Cheese With Your Whine?
8.28.2005
Sunday night bluesI don’t really like Sunday nights. I just get this empty, lonely, depressed feeling. I suppose it’s a combination of dread of Monday and another long week and the idea that the weekend and the freedom it brings it over. Whatever it is, it sucks.
It’s times like this that I long for a close family so that I could pick up the phone and whine to my mother. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Some of you know the details, most of you don’t, but the short version is that I have a stepdad I hate, a mother I don’t talk to, a bio dad that wasn’t around for 12 years and now that he is, isn’t really a dad, but more of an old guy I talk to on the phone sometimes. I really long for the close family that I see so many of my friends have. That unconditional love that most families provide and those very few people who always have your back no matter what. Most of the time, I’m okay with it, but sometimes it really hits hard and it just bites.
I was talking to someone about this whole thing the other day this is what she said about it:
“Cassy, we don’t get to pick our bio families and when they aren’t all we want or need we have to go find other people who can be like family to us. So you have it best. You’ve found people who love you like family and you got to pick ‘em.”
Wow. It took a minute for what she said to sink in and then the light bulb came on. She was absolutely right. I have a wonderful ‘family’ and I chose them. How cool is that?
Before I left home, I was a very frustrated and angry person. I didn’t allow myself to hurt because that made me feel vulnerable, so instead I got angry and I kept busy – very busy. I let my entire self esteem come from what I DID not who I was. I was proud of the fact that I was young and taking a very active part in running a multi-million dollar company. I liked that I had a life people wanted – lots of money, driving a ‘Vette, traveling, etc. I let what I liked about myself come from that, not who I was, because who I was was miserable. It was very empty and I always felt like a huge something was missing.
All that changed on a Friday morning when I packed my suitcase, drove 45 miles to the nearest ‘big’ city and stayed in a hotel for the weekend while I got a job waiting tables and found an apartment.
Now all of the sudden, I had none of those things I liked about myself and my source of self-esteem was gone. The big job was gone, the ‘Vette was gone. So was the Lexus. No more traveling and shopping. Instead I was serving people fish at Red Lobster and wondering who the hell I was. I finally hurt for the years of things that I had just been angry about, and I hit bottom, self-medicating with alcohol, sex and partying. I still didn’t like who I WAS, and now I didn’t like what I did either – not really way down deep inside. It was all fun on the outside and in the moment, but it too was very empty, just like before.
Enter Rylee. When I found out I was pregnant, I hit an even lower bottom, because now I had NOTHING that I had been using to make me feel ‘better’. I sure couldn’t party – drinking and smoking were out. My so called friends disappeared and I was desperately alone.
So I sat around and had huge amounts of guilt for things I had done, anger at my past and fear about the future. How was I going to take care of a baby? What if I screw her up? All the things first time moms think about.
When I decided to move here when Rylee was 2.5 months old, I felt like it would be a fresh start in a new place. And what a blessing it has been. I have found my “family”. I truly have people in my life who love me. And you know what? I finally do too. It’s amazing what hearing the words, “I’m your friend and I love you no matter what” will do for a girl’s ‘real’ self esteem.
This handful of wonderful people have taught me how to love myself and that I am worth loving for and in spite of who I am and everything that I’ve done. Do you know how refreshing it is to hear that for the first time in your life, at 27 years old?
I’m reminded of the Whitney Houston song, “The Greatest Love” when she says that the greatest love is learning to love yourself. That’s really true. Loving Rylee comes easy to me…so easy. Loving her mama is not.
Thanks to the love shown to me by my TRUE friends, I am finally at a place where I like me. Not in an arrogant way. There are lots of things about me I want to change and that I’m working on, but all in all I like me. Just for me, not what I do or don’t do. For who I AM. I’ve discovered the greatest love. I’ve said it for a long time, but I honestly don’t think you can love someone else wholeheartedly in a healthy way until you love yourself. Now I actually believe it and can do it.
To my friends – my ‘family’ – thank you. You know who you are and some of you aren’t even in this super cool blogging world. But thank you. Thank you for showing me unconditional love. To those of you who over the past few weeks have been there at a moment’s notice on the phone or to help out with my minor crisis, thank you so much. You mean more to me than you’ll ever know and I love you.
I guess this kind of turned into a ramble. But I will say this: as bad as Sunday nights suck, I have much to be thankful for. I don’t have a mom I can call, but I have people who genuinely love me. I have an awesome daughter that I don’t deserve. I’ve got a good job, working vehicle, nice place to live and I and those I love are healthy. What more could a girl want?
Not much, I guess, but I still hate Sunday nights. ;-)
