Category: self care

Summertime madness…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay3 Comments

On the first day of summer, I woke up and poured my coffee like normal.

I washed my face, responded to a few emails and texts… It was a pretty average day.

Quiet.

My two dogs, Emma and Elenor, continued to remain civil yet distant. There was nothing which stood out as extraordinary.

On the first day of autumn, I woke up and poured my coffee, just like the beginning of the seasons which fell before.

In a new home. (well, new to us anyway)

In a different state.

With only one dog, the other having left this world.

At forty-two years old, I am no stranger to how quickly things can change, and yet this particular reflection has me overwhelmed by the truth growing there.

Hello, from Pennsylvania!

I missed Emily’s link up, but I’m sharing anyway because the reflection is good for the soul. (You can ask anyone I talk to regularly, I am so out-of-sorts and behind!)

So, in that sunny season, what did my life have me learning?

1.) I am capable, but just because I can doesn’t mean I should… 

This move was hard. The hardest we’ve had. I had to challenge my physical capabilities on an almost constant basis, which created all forms of other complications. My health and chronic garbage aside, I found I was far more able than I realized. I also concluded I can’t ever do anything like that again. It isn’t that I’m not capable, as much as I can’t do that to myself.

Also, moving is terrible and I don’t want to do it again. Even. I will die in this house.

2.) I still expect summer to be filled with long, lazy days and sun-kissed bliss. It never is… 

This isn’t just because of moving, it is simply this (societally induced???) notion of what I have always imagined summers to be, but for one reason or another they never are.

It isn’t a bad thing, and thankfully as our crazy summer unfolded, I really had to use lenses of Grace to differentiate between truth and fiction.

3.) Airline Miles are not nearly as awesome as they used to be…

Do you remember back when miles used to accumulate and when ready we could simply redeem them? Not too long ago, a roundtrip to Australia, for the husband, would have resulted in a free domestic ticket. This time around, FOUR round trips to Australia, plus three years of far-too-frequent domestic flights resulted in us still have to pay a ridiculous amount of money for “miles” so we could buy a ticket to go see our son.

A part of me wants to say, in a gratefully optimistic tone, well, at least they build up even if it’s slowly… But they expire, so I’m telling that sweet side of me to zip it. It’s irritating. (on top of baggage rates increasing… Do I sound like a cranky old lady yet? I feel like one, so I’ll take it!)

4.) I really like Pennsylvania and it was the right decision… 

I’ll be honest, this state is the LAST place I thought we’d end up. My husband was looking all over and even considered a couple of overseas positions. The one state we BELIEVED we were destined for- Utah- was the very wrong choice, we came to realize. Had someone asked me, on that first day of summer, if we were presented with both PA and Utah positions, which would we choose- HANDS DOWN both Chw and I would have said “UTAH!!!!” If you had asked our kids, they would have told you, without a moment’s hesitation, that we’d choose Utah. Ask friends? Family? Utah. And then, one evening brought us to the brink of choosing and we both knew overwhelmingly that Utah was not the path.

I am grateful for how things turned out. We love our house. We are getting to know our area. We have fallen head-over-heels with certain bits of it. We never found a home in Michigan. We never liked it, never got plugged in or connected. There is a mentality there which we just don’t mesh well with, but the first thirty minutes here showed us it’s a much better fit and twenty-six days later (for me) we are still seeing that.

And no one is more shocked than me. :)

5.) I love dogs, but… 

I’ve loved dogs my entire life. LOVED dogs!

I have had to sit in that vet office and say goodbye to three in two years, and I can’t do that anymore. My house, my yard, my dog-loving-heart have hit me hard with puppy fever. Elenor would LOVE a puppy friend. My heart still aches for a blue-tick-beagle boy, as my other one lived way too short a life and I loved him so… BUT, I can’t do that anymore. I cannot sit there and say goodbye.

I love dogs. I never thought the period would morph into a comma and be followed by a “but”, yet here we are.

6.) People…

Last but not least, we come to the heart of what summer has taught me: I have a hard time with people. Not all people… But, lets say, random strangers who want to buy/sell something over the internet. Specifically I’m referencing Facebook Marketplace and Ebay. I just… I keep waiting for my people-patience to rejuvenate, but it isn’t. I feel like the experience of downsizing and relocating while ALSO dealing with people in the afore-mentioned settings may have broken me irreparably.

When you add to that juvenile, cliquish behavior by grown women, people who can’t follow through with something and well, it’s actually probably a pretty long list. (see: old, cranky lady!)

But not YOU! Obviously, I love you.

I know I’m super late, but I’d love to hear if summer taught you anything…

Dog Days {of Summer…}

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay5 Comments

I’ve talked about it here before, but two years ago this month I unexpectedly lost my beloved life companion Paisley. It was a fast, tragic and deeply severing loss. About eight months later I opened my heart up to love an amazingly tiny little blue-tick beagle I lovingly named Knightley and when he died just three months later…

Honestly, even looking back, fourteen months later, I am not sure how I did it. I love the ones I truly love so, so deeply, and dogs are among the deepest… Even though I had only known my sweet Knightley for such a short time, those were a very dependent few months as his health had not always been the best. He needed me so much and he loved me even more. (I hope you never have to put a puppy down, it is a terrible that exceeds so many others…)

BUT… Nearly twelve months ago my husband brought this little nugget home:

And I’ll be honest… I was not ready. She was this ball of love and energy and cuteness and I just did not want her.

Not long after little Miss Elenor became a part of the clan, my husband went on a super long business trip and I had no choice but to spend a lot of quality time with her.

I wanted to resent her.

I wanted to be so annoyed at her high puppy demands and needs, and I was.

But also, I melted… I knew that it was easier not to love her because someday she’d be leaving too, and my heart just maybe couldn’t take anymore sadness.

But then I would laugh at her, because this girl’s personality is LARGE, and I finally caved because I admitted that my heart would be so much better off to love and embrace her…

 

 

I am so thankful for the life, the love, the indescribably happiness and connection that each one of my sweet little fur loves have brought to my life… Through them I have learned TO love outside of myself, to move past loss and heartache and love again. I have learned to laugh when I still feel shattered, and to take time to settle down and snuggle when I really need it, (or they do) and I am so thankful…

Nina Dobrev stars as “Elizabeth” in director Ken Marino’s DOG DAYS, a LD Entertainment release. Credit : Jacob Yakob / LD Entertainment
Vanessa Hudgens stars as “Tara” in Ken Marino’s DOG DAYS, a LD Entertainment release. Credit : Jacob Yakob / LD Entertainment

DOG DAYS is a hilarious and heartfelt ensemble comedy that follows the lives of multiple dog owners and their beloved fluffy pals.  When these human and canine’s paths start to intertwine, their lives begin changing in ways they never expected.  This is a sweet film about the joy our furry friends bring into our lives and what they can teach us about treating people with kindness and compassion.  DOG DAYS releases in theaters in August 8.

I would love to hear about any dogs in your life, that you’ve loved! You could win a gift card to show them (or yourself) a little love!

Letting Go, a lament…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay8 Comments

This year of letting go has been brutal.

I am left raw and bleeding, stripped away layers of love, of life, of skin and  laid ready for something new. The new is hard, terrifying… I love the old, the old like you.

When I knew, to my core, that this year would be the one for letting go, I feared the most that the end result would be you. I feared this down deep to my soul, but that intuitive certainty seemed to whisper this truth.

Here, in the almost middle of the year-long-journey, I have already released my grip on so much.

So many habits, a friendship, crutches and dark things long gone now…

The thought of you too, as it grows clearer and clearer, makes me want to take back the whole plan.

I can’t do this.

I can not let you go…

And yet, as I loosen my grip a little, I realize I am the only one holding on anyway.

Just me.

It is just my hand there, fingers clinging to your loose one.

You let go a long time ago, but then I wonder- scared to ask, had you ever held on at all?

To let go of the love means also letting go of the lies, which should seem like a good thing, shouldn’t it?

It does not.

The losing you part has never been a parcel of my bargain, and yet, it seems this is what it comes to anyhow.

How?

I truly don’t know.

My chest is so tight from the fight to breathe, I want to kick and scream, to conquer your demons for you so that you can learn to love me again. Assuming, of course, you ever did. I used to believe it, but beneath the crafty way in which you seem, I am beginning to doubt that too.

I know, I can’t do that… I won’t even try. They are your demons to release or draw nearer, and they are what you’ve chosen. I am not.

I am not.

I will repeat the words until my insides cease throbbing.

I will stop allowing patterns to blanket me, which have only slowly ripped me apart.

You are yours now, you never claimed me.

In the deepest way possible, I am gone.

Entombed within this landscape I have woven- painting it beautiful so that you had somewhere safe and whole to belong- I cannot think about what comes next. Whatever it is, I know that the course of us changes forever, again.

Forever, always.

Words meant for something spectacularly earth shattering, in the best ways- not like this.

I did not wish this, I did not want it.

I do not want it.

But you do not want me, so why hold on, anymore?

Good-bye being lied to,

Good-bye being lied about… (This will still happen, of course, you seem to know no other way of making it through a day, but perhaps this will finally not affect me like it always has before.)

Good-bye disrespect,

Good-bye raised-fist-shattered moments and brutal words, spread like meat hooks, within the crevices of my mind.

Perhaps I’ll make it to the clouds, finally able to exhale…

Maybe instead I will struggle again, day in and out, never catching a break.

Either path it is, I guess is better than naked and lonely, splattered there on the ground.

Quilts and Ice Cream Spoons…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay3 Comments

www.rainydayinmay.comI stir the ice cream, there in that bowl.

Over and over, spoon to side, and back again. The grinding sound is creating the milky masterpiece that I love so much.

Often the act begins with scoops of Cookies & Cream, the one which will remain a lifelong favorite. Most often though, they consist of French Vanilla, what I remember to be your favorite and a flavor I simply cannot stand.

The grinding, noise of metal spoon against glass, annoys you. This isn’t why I love to do it, but it doesn’t seem to deter me from my mission either.

As long as I can make that ice cream last, fading from firm scoop to sweet cream, the more of a victory I seem to feel I have won… I never questioned why, or why I stopped playing with the treat once I no longer lived under that roof. Have I ever done that as an adult? I’ll have to ask my husband. If I have, it was more from habit than intent.

As a girl, it was deliberate- thought out. It took serious concentration and I was committed to the act as if humanity’s survival depended on it…

Whenever something prompts me to reflect on my childhood, and the sorts of things I loved, liked and found interesting, that silly little ice cream habit is always towards the top of my list. I would shrug it off internally, chalking up to one of those dumb things I did to be weird. Today, suddenly, in this adult moment I am simply not sure…

We only had ice cream when you were there. We only did a lot of things when you were there. Movie nights, game nights, real dinners, actual dialogue and verbal interaction that didn’t involve yelling or verbal abuse. Which, I guess, isn’t entirely true. There were manic moments which included late night dance parties between her and I, or crazy drives in the dark where she’d sing and dance in the car and I would try to force myself to absorb how incredibly fun my mom could be. It would be well into my own adulthood when I would realize my mom’s manic habits really weren’t fun, but to a child those were the best versions of her that I saw.

On the nights when you were there, after the evening meal, after the kitchen was clean and the ice cream was eaten- this is when I was encouraged to sit on the couch beside you. This is when the bad things which I had always known, would happen. She would turn slightly, towards the light and away from us, and there- with a movie on the television, my little soul would fragment again and again.

Of course we were quite a group, the three of us. There was me, the girl who really hadn’t a clue what was happening as I disappeared catatonic, to a dark place deep within. There she sat knitting, in the role of my mother, choosing not to see it because then she could convince herself of innocence. And lastly, you. I don’t know why you did it, I don’t know how you could hear the word Daddy, be the keeper of my more stable childhood moments, be the teacher or my board game and bicycle skills and still be the monster with his body parts between my little girl legs…

I will never know the full extent of what happened.

I will certainly never understand.

I do know that I don’t hate you. It’s a complicated place to arrive, but I have. It was. It happened. It’s over.

I’ve found myself in the repeating situation, as of late, of hearing another share their own abuse story. I have found myself in awe of the quilted fabric we survivors lay across this earth, together connected by stitches not visible to the human eye, yet very real and binding. We are each so different, yet it is often in the connection of together which makes it the most beautiful…

It is beautiful.

This scrap of fabric, the fragment which remains after the use and abuse of the rest of a once shiny and new linen- it becomes something heavy with warmth and stitched with love. Something which will cradle a newborn, nurture the sick, protect our children from the elements and splay so much hope and beauty on this fragmented world.

Four sat around a table today, talking about life and motherhood, about marriage and technology, about childhoods and dark things like this. Of the four, only one had not known such darkness. Only one… I saw it then- this quilt protects the babies so that the one can one day become three– and some glorious day- four. I long for a day when four women can come together and not one of them will know the unwanted sexual touch of another.

I am a part of an often faceless sisterhood, and while I cannot be glad for what took me there, I am grateful for the banding together of something bold and beautiful, sprouted from the ugly it was born.

I am not what you did to me, but I am forever changed because of it. It may have felt otherwise, and it might still I guess, but the reality is that the only victim in our exchange is you…

I think of you, of that favorite bowl and that flatware spoon every time I eat ice cream. Woven into my soul, you’re there. You are there in the small green Monopoly houses, in the 1980’s horror movies, in tall sweaty glasses of iced tea, even in the smell of grilled steak… You are everywhere, somehow in almost everything. It is both complicated and simple. Hating you, I finally see, would mean hating me. So, instead, I’ll roll the dice and keep my fingers crossed that I get to own the Orange and the Greens. I’ll savor bites of ice cream and I’ll occasionally enjoy a steak and iced tea- I can not let the memory of a man, both father figure and monster, ruin things I love- just like you didn’t ruin me.

I’ll show you my brave…

Published on by Mae @ Rainydayinmay5 Comments

www.rainydayinmay.com

Brave to you will likely look very different then it does to me…

I was recently challenged to consider the bravest thing I have done. I thought, instead, of all of the courage and bravery I have seen in the people I know and love. I have friends who have literally chased down muggers/assailants. I have law enforcement friends. I have inner-city-teacher friends. I know several people who travel the world, adventuring into unknown and remote locations… (I recently read a story about an Anaconda, in the Amazon, that stalked someone in the water. It STALKED them. Snakes are in the wild, unknown and remote locations. This is a problem for me.)

My sister Joy lives in a beautiful home in south-eastern New Mexico. (she also has snakes who stalk and intrude on her life) My son is a soldier, as are so many friends. I know a beautiful soul who is a surrogate. The list goes on and on. I see bravery demonstrated so regularly and, when I look at myself, I feel like there is no comparison.

And therein lies the issue. There IS no comparison. My brave won’t look like yours. While it may have been brave for me to fight for my marriage and stand by my husband after infidelity and betrayal, it may be brave for another woman to walk away from a similar situation… And that is the thing about courage- no one else gets to decide it. A soldier, in and of itself, does not make them brave. A soldier who is willing to protect us and fight for what is right, even if it costs him his life- THAT is the brave part. Courage and selflessness in the face of danger is their brave. We can define ourselves a thousand ways, but brave will never be located in the title.

My brave can be found in my pursuit of motherhood long after I lost my uterus. I was shattered, but did not give up.

My brave can be seen within the moves I’ve made, the jobs I’ve taken.

My brave is there, beyond my comfort zone. In the once-awkward situations, the stranger-conversations, the elements of life just beyond my natural limit. I have grown to push myself there, into that place. Sometimes it is downright nauseating.

My brave is rooted deep, in my writing. To be authentic, raw and displayed does not come naturally, but it is the only way that it feels right.

My brave may have been born the day that I realized it was up to me to stop the patterns of sexual abuse that were happening within my childhood. There was no shame, only a concrete knowledge that the more  people I told, the less likely it was to happen again.

I told everyone.

It never happened again.

Perhaps the most ironic part of each one of those things though, is that they never felt brave. They often felt woven with elements of worry, anxiety and more than a healthy sprinkling of fear. Second guessing was my second nature during the seasons that, upon reflection, reveal themselves as brave. Bravery often makes me feel like I need to throw up, pass out, curl up in my bed and hide… The list goes on and on, but never have I though Woah! Now that, Misty, that was one mighty fine act of bravery! And it’s pretty unfair for me to hold myself to another soul’s standard of bravery before I’m willing to label it is as such.

Maybe you scale rocky mountainside’s for fun, eat nails for breakfast and only date psycho clowns- if so, my list probably seems pretty mild to you. (I’d also like to point out that two of those three things aren’t brave, they are reckless and that’s not actually always a fine line. Sometimes it is a gigantic 8-lane interstate.)

I don’t know when I’m brave, always.

I am pretty sure I could sit here and list out the ten-thousand ways I have felt and acted the opposite, just this month.

I’m working on accepting my brave for what it is. I’m learning I don’t need my neighbor, brother, husband or friend to call it brave, for it to be. Most importantly though, I know to my core that I need the brave list to be growing longer, by the day, while the other list grows smaller and smaller…

So that’s my plan.

(Minus any and all snakes, anyway.)

What has your brave looked like?