Trust: An Almost Four Letter Word

Trust. Its like a four letter word plus one extra letter for an extra punch. It is the one major issue that I am dealing with, and the one major issue that I don't even know how to start fixing. You will see throughout this blog, that trust issues are a reoccurring theme for me. No matter how much I overcome in my life, no matter how much progress I gain, no matter how many issue's I sort out, I never seem to make any headway in the trust department. I seem to swing wildly between trusting no one, and trusting someone way too much, which usually ends being someone that I should have never trusted.

Help.

Right after I got out of my marriage, I met a man. He was great. Funny, sweet, adoring, and he said all the right things. So perfect in fact, that I didn't trust him at all. No way could a guy like that want someone as broken as me. Somehow though, we still became friends. When he continued to push the idea of dating, I was resistant. He, on the other hand, was overly persistent. He would say things that had literally fallen off of a Hallmark card and out of his mouth. "You don't need to trust me right now, I can wait. I have the rest of my life to prove to you that I will never hurt you." I would cry and tell him that I couldn't trust him, that something was inherently wrong with me, and that eventually he would see that. That I must harbor an innate flaw that made people want to hurt me. That he just hadn't seen all of the terrible things about me that my parents and my ex had seen, and that eventually he would see them too, so save us both the time and trouble and JUST STAY AWAY. He would assure me that my ex was "a waste of oxygen and working organs," and that my "parent's deserved to be damned to hell,"  and that he wanted to be the first one in my life to show me what unconditional love looked like. Eventually, after months and months of his persistence, I allowed myself to fall for him. HARD. When I found hard evidence that he was cheating on me, I confronted him about it, and he blatantly lied to my face. I  knew he was lying, but I made the stupidest decision to ignore it anyways. I figured that it was me, that I was again doing something wrong, and that if I just tried harder, things would get better. He was good to me on the surface, so I convinced myself that it wasn't an issue with him, it had to be my fault. When he ended it, his exact words were "You had to be kidding yourself to think that I was going to pick up a wife and two kids that someone else had thrown out like trash. I'm not a garbage man."

Facing The Silencers

Ok, so, this post has been a little hard for me to write. I love this blog, I love that survivors are coming together in the comments section, I love that people are feeling comfortable sharing their stories, and I love that the stigma of abuse survivor shame is finally being broken.

Coming on here week after week and bearing my feelings in front of you all, it has not been easy. Writing comes easily to me, but the reflections I get while I'm writing, the memories that are dragged out of the darkness from the back of my closet where I have buried them away, they aren't easy to face. But I can't keep everything hidden away in the corner of a closet with the three year old me anymore. The closet is full. I can no longer close the doors on my past trauma's. Just like all the wrong sized clothes that hang around in a closet and do no good to anyone, someone else could use them if you are just willing to pull them out and give them away. I wouldn't have been in the closet if someone had seen me. I wouldn't have spent years piling more, and more, into that closet and locking it away if I had known that it was ok to pull it all out. If I had known it was ok to tell someone what was going on and if someone had listened, I might have been saved from years of trauma.

When Your Life Burns Down

This week, one of my articles was published over on the site XOJane.com. I didn't even know it was going to be run this week, so I was a little caught off guard when my blog started filling up with comments from people all over the world who had made their way over to my site. When I went to the actual XOJane site, I was floored at the comments. Not only were there hundreds of them, but most of them were so freaking nice. Praise was tossed around, sprinkled heavily with the words "inspiration, so strong, proud, amazing," and many, many, more. I am absolutely mind boggled. People, can we talk about pressure? 

I look at people fighting cancer with a smile on their face and I think "inspiration." I look at myself and I think "my gosh people, do not follow the path that I have! It is littered with bad decision's and regrettable choices!"

Why I Refuse To Sleep Inside Of An Enclosed Umbrella

So a guy I’ve been dating has been trying to get me to go camping with him. I do believe you all know my feelings on camping by now. Referenced here. And Here. And yet again, here.

I go to great lengths to avoid anything that involves actual camping. In fact, in our house, camping looks like this:



Garage S'mores over a can of sterno. Urban style, That also just so happens to be Mr. Nutcase Neighbor

So anyways, this whole camping thing has become a regular conversation around here with this (overly persistent) guy. Today it comes to a head, and this is pretty much how the conversation goes;

It starts with him saying “Baby, come on, I really want to go camping. Please will you go with me?”

To which I sort of whine out “Dude. We don’t need to do EVERYTHING together. It’s ok to have our own hobbies. Babe, I just don’t want to sleep outside, in a tent, which is essentially an enclosed umbrella.”

In his own distinctively whiney voice, he says “But I want to go WITH you. I have more fun when I’m with you. I know how weird you are about your food, so I won't even make you eat anything that I caught in the lake.”

"Are you going to make me eat anything that has been living in a cooler for longer then 12 hours?" I ask him.

Only Me

Things that make me shake my head and say "Only Me."

Ok, so it’s time to update all of you on the strange and bizarre in life that is me. Fun times. I often sit back and wonder if I am heaven’s comedy reel. Like seriously, how does all this weird stuff happen to me??

A few days ago I was at the grocery store, and I was trying to reach the yogurt, but it was on the top shelf in the cooler, which I am too short to reach. 

Normally, I’ll just ask someone taller who is in the general area, or more often, when no one is around, like that day, I’ll just climb on the first or second shelf. But that day, the situation looked…questionable. It was in the cooler section behind the glass doors, and the first shelf looked slightly unstable. So, I decided, “you know what, I don’t really need yogurt, cuz I don’t really need a broken face.” I turn around to leave, and some 987 year old woman says to me, I kid you not, “Sweetie, can you reach some yogurt for me?”  Well, gee grandma, I can’t say no to you, of course I will. 

So, I climb on the first shelf, and the ENTIRE SHELVING SYSTEM rolls back like four inches, and the door CLOSES BEHIND ME. Then I hear it. That “Vrooooom” sound of the cooler re-cooling. Which apparently creates suction. BECAUSE THE DOOR WON’T OPEN. I am COMPLETELY in the cooler, holding onto the shelving system, standing on the second shelf, facing it, with my ass pressed against the suctioned shut door, and I’m stuck. Literally, there is no wiggle room. AND WHERE THE HELL IS GRANDMA?? I am actually stuck IN the yogurt cooler at the grocery store. 

Well this is certainly a high point in my day. Finally the vrooming stops and the door is able to be pushed open WITH MY ASS, and I climb out. There are like five people standing there starting at me. It’s like I'm the freaking bimbo display at the zoo. And grandma? No where to be found. Well this is just great.

He Loves Me, I Love Him...... Not

He and I have been best friends for quite some time. I don’t know why we never dated, we just never did. People have always asked us why we don’t date, and for the most part, we would just look at each other and have a mutual exchange of somewhat horrified glances and scrunched up eyebrows, as if to say “Why on earth would we date each other?”  

Our friendship, it has always just been…comfortable. I could tell him anything and vice versa. In May, when the man I thought I would be with forever, dumped me and moved out of my house the night before my birthday, it was him that took the day off of work to take me out. Last winter when the kids and I all got slammed with the stomach flu, it was him that showed up to hold my hair back and clean up the kids. When he found out I was sleeping on my couch because I couldn't bear to lay on my bed and look at the walls that had enclosed me and all of my pain for so many years, he showed up the next day with paint and a ladder. We spent the next three nights painting the ridiculously high walls, in shower caps so as to not paint our hair, until we collapsed on my bed in a pile of pizza and ice cream sundae's. When his girlfriend dumped him, it was me who sat with him for hours coming up with a plan to win her back. After a long period of stress, it was me who went with him to his first counseling session, because he was too nervous to go alone. After a particularly scary incident with my ex, he met me at the police station, worried about me driving home alone. After that, he started sleeping at my house, in my bed, because I was scared to be alone. It’s not unusual to find us snuggling on the couch together watching a movie, me, nestled into his arms. When he thought it was going to be “the night” with his girlfriend, he sent me pictures of himself in different underwear so that I could pick which one looked hottest. When he came over one day and I was reading the drug information insert on a new birth control pill I was taking, we both laughed at the part that listed “breast growth” under the negative side effects section, because seriously, how could that be a negative? And then I’ll be damned when my boobs actually did get bigger, it was him who got the text picture that was captioned “I was going to send this to a girlfriend but it’s not like she would have ever looked at my boobs, and as a guy, I’m sure you have, so what do you think, did they get bigger?” And it wasn’t weird at all. It’s always just been….us.


In fact, we have always been so comfortable with each other, that scenarios like this, didn’t even phase us:

When You Have Nothing To Offer But Love

Finding out I was pregnant with my daughter ranks up there as one of the most terrifying moments of my life. She was born out of an abusive relationship and growing up with unstable parents myself, I feared that the only thing I had to offer her, was failure. But the more she grew inside of me, the more I fell in love with her. I came to realize, that with everything I could not offer her, the one thing that I could, was the one thing I had so desperately craved my entire life; I could offer her love. I started writing to her; a letter every week of her life since before she was born. Talking to her about the hopes and dreams I have for her, telling her how much I loved her, giving her advice that as a teenager, she may not want to take from me in person, but maybe she will be open to reflecting on it. If I could offer her nothing but love, I wanted her to know how much I loved her. That when we hit those rough teenage years and she calls me stupid and slams the door in my face, that I could slip them under the door, and show her, that I tried as hard as I could, and how much I love her. When I found out I was pregnant with my son, I started doing the same thing for him. I hoped that one day, they would be able to look back, and see all the fun that we had, all the good times, and how we worked through the bad. 

Things That Make You Ask, Why??

Things that just make you ask why?  Pictures courtesy of my phone.


Why do they let people who obviously cannot read, be in charge of applying the door stickers at Target? Because I CAN read, and now I'm just confused.

Why do they let people who obviously can't write, write romance cards? Everyone knows that "shiv" is a noun and the verb would have been "shank." Duh. (And why would anyone buy this? Seems more appropriate in Detroit then in suburbia over here....) I can pretty much guarantee you though, if I have a boyfriend come Valentines day, this is probably the card I will get. Because my dates always go so well.

From the Minds of the Dark and Twisted

So, I had the STRANGEST text conversation with a failed date the other day, and while I was looking through my phone to find the conversation so that I could write a blog about it, it became quite apparent that strange text conversations are not a new thing for me. So, because I have no problem letting all of you have a good laugh at my expense, welcome to Eden's phone, messages from the last ten days.

Did You Get The Picture?

7:26am Friend: Well, he’s definitely dead. I just woke up and he’s a goner! I thought we were going to have a happy life together L

7:45am Me: What are you talking about?

7:47am Friend: When I went to bed, he was lying on my pillow. Woke up this morning….dead.

7:46am Me: What the fuck are you talking about. Seriously.

7:47am Friend: I was so tired last night, I didn’t even wake up! Now he is dead L Poor guy, he was so cute.

7:48am Me: I’m not even kidding, you had better not be messing with me right now. How do you know he is dead?

7:49am Friend: Cuz he is smashed and kinda deflated.  His neck was like totally twisted, so I tried to straighten it out, but his head about near popped off. Why do you even care? He wasn’t yours.

7:50am Friend: He is all nasty, I don’t even want to haul him out to the trash.

7:51am Me: WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED!?

              7:52am Me: No, don’t tell me. Do not tell me a thing! Don’t touch anything! Call the police! No, call an attorney first. Hell I don’t know, call someone that is not me, and don’t touch anything! And don’t talk to the police! Just call them and don’t answer anything!

When Society Rapes You

Statistically, rape is the #1 crime to not be reported and one of the major crimes where women drop the charges. %60 of women do not report being raped and of the women that do, only %3 of the rapists will ever serve a day in jail. In this day and age of fighting for equal rights and gender equality, we are seriously failing our women.

Every day you hear politicians and college administrators talking about the ways that we can prevent rape. “Don’t dress provocatively. Don’t drink too much. Stay with a group. Don’t invite a guy into your room. Don’t walk alone at night.” That is ridiculous. You know why I was raped? Because someone fucking raped me. Not because of what I was wearing or what I was drinking. When people hear of a girl getting raped, so much focus is placed on what she was doing that led up to it. Let’s all dissect exactly where she went wrong. Let’s figure out how many rules she broke that led her to such a tragedy. Let’s figure out exactly where she went wrong so that we can teach other girls not to make the same mistakes.

Well ok then, let’s talk about me. Let’s talk about the two rapes that were committed by a stranger guy that stalked me. The first one took place in a grocery store parking lot, in the backseat of my car, where I had been trying to tighten a car seat restraint (kids were not there), in the middle of the day. I was wearing yoga pants and a tank top, not exactly risqué clothing. I had not been drinking. The second time, the same stranger guy forced his way past me and into my home when I opened the front door after the doorbell rang. I was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, I was not drinking, and I was on the phone with my attorney of all people when I opened the front door and yet I still blamed myself. Oddly enough, the neighbors did too, and even more so, I’m pretty sure the police did as well. The questions they asked me were completely absurd. “What clothing do you normally wear? Could he have seen you in skimpy clothing? Do you normally wear that (red lace) bra? What medications are you taking or have you been drinking? How many people have you slept with in the past?” How on earth is any of that relevant to the fact that a STRANGER forced his way into my house and forced himself on me?

Nutcase Neighbor Update (You know you want it!)

So I just know you are all dying for a neighbor update, am I right? Am I? I am, aren’t I? Most likely. Anyways, here you go. You’re welcome.

Soooooo, those two nutcases went ahead and got married! Good for them. Nothing like betting someone half your shit that you will stay together forever. Unless she kills him first and then she gets to keep everything. Who knows, I’m not ready to hedge any bets quite yet.

But….I was unloading groceries the other day and another neighbor came over to talk to me….with an agenda. Now you have to understand, my neighbors and I are fairly very close. We know quite a bit about each other and many of us get together on a regular basis. We are that weird neighborhood that takes each other’s trash out, cleans the snow off of every car that is parked outside, borrows butter, collects mail when someone is on vacation, and leaves the doors open so that the kids can run in and out of the houses. Many nights as soon as the sun goes down the garage doors come up, the lawn chairs and baby monitors come out, and the campfire gets started. When I came home with a sick baby boy from the hospital, and he started puking all over the backseat of my car, it was my neighbors that took him in, cleaned him up, and scrubbed out the car seat and backseat. When my toddler was sick, it was a neighbor that fell asleep with him getting a steam treatment on the bathroom floor. It was the neighbors that applied the racing stripes to my car, and it was the neighbors that caught the mouse in my garage. It was the neighbors that convinced me to run down the street in an ATV helmet while they shot me with a soft air gun, and it was the neighbor’s girlfriend that got REALLY pissed when a few of us girls decided at three am to go throw rocks at his bedroom window and lure him out. We didn’t know she even existed. Oops. It was the neighbors that set up an Easter egg hunt in my front yard on our first Easter without my ex, and it was my neighbors that brought breakfast over Christmas morning. Many of my neighbors I would consider to be my family.

When you have awesome neighbors, you need an awesome garage to hang out in.