Blossoming

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Anais Nin

I've been struggling to begin posting again. As it turns out finding the door is the easy part. Walking through the darned thing is painfully difficult.

Summing up 2008 - well that could be difficult as well. I have decided however to adopt a new motto in writing.

JUST DO IT.

It doesn't have to be good. It just has to get done.

So, here I am. I've walked through one hell of a door. I'm standing on the other side of it and my head is still spinning.

In June my husband and I made the decision to part ways. As it turns out no amount of therapy will ever change the fundamental essence of a human being. Trying to make someone into the person you want to be with is a worthless endeavor. I don't regret what I learned in the eleven year relationship, but I am saddened at the amount of misery and hurt that we were able to visit upon each other in that time.

The biggest binding factor in staying for so long was my fear of losing my step-kids. It turns out that when I decided to take the leap everything fell into place. I keep wondering what I did right to have things turn out in my favor against such odds and in such an unconventional situation. I approached my step-kids, my husband, and the biological mother with the same proposition - let me keep the kids.

I had made arrangements to move the three of us to my best friend's ranch. Over the last year the two families already living on the ranch have become the family that I've always wanted. I have found the peace and love in their presence that I had nearly ceased believing existed. The kids have spent many weekends with me there - and they had found the same comfort and sense of belonging that I had. So with the two of them in agreement, and the blessing of their parents, the three of us have made our move 40 miles north of the area we have called home for the last decade.

Please, don't think for a moment that I am giving up the reigning title as "wicked stepmother". They still laugh when I say it, but I haven't made things any easier on them. Without the constant household struggles that we have all endured I am able to focus alot of attention on them, their homework, grades, chores, and behavior that I didn't previously have the energy to devote to those areas. And they have four other adult figures that really don't give them much room to shirk the higher level of expectations. And yet still - they endeavor - and maintain that this is where they want to be.

They both just started their freshman year in high school. I am not a fool - and I understand that they may decide in the near future that this is too hard. They could very well decide to take the easy road - and as I have no legal claim to them there is little I could do to stop them. I'm not letting that scare me though. I'm not going to back off and make it easy to keep them from wanting to leave. They are 14 and 15 years old - and their decisions now are their own in a much broader sense than most of their peers.

They aren't angels either. The lengths that I have already had to go to in the first two months of their HS careers trying to get and keep them on task have been exhausting. I just have to maintain my faith that in the end this will for the best. Any success that they achieve now will help forge the path to a happier future for them. And if I were to do any less to help them I would have regrets that I'm not willing to carry through the rest of my life.

So now I find myself a different woman than I was in the spring of 2008. Autumn frost is settling over the landscape and I am having to take an accounting of my harvest through the past season. I believe that I have come out ahead - possibly for the first time in my life. As I look down the road towards winter I believe that I have laid in the emotional provisions that I need to make it to the next season, the next planting, the next door.

I owe many updates to the information that I've posted previously - and I will get to them soon. For now this song is running through my head:

A bear climbed over the mountain
A bear climbed over the mountain
A bear climbed over the mountain
To see what he could see.

He saw another mountain
He saw another mountain
He saw another mountain
And what do you think he did?

He climbed another mountain
He climbed another mountain
He climbed another mountain
And what do you think he saw?

He saw another mountain
He saw another mountain
He saw another mountain

And what do you think he did?

I don't think I'll ever stop finding doors. At least I hope not.