To Close To Home July 9, 2009

Our boys and Big are very active in Boy Scouts. A year ago when we needed a temporay house for 15 months it was thru a scouting family that a rental was found.

This family has 4 boys from 6 to 19 and a little girl who just over 4. All of the boys are well known in the scouting troops and the family is very active overall. Sunday, the dad and one of the middle sons joined two of our boys and the rest of the troop at Scout camp for what was to have been a 5 day adventure.

Given our two connections to this family their recent tradgedy has hit very close to home for us.  Tuesday night , rather late, the oldest boy was found hanging in his closet by his mother. News of his death spread rapidly and the father and son away at camp left in the wee early morning hours to make a long and I’m certain difficult drive home.

As a parent my heart goes out to this family as a mother I am identifying greatly with his mother. It is unimaginable and one of the worst kinds of grief to lose a child. My mind conjurs all of these images of a mother of bringing this life into the world and being alone without your spouse by your side to find this child you gave life too, lifeless and departed from this world. I admit to being almost fixated by this tragedy because of the age of the boy, and the proximity his family had to ours.

Somewhere in the equation of sympathy and empathy I find anger. While his family is in my thoughts and those thoughts are filled with compassion my mind eventually turns to this young man and I find anger.

What in this life could be so horrible that death was the only way out. And putting all of those reasons aside, his father was away, did he give no thought to who would find him. That it would be his mother and that the site of him in death would be etched forever in her mind, that she and those around him would forever wonder and question what they missed, what could they have done or not done to save him. Did it ever cross his mind that rather than his mother it could have been one of his brothers or his sister, barely out of toddlerhood who could have found him.  Or worse still, was it not his pain he was trying to escape, but rather create pain for those who loved him. Was it an act of rebellion or anger that caused him to take this step ?

Those who choose suicide to end their “suffering”, have absolutly no clue to the suffering they will be leaving behind. This boy has left a family shattered, and this family will spend the rest of their lives trying to make sense of everything, trying to put the pieces back to together and hoping for life to be normal again. But it never will be.

Suicide is taking the easy way out, you may leave all of your pain behind, but you leave it for everyone else to deal with. This young man’s death has reached far beyond his immediate family  and the ripples and shockwaves will travel further what one could imagine. I have never personally met this young man, only seen him from afar, and his face now haunts me as my mind replays the agony his mother must have went thru and imagining the difficulty of getting thru these next few days of funeral preperation, viewings and laying him to rest.

Our boys and their troop will be returing home a day early in order to have the opportunity to pay their respects. They are  going to be taking part in something I wish for no young person and that is to say a final goodbye to a life ended to soon. 

I urge you our readers, please take time to be aware of your young ones. Talk to them. Let them know it is safe to talk to you. There are times when kids need us to be parents, and others when they just need us to be shoulders and ears. And let them know that if they can not talk to you, you will help them find someone that can talk to. And if that is an avenue your child takes, don’t be offended. Be grateful , because that person may be the one to save your child’s life.

Temptress

The Door May 3, 2009

The door is closed
I know she is on the other side,
tears streaming down her cheeks,
hurtful words ringing in her ears, demands placed upon her.
I want to rip the door apart,
take her in my arms,
and shelter her from the pain.

But I can not.
I must sit and let the two deal with their troubles.
I wish so much for it all to be diffierent.
For everyone to be at peace with the others.
For each to travel the path that brings them happiness
and compersion to all.

Why when we are hurt do we strive to hurt those we love?
Why when a different path is chosen do we demand others must follow?

I sit now, watching the clock.
The minutes tick by, the door remains closed,
my mind conjours her face contorted in pain.

I hurt for her.
I love her.

Just Friends September 3, 2008

I was answering questions on OKC today….

I was asked:

 

Which of the following relationship timelines would you prefer?

 

1.    Attraction > lovers > love > friends

2.    Friends > love > attraction > lovers

3.    Attraction > friends > love > lovers

4.      Attraction > friends > lovers > love

 

So I answered #3, what most people I think would have answered. While perusing the answers however I realized for the most part #1 is what describes or described Big and myself.

 

Three years ago we found an attraction to each other. Well I did anyway, I won’t speak for him as to what exactly the attraction for him was ( the thrill of the hunt I am guessing).

Very quickly after the attraction we moved to stage 2 and became lovers. I was satisfied with this, as I am going to assume he was. Then after 4 months of living together my defenses lowered and a weekend away changed everything for me. I fell in love with him. And reveled in stage 3.

 

So that is where things stood for me until last week. I knew that he cared for me, I also knew he was not “in-love” with me, I knew that he was camped at stage 2.  I was under the stupid and mis-guided assumption that I could love him enough for both of us. Until last week … I realized after over hearing a conversation he had with Goddess that what I thought he felt for me… well even that was a fantasy on my part. I was expendable, I was a thorn in his side where she was concerned, I was competition for him in her affections, I was a commitment he had made, and really nothing more than that.

 

So now I am trying to find a way to convince my heart that it is time to move to the 4^th stage, to the stage of friends. It is time to let him go, to help my heart and my mind find the path to releasing him and coming to a place where I can breathe, where being in the same room with him doesn’t cause me to fall apart, where I can sleep at night, rather than lie awake wanting to feel his arms around me.

It is time for my heart to come to grips with reality and find a way for us to be just friends and housemates.

 

Temptress

Assumptions August 12, 2008

 

It never ceases to amaze me how a person can look at another and create assumptions about who they are and what they are about.

 

There have been numerous times over these last three years that we have left restaurants etc. snickering and giggling over the perplexed looks the waiter, clerk or other employ has worn in their quest to discern which wife belongs to which husband, which child goes with what mommy/daddy or why the hell is that man kissing two women. I am certain our poly life and the actions we take out in public confuse those in the land of normal.

 

On some occasions the person is so very blatant about their need to figure it out that we enjoy goosing them, playing a little cat and mouse for our enjoyment.

 

Today, my Goddess and I were out taking care of mommy duties free and unencumbered by the children who have all now returned to the land of quality education when we for the first time did not need to goose the person with the assumption…. She goosed herself.

 

LM3 will be taking ballet one day a week at her pre-school. This caused our LM’s 6 and 8 to beg longingly for ballet as well. So my Goddess and I stopped by the ballet school to register the two girls and pay up their first month. We have considered ourselves family from day one and to most people we refer to ourselves as a “blended” family when asked.

When filling out the girls applications today, we decided to fill out only one for ease. The form was made to accommodate more than one child so we thought this was a good choice for all concerned. The form asked for father’s name first, which I drew a line thru and wrote “mother” and then followed it with my name. On the next line that asked for mother I wrote  LG’s name.

 

During the course of the class choosing we had explained that the girls lived together and we were a blended family. When it came time to pay we handed her the amount listed for signing up two children from a family (a $5 discount). We were not looking for a discount per say, really five bucks isn’t going to break us, but in the scheme of things we consider ourselves family, and when we present ourselves as such we expect to be given the same treatment/benefits of such.

 

The woman says to us that since the girls aren’t really sisters we aren’t considered a family. We both state to her again that we are a blended family, we live in the same home and while they are not “sisters” we do consider ourselves family and they do call themselves sisters. Before we could explain further the woman’s eyes widened slightly and she said no problem, she would accept the discount amount. And then she followed it by saying  most women from families like ours, come out and say so right away, she didn’t understand our “situation” at first.

 

It took LG and I both about 2 seconds to realize that the woman had decided that since no fathers names were on the application, and that we had presented ourselves as family and living together, that in fact we were a lesbian couple.

 

She spent the remainder of our time there tripping all over herself. She had created an assumption that no matter how wrong (or right) it may have been, she now felt completely flustered by. LG and I did nothing to dissuade her from her chosen assumption, but neither did we do anything to show her she was “wrong”. Over the course of the next 9 months we will be at that dance studio on a weekly basis and in time she will come to know us and our girls and there will be enough evidence to show the real make up of our household.

 

While we are not hiding our lifestyle any longer per say, for the protection of our children we are not flaunting it. And we have also come to the conclusion that if people get to know us and our kids and then find us to be “normal” and our children well adjusted and happy, then when the “truth” comes out it will be a small blip on their radar and in some way we will have been able to show that families that are different are really just as normal as everyone else.

 

But in the end, what is normal?

 

Temptress