Spring?

Its 10:30 on a Tuesday. At this time, I should be in third period, seventh grade United States History. Instead I am home in my sweats doing laundry. Snow day! It's currently sleeting out, my guess is that there is around 7 inches of snow outside. Don't get me wrong, I like snow days but a snow day the day before the official start of spring really stinks. I'm so over winter. I also have determined that whatever they say about New York having four seasons is a lie, there are only two seasons, winter and summer. Hopefully within the next month or so, I'll be complaining about how warm the weather is...

The loss of a "good" child

I am a very passive person.  I hate fights and arguments.   I work in a middle school and this week I lost it and yelled at the kids in my eighth period class.  I had not done that in years and I felt really bad about it.  I try to avoid confirmation and I never intend to cause people any grief.  Unfortunately, in the last few years I have caused my mom great suffering. It's true, what I have done seems minuscule to most people, but all this is a big deal to my mother...I have given up on religion.  Not  all religion, but I just don't agree with the one she raised me in.  I haven't fully left the Jehovah's witnesses, but I'm really teetering on the edge, barley  hanging onto the religion.  She knows how I feel, and she knows that I stay for family reasons but she still hasn't accepted my decisions yet.

But that's not the only problem.  I'm in a relationship with a non witness.  This is a big no-no to the witnesses.  They want you to only date and even be friends with other witnesses. This is one of many JW teachings I cannot agree with.  Anyway, a phone call with my mom the morning got me thinking of the stages a loss which are:

• Denial, numbness, and shock
• Bargaining 
• Depression
• Anger
• Acceptance

I think my mom is grieving the loss of what she thinks is the ideal child.  Although I'm 32 years old and I'm really not a child, I had followed mostly everything she told me right up until the time I turned 30.  So back to her grieving, she's not at all doing the stages of loss  in order, I think her first reaction to it all was bargaining.  She tried to make deals and plea bargains with me.  Then  it was anger, there was a point when  she was really, really angry with me.  Then she fell into a depression over me.  Now I believe she's in denial.  On the phone this morning she was asking me where I would be attending the JW conventions this summer (I don't think these are a big deal anymore) and then she said something very weird.  It snowed overnight here on the east coast.  She then told me to be careful shoveling because she knew a women who recently fell while shoveling and miscarried her child.  My response to this was "I'm not pregnant". Her response to me was "of course you're not pregnant you don't have a partner".  Yep, she's in denial.  So that leaves only one more stage to go through, that's acceptance.  I hope this happens soon.

Daylight Savings

Its Daylight Savings time this weekend.  Most grumble at the thought of losing the hour of sleep Saturday night into Sunday.  But this day is celebratory for us.  It was exactly a year ago on the Saturday evening before daylight savings time that I first attacked him.  The weapon of choice was my lips.   It started as a somewhat normal Saturday evening; I brought a few drinks over to his house.  At that time I had the hugest crush on him, and my sober self could almost pretend that I didn't.   It  was hard to hold off my feelings after a number of flavored vodka shots. 

I barely remember the events leading up to the “attack”.  I remember us having a fair amount of distance between us.  I remember him saying "I really dig you".  I remember smiling and thinking to myself "maybe he likes me back".  Somehow in between all these thoughts, I acted  on my feeling and  the next thing I remember was sitting on his lap, kissing him and enjoying every second of it until, he played this song for me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Df5dmYvmB4

The verse in the song about it being just one night kept playing in my mind.  Of course my drunk self had no control of the words that started to spill from my mouth, "but I love you" I told him.  I went home that night in tears.  What had I done?   Had I destroyed my relationship with my very best friend?  I woke up late the next morning, in between looing the hour of sleep and the tears I didn't feel like facing the world.

But the story doesn’t end here.  This is only the beginning, something happened.  Our friendship stayed intact and  a loving relationship started to flourish.  Originally, we would share a few kisses every now and then.  Then this developed into almost daily visits, texts and phone calls.  When exactly did we become a “we” I can't pinpoint a first date or being asked to be his girlfriend, but  I can point to daylight savings time as being the day that spark officially began. 

So we will celebrate a year of mostly smiles and pure bliss, and sometimes tears (I'm winning the crying contest by many points).  A year of figuring it all out.  A year of helpful advice, and someone always to turn to.  A year of true love, and the hope of many more years of happiness.