I'm still here

I miss being part of a blogging group. Last year was really good for me to have this connection to women around the country and English speaking world, frankly, reminding me of the song in my heart and playing it back to me in their own words and making me feel noticed and cared for during a very very rough year that began with my divorce being finalized and tumbled from there.

I moved into this cute button of a house in February, and then spent the spring building IKEA furniture with a friend and making this place into something I could call home. It is so clean and so tightly pretty. It feels like me.

I was walking around on a broken heel that whole time and finally took myself to the doctor and got that mended, and then followed it with physical therapy all summer and now finally a year later I don't hurt anymore mostly but sometimes in the morning.

This whole time too I was working on my masters in special education and already working in the field after losing the job before that in a career-shattering heartbreaking move that cost me many things but most of all my faith in the human organization of the Catholic Church. What was left of that faith anyway.

My oldest picked a college. My middle one picked a high school. My youngest merrily skipped along, easy with his classmates and a favorite of his teachers. Thank God. Something, somebody, needs to be easy sometime. He went back to speech therapy for one last shot at the apraxia and it worked a little bit. Some things will be who he is and I have to learn to love the pauses.

I grew a lot of tomatoes and got a little bichon poodle mix who fits this house and this new little life of mine. My girls settled in the attic and I got a barbecue grill.

And then I spent the fall fighting fucking crime again. And my roof leaked. I feared so much failure, my God, what if I've made a horrible mistake moving here?

But I hadn't. I threw a nice little graduation/Christmas party for myself and people came. Old friends and new ones too. My sister and her boyfriend stayed until after 1 in the morning.

The year turned over to 2019 and I got a roofer to come look at the house and insurance is helping to pay. Anxiety is heavy on us over college funding but we are still hopeful. The job, it's a hard job, but my boss celebrates me and I'm good at it, most of it anyway, and I don't own the heartache like I once did. It was a good rebound to land where I am, where I will likely remain until retirement if I can hack it. I don't work for a district as much as I work for an educational agency, county-wide, so I have some chance of fluid movement later as my seniority increases. I think this way now. Successes are fewer in special education but they are sweetly won.

My ex-husband has a girlfriend and his front porch is falling down just as badly as it was when it was my front porch and I sat there drinking whiskey and soaking up moments with my children, my neighbors, and that stolen summer I got to spend with John before he died. It's still broken-down, but I'm not.

I find dimes everywhere. I can't explain it.

Maybe I'm a dime.

There are things I won't say here because I'm more cautious than I once was and I think about that and the privacy of those I love. But just to say that things keep being hard, things keep being heartbreakingly beautiful and I am soaking up so many moments.

So I am still here. I was reading my old blog, one where I met many of you, South City Musings, which is now closed, and I realized I used to have a lot to say. Now I have a lot to do. But I miss it, the self-revelatory moments and the comments and the community. Without a church, I have fewer communities than I once did. Without my old block. Without that little school I helped found.

There's been a lot of loss.

But I've gained myself.

I am a dime, yeah, I think that's how I would put it now.