My Jilly and My Jo

This week I am so grateful for two of my dearest friends on the planet and their examples of strength, kindness, and love. Cheesy? Maybe. But I seriously love them. And I don't  know what I would do without them.

First, my BFF Jill. She is freaking amazing. And if you don't know her, you are missing out. Seriously. You are. I spent last Sunday with her and while we didn't do anything super abnormal, I was consistently overwhelmed with how giving and wonderful she is. We both went to a meeting and during the meeting, I got to see her handle some intense situations with grace and compassion. I am not sure I have ever seen anyone call someone out on their narrowed perspective with quite the same combination of tenderness and strength. It was seriously perfect. Then we went to visit her grandfather, who is currently at Kolob, a rehab/care center for seniors. During our visit, we sat in the dining room while he ate. At a table not too far from us, sat a group of four gentlemen, some a bit more on the grumpy side than others. She was the first to jump up and help them find the salt and pepper, and made sure they were all good before sitting back down. I wish you could have seen the way her grandpa lit up when she talked to him or the way that it all came out so naturally. I wish I had a better vocabulary do describe the situation, but, I was at one point I was really overcome with how amazing she is and how lucky I am to have her in my life. I feel like I am not even coming close to doing it justice, but with not having much sleep since Thursday, this is what we have to work with. haha.

Second, my dear, dear, dear Jo. I am not even sure where to begin with this one. In the past few weeks she has experienced some major losses, things that would make me want to stop dead in my tracks and not move. But not Jo. She just moves forward, somehow. Maintaining  a strength that everything will be okay and that they are happening for a reason. It is this inner grace that I can only wish to have one day. And somehow, she is finding the ability to focus on others. She is concerned with her husband and how he is handling the situation, she goes to work and takes care of patients and follows around doctors who are being stretched in fifteen million places. And somehow, still takes a call or series of texts from me and my silliness. I have no idea how she does it. Well, I have some ideas...

I am really so thankful for these two in my life. They keep me sane when everything is falling apart. They are strong when everything is falling down around them. They are two of the most graceful people I know, and I am the luckiest person to have them.

I love you two. I hope you both know that.

End of an Era

It is now Monday and it has been a really weird weekend/day... For those of you who don't know, I have two jobs currently. Well, had. About fifteen minutes before I was supposed to be at the daycare for my Monday/Tuesday closing shift, I got a text from my boss that said, "Don't bother coming in. We are now on vacation until further notice." I promptly called and asked what this meant. And it apparently means that I am out of a job until further notice... sort of a permanent vacation. No one is sure if it will actually start up again. No one knows if we are going to be paid for the hours we worked for the last month ish. So that is super, super, super neat.

I am trying to be okay with this. Trying to find the positive in all of it, but honestly, it feels really strange. I have worked at that daycare for almost as long as I have lived in Cedar. Which has almost been ten years. Which is insane. If you would have gone back and told my twenty year old self where things would be at for me right now, I probably wouldn't have believed you. But, I am really glad it hasn't turned out the way I thought it would then. Or even the way I thought it would be a year ago. I have realized that my last few posts have sounded really negative, and I didn't necessarily mean them to come across that way. Mostly, I am trying to work out these thoughts in my head. And for the most part the thoughts aren't overtly present, but every once in a while they boil to the top and I just have to write them out... because I am a writer and that is what I need to do. But they are all too close to the surface to do any actual writing about it. Its complicated, haha.

Anyway, back to the point. I am not working at the daycare anymore. I am not really sure how to take that or what it means. I walked into the building on Saturday to try and pick up my check, and the entire building was empty. (Which wasn't really a surprise or why we are on 'vacation', we were moving to a different building anyway.) It was completely empty. I wish I could explain feeling that washed over me. And then I started to think about all the kids I had taught, all the kids who I had as babies, who I watched have their first steps, helped sing their first abc's, helped with homework... and realized the large majority of them are so big now. In some ways, it made me feel like I have been a part of something bigger than myself and in some ways I am not really sure what has happened with all that time.

So with that door shut, its time to look for an open window, I guess. I think I am going to try to wait to find a second job until after the holidays... In the meantime, I am going to look for some freelance writing jobs or something... If you hear of anything or want to hit me up for some writing, let me know... Good thing I said in my last post that I was going to try to start writing again. See? Silver linings. 

November Catharsis

Hello blogging world and friends and people who actually are inclined to read this, its been some minutes... Somehow it is November already, and I am not sure when that happened.

I have left you all with a very long absence, and to be totally honest, I am not sure why. That isn't true. I just lied so hard. Not even for a second. I know why. It is because I have been afraid to write, even if it is just a blog, a stream of consciousness which I will try extremely hard not to edit. (Sometimes I wonder if you read this and think, "Brittni, honey, you are not a writer, if you were, your posts would be eloquent and well-worded, punctuated correctly, grammatical... You went to college for crying out loud!" My answer to which is this, "Blog writing is something completely different for me. It is almost like a therapy session. A space that I can just type and type, and I don't have to worry about the end result. And if you don't like that, click the next button on your reader. XOXOXOXOXO.")

Back to the truth.

I just deleted an entire paragraph, I feel like you need to know this, cause you know, truth. I need you to understand that this is not about a boy. These feelings I have been having, they are more than a single boy, though, he instigated this. I wish I could tell you how frustrated I am at myself for that sentence. I wish I could say this time in my life, this time where I have been feeling this way are because of my own accord, but alas. But please understand that it hasn't been about a boy for months now. I am trying to be, thinking I am, beyond the place in my life where I let a boy dictate who I am and how I feel about myself. But, and this is a big but, it was the catalyst into things I have not wanted to think about for a long, long time. Or maybe a combination of many things all at once. It is hard to say.

I have also been avoiding the writing, the blogging, those parts of myself, because I have decided I want to put good into the world, not spend time with pity parties. In the words of one brave bunny, "If you can't say nothin nice, don't say it at all." So I haven't. But I have been sitting on this one thought for a few days now: Maybe to get to that place, the place of good things and good thoughts, I need to be honest about the dark bits. And, really, I have had so many darker bits than this.

I have had massive feelings of indifference. With everything. I have been struggling with some very deep parts of my identity, things and traits that I once held dear. Cryptic? Maybe. But here is an example... One of the things I love about myself the most is my ability to love. I am not trying to say this in toot my own horn type of way or a look at me type of way, but I truly, truly feel like the gift to love and to be patient is something I have been given. But it is also something that is really hard for me to accept right now. Because to love people, I feel it is important to strive to see the good bits, to hold out hope that they will turn around, they will see the hurt they are causing and they will change. I want to fight for you as a person, as my friend, as my coworker, as my family member, as my __________, until the cows come home. But there comes a time when I have to stop fighting for you because if I don't, I will lose myself. So, to combat all of these situations where I feel so utterly defeated, deflated, and disappointed in people, I have turned to indifference. And so much of that makes me hate everything about me. Because that used to be the one thing I truly liked.

My parents have always told me stories about my younger self. When I was three, I cried and cried and cried because someone shot Bambi's mom, and I could not understand, would not understand, how anyone could take another's mom away. I know you are thinking that sounds exaggerated, but it is 100% true. When I was eight, my parents took me with them to see The Fugitive. Let's not get into a dispute of whether this was appropriate for an eight year-old or not, it happened, move on. I remember sobbing, bawling, screaming, because I could not understand how someone could physically beat someone that way, I still remember the look on my dad's face when I asked him that question. What I am trying to say, is that my level of empathy is ridiculous. I am tender. I want to apologize for that, because I am afraid it sounds weak. And there in lies my contradiction. How can my greatest strength be such a weakness?

Its not. But, when I look at the big, life effecting situations of this year, I realize how toxic caring so much can be. For all of us. Do you want to know what happened with me and Adam? He cheated on me. He came to my house in the middle of the night, drunk. So drunk that he couldn't stand. So drunk that he could not keep a thought inside his head. So drunk that the dogs cowered in the corner. He kept repeating one phrase: "Now Brittni will know." I asked him what I would know, and he would look at me like I could read minds. After an hour of this nonsense, I took his phone, and I read his texts. He had been texting three separate girls. In every situation he said he had moved to Cedar City for a girl and it hadn't worked out. Which was real neat, considering he was passed out, drunk, in my bed. I called Jill and she drove me around while I tried to figure out what was going on. I called the girls and asked them what was happening and told them I existed. Because I needed to have an identity. Then I went home, got the keys to my office, went to work, and called Jo. And bawled on the phone to her for three hours. I dried my eyes, went home, and woke him up. He thought I was mad just about the coming over drunk bit, so I confronted him about the girls. He gave some excuse, it was because he was lonely. Because he didn't know anyone here. He didn't have any friends. He said it would stop. I told him I called them. He got mad and he left. He came back over later that day, explaining with some lie. A lie that we both knew was a lie. But, me being me, wanted to know that I hadn't wasted so much time pouring my love into someone who wasn't going to be there for the long haul. So, I gave him another chance. And in January, he came over and said, I am done. I asked why and I got a shrug of the shoulders. After two years, that was my answer. He left. Sheena came over. I called Trent and Rachel. And the world moved forward. He ran straight to at least one of the girls. (For those who care, he ended up cheating on her with two separate individuals... I want to say, karma. Maybe that is wrong, but how you can start a relationship and think it will last when it was based on lies and deceptions, and you knew about them all, it is hard to be surprised. Call me heartless.)

I took this whole situation and let it drift back to the other long relationship of my life. And this isn't something I talk about frequently either. Seth and I dated for a long time. It was good in the beginning. It felt like the right thing. I prayed about it. He prayed about it. Our parents prayed about it. It was the right thing. But sometimes people make choices and those answers change. We grew up and apart. He did things that weren't right. He changed. He was emotionally abusive... that was a hard sentence for me to type, I am not sure why. Maybe it is because I know some of you reading this, if you are still with me that is, know him too, and I don't want his past self to affect his now self. Things happened. Things got worse. And worse. And worse. One day it wasn't the right thing anymore. But I already had a ring on my finger. Plans were being made. Dates were set. Appointments scheduled. Families intertwined. How do you break that up? How do you walk away from all of that? How do you let go of something you were once told was the rightest thing you knew, by the rightest thing you know? How does that make sense? A really good friend. One night, after throwing up in the bathroom for three hours because he had called to tell me that he had decided I didn't need a wedding dress, that we didn't need to speak until I came home for the semester, that he had scheduled my appointment to take out my endowments, and that he had told his parents that I had been screaming at him for some stupid thing, "because it has more dramatic flair", Trent came over. I was telling him at length the whole conversation. I looked at him and asked him to tell me it would be okay. He hugged me tightly, looked at me, and simply said, "It will be okay. But, Brittni, you deserve for it to me more than okay." And those two sentences saved my life. And I am forever grateful to Trent. Because it was in that moment that I realized I could be more than just okay.

So two boys. Two crappy situations. And me feeling like I am pouring myself into people who can easily just flip a switch and change, move on, move forward, be someone else. Then I add on other things from this last year. I can name at least three people at work who have made stupid, stupid choices, followed by me sticking up for them, and then seeing a complete 180 in them. Suddenly, I wasn't ever supportive. I wasn't doing my job. I was making it harder for them. Etc. And I took these things so very personally. Because, how can you not when giving yourself to everyone in your life is such a huge part of you? Not to mention a series of events in the world of family. So add up all of these things and add in some not wanting to stare it all in the face, because it felt so overwhelming, and you get indifference. And that is where I am at.

I have tried for so long to ignore these things, to move forward, to not let it get to me. This may sound like fourth century Spanish to some, but all of these things feel like Amelia's house with six rooms, but only being able to acknowledge five, because of a perception filter. I am such a nerd. But that is how it feels. I guess what I am trying to accomplish with this post is to tell you this, I am going to start exploring these things. Talking my way though it here. Or maybe, this will be enough for now and my next posts will change the subject and move forward and we shan't speak of this until 2026. I am not really sure right now. But, at least you have some honesty. It is now three am and Zimm is pacing because he needs to go out, so I am going to take care of that. But. I wrote something. And for today, that is enough.

Blach.

I want to be able to say I don't only write on my blog when I feel upset or unhappy, but that probably wouldn't be the truest statement of all time, we all know it. I feel like that in the past three weeks I have felt better, ish about things. For the most part... But then I have these moments, like tonight, where I just feel like I am back at the beginnings of things, times when I feel like it would be great to just Eternal Sunshine him.And pretty much the last like seven months or so, because the truth is, he is not the only reason everything feels crushing or like I'm falling apart. Work has been gross, I feel like I've made some wrong choices and they have created this place I am in there, and I feel stuck. I can count nine people who I know are actively searching for new jobs, so that makes half of the office with one foot out the door. No one wants to be there, its difficult. And there is my aunt and things there are crazy. And I feel like it would be really cool to have people in my corner, but that is hard too.

I want to go back to this morning, when I was busy and hopeful. When things felt like it would be so nice to just start over. I don't know. Now I am tired and things are weird. Everything will look better in the morning, right?

A Little Dramantic

I want to preface this post with a comment... This whole break up has had a lot of ups and downs, and I feel like the only two posts thus far are the downs. But please know that I have had overwhelming moments of hope and positive feelings. While there is hurt and pain and confusion, there is also excitement for something new... but I guess part of me feels guilty for that. Wanna know a secret? A few hours before the break up, I had the thought of how nice it would be to start again... to be able to find someone who made me feel comfortable and could give me the butterflies... someone who would tell me they loved me, without me having to ask. I guess that should have been my first clue. But, I thought he was trying to do better... was that a lie? Ugh. You see this pattern? For every good thought, there is another that creeps in. It is getting better a little every day, but it still happens, especially when I am left to my own devices for too long. Oh- that is another thing, I have to figure out what to do on my own again, how to be on my own again. That is the worst... and the best... I am doing it again. I am sorry. Let's get on with it, shall we?

So my last post may have been a bit emo and dramatic, but I will not deny that is how I was feeling at the time. It helped to write it though, writing down the feelings and sending them out into the universe. Breaking up with someone you have dated for nearly two years is hard. This particular break up seems to be harder than any of the ones I have had in the past, probably because some how, some part of me knows that this was for the best, and that makes it so extremely hard. Because I still love him, a part of me always will. He is my best friend, and I guess that is going to change. It hurts.

Sometimes this whole thing feels all consuming and very overwhelming. Mostly, that is when I lump everything together. Everything? Feeling like I am mourning someone I have loved more deeply than anyone before. Feeling disappointed, in both myself and in him. Feeling lost. Feeling terrified, I am 27 and am having to start over again. Seriously, that feels so old. I have no idea when I got to that point, but I am feeling it now. Somewhere along the lines, I have grown up. Feeling like my life is no where near the place I thought it would be at this point. Sure, there is the wife and kids thing, but beyond that, if you would have told me seven, even three years ago, that I would still be living in Cedar City, I probably wouldn't have believed you. Not because Cedar is a bad place, I love it here. Most of the time. But because being this far away from my family feels so hard sometimes. I cannot believe that I have lived so far away from them for this long. Don't get me wrong, I also feel like I have a great family here in Cedar... But there are times when I just miss Oregon like crazy. Especially the last few weeks. Call me a baby, but for once, it would be nice to be able to run from my problems. I have thought about moving home a million times, but I am not sure that is the answer to my problems either.

Mostly, I feel like I am having a mid-midlife crisis. I have even thought about what I am doing with my life, do I want to stay at LearnKey and see what else this path has in store for me? Do I want to go back to school? What about nursing? Or a master's degree? Or getting a master's in counseling? I think I might be good at that. I have this fear, maybe it is a feeling, maybe it is nothing, maybe fear is not at all the right word, but... What if I am in the wrong place right now? I have this overwhelming feeling that right now, at this point in my life, I need to figure out where I need to be. Cedar City? Salt Lake? Portland? Vancouver? None of the above? Where? What if I am missing something, someone? All of that leads me to two thoughts.

1. I am panicking about my future. Here is the deal: I want more than what I have. What does this mean? I want to feel satisfied with myself, happy with myself. I want to have a job/career that I find completely satisfying. I want to get married. I want to be loved by someone who will love me as much as I love them back, and not give that love away. Or let it dim. Is that too much to ask? I want to have a family. I want children. I want to be a mom... I want that so badly. What if I am in the wrong place for all of that to happen? Is that ridiculous?

Having said all of that, I know that I need to stop worrying about the when and work on the what.

2. This is what it comes down to- somewhere in the past two years I have lost some pieces of myself. Some important pieces. I was willing to give those pieces up for someone who I thought was willing to give up pieces of himself for me. At first it was like that. We both were striving to be better together, we had dreams. We dreamed of things together. I poured everything I had into this person. And he, for a while, poured himself into me. But somewhere, he stopped doing that.

If I am honest with myself, I knew the break up was coming, for probably the last two months or so. Because that is when he stopped investing into the relationship. Don't I deserve to be with someone who will not stop investing in our relationship? Someone who will want to introduce me to his friends? Someone who will want to tell me everything about their day? Someone who will love me so much, and I will love so much back, that neither one of us will have to compromise so much to be together? Someone who will keep his promises? Mostly, the main promise, the promise of being an eternal family? I know what was ultimately missing in our relationship... Someone who will do things to make me feel special and loved? More than anyone else. Someone who will put me first, because I put them first? And not that Adam didn't do these things. He did, for a long time. But... In the last few months, he hasn't been telling the truth. He hasn't been the same person I fell in love with. It is almost like a state of limbo. Where we were two friends stuck in this place. But at the same time, I feel like that is not the case. I was willing to give him another chance. I was willing to forgive him for a huge mistake he made. Two actually. I was willing to start over. I was willing to love him with everything I had. But, he closed a door and didn't open it all the way back up again. I think that is what hurts the most. Knowing that, on some level, I knew what was happening, but I was willing to fight like hell for it, and apparently, I was the only one. Is it okay to blame him that way? To point such a big finger at him that way? Is that fair? Am I wrong? And if that is the case, than why am I something he chose not to fight for? Why am I so easy to give up? Oh, that is such a horrible place to be. I try not to let myself be in that place for too long though. Those are thoughts that I got from someone else, someone toxic. I know that... but, on some levels I feel that way. That is why I have to talk to him again, that is why I have this need to ask him questions, find out what really happened.

Now let us get back to the rational parts. I know I need to do some work on myself right now. I need to fix what I have given up, and I need to get it back. I feel that with every ounce of me. That is the most important thing to do. And I will do that. I hope I will find the answers I need along the way... I will... right? 

A Rambling Mess

To you,

Today someone said the words that I have been really have summed up my greatest fears, “Brittni, it just makes me so sad, because there is no one in this world who was as perfect for you as Adam. I mean, just the way you met, it was all fate. And that makes me sad, because you don’t have that.” Maybe my wording here is slightly different, but that is what I took from it. And in all honesty, I worry that there are some really big truths in what she said. 

That hurts. 

Because the truth is, no one in my life has ever just understood me the way you did/do. I have never been able to instantly and simultaneously open up and trust someone in every single aspect of my life, the way I could with you. I wish you knew how terrifying this is for me. How much it hurts to lose you, my best friend. How is it that you talk about our future life and our future children one day, and telling me you love me more than anything in the world, to the next day when you cannot even look me in the eye when you tell me you love me? How does that happen? I have spent a week and a half trying to get through that single thought. Trying to figure out what choice was made between those events that changed the course of our futures.

There are moments when I blame myself for all of these things. I must have done something to make it so easy to walk away from me, from us, from our family, from our future. Maybe I should have given you more space. Maybe I shouldn’t have held you so tightly. Maybe I shouldn’t have worried about you so much. Maybe I shouldn’t have felt your pains as much as I did. The maybe I should haves and the maybe should not haves go on and on and on. Those are the moments I want to hate myself. Those are the times I regret the most, because I cannot and will not apologize for the way I love you. I will not apologize for the amount I love you. I will not apologize for dreaming so hard. I will not apologize for believing in you as much as I do.

There are moments when I look back at our entire relationship and look for the exact moment things changed. There are times when I look for the moment we made the choice to change it all. Sometimes I blame myself for not being strong enough or having the faith enough to keep us on the track that we should have been. That hurts too.

There are moments when I am nearly certain that you made some choice, did something, to cause the rift between us. There are days when I think you found someone else who completed you a little bit more than I ever could. There are days when I just want to call you and yell at you. I hate those moments too. Because I hate being mad at you. I hate being disappointed at you. I hate feeling like you would do those things.

Please tell me you didn’t.

There are  moments when I miss you more than anything I have ever missed and it feels like that missing is going to absolutely shatter me.

And then I have moments of clarity. Moments where I know that sometimes the distance between 22 and 27 is vast. Sometimes, they are 700,00,000 miles apart. I know you need to find yourself and your footing in this world. I wish you would have told me you were not happy in Cedar City. I wish you would have told me your other feelings any time before that day. I wish we could have fixed things. I wish we could have loved each other more. I wish we could have fixed it. But mostly, I wish you the best, because you deserve the best.

As for me and my fears, we have a long way to go, there are a lot of places that I need to repair myself. And, in all honesty, I need to do those repairs without you. Because they probably wouldn’t have been made with you. We will both be better for that. To complete the circle from above, I have to believe that my fear that you were the one person who fit me so perfectly is a lie. There will be someone else. Someone who fits me more perfectly than you ever could have. Some moments that hurts. Some moments I believe that, other moments I do not, could not ever even imagine it. I think that is where I am right now. Stuck between missing you and feeling like there could never be anyone else like you. But guess what, tomorrow is a new day, and there will probably be less hurt and more hope. I hope so at least. And one day, I will write about you. You will become another essay in my collection. Another poem. You were always going to become those things anyway, they are just different now. I have to accept that. We both do.

Please just don’t walk away forever. I am not asking for you to come back and declare your undying love. I am simply asking that maybe every once in a while you remember I exist and send me a message, because I want to know who and what you become.

You are my best friend.

I love you.

Thank you for what you have taught me. 

Crushed

Today I feel defeated, completely and utterly defeated. I am currently sitting on my bed, working on creating a gigantic outline for work-one that I will hopefully finish by tomorrow morning, Zimm is laying on a pile of papers at my feet, and we are listening to Gilmore Girls-because it has been that kind of day. For the first time in a long time I had an anxiety freak out. (Luckily I have a couple of really good friends who help me keep it together.) 

Let me give you a little background-- it is going to be brief, so keep up. My aunt, who is really more like my older sister in every sense, is in the hospital. Since Sunday night. She isn't in the ICU anymore, she is in the Psych ward... which is better than the ICU. I, more than anything, want to give her a hug. I was going to go up there today, Adam had to go to Layton for a few days for a wedding, but she can't really have visitors... so I stayed. I miss him. He's been holding me together for the last few days. However, I am so incredibly glad he gets to go and spend time with his friends, really and truly. I think he needs it.

I want to hug my mom. I want to go to lunch with my sister. I want to hug my dad. I want... I want to have a conversation with my aunt, I want to understand why she made the choice she did. I want to call my uncle, and I want to ask him what he is doing, because we need to understand his intentions. I want to not cry. I want to focus.  

That is all. Thanks for listening.