Day TwentyTwo: Regret.

Something you wish you hadn't done in your life.

I don't regret many things. I learn from the bad experiences and move on. Except for one gigantic time period that is: adolescence.

I wish I wouldn't have been so sensitive to the bullies. I wish I hadn't spent night after night crying in high school, cutting myself (with a lady bic razor no less) to dull the pain. I wish I could look back on those years and smile with nostalgia instead of grimacing with thoughts of how painful things were. I wish I hadn't let it all get to me so much, because really, it all seems so far away now, so not worth the tears and heartache.

Yet still, after all those painful years, I wear my heart on my sleeve but I do it proudly at this point. I don't see it as a bad thing, I see it as something that is a part of who I am; something that lets me experience life in a way that many people never will.

People.

They are generally assholes, self-serving assholes. I know this to be fact, but I still let myself care too much and I let myself trust when really I should have known better.

I am cursed with my heart on my sleeve and a vain hope that people can change and people are good.

That's not how it really is and I know it. Hopefully, I will be wiser from this point on.

Complicated.

Come up to meet you,
Tell you I'm sorry,
You don't know how lovely you are
I had to find you, Tell you I need you,
Tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets, And ask me your questions,
Aww let's go back to the start
Runnin' in circles, Comin' our tails,
Heads on the science apart

Nobody said it was easy
It's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Aww take me back to the start

I was just guessin',
At numbers and figures,
Pullin' the puzzles apart
Questions of science,
Science and progress,
Do not speak as loud as my heart

Tell me you love me,
Come back to haunt me,
Oh when I rush to the start
Runnin' in circles,
Chasin' our tails,
Comin' back as we are
Nobody said it was easy
Aww It's such a shame for us to part

Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I'm goin' back to the start

Heavy Stuff.

Hi, my name is ________ and my father is an Alcoholic.

Growing up we had a lot of communication issues and looking back, it was mostly because he was always loaded between the hours of approx. 3pm and bedtime (which for him, was about 9 or 10pm). Don't get me wrong, my dad worked his ass off for my family...working crazy amounts of overtime while I was little to make ends meet. Neither of my parents went to college, and I have an older sister and brother. We were probably teetering on the edge between working and lower middle class growing up.
The majority of time I spent with him on weekends involved getting Shirley Temple's and playing the jukeboxes at the VFW and Legion Hall....I loved it then, and never thought twice about how taking your 10 year old daughter to a bar wasn't exactly appropriate.

He was never physically abusive, but there are a few select incidents that were pretty emotionally and psychologically trying. One of which took place when I was in high school. It was a screaming argument that ended with me locking myself in the bathroom because I was afraid he was going to hit me, and then I told him so through the bathroom door, which made him even more angry, that would I think such a thing.

As an adult, things really cemented themselves around Christmas of 2006. My brother was home from leave from Iraq (he's in the Army Reserve) and my dad began drinking around 8am the day brother was set to head back to his post before going back overseas. I was headed to my hometown to meet them, my dad, mom, sister and brother at the Moose Lodge (another "club" type bar Dad has added to his daily routine of drinking places) around lunchtime. Well, I get almost there, when my sister calls and says they called an Ambulance, because they thought my dad was having a stroke. He couldn't talk and wasn't coherent. By the time I was right near my parents house, my sister calls again and says they are headed home, he came to as they were trying to put him in the ambulance and was very angry and confused. So I meet them at the house, and they pull in, and I have to help my father into the house because he is completely blitzed, the drunkest I've ever seen him and he is yelling about my mom overreacting.

My mother is just about hysterical, crying out of anger, fear and frustration. The woman has dealt with this for almost 35 years at this point, and she tells us about how her father was the same way and she's done with dealing with Dad and it was a whole gnarly wad of awkwardness...since we're very uncomfortable with dealing with stuff like this in my family.

That was the day it all clicked for me. All the miscommunication as a child, and the repeating of myself because he wouldn't remember things the next day, because I told him the night before when he was drunk.

Now in the past few years since this incident, my dad has been diagnosed with Angina. Right now, he is on blood thinners and all kinds of meds to regulate his heartbeat, because its beating is irregular. My mom said the bottom part of his heart is right on but the top part isn't in sync.

Has he stopped drinking while on all this medicine? Of course not.

He had a procedure this morning, which was supposed to fix things, and it didn't work. Plus they told my mom it took a lot more than it should have to put him under. I don't know much about anesthesia, but I'm guessing since he is always drunk, it takes a lot more to make him pass out?

The man is seriously going to drink himself to death.

I'm sorry this post is such a bummer. I just can't quite get this out of my head today.

...

(editor's note: I had typed about my few short relationships before Fiance, but decided they don't even matter, cause it's in the past)

fast-forward to 2005.  I was bored with the single life.  Dating a bunch of guys since the break up who I knew were no good for me led me to a particularly bad guy which made me hang up the reins for a while.  Then along comes Fiance.

Things have been so different with us.  We took things so slow in the beginning I can't believe I had the patience for it....all I could tell my friends was, "its so different with him than how it was with anyone else" blah blah blah.  We didn't see each other much so we appreciated the time together so much more.  All his baby related drama has never really been an issue for me, I want him including all the stuff that entails him.

So, my point I have finally arrived at...if our relationship was so different in the beginning...so great and shiny and we never fought about anything and all that jazz....how come we have fallen into the same problems all relationships have?  Okay, wait, I know the answer to that...its normal, thats what happens, but I have to point out, things were better before we were officially engaged.  Its this fucking wedding.  Not the fact that we are getting married.  The whole lifetime together part of the bargain doesn't cause us any strife, its August 29 that is causing all the problems.

Ever since we got engaged things have sort of gone to shit in my eyes.  Not the fundamentals of our relationship...we love each other and are going to be together and that is the bottom line, but all of the sudden, the way we talk to each other has mutated into something I don't like.  I don't feel like he knows me at all sometimes...like we have the same argument and he can't just take me at face value and realize I'm flawed and not tell me to stop worrying and be sort of stand offish about it, but hug me and tell me its okay.  Oh and that NOT fighting a lot in the beginning is biting us in ass because we aren't seasoned in it yet....I'm not used to it and most of the time, it just makes me cry....more because I'm angry than sad, but sometimes its both.

He (STILL) doesn't seem to get how all the stupid fucking wedding related stuff is all on me.  I haven't done anything for it in two weeks, including talking about it and he jumped all over me about wanting to go to the tux place just to get prices.  And he acts like a fucking 5 year old kid "well how long is it going to take" and sighs and acts like I'm making him go with me to a book club meeting full of women who all happen to be on their periods (I'm not even in a book club, and if I was, he wouldn't be invited, but you get what I'm saying.)

I let it go today.  Whatever the men are wearing that is.  I told him I done with it, and he can figure it out himself since he made it clear he wants a say in what he wears early, but now when I want to get it taken care of when we have nothing else going on, he gets his panties in a bunch about it.

We should have fucking eloped.

I hate wedding planning.

I pick my battles...

So yesterday...my lovely bf (of almost three years) basically told me his band is more important than our wedding date....this is the man who wants to buy a house with me...who lets me help him pay his bills, and let me help him buy his car. And it may have been me misinterpreting things, but this is (basically) how it went:

me: "so I looked up OSU's schedule for next fall (yes, I am being kind enough to schedule around OSU football in order to have my wedding in the fall like I want) and they play New Mexico State on October 31 so I doubt it will be an 8pm game, so how do you feel about getting married on Halloween?"
him: "Halloween is a busy time for shows, and I don't want my anniversary that day because then I'll have to turn down shows because its my anniversary."
me: "The 31st isn't always going to be on a Saturday"
him: "well it will be once every seven years" (he said this being completely serious)
me: "so you'll have to turn down a show on Halloween once every seven years...so what?"
him: *ROLLS HIS EYES AT ME* and goes on to say something like, it just shouldn't be on any holiday because people have family stuff........all I can think is....most of the people at the wedding are going to be FAMILY. Plus I've never, ever had a family tradition on halloween, or even known a family to have one.

At this point, I say something along the lines of...I don't want to talk about this anymore because it doesn't even matter because we aren't even engaged. Plus he hurt my feelings but I didn't want him to know that. So I get real quiet and fight the tears and try and not be mad, because if I get mad, he won't feel bad, he'll just be frustrated and mad as well. And I'm way more hurt than mad anyways.
So I get online and I delete my offbeat bride tribe account...and the subscription to the Knot website as well (I didn't use that one much anyway....it overwhelmed me) and I am refusing to talk about it until there is a ring on my finger. I'm going to try my hardest not to think about it either. Then I volunteer to walk the movie we have out from the library back just to get away from him.

I will give him this: he works for a crappy company that is owned by really old, rich, republicans and they refuse to turn on the furnace until the end of November or something to save on money, and he spent the whole day freezing and said he felt like he was getting a cold. Plus a guy he works with, who had been there for 3 or 4 years got fired for financial reasons and that bummed everyone out. So I could have chose a better time when he was in a better mood to bring it up, but still....

If he brings up house buying again, I'm totally shutting him down on it. If we aren't in a financial place for him to be able to afford a ring, we have no business making such a huge investment. And just the fact that he doesn't seem to be making an effort to even go window shopping for them with me pisses me off. I've told him 4 or 5 times now, we need to go look and get an idea of price before anything else but I doubt he has ever heard me.

So I'm pretty sure he knows I'm upset. I cried a little when we went to bed and turned away from him and he rubbed my back without me asking (which he NEVER does).

I just wish he would hurry up and propose. I've definitely put in my time :)