W.S. Carmichael's Blog

Middle-Aged Sass

Middle age is amazing. Being tired is amazing. Not caring is amazing. Bear with me for a few minutes as I explain because I’m certainly not talking about the constant new aches and pains my body insists on discovering. Most days, I can’t tell if I’ve injured myself or if this is just how I am now. I’m talking about the level of I don’t give a rat’s ass only crossing the threshold into middle age can give you. I published my first book eight years ago, and in the time since, I’ve published three more. My sales aren’t great—not because the books aren’t good; my reviews are positive—but because in a sea of romance novels on Amazon, no one will see you unless you make them see you. Cool. I knew that all along. Knowing something and doing something about it are two vastly different things. So why didn’t I do more to make people see me? Why didn’t I try harder to give the romance reading world the opportunity to buy a book I know they’d enjoy? Spending this past weekend at a writers’ conference gave me the clarity I couldn’t get anywhere else. I was surrounded and embraced by people plagued by the exact same issue I’ve encountered. Some of them have successfully navigated through the maze, some are in the process, and some are so early in their writing journey that they don’t even realize how daunting the maze can be. During some of the workshops, I repeatedly heard the question asked in a multitude of contexts—Why? After the last workshop I attended, Building a Brand by Caridad Piñeiro, I asked myself that very question – Why? Why didn’t I put in the effort to make them see me? I have the information. I have the ability. I know I’ve put together some really fun books to read. The answer is simple. Fear. What will people think about me? Will they think I’m silly for making social media posts? Will they think I’m bragging? Will they whisper behind my back, “She really thinks she’s something. Her books aren’t even that good.”? Was I afraid of what success might look like? Maybe I wasn’t ready to embrace the kind of change success would bring to my life. Maybe I was too afraid to chase my dreams. Fear is such a dumb reason not to do something – unless that something is jumping out of a perfectly good airplane – I’m definitely siding with fear on that one. But seriously, I didn’t let fear stop me from writing that first book…or the next… or the next. I didn’t let fear stop me from returning to college to finish my bachelor’s degree after 25 years. I didn’t let fear stop me from taking a promotion. So, why the hell am I letting fear stop me from being proud of my hard work?   No one starts at the top. I can’t wait until someone else thinks I’ve earned the right to be proud of my work to be proud of my work. That’s just idiotic. The fear of what others will think has been plaguing my brain for so long that I forgot to stop and ask myself one very important question: Do I really value other people’s opinions that much? The insanely liberating answer is a resounding NO! Which brings me back to the opening lines of this post. Middle age is amazing. Being tired is amazing. Not caring is amazing. As I creep through my forties, I realize I no longer have the energy or the patience to care that deeply about someone else’s opinion. If you think my social media posts are silly, braggy, or dumb….don’t look at them. If you don’t like my books, don’t read them. If you want to poke fun at my efforts, go ahead. Either way, I’ll just be here – writing, posting, not caring, and reveling in the immortal words of advice my father had for any of life’s hardships… “Fuck ‘em.”

The post Middle-Aged Sass first appeared on .

The Romance of Death

My dad died. It’s easier to type those words than it is to say them out loud. I’m a fairly straightforward person. I don’t like sugar coating my statements and I don’t like euphemisms. I hate when someone says, “I had a few beers” when they actually got shitfaced and pissed themselves. Saying something in a more pleasant way doesn’t change the facts of what happened. Euphemisms serve no purpose other than to make the truth more palatable. I always found it irritating when people purposely avoided saying that someone had died. Instead, they “passed” or “left this world”. Until now. Now, I understand. Almost every single time I had to inform someone that my dad had died, I would choke on any form of the word death. I would purposely not say it. I embraced any genteelism I could find in an effort to avoid the cold truth. In the eulogy I gave for him, there were plenty of words describing my loss but none of those words included death. Because death sucks. It hurts like hell and it’s hard. So very, very hard. But hard doesn’t equal wrong. My dad’s death (yes, I can say it now) wasn’t wrong. It was and is painful for me. I feel it every single day, but it wasn’t wrong. He was ready and it was time. If he could have chosen the time and place, his death would have happened exactly as it did. He is off on an amazing new adventure, one not hampered by a body that would no longer cooperate with the business of living. To quote my rock, my love and my bestest friend, Mark: “Life isn’t easy for anyone. It’s inherently hard, it’s going to hurt and eventually, it will kill you.” So, why is a romance author writing about pain and death? Death isn’t romantic. Oh, but it is…. Death and sadness are part of the romance of life. Without the lows, the highs wouldn’t be as high. Without the hardship and loss, the joys and gifts of life would be less sweet. Writing romance novels is about finding the hope in the mundane, about always believing everything will work out in the end no matter how rough the road gets. I wouldn’t be able to write the way I do if I couldn’t see the beauty in the pain or the opportunity in the loss. To feel the sorrow is to have known the joy. To feel the emptiness is to have known the love. Being a good writer means drawing inspiration from the spectrum of human emotion. The whole spectrum, not only the parts that make us feel good. My current work in progress is the first in a planned series of four stories about four sisters and their respective happily ever afters. The entire premise of the series is predicated on the loss of their father. The first chapter takes place days after the unexpected death of Jasper Brooks. It is written from the perspective of his daughter, Billie, who is by far the closest to him of all his daughters. Her pain drives her work ethic and her determination to succeed in keeping the family ranch operational. I don’t know what pushed me to start a romance series with one of the most painful losses a person can endure, but I did. And I did it before I knew firsthand the aching loss of a parent. I started this series over a year ago. This chapter was written long before I was Billie. I didn’t touch the book for months after I lost my dad. Partly because I wasn’t ready to share my pain with Billie and partly because I had to work through the pain before I could see the beauty. It’s hard to type when you’re crying. I’m back in the game now – writing, planning, re-writing, still crying occasionally. Ok, more than occasionally. But, I can now see the joy beyond the sorrow and the love beyond the emptiness. My loss will transition into a deeper connection with Billie and what I hope will be a better experience for my readers. I titled this blog post The Romance of Death, but it is really about the Romance of Life. It is about the richness of the emotional experience and the opportunity to be found when it feels like we’ve lost everything. It is about finding the hope in the hurt and the silver in the dark cloud. It is about believing in the happy ending….

The post The Romance of Death first appeared on .

Renovations Are Fun

It’s finally happening! I’ve worked hard. I’ve saved my money and I am now on the road to renovating and redecorating my kitchen/living/dining room area. Open concept floorplans are great but change in these large areas create an equally large mess. When your kitchen, living room and dining room are essentially one big room, you can’t renovate only one area. That would be weird. And ugly. Living in a construction zone is enough to make anyone crazy, and me being the OCD organizer I am, I had a plan. (Side note – I like to organize, but I rarely am organized.) Anyhow, I had a plan. There were some tasks I planned to perform myself and some I was going to hire out. A detailed schedule of events was created, carefully orchestrated to maximize efficiency. You know, because renovations always go exactly according to plan. One of the jobs I did myself was painting my kitchen cabinets. This needed to be done before any other work could start. The reasons for this are based in solid construction and renovation principles predicated on the fact that I make a huge mess when I paint, and I didn’t want to screw up anyone else’s hard work – especially if I was paying for that hard work. If you have never painted cabinets before, I can tell you it isn’t too hard. Until last week, I had never done it either. You just need to use the right supplies and follow some step-by-step instructions. Because I love making lists, here are those step-by-step instructions: Step One: Clean Out All Cabinets And Drawers An untalked about bonus to painting your cabinets is having the chance to clean out all your hidden spaces and junk drawers. You don’t want to be using paint and chemicals around food item and utensils, so it makes sense to remove everything even if you aren’t painting the insides of the cabinets. This is a great opportunity to find open Pop Tarts and crackers someone shoved to the back of the top shelf before the mice do. Pro tip: You should definitely place all the items you remove somewhere close by in order to limit your workspace and maximize the number of times you trip over them. Step Two: Degrease The Cabinets This is a particularly important step. Any hardware store sells a degreasing concentrate you’ll use to clean the cabinets before you do anything else. The reason this is so important is because if you have kids in the house, your house is grosser than you think. My cabinets are eighteen years old. That means even though I’d wipe them down a few times a year during deep cleaning binges, they still had eighteen years’ worth of grime on them. Yum. Step Three: Sanding Alright. You’ve scrubbed off years of accumulated filth, now what? Sanding, that’s what. Don’t be afraid of this step, though. Unless you’re staining the cabinets and need to get down to bare wood, this is an easy step. Just use a medium grit sandpaper (the blocks work great and are easy to hold onto) and scuff away. This part isn’t rocket science. Pro tip: Don’t forget to repeatedly sand over your own hands like I did. Fine cuts and abrasions add to the DIY experience. Step Four: Priming Now we’re getting somewhere! This is the point when you can actually see progress. It’s shitty looking progress, but it’s progress nonetheless. This is the point when you will look at your primed wood and wonder if this was a really bad idea. Make sure you use a good primer specifically designed to adhere to hard to paint surfaces. I used Stix primer. Two coats. Worked great. Looked terrible until I used the actual paint. Step Five: Painting Ah. The moment you’ve been training for! This is the main event. I used a high gloss white paint. I’m realizing now I left a few details out of my previous instructions. I had my son remove all the cabinet doors and hardware for me. You’ll get much better results and less drips if you paint the doors while they lie flat. Factor in lots of drying time because you’ll need to do two coats and can only do one side at a time for obvious reasons. I also painted the sides of the cabinets in the space where the stove sits. Completely unnecessary because no one will ever see them, but I have overachieving OCD. Pro tip: Remember, and this is super important, when painting in tight spaces, swipe your hair through the fresh paint as much as possible. I sat on the floor in the small space for the stove and painted the sides of the cabinets. Not once, but twice (two coats, remember) I finished painting one side, turned to paint the other and smeared my ponytail through the wet paint. If you think you’re fancy and refuse to do this part, you’ll miss out on the next step. Step Six: Spend The Next Week Picking Paint Out Of Your Hair I don’t think this step needs detailed instructions. I’m going to assume you can figure it out. If you need help, though, watch a nature video where monkeys pick bugs out of each other’s hair. It’s a similar process. Just don’t eat the paint chips. You’ll also repeatedly answer the question “What’s in your hair?”. Or, if you’re as lucky as I was, you’ll grab a hair thinking it has white paint on it only to discover it is, in fact, just a white hair. Tada! We’re done! My cabinets actually look great. The rest of my kitchen is a paint covered mess, but we’ll fix that soon enough. Although I probably gave you some real tips here, please don’t use my blog as a place for actual instructional information. If you need to know how to make a messy renovation even messier, though, I’m your girl.

The post Renovations Are Fun first appeared on .

Hitchhikers Who Don’t Try

Pet Peeves – We all have them. For most of us, the everyday irritants of life are similar. We all hate the slow guy driving in the passing lane. We all want to kick the guy who chews loudly, smacking his lips together with each grind of his molars. Or the guy who macerates his food with his mouth wide open as if the rest of us want to see the sickening result of him tormenting a pop tart, crumbs flying everywhere. And no one likes the messy sneezer. You know, the person who never covers their sneeze but tells you not to worry because it’s just allergies. Allergies or not, I don’t need your spit and boogers assaulting my air space at a hundred miles per hour, Janet. But what about the unreasonable pet peeves? What about the innocuous idiosyncrasies of our friends and neighbors that drive us nuts for no specific reason? When do these modern-day annoyances get the attention they deserve? I say right here, right now. My friend Chris hates – HATES – when people tuck in their shirt and do not wear a belt. He maintains the position if you tuck in your shirt, there is no good reason not to finish the job by putting on a belt. For clarity – and this is a direct quote, “A belt must be made out of leather and have a buckle. Anything else is wrong.” If your waist wear is constructed out of nylon or is – gasp – stretchy, it is an abomination and doesn’t count as wearing a belt. His opinion on proper midsection goes one step further, demanding shirts only be tucked into proper, tuck-intended pants. Elastic waist? No zipper or belt loops? Untuck that gosh darn shirt, you heathen! But wait, there’s more…If you manage to conquer level one of dressing yourself to Chris’s liking by tucking your shirt into appropriate pants AND putting on a satisfactory belt, for the love of God you’d better match your shoes and belt. Anytime I must rely on an automated system or piece of equipment, I am instantly annoyed when it doesn’t read my mind and perform in the exact way I want it to perform. I hate when I call a business – looking at you, cable company – and I’m forced to wade through five layers of automated bullshit before I can speak to a live person. Never in all my years of being a grown-up have I called the cable company and NOT needed to speak to a live, breathing person. First of all, if I am taking the time out of my busy day to call, it isn’t because I want to tell you what a stellar job you are doing. There’s a good chance I’m already pissy and having to argue with inept artificial intelligence isn’t going to make me any sweeter to the poor schlub I’ll eventually speak to. My seething rage doesn’t end with automated phone systems, though. Oh no, there is a much more sinister monster lurking in the world of AI – the touchless faucet. Walmart bathroom sinks are the worst. I never seem to get my hands in just the right spot to start the water flow. I end up spastically moving my hands back and forth in a vain attempt to trick the sink into giving me water to wash my hands. God forbid the soap dispenser is also touchless. I could be there for hours. Shock of all shocks – Chris has graciously (and accidentally) given me more fodder for my blog about pet peeves.  My dear, opinionated friend is also mightily displeased by poor grammar in written work. As Chris is wont to do, he has narrowed his focus to the most heinous of all grammatically disastrous offenses – the use of contractions in a professional/research paper. Again, to quote him directly – “Type out both words, you fucking barbarian.” While I can’t say I find hybrid words especially alarming, I must say I agree with him about reading poorly executed grammar. If your speaking, there is know way to no if you are using the correct words. You could be a terible speller to. I’d never no the difference. See what I did they’re? If you didn’t notice anything wrong with the preceding sentences, skip ahead to the next paragraph or prepare to be insulted. My brain hurts when I’m subjected to these bloody eviscerations of the English language. If you need an example of poor grammar, scroll through any social media feed. As we navigate these post-election, mid pandemic times, there are limitless rants about why one side is right and the other wrong. Most of these posts are missing basic sentence structure and grammar, which, in my mind, instantly invalidates the intended argument. Finally,  we come to my biggest pet peeve and hence the title of this rant. I personally can’t stand hitchhikers who don’t try. I don’t mean try at life in general. I’m not being judgy about what life decisions they made ultimately bringing them to the side of the road, begging for a ride from complete strangers. Maybe they fell on hard times. Maybe they’re environmentally conscious and will only use a vehicle if they are carpooling. Maybe they spend all their money on hookers dressed as rodeo clowns. I don’t know. That’s their business. I’m talking about the hitchhikers who just stand on the side of the road with their thumb in the breeze. That’s it. Just standing there. No forward motion at all. Why should I stop my car and risk my life by picking up a potential serial killer if you can’t be bothered to put one foot in front of the other and at least attempt to get where you’re going? You aren’t even trying! Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t going to pick you up anyway. That’s just dangerous. However, if you aren’t willing to put forth some effort in a good faith gesture of self-reliance, I’m extra not picking you up. I’ll drive right on by, judging you for your lack of effort in the traveling department. Thanks for coming with me on my journey of petty irritants. Please feel free to share your favorite and weirdest pet peeves.

Pomp, Circumstance & The Mullet

I am a little late in posting this, but a couple of weeks ago my youngest, Nick, graduated high school. Now, if you’ve been following my blog, you know I am not a fan of graduations. They are long, boring and usually a platform for political grandstanding. I won’t bore you with my full rant when you can easily read about it. Click here Despite my inherent dislike for the ceremonial pomp, I am still disappointed Nick didn’t get an actual graduation. The class of 2020 was shafted big time. They didn’t have a prom. They didn’t have the Belleayre Bash (an all-night graduation party sponsored by a local ski resort). They missed out on the last few months of their childhood and precious memories with lifelong friends. They did have the most epic senior skip day ever, but still… In January, when Nick announced he was growing a mullet for graduation, (Yes, you read that right – a business up front, party in the back mullet) I told him I didn’t care if he walked across that stage wearing a T-Rex costume as long as they gave him a diploma when he got to the other side. I had no idea then he wouldn’t get the opportunity to show off his hard-core commitment to outdated hair styles. I had no idea how much he would miss out on during his senior year. While a naturally intelligent child, Nick was a terrible student. He developed a bad case of senioritis in the fifth grade and I spent the rest of his school career dragging him towards graduation. He is pragmatic and practical. Couple these traits with his deep-rooted stubbornness and I knew If he did not see the point in learning about a particular subject, we were in for a long year. He is a hands-on type of learner, always excelling in classes like Glass and Metal Working, Welding and Science of Survival while he faltered in other subjects he deemed uninteresting. In elementary school, he loved to read, often reading books above his grade level. Unfortunately, as a kid who didn’t fit the mold, being forced to dissect what he read took all the joy out of reading for him and he no longer saw the point in reading if it wasn’t fun. This thought process colored his entire academic career. The only time of the year I could count on Nick to keep his grades up was during football season. He loved football so much, he wouldn’t take any chances that might jeopardize his season. If he couldn’t get a ride to pre-season practice, he would ride his bike eleven miles to the school before a grueling four-hour practice in the August heat. He played through injuries that would have ended most kids’ seasons. Yes, football was a great motivator for him. Too bad it only lasted the first two and a half months of school. Nick didn’t care about his grades, he only cared if he passed or failed. In his words, “It doesn’t matter if you win by an inch or win by a mile. You still win.” Graduation was supposed to be literal and figurative finish line. When the school first proposed an alternate celebration, I didn’t like what they had planned. The plan was to broadcast a modified ceremony over a local radio station while everyone stayed in their vehicles, after which we would drive throughout the district, parade style. None of this sounded like a good time to me. As it happens often in life, I was wrong. Yes, I wanted to see him walk across the stage. Yes, I was disappointed COVID robbed him and his classmates of that honor. Yes, I still feel like we jumped the gun by cancelling the ceremony as early as we did. However, I underestimated the dedication to and support of our kids the community would show. Within a quarter mile of the beginning of the route, I was crying like a baby. So many families lined the roadsides, holding signs and cheering as we drove by. I was touched by the love and support Onteora has always shown our students. All I could think of was how this would be one of the last school events I would attend. This makeshift graduation ceremony accomplished exactly what graduation ceremonies are supposed to. It marked the official end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood. Where did the time go? One minute my baby was climbing onto the school bus for the first time, the next he was rocking a mullet as he posed for staged graduation pictures. Graduation is a bittersweet moment for parents. On one hand, we are proud of our children’s accomplishments and excited for their futures. On the other hand, it is a harsh reminder that our babies have grown up. There’s lots I’ll miss. I’ll miss watching him play football. I’ll miss reminding him not to spend ALL of his lunch account money on snacks and water he easily could have brought from home. I’ll miss hearing about his day at school. Someday when he moves out (Not yet Nick. No rush to leave your mom), I’ll miss having a house full of teenagers. Yes, I will even miss him making a huge mess in the kitchen. I couldn’t be prouder of the man Nick is becoming. He is smart, funny and a hard worker. He’s handsome and athletic. He loves animals. Most importantly, he is kind – unless he is deliberately annoying his sisters. I am very blessed to call this young man my son. Congratulations, my baby, and always remember no matter what you do or where you go, your mamma will always be your biggest fan, your most loyal friend and the home you’ll never outgrow.

Waxing in the Age of ‘Rona

If you’re anything like me, you are sick, sick, sick of this whole Coronavirus business. I am so ready for life to get back to normal. I need my nails done. I need to visit my wax lady. I need to shop somewhere other than Walmart. There is no end to the selfish and shallow reasons I want this to be over. The end of the world is proving to be quite an inconvenience. Simmer down, Karen. I know how serious this virus is. I don’t need an angry email detailing the reasons I should follow your lead and wear a useless cloth mask and contaminated gloves everywhere I go. I’ve seen your selfies on Facebook, beaming with condescending pride as you don your protective gear. I’ve read your posts publicly admonishing anyone you feel isn’t practicing adequate social distancing. I know you are mother/teacher/volunteer of the year. We get it. The pandemic is serious. Very, very serious. However, I’m over it. My nails, nether regions and I are one hundred percent over it. Despite the myriad of trivial reasons I crave the return to normalcy, I swear I’m not a high maintenance chick. I am a capable, independent woman. So, being the problem solver I am, I decided I could survive a month or two without a visit to the European Wax Center. No sweat. Grooming at home will be a cinch. I might even prefer the do it yourself route, saving myself some time and money in the process. Such was the pep talk I gave myself while carefully selecting an at home wax kit. I’ve watched Michelle, my waxer, do this a bunch of times. It seems simple enough. How hard could it be? Fast forward a couple of days. My slightly stubbly underarms and I have worked up enough courage to test out the pre-waxed strips I found at Walmart. Now, I’m not an idiot. I know better than to attempt an at home bikini wax without practicing on another body part first. I also know I can’t be trusted to use the gooey wax you smear on with a stick. Hence, the pre-waxed strips. This ain’t my first rodeo, after all. Underarms seem like a good idea. It’s a small area. If I stretch my arm up high, I’ll be able to hold the skin taut enough to remove the wax strip with minimal pain. I’ve got this. Here we go…. Holy Mary, Mother of God! What was I thinking? Have you ever had the disheartening experience of learning you are, in fact, an idiot? Well, this was my moment. I made three grave miscalculations. One – I’ve never actually waxed my underarms before. I can’t think of one good reason why I chose to use one of the most sensitive areas of my body as a crash test dummy. Two – Even though the instructions said to put baby powder on the area to be waxed in order to protect the skin and even though I’ve watched Michelle powder my scooter every single time she’s waxed me, I decided to disregard that gold nugget of information. Clearly, my amateur hour hair removal expertise qualified me to willy nilly change the laws of physics. Three – (I found this one out later from a professional waxer friend) Apparently, the only place you absolutely CANNOT wax yourself is your underarms. Despite my assumption I would be able to hold the skin taut, I was sadly mistaken. I’m no quitter, though. I learn from my mistakes and I persevere. Admittedly, it took me a few more days to work up the courage for the main event – the bikini area. This time, I was prepared. I had scissors to cut the wax strips to size and baby powder to protect my delicates. I confidently powdered up and placed the first strip in place. I smoothed it down in the direction of hair growth. The only thing standing between me and smooth skin was one good yank. Yup. Just one good yank. Alrighty, then.  Here we go. Anytime now. There I was – lying on a towel on my bathroom floor covered in enough baby powder to keep Johnson & Johnson in business for a year (I wasn’t taking any chances this time) and a wax strip stuck to my goodies. I cowardly wondered if it was too late to turn back in my misguided quest for at home silky smoothness. Maybe if I took a hot enough shower, I could gently remove the strip and shave my way out of this mess. Maybe I could just trim off the excess paper and let Michelle figure it out next month. Or, maybe I could just man TF up, give it one good pull and put the whole ugly experience behind me. I chose to man TF up, but only because after a quick google search I learned the other options were unrealistic. I grabbed the end of the wax strip and braced myself for the blinding pain I knew was inevitable. In one quick motion, I removed the wax and the unwanted hair attached to it. Stunned by the decidedly anticlimactic moment, I stared at the offending strip in my hand. As it turns out, when you follow the instructions you have much better and less painful results. I’m not saying it was the most pleasurable experience to ever happen south of the border, but it was nowhere near as bad as the underarm fiasco. It was so ‘not terrible’, I finished up the rest of the territory without the dramatics. There may have been some curses directed at the Coronavirus and vows to tip Michelle double from now on, but no dramatics. As I said, my nether regions are done with the ‘Rona. I can’t take much more of this, so listen to Karen. Wash your hands, don’t touch your face and take this shit seriously so we can all get back to normal. Better yet, Karen, go find the manager in charge of viruses and make him give us a full refund.

An Open Letter To My Addict

Addiction is so commonplace in our country we all have at least one loved one affected. Loving an addict is a tough place to be. Always walking the fine line between helping and enabling, always hovering in the gray area between hope and reality, always wavering between speaking our mind and worry that the last conversation we’ll have with our addict will be filled with anger. I’ve never been great at holding my tongue (shocker, I know). Many times, the opportunity to speak meaningful words is lost because we don’t know how. Or our addict refuses to hear. Or we know anything said will be twisted and refuted the moment it leaves our lips, forgotten amid the excuses and denials. So, what do we do? I’ve found the written word (especially on the internet) is always available. Available to reread when we are calmer, when there’s a lucid moment for the recipient to reflect. I’ve written an open letter to our addicts. I say our addicts because they belong to us. They are our brothers, our sisters, our nieces, our nephews, our cousins, our friends and our parents. They aren’t strangers for whom we can pretend not to care. They aren’t abstract beings unattached to us. To My Addict, First of all, I love you. Loving you is what makes your addiction so painful to witness. One of your favorite go-to accusations is that because I won’t give you money, or a place to stay or one more chance, it means I don’t love you. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is because I love you, I cannot help you kill yourself. I cannot aide and abet your demise. Often, you are angry when I won’t believe your claims that this time will be different. Maybe when you say it, you believe that this will be the time you’re able to change your life. And maybe it will be. But, for me, it sounds like the thousand other ‘this time will be different’’s I’ve heard. You know the saying “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”? Well, you’ve fooled me hundreds of times. Hundreds. Each time I hoped, and I prayed, each time I put my faith in you, each time I waited – cautiously optimistic and each time you crushed me. Each time you shredded my  trust, rewarded my confidence with lies and betrayals. So, please understand why your words are meaningless. I still hope and pray you’ll find your way, but I need to see action – long term, sustained action. Not a one and done token gesture. Your actions will always speak louder than your words. You want me to forget your past with each new start, you want me to wipe the slate clean. Real life doesn’t work that way. I agree constantly reminding you of past indiscretions is counteractive to your recovery, but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember them. Wanting a fresh start doesn’t erase the past. The fact that you blame your addiction instead of taking responsibility for your choices is one of those deafening actions I speak of. Calling addiction a disease does not absolve you from the consequences of your actions. Diabetics must manage their disease or face complications like amputations, heart disease or kidney failure. Those with high blood pressure must take medications and eat sensibly to avoid the same complications. Never in the history of medicine has someone been able to reverse the effects of not managing their disease by blaming the disease itself. A diabetic must choose to avoid certain foods. Someone with high blood pressure can’t eat a pound of bacon everyday and expect to be healthy. They must live with those consequences and so do you. You are not a victim. Your mother is a victim. Your child is a victim. Your family and friends are victims. You are not. You are an accomplice to this disease. Change doesn’t happen instantly, and trust isn’t rebuilt overnight. Maybe  you were clean for a month last time, maybe a year. However long it was, I will sit on pins and needles waiting for you to relapse until that much time multiplied by ten has passed. Because all I’ve learned from you is just when I let my guard down, you’ll move in the for next scam. Until you heal yourself from within and conquer your demons, recovery will never last. You crave the high only an external source can provide. With each new start, that high comes from the praise and confidence of your family and friends when you’re doing well. But soon that praise will taper off when your newfound stability is no longer a novelty to us. Soon you will have to work for that high. Soon you will have to reconcile within yourself that you are a person who will steal from your own mother to chase that high. Soon you will face the anticipated disappointment in the eyes of your loved one when you make a promise. Soon those demons will rear their heads. Then what will you do? Every experience I have with you tells me you will soon chase the easy high. You’ll have just one beer. Then next time, just a few beers. Then maybe you’ll have a tough day. Then you’ll call your dealer.  If you want to change the world’s perception of you, you must first change your perception of yourself. Do the hard work. Take the hits your past self earned. Feel the hurt you caused. Do these things over and over. Each day. Again and again. I can hear you already arguing that you’ve done all these things and it didn’t work. I can hear you already justifying your relapses. I can hear the fake mea culpa, taking responsibility but not really meaning it. I can hear it all because I’ve heard it all before. So, before you accuse me of not believing in you, or triggering your relapse, or wanting you dead because I refuse to play along with your version of reality, ask yourself how many times have you lied? Or stolen? Or broken a promise? Put yourself in my shoes. Walk around in them and when your done, reread the first paragraph in this letter. Forever in your corner, hoping and praying…                                                                 Love, Me

An Open Letter To My Addict,

Addiction is so commonplace in our country we all have at least one loved one affected. Loving an addict is a tough place to be. Always walking the fine line between helping and enabling, always hovering in the gray area … Continue reading →

God Laughs

I may not go to church as often as I should and I’m certainly not the best example of a pious woman, but I do wholeheartedly believe God is real. And I am one hundred percent positive he has a … Continue reading →

Awesome Autism

I had this great plan to publish this post at the beginning of the month in celebration of Autism Awareness month. Unfortunately, time got away from me and my blog took a backseat to life. As I just said, April … Continue reading →