Our Island Family Life

I am working today for the first time in weeks. I really need the money. It would have been nice to know I wasn't needed until 8:30. I wouldn't have gotten up at five thinking I needed to be ready by 6:45 like usual. It's nap time and I am resting my foot. It still aches when I am on it too long. I do not want to go to the doctor though.

Overall I have had a nice quiet week. I have been home the whole time and haven't left except to take out the trash. I really should have gotten gas for the island car. I am not even sure what days (if any) there will be someone there at the pump. I will have to ask around. I don't think the car has enough gas to get to the ferry and back tomorrow. It is swim day and sadly a visit weekend. Cade is going this time. He has been weighing things in his mind. Halloween weekend is a visit weekend and he is not planning on going. I think he feels if he doesn't rock the boat until then he will be able to tell his dad he isn't coming without feeling bad when his dad tries to make him feel guilty for not coming. Not that Sean tries hard to convince him to come anyway. Cade wants Sofie to be here too. We are having company that weekend so I am going to ask if she can stay anyway. There are moments I just want to tell him they are staying and that's it. I tell myself, what is he going to do? File contempt against me? Then all his dirty laundry will come out. I wonder if I am being petty? I just think that the kids really have so little time to be together as a family, as siblings for such a short time that they should be together for holidays and such for as long as possible. The bonds for a lifetime are made now. I think their relationships with each other is more important than with Sean or me. I know I want them all here not for my own feelings or needs. I asked myself that question many many times. Am I being selfish? Am I feeling spiteful? Am I wanting to hurt Sean? These are important questions that have to be asked and you have to look real hard at yourself and admit all the ugly you find there. I think the big thing is making sure my choices and decisions don't wind up hurting the kids in the long term. I know I will hurt them sometimes and make royal mistakes from time to time. I hope that at least in this I stop and think and not do anything because I feel hurt or bad. It isn't about me after all. I certainly had expectations of what my life was going to be like in an outline. How I thought my holidays and stuff were going to be like with my kids by my side. Still, it goes back to the first choice I made in having them in the first place that had to preclude my own wants down the line. They didn't choose to be here. That was pure selfishness on my part. So now I have to make the best of doing right by them to the best of my ability. So, in this emotionally hurtful experience here I have to look at my motives. Do I think I am trying to hurt Sean in all this? I know I would like to see him face the music for his bad actions, criminal actions, morally wrong actions, emotionally hurtful actions. I just don't know what that music should be and I do not want to be the one who plays it for him. Would I like to know if it happens? Sure. That is about as bitter as it goes for me. When it comes to the kids and their reluctance or downright refusal to be anywhere near him I feel nothing at all anymore. I felt so bad for him for a long time. I felt worse for him in a lot of ways more than I did the kids. That was how wrapped up in wanting his happiness I was. There is no satisfaction for me in thinking he is sitting at home crying or suffering over the loss of his kids. No stick it to him feelings. I honestly don't think he is doing those things anyway. I don't think that at this point in time in his life he sees the big picture or feels true loss. I think maybe someday he might. I feel more disconnected in having this empty feeling there of not caring when that might be or worrying about how he will handle it. I know this is good for me in a sense. I still don't like feeling like I have become colder or more cynical. I feel as if I have lost (am losing?) something real important about myself and that is feeling empathy for people. Maybe it's just for him? Again, more to ponder. How do I want to change from all this. I don't want to change as a person because of hurt and fear and loss. I don't think that is growing at all. So, I am trying not to dwell too much but I have been putting a lot of things off again. I have been really low on emotional energy lately and only wind up stressing myself even more.

Ok. Here is where I yet again delve into my unconscious mind and try and figure out what I am trying to tell myself. Along the way I am most likely going to go into the too much info territory. I had a dream last night. Dreams are dreams and although at times I am able to control them somewhat most of the time I don't even realize I am dreaming until it's just about over anyway. Luckily or unluckily depending on the dream I am quite good at remembering them and I usually have at least 4 or 5 a night I can recall. Not bad. So last night I only remember one. I am not sure how I feel about it. It has left me thinking about it all day though. I felt good. I felt bad. I felt ashamed. I felt powerful. I was going back and forth like a swing. When Sean first left I had dreams about him from time to time. None of them good. He laughed at me. Used me. Made me feel worse in my dreams than I did when I was awake and that's saying a LOT. After a few months I stopped dreaming about him. I felt that was a good thing. Very good. So he was in my dream last night and my first thought was why? Why now? What is going on in ME that brings him back into play? Long and short of it though is that he wasn't bad or mean to me per se. He used me yes but I was using him as well in the dream. In that sense there was more equality there even though what we were doing wasn't very nice. What were we doing? Well, you know how in dreams you know things even if you don't see what's going on? Some people I know don't remember their dreams. Anyway, we were having sex. Good or bad for me (you judge) it wasn't porno sex or even HBO sex it was more 18th century implied sex. So I KNEW it was going on but I didn't even get a chance to enjoy it even in my dreams. Oh well. It was nothing loving though. He was cheating on his wife with me. It was truly weird. Was I missing him? Missing sex? Feeling vengeful towards her? Wanting to use and abuse him as he did me? Wanting some fulfilling irony in my life? Did that make me like her? After all I was having sex with a married man. Still, it was hard for me to feel like I was a bad person in "that" sense because I was having sex with my "husband". Even though he isn't anymore. I didn't want anything from him in a loving sense. I knew that. It was just a straight up, in it's own separate box kinda thing. How did this affect our relationship? He still was an ass. He did nothing to improve himself as a father or co-parent. He still didn't pay child support. He was the same jerk he is now. It was kind of cool being with him in a way though because there was NO expectations there. I was comfortable with him and was downright mean a lot of the time. Not who I really am. I talked to him as I wanted while were in that room without fear of how he was going to react because I really didn't care. I said things I have never said to him before and demanded things, never asked for anything. I didn't care how this would complicate his life. I even thought about continuing with it if I found someone else. So against my values in every single way. I was really horrible. I played by my own rules and if he didn't like it, so what? I know the dream wasn't about sex really. Subtext maybe but it was more about letting go of stuff and not being afraid and asking questions of myself. Maybe he was in the dream because he is who I am familiar with? Maybe a lot of it is really about him and how I feel about him. I wasn't sad in any way to not feel a shred of love for him in all this. That spark that is love was totally absent and any "feelings" I had were purely physical and could have been there for anyone I found attractive. He was simply convenient and the stick it to "her" value was a bonus but not a driving factor. Doing something forbidden and wrong were pretty big turn ons too I must say. Again, nothing I would ever do in real life. I would feel so sick if I was really like that it wouldn't be worth it to do in the first place. So, much to think about and ponder.

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