Slowing my Roll

Well hello there! I guess I should begin by saying that its kinda been the day from hell. I spent it cleaning the house and trying to get the stench of small dog urine out of the carpet in my hallway, calling people who deal with my son's issues and finalizing my decision to take a 6 month leave of absence from Grad. School so I can decide if I am losing my mind or if I just need a damn good vacation and a nights sleep.I also found the small dog a new home without small children to make her nuts.
You are probably thinking at this point, 'Jeesh! Another whiner, just what the world needs, and I would be right there in thinking the same thing with you, but if you knew what the last 2 or really what the last 10 years had been like, you would maybe cut me just a little slack, but I am going to get into all the gory details in fits and starts down the road a bit so all the doom and gloom and gore doesnt freak you right the hell out, becasue there is a lot of gallows humor to be found in what went on and the absurdity that has ruled my life, and I think that you will enjoy the trip if you stick around.
Its insanity in my life, for example; as I write this posting, I am ignoring the 2 St Bernards that are engaging in homosexual sex at the feet of my recliner while my mastiff,Fergus, whines and howls in doggy time out and the bassett hound bays at the guinea pigs in the childrens bedroom. There is really nothing interesting on TV, so the kids and I had watched Twilight on dvd earlier and I totally embarassed the kids and upset the dogs by dancing all around the living room to the Muse video in the Extras. Im more of a 'True Blood" fan myself, because after all, I am a middle aged soccer mom from hell and the boy who plays Edward looks like my oldest son and thats just a bit disturbing,(though my son is capitalizing on in a major way and giving me even more grey hairs and grandmother fears), but I dont mind the books or the movies and as a parent and sometime educator, I need to keep up with whats popular with the kiddies. I liked the music mostly. But I have been zoning out and ignoring all the chaos going on around me and hoping that nothing too destructive is going on, though my house is at a point in its life where its hard to damage.
I am hopelessly single and as I discussed in my profile, I am male kryptonite.It has become easier to be alone this past year because I had a run of real losers that just confirmed for me that there just isnt anything around here worth shaving my legs for. I had the,"Hipster Doofus/Wannabe RockStar", the "Short Man Syndrome whos nerve matched his stature" and the generic "Drunk Losers", and that was that. I have been in love with one man for over 12 years, its a pure-hearted from the bottom of my soul, see him in every thing good and no one will ever measure up, kinda love, but he will never be mine. I have accepted that and I have tried to move on, and its destroyed me inside, but in many ways it did me a favor, because I realized that I do not need a man in my life to be able to function.Seeing him, talking to him, touching him even casually, is like running a straight razor through my heart, but every now and then that is good for me because pain reminds me that I am alive.
I do have a wicked bad crush on Gerard Butler, but then so does half the female world, and his dvds help get me through the long, cold, snowy nights up here in the mountains.
I dont date, dont even try. I wear jeans and western boots and Affliction thermals or t-shirts and weird circular glasses and my hair is short and always messy and often under a cap, and I have been told I ooze the ,'vaugely threatning, unapproachable, but damaged and wounded" air that people do not know how to take...in other words-CRAZY! (By the way, if you are a punctuation or formatting Nazi, please leave now.I am in full-on rebellion against 10 years of APA style and college writing that tried to kill my love of writing)I am short, only 5'1 and I am skinny often struggling to get to 110lbs, and I wear a size 3 in my Cruel Girls and people freaking hate me, but its not because I try to be that thin, its because I have a freak disease called Celiacs and most normal human food makes me sick as hell and I cant keep food in my guts, which is really unfair because I am a bitching cook! I love cooking and I cook about 6 different ethnic types from scratch, and before I put the ex-husband in prison, I put over 60 lbs on him. I have a Southern accent, because I grew up in Texas on a small ranch and I have all kinds of weird skills that really freak guys out, such as,"roping, riding, branding, castrating, vaccinating, de-horning, skinning and butchering my own kill. I can shoot,hunt and clean my own fish, work on my own vehicles and I dont mind getting dirty and I am a brawler, old-school style. I prefer the company of guys and all my careers have been traditionally male related careers, including law enforcement, EMS, Fire Fighter and Construction. I am one of those freaks that runs towards gunfights and accidents, who sees a bar full of bikers and thinks,'COOL!,I'm gonna go have a beer", and who has looked death in the face 4 times and stared it down.
I love to dance, but I havent been dancing with a man in over 10 years. I read like books are essential to life itsself, and I will read pretty much anything. I just read the Twilight series last weekend for kicks, and I kinda enjoyed them as cotton candy for the brain, considering I was reading,"Criminal Profiling" by Turvey, and 'Without Conscience" by Hare, and those books will give you nightmares.
I am supposed to speak before a group tomorrow called a "Domestic Violence Impact Panel", it will be a group of about 20 people, it includes offenders, attorneys, counselors, judges, political folks and community members. I am supposed to tell them the story of how my life was impacted by my encounter with Domestic Violence affected my life, but I am finding that I am having a hard time coming to grips with the impending release of my ex-husband from prison, because emotions are surfacing that I did not expect.
My ex was the exact opposite of the love of my life, where the love of my life was a poster boy for the Marine corp, clean cut, tall, handsome and professional and always neat, organized and ,'dialed in", Ed was trying to prospect the HA. He was long haired and a classic biker, who had a disdain for all that my I stood for as a former cop. How we ended up together was unusual to say the least, and it was fire and ice, and passion and in all honesty, he was my re-bound man who took the place of the love of my life who I had just realized I could not have. We dated 3 months, and had a JP wedding, and our honeymoon was dinner at the Kachina restaurant. Our first child was born 8 months later, premature and with Downs Syndrome and both of us nearly died. Ed loved his son, but the stress caused him to distance himself from us, and I began to not only be the caretaker for the child, the housekeeper and source of income, and resentment grew between us. He began witholding affection, and the verbal abuse increased towards my son, who suddenly could not do anything right.
When I ended up pregnant with our second child Ed had decided to enroll in college at my behest, I had hoped he would find a career track program that would lead to a way to make a living other than construction, but he chose Art. Unlike myself, he decided to enroll full-time and not work, and in the place where we live, you have to have a median income of 68k a year to survive and we were pulling in less than 40k because he would not work, and he resented the hours I was working because he had to watch our kids and the stress at home was palpable. The verbal abuse edged up into the occasional shove or hard nudge, and I attended most of my appointments for my pregnancy alone. When my son was born, he was there for the delivery and then he left and I drove myself home with the baby a few days later.
Our last child was my daughter, and that pregnancy was the worst. I was sick with heart issues, diabetese, and infection. I was in the hospital more than I was out of it, and he not only refused to help me, he became cold, distant and forced me to sleep on the couch. When I finally reached the point where I was so sick that I knew I had to get to the hospital, he refused to drive me, even though there was a blizzard going on and I was essentially dying. I had an emergency c-section and my daughter and I spent 10 days in the hospital being treated for infection and all the side effects, and he never came to see us.
When we came home, he refused to help telling me that he did not want all the kids, they were my "problem" and he had to work on his art.Things rapidly deteriorated and we argued almost daily about finances,(or lack thereof), my jobs, his lack of a job and just stress in general. He became increasingly aggressive, and during one arguement when I asked him to leave because it would be cheaper to just feed and support myself and the children, he got his pistol and pointed at his head in front of myself and my oldest son, terrorizing my son to the point that he still has nightmares years later.In October 2005 we had been arguing almost daily, I had asked him to leave and find his own place, and he had told me to leave because he claimed it was his house, he sat in the living room in his recliner and watched his 50 inch plasma screen tv most of the time and if we disturbed him there was hell to pay, and I seemed to excel in disturbing him. My best friends son was over playing with my son, and I was putting away laundry,(not very quietly), and he yelled at me to be a little quieter and I answered him back that is he didnt like the noise he could either get up and help or he could try being a man and go find a job. That was the trigger.He jumped up and followed me down the hall, passing me and going into the master bedroom and then abruptly returning to the childrens room where I was putting away laundry and talking to my two youngest boys. Ed grabbed me by the throat znd alammed me into the childrens dresser hard enough that it rocked baqck into the wall and left a dent, anda bruise across my back. He put a straight razor against my throat and told me that he was going to slti my throat, take pictures of it, send them to my friends and then dump my body down a well on the Rez. all of this in from of my two youngest children.