breaking.

I went to a hockey game tonight (Saturday). I went with Dr. Yummy. Yes, we have continued to date. Hoping. Seeing. After our last break up, we barely made it two days before realizing we were miserable without each other. We decided to give it a little longer, but I was still in it to succeed, and he was still in it just not to fail. Every time I seemed to happily settle into what and who we were again, even if it wasn't what I'd hoped, he'd feel the need to remind me that "something just didn't feel right." I missed the man from a month ago who showed up with purple tulips and washers for my leaky hoses and who looked at me like no man has ever looked at me before.    But now, while he made me feel happiness and laughter and anticipation, I made him feel discomfort and uncertainty. Hardly seems a fair trade, right?

So he finally ended it tonight. For real. Said it was him, not me. Though I've heard that so many times now I don't know that I can believe it. I guess it feels better not to wonder who made it not work, just to accept it wasn't meant to be. Just one of those things that's supposed to happen for some yet unknown purpose. Again. I'm not angry. I have only wanted the best for him from the beginning. I think he's completely and perfectly wonderful. I loved him from the top of his curly head to the bottom of the toes that he hated to have tickled. My J even asked the other day how to spell Dr. Yummy's name because he was "making a list of our family." So, yeah. I guess it's best it ended now. Before anyone got hurt. More.

How could I be such an idiot as to let this happen again? I promise I do not go into these things willy-nilly. I promise I do a lot of praying about who I choose to get serious with. Nothing had ever felt as right as this, gosh darn it.

Anyway, we went to that hockey game. And had a great time, too. I didn't see a break up coming. Maybe I started to feel it on the drive home though. We exited the freeway and passed the Sizzler in front of the mall. Suddenly, it felt like I had been transported back in time six, maybe seven years. In my mind, I was getting out of the van and walking into that restaurant with my three boys (the fourth not yet born) and my husband. We were going to eat Malibu Chicken and Steak. Brad and I each had hold of one of the bigger boys' hands, and I was carrying little L. My mom lived just around the corner, and we talked about going to visit her afterwards. I could feel it, all of it, perfectly.

It was all so familiar, so near, but also like it had happened to someone not me.

Like I have lived a million years in the last 3 1/2 without any recollection of how I got to where I'm at now. I thought of all the things I had in that flashback that I don't have now---not just people, but situations, emotions--security, safety, the luxury to worry about small and insignificant things like saving for a new couch, or what kind of tile to put in the kitchen.

Now those things are gone. My husband is gone, married to someone else, with another baby. My kids, in a way, are gone--not having the same opportunities I saw them having before. Mom is gone. I haven't even eaten at the Sizzler for four years.

And then I thought of all the things that have happened since. The people who have come in and out of my life--Haute Cakes, Green Eyes, Ninja, now Dr. Yummy. Other friends and acquaintances, too, who were so important for a short time and then gone. The myriad ways I have seen and hoped and planned for things to settle back into a comfortable place, to end happily again. And how they have all unraveled. How, I can count on one hand the number of mornings I have woke without fear.

And I worry, that type of worry that balls me up inside, into this thing that makes me shake and shake and shake.

Who am I anymore? What is going to happen to me? How can I keep doing this? What am I even doing? And who cares? When I look down at them, my hands seem foreign. Sometimes I catch a reflection of myself in a window and wonder, who is that woman? How can I continue to meet the emotional, physical, and spiritual needs of those around me when my well of all those things is dry?

It is unsettling. Disorienting. It really does make me want to go to bed and not wake up. Sometimes I even pray for that--not that I would ever consider taking my own life, just that I want God to know I'm ok if He decides to take me now. Quickly and painlessly, preferably.

But that is selfish, I know. And selfishness is an unfamiliar emotion to me, like rage. You know, when soldiers try out for the Navy Seals, they usually start in a group of 200 plus? By the time they're finished, there are generally no more than 20 left. It's not because the others weren't strong and capable and qualified. It's that it comes down to character. The ones that didn't quit, didn't quit because they cared too much for the man on either side of them. They cared as much about getting them through as they did themselves.

Not that I'm Navy Seal material. I'm a poor shot and a weak swimmer (I've got soul but I'm not a soldier...), but I do care more about these men, these boys of mine, on either side of me, than I do about myself. As long as they need me, which they do, I'm going to keep going. I will live through the disorientation, the frequent bouts of being unrecognizable. I'm going to keep getting up and trying and smiling my brave smile. Keep being that annoying type of cheerful that people get when they have no other choice but to be cheerful. When they've walked through hell and learned to shrug their shoulders and chuckle. When they've learned to accept God's will isn't usually the same as theirs but it's still the only way to go. I'm going to keep believing that something wonderful is always just around the corner. Because you know what? Sometimes it is. But for now, stuff really sucks. Guess that's why they call it *breaking up.* That's just how it feels.