There is hope.

One of my sons is spending a bit of time with his dad. It's difficult when any of my boys are gone, not only because I miss them but also because it reminds me of how very much my world revolves around them and how lost I am without the three of them to cement me in place.
In the last 6 months, I've made huge strides in trying to bring back pieces of my old self. I've become active with a service group in our town, one that tries to identify needs in the community and either match those groups with service providers or creates a remedy for that need. We've begun an autism support group, helped keep a flagging group that helps young children from going under, have begun the process of building a kinship navigator program. It makes me feel good to be involved in something that's having a positive impact on our community.
I've been involved more at my younger sons' school, even been elected PTO president for the next school year.
It seems like, outside my home, I'm moving in a positive directions and succeeding in exposing myself to the outside world again. I'm creating superficial friendships and networking.
I'm reminded that I used to be such a social creature.
At home, though, it's a different story. It's hard to change. My husband has tolerated my involvement in the school and service groups because I've painted it in such a way that for him to protest would come across as complete crap. I'm very careful to tell my aunt about it in ways that he can't argue with, because he won't show his true colors to anyone else but me.
I've managed, to this point, to make my way and still keep up most everything in our life at home as it has been. He's very possessive of my time and my happiness. More than once, he's remarked jealously that I'm happier leaving home than I seem to be inside it. And he's not completely wrong.
When it's me and the boys, I'm happy. He works third shift so it's like that quite a bit. It's when he's home and awake that I have to walk on eggshells and try to run interference for the boys.
He's very critical and I try to buffer as best as I can.
I shouldn't paint him as completely negative because he has his good spots and moments. I wouldn't have married him, otherwise.
It's just that the longer we're married, the more I lose those rose-colored specs I painted on myself and the more I realize that it's not how I want to spend the rest of my life. How sad is it that on a recent occasion when we went to dinner sans children, we literally sat in silence?
I've changed so much since we first met.Not only because he's demanded it of me but because I couldn't reconcile the old Me and a new Me.
I was a vibrant, social, nurturing woman. I trusted. I believed. I had actually begun to build my confidence back up, for the first time in years.
I don't recognize that girl anymore. I gave away my friends, closeted myself away with a controlling, manipulative man. I gave up myself to fill his needs.
And I want that Me back.
I want this time without my oldest to serve as a reminder that I am more than Wife and Mom. I am a human being with needs that deserve to be met too.
I'm going to work on exploring those more as this Summer winds on. I'm going to take advantage of the boys' times away to rebuild my interests and try not to miss them TOO strongly but just enough. I'm going to break away and out from under his thumb. I'm going to look at Life and remember how sweet it can taste. I'm going to become the example my sons deserve, an example of living Life to the fullest extent, well-rounded and open to what might come our way.
Note to self: there is hope.

Definition

If you look up lagan in a dictionary, the proper definition is as follows:

lag·an : goods thrown into the sea with a buoy attached so that they may be found again.

That's me.
Today is my 9th wedding anniversary, in my second marriage. I have three sons, aged 14, 12, and 10. I'm 33.
As I suppose is the norm for many wives and mothers, somewhere along the way I've managed to lose Me. However, unlike a lot of wives and mothers, I set up a buoy, so that I might find my way back. I've kept a journal most of my life. Nine years ago, I moved it from paper to the 'Net, knowing that the man I'd married would never afford me the privacy of my own space, unexplored. Red flag, right?
Today begins my journey back. Today marks Day One of my efforts to remember who I was pre-Marriage Number 2.
Today. I'm reclaiming Me.