Suburban Goddess

The moment I step out of the shower, I always call out, “Alex, what are you doing?” In the very short amount of time it takes me to wash my hair, I still worry that something unforeseen happens. It’s one of the disadvantages to being a single parent; there are things that occasionally require you to take you eyes off your kid, you just can’t help it. Like personal hygiene. And going to the bathroom.

I’ve been blessed with a pretty great kid, so I don’t usually worry about the time she’s unattended. She knows what she’s allowed to do and what is forbidden. But I think those times may be changing, because yesterday when I stepped out of the shower and asked, “Alex, what are you doing,” there was a moment of silence, a quiet crash, and this tiny answer:

“I don’t know.”

Immediately, the Mommy Radar kicked in. I didn’t even know I possessed this Mommy Radar, but those of you who experience it know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s kind of like how you instinctively know that the dog peed on the carpet; he just has this “look” about him. I quickly wrapped myself in a towel and ran to see what she was up to. She stood in her room, her eyes wide and her head turned down.

“What were you doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you not know what you were doing? Were you doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you MEAN you don’t know? Alex, WHAT were you DOING?”

Her eyes welled up with tears and she started to cry before mumbling, “I don’t know!”

Now I KNEW something was wrong. I looked around the room until my eyes landed on what was out of place. The hamster cage. The door was wide open, but the cage lay quiet. I looked to make sure he wasn’t playing Hamster Sausage, but alas… Hermie was gone.

“Where’s your hamster?”

“I don’t know!”

“Alex,” I said, exasperated. “Where is your freaking hamster? Which way did he run?”

Sniff, sniff. “I don’t know.”

At this point, my patience snapped. My mind raced with visions of a dead hamster turning up, or worse yet; a live one BEFORE I accidently stepped/crushed/cooked it. I knelt down to her level and looked her straight in the eye. “Alex, I need you to THINK. WHICH WAY did the hamster run?”

She pointed towards the closet. Great. Who knew the “monster in the closet” would be the size of a golf ball? I peeked under the dresser that I’d wedged inside to find two tiny eyes staring back at me. I reached my hand beneath the dresser and was promptly rewarded with two tiny teeth piercing my skin. A string of obscenities flew from my mouth as Alex started to cry harder, before an avalanche of stuffed animal rained down on my head. A tiny tan furball shot past… I started tossing plush animals in every direction before he returned to the safety of the dresser. I peered under again, this time to hear him hiss at me.

All the hamsters in the world, and I pick the Cujo of Hamsters.

I looked back at Alex, contemplating sending her in… then promptly admonishing myself for putting my kid in harms way. But hey, it WAS her mess… I took a deep breath and stuck my hand under again, getting the teeth but grasping the small furball despite the pain. With a quick flick of the wrist, he became a small curveball, landing safely inside his cage with a thud. I closed the wire door and fixed my very annoyed gaze on my daughter.

“What was RULE NUMBER ONE about the hamster?”

“Don’t take him out of the cage unless you’re in the room.”

“Why did you take him out?”

“I don’t know.”

And so it begins… the next page in parenting. I can only imagine the hamster bites that the teenage years will bring.

“You hardly ever update your blog anymore.”

“I haven’t been inspired lately.”

“I know. You’re totally not funny anymore.”

“Wow. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

It’s been yet another long week. BFD was out of town, which always puts a strain on me; something about my man being out of town makes me incredibly paranoid…. it MIGHT have something to do with the fact that my ex met his little playtoy on company trips. And while he was on those company trips, phone calls were scarce, or short, or non-existent (and now I know why). The worst were when he would call drunk… and I knew he was out, I would be afraid, but I never in a million years thought it would actually BE with another woman.

It’s amazing how some people irreparably damage you. I have deep-seated trust issues because of that loser.

He didn’t deserve me.

It’s still hard for me to separate his behavior from others; after all… it was seven years of this. Seven years of whole-hearted trust and belief that this man could/would never hurt me. It’s funny… it’s the ones you never see coming that seem to do the most damage.

I can credit it all to Chad Whitworth. Chad was a tall, lanky redhead who loved horses and the outdoors. I used to have the same P.E. class as his girlfriend; she was a tiny little thing, a nice girl named Sherry. She was older than me, and she would sit with me and my friend Crystal as we would read Anne Rice’s naughty Sleeping Beauty novels, giggling at the hard-core porn for girls. I had no interest in Chad; he was the best friend of MY best friend’s boyfriend. We hung out a lot at the stables… late night bonfires, pickup trucks and the smell of fresh hay. During the course of my friend’s relationship, Chad & I hung out more & more; eventually he & his girlfriend broke up and I became an unwilling rebound. It started innocently enough; he needed a shoulder to cry on, and I’m a great listener. He had a wonderful family, and we would meet at his house for movie night or hang out on his family’s back porch in the balmy Louisiana nights. We spent many hours on that back porch, just swinging and listening to the quiet rhythm of the cicadas…

Eventually, I grew to depend on him. He tried so hard; we would pass notes back and forth in the hallway between classes. While I wasn’t physically attracted to him, his gentle demeanor slowly crept into heart, until one day I came to the realization that I’d fallen in love with him.

Right about that time, he realized he was still in love with Sherry.

This is where my Woman Scorned Psychosis began. When someone you are not initially attracted to wears you down, creeps into your heart, convinces you that he *is* the one, only to turn around and say “NEVER MIND” as soon as you acquiesce… well, YEAH, it kinda PISSES ME OFF. I admittedly went psycho; my teenaged hormones were out of control back then. I said horrible things about him, made up lies about Sherry… I was a horrible person. To this day, my behavior back then still bothers me; they eventually got married and had kids, and I never heard from him again. But this began a deep aversion to the “Nice Guys” I encountered thereafter. I only had two types of relationships:

a) The Bad Boy. Inevitably, they would cheat on me, steal from me, lie to me or emotionally abuse me. But I KNEW they were an asshole, so it was okay; I expected pain and they delivered. After a while, the sane part of my brain would overpower the masochistic side and scream “ENOUGH!” Which would lead me to the next relationship with…

b) The Nice Guy. That I would promptly destroy before he could rip my heart out. I shudder to think how many missed opportunities of a normal life I squandered because of fear… as we would fall deeper into a committed relationship, the fear would overpower me until I found a way out. Usually there was a Bad Boy involved. And so the vicious circle ensued.

At this point in my life, my eyes are wide open. I’ve been going through some serious self-evaluation lately, and I really don’t want to repeat past mistakes anymore. It’s hard to change life-long habits; you find yourself in some pretty vulnerable positions, and unfortunately, sometimes you get hurt. I’m trying to take the hurt in stride… one thing I’ve discovered is that men can’t read a woman’s mind. Even if they could, they have no idea how to translate. So the deeper I sink into this relationship, the more I realize that my demons are not dead, but very much alive and well and waiting to come out to play.

But this time, it’s going to be different. This time, I’m going Buffy on their ass.

It all comes down to a fundamental question, one as simple and yet frustratingly unanswerable as the “chicken or the egg” dilemna:

Can people change?

My answer used to be a whole-hearted and resounding NO.  But then, that means that I cannot change, and there are those who would testify that I AM a different person. I have to believe that I HAVE changed, otherwise I’m doomed to repeat this vicious cycle for the rest of my life… and I can’t bear that thought, not only for my own sanity, but for the sake of my daughter as well.

In the past 48 hours, I’ve seen three stunning displays of infidelity. Not minor displays, mind you, like a lustful glance or a slightly inappropriate flirt…. no, I mean, “THIS GUY IS A TOTAL PIG” type of infidelity.

It scares the crap out of me.

Are ANY of you guys faithful?  Or do women need to come to the conclusion that you will always be looking, scheming, or plotting to upgrade behind our backs? Is it the company I keep, or are my encounters just remarkably disproportional because I have “JERK MAGNET” stamped on my forehead? I am sad for the women in their life… do they know what they are committed to? Is it my place to tell them? Would it matter anyway?

Is this just the reality of life in the new millinium?

“It doesn’t matter where you work up the appetite, just as long as you eat at home.”

Are you kidding me?

Over the course of the past few months, my life has changed drastically. Again. Nothing in it is recognizable; I’m in a constant state of change.  Some people would be excited by that; me, I live in a constant state of panic. A funny thing happens when you live in a heightened state of anxiety; you don’t realize you’re not eating. You’re not eating because food lies on a higher plane in the realm of survival; without emotional stability, you don’t really give a crap about food.

So now that I have a “normal” job again (translation: a job that requires me to shower and look presentable), I pulled out all my professional clothes that went to the back of the closet when I lost my last corporate job. But something was different; all my “fat girl” clothes hung loosely around my hips… (I had no boobs to start with, so tops are ALWAYS baggy).  I reached behind those clothes to that stash that every woman keeps in her closet; the “I’ll-get-back-into-these-someday” section. But try as I might, I haven’t been able to get there…

…until now.

These are clothes that haven’t seen the light of day in six years. These are my pre-Alex clothes. These are the clothes I’d pretty much given up all hope of ever getting into again but refused to throw away out of sheer stubborness and a total state of woman’s denial. And without any focus whatsoever on my physical appearance, I finally fit in them again.

Happy day!

I have six tiny dresses (and five new pairs of shoes) that are screaming for a field trip….

I was driving Alex to her aunt’s house when she pointed to a tuft of grass on the side of the road.

“Mommy, you can’t pee on there.”

“What??”

“You can’t pee on there. On the grass.”

I furrowed my brow as I was trying to figure out what she was talking about.  “Who told you that, baby?”  Since we were close to her father’s house, I figured it was something bone-headed he’d told her. But she shook her head.

“Nobody told me. I just know.”

“Then how do you know?”

“Because it says No P on that sign….see?”

BFD and I have had quite a few heated discussions lately; his ability to push my buttons drives me to insanity in record time. The other evening, we met to take Alex for ice cream, and while drivng him back to his truck, there was another discussion that sent my voice into the glass-shattering range again. It’s never an *angry* conversation; he just likes to antagonize me until I squeak (which was difficult for a while when I lost my voice; when I’d hit the Squeak Range, my voice would drop completely, much to his delight).

As we went back and forth, Alex tried repeatedly to get my attention.

“Mommy! Where are we GOING?”

“Delirious Hills,” mumbled BFD.

“Oh. Are we getting out?”

I glared at him as he smirked back at me.

And people wonder why I’m prone to bouts of insanity.

“Mommy, I want to hear the dot song.”

“The dot song?”

“The polka dot song.”

“Baby, I don’t know what song you’re talking about.”

“You know, the polka dot face song.”

(pause)…. “You mean, Poker Face?”

“Yes, that one.”

(snicker)

Here lately, it feels like I’m been flamed more than usual. I have a stalker on the Chron blog, my ex-boss sent me a vicious email claiming that I’m incapable of doing what I said I could, and an ex-co-worker decided to take a cheap shot at me on a friend’s public profile.

It seems like the harder I try to be nice, the nastier people are. So that go me thinking…. am I really that nice after all?

My ex-boss; I’ll give him a pass. I mean, I did flame his wife in a public forum. While in my mind, I felt I was just venting (and I had NO IDEA they even knew I had a blog), I deserved that one. I had no right blasting them in public the way that I did. So I’ll eat that karma sandwich.

The blog stalker? Well, I guess I kind of deserve that as well… but only because I put everything out on the Internet. While there’s no excuse for nastiness, it’s only expected when you put your life out there and open it up for comments.

But the last one really annoyed me. I’ve crossed some people in my life… sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. When I was younger, I was really a raging witch at times. But when I had Alex, it grounded me (somewhat) and I realized that the world wasn’t going to get any better if people didn’t make an effort…. starting with me. So a kinder, gentler Christina was born.

But not before I pissed this woman off.

I don’t even remember what I did to her, but whatever it was, she’s a grudge holder. It’s been over SIX YEARS, and she still lashes out at me with venom. I thought she might be joking for a moment, and then I realized she wasn’t. And I wondered… what the heck did I do that she would still carry so much anger towards me six years later? I had tried to apologize to her, but she was nasty to me then, too… choosing to call me two-faced and backstabbing, and just getting more upset as I tried to explain that I was no longer the same person I’d been.

So I was quite surprised to see her flame me yet again, years later, on a friend’s Facebook account. I’d even forgotten the woman existed, but she obviously still remembers me with a red flame burning in her heart… and I wonder how some people can carry so much anger. I mean, I’m still angry at my ex-husband, but not like this woman is angry at me. I don’t know if I should pity her, or flame her back.

I mean, I like to let the claws air out sometimes…. but I know it’s not the right thing to do.

The other evening Alex & I were cleaning up the house. I usually turn some music on to keep us motivated, so I scrolled down the playlist until I found something I wasn’t sick to death of hearing. I settled on Harold Flatermeyer’s “Axel F,” an 80’s classic. When the first notes started to twinkle out of the speakers, Alex’s head popped into the doorway.

“Mommy, are you watching Space Chimps?”

“Huh?”

“That song. That’s from my Space Chimps movie.”

I’d forgotten all about that. With a smile, I answered, “No, baby, that’s just the music. No movie.”

“I like this song, Mommy.”

“Me, too,” I laughed as she danced out of the doorway back to her room. A moment later, I headed down the hallway, peeking in to watch her dance around her room…. just like I did to the very same song over 20 years ago…