Constraints Of Happiness- SSS July

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 13 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

Your “Secret Subject” is:

If money and time were no object, what would you do and why?

It was submitted by: https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/  

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I’ve been going around and around in my head for two weeks now, trying to figure this one out. And I can’t. I can’t wrap my head around this one and come up with anything as specific as traveling the world, buying a private island escape, or meeting someone from the past like other people would.

You see, time and money are the two things that I hate most about this life. The two things that threaten the well-being of my marriage and my family. For someone like my husband, I could go as far as saying that they are the root of all evil because they are the two things that simultaneously haunt and drive him in life. He can never get his hands on enough of either one.

And I can’t blame him for that, either.

Living right at the border of the National Poverty Level for a family of six isn’t easy for us. Considering that my husband works over seventy hours a week to makes ends meet for us because I’m unable to work at this point in time, it’s not hard to understand why we covet time and money so damn much on a daily basis. We never see enough of one another, we don’t get to share the experience of raising our children together, and we are constantly struggling to keep our finances from drowning us on dry land. Our children don’t have the opportunities to explore their talents and interests because money is the golden ticket they lack, and the only thing required to participate. They’ve never stepped foot in a mall. Or really any major name brand retail store for that matter, beyond the scope of Dollar General or Wal-mart that is. And, even then, a store like Wal-mart is a rare blue moon treat for them.

It just doesn’t seem right that someone who busts his ass for twelve hours a day, six, sometimes even seven, days a week in a grueling steel production machinery shop (making the base for which parts that are critical for building everything from washing machines to hardware tools to automobiles) doesn’t bring home enough money, even with 30 hours of OT on each paycheck. Or has to even put that much time and energy into his job for the measly pay that keeps the bacon on our table. No one should have to sacrifice THAT much only to provide by society’s standards, a meager life. Not a good one. Not a comfortable one. And most certainly not a happy one. I believe Eminem’s infamous “Lose Yourself” song sums up the struggle we face pretty well.

Lonely roads, God only knows, he’s grown farther from home, he’s no father
He goes home and barely knows his own daughter…                                                                …All the pain inside amplified by the
Fact that I can’t get by with my nine to
Five and I can’t provide the right type of
Life for my family ’cause man, these God damn food stamps don’t buy diapers
And its no movie, there’s no Mekhi Phifer
This is my life and these times are so hard

So, if time and money were no longer part of the equation, I think it’s safe to say that all I would want is to just live happily, peacefully with my family in our own version of dystopia. I would give my family the experiences and opportunities life hasn’t afforded us the ability to have thus far. We would take trips together. Explore our community together. Eat dinner every night as a family unit at a kitchen table big enough for everyone to sit at- something most people take for granted these days. There would be sports practices, art classes, dance lessons, and martial arts training. Everyone would be able to embrace their own unique sense of style as their clothing options would no longer be limited to whatever is available in their sizes at the local secondhand thrift shops. We would be free to focus on our relationships and create the unity we lack as it stands right now. Our family could be the family we all dream of having right now.

And with that dream come true, my husband could finally find some relief and breathe deeply without the weight of providing for his family sitting heavily on his shoulders. Because he deserves to enjoy the family he made just as much as I do. He deserves to see his kids grow, learn, play, and love. He deserves to have a life that isn’t ruled by a paycheck which will be gone before the bills can all be paid in full. Time and money are the two things that bring him the most pain and strife in this world and it breaks my heart to see a great man suffer under their constraints.

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Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts.  Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado                        http://www.BakingInATornado.com

Cognitive Script                     https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/

The Blogging 911                   http://theblogging911.com/blog

The Lieber Family Blog                     http://thelieberfamily.com

The Bergham Chronicles                  http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com

Simply Shannon                             http://shannonbutler.org

Southern Belle Charm                    http://www.southernbellecharm.com

Never Ever Give Up Hope                 http://batteredhope.blogspot.com

The Angrivated Mom                    http://www.angrivatedmom.wordpress.com/

Not That Sarah Michelle                 http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com

Bookworm in the Kitchen                  http://www.bookwormkitchen.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom           http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Climaxed                                           http://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com

Crumbling Foundations At The Crossroads Of Life

Never have I felt more lost and confused about life before. Everything around me is falling apart and spinning out of control. I’m struggling to breath as the world as I know it crashes down on me like the Twin Towers did on 9/11. Some might say I’m having a midlife crisis of some sort, but I’m barely halfway through my thirties and this isn’t about figuring out who I am rather than how this all went so terribly wrong.

My marriage is faltering, my children have lost their sense of family unity, my mental health is deteriorating, and the foundation for which a happy, comfortable life is built upon has crumbled. Everywhere I look there is nothing but failure and disarray and everywhere I turn, I hit another brick wall square in the face. My soul is battered and bruised and my heart is bleeding on the sleeve I have always worn it with pride. I don’t trust my judgement and my confidence is waning. All I can do is cry, wishing some magical fairy godmother would appear out of thin air and fix it all with a wave of her wand. I’m so tired of fighting.

Having a Borderline Personality diagnosis compounds this mess until it becomes a category 5 hurricane. My emotions are skyrocketing off the charts as they bounce between black and white, never pausing to heed the gray in between. Love and hate, love and hate, love and hate- there is no middle ground to hold steady to anymore. My mind is held hostage with racing thoughts which want to overanalyze everything. Breaking down, filling in the blanks, concluding the worst case scenarios, and piecing the structure back together again over and over until I finally fall asleep at night just to wake up and start it all again. Nothing makes sense and I cannot fathom a reason to justify why anything is the way that it is right now. There’s no good answers to quench my thirst for enlightenment so I can find the path to lead me out of this hell.

I just want it all to stop. I just want my life to be happy and content. I want the security I used to have knowing that I would be all right in the end. But it’s seemingly impossible right now.

What is one to do in a time like this? When the roots they’ve laid down deep are suddenly ripped from the earth and everything you’ve latched onto for support and nourishment is gone? How do gather so many fragments of the universe that keep you whole and force them to stay where they belong? Never have I felt so disconnected and isolated before. Never have I felt so insecure about what the future holds. Everything I’ve ever known, everything I’ve ever wanted out of life, is hanging by a thinning thread over the darkest abyss I’ve encountered thus far. I cannot bear the thought of what would happen if I lost my grip.

Maybe had my foundation been more solid and less hollow to begin with, I wouldn’t be in this place at this moment. But shoulda, coulda, woulda’s don’t do anything but waste more of the strength and energy I’m already severely lacking. I need a plan of action. One that doesn’t catapult me face first into steel-enforced concrete barriers that keep me trapped where I am. I need a way to save my life from complete and utter destruction. I need a break from this test of my fortitude and the impact my mental illness has over everything I have ever loved unconditionally without reservation.

I know that everything happens for a reason and very few things last forever. That it’s not my choice how life plays out, though everything I do affects the outcome. If only I had some clarity. Or a crystal ball to show me this isn’t the beginning of the end, as I fear it is, and I’ll wake up one day to feel the sun shining brightly upon my face once more. Miracles don’t really happen to people like me, however. My fate is cursed, after all. Cursed to live with the misery of abandonment, instability, and betrayal; the basic recipe needed to elicit my mental illness in the first place.

Maybe my black and white emotions have simply hijacked this crossroads I’m at and acted as a catalyst to make the state of my affairs worse than need be. But I don’t think so. I think they are just the end result of the pieces of my life shattering as they came down on me on their own. Either way, I’m left to commiserate all alone in this void while trusting the universe to navigate me back to where I belong. I just really hope it doesn’t kill me in the process.

 

 

An Expendable Pleasure

 

Like dirty dishwater flowing down the sink drain,

The love you felt for me has gone away.

Shadows linger where your light used to reside,

Storm clouds brim with all the tears I’ve cried.

This fairy-tale we wrote never actually existed,

A phantasmal love which my desperation should’ve resisted.

Icy winds now flow chillingly from your stare,

Seething with rage aimed at my heart’s despair.

Disgust and contempt replaced the warmth of your touch,

My lungs deflated by this wayward sucker punch.

photo credit: Pixabay.com

Fraudulently, intentions were only meant for the moment,

Not thinking beyond this needed whirlwind elopement.

Hatred hides beneath your words laced with charm,

Promising all the right things to convince me there’s no harm.

With your mask conceded, an escape plan went into play,

Too cowardly to admit you would never want to stay.

Hope was resting on the trump card’s revelation,

Using against me the secrets of my sought after salvation,

Yet my heart keeps fighting this, denying the blatant truth,

This requiem of a dream I dreamt in my evanescent youth.

Could this really have been just a nightmare come true?

Fingers crossed behind your back when we both said, “I do,”?

 

A Binding Curse

We’ve come a long way from where we began

But not without congeries of heartache, betrayal, and pain.

Time dissipated quickly, slipping past us in silence

Leaving nothing to show except the darkening blood stain.

We pushed and we pulled, a tumultuous battle of wills

Rising high with the moon, then crashing low with the tides.

Broken and beaten by life and one another, alike

Yet bound at the soul, determined; headstrong to survive.

The road less traveled took us so far off-course

Losing dreams of hope and trust in blind faith along our troubled way.

Struggling to breathe when the air between us became too thin

We trudged right through the raging storms, vehemently vowing to stay.

All that we fought to overcome, all the perils we experienced

This love should’ve drowned in the shallows of illusory passion.

A magnetic force instead fused our hearts to beat in rhythm

Stronger than Earth’s gravity, defying even Sir Newton’s laws of attraction.

No one else could have made it together this far,

A stacked deck, a magician’s curse, and the devil’s kiss sealed our ill fate.

I wish I had had a crystal ball way back when

Because I’m in too deep now, escaping your spell is beyond much too late.

Looking back in vain, I can only shudder with horror

My heart was hijacked by our wishing stars somehow misaligning.

I made you my everything, gave you all of me there was

Bleeding from my wounded soul, my heart cannot stop its painful crying.

Your love is simply Hell in disguise

Bound to you for eternity, stuck together with the ultimate super glue.

So many questions for which I’ll never get answers

My sanity lost within this nightmarish dream come true.

 

A Convenience Of Love

Simply a convenience. Like microwave popcorn. Or cold water from the faucet.

A remote control or even socks. Won’t know what good you had until you’ve lost it.

Hard to see past the image staring back at you. Your own beloved reflection.

An ego so large it devours everything in sight. Even your discernable discretion.

Mocking from your stately throne. Sitting upon that fine, high horse.

Delegating orders, commanding attention from peasants. Never showing remorse.

Wickedly charming. Like a pied piper. Or a white collared politician.

Taking all that you can get without a care. Self-fulfillment seems your only mission.

Ignorantly unaware. Trampling over anything, in a frenzy to feed.

Selfishly forgetting the one who dares love a man who desires only his needs.

Simply a convenience. Like shoelaces. Or the warmth of a favorite sweater.

Unnoticed unless wanted in the moment. An umbrella for times of bad weather.

 

Midnight Heartbreak

Needing. It’s never enough. 

Wanting. Comes a little too late. 

Desperation. Alone at night. 

Failing.  Left up to fate. 
Counting. Stars supernova death. 

Burning. Desires succumbing. 

Crying. No one is listening.

Wounded. The pain is numbing.
Naked. Cold and withdrawn. 

Tormented. Truths do so lie. 

Accused. Stake no claim. 

Shamed. Wishing just to die.
Weighted. Drowning patiently. 

Cheated. Never meant to be. 

Leaving. All there is to do. 

Breaking. Nothing left of me. 

The Family He Never Wanted And The Man I Always Knew He Was

My husband never wanted the family he ended up with. He was in his mid-twenties, rebelling against The System, self-medicating, and a very experienced player when I first met him. He was trying to break away from that lifestyle, but he had no idea how or what to do even if he did manage to do so. He knew no other way in life. No other way to be.

It was the same kind of fast and furious- with a dash of faith for good measure- way of life he grew up around that kept him trapped.

Unfortunately for him, the kind of girls he preferred were not the loyal, take-home-to-mother type. When I met him, I was just the kind of girl he needed to support him through his most recent bad boy expenditures and provide the foundation necessary for a change in outward appearances – I was a young, naive, gullible, unwed, single mother of two toddler boys.

So he settled for settling down with me.

I was only supposed to be a pawn ticket he could cash in later on and retrieve the freedom he sold out for a stereotype when he found his way.

He knew he was way above my league and could charm me into anything he wanted. I would do anything to feel like one of the enviable girls that came before me – gorgeous, sexy, tiny with all the right curves. The bad boy in him could live on undetected under the guise of his instant ready-made family. I never saw it coming and was too desperate not to be the shamefully single, young mom I was to stand up for myself once I saw his true colors. While his party hard debauchery never led him unfaithfully astray, he valued his ability to live on the edge more than he valued life itself. In the back of my mind, I was waiting for the day he decided to redeem his pawn slip, shattering my dreams of happily ever after.

Ten years later, I am in complete awe of the man standing before me today.

He has come full circle and embraced the life he never wanted for anything more than appearances sake. This man went from drinking and popping pills until he figuratively was the walking dead to sober and clean for the past 7 years. He busts his ass and bloodies his knuckles, even suffers the occasional second degree burn, in a cold-drawn steel factory anywhere from 60 to 78 hours a week. A WEEK! Some humans barely stay awake that long in a week. The level of exhaustion this man has reached must be previously unheard of before – and this is coming from the mouth of a stay-at-home mom of 4 kids. Yup, we have even added to the family he never wanted. Two little girls to match the two boys of mine. His time at home is wrapped around all their fingers as they get attacked by Tickle Monsters and cuddled during campfire story nights in the living room. He plays endless games of catch and gets up to look at every, “Daddy watch me!”

My husband is now the kind of father I used to dream of having as a young girl watching her own father get lost in the bottom of a liquor bottle every night.

Even the dynamic of our marriage has turned around. No longer do I feel as if I will never measure up to all those damn notches in his old headboard; as if I am not the kind of woman he wanted to stand by his side without being embarrassed. We have a genuine friendship stronger than any I have ever had. More so than even my longest of childhood friends. My husband has learned to be selfless where he once was very selfish. He is incredibly humble and tender, with a fierce need to protect all five pieces of his heart. Somehow, the barrier around his soul has been shattered, allowing our love to penetrate his once icy, egotistical heart…and that cold heart has warmed over, radiating love back into our lives tenfold.

It is the most amazing thing.

A man who lived each day like it was his dying last, who was the only human left on this planet worthy of greed, has left behind the only life he ever knew. And for what? His wife and children.

There is no greater man… father… husband… than that.

I am the luckiest woman on this Earth. This man who never wanted the family which landed in his lap is now the family man I always knew he had it in him to be. By some unknown kismetted grace of fate, he chose me, and for that I am eternally grateful. I cannot think of anything better life could have ever had to offer me than my husband – the father of my four children.

Save Your Soul- UYW April

Strong and fierce, you are a pugilist of demons living within, a warrior of self-inflicted pain.

Push, fall, rise, defeat- the cycle never ceases, beating you down under the eternal strain.

An aberration of souls, destined to do battle against your heart ’til your last, dying breath.

Heedless you scramble to rebuild the ruins anew from the forsaken fortress you have left.

You desecrate it over again with raging fits, refusing to succumb to their cachet of milquetoast.

Your own worst enemy, terrorizing, anyone who dare sees past this fragile façade you brashly boast.

Waves wash away evidence of your poison, leeching- infecting those weakened and unsuspecting.

Inhale deeply at the shoreline, for the miasma lingers in the stale, salty air with power unrelenting.

I am, but an aberration myself, though, immune to the evil simmering beneath the hardened surface.

His unholy reign imposing, yet unphasable, as I seek for him a greater sense of purpose.

Performing his exorcism with the saging of the moon- banish the demon he is and end the raging war.

Demolish the fortress, break the bindings, release the poison from his blood- you are free, my love, now and forevermore.

**Today’s post was a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

I’m using: milquetoast ~ aberration ~ cachet ~ miasma ~ pugilist             

They were submitted by: http://www.someoneelsesgenius.com/   

Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:                                       
Baking In A Tornado

Southern Belle Charm

Not That Sarah Michelle

Spatulas on Parade

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver

Dinosaur Superhero Mommy

Someone Else’s Genius

Confessions of a part time working mom

Never Ever Give Up Hope

Climaxed

My Brain on Kids

The Bergham Chronicles