It's my party...

I turned 36 yesterday! Oh, it is a bit weird having a birthday different from the ones that I've had before. I had a fun time but it was definitely different. I toasted to myself that it was my first birthday being a lesbian!

Pictured are: Heidi, Angie, Laura, Marilyn, and Darcy celebrating my birthday with me at Dingo's. I'm the one wearing the tiara and the pin that says, "Birthday Princess."

The girls, my mom, Marilyn and I went and had dinner for my birthday at the restaurant that my friend and her partner work at. We had a lovely time and my mom brought a beautiful cake which we all enjoyed.

Pictured are my little girls and I at my birthday celebration.

Spring Break

Oh, it's Spring Break. The kids are home from school and the sounds of their blissful happiness fills the house. The romp through the house playing with eachother, happilly expressing their deep sisterly love for each other. Okay, actually their fighting and bugging me about "what are we going to do?" but it's nice to imagine otherwise.

It's been a rough week and sometimes I get so wrapped up in things being rough it's hard for me to express myself through writing. I can't get passed my overwhelming confusion and complete inability to clear my head; I feel as though my brain is unable or unwilling to process anything right now. One minute I think I have a handle on things and the way that they should be, other times I'm completely confused again. A lot of times I just want to escape from it because it all hurts so much; I do that in a lot of ways, reading, surfing the internet, talking on the phone, going out, drinking too much, smoking cigarettes, shopping, sex. I don't know what I need anymore; I don't know what the best solution is to this problem.

Oh, what's the problem? Well it's like this...my girlfriend can't decide if she wants to be with me or if she wants to try to find a way to work things out with her wife. She goes back and forth like moving between two dimensions of reality. When she's with me, I'm all she wants. When she's with Kelly, she wants Kelly. When she's alone, I'm not sure what she wants, maybe she wants us both when she's alone. I don't know anymore. I feel like she escapes from dealing with her feelings about Kelly by being with me. She says that I'm the only thing that makes her feel good, and that's probably true, but where does that leave me? It leaves me unsure, confused, upset, hurt, insecure, and feeling bad about myself in a lot of ways. I tell her this, and she gets mad. It just seems to viciously circle around in an very unhealthy way and that is the last thing that I need right now.

But, alas, here I am and I guess it's just up to me to figure it all out. I know that she doesn't want to lose me; I don't want to lose her, but I need to let go and let her figure this all out. I have no intentions of running away and marrying the first woman that gives me attention (unless it's Shane from the L Word, Angelina Jolie, or Gwen Stefani.) She wants me to guarantee that I will wait for her, I did make her that promise, a long time ago, and I've kept it, but how long do I wait? A week, a month, a year? That's where it gets confusing.

Today though, I need to take care of my kids and get them to stop fighting and asking me what we are going to do!

The sun continues to shine

And I am in a much better place than I was last Sunday. The PMS thing really knocked me on my ass last week and luckily Aunt Flo came to visit on Tuesday morning. I am feeling much better now!

I worked for the first time since August on Tuesday evening. My first client since my ordeal went into labor that morning and I prepared to do my first bit of labor support in a long time. I met a lot of anxiety and apprehension about doing the birth, but I knew that I would just need to get in there and do what I needed to do. The universe was kind to all of us and my client had a very quick and relatively easy, completely uncomplicated, labor and birth without the need for any medication. The baby is beautiful and entered the world with just the right amount of crying! All was well in the world and another life began.

I spent some time on Monday evening thinking about what it is that I'm going to do for the rest of my life. I know that I can't do the doula thing and support myself; also the amount of hours I spend away from my children and the on-call time is so grueling. I wouldn't have the luxury of just taking time off if I felt like for months on end, like I have. I really love the work that I do with women and couples preparing for birth and parenthood, I have a talent for it and I feel that my soul is in synch with that kind of work. How do I support myself doing that kind of work? Well, I can't unless I find another way besides doulaing or midwifery work. I looked into the funeral director program that I am interested in and found that the amount of schooling that I would need to put in, I could instead go to school for nursing and it would only take me a bit longer. This started me thinking that maybe that wouldn't be the right path for me. Of course, I still need to do quite a bit of investigation and it certainly wouldn't happen in the immediate future, but it feels good to at least be looking ahead.

Last time I wrote that I felt as though I was dying. I think that I feel sometimes like I'm dying because it's so hard for me to see anything in front of me; everything is so uncertain and so hard right now. I don't know what kind of job I'll have, what kind of car I'll have, if I'll have someone in my life or not. All of that which is so different from the way my life used to be makes me feel as though I have nothing to look forward to and no where to go; like I have no future at all, like I'm dying. I guess I needed to realize that so that I could start to make some decisions and think about some possibilites. My friend Angie told me to just do one thing every day. I have been trying to do that the last few days and I think that it's helping. Yesterday I bought a new version of Quicken. I know that sounds like a dumb thing to accomplish, but for me it was a big deal. John always kept up on all things financial and technical; this was a double whammy thing that I needed to take care of all on my own. I haven't installed it yet, one thing at a time!

Today is going to be a record weather day; sunny and 73 degrees. I'm looking forward to today's sunshine and soaking in a bit of it with my dd's. It's going to be a good day!

Depressed in the sunshine

The sun is shining again and it is over 70 degrees; but I am sitting here crying over my keyboard.

I have had the unfortunate ordeal of dealing with some very severe PMS the last few days. I have at times throughout the last week felt deeply depressed interrupted by some feelings of normalcy. I've cried several times today and I am unable to really identify the cause of the feelings. I'm sad and scared and unsure and feeling quite fragile all around. I know that I will have days like this; I know that I'll have days like this; I know I will; I just don't know how to quite handle them. I really, really need to just start my period and get it over with, I know that will help a little. I also need some sleep. I've been so tired the last few days and unable to sleep, no matter how hard I've tried. I've tried to nap yesteday and today. Today, I am so sleepy, so very sleepy; and completely unable to sleep.

I feel like I have nothing to look forward to that will lift me out of this funk; only more of this desparity that I feel like I'm starting to sink under. Will I drown in it? Sometimes I feel like I'm dying, like all of this pain is just too much to bear and it will someday just kill me; I will just curl up in a ball and die in my own sorrow that has become my life. I just get tired of trying to look at the positive sides of everything, tired of thinking that all of this will serve me well someday. I don't want to hurt every day anymore. I don't want to worry about what is going to happen to my life. I don't want to wake up every day dreading getting through how hard it all is. I did all of this to myself; I chose it, I made it happen. And here I sit; complaining and crying about how hard it is. It's actually really pathetic.