Yes people I am a klutz...

I'm well known in my social circle for being a klutz.  If there is a unique way to hurt myself in any given situation I'll find it. If there is a rare virus I'll catch it. If there is an accident waiting to happen then it will happen to me.

I rolled down a hill once while carrying a giant stock pot of hot chili and got lodged under a parked Buick, dislocating my shoulder, burning my boobs, and taking all the skin off my knees and hands.

I managed to roll my Chevy three times and land back on the tires, facing traffic.

I nearly died from a severe kidney infection.

I woke up one day and half of my face was paralyzed.  After testing it was determined that I caught a virus called Bells Palsy.  The paralysis lasted 8 weeks.

I broke my wrist tripping over my own feet and landing with my hand in a metal bucket of hot, soapy mop water while working at the mall in high school.

And today...  today I nearly drowned myself in my own cup of coffee. How does one do this?  Well first you have to take a big, unlady like gulp of hot coffee.  Then at the exact moment you are going to swallow it you have to sneeze.  Voila - you suck all that coffee into your lungs... Then you start turning pink, so violet, to lovely shades of blue as your significant other is pounding on your back and you are desperately trying to suck air into your burning, gurgling lungs.  Sound like fun?  Wanna give it a try? 

That was 6 hours ago and I'm still coughing, and when I do I have the faint taste of coffee in the back of my throat... lovely... 

I wonder what new and imaginative way I'll manage to damage myself next.

1 year ago today...

He called, demanding that I pick up the dogs from his house. I refused, it was after ten at night and I was just getting ready to hop in the shower.

The next thing I know he's at my door. He tries to talk me into coming out to his car to grab the dogs. Again I refuse. He tries to get me to come out to his car to get a bag of dog food. I tell him to keep it - I have my own bag.

When it's clear I won't come out to his vehicle he walks out and stands beside it for five to seven minutes. I just want him to leave. I just want a hot shower and my bed, I have to work in the morning. All I have on is my bathrobe and I feel vulnerable. I figure the fastest way to get rid of him is to see what he's doing.

On my front porch I see him grab a long, black plastic case with a center handle from his car. He says, "I told you I bought Chef a guitar right?" I think to myself, "well that's the weirdest guitar case I've ever seen, it's so narrow. I'm sure he bought some piece of shit toy thing that won't work and I'll get to fix it when she's disappointed."

I turn around and walk into my house, he follows immediately behind me. I don't notice him locking the door as well as the deadbolt. I sit on the couch, my back to him. I fiddle with my cell phone that I put into the pocket of my robe. I remember thinking, "maybe someone will call and I'll have an excuse to get him out of my house." I hear him behind me fiddling with the case and I assume he's pulling out this weird guitar to show me.

In a moment he says to me, dead calm, kind of a low, slow tone. "So we really aren't getting back together are we?"

"no... we are never getting back together"

"Well this won't take long" and like a slow motion dream I hear the familiar sound of a gun being cocked opened. Not that I have any experience with firearms at all, but I've seen enough movies. I've heard that sound a thousand times over on the big screen. I look over my shoulder and I see him removing shells from his pocket and loading them into the chamber of the rifle. It's pointed directly at my head.

I slowly stand up, backing towards the door I dial 911 on the cell phone in my pocket. When I hear the operator's voice I life the phone to my ear and say, "my ex husband is in my house with a gun I need the police NOW."

She asks me if I can get out of the house. I tell her I don't know. She tells me to run, just run and don't stop until I get someplace safe. I'm pulling on the doorknob and I can't figure out why it won't open. I see the deadbolt and I flip it open. I pull again... it still won't open. I'm starting to get frantic, I feel trapped. I'm sweating and my blood is pounding in my ears. It occurs to me that the door is locked, and I flip it open.

Suddenly it's a rush of cold night air and I'm running. I hear him behind me on the patio yelling "YOU DON'T WANT TO DO THAT!" I keep running down the driveway. It is near total darkness, no street lights and only a few lights from local houses. I head to one of those lights in the neighbors house.

A sudden explosion of pain in my right foot sends me to the ground. I land on my right shoulder feeling it shoved out of its socket. Another explosion of pain makes my vision blur. I don't feel like I can take a deep breath as I crawl on my hands and knees to my neighbor's door. I pound furiously. I can still hear him screaming in the distance.

My neighbor answers the door. I tell him what happened. I'm still on the phone with the police. I must have given them my address by this point. They tell me that help is on the way. My neighbor hides me in the closet of a back bedroom with his teenage daughter and his wife. He's also on the phone to the police. I keep apologizing over and over for bleeding on their floor. My foot looks like raw hamburger and my arm is hanging limp, useless, and at an unnatural angle.

The police arrive a few minutes later. They get me out of the closet. They hurry us out of the house. I see the SWAT team arrive as they lock me in the back of a police car. I call my best friend and his family before someone searches me and takes my phone. For three hours I'm questioned, I'm forced to write a statement with my dislocated arm. My cell phone is confiscated. I'm nearly naked - still in nothing but my bathrobe, cold, and injured. They won't tell me where my children are. I'm frantic, having convinced myself that he killed them before he came to kill me. I am honestly and truly, for the first time in my life, hysterical.

The rest is a blur. At some point the police finally inform me that they found my children alive and well at his home. My former in-laws picked them up and they are safe. They take me to the station and lock me in an interview room. After approximately four hours I demand they let me go or charge me with a crime and get me a lawyer. I demand my cell phone be returned to me. I call my best friend. She comes to get me.

At some point in the wee hours of the morning he surrenders and they remove him from my home without further incident or injury. He's arrested. My life is never the same again.

I have to tell my children that their dad won't be coming back to them for a long time. I have to make statements to the police again, get a restraining order, contact my land-lord, get medical attention, call my employer, and try not to break into a million little pieces.

One year ago today I became a person I never imagined I could be. I became a victim, a single mother, a survivor.

One year ago today I changed.

Tend your own garden please....

I'm a little heartbroken today. The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of changes. For the most part they've all been wonderful, welcome, and wanted.

However hanging over all of these new adventures and opportunities is a dark cloud. My father is very concerned for me and the kids. I understand this, I accept that he is doing his "daddy job" and trying to protect me. But I'm a grown woman, I'll make my own decisions, and if this is a mistake it's MY mistake to make. I've shared my personal fears and hopes and dreams with my former sister in law during all of this, whom I had always considered one of my closest friends and allies.

Well today she stabbed me in the back in the worst way. She broke my heart a little to be honest. My mother called today to let me know that I can't talk to J anymore. She doesn't have my best interest at heart and she's trying to sabotage me. Apparently yesterday J (who works for my families business part time on the weekends for extra money) got my father all worked up in a tizzy. She told him personal things I had confided in her. She pushed all his buttons and it was like poking a hornet's nest with a stick. There has been major fall out.

I always new J was bitter about her disastrous love life but I never knew she would let that poison our relationship. In the span of five years she has been divorced twice. Once from my brother, and again from the man she married less than a year after knowing him. She is in "man hater" mode these days, looking for evil intentions in every act, having no faith in men in general. I told her, "I believe in love, I believe in marriage. I believe the right two people can be happy together."

Her exact words to me were, "well I hope everything works out for you, but I have very little faith that it will" Well that in turn became her telling my father that BLT has no business moving here. That my parents were foolish to hire him. That it is a disaster waiting to happen, that my children are in danger, that I'm in "la la land" and calling BLT my "boy toy" basically feeding into all my father's fears for the girls and I. It doesn't matter how I feel, or what our history is... she pulled no punches.

She meddled in my life, in things that are none of her business. She caused a huge fight between my father and my mother, a screaming match apparently and she just stood back with a vile little smile on her face. My mother's stance is that I'm a grown woman and she trusts me, that it's none of her business and she is here to support me no matter what. My dad wants her to take his side, to stand by his prude, outdated moral stance.

Why would she do that? What benefit is it to her? What does J gain by trying to ruin what small amount of happiness I've managed to find?

She told my parents that she doesn't think they had an business helping me when I got divorced or when the X came to my house with a gun and went to jail. "Nobody ever helped me, I had to do it all alone." WTF??? She did not! She gets child support from my brother every month. She got help from my former in laws who treated her like extended family, she had my parents giving my brother extra cash so that he could buy her out of her share of their house. Directly and indirectly she got plenty of help...she still does. I've watched her children for her, and helped her in any number of other ways.

Why would she do this? I just don't understand. Why is my personal life open for their discussion and involvement anyway? What gives either of them the right? Why can't they just be happy for me?

I shed more than a few tears today... I'm so confused and hurt. I want to confront her, but really... what would I gain? I have trust issues to begin with. I should know better. I don't share, I don't talk to people, I keep my problems and my fears and my feeling to myself with the exception of about three people, well now two people. I should never have opened up to her... lesson learned. Trust no one. Tend your own garden. Don't give anyone the ammunition to hurt you.

Thanks for the hard cold lesson J. It won't be forgotten.