I see you.

Hiding behind your family.
A fiancee,
a daughter.

I see you smile.
Play daddy.
I remember what you did.

I am someone's daughter.
Someone's mother.
I was someone's wife.

And I carried you with me.
A decade plus.
I can see you above me.
Moving.

I can feel your weight.
I can feel my powerlessness.
I can feel my fear.

I cringe,
To see you smile.
To know that you probably forgot.
What you did to me.
What you took from me.

You can pretend.
You can be who you claim to be now.
But I see you.
I have not forgotten.

And it is hard.

We step lightly.
Around mud puddles.
Patches of moss.

We are not graceful.
Our boots clunk.
Sometimes our ankles buckle.

We reach clearings,
Where we can walk freely,
Without hesitation in our steps.

We run,
In those moments,
Until we reach the next quagmire.

And then we step gingerly again.
Seeking our next reprieve from the muck.
Moving toward it with soft purpose.

We cannot halt,
Though we my falter,
Me must move if we wish to leave the muck in our wake.

And we seek God.
We admire the beauty.
We breathe deeply and give thanks.

We take in the greens,
the browns,
the graceful blues.

We take the moment.
Take in the bliss.
The grace.

And then it is onward,
To seek the next moment,
And to search, eternally, for ease.

Uncharted

I find myself in uncharted waters. Going to school, pursuing a master's degree that I do not know if I will use, working full time in a field that I never even considered a possibility for myself, not having a permanent residence, living almost wholly on the grace and kindness of near strangers, sober for over a year, and parenting only one of my children by myself.

Five years ago, I would have never imagined myself in this position. Honestly, eighteen months ago I could not have imagined my life without ever having another beer again. Going a year without a drink was not something I would have ever thought about seriously. It is amazing where life takes us when we are too busy living it to notice. What is really amazing to me about this unmapped territory in which I find myself, is that I like it.

I feel hope. I feel God. I feel purpose. I feel pretty good about myself five out of seven days of the week right now. Every day, I feel like I have done a damn good job at what has been set before me. First of all, I am an amazing mom. I cannot begin to explain how far I had fallen as a mother before I got sober. I was completely checked out and detached from my beautiful children. Now, I find myself counting the breaths until I can parent them together, as a single mom. The challenge sounds like fun and it sounds doable. I kick parenting's ass every single day, even on my bad days. And I know for sure that my son knows that I love the shit out of him, even when he is being a rotten little turdburgler.

My faith? My faith!!!!!! The most exciting thing in my life right now is my spiritual journey and my walk with God. There have been moments when I don't know what I am going to do next. I literally do not know where I will live after Friday, but I know that I am safe. I know that what is meant to happen will happen and that there will be a reason for it. I also know wholeheartedly that even when I struggle and despair, there is a plan for me and that the ultimate goal of that plan is divine love and unending happiness. This is all new to me. I never imagined that I would feel that kind of connection, largely because I never knew that there would be a day when I would want to. I always thought that I could rely on myself. All that that ever got me was drunk, sad, and divorced. Relying on my Creator takes a whole Hell of a lot off of my mind and I have spent the last year of my life with an almost constant smile on my face.

As far as my job, I don't even know what to say. I LIKE work. Who the fuck likes work? I mean, I actually look forward to doing my job. I want to be amazing at it. I want to do it well and I want to do it for a long time. I majored in history in college, guys. I had no intention ever of working in the medical field. I also never even knew I had the ability to understand vision and how to take care of people's eyes. I knew that I was capable of doing many things, but this particular thing was not even on my radar until recently. What I do know is that there is a reason that I got this job. I could not be happier with what I am doing and I could not feel better about how I am making my living. I am actually excited to wake up and go to work tomorrow. That, my friends, is a gift which I do not intend to take for granted.

This is amazing. My life is not where or what I had mapped out. I am floating in the sea right now. I am completely at the mercy of the waves and the tides. I do not know when I will find land. I do not know if I ever will find land. What I know is that while I drift, I will look up at the stars. I will take every moment that I can to feel grateful. I will take in every breath that I have to feel good about my life and about this journey. Never again will I feel entitled to the stars, the water, the breath, the life, and the moon. My life is a gift. It has become a journey down a path that I had considered off-limits. I have come, only recently, to realize that I am not the captain. I simply have to float, to walk the trail, to stare at the stars, and the soak in the gratitude. I am so blessed. So lucky. So blissful. I am so off-kilter it isn't even funny.

Watch.

I work part-time in the childcare room at a local gym and one of the perks of the job is that I can bring my six-year-old son with my to work when he isn't in school. I like this for two reasons, the first being that I don't like being away from him. One of the perks of my sobriety is that I actually like my kids and want to hang out with them. The second reason is that it eliminates the need for me to ask someone else to babysit.

Yesterday was the first time that the need arose for me to bring him and it was a rough night for us. I have written before, a long time ago, about Archer's personality. He is shy and introverted and he is weird as fuck. Just like his momma, damn it! I am proud to be raising another introvert because I LOVE the fact that I am introverted. I am proud to be raising someone as weird as myself. I love that I have grown into my weirdness and I love that he shows signs of growing into and embracing it sooner than I did.

But yesterday I realized that being a weird, introvert is probably easier for a twenty-eight-year-old who embraces it than it is for a six-year-old who doesn't completely understand it. I watched my son sit in a room full of kids and play alone. I watched him play contentedly for a while and then I watched him look up and watch them longingly. I stood there and observed as he tried multiple times to connect with the other kids and I held back tears as I watched him fail.

He would hear them say something about Pokemon or Minecraft and try to connect, because he had found a shared interest. He was ignored. He asked to play zombies, because he loves zombies, and was told that it was for "the family." I watched him sit in the corner and watch them play and I could see from his face that he was hurting.

I understand that my son is different. I understand his strengths and his weaknesses. I understand his heart and I know what kind of kid he is. He is amazing. He is a good friend, he's incredibly smart, he's funny in a very dry way, he loves animals, his kindness is unmatched, he loves to read, and he shamelessly loves his momma and his daddy. He also loves Jesus, which I think is pretty cool considering he is a product of Dave and myself.

The difficult thing is that he doesn't understand himself. He is six, so he isn't supposed to. He isn't supposed to understand that introverts have a tougher time in today's world. It is my job as his mother to keep him from needing to understand that any time soon. So, I did what I have done before and what I will do again. I fought my instincts, which was to say, "You kids HAVE to play with him," or even "You guys SHOULD let Archer join." I called my son over to me and said, "Hey, buddy, what's wrong?" My son said to me that he didn't like the games the other kids were playing, which wasn't surprising to me.

I told him that it is okay to play alone. That it is okay to want to play alone. I told my son that he has a choice, he can play a game that doesn't interest him because he wants the company of other children OR he can play alone and do what he wants to do. I also told him that introverts sometimes take longer to make friends and that we often have fewer friends and than our extroverted peers. However, I also told him that because we take longer we tend to have more intimate friendships and make stronger connections. Then I gave him an idea of something he could do to help me out and keep himself busy for a little while.

I knew what to do because I have read the books. I know how to be and to parent an introvert. I had to fight my instincts because I am a mom. All I want in the whole world is for my son to feel happy in his own skin. I want him to see himselff as I see him and to know that those qualities are high on the list of amazing qualities any person could ask for. I want to make my son feel good, but I can't. My job as a mom is to give my son the tools to find happiness within himself and to find completion within his own heart.

Being a mom is the most difficult and most rewarding thing I have ever attempted because it is the biggest battle between my survival instinct and the little voice in my heart that leads me down the right path.

Softness.

When I woke up this morning, I was laying in bed and a line from Pulp Fiction crossed my mind. I can't quote it exactly, but it is when Bruce Willis' gorgeous, very thin, French girlfriend says that she wants a pot belly. She says that it is funny that what feels good to touch doesn't look good to the eye, because the extra flesh of a pot belly is soft and appealing to the hand.

I'm not exactly sure what caused that scene to flash through my mind, aside from the fact that Pulp Fiction is one of my favorite movies and I haven't seen it in a while. But I do know that it hit home for me. I recently wrote about having put on some weight and how that bothers me. It does, I am determined to lose it. But I also know that yesterday, I was looking in the mirror and I actually enjoyed the extra flesh on my body. I haven't gained a lot of weight, but it seems to have gone to my legs and my butt, which are two of my smallest areas.

After I thought about Pulp Fiction, and about how important that one line is to modern women, I started thinking about my last boyfriend. He would always tell me that women are supposed to have fat and extra flesh on their bodies. Women were built to have some padding. He would always say that as if he wished women would remember it, which made him even more appealing in my eyes.

My real question is why women don't get this? Why don't women see this about themselves and want it? I am just as guilty of being blind to this as any other woman I meet or who may read this. As I write this, as I say that I enjoyed my extra weight yesterday, I am planning on losing it. I won't stand for being this weight for long. My ideal body is very thin, without the extra padding that my ex-boyfriend seemed to find appealing.

Should I blame the media for this loss of clarity? Should I blame men? Should I blame myself? Is there something broken in my mind that tells me that I should be skinnier than I am? I don't know. What I do know is that some of the women who I personally find the most beautiful are not thin. In fact, I can only name a handful of women who are as thin as I want to be and whose looks I admire.

Why is is that we can't embrace our softness and love the fact that we were meant to have it? For me, this is a continual battle. It is a fight between my body and my mind and everything I know and love about myself. And the bottom line is that it shouldn't be. I have bigger problems. Weight should be the least of my concern right now. I am told daily that I am beautiful, even by the man who's divorcing me, so why is it that I can't believe it.

My body has done wonderful things to earn this softness. I birthed a nine pound baby. I birthed a baby in twenty minutes once. And one other time, I birthed a baby in my living room. My body has run 13.1 miles, and I have the medal to prove it. My body has been sober for over a year. My body nursed one child for over two years. There are really good reasons why my body is not rock-hard and firm. There are really beautiful reasons for the softness of my flesh. Yet, all I really care about is hardening that softness.

It all leads me to the question: Would I rather sleep on a soft pillow or a hard one?

Pretty.

It just so happens,
that as the sun goes down,
the light hits you.

Your curls light up.
Your hair is on fire.
You are pretty.

It just so happens,
that as the sun rises,
the rays bounce off of your cheeks.

Your cheekbones appear rosy,
Your dimple glows,
You are priceless.

It just so happens,
that in the afternoon,
the sun is in the sky.

You look sun kissed.
Your shoulders glow.
You are luminous.

It doesn't matter,
what time of day.
Or if you have spilled coffee on your shirt.
Or if your socks don't match.

You are not perfect.
I am not perfect.
We are divine.
We match.
We just need the light to hit us, just so.

We just need to see it,
Through our eyes.
We just need to see it,
in the shadow.
With our hearts.

Among.

I think that I have written about this before, but if I did it has been long enough that I don't think it matters.

I have always had issues with people. I like to be one on one or two on one, but if the group is much larger than that I will sit in the corner and look around. I don't like to feel socially pressured. Even if I am in a familiar place, like the place where I am currently staying, if there are people at the table playing games I will go to my room and do my own thing.

I could go on and on about how my introverted nature affects me daily. I run alone, do yoga alone, will walk to and from work alone and be perfectly happy. I like to ride my longboard alone and generally I prefer to be alone for a significant portion of my day. I have even always elected to go to college online because I feel uncomfortable in a classroom.

As it stands right now, I like to hang out with my son and with my best friend. Occasionally I will reach out to other adults for coffee or to talk. I do meet regularly with my sponsor from AA, and I do find myself looking forward to that.

 Lately, however, I have been pushing myself to be among others. I started going to church and I am trying out different small groups. I have been working on making connections with other women in AA and asking people to meet for coffee so that I can socialize. It's hard for me because all of my gut instincts scream to me to cancel on them and to stay at home doing homework or drawing.

I have to fight with every corner of my mind to actually follow through with these commitments. And sometimes I have the tendency to dive in overboard and make too many social arrangements. It leaves me feeling exhausted and emotionally depleted. I have to find balance in this matter. I have to find myself able to socialize and able to come home when I need to. This is a learning process for me and sometimes I find myself wishing that I was an extrovert, for whom it came natural to be around people all of the time.

What is strange about me is that I am not socially awkward. I have social skills and I am friendly. In fact, most people are kind of surprised when I tell them that I am classically introverted. They think that I probably read an article about it and decided that was what I wanted to be. But that isn't the case. Many introverts work in extroverted jobs, are friendly, and even have bubbly, outgoing personalities. I think that I fall into that category of introvert and so it surprises people when I want to hide in my room rather than play monopoly.

It's very new for me to want to me among. It's hard for me to make myself a part of because I don't want to become overly involved and because I don't have a lot of practice at doing it. How does a twenty-eight-year-old adult learn new social practices? Does it just take time and patience? Should I read a book? It's a long road to normal and I don't know if I ever want to get there.

Twist.

I found you on a broken hill.
Standing in the darkness.
Contemplating the precipice.

The Earth was broken.
Twisted.
The wind was still, the leaves were blowing.

I stood beside you, though you could not see me.
Watched you look around for someone,
to bear witness to your calm and serenity.

Surrounded by chaos,
as you contemplated.
The beauty and the madness,
of crumbling Earth.
Angry rock.
Dirt in the midst of a revolution.

You could not see me,
though I was tangible.
For when I pushed,
you dove.

Into the void,
the blackness.
And as you fell, the stars grew bright.
Flickering, singing.
Enthralled by your leap of faith.

The Earth, the stars, the wind.
A tree cried out with joy.
For the melting Earth began to heal.
Lick its wounds and seek to rest.

The writhing came to and end,
and there was peace.
And there was solitude.
And there was me. 

Jesus.

My faith has always been really personal to me. Even when I was a practicing alcoholic, I had a life full of faith. I have always believed in a power greater than myself. However, now that I am sober faith takes the central spot in my life. I pray and meditate every day and sometimes I do this more than once per day. I find myself frequently stopping mid-movement and doing what I call a "single-breath prayer."

I usually hesitate to define my faith because I take it so personally and because I like to be so private about it, also because I think it is very hard for me to describe. Lately I have been in a strange emotional place. I wrote recently about hitting an emotional bottom and in that bottom I found myself looking to my faith for answers. I spent a whole day praying. God talked to me that day and gave me some pretty solid direction, which I have been doing my absolute best to follow.

But, I don't just pray when things are bad. Today when I got a very badly needed job, I hit my knees in the living room and just yelled "THANK YOU!" to the sky over and over. I ended with an "Amen," and then I got up and carried on with my day.
Every morning, when I exercise, I talk to my God about what I am grateful for. I try and name at least ten things and they are never material possessions. I talk to Jesus all the time because I am pretty sure that no matter what, he is always there listening to and he always has my back.

That said, I am not a Christian in the traditional sense of the word. I mean, who is? I tend to think of my faith as a full-Earth picture. Mother Earth, Father Sky, Jesus, the cosmos. It's all intertwined to me. I love them all. They are all the same entity, no matter what I choose to call it. I love the Bible and I love listening to the Word. I love reading and studying ANY faith, because I think that faith is the fabric of life. I live on and for faith. I have a tattoo of Buddha because I follow Buddha as well. I also practice Buddhist meditation from time to time, among other forms.

I love my faith. I feel at ease when I pray. I feel peace when I am on a run and I look up at the trees and the sky and I thank my divine Mother for the breath in my lungs and the sun on my skin. I have felt the stars staring down at me in a moment of prayer, making sure that my heart knows comfort. My faith means the world to me, because my faith is product of my sobriety and my sobriety is a product of faith.

I am really not sure what led me to write this, but what I do know is that day by day I feel better and I feel more love. I am thankful for today, and today I am full of faith.

Fat.

Don't tell me that I am skinny. I don't want to hear about how good you think I look. I don't feel it. When I look in the mirror, I see someone who easily needs to lose another twenty pounds.

In my head, I can tell myself that my pants are a size 7 and that they are loose on my legs. But my head later tells me that I have probably stretched them out and that they fit more like a 9 or an 11. They might have even been sized incorrectly, because surely I need to lose weight.

I used to weigh close to 300 pounds. I was tightly compacted into my size twenty jeans and I hated myself. I hated my body. Now, I weigh over a hundred pounds less and I still hate my body. I still want to lose weight. But overall, I want to love my body. I want to look in the mirror and think "You are beautiful," but I don't. I want to look in the mirror and like my face, but all I see are pimples and eyebrows that need wax.

There are things that I like about myself, don't mistake my low self-esteem for utter self-loathing, but I do not like my body and I do not like my face. I don't know how to change it, if I could I definitely would.

What I do know is that I am tired of hearing that I am skinny. I don't feel skinny, especially because I have recently put on weight. I don't feel good about my body and until I do, the compliments feel like insults. They feel like eyes scanning over my muffin top and taking in my fat. If you are looking at me, clearly you can see how flabby I am, clearly you can see every ounce of extra skin and every stretch mark on my body.

I don't want you to see those things, I would hide from your eyes if I could. I would go away and not re-emerge until I had achieved my perfect body and somehow found a way to like my face. I wish that was an option, because I would take it. I don't know how to achieve my goals. I eat well. I run. I do yoga. But here I sit, having gained weight that I worked very hard to lose. Not feeling good in my skin and not feeling like I am presentable for the public.

I wish I knew why. I wish I understood my mentality. But all I understand is that I want to look a certain way and that I don't. I understand that until I meet my goals, I will feel fat. I understand that I do not want to be told that I am thin. I am not thin. I do not accept that.

I Threw a Fit.

My name is Molly. I am 28 years old. I just had a temper tantrum. I even threw my phone. I cried so hard that I had snot running down my face. What, may you ask, led to this? Well, the straw that broke the camel's back was the fact that I was asked to move my car. Instead of moving it, I had a tantrum. Now, I feel better. A lot better.

Obviously, the car was not the only reason that I lost it. I came home, mid-tantrum, and my best friend calmly told me that I have a tendency to let "one thing wreck my day." Well damn her for being right, because she is. I have problems. I have a lot of them. Right now, they seem huge. They seem like the end of the world and generally speaking, I don't know what to do. But, when it comes down to it, everyone has problems. Everyone probably thinks that their problems are huge and everyone probably should alleviate them by having a melt down.

I mean it.

Have a tantrum if you need to in order to feel better. Maybe don't throw your phone, because they are expensive, but if you need to scream... fucking do it. I'm glad that I did. If I hadn't I would probably still be stewing on my problems.

I think the thing is that I expect too much. I expect too much from life, I expect too much from myself, and I expect too much from other people. Things are not always going to go my way. In fact, lately, few things have come out the way that I have wanted them. I have to get used to that. I have to wrap my teeny tiny, pea-sized brain around the fact that life doesn't come on my terms. I have to live life on life's terms.

Sometimes that means I am going to have to continue using my Esca-legs to get around, that I need to find a new job, that I have to depend on the kindness of my friends to have a roof over my head. It means that my student loans aren't what I expected them to be and that I am not guaranteed to be a size 5 forever. It also means that I get to see my son off to school and pick him up from school. It means I might actually have the time to learn to ride my long board while I look for a job. It means that I can take the opportunity to learn to manage my money better instead of just spending it willy-nilly. It means that I have friends that love me and time to build strength of character.

Life is seldom what I want or expect it to be. Sometimes life is a big bag of dicks. No matter what, life is a gift. Life is beautiful. Life is growth. Life is change.

I learned today that I will probably always be in perpetual motion. I will probably always be in a state of chaos. What needs to happen is that I need to learn to handle the chaos and flow with it. I need to take a deep breath and not focus solely on the mud and the muck.

I came home mid-tantrum to someone who loves me unconditionally. I was told by that person that it is not as bad as I think it is. I believe her. And I also believe that what I really needed was a good cry.

Holy Blogsack.

Has it been a while since I blogged? I can't remember. I was too busy getting sober, wrecking my life, rebuilding my life, and going through multiple cycles of crazy versus sane. Crazy almost consistently wins out, however a lot of the time when I get crazy my hair just gets curlier. Just kidding, I wish.

The last year has been emotional, action-packed, adventurous, spiritual, chaotic, unstable, magical, beautiful, and weird. Weird works for me, so that is probably why this has been the best year of my life. As of September 8, 2014 I have been sober for one full year. I now reside in Washington and my oldest son, Archer, resides with me. We live with a friend, as I am looking for my own place, and I am finally back in graduate school. I hope to teach history to high school kids in a couple of years.

Today I decided to blog again because I am having a shitty day. You hear that? Shitty. It's utterly horrible. A few days ago, I hit an emotional bottom. I won't go into details, but I will say that it was through my own actions, my confusing self-will with spirituality, and my inherent ability to be a Olympic level chode. I found myself sober, but feeling hungover. I was actually physically ill. I decided then that a purge was in order. I started eating vegan, took a ton of time to pray and meditate, and did a ridiculous, semi-embarrassing amount of journaling. As a result of hitting my knees in an utter state of surrender, my Creator and I came to a few conclusions together. I won't go into the details of those, but I will say that they are basically the same things that kept me sober for a year and regarding which I had become lax. My Creator and I are still working through a couple of things, but I am confident that She (or he) will eventually slap me in the face hard enough that I will see reason and submit.

As a general rule, my life today is amazing. Sobriety has (mostly) taught me to love me. I wake up in the mornings and embrace the day. I do things and I enjoy the sunshine. I am healthy and fit. I have fallen in love with my children again and I have fallen in a different kind of love with my ex-husband. I have friends and I have standards and I have morals and I have values. I have both short and long-term goals. I have a spiritual life and a creative life and an active life. I have very little materially speaking, but I have so much that my heart is full.

There are times when I have to remind myself that stress and anxiety are temporary. There are days when I just want to lay down and sleep. There are times when I want to give in and call it quits, because it's hard. Being a grown up sucks and being sober means I have to do it while feeling every single feeling. But they pass, the feelings do. I have learned, absolutely, that feelings are temporary. Grace is permanent. And it is through Grace that I am sober today.

New World

My husband separated from the Navy about two weeks ago. He did this voluntarily. We both hold bachelor's degrees. Two months before he separated, my children and I moved to our final destination so that I could start to look for a job, which I have been doing since our arrival.

Today is December 4th and I still don't have a job. This is depressing in its own right, especially since I have applied for such a wide range of things. We have no income except for unemployment, which hasn't started yet. We had to apply for food stamps and I have contacted local organizations about getting Christmas presents for my kids.

Last night, we were out of food and our food stamps didn't hit our account until six p.m. One of my friends ordered and sent us a pizza so that we could eat before 10 p.m. Today, one of my friends found out that we didn't have money for Christmas gifts so she gave me a gift card to Sears that she had so that I could buy a couple of things for my kids. She also sent me an old cell phone because mine is broken and we can't afford to buy a new one. The food stamp case worker pushed our food stamps through on the first day when she heard our circumstances.

I am awestricken by how awesome people are. None of those people had to do those things and they did them. They didn't even seem to mind, which makes them even more awesome. On top of that, I am extremely grateful that these programs are available to me and my family. We would literally have no food if it wasn't for food stamps. Had they not gone through, we would have had to go to a food bank. I am so grateful that there are organizations that donate toys to kids who wouldn't get much of a Christmas without them.


I can't believe that my family is in this place. I never thought I would be calling charitable organizations asking what kinds of outreach they do because I needed them for my family. This is a world that I never imagined myself being a part of. As I watch my son's school uniform get smaller and don't see my job prospects getting larger, I find myself wondering if there are organizations that donate such things or if I am going to have to hope that I strike gold at the thrift stores.

This is a new world to me and I find that it fills me with mixed emotions. I feel gratitude, shame, embarrassment, stress, appreciation, hope, and sadness. I have never been here before and I hope that I am never here again. I also hope that I am not here for long. This is a world that no one should have to live in, however this is a world that will make you feel differently about what you have, had, and hope for. It is also a world that will teach you about yourself and your loved ones.

The Final Countdown.

This week is the end of my life as a Navy wife. Five long years later, and it feels good. It feels good knowing that by the end of this week, the Navy will never force separation on my family again. It feels good knowing that we won't have to deal with the long hours, degrading pay, and Navy bullshit anymore. I couldn't be happier about this step in my life.

I am also appreciative because I know that the separations are virtually the only reason my husband doesn't want to stay in the military. He likes his job, he's good at his job, he has friends at work that he will be giving up. Dave makes an excellent sailor and the Navy has been lucky to have him. I am lucky to have a husband who's willing to make such a big personal sacrifice, just to be in my presence.

I am excited because I am in my home town, near my family. I am looking to enter a master's degree program that I am really enthusiastic about, which makes me feel amazing. I am excited to enter the workforce and to get a break from my children. I have a race coming up soon, I am excited to see how I have grown as a runner. I am excited because this change leaves me with so much to look forward to.

However, the biggest emotion that I feel is sadness. I miss Washington so much that I can't even explain it. I am so sad that I am so far away, and will now be dealing with a lifestyle separation, from some of the best friends I have ever had. I am sad that I won't get the chance to make new friendships, because I feel there are more than likely a lot of great Navy wives that I didn't meet. I am sad that we are giving up being a part of such an amazing community.

I am sad that my kids had to leave their friends and that I don't know when we will see them again. I'm sad that we are saying goodbye to the life that brought us together as a couple and the life that turned us into the parents we have become. It's a huge deal to leave the Navy life. I wish I hadn't taken so much of it for granted. The future is bright, but the past is luminous.

Respeck.

Free to Be Me.

All I want right now is to cut my hair, dye part of it blue, pierce my septum, and finish my sleeve. I have been putting it off because after five years of being a stay-at-home-mom, I am finally looking to get back into the work force. I am having a hard time finding a job and I think that if I make myself look even more different than I already do, I won't be employable at all.

It's bumming me out because I am me, and I am proud of who I am. I wouldn't have all of these tattoos if I didn't like them, and I don't regret getting them. Having tattoos and wanting blue hair does not say anything about me, other than that I like blue and I like tattoos. In fact, I really don't like needles, even though I am tattooed.

I have a degree, and I plan on getting a graduate degree. I am smart and hardworking. I am really friendly and I learn quickly. I am clean and dress appropriately. I think that I am very employable. I just want to job where I don't have to wear a turtleneck and long sleeves, seeing as it is like eighty degrees here in October. I want a job where I can be me, even where my looks are concerned. I don't feel like I am asking too much.

I don't want to wear skimpy clothes. I just don't want to constantly be covering up all of my tattoos.  I hate that I can't do what I want to do with my hair, because of some stupid notion society has about what's acceptable. I look darn good with blue in my hair. I want to let my light shine. I don't feel like it's too much to ask. There has to be somewhere that I can get a job and still look the way I want to look.

I feel like everyone has a different light. Everyone has a different look. I really wish that I lived in a world where everyone was able to let their light shine through the way that they want. Purple hair, a mohawk, head to toe tattoos, piercings galore, a mu-mu, head coverings in public, all black, pastels only, bald, bearded, dread-locked- I don't care. It's all pretty as long as the wearer feels pretty. I think the important thing is to do what makes you feel like you light shines.

In my opinion, it is incredibly unfortunate that I feel like I can't let my light shine because I won't be able to get a job. Or I can choose to let it shine, and remain unemployed until I can find an accepting employer. We are all so beautiful and so different, we humans, it's a pity that we are so often compelled to conform.

My little Oyster.

Last night as I was dealing with my usual bout of insomnia, I was thinking about something that I have experienced multiple times recently. This leads me to a post that is going to have two parts, the first is going to be about choosing your words carefully.

Recently, a couple of different people have said to me that my younger son, Puff, must have gotten all of the personality between he and Archer. That sentence in itself is incredibly hurtful to me and would have been incredibly hurtful to Archer had he been the one to hear it. There are many other ways to describe my boys. Puff is definitely the more boisterous of the two. However, being outgoing doesn't necessarily mean that he has all of the personality. I won't pretend that I have never put my foot in my mouth before. I have done it many times and I probably do it at least once a day. However, when referring to someone's children or addressing their parenting tactics or home life it would always be prudent to choose your words carefully. Hurting my feelings regarding Archer is one thing, but had he heard these statements and been hurt himself it would have been a whole different issue.

Now on to the good stuff. The part about my little oyster. Puff is definitely more of an intense personality than Archer is. However, anybody who thinks Archer doesn't have much personality is sadly mistaken. In fact, that mistake says more about you than it does about Archer. What it says is that you haven't been let in by him, and that's probably with good reason. Archer only opens up to the coolest of the cool. He only becomes attached to people who truly deserve his love and attention. And when he opens up, you will find the most amazing pearl in the whole world. If Puff lets you in, it means that you smiled at him or, simply, that you are in the room. However, Archer is more selective regarding the people that he opens up to.

As far as personality goes, Archer loves to snuggle. He loves to play in the dirt and he enjoys collecting bugs. He knows lots of different bugs by name and he also knows their habits. He is well-versed in animals and sea-creatures. We have tried to put him in several different sports, but he would rather play the piano. He likes to talk to adults and tell them stories about Transformers and Thomas the Train. He prefers situations where adults talk to him one on one. He has excellent taste in movies and he loves zombies. He would be an amazing sidekick to have when the zombie apocalypse rolls into town. He is extremely perceptive and really witty. He is much like his dad in that he will suddenly use a big word and surprise you because you never imagined he would know the meaning of that word.

Archer loves people. He remembers people that he hasn't seen in years. He takes his attachments very seriously. He takes his friendships and relationships seriously. Archer doesn't like to kill bugs, he would rather set them free. He likes to give hugs. He likes pink and he also likes princesses. He has no concept that certain things are for boys and certain things are for girls, and I intend to keep it that way for as long as possible. He believes in magic and he lives in a world where superheroes are real. If we pass a red and black car, he generally assumes that it is Bumblebee and he is on an important mission.

Archer is not typical as far as boys his age go. However, to assume he has less personality than his brother is a gross underestimation. And, I say again, it really says more about you than it does about him. If you are reading this, and you know the Archer that I described, you should feel an incredible amount of pride. If that little oyster let you into his life, than you must be pretty special too. If not, you should take the time to talk to him. Your life will be better because of it. Mine is.

A Journey.

I know that I talk a lot about running, but that is because I love running. Running saved my life. Running picked me up out of a crippling depression that had been going on for years. Running lost me 60 pounds, which is great on its own but it also did wonders for the self-loathing I had been feeling for years. But most of all, running made me believe in God again.

I have been on a spiritual roller coaster for most of my life. I was raised Catholic, and my Catholic family didn't exactly make the religion appealing. My upbringing made me very leery of religion. It made me loathe spirituality and question God. It raised questions that have lasted until the present. I don't really have a lot of good things to say about Catholicism, but I won't go any further with it because I don't want to offend anyone. Suffice to say, I am not Catholic anymore and being Catholic wasn't a positive thing for me.

I have, at times, decided to try to find my way to God but I never have managed to. I dabbled in churches and never lasted long. But for the past year and a half, I have been growing closer to God without a church. It has been made abundantly clear to me that he exists and most of that has come to me through running.

It happens in various ways. Sometimes, I run outside and bear witness to beautiful things that point to God. Sometimes, I run and my thoughts wander and then become clear in a way that I can't really describe. Sometimes, it hurts so bad that I can't wait for it to be over but when I am done I feel like I conquered the world. Other times, I spend and entire run feeling grateful for my feet pounding the pavement and the breath in my lungs. All of it has inspired a level of gratitude within me that leads me to a level of faith that I have never experienced before.

For the first 25 years of my life, I had no desire to run. When I was young and hadn't baked and birthed babies, I didn't really need exercise to be in shape. After I became a mom, and when I started struggling with my weight, I tried all different sorts of exercise and nothing ever really stuck. I couldn't get into it. Then, suddenly, when I was at my heaviest and when I was at my most miserable I decided to buckle down and I started to run.

What followed can only be credited to God. I pushed through when I hated it, and I am not known for my perseverance. I started to lose weight, I started to love running. Here I sit nearly two years later, and running is the only thing in my life that I am 100% certain of. If I gain weight, I will still run. I look forward to it every day. I feel things and know things when I run that I don't feel or know at any other point during the day.

In my mind, it is like this perfect circle. When I needed running, God brought me to it.  I don't think that I just needed it physically, I think that God knew that running would bring me to him as well. God brought me running and running brings me to God every day.

I am writing this with a smile on my face and hope in my heart. I am enjoying the path that I am on and I am enjoying the journey that I am taking. I can say, with certainty, that I did not like my life nearly as much when God and running were not part of it. 

Wow....8 months later.

I can't believe that it has been eight months since the last time I blogged. I think that I have gotten very caught up in the business of life. I forgot that blogging can be cathartic and that it does good things for my mental health. I would make this the type of post that updates everyone on how I have been and what I have been doing, but to be honest I haven't been doing that much. In short, I still run and I still love it. I still parent and sometimes I love it and sometimes I wish that I could run away screaming and start a single life in a city somewhere. My husband was deployed and now he is back, however my kids and I are now living in a different state waiting for his service to end. He should be joining us in a month and a half. I graduated from college and am getting ready to start graduate school. I will be pursuing an MA in teaching. I think that's about it, and it is definitely the interesting stuff.



I decided to blog again because here I am alone with my kids again. By the time that 2012 ends, my husband and I will have only lived together for 4 months of the year. While I understand that this is a part of the military package, that doesn't make it suck any less. My husband is amazing. We have a wonderful relationship and I love him very much. On top of that, he is a great father and he is very involved. He helps a lot around the house and does more parenting than many men that I know. It has been a really long year for me.



I don't think that a lot of people are completely honest with the public about their feelings on parenthood. I know that, having been a stay-at-home-mom for the last five years, there is a lot of pressure in the stay-at-home-mom community to be all mommy all the time. You are looked down on or judged if you express an interest in a life outside of the home.A stay-at-home-mom is expected to enjoy every minute of it and to devote herself to it entirely. I know some moms who actually do, I know some moms who are honest about the moments that they don't. However, most of the moms I know just put something out there that I *personally* don't think they really feel.



We moms don't talk about how exasperating it is to try and keep a house clean all day long while the messes seem to keep popping up. No one understands how hard it is knowing that the words "go brush your teeth" are going to cause a tantrum but they have to be said anyways. No one especially understands the crushing feeling of having a million things to do, wanting to do them all right, and feeling like you will never get the five minutes you want to just sit there and breathe. I have felt that a lot this year. Being a stay-at-home-mom is defeating me. I am not giving my all to anything because I feel like it's never enough.



I am so tired all the time that I feel like having a job of my own would actually be refreshing. I feel like I would value my time with my children more if I worked outside of the home. I want to enjoy them, not wish that they would go play quietly away from me in their rooms. I want to look forward to the moments that I will share with them rather than dreading the moment that nap ends and I have to deal with more messes. On the weekends (or whatever my days off are) I would like to look forward to doing things with them rather than wishing for a moment of peace and quiet.



I love my kids so much. I love being a mom. I love being a wife. But I think that I need to get back in touch with Molly as a person. For a long time, school was all I needed to keep me anchored as a person. Then I added running and that worked like a charm. But, once again, I need to grow and I need to change. I need to work. I need to start making a life for myself outside of my home. I need to see myself as something other than a wife and mom and student and runner, because I have always known that I was capable of great things and I need to feel like I am doing them.



It's time for me to walk out the front door and grow even more than I already have in the last couple of years.

Celebrating My Babyman.

The child whose birth I am celebrating today is my miracle. Any mother of more than one child will tell you that you don't have favorites, but you do love each child differently. Your love grows and changes and your relationships with each child are different and special. My little Puff is my miracle. He is the baby that I have truly gotten to embrace and enjoy. He is the baby that brought me out of almost three years worth of depression and anxiety and into the light.

My sweet Babyman is my breath of fresh air. He is the smiling, mischievous, little chunk that I look forward to seeing every single day. I remember that one year ago, I was amazed by his beauty, but slightly disappointed that he had brown eyes. Now, I enjoy the sparkle of mischief he has in those dark brown beauties. I love the way that he reaches for me and says, "buh, buh, buh." I love his independent streak and I love how excited he gets to play and how efficiently he entertains himself.

The last year has been amazing because I feel like my sweet boy has helped me to come into my own as a mother. I am a better mother because of the sweet little boy who is one year old today. I can't wait to see him spend the next year developing his own personality and his own set of quirks. I love my sweet baby and I can't wait to watch him turn into my terrible toddler.

Happy birthday, Babyman.

Half-Marathon.

Last year, on March first, I started the Couch to 5k running program. I was about six weeks postpartum after having my sweet little Puff. I had been overweight since 2008, after I gave birth to my older son. I had always made really half-hearted attempts to lose weight after he was born, but I think that my depression really inhibited me and kept me from fully committing. However, last year something really clicked. I was fed up with the way my life was and I was incredibly tired of hating myself. I started that program and I also started Weight Watchers and I never looked back.

This hasn't been an easy road for me. I wasn't raised to eat well and exercise and I don't have the best habits. However, here I stand almost a year later, sixty pounds lighter and roughly eight sizes more trim. Weight loss has been wonderful. I can't even begin to explain the improvement in how I feel. But, there has been one other major gain from this life experience. It took me twenty-five years to figure it out, but, I am a runner.

I absolutely love to run. Nothing makes me feel stronger than running through the compulsion to stop. Nothing makes me feel more at peace than a good run. Running is a huge part of my connection with the world around me and the God that I am learning to believe in. I never knew I had it in me, and now it is something that I never want to lose.

After a couple of months of Couch to 5k, I entered my first 5k and I ran every step. I average 13:30 per mile, but I ran the entire time. Shortly after that, I registered for a couple more 5k races and my performance improved each time. Then, a friend and I trained to run a 10k. We did not end up competing, but running with her was one of the best things to have happened to me in 2011 and I increased my distance markedly. Then, it occurred to me that I wanted to challenge myself in a way that I never thought possible. I registered for a half-marathon. 13.1 miles of running and I was ready to dive in.

I trained hard, however I have been sick on and off recently and my husband leaving for deployment really hindered my ability to train as well as I would have liked. But I still trained and even though I was a couple of miles short in my training, I showed up for the race last Saturday, January 14, 2012. I was reluctant and I knew that my inadequate training was going to affect my performance. However, I still wanted to do it and I knew that I was able to run the majority of the distance.

It was a very cold, rainy Saturday with a prediction of rain. I don't own winter running gear, so I knew it was bound to be interesting. In fact, less than a foot off of the starting line and I ran right through a huge puddle. My feet were cold, my hands were freezing and I realized almost right away that I should have gone to the bathroom before I started. I kept running. The course was gorgeous and I kept reflecting on how I was doing something that I never imagined that I could do.

My mind would occasionally drift to my full bladder and my frozen, wet toes but I would remind myself to think about what I was looking at and I would take a moment to give thanks every time that happened. The things I generally thought of to give thanks for were my kids, my husband, my feet and legs that were allowing me to run, my friends who had supported me, and the finish line. Every single time my mind would drift, I went to what I was grateful for and it helped.

I finally came to a porta-potty at about five and a half miles. I lost about five minutes waiting in the line, but I kept jogging in place. Then, I took off again and that is when the magic happened. I had to run through a residential area and coming out of it there was a small downhill slope. The small hill gave a view of a lake and across the lake there was a beautiful mountain home. The scenery was glorious and I know that slowed down significantly as I came down that hill because I was so taken aback. Then, as I was staring in awe, two gigantic bald eagles (my favorite Washington feature) swooped down and tried to catch something in the lake. It was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen in my life.

I realized, at that moment, that I was blessed. I was a formerly obese woman, running in a half-marathon, with a deployed husband who was lucky beyond measure just to be there. If I had ever doubted that there was a higher power, those doubts were squashed. I took a deep breath, said a small prayer, and kept running. My GPS yelled in my ear a moment later and informed me that my average pace was still roughly a twelve minute mile. I was in mile eight of a half-marathon and I was hitting twelve minute miles. I kept on at that pace for another two or so miles.

It was then that my run went all to crap. I came through the out and back and I was starting to hurt and feel tired. My feet were so cold and wet that I was actually having some pain in my toes, and then I got lost. I ran about a quarter mile out of my way, up a hill before I ran into a runner who told me that I was going the wrong way. I ran with her to the fork where she went up to go to the out and back and I ran down to head toward the finish line. That mistake cost me about half a mile total and it happened right at the point when my run was getting difficult. I averaged fourteen minute miles the last mile and a half or two miles of my run. My spirits were low and I was just so freaking cold that the whole thing had started to seem absurd.

I was fantasizing about calling my friends to just come and get me, but I really wanted the medal I would get for finishing. I kept running, it was just an insanely slow pace and with an incredibly bad attitude. I was about half a mile away from the finish line when my GPS told me that I had completed 13.1 miles (because I got lost) and that my time was 2:56:??, I jogged a little bit farther before I decided that walking up to the college (where the race ended) would give me a cool down and that I had met my goal and done it not too terribly much over my goal. I walked in, until I saw my friends and they started yelling me to run across the finish. I ran across the finish line, collected my medal, and immediately went into some sort of hypothermia-related shock.

I have never felt so immediately sore after a run. First of all, I needed to get my socks off. My feet were ridiculously cold and wet and I was getting concerned that I might lose a digit. I also needed to stretch and eat and replace my electrolytes. I was shaking and my inner thighs were already seizing up. I did what any, rational girl would do. I went and got a cheeseburger and some hot cocoa with my friends. I also let my friend drive home and kept my feet under an eighty-degree heater the entire way.

It took a while to sink in, but in the past couple of days I have realized the magnitude of my achievement. Not only did I run 13.1 miles, I did it in the freezing cold without good gear. I ran 13.1 miles. I, Molly, ran the entire race. I worked through my mental and physical roadblocks. I ran 13.1 miles. I used to wheeze when I walked up my stairs, and I ran 13.1 miles. I ran 13.1 miles and managed to feel thankful and lucky to be doing it. I am still in total awe of what I accomplished.