I am too much of a perfectionist mixed with idealism and high expectations. This tends to paralyze me.
For instance, I love to send letters in the REAL MAIL. I start planning out how I am going to send them, and how I will make the paper by hand myself and...and...illustrate the whole thing! Yes! I'll write a book that is really a letter! Perfect! And then I'll start on it, and realise that the paper I'm using is all wrong, or that I'm not feeling particularly inspired that day and so I stop altogether, instead of just writing a letter to the person I care about because I wanted it to be AWESOME.
Stupid.
I buy cards in the store, 4 and 5 at a time sometimes, thinking,
"I shall send these out very soon to so and so, and so and so..."
I go back to the cards a bit later and find that I don't like them anymore.
"How did I even find these at all interesting? I should just make a card myself..." And then the cycle starts over.
I haven't been writing much at all. Everything that has been happening in my life lately has been so overwhelming that when I even attempt to think about attempting to think about writing the thoughts of my head down I want to crawl under the covers. Or eat a cookie.
Anne Lamott once said, and here I'm paraphrasing, "To write anything you just have to start writing. Don't be intimidated by the blank page in front of you. Just start."
Here I go.
My new marriage. It's more than I ever dreamed. I am so blessed. Zack and I are such good friends that talking with him is easy. But last night, he came home, and immediately went upstairs to brush his teeth and clean up because he knows how much the smell of cigarettes bother me now. He came downstairs and we began talking about how we're both having to adjust to so many things at once. He misses our "porch time" together when we would sit outside and have a couple of drinks and I wasn't bothered by the smoke and would smoke a couple myself. We were getting into a groove of sorts, he and I, and he said he was so looking forward to being a young married couple.
"Now, I KNOW where you're going to go with this because I KNOW you. I am NOT saying that I wish you weren't pregnant or that our lives are ruined because of it, I'm just saying that you have adjusted better to all of this than I have."
It was true, I was shutting down and clamming up.
I love that he calls me out on stuff about myself.
It's true though, that we have struggled a little bit these past few weeks since finding out about the baby. I have turned into a walking mood bomb and my sense of smell rivals that of something that smells really well. I dunno, a dog? A dolphin? I just asked Zack,
"Honey, what is an animal that has an amazing sense of smell?"
"Uh...a pregnant woman?"
Right.
It's funny, I almost deleted what I just wrote up there.
I am gun shy when it comes to sharing. Is it too much? I don't want to overwhelm anyone with my overwhelmingness, which, according to my computer, isn't even a WORD.
So, yeah, navigating the waters of pregnancy to the love of my life when we haven't even been married 2 whole months yet.
Navigating the unavoidable ickiness that comes with divorce. Zack and I walked through hell and back when it came to the ending of our prospective former marriages. The fact that he and I found each other, and that it's such a beautiful relationship, is a testament to God's grace and mercy. He and I have such a huge sense of gratitude and respect for each other because of how bad things were BEFORE.
All that to say, this brings up the next issue I'm dealing with. Zack's ex-wife has turned out to be the most bizarre, odd, selfish woman I have ever known. I'm sure she has her side of things. Everyone does. Lord knows we all have done really stupid stuff in our lives.
Part of me wants to really share about this. Part of me wants to vent. Part of me wants to rip her a new one.
But I won't.
I, myself, have been unfairly judged and slandered by people who thought they had me figured out. So who am I to do the same to someone else?
Oh dang. I have to go. I will write more later.
Okay. I'm back now.
Today has been a good day so far since the start of this post.
I was thinking, though, about how to best go about the slow dissection of my thoughts and have decided that I shall categorize them and write about each category as I go.
Here's what I want to write about in depth:
Zack and I's story
My marriage now and how I view it
My child and step-children and the one on the way (Yours, Mine and Ours)
Music
Search for Community
My relationship with Kent Coffee now
And then the other various sundry of randomness that is left over...
I need a nap now. See? Just writing about this makes me tired.