Observations on destiny

So I have officially become obsessed with Christina Coppa's blog, Storked!, on glamour.com. Coppa is a single mom to a one year old son, and the things she writes about her life, her child, they are the words in my heart, in my soul. She just got a book deal...lucky bitch. She is inspiring me to go there again, to find the words and write them down and send them out into the world, for all to read and know. Writing is where I truly find myself, and I have wandered so far off the path, but the rigors of this life just haven't given me time to go there, to get back to where I want and need to be. Coppa's blog talks about how she chose her life, she knew she was going to do it alone, and that it would be hard, but that she wouldn't trade it for anything. I feel that. So completely.
From the moment I found out I was pregnant, I think, in a lot of ways I was unwilling to admit at the time and for a long time afterward, I knew I would be right where I am today, raising Kayla on my own. Yes, AJ and I share custody, yes she loves her daddy, yes I get child support, yes I have it better than 90% of single moms in that respect, but at the end of the day, every week day I am alone raising her. I have my family always willing to help in whatever way they can, but my own pride and need to accept responsibility for the life I created doesn't often allow me to take advantage of that. But, in the end, and in the beginning, its me and Kayla. Love it or hate it, I am the one who is the fixer of the boo boos, the lay-er down of the law, the calm in the storm, the voice of reason. Yes, when I found out I was pregnant, this is the life I knew I would have. Don't get me wrong, I wanted the two parent family, the textbook definition of a "perfect" life, with the three of us around the dinner table sharing our days, Kayla's toys and clothes and other accessories of life strewn from one end of the house to other, hell even another baby by now.
Do I think we could have been happy? Yes, or if not, we could have put on the facade of happy. Do I think we are all better off now? Yes. Kayla has two parents that are over the moon for her, are friends to each other, co-parents in the truest sense, and two bedrooms- one Elmo, one Cinderella, one backyard with a jungle gym, one with a plastic house and a slide. More clothes and books and toys than any child should ever have. She can spell her name. She can recite her ABC's, her numbers to ten in English and Spanish, knows her colors and her shapes. By all accounts, we are doing something right. Her three years of life have been pretty happy, despite the ugliness of the first months of AJ's and I's break-up, and my overwhelming sadness and sense of failure. Would they have been as happy if we were still together? Maybe...probably. But would her parents have been? Probably not. And that would have made her much unhappier, much more stressed in the long run. That would never have been fair to her. Not for one minute.
Honestly, when the judge told me that I would have to allow AJ overnight visitation, I felt like I was being punished, like the entire world was going to stop twirling on its axis. There was nothing worse than taking my baby away from me, even for one night. The first night he took her I cried myself to sleep. I had to create a ritual just to keep my mind occupied and off her. Flash forward three years and some weeks I am counting down the days to the weekend because I need a fucking break. I love my girl, she is my whole heart, the very best thing I have ever done, but she is tiring! She's like me when I was that age, non-stop chatter and motion and need. I love her more than I could ever articulate, but mama needs a break! I need room to breathe and feel 26 years old for 10 minutes. Yes, I miss her when she is gone, yes I feel like I have lost a limb, but I am so grateful now that I worked hard to maintain her relationship with her father. And yes, I know I am lucky, and I tip my hat to all the single moms who don't have the option of carting their child off for the weekend. I don't know how you do it!
Coppa talks in one of her blogs about her life happening while she was busying mapping out her plans. She also says the goals she set for herself were achieved, just in different order than she planned, and the order life decided made her a stronger person. I understand that completely. When I was a little girl, I had a fantasy journal (yes, nerd and aspiring writer right here!) and I would write about my life, my dreams, relationships I hoped to have and the ways in which they were to be conducted. Meet a random guy after too many shots in a bar, fall feet over head, be silly and crazy and not cautious, not call my gyn to make sure the med the ER prescribed didn't indeed render my pill virtually ineffective, get pregnant, have mom get sick, turn myself inside out, sideways, upside down, backwards, every which way to make it work with someone who wasn't ready for it, have my mom die before seeing her first grandchild, blow up like a balloon because my kidneys stopped working, have a preemie, having Dan die, becoming a single mom...yeah none of that was in my cards. I was going to go to college, finish with my Journalism degree, meet a guy while I was there, get married out of school, have some babies, live in a house by the ocean, and be in total bliss for life. I realize that is a crock of shit, and the person I am now would never be satisfied with a middle school girl's ideals for her life. I also think in that same journal I noted that I would never have sex with a guy unless I had been in a serious relationship with him for two years...for anyone that knows me, that is so beyond laughable I can't even comment. But that just further proves the point of how unrealistic the goals I set for myself were. I met a guy my freshman year of college. I liked him, there was an instant connection, and I had my timeline, so of course I had to pursue, time was a-wasting. I dropped the L-bomb, and he hightailed it out of my life. I can understand it, I was too intense. I was trying to create a life I obviously wasn't meant to live. If I had meant to do any of the things I had created for myself over 10 years ago in my journal, I would be doing them. Plain and simple.
As life would have it, I was meant to take a break from school to try and find the person that had become jumbled up in a mass of college living-too much freedom, alcohol, random boys and not much studying or caring. Instead of finding the me I thought I was, I found a new (and hopefully improved version to those that knew me back in the day) me. I had to stumble along the way, into a seedy bar every night, partying till 4 AM only to head to work at 7 AM, I had to get involved with inappropriate people and hurt my mother (still one of my deepest regrets.) I had to be young and free and in my 20's. Then, like a bomb, my world exploded. I was 22 and in crazy and drama filled love, with the best friends and very little debt, a job I loved and then I was pregnant. BOOM- in one instant, a life I had thought was pretty damn fun and heading in a good direction was over. And life moved in another direction faster than I could keep up.
Kayla was here in short order. Mom was gone. I had to adapt, and survive. And you know what, its what I was meant for. Miss Kayla, with her eyes and her small hands that fit so perfectly in mine, and her questions that just floor me, and her smell and her voice, and her perfection-her- its what was intended for me. No question in my mind, not for one moment. She has been my destiny since before I ever imagined her into existence. She is the reason for me. And in the mornings, when we are bundled into the car, and she requests her new obsession, Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocketful of Sunshine," or her "sunshine song" as she calls it, I know me and her alone is the will of whatever higher power there is. I do resent it sometimes, like the other morning when Kayla wanted a donut and I had to count change to get her one, because frankly, paychecks aren't stretching nearly far enough, but for better or for worse, its me and her. And if its that way forever, thats fine. And if its not, thats fine too. We Hewlitt women, we roll with the punches. We adapt. We don't give up when things look dismal. If there is one thing that Kayla's conception, pregnancy, birth and life has taught me so far, besides the fact that I am stronger than I realize most days, is that its that we don't always have control over what life wants for us. And that's okay by me. Because everyday with my baby girl is an adventure, and I can't wait to see where we end up, 6 months from now, a year from now, 5 years from now.
So have I accomplished my timeline? I haven't finished my degree...trying my damndest to get back into it...no husband, or boyfriend, to even speak of...I have my own house and my own car...we're close to the ocean...but I have Kayla, and that cancels out any other goal I have yet to achieve. I am raising a person. I am responsible for someone else. I am needed and loved just because. Thats powerful stuff. So I say, screw the timeline. Live the life you are intended to live. And enjoy the ride.

Ocean...

When I was a little girl, I used to go watch the waves crash against the rocks of the beach with my aunt. In mist, in downpours, in soul shattering storms, even in a hurricane, there we were, watching and marveling. These moments are the ones that sealed my love of the ocean. In fact, my entire family loved the ocean. I am the daughter and granddaughter of fishermen, men who made the water their home when their land locked ones became too chaotic, or too sad, or too overwhelmingly anything. One summer for my 70 something grandfather's birthday, all the grandchildren donned suits and waded into the water with Pop, his two canes pocking the sand with small circles as well all trekked into the surf. He taught us, all of the adults taught us, to love the water, but most especially the ocean. My mom was laid off one summer, and everyday we all went to the beach. We just soaked in the salt, and the expansiveness of the horizon. My uncle owned a boat, and we spent a lot of time in it, cruising and laughing and loving each other. To me, growing up, the water wasn't about swimming, or sea animals, or science. It was about love and family. Because where my family was was the water. The ocean. And it seemed to just fit, to be the natural place for us to be. Situated in a coastal town, loving and living. When my PopPop got sick, my aunts and my mom would meet on the beach for talks about his care, life, their grief, whatever those pre-dawn talks amounted to. My mom began to collect shells on the shore in those days. By Christmas, everyone had shell wreaths with shells from our own beach. I still have one hanging in my bathroom today.
When my mom passed away, there seemed like nowhere on earth that I got her back, even for a second. Not one place where I could remember her for who she was before the illness came, before it invaded every part of her rapidly and thoroughly, leaving no room for me to recognize the person I love. One day, overwhelmed, exhausted, sick with grief and pregnancy and worry, I went to sit at the beach. Just to escape my world, to find that peace I knew looking at those rocks where the surf crashed when I was a little girl. I found the place, at last, where my mom was. Everywhere I looked, I saw her. Her shells. Her sand. Her surf. Her picnic tables. Even the house she rented for a Halloween party that left my father hitch-hiking in a Batman suit at 3 AM. It was her, at last. The mom I knew instead of the vessel of pain and incomprehension in a hospital bed. After she died, it was where I came to feel her, to talk to her. To be with her again. I have been to her grave. I go every holiday, but she is not there. No, for me, my mom is the ocean.

Stuck in quicksand...

I feel sometimes that everyone around me is changing and growing and I am standing still. My sister and brother in law just celebrated their year anniversary and welcomed a son, my cousin and her husband just celebrated a year and soon, their son will be here. I was catching up with old friends the other day, and two of them have gotten married. My best friend from college has a child and has gotten married. More and more wedding invitations and baby shower invites flood my mailbox these days.
I have to admit, I am starting to feel a little left out. I love being a mother, it is without a doubt the most profoundly moving, difficult and beautiful thing I have ever done, or will do, but I am also a woman, a woman who wants and deserves love. More than the love Kayla has for me, more than the love of my family and friends. I want romantic love. And lately it feels like it will never happen.
I don't know how to fix this problem. I don't have much of an opportunity to meet men at my job. Childcare doesn't generally attract available men. I go out on the weekends and the market seems so dismal. I used to love the thrill of the chase, the flirty looks across the bar, the seductive dancing, the buying of drinks and applying of lip gloss. The enticement of a stranger. The carelessness of attraction. I still love the social scene, going to a bar, dancing, but I am not getting anywhere. The men are not interested in a long term connection, only a one night stand, someone to kiss in the dark corners, to stumble out of the bar with. And I can't go there. Not now, not when I have the example I have to be to Kayla in my head at all times. I am not afforded friviolity anymore. I have to be wise in my love life, so as to not harm Kayla. I won't have guys going in and out of her life, toying with her emotions and confusing her. I also strive to find someone who loves Kayla, loves her like I love her, like everyone in her life loves her. This task seems impossible. To find a man, my age, reasonably attractive, with a job, intelligent, who loves Kayla and who treats me well, who is ready for the responsibilities of us, our baggage, our craziness, seems like it will never happen.
I have recently sought an alternative dating experience. I signed up for online dating, at the urge of my boss. I have had lots of emails, and one seems worthwhile. But I am so nervous, and hesistant, about bridging the gap between a computer screen and real life. There is no accounting for accuracy, truth and of course, the ever elusive chemistry. So maybe it happens, maybe it doesn't.
In the meantime, how do I get over the feeling of being stuck in quicksand- not being able to move from where I am? The whole world seems to be in love and procreating...where do I sign up for that? I have a child, maybe I shouldn't complain when there are some people who can't have children, but I want more, and I want that unspoken support system of a significant other. I want to be worn out from children using me as their own personal jungle gym all day and come home to someone who will just wordlessly soothe me. I want things to be easier, even if that means just knowing that someone else will read Kayla a book tonight so I can have five minutes peace. I'm not pretending every day will be great, love is messy sometimes, a lot of times, and I crave that too. I am ready for all of it, that human connection in all its complexities.
So here I am, ready for the next step. I've done all I can do on my own. I have a house, I have a car, I am in school, I am raising a child...so now I am ready to carve a corner out for love, once again.