"Give me that shocked expression again!"

that awkward moment.

God is poking fun at me, I swear.  He's showing me how much I've grown and yet how much growing I have left to do.  Guidance, not directions.  Morality, not conformity.  ThoughtCatalog.com has provided me with some great jumping-off points for my more personal entires, but none such as this article that I stumbled upon two days ago.

The First Time You See Your Ex After The Breakup.  This article SO isn't my situation (especially not the bit at the end about masturbating) but the idea is the same.

Sooooo this ex-boyfriend story is probably like no other you've ever heard... but you'll never hear it.  There are too many parties that haven't been made privy to the history he and I share.  In a nutshell, we were raised as family.  Obviously, that notion went hurdling out the window with our first kiss (which was like something out of a Nicholas Sparks novel, mind you).

kiss like a romance novel

Its been 9 unbelievably fast years since that first kiss.  I am a terrible details person but moments like that one I'll never forget; it is forever etched in my mind.  1 a.m. on a Tuesday morning and drenched in moonlight, just after a fight with my then most recent ex-boyfriend, an insecure, clingy boy unable to accept that we were through.  I'll spare you the rest of the details for they bear no importance to me anymore, except to remind me that I've since redefined my standards of a healthy relationship and found my very own Prince (Sort-Of) Charming (In-His-Own-Way).

A month ago, I find out my ex will be visiting the area in which I live.  The likelihood that we will run into each other is extremely high.  When he does arrive back in town, he will have his wife and kids.  The wife he married after I dumped him.  Four months after.

If I sound offended its because a small part of me still is.  Was I so forgettable?   So easily replaced?  I'm a big advocate of finding closure but I'm realistic enough to know that it isn't always attainable.  There are a few things that, given the opportunity, I'd love to ask him.  Why would be expect me to have a sympathetic ear for him after he'd broken my heart?  Did he think I was Superwoman?  Or perhaps cold and unfeeling, since I was the one that walked away?  What kind of a man doesn't even give polite response to a simple question? Was there ever any hope of him returning the love I felt?  Did he miss me once I was gone from his life?  Does he wonder how life would be different if I had stayed?  I have accepted the fact that I may never know... but it has still left its mark upon me.

The second hardest part of this experience was making sure that I learned from it without taking it with me.  Does that make sense?  I knew that I had to learn from all the pain and the sleepless nights but I didn't want to carry it with me forever.  I didn't want my pain to taint my perspective on life and love.  I wanted my idea of love to remain as pure and unscathed as possible.  That was my goal.  My husband mentioned to me that never once has he felt like he was paying for anything my exes did wrong.  That brought me SUCH relief.  It was what I worked so hard for, so that when I met the man I would marry he wouldn't feel as though he were carrying around my baggage along with his own.

The possibility of seeing him again is looming over my head like a cloud just waiting to rain on me.  I'm afraid of it.  What if I do see him again and the pain comes rushing back?  Will I be able to contain myself?  Is there going to be that awkward pause when our eyes first meet that lasts mere seconds to the rest of the room but an eternity to me?  How will I fake the small talk?  After all, our mutual contacts haven't the slightest idea of what when on between us.  Can I even make it through the conversation?

What scares me the most is that I'll see him again and love him again.  Unlikely though it may seem, there's a tiny part of me that is absolutely petrified of it.  Because that is the one scenario that I am completely unprepared for.

Maybe its time.  For whatever reason, every other time he's been in close proximity of me I've either been out of town or wholly unaware.  This time, I was actually PLANNING to be out of town but those plans fell through recently.  Just a week before I heard all this.  Perhaps God believes I'm ready.

/end rant.

Pride vs Brain

It has come to my attention that the last 6 months of my life have taken a harder, more profound toll on me that I'd realized. I do not usually condone the bottling of emotions or the subsequent eruptions because I don't see them as healthy ways of dealing with . But somehow since moving back in with my parents in January... I subconsciously started to commit that very offense.

Two of my very best friends asked hubby & I to have dinner with them at a swanky sushi joint in DC, so if course I wanted to be there. Upon realizing how much it would cost, I politely declined and informed them that it just wasn't in the budget and thanks for the invitation. I was doing what I thought was the most responsible thing to do. Of course there was a plethora of other hurdles that would need overcoming but the budget constraints trumped them all.

My friends, being the wonderful people they are, tried to help me overcome each obstacle. No money? We'll pay! No car? We'll pick you up. No babysitter? The place is kid friendly. We can change to a different restaurant. We'll just have a BBQ instead. We'll make it work. We'll find a way. One right after another, my reasons were shot down and left and right and before I knew it there was nothing left to do but to admit to myself and to them what my real reason for declining was: I was tired of feeling like a mooch. Every nice, considerate thing that my friends suggested ended up feeling like a knife blade, digging a deep hole for me to crawl into and feel like a rat. Though I fully understand that they just wanted to be able to hang out and be together, they inadvertently reminded me of why I felt so terrible in the first place.

My parents (& in laws), my sister, my brother, my best friends.... they've carried me through the last 6 months both emotionally and financially. Being away from my husband is challenging all by itself but now I feel like I've reverted back to this state of dependency that is flat out depressing. I mean, how am I supposed to feel when I can't even afford to buy my son's milk?

My best friend had to pay for my bridesmaid dress for HER wedding. My other best friend (who is going on vacation and is saving money for that) is constantly giving me rides and paying for my food. My little brother is my right hand man when travelling with my son and my sister had to sign my name on our mother's day gift, even though she paid for the whole thing. My cousin's girlfriend has to give me free haircuts and she EVEN drives to my house.

YES, I understand that these are people who love me and don't mind it but there's still a big part of me that whimpers every time someone goes out of their way to be nice to be... mostly because I feel like I've taken advantage of it and that I can't give anything in return. I couldn't even call my best friend and admit this to her... my husband had to do it for me like in that crazy movie with Ashley Judd playing a mentally ill mother. I was so overcome with shame and guilt that I fell into a fetal position on the floor crying... broken hearted and saddened by the fact that this is what my life has been reduced too.

My brain tells me that these people help me because they care, but my pride as woman is shattered and I'm having trouble shaking this wretched feeling that I'll never be anything more than a leech. Yeah, I KNOW better... but is it so hard to believe that even with that knowledge my emotions have exerted a little more control over me?

Blah blah... messy, disorganized rant.