I took it personally because he was rejecting me.  I was his wife and he didn’t want anything to do with me for so long that it entirely broke me.  All I ever wanted was him.  We could’ve been dirt poor, living on a street corner with just a cardboard box as a blanket at night and I would have been happy knowing that I had him.  But it was never like that.  We were in the same house, more often than not in the same room, and yet he was miles away from me. 

 

I didn’t leave because I was confused.  I’m not confused nor was I when I left.  I left because I couldn’t take another night of being so far away from him.  Of interrupting him from something and seeing in his eyes that the fact that I’d done so made him so unhappy.  He always said that his games and his computer and everything took him away from the reality that depressed him so much.  They made him happy; were his escape.  And every time I interfered with that, I could see that I’d taken him away from his happiness.  Because I never made him happy.  I was never enough.  There was always something he’d rather be doing.

 

We’d go out and he’d be twenty feet ahead of me while I walked alone.  We’d stand in a parking lot after dinner, talking to friends and if I so much as spoke a few sentences more than him he’d stand in front of me and block me out of the conversation.  I’ve told him these things, and he’s admitted to them; begrudgingly so.  But it was things like that that tore me apart.  That made me the shell that I am today.  Because I knew that I wasn’t enough.  That I never would be. 

 

The gist of this is that I left for my own reasons.  They might not make sense to anybody else.  They might seem to be just the emotional ramblings of a clingy and useless woman but they’re my reasons.  Or at least the surface of them.  I never felt the need to involve anyone else in our relationship.  I didn’t feel obligated to share my side of the story with people who weren’t in the marriage.  I still don’t, in truth.  I don’t see how it’s their business.  But now, seeing as I’ve lost friends that I considered to be close and I’ve lost the man that I wanted to grow old and die with, I’m saying it.  I’m laying it out on the line.  There’s nothing else I can do now other than try to heal.

 

I’ve experienced grief before.  I’ve lost loved ones to their own immortality and I’ve had my heart broken before.  But I’ve never felt the pain, the grief, and the emptiness of a truly shattered heart.  This isn’t something I can recover from.  It’s not the cold or the flu, or some parasite even.  I’m grieving and it’s different.  I’m not strong, I’m not brave, I’m not stupid, and I’m not frivolous.  I’m numb. 

 

He’s telling me that I’ll be fine once I start dating again.  I can’t do that.  I’m not ready.  I assume he is but to me, he isn’t replaceable.  Whoever comes next will be just that.  The one who’s after Ephriam.  The one who was someone entirely different.  They will never be him.

 

Simply because I did the leaving doesn’t mean that I’m not hurting too.  It doesn’t mean that I didn’t or don’t care about him.  It simply means that I’m trying to do the best thing here.  Hate me.  Cut me off.  Do what you will.  There’s nothing I can do anymore to change it.  You’re on the outside looking in.  Don’t assume that I’ve moved on, don’t assume I’m fine.  I’m just trying to live life.
~Amy